Are You Feeling Skinny, Punk?

Precocious Daughter and I spent last evening getting ready for Decades Day, an event at her school where the kids are supposed to wear the costume of a particular decade.

PDaughter chose 70s Punk. Because she worships the Sex Pistols, you guys.

As one does, I suppose.

Last weekend PDaughter and I scoped out the local Goodwill store, in search of decade-defining clothing on the cheap.

We found a bitchin' 80s-vintage jacket, and some psychedelic '60s pants, before she stumbled upon...

...a pair of skinny, multi-zippered, faux-leather trousers that screamed "Sex Pistols" louder than Sid Vicious ever actually did.

We also found an amazing faux-leather jacket with a great big metal buckle in the back.

Punk heaven.

Seriously, way cuter than this.

So here's the actual thing.

D'you remember the social media post from the woman who was a size 12 who tried to squeeze into a size 16 at H&M and could barely breathe?

This, if you don't remember.

This, you guys.  

Anyway, the pleather pants PDaughter found - but didn't want to try on because the try-on rooms were full and also funky - were from H&M. They were a size 6.

PDaughter is legit a size 0. Honestly, she is. I know, right?

But you know, she held the pants up and decided they seemed to be cut a bit small, and anyway if they turned out to be large on her, it was just a dress-up day, no biggie.

So we bought them, and the cute pleather jacket, which came to a grand total of, like, 12 bucks. The best part was when my angel-faced little girl plonked down this faux-black-leather outfit in front of the Goodwill Store cashier, who said, "Oh my...look what you found!" with a look of poorly-concealed horror on her face.

We quickly explained about it being for a dress-up day to save the poor woman from getting the vapors.

Fast-forward. We made a Target run, saw a movie, then went home. PDaughter decided to try on her punk outfit.

You guys...the size 6 H&M pants were skin-tight on my size 0 daughter.

That's three sizes above her norm, and she can't take them off without turning them inside out. She can't bend her leg all the way back when she's wearing them.

WTF, H&M?

Who is your target audience? Women with rock-solid self-esteem who don't mind buying clothes 3-4 sizes above what they wear in any other brand? Foreigners who don't understand how our clothing is sized? Itty-bitty fairy-aliens with long spindly limbs that will fit into sleeves and pant legs that are only three inches across?

And why do brands insist on making clothes that are small for their size instead of large? Clothing makers: This size-10 mama would be thrilled to buy your entire line if you'd let me "fit" into a size 6. Honest. And I don't think I'm alone in that. Amiright, ladies?

Yikes.

So tomorrow is Decades Day, and PDaughter will be wearing leather pants, an artfully deconstructed t-shirt (complete with safety pins), and a plaid vest that formerly was a shirt. Lots of black eyeliner and attitude to complete the look.

I hope she doesn't decide she loves it so much that she adopts it permanently.

Mostly because if she eats a sandwich, she's going to split those size-6 pants.

Prom 2017 - Shopping Edition

Drunkards, we have achieved prom dress.

A few days ago, I told you that Precocious Daughter and I would be shopping for a suitable dress for her junior prom.

Not this, however.

After three days, three malls, and somewhere in the vicinity of 20-30 stores, we nailed it.

The good news: For three days straight, I got in all my steps.

(LOL, like I wear a pedometer, aka a lazy-shamer. Paff.)

The less good news - it can't be bad news because we did end up finding a dress - HOLY SHIT IT WAS AN EXHAUSTING AND STRESSFUL PROCESS.

Actually, for the most part I had a great time. For me, the stress came from watching PDaughter become stressed as store after store yielded nothing appropriate for her to wear to prom. Honestly, for all her talk about her "aesthetic" (because of course my child has one of those), she was neither nitpicky nor unreasonable about the kind of dress she wanted. But most of the stores we visited either a) had a disappointing selection or b) were way out of budget. She only tried on dresses in maybe a third of the places we visited. It's pretty discouraging to walk into and out of more than a dozen stores without even finding a candidate for the dressing room ritual.

But I stayed positive, because I have great faith in the shopping gods. I knew the right dress would cross our path. And I was right.

Early Sunday afternoon, we found an amazing dress in a wonderful formal shop that had a fabulous selection and excellent customer service.

Did it cost more than I had planned to spend? Duh, yes - mostly because it needed a few alterations to perfectly fit PDaughter's teeny-tiny form.

Do I care about that? No - because I could see in her face and hear in her voice that this was The Dress. Not The Dress She Settled For, not The Dress She Ended Up with Because It Was Just About the Last Store in Town.

She loved it. And she looked...guys, she looked so beautiful in it.

The alterations should be done by tomorrow. We just need to pick up a pair of shoes - probably silver flats because PDaughter doesn't do heels - and all will be in readiness for prom this Saturday.

I tried to find a picture of the actual dress online, but I couldn't. Then I tried to reproduce it in MS Paint, and...that didn't work.

I'll take lots of pictures on Prom Night, I promise. But just so you have a tiny bit of a mental image, it's seafoam green, it's halter-style, it has a full knee-length skirt, and there's just a touch of sparkly bling at the neckline (perfect, as PDaughter doesn't really do jewelry, so the dress does it for her).

Its prettiness is nothing compared to the smile on PDaughter's face as she looked at herself in the mirror.

I'm reminded that when I started this blog, my little girl was in the fourth grade. And now she's about to attend junior prom.

Oh hey, also I was married, a homeowner, and believed I was happy.

But I digress.

Anyway.

The prom dress is acquired. Milestone reached.

Pardon me while I ponder how the hell I became the mother of a 17-year-old. I'll be back.

Out to Dry

My washer and dryer live next to my bedroom, so I can hear them running.


I did a load of laundry earlier this evening, then put the wet clothes into the dryer.

Since these are new appliances to me, I'm continually experimenting with their various settings to determine which are the best for my needs. And they have more settings than the W/D I owned previously (which apparently were pretty basic and are now with my almost-ex, and good riddance).

These are beautiful and somewhat intimidating.

So the dryer has two different drying modes. You can choose an amount of time you want it to run, or you can choose a "less dry/normal dry/more dry" mode. And that apparently involves sorcery.

For the last half-hour, I've listened to my dryer run...then stop...then run...then stop...then run. I guess it's somehow sensing whether the clothes are dry and then starting up again? Or perhaps just fucking with me because it knows I can hear it? Honestly, I don't know.

Leaning toward sorcery, though.

All I know is that I set it to "normal dry," and it's now making decisions independent of me as to whether my work clothes are actually "normally" dry or not. Apparently they are wanting in the normally dry department, because every few minutes the dryer restarts itself to tumble my shirts and slacks for a few more minutes.

I think we all know the obvious question: Are there gnomes living inside the dryer who emerge from those little holes in the rotating drum to evaluate (or judge) the moisture conditions of my clothing?

DRYER GNOMES.

Why did I never know about this phenomenon before? I've been doing laundry for years. Are dryer gnomes a recent phenomenon, or am I simply out of the loop, magical-laundry-dryness-sensing-creatures-wise?

I'm fine with dryer gnomes, actually.

All I know is that I find my nearly-sentient, moisture-sensing dryer to be a bit disconcerting.

Help... ?

Feedback on Feedback

So a few days ago I showed you guys a picture of my bedroom closet.

And I asked you to identify what percentage of those outfits I've actually worn in the last two years, what's in the dresser on the left, and what my favorite color is.

And the winner is...

OK, well, first of all, nobody got all three answers right. And NOBODY got my favorite color right.

Look at this page, people. Look around the edges and at the title. What's my favorite color?

This guy knows.

It's possible I've even written about my love of purple in this very space. And if you weren't reading me back in 2011, then you now have a homework assignment. Get to ketchin' up.

So everyone blew the color question (partly because there is not a scrap of purple in that closet, which is totally not unfair on my part). The percentage question actually surprised me a little. Several people guessed zero to five percent, and I thought that was the answer myself, until I did the math. Yes, I did math for you guys. I SUFFER FOR THIS BLOG OK.

Anyway, the answer is...somewhere between 10 and 15 percent, because I couldn't remember how long it's actually been since I wore some of these. And unfortunately, I haven't worn any of the vintage pieces you can see in the picture in the last two years. None of them have fit me in at least five years. I sort of harbor the dream that I might return to the weight I was when I bought them. But then I remember that I only achieved the weight I was when I bought them as the result of a long period of extreme stress and trauma.

Hey, if you're a vintage-loving girl who wears a modern size 4-6, I may have some pieces that would interest you. Hit me up, OK?

And that just leaves the question of what's in the dresser. Two of you got it right, and I'm going to call the contest based on your answer, because you both nailed it.

The dresser is full of patterns and fabric. Mostly patterns, but also some in-progress projects that I had to pack away when my sewing room became my little home.

Allie Cat and BekS, you win!

Total victory!

Your prizes are a Chuck's Principles for Life bookmark and an item to be randomly selected from my garage. Hint: It probably won't be a car or a lawn mower.

BekS, I already have your address. Allie Cat, I need yours. Message me pronto.

Next contest: What flavor soup is sitting on my poor unused sewing machine that currently is serving as a makeshift pantry?

Contest: Spoiler Alert, It's a Pretty Crappy Contest

Pop quiz!

How's that for a graphic, mofos?

Ready? OK.

Here is an actual photo of my bedroom closet.

Oooh, intimate.

Here are the questions.

1) What percentage of this clothing have I actually worn in the last two years?

2) What is in the dresser in the left portion of the closet?

3) What is my favorite color?

Answer in the comments. Most correct answerererer gets a Chuck's Principles for Life bookmark and a random item from my garage.

GO.

Hey, Judge My Memories, OK? (Updated)

Note: I've made a few edits since posting this last night, because it sort of read like something a drunk person might have written. For some reason.

--------------

I've been struggling with what to write about tonight.

I've decided to simply relate an anecdote.

In January 1992, my sister-in-law got married. I was a member of her wedding party.

Completely unrelated, but the Obamas
also married in 1992. So cute, they are.

The wedding was modest and low-key, which made it a lot of fun. And my SIL's wedding party had a simple mandate: to wear a black dress of our choosing, which would be tied together via a tartan sash, in honor of the bride's Scotch-Irish heritage.

And for decades I've kept the tartan sash as a cherished memory of that day.

Apparently my camera didn't like the shine from the
taffeta fabric. It's much prettier than it photographs.

But now it's 2015. My marriage to SIL's brother is over. I'm shedding all the extraneous possessions I can so I can move on.

And oh, did I mention that SIL surgically removed me from her life as soon as she heard my spouse and I were separated?

Yep.

So now I'm cleaning house - physically and psychically - ahead of my impending divorce.

I am keeping things of emotional value, I proimse.

But I need some advice on this front. 

SIL and her husband cut me out of their lives - and the lives of their wonderful sons, my nephews - after the separation. Without ever hearing both sides of the story. Presumably without ever thinking about the 20+ years of history we had, as relatives and friends.

Which included her husband - my brother-in-law - trying to get into my pants for basically the entirety of their marriage, but I guess some things you can put into boxes and some things you can't.

Still, we had a lot of wonderful times together. Although she claimed to my spouse later that she never liked me and thought we shouldn't get married. But still asked me to be a bridesmaid. Boxes.

Question: Do I keep the sash because it represents an indelible and still-cherished memory in my life?

Or do I chunk it, because fuck the haters who don't even think I exist any more because they don't know the whole story and never will?

You can see how I'm torn.

Your input is welcome. Keep the sash, discard the sash, burn the sash with righteous fire?

Honestly, I'm leaning toward fire. Or giving it to Precocious Daughter.

Commence judging.

Ten Things You Forget When You Stop Sewing

Or, Ten Things You Remember When You Start Sewing Again.

1. Choosing fabric for your project is terrifying. It has to be perfect. What if you get it wrong? Worse, what if you mess up your project? That one-of-a-kind vintage bolt end is gone, baby.

2. Pinning and cutting the pattern pieces is soooo tedious. How can it possibly take so many different parts to make a simple top/dress/skirt?

3. Was it this hard to thread the needle last time I sewed? The eye must have shrunk from disuse. That's the ticket.

4. You have to keep the tension when you're winding a bobbin, or you end up with a loose, saggy mess of thread. There's probably a metaphor for life in there somewhere.

5. The cleanest, straightest seam you ever sew will be when you didn't notice the bobbin thread ran out halfway through.

6. Nothing is quite as specifically, exquisitely painful as sticking a pin into the pad of your fingertip.

7. Pressing is even more important than actual sewing. Getting a perfect press does more for the quality of the finished garment than sewing a perfect seam.

8. Stay-stitch, slip-stitch, edge-stitch, tack-stitch...so much sewing that no one ever even sees! But it all totally counts.

9. Pattern pieces under a type of fission and expand in size once released from their package. Once out, they will never, ever, ever go back in again.

10. Sewing time doesn't work the same as regular time. The phrase "just give me five minutes to finish off this edge" bears no relation to reality. Five minutes means you've missed two meals and all your favorite TV programs.

I've really missed sewing.

A Very Straightforward Post About the Golden Globes

Last night I watched the Golden Globes. Which is not something I typically do. But as I'm reminded every single day, I now have a teenage daughter with an insatiable appetite for media. And tuna noodles, although that is somewhat less relevant to the topic at hand. I'm trying to keep today's post tightly focused.

No matter how adorable this picture of a baby
chinchilla may be, it's off topic, and we'll dwell
no more on it.

So Precocious Daughter and I watched the Golden Globes last night. I was delighted to see Tina Fey and Amy Poehler show up on the red carpet.

Tina's hair and dress were awful! That made me feel good, because I'm shallow and vain and mean-spirited and it's just not fair that Tina Fey gets to be gorgeous and smart and funny. Really, she's setting the cause of feminism way back by inspiring so much petty jealousy in her fellow women. Me. In me. Shame on her. So yeah, I was glad to see the hideous Peter Max-inspired bedroom curtains she was wearing, along with the exact same hairstyle I rocked in my fourth-grade school picture. Especially since Amy looked smokin' hot. Not just in comparison, but all by her gorgeous damn self.

Then the show started, and Tina ruined everything by coming onstage like this:

How did she even do that? Stop being so beautiful, Tina Fey. You're ruining everything for women. Again, me. You're ruining everything for me by being you. Because that's totally how it works.

 

I really had no idea how cute baby chinchillas are.

What? Where did that come from? We're talking about the Golden Globes here.

Anyway, there were awards and stuff. Oh, by the way, I joked on Twitter (@drunkbaudelaire, just throwing that out there) that a good drinking game for the Golden Globes is to drink whenever someone talks about drinking. Let me just say that if you play that game, you end up drinking really quite a lot. I mean, by the time Emma Thompson teetered onstage holding her Loboutins in her hand, I was almost as drunk as she was.

 

Drunk Emma Thompson is now the patron saint of this blog.

I'd like to point out that Terry Crews' blue tuxedo and badass wingtips was the most incredible outfit ever...

 

...but I can't, because then along came Matthew McConaughey in his green velvet tuxedo. What.

 

My sweet Matthew is still too thin from his award-winning role in Dallas Buyers Club. If someone would kindly provide me his home address, I should like to bring him hearty soups and crusty homemade bread to restore the meat to his pretty bones.

Anyway.

So dig this: There was not a single camera shot all night of Benedict Cumberbatch. You would have thought he wasn't even at the Golden Globes. Oh, he was there. Apparently someone on the technical crew didn't get the memo that Benedict Cumberbatch is not to go unphotographed when present. Someone missed the opportunity to broadcast his face over the international airwaves and boost both the ratings and the awesomeness of the awards ceremony. I'm not suggesting that someone should be fed to the lemurs for this oversight.

 

But possibly to the chinchillas. So many chinchillas.

We know that Benedict was in attendance because we have this delightful picture of him dancing with Michael Fassbender.

You will never, ever enjoy yourself this much unless you are
Benedict Cumberbatch or Michael Fassbender, or at least
have an equally amazing multisyllabic name.

Did you know that Benedict Cumberbatch is on the cover of Russian GQ this month and it looks like this?

Haha, I don't even know which of those words say
"Benedict Cumberbatch." Or why they bothered
putting any words on the cover at all.

What was I talking about?

No more chinchillas.

That is totally an otter.

And a bunch of people won stuff. Michael Douglas looked wonderful, Kyra Sedgewick looked like one of those annoying characters Jan Hooks used to play on SNL that laughed after everything they said, and I still can't tell Andy Samberg and Jesse Eisenberg apart. Johnny Depp did not wear a bird on his head, which almost ruined the evening for me, except it was the end of evening and I was too Emma'd to care that much.

There, that was pretty much on point, wasn't it? Not a chinchilla in sight.

What Do You Mean You Don't Want to Dress Like Mommy?

Yesterday Precocious Daughter and I decided that we didn’t need to watch seven hours of Super Bowl pre-game, so we went shopping. (whispering: It wasn’t a hard decision.)

 

PDaughter, shown here twisting my arm.

We ended up at our local ginormous regional outlet mall. It’s shopping plus exercise. I mean, how do they even make a building that big? It’s so big it has two pretzel places.

Anyway, PDaughter and I both tend to get a little shell-shocked when we go to this mall. There’s just so much stuff. We know we can’t buy all of it, but it’s so hard to choose from the sheer tonnage of consumer goods that we typically go home sore-footed and empty-handed. We are the not-so-coveted Indecisive and Mostly Broke Anyway demographic.

A girl can dream.

 

But yesterday I decided I wanted cute new tops. And of course, once PDaughter got wind of what I wanted, she wasn’t going to come away without cute new tops of her own. Her sense of fair play is very well developed. Also, she likes when I buy her stuff.

Like mother, like daughter.

 

So we went in to this huge store that had acres of clothing. We had to wade past the clearance racks of puffy coats, which apparently some buyer somewhere thought were going to be the Big Thing this winter. Judging by the number of puffy coasts being sold off at please-for-God’s-sake-buy-me prices, this buyer is now a sock inspector at a low-end underwear factory somewhere.

 
Fortunately, there were also a gazillion cute tops. I quickly picked out two and then stopped myself. Because when it comes to shopping, I tend to count one, two, forty.  Forty was incompatible with eating for the rest of the month, so two it was. One was a little teal number with a drapey collar, and the other was a more casual olive-green Eddie Bauer top.

Why yes, it does make me look
exactly like Bar Rafaeli.
Thanks for asking.

 

Then we moved over to the Juniors section. It still makes me seize up a little inside every time PDaughter steers me to Juniors instead of Kids. I haven’t really accepted that she’s a teenager yet. Although I like the part where I imagine I gave birth when I was 12. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Whatever. We started going through the tops in that section. Of course, I vetoed everything that was see-through, backless, or had “SEXY” written across the butt. I’m not a prude; it’s just that the girl doesn’t have enough butt to fit a four-letter word. Me, I could put President Obama’s most recent inauguration address across my butt and still have room for Meryl Streep’s last Oscar acceptance speech. I won’t, but I could.

PDaughter found two very cute tops of her own that were both kid- and mom-approved. But as we were waiting to check out, a strange look came across her face. I asked her what was wrong.

“We got the same colors,” she said, horror-stricken.

I looked at the four items in my hands. Sure enough, although PDaughter had chosen two teenage-girl tops and I had picked two middle-aged (but very cool and stylish) mom tops, we each had chosen one that was teal and one that was olive green.

I'm sure this is what she saw.

 

Of course, I did the mature thing. I told her I had picked mine first, so she had copied me.

She decided to stick with what she had bought, even though they were same colors I was getting. But she did fix me with a solemn gaze and say, “We can never wear these at the same time.”

Because this, as far as she's concerned.

 

I immediately agreed.

I mean, who wants to look like a 7^th grader?

 

 

Big Fat Old Circle of Life

In my very first ever blog post, I told a moderately amusing story about how my jeans split when I was getting into my car, while I was carrying the new pair of jeans that - through sheer fortuity - I had just purchased. Yeah, it sounds pretty stupid when I say it like that, but if you read the post, it's only mediocre.

I am totally going to let you imagine that I looked like this.

 This morning, the jeans I bought that day - the ones that saved the world from seeing my hoo-ha and thus deserve the Nobel Prize for Jeans - met the same fate. I was sitting at the breakfast table, and when I reached down to scratch my leg, I felt flesh instead of denim.

Yes yes I was scratching my inner thigh in the privacy of my own kitchen shut up.

Again, I invite you to believe this is my thigh.

My beloved Levi's capri-length jeans, which had served me so well for three years, accommodating the imperceptible weight gain I've experienced in that time (ahem), going with everything in my closet, getting softer and more comfy with each washing, split open in exactly the same place as their predecessors. A very mean person would surmise aloud that this had something to do with the fact that the thighs of my jeans tend to rub together, due perhaps to a genetic disposition of mine to store fat in that area.

I don't think mean people like that read this blog. But if they do: Get stuffed, asshole.

Love youuuuuuu.

It was all very ironic. I think. I'll have to ask Alanis Morrissette.

So today I bought a new pair of jeans. They're not exactly the same as the old ones - you know, when you buy a new car you don't get the same model, when you get a new dog you realize your previous dog was a unreproducible freak of nature - and they're definitely not as buttery-soft as the old ones. That will come with time. And friction. Lots of friction.

Also, it's possible they're a size bigger than the ones I bought three years ago. Maybe I just like baggy jeans. Yep. As far as you know, that's it.

When these split, I'll let you know. It's good to know that I already have a post topic for some day three years from now.

P.S. I also bought some other clothes today. I'm not saying there's a reason I might need new clothes, but I will say I may not be able to sit around all day in my jammies for much longer. Wink-wink.

Update to Yesterday's Post (Before I Have a Heart Attack and Die)

You may recall that yesterday I wrote about the teeny-tiny shorts that Precocious Daughter and I spotted in the juniors' department at Target last weekend.

Yeah, those.

I mentioned that neither PDaughter nor I get our own clothes from the juniors' department. I have too many curves to squeeze into those sizes, and she doesn't have enough. She's just a wee little girl. Yes, 12 is a wee little girl, when it's my daughter and my blog. She was out of diapers yesterday.

"Yesterday" is metaphorical for literary effect.
PDaughter would like you to know.

Last night I bought my baby girl a new pair of jeans that she spotted and thought were were really cute and begged me to get them for her. And they were indeed cute and fit her well, so I bought them.

From the juniors' department.

This is the big one.

Oh, crap.

Nooooooooo!

Really?

I don't feel so well just now.

But...if my little girl is shopping where the teenagers shop, what does that make me?

Oh yeah, you old.

If you'll excuse me, I'm going to take some Metamucil and have a lie-down now. Maybe catch some "Matlock" repeats later.

I'm sure I'll feel better after a little nap.

I'm coming, Elizabeth.