Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Guys and their hats




9/28/2005

Guys love their baseball caps to the point that it’s grotesque.

Apparently I’m attracted to white-baseball-cap-wearers. I don’t know what’s actually on the cap or if there is perhaps a sports team they all commonly root for. But every guy I have ever dated wore a white baseball cap. Heck, even my brother and dad wear white caps.

The white baseball cap has its own set of uniquely disgusting problems. It comes down to this: Guys do not wash their caps. They do not know how, and they do not want to.

Because of this, their nasty hats stink after a while. The odor rivals shin guards (which any soccer player well knows is a scent that can burst a nostril).

One guy actually told me once he didn’t want to wash his because it had “a good luck stain” around the rim.

I had to clarify that his “good luck” was comprised of sweat. And dirt. And hair grease. And everything not nice, and it was all rubbing on his forehead for eight hours a day.

He did not see a problem with that.

My husband has a few caps I’d like to set on fire. Instead, my mom loaned me her baseball-cap washer – some contraption you can place over the hats so they won’t lose their shape when you wash them.

Turns out the contraption doesn’t go in the washing machine. It goes in the dishwasher. Where I put my plates to get clean so I can eat food off of them.

I could imagine the hat filth swishing around the dishwasher with my forks, tainting their prongs, and seeping into the fibers of my water bottle.

Looks like my husband will continue wearing dirty hats.

Good luck to him.


Photo by Flickr user riekhavoc.

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Adelaide Jane: Dressin' up




9/22/2005

My friends and I were behind dressing room curtains at Rockin’ Robin’s when tiny Adelaide Jane and her mom arrived.

It was Adelaide’s first ever dress-up party – the 2-month-old’s “initiation” into girlhood. Like when the Lion King held Simba over the cliff and the village animals sang “The Circle of Life.”
Except it was my sorority sister’s infant in a pink gingham dress, clutching her first designer purse, with “Love is a Battlefield” on the jukebox. It was so moving, I almost cried.

Adelaide, too.

Back in the ’80s, when I was the muscle-less ball of baby, my mom said she could only get me to stop fussing by dressing me up in different outfits and taking pictures.

So Sunday evening’s dress-up party at Rockin’ Robins Retro and Resale in Niwot (www.rockinrobins.net) was like a pacifier for me.

It’d been a super rough week. First, I dropped my mascara wand on a public floor and had to spend the rest of the day with lopsided lashes. (Note to self: Wake up five minutes earlier so you don’t have to get ready at work.) Then, I wore my fave vintage pumps to a family picnic in the mountains, and my heel broke off. (Note: Don’t wear pumps hiking.)

But, alas, the Fashion Goddess was watching over me. She guided me to Rockin’ Robin’s where, miraculously, I found those same pumps (and for $38 less).

I also found a chunky blue necklace that looks like one Julie Cooper wore on an episode of “The O.C.” Except mine was 45 years old. And cost $12.

I swore I wasn’t going to buy anything. I also knew I would break that promise.

Robin Abb rents out her consignment store for dress-up parties. After my devastating week, I obviously needed one. So I sent out an emergency Evite to my girlfriends. We had full reign over Abb’s jukebox, lighted dance floor and clothing racks.

We’re talking go-go boots, Kimonos, cowboy-print pants, ’80s prom dresses and even something we found called a “silver sparkle tent” with one pocket. I’ve never seen anything like it before, and I doubt I ever will again.

So there we were, behind the dressing room curtains when Adelaide Jane showed up.
From stall No. 1, my friend Jenelle welcomed Adelaide to the Wonderful World of Dress-Up, looking like a silver-coated fortune teller. I left stall No. 3 sporting a tri-ruffle skirt that I think I owned in fifth grade.

Then, out came Tiffany. Sheepishly. She’d been devoured by a skin-tight red pleather dress that would’ve caused the gals on Colfax to blush. Rockin’ Robin had picked it out for her as a joke.
Tiffany asked Adelaide not to hold it against her. First impressions are sometimes misleading, Tiff said – an important lesson for any future fashionista to know.

I think I saw Adelaide smirk.

Either that, or she needed to be burped.

Photo by Flickr user ohsohappytogether.

Friday, September 9, 2005

I need to move





9/9/2005

A funny thing happened at mile 60 on my bicycle last week.

I began praising padded spandex shorts while contemplating the benefits of a fanny pack. As the sun swelled, I started to think of how I could really use a visor.

It was as if I had peddled away all fashion sense.

Maybe it was the 104-degree heat. Or a creepy survival mode to distract me from my burning hamstrings.

I was in Napa Valley on a weeklong cycling excursion. In other words, biking by day to negate the caloric toll of enough wine to intoxicate a medium-sized French village.

Just days earlier, I had composed a “negative ode to bike shorts,” swearing I would rather die than purposefully pad my bum. It seemed counterintuitive, after all the hours spent on the Stairstepper, de-padding it.

Then I dropped $80 on a black cycling “skort.” (Apparently I de-padded myself too much. Had to learn how to walk again with a numb gluteal region.)

Granted, the outer skirt concealed the 8-inch thick sponge between my Lycra-suctioned legs. But the experience of willingly purchasing spandex really pushed my fashion boundaries.

I thought I’d come back from Napa with chiseled thighs and a suitcase of fine wine.










Instead, I’m stuck with overpriced spandex and a more lenient eye for style. I don’t know which is scarier.

Photo by Flickr user Tom Olliver.