OK, I know I've been watching a lot of makeover type shows lately, but most of them involved home design. Now I've become obsessed with TLC's What Not To Wear, the US version, which is an hour long and is on almost every day it seems. I'm honestly not a trend or fashion freak, I've just always had a really hard time personally finding clothing that fit and looked good on me (and was comfortable) and this show is fascinating to me. Even when I was 98 pounds I had trouble finding jeans that fit properly, and had large shoulders, which, at 5'1", means sleeves and hemlines never fit correctly. I have a half dozen pair of pants hanging on my closet door right now that need hemming. I also worked in the retail & fashion world for years and handled so much clothing that I know too much about it now to be able to buy really bad clothes. I've been trying really hard to upgrade my own wardrobe to have clothing that actually fits me and isn't too baggy, at least in public ;-)

I missed most of the Memorial Day marathon, only caught a couple, poor Niya, a young urban black woman who bought clothes based on their original price tag and percentage off as opposed to whether they fit her. Or covered her. She had to lay on the bed to zip up her favorite skirt which was about 4 sizes too small and made her look six months pregnant. Then they gave her $5000 and sent her off alone in NYC and told her not to buy anything that would make her look like a hoochie mama when that's all she'd been wearing and her idea of a good outfit was based on the number of honks she got at the gas station.

I always feel sorry for them on day one, especially the women who don't shop on a regular basis, they're so overwhelmed and get very discouraged. Shopping is hard, I'm sorry, it really is. I love clothes but I hate shopping. Especially shoes and pants, too much stress. My arms will hurt for days afterwards from carrying stacks of clothes in various sizes because the fashion industry's sizing standards are so varied. And I want to try on as many things as possible at once to get it over with and be able to try and keep straight in my head what looks good and what doesn't. And I would not want to start my wardrobe over from scratch, even for $5000. I've finally gotten it down to things I either really, really like or just can't bear to part with for sentimental reasons (though often never wear, they're in storage). Even if they have good opinions, I don't like going by other people's rules for how to look. I wouldn't want a home makeover, either, unless my house was a total dump and I didn't own anything nice but it's fun to watch.

I went and looked at the website to get a link for this article and am really hooked now, besides having photos and info on all the shows, they have listings of what they bought, where, makeup and hair colors used, how much they spent... it's an OCD nightmare, yikes! But they also have the listing schedule and who is featured in which show, which will actually make my life a little easier because I can skip the shows I've seen, I've been having trouble trying to figure out their oddball weekly schedule. Unfortunately it's often on at midnight here which is about the time Sparky wants the big TV back, and he complains enough about having to watch Clean Sweep every week. I like that show even though everyone is a little too perky, though it seems kind of a cheat because they make the people throw like three fourths of their stuff out and then it's pretty easy to get the remainder back into their house... HGTV's Mission Organization is more challenging, IHMO. I'm very bad about following shows, especially one hour ones, usually Sparky timesets all of our one hour shows so we can watch them back without commercials, because about the only time I usually sit and watch TV is during dinner.

I'm always looking for women who have the same problems I do, I don't feel too sorry for the girls with cute little bodies and just bad taste. They had one girl on during the marathon with a Playboy figure (Irene) who was wearing basically stripper clothes to work (and her husband was complaining, go figure!), but all she needed was more coverage and better quality clothing, she would look good in anything.

I did sympathize with Alisha, who wore her husband's clothes, no makeup and thought skirts were fussy. I've always been a tomboy too, though I've learned that wearing boys tops really is not a good look for me. I still don't like skirts, though. It's not a modesty issue, skirts just aren't practical or comfortable in my opinion. Don't like pantyhose, if I don't wear pantyhose everything sticks together (it's hot in Houston!), and I'm not good at wearing shoes without socks (narrow heels, I just end up with blisters). Alisha is a taller girl, though, and not too busy so she could wear pretty things like empire waists, which I can't wear.

Looks like I missed the episode with Misti the Goth girl, I hope it comes around again. She's short like I am, though the photos of her wardrobe look awfully colorful for a Goth. I'm not real fond of the clothes they put her in, though she's ten years younger than me and they do look cute on her.

The 6/16 episode with Mary looks promising, she looks like she's going to be challenging and I like the looks they picked for her. She also looks to be short and busty without being too thin, so perhaps I'll learn something. I'd invest more money in clothing, but I have trouble justifying it when I feel like I still need to lose another 20 pounds. My big jump lately has been finding some jeans that fit (low waist jeans don't cut off my circulation, yippee!), and I actually own several nice belts and have worn them without going into a panic. I don't like anything tight around my waist, but since the pants hit lower the belts aren't too bad. (I'm very short, straight-waisted, all the weight loss in the world won't change that).

One of the women, I think it may have been Kimberly H., struck a note with me by saying that she had always worn her hair long to be more feminine and remembered being referred to as a boy by someone when she was young. That happened to me in about 6th grade, wearing jeans, a tee and a windbreaker I was looking at comic books when a clerk said "Little boy, don't read the comics". Now, everyone had long hair in the 70's, and I was a tomboy, but still... I think that may have played into my fear of cutting my hair for so many years.

I still don't like the pointy shoes and clutch purses they like to assign everyone, they look cute but are impractical. But I've seen myself in a lot of these women, long baggy shirts that just make me look bigger, pants that are too tapered, too short, big chunky shoes (no stilettos for me, sorry!), long scraggly hair (I cut it myself for years), no makeup, too much black... No wonder I don't like to be photographed, thank God I at least have cheekbones and good skin. More later, I'm going to try and beat Sparky to the bedroom so I can read a bit before trying to sleep.

Withering heights? Oh well, the rest of the description fits well, I am English, Irish and German, and the UK is on the top of my "visit someday" list:

You are English to a tee, mate. You would feel most at home in the country of rolling hills and patchwork valleys, of the white cliffs of Dover, of craggly bluffs, wild countryside and withering heights and moors. A nice, warm corner pub on a cold wintry evening would make you feel right at home.

Your personality is also a match: Like many English, you value singularity—a lack of inclination to create bonds and acceptance of inherent conflicts among people. For you, a sense of rules is important; and you have a healthy respect for institutions, conventions and rules. You are prone to strong feelings of national pride and national identity to your country. Although pragmatic in day-to-day activities, you can fall quite easily into flights of fancy and idealism.

You are tenacious in the face of adversity and have a humor that is partial to ironic understatement and dry wit. You tend, either in modes of thinking or dress, to lean toward a hip eccentricity. You often have a hard time expressing your intimate feelings and you may, in fact, reject that kind of self-expression as “unseemly.” You don’t like to touch or hug people you don’t know very well.

London is your soul city—with its unique, cosmopolitan mix of young and old, hip avant-garde, working class bravado, age-old pageantry and new immigrant flavor. Visit it one day. You may not want to leave!

What's Your True Nationality?

Homework: A Household Meme current questions...

HomeWork: Week 19

Take a good look around you. What's the most pressing disaster brewing in your house? A mammoth pile of laundry? A Leaning Tower of Dishes? A junk closet about to explode? Do you have any immediate plans for dealing with it, or is it hidden enough that you can ignore it a while longer?

I don't even have to think about that one, the entire bedroom needs major dusting. Both sets of floor to ceiling drapes, the floors, the crowded bookcase, the top of the armoire, the ceiling fan, under the bed, yuck! I know it doesn't sound that major, but we can't really start till we get the drapes done and they're relatively new (and dark cobalt blue), so we're sort of unsure where to begin. And anything we do will make me ill for days from all the dust :-(

Just so no one out there thinks I've died, my cable modem has been acting up all week and completely crashed a few days ago but (knock on wood) seems to be back up and running now. The Roadrunner people first said it was my whole area, then just me, then the area again... And they had me scheduled for a service call next Monday (gee thanks!), but this morning called and woke me up three times to see if I was up again, who says whining loudly doesn't pay off ;-)

I had decided earlier in the week to take a short hiatus from eBay to catch up on things and rest, so luckily I didn't have any regular auctions running. I had placed bids on three items in advance, and won one of them. I managed to get some of my email to come through and got my invoice for the auction I won, and then had to set my email on a schedule and leave it running all day to get a message back out to the seller that I was having problems and would pay her as soon as everything came back up. I didn't want her to think I was ignoring her. I was actually to the point of driving down to the library to see if they had internet access, I probably should check that out for future emergencies.

I still didn't get anything read, I mostly played with my computer and rearranged files and watched the damn cable light blinking on and off out of the corner of my eye in hopes I could at least download all of my mail during the millisecond it came up. I had a bunch of auctions actually all written up in advance and listed them tonight, but I missed .10 cent listing day yesterday, dammit! And no mail service today, which was actually a good thing because I couldn't print postage with no internet connection anyway. Oh well, probably the Goddess telling me to slow down, I've been too busy lately and we have a busy weekend coming.

OK, let's see what I missed this week so far...

OK, I admit I'm rambling tonight, I still feel like my brains are not all assembled in the same room. And now my hands ache, I got my Yamuna Body Rolling Balls in the mail today and just spent the last hour or so inflating them. The little green one wasn't too bad, you have to use a hand pump (sold separately) to inflate them, they are shipped flattened, but I didn't think I'd ever get the larger red ball inflated. I'm still not quite sure if I've done them correctly, the book said not to overinflate them and I have no memory of how to properly deflate rubber balls, though it says you can flatten them and bring them with you when you travel. Right now neither is perfectly round but a bit more oval, I'm just waiting for my husband to walk by and say "Hey you didn't inflate these all the way!".

I'm glad I invested in the name brand therapy balls, though, instead of getting a similar cheaper one I saw on eBay. These really are very good quality and heavy duty. I also have a strange fear of things bursting, I hate balloons, and the one on eBay said "no pump needed, inflates with a straw" which doesn't sound either safe or logical.

I did finally take a step towards fixing my poor teeth, I made an appointment for my husband and myself to go in for a cleaning (together, so I can hold his hand). They couldn't see us at the same time till the end of the month, though, so I mentioned I had a couple of teeth that were painful (the magic word for dentists) and I get to go in to be looked over this Monday. We're trying a new dentist that my mother has used, and is two miles from the house vs. 20 miles, where my husband's family dentist is. He's the reason my teeth are currently so messed up, he replaced several gold crowns with pretty white resin crowns and my molars have felt "off" ever since to the point where I've ground through at least two of my upper gold crowns. Also the resin feels rough to me, despite his attempts at smoothing them, which is a constant irritant.

I hope the new dentist is good, and has nitrous. I actually have a very high pain tolerance, and have had enough major dental work to make most people faint at the thought, but I also have super sensitive teeth when it comes to cold and pressure and the nitrous keeps me from inadvertantly biting the poor dentist. Plus it's the only time in my life I've ever actually felt relaxed. I agreed to let the last guy do a gingivectomy while under it's influence, it must be pretty good stuff.

The front page of today's Houston Chronicle had an article from the NY Times near the bottom of the page with the title Memo said Bush could OK torture of prisoners. Later in the day, though, the article had been replaced on their website with Ashcroft: 'This administration rejects torture', and I had to hunt for the first article. I've got to give them credit for printing it, at least. I think the country is so shell shocked that even something like Bush Sells Soul to Satan probably wouldn't make much of an impact anymore.

Weird quote of the day from Ashcroft:

"I condemn torture. ... I don't think it's productive, let alone justified".

Gee, what could we do that would be even more efficient and productive, that's kind of a scary thought.

Sorry for the pun, it was an easy shot. Fresh from the evening news tonight, more wacky antics from those lovable Enron traders, just adding further proof to justify Bill Hick's observation that marketers really are Satan's little helpers.

"It's called lies. It's all how well you can weave these lies together, Shari, alright, so," an employee is heard saying.

The other employee says, "I feel like I'm being corrupted now."

The first employee adds, "No, this is marketing,"

"OK.''

Wow. So for all you conspiracy theorists out there, it has now been officially proven that Enron worked very hard at deliberately screwing over California. So maybe the Davis Power Crisis should be renamed, hmmm...

My main server has been going up and down all night, so if you click on a link and get a 404 error, check back in a few minutes...

Homework: A Household Meme current questions. I told myself I wasn’t going to do this one, because I don’t really consider myself a housewife, but the questions are too fun to pass up. And I’m am wife who works from home, so...

I went back and did some of the archived questions also (click Read More below), there are some really interesting ones.

HomeWork: Week 18

The phone rings. You've got unexpected company coming over in an hour! Look around your house. Is it company-ready? What can you do in an hour to get it up to the level that would make you comfortable?

Make the bed, straighten my office a bit (it’s in the living room), swish out the toilet, put new hand towels & toilet paper out, close the shower curtain, stuff anything into the closets that looks junky sitting out... Try and wipe some of the baby powder out of the hall bathroom, the stuff goes everywhere :-( Make sure I have a few cokes in the fridge. Our house isn’t usually dirty, mostly cluttered, working at home I often have a lot of “things” laying around in progress. Hopefully there won’t be any dishes in the sink...

HomeWork: Week 15

What is your favorite thing about your current house/apartment/domicile of other sort? What's your least favorite?

Probably the layout, for both questions. Our house has really good flow between the rooms, but my office has no privacy because it’s the living room. Someday I’ll figure out how to add pocket doors or something...

Also the wood floors are pretty, one of the reasons we bought the house, but they are also hard and get very dusty. We upgraded to storm windows a few years ago and that has been great, it makes the house nice and quiet and temperature controlled :-)

HomeWork: Week 13

Do you own any tried-and-true housework manuals or books? Have you belonged to any housekeeping or organizational groups, such as FlyLady? How have these worked for you?

I have Too Busy to Clean? which has good tips, and Home Comforts - the Art and Science of Keeping House which is a massive reference tome. (Ha! I just saw your mention at the beginning of the archives, I’m no Martha Stewart either ;-) I also have several organizing and closet books (because I’m obsessed with organizing). I have Julie Morgenstern’s Organizing From the Inside Out and get her newsletter, which is fun.

I’m also addicted to the Home & Garden Channel, and always try to catch Mission Organization and TLC’s Clean Sweep. I also have a book called Spiritual Housecleaning, but I haven’t read it yet. The single most useful household book I have is my old Fannie Farmer Cookbook my grandmother gave me when I moved into my first apartment. When you forget how long to boil eggs or bake potatoes, it's nice to have around.

HomeWork: Week 12

When was the last time you moved house? How long did it take you to pack? How long did it take you to get out of the boxes? Does your unpacking method more closely resemble the "get it all done as quickly as possible" style or the "do it slowly, do it right" one?

We just celebrated our sixth anniversary in our house, and we lived in our last house for seven years. Before I met my husband I used to move a lot and it was all very haphazard. My first big move out of town broke me of that, though, when it took me over a week to find my bath towels!

When we bought our house we had to wait an agonizing three months to move, so we packed and labeled everything to death. And it still took us 12 hours with two professional movers to get everything from one house to the other (just a few miles apart). We had a ton of stuff, and actually got rid of a lot of things at a pre-moving garage sale. We unpacked most of the boxes (lots went straight into storage) within a few days of moving, because it drives both of us nuts to be tripping over boxes. The only unfortunate thing is that the people we bought the house from were literally moving out when we were moving in, so we couldn’t bring in anything over in advance or do anything like paint the walls.

HomeWork: Week 8

How often do you grocery shop? Do you have a usual day or time for shopping? What's your budget for a typical grocery run?

I try for just once a week, but I go to the neighborhood supermarket and Sam’s Club. And, when I get a chance, Whole Foods. I don’t have a set day, it’s usually when we start running out of the important things, like my husband’s Mountain Dew, toilet paper, bottled water. I average about $200 bucks for the weekly basic groceries, but we don’t eat out a lot and I do buy some convenience foods, mostly from Sam’s. I like to go in the evenings, but a lot of times the stock is lacking, especially in fresh things like bagged salads.

HomeWork: Week 4

When you were a child, did you keep your room neat, or was it a disaster area? Why do you think that was?

It was organized but very cluttered. Lots of books, lots of Barbie stuff, many horses... I’ve always been a book fiend, that’s usually the majority of my clutter, books and papers. I hated having to make the bed and little things like that, though. Nothing nasty laying around, though, like old food (we have huge roaches in Houston!). My parents house was fairly spartan, though, so in comparison I was pretty messy.

HomeWork: Week 3

If you live with other people, how do you divide the housework? If you live alone, what chores would you like to give away, and which would you keep?

My husband is obsessed with vacuuming, so I let him. He’s also good at doing the dishes, but I don’t mind putting them up. I HATE dusting, it kills my allergies for days afterwards. I also don’t like cleaning the bathroom, though I’m pretty good about swishing the toilet out regularly. I’m rotten at sweeping too, we have lots of wood floors, hubby usually ends up doing that.

Week One

How often do you...
...clean your bedroom? It’s SOO dusty, very neat, but dusty. We need to have a pro in there to do the curtains so we don’t ruin them (that’s our excuse, at least)
...wash your sheets? Not often enough, every few weeks maybe. I’ll do the pillowcases every week or so, though.
...mop the kitchen floor? Usually when something breaks and we have to pick up bits of glass anyway.
...vacuum? Hubby vacuums several times a week, when we had an indoor dog he would do it almost daily. I think it’s therapeutic to him...
...dust? When it gets so bad we can’t stand it, or when we’re going to have major guests over. We have over 20 bookcases in the house and every one of them is full (sigh).
...clean the toilets? I do mine regularly, whenever anything starts appearing that shouldn’t. My husband does his every few months when it gets downright scary. His bathroom seems to have less air circulation of something, luckily it’s not the guest bathroom.
...scrub the tub? Mine stays pretty clean, except for a bit of mildew around the caulk. His looks like the shroud of turin and is a major undertaking that he only does about 3 or 4 times a year.

TV Tuesday questions for this week, first time...

1. Do you watch daytime talk TV? If so, which shows do you watch? Do you prefer the calm shows like Oprah or the wilder side like Jerry Springer? When I wake up early enough I’ll watch Oprah and Dr. Phil. Oprah’s been doing too many celebrity interview type things lately, though, which bore me. I watch more night time talk & news shows, I like shows that are useful and entertaining. I can’t stand the “yelling, screaming, fake drama” shows like Jerry Springer. I’d probably watch Ellen if I were awake when she was on.

2. Which daytime talk TV show would you like to be on? What would the topic be? Probably Oprah, but I’d be scared to death...

3. Is there a daytime talk TV show you miss that's no longer on the air? Is there someone you'd like to see get a daytime talk TV show? Not daytime, but I really miss Phil Donahue. I miss Johnny Carson too. I liked Rosie’s show, but she seemed a little stressed out towards the end.

Bonus- Before talk TV took over game shows ruled the airways during the day, which do you prefer? Or are you a soap opera fan? The only actual soap opera I ever seriously watched was Dark Shadows. When I was in college I got sucked into General Hospital for a short time during the Luke & Laura epic (it was fun to sit in a room full of women talking back to the TV). I loved game shows as a kid, but they were completely different. I mean, “Let’s Make a Deal”, what’s not to love!

For last week’s question, I watched part of TV Land’s "Addams Family" marathon, and part of TLC’s “What Not to Wear” marathon. I actually try not to watch as much TV anymore, but I’ve sat and watched it all day in my youth, till the National Anthem played, zzzzzz...

Dark Shadows had the biggest influence on me growing up. I have vivid memories of watching it with our housekeeper when I was very young and hiding behind the couch when Barnabas would appear. After that Bewitched, The Munsters and Addams Family, I Dream of Jeannie, classic Star Trek. Lots of memories of watching the Carol Burnett Show also.

I've been having that nagging shopping "urge" lately, glad I don't have any credit cards left. I have bought some useful things, though, yet more clothes, two "real" leather belts, two new pairs of house shoes (all they had were pastels, aagghh!), some shorter socks for summer, and a bottle of my Clarins lotion. Everything was on sale, though, except for the lotion, which cost almost as much as the others combined.

I got my Chi straightening iron in the mail today and played with it. It really did do a nice job, much better than my Conair, and it heated up superfast like it claimed. I wasn't very happy with how the girl shipped it, though, she just threw it in a Tyvek Priority envelope and sent it out at the two pound rate (and charge me about 3 times that much). I knew I was being overcharge for postage but a little bubble wrap would have been nice, I thought it would at least be in a box with some newspaper at the least. People on eBay really like to charge out the ass for any electronics, I've been charged $7 to ship a camera memory stick the size of a piece of gum. I guess they figure since everyone else is doing it it must be OK (sigh). The scariest one I got was a phone that the guy just slapped address labels & postage right on the manufacturer's box and threw it in the mail, didn't even bother to tape up the edges of the box.

I went through and purged some of my old worn out clothes the other night, and rearranged my closet. I still have two bags in my trunk from the last clothing purge, all of our clothing donation boxes have vanished recently, I don't know what to do with them... I feel like I need to get rid of (i.e. sell) some more of my dressy & work clothes since I never wear them any more, but I'm down to that point where I've gotten rid of most of the extras and just have things I like (and hope to fit into again) left. But we never go out anywhere, I never wear my rayon and silk stuff, Houston is a very casual (and very hot & humid) city. I'd actually like to buy more really nice quality casual stuff, but I can't justify it until I lose some more weight (which is a good way to save money, I guess ;-)

I think I'm going to go look at my memes and see if there's anything my poor tired brain can handle... I've been doing way too much eBay lately, I'm trying to take a short break from selling, but now I've started looking at things to buy. I have to keep reminding myself "where are you going to put it?". All of the shelves in the house are full (and must be dusted, dammit), but I'm still lacking some wall decorations in the bedroom (where no movie posters are allowed), so maybe I can find something suitably kitschy to fill in the blanks, it's the only room in the house with any wall space left...