Cooler than You: Stupid Things I Say and Do

Twenty-five years marks a silver anniversary.  Someone, somewhere, owes me silver.  Why? 25 years ago, this week I take, I went to my doctor's office with an ear infection and easy bruising, and I came home with Lupus.  Just like that, life at sixteen changed. In that regard, as I sit here looking at a quarter of a century, more than half my life, and a sentence comparable to manslaughter I can't say I'm nostalgic.  I mean years of taking vitamins the size of chicken patties, years of staring down the gremlin bottles on my dresser, years of putting my feet on the floor in the morning and letting out moans and wails, years of endless doctor visits and blood draws, and years of wondering when the next friend will bail on me because the Lupus is too much.  That latter part: I called and left a message, the day of a meeting, that I couldn't make it.  Seven years later and I remember the spinning room, the adverse drug side effects, the trips to my p...

“Mom.” “Yeah?” “I’m pregnant.”  Tho s e  final four words from Rory Gilmore  have now  erupted  shock waves across the internet, phone lines, and social gatherings.  I, like a large score of others who loved the  Gilmore Girls  show for years, am no exception.  I gasped, I laughed, and I logically saw it as an opening for another revival.  But, as I sat on my bed,  my  knitting falling from my hands, staring solo at my television I couldn’t help but feel a strange mix of nostalgia, anger, let down, and longing wave over me.   For months now I’ve been working on various feminism projects, and in the midst of that I’ve found myself re - watching  Gilmore Girls  as the show has always been my feel-good, go-to, comfort food of no calories.  That combo is hard to find, and about four years ago when Netflix released the entire series I was one of those  mid  thirty-year olds who spent the better p...

In 2012 the concept of a woman needing anything beyond her own wit and merit almost seems passe.  Yet, in this world of instant messages, ATMs, debit cards superseding checks, and steel-toes stilettos a women (or, girl if the term--like me--makes you feel a little more hip, at ease, and at peace within your changing skin) should have a little black book–– or a little black digital phone book–– filled with names beyond old lovers, forlorn exs, or divorce lawyers. These are the things, as I tell students, that just make life easier, richer, and full. A list, per se, that I deliver to Women's Studies when I can and to students, friends, and sometimes strangers when I see or feel the need . . . or just plain hate what I am hearing. In no particular order: 1. A former lover, partner du jour if you will, that is no longer a shag buddy.  Just merly a name and number in her book who she can text or call just to say hi.  Why? While not all rel...

So today I went on the hunt for a dresser.  I braved IKEA again, on the quest for something cheap and functional.  Perhaps this is where I should say I do not enjoy the vortex of IKEA.  the first time I went into an IKEA I was hobbling along on crutches as I had broken my foot.  Perhaps it was the pain pills, perhaps it was the July heat, perhaps it was the massive crowds that day . . . But, ever since I have detested the place. I'm just not a fan of winding through the vortex of IKEA, with only one way out--through more crap.  To make it even better all the furniture blurs into itself after about five minutes, and winding through the maze of assemble-yourself furniture of pressed wood and veneer it feels like a vortex has sucked you in.   Mixed in are rooms assembled with signs attesting that "This is rooms costs 1000."  Components share and match, and mix, and . . . scores of folks run about designing their room to look like something from the stor...

This morning I awoke to an email from an old friend asking me sewing advice. She plans on making Christmas stockings for her nieces and nephews from her father's old clothes. Very touching indeed. As I smiled that asked me for advice, I couldn't help but think about the time I spend at a sewing machine, the hours I spend sculpting projects, and the moments I have sitting with members of my Mother's quilting guild. My Mom has been part of a guild for about a decade now, and I've been going the past few months. In February she asked me to go to the Hampton Quilt Show (Mid-Atlantic), and since one of her friends was sick I took a Curve Master class. All that is a special foot for the sewing machine made to make sewing curves easier (see my entry with Mellie Bellie's baby quilt). I don't know if it really makes sewing the curves easier, as I just made a Vogue pattern with princess curves on a regular foot. I like my regular foot . . . None-the-less, my favor...