style

I'm not what you would call a clothes horse, at least not a 'what's trendy now' one. When my high school chums were all wearing z cavariccis and pin-tucked jeans, I was the one in the penny loafers, straight-legged jeans and a Coca-Cola top.

There were a few trends I followed, and some of which I would have held on to. Had I known baby doll dresses and brougues were going to come back into style, I would have kept the contents of my closet from 1992-1995. I would have saved me a lot of money these days rather than the looks of sorrow as I remember owning the same exact pair of  X 20 years before.

While I've been on my recalibration/blogging hiatus, I've been spending a lot of time on sites where I can improve myself. Whether that be my inward soul or my outward appearance, I've been trying to make myself over in a way.

One of the sites I've grown to love, Wardrobe Oxygen, has lived up to its name. I crave this site like a junkie craves heroine. The blogger who writes it is a normal woman with a great sense of style. I want to emphasize the normal part because she's average weight and height -- not model thin or not morbidly obese -- and she puts outfits together in a way I would have never thought of before finding her site.

In addition to help me realize that I, too, can wear red jeans and not look like a fashion victim, her site also turned me on to a new favorite site that I want to tell everyone about: Gwynnie Bee.

Gwynnie Bee is one of the 'fashion rental' sites that seem to becoming ever more popular. For a fairly low cost, you can get a membership to the site and rent or 'check out' outfits for as long as you want. Did I mention these clothes are super high quality pieces that would usually cost $200-$500 to buy separately?

I've been on it since January and I've already cycled through 5 dresses. Two of the dresses were TO DIE FOR and I received more compliments from friends, coworkers and husbands (okay, my husband) than I knew what to do with. One dress I loved so much that I went and bought my own so I could keep it (as my luck would have it, the dress was on sale on the original manufacturer's site - Fashion For the Win!)

As a thank you, the fine ladies at Gwynnie Bee have gifted me with a special link that people on this blog can visit and sign up for a free trial. If you've always wanted to try out clothing without commitment, this is a great way to try it. If you're not sure about this whole thing and have questions, drop me an email or mention something in the comments.

Happy Styling!

recalibrating

Last week marked the 6th anniversary of this blog.

I've heard of numerous bloggers that celebrate a blogiversary on the birth date of their blogs. Not me. In fact, when I have been on this blog lately, it's been to remove posts, not add them.

This blog, which started out as a playground for the new digital technologies I wasn't getting my hands on at work six years ago, quickly became a speakers corner about my stepparenthood. I deviated off-topic a few times when certain experiences hit me hard, but I've spent the better half of six years talking about being a good stepparent.

I'm here to officially declare, my marriage and stepmotherhood will no longer be fodder for the blog. Both are still parts of my life; however, they've changed in ways that I no longer feel like I need to explore publicly.

I realize a majority of people that have read this blog over the years -- because of its stepmom angle --  might move on to other blogs. If that's you, I promise there are no hard feelings. I'm changing the content of the blog and what I write about and I realize the new stuff may no longer pertain to everyone. 
In broader terms, what I'm doing is recalibrating. I can't say that I won't talk about my personal life, but this site is now going to be more lifestyle and less family.

Welcome to the new Erin Experiment.

saving private erin

There comes a time in every social media-savvy woman's life when she starts to ponder if she should keep a blog publicly available for all the world to see and read.

I'm curious to know the likelihood of people clicking through to posts if there was an extra log-on step. Would you be more or less likely to come 'round these parts? Is my vulnerability tempting enough to require an extra password?

let me know in the comments or via email...

no, I won't babysit your children just because I look nice

Enough with the dreary, depressing body stuff. I'm on to something that really churns my butter.

Today's topic: children. More specifically, other people's children and why I loathe the people who assume I'll babysit them.

Photo Credit: Microsoft Clipart

The trip I'd returned from a couple of weeks ago was my breaking point with other people's children. I was returning home from a visit with my husband (in my line of marriage, a visit with my husband requires a plane). I was sitting in row 9, seat A (the window). Sitting next to me was a seemingly nice 6 year old and sitting next to him, another stranger. Six year old's mom and dad, 11 month old sister and 4 year old brother were in the row behind me.

The boy started off fairly nice...until he fell asleep. He moved about the 3-seat row like it was his bed. His mom, seated behind me, poked me once to ask if he was asleep; a second time to ask me to grab headphones out of his bookbag on the floor and then a third time to see if I could ask the boy if he had to go to the bathroom.

My first thought to myself was "I'm a stepmom, I'm used to taking care of non-biological children. This shouldn't be too bad." I was wrong.

After the boy took an hour nap, he spent the remaining 2 1/2 hours in fits. He would scream or cry, hit me and the guy next to me. Never once during this did his mom or dad peek over to see if he was okay. I suppose I could have peaked my head over the seat and said, "Listen 'rents, your kid is waking up from a nap and he seems inconsolable. Is it normal for him to beat things up when he's waking up?"

I decided to keep quiet. Unfortunately, the other 7 children in our section of the plane had the opposite idea and spent the last hour of the flight screaming and yelling.

I do believe this was one of the worst flights of my life. Worse than the 7 hour trip from Tokyo to Thailand were I almost puked from the smell of the food, worse than the trip from London to Chicago where the turbulence was so bad people were throwing up in their vomit bags, even worse than flying through a hurricane on my way to New York.

As I recounted my miserable tale to my husband, we both agreed that parents who treat nice strangers like babysitters are awful.

I'm predisposed to not like most children -- other than the well-behaved ones I know. I make it a point to not hang out as a family unit with any friends that have bratty children. There are a few that squeak by, but I try to limit my time with them.

I'm of the opinion most kids today are raised with halos on their heads and that their parents think they can do no wrong. I don't subscribe to that notion. I believe in groundings and parental dictatorships. But these are my opinions and not everyone else's. I could no more ground a stranger than I could walk on the moon. I think that's what makes the whole inflight babysitting -- or other instances where this has happened (and yes, it's happened elsewhere) -- globally frustrating.

Maybe I'm jaded because I decided not to have children. I took 6 months of clomid after which, when it didn't work, I decided I wanted my own peace, quiet and life more than I wanted my own child. While I was trying to conceive, I had a whole list of parental things I would -- or wouldn't -- do. It's tough sometimes to carry around that list in my head and realize I don't have a child that will reap the fortunate rewards of knowing what it's like to hear the word "No" or to be grounded because they behaved poorly. True, I have stepchildren, but I don't discipline them so it's a moot point.

What makes my plight more interesting is that I'm a nice lady. I'm helpful and conversational when need be. I think the nice lady part of me might be what's getting me into trouble though. When parents assume my 'nice lady' demeanor means I'll just sit by calmly while their child unleashes terror on me, I think I reserve the right to demand money for my services.

I realize I sound like a bitch and I take full responsibility for my opinion. But so help me gravy if I'm the assumed babysitter one more time...

perspective

Leave it to death to put life into perspective.

On April 30, I said goodbye to a friend, a co-worker and a mentor. I use goodbye in a figurative sense because her passing was so quick none of us had the chance to actually tell her what she meant to us.

In the days following her death, many of my coworkers took to Facebook to offer posts, pictures and stories about how she impacted our lives. Her brother, who is also our CEO, has sent short emails to the office to let us know how much those posts have meant to his family.

I posted at one point, on the evening of her death, that I wasn't sure what was harder: that she'd died or seeing how much of a positive impact she'd had on people's lives.

It was heart-breaking but also eye-opening. I've spent most of April wallowing in despair because it was not a kind month. I grieved the loss of a pet, the loss of a child, the loss of a family member and ended the month grieving the loss of a friend and mentor.

I have the clarity bestowed upon those with hindsight to see that my pleas to fill the voids and desperation were just part of my grieving process -- I just didn't realize until a life I'd been a part of on a daily basis was ripped away.

In searching for some sort of spiritual rationalization for why friend has died, I have been scouring the internet for quotes on how life precious is. This quote seemed particularly fitting:

Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have - life itself.
~ Walter Anderson

In all of the loss this past month, I have been able to put a finger on what my biggest fear in life is: That I won't be missed when I'm gone.

I think each of us hopes we've made an impact on the world. If you've not had your own children, the sadness of feeling like you won't carry on a legacy can be almost palpable.

I've been searching my soul to figure out what legacy I'd leave behind. Would I be known for my silly jokes?  My crooked fingers? or something more emotional and deep, like a legacy of kindness or compassion?

As I've read through Facebook this week, both on my friend's tribute pages and my stepmom support groups, I've noticed a disconnected similarity: In life and in death, all we really want is to matter and to have made a difference.

Walter, my new Ikean Bulldog

After all of the passing and grief, I've decided to focus on things that do make a difference: like enjoying the sound of birds singing, watching my cats sleep, and sleeping on my new dog, Walter.

Petty things don't bother me as much any longer. I don't want my legacy to be one where I was known as the bitchy wife, stepmom, sister, friend, etc. I want to be remembered for kindness, loyalty, love and compassion.

And so my actions will (continue I hope) to reflect what I hope to leave as my legacy.

As a brief aside, I want to extend a ginormous cyberhug to every single person that left me a supportive comment or an email this month. I can't begin to tell you how much I appreciated the thoughts, ideas and good spirits. xoxo.

Commuter Marriage Confessional: On Being Alone

My husband left a few days ago for a 10-day trip to India. When he returns, he'll be back for a few days and then gone again for a few weeks. Nearly everyone I tell this to asks me one single question: How do you feel about him being gone like that?

In the beginning of his traveling, I hated it. I think there have been numerous blog posts about how much I didn't like it. There was the loneliness aspect of it; the co-parenting aspect of it; the 'what was the point of getting married if I'm alone' aspect of it. All of that still rumbles around in my head although nowhere near as loudly as before.

We're going on the fourth year of this arrangement and I've grown used to life as a commuter wife.

I think I'm alone now

Something I'm very proud of about myself is that I can handle being alone. I was an only child until I turned 18 and even then, there was an element of alone-ness as I went from only child to older sister. While my mom  was in pre-term labor with my brother and sister (at her 29th week), I was at home with pneumonia so bad I almost had to be hospitalized... twice. My stepdad was at the hospital with my mom, which left me at home somewhat alone. I should add that the hospital was a good 45-mile trip one way and this was Chicago....in the Winter.

I have vivid memories of driving myself to the doctor for my initial diagnosis only to find out that my fever was .3 degrees away from hospitalization. I also remember the medicine-induced projectile vomiting that was so bad, the doctor told me -- and my mom, who was in labor 45 miles away -- that if I couldn't keep anything in for another 24 hours, I would be hospitalized. All of this went on while my mom and stepdad were at another hospital trying to bring my brother and sister into the world. The story has become a bit of lore for my now-18 year old sister, who loves to hear what we all went through to bring her and her brother into the world. 

Don't even get me started on my 18th birthday. This was my absolute worst birthday ever and it involved me spending it -- you guessed it -- alone*. 

College was spent with more alone time, followed by those years in my 20s where I reveled in the sanctuary that was my one-person studio apartment. 

Love + Marriage

When I met and married my husband and brought his two kids into my life, I worried about the impact that would have on my previously solitary life. I wasn't so nervous about my stepkids as I was about my husband. I'd never really had to answer to anyone before and here I was shacking up with a guy. Thanks to my brother and sister, I could handle the complexities of childhood. 

Marriage is what caught me off guard. I had to figure out how to live with someone that was something of an equal to me...and I found that somewhat difficult.

Just as I felt like I'd finally acclimated to life as a couple, my husband's career took off. Specifically, the plane carrying him to different places every week took off and I was back at home, alone....again. 

It took me a few years to get regain footing as an alone-person, but I think I've figured it out again. 

What I've learned from my life as a commuter wife

The Commuter Wifestyle takes some getting used to. You don't just decide one day to have a commuter marriage and go about your merry way. In some ways, the commuter marriage has helped me in other areas of my life, such as: 

• Don't be afraid of who you are. If anything, being a commuter wife has helped me realize who I really am and what I'm all about. I spent an inordinate amount of time by myself and am able to fully grasp what makes me tick...and what ticks me off. 
• Don't be afraid to go at it alone. If I want to do something -- be it a class, a movie, a meal -- I will go by myself if I really want it. Similarly, if no one else agrees with me on something in the house, I'm perfectly okay to suck it up and do it by myself. 
• Don't be afraid to try new things. I've rehabbed entire sections of our house, taken up painting and now have a green belt in Karate all in the 3ish years my husband and I have had the commuter life. I also stepped back from involved parenting and started reading a lot more. I think these have been the happiest years of my life because I've tried things I didn't think were possible before I remembered how wonderful being by myself felt. 

*my parents were not mean people, they just had more pressing things to attend to, like my brother and sister were still in hospitals and my mother's godmother had died right before my birthday and her funeral was held on the same day as my birthday. 

What do you love about being alone? Any behaviors you take part in when it's just you and an empty house?

Dear 36 year old self

Congratulations. We made it to 36 years old. Granted, our birthday was over a month ago, but it should come as no surprise that it's taken this long to write something because, after all, our brain has become a the land where thoughts get lost.

That picture to the right? That's us. Today. The day after we colored our hair, wore the right amount of make-up and wore the pretty orange dress. We should remember this day for a while because a lot of people told us we looked pretty today. It felt great to hear someone say that to us because most of what we've thought about ourself lately is how frumpy and dumpy we've felt we looked.

This other picture? That was the 'before' of our hair. Notice the wiry gray things popping out? Those are 'old lady' hairs and we don't like those. We much prefer the more pulled together look we created today. The old lady hairs remind us that we are, in fact, getting old.

Let's talk about getting old. Our glasses, which we thought made us  look cool in high school -- even though they were fake -- are now a necessity. Our husband loves us in glasses (which we can't really figure out but will gladly accept) which is good because we've reached the age where we need them... for everything. We can no longer go to the grocery store without needing the glasses to look for the name of the soup we hope to buy.

Speaking of stores, let's talk about how we created this look today. We used a  #75 hair gray covering hair dye, Neutrogena Berry Fit lip gloss and Physicians Formula Mineral Wear Kit Flawless Complexion Kit 1 kit. Congratulations. It's only taken us about 25 years to figure out what makeup works well on us.

Can we talk about our body? Nah. Let's not. We've got a love thing going on. Let's not ruin it with self-loathing brought on by our bum knee and turned out ankles.

Let's instead talk about observations. Have you noticed how much time we spend on Pinterest and how much we resisted even joining the site? Let's admit, the site has been inspirational. Heck, we even learned how to do pretty up-do's with our hair. Even better, we found the inspiration which prompted the motivation to fix up the home office. It does look nice, doesn't it?

What else has been going on?

We'd remember what else has been going on in our life except right around our birthday, our memory went to hell. Actually, our memory started failing us soon after our tonsillectomy last year and sped up with the memory lapses upon our 36th birthday.

We're struggling with getting older. There are certain things to love about it such as maturity and wisdom, but  we're not always quick to remember those tenets of middle age.

Middle. Age.

How did we get here? Don't you remember being 16 and loving to hate the world? Do you remember how every relationship seemed like it was the most important thing in the world? Do you remember how confusing it was to be a teen-ager? We had rules to live by and no sense of real direction about where our life was going to take us. We wanted to explore and see the world yet we had no idea how we'd get there. Thankfully, we're able to tell that 16 year old self that we do, in fact, get to travel. But that's fodder for another letter.

Well, dear 36 year old self. Getting older means needing more rest. Never mind that it's 9:30 on a Tuesday and that 10 years ago you'd just be setting out to go on a date (case in point: the man you married). Time to settle in with your fuzzy socks, hand cream and a good book and nod off to sleep.

Sweet dreams....

Circle of Moms Top 25 Moms with Blended Families: A vote for me is a vote for you

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

I just found out I was nominated to the Circle of Moms Top 25 Moms with Blended Families - 2012 list.

I received the email a little bit ago and sort of stopped in my tracks. Me? A top 25er? WOO HOOO!!!! Spank my ass and call me excited! (that came out bad, didn't it?)

I don't care. I'm excited about the nomination. Apparently to make the final top 25 list, I need people to vote for me.

 

According to Circle of Moms, Top 25 program honors bloggers who write about topics of interest to moms. Their mission is 'to connect our six million moms to the resources they need most, and those resources include exceptional mom blogs!' That there is a category for blended families makes me puddle with excitement. It's almost as if I'm gaining access to the 'rmom' club and it feels SO cool.

If you, too, want to see The Erin Experiment listed in the top 25, please click that Circle of Moms button up above and vote!


A few FAQs before you click over:

How do I vote for my favorite blog?Vote by clicking the orange "thumbs up" button next to the name of a blog.

Do you need to be a member of Circle of Moms to vote?No.

How often can I vote?You can vote once per blog every 24 hours. So for example, if you voted today at 10am, you wouldn't be able to vote again until tomorrow at 10am.
In order to protect against ballot stuffing, we limit the frequency of votes from a single network. So if you're connected to a network that shares an IP address (like in an office), you may be prevented from voting if another person in your network has already voted. No voting system is perfect, unfortunately, but this is one of many precautions we've taken to prevent cheating and protect the integrity of the competition.

I'll keep you posted on the outcome!

Now pardon me but I need go to find and dust off my tiara :-P

My life in pictures

The framed advice that resides in our entry hallway

Our 'Family Rules' that hang in the kitchen

The feline love of my life: Puppy Cat;
one of three ginger tabbies we have

Sunset as seen from our driveway

I resolve...

You know what I like about having a blog? 1) Free advice and 2) Accountability.

The comments that came in on my last post reminded me to be myself. Some how, some where I lost sight of that notion and let everyone else's input and my inner critic take over my otherwise self-affirming brain.

Being that it's almost a new year, I've decided to pen a few resolutions that I hope I can master in the next year. Some will be insightful, some meaningful, some of them downright vapid. This list, like me, is ever-evolving so feel free to make suggestions. Similarly, if you've got your own list or are considering drafting a resolution wishlist, let me know. I'd love to be your accountabilibuddy.

This next year, I resolve to.....

• Grow my hair out another 6 inches (told you some would be vapid)
• Let my gray hairs grow out rather than cover them up...I'm going to be 36 years old. At what point do I admit to myself I'm getting old enough to rock gray hair? 
• I'm going to rock my uniqueness. I found the Oregon state motto (pictured above) on a Quotable card and I fell in love. I think I often forget that the thing that makes me me is that I don't like to be like everyone else. I may do it to fit in, but I don't like it. It feels uncomfortable.
• I will take my brother, sister and stepkids to Europe. This one is already on the books and flights are booked; however, I want to make a point of making a ton of memories on this trip.
• I will not participate in bully behavior. The next time I'm around people that participate in bully behavior, I will stand up for myself and/or the person being bullied.
• I'm going to not get a tattoo or surgery or a major illness. (Okay, I can only really control 1 1/2 of those things, but I'm going to do my damndest to try to stay away from unnecessary needles or pokes to my skin)
• I'm going to go on more dates with my husband. Of course, he needs to be a willing party to this one too but I'm going to make more of an effort to get him away from the xbox and out the door with me. 
• I'm going to figure out what sort of stepmom I want to be. I've gone all over the board with this one in the last few years. First I was over-involved; then I'm not-as-involved. I can't seem to figure out a nice little step-niche that makes everyone -- most of all me -- feel comfortable. My oldest stepkid is graduating high school in a couple of years. It would be nice for all involved if we knew what kind of stepmom was attending the graduation ceremony. 
• I'm going to be.... My brain is always swirling around with how I can be better. That's not exactly a bad thing except for the fact that over-analyzing can lead to self-imposed drama and frankly I'd like to spend my remaining years of my 30s actually getting super comfortable in my own skin. 

That's all I've got for now....