Ashbloemstraat

Excess.

I shit you not, I have 19 pairs of boots. And while there ARE three pairs of black knee-high boots, for the most part they are all completely different!

I clearly have a Thing. I don't know how this happened. I'm finding it hard to purge.

۵

Along side the many other duality based qualifiers one can use for people (e.g. Republican vs. Democrat; Neil Diamond fan vs. not; neat vs messy), there is another: those who enjoy rosewater in their food and those who don't.

Personally, I can't get enough of this saffron rosewater ice cream David brought home from Central Market (and I could eat kilos of a rosewater rice dish my friend Mana once made me), but some people find it akin to eating perfume.

Undici (Mates of State entry).

Forget your politics for a while! Let the color schemes arrive!

Things from the past week that have made me laugh.

1. This.

2. This.

3. This.  (also, a little frightened)

Showering.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Lingerie showers are awesome.

Here on this blog I have rather publicly aired my discomfort regarding wedding gifts and showers and registering and all that business. It just seemed so selfish and I am really bad with accepting gifts without having one to give in return. Anyway, my friends and family finally convinced us that registering is the way to go, since people WILL give us gifts, so we better just make sure they are what we want (and they are right, even after registering we have received items NOT on the registry, so I can only imagine what would have happened by now if we hadn't).

So anyway, I'd been asked about showers and while I felt super uncomfortable about them, I agreed because I did not want to offend anyone who wanted to do something so nice for me (Sister! Mother! Soon to be MIL!). My first one was Saturday and it was a lingerie theme and I wasn't sure how I would feel opening all these gifts but I was looking forward to drinking a bunch of wine with the girls.

You guys: it was so much fun. We had tons of food & so much wine. We played a couple silly games and just chit-chatted. And the gifts! I am so impressed with my friends; they picked out just lovely stuff. Of course, I love sexy lingerie and underwears anyway, so in all honesty I wasn't going to be hard to buy for, but it was even better than I thought it might be! I have, like, two weeks worth of naughty and delightful items to tease David with. It almost makes me wish we WERE taking a traditional honeymoon. Oh well - these items will seem even more naughty when I wear them at Machu Picchu or something.

Apparently it is bad luck to wear them before the wedding but it is going to be very hard to resist. I think I'll at least try them on, though, away from David, despite the fact he's pretty keen to check them out.

And I did feel sort of uncomfortable with the first couple gifts, but the wine helped, and everyone was so clearly happy for me, that I just sort of relaxed into the whole thing and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I know some really lovely girls here - sometimes I feel it has been hard to make friends in Dallas, but Saturday I realized I have done really well on that front, actually.

Thanks, ladies. You are the best.