Friends: I’m currently staying in an uber hip hotel in Soho (the James — I highly recommend it; great service and lots of lovely amenities, like complimentary La Colombe coffee and Balthazar pastries in the morning so I don’t even need to leave the hotel!). Everyone staying here — with the exception of two rubes from Chicago, their large dog, and their 7-month-old baby (who let them in?) — looks kind of like the street style chic pea above: extremely tall and beautiful; sporting lots of black along with practical and peculiar footwear; and often sporting an Hermes belt (likely hidden in the above snap). Also, as with most New Yorkers, you don’t really want to mess around with these people — they comport themselves with confidence and coolness and will not tolerate your inconveniences. There was a photo shoot on the roof of the hotel the day we arrived and glamazons were floating in and out of the elevators wearing things like frayed uber-short denim shorts and bandanas around their necks and a whole crew of clad-in-black-and-wearing-an-attitude assistants complaining loudly about things like: “booms weren’t made for women — they cut into your boobs; it’s so rude.” I, at a modest 5’0, wearing rumpled clothing I’ve been in for the past few days, suddenly related to Simba in that scene where the wildebeests come trampling down the valley: aka, a leeeetle out of my element.
I’m mainly kidding, though the details above are absolutely true (it is a good point that a lot of camera equipment was made for men, and I did see a lot of bandanas…P.S., I WAS RIGHT) — I love New York and already feel like I was meant to live here. That East Coast mentality feels like home to me. As we drove through Pennsylvania and the landscape transformed from flat Midwest cornfields to the hilly, heavily-forested roads of Pennsylvania, I turned to Mr. Magpie and said: “We’re back. This is where we belong.”
This move has turned out to be a major ordeal. I will have to write a post on the situation at some point, but the tl;dr version (to long; don’t read version): we have had to live, unexpectedly, out of hotels for over a week (not as glamorous as it sounds with a 50 lb dog and a 7 month baby and a husband at work) and move all of our possessions into short-term storage. I will be heading home with mini to D.C. to live with my parents until we get our housing situation sorted, leaving Mr. Magpie on his own in New York. We are exhausted and angry and ready to be done with this.
In the meantime, in case you missed it:
+I was in A Mood. Thank you for your words of sanity, compassion, and encouragement, especially to my girl Claire, who wrote: “Ok, breathe. Take it one day or even one hour at a time…Hang in there. We are all cheering for you.” I may or may not have shed a tear reading that after I had been crouched on the floor of a chic hotel lobby bathroom, waiting for our room to be ready, trying to clean up a blowout situation (clearly the hip bathroom was all sharp angles, with a modern, rimless sink and certainly no changing table).
+Lots of great responses to my current lust list items, obsessions, etc. Did you try the banana bread recipe yet?
+This was the most popular post I’ve written in awhile, because — well, ’tis the season. Specifically, this sweater.
+Now might be a good time to invest in the Gucci Princetown mules, because you can get a $75 gift card with purchase at Bergdorf Goodman when you buy them through Sunday that you can in turn put towards a La Mer eye cream or some other cosmetics you’ve been eyeballing. I get SO many questions about these mules — I find that they run true to size, and that they take a bit of time to wear in. They’re made of great leather but they definitely take a month or so of wear to get them to a place where they conform to your foot. And THEN they are THE PERFECT SHOE FOR A MOM WHO IS RUNNING AROUND LIKE A CRAZY PERSON. So easy and comfortable. I do think that mules will have a shelf life, but they’ll be chic for at least a few more seasons and the fact that they’re a riff on Gucci’s timeless loafer suggests to me that they’ll have more staying power than, say, all the pearl shoes I’ve been buying. (Yikes.)
+If I had an actual address right now, I’d order this dress. It’s very ladies-who-lunch, but in a good way.
+Still my tippy top lust list item.
I can’t imagine how crazy/difficult a move like yours must be — you are a superhero! Good luck with the transition into your new home — even if you have to be in DC for a little bit, it’ll be worth it in the long run. Thinking of you!
The Gucci mules! Ugh, I need them. Wish I’d seen this when you originally posted it & not 8 days later … haha!