Sex (or the lack of) and the City

On a cold winter night back in February 2015 and upon my return from a three-month sabbatical in Colombia I met Estela my real estate agent who amidst the very competitive housing market in New York City somehow magically pull out of her sleeve my beautiful –yet tiny- rental studio in the very chic area of Greenwich Village also known as New York’s Gold Coast at a non-obscene yet still scandalous for other parts of the globe monthly price. Am I bragging? Fuck yeah! This minuscule -and overheated- piece of floor plan smaller than some people’s closets makes me feel like a Latina version of Carrie Bradshaw and for those of us devoted Sex and the City fans this is a life time achievement, so allow me to boast like a spoiled 5th Avenue kid (Nah nah nah nah nah!)

One might think that -as the show suggested- living in the city and having an adventurous fashion sense should be enough to live a Carrie-esque love life. Unfortunately that is not the case. Even though the city is full of fantastic people, finding a fulfilling love connection can be a frustrating process. Ice breaking face to face at a bar or any other social venue has been replaced by pointless Tinder and/ or Bumble virtual chatting that usually leads to and even more senseless real life encounter with the non-photoshoped-enhanced version of the object of your temporary virtual infatuation. You are expecting Mr. Fantastic when in reality you are stuck with Mr. Disappointment.

After a handful of not-so-fulfilling first dates I decided to change my strategy completely. I was not going to look "for love". I made the decision of becoming the best person I could be for my own benefit and satisfaction. I started a passionate love relationship with myself (insert dirty thoughts here). I took myself to the fancier restaurants, the most romantic beaches, and the chicest clubs. I also bought myself flowers and treat my skin to facials and my body to massages. I became my very best friend. I even took myself to the coolest Valentine's party where I met awesome people who just like me embraced their singleness with pride!

Once I dropped the self-imposed expectations of finding a romantic partner and became my best friend, I fell in love with life. Having a loving relationship with myself has been a very fulfilling and liberating experience. The "need" of finding a boyfriend has been replaced with the joy of understanding that no one can "complete" me because I am already whole and that my lovers is the ultimate life time achievement.

Besos and shine like the stars that you are!

Gloria

Vintage dress directly imported from my aunt's closets. 

All pictures by CoCo. 

-"Is she back?" 

-"Maybe she has never left."

Conversations with God

I got myself the coolest book ever called 642 Things To Write About (by the San Francisco Writer's Grotto). As the name suggests, the book describes 642 fantasy scenarios to write about. The ideas go anywhere from "Write the lyrics of a rap song. They must include a cop, a bad dry bust, and a dog" to "Create an imaginary friend (human or not)". I would definitely go thru the 642 ideas and promise to share with you the ones I find most entertaining (or most embarrassing, which for the most part happens to be the most entertaining). 

I glimpsed quickly thru the book and got inspired to come up with  my very own idea #643: If you have the opportunity to call God (or the Holley Molly, The Divine, Your Holley Cannoli, or whatever is it that you believe in -or not-) and speak with him for a few moments, what would you tell him? Extra points if you use a shoe phone a lá Maxwell Smart....

(To increase my chances of getting through God's very busy hot line I will use two "shoe phones" as opposed to one just the same way I use several phone devices when I need to call La W Radio or Radio Bemba to request a song)

"Hi, can I speak with God please?"

I'm on hold....

 Still on hold. I'm listening to Kenny Rogers background music...

 "God? Hi it's me! Hi how are you?!"

"I'm good thanks for asking...so listen, I'm calling you to thank you for the beautiful day, the sun, the flowers, the sea, my family, my cats, music, James Rodriguez and the Colombian soccer team, vanilla ice cream, wine & cheese, cherry chapstick, I Love Love by Moschino perfume, ricotta and strawberries with mint, green tea latte with coconut milk....."

"...banana smoothie with almond butter and almond milk, (it just tastes sooo good!)...."

"Oh wait I also wanted to thank you for my friends -specially CoCo, Pao, Maritza, Meghan, Ri, Lauren, the Pumacitas from my office-, my lavender detergent, brown sugar exfoliant, massages, pedicures, manicures, my bicycle, my funny accent when I speak English...hold on...."

 "Can I put you on hold? My mom's calling..."

He hanged up on me...

In all seriousness be thankful for life, love and everything in between.

And now repeat after me: 

"I'm too grateful to be hateful. I am too blessed to be stressed"

El DeBarge

See-Thru my eyes

I have a very small TV that I hardly use, the truth is: I hate watching TV. I'm a cheap'o so I don't pay for any premium channels. I've never had HBO (Sex and the City became available to me when channel 11 started showing it at 10pm every night), Cinemax, or even Netflix. I miss all the fun series and I'm always left out of any pop culture related conversations. For me Breaking Bad is just a term for a severe heart ache and The Sopranos are still Pavarotti, José Carreras and Plácido Domingo -oh wait, they were The Tenors, oh well, close enough. Yet, last night as consequence of extreme boredom I turned on the TV. I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary, you know the usual: a politician here and there getting caught smoking weed (O.M.G!), Miley's scandals (I love her), and a whole fifteen minutes section on an entertainment show about see thru dresses. Wait, what? Seriously? Finally my see thru black dress isn't going to the "most vulgar in town" list? Oh Gwyneth, you rock! 

CoCo took these pictures of me some weeks ago when the weather was decent and I was still living in Jersey City (I recently moved to Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love (uhum)....more about that on a later post) and they seemed perfect for the occasion. The occasion being "Go commando or die". I chose a slightly less provocative -and less comfortable- approach (I wouldn't scare you with a commando picture of my butt. Cellulite and I have been frenemies for years). 

Hope you are all doing fine, please don't watch too much TV, call your mom instead, or call me what the heck, I never answer the phone (I hate phones too) but I promise I'll meet you for coffee, or even better wine. 

Love you all!

Besos,

G

Bitch stole my look!!! ;)

Blank Canvas

Hoping that every new day provides me with the opportunity to continue painting my canvas with beautiful colors. I'm starting with pink.

"Whatever you do always give 100%. Unless you are donating blood"
The wonderful world of Google

I got this wonderful white shirt in my favorite Polo outlet in the whole world: Old San Juan; you keep filling my life with great memories, and great Polo finds ;) MiuMiu shoes (*sigh, thanks for always being there for me :)) All pictures by: give me a C give me an O give me a C give me an O!! What do we got? CoCo!

The Super Hero inside of You

Lately I've been all about therapists, yogis, yoginis (this particular word is not recognized by Wikipedia.  Is the plural form of a yogini (female master practitioner of yoga -clearly not me-) one of those funny English words like radii, fungi, or foci? Or is it spelled the same in both singular and plural form? Accept my apologies for the level of ignorance that I've reached; several weeks of non-blogging had clearly affected my second language learning process), clairvoyants, help groups, and every possible human and non-human (I've been holding bi-weekly therapy sessions with my cats :)) form of mental and/ or spiritual help I can get my hands onto. I've enjoyed most of my encounters (with the exception of a certain fortune teller that insisted -against my will- to read my palm only to tell me horrible things about my chakras -"bitch! what's wrong with my chakras? we've lived in harmony for the past thirty-something years! why don't you go and get your chakras check first!") as I believe that these people had entered my life for a very specific reason. I've learned things from all of them (and hopefully they have learned something from me as well) specially to understand how powerful we all can be, how important is to learn to read our internal compass and specially how obscenely (I really wanted to use the F word here, but sometimes my mom reads this crap and even though she doesn't understand English I'm sure my brother already went thru the bad words with her) expensive one hour of therapy costs in NYC. God bless the health system of the USA, but we'll leave that discussion for another time. 

Until next time, and many thanks and kisses to those of you who kept asking me: "Que pasa con la guayaba? I haven't seen you in weeks! I miss you" You are my inspiration. 

"Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim"

-Nora Ephron

Philip Lim for Target sweater ( I have no idea why in the world do I still go through the nightmare of shopping designers clothes when collaborating with affordable stores (please check this out and laugh at humanity).....Oh wait, I know why, because otherwise is fucking expensive! Sorry mom ;)), American Apparel leggings, New Balance sneakers, and Made with Love bracelet. Pink hair and pictures by the one and only CoCo (what ever you do in life, where ever the river takes you, make sure to have a CoCo in your life).

Happy Friday Quimbara Quimbara!

Celia Cruz, the one and only. If you were born south of the hemisphere chances are that you grew up listening to Celia, El Gran Combo, La Fania, Tito, Joe, etc. These songs are part of our internal hard drive. If only every lesson thought in school was in a form of a salsa song Colombia would be a land of geniuses!

Last weekend CoCo's parents came to visit her, and that such event inspired us to have a mini welcome parents-welcome-nice-weather party at CoCo's backyard; because sometimes all you need is chips, salsa, wine an all-white-outfit and Celia to turn your life into a Carnaval. 

Happy Friday!

G

Vintage white pants found at certain's aunt house. Remember this? 
H&M vest
All pictures by beautiful CoCo
Extras not knowing exactly what they were getting themselves into include: CoCo's parents and Mafe...the DJ

Real Nice Thing in Life #6

I have promised myself not to buy any clothing item for three months. I'm very proud of my organizational skills, but my closet is rapidly reaching its full capacity. I'm blessed enough to belong to the spoil girl's club where owning fifteen pair of shoes seem normal. From a practical point of view one should only need one pair. The other fourteen pairs are the result of years of being spoiled by a lovable father, mother, boyfriends, husband, etc. I'm en route of becoming a clothing addict. Which doesn't sound that bad when you think about it. Clothes have never seriously hurt anyone, and the side effects of shopping therapy are known to be quite positive involving feelings of pure ecstasy and immense happiness. The problem starts when you can't fit your clothes anywhere. I have to say however that I've always had the "one and one" rule. One new item comes in, one old item goes out. That way I've kept my closet in balance and my friends happy -purging closet day is quite popular among my closest pals-.

Before committing to three months of clothing abstinence, I made myself a little ritual. Like a smoker having his last cigarette, I treated myself to one last shopping spree. I promised myself that this spree could only consist of one item, one last special item that would seduce me and keep me entertained for the hard months to come. And without much effort this pretty little skirt found me. It was love at first sight. It made me look -and feel-  like a pumpkin. But not any type of pumpkin, but a pumpkin having a blast in the Carnavales de Rio. It was fluffy, heavy, and shapeless. In other words: PERFECT! 

It's been two weeks since I started my non-buying-any-clothing-for-three-months-promise and I've done a great job. The only thing I gotten myself has been a package of bobby pins, which I chose to categorize as necessities and not clothing items/ accessories. 

I think I will be able to control myself. With the money I'll be saving these three months I'm planning to buy a killer pair of shoes ;) Just kidding!

Real Nice Thing in Life #6: Clothes! and the joy of sharing what you have with the people you love.

Besos,

G

All pictures by CoCo
H&M Skirt, JCrew Shirt, Celine Platforms, vintage shell purse