Category Archives: Photos

Day Twenty-one

  By Eden M. Kennedy | November 21, 2011 - 12:32 pm | ,
21 Comments

And now it’s time for NaBloShoeMo: Boots Edition. This fine collection of footwear was amassed over a period of decades. I admit, it’s pretty self-indulgent — I had a boyfriend after college who had one pair of shoes, after all. One. But it’s not like I went out and bought these all at once, laughing at the Bangladeshi orphans as I stuffed them into the trunk of my car. No, serious shoe collecting takes time, people. (Time and, in my case, self-restraint, two jobs, and an understanding husband.)

Blundstones circa 1994-ish. The best waterproof boots I have, but not the most comfortable for a day on your feet.

Uggs, circa this year’s birthday present. Off the charts comfortable, I don’t care how weird they look.

Danskos bought half price from Amazon last summer because who doesn’t need a pair of suede knee-high boots in the middle of July? The shaft is too wide around my calf but the slight bunching at the ankle gives them an appealing Robin Hood quality.

Borns from a couple of years back. I never know what to do with these. They’re too high for standing all day at work and they need more cushioning. I still don’t want to give up on them, though.

Some of you may remember these from ShoeMo ’07. These Donald Pliners are WAY too high for work, but when I wear them I feel like Chrissie Hynde. I should probably just be buried in them.

These Pikolinos are embarrassingly rock-and-roll, but they work with jeans tucked into them. I don’t feel like they’re totally “me” but whenever I wear them Jack shouts, “THERE YOU GO, BABY!”

Franco Sarto. These are total Cruella de Villes. Surprisingly versatile for something I bought as a joke for a Halloween costume.

Merrells bought on a trip to Colorado several years back when I discovered the pelvis-breaking potential that are motorcycle boots* on ice. Super grippy, they leave a little snowflake pattern in your footprints.

An impulse purchase from the two-hour paroxysm of shopping I did before the book tour last spring. The brand is Relaxshoe? Okay. Super snug around the ankles = surprisingly sexy.

These Tony Lamas are now in their 30th year in my closet. Actually, these are the ones you should bury me in, sorry.

Keen hikers. I use them about once a year, because as you know I abhor nature. But they haven’t failed to protect me from prickles or slippery moss yet.

Is there anything better than sale Fluevogs? NO, THERE IS NOT.

Bought on Eighth Street in New York in 1988. Terrible for walking on ice. My nephew once sneered at them for being “so out of fashion.” I guess I could have gone into some speech about the difference between fashion and personal style, but fourteen-year-olds know everything! Do not bother talking to them unless you have your Gucci sunglasses on!

I thought about buying a pair of engineer boots for fifteen years until I finally pulled the trigger on these in 1999. By then it was sort of too late to sashay around campus wearing them with a mini-kilt and torn stockings, but I manage to find other, more matronly ways to wear them. Like with a bikini.

I had no idea I needed a pair of purple suede ankle boots until I saw these at Marshall’s last month. They are Borns and super comfy, even though Jack says wearing them makes me look like a Midwestern strip mall prostitute. Jack has a LOT of opinions, I am shielding you from so many of them, you should thank me. I admit these are borderline tasteful but there’s something about them that just speaks to me, it’s worth building an entire outfit around them. As a matter of fact, I’m going to wear them today. SO THERE, JACK. FIFTY BUCKS FOR A BLOWJOB. NO, WAIT: $150 FOR YOU.

Day Twenty

  By Eden M. Kennedy | November 20, 2011 - 10:55 pm | ,
9 Comments

I have a little bit of a thing for the hydrangeas in my neighborhood, and last April 26 I started taking pictures of one particular plant that’s in the back by our garage. Every year it gets cut down to the nubs, and every year it comes back, so I thought that instead of merely charting its demise, I’d chart its growth and it’s demise. Every few days, when the plant was in shade, I’d take a picture from roughly the same position. All through August and September I waited for the gardeners to see that it had passed the prime of its bloom and cut it back, but they left it, giving me faith in fading beauty, and let it have a long and pleasant dotage that lasted until last week.

Day Nineteen

  By Eden M. Kennedy | November 19, 2011 - 8:24 pm | , ,
14 Comments

I was at work today looking around for books to add to the Staff Picks shelf. There are a few books that I’m continually putting up there, like The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate and The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing, but when all my favorites are checked out I have to start grabbing stuff that you’d reasonably believe a middle-aged woman whose book club only keeps on their e-mail list out of pity would recommend to you.

I was wandering through fiction hoping for inspiration when I found an old Wodehouse novel called Jeeves and the Tie That Binds. The inside flap said rather effusively that P.G. Wodehouse published this book on his ninetieth birthday, and that this was his best novel yet, and also that it was clever, delightful, uproarious, entertaining, and fun. Skeptically, I flipped the book over to see if there was more hyperbole on the back:

Nope! But he could still touch his toes. Best author photo ever.

Day Seventeen

  By Eden M. Kennedy | November 17, 2011 - 10:47 pm | ,
10 Comments

I’m really falling down on my promise to do some ShoeMo/wardrobe remixing here this month, but I did remember to take a picture of what I wore to work today, aren’t you lucky. I was kind of a hit among both the middle-aged and preschool patrons; I got gawked at by a couple of teenagers, but they were far too cool to admit what they really thought. I only mention that because when I’m happy with what I’m wearing, I don’t really give a shit about your approval, and that’s how I felt today. Yes, when teenage library patrons looking for books on raising chickens can’t touch you, you know you’re all right.


Red cardigan: Gap
Gray t-shirt under red cardigan: Gap
Skirt: Banana Republic
Tights: unknown brand, bought at The Sock Drawer in San Luis Obispo
Mary Janes: Dansko

Pardon me for turning this into a page from a Flickr set. It’s NaBlo, you do what you have to do to keep your head above water.

Also, let me direct you to some other things I’ve posted this week:

1. I know, you only had one glass of wine, the yams were burning, and the baby started crying — what else were you supposed to do? Ask for help?
2. Some holiday films that I’m praying won’t suck this year.
3. The Many Ways Children Can be Disgusting: A Timeline
4. When I read whatever parenting magazine may be on hand at the pediatrician’s office, I am consistently underwhelmed by what they assume that I and my vagina are interested in. (Part of a Babble Salon on the rise of mothers and the ostensible marginalization of fathers.)

Day Sixteen

  By Eden M. Kennedy | November 16, 2011 - 11:00 pm | ,
15 Comments

Jack invented these a few weeks back, and with Thanksgiving rolling up on us you might want to try making them and then feeling really grateful about what you’ve just done.

Take one half-strip of partially-cooked bacon and lay it around the inside of the cup of a muffin tin. Then take two half-strips of partially-cooked bacon and lay them in an X across the bottom of the cup. Bake at medium heat until brown. (Jack is asleep in bed next to me as I write this and I don’t want to wake him up to get exact numbers here, sorry.) While still in the tin, fill the bacon baskets with pureed pumpkin, sweet potatoes, acorn squash, or other delicious autumn melon. (Holy God, I’m tired, what the fuck is an “autumn melon”? I can’t believe I have to stay up and write more after this. Help.) Top with brown sugar, and then finish in the oven so the sugar bubbles a little. Cool. Stuff into face. Serves twelve, or six, depending on how your much your guests enjoy autumn melon.

Day Fourteen

  By Eden M. Kennedy | November 14, 2011 - 12:18 pm | ,
11 Comments

The second day of Camp Mighty I looked into the skill sessions. (I’m not sure what happened to me during the Friday skill sessions, but it seemed more important to black out for a couple of hours in a cozy, cozy hotel bed.) The session devoted to sabering open champagne bottles got cancelled because of the rain, so I went into the tent by the pool and discovered a man named Adam furiously making balloon animals. I was kind of like, Hmm, this doesn’t really interest me but no one else is here and I don’t want him to feel bad, so I stuck around. I watched him make a brown balloon monkey holding onto a yellow balloon banana:

When enough people had gathered around, he started handing out balloons and explaining some basics. Always twist with your dominant hand; always twist in the same direction because if you start twisting away from yourself and then halfway through switch to twisting toward yourself, your twists will come undone. Don’t be afraid of the balloon popping, go ahead and just twist the hell out of it. (It’s worth the extra couple of dollars to get the good balloons, though, as the cheap ones don’t hold up under serious twisting.)

I made a dog. Then I figured that if I were really going to learn to do this I should practice a little more, so I made what ended up being a sort of hyper-masculine poodle:

But what I really learned from spending fifteen minutes doing this is that so many skills that look odd or unattainable or mysterious can be broken down into a few simple steps, and that after you practice them and gain some confidence with your materials and with your body, you can do almost anything. Or make a motorcycle.

I thanked Adam and then decided not to go over to the How to Throw a Punch session because I already knew how to break a board with my hand.

I walked over to a small yurt where the How to Give a Great Neck Massage session was happening. There I learned several more things.

  1. “Pull the meat off the bone” is the key to Thai massage in general, but deltoid massage in particular
  2. There are a string of pressure points along the scapula that, when pressed even slightly, will make a person say, “OW” followed quickly by “YES, RIGHT THERE” and “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON’T STOP”
  3. You can press with all your might on someone’s head with your finger pads like you’re trying to squish their brains out their ears and it won’t actually hurt them, it will feel good
  4. Don’t massage anyone’s neck arteries or you’ll obstruct the flow of blood to their brain and they’ll pass out

I was gingerly trying to find Cameron’s deltoid muscle when the massage therapist came around, put her hands over mine, and showed me how to lift and gently pull them toward me, and the confidence of her touch transferred into my hands and I got it. It was like when a golf pro wraps their arms around you to teach you how to swing, except not as creepy.

So again: learn some techniques+ get comfortable with the motions + practice = enviable skill that your family and friends will enjoy, plus it will help put an anxious, talkative child to sleep after you’ve been away for three days.

Day Twelve

  By Eden M. Kennedy | November 12, 2011 - 10:39 pm | ,
16 Comments

Today at Camp Mighty we had our team lunches, where the group of people we raised money with for Charity: Water got together to read five things from our life lists to the rest of the group. If you, the listener, knew of a way to help the list reader take a step toward one of the items on their list, you spoke up and said so. Do you need 200 pounds of sand for your playground project? Well, there happens to be someone sitting behind you whose best friend’s cousin’s father is the head of Home Depot. Maybe they can help you.

It was a lunch peppered with possibilities like that, as well as inspiration, goofiness, tears, nervousness, and did I say tears? Because I barely began to speak before Oh, The Choked-Upedness.

So since I’ve been so very life list-reluctant, I thought I’d tell you my five things that actually turned into six things.

1. I apologized to everyone for coming in late and missing the first couple of people’s lists because I was busy checking off a list thing of my own: GET A MASSAGE. I plan to do this at least every quarter, but ideally every month of 2012, and possibly longer if I can budget it properly.

2. During my massage, which was a combination of cranio-sacral/energy work, Deb told me that she opened up my throat chakra. Afterward, I asked if she had any advice for keeping my throat chakra open and she chuckled and said, “Well, yeah. Say what you need to say.” As someone who was a very, very angry teenager with a chronic sore throat, and who has been working on this very thing for quite some time, and who also enjoys giving energy workers shit, I then said, “Oh, is that all? I was hoping you could recommend a crystal or something.” Deb then did this thing where she looked left and right, like she wanted to make sure no one else heard her, and then she lowered her voice and said, “I hear turquoise helps. Do you have a turquoise necklace?” No, but I’m on my way to the bead shop, Deb, thanks.

3. Because I want to find other ways to open my throat by connecting my brain and my mouth, the third thing on my list (and which I borrowed from Alice) is to take an improv class. This sounds somewhat terrifying to me, but there’s a grain of a part of me that thinks I might like it, and I believe it will behoove me to honor that grain. Even though Honor the Grain sounds like a book about Thanksgiving starring an anthropomorphized ear of corn. Oh, wait, I actually wrote Honor That Grain, which is more of an exhortation. Honor That Grain! sounds like a silent Micky Mouse short that never got off the drawing board. Which leads me to . . .

4. When I was six I wanted to be either a truck driver or a cartoonist. I have driven some seriously medium-sized trucks, but what I’ve never managed to do is put together a story and drawings. I want to work on the drawing part. I can draw trees and furniture but I want to be able to draw faces and bodies, to really capture expressions and postures in just a few bold strokes. So next year we can all look forward to me posting an awkward series of stick figures with their heads on fire, maybe? Is that enough of a plot?

5. Because Jack and I just had our 15th anniversary, it felt right to include the fact that I’ve been experimenting with The Work, and it’s helping me to loosen up some of my emotional knots, and so one of my most important goals for the next year is simply to forgive my husband* for being who he is. I mean that without a shred of arrogance. To me this means it’s my job to stop projecting my own problems onto Jack and then blaming him for them. I hope that makes sense. Whenever I untangle one of these dumb little long-standing resentments, I feel ten pounds lighter, and I want to feel 1,000 pounds lighter. It’s better for everyone that way. And speaking of better for everyone . . .

* and my parents, and my brothers, and everyone else in the world, including you

6. When my mom was dying, I got to witness the work of hospice nurses, aides, and volunteers over a two-year period, and they are some of the most amazing, beautiful, tuned-in, funny, grounded, and okay-with-life-and-death people I’ve ever met. So my last goal is to take just one tiny step toward volunteering to support a hospice group. One of the midwives who helped me have Jackson is also a hospice worker, which I think is so great — she gets ‘em coming in and going out — and I trust her completely, and it seems like one way to become an amazing, beautiful, tuned-in, funny, grounded, and okay-with-life-and-death person myself is to hang around with people who are already like that, and then go forth in the spirit of total awesomeness.

Tomorrow I will tell you about our Skill Sessions. You might be somewhat jealous.

Day Eleven!

  By Eden M. Kennedy | November 11, 2011 - 6:46 pm | ,
3 Comments

Camp Mighty! Here we see the tent in which speakers spoke to us today. I am not a big Oprah fan but I learned a lot from Brian Piotrowicz, a lovely man who works with Oprah and who showed us a clip of himself hugging Carol Burnett and crying. He talked a lot about setting a pure intention for what you do, and I realized that (a) I go into so many things half-assed and wonder why they don’t work out, but when I have a clear intention they always do, and (b) I once saw Carol Burnett in a restaurant where I was having dinner, and I didn’t cry, but if she had come up and asked for a hug . . . no, I probably wouldn’t have cried then either. But I do love Carol Burnett.

Evany gave what is hands down the single most enjoyable PowerPoint presentation I’ve ever seen, and I think they were filming/taping it so if it gets uploaded somewhere I will link the everloving shit out of it. She spoke about being somewhat anti-life list, and being open to what life brings you in the moment rather than planning things too precisely. Here I realized that if you resist life list-style planning, as I do, it still behooves you to embrace chance, opportunity, and as previously stated, intention. I’m still sorting this out, and will provide updates as enlightenment occurs. (I have hugged Evany. Without crying, so far, but the weekend’s not over yet.)

EDITED TO ADD: The Charity Water initiative that a lot of you donated to in the raffle raised more than $20,000, and by 11:11 a.m. today, 11/11/11, was able to help 1,111 people have clean water. That, my friend Sting, is SYNCHRONICITY.