Shall We...Capri?

I put out a request on Facebook recently, a cry for help if you will, looking for suggestions of topics about which to write.  I got a few random subjects, one of which debuted yesterday talking about hair, and one that sounded like it had an entire back story of its own, and since I had not been present for said story I could not presume to detail it in text. Today’s winning topic is capri pants.  See, random.  Actually, let’s not say winning.  I’m not sure how winning this is going to be.  Chosen topic.  Better. Capri pants.  What about them?  Why them?  Why now?  I suppose because warmer weather is here.  It’s too hot for regular pants but you’re not quite ready to expose your entire leg so you showcase your ankle and lower calf.  Just a little at a time.  Then when you’re comfortable enough you can work your way up to Bermuda shorts.  It’s like a time-lapse strip tease.   Just remember to continue to shave as far as is necessary as your hem rises. I daresay you will never see me in capri pants, pedal pushers, clam diggers, etc…  One reason is because I am short.  Not to say that capris should not be sold to short people.  Wear what you want.  I just prefer not to look any shorter than I already am.  The raised pant leg breaks up the line of the leg and just chops you right up.  At a statuesque 5’4”, I prefer to look as tall as possible and I cannot do so wearing capri pants. Another reason I don’t wear them is because I’m fairly certain that my ankles are going to get cold.  I just don’t think shoes and knee socks are the right match for capris.  It kind of defeats the purpose.  You could put on leg warmers but then, for all anyone else knows, you’re just wearing pants.  They can’t see the exposed six inches of ankle, as it is no longer exposed.  I also feel that I don’t have the appropriate footwear. Furthermore, do not confuse capri pants with highwaters.  They are not the same.  Inexplicably, though, even highwaters had a brief popularity in the last few years.  I have no clue as to why.  It just looks as though you are not aware that your pants are a little too short.  Like you had a growth spurt.  You’re 34, you had no growth spurt, you just have bad taste in pant lengths. Cousin to the capri pants is the utterly horrendous gaucho, since we’re talking about highwaters and other such tasteless trousers.  Gaucho pants also saw quite the resurgence in the millennium, though God only knows why.  I still see them on occasion and wonder why.  It’s as though someone wanted all the flowing movement of a circle skirt with the practicality of board shorts.  Thus was spawned the red-headed step-child of both items, the gaucho.  Yet another incarnation of short pants you will never see me wear. The weather is turning hotter every day.  Sadly, the capri pant is just not an option for me.  If it’s that hot, I’m wearing shorts. Then my entire leg can get cold instead of just the ankle. So what say you? Do you Capri? And just what shoes are right for those things?

Gimme A Head With Hair

Hair.  I think it’s safe to say that at one point or another each of us has/had some.  As we all know, eventually, aforementioned hair has to be cut.  Maybe because people keep commenting on what a pretty little girl your son is, and he is, by the way.  Maybe your high and tight turned into a low and loose.  Or perhaps it’s just the one thing you have control over since that bastard broke up with you. Maybe you’ve been mistaken for Bill Golden?  What’s worse, you don’t even know who that is. Our first haircuts are not our personal choice.  They are at the behest of our keepers, parents if you will.  The general time frame for that first trim is in the first 3-4 years of life, unless you’re my cousin Heather whose first haircut came just shy of her eleventh birthday. No, not really.  She was eight.  Eight and four months. For my eldest child’s first haircut, I had a full bag of Tropical Starburst at the ready and a fully charged iPod so he could play Angry Birds to distract him.  He was three.  After I saw the pictures of his birthday party and wondered why Justin Guarini was wearing my son’s football jersey, I knew it was about that time.  Afterwards, he looked a lot older. CAUTION: just because they look older does not mean they will act older. My second child’s haircut is looming in the near future as his resemblance to Shirley Temple becomes more and more prevalent. At times, one may find him or herself on the receiving end of a bad haircut.  Then what?  You could find a different stylist/barber to fix the feature that is making you look like the lead singer of The Cure.  Or, if you have the cojones, you can leave it, make it work, and tell people it’s exactly the way you told them you wanted it.  It’s so avant garde. What happens when you don’t realize that you have actually been follicularly massacred?  Is it even worse when everyone knows but you? No, and I’ll tell you why.  Because as long as you like it, you probably aren’t aware of the fact that other people think you look like half a Flock of Seagulls.  I know this from experience, though I did not rock the Flock. I was trying to remember if I had ever gotten a bad haircut  and I simply could not think of one.  Then I remembered the ‘do of middle school.  Sadly, it was my choice and I liked it, but I might as well have been wearing flannel and kissing girls.  What was my mother thinking when she approved this haircut? Well, Nonnie?  What say you? It did grow out as all hair will.  The only time I was unhappy with a haircut was when stylist lady did not listen to what I said I wanted as I pointed to the accompanying picture.  What I got instead was her version of said haircut.  Never again.  Oh, how I cried.  It wasn’t BAD, per se, but it wasn’t what I wanted.  It was what SHE wanted. Employment listings for stylists should include the sentence “Control freaks need not apply.” How do I avoid bad haircuts now?  I avoid ALL haircuts.  Completely eliminates risk.  Sure, I can’t dance without my hair getting caught between my elbow and waist, but it’s worth it, I think. Then there are those that only wish they HAD enough hair for a haircut, even a bad one. No, I haven’t had much (conscious) experience in the area of the bad haircut. Boy, could I tell you about bad dye jobs, though!

Run Like A Mudder

I want to run.  I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike. Oh, sorry, Queen got stuck in there for a minute. I want to run races.  I want to do a mud run.  There’s only one thing stopping me. Me. Well, that and the fact that my left running shoe is about to turn itself into a peep-toe flat.  I can only imagine what my Asics have to say on the matter. As many times as I have said it, I want to run.  I even said it a few sentences ago.  See?  I do say it a lot.  I have started running again several times.  One of my favorite pinned items on Pinterest says “If you’re tired of starting over, stop giving up.” There’s a girl beside the text.  What is she doing?  Running, of course!  It’s a sign.  Maybe it’s just a sign that people quit running a lot.  I understand that, it’s not like it’s easy!  If it were, everyone would do it.  And no one would be overweight. So, to sum up, running is hard. I have done two 5K races in my life.  The first one I did not even two months after I had my second child.  I love to say that it sounds so hard core.  I recall right after the cord was cut saying to what, oddly, was a roomful of med students that I now had to go train for a race.  It was the medication talking mostly. My second 5K was a week after that same child turned 3.  Good and spaced out.  I did manage to shave almost seven minutes off my time, though.  Unfortunately, not a very impressive time to begin with.  Oh, well, we aren’t all Kenyan.  Gotta start somewhere. I want something to challenge me, and yes, running on its own does that.  I want a REAL challenge.  I want…the Tough Mudder.  Probably the toughest event on the planet, it says so right there on the website.  Ten or so miles and about twenty obstacles to get through.  Now when I say obstacles, my mind automatically reaches back through the television ages and channels the old Nickelodeon show Double Dare.  Anybody else remember that or am I really showing my age here? I don’t mean walking a balance beam or, as it were, trying to find an orange flag in a pile of goo.  Ever see Ninja Warrior?  It’s kind of like that.  Crawling through a field of dangling live wires, jumping bales of flaming hay, a massive pit of mud to traverse.  THOSE are obstacles, baby.  Nary an orange flag to be seen. Luckily and somewhat surprisingly, your finish time at Tough Mudder is probably the least important thing anyone focuses on.  Getting through it and helping people out along the way is what it’s about.  I have seen YouTube clips of parts of the races that bring me to absolute tears they are so great and that is not something I admit willingly.  Look up Tough Mudder on YouTube.  You’ll see what I mean. It is, without a doubt, hard core.  And it is what I want. This may come as a shock to you, but I am not a Marine.  No, it’s true.  Spare me your gasps of surprise.  I possess what I believe to be about the average amount of upper body strength for a chick.  Which means I can’t do a pull-up.  That bothers me.  Partially because I know that won’t get me through Tough Mudder.  At all.   I also can’t expect a REAL Marine to follow behind me and hold my legs up when I have to do things like monkey bars.  Ascending monkey bars.  The humanity. Yes, people will gladly help, but I’d really rather not need it if I can at all avoid it.  That’s why I have to start training for it.  Another potential problem is the entry fee.  It’s no $25 road race, dude.  It’s a three digit price tag.  Proceeds go to a very worthy cause, the Wounded Warrior Project.  If anybody deserves my money it’s them.  Or March of Dimes.  Or Susan G. Komen.  But they aren’t getting it.  Wounded Warrior is.  Oh, except for the fact that I don’t have that kind of money to donate.  See the potential for an issue there? Yes, without the funds, I’m really just running up and down my parents’ driveway looking for a mud puddle to jump in when I’m done.  While my 3 and 4 year olds will disagree, I don’t think that is worthwhile. I don’t know how long it would take me to fully train for the Tough Mudder, but I do know that Zumba alone will not accomplish it.  More’s the pity.  I gotta do the stuff I avoid in the weight room.  The stuff I used to be “sick” for in gym class.  Yeeeahh, pretty much the stuff I can’t do. Oh, I also would prefer not to do this alone.  Any volunteers?  I can’t make my Hetero Life Mate Rosa do it.  She says no.  Some days it’s hell, no.  Other days it’s HAELLLL NO!  I’m pretty sure one of these days it’ll be ‘stop asking me’ followed shortly by ‘I think we should see other Hetero Life Mates.’ People, I implore you.  Don’t make me roll in the mud by myself.   Incidentally, when you finish you do get a bright orange headband.  Hey, it could have been a flag in some goo.

Chirp Chirp! Tweet Tweet!

After I wrote that my head started singing “toot toot! Ahhhh beep beep!”  Kudos if you know the song. So recently upon rediscovering the email connected to my long-stagnant blogs, I was alerted to the fact that Twitter missed me.  Perhaps you’ve heard.  After a very long session involving the delete button, I ambled over to this Twitter and had a look around.  Shortly thereafter I began to wonder why I am following a Korean BBQ lunch truck in Orlando. I learned from the email spring cleaning that, lo and behold, I had followers!  However, I can’t help but feel that I let 78% of those followers down daily as they seem to be death metal bands.  Sorry, Choking on Bile, did you not want to know that I switched to Splenda?  Oh, well, thanks for following just the same!  There were also real people following me, at least a few of whom I was tickled to see there. (Ahem, @danielleaelwood) I have to admit that I joined Twitter because of the hype.  I must admit further that once I signed up I had no clue how to use it.  I mean, I understood the concept, 140 characters and all, but the format that I was actually gazing upon was making no sense.  Perhaps it was because it was a recently birthed app at the time.  I can only hope that it made sense to almost no one and that they were all tweeting from their phones via text message because they couldn’t figure out how to do it any other way.  Either way that was the main reason my interest in it fizzled out pretty quickly. Now!  I understand the app now!  Oh, it makes sense!  Now I can do more than just stare at it blankly.  And it hits me…Twitter is actually an ideal medium for me.  Short, to the point, witty one-liners that I can deliver to, again, mostly death metal bands.  Oh, and Danielle Elwood!  Hi, Danielle! Here’s where you come in.  Don’t let my singular brand of humor go unappreciated.  Come follow me on Twitter!  Don’t subscribe to Twitter?  Sign up!  Danielle is busy, she can’t watch my tweets all by herself!  She has her own self-named website to tend.  Follow me and I will follow you back.  Sounds like a threat.  Kinda of like mutual stalking. Now that Twitter is more user friendly (for me) and I know that it missed me, I intend to utilize it for my random thoughts and shameless plugs.  What thoughts?  What plugs? you wonder.  Follow me and see. And be sure to wave to Danielle.

Here's the Mail It Never Fails...

  Ever stumble upon an email address that you have forgotten about?  Then by some miracle you remember the password, open it up and see that you have 1,183 pieces of mail waiting for you to read.   Or take all the time to delete.  Why don’t they make a ‘delete all’ button? Today I have done such a thing. Ironically, it’s the email connected to all my blogs. Well, if people would comment on them I’d have a reason to check!  No, no, I realize that if my blogs were my kids I’d be no better than that couple would couldn’t be bothered to feed their child because they were too busy playing World of Warcraft.  Yes, that really happened, by the way. Let me tell you what I have found in this dusty old electronic mail box.  Updates from a pregnancy website on a child I was never even pregnant with.  My question here is, who was? A ‘digest’ email regarding house cleaning that looks as though it comes four times a day.  Good God, who is talking about cleaning their houses that often?!  Oh, so THAT’S where my iTunes receipts have been going. Twitter update.  I have a Twitter account? Ahem!   I mean, I have a Twitter account! @deathmetalmommy.  Follow me! GeorgiaSexOffenders.com.  Well, that’s just good sense. Ooh! I have 37 followers on Twitter!  It looks like most of them are death metal bands.  Hmm, it pays to read the whole name, people. EHarmony?  Um, no? Oh, look, they’ve missed me on Twitter. I don’t know who Andy Bailey is, but he seems to like me.  Oh, maybe it’s some newsletter that had relevance at the time. Or it’s eHarmony again. A date night look that I HAVE to try from Glamour last November. Perhaps I should tweet more.  They seem to really like me, too.  Along with a new follower as of November of last year, Choking on Bile. I…I…thanks for following? It’s pretty much playing out like a big pattern. Why have I been invited to join a Paranormal Social Network? OK, unsubscribe.  “Do you really want to unsubscribe from this newsletter?” Would I have clicked it if I didn’t? Free yoga panty.  They must be really flexible. Someone activated Find my iPhone.   I hope they found me. Someone wants my opinion on their diet/fitness app…last September.  Well, better late than never, right? I’m now down to 665 email.  Oy. Aw, hell, somebody did comment on a blog post.  And it’s someone I don’t know!  My sincerest apologies for not seeing it! Wait, no—I do know them. Classmates.com update for a school I never went to.  What? 389.  Still going. Oh, hey, they’ve missed me on Twitter! Nothing interesting, nothing interesting. Oh, they’re all gone. OK, and now I see that there actually is a ‘delete all’ button. I’ll remember that for next time I have over 1,000 emails. Maybe I should put something on Twitter.  They miss me.

The AA of Fashion

American Apparel. It’s terrible.

And I love it.

I am a little ashamed what with all the bad press American Apparel gets because of its lecherous head honcho, Dov Charney, but I just can’t help it. This brand totally appeals to the gaudy retro in me. Not fifties retro, I leave that to labels like Stop Staring. This is sweet, gauche, self-absorbed eighties retro. You’re not going to find any other brand that proudly dedicates one of the front page ads of its website to a fabric like nylon tricot. These days you’re more likely to see the page emblazoned with ‘Organic cotton!’ Not American Apparel, oh no. Sure, they do have some organic cotton, but it’s not the main thing they’re hawking. Again, not too many other retailers use the adjective ‘shiny’ on such a wide expanse of products. When was the last time you bought shiny bike shorts? I ask you. Probably about, what, 1987? Sounds about right.

A lot of the items seemed familiar to me as I clicked through the on line catalog pages. Then I realized it. I had Barbies that wore most of these things when I was younger. It’s like the designers over at American Apparel saw the Barbie wardrobe and thought, “By Jove! What a fantastic idea! Zippers that go completely up the side of your nylon tricot neon green leggings in a contrasting purple color? We must market this to adults!” Seriously, I haven’t seen so many plastic, oddly placed zippers…well, since the eighties. I don’t think it’s necessarily a great fashion strategy, but it does make me a little nostalgic. It made me long for the days when Pepsi was Free and New Kids on the Block were still both New and Kids.

American Apparel is the only place that I have seen a quintessential eighties piece: the unitard. It’s pants, it’s a top, it’s spandex, what more do you really need? Maybe leg warmers? Well, they’ve got ‘em, baby. I remember the late eighties when my mother had a peacock blue unitard. I loved that thing. I took it upon myself to inherit it, though, the seams did eventually split and I miss it dearly. At least now I know where I can go to get a replacement.

I would also be remiss (and lying!) not to mention that I have their unisex Henley unitard on my wish list. I love it and I almost wish that it had the little trap door in the back. OK, I do wish that. And remember in eighties movies, those super short, skin-tight tank dresses that seemingly only hookers wore? Oh, they’ve got ‘em. In eight, count ‘em, EIGHT rock ‘em sock ‘em colors, including stripes and polka dots. They even have them in nylon tricot.

Another eighties treasure on the shelves is stirrup pants. Stirrup pants and harem pants. Harem pants, for those of you not of the eighties, were once referred to as Hammer pants. Aptly named for the uber trendy rapper M.C. Hammer who wore them. I can’t say that I quite understand the see-through factor that American Apparel has going on with some of their harem pants. Maybe it’s just so you’ll buy one of their leotards to wear under it.

They should name an entire department I Love Gold Lamé. They sure do. I have not seen this much gold lamé in the last twenty years combined, barring those two concerts by the Velcro Pygmies I attended. I cannot honestly say that I have a need or a use for a zip-up gold lame one-piece swimsuit, but I sure am trying to think of one.

American Apparel also seems to have quite the affinity for high waisted items, but not in the fifties Mad Men kind of way. These are the kind of high-waisted jeans that unless you weigh just a smidge under 100 pounds you will, in fact, be labeled pear-shaped.

They do have basic tees and they are basic tees, but the price suggests they are something more than just basic. So, yeah, the prices are not entirely reasonable on all items. And then there is all the bad press. So the CEO is, for lack of a better phrase, a pervy douche. OK, that said, don’t blame the clothes! And sure, the models have hip bones and cheek bones so sharp you could slice cheddar on them and that’s not quite so eighties. The sizing may also be a topic of dissension. Most things are sized a little small. That doesn’t seem like that big of a problem until you consider that a substantial percentage of Americans cannot shop at American Apparel at all because they do not have sizes that accommodate them. Why should the larger and half-size gals have to go without lace trimmed nylon tricot bike shorts and the matching stretch floral lace crop top? Although, to AA’s credit they have added some larger sizes of late.

There is a 2 and 3XL section, but it consists primarily of t-shirts and a couple of pair of lounge pants. Sadly, they could not even have been bothered to rustle up a plus size model or two to sport these items. It’s the same girls with jutting hips and clavicles. There is also a maternity section, but again there are no pregnant models. It’s not real maternity wear either. It is simply items that are really stretchy or really loose that would probably work for a preggo. Hmm, no plus models and no pregnant models…maybe Dov Charney IS a douche. Oh, well, that’s not concerning me today.

They also have men’s and kids’ clothes, but that’s all pretty straight forward, despite some strange male model choices and even stranger examples of pants.

There is something I want on just about every page of American Apparel’s website. Other things I just have to laugh and clap my hands at. American Apparel provides a piece of nostalgia for those of us who grew up in the eighties. We just have to accept the fact that we’re now old enough to be nostalgic and say ‘I remember when…”

Now if they only sold Hypercolor…

Tired Doesn't Begin to Describe It

After having numerous children over the past four years, you would think one would be used to having very little sleep.  Well, in this case, you would be wrong.  I have never had such a problem sleeping as I have these past few weeks.  I’m not sure why either.  Trust me it’s not an issue of GOING to sleep; I’m very adept at that part.  It’s the ignoring any children who may wake up and cry that is hindering my sleep at the present time.  Dude, why can’t they just go to sleep!  And stay asleep!
For example, last night I was very, very tired having spent the evening trying to think of the name of the strip club in Atlanta that Marilyn Manson likes which is known for employing one legged hookers.  You wanna know, don’t you?  More on that later.    I had gotten two out of the three children in bed and Sully was the only one left, just like most nights.  He finally fell asleep and I was under the impression that I had as well.  I dreamed I got on Facebook and posted on my father’s wall “What is the capital of Assyria?”(a Monty Python quote, for those of you not in the know.)
When I got to work this morning I checked Facebook on my phone and, to my utter confusion, realized that I had actually posted said quote.  That, my friends, is why you should not be allowed to surf and sleep.  Now if I had been drunk, that would have been more acceptable, but just excessively somnolent?  No, that one is all you.  
Think that’s bad?  It doesn’t compare to the night before that.
Lily had woke up so I plucked her from her crib and went to lay down on the couch and give her a bottle to put her back to sleep.  Somewhere after the bottle was began I fell asleep, and I believe the bottle rolled off somewhere.    I then had to fight unconsciousness to wake up because I heard something.  It took a while to realize that Lily was four inches from my head crying.  Loudly.  Loudly and a lot.  And I hadn’t heard it.  But that wasn’t the worst part.  The worst part was when I didn’t know who this screaming baby was lying beside me.  It really took a good full one or two minutes for it all to come back to me.  So I grabbed for the bottle which was now silently taunting me from under the recliner and had to get up.  Did you know that when you’re that sleepy it’s damn near impossible to stand up straight or walk without falling?  I didn't know that.  But I’m well aware of it now.
If this isn’t a great handful of reasons to get more sleep then I don’t know what is.
 
Oh, and it’s Clairmont.  But there’s only one monopedic hooker.