Smittens
5 December 2007I am not a loser of things. I like to think that I’m not a loser, full stop, but I might own a few too many melissa joan hart movies to really give that claim some weight. Anyway, I don’t lose things. I lost one thing in all of 2006, but I really got my losing-stuff money’s worth– I lost the pair of glasses that I loved, and to add insult to injury, I lost them at the Javits center during BEA. Since I only wear glasses about 3 times a month (movies, baseball games, sales conference) I’ve been rocking my old, lame pair since then, telling myself I’d hold out on getting new ones until my next vision insurance cycle but really because I’m convinced that I didn’t actually lose the glasses, that they’ve really been accidentally lodged, say, inside my riding boots or behind my blender or near something else that I haven’t touched in over a year. Deny, deny, deny. But usually, nothing is lost. I think this is a function of my mild yet productive OCD that requires me to lay hands on something in order to confirm that it exists and is in the proper space– I do the wallet/ cell phone/ iPod/ Keys rundown three times between my bedroom and the street, again when I get off the subway, and a couple more times over the course of the day. What a fantastic waste of energy. But still, nothing gets lost.
And thusly, I have a lot of stuff that I probably should have been rid of by now, stuff that ranges from entirely useless (of COURSE I need the pref night drinking shirt we made during rush, never mind that it’s too lewd to wear out of the house) to entirely awesome, like the set of mittens my mom got me in high school from Delia’s (yes, that Delia’s) that were ahead of their time with their option of converting to fingerless gloves that allow iPod manipulation without mitten removal. This saturday I decided to delve head first into Christmas shopping and dug the glove-mittens out to accompany me on my journey to The Container Store. (Is there ANYWHERE as awesome as The Container Store? No. There is not. The Container Store is one of a limited selection of places in new york were I would happily lease space and live there if the occupying party would allow it. {see also: dinosaur floor of the museum of natural history; david wright’s apartment}. And leading up to christmas, it goes from being the Happiest Place In The World to being the Seriously, This Is The Happiest Fucking Place In The World for me. I want to freelance for them and just do gift wrapping demonstrations all day long. I didn’t wind up buying any wrapping paper because I haven’t picked a gift wrap theme for this year… as dramatic as my theme was last year, black paper/ metallic ribbon doesn’t exactly scream holiday cheer so much as it screams I Am A Stark Minimalist, which isn’t even true, so I’m exploring new options. This year might be the year of brown paper packages tied up with strings and by strings I mean something in hunter green with gift tags that make use of my entire rubber stamp collection). And en route to The Container Store, in addition to accidentally buying myself three sweaters that you will say look identical but *I* say are each beautiful and unique snowflakes, or at least they are when your entire wardrobe is the same color, I spent a lot of time thinking about mittens, and how fall is most certainly my favorite season, but its one failing (other than not enough baseball) is that there’s not usually any need to wear mittens. Because really, it’s impossible to be upset when you have mittens on. In gloves you can be all kinds of upset, but if mittens don’t make you automatically happy, you have a cold, dead soul. I wore my mittens to The Container Store and had to physically restrain myself from hugging strangers. It’s the mittens (and seeing Enchanted), I swear.
(Okay– WHERE could this story be GOING? Master of suspense that I am… a regular dean effing koontz over here).
I came home with only one glove mitten. ONE. The other, it seems, decided that it would also like to live in The Container Store. I can’t say I blame it. But I will anyway. WHAT the EFF. I called Jordan as soon as I found out. “I LOST one of my MITTENS!! This is the worst possible thing that could happen to me at this exact moment!” Quite the gift for hyperbole.
Replacement glove mittens coming shortly after a long struggle with google “How could it possibly NOT know what I mean by ‘mittens that are really gloves and let me use my iPod???’ No, I am NOT feeling lucky, google, you asshole.”
Also, this bookfixes everything. I only hope that my lost mitten is similarly in love on the streets of manhattan somewhere:
4 Responses to “Smittens”
December 5th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
I was just thinking today that I’ve never felt lucky enough to hit that “I’m feeling lucky” button on Google, and I was wondering what that said about me.
I also never wear mittens…
December 5th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
http://www.onecoldhand.com/
Time to start one in NYC?
L,K
December 5th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
I bought some of those fingerless-glove-mittens two weeks ago at a nearby J.Crew outlet…just a thought in case you’re desperate.
December 7th, 2007 at 12:42 am
These right here only seem to come in men’s sizes, but you have big hands, right?