Monday, December 31, 2018

The case for loving January...



Happy New Year - would you believe me if I said that I like January?   A few weeks ago, I saw a post on facebook describing how Winter is really a nurturing season, we really just need to see it as such.  Winter is kind, it said. It showed a graphic of a large oak tree under which were three little burrows.  A fox was curled up in one, a bear in the other, and the third contained a seated young woman reading a book. Winter is nurturing it said, and I thought yes, yes it is. The post described winter as a time to recharge oneself, to look inward, to rest and rejuvenate so that in the spring one would be ready to burst forth with renewed energy into new realms… after a good winter, one would be ready to grow.  How can you be energized for the new if you don’t rest first?  I like the quietness of January… the cleanliness; I like how your surroundings look clean and uncluttered after putting away all those Christmas decorations.  I like getting back to just what’s essential.  

I believe that January is a time for decluttering your environment and your mind.  We all know about actual, physical spring cleaning, but the mental cleaning and pruning is always underrated. January is the perfect time for you to inspect the plants of your life prune and them carefully.  Dig up the bulbs that you’ve mentally planted, cut away the dead bits and make room for new, healthy growth.  


Young people, just like new gardeners, have only a vague idea of what they should grow in their gardens.  They want to keep everything - all of their plants.  They look to accumulate, fill their gardens with abundance… they want to save and stockpile for the future. They have no idea what will grow in their gardens so they try a little of everything, and there is nothing wrong with that.  When we get older, however, we become more discerning.  For example, you may accept the fact that you’re no good with most roses, but you love peonies, and they love you.  Why fight with the roses when they are clearly not your thing?  As a more seasoned gardener, you see that your space is not infinite and you realize that you need to cut out the bits and pieces that don’t really serve you.  You don’t mind the pruning; it has become easier.  You see beauty in the lovely, uncluttered space.  In January, we can look at our lives like the seasoned gardener looks at his garden.  You ask yourself, why should I hold onto things that make me sad?  I don’t need a clutter of abundance when there is such beauty in the empty space.  When I clear out my heart and mind and space, I make room for new things to grow.  Like a gardener who has pruned and weeded well, I’ve made space for new possibilities and it is indeed, beautiful.  Thank you, Winter, for this gift. 

Wednesday, September 19, 2018

Additional Fabric for Queen of Hearts Costume



When I last posted, I had just purchased a jacket and two pieces of fabric for my Queen of Hearts costume from Savers.  This past weekend, I went to Joann Fabric and Craft store.  I knew I wanted a black and white checked fabric.  I found one with alternating squares of black and white, but that looked too much like a flag on a car racing track.  Then I found this - diamond checks.  I thought I might use it for the large collar of her dress, and maybe some highlights on other areas. PERFECT.  I bought 3 yards of it.  I checked out the Valentine's Day fabric, but nothing really spoke to me.  Then I found this lovely photographic roses print.  This is perfect for the Queen of Hearts, right?  I mean, all that talk about painting the roses red, etc.  I got three yards of this, also.  I seriously had no idea how I was going to use these prints, but I figured I could decide at home. 

Back at the ranch, (so to speak) I knew that I wanted to remove the sleeves on the blazer, so I did that right away.  I was left with this: 


Although the jacket is lined, it was pretty easy to take the sleeves and lining off with a seam ripper.  I think I'll have to cut the shoulders back a little bit and make the arm holes a little bigger to accommodate the puffy sleeves I have in mind.  I thought about the checks for the collar and now I can't decide if that will be too busy of a print next to the face, especially with the roses print thrown in there.  I'm thinking of going with a big white collar and maybe making a piping around the edge of the collar in the checked print.  To get a feel for how all of this would look, I decided to lay the fabric out on a flat surface so I could picture it better.  


Here's my plain red, alternating with the roses print.  Then I decided maybe I can use the checked fabric as a belt highlight along the waistline.  There must be a proper name for that, but I don't know what it is.  (I definitely didn't need 3 yards of the checked print, but oh well.  See below:


I liked the checks in that spot, but it seemed a little too busy with the brocade weave of the plain red.  I added some black in between... (which is actually not fabric, but a t-shirt dress I had hanging around - I'll have to buy the black fabric).  When I added the black, I liked it a lot better.  I also put the end of the roses print under the black jacket to simulate puffed sleeves.  NOW, it's kind of coming together...


I still have the pink fabric (tablecloth) from Savers.  I'm thinking it might look good cut into heart shapes and sewn in a line down the black strips of fabric in the skirt.  Maybe I can add one strip of black with pink hearts down the sleeves, too, to bring the pink up to the top half of the outfit as well.  I'm feeling encouraged to continue this project.  So now I need to buy a few yards of black fabric and some white for the collar.  Oh, and a bit of iron on interfacing to stiffen the collar and to iron on the back of the pink for when I cut out the hearts.  Hoping to  make some more progress by the end of this coming weekend.  Wish me luck! 

Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Queen of Hearts Costume from Thrift Store Finds


Just when I've been floundering around for a creative challenge, Halloween arrives! Well, it's not halloween for another month and a half, but this is the season of prepping for Halloween.  A few weeks ago I said to my husband, "well, it's almost time for Halloween prep" and he looked at me like I was insane.  We live on a private road with 3 houses and practically no one sees the front of our house so he knew I was not talking about decorating the outside of the house.  But I digress... (as usual) 

I'm excited because I'm going to a Halloween party.  I'm not into gory, gross Halloween, (I'll pass on the rubber face masks of zombies and the fake blood everywhere) but I love making costumes and getting dressed up.  I've been tossing around a few costume ideas and this weekend I settled on the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland.   

There are LOADS of costume and make-up ideas on Pinterest for the Q of H. There ARE really nice costumes you can buy, but I like the challenge of making one myself.  In the past, I've gone to the fabric store, picked out a pattern and fabric and made my costume that way, but that method can be QUITE expensive.  AND time consuming.  Plus, I'm just not into the nitty gritty details of sewing a costume from scratch.  And my sewing machine has become temperamental. So this morning, I took a trip to the local Savers (for those of you not in this area, it's a thrift store chain) to see what I could find to fit my costume goal.  

When you start with pre-made pieces you have to be open to different options.  You can't go in there looking for a very specific thing because it's quite likely you won't find it, but you WILL find something that will work. The most important piece I needed was a top in either red, white, black or pink.  I needed a base to sew the skirt onto - something that could attach a skirt to and I could tailor to fit me.

I found a few options:

A corduroy stretch blazer from Loft.  I liked it, but I wasn't sure the buttons in the front would work.  Plus, it was not really red, but a kind of plum-ish red. And it wasn't long enough for me to attach a skirt and have it hit me in the right spot.  AND the stretch might be a problem if I sewed a lot of trim or embellishments to it.   

A short, brocade shirt from Forever 21.  I liked the brocade on this, but while it was appealing, it was also sort of a drawback.  It was black and white with silver and white seed beads on it, the print was a little bit geometric and I thought it would detract from the hearts theme.  Plus, this was borderline crop-top, and while it had a zipper in the back that would allow for me to custom fit it, it would again be really short in the end, creating an empire waist dress.  Because of those two cons, this one was out. 

A stretchy front zip jacket in red. This one would have worked, but it was XL, and I want the top of my costume to be fitted so this would have required a lot of alterations.  More importantly, it just didn't excite me.  Gotta have some excitement. 

A few different vests in grey. These were options, but one had a modern print to the grey fabric, and both were too short for me to make their buttons work.  Out. 

The above Lord and Taylor, linen jacket in black with the FABULOUS buttons. ($7.99) I was totally attracted to this jacket because of the buttons.  They're was made me notice it on the rack.  When I looked at it, I noticed - hummm, nice and long, so even though it has buttons, I can make my dress a drop waist dress if I want to, and the buttons will work.  There are SO many buttons, it will be secure enough for me to wear without an additional shirt underneath if I want.  It does NOT stretch, which will be a plus when sewing on embellishments, and it is pretty much my size. I scooped it up.  

I got a fabulous red curtain/tablecloth (for $2.99) and a pink tablecloth (also $2.99) as well to make my skirt.  I plan alternate the red and pink in stripes.  The pink is an oval tablecloth and I think I can use the rounded parts for the front of the skirt.  For the top, I'm going to 1. round out the neckline, take off the sleeves and add embellishments, then attach a skirt.  

I'm pretty excited with my start.  Next, I'm going to check out the fabric in the fabric store and see if I have any clothing items at home that will work with this project. 


Sunday, September 2, 2018

Pallet Heart - Hmm, how to finish it?



At work, every year in late summer, we get a shit-ton of deliveries.  Some of them, for example, copy paper and text books come on pallets.  Last summer I got the brilliant idea that I was going to use some reclaimed pallet wood to make a few of those decorative wall hangings I see all over Pinterest.  I had been to one of those pallet wood stenciled sign classes and and I was a little disillusioned that the sign wasn't actually made of pallet wood, but with NEW wood that was made to look old and weathered.  I love the idea of recycling something old into something new and I had just bought my own jig saw the year before so I thought wood signs in shapes was the way to go.  

I stayed after work a few days and cut up the pallets with my jig saw after I tried at home to actually take one apart (see my post Pallet Problems). Our head custodian took pity on me (a jig saw works, but not well - it is the WRONG tool for that job) and cut up a few more pallets for me to use. I was inundated with pallet wood, but for the plan I had, I needed some really long pieces, and I did not have many of those.  

I created a template out of oaktag and arranged the wood on the floor so that I would be able to get the most out of the pieces I had.  I kept all the "good sides" up for the front, put the "bad" sides on the back and arranged the wood to get the most mileage out of each piece.  Then I glued them together with Elmer's Wood Glue.  (I realized that the edges of pallet wood are not really parallel, so there were some problems with this - I invested in a mini hand plane after I spent quite some time sanding with a palm sander to get the edges to match up.)

The glue held really well.  I placed my oaktag pattern on the glued wood and traced the heart shape.  I cut it out with my jig saw, and sanded and still, the glue held.  It held so well, in fact, that I didn't realize the cross pieces I had also attempted to glue on had never made contact, so they weren't stuck on at all.  I leaned the heart up against the wall in the living room to decide what I wanted to paint on it and as it got jostled around during vacuuming and whatnot, it eventually came unstuck and I got disgusted. 

Fast forward to THIS summer, and my continued attempts to finish projects I've started.  



I got some screws of the right length from Home Depot, reattached the support pieces and painted the heart read with watered down craft paint so that you could see the woodgrain through the paint.  That was another disappointment - I thought I'd be able to find STAIN in different colors, but apparently, that either doesn't exist or was not easily found.  (I looked for orange to paint a pumpkin I had also cut out.)

So now here I am, with my pallet wood heart all finished EXCEPT for the lovely quote painted on the front.  I'm not sure what I want to paint on it.  I want it to be something down to earth.  I love poetic quotes, and literature quotes like: 

"My heart is and will always be, yours." Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility 



But I still keep thinking I should go with something like Adam Sandler's song from The Wedding Singer:

"I wanna make you smile, whenever you're sad, 
Carry you around when your arthritis is bad.  
Oh, all I wanna do is grow old with you.  
I'll get your medicine when your tummy aches, 
Build you a fire if the furnace breaks, 
Oh it could be so nice, growing old with you."

I really like it because you know, that's what marriage is really about.  BUT IT'S TOO LONG TO FIT!

Help!!  Any suggestions?




Wednesday, August 29, 2018

I’ve been thinking an awful lot about this blog.  Should I continue it? Refocus it? Give up entirely?  Should I start a totally new one? What the hell am I blogging about anyway?  

Way back when I started this, I wanted to give myself writing practice because I loved writing, and I wanted to practice it with a potential audience (I think not many people want their creations of any kind to sit in a total vacuum).  As my lack of recent posts shows, I’m also not so productive without the pressure of a looming deadline.  But that doesn’t mean I can’t change.  I was WAY worse when I was younger!

When I started this, I intended to write, just write.  And I thought some of my posts were pretty good.  Admittedly, some sucked.  But sometimes it sucked to see that people were just not looking at the posts that I thought were really pretty good.  Then I posted some things on Facebook, but in so doing, my friends found out about my blog.  Which was good, and bad.  Good, because people saw it, but bad because then people I knew in real life saw it.  LOL.  I went through the internal dilemma of, “What am I going to write about that won’t compromise someone’s privacy?” because there were some good topics I could have written about, but even disguising names and details would not have been enough to completely hide whom I was talking about from other people that I knew.  This doesn’t necessarily mean I wanted to talk about BAD stuff, but you know, everyone’s different.  What you think is cute or funny, they think is not funny, or too personal ("I don’t want the world knowing that I shell my peas!").  My kids went through a period of time where they were always asking, “MOM, are you gonna post that on your blog?” and usually when I asked them if I could, they emphatically said “NO!” 

So I didn’t.  

Throughout all of this, I posted about crafts, and art projects, because I like doing them, and because throughout my life people have always said things like, “Oh, that’s cool. How did you do that?” So I did some posts about that stuff, and I saw that people, (people I didn’t know in person!) were viewing them. And that was SO COOL.  I made scenery for a few plays at work and at my daughter’s school and posted some projects and a considerable amount of people viewed them, and that is still so cool, but the play scenery thing did not work out logistically the last time or two, and so it’s not going to be in my immediate future.  The play people I know like work on a VERY intense time schedule where everyone’s schedule depends on everyone else’s and I just don’t enjoy working like that.  Maybe it will be possible for me to do play things further down the road and if so, that would be great. But I'm still going to make things, even without plays, and maybe I'll even make some things that can be used in plays. Who knows what the future will hold. 

All of this introspection has made me realize something.  I’ve been on a journey to find my thing, the thing that I most enjoy doing, and that was what I wanted to blog about, but I realized..

 my thing… is searching for my thing. 

So yeah, let me clarify:  this blog is about me searching for my thing.  And when I say thing, I mean the “work at what you love to do and you will never work a day in your life,” thing. (It’s like the “One True Love” of arts/crafts.)

Months ago, while I was pondering all of these questions about what I should be doing with my life, (creatively speaking) I had a psychic reading.  The woman reading me seemed pretty accurate - she told me some things that were pretty specific to me and my family that she really would have had no way of knowing.  Both of my grandmothers came through and said that this is “my time” and that I have “gifts that I’m not using.”  Jeez, I was kind of upset by that one.  I told her, “BUT I JUST DON’T KNOW WHAT THE GIFTS ARE!  WHAT SPECIFIC GIFTS ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT, CAUSE I LIKE TOO MANY THINGS!”  Is it writing?  Is it paper mache? Is it photography?  Is it costume design? Does it involve power tools, because I LOVE power tools! 

I don’t yet know what my thing is, but I know that there MUST be other people out there with the same exact dilemma because Pinterest is LOADED with great creative things that people feel passionately about, and it’s also loaded with people like me who are trying them and doing some well, and some not so well.  All I know is that this blog is about, and is gonna continue to be about searching for my Holy Grail of creativity.  I’m gonna have some bombs, surely, (I’ve already posted some!) but I’m gonna have a few successes, too.  And I’d LOVE to hear about your searches and your successes because if you’re reading this, you love to create and you are part of my tribe.  

So now that I’ve written my rallying cry, I have to go to bed cause tomorrow promises to be a LOOONNGG day at work - I get paid to be a secretary and school starts in a scant few days. Goodnight, friends!



Wednesday, August 1, 2018

Between what is known and what is not known, there are doorways...


doorway in Bellport, Long Island

I am obsessed with doorways.  I've realized this over the last few years, when I've gone on picture taking outings and I've found myself looking at multiple doorway shots.  I can't help it - doors and doorways speak to me.  

Some say, "come on in" and some say, "Stay Away!" Some are casual and inviting and some are snobbish.  When my attention is caught by someone's front door, I can't help but wonder what that family's life is like inside that house.  

doorway in Bellport, Long Island

I love the exotic doorways I've seen on Pinterest - doorways from far away countries - but I also like the doorways right here in my own country, and some of the towns I know so well. 

Country doors...

Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia


... and city doors

Manhattan, New York




Manhattan, New York
"Between what is known and what is not known, there are doorways"

I found that statement about doors on Pinterest (where else?) a week or two ago and I can't stop thinking about it.  It's got a mysterious ring to it, doesn't it?  Perfect for contemplating doorways.  

I see more pictures of doorways in my future.  

Enjoy. 





Sunday, July 29, 2018

My obligatory trips to The Purple Gym


Years ago, I joined Planet Fitness, a.k.a, the Purple Gym.  My husband joined as well, even though he's a gym snob. When we went down to check it out and sign up, its biggest attraction was that it was cheap for a gym, and it was close to the house.  We signed up, and after just the first visit, my husband was skeptical.  "It has no squat machines... " "the dumbbells only go up to..." (whatever he said, you can see it was irrelevant to me at the time).  Still, I thought, 'eh, what do I care?  I'm not a gym rat, I just need to go and work out for a bit and go home... and it's cheap.  You can't beat the cheapness.'  I knew this would not be a gym for hardcore gym rats, but I thought the benefits would outweigh the drawbacks.  

Now I'm not so sure.  

I am no gym rat, but I HAVE been to other gyms.  One weird thing about this place is... Candy on the front desk.  CANDY.  It's a gym.  I mean, you're trying to be healthy, maybe more healthy than you are now, so why the candy?  You can work out for an hour or so and then grab a handful of candy on your way out and cancel out any caloric gains you may have made. Awesome.  I hear there are also pizza parties every once in a while.  I've never been to one of them, but this just astounds me.  How about a grilled chicken and salad party?  Now THAT might inspire me. 

Another thing that annoys me about the Purple Gym is, for a place that calls itself "a Judgement Free Zone," It sure is full of judgements.  


This is the classic Planet Fitness sign.  I believe it used to be featured in their TV ads - you know, you behave incorrectly and the Lunk Alarm goes off. I had thought this was BS until one day I was there and the damn thing actually went off! A guy was standing too close to the mirror, and he misjudged his barbell distance, smacked his weight into one of the mirrors and broke it.  As if the crash wasn't bad enough, the damn Lunk Alarm went off, too! The thing I find most funny about this sign is that, apparently, drinking a lot of water makes you a lunk... And the poor guys named Ricky get a bad rap!

But how about this one:

It's my favorite.  Or shall I say, my ANTI favorite.  What I can't stand about the gym are people who hog certain areas and won't move, even if they're not doing anything, but I couldn't give a single shit about what they're wearing.  Are there people out there who are intimidated by boots?  So you can't wear boots, but you can wear, for example, sandals, and maybe get your toes squished?  Are there people who go into the gym and actually get intimidated by people wearing jeans?  and those intimidated people would then NOT be intimidated by those SAME people if they were wearing SWEATPANTS?  I'm not buying it.  

Not to mention - what happens when someone is using the equipment incorrectly? Let's say their form totally SUCKS and they're going to hurt themselves.  Someone should be walking around, monitoring people to help them, no?  Although, I don't remember that happening much at REAL gyms either, but still. The improper form thing happens much MORE at the Purple Gym.  I've seen a few things myself that made me think, WTF?

You can't wear certain things, you can make certain noises, you can't even drink out of certain containers. The most JUDGEMENT going on here is by the Purple Gym itself.  LOL.  Talk about irony!

Lately I've been wondering if maybe I can't drag myself to the gym more often because it's just too cheap.  I hate to say that, but I think there's something to it.  When I was going to karate, it was nice to see and talk to people and become part of a community, but it was also more expensive, which definitely makes you take it more seriously.  Even the Black Card Membership is only 20 dollars a month, so you think to yourself, "Even if I only go once a week, that's still only 5 dollars a visit." If you're paying 40 dollars a month, that's 10 dollars a visit - you have to go twice a week to get that same bargain.  See where my convoluted thinking is going with this? 

So now I have to wonder if the Purple Gym is really a bargain after all...  I'm content to slug through my workouts and not take them very seriously.  Maybe because I'm not Gymtimidated.  Maybe I NEED to be a little bit GYMTIMIDATED to be properly motivated.  

Tuesday, July 24, 2018

Let's Go Take Pictures...

Sailboats docked at Bellport Bay Yacht Club

It was a nice day today, although quite humid.  I've been getting a whole lotta nothing done this summer.  All school year I look forward to the summer so I can "get a lot of things done" and then when the summer comes, I talk myself into procrastinating about just about EVERYTHING - even FUN things I procrastinate because:

it's too hot
it's too humid
I don't want to start _______ and make a big mess
it requires me to spend money that I don't feel like spending
it requires me to plan ahead, and I didn't do that
I'll do it tomorrow
I should have done it last week
I have no one to do it with
I have too much to do already today
I need to clean
I need to make dinner
I should really go to the gym
now, what did I want to do?
why did I want to do that, anyway?
oh, jeez, it's too late, why start that now, I should just go to bed

Whatever the reason is, it's never a really GOOD reason.  After several days of dawdling and spending WAY too much time checking Facebook, Instagram and Twitter (for what, I don't know) I decided I needed a reset.  I don't know exactly why, but I seem to need a job list in order to function efficiently.  I made myself one first thing this morning and lo and behold, I got some stuff done.  

A photo shoot purely for fun was on my list, and my daughter is always game to go for a ride, check out a different place and maybe take some pictures.  I knew the perfect place.  



We hopped in the car and drove to Bellport Bay Yacht Club for a quick photo shoot.  

Bellport Bay Yacht Club

It was a nice day.  Windy, but nice.  Not the best day for curly haired ladies, but still lovely. 


The birds still had a great fishing day, though.  We actually watched this little guy pluck a fish right out of the water.



Bellport Bay Yacht Club

We didn't stay long, just long enough to get a taste of the salt air and pick up a few pieces of beach glass.

Bellport Bay




FINALLY, I stopped procrastinating!  Looking forward to seeing what tomorrow brings.  

Making my list already. 







Sunday, March 18, 2018

Ladder Skills



        When I was around six or seven years old, my father was still building our house. It looked kind of like a house from the outside, but there were still a lot of things missing.  We had windows, but no interior doors. We had floors but no interior walls, and no stairs anywhere.  We got in the front door by way of a stack of cement blocks, piled neatly with their open ends up, holes filled with sand.  Ladies who wore heels complained a lot about those steps when they came to visit us.  We got from the main floor of the house to the basement by way of an 8 foot rung ladder. 

One summer day I was wandering around our house looking for something to do.  My mom was outside, doing laps around the house with my sister Veronica in the stroller, and my sister Bernadette holding onto the stroller practicing her walking skills.  My dad was at the back door of the house, in his shorts, t-shirt and work boots, fitting and installing the door sill.  There was nothing for me to do.  I decided to play in the cellar.  I loved our cellar.  It had no floor yet, and so it was full of sand. It was a lot like being at the beach in your own home, and if you ran around a lot down there, you could also make a dust fog that we kids thought was great, but the parents HATED.  I went to where the cellar stairs were going to be, and I carefully turned around and lowered down one foot at a time to meet the round rungs of the ladder. I held the edge of the floor with my hands and backed down a step. I was familiar with this process - I had already done it dozens of times.

I must have fiddled around too much with my feet. Suddenly, the part of the ladder that had been leaning on the floor I had just left was no longer there.  It must have sunk down just far enough into the sand so that it was no longer tall enough to lean on the floor above.  I felt the ladder tilt away from my now dangling feet... I saw it in slow motion… falling, falling... until Pfit!  It landed with a soft thud and puff of dust in the sand below.  Luckily, my hands were still in contact with the floor. I looked down at the ladder lying uselessly on the sand far beneath me, and then I looked up at my hands above me, grasping at the flat floor I had just stepped off of, and I did the only thing I could think of..

“DADDYDADDYDADDY!!!I screamed for my dad.  I heard him drop his tools at the other end of the house and come running. It took him literally 3 steps to get to me. I counted them… ONE and he was almost though the kitchen, all the way from the back door, TWO and he was halfway through the playroom - almost there! THREE and he was crouching low in front of the stairwell and lifting me up by the wrists. He placed me gently back on the floor.  

“Are you ok?” he asked me. He knew I was. He knew that I was just scared because I had hung off the edge of the world for a second. I shook my head, yes, yes, I was ok. 

Years and years later, I asked him, “Dad, do you remember that time the ladder fell out from underneath me when I was going down into the basement?”  


“OH yeah,” he said.  

“I just remember that it only took you like, 3 steps to get there,” I told him.  

“Kids yell all the time,” he said, “but sometimes…” 

“Yes,” I said, “I know exactly what you mean.”


That day, I just remembered that my dad had gone back to his work, and I went outside and found my mom and told her the story, but I always thought to myself, 'Wow, I never realized how fast Daddy could run.'

Sunday, March 4, 2018

My Bra's Maiden Voyage


      Is is any wonder middle school kids are so stressed?  Even things like wearing a bra to school for the first time can stress them out.  Be kind to those little devils - the little bumps on life's path are hard for them.  A while back, a writing teacher of mine asked the class to jot down 25 memories and then expand them into memoir pieces.  Here's one of my funnier memories.


My Bra’s Maiden Voyage

  Madeline and I shared a trapezoid-shaped desk in the exact center of my 6th grade class.  Mr. Kogler, our teacher, sat just two desks in front of us, his curly head bowed as he wrote in his grade book while we worked. He was paying minimal attention to us, but it was still pretty quiet for a group of 6th graders, as everyone was silently writing. Or so it appeared.  Most likely, a good portion of us were silently agonizing over what to write next.  I leaned back in my chair and glanced around the room.  Our school was built according to the open classroom model, with four very large “houses,” each divided by partitions into smaller areas we referred to as classrooms.  Sometimes, if someone had a friend in the next classroom over, they would sneak their hand through the partition into the next room to pass a note.  Kids would sometimes throw things, or pull things over that had slipped too far under the dividers. A small bookshelf made the wall in the front, left corner of the room.  Since ours was a corner classroom, in addition to the wall with the window and chalkboard behind Mr. Kogler at the front of the class, we had part of a wall on the right side too; beyond that was a room of lockers.   
Madeline, who sat to my left, kept looking at me.  Uh oh, I didn’t like that look.  When she got that look, it meant she was going to say something, and usually when Madeine said  something, it was something obnoxious or at the very least, annoying.  She talked to everyone and everyone knew her, but she didn’t consider all of them her friends.  I, however, was graced with her friendship.  She had committed her time and attention to helping me “come out of my shell.”  How did I get so lucky?  Wait… she was looking at my chest.  I was wearing a bright orange shirt with a sequined dancing girl on the front.  Although my shirt was kind of flashy, I was pretty sure she was not staring at it because she loved it - she was more into nautical stripes. Her blonde eyebrow lifted noticeably under her reddish-blonde cowlick.  She leaned back in her chair and said quietly, but smugly, “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were wearing a bra under that shirt… It really looks like you’re wearing one…” 
  “That’s because I AM wearing one,” I whispered back. I gave her a smug look of my own.  Apparently according to the Rule Book of Madeline, I should have told her about this news, firstly since we were friends, and secondly, since this was my first public appearance in, as my own mother called it, an “over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder.”  Besides, much as I HATED the idea of having to wear a bra, I knew she’d be jealous, and after all the ribbing I took from her on a daily basis, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to annoy her just a bit in return.  For some odd reason, she thought having boobs was cool.  
“I’m going to tell the whole class…” 
I cut her off in mid-sentence. “You better not!  I’ll kill you!!” I tried to look threatening, but Madeline wasn’t threatened by much.  Not only did she model herself after a bizarre character I’d never before heard of named Pippy Longstocking, but she had tried to shove  me in her closet the first time I had been to her house.  “GET IN THERE WITH THE DEAD PEOPLE!” she had yelled until I really started to think she was crazy, and not just annoying.  Afterwards she laughed and said, You really started getting scared for a second, didn’t you?"  
She caught the eye of Daryl, who was siting just even with us at the long bank of tables further to our left. Daryl could be obnoxious, too at times, but he seemed a bit more savvy of his audience.  He knew when to shut up.  “Guess what?” She said to him, “I’ve got something to tell you…”  She KNEW I would hate this - telling girls was one thing, but telling a BOY?  It reminded me of the time in 5th grade music class; we were divided into two rows of chairs facing each other, boys on one side, girls on the other.   One day while I was minding my own business sitting with my friends on the girls side of the classroom, boys were laughing and pointing at me and I didn’t know.  Toward the end of class, it dawned on me…  I looked down at my brown corduroys to discover with horror that the fly of my pants unzipped and my bright white underwear was exposed.  Now here we were, a year later, and in addition to Daryl, Debbie and Andrea too looked up from their papers, ready to hear a juicy tidbit that would break the monotony of English class.  Madeline glanced back at me again.  She was undeterred.
“You’d better not!” I said and glared at her with my most fearsome, but obviously ineffective stare.  “I’ll kill you,” I muttered. 
She turned away from me and leaned towards them conspiratorially, “Melinda’s wearing a BRA!”
“Oh GOD,” Daryl said, let down by the banality of it all. “Shut up, Madeline.” He shook his head at and smirked at her, then went back to work.  The girls, too, went back to their writing and Madeline looked at me triumphantly - she had broken the news to the public.  I’d been outed.  I went back to working on my essay in a solid attempt to dismiss her, but when I leaned forward she reached behind me to grab my bra strap and SNAP it loudly.  

“Cut it OUT!” I said, as loudly as I could without drawing too much attention from Mr. Kogler.  Behind her back, Daryl rolled his eyes sympathetically, but it hardly seemed to matter.  Madeline had struck again.   

Sunday, February 25, 2018

Flowers and Jalapeños


I wrote this memoir piece years ago and only recently found and revised it a bit. Hope you like it. 


         I was walking down the hallway of our hotel, feeling pretty good about myself. ‘Hey, I’m in Mexico... I’m in the tropics…’ I said to myself just under my breath, ‘Everything is cool.’  I checked to make sure no one was around, then did a little hip-shimmy in my wildly flowered dress.  My flat, gold sandals clicked to a stop in front of Cathy’s door and I knocked the ‘shave and a haircut’ knock, then spoke into the crack of the door, “Helllooo... it’s me…”
Cathy answered the door wearing shorts, a T-shirt and espadrilles.
‘Look she’s wearing shorts and a T-shirt’ said that annoying little voice in my head. ‘You’re going to make a spectacle of yourself, Melinda.’
‘Shut up,’ I told it. ‘If she wants to wear shorts, that’s up to her. If I want to wear a dress, that’s up to me.’ But I held my short white jacket tighter, just the same.
“I brought a jacket, just in case the air conditioning is cranked up really high. You know I’m always freezing…” my words trailed off lamely while she stuffed some money in the pocket of her shorts and closed and locked the door to her room.  We headed down the open air hallway to the front of the hotel so we could catch the bus to…
“Jalapeños, right? I mean, you don’t mind listening to reggae, right?” she said.
“No, it’s fine, really. Reggae’s OK.”
“I just feel like dancing to some reggae, you know?” 
 I was not a huge fan of reggae, but I did know. She seemed to have absorbed some of the mood I was in before I got to her door, her eyes moving around from one clichéd tropical site to another until they finally landed on me, and she said, “YOU look very nice tonight. I think we’re going to have to beat Mexican men off you with a stick.”
“Haha, yeah, right,” I said. 
I should have brought my long, black sweater instead. 
Fifteen minutes later, we hopped off the bus and ran across the highway to Jalapeños where a flock of taxi drivers hovered, waiting for some action. 
“Whoooooeee, pretty mama,” I checked out my sandals as we walked past them. Some Spanish accented whistlers called out a greeting and I could not help but look over to see if they were talking to us.
        “Nice dress…”  I heard.  I looked up briefly.  Yikes, yup, I was the only one wearing a dress.  I shouldn’t have looked.  I tried my best to ignore them. Although it was uncomfortable to be cat-called, it was even more weird that they were paying no attention at all to Cathy. Why didn’t she get dressed up, too? If she had, I wouldn’t have been the only one in this situation. I did my best to turn on my ‘selective hearing.’  I pretended not to hear them, even though I could hear the sound of traffic coming down the highway a mile away.  Suddenly I was clammy and wishing I wore something else entirely - something that provided me with more cover. I put on my white jacket and pulled up the sleeves.  Cathy, whose sarcastic wit picked up the most finely detailed of personal flaws, seemed to have missed these men loitering around the outside entrance of the club. Were they all cab drivers waiting for a fare? There was no time for us to talk about this though, because she was a woman on a mission.  She strode into the club with such single-minded purpose that she left me trailing in her wake, hop, skip and jumping along behind her in an effort to keep up, while simultaneously lengthen the hem of my dress. 

Inside, we were surprised to see a bar less than half full of people, even though it was way past 10:00 pm, and the band was working diligently through its reggae set. We approached the first empty table and Cathy said, “do you want to sit down and get a drink first? I don’t want to dance yet. Nobody else is out there.” 
“Yeah, that’s fine.” I grabbed a chair and lowered myself into it, trying to look inconspicuous as everyone stared at us. 
  A waiter rushed over almost immediately with his order pad and a large smile on his face. “Good evening señoritas. Can I get you a drink?” 
“Yeah, uh…”  Cathy and I looked at each other.  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the waiter leering at me. Good lord, I’m not Helen of Troy, I’m just some girl in a flowered dress.  I decided to use my selective vision as well, and tried not to meet his eyes.
“Vodka and cranberry” she said.
‘I’ll have an extra-large cloak of invisibility with a hood, please’ is what I wanted to say but instead I said, “I’ll have the same, thanks.”


The waiter left to get our drinks and we looked silently around the room and checked out the one or two couples who were on the dance floor.  After a few more minutes a some more people made their way one to the dance floor to sway in time to the music. Still trying to make the most of my evening out, I thought hopefully that maybe soon they would turn down the lights on the dance floor so I could go out there and dance and no one would see me.  Hmmm it’d probably have to be a lot darker than this, though.  I was still staring, hoping for this eventuality when a thin, long-faced man with a thatch of dark hair and a mustache approached our table.  He looked like figure on a Mexican souvenir  - tall and lanky, slightly hunched at the shoulders.  He perfectly matched this tropical setting.   He leaned towards me so close I could see the dampness under the arms of his burgundy polyester shirt. “Would you like to dance?” he asked.
My brain said, ‘WHATT?’ and a I squeaked out, “Oh, no thanks, I just want to sit and listen for a while.” My eyes darted around the room, landed on him for a split second and darted off again.  
The long-faced man retreated in silent disappointment and I noticed an amused grin on Cathy’s face, but she said nothing.  Shit, I thought.  Now I can’t dance - I told that guy I just want to sit and listen.  Long-faced man ordered himself a drink.  I imagined it was tequila.  

The waiter returned with our drinks and we sipped them for a while, passing the time checking out the decor.  Humanized jalapeño peppers complete with wings and mustaches cavorted among a heaven full of clouds painted on the ceiling.  A neon green jalapeño and some of his red buddy chili pepper pals formed the logo on one wall. There was some lighting behind the band, and behind the bar, but other than that, it was pretty dark in there. I guess it was no good hoping it would get darker so that I could dance.  I looked over at Cathy. She was checking out the band. 
“I really want to dance, but this really isn’t good reggae,” Cathy said finally.  
Oh, it doesn’t matter, I thought. I shouldn’t have worn this damn dress, and now I told that guy that I don’t want to dance, so how can I just get up now and start tearing up the dance floor?   
“That’s ok.  It sounds fine to me.  Really.”
Our smiling waiter returned and asked if we wanted anything else.  We declined and he retreated to observe the band from the walk space next to our table. We watched the band, too, and I suspiciously kept an eye on the waiter, wondering why he was still standing right next to our table.  Another waiter walked over next to ours and the two of them started chatting, occasionally pointing with their chins in our direction.  
Our waiter and his grin returned for an encore performance, “Would you like to dance?”  For a second, I was stunned.  He’s WORKING, I thought.  Is he allowed to dance on the job? Are the rules that different in Mexico? 
“No thanks,” I said and looked away quickly but this time, smiled sweetly so that I didn’t look like a complete bitch.  Better, I said to myself.  The waiter, unfortunately, didn’t seem to think so.  “Why not? It looks like you want to dance so come and dance with me.” In my 26 years, I had never run into this sort of thing.  How was I supposed to answer that? ‘No, buddy, I might consider dancing, just not with YOU.’  Yeah, that probably wouldn’t go well.  
“No, really.”  I said, and shook my head no.  “Thanks anyway.”
I suddenly noticed that the tequila drinker was watching us closely.  MIND YOUR OWN DAMN BUSINESS! I wanted to scream.  
Cathy was wearing that smirk again, and I widened my eyes, trying to convey that that I could use some help.  She looked back at the band.  
The waiter leaned over me, his hand on the back of my chair and tried a new approach, “Come on… You’re on vacation.  You’re supposed to be having FUNnnnnnn…”
“No.”  I said. My voice took on a harsher tone, but sounded to my ears, just a tiny bit desperate.  Leave me the fuck alone, so I can enjoy my night, I thought.  
“Do you want to go?” Cathy asked. The waiter, who seemed to have forgotten all about her, turned back to look at her.  
“Yeah!”  I said, with enough enthusiasm to convince anyone except for this idiot that I really did want him to get away from me. I put some money on the table for the drinks but when we stood up to go, the waiter grabbed my arm and started walking toward the dance floor.  
“No,” I said, “I don’t want to dance.  We’re leaving now.” I silently cursed my God-damned dress.  Why did I have to wear it? Why are these men such blathering assholes? 
“Where else are you going to go?” the waiter asked.  He then had both of my arms and was trying to steer me away from the door and back toward the dance floor.  “Don’t you want to hear reggae?”
My temper bubbled up like steam in a kettle. “No.  I want to go back to my hotel and go to sleep.”  While my statement sank into his thick skull, I wrenched free first one of my arms and then the other, then headed for the door with Cathy following behind me, who still managed to keep her eyes mainly on the band even as we headed out the door. 
I strode to the parking lot and hailed a taxi to take us back to the hotel - the first taxi with a driver who looked old, and happily married, and grandfatherly.   We got in the cab, and as soon as he pulled away from the curb, I gave voice to my livid thoughts.  
“How obnoxious!”  I ranted.  “I can’t believe they wouldn’t cut it out and leave me alone.”  
“Well,” she said, “You wore that dress, what did you expect?”