while the hub's away, the bean and i play

with the hub off on his business trip (um, it's a bunch of boys on a giant yacht, sailing from baltimore to philadelphia and stopping everywhere in between. hard work indeed), i filled up the ol' calendar with dinner plans with various friends. last night saw the bean and me meeting up with our buddy amber at the americana in glendale for some cheap eats and window shopping.

we left a little early in order to stop by nordstrom and pick up these:
i've had my eye on a pair of these fab tory burch flip flops ever since the girls on the OC nest board turned me on to them. ms. burch's wares are a bit out of my league, and these are about as close as i'm gonna get. heh. i'm still deciding whether or not i really like them - i'm not a huge fan of gold, and the little TB emblem is just that. not to mention, damn - i could get a good 3 pairs of havaianas for the same price as these. hmmm.

speaking of havaianas, i found these in the kiddie section at nords and couldn't resist. come on - aren't they adorable?

i also finally saw the coveted petunia picklebottom cake bag, live and in person. i've been drooling over this damn thing for months, but never actually seen one aside from online. and oh, it's lovely - but with my expanding collection of diaper bags (i'm up to 4 or so, thanks to mamabargains.com), i just couldn't justify scooping it up. and, um, the $340 price tag held me back some, too. heh.

as we got onto the freeway, i somehow managed to incur the wrath of some heffa who apparently holds a grudge. we sat at the meter at the on-ramp, and once the light went green, i romped on it and got ahead of her when the two lanes merged. i heard her honk at me and thought, "hey, it's not my fault that you couldn't beat my ass off the line." i zipped over into the fast lane and forgot all about her as my radio started playing jessica simpson's first country single.

i know, right? that's craziness. and i hate to admit it, but it wasn't horrific.

and what do you know, here comes angry heffa, swerving into the space between me and the car in front of me and then hitting her brakes. ha! well, she got me, didn't she?

normally, this would piss me off, but i guess i was too amused at jess's warbling. so i just smiled brightly and waved happily at her as she totally mad-dogged me in her rearview. and of course, this pissed her off even more, and she flipped me off as i giggled even harder.

the bean was sitting in her seat behind me, babbling "bah, bah, bah. da, da, da" and blowing raspberries. i said "watch this, monkey" - and i slid over into the carpool lane, honked, and waved merrily at that crazy bitch as i passed her ass. oooooh, that chick was mad. and damn, was it funny. i enjoyed it thoroughly.

the rest of the drive was pretty uneventful, and we found a parking space fairly quickly. the bean got comfy in her stroller and we found amber sitting on a bench right in front of the kate spade store (which i wisely avoided), under the big chandelier.

we walked through the michael stars shop, checked out the selection of havaianas at urban outfitters (they had so many pretty colors, and they're always buy one, get the second half off, but i restrained myself), and perused the adorable offerings at the juicy couture store. it was fun oohing and aahing over everything, and after a walk through anthropologie, we decided to grab dinner at jewel city diner, a little gem (gem! get it? [crickets]) tucked in a little corner between cheesecake factory and h&m.

of course, the bean had kicked off one of her brand new flip-flops while i wasn't looking, and amber, being the sweetheart that she is, retraced our steps until she found it (somewhere in anthropologie). yay!

amber's classic hot dog, topped with yummy cheese and other delicious stuff:

and my slightly health-conscious blt.

we munched and chatted, while the bean did some peoplewatching and checked out the water show at the nearby fountain. and amber cracked up at the bean's excitement at the sight of me pulling the nursing cover out of the diaper bag. ha! it's pretty funny - as she said, we get excited over food, so why should she be any different? heh.

and when she was done, we got up and walked over to pinkberry, where we enjoyed the yummy, tart goodness. of course, photography is a no-no, so i have no fun pictures to share of the silly faces the bean made as i fed her little bits of yogurt. but this is pretty similar:
love it. we went to the gigantic forever 21 to check things out, and even with two enormous floors to shop from, we both left empty-handed. oh, well - my checkbook was delighted. whee!

and then it was time to go home. good times, good times.