Debbie the Diva and the (Little) Taupe Dress

It all started in the dressing room.

Have I mentioned how much I hate clothes shopping? Well, I do. It's not so much the casual shopping that I hate; it's the commando shopping. You know... the kind that you have to do for what I like to call a Loomer.

Now, I don't know how you handle the Loomers, but I generally follow a few simple steps. First, I procrastinate. Then, since procrastination does wonders for my appetite, I move into phase II: The panic diet phase. It's during the panic diet phase that I realize it's time for the commando raid to find the appropriate Loomer wear.

It's not a good mix. 

That's because procrastinated panic dieting rarely does what it's intended to do. About an hour into my commando raids, I usually decide to surrender, buy yet another black dress, and loom in the shadows. 

Can anyone relate?  (please?) 

(Yes, I realize that the phrase yet another black dress implies that I have a multitude of them. I do. They're just never the right black dress for that particular Loomer.  Plus, they don't fit. Try to keep up, people...)

So that's where I was, standing in a dressing room in middle Georgia, crying because not one of the 4,726 black dresses I had tried on that day was working for me. 

That's when the size 2 clerk who probably never had a case of Loomers in her life knocked on the door. She handed me this:

Does that look like a black dress to you?

Now, the typical Debbie thing to do here would be to take the dress and pretend to try it on. However, I might possibly have turned into a Diva in need of a Snickers at that point because what I did instead was flatly refuse. 

And I said,

 "Sorry, I can't wear that color."

And she said,

 "Who says so?"

I was about to tell her that everybody says so, but I knew in my head that it was sort of a stupid answer. I'm pretty sure that every person on the planet has not weighed in with his opinion as to wearable colors in Debbie Land.

Instead, I murmured something about being a blonde so anything beige just washes me out. 

While she agreed that I should not ever wear the color beige, she said that taupe was completely different. It's all in the shade, she said, and she began to prove it by holding every piece of beige in the store against my face to contrast it with that taupe dress. 

The next thing I knew, I was checking out. Then, she gave me directions to the best little accessory shop she knew and the name of a woman there who would be able to help me find a pop of color to go along with it. 

I was thinking red or coral or something,

 but the color maven suggested this:

Does that look like a pop of color to you?

It didn't to me either. I guess I protested too loudly, though, because before I knew it, everybody in the store really was weighing in on the wearable colors in Debbie Land.

I was still unconvinced, but since I had dubbed 2013 the year to step out of my comfort zone, I did it. I bought the single most daring outfit I have ever owned: Taupe on taupe.

And you'll never guess what happened next. 

My daring taupe outfit was a big hit. Seriously, not since the electric blue pant suit of '83 have I gotten more compliments on an article of clothing, specifically about the color.

On me.

As in, why don't you ever wear that color?

 It's wonderful on you.

What?

Then, since I never do anything in moderation, I began to buy more of that taupe-y stuff.

Taupe shoes...

Taupe sweaters...

A taupe scarf...

I even tried to taupe-stain a lace blouse with some strong coffee, but it was an epic failure. After three washes, it turned an unfortunate shade of beige, and my closet still smelled like Starbucks. 

You can't win them all, folks.

With all that taupe in the closet, it just seemed reasonable to go ahead and make it the 2014 Color of the Year. When God laid the word balance on my heart, it was a match made in Heaven. 

And there you have it: How Debbie the Diva learned to love taupe.

But now... if you have stuck with this too-long-yakabout for this long, I think you deserve a moral of the story as well.

And here it is:

Maybe you can do the thing you think you cannot do.

Maybe, just maybe, you need to do it a shade differently. 





*****
(I have no idea why that font suddenly changed. I can't fix it either. Ugh.) 

Biscuits in the Bathroom

So I've been trying to makeover my kitchen table and chairs, but I'm not making a lot of progress.  For one thing, the weather hasn't been cooperative. Like the rest of the country, springtime seems to be playing hide and seek with Dixie.

For another thing, I'm not thrilled about the table. What I'd really like is to find an old farmhouse table to makeover, something with big old farmhouse legs like the one I did for The Practical One last year.

Unfortunately, my farmhouse table money has quite literally
gone down the toilet. 

. In case you didn't notice, it's leaking...

Apparently in her travels from powder room to deck to garage and back again, Little Miss Powder Room Toilet ended up a a wee bit cracked.  I had no choice but to make yet another trip to the local home improvement store to replace her. A small matter, you say. How expensive can a toilet be?

If you're looking for a basic white toilet, not very.

Unfortunately, I'm not looking for a basic white toilet. Nooooo... I'm looking for a specific shade of off white called biscuit. 

That's because the house with the big fat '80s kitchen also came complete with 3.5 big fat '80s bathrooms, and big fat '80s bathrooms were outfitted in  biscuit, bone, almond, or whatever name the big- haired decorating diva of the day decided to call that spin of the color wheel.

 Honestly '80s people, what were we thinking? Did the words harvest gold and avocado not sound an alarm?

source

Apparently not, since my house  like many others of the era came complete with with semi-permanent fixtures which are nearly impossible to match.

I don't want to match them.

 I don't want a biscuit toilet. 

I want a simple, white toilet. Considering the toilet's job description, I don't want to spend a huge amount  of money on it, either.  I don't care about dual flushers and elongated seats with self closing lids. With no apologies to the environmentalists out there, I don't even care how much water it uses. The toilet in question is rarely used.

Unfortunately, I can't change out the toilet in that room unless I also change out the sink. Don't tell me to try it. I tried it. We bought a white toilet, but it looked stupid so we took it back. Then, I went all over town looking for a biscuit colored one with no success. Apparently, you have to special order biscuit colored toilets. You pay for that big haired '80s look, too. They cost at least a hundred dollars more than a comparable white one.

For a toilet that I would eventually want to replace anyway

 because, well, it's biscuit. 

For the price of one bathroom biscuit, I could have purchased a white one and a pedestal sink had I known I would need to. Since I didn't know, I  tiled around the existing vanity. The pedestal sink option is no longer on the table.   .

I guess I could cough up a little more money and replace the vanity top and sink, thus freeing one (half) bathroom from biscuit bondage. Of course, a new sink would  necessitate a new faucet. It would most likely destroy the  surrounding wallpaper to get the old one out as well. If I strip the wallpaper, I have to fix the sheet rock behind it. That's the reason the wallpaper was put up to begin with.  Now folks, I was planning to do all of that. I just wasn't planning to do it right now. 

Right now, I was planning to address the table and chairs.
And then, I was planning to do nothing for a while.

So last night, that's exactly what I decided to do:. Nothing... for a while.

After a good night's sleep, I made the bold decision to continue doing nothing for a while.  Since the water has been sucked out of the soggy biscuit, it's not an emergency. I am going to take a week or two to figure out what I want to do. Visitors will just have to visit the Siberian Crathroom should the need arise.

And just for good measure, I decided to yak this most recent adventure abroad and throw myself on the mercy of good advice.

So, what would you do?  

And is anyone else out there suffering from the biscuit bathroom blues?

Remember Your First Election?

OK now, admit it. 

Isn't that the cutest little poll watcher ever? 

It's The Practical One, from a twenty year old newspaper photo.

It graced the front page of the local paper. 

Do you see the line running across the middle?

That's the crease from the fold. 

And do you see the wide load hanging over said fold?

Yeah, well, that' the reason I'm filing this under stuff I should be ashamed to yak about. That's my wide load, of course, and just in case you haven't figured it out, that's Sir Boney Butt on the other side.  

My fifteen minutes of shame. 

Just thought I would share it on this election day. Aftet all, once your patriotic patootie has graced the front page of the local newspaper, you might as well put it on the world wide web.

(Old pictures from a 2010 post) 

Have I mentioned how much I love election day? Well, I do. I've loved it ever since I was a little girl. I honestly can't remember a time when my family didn't make a big old deal about it. Dad and the Duchess always had a horse in the race. They had their yard signs and bumper stickers, and the Duchess would volunteer in the local campaign headquarters.

On election night, we had a family party. They would let us stay up later than usual to watch the results, even though back then you usually didn't know a thing until morning.

Once the results were in, they taught us how to be

 humble winners or gracious losers. 

My first presidential election was in 1980. Since I was away at school, I had to vote by absentee ballot.  I was a little bummed about that, but back then it was absentee or nothing.

My how times have changed.

Now, most states have election month instead of election day. I'm still not sure how I feel about that, but I go with the flow.

As for us? We still wait to vote until that magic Tuesday in November. Tonight, we'll stay up late and watch the results in our pajamas, just like we did as kids.  

And just like then, we probably won't know a thing until morning anyway, probably longer. All signs point to this being a close one, after all. Those race horses are neck and neck. Someone is going to win by a nose.

That being the case, I hope you all get your own patriotic patooties down to the polls and cast your vote.

 Just one word of caution, though...

Beware of hidden cameras.  

So what about you?  

What do you remember about election day growing up?

Do you remember your first Presidential election?

Inquiring minds want to know. 

A Strip Tease

It's hot here people.

I know... I know...

 It's summertime. 

It has always been this hot. 

Maybe so, but I haven't always been 50. 

It seems to be worse this year than ever. 

I'm thinking of moving to Siberia and becoming a stripper

 until this raging hormone thing is over. 

Since that's probably not a reasonable option,

 I have come up with a different plan instead. 

If you need me, I'll be in Siberia.  

Lovely, isn't it? 

Siberia is a rarely used bathroom in the most remote corner of the house.  Outside of family, no one even knows Siberia exists. That's because I keep the door closed so as to employ the ostrich method of decorating.

What you can't see can't hurt you.

The shower in this room has never been used. We have plenty of others around here. The commode is rarely used either,  and this lovely '80s vanity area? It  has been used for the past decade to store my attempt at an emergency food bank.

In fact, Siberia has become the vast wasteland of the home place, hiding all manner of my schtuff.


Teaching supplies in the shower;
teaching career in the toilet. 

Now folks, please don't think that I'm the one who gave this room a case of the blues. I didn't, at least not intentionally.   If you have read my Big Fat 80s Kitchen story, you might recall that we purchased this house for its size and location, even though it was covered top to bottom with '80s wallpaper. 

Blue and peach '80s wallpaper. 

Really, that was the color scheme of the entire house. 

You'll might also recall that I had done my stripping act all over this joint until I developed a severe case of sheetrockaphobia whilst stripping in the guest bathroom. (Which is not this bathroom.) 

 Sheetrockophobia: The unnatural fear that ugly '80s wallpaper

 has been superglued to bare sheet rock 

and will bring said sheet rock down with it upon removal. 

At that point, I threw up my hands, shut the door, and started pretending that the wallpaper didn't exist. The blue shower liner and towels were remnants of our first home so I just stuck them in there with the rest of the blues. In for a penny; in for a pound. 

But here's the thing:

Not only is this room the most remote corner of the house, it's also the coldest one. That's because it's the first one on the line of our monster air conditioning unit. When the door is closed, which it generally is, the room becomes a freezer. 

Are you following me here?

And so, with a little long distance encouragement from a very practical daughter, I have decided to spend the  rest of No Buy July as a Siberian Stripper.  

Which  is an upgrade from my usual role as Siberian husky. 


 And the best part about it? Stripping wallpaper didn't cost a dime.  In fact, repainting it didn't cost a dime either. I had a nearly full gallon of the yellow from my kitchen just waiting for a home.  

So here's the strip...

And here's the tease...
(The blue curtain will go. I'm just hiding something behind it.)

That's as far as I've gotten, but I have more plans for Siberia by the end of the month.
You see, I'm changing it from a Siberian wasteland
into something much more useful.

And I'm determined to do the entire thing without spending a dime.

Want to guess what it's going to be? 

By the way, just one bit of advice as I close this:
If you're searching google images for a picture to illustrate a blog post,
it's best not to type in the words
STRIP TEASE.

Don't ask me how I know...

A Horrible Warning!

They say when you have a little case of blogger's block, you should just power through it. Since I have a severe case of  blockage right now, that's what I'm about to do.

You see, I've found it difficult to be creative for about a week or so because I've been in a big pout. 

If you want to know what caused the big pout, I'll tell you. If you don't want to know, I'm going to tell you anyway.  Someone else out there might need the horrible warning.  

Listen up, folks. I was hacked. 

It wasn't my blog account or my email account.

 It was my bank account. 

I didn't even realize I had been hacked until the drunken sailor who obtained access to my account had gone on a little shopping spree and whittled my balance down to the bare bones.

I discovered it when I stopped at one of these things.

source

Now, I used to use the ATM all the time, but these days, I rarely use it. I don't really need cash;  I have a debit card. I love my debit card and have named her Debi. 

Debi  has made my life so much easier.  No longer do I have to stop, write a check, and show ID  for my large purchases. I just whip out Debi, and she does all the work. No longer do I have to consider whether a small purchase is worth the wasting of a check. Debi doesn't play favorites. Debi thinks the small charges are just as worthy as the large ones. No longer do I have to keep cash on hand for Dollar Trees and fast food joints.  Debi is welcome there too.

So much easier. 

In fact, the only place in town where Debi isn't welcome, is our local Habitat ReStore.  That's where I was headed the day I stopped at the ATM. I was out to do some thrifting, and I needed  wanted twenty bucks.  So...

I pulled in, punched in the magic numbers, got my twenty bucks and the receipt to go along with it. As I was pulling away, I glanced down at that receipt, and nearly had a stroke.  I was so upset that I pulled Ebenezer into a parking place to look again. 

The "available balance" bore no resemblance to the amount that I was supposed to have in there. What?

I did what any rational 50 year old housewife would do in said circumstance; I called the husband and hyperventilated. Since he could do absolutely nothing from his cell phone on the interstate outside of Atlanta, he told me to go home, get online, and see where the purchases had been made. That's what I did. 

Now, I've heard about these hackers before. Generally, they clean you out in a matter of days, one maximum purchase after the other. My little pirate was craftier than that. Mine seemed to have gained access to the account at the beginning of the month and whittled me down, one small purchase at a time. 

Hobby Lobby....
TJ Maxx...
The Dollar Tree...
The Dollar Tree...
The Dollar Tree...

Yep.  There it was, the cold hard fact staring me in the face. I had met the enemy, and he is a she.  She goes by the name of... Debi. 

You see, all that inconvenient check writing back in the day also encouraged inconvenient check recording. And all those purchases too small to be worth a check? Well, they were generally resisted. And that cash that I had to keep on hand? It actually ran out.  

But not Debi. She spends and forgets to record her purchases, and she nickles and dimes her way into the poor house,  one Dollar Tree noodle at a time. 

So I called the husband back, and I made a full confession.  I told him I was putting myself on austerity measures until my checking account is back where it was supposed to be and Debi learns her lesson.

It's been almost two weeks since the Great Hacking Discovery of 2012. I'm managing fine on the meager allowance I've assigned myself.  I drove by Hobby Lobby and The Dollar Tree the other day and noted that they have managed to stay open without me. Good thing. I would hate to be responsible for another great American recession. 

I'm filing this one in the Stuff I Should Be Ashamed to Yak About category and throwing myself on the mercy of good counsel.

Are you a debit card person or a cash person?  How do you manage the debit card? Do you record each purchase immediately or do a nightly check of all purchases?

And does anyone want to buy 4,728 slightly used pool noodles?

All Hands On Deck

I should be ashamed to share this yakabout today. I should be ashamed to show the picture, too, but I'm doing it anyway.

I guess I'm just altruistic. 

I'm willing to sacrifice my dignity to tell you about something that really works like a charm.

It's not Monistat Chafing Gel for the face this time. I've already yakked about that.. I've even copped to slathering a little Preparation H on there, too, because apparently,  I have no pride.

Today's tip is about a weathered barn face of another sort. It's the weathered floor of our back deck.

Ready?

If you're wondering how in the world it got that bad, I will remind you that this little deck of mine is located smack dab in the middle of the Piney Stick Forest.  Even if it's cleaned every year, it still gets overtaken by the creeping crud. 

And it wasn't cleaned last year...

2011, as you might recall, was the year of The Pigeon-Toed Duck Waddle.  We hardly even stepped foot on the back deck, let alone clean it.  You pretty much avoid decks and other such torture chambers during a depressing south Georgia drought.

I realize that it looks as if it wasn't cleaned the year before that either, but I distinctly remember doing so.

Actually, I distinctly remember the husband doing so. Deck duty generally falls in his jurisdiction, just like lawn duty.  Lately, however, the Man of the House has been working really hard. He barely has enough time to tackle his front lawn and other house maintenance in the one day a week he usually has to do it.

He's a travelin' man, ya know. Plus, the slave labor we procreated isn't living at home anymore.

And so, I decided to embark on what I've called The Great Back Yard Surprise. I decided to divide the entire back of the house into manageable sections and conquer one section a week. Every Friday for the past month, he has come home to a different backyard surprise.  Last week, I surprised him by cleaning the back deck.

Remember all that new exercise equipment I said I'd yak about?

Well, here's a piece of it.

Just call me the Karate Kid. 

source

Usually, we use Thompson's Deck Wash for the spring deck cleaning, but when I got ready to clean, I really didn't feel like going to the store to get some. Instead, I tried this stuff.

I love OxiClean. They really should pay me to blog about it because I use it just about everywhere.  We had never tried it on the deck, though.

I made up a strong solution with some hot water (About 2 scoops per pail) and just dumped it on a portion of the deck to see how it worked.

Then, I got distracted.

Don't ask me what distracted me. I don't remember.  I just remember that when I finally made it back to the deck about a half hour later, I noticed that the OxiClean had been hard at work eating away at the creeping crud.  I gave it some stiff bristle action, rinsed it off, and just look at the difference.

That's when I decided to blog about it.

I could hardly believe it myself.  Commercial deck wash does not work that well.  

A work in progress.

  And finally, all cleaned and ready to reseal.  

I trimmed that hedge behind it too. 

Unfortunately, it looks a little bit like the bangs I used to trim on the daughters.

Whoops.  

He gave me two thumbs up for trying, though.

  What's more, he didn't even flinch when I told him 

that I thought we should embark on a 

 Great Deck Makeover Adventure. 

He just said,

 "Why don't you surprise me, Deb-or-ah..."

And that's exactly what I think I'll do. 

Because I'm strong.

I am invincible.

I am Deck Woman.

The Frocky Horror Picture Show

So now that the fat cat's out of the bag,

 I have some yakking to do.

I kind of want to yak about that picture, you know the one... the one of the repentant drama queen in the blue frock. The one that had me so horrified that I actually considered closing down the blog rather than put it on here.

Seriously.

So why was I so horrified? I mean, I'm not a vampire or anything. We do have mirrors in our house, and I've actually seen my reflection a time or two. How could I be so ignorant?

Because I don't like to step on one of these.

source

It's true. Decades ago, I heard someone, probably Oprah, yakking all about breaking free from the tyranny of the scale... how we shouldn't be slaves to some silly old number...   how it's all about how your clothes fit... how you feel about yourself...  The scale? Well, that's just an archaic invention of man to terrorize woman.

I'm pretty sure she followed it with a segment on buying clothes to flatter your frame.  

Therefore, that's exactly what I do.  I buy clothes to flatter my frame, and I judge how bad the weight gain is by how well those clothes fit.

But there's a catch.  Clothes can stretch.
And s-t-r-e-t-c-h.

The cheaper they are, the better they stretch, and when you are a perpetual dieter and a cheapskate to boot, you generally buy the cheaper ones. I buy Kim Rogers slacks from my local Belk store. For $29.99, Kim will flatter my frame. Even better, she will stretch to accommodate future growth.

Kim is very gracious that way.

And so they stretch quite well over my rumpus. When they stop stretching? Well, that's due to dryer shrinkage of course. The fact that I line dry my Kims is irrelevant. If they shrink, they shrink. Who am I to argue?  And anyway, any pants that can't endure a little heat now and then must not have been very good to begin with. They need to be replaced.

And that's when I have the crisis.

Aside from an unfortunate Kodak incident, most of my meltdown moments happen in the dressing room. New clothes, you see, are not gracious at all. They are mockers. You reach for the size that you're supposed to be wearing, and they magically shrivel, right before your very eyes.

I don't know what you do when this happens, but I generally console myself with a smoothie. Then, after a salad supper, I wake up the next morning, strip down to the birthday suit, close one eye, and step on the scale.

And then, I turn into Jane Fonda (minus all that communist stuff).

Wouldn't it be easier, and certainly healthier,  just to gut up to it and step on that scale on a regular basis? Oh sure, the news won't always be pleasant, but it will always be true. 

The scale doesn't lie. It doesn't give empty flattery or grant absolution when none is warranted. Its numbers are never out of style. 130 is 130 yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

(True, it's a lot more yesterday than today, but I'm believing for tomorrow.)

But here's the thing.

This post isn't actually about the weight problem at all.

I just lured you in for the sermon. I'm sneaky like that.

It's about a delusion of another sort, and one that is so much more important than the Michelin around our middles.  It's the delusion of the spirit. 

You see, God has a scale too. He has, as he says in Amos, a plumb line, and it's His Word.

The Word of God is the only true measure of our spiritual fitness, and we don't need some Oprahfied spirituality to tell us any differently.

Don't be a slave to the tyranny of the Word, they will say.

Oh, they won't phrase it exactly like that, but that's exactly what they mean.

That's what they mean when they give you any alternate measure. That's what they mean when they tell you to weigh yourself in the balance of feelings, that the Word of God is just an archaic invention of man.

And the people eat it right up. They have since the beginning.  There are folks out there who try on church after church and faith after faith just to find the one that best flatters their frame. 

They have no intention of changing said frame. It's their frame, after all.  It's who they are and who they want to be, right down to the very bone.

I'll give you this one for free:  Anyone who tells you to step away from God's Scale and flatter your frame doesn't really love you. They're the fat friend who wants you to be fat too. Misery, as they say,  loves company.

God isn't in the business of flattering our frames and stretching elastic truth over our ever-expanding flesh. He's in the business of transforming us into His image. He whittles away our flesh, inch by inch and pound by  pound until we are his very likeness. Isn't that infinitely more beautiful?

Yeah, I think so too.

So go ahead. Step on God's scale. Oh sure, the news won't always be pleasant, but it will always be true.

As for me, I'll be back to yak all about that other exercise equipment later in the week. Right now, I have some celery sticks to gnaw and sit ups to do.

When The Fat Lady Sings

So I'm a bit late in updating on the Misadventure of the Drama Queen. There's a reason for that, too. It's just not a good one. I'm blaming all those Nosey Nellies who requested photograhic evidence. You know who you are...  It's not all that easy to make a spectacle of oneself while juggling a shiny red Kodak, you know. I had to trust others to share photos with me. Unfortunately, there was a bit of a problem.

Some fat lady kept showing up in all the pictures.
What's worse? She was wearing an exact replica of my historical costume.
How rude.

Of course, according to Miss Kathy at The Writer's Reverie, I wasn't wearing historical costume. No... what I was wearing,  according to the experts, is period attire. 

I stand corrected and bear witness to the truth of it.  I was, indeed, wearing a tire.  

Sighing...

Since I didn't have one of those whale bone corset thingies, I headed out to find something to camouflage the aforementioned road wear.

And behold...

A miracle

So I looked over my left shoulder...
And then I looked over my right shoulder...
And then I sort of skulked into the dressing room to try it on...

And do you know what happened?
Not a thing.

Apparently, I not only suffer from growing girth syndrome, I suffer from a lack of belief as well.  

He could perform no miracle that day... 

I personally think they should be charged with false advertising and renamed Pants on Fire. For one thing,  it took way more than 10 seconds to get all that extra firm control fastened around my Michelin.  For another, it didn't work any better than a trusty pair of control top pantyhose. I was looking for something to flatten the tire. There's nothing whatsoever miraculous about transforming it into a steel belted radial one.

And then there was the whole breathing thing. It's kind of hard to speak without it, and this was not historical mime.

Therefore, I opted out of the $44.00 miracle and decided to try the control tops instead.  I was looking for something like this:

google image

I thought it might suck in the area where my cheekbones used to be and reinvent the jaw line.   Unfortunately, no one even pretends to have created control tops like that. We clearly need more math and science in the public schools...

In the end, I just appeared in all my puffed out, faded glory.  It wasn't supposed to be about me anyway. It was about my hometown and the tour they were giving some visiting folks from across the state of Georgia.  So I sucked it up as best I could and did  my part.

 I actually can't remember a thing about it since I tend to suffer from Post Dramatic Stress Amnesia. They say that it went well. In my head, I looked like this:

But in reality...

I'm not exactly sure what dramatic moment is being captured there with the hand on the bosom and the pitiful face... 

So anyway, that's my tale for today, and as usual I tried to share it with some levity. If you've read here long, you probably know that laughter is my default mechanism.

But in truth, it's no laughing matter. In truth, I was horrified at the stranger in the photo. I mean, the tire I knew about, but who is the old woman with the fat face?  I almost wrote my Sunday post about it, in fact.    

Instead, I got off my blogger butt and tried out some new exercise equipment. It didn't cost me a dime either, but that will have to be a post for another day.

Misadventure of a Repentant Drama Queen

Why oh why oh why did I do it again?

I let this motor mouth of mine override whatever common sense I have.

I'll be busy for the next few days because of a promise I made, and I have no one to blame for it but my own self.

You see, about a month ago, someone from my hometown called and asked me do a little favor. What I thought she wanted me to do was give a tour of my favorite historical home and tell the story of the Curse of Lorenzo Dow.   

I yakked all about that HERE.

That's what I thought she was asking...

And so I said yes. She didn't even have to talk me into it. For one thing, I'm kind of remedial with that whole "just say no" thing. For another, it's a pretty easy fit for me, and it sounded fun. I love the story; I love the house, and apparently I love the sound of my own voice yakking about it.

Vanity thy name is Debbie.

And then, the other shoe dropped. It wasn't a tour, you see. It's more of a performance.  It wasn't to be done safely sequestered behind the walls of the old house, either.  Oh noooo... I will be making a fool of myself smack dab in the middle of town.

Right in front of God and everybody...

In historical costume no less...
Just not enough costume so as to render me incognito.

The Farm Sister has been making said costume since she's a better seamstress. Plus, she laughed at me and is trying to get back in my good graces. I told her she didn't have to make a bustle or hoop since I have those things built right in. I'm convenient like that.

Does anyone know if they still make those whale bone corsets?

Pull, Sister, Pull!

So anyway, if you don't see my flower cart until later in the week, just know that I'm very busy and very stressed out. Not only do I have to finish writing my dramatic little monologue, but I also have to memorize it.

And practice it.

And lose 50 pounds, one of my chins,  and the built- in bustle.

And of course, fit in time to highlight my hair. 'Cause you know how those historical women loved their  blond highlights... 

Good grief.

Can anyone relate? 

Has your vanity ever gotten in the way your common sense?

Giving Procrastination the Flush

Angel over at Finding the Inspiring has invited folks to follow her on Fridays and share something that inspired us in Blog Land. Now, I'm pretty sure what inspired me wasn't exactly what she had in mind, but I'm sharing it anyway.  

I was inspired by an unclogged toilet.  

OK, technically, I was inspired by a post at Janette's Sage where she rolled up her sleeves and tackled a really dirty project, that of unclogging a toilet in her boys’ bathroom. I think she’s pretty brave. I don’t even like to venture into a boy bathroom, let alone reach into a toilet when I get there.   


Janette is Super Woman, though, and when I say she tackled it, I’m not talking Liquid Plumber. I’m talking tackled like a linebacker.

  

In her classic Janette style, she wrapped it all up with a life lesson, though, and even ended with a pep talk. 

"Lesson learned....don't make a mountain out of a mole hill...stare it straight in the face and pull that hill down fast."


Janette's post not only inspired me spiritually, it inspired me domestically.  I figured if Janette could stare down Toilet Mountain, I could certainly claim dominion over a mole hill of my own. Mine wasn’t a toilet, but it was an appliance clog of a different sort.  It was the clogged arteries in the Big Black Thunk.

Musta been da debil…

I have no idea how the Big Black Thunk got so disgusting. I’m blaming hormones. A vintage woman gets to blame hormones for everything, and I’m pretty sure it was hormones that made me adopt the schmoosing method of refrigerator management.

So yesterday morning, I pulled everything out to divide and conquer. Then, I pulled out all the shelves. 

I was pretty excited about that part. We only recently purchased this model, you see. Our old one, Lazarus, was born way back in the last century when shelves were less removable.  I removed them all. Then, I removed the glass from each one, and then I lugged them outside to introduce them to Mr. Power Nozzle.

It’s been in the 70s this week…

Without the shelves, it wiped down really easily.

Then,  I emptied chunks of Whatzit into the trash bag and piled the sink with fuzzy containers.  I sorted through the rest of it and made a shopping list, all while dreaming up this post in my head.  


That's when it all went south...

This post was supposed to end with the big Ta Da picture. You know...where I show all my nifty keen ideas for organizing the fridge and facing down the Shmoosh Monster.

However...  when I got ready to replace said shelves, I could not for the life of me get them back in place. It seemed so simple, shelf… notch...notch… shelf, but try as I might, it just wouldn't click. 
Literally.


I finally threw up my hands and called uncle.
    

And so... at the time of this posting, I have no Ta Da picture. All I have are a piles of perishables shmoosed into the outside refrigerator and two bags of stinky whatzit waiting by the kitchen door. 


So there that’s where we sit, folks. No big  finish, just a welcome home honey do for the traveling man.

He'll have to fix the shelves before he reassembles
 the mirror  I took apart to paint earlier in the week. 

That's what he gets for marrying a left- handed blonde...

 Regardless, I still think Janette's lesson from the toilet was pretty inspiring. I'm just grateful she didn't inspire me to take apart my toilet as well. 'Cause, well... you know... 

How about you? 

What inspired you this week? 


Sharing this with Angel at Finding the Inspiring