The Ubiquity of Cuteness

As I write this I am listening to the jaunty lyrics of Alouette in the most recent TARGET commercial, Color Changes Everything (just click to watch)...

(Isn't this potting shed cute?)


which brings me to the topic the Ubiquity of Cuteness, a thought bubble that has been floating around in my head for several days now (not unlike that little French ditty.)


There was a time when one could make a trip to TARGET (or Walmart or the Dollar Store for that matter) and return home, relatively unscathed in the pocket book department.  We, for the most part, stuck to our list and avoided the temptations of Point of Purchase displays and seasonal chotskes.  


We may have to go back a few years, but there was a time when, yes, quite frankly, things weren't just all that cute in the stores we frequented often.


Now   we are accosted by cuteness EVERYWHERE.  


One no sooner walks in the door of almost any store than one is overwhelmed by seasonal or thematic  cuteness.  Cuteness in every color, for every age group, for every size, for every weather condition, for every fad, for every hair color, for every gender (well, two anyway)...sometimes edible, sometimes not, cuteness. Customized, colorized, categorized, cleverly-packaged

"Cuteness"

It can be absolutely exhausting, this cuteness.  Enter its pearly gates and checking out just one of its aisles becomes a virtual impossibility.  If the contents of Aisle One are this cute, what might be EVEN CUTER in Aisle Two?  If the office supplies aisle is this charming, what, prey tell, is charming (only in numerous different patterns) in the gift wrap aisle?

Enticing SPRING cuteness beside the even MORE enticing (and now on sale!) FALL cuteness. Oh, and for both the INSIDE and OUTSIDE of your waiting-to-be-further-cutified home.

And all you came in for was some Jet Dry and toilet paper.

Earlier this week I went and had lunch with my friend Sunshine who is a buyer for one of the epicenters of cuteness, Hobby Lobby.  She showed me her new office and gave me a tour of the fantastical warehouse world of craftiness, in all of its iterations.

"Oh, look at this!" we would say over and over again to one another.  "Isn't this CUTE!"

We would both acknowledge the item's inherent cuteness (though we both also acknowledged the fine, often VERY fine, line between CUTE... and TACKY).

And if it isn't cute in the pastel version, it might very well be cute in primary colors. Or in lamp form.

But I confided to Sunshine that I had my concerns about all of this cuteness, and whether or not its sheer ubiquity diluted its value.  I can remember a time when I actually created cuteness.  With pinking sheers and polka dot paper scraps and leftover twine.  Now this version of cuteness is available in packages of twelve in the Notions Department, and quite often, for less not only time, but money.

"Now EVERYONE  can be or do cute",  I told Sunshine.  "With little or no imagination".

And I pondered out loud whether or not this easy access to cuteness diluted

its very value, its very specialness. Yes, we both decided, the ante had definitely gone up in the cuteness department.  Mere cuteness just doesn't cut it any more.

Something now must be.......extra-ordinarily cute.

Sigh.

Does our misery never end?

(Check in with me tomorrow and I'll reveal my favorite technique for warding off the cuteness epidemic. Till then, have a cute evening. )

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcgwgkyU4sY

Roman Holiday

Head verses Heart

Risk verses Return

Practicality verses...

ROME

Such is the deliberation my oldest son has been engaged in this past week.  One would think it a no brainer, going to Rome. Especially since the raison d'être for the trip is a spring break visit to a girlfriend in Italy on a semester abroad.


But that would diminish the level-headedness and seriousness and deep analysis with which he approaches nearly everything.  (Not to mention the availability of Dad's airline points and Pop's willingness to part with them...)


It will not be his first visit to Italy. Husband and I took our boys to many dream-inducing places around the world (though as they often remind us, never Disneyland...)  Cherished time recorded in journals and pictures we 

created together.  Recorded memories that with very little effort can reduce me to a blubbering blob of inconsolable parental longing... and heartache over the passage of time and the transience of childhood, of life, of moment, of chance.  

So when he approached me with his comprehensive list of pros and cons about the trip


wanting input, wanting confirmation, wanting assurance... that he had covered every issue, every angle, every outcome


 I told him (after determining that there indeed were enough airline points...)

 

that you're only young once;


in like (if not love) with the possibility of romance in one of the planet's most sensuous cities, 


with a world of potential at your feet 


(not to mention the metabolism of a 21 year old)


 with a chance to spend a week in ROME .

If not now, my darling




When?

But then, isn't that true of me too?  I am at this very second the youngest I will ever be and the oldest I have ever been.

With prospects for love and opportunity and potential...and moments of possibility

Same lesson.  Same advice.

Just different dreams for different dreamers I guess.


And for both of us...for all of us

 If not now

When?

Superbowl and the Schnitzelbank

Sometimes, things just don't seem right.  Or sound right.  It doesn't mean the thing doesn't have merit.  Just that it is kinda-off if you know what I mean.  For example, I was recounting to Color Girl the blissful weekend that had just been mine. All of my men-folk were gone, you see.  Sons at school; husband gone fishing.  Me alone, gorging on solitude and closet-cleaning-outing and past episodes of Downton Abbey ... and, of course, eating whatever I wanted for dinner.




On Saturday, I told her, I had a can of smoked oysters, and muesli mixed with Greek yogurt  for my repast.  She acknowledged that I had obviously enjoyed it, but didn't sound as if it would have been her first choice.  (Or second, for that matter.)  After some clarification... that the smoked oysters had NOT been mixed in ALONG with the yogurt and muesli, she sounded somewhat less repulsed by my choice; still, I could tell it just didn't sound right to her. 

Last week was my Dad's 87th birthday. L'il Sis was driving him around for a day of birthday adventure, and in the course of their traveling, my Dad asked her how old he was.  (Why is it that the older we get, the more difficult it is to remember our age...)  Anyhow, she told him he was 87, to which he responded with a resounding denial that that was the case.  She asked him how old he THOUGHT he was, to which he responded with an emphatic "73!" 

After working through the math, he grudgingly acknowledged the number, but  ended the discussion with  "well, that just doesn't SOUND right".  True that,  I am thinking, true that.


Dad's day of birthday fun included a meal at a local German institution-of-a-restaurant...the Schnitzelbank.  German fare for this uber-German birthday boy.

Given that the entirety of Indiana is consumed with Super Bowl fever, birthday fun wasn't the only thing on tap (along with the German beer) at the Schnitzelbank.  My mom was downright giddy at the prospect of voting for the Schnitzelbank bratwurst as HER favorite contender in the Indiana Superbowl 46 Sandwich Playoffs. (Click here to join the fun and vote Bratwurst!)  

After all votes were cast, L'il Sis took the tired birthday boy home...a person can handle only so much excitement after all.  She did, however, take the time to read a flyer about more impending fun at the Schnitzelbank: 


A Spay-ghetti and (No) meatball fundraiser being held this weekend by the local Humane Society. 


Good times.  Good times. 

HAPPY SUPER BOWL! EVERYONE

Journaling with 'Charisma"

Garden Journal Entry:  23 January 2012

HIGH:  57  LOW:  36

Tips of tulips have begun to appear over the past couple of weeks.  Am thrilled to see lots of viola seedlings from the violas planted last fall...hope they mature in time to join the party. :( no sighting of golden feverfew seedlings though. Even saw a forsythia in bloom yesterday. 

 Way too dry and warm...will this arid pattern never end?  Possibility of a good rain tomorrow. Keeping my finger crossed.  I deep watered this afternoon, so maybe that and a car wash will bring it on. 

 Lovely words from Colette...though I'd replace 'winter' with 'drought' in our case. The warm winter weather beckons...but also intimates that another dreadful growing season might lie ahead.

For now though trying to remain hopeful and feeling kinda giddy about the coming season.  Maybe gullible is more like it, but the emerging buds and warm sunshine are so optimistic...gets me  every time.

 Meanwhile, I'm adoring my double amaryllis, ('Charisma', I think) Pretty sure these are the ones Bubba got for me... Love the drama of all three of them blooming simultaneously.  Contorta branches as supports give them a certain Sleeping Beauty and the brambles kind of vibe...love it.  Will always plant in threes again...so striking.

 Especially like the way they glisten when light passes trough them.  Pearl-like.  Erotic and exotic.  Effect changes with the  angle, time of day, age of bloom.  

Will definitely want to grow these again next year.  Luscious is what they are. 

And Dreamy.

So Romantic.

Would be gorgeous for a wedding.

And Valentine's Day.  Hopefully they will last that long and new stalks will emerge in time.

 

Meanwhile, 'Samba' times three waits in the wings.  :)

THE GAGE HOTEL AND MEMORIES

" If the world were perfect, it wouldn't be." Yogi Berra

Or so I am thinking as I sit in the waiting room at Orthopedic Associates while my youngest has hand surgery.  A case of fist meets steel door resulted in an injury requiring titanium pins and anesthesia and deductibles and co pays and nervousness.... and, yes, the 

               BOING!

phenomenon whereby your college kid returns to campus  only to bounce back home when life happens.

Life also happened a couple of weekends ago when a much anticipated, long-weekend trip with my men

didn't quite turn out as planned.

Husband had been talking up the wonderfully remote  GAGE HOTEL (click here for more information) for a very long time.  Located in Marathon, TX, and ever so close to the epically beautiful BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK, the GAGE is my kind of place...my kind of experience.

Redolent with old frontier charm and grace, the Gage is the perfect place to stay while enjoying and marveling at the craggy, prickly, breathtaking landscape of southwest Texas and the magnificent Big Bend.


(cue sountrack to GIANT)


A hiker and photographer's dream...an artist's fantasy, a designer's muse.  

a people-watcher's heaven.
 

Not that I personally enjoyed any of these traveler delights.

Oh, no.

On the way home from Enid on Christmas Day, my men and I were listening to Garrison Keillor as he recounted memorable Christmases of the past, one of which was memorable because his family was visited by, and I quote


"the Dark Horse of Projectile Vomiting..."

Well, let's just say,


my trip was memorable (though, thank God, not necessarily projectile...)


and resulted in Husband's visiting a pharmacy in a town an hour away.  (I had good sense to marry that man.)


On top of the visiting dark horse, our already-short-to-begin-with excursion was cut even shorter


by a snowstorm in central Texas 

that threatened to leave us stranded in our little desert oasis for a bit. Fortunately, my men avoided the stomach curse, and managed to get in a long, sunny hike...more than one Chili Rellenos breakfast...


and, yes, more than one cerveze and shots of tequila.


Oh, I did manage to take lots of pictures though;


granted... through a phenergan-induced haze.

Please don't let my experience dissuade YOU from visiting this magical place.


I plan on visiting again, soon I hope.  


Though not necessarily on horseback, if you know what I mean.