Yeah, they’re brine shrimp; and yeah, they’re gross; but I can guarantee you that when your child (hell, when your significant other) trots into her classroom with a Sea Monkey strapped to her wrist, you’re the parent of the coolest kid in the school.

You might worry that we’re subsisting on a meager diet of PB&J and Tang. But no. As a veteran of exactly 873,642 hurricanes, I know that when the going gets wet and windy, the wet and windy grill. And with this griddle, our grill transforms into a skillet, so that we can eat bacon, eggs, and home fries for breakfast before we go outside to retrieve the mailbox that has inevitably landed on our front lawn.

I’ve seen Kiel Mead’s knot-me-tight-and-don’t-let-go rings before, cast in sterling and gold. The beautifully blackened version is more bleak than demure, as if you have a painful, delicious secret that needs remembering.

Except when it’s hilarious.

(Identity commands a perverse kind of authority. I am; therefore, I mock.)

When Mr. Misosouper and I married seven years ago, we didn’t register for any “fine” china; I zapped a set of Fiestaware with my gun, and figured that someday, when we had a dining room (at that point, we didn’t even own a kitchen table) and a fully-funded 401k, we’d buy something we really loved, price be damned. (Sidenote: I understand that some wedding guests like to purchase expensive gifts. But asking Cousin Tillie for a $278 pie server? Really?)

That day of reckoning, the day of dedicated dining areas and vested retirement plans, has arrived. I want this set of gloriously bird-flecked china, deep down in my soul. Is it too late to register? Never mind. I suppose we’re on our own for that $1450 gilded teapot.

We have settled our own Apartment Therapy Good Question by covering the wall with Algue, a modular, organic installation that can serve as transparent curtain, room divider, or decoration. Our temporary solution looks so good that it just might stick around.

Between Blayne’s fluorescent skin, Stella’s assless chaps, and the overall crappery being sent down the runway this season, I simply don’t know where to look. It’s as if Project Runway is, in Heidi Klum’s immortal words, “pooing fabric.” You’re trying to help the designers make that shit work, but it all seems to be congealing into a purple shantunged leathah bescarved plaid jumpsuit.

So I salute you Michael Kors, for carrying on this season in the midst of all that mess, and for bringing sexy back to the black t-shirt after Simon Cowell stripped it of all appeal. That you gave us these shoes–oh, these naughty, perfect shoes–is just icing on the cake.

Yours,

Anna

Here’s her replacement: a porcelain take on the landfill-clogging coffee cup, complete with soft silicone lid. Completely reusable, insulated, witty, and not made in China.  (Well, Taiwan.  But still not China.)  And with the coupon code 40SAVE, a really good deal.