Bedazzled

It was late and I was on Amazon.

I have no clue about fashion. I wear t-shirts with sayings on them (often hand-me-downs from my  kids) and hoodies.

Oh, and I have a zippered garment bag of my “normal-person disguises,” clothes I wear when I am not allowed to dress like an 8-year-old boy. The garment bag is necessary to protect them from dust.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I realized this past weekend that I dress (sort of, in a distorted way) like a Texan woman. Go to a mall in Houston and you will see clothes bedazzled with rhinestones, topped off with marabou feathers, in tiger and zebra prints. And no, you are not in the little girls’ section (I checked), you are in the section meant for adult women.

I went to visit my son at college in Oregon. Arriving for the parents’ tour, wearing my rainbow-colored sneakers and my bright purple down jacket (for Texans, cold weather is novel and fun), I realized that all the other parents were wearing expensive hiking gear in earth tones. Oops.

Place has a definite effect on your clothes. I remember, when our kids were small and we lived in New York City, we went to Disney World in Florida. My husband and I laughed when we got back to the city. People at Disney World wore pastel colors, were super-friendly and also, sorry to say, fat; people back in Manhattan were skinny and wore scowls and black.

Also, in New York, I remember seeing an elderly woman on the bus, wearing her coat, just so, accented by a pretty pin. I thought, I hope I dress like her when I’m old … but that’s not looking likely. At the rate I'm going, I’ll probably be the little old lady in the bedazzled baseball cap.

Those Poor Children

Just wrote to my representatives about the children on the border, the ones the US government says it doesn't have to provide food and water and soap for (all while Trump charges the Secret Service, whose job it is to protect him and his family, rent at his properties). Disgusting.

Anyway, here's what I wrote:

I am writing to you today as one decent human being, one decent American, to another.

The migrant children, some as young as 5 months, having not only been ripped away from their families, but now being held without access to proper food, water, medical care, need to be taken care of.

Period.

Full-stop.

Do not use them as a bargaining chip to get funding for any other thing, including immigration enforcement.

Do not use them to complain, as I have keep hearing politicians do, that it’s “the other side’s” fault or that the children’s parents broke the law. I don’t care if their father is Jeffrey Dahmer and their mother is Ted Bundy. Which, incidentally, these people are not. They are refugees. Maybe ones that fit our asylum requirements, maybe not. Maybe they are “only” economic refugees. Maybe they are fleeing climate change or violence. But they are people and they, particularly their children, now artificially orphaned by the Trump Administration’s cruel policies, are in distress.

We are Americans. We take care of children. We take care of people in distress. It is the decent thing to do and Americans are decent people. Those there, on the ground, including government workers, are trying, even coming in on their off hours to help. Other Americans are coming with donations of diapers and soap and toothbrushes and paste – only to be turned away.

Other countries take care of such influxes with refugee camps and invite in organizations like the Red Cross. Why aren’t we doing something like that?

We used to be a country that could handle things like this, would even help other countries.

Please do whatever you can to take care of these children. And do it without delay.

Thank you.

Blasts from the Past

Well, so, yeah, when I couldn't get up enough energy to go to bed last night, I Googled myself and came up with these two ancient clips. :)

https://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/04/style/game-not-cattle-on-texas-ranch.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/food/1993/10/20/food-newsletters-eating-between-the-lines/cef0fbf1-598f-45a3-96ba-0442b0631e05/?utm_term=.b9211b8ae28a

Things really don't ever disappear from the internet. :o