organized chaos

Magazine covers are so stupid. A couple of them caught my attention this weekend whilst I was trying to look busy at work during some down time.

Remember these jeans?

I had a pair in Jr High when I was so skinny my legs resembled two chopsticks attached to a butt. Mine were tight on me because I’d had them for a couple years and I was going through a growth spurt, and we were poor. To make matters worse, I had let out the hem to compensate for my ever lengthening chopstick legs and they had zippers on the outsides. Very attractive and very now. This is me and my friend Twiggy back in 8th grade. She’s the one with the pumps. Lots of people in my podunk jr high wore pumps, you know.

So I saw on one of the mags: “Hottest Jeans, And How To Wear Them!”

My first thought was, “Hot or not, it’s one leg at a time, one leg at a time. Then you zip them, and hopefully wear a shirt that closes in the front or back, whichever you prefer.”

And I’ve seen a few youngsters sporting these “new” skinny jeans around the store. I just figured it was some renegade choice they’d made to stand out against the angst of sameness that is teendom. But no, it would seem they’re back in action.

But you’ll probably not catch me in a pair of these weirdo pants. If you can pull it off, fine for you. I’ll try not to judge you for being skinny enough to look good in these. I might actually offer you a plate of nachos with extra cheese because I’d be concerned for your health.

But most of the women I know have that little something called hips. And when you wear skinny jeans with hips, it ends up looking like you are a walking triangle from the waist down.

It’s really the equivalent of tight rolling without the tight roll. It’s the equivalent of leggings, only with denim. You might as well just forget the pants all together and wear a long shirt. But what do I know?

Lately, since I had the baby and my “skinny” jeans are so tight they make me look like I’m some kind of hoochie mama, I’ve been slowly buying some that I don’t have to pour myself into. I’m favoring these
I buy the tall size, and guess what? The Jeans People finally got a clue and started making tall pants long enough that I don’t have to let out the hem like a dork! Although I still do from time to time. It’s a reflex. You cannot stop it.

I haven’t really seen a whole heck of a lot of magazine headlines that piqued my interest of late. But my friend from work, you know who you are, jogged a memory that had apparently fallen through one of the swiss cheese holes that is my brain, and I thanked her profusely for completing me through a cherished memory.

Before I tell you what that memory was, let me say that I then noticed one headline that boasted 347 Fall Fashions, and I wondered, “Are there really? Three hundred and forty seven of them?”

Amazing.

But let’s do this the Carrie way, shall we? I immediately thought of some of my “must haves” for when I would start school again in the fall. And we didn’t have the cold hard cash that all the cool kids had. So some of these were just wishes. And some of them I got, finally, but only when they were sadly out of fashion.

Carrie’s Must Have Fall Fashions From Roughly 1986-1990

Hypercolor. You know, the shirts that turn color with your body heat. That way everyone could grab you in inappropriate places and the whole school would know. Charming.

Blue eye shadow. My mother was a big fan. So was Cyndi Lauper. Which by the way, I played in this little skit we did in the 3rd grade, where everyone was one of the singers in “We Are The World” and we lip synced to it. Except my teacher, bless her heart, wasn’t rad enough to spell it right. And I was all about the correct spelling of my favorite singer. Oh, I argued with her. It was a serious offense to spell my Girl’s name ‘Cindy Loper’. Mortifying. But I rocked it out anyway.

Parachute Pants. Man, did I want a pair of these something fierce. I dreamed about these things. If I had just had a pair of these, maybe that really cute boy named Brent would’ve talked to me. Because every boy dreams about a girl with bright yellow pants that swished as you walked down the hall, right?

No, Lea Thompson was not a must have fashion accessory. But I was all about my favorite hair tool. The Crimper. Unfortunately, I didn’t come remotely close to the coolness that is Lea Thompson in the 80’s, but I did try to crimp my Barbie’s hair once, and burned it off. It smelled really gross.

And to hold that crimp in my stringy thin hair, I always made sure to use plenty of Rave. Looking at this can of sticky goodness, I can almost smell it. It’s the smell that takes me back to good hairstyles gone bad after a windy bus ride on picture day. It takes me back to the day I wore pig tails with thick rope ribbons and a black and white skirt, purple leather jacket, and blue pantyhose. Oh and jelly shoes. Because without the jelly shoes, you cannot do the 80’s dance.

Guess Jeans. I truly believe deep down in my heart that had I a pair of Guess Jeans in my possession that I could’ve been voted Favorite Girl in my 7th grade class. And maybe, just maybe someone would’ve picked me for square dancing at P.E.

And speaking of jeans

I give you the Tight Roll. The reason for my existence every morning for several years. The reason for my sweat and anxiety every morning before school when it just wouldn’t roll right. The reason for my triumph when it rolled perfect and looked hot. The reason for my vomit to get stuck in my throat when I think about how absolutely idiotic it looks now in all my pictures.

I didn’t know this was how stirrup pants worked. They look nice on this chick. Maybe it was because I was pushing 5′11″ by the 9th grade and they would always try to slip off my hips, looking much like a pair of chopsticks with weird triangular shaped fabric stretched too far up the length. So I remedied the situation by cutting off the straps at the bottom. Then I had those little tabs sticking out on either side of my ankle, and I was good to go.

Now this girl has some skinny legs. But I assure you, mine were skinnier. So much so, that the leg warmers were always too big for me. Like someone had stretched them out before-hand as a sick joke. But I still wore them. Usually with some kind of skirt with fringe and a sweatshirt my mom made with strips of felt attached to the shoulders that resembled pom poms.

So I hope you’ve gotten a few fashion tips for this fall. I hope you remember your early school days without gagging or inhaling your coffee up your nose as you type. Because fashion can be funny. As long as you burn the incriminating evidence, or at the very least hide them in a safe, so you can pretend it looked good on you via your warped memory.

And if you’re looking for Letters From Your Friendly Cashier, scroll down.

So it’s been awhile since I posted any dysfunctional headlines, and really it’s because it got kind of busy at work and/or there just wasn’t anything that sparked my interest. Well last weekend Oprah’s mag had a bold headline that I thought, “If Wally World weren’t taping me right now with their security cameras, I’d totally read that article!”

Oprah’s cool and all, but I don’t really watch her show. Every time I have and she’s had some Cool Idea show theme, it’s usually stuff I can’t afford to do, so I avoid her stuff.

Since I did not read O’s fabulous article, I thought I’d do what I always do. Come up with my own.

Chill!

21 Things to Stop Worrying About Right Now

(give or take)

1. Are the managers at work going to catch me wearing open heeled shoes when it’s clearly not allowed per the new dress code?

2. Will they let me get a dr.’s note since the last time I wore closed heel shoes and was on my feet for a long time, my toenails got so bruised they turned black?

3. Since I’m so tall, do people ever notice the little white chin hairs that grow on the scar from a bike accident when I was a kid?

4. If I drink my coffee through a straw, will it prevent my teeth from turning brown?

5. Why are there so many little toads in my back yard this year? Is it the beginning of the end?

6. Is my daughter going to grow up resenting me because I didn’t make it to the Barbie Ballet scheduled at 6 pm in her room the other night?

7. If my microcephalic dog takes off down the street after a motorcycle, am I expected to retrieve him, or can I just pretend he never existed and get on with my pet free life?

8. Will I ever stop having recurring dreams about finishing high school? I graduated early Dream Maker! That doesn’t mean I still have one year left! Leave me be, already!

9. What would I do if I drove over a bridge and a support beam cracked off? Or some evil mutant or Lex Luthor showed up causing mayhem to everyone driving over the bridge that day?

10. And will I ever be content with my hair color? Or is it actually a creative outlet I just need to accept?

That’s not 21, I did say give or take. I have a feeling Oprah wouldn’t approve my list for her astute publication. I crying a river over that. Really.

a footnote: worry is actually a struggle for me and many things that consume my thoughts just aren’t fodder for my joking around. i’m thankful the lord has given me a sense of humor to lighten my load and laugh at myself, and hopefully someday i’ll laugh at all the things i’ve wasted so much time thinking on.

Remember this? I don’t personally, but sure I’ve heard of the ol’ vibrating belt exercise machine of the 50’s. Looks like swell fun. Maybe afterward they gussied up for a sock hop or something. Those were the days. At least they look like the days.

I’m hoping that contraption up there was effective, because I’ve found myself in a similar position lately.

Our old washer broke down a couple months ago, so I hiked it up to Main Street to purchase a new-old one. We only buy used appliances. It’s a religious preference.

Not really. I drool over those really nice front loaders that probably make nary a sound when spinning out or agitating. Because it wasn’t too long after we got our new-old washer, that supposedly is industrial size, when we found out it couldn’t handle a full load of sheets or towels.

You can always tell when it’s going to start. The spinning starts slowly. Thump-thump-thump. And you hope once it starts full throttle that it will even out and just work right already. And sometimes it does.

But then you have the knocking-turned-walking washer issue and you go in there, flip the darned lid open and rearrange some towels. When you close the lid again you pray to the heavens above and chew on the inside of your lip while you wait for the momentum to gain to see if the earth shattering vibration will begin again.

If it does, and you’re a novice at this, you might try rearranging a few more times. Each time getting more and more agitated that your new-old industrial size washer cannot handle a freakin’ load of towels. Even a small load.

Once you’ve had some experience at this, you might try going outside while it spins out. Because if you can’t hear it, then it doesn’t exist. Besides, you’re tired of worrying that the contraption is going to shake it’s way through the old floor and land smack dab on the sump pump in the basement. But then a gremlin usually comes out and interrupts a nice daydream about caramel mocha frappacinos and he’s really freaked out by all the banging and whatnot, so you go inside cause you’re a nice mom.

And when you’re back inside and the monster of a machine starts in again you know the only thing left to do is to sit on it.

If you’re a big girl like me, sitting on it will, in fact, calm the booger down a tad. Oh, rearrange to your heart’s content, but while I was sitting on my washer just this morning I realized that I am probably just shaking off those pounds at warp speed.

At this point, you might be tempted to think that I’m just trying to be funny and ha ha wouldn’t that just be a hoot to sit on one’s washer while it shakes profusely! But do not give it one more thought! At least twice a week, I can be found, at some point in my day, perched atop my vibrating washer waiting out the spin cycle. This is my true life. I don’t have to make this stuff up.

I was going to give Tae Bo a try, but I think this might just be a wee bit more effective.

This last weekend I was thrown into the duty of the service desk at work, much like if you were to throw a toddler into a pond and say, “There you go! Now swim!”

Honestly I did ok for not having a clue and people were nice. And that is using the term loosely since I found that people at the service desk are NOT as friendly as the people who usually come through my line as a cashier. I’m sure it has something to do with the fact that they are skeptical if I’m going to refund their money on that cracked toilet seat without a receipt.

So since I was such a busy girl this weekend, I thought this headline was appropriate:

The Busy Girl’s Beauty Guide

1. Sleep is for sissies. The Busy Girl should dupe her doctor into giving her a prescription for Ritalin and then couple that with caffeine. If jitters are a problem, just keep moving at insane speeds. Everything looks better in a blur. And your hair will flow behind you like a model with a wind fan.

2. Who has time to shave? Just let the hair grow for a week and say it’s trendy in Europe.

3. If you want to shorten your time in the shower, have kids. After that, you will never shower or bathe for longer than five minutes. If that. Sometimes Rinse and Repeat is all you need. Soap dries your skin out anyway.

4. Lipstick is only good for writing mean notes on the bathroom mirror to your spouse. You will be much better at making the scary face at your gremlins without it.

5. Worried about those extra pounds? Make sure your baby only sleeps for an hour at a time during the day, and his room is up a flight of stairs. Resist the urge to put him in a pack n play downstairs for your ease. He won’t like it anyway and it’s too noisy for him to sleep. This way, you will get plenty of exercise running to and fro up the stairs all the live long day.

And that’s all. After all, I’m busy!!

So I had some time between customers on Thursday night to jot down some more headlines. If you missed the previous posts on this subject, GO HERE.

And by now, you know I like to shake things up bit. Geez, don’t try to put me in a box!!

So instead of 30 Summer Style Secrets, which I’m sure includes all the hints and tips for women size zero and under. (And if you’re a size zero and reading this, I love you too, I’m just saying, magazines in general don’t cater to size 14/16 women who are 6 feet tall.)

So here’s

Carrie’s Style Secrets For Any Season and In Any Decade

1. Do not wear sleeveless polka dot shirts when you’re pregnant. Especially big black and white ones.

2. Sweat is NOT an appropriate accessory. Unless you’re mowing the lawn in 90 degree weather and The Jackelope falls off his bike unexpectedly and you need to run to the ER all helter-skelter. Then you just have to pray the ER docs ARE NOT cute and if they are, you must pray they have no sense of smell.

3. If you choose to go to the Prom with a guy who wants to wear a kilt, you need to make sure you have a totally rockin’ dress and thus ensure that everyone will be staring at you instead.

4. The only thing that looks good on teeth is shine. Except if you must wear braces for a time. Lipsticks, corn, broccoli? Never a good idea and it’s likely no one will have the guts to tell you that these things are on or stuck in your teeth.

5. If you insist on wearing P.J.’s to Walmart late at night, make sure A) they cover your most important body parts and B) they’re cute, and C) there are no gaping holes revealing the previously mentioned body parts. Your friendly cashier does not want to see that much of you.

6. If you have legs that resemble Slim Jim’s, DO NOT tight roll your jeans.

7. If you decide to rip holes in your jeans, all the way up and down the pant legs, and imitate your favorite glam rock star, DO NOT take a picture. You will likely resist the vomit impulse every time you look at it for years to come.

8. If you have really long luscious blonde hair and you meet a really cute boy over the summer, and that cute boy goes back to Germany for a few months, DO NOT rush out and get a perm on sheer impulse. You will regret it and your mother will force the beauty parlor to relax it asap but it will never be the same after that. And you will freak the cute boy out when you tell him about it on the phone, and he will probably not show up to your next date.

9. And speaking of perms. Just because you happened to get a GREAT perm back in the 11th grade, it DOES NOT mean all perms hereafter will be GREAT. And one of those times you try to recreate the past hair success, your perm could go so haywire and so curly that the hairdresser has to cut your short hair even shorter, and you end up looking like something from “Amazon Women Sporting Gerry Curls: Next Geraldo!”

10. If you design your own wedding dress, for the love of Mike, make sure the sleeves DO NOT hang off your shoulders in a way that cut off your ability to lift your arms. Otherwise you will be hugging everyone Zombie Style all night.

11. And finally, since I have so many DO NOT’s, here’s a DO. If you want to be a totally rad roller skating queen, you MUST own a satin gold and red shorts set with a tank top to match. And you MUST wear this with red cotton tights. Because how will you ever work that Whitney Houston song, “I wanna dance with somebody” on your red, white and blue skates without the ultimate outfit?

And my dear internet friend, Hallie

has apparently given me this:

Just kidding!!

She thinks I’m this:

Thanks GirlFriend! Now I’m supposed to give this to 5 other bloggers. Here’s who I think rocks, because they’ve left me a comment and thus secured my friendship forever:

Jenny, Karen, Elizabeth Joy, H0MEfree, and that’s really all the gals with blogs that I can think of that haven’t already been bestowed this reward. And to all you non-bloggers who read this nonsense regularly, YOU ROCK, as well.

Geez, I think this whole magazine headline thing is becoming a series.  I made a category for it over on the sidebar.

Before I begin, however, let me just say Jackelope had a smashing party today.  His birthday is tomorrow and we will go swimming for some more fun.  He was a little confused, though.  He kept asking,

“So, when are all the customers going to get here?”

Not really sure when his relatives turned into customers, but hey, I’m sure they’ve been called worse.  He was polite, and gracious, dashing and very, VERY excited about all his cool new stuff.  That’s my Jackelope.  Mr. Charm himself.  Most of the time.  Well, maybe only when he’s getting cool new stuff.  I love him to pieces.

Ok. Enough gush.  Here’s some headline humor. 

Most of the mags were the same as last week, but one I hadn’t noticed caught my eye.  Only part of it was visible though.  And on that part all I could see was: 

“Charles Dumps”

For two hours, inbetween every customer, every time I waited for someone to make their check out, in fact, every time I lifted my eyes, I saw those two words.  Nice.

Then I found out that there are 143 Ways to Rock Summer ‘07.

Really?  143?

Here’s my five.

1.  get to take a bath for longer than five minutes without a gremlin shouting through the door that his brother stole his imaginary friend. Again.

2.  eat way too much leftover frosting from making a birthday cake and therefore propel yourself into the best sugar high EVER, and laugh uncontrollably at your unsuspecting husband’s completely normal questions.

3.  finally get rid of poison ivy that made you look like a leper

4.  your grandma gives you her old digital camera and now you can finally take crazy photos and see them instantly without waiting to get film developed.

5.  And if you really want Summer ‘07 to rock, and frankly, who doesn’t?, stay in a nice, cool air conditioned house because Kansas humidity is not to be trifled with and it DOES NOT rock.

I had so much fun griping about magazines the other day on THIS post, that I thought I’d poke some more fun at the topic. I had some down time at work finally last night around 1 a.m. when people apparently decided they’d bought enough John Wayne Ultimate Collection DVD for their dad’s Father’s day gift and cat litter to last the weekend and went home. So then I stared at the mags and spaced out for awhile and laughed to myself over what I saw there yet again.

I learned that the world is indeed going to end on 9/11/2007. That’s unfortunate because #1 I’d like to celebrate my 31st birthday, and #2 I was hoping to visit Washington State sometime before I die.

I learned that I can get inches off in just 8 moves. I’m not sure this works. I know it took 8 moves to:

climb out of my bed,

walk into the kitchen,

open the refrigerator,

bend down to the bottom shelf,

grab the tortilla package and cheese,

make a quesadilla,

shovel it in as fast as possible before the gremlins caught me and begged for some,

then grab my tape measure and balk at the lack of inches missing from my waist.

And last but not least, I learned there are at LEAST 337 ways turn heads this summer.

How about if I just give you Carrie’s Top Ten Ways To Turn Heads This Summer?

in random order

1. renovate your bathroom and leave your toilet on the front lawn for two weeks

2. watch in horror as your child hangs from the side of the shopping cart and almost catapults your infant over the side and onto the grocery store floor, in the carseat, with it still attached.

3. leave a piece of toilet paper stuck out of the back of your pants and go shopping

4. get poison ivy so bad you look like a leper

5. buy a microcephalic dog that chases down motorcyles like nobody’s business

6. take your Spiderman obsessed gremlin to church and watch him shoot webs at the old people in the pew in front of you

7. have a baby so cute the world stops on it’s axis and everyone at Walmart has to stop and say, “Look at all that HAIR!”

8. drive a minivan with a cracked windshield for two years just to be different

9.tell people you took your gremlins to the cemetery for Father’s Day

10. while ringing up your customer’s items, sneeze on his gallon of milk unexpectedly, then act like it never happened

I never said mine were better. I just said they were mine.

I’d like to take this moment and step out of my usually organized (ha ha) system of writing and express some randomness. Weekends aren’t the best for creative thinking for me, since as you probably already know, I work weird night hours three nights a week.

I’d like to vent a bit about the skinniness factor. Last night, I got stuck checking in one of the express lanes, which I normally like, but the downside is that I get to stare at all the magazines right across from my register. For the last week, as in all weeks, super skinny women have plastered themselves onto these and shout at me in large, bright headlines about how I can be like them.

“How the Stars Slim Down”

“Lose 15 pounds in Two Days!”

“Eat Whatever You Want and Still Have One Chin”

One of the women I got to look at for two hours last night was a skinny, toned Leann Rimes in a bikini. It was Shape magazine and it promised to tell me just how she got those rockin’ abs. They were rockin’. And mine are so not rockin’.

Here’s the deal. I grew up so skinny my knees looked like knobby grapefruits with dowel rods sticking out of the tops and bottoms of them. I looked sickly. I was the target of the cool kids.

Then I had kids. Need I say more? Well, maybe I do, because I have a couple of friends who have more than one kid and they are still really, really skinny. I don’t hate them. They just have good jeans genes. Ha.

Usually I don’t have too much trouble shedding the pounds after a baby. But this time I had The Surgery, in other words, “No more babies for you” and I think it messed up my plan for sliding back into my skinny jeans two months postpartum.

I’m really split in half on this issue. There was a time, during a deep depression, when I obsessed over my extra 20 pounds so bad that I could quite literally not think of much else. Now, I can go along my merry way, aware that I’d like to lose some of this weight, but merry nonetheless. Then I get to stare at Leann Rimes with the rockin’ abs for two hours and, by golly, that monster of insecurity takes a big ol’ bite out of me and I pine away for rockin’ abs, rockin’ thighs, heck, I’d settle for a rockin’ chin at this point.

My Man likes me a lot. Age has mellowed him out. I think that’s why this whole thing doesn’t bother me as much as it used to. But security from the husband really only goes so far for women. As long as there are rockin’ women plastered everywhere, we will fight this battle, I think.

The part of me that doesn’t give a rip about skinniness is getting bigger and bigger. Well, internally anyway. I love seeing magazines use “plus size” models, which should be called “normal size” women. They’re the ones that look good, and healthy. They can eat a donut and not feel the need to throw up later, or do the stairmaster for an hour the next day.

Yes, I want to lose weight. But at this point my focus has changed. I just want to fit into my pre-pregnancy clothes, cause I’m too poor to buy new ones. After that, I will battle this issue from time to time. As all women will.

In one of Lisa Samson’s books, “Straight Up”, one of her characters is in a coma and sees her dead mother and grandmother. In one of their many conversations about life, they mention that we will be surprised regarding the issue of body shape when we get to heaven. They said the former generation had it much closer to the truth: think Marilyn Monroe.

One of the characters said something about Eve (you know, from the garden) has a nice plump bottom and a round tummy to boot. And that’s what normal is.

I liked that.