Barbi Does Miami

mostly from my oxymoronic years between Miami and Milford

Category Archives: being wife


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ROUTINE

I am woken up at 6.30 by my fifteen year old daughter. Depending on her teenage mood she either wiggles my toe or mumbles a sullen “wake up Mom”. Sometimes I’m already awake and, waiting for her to open the door, I’ll call “I’m up” before she enters the room. Occasionally she has to search and finds me on the sofa because there are times when a queen is just not big enough for her fretful viking parents.

After sliding my contacts sideways into sleepy eyes I pull an outfit from the closet that could attract the attention of  roadside assistance on the Alice Tuttle Parkway. I  don’t brush my teeth until after my first cup of tea, two bags of English PG Tips, super strong, lots of sugar and milk, and sipped as I make the next three lunch boxes out of the 4982 lunch boxes made thus far and the 2400 or so left to go. I like making lunch boxes. I refuse to iron, I hate washing pots, I’m not strong at patiently explaining home work but I do get into assembling lunch boxes. First the sandwich and its variations: white bread, whole wheat bread, cesar rolls, ciabatta rolls, bagels and wraps, turkey and cheese, ham and cheese, tuna, cream cheese, egg salad, hummus tomato lettuce, and occasionally for the unexpected and I’m out of everything, peanut butter. An apple or satsuma or grapes or melon. A large chocolate chip cookie from the Fresh Market and finally the salty element; chips or pretzels, crackers or Pirate Booty. Iced tea in the three canteens. Its the first creative act of my day.

    

By 7.15 Iona and I are in the car. By 7.30 I drop her off at the railroad tracks that run along DASH – her high school. We talk along the way. We catch up. There’s always something. A teacher. A test. A pesky text from an ex-boyfriend demanding back some gift bestowed in the early days of his mad passion. I curse and scream at the Miami drivers, justified in my agro by a recent report that Miami drivers  REALLY are the worst in the country. Its not me. It’s been proven and  I attest: They  don’t move at a green light, they slow down for orange so they can check messages, but do run every red light, they change lanes randomly, pull out of parking spots without looking, never use a blinker, speed in a slow zone and do 25 miles in the outer lane of the highway. They drive around speed humps as if that’s actually an option and mothers make u-turns on the school crossing almost running over the carpool of kids they just unloaded, all while texting.

Once I’ve dropped off Iona I have 12 minutes to make it back home. 7.42. The school bus for the twins arrives around 7.50. They are never ready and always in a wardrobe-induced flap. Amber hops impatiently through the hall, hyper at the knowledge that she’s next on my roster. The three of us run to the light, press the may-pedestrians-cross-soon button, ensure we don’t get run over by a red-light jumper and wait on the opposite corner.  Alton Road rush-hour traffic zooms by. The same thousand cars every morning. The same yellow Fiat with the redhead, the same black mini Cooper with the fat woman, the same tan man on his bicycle, the same white Range Rover turning onto Allison Island. I wait with my girls until they get on. Ever since a black Cherokee almost slammed into the back of their school bus I make sure they do not enter until all cars behind have stopped. I wave at the driver, a friendly grey haired woman, the girls hiss back at me “she only speaks Spanish, Mom!” as if I waved in English.

I press the pedestrian light again, check the traffic exiting from our community gates for the black Porsche Cayenne that came so close to hitting me a month ago that I actually screamed FUCK and saw my life flashing while the driver, her face a few feet from mine, remained unimpressed and did not even mouth “sorry”, something I would definitely have done had I almost run her over, just in case I’d meet her by the pool later.

By eight I’m home. I thank God for sparing me and my family yet again, clip the leash on Amber, grab a poopie bag and am dragged around Aqua for the next ten minutes, fresh on the trail of  the Airedale terrier – Zoe from Zoe Way (coincidental or intentional one wonders.) Amber, who ignores all dogs, has decided Zoe is da meanest bitch of Miami Beach and needs to be taken out. We pee, we shit, we pick up the shit because cameras are trained everywhere (in the last condo meeting there was even talk of D & A testing un-bagged left-behind turds in order for appropriate fines to be imposed.) Not I.  I am proud of my own goodness every time I pick up, and when the security guard passes in his golf cart moments after a shit has been taken I hold up my baggie and call out “I got it” as if he’s driving by just to check on me, which is not altogether unlikely.

studio aka garage

I return a disappointed Amber home and grab my swimsuit that hangs from the doorknob in my studio, also known as the garage. I change, wrap the mandatory Aqua towel around my waist and ride my bike  along Indian Creek to our pool. It’s invariably a gorgeous morning. We’ve been in Miami two years and four months and I still notice the luxury of the weather. It is sunny, warm and the air has a hint of salt from the ocean two blocks away. I look for dolphins or manatee in the creek. A heron flies close to me, checking for fish. I admire the tall palm trees on the other side of the water and the mansions with their tropical gardens and jetties with million dollar yachts. There is no one at the pool except for the Aqua grounds keeper preening for the day ahead. I wade into the Olympic sized body of turquoise water and start my  thirty laps.  The water is warm. Too warm. A ridiculous waste I think every morning as I pull a bunch of  bougainvilla flowers from the filter. I start to think as I swim through more  fuchsia bougainvilla. The sun is just coming around the tall apartment blocks of  Millionaire Row along Collins, the avenue that separates the creek from the beach. I think of the day ahead. I lay it out like the lane I’m lapping up, with each stroke I run my list: Finish taxes, call Blue Cross Blue Shield, balance my check book, mark up the next BHS folder, send e-mail to John about the wine sponsorship, order 200 tee shirts, did the Botanical gardens respond yet? And why not?  I think of the BIG list. The list of things to do with the rest of my life. My ambition list. I think of how I felt those first few months I was doing laps here. How I was unsure, insecure and off-kilter. How in the second year so much turned around, how doors opened and how I passed through them. I imagine I am exactly in the middle of my entire life. Its been eventful so far and I look forward to what’s coming. I think of the 120 or so pieces I have to make for my new collection. I anticipate what it will be like when my routine goes upside down and inside out when I’m leaving all this behind for three whole weeks.

Alone.

I’ll be alone for the first time in 16 years. Alone in a house. No actually, a castle. I shall make dinners just for me and 45 less lunch boxes in the big scheme of things on my to do list.

beginning of a new collection


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The making and premiere of One Beach, the movie…

Q and A at the premiere of One Beach

Last Spring I got  that  e-mail

That uber message we look for in our otherwise boring Inbox.

The one that says:

We have been following your work with beach plastic pollution, we love it, would you be interested in being featured in a movie we are planning?

Delete?

Not me!

Looking for a hidden sales message? Like the next line would say: If you take part in this short questionnaire  you too can be captured on film.

You bet! I did not trust it. I proceeded with caution.

It was not until I had spoken with all the makers of the film, the creative director Sean, the producer Michael, the director Jason and had signed a non-disclosure with Barefoot Wine (to keep it all hush until the premiere, hence no previous mention here at BDM) that I became excited.

They wanted to shoot in Eleuthera, where I find all my beach plastic, and so I sent them the  limited  list of places in Governor’s Harbour. Three low-key hotels, Cigatoo, Pineapple Fields and Coco Di Mama, and a handful of rentals that have 5+ bedrooms.

They chose Squires Estate.

Squires Estate, Toad Hall in foreground, Main Russell House beyond...

I had always wanted to stay there, ever since it had been restored two years ago. Alastair and I even looked at the main house when it was on the market. Its a dream property, on the hill, a 120 year old Victorian House, overlooking Cupid’s Key, walking distance to Club Med Beach – the most beautiful beach I know.

They booked me for four days early June. Two travel and two shooting.

“Bring your tools and your favorite designs, we’ll do the rest.”

If the camera added ten pounds then it was the time for a diet.

I did a two-day fast, a nine-day shake/powder regimen and swam a million lengths of the pool.

I departed, lithe and pre-tanned.

First to arrive, I chose the ground floor bedroom of the main house because it was the most private, like a mini wing, overlooking the pool and the Caribbean sea to the west. Everything was new, done by an Italian designer with exquisite taste, who’d mixed old with high-tech, quirky with traditional.

I got my old red truck from the garage.

I was already happy.

A few hours later the crew arrived. Curt, Sean, Jason, Michael, Scotty and Tyler.

Six surfers from California.

Had I died and gone to heaven?

OK. Yes! I am happily married. I’m a mother of three. I’m not young as such.

But hey, I’m still a woman!

lunch at the Beach House

I had an eery feeling –  after  years of being a service-driven mother, feeding, cleaning, chauffeuring, organizing and wondering  (within the safety of my own head):

What about me?

A dawning sense that maybe someone (who can hear beyond the safety of my own head), had been listening, that somehow I had been good enough, that getting attention was actually allowed when you try your hardest to be a good wife and mother and employee and world citizen…

And I let go.

Snap.

This was  going to be about me (and my obsession with beach plastic) and it was OK.

Those six guys were awesome, I don’t know much about them beyond those four days, but they were easy going, considerate, creative, charming, talented, professional and funny, so funny…

They made it possible for me to be me. To do my work, make my stuff, tell my message without ever making me feel self-conscious or insecure. At least three cameras captured me at work for at least 24  hours. It felt natural. It felt great. I felt beautiful. They helped me believe that what I was doing was worthwhile.

I wanted it to last a bit longer.

Last shot, left to right, Tyler, Jason, Barbi, Curt, Sean, Michael and Scotty

Still, we dispersed. They went on to do the next “innovator”, Tim in Australia, and I was just a tad jealous.

But I mainly felt empowered. Things were falling into place. back home I was asked to apply for the Miami TED talk. I went on my teaching trip around Eleuthera.

*

Last night I saw I Don’t Know How She Does It with my three daughters. I had read the book at a time when I identified with the author, when I was the overcommitted mother of three little girls who felt she had to do it all, or else…

Leila wanted to know if I had ever felt like Kate did in the film.

You mean, like, I Don’t Know How I Did It?

Kiki and Leila @ 2 years, by barred stairs in Milford.

My daughters are now eleven and fifteen. I asked if they remembered when I was the Mother with a Career in NYC.

They don’t!

They don’t remember that I went to Hong Kong for two weeks over Christmas when they were six months old, nor being in day care at age two because the latest nanny had disappeared without trace while I worked on 7th Avenue three days a week (living in Milford,PA). They don’t remember my equivalent of  Kate Reddy’s bake-sale angst amongst the zealous fundraising stay-at-home mothers of the Homestead School.

Its great to find out that it it did not matter. That they are fine. More than fine. That I can forgive myself for those perceived shortcomings, that getting off the fashion merry-go-round to have more time at home with them was a good choice too. That feeling out of it and disconnected and fat and dumb maybe was just a cocoon, a small, limited space, where the next incarnation of me could shape itself.

Of course we always are exactly where we should be.

This is easy to see with the gift of hindsight, like looking at an old photograph and wondering why you did not really enjoy the way you looked back then.

When I first saw One Beach I felt that I was exactly where I should be in the big picture of life.

So.

Thank you all Barefooters for making this possible.

Jason Baffa, Scotty and Tyler for making me look good.

Michael Pizzo for producing and Curt O’Brien for setting it up.

Sean O’Brien for his creative foresight and green spirit that gave birth to the idea of One Beach.

And of course the entire Barefoot Wine team in California and New York that worked so hard to pull it all off in time for the premiere in NYC  last week.

We were all there.

In New York.

The team that made One Beach and the people it featured, called The Innovators in the film.

Kevin Cunningham, a surfer from Rhode Island who incorporates beach plastic in making surfboards from recycled materials.

Richard Lang and beautiful Judith Selby Lang, the king and queen of beach plastic, fell in love on their first date while combing Kehoe Beach for plastic debris. They incorporate beach plastic in their art from installations to photography and jewelry.

Left to right: Stephanie Gallo, Kevin Cunningham, Sean O'Brien, Barbara de Vries Jason Baffa, Judith and Richard Lang, Elizabeth and Anne. Lying in foreground is Tyler from Smash.

We watched the first screening together, wept at the end, and were all amazed at the synergy between us, four people who have never met, in three different parts of the US, who collect and work with beach plastic and whose dialog and message has evolved in an eerily similar way without ever speaking to each other.

We also had beach plastic envy as we drooled over pieces in each other’s collection.

The premiere was at the Helen Mills theatre in Chelsea, with a live feed to our own Facebook app where over 5000 people had signed up to watch the film and subsequent Q and A online.

Sitting in the director’s chairs, below ground in NYC, taking questions that Tyler, our MC, received on his Ipad from Facebookers all over, had a surreal sense of opportunity, the feeling that when we  all connect we can make a difference.

Below is  the One Beach film, which we hope will help raise awareness of beach plastic pollution. Numbers just released estimate that six million tons of what becomes “marine debris” (non organic material that does not break down) enters the oceans every year. One Beach has a positive message, it is upbeat about creativity and possibility, but none of us have the illusion that just  selling up-cycled beach plastic into ownership can significantly reduce what washes up on our beaches every day with every tide and every wave. We want to connect to people through beauty, and our message is to for everyone to reduce our plastic foot print (300 pounds per person every year) NOW by saying no to single-use plastics.

Tip: Start with refusing bottled water and plastic shopping bags, relatively easy steps, then pick an alternative material every time there is a choice…

Here are Sean’s pictures of the making of One Beach in Eleuthera:  link

Sunset from the pool at Squires


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Back and Doing the Other Miami…

I’m back.

From pastoral Pennsylvania to crazy Miami.

To the bachelor pad which is being de-bachelored by turning the “pool” room (as in shooting pool with your mates at 3 am, after getting home from the Wall without scoring)  into a third bedroom for the twins so they can do homework, hang out, bicker and sleep behind a wall (instead of the exposed upper mezzanine).

Tiesto mural in pool room will be preserved

Of course this was to be done in the ample two months that we were away and of course it was started on the Friday we returned. So now we neither have an office (pool room) nor a bedroom for the girls since everything from one room is piled in the other.

But thats OK.

They say they will be done by Wednesday.

They say.

They said they’d be done by now.

But I’m not bothered. There are bigger problems.

Like school uniforms.

Maybe one has to be genetically programmed to deal with procuring kid’s uniforms. Maybe I’m too hippy-dippy Dutch to even think about universal clothing for creative kids. See I always look to blame myself first (Have you noticed? Do you do that too? I wish I were a bit more Teaparty, and blame everyone else. Like only everyone else all the time.), still I was proud to have gathered, at Woodbury Common (Like/Love), four khaki bottoms that my trendy twins would deign to wear to school, and one pair of black pants that may get them sent home (while the color is right, the fit will be deemed too sexy, which in this city of underdressed exhibitionists is paradoxical but don’t get me started, I already wrote that blog.)

The preppy polo tops have to be bought locally since they are emblazoned with the Miami Arts Charter School logo.

lime, teal, white or black with MAC logo

Another bigger problem was getting an e-mail from TED, shortly after arrival, requesting a full run-through of my talk at 1 pm on Wednesday. This Wednesday? This Wednesday!

TED? But I was still on uniforms. Saturday was uniform day on my “what to do when we get back” list. Which also has finish homework with the girls, unpack, get food in fridge, get 2nd floor toilet and phone fixed , you know the drill.

TED!

So while I should be writing and practicing my TED talk, I’m chasing uniforms.

Yes, I’d ordered them online as the school suggested, but got a notice a few days ago that the polo’s would be ready for delivery in 5 weeks!

WTF? Right?

What are the suggesting? Homeschooling for five weeks? I mean the school is clear:

All students and parents have agreed to abide by the school uniform as described in the parent/student contract signed during registration.

Students not in uniform will be required to contact their parent and sent home.

I’m scared!
Ibiley suggests I visit any of their conveniently located Miami stores.
They lied. None of them are conveniently located. All of them are in scary shit neighborhoods that are at least  40 minutes away.

I settled on North Miami and was wise enough to call first, just to make sure they had said polos in stock, but of course got the robot who told me that August is too busy to answer the phone, and tells me to leave a message.

They’re also too busy to answer.

I find out just how busy.

But not till after getting lost in the maze of NE and NW 159th street Drive and Street and Court, at the very place where 95, the turnpike and 539 intersect in a spider-web of flyovers and underpasses and of course the exit ramp that Mapquest told me to use is Closed for Construction.

What?

You are sorry for the inconvenience?

Fuck you!

Why not just post some signs up telling how to get the fuck to Ibeley Uniforms in the industrial park (with one entrance) that I can see from the overpass which points towards the Everglades, at 70 miles an hour.

OK. So.

50 minutes later, and isn’t it amazing how proud those moments can make you (forget about a TED talk), I pull up in front of Ibiley.

Pride turns to nausea in a nano second.

Swarming around the  huge warehouse, are hundreds of people of many colors (none quite as white as the three of us), several  stainless steel quilted food trucks are randomly parked, and something that resembles a long line, made up from entire families (bring the kids, the toddlers, the babies, the grannies, aunts, uncles and don’t forget the neighbors) comes out from the front door into the 95 degree sunshine.

We “politely” battle our way inside only to find many feet of empty shelves and another line that resembles immigration at JFK before Christmas.

Determined (if nothing else) I find 8 tees (4 each), while yelling at the twins to help me. Unfortunately they’re catatonic with the otherness of it all, like in some culture-shock transition from the verdant woods to this urban jungle.

We join the immigration line.

After ten minutes we move close enough to spot a tiny sign over the counter.

We are out of the folowing logo patches. (you buy the tees and pay in line #1, they give you your school’s logo patches, you join line #2, the one outside, and they apply the patches).

Come back on the 28th and we will apply them for free,, it also read. (You’d have to bloody well pay ME to come back!).

There’s no actual list of said missing patches posted. I guess it changes by the minute.

So.

I grab an Ibiley sales girl who looks like she will get really drunk that night.

MAC is not on her list of out-of-stock patches.

I ponder if this is good news. I’m rather praying for an excuse to leave. But it sounds like we will be there for the next few hours. (Could I get into this Cuban/Caribbean/South American block-party atmosphere?).

The girl walks away.

The girl comes back.

“You are at the wrong location”, she says. “MAC uses special embroidery and is only available at our Little Havana store on SW 8th Street.”

We are on NW 167th street.

You have to be from Miami to know what that really means, but imagine flying to London instead of Sydney.

We are fucked.

We leave the line.

We are hungry and buy three sandwiches, and three Cuban drink cans ( sexy looking mixed mango. papaya, passion fruit that taste like water) from the guilted truck.

“Mom, these are the best sandwiches I’ve ever had,” the twins chime, “Yes, at least we got some really good sandwiches out of it.”

They encourage me. (Afraid that I might have a shit-fit meltdown?)

Instead I find 95 South (easy), and head towards Little Havana.

I call husband who is on the porch in PA and tells me its the first nice day in weeks.

@#$%^&* !!

He also tells me to give myself a break.

He often tells me this.

I listen. The only breaks I take are the ones he tells me to take.

He’s good to me in that way.

“You did your best,” he says. “Go home, have a swim, enjoy being back.”

He has a point.

I compromise with myself. I settle on Target, which I happen to be passing, buy the last three (a terrible number for twins) white polo’s and  HP iron-0n tee shirt transfer paper.

I feel clever.

I shall go home, get the MAC logo online and iron it on.

Which I do.

While arguing with the MAC principal in my mind that this is as good as the real thing from Little Havana and that the Ibiley store was completely out of stock (good chance of that anyway, right? Given the odds so far?)

While the trip to Little Havana still looms, since three tees between twins won’t last me the promised five weeks.

They wont even last two days.

And then there is TED.

TED needs attention.

As soon as the girls are in school TED will be my lover.

I promise TED my undivided attention….


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Trysting…

Forgive my absence.

So sorry that I did not blog for almost three months and then do this weird  search-word driven thing which most people (especially my mother who thought I’d gone bonkers) did not get. Writing kinky helped the stats however,  as in “how to drive more readers to my blog.” So bear with me when I pepper the blog with dirty words and obscure celebrity combinations. I’ll forewarn with the * icon . Example: * bums, big tits, Charlie Sheen.

BTW my most popular search-words are: sexy long legs, models. So I found an old Razzmatazz ad/video of me in Australia, befitting this search word:  link here, then click 1979 button down.

I just came back from a tryst. (Tryst – An agreement between lovers, illicit or not, to meet , for sex, in a certain time and place). Actually we did not meet at the certain place, Key West, we drove together along the ugliest corridor that connects all the Keys, the randomness of  place, demographic and function (fishing, dolphinariums, shooting alleys and gun shops, strip bars, motor boat retail, cheap motels and trailer parks, etc.) creating a disastrous effect, a visual assault that left me nauseous until we passed Deer Key and the sea turned light turquoise and  spotted with every size island from potted plant to small land mass.

hard to capture at 50 mph

Husband and I had not been in a confined space, ie car, together in a long time, so  mind-trysting started before we hit Key West. The only place fit for romance if you live in Miami and want to get away like a * gay-escape.

Destination was a secret so I visualized  the Hemingway House combined with renovated cute gay Inns as seen online. (Apparently there are straight-friendly and not straight-friendly cute gay inns in KW).

But.

We went to a resort. Upon arrival my mind did a U-turn. It was modern; Travel and Leisure worthy, with swimming pool, beach, 200 rooms, and I liked that this is was what husband had in mind for us, *  like  Brad and Angelina on vacation.

Idyllic? Yes. But see those two beach balls?

They have “Advanced Auto Parts Convention” printed on them.

Advanced Auto Parts is a link you do NOT press. AAP was trysting too. Like a * Advanced Auto Parts orgy.

We arrived at 2 but check- in time was 4pm. OK. So when we finally get to our Casa Marina room at 4 and walk onto the “balcony”  the nerdy  bag boy follows us and says: “Best leave the room  from 6 to 11, it will be noisy huh huh.”  He snickers like  * Mark Zuckerberg.  Right below us is a stage with Easter Island sized speakers for that night’s AAP concert . Woohoo, we had front row seats. OK. And what time is  check-out?

“11 am.”  (Shit! that works out to $40.00 an hour spent unconscious, eyes shut, as in sleeping.)

Still, when on a tryst everything is “fun”, its so not hot to complain during check-in; “Excuse me, my husband and I were planning on coming home and having sex around 10 pm,  but with that band…. would you have another room for us? Like facing the highway or the garbage collection area?”

I don’t think so. Denial is preferred when on a tryst, avoiding every opportunity for disappointment which will inevitably lead to a fight.

So,  a 3rd rate rock band under our window? Who cares, we’ll just pretend its * Gwyneth Paltrow!

We rented bikes. Rode around with 10.000 other tourists, for some reason mostly Danish. At 3.55pm we leashed our bikes together  at the clumsily laid-out Casa Marina bike racks, once you were in you couldn’t get out, which irked my  Dutchness, but I kept quiet.

We went to our room. After all it was between 4 and 6. Then back on the bikes. Dinner at Seven Fish.

Back at  our room by 9.30. Too early. See below for  video .

The next morning we biked to Hemingway’s House because that’s what you do when in Key West. Along with 100 grey haired ladies.

Writing loft roof top and pool Pauline put in to keep H from straying to Martha Gelhorn's pool

H's luminescent ghost over the writing desk

pappa's potty in the mirror

Hemingway through the years

Any cellulite? Front row fashion show worthy thighs?

Then we drove back, stopped for lunch at Pierre’s (* a place that makes me think of  Carolyn Bessette and how, depressed,  she never left her cottage when on a tryst with model boy friend Michael Bergin because she was already madly in love with JK).

Flagler Railroad to KW built early 20th century, now a defunct sculpture alongside the highway

PS I love Coca Cola going green and adore their new cute aluminum bottles and  this truck:


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the perfect dress

We were invited by Cheryl from Bal Harbour Shops for our premier Miami night out together since husband arrived in Miami. The billing was the first Lanvin show EVER in the USA at the Fontainebleau and the most coveted ticket last Saturday night.

So.

I needed a dress.

I had not bought myself something I really LOVED since husband’s book party three years ago when I bought a gold sequined tunic at Neimans and pink Pucci pants for our Spaced Out hippie party at the Ramscale loft in NYC ( see link to groovy video of this 60-ties party right  here).

But this was an occasion, like OCCASION…

My inner frugal Dutch housewife voices argued with the Barbi Does Miami voices who told me: You deserve it, how long has it been? You’re such a goody-two-shoes but is Loehmans, TJ Maxx, a bit of Zara here, a bit of  Woodbury Commons there really, really you? But what about being careful, the frugals said. What about the girl’s dentist? What will husband say?

My inner head was far far from the days when I made lots of dough, and shopped all the designer stores in Paris, London, Milan, NYC and had a $25,000 clothing allowance at Calvin Klein.

We’re sick of it, some voices said. You NEED to look like YOU, they said. Enough with that trashy Miami Beach look already. What happened to your own style? What’s with all this bling role-playing?

I dunno, Barbi said. I kinda like it. Its fun, you know high heels and mini’s and tits and ass. But I do rather like All Saints. Given an unlimited budget, which no one will give me, I’d blow it at All Saints, Spitalfields….

Before I knew it I found myself on Lincoln Road, ambling into the Victorian environment with hundreds of antique sewing machines (where do they find them all? Do they have this many in every store?) touching a fatigued leather jacket here, a weathered gold embroidered tunic there, an open-back ruffled washed habutai dress, a sweater that was to-die-for but luckily totally unnecessary in the Southern climate.

I headed towards the back.

Where the gowns are.

I was looking for…

That one dress…

The one I had seen before…

When they first opened about a year ago…

That parachute dress…

It was me. I remembered it as definitely me.

I passed an embroidered gown, long to the ground, somehow looking like it came from the V&A costume department.

I tried it first. The boob area, once I slid into it, was somewhere between my collar bones and my breasts. Hmm. Designed for some giant (it dragged the dressing room floor) high breasted fifteen-year-old Pre-Raphaelite nymph but clearly not for me.

Next I tried the parachute. The ropes were all tangled around my neck and I looked like some mangled British soldier who’d landed in a Normandy tree. The sales girl brought me another one – the sample from the display wall. It was perfect (they give good mirror at All Saints, all golden and dusky and slimming and oblique). This Parachute-dress made me look like Aphrodite on D-Day, exactly the look I was going for.  Like so not Lanvin and so not Versace and so not where I’d been in my first year of Barbi Does Miami.

Before I allowed myself to hesitate. To re-think and second-guess. I said to the punky white-haired sales girl:

I WILL TAKE IT!

(My first expensive dress in over, what? Five, six years? )

Now.

Which part of a woman’s brain springs into action once she has the dress? The part that goes: Well … now you need a tiara! And shoes! And earrings! And what will you do with your hair? And make-up? And what color nails for the pedicure?

By the time I got to the car at Epicure I’d figured it all out.

I must admit I succumbed to adding a bit of Miami bling to my traditional beach-plastic cross earrings:

I also, don’t ask why, did a very blingy beach plastic tiara.

Which husband told me to take off my head before we left the house (I think he was right).

I got stainless-steel colored nail varnish. Did smokey eyes and hair like that Aphrodite parachutist on D-Day.

Oh, what delight to be in the bathroom for two hours putting it all together. First the shower, shave, blow dry, curlers, make-up – foundation, blush, eyes (light, darker,  dark, black and mascara), take the curlers out, brush and spray. Underwear (I actually got a Macy stick-on front only bra, likeWhoTF thought of those? because the parachute back dipped really low), silver stilletto heels, and then I was ready for my dress.

It was hanging high on the bathroom door so I could somehow dive into the mass of tousled skirt and find my way to the neck opening without upsetting all that complicated roping….

Where it hung my eyes were kind-of level with the hem.

What?

Was that? A speck of dirt? Actually a bit more than just a speck. More like an area of dirt. Like three/four inches of dirt near the hem. I got a wet towel and tried to brush it off. I realized it was mold and as I rubbed the fabric parted into a hole.

SHIT!

FUCK!

A hole! Mold and a hole!

Now what?

Should I wear it anyway? I did not have anything else half as glam. Not anything that went with my hair and toes and shoes and the expected image in my head.

So WTF now?

I slipped into it.

The hem draped around me, sweeping the floor (my very clean bathroom floor).

I decided on denial.

I mean. I looked good. No one would see the hem. I had no choice. Husband was calling, we were already late.

Should I call the All Saints store now? Tell them I was wearing the dress with an existing hole cause I had no choice? Would they believe me, tomorrow? Or would they say that I was the culprit who wore the dress and ruined that hem?

As I came down our bachelor-pad stairs husband took pictures:

He did not notice anything.

I arrived at the Fontainebleau, and by the time I entered the ballroom I’d forgotten about my hem.

I had fun.

We found my super-pretty Winona/Audrey-esque friend Rebecca

and together with the Lanvin mannequins we ogled the local recipients of the now permanent (how could you, Mr. President?) Bush tax cuts, and the ways they’ll spend it..

.

and sat with our less affluent but smart and funny press and pr friends at an eleganca table…

We watched the show which went much too fast (the bride was there before I even started paying attention) I mean what is it with these models ? Do they run, possibly misinterpreting the word run-way, oblivious that some people are actually interested in seeing the clothes they are wearing?

In the end I even danced with husband on the catwalk while my inner ex-model had fantasies of sha-shaying down that runway showing off my All Saints gown…

But before I totally embarrassed myself we headed home.

with my prince and no slippers

The next morning I woke up in love with my dress. I had a super fabulous time in that dress! I got compliments from strangers in that dress! I looked at it lovingly, hanging on my bathroom door….

and there…

staring me in the face….

was a giant, at least two inches across, L-shaped rip….

about half way up the skirt in the folds of all that cotton…

My lovely dress no longer had a small innocuous hole at the hem, it had a HUGE fucking rip!

Not my rip! That was a rip caused by some short bitch who wore her stillettos in the dressing room and had tripped, and ripped, my dear darling dress before we even became acquainted.

I had bought a dress with serious baggage! Mold was one thing, but a rip called for divorce!

SO.

I phoned All Saints.

I got Gill the Manager.

Gill was lovely. Gill understood right away. Maybe Gill even knew that my floor sample of the parachute dress had been stained and ripped long ago because most women are not 6ft2 in careful bare feet.

Gill, I said. I love this dress, you gotta help me out…

Come and get a new one from the store room, Gill said.

So, at 1pm on Sunday, with a bit of a hangover, I snuck out to exchange my darling parachute dress.

Only there weren’t any in stock.

No more left. Not one. Not in Lincoln Road and not in Aventura.

I can give you a store credit, Gill said.

I do not want a store credit. I want my dress….

Sweet Gill looked at me. He pondered, then walked me over to a giant Apple screen in the middle of the store and ordered me my dress on line. All new. Untouched. Unworn. Never tried on by some Miami Beach midget in twelve inch heels.

A new parachute dress all of my own.

I think I’ll wear it to the Bruce Webber opening at MOCA on the 18th.

Fingers crossed it will actually arrive….


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Tutus and burkas are forever…

 

whoops too short

 

At eight this morning Iona called from school.

“Mom, you have to bring me jeans, my short shorts are too short.”

Hello! When I saw her at 6.30 in the kitchen I thought she’d forgotten her skirt. But, this being a common thought, it slipped away without becoming another sarcastic remark, we were late for the bus, I hadn’t printed her essay nor sick note, panic ensued and my opinion on dress code was forgotten by the time we met up in my (still dark at 6.30) car.

Yes, DASH has a dress code. Its tolerant, but does require a certain amount of body coverage.

So.

At 8.45 I arrived, bagged jeans in hand, and told the dear woman at reception that my daughter had been nabbed by the DASH fashion police and here I was; bringing her Burka.

Don’t you hate it when a good joke goes to waste? It was a case of flat ears.

Now rewind 12 hours to 200 yards across the street from DASH at the Moore building in the Design District, 5- 10 pm yesterday evening.

Burka’s crossed my mind then too.

I was there selling tutu’s. My original princess-dress tutu’s.

(I don’t mean to confuse you, yes-yes I work with beach plastic now, and not tule).

But I confused myself. I mean what was I thinking when my friend Francesca told me about a giant sample sale fashion event called Sassy City Chicks?

Fate, I thought.

Tutu* destiny calls, I thought.

*Aside – I keep a “past lives storage unit” in Milford, across from ACE hardware. Last summer I was getting two tutu dresses from my previous Baby Gordon collection (in storage for ten years) for friends with brand-new baby girls in their lives and, in an inspired moment, thinking that Miami was the perfect market to get rid of my tutus once and for all (those princesses in the making) I UPS-ed two boxes down to our candy land bachelor pad.

 

my chic display for young miami princesses...

 

Little did I know that  the crowd of childless  Sassy City Chicks Fashion Bashers had come for the DJ, the party atmosphere with free Smirnoff Vodka while they had their nails done, carried no cash, nor checks, only credit cards (which I did not take) and had about fifty dollars to spend on themselves, which went to an instant gratification piece of bling and not a Christmas tutu for their favorite niece.

 

tutu or bling? that was the question...

 

I took one look at these girls’ heels, cleavage and legs and thought:

I may as well be selling burkas.

Like pastel baby tutus or black burkas @ Sassy City Chicks Fashion Bash = wrong demographic!

 

Miami trend: two drinks, one for each hand. Predicament: how to shop...

 

Still, I sold six pieces. I only lost thirty-five dollars. I had free Vodka. I hung out with Francesca, who oozes Italian style, and we bitched about the fashion Chernobyl going on around us.

 

Francesca = effortless chic...

 

I met a few cool young guys who do cool young things.

I got to stay out late by myself.

But, when I left the building and had to step over the passed-out body of a young woman lying in her own vomit, I decided to put my tutus back into storage for another ten years…

 

the fashion apocalypse

 


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Ten things you can do in Miami that you can’t get away with anywhere else in the US of A

OK

So…

I didn’t do my 22 laps today. I did homework. I prepped beach plastic. I made dinner. I edited. I had a Martini (or two) …

Then suddenly I had a window, so I went down to the pool.

I did my 22 laps. Or was it 32?

Let me tell you; after those martini’s it was soo easy. It was actually fun! And pretty! Prettier than I’d ever noticed before. The palm trees lit from below swaying in the wind, the lights from the apartment buildings across Indian Creek, the slice-of-a-moon rising, the last contours of a pink sunset…

I swam like a fucking dolphin!  I would have leapt if I  could have!

I wondered if I’d burned the same amount of calories as when doing the same, only sober.

So politically incorrect though. No?

I mean I’m from the north. And from Holland. Swimming laps while intoxicated? Bad mother! Bad, bad mother! Bad temporary single parent!

But.

Hey.

This is Miami.

So while exercising intoxicated I thought of all the things you can do in Miami that you can’t do anywhere else in the U S of America….

Like:

1. Sex rules without boundaries #1 – Cross a busy intersection wearing nothing but a red sparkling Brazilian bikini (thong that is), on Friday evening Sabbath in the center of the Jewish quarter, 41st and Pinetree Drive… You go girl! (It wasn’t me, I wouldn’t dare).

2. Safety? Up yours! – Do a U-turn, in a SUV, in the center of a three-way-zebra crossing during  blinking-light school hours with uniformed kids pulling their Zuccas on every black and white stripe  (I don’t do this, it drives me nuts).

3. Fun beats responsibility – Send your kid on a two-day field trip with a chaperone, never call her (kid nor chaperone), and then NOT collect kid for another two days (courtesy of my friend F B ).

4. My body is my business – Sunbath topless on the regular (not nudist) beach. I do this when its REALLY quiet (my Mom and I tried it on Shelter Island and almost got arrested….)

5. Get out of my way, bitch – Cut into any and every line, whenever you can, proudly, as if it’s a Mark Jacobs Spring 2011 fashion statement.

6. Spontaneous manners –  RSVP to an intimate  (early-ish) dinner party, not show up, then call at ten, ask if you can bring a friend, eat left-overs and have a fabulous time till the wee hours…

7. Honestly I’m an honest person – Text a hostess to thank for a great dinner party, and write that it was fun only until the moment when she (the hostess/me) made that one stupid comment about…

8. Sex rules without boundaries #2 – Sit by the pool and hear the explicit details of a druggy orgy, as told by three extremely pretty Russian girls, while there are at least a dozen children under the age of seven swimming amongst them…

9. Scary shit is fun any time of the year – Have “Night of the Zombies” on Lincoln Road four weeks before Halloween, where adult men walk around in blood stained T-shirts, drunk, yielding real and churning chainsaws…

10. Sex rules without boundaries # 3 – Have a bus stop sign that says: Still a Virgin? Need Help? call 1-800- etc. on one end and a sign that says “Raped? Need Help? call 1-800- etc.” on the other…

(11 and 12 are added since this post was first written:

11: Have the office of a male and female, boys and girls, modeling agency inside a church building. Yes the Green agency is conveniently located (for recruiting purposes) on Lincoln Road inside the community church building, instantly absolved and blessed with divine credibility. And oh those lucky priests, inside the kids candy store….

12: On Sunday, when the sale of liquor is forbidden in many states including PA, we were give free and rather generous wine samples at the Publix supermarket check-out line at 11am, Halloween day. The man behind me passed “because I have to go to work” and the sexy wine seductress tried her best to persuade him that a bit of wine would do no harm…. )

I’m sure I can think of ten (yes I did) more but I have to get out of this wet bathing suit and call husband back…


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Barbi does Miami, alone…

Ok

So

Here I am, in (on? I always wondered about this) Miami Beach.

One year later…one year after the TB scare and the rashes from the fiberglass chairs.

Like one year ago is when we came down for our nine-month get away…

As in, lets try a school-year away from Milford with its six-feet-of-snow winters when I need a focus-group to determine how to best get from the front door to the car to pick up the kids, where we have crazy neighbors who shoot at eight-year-old twins (or at least try to hit a target that stands about ten feet in front of their neighboring twins) and then try to get the mother (moi) arrested for shoving the neighbor for almost shooting my twins (one day I’ll be ready to blog you that whole story), getting away from having Obama signs stolen five times from my yard, being called a commie for trying to have a library built in town and having to spend at least 1/3 of my life in the car driving for every little  brain fart.

Anyone would agree that these are plenty good reasons to try something else for a while. And as you know, from 12 months of blogging, we did.

WE. I said.

We, as in husband and me and our children, Kiki, Leila and Iona.

So, if you’ve been a faithful follower of this Gordon de Vries adventure, you know that, based on mainly but not solely, Iona’s acceptance into DASH, we went for the second year. A second year in DJ Tiesto’s bachelor pad. Tiesto loves us, despite the fact, or because of the fact, that we’re not bachelors, we dont wreck the place every Saturday night, but instead the “Dutch Cleanser” has moved in, one who occasionally slips into heels and a mini, but still reports every toilet blockage.

Anyway.

I’m here. Kiki is here, very popular in her grade. Leila is here, very popular too, Iona is here, loving DASH.

But where is husband? I’ve been looking everywhere! The closets, under the bed, the garage, by the pool, in the car (maybe he locked himself in?), the fridge, the gym, the jacuzzi?

He’s not here.

He’s in Milford!

Yep, believe it or not, he’s there.

Next to the crazy neighbors, who reportedly are building a moat between them and us, like they’re the bridge and we’re the water  (one day I’ll tell all…)

And I miss him. Husband, not the neighbor.

He’s there because of work. Like suddenly, isn’t it always like that, like you think you’re in the shitty check-out line and you move and then the register in yours breaks and the other, previous, line turns out to have an additional bagger, well this year he, husband, happens to have loads and loads of work in New York. He HAS to be there. Meetings every week. New editors, new jobs, new websites who want him, launches and openings and suddenly New York is where its at.

FUCK!

Like now I’m a single parent without benefits.

Like I go out with my single and divorced girl friends but I don’t get to flirt, exchange numbers, and pretend to be BAD.

I’m GOOD.

I’m so good I bore myself.

Sometimes, when husband calls at midnight on a Saturday night, just when I’ve come home and read his e-mail saying “call me when you get home”, I pretend that I was bad. But, to be honest, I don’t even know how to do this…

So between now and Halloween Barbi does Miami, alone.

waiting...like a good girl...

; )

Do you have my number?


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betwixt and between…

barbi?

Barbi is back in Miami

Only I’m not quite back to being Barbi, and I wonder, was Barbi a character I created for living in Miami last year? Do I want to be Barbi forever? Do I want to do Miami forever?

Am I lost between Milford and Miami and me and Barbi?

me

I am lost between Milford and Miami and me and Barbi.

So, since I’m not Barbi, its kind of hard to blog  Miami style.

I’ll start with the kids, to keep the focus off me.

Iona is at DASH with lots of homework, fun homework like do ten art works using soy sauce, soap and candle wax and there are lots of cute boys so she’s tired but inspired.

Kiki and Leila? They’re fine too. Oblivious to the drama that goes on at their school.  That screwed-up underfunded, overpopulated public elementary school. And Miami Beach has many entitled super-moms running around (I admit to being guilty myself), who are all confused about wanting and trying to get “the best for their child” in this – classes too big, teachers too stressed, Gifted/not Gifted principals too scared, no budget for nothing, job insecurity, not good enough UNIVERSE. We’re all in it and we all feel lost in it, like there is no there, there, no truth, no path, no mentor or inspiration, its just a get-through-it-in-one-piece processing plant. BUT. The girls like their teacher, She’s funny, they say. Funny is good! They come home and do their homework, so they want to please her….

But me, I’m betwixt and between…

Husband was here for five days. We had a big meeting with a potential client (fingers crossed). Then he stayed for our early anniversary. We first met on September 2nd 1990 and got married on September 4th eight years later. Twenty years! But thats another blog, the love blog, the relationship blog. The pink lava lamp blog. Still I don’t mind telling you that being betwixt and between on your anniversary is very romantic. I can recommend the uncertainty, as if nothing can be taken for granted. There is no need for fancy hotel rooms with scattered rose petals, or a million candles around the tub, or a ring studded with meaningful diamonds. I take the flutter of betwixt anytime over all that. And the shiver of between…

But  he’s gone back for work in NYC. And my car broke down. It rains and its grey like Holland. So I rearranged the furniture. The designer couches and rugs and Arad chairs of our Tiesto bachelor pad are all muddled up.  We now have a TV corner, how bourgeois, and can, for the first time in a year change the channels lying down instead of  walking around the corner of the hidden designer shelving system. Much better. Its cozier  but also more photogenic  in a World of Interiors kinda way.

But I wonder, where do I start picking up on me? Am I working or caretaking? Am I facilitating or building an awesome third career?  Am I a writer, a fashion designer, a book designer, an environmentalist, a mother, a wife, a bill payer, check chasing, budget balancer (yes I’m definitely that ) ? Am I at home or am I lost in Miami?

Where is home?

Milford is home, because that’s where my heart is the fullest.

favorite spot, over the stream...

But the rest of my family disagrees. The girls think its boring and husband thinks its HillBilly… (my husband is so not HillBilly but I have an inner HB)

This kind of family division causes betwixt.

I be twixt. I be twixt in a who the fuck am I? where the fuck am I? kinda way.

Oddly I don’t seem to mind it. I may even like it. Its nothing like being bored or the feeling that I should be somehwhere else because I’m already somewhere else.

Maybe I don’t quite mind it because – did I tell you this already? – I got an order for 900 t shirts to be embellished with Plastic is Forever from Barneys!

Barneys New York!

Loomstate Tee with Plastic is Forever

For Spring 2011!

Thats a lot of beach plastic. Thats a lot of harvesting and cleaning beaches and I will post my progress on my Its a Man Made World blog.

So that is one person I WILL be: a beach-plastic comber, during September, October, November, I shall be crouched over the coral-pink sand of the Bahamas filling my bags with plastic garbage…

I look forward to it. Its just when I add all the other stuff I also have to do to that order. Thats when I start to be twixt. Like can I do it all? Be it all? Be here and there and there as well.

But maybe we all feel like that all the time now? Like what we do is never enough and at the same time too much. Too much choice of stuff like options for anti-aging, to name an example, so many ways, creams and pills and remedies that I may need but will never get around to trying.  Or all those causes, like at the check-out of Publix for helping poor hungry kids and at Walgreens for helping Haiti, and on FB posting pink ribbons for breast cancer, and an Inbox full of ways to help out in the Gulf, and then there are those PTA meetings I should attend. I want to do them all, end up doing none and then I feel guilty.

And what’s with making money all of a sudden? Someone has turned off the middle-class money faucet, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Obama.

Then I worry about Obama.

I can’t watch TV because I get too upset. About what those mad hatter tea-partiers are doing and getting away with. The bile they stir into their BP logo tea cups. The general ignorance of who funds and fuels (oil) their fire of hatred. And why? When I get on that train of thought I get so betwixt that between is not even an issue.

But I wonder, Milford versus Miami aside, do we all feel this way?  Like where the hell are we headed and how do we turn this around?

Are we lost because so much of our lives are no longer familiar?

Maybe familiar is out and betwixt is in…

Iona's eye by Iona


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No LOVE, just PRAYing for the end so I can EAT…

Last night I saw Eat Pray Love. All about a woman who is lost. Right?
I hated it. (I didn’t get past page 30 of the book either). And I wondered. Why? Why do 300 million people love this story in 48 languages, buy it, get inspired by it, and I hate it.

Like I wanted to leave. I wanted to scream over everybody’s head, why are you buying this  BULL SHIT ?

Anyway.

I think I figured it out. It lacks authenticity. Credibility. Like when Precious makes good we cheered for her. We admired her for facing horrific challenges and demons. But this?  This is the cliche of a spoiled pretty woman lost. Really, she’s more enviable than pitiable. She tells us she’s desperate but  shows us a gorgeous home, handsome husband, intellectual parties, NYC at its brownstone best, cutest actor rebound boyfriend, rambling apartment in Rome, all the prosciutto, basel and Chianti she can consume, fabulous funny friends who adore her, then onto the super cleaned-up version of India where she befriends the “I don’t want to have an arranged marriage” cliche Indian girl while scrubbing picturesque mosaic floors (all along her hair is Fekkai perfect) ending with the inevitable photogenic Indian wedding ceremony. Then onto Bali (How awful, are we suffering yet? I am, by now I’m so hungry seeing all that Italian food earlier) Anyway. Once there she finds out, like duh, that “giving” makes her feel good about herself, things start looking up… and finally she smiles!

BUT THEN.

While bicycling through a gorgeous landscape she gets hit by Javier Bardem in his white jeep.

JAVIER BARDEM!

Tell me, who here doesn’t want to get run over by Javier Bardem?

STILL…

Now she’s pissed off about that too!

After several scenes ( I only stayed this long because my friend Jessica swore there was steamy sex with Javier) of Roberts and Bardem  having fully clothed sex behind  bamboo doors the story reaches its end. (Phew).

The last scene is straight from the Bachelorette, radiant Julia at the end of the jetty, sun setting on the horizon, waiting for her knight in shining armor …

Fade out to “and they lived happily ever after.”

(Apparently not entirely, in real life the couple’s struggles continued because Javier, had “immigration” problems).

Now there is a movie I may watch:

Javier (without papers) in Arizona…. running his white Jeep over Julia Roberts on her bike…

Any suggestions for the title of that movie…?