Archive | August, 2009

5 Random Fashion Observations

20 Aug

Because, tonight, Project Runway is back. Viva Tim Gunn.

1. Some mornings, I miss my wardrobe staple of Chico’s stretchy black Traveler’s pants. Then I remember that the same size fits me even if I gain 40 pounds, and I resist any urge to go buy another pair.

2. People who have enough time and emotional energy to be outraged by the first lady wearing shorts on a visit to the Grand Canyon need to get a life. Seriously. I read some of the hyperventilating, pearl-clutching critiques before I saw the pictures and expected to see her booty hanging out the back and a too-short tank top revealing a belly-button piercing.

3.  Baby Phat, I really do not think you need to make your acid-washed denim miniskirt available “now in sizes up to 24.” I do not say this with a sneer of a size 2.  I myself am rather amply blessed in the figure department. But my sisters, dress the body you have, not the one you wish you had.

4. Seriously, what is up with these boots? Zappos offers them up as a hot new look. For who? Tundra gladiators who need the formality of a high heel?

ugly

5. However, after a summer with more than FIFTY freaking days over 100 degrees? If it meant I could wake up with it being 70 degrees tomorrow? I would wear the boots with the Baby Phat skirt and parade around the River Walk. Seriously.

Five-O

12 Aug

One of my favorite people on the Internet is celebrating a milestone birthday today.

And although I have offered up my share of geezer quips,  including asking if Luby’s Cafeteria will have Wi-Fi so he can tweet while he’s eating the senior plate, I’m going to set the snark aside for a moment.

When I first started writing this blog, it came after years as a television news producer. I did plenty of writing, but it was to tell other people’s stories, in styles geared to please news directors and consultants, and then to watch from a control room as other people gave a voice to those words.

So this blogging thing has been a sometimes terrifying process, like going from helping with costumes backstage to walking on a tightrope. I’m hardly new to the circus, but this is a new role, and the balance bar is still unsteady in my hands.

Richard has been sauntering across that tightrope for awhile, as a sports writer and amazing storyteller. We have mutual friends, my husband worked with him for awhile, but we’ve never met. But when I started following him on Twitter, he was gracious enough to return the favor.

In 140-character snippets at a time, we’ve traded snark and sports talk, and occasionally, even sincere snippets of conversation. And Richard, one of the best writers I know, regularly takes time to read this blog, and amazingly, tell me he thinks it’s worth reading.

It’s easy to take small kindness for granted, but today, my friend, I want you to know I do not. Because of the deep respect I have for you as a writer, a journalist, a man of faith and integrity, those 140 characters are powerful. They make the tightrope not so daunting.

I hope, as you celebrate this milestone and begin this year, that God blesses you and your family, and gives you many more years to laugh and write and encourage. Happy 50th.

Stringing Along

11 Aug

I’m hanging up the necklace when it suddenly shatters.

Beads crash, bounce, scurry

to hide in the corners of the closet.

I could gather them. Restring, re-clamp, restore.

A wall of necklaces, my drawers of clasps and crimpers and spare beads –

they all testify to my ability to create, mend, try again.

But this day, the cold tile scraping my knees,

I am more inclined to sweep the scattered beads

into the dustbin,  toss them with the trash.

Restringing is painstaking work, the necklace never quite the same.

A bead missing here, a clasp wire scratching there.

Reminders

of when it all fell apart.

Not worth it, I decide, for pony beads and cheap glass with the lustre worn off.

The other choices, to repair or release? Not so easily settled.

Taking more than an afternoon, bruising more than my knees.

I weigh these beads in my hands, wonder if they’d ever look the same put back together.

← Older Entries

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 47 other followers