OmegaMom

So a few days ago, I was majorly bummed that the Hanna Andersson clothes on sale were all sold out.

And Lizard (an old internet buddy of mine, whose dotter E. is six months younger than OmegaDotter) commented saying she lived near the HA outlet store and maybe we could work something out…

A few emails later, and now she is all set to do some vicarious shopping.

Booyah!  And woot!

Of course, this all assumes the dotter will like the dresses.  This is not guaranteed, which is why I was so hot-to-trot in regards to the sale prices.  I’m more than willing to experiment with the kiddo’s tastes when I’m spending $19, but not willing when it comes to a $50 price tag.

Just so everyone knows, I am still keeping track of the Ongoing Saga of the Global Financial Meltdown.  I note that (a) Bush is saying that Paulson’s blank check for another $350 billion is not going to be spent in this administration thankyewverramuch (thus pushing it off onto Obama’s watch), (b) today’s news is that GM is not going to get a bailout (but that could change at the drop of a hat), (c) Goldman Sachs has a research note out that says that GDP could shrink (that would be decline) by up to 7.8% this quarter, (d) and recent photos of Obama show that his touch-o-grey has expanded rather rapidly in my opinion.  I have asked my boss to send me a copy of my resume (I only have an extremely out-of-date hard copy from my files) so I can update it and have it on hand; there is no specific news to warrant this, aside from the fact that the state I work for is currently $700 million in the hole.  However, everywhere I turn on the ‘nets, I hear from this person or that person that they know someone (or a spouse or parent or offspring) who has been laid off.

There was this heap of magazines and catalogs and things (*ahem* bills *ahem*) that I hadn’t looked at for about a week.  I needed some reading material in the library, so grabbed the catalogs.  There was a Hanna Andersson catalog.  It was a dress sale.  They had their “It’s a Playdress/It’s a Daydress” on sale at $19!!!

Woot!  And holy moly!  I haven’t seen a price that good on pd/dds ever!

And I still had a day for the sale!

Double woot!

So I sashayed down to the office, pulled up the Hanna Andersson website, and took a look.

And now I’m bummed.

Because they’re all sold out in bigger sizes.

Wah.

I was so ready to drop a whole bunch of money on some of those dresses for the dotter.

Anyway, those of you with kids in smaller sizes might be interested; it’s a really good deal.  I’ll just sit here and sulk.

Le Petit Coop, c’est fini!  Woot!  The silkies are in their new home; Fluff is out of the bathtub in the downstairs bathroom (yay!) and Puff is out of her jail cell in the garage.

We are regularly getting three eggs a day.

I am planning for OmegaDotter to fund our retirement with the proceeds from egg sales.

(Hah.  I just looked at the returns for my Fidelity 2020 investment fund, and it’s off 25% since the beginning of the year.  We’re gonna need those egg sales.)

Speaking of finances (dontcha love that segue?), the score is currently:  Lehman Brothers filed bankruptcy.  The Dow Jones dropped 504 points.  Lynch America is going strong.  Reserve has frozen a money market fund for seven days (this has only happened once before).  AIG is currently begging the U.S. government for an $80 billion “bridge loan”; otherwise it will file for bankruptcy tomorrow, sayeth the press.  Just FYI, AIG is a trillion dollar business.  (Whoa, breaking news:  Wall Street Journal says AIG is going to get that loan and be put under government control…”The Federal Reserve is considering an $85 billion rescue for embattled American International Group that could leave the government in control of the firm, according to people familiar with the matter, though the structure of a deal remains unclear.”)  The Russian stock market was closed after it plunged 17% in a day.

Let’s look back on those days of yore, when the savings and loan crisis cost the U.S. $500 billion dollars.  Remember those?

Let’s talk about the Glass-Steagall Act.  This was enacted in 1933, established the FDIC, and forbade banks from providing investment services, in an attempt to keep banks from speculation that would drive them to bankruptcy.  Phil Gramm (currently a senior financial advisor for the McCain campaign) sponsored the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1998, which fully repealed Glass-Steagall.  President Clinton signed it into law, so it was a non-partisan clusterfuck.  And now we have Lynch America, Lehman Brothers in bankruptcy, and a $1 trillion dollar company dangling by a thread.  Oh, well.

Some other chickens that have come home to roost are my various jeans purchases.

Alas, I must have measured incorrectly; all of them are too big.  The custom Lands End jeans fit the best, but they are still too big.  I am sufficiently pleased with the shape of the fit to try again, fiddling with the measurements and changing from a waist-high rise to a mid-rise pant.  We shall see.  The Gap jeans were way too big and I am returning them.  I think I will find a local seamstress and have the Nordstrom black jeans taken in.

I have truly been tied to the computer these past few days, watching the financial services sector go kablooie.  Things have been happening at an incredibly rapid pace.  I don’t know whether to be fascinated or appalled or both…

Score so far:

Gap curvy jeans, size 14:  too big.  Way too big.  Off to return them and ask for a smaller size.

Nordstrom’s Not Your Daughter’s Jeans, size 14:  Fit perfectly in upper thighs/hips, too big in waist.  Have washed, will see what happens; will probably end up going to a seamstress/tailor in town and getting them taken in.

Still waiting on the Land’s End made-to-fit jeans, but those are supposed to take about a month (a month?!).

Aside from that–we went to the State Fair yesterday, with tickets to the rodeo.  It rained.  The dotter was a pill.  After a few hours, I ended up telling OmegaDad and OmegaDotter that I would have more fun back in the car.  So there.  So I went back to the car.  OmegaDad Had Another Talk with the dotter (the “I would have more fun back in the car” was my result to a very grudging forced “I’m sorry” from the dotter as the result of the first Having A Talk).  Both OmegaDad and I said that if she didn’t shape up, we were going to forego going to the State Fair next year.

The rain was followed by fog this morning.  This is actually very rare in our neighborhood, but I remember it from last fall.

The birch trees’ leaves are already turning yellow and starting to fall off the trees.

Sunset is now at 9:30 p.m., sunrise at 6:35 a.m.; a great galloping loss of light.

The end result of this weekend is that I’m bummed.  Wah.

So, let’s see:

Mamasan and Anne suggested Gloria Vanderbilt.  Mamasan also suggested low- or mid-rise jeans, which Wendy, Anne,  and Mrs. Figby seconded.  There were a trio of mentions of “Not Your Daughter’s Blue Jeans” from Nordstrom’s (Noreen, Carol Anne, and Anne), and a couple of mentions of the “curvy” jeans at the Gap (LisaC and an email).

So I decided to try one of the NYDJ’s from Nordstrom’s, one of the curvy’s from the Gap, and one of Lands End’s custom jeans.  Much to my horror, my measurements plopped me into a size 14, since you’re supposed to be ordering by the hip size mostly.  Aaaaccccckkkkk!  I halfway expect them to arrive and fit perfectly through the hips and–as usual–gape like crazy at the waist.  Or maybe just not fit at all–either being too tight or being too loose.  We shall see.

Why am I doing all this?  Well, to be honest, I just hate trying on clothes.  I can handle about an hour, and then I go batshit crazy, start foaming at the mouth, chewing the walls in the dressing room, feeling like ants are crawling all over my skin, and turning into Uber Bitch.  What’s worse is when I do that and there’s no payoff:  Nothing fits, I don’t like any of the jeans I’ve tried on, or there’s a great pair of jeans that just happens to be half an inch too tight, and none of that model in my size.

It’s just an exercise in frustration and aggravation to me.  So I am seeking out the Holy Grail on the intertubes.

(Waving “Hi!” to Wendy and Anne, who delurked.)

As for readership, as one of my long-time readers noted in an email, my RSS feed shows the whole post, and I’d get more hits if I switched to a partial feed.  Now is when we edge close to an ethical question:  Do I provide convenience for my readers (whole-post feed) or do I provide a much-needed ego-boo (partial-post feed prompting click-throughs)?  And the fact that my ego-boo would also provide views on my BlogHer ads is additional ethical fodder.  I happen to know of some people who claim that as soon as a blogger they read switches to partial posting, they immediately drop their subscription as a matter of principle.

The whole readership question is pure narcissism anyway.  It’s a revealing chink in my oh-so-bluff self-confident armor that the drop has made me stick out my lower lip and whimper, “Why is everyone going away?!  Don’t they like me any more?!”  At these times, I have to sit myself down and talk sternly:

“Self.  Quit being a whiner.  You know damned well why your hits have dropped, and it’s called ‘not updating your blogging software and pissing off Google’.”

::sniff::  “But I’m not suuuure!  Maybe it’s not that!  Maybe it’s because I’m getting boring in my old age!  Maybe what I think is good writing, or fun stuff, just plain isn’t, and it’s all been ‘pity’ reading, and they’re just clicking through because they’re sorry for me, and I know they’re all talking behind my back and laughing at me!“ 

Segue into my Self curling up in a quivering heap in the corner of the bedroom and having serious flashbacks to the anguishing angst that is “being a nerd in high school”.  I begin speaking even more sternly:

“Girl, get a grip!  You know that Google blacklisted oodles of blogs who hadn’t upgraded, because Teh Hackers were siphoning off Google search results and gaming the system with invisible SEO terms.  Your Google hits are beginning to pick up again, slowly but surely.”

Self just rocks and moans and nervously curls hair around a finger.  This is difficult, because I have short hair, but Self does it somehow.  This is also a flashback to high school, when I had hair halfway down my back, but the hair beside my face was always filled with split ends and half of it was broken off around chin length because of the constant hair twisting.

BUT!  There is always a “but”:  I’ve read about three or four other bloggers whimpering about readership lately, and they seem like hawt, trendy, interesting gals to me, so maybe it’s all a function of summertime.

At which, Self pops open a suspicious eye, peers at me, and decides that possibly–just possibly–I might be right and Self can come out of the semi-catatonic state and focus on more important things, like the fact that Crayola 24-pack crayons were a smokin’ 49 cents each at the local store, along with other good deals, so the back-to-school shopping was not as frenzy-making as it could have been…

I need reader feedback on this one, puh-leeze!

I have a Victorian figure, relatively slender on top, a well-defined waist, a natural bustle (”I’ve got a big butt, and I cannot lie!”) and wide thighs.  And I’m short.  But not quite short enough to be classified as a “petite” for pants and jeans.  Anyway, almost any time I purchase something that fits me through the butt and thighs, it has a waist that gapes like a fish.

So I’m thinking of trying out custom jeans.

Much to my dismay, after investigation it turns out that the top two most interesting online sites (myjeans.com and makeyourownjeans.com) are…well, let’s just say they have lots of dissatisfied customers.  Then there’s LandsEnd and JC Penney’s versions…Penney’s are less expensive, but they both seem to use the same approach to fitting.

My old jeans are all beginning to wear out; we’re talking “please, please O Kozmik All, please let these jeans not split beside the seams or have that small hole above the back pocket suddenly rip asunder while I’m at the back-to-school picnic!”  I desperately need new jeans.  Also, I need new (bigger, sigh) jeans that fit.

Anyway, I want to hear from YOU.  Yes, YOU.  Have any of my readers tried any custom jeans purchases online?  What were your experiences?  Satisfying?  Not satisfying?  Horrible experience?  Great experience?

(Actually, I’d like to hear from YOU whether you’ve tried it or not; OmegaMom has suddenly jumped up a bit in subscribership, while still lagging in hits, so I’d just like folks to de-lurk and say “Hi!”)

I have always admired the smooth, sleek elegance of French braids, but they intimidated me.  Surely something that looks so…classic…must be difficult to do.  So when I had long hair, I contented myself with (occasionally) doing regular braids, and merely wisted from afar at more snazzy dos.

Then the dotter arrived in our life.  For the first few years, her hair was too short.  Then, when it became longer, it was the central point of the Hair Drama, in which mere combing became torture for both of us.

Somewhere along the line, we both learned how to cope with the hair combing, and suddenly it was no longer torture.  And her hair was long.  New vistas of hair fiddling opened up before me, and I was able to rediscover basic braids, variations on ponytails, buns, and twists.

But still, French braids seemed an arcane art.  In her preschool, the dotter had one teacher who was adept at French braids, and she would occasionally arrive home with her hair sleeked into the lovely style.  I would admire and ooh and ahh, and secretly seethe with jealousy that Miss R. (who was young and cute and perky and beloved by the dotter) also had this feminine mystery down pat.

I tried once, following a how-to from the internet, and it looked clumsy and messy.  My plan was to keep practicing, but there was never time in the evenings–when an hour or so spent dealing with frustration would seem okay.  And then the dotter had the incident with the bubble gum, and her hair was shorn, and there was a hiatus on hair-fiddling.

But now her hair has grown out again, very suddenly seeming long enough to do things with.  We’ve been doing ponytails and basic braids again, and one of her camp counselors sent her home one day with a French braid.  So I decided this evening to try again.

As you can see, it’s not “smooth, sleek, and elegant”.  The part is ragged.  The hair joins are rumply and fumbled.

And her bangs, which she is determined to grow out, are every which way.

BUT…it’s a start.  She liked it, and wouldn’t let me take them out and re-do them.  Somewhere along the line, I suddenly realized how to grab the new hair without getting my fingers tangled up, and it became easier.  Once I get the finger movements down, then I can concentrate on making it smooth.  And then I can try a one-braid design.  Or two braids merging into one.

The dotter, by the way, was thoroughly engrossed in Hann@h M0ntana on YouTube, a rare treat.  We now have a movie of her dancing to “The Best of Both Worlds”, which, alas, is stuck on the other camera, because I can’t seem to find the proper USB cord, and can’t find the third camera to dump the memory chip into (we do have the proper USB cord for the other two cameras, but the second camera, which I have the cord to, uses the other kind of memory chip…wasn’t all of this supposed to be easy and plug-n-play?).