High-Low, Suburban Style

grocery-store equivalent of mixing Burberry and The Gap:



Mimmolette Cheese - France


kiddie quarter-barrel of Sunny-D


organic wheatberries


4-pack ("fwack") of toilet bowl cleaner

Not Fixed Yet

Oh Mrs. O...

Put down the tweezers!

Get those brows back down on your brow BONE, girl!


http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/usa/features/article_1457417.php/In_photos_President_Obama_and_First_Lady_Read_to_School_Children

Inheriting The Wackness

The remember-this-for-the-blog-note was written on the back of a "shoe-a-day" mini calendar page (February 2nd, purple pump that even a drag queen wouldn't wear) that is 2 x 2.5 inches.

This is one of the quirks that I inherited from my mom.

It's the why-use-a-pristine-piece-of-paper-when-there-is-some-sort-of-reusable-piece-of-paper-around-here....quirk.

She was green before Al Gore and Bono told us to be green.

She types her notes that accompany magazine/newspaper clippings and comics for the kids on random pieces of paper. The bottom third of a nice piece of paper that someone sent her a letter on. A note pad page from a hotel in Italy or a page-a-day calendar depicting places in Italy that she's been to, with a written or typed note, on the back, indicating the significance of the place on that calendar page.

Grocery lists are written on backs of envelopes and junk mail fliers with enough white space.

I do the same thing.

I wonder if The Boy or The Grrl will inherit this wackness?

I was reminded of another childhood quirk when The Grrl and I played Monopoly last night. When I was her age, I hoarded the money that was distributed at the beginning of the game. I wouldn't buy a property until other people bought up quite a few. I was afraid I would run out of cash. The Grrl bought every property that she landed on until she was down to about $120.

I bought property on every roll until I got to the green ones. The ones before Park Place and the other hoity-toity address. She still had 2x what I had, but I had 3 utilities and made some nice $ when she landed on one.

Maybe she'll get the paper quirk, because she clearly didn't get the Monopoly chicken-shit quirk.

Best Take On The Inauguration

I love Maira Kalman. And she's back with her occasional works for the New York Times, here:
http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/the-inauguration-at-last/

In one of the frames, she illustrates the Lincoln Bible that Obama used for his swearing-in and references a woman near her who asks, "Why on the Bible? Why not on the Constitution?"

Maira says that it's a very good question.

The Boy posed the same question - well, the first half of it.

Now I have the answer.

One of the first books we bought for him after he was born was "Stay Up Late", which illustrates the Talking Heads song of the same name.

I like the re-connection of him to her.

What We're Leaving For Them

I come from a family of letter writers - mainly on my mom's side.

Even though my mom's first reaction to bloggers (based on the snippets I emailed her - she has limited web access) was that they were being self-absorbed, it occurred to me that blogs may, if they are archived/preserved through the future iterations of technology, be the primary documents that historians will examine to learn about these generations.

I went to college (1980) an hour away from my parents and we wrote letters to each other - phoning was used only in an emergency. My mom saved the letters and postcards that I wrote to them in college, and the letters and postcards from high school and college trips to Europe. She has given them back to me and I'm saving them for my kids and their kids.

I have the letters from my first serious boyfriend and from my second serious boyfriend (that would be "Mr. Savage"). They will be shared with The Boy and The Grrl when they start asking more questions about "the olden days" as they call them.

Eventually the archive will be implanted in the body - some sort of microchip with everything you need to know.

It's the iMe.

In the beginning, there were the eyebrows

My friend said I should start a blog.

I marinated on it.

My mom, when learning about what blogs were, wondered how people can be so self-centered to blather on about their lives. I decided that someone needed to write about her eyebrows.

Mrs. O's eyebrows. The ones straight out of a caricature on the walls of Sardi's and made me think of Snidley Whiplash's moustache.

But I've read that Mrs. O's Chicago-based make-up artist liked the high, fly-ball to the left field brows, but people had been talking....so they needed to come down a bit and she was working on that. Based on I-Day pictures, they are starting a downward trend...maybe.

I found this site today:
http://www.mrs-o.org/
It follows what and who Mrs. O is wearing. It might be fun.