You could simply refuse. The whole adult thing I mean.
I have had a certain amount of success with that. And a great deal of failure.
But sometimes life just sucks.
Sometimes things just hurt.
We’re built that way. Which also can seriously suck.
And sometimes the pile of crap in front of you just has to be done, even tho it’s horrible doing it, and very little good comes from doing it, but it has to be done anyway. Which sucks.
And sometimes things just suck. And for a while that’s all there is. And that sucks.
And sometimes friends and other people are idiots. And that sucks too.
Perhaps together we can find a way?
More later. Even tho I might be an idiot whose conduct and attention span suck.
And sometimes the pile of crap in front of you just has to be done, even tho it’s horrible doing it, and very little good comes from doing it, but it has to be done anyway. Which sucks.
This would be a major area of refusal of adulthood for some of us.
Good thing there aren’t any mirrors about at the moment. I have no idea who I might be referring to.
It’s a total mystery, really.
So many areas of total suckage. But I have the feeling you’re are talking about the ones that hurt, more than the ones that are easy to ignore.
Research shows that the average American operates intellectually at the level of a sixth grade education. Marketing and advertising is geared towards this level: Coke is it. Just do it. Simple enough for a sixth grader… Simple enough for your average American.
What is not so well researched, however what seems true to me, is that the average American also functions on an emotional maturity level which is far beneath their biological age, typically in the range of 8 to 20 years old developmentally.
Life tends to kick parts of us into a kind of grown-up mode over the years. Or a pretend fake-it grown up mode (for moi).
I seem to remember someone trying to be the last one out when a building fell down.
But maybe that was just inner human decency in that person, taking over as an automatic instinct, since there was little time for reflection.
Anyway, if that’s a sixth grade reaction thing, in that person: then hooray for sixth graders.
Those parts of me that have not yet been viciously and brutally kicked into horrible hideous semi-responsible adulthood tend to refuse to go anywhere near there idea of attaining maturity.
I guess/hope I have a few decades left in which to test this categorical refusal out.
Will it hold?
If the scale runs off a reasonably idea if the “attainable”, there is no reason why the average person can’t fall below a level of reasonable expected or hoped-for achievement.
Perhaps lack of social, educational, emotional, productivity, and life skills deficiencies can be remedied to a degree, for those who choose, even in adults, even across society.
In advertising and persuasion, we all are vulnerable, to varying degrees, for simple catchphrases, selected facts, easy “solutions”, smiling faces, certain types of visual and auditory cues such as setting, lightning, tone of voice, sound effects and music, etc.
People on guard against being triggered by predictable cues still have the reactions, even if they/we ignore outer own immediate response to a smiling faces or other cue.
@2many2no
Growing old doesn’t suck as much as it might appear to, in the earlier stages: If you have a little prosperity and decent health, and no imminent or ongoing tragedies.
Or course, you always lose at least some of that, in the end. Sucks, but there you are. What are you gonna do, have less fortitude than your ancestors possessed?
Looking in the mirror past age 60 is a wonderful way to let go of a certain vanity about some things.
And being older gives you an instant and superb excuse for any and all fuckups.
@f00l So we need emotional RSP rooms? Like they have at schools for kids who need a little help with reading or math? I like it! Would it take place during work hours? “Sorry Bob, I have to go to room 7 for 45 minutes, you will have to find someone else to do this shitwork for you.”
Gosh, I neither made that argument not implied anything like that.
So … If you want to take a casual and very general forum remark from someone and then distort and exaggerate that remark into a some kind of ridiculous straw man thing, that’s your choice I guess.
Everyone else is just either trying to do it when they don’t know how or have the skills, or else just out and out pretending. Or they’ve given up. Or they never even tried.
Btw it’s Very Very OK to take a break from trying.
@OldCatLady I don’t watch TV, so I don’t know anything bout Gollum. As for tweets, I don’t tweet either, so I’m not following anyone.
I guess if I did decide to follow anyone on Twitter, it would be @snapster. I’d even vote for him for President. Like today’s President, I wouldn’t understand what he would be saying either.
It’s ok that nothing is OK, since you have no choice about it. Nothing is OK.
It’s ok to stay in bed
It’s ok to hurt and not be able to say so.
It’s ok to hurt and say so.
It’s ok that the pain won’t just leave, since it won’t.
It’s ok that you can’t face stuff.
It’s ok that you just can’t find the energy.
It’s ok that when people are around, you feel they don’t get it. They mostly don’t, in any immediate sense. And they don’t know what words to use even if they do get it.
It’s ok that you wish people would do more but you can’t think of what they could do.
It’s ok that you wanna smash things.
It’s ok that nothing has much value and why bother.
It’s ok that you feel that it sucks, since it certainly does suck.
It’s ok that it’s not getting much better.
It’s ok that you don’t care about trivial stuff that you normally deal with easily.
It’s ok that it should all just go to hell.
It’s ok that you are more tired than you have ever been before.
It’s ok that the universe is empty a lot.
It’s ok that you don’t understand how you are supposed to get through the next x years and decades.
Hey, I was an adult yesterday. A friend and I went through my shoes, and I took them to a local charity to sell (they have a surprisingly upscale clientele).
@Barney Truthfully, there were at least three pair that had NEVER been worn, and I still have plenty of shoes. No more spike heels, or platforms, though. Seriously, I’m 70, and I just don’t need that many shoes. I didn’t let anything go that I was attached to; those are all still in their own little pockets, in the closet. I do love shoes.
@Shrdlu I love shoes, too, but mine are jogging shoes and tennis shoes and walking shoes and purple shoes and shoes with day glo shoe laces. You get the idea.
I’d break my neck in heels. (I’m glad you didn’t get rid of shoes you are attached to.)
@KDemo Well, no. If I’d done that, I’d have fallen flat on my tuckus. That would HURT. I’m not even sure which ones you’re calling ruby slippers (doesn’t really matter). I’ve still got plenty of fancy shoes, just mostly less dangerous.
I did love those ugly pink things, though. You could make some serious noise with them, if you hit the ground just right with your heel. (Hey, I never claimed maturity. Never ever.)
I am kind of way into these look of the both of both raspberry pairs in the last image.
Even tho I cannot imagine myself wearing them or anything like them.
I love to look at shoes. Esp really beautiful shoes like those. When I went to the new local N-M for the eye candy, I spent most of my visit in the shoe area.
Even tho I don’t want to wear them. If I owned them I might put them on a shelf to look pretty, as I might with vase or something.
I own too many pairs. Way too many. But mine are either weird, or practical for just waking around in all day, the kind favored by tourists and people running errands.
(N-M. Note the hyphen.
We’re olde school here. We claim the right to not notice “silly” updates.)
(When I was little, my Always-Right “Politics” Grandmother had a friend who would call Stanley Marcus and lecture him, in a very prim and reserved fashion, when she didn’t approve of his holiday offerings. Supposedly, he quite enjoyed these lectures, and usually offered something special, some item, to accommodate this lady. This lady was one of those fortunate sorts who had no sense of money, and never needed to.)
@Shrdlu My ex used to call me Imelda, the last time I moved I had 114 pairs of shoes and boots. I’ve gotten rid of all my nonplatform heels, but I’m still a sucker for a cool pair of boots. I had a hard time clicking past when Amazon waved these at me this morning.
@OldCatLady Honestly, walking around in the equivalent of stilts is a piece of cake when you’re young. I was used to it, for years and years. One of the things that would keep me from it now (besides the fact that I’m out of practice) is that it’s impossible to find someone who knows how to resole that tiny quarter inch piece on all those spike heels. It used to be expensive (but I earned money, and didn’t care). I still have a pair of shoes that have been resoled at least 40 times, perhaps more. Then again, they were new in around 1990 to 1993 (memory is vague on the year). They’re still in my closet. I would NEVER sell them.
In the long ago times, we called the shoes with stiletto heels CFM shoes.
@Shrdlu
I could walk in heels and stillettos where young. For miles, as long as the heels didn’t break.
I suppose I could do it now, with some practice. I managed it for two of the recent set of family weddings.
(Of course, everyone removed their shoes as soon as the ceremony and feast were completed, anyway. One of the weddings provided “flipflops for dancing” as wedding favors for the guests.)
Only it’s been difficult to find heels that fit well and that I don’t hate wearing.
Perhaps I just don’t put in enough time in trying. My feet are accustomed to sandals (no heels, I like sandals I can run in), and to trainers and similar. I emotionally project on my poor innocent unthinking feet an enormous resentment of any shoes less casual.
I think I developed some sort of ideological allergy to things like high heels and other “dressing up” markers when in high school. Lots of fights with family over traditional clothing, if I recall. (They favored “very 1963” half a decade after 1963. I favored a look that could have been called “resentful teenager”.)
Even tho I have avoided heels all these decades since, with some few exceptions, I am now quite suspicious of my younger self’s ideological “purity” on these issues.
The beliefs I carried about such things as personal style when I was a teenager come across as fanatic and self-righteous to my older self now.
But I have still never managed to dress and arrange my appearance to present myself as a full adult.
(Or perhaps I haven’t wanted to. Unconscious motivations make for great excuses.)
I suppose my family and peers have all learned to put up with me.
People who manage a “pulled together and effective, yet comfortable” personal appearance and personal style still amaze me more than a little.
That said, I do love shoes. I love to look at the lovely ones I would never ever wear.
@Shrdlu when in 4th grade my kid insisted on wearing a pair of spike heels (real woman’s shoes I bought for dressup at a goodwill type place) that actually fit her, to the grocery store despite my warning. So about 15 minutes into this announced that her back and feet hurt; she started to go barefoot. Nope. I gave her a choice: keep wearing the shoes or ride in the cart. She chose to wear the shoes (although did hang on to the cart at times with her feet on the underside shelf) since riding in the cart in public at her age meant terminal embarrassment. Took her years to ever want to wear heels again anywhere for any length of time. LOL
@Kidsandliz My first pair of heels (two inch, and I protested mightily that I needed the four inch version, to no avail) was in the eighth grade (I’d have been 13). They were black suede, with a sling back. I wore them to school the next day, and was in heaven. Truly.
It was also the first year I was allowed to wear makeup (my mother gave in). I wore it before, of course. Hurry to get to school early, apply makeup, make sure to hit the girl’s restroom before going home to take it back off. I made my poor mother crazy, I’m sure.
@Shrdlu My mom taught kindergarten and gave my niece (whom we were raising) and a friend of hers a ride to and from school every day. In the backseat the friend would change clothes and apply makeup. For reasons unknown my mom never told that kid’s mom. If it had been me and a friend my mom would have ratted my friend out. I guess raising the next generation wore her down LOL.
My kid would get up at 5:30 in the morning to catch a 7:23 bus to school. The bathroom generally had 2-3 sets of clothes left on the floor and I am reasonably sure that a significant amount of that time was spent on hair and makeup. My rule was as long as the school does not send you home wear what you want. They were were pretty quick to send them home and she was sent home several times, then sent to detention, after that was careful not to cross the line… but had they not been picky I would have had more rules instituted since the low budget lady of the night rule was a no go in my household - amazing what kids could do with staples, pins and tape to originally street legal clothes though LOL.
Also you don’t miss the bus - you wear whatever you have on (or not) when when bus comes (miss it and you owe me twice my time involved with hard manual labor of the chores of my choice - guaranteed to be ones she hated), clothes are clean (I had to confiscate dirty clothes to keep her from re-wearing them so then all that she had left was stuff she hated. No pity on my part if what was left didn’t match/was ugly/she hated it. Don’t want that to happen then do your laundry. She only had to learn that lesson twice). I didn’t get involved (except on school photo day using the excuse of her grandmother LOL). I figured not my problem.
@f00l No but I figured that out really quickly as the sky fell. Had I known in advance that she was significantly older than I had been told (1 month shy of 10 rather than originally 5, upped to just 7, but the size of a 4 year old - so with her real age malnutrition brain damage a given) with the issues she had I would not have adopted her. But since I didn’t know and I did adopt her… well… I couldn’t run away from home even when I wanted to and had to pretend to be an adult (which at times I sometimes failed miserably at).
I like getting older because you know how old people can get away with saying just about anything? Yeah, my filter is quickly going away and I can tell everybody to get off my lawn.
/image flamingo get off my lawn
@looseneck I had a middle finger flying shouting argument with a 20ish blond in a Mini Cooper at a traffic light after she blew around a line of stopped cars and cut me off. I wouldn’t have done that even five years ago. She called me a hateful bitch. Yes indeed.
Just yesterday I finished rereading Robert McCammon’s excellent book Boy’s Life. It is set in a world seen through the magic lens of childhood, a state which the narrator is keenly aware is precious and ephemeral. “The truth of life is that every year we get further away from the essence that is born within us… Life does its best to take that memory of magic away from us.” Read it, and remember the power of believing you could fly.
@Barney I’m sorry. I know you have tough times ahead of you for months and some days are just too hard… if the joking around we are giving you on the bracelet thread isn’t helping please say something and we can stop.
@Barney for a minute there I though @mikibell wrote bluetooth speakers (you know this being meh and all) and I was thinking so you could pipe in traditional wedding music at the elopement as a surprise wedding gift? LOL
@Barney Obviously you’re okay or you wouldn’t be posting, but is everything else okay?
ಠ_ಠ
I missed my earthquake. We were in Costa Rica on a very rugged dirt road in a retired school bus with no shocks headed for the river to go whitewater rafting. They called the driver on the radio to tell him to turn back, there had been a 6.6 earthquake and they couldn’t let anyone on the river till the engineers had a chance to inspect the dam. The ride had been so rough we literally didn’t notice a pretty big earthquake was happening. We went back to the hotel and everyone was in the parking lot looking freaked out. A couple of walls got minor cracks but everything was okay. Unfortunately we missed not only our first earthquake but our only chance to go whitewater rafting in Costa Rica. Oh well, if it had happened an hour later we’d have had some real white water.
@mikibell Earthquakes are caused by fracking. This one was a 3.5 near Perry, Oklahoma. House shook pretty good for about 10 seconds. And yep, we’ve had earthquake damage here in Oz.
@Barney wowsers… sorry… didn’t consider fracking. We are on a fault line here
The last time we had a quake (epicenter was in VA), I thought it was my vertigo kicking in. Such a weird feeling.
@mikibell@Barney Is anyone trying to assemble a class action in your area? We have a natural fault under the Franklin mountains which run through the city, my house is on the shoulder of one. Some local geologists dug up part of it only a couple miles from my house. But its pretty stable and the terrain is sandy, so the quakes get muffled. We’ve had a few 2 and 3’s in the area that most people didn’t even notice.
@moondrake There was an injunction to stop fraking in some areas of Oklahoma, I think, but no there hasn’t been any class action suits that I know of. However, I do think some in OK have tried to sue certain oil companies damages.
@Barney Living in SoCal for pretty much all my life, earthquakes are a norm – and yet, I still can’t get over the aspect of all the manmade earthquakes happening in the midwest.
Of course, the industry points out that fracking isn’t to blame – which technically, the drilling isn’t the direct cause. A lot of the seismic activity has been created by the pumping of waste water back into the ground through disposal wells. That waste water comes from fracking, but because they aren’t the ones pumping it back in, “it’s not caused by fracking”.
@narfcake So that is how they say no earthquakes. A few years ago a company wanted to drill in my area. There was a ton of coverage on the pros and cons. It is on indefinite hold for now.
One of the most insulting things every said to me was when a friend asked if my wife and I could be the “adult contacts” for his kid who was starting her freshman year in college in the city we were living in at the time.
@huja ahhh but you still behave safely then because you don’t cut people off with your car in order to swipe the last parking spot on Black Friday or in the pouring rain at the grocery store.
@KDemo Add yellow to purple get brown. Shine a yellow light or golden sunset on purple and you get brown. In theory, mixing the three primaries should make black, but it rarely works out that way, because most pigments aren’t pure color. In oils class we used ultramarine blue plus burnt umber to make black, or alazarin crimson plus viridian green.
I gave up on pretending. Just reverted to my inner child. You can too!!
Maybe fun is overrated sometimes.
Really, @Barney, you have all the long-distance support I can offer.
i stopped adulting because people were being poopyheads. admittedly, i’ll miss the use of my favorite word.
@carl669 Fuck!
@carl669
Good for you. Fuck adulting.
@Pavlov well said sir.
@f00l also well said.
@carl669 I mean, ‘fuck’ is great, but ‘poopyhead’ is pretty damn good too.
Adulting is hard. You however are stronger then you give yourself credit for . You can do it.
@CaptAmehrican I dunno, I think I’m doing it wrong.
@Barney
You’re prob not doing out wrong.
Sometimes it sucks no matter what.
You could try running away from home… of course the problem with that is that you have to take yourself with you.
Sorry you are having a tough time right now.
https://www.teeturtle.com/products/cant-adult-today
@narfcake i bought that t-shirt and wear it as a warning to the world!
@narfcake Just my luck, they’re out of my size.
@mikibell I have it … somewhere.
@Barney
Blame
@Trillianthe shirtgoat.You could simply refuse. The whole adult thing I mean.
I have had a certain amount of success with that. And a great deal of failure.
But sometimes life just sucks.
Sometimes things just hurt.
We’re built that way. Which also can seriously suck.
And sometimes the pile of crap in front of you just has to be done, even tho it’s horrible doing it, and very little good comes from doing it, but it has to be done anyway. Which sucks.
And sometimes things just suck. And for a while that’s all there is. And that sucks.
And sometimes friends and other people are idiots. And that sucks too.
Perhaps together we can find a way?
More later. Even tho I might be an idiot whose conduct and attention span suck.
@f00l
PS
This would be a major area of refusal of adulthood for some of us.
Good thing there aren’t any mirrors about at the moment. I have no idea who I might be referring to.
It’s a total mystery, really.
So many areas of total suckage. But I have the feeling you’re are talking about the ones that hurt, more than the ones that are easy to ignore.
Research shows that the average American operates intellectually at the level of a sixth grade education. Marketing and advertising is geared towards this level: Coke is it. Just do it. Simple enough for a sixth grader… Simple enough for your average American.
What is not so well researched, however what seems true to me, is that the average American also functions on an emotional maturity level which is far beneath their biological age, typically in the range of 8 to 20 years old developmentally.
( http://www.leiken.com/exploring-emotional-maturity/ )
So, some of us here aren’t really nearly adult enough to be here in the first place.
@Pavlov
Life tends to kick parts of us into a kind of grown-up mode over the years. Or a pretend fake-it grown up mode (for moi).
I seem to remember someone trying to be the last one out when a building fell down.
But maybe that was just inner human decency in that person, taking over as an automatic instinct, since there was little time for reflection.
Anyway, if that’s a sixth grade reaction thing, in that person: then hooray for sixth graders.
Those parts of me that have not yet been viciously and brutally kicked into horrible hideous semi-responsible adulthood tend to refuse to go anywhere near there idea of attaining maturity.
I guess/hope I have a few decades left in which to test this categorical refusal out.
Will it hold?
@Pavlov
Election marketing … Sigh.
@Pavlov if the “average” American functions “below their age”, isn’t the scale broken?
@InnocuousFarmer
If the scale runs off a reasonably idea if the “attainable”, there is no reason why the average person can’t fall below a level of reasonable expected or hoped-for achievement.
Perhaps lack of social, educational, emotional, productivity, and life skills deficiencies can be remedied to a degree, for those who choose, even in adults, even across society.
In advertising and persuasion, we all are vulnerable, to varying degrees, for simple catchphrases, selected facts, easy “solutions”, smiling faces, certain types of visual and auditory cues such as setting, lightning, tone of voice, sound effects and music, etc.
People on guard against being triggered by predictable cues still have the reactions, even if they/we ignore outer own immediate response to a smiling faces or other cue.
@f00l @Pavlov I still feel like I’m 18 until I actually try to do something…
Then shit I didn’t even know I had hurts.
Growing up is optional, growing old is mandatory.
@2many2no
Growing old doesn’t suck as much as it might appear to, in the earlier stages: If you have a little prosperity and decent health, and no imminent or ongoing tragedies.
Or course, you always lose at least some of that, in the end. Sucks, but there you are. What are you gonna do, have less fortitude than your ancestors possessed?
Looking in the mirror past age 60 is a wonderful way to let go of a certain vanity about some things.
And being older gives you an instant and superb excuse for any and all fuckups.
I say, “Use it well”.
@f00l So we need emotional RSP rooms? Like they have at schools for kids who need a little help with reading or math? I like it! Would it take place during work hours? “Sorry Bob, I have to go to room 7 for 45 minutes, you will have to find someone else to do this shitwork for you.”
@Pavlov Relevant username
@ChompyGator
Gosh, I neither made that argument not implied anything like that.
So … If you want to take a casual and very general forum remark from someone and then distort and exaggerate that remark into a some kind of ridiculous straw man thing, that’s your choice I guess.
Just Don’t.
@mfladd I made it many many years before having to attempt to be an adult. I guess this is also something else I’m bad at.
@Barney
They are maybe 50 actual adults or something.
Everyone else is just either trying to do it when they don’t know how or have the skills, or else just out and out pretending. Or they’ve given up. Or they never even tried.
Btw it’s Very Very OK to take a break from trying.
or
or
@Cerridwyn I think I might need a billboard.
Would it help to hear Gollum read some of 45’s tweets?
@OldCatLady I don’t watch TV, so I don’t know anything bout Gollum. As for tweets, I don’t tweet either, so I’m not following anyone.
I guess if I did decide to follow anyone on Twitter, it would be @snapster. I’d even vote for him for President. Like today’s President, I wouldn’t understand what he would be saying either.
@Barney
Gollum.
The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings.
Andy Serkis is the actor. He’s beyond awesome.
It’s ok to quit for a while here and there.
It’s ok that nothing is OK, since you have no choice about it. Nothing is OK.
It’s ok to stay in bed
It’s ok to hurt and not be able to say so.
It’s ok to hurt and say so.
It’s ok that the pain won’t just leave, since it won’t.
It’s ok that you can’t face stuff.
It’s ok that you just can’t find the energy.
It’s ok that when people are around, you feel they don’t get it. They mostly don’t, in any immediate sense. And they don’t know what words to use even if they do get it.
It’s ok that you wish people would do more but you can’t think of what they could do.
It’s ok that you wanna smash things.
It’s ok that nothing has much value and why bother.
It’s ok that you feel that it sucks, since it certainly does suck.
It’s ok that it’s not getting much better.
It’s ok that you don’t care about trivial stuff that you normally deal with easily.
It’s ok that it should all just go to hell.
It’s ok that you are more tired than you have ever been before.
It’s ok that the universe is empty a lot.
It’s ok that you don’t understand how you are supposed to get through the next x years and decades.
It’s ok that things are black.
We know. It’s ok to be here.
@f00l I know about Gollum.
@Barney
Ok.
Have you tried
?
Hope all is well. Stay purple.
@brhfl Adult chocolate milk sounds wonderful.
And thanks.
Hey, I was an adult yesterday. A friend and I went through my shoes, and I took them to a local charity to sell (they have a surprisingly upscale clientele).
Here’s pix:
and more:
…and three that went to another thrift store (different charity, different clientele):
I’ll miss these the most:
@Shrdlu Each pair has a story or two to tell. Did you find it hard to say goodbye to old friends?
@Barney Truthfully, there were at least three pair that had NEVER been worn, and I still have plenty of shoes. No more spike heels, or platforms, though. Seriously, I’m 70, and I just don’t need that many shoes. I didn’t let anything go that I was attached to; those are all still in their own little pockets, in the closet. I do love shoes.
@Shrdlu I love shoes, too, but mine are jogging shoes and tennis shoes and walking shoes and purple shoes and shoes with day glo shoe laces. You get the idea.
I’d break my neck in heels. (I’m glad you didn’t get rid of shoes you are attached to.)
@Shrdlu those pink corset shoes are lovely.
I don’t wear heels, but sometimes I see some that are really neat, and I wish I could wear them for a minute.
@Shrdlu
Posting those images is a lovely and beautiful thing to do here.
I am feeling awed and a little intimidated.
You owned those shoes and wore most of them.
That’s a lot of elegance.
I am betting you have plenty of elegance left at home with you. And you always will.
@Shrdlu
My tall heels days are behind me, as well. Love your shoes, though. The charity should do very well.
Were you tempted to click your heels together in the ruby slippers?
@KDemo Well, no. If I’d done that, I’d have fallen flat on my tuckus. That would HURT. I’m not even sure which ones you’re calling ruby slippers (doesn’t really matter). I’ve still got plenty of fancy shoes, just mostly less dangerous.
I did love those ugly pink things, though. You could make some serious noise with them, if you hit the ground just right with your heel. (Hey, I never claimed maturity. Never ever.)
@Shrdlu Several of those fall into the ‘sit-around-and-get-drunk’ class, because walking is not practical. They look spectacular, though.
@Shrdlu Thanks for the pics.
/giphy sniff
@Shrdlu
I am kind of way into these look of the both of both raspberry pairs in the last image.
Even tho I cannot imagine myself wearing them or anything like them.
I love to look at shoes. Esp really beautiful shoes like those. When I went to the new local N-M for the eye candy, I spent most of my visit in the shoe area.
Even tho I don’t want to wear them. If I owned them I might put them on a shelf to look pretty, as I might with vase or something.
I own too many pairs. Way too many. But mine are either weird, or practical for just waking around in all day, the kind favored by tourists and people running errands.
(N-M. Note the hyphen.
We’re olde school here. We claim the right to not notice “silly” updates.)
(When I was little, my Always-Right “Politics” Grandmother had a friend who would call Stanley Marcus and lecture him, in a very prim and reserved fashion, when she didn’t approve of his holiday offerings. Supposedly, he quite enjoyed these lectures, and usually offered something special, some item, to accommodate this lady. This lady was one of those fortunate sorts who had no sense of money, and never needed to.)
@Shrdlu My ex used to call me Imelda, the last time I moved I had 114 pairs of shoes and boots. I’ve gotten rid of all my nonplatform heels, but I’m still a sucker for a cool pair of boots. I had a hard time clicking past when Amazon waved these at me this morning.
@moondrake love those. Very steam punk.
I seriously need to move where it’s colder and I can actually wear boots except for a handful of times in the winter.
@RiotDemon I used to wear them at sci fi cons. Still sometimes do, but art has replaced costuming for me.
@moondrake
Those boots are pretty awesome. I might have worn them or conveted them in my misspent youth.
I suppose I might wear something like that for a special situation, for fun.
But … Often I aim straight at comfort now.
What a sloth I am.
Perhaps if I ever discover my own set of wizarding skills, and get as far as a Patronus, I will find I that produce an ephemeral sloth.
(not me)
@OldCatLady Honestly, walking around in the equivalent of stilts is a piece of cake when you’re young. I was used to it, for years and years. One of the things that would keep me from it now (besides the fact that I’m out of practice) is that it’s impossible to find someone who knows how to resole that tiny quarter inch piece on all those spike heels. It used to be expensive (but I earned money, and didn’t care). I still have a pair of shoes that have been resoled at least 40 times, perhaps more. Then again, they were new in around 1990 to 1993 (memory is vague on the year). They’re still in my closet. I would NEVER sell them.
In the long ago times, we called the shoes with stiletto heels CFM shoes.
I still love shoes. I always will.
@Shrdlu
I could walk in heels and stillettos where young. For miles, as long as the heels didn’t break.
I suppose I could do it now, with some practice. I managed it for two of the recent set of family weddings.
(Of course, everyone removed their shoes as soon as the ceremony and feast were completed, anyway. One of the weddings provided “flipflops for dancing” as wedding favors for the guests.)
Only it’s been difficult to find heels that fit well and that I don’t hate wearing.
Perhaps I just don’t put in enough time in trying. My feet are accustomed to sandals (no heels, I like sandals I can run in), and to trainers and similar. I emotionally project on my poor innocent unthinking feet an enormous resentment of any shoes less casual.
I think I developed some sort of ideological allergy to things like high heels and other “dressing up” markers when in high school. Lots of fights with family over traditional clothing, if I recall. (They favored “very 1963” half a decade after 1963. I favored a look that could have been called “resentful teenager”.)
Even tho I have avoided heels all these decades since, with some few exceptions, I am now quite suspicious of my younger self’s ideological “purity” on these issues.
The beliefs I carried about such things as personal style when I was a teenager come across as fanatic and self-righteous to my older self now.
But I have still never managed to dress and arrange my appearance to present myself as a full adult.
(Or perhaps I haven’t wanted to. Unconscious motivations make for great excuses.)
I suppose my family and peers have all learned to put up with me.
People who manage a “pulled together and effective, yet comfortable” personal appearance and personal style still amaze me more than a little.
That said, I do love shoes. I love to look at the lovely ones I would never ever wear.
@Shrdlu when in 4th grade my kid insisted on wearing a pair of spike heels (real woman’s shoes I bought for dressup at a goodwill type place) that actually fit her, to the grocery store despite my warning. So about 15 minutes into this announced that her back and feet hurt; she started to go barefoot. Nope. I gave her a choice: keep wearing the shoes or ride in the cart. She chose to wear the shoes (although did hang on to the cart at times with her feet on the underside shelf) since riding in the cart in public at her age meant terminal embarrassment. Took her years to ever want to wear heels again anywhere for any length of time. LOL
@Kidsandliz My first pair of heels (two inch, and I protested mightily that I needed the four inch version, to no avail) was in the eighth grade (I’d have been 13). They were black suede, with a sling back. I wore them to school the next day, and was in heaven. Truly.
It was also the first year I was allowed to wear makeup (my mother gave in). I wore it before, of course. Hurry to get to school early, apply makeup, make sure to hit the girl’s restroom before going home to take it back off. I made my poor mother crazy, I’m sure.
@Shrdlu My mom taught kindergarten and gave my niece (whom we were raising) and a friend of hers a ride to and from school every day. In the backseat the friend would change clothes and apply makeup. For reasons unknown my mom never told that kid’s mom. If it had been me and a friend my mom would have ratted my friend out. I guess raising the next generation wore her down LOL.
My kid would get up at 5:30 in the morning to catch a 7:23 bus to school. The bathroom generally had 2-3 sets of clothes left on the floor and I am reasonably sure that a significant amount of that time was spent on hair and makeup. My rule was as long as the school does not send you home wear what you want. They were were pretty quick to send them home and she was sent home several times, then sent to detention, after that was careful not to cross the line… but had they not been picky I would have had more rules instituted since the low budget lady of the night rule was a no go in my household - amazing what kids could do with staples, pins and tape to originally street legal clothes though LOL.
Also you don’t miss the bus - you wear whatever you have on (or not) when when bus comes (miss it and you owe me twice my time involved with hard manual labor of the chores of my choice - guaranteed to be ones she hated), clothes are clean (I had to confiscate dirty clothes to keep her from re-wearing them so then all that she had left was stuff she hated. No pity on my part if what was left didn’t match/was ugly/she hated it. Don’t want that to happen then do your laundry. She only had to learn that lesson twice). I didn’t get involved (except on school photo day using the excuse of her grandmother LOL). I figured not my problem.
@Shrdlu I bowdlerized the CFM terminology, although both descriptions apply.
@OldCatLady
@shrdlu
CFM shoes.
I never wanted to wear CFM’s. But they can be fun to watch someone else wear. .
None of my k-12 schools would have allowed this look.
@Kidsandliz
Did you have any idea at all about the damage caused by terrible conditions during her early childhood, before you took her on?
@f00l No but I figured that out really quickly as the sky fell. Had I known in advance that she was significantly older than I had been told (1 month shy of 10 rather than originally 5, upped to just 7, but the size of a 4 year old - so with her real age malnutrition brain damage a given) with the issues she had I would not have adopted her. But since I didn’t know and I did adopt her… well… I couldn’t run away from home even when I wanted to and had to pretend to be an adult (which at times I sometimes failed miserably at).
@Kidsandliz
No matter what you thought at the time, that took some guts.
Is it a reasonable medical expectation that she is doing close to the best she can under the circumstances?
/giphy group hug
I like getting older because you know how old people can get away with saying just about anything? Yeah, my filter is quickly going away and I can tell everybody to get off my lawn.
/image flamingo get off my lawn
@looseneck @Barney Surely you’ve read this poem. If not, you should as it’s particularly great for you.
“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple”
@looseneck I had a middle finger flying shouting argument with a 20ish blond in a Mini Cooper at a traffic light after she blew around a line of stopped cars and cut me off. I wouldn’t have done that even five years ago. She called me a hateful bitch. Yes indeed.
/giphy hateful bitch
And it felt sooooo good.
@moondrake I have it hanging on a wall in my office. Oops! I’m re-arranging my office, but it will go back on a wall.
@sammydog01
@Barney
-@moondrake
Be all that you can be
@moondrake
/youtube start wearing purple
@barney
ಠ_ಠ
@mikibell
ಠ_ಠ
ಠ_ಠ
@KDemo exactly!
Just yesterday I finished rereading Robert McCammon’s excellent book Boy’s Life. It is set in a world seen through the magic lens of childhood, a state which the narrator is keenly aware is precious and ephemeral. “The truth of life is that every year we get further away from the essence that is born within us… Life does its best to take that memory of magic away from us.” Read it, and remember the power of believing you could fly.
@moondrake I have that book- off to find it.
@moondrake I have that book in my Kindle library. I’ll read it next. Thanks!
Apropos of nothing, but it’s just so fun:
@Shrdlu
Hey @barney - are you adulting any better today?
Hey @Barney
If you are, consider stopping.
@Kidsandliz No.
@Barney I’m sorry. I know you have tough times ahead of you for months and some days are just too hard… if the joking around we are giving you on the bracelet thread isn’t helping please say something and we can stop.
@Kidsandliz We’re eloping.
@Barney Good thing we planted bluetooth trackers in your sneakers
@Barney for a minute there I though @mikibell wrote bluetooth speakers (you know this being meh and all) and I was thinking so you could pipe in traditional wedding music at the elopement as a surprise wedding gift? LOL
@Kidsandliz @mikibell I’m going back to bed and pull the covers over my head.
@Barney Well, forget about sleeping, we just had an earthquake.
ಠ_ಠ
@Barney Seriously??
Forgive my lack of geographic intelligence here… is there a fault line in Kansas??? wow…
@Barney Obviously you’re okay or you wouldn’t be posting, but is everything else okay?
ಠ_ಠ
I missed my earthquake. We were in Costa Rica on a very rugged dirt road in a retired school bus with no shocks headed for the river to go whitewater rafting. They called the driver on the radio to tell him to turn back, there had been a 6.6 earthquake and they couldn’t let anyone on the river till the engineers had a chance to inspect the dam. The ride had been so rough we literally didn’t notice a pretty big earthquake was happening. We went back to the hotel and everyone was in the parking lot looking freaked out. A couple of walls got minor cracks but everything was okay. Unfortunately we missed not only our first earthquake but our only chance to go whitewater rafting in Costa Rica. Oh well, if it had happened an hour later we’d have had some real white water.
@mikibell Earthquakes are caused by fracking. This one was a 3.5 near Perry, Oklahoma. House shook pretty good for about 10 seconds. And yep, we’ve had earthquake damage here in Oz.
@moondrake Nah, not ಠ_ಠ, I’ll check for damage to my house in a little while.
@Barney wowsers… sorry… didn’t consider fracking. We are on a fault line here
The last time we had a quake (epicenter was in VA), I thought it was my vertigo kicking in. Such a weird feeling.
I hope everyone is ok…
@mikibell It is a weird feeling, especially to have the bed moving all by itself.
Nope no giphy on this one.
@mikibell @Barney Is anyone trying to assemble a class action in your area? We have a natural fault under the Franklin mountains which run through the city, my house is on the shoulder of one. Some local geologists dug up part of it only a couple miles from my house. But its pretty stable and the terrain is sandy, so the quakes get muffled. We’ve had a few 2 and 3’s in the area that most people didn’t even notice.
@moondrake There was an injunction to stop fraking in some areas of Oklahoma, I think, but no there hasn’t been any class action suits that I know of. However, I do think some in OK have tried to sue certain oil companies damages.
http://www.kwch.com/content/news/City-of-Wichita-to-release-earthquake-report-today-392406491.html
@moondrake @mikibell Oops, I was looking at the wrong date (I really need some sleep). OK had two earthquakes this morning: a 4.2 and a 3.8.
@Barney Living in SoCal for pretty much all my life, earthquakes are a norm – and yet, I still can’t get over the aspect of all the manmade earthquakes happening in the midwest.
Of course, the industry points out that fracking isn’t to blame – which technically, the drilling isn’t the direct cause. A lot of the seismic activity has been created by the pumping of waste water back into the ground through disposal wells. That waste water comes from fracking, but because they aren’t the ones pumping it back in, “it’s not caused by fracking”.
Sidenote:
@narfcake So that is how they say no earthquakes. A few years ago a company wanted to drill in my area. There was a ton of coverage on the pros and cons. It is on indefinite hold for now.
I should be getting my “pretending to grown up” card game soon. I’ll let you know if it’s more fun than the “pretending to adult” game.
One of the most insulting things every said to me was when a friend asked if my wife and I could be the “adult contacts” for his kid who was starting her freshman year in college in the city we were living in at the time.
Me: “Who you calling an adult?!”
@huja
You gotta do what you gotta do.
Pretend now and then.
In this case, I’m sure it was biological age as a factor, rather than emotional maturity; if that helps.
@f00l You apparently like to live dangerously…
@Kidsandliz I’ve been know to run with scissors . . . swim only 59 minutes after eating . . . push a cart with 11 items in the express checkout lane.
@huja
You are a certifiable danger to the future of the planet then.
@huja ahhh but you still behave safely then because you don’t cut people off with your car in order to swipe the last parking spot on Black Friday or in the pouring rain at the grocery store.
@f00l Nah @huja probably still recycles.
@Kidsandliz Okay, yeah. I recycle.
Maybe this will cheer you up @barney! I just saw this tonight in Myrtle Beach
@readnj - Is it weird that that sign looks brownish?
@KDemo No. But if you click to view the image and then click in to 100% you’ll see that it is indeed a very deep purple at sunrise or sunset.
/youtube deep purple
/youtube sunrise sunset
@KDemo Maybe it is like the blue vs yellow dress controversy? But I agree is looks more brown with a red undertone than purple.
@KDemo Add yellow to purple get brown. Shine a yellow light or golden sunset on purple and you get brown. In theory, mixing the three primaries should make black, but it rarely works out that way, because most pigments aren’t pure color. In oils class we used ultramarine blue plus burnt umber to make black, or alazarin crimson plus viridian green.
@readnj I want to be a purple Purpleologist when I grow up.
@Pavlov You are exactly correct. I took the picture at sunset as I was walking around and it is indeed purple. Great store too by the way
@Pavlov -
@Barney - You must have an honorary PhD by now?
@KDemo I think it’s a lifelong quest.
@KDemo purple halo degree?