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Purse poll June 29, 2008

Posted by charmingbutsingle in Uncategorized.
67 comments

I am looking for a bag I can wear across my body for weekend errands, including, but not limited to, shopping (grocery and otherwise), lazying about, seeing movies, late lunches and (possibly) tailgating and other casual outdoor type events. Something I can wear with a cute jersey knit dress and flip flops.

My quandary is that I have long been confused by two handbag phenomena – crazy Vera Bradley printed purses and Coach logo satchels. I’ve always wondered how adult women could adorn their hips and arms with terribly preppy quilted handbags or mini billboards full of Coach “Cs.”

But lately, as I’m searching for a cross-body purse to carry just my weekend essentials (cell, wallet, keys, sunglasses, powder and lip gloss) during the day, I’m drawn to that which I’ve hated – the Vera Bradley hipster purse and the Coach Signature Stripe Swingpack.

My sister has the Vera Bradley hipster and it is light and holds the essentials. Has an adjustable strap and comes in several cute patterns. I’m leaning toward Peacock (below), Puccini or Mod Floral Blue. And given that it is fabric, I wouldn’t be too worried about spilling something on it. And it is less than half the price of the Coach bag.

The downside is that I worry the Vera Bradley is too young looking. I see adult women, some older than I am, carrying Vera Bradley bags, but I often catch myself rolling my eyes at them. I’ve always thought the larger totes would make great diaper bags if I were to have a child someday.

Then there is the Coach bag. I’ve rolled my eyes with equal disdain at the Coach logo. In general, I find logo patterns to be annoying. If I wanted to advertise for a company, I would, but I don’t and I’d rather not pay to. But the Swingpack appears to be well made and large enough for the weekend essentials. In general I feel as if the Coach bag looks more like something someone in her (gasp!) late twenties would carry. But I worry that I’d carry a $128 bag with a bit of concern for getting it dirty or wet, which is simply no way to live of the weekend.

So, your thoughts?

Vera Bradley Hipster in PeacockCoach Swingpack

They read my mind June 26, 2008

Posted by charmingbutsingle in General Clumsiness and Related Stupidity, Single Girl Cliches, Snippet.
18 comments

For the third night in a row I shuffled through my neighborhood fancy organic market to get some soup, praying that this $4.99 carton of warmth would fill me with enough nutrients and goodness to kill off the miserable summer cold I have. I spent most of last weekend shivering under blankets and I’ve been hoping that this weekend I would feel stronger, less full of snot and able to sip a glass of wine with friends. Alas, it seems somewhat likely that my fate is to nest and go on soup runs again this weekend.

After picking a hearty cup of chicken chowder, I turned my attention to the drink aisle. As an aside, My Mom, when she wasn’t force feeding me liquid Jell-o, always insisted that we drink Gatorade when we were sick as children so we wouldn’t become dehydrated. I hate Gatorade with a passion and after having my tonsils out a year and a half ago, I was left weak and defenseless against my Mother and her Gatorade habit. She pretty much broke my will to ever drink the stuff again – the thought makes me gag. I’ve replaced it in my “sick regimen” with the now trendy Vitamin Water, which is kind of a laughable name because a bottle of the stuff has more than 30 grams of sugar. Despite that, I feel “healthy” when I drink it and my favorite flavor is “multi-v” lemonade.

But back in the drink aisle. I was passing on the Izze (has anyone tried low cal Izze Esque?) and looking for my Vitamin Water when I stopped dead in my tracks.

I don’t know how I missed it, but POM got rid of its unfriendly glass jars for its teas in favor of plastic bottles with screw caps. I swear on a million Bibles that I have a half-written “Open Letter to the Makers of POM Wonderful Tea” post on my computer somewhere, wherein I implore them to rid the world of their clunky drink jars. You simply have no idea how many times I spilled POM on myself. Literally each time I opened a damn bottle of the stuff, I ended up with some part of me splashed in pomegranate-laden drink. (Hibiscus Light Green Tea is my favorite.) And I’d (hopefully wrongly) assumed that I was the only grown woman who couldn’t open her freaking drink at lunch. It was maddening.

I squealed a little bit and grabbed some for dinner. It literally was the highlight of an otherwise bland and Mucinex-filled week. Which clearly means it is almost time to pick myself up and get back in the race. Or buy a cat and learn to knit. (And I hate cats.)

Not giving anyone from Rolling Stone a run for their money. But CD reviewing nonetheless. June 10, 2008

Posted by charmingbutsingle in Keeping my day job, There are songs about all of them.
25 comments

I am not a music critic. By any means. Let me make that very clear.

But, I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned before that I am a long-standing Alanis Morissette fan. As such, I went out of my way to go to Starbucks to buy her new CD this morning. (I favor local shops over Starbucks. Also, there’s something special about buying the physical CD and popping it directly into my CD player, rather than downloading it from iTunes. Alanis is pretty much the only artist I do this for.)

My first reaction was that I like this album, Flavors of Entanglement, more than previous work from Alanis. I’ve always liked a gem here or there – “Eight Easy Steps” from So Called Chaos and “Flinch,” “21 Things I Want in a Lover” and “Hands Clean” from Under Rug Swept and “Unprodigal Daughter” and “Simple Together” from Feast on Scraps. Gone are the Jagged Little Pill days when I wore the CD out from overuse.

It has been well-documented that Alanis penned this album in the days after her broken engagement to Van Wilder himself, Ryan Reynolds. And so the idea has been that she’d return to the rage of “You Oughta Know,” easily one of the best anthems for the dumped in modern times. And, while she’d probably rather not have her melodrama from more than 10 years ago be the height of her career, I’m sure she recognizes that the song’s energy, rawness and lasting popularity give her the luxury of releasing the kind of albums she releases now – softer, more thoughtful at points, less likely to hit the Billboard 100. The tone and arrangement and pronouncement of her lyrics are awkwardly hers – I don’t know anyone else who uses odd terms like “accountable-less” and “focusless-ness.”

And maybe it is my foul mood or the fact that I finally just had enough and cried years worth of tears a few weeks back. But this CD? I like it … a lot.

I could see “Citizen of the Planet,” with its strong beats on my workout mix. The same goes for “Straitjacket.” Incidentally, I snorted when I heard the break up-inspired line, “I don’t know who you’re talking to with such f–cking disrespect.” Snorted. Out loud. Thankfully I was alone in the car.

And the slower, stripped down tracks, like “Not as We” and “Torch” are the gut wrenching songs of a woman in the midst of coming to terms with her ending relationship.

While I didn’t break up with my fiancé or anything crazy like that, I don’t find it tough to relate to the angst of some songs and the sadness of others. I mean, who hasn’t wanted to “declare a moratorium on things relationship”? Hell, I think I did that last week. Twice.

Perhaps the sweetest song and the one that speaks to me the most at this moment is “Incomplete,” which celebrates an idea that I should get behind – that being somewhat unfinished and still forming is where the true beauty lies. And so I’ve been listening to its calming tone all afternoon.

“I have been running so sweaty my whole life / Urgent for a finish line / And I have been missing the rapture this whole time / Of being forever incomplete.”

I’m going to stitch that on a sampler or something.

So why spend all our time in dressing our bandages / When we’ve the ultimate key to the cause right here, our underneath* June 9, 2008

Posted by charmingbutsingle in Dating, My family is sure I will never marry, Social Networking Awkwardness.
27 comments

So, let’s say that hypothetically a friend you met through Professional Networking Stuff who doesn’t know the ins and outs of your dating life asks you if you are seeing anyone.

And you respond, “No. No. No one. Not anyone. At all. Why are you asking?”

And then she proceeds to say, “Well, um, you see, one of my friends just joined Facebook and she invited her whole address book, so suddenly I’ve added many new friends from high school.”

And she continues, “And there is this one guy who I think is just great. One of those people I hold dear.”

And then she proceeds to tell you about him and ends with, “The thing about him is …” before she gets cut off by her adorable four year old who is swashbuckling around the table in cowboy boots with a fake sword at the (very much) casual outdoor patio of the restaurant where you are eating, much to the chagrin of exactly no one because all of the other diners are focused solely on a baseball game.

Topics get changed and then you’re on your way home and you realized you never get back to whatever the thing about the mystery guy is … and then you Facebook stalk him only to find no picture and a private profile.

Would you assume he was a two-headed albino half-man, half-beast creature, with a Mohawk on one head and a mullet on the other?

Or is that just me?

* Ok, fine, this post title/song lyric has even less to do with the post than normal. I’m just excited that the new Alanis CD comes out on Tuesday.

All of these lines across my face / Tell you the story of who I am June 1, 2008

Posted by charmingbutsingle in Family, Life, We Get It -- You're Stressed About Getting Old.
44 comments

The other day I was telling my Mom about how cute Best Friend Ever looked pregnant and how her Mom’s eyes just lit up every time she talked about the baby, as if she might just burst with joy right there and splash Excited Future Grandma Guts all over the twice baked potatoes she was preparing in their newly renovated kitchen for our Memorial Day steak dinner.

“Well, I bet she is excited! It is an exciting thing! I am so happy for them!” My Mom said of Best Friend Ever’s Mom as we stood in my parents’ kitchen the other night. My Mom’s tone was upbeat and I thought I detected a twinge of regret in her voice, though it is quite probable that I am projecting my feelings on her tone.

“Do you feel like Mom is disappointed that she doesn’t have grandchildren yet?” I asked my Little Brother later over lunch. “I was telling her about [Best Friend Ever] and she seemed very excited for her mom.”

“Don’t worry sis, I’ll take one for the team,” he said. “She’ll get her wedding next year and we’ll pop out a few kids and everything will be fine.”

He meant for this to reassure me. He meant to calm my fears. But this response stung and hurt my heart.

Have I become so anxious and disappointed with my terribly off-course life plan that I assume that everyone else is upset with me? Probably so. I misinterpret their jokes and teasing as being barbs thrown at me with great force.

And I know I’ve moaned and complained about this before. I simply do not care. This is, in fact, the biggest emotional issue I have to overcome in my life right now.

I’m not talking about fearing for my Spinster Status and Aching Ovaries. My issue is disappointing my family. (There, I said it.)

I’ve always been a Parent Pleaser. It’s in my nature I’m not only the Oldest Child, I’m the Oldest Daughter and the Oldest Grandchild on BOTH sides of my family. I was one of the Smart Girls in elementary school and, well, Good Enough in my high school of over achievers. I work my ever-loving tail off to have a fulfilling career. And while these things made or make me happy in some small way, they are, at times, overcompensation for worrying that I wasn’t enough of a Sweet Southern Belle Daughter for my parents. I’ve never been one of the Beautiful Girls with a soft spoken nature, shiny hair and delicate features. I’ve always felt as if I were a bit awkward, a bit too outspoken, a bit too much for some people – my family and myself included, at times.

What’s most amazing is that I really don’t think my parents mind all that much. If they were terribly disappointed in me I can’t imagine we’d spend as much time together as we do. I wouldn’t be about to head to their house for a big Sunday family dinner after I finish this thought. But I wonder if my following the traditional Southern Belle path would make their lives easier.

I honestly think me being happy and fulfilled is all they really want – husband, grandkids, picket fence or not. And I don’t say that in an “Of course they want me to be happy” way. They actually DO want me to be happy. For all of my complaints, I do have two of the most supportive parents either side of the Mississippi and I’m still sitting here alone, staring across a wide gulf, wondering how to get to the other side with all of the joy-filled, happy people.

The tough part for me, of course, is accepting that I am so afraid of allowing myself to be happy and so confused to even think of what Truly Contented, Happy Me would even look like that I’ve spent the better part of my life blaming my angst and bitterness on other people’s perceptions of what I should be while simultaneously shoving my Square Peg self into a Round Hole in which no one who really, truly knows and loves me even wants me to fit.

I just exhaled deeply writing that.

Onto Sunday Dinner.