MY BOGGY BLOG: find your way through the murk

"Decade Wear"

This week is homecoming at the high school, and DD told me *this morning* that it's Decade Wear Day-- dress up in styles from some other decade, pick a decade folks, any decade.

First she was asking about the 90s. What did people wear in the 90s. Well, that's a puzzler. I lived through it recently and I really couldn't tell ya. The twins were born in '91, so for me the 90's involved a lot of comfy t-shirts and sweatshirts that always managed to get spit-up or food or dirt stains on them because I had little kids. It's hard to think of the 90s as a decade you could "look back on" and dress up like.

Now the 80s and 70s I have a better idea of, having been younger and more fashion conscious at those ages. I wouldn't want to dress like the 80s at all, but the 70s had their moments.

But if you dressed up like the 70s for Decade Day, nobody would really be able to tell you weren't just dressing in today's fashion. So many of those clothes are totally back in style now.

So, Super Mom fashioned a complete outfit for DD in less than 10 minutes-- all done on no coffee and while getting the rest of the school stuff together. After thinking a minute, I remembered the 50s were an easy decade to dress in, and I think I'd done it myself back in high school. She had rolled up jeans on, borrowed a white button-down shirt from her dad to wear over the jeans, put her hair in a high pony-tail with a scarf tied around it, and dark red lipstick. Ta da!

Maybe I'll have to Google 90s fashions and see what comes up-- or what everyone else was wearing during that decade.

Recent Observations

Just a few things that have sprung into my mind lately:

--High school is expensive. Guess how much the year books are this year at DS and DD's school? Nope, higher. $55 dollars for a plain old year book... if you want your name engraved or a cover or other strange additions, it is even more. Thankfully, DD and DS were okay with just getting one year book between them as freshmen.

--What is up with the slut look in current fashion? DH and I were downtown on Saturday night for our Indigo Girls concert (yay!) and all the women walking around were dressed in such filmy/flimsy clothing, like negligee camisoles. That fabric always looks cheap to me. Makes me wonder if women wear this stuff because they like the way it looks, or because it is "in fashion?" We also saw 4 women in different colored VINYL dresses, looked like plastic bags to me! High heels, fishnet stockings, the works... I'm sure they attracted a lot of the attention they were looking for.

--So, you start to feel old when you are watching fashions come back that you were wearing/seeing in your youth. Like me with all these 70's style clothing... the bootleg jeans, the striped tops, the plaid, the chunky clogs (I could go on and on). But how old does someone feel when you see the fashions for a third time? Or maybe fashions only go around twice?

--Talking with some people yesterday about going to see the Indigo Girls and how our kids just roll their eyes at us, DH remarked: "So the Indigo Girls are the Englebert Humperdink of today?" Because of coure, our mother's listened to EH.

--Trying to avoid trans fats (partially hydrogenated fats) and high fructose corn syrup is pretty difficult. They are everywhere!

--I can see now why I've heard it said that sushi is an art form. We had friends over Fri night who taught us to make sushi and we had a lot of fun making and eating it. And it did feel a lot like art, playing with ingredients and how they would look in the presentation.

--Sushi tastes best the first night. I tried to eat some of the leftovers for lunch the next day and practically gagged. It just didn't taste great, and it felt a bit more like I was really eating hunks of raw fish. Ugh!

More later!

Found It

Doncha hate it when a favorite restaurant disappears? We've had this happen a couple of times in the last few years. A Thai restaurant which served my special spicy peanut curry with tofu (sounds strange but it is divine) was replaced by another Thai restaurant. A few years later, we found it, relocated, in Robbinsdale by DH's mom. Now we have just "re-found" the local Vietnamese place we loved. It was in a shopping mall at Lake and Hiawatha, and we had searched far and wide for really great egg rolls and this place had them. It also has great curry and spicy chicken, and wonderful pho (the Vietnamese beef noodle soup served in gigantic bowls).

Sadly, the shopping mall was being remodeled and the restaurant shut down for several months because of the remodel. And then after about 6 months, a different restaurant opened there, still Vietnamese but not as good and a limited menu. Darn!

Today we managed to find our old restaurant-- we knew the family had another location but didn't know how to find it. The restaurant by us had gone through about three name changes, and the family's other restaurant took on one of the old names.

The menu was familiar, the egg rolls crispy and deliscious, and the chicken curry was great. Yipee!

Sometimes it only takes something small to make life better!

State Fair Moments

The State Fair is a big deal in Minnesota. We go every year (luckily, we went last Friday, which was a lovely sunny day, instead of yesterday when it rained all day), and while it is always the same in some ways, there are always some unique moments. Some highlights from this year:

--me teasing the family about "staying until 10 pm" (we arrived at 8:30 am). Usually we go home around 7, but this year I had some extra stamina (not sure where that came from). I didn't actually think we'd stay until 10, but some things took extra long, so we actually didn't leave until 9:45!

--wandering into the grandstand and seeing one of the actual munchkins from the Wizard of Oz movie-- he is the middle guy in green in The Lollipop Guild! Apparently he's trying to stretch out his fame by making appearances.

--the family leaving me alone for 15 minutes so I could watch a morning radio broadcast of The Kevyn Burger show. Fun to see radio in person.

--running into people we know: (1)DH introduced me to a woman in his graduating class and her husband. He'd just seen them at his school reunion last week. (2) a woman from church and her family-- I worked with her on the RE Council for a few years. (3) an old "friend" of DH's, her husband and 3 red-headed daughters. DH kept giving me the raised eyebrows when I'd look over at him-- she was one of his old lovers. Oh, he loved that!

--me watching one of these fast-talking kitchen gadget sellers, and getting excited about buying vegetable peelers and mandolin! (They work nicely.)

--watching a little piglet being born (just slid right out!).

--visiting Dad where he and my BIL were working at the Epiphany Diner.

A good time was had by all!

Sidewalk Activism

Well, sometimes speaking up and being the squeaky wheel does work. I've seen this happen for me twice-- well, maybe more if I stopped to think about it, but twice for sure. Years ago, a phone call I made to our city council member resulted in a stop sign being put up at an intersection a block from my home that had no traffic signage. I called after I and my kids were almost run down by two drivers in a row as we tried to cross this intersection. During the call, the council member said, "Oh, there isn't any stop sign there at all? We'll get right on it." And in a matter of weeks, there was a stop sign and the intersection has been ever so much better and safer.

My second bit of activism has been getting a sidewalk installed. There is a one-block stretch of street that has warehouses and trucking businesses on it, and because of some old coding, there is no sidewalk in front of those businesses. This happens to be the direct route for countless children (including mine) to walk to and from school. In the warmer months, this is not so bad, except for the puddles and wet grass when it rains, but in winter, since there is no sidewalk, the businesses don't plow the path, and often snow is dumped in huge mounds from a nearby driveway right onto the pathway where these kids walk. So kids must either walk in the street or climb these huge snow hills to keep walking.

So about two years ago, I started emailing the city council memeber (a different one now) and getting him to find out why there are no sidewalks and can they be put in. I talked to the principal to get him to request sidewalks as well, and this issue took so long to resolve that we've gone through 2 principals in this time. I've heard about zoning, I've heard excuses that these trucking businesses don't want kids to walk on this side of the street because there are trucks coming and going (but kids really won't cross the street to walk on the other side-- that was tried by the school but too difficult to enforce).

Finally, after hearing months of "the sidewalks will be installed by XX date," and it never happening, FINALLY the sidewalks were put in this week! I was thrilled! I think it will make a difference-- the truckers will know for sure now that this is a pedestrian zone and that they should watch for people. Kids will not walk in the street. The sidewalks will have to be plowed in winter.

In this case, it took 2 years of squeaking but it has happened.

Now, if only I could solve world peace, or something like that!