Northeastern Easter Fashion Report April 22, 2014

No, that’s not Kanye’s next baby name.

Easter fashion has always been an entity unto itself.

I recall a certain purple gingham maxi dress I wore one Easter when I was eight or so. Then there are those I-dare-you- to-wear-me deranged Easter bonnets. I hold that the purpose of these is to provide ample nesting materials for local bird life.

This year, I was struck by nothing so much as the pastel floral number worn by a lovely young lady whose parents I hope were far, far away.  Because this is the stuff of cardiac events.

Daughter in question chose to celebrate the resurrection of her personal lord and savior (or possibly the end of Passover? Larry Flynt’s birthday?) by sporting the always appropriate vagina-length stretch dress.

At what point, I mused while trying to come up with a sentence I could say out loud that did not contain the  term “vagina-length dress,” did she become comfortable wearing said hemline? Probably best that I never learn.  Though I am toying with a scenario where the girl is a rebelling Amish-ette, taking things just a bit too far…or not far enough.

I do feel that my experience could give rise to one of those helpful questions one might ask oneself while shopping, dressing, or contemplating cutting off part of a dress: “Will anyone look at me and think ‘vagina-length?'”

And, while you’re at it, say a prayer for my computer. It doesn’t know what the hell to wear.

 

 

Battle of the Brow Furrow February 19, 2014

Like me, you have probably spent hours pondering the qualities you share with Robert Downey, Jr., Hugh Jackman, and George Clooney.  Unlike me, you may not be a woman who has compared brow furrows with these giants of the silver screen, and won.

I’m hardly proud of this fact, but why not? I have not weathered heroin addiction, but I have compulsively raised an eyebrow throughout my adult life.   For this, I wear the battle scars.  For this, I must view ads for the likes of something called “Miracle Blur,” and wonder just exactly what would be blurred upon application. The post-40 eyesight decline provides the same luxury, if only for me.

Truth be told, I do harbor some resentment that guys with real foreheads are perceived as looking sexier and more interesting with their lines, while women run to shoot up some paralysis juice, or at least Miracle Blur themselves to near invisibility.  The eighties female rock stars that “look great” have been stretched and they look good to us because we can’t deal with our own aging and what it actually looks like.  Is looking like we looked in the 80’s really the process we should be undertaking?

We have this huge expanding force of older people, yet we remain youth obsessed.  Oh yeah.  The Fountain of Youth.  Even back when life expectancy was, I don’t know, 35– that quest was worth taking out a few native people along the way.

Excuse me while I order my free Lifestyle Lift brochure.

 

Cop-out Gifts From Gentlemen to Ladies November 28, 2013

Fragrance purchases are the lamest of the lame of the stuff that guys cop out and buy for their ladies.  I have never spoken to one woman friend who expressed a desire to receive fragrance.  Incidentally, guys, they don’t want lingerie in a size too small, either.

It pisses me off that I can’t understand fragrance commercials. The Katy Perry one? “Killer Queen?” If Freddie Mercury showed up, singing the song from the grave, a la that puzzling ad for Dior where Charlize Theron chums it up with Grace Kelly and Marilyn Monroe—if that happened, THAT would give it some street cred.  Am I really supposed to buy this empowerment message, that Katy is so free when she cuts off her corset (oh, wait–she kept the corset. Cuz it’s hot.)?

The problem is that these ads are all shot through the most male heterosexual lens possible.  Thus the absence of Freddie Mercury, in all his gay and brilliant glory. 

Just know, guys, that a gift card to anywhere that is not a grocery store or a vacuum cleaner dealer is gonna get you more game than a damned overpriced bottle of perfume.  Face it; so many people these days have asthma and can’t deal with smelling stuff anyway.

The exception to this rule: if you are eight years old and you pick out perfume from Rite Aid for your mommy.  You are golden.  Come to think of it, perhaps this is why men think that cologne is the ticket for getting that special reaction.  That’s sweet.  But that ship has sailed, Skippy.

Image: http://queenrockband.blogspot.com/2013/05/freddie-mercury-freddie-mercury-muses.html

Structured Procrastination Makes Me Awesome August 16, 2013

Structured Procrastination is a thing, and a beautiful thing it is. The title of the book is, in itself, worth a look: The Art of Procrastination:  A  Guide to Effective Dawdling, Lollygagging, and Postponing.

The idea is that procrastinators tend to get lots of good stuff done whilst avoiding other important tasks.  Also, that they do their best work on those high-priority items with a limited amount of time (we generally create this circumstance through thorough laundry-doing and DIY projecting).

I have been meaning to get around to reading this book ever since I heard a piece about it on NPR, but I guess that it takes a while to process the experience of having one’s entire life validated in one brief radio spot.  I’m not even entirely sure that John Perry, the author of the above-mentioned book, has any sort of corner on the concept.  He might not have copyrighted promptly; who knows?

Tonight, I am in late-ish August mode, that period of time when teachers are knee-deep in professional development, and when they anxiously attempt to crush the sneaking suspicion within; the one that is telling them that, perhaps, they are imposters after all.

Structured procrastination is so comforting and entertaining right now.   There are quite a few tasks that I have to do.  Soon.  Some of my possible alternative accomplishments:

*Procrastination a la Pinterest:

 

*Create and pin all possible projects involving bleach crafting, and share every one of these on Facebook. There are a lot of them. Don’t ask me to define “bleach crafting.” I just made up the category when I saw a really ugly Pinterest shirt with writing done with bleach.  It is my hope that some prominent bleach artist with her own Etsy shop called “Life’s a Bleach” does not read this and write an indignant comment while she puts off filling those bleach lettering orders for that family reunion in East Undershirt. She made up the category, and her last name is White.

*Clean my Pier One rattan accent table using cotton swabs and whatever the Internet says is best for cleaning rattan that has been cleaned less than once.  Come on, clean freaks.  I’ve dusted it.

*Deadhead the annuals to extend their bloom duration.

*Throw away those potatoes.

*Plan a procrastination party.  What will you accomplish when you structure your avoidance?

Peachy and the Purple Pedicure July 27, 2013

Meet Peachy’s Purple Pedicure.

This is about as close to a “selfie” as you are ever going to see here.  Besides, I read a snotty piece of advice on some snotty piece of social media that no one wants to see your location by seeing your toes in the foreground.  Rebel that I am, I take that as a challenge.  I may even take a beach one, just to be beachy about it. It is ever-so-slightly artistic, seeing as how the pedicure is such an ephemeral event.

 

Here, Peachy’s Purple Pedicure plans dinner.  Don’t worry, no food was foot-touched.

Finally, Purple Pedicure pumps iron.

It’s no garden gnome, but it’s not a fish face in the bathroom mirror, either.

Keep a large, ugly coat handy—just in case June 26, 2013

It’s summer again–time for a replay of my PSA persuading the world to ditch the ugly coat.

peachyteachy

     So, there is this enormous coat that lives at my house.  It’s a man’s coat, worn by the man of the house on any day where there is a chance of freezing temperature or some possibility that he may be called away to the Arctic Circle on business.  It’s reversible, which is an iron-clad guarantee that we won’t be seeing it or any of its counterparts on the runway of Fashion Week anytime soon.  Except in Yakutsk.  The coat has resisted stepping aside gracefully in the face of not one, but two purchases of stylish and attractive outerwear.  Its pockets contain what amounts to a small Y2K kit and about seventy thousand minor receipts, presumably for the items in the doomsday prep outfit: gum, lighters, fun size candy bars.   You have figured out that this is not the coat of a fitness nut.

I am using today’s…

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Bad Moon Rising February 26, 2013

Test Your Knowledge of Urban Education!

WHICH SCENARIO DID NOT HAPPEN ON THIS, THE DAY OF THE FULL MOON?

1. Did I lock my classroom door today to keep out a disruptive student? Again?
2. Did the kid proceed to kick the door for about a half hour, rendering me a super effective teacher? Again? 
3. Did the rest of the class placidly continue with their work, ignoring the distraction, and increasing their stamina for responding to multi-step fraction word problems?

If you picked 1 or 2, you have not been reading my blog for very long, have you? And you missed the nearly identical situation detailed a couple of weeks ago here .  There is little doubt that this blogging strategy will not earn me tons of readers who have fashion blogs (although you are so super welcome!), but I would like to suggest that you picture me, a smallish woman, body blocking an eleven-year-old while wearing a snappy Loft jacket of tiny railroad cap stripes–I wear it in recognition of the fact that my class is, well, a train wreck.  Sporty!

Down the hall, in my colleague’s classroom, I am pretty sure that they were performing a re-enactment of the flying monkey scene from the Wizard of Oz, with one small exception: the flying monkeys in the movie don’t fight EACH OTHER. At the very least, it is reassuring to know that it’s not just me!

It doesn’t occur to us until later, after the crisis has ended and we are at home recovering: what if this kid is angry enough to bring a knife to school? So many of them have demonstrated their absolute willingness to beat the hell out of each other; it’s the main strategy for dealing with the overwhelming threat of another human LOOKING AT THEM. You know that there are weapons unseen on these kids, probably far more often than we want to think about.  Every day is a WTF day.

Good thing I have an invisible and  invincible force field around me at all times.

Manicure Gone Horribly Wrong July 13, 2012

I rarely, rarely avail myself of that upper-crust indulgence: the manicure.  Perhaps it comes from my Depression-era raised mother, who would be downright embarrassed to do such a thing.  On the other hand, I do treat myself to the occasional pedicure from time to time, and Mom would sooner have pierced cartilage (I upset her farm girl sensibilities when I got my lobes pierced, let alone any of that other heathen puncturing–it really created a rift that she carried to her grave).  Mom owned some nail polish, yes, but I am quite certain that the striation in the bottle’s contents indicates a pre-sixties Avon product.

For those of you who have a life, my research on your behalf reveals that the image at left is an example of what we do these days when we want to tell the world all about our latest nail color: hand hug the bottle whilst displaying our fresh and perfect manicure.

Getting back to depression,  this is not about a perfect manicure.  I did give it a shot, due to the lure of an online mani/pedi coupon.  I was paired up with a nail technician who was all but silent while taking the better part of two hours to complete said M/P.  It was nice, you know, the awkward quietude that enabled me to pay close attention to the sitcom broadcast on four flat screens in the cavernous, mostly empty and orange salon.  And everything looked quite nice at the end.

Let’s just cut to the chase and put it out there—by the time I was in my car, I had dinged up no fewer than three fingernails, rendering me impotent as a fingernail model.  HOW is it possible not to do this, I ask you!?  HOW can a five dollar bill be so destructive? Clearly, I am not made for manicuring.  My fingers reject nail polish and respond with the equivalent of digit projectile vomiting.

BUT WAIT! I saw something going on in there that supposedly yields an indestructible result, even in the face of the abrasive and abusive five dollar bill.  Varnish? Veneer? Shellac!! It seemed that the main difference is that you have to “cure” your newly-shellacked (?) claws in a mini-kiln for a couple of minutes, then walk on hot coals, after which your nails are ready to return to the potter’s wheel and form the urn of a lifetime!  Surely that costs more. . .

image: http://www.temptalia.com/images/summer2011/wetnwild_graysanatomy004.jpg

Keep a large, ugly coat handy—just in case July 7, 2012

     So, there is this enormous coat that lives at my house.  It’s a man’s coat, worn by the man of the house on any day where there is a chance of freezing temperature or some possibility that he may be called away to the Arctic Circle on business.  It’s reversible, which is an iron-clad guarantee that we won’t be seeing it or any of its counterparts on the runway of Fashion Week anytime soon.  Except in Yakutsk.  The coat has resisted stepping aside gracefully in the face of not one, but two purchases of stylish and attractive outerwear.  Its pockets contain what amounts to a small Y2K kit and about seventy thousand minor receipts, presumably for the items in the doomsday prep outfit: gum, lighters, fun size candy bars.   You have figured out that this is not the coat of a fitness nut.

I am using today’s ninety-degree plus temperature as an excuse to A:  Deep six the coat in the attic, and, B:  Stuff some tube socks in the sleeves to “hold its shape.”  The geometrical term for the shape to which I refer is “amorphous coatlyhedron.”  No, I have no idea where your tube socks went.  Maybe they went to look for a nice tube to live in.

I try super hard to live and let live in the wardrobe department, especially since I have recently felt that my own wardrobe is beginning to lean toward the Amish persuasion.  If he had his druthers, though, no item of his clothing would ever go to Goodwill or become a soft and absorbent rag, regardless of holes, paper thinness, or ugliness of coat.  However, sometimes I am weak.  I may have let slip once that he could not wear the “homeless guy coat” out to dinner.  And then, I might have postscripted that one with something to the effect of–“I am not comfortable going on a date with Aqualung.”

image: eariam.blogspot.com