WHAT DID YOU SAY?

???

The Do Not Call Registry notwithstanding, both my husband and I get too many robocalls. Because many of the seniors in our community have kept their out-of-state phone numbers, we can’t always ignore calls from numbers we don’t recognize. Oh yes we could let it go to voicemail, but then we have to go and listen to the voicemail and clear it out. So we answer the calls, listen to the beginning of the spiel.

We get offers of free trips, calls to sell us things like health insurance, new windows for our home, and car repair coverage. We ain’t interested. Then there are those that tell us they are from "your credit card company." Oh, really? Ain’t interested. We end the call.

But yesterday morning there came a call that was amazing. It was an 800 number. That was really unusual, but when I flipped open my phone and listened (yes, Warren Buffet and I still have flip phones) I heard a woman speaking Chinese. Chinese? Mandarin, or Cantonese, I couldn’t tell you, but the inflection made me guess it was Chinese. I can count from one to ten in Chinese, but that’s just something I learned, and probably remembered incorrectly, from childhood.

Why would we be getting robocalls in Chinese? Anyway, it’s all Greek to me.

EVENING GOWNS - RE-DRESSED

I was searching for a picture that I knew I'd used once on my blog. In going through the blog archive, I was delighted to see all the pictures collected there over the last nine years or so. I stopped at several pictures, remembering the article that went with that picture. I'm amazed at how many articles there were - the count tells me it stands at 699 - this will be 700.

My eye lingered on the pictures of the evening gowns - I do love elegant evening gowns. I'll never an occasion to wear them, but I'd love to have a collection of some of the most elegant.  I'm reprising the article that goes with the luscious pink Yves Saint Laurent number below.

The Lovely Brooke Shields -
looking stunning as always at a recent MMA gala

 The article from December 2012: Evening Gowns, the nuns, and My Mom --

Vintage YSL

 After one of my piano lessons, eons ago in the early 50’s, I listened to my Mom and my piano teacher, one of the nuns at my school, talk about evening gowns. Even as I listened I thought it fascinating, and when I was older I came to realize that those gals, those nuns, were savvy creatures. They were devout but not ‘holy, holy’, and they were a bunch of women who had to get along together. They were also a bunch of women with wide interests outside of the classroom.  Wearing the same medieval habit every day was equalizing, and it gave them a keen appreciation for fashion. One of their favorite days of the year was New Year’s Eve. In the early to middle part of the last century there was always a “midnight” mass,  the exact timing of which I wish I knew: right on the strike of twelve mass-goers would have missed the kissing and the Auld Lang Syne. On New Year’s Eve, Sister was telling my Mom, the nuns made sure to be at mass to see all the evening gowns – sort of like an Easter Parade, but with gorgeous gowns and furs – and they would be the topic of convent conversation for days to come.



A simple, slinky Ralph Lauren number

I remember a gown my Mom made in my senior year. It was a strapless floor length white satin “underdress”. I could wear it alone, with or without the various colored hooked-in straps and sashes, and the stoles she made in both red and purple velvet. I could wear the gown with the sheer lavender voile overdress, trimmed in purple velvet. That dress was my senior prom dress. Sleeveless with sort of an over top like a bolero – trimmed in the purple. (I just spent about a half an hour looking for the ad from 1959-60 – I think it was from Modess sanitary napkins… “Modess because” – and saw a lot of great, nostalgic ads, but not the dress!) Anyway, the underdress could also be basted up and then she made an overdress of white voile curtain fabric, the edges were embroidered in a flowery, scalloped edge. So I could wear the underdress hemmed – or! she pulled the whole thing up into a gathered rose she basted in, and I could wear it with the velvet sashes and with or without straps she snapped in. My sister wore the underdress that year with the red velvet for her junior prom and to several occasions in her senior year too. I don’t think either of us ever wore it the same way twice. Oooo, and I don’t have even one picture of either of us in the dress in any of its various permutations. I tell you, my mother was on a roll that year. Well, she was on a roll every year – you can read about more of her sewing in my post A Material Thing.

Love that gown! And, of course, you know that's a young Ted Danson backed up  against that refrigerator. I've had this ad for eons in my special scrapbook. And the Aramis was the one worn by a then special "beau" of mine. Oh, the memories!

After finishing my blog on The Coat of Many Colors, I got to thinking about all the fabulous gowns I’d seen and loved over the years.  I do love evening gowns. I’ve never had much occasion to wear them once I was past my prom years, but I’ve always had an eye for the elegant ones. Over the years I subscribed to Vogue I pulled out several pages of gowns I’d love to have had. I still have several pasted in my own special scrapbook, ready to be scanned in for this posting. I look at them today and to my way of thinking they’re still in style.

Another page from my special scrap book - This black silk brocade number is by Sophie.

If you have oodles of time you can get your fill of gorgeous creations from decades of designing just by googling ‘evening gowns’, or something like ‘red evening gowns’ under Google Images.  Be ready to sit a spell.

BRAIN FADE

Ah! Saturday morning! You thought I forgot to write a blog yesterday. Guess what – I did!  I also forgot that I had a meeting to attend yesterday afternoon, and it threw off my inner schedule because I was concentrating on a reception I had to attend in the evening.

To my horror, there were several times last night when I absolutely lost my train of thought, or blanked out on the word I needed. Thinking about it in bed last night, I felt I should email some of the people with whom I was talking and ask if I can have a do-over. I’m thinking, hoping, that probably none of them noticed my problem. I surely did.

An email this morning from my Canadian correspondent jogged my memory. Is something going ‘round? We’re both fairly sharp tacks when it comes to brainwork, but both of us are suffering from memory woes. And both of us are in a position where, as she said, “since mine is the default memory in this house, if it gets damaged or disappears for any reason, we'll be up Crap Creek without a paddle.” The long term memory is there – it’s the short term memory that’s faltering in the short term. 

As my pal said, it’s probably just the result of “massive overwhelm” right now, and she is much more overwhelmed than I am. But while it is going on, it is really disturbing. I suppose it’s a good thing we’re mindfully aware of it, otherwise we’re really be losing our minds.

It’s still early in the a.m., and I’ve got the first proof of February’s community magazine to scrutinize today. I’m glad the cloudy, cold weather is cooperating to keep me inside.

I was searching for an image to go with this post, and I came upon this one under “brain fade.” It is from the New Atlas website, and the article is titled “Brain Fade? Your neurons may be taking a power nap.” That’s it!

 

My brain is taking a power nap - I hope!

EARWORMS FROM MY CHILDHOOD

                

It seems as though I’ve always got an earworm going ‘round in my head. I blogged about them in February of 2015. I’ve had dozens of them since then. Before my current musical number, it was a song from Funny Girl. This week it’s a ditty from my childhood: “The Animal Fair.”

I went to the animal fair.

The birds and the bees were there.

The old baboon, by the light of the moon,

Was combing his auburn hair.

The monkey he got drunk and

Stepped on the elephant’s trunk.

The elephant sneezed

And fell on his knees, and

That was the end of the monk – poor monk!

   And that was the end of the monk.

There may be different words, but that’s how I remember it. I wonder what ditties my grandchildren will remember and have as ear worms in their heads. Sometimes I’ll sing a silly one to them, or recite a nonsense verse, and they just look at me as though I’ve gone starkers.

Eenie meenie – titsie teenie

Ooo – gah – gahgoleenie

Achey, pachey, googa-lachey

Out goes Y-O-U!

And what ever happened to Mairzy Doats?

MAKING A LIST - CHECKING IT TWICE

This morning's news brought dozens of pictures of the world's New Year celebrations.
My favorite is this one of the London Eye. Wow!
  They guy who orchestrated all this is a bloody genius.

Happy New Year to all of you. This holiday season has been a happy, busy one for me. More so than in recent years, I've had a bit more of the holiday spirit - and yesterday I got into the spirit of the new year and a new plan. 

I just read an article about why it's so hard for women over 50 to lose weight - I've been struggling with my weight for eons, and what I read in the article was quite familiar to me: count the calories, exercise more, get better sleep. Yeah, I hear you. So in this time of resolutions - re-solutions - and starting over, I am going to give self-improvement another try. Come to think of it, I've never before used the turn over of the year as a starting point. We'll have to see how it works for me. 

So - first things first - I started two lists. One list is for several of the little nit-picky jobs that need to be done around here. Home Improvement.  For example, I've got to vacuum out every drawer in the kitchen - not to organize then and discard the useless stuff, I keep them fairly neat and tidy, but to clear out all the crumbs and other detritus (I love that word!) that have fallen in there. You could bread a piece of chicken with all those crumbs.

The other list is to keep me on track for my own better health. Self Improvement.  On Boxing Day, my three youngest granddaughters  were weighing themselves on my scale. Jillian, 8, weighs 40; Jenna, 10, weighs 60; Jordan, 12, weighs 106 pounds. I weigh much, much more than their weights combined. I made a quick poster of their weights to put on my refrigerator to remind me of that. I have got to, got to, get some of this weight off. I absolutely know I'd feel better. 

LOL - the other thing I did for me was to throw out the half-used, largest size, jar of peanut butter. PB&J sandwiches are my indulgence, my "what the heck, I'm going to have a PB&J even though I realize it's bad for me but I want one" indulgence. When I get a bit of the "why me's" I'll even go in and scoop out a big dollop to savor. No more dollops, no more snacks. 

As I said, we'll see. 

2018 was a very interesting year - 2019 promises to be the same. Elizabeth Warren (she has my vote) has already announced her candidacy, many (maybe too many) will follow soon. Did you realize that the debates for the 2020 elections begin this June? Yes, it will be an interesting year. Meanwhile, I hope it is a happy, healthy, busy year for all my followers.