Tag: Los Angeles

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Clothes: Dreaming of Cooler Weather & Back-to-School

I have this sense that sometimes I come off as a competent professional, and this post is proof that I’m faking it, just like most people on the web.

This is a photo of me in an outfit I particularly liked last spring, but, if it looks on your screen like it looks on mine, it looks warped. And I don’t know why. I have Photoshop, and mad Photoshop skills (if mad Photoshop skills means I pay for it, and noodle around and do my best, and really have no idea what I’m doing). I don’t know why I look freaking warped, but I can’t be bothered to care, mostly because I love this outfit, and I so badly want it to be chilly, even a little bit for a few hours. So, yes, I am faking any confidence (and proficiency at Photoshop) that you may feel that you see.

It’s times like these that I realize that while I absolutely consider air conditioning to be both a privilege and a blessing, what I consider even more of a privilege and a blessing is some outdoor space to call your own, and nice enough weather to enjoy it. I’m in that awkward phase of life where I am really not too good in The Heat, with capital letters, and also not too good when the temps go below freezing. I was a winter-over-summer fan from birth almost (and aren’t most very pale-skinned people?) and I still am, but not quite as cold as I age. Blech. Aging.

In any case: I bought that green blouse, I don’t remember from where, but it is long-sleeved, a bit cropped, and I love it. Over my (presumably, at the time) chilly shoulders I have an inexpensive sweater shawl/wrap I treated myself to (I think it came from Quince) when we first moved back to CA, which was insane because I probably would have gotten more use out of it on the East Coast, but maybe had less reasons to go out looking dressy enough for a shawl. Are shawls dressy? It seems to me they are. East Coast or West, hot-as-blazes or nicely cold, I have never gotten over my love of corduroy.

When I was going into sixth grade my mother gave me some money, and let me take the trolly to our local mall to buy some school clothes on my own. My mother was a very clothing-controlling mother who “knew” how children were supposed to be dressed, and that often meant clothes I didn’t especially like, like pink or pale peach, and Keds (sorry Keds) and lots of white, and no dark colors. If you got an Easter purse made of some sort of wicker every spring along with your white sweater and a hat with fake flowers on it, your mom may have been like mine. That year I don’t know what had come over her, as she also really liked seeing me try clothes on, and deciding which stores to go into, but she sent me off on my own. I went to the Levi’s store that had floor-to-ceiling bins full of denim and corduroy arranged by waist, and length, and also leg type. I cannot tell you how disappointed I was to hear that they only had straight legs, skinny, and boot cut; bell bottoms had been discontinued the prior fall, they told me. I mean I adored bell bottoms. So sad for me. But they had corduroy, and I had never had corduroy before, so I bought three pairs: one in green and one in a dark rust color, and I think the other pair was deep brown. Needless to say my mother was nonplussed. I remember feeling like middle school, where, for the first time, I would have a different teacher for each class, and move from classroom to classroom like a college student, was the big time. I was ready to learn, baby! (Of course I was. I read the encyclopedia and the atlas. I was a positively thrilling child with my consumption of plays and gothic horror romances. What sixth-grader doesn’t like gothic horror romance?) So I wanted to go to middle school looking collegiate, and for me that was corduroy and fall colors. Flash forward to this spring, and I have been lugging those green corduroy pants (from Gap or Old Navy) around for at least five years!

And, lastly, to finish off this particular ensemble, on my feet was the birthday gift I requested from Sophie and her dad for 2024: green Doc Martens. I had Doc Martens boots in college, but they have gotten so much more comfortable now. I love them. I replaced Doc’s laces with some pretty green ribbon laces, and that completed the look, in my mind.

Here’s to fall colors. I bought Dave a pumpkin spice latte the other day!

You know, one last thought, when I was a K-12 kid, all I thought about and longed for was going to college. I know I was a teensy bit of a dork, but I just cannot stand what it happening to colleges now: Cutting down on diversity (which I loved. I requested a non-white roommate on my college form because I was leaving Wonder-Bread-white Springfield, and wanted to meet some people who were not like me), cutting down on international students, controlling what teachers can teach and what books can be made available. But the most horrible thing is the absolute lie that college is neither good nor necessary. I had teachers with different morals and beliefs and ideas than me, and I liked them just as much as the ones who were more similar to me in my thinking, and I loved them all (except for that one Irish poet who refused to pass women, which I’m sure is here somewhere in a past post). And learning new things is important. You cannot do it all on your own, and you have to read to do it, and you have to care about knowing things. I tend to be a very trusting person, but I also always wanted to check the source before I changed or confirmed my thinking on a topic. I wished, so much, that I could have had time in my program to learn more languages, and to take subjects that weren’t related to my degree, and that were tough for me, like physics, which continues to fascinate me, and automotive repair (I wanted to learn how to fix car engines). September is the month of school, and fall, and new things to learn, and the circus of idiots in leadership of the federal government at the moment should have their brains washed out with soap for their absolute hatred of college. College is not easy, but it is a wonderful experience that every American child should be encouraged to pursue, and supported to pursue (use my tax dollars to pay for college please, and not to give Tesla a tax break!).

So, in the spirit of fall, and going back to school, and wishing, in vain, that it was cool enough for corduroy, and that I was young enough to be a college student all over again, here is my head-to-toe green outfit. If only the pants were bell-bottoms! If only college were life-long and free. If only we had time, and resources, to do it all. I would stay busy.

What was a class that you took in K-12 or college that you still remember fondly? I loved choir, geometry, home ec (cooking) in middle school, and still remember some of the recipes, and literary criticism, the Vietnam War (which went with a PBS series), and black and white photography in college.

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I’ve Been Known to Smuggle Plain Yogurt Into a Restaurant

That there is a photo of white mountain yogurt, which is my new favorite yogurt.

Years ago there was a restaurant in Venice Beach called Hurry Curry. It’s gone now. It was one of those places where, between 9am and 9pm, you could walk in and Raj would hook you up with anything you might want that was your typical Indian fare, aloo gobi, palak or saag paneer, matar paneer, chicken tiki masala, vindaloo, you name it. You could get various levels of spice, but almost all of their food had a kick to it, and I was raised on Irish cooking, for the most part. I love cucumbers, but I’ve never been a fan of raita, because they’re too mushy in it. I had eaten yogurt in my life, but, if you grew up like me, the yogurt you ate was a crime against yogurt, Dannon. My mom bought one that was fruit on the bottom that was okay, but really, yogurt was always like a “when you really want a good sweet, but you’re too fat for one,” sort of thing, and as fat as I have ever been, and I have been quite voluminous, I ain’t never been that fat. LOL. Actually I am not even that into sweets. So why waste the sweets you are going to eat on freaking Dannon?. But Raj, the very sweet very large man in charge, gave me some plain yogurt to try as a way to cool down the spice.

Raj made the yogurt from scratch. Raj was probably 20 years older than me, and his entire family was back in India. Raj was here hoping to make enough money to send them back there so that his kids could do well in life, and he hadn’t seen his family in the same room as him in about ten years when I met him. Raj was illegal, and he could not go back to visit and hope to come here again easily, especially after 9/11. But he owned Hurry Curry, and he was beloved in the neighborhood.

Raj’s yogurt was slightly warm, as he took it from the pot on the stove, and runny. Dannon’s was only runny if it had gone over. Raj’s yogurt had a tang to it, but not sour, and so soft and smooth. It was delicious. Raj taught me how to make it by taking home some of his yogurt, and heating up milk on the stove, letting it almost boil, cooling it down to room temp., and then pouring in Raj’s yogurt. (I am not a food scientist… please do not consider this a “how to” on yogurt making. It is a reminiscence from 20 years ago.)

Raj had a little “fatherly” crush on me, I think. I was not a petite person then, and he thought I was just the cutest, plumpest thing outside of his wife in India. He always used to put extra cheese cubes in my saag paneer. Oh, man, was it good!

Indian restaurants, in general, in my opinion, have the best yogurt going. I am not a fan of yogurt with sweet things in it. I like it plain. And, actually, I have to make another tangent here to rave about Turkish manti.

Turkish manti can most easily be described as tortellini filled with meat and presented with a creamy buttery garlic yogurt sauce on top, but the kind I had was made like that, and then “soupefied” (it’s my word, I created it!) with some of the pasta water. The ones I see photos of on the web have missed this (IMHO) crucial step. I once had a little group of Turkish graduate students I’d become friends with, and they took me to a restaurant in NYC that served manti, which they said is normally a food not served in restaurants, because “Only Mama makes it.” And then they had Mama send some, somehow, frozen like a brick, and they made it for me at home too. I don’t eat a lot of meat these days, but if someone put a steaming bowl of manti in front of me, especially if it was soupefied, it would be impossible to say no.

Back to the yogurt, because I want to tell you about white mountain yogurt, which I found at Sprouts. I’m not gonna lie. I bought it because of the beautiful glass jar. I am a jar lover, and a jar hoarder. I mean it’s endlessly reusable! And this jar is beautiful.

May they never switch to paper or plastic! Imagine those flowers you are going to buy yourself sticking out of this damn jar! Wow! Imagine the terrarium you could make in it! Imagine the leftovers, like something soupified, you could store in it after you have pulled a Gene Simmons and somehow gotten your tongue all the way down to the bottom of the jar. This yogurt tastes exactly as I remember Raj’s tasting. It is thin in spots and thick in others, but a good shake of the jar makes it more uniform. It has that silky thin texture and absolutely perfect taste. It is, so it says, Bulgarian! And, just like that, another country on my “wish I could visit” list. I want to go!

Which brings me to tangent #2: Immigrants, illegal or otherwise.

I found a photo of Raj! God bless the internet!

What a cutie!

And here are some photos of Hurry Curry!


Wasn’t it beautiful?

Right before I moved back east, Raj had a heart attack. At the time his wife was able to visit, and was coming to take care of him. Of course, she couldn’t stay any more than he was supposed to have stayed. I don’t know the real story of why Hurry Curry is gone. I was having my own very real life crisis at the same time, so I could not even attempt to keep connected. I hope he closed because he went home to his family. I know he always wanted to. I’m mean, Los Angeles is great, but his family wasn’t here, and he always wanted to return to them. The immigrant situation in the USA is a problem of our own making, in my humble opinion. If you want to move here from England, you have a much easier time than if you want to move here from Mexico, or India, or many other places. The way to move here is not standardized or the same for each country. Many Americans, long before the current mess of an administration, married immigrants only to find there was no way for their spouses to get citizenship, and they left the USA for their spouses’ home countries. But many countries are not safe to go back to at all, and so people go “underground” because they fear harm back home. But really, if home was safe, and your family was safe, you would probably prefer to be in your home. I’ve met and become friends with many international students, and none of them wanted to stay. They wanted to go back to Turkey, to Vietnam, to Eastern Europe, to Mexico. And it breaks my heart, every day, to see what the current administration is doing to my fellow humans. A person who happened to be born in Columbia, or Haiti, or Yugoslavia, or Sudan is no different from me. They may like different foods, or have different spiritual beliefs, but we all have the same dreams: happiness for ourselves, and, as we have them, for our children. Stephen Miller and his goons are as wrong and evil as any other proponent of monoraciality in history. He would deny us our friends from other places, our family from other places, and our food from other places too. I see what is going on today as simple cruelty that is out to hurt people like Raj. And why? What for? I don’t buy the whole “crime & rapists” stuff, and I don’t buy the “they’re using all the resources so we don’t have enough!” The Republicans keep cutting aid programs, which is why we don’t have enough. It’s got nothing to do with poor children from this country or any other.

This article really moved me, and gave me some small insight into a world I don’t know anything about. “A day in the strawberry fields seems like forever”

I hope people who judge immigrants harshly will take a moment to read it.

Anywho, as a woman who loves to eat, and quite likes spicy food, but can also collapse into an asthma attack if it is truly spicy, yogurt has saved my ass too many times to mention. I’ve been known to bring my own (small plastic container secreted in handbag or coat pocket) if we’re going for spicy food at a place where I don’t expect them to have any… like a Korean restaurant. I’ve never not been grateful for being introduced to non-English, Irish, or Italian foods. Diversity is one of the things I most enjoy in the world. I can think of one of my favorite and most challenging students, and young guy named Mole (pronounced mole-eh! like ole!), who introduced me to, you guessed it, mole sauce! But that’s a story for another day.

I hope that Raj recovered, and was able to go back to India to live happily ever after with his family. I can’t thank him enough for all the good food, for being so kind, and always so tickled to see me (he always came from behind the counter to give me a hug), for thinking I was cute, and for teaching me about plain, and delicious, yogurt. Go try some white mountain. You can drink a shot glass of it: it is so liquidy and delicious. Take a shot of probiotic bliss and toast to your own health, mine, and Raj’s. And buy yourself flowers to put in the jar after you empty it!

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Clothes: Today’s Outfit: I Dream in Madras

A gazillion years ago now I spotted a pair of madras pants at a Goodwill. Man, I wanted them. Unfortunately, based on their size or mine, it wasn’t happening. I remember standing there, thinking, What sewing skills can I unleash to make these work? I do have sewing skills, and they are universally unimpressive, so there’s that. I talked myself out of them, which was a good idea, but I’ve been longing for them ever since.

Facebook puts clothing ads up in my feed all the time. It knows me, and, in this case, I don’t mind, because here came a golf store (last month) with a huge sale on men’s madras pants. Score! Now, what the hell do you wear with madras pants if you don’t golf, and you don’t want to look more dork than usual? T-shirts just seemed to add to the wrong vibe, so I went with this shirt, from Old Navy, I think, during the pandemic, and I believe it is a women’s shirt, because it is a petite, as you can tell because it doesn’t come down to below my butt. I am short, really short, so short my favorite HS teacher called me Shorty instead of my name, and my waist is also short. And, while I’m outing myself, I might as well go all the way and reveal that, also during HS, the costume lady informed me that my arms are shorter than they’re supposed to be, which explains a lot of yoga challenges, and why my daughter says I am a T-Rex. Add into all that my usual chest size of 38D, and it’s been a work-in-progress, sometimes, to find what I want, like a good men’s shirt to wear with ties that fits waist and boobs, and this petite version does the trick so well that you cannot imagine how carefully I launder it. This shirt has to last me to death, folks, and I ain’t planning on going anytime soon.

Lastly the tie is, like all my ties, from Goodwill, but, until today, it had been living in my closet, unworn, for probably 8 or more years. Listen, I commit to clothes I love. I think it works with the slightly preppy vibe.

I have on Seavees sneakers, and, pro tip, every August Seavees has a massive online sale on most of their sneakers that is often 50% off, which these were. They are not as comfy as Vans, IMHO, but they do have that retro beach feel. I have had this pair about five years, bought on sale one August. I am obsessed with my favorite color, green, and really have to hold myself back from buying nothing but green clothes.

Dave has off today, and is sleeping in. I got up (even though I was up late, one!) at my usual pre-6 time, mostly because I was sooo hot, which was, I think, not a function of the weather, but more of the time of life, and had to get in a nice cool shower. Then I thought I would try to wear these pants, and put this look together, and took Oliver for a walk so he wouldn’t bother Dave. As we were heading back we pulled ourselves over to make room for another pedestrian, and we said hello, and she said, “I love your look!” So, you know, I’m pretty much on cloud 9 right now: day slayed. I only dress for me, so that I think, OMGosh, woman, I love it! and tell myself how clever I am. But, having another person comment, before 7 in the morning too, is a great surprise.

These pants are comfy, and got looser just on the walk, which was nice. They have four pockets too, cool, as I often walk with my hands in my back pockets for some reason. I’m all in on the pants, and also happy to be undercutting that golf, country club thing. Golfers… I just don’t know. Someone out there is giving golfing a very bad reputation these days. You know what I’m talking about. Imagine how authors would feel if I golfed instead of helping them edit and sell their books! So Ima sit my madras butt down on the porch before Los Angeles gets scorching at noon, and do some editing. And if it needs saying again, there are no riots here. Just hot days and hard-working people being nice to each other. Los Angeles is one of the best places to merge onto the highway, because they’re nice here. I mean, you know, I’m from Philly. I can drive freaking anywhere in the world because I could easily merge onto the Schuylkill Expressway from the left lane, coming down a ramp into the fast lane at 65. It’s a thing. Los Angeles is so much more forgiving. So, yeah, if you like nice weather, really nice, 9 or more months of the year (a teensy bit too hot other times), if you like happy people to interact with at stores and on the street, if you like diversity for your kids and your own general weirdness, and a more chill vibe overall, and especially if you like international food, this is a pretty good place to be. And if you want some super soft comfortable pants with lots of pockets that could, truly, go with almost anything, get some madras. Geek out!