When I was a teenager, one of my favorite movies to watch with friends was Rocky Horror Picture Show – it was silly and weird and just on the right side of scandalous. Huge fans of musical theatre, my best friends and I knew all the words by heart and would unabashedly belt them out while zipping to the mall to wander around and buy literally nothing. Our favorite song was the Time Warp (no originality there. But we were 15…).
You know the old cliche, the Grass is Always Greener? Well, never is this more true than when peeping at another vintage lover’s wardrobe. No matter how much you love your closet, your eye can’t help but wander to the next wardrobe over and start gawping at the covetable, lush contents within…
There are a lot of funny ideas you get in your head as a kid – things you absorb that you don’t realize you’ve carried into adulthood. We all have them – we follow a certain family code, abide by rules of our social group, and accept certain ideas as fact (until we become old enough to question them). We also randomly assign certain aspirational characters that make perfect sense to an 11-year-old brain, but certainly bears re-examination years later…
When I was a kid, I remember getting to watch the Wizard of Oz each year – I can’t remember which aunt’s house marked the annual occasion, but I can still feel the carpet on my elbows as I propped myself up, the excited butterflies that would come a-flutterin’ when the MGM lion would roar at the start of the film, and the brave face I would (un)successfully put on any time the witch would appear (all I can say is, she had some serious unresolved anger management issues).
Ever hear the phrase, “If you want the rainbow, you’ve got to put up with the rain”? Never has this been more true than the strange world we currently find ourselves in. Between important protests worldwide, quarantine, murder hornets, and sandstorms, the world feels like it’s experiencing some important long-overdue changes, coupled with apocalyptic catastrophe. I feel we are somehow both barreling forward and standing completely still. I guess this is the very definition of the rain before the rainbow….
My husband, Mr. Dressed, is a champion gift giver. Truth be told, he stresses about it before every birthday and holiday, but the man has skills. He will occasionally pull something from my wishlist, but more often than not he will brave the cyber streets and find something I never even knew I needed. He’s amazing at pushing me out of my comfort zone or finding a stunning vintage piece that reminds me of just how well he knows me.
Sometimes, I swear I see the world around me like a kind of Rorschach test. You know – the psychological ink blot tests that ask you to describe what you see in a series of swirls and smudges? We do this all the time – people seeing faces in a piece of burnt toast, getting frightened by a pile of clothes out of the corner of your eye that looks like an intruder, or laying on your back in the middle of a field, staring up at the clouds and suddenly seeing creatures created from cumulous before your eyes.
I think it’s always important to be proud of the things you do well – either from an inherent skill or years of practice, there is no harm in patting yourself on the back. It’s just as important to acknowledge the things you do not excel at. Come on, we all have them. The things that, no matter how hard we try or how many books we read or YouTube videos we memorize, it’s just never gonna happen.
I’ve noticed an interesting trend lately in the wake of the coronavirus. Now that we’re rounding the corner on a month+ of social distancing (I just did the math and realized I’ve hit 6 weeks of not leaving my house. Holy isolation Batman!), I think we’re all feeling a different kind of stress. The first part was rife with panic – we all went into crisis mode, trying to find our footing in these new circumstances. But, now there’s a new kind of fear: coping with the fact that this is our new normal and likely will be for awhile…
I don’t know about the rest of you, but days have certainly lost all meaning. I wake up and it takes a good 5 minutes to even know what day it is. It’s funny to think about this same time last year. The buds were just starting to break into flowers. The end of the semester was in sight, with thoughts of summertime looming. Nowadays, I’ve got lots of buds blooming in my sewing room, but not a lot of places to wear them. The end of the semester can’t come fast enough, but mostly because I’m exhausted at feeling…