Red Pen Mama

At the last full-time job I had, there was a woman who knew how to dress. She was about eight years younger than I, and she just was stylin’. She didn’t wear “trendy” clothes yet she was fashionable; although her clothes seemed of good quality, they didn’t seem expensive.

One day, I complimented her on her style, especially on the way she wore color. She told me about this book she had read. I decided to read it too.

It would take a lot of time to implement every trick in this book, I think. But, I have kept a lot of little tips in mind since I read it. One of the biggest things was this: Black doesn’t go with everything. Black goes with black, or white.

On Monday, when I finally set out to buy some work clothes, I vowed to shop for colors. I wasn’t going to go for loud colors, or young colors, and I was not going to buy something if it had black in it.

As I alluded to in my last post, I was pretty appalled by my selection. First off, for the first time in quite some time, I am NOT pregnant. So why would I buy clothes that would make me look pregnant? (Also, what’s up with those sleeves?) The tunic top, while I am sure it is flattering for many figures, doesn’t do a damn thing for mine. It’d be like hanging a sail on a toothpick.

Secondly, a big combo this spring is going to be yellow and gray. Yellow doesn’t do a thing for me. Except make me look yellow.

Also in stores right now? A lot of prints.

Very, very bold prints. With black.

On the plus side:

1. The prices at the department store I did shop were incredibly good. Like the prices I usually pay at Target for clothes. And, while I do love me some Target, these clothes are probably higher quality.

2. As I mentioned, I did find cute shoes, marked down from $45, to $26.99. Thank goodness they are flats, because after two days in my high-heeled boots, my dogs are barking. All the way up to my ass, frankly.

It’s more than I haven’t worn high heeled boots for two days in a row. Many a day has gone by with no shoes worn in this house. Those days are over.

3. Bra that fits. This truly cannot be overstated.

I hadn’t shopped for a bra in years. I had to be measured — I had no idea what size I was (I’m a 32/33 A. Well, almost an A.) (Quit laughing.)

While I find it ridiculous that I have to wear a bra at all, it’s a bare fact:

If I don’t wear a bra, my unusually long nipples can take out an eye. DearDR once quipped, “If you breastfeed, our children are going to drink out straws for the rest of their lives.”

But I have found perhaps the most comfortable bra I have ever worn, ever. I am going back for more.

And, just to make it exciting, I even bought some matching panties.

I’m living on the edge people.

I have been reading through my comments and emails, and since I don’t have much today (except the urge to post), I will tell some stories/answer questions.

1. Bun gets kicked out of daycare. I don’t really take the girls to “daycare”. It’s just a woman (certified in CPR, etc.) who watches some kids in her home. When Bun was about 4 months old, I thought it would be nice if she started going a couple of days a week with Monkey. I was freelancing at the time, too, and doing that work at home, so it was for the best.

Unfortunately, while Bun wasn’t by any means a “high-needs” child, she definitely was demanding. And Day Care Lady couldn’t hold her all the time with a bunch of other, more mobile children needing her attention. Bun’s response to this was to cry. A lot. So Day Care Lady and I came to the agreement that I would keep Bun home for a while longer; for financial reasons, I decided to keep Monkey home, too. Suddenly, I was a stay-at-home mom. It was a shocker.

2. I have, indeed, given something up for Lent. I have given up reading novels. Now, if you don’t know me, that may not sound like a big deal. But I read a lot, and most of what I read is fiction. My kids are pretty independent, so I do, actually, have more time to read than you may think. Or, at least, I rationalize reading as much as I do that way. (Hey, we may have inadvertant haircuts, but nobody has drawn blood. Knock wood.)

And Stephen King just put out a new one that is getting great reviews. And I got a gift card to Joseph Beth Bookseller’s for my birthday (thank you J & P). Talk about temptation.

So instead, I am spending more time interacting with my children, doing crossword puzzles and reading the Bible daily. I am exploring the world of non-fiction. I am currently mired in Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, which while fascinating is not a fast mover.

If you have good non-fiction suggestions, I am open.

3. Getting diapers (or anything, I suppose) out of the heating duct in your child’s room: You need a really long pole. (That sounds much dirtier than I intended.) DearDR was a house painter in another life (i.e. when he was still an undergrad), and he has an adjustable, uh, thingie for painting high walls and ceilings. You can attach a paint roller to it. It adjusts up to (I’m guessing here) 12-15 feet. We taped a paperclip, formed into a hook, onto the end of it; I held the light, DearDR did the fishing.

You can borrow DearDR’s pole, if you want. (That, too, just sounds much dirtier than it actually is. Sorry.)

4. “Fire drills” before the big day, i.e. my first day at the new job: DearDR and I have decided that next Thursday and Friday, I am going to disappear in the early, early morning. Then, he will be responsible for getting Bun and Monkey to daycare, and himself to work.

If I show up at 10 a.m., and Bun and Monkey are home alone, well, then we’ll know how that experiment went, won’t we?

I, in the meantime, am setting my alarm earlier and earlier in an attempt to re-train my body to get up at 6 a.m. again (possibly even 5:30 a.m.). My natural inclination is to be a night owl, but that is not going to work if I intend to exercise before work and still get to the job on time.

My other natural inclination is to work out after work, or at lunchtime. Unfortunately, children preclude the first option, and a half-hour lunch precludes the second. So we’ll see how I do in the early morn. I really need to get some exercise.

5. Lastly: No-Photo Fridays. We have hit another technical glitch. Namely, the PC with the digital camera attached and all my photos on the hard drive, died. We think the hard drive is actually fine, we just have to transplant it into the new computer that DearDR is bringing home from his office.

It’s a bummer, because I have some awesome photos on my camera!

Edited to add: 6. Lost. This is by far one of the most stellar non-cable shows out there. I have never been a big TV watcher. A few of my favs over the years include NCIS, ER (the earlier years; I haven’t watched it since Noah Wylie left) and the X-Files (still best ever). These days I watch Heroes, House (ocassionally) and Lost. I used to watch the original CSI:, but they have pitted Lost against it, and Lost has won. The season 3 finale was one of the best, most surprising things I have seen. And so far this season, I am as turned on as I was the first season.

On that note: Naveen Andrews is steaming hot, people. Smoking. I may change my marriage clause to him, away from Hugh Jackman.

Edited even later to add: I think the Oceanic 6 are: Jack, Kate, Hurley (duh), Sawyer, Claire and Sayeed. I also think Desmond, Juliet and Ben, Aaron (Claire’s son) get off the island (or are taken off). I think the funeral that Jack attends in the season 3 finale is Ben’s.

Just my two cents.

Thank goodness I have this literary meme in my “to be published” posts. Because I have a scant hour to do stuff, and I haven’t thought of a bloody thing to write today. I’ve just gotten back from Target, and I am happy to report that I am almost done Christmas shopping. I love Target, and my 10% off coupons I get from them.

Got this from the redoubtable MaryP. I found it an interesting list, as per usual. These are the 106 books most often marked unread (so, the least read books, I guess?) by LibraryThing users.

Bold the ones you’ve read.
Italicize those you’ve started but not finished.
Put an asterisk (*) by those you’ve read more than once.
Underline those you mean to read. (I don’t seem to have an underline function here. Let’s just say I aspire to read all of these books. There are a few I actually aim to read. I put a double quote (”) by those.)

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (I have started this book FOUR times, and I’ve barely made it to chapter 2, and that only on the last try. People who get through this book must be much more intelligent than I am.)
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22*
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights*
The Silmarillion (I’ve read bits and pieces of this. Let me just say right now that I’ve only read “that much” because DearDR? A Lord of the Rings fanatic. I cannot empasize that enough.)
Life of Pi: A Novel
The Name of the Rose*
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses” (I would truly like to read this book, but I think you need to take a class to understand it.)
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre*
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies”
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveller’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin*
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (I intend to re-read this because I just read its “sequel”, for lack of a better word, Son of a Witch. It was okay.)
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest*
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune*
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury*
Angela’s Ashes
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-Present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything”
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being*
Beloved*
Slaughterhouse-Five*
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves*
The Mists of Avalon*
Oryx and Crake: A Novel
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye*
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance*
The Aeneid
Watership Down* (This is one of my all-time favorite books, and I’ve probably read it close to 10 times.)
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit*
In Cold Blood*
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers