back to school.

well, i’ve been a lazy sack this summer, and it was AWESOME. i actually read some trashy books, went to the beach, ate ice cream cones, got a terrible sunburn, did some flea marketing… all the best summer cliches, TO THE MAX.

although now that things are cooling down, i’m digging out my sweaters, dreaming of the pumpkin harvest and watching all the kiddos are getting shoveled back into their classrooms (as if that affects me in any way other than the bountiful reaping of cheap composition notebooks). and, i’m feeling ready to get back down to business.

so as of this morning, summer hours are officially closed.

what does this mean for you?

well, it means:

1. more posting! ok, not like that time that i lied to you and told you that i was going to post every day (i’m such a scumbag!)… but definitely more than once a week.

2. new features! i had a brilliant idea for a a new fashion feature, along with some recipes and some other awesome shit. possibly. possibly some other awesome shit.

3. old feautres! hey, whatever happened to the weekend pickthrough? or what about that time i tried to start a “store spotlight” section? and although increasingly this blog has moved away from the coupon factor (best left to maine’s own extreme couponer, i love to gossip), i would like to bring it back some deal hunting in smaller more subtle ways.

4. special events! one of my favorite things about the past year was my chance to be involved in some crazy projects. well, i’m definitely planning on keeping that shit rolling now that i’m done being lazy. there’s another SWAPmaine scheduled for october (we’re still working on the dates & location, but picture BIGGER & BETTER!), another IKEAbus planned for the spring, as well as the revival of the makeup project, and possibly a mystery event/appearance or two.  would anyone be into a cheap beer pub crawl/meetup (perhaps a joint venture with deal me in portland)?

anyway, thank you for weathering the low keyness that was my summer posting schedule. it was much needed, but i’m ready to reanimate. let me know if there’s anything new you’d like to see/old you’d like to see revived/thing you’d love to see more of/thing you never want to see again. or, you can just tell me what you did with your summer vacation.

i should go, because i’m going to be late for work. BUT, i’ll be back tomorrow with a small announcement about a “celebrity” appearance i’ll be making in september.

cruel summer.

this heat is killing me. just because i haven’t been in grade school since the 80s doesn’t mean that i don’t remember what that last few weeks of school feels like just before summer vacation. come mid june, my body has a pavlovian response to the first really hot days of the season. i lack concentration. i stare out the window aimlessly humming vacation by the gogos. i abandon my work shoes beneath my desk and pad around the office barefoot. why on earth do we train our children to expect that life comes with 2.5 months worth of vacation, when it usually comes with 2.5 weeks at best? it’s fucking summer vacation yo, and i should be at the beach.

while i’m quietly languishing in the air air conditioned cubicle that is the shackles of my adult responsibilities, i thought maybe i would twist the knife a little harder by thinking about all the things that i would be taking to beach if i actually got to go:

the swimsuit is obviously imperative. however, if perhaps you’re still carting around 30 excess pounds of divorce weight, something skimpy from the victoria’s secret swimslut line doesn’t exactly do the job. i don’t know about you, but i’m not really interested in helping redefine the term “inappropriate ass coverage”.  however, i also don’t desire to be encased in a sacky lycra cocoon of modesty and shame. nestled somewhere in between the two, is the retro suit. draw attention to the tits, cover the lumpy bits.  swimsuits are stupid expensive for how little fabric they involve, and a nice looking retro suit can run upwards of $100. my secret, newport news. yes, a little dowdy, a little dated, and with a healthy side of 1980s hooker. basically, somewhere in between the softer side of sears and fredricks of hollywood. randomly though, they have an awesome selection of swimdresses, some of which are even kinda sexy. oh, and around $50 or less.

although it is definitely always important to know where your towel is, it is perhaps the very most important at the beach. i don’t know if it’s the fact that i grew up in the 80s, and that my mom always bought me jc penny knock offs of the cool clothes, but i am LOVING these lacoste beach towels. somewhere underneath this aging art school kid exterior, there’s a prepster screaming to get out. sadly, as my mom well knew, preppy is pricey. a better bet would be to toddle over to target and pick up a myself an attractive pedestrian towel. do you think the alligator affects absorbency?

once you’ve got your suit and towel, you’re gonna need somewhere to stick it. i’ve been coveting one of these vintage style pan am totes pretty much forever, but who the fuck pays $90 for a beach bag? or pretty much any bag that isn’t encrusted with semi precious gems or at least filled with free donuts. a more practical and almost as attractive solution is the good ole ll bean boat & tote. classic, sturdy, affordable! and you can’t go wrong pimping that maine economy. seriously, half the people i know either work there now, will work there over xmas, or were working there until very recently.

well, those are pretty much the 3 main food groups of shit you need when you go to the beach (and i’m so easily distractable right now that 3 is pretty much as high as i can count without wandering off in another direction) , but you should also strongly consider some other less interesting beach bag accouterments such as sunscreen, maybe some sort of hat, something to promote hydration, a really trashy book, and of course like 17 wacky noodles. did i forget anything?

well, somehow that bummed me out more than i thought it would. my own summer vacation (one whole week!) doesn’t actually happen until august, so i’m pretty much fucked until then. maybe i’ll just lock myself in my room and watch a summer place (have you been bad with girls johnny?) on loop for a while. or maybe i’ll just let jasper from the simpsons sing me the theme song until i black out. bananarama was right, summer is the cruelest season.