That’s kind of a lot of TWOs–two thousand ten two two.  Maybe we are saying twenty ten now.

February Second, twenty ten. That is almost eight years after I started this blog. I just realized that means I’ve only been working on my book, The Russian American School of Tomorrow for seven years. I was beginning to feel like it was more than a hundred already.

But let me begin again:

Friends! Readers! Spammenters! Lend me your eyes!

Welcome to February. What will this month portend? I’m looking forward to it. Last weekend, before february started, Chris cleaned the garage by putting up shelving around the edges. He threw out a lot of things, and things are accessible now.

In every relationship, it is always the other person’s things that take up all the space. He immediately pointed out to me all the stuff I had that should be discarded. Fine. There were several boxes of clothes.

CLOTHES! an archeological TELL of clothing.  A dress I sewed for myself as a teenager. I LOVED that blue dress. Needs a little hemming, but I can wear it again.

My high school graduation dress! that confection I designed at age 17 to fulfill all the stifled formals I had missed by not attending a regular school.

It still fits, but only because … I was a slender yet voluptious teenager. I was drop-dead gorgeous, yet convinced I was very ugly. Seventeen magazine told me that models (the standard of beauty for everyone, don’t you know?) were 5’9 and weighed 115 pounds. I didn’t eat for a week and got down to 150, a weight I shall never see again. Ah…Isn’t it a shame that youth is wasted on the young? Anyway, when my mother was sewing the bodice of this dress, she refused to fit it. She said it was immodest, and my shape was hidden under a baggy bodice.

I’ve gained 20+ pounds in the intervening 20 years, and some inches on my waist. But the bodice still zips up.

I will have to post a picture for you all.