Barnstorming on an Invisible Segway

Apparently last weekend a small person of my acquaintance announced that he wanted to look like a college professor. I only heard this after the fact, but he succeeded admirably. And I sometimes think that the combination of him being in the single digits of age and autistic means that he will admit to stuff like that when other people mostly don't, and I think that's awesome of him. I remember when I was his age, I tried to compose Bohemian Artist outfits and Very Serious Scientist outfits, but I did not disclose this intention to my parents or godparents. (My godfathers, God love them, would have been no help whatsoever with this endeavor, as they were rather committed to the Person With A Modicum Of Fashion Sense oeuvre of small child outfits. But explaining my thinking at least might have explained some of the attempted combinations to my baffled and long-suffering mother.) And I did wind up with a Budding Suffragist On A Bicycle outfit that my grandmother and I both adored, but again, I did not tell her why I liked it. It was a very 1905 sort of bow on the thing.

So in the spirit of full disclosure, I will report that I am wearing my Sensible Grown-Up From An E. Nesbit Novel Visits The Mod Sixties outfit. I have had this reaction to this outfit (particularly the skirt) since I bought it. Every single time. I also have Wednesday Addams Appears on Laugh In and Piano Teacher Uninterested In Your Bullshit and Why Yes I Do Own A Krumkake Iron Why Do You Ask, among other fashion choices. A lot of the time, of course, I am dressed as Person Who Hates Complicated Laundry or Person Whose Feet Are Toasty Warm Despite The Weather Thanks. But sometimes we change things up.

The closest I ever came to buying non-hiking boots in the three digits of price was when I looked at a pair of boots and thought, "Every time I wore those, I would think, 'No, The Other Kind Of Goth.'" And that seemed like a very appealing thing to me. I still didn't buy them, but I was tempted.

Do you do this?

It's autumn here in Baja Canada, which you can tell because I'm wearing socks again, the tomatillos are going berserk, and my tisane consumption has gone from appallingly high to truly unbalanced. That latter, of course, may be due to the fact that the first chest cold of the season has arrived right on schedule, so I am occasionally alternating in what Midori's Floating World labels a honey-ginger latte, despite the fact that it contains no coffee whatever, which I thought was a requirement for a latte. It's just hot milk with honey and ginger. Really intense, but good on the throat. timprov figured out how to make them at home. He, too, is trying to rid himself of bits of lung. (markgritter too, but he is doing it in California at the moment, and also he refuses the goodness that is honey-ginger latte. timprov refuses the goodness that is tea. Only I know what's good, apparently.)

Yesterday's city, the capital of Britain's dearest ally in 1955? Oslo, Norway. Surprising Brits and Norsk alike, I expect. Well done, mastadge, although guessing all across Scandinavia at once does seem a bit...anyway, well done.

We have candidates for the dress for my godfather's wedding. We also have yet another reject. You know what I hate about those shows where they make people over, other than everything so I don't watch them? They are apparently constantly telling people to try things on in styles they don't usually wear. I do this. You know what happens? They don't fit. You know why I don't wear those styles? They don't fit! (Or else they look terrible on me.) Who are these people, who have styles that fit them perfectly well and are perfectly flattering, and they go around not-wearing them on a whim? Oh, tra la, I think I shall just not-wear perfectly good clothes that will look lovely on me, because there are just far too many perfectly good clothes looking lovely on me in this world, tra la! Also, they are far too readily available at reasonable prices, manufactured by people who are treated humanely and with reasonable environmental practices, tra la! Shut up, those people!

(Tried on a sheath dress in a perfectly beautiful shade of blue, which my mom purchased and brought over and will now have to return to the store with sad and dragging feet. It had a wide belt that would have accentuated my not-wide waist. Guess what? Did not fit. Surprise! Yet another Neal Stephenson dress. What, ask the newcomers, is a Neal Stephenson dress? It is a garment in which I could fit the complete works of Neal Stephenson in the waist of the thing with me. Gigantic cul-de-sacs of fabric, people. Why do I not wear sheath dresses in non-stretchy fabric? Because I am not shaped like a sword aaaaaaaagh the end.)

Don't get me wrong: sometimes I like thinking about clothing. But I don't like being made to think about clothing. I like having more or less default options for daily wear for whatever weather and being able to put those on and go about my business if nothing in particular is going on.

For the last few summers, my summer default has been a Nusa Rollover skirt from Athleta and a T-shirt. Done and done. Various colors. Hurrah. I wear other things. But if I just want to get dressed in something comfortable and decent-looking that will wash well, that is how I do it. This extends reasonably well into spring and fall with addition of tights and extension of shirt sleeves, so many of those of you who have seen me at all have seen me in one of these skirts. They are not the sort of skirts for which people will accost you on the street, squealing over the cuteness. They are fairly plain cotton knit skirts. One will not get arrested for indecent exposure in these skirts. One will not have to fuss about pulling them down when one gets out of a car. If one's friend's kid spills on them--if one spills on them oneself--they will wash well.

Until now.

The most recent batch I ordered were clearly of a different fabric, lighter weight and clingier. I frowned but wore them anyway. And after two or three washings in cold water, I went to put on the Sangria colored one yesterday.

It had two holes in the middle of the fabric. Just holes. Not even by the seam. Not where you could have stuck your finger through pulling the skirt on. The fabric, after two or three washings in cold water and wearings not at all strenuously around the house and possibly out to a restaurant, had developed holes.

I wrote to Athleta customer service, and they sent me a helpy* e-mail response about how I could pay $6 for a return or exchange. Golly! I could pay an additional $6 to have another skirt made of the same shoddy material? Or I could have my money back, less $6 for the privilege of dealing with them? I have written back to ask how this is customer-friendly, since it is in no way my fault that they have decided to make their skirts out of tacky crap. I may have phrased it more tactfully than that. But I have long been a fan of Athleta clothing like Athleta Nusa Rollover skirts, and have sung their praises here and elsewhere, and I am really not at all pleased with this development, because one of the main things I liked about their clothing was durability. They claim to cater to active women; active women do not have the time to pull out a garment and discover that the thing they bought just last month has already given up the ghost and they will need to run to the UPS store to spend money on exchanging it. That is not the kind of running active women want to do.

Bah.

*Helpy, adj.: the quality of sounding like one is being helpful without actually providing any help whatsoever. Thanks, matociquala, for this genuinely helpful word.

Update: They have offered to waive the shipping for a replacement or give me a full refund since it was their screwup. Which is reasonable; I just hope the quality gets back up again so I can keep using them.

I'm no fashion expert, but I'm pretty sure that if you hold the seat of a pair of jeans up next to the window while folding it, you're not supposed to be able to see not just daylight but details of individual shingles and leaves outside the window through the cloth.

Sigh. Well, no one could accuse me of not getting good wear out of those, I guess.

Now it's just a matter of seeing if the jeans I ordered last year are still being cut that way. Hopehopehope.

Okay, fellow Really Pale Femmey Women! I think we need a preemptive writing on the blackboard exercise. Fifty times each:

"Just because Michelle Obama can wear that color does not mean I can wear that color."

We are going to need it this administration. Our new First Lady is veryvery good at dressing herself, not some idealized person on whom all trends look good, even the contradictory ones. And that is the lesson we need to learn from her clothes, not, "Ooh, she looks so pretty, I should wear exactly what she's wearing!"

Because she looks lovely, and we would look like three-month-old lutefisk in some of these colors.

Seriously. We need to take deep breaths and repeat, "Not every color is for every person, and that's okay."

So at Fourth Street elisem had Heather Corinna take a bunch of photos of people wearing shinies made by her. And I was one of those people, and if you want to go look, there are a couple of my necklaces:

Remember What You Say in Dreams III, and again, and again.

Prairie: Storm Light (just before) and another.

All together now: ooooh. Shiiiiiny.

elisem promises a current shinies post soon.

This is not my con report. This is about a thing that happened, though.

I was sitting in the programming room waiting for the rest of the panelists to arrive (having finished lunch and PT*), and marykaykare came in looking mysterious and pleased and said to me, "If you go speak to elisem, you will hear something to your advantage."

Well! I told Mary Kay that I like things to my advantage -- that I am firmly in favor of them, in fact -- and so I grabbed markgritter's arm, and off we went to the dealer's room to see elisem.

She was working on a shiny, as is so often the case, and there was some initial chatter, very casual, and then she consulted me: shinies are like books, and sometimes it helps if someone else can provide a second opinion, so did I think this one was almost done? I looked. It most certainly was. Did I think the labradorite was the right face out? I did.

She handed it to me and said, "Someone wrote to me and said, 'Mris is having That Kind Of Week, and you're going to see her soon; will you make her a shiny from me?' And here it is."

So I now have a silver wandering wire and labradorite pendant, and it is so shiny, and I am so pleased. And I'm pretty sure that my mysterious benefactor is someone who reads this journal. And you know what's great about my life? I have no idea who it is, because there are too many possibilities; I can't say, "Oh, obviously it must be x," or "y is simply the only person who could and would do that."

So you have given me the present of the shiny individually; and with the present of making it a secret surprise, you have reminded me of the gift of all the other people in my life who might have been responsible for it with you. Thank you, mysterious benefactor. It is Just Right.

*I did not miss a single session of PT this weekend. I am the Virtuous Mris Of Great Virtue. Just ask me.

I have mostly steered clear of controversial political issues in this lj, but a friend's post has made me aware that there is an issue on which I can no longer in good conscience keep silence.

To wit: playoff beards. I am for 'em. Let there be no confusion: distinctly in favor. Brent Burns looks like a demented hillbilly in his, to be sure, but Burnsie looks like a demented hillbilly under most circumstances, so that harm is outweighed by the great joy that is everybody else's playoff beard.

In fact, while I'm enjoying the NHL playoffs a great deal more than I am enjoying or expect to enjoy the PotUSA playoffs (though with equal doubts, I suspect, about the officiating), I would like to suggest that people could grow playoff beards for that as well. Don't shave until your team wins the...well, it's not as cool as the Stanley Cup, but if you don't bother to learn to play hockey, you can't really expect it. But the US Presidency, at least, which has a few consolations despite its distinct lack of Stanley Cup. And if you don't have a team in this particular set of playoffs, you could still grow a playoff beard in support of those who do, and sort of to add to the pleasant parts of the spectacle of the thing. At least for me personally, and isn't that what's important here?

People whose beards look as though someone snuck in while they were sleeping and drew on their face with a cheap Bic pen and then ran away when it looked like they were waking up are exempt from this exhortation, I suppose. I suppose.

Also, nobody is strictly required to buy a Life of Brian style beard for my amusement. No. Definitely not a requirement.

(Upon continuing the preliminary search for dresses online)

1. "Oh, are they having a Brownie troop meeting here? How sweet!"

2. "They got talking cleavage to do a reading? That's kind of weird. Oh...no...wait...I think I can see a person back there. Maybe."

3. "There are lighthouses printed on her dress. Light...houses. Printed. On her dress. Um. Why?"

4. "Do you know when she's due?"

5. "That's definitely a dress. Or a shirt. One or the other, I'm almost sure."

6. "That's definitely a dress. Or some curtains. One or the other, I'm almost sure."

7. "Is she still alive? She sounds alive, but...."

8. "Is that hole a design element, or did she have a near-fatal run-in with a knight on horseback on the way to the wedding?"

9. "I don't know how many thousands of chiffonlets died to make that, but it was too many."

10. "I don't know how many thousands of chiffonlets died to make that, but it was not enough."

There is, however, a possibility. *song from choirs of angels*

I ran my tights first thing at the bagel place this morning. Came home to find the next pair of brown tights in the drawer was not run but clocked from hell to breakfast. Sigh. So I am on brown tights version three this morning. Any further tights damage means changing my clothes completely.

But as I was digging through the tights drawer, something became very very clear to me: the Great Trouser Experiment of 2003-2004 is officially over. Three and four Christmases ago, I got trousers, on the theory that, hey, I live here, it gets cold, I might want some trousers. Turns out: no. Many of the things sold to women to be "dressy" are no warmer than good tights and a skirt, if as warm. I will now -- sometimes, occasionally -- rarely -- wear corduroys. But in general, the attempt at trousers was a dismal failure, and I declare it done, and I'm not really interested in going back. Jeans, yes. Skirts and dresses, yes. Trousers...not so much. It turns out. I just can't get into it, really.

Also, I have started looking for a "light-colored" dress (or matching skirt and blouse, but more likely a dress) upon the bride's request for a wedding in the late winter. I have time, so I've just been doing online preliminary looking. It's good for me to get out of the dark colors rut. (Although I like it in here and will probably slip right back in after this wedding.) But so far the only pale blue options I've found are from a store that thinks I am a size 8 on top and a size 2 on the bottom. Hint: that's not going to work. So I may have alterations in my future, and I certainly have further shopping in my future, but -- hello, clothing manufacturers! I am not a size 2! I don't particularly want to be a size 2! I do not feel all vain and proud when you try to make my measurements into a size 2! I am fine with the 4 I generally wear. Don't go vanity sizing me into nothingness and some of my friends into negative numbers. And this thing where you make the waist and hips bigger and not the bust: I am not feeling loved, clothing manufacturers. I am not feeling your affectionate regard. I am not even feeling like a Barbie doll, but I'm feeling like you think I am one. That makes me annoyed with you, not with myself.

Harumph harumph harumph harumph.