Year: 2006

  • Consider yourself enlightened

    I found the following top 10 list in an article online from Marie Claire magazine. It’s a list of the top 10 things a woman should have or do by age 40. What does it say about me that I’m 35 and I don’t even know what 90% of the things on this list are? Here is the list so that y’all can see how you measure up. I’ve provided my own insight in italics for your reading pleasure.

    1) A DEAD-SERIOUS PIECE OF TIMELESS CLOTHING MC recommends: The YSL tux for women. yes, at $3560, it costs the equivalent of 350 pairs of leggings, but it will outlive them by several decades.

    (Um, yeah do you get some kind of European vacation with that suit? The reason it’s timeless is that every time you see it in your closet you’ll think “What kind of fool am I that I paid $3500 for an article of clothing?”)

    2) A LOOK You’re not Madonna; enough already with the bimonthly reinventions. Are you a Dietrich throwback? A reconstructed punk? Figure it out and shop accordingly.

    (My look can range from bag lady to somewhat pulled together mama depending on the day. I’m not sure if you can call “anything from Old Navy” a look, but if so, that would be mine)

    3) A PIECE OF ART Yes, the birch trees in that framed Ansel Adams poster are v. v. haunting, but consider an investment piece with which to start an actual art collection. Living artists cost less; how about a Cecily Brown print or a limited-edition Tom Sachs multiple?

    (First of all, who? And second of all, why did I have a child if not to provide me with plenty of artwork and photos for my entire house?)

    4) A FIRST EDITION . . . of To The Lighthouse, the ur-Woolf.

    (What? Where am I?)

    5) FANCY LUGGAGE (A MATCHED SET, PLEASE) No more schlepping through airports with midcentury Samsonite. MC recommends: Gucci’s new Guccissima line, which makes the goofball trolley look like a major style statement ($3350).

    (Once again, does the price of the luggage include the European vacation? Do you really want to spend that kind of money for something that will only be used as a punching bag and possible spit depository for underpaid, angry baggage handlers?)

    6) ENLIGHTENED Go see the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India.

    (Sweet. I wonder how enlightened the Dalai Lama would think I am when I show up with my $3500 Gucci luggage wearing my $3500 YSL tux?)

    7) A FINANCIAL ADVISOR No, the hedge-fund dude one stool over doesn’t count.

    (I’ve mentioned before that I just recently discovered what a hedge fund is and I’m betting if I had a financial advisor he would advise me not to spend outrageous amounts of money on luggage or clothes. Maybe I’ll do something kicky and fun like save for college tuition.)

    8) A MUSEUM MEMBERSHIP Whether it’s the Met, the Getty, or the Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia, it’s time to earn some culture cred. take your place on the gala circuit—perfect for that YSL tux.

    (Instead of the museum membership, can I earn “culture cred” by knowing every word to all The Wiggles songs? How about the theme to Little Einsteins? I mean they play classical music and everything. As for the gala circuit, how about 142 birthday parties for people under 5?)

    9) A MAMMOGRAM ’Nuff said.

    (Seriously, this is the only sane thing on this list. No joke, y’all should go get a mammogram.)

    10) A GOOD CAUSE Stop considering yourself your own favorite charity. Amnesty International? Oxfam? Amfar? Then get your new financial advisor to determine what chunk of every paycheck you can commit.

    (I wonder if a good cause like buying diapers or peanut butter count? How about a pack of Nestle Ultimate chocolate chip cookie dough? It’s one of the best causes I know. Help stop PMS by eating this whole pack of cookie dough.)

    I hope this list has given y’all some inspiration. It’s a lot to accomplish before I turn 40, so I may start my own list and include such things as getting 8 hours of sleep just one night between now and my 40th birthday or making it through the day without getting some stain of foreign origin on my clothes, but then again that may be as ambitious as visiting the Dalai Lama and toting my pricey luggage up that mountain.

  • It’s what we do

    When P and I started dating eleven years ago, he didn’t know much about females. And by not much, I really mean nothing. It’s not like he hadn’t dated a few girls over the years, but when faced with choosing between listening to someone talk about her “feelings” or going to the ranch to hunt deer, I’m just saying that the deer hunting won out every time.

    Every single time.

    In fact, he was so clueless as to the female personality, that for the first year and a half we dated, he’d break up with me anytime I cried. He was convinced that something must be wrong with me because why was I crying? I finally had to tell him that sometimes girls just cry…it’s what we do, like putting on lipstick to go to the grocery store or trying on 47 pairs of shoes and not buying any of them.

    The week before our ultrasound to find out if we were having a boy or a girl, P had been in charge of a ski trip for his high school students. At the last minute, his only female chaperone became really sick and couldn’t go on the trip, which left P with a busload of kids, two male leaders, and more importantly, about twelve 14 year old girls with no female leader. Since I was 5 months pregnant and not about to contort my body into a seat on a bus for 17 hours, he became their leader.

    Every night during the trip, he would call and give me the report. One night the girls had convinced him that it would be fun to do everyone’s hair and he had ended up having his hair gelled, blowdried and straightened. Then he said someone pulled out a pair of scissors and they started actually cutting each other’s hair and naturally, one girl ended up in hysterical tears. I laughed and told him he was crazy. Everyone knows that you don’t let adolescent girls handle sharp utensils. No good can come from it.

    A strange thing happened during that trip. P really began to appreciate how fun a group of girls can be, granted he also learned that they talk ALOT and can be slightly emotional especially in the face of a hair crisis, but when he came home he told me that he felt pretty sure that we were having a girl because this trip had obviously been God’s preparation for him.

    Sure enough, we found out two days later that we were having a sweet baby girl.

    Last night that sweet girl got in trouble for throwing a big, huge crying fit and later, when she had calmed down, P took her aside and said “I don’t want to punish you but you have to listen when we tell you to do something”.

    She looked right at him and said “I know Daddy, but sometimes a girl just has to cry.”

    That’s all I’ve been trying to say.

  • Big Mama for President or you know…not

    I’ve never been an extremely politically minded person. I mean I vote in every election and I definitely have my political thoughts and beliefs that I feel strongly about, but I’ve never been one to want to run for any kind of office or even volunteer hours of my time at a campaign headquarters.

    Even in high school, I was content to be just a member of Student Council because after all, there were very important issues to be decided, such as prom theme and the various dress up days for Homecoming week. Serious, serious stuff and I didn’t want to be left out of these crucial decisions. But as far as making some poster board signs and pins that said “Big Mama for President. A vote for Big Mama is a vote for Pajama Day and Enchantment Under the Sea Prom theme”?

    No, not for me. Way too much pressure. I couldn’t have the final decisions regarding prom and what everyone would wear the week of Homecoming hanging solely on my significantly padded shoulders (remember it was the 80’s).

    In college, I was a member of COSGA which stands for something like Conference on Student Government Associations (shout out to Hite who interviewed me which started our lifelong friendship), but that wasn’t about school politics for me. It was about meeting really cool and potentially cute young politicos from other college campuses around the nation.

    And oh yeah, it wouldn’t look bad on a resume. I could put it right under “Diamond Darling for the Aggie Baseball Team” so that potential interviewers could see that they were dealing with a serious, academically driven candidate. Right.

    I guess I’m saying that I personally don’t understand why anyone would want to be a politician. I mean someone has to do it and I’m glad they do, but I get stressed about having to get to the grocery store and then Target in the same morning, so do I really need to be making decisions about what to do with North Korea or the federal deficit?

    However, I will be waiting in line at the polls today because I do believe that we should take our right to vote seriously. In my opinion, if you don’t vote then you can’t complain about the state of the Union and since I like to be able to complain, I will vote. It’s not just about politics, it’s about democracy and freedom of speech. It’s about the ability to have a voice in the whole big system. Our founding fathers and our veterans fought way too hard for our freedom for me to not use my voice.

    Heaven knows that if I lived in North Korea, there is no way Big Mama would be able to write as freely as I do. I’m proud to be an American, even if the votes don’t go the way I would like today.

  • From now on, I’m buying knockoffs

    I’m not sure at what point in my life I became aware of designer labels, but since I am a child of the 70’s, there were some crucial, foundation building years of my life that came about during the advent of Gloria Vanderbilt putting her family name on every bottom in America. I’m just saying, it could’ve influenced me.

    I remember the day that I graduated from wearing Garanimals to Luv-its. Oh you know y’all remember Luv-its. My favorite pair had an ice cream cone stitched on the back pocket and let’s just say that I thought I was IT at Magic Skate wearing my sweet, sweet Luv-its and my white skates with green pom-poms. Look out world because here I come and I’ve got dessert embroidered on my booty.

    In time the Luv-its became just a little passe. It was all about Gloria Vanderbilt and that swan. I had to have a pair. My Mema came through and bought me a pair of aqua (I would say turquoise, but we all know it was the 70’s and aqua is more appropriate) Gloria Vanderbilt jeans with a matching aqua Gloria Vanderbilt top complete with elastic waist band. Oh yes ma’am, I was going to take 5th grade by storm.

    Then, tragedy struck. I can still picture the whole scene. I was sitting in our living room wearing my new Gloria Vanderbilt ensemble while changing the batteries on my 8-track player (could that sentence even apply to any other decade than the 70’s?) when I looked down and realized that I had gotten battery acid on my aqua jeans. They were ruined. To say that I was upset is an understatement. It was a display of prepubescent hormones that could serve as a warning label to anyone who will ever come in contact with a 10 year old girl.

    Fortunately for me, Jordache jeans came in style shortly thereafter and I moved on. There is no better school picture of me than my 5th grade picture complete with Jordache jeans, royal blue Izod shirt, and winged hair that was shellacked to my head by an inordinate amount of Flex hairspray.

    Throughout my teenage years, I pined for Polo shirts, complete outfits by Esprit, Guess overalls, Laura Ashlely dresses, and Dooney and Bourke purses to name just a few.

    Then, one Christmas while I was in college, this boy I was dating bought me a real Fendi purse. I don’t even want to think about what he paid for it. I adored this Fendi purse. I carried it everywhere and it lasted much longer than the relationship with the guy that bought it for me in the first place. Even after we broke up, I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of the Fendi. It just looked too good with everything I owned and it would be wrong to lose a nice handbag because of a bad boyfriend.

    I’m not saying I am proud, I am just being honest.

    Anyway, I carried that Fendi for about a year and a half before the leather on the drawstring began to completely erode away. I couldn’t believe that such a nice purse was falling apart after a measly year and a half. So, one day I was in Houston, shopping at The Galleria and noticed the Fendi store.

    I marched in there with my purse just knowing that it gave me instant credibility. I explained that my purse was about a year and a half old and the leather was falling apart. The saleswoman took my purse, looked it (and me) up and down and then in a snooty, faux french accent said “Well, this is obviously just a department store Fendi.” It was like I had handed her a dead possum in Fendi clothing. She then said “Our Fendis are not meant for everyday use, so there is nothing that can be done.”

    Oh right, because why would you pay an exorbitant amount for a purse that you were actually going to use?

    I hadn’t thought of this story in years, but this week my friend Hite sent me an ad for a Fendi purse with a note asking about the department store Fendi. I can’t believe he remembered, but he’s probably spent years being embarrassed that he associated himself with someone who was using a designer handbag from a department store for everyday use. How tacky.

  • Over and above

    Caroline has learned this little song at school that they sing before they eat lunch. It’s sung to the tune of “Are You Sleeping?”

    God, Our Father
    God, Our Father
    We thank you
    We thank you
    For our many blessings
    For our many blessings
    Amen
    Amen

    Everytime I hear her sing it in her little 3 year old voice, I think I couldn’t agree more. We are abundantly blessed.

  • Sydney Bristow would be so disappointed

    Yesterday morning I was completely busted. Busted in a way that I haven’t been busted since I was 17 and snuck out of my best friend’s house to go to a party, which should really be a post for another time.

    Anyway, Caroline had a friend coming over to play and our playroom was a complete disaster. I realize that it is in fact a playroom, which means it will never be a clean room, but even by playroom standards it was disreputable.

    So, I began my stealth approach of casually throwing things into a bag to be thrown away. Broken pieces and parts, dried out playdough, Happy Meal toys, and a few Barbie shoes were quickly disposed of and some semblance of order was returned to the room. I was pleased.

    But sadly, I made a flaw worthy of a mere rookie, not a seasoned OCD veteran.

    I threw everything away in a Disney Princess bag.

    I then placed the Disney Princess bag in my kitchen trash and pulled the whole thing out for P to take to the curb. However, he was doing something really important like buying ammo online and didn’t get the trash out before Old Eagle Eyes spotted the Disney Princess bag through the semi-transparent kitchen trash bag and she had a complete shall we say freak out.

    “MAMA, why is my princess bag in the trash? WHY? Get it Mama, get my princess bag. Daddy threw it away! He threw it away!”

    And so I let him take the blame.

    No, I didn’t, but I thought about it, especially because he was watching this whole exchange with a smug grin on his face.

    I said “Oh Mama must have made a mistake, let me get it for you” and I pulled it out of the trash while discreetly dumping out its contents.

    She took the treasured bag from me and with her hands on her hips looked at me and said, “Mama, you are always throwing my best stuff away”

    She isn’t the first person in this house to accuse me of this offense, but I’m sad that she’s on to me so early. I need to brush up on my stealth moves and remember the first rule of any good spy, always destroy the evidence immediately.