My Neuroses For Your Entertainment

Things you might read about here: My love for Parks & Recreation, Pharrell, my husband, food & my miniature goldendoodle, Morris Chestnut

[madamgiraffe-blog]

madam giraffe

My Neuroses for Your Entertainment

A New Place. 

[explodingdog]

Hungry Death

[madamgiraffe-blog]

This guy.

[madamgiraffe-blog]

This is how you do a work appropriate costume WHILE reusing wedding stuff. Yellow was one of our colors and these are things I wore to showers and rehearsal. The umbrella is from our surprisingly rainy wedding, as well. The container of salt, sadly, was not present at my nuptials. 

[lickystickypickyzzz]

Same.

[madamgiraffe-blog]

Photos From the Front Lines of California’s Agriculture Decline

If there’s one thing that struck me during my monthlong drought-themed road trip through the American West earlier this year, it was the colossal scale of agriculture in California’s Central Valley. Now it seems there’s nowhere to go but down. Photographer Matt Black’s life’s work chronicles the plight of his...

It's easy for me not to think about the current California drought in my apartment in Sherman Oaks with its seemingly endless supply of running water. But even in the comfort of my Southern California home, I have a tiny anxiety in the pit of my stomach about my homeland and the one thing in Los Angeles that keeps me tied to it - the produce. Almond trees are in dry fields. Oranges and other citrus should be growing - are they? Will the grapes and raisins I enjoy be available at my local grocery store in the coming seasons? I don't know. When I visit home, that's when I see that the drought is real and the anxiety for the people more directly affected by it hits me. Will certain family friends turn a profit this year? Will the children of the farm laborers have enough this year? Is everyone going to be ok? How long can they wait for rain? How long can WE wait for rain? 

Please, let there be rain.

[madamgiraffe-blog]

Pants, Your Numbers Mean Nothing to Me

Here's the deal: I've got a size 8 waist and hips, slightly longish legs & the world's longest torso and I need pants. And I'm having a hard time finding a brand of jeans that's really targeting my type and producing a comfortable fit jean with a 35 inch inseam and about a ten inch rise. I need pants that would potentially come up to another woman's boobs while simultaneously swallowing her feet, but have a 29 inch waist. How is that not a thing?  I think I've discovered an untapped demo in the world of women's jeans. I may start my own company that makes long, skinny, granny-waisted jeans. It will be hugely successful, I'm sure. 

[madamgiraffe-blog]

Morris Chestnut met the ocean last weekend. My dog and I, we had a good time. 

[sublimecinema]

17 Celebrities Who Have The Right Idea About Feminism

[madamgiraffe-blog]

"[Beliefs] are really nothing but opinions one refuses to reconsider. Beliefs are easy. The stronger your beliefs are, the less open you are to growth and wisdom, because “strength of belief” is only the intensity with which you resist questioning yourself. As soon as you are proud of a belief, as soon as you think it adds something to who you are, then you’ve made it a part of your ego."

http://theunboundedspirit.com/9-mind-bending-epiphanies-that-will-turn-your-world-upside-down/

[madamgiraffe-blog]

Thirty

Today, I am thirty years old.  I have a job. My bills are paid on time. I can afford to go to the doctor when I need to. I have a little family: my husband and our dog. We live in a little apartment. We visit family on some weekends and holidays. I have a nephew who sends me videos of himself singing for my birthday and a niece who looks just like me. My friends love me, and I love them.  I've made a life for myself that brings me joy every single day. And I'm only thirty.  That's something to hang my hat on, that is. I may not go down in history books, but I get to have happiness every day. Every. Day.  Me and my little life, we're doing just fine. We're doing great. 

(Dogs don't understand "family selfies.")

[italicsmine]

I started watching The Voice again and my lord I am in love with Pharrell Williams.

[madamgiraffe-blog]

Pharrell has been/may always be my number 1 celebrity crush. Pharrell can see into your soul. Pharrell can make a grown man cry. Pharrell is my Oprah. 

[madamgiraffe-blog]

Sometimes, my dog sits upright sort of like a human and when he does this, I call it "wearing his tiny pants." (Just go with it, ok?) And sometimes I'll sing to him "Put your tiny pants on!" and I just found this gif and MY LIFE IS COMPLETE THANK YOU!

[madamgiraffe-blog]

This is My Life

Saturday night I cried because my dog tried to eat my caterpillar friend.

I will be 30 years old in 3 days. I don't think I'm going to "grow out" of crying over animals. Sorry, adults in my life. 

[humansofnewyork]

"When I was fifteen, I was raped by three boys while competing at a gymnastics tournament. I was so ashamed, that I stood on a train track, and waited for the train to come. At the last moment, I tried to jump away. I woke up after a month. It was the middle of the night, and I could immediately tell that something was missing. I started feeling all over my body, and that’s when I realized that I’d lost my arm. Now I counsel teenagers who have been diagnosed with HIV. I’m normally the first to meet with them after they get their results. I try to explain to them that there’s a way out of even the most impossible situations."

(Odessa, Ukraine)

[madamgiraffe-blog]

there’s a way out of even the most impossible situations

[madamgiraffe-blog]

My dog, my husband, my city

[madamgiraffe-blog]

I understood that as much as I had resisted the outside, as much as I had constricted my life, as much as I had closed and narrowed the channels into me, there were still many takers for the quiet heart.

Steve Martin, The Pleasure of My Company