Spotted on the Metro

The Metro has seen a wealth of bad fashion over the bad two days. There was more acid-washed denim. There was a clothing item that hasn't seen the light of day since 1992. Choices this bad must be shared.

Yesterday, June 13th, 5:00 p.m., Red Line: high-waisted, acid-washed denim short shorts with a sailor-style front closure.

Today, June 14th, 5:30 p.m., White Flint metro station: see-through stretch lace top, skirt overalls...I'll just let that sink in for a sec...and lace cuff black leggings. Yes, I am serious.

The second one actually provided a much-needed lift to a shit day that started with a woman criticizing my driving in the Metro parking garage before 7 a.m., kept up the losing streak with an overdrawn bank account, and ended with my flip-flop breaking a half hour before leaving work. So, thank you misguided overalls girl, for my own personal Moment of Zen.

Liza Never Writes Real Posts Anymore

Someday, I will wake up and find that I have enough to say to write a real post. Or I will get exceptionally cranky about something and feel the need to vent. Until then...

1. I'm pretty sure I messed up my shoulder playing badminton on Saturday. Who does that? It's pretty much the wimpiest sport ever. Although, to be honest, I'm not sure if I messed it up actually trying to hit the birdie, or whether it was that time that I ran backwards, fell on my butt, and rolled ass over teakettle back into a sitting position (I'm quite sorry E. Lee missed it. She's the one who named me Zero Gravity, after all, and it was a truly great moment of clumsiness).

2. I'm sort of a contributing member of society now. I say sort of because I'm merely a doc review drone, and thus am not actually contributing much of anything except for approximately .0001% of my brain power. Still, I now have to get up every morning at a reasonable time and get myself to the Metro, and stand there looking disgruntled with everyone else.

3. Speaking of disgruntled, riding the Red Line during rush hour sort of makes me understand why people occasionally throw themselves onto the tracks. Maybe they're not attention-seeking commute-ruiners like I thought. Maybe they just got stepped on one too many times, or ended up standing next to someone with really smelly armpits and couldn't take it anymore.

4. Still speaking of the collateral bits of my new job, I'm allowed to dress casually, like really casually, meaning jeans and flip flops, but I've found myself breaking out the heels and skirts most days anyway because it makes me feel more like I have a meaningful daily grind to get to. I'm pretty sure this is a really silly reason to give oneself extra blisters.

5. People who talk on the phone in the bathroom weird me out. There was a girl today who was talking on the phone in the stall with toilets flushing all around her, and it didn't sound like she was talking to someone that she was very familiar with. It sounded like she was rescheduling an appointment, actually. I'd be a little freaked out if someone I didn't know decided to talk to me while sitting on the toilet.

And...that's it. That's all I've got. Till the next time, happy Monday y'all.

Acid Washed Apocalypse

I've posted before, many a time, about the evils of such articles of clothing as: the skinny jean, the high-waisted jean, shirts that might be dresses, and leggings. Well, guess what? I now own several of them. To be exact, two pairs of skinny jeans, and several shirts that could double as dresses, or maybe they're dresses that I wear as shirts - I still don't know. Sometimes when you can't beat 'em, you just have to join 'em. I even like the pair of high-waisted jeans that E. Lee bought recently (to be fair, she is a tiny, adorable person and thus one of the few people on the planet that doesn't look like a demented soccer mom wearing them). However, there is one thing that I'm pretty sure is a definite sign of the apocalypse, and it's name is acid-washed denim. The other day on the Metro I saw a girl, an otherwise normal looking girl, wearing a purse made out of acid-washed denim...with acid-washed denim fringe...with several of those regrettable butterfly clips pinned onto the straps. Holy fuck. It was 8:30 in the morning. I had a tinge of almost-hangover. It was distressing in the extreme. As I said to E., if that pox on fashion comes back into style, it will truly and completely break my spirit in the way that no pair of leggings, no romper even, ever could.

In fact, let me leave you with this link to the fug girls, whose reaction to an acid-washed denim romper (I KNOW!) about mirrors my own feelings on the subject. That is: "SHUT. UP."

By Request

The lovely E. Lee says that I don't post enough, so y'all are getting another list. This one's for you darlin', just remember that I warned you there's nothing exciting going on in my life...

1. Two things I learned from a recent trip to the Salvation Army: (a) The AbDoer Extreme apparently doesn't work at all, judging from the fact that there were four old models for sale at one location. (b) There are approximately 20 million different titles in the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. Actually, there are 200, but still. There is everything from Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul to Chicken Soup for the Tea Lover's Soul. I shit you not. Who knew that you could find that many treacly stories about little boys being improbably saved by kind-hearted packs of racoons, or whatever it is those stories are about? Honestly, no one needs that crap. What you need is a bottle of wine, a good friend, something ridiculously fattening, and/or some retail therapy. Or maybe a good lay.

2. Those Baby On Board stickers that people put on their cars make me stabby. Like, strong, visceral reaction stabby.

3. Sometimes, after a few glasses of wine, I get the urge to work out for the second time in one day. It's completely inexplicable. Usually people get the urge to dance badly, or go home with someone inappropriate - I get the urge to do fitness DVD's. Maybe it's a substitute for my previous urge to smoke too much? At least my tipsy exercising usually involves a strip aerobics DVD, but I'm pretty sure I'm still kind of a freak.

4. The other day on a trip to Pittsburgh an 18-wheeler ran me off the road. I sat there on the grass and freaked out for a minute, but mostly I just shook with fury. So M called the trucking company, but I didn't have the truck's ID number, given that I had been worried about dying and all. Solution? For the next 30 minutes I drove kind of maniacally until I caught up with him, at which point I actually crowed in triumph. Suck on that, douchebag. Plus, as a bonus I got to Pittsburgh about a half hour more quickly than usual.

5. My new favorite cocktail is spiced rum with Orangina or Diet Sunkist (which is my favorite soda). It tastes like Orange Julius, and is awesome. You should try it.

6. Sometimes I listen to really bad country music in the car. I'm ashamed, but the songs are so predictable I can usually sing along by the second verse, and it's calming. Besides, at least I know going in that the music is bad, instead of wasting my time flipping through all 30 or so of D.C.'s radio stations, all of which are equally bad, but not in the same satisfying way (except for NPR, but sometimes I can't listen to any more news about the economy or I may drive my car off of a bridge).

7. I had one more, but M is listening to music in the next room and it's completely distracting me. Clearly, whatever I had to say next wasn't all that important.

Running Scared

Being female can sometimes be an irritating handicap when it comes to personal safety. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade my lady bits for dangly bits any day, it's just that occasionally my awareness that my gender makes me more susceptible to the seedier bits of society chafes at my "Whatever, I do what I want" attitude. Take trail running, for example. I currently live in the Maryland suburbs, and there are only so many times that you can run by the same McMansion without getting bored, even when you do have the distraction of giggling at its pink Corinthian columns. Since the MD/D.C. area has a number of really nice parks and trails, it's easy enough to get some variety, the problem being that if I go during the week I can make it 5 miles without seeing anyone, or seeing only one or two other people, which is creepy. The first (and only) time that I ran in Rock Creek Park the only people I saw were two pot smoking teenagers, lighting up the second they got out of range of Mom and Dad's house.* I ended up cutting my run short that day because the utter silence, combined with the grey skies and lack of civilization close by, gave me visions of merry axe murderers, or rapists, or Chandra Levy.** Today, and several times recently, I've had the same problem along the C&O Canal Towpath, which has become my new favorite running spot. There are times when I get the creeping feeling that I'm not being entirely safe by taking off by myself sans cell phone, and I spend most of my run looking behind me and imagining scenes from Deliverance while simultaneously being far too fucking stubborn to stop. It's not enough to stop me from going there, but it is enough to glaze my otherwise perfectly lovely communion with nature with a little fear. I may be stronger than I look, and I may be able to run for rather a while without getting tired, especially if someone were chasing me, but part of me still wishes that my running shorts had a stun gun holster. Axe murderers beware!

* What is it with me and pot-smoking teenagers? It's like they're drawn to me.
** I hope my mention of Chandra Levy doesn't seem disrespectful. There's just no way for me to think of Rock Creek Park and "cautionary tale" without her name coming up in my head.

Listing

So there's not a whole lot going on in my life lately, which you probably gathered from my last few posts. Some people might think that you should stop posting if you don't have enough for a whole entry, but not me. That's what lists were created for, so in no particular order, and in concentrated form, some snippets from the life of Liza:

1. I've stopped doing Bikram for a while. Not because I dislike it or because I felt like I wasn't deriving a benefit from it, but because for some reason it makes my knees, specifically the right knee, rather cranky. My dad just had a knee replacement, so I've been paying attention to them more than usual. I think the problem is that I have a tendency to hyperextend, but since I already run - not exactly easy on the joints - I figured I should give them a chance to chill and am experimenting with other forms. So far regular Hatha yoga bores me to death, and Ashtanga looks promising, but will require quite a bit of work on my "flow," not being naturally graceful.

2. I am officially a victim of identity theft. After halfheartedly joking about it for years because I had my wallet - containing license, social security card and, idiotically, my birth certificate - stolen my first freshman year of college (I made it through a semester and left. USC is not my kind of place. Also, I appear to be fond of repeating the first bits of schooling. For another example, see Hurricane Katrina). So, anyway, some douchebag has been applying for a bunch of credit cards in my name, and now there's all these inquiries on my credit report, and also past addresses at which I've never lived, one of which is a shopping center. Lovely. Much mail scrutinizing, credit reporting, and police calling has commenced.

3. There are few things as relaxing as wandering about my backyard in bare feet. Having grown up barefoot, and having been a city apartment dweller for several years now, it's one of the facets of suburbia that I hadn't realized I missed.

4. Also, suburbia at 3 a.m. is an exceptionally dark and quiet place. I know this because, having consumed too much champagne on Saturday night, the lovely E. Lee and I decided that we needed to go find a swingset and set off looking for a playground in the dead of night. After visiting one playground that was inexplicably lacking in swings, we got sick of walking and only managed to find some pot-smoking teenagers. At least we think they were teenagers. We never actually saw them, only smelled their drugs.

5. I have a vegetable garden. M and I spent a few hours shopping for and planting squash, tomatoes, peppers, onions, and assorted herbs a few weeks ago, and I delight in checking on them and seeing their progress. One of the pepper plants already has little blossoms on it, and I've learned that of all the herbs I planted, chipmunks like basil the best.

So, that's my life right now. Yoga, gardening, big backyards. It's all very suburban and calm, but with some champagne and identity theft thrown in to make sure I don't get bored.

Miss Manners Says...

There have been a couple of Thursday regulars here, most of which became not so regular. Thursday Thirteens took too darn long to research, and Shameful Confession Thursday couldn't possibly remain for long, as I don't do much of anything that is shameful. But now, I've obtained what is possibly the most awesome book I've ever had: "Miss Manners Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior." It's 711 pages long, and ends with the section Answers to Questions Nobody Asked, simply because she felt she had to get said answers off her chest. It's fantastic. So, every Thursday I shall post some bit of advice or a quote that amuses me. Because this blog is first and foremost about amusing myself. Anyway, to begin, Miss Manners' advice when one yells out the wrong name in bed:

Dear Miss Manners:
What can you do after accidentally calling your present lover by your former lover's name?
Gentle Reader:
Seek a future lover. Such a mistake is easy to do and impossible to undo. Why do you think the term "darling" was invented?

See? Such sage wisdom. And I haven't even gotten to the section entitled Unpleasant Facts of Life yet.