Picture a Day-Day 35

A phone call is all I need

To rush down to receiving

And see what we got indeed.

Why it's a huge present
On a wooden pallet.

I wonder how I get into it?

What could be resting within

Our box of cardboard and staples?

Let the guessing game begin

Is it a guitar

just perfect for lab concerts?

Nah, that's going too far

Oh I know, maybe a book

The biggest one in the world.

One never to be stolen by a crook.

Or perhaps a plane

To fly around campus

Especially when it rains.

This guessing game is grim

So I think I'll just stop

Open it up and see what's in.

Or maybe one of you

Would like to take a crack

And guess what's inside

That little box of mine.

Sometime this week

We'll hopefully get it upstairs

And then I can tell you

What we didn't get in pairs.

Not a catalog of faces

Standing in the bathroom staring at my huge face in the mirror (okay so my face isn't really all that big I am just so blind I have to stand really close to see anything) contemplating my pores my mind starts to play a "What if" game.

What if instead of the laws of beauty stating that we should have non existent pores it was the exact opposite. Instead of putting on special tightening creams with caffeine and very expensive unguents everyone would slather on a good tub full of bacon grease to give their face a gorgeous shine and really bring out those pores?

Sound a bit too far fetched? Well it was just a little over a 100 years ago that a flash of ankle was more likely to rile up the male blood than any amount of cleavage ever could. In the Elizabethan era women were spending hours to cover their faces in lead paints so they could be as pale as snow. Now they line the block to be spray painted the same golden brown as an oven roasted turkey.

The size that the perfect woman is supposed to be has changed so much as history shifts it's a wonder women haven't evolved into some sort of tall Gumby with boobs (check out this ancient fertility statue). Ever really looked at a middle ages or even Rennisance painting? Back then women were painted to have some fat and even the horror of horrors cellulite. Now we photoshop all that out.

Women were not told to shave all their body hair off until lagging disposable razor blade sales gave the blade makers an idea to open up their market.

Over New Years I caught a few old Twilight Zone episodes and one of them involved a society (that happened for want of a better term in it the year 2000) where every person upon reaching the age of 19 would be surgically altered to look like one of two people. It all opens with two women looking over a cataloge and the mother keeps badgering her daughter to pick one.

The daughter didn't want to do it, but she kept being told over and over "Don't you want to be beautiful?" "You don't want to look weird do you?" "It's for your health, don't you see?"

It's amazing how much those really resonate today. All too often people are quick to spout that you should do this or eat this claiming that it's for your health when really starving yourself so that you can fit into a certain size of pants is for one reason and one reason only, to fit societies ideal.

People who are in no risk whatsoever of suddenly dying from a heart attack or diabetes are willing to risk dying in a pointless surgery just to be a smaller size (and really ask yourself if only fat causes heart attacks and diabetes why are people of every size afflicted?)

It can be just as true the other way, women who are just naturally skinny try to eat way over what their body (we're talking 10,000 calories a day sometimes) can handle and wind up in the emergency room trying to get Scarlett Johansons curves.

What's so wrong with diversity? Why are we trying to claw and destroy each other in order to look as much like one of two people?

Well guess what, I am what I am. I am not going to curl my straight hair to appease society. I will not slap on face paint, a padding stuffed bra, or eat nothing but celery for a month just so I can blend in with everyone else.

I am proud of my weird little amalgam of genes that lead to what I am. I refuse to talk about any problem areas because; guess what, it's what I come with so like shag carpeting or a small garage you better just get used to it cause I am not going through all the remodeling to fix something that isn't broken.

Who is with me? Who else refuses to get duped in by the resolutions they flaunt of TV to change yourself so you can become one of the two options?

We're always being told by all the fashion and beauty magazines to hide our flaws, to do our best to mold ourselves to look like a society ideal (which no one, even those famous beauties in History, ever really acheives) and not be a square peg.

When we all look the same then no one is really beautiful.

Picture a Day-Day 34

At the last and possibly saddest after Christmas "Please dear God take this stuff away" sale we snagged two little statues of kids playing in the snow.

But we don't really have anything all snowy and Christmas like. Our town is mostly a cemetery and these kids needed to be updated. They have to look more like something that would be chased by him:
So I pulled out my paintbrush and got to work:

The biggest challenge was turning the snowy ground into more of a mossy swamp. I used different layers of black, brown and green.

This is the final product. Don't they just look like two boys having a mud fight?

The last part where I painted mud all over their clothes was probably the final piece to bring it all together. My husband asked me why kids would be having a mud fight in a cemetery and I felt compelled to tell him that he must not know any boys.

Does anyone else get a little kick out of buying something and using a little paint (or other materials) to turn it into something a bit different?

Picture a Day-Day 33

There is a strange almost pantomime of life associated with every holiday. You get all excited waiting for the life to come, taking the opportunity to deck out your home just for the new joy.

Cards, greetings and joy are all exchanged as families get ready to gather on the special day. Once it comes you relax in a joyful stupor (assuming of course no one accidentally caught the curtains on fire) but come the day after you're just left with a lot of stuff hanging off the walls and sitting in rooms that suddenly feels wrong and very out of place.

Almost like someone close to you passing on and leaving all their worldly collections for you to clean up and put away (I think that makes New Years eve Christmas's wake then.)

Humans are an interesting creature sometimes when you stop and think about it.

Well yesterday we began the Christmas vigil cleaning. Time to say goodbye to our little tree and lights bright enough to land planes.

My Husband always makes that face when he's concentrating, he he he:

That's right, I have an armadillo ornament. Admit it, you're incredibly jealous:

Death had a rather hard New Years Eve and can't stand all the noise we're making:

After a while my husband decided to turn the taking down of the tree into a carnival game. He tried tossing all the branches into the small box.

As you can see, he didn't do a very good job of it.

Does anyone else have some mixed feelings about taking down all the Christmas stuff (sure you get lots of space back, but suddenly it feels so empty)? Are you quick to take everything down or do you like to sit on it for a few weeks?

Out with the bathwater

Once the wedding is all over and you're ready to get back to real life it can sometimes be hard to accept the fact that no one really gives a crap anymore.

No one is going to ask you what the plans for your next dinner are, if you're nervous about going to get some milk, or where you're planning on spending your St. Patrick's day. It's amazing how everyone suddenly had to know all about you when you were a bride but once that ring goes on your finger they've already moved onto the next young woman ready to walk down the aisle.

When we went home to Chicago it became cemented in my mind what we have become: old hats.

Last year when we went back for Christmas everyone was all smiles and constantly asking us how things were going and if we needed any help. They were more than happy to make conversation.

This year there were plenty of times I'd be sitting at the kitchen table with his parents and it'd be stone silence. I suspect there is still a lot of regret and anger that I am the reason their son lives in Nebraska and didn't move back home. So the whole trip (which was a giant pain in the ass to make) we were treated as though we weren't really there. People would disappear and leave us alone for most of the day, we were left to fend for ourselves for most meals and never mind the weird looks we got for asking for a real bed.

To add insult to injury I had brought back all the wedding albums, wedding video, and invitation ornaments I'd worked very hard on. The album got a quick look through with a lot of heavy sighs and strange glances, the video was promptly forgotten and will probably never be seen and the bulbs stuck in a corner.

I have come to realize that my in-laws are; well, yuppies. They put much greater faith in something that everyone else does because that's what you're supposed to do. Buy pre-packaged and flavored almonds from an overrated specialty store? Good. Buy almonds in the shell and crack them yourself so they taste as fresh as possible? Weird, so that makes it bad.

My husband's sister is planning her own wedding and how while it is going to be much more elegant and fancier than ours it also comes across as very cookie cutter to me, but his parents are loving it. They did everything possible to avoid doing anything for our wedding citing that the groom's side isn't supposed to but now to me it's pretty obvious that they just hated all our ideas and the fact that we didn't do what everyone else did.

Now we've basically become family pariahs. No one wants to talk to us, we're viewed as weirdos that just don't fit in, and anything we do say is promptly ignored.

Is anyone else going through this? Now that the wedding is over does one side of the family treat you completely differently, especially if you had a wedding that was different? It just pisses me off to know that they all had a lot of fun at the time but it still wasn't good enough so they set all their hopes on his sisters.

I really do not want to attend her's considering how I'll just be pushed to the back, wearing an uncomfortable "black tie" dress, viewed as an outsider. Maybe I could catch the Hantavirus and stay home.