Halloween

While shopping at Fabric Hell I heard an announcement over the intercom that their clearance fabrics were 50% off, an unannounced one-day sale. I meandered over and instantly fell in love with a blue fabric which announced itself to me as my Halloween costume. It was SO Project Runway (in a cheap-ass, tasteless kind of way).

So I started out making an Uli dress, but it morphed into a PR homage. I did the Santino braiding around the neck. I melted the hem, a la Michael with the Pam Grier hotpants. I mixed prints, my nod to Uli. And I fake tanned for the Duchess. I also did the smokey eye with a nude lip. During the day I tried making a bow out of my hair, but it was too subtle (and doing it correctly would have been too much work), so I just wore it loose for the evening.

If only I had a digital camera; Michael's cell phone just doesn't do it justice, and my film won't be developed for a while. *sigh*

I miss Dorothy Parker

"For all these years, Lorelai in “Gilmore Girls” has been painful and surprising and exciting to watch — a marvelous high-wire act. How cruel that the new writer of the show wants to rub her face in conventionality, strip her of the speed that was her reason for being and transform her into another banal television lead."

Great review in the NY Times by Virginia Heffernan.

H&M

Last night Michael and I cruised the Post Street H&M. Last month we'd met at the Powell Street store, where I was returning a sweater. Last week we braved the crowds to check out the new Westfield Mall and walked by the H&M there. The mall, btw, was CRAZY! We went at six p.m. on Saturday - I figured the stores would be closing, and we'd have a chance to just walk past the stores to see what's there. No. It was packed. Shoulder-to-shoulder packed. My son, for whom shopping is a pastime, couldn't get out of there fast enough.

The H&M in the mall has a lot of children's clothes. That was enough for us to notice - I didn't see anything calling my name, so I felt fine skipping an interior look. I'd read reviews saying that the Post Street H&M had clothes that were more suited for older women (omigod! am I one of those?), so I thought it was worth checking out.

It is indeed for women (no men's department, no children's), but I'm not sure that older is quite accurate. Colder, perhaps - I saw no fewer than 10 different types of overcoats. And the upstairs seems more geared to either 13-year olds, or closeouts. It was all garish colors, mostly Ts, tanks, and polos.

The clothes downstairs mostly looked like a repeat of what's at the Powell Street store, but without the crowds. That in itself is a big plus, but since the selection is so much better at Powell, I think I'll stick with it. Even with the 30 minute + wait for a dressing room, it's worth it.

At least I've learned that I shouldn't even bother looking at their pants. They are not ever going to fit me, no matter the style. But everything else works. It may be cheap, it may fall apart, but it'll look good for this season at least.

Menswear

Last night I drove past a man getting out of his car. He was at least 70, very tan, and wearing a seersucker shirt, madras plaid shorts, and topsiders. He looked so out of place as to appear comical. It reminded me of going to New York to drop Michael off when he moved there. It was August, and people weren't wearing much. I felt as though I was in a completely alien environment because folks were baring so much flesh.

Mark Twain is credited as saying that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco. I've thought about the cold (it's hard to avoid thinking about the cold), but I hadn't thought much about how it impacts what we wear. A summer outfit, to me, involves a cardigan or windbreaker. Beachwear involves a fleece jacket and long pants. It's not that there's never a time for shorts, but it certainly isn't at the beach. And madras? With a tan??? Where on earth was he from?

Then as I continued home I drove past a guy who was jogging in a T-shirt which read "I (heart) hot moms." My heart sang, and my faith in Berkeley men's couture was realigned.

You're how old?

This morning at the gym I was talking with some women about WW, and said something about having had a baby pooch forever, and finally losing it now that my son is 21. They both did double takes. It's not an uncommon response, and it almost always feels good.

At noon Susan and I were walking around the reservoir talking about how with this next birthday I'll need to make my first appointment to visit the waffle machine.

And this evening I found my first grey hair.

I feel a bit as though I've aged a lifetime in one day. I've gone from the young, fit, teen mom to the grey-haired woman scheduling a mammogram. Thank god I'm not going through menopause. Yet.

Bye-bye, boobies

One of the things that kept me from trying to lose weight for years was my boobs. I loved having boobs. A B-cup isn't much, but compared to a nearly-A, they're huge! And since they came on so slowly, after gaining a fair amount of weight, I figured they'd be the first thing I'd lose if I ever dieted.

They stuck around much longer than I expected. I'm now within 2 pounds of my goal weight, and still wearing a B-cup. A padded, push-up, not quite full B-cup, but a B-cup, dammit! And oh, the joys of the push-up bra! I tried one once, years ago, when I was a nearly-A. It was ridiculous. Going from pancake-flat to having roundness on my chest looked absurd, and I've avoided push-ups ever since.

But once I lost enough weight that a 38 B really didn't fit, I went in for sizing and shopping. Lo and behold, I was told I'm a 34 B. So, fearing that loss of cup size was right around the corner, I tried on a push-up. Without making me look like I'm pretending to be a D-cup, I've suddenly got cleavage. And now, though I notice they're getting smaller, they're still pretty happy to hang out in a B-cup.

Who knew?

The Darndest Things

Susan has a great laugh. One of the joys of being at work used to be hearing her laughter down the hall. She laughs loudly and often. I love to hang out with her in part because I know I'll laugh - her laughter is infectious.

In addition to having an infectious laugh, Susan has also made me laugh incredibly hard because of the things she's said. Once I was in her office talking about colors I don't wear, and mentioned that I own very little green. She said, "Oh, I don't think I own anything green at all." She was wearing a green jacket.

When we went to see Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, she looked around the audience as we were waiting for the first act to start and said, "I don't think I've ever seen so many men at the theatre before. (pause) They're not available, are they?" I don't think I've ever seen such a concentration of gay men outside various bars in the Castro.

This weekend we had lunch at Pizza Antica after our walk, and talked a bit about a Persian guy I met. She remembered that someone in the office had said they were only attracted to fair-haired people, so she said, "I was thinking you weren't attracted to darker men, but I guess that doesn't really make sense, does it?" I howled. The waiter stopped by and said, "You ladies are clearly having too much fun." Susan has of course met Michael, my African-American son, several times.

I can't wait to hear what she comes up with next.

Certifiable

I took a quiz online and got this .jpg as a prize!
Ah, The Gilmore Girls - my life in a parallel universe, with better costuming and dialogue. Rory turned 21 just a couple of months before Michael, graduated from high school when Michael should have, and let's face it, Albany is Stars Hollow. Now if I could just find Luke...

Netflix Sux

I’ve been a Netflix member for about 2 years, on the three-at-a-time plan. No big problems – the occasional slight damage to a disc, twice something got lost on its way to me and I had to report it as missing, but the replacements came quickly and I’ve enjoyed my membership.

I mostly watch things other people don’t watch. The Netflix top 100 are mostly movies I’d never see, and their recommendations rarely interest me. I tend to watch documentaries, foreign films, old classics, the odd musical or two. On average I tend to keep each movie for two days. Lagaan I kept for six months because I misplaced it and couldn’t find it. So I don’t qualify as a heavy user.

So then why is Netflix throttling me? I sent in a disc last Friday. They should have gotten in Saturday, processed it Monday and sent out the next disc, which I should have received on Tuesday (although they would tell me I’d receive it on Wednesday). Instead, it’s now Thursday and they’ve finally sent me an email letting me know that they’re putting the next disc in the mail today, and I’ll get it on Saturday! That means I’ll have been down to two discs for an entire week, even though I’m supposed to be on the three-at-a-time plan.

I realize that I’m not guaranteed to have three discs in my hot little hand at all times, that transit times will impact how many I have (and if I’m stupid enough to put all three in the mail on Friday, I will be without any DVDs for at least four days. But that would at least be my decision. Throttling me is their choice, and their choice seems to be to prevent me from getting what I paid for – three DVDs at a time).

The best suggestion I’ve seen on other websites is to use the minimum plan and subscribe to both Netflix and Blockbuster Online, then pace it so that you hang onto your movies from one while waiting for the other to deliver. Allegedly this will prevent either company from treating you as a heavy user, and you’ll be able to get about the number of movies per month you should be getting on a higher-priced plan.

I just can’t stomach the idea of using Blockbuster, though. They, like AOL, are spawn of Satan. And I love my little local video store, but my Netflix queue is currently at 293 movies, every one of which I really want to see. My guess would be that the local store carries maybe a third of what’s on my queue.

I’m not ready to quit Netflix. Yet. But I’ll badmouth them to anyone who’ll listen.

Michael's birthday party

Your son is how old?

I didn't start to freak out about Michael turning 21 until the day before it happened. I knew it was coming, but for some reason, it wasn't until I wrote the date out on something that it really hit me that his birthday would be the next day, he would turn 21, and I'd be the parent of an adult. How is this even possible? I'm not even an adult yet. How can I be the parent of one?

It's always like this. I remember "How can I be the parent of an elementary school-age child?" "How can I be the parent of a middle schooler?" And my favorite, "I'm not old enough to be the parent of a teenager!" These are the things they don't tell you when you go to Teen Mom School. They also don't tell you that some day your child will be older than your high school geometry teacher's child, and you'll be able to give him parenting advice. If they had told us those sorts of things in Teen Mom School, I bet there would have been a lot more people deciding they didn't want to be Teen Moms.

Being the parent of an adult feels much less threatening than any of the previous landmark birthdays, in part because Michael doesn't live with me any more. I don't have to face him on a daily basis and be reminded of how old I am (or should be). But this year in general is hard because I'll be turning 40 later in the year. Another warning they didn't give us in Teen Mom School - to plan our unintended pregnancies so we wouldn't be turning 40 the same year our child turns 21. It's just not a good combination. So once again, I'm reclaiming 38. I may have to stay here for awhile. I really like 38 - it feels comfortable, and appropriate. And really, there's not much difference between being 40 with a 21 year-old and being 38 with a 21 year-old, right? Just so long as I move on by the time I would've been pregnant at 12.

(not my real hair color)

Halfway Mark

At last night's WW weigh-in I got my 15 pound bookmark - halfway to goal. And by some wondrous coincidence, the topic for that meeting was how to get motivated again after hitting a plateau or gaining back some weight. Having just spent a month being mostly off-program and not exercising, I felt really ready to jump in with my helpful comments. After all, I had just lost four pounds in a week, after a month in which I mostly maintained. I had needed to kick my own butt in order to jump-start my weight loss and exercise.

So I was getting set to be all smug and helpful about how to get motivated again, when someone said they'd been on a plateau for FOUR YEARS! Then someone else chimed in about how she got to within 2 pounds of her goal weight, and then gained most of it back and hasn't lost much (but has kept coming to meetings). Then over and over people commented on how they'd made lifetime or lost significant amounts, and then had gained it back. It was depressing.

Part of me wanted to stick my fingers in my ears so I couldn't hear them. Another part was listening with morbid fascination, noting that it could be my future. And there was another part trying to protect me, telling me that most people aren't really very smart. But it's a lot harder to believe that people are dumb when I'm looking at them. When I'm lurking in the WW chat rooms, it's easy to be dismissive of the folks who are complaining because they can't lose weight even though they've cut back on the number of times per day that they eat a Big Mac. Or who consistently write "loose" instead of "lose." But when I'm at a meeting, I tend to think of everyone as being fairly intelligent. Maybe I'm just lucky to go to a meeting with lots of fairly sharp folks. Or maybe the dorks just keep quiet. And it's certainly easier to be dismissive of someone once they start misspelling things, while people who attend meetings and never say anything remain innocent until they open their mouths.

So instead of leaving the meeting feeling great about getting halfway to my goal, I left feeling vaguely anxious about the possiblity of gaining weight back in the future, and very unhappy with how judgemental I am. I can usually talk myself out of it, but it makes me unhappy that my first response is to dismiss someone as being not very smart.

Today was a great antidote. I've heard my students in several conversations that were so far over my head that I can't even remember what they were about, walked in on a student who was going over a math problem so complex that I didn't even recognize some of the symbols, and looked through the bookshelves of several students and saw titles of textbooks that made me feel very small (one of them was Bargey's Manual of Systemic Bacteriology).

I am not that smart. I'm good at some things, but math is not one of them. Reading "The Elegant Universe" makes my head hurt. So I will now get down off my high horse and appreciate people who use six exclamation marks after each sentence when they're in a chat room.

But I made it to the halfway mark! Yipee for me!!!!!!