Helter Skelter

Hi all!

A not so quick, disorderly run-down of my life in the last few weeks:

• The news of one of my very best friends moving to Madagascar for a year.  Awesome for her, but taking a serious toll on my emotional stability and in turn, my wallet (see: appalling Nordstrom's credit card bill this month)
• Two back-to-back business trips on opposite sides of the world.  From a sprawling, vibrant metropolis (where I saw more couples engaging in serious PDA in broad daylight than in your average dark sweaty bar basement) that is Mexico City to a sleepy, Victorian Dublin whose architecture and feel drew inspiration from a combination of Mary Poppins and King's Landing (Game of Thrones nerd, here)
• An incredible and physically demanding vacation to Hawaii that left me with sore spots in muscles I didn't know I had (see: surfing, hiking, waterfall trekking, camping, zumba, dance floor battles: won, and battles with violent billowing ocean waves: lost)
• And finally, what brings me to the brain child of this post... a trip to Miami this weekend to visit a boy.  

Long story long, I met said boy through a twist of fate plane ride to Miami last year (a birthday trip with friends) during which I happened to sit next to some of his friends who were also visiting from the DC area.  We all bonded over a $200 airplane alcohol tab, and decided to meet up at some point during our trip.  Plane boys, plane boys' Miami friends (introduce: said boy), and my friends all hit it off over the weekend (fun fact: I actually ended up having a lust affair with one of the plane boys in DC, lasting nothing short of a month... oops).  I returned a few months later to be my best friends date to her sister's UMiami graduation, where we and Miami-based friends rekindled our drunken bond.  One Rhianna ballad on a dark dance floor and countless Patron shots was a lethal combination resulting in... well, you can probably guess, my intelligent readers.  And therein was born the most strange, all-too casual yet emotionally involved "relationship" (for lack of a better term) with said boy whose flame re-ignites with every trip back (okay so I frequent Miami a little too excessively).  The text messages escalated in quantity, we even started being real humans and talking on the phone (!).  And a few months ago, he came up to DC (albeit a few of his friends also happened to be in town for a work conference) and stayed with me.  And now here I am, making yet another trip to my spirit city... this time, with no other intention other than to visit him.  

So, as you can see I am in quite the predicament... not surrounding the fact that the future of this undefined whatever is looming over my head this weekend, or that the colossal zit on my chin will be the first to greet him when he picks me up at the airport, but rather: the contents of my suitcase (this is, after all, a clothing-inspired blog) and the outfit choices that took an anxiety-ridden me until 2:30AM to perfect. 

Normally, packing for Miami takes me mere minutes and I abide by two simple rules: 

1. Less is more
2. If it ain't neon, it ain't on

But, this is no ordinary girls trip to South Beach... said boy lives in a casual suburb of Miami populated by beach bars and recent graduates, and he rarely frequents night clubs (wouldn't be my lifestyle of choice, but to each his own).  Most importantly, I will be meeting his friends for the first time.  Male and female friends.  I'm fairly confident around immature twenty-something boys and can very easily hold my own, but the twenty-something girls whose mother-bird nesting territory I'm invading is a whole new can of worms (no pun intended).  Girls judge.  I know because I'm one of them.  So my challenge was finding a happy medium between sultry and classy, which was particularly impossible to find in my closet containing kaleidoscopic spandex skirts and crop tops to one side, and mannish business-casual wear to the other.  Literally. Nothing in the middle. 

After much panic induced by the thought of the unkempt, product-free, boy-occupied living space I will be inhabiting and a couple Coronas (we were out of wine), (and this actually wasn't the wisest decision since it severely counteracted my productivity) I was able to put together a few functioning outfits.  Featuring none ofher than some of my Pleasure Doing Business skirts (they just looked so lonely I couldn't leave them) and loose silky tops (these from Nordstrom I have in several colors and are fantastic), with either Jack Rogers or gladiator sandals (man repellers but I don't care) and a couple pairs of light-colored jeans (by which I'm sure I will approach death from heatstroke while wearing them in the swampy South Florida humidity)-- Zara has a great yellow pair here.  

So needless to say I'm halfway confident with my selections, and will take it upon alcohol to make up for the other half insecurity-- cheers!  I'll leave you with a few screen shots of my travels since this post was not so visually appealing, and maybe I'll scrounge up some weekend pics to post later.  Wish me luck! 

xoxo,

GG

Sunset in Kauai

Distrito Federal, Mexico City

Dublin by twilight