almost 2 months into 2015, self-improvement is abandoned

if Edward Gorey had illustrated Little Women

My sister and I never made New Year's resolutions. Life was too full of other reasons to feel inadequate, many related to hair, and if that wasn't enough, there were enough people around to remind us that our homework was messy, we were smarter than demonstrated by our math work so obviously we were lazy, the constant refrains of reminders like "stand up straight, articulAte!" from Pop, and "pick up your feet when you walk" from Mom - and there was children's literature bursting with gallant orphans being rewarded for kindness to people and animals, and having dangerous but triumphant adventures, or with worried young girls who wanted to Be Good. The lesson I took from those improving tales was that being an orphan was a lot more interesting than being a dutiful daughter.

Plucky little genius that I was, I knew that life - make that Life - bristled with things that would always be Beyond Me, or that once achieved did not require repetition. Keeping schoolbooks neat, for example. Hah. I learned to color within the lines in a coloring book when I was 5. That was it. Same principle. Pointless effort.

Although I did once flip through a Gideon Bible in a hotel, and found that a previous reader had made his/her own annotations. Like "oh, true." There was a person who should have been made to promise  not to write in books.

I knew that anything Aunt Clarabelle cooked would be inedible, no need to taste the same thing again with different garnishes. I knew by the time I was 7 that certain fabrics would always make me itch and that others would always crush and wrinkle and make me look uncared-for, even if all I had done was stand very still and breathe carefully.

Thus the literature of self-improvement and self-sacrifice in all its sententious variations couldn't fool me. I have improved myself some, not to the point of perfection, but to the point of resenting every penny spent by me and others on products and systems, every theory of organizing storage, every talent I know I don't have. This is as good as I'm likely to get. I return calls, thank busdrivers, try to remember birthdays, wear a sweater on cold days.  I don't tell secrets (I learned "keep your own counsel" very early). I don't practice the piano. In this world there are very few people whose musical skills improve with practice. One is called Itzhak Perlman. Others are called unemployed. Actually, to be honest, I don't own a piano.

So now there is no checklist of unreached goals to be sadly ticked off on December 31 - oooh, flash of insight: that must be why we greet the New Year with alcohol? - and I thought I had the situation mastered. If ever I decide to lose weight/ let my hair grow/ get a different haircut/  moisturize more often / tackle the sock drawer / weed out the collection of recipes that will never be cooked - c'mon, I've spent most of my life with one guy and Julia Child, why mess with that? - stop googling high school classmates to see if they got fat/ clean out that ancient Rolodex/-- well, if ever, then I will. Or I may. Or I may not. There's an app to delete duplicate pictures from your computer, made necessary by the sad fact that Apple devices just love to share. I may let that app do some of the work. Spending more time at museums? well, that's their problem, if they miss me they should get some better exhibits in. I just don't want to feel like a project, mine or anyone else's.

This past December, however, something appeared in my Inbox. You enter your birthdate and gender and click on a little triangle, and a circle appears and spins. When it stops, you would see the resolution you should make. I've been suspicious of this stuff ever since a wheelchair-bound classmate opened a fortune cookie to learn that his backhand would improve. It did not.

Whatever. In for a penny, in for a pound, or as I once warned my sister, in for the car, in for the mortgage, in for the second mortgage...  for the gullible, all things can lead to extradition.

I clicked.

Here is what I was told to resolve:

I WILL STOP CUTTING MY OWN BANGS.

I was terrified. This has been a problem for decades. My efforts have always gone hopelessly and expensively wrong, and I haven't learned. How did strangers in a French-speaking area of Switzerland buy or steal an address list with my email on it? Had my computer's camera been hijacked? I flipped a finger at it, just as a precaution.

Well, here we are, almost 2 months into 2015, and guess what? I haven't pointed a scissors towards my forehead all year. The lady who cuts my hair every six weeks is going to be soooo happy. Or not.

mom's rules for life - a Mothers' Day memory

I daydreamed through high school physics, but I do remember hearing that "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction."

This is true of proverbs: compare Many hands make light work with Too many cooks spoil the broth. On Mother's Day, I happened to remember my mom fearlessly bending proverbs and sayings to serve whatever parental purpose needed emphasis. 

Thus you will not be surprised to learn that the same lady who insisted that you should never judge people by appearances, because you can't judge a book by its cover told my sister I don't need to get to know that guy, he looks like a bum and he's up to no good. And when Sister Dear persisted, Mom brought the discussion to a close: don't tell me I'll like him when I get to know him, I can read him like a book.

Mom's approach to proverbs and sayings was my introduction to situational ethics.

After all, if both things weren't true at least some of the time, there wouldn't be two proverbs.

The sun just came out, so that's enough critical thinking for one Mother's Day. I hope all of you have some enjoyable memories to share, and Happy Mother's Day to all. 

in an effort to be generous of spirit Fred hires a publicist

We live surrounded by hints, lists, orders, directives - no, fiats - for improvement. Entire professions and fields of industry labor under the delusion that Somewhere in the universe there is a better-looking, calmer, more compassionate, fitter Me. Better Me has clear eyes, each endowed with long and curly lashes; a fine and even complexion with no visible pores; whiter teeth (but not Chiclets); good posture; shiny hair that bounces when Better Me rushes to the store on an errand for her grouchy elderly neighbor. Better Me always finds kind things to say about everything without sounding sappy, and can change the subject at awkward moments without being obvious (no, we're not really married, I just live there because there's room for the three of us, him, me and that ⇑and is it true you're being audited by a whole team of Special Agents? Yes, they're required to tell you. Um, seven years back, longer if they smell fraud....) Better Me never forgets a birthday but always knows when not to draw attention to it. Neither of us commits diabolical puns. Well, hardly ever.

Readers and friends know that most of the time I'm able to keep Better Me under control, the better to see the world through jaundice-colored specs. Did I mention that Better Me is prompt, keeps her shopping under control and returns library books when due? You can see why having someone like this around all the time gets old fast.

I had a visit from Better Me and her list-of-areas-yet-to-be-improved yesterday. Quite innocently a lovely reader drew my attention to an anatomical gaffe of truly grotesque proportions on the J.Crew website. I could feel my fangs growing and my palms twitching as I read and reread the item in question. Better Me, a master of the b%*%ier martial arts, tied my hands together with a simple black silk sash (Elie Tahari) and stuffed a cotton scarf (Epice) in my gaping mouth. I am happy to report that I am again at large, with working laptop.

NOT THE ANKLE 

NOT AN ANKLE-LENGTH SKIRT

Ready? Open another tab in your browser and go to the J.Crew website, item no. 49667, called a knife-pleat wrap skirt in silk taffeta. Read the detailed description. OK, let's go. First the fashion lesson, then the anatomy lesson. This is not a knife-pleat skirt. This is a skirt with pleats that are stitched down and released at or near the hip line. Knife pleats are pleats with a sharp edge (on each of them) all the way down. Speaking of all the way down, I think the skirt must be made of silk taffeta plus invisible fairy princess magic lacey fabric from the knee to the ankle, because even though the description claims that the skirt is ankle length, to my eyes it stops somewhere north of the shinbone. The only way this could be ankle-length is if the wearer spent her days on her knees in penance. Obviously the Copywriter From Space was at the outer limit of her orbit when she phoned this one in. It is she who should be doing penance. Should not catalog copy be written by one who has at least glanced at the item to be described?

THE ANKLES

Better Me thinks I should say something nice. Ooh, guess what? no ghastly puns. Now about that ankle/knee business. The knee is the bendy thing between the thigh and the shin/calf assembly. Its Latin name is Patella. The ankle is a complex of bony things, tendons and fasteners, collectively referred to as the Talus. Is this difficult?

Because I don't want this blog to focus solely on the Copywriter From Space and her employers, I'll ease up a little. I have a new project. I am writing an opera (or perhaps an operetta, don't know how serious the music will be) about the fashion business, as shown through a close look at catalog vending, a merry romp through a retail store, and some distant glimpses of off-shore manufacturing.

Although I have yet to commit one note to paper, nor to make one more of the improvements on Better Me's list, I've done what those I watch in the fashion business do when improvement is required. I've retained a publicist, to whom I now turn over the rest of this space:

MERCH ARRIVES FROM OFFSHORE

World-famous (on her blog) wit, poet and observer of things past, contemporary and yet to be, wellfedfred has tackled that greatest of art forms: the opera. With her usual economy of style and spirit, she has decided not to waste precious pre-production time and money in learning to write music and compose. Rather the score will be shamelessly knocked off  inspired by the works of Rossini, Gilbert & Sullivan, Verdi, Friml, Beethoven and Mascagni, and others. The artist was once thought to have abandoned opera in favor of her unique versification style after an early work, The Diet, caused spectators to faint from hunger. Now, with From Merchant Prince To Pirate King (working title), cognoscenti expect that the rich potential of what was once a major American industry, when brought to the stage, will make a bundle for ole fred prove entertaining, enlightening and ultimately satisfying. We look forward to humming Don't Cry for Me, Fashionista, Three Little Chicks from F.I.T., and I Am the Very Model of a Modern Prince of Merchandise.  Casting for female roles - She Who Must Be Adored (soprano), The Copywriter from Space (mezzo) and a crew of Acolytes, Sycophants and Trust Fund Babes (supernumeraries) - is taking place now. Audition dates for male roles will be posted later in the usual places.