Author: Average Jane

This month, a home furnishings store called Design Public is running an online feature called Baby Blog-A-Palooza that allows parenting bloggers such as finslippy and Mrs. Kennedy to blog about child-oriented design (mostly) for everyone’s entertainment.

I heartily agree with Mrs. Kennedy’s assessment that white towels do not belong in anyone’s household.  However, if I think about my own towel collection I realize I am in no position to advise anyone on towel purchases.

I actually have a set of white towels that are not only miraculously stain-free but really, really old.  I’m pretty sure I was in elementary school when I received them as a Christmas gift from my great-aunt.  They have Chessie, the sleeping kitten symbol of the Chesapeake Railroad embroidered on them.  (Awww.)  I don’t use them much, mainly because they would look weird hanging in my bathroom, so they’ll probably last forever.

The first towels I ever purchased were from the Sears catalog.  I worked at Sears all through college and I’m pretty sure these towels were a catalog return that I bought at a huge discount.  They’re brown.  I say that in the present tense because I still have them, even though they are thin and cheap and, well, poop-brown.  They’re great for mopping up kitchen disasters, though.

I have a set of pink towels that were given to me when I moved into my first apartment.  They go nicely with the pink silk chrysanthemum that skulks dustily in the corner over our toilet.  At least I think the chrysanthemum’s still up there – maybe I came to my senses and threw it away the last time we did a big spring cleaning.  Anyway, the pink towels are getting pretty thin and scratchy, so I really only use the washcloths.  The towels are good for drying my car after I wash it, though.

A couple of years ago I bought a couple of nice, thick, sage green towels that complement what I loosely refer to as our bathroom decor.  Somehow, my good bath towel always ends up being paired with a random, lesser towel that I use for my hair.  I have several of these orphan bath towels that don’t match any of the other towels and whose origins have long been forgotten.

Will I someday rid myself of all the old, crummy towels and purchase good towels for both bathrooms?  Nah, I’m too cheap and it really doesn’t matter that much.  Now if you hear about a good deal on nice cotton sheets, maybe we’ll talk…

When my husband woke up on Saturday morning a little before noon, I made us omelets, maple bacon and toast to fortify us for loading the Jeep with the P.A.* equipment I needed to take to band practice. 

For you music geeks who might be interested, I have a pair of Peavey SP-2 speakers that were probably made in the 70s, a QSC 100-watt power amp, one newer Peavey monitor, an ancient Sennheiser microphone that really needs to be refurbished, and a fairly new AKG D3800 microphone.  One of the other band members has a Peavey CS800 power amp (we used my amp for the monitor) and a mixing board.

Fortunately, we loaded the Jeep a few hours before I needed to leave because it started pouring rain about an hour before practice.  When I got there, we set up the P.A. pretty handily except that we came up short on speaker cables.  Our bass player managed to retrieve some of his from a friend who lived nearby.  The CS800 amp was half blown and was really only pushing 400 watts on one side.  It also had a bad switch, so we had to jury-rig it with tape and slats of moulding to keep it powered up, but it worked well enough for our purposes. 

It was wonderful being able to actually hear myself at band practice for the first time.  Until Saturday we’d been running the vocals through a guitar amp, which I do not recommend.  Eventually, volume creep by the guitarist and drummer began to overwhelm the vocals, but I believe it may have partly been the heavy-metal-inappropriate subtlety of the Sennheiser mic.

I’ve been so busy (and lazy) since I joined the band that I still haven’t written any lyrics to their original songs.  Every practice makes me feel like the schoolgirl who didn’t do her homework.  However, I’ve been listening to the songs a lot this weekend and I should be able to have two or three of them ready for our next practice.  I know my husband is itching to "help me" write them, but I think I’d like to have a go at them on my own.

My musical goals from here on out:

• Daily warmup and practice
• Set aside lyric writing time several times per week
• Memorize the lyrics to all the songs
• Prompt the band to choose a name
• Get us a gig at a roller derby match when we’re ready

It’s nice to have a hobby!

*P.A. stands for "public address," in case you were wondering.

I seldom wear fragrance, partly because the strong ones can give me a
headache and partly because I figure my soap, hair products, clean
clothes and deodorant probably have enough perfumes in them.

Still, just as I’ll occasionally leave the house dressed like a
grown-up, so will I occasionally take the extra step and apply perfume.

My husband recently ordered some haircare products from Sephora, which came with a number of perfume and cologne samples.  Some of them were women’s, so I’ve been trying them one by one over the past couple of weeks to see how I like them.

The first and best was Essence by Marc Jacobs.  It’s a gardenia scent with some kind of heavier note keeping the sweetness in check.  I would actually buy it, except that it retails for $65 for 1.7 oz.

The second one I tried was Bulgari BLV Notte.  When freshly applied it had a faint "tire rubber" note that I found a little off-putting and overall I thought it seemed a little matronly for my taste.

At the opposite end of the spectrum was the third sample, Britney Spears’ Curious.  I put off trying this one for a long time because the radio commercials made me gag and, really, who wants to smell like Britney?  Judging from the perfume itself, I’d say they’re banking on the pre-teen crowd.  The perfume is very sweet and smells a lot like cotton candy when first applied.  If I were eleven, I’d be all over it (Sweet Honesty, anyone?), but I think today will be the only time I wear it.

Once upon a time I worked as a consultant for a large corporation.  It was my first exposure to the horrific business catchphrases that people at large companies pick up and carelessly throw around in conversation.  On the first day when my supervisor told me to meet with someone for "knowledge transfer," I almost laughed in his face.

Now that I work at a small company again, I thought I was immune to the worst corporate-speak cliches, but judging from this article from Fortune, Business Buzzwords That Make You Gag, I need to rid myself of a few lingering jargon parasites.

Are you guilty of uttering any of the phrases on the list?  Can you think of any bad ones that didn’t make the list?

After all of July’s travel and extra work, it’s been a special treat for me to be able to stay home for two evenings in a row.  It’s over as of tonight – I have a board meeting and a dinner with friends – but it’s been very satisfying to sit on the couch with the TV and the laptop, doing nothing of significance.

I did manage to hoist myself off the couch long enough to cook a pot of chili yesterday.  By some miracle, I had all of the essential ingredients on hand.  Now, however, if I were to clean out the refrigerator and organize the cupboards, we’d be in Old Mother Hubbard territory.  Since the weekend, I’ve made two meals out of freezer scrapings and there’s just nothing left to eat in the house unless I want macaroni and cheese or canned beets.

My schedule is always so full that it’s hard for me to take a couple of evenings off without feeling guilty.  I keep thinking I could be working on my club’s website or starting an outline for the book idea I have or writing some song lyrics or filing paperwork or shredding junk mail.  Then I remember that I had a headache every day last week and I’m feeling perfectly fine this week, probably thanks to the extra downtime.

The procrastination has to end sometime, but I know I’m probably okay for now because I haven’t been waking up worrying about projects that need to be done.  Isn’t that a terrible gauge of productivity?!

July was so crazy-busy that I’m just now realizing that it’s summertime and I should think about doing some summertime things before it’s too late.  As of the end of BlogHer, I’ve taken so much vacation from work that it’ll take me seven months to actually earn the vacation I’ve already taken.  Clearly, I need to think about some activities close to home.

For starters, I’d like to go swimming at least once this year.  I don’t know anyone rich enough to have a swimming pool or young enough to live in an apartment complex with a pool.  I wouldn’t object to swimming in a lake, but it’ll be kind of icky-warm by now.  Then there are water parks, but they always give me the uncomfortable suspicion that I’m sharing a portion of the clientele’s weekly bath.

What else do I want to do before autumn invades?  (I’d like to take this time to mention that I went to the grocery store last week and saw a large group of employees setting up the Halloween candy display.  In early August.  Better hurry, there are only 83 Halloween candy shopping days left!)  Well, I haven’t grilled out enough.  I haven’t made cucumbers with vinegar.  I haven’t eaten any watermelon yet – I bought a piece but it got hidden in a fridge drawer and had to be thrown out.  I don’t have even a hint of a tan, but that’s always the case given the 60-level sunblock I use.

More than anything, I want some lazy summer time.  I want to nap in my hammock, read two books in one day with cats piled on my lap, make a tuna noodle salad and have it for lunch two days in a row.  I want to have dinner on the deck every night, just because it’s warm out.  I want to break out of my laziness briefly to weed my flower beds and cut down the volunteer trees, then take a shower in ice-cold water and sit on the porch swing to let my hair dry.

Maybe I can start some of that on Saturday.  In the meantime, off to work!

On Saturday, I attended my 20-year high school class reunion.  After the last one, I had sworn I wasn’t going to any more of them, mainly because I’d barely recognized anyone and vice versa.  On the other hand, the previous reunion had been held in a big, bonfire-lit field, so that could have made things a little more difficult.

This one was in the basement of a suburban, Irish-themed pub.  Note to potential bar owners:  carpeting does not belong on any bar floor, even in the "party room."  Every time I stood still, my sandals stuck lightly in place.  Fortunately there was adequate lighting, a buffet, and the occasional yearbook scattered around for reference.

I was heartened to see that everyone was having as difficult a time recognizing people as I was.  My husband and I sat at a table with two of my classmates I’d recognized more or less immediately.  Everyone who had any idea who I was seemed to think I looked "exactly the same," which didn’t make much sense to me considering that I’d changed my hair color and lost 15 pounds since the last reunion.

Two of the "popular" girls from my class (and let’s keep in mind that everyone was popular compared to me) came over to say hello.  "You look great!" they said.

If any of my current friends had said that to me, I’d have said "thank you" and moved on.  In this case, High School Jane was lurking in the back of my psyche thinking, "What does that mean?  Do I look fat?  Does my hair look weird?  This outfit is all wrong, isn’t it?"  Aaagh!  I’d never go back to being a teenager!

I did a minimal amount of mingling (once a wallflower, always a wallflower), but managed to at least say "hi" to everyone I’d been friendly with in high school.  My husband passed out more business cards than I did because two of my friends happened to mention needing a recording studio and computer help, both of which he can provide.

After all this time, two-and-a-half hours of high school reunion struck me as no different than any other social activity with strangers.  I don’t have any high school glory days to relive.  I could barely fill out the questionnaire they gave us asking things like, "What were your three favorite songs in high school?" 

Maybe by the 25-year reunion I’ll have more time for reflection…