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fat in the fifties.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

I’ve been cataloguing used books a lot this month. Really, I feel like I’ve been doing it a lot for the past year, but it’s really gotten crazy in the last month. I got 20 boxes from someone’s private library. Someone smart. Like, a whole family of smart people. The books are things like Walden and gardening books and cool old pulp novels and at least two to three boxes of old books. As in, published in 1950 back to 1889, I think.

Clean, research, price

Clean, research, price

One of the books I put into the system this week was a little gem called Teen-Age Glamor by Adah Broadbent, with illustrations by Anna Marie Magagna. It was the illustrations that really drew me in. And once I was there, I didn’t want to be.

Looking through it, I thought it was archaic, but sort of cute. Until I came to the chapter on “Dangerous Curves.” In the index, if you look up “overweight,” it redirects you to “plump figures.” Holy crap, am I glad we don’t use the word “plump” anymore. I think I actually prefer “fat.”

Sad little girl

The tiny girl by the giant ice cream sundae looks so sad.

Here’s the first two paragraphs of that chapter:

You can have dimples and your eyelashes my curl from here to yon, but if you are a fatty, you aren’t a beau-catcher. It’s a family trait to be overweight? Don’t be ridiculous. You aren’t the petite type, but those extra pounds are no help. It’s time to use will power and here’s the way to start.

Stand in front of a full-length mirror without your clothes. What do you think of that fat tummy, those padded legs, and balloon arms? Under that layer of fat is a beautiful slender body which is yours. Never will you see it unless you want it. You say, “Of course, I do.” Honestly, do you? Think it over, the decision is yours.

Eloise grew up.

This is what Eloise looked like after 16 years of room service. Isn't she ashamed?

I think I would’ve been disturbed anyway, but the illustration of this not-so-fat girl looking in the mirror is heartbreaking.

There’s something about the question, “Honestly, do you?” that really makes me doubt myself. As if I’ve never had a strong conviction about anything.

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A list of things I think are more deserving of the title “the world’s best daily luxury” than my Bath & Body Works shower gel

Sunday, May 1, 2011

-Indoor plumbing.

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jackzilla costume.

Friday, October 29, 2010

Wednesday night, after going to (and loving) the Chihuly at Night exhibit at Cheekwood, John and I finally got around to thinking about Jack’s Halloween costume. Nothing like planning ahead, right? Well, anyway, we decided to go with Godzilla because John loves Godzilla and I love John and because Jack loves to play with one of John’s Godzilla toys and he does this awesome little roar. Originally, I thought I’d make the costume with felt and a green hooded sweatshirt and sweatpants. By the time we got to a store, the only thing still open was Wal-Mart, which I hate, but I was desperate.

This little “pea in the pod” ready-made costume was the only viable option for green clothing of any kind. Looking at the package, I think it’s pretty hideous. But. Look how cute it was on Jack:

Jack is a little guy, so the suit was pretty baggy, but I was stunned by how cute it actually was. To go from a common vegetable to the king of monsters, I had to add a tail, which I made with the leg of a cheap pair of jammies, and felt spikes/spines. At first, the spines looked a lot like little Christmas trees.

For reference, this is the real Godzilla:

See the shape of the spines on his back? It took me several tries before I cut a shape that I thought was simple enough to work with felt, but not too simple. I want it to be clear to people who are familiar with Godzilla that this isn’t just a T-rex costume…which would’ve been a little easier. I got the spines stuffed and sewn on last night and finished up the project tonight by making covers for his shoes, a.k.a. toho spats.

I’m really pleased with the way it turned out. I think that the bagginess works well, too, since the suits in the movies always have big, bulbous legs. I’m looking forward to taking him out in it tomorrow night, especially since I know he’ll love seeing the other kids in costume.

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whiny self-indulgence. (a.k.a. your typical blog entry)

Monday, October 18, 2010

I was going to write a post about a disappointing snack I had last night (Sundays are splurge day for the diet John and I have been on for the past month or so), but the wind is out of my sails because the picture I thought I took of said snack is somehow not on my phone. Maybe I didn’t save it…? So, without the visual aid, it’s not as easy to point the finger of blame at the people who ruined Splurge Day. Yes, it’s important enough to deserve capitalization. It would be a bank holiday if banks weren’t already closed on Sunday.

Honestly, I don’t know what the world is coming to when it’s so hard for a girl to get her hands on a decent brownie these days. That’s what I want on Splurge Day. A rich, super chocolate-y brownie. Last week I got no chocolate on Splurge Day. Yesterday, I bypassed several passable chocolate choices when I was with the family at Red Robin because I wanted something specific. Something, apparently, I’m just going to have to make myself. I’d been trying not to make it myself because, even on Splurge Day, I don’t need to eat an entire pan of brownies and I don’t want to have brownies at my house all week.

I went to Kroger last night, thinking that there might be some brownies in the bakery section (there weren’t) or some chocolate chip muffins in the bread aisle (usually, yes, but not last night). I found nothing I expected to find and almost gave up. Instead, I bought something called Sweet Moments Brownie Bites from the refrigerated section and a small, single serving, bottle of Kroger brand skim milk.

It’s late when this all happens. Like, 11pm. Maybe 11:30. As we’re driving, we notice there’s a stupidly long line at Taco Bell, which is John’s weakness. When we leave Kroger, I suggest we go to Taco Bell so we can both enjoy the last moments of Splurge Day.

I got this new burrito that has sour cream, chili and Fritos. It’s the kind of food that I’m actually embarrassed to enjoy. Nothing but the cheapest ingredients. It looks like dog food. That one burrito probably shortened my life, it was so unhealthy. But. It was so amazingly delicious. It was salty and crunchy and sour creamy and awesome.

Sweet Moments Brownie Bites suck. And that Kroger brand milk was the worst milk I’ve ever tasted. They both had a weird, twangy aftertaste and seemed to taste worse together than individually. But they still sucked individually. At John’s suggestion, I threw the brownie bites, one by one, at road signs the rest of the way home. I never hit one.

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my busy, busy brain.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

I’m the kind of person that needs to be doing something all the time. That  doesn’t mean I clean like I should or that I can’t enjoy a day of doing nothing. In fact, it most often means of have half-finished craft/sewing projects and partially read books littering up the house and “doing nothing” means watching TV, reading blogs or looking stuff up online, keeping an eye on Jack, and sometimes eating…all at the same time. I like to do things. My brain is active, even if my feet aren’t.

Still, even for me, I’ve been too busy lately. I go and go and never seem to rest. This summer, I’ve doubled the number of books I read a month. I rarely seem to spend my day off at home. For the store last week, I produced a newsletter, created a DVD section, and reorganized the children’s section. I tend to thrive on this sort of thing, but not so much anymore.

Jack is still nursing, so part of my energy goes into doing that. Even when he was a newborn, I always forgot to factor that in to my exhaustion and he doesn’t nurse very often at all anymore, compared to then. I could stand to lose some weight, of course (what else is new?), and I’m sure the food I eat isn’t giving me the energy I need. But the real thing that seems to be bringing me down is that I haven’t had a vacation in forever. I took off a couple of Saturdays in July, but I haven’t been anywhere since before I knew I was pregnant. And even at that, the last time we “went somewhere” it was only to Atlanta. Not that I don’t like Atlanta, I do–I’d love to go back again soon–but it isn’t the vacation I need.

I want to be in a car seeing things I’ve never seen before. Sometimes I just need to feel the road moving beneath me, to feel the scenery fall behind me.

Life is pretty stressful right now.

Here are the fortunes we got in our fortune cookies when we had Chinese food last night:

Mine
Time heals all wounds. Keep your chin up.

John’s
You discover treasures where others see nothing unusual.

Jack’s
Linger over dinner discussions this week for much needed advice.

Jack wasn’t able to eat his cookie, since his little teeth couldn’t quite handle anything that hard, but the waitress there always remembers us and she and Jack are great friends, so she gave him one. (I believe that you must eat the cookie before reading your fortune in order for it to come true, so John and I shared Jack’s.) I love Jack’s especially because we’ve only recently gotten a high chair and started eating our meals at the table together. Before, when it was just the two of us, John and I always had our dinner with a movie. The change feels very “atomic family.” I love it.

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jack and i are friends again. i think.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Jack is asleep in my lap, having just survived the disaster of the day. He usually gets his bath with John in the shower, but tonight I washed him in his little tub, during which he totally freaked out. It was traumatizing for both of us. Last time I bathed him in his little tub (which is adorable, by the way, and looks like a whale), it went fine. So, when I put him in the water with his squeaky little duckies and he started clawing at me and screaming, I was completely surprised. The look he gave me!  Like I was abandoning him. Like he’d never forgive me. He was so relieved when I picked him up that he wouldn’t let me put him down without freaking out all over again.

So, here I am, sleeping babe curled in my lap, watching “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and wishing John didn’t have to be gone tonight.

I finished reading The Road today. It was well written and I can sort of understand why it got so much attention, but it left me with a lot of questions. Plus, it was just generally unpleasant. When I finish a book, I update my profiles on LibraryThing, GoodReads, Shelfari, and Living Social. I rated this book a 2 out of 5. I wish there was a button to push or a way to modify your rating to say something to the effect of “I think it’s a good book, but I wish I hadn’t read it” or “no amount of good writing is worth having to think about such awful things.” There’s no such button. I guess that would just be my review of the book as a whole. It felt a lot like The Old Man and the Sea, except that the boy got to go along, the old man never caught anything, and there was no hope of him catching anything again ever because all the fish, people, and plants were dead.

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is it june yet?

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

We’ve cut off our satellite TV service. The leaves are back on the trees, blocking our dish from all the satellites floating around out there, so we weren’t getting any stations anymore anyway. We’ve started streaming Netflix with our Wii though, so I feel better about cutting off the satellite only about a month after buying a new, too-big-for-the-room TV. Not all the movies on Netflix are available for streaming, but apparently a good deal of lame to mediocre sci-fi movies are very much available.

At the moment, Godzilla seems to be fighting Mothra and something called Battra. Seriously, Battra?

I have a ton of Hitchcock movies lined up for future viewing and have been enjoying Mystery Science Theater with John, when I can manage to stay awake.

I should be reading, but I’m trying (and failing) not to think about the store or its book club or other events tonight. I’ve been knee-deep in used books for weeks and weeks, trying to get them all into our computer system and onto our shelves. And then today, out of the clear blue, a got a great offer to for a whole bunch more…which I couldn’t ignore. I don’t know how I’m going to get them all to the store, where we’ll put them, when I’ll have time to do anything with them, or if we have enough shelving to accomodate them all.

I’ve started having dreams that I’m drowning. I need a vacation.

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goodbye, blogger.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

I’ve just converted from blogger, which decided not to support ftp publishing anymore, to wordpress, which is way cooler anyway. My site had gotten hacked and was hosting malware, but it’s clean and tidy now…but I lost all my images in the process. I may add them back in later, but I’m swamped at work right now and fixing the blog portion was a major accomplishment. More to come…

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a good book and a dead book.

Saturday, July 18, 2009

I finished up another book by Per Petterson last night. In the Wake was the first of Petterson’s novels to be published in the US, though I managed to miss out on it until he’d had two more released here. This one was just as well written as Out Stealing Horses (my favorite book ever, I think) and To Siberia, but still wasn’t quite as good. I think it suffered because my reading of it was so fragmented, reading 20 to 40 pages then not being able to pick it up again for another week or so…and it’s only 202 pages long. Petterson’s fluid writing is simply fantastic though and that was still easy to see. I get completely caught up in it.

After I added In the Wake to my LibraryThing library, I looked at the list of recommendations they’ve assembled based on my entire library. One of the suggested books on the list was Wendy McClure’s weight loss memoir I’m Not the New Me. I remember this book very vividly now, but I had totally forgotten about it. We had it when I worked at Dutton’s and I remember it had these awesomely terrible Weight Watchers recipe cards from the 70′s with commentary about how awful they are. Those are actually online here at Wendy McClure’s website. Anyway, I read the title and instantly remembered the book and thought, “Oh, I have to get that for the store!” I was so sad when I looked it up and found out it has gone out of print! It was just published in 2005 and it’s already dead. And I never bought it! Poor little book. It’s easy to find a used one online, but I don’t really need it…and I feel stupid buying a book elsewhere when I own a bookstore.

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john’s first father’s day.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

While we were still in LA, I bought fabric for a bag to make for John, but I couldn’t get my machine to work with canvas. I figured it was just too thick, but then, at Christmas last year, I discovered I’ve been putting my needles into the machine backwards…like a complete dope. When I tried to sew the canvas with the needle facing the right direction, it worked just like it was supposed to. Well, it worked anyway. I found canvas (technically, this was called duck cloth, whatever that is) to be incredibly hard to work with because it has no give whatsoever. It barely even folds. I could cut it like paper, but trying to turn it inside out to work on a detail was a little like working with cardboard…or something that doesn’t want to be turned inside out or manipulated at all. So, all this means that I had to make special concessions throughout. I also made tons of mistakes, but I don’t think most people will notice…but..you know…I do. John seems pretty psyched about it though.

Here’s the front:

I have more pictures here.

Almost immediately after finishing John’s bag (which, now that I say that, isn’t totally finished because I’m thinking of adding a cell phone pocket to the strap), I started working on a quilt for Jack. I finished it up tonight. I’m in love with the contemporary, not-too-babyish fabrics.

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