Irish Expressionism

I promised Vin that I'd write a post about Ireland so here goes. I've always had a fascination with the country. In 1998 or 1999 (the 90s - so long ago I can't even remember which year!), I was lucky enough to be sent by my job to live in Dublin for a month. Oh how I wanted to stay and live there long-term.

Ireland and America are good friends. The U.S. ambassador's residence in Dublin is in the same park as the Irish president's house. So traveling around Dublin and the immediate area (Editor's Note: I've not been to Belfast or Northern Ireland) means you're going to be greeted by friendly, welcoming people. This, of course, contributes to the charm of the area—it's nice to not feel like a barbaric American.

But there's another element that, for me, contributes significantly to the charm of the area and that's the expressions used in everyday conversation. Since my trip was about two weeks ago, I couldn't remember all of the fun slang I wanted to share with you here. Enter Google. A search for the term "irish slang" has thankfully pulled up a number of websites where people more dedicated than I have created dictionaries to help jog my memory. Here are my favorite terms:

• Grand - This one is really best of the best. It's just like saying "great" in response to anything someone says to you when you want to respond with a supportive, affirmative exclamation. But "grand" sounds just a little more regal, dontcha think?
• Lovely - Again, this term puts just a little more of a refined emphasis on things. It's not a matter of translating this one, just a matter of it being used more often than we use it here in the states.
• Crisps - Potato chips. They're sold in every pub*, which I think it brilliant*.
• Pub* - Not a bar, but a pub. There's a difference and I'm not sure what it is, but I think a bar is a bar in a restaurant or hotel, whereas anything that's only a bar is a pub.
• Brilliant* - When something is really great, meaning great with an exclamation point.
• Chalk and cheese -  Used to refer to two things or people who couldn't be any more different.

Of course this anthropological report wouldn't be complete with some real, live footage from the field. Isn't this a lovely tune? I don't totally understand what they're saying, and I've watched this vid a number of times, but it's lovely, grand and brilliant.

Hot Online Shopping Tip: Hampden Clothing

Attention my lovely fashionistas, a favorite store of mine in Charleston, SC, is having its winter sale with some seriously fabulous—and usually uber-expensive—items on sale. 75% off cannot be missed, so get yourselves over there now because it's about to end (tomorrow). Here's the URL>>
HampdenClothing.com.

Some hot selections, for your perusal:

I call this one Pilgrimmage

And this one is Fire Ball

Finally, this one I want

2012: A Plea to the Young People

Arriving back to NYC from FL this week, I was struck by just how few people I noticed on the street looking hip and stylish. Usually when I'm away from this fine place for an extended period of time, I'm immediately struck by how hot, and cutting edge so many people look. Ok, we still have a ton of hotties here, but the outfits are, well, mainstream. Every woman in the East Village is wearing leggings and boots (myself included). Every woman in Brooklyn knots her hair on the top of her head and wears a chunky knit scarf. For a while I was blaming globalization for this, and according to this article I just read in Vanity Fair—"You Say You Want a Devolution?"—that's part of the reason why style, culture, art, etc. hasn't really changed in the past decade (at least). But this is New York City, people, and that is why my first post of the new year is a plea to the young people.

My dear twenty-somethings:

I understand you're faced with a lot of tough elements these days. A college degree doesn't guarantee a job once you graduate, but it is likely to guarantee some serious debt. We're smack dab in the middle of a deep recession that's only getting deeper. Life, especially life in this city, can often feel like a treadmill you'd just like to take a break from. As someone who moved to South Carolina for three years believe me, I get it.

The thing is, we're counting on you. We in our middle-to-late thirties, and older, need you to shake things up. We need you to actually innovate and not fetishize the word innovate. We need you to occupy Wall Street, and if you can't afford to take off work to do so, get involved in some other way. It's great that you worked on Obama's campaign, but we need you to continue to volunteer, be passionate and contribute.

Let's move on from Steve Jobs. Yes, Apple products are amazeballs but the products of the future can and should make them obsolete. Let's move on right now&mash;we are counting on you to knock our socks off so that ten years from now we can say "that's so 2012" and have it actually mean something.

And on a fashion note, I am counting on you to wear the stuff I'm in awe of. I'm counting on you to rock the shoes I can't wear because I'll break my back if I do. I need you to get the new haircut I can't because I don't have straight hair. And most importantly, I need you to design the most killer pair of spectacles never before seen on any hipster for when my eyes go.

Your friend and mentor,

Caroline

Pegged Jeans

This weekend I noted not one but five different young ladies sporting the banana clip in their hair*. That clip is a terrible element of the 80s to try to bring back into vogue (stop it, Urban Outfitters, I know it's you that is to blame for this...or maybe Forever 21). But here in this photo is a wonderful element of 80s style to bring back -- the pegged jean!

This is the fabulous ER, who I'm proud to say is a colleague of mine, rockin the pegged jean. Hot!

*Note: all these youngsters were spotted in Brooklyn

Divorce

Life can be hard. I have now been sitting here in front of my laptop for more than ten minutes trying to come up with a follow-up sentence to that statement that gives it justice and also sends us into the point of this blog post, but I keep deleting the drafts. There's not really much more to follow up with after that simple statement: life can be hard.

A few years ago when my ex-husband and I were in the thick of our culture shock in South Carolina, life was hard. Soon after that we went to counseling and life got even harder because we unearthed the hard truth that I wanted kids from our marriage and he didn't. I was sad and I was angry, but what I didn't realize then that I see plainly now is that we had started on the path to clarity.

After spending a lot of time trying to first convince my ex- that we should have children and then convince myself that I didn't need children in the marriage, I came to a point of acceptance. Mind you, once I got to a point of acceptance, life wasn't rosy. There was and still is a process: I moved back to New York to restart my career, I reached a point of forgiveness of myself and my ex- and I am now currently (re)learning how to be (yep, I'll always be learning that; spoiler alert: we all will).

My ex- and I worked really hard to make our divorce as smooth a process as possible. We started the work of drafting an agreement last year with the goal of being officially divorced by June 2011. But the month came and went this year and the trial still wasn't on the calendar in the courts in South Carolina (you know, y'all, it was the summah and therefore beach season). I began to get really anxious. I was panicky. I had kept "the first week of June" in my head as this marker — a milestone that would soon be surpassed. After that hurdle was cleared, relief would be the reward. But once June morphed into July, I became a total wreck. The what ifs wormed their way out of my subconscious and into day-to-day thought.

Then like a gift a date was finally set for our divorce trial: August 23. I made sure to keep my cellphone close by me in case something funky happened at the trial, but thankfully it was smooth sailing. Sure enough, when my ex- texted me that it was official (so Gen Y of us, right?), the sense of relief struck deep. I wasn't surprised by the feeling. I had intellectualized the process enough so that I assumed relief would be the outcome. It's just that I didn't fully understand why relief was going to be the response. Now on the other side of August 23 I realize that I was relieved because I was no longer responsible to a relationship that wasn't working. Couple that with this amazing lift of the pressure of having children, a pressure that only I was putting on myself, and I present to you, my dearest darlings, the joy of life.

Are there trying times ahead? Yes of course there are and these times can probably be summarized under one general category: dating. Is joy fleeting? Yes, I believe it is. But there's this concept I learned from my therapist in South Carolina that was recently echoed by my sweet JK who got it from this TED talk by Brene Brown and it is that in order to have joy in your life, you must open yourself up to grief. As Brown says in the talk, "to feel this vulnerable means I'm alive" and I am thankful and relieved that I am alive.

A Day of Beauty, EV-Style

What's your personal maintenance regimen? Does it involve more than one place? One of the 5,892 reasons why I'm so glad to be back in NY is that all my beauty bars are within walking distance. Here's my list, for which I have the lovely ladies of the EVC to thank (except for my eyebrow place - I found that one all on my own!)

- EYEBROWS: Lulu's Nails on 1st Avenue between 8th and 7th Streets. This place has zero frills but the waxing woman knows the difference between "clean up" and" shape" and has never given me vampy eyebrows.

- BIKINI WAX: Maria Bonita on Prince Street. You're in, you're in pain, you're out. It's a nice, clean job every time.

-NAILS: Top A Nails on, you guessed it, Avenue A. This place is also very efficient. In the winter, they wrap your newly-done toes in plastic wrap, then put on your socks and shoes (smart).

-HAIR: Of course I go to Devachan, y'all. It's probably one of the top 20 reasons why I moved back here. Curly-heads of the world, UNITE!

What's your routine? Have any cool, affordable places in NYC to share? Comment!

Day 304ish

I woke up, went to work (subway), came home from work (subway), stopped by Filene's and bought some Vince jeans on sale for $39.99, happened upon a dance troupe of 10 people dancing in unison and not-so-in-unison in the square outside of the St. Mark's church which is now a cultural center, decided to stop and watch the troupe, decided then to sit (under my umbrella because it was raining! they were dancing in the rain), then a man also standing in the square who had been whistling at a bird who was chirping back tried to get my attention about how he was talking to a bird and I looked away and continued watching the dancers, then the man kept staring at me so I rolled my eyes and left the bench, I walked two more blocks home and peeled my wet clothes off, got into dry ones and thought it was a pretty nice end of March 31, 2011, my 304th(ish) day back in the city.