What To Wear New Years Eve

It was raining when I decided to get out of bed this morning and has not stopped through putting on my makeup, having a cup of Creme Brulee home made coffee, making my lunch for work tomorrow, and taking photos to see if I remembered how.   All I have done is put on about 5 different outfits, took about what felt like a hundred pics and I am exhausted.  I watched the Lakers win a ball game with my favorite player Kobe inspiring as ever yet I can barely keep my eyes open at 5pm now.  No ballet class for two days and I am a mush ball.   It must be the grayest rainiest  Christmas Day of all time that is making me feel like I am in a deep dark cave and all I want to do is hibernate. 

I did forget how to transfer my photos from my camera so I did wait too long.  Thank heaven Google manages to answer my questions and I came up with only one photo I feel like posting.  I have discovered when taking photos I have nothing to wear for New Years Eve.  I am in charge of games and we are going to be playing outdoor games indoors so a LBD with spikes is not a good choice even if I owned them.  I am picturing a chiffon sleeveless cream dress I spotted at H & M with some kind of red or green cotton tee over the top and some fancy boots.

The story behind the granny boots I have on in this picture today are forty years old.  They are Naturalizers and orignially dark brown.  One Halloween I decided to spray them with Design Master Gold metallic spray paint good to spray baskets, ceramics, wood, and so much more.  When I wore them as a costume I received so many compliments I decided they were not just for Halloween I could wear them all of the time.  Then I wanted them Silver and over the years decided to go back to Gold again.  When I saw the Bronze color I thought that would be the best color of all for granny boots.  Forty years old and still trekkin'.  See how things can get better with age... and a little bit of paint.  

How Action Speaks Louder Than Words

Growing up I remember my mother telling me I was not to play with certain kinds of kids that used bad language.  When I raised my children I did not want them to play with certain kids I considered a bad influence.  The ones who were always getting in trouble.  I wondered why being around the "wrong kind" is so powerful and being with so called good kids is not as influential?.  Or is it?

Yes I am a hundred years old and this was one of my favorite movies I went to see over and over and over.  I bought the album and learned all of the songs by heart and put up drapes in my basement with folding chairs for the neighbor kids to come over and watch me perform.  Okay I bribed them with graham crackers and grape juice if they came over so they did.

I just heard a movie director interviewed tonight ask, "where is the data on musicals and how those affect us?  Do the happy go lucky Mary Poppin type movies create a good world like they are trying to say violent movies creates a violent one?"   He of course did not think so.  In my personal experience when I see or hear violence of any kind I immediately turn it off because if I do not I FEEL sick.  When I see something beautiful and life giving I FEEL inspired, and uplifted.   Where is the data on this?   Depending upon who puts the money behind gathering the data will be the final verdict.  Yes that means you NRA!!!!

I made my sister be part of my home made musicals.  When she drowned she was ten and I was sixteen.   We were riding in the hearse to the funeral parlor looking out the window when my father said, "It feels like the whole world should stop but everyone is going about their business like everything is normal."  Since then I have come to know the meaning of a time to grieve and a time to dance for each one of us in our own way in our own time.

What Can We Stand For In America?

Last Tuesday I was getting ready to leave for ballet class and heard on the news a shooting had happened at the Clackamas Towne Center Mall about twenty minutes away from where I live.   America likes to think the "terrorists" are ...over there somewhere.....and love our violent movies, video games, music,  magazines, books, and television.

Today I read on a blog that teaches writing...."If you don't torture yourself with hardship, and suffering you are torturing readers with boredom."  What is this fascination?  I listen to OPB radio when in my car.  I only drive for ten minutes at a time.  Many times I have to turn the radio off because the stories are all too gruesome to be of any value to me and my life.  Just the other day someone was telling a reporter "her sister was being stabbed in the throat...."  I know the head in the sand expression but that is just one of many stories now that has taken over the airwaves of National Public Broadcasting supposedly the ONLY intellectual media left alive.

Now today the morning news comes across my computer screen about the mass murder of children and teachers at a grade school in Connecticut.  Is this going to be just another day in America?   What do we stand for?  If we all need guns in our homes to protect ourselves who is the enemy?   My father had guns and loved to shoot.  He took me shooting once and I hated it.  He would shoot beer cans for sport and go hunting for deer and moose.  One year he finally saw a deer, shot it, brought it home to put in our freezer and we ate venison for many dinners.  He never went hunting again.  The thrill was gone.  My father was the most loving, mellow man I have ever known and he loved his guns.  So I don't get it.
 
Is there another way to live?  Is it possible to begin with the hearts and minds of our own self?  If one really chooses violence as a form of entertainment is it going to creep into real life?  Does real life mimic our environment?  Is there a way to love our self and then each other or does the gun come first then lets think about love.  Do you really have to kill another human being in order to protect yourself?  Do you know anyone mentally ill?  If you think someone is "different"  do you avoid them?  What else can you do?

There is no such thing as being able to control anything let alone guns.  What made the mother and kindergarten teacher want those guns?  Did she know how to use them to protect herself?  Where did she go to learn how to use them?  Or were they for her children to learn how to use in order to protect her?  If guns are so useful to protect each other what is the problem?  Are many more humans in America and else where alive today because we have guns to protect us?  This is what we need to decide?  I wager people that own guns own them because they like them and think they are fun but it sounds better to think and say they are for some kind of protection. 

But here come another round of arguments. "Its not the guns it is the mental illness.  It is not mental illness it is bad parenting and all the rest of it".  The chatter will continue for weeks and slowly dies.  I agree with Michael Moore and what he said,   "Is it too soon to talk about gun control in America?  No, it's too late."

How Did You Get That Look

It is 9:30pm on a dark and rainy night in Portland.  Just watched the Rhajneeshpuram special on OPB. I remember when this was taking place in the 1980's and 90's in Oregon and I did not know what to believe.  Since then I have read many conflicting stories about what took place during that time.  One of the best books I have ever read is called My Life In Orange written by Tim Guest who spent his childhood in the commune.  It is so well written I felt like I was right there with him.

The commune came into being a few years after what happened in Jonestown and mostly fear based because of it being labeled a cult.  The story has so many twists and turns it is hard to believe it all began in a sleepy little town in Oregon called Antelope.

Now on to the look of a "smokey eye".  Tomorrow a few of us at work have decided to come with our interpretation of a smokey eye.  I have been experimenting with it over the months and sometimes think it looks good and other times think maybe not?  Have you tried it?  Do you like it?  I remember my father telling me NOT to compare myself to the pictures in the fashion magazines I would bring home.  He said those pictures were not real and that was in the 1950's way before Photoshop and all the rest of what we have now with the Botox etc.

Well, here goes....tomorrow I am going to try for one of these two looks to wear to work.  I only have drugstore makeup to work with.  Yeah, I will blame it on that.