Raw Fish

The difference between North and South Louisiana is vast. North is very conservative, Bible thumping, and if you have a cocktail or wear leopard skin you might cause a scandal. Cotton fields, corn, soybeans everywhere. Even though Shreveport has five casinos it is mainly Texans who patronized them. That's because East Texas is dry. There is only one liquor store between Shreveport and Dallas in Kilgore. If you like to fish or hunt, ride four wheelers and act like a coon ass this is your place. It was actually considered cool if you wore muddy camouflage to high school during duck season. This is why people think I am so weird collecting all these Pucci clothes. Hell, why wear that when Sportman's Paradise Gun and Ammo Store has camo on sale. If you like to eat well and have a cocktail this is not your place unless you like catfish. There is only one exception to this rule and that is the Chateau. The Chateau or the 'teau as I call it deserves its own post

The South is untamed, Cajun 24/7 partygoers with beer cans permanently glued to their hands. The unofficial capital of Cajun partyland is Lafayette. Downtown maybe one street but that street is packed with good food, live music, art galleries, and a huge outdoor park that was designed to host live music acts . The downtown merchants sponsor Downtown Alive! on Friday nights during the spring and fall which features bands mainly from Louisiana but occasionsly from some exotic place like Texas. Eveyone just hangs out in their folding chairs with beer cans firmly gripped and enjoys the music. I hate beer for many reasons but mainly because it is so fatting. Yet these people guzzle beer like water (do they even have water here?) and there are very few large people. I guess that all that inbreeding has created a beer drinking/no weight gain gene in those Cajuns.

Every Friday I escape to the South to hang with my longtime boyfriend Bill. We have been hanging out together for over five years. If I didn't get out of my parents house every weekend I would go crazy. Last weekend I was homebound and Bill came North so I have been chomping at the bit to get out of the house. Even though it was pouring down rain I was determined. I have a 4 wheel drive truck so I can handle anything except hurricanes. It takes me about three hours to get to Bill's house which is no big deal. He used to live in San Antonio which was a 7 hour drive. That was a bitch.

So I finally get to Bill's and the opening round of where do you want to eat dialogue begins. With the exception of crawfish season we tend to hang at the same places. Last night was sushi at Tsunami or as we call it "too snobby" The people there want to be been; I just want to eat. Last night there were the most interesting collection of shoes I have seen. The usual patrons are young trendy people and eating here is the height of their existence which is okay. Not everyone can be me.(Just kidding) I just can't take myself that seriously. After you wade through the posers and finally get to the hostess stand you are exhausted. We usually angle for a place at the bar to eat and last night we scored early. Yum.

Today we are hanging out in bed. This does not mean what you think. It is endless hours of surfing the web and the 1000 or so satellite channels. We definitely need to get off our asses and hit the gym just to remember we are part of the human race. And I definitely need a shower after our post sushi stop at the 307 for some cocktailing and cigar smoking. There is nothing worse than have smoky hair. I don't know why my hair absorbs so much smoke. I will even spray Fabreeze in it to get rid of the smell. Wow, am I really watching drag racing. My attempt to live the life of a sophisticate Pucci princess is shot at least for today.

What the night will bring I don't know but I will do my best to wear something worthy of my imagined title.

This might be my choice for a steamy evening in the South. The pattern is Stella in blue. I love this shade of blue with all the colorful accents. This is a modern interpretation by Christian Lacriox of an Emilio Pucci pattern from the late 60's. The fabric is silk jersey which wears well in the high humidity of Louisiana. I purchased this blouse on Ebay a couple of years ago. I will never part with this blouse as I have the matching purse which is reversible. I will not wear it to a drag race.

Movin' on Out

Holidays that fall on Wednesday are useless. You end up working anyway because you either have to take vacation days with every other person or show up reluctantly on Thursday and Friday. I wonder how much actual work will be performed the next two days. If I had to bet not much.

Life at my current office is hell. The guy that owns the building won't fix the AC or the roof. Finally the insulation and the plaster fell along with pieces of the roof during a bad storm and all he did was get a baby pool to catch the water. He is the biggest slob and very cheap. My mother rents one suite (it is a four suite building) and my dad and I rent another suite with the guy. I can's stand his hires either as he has been through 6 secretaries in five years. What a guy!!

I spent today moving files. My dad is an attorney and loves paper. He is no where close to having a paperless office. He has also been amassing these files for over fifty years. He still has file number one. This whole saga started years ago when I first agreed to move home. The deal I struck was I would spend Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at home the the rest of the week I would hightail it back to Dallas. I had gotten a fabulous severance package from my last job and had a part time secretarial job. Income would be tight but I figured that I could make it for awhile till I found a new full time job. I never anticipated what would happen.

The first thing I discovered is that my dad's last two secretaries had stolen a considerable amount of money and had run up all of his credit cards. One secretary had even applied for credit cards in my dad's name. In addition to this debt, the mortgage on his office building was breaking him. He was well into six figures in debt including his real estate holdings. My mother' s situation was no better. Her bookkeeper had stolen over $300,000.00 in the past eight years. We discovered this when the bookkeeper went out of town and my mother received a sheriff's sale notice for her building and a notice from the IRS that the payroll taxes had not been paid in five quarters. Apparently the CPA that was suppose to audit the books each month had never looked at the checks. He just reconciled the account by matching the amounts. He also never reconciled the cash receipt book with the bank statement. It was a grim situation.

I freaked out. Most of my adult life had been spent working for a large corporation with a steady paycheck every two weeks and benefits. No more. With my mother at 70 and my father at 74 their ability to generate new income was slim. As the bill collectors honed in, I ate myself to well over 200 pounds for my 5'4' frame and when I wasn't eating I was crying. The district attorney did not want to take the case because he didn't feel that we could succeed in collecting any money. I was shocked. I found out that you can steal from your employer and chances are that you will never face prosecution because it is not high profile. It took five years to finally convict that bitch.

Meanwhile how do I pay all this massive debt? Well, a miracle happened. The rain came and flooded my mother's office building. Since it was the third time in ten years FEMA bought the building for higher than the appraised value. Then one of the major law firm broke up and needed an office thus I unloaded the other office building. Screw the capital gains tax right now I needed to stomp out some of those fires. We now needed a place to move and the guy which had rented from us bought this crappy building and we moved.

I hate to say this but this building was and still is the biggest piece of shit. It is so poorly constructed that in some places you can see the roof shingles. It is two stories and the second floor is a pit. The filing room upstairs is where the pool is and it is not air conditioned!! In my mother's suite on the second floor the light fixture fell out of the ceiling and there were live wired hanging down. We endured. I vowed that we could not move until the massive debt was reduced significantly. It just got worse. The roof caved in and the guy's wife put a space heater upstairs to dry out the water. The files were wet and then the mold started. Every time air blows out of the heater or AC black mold sprays everywhere. Nasty.

The problem with moving is that in a small town there are not many options when it comes to office space. We looked for about two years. Finally a suitable building went on the market and we snapped it up. The owners were divorcing so even the price was right. It needed alittle work so we have to wait until it is ready. Today I hauled 40 boxes down from the inferno and I am just wiped out With no AC and the high humidity I was drenched in sweat and really stank. The stairs are so narrow my feet are bigger than each step. I have 39 more legal size filing cabinet drawers to go. So happy 4th.

At least I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. In the almost seven years I have reduced our debt by two thirds, lowered the tax exposure, increased their income as well as mine and lost 75 pounds which I have never gained back. I feel great and can not wait to move into our new office. We will actually be paying less for the mortgage and utilities than we are paying the guy. Although my back is killing me I am going to try to finish moving the files tommorrow.

There are no fireworks due to rain but no problem I can see them on TV.

For my fashion pick of the day a Stephen Sprouse mini shirt from Target. I love it. I won on Ebay several years ago. It is a shame that this great talent in the fashion world is no longer with us.

Why take a shower?

I am always amazed that I survive the heat and humidity in Louisiana each summer. It is just miserable. My hair never dries and feels so heavy. My deodorant never works. My clothes wrinkle. Outside it is hot so you go inside the air conditioning is too cold. The condensation on the windows leads to mildew which I will have to clean if the humidity gets low. Everyone seems cranky and lethargic. Yet year after year I languish in the heat slathered in sunscreen, wearing a big hat and long sleeves. I do not tan and have given up any hope of being a bronzed beauty. I should really look into going way south like Argentina or Antarctica to escape the sun but it is likely that I never will. I know what to expect after 40 something years of enduring the summer broil yet that first blast of heat just sends me into waves of depression.

At the gym as I struggle through my cardio routine my face turns bright red. No cool towels or ice water negate the redness. People think that I am dying or having a heat stroke so they express concern. No, I am not dying I just have extremely fair skin. Haven't you seen anyone without a tan in the summer? I go through this drama every time the gym hires new trainers or new members show up. Even after I leave the gym and go to the grocery store or run an errand people just stare. Beet red face; lily white arms and legs dripping in sweat. What a vision of beauty!!

On the other hand my boyfriend just bakes. You would think that over the years I would have developed some type of coping mechanism for the summer heat or through the evolution of generations of my family that have lived in the South, I would be Teflon coated but NOOOOOO!!! Bill moves here from Chicago and acclimatizes immediately. He can mow the grass, wash the car, workout in the heat of the day and remain cool. Tan should be his middle name as he just bakes for hours with no sign of even a slight burn. I am sure that my constant pasty skin annoys him but I am not tanning or for that matter no fake tans.This is clearly unfair and I question evolution.

Another summer phenomenon is my mother. She never sweats or in her words "perspires." She has never been in the sun for any length of time and has never had a tan. This does not bother me as much as the lack of sweating. So why do I sweat so much? I understand the fair skin but why the sweat? I mean my mother NEVER sweats. I drip. She always looks cool. Her mascara never runs down her face. Her deodorant always works. Her clothes never wrinkle. Her friends are the same way. It drives me crazy.

My father on the other hand has fair skin and when he was younger he was always in the sun. He sweats but the heat never seems to affect him that much. I feel as though I am going to faint. What happened to this trait of being heat resistance? Again I question evolution. On the downside his many days in the sun resulted in multiple skin cancer lesions which had to be removed. This alone is an incentive to stay clear of the sun's rays.

So back to my original question, why take a shower when I will just sweat gallons as soon as I leave the house? I guess because hope is eternal. Maybe it won't be so humid today. Maybe it will be cool and cloudy. Maybe because I will smell better. Maybe I can finally dry my hair. Maybe because the cool water feels good. Maybe my beet red face will return to its normal color. Who knows?

My Pucci post today is a vintage shirt from the late 50's. The design by Emilio Pucci was inspired by Maya and Aztec hieroglyphics . The colors are aqua blue, olive green, coral, white and magenta with the figures outlined in black. The colors have faded slightly. The shirt is silk with beautiful fabric covered buttons. I scored this gem on Ebay and weirdly enough a month later I won the bid on a matching purse. I could not believe my luck as the blouse came from an estate in Maryland and the purse from Sherman Oaks, California. Also, it is a size 16 which freaks me out because I usually wear a size 6 or 8. So much for vanity sizing.

In the beginning........

Entering into the world of blogging, I feel like it is my first day at school, and I am the new kid. I am hoping that the blogging world is kind to me as I really don't have an idea what I am doing except learning a new way to express myself and hopefully communicate with other people that have the same interests, experiences, frustrations, etc. I am constantly fascinated with reading blogs. Bloggers that I read are passionate about their stories as I feel one should be. I believe everyone has a story to tell and Lord knows that I can talk the horns off a billy goat but can I write with the same enthusiasm. I am sure sometime or another someone out there will let me know.

My obsession with Emilio Pucci has been ongoing for years. I firmly believe that I was born obsessed. Since the advent of Ebay I have been able to get some really cool vintage pieces. The competition is fierce as most vintage pieces are TINY and the few pieces that I can wear are few and far between. No wonder Nicole Ritchie has a collection of Pucci vintage dresses. (Not that I want to emulate her in any way) I have two sources for new Pucci items, Adrianna at the Pucci store and Tracey at Tootsie's. They are wonderful, awesome people and I love it when they send me cool things in Swampville . My blogging aspirations writing about a place to share my clothing dramas and passions. I am really not a pampered princess but I would like to think that I am. I am currently working on upgrading my status.

My real life is the challenges of living with your elderly parents. Like today as I struggled to set this page up, my 80 year father announces that he has run about of gas in the driveway. Incredible. This means a trip to Ratville, ie the garage, to rummage around for a gas can and funnel. Luckily since I work for myself I rarely have anything other that sweats on so it is no big deal. I ask my father while searching Do you have a gas can? Does gas go bad? What is in this can? I sniff at what I think is gas but who knows. At 80 my dad doesn't move that swiftly so I take the can and attempt to funnel whatever is in there into his car hoping that nothing will explode. Success! except I stink like gasoline and yell, " just don't crank the engine till I have moved a considerable distance from the car." He turns the key, almost getting it cranked and I just keep moving away until the car backfires and starts. I follow him to the gas station just in case he runs out of whatever I just poured in to his tank. He can't hear the warning beep to let him know that his gas tank is low so he just keeps on going till he runs out. This is definitely not princess territory.

His other daily task is getting new telephones which I refuse to partake in this quest. My parents have not had working telephones in their house since January. When the phone rings about six different phones start to ring with two different answering machines competing to take your message. Thus no caller knows how to leave a message; well you get the picture. This is because my dad bought a telephone system that no one knows how to use. I have learned to stay away from these types of decisions. I am still recovering from upgrading to HDTV last year. The lesson learned, if you live with your elderly parents don't make any changes in the electronic world unless you are willing to patiently explain over and over again how to use the device. A new remote came with HDTV and I am still trying to explain how it works.

Enough already!

Pictured in this post is an Emilio Pucci cotton smocked shirt in the Cactus print updated by Christian Lacroix. I love this shirt even thought is has to be ironed. I purchased this several years ago on Ebay. Cactus seems to be a fairly popular Pucci print in these colors which are bright pink, yellow, orange and chartruse. I have a matching hat which is a real attention getter. It makes my head spin.