So be honest: Is Julia Roberts in your closet?

q. shenaynay


First, a word from your sponsors about the recent lapse in the travelog posts...

Yes, beloved friends, we are home now for a bit, and one might reasonably expect us to resume production of the Scotland posts now. But we have a legitimate excuse. Really we do. Our main household computer, the mothership from which we manage all our photos, hath died an ugly death. La-do-mi-do-la. So for now, we are limited to my beloved little laptop... and hence have no access to our photo program at present. Cie la vie. Manana. All that and a bag of chips. We'll get back to it when we can. A new mothership should land soon.


And now we return to the scheduled post...

I had visions of us not being terribly busy in our few weeks at home this summer, but here we are scrambling to get a bunch of Necessary Stuff done in the limited and waning days that we are here... sigh.

One of the items on my Stuff to Accomplish This Summer agenda was to tackle my long-neglected closet so as to increase my efficiency quotient on the hectic school mornings looming just ahead. See, when we moved into this house six years ago, I hurriedly piled my stuff in there and then immediately began working on renovating other rooms (a project that is just now winding down). And, because life never stops for mom to do big things for mom, I never got back to it. In Six Years. I'll spare you a description.

So on Saturday, I did a scary thing: I turned The Shieldmaiden loose in there and gave her free reign to play "What Not To Wear." With disturbing fervor, she proceeded to yank everything out for brutal inspection. Did I mention yet that it was scary? Mondo beyondo scary. Three stuffed trashbags later, she beautifully rearranged what remained. It's a sweet little closet now. I like it.

Those of you who know Miss Shieldmaiden are already anticipating that this process was not without a few twisted episodes of dressup. You would be correct. She came upon a vintage quintessential 80's power suit that I kept in the very back of the closet. I saved it for sentimental reasons: I had it on when I met the Scot. After gasping and eyeing me with newfound concern, she disappeared for a bit. We waited in fear. Presently she came catwalking out as Julia Roberts circa 1986 -- very large hair, black linen power blazer with linebacker shoulder pads, pleated and tapered linen trousers, the works. She was me. Horrors. Hard to believe we ever did that to ourselves. But there she/I was, mercilessly swishing about in a once beloved but obviously dreadful Liz Claiborne ensemble with shoulders the width of the closet door. Hey, I once got lots of compliments for that suit, I protested. Nabbed a husband in it, even. Oh my. Oh. Oh.

Maybe our brains were foggy from all that cheesy 80's pop music?