things I like this week, vol. 12

This McQueen dress is infinitely better than that other dress, and something I would much rather wear.

I'm in love with the candle sconce.


In an unrelated coincidence, this is my favorite color. The swatch is Pantone's Twilight Purple; I would love to take down that horrible birdhouse wallpaper and paint the downstairs guest bathroom in it.

. . .

Bad spellers are a breed apart from good ones. A writer with a mind that doesn’t register how words are spelled tends to see through the words he encounters — straight to the things, characters, ideas, images and emotions they conjure. A good speller, by contrast — the kind who never fails to clock the idiosyncratic orthography of “algorithm” or “Albert Pujols” — tends to see language as a system.

. . .

But as a writer, my inner life is my only instrument. I understand the world only by my attempts to shape my experience on the page. Then, and only then, do I know what I think, feel, believe. Without these attempts (the word essay derives from “attempt”) I am lost.

(Fair warning: as both a mother and a writer, this article had me tearing up by the end. Not so much with sadness, but with how much it resonated.)

. . .

A powerful post on loss, trees, and finding peace.

. . .

Man on a pole.


Freckles, piercing eyes, wavy hair. Except for its unpredictability, wavy hair is the best of both worlds.


Boozy watermelon rosemary lemonade. If I had the patience for making my own infusions, this would be at the top of my list. (Instead I gave the link to a friend who does take the time for such things.)


The snapped bow-strings make the picture.

A secret bookstore.