On Languorous Lips and Lives Well Led

It was a night to indulge my inner girl.

After a day of being productive - re-potting outdoor begonias inside for the winter, re-framing a local artist's print when the glass on the first frame broke and making basil walnut pesto out of the gargantuan basil plant that's been growing in a dining room window box since June- I wanted a low-key Saturday night.

The dinner location was prescribed by my need to review.

Dessert followed at Shyndigz, that cake cafe in the near West End.

Sure, it was a tad out of my comfort zone, but I'd heard raves about the mondo pieces of cake and was curious.

I was as unprepared for how small a place it was as for the sheer number of people crowded into it at 9:00 on a Saturday night.

My partner in crime and I didn't get particularly creative with our selections once we found seats at the small community table.

The place's signature cake is the salted chocolate caramel cake so we got one to share along with a salted hot chocolate.

The hot chocolate was good (maybe not quite as good as Can Can's) but the two enormous homemade marshmallows on top were divine, airy and not too sweet.

The cake was of the Alice in Wonderland variety, somehow having grown bigger than any piece of cake needed to be.

For me, the best part of it was the buttery chocolate frosting with the complementary salt crystals.

Between the heavy meal we'd had first and the thick-as-cream hot chocolate, half the cake left with us in a box.

We were off to the Westhampton Theater to see "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel," a documentary about the doyenne of fashion during the 20th century, first at "Harper's Bazaar" and then at "Vogue."

The documentary had tons of talking heads of the most interesting kinds, like former models Lauren Hutton, Verushka and Ali McGraw (looking about as awful as imaginable) and designers (Blahnik, Oscar de la Renta, CalvinKlein).

From a childhood with her mother telling her she was ugly compared to her beautiful sister to becoming the arbiter of taste for women in this country (Jackie O. contacted her for First Lady wardrobe advice), I was fascinated by her imagination and her wide circle of (in many cases younger) friends.

And was she ever quotable!

I think so few people believe in pleasure.

Don't worry, Diana, I believe in it, too.

She spoke of the wisdom of being born in Paris and even that, "The best thing about London is Paris."

Having been to London but only through Paris, I take her word on that.

I say to evoke the imagination of the public is a wonderful thing if you can manage it.

Managing to do it is the challenge I've found, but such a satisfying one.

My intense reading was natural.

I always suspected that my intense reading was as natural as breathing, and here was my corroboration.

People described her in glowing terms, like, "She gave energy and pep to everything she did."

Oh, for people to say that about me when I'm dead.

But her standards were exacting and co-workers said she could look at a photo spread and pinpoint the smallest failing.

Once she dismissed a photo because, "There's no languor in the lips."

Only Vreeland could spot the absence of languor.

That said, she was also praised as, "Understanding the genius of vulgarity."

Why don't you paint a map of the world on all four walls of your boys' nursery so they won't grow up with a provincial point of view?

I'm with her on this one, too. Save me from a provincial point of view, please.

And while she may not have been a conventionally pretty woman, between her red lipstick, her ever-present smile and her pure verve, she was riveting to watch and listen to.

We could have been friends, I feel certain of it. Hell, she'd have made a great mentor, too.

There's only one life and it's the one that you want and you make happen.

There's one Vreeland-ism I didn't need to hear to instinctively know.

Hell, life? I'm not shy about saying that this is the one I wanted and this is the one I (painstakingly) made happen.

And I didn't even have the advantage of being born in Paris.