After an epic struggle, guest blogger Kristen Anderson Short has reached a decision. A decision women across this country and around the world face.
Pantyhose. The worst invention ever for women. I only wear them out of necessity in really cold weather.
Recently, I noticed a run in my hose. Had a board meeting that day, so at lunch I ran out to get a new pair of name brands in my size.
Back at the office, I tugged and tugged to pull them on. No matter how hard I pulled, I could not get the blasted things all the way up. Had I grown to five feet six inches, the height of my dreams?
Unfortunately, no. The new pantyhose were too short.
light sheer
My board meeting loomed. I had no choice but to go with it. Women, you know how uncomfortable that is. Men, you can guess.
Made it through the day and met some friends after work. But even two glasses of wine didn’t make the pantyhose feel any better.
I was ready to trash them when I had a change of heart. Why not save them as my emergency backup pair?
A few days later when another pair of hose ran, I reached for the emergency backup pair. Sure, they were too short, but I could fix them.
I stepped on their feet. I pulled and pulled and PULLED, stretching them as far as I could. It was a miracle. They went on and up no problem!
patterned & footless
Then I moved, and they ran faster than Flo Jo in the 1988 Olympics.
I’m not talking about a tiny run. My hose looked like I’d been dragged down the street behind a Harley. Like I’d been out all night partying with the band and forgot to go home before work to change.
With no other pair of hose, no tights, and no clean pants, I made the walk of shame into my office. The minute I got the chance, I hightailed it to the store to buy yet another pair of pantyhose.
(This is the fourth pair in the story in case you’ve lost count.)
Gingerly, I pulled them on. They ran before I made it out of the bathroom.
Once bitten, twice shy, I converted to tights that day and never looked back.
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven. A time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away. Ecclesiastes 3:1 & 6 NIV
Clear the stage for the bad boy hair band that looks remarkably tame by today’s standards. Great White, Once Bitten, Twice Shy.
guest blogger Kristen Anderson Short
The lovely Kristen Anderson Short and I went to high school together.
Kristen works as a housing and foreclosure counselor for a local government agency.
A single mom of two teenagers, she enjoys reading, talking politics, and finding the humor in everyday life—sans hose.
February is the height of the season for grapefruit. Not just any grapefruit. Texas Rio Star grapefruit.
Rio Star was the one food I craved when I was pregnant with my son. Bought and consumed bags of it.
My child was born with a taste for it. Our dear pediatrician said she’d never before seen a baby who preferred grapefruit of all things.
Round, sweet, softballs of juicy flesh. Fresh, pungent perfection sectioned with a snow showering of cane sugar.
Sunlit yellow skin and blushing spots on the outside. And inside, that sparkling, succulent, glistening, glorious pink. Like the pink of a Tropicana tea rose. Or a cluster of coral-tinged rubies.
This forbidden fruit. This Rio Star. The French call it pamplemousse.
The word must roll off their tender lips like the names of royalty. Geneviève. Marguerite. Antoinette. Pamplemousse.
Behold the pamplemousse. Crowned winter gem.
Partake before its glittering reign ends for the year, gently ushered out by the promise of strawberries, peaches, blackberries, plums.
Does not wisdom call out?
Does not understanding raise her voice?
“My fruit is better than fine gold;
what I yield surpasses choice silver.” Proverbs 8:1 & 19 NIV
Interior designers and wardrobe coaches are forever advising us commoners to create inspiration boards.
Pull magazine pictures, postcards, paint chips, bits of string, anything that inspires you. This, they say, this will produce the holy grail. Your guiding light of personal style.
Like sirens in the sea, crafters, chefs, and domestic divas have also lured us.
Clip their recipes. Buy their magazines. Watch their shows. Read their books. Then flail hopelessly about trying to replicate their perfection.
But now I have Pinterest.
I pin whatever I like. Collect it on one of my own boards. Move it to another. Even delete it.
I choose the content and contributors in my own virtual magazine. There is no paper to recycle. No subscription renewal. No ragged-edged article glaring at me every time I walk into my kitchen because I have yet to cook its blue crab and corn chowder or paint my walls tangerine.
I expand out beyond food, crafts, and home decorating to pin other interests. Books. Art. Photography. Gardening. Kate Spade.
Pinterest is an organizer. A bookmarker. A cyber bulletin board. An ideas exchange. A creative breathe-in-breathe-outlet with endless applications.
My pins are safely tucked away. Nice and neat in vivid pixels. Accessible when the mood strikes me. Their linked sources but a quick click away.
Pinterest is free. And Pinterest is freeing. Like all good social media, it is the great equalizer. There are no kings in the pinmarklet. Pinners are at liberty to share their own finds and ideas. To pin and be pinned.
Case in point, my latest creation. A bit of Beyoncé-inspired pintelligence:
Pinners, you know what to do. On your marks. Get set. Pin it.
A generous person will prosper;
whoever refreshes others will be refreshed. Proverbs 11:25 NIV
My seven-year-old son loves the water. Swim club seemed like the perfect extracurricular activity.
It was all good until his lesson was over and it was time to change into dry clothes.
He doesn’t want to go into the women’s locker room. He refuses to change in the bleachers while I hold up a towel.
No. He insists on going into the men’s locker room. Alone.
As every ounce of Momma Bear in me protests, I let him go all by himself.
“I’ll wait for you here by the door,” I say. He disappears into the abyss.
I wait. And wait. And wait.
Another pair of MOBs are standing nearby watching their sons’ swimming lessons. They look at me and nod.
“Mine doesn’t even have to change his clothes,” says the first. “He only has to put on his sweatpants over his swimsuit. And it still takes him a half an hour!”
“Well, mine came out telling me about all the friends he made in the locker room,” said the other. “I told him we don’t make friends in the locker room. That was the end of that. Now he changes in the bleachers.”
Friends in the locker room? Oh, dear.
four feet deep
“Honey,” I crack open the door. “You okay in there?”
I wait. No answer. Dare I go in?
Then I hear it. The unmistakable sound of two dozen slippery sea lions smacking the pavement. The high school boys’ swim team has finished their laps, and they’re headed my way.
The rushing stream of soaking wet, teenage boys flows through the locker room door. Panic ensues.
I imagine shouting, “Cover yourselves! Mom on the floor! I’m coming in!”
The thought of seeing a bunch of naked teenage boys is as appealing to me at 41 as it was at 16. I stop short of my raid.
I pace around outside the locker room, scanning the club for a responsible adult male to help. Where are the instructors when I need them?
A clean-cut boy who looks to be about 15 emerges from the locker room wrapped in a towel. Boldly, I approach.
“Excuse me,” I say. He looks at me. Deer in headlights.
my cub
“My little boy’s in the locker room. Yeah, and he’s been in there a long time. Could you go in and check on him? I’d go in myself, but that might be awkward.”
“Okay,” he says.
Towel boy scampers into the locker room. I wait. And wait. And wait.
The door opens and out bounces my cub. Unaided. Unharmed. Happy as a clam. And barefoot.
Where, oh where, are his shoes?
Yep.
“Cover yourselves! Mom on the floor! I’m coming in!”
Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart.
The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away;
may the name of the LORD be praised. Job 1:21 NIV
Chihuly Blue Chandelier at Missouri Botanical Garden, aka a depiction of my blogroll
There’s Blogger, TypePad, Moveable Type, etcetera, ad nauseam. So many blogs, so little time to read them all.
I subscribe to RSS feed readers that are supposed to make following a multitude of blogs easier. So why do I still feel like I’m drinking from a fire hose?
While I learn to narrow down, take in, process and respond to all the blogs I want to read, I’ve gone back to basics.
I’ve made a list.
As Lucy said in a Peanuts cartoon, “That’s called survival, baby.”
My list is actually called The Social Network. You’ll find it in the overcrowded menu at the top of this blog.
The Social Network is now categorized to help you select blogs to explore. There are some recent additions. More will be added.
Please check back as this list grows, evolves and probably gets out of hand.
Cheers to you as you tame the fountain of blog. May you swim and not sink in this flood of information.
Regis, throw me a lifeline.
The LORD sits enthroned over the flood;
the LORD is enthroned as King forever. Psalm 20:10 NIV
My friend Nicole Diehl shared some good strategies she uses to manage her blog, Facebook and Pinterest passions. Click to read her post On Social Media.
My mother once remarked on the differences between two of her children. While one said, “I’ll do it tomorrow,” the other said, “There is no tomorrow.”
self check-out
Guess which one you’re reading.
Brace yourself. This may come as a surprise.
I’m a little high-strung.
The only gray in my life is on my head when I miss my salon appointment. I’m black and white—and read all over. Considered by some to be entertaining as well.
Although I may look super cool, my nature is type A. Prone to burnout, breakdowns and digestive issues.
Last post you read about how I drive with intention. You may have detected an urgency in other posts too, and you probably will again.
Live now. We’re not getting any younger. Get those ducks in a row. Just do it. Today, please.
When taken to extremes, our strengths look a lot like weaknesses. So I’m learning with age, motherhood, circumstances, my husband’s encouragement, and God’s gentle prodding to cool it. Take my foot off the gas pedal once in a while. Give myself and the rest of the world a break.
As much as I hate it, things spin out of my control.
Okay. Things were never in my control in the first place.
Pacing doesn’t come easy. But with practice and God’s grace, it’s possible to slow down. To actively wait and rest. As I heard the pastor say in yesterday’s sermon, “The invitation is to trust.”
One of my favorite quotes is from writer John Steinbeck. “Don’t worry about losing,” he said. “If it is right, it happens. The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.”
God has a good plan for you and me. He’s the driver. Nothing we do or don’t do stands in His way. God’s plan will be accomplished in spite of us.
tick-tock
Time to rest on that.
And I am certain that God, Who began the good work within you, will continue His work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns. Philippians 1:6 NLT
The state of North Carolina may have been the first to grant me a license, but I learned to drive in Chicago.
There you better get up and go or you’re going to be run over. They drive at breakneck speeds. Play chicken turning left at intersections. Dodge thousands of pedestrians and maniacal taxis.
Had to take it down a notch when we moved to St. Louis. Some folks there drive fast, only that’s not the real issue. The daredevil maneuver of drivers in the Lou is gunning it through red lights.
See yellow? In St. Louis, that means speed up. Like a bull rushing the matador in anticipation of red.
For the most part, Wichita drivers are safe drivers. They seem to take it easy. Five or ten miles below the speed limit easy.
A new friend I’ve made here is another big city transplant. Like me, she’s adjusting to the Wichita crawl. Her explanation for the slow driving is that it only takes 15 minutes to get anywhere in Wichita, so why hurry?
One morning I pulled out of the carpool line to see my friend’s SUV a few cars up on the road. The light turned green and we bolted through.
My Chicagoan stirred. “C’mon. You can take her!”
20 mph
Chrissie Hynde belted out Middle of the Road on Sirius XM 80s on 8. I knew my friend was listening to the same station in her starship. We built this city on rock and roll.
“Let’s see what you got,” I said under my breath. Me and Cranberry Mary versus her and Silver Fox.
We zoomed around the curve at Hawker Beechcraft. Ducked into the tunnel beside the airfield and whoosh! Out like rockets.
Cruised the four-lane drag down Central. Into the great, wide open. Cranberry and Silver, streaks across suburbia.
It all came to an end when I turned off north toward my house. “Until next time, Silver Fox,” I said as she disappeared into a cloud of cosmic dust.
starship
Two corporate wives. Multiple relocations. Baptized in the guerrilla warfare of city driving in concrete jungles. Set free to roam in slick SUVs on flat stretches of Kansas highway. Wind them up and watch them go.
Truth be told, we were probably clocking 45 in a 40 tops. With everyone else driving 30, we may as well been flying supersonic jets.
We weren’t behaving recklessly or irresponsibly. We were coming home from carpool for goodness sakes.
And we weren’t knowingly racing either. At least she wasn’t.
My days are swifter than a runner;
they flee away; they see no good. Job 9:25 ESV
Fasten your seat belts and coast on into the weekend with J.J. Fad and Supersonic. The S is for super and the U is for unique!
While you enjoyed a little Moon Walk, the SOPA deal got me thinking. Is this blog in danger of infringing copyright and trampling intellectual property?
I scoured the images in all 146 published posts of everyday epistle, confirming permissions and source attributions for the handful of photos I didn’t take myself.
Scrapped a few. Replaced others, some with my own pictures. Like this striking candid of an Angry Bird I snapped for The Lost Art of Tying Shoes.
Celebrities are more complicated. For this blog, I figure covers of books, albums and movies are legit under fair use. So are publicity photos celebrities post of themselves on their own sites, as well as most logos.
However, I am left wondering about the images of The Bangles and Kurt Cobain in Murder by Muzak, Jackie Kennedy in High-Rise Jeans, and Vivien Leigh in Wichita. Ever see those names in the same sentence before? Me neither.
Rose the Riveter
Are they public domain? Would my use of them be considered fair use? I’m not sure, but they’re staying put for the time being.
Comic book characters were deleted (Boo!), except for the picture I took of Wonder Woman at MAC Cosmetics for American Beauty.
I don’t want to step on someone else’s copyright any more than I want them to step on mine. I don’t want to go back to school for a law degree either.
This blog has been scrubbed clean-er. Not perfect, but better. My, there is so much to learn.
Teach me to do Your will,
for You are my God.
May Your gracious Spirit lead me forward
on a firm footing. Psalm 143:10 NLT
Correction tastes like medicine. One more spoon of Cough Syrup now…
Advice is welcomed in the comments. Commiserating, empathizing, disagreeing,
high-fiving and general discussion is fine too.
Back in the day, I casually practiced yoga. It was easy then.
The asanas, or poses, were akin to warmup stretches I’d done for years cheerleading. My body was young. My muscles were flexible. Life was good.
That was before I carried a child in my womb for nine months, gave birth to him, then proceeded to sacrifice my body in all manner of ways to raise him into the fine, young first grader he is today.
One can only run on the fumes of a good fitness history for so long. Years of stress, changes and parenting begin to show.
Junk in the trunk. Bowl full of jelly. A little waddle here or there.
So when we arrived in Wichita, our family joined the YMCA. The Ys here are impressive and affordable. We needed to get into shape. It was destiny.
bouquet
Went to my first yoga class last Friday.
I sweated. I stumbled. I noticed I how badly I need a pedicure.
I struggled to breathe as the instructor lead our class into the 30th chaturanga dandasana of the hour. Good push-ups gone bad.
When yoga instructors give the command to do some New Age visualization, feel the energy bands, look to the inner flame or whatever, I talk to God instead.
At one point last Friday, I feared I was going to meet Him.
The instructor was trying to kill me. A pencil-thin, pretzel-like assassin intent on carrying out yogini’s revenge. Downward, dog.
When the class was over, an older gentleman who had labored alongside me approached the instructor. “Great class,” he said. “I’m glad I got to see it.”
Then the woman behind me spoke up. “There’s a beginner’s class tomorrow morning,” she said. “We go slow and take it nice and easy. You’ll be with a bunch of other people who are learning.”
coming unrolled
A remedial class?!
Use it or or lose it. Reap what you sow. Law of the land. Ah, but there is another law at work.
The yin and yang? The swinging pendulum? The circle of life? Hardly.
Grace is at work.
Grace spoke Saturday morning in the company of beginners. “Hold this pose if you want and can. Or not if you don’t. This is the Y. We’re not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do.”
Easy does it. One step at a time.
We drop the ball. Wreck the train. Make a chocolate mess. Waddle here or there.
“Pick it up and try again,” says Grace. “I’ll help you.”
Namaste, Grace. Namaste.
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. Romans 8:1-2 NIV
Namaste is a friendly greeting between people when they meet. Derived from Sanskrit, it literally means “bow me to you” translated as “I bow to you”… In other words, when one says “Namaste” to another it means “I salute or recognize your presence or existence in society and the universe.”wikipedia.org
When I started blogging, I didn’t know what I was doing. Still don’t in many ways.
barking dog as seen at Williams-Sonoma
Everyday Q&A was an attempt to let you in on what I was learning so you could learn too. We’re all in this together.
Time for Q&A II. A sequel about comments and sharing.
Q: Should I comment?
A: Yes, but only if you want to. Comments are always appreciated and always optional.
Q: What should I write?
A: Whatever you like within the bounds of good taste and discretion.
Q: What if I make a mistake or change my mind after it’s posted?
A: Contact me at everyday epistle at att dot net if you need me to change or remove your comment. I will be happy to oblige. A word of caution: once it’s out there, it’s out there.
Q: Huh?
A: As best I can understand, web browsers like Google periodically store content in caches.
If Google caches a post before a comment’s removed or changed, that comment may show up in a search even after it’s removed or changed, at least until Google crawls around again to cache the revised version.
A: Use whatever name you want. One friend uses an anagram and another uses an alias. Seriously.
Q: Why would they do that?
A: Remember, once it’s out there, it’s out there. If you use your full name and someone like an employer, your significant other, or your mom searches, they very well may find you and your comment here.
stealing my identity bumper sticker
Q: Why do I have to give my email address?
A: Security. Your email address is not published on the blog. Only WordPress and I can see it.
A: Security again. Trying to keep the spammers at bay.
Q: How can I get my picture to show up beside my comment?
A: For WordPress, go to Gravatar and upload a photo there.
Q: Do you even read the comments?
A: Yes. I read them all. And I try to respond to them all. Dew drop inn to dialog.
Q: Should I share a post I like?
A: Yes, please. Word of mouth is the way this community grows.
Q: How do I share a post?
A: Go to the end of the post you want to share and click on the button for how you want to share it (Facebook, Twitter, email, print, WordPress reblog, Pinterest). WordPress may ask you some security questions to complete the share.
angel flag
Q: What happens when I share a post?
A: It will be shared by you in the outlet you chose. Your people will read what you liked and maybe like it too. And every time you share a post, an angel gets his wings. It’s a wonderful life!
And don’t forget to do good and to share with those in need. These are the sacrifices that please God. Hebrews 13:16 NLT
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