Angela Jones, Author at And Now I Love

December 12, 2018December 12, 2018

And Now I Love TV

What I loved about TV in the 70’s and 80’s was that it was abig fucking deal. TV was an event back then. People planned their whole week around their favorite shows. Season enders where actual cliffhangers and then you had to wait all summer long until you found out what happened. Make some popcorn and gather around the TV, kids. Let’s find out who shot J.R.

Dallas was one ofmy favorite shows. Pamela Ewing was my idol. Her black 1976 Porsche 911 Carrera is still one of my favorite cars. When she pulled into that long driveway in her sportscar you knew something was about to happen. By the way, I have been to that house in Dallas, and it’s the size of a postage stamp in real life.

I was also a fan of Knots Landing, Falcon Crest, Dynasty, and Hart to Hart. The streetlights came on, and we were all home for the night, just in time to watch all these really grown-up shows that my daughter would be bored out of her mind watching today.

Not only did I have a love of the nighttime soaps, but I loved the daytime ones as well. I was an avid Days of our Lives watcher from the time I was 10 years-old all the way through college. I actually wore a dress to school the day Luke and Laura got married on General Hospital. It was a big fucking deal.

There were no VCR’s or DVD’s or streaming, so if you wanted to watch a movie that at one point showed in a theatre, you had to wait until it was on TV. I remember watching The Shining with my family and I think about how awesome it was that all the worst parts were cut out so a 9-year-old could enjoy it. I kind of wish they still did this so me as a 40-something could enjoy it as well because I’m too scared to watch it now.

Sometimes I think back, and I think we watched a lot of inappropriate shit as kids. Our neighbors weren’t allowed to watch The Dukes of Hazzard because Daisy’s shorts were too short. It probably never even occurred to me until they said that, and then I thought how stupid it was that they couldn’t watch a show because of a pair of shorts.

What my daughter has available at her fingertips on a daily basis is a thousand times worse. She’s an avid YouTube watcher and as a parent, it’s hard to monitor. I know what her favorite channels are, but she can be searching for something innocent, and 15 search results will show up for things her eyes shouldn’t see just yet.

I wish we had appointment television again. However, I would’ve missed out on my current obsession, Parks and Recreation. Now I can binge watch it to my heart’s content. But the stress I feel to get through 7 seasons! It’s real. I’m also about the jump on the Game of Thrones train and I can’t even think about the amount of shows I need to watch without having heart palpitations. One episode at a time…

December 7, 2018December 7, 2018

And Now I Love Pinterest Quotes

I’m in love with pinning life quotes from Pinterest right now. I love it when you come across a quote that just resonates in your soul. Like, yay! I’m not the only loser out there who feels this way, or needs this advice, or needs this kick in the ass.

I have to admit, though, it’s kind of embarrassing and I’ve thought that if you follow me on Pinterest and see all my lame quotes showing up in your feed, you probably think I’m a hot mess. Some days I’m so embarrassed by my quote over-pinning that I pin some of them to a secret board.

I even had to create two Pinterest boards on quotes because I had so many, I had to split them up between life advice and love advice. When I’m feeling blue about my love life, I just remember:

Sometimes it’s hard being the coffee instead of the Two Buck Chuck Cabernet, but this quote reminds me that I would rather be black coffee than Two Buck Chuck any day.

Or what about this one?

I’m a crier in general, so I wear waterproof mascara. But yes please, mess up my lipstick, not my mascara! Messy lipstick is so much more attractive than messy mascara…

This one really resonated with me when I thought of all of my past relationships and realized that with every single one, this quote was absolutely true. Why hadn’t I thought of this myself?

Don’t ignore the red flags. There are also white flags, black flags and green flags, so while you may want to solely pay attention to them, the red flags are the ones that need the most action.

Then there’s this one (see above, I cry at everything)

One time, I was sitting in my boss’s office crying uncontrollably because he told me I dropped the ball on something. He didn’t even know what to do with me at that point, so he sent me home. I can tell you without a doubt it feels like crap when all you want to do is stop crying and it just makes you cry harder.

How about this reminder to live your life:

Such a good reminder that you should do all of the above and enjoy life and continue to grow as a person along the way.

I’m a worrier and I’m smart and cute, so I loved this one:

Umm, how about this one on growing older and being a good person from Gary Janetti (follow him on Insta if you don’t already):

Gary Janetti is one of my favorite people to follow onInstagram. He is married to Brad Gorskiof celebrity stylist fame. He’s hilarious. And as you can tell, he’s blunt. I love this one because, well, it’s true, but don’t be an ahole. Just be a nice person.

There are a ton of depression and anxiety quotes on Pinterest. This one is especially true:

It is hell having both. But then, you can just look at this quote and remember it will all work out just fine:

And this is my quote of the year. It spoke so loudly to me. One of my good friends even sent me a text when she saw that I had pinned it, and said “I love this.” Me, too.

November 29, 2018

And Now I Love Coffee

I grew up with Scottish parents who drank tea 12 times a day. My mom had a small jar of Sanka instant coffee on hand just in case company preferred a coffee to tea. When caffeine was necessary to get through life in high school, Pepsi was my choice. It wasn’t until college that I really started to drink coffee.

I went to college in the 90’s, so it was the start of the indy coffeeshop craze and introduction of espresso and cappuccino to most of us. Thanks to Seattle and grunge rock, drinking coffee was cool again. And not just any coffee – fancy coffee. Espresso, cappuccinos and lattes. I remember the first time I heard of a latte, I thought “What’s a latte?”

Then I worked as a barista for several years of my college career and I make a mean foam. My foam brought all the boys to the yard. Seriously, do you know how hard it is to find someone who makes good foam? Very, very hard to find.

This is where I learned the difference between a latte and a cappuccino. I have since realized half the baristas I’ve encountered don’t know the difference between a latte and a cappuccino. And if they do, they don’t care to make it correctly. The milk to foam ratio is never correct.

It was working there that I started to love coffee. When a French guy tells you you make good espresso, you pay attention. If I wasn’t good at anything else, I was good at making coffee. But, much like anything else I eat and drink, I have to have my coffee in moderation. I typically only have one cup in the morning.

I like a dark roast and I’ve managed the perfect balance of water to coffee. For one cup. If I need to make more, it gets a little sketchy and becomes an experiment in weak vs. strong. I have my coffee with milk and sugar.

Even if I didn’t love coffee, I love the ritual of having coffee each morning. It’s honestly one of my favorite times of the day. I like to take my time drinking my coffee, and working from home gives me that luxury. However, now I have a bit of a commute taking my daughter to school, so sometimes I have to drink my coffee in the car.

And you know what I love more than drinking coffee? Drinking coffee with a friend. Or multiple friends; even better. If I can have my coffee with my sisters, or a friend, my heart is full and my cup is empty.

November 22, 2018

And Now I Love Honky Tonks

A few weeks ago, Tarrah and I took a trip with another friend to Nashville. I had never been, but the other two had. It’s always been on my list of places to visit and ironically, I have traveled extensively through Tennessee, I just never made it to Nashville. I’m not a huge country fan, but I can appreciate it, and come on, fried chicken is one of my favorite things.

My favorite part of the Nashville experience was Broadway. A street filled with bars, aka honky tonks, playing live music morning, noon and night is my kind of place. There was even live music being played in the airport when I landed at 9:30 a.m.

Broadway reminded me a lot of Vegas. It’s a street filled with bars, neon lights and a bunch of drunk people. While talking to two other women who were also on a girl’s weekend, they pointed out that it was almost worse than Vegas because Nashville is much more condensed. True dat.

The great thing about visiting a honky tonk is that you don’t have to be a country music fan. Yes, they play country music, but they also played a lot of cover songs from a lot of different bands. Basically, if you leave money in their tip jar, you can request whatever song you like.

Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge is one of the more popular bars, and while we were there, I thought I was going to die. It was so super crowded, and I don’t typically do well in crowds. But I hung tight and eventually we settled into a spot where I didn’t feel like I was going to get trampled. Until a girl and her boyfriend walked by and she said, “This is so unsafe. What if something happens?” I squelched the rising panic by drinking more beer.

Tootsie’s has three levels, with a band playing on each one. My favorite honky tonk was Nudie’s, with Layla’s being a close second. One thing we noticed was that they don’t serve draft beer, everything is out of a bottle. Not so great for the environment, and not so great for the bar backs. A bartender told us the bars are so old it’s not cost effective to put in tap lines and for the volume of beer they sell, it’s more efficient to pops caps off bottles than wait for a tap to fill a glass.

Our first night in town, we strictly hung out on Broadway. This was the night of the longest World Series game ever, with a Boston Red Sox fan in our midst, we watched the game starting at dinner, and finishing three honky tonks later at 2:00 a.m.

The second night, we ventured out to East Nashville, but ended our night on Broadway where we endured being stalked by a strange Italian guy, spilled beers, and some pretty drunk peeps. Good people watching.

I loved Nashville and had a super fun weekend with super fun ladies who like to drink beer and listen to live music. Yay for Nashville, yay for honky tonks, and yay for Broadway!

November 5, 2018November 13, 2018

Angela Loves Shoes

I love shoes as much as Ron Burgundy loves Scotch. My love of shoes started early. The bolder, the better. My sister had a pair of patent leather, red clogs in the late 70’s, which I inherited in the early 80’s. Don’t they sound amazing?! I wore them every chance I got.

There’s a picture of me and my cousins from 1980. We had just returned from a week of camping and after everyone had showered and gotten ready, we were all going to Pizza Hut for dinner. There are all the kids in tank tops, shorts and tennis shoes. Then there’s me, in a pink dress with red flowers on it, socks up to my knees, and my red clogs.

Things didn’t change into adulthood. In college during the 90’s I was a devout Mary Jane, Doc Martin, and high heeled, lug soled loafer wearer. I still love a good Mary Jane. I even had a hideous pair of shiny, red platform stripper heels that looked better suited for Pamela Anderson than me. I owned them because they reminded me of my red clogs. And I hate to say it, but I actually wore them on several occasions. Hey, I lived in Las Vegas.

Recently, I have used shoes as retail therapy. I went through a rough two years with a separation and a divorce, then a move to another state. Hideous, shiny and red are no longer on the wish list. My taste has changed and my shoes can be expensive.

I typically buy them from consignment or ebay and most of them I resell after a year or so. In two years, I acquired a pair of espadrilles purchased on vacation in Hawaii at a TJ Maxx when I realized my marriage may be past the point of saving. From there, I bought a brand-new pair of Diane Von Furstenberg tall, black, high heeled boots. They’re hard to walk in, but they’re gorgeous, and what cost fashion?

Then, I needed to counter those with a tall brown, leather, high heeled Ugg boot that I LOVE because they remind me of the 70’s. Easy to walk in and oh so comfortable with the shearling lined toe bed. Next, a pair of Gucci slides which reminded me of Miami in the 1980’s because, why not?!

Stuart Weitzman wedges ala Duchess Kate, a pair of Lanvin block heeled sandals just like a pair my mom had in the 70’s. Another block heeled sandal by Charles Jourdan because they reminded me of Studio 54, and a purple, lizard, strappy Yves Saint Laurent platform sandal because they reminded me of a classier version of the shiny, red platform. Finally, a pair of simple black Prada pumps. And just because flats should be represented, a pair of Loeffler Randall burgundy, suede, ankle tied flats.

There are probably six more pairs, but I’ve already sold them. As you can tell, I’m pretty nostalgic, and I like shoes that remind me of the things I love. But, I’m also looking to the future.

All this for the amazing, tall boyfriend I’m going to get and the fabulous fucking life I’m going to lead 😉 Dream big, friends, dream big. And love shoes, because they make you happy.