Derailed

You know you've been a bad bad blogger when your mommy tells you so.
Well of course, she didn't say I was bad, bad or even bad. And I'm pretty sure she didn't use the word "blogger," but she did just send me a kind, yet prodding e-mail that said only this: "Is July 21 your last entry?"
Uh, yeah. It is.
So, it just goes to show that the only true dedicated reader of Winky is my mom. But no matter how small in number or large in DNA overlap my readership is, I will not let it down.

So I'm back, but not in the saddle. The bike is in the shop. The derailleur is busted. That's as gear-headed as I get in describing its situation. Don't ask me which one. I only realized the other thingie was a derailleur (sp?) too when someone else asked which one.
They really should have a loaner program for bikes. (Hey They, are you listening??) How can I be a bike commuter with no backup? Or if the bike shops don't want to take the risk, commuters should set up a time-share program for their bikes, especially in the summer when other bikes are left in airless garages during vacations, just sitting there hoping some bikeless-for-a-week biker will come rescue them.

To satisfy my need to have wind in my hair, created by own velocity, I went rollerblading today. Rollerblading is hard. I once broke my wrist rollerbladding slower than I run.(Concrete is concrete at any speed). But I am not one of those types to not get back on the horse. I have my own erector set of rods and pins in my leg after breaking my femur in a biking accident. (The trunk of a 1992 Nissan is a trunk of a 1982 Nissan no matter if it's parked or not).
When I skate now, I look like a preschooler with overprotective parents (is there any other kind? at least outside of kentuckiana?). I have on wrist guards, a helmut and a backpack stuffed with extra socks and a cell phone (which of course probably throws off my whole equilibrium). I don't do knee pads -- and probably just rankled the injury demons with that on-the-record admission.
So lots of rollerblading and coveting others' two wheels, even the chubby hybrid ones.

Speaking of things that became popular in the mid90s, I have been wearing the shit out of lil' mini dresses. Only one baby doll one made it into the rotation and I spent the whole day cracking wise about needing some midnight red lipstick to smudge across my face in order to complete my Courtney Love look. But it's been 100 outside and our a.c. at work has been living up to its Class C building repuation, so the breeze and the gossamer fabric of t-shirt dresses have been exactly the thing I grab to keep me unwilted.

Speaking of things named Courtney AND popular in the 90s, the other mini-dresses I've been sporting were bought or acquired back in the days when I had to wait a full week to see "Friends." Now I just shamelessly watch it almost every weeknight on the WB or the CW or whatever the frogless version of it is now.
That Rachel wore some short skirts, and there was no pulling them down Ambercrombie & Fitch style. She had the real-woman waist going on and still had those skirts just barely covering her bum. And you know what>? My hair may have been too short to pull off a Rachel, but my legs were step-aerobicized enough to pull off the skirt. Thankfully I am not wearing those Although I am saving one stretchy chocolate brown number and one wide-wale corduroy mini -- both from the Gap -- to wear to my 90s new years bash. I've let Winky Man (hey, at least I'm not calling my husband than Mr. Winky!!) keep one of his tab-collar shirts (a la Almonzo on Little House) and drug-rug poncho for this very occassion.

See, this is why I haven't been writing. The previous graf about wearing dresses purchased in my 20s would have been the perfect setup for one of my few theories. But I couldn't think of a nice transition. So I'm taking the 10th grade term paper approach by telling you (yes, you Mom) what it is I intend to write about. I would like to propose that people tend to stick to the hairstyle and the dress mode of whatever era in which they peaked. For example, you know that once hot-shot gal in marketing who now leaves early to pick up Cody and Kyla? Well she's likely coming in on casual Fridays in jeans, whose length above her coin slot are equal to the length of the skirt or tube top worn by her intern, Kaitlan. On top of those jeans (likely early Calvin Kleins or yikes, Lees), she's looking sharp in a black blazer, with a white t-shirt on underneath. Somewhere in there are some shoulder pads, we can only hope for one pair, and a pair of decapitated black booties. Her hair is all one length with some cutsie bangs or that awful I'm getting my hair cut short!! damnit!! with a mushroom cloud stuck on the back of her head. You know the look, especially if you know me. I referred to it as my Jippy Pop.
See, that former hot shot is wearing the style of her late 20s, (early 90s, back when her ad campaigns were dropping jaws, her Thursday nights were the beginning of her weekend and her flirtations were answered by many a funny Seinfeld wanna be or earthy dude in a denim J. Crew shirt.) Now she's married to a man who wears more accessories than she does (headpiece on ear, phone on hip. blackberry on belt, coffee tumbler in backpack), her Thursdays are at Gymboree and damnit she's gonna wear those black booties without tops because she got wasted in them at Hurricane O'Malleys, doing the Macarena back in 93 and if she can look down at her feet once a day and recapture some youth, well danggummit she's going to do it.

And so am I. More shirty, flirty mini dresses are on the wardrobe lineup for this week, baby.

I imagine I'll be doing lots of walking this week, which means lots of eavesdropping on snippets of conversations and trying to weave them into one long narrative. try it, it's fun.
Now go grab that French blue button down shirt, the one the girls in accounting like, you know the one with a white collar or your black low-rise over-bellbottomed Express pants that remind you of 2000 and look forward to Monday!

P.S. Speaking of gals at their peak time, go vote for my buddy Lesley Lopez for D.C.'s hottest off-air media personality. C'mon she's a hottie with a kick-ass vocab. And she works for leather man on a mission at America's Most Wanted. Imagine if your boss could throw the memory of his kidnapped child in your face everytime you messed up at work.