The Search for the Perfect Pair of Underwear

I have been on a mission lately to find the holy grail of under garments.  I am looking for a perfect pair of underwear.  These undies will meet the following requirements; they will fit well - no riding up or falling/rolling down; they will not show through my clothing - no bump or lump or double-butt creation can occur or detailed outlines of the embellishments can be evident; they will last more than two washings; and finally, they will be cute and come in nice colors. 

I doesn’t seem like I’m asking a lot, but for some reason, this article of clothing is alluding me.  I, the shopping maven, am having the toughest time finding those along with the inability to locate a pair ankle boots with a medium high heel in black leather with a slightly pointy toe and some details on them to make them cute - oh and under $75 and in my size.

I did the thong-thing when I was younger and more tolerant of those types of irritations.  Now that I’m older, I just don’t have the patience for them and I don’t think there is enough fabric separating certain body parts from my clothing.

And Then There Were Three…

When I started this blog, I only had two kitties.  Two bad kitties.  Well, now I’d like to introduce a third kitty, Zoe.  Little Zoe is actually my boyfriend’s cat, but we got her knowing that we will all probably be living in the same house sometime in the near (?) future.   Here she is - she’s quite a beauty.

The Great Closet Makeover

So I’ve begun clearing out the clothes in my closet that don’t fit me right now.  I sorted them by size and realized I have enough clothes to outfit three people.   There are three categories; small-, medium- and large-me.  I am hoping that I don’t end up with an “extra-large-me” category in there.

This project is taking longer than I’d like.  Part of the problem is that I am trapped for about 9 hours a day at work sitting at my desk not really adding any value when I could be home doing much more productive things.  The other part of the problem is that I don’t have a lot of energy.  I have adrenal fatigue and hypothyroidism that I am currently treating (also the cause of the various sizes of me).  I can only do a little bit at a time before I need to rest physically and mentally. 

I’ve come to realize that I really enjoy jobs/projects where I can take a big mess and make it better.  I’m all about seeing the results of my labor.  Right now, my “real” job; you know, the one that pays me a good salary along with benefits,  is really unsatisfying.  I’m stuck with a manager who won’t let me have any decision-making power and doesn’t know how to delegate.  The whole department is undergoing a 5-month long reorganization.  Where I work, a ”reorganization”  is defined as getting a new executive over your area who has the strong need to “mark” his territory by dismantling everything his predecessor put in place and putting everyone in the department into new groups and creating new work flows between them.  This generally creates a great deal of worry, disatisfaction and upheaval amongst his associates.  But, he gets to show his management what a great job he’s done in the first year on the job with charts and data that shows how unproductive we were before and how productive we will be  in the future.  In the meantime, all of the funding for our projects has been cut so that we can make sure our CEO gets his millions in compensation at the end of the year.  So, in addition to not knowing what job you are going to be doing in the next month, you have nothing to work on before then or aren’t too motivated to get into something new because you might not be even working on it later.  This is a fantastic strategy for boosting morale if you ask me.

Too much stuff, continued…

When I was a little girl, my bedroom was always a disaster area.  First it was my toys - they were always on my bed.  At night, I would pull the bedspread down to drag them down to the lower half of the bed to make room to crawl in.  Occasionally because of a bad dream or just to annoy my parents I would go climb into their bed in the middle of the night.  My father couldn’t sleep with me there and would go get in my bed.  I remember waiting for the inevitable “crash” as all the toys at the foot of the bed were pushed off as he got in and then some muttered swearing.  The toys were replaced by clothes eventually.  That drove my father to the brink every time he passed my room.  I eventually rearranged my room strategically so that the bed was parallel to the back wall.  From the door it was impossible to see over the far edge of the bed so that’s where I would toss everything if I wanted to make it looked like I had tidied up.  That made it easier for him to walk down the hall to and from my parents’ room without having an aneurysm. Somewhere in high school I just gave up trying to hide my messiness.  One night I came home after being out with my friends and my room was spotless.  At first I thought maybe my parents cleaned, but I soon realized all of my clothes that had been on the floor were missing.  I threw a fit and woke up my parents demanding to know where my clothes were.  It turns out my father gathered them all up in garbage bags and put them in the storage shed out back.  This was all his idea and my mom was not happy that she was awakened in the middle of the night because of it.  I got my clothes back and my father and I held a truce until I left for college.

Fast forward 20 years.  You’d think with that kind of childhood, my house would be a disaster area.  Nope. 

Too Much Stuff!

I frequent Huffington Post often.  They have a nice mix of news; business, politics, entertainment, living now, etc.  I read this post, The Sky Mall Trap by Lee Woodruff today.  It is a pretty funny article, but it really cuts to the heart of the fact that as Americans, we really have too much stuff!  Our houses keep getting bigger to hold all of our stuff, we need to rent storage spaces to keep our stuff if it won’t fit in our house, and we have shows on TV devoted to organizing or decluttering all our stuff.

I am just as guilty as most people in that I have a lot of stuff.  It actually makes me quite anxious if I think about it.  My boyfriend and I are planning on eventually having a place together and I am overwhelmed at the thought of having to pack up all of my stuff.  I will really start to hyperventilate when I think about organizing his stuff (he has a lot of stuff too) and my stuff in our new place. 

I think I’m going to start going through my place and weeding out more and more stuff that I don’t really need.  At the same time, I need to figure out how I can stop acquiring so much stuff (yes, I know, this is right after I posted about buying three new pairs of pants and a sweater yesterday).  I can’t stand that I have 8 bottles of shampoo and conditioner, 4 bottles of body wash, 3 bottles of bubble bath, shaving lotion, 2 facial scrubs, 2 body scrubs, a back brush, a loofah washcloth, a bar of soap and a razor.  It’s amazing there is even room in there for me.  If I can use up what I have and narrow my stuff down to 1-2 of each item, I should be in better shape.  It’s kind of like a stuff diet…

The Strange Habits of Kitties

My cats, like other cats, have some strange habits.  Most of them aren’t bothersome, but I find myself wondering how the heck they picked them up in the first place.

Besides Simon’s obsession with Q-tips, he is also obsessed with shoe laces.  He has chewed clean through a couple pairs of laces on my tennis shoes.  I’ve learned to keep them in the closet with the door closed and my boyfriend makes sure his are tucked under a piece of furniture to keep the feline masticater from destroying his laces.  He won’t eat directly from a bowl; instead he scoops the food out of the bowl with his left paw (and only his left paw) and then eats it off the kitchen floor.  He is also very frustrated/fascinated with baths.   He will come running from wherever he is in the house when he hears the bathtub start to fill.  Once I’m in the tub, he paces on the side of the tub and meows loudly and furitively at me while trying to figure out how to get into the tub. It gets even more interesting when his tail accidently dips into the water.  This confuses the heck out of him and he spins around on the floor trying to catch his tail to get whatever it is that is spraying the drops of water on him. 

Sasha isn’t quite as odd as Simon but she has her quirks.  She gets into the bathtub after you’ve showered and drinks all the water that is still pooling in the tub.  This must be some sort of delicacy for her.  She also has a nasty habit of rubbing herself on underwear and clothes - both clean and dirty.  She rubs the side of her face against them and then rolls around on it. I’ve caught her laying on the floor with her head sticking through the leg of my gym shorts. She recently dragged two pairs of my boyfriend’s clean underwear from a pile of clothes on the floor and had rolled all over them.  I knew it was her from the large quantities of blond fur covering them when I found them.

I guess like humans they find things that bring them comfort or entertainment and latch on to them.  I’m glad that I haven’t picked up any bad habits like rubbing against underwear though…

Balancing the Blogosphere

My boyfriend, skullstars, has his own blog that I read daily and also comment on frequently.  You know, it’s the kinda thing you do to keep the peace in the relationship, <ahem>.  Anyway, he is a big fan of horror writing and movies and those are frequent topics on his blog.  I thought it was about time I balanced out all that scary stuff with a post about one of MY favorite genre of movies.  I love a good romance, one with two characters that are destined to be together, but haven’t figured it out for themselves.  That sounds formulaic and it can be, but if the characters are more than one-dimensional and aren’t a couple of complete idiots, it will draw me in time and time again. 

Some of my favorites are A Room with a View one of Merchant-Ivory’s best films. George Emerson is such a great guy to fall in love with.  Another is When Harry Met Sally which to me represented how a good relationship between a man and a woman should be.  They are friends first; lovers second.  I see too many real life relationships where the husband and wife don’t even like each other - they are just together because they wanted to “be married” and “have kids” - you know, check the box off their list.  Another one is Enchanted April which has several couples either falling in love for first time or rediscovering their love for each other.  It also emphasizes the need for women to be more than just some man’s wife.   Alfred Molina and Jim Broadbent are in it - they are two of my boyfriend’s favorite actors - maybe I can convince him to watch it with me now.  Or I can lie and say it is a horror flick involving talking decapitated heads and flesh-eating bacteria from outerspace.

Home Again

Last weekend I went back to my hometown of Avon, just west of Cleveland.  I lived there and in Cleveland until 5 years ago when I moved to Charlotte.  I was there for my grandmother’s surprise 90th birthday party.  She seemed to enjoy herself and was very surprised and happy that my sister (from Montana) and I had traveled home to celebrate with her.

On Friday night I met up with my girlfriends from high school at the local “hot spot” The Creekside.  It’s your typical ”old school” type bar with the checkered floor, round, red vinyl bar stools that spin around and a bunch of locals hanging out.  It’s the kind of bar I spent a lot of time when I lived in Cleveland and I miss that atmosphere down here in Charlotte.

I am definitely living a different life than my friends.  They are all divorced and/or remarried and have kids.  They haven’t left Avon and have no plans to do so.   They seem happy with their lives so I can’t fault them for their choices, but I’m glad I’m where I am now.

Roll On Deodorant, Roll On

My boyfriend (AKA Skullsinthestars) and I recently flew to Amsterdam for vacation/his work.  USAirways lost our luggage (that’s a story for another post).  Since the terrorists can blow up planes using more than 3 ounces of liquid,  I didn’t carry on any of my toiletries beyond a toothbrush and toothpaste.  That left us in Amsterdam at 8:00 am with none of the basic necessities.  Luckily my fabulous boyfriend had lived in Amsterdam for two years and knew the city well.  He took me shopping to the main drugstore to pick up some of the things we needed.  The drugstore we went to carried roll on deodorant.  I haven’t seen or purchased roll on deodorant since the 80’s.  There really isn’t anything wrong with roll on deodorant other than it takes a few minutes to dry.  I guess Americans are just too time-strapped to have to wait two minutes for their deodorant to dry before getting dressed so we have to use solid deodorant.  I don’t know about you, but I hate the white streaks you get on your clothes as a result and I’ll gladly wait the few minutes a roll on requires to avoid it.  I purchased a bottle of the deodorant and have been using it ever since.

This got me thinking about other products that have disappeared from our stores mysteriously or for some trumped-up marketing reason.  Whatever happened to pump toothpaste?  That was THE toothpaste to have once upon a time.  And do you remember Jello 1-2-3?  It looked just like regular Jello when you prepared it, but when you poured it into a tall glass, the magic happened.  It would separate into three distinct layers.  The bottom layer was regular Jello, the top layer was a lovely, whipped cream substance and the middle layer was a combination of the two.  But sadly, it disappeared from store shelves sometime in my youth.

Those are three things that I came up with this morning.  Can you think of other main-stream products or product variations that inexplicably disappeared?

Meet the Two Bad Kitties

I thought I might take some time to introduce you to the inspiration for the name of my blog.  I have two cats, Simon and Sasha.  They’ve lived with me for two years now.  You notice I didn’t say I’ve ”owned” them for two years, cats are never “owned” by anyone! I thought it would be be best to allow them to write their own posts to introduce themselves.