I’ve been singing in my head wake me up when September ends because this month has been crazy, and here it is, almost over. Of course, I don’t see October slowing down significantly. Wake me up when October ends. I’ve been busy in a silly kind of way, with things that are not terribly important world-wide but are kind of important in my world, and so I’m like a hummingbird on speed. Vrrrrooooooooommmmm. My husband asked, plaintively, if I could possibly start sleeping in a little later than 4:30 am and I realized I have turned into a boring sort of person who says things like “But I have to bake macarons and write about it and I have to call all these people for the silent auction and I want to wash all the sheets and clean the bathroom and I need to get the agenda posted for the SC/PA meeting and…” and by the time I say “bake macarons” he has tuned out from my dull monologue. I’m even boring myself, just writing this.
But oh! There have been a number of other things happening this week, other than school council meetings and baked goods. Today was the Terry Fox run and I was a little worried about it since it was 4 degrees this morning and Jake called me from school to ask to come home yesterday afternoon, which has never happened. He has a cold, that’s all, but for him it presents as red, watery eyes and the kind of misery that goes along with not being able to see anything as a result. He seems okay today and is back to class; in any case, my husband reminded me that being able to perform and work while not feeling 100% is actually a very useful life skill. It is, isn’t it? It’s not like we can call it a day every time we have the sniffles, and spend the day lying on the couch eating cinnamon toast and watching terrible daytime television. It’s probably good that kids learn to suck it up, buttercup, at least when it’s something minor and not a FEVER or BARFING or something gross and contagious, in which case I always keep the kids home.
We’ve been having many what do you want to be when you grow up conversations lately, and I am telling you, it’s very entertaining. The main goal in this mercenary household is to be wealthy, or, more specifically, to “Make more money than you, Dad, and get a nicer car.” That would be my eight year old talking, who has decided he wants to be a trader. Given his math skills and his generally dickish attitude, I think this would be an excellent career choice for him. Mark wants to be an engineer, which he is also very well suited for. He has what I fondly think of as an engineering personality; those of you who know any engineers will know exactly what I mean, I think. This is the part where I’m supposed to say, passionately, that I just want them to be happy, which is true, of course, but I do think a person is happiest when pursuing a solid career, and so I will continue to cheer on their engineering/ trading/ finance interests while doling out more math worksheets.
When I was a child I wanted to be a concert pianist and/ or a great theatre actress; I ended up with two economics degrees and working on a trade floor as a quantitative analyst. What I did not envision was my current career, at least this week, of being an old-timey dentist. I have been pulling out a lot of teeth in the past seven days, just like one of those dentists in the wild west, except with a decided lack of whiskey. The kids have suddenly developed two things: an alarming number of loose teeth and a complete lack of patience with said loose teeth. I’m getting really good at pulling them out, I have to say. Wham, bam, tooth out. And then there’s the little issue of payment. In lieu of my husband donning a tutu and a wand with a tooth on it, he simply doles out whatever change he has in his pockets when he gets home. This led to Mark’s receipt of nearly $5 in change for a molar. I heard him telling a friend this, who lamented that HE only gets $2 a tooth, to which I said gently – because I didn’t want anyone to feel bad or anyone to whom I have given birth to be boasting – that case was just because that was what Dad happened to have in his pocket. To which the little friend said “His Dad? The Tooth Fairy brings me the money.” Mark gave me the wide eyed, raised eyebrow look I usually give to the children for such verbal slipups, and later said to me, sharply, that his friend still believed in the Tooth Fairy and I shouldn’t have said anything at all.
Parents. We just don’t understand.
Category Archives: When I grow up
Willie Wonka’s Factory of Near-Death Experiences
I’ve been having a lovely day, despite of an inauspicious moment this morning when I was getting dressed and wondered what happened to my sweater. I wondered if I had somehow shrunk it, which seemed unlikely since I never put sweaters in the dryer. The usually long, drapey sweater was fitting bizarrely like a crop top. I finally realized – and don’t think too hard about how I achieved this – that I had put it on upside down.
The boys and I have been reading Roald Dahl books lately, and it occurred to me while reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that no book of that type could be written in today’s cultural climate. For one thing, Charlie and his family are starving to death and take much joy and salvation in being offered a lifetime supply of candy. I need not reference the obvious objections to excessive sugar intake, childhood obesity, etc., but I will mention that throughout the book I kept thinking lawsuit waiting to happen. I mean, the children constantly going missing and then ending up a) stretched b) emaciated c) blue? I kept thinking that Mr. Wonka had better have a good lawyer, and then I recalled that back in the day of Charlie’s inception the children’s downfalls due to their own gluttony, greed, and general assholishness would have been considered just desserts (see what I did there?). In any case, the dramatic conclusion was much cheered by my own children.
Speaking of chocolate, I managed to get all of the teachers’ gifts purchased and arranged today, and chocolate featured strongly. I also stopped by my local Planet Organic to buy hazelnuts, and realized I also needed raw cashews, and hey, that’s a great price for tofu, and wow, coconut milk is $1/can less than at my regular, old-people, non-pretentious grocery store. I went to the cashier with four cans of coconut milk, two packages of tofu, and two large bags of bulk raw nuts, and I felt a bit like a pretentious douchebag. Then I realized where I was and felt that probably there were many, many more people who were many times the pretentious douchebag that I am, and so instead I just felt the kind of excitement that only comes from buying so many thrilling ingredients for various vegan recipes. Because yesterday I made the most delicious dessert from coconut milk, dark chocolate, hazelnuts and – of all things – dates; it was so scrumptious that my husband, my red meat loving husband, said it was the single best thing I have ever made. Honestly, he probably high-fived himself for marrying me, it was THAT GOOD. Or maybe he was just saying that to get me into bed; either way. Everybody wins! And nobody, hopefully, meets their maker in a violent ending a la Willie Wonka’s factory of near-death experiences.
Okay, by now everyone who watches Mad Men has seen this week’s episode, right? So I can say this without fear of spoiling it for anyone? OF COURSE BOB IS GAY. I called that weeks ago, based entirely on his short shorts. Also, was I the only one who loved the line “Imagine if every time Ginger Rogers jumped in the air, Fred Astaire punched her in the face!”? I giggle every time I think about it, which seems to be more often than is appropriate. That is quite the mental image. Also fabulous was the scene when poor demented Mrs. Campbell talks about her nurse, Manolo, awakening feelings in her loins and Pete snaps “Do NOT be more specific!” Hee hee, I feel like the line do NOT be more specific could be used in so many different situations. I’m saving that for later. Not to mention “Diplomacy Club is just another excuse to make out!” I have to disagree on that one; having been in Model Parliament in high school, there was no making out that I could discern. Although I could be wrong on that front; I may have been too absorbed in backcombing my spiral permed hair to notice.
Happy early Father’s Day to all you daddy-o’s out there. Hey Daddy-O. Don’t be a square.
Life Lessons from the Eighties
Two things happened in the last couple of days that have got me thinking about aging and hairstyles and beauty in general. First, I was at a reunion on Saturday night with people I went to school with for grades 1-10, and the most popular comment of the night was You haven’t changed a bit! This is a very kind, though untrue, thing to say. I believe the sentiment behind it is not that a person hasn’t changed but that a person hasn’t aged. Which is also untrue – everyone ages, some gracefully, some not – but is a very kindhearted sentiment all the same.
The second thing is that a friend posted a photo of me on Facebook, a photo dating back to the late eighties. I was thirteen in that photo, and I was reminded that we all go through very awkward stages in our lives. I was also reminded that the trend back then was to wear one’s bangs vertically, with enough hairspray to make a solid and unmovable wall. Possibly my circle of friends was singlehandedly responsible for climate change, given our penchant for Salon Selectives.
My first instinct on seeing this photo was unparalleled horror – I felt I must untag myself from that train wreck immediately; I’m pretty vain and I was not flattered by this picture. Upon further reflection though, I feel that embracing our awkward stages is an important part of our development as people. After all, one must be an ugly duckling before one becomes a swan, am I right? One must be veiled in a cocoon prior to blossoming as a butterfly. Etc.
I felt like I looked nice this morning – I’ve been using a new shampoo and conditioner that is improving my poor heat-and-colour-damaged hair, and before you tell me to be proactive and stop damaging my hair with heat and colour, well, not going to happen in this lifetime. I’m going to go to my grave with heat and colour damaged hair; likely it will be that orangey-red skimpy hair seen on women of a certain age, paired with bright lipstick bleeding into my liplines. No matter. I felt good this morning. This is what I looked like this today before school dropoff, forehead and undereye lines and all:
Compare and contrast with this photo, from the same era as the one posted on Facebook:
Good gracious. Although those glasses are probably popular in the hipster community right now, I feel that nothing but improvement can come from that time period in my life. In other words, I want to have changed and aged. I want to look different than I did back then, for many reasons. For one, I didn’t know how to pluck my eyebrows back then and so I went through many years with Martin Scorcese-style brows:
Those are SOME eyebrows. What I’m saying here, people, is that we should EMBRACE the aging process because the vast, vast majority of us look much better now than we did as teenagers. You know the old saying that a woman at twenty has the face she’s born with, and a woman at forty has the face she deserves? I feel like hugging all the young teenage girls I know and telling them that it gets better, it really does, and one day you will look back at your eyebrows and bad skin and cringe-worthy hair and your horrible fashion decisions and you will feel like you have improved immensely with age, like wine.
Speaking of cringe-worthy hair, I have had emotional issues about my hair for my entire life. My entire life I believed that I had uniquely awful hair. In fact, I had such insecurity about my hair at such a young age that I took to wearing wigs that were lying around:
In answer to the inevitable question, no, I do not know whose wig that was. I just know that I rocked it out.
Looking back at photos I realize that my hair, while not quite shampoo-commercial worthy, was really no worse than anyone else’s, hardened bangs and spiral perms not withstanding. Well, maybe it was worse for a brief period in 1985:
I don’t know either. Sadly, this Toni home perm was a turning point in my life, hairstyle wise, since before that the majority of my young life was marked by a variation on the Dorothy Hamill style cut which I hated with a passion:
I always wanted long, long hair, and I briefly achieved this between the ages of seven and eight:
Notes: I am reading Little Town on the Prairie, and probably dying with excitement at the old-timey romance, and also – EYEBROWS. For some reason, shortly after I rocked out a pink frilly puffed sleeve dress, I allowed my hair to be cut short yet again, only to grown out and home permed a few short years later.
There are lessons to be learned here: a) although I was horrified at finding a photo of myself and three girlfriends and our collectively spiral permed and sprayed hair sitting on Santa’s lap on Facebook, such photos keep us humble, b) we become the people we are through the mistakes we make, notably in the hair department, c) youth is a time of experimentation, also notably in the hair department, d) AGE IS OUR FRIEND.
Let’s all agree to stop saying you haven’t changed, and instead say you’re beautiful. Because it’s true – the beauty inside us shines through, and only gets better and better. Plus, as we age, we learn important life lessons such as how to wield tweezers properly and that perms are not a good idea, and also that hair clips and earrings should never match one’s lipstick. Age before beauty? Age IS beauty.
Nicole’s Favourite Things – Spring Edition!
It was such a long, cold winter, wasn’t it? Snow on the ground from October solidly through April, but I tell you this: May has been absolutely stunning in YYC. I keep expecting snow in the forecast every day, or at least hard frosts, and yet it’s been warm and beautiful. It feels like spring, but not Calgary spring – regular actual spring!
And so it’s time for the Spring Edition of Nicole’s Favourite Things!
My Garden
On the fourth of May, this is what my front yard Mayday tree looked like:
This is what it looks like now:
Leaves! Flowers! All in a nine day span, which is not great for the allergy sufferers in the house, but it sure is pretty. Speaking of pretty:
This is the prettiest the Nanking cherry has ever looked. Usually the buds freeze before the flowers come out and/or the flowers get blown off by gale force winds, but not this year. I’m soaking up every second.
I know people in other parts of the world have had lilac bushes, the blooms of which have already come and gone, but look at the adorable little buds on my lilac:
There are many, many other exciting things happening in my garden right now, but if you are NOT a gardener, you may be falling asleep with boredom at all my squee flower talk. Moving on.
Embracing Colour
Well, kind of. I was shopping with a girlfriend who just so happens to have gone to design school and has a fabulous sense of style, and she practically forced me to buy this top, which I was unsure about, but now I love.
IT’S SO COLOURFUL! I feel a little bit peacock-y in this outfit, but my husband informed me that I am now no longer allowed to shop without my friend in tow. Hope she doesn’t mind her new career as my personal stylist.
I also wore a blue – BLUE – scarf to my 20th high school reunion. I don’t know if it’s spring fever or what, but all this colour is going to my head.
Anyone else feel like I need to clean my bedroom mirror? Seems a little dusty.
Mascara
I am a sucker for different formulations of mascara, and yet I don’t actually notice a difference between any of them. None of them transform me into a Megan Draper lookalike, possibly because I don’t look anything like Megan Draper and also she has fake eyelashes and professional makeup artists and she’s a TV character, not an actual person. Anyway. I did buy this mascara called “The Falsies” and although I was at first disappointed with it (see also: non transformation into a TV character) the more I use it the better I like it. My husband snapped this picture of me on Saturday night and I can actually notice my eyelashes in it:
Spring Food
I am in love with everything berry and green these days, so I’m enjoying these recipes I have up at Yummy Mummy Club: Green Goddess Bowl of Goodness, Overnight Coconut French Toast, and Lemon Mini-Cakes with Whipped Coconut Cream. Fun fact: that last recipe is a vegan riff on my dear friend Hannah’s famed Lemon Muffins.
Mother’s Day
I’m not hugely invested in Mother’s Day, but this weekend my boys gave me homemade cards and hugged me approximately one zillion times. They also had a blast playing in the sprinkler, which NEVER happens in May!
That series of photos just makes my heart happy.
Ground Control to Commander Hadfield
Commander Hadfield is the BOMB. I have never been a person even slightly interested in space. In fact, one of my strongest memories from Grade One is lying to the teacher of the gifted enrichment program about already reading a book about a dog who becomes an astronaut because, hey, books about space? Snore. I think they gave me an equally snore-worthy book about a dog who dug a hole in a garden but whatever. At least I didn’t have to read about space.
But here comes the amazing Canadian Chris Hadfield and suddenly I’m completely obsessed. I can’t wait to watch him come home tonight, with the kids. Is there anything that man cannot do? Plus, his song Is Somebody Singing makes me tear up every time I sing it (which is often, in the shower). The kids sang it for Music Monday and it was just so special.
This Fabulous Spam Comment
Anonymous wrote: I don’t even understand how I stopped up here, however I believed this put up was good. I do not know who you are but certainly you are going to a famous blogger in the event that you aren’t already. Cheers!
Anonymous goes on to post his/her website entitled “tits movie”. Oh boy! Thanks Anonymous! I sure hope you’re right, and I think I’ll just go click that link now.
Yeahhhh, that’d be great.
I enjoy Facebook for many reasons, but those reasons do not include certain pictures that get posted with political or inflammatory messages on them and pictures that are prefaced with “Share If You…” Share if you love your mom! Share if you love your kids! Share if you have a dog! Share if you hate cancer! Whoops, I didn’t share. Guess I hate my mother. (I don’t hate my mother. Hi Mom!).
However, on occasion a picture will be shared that I think summarizes a certain situation up admirably.
One of the reasons I do like Facebook is that my twenty year high school reunion is coming up and I already pretty much know what my graduating class has been up to, which will cut down on awkward “So…what have you been doing these past two decades?” conversations. A number of people have said things along the lines of I can’t believe it’s been twenty years! to which I strongly disagree. It feels more like fifty years since I was in high school. I have only to look at photos from my high school graduation to feel that it was a lifetime ago: my shiny red off-the-shoulder dress with satin clutch and shoes dyed to match, ringleted hair in a fancy updo, and the piece de resistance – a white rose corsage on my wrist. My high school boyfriend was wearing a tuxedo with a red bow tie that matched my dress, for the love of god. I wouldn’t relive those years for anything, and not just because everyone wore belted, high waisted pants with baggy t-shirts tucked into them.
Speaking of exes, I don’t know about you but I never have the urge to get in touch with any of them. I was at a wedding once where the bride prided herself on maintaining friendships with all her ex-boyfriends, and so there was not one, not two, but SIX ex-boyfriends in attendance. There was also an open mike at the reception which was a terrible error in judgement. One of those exes got up and started a long and inebriated ramble about how much he loved hitting that (I’m paraphrasing here) and how jealous he was when she was with a man who was not the groom, but who was another ex-boyfriend, seated at table 12. It was more awkward even than the wedding I attended where the brother of the groom, who was also the best man, gave a thirty-five minute drunken speech about his brother that started with their childhood dream of becoming Stampede wrestlers and ended with the groom being so drunk that he vomited after offending every woman in a bar with his interpretive dance to the “Thong Song”.
You know, the last giveaway I did was so fun, I think I might just do another. To enter, leave a comment either telling me a funny wedding story OR what you wore to your high school graduation. Or both! I’ll do a draw on Monday April 22 (EARTH DAY! Maybe the prize will be Earth Day related! Or maybe not…)
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In case you haven’t already heard, I’ve got an exciting new gig over at Yummy Mummy Club! I’m the new food blogger, and I will be putting the yum in Yummy Mummy with tons of recipes for the whole family to enjoy. So, check it out, pretty please, and maybe subscribe to my feed over there? I’m the Meatless Mummy Con Carne, so I’m going to spill all my secrets on how I cook vegetarian meals and adapt them for those meat-loving boys of mine. I’d be ever so grateful if you took a look – maybe you’ll find some recipes that you can enjoy as well. xoxo
Fun with the Sears Catalogue
This was the view out my back door last week:
It has been cold and snowy forever, I think. In reality it has been more like three and a half weeks, but it feels like forever. At least the sun came out yesterday, which makes me feel less like stabbing people who complained about the summer heat, and more like taking the kids sledding.
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I am someone who is hyper-organized when it comes to winter gear. All outerwear is tried on, and necessary items purchased, by the first week of September at the very latest. This is normally a very good thing: I am ready for when the weather drops twenty degrees overnight, I am not scrambling to find matching mittens, I know that my kids will fit into their designated snowpants. But recently it backfired: the children’s feet had a sudden growth spurt in late September, and it was difficult for them to get their giant flipper feet in and out of their boots. Rather than search the mall and become frustrated at the lack of sizes, choices, and temperature ratings, I always order winter boots online from Sears.
I went to pick up my order on the weekend, and there was a lovely cross-section of Sears shoppers at the catalogue office: a young couple buying a bedroom suite, a woman talking excitedly about the arrival of a new grandchild and the need to purchase a crib, a crotchety old man, and me. The old man at first endeared himself to me by referring to me as “young lady” but then made things uncomfortable by lighting into the lady at the counter about an $0.81 discrepancy on his bill.
It was minus 24 with windchill last Friday, and yet I allowed myself to be peer pressured into walking my dog with my much hardier friends. I felt somehow that I deserved some sort of medal for trudging through the heavy snow in the cold. Or maybe I just need a better coat. The one I have right now is very warm and huge; wearing it is like being wrapped in a comforter, as shown in this (old) picture:
but yet it isn’t quite long enough. I was mentioning this to my friend, who suggested that perhaps I have reached the stage of womanhood of wearing ankle length, pastel coloured puffy coats, with ruched sleeves. It occured to me then, not for the first time, that clothing really goes in stages of life, and I am sliding down the slippery slope from “fashionable” to “practical and I don’t care what I look like.” The next step after that is wearing caftan-type nighties and matching velour housecoats.
Although maybe not. I’m more of a pajama girl, anyway.
It’s funny, though. I was thinking about my teen and university years, when I would wear miniskirts and crop sweaters year-round, with light jackets and no scarves. Now I’m wearing the down-filled equivalent of a burkha. I saw a young girl walk by my house last week, in the bitter cold, with an open jacket, a skirt and BARE LEGS. I had to hold myself back from running outside and bundling her up. I see girls like this and I say things – out loud, and directly to said girls – like “Oh dear, you look cold. Don’t you have some mittens?” In other words, I have turned into my own grandma. I sure hope the next step isn’t wearing these:
The first sweater is advertised as a “face-framing” sweater for ultimate face-framing flattery. The other two are called “fooler” sweaters, and I would like to know why. Wait. I just answered my own question – it is due to the “double cross-over collar” which “fools” people into thinking that you are wearing two “shirts”. I got a little crazy with the quotation marks there, but can you blame me? That poor blonde woman is staring at me with angst, probably because she is modelling a sweater with cardinals on it.
I’m pretty sure I’ll never wear one of those sweaters – they don’t come in black – but I can’t be sure I won’t be rocking the nursing home in one of these:
That model is WAY too young for a leopard-print tunic blouse. I can see myself wearing this, with my bleeding lipstick and my super artificial red hair, my open-toed pumps, and these slacks:
There are a lot of pluses to being in the “slacks” stage of life, the biggest one being elastic waist bands. Although that’s kind of a moot point for anyone who is often found to be wearing yoga pants. The only difference between these slacks and yoga pants, really, is the fabric. Another plus to these slacks is that you would never have “whale tail”. Of course, I’m not sure thongs would be the undergarment of choice once the slacks stage of life has been reached. I’m guessing the appropriate panty would be more like this one:
Or this one, for less fancy occasions:
Those are touted as “anti-static panties” which I find very, very amusing for very, very inappropriate reasons.
Batting 500
It all started when I read my friend Swistle’s post about behaviours that are “mom-ish” and behaviours that are “old lady-ish”. For example, referring to youth as “young people today”, fumbling for change while the grocery store lineup expands behind, and so forth. Swistle said, and I quote:
“Have you noticed that each generation thinks they’ll manage to avoid seeming “old,” as long as they avoid the exact thing their own parents/grandparents did? A woman my age will say she doesn’t want Mom Hair or Mom Jeans—but what she’s thinking of are the current GRANDMOTHER hair/jeans: she’s filed her OWN mom’s style under “mom,” but a generational shift has occurred since then. Angled stacked bobs and cute-messy twisted-up hair with side-swept bangs ARE the Mom Hair! Cute dark-wash boot-cut jeans ARE the Mom Jeans! BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT THE CURRENT MOMS ARE DOING. Our daughters will speak of such styles with distaste, and will specifically avoid them. “Don’t give me Mom Hair,” they’ll tell the stylist, meaning OUR CUTE HAIR.”
An idea sprouted in my brain, my brain that was underneath my “cute-messy twisted-up hair with side-swept bangs”, and that idea was that I am now part of this generational shift. I am no longer “young people” – which is not news, really – but I am part of the Mom Generation that will be dismissed as lame by our daughters (collectively speaking). That idea started as a small, uncomfortable kernel and then exploded, like a piece of popcorn.
It exploded when I started flipping through fashion magazines, as one does when one is at the hairstylist getting one’s grey/white roots touched up. I realized as I looked through that there was not a single pair of boot cut jeans on any of the pages. I picked up another magazine; same thing. I picked up an article on back-to-school shopping and saw that all the hottest outfits – worn by young people today – involve clothing that I wore during my teenage years, distressingly enough. But it was really the lack of boot-cut jeans on style pages that had me thinking; then I realized that boot-cut jeans are not worn by anyone on popular television shows anymore.
I understand now, perfectly, how certain women who came of age in the seventies could still, twenty years later, be wearing blue eyeshadow that had long gone out of style because they believed that the shadow brought out the blue in their eyes or what have you. I understand now, perfectly, how a person can cling to something – a bad haircut, a low-fat or low-carb diet – because that was the style during their formative years. I understand but I am in deep, deep mourning that dark-wash boot-cut jeans have become this to the current young generation:
Do you see what I’m saying here, people? OUR JEANS have become MOM JEANS. And, sadly, they are fast becoming passe. I mourn this piece of knowledge and wish I could go back to not knowing it because really, dark-wash boot-cut jeans are the most universally flattering cut that there is. It’s true. There is just no way on earth that this
is more flattering to the female body than this:
And yet I will concede that skinny jeans are better for wearing boots, which I love, and that skinny jeans do look pretty good with a longer top, which is nice in order to hide the muffin-top. And this is how I found myself in the mall last week, shopping for skinny jeans.
I was helped by a very sweet young thing named Ashley, who never once helpfully told me which jeans her mother preferred. Ashley, I realized, is not a name I hear on little girls very often anymore. Most Ashleys that I know are in their late teens or twenties. There is a very strong trend right now to give little girls old-fashioned names, lovely names that until recently were reserved for our grandmother’s generation: Grace, Isabelle, Ava, Emma, Lily, Abigail. These do not include my own grandmother’s names, which have yet – if ever – to come back into fashion.
I had a St. Paul on the road to Damascus kind of realization that, if those names that reflect our grandmothers’ generation are in style now, then in twenty years the names that will be in style are what I consider “Mom names” – meaning my own mother’s generation. In other words, in twenty years, we will see a rash of Barbaras, Beverlys, Donnas, Corrines, Carols, and Lindas. Can you imagine? Our granddaughters may be named Barbara and Beverly. Or maybe Susan. This is mind blowing enough, but then twenty, thirty years or so after that, we can expect to see our own names come back in fashion as WE become the grandmother generation! In 2062, top baby names may well be Jennifer, Julie, Michelle, Melissa, Heather, and MAYBE EVEN NICOLE.
My mind is officially blown by this.
After Ashley helped me pick out a couple pairs of skinny jeans, I went to Sport Chek to find, apparently, the only pair of size three boys’ shoes in the entire mall. In front of me in line was a young girl wearing orange skinny jeans with an actual backless sweatshirt showcasing a completely visible bra.
Is this the fashion on “young people today”? Backless sweatshirt revealing not a bra strap, but an actual bra band, worn with orange skinny jeans? Is this what is sweeping the fashion nation?
It made me feel that maybe, just maybe, my becoming-passe boot cut jeans are not that bad. After all, they are flattering, right? Not like this:
Right? RIGHT? Although I did notice that high-waisted shorty shorts were being worn by the young crowd this summer, which makes me wonder what is happening. What is happening in the world today?
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And what do I mean by “Batting 500”? It’s my 500th post! I can’t believe I have had so much to say! And I am so very, very grateful to you, dear readers, for reading and commenting and being supportive. Thank you. Stay real. Let’s wear our boot cut jeans with pride! xoxo