Old Navy Lies, Fat Cats, A Love of Winter

Hello everyone. I have been travelling for the past week and I apologize for my lack of blogging.

Here are some observations:

1. Old Navy lies. Vanity sizing is out of control there. I am currently wearing a pair of Size 6 jeans that I bought at an Old Navy in the U.S. and they are hanging off me. I should have bought a Size 4. And that is a lie, a huge, big, massive lie. Because I am an average-sized woman. Not tiny. Not even very small. I have a bit of a JLo bum. If I were a true Size 4, there would be no way I could wear any Old Navy jeans. I'd have to buy a Size 12 in the kids' department.

I know why stores like Old Navy do this. They want to convince fatties that they are slimmer than they are, which will make them happy, which will encourage them to buy more clothes there. But I find it dishonest and wrong. That is all.

2. My cat is borderline obese. Because it's so cold and snowy this winter, he's staying in all the time and is now just eating out of sheer boredom. He used to be a meat-only kitty but now he'll eat anything. He even licked a plate clean last night that had the remnants of lasagna -- tomato sauce and melted mozzarella. Even he looked ashamed of himself. I hope the warm weather arrives soon so he can get back out there and lose some poundage.

3. Even though I have just returned from a warm climate with palm trees everywhere, my heart soared surprisingly when I got back to Toronto and took a cab home from the airport in a minor snowstorm. There is something about the black silhouettes of maples and oaks bending in a winter wind against a metal-grey sky that is beautiful to me. I couldn't live in a place with no winter. I would actually miss it.

Please, someone, explain this to me

U.S. Patent #6,004,186

As someone who both breastfed and pumped -- albeit 13 years ago, I do not have a clue what's going on in this unintentionally hilarious photo of a "hands-free pumping bra." Has the technology changed that much in the past decade? Does this explain why I couldn't sell my breast pump in a garage sale ? Is there anyone out there who can tell me what's going on?

Most Awesome Action Doll Ever!

And you can order it here!

Wonder Product: Lands' End Down-Filled Reversible Coat

I have always been fashionable to the point of stupidity. Freezing cold out? I won't wear gloves if they clash with my outfit. I will insist on a jaunty cap even if it means my ears will freeze. I will wear stiletto boots the day after a snowstorm instead of snowboots. And this winter, I could not bring myself to stop wearing my Kenneth Cole green tweed coat with velvet buttons no matter how cold it got until one day, amid a brutally cold screaming blizzard that practically picked me up off my feet and blew me along a downtown street, I asked myself: "What is your problem?"

So I decided to go online parka shopping. I found some tempting ones on Roots.ca, but they were more expensive than I could afford. So I surfed on over to Landsend.com, and ended up buying this coat.

And can I just say how happy I am with this coat? It is reversible, quilted on one side and sleek on the other, downfilled, totally lightweight and yet utterly impenetrable no matter how bitterly cold and blustery the wind. Last week I walked up a long hill in my neighbourhood in the face of a horrific minus-30-with-the-windchill gusting wind and I didn't feel a thing. I was toasty and warm inside that coat, even though my ears were frozen in my jaunty tweed cap. Plus, it was on sale and I got a great deal on it even with the duty.

One thing to be careful of, however. Lands' End sizes are large. If you're a medium here, you'll need a small. I might have even been OK in an extra-small and I am not tiny.

The second best thing about this coat is how cute it looks when you pair it with a funky scarf and mitts and a jaunty cap!!! Yes, I am still working on giving up the jaunty caps.

The Site Meter Collection: Part XXXXIV

And in Indonesia, they probably laugh at people in Regina looking for instructions on how to cook the rice for nasi goreng.

Happy Valentine's Day Dr. O and a big Mouah for all the traffic you've sent us -- and all the guidance you've given to lovers looking to make an erotic tiramisu. In your honour, here's some Dr Oetker muffin video taken from YouTube, where it turns out there's a treasure trove of Dr. Oetker archival footage.



(Heh, heh, just clicked on the spellcheck for tiramisu and it gave me pastrami.)

Happy Valentine's Day

With or without you by Maya 1 at Flickr

From RTK, the Scottie News and the Daily Doxie.

Was Mommie Dearest okay after all?

Well, let's just say I have my opinion (as usual), but I'm wondering about yours.

This is one of Joan Crawford's other daughter's side of the story.

Wonder Product: Roger and Gallet Soaps

I am big on bathing. I would eat my supper in the bathtub if I could. I'd happily lounge in the bath for hours every day if I had the time. So given my bathing obsession, I have sampled many different kinds of soaps.

But I always come back to these -- Roger and Gallet. These French soaps are hefty and substantial, and they feel like butter on your skin when you lather them up. They are also beautifully perfumed -- the linden blossom one is my favourite because when I was in the south of France seven years ago, the linden trees were in full bloom, and so every time I shower, I am transported back to that beautiful tiled bathroom overlooking rolling hills and olive groves and cypress trees.

All of the fragrances have their charms, however, including the lettuce and carrot varieties from the Roger and Gallet nature line. The lettuce is grassy and delightful, in fact.

In Toronto, you can get these fabulous soaps at the Bay and at Holt's. Seek them out if you can -- you won't be disappointed and your skin will be satiny and fragrant all day long!

An Ode to An Old, Great Song: Haunted When The Minutes Drag by Love and Rockets

For the past 20 years or so, I have deeply loved the Love and Rockets song "Haunted When The Minutes Drag." All these years, however, I believed it to be a heartbreak song, a lush, dark, angst-ridden tune about longing that I used to think was sung bitterly. But I listened to it in a different frame of mind today on my iPod on my way to spin class, and I realized with a start that it is, in fact, a love song about two people who are together in all meaningful ways, except physically. Perhaps it's just that my definition of love has matured with age.

Love and Rockets was a great British band from the 1980s that emerged, in part, from Bauhaus and was in the same vein as the Jesus and Mary Chain and other dark goth bands. They were accused of selling out when they had that one big album in the late '80s with that hit single on it, "So Alive."

But "Haunted" was recorded five years before that. I love the acidy, trippy bass lines in the song ... it still gives me the shivers every time I listen to it, especially when the psychedelic instrumentation takes over and the bass picks up and ... well, I just can't explain what else goes on there, but it is beautiful. And the lyrics are killer.

I turned someone lovely onto this song today, and now I feel a need to pay tribute to it. It's a brilliant, brilliant song. Download it!

"Pimped Out" Scandal

This is a pretty interesting story about an MSNBC Washington correspondent who's been suspended for saying on air that the Clintons were "pimping out" their daughter Chelsea in Hillary's battle to win the Democratic nomination.

Others may feel it's a terribly sexist and offensive thing to suggest about Chelsea Clinton, but to me, I don't get what the big deal is. The verb "to pimp" or "to pimp out" is common slang, it's totally in the vernacular, there's even a highly rated TV show called "Pimp My Ride" -- the word has utterly lost any sting it used to have. As so often happens with language, "to pimp" has evolved to mean something really quite innocuous.

Urban Dictionary even describes the term this way, meaning it really bears very little resemblance to anything prostitute-related:


Pimp out: A term used to describe massive modification of something to make it standout and look attractive.
The term is derived from the way pimps modify their cars with various colors, lights and other hardware.

Drummer to Pianist: "Damn, your keyboard is totally pimped out! What's all that LED lights and glowing buttons!"

Geek: "I've pimped my computer out - Now it has a transparent side and florescent lamps inside it."

The suspension is already causing people to accuse MSNBC of caving to pressure from the Clintons. If so, apparently the Clintons are both 70-year-old church ladies who haven't paid any attention to pop culture in the past 20 years.

I know the subtext here -- the Clintons are always accused, usually unfairly so, of being insanely manipulative and ambitious in their bid for the nomination, and perhaps they just got fed up and felt it wasn't fair to Chelsea and so complained. But on the face of it, this seems like fair comment to me from someone who used a modern-day bit of slang to describe Chelsea's often well-timed and well-planned appearances on the campaign trail.

UPDATE: Thanks to a commenter who sent us a link to this very funny photoshopped picture:

Britney Spears, Again: I Don't Even Know This Woman

You'd think I was a close personal relative of Britney Spears this week if you could see how I am reacting to her troubles.

When I found out the hospital let her out last night, I almost cried.

The girl is in a psychotic state! She was deemed to be too out of it to understand a court proceeding just the other day, yet two days later they let her out and over the advice of her doctors? And she's immediately back to her old tricks, going to the Beverly Hills Hotel, talking in an English accent, looking dazed and confused?

I feel we are watching someone die, and enabling it by watching, and yet are unable to tear our eyes away. I don't know why I can't stop watching, but I can't. Perhaps I am waiting for someone to swoop in and save her. Like the Scientologists, for example. Wasn't Tom Cruise boasting on that tape a couple of weeks ago that only Scientologists can save people? Paging Xenu! Paging Xenu!! Britney Spears could use your help, you arrogant headcases!

Poor Britney Spears

The stories emerging tonight about Britney Spears and that crackpot who's been drugging and controlling her are horrifying. The poor girl. Here I've been ranting for months about how she obviously doesn't care about her kids and is more concerned with partying and visiting gas stations and Starbucks when in fact she's been on a powerful and debilitating anti-psychotic medication. And her Howard K. Stern evil douchebag "friend" has been muddying the waters by plying her with other drugs, alcohol, threatening her, scaring her, cutting her off from her friends and family, stealing from her, etc.

It just goes to show you the horrible situations people can find themselves in when they have had unhappy childhoods and don't trust the people who raised them, are heartbroken and feel isolated, misunderstood and alone. I thank God for my kids -- I've been through some crap in my life, but my children kept me from going off the deep end. As it is, I let people into my life at times when I was heartbroken and vulnerable against my better judgment -- people who turned out to be callous and dishonest and soulless and not at all the people I thought they were. But my troubles seem like a picnic in the park compared to poor Britney's!

Wouldn't it be sweet to see her get better and get her kids back, pull herself together, find someone who truly loves and understands her, who will stick by her through thick and thin, and even watch her get something of a career back? Although I must confess, I hope she finds a sweet and kind-hearted non-Hollywood guy, moves to Montana and lives a peaceful rural life in a country house surrounded by "tall thin pines and musty books"* while he farms and she bakes. I am cheering for a peaceful and happy ending for Britney Spears!

p.s. I thought she looked pretty at the VMAs. I was really pissed when people said she was fat. Drugged senseless, yes, but not fat. If I could look that good rocking a serious addiction to a cocktail of various mind-numbing pharmaceuticals, I'd be pretty pleased with myself.

*That one was for you, suitor.

Old-Man Crush = Spirit-Lifter

So I had a depressing weekend for reasons I won't go into here -- just a profound sadness that kicked in Friday night and lingered all weekend until I forced myself out, on the advice of a dear friend, and went to a SuperBowl party with one of my suitors (the 50something one).

I must say, I don't pay any attention to football, but that was quite a game. That long pass from Eli Manning that was caught by that other guy while he was practically horizontal that ended up leading to the touchdown that won the game -- exciting!

But my 50something suitor blows hot and cold on me for reasons I entirely understand, since I blow pretty much entirely cold on him.

So I return home, mood slightly elevated but not significantly so. Wake up this morning feeling fairly forlorn. Notice I have messages, and start listening to them. And there is the funniest message ever, left last night while I was out, by my old-man crush. I must have listened to it 10 times, laughing harder each time, and will save it forever in my archives because it so sums up exactly what it is that I adore about him -- witty, clever, giggly and silly. The message also contained a surprise ending that would make the most humourless among us howl with laughter.

A great sense of humour has always been the biggest turn-on for me, and my old-man crush has really been blessed in that department.

In one message, my old-man crush really raised my spirits. I am really crushing on my old-man crush!

Surprise marriage in Paris!!!!

The bride's been portrayed as "a man-eater in the press" and has a scandalous internet presence. The groom's a jet-setting lawyer. The wedding was a surprise even though it was expected -- sort of.

Read our previous hanky-panky coverage.