Time Flies

My sabbatical is coming to a screeching halt and I'm coming full circle. 9 ½ years ago I was dying to go from contractor to full time at my company and now I'm returning to that company—after 9 years of salaried employment—as a contractor. It's been a fabulous 8 ½ months off. I did some of the things I wanted to, didn't get around to some of the things I did, but overall got a good mental rest and restart.

Why am I returning to work? Technically speaking, I don't have to. But to not work would require certain sacrifices I'm not ready to make. I don't care how inane or vain those reasons sound, they still exist. Despite cutting back significantly in spending and being OK with that, there are things I'm not quite ready to give up unless I have to. Such as:

• I hate yard work. To be able to hire someone to do what I hate is the ultimate luxury and a reason—at least right now—to return to work.
  
• Despite its many wonders (and more of that to come), Costco cannot supply a good body wash to save its life. I want my Kiehl's body wash and I will not do without!
  
• Over five hundred channels and there's nothing to watch? There's always Law & Order and there's always a rerun of Big Love. I will not give up my massive cable or Tivo.
  
• Organic food. Yes, today I spent $3.99 today for a yellow bell pepper vs. $1.49 for a conventionally grown one. But I'd rather not poison myself with god knows what when I don't have to. I may choose to poison myself with cigarettes, but food should never be poison and I'm bound and determined to support the organic food movement regardless. Again, more on Costco later as I love rewarding them by buying whatever new organic product they stock.
  
• In Vino Veritas: Not that I ever gave up wine, but I'd like the occasional splurge on a bottle over $10, something I've denied myself these past eight months. There are great bargains for under $10 and I intend to continue to patronize those, but there are amazing wines out there for more that I want to treat myself with now and again.
  
• Not caring about the dry cleaning bill! There's no point in dry cleaning when you aren't working to justify wearing those types of clothes. But when fashion is something that makes your mornings creative, having to care about how much it costs to clean vs. the value of wearing said item becomes annoying. I want to wear what I want!
  

But in addition to gaining these little luxuries back when I return to work, I'll have to give up some things as well:

• Privacy: For eight months I've seen who I want, when I want and have been able to spend as much time alone as I want. In going back not only do I have to interact with many people on a daily basis, I have to carpool. Yes, I realize I'm a liberal and I'm supposed to embrace such green living, but I hate carpooling. I adore the privacy of my car and my NPR or CD and singing badly at the top of my lungs. Because of the location of the office and new parking costs, we all have to carpool which puts restrictions I'm not used to on my time and privacy. Plus the new office has open space rather than offices. I'm OK with that, but will take adjustment given I've spent eight months spending the majority of my time alone. Time to finally invest in an iPod I guess.
  
• Freedom to spend my days as I like. Regardless of what anyone thinks I've done or not done well during my time off, it was still all MY time. Now my time during the work day belongs to someone else (though they are paying me well for that). I don't see a problem in transitioning to that, but it is a loss of something I've enjoyed quite a lot.
  
• Managing my household: I don't care how Desperate Housewives it sounds, or how much you might want to make fun of me for it, I've enjoyed being a "housewife." I've enjoyed having the chores get done and not pile up into mountainous problems; I've enjoyed cooking every night; I've enjoyed doing little household projects like painting a wall or installing new switch plates or putting in a new kitchen floor. I like channeling my inner Bree (except for the aforementioned yard work). There simply won't be time—despite how well I've set up the systems—to do it all as well as I did while not working.
  
• Make up free: I love make up, I really do. But it's been wonderful to go days, even weeks, without any on my face because there simply was no reason to. I've grown used to a face without makeup. You might say then why start putting it on just because you're returning to work? Don't you work in an uber casual environment anyway? You would be right, but it still isn't going to happen. I go to work, I wear makeup. It's just my way.
  
• Spending hours in a day delving into a single issue in the world (economic, political, social, etc.). Not just reading one story, but reading ten or twenty to figure out exactly what happened and what it really means. That takes a lot of time and the average person's inability to do so is a detriment to society.
  

Don't judge my sabbatical on the above (or do, I don't care). I've had plenty of deeper philosophical insights than the relative merits of body wash or dry cleaning. But those are going to take time to internalize and articulate and in many ways, I need to return to the structure of a working world in order to do so. At least for a time. In the meantime, I relish not feeling guilty about buying skin care products and I relish that I don't really care so much about shopping anymore.

More to come …

Random Inaugural Thoughts

It sure was nice to get a shout out in the inauguration speech:

“We know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers.”

It’s the first time that we non-believers (atheists, agnostics, or whatever it is we’re called) have been so publicly called out as being a part of the country. And after the rabid Christianity of the last eight years (which I don’t expect to end, but at least it’s out of the White House) it was a pleasure to be included.

I loved that Michelle Obama stayed away from the traditional red or blue outfit. Rather than being symbolic of the flag, those colors have become more representative of the divisiveness of the two parties. The Obamas could not have won without the red states and cross-over voters. Avoiding the standard colors was a nod toward that, I think. A small one, but her fashion choices are scrutinized. And a white dress for the balls uses up the often neglected remaining flag color.

It was an excellent speech. It doesn’t soar, but then given the current situations, it would be hubris to be so lofty. And the truth is, without citizen involvement, things aren’t going to get better. This says it best for me:

There are those who wanted more poetry, more loft in the speech. They wanted to hear the eloquence of the race speech Obama gave during the campaign. Or the call to tomorrow given from the mile-high perch of the nominating convention in the Rockies.

But this was a day, in a year, when all poetry will have a more urgent edge. Loft will not suffice.

But it’s really today and tomorrow that matter, not the actual inauguration day. Today he starts work. Oh wait, no, he actually did start yesterday with this memo from my uber-crush Rahm Emanuel:

"...no proposed or final regulation should be sent to the Office of Federal Register for publication unless and until it has been reviewed and approved by a department or agency head appointed or designated by the President after noon on January 20, 2009, or in the case of the Department of Defense, the Secretary of Defense."

I’m not sure which of Bush’s last minute gutting of the environment or my uterus haven’t made it into the Federal Register yet, but it’s a start.

Virtual Reality: Fashion and Politics Activate!

When I quit my job this past June I had to quit surfing Bergdorf’s and Neiman’s web sites. I couldn’t trust myself not to just say “fuck it” and purchase the next great pair of shoes or coat I ran across. So when I decided to try and virtually spend $150,000 on clothes, shoes, makeup and jewelry, I thought I’d found the best of all worlds: indulge both my political and fashion manias.

This is hard! What’s wrong with me? I’m even being generous in understanding the amount and type of clothing that Sarah Palin needs!

Dear Helen can be dismissive, but she’s wrong. There is no way to dress a Vice Presidential candidate in $300 or less. You probably can’t even do it for less than $30,000. While I may be incredibly dismissive of Sarah Palin as a Vice President/possible President, I am incredibly understanding of what it means to be a woman on the national stage.

First off, she’s a woman. We all saw what happened to Hillary starting way back in 1992 when her hair, clothes, mannerisms, cooking was picked apart rabidly. In the Democratic primary, it was less so—because she’s such a known commodity—but it still happened. Ms. Palin was only going to get more picked apart because she’s new to the game. Plus, her appeal to men is based in part on her attractiveness so that has to be maintained as well. So she needs the clothes, hair, and makeup to keep her pretty and appear professional.

And the campaign trail is brutal. Multiple appearances a day, traveling by auto or plane across multiple locations throughout the day. She needs to have enough clothes to get through multiple appearances a day. As any woman knows, a cheap skirt looks like a wrinkled piece of rag after sitting in a car or on an airplane for 30 minutes, much less crisscrossing a state or several in one day. One outfit a day isn’t going to cut it. She probably has ten of those black pencil skirts (probably two or three per day as the rest get cycled through dry cleaning) and goes through at least two of those jackets per day. If she’s in a place like Florida, she’s going to go through three or four per day to avoid stinking up her rallies in that heat. Can you imagine what US or OK magazine would do to this woman if she showed sweat stains or creased front wrinkled skirts?

Not only does she need multiple skirts/pants of the same type, they need to be of good quality craftsmanship and material. A cheap JC Penney’s skirt isn’t going to last long under this type of wear. Better constructed fabrics—which cost significantly more—are needed in order to last out a week, much less months of this type of wear.

And to keep her from looking too repetitive (which would also get picked apart), she’ll need about 5 skirtsuits and/or pantsuits. She’s primarily a skirt lady, so I’m focusing the bulk of my shopping on that.

Shoes, so near and dear to my heart. And my feet. When I worked I usually wore heels. Not because it was required (I worked in the tech industry) but because I like to. So I know what it’s like to be in heels day after day. And if you’re going to wear high heels on the campaign trail, you need some serious shoes to get through it. Screw the Naughty Monkeys. Those won’t cut it. You need Choo’s, Blahnik’s, Louboutin’s, Alexander McQueen’s. You need what I call the six hour 3-inch heel. If anyone scoffs that it doesn’t make a difference, you’ve never put these babies on your feet. I have a great pair of Nine West heels that’ll keep my on my feet about 2 hours, but I can go eight hours in a pair of Manolo’s.

In short, I get her needing some seriously expensive shoes.

And she’s going to need some dressier, though professional, evening outfits for fancier and more intimate dinners. And she’ll definitely need at least four inaugural ball gowns if they win, though I certainly hope those haven’t been pre-purchased.

So all that plus accessories, under garments (hope those aren’t being donated to charity), makeup, hair pieces, handbags? It’ll be interesting whether even I can rack up that kind of bill. But I’ll give it an honest try.

So yeah, overall, I get that Sarah Palin needs good clothes. That doesn’t keep me from laughing at the pickle they’ve put themselves in. What they should have done was find a few Joe Designers struggling in this economy and chose them to design a Sarah Palin look. Then they could have been both populist and fashionable. But they didn’t, they went the easy designer route and created so much enjoyment for people like me.

Time to go shopping! If I’m feeling creative, I’ll showcase the collection.

Fashion Inanities

Oh I need a break from public policy postings and debate. I don’t always talk politics. Another love is fashion. Hell, I even talk politics and fashion, but this one is all about the fashion. I indulged myself with the latest fashion mags (hey, trying to be a lady o’leisure here sometimes) which I usually reserve for cross-country flights.

I’ve never looked to fashion magazines to determine what I will or won’t wear. I usually get inspiration for what my particular fashion style will be any given season by what’s available that will fit me, and what I see in the streets and on particularly fashionable friends and what I’ve determined as my own style. But it is fun, after that, to look at the fashion magazines and see how close or far off I am from the “trend setters.” For the record, I’m usually not very close. I don’t always have a choice.

I have a figure that only comes into fashion every 5-6 years. In those times, I snatch up pretty much everything I can lay my hands on to save for those rainy stylish seasons that insist women don’t have hips or tits. During those hipless/titless style periods, there are usually one or two nods to the “curvy” figure and I snatch those up as well. And by the way, this is no matter what size I am. In my adult life I’ve ran the gauntlet between sizes 4- 10 and even at my skinniest, low slung pants or skinny jeans do not fit and never will and I cannot wear a bubble skirt. Ever.

Anyway, for the past six years I’ve been accumulating what I feel is a fairly spectacular wardrobe for someone my age and income (meaning, I’m not stinking rich so I don’t have that kind of wardrobe but I haven’t had to bargain shop either). But all in all, it’s pretty substantial in shoes, clothes, and jewelry and is pretty heavy on the quality side of the scale as well. I adore shopping. I adore accessorizing. I adore putting new looks together. I’m no style icon, I don’t pretend to be. But I like putting my look together for any given event or occasion.

So I was a little worried that I wouldn’t be able to maintain that on a sabbatical as I can’t justify my regular shoe habit or my disregard for price tags when I don’t have new income coming in every two weeks. But I was pleasantly surprised when I was leafing through several fall fashion previews that I’m almost entirely covered and wouldn’t need to add much if anything to adapt my look to whatever’s going on this year. A few areas where my closet is lacking are things I wouldn’t wear anyway (or at least only rarely) and the others can be made up with cheaper accessories or vintage shopping.

• Artist prints and flowing tops: Check
• Shoes in crocodile, alligator, snakeskin: Check (Croc and snakeskin Manolo’s; python Jimmy Choo’s—even if I can’t walk ten feet in them)
• Capes are back which gives license to my ponchos. I love my ponchos and wear them whether they are in style or not, but at least I have to defend them less when they’re in style.
• Hardware-studded shoes: Covered (thank you fiancé for picking out those Manolo’s in Vegas! I love you!)
• Autumn colours actually found in nature: Double, triple, quintuple check. Those are my perfect colors.
• Jeans and trousers I’m completely good with.
• When it comes to dressing up, I have every look I’d ever wear covered, and still a few I wouldn’t wear. I have frilly feminine, austere feminine, Victorian, Goth, romantic, structured, hippy, avant-garde, Asian-style, you name it. A year ago I swore I wouldn’t buy a new dress until I’d worn everyone in my closet. I only broke that vow for the ‘50s style taffeta shirtwaist dress in blurred leopard print. That pretty much completed the collection for now. And I’m not bored with a single one of the dresses in my closet.

A few things that are missing:

• A big slouchy off-the-shoulder or boat neck sweater: I remember I had the absolute perfect one several years ago. For the life of me, I can’t remember what happened to it and can’t imagine I got rid of it. I must have been high. But I don’t get high. Weird. Anyway, have been looking for a replacement for that for years.
• Ankle boots: Particularly drooling over the ones in Manolo Blahnik’s fall collection. If you haven’t picked up on it by now, I’m a HUGE Manolo Blahnik fan. And while yes, my knowledge of this designer started with Sex and the City, it’s because of the fit and style that I remain an adherent. There are a lot of designers that I love the look of, but whose fit and heel placement don’t work with my feet (Christian Louboutin, sadly) or whose shoes have toe cleavage, which I hate. Still, my Alexander McQueen’s are my favourite shoes in my collection. But McQueen just doesn’t have a big shoe line. Anyway, I’ll probably have to bypass the ankle boots this year unless I can find acceptable knock-offs. I can live without since I have enough regular boots and I’m not a big fan of the ankle boot with skirt or cropped pants. On me anyway. For women with fabulous legs, it works. I have good legs. Not fabulous legs.
• Metallics: I’ll mostly cover this base with accessories. Too much metallic starts looking too ‘80s.
• Jewelry: There are probably a few new pieces I’ll pick up throughout the season. Most will be cheap/vintage, but I might have to make a visit to my jewelry designer friend for something special.

What I’ll pass on:

• Jewel tones: Not the best look for me. I have one or two dressy pieces that work, but for everyday, it tends to make me look a bit clownish. Earth tones are much more my color.
• Plaids: They keep trying, it keeps failing. Plaid outside of Scotland or the SCA needs to just stay away.
• Pencil skirts and really skinny pants: They just don’t fit and never will. I’m zen about that now.

I’ve also got it on my To Do list in the next two weeks to go through what I have and get with my fabulous seamstress sorceress to update anything severely in the need for it. I also have extra of a fabulous fabric (red-orange silk taffeta that will make my curtains) to turn into something as well. In fact, I’m going to do a lot more fabric/pattern hunting than actual shopping for new pieces. It will be cheaper and I will be 100% sure of the quality for the value.

Fashion Politics

All the broo-haha over the “value” of Cindy McCain’s convention outfit (estimated at $313,000) is rubbish. Now I love Vanity Fair, but they know better than anyone about the difference between estimating what something is currently worth vs. not only what it actually cost but also what the wealthy actually have to pay for these items. First off, other than the watch and the de la Renta dress (which Vanity Fair absolutely would have known a solid estimate of the price of), there is no factual numbers associated with any of the items. The 3-carat diamond earrings are estimated to cost—right now—approximately $280K, but there’s no information about the designer, the distributor, or how she obtained them. She could have gotten them at an auction (oh, even a charity auction). Same with the pearls. Take those two off the table, and the outfit’s value is dramatically reduced to $8,100. While they were able to identify Laura Bush’s as Stuart Weitzman’s, Cindy McCain’s are unidentified and estimated to be $600. Which is a good estimate for average designer shoes. My guess is that, given she’s wearing de la Renta, she probably has some high end shoe tastes. But all in all, neither she nor Laura Bush probably paid retail prices for the dresses as designers do like having high profile people strut their clothes across national television.

I don’t like the McCains anymore than VF does, but can we leave fashion out of our politics? It’s really unfair given that Michelle Obama isn’t getting the same critique. Quick searches shows her preferred designer (and the one who did her convention speech dress) is Maria Pinto who retails at Saks and Barney’s (quick search didn’t produce a price for a Maria Pinto dress, but a simple wool top is $95) as well as accessorizes with Alaia. Now I can’t price out all her accessories, but I do know Alaia shoes usually retail for at least $1,000. So let’s stop blowing Cindy McCain out of proportion for earrings that we can’t even confirm cost that much or are even real (the disclaimer in the VF piece says “All prices except Laura’s shoes and Cindy’s watch are estimates, and the jewelry prices are based on the assumption that the pieces are real.”)

I’m just happy, since I have to look at them for the next two months, that they’re all at least fashionable. Laura’s bored me to tears for 8 years and Condi stopped wearing the cool boots.

Speaking of cool shoes, Manolo Blahniks fall collection has me drooling. Almost--just almost--makes me want to start job hunting.