Month: January 2010

The 00s: The Decade of the Butt Crack

After my last post, in which I declare that I barely noticed an entire decade, I’ve spent some time reflecting on the decade. Because I’m pretty sure I was there.

One thing that stands out in my memory is that I had to change my underwear.

And by that, I mean that I found that styles of underwear that I had been wearing previously no longer worked with new styles of pants.

You know what I’m talking about.

Low rise.

In the early years of the last decade, more and more people were dropping their pants. As the decade progressed, waistlines kept moving lower and lower, such that many feared what depths might be exposed before the trend reached its bottom. Hanging low on the waist, the jeans of this brave new world exposed a large swath of midriff in the front.

And from behind, they showed a lot more behind.

Before you knew it, you couldn’t walk down a city street without seeing hip young things showing off their coin slots.

This was a new dawn rising in the fashion world. Or perhaps a new moon. This was the dawning of the age of butt cleavage.

(Who knew that plumbers would start a fashion trend?)

We may not have seen much progress in many social trends in the last decade. We may not have seen great strides in the arts. What we did see was a lot more ass.

The 50s presented the poodle skirt. The 80s offered legwarmers.

The 00s had the butt crack.

Holy crap. I totally missed a decade.

It’s 2010, the start of a new year. What’s more, as you may have heard, it’s the start of a new decade. The 10s. This has lead to plenty of people reflecting on what’s happened in the last 10 years. How things have changed, how far we’ve come. What we’ve seen and done as individuals.

Let’s think back 10 years…

In the year 2000, way back then, I was in grad school.

Oh, wait. I’m still in grad school. Fuck.

In the year 2000, I was living here. The couch was less dented, the carpet less stained. But it is the same couch, the same carpet. It’s funny to think that there are probably things in this house that have not been touched in 10 years. There have certainly been projects on the to do list that have not been touched in 10 years.

Living in the same place has lifted the landmarks from my memory. The years have almost totally blurred together.

I can hardly remember movies of the decade. When I think back on movies I love, the more “recent” ones, I’m shocked to see that they are often years old. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? Was from freakin’ 2000. I’ve hardly read any books in the past decade. Most of my music is from the 80s and 90s. (Hell, I probably still wear clothes from the 90s. I’m just getting the jump on retro chic.)

Anyhow, I find myself having trouble being nostalgic for the past decade. Because apparently I barely noticed it.

Oh, fine. I guess I did have some changes. I mean, 2000 was when I started grad school, so that was a change. And I did get a master’s degree. And I had 2 children. And I guess there were some other events and accomplishments along the way. I mean, hell, in 2000 I didn’t even have an iPod, let alone a blog!

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In other news of nostalgia, I’ve been working on putting together a list of my favorite posts of the year. I may well put together more retrospective lists.

Speaking of which, Holly and I are going to be putting together a list of the best Just Posts of 2009. And we need your help! We’ll be taking nominations for the best posts of the year, orchestrating some voting, and even awarding prizes! We can’t do it without help, though, so let us know if you can help look back at a few of the posts of months past. To see the lists, you can check out the Just Posts category. To learn more about the Just Posts, check out the info page.

Cabin. Fever.

It’s been a looong, looooong, loooooooong week. The kind of long week that induces me to add extra letters to words. Exxxxtra letttters.

There hasn’t been anything particularly bad going on, so I really shouldn’t complain. But I’ll complain anyhow.

Daycare was closed. Seeing as I am crazy about my kids, that shouldn’t sound like a bad thing. However, I am so not cut out to be a stay-at-home mother. I guess much of the problem was in how much we stayed at home. We had various plans for various days, but many of them fell through for various reasons. For another thing, I still had some work obligations to tend to, so it wasn’t actually vacation time.

We did get out on Wednesday for a bit, which was before all this snow started falling. After being out and about for a while, I thought it would be nice to go somewhere for a snack. I found myself hankering for a latte (a decaf soy latte, mind you), and the only place to find such a thing in the towns near our home is a large chain bookstore. That particular endeavor ended in me leaving the bookstore in disgrace with a crying baby, one newly purchased $4.99 Dora book which I had tried to read to Phoebe, but which we couldn’t finish due to said crying baby, and a little less dignity. I did at least get to have my latte first. (Though I burned my tongue on it, and had to wait what seemed an eternity for it to cool, and then had to chug it anyhow when Theo ran out of patience at being stuck at the table after hours of largely being strapped in to a carseat or a stroller. Good times.)

I looked forward to the weekend, when John would be available so we could all go out together on some fun excursion. Friday things were mostly closed for the holiday, so we didn’t try. We made plans for Saturday, but then it snowed, and it set us back. We thought we try for Sunday, but there was more snow. And somehow, we never managed to go anywhere. And while Phoebe likes to go out in the snow, Theo, so far, does not. (Also, I can’t for the life of me find his snowpants. Our house eats things.) The result is that I have not actually left the house in days. I can’t actually tell you where the time has gone. I know I did some baking. I made apple sauce (from baked apples) and a pumpkin pie, and Phoebe and I made bread again. There have been some movies watched. There have been some toys played with. Some phone calls. I’ve had very little time on my laptop, other than late at night, and much of that was for work. I check in for brief spells during the day, but Theo has this tendency to come over to the couch and close my laptop whenever I open it.

I have to say that I am really looking forward to Tuesday, when Phoebe and Theo go back to daycare. It’s not that I don’t like spending time with them. It’s just that I appreciate spending time with them more when I get to have a bit of time when I can focus on other things.

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And speaking of focussing on my children, here are some pictures I took.