So here’s what happens when you complain about it being 108 degrees outside: it’s 111 degrees for three days in a row. And your air conditioner breaks. At the beginning of a three-day weekend.
Is it possible for people to literally melt? I think it’s possible.
(Don’t worry – because I know you were so worried – we have someplace else to stay. As for your smug “I told you so”– hmph. Whatever.)
Today was the much-anticipated last day of school. The Evil Monkeys have been beside themselves waiting to have some summer fun. I’m slightly more, shall we say, ambivalent.
As of RIGHT NOW (7:17 pm) it is:
When’s the first day of summer again? Because if the last day of school is ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHT DEGREES AT SEVEN P.M., I really really don’t want to be here when it’s actually summer.
On the upside, I think I just sweated off five extra pounds simply having dinner on the poolside patio at my parents’ country club. Which totally makes up for having to, y’know, have dinner on a poolside patio at a country club. When it’s ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHT DEGREES OUTSIDE.
Sheesh.
‘Course, it snowed last night at my sister’s place. I guess it could be worse. Maybe.
What’s your weather like today?
So this photo has popped up on multiple news pages that have randomly floated across my desktop today. I’m getting a little tired of it, actually:
Here’s what’s probably going on in this photo:
And then there’s what goes on in my mind:
I get bored easily.
Lately I've been suffering from Virtual Ennui. It's a terrible condition whereby the afflicted wanders aimlessly and fruitlessly around the interwebs looking for something to provide interest... something, anything... anything at all....
Now, I'm not what you'd call a big follower of fashion. I don't subscribe to any fashion magazines and I'm clearly not fashionable myself. But when you have Virtual Ennui, what can you do? There's only one solution: Vogue.com. This is always good for a dose of Pretty Shoes For Everyone (If You Have $1200), a shot of Glamorous Famous People You've Never Heard Of and a very healthy serving of WTF Is She Wearing soup. They also have the weekly "10 Best Dressed" in which you get to vote for the Best Dressed. Vote, people. OMG is that not the best?
So I open up several pages of 10 Best Dressed and TLo, using her amazing Fashion Finding superpowers, instantly comes barreling in from the other side of the house like a Prada bloodhound on crack. (No really. She just knows. She has Fashion Radar. It's kinda creepy.) Needless to say, when she discovered that you can VOTE (she's just as aware of how awesome this is as anyone), she of course had to pick her favorites.
And here's where it gets really scary. Every single one she picked was the overall favorite of the general readership. Every. Single. Time. She's 9 for 9 so far.
I can see where having a seven-year-old who's more fashionable than I am can only lead to Bad Things in the next decade.
I was going to say, "At least I have The Big One, who's unlikely to ever out-fashion me." Except that this week is "Free Dress" week at school. She just flounced in wearing her black ruffle-miniskirt, black t-shirt, black knee-highs and black maryjanes, looking for all the world like a beatnik French schoolgirl, and announced "I am too wearing this. It's my fashion."
Help.
TLo has never lost a tooth that The Big One didn’t knock out. Seriously. Right now she looks like Vampire Girl.
Anywho…
Lest you labor under the false impression that I haven't sewn anything the past month or two:
I made this.
I also made several other summer tops/dresses for TLo. Really. I just continue to suffer from a complete and utter lack of interest in discussing them. Or photographing them.
I will tell you that on this one, I started with this pattern (Ottobre 1-2009 #35)
and then altered the front so as to not have to suffer through making a totally superfluous (i.e. too fiddly for me to deal with more than once) front placket.
I did do the front placket on the first version I made of this. Honest. But it was so totally annoying that I decided to just pare it down to the little placket version you see now. To make the closures, I used salvaged buttons and some purple hair elastics. Which is pretty cool. Admit it.
Oh, and I converted the gathers to pleats. I just prefer pleats.
Actually, the same two life lessons. I'm a little slow on the uptake.
The first lesson is "I just should not be allowed to take my own picture. Ever." Unless I really am:
a) perpetually out of focus and poorly lit
b) An asylum escapee with no chin
c) Astonishingly irritated with everything and everyone, super-duper crabby and looking like a wrinkly old bat
Ok fine. Item C isn't totally outside the bounds of possibility. But still.
The second lesson is one that I just can't seem to wrap my head around no matter how much I remind myself. Namely "I should always wait a day or two before I decide whether or not a garment really is as disastrous as I think it is". Because on Sunday when I finished the neckline on this tunic I was seriously disturbed by the fit, the finish and the general look of it. Distraught, practically. But today when I tried it on to show you all just how disastrous it was, I discovered that it's not nearly as bad as I remembered. It’s not great, but just possibly not the first sign of the apocalypse.
So I guess I'll finish the sleeves after all.
Oh, this is what the fabric actually looks like, it's really royal blue not black. The hem band on the inside is a lavender linen with weird white roses painted on it.
edit: The one advantage to photos, even these horrid ones, is that I get a better sense of how something fits… or rather, how something looks like it fits. In this case, would you say that this is too big starting, oh, pretty much at the armscye and working down? I’m inclined to say it could be taken in just a tiny smidge. Which is totally fascinating, since I made a way smaller size at the hip than my measurements call for. Um. Like you’ve never heard that before, right? What is the deal with that??
edit the seconde: Re: the camera being up high—in fact, it was sitting at pretty much the same height as my husband’s head or in other words where he would hold the camera were I to allow him to attempt taking my photo. He’s short(ish) for a guy so it’s not especially high relative to how people on the street might see me.
I am very, very short.
I’m thinking of investing in a tripod. I used to own a tripod but I have absolutely not one clue what’s happened to it. Probably wherever my film camera is (you know, those things people used to take pictures with?).
Just thought I’d point out that I added a new page to the “FAQ” and “About Beangirl” list: “The Cast Of Characters”.
In case you were wondering who everyone is. I sort of was. Now I know.
And in related news: Facebook “share” button (as seen below). Good? Bad? You like it? (ha ha.) I can’t decide.
No, I am not stalling on writing about sewing.
Am NOT.
Who asked you, anyway?
"Got To Do It Like This, Like Chachi And Joanie
'Cuz She's The Cheese And I'm The Macaroni."
Seriously. That is some excellent song writing there.*
One of the problems with being a so-called GenX'r (bleh), is that our iPod is only about 50% kid-friendly. If that. (Of course, the definition of "kid friendly" can be somewhat fluid as well... for instance, despite an absolute lack of any significantly offensive lyrics, The Husband is of the opinion that "Firework", or for that matter any Katy Perry song, is not Kid Appropriate. Or, indeed, Human Appropriate.)
So when the Husband decided to buy the latest Beastie Boys single.... well, you know: BLOCKED.
Or rather, it should be blocked. Instead what we do is wait for an inappropriate song to come on and then make a sort of mad, arms-flailing, cartoon-slow-motion-craziness dash across the room for the remote, so as to click it forward a song Before It's Too Late. Because with over 4500 songs on the 'Pod, I just can't be bothered to go through each and every one and label it "Ok For Kids".
I'm a bad mom, right?
New Beastie Boys movie/video is here: VIDEO. Totally inappropriate if you are A) easily offended by language, B) easily offended by mindless vandalism/illegal actions/general stupidity or C) easily offended by bodily fluids. Totally hilarious if you are A) a 40 year old man. Mildly entertaining for everyone else.
Just thought I'd share.
I couldn't be bothered to write about the blouse I'm working on.
*In the interest of not being totally and pointlessly offensive to a large portion of the general readership, I won't quote the rest of the lyrics from "Get It Together"... although it is an excellent song. If you're going retro with the tunes and you don't have "Ill Communication" you could do worse. Just saying. Also, slightly depressed that an album I bought when it came out is “going retro”. But there you have it.
Ok, so Tanit-Isis (rather bravely) posted up her participation in a new meme regarding one of my very favoritest topics: dialect. I love this! Not only do you get to hear people talk in different dialects and accents, but you also get to hear the (hopefully) charming voices of some heretofore aurally mysterious bloggers. Coolio!
Basically this all adds up to you, yes YOU, being subjected… er… I mean, allowed to listen to my rambling insanity. As opposed to just reading it. Lucky lucky YOU! Right?
(Warning: I talk really fast. This is me talking slowly. Just saying.)
(Also, yes I know my glasses are jacked up. I can’t get new glasses until next week when our new insurance kicks in. Meantime, I’m Crazy Glasses Girl. Really. No need to tell me. Again.)
The words are:
Aunt, Route, Wash, Oil, Theater, Iron, Salmon, Caramel, Fire, Water, Sure, Data, Ruin, Crayon, Toilet, New Orleans, Pecan, Both, Again, Probably, Spitting image, Alabama, Lawyer, Coupon, Mayonnaise, Syrup, Pajamas, Caught
And these are the questions:
What is it called when you throw toilet paper on a house?
What is the bug that when you touch it, it curls into a ball?
What is the bubbly carbonated drink called?
What do you call gym shoes?
What do you say to address a group of people?
What do you call the kind of spider that has an oval-shaped body and extremely long legs?
What do you call your grandparents?
What do you call the wheeled contraption in which you carry groceries at the supermarket?
What do you call it when rain falls while the sun is shining?
What is the thing you change the TV channel with?
I really hope everyone joins in on this one! C’mon! You know you want to. Copy and paste. Get out that video camera. You can do it! Go team!
Wow. Too much caffeine today.
edit: ‘K, so Big In Japan at least should know that I’m pretty much always that excited to talk about something… er… anything, as long as I’m talking. I’m whatcha might call A Talker. Big shocker, I know.
edit revisited: so yesterday we had a slight sprinkle of rain while it was sunny and my mother announces, “Hey, it’s a sunshower!” out of the blue. I have never heard this before but she insisted this was a totally normal thing for her to say. Weirdness. And re: T.P.ing a house… that is a pretty normal North American thing to do, usually by high-school students. The trick to clean up (in case you ever need to): light one end of the toilet paper with a lighter and the whole streamer should go up in a puff of ash. Not recommended in extreme drought, but otherwise pretty safe. And waaaay easier than picking it all up.
You know how sometimes you’re just aimlessly surfin’ the webs and something strikes you? I mean, not literally jumps out of the screen and smacks you in the face (that would be a little too “Poltergeist” for me), but makes you just sit up and LAUGH?
Case in point:
This photo came up in BBC News’ “A Day In Pictures” segment.
And I quote:
“There were 5,000 police officers on duty, with more than 900 along the wedding route. Most were in uniform, but some were in plain clothes, mixing with the crowd.”
Plain clothes in London has gotten significantly weirder than I expected.
Guess what I did on my day off?
No really. Go on. Guess!
Seriously. You can’t guess, can you?
