havocandmayhem.com

I went shopping at TJ Maxx recently. I rarely go there because mostly I find clothes that are in my size but ugly or clothes that are cute & the wrong size. And this time was no different - I found THE CUTEST DRESS! They only had it in purple in a size 6, which I have not been in..oh…say a decade or so, probably more like two, possibly an entire quarter century, since I regularly forget just how old I actually am & don’t honestly recall ever being a size 6 though I must have been at some point- logically speaking. Common Sense shook it’s head at the size & wondered where exactly Vanity thought I’d be wearing it if there was a size 10 version .(Common Sense spends a lot of time asking “And where will you be wearing/using THAT?” when I go shopping. I think I have mentioned before that Common Sense sounds like my mom.) Vanity was drooling over this dress, so much so that I found myself in the dressing room in possession of a dress I suspected would not be able to p...

Possibly the highlight of my weekend. I went from these bushy things: To these much more trimmed & shaped things: Please note the grey hairs remain unchanged despite getting a hair cut as well. Why is this such a big deal? I am 43 years old and this is the first time in my life I have had my eyebrows professionally done. Usually the same person does my eyebrows that does my nails. That’d be me. And not being a.. um… (sadist or masochist…I always get them confused initially as I do with anything that is a choice between two things. I’m so used to guessing wrong that I guess differently even though I’m fairly sure I do know the difference. I am wrong often enough to doubt myself constantly in this sort of situation. I’d be a lousy bomb diffuser because I’d be seconding guessing whether I remembered the wire to cut color right. red? blue? I think it’s blue but maybe it is red? Was it red?) ... anyway… not being into giving or receiving pain (so I suppose terminolog...

A list. I generally refer to them as the Voices in My Head. You probably have Voices too, you just may call them by different names, maybe you hear your mom’s voice in your head every time you look at new shoes. “And where will you be wearing THOSE?” or maybe you simply do not acknowledge them at all, but they are there. You may only notice them after the fact, like when you are cleaning your closet and find a pair of really cute but really impractical sandals with 3 inch heels and beading and you wonder “What was I thinking when I bought these? They go with nothing in my wardrobe or in my life actually?” In my case *I* was not thinking anything. Vanity was thinking how great I’d look in them & a sundress (that I don’t own) at a pool party (that never happened). Or maybe you come home from grocery shopping & as you put your purchases away you find a tube of Sun Dried Tomato Paste and you wonder “How the heck did that get in there?” with  sudden flash of  mem...

Martha, the crafty voice in my head, has retired for the moment, pleased with the chalkboard paint project. But while was heaving a sigh of relief at that, Ambition suddenly appeared. Ambition is a pain in my butt. Unlike Martha, Ambition knows exactly who he  is dealing with & is well aware of my lack of motivation. Ambition is having none of it right now. It all started out innocently enough, I was reading a website (not pinterest.com for a change) and they were talking about a 31 Days to Build a Better Blog challenge they were about to begin on Feb 7. And Ambition said “Ah HA! you need to do this” and I whined “But I don’t wanna monetize my bloooooog! I just wanna have a commuuuunityyyyyy” and Ambition said “Geez, Martha and the Insecurities are right. You are pathetic, and lazy. No one is expecting you to become the Pioneer Woman. Just try the self promotion thing for a month. And it’s February, so it’s a short month. At worst you meet some new people & ma...

Martha, the crafty voice in my head, was unsatisfied with my apron making. It wasn’t enough for her. She needed more. Once again I was out on pinterest.com (I never learn) and I saw these photos of walls with chalkboards painted on them. And cabinets with chalkboards on them & one of them had some comment about it being DIY chalkboard paint & you can use whatever color you like. I’ve long thought of getting some chalkboard paint for the inside of a couple of my kitchen cabinets. I want to be able to write recipe ingredients on them when I am cooking because I really have no space to put the book anywhere near where I prep & cook & end up wandering all around my kitchen with every new step. But I didn’t want black. Green might be acceptable. Only nowhere around here sells chalkboard paint in any color. Lowes claims on the website to stock it at both the Lowes ‘near’ me, but neither of them actually stock it. So it’s just been one of those things on the mental list t...

Well Mister Scissors, we meet again! I decided, for reasons best known to the voices in my head, to sew an apron this past weekend. Why? I have no idea why. I saw a picture of one on the internet and then another (pinterest.com, it’s of the devil y’all) and that voice in my head that thinks I am Martha Stewart suddenly woke up. (you know, the one that convinced me to buy table clothes of actual cloth & matching napkins, the one that forgets just whose life I am actually living) The voice was fascinated by the aprons, especially the retro ones and had visions of me (taller, thinner) wearing an apron over my (adorable designer) clothing while cooking in my (much larger with nicer appliances) kitchen or standing out near the (in ground) pool serving drinks to friends on our (landscaped) lawn. Yeah. This voice has such a nice fantasy life going and I really hate having to bring it down to earth by pointing out the obvious flaws. Not the least of which is – I have...

So I was in Wal Mart a month or so ago Which is exactly where you would expect a fantasy to begin right? The fantasy of being the sort of person who does not shop in Wal Mart. But I am that sort of person, just sometimes I get these ideas in my head and I forget just whose life I am leading. I call them my Martha Stewart moments. I needed table linens. Actually I needed table plastics. The dog had somehow snagged a claw in the last decent looking wipe off table cloth (ok, vinyl) we owned and ripped it. My table’s surface is…unattractive.. It’s the table from DH’ family kitchen & was low end balsa, later covered with fake wood look stick on plastic. It needs covering. Off I went to Wal Mart, the source of my previous table vinyls, to purchase some new ones and some plastic placemats & to see if my one time buy of 8 white cotton napkins could be repeated. (I saw them once on sale for $5 and have never seen them again) Table vinyls were only available in bright aqua. My ki...

This post has been written by the voices in my head. If I don’t let them out every now & then they get cranky. Voice #1: She’s been crocheting randomly again. Voice #2: What is that thing? Voice #3: It looks like a crocheted bowling pin Voice #1: Would it kill her to stick with a pattern & not go off on her own? Voice #2: That would make the results too predictable Voice #3: I think she did stick to the pattern on this one. Voice #1: Geez! There she goes again. Anthropomorphizing things Voice #2: Someone needs to take the plastic eyes away from her. Voice #3: The eyes add something. Voice #1: Yeah, something creepy.   Voice #1: Oh look. She did a bunch of them in different sizes Voice #2: Anthropomorphized mutant bowling pins. Voice #3: The little one is cute Voice #1: Does she think people will buy these things? Voice #2: I don’t know, some people will buy anything. Voice #3: With some little accessories she could probably get $5 for ...

A few months ago I wrote about my internal debate between Vanity & Common Sense over hair color. The end result was that after weeks of thought I bought a box of color and a few more days of dithering, I actually used the color. Now that it is 3 months later I naturally have some root issues.  But this isn’t about that. It  is about that internal debate though. I have naturally wavy hair.  Stupid looking waves at that.  No matter the cut may hair is too wavy to hang right and not wavy enough to really curl. I got my first perm at 13 to correct this problem.  For the next 15 years I alternated between periods of perm curls and periods of flat iron straightness. It just depended on which was less effort to achieve. (Common Sense holds the long term decisions. Vanity knows it’s not worth the fight) The perm would be nice & curly for a couple months & then it would start to require a lot of mousse & gel and a diffuser …. Then it would be easier to...

and some exchanging. I tried on a bunch of dresses and skirts. Ok... designers who design  pleated skirts with wide pleats that start at the top of your hips are just plain MEAN and obviously hate any woman who doesn't have the body of a 14 year old boy.  AACCKKK!! Then there is the 'high waisted' style dress, that doesn't take into account the fact some of us at this point in our lives are in possession of low waisted boobs. At least build some underwires into where you think my boobs ought to be sitting, to help keep them in the general vicinity. There were some no waistline dresses that made me look pregnant, both the form fitting and the bag style. Lots of skirts and dresses that were just the wrong length. Some were too short to bend over to deal with small kids and some hit me at mid-calf, giving me a dumpy, stunted appearance. Have I mentioned that Vanity has watched every episode ever of What Not to Wear? Vanity finds duplicating the results of $400 ...

I have not dyed my hair yet. Common sense & vanity have been distracted from the hair issue by something in my previous blog post. I knew when I wrote it that there was *something* odd about it, something about that post rang a tiny distant note in my brain. It took until Tuesday afternoon before that note was loud enough to be heard.  Wedding, it said. When was the last time you were invited to a wedding?..hhmmm.... Oh my god! I'm supposed to go to a wedding on Saturday and I have nothing to wear!!!! Yeah, vanity has been much much too busy trying on every even slightly 'nice' item in my closet and fantasizing about wearing my purple, pointy toed, kitten heeled shoes to even think about hair. Common sense has been going on about budgets, a lack of wedding gift, squished toes and shooting pains up my calves & hasn't even thought about hair. Vanity and common sense agree that my summer 'nice' dresses are too summery & light for an outdoor (yes...

I am at heart a practical person. I have my vain moments & a quick glance at my shoe shelf will reveal that I own a number of very impractical pairs, but by & large common sense tends to win out over vanity. It has always had, at bare minimum, a 50-50 chance of coming out ahead, even during the worst of my 1980's excesses (and I was 13 in 1980, so I got to experience the whole glorious decade in full).  Commons sense said that one really wide belt was sufficient, even if everyone else was wearing 3 at once. So was one necklace and perhaps 2 layered shirts instead of a Mr T starter kit and 4 shirts in varying states of coverage.  However, there were bad perms a plenty in the 80's and some truly huge amounts of teasing and Aqua Net went into my hair. But those choices were as much common sense as vanity.  I didn't think my hair looked particularly stunning with 5 inch tall bangs and wings out so far they made taking off a t-shirt impossible, but it was the look. No ...