Branch Out From Black

My youngest son and two of my friends have had that ugly cold that's going around. The aching, painful, hangs around forever, makes you feel like you're coughing up bits of lung, one. Yesterday, when I got that I'm getting a cold feeling, I dutifully began swallowing Cold FX. Perhaps it'll prevent it. Perhaps it's just putting off the inevitable.

I expected to wake up miserable and instead, I still have that I'm getting a cold feeling. If so, now would be better since my friend Barb is coming to visit in two weeks. Just in case, I made a big pot of gluten-dairy-corn-soy-free chicken soup yesterday. With my allergies, there are no cans or packages or even deli soups. Isn't that pathetic, when you have to make your own "sick" soup. Life - LOL!





I'm re-reading Chic Simple: Women's Wardrobes by Kim Johnson Gross and Jeff Stone. On this all black page, the text reads "Women who wear black lead colorful lives". On the next page, the heading reads Black + Color = Drama. That's me. A drama queen in black... with color!




The text goes on to read: Black can be intimidating. So dark, so full of attitude, so... black. But used as a backdrop, black brings out the best in colors and patterns. It has the effect of simultaneously toning them down and punching them up. And with a basic black wardrobe, you'll always have something to pair with that chartreuse shirt or that leopard print skirt you've been holding on to. - page 48 and 49

The all black illustration made me feel calm and confident. The black plus color illustration caused all kinds of reactions. I dislike both red, especially tomato red, and glitzy meaning the right side of the page spread didn't appeal to me at all. On the left, I thought orange and black looked like Halloween and that the lilac skirt looks out of balance with the black coat. It was too visually light for something so visually heavy; too spring to winter.

On page 49, Aileen Mehle (a.k.a Suzy, W magazine columnist) is quoted as saying "New York being New York, the crowd was a sea of black. Women in this city are afraid to wear color. And no dictum from Paris or Seventh Avenue will ever change them.

Over the last while, I've been making an effort to branch out from black, buying fabrics in other colors only they're typically medium dark and the resulting look is monotone-ish in value with spark and drama in the accessories. That works for me. It makes me comfortable. And no amount of "wishing" will change that... for now... we'll see if ever.. it might. At one time, I was noted for how much color I wore. Things can change but will they?

Chic Simple is out of print. I ordered it second hand after reading Kim's current book What To Wear For The Rest Of Your Life: Ageless Secrets Of Style. It's a picture book with colored illustrations so I would definitely want it in hard copy. What To Wear is all text. If I were buying it now, I'd buy the e-book.




For Christmas, Howard bought me a Kobo which is the Chapters version of Amazon's Kindle. This way of reading took a bit of adjusting to at first and now I'm enjoying how lightweight and portable it is, the paperless and won't be stacked on my bookshelf aspect, and the lower prices although they're not as low as I think they should be. Why We Get Fat is a book I want to order. Once all the deductions are made, the hard copy is $11.56, the audio is $16.55, and the e-book is $8.40. Still cheaper but not CHEAP.

I've compared prices for e-books on the Kobo, the Kindle, the Sony Reader, and the Nook from Barnes & Noble and more often than not, books for the Kindle are the least expensive plus Amazon also has far more selection than Chapters does. The formats are not interchangeable unless you want to do something illegal called stripping the DRM. I don't so I ended up reading the one book I downloaded on my laptop using Kindle for PC which is a free download. A little more cumbersome but still less expensive. The Kobo, however, is proving so useful that I could see having both a Kobo and a Kindle at some point.

The Kobo came with 100 free classics. I tried reading a few of them like Emma and Jane Eyre and didn't want to work that hard with the old English so I kept Anne of Green Gables, Little Women and books like that and deleted the rest. I thought these might be good if you're ever somewhere with a young girl who needs to be occupied, like my friend who was stuck in an elevator for 90 minutes with three children the other day. And, I'd like to re-read them.

I also downloaded some free romances from Harlequin. OH MY GOSH - those books have become darn near pornographic with pages and pages of steamy read. Not for me. I don't mind flipping a few pages to avoid it but darn near the whole book is ridiculous. I'm will be very careful when I say I read romances in the future. I won't be saying I read Harlequins. Luckily, the larger, non series, book aren't quite so full of it. There's less page flipping.

I started reading romances when I was ten or twelve. They were twenty-five cents at the time and the characters did little more than kiss and fumble. Today's books are significantly different and it's not just in romances. You see the increase in sex and violence and language in advertising and TV and movies and all kinds of areas of life. Swearing that would have been bleeped out at one time is now common place. Is this good? It seems that something has been lost in this anything goes world and that we're moving forward at such a tremendous pace that no one has time to think through the potential nor the consequences.

The new car is in the shop today having some warranty work done. Howard has taken the other one to work with him. I'm staying home. I knew I wouldn't need a car because I've been looking forward to today for weeks. It's the first day, since December 17th, that everyone will be out of the house and even then, it's only in the afternoon and for a few hours between on son leaving for university and the other arriving home from highschool. Being used to being home alone, it's been a long time with people around constantly. I plan to thoroughly enjoy my space.

Talk soon - Myrna

Grateful - adjusting to new software and finding the Kobo reader useful and cost effective