Fashion Friday!

Here’s the thing about being a food blogger: today, instead of eating my usual healthy lunch of nuts and a green smoothie, I ate guacamole and a vanilla cupcake and I now feel like I’m going to explode. All in the name of recipe testing. It just so happens that the cupcakes are blog-worthy, but that wasn’t my main reason for making them. For lo, we have a birthday today in the Boyhouse:

What’s a birthday? says Barkley

Our fuzzy baby is six, so welcome to middle age, Barkley! In the spirit of mid-life crises, Barkley festively rolled in something at the dog park last week that made me a) hate him and b) thank god that I had a bottle of no-rinse dog shampoo in the cupboard.

So it’s all cupcakes and festivity around here – well, the birthday boy does not get to partake in the cupcake celebration, but he will have a nice dog chew to work on.

The boys had a very pleasant trip to the zoo, despite the rain, and despite the fact that Jake was in a group with a “bossy girl who he DOES NOT LIKE” who – evidently – made fun of the animals all day long. How or why one makes fun of animals, I do not know, but it raised Jake’s ire enough to discuss this ad nauseam.

While they were at the zoo, I was at the hair salon. A new girl mixed my colour while my usual hair therapist got organized, and I kind of think I have a different hair colour now. I’m not sure, though.

Maybe an extreme makeover! I’m not sure.

It seems darker, but maybe it’s just “first day” colour. In any event, while I was at the salon I chose not to feel out of touch by reading People magazine, and instead settled in with a copy of In Style. Now, I consider myself to be fairly aware of the styles these days. I try to keep up, and to wear fashionable-yet-classic-and-age-appropriate wear. It turns out I have no interest in the new styles, if this is what’s in fashion:

Say NO to the sporty cinch.

I had pants like this. They were pale pink and had a matching sweatshirt. It was called a sweatsuit and it was 1984 and WE DO NOT NEED TO BRING THAT BACK. It reminds me of gym class, and let me tell you this, I was not an A student in gym class. I got the “Participant!” sticker and/or ribbon for every single sports event on sports day, when my friends were getting actual ribbons and stickers that showed athletic prowess.  I am certainly not about to embrace this style, not just because of the emotional trauma it stirs up, but because it’s unflattering.

I’d wear these as PJ’s, totally, but not as actual clothes.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with a tapered leg, although it makes me think of the 1988-90 when my mother would sew the calves of my jeans so that they would be tapered. Thanks, Mom! I mean, it’s not a great look, to be sure, because nothing says “Large thighs and bottom and teeny little calves” like a pair of super-tapered pants. But I’m specifically saying no to the above pair of pants. People, horizontally striped pants are really best left in the jammie department.

Wide crop, tapered leg, MAKE UP YOUR MIND, FASHION PEOPLE. Actually I don’t mind the wide leg look so much, but I’m not a big fan of:

When I was pregnant I had the kind of maternity pants that went under the belly, even though my mother was scandalized when I got too big for everything and had a strip of belly showing where my maternity tops ended and my elastic-waist pants began. I owned that look. I would rather have that than the feeling of elastic waist ending just below my bra line, and that is how I feel about these pants. It’s just too Steve Urkel or that Martin Short character to me.

Need I offer further comment?

I weep for all humanity.