Month: October 2010

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Retro dress!

If you’re an Etsy addict like I am, don’t you absolutely love how lucky you feel when you start sorting through the thousands of items, only to find a great new listing that you pounce on?

Yeah – I felt like that the other day.  I had sworn off buying retro dresses for awhile, because it always seemed that the measurements weren’t quite accurate and I ended up with a dress that didn’t fit.  But hey, I’m not one to learn from a few similar experiences, so I had to snap up this dress as soon as I saw it.  I won’t quite look like Mad Men’s Joan in it, but oh, it’s so perfect . . .

There’s something about that collar and those cuffs that make it so deliciously retro.  I’m considering wearing it to a Halloween party this weekend.  I’m sure the retro look has not quite caught on as a mainstream costume choice.

At least it hasn’t yet in the middle of Iowa.  I think it’s safe to say that.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

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Joy is universal

I have to admit — I have been rather detached to the plight of the Chilean miners.  True, I followed the story, albeit rather loosely.  The updates I’d get every few weeks would elicit the appropriate responses from me.  The miners have been found alive . . . that’s miraculous!  They are surviving . . . wonderful.  A rescue is planned . . . feeling hopeful.  The rescues begin . . . relief.  I did not initially tune into the rescues because they mostly occurred during hours I was working or sleeping.  Tonight, after I returned home from school,  I tuned in and was instantly sucked in.

By that time, they were on the 25th rescue.  I had missed the majority of the rescues, obviously, but the 25th struck me as strongly as if I had seen the very first.  It was my first, yes, but not the nation’s first. I had been getting updates throughout the day, so I knew the rescues were progressing well.  But seeing it live on the TV . . . well, I felt instant gratitude for modern technology.

I have never been to Chile.  I don’t know squat about the mining industry.  I don’t know anything about any of the rescued miners, aside from the tidbits the news would share.  In short, these were strangers in a strange land, and I was a disinterested viewer.  It only took a few seconds for me to realize that I was watching the best reality TV available — TRUE reality.

I cried when the 25th miner was rescued . . . then the 26th, the 27th, etc., and I saved the most for the final miner.  Normally, I’m not a crier.  I used to pride myself in being able to control my emotions when others crumbled.  However, tonight I realized a simple truth: the range of human emotions is universal.

I didn’t know anyone I was viewing on TV, but I read the joy on their faces.  I felt the relief.  And as the news droned on with the details about how all these different countries came together in order to orchestrate this rescue, I felt a moment of clarity that only comes about every now and again.  I’m not one to foolishly believe that if we just all try to get along that we can and we will, for human nature seems to demand a trip to the dark side every now and then, but the sheer beauty in what happens when the forces all point the same positive way is breathtaking in itself.

For a few hours tonight, I felt the joy of people I’ve never met from a country I’ve never visited.

Joy is universal.

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1954 Miller Studios Fish

Yep — chalkware fish are still on my mind.  Kind of makes you wish you had my life, eh?  Nuttin’ but chalkware fish using up my brain cells.

These fish are more special to me than the ones I posted about previously.  These have been in storage since the late ’90s.  They’ve been through four moves with me since that time, including the past ten years in my current house.  I never wanted to hang them up, though, because they never seemed to fit — either in theme or in color.  I was never in the apartments of my youth long enough to even think about unpacking these delightful fish, and it only took me, uh, ten years to strip off the ugly basket-n-bunnies wallpaper in our bathroom, where these fish now live.  Now that the walls are a nice, calm, “bathroom blue,” the fish can now come out and play.  They were an afterthought, however, because I originally hung up the blue fish that I talked about in my previous post.  Once those were up, I felt inclined to hang up these fish as well, even though they don’t really fit in with the other colors of the bathroom.

These two fish were given to me by my grandmother, who had them hanging in the bathroom of her lake cabin.  When I was a little girl, I used to love the fish.  They had become indelible part of the lake cabin — always there, always in the same spot.  The last time I visited the cabin in 1997, I felt sorely disappointed when I went into the bathroom and realized that the fish were gone.  My grandparents were in the process of selling their cabin that year and were slowly taking down decorations here and there for storage.  Several months later, my grandmother surprised me by presenting me with the fish during a visit, remembering how shocked I was that they weren’t on the wall during my last visit up there.

And so the fish have traveled many roads with me — literally and figuratively.  I had never really looked closely at the fish before, since my penchant for retro didn’t truly start emerging until a few years ago.  While hanging the fish up the other week, I noticed that they’re actually signed and dated: 1954, Miller Studios.

Given the fact that my little ranch house was built in 1953, I’m thinking the husband and wife truly feel at home.  🙂

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The secret lives of chalkware fish

Ok, so I don’t know the secret lives of chalkware fish, but I am fascinated by them.  Ever since I stripped off the ugly basket-n-bunnies wallpaper off my bathroom walls and painted the walls blue, I’ve been on the lookout for some blue chalkware fish to adorn the walls.  No retro bathroom is complete without them, in my humble opinion.

I hadn’t had the best luck finding the exact fish that I wanted.  The ones I found were either the wrong color or were in bad shape, and I wanted to wait until I found the right ones.  Well, my husband came to my rescue once again, for when I came home from work the other day, I found two little blue and gold fish lying on the counter.  He scored them at a local thrift shop.  And that’s why I love him.

Ok, there are other reasons as well.

They look quite at home, swimming in their blue-walled world, don’t they?

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