befabulo.us

I have not been eaten by a bear.

I have not fallen into the toilet and been swept away to live my life among the crocodiles in the sewer.

I have not been trampled to death by ferocious shoppers at a 90% off shoe clearance sale.

I have not lapsed into an alcoholic coma.

I have not gone into the Witness Protection Program, or joined a cult, or been abducted by aliens.

I have not gotten shot, maimed, knocked up or knocked out.  I did get burned while ironing a shirt, but it only hurt for about an hour, thanks to the wonder of fresh aloe leaves.

So what have I been doing?  Working 55 hour weeks, mostly, which leaves me no time to write.  Well, technically there are a few hours a day during which I'm not either asleep or working, but in that time I have to do things like shower and eat and hang out with my kid and watch "Hell's Kitchen."

I can't promise when I'll write again; the next month and a half look to be even more insane than the last six weeks, and that's saying something.  But I am alive, and I am checking gmail, and I like it when you say hello.

And I'll be back.  Sooner or later, I'll be back.

The horror, the horror.

These might just be the ugliest shoes I have ever seen.  And I have looked at a LOT of shoes.  I think I need to go brush my teeth, or maybe my eyeballs. 

Back.

I stepped off the plane at ten on Sunday night into cold rain.  Dorothy, you're not in Miami any more.  You just WISH you were.

I do have a lot to tell... but I'm feeling coy, or maybe just reticent.  Don't want to jinx myself, don't want to risk popping this shiny bubble.  For now all I can say is that the weekend away was fantastic.  It was better than I could have imagined.  It was, I'm hoping, the prologue to an amazing new chapter in my life.  But until everything is set in stone, I'm not ready to talk about it.  I'm even holding out information from close family. 

So hang in there with me, will you?

On a completely different note, I've decided to keep the comments open on the Freebie Friday post below, because several commenters (who had wonderfully disgusting stories) said they didn't want my perfume as a prize.  So if you would like some perfume, post a note on the last entry.  If you don't want to write a story about a terrible stink, you can just tell me I'm pretty and I smell good.

brb

Much is going on in the fabulous world; too much, really, for me to be able to keep up with telling you about it.  Suffice it to say that I've got to hop on a plane in a few hours, and when I get back on Monday I'll have a lot to tell you.

I think I might even, on Monday, reveal the new section of befabulo.us I've been working on for the last month or so.  Aren't you excited?

If you're not excited yet, can I tempt you with a FREEBIE FRIDAY?  This week's booty: perfume samples!  The good kind, the ones in wee glass vials, not some crappy scratch n' sniff thing.  I've got five to give away to five moderately lucky readers.  I could make it be the first five commenters... but no, I'm feeling capricious.  Tell me about the worst thing you've ever smelled, and on Monday, I'll pick out the five I find the most revolting, and I'll send you something that smells fantastic.  This is a good one, friends.  Some of those perfume samples are Chanel. 

To get things rolling, I'll tell you about the worst thing I've ever smelled.  Back before I had a kid, we had a Bad Dog for about six months.  Bad Dog was an akita-pit bull mix, absolutely gorgeous and brilliant and insanely fit, but he was very, very Bad.  He was so Bad we couldn't even have friends over to the house, so when we decided to take a week at the beach on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, there was NO WAY we could have had someone dog-sit.  We took him with us.  One day, we took him down to the fishing area at Oregon Inlet, where I kept him on leash while my husband played fisherman.  As I slowly wandered around, the dog suddenly lunged off into the tall, scrubby beach grass.  He scratched around and pulled out a dead horseshoe crab.  VERY dead.  He rubbed his head in the hollow of the shell, but that wasn't enough.  He plunged back into the grass and pulled out something else, ripping and tearing at... a box of squid.  Who knows how long that box of squiddy bait had been in the grass, in the heat of the summer days.  All I can tell you is that it was THE WORST SMELL EVER, and Bad Dog threw himself down upon the squid box and rolled and rubbed in glee, coating his beautiful, fluffy white fur with a purple scum of decomposing squid.

That night we washed him FIVE TIMES with heavily scented peppermint shampoo, and still, the squid aroma lingered.  Top THAT, my friends.  If you've ever smelled something worse than a box of squid ooze, you DESERVE some Chanel.

Selling it on the street.

I'm having a yard sale tomorrow, and I am way freaked out about it.

I've never had a yard sale before.  I can't even remember ever shopping at a yard sale, unless you count the weeks-long moving sale my father-in-law ran out of his garage, and I wasn't so much "shopping" as "cherry-picking the few items worth snagging."  (We had to take back the pilsner glasses my husband picked up on his college father-and-son trip to Germany.)  So I am a yard sale virgin, essentially.  I don't know what I'm doing.

I've picked up some basic hints.  Make sure the items are clean, and grouped if they're meant to be sold in a group.  Put a price on everything.  Have plenty of small bills and change, and a calculator for adding up prices.  But... the devil's in the details.  Put a price on everything... okay, but what price?  One website told me to price things at 25% of what it would cost to buy it new.  My sister-in-law says to price things at about 10% of new.  My lawyer says that "perceived value" of items is higher if the prices are odd (like $6, rather than $5, I suppose) and no, I didn't actually consult my lawyer about my yard sale, that was something he said in a different context but it seemed to apply.

The other problem is that the more stuff I pull out to sell, the more stuff I can SEE that needs to go, and I've got less than 24 hours to organize, clean, price and display everything, and I still need to do important stuff like work and sleep.

It's also very sad to have to pull out all the baby items that I saved for the baby I couldn't have.  But we won't dwell on that.  It would be more productive to fixate on how much junk I can remove from my son's room without him having a conniption fit.  He takes me to task if I recycle the scraps of paper he's written on or the empty Cheez-It boxes he hoards to "reuse" -- do you think he'll notice if I sell that obnoxious battery-operated tank he never takes out of the drawer?  He has, to his credit, filled two paper grocery sacks with items to sell, though he has given strict instructions that all proceeds from the sale of his books and toys must be given to him for his new toys fund.

So hey, if you live anywhere near DC and feel like shopping tomorrow, send me an email or leave a comment here, and I'll email you my address.  My sale is part of a community-wide effort, and is one of FIFTY yard sales around my neighborhood.  It'd be worth your gas money to drive over, even at $3.50 a gallon.

Papal in my neighborhood.

What, you may ask, is this woman doing? 

She is looking at this building:

And waiting for this to happen:

YES.  That is the Popemobile!  With a very blurry white blob inside!  And that blob is Pope Benedict!

It isn't every day that the Pope comes within walking distance of my house.  I had to go see him.  This is by far the biggest thing that's happened to my neighborhood so far this century.

So yesterday afternoon, I walked my Catholic self over to the Shrine (along with my Catholic husband and my Catholic son and my Episcopalian yet enthusiastic mother) to join several thousand other people who had gathered to wait for a glimpse of Pope Benedict.  We got there an hour early, but the best viewing spots were already tens of people deep.  Hey, I can handle that challenge; I've got enough mosh pit training to get to the front of any crowd, so a gathering of ten thousand cheerful Christians posed no difficulty.  Soon enough, I'd wedged my family in the second row back, right behind the shortest family I could find.  I had a great view of the entrance to the Shrine, right over the tops of their heads. 

We waited, luckily in about the most perfect April weather imaginable.  (Perhaps the good weather was a birthday present for Pope Benedict, who turned 81 yesterday.)  Despite the wait, I wasn't bored at all.  Are you kidding?  The people-watching opportunities were amazing.  My mother was quite surprised to see Mennonites; I reminded her that she's not Catholic, but she was there, and she responded by saying that her church "still acknowledges him as the leader of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church" and "if it weren't for Henry Tudor, he'd be my pope too."  All around us, people were singing and strumming guitars and beating djembes and shaking tambourines.  (The protesters had all been confined in a tiny grassy triangle in the middle of the road, well away from the Shrine.  We'd had to walk past them, and I hoped my son wouldn't notice them, because he can read, and I really didn't think it was the time or place to discuss why certain people would think "the pope is a lying whore."  C'mon.  He wears red shoes, but red shoes do not a whore make.)  Honestly, the only bad part of the wait was that as the crowd figured out that the Moment Was Nigh -- many people were getting updates via cell phone from relatives at home watching television coverage -- they pushed forward, and as I was pushed forward I got into a spot with an even better view... but it meant I was nose-to-tush with a toddler perched on his teenage brother's shoulders... and the toddler had a messy diaper.  Ew ew ew.  My superpower is the ability to diagnose poopypants in an instant, from a great distance, and thus it was quite a challenge to keep my mind on the Pope and not on the poop.

Then the motorcade started.  Cop cars, cop motorcycles, big black SUVs, beflagged limousines.  That part is old hat to anyone who has lived in DC for a while.  The only odd thing was that one of the limousines had a rear window open, revealing a clear view of Archbishop Wuerl.  He got quite a cheer, though I'm not entirely sure that the cheer was for him, or if people in the crowd mistook his white clerical head for the head of the head of the church. 

Then the Popemobile appeared!  It slowly drove a full circle around the driveway in front of the Shrine, allowing the Pope to do his two-fingered blessing wave in all directions, and then it disappeared around the side of the Shrine.  We knew that was it; no sense hanging around, he's not coming back.  Pope viewing is over.  We pushed our way through the milling crowd, only to be stopped by a line of police tape guarded by a handful of lady cops.  "Can you let us through?" yelled my husband, as everyone around us muttered and shuffled their feet.  My son, who by this point was exhausted, hungry and thirsty, leaned heavily against me and then slid to the ground.  That didn't seem particularly safe -- the crowd was still complacent, but it seemed entirely likely that at any moment there would be a mass decision to just push through the yellow crime scene tape -- so I scooped him up and held him against my chest.  I stood there, holding him, for at least twenty minutes before the cops agreed to open up a three foot wide gap in the barricades to let the crowd trickle out.

Then we went out to dinner and I drank a pint of Belgian-style ale with a 7.5% alcohol content.  It was good.  The end.

Documentation

This morning, I have a choice.  I could whine at you about the many, many things that have gotten my goat but good (car refuses to start! got blister from wearing cute shoes while force-marching son the one mile to school!  federal and district governments want so much money from us, I may never buy shoes again!  wah!)  or I could talk about something completely different.

Let's go for different.  Shall we?

Yesterday I got an urgent message regarding the magazine I modeled for last November.  The magazine is scheduled for release soon, but first, they want a "lifestyle" photo of me doing... something.  Preferably looking cute while doing that something, ideally with my son (who is always cute) and if the husband is in the shot too, so much the better.  I didn't think it'd be a problem.  I've got at least 2,000 photos on my computer.  Got to be a cute family shot in there somewhere.

I thought wrong.  I went through over a year's worth of photos, and found very few photos in which I appear at all.  (And when you filter for SUMMER plus LOOKING HOT, the pickings were very slim indeed.)  Most of the photos of me were taken by my son, and trust me, four- or five-year-old children tend to take photos from very unflattering angles.  I even found one where my arms look fat, and I've got scrawny, scrawny arms.  How does he DO that? 

I've got literally thousands of photos of my son.  My son playing on the beach.  Opening his Christmas presents.  Running with his friends.  Performing in school pageants.  Spilling miso soup all over himself at our favorite sushi joint.  I've got many fabulous photos of my son with my husband... on the playground, building a model steam engine, sharing a slushy drink with two straws.  But where am I, in all these photos?  Behind the camera. 

From these photos, the documentation of our happy family life, it looks like I barely exist.  I found myself wondering what would happen if I just dropped dead tomorrow... what would my son have to remember me by?  There are so very few photos of the two of us together, or the three of us together as a family.  There are even fewer photos I'd want propped on my casket, because I'll be honest, if I die young I want to be remembered as gorgeous, and you better not even THINK about copying that picture of me looking fat-armed and double-chinned onto my funeral program.  (Please note: I have no plans to die young.  Will take measures to ensure the blister on my heel doesn't go septic.)

One thing is clear: I need to relinquish my tight grasp on my camera.  I need to hand it around (to people over 4 feet tall) and let them snap away, let them capture the moments I spend with my young son.  There will be terrible photos.  There will be photos of me looking goofy, with a shiny forehead or wind-wrecked hair.  There will be many photos that make me wish I'd worn more makeup.  That's okay.  There will also, every once in a while, be a photo that makes me smile.  Maybe even a photo good enough to publish in a national magazine.  You know, in case this happens again.

I bet I'm not alone in this.  I bet a lot of you out there -- moms, I'm looking at you --  have been hiding from the camera, or hiding behind the camera, documenting everything your child does except for those moments your child is interacting with you.  You might never get an urgent message asking for a photo for a magazine, but certainly there will come a day when your adult child flips through his scrapbook and asks where you were during his childhood.

So get out there and take some pictures, or rather, have someone snap pictures of you.  But if you forget to powder your nose first, please, do not blame me.

Urban Myths-R-Us

Do you know what happens if you google "Feria dye glass" in an attempt to discern whether or not your hair is now full of a ground-up windshield?  Why, you get a link to befabulo.us!  Second from the top!  And all the other links on the first two pages will be about glass art, or links to expired auctions from eBay Australia.  Now, what does this tell us?  Could be any one of the following:

A. The "glass in Feria dye" is an urban myth.
B.  There is glass in Feria dye, but it isn't a big deal.
C.  There is glass in Feria dye, and it is a terrible, terrible thing, yet I am the first person to sound the alarm on the internet.

My test-taking skillz are telling me that options A and B are possible, even likely, but C?  C is the answer I'd cross right off before chewing on my pencil for a while as I deliberate between A and B.  Really, how likely is it that I am going to be the person who first informs the World Wide Web of an ugly truth known to all beauty students?  Could there really be a well-known theory of corporate evil that ISN'T easily googlable? 

I've not, I'll admit, gone to that Environmental Working Group site that has the database listing all the deadly chemicals in beauty products, simply because IT'S HAIR DYE.  OF COURSE IT IS NOXIOUS.  I know that, and yet I don't feel the need to read about the details.  I already know my scalp is a SuperFund site.  So what's a little broken glass?

Hair Today

I did it, and I'm glad I did. What a weight off my mind!  Or at least, what a weight of hair off my neck. 

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to take a photo of the back of your own head?  It's hard enough that this was my best effort.

It's... well, let's be honest.  It's not quite it.  The girl who cut my hair was sweet as she could be, and had some really excellent tats, but she just couldn't nail the angle on the side, no matter how many times I said "let's make this angle steeper."  After two hours of cutting and checking and cutting some more, I decided it was good enough.  But if you look at the back of my head, left side, you can totally see a chunk of hair that shouldn't be there.  I'm terribly tempted to take my own scissors and whack it off at what I consider an appropriate angle, but I'll refrain.  At least for now.  Get a couple of drinks in me, and who knows what might happen.

And now, two notes.

One. You may have noticed that I'm wearing glasses.  (Not just ANY glasses, those are 39dollarglasses.com glasses.  I like the style of them, and the price was certainly right for a pair of "oh no, I've got hives on my eyeball again" or "oh no, I forgot to reorder my contacts" glasses, but they, um, don't fit.  I happen to have a very small head and thus require a narrow frame for glasses.  On a positive note, these glasses are VERY good for that skeptical, eyebrows raised, looking over the top of the glasses look.)  The glasses are part of my current efforts to Look More Professional.  You see, I was flipping through a book on body language at a friend's house, and came across a section on how women's appearances affect the perception of themselves as professionals.  Research shows that women who wear makeup are considered more professional than those who don't (though points are deducted for bright red lipstick; let's stick to the lipliner and gloss, then) and women who wear glasses are perceived as more intelligent and competent than those who don't.  Best of all worlds: makeup AND glasses.  "I can do that!" I thought when I read it.

Also, I need to get an eye exam before I get new contacts, and this is allowing me to put off that chore.  Not for long, though, for I am freaking sick of the way my hair sticks to my lip gloss and then leaves gooey streaks across my glasses.

Two. The hair color, if you're interested, is L'Oreal Feria in Ruby Fusion.  The girls at Aveda all loved the color, and the one cutting my hair really wanted to know what I'd used.  I told her.  "Oh, I love Feria, but the people here give me grief about it.  It's so nasty."  "I kind of assume that all the dyes I put on my head are awful, but I could have worse vices," I replied.  "That's true," she said, "but Feria has GLASS in it.  That's what makes it shiny."  "Glass?  You mean there's ground glass inside the cuticle of my hair?"  Yup.  That would explain why the color's so shimmery, as advertised.  Weird.  But you know what?  The more I think about it, the less it bothers me.  At least I know what glass is, unlike most of the chemicals in hair dye.  Compared to the carcinogens and hormone-disruptors, glass sounds almost benign. 

If I'm not talking shoes....

Then I must be talking hair.  Because seriously, who wants to hear about potentially life-altering matters?  Pshaw, I say!  It is much more important that we discuss my hair!

(In all honesty, I can't talk about the business stuff right now.  Signed an agreement to that effect and everything.  I've probably already said too much.  Back to hair!)

The reason for my urgency is because I've got an appointment for a haircut this afternoon.  I've booked myself in at my favorite "salon" downtown, the Aveda Institute.  I think my husband is annoyed that I'm cutting out early this afternoon, but it doesn't matter.  I need a haircut.  Badly.  I haven't had my hair cut since November; the photo I have up was taken the day after I last had my hair cut.  Bobs are pretty forgiving as they grow out, which is why I've been able to go an astonishing five months between haircuts, but my hair is now long enough that it's waving oddly in the back.  It's more or less all one length, a few centimeters longer than precisely chin length.  I like the length in front, but want to have the bob strongly angled so it's much shorter in back.

Essentially, and to my deep shame, I covet Victoria Beckham's hair.  (And many of her clothes, at least those that aren't boob-mangling, and just about every pair of shoes she's ever put her plastic Barbie feet into.)  I've just spent an enjoyable half-hour looking at photos of the various incarnations of Posh, and I think that I've found my favorite of her Pobs.  Check out this entry from Go Fug Yourself -- ignore the outfit, or not, it is quite spectacular in a "dear God, that must HURT" kind of way -- but the hair, is it not adorable?  Especially in that last photo, which shows the back?  Yup, I think that's the one.  Cute, cute, cute, and I'm pretty sure my hair can be easily cajoled into holding the style.

Is it a betrayal of my feminist principles if I go to the salon with a photo of a Spice Girl?  I mean, I cannot condone Posh's abusive mishandling of her breasts, but her hair is fantastic.

I should do it, shouldn't I?