It’s SO hot… that my cheap ass consented to getting a window air conditioner for the bedroom, and even using the whole house A/C for a couple of days last week.

It’s SO hot… that even though the garden is not situated ideally for full sun, the peppers are growing like mad.

It’s SO hot… that I spent the entire un-airconditioned light rail ride down to Artscape getting mad at hair. See, this thing happens every time I decide to make a change to my hair. About a month and a half ago, I decided I was going to let it grow long again, but the thing about a change in hair with me is that it is never just a change in hair. It always turns into a referendum on femininity and lifestyle, and anything else I can come up with. I looked around the train at all the girls with braids and ponytails, and hair still damp wrapped up into twists, and I remembered that feeling of having so much more hair. Do I REALLY want to walk around in the summer feeling like I have a sweater on my head? Am I really OK with giving up the convenience and practicality of being able to get out of the shower and walk out the door five minutes later looking presentable, because the only thing I have to do with my hair is run my hands through it and go, and it does not take three hours to dry? Am I really ok with giving up the certainty that my hair will look good every day? Curly hair with any real length is completely unpredictable, like having a bipolar muppet on my head. Three decades of AAAANNNNNNIMAAAAAAALLLLLL! on my head was a long time. And furthermore, men who like long hair on women can suck it, unless they too have experienced at least one really hot summer with bipolar muppets on their heads. By the time I got to North Avenue, I was ready to revert to an inch-long haircut, and while I’m at it dye it purple, just because I can, because it would be gone in six weeks anyway and I AM A GROWN-UP AND I CAN DO WHATEVER I WANT, INCLUDING HAVING A PUNK-ASS HAIRCUT. Suck it, middle age.*

Seriously, it’s been really hot out.

Artscape was lovely. I went early in the day before it got too crowded, and it was fun to see the work of people I know, and artists I recognize from last year.

Because Scott is sick, I was on my own, so I went on a mission to find him an extremely ridiculous t-shirt to lift his spirits. He has a cold, but he is not just sick, he is MAN sick, so he is suffering. Women get sick in a very general way. I feel terrible, leave me alone and let me sleep for two days. Men get sick in great detail. Give even the most reticent, stony man a cold, heck, give Calvin Coolidge a cold, and suddenly Silent Cal is profoundly in touch with every feeling and sensation he is experiencing, and he wants to express this to any one who will listen. Sequentially. Repeatedly. From the first little twitch. Now I understand why the age-old remedy for colds is lots of sleep and lots of fluids. Sleeping and drinking are two activities during which it is impossible to complain.**

All that aside, I was successful in my mission. At the SEIBEI booth, I found this design for Scott, which is hilarious for anyone who has a dog. Dog digestion is a wonder. Take a dog outside every hour, and every hour, that dog -regardless of what or how much he has been fed- will find something to poop. It is as if all dogs have some kind of poop reserve, the same way camels store water.

I also found a shirt for myself, buried in the bottom of the SEIBEI clearance bin.

I absolutely fucking love this shirt. I love it so much that I bought it even though it had sleeves, and came home and age-inappropriately removed the sleeves myself. I just cannot deal with sleeves. Long sleeves in cold weather are lovely, but I am an all or nothing kind of gal, and once the weather is warm enough to eschew long sleeves, there will be NO SLEEVES. Short sleeves are for wusses. Well, wusses and people who have excessively hairy armpits and use solid deodorant, because really, who wants to consider the possibility that someone else’s armpit hair / deodorant ball is going to end up in their food / face / gym equipment? Gentlemen take note.

There is another version of the shirt picture, and while I know this will be amusing only to people who were in Mrs. Bintner’s 12th grade honors English class, yes I WAS channeling Mrs. Bintner stomping around between the desks talking about Götterdämmerung.***

Also of note in this picture: no toenail polish. The polish I was using left my nails looking yucky when bare, but I have been using a base coat (and buffing and shining and smoothing) long enough now that everything is looking happy and pink again. Sadly, though, the polish must go back on tomorrow. I will not be able to go completely bare or in a very light color until the bruise grows out from one of my toenails – product of dropping a full can of bathroom cleaner right on the spot where the nail meets the skin, earlier in the year. I think this is proof that I have no business cleaning bathrooms.

One last thing: while I was out taking pictures in the rapidly growing garden this week, I thought it would be fun to follow Max around holding the camera under his face. This nifty shot was the result.

*On the other hand, it’s nice not to need an expensive haircut every five weeks. I don’t know.
**That’s right. Men do this while women do this. I “went there.”
***I also learned, in the process of taking these pictures, that if I need a full body picture and no one is around to take the picture, or my picture-taker is sleeping off the plague, I can set the camera on the corner of the piano, use the timer, and get a shot lined up nicely. Now I can give the appearance of having a good time with whomever is behind the camera participating in my jackassery, when really I am enjoying my jackassery all by myself. No one will ever know.

I. Getting Off On It

It was weird to start off the week misbehaving, but I am certainly not one to let a little three day weekend get between me and my regularly scheduled mischief. After the usual Tuesday work and erranding, I gave a nod to the stack of bills that need to be mailed out, ambivalently eyed the copy of the sutras I am supposed to finish by this weekend but have barely started (why I am I resisting the readings for this training with ever fiber of my being?), and went out to spend the rest of the gift certificates from my birthday.

See? Shoes, yes, but this is the expensive pedicure. I do a better job myself.

There were shoes involved, of course: delicate, girly flip-flops that make me smile. There was also a purchase of funky embroidered tank tops (one in orange!) from the girls’ department at Old Navy.

I have written about this before; I am always a little conflicted about getting stuff from the kids’ department. But f that. Yes, I kind of get off on being small enough to get stuff from the kids’ department, and as long everything fits and I’m not decking myself out in Hello Kitty and Underoos*, there is nothing wrong with this.

II. Getting Off Of It

This picture of the newly planted garden has nothing to do with the post. But, yay garden! Tomatoes, peppers, cucumber, and zucchini.

Sometimes I have bad ideas. Recent bad ideas include the “vintage” bedroom furniture that is tiny and loud and leaves splinters all over my clothes, and hormonal birth control**. Let me state for the record: What the hell was I thinking? Knowing my sensitivity to drugs and hormones, what on earth made me think this was a good idea? I intentionally did not look up side effects before I went on it because I am suggestible, but tonight I did, only to find out that I have had most of them, from thinning hair to a distended gut to low libido and other issues related to adult misbehaving. The only ones I didn’t have were the mood swings and irritability, or maybe I did, but who could tell? Ha.

So, after two months of unpleasantness, on Saturday I decided to get off the stuff. Now I’m just waiting for the side effects to subside, and musing on the irony of birth control that makes one less attractive and causes sex to be incredibly uncomfortable. No wonder it is so effective.

III. Getting Off On Me

I have been cautious about sharing the rest of the photos from the Atomic Cheesecake shoot with people I know, but I did send the link on to a dear old friend. He has long been one of the safe people in my life, a twenty year friendship that has always had a cousinly feel to it. This was his evaluation of the pics:

Holy shit. Is it weird to admit to one of your oldest, established friends that she has turned into a righteous babe and her [pics] are hotter than the surface of the sun? ‘Cause it feels weird. It was a little uncomfortable, actually. I could barely bring myself to masturbate to them a second time.

Thanks, man. Take a nap and give it a few hours. Now that’s a happy ending to a Misbehaving Tuesday.

*1. Why aren’t there still Underoos? 2. Why aren’t there Underoos for adults? I had C-3PO Underoos when I was five, and I would like to have them back, please.
**Did this just come out “birthday control?” Yes it did.

It was one of those garments that I thought of from time to time, that it would be nice to find something like it again. And, then, behold! Back in the early fall I found that very dress in a thrift store, two sizes smaller, for six dollars. What with me being old enough to no longer care about being too old to wear things, I bought it, and ever since, I have been waiting for the weather to warm up so I could wear it. Tonight I wore it for the second time this year, to my grandfather’s 94th birthday dinner. It’s still about a size too big and should be taken in, but I don’t mind.

Sometimes it’s the little things, like a six dollar dress (and amazing weather, and summer, finally), that make life magical and exquisite. I’ll take them all.

Unfortunately, it is only available as a regular old unisex shirt, and those always look ridiculous on me. The sleeves hit me in a funny place, and the shirts are usually about five inches too long, which would be fine if I wore my t-shirts tucked in, but this is one of many no-nos for the busty gal. With the exception of well made oxford shirts, anything tucked in gives me the shape of an ice cream cone, which does not sound bad because ice cream cones are delicious and lickable, but in practice it is unattractive. And bodysuits? Forget about it. The early nineties were a terror to me, and I cannot forgive American Apparel for bringing back these monstrosities. The only busty gal I knew who looked good in a bodysuit had a figure that could support wearing one a couple of sizes too small, which negated the triangle effect by virtue of being extremely tight, the kind of tight that becomes obscene immediately upon leaving college. On that note, American Apparel: seriously? Bodysuits and high-waisted pants? Good lord, a gal could get a yeast infection just walking past the store.

Bodysuits, even when they looked good, were a pain in the ass, literally. Even when they did not ride up, snapping and unsnapping those things required contortion, and after a few beers, forget about it. Try being drunk in a bathroom stall the size of a veal crate with no TP, and fastening three snaps, in order, between your legs. What were we thinking?

Anyway, since I liked the design of the t-shirt so much but not the style, I decided to get fancy and alter it. I added cuffs, which I sewed by hand, and then got out the heavy artillery to hem the bottom. I have not used my sewing machine since we moved here almost three years ago. The whole project should have taken an hour or less, but since it has been so long since I used the sewing machine, I spent about an hour unpacking the thing and remembering what I was doing with it. For the most part, I am very bad at sewing, but thanks to a determined middle school home ec teacher, I can at least operate a sewing machine (sometimes) and follow a simple pattern, and I always level off cups of flour with the back of a knife.

After some false starts, including a good twenty minutes trying to remember how to wind a bobbin and wasting half a spool of thread in the process (just press that thingy over to the right, it turns out), I got it together. And I must say that I did a great freaking job. Everything is completely straight and secure, and I now have my very own custom tailored tricked out TMBG t-shirt.

They are in a stack in the bureau in the basement. Most are either large or extra-large, which I am not, so wearing them is not really an option. Also in this category is my biker jacket, purchased during my junior year of high school. It is both leather and too big on me now. I was a little bigger when I wore all of this stuff, but more significantly, my style was a little bigger, too. Anyway:

I am fairly certain that this is one of those “vintage” shirts that is now being mass produced and sold in Hot Topic and Alloy. My high school boyfriend saw the Femmes in the late 80s with his older brother -I am guessing it was the tour for 3- and his older brother bought the shirt. When he outgrew it, he gave it to his little brother and when his little brother outgrew it, he gave it to me. Somewhere in my boxes of cassettes, I have a copy of the bootleg from the show. In it I can hear high school boyfriend -still pre-pubescent at that point- laughing in the background.

The first show I ever went to see without parental supervision was The Mighty Lemon Drops and The Ocean Blue at City Gardens in Trenton in January of 1990, probably around the 25th or so. It was just days before we moved to Cheltenham. I wore this tshirt over a blue long sleeve shirt with purple and blue pajama bottoms and black chuck taylors on the day we moved, and many, many times after that.

The bleach mark has been there forever. I still remember what the stage looked like at this show. During some of the songs, there were crazy, super bright lights behind the band in a kind of white-blue, like sunlight.

This was from the Perspex Island tour, fall of 1991 or maybe spring of 1992. Matthew Sweet opened for Robyn Hitchcock at the Trocadero in Philly. I bought two shirts at this concert. The other one was white and got so pit-stained that I had to throw it out. I loved this shirt and wore it with the aforementioned pajama bottoms, and also with cutoffs over tights and fishnets, with combat boots or chuck taylors.

My friend and I got to the Troc good and early. We were waiting outside the front door when Robyn and band arrived. He looked at us and said, “Well, they keep getting younger, don’t they?” I was in the balcony for this one, looking straight down at the band. During “Uncorrected Personality Traits,” there were two people at each mic for the four-part harmony; in one section they switched off in pairs, syllable by syllable, maintaining the harmony. It was pretty impressive.

I have seen They Might Be Giants so many times now that I cannot remember where this shirt came from. I had one from the Apollo 18 tour in 1992, but I think this was later, maybe John Henry in 1994.

I love this design. If it is, in fact, from the show in 1994, it was a great show. BU sponsored it, but hardly advertised, so there were only a few hundred people there. Bummer for the band, but pretty awesome for those of us who found ourselves in a four hundred person conga line during “No One Knows My Plan,” which might not have worked so well in a more crowded venue. I talked to the drummer for a bit after the show (he’s a libertarian), and nabbed a playlist. On the way out, I saw John and John heading into the Aerosmith bar. I was prepared to use my fake ID and follow them, but my friend didn’t have ID, so we left. Bummer.

This wasn’t from a concert, but it is in the same drawer with the concert t-shirts, and is also an XL. I won it in a silent auction for NARAL in St. Louis, hence the pro-choice business all over it. Where I stood then or now on this particular issue is not the point (actually, at the time I could have cared less, but some one from my office was obligated to go to this event), the point is that I was shocked to be at a stuffy fundraiser in the midwest and see a signed MTX shirt up for auction.

So there it is. The late 80s and 90s in t-shirts.

Imbolc is also the festival of plows, the maiden, and lactating sheep, but for me, Imbolc is the festival of the treadmill. It has happened every year for the past six years or so; sometime in February I just want to run, and run, and run, and I do. I run until spring. I usually get to a few miles feeling comfortable and I start thinking about signing up for 5k races, and then my back quits and I go back to walking.

After six years I have figured out that rather than try to turn myself into a runner (which I am NOT – a ten minute mile is super speedy for me), rather than always building toward a 5k, then a 10k and so on, I might as well just enjoy the running for a few months out of the year. Every year I start out a little stronger. The first year, I could barely run for five minutes, the next year wasn’t much better, even though I was in better shape. By last year, when I started I could make it about a mile and half if I did intervals. Tonight was my second time on the treadmill this year, and I ran for a solid half hour, with effort, but it wasn’t bad at all, even with a bruised toe.

Some people go from the couch to a marathon in a matter of months. For me, the progress is over years. I think I like that better. It is one thing to look back and know that I am in better shape than I was a few months ago; it is quite another to see the changes over years and know that I am still getting stronger.

With that, I am off to eBay to look for some vintage dresses to adorn this strong, maiden body of mine. And also sports bras.

I started at a Goodwill in Towson and found a purple dress and a black and white polka-dot skirt for thirteen bucks. I also found some orange pants which I liked, but I had a long conversation with myself about how many pairs of orange pants one really needs. Myself and I reluctantly agreed that one pair of orange pants, one pair of orange capris, and one pair of orange short shorts should really cover it. The next stop was TJ Maxx, where I found a funky mod looking black dress on clearance for for ten dollars, and -holy boulder holders, batman- one of my favorite kinds of bras in my size, for $12.99. I am an odd size, so this is the type of thing that makes me giddy enough to consider asking the store out on a date.

Last stop was DSW where I had a familiar moment – I tried on the ridiculously impractical shoes, loved them, decided not to buy them, and by the time I got home, knew I would be heading back tomorrow. Because, really, no matter how impractical they may be, sometimes, you know what? Shoes. And we’re only thirty-five days out from March 2, the date on which I start wearing open toe shoes again.

Speaking of thirty-five, this is all part of a dramatic de-frumping of my wardrobe that has been happening since last summer (she writes, sitting on the couch in sweatpants). At first, the idea was to enjoy the hell out of the clothes that will expire at thirty-five, but as the year moved on, I decided that I don’t care if the clothes expire at thirty-five, I am going to wear them anyway, but if I am going to do this, I had better -to borrow some outdated vernacular- really freaking work it. I plan to be thirty-five in a miniskirt not so much in a Pamela Anderson kind of way as a Halle Berry kind of way, if Halle Berry were an overgrown punk instead of an accomplished actress. (The current stage of the de-frumping is focused on underthings. Bras were radically updated over the summer, now I am onto getting rid of any crotchless underpants that did not start out that way. Good god, undies that are one hanumanasana away from full frontal just have to go.)

All in all, a successful, if frivolous Misbehaving Tuesday, that will extend partly into tomorrow. $37.00 isn’t bad for two dresses, a skirt, a bra, and chasing away the blues.

Pink, purple, blue... decisions, decisions.

Or, perhaps, you tired of me bugging you about voting for my smut.

I am delighted to announce that I won! Finally, that year I spent working in campaign politics paid off! Thanks everyone, for your votes. I promise faithfully to uphold my duties as whatever this makes me. This was really fun.

I eagerly await the arrival of my prize, a “skirt” from one of Alison Tyler’s sponsors, Yandy (NSFW). Perhaps I’ll post pics when it arrives. Now, to decide which color…

This is post #400. Yay for me!

From time to time I will buy something from the kids’ clothing department because it is cheaper and fits just fine – t-shirts, gym socks, that sort of thing. My favorite sneakers (knock-off skate shoes with flames on the sides) are from the boys department at Wal-Mart from back when I would set foot in a Wal-Mart, and I have a few t-shirts that are youth larges and XLs.

(I do need to interrupt myself here and mention that a couple of jobs ago, I worked with a gal who had lots of tiny little kids’ t-shirts from thrift stores. She wore them often and she looked ridiculous. But, her shirts had cartoon characters on them and were so little that they only covered her from shoulders to lower ribcage*, which gave her the appearance of a rapidly growing preschooler whose family was down on their luck, which is why the whole hipster aesthetic is just depressing. I am very careful not to do that.)

At one point, all of my gym-going underwear was from a plain 7-pack from the girls department, because it was cheap and not made out of some ridiculous material. (Wearing of thongs during vigorous exercise: what the hell? Discuss.) The only bummer was that I bought it during a Christmas shopping trip, and I unpacked all seven pairs to put in the wash at the same time that I was wrapping presents. One pair vanished, and for days, I was paranoid that one of Scott’s nephews was going to get my underwear as a present. (I couldn’t decide what would be more mortifying: one of the kids getting a toy with panties attached to it, or Scott’s family knowing that I bought them in the girls’ section.) I unwrapped and re-wrapped all of the presents, and never found the missing undies. Weird.

It turns out that $2.50 buys a lot of misbehaving.

Anyway, today I wandered into the kids’ department at Target because I had some Misbehaving Cash set aside, and I was unsatisfied with the tights still left in the ladies’ department. Behold, there on the wall were ruffly socks, on SALE. I now have three pairs of ruffly little girly socks that are made for, well, ruffly little girls, but I am going to wear them anyway, because if I have to wear socks for another six weeks, I should at least be able to come home and do a halfway decent impression of a ZZ Top video.

*Apparently I can’t type tonight. “Ribcage” kept coming out as “fubbage.” I think I like it: “Sweetie, you can’t go out like that. That shirt barely covers your fubbage.”

1. I overslept, blissfully.

2. Orange pants!

3. As I was walking up an aisle in Whole Foods, a woman walking toward me with her cart stopped abruptly and stared at me. “Your hair is beautiful,” she said. “It’s a beautiful style. Perfect for your face.” I thanked her, and we went our separate ways. This is by no means the first time some one has stopped to tell me about my hair -it has always gotten attention- but the interesting thing about it is that in the year and half that I have had my hair short, the demographic of people who stop to tell me about my hair has changed. When it was longer, I always got comments from middle aged white women and young-ish black men. Since I went short, the comments are almost exclusively from younger to middle-aged black women. I have no opinion about why this is. I am delighted to have the attention.

4. Sommer Marsden‘s wiener dog nosed my name out of a virtual hat, and I won one of her books!

5. I finished the story I am going to submit for the sex issue of Smile, Hon, which is, ahem, a feet of misbehaving all its own. I am just so glad to have to it done that it doesn’t matter anymore whether it gets printed (although I would like it very much if it were printed).

6. I spent a little time meandering aimlessly through Target. I didn’t buy anything interesting (coffee, conditioner), but I was amused when I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror and was, for a brief moment, surprised by the brightness of my own orange pants. I considered buying some orange underpants to cap off the whole orange pants experience (ok, technically, underpants would underlie the experience, not cap it off), but I walked away from the undie bin empty-handed. Hmmm. Maybe next time.