Fashion Trends

Somehow or other I got started thinking about fashion trends I remember from my (K-12) school days, and I started jotting a list of them, just for the fun of it.  (I may have done something like this before, but I can't remember for certain...)

There's no real reason for listing them here, now, except that the thought occurred to me.

• t-shirt buckles-- We'd gather up the loose fabric on our long t-shirts and feed it through one of these plastic buckles, which were worn off to one side or the other.  
• acid-wash jeans
• slap bracelets-- Which were banned at some point...
• French-braided hair-- Not that it's completely out of the question, now, but I think it used to be more common...
• crimped hair-- I think we even had a crimping iron, but it hardly ever got used.  Probably not the best thing for the health of your hair, anyway. . .
• banana hair clips-- I seem to remember these things either hurting to wear or falling out.  Not practical for elementary-school-age girls with fine hair, I guess. 
• clip-on hair bows of all kinds-- At one point, we had a whole basketful of these.  Most were ribbons of various kinds and colors, but some were more bizarre-- like the ones made of a bunch of uninflated balloons. (Sounds crazy, doesn't it?  What were people thinking?)
• tie-dye tees-- But they've been in style since the 60's, I guess. . . more so sometimes than others, I guess.
• neon / day-glo colors-- particularly neon green and hot pink. . .
• high tops-- Tennis shoes / sneakers with a built-in cuff that went up over the ankle.  Oh, and there were all kinds of fancy neon shoelaces to go with them. . .
• Guess brand jeans-- Never had a pair, but they were definitely "cool" for a while.
• denim jackets-- Another thing that was temporarily so cool.
• "pop beads"-- Plastic beads made so that they could be "popped" together, taken apart, and popped back in different sequences.  Mostly they were just colorful round beads, but later they came out with hearts and all kinds of different shapes.  
• plastic chains and charms-- I think I had a whole necklace of these, for a while.  I'd love to look at that thing again.  I remember one charm was a bicycle, but I have no idea what all was on it. . .
• "jellies"-- Plastic/rubber shoes, many of them translucent with glitter inside.  They seem like torture devices, now, but I think some of them were actually fairly comfortable.  (Others, though, were torturous-- sweaty and sharp-edged.)
• jams-- I think these were mostly a boys' trend-- long shorts in bold fabrics.  
• pony tail worn on one side of the head
• Hypercolor shirts-- Changed color depending on the temperature of whatever touched them.  So, for instance, you could leave a temporary hand print on someone's back.  Kind of pointless, really, but kids were of course impressed.
• poodle perms-- I've never had a perm, but every so often in elementary school, a girl would come to school with startlingly different hair.  
• rat tails-- Ugh.  Why did mothers ever allow their sons to have those hideous things?  Not a good look.
• huge glasses frames-- When I see photos of my first pair of glasses, especially, I cringe.  The frames were huge-- even  more so on my small, young face. (I was in 5th grade, I think.)  But apparently that was an acceptable look back then. . . How long until we look back at our current smaller frames and die of shame over them? ;o) 
• huge / baggy / oversize sweatshirts & sweaters-- Some of my absolute favorite shirts, at certain times in life, were very baggy.  I remember two or three in particular.  One sweatshirt's bottom edge probably came down within four or five inches of my knees, and I thought it was perfect.  (Ok, yes, I still like baggy shirts, every now and then.  Maybe I secretly even want them to become fashionable again.)
• slim fit jeans-- For a while, I was obsessed with my jeans being "skinny" enough.  If there was hardly any spare, loose fabric in the jeans, I thought they would make me look fat, and if the cuff of the leg wasn't so small that it was a little of a struggle to get my foot through it, it was too loose.  I'm sure that if that me (whatever age I was... 14 or so?) saw me now, glorying in my comfy boot-cut jeans, she'd have been mortified.  (g)  (Tough luck, kid.)
• "grunge" fashion-- Flannel, plaid, etc.
• leather lace-up shoes

And then there was that style for which I don't know the name.  Fabric printed with jewelry-- chains, gems, pearls-- on animal print or jewel-tone colors.  Leather purses with the straps fed through gold chains. . .  I'm having a hard time finding an example of the fabric I mean, online, but I know it has to be out there somewhere. . .

Well, anyway, that's enough of that. 
Did I miss anything important?

How much can $7.63 buy?

When you luck up and find a "4 for $1" sale, it buys 28 brand new pieces of clothing:

Not bad, huh?

This & That

The other day, I pulled out the scrapbooking stuff for the first time since August (I think). There were a handful of pages with everything in place but the captions, which I'd left off until I could make sure I got the locations right. (These were pages of photos from our trip to Norway, which was extremely unstructured-- the type of trip where we didn't know much about what we were looking at, sometimes. It was so beautiful that we didn't really need to know anything to appreciate it, but now, I'd like to put names to some of those unidentified places. It took me a while to pinpoint a few of them, but that just made it more exciting when I finally did.)

I'm almost ready to start on completely fresh pages, now that I really ought to be focusing my energy on my Christmas list. (Such as, you know, making one. I'm not that great at figuring out what people might want or need-- always second-guessing myself. . .)

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Speaking of Christmas, a couple of local radio stations have been playing holiday music 24-7 since before Thanksgiving. Now that it's finally the Right Time for Christmas music, I decided to tune in while scrapbooking.

The first little bit was nice and cozy. Maybe they weren't all my favorite songs, but it was pleasant to have a random mix of songs that I myself hadn't carefully chosen. Even with the mp3 player on "random", I know exactly what's in the pool to begin with-- so it's not quite the same experience as listening to the radio.

However, as time went on, I began to see a pattern-- one which became more obvious when I listened to the radio again, another day or two. Apparently these radio stations have a very limited number of Christmas songs available. Either that, or they only really like about 30 songs, because they play the same ones over and over and over again. (I seem to recall this from previous years, as well. . .)

This constant repetition of songs gets old in a hurry. Yes, there are only so many Christmas/holiday melodies to begin with, but there are plenty of different versions of them available!

Pointless complaint, but oh well. There it is, anyway.

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Remember how I was complaining about how none of the pants that used to fit me fit this year? Well, part of that mystery's been solved.

While dressing yesterday morning, I thought I remembered, somewhere in the back of my dimming, nearly-thirty-year-old brain, a particular pair of jeans. That memory triggered one of another pair, and so on. But. . . where were those pants? I couldn't find them in any of my usual hiding places for out-of-season clothes. Finally, I walked back to stand in front of the chest of drawers and realized that, hey, there are four drawers there, and I haven't looked into the fourth in many moons! (Gosh, I sound ditzy. I think I am getting ditzier as time goes by. Scary.)

So, until now, despite several weeks of "pants weather" and searching each morning for something to wear, I'd just never noticed that fourth drawer-- the drawer, it turns out, where I was keeping most of my comfortably-fitting pants, the last time it was cold enough to need them.

The good news: I now have several more pair of wearable pants. Though I still want to lose a little around the waist, at least I have something to wear in the meantime.

The bad news: Apparently my memory is faulty. How could I walk by that dresser several times a day and never realize that there was a whole drawer I wasn't (currently) using? Is this how it feels when you first begin to lose your mind? I'm going to at least pretend to believe that everyone does this-- that it's due to being such a creature of habit that I simply cease to see things that I don't use on a regular basis. (Maybe this could also be an excuse-- er, explanation for clutter and unfinished projects. . .)

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Earlier, I was enjoying a rare peaceful and quiet morning at the computer. Usually, Trixie can only go fifteen to thirty minutes in the morning without barking to either go outside or be played with. Today, she was already outside, and for some reason, she wasn't yet barking or "bouncing the door" to tell us that she was ready to come back in.

Uh oh. That sent up a red flag. (Just like parents always say about their kids, any puppy owner knows that too much quiet usually indicates that mischief is afoot, somewhere.)

I betook myself to the back yard, looking for her, and soon enough, here she came bouncing toward me. As soon as she saw that I'd seen her, she turned and ran back to something she'd left on the lawn. Something dark and longish and oh-my-gosh-is-that-a-snake?? I called out to her-- pointlessly, as she had already reached it. (Yes, believe it or not, my frantic call of "Wanna go inside?! TREAT?!" went unheeded.)

I had just enough time to think, "Well, it seems to be still. Maybe she's killed it..." before she lifted it and I saw that it was a piece of fabric. Fast-forward a few minutes and some toy-squeaking distraction efforts, and I'm holding a soggy black sock. She's always had a fondness for socks, but this was the first time she'd had her way with one since her baby days, and she took full advantage of it. Now it's not so much a sock as it is the new, trendy, sock-y equivalent of the fingerless glove. Everyone will be wearing them, soon! ;o)

Oh, Trixie.

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We put up our Christmas tree over the weekend. I have yet to put away the boxes and vacuum all the needles and bits of glittery garland that fell around the room in the process of putting it up-- and until that's done, no photos!-- but it is good to have the tree up. Christmas is sneaking up on us early this year. Or at least that's what it feels like. . . So much to do, so little time!

Wanted: Fat Pants

Pants that fit me last year no longer want to button comfortably (or, in some cases, at all). I knew I wasn't exactly losing weight, these past several months, but neither did I think I was (still) gaining it. We have a bathroom scale, of course, but not being a fitness-geek, I never step near the darn thing. (Well, would you, if it kept insisting you were getting pudgy?!) I prefer to ignore concrete numbers whenever possible, but now my own once-beloved pants are turning on me.

(sigh) This means I have to figure out some way of losing weight-- meaning some way that I can actually stick with long enough to see results. We're coming up on what is universally acknowledged as the peak seasons for weight-gain (festive meals, desserts galore, cold-weather cravings for all sorts of goodies-- and that holiday feeling that you really deserve to indulge), but if I ever want to wear half my wardrobe again, it has to be done.

Why, oh why can't typing/mousing, TV-remote-pushing, and page-turning be aerobic exercise?! Those are the types of things I want to do in my free time-- not sitting for hours on the bike or (shudder) running. Cruel world!

The most irritating thing? Knowing that no matter what I do, I'm not going to be able to slim down noticeably in time for all those holiday photos. Nope. The 2008 "out of shape" me will be captured forever in untold numbers of digital photographs. Oh well.

(Hey, you family photographers out there? If you could, whenever we get ready to take those pictures, please tell me how to pose so that I at least don't appear to have too much of a double chin. You know, "lower your chin a little" or "angle yourself more to the right" or "wrap this scarf around your neck". ;o) Please?)

If When If -- Ok, let's be optimistic here!-- WHEN I lose enough weight, I'm going to take a gazillion photos of myself to look at and show off when I'm old(er) and gray(er) and have earned the right to not care so much if I put on a little extra weight.