It's Complicated. (How Many Times Have I Said That This Year?)

How much did I LOVE the movie "It's Complicated"? Meryl was wonderful, of course, and as I may have mentioned before on Dreaming in Dior, I absolutely love everything she does as an actress. She is hugely talented, and since I used to DREAM of becoming an actress myself (and nearly pursued it, at the age of 18) I've always admired her career. Everything she touches turns to gold.

I think what I loved even more about the movie "It's Complicated" is that it was so honest, and so frank. Alec and Meryl were hilarious, and if you're in the mood for a movie night with your girls, or a super cute date movie, go see this one.

I would've gone back to the movies to see it a 2nd time, but it's almost Oscar season, and since I didn't become an A-list actress, I figure I still have to stay informed about what's going on in Hollywood. I live vicariously through the red carpet.

Happens Every Day: LC's Must-Read Book of the Week

I love memoirs. Perhaps it’s because I’m a storyteller; as a writer, it’s second nature to explain a personal experience to someone as though I’m writing my own memoir. Somehow, telling people the bullshit that I’ve been through seems to help them through difficult times and gain some clarity they didn’t have before.

This is by far one of the most incredible memoirs I’ve ever read. Isabel Gilles’ voice in the book shines through; you can tell she is a novice at the whole writing thing, but it’s that voice—a real, true voice of a woman who survived the worst possible heartache—that makes even the biggest cynic empathize with her.

When her husband gets a new job in a small town in the Midwest as a professor at a university, Isabel is forced to move her two young sons and become a stay-at-home Mom. When he begins coming home a little later, she realizes he is having an affair with the woman who just started working in his department, and they finally decide to be together, despite much begging and pleading from Isabel. There is a scene in the book where she suspects the woman, who she befriended, was having an affair with her husband, and when she talks about infidelity while they are in a movie theatre together, her husband’s mistress turns to her and says, “It happens every day.”

When I read this book for the first time in the summer, it hit close to home for a few reasons, personal reasons…and flashbacks of the times I’ve been hurt and felt broken flooded back. When I was staying with Auntie Gloria in Las Cruces, New Mexico in summer this past year, she let me (as usual) stay in her bedroom, and as I laid in that big bed at night and read most of the book, I found myself in a little ball, crying as I read the last part of the memoir. It was so real and so heartfelt, it pulled at my heartstrings in a way a memoir ideally should.

Pick up a copy for yourself at your local library if you’re a recessionista, or if you’re the type who likes to add a new and wonderful book to your bookshelf, visit your local Barnes and Noble, or www.bn.com, or Borders Books and Music today. Everyone has a story, and this one desperately needed to be told.

Make It Straight Up and Dirty

“There’s a subliminal fabric that ties us to people. It’s beyond attraction. We’re drawn to those who push our buttons and will create an environment for us to work on our issues.” –Stephanie Klein, Straight Up and Dirty

It is not often I find a book that actually makes me feel connected to it in a strange, unusual way: but Straight Up and Dirty by Stephanie Klein is one such book. I finished reading it this week, and have to say, it probably was the sign from God that I needed. The book itself fell into my lap at the perfect time; and if I had to pick my LC Book of the Week from an entire library, I’d pick this one, week after week.



I will admit that at first, I was reading along and thinking to myself, “This girl is really no different than me or the rest of the single ladies out there. What’s so damn special about you, Stephanie Klein?” As I continued reading the book, there were moments when I related to her stories so much, I felt as though she had been observing my life and documenting it and calling it her own. This memoir is crafted from the heart, and each story of love and loss that Klein experiences will make every woman out there, single, married, or divorced—feel inexplicably linked and connected. She has been called the Carrie Bradshaw of the blogging generation, but quite honestly, it was refreshing to hear Klein describe the details of her heartbreaking experiences with dating, sex, pregnancy, abortion, and the disintegration of her marriage while she is in her twenties, on a normal woman’s salary, one that does not have Patricia Field as a stylist and a closet full of Manolo’s.

Thank you Stephanie, for a wonderful read, which helped me, as well as some of my girlfriends…sometimes knowing another person has felt the same way we have is enough to get us back in the saddle again—even if we are riding off all alone, untamed, and uninhibited.