Thank you, Michelle!

Surely enough has been said in the press about Michelle Obama's style. We know more than we need to about her use of unknown designers and small design houses, ... and J Crew. We've seen national and international news anchors going on endlessly about how good she looks and how she's the new Jackie O. We even know that she went toe to toe (Manolo a Manolo) with Carla Bruni and at worst came away with a tie, but it seems to me that in all the babble the important thing has gotten lost.

Michelle Obama is one of us. She has hips! She's built like a real woman and her clothing choices may help free the rest of us from the limits that haut couture [and its less expensive copycats] have placed on us for the past ten years. In other words.... maybe now we can buy clothes that fit and that [drumroll here, please] actually flatter a real woman's body.

With the generational change that has happened in the White House, we have gotten a First Lady who works out - look at those arms! To die for! and who is in good shape, but who is not a size two. Nancy Reagan wore lovely clothes, but she was a size two, as well as a grandmother with the budget to buy Hollywood glamor. She always looked lovely, but never wore anything that a working woman could consider. [Well, maybe that one-shouldered red evening dress, but it's overkill for my office at LSE.]

Hillary Rodham Clinton was a real - working - woman with a real middle aged woman's body, but she tried to hide it in pants suits that just didn't work for her. She probably needed a younger, more hip designer, but you have to give her a little credit for trying. I've tried the pants suit solution, and it doesn't work for me, either - I'm too short and have too much hip to look really good.

Laura Bush had the same problem. She always looked frumpy. I never heard much about her designers, and maybe she didn't really care, but like so many First Ladies there was nothing to emulate.

But now here comes Michelle wearing separates and dresses with pleated skirts, gathered skirts, and even fitted skirts that show her curves. Did you hear the pregnancy rumor that was caused by folks-in-the-know who thought they saw a "baby bump" on election night? That bump is called a "belly" on the rest of us. We all have it; it's pretty round on some of us.

My hope is that with Michelle leading the way we will see skirts that are fuller, more mix and match separates, little jackets and sweaters that can go from day until night and from everyday to fancy. In other words... clothes that all of us can wear. Who am I kidding? Clothes that I can wear!

I'm not too wild about this sweater - probably because it's too busy for me - but give me that fitted sweater and full skirt over Mrs. Brown's too tight suit any day. I can hardly wait to do a little shopping this spring. I think it may be more fun than in years! And, Michelle. You go girl!

It's That Time of Year, Again

Clearly it's time for Persephone to come home from Hades. Why else would Demeter be working in overdrive to prepare such a gorgeous welcome for her?

I can't walk outside without being accosted by house sparrows and their first crop of offspring chirping from their carport nests. Or, walk too close to the front porch and upset the newly wed couple of house finches who decided to build their first nest in the wreath on house and who are mad at me for getting too close. Screeching is ok, but the dive bombing has got to stop!

Nature is just one bud waiting to pop open after the next. Dogwoods are showing a bit of white off in the woods and the first azalea opened today, with a host more all set to follow over the next four weeks. Everywhere I look nature is alive and bursting with life. It's that time of the year when my faith in a greater power is restored. Forget those painted eggs and give me a bursting bud any day to remind me that we are not all there is, and that "someone" with a bigger plan got it right. We are just the stewards.

I spent some time today cleaning out the old leaves from the helebores and weeding the vegetable garden-to-be. Both yucky jobs, but the sort that immediately show results and tell you that the time was well spent. Under the mature helebores there must have been another million babies, and under all the grass in the vegetable bed were wee lettuce leaves - yet more proof of the annual rebirth of all green things. And, enough mature spinach for dinner tonight to remind me that there are those things - like the fish in the pond and the spinach - that lie low and make it just fine thru the hard days of winter. I'd like to think that I am like them, too.

http://www.popeye.com/

It Ain't Capistrano, but It's Ours

Yesterday the fish came back. Well, not like the swallows to Capistrano, or salmon swimming upstream , but they had been missing since last fall, and we are thrilled to have them "home". We cleaned the pond.

Altho the pond is two seasons old, we did not clean it last year - big mistake. Well, at least a medium-sized mistake. By fall the water was so dirty that the pump filter was having a difficult time keeping it clean, but no fall house cleaning for ponds. Like bears, our scaly friends slow way down in the winter and sleep a lot in the bottom, but unlike our furry friends they still need to eat now and then. And without the pump, they have to get their food and oxygen out of the muck on the bottom. Don't ask me to explain the science, but all the books agree - don't clean the pond in the fall! Since I am not much of a cleaner anyway, I had no difficulty following that rule.

So, siphons, pumps, brushes and the hose in hand, we attacked the pond yesterday. After terrifying the fish by draining half their water and forcing them into the bottom, we scooped them all out into big plastic tubs and started in on the muck. There is the same kind of satisfaction in cleaning the pond that one find in mowing the grass - you know it won't last long, but it looks so good when you finish. Even standing bare footed and ankle deep in cold - I do mean cold - water, it felt good to do.

But the wonders we discovered: three, count them, three frogs! We had seen one a few times, but perhaps it's a family - two large and one small. Now we think we have identified the "black fish" that we saw feeding last fall - big tadpoles! And did you realize that frogs stay under water for long periods of time - like hours - and really do use the "frog kick" to get around. I'm a city girl - that was news to me.

Wonder #2: the waters lilies live! Both have sprouted new growth and one is so much larger I had to repot it. I alrelady knew that the iris had thrived, but they live at the surface and I could see weeks ago that they had new growth. Even tho the water lilies were billed as "hardy", I fully expected to be buying new ones in May.

Wonder #3: the baby fish made it, too. In the fall we counted 8 - 11 babies of various sizes. Now we know that three were tadpoles, so the count was really 5 - 8 babies and we ended up with all eight. With the five big fish, we had more than our tiny pond can sustain, but the pond store recycles fish, so we took most of the the little ones back.

This morning the five "old fish" [Big Red, Goldie, Oreo, Spot, and Whitie] are now circling the pond with three youngsters - as yet unnamed, but clearly the children of Spot or Whitie, which will make naming them more difficult. They are eating and seem none the less perky for wear and tear and the excitment of spending the day in a plastic tub. Perhaps they even appreciate the clean water and gurgling pump - I sure do!

A New Start

Why is writing so difficult? For months I have wanted to do this and now that I have actually jumped into the water - and enjoyed it - I cannot seem to find time and all the wonderful ideas I had have circled the drain and disappeared. I find myself thinking, "I should write" and then doing something else, while trying to pull five words together into a reasonable sentence in my head. Failing that, I never get started. This morning is a good example.

It's too cold yet to walk, so I sat down ... and read someone else's blog. I think hers is so comfortable, that I am intimidated by it. I am also lulled by the finished product. What flows on the page is surely not the actual words that flowed from her brain thru her fingers to the keyboard. She thought, she edited, she re-wrote and now I am looking at the finished product.

So, I think I need to decide what it is that I want to do - write the great American novel? write soaring essays about memorable things? frame a memoir? perhaps all of those someday, but for now I think I really just want to practice the skills I used to have but which are sleeping from lack of use. I need to go back to the beginning and look at the meaning of "blog".

Encarta Dictionary (North American version): English - "Blog". Same as "weblog". a frequently updated personal journal chronicling links at a Web site, intended for public viewing.

I need to look at that chronical-thing. While I have been looking for the big idea, the "writing assignment", I have lost track of the chronical aspect. It's been at least 40 years - ok 50 - since I kept a diary, but that's more the idea for now.

New goal: write something daily about what happened in my life - or on TV - or an interesting event or website. Just write.