We're not in Kansas Anymore, Toto.

The terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week.

Do you remember this book? Drew loved it when he was in kindergarten. We read it all the time. Almost as much as we had read Tumble Bumble when he was a toddler. But Alexander and his little pity party have been running through my head all week, as at each turn something else seems to happen which makes me feel like going back to bed and pulling the covers over my head. That or drinking heavily. Which I never seem to have time for, now that I'm old and I require more time to recuperate. 

Binge drinking options aside, mostly I just run a hot bath and snuggle up in my bed. Right now I'm snuggled up in bed with the dog at my feet and my nine year old snoring next to me, noticing how badly he needs a haircut. Oh well.

But this week. THIS WEEK. People, it is sort of ridiculous what friends and family have been going through. Here's a short list:

• a friend had a stroke, and remains hospitalized, in a coma. She is a wonderful dear sweet thing and we are all devastated for her.
• a child had a seizure at school, at dismissal time, in front of all the other kids. He is fine now, but it was terrifying.
• A friend said goodnight one last time to her dog and lost her wedding ring within the last week. 
• My poor dad got a trojan on his computer so nasty it ate everything on his hard drive. I could do nothing to clean it except try and save the backup drive, but he's lost all his emails going back probably a year. I tried for an hour and couldn't get around it, leaving me feeling impotent in my IT skills. 
• This morning I backed out of the garage a little to close to the side, and tore the side mirror off the passenger side of the car. The new car, that just this week we've had for one year. 

There's more, but it's much more personal and health related regarding people I've promised not to discuss here. But it's scary and we're helpless and it just pushes us closer to "Really? How much more can we take" territory. I try not to ask that question aloud, as I fear the response is more suckage.

But tomorrow is Friday. The weekend should be nice, and Monday is a holiday, no school. A little extra time to recuperate and take some deep breaths, maybe peek out from under the covers. Hopefully we can all emerge Monday from our pity party and start anew. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friday Wine Goodness: The Mating Call of the Chocolate Ale.

image from Boulevard Brewing Company

I know I'm about a week behind on this topic, but that's just how it works for me these days. Two weeks ago Boulevard Brewing Company released the 2012 Chocolate Ale, part of the Smokestack Series of special release beers, in collaboration with Christopher Elbow Chocolates. Beer and chocolate lovers alike scrambled to get their hands on some, but it was scarce and sold out quickly. In my infinite wisdom, I chose not to try and scramble, knowing instead that my brother's bar would have some on tap, and I could partake at my leisure.

Tempting fate is not one of my lessons easily learned, however, as it was by that Wednesday afternoon my 11 year old had been sick with a high fever for two days. We were not going out to eat at my brother's place, nor would we be served a glass of hoppy chocolate yumminess the next day, as the keg was tapped and sold out in about 8 hours. Oops.

My nearby Lukas Liquors had a recording on the phone announcing they were sold out. The World Market store clerk said "Oh yeah, we had some. For about 15 minutes."

Hmmph. Epic Fail.

Finally, after many calls, we found a liquor store that was getting in a new shipment and taking names for a waiting list. We dutifully left our name, and then went in the next morning to collect our prize. $15 for a litre bottle. (I heard later people were selling it on eBay for a lot more.)

Having caught a Facebook conversation in which my friend Average Jane suggested the Chocolate Ale would be better served closer to room temperature, we brought it of the fridge and let it sit for about 20 minutes before snapping off the Champagne-like cork contraption. And then we swirled and sipped, as if it were a glass of Pinot being served on a terra cotta patio in Napa Valley.

And it was good. Really, really good.

The chocolate kicks in more in the aftertaste than in the sip itself. My husband and I found ourselves polishing off that litre a little too fast, a little too easy. It's probably good this stuff isn't around for the regular part of the year.We shared the other bottle with friends we had over for the Super Bowl. It disappeared in minutes.

Here's some other good news: if you didn't get any Chocolate Ale in the frenzy of the past few weeks, never fear. A little bird tells me some restaurants may be holding some back to serve on Valentine's Day. Call around to your favorite places, because I'm not giving up my secret source.

 

The hippie hiding in my closet.

Now that I have a "real" job for the first time in 12 years, and by "real" I mean one which requires me to leave the house every day dressed in something besides yoga pants, I find my overall wardrobe lacking any sense of direction. This is partly because my fashion style is not really a recognizable category. I'm not traditional, I'm not modern, I'm certainly not couture. I'm still the thrifty fashionista* that I've always been, meaning that I'll buy scarves from the Target dollar bin, and then try and figure out an outfit around it. I do this with any number of clearance items, jewelry, shoes, etc.

It's not really the best fashion plan, trying to build an outfit around one particular piece. And yet I keep doing it. Mostly because I like to claim that I don't do very much shopping. The reality is that I do a lot of shopping, when calculated at the end of a year, but because it's an item here and an item there without any planned reasoning, I end up with a bunch of random crap that I don't wear, and then I spend a lot of time frustrated with the options ( or lack thereof) in my closet. It's the same frustration I get while playing Words With Friends, when I end up with all vowels and no words to play off of.

Probably ten years ago I began wearing mostly all black. This cut back on the frustration for a while, as I know that no matter what time of year, I have a black shirt or a black sweater that I can wear with jeans and be all set. I stopped trying to be trendy, and just went with basic, and it worked. It works when you travel, it works when you're going out, it works when going to work. It's almost like dressing by number, or Garanimals.

Basic is kind of boring.

But I'm terrible at putting together outfits, and trying to do so makes me anxious. Enter Pinterest.

Turns out all I needed was someone to lay out clothes for me, and upload it to the internet.

You guys, I have most of that crap in my closet. Maybe not every piece, but enough of it that I could get pretty close to most of these outfits, allowing for some minor substitutions. The good news here is that I feel better about my initial vision when I first spot something and decide to buy it. It's getting it home and matching it to something else where I lose confidence in that initial vision, and just hang it up and leave it to gather dust. So maybe my habit of buying individual pieces works after all, sort of.

The more I find these outfits on Pinterest, and find the individual items in my own closet, the more I realize that I do have something of a style. It's a style I like to call "Leawood Boho" mixed with "Hippie Thrifty Mom." Start with a pair of jeans, add a cotton shirt, layer a flowy blouse or a long cardigan sweater, add a bunch of seemingly random but slightly matching cheap jewelry, and either flats or boots. Tada! This, I can do. And I get something of a kick out of actually doing it cheaply, as opposed to the many Leawood moms who drop a lot of cash at places like Standard Style Boutique on outfits that make them look nearly homeless effortless. (There's a difference between "Boho" and "Hobo" but sometimes It's a very thin line.

_{(Mary Kate Olsen picture from msvixenmag.com, which is not a link I recommend clicking outside of the google image search function unless your pop-up blocker is made of titanium. Just sayin.)}

But I digress.

Here's the other thing that's kind of new for me: jewelry. When I had babies, I practically stopped wearing jewelry. Earrings and necklaces are the kind of things babies love to grab a hold of and try to rip off your body in order to put it into their mouths, sometimes forcefully. So I stopped wearing anything except stud earrings, for years. Now that I'm teaching little people I don't have to hold in my lap, however, I notice that all the teachers wear a shit-ton of jewelry, all the time. Big earrings, layered chains of necklaces, tons of bracelets. It's kind of...weird. As always when I don't understand something having to do with women, I asked my mother. "Well, your grandmother was a teacher, and she always said you had to wear shiny things to keep the kids attention."

Aha. It's the "Look! Shiny!" method.

So now I wear a lot of my grandmother's jewelry. None of it has any value, but it's bright and shiny and retro, and goes decently with my Boho taste.

I still wear a lot of black, I still find safety there. But I'm trying to stretch. It's a start, I guess.

 

*fashionista is a little strong when discussing the Target dollar bin, methinks.