Sister's birthday!

Today is my little sister's birthday. We are both middle aged women now so it feels weird to refer to her as my "little" sister. But truth told she is little and petite and was always and still is "the pretty sister". Burns me up. You know, like Taming of the Shrew? In order for the beautiful little sister to get married they have to foist the battle ax older sister off on some unsuspecting man? Yeah, that's me. Old battle ax. But it's OK! I'm OVER IT now! I'm "vivacious"! Fuck that.

Anyway I love my little sister dearly, her being petite and beautiful notwithstanding. I hope she's having a great day at work over at the USGS (oh did I mention that she's a damned Geophysicist? So brilliant as well as lovely?) and I hope she likes the cookies I dropped off for her.

Here is what I wore on this auspicious day. When I got to work I wrapped a colorful vintage scarf around my neck to keep warm and add color.

Battle ax ready to do damage

Maybe I can get back to Oz in these shoes

"there's no place like Oz, there's no place like Oz..."

I can see my underwear!

I didn't wear this before but it looks like it

I had my silk Classiques cross-over top on last time. Today, its a long sleeve Tahari t-shirt. I know these things because I have a database that keeps track of stuff.

Am I smiling, or am I like a baby: passing gas? Probably passing gas.

Christmas is coming and I have been to the mall with my sister. I bought a pair of glittery gold flats that will soon show up here. Shoes and outerwear were excluded from the deal. Ha! Anyway, I have my eye on stuff that I want. I went and tried on a bunch of stuff I thought I wanted and discovered that they fit poorly. That saves me quite a bit. Once pants fit around the waist they are baggy on the legs. Fit the legs = too tight around my floppy waist. I think this has something to do with middle age, and is why some companies specialize in middle aged clothing. I think its also the reason (along with arthritis) that old lady pants tend to have elastic waists. But I will die before I shop at Chico or Coldwater Creek. No. Will starve myself to death first.

My sister told me my selfies were terrible. Now I am self-conscious.

Grimace

Hair dye. October finished. My big ass is a good thing.

It makes me sad to realize that most of my female compatriots at work dye their hair. Even the ones with a healthy distain for fashion. It belies insecurity that I was not aware that these amazonian women at my workplace, the biotech survivor warriors of 5 or more downsizings, "doing more with less", and vicious aggressive white male bosses possessed. That they have stood strong in the face of this relentless battering, but cower at the sight of a grey hair, is profoundly disturbing to me.

Here is October. I have added some sweaters. The J Crew cashmere turtle neck is really shabby. It is completely covered with pills but its warm. Target sweater is also shabby, and purple Martin and Osa is from a chain started by Gap, I think (Fourth and Towne?) that was aimed at middle aged women. It failed. Because all us middle-aged women are in denial right up to the elastic waist pants and flower printed sweatshirts that mark "old age". OMG I look frumpy in these shirts.

I have a new lady boss at work (probably dyes her hair) who while possibly younger than me dresses very conservatively. But she probably thinks I'm insane. These combos look terrible.

Finally, there was a study published recently is the International Journal of Obesity showing that women with big cabooses were healthier, and had smarter kids, than their narrow-assed compatriots. Here is a link to the abstract if you don't believe me (I don't see the smarter kid thing here. I read that else where. Something to do with Omega-3 fatty acids during pregnancy or something):
http://www.nature.com/ijo/journal/v34/n6/abs/ijo2009286a.html

 

That big ass means I will live forever

Mi gusta flowery shirt

It's the Real Me.

It's my Nature...

Accidental Dress Week

When I compile the database for your viewing pleasure, I take the tracking documents in to work and during my free time, I updat and post. After updating for September I accidentally left my tracking documents at work. Therefore I could not accurately put together novel top/bottom combinations. I arrived at the solution: the return of Dress Week.

As you can see some of this stuff is OK and some of it is pretty terrible. The nadir was the cool Fall day when I determined that I needed to wear a pair of cotton knee-highs with my clogs. With the long Eileen Fisher linen dress

 Here they are: Because all other shoes wouldn't work. Sometimes you just have to go with whatever works at the moment.

Below is the Dr Seuss shirt. Dubbed as such by my well meaning boss.

This combo not too bad, either

What was I thinking?

The Michelle Obama skirt

This combo not too bad

The man that enters his wife's dressing room is either a philosopher or a fool

Balzac, right? Its all about women's artifice, and the effort we put in to construct the facade each day. Yes, I'm talking about foundation undegarments. Well that and all the other stuff we do. I'm pretty open minded about a lot of things but I do not like having my significants see me shaving, plucking, polishing, clipping. I wonder why? Is it a vestige of that creation of artifice? I don't want spousy to know that I'm less than perfect? I think he knows it, but we continue to play along. The response that it's "disgusting" belies how deeply this idea has permeated our thinking.

In addition, I engage in the artifice and the result is what you see here. It takes quite a bit of attention to detail to acheive this level of mediocrity. So why bother? All the ladies I know undergo various levels of grooming, most more than I do, and most of us are only managing to keep our appearances just under the average curve. Seems like a lot of work for a ho-hum result. On the other hand I operate under the delusion that I am the Queen of Sheba as I apply my Jergen's. Maybe that's what its about. Self-soothing behaviour.

Anyway here is September.

And here was my scarf trouble this morning:
You can probably tell by my expression which one I went with. I am a trained biologist after all and nothing warms my heart like frogs, bugs, critters and pretty flowers.

 

 

plain



brightly colored



bugs!