Skirting The Issue

Last night I locked myself in the closet and tried to clean the mess up. It was total pantamonium. That is no spelling error. It looked like a wild beast had charged through all of my dark colored pants, leaving a trail of destruction. Well, at least the beast part was true.

It was the sad remains of trying to find a pair that would fit me after the gluttony of the holidays. Gone arethe guilded days of eating. Here lies the sad reality. None of the pants fit. Okay, well, some of them "fit" only in the most technical sense. But, wearing them outside of my closet would have resulted in a serious fashion felony. I would have been guilty of gross distortion as to my actual body image.

I cleaned up the whole closet, but I couldn't bear to hang the pants up. I mean, why bother? They don't actually fit now, so why hang them up again. Hanging them would be a sign of hopefulness. Did I mention it was 10:00pm at night? I am very pragmatic when it comes to expending any energy when it comes to my clothes. That is why, back when I used to have clothes that needed to be ironed, I would only grudgingly iron them immediately before wearing them. My mother would constantly lecture me that I should set aside one night and iron all of the clothes that needed to be ironed. That struck me as overly confident that I would definitely get the opportunity to wear them. If I was going to get into a car accident tomorrow that would put me out of commission for a while, I imagined that while I convalesced, I would be extra bitter that I wasted those hours ironing clothes that I wasn't going to be able to wear.

So, you see why I won't put the time and energy into hanging those pants up now (so what if it would take only 10 minutes? That is ten minutes of valuable time doing something else, like whining about this issue in a blog post). Maybe I will have the confidence to hang them back up today after I polish off the last offending bit of Christmas excess-the peanut brittle. Then, no more temptations and no more excuses.

In the meantime, I have relied on the most wonderful fashion accessory of all time. The skirt. Sure, it gets a bit drafty in the winter time, but when all of your other options make your legs look like cocktail franks, you embrace the skirt and brace the wind. The only thing better than the skirt in these dire days of post Christmas reality, is of course, the skirt with the elastic waist band. Talk about a true friend, with you through thick and thin, literally, though thin hasn't been around much of late.

As for the pants, I hope to get back to them and not have to buy a new set. I am going to the gym again and not scarfing down all kinds calorie laden tidbits (at least not regularly). I am getting back on track. So, I should probably hang those pants up before my daughter reminds me that I promised to make homemade cookies with her this afternoon.

Ho Ho Go!

Okay, I am so over the holidays. I can't wait to pack Christmas back up in its box. I got yelled at last night by hubby for taking down all the candles in the upstairs windows. So what if I am a party pooper. Enough with the excess, it is time to get right back to the recession and the grim prospects at hand.

Speaking of hands, if I could get my hand out of the 2 lb. box of See's candies that our friends Susan and Eric brought over, I might have a better chance of getting my butt back in the pants that seem to have shrunk as small as my wallet. It isn't just the See's. There is also the homemade peanut brittle, the homemade bread (well, it did save money to bake it, too bad it now beckons me to eat it and thereby threatens any cost savings be transferred to a new larger wardrobe) and the banana pecan streusel muffins I decided to make yesterday when hubby prodded me to do something with the frozen bananas falling from the overloaded freezer.

As the guy said in that commercial for Ronco, "but wait, there's more." There is also the leftover lemon almond polenta cake which I made for my daughter to have a piece of for dessert on Christmas Eve. And the homemade cookies that hubby's Aunt sent us.

If all that fails to tempt, there is always the usual snacks, cheese and what I like to think of as "food mines" to be had. So yeah, I just want to be done with all of these things and start a new. Except I can't. Throwing out these once a year goodies would be very wasteful, especially in this economy. I know, I may as well strap them to my thighs. But, I can't bring myself to get rid of them and those nuts and chews from the See's box sure bring a measure of comfort in these uncertain times.

Obese Navidad

The song "Feliz Navidad" was playing the other day and I contemporaneously changed the words to "Obese Navidad." Recession or no recession, or maybe because of the recession, we are eating like there is no tomorrow. Because there may not be one for us. My job and hubby's jobs are both vulnerable to extinction. So, bring on the cookies,the drinks, and whatever highly caloric and life limiting food choices are around. 'Tis the season to be Merry and damn it, no matter what, we are going to give it a go.

So, we have been scarfing down homemade cookies and whatever else has been sent from above or from devious types to tempt us. We baked lots of cookies but sadly, they are mostly gone now. Well, they are best eaten while fresh, why wait until Christmas? Speaking of Christmas, why have the stale homemade christmas cookies that by some miracle you did not yet eat, for your dessert? Those should just count as snacks or highly caloric energy "pills." No, by rights we should have a proper dessert.

So, its on with the boots again and off to the crowded store to buy the ingredients for sticky toffee pudding, a favorite English dessert I had the misfortune to fall in love with during our UK years. Oh yes, and the individual fallen chocolate cakes have become a Christmas Eve tradition. Really, it isn't officially the night before Christmas without them.

While flipping through my recipe file I just ran across a recipe for Lemon Almond Polenta cake. Well that sounds yummy too. May as well make it and take it, along with the sticky toffee pudding, to Christmas at hubby's uncle's house. It will be the blessed union of two great sayings: Tis the season to be merry and: The more the merrier. Is that Jose Feliciano I hear singing in the background?

Deck the Balls!

Okay, I admit, if there really were fashion police, I would probably have been arrested a few times. But, I will go ahead and mock some of the obnoxious holiday "styles" I have seen of late.

Saturday night at my husband's work holiday party, there was a man there wearing the most obnoxious "holiday" pants I have ever seen. They were bright red cordouroys with green wreaths adorned with red bows all over them. There was no missing this man in a crowd. When I relayed this to a friend she told me that her significant other does a good volume of business in vintage and high end clothing of just this sort. Just goes to show you that taste and money do not always go hand in hand.

I was thinking that maybe the man had mistaken the words of the song "Deck the Halls" with "Deck the Balls" and therefore sported such pants to show his holiday spirit. He was probably just a victim of fashion amnesia. I myself bought a pair of pants a few years back which I now realize upon reflection, should have been limited to either upholstery or shower curtains. Bright blue and yellow. I must make a mental note to go back and destroy any photos of these in case I decide to run for public office.

A few nights ago we dined with some acquaintances from our Alma Mater. A spouse of one of the alums also decided to get all decked out in the spirit of the season. The fashion police would have picked him up on his three-alarm red blazer complete with christmas holiday buttons as extra adornment, had they been in the vicinity.

In general I don't go in for looking like a Christmas tree just because 'Tis the season. Consistently, I am also not into things like dressing in Disney top to toe. Just the occassional foray into the world of upholstery, that's me.

Land of the Limp Blimp

This morning while catatonically going about my morning routine I heard a story on NPR that made me bust a gut. It was on the local CT news. Apparently, some man in a town nearby had been arrested for stealing all of his neighbors lawn ornaments and other holiday decorations. According to the news source the police required 3 trucks to haul the evidence away. Neighbors were perplexed as to why their reindeer, snowmen and the like kept disappearing. The part that made me laugh was when the story concluded by saying that police had not yet determined a motive. Hello? He probably couldn't stand the tacky ornaments and thus took matters into his own hands.

Lately, I have been thinking about that a lot as I drive around town. There are definitely different ornament styles for different neighborhoods. I would characterize my nieghborhood's style as New England Puritanical-i.e., real traditional. I mocked my husband for putting out his Santa climbing up a rope which he bought in France. I told him it stuck out like a sore thumb in the 'hood. To which he replied that it was European. To which I replied, "you mean Eurotrash."

In the center of town it seems that people really go in for the Christmas blow up figures-santa, frosty, etc. As I drive around during the day, these deflated "limp blimps" as I like to call them, lie in the various front yards like victims of some sort of terrorist attack. They really are quite weird looking by day, forlorn fallen victims of the green energy movement.

I will conclude with something that a friend sent us in an email on this topic:
if you had 250 strands of lights, 100 individual bulbs per strand for a grand total of 25,000 individual miniature imported Italian twinkle lights stapled to the outside of your house you know who you'd be don't you? Click this link to find out: http://www.quizilla.com/user_images/R/riverblue/1059698537_z-griswold.jpg