Jean diapers...yes, you read that correctly

Just when I thought the diapering market was all shored up and couldn't possibly withstand the introduction of another niche product, Huggies stepped up to the plate. A few months ago, Huggies' introduced their Limited Edition Denim diapers. I'm not kidding. Perhaps you've been subjected to their television commerical or you've visited the website which showcases a mini Danny Zuko looking too cool for school in his denim duds: http://www.huggies.com/en-US/promotions/jeans. In case there was any doubt in your mind, the Infant will NOT be sauntering down the street in a diaper, let alone a denim diaper.

The only reason I can see that they deemed them "limited edition" was to give the impression of exclusivity and we all know I love a good bit of exclusivity but I draw the line at jean diapers. Apparently for this grandfatherly gentleman at Babies R Us, denim diapers were EXACTLY what he was looking for and perhaps afraid they truly were "limited," bought them in bulk. I need to believe that his son or daughter graciously thanked him for the gift of the denim diaper and quickly made his/her way to the store to return them. Let me, at least, have that.

Get into my van

I have to share a story with you that didn't happen in Kansas and didn't happen to me but it did happen in one of my favorite states, Maine, to one of my kinfolk, my little sister, who we'll refer to as Lil' J. It had me laughing so hard I thought I might herniate a disc and I hope you, too, will find it as enjoyable minus the sciatica.

So, Lil' J is working at the same summer camp we both worked at in college and where I met the Husband. It's an all-girls, residential, 7 week camp located in Maine. Think of the camp in the movie Parent Trap, the first one, not the second one with Lindsay Lohan before she starting accessorizing with SCRAM bracelets. It's a glorious place to spend a summer.


Lil' J went to camp early to help get organized for the summer and was working in the front office before pre-camp started. Pre-camp is when all of the counselors arrive and learn about camp operations, set up their respective activity centers and learn the camp lingo (Greenie=bathroom; Bubbie=person who inspects bunks after clean-up and removes candy contraband; Ognog=old girl, new old girl talent show). One morning, Lil' J's boss, Nancy, asked her to run some camp-related errands. Lil' J took a camp van and rolled out.

Before returning to camp, Lil' J called Nancy to see if there was anything else she needed to do while she was out. Nancy told her that there was a wicked (I sound like an authentic Mainer!) storm moving in and there were some counselors that had signed out for a run and Nancy asked Lil' J to pick them up on her way back. Lil' J made her way back to camp and came upon two girls running on the road. Since Lil' J didn't know the girls she was supposed to pick up, she assumed these two girls running on the Maine backroads near camp were the ones she was supposed to round up so she pulled over, rolled down her window and said, "Hey, girls, sorry to interrupt your run but Nancy said there was a thunderstorm rolling in and she asked me to pick you up and take you back to camp." The girls hopped into the van and Lil' J began driving back to camp. As they drove, the conversation went a little something like this:


Lil' J: Sorry to have interrupted your run, you really looked like you were in the zone, but Nancy was really worried.
Runner #1: Umm...who is Nancy?
Lil' J (a little perplexed): Nancy M. Our boss. The lady who hired you to work at TLC.
Runner #2: We don't work at TLC.
Lil' J: Wait...WHAAAAAT?
Runner #1: We work at Fernwood.


It was at this point that Lil' J realized that she had just abducted two young women by inviting them into her mildly creepy 18 passenger van (this was the point in the story when I made several unladylike snorting sounds as I was overcome with laughter). With the thunder and lightning already booming around them, she offered to drive them to Fernwood (a different camp a few miles down the road) but they declined and asked to be let out of the van on the side of the road. The last she saw of them, they were running at a full tilt away from her van and for a moment she felt slightly ashamed but quickly recovered and wondered why the heck they got in her van if they didn't even know who Nancy was?! Seriously!

She pulled herself together and made her way back toward camp. She happened upon another runner and rolled down the window and asked if the girl worked at TLC. The runner confirmed her status as a TLC employee and again, Lil' J invited her into her van. The girl hopped in and Lil' J began to think it was just far too easy to pick up camp counselors in the backwoods of Maine. I think this serves to illustrate that we need a refresher course on not getting into vans with strangers, especially if you don't know Nancy.

Slurpees and pegging your jeans

I retrieved the latest Real Simple (RS) magazine from my mailbox yesterday and was excited to cozy up with the latest RS-identified trends and glean other information I didn't know I needed to know until I read it. Now, RS is my kind of magazine these days. It doesn't boast scandalous taglines on the cover like: "So you made out with your boss? No problem!" or "What does your underwear say about you?" or "107 New ways to seduce your man TONIGHT!" (seriously...can there really be 107, let alone 7, "new" things that those magazines haven't covered in previous installments?) or any other equally mortifying large print title you might find among the saucier mags. I can read Real Simple in a public place without wondering if the guy across from me at the airport really wonders if I made out with my boss or has any thoughts about my under pinnings.

My mag of choice includes items I find interesting like mini home improvement projects or crafty ideas, home decor, fashion articles, reviews on the best tooth whitening toothpaste, recipes, how to fashionably organize one's home, cleaning product reviews, and those human interest stories that rip your heart out and break it to pieces. Upon review, a few of those items sound hardly more interesting than dry toast but what can I say? On occasion, I've been known to be a fan of dry toast.

Back to the crux of this post... I was only a few pages into the mag when I came upon a most glorious piece of information: the 7-11 Slurpee is celebrating its 44th anniversary in July. Now, this is cause for celebration. In fact, I will be celebrating this special 44th anniversary much the same as I celebrated the 43rd and most of months in between by visiting my local 7-11 frequently and forking over the $1.39 for a refreshing, and always appropriate, Coca-cola Slurpee. In fact, participating 7-11's will be giving away free 11 oz. Slurpees in honor of this momentous occasion on July 11 (how fitting). Let us all take pause to think about what the Slurpee has meant to us through the years. Let us raise our coned cups with spoon straws to 44 more years.

This post is going to make a hard right down the road of things that shouldn't be, but apparently are. Fresh from my 44th Slurpee anniversary high, I came to the "guide to fashion" page where 1/4 of the page was devoted to step by step instructions on how to peg one's jeans. And the blurb was titled: Cuff your jeans stylishly. Stylishly? You've got to be kidding. Yes, when I pegged my jeans in 1992 when I was in the seventh grade it was indeed stylish but I'd like to think as a society, we've progressed stylistically and my horrible recollections of middle school attire could remain safely in the past. It is 2010, my friends, and I'm proud to say that I know now what I wish I'd known back then: pegging is ridiculous and does no one any favors.

The pegging article made me think of several other fashion abominations from my tragically fashioned youth that I do not want to see make a come back including:

1. Hypercolor: do we really need a blatant illustration of where people sweat? No thanks.

2. Dropped-waist jeans with pleats

3. Acid wash

4. Bangs, half teased backwards and half teased forwards

5. Pants with skirts attached. To this very day, I cringe when I think that not only did I own the skant (skirt-pants), I owned two pairs. And I loved them.

Bathing soups and feral cats

Pool season has begun in the Plains and not a moment too soon because it is hotter than a cow pie in August. Of course, before the chlorinated oasis opened, the hunt for this summer's bathing soup was on. (My darling six and four year old nieces refer to bathing suits as "bathing soups" and it is just too cute for words.) Since bringing the Infant into the world, I've decided that my bikini days are long, long gone. Not that I haven't tried. Oh, I've tried some old two-piece soups on in the privacy of my own home when the Infant was napping and the Husband was out earning the Benjamins so no one would have to witness the horrors. It was just me and the mirror and we both should have known better. It made me long for the days when donning a bikini meant it was summer time and the world was my oyster. Don't get me wrong: I never truly rocked the two-piece but I was young and blithe. Now, I'm old and am more civic-minded; therefore, for the sake of our township, I will be sporting the one-piece soup this summer. You are welcome towns people.

Finding a tasteful, yet not overtly mumsy, swim soup that doesn't cost more than a trip to Target (seriously...how does anyone get out of that store without spending $100?!) is much more challenging than it sounds. I came across a Lands End catalog--I know what you're thinking "Lands End?! My mom shops there!" but bear with me--only to find that they have branched out from slightly dowdy mummy-wear to young, hip mummy-wear with a new line called Canvas. It's like a girl-on-a-budget's JCrew and the line is really basic at this point but they have swim soups that aren't terribly dowdy: http://canvas.landsend.com/canvas/?cm_re=core-canv. I purchased one and have been very happy with my selection. I don't think it to be overly mumsy, although the Husband did ask me what time swim team practice was. I've asked him to limit his assessments of my fashion choices to "Looks great!" or "I don't know how you do it, but EVERYTHING looks totally awesome on you." He said he'd work on it.

So, now that my swim attire is all taken care of, let's move onto the Infant. You'll be happy to know that he is not wearing the pink Ariel the Little Mermaid swim pants that I accidentally purchased this winter when we went to the dreaded water park. I passed those onto a mother of a wee girl and purchased some seriously masculine Nemo and Tiger swim pants. Nothing screams "MAN!" more than a cartoon tiger with a spring in his tail. But because I cannot allow the Infant to splash about in nothing more than a swim pant, (Speaking of pants-less babies walking the streets, I am both intrigued and repulsed by the limited edition jean diaper by Huggies. If you do not know to what I am referring, simply watch the ad on YouTube. Be forewarned: this just isn't right. Huggies ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQ0M9CBEkw0) I purchased some swim trunks for him that claimed they were sized for a 12 month old. It wasn't until I dressed him at the pool that I realized my son would not be sporting swim trunks this summer, rather, he'd be rocking swim jams. Poor little thing looks like a mini hoodlum.

On a completely unrelated note: there is a feral cat that is squatting on the deck chair on our back porch. It is gray and mangy looking and it rubbed itself on my leg yesterday and I had to take a shower afterward. It looks like it needs to eat a sandwich but if I feed it, it will never leave and, at this point, I just can't commit to cat ownership. It screams at night and, so help me, if it wakes up the Infant we're going to have to deal with this the way we dealt with things on the farm and, in the words of my father, have a little "come to Jesus meeting".

Rat tail sighting...seriously.

Today, while making my way through the mall on a mission to return some items, I spotted a woman at the Piercing Pagoda whose 'do warranted a double take. I admit, at first, I was unsure the individual was indeed female. I only saw the back of her head and thought for sure that: 1) the rat tail was eradicated in 1986, and 2) prior to 1986, most of the individuals sporting the tail were males. Piercing Pagoda lady completely upended both of my theories: it is not 1986 and SHE was sporting a mangy looking rat tail. Moreover, her bangs were platinum blond and the rest of her hair was jet black. I don't think any of this was an accident: she was intentionally sporting a rat tail and we all know the intentional rat tail is the worst kind there is. Now, let's be honest, there's been a time or two in our own lives when something went terribly awry in the stylist's chair and you walked away with Farrah Fawcett wings, a mullet, a mushroom, or a helmet, none of which you actually requested by name or implication.

I remember back in 1996, Friends was the rage and I, like every other high school girl in America, wanted Rachel's long layers. I had the long, shoulder length hair necessary for such a 'do and brought in pictures to show my stylist. An hour later I sat staring into the mirror at someone with short, two-inch layers from the crown of her head all the way to her shoulders. This was NOT the Rachel; this was a feathered mullet. It was all I could do to choke back the mixture of horror, bewilderment and panic that inched its way up my esophagus. I composed my young self and made it to the car before bursting into tears. I had to sport that stinkin' mullet for three months before it finally grew out enough to fashion into something less mullet-like. It was awful.


It was quite clear to me that the situation on the back of the Piercing Pagoda lady's head was nothing like the Botched Rachel Cut of '96. If I hadn't been in such a state of shock, I surely would have snapped a picture to post but my world was in the middle of being rocked so, alas, no picture. I will try to pull myself together next time and get the photographic evidence.

An open letter to Toyota

Dear Japanese makers of cars:

I applaud your efforts with the witty "Swagger Wagon" campaign to reinvent the minivan's, specifically the Toyota Sienna's, image. I admit: I propagate the stigma against the minivan. It likely stems from my years in high school driving a tan minivan with faux wood paneling. I assure you that driving a minivan into the school parking lot does nothing to improve your social standing. I digress. Your commercials attesting to the coolness of the Sienna minivan are both creative and humorous, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql-N3F1FhW4, but I fear you do not know what you are up against.

The soccer moms toting their broods to music lessons and swim practice are not the problem, it's the fringe group of the minivan driving population that is ruining it for everyone. For example, today while refueling at a local petrol station, I witnessed a 65+ year old woman wearing a dangerously low-slung strapless bathing suit, very short shorty shorts and flip flops paying the cashier (what happened to "no shirt, no shoes, no service"?). Suddenly, four cop cars pulled up outside along with a fire truck full of EMTs and I thought for sure they were there to arrest this woman and cart her off to fashion prison. They walked right past her and started attending to a guy standing in front of the rotating corn dog cookers who was feeling faint. I'm no medical expert but I'd blame the ghastly looking sausages that had been slow-cooking on those hot rollers for who knows how long for his feelings of faintingness but that is neither here nor there.

The lady with the barely hanging on bathing suit strode out the door before I could issue a citizen's arrest and climbed into her vehicle. Imagine my surprise to discover she was not driving a bright red Firebird but a light blue minivan. The last I saw of her she was driving away, sans seatbelt, munching on some Doritos and looking quite naked. There is not a compilation of lyrics and sound editing that could bring any cool to that situation.

I also wanted to make you aware of this:
Yes, it is indeed a midnight blue, low rider minivan with tinted windows, pimped out rims and a spoiler.

I wanted you to know what you are up against. For every dollar you spend on your positive image campaign, another dollar is spent on airbrushing a lioness and her cubs to the back doors of a midnight blue minivan. Good luck and Godspeed.

Virtual regards,
Call Me Alise

Pre-emergent

There are many things I was not at all familiar with before I became a co-homeowner. What need did I have for knowledge of what "being in escrow" meant (to be honest, I'm still miffed by that one), sump pumps, radon, lawn irrigation systems, and hardwood floor maintenance? Armed with knowledge I've gleaned from the always accurate Wikipedia, I pretend to know exactly how to prune a rose bush, eradicate fruit flies, care for delicate antiques and patch holes in the wall but all of these things I can do in the privacy of my own home without being told I'm doing it wrong by someone who is much wiser than I. That all came to a screeching halt today and I was exposed for the fraud I am by Henry, the friendly lawn man at my favorite garden center.

Here's what happened:

This spring, I decided that I would take over all of our lawn and gardening maintenance and by all of our lawn and gardening maintenance, I mean I intended on doing more than our previous maintenance plan which basically included mowing. Luckily, the Husband had no qualms with my hostile take-over of our yard work. This should have been a sign of things to come but it was not.

I was confident I could construct beautiful gardens in our backyard and have the most lush, green yard that every neighbor would envy as they drove slowly past our yard realizing they would soon come upon their own mediocre lawn and be faced with their own grassy shortcomings. Yes, I would work my magic and it would be as glorious as I had imagined. The only problem was that I had no magic. I knew nothing about lawn care and my history with plants was nothing short of murderous.

My parents got me a subscription to a local gardening publication which made me feel slightly more confident. In the February issue, there was a whole article about how to have the best lawn ever. It wasn't a terribly long article and laid out a lawn maintenance plan that seemed relatively easy. All I needed was some pre-emergent, not cut the grass too short and I was good to go. I had no idea what a pre-emergent was but I figured it wouldn't be difficult to find at the garden center so armed with my paltry understanding of pre-emergents, I headed to the garden center. It was at the garden center that I met Henry and where my lawn maintenance ineptitude was blatantly exposed.


Henry, being an older, kindly gentleman with glasses and a lot of enthusiasm for grass asked if I needed any help finding anything. I told him I'd been reading about lawn care and I was taking over our lawn maintenance this year. He told me he thought it was really wonderful I was taking such an active role in my lawn care and said that most people just throw stuff on their lawn and don't even know why they are doing it. Gulp. I tried to backpeddle saying that I just really read one article and I wasn't even really sure what it all meant so I still had a lot to learn but I really thought I needed a pre-emergent and I had a dandelion problem. Henry shook his head. Pre-emergents (much like their name implies) take care of weeds before they present themselves so my dandelions would require something else perhaps a post-emergent? Henry again shook his head and gave me the scientific name of three products that would most likely get rid of the dandelions. I was slightly bummed that Henry wasn't finding my lawn care humor very entertaining but, like I said, he was older and kindly and I wasn't going to hold his seriousness about weeds against him.

Clearly buying my lawn care expertise charade, Henry asked what type of grass I had in my yard. I looked at him thinking surely he was kidding but he was not. Sure, I can tell you the characteristics that would make a certain cow more favorable than another and can identify almost every purebred dog breed by sight but identify a type of grass? No dice. I ended up telling Henry our grass was green and not prickly. Since that didn't narrow it down for him, he informed me that Kentucky Bluegrass was really popular in the area and I probably had that. It sounded good so I went with it.

As it turns out a pre-emergent is just the beginning. Henry outlined an entire plan including fertilizer application, grub control, irrigation, seeding and winterizing that would take place over the next six months. Six months?!!?!? Multiple applications of various concoctions??!?! And I thought a pre-emergent would take care of everything. So, so naive.

In a month I will return to the garden center and seek out my man Henry and sheepishly admit that I did not commit the lawn care regime he laid out for me to memory and I, again, need to tap into his infinite wisdom of all things grass and weed related. What I thought was going to be easy-pezy is not going to be easy at all. I suggested to the Husband that he could have all of that responsibility back. He said he'd think about it and then he chuckled. I'm doomed.