'ello, loves.

Right. Just popping in to share the fabulously-cheekboned, famous British versions of Shirley & me.

More cuteness at the ever fab Project Rungay.

p.s.: If you make us cross, then we look like this:

Shark week

Let's cut the shit, ladies. I'm not going to sugar coat it. This is how I am feeling today:

But it's not your fault, y'all. Just wallowing in my grumpy PMSness, which has been really weird this month. I didn't actually get into the game until yesterday, but last week was spent with severe headaches and sadness--a whole week early. This week (up until today, obvs) has been puppies and rainbows and smugly healthful eating. Today there needs to be pizzas, purple couches, and Real Housewives. Instead there may be coworker facemurder.

See, there's this big project that I've been working on for 9 months. It's my work baby. My work baby with fetal alcohol system and an extra 10 lbs brought on my stress eating/research. Work baby is in the final stages of labor right now, but it's not a peaceful home birth with tubs and yoga balls. It's a mother-effing, worn-off-epidural having, cuss word screaming, annoyance fest. And the end results look like it took someone 5 minutes to throw together. But it's almost done, which means I'll have to find something else to complain about. -- L

How do I love Shirley? Let me count the ways

It's not been the best week for our girl Shirley, so let's lift her up in praise (as the crazies say down here). When I saw these, I wanted to immediately rush out and get us matching ones...how cute are they?

[nouveau friendship bracelets from J Crew]

...until I saw that they start at $130 and realized we could A) make them ourselves for like, $0.43, and B) I've spent $400 at the vet on the World's Best Cat in the past month (and $200 on the world's best phone) [Jesus. Need to stop spending money.] So maybe what we really need is this:

or this:

Here are today's three reasons why I admire Shirley, the jelly to my (crunchy) peanut butter:

1) she nursed me through a really bad breakup with my now husband. It was 2000, I was 21, and the world was ending. Thanks to Shirley, matte burgundy lipstick, Bjork, the shores of Lake Michigan, and enough wine that would kill my now 31 3/4-year old body.

2) she has not let a sometimes-not-happy start in life get in her way. She is a joyous, grateful, silly, fun, loving person. Same goes for her man-partner in crime. It can happen.

3) she has the best sense of style of anyone--even stupid Pomeranian Anna Wintour. Example: You could see S wearing a space helmet and be all like, "WTF, space helmets??" And then you'll see shitty knock off space helmets at Target in 9 months. S knows what's going to happen before it happens. And she looks good while it happens. She is the Miss Cleo of fashion trends. Respect.

THANK YOU! I LOVE YOU TOO LAVERNE!