Happy New Year, StyleNation – and Happy New Term to the academics in the group!
As it is now the ides of janvier, we had best get this party re-started, n’est-ce pas?
In recent past, the brilliant E-Jo recommended that I read Ruth Ozeki’s wonderfully terrifying novel My Year of Meats. Among MANY other things, My Year of Meats introduced me to the historical Japanese writer Sei Shōnagon and her hilariously ruthless, poetical lists.
In short, thanks to E-Jo, Ozeki, and Shōnagon, I introduce a new feature here at IPF. Over the next while, I’ll use Shōnagon’s titles to create new lists—and I’ll enlist your help in expanding them, StyleNation!
For reasons that may become obvious shortly, I shall begin as follows:
Things Later Regretted
1. To eat mountains of sweets and drink gallons of nog and mulled wine over one’s holidays.
2. To squeeze one’s increasing girth into one’s beautiful, already-fitted leather skirt for the first day of teaching, and to blow out a seam in the process:
Scarf: Smartset; Top: Dalia (via Costco, the evil empire with whom I recently broke up); Skirt: Danier Leather (thrifted, new to blog); Tights: Hue (remixed); Shoes: Fly London
(here’s a shoe close-up):
3. To inform one’s spouse that one of their gifts was gently re-wrapped and re-gifted from the box of last year’s gifts (found recently in the back of his office).
4. To agree to teach yet another new course when one desperately needs more time to apply for grants and publish in order to retain one’s job.
5. To ask one’s favourite undergrad to house-and-dogsit, and to mention that they may help themselves to the wine.
In Professorial Fashion 
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On a totally different subject, did you see this?
http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2013/01/22/the-balancing-act-of-being-female-or-why-we-have-so-many-clothes/
Totalz! The image itself has been all over FB and some of the tumblrs I follow. It’s great to read this smart commentary, too. Thanks Anne!
See, I did not see the image without the commentary, and so it is new to me. But man, I like the image!
#1 is awesome, #2 is semi sad but hopefully fixable, #3 is well, you know *whachyougonnado*, #4 unfortch, we have all been there, and #5 is just plain on noes. (We started using profesh pet sitters because, even though it got pricey, because there is something so awkward about asking people you kinda know (or worse, know well) to not fuck around too much in your house. Why?)
Blokester and I are trying to de-fuck our sleep schedule in Sweden right now. I am farting on our friends’ beautiful couch (oops) while he reads the Lonely Planet guide to Gothenburg. I fell asleep during the Viking display yesterday afternoon. My biggest regret? Popping a pimple that my friends’ kids will inquire multiple times about later tonight during Fredagsmys (Friday cozies- a Swedish potato chip company created heteronormative tradition of chillaxing with the kids post work. Bring it!)
Susanify, as usual, you are killing me. So jelly of your time in Sweden, minus the farts and zit management exercises.
Bwahaha re: #5. Only because my trusted undergrad who dog sat for me one summer kept my Golden Retriever beautifully coiffed–with my Mason Pearson brush. I’ve had to be tangled ever since.
Oh gods. That is indeed a thing to be regretted! Also, who the heck cannot tell the difference between human and dog hairbrushes!?
As D-Med and I wondered together this very eve, why can we not realize (and then consistently remember) that undergraduates are not responsible enough to care for our things?
I suspect my own answer to the above would begin with acknowledged desperation to get out, despite a dirth of responsibly overworked, stressed-out, introverted grad students to care for my things during my escape.
BOO on her and a failing grade in your next class.
Things Later Regretted:
1. Not noticing the coffee stain on the most expensive thing in my wardrobe until it was probably far too late to get it out.
2. Eating that slice of leftover pizza at top speed whilst slugging iced coffee.
3. Impulse buying glitter nail polish that went on sale the next day.
Your skirt is BADASS and can surely be repaired?
Fortunately, she’ll not have any more classes with me. And yep, the skirt can be repaired.
Were you wearing the glitter nail polish when you found the coffee stain on your cherished item? Is it now disguised by glitter? More seriously, could a dry cleaner not help you?
Also, I don’t understand item 2: it seems awesome. Did it make you ill to mix the flavours?
Someday someone will drink all her wine and stain her tables and THEN she will know the error of her ways.
The dry cleaner couldn’t remove the stain, which is why I think it’s a lost cause. Internet home remedies next! Then I’ll put some glitter on it. Glitter fixes everything.
#2 was awesome, but the consequent hours of indigestion were less than thrilling.
Oh, so you have no wine left in your house, then?
Only the kinds she doesn’t like. And some stains on the coffee table.