Mom Jeans, Black Socks, and Other Things You Don’t Want in Your Closet

“It’s happened,” my husband Chris tells me solemnly one afternoon as we’re standing in the kitchen packing for a picnic.

 

“What’s happened?”

 

He glances at me sheepishly. Pushes the picnic basket aside and hoists his tennis shoe up onto the countertop, slowly pulling up his pant leg to reveal his ankle like some sort of Victorian bride.

 

My eyes widen. “Black socks?”

 

He nods. “The only thing left would be the sandals,” he says sadly, putting his leg back down.

 

“But why?” is all I can think to ask.

 

He shrugs, putting a few napkins into the picnic basket. “They’re actually quite comfortable.”

 

My husband and I had been worrying about this day. We made a pact, when we were about 25, that we were not going to do “old people” things. We were always going to dress cool, talk cool, be cool. We were not going to wear elastic-waist jeans or colored socks. We were going to be hip. Forever.

 

Our plan began slipping, of course, only a few years later, when we began approaching our 30s. Continue reading

The Power of Visualization

san-francisco2I have a lot of other posts lined up, but I thought I’d revist this topic briefly, since it was a good discussion over the weekend. …

 

On this topic of lists – and whether or not it’s important to have one for the man of our dreams – I have to say, you all are convincing me of an alternative viewpoint.

 

I’d always thought it was a terrible idea – and I’d always thought it was a fluke, or a freakishly astonishing coincidence, that I’d married a man who met the requirements of my original “list” (as childish as it was). But I’m starting to see your point of visualization.

I do believe in visualization. Urban-fantasy writer Jordon Summers blogged about this the other week, when she was talking about her ability to simply make things happen the way she expected them to go. And I was sort of talking about this the other day, when I spoke about knowing what you really want, and why aren’t you simply making that happen? My former coworker Jen K. and I talked about this, too: how she finds it half-frightening, half-liberating, that – once she sets her mind to something – she simply makes it materialize. She gave a lot of examples, but – right before my eyes – I heard her say one day that she’d really like to live in San Francisco. Continue reading

The Man of My Dreams

heartSo here’s a weird thing. When I was a kid, I wrote this little journal entry describing the “man of dreams.” (Well, actually, I wrote the “boy of my dreams” because I was only 13.) Here were my basic requirements: I wanted him to have black hair. (I specified “curly.”) I wanted him to drive a jeep. (I was sort of into the “outdoorsy” types.) I wanted him to have a dog. And I wanted him to play the guitar. Those were my big requirements. (I know, I know – where’s honesty? where’s intelligence? where’s sense of humor? blah, blah, blah. I know. I was only 13. …)

 

So anyway, I met Chris (my now husband) in high school, about three boyfriends in. The first three boyfriends didn’t fit these requirements at all. But, actually, neither did Chris. He did have black hair, but it was straight as wheat. He didn’t play guitar. And he wasn’t old enough to own his own dog, let alone buy his own jeep. But I liked him anyway. And gradually, eventually, we fell in love. …

 

But here’s the weird thing: Chris’ hair GOT curly. It started right after our senior year, and, by the time we were in our early 20s, he had a mass of black curls on his head. Continue reading

The Cake Wrecks Blog: When Pastry Goes Wrong

I like to start my day with a little humor. Especially when it doesn’t involve me. (Pre-8 a.m. “humor” involved in running out of ham for lunches and having to resort to fried eggs, for instance, doesn’t count.)

Anyway, if you like to start your day with humor also, you might want to add this little gem to your RSS reader: It’s a blog called “Cake Wrecks” (“When Professional Cakes Go Horribly, Hilariously Wrong”).

The famous Wal-Mart “under neat that” cake started it all, and – since then – the blog writer, Jen, has had so many cake wrecks e-mailed to her that she’s able to post one or more daily. Her writing is really the funny part, though: Her commentary on what must have been going through the cake-decorator’s head, or what the recipient must have thought when she first saw the cake, is hilarious and spot-on.

My personal fave is the “flash-drive” cake (in the entry entitled “The Problem with Phone Orders. …”). The post starts out with the conversation that Jen imagines must have taken place to get the cake ordered. (“I need to order a cake for my boss. We have a photo of him playing golf that we’d like to put on it, though – can you do that?” “Of course! Just bring the photo in on a USB drive and we’ll print it out here. …”) (You can probably see where this is going. … Definitely visit the site and see the unfortunate result.)

The big reader favorite (and I must chime in with agreement) is the “naked mohawk-baby carrot jockeys” cake, which you simply have to see to believe. Must’ve been the last cake left, a sad little carrot cake that needed to be converted to a baby-shower cake at the last possible second, and all that were left for decorations were these little … plastic … naked … babies … with … mohawks? … hmmm … well, why not?

Jen writes hilarious commentary on cupcake “cakes” gone wrong, badly placed flowers on a cake offering congrats for a vasectomy, greetings to “Aunt Slash Mom,” a “sexual harassment” cake that looks like something Michael Scott would have brought in, and many, many more.

The site won best food blog (which is kind of scary) but also best humor blog, which is ideal, because that’s where Jen really shines. She’s up for some awards for this year, too.

And now Jen has a great new coffee-table book! The book is a collection of some the best of the best. The link to the book on Amazon is here. (I think I have to get it for my mom, who doesn’t read blogs, but would LOVE to see these entries in book format. …).

If you’re short on time, just go through some of the “Fan Favorites” in the right sidebar. Then add this to your RSS feed. It’ll give you a good laugh every day.

How about you? Have you ever ordered a cake that turned out to be disasterous? Or tried to make one with less-than-stellar results?

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