Light Refreshments Served

We’re off to school, the schedule, and all of it, so it’s time to reflect on our fun summer.  I looked on the list we made at the beginning of the summer, and all things considered, I think we did a good job.  Like I predicted, there was a lot of “going to get ice cream” and we didn’t really ever “go hiking.”  I’m proud that we did “try to catch snakes,” but wish we would have “looked at the stars at night through a telescope.”  Since Topher’s been gone, the kids have been going to bed earlier and earlier in the name of getting ready for the earlier school schedule, but stars or no stars, self-preservation is self-preservation.

I’m glad my kids like school.  For the past two weeks, Phoebe has asked me, by tapping me on the arm and whispering in my ear, “Tell them I’m going to kindergarten soon!”  or “Tell them I’m going to school–a real school–for the first time!” to everyone from the bank tellers to the grocery checkers, to the random lady at Target today.  When I do, the strangers give an appropriate response that leaves her satisfied.  I thank them for that.  I pretend I’m just humoring my five year-old with a roll of the eyes and an apologetic “Oh, she’s just so excited for school!”  but I love it that she’s so excited and wants to tell everyone.  I can’t put my finger on it, but it reminds me of someone.

Back to School Night at the local elementary school signals the end of the season.  My kids go back to school on Monday, and it seems a bit early.  I’m having a hard time convincing Phoebe, a sparkling new kindergartner, that wearing wool tights, a long-sleeved black tee under a knit shift dress is probably not the best idea.  While I admire her commitment to fashion, I don’t think heat stroke is the best way to introduce her to the nurse’s office.  She should save that inaugural visit for something important:  a “headache” when there’s a substitute teacher, a “stomach ache” when the novelty of going to school wears off, or on “sloppy joe day.”  It should mean something.

I can almost never buy clothing “off the rack.” I blame it on the fact that I am too tall, but in reality I know that I am really also too wide, and most stores just can’t make a profit stocking  items that would fit me.  (This apparently makes me the quintessential online shopper, though.) 

Anyway, imagine my delight when my husband and I were in Las Vegas earlier this year and paid a trip to the factory outlet just south of town, and there was a cute spring dress in a store there that was my size and my shape and even my price range (I think it was $40). It was a thrilling moment. I came out of the dressing room to show it to my husband, and he said, with alarm in his voice, “What’s with the side slit?”

On a shorter woman, the side slit in that dress would probably have come from the ankle to about the knee, and would have been essential in order for her to walk in the dress. For me, however, it stretched more from mid-calf to upper thigh, and I certainly didn’t need it for mobility purposes. This is a common feature of the kinds of dresses I generally end up buying, though, so I wasn’t worried. “Oh, I’ll just stitch that up,” I said breezily. “I do it all the time.” Not to brag about my sewing abilities or anything, but whipstitching a side seam falls within even my limited homemaking capacity.

A few weeks later, when I was asked to speak in sacrament meeting for Easter, I remembered that I had a brand-new dress to wear and felt pretty excited about it. The only problem was, I had forgotten about the side slit, to be reminded of it only when I put on the dress fifteen minutes before sacrament meeting. I yanked the dress off, hastily stitched up the slit, and ran over to church. As I was hurrying down the aisle to the front of the chapel, I felt the dress waving in the breeze. I looked down and discovered to my dismay that my stitching had apparently failed to hold up, and the slit was wide open again. Okay. Not that big a deal for the talk - but I also had to teach Gospel Doctrine the next hour.

There was nothing to be done. I gave the talk and the lesson (holding as still as I could) and hurried home. My married daughter, who was in town for Easter, said, “Mom, what was with your dress today?” I said, “I know, I know, I tried to stitch it up but it just didn’t work.” “The one side was fine,” she pointed out, “but the other one . . .” “I KNOW,” I said. I grabbed the dress to see if any remnant of my stitching remained so I could prove to her that I really had tried to fix it.

Turns out the dress had TWO side slits.

Which just goes to show, no matter how hard I try, I never seem to get everything right. Some days are just like that.

Kristy says:  I still remember when my daughter was a baby and she had a blowout that displayed itself on part of my WHITE SHIRT five minutes before having to teach in YW.  Those bathroom paper towels only do so much.  Not one of my shining moments.

My new favorite thing to read when I fly is the Sky Mall catalog. Forget the novels, the women’s magazines - this catalog is a whole lot more entertaining.

It first caught my attention when I was thumbing through it casually and a product headline caught my eye: “Now Unsightly Sock Lines Can Be a Thing of the Past!” I do a little catalog copywriting myself, so I was especially intrigued by a teaser that proclaimed so bold a benefit to the consumer. My only problem was, I wasn’t quite sure what an “unsightly sock line” was. To me, for example, an unsightly sock line might be what occurs when the hem of your dress doesn’t come down far enough to cover the top of your knee-high hosiery.  Could they really solve that little difficulty?

I read on. It turns out that an unsightly sock line is what occurs when one is so careless as to spend excessive time in the sunshine with socks on, thus creating a tan line above the top of the sock, unsightly indeed when one wishes to wear sandals later on and one’s feet are lily-white from the ankles down. The product being touted to resolve this horror was called the Tootsie Tanner, and it was basically a mini-tanning machine just large enough for you to toast your feet under.

To me, there seem to be two inherent problems with this notion. First, how on earth do you ever get the tans even? I mean, what if you overcook your feet? Are you going to put the socks back on and go lay out for an hour? Or what if you don’t get the tanning rays in exactly the right spot? Could you end up with an unsightly sock line of a different sort - an extra-brown layer where your tans overlap?

Second, who has the money and the time to expend on something like this? Is this really how the other half lives?

It frightens me to even contemplate that.