Another day...another set of apologies...this time because a raging case of toothache (multiple teeth...some of them must be sympathy pains...I just wish the little swines would choose another time to be sympathetic)...as a result of which I am finding it difficult to think...let alone come up with anything vaguely lucid in written form.

Apologies upfront...this post is completely selfish...but I just found out that I'll be spending a few days in Geneva in the middle of September and (having never visited there before) am throwing myself on the mercy (and wisdom) of my readers.

Basically I'm looking for recommendations...inexpensive (yet good) restaurants...places to grab a quintessentially Swiss snack...great boutiques or "must see" places to visit (just so that everything isn't glutinous and food based).

Thanks for indulging me on this one...normal posting will resume shortly.

Not to be over curmudgeonly and nit-picky (she said, before continuing and being just that) but...can anyone explain the point of a relatively heavy winter coat whose only fastening is one, meager little button? I ask because I keep coming across coats that are perfect...heavy wool...cozy lining...with all the bases covered in the winter warmth department... Except, that is, for the measly fastening trying to contain all your body heat...wide open at the neck (hello chest cold!)...billowing out at the hem with even the slightest puff of wind...completely ignoring the practicalities of life...and the concept that if it’s cold enough to require a heavyweight coat it’s surely cold enough to want a coat that doesn’t gape open and let the cold roam freely about the person of the wearer...

"The smallest patch of green to arrest the monotony of asphalt and concrete is as important to the value of real estate as streets, sewers and convenient shopping." - James Felt

I always find myself deeply attracted to the Balenciaga bags that aren't part of their normal arsenal of Works, Citys, Firsts, et al...the hybrids, the freaks, the bags that you rarely see and, when you do, are generally on sale because they don't fit the accepted criteria for a "B bag". Though it's currently full-priced (and rather expensively f-p'd at that) I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this retro futuristic jade number. Roomy...elegant...in a fascinating color...and not readily identifiable...in other words, bag nirvana.

"The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."

A psychiatrist would probably see something deeply depressing in my fixation with skulls...but, really, can anything be truly depressing when it's covered in gold vermeil and is made by a company called Tylie Malibu (which I would like to think is the name of Barbie's prescription drug addicted neighbor but is, in fact, a California based bag and accessory company). Oh dear, that Barbie comment would probably cause an analyst some anxiety as well...

Fall is almost upon us...I know this not because I am "at one" with nature...but because I’ve started my annual battle against the inner demons compelling me to buy (yet another) chunky, over-sized, thick woolen sweater. This annual affliction has occurred since I was a teen...and, at this point, I have enough wool in my closet to re-fleece an entire herd of prematurely balding sheep...I need to step away from the edge (and the fleece). Even if it's braided...and calling out to me like a lamb stuck in a ditch at two o'clock in the morning (ah, sweet memories of the two springs spent working on a friend's sheep farm).

It's rare (or, at least, it's seemed that way recently) to stumble across customer service that is kind/generous/thoughtful/helpful to the customer and not just another way to part them from the contents of their wallet...the kind of thing that changes you from a curmudgeonly old cynic (i.e. my normal genetic make-up) into someone who runs around discussing rainbows and the fact that the glass is, indeed, half full...

As I passed Store A yesterday I realized that I was almost out of Wondergoop Z (the only product that actually makes my hair actually look like hair and not straw)...once inside, however, I realized that "Z" was no where to be found. Aghast I stopped a passing sales assistant and was told that my beloved Wondergoop had been taken out of production. They suggested Goop L...I thanked them but explained that I had tried Goop L previously and found it unsuccessful. They asked me to wait a moment and disappeared through a doorway. They returned and said, "we have three bottle of "Z" in the back...they were testers...they've been opened...but they've hardly been used". I asked if I'd get them for a reduced price (my frugal Scottish blood rearing its head)...only to be told that, if I wanted them, there would be no charge.

What really shook my inner curmudgeon was that not only was I given three, full-size, mostly unused bottles of my beloved Wondergoop Z but (in a show of customer service above and beyond the call of duty) samples of various other conditioners and hair treatments. Forget "half full"...my glass might actually be overflowing...

A couple of days of vaguely Fall-like weather shouldn't induce giddiness...yet...oddly...they have. The siren's call (aka the morass of jackets, sweaters, and other layering pieces lurking in my closet) is strong...only my last vestige of common sense meant that I actually left the house in something lightweight... Jacket - Heimstone, vintage t-shirt, dress - Anthropologie, lo-tops - Converse

There's something very Sloane Ranger...Princess Diana (the early years when she gazed up...like a chocolate box puppy...into the eyes of Prince Charles)...and spinster librarian about these loafers from Rachel Comey. And yet...they're also kind of cute...or am I still randomly fixated on the whole choccie/puppy thing?

All this talk of cost per wear has dragged my mind over to Golden Goose...Italian designers of beautiful (but gulp inducingly expensive) rough luxe. At first glance it's hard to believe that the outfit below would leave you $3,795 plus tax less well off once you passed the cash register (do not pass Go, do not collect $200)...lest you blame it on the fur, even if you remove the fox vest from the equation you're still looking at $403 for a plaid cotton shirt...$510 for chinos...and $488 for some pre-distressed hi-tops.

The shirt and the hi-tops I can't even attempt to rationalize...a plaid shirt being, well, a plaid shirt...and my own well worn pair of Converse treating me just fine (thank you very much). The chinos on the other hand...I'm on the fence over...I can't help but admit that they're excessively priced for a pair of cotton pants...yet...there's something about the fit...slouchy and relaxed...yet crisp...which I know few lesser priced pants could attain. Once again, the c.p.w. conundrum leaves me reeling under the weight of "52 weeks...divided by 2...times 3" computations...

Jacket - Phillip Lim, top - Dover Street Market, skirt - H&M, talon necklace - Erica Weiner, rubber riding boots

This is one of those random posts that really has nothing to do with anything but...as I have previously managed to kill almost every plant I’ve ever owned and...as I've nursed my tomato plant for several months now (daily watering, leaf plucking, moving into and out of the light as needed)...I feel an almost maternal pride at having actually assisted in the creation of a tomato. Of course, mothers don’t usually do what I did and eat their young...the upside of this cannibalism...junior was delicious.

I'm as guilty as anyone of throwing the old "cost per wear" rationalization out there anytime I feel the expensive purchase urge coming on...and I'll be the first to admit that the math doesn't always work...some items have made it out of the closet once, thereby having the worst c.p.w. ratio going. Others...like these chambray pants from Prada...get worn so often that I think I'm down to about fifty cents an outing. Logically...the math shouldn't have been right...pricy, pseudo-denim, vaguely 50's housewife, vaguely Humpty Dumpty pants are not "wardrobe staples"...yet I love them. It kills my inner nerd but, like I said, sometimes the math doesn't work...sometimes you just have to let the intangibles take control...

The following was so easy that I'm loathed to call it DIY...instead, let's just say it was a happy concatenation of circumstance which started when I stumbled across a vintage fanny pack...a sentence which I never thought I'd write as I loathe fanny packs...bum bags...any kind of bag that looks like a goiter on a belt. But, the f.p. in question was thin, structured, leopard printed ponyskin on the front, leather on the back and...most importantly, completely detachable from its belt.

Which left me free to track down some vintage brass chain...thread aforementioned chain through the belts loops on the back of the bag...and close the link with the pliers that have been sitting in our junk drawer, unused, for the past few years (self and any kind of home related DIY going together like oil and water).

The result is...a piece of the leopard love that I've been looking for...and another one of those bags that is inadequately small to use to carry the majority of things needed on a day-to-day basis. As a decorative, cross-body, extra pocket, though, it's perfect.

"The mind of a thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value." - Oscar Wilde

I constantly find myself attracted by fashion tsotchkes...the wearable equivalent of a figurine of Edinburgh Castle with Dayglo haggis romping around it...or a 2" high replica of Brussel's Manneken Pis...actually, in the interests of full disclosure, I did fall prey to the latter, and he is mock-urinating off our bookcase at this very moment...but I digress, back to the fashion tsotchke...because, while its tourist kitsch cousin may fall at the inexpensive end of the financial scale, the f.t. is usually horrifically over-priced (in the way that only something so completely useless and excessively ornamental can be).

The latest piece of f.t. to catch my attention...this Vivienne Westwood rosette...either (at least to my feverish mind)...an ode to the kind of political "Vote for me" ribbon that you could have imagined Margaret Thatcher wearing in her heyday...or a "Best in Show" award for one of Thelwell's punkier equestrians. The problem? The $75 price tag. Because, as is the concern with all tsotchkes, you let one past your defenses...you make the purchase...and pretty soon you're buried beneath a pile of bric a brac..

"As yet exaltest thou thyself against my people, that thou wilt not let them go? Behold, to morrow about this time I will cause it to rain a very grievous hail, such as hath not been in Egypt since the foundation thereof even until now." - the Bible

If this is summer, make it stop...excessively high humidity...monsoon-like rainstorms with accompanying crashes of thunder and lightening...and talk of hail later in the day...

I'll say upfront that I realize that this post could be taken as a case of "pot calling kettle black"...but that's not my intention...it just comes from the amazement that I felt when I read on the Times' website that people were paying to have themselves airbrushed in their holiday pictures.

Because...although I fall back on Photoshop to try and rectify the color (as my photos never seem to accurately reflect the actual hue of the clothes) or to increase the exposure (in the hope of getting some detail from a sea of black) of the photos that I take and use here...I don't see the point in trying to make myself look thinner or giving myself bigger boobs...as Popeye said, "I y'am what I y'am". The thought of doing that (and a whole lot more) for vacation pictures just seems exhausting...and a little depressing.

And...nagging away in the back of my mind...is the fact that the pleasure that comes from looking at old photos...my grandmother surrounded by dalmatians on the beach...Mr. Heb and I in Paris...dumb shots of animals at the zoo...would be altered if I knew that everything had been passed through some kind of "beauty filter". Though we increasingly publicize all aspects of our life...on Twitter, or Facebook, or countless other sites...we shouldn't forget that the life that we're living is ours...it's real...and it's the only one we've got.

"The vermine is a small black and white relative of the lemming, found in the cold Hublandish regions. Its skin is rare and highly valued, especially by the vermine itself; the selfish little bastard will do anything rather than let go of it." - Terry Pratchett

What "comes before a fall"...pride or Chloe boots? I ask because...having managed the inch or so of heel attached to my Russell & Bromley ankle boots...I am recklessly envisioning a future which includes Chloe's zipped and buckled beauties (and their three and a half inch or so heels). Realistically I know that after a few steps I'd topple over like a reluctant lemming going over a cliff...but I can't help but feel that, on the upside, I'd look pretty good as I went down...

I know that I haven't talked about many lower priced pieces lately...trust me, I was cursing the fact that everything that caught my eye was ruinously expensive too...then I found a little something on etsy...it was shiny...unusual...and five dollars and fifty cents.

And...though it's technically a "sign of the zodiac" ring...it immediately brought to mind the scene in Diamonds Are Forever where Mr. Wint puts a scorpion down the back of the diamond smuggling South African dentist...takes Mr. Kidd's hand...and strolls off into the desert.

Yes...I watch too many Sean Connery movies...and yes...I am this pale in August. The seller that I got this from has several other zodiac rings for sale...including some that weren't listed when I bought mine (darn it, now I want the lion's head as well)...if you want a cheap thrill, take a look.