STUPID STUPID STUPID CAT PRINT LITAS THAT WON'T BE MINE.

I honestly don't know how to deal with the fact that there are cat print litas out there.

SERIOUSLY! CAT PRINT LITAS! LITAS! WITH CATS ON THEM! What am I supposed to do with this information?! I can't afford to buy them, which means I am forever doomed to be a crazy cat lady and crazy lita lady who doesn't own the cat print litas. I mean, just look at them! Those are MY CATS! That's Baz (the big red one) and Bii (the smaller, grey one)! Jeffrey Campbell have designed litas with my cats on them. Just saying.

(Thanks to Laura for showing me these ridiculously purrrrfect shoes - it's not like it's your fault I can't buy them!)

OK. Enough with the western middle class drama. I realize I now have to go make another donation to the battle against famine at the Horn of Africa to make up for this terrible post.

(And I'm not saying I'm such a good person for donating money, come on, I hope that everyone who can spare a few bucks to help people dying from starvation is willing to do just that. It's not like we chose to be born into a part of the world where we're able to fill our fridges with food and our closets with fancy shoes. I'm sorry, I know you already know this. I just need to remind myself sometimes. Especially when I fall in love with cat print litas that my spoiled brain is telling me I "goootta have". Aaah. Forget this whole rant, I probably shouldn't have said anything about any of this. Blaming the fact that the cats took up all the space in my bed last night and I barely got any sleep. Look, here we go again with the self pity!)

I Keep Dancing On My Own.

Strapless flower print dress, H&M. Cheetah print litas, Jeffrey Campbell. Black leather belt, Gina Tricot.

As soon as I got in front of the camera in this outfit, I started to move like a prima ballerina wannabe. I find that interesting, since the outfit itself obviously has nothing whatsoever to do with ballet dancing - and still, somehow, it does. There's something about the hair tied back in a bun, the bare shoulders, the wide skirt and the high heels that makes my mind immediately associate to a ballerina.

If you read my story about my love for horses, you might remember that the horses were an exception to the rule: everything else I tried out, I just had to be a natural at. I needed people to tell me, "oh wow, Annika, you're so great at this, I can't believe you've never done it before!". Otherwise, I felt like a complete failure and told my parents, "I hate this, it's boring and I'm never going to do it again". The more talent I had, the longer I would stick around - I did gymnastics for a while, as well as high jumping, played the piano and sang in a choir - until other people started becoming a lot better than me, and so I quit those activities, too. I guess the only thing I was always really good at was writing, and well, that's probably why I ended up writing for a living.

Anyway - dancing was not one of the things I had a talent for. Quite the opposite. Like so many other kids, I wanted to be a ballet dancer, and my mom took me to a dance studio to let me try it. I have no idea how old I was - six? Mom, help me out if you read this - but what I do remember is that we didn't get to try any of those cool moves I'd seen on tv. Instead, we were walking around in a circle, while the teacher repeated the sentence "pick the apples... and put them in the basket". And we were, as you can imagine, pretending to pick apples from a tree and put them in an invisible basket on the floor. Coordination has never really been my forte, and it wouldn't surprise me if I tripped on my own feet at least three times while picking the imaginary apples. When I asked the instructor when we'd get to dance Swan Lake, she laughed and told me we had a lot more pretend apple picking to do before we'd get to that. Needless to say, that was not the answer I was hoping for, and my dream of becoming a prima ballerina died there and then.

During the last twenty years of my life, the only dancing I've been doing has been on the crowded dancefloors of various clubs, and alone at home, with the music turned up extremely loud and noone watching or judging. That suits me a lot better than years of imaginary apple picking. But that doesn't mean I can't put on a pretty dress and pretend to be on my way to rehearsal for my latest lead role at the Royal Opera House in London!

...oh, and since I stole the title of this post from the amazing Robyn, here's the song for you:

Sparkly sequins, fancy floppiness and fake fringes.

Striped sequin dress, H&M. Grey/pink over knee socks and floppy hat, Asos.com. Brown leather litas, Jeffrey Campbell/Solestruck.com.

When you read this, I might very well be at Ikea, picking out their cheapest stuff for my new amazing office. Writing this, I'm kind of in a rush and will have to limit myself to telling you two things:

1) The floppy gorgeousness on my head is the most awesome hat I've ever owned and I might have to wear it with everything from now on.

2) I didn't cut my bangs. They're fake. (OK, now you're like, say whaaaaaat, and I'm like, hey, my hair looks horrible ALL THE TIME in this humid heat, why not fake it til you make it?) It's one of these clip-on fringes, and it doesn't look good whatsoever without the hat - but who cares, I'd rather keep it on anyway.

I bought the fringe before Christmas when I tried to make up my mind: I've had my bangs cut short and blunt most of my life, even though it's incredibly stupid and impractical considering how curly/wavy my hair is naturally. Last year I'd finally managed to grow them out completely, and I missed them so much, it was nuts.

I got the clip-on fringe to help me decide whether to cut my bangs or not, and since I thought I looked a thousand times better with it than without it, I just went for it. BIG MISTAKE. It's like my hair gets curlier every day and it was impossible to make the straight bangs look good (or even okay). After six months and visits to a bunch of different hairdressers, now I'm trying to grow them out again. But then I put on the clip-on fringe and the hat and immediately I can feel the thoughts being formed: Wow. That looks really good. Really, really good. Like, awesome. Maybe having bangs actually wasn't a bad idea at all. Yeah, I can feel it. It will be different this time. Different!

No. I will be strong. Just need to throw away every single pair of scissors in this house, just in case.

UPDATE:

Thanks to Rika from Fashion Blogger Revealed for this great feature! Check it out, especially if you for some reason are dying to know a bunch of more or less random facts about yours truly. I had a lot of fun answering all of the questions!

Oh sister, where art thou?

My sister Amanda is visiting! She's not only blonde and gorgeous, she's also an artist in the making. When I say artist, I say it in that French way: une arrrtiiiiiste. She paints, and she does it so well. We've been looking at photos from her examination exhibition (she graduates high school in three weeks) and I'm simply in awe of her talent! Since we're sisters, there's obviously some competition between us, and I wanted to show her I'm pretty arrrrtiiiistic myself. So... I went outstide and took a photo of my shoes.

Then we discussed it for twenty minutes. I mean, we could have talked about my piece of art for at least an hour, it's just got so many layers. Of course I want to share some of our deep and meaningful analysis with you guys!

"OK, so, I call this... The Invisible (Wo)Man. The theme is the Tunisian revolution."
"Obviously."
"Yeah, obviously."
...
"Umm... yeah. As you can clearly see, there's someone standing there, you just can't see him... or her."
"Oh, that's why it's called The Invisible (Wo)Man!"
"Yup."
"I see that the shoelaces aren't tied. I suppose that's a metaphor for not being able to move forward. It's like, you stand there, and everything looks so peaceful, but as soon as you try to go your own way, you trip and fall on your own shoelaces."
"Yeah, right on your face."
"Ouch, that's gotta hurt!"
"Revolutions always hurt. But sometimes, they're necessary, if you want to be able to stand on your own two feet."
"Try walking a mile in my shoes, so to speak."
"I mean, I wouldn't want to be in President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's shoes. But he put them on himself. Or maybe he had people who did that for him?"
"Metaphorically speaking?"
"No, literally."
"Oh. Yeah. Maybe. Wow! We surely could discuss this for hours."
"That's art for you, baby sister. That's art for you."
"You're wise."
"I am. I sure am."
"I ADMIRE YOU SO MUCH! I WANT TO BE JUST LIKE YOU!"

Hmm. I have to stop writing now. This adorable little creature keeps pinching me, telling me I'm writing lies on my blog. How dare she?! I swear on my brown leather litas that this is exactly the conversation we just had! Seriously! Almost exactly.

And though your father's name is known, your decisions now are yours alone.

Brown leather litas, Jeffrey Campbell. Flower print jumpsuit, a gift from my best friend. Brown leather belt, Gina Tricot. Lipstick: "Fuschia" from Maybelline.

I love wearing flower prints in my garden - it's like wearing camouflage! I feel like I fit right in. And this jumpsuit truly has enough flower print to cover an entire battalion. OK, almost.

My best friend bought it for me - we always did that; when we found an item we really loved, we'd buy two. One for her, one for me. One for me, one for her.

The last few months I have been living with this couple
Yeah, you know, the kind who buy everything in doubles.
Oh, they fit together, like a puzzle
And I love their love and I am thankful 
That someone actually receives the prize that was promised 
By all those fairy tales that drugged us

---Bright Eyes, Waste of Paint 

This is not the greatest Sunday ever. My friend Jake is visiting over the weekend, which of course is awesome, but we stayed up a little bit too late last night. Watching Glee with someone who's never seen the show before is risky business - one or two or three episodes so easily turns into a full-blown Glee marathon. Combine that with two bottles of wine and some cheap but delicious pizza and you have The Most Awesome Night - but the day after, not so much. I fell asleep way past four this morning and now I'm paying the price. My head sort of feels like it's been run over by a car. Twice.

I hope your Sunday is way better than mine! I'll write you again as soon as I'm sure I won't throw up. Don't hold your breath.

Walk a mile in my shoes?

 

This past week I've had quite a lot of people asking where I bought the cheetah print Jeffrey Campbell litas I'm wearing in my blog header. The answer is that I got them at the LF store in Venice Beach, but I thought I'd let you know that they do sell them at Solestruck (or at least very similar ones).

(Nope, I'm definitely not being sponsored already - just googled it and found the shoes there.) :)

I know shoes are only material things and material things don't bring you happiness... but I must say that my life is just a liiiittle bit more enjoyable since I got my cheetah litas!

Any way the wind blows.