no boys allowed in the room!!!!

wow - that's a lot of drama over an occasion that's supposed to be happy! The only thing remotely close to dramatic in-fighting we had at Christmas was when my grandmother complained that certain family members not be allowed prominent solo verses during the traditional Christmas carol singing because their voices are horrible and they are constantly off-key

as adults, me and my cousins have reappropriated the "kiddie table" exile we faced as children, and remade the kiddie table - "the place to sit" - so the older generation will get jealous of the one person of their era that gets to sit with us.

my mother is the worst gift-giver in the entire world, ever since my childhood. there are only about 5 times in my whole life where she has gotten me a decent gift.

my mother-in-law, otoh, is FANTASTIC - she's made/bought me a lot of gorgeous jewelry, perfectly fitted to my tastes; last birthday i got an ipod; as a housewarming gift she gave me (us, i guess, but really me) this breathtakingly beautiful chip n dip set - which sounds lol but it's handmade, from a mixture of something like shattered glass and ceramic, in beautiful shades of green (i should take take a pic of it, it's so pretty and elegant).

i am a terrible giftgiver but i've just discovered the joys of bookmarking stuff on etsy when i come across things i think my friends/family would like.

that doesn't sound lol at all - it sounds super nice

i really should post a pic - it's one of the nicest 'decorative' things i've ever seen. i mean, i would never buy it for myself in a million years, 1. bc i'm pretty sure it was super expensive and 2. that's not the kind of thing i buy. but that is also what makes it such a great gift.

omg some of the wedding gifts we got... one is a lead crystal 'sculpture' filled with something like paint streaks, which i refer to as the Glass Uterus, due to it's shape O_o

i totally wanna see a pic of the Glass Uterus!

though i guess you could invite me over, and i could see it in person, lol

ok i will do photos tonight! i guess it's a 'nice' thing, if you like that kind of thing... it's just so far removed from my tastes. although it has grown on me a little. jordan had it in his carry-on luggage and it caused a bit of fluster with with security ppl bc it appeared as a blank (lead crystal).

xp but we're not neighbours anymore :/

we don't even live in the same county anymore!

do you live near the Target?

Just1ne, that uterus sounds like Murano glass.

Go look at Xmas 2008 refugee thread, that one was terrible. I'm home once a year and friends here have a sweepstakes for the *hour* the first fight happens (ie. '46 hours into the visit, FITE!' This year's winner is CARLOS'). My big sin is speaking to a cousin she's boycotting for insufficient desire to take her life advice. I've pointed out that she's the person with grudges and swerves in her life, not me, and they're adding up to 'guess who's the unreasonable one?'

Yeeeeeeah, conceptual-type art seems like a v risky gift, I gotta say.

It might grow on you. Or it might just be hideous.

xp sarah: we live a few blocks from del norte plaza - near the richmond target, which is fwiw a good target to go to if you don't like crowds.

lol the security lady at the airport, after we pulled it out, was all 'OMG THIS IS SOOOO BEAUTIFUL', she was so impressed!

I asked my mom for socks two years ago and she got me six pairs of nice wool socks... in Christmas colors and patterns. I tried explaining that in Chicago, we wear socks in months other than December but then she got all momguilty so I dropped it.

Dish towels all the way. Can never have too many dish towels, right sarahel?

we also got one of the carved wooden bride/groom figurines too - so cheap and ugly-looking.

but the best surprise gift we got was this antique bookend contraption; i can't reallly explain it better than that, but it's really beautiful, and i thought it was a really thoughtful gift from ppl we don't even know that well.

god i wish my mum would buy me something as useful as socks or dishtowels!

speaking of gifts: i just ordered some bulgari perfume from strawberrynet on a whim, bc it was on sale and i love the bulgari white. however i have no idea what this one is like, so if i don't like i'll send it to anyone (in the US) who would like it.

Yeah, don't get me wrong. My mom is generally A+ but she tries to make every Christmas Very Special and so on 12/23 when she realizes she hasn't done any shopping, she pays exorbitant overnight shipping rates for the first thing she spies in a random catalog.

xp this thread makes me really look forward to the holiday season.

I am too impatient to keep gifts in my closet until Christmas or whatever. I'll buy something that seems just right, and then I'll give it as a gift—happy March! Or something. I would rather give gifts because they seem well suited to the recipient rather than out of obligation. Last time I did that, I gave my mother a piece of jewelry that made her cry, because it was beautiful, and because it was personal and sentimental to her. I was so delighted when I found it that I knew I couldn't save it till Christmas. (http://www.etsy.com/transaction/8780267—Ihad it made into a lapel pin for her–Cala lilies were her wedding bouquet)

But then my mother gets butt hurt when I don't get her Christmas presents, so I end up getting an extra present for the actual holiday. I should just stash things away and be patient when it comes to my mother.

And then every holiday I have to dance around which gifts I hate the most, because I can't have her return everything. So I have a lot of pastel colored shirts that look like maternity wear, and various pullovers that are reminiscent of Muppets. (“It is… so soft! And what a color!”)

I'm sure when you can look up butthurt in the dictionary there will be a small Daguerrotype image of my mother, chain-smoking, as an illustration.

Jenny's word “momguilt” is a great mom–specific synonym.

My mum always buys me practical gifts, especially these days, as she knows I'm always broke and that I appreciate practical things. Also, her taste in clothes and understanding of my tastes is abysmal, even after all this time. I love her and I feel terrible when she picks out something that I know she put time into buying but is just so off-base.

Parents are pretty broke now too (close to retirement, mum not working) so I dont really expect anything - most fam just give me gift vouchers these days.

suzy, as a mom, you're scaring the hell out of me right now

lol omg suzy

a trio of socks: three socks that are all related in prints/style but not exactly the same. I guess if you're a manic pixie dream girl, you're supposed to SWITCH IT UP and wear two of the three socks at a time in various color/pattern combinations

I have some sets of socks in different patterns of the same 2 colours, and one morning I was having trouble finding a pair in the overstuffed sock drawer, so I thought, hey, I will be a manic pixie dream girl and switch them up! Then mr spacecadet asked why I was wearing odd socks and I went "uhh" and decided it was safer to feign surprise and go and change them.

And so ended my life as a manic pixie dream girl.

OK I have no idea what a manic pixie dream girl is but I rarely wear matching socks. I have so many single ones that if they're close enough I just don't care. It's probably rarer to find me wearing socks that go together. My pants are all long enough so that you don't really see my socks even when I'm sitting so I figure it's not that important.

^ and I don't wear socks very often.

Spotters' guide to the manic pixie dream girl: Defend the Indefensible: films in which gorgeous, independent, "edgy" women have nothing better to do than break uptight whiny squares out of their bubbles

I still think Laurel's pack of THREE unmatching socks is kinda nutty but then I am a square I guess

(though since it is the rule of packs of different, paired socks that one sock will instantly go missing I guess it doesn't make any less sense than a regular pack)

http://img.timeinc.net/people/i/2006/specials/sma06/sma_international/james_mcavoy.jpg

OMG! heh

welcome my friend kat to the 'no boys allowed' thread. she is my best gal friend that ain't my sister. that is her posting a hot guy above...

i <3 him

mesmerizing

and welcome!

Hi Kat!

Who is that guy?

i had a dream about that guy once and after this dream, i liked him more

in my class today one of my students broke down crying while talking about all of the (genuinely) horrible things she has been through. during this episode her eye makeup (rather elaborate) stayed perfectly in tact. she's a very aggressive mary kay saleswoman and after we had comforted her a little, i told her that her makeup still looked perfect, and it did.

in sum, mary kay cosmetics: good for crying, will not let you down

ps hi kat :)

hi.

james mcavoy

I'm venting to the lay-deez because I am hoping for a sympathetic audience here, I will admit.

Blarg. Okay, so I'm listening to NPR (National Public Radio for those of you not in the USA) this morning and they do two stories w/in five minutes of each other. The first was a story about how it is good for baby boys to gain weight in the first six months of their lives because they will grow up to, get this, be tall, reach puberty sooner, and having more sex partners than baby boys who don't gain weight in the first six months. Okay, okay, so seriously, I know that we're all supposed to be losing sleep at night because we're SO FAT but is there really any debate that babies need to put on weight? And how fucked up is it that like, three weeks ago I caught the tail end of a fear mongering news segment about how girls are reaching puberty sooner (and one of the reasons posited was because of childhood obesity) and how that is going to RUIN EVERYTHING, and don't get me started about slut shaming. FTR, this segment was narrated by a man, and the study was done on babies and then men in the Phillipines, and the science experts they interviewed were men.

Then, five minutes later, there's a segment about the dreaded "freshman 15" (the so-called 15 pounds that women gain their freshman year of college) that started with the information that it's really the freshman five, and then went on to go into great length about how important it is to avoid gaining this five pounds (even though freshman in college are 17 or 18 and arguably not done growing yet), suggesting that students restrict their portions and engage in stress-relieving activities like, as one freshman interviewed suggested, taking an exercise class every day. The narrator, the experts, and all of the freshmen they interviewed were women.

So, to recap:
Boys should gain weight so they can grow up to reach puberty and have lots of sex partners.
Girls should restrict their food and exercise every day so they can avoid gaining five pounds. Also they are sluts (implied).

Maybe this just struck a nerve because I restricted my food intake and exercised every day and subsequently lost a freshman 20 due to, as it turns out, an eating disorder but way to piss me off first thing in the morning, NPR. Assholes.

You make me feel so Not Crazy, Jenny, because otherwise it's just me getting all het up about one unfairly manipulative thing after another in my world.

I don't listen to NPR so I didn't hear either segment. I'm sure you're right about every inference made on both shows -- even on "lefty" (lefty-ish?) radio. But also the people who made the programs didn't know about each other, and didn't plan an overarching moral message, both sides just happen to both be so goddamn NORMATIVE that it works out that way.

Also everyone involved are idiots -- yes, pre-natal and post-natal care and feeding are (so I've read) strongly related to health and height later in life. You think they could do a story about how much WORSE people turn out if their mothers don't have adequate health care and/or nutrition??

hi kat. you have excellent taste. <3 mcavoy

Jenny, that kind of thing would infuriate me, as well.

ugh, Jenny. glad i missed that segment. to be honest whenever i hear "weight" or "obesity" or "fat" on tv/radio news i turn it off.

ditto. I can't believe the "Freshman 15" is still a thing (I don't know what would lead me to believe that it would ever stop being a thing, wishful thinking?). That would have pissed me right off. I did almost exclusively feast on totinos pizza and white cheddar cheezits during my first semester which wasn't too healthy but if someone had said to me "watch out for that freshman 15, girly" I would have eaten 2 boxes of cheez its that night instead of the 1.

Also can I tell you, I hate the Taco Bell ad where the two douchey office drones tell the HILARIOUSLY non-English-speaking Hispanic "sandwich lady" that Taco Bell's chicken something-or-other is one-fifth the price of her home-made sandwich and tastes better, too! And then she gets all ANGRY at them for BREAKING UP WITH HER SANDWICHES like SHE is somehow OPPRESSING these sympathetic young white men in blue shirts and ties.

Oh yeah, god forbid we spend our office drone wages on a home-made sandwich made of actual FOOD ITEMS, that supports a real person who started with nothing and (humor my dramatic tone for a second) could be struggling day-to-day to lift her family out of poverty. No, a mega-corporation that puts seaweed fillers in their "meat", they DEFINITELY have your best interests at heart and besides, it's WAY better for your cool dude image.

How weird, back in the dawn before time when I went to college, the "Freshmen 15" was considered something that boys got, not girls. At least that was my memory of it.

I hate this ad even more because it's on during Family Guy and I HATE Family Guy.

I've never seen that taco bell ad but I'm pretty sure I hate it. I also hate Family Guy.

The Freshman 15 was def a girl thing in Delaware in 1990.

Maybe I misunderstood what it was about. I guess it was more of a unisex thing back then? Or did I just go to too "PC" a school for it to have much impact on my surroundings? I kind of miss how naive I used to be back then, in some ways. With regards to this stuff, or being aware of it. These days the anger over any disproportionate pressure for women with regards to weight makes me so angry it's almost hard to view anything with any degree of objectivity.

actually, I did have a really bad male friend (who I'm still sort of friends with and who still gives terrible advice) who told me one of our female friends from high school was eating only peanut butter and losing a bunch of weight (she had been chubbs in h.s.) and that I could try that. I thought about it.