An Easy Mark? Moi?

This fancy little boot is coming to the office
with me. Solid gold! (OK, it's a hollow
ornament, but really as fabulous as that long
ago TV show).

Esteemed readers, this kickin' glitter mini-boot is many things I can't resist: 1. It’s in the shape of footwear. 2. It’s sparkly. 3. It’s tiny.  4. I wasn’t looking for it. Rather, it found me in a little shop on Hamilton a few days ago.

Other dangers: I had just finished a run, so endorphins were involved. Also: I had actual cash money on hand (I feel more confident when I set out for a run if I have a slurpee fund on my person.) 

I had just run to Donut Parade, my first visit to this fine establishment. My running partner and I scarfed down homemade maple bars. The place closes up by noon on Saturdays, 1 p.m. on weekdays, so there’s none of this dawdling till the afternoon. You get your treats in the morning, or you pout and go to Safeway.

According to the menu, there were maple bacon bars for sale, but one of the friendly servers told us that we’d have to be there by 9am if we wanted those. (We arrived by 10:45, which is not late in my book, but I fear I keep a different kind of book than most people in this town). 

Running partner and I were sweaty from the summer morning heat. We sat at the counter. I swiveled my bar stool. Donut Parade was first described to me by a pastor friend as a “salt of the earth” kind of place. Tacked up on the paneled walls are pictures of donuts colored by kids and handwritten signs, including one with a call ahead number. (Could it be? I could sleep in AND have my maple bacon bar? Noted for next time!) The place has a clean but bedraggled bathroom you have to cross through the pantry to reach. This is the Pacific Northwest, so there's also an espresso machine.
I sipped my americano and tongued the creamy maple patina off my pliant donut in a way I hoped was not against the wholesome spirit of the place. Competitive swimming was on TV angled from the wall. One of the best ideas ever: Eating fresh donuts while watching other people exercise.

So in a post-donut stupor, I found myself faced with this gold Christmas ornament that could be rigged for an unconventional gift tag. Clearly, I needed it. I couldn’t fit this treasure in the small, zippered pocket of my Camelback, so I carried home my new booty (sorry!) in a black plastic bag as if it were a wad of dog poop.
I maintain a little menagerie in my office window, mostly of the cat and matryoshka inspired objects, but little gold boot will fit right in. I wonder if there’s a pseudo-Catholic part of me that can’t get her fill of relics. In my office, I have a couple of ceramic busts on my desk and a styrofoam model head and glitter skull on my file cabinet. This sparkle boot is just another disembodied part. 

I’m having an iPhoto crisis at the moment (Genuis bar, hold a place for me!), but I’ve got some shaky photos of relics from my recent trip to Europe, including the fingerbone of St. Genevieve, patron saint of Paris. I'm struck by the idea that just a fraction of a holy body still has miraculous power (it's that holy!). 

This also makes me think of the story of Jesus healing people with his clothes (this blog can't take two steps without running into Jesus these days. And how does that make me feel?)

If you have your Bibles handy, turn to Matthew 14 and follow along. In the Matthew version, Jesus has just fed the multitude with five loaves and two fish and then, in the very same chapter, walked on water. There's plenty of action/adventure in this chapter already, but then we get another episode that's quieter and moves me with its simplicity. I'll cut and paste from the KJV (It's the Bible of my youth, and I still prefer its sound): 34. And when they were gone over, they came into the land of Gennesaret. 35And when the men of that place had knowledge of him, they sent out into all that country round about, and brought unto him all that were diseased; 36And besought him that they might only touch the hem of his garment: and as many as touched were made perfectly whole.

Of Birds & Men

Check out the lapel on Sears JR Bazaar shirt from
Area 58 on Monroe.

The guy behind me in the big, black truck flipped the bird.

I was meekly merging onto the Maple Street Bridge. I know it's fuel-efficient to speed up and join the flow. 

But unlike Interstate on-ramps, which offer you a little teaser lane from which to find your way way, this ramp ends in a yield sign. There’s not room for error and the traffic was, well, not bumper to bumper, but heavy. I was lame. I stopped and waited for a hole.

So, when Big, Black Pickup marshaled the rhetorical power of his middle finger, my strongest desire was to flip one right back. Experience has taught me to hesitate (for example, the person who honks at you while you’re running and nearly causes you to shart yourself could well be someone from work or who knows your grandmother. The honker may think they're being friendly, even funny). 

I also considered an alternate reading: this chap with the pickup was flipping off traffic in general, not me in particular. F*&^ you, Maple Street bridge! Up yours, enchanting summer sunshine!

And then I remembered that there’s nothing special about returning anger with anger. Permit me a little Jesus talk (this summer I've been revising essays about my evangelical upbringing, after all). The New Testament upends that eye-for-an-eye, bird-for-a-bird cycle. What’s the point of church or prayer or scripture if it doesn’t increase one's capacity for love or peace? 

Reader, I didn’t flip the bird. I entered traffic as soon as I could, and then hauled ass so that guy couldn’t catch up with me (to flee temptation, of course).

In spite of this stray bird incident, I had a fantastic summer evening. I was crossing the bridge, after all, to meet my friend Janine for a nine-mile run around Bowl & Pitcher, an especially scenic part of Riverside State Park. I’m usually a pavement girl, but I’m learning to love trails. You have to negotiate rocks but not much traffic, save the occasional biker or runner. We were only two or three yards from the Spokane River, in the shade and that sun-warmed pine needle smell I associate with campgrounds (did I mention it's a campground?). We also passed an artillery range across the river. I asked Janine if she was nervous, and she said no way, so I trusted that and kept running.

Without a proper segue, allow me to say that I like the vision of my new shirt from Area 58 on Monroe. And that store: what a treat! It lives up to its marquee promise to showcase “the old and the odd.” It was like walking around in a roadside museum where you were allowed to rifle through the stuff.

The print on the shirt makes me hum “Shiny Happy People.” (For readers 30 or older, you may also think, like I did, of Hands Across America).

I’ve mostly purged my wardrobe of polyester and wide lapels. Retro for me now means more MadMen aspirations. Pencil or pleated skirts, things that affirm I have a waistline. If this sounds vain, well, yes, my vanity is bottomless (let's address this another time, eh?) 
Suffice it to say that I shuffled through high school and college draped in gigantic jeans, baggy blouses, and flannel shirts (many borrowed from my dad). I bought a purple cotton muumuu at a consignment store because I loved its bright flower embroidery. I had no compunction about wearing birks or clogs with dresses. Most of my shirts had hoods. I was no stranger to the poncho. (Be gentle. This was the 90s. Notice there are no pictures in this section). 

This new-to-me Sears shirt from Area 58 doesn’t identify its fabric. It must be synthetic, but it’s light (not like those thick floral hippie shirts I wore that were as breathable as a good patio tablecloth). It’s cut well, to avoid that curse of shorter shirts: The Box. 

And, it has a moral.

Next time I’m tempted to return an unfriendly gesture, I’ll think of this pattern. Let the circle, or the stripe, be unbroken! You, the insecure man in the giant truck, we are all part of the same family. Come, clasp hands! 

Notice (that photo feels really far away now) that the shirt repeats a figure wearing a killer headdress and a blue jumpsuit with shoulder pads. Nothing says peace quite like that. 

Getting My Kicks

Who do I think I am, standing on my roof in new-to-me boots?

The West is the best (for boots). 

After five years in Utah and almost a year in eastern Washington, I’ve been stamped by the American West in a new way. 

I’ve extolled the vibe and selection of Spokane’s Fringe & Fray in earlier posts, and when I stopped in last week, tall boots stopped me in my tracks.
One of the advantages of buying local, they say, is a personal connection with the maker or seller. And it’s true! Grace, the store's proprietor, knows I have a soft spot for stripes and dots. She knows I need big shoes. I tried on two pairs of boots (men’s boots, but a close enough fit) in versatile black leather with fun stitching. 

This was coming full circle. I'd tried on some boots at Fringe & Fray earlier this summer. Thus my bootlust was born.

I became a different person, stalking Sierra Trading Post’s web site. My lust was so bad I considered backsliding on my rule: I have to love, not just like, the clothes, and they have to love me back. There I was, wobbling around in some weary caramel so-so looking boots at Value Village, surfing on someone else’s serious pronation, on the verge of taking them home. I tiptoed around in a polka dot size 9 ½ pair of boots at Nordstrom rack, fooling no one but myself that my feet would be fine once these elf-size kicks were broken in. This was serious. 

Imagine my delight last week when the taller black boots fit great, as though they'd been waiting for me. Grace cautioned that this might be my gateway pair of boots. I'm willing to chance it.
While I was in Europe a few weeks ago, I browsed many sundresses and sandals, but I couldn’t buy them. I was traveling light and also the season to wear that stuff here in Spokane is short. I can’t justify many tank tops. I can, however, make ample room for coats, woolens, and boots.  

I wore my new boots with a pinstripe Banana Republic cotton skirt to church on Sunday and felt my toughness go up by several points. Come fall, those freshmen had better check themselves.

Serifs Gone Wild!

Woody Allen’s new film, Midnight in Paris, opened in Spokane last night, so the theme of crashing the party of a past epoch is, well, present in my mind. (The film’s past is a very good-looking past, I must add: Adrian Brody as Salvador Dali! for crying out loud.)

Wilkie knows her place!

The seasoned Thrippie reader will not be shocked that this yellow table tent’s jaunty font caught my eye. 

I’m especially charmed by the attempt to yellow out the official time of the Beer Garden. The little plastic teepee reflects an earlier era, which makes me curious about its past life. What kinds of revelry has this tent seen? Were the Beer Gardens in days of yore so wild that Spokanites were cut off promptly at 8 p.m. and sent home with ibuprofen?

This sign’s imperfection lets us have it both ways. We see the new intention, but we also get a look at its history.

In Part I of “The Interpretation of Dreams,” Freud claims, “Thoughts which are mutually contradictory make no attempt to do away with each other, but persist side by side. They often combine to form condensations, just as though there were no contradiction between them, or arrive at compromises such as our conscious thoughts would never tolerate, but such as are often admitted in our actions.” The stolen table tent is a kind of dream space, a tablet of the unconscious mind where possibilities are open. The Beer Garden is and is not from 5pm-8pm.

Yes, dear reader, I said stolen. It was not Thrippie's finest hour. I and my accomplice, to whom I might or might not be related, swiped it off the table when no one was looking. Maybe next summer I’ll sneak it back into the ArtFest booze corral and return it to its native habitat. 

But for now, ArtFest, I pledge to feed and care for this sign, to love it as though it were my own. It’s a much cooler centerpiece, I might add, than my usual bowl of questionable onions or a stack of papers.

(If anyone from Artfest happens upon this post, I beg of you: leniency! Always leniency). 

Spring Things: Part III (Be a Good LeSport)

I have not quite crossed the finish line of the semester, but I couldn’t resist taking the afternoon off.

Yesterday I attended graduation in my robe with velvety chevrons and my droopy hood. This is the third time I’ve worn the gown since my own graduation in May 2010. That last-minute grad ensemble from the campus bookstore turned out to be a good investment. I considered working out the wrinkles with my new clothes steamer (a fine alternative to ironing if you can listen to the user's manual and not put your hand over the steamy part to see if it's hot). Then I read the robe’s ominous tag: Do Not Wash Or Dry Clean. I suppose that when I’m done with it, I should burn it (not unlike a decommissioned American flag)? Readers who sew: could I pay you to make me some pockets in this thing? A girl needs a way to stash a pack of Skittles, especially when she’s sitting through a ceremony.

How could I resist the Atari pull to the heartstrings?

And dear readers, I confess that I haven’t accomplished much thrifting in recent days, other than scoring some graduation wrapping paper last weekend, just in time for a few gifts.

And today, in my glorious afternoon of hooky, I strolled over to Fringe & Fray, where I found this rad LeSportsac bag. I have a boring black bag I bought in desperation at TJ Maxx. It’s better than the ratty tote I used at the beginning of the term. But I fell hard for this LeSportsac (I just like saying that phrase. Is that OK? LeSportsac. LeSportsac. Je m’appelle LeSportsac). The outer pockets will come in handy (keys? Right here! Phone? Got it! Jolly Ranchers? You bet).

New cat Wilkie avoids
LePaparazzi.

But it’s the print that won me over. There’s the nostalgia for my Atari childhood (especially Space Invaders). And then there’s the subtle reward for paying attention. The photo doesn’t do this justice, but for many of the patterns on this bag, there are little surprises. In a row of arches, for example, one sprouts antlers, another eyes. “Repetition makes us feel secure,” writes poet Robert Haas, “and variation makes us feel free.” This bag makes me feel good. Its size and volume assure me it can get to work, and its fun print will be just the thing to usher me into my summer projects.

We’ve had a good stretch of spring-almost-summer weather here until the last couple of days. I have worn sandals and, at last, a floral-print dress from Anthropologie that I received as a birthday present back in March. And, another marker of the seasons, I sat on my roof last Saturday for the first time this year. A couple of friends and I stared at the Spokane skyline, happy to shiver in our jackets or shirtsleeves so long as we got to feel young, hip and urban.

Extra Credit

Why does it take such a nudge to get me out of my orbit? (Initially I typed “nude” instead of “nudge,” a different kind of provocation altogether!).

There are two great vintage/resale stores, Carousel and Fringe & Fray, within walking distance of my neighborhood, and today I finally visited them for the first time. A friend of mine with her infant son brought two small bags of clothes to resell. I’ve been culling my closet lately, applying the “have I worn it in the last year?” rule with laudable rigor, so I had my own bag of shoes and clothes to take.

Another first for me today: I sold a few items from the Nicole Inventory and racked up a bit of cash and store credit.

I wasn’t really in a trying-on mood, but I snuck a peek at the racks of vintage dresses and separates arranged by decade at Carousel. I bought a pair of chunky yellow triangle earrings, like something my Nana Sheets might have worn back in her schoolteacher days. I could have spent my store credit at Fringe & Fray, but snack time called. Besides, it's nice to have shopping to look forward to.

Two things I learned: it’s not a good idea to buy something if the only purpose is to resell it. The store credit is a perk, a bonus for clothes that I was prepared to give to a friend or thrift store anyway. But it's not a way to make a living, nor can I use it as an excuse to justify buying stuff I don't love (or that doesn't love me back). 

The other thing: I should think a little harder about how I’m dressed before I trot into these cute boutiques. On teaching days, I try to coordinate my clothes, not in a matchy-matchy way but to suggest that I have put on The Teacher Costume. I choose earrings. I shoot for matching socks.

But after catching up on Glee last night, I slept late this morning, then spent an hour or so trying to sweep up, empty the compost, clean the stovetop before my friend arrived.

I know I wasn’t selling but rather re-selling clothes, so I’m sure it didn’t really matter if I looked put together. My pile of gently worn clothes either suited the vibe of the store or not. But showing up in my dusty purple turtleneck and paint-spattered jeans probably didn't inspire confidence that I thought much about clothes (it may also have inadvertently revealed that at times I use the floor as clothing storage space.)

My shopping companion was well turned out in spring weekendwear, with a cute denim skirt, a green scarf with flecks of color, and a baby in a tiny ball cap and yellow coat. Now that's a great look.