jenny top 8 no. 3
Hello!
Here I am role modeling a real lack of excellence! I promised myself I would post my top eight favorite things every month for a year, and here I am 23 days in, at least honoring my promise, late, but still doing it.
I wanted to do Jenny’s Top Eight, not because I think I am some sort of beacon of cool stuff, but because it trains my brain to look at the positive. My brain (and the human brain) is built to look for danger, and lately I have been waking up and looking for danger in my life. I don’t wake up to find a lion in my room, but I often wake up to find a predator in my brain - Good morning Jen, why haven’t you figured out your life yet? Good morning Jen, maybe you shouldn’t have eaten that last night, or spent so much time on your phone, or what are you actually doing? YOU ARE WASTING YOUR PRECIOUS LIFE!! And it’s only 7am. This is the kind of brain that I have and so I NEED a lot to course correct, to get back in flow with the universe, to relax into my human experience.
Jenny’s Top Eight is both a gratitude list and a way for me to share about people and things that I really do love. And yes, life gets in the way, because that is life. This past May I celebrated 9 years with someone I love so much with a trip to Cambria, I finally got Covid on Mother’s Day, which coincided with my father’s birthday this year. I celebrated my parents from bed watching Queer Eye all day and crying tears of Queer Eye joy. I went to Mexico to do something with a dear friend, and came home to more health issues. I found out someone I cared about passed away unexpectedly. So I forgot, or I didn’t forget; I couldn’t rally to care about what I loved, I just felt LIFED.
But here I am, keeping my promise to myself. I hope that if you are beating yourself up about something you just aren’t doing you give yourself a big dose of self compassion and then maybe just do five minutes. And if you don’t do it I love you anyway.
xxJenny
Pacific Tote Company. I am in love with any tote that makes me think I live in coastal New England and have errands to run, or ferries to get on with a bag full of swimsuits and sandwiches. This bag does all that and the colors and quality are v good. I obviously want lots, but I’m practicing minimalism! haha, kinda! I said PRACTICING!
2. The Danielle Mckinney show Metamorphic at Night Gallery!!! I knew this show was going to be good but it was way more than good. Such a stunning body of work that spoke to me about our solitude and the life that unfolds from our relationship with ourselves. I don’t dare to assume I can “understand”art. A friend and I were recently joking about listening to people in art museums talk about art. To me, it’s about a way that it makes my body feel, my heart pulse and how it activates my imagination. But it’s your experience, have at it!!
3. THISISTHESIGNYOUVEBEENWAITINGFOR Sweatshirts have arrived!!! These sweatshirts complete the trilogy! Smile Baby and Basic Angel still available! All one of a kind vintage sweatshirts, embroidered here in Los Angeles. There are 12 left! Hopefully going online soon, but contact me if you want one!! $125, 20% of all proceeds donated to Moms Demand Action.
4. I’ve had my eye on this bad boy for a long time and I finally did it! Post pandemic my boyfriend says I have three looks, nighttime pajamas, living room pajamas, and outside pajamas. This is definitely some chic ass outside pajamas!! For every purchase Farm Rio plants a tree, so comfort and activism (a teeny tiny bit!!)
5. My best friend and I used to be obsessed with this store Castor & Pollux in Brooklyn in the early 2000’s. We thought is was the essence of cool and we wanted everything there. We were in our early twenties and it just seemed like how we wanted our lives to be. The owner was kind and always looked so chic! Years later I realized that the owner Kerrilyn started Cap Beauty , which kinda sealed her coolness to me. I’ve been watching from the sidelines, but I finally took the plunge and bought Serotoner, and I LOVE. It’s a little moisturizing divinely smelling pick me up I always spray on the way out the door into that big overstimulating world!
6. This is a nice time! A shower gel!! What’s that? I recently had a little mini love affair with Le Labo Hinoki hand soap at a hotel. Le Labo perfume closes up my throat ( Super good advertising on my part!!) BUT this shower gel smells so refreshing!! Is it a soap? a moisturizer? I don’t know! What I do know is that it is a very nice tactile experience and life is hard and you should take the small pleasures where you can get them!
7. Okay. This one feels a little vulnerable because this is sort of my secret pleasure, like sometimes getting strawberry pop tarts and eating them raw in the car ride home. I love Elin HIlderbrand books. I get shit for this from some of my Nantucket people and I have cringed a lot BUT I call them my family porn. There is always a tragedy and people have to face themselves and what they have been hiding from and c’mon that’s a good story. We didn’t really go to Nantucket when I was growing up, but it was such a fabric of my upbringing. My grandmother had a lot of history on that small beautiful island and I knew it was my roots, my blood, part of where I am from. Now I go kinda a lot, and I never go during peak season - I like to go when the locals are revving up or winding down. These books bring me back here, they bring me back to what it’s like to have a family, so I love them. So there, secret out.
This book just came out and I’m only on page 40 so I don’t know if it’s good, but The Winter Series gets me!!
8. MULBERRIES!! Not so fun fact… I grew up on Mulberry Street, but it never occurred to me to question what that was! It wasn’t until a lunch at Gjusta that I tasted one and was mesmerized by it. I think the season is almost up, but I hit the South Pasadena Farmer’s Market every Thursday to stock up on my weekly mulberries and white mulberry kefir!!
I love you. Happy Summer!
