Little Black Dress

It's called Spring Cleaning for a reason, but those of us who teach know the long holiday break is really the best time to pare down and clean out. A little extra time on my hands, the New Year a blink away, my birthday just after, and past that the beginning of another semester - so many beginnings need a fresh decor.

Besides, I just finished a massive online design job for someone else, and it made me want to fiddle with my own small space. So, a little-black-dress blog makeover. It was great fun to make and infinitely cheaper than redoing my living room.

My inspiration was this picture of Coco Chanel. Such a powerfully creative woman who, bless her heart, definitely needed to eat a sandwich now and then. Starvation aside, she's impeccable. I don't know a living woman who can sit at that angle without a few biscuits creeping out of the dough, Spanx or no Spanx.

I've just begun my New Year's Resolutions. The first three are "Simplify, simplify, simplify." I should probably take that to heart and stop worrying about the list.

My celebration tonight will be simple. Em is glamming up in her own little black dress for an evening at the Peabody with her gentleman friend. The Perfect Grandson and I will be home having a "pawty" - we'll play with cars and watch Robots at least twice. I figure we'll ring in the new year around 7:30 tonight with a little apple juice. There will be years and years when he's too cool to spend New Year's Eve with his MiMi, so I'm taking our "pawties" when I can get them.

I want to wish a happy New Year to everyone. My hope is that all of us are healthy, happy, and writing during 2010.

Planned Obsoletion

I've been sitting here staring at Huffington Post's photo slideshow. It's called "12 Things That Became Obsolete This Decade" and it's funny in that way that makes you laugh and shake your head just before you cry.

Many of these took me by surprise - I guess I'm such a geezer that I missed out on some kind of sea-change. Yes, I received a Googlewave invitation about a month ago, and no I haven't clicked on the link yet. You can't expect much from a gal who collects manual typewriters anyway, so that should give me a pass.

Just so you'll be In The Know, here are the twelve things that are suddenly obsolete in the past ten years:

1. classified ads in newspapers
2. dial-up internet
3. encyclopedias
4. CDs
5. landline phones
6. film and film cameras
7. Yellow Pages and address books
8. catalogs
9. fax machines
10. wires
11. calling people on a phone
12. hand-written letters

Are you kidding me? I still have (or do) at least nine things from that list. To be honest, the daily business of our university would come to a halt if the fax machine went down, so it's not just me.

I started thinking a bit on the whole idea and it only gets worse. I have a whole gaggle of obsolete skills - many of which cost me good tuition money to learn. I can take shorthand, queue up records for radio, edit sound tape with a cutter and - um - tape. I can drive a stick-shift. I can operate both a film projector and a slide projector, and - stand back - I know how to lay out an entire newspaper using wax, Exacto knives, and a light board.

None of these skills mean anything anymore, but I can understand that. It's been quite a few years since technology shoved it's wide shoulders to the front of the line. I always hated shorthand anyway. That's not the problem.

The problem is speed. My music has gone from record, to reel-to-reel, to 8-track, to cassette, to CD, to digital in an instant. I've bought The White Album six times. If we can lose landline phones and speaking to another voice over them in only ten years, what's next?

Some of these may pass by without much notice, but there are at least two generations of Southern women who'll have to die before the hand-written thank you note does. Just sayin'.

Dumptrucks and Reindeer

Santa came and paper flew. We've been dodging power-hits from the T-Ball set-up for two days now. We've built and trashed a few dozen block buildings, put together puzzles, colored with fat crayons so frantically that we've got to make another ticky-tack run tomorrow so we can show these beauties off properly.

And there are vehicles - trucks, cars, fire engines, tractors - all with appropriate sounds. The ladies in the house are finding all this varoom varoom business a tad mysterious, but it seems mighty important to The Perfect Grandson. He speaks "race car" more fluently than we do.

It snowed here for Christmas, although only for about half an hour and only between midnight and one o'clock. It didn't stick and it didn't stay, but I saw it blowing sideways at the streetlamps and it was a lovely gift. It rained for a week before the snow, devastating and stranding most of the state in floodwaters that have only just today begun to recede.

We had love and food and presents and family. With the flooding and events more dreadful, there are others who did not, so I'm grateful. There are always little miracles even in the worst of times.

The Perfect Grandson swears he saw a reindeer in our front yard.

"Sugar, where did you see the deer?"

"Wight dere." He pointed at the postcard of grass that is our front yard.

"What was he doing out there?"

"Eatin gwass. Wet's go, MiMi. I fina deer."

We bundled up against the cold and searched for it high and low. We live in the middle of town, but it's not unlikely there was a confused deer wandering the streets. Around here, things like that can happen. But what he saw was no deer - The Perfect Grandson says he saw a reindeer. And I believe him.

Breathing the Fresh Air of a Four-Day Furlow

The last essay (for now) is graded. National Novel Writing Month is a sweet flicker in the rear-view mirror. Final exams begin on Tuesday. Somebody pour me a drink.

My brains are scrambled and my eyesight is shot. I've eaten unhealthy food from bags out of machines for too long and haven't had a minute to attend to this poor blog. I've got four days to regroup and come out swinging, all my faculties in place and such.

I'm having a little sushi tomorrow and a long walk. I might even scare some of the dust off of this desk and become human again. That's the plan, anyway.

Oh, I have so many stories to tell you guys. You just don't know.