A thing of beauty

After much research and more than three years of more or less daily riding on the standard saddle that came with my bike, I'm finally upgrading to this: a Brooks B67S. I'm buying it from these guys, since my local shop caters mostly to the mountain biking and/or pink Electra cruiser crowd and therefore doesn't carry stuff like that.

I'm excited! I've been wanting to do this for a long time, and now I'm finally inspired to take action. Last week I was forced by traffic to ride over the high, sharp edges of a poorly-installed street drain, and woke up the next morning with a flat. Between crazy work hours and the necessity of tracking down a new tube (the glue in my repair kit was completely dried up; this is only the second flat I've had since about 1997) it ended up being several days before I had the thing changed out and was able to ride again. And the first day back on I remembered again how there's really only one thing I'm not 100% happy with on this bike, and that is the saddle. It presses in places I don't want pressed, which forces me to ride with my back curved and extended in a way that just doesn't feel right. So I've decided to go ahead and get the one I've wanted all along.

About not riding for upwards of a week: I was surprised how much I missed it. Riding every day has become part of my life in ways I did not expect when my car died and I decided not to get another one. I don't know if I'd feel the same way if I were riding somewhere else – in a city, for example, or in the snow – but the hour or so I spend on my bike every day has become the highlight of my life, even in spite of the not so comfortable saddle.

Don't get me wrong – it's a nice enough seat, and I'll keep it to put on one of the other bikes one of these days. It's just not a good fit for me. The new one, I hope, will be perfect. I've only put it off this long because of the expense, but I've had a recent epiphany about that, realizing that a hundred or even a couple hundred dollars for a new bike seat is nothing compared with what I would be spending on a car, if I still owned one.

Because of things happening at work and a few other factors I have been considering the possibility of buying another car, in order to commute to some other as yet unknown job in some other possible city. Public transportation around here is only a few inches away from being non-existent, and for my needs, if I were going to try working out of town again, it might as well be. Considering that, and the state of the county roads – narrow and hilly, with blind curves, no shoulders, hostile drivers, etc. – riding the 15 to 20 miles or so to another job would just not be an option for me.

But thinking about owning a car again, and all that entails, has made me appreciate my bike even more, and realize that despite the smallness of life I've accepted as the cost of going car-free, and the thankless nature of so much of the work I do (etc. etc.) in order to stay employed locally, I still feel like it's all worth it. In fact, when I think about buying a car, insuring it, gassing it up, maintaining it, parking it, etc. etc. – I really feel like it's more oppressive than liberating. All that money I would have spent on transportation is now in my bank account and investments. Hooray!

Of course things would be different if I didn't have access to a car, which I do – Mr. A has two of them, and keeps me on his insurance as an "occasional" driver, which doesn't increase his cost and ensures that I can still get where I need to go even if the bike is down, or there's a long-distance or cargo-heavy destination in mind (the airport, for instance – or the dump!).

So I guess I can't honestly call myself completely car-free, but the last several years have left me feeling pretty okay about saying I'm definitely moving in that direction.

Oh, and fashion

I keep forgetting to do it on Friday. Anyway – here's something. I saw these great-looking women at a big concert in the park. My friend actually spotted them and came to get me from the other side of the park, because she knew I would love their fabulous black platform sandals. They were probably the only people on the plaza who were wearing all black.

It's still funny to me that this town is so small and homogenous that you can easily tell the tourists from the locals. Certain types of people – women with big hair or anyone wearing lots of gold jewelry, for example – stick out like a sore thumb. Or is it like that everywhere? I actually have a bunch more photos of people who are obviously not from around here ... Like these folks, for instance.

The men were talking and gesticulating and eating and the woman was mostly fussing with her food – an artichoke salad – which one of the men finally had to show her how to eat. After she had tasted a little of the salad part, she started complaining about how there was nothing to this dish, at which point the man nearest her said, "You're supposed to eat the leaves, you know. And the middle – that's the best part."

She thought it was disgusting, and he ate the rest.

Clearly not a Californian.

I love you, Mrs. Stewart

Funny that this should happen right after I posted about acceptable colors to wear, but today I was wearing a color I almost NEVER wear, never ever ever – white – and I had not had it on more than two hours before something happened to remind me why I never wear it.

It was a very hot afternoon and Mr. A and I were lounging around in front of the fan, sharing a little box of anniversary mini-chocolates. The very first one I bit into was a dark chocolate truffle with (I was soon to find out) a melted dark chocolate ganache center that gushed out from between my teeth and landed in a deep brown blob all down the front of this beautiful pure white camisole I was wearing. It was only the second time I've ever worn it.

So I leaped up and went to the laundry in search of a bottle of Shout, which I applied, and then – to make short work of a potentially very long and boring story – hand washed it in a stock pot on the stove. The final step in laundering was to add a few drops of Mrs. Stewart's Bluing to the rinse water. And I don't know if it was the pre-treatment or the quick washing or the bluing or the very hot water or what, but my, is it ever White now. I still can't believe all the chocolate came out.

And I'm all giddy and excited now about bluing. Can you use it as dye, does anyone know? (I'm kind of on a dying binge right now, in case you hadn't noticed.) Laundry and all these general household tasks are sort of fascinating me right now. I've rediscovered the library and at the top of the huge stack of books I have lined up to read is this one: Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England. I've only just started reading it but already I'm sort of freaking a little bit over just how much work there was to do in those houses. Even more than that, I'm in awe (and not in a good way) over how completely people of that time and place seem to have bought into the idea that you really do have to do things the way the official sources say you do.

Listen to this:

The attractive, tastefully appointed house was a sign of respectability. Taste was not something personal; instead it was something sanctioned by society. Taste, as agreed by society, had moral value, and therefore aherence to what was considered at any one time to be good taste was a virtue, while ignoring the taste of the period was a sign of something very wrong indeed. ...Conformity, conventionality, was morality.

Hmm. I was gearing up to write about how glad I am that that attitude has changed, but now that I think of it I don't suppose it has, much. People are social animals, and even though the details of what's considered okay and what isn't are always changing, it seems like a pretty universal desire of people to want to know where they stand amongst the others around them, and therefore to pay attention to those kinds of rules – whether they care to obey them or not.

Although of course there are always exceptions. I tend to like people who choose their own way, or at least to find them interesting ... up to a point. Lately I've met a few people who have really frayed the edges of my open-mindedness, and I'm finding it a little sad to feel myself wishing they would just take their aggressively weird-ass attitudes and get away from me. Maybe I've become boring in my old age.

Anyway. My hands are sore and tight and stink of bleach just from hand-washing and rinsing one tiny little piece of fabric. I can't imagine what it must have been like to have to wash an entire household's laundry that way two or three times a week.

Post script (response to comments)

Wow, people really like this topic!

The slip doesn't solve the problem of people seeing up your dress while you're riding a bike. That's what the leggings are for. The slip solves the problem of the leggings causing your dress to bunch up in front when you walk. Plus it's just kind of fun to go around all day knowing you're wearing a beautiful piece of old-fashioned underwear under all your other clothes. And if the delicate old fabric ends up ripping or falling apart one day – well, it was still five bucks well spent.

I love antique unmentionables and am still hoping that someday I may be small enough again to fit into an ancient pink lacy girdle (with strings and garters and everything) that I picked up at DI in college and used to wear a lot 20+ years ago. At one point I had quite a collection of that stuff, incredibly engineered and gorgeously embellished foundation garments that women threw away in the 70s and 80s when it finally became acceptable to Not wear them anymore. So many of those things were just beautifully made – still wearable after 50+ years – nothing like the throwaway underwear most people wear nowadays (though I know better stuff still exists, for those who are able to afford it).

The older I get the more I appreciate elastic and laces and other structural elements that make it possible for a body like mine to achieve at least the illusion of firmness – not every day, but on occasion. I'm really glad though that we're no longer "expected" to wear them – that really would feel oppressive.

As for the slips, those are not about structure at all, but more about texture and flow. They just feel good. The color is a lot of fun too. That's something new for me; I always used to just wear 'em like I found 'em.

Speaking of dye, if anyone knows of a good black I would love to try it. Most of the blacks I've used end up just really dark purple, which is not what I'm looking for at all.

A new theory of underwear

Somehow this has become the summer of the skirt. Maybe it's because my two favorite pairs of pants – identical baggy wide-legged linen floods, from Flax, bought at the same time (as is my custom) – both wore through the crotch at about the same time and I haven't gotten around to replacing them yet. Or maybe I'm just wanting to look and feel different this year than in the past. For whatever reason though this change has necessitated a revision in my underwear policy and I'm really enjoying it.

Normally I keep only about eight or nine pairs of underwear at any given time, and they have to be on the pale pink through mauve through periwinkle purple end of the spectrum – no orange, red, yellow, white, green or even blue is allowed (black is always acceptable).



This summer though I realized that my usual colors could create unwanted attention if I wore them while riding my bike in a dress. It's too hot to wear tights or leggings or even jeans, especially while pedaling home in the heat of the afternoon, so I ordered several pairs of cheap stretchy "bike shorts" from American Apparel – all black. That was the first big change. Unfortunately they turned out to be bike shorts in name only. The fabric is too soft and flimsy, which makes them comfortable to wear, but pointless to ride in as the legs stretch out with every pedal and creep up my thigh until they're right about where the leg elastic on a regular pair of underwear would be.

So I decided to just suck it up and wear the leggings. I have a few pairs that are capri length that are not so hot. The trouble there is not with riding but with walking: the fabric of the skirt rubs against the fabric of the leggings and they end up bunching up in the front as you walk. Not attractive.

This week I finally thought of a simple solution that is making me so happy I just have to share it. The answer is to be found for usually three to five bucks or less on the racks of any thrift shop, and if you're lucky it will have yard upon yard of lace as well. I refer of course to old-fashioned full slips, the nylon or rayon kind (or silk, if you can find it), cut on the bias with adjustable straps and whole networks of ingenious tucks and darts and gussets and yes, lots and lots of lace.

Besides the way they allow the skirt to fall straight, just like it's supposed to, with no rubbing or bunching, these are also great because the fabric takes dye so well. Take a look at the color chart above and you can see where I'm going with this. By mixing various dyes you can get just about any color you can imagine, and one slip takes only a very small amount of dye to do, and they dry so fast you can wear them the same afternoon.

So hooray for vintage lingerie! I am still working on my patterns for various tap pants, camisoles, combinations &c., but for five bucks plus the cost of dying I am finding this a lot of fun. (Plus they make great nightgowns – no more getting all wrapped up in the sheets like a burrito.)

My latest find, from eBay:


I haven't decided yet what I want to do with this one. I'm actually starting to consider a seasonal addendum to my color rules ... maybe expanding to include brown, bronze, even orange .... oh, the possibilities.

Kiss THESE shorts

I saw these on a guy the other night behind the stage at the farmer's market and immediately though, "Perfect for Friday!"

It was a good night at the market. Besides the KISS shorts, I saw a lot of friends I hadn't seen in awhile, and picked up a beautiful loaf of walnut sourdough bread, a dozen gorgeous brown and white eggs, two glossy purple torpedo onions and several tomatoes so ripe I had to take them home in a special little padded box.

There's paving going on in the parking area where the market is usually set up, so this week the city closed one block bounding the east side of the park and all the vendors set up in the street. It was such a great arrangement compared to the way it usually is, all cramped and claustrophobic in an obstacle-course of a municipal parking area.

And I wasn't the only one talking about it. The whole feeling of the market was transformed by the new ability to move easily among the stalls – and to actually SEE not just the food and other things for sale, but all the other people, too. In general, if you run into someone you know at the market in its usual location, you can't really stop and talk without either creating an instant and serious traffic jam, or taking the time to walk away from the market until you can get out of the flow of shoppers. So it isn't that people never stop and talk, but just more that it isn't effortless and natural to do so. With the new layout, it is.

Anyway, I loved it and I'm really hoping they'll decide to keep it there. In fact, I'm planning to write a letter to the editor suggesting it, and send copies to a couple of friends who are on the city council. It makes me happy to think of doing that, even if nothing comes of it, and who knows, maybe something will. Another friend in city government told me that if enough people want it to happen, it probably will.

This is something I really like about living in a small town vs. a city: I feel like I actually have some ability to influence what happens. It's not about the size of the community, exactly. I think even living in a city most people's circle of friends isn't any bigger than it would be in a small town. How many people can one person really be "friends" with? A hundred? Two or three hundred? Once you hit your max, it really doesn't matter how many other people there are. Everyone has only so much time to spend on relationships, and a city neighborhood functions a lot like a small town anyway, if you make the effort to get involved. So I'm not saying they're exactly the same, just that socially, except for possibly the greater opportunity in a city to constantly be enlarging your circle, they're not all that different. (Of course, I could be wrong.)

In any case, the point I wanted to make was that I think in a city I would be much less likely to be friends with the mayor, or the city planner, or council members, or the editor of the newspaper, or any other influential public figure. In a place like this though it's easy to know those people. You could probably even BE one of those people, if you really want to.

Personally, I'm a more behind-the-scenes kind of person than that, which is why it's nice to know those folks who are out in front – because I do have strong opinions about a lot of things, but I don't necessarily want to be the one giving the presentation about it.

Urgh. Is all this fascinating enough for you yet? In the interest of full disclosure I should probably mention that what I'm really doing here is not writing a blog post but avoiding getting started on the mountain of work I've been putting off since Monday, "until the weekend." Okay, so it's a small mountain. I just really don't want to work any more today ... it's Friday night, and tomorrow Mr. A will be back from Texas and the whole energy of the house will be totally different again. So what the hell. I'm going to give myself the night off.

Enough with the cupcakes already

I know I've already mentioned this but I am really – no, seriously – very tired of this trend, fad, fashion or whatever it is, of grown-up adult-type humans trying to re-live their childhood – their Very Early childhood. If I hear about one more fancy six-buck cupcake shop with swings and seesaws instead of tables and chairs and long lines of childless 36-year-old twee woman "designers" in pigtails and precious candy-colored frocks I think I'm going to puke.

This commercial is a great example of what I'm talking about. What's wrong with these people? Didn't anyone ever tell them you don't have to pretend to be four to eat candy if you want to? That's the great thing about being a grownup! You can have candy any time you feel like it.

The interesting question (to me at least) is, why does this bother me so much? What do I care how other people act? Isn't it possible it might even be good for society for people to lighten up a little and return to some of the simple pleasures of pre-school?

Naps, for instance. I'm a great proponent of naps. Even cupcakes I don't mind so much – in theory. I can't deny their cuteness, and sometimes they even taste good.

Maybe I'm just uptight about my own childhood.

In any case, I'm ready for the next food trend to take root and start crowding this cupcake thing back down to its appropriate size. Because while I'm well aware that complaining about stupid food fads is boring as hell, until I start seeing some movement toward more sensible items like toast, pie and/or broiled potatoes, I just don't see how I have any choice but to continue.

P.S. While looking for that commercial at the top, I came across this provocative video that also deals with the 100-calorie phenomenon. Make of it what you will.

Yeah, I do that

Tonight I dragged a friend from work with me to a new yoga class I've been wanting to try. It's not at the community yoga studio I usually go to – it's at the ashram, which I finally (after how many years now?) have realized is actually very, very close to where I live.

So we went, and it was so beautiful there, with gardens and flowers and lovely reflecting pools and waterfalls and little personal-sized temples you can sit in and so on, and the class was very nice as well, and at the end of the class the teacher was talking to my friend – a hard-working, always overbooked mom of two – about ways to work practice into her day.

"One thing that will help more than anything is to just carve out some time for yourself right when you get home from work," she said. "Even just five minutes. Just go in your room and close the door and lay down on the bed and breathe for just five minutes, just like we did at the end of class. It will transform your life."

And I didn't say anything at the time, because I didn't want to make the conversation all about me, but since this is my place to be shamelessly self-absorbed and self-promoting I wanted to say that yeah, she is SO right about that – and I know because yeah, I do that. Every night without fail.

And I didn't think of it all by myself, either – Tater taught me. Every night when I get home from work he runs into the bedroom and jumps up on the bed, where he sits staring at me intensely until I lie down with him to spend several minutes breathing and snuggling together. It seems like such a small thing, but we really do do this every single night, and it really is like a mini-practice – and it really does make a huge difference in how I feel.

If I ever try to Not do it – if I'm in a hurry to get dinner started, for example – he pushes his eyebrows together and tilts his head to the side and makes a little questioning sound, like "Hmm?" Why is this moment of ours together suddenly not as important to you as any other moment in your day?

And I realize that it IS important. And so I do it.





These pictures are from my ride home from the ashram tonight. They're all taken within a few minutes walk from my house, but since this part of the road is on the other side of the creek, I don't usually go home that way. After tonight though I think I'm going to start, at least until the creek fills up with water again. (Plus, I have some friends who just moved into a place up around there, so there's another incentive to go that way more often.)

To get home this way I have to bush-whack it a bit where the road ends, and carry my bike across the creekbed and back out through more bushes on the other side, to where the road picks up again about a hundred yards from my house. Except for the fact that it makes getting home that way harder for me, I'm actually glad that road doesn't cross the creek, because it means almost no traffic on our road. It dead ends about a half-mile past our house.

Anyway. Riding my bike around quiet roads in the sunset light of a warm August evening has been one of my favorite things in the world to do since I was a young teenager, and doing it again tonight I realized (again) how much I really, really, really love my life, and love where I live.

Learning by un-doing

So I've been laboriously deconstructing all these thrift-shop clothes – getting them ready for later refashioning into new and improved outfits designed by moi – and I'm noticing something that shouldn't be surprising, but is: the more expensive label clothing really is better than the cheap stuff. The fabrics are better quality, the cuts and design are more thoughtful and intuitive, and the sewing and detail work make for a much better-fitting, more durable garment. Things like linings that really fit, darts, interfacing, etc. etc. ...

Taking things apart is a good way to learn how to put them back together.

In other news, I've been asked to do a followup waxing report, so here it is. The short version: waxing is not all it's cracked up to be. It's great for about the first week, but then the waiting begins – the prickly, scraggly, unbearably itchy waiting. Because you can't just wax whenever you want to. You have to wait until the hair is long enough to get caught in the wax. For me, this takes about three weeks, and the ratio of one good week to two increasingly uncomfortable weeks is just not good enough.

The other thing is, even the first week has one or two uncomfortable days in it, if like me you have super sensitive skin. Remember: you're applying melted wax to your skin, and ripping hundreds of hairs out by the roots, all at the same time. The very first time you do it is the most painful, because you're ripping out ALL of the hairs. But they're all in different stages of growth when they first get ripped out, so they don't all grow back at the same rate. After the first time, you'll be ripping out only maybe a third of the total number of hairs – the third that are long enough to wax. The others will be left behind, slightly prickly because they're still too short – or soon to become prickly, as soon as they emerge from the skin.

For the same reason, the regrowth after waxing is not as thick and luxurious as the regrowth after shaving. So even though it itches and feels rough if you run your hand over it, it isn't visible enough to be embarrassing. Still. The itching, for me, is a deal-breaker. No amount of smoothness is worth that kind of discomfort.

So it's back to shaving for me, or maybe I'll just let it all grow out again this fall. Truth be told I'm really pretty sick of dealing with it.

Finally, in lieu of a picture of the fabulous party shoes – which are proving to be kind of difficult to photograph, though I will continue to try – here's a rather arresting image of a sculpture I saw at the Ashby flea market over the weekend, after dropping Mr. A at the airport. You really must click to see the blown-up version – this lady is larger than life-size and BEYOND luscious. I would freak to see a piece of art like this in somebody's actual house. Wouldn't that be awesome?



Also: I have been practicing some classic Blue Oyster Cult tunes on my three-stringed ukulele and if I continue to improve at my current rate I may be ready to post another video on YouTube before the end of the decade.

Thus ends this fascinating installment of the Tinaramadrama™.