Suddenly…

Hey, do you know that feeling of hitching up a long skirt so you don’t fall on your face when walking upstairs, and then you immediately become a wretched yet resolute Jane Austen character? It’s a universal thing, right?

I wish I could take credit for this. Because it is a universal thing, for women. I can’t speak for men, but women know those moments.

Staring out the window during a rainstorm, sipping tea, listening to a sad song and feeling like a rom com character who had to break up with the “guy,” but wishing he had been…better.

Staring into a fireplace with snow falling, thinking of your ancestors who didn’t have a Zippo to light their own fires they needed to survive.

Diving into the ocean, feeling like a literary heroine in a Kate Chopin novel, wondering, “If I just keep swimming and disappear, I can start a new life.”

I have been involved in an Instagram thread that has brought me so much laughter and happiness, I thought it is the perfect way to start blogging again. To know that as women, we all have this in common. That of removing ourselves mentally and emotionally from a moment or situation, and imagining we are someone else of days gone by.

Here are some “moments” in the thread:

Washing dishes and rubbing your forehead with the back of your hand, because you suddenly realize you must churn butter for supper.

Eating stew with bread and suddenly you’re in a medieval inn eating your first hot meal after a fortnight on the road.

Running down the stairs with a long skirt, suddenly a princess escaping the castle under siege.

Your shoes making a clacking noise on a marble floor and suddenly you’re a fashion maven followed by your three assistants.

Wearing an oversize sweater with long sleeves, gripping your warm coffee mug and suddenly you’re a middle-aged successful author who writes self-help books and has slender fingers.

When it begins to rain unexpectedly and you don’t have an umbrella, so you pull your scarf over your head and suddenly now you’re an eastern European peasant woman trying to survive the Nazis.

You bring in wood for the fire, and suddenly you’re a wretched poor woman who lives alone in a small wooden shack on the moors because you wouldn’t conform and marry the middle-aged captain.

Walking along with a child on your hip and suddenly feeling like an impoverished  washerwoman with a brood of children walking to meet her husband from the mines.

Wearing a scarf over your head on a cold winter day, you turn your head to look and suddenly you’re the French Lieutenant’s woman.

Eating bread, cheese and stew and suddenly now you’re Heidi, living with Grandfather.

That’s only a small sample. Makes me proud to be a woman. The one comment from a man was:

“These comments confuse and intrigue me.”

Indeed.

SRFS UP

Vanity plates are so….vain. And while I myself AM vain, I see no need to broadcast my vanity to cars idling in back of me. So when my lease ended on my Audi, and my new plates arrived, I knew immediately what I was in for.

My plate spelled out “SRF.” Clearly indicating someone who loves to surf, someone who loves the beach, someone who loves the water above all else. Right? If you’re going to pay money for an acronym to be spelled out on your license plate, it should spell out something that you adore above all else.

Right? Like: DOGZ. NYCTY. CHEEZ. Or HRVRD.

(At this point in time, I can’t imagine ANYONE bragging about attending Harvard. What an embarrassing institution).

Anyhoo, the SRF is NOT the topography I adore above all else. MNTS, maybe. Or DSRT. But not SRF.

Here’s a smattering of what I have gotten so far:

Wawa Attendant: “Like to surf?” Me: No.

Guy next to me in hotel parking lot: “You from Surf City?” Me: No.

Guy pumping gas next to me at a Sheetz: “I guess you like the water, har har.” Me: Not really. Har har.

Just recently a new acquaintance at a tailgate: “Surf’s up,” then he did that hang ten hand gesture. Me: “What does that mean?”

Oh, let it end.

KEVIN!

I like the scene in the movie “Home Alone” when Kevin is walking home with his groceries, and the bottom rips out of the grocery bag, spilling the groceries on the sidewalk. So much so that I personally recreated the same scene at work yesterday.

On long days on campus, I bring an assortment of food stuffs. Bringing a healthy assortment of snacks keeps me from drifting towards the crap machines. A crafty ploy.

Between my first and second classes, as I was waiting for the elevator, the bottom ripped out of my bag, and I’m sure my face registered the same expression Kevin’s did in the film. That look of:

WTF.

I knew why it happened. At the last minute, I had grabbed a frozen bottle of water out my freezer, ostensibly to replenish my flask at lunch. I don’t know why that frozen bottle of water was in there, probably from one of the boys drifting in and out of the house, treating our home like a Marriott, as they do.

It being humid out, the frozen bottle drenched the paper bottom of the bag. I mean, you get the idea. It was class change, so a few dozen people were passing through the hallways. A couple of good Samaritans stopped to gather my wares off the floor, and I wonder what they thought of the sundry assortment.

Listen, when I pack my lunch bag in the morning, I’m not thinking. My main goal is to simply use what I have “in the house.” This is my new adult thing: to use what is “in the house.” It is truly something I enjoy doing now that the boys are all out of the house, using whatever I have in the house since I don’t have to shop for them anymore.

I had brought:

Half veggie sandwich

5 carrot coins

8 overripe blackberries

Small plain yogurt

Half dozen Wheat Thins

Small bag of vanilla granola

2 chocolate raspberry truffles from the Ritz-Carlton in Philadelphia

2 small pieces Willy Wallaby black licorice

“Here ya go, here ya go, here ya go….”

The sandwich and licorice survived. The carrots fell out of their wrap, the blackberries disintegrated, the yogurt opened on the floor, and the rest, I’m sorry to say, suffered various life-ending morbidities. It was a real mess.

KEVIN!

Sword Fight

Three equal length boxes arrived at the house last week. Narrow, about three feet long.

I pondered. Golf clubs?

They were addressed to my oldest, so I texted him from work.

Boxes for you at house.

Yes!  he texted, and he told me that they were birthday presents for himself and his brothers.

I was filled with dread. You don’t understand his style in gift giving. He gives things like Bernese puppies. Forts. Sprinkler systems. Trips to places like Auschwitz, and Machu Picchu. Gift cards for experiences like combing the cashmere off the bellies of Angora goats in the Himalayas. His gifts should come with things like warranties. Flight plans. Insurance policies.

When I arrived home, the outer boxes were on the floor, and one inner box.

Game of Thrones, the box said.

I called Tommy down, and he emerged off the stairs holding a sword. A real sword, the sharp kind that disembowels villains in Shakespearean tragedies.

I stared and asked.

But why? Why do you need that? What will you do with it?

He shrugged, and offered:

Hang it on my wall at school? Have a sword fight?

Jesus, I said. No. That’s a real sword.

He scoffed. That’s the point, Mom. This is a Game of Thrones sword. You wouldn’t understand.

Obviously not.

Then it was the night of our big family dinner at our favorite restaurant, and we were all gathered at the house. It was time for John to give his twin brother Dustin his sword. I wondered how it would go over, Mr. Conservative Hospital Corners getting a sword for his birthday. I hoped he didn’t hurt his brother’s feelings when he opened it.

When I heard him whoop and holler, I knew I still didn’t get it. I’ve never seen him happier with a gift in my life. They showed me some “Game of Thrones” video, some battle scene where some leader who doesn’t want to be a leader but who is a leader anyway charges thousands of barbarians all shooting arrows at him. He thinks he is alone, when he suddenly turns around, and realizes his own army has been behind him the whole time. He draws his sword.

The Sword. The one that they all now own, the sword they are whispering about. I hear only snippets of their conversation.

Fight…Yard…Cousins…Thanksgiving.

God, I hope they are going to use the swords to cut the turkey.

Hoowah

The most hate mail I ever received as an op-ed writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer was when I said I liked the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition.

Yowza, did I get in trouble.

Getting to be a woman is such an honor, was my point. And I recently ran across the movie scene in “Scent of a Woman” that reminded me:

Al Pacino, playing that part, articulates it perfectly. So take it away, Al, I’m too hot to think and write.

(Oh, and a warning: this video has the “T” word, and the “P” word when referring to women. Don’t watch if easily offended. If you watch, and you get offended, you’re completely missing the point of the speech. You’ve been warned. Oh, and grow up. Sheesh).

Too Pretty to be Sad

This adorable video keeps popping up on Instagram of this baby girl who every time she looks at her mother, she makes this sad “boo-boo” lip, and when she looks back at her dad, she smiles. Her facial expressions go back and forth between mom and dad, and it’s super cute.

(I demand a granddaughter, pronto dente).

Anyway, when she does the pouty lip thing, you can hear her mother laugh and say, “Oh, baby, don’t be sad.” You can also hear her father say, off-video, “Oh, baby, you’re too pretty to be sad.”

If you’ve already figured it out, you’re quicker than I am. I wasn’t prepared, but now, of course, I realize I should have been. Silly, silly me. Here are some of the comments:

Too pretty to be sad? Ugh.

Bad parents.

In this day and age, seriously?

What the hell is that supposed to mean?

The implication being, of course, that the parents are sending this six-month old the wrong message, which will, ultimately, send her to her crib with low self-esteem and potential cutting issues. The message being?

That being pretty is everything. And that if a young girl is lucky enough to be born “pretty,” she has, and never will have, anything to complain about.

Yikes. Does anyone actually believe that, or teach their daughters that? I tend to doubt it.

Entire books have been written on the subject of women’s body image, societal expectations of the female body image, the effects of growing up as what society perceives as “attractive” vs. “unattractive,” etc. I teach entire classes on it, sometimes I spend weeks on it, sometimes I assign papers to be written on it. It’s fascinating.

And I’m not trying to solve it here.

I guess the bottom line is that you should see this baby. She is definitely too pretty to be sad. We all are.

Floral Dress

So I have this dress in my closet that I can’t figure out how to wear. It was super cheap, a cool color, but a mistake. In my defense I didn’t know it was “Final Sale,” therefore unable to be returned. I tried.

It’s a long-sleeve maroon floral peasant dress, completely antithetical to anything I would ever buy, and I can assure you is as terrible as it sounds. I simply don’t know what to do with this thing. Here are five scenarios I came up with:

  • Find an empty field like the one in the picture above and twirl around in it.
  • Dig out my old cowboy boots and go line dancing at a honky-tonk.
  • Put it on when I get out of bed in my forest cabin, like the female lead in a really bad indie movie. I will throw a shawl around my shoulders, wander down to the dock barefoot, and stare soulfully into the sunrise while sipping my coffee. I will also need a golden retriever to pet when the sunrise hits my face.
  • Put my hair up in a really cute bun, throw on Doc Martens, and browse in a used bookstore in London, hoping a Hugh Grant lookalike will approach me and tell me I have “really eclectic literary taste.” I will ignore him at first, because that’s what I do, but I will eventually give in, and we will go out to lunch to debate Shakespeare vs. Marlowe over coffee and scones.
  •  Wear it to buy maroon mums at a garden market, hoping someone will notice that I match the flowers I’m buying.

It’s my only hope.

Brand New Tags-On. I Swear.

Ah, I am so naïve.

So I did another closet purge, right? Purged my closet of dresses that are perhaps too young for me, and, er, too hoochie-momma for someone my age? It felt good, coming to terms with my closet.

I mean, just where in the hell am I going to wear a magenta ruched mini-dress? A navy blue backless caped mini? A leopard print mini?

Exactly. To a costume party only, if I wanted to go as a woman who refuses to act her age. I could go as Madonna. Susan Sarandon. Cher!

Not to denigrate these fabulous women, I love them all. They can dress however they want, they get artists’ exemptions. Not me. I’m immature enough as it is, so I believe firmly in dressing appropriately for a woman my age.

So OUT DAMN POLE-DANCING CLOTHES, I said, using my best Lady Macbeth impression. But now what to do with them? Some of them still have tags on them, since they were bought in moments of rash impulsivity. Many of them were only worn once, with little chance of ever being worn again.

But they’re soooooo beautiful. Some beautiful young person with no cellulite should be able to rock them.

Then I remembered the commercial for Poshmark. That cute girl, who tells us in her delicate little voice that it’s sooooooo easy to sell clothes on the app.

Yeah, right.

I don’t care about the money. Let me just say that going in. I just want these beautiful dresses to be worn by someone equally as beautiful. If you are reading this, I swear to God email me and give me your address. I will send the whole lot to you, then you can do the heavy lifting.

The only heavy lifting I like is in the gym.

Poshmark is not easy. Maybe someone who is good with social media would have fun with it, but it was not easy for me.

I discovered pretty quickly that Poshmark is a dating app for clothes. No one trusts anyone else. If you say it’s brand-new, tags on, all you will get are people messaging you, trying to make you prove your dress is who you say it is.

Then there are the scammers. They want your private information, they are in the hospital and need money, they want the dress for their daughter who is sick in Bolivia, blah, blah, blah.

I gave up pretty quickly. My Poshmarket closet is still up, so take a look if you want: @moves66

We are going to have a yard sale in the spring, and I am going to display the dresses front-and-center, on decorative racks. See if I can sell them that way.

Unless you want ‘em. Email me. And see everyone in November.

Maybe.

A Sweet Ride

I was discussing my soon-to-be expiring Audi lease with my son.

“I don’t know if I like it enough to keep it,” I said.

“I agree,” he answered, clomping through the house like a Clydesdale. “It wasn’t you, Mom.”

Interesting. Bear in mind that people in my life have said this about every car I’ve ever driven. I’ll go backwards, before the Audi:

Middle child, looking at every angle of my Chevrolet Equinox parked in driveway, on my first day home with it: (Shaking his head) “It’s o.k. I guess, but it’s not really you, is it?”

I mean, I thought it was.

All boys in my trail-rated Jeep Wrangler, as they watch me wave to other Jeep drivers: “Mom, stop. You are not cool enough for this Jeep.”

I knew that the day I bought it.

All three boys, as I shepherded them from athletic youth activity to athletic youth activity in our family Chevrolet Tahoe: “Can dad drive us in this truck next time?”

Point noted. Dad is cooler.

All three boys as babies/toddlers, as I shepherded them from errands to play dates to supermarket to t-ball in our family Chevrolet Tahoe: “Grrhdhpsdopspaf, phlooooppp, sjdkfjiw.”

Baby babbling noted. Too much truck for me, I get it.

Youngest child as a baby, watching me get into my Mazda Miata convertible: “Ew, Mom.”

The Miata lasted less than a year.

A student watching me park my cabernet-colored Jeep Cherokee in the faculty parking lot, then accosting me in the hallway: “Mrs. Oves, I don’t see you in that truck. At all.”

How can you not see me? I was right THERE.

My late husband, a day after I announced I was pregnant with twins as he watched me squeeze my way into my Mazda RX-7 sports car: “You’re not going to fit into this car much longer. We’ll have to get you something for your girth.”

Gee, thanks. I never felt cooler in my life than when I was driving that car with my Alanis Morrisette CD blasting.

My late husband when we were still dating, as he drove me back in my Chevrolet Tracker from the dealership, since I could not drive stick:  “I just don’t get how someone buys a vehicle without knowing it is stick shift, and then refuses to learn. How did you intend to get to work?”

I obviously hadn’t thought that far ahead.

My calm older brother on the phone, after I told him I had totaled his Dodge Charger while he was doing a military tour of duty overseas: “That’s a shame, Mary, that car was you.”

So maybe that was the last time a car was me. So what’s left?

I’m thinking a cement mixer. A VW bus. An Airstream.

Anyway, my close and personal friend Dave Ramsey, who personally counsels me on everything financial, wants me to let the dealership buy off the lease so I can just buy a clunker. The thought of my having that extra money every month makes him giddy with glee.

Part of me doesn’t want to give up the Audi symbol that reflects onto the ground when I open my driver’s door at night. Or the encapsulating “thunk” whenever someone closes the door. The safety, the lines, the sheer vanity of the Audi.

Can I give that up?

But there’s something about driving a clunker that appeals to me, besides the obvious benefit of no car payment. Terrestrial radio. No computer system that tries to override my brain. Nicked and scratched, inside and out, well-loved and imperfect.

Anyway, at the age of 56, that describes me perfectly. Some mileage, some wear-and-tear, but in the long run?

Just a sweet ride.

Can I get some answers?

(*Let me just say that of course I support whatever tactics any woman utilizes that makes her feel beautiful. I judge no one. After all, I don’t want anyone judging me for getting highlights, or a spray tan. That being said, please read on)…

Who is telling women who get Botox and extreme face lifts that they look good?

One night when I was at work, a tall emaciated blonde on the arm of a dark-haired older man walked past me, and I couldn’t help but feel enormously sorry for her. This is amusing considering the fact that not only was she wealthy, but obviously the whole point of her frozen monkey-like countenance was to show everyone in the room that she (or I guess he) could afford the plastic surgery. She couldn’t possibly have thought she looked good. And she was so young.

Who is telling these women with frozen misshapen faces and blowfish lips that they look good? Social media? Rich men? The plastic surgeons? They all have to stop lying to these poor women.

Other questions I have:

Why do all sweaters cost $300? They’re not even cashmere. Even high-quality sweaters used to cost, like, $79.99. Every single sweater I like costs $300. That’s a car payment. Have I missed something?

Why does the media so badly want me to eat an avocado a day, and also get the Shingles vaccine? What’s in it for them? If my health was a priority to conglomerates, supermarkets wouldn’t still sell sliced salami.

How can Supercuts advertise and brag about the fact that they have “no waits”? I have dozens of stories of my twins’ meltdowns while waiting for their turns at Supercuts. The only thing that kept them in control was the promise of going next door for pizza and Gamestop.

I guess that’s it for now.