Okay, I might be insane (like, for real this time) but I’m kinda digging this craziness from Holy Taco.  Here are their stats:

So there you go. Happy eating. Happy commercials. Go Giants! (Even though everyone around here loves the Cowboys and therefore hates the Giants, I say Go Giants!)

Happy Super Bowl!

And Happy Birthday, Kirtsy!

Top image from Girl In Gear Studio

It includes a few choice quotes from Harry:

Harry regarding the GOP candidates: “It’s weird, Mom. They all have white skin and they’re all boys. None of them have dark skin like our normal President. That’s weird.”

Harry regarding Beyonce: “I don’t like this song. It’s mean. Why do they say only girls run the world? Boys can run it too, can’t they? Why can’t it just be people run the world?”

Harry regarding Friday night: “We saw the Olive Godtrotters! And they pulled their pants down! And it was awesome!”

Check it out.

Happy Monday.

In other words, I think I’m now in the market for a crystal chandelier. Or just a chandelier maybe. I don’t know.

From Adams Antiques Importers

From Alexander & Pearl

From Gallery 74

From Anthropologie 

Let There Be Flight hanging lamp from Mod Cloth

(Ok, I realize this is going in a completely different direction. But it’s kinda cute.)

From Amazon

From Lamps Plus

Also from Lamps Plus

From Bowery Lighting Company

And again with the Bowery Lighting Company

And one more from Bowery

For the most part, I tried to stay on the lower end of the price scale. Just because, whatever. But there are some amazing ones if you’re willing to spend $5K on ceiling crystal. I am not.

Anyone have any lighting tips? Like the most amazing vintage store to get 1915 chandeliers in my neighborhood for $500 or less? I feel like a grown up just talking about this. Next, I’m going to discuss politics and taxes. And have a bridge party. You’re all invited.

UPDATED:

Pam pointed me CSN Lighting, where I found this one…which is the closest I’ve seen to the top photo online. It’s still way more than I want to spend (Of course I want to spend $25) and maybe smaller than I want, maybe. But yes. Closer.

As I know I’ve mentioned before, my friend Jenny is always coming up with these fantastic things that make her (and others) furiously happy. You probably know about our Beyonce adventure. And the Twilight wolf costume dance off. And the time she and her readers saved Christmas.

But now, as we’re looking ahead, making resolutions and starting fresh, I’d like to talk about something more personal, related to furious happiness…happiness in your own skin. Specifically, I’d like to discuss the brilliance of the Traveling Red Dress.  I wrote about it a bit before Halloween and on Hitting Refresh on Babble, but I wanted to tell you about the red dress here too.

It started as a random idea. Jenny wanted to wear the dress but she couldn’t imagine purchasing it just for herself…she wanted to share the joy. Because there’s something a bit magical about that dress.

In Jenny’s words...

I want, just once, to wear a bright red, strapless ball gown with no apologies.  I want to be shocking, and vivid and wear a dress as intensely amazing as the person I so want to be.  And the more I thought about it the more I realized how often we deny ourselves that red dress and all the other capricious, ridiculous, overindulgent and silly things that we desperately want but never let ourselves have because they are simply “not sensible”.  Things like flying lessons, and ballet shoes, and breaking into spontaneous song, and building a train set, and crawling onto the roof just to see the stars better.  Things like cartwheels and learning how to box and painting encouraging words on your body to remind yourself that you’re worth it.

So she bought the dress. And then she wore it. And then she began sending the dress around to different people who needed it for whatever reason.

All for different reasons.

All have stories attached to them.

And there are many, many stories, more all the time…You can read about some of them here.

Or here.

Or here.

Or here.

Or, you can even read about mine here.

As I said on Hitting Refresh, Jenny brought this dress over to my house on my 40th birthday and insisted that we do a shoot. I say insisted because she did insist, but also because I was uncharacteristically hesitant. It wasn’t like I didn’t want to do it…I really, really wanted to do it…but I was also really scared of it. The dress is intimidating. It’s large. And it’s red. And I was uncomfortable with that much energy being focused on me and actually on me.

But, if I’m really honest, I’ll tell you I was afraid of what the photos would look like. I wasn’t sure that they’d match up to the way I felt in the dress. Or the way I felt about myself at 40. It’s complicated. But on about four levels, I would say, I didn’t want to see myself. Because even though I still feel almost exactly like I did at 16, I know that I’m not. I’m not at all. The 16-year-old me was naive, and predictable, and safe. While my current self has lived enough and seen enough to know that life is anything but safe or predictable. Sometimes it’s shocking, disappointing, thrilling, and really scary. Sometimes it’s all those things at once. And sometimes the most shocking part is how you’re able to handle it, and how you’re able to wear it.

And that’s the thing about The Red Dress. It’s pretty intense to put on something so bold and really look at yourself, where you are, how far you’ve come. And like I said before Halloween, it’s true that there’s something about putting on a costume to become something new, something uncharacteristic, something better. But there’s far more exquisite power in doing this in an non-ironic, unabashedly  ”Here I am!” kind of way. It takes guts to put a spotlight on yourself and look straight into where you really are, and who you really are.

Jenny and I had a long discussion about this last month…and her words have stuck with me ever since. She finally wrote about it here. And I’ll tell you, she is one of the strongest, bravest people I know. It’s really remarkable to see someone be so candid and honest about her real struggles and her real self.

My new year’s resolution, for all of us, is to be so brave in 2012.

And to be so daring to wear our own red dress, in the clear light of day, right where we are.

————————————–

After Jenny wrote her post and then this other post, people began using #silverribbons tweets to support, honor, and celebrate those battling depression. A lot of people even asked Jenny to offer them in her shop, but, as she says, “honestly, you can make them for free if you have a nickel’s worth of silver ribbon and a safety pin.  If you do want to buy one though, you can buy them here and here.  Any profits will go to donating new red dresses for The Traveling Red Dress Project.” 

 ————————————– 

1/8 Update: There’s been a red dress explosion! Jenny updated a lot of it here:

UPDATED 2012: The red dress is now years old and is a bit tattered but it’s still filled with magic and is currently on the road visiting people who need some magic in their lives. Ideally, we would have 15 red ball-gowns in various sizes all traversing the globe at the same time but I just can’t afford it. If your company is interested in donating red ball gowns, just drop me an email at advertising (at) thebloggess.com.

And then people started tweeting with #travelingreddress and offering and matching up and going crazy with it.

It’s inspiring. I’m inspired. And so, I just bought two red dresses.

I’ll send them to the next two people to leave a comment about why they need a red dress experience. And then those people will send it on, and so it goes, into the traveling red dress circulation of awesomeness.

Let’s do this.

This stuff on Kirtsy today is also persuading me to think more about the treats I consume. Did you know there was such a thing as fair trade, organic, pure and unrefined, socially responsible chocolate? And glass straws?

I need to get out more.

And on that note, here’s one of my many favorite Christmas songs just for you…

Drink Tea for the love of God,

Laura

I hope your week is much more holly and jolly.

Drink some egg nog for me.

*The smile is ironic. And sarcastic. And painful.

It’s the holidays, Man. A tough season for anyone over the age of 11. And honestly, it seems the more most wonderful times of the year you’ve chalked up through the decades, the further down you can find yourself in the weeks leading up to the happiest season of all. This is all coming from someone who’s obnoxiously Glass Half Full!…This time of year can be brutal. Sure it brings out the best in us, and also the worst. You don’t have to get many feet from your driveway to figure that out. And we were miles from home.

So I turned up the Holly station and challenged Harry to a contest to see who could sing the loudest. (He won. He screams.) And by the time we pulled into his school lot, I had veered back into the direction of normal. We parted ways, and I moved into the day.

But first, I had to stop for coffee.

This is what’s rough about getting out of the house in the sixes. Time is of the essence, and I excel at not making enough time to get it together to prepare the necessary to-go cup before going.  So I stopped in at the giant chain up the street and stood in line. The line is always the feature in this place, it’s the main thing going on, and it winds around every table in the room…tables that no one in her right mind would even attempt to sit in because of all the crappy line people standing over your head in the line. It also creates the perfect environment for eavesdropping.

So I was standing in line, eavesdropping, over this mom and her four-year-old daughter who had crammed themselves around one of these tables. The mother was beautiful, in a seemingly and annoyingly no-effort kind of way, and she was dressed in the area’s mom uniform…fancy workout clothes. The ringlet child next to her was wearing some kind of pink and red fancy dress. It was 8 a.m. They didn’t have any food or beverage on their tiny table. They were just sitting there, waiting for something maybe, and the daughter was begging for a cookie. The mom said, “Sweetheart, no, no cookies, you don’t want cookies. You need to lose some weight.”

And then I stopped breathing.

I didn’t hear anything after that because my senses were no longer working as a team. My body was taken over by that punch-gut feeling you get when the boy you love breaks up with you.  I went through all five stages of grief in 27 seconds.

Then I pulled out my phone. In a desperate attempt to remind myself I wasn’t in some kind of weird dream sequence, I did a version of “OH MY GOD DID YOU JUST HEAR THAT?” to the only other people around, the pixelated people on the electronic device in my hand…

I still wasn’t thinking clearly. I was typing this on Twitter and trying to breathe. I went through all the grief stages again and added on a few more just for fun. And then it was my turn to order. My ears were still numb and I was frankly still a little dazed when I stepped up and ordered a tiny hot chocolate with extra whipping cream. No. Make that two. No. Make that three.

As I waited for the beverages to be properly frothed and for my name to be called, I suddenly sobered up. Crap. Seriously. What the hell was I doing? I was taking eavesdropping to a new and inappropriate level of butting into someone’s life and parenting issues.

But then I realized this wasn’t about them.

It was about me. And my ears. And my blue mood that suddenly went exploding red hot with the utterance of six words. This was about me on about six levels. And it was about all of us…as girls, as mothers, as daughters, as people. Enough. We don’t even realize what we’re doing to each other. We don’t realize what we have. And we don’t realize how fragile, how resilient, and how powerful we all are.

I’d never expect a tiny hot chocolate to fix that. But that’s what I had at my disposal.

I collected my offering and walked over to the tiny table. I told the mom that ‘seeing such a beautiful mother and daughter out this morning made my day. Because it’s so great to see them together out during the holiday season. And what a wonderful thing to get to start the day with such a beautiful little girl. I came in for coffee, but I decided to treat myself to a hot chocolate and I wanted to buy them one too and say Happy Holidays!‘ And my God as I’m typing this now, it just sounds crazy. But in that surreal moment of weirdo dreamland perfectionville nonsense, it all somehow made sense.

And then the mom took the chocolate. It seemed she didn’t know exactly what to say. But then she started to tear up a tiny bit. And she thanked me.

I don’t think she’d had hot chocolate in a very long time.

And her reaction made me remember something. We all have our things. And we’re all missing things. And we should all be easier on ourselves and each other.

Let your heart be light. Just let it be.

Soundtrack: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. 

It has lights included. It’s ugly (it’s actually even more ugly in person, trust me). And it was $5.

Then I got out the bakers twine and cut off a few branches from the bottom of our Christmas tree.

I began to tie the pieces of cut branch to the plastic garland. Along with ornaments. And love. Etc.

It’s nice, yes?

I didn’t even clip off the baker’s twine very well. I don’t even care.

Even if the crappy plastic garland shows up in some spots, the overall effect is so great it doesn’t matter.

The house smells amazing. And if I squint, I can almost believe I’m at the Gore Hotel in London. Or at least believe that these incredibly decked halls cost me more than $10.

A. Please go check out all of these blogs listed on Babble’s Top 100 Mom Blogs.

B. Thank you, Babble for making the effort to feature writers, photographers, and storytellers who just so happen to also be raising children. And talking about it. I’m thrilled and thankful that I get to live in a time where this is a reality.