resistance is fertile

you say you wanna

lagusta — Thu, 10 May 2012 03:56:41 +0000

What my legs look like to me. With a bit of my thumb, too. And Parisian tights!

For a project involving The New Revolutionists tonight (check it out yo, if only for my fancy fancy fancy photo [definitely airbrushed, 'cause I know I had a pimple that day that is totes disappeared {yet, ye olde 'stache is still hangin' out!!}]–but not only for that, for everything else, ’cause it’s cool), I did a search on this here blog for all my posts with the word “revolution.” It’s a pretty rad way to read the blog, to be honest! Do it!

Or, just read this one. Damn, I can be a fairly decent writer when I’m all angsty and shit!

Love and other indoor sports,

Lagusta Pauline, who has to get back to making Mother’s Day chocos right now.

PS: HOW MUCH ARE YOU LOVING MAD MEN THIS SEASON????????????

I started out hating Megan and now I like her. I think that was supposed to happen, right? Man, I’ll feel whatever Matthew Weiner wants me to feel, let’s just admit it.

I thought it would be the way I’d feel if I ever visited Europe. I’d come home, and if I looked closely into the mirror I’d be able to make out a little white Alp at the back of my eye.

lagusta — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 03:40:47 +0000

OK, I didn’t go to the Alps, I just (just!) went to Paris, and I’d been twice before anyway, and also: quoting the The Bell Jar when you’re thirty-freaking-four is pretty idiotic.

But: I loved Paris so much, I want to spend one more post honoring the experience.

On our last night there, I stayed up half the night scribbling down all the ideas Paris put into my head. As the above Plath title might have indicated, they’re pretty silly and childish, but who cares, right? I got carried away with a city, and I’m not ashamed.

Herewith, please enjoy (read: suffer through) my unedited Paris ramblings (some of which made their way into my previous post. Ah well.):

I dove into this trip as a purely hedonistic endeavor. Fucking Paris, right? Why not? I wore lipstick every single day. When I decided I hated the clothes I brought (as you will, O American, I guarantee it), I bought new ones on my credit card, breaking the #1 rule of my life, Thou Shalt Not Use Credit Cards For Anything But Business Emergencies. We ate baguettes and chocolate all day long, every single day, and then we got sorbetto on the way to the hotel every night. And then we ate chocolate and drank wine in bed. Every night.

Here’s the thing about Paris: every cliché in the world about it is true. The women really are the most beautiful, the food really is cared-about, the style really is classic and breathtaking, the flowers truly are gorgeous, the streets cobblestoned and picturesque, the nights long and glittery with the Eiffel Tower winking away in the background. People really do wear blue boatneck striped shirts, and they really do pull off those horizontal stripes with a fucking APLOMB that you never will.

Of course, all of this is not true, too. Every city is large and contains multitudes, and I stayed in a hotel and went to touristy areas and had a typical American-goes-to-Paris kind of trip. I barely scratched the surface. But who cares? I loved the surface.

I was very happy. Partially this is because I was not working, of course—just the strange thrill of hours of daytime light on my skin is one that is foreign to me for the 11 months out of the year that I throw myself into work. But part of it was the whole succumbing-to-pleasure thing.

So what’s the deal? I leave tomorrow, and I return to the craziness of the Easter rush. I can’t say I’m going to take a tip from the French and sit in cafes for half the day in my impossibly high heels and artfully knotted scarf and perfectly applied makeup, sipping wine and languidly gossiping with my gorgeous friends. I’m going to be in my Birkenstock clogs with my hair in a bun held with a knitting needle and a wrinkled apron for 15 hours a day until Easter, when I’ll try to only work 12 or so hours a day. I dearly love my world but I worry that it provides too many grooves for me to fall back into—habits I want to outgrow, ways of being I want to push past. Paris was good at shaking me up. I want to stay shaken.

It’s hard to see how I can bring Paris back with me though. The quality of work here—food, clothes, scarf-knotting, and, more particular to my job, chocolate-making—is so high that I don’t understand how it’s made possible without lots and lots of cash and time, two things I have almost none of. All I can do is internalize things I see the French doing and use them to make my life better, while living my very non-French life (which, curiously, consists of making a most French product!).

So here’s what I’m going to work on:

NOTES TO SELF FROM PARIS IN SUMMARY:

Confidence: be so happy with what you’re doing that you don’t care what anyone else is doing. Remember your own happiness and tap into it.
Fuck what everyone else thinks about you. Who cares if people think you share too much of your heart, are too open, too wild and intense?
Lead with your heart. That wild and intense thing.
Stop fucking around: stop wasting time on things that seem important but don’t contribute to true happiness.

NOTES TO SELF FROM PARIS IN DETAIL:

1) The biggest cliché ever, but what makes a person happy is, partially, confidence. And happiness leads to confidence. What a loop.

These French bitches are wearing CRAZY THINGS!! Risky, weird things. And it mostly works. And when it doesn’t work, it still somehow works because they’re French. And, (can I point out again that everything in this post is a massive cliché?), therefore, they just wear the shit out of it. There are trends, of course—every fourth woman on the street is wearing heels, black sheer stockings, and short shorts—but there’s a level of body confidence and pride in one’s form that doesn’t exist anywhere else I’ve ever been except NYC.

Being a (non-Parisian?) woman in the world is to struggle with a trillion internal confidence battles every minute of every fucking day. I had about 50 thousand failings of my usually pretty decent sense of self-worth while in Paris—does my ass look big in these jeans? Do I look ridiculous in lipstick? Why are my feet so much bigger than everyone else’s? (A saleswoman dubiously said of a pair of socks, “These are the biggest size we have…I hope they fit,” as she extra-dubiously glanced at my feet. I informed her that the label said they fit feet up to American size 10, and mine are only 9, so I’m sure they’d work, but the whole rest of the day we kept referring to my feet as The Biggest Feet In All of Europe.) I do this, I hate this, I know this is stupid, useless, awful, and unrevolutionary. Being honest about one’s weak points and need to grow is one thing—constantly critisizing oneself is another.

Every feminist has said it a million times to every other feminist, and here goes again:

just. stop. it.

Now.

The confidence that comes from quieting those voices down is what allows you to live a real life—it unleashes the you that’s always been striding cobblestone streets in ludicrous heels and a jacket that fits you so weirdly but in a way that you’re seriously rocking. You just sometimes don’t notice her.

2) Fuck other people. I mean, seriously. (not literally–unless you want to!) I’ve always been really uptight about speaking French. I have a minor in it, but still feel like I never knew much and have forgotten what I did know. But for some reason on this trip I just did it. I know I was making mistakes all over the place, but I figured mistakes were better than not trying. So I just had fun with the most fun language in the world. And I conducted almost all my transactions almost entirely in French, I got complimented on my accent twice (!!!!), and I made my way through the city, buying baguettes here and chocolate bars here, easily. And if people were secretly laughing at my accent behind my back, they can go fuck themselves, because French is fun to speak.

3) If you know your heart is in the right place, you can lead with your heart, and let everything else go. At home, I can be mean. I get stressed out and I snap. But fundamentally I know I have a good heart, and so most people give me a pass. But I shut down my heart a lot in order to indulge my righteous rage. In Paris I just blocked out anything I would ordinarily get mad about, and just spoke to the world with my heart. I was happy. It was simple. It got me thinking: when things make me so angry I want to punch people, if I slowed down and spoke to them with an open heart, would it change things? Authenticity, that’s what I need to tap into. Not everyday armor.

4) Stop fucking around. Fucking around is the thing right now: fucking around online, fucking around on TV. Fucking around to pretend that our lives aren’t pathetic and our world isn’t going to shit. Getting outside of my cozy warm world of constant internet and endless distractions from the task at hand reminded me of the need to stop all the extraneous fucking around that makes up half our collective lives these days.

Ok. There we are.

Stop fucking around reading blogs!

Go back to your wonderful life’s work!

À bientôt!

A long and boring tour of my internal turmoil throughout the past few weeks.

lagusta — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 03:55:28 +0000

So we went to Paris.

To celebrate love, and all that.

It was so fucking Parisian, you would not even believe.

It was literally all bonbons and baguettes, walks on the Seine holding hands, delicious food and even better sweets,

farmer’s markets with amazing produce,

and endless rambling while talking about existentialism, love, culture, how to live, how to dress, how to be alive.

The women were heartbreakingly striking, the men all had ludicrous cheekbones and well-cut jackets.

I wore lipstick every day.

It was too much.

I spoke French everywhere, without fear, with glee even in my million mistakes when ordering falafel, buying pâtes de fruits, inquiring if the coconut sorbetto had dairy or not.

(Here’s my favorite story from the trip.)

It was perfect.

I was so happy.

When I came back the Easter rush was in full swing. Work was TOUGH.

Everyone was grumpy because they’d been working like dogs to make up for Jacob and I being gone (when Jacob’s not on tour, he works pretty much full time in the shop—why yes, I am the luckiest girl in the entire world. My boyfriend works for free doing whatever I don’t want to do, as much as he can. COME ON.). Eight hours after our plane touched down we were in that kitchen, and we didn’t come up for a breath until weeks later.

Paris vintage clothes shopping: conveniently organized by pattern.

When that pressure was just letting up, I got a phone call. It was from a neighbor of my grandmother’s, who has been taking care of her while she slowly dies of emphysema, alcoholism, and assorted other diseases related to hard living. The neighbor told me my grandmother is subsisting on morphine and has six months to live, and her friends are having a party for her (she called it “a wake,” which I’m not sure was the best choice of words), and she wanted to invite me.

I sat down, and took a deep breath, and told her that I really appreciated her taking care of her, and for throwing a party, and that I couldn’t go. I told her that I just hated my father so much (he lives with my grandmother, in classic fuckup fashion), I couldn’t do it. She told me she understood, that she’d dated him for a while, and dropped a couple terrifying facts that let me know that—despite several other family members’ insistences—as I always suspected, he is the same violent and terrifying person he’s always been.

This situation—a past I’ve worked for 16 years to erase tugging at my heart and trying to lure me back—threw me into a vortex of sleepless nights and meltdowns. I love my grandmother, and we’ve talked fairly often over the years, and she knows that her son (who she had when she was 16) is a person best avoided. I felt pretty square with her, but I know she’d like me to come visit.

My quick urge was to do my typical thing—hang up the phone and step forward into a future that does not include the news I’d just heard. Each step forward creating a new present that would erase the unpleasant past.

But it messed me up, and friends started gently suggesting that maybe going to Arizona wasn’t the worst thing that could happen. I put up a good face for a few days, pretending that was possible.

I said big things like “why let him have power over me? I’m strong enough now that nothing he can do will affect me.” and “I refuse to be the person I was as a child. I won’t let him hurt me.” I’ve told my father—in responses to letters he had to send as part of 12-step programs when he was in prison, on the phone once or twice, and, mostly, through 16 years of stony silence—that I will never have a relationship with him because of what his rage did to my childhood, to my mother, and to my brother. But I knew if I went to Arizona I’d have to tell him all over again.

And so I, Lagusta, who will work 15 hour days and love the feeling of pushing her body and mind as hard as possible, who will tell assorted meat-eaters and ne’er-do-wells what she thinks of their crap without a second’s hesitation—strong, strong me—I got really scared. I had nightmares, I kept having breakdowns and near-breakdowns at work, I wasn’t sleeping, I was sleeping too much, my rage episodes grew in intensity and started to truly scare those around me.

One day I was walking to work (I had had a rage outburst that morning and knew walking the 1.5 miles to work was my only chance to salvage the day) and thought a spring skunk cabbage on the side of the swampy creek I was passing was a nopale cactus. Even though it was 20 feet away, I jumped. I was so out of my mind that for a second I thought my obsessive worrying about Arizona had literally transported me there, to that inhospitable and cruel climate. I was losing it.

After a week of this, I took a day off and didn’t get out of bed until 2 PM. I cried it all out. I cried staring at the ceiling until my ears were squeaky with tears. Somehow I’d decided that, because friends of mine kept telling me that I could (and, implicitly: should) go to Arizona, the fact that I knew in my soul that I could never go meant that I wasn’t a strong person and was actually, in fact, when it came down to it, a failure at everything I’d ever done. I cried for seven hours, wailing that I was a complete failure unless I could stand up to my father in person, which I absolutely definitely positively could not.

Can not.

Sculpture from the Musée d'Orsay accurately depicting my soul in the days following Paris.

Seeing my horrible mental state, the same friends who’d tried to convince me I should go helped pull me out of the hole I’d clawed myself into: they convinced me that just because I couldn’t have some awful confrontation with my father, I’d still built a wonderful life for myself here, all these thousands of miles away from him. They reassured me that if I didn’t go—as everyone now saw that I couldn’t—I’d still be awesome.

I felt like the worst kind of loser for having to depend on my friends so much, and Jacob said the most amazing thing to me about it: “When you were a kid, you couldn’t depend on anyone. You literally raised yourself. You didn’t confide in anyone, you only had yourself. Now, you’ve worked really hard to create a healthy life for yourself, and part of that includes good friends. So now, when you really need to depend on someone, you don’t always need to depend on yourself. When you can’t count on yourself to help you out, you can count on the community you’ve created—and we’ll always be here for you.”

At that point, I stopped crying tears of fear, the rage started to dissolve, and I picked myself up and cleaned out my squeaky ears. I went back to work.

Work was calmer. I worked a bunch of late quiet nights, listening to audiobooks, fucking around on Facebook and Twitter with my friends, and making beautiful things in my beautiful shop in my beautiful town in the quiet, quiet spring nighttime stillness.

My beautiful, beautiful life.

Everything calmed down, and I let myself just work, which has always been what grounds me and makes me calmest.

Inspiration was all around in the chocolate shops of Paris, even if I don't plan to make $100 chocolate hedgehogs eating chocolate eggs anytime soon.

I called my grandmother, holding my breath as I always do in case my father answers, but the machine came on. I left a message saying we should talk every week if she was able to, that I’d call her every Sunday, and that I love her.

City of Lights

lagusta — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 13:52:54 +0000

Hello from bed on a Sunday morning when I was at work way too late and don’t want to get up to go back to it.

I thought I’d procrastinate a bit more by writing a quick blog to ask a question of all you smart cookies: I’m taking a quick trip to Paris soon (as a celebration of the event described below!) and was wondering if any of you live there/have tips for Paris vegan things, vintage clothes things, flea market things, and other general amazing things? We’ve both been before, so our plan is to skip the touristy spots and spend every day walking for miles, discovering things as we go, nibbling on baguettes and dark chocolate, and ending each day with a spectacular meal.

Here’s my list so far, let me know if any of these things are extra awesome (or actually awful), won’t ya?

Also…and this takes guts for me to say: if you’re a blog reader and live in Paris, do you, um, want to meet up? I’ve met a few blog friends lately (one of whom came into the shop yesterday and was pretty much the raddest person ever, and not only because she’s been reading the site since like 2003, back before it was a blog—my god I can’t imagine the ludicrous, long-deleted rants she’s been witness to.) and it’s been really nice, so I’m sticking my neck out—why not? Let’s get a drink and you can laugh at my atrocious atrocious Francais (accent finder on an iPhone? if it exists, I sure as hell can’t find it…).

OK:

Paris fun things, from friends, Facebook, magazines, and the internet (most helpfully, Joshua Katcher’s blog here and here and here):

“Book a Velib online before you leave so you can tool around town that way.”
“Visit the Marche d’Aligre, my favorite Tuesday-through-Sunday Market, not far from the Bastille. It’s half uber-busy veg market, half flea market.”
“The Marais is more thrift-store friendly than ever before (seems like every day there’s a new vintage shop opening), but I prefer the ones near Sacre Coeur, like Guerrisol (a chain). Worth the schlep up there. Also, rue des Martyrs is a great shopping street.”
“Between Sacre Coeur and Gare du Nord, in the little India section, there’s a wonderful vegan-friendly restaurant called Chettinadu (it’s down the street and opposite all-veg Krishna Bhavan). Vegan thali with wine for two is less than 20 euro!”
“If you’re into Sunday brunch, try Soya, in the 11e. It’s a lovely little place I’ve just discovered, and their menu is mainly vegan.”
“If you wanted to take a yoga class while you’re here, Ashtanga Yoga Paris (near Soya in the 11e) offers 5 euro community classes. They’re fantastic!”
“A new vegan cake shop opened in the 5e called Vegan Folie’s. It’s on an adorable street (rue Mouffetard) that’s fun to explore on foot. I’d highly recommend it, even if the sweets aren’t the best in the universe!”
“Voy Alimento: this funky vegan restaurant is a must-try. It’s near the Canal St. Martin, so you can have a nice stroll before or after your meal!”
“The first sunday of the month is Free Museum Day! I love that day.”
“You might want to consider going to the musee d’orsay anyway as they just reopened after renovations and its beautiful. There is so much to do though, so let me know what kinds of things you like. There are farmers markets every day all over the city so that’s not a problem, just tell me where you’re staying and I can recommend some close to you! You just have to go before 12 most of the time, 2pm on the weekends.”
“This one is by the “rue mouffetard” which is fun to walk along – there are lots of bars, etc anyway its :http://www.anada-5-saveurs.com/“
“here’s another one, more for dessert / snacks in the same neighborhood : http://veganfolies.fr/ - they also have bionade which is a german drink that I really like … if you’re thirsty!”
http://www.saveursvegethalles.fr/fr/menu.htm
http://www.lepotagerdumarais.com/restaurant.htm
http://www.restovege.fr/paris/loving-hut/
“This one is indian but vegetarian and has vegan options : http://www.saravanabhavan.com/restaurants.php?cn=France&cy=Paris&rid=“
Marché Biologique des Batignolles
Marché Popincourt, R. du Marché-Popincourt, 11th, Paris: flea market! (Sat-Mon)
Les Puces de Saint-Ouen, 7 R. Jules-Valles, (Marché des Antiquaires) bet. Porte de St.-Ouen and Porte de Clignancourt, just outside the 18th, Paris: flea market! (Mon-Sun)
Marché aux Puces e Montreuil, Ave de la Porte de Montreuil, 20th, Paris: flea market! (Sat-Mon
Marché aux Puces de la Porte de Vanves, Ave Georges-Lafenestre at Ave Marc-Sangnier, 14th, Paris: flea market! (Sat and Sun)
Marché de Enfants Rouges
Marché des d’Aligre

Lots of marché-ing, of various sorts, to do! And lots of eating. What else do you need in life?

March 20, 1997

lagusta — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 06:37:55 +0000

I write this post every year. Every year a detail gets sharper, another one fades away. Memoirs are like that.

Last year’s post was better than this year’s. More poetic.

Here’s this year’s anyway.

Fifteen years ago today, I knew everything I know today. In one way, at least.

You did, too. I know it.

The story we tell is that we met in a class, Confucius to Zen. You copied off my notes, were intrigued by my blue, then pink, then red hair. That’s the story, too. But the story story is that our ragtag group of friends, two groups of friends with some overlap, like there is when you’re 19, went to the annual screening of a porno, one of those stupid campus traditions. You and I, independently, decided at the door we’d rather not.

And so we saw each other. We’d been making circles for weeks, going out of our way to catch glimpses of each other, and now we made a straight line. It was so cold. We walked around outside for hours. I remember telling you how obsessed I was with JD Salinger’s Glass family. You hadn’t read the books, then, but that wasn’t a deal breaker for me, it just meant I could ramble on and on about Franny and Zooey and Seymour and all the rest. You listened. And that set up the pattern, right there, that first night. Ramble ramble ramble—–>patient listening.

It was a Thursday, we had class in the morning, but we walked and talked and then we went to my room and we’ve never been apart since.

Simple.

We joked about it even that very first week: how we couldn’t wait until time passed and everyone could see what we saw. The strange thing is, what did we see, then? We’ve become so much more alike since. When I think of us then, all we really had in common was a sensibility. That was more than enough. A shared sensibility will take you everywhere, it turns out. I guess you could say we got married that day, March 20, 1997. As married as we’ll ever need to get, in that I took your heart and you took mine and everything since has just been details.

Rings made me feel stifled and aren’t your style. We didn’t have religions or overbearing families, and we never wanted religion or a family of our own, so we had then what we have now: ourselves, and our words.

All I’ve ever wanted, really, and more than I ever thought I’d get.

And later, way later, when I got to feeling really stifled—we were 19!—we talked about it, made guidelines, and it was OK. We still talk about how to make it work, all the time. I always figured I’d be a grand loner, so we’ve made big giant spaces for me to be alone when I have to be. We figure it out as we go, as you do.

We’ve had long conversations about what to call us to others, but they were practical on my part and idle talk on yours, because you’ve always only ever introduced me one way: “This is Lagusta.” Once I asked you why, and you said, “Let them think what they want, who cares? You’re my Lagusta.”

When we’d been together six months, I gave you a present: a box of candy, with tiny stickers on each piece with a date and an activity: “Lilac Festival.” “Thai Food.” ”Pregnancy Scare.” We started celebrating ourselves early—big giant birthday celebrations, sweet anniversary dinners—and we’ve never stopped. When you don’t celebrate readymade holidays, you’ve got to make the most of what you decide is important. Like today.

Fifteen years ago I didn’t yet have words to talk about where I’d come from, and I didn’t want those words. I wanted you, and a new life. But the facts were still the facts. My mother had written bad checks with my checking account and ruined my credit, so when we met I had a secret: an envelope of paychecks from my coffeehouse job, with no way to cash them. That first week, I screwed up my courage and asked if I could sign a few checks over to you to cash. You didn’t ask any questions, you just signed your name with that long line and squiggle at the front, and I felt a relief I’d never felt before fill my entire body: he isn’t going to make me talk about it. Amazing. Seven years later we went to the bank and added my name to that account, and that’s the same account we now pay our three joint mortgages from today. Things get better, because we made them better, you and me. Fifteen years.

Fifteen years of working through everything. Of lavish birthday celebrations that border on Versailles-level opulence, of teaching me to drive, teaching me math, teaching me how many decibels the subway screech is and the Radiohead show is and the tempering machine makes.

Fifteen years of cat puke and cat scratches, of ferries when I puked seven times and flights when you had to hand bags of puke to flight attendants and request fresh bags. Of meltdowns and manic highs, of ludicrous schemes that actually came true—thanks to you.

Of ridiculous poverty and living beyond our means, of credit cards and lines of credit, and of cutting up credit cards and paying off lines of credit.

Fifteen years of zipping me up and ”you’re wearing that?” and sitting in a stifling airless car because I just did my hair and no wind can touch it, and of not laughing at me when I need to buy a new pair of shoes on the spot because I can’t walk in the ones I’ve worn for a day of walking around the city.

Of making a place for me at Front of House and telling me when I could safely steal whiskey from the band dressing room (“they’re all on stage—go!”).

Fifteen years of indulging me, of bringing me back down to earth, of knowing the look in my eyes that says ”hold my arms because I’m going to snap in one second and break every piece of glass in this house.”

Of whining and screaming and way too much Bikini Kill at way too many decibels.

Of the golden rule: never telling me I’ve made something delicious when it’s not.

Of dinners that cost more than a nice used car and dinners we’ve foraged for in the backyard.

Of warming my hands up and letting me touch my icy feet to your warm body.

Fifteen years of hikes where I’ve whined the whole way and hikes where I’ve puked and hikes where I made you eat questionably foraged berries.

Through wisdom teeth and root canals and broken feet on tour in Australia when you had to push me in a wheelchair through endless airports, through sun poisoning and hangovers and, oh god, the Master Cleanse.

Fifteen years of being the worst Jews in the world, together.

Fifteen years of me yelling at that guy next to us at dinner and at that guy on the street, and that guy in that car, and that lady in that movie theater, and those million other strangers I’ve had fights with.

Of endless teary airport kisses.

Of that month in Europe a decade ago when I couldn’t get the dust of dead bodies out of my hair, and even though it gave you terrible backaches you let me sleep in your bunk on the tour bus because I couldn’t do anything but sleep as close to you as possible and hope I could dream your non-terrified dreams.

Of waking up on beaches with no one else visible for miles, and walking in each other’s footprints, yours with that little drag, mine too tip toey.

Fifteen years of my Chelsea boy, my curly head, the most perfect thing this perfectionist could ever hope for:

My Jacob Jon Minor Feinberg-Pyne.

Why aren’t vegans talking about this place?

lagusta — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 03:53:37 +0000

‘Cause the mainstream vegan world is fucking racist? No, that can’t be, because Judaism isn’t a race. But anyway. Let’s go here!

pantyhose

lagusta — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 03:09:40 +0000

vegan shoes yo! Not pantyhose, but we're getting there...

Sweethearts and assorted frenemies,

I had this great idea in the shower this morning (birthplace of all great ideas, no?) to write three emails to three women I’ve got beefs with today. “Time to air my beefs!” I told myself, all hair-washy and excited. I hate it when people hate me and I can’t figure out why (on the other hand, I love it when they hate me and I know why and don’t care!), so even though I don’t hate these three women (one I never think about, except we have an unresolved issue [she almost definitely won't read this], one I’m irked by but should just let it go, even though our thing is unresolved too [she will probably read this, alas.], and one is…well, one is my mom. Who I hope isn’t reading this.), I figured it would be good to just get it over and done with.

But when I got out of the shower, the idea of actually sitting at the computer and bringing up all the unpleasantness faded as a great plan for the day. Instead, I took photos around the house and did some work paperwork and made a meal with foraged greens from the backyard and just generally fucked around. The kind of day I never get. It was nice.

But! My point in writing this is that if I was those three women, I’d want to know (maybe they do want to know?) why I’m irritated with them. So: if I irritate you, tell me. I want to get better, and knowing where I irritate the shit out of people will help with that.

BACK TO PANTYHOSE. Which I meant to start with before I started with all that other crap.

I put an album of my pantyhose pack collection on Facebook and made it so anyone could see it. It’s my life’s work. (In addition to that other life’s work.) Check it out!

Also I am tweeting like a freaking maniac these days. Very weird. Let’s be Tweet pals!

Also vegan!

i’m just going to say that i’ve worked 55 hours in the past 4 days to start this off, ok?

lagusta — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 03:15:41 +0000

Let me just alienate myself from my colleagues, ok? OK.

Here goes. With apologies to those who have already discussed this with me on Facebook and with apologies to you, since we basically just covered this:

JUST WHEN YOU THINK YOU’VE SEEN IT ALL.

I MEAN.

FOR REALSIES.

There was that girl who wanted you to give her money so she could TRAVEL THE US EATING IN VEGAN RESTAURANTS and writing a blog about it. The donut place. The vegan bodega (“give me money to sell you junk food”). BUT THIS TAKES IT. Give this vegan bakery money to START SERVING EXPRESSO. I’M SO ANGRY I JUST SPELLED ESPRESSO WITH AN X.

wtf vegans!!!!! we’ve gone insane!!!!!!!!!! Are we here for animals, or are we here TO DRINK CARAMEL MACCHIATOS?

One of my Facebook friends said, “Both.” OK, yeah, maybe both. But why on earth would anyone “donate” to the “cause” of you making money? JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE VEGAN?

Get a better reason.

In other news I now make vegan Cadbury eggs. Everyone is very excited about this and this excitement somehow depresses me. What the crap is wrong with me? The Cadbury eggs are nice, but basically they’re just sugar bombs that replicate corporate trash food, only not trashy. They’re nowhere near as nice as a Yuzu Cream. But who cares, people like what they like. Be excited!

Oh wait, I’m also doing a very exciting donation project with our old pal Isa: check it out here, and look at this photo, and now I feel weird about mixing all these three things in one post. But these dudes: like 1,000 times better than the Eggs.

Shoulda lightened that photo a bit. Ah well. OFF TO DO YOGA!!!!! Still loving yoga!

Yours,

this post is about how much I hate my credit card processing company.

lagusta — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 05:59:59 +0000

Just another day at the office.

I’ve needed to vent about this one for a while. Here goes:

Before I had the shop, I used my bank (ATM/credit) card all the time. Why fiddle with cash? Using my bank card means all my receipts go directly into my financial software (mint.com), and it kept everything so much cleaner, no receipts to enter into the computer later (why yes, 99% of what I buy is tax deductible) and no change to mess with. I had the meal delivery service going, and I often preferred my customers to pay with credit cards because it meant that I could actually get payment for their meals from them by processing their cards myself every week instead of hounding them for cash or running to the faraway bank to cash checks.

But with the shop everything has changed, and it’s made me realize something that all of you probably know but for some reason took me way too long to figure out: using credit cards is really, really awful for small businesses.

Our credit card processor (authorize.net) takes, when all the many, many, many different fees are taken into account, about 3-6% of each transaction. Honestly it’s probably more, but I’m just too lazy to get a statement right now and figure it out. It’s a monthly fee, a yearly fee, a transaction flat rate, AND a transaction percentage. Plus a $20 monthly fee if I have transactions that need to be processed every month (like the Chocolate of the Month Club.).

Plus, whenever the government actually attempts to regulate these awful companies a bit more, they charge their account holders a fee to comply with the new regulations. For reals. A couple months ago my bill went down an incremental amount because of laws passed to stop the credit card companies from [here I would use the word "raping" if I believed in its use outside the realm of, you know, rape] small businesses like mine, and right next to the announcement of the reduction of charges was the announcement of “compliance fees” that added up to….the exact same amount of money.

PayPal is about the same, FYI.

Most of the bands I know use Square these days to do their merch, and with good reason—the processing charges are a lot less. We can’t switch to Square because our website runs through authorize.net and so does the app on the iPad we use as our cash register. We just need more functionality than Square offers right now. Jacob recently researched a bunch of different credit card processing systems, and it appears that they’re all mostly the same, fee-wise.

So we’re at where we’re at. And where we’re at is that when college kids ask if they can put one Drinking Chocolate on their credit card, I die a little inside. A Drinking Chocolate is our absolute most awful loss leader of all our loss leader items. A “loss leader” is supposed to be a product you don’t make a lot of money on but sell anyway because it lures people to you, or makes them buy other stuff, or whatever whatever whatever. (I know I’ve shared this little gem of a factoid before, but it’s like how if you [a vegan] go to a steakhouse, you’re helping them offset their loss leader—the steak. A steak isn’t usually marked up a much as it “should” be because it would cost too much, so when you go with your annoying aunt you never see to a steakhouse against your will and get a $15 garden salad, you’re paying an inflated price to make up money they lost from the loss leader. Moral: don’t go to steakhouses, vegans, and don’t hang out with those annoying aunts.)

In our case, a loss leader is usually some ludicrously fancy thing that costs us an insane amount of money to make so we can’t mark it up as much as we should. In the case of the Drinking Chocolate, once you factor in the almond milk, Mimiccreme whip, iSi whip chargers, marshmallows, sugar, 55 grams of ganache (A TON—see a photo of how much that is here), eco-cup, lid, arrrrgh, it comes out to $2.50 a glass. Which we sell for $5 and oh honey, you should see how people balk at the price.

None of the labor/mortgage/taxes/utilities/blah/blah/blah are factored into that, of course. We’re becoming famous for our Drinking Chocolates, and I love making them, but every time I do a little $2.50 sign goes off in my head, and I die a little. $2.50 Drinking Chocolates aren’t going to keep the lights on, particularly when we’re actually making only $2.37 on them when someone pays with a credit card.

Obviously, I don’t say anything to customers who use credit cards. Until a year ago, I was that customer! I just didn’t realize. But now I do, and I figured in case you didn’t either I’d write this little post. One more thing—rewards cards are where we really get screwed (that and American Express, but we get screwed so royally on AmEx that we, like every other sane business, don’t even take them.). If you can save your airline points card and whatnot for those rare trips you have to make to Target and the supermarket, every small business owner in the world will thank you.

PLEASE NOTE that if you’re a pal of mine and you come into the shop with a credit card, I won’t be all bitchy at you! I promise. I just had to vent a bit.

Onward!

yoga and noodle the cat, yawning.

lagusta — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 03:29:26 +0000

Hiya there, internet friends!

Howzit (as they say in the Sandwich Isles)? I am post Valentine’s Day and loving the calm. The 4 days around V-day were the wildest my business has ever had, and it was fun and insane and—who knew so many people celebrate Valentine’s??? Not me!

I miss the old blog, but I have a weird thing where being at the shop all day every day more than fills my tiny tiny quota of human interaction (even though I try to escape dealing with customers as much as possible—not because my customers are awful, in fact most of them are amazing, it’s just that I’d rather be making chocolates, or washing dishes, or talking about Downton Abbey with my fellow chocolatiers, or, actually, if I’m being totally honest here, eavesdropping on what customers are saying about the chocolates, rather than actually breaking the flow of my day to talk to them myself. Much to my amazement and happiness, my sweetheart, Jacob, has been working at the shop almost full time lately because the bands he works with are currently not out on tour and for some reason he adores interacting with customers (it should be said that he doesn’t make chocolates or enjoy washing dishes, so there’s that, too.), so I’m quite spoiled these days, really.), so…what was I saying?

Let’s look at a photo of Jacob working and see if I can remember:

So, so so: so when I have a moment to myself I tend to want to cocoon at home and forget that other people exist, thus the lack of blogginess lately. Let me say again: my customers tend to be amazing, it’s just that being around people (not to mention also being a boss, which I’m doing these days more than I ever have in my life. The anarchist boss—can you even?) just isn’t my thing at all. Which makes me extra happy to have pulled all the coolest people toward our little blue building in this small mountain town here at the end of the world—if you’re going to have to talk to other humans, might as well have them be the best humans.

But I continue to love the shop with a fierce wild love. Every day when I unlock the door my heart jumps a little. It’s constantly changing and growing and getting better and better. Amazing.

Oh hey, speaking of the blog, and speaking of people, guess what? The coolest thing ever happened. After I posted about wanting to do yoga, a blog reader, Bettina in Berlin, made me a personalized yoga video! How ridiculous is that? FInally, my misanthropic lefty grumpy rants pay off! I forgot to ask her permission to link you to the actual video, which is insanely amazing, but she said I could link to this LUDICROUSLY AWESOME and blush-inducing little hello video. It’s a sweet thank-you for years o’ blogging, and it almost killed with delight to such an extent that they fact she pronounces my name wrong didn’t bother me at all. (Gus in the middle, not a goo…but who cares, sweet Bettina can pronounce it however she likes!) Are you dying? I’m dying!!

So that happened.

Bye!

OH WAIT.

HOLD.

THE.

PHONE.

There’s also this: after years of trying, I finally caught a snap of one of my cats mid-yawn.

BEHOLD!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!