Bikini babes

I don't wear bikinis, never have. (Uproarious laughter ensues!)

I do love tankinis, however. And last summer, I had the rare experience of finding and purchasing a bathing suit I liked. I like it so much I'm already worried about  making the seams and buckles and straps last. My fear of suit disintegration isn't paranoia. I wear it all the time from May - September! I love swimming, so in the summer months, my kids and I hit various pools multiple times a week for hours at a time. All that chlorine can't be good for the suit... so I rinse it out and I tuck it in at night, praying that the suit will live to see another summer. Still, I fully understand the reality that I shall probably never find another swimming suit I like as well. Lightning doesn't strike twice. I can only hope that maybe by the time my blue-striped tankini falls apart, Land's End will be manufacturing 1920s-era women's suits, the kind with bloomers and puffy sleeves!

In the meantime, I keep my eyes peeled for suit trends. This sometimes involves going to people.com and clicking through the slide shows of famous people at the beach. In my most recent perusal, I found these three photos. Three celebrities in bikinis, but one of these ladies is not like the others. 

I think Gwyneth Paltrow's suit is cute. She is rail thin, but looks healthy, like someone who works out and eats nutritious food. She doesn't look like some kind of augmentation nightmare and her skin is pale. Points for the natural look. (Natural as in, she has a trainer, live-in housekeeper, nanny and stylist to aid her in achieving that look. Still, many celebrities have that kind of help and still go for the bronzed plastic look!)

Kate Beckinsdale is way too skinny, but I like the feminine touches on the suit. She looks relatively demure, in a skin-baring way. I don't like the hat with the attached hair though. Oh wait - is that her real hair? Coulda fooled me!

But Cameron Diaz scares me. I know she's ripped and I appreciate that she hasn't implanted double DDs, but still, something about this suit/this picture gives me the beach-willies. Why am I having such a negative reaction to her? She isn't baring any more skin than the other women ... so is it the wet, slicked hair? Or is it the mercenary bent of her jaw?

Lip service: a story in pictures

Once upon a time, a ho-hum woman found herself in an un-plumpfortable situation, having run out of her favorite CityLips gloss wands but needing, more than ever, a shot of style. Let's not mince words - her glam was gone. See how tired she looks? It's not from seeing a late showing of "The Adjustment Bureau" right before this picture was taken. It's because she ran out of lip gloss.

Some time after publicly declaring her love for CityLips (and all the CityFill-in-the-Blank body parts), a package arrived in the mail. 

For her. 

From a certain C. Hubbard, the SAME C. Hubbard who had first provided her with a taste of CityLips.  

The package was a padded envelope, which both disguised and protected the contents. 

She held her breath! Then she ripped the envelope open!

(Originally, she was going to include a vanity shot that featured both the envelope and her big smiling teeth, but realized that it was a terrible photo AND a breach of privacy, since anyone reading this blog could have easily copied C. Hubbard's address, then pestered her for beauty products!)

The envelope contained TWO CityLips gloss wands.

(Side note: She had previously decided to refer to them as 'gloss wands', not knowing whether or not that was the accurate product name, but deciding she liked the sound of such a product. Only C. Hubbard can offer a final word on the official name of the heavenly product. We know the brand name is CityLips, and we know they are "Instant collagen stimulating lip treatment[s]", but can we call them gloss wands, ye gloss goddess?)

The package also contained - gasp! - a secret note, so secret it used STICKERS to spell out its glossy message: "Happy Plumping Erin !!" It was clearly sent from a friendly type of person, which C. Hubbard most definitely seems to be, because only a friendly type of person would stick a smiley face on the bottom of a secret note. Also, only a friendly person would send two tubes of a costly, valuable, delightsome beauty aid.

Golly, the woman could have KISSED ol' C. right on Ms. Hubbard's CityLips.

She applied the peptide-rich gloss and waited the requisite sixty seconds. 

Voila! Her glam was reclaimed. 

She was glad she was wearing a metallic threaded shirt for the picture, all the better to show off the glitz of her newly plumped CityLips! (It is ironic, yes, that this is the worst overall photo of the story, yet cannot be deleted since it best shows the shine of her CityLips. Seriously - check out that tint and sparkle, but ignore the crazy stare. This stuff is the best. It doesn't rub off, it doesn't add a bunch of unnecessary color that bleeds onto a person's teeth or into her wrinkles. In this picture, only a clear gloss has been applied, yet it packs a wallop of color! The color is the lip's own natural pink, accentuated by the tingle of the gloss's stimulants. It looks natural, but better! It makes every day feel like Senior Picture Day!)

Community

I don't watch television.

On a television set, that is.

Oh, I used to. I used to have a Dish satellite on the top of my house. Those were the Bravo days, filled with  "Top Chef" and "Project Runway"marathons. I had a DVR filled to the brim with "Charlie & Lola", "What Not to Wear", you name it. I might have even watched "The Real Transvestite Hoarders of Orange County Penitentiary", a pseudo Bravo series joked about on "30 Rock." I paraphrase Liz Lemon (from memory): "That show is disturbing. Why does the warden let Lady Extravaganza have so many spoons?" Back then, if I wanted to do laundry after my kids were in bed, I could happily fold and enjoy the exploits of  those dozens of Duggar children or catch a few episodes of the timeless classic "Three's Company". (Now I just let the laundry pile up inside the washer.)

But when I was moving, during the summer of 2008, I decided to be done with cable and such, partly to save money, partly to ween my children off of, as they call it, "channel shows." Of course, they see plenty of 'channel shows' with their dad, but at my house, they are only allowed to watch movies we rent from Hastings or RedBox or check out from the library or already own. Poor kids, they only have like 40 choices available to them on any given day. {Snort, giggle.}

I was also happy to get rid of that tacky satellite dish that perches on the roofline. Unfortunately, the *modest* home I rented and moved into already had TWO stuck on the roof. Nice. All of the scuzz and none of the snazz.

I have genuinely decreased my overall television show watching. And movie watching. A year of depression will do that to ya, and let me tell you, I knew something was wrong when I would hear about various friends watching, say, "Glee", a program I enjoyed, and yet would feel too weak to watch the latest episode. I can't explain that feeling, but I know it well.

But one steady friend who accompanied on this move and over the last few years is "30 Rock." If you have a chance to spend much time with me IRL,  and if you haven't shot down my frequent references to Liz and the gang, then you will hear me subtly (?) inserting snippets of that show's dialogue into my OWN conversations (as in the first paragraph), i.e. "That reminds me of a recent '30 Rock' episode where Jack's baby is born in Toronto, and when Liz finds out, she gasps, and Jack says, 'Yes, my baby is Canadian-American but I will love her just as I would a human baby.'" And then you would wonder what Canadian-American babies had to do with what we were actually talking about. Not much, no. But since when does pure laughter need a reason to be inserted into a conversation? Just smile pleasantly.

So even though I don't really watch television shows on a television set, I still catch "30 Rock", "Modern Family", "Arrested Development" and "Community" on hulu.com. (Admission - I also watch "Psych" episodes when they are being aired!)

"Community"? Yes, the hit NBC sitcom no one's ever heard of!

It was recommended to me by ONE OF MY STUDENTS, which makes sense, since it's a television show about a community college and a band of lovable losers who take intro courses together. Formulaic, yes. Ridiculous, yes. But funny, yes, as well. Funny to me, at least. I laughed and laughed at this moment in a recent Dungeons & Dragons-themed episode. I have no idea why it was quite so funny. Please tell me if you have the same reaction to "Britta, he was an imaginary waiter."

A catch

Back in my tenth grade year of high school, I had a crush on a certain senior I'm going to refer to as Garrett, mostly because that was his name. He had a nifty middle and last name too, but I'll keep those to myself. Garrett had a certain style that captured my eye from across the cafeteria nearly every day at lunch. I was so captivated by his cornucopia of stylish clothing combinations that I began to predict - with impressive accuracy! - his clothing ensembles for the next day. Not to him, of course, just to myself. But I somehow managed to put my finger on the pulse of his clothing rotation cycle and had a pretty good sense of when a red plaid pants day or a green tennis shoes day was coming. Or a black & gray twisty sweater day (see below). I'm sure I managed that feat by obsessively scanning his outfits every single time I saw him. He was just so cool - tall, red-headed and a 1987 hipster with Benetton style. A Twins fan too, as I recall. Of course, we were all Twins fans that year. Administrators broadcast the daytime World Series games in the school cafeteria during school hours!

My actual interactions with Garrett were very limited. He did, however, call me that winter to ask me to attend the Snow Ball with him and the group he was a part of. Somehow the information that I had a crush on him had made it to him EVEN THOUGH WE HAD NEVER SPOKEN TO EACH OTHER. I accepted. Then he voided the invitation a few days later and the message was delivered to me via a mutual friend, a kindly blond senior named Amy who I knew through orchestra. (It's a mildly amusing to imagine how the same interactions would have transpired had I been a member of the class of 2010 instead of 1990. The dis-invitation would have come via text, of course, and I would have posted a cryptic yet bitter message on facebook in response.)

I was so offended in my fifteen year old way that I felt it necessary to convey my disappointment to Garrett in person. It would be a first for our "relationship", that face to face conversation. (Yes, I am laughing as I write this.) Even then, I was terrible at pretending smug disinterest. Cannot do it now, couldn't do it then. Instead, I waited for him in the front hallway of the first floor of our school, waited until I knew he would be passing between classes. I stepped into his path, noted the way his face scrunched in annoyance, and then said, "You should have called me yourself."

Zing! Way to start with a right hook, Erin! My pleasant delivery and peasant skirt probably didn't help on the intimidation front either.

He sighed, the exhalation of a cool senior who probably had to deal with this kind of nonsense multiple times a week, and said, "Uh, I didn't want to beat a dead horse."

I'm not sure if he even knew my name.  But boy, that steamed me. "I am not a dead horse!" I responded in my frostiest tone of voice before stomping away. I can only wish I had been wearing Benetton boots when I made my exit. (I wasn't.)

Fast forward to the 21st century. Garrett is artisanal baker in the Twin Cities. Well, of course he is. Am I shocked? He was cool then and I'm sure he's cool now. I'll have two loaves of pesto foccacia, please!

Which brings me to the original idea for this post. Garrett had a friend named Chad. Chad was even cooler than Garrett. Chad was the alpha boy to Garrett's cute sidekick, the bleachhead on the right in the above picture. I had a thing for sidekicks and definitely preferred Garrett's quirkiness, but even so, I knew of the high place Chad occupied in the high school popularity ranks, standing proud with that spiked hair and symmetrical grin on his social pedestal.

So imagine my surprise when FB recommended that I look at a friend's album a few months ago and I clicked my way through to a  more recent picture of Chad. It's not that he isn't still handsome, it's just that I didn't expect to see so many hunting and fishing pictures or so much camo gear from the new wave boy who looked like he was performing with Flock of Seagulls during his summer breaks.

Apologies for posting this personal picture of him. However, I cannot send those apologies directly to him AS HE WOULD HAVE ZERO RECOLLECTION OF ME. Also, I don't know where he lives. But that sure is a big fish.

A gem of a father

Today is my dad's 75th birthday. I looked up the related gifts for year 75 and learned that the gift for a 75th birthday or anniversary should be a diamond. (Note to self: order cufflinks, pronto. Cubic zirconias will have to do.) And while I didn't actually purchase a diamond in time for this birthday, I think the stone is an appropriate symbol for the wonderful person he is, and not just because he likes to tell stories about living for a time as a child in an old coal shed (no joke). Like a diamond, his character and humor has been forged through many experiences, some trials. Like a diamond, he is multifaceted, interested in culture, history, language, politics ... and most especially, his family. Like a diamond, he is strong.

And also like a diamond, he shines in his setting. During our family vacation over Christmas, all of the adults stayed up one evening to play games after the little kids had gone to sleep. This is a tough feat to pull off, but we gathered around the long table in the cabin we were staying at and started in on a new board game. One of the best moments for me of the whole trip was the sight of my dad laughing and laughing once the game had devolved into the silly state our family enjoys so much. In fact, if a board game isn't able to transport us to the "laughie" stage, it's probably not a keeper. My dad's belly laugh is so much fun to witness, it made everybody else laugh as well.

Happy birthday, Dad!

Here is my dad with the grandson who shares his name.

Lovey-dovey

These NPR cards are the best, are they not? Happy Valentine's Day indeed. I may just send this one to myself!

Love story

Last year, I received a Valentine's Day gift from someone I cared about a great deal. Someone I would come to love in the early part of the year. I was so excited about this new relationship that I shared with my sister the thought, albeit later in the year, that connecting with this person made me believe that God did indeed love me.

But alas, the romance was not to be. That phrase could be its own book. That book is probably already written in my gmail inbox.

And over the course of 2010, after much agony, I came to believe that God did still love me, for in this relationship, a romantic spark that grew into a deep friendship, I learned some truths about the nature of life and suffering and even about myself that changed me. Interesting side note - I had to completely fall apart for the learning to take place.

The falling apart had actually started earlier. I have now traced it back, using strict scientific methods, to the summer of 2009. That's when I finally realized I wasn't married anymore. The hilarious part of my realization was that I had been separated since summer 2008, living on my own with the kids, no longer in the home we had owned, riding a killer schedule of full-time work, time as YW president at church, and round the clock emotional roller coasters. I already received the divorce papers ... months earlier, and still, I couldn't seem to let go. That summer, I let go.

Not before running myself into the ground. That first year on my own gave me gray hair, I know, and it broke something in my health. Still, my intense church service in that particular role - hours and hours in that calling - buoyed me up considerably through the community it provided. And my delusional hopefulness carried me through a demanding schedule. But it also delayed an inevitable realization, that I had to let the facade go.

Every lesson in its time, right?

By summer of 2009, I had a new calling at church, a year of full-time teaching under my belt, and new expectations for my relationship life. I wouldn't classify them as healthy, however. And I myself wasn't too healthy - I found out I had anemia, which helped explain the constant exhaustion. I made a connection with a potential date-ee and almost immediately changed gears from sparkling and witty to desperate and needy. Great first impression, but then Glenn Close arrived. Well, not that bad. No rabbits were harmed in my emails. Still, some of my friends will attest that put a little too much worry into my friendship with this fellow, someone who turned out to be perfectly nice friend, but who was someone I had not yet actually met in person. Turns out I was jonesing for an escape from my life.

As my friend Elizabeth so brilliantly pointed out, there is a catch. Her words were, "Whenever I try to escape, I always end up bringing myself along."

A-ha!

By the end of 2009, I was ready for a more thorough breakthrough.

First came the breakdown.

Well, really, first came the breakdancing.

No, not really.

But in order to descend the roller coaster slopes, a person has to ascend in the rickety car. And so I did. Although it didn't seem rickety. Hmmm. It's more difficult to write about a relationship in a completely non-detail-revealing way than I thought when I started this post. Metaphors can only take ya so far.

Suffice it to say, I fell in love. It's like this - I could have lived on a remote farm, like Australian bush country or Wyoming ranch land, with this person and been happy.

It was very painful to have that hope of happiness and remote location farming taken away.

One college friend shared with me that he took solace in his break-ups by remembering all of the other people who had experienced such heartbreak as well. Nah, that didn't help one bit. I didn't care about other people's pain. I was struggling to wrap my head around this big misunderstanding I'd just had with the universe. Or at least with Cupid.

It must be noted here that if I had some kind of cosmic choosing ability, I'd repeat the whole process. In a heartbeat. I wouldn't give up the highs or the lows of 2010 for anything. I wouldn't give up what I was about to learn. Two little words, yet two enormous and still-in-the-process lessons:

attachment

aversion

Let's add ego to that list.

These concepts dovetailed nicely into the life lesson I was able to walk out of my marriage with (yep, going to end that sentence with a preposition): expectations are the enemy of happiness. I shared that lesson in an earlier blog post.

I was the queen of expectations.

Expectations beget judgment. Expectations beget insecurity. Expectations beget control. Expectations beget frantic clinging. But I didn't know how to rid myself of unrealistic expectations until I met him, not to be confused with the him of fall 2009 mentioned earlier who was really only a 7.5 font size lower case "h" him, although, again, a very kind person who actually helped me a great deal, even offering wise counsel during my 2010 breakdown.

It was only because of the trauma of the end of the romantic relationship fallout that I HAD to work on ridding myself of expectations. I'm still working on it. And I don't recommend viewers attempt the process at home without consulting a doctor first. You know that saying, Only when the pain of the problem is worse than the pain of the solution will we change? I resemble that statement. (<---- Insert smiley face emoticon.) And for me, the pain of the problem was excruciating.

So I spent much of 2010 trying to scrape my psyche free of that stuff. Turns out, it grows back. But like a weeded garden, I think it's a bit easier to stay on top of the unwanted growth after a big clearing.

So ... to recap: at the end of 2009, I had written a long list of expectations for the new year to come. (Yeah, I hadn't scraped my soul yet.) Just another long list in the history of my long lists. I hope I can find the list I made back in high school of the person I wanted to marry. It'll knock your socks off. I wanted someone so multitalented ("skilled carpenter", "multilingual", "musical") and amazing ("tall", "handsome", "creative", "well-traveled") and just like me ("a good reader", "sensitive") that not even a young Albus Dumbledore with his magical powers could have delivered. But I thought I was doing myself a favor by writing such lists. I suppose in a roundabout way, I was.

In January 2010, a clear impression came to me, perhaps as I was pondering the most recent list. It was so clear that I immediately wrote it down: Forget finding a relationship. Focus on writing your book. This will be a year of great love. I thought the prompting would be accompanied by a certain Prince Charming, white horse, fairy godmother, happily ever after, preferably wrapped in a decorative bow. I told the universe I was ready. The universe answered me via a certain social network. Then came February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December and January. I spent so much time in my head last year that I can probably tell you where my thoughts were in each of those months.

Sigh.

Smile.

The lesson I walked out of 2010 with was: When I desire things to be different than they are, I suffer. And suffer I did. Lucky for me, suffering is instructive.

And from this vantage point of one year later, I feel grateful to have shed another layer of expectations and to have opened my eyes. It's like the message from this anecdote about Buddha's enlightenment (borrowed from this site):

I Am Awake 
When the Buddha started to wander around India shortly after his enlightenment, he encountered several men who recognized him to be a very extraordinary being.
They asked him, "Are you a god?"
"No," he replied.
"Are you a reincarnation of god?"
"No," he replied.
"Are you a wizard, then?"
"No."
"Well, are you a man?"
"No."
"So what are you?" they asked, being very perplexed.
"I am awake." 


My hope in 2011 is to stay awake.