My Alternate Universe

I just had to show a picture of my dog... my excuse for not blogging regularly is that whenever I have time to, I always want to lay on the couch with her. She's just so precious! Luckily for all "y'all" (as my Grandma would say) she's stinky and needs a bath. Groomer tomorrow at 8:30am!! She doesn't look like it, but she was attacked by a coyote a little over a month ago in San Diego, and she was inches from doggy doom. Luckily with her IVs and collapsed lung, she didn't go to that warm, inviting light to doggy heaven. Or maybe she remembered seeing "All Dogs Go to Heaven" in her previous life as a French Princess and recalled that "you can never go back!"
---Changing gears...---
So it's been a busy, interesting week. I feel like I'm lying whenever I say that I'm busy since I'm only working part-time, but I'm never just sitting at home relaxing. I guess that will only happen when I retire. College is over, it's time to get serious. I did a lot of sewing of course, since I'm a superstar sister and quilter. I've been working on this quilt that I promised my brother and sister-in-law for their wedding (over 2 years ago) and it's almost finished. Also, Samantha sat on some kind of gunkitty-goo on the metro while holding her little boyfriend's hand and it threatened to destroy her pantalones. So, being an awesome person, I sewed some cute fabric over the stain.

The fabric is a scrap from a quilt that Alexandra is working on, so that was convenient. I bent a needle and a pin beyond recognition, but I make sacrifices for my love. Notice my cute toes to the right of the picture, with the big toe naked as the day I was born, and the other ones alternating white and black. I won't even try to explain what happened with that. Just smile, shake your head, and say "what a hippie." Also notice my mom and dad's sweet new rug.
This week has been loaded with interior design-ness from top to bottom. I went antique shopping with my mom most of Saturday, and she found a few pieces of furniture that were going to be ideal for the house. When my parents moved from Boston to La Cañada in August, there was suddenly a lot more space to cover. So anyway, the most promising was an Empire table, American, 1890, solid Mahogany for the entry hall. It is really beautiful, but of course we couldn't just bring it home because... my dad would probably have a hernia. And believe me, I know hernias. The ladies who we worked with were these spunky, vivacious, slightly tacky 70-year-old twins, Ann & Kay. If you're ever in Pasadena, you absolutely have to go see them. So my mom and I ended up going back for the table on Tuesday, at which point we hit up more antique spots and found more good stuff. So the cycle continues, and some day after dad has moaned and complained about furniture enough we'll get our way. I've never been that exposed to or interested in antiques, but now I'm in love. And even though I don't have my own place to put my own stuff, I saw a lot of potential in the old jewelry. It's funky retro chic is right up my alley, plus I would re-work a lot of it to make it look more modern (and therefore stylish, not kitchy), which feeds my need for working with my hands.
Anyway, after all of the antique business, we went carousing into Culver City, where there's this ridiculously amazing design store (like the size of a small home depot) called "Berbere Imports." Just the name is enough to make an African Studies minor like me salivate, but the inside was practically orgasmic. (My mom's mom would crucify me for that mark... when Meredith moved from "The View" to "Good Morning America," she used the word orgasmic and I heard about how inappropriate it was for a few days.) Anyway, it's all stuff from Europe, Africa, and Asia, and they sell to the trade. They have indoor and outdoor stuff, furniture, textiles, decorations, GIANT DOORS, you name it. They have these amazing, tall wooden doors that should be in the British Museum or something. They look like the doors of Jericho or a fortress in Assyria. I called them the doors to Narnia. So most of their stuff, I'd say, was Indian for indoor and Chinese for outdoor. They had killer Moroccan lamps and stuff, and the whole place was amazing. Well, we bought this cool little side table for the family room, which wasn't easy. You see, we were two lay-people walking into design Mecca, and it turns out that they only really sell to designers. But, we talked a cute guy into letting us have it, and I told him that it was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. That is, after trying to solicit my services to him. I definitely mentioned both having lived in Africa and speaking fluent French, but he neither proposed to me nor hired me on the spot. Such is life!

This table is from India, about the height of my knee, and it's inlaid with either bone or lacquer. It's definitely cool. My mom said "A touch of ethnic is just perfect," to which I replied "a touch of non-ethnic is just perfect," at which we laughed and drove off into the sunset.