My favorite place I’ve ever traveled to is San Diego, no contest.

Italy is somewhere I’d love to go someday. But we all know that, so let me get specific: I want to go to Naples and eat pizza where it originated. I don’t want to stay in Naples because I hear its dirty and gross. I want to stay in a little down outside Naples and just go into the city to stuff my face.

I pass the time when I’m traveling by reading, for sure, or occasionally writing. Travel is a great muse for poetry.

My three must-haves when I travel are a book, a blank lined journal and a pen.

My favorite travel companion completely depends on the destination. The beau is amazing to travel with (it’s one of the major reasons we work, I like to travel too much to be with someone who would never step foot on a plane), but I think a place like Vegas or downtown Chicago or NYC would be much better with girlfriends.

The craziest thing that ever happened to me while traveling is the entirety of the trip to visit my folks after they moved. I flew to see them from college, and on the trip there, my flight got delayed. I wanted to tell my folks so they knew to pick me up later, but this was before I had a cell phone AND I didn’t know their new number. I called my grandparents to see if they did, and my grandpa picked up. Now, my grandpa is ADORABLE … and he doesn’t speak English well at all. Nani wasn’t there, so I had to ask Papa. It went like this:

“Papa! It’s Jaclyn.”

“Bata Papa! How are you?!” (“Bata Papa” is like he’s calling me his heart.)

“I’m good. Papa, I need my parents’ phone number. Do you have it?”

“Nana’s not here.”

“I know, Papa, but do you know what my parents’ phone number is?”

“Ohhhh … wait.” And he walked away. And I thought, “Holy hell, what is happening?” And he came back and gave me the number. I still don’t know how that happened.

My adorable papa with one of my aunts and three of my cousins this past Thanksgiving.

Then on the drive home … my ride never showed up. A friend’s roommate lived very close to the airport, and he offered to pick me up. After an hour — again, I had no way to call this person, as he wasn’t yet back in his dorm and I didn’t know his parents’ number — I got a cab. I had exactly the right amount of cash on me to pay for it. The next day when I was in my friend’s dorm, the roommie came up to me and handed me a 2-liter of pop and a large pizza to say he was sorry.

The most exotic thing I’ve ever tried while traveling is I can’t think of anything. I’ve tried weird things — cicadas baked in cookies, cow stomach — but that was just everyday life.

If I could live anywhere else, it’d be San Diego … or anywhere outside the Midwest that speaks English.

I have been to 15 states in the United States. I think. I had to count them up.

While you’re at it, be sure to check out my guest column at Jen’s blog.

Enjoy!

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Hi y’all! I’m Jen and I blog over at The Arizona Russums. On my blog you will find bits about my faith, my marriage, my grad school research and our adventures since moving to Arizona. Mainly, I  hope my blog is a place where women are encouraged to love Jesus more deeply.

Yes, we have brutally hot summers, and all the locals complain, but Micah and I just spend every second we can floating in our pool. But do you want to know what really makes summer worth it? Winter.

This is Micah and me on the day we bought our Christmas tree in December!

Have you ever experienced an Arizona winter? There are hardly words for it. “Amazing” just doesn’t do it justice. In November, December, January and February, it’s 65 to 75 degrees every day. Sun shining. Crisp mornings that call for a jacket. Warm afternoons that are perfect for sitting outside to read or going for a run (in shorts!) through the neighborhood. You can grill steaks in the backyard 12 months a year here.

Even today, on our lone cloudy winter day, I went running in shorts and a tank top. A brutal winter day here means the temperature is in the low 60s. There were a couple of times last year that it actually got into the 20s overnight, and it was 36 degrees on my morning commute. I wore one of my now-foreign winter coats to school and was lugging it around by lunchtimesince it had warmed up to almost 60 degrees.

And that, friends, is how we do winter in Arizona. All blue skies and sunshine. And I love every minute of it.

This is how much I love Arizona winters!

Please stop by. I’d love to meet you!

Blog // Facebook // Twitter

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Oh man, I am a jealous, Midwestern Panda. What’s winter like in your neck of the woods?

Now, it’s up to $1.95 for the same weight. To give you some perspective, here is something that weighs 1 ounce:

Five quarters. So we’re not talking concrete blocks here. Jac & Elsie packages are pretty dainty.

Knowing full well that how I  handle shipping is entirely up to me … I still feel I should be asking customers what you think. Right now, if you buy a Jac & Elsie piece, you’re going to pay $2 for shipping worldwide.  Some of the heavier items or pieces that require a ton of packaging for protection are $3, and nearly everything decreases in shipping if you buy multiples. So three lightweight bracelets will run $4 total for S&H, not $6.

Shipping on earrings like these are $2, or $1 with another item ...

... whereas something super chunky and awkward, like this, ships for $3, or $2 with another item.

With the new postal costs, my S&H prices cover pretty much just shipping, no handling. (OK, 5 cents per package goes toward handling, and envelopes, and bubble wrap, and return address labels.)

I am not planning to do a dang thing to shipping right now. But if (or, more likely, when) shipping increases again, it will break the $2 barrier for my little five-quarter packages.

My instinct is, at that point, to offer flat rate $3 worldwide shipping, which would be the cost if you order one item or 10 items. I’m also wondering about having a sliding scale, something like “free shipping on all orders $30 and more.”

This is where you come in. What shipping prices seem most reasonable to you? Or is shipping so the bane of your existence that all you want to see, ever, is free shipping all the time? Give me some more ideas!

“My best friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.” ~Abraham Lincoln

So this weekend, I switched over to My Favorite Purse. I have this old school coat tree full of purses in my room, and this particular purse is head-and-shoulders (zipper-and-straps?) above the rest. It’s a dark brown hobo bag from H&M three or four seasons ago. It has an uber long, adjustable strap and is insanely, perfectly floppy.

After the switch, I threw the purse over my shoulder and ran to Target. After carrying the bag for about an hour, I realized something dreadful: This purse was no longer fit to be carried in public.

The bag in question is ridiculously fake leather, and this ridiculously fake leather has started to crack and to flake, so when I pull out my Bic pen to jot down a note, the rubber knuckle guard is full of these fake leather flakes, which also have coated my check book, makeup bag of lip stuff and wallet. It’s disgusting.

Today, I switched over to a much better quality brown leather hobo bag. It’s actually real leather, and I stole it from Mom because she hadn’t used it in years and I’d always admired it. However, it’s not as big as the Dead Hobo. It’s not as perfectly floppy, either.

And I realized something: For a bag just like my Dead Hobo, I’d spend more than $20. I might even spend more than $40 (gasp, I know). So I started to look for acceptable styles.

I googled it. Checked Target.com. ModCloth. Kohls.com. Pinterest, which showed me a not horrible Banana Republic bag. BR definitely has the best so far, but a market tote is not a hobo bag.

H&M. Plasticland. (Not what I’m looking for, but oooh!)

Anthropologie. Ruche. Forever 21. Zara. And Lulu’s, where I found this:

A duffel is not a hobo, but this looks promising. But how can I tell if it’s appropriately floppy if I can’t touch it??

I learned something today. Apparently, I didn’t know what a hobo bag was. Instead, what I’m looking for is an “unstructured shoulder bag.” I think?

Whatever.

Do you have a favorite purse you’d be pissed if ever broke? And where else should I check for my purse?? Maybe I’ll stop at TJ Maxx this week.

I would like to see:

1) Gays have the right to marry. Not civilly union each other, but wed. With all the same rights as straight couples.

2) My parents go on a vacation by themselves. Australia would be great, as they’ve wanted to go forever. When I was little, they told me they’d go for their 25th anniversary. But Joey threw a bit of a wrench in those plans. In my life, Mom and Dad have been on two (TWO) vacations together. The last time they went, I was in  junior high or high school. And this year, they celebrate their 34th anniversary. So they’re a bit late to celebrate the silver anniversary down under.

3) A cure for autism.

4) A Jac & Elsie item on the front page of Etsy. (It’s the little things, man.)

5) A book on a bookshelf by moi. And not one of those self-published deals, either.

6) A graphic novel on a bookshelf by the beau. And, again, not one of those self-published deals, either.

7) Jac in Harry Potter World.

8) Jac in Italy.

9) Jac meeting Stephen King.

10) Jac in Andimeshk, Iran. It’s the town where my dad was born and grew up. In terms of “most unlikely to happen,” this one ties with No. 3. God, how sad — I’ll write and publish a book before I get to step foot in Iran. So true, though. (He has stories of dynamite fishing in the Persian Gulf. That is … he’d throw sticks of dynamite in the water, and he and his dad would gather the fish. Can you imagine throwing an explosive in Iranian waters????

What’s something you want to see happen before you die?

This is the only perfectly clear image of the earrings I’ve ever taken, and the backdrop looks ridiculous. This further back shot shows them much better in the background of a human, but they refuse to come in clear. This is the best I could do:

And if you look at the rest, they look washed-out on the white back drop, get lost on the pin cushion, look ridiculous on the skein of yarn. No idea what to do, so I keep them at $9 to tell folks, “Look I know they don’t look awesome — despite the fact that I swear they’re pretty, because you know we like pretty things here — so let’s keep the price marginal.”

I think I did a little better with some of the new goodies, though it’s becoming increasingly obvious to me that I need to invest too much money in a fancy camera. I adore my little point-and-shoot, but these images aren’t quite as crisp as I’d like them to be. (Click on any of the pics to see more.)

The last time I was home, my dad gave me a little spy glass he uses for work. It is perrrrrfect for checking maker’s marks on vintage jewelry. I learned this lemon yellow beauty is a Coro, a company that started in the 1910s and went bankrupt in the 1970s. Based on some Internet research and the style of this, my best guess is that it’s from the 1950s. It is in wonderful condition, and I found it for as much as $64. (You know Jac & Elsie don’t charge that much.)

I am kind of in love with the set up I came up with for this necklace, but it’s also the best proof I can muster that I need a better camera. The image is just fuzzy, and you can’t quite see the awesome design in that sea foam green teardrop quartz. It’s translucent and foggy, with what appear to be murky waves of color. It’s seriously beautiful, and I just love how it contrasts with the solid, opaque black stone above it. The whole necklace is uber long — 30 inches.

This listing was actually inspired my my beau’s brother’s girlfriend (follow that?). We went out last weekend, and she had a bunch of chunky necklaces layered over a solid-colored shirt. The design reminded me of this strand of vintage acrylic ivory pearls I had and didn’t know what to do with. So I attached it to a new gold-toned chain for a long necklace. But I knew I liked this strand best layered, so I picked up this vintage gold-toned and dainty floating heart necklace I found on my last antique run. I attached a simple pink Czech glass bead to the heart and put the two necklaces on together. Perfect! They’re not attached, so you can wear them separately for a total of three different looks.

Enjoy!

I’ve got a few things you should definitely check out when you get a chance:

First, want to win your choice of Wordplay locket from Jac & Elsie? Hop on over to The Arizona Russums to enter the giveaway! If you win, you’ll get to pick from the lockets in the shop.

Second, definitely no Fill-in-the-Blank Friday this week … because our lovely link-up hostess just had a baby. Wander over to the little things we do, check out Lauren’s beautiful family portraits and wish her congrats.

Third, read this and see if you can make any more sense of it than I can. In short, an American Psychiatric Association panel is toying with switching up the definition of autism so it no longer includes a majority of those with Asperger’s Syndrome or PDD-NOS, the latter of which is Joey’s diagnosis. The article doesn’t get into what would happen to people with either of those diagnoses — would they become their own entity? get their own label? — but the short-term affect is that those receiving state aid for those diagnoses would no longer get that aid because they would no longer be considered “autistic.”

Me and Joey on Christmas eve with Judgmental Santa. (You can't tell from this angle, but seriously, he's looking down on you.)

Joey has been getting help from the state in the form of therapists and behavioral analysts for more than a year now, and they have been a literal life-saver for my parents. However, if the definition of autism changes, 85 percent of those with PDD-NOS would no longer quality as autistic and would therefore no longer qualify for those funds. Chances are, due to Joey’s severity — he doesn’t talk, which is the biggie — he’d still be covered. Probably. But what about all those other parents who finally have found help? Would they have to start over? Or would their cases be grandfathered in so the parents wouldn’t have to work from scratch to get their kid help?

The idea is that with the numbers exploding the way they have, something isn’t right. Today, 1 in 110 children in the U.S. are on the autism spectrum, which currently includes PDD-NOS, Asperger’s and traditional “autism.” (Aside from the fact that those with Asperger’s are much higher functioning … no, I don’t understand the differences.) That is a 600 percent increase since Joey was diagnosed nearly two decades ago. (source.)

Getting aid is a bitch no matter how you look at it, but throwing in another monkey wrench into an already difficult system isn’t going to fix anything; it’s only going to worry parents and siblings and loved ones. I have to wonder — does anyone on these boards know anyone with autism? Do they have any idea how much they freak people out when they throw out this stuff as possibilities?

There’s something to be said for keeping what you think under your hat until that idea becomes something concrete.

This is the best I can do:

Click the pic to join the strike. Read up on it here or here. And see how it’s working here.

If I can’t black out properly, at least I can be another megaphone in the crowd.

Here are some of my favorite things I’ve found on Etsy lately (click on any of the images for more).

LOVE how this earring sits in the ear:

Amazing design on this vintage necklace:

Totally adorable print that I want to give to, like, everyone:

Looove how simple this personalized stationery is: