A day and a half later, and I am STILL pulling thread off of things….

Ta-da! I did it! Now I know you all were expecting some sort of rhinestone encrusted Elton John jobby, so don’t be disappointed. I’m crummy at this digital photography thing (give me an SLR any day!) and I didn’t get the rhinestone heart on the left lens to show up well. Oops. But it’s there, you can see it. I guess it’t the right lens in the picture! For me, these are flaming flamboyant! And who doesn’t love the world better looking through rose-colored glasses?

My daughter is bringing out something surprising in me: I am softening towards things pink and, maybe, just maybe, I am enjoying, a little bit more than I used to, being a girl.

Yesterday, I wore a pink sweater to church- a big deal, since my wardrobe consists mostly of black, white and gray. I also wore heels, a pencil skirt and my hair up- what gives? I actually felt kinda pretty. Oh, and the topper- pink rhinestone sunglasses I got at the dollar store! Oh-yeah! What’s happening to me!?? It was fun, and many of my friends complimented me- I think they were just coveting the sunglasses, but whatever. (Oh and the sweater came from Stephen King’s Thrift Shop!)

I’ve always wanted to be more adventurous than I am. To have the courage to be less than ordinary. My wild curly hair has kind of forced a crazy look on me, but I always wanted to be more Carrie than Charlotte. So now that I have a daughter, I am aware of how I feel about being a woman and mother is going have a direct bearing on how she learns and see’s herself. It is also causing me to re-examine my own relationship with my mother, and try and cull the good things worth keeping, but that’s another idea for another day.

It’s not that I want my daughter to think she has to be made-up and in a pink rhinestone sweater to be feminine. Not at all. But I’m thinking I have been kind of lopsided in my femininity- my intellect is nurtured, by creativity is nurtured, but I often neglect the parts of being a girl that can be fun, too. I can read Goethe and Dostoevsky, run my own business, be woman of faith, a mother, a wife AND sometimes sport pink rhinestone sunglasses. Here’s to breaking down our own barriers, whimsey and being well-rounded!

My husband and I went on a date last night. We got a sitter, got the Monkeys in their jammies, packed up Abby with us, and took off. Oh, how good it felt. It doesn’t matter what we did, or where we went- we just drove around for a long time, enjoying the quiet. We don’t get much quiet these days. Conversation was organic, and sprung up as inspired, rather than smushed in between kid-tastrophes. How nice it was to be away for a few hours.

Abby slept most of the evening, delightful little doll she is. We got a bite to eat, did a little shopping in peace and quiet, and when we got home, the Monkeys were in bed, sound asleep. The perfect Saturday night.

Tuesday I took the Monkeys to see “Cars”, and I am still recovering. Not from the movie- it was cute and we’ll add it to our arsenal when Costco gets the DVD, but recovering from the experience of taking a 2 year-old, 4 year-old and 7-week-old to the movies. By. Myself.

It was a rookie mistake, but I’m no rookie. I am however, still asking myself “why?” and trying to calm down the tic that has taken over the left half of my face. Let’s just say Eric won’t be going to any movies for, oh, say, maybe a few years. Jeffrey was enthralled and well-behaved, and Abby, well-fed and snuggled in her seat, slept through almost the whole movie.

The saving grace was that it was a noon matinee on a Tuesday- anyone who didn’t appreciate a child rolling on the floor and occasionally biting his mother- could easily have moved. I paid my king’s ransom for the tickets and the king-kong sized popcorn, and I wasn’t going to leave. Enough said.

So, if you have little ones who can sit still for more than 22 minutes, have a go at it. The animation is stellar, per normal for the Disney/Pixar mix, the story is cute and has a good moral, there are some genuinely funny moments- I really liked the tractors and the glow-in-the-dark cars. Beautifully done.

But if you see a woman with a string of red-headed boys and a baby somewhere on her body, you might want to find a seat somewhere else. Away. Far away. Enjoy your movie.

Mr. King would turn the new thrift store up the street into some sort of Needful Things novel, and he would undoubtedly do a much better job painting a word picture than I will, but I have to try anyway.

Last night I went to check out the new place, always in the market for cheap dress shirts for my Monkeys. When I walked in, the place just felt, well, weird. I kept thinking- weird…Weird. It was an older building, but recently had been refaced and painted white- everything inside was white- shiny, new, bright white. But it smelled old, musty and aged, like the pages of an old book. Like a thrift store. The contrast was, weird.

As I walked around, I was startled to see really old stuff. Things that in other thrift stores, you see marked Vintage, and marked way up. Clothes my grandmother wore when I was a small child, things I’ve seen in faded photographs from when my mother was young, caftans and hot pants and beaded cocktail gowns- seriously vintage stuff- at 1971 prices- $2 here, 50 cents for something else… Strange. And it was really old stuff- things you could put on e-Bay and get a fortune for. There were records, 45’s, comic books, all looking resonably new- but they were 30 or 40 years old. I found two “Light Bright” games from when I was a kid- still in the box, marked $2.00. I would have bought one, but where would I get the black paper? Strange.

Everything about the place was “out of time”- the music over the speakers was oldies- Jefferson Airplane, Strawberry Alarm Clock, Santana- I just kept shaking my head to try and clear the cobwebs.

There were plates and dishes from my grandma’s when I was young, there were baby clothes made of organza and obviously handmade. Little dresses, again handmade, smocked and immaculate, for $1.99. The fabric was old, but they were all clean and pressed. Weird. The books were old, like from the WWII era, and there was a lot of surplus-like stuff, but all from bygone times- like someone cleaned out storage lockers from 1955… Electro typewriters for $15, big, bonnet hairdryers for $5.00, and a desk lamp I almost bought that looked like something from Ed Harris’ desk in Apollo 13.

I kept walking around marveling at the strangeness. I picked up a dress shirt for Eric, and when I went to pay, the checker-girl was reading. She was reading “Go Ask Alice”. Out of place, out of time. Weird.