The good life

Today I splurged. I wasn't exactly planning to drop a chunk of change when I went out, thinking we'd just grab a nice Sunday afternoon coffee. But then I made the mistake of going into a shop I've been eyeing for a while.

And then I saw this:

I couldn't resist. I was useless against the sumptuous hand-crafted black leather bag. Gorgeous. I'm not a bag person, but this was something special. It's by BILLYKIRK (www.billykirk.com).

I love my neighborhood: the shops, the restaurants, the Sunday morning farmers' market. The old Italian immigrant neighborhood where you still hear the southern dialect spoken in the corner store, the grocery, the bakery.

But there's also the new contingency in the neighborhood: the stylish singles and couples,the ex-Manhattanites, the baby-makers. I'm in that group (but not the Manhattan part). Maybe I feel a little cliché sometimes, but I had no idea the neighborhood was going through a boom when I moved in, drawn by the quaint charm and its proximity to my job less than a mile away.

Who knew that four years later I'd be walking down Court or Smith with a baby of my own?

Today I feel so Brooklyn. Or rather, very Carroll Gardens/ Cobble Hill-esque. I headed out early into the brisk February morning, the cold wind biting my skin as I made my way up Smith Street to the green market to dump my week's worth of saved kitchen scraps for the compost collection. Then off to an intense hour and a half of Vinyasa yoga. Awesome.

Call it cliché, but this is the good life.