the right to bare arms (& legs)

~ or why I'd never make it as a fashion critic ~

Who wears short shorts? Apparently, not Michelle Obama.

I check Webmail every morning; more often than not, before I get to the correspondence, I am lured into reading the Yahoo "news" articles with their luridly promising titles. Consider them my surrogate for the tabloids I don't read at the grocery store. Well, what should be a hot topic today but the First Lady's right to bare legs. (The article was dated August 19, but I didn't see it there at midnight, so maybe the author did what I confess I sometimes do: begin something on one day, finish it on the next, post it with the original date, and voila! And no, sadly, I can't take credit for this post's title.)

The article was a huge disappointment, very tame. The conclusion? Mrs. Obama is fit, she's firm, and she's not being cheeky. So leave her be.

The article made further reference to a "furor" in February "that erupted after she went sleeveless in her official portrait." Take it from me, that link's a bum steer. It led me to expect to read about outrage or controversy over sleevelessness. Ah, you say, the author's using the other meaning of "furor," that of a fashionable craze. Anyway, you can barely tell that her outfit is sleeveless because there is an enormous red bow front and centre.

You'll recall that a few weeks ago, the media was all a-hype over Barack Obama's jeans. They're pants, people! As long as he keep'em up & on--unlike some past presidents--who cares?

I am so not a fashion maven.

So you can imagine how much I appreciated yesterday's piece by the Fashion Police, complete with photo gallery. The caption for the photo of Maria Sharapova read, "We're loving the shoes and dress, but we are questioning the choice of gold belt and bag." Seriously now. They're loving the dress??? Is it possible to say that with a straight face? It looks like an over-sized velveteen baseball t-shirt! Keep the belt and bag, I say; ditch the dress. "This is how you wear white," they rave over Rachel McAdams. I can't decide if it's a reference to her dress or her skin. Furthermore, I don't see a problem with females wearing pink over the age of 5. Especially if one of them is Jane Seymour. Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, you had to "man up" enough as Dr. Mike; you deserve to luxuriate in girly girl colors if you so desire. Have to admit, though, they got me with Denise Richards's "tanorexia syndrome" (chuckle, snort).

There, I've exhausted my fashion commentary. Now if you'll excuse me, it's off to reconstruct the friggin' PowerPoint file that I was developing yesterday, and which for some inexplicable reason did not save the last 45 minutes of my changes. I can assure you I am a diligent "saver"--I'm frequently Apple+S'ing (Ctrl+S for PC users) every few minutes as I go along. In fact, I'm pretty obsessive-compulsive about it. I cannot locate the AutoRecovery ".tmp" file either; believe me, I've looked (grumble, grumble, expletive, grumble). Back to the drawing board.

it takes a thief to catch a thief

Somehow, I don't think this was what they had in mind when they coined that phrase: "Man charged with stealing 130M credit card numbers in record identity theft."

In other Yahoo news (for those who don't get their Webmail there), I just want to take this opportunity to inform you that there is only one "u" in Iqaluit. Extremely important if you don't want to offend Nunavutians residing in the city formerly known as Frobisher Bay. In defence of writers, editors, and proofreaders everywhere, I want to point out that with the ever-expanding number of automated features in Microsoft Word, how does anyone know that it wasn't merely an overly eager autocorrect responsible for this fiasco? Yes, someone should have caught it. But seriously, have you dealt with anybody in federal government offices lately? (Other than my two or three exceedingly competent friends, I mean.)

garden of weedin'

And now it's time once again for the amateur gardener report...

I thought I'd tour you around the backyard to show you how things are progressing now that monsoon season's waning.

I took a few pictures last Tuesday (August 4). The soil in this corner of the backyard is so sandy beneath the thin layer of (crappy Ontario) topsoil that hardly any weeds grow there.

Tomatoes

Dahlias, marigolds, geraniums

My flowers are not pushing up the daisies yet. Confession: earlier this summer, I contemplated transplanting some of the wild daisies I saw by the side of the road along Strandherd. The 20-min. walk back home, in plain view of the traffic, with a fistful of flowers, dissuaded me. Not to mention the creepy-crawlies hiding in all that roadside growth. Only mention the word "grub" and I recoil. I don't do well with "slug" either.

A while ago, Ontario banned the use of pesticide. We find ourselves in a position similar to that of the last individual interviewed in the article. We like our yard (relatively) neat and tidy. James keeps the lawn nicely trimmed, and my job is weeding. I'm not obsessed with it, but I've been out there a couple of times with my amazing weed-picker. Yet for some inexplicable reason, the rest of our neighborhood would rather wallow in clover, thistles, and other pesky growing things I haven't yet positively identified.

Here's the view when we look down our back lane. It's easier to see where our lawn ends and carpet of chaos begins if you follow the line of the fence that separates us.

What's the market for clover like at the moment? Maybe our neighbors are growing it for cash crops. And who's to say that they aren't growing another kind of weed amongst the thistles under their decks? A little bit of extra income.

Except for the woman with the corner lot, everyone's letting their yards go au naturel. She hired landscapers this spring to put in trees and shrubs and an arbor. Their trucks were parked out front for days on end. She's a serious gardener; she told me she chose the black chain-link fence to let as much light in as possible. I like the look of the black, wrought-iron fences I've seen, but I think the men in our row units have decided to go with a wooden fence. Just as well, probably. It'll keep out the weeds.

Occasionally, the grass is not greener on the other side.

friends

Lots to celebrate concerning my friends these days.

Sandra, an Ottawa friend proud of her Prairie roots, won the bpNichol chapbook poetry award in June. Here she is in an interview being very articulate about Lift, her winning chapbook.

Congratulations to Shirley & Dave on the birth of their daughter Makayla. I had to find out the hard way...by snooping around Shirley's "Wall" in Facebook. As far as I can determine, the blessed event happened in late July. That's OK, I'm sure she would have told me sooner or later. I'll let the dust settle a bit before I contact her to see if she feels up to having company. Between her paid employment as a programmer and her second (unpaid) job as a farm wife and all that entails, Shirley has created a third position for herself: quilter extraordinaire. I guess she's just added "mother" and all the variations of that title to her résumé.

Congratulations to Tawny & Terry & big brother Logan (formerly known as Team T-Lo) who welcomed daughter & baby sister Lane to their family. (Does this mean they'll be known henceforth as Team T-LoLa? or T-squared L-squared?) I think Lane was born only a day or two ago. Tawny loves to sew, and many of her creative projects can be viewed at TawnyBee on Etsy.

Then there's Renée, who together with her husband Jerry decided to pack up their family for a missions spree. (Is that an oxymoron?) They're going to live among the limes, coconuts, frogs, and geckos for a year in their BelizeQuest. (A link to their blog now appears on the list below-left.) It'll be like Survivor, except without the flimsy shelters or voting people out. (I hope.) They won't have to concern themselves about scurvy, since it sounds like there's fresh fruit aplenty. Renée will have a chance to live her dream: being a kindergarten teacher. I've heard say that in her misspent youth, Renée once held a cousin of hers captive behind a makeshift desk in a poorly ventilated, top-floor room in the middle of a prairie-summer heatwave while she taught writing and arithmetic.

Paula, a friend ever since "The Lyric" honors seminar brought us together in our final undergrad year at UofM, has been out in the Ottawa area visiting her parents with her husband and two children. You may have heard me mention a friend who lost her sense of smell as a result of a childhood biking accident, and then regained it as an adult through craniosacral massage therapy. CTV Winnipeg broadcast a story on her recovery in 2003 or 2004 or thereabouts. Paula and I last saw each other about 12 years ago. I drove out to Arnprior to meet her, and we made a lovely afternoon of it: lunch with her family, then window-shopping at the local bookstore and gift shops (all the while dodging her aforementioned family), topped off by girly drinks (she and her white wine, me and my daiquiri) outdoors at Danny Mac's. Between running a daycare out of her home and taking counselling courses, Paula writes. A few weeks ago when we were planning how to meet up, she forwarded a handful of the most hilarious anecdotes. (I'm hoping she either starts a blog or that she'll allow me to post a few of her darling non-fiction moments.) So glad she found the time to see me.

"Make new friends and keep the old, one is silver and the other one's gold..." something Sally allegedly said and Christopher Cross recorded.

Anyway, here's to friends!

pie-eyed

I did something yesterday that I've never done before in my life: I made a pie. A peach pie. I took a photo just to prove it. Those of you who have been baking from the time you started kindergarten are shaking your heads at this moment and thinking this is so lame--that I am so lame. I agree. I don't know why I previously missed out on this rite of initiation. I don't know why it's taken me so long to get around to it. I know for certain I've baked blueberry tarts many times--with frozen tart shells purchased at Safeway, mind you. To tell you the truth, I guess I just never saw the point of making a pie of my very own. When I lived at home, my mom's culinary skills were superb; many of the roommates I had were also experts in the kitchen; when I met James, he was content with store-bought pies, and so the tradition continued for the last 10 years. I would rather spend my time on other things, so it's not as though I've been highly motivated to learn.

Thanks to Epp Peaches, all that changed. At least for a day.

It was a typical situation: I'm supposed to incorporate more fruit into my daily diet, and I found baskets of peaches on sale at Metro (the former Loeb). Two years ago, I had a brief but torrid affair with Epp nectarines. The peaches started turning on me a lot sooner.

I searched through my cookbooks: The Mennonite Treasury of Recipes, Country Kitchen Classics (REMC), Our Very Best (PVC, RFC, REMC), and Our Favorite Recipes (St. Vital EMC). I found recipes for blueberry pie, rhubarb pie, lemon meringue pie, banana cream pie, pumpkin pie, raisin pie, strawberry pie, even egg pie--but no peach pie. I was beginning to think that maybe Mennonites didn't eat peach pie, maybe I hadn't received an important bulletin that was supposed to have circulated. Until I found the "Peach of a Pie" recipe in Christian Fellowship Chapel's All Time Favorites. The problem was, it called for peach jello, and, well, you know...the whole "gelatin rhymes with skeleton" thing and all that.

If you were paying attention above, you already know this story has a happy ending. Fortunately, calling on my best friend Google yielded a flaky crust, a fruity filling, and even a fizzin' solution (actually quite a few solutions, but I used baking soda and dish detergent) to clean burnt sugar overspill off my baking pan.

I'm not going to admit how long it took me to put together the pie crusts and scald & skin the peaches. And I didn't even flute the crust edges. I'll just say that now I know why people usually bake multiple pies at a time. Mind you, I only have the one pie plate. Ultimately, I'm just happy that it didn't go up in flames. Unlike that torte I once made...

So I challenge you to do one thing this week (or month, if you need a bit more time to gear up to it) that you've never done before. Then share it with me.

I wanna know if it's as easy as pie.