Observables #41

on baseball caps and other magic

Baseball caps to flatten my new middle part. Hot tip from a friend. I also found out they’re a trend in NYC.

This plant from my local soap (and plants) friends. It’s a Dr. Seuss marvel. But I have been googling for a while now and cannot find the name. Anybody?

I also watched Elsie at a music festival on the weekend. It was a hard environment because although she is an excellent piano player, at these festivals you always encounter 6-year-olds in ball gowns who are better. So it’s a mental game as much as a finger game. Afterwards, we ended up at Urban Outfitters looking for jeans. I asked the person helping us if the jeans would stretch. He said they might stretch. Or they might shrink. Which I believe is called magic.

When Elsie was satisfied with her purchases, she took me around the store and showed me the items that might look good on me. I really appreciated the attention. Mothers crave attention from their tweens. Text that to a tween in your life. You know, I’ll just do it now.

Rebecca Davey @BeccaDavey

Tweens bestowing attention on their mothers is a very good thing.

The new grooves on my face. One day I looked up and discovered a groove in my forehead. I realized I was aging…some more. I had this experience when lines appeared around my mouth a year or so ago. Boom. The crumbling body.

When I was 28 and pregnant with Elsie I had a similar experience. Looking in the mirror I suddenly noticed this stream of stretch marks on my belly. I cried. It was also the year I tried to cure my pregnancy acne with emu oil. So there was a lot to cry about.

My house is deteriorating along with my body. A large crack makes its way through our hallway. Sometimes I follow it like a twisting country road, determined to find the adventure at the end.

In regular reading, I came back to this short story from Willful Creatures by Aimee Bender (upcoming podcast guest!) called “Fruit and Words.” It’s a very quirky story about a woman on the search for mangoes after being left at the altar. She thinks the taste of mangoes will quench the pain of her newfound aloneness. My sister teaches it to her students as a story steeped in magic realism. At one point the mango seller yells at the woman, “You just broke HOPE!” The oddness of Bender’s stories is magic to me.

In other news…on the podcast this week Nat and I are reframing some of our old coffee shops. And we have another Women in Business segment. WIB. Yup. Join us!