This is a touchy entry. After all, we here at Girlyshoes try so very hard to be politically correct at all times, and the epithet JAP (referring to Jewish American Princesses) is so not PC.

On the other hand, being Jewish, and as the youngest grandchild on either side of my family and a little girl to boot, a certifiable princess in my own right, I feel that I can take liberties where others may not.
Having said that, let me also say that I am so not a JAP. Never have been. I cook, clean, enjoy relations with my husband and do not require massive amounts of jewelry in order to do so. I have always worked outside the home, and not as a charity volunteer, although I also do charity work. I do not shop as a competitive sport and I do not have a standing appointment for acrylic nails. I have never had plastic surgery, nor do I intend to. So there. Furthermore, my nose is my own, original model, as is my hair color.

Now that we have the ground rules, if you will, let me say that I have spent the last three days in the company of JAPS, and the last two weeks trying to pry information and money out of another set of same, and I can honestly say that I'd rather poke myself in the eye with the charred end of a sharp stick than do either ever again.

The three days at the bead expo were wonderful learning and shopping days, except for the time spent with a woman who can best be described as a Dowager Princess. She was needy, demanding, a know-it-all, requiring constant attention from either her co-students or teacher, engaged in extended one-up-manship and bragging and made me want to convert to Episcopalian, just so I could sigh and say "Not our kind, dear." She was dreadful. Her daughter was somewhat better behaved, but utterly clueless as to polite conversation.

In response to my question "You did recieve the thank you note I sent after my father died?" she said (and I fucking quote) "Yes. And it was such a sob story that I felt even worse after I read it."

Yeah. My life last year was pretty much a sob story, and if you think reading about it sucked, try living it, beyatch.

The Dowager and I actually shared a work table in our class on day three, and I was tempted to shove her Ott lamp down her throat. The first few hours she complained non-stop about the teacher's instructions to use double thread. The teacher kept saying that if you found it hard to work, use the thread and strand count you preferred. It was more entertaining for the DP to bitch, and so she did. I finally said to her, why don't you stop complaining and change threads? So she did, and the next three hours were spent gloating over how utterly fabulous her work was, and talking about how much better it was to work with her choice of material rather than the instructor's.

The second interaction with a company of JAPS involved my latest tallit commission. The little princess apparently did not like one piece of fabric that I used and it so upset her that her bat mitzvah was nearly ruined. She had to have a dress maker install a piece of fabric over the offending two and one half inch wide stripe, before she could go on. The matching tallit bag was salvagable only by turning it inside out, which she was able to do because I made it with no seams showing.

Not that she or her mother have had the courtesty, despite e-mails from me, to tell me any of this. I have it third hand, from a cousin who happens to be friends with the mother. I also have not been paid.

I am expected, I have been led to understand, to remedy this atrocity for them. It seems that't the princess doesn't like purple at all, and the fabric stripe in question was a strip of magenta silk brocade, the brocade pattern being leopard spots. She felt that the color was more correctly defined as purple, and she hated it. The leopard was more than she could bear, and she just broke down in tears and rage. Or so I've heard, third hand, as I said.

Check out the offending fabric

And here it is in place, so you can see the proportions

I'd also like to point out that the only direction I was given in making this, was that the girl was a princess, and as such needed some sparkle and glamor.

OK, fine, so their idea of sparkle and glamor and my own don't match. Is that any reason to stiff me on my fee, or to not contact me with complaints and concerns?

I didn't think so. Bite me. I'm off to work.

This time the bus that hit me was a head cold. I hate head colds. My whole brain gets stuck in the gel that fills my skull. I can't think, I can't breathe, I can't sleep, I can't eat.
You might think that the can't eat part would be good, but I'm the only person I know (except my alter-ego, Edina Monsoon) who can gain weight through my pores. I swear, when the brown shirts round me up and send me off in the box car, I'll be getting out heavier than when I went in.

And being brain-dead and snuffling in retail is a bad, bad thing. So I'm dosing myself with Day-Quill and Ricolas and walking around with a handkerchief up my shirt sleeve like a granny.

Pathetic. This must be some sort of cosmic retribution for ridiculing the man with the horrible slurpy sniffle the other day. Feh.

I was in training for the past two whole days, and as a result, exhausted. The RLA took me out to dinner last night as a reward. Our first choice was an excellent little family-owned Middle Eastern restaurant. I was looking forward to the tardig. We sat down in the pleasantly uncrowded dining room and started to review the menu.

And then it started. (Warning: do not read further if you have a weak stomach.)
There was this noise. It was coming from the table to my left, and directly across from the RLA. It sounded like... I don't know what. It was definitely WET. Slurpy. At first, I thought maybe the man behind me was blowing his nose. But the sound went on and on and on and on. Much longer than possible for a nose blow. And it was so WET, so bubbling, so liquid and viscous at the same time. And I couldn't tell if it was a noise from going in or going out.

It sounded a little like someone was eating oysters on the half shell. Very liquid oysters. Not on the half shell so much as maybe on a saucer full of brine, and they were trying to slurp up all the brine, while holding the oyster at bay with their tongue. Wet. Slurpy. Bubbly, yet slimy.

Then the noise stopped, and I looked around to see what was on that table, but I couldn't quite make out anything out of the ordinary. I went back to my menu.

SLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPSSSSSSSSCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP.

What. The. Fuck. I turned around again, and the man at the table seemed to be moving his head back and forth like he was.... sucking something off a plate? But I couldn't see a plate. I finally asked the RLA, who was facing him.... What in G-d's name is he eating? What the hell makes that kind of disgusting noise?

The RLA turned a lovely shade of gray-green, and said:

"That's his nose. He's blowing his nose."

Except blowing isn't the right word. Having very, very extended, very, very wet, slurping sort of burbling exhale like you might hear in a movie if the alien had gotten it through the lungs but wasn't quite dead yet and was coming after the hero at a gallop is a better description, but still misses the unholy horror of that noise.

The RLA and I looked at each other and bolted. I don't know if I'll ever be able to eat there again.

We went to a new Cuban restaurant over on Dixie Highway, and I marched off to the loo to wash my hands. When I came back, I almost fainted, because, sitting at the next table was a man almost identical in appearance to the disgusting noise man. I looked at the RLA and he just shook his head. Nope. Not the same guy, just a little too much synchronicity and coincidence in the universe.

The pan con lechon was delicious.

This has to stop, people. I mean it. Don't make me come out there and snatch those gawdawful trucker hats off of each and every one of your heads and beat you about the head and shoulders with it.

Once and for all: If you have all of your teeth, and none of them are brown or green, if you and your family are not the punchline in a Jeff Foxworthy joke, then you should NOT WEAR THE TRUCKER HAT.
Furthermore, if it has a brim, the brim should be worn over the brow, thereby shielding the eyes from sun and glare. See any photo of Humphrey Bogart, Ernest Hemingway, or even Jimmy Buffett.

Wearing them backwards, while appalling, is still more acceptable than wearing them askew. Askew is not a viable fashion statement. Are we clear on this? NOT. A. FASHION. STATEMENT. Ever. Even if you are nominally a celebrity.



Maybe I need to repeat that.

DO NOT WEAR A TRUCKER HAT SEMI-SIDEWAYS ON YOUR HEAD.

It doesn't look cool. It only looks stupid.

And this trend?



Of wearing trucker hats not only askew, but too small? Are you people trying to make my brain explode, or force me to poke myself in the eyes with the sharp end of a charred stick?

It isn't even acceptable on a cartoon character. In real life? It is just wrong.

This is for my mother, who doesn't remember me. I was the light of her life, and one of the last stories she told (over and over as Alzheimer's robbed her of herself) was that I was the living doll she always dreamed of having. She would repeat the story of the day I walked to the end of the dock behind the house. I was still in diapers, there was no railing on the dock, and she stood at the foot of the dock and called me back, heart in her mouth, afraid that I would fall and be lost to her forever.
I didn't fall, but I am lost to her forever anyway.

Because she can't share this day with me, or these memories, I'll share them with you.

One of my earliest memories is of sitting in her lap, under the arbor by the kitchen door, at that same tin-roofed Cracker house on the St. Lucie River. She is singing to me. She is singing "You Are My Sunshine."

It is a Tuesday night, and the ladies are at the house for the weekly mah-jong game. The card table is set up in the living room, near my bedroom door, and I helped put out the candy dishes earlier. Now I am going to sleep, lulled by the clack of tiles, and the voices of the women as they play: "One crack. Three bam. Six dot. I'll take that. Do you know who I saw yesterday? Who? Four dot..."

I am so small that I am standing on a chair to see into the pan as she teaches me how to scramble an egg. She tells me to sprinkle a drop of water in the pan to see if it's hot enough. The drop should bounce. I tell her the pan is ready. It's only after the egg is cooking that she asks where I got the water, since I never got off the chair. I tell her that I spit in the pan. She doesn't miss a beat, just says "Those eggs are for your father."

She taught me about art, and always took a certain pleasure in reminding me that she went to Ringling Art School, whereas I didn't get accepted into Rhode Island School of Design. She taught me to sew, and to cook, how to play mah-jong, how to knit. She taught me a million lessons and there isn't a single one that she remembers, because she doesn't remember that she ever had a daughter.

I remember for her. Happy Mother's Day, Florence.

So my boss told me I can blog about work, as long as I don't name names or precise locations. Whoo-fucking-hoo. I've been sitting on this entry for a week out of fear. But now, I can blog it.
Last week we had a special event at the store, to premier a new product. We closed at five, and reopened at six. People, there was a LINE waiting to get in at six that stretched down the mall to the coffee shop.

Those folks in line didn't know whether to shit or go blind, because they had to decide: line up for the new product, or line up for tickets to Star Wars. Because, yeah, it's pretty much the same group of sox and sandal wearing, go to Star Trek conventions to practice conversational Klingon, home beer brewing nerds. Uber nerds. My people.

Really. I can't make fun of them too much, because, after all, I am their goddess: The Geek Goddess. I can identify the original Star Trek episodes in the 30 second teaser before the credits. I can talk tech talk: routers, bit rates, code. I know all the urban legends and where to go to on the internets to debunk them. Click here.

Since I'm too old to care about such things as appearances, I got to work the line wearing a pair of fuzzy animal ears that symbolized our new product. One of the managers made me lose the tail, which was a pity, 'cause sisters, I was working it.

Later in the evening, the mall rats came out to prowl. Where are these girls' mothers? The fat bellies hanging out over the low-rider mini-skirts, the black bra straps peeking out from under white tank tops, the dirty feet in sloppy flipflops. Skanks. We had a number of prizes at the event, but you had to be eighteen or older to win. Nevertheless, the mallskanks all wanted to play. Why? I kept asking them. You can't win even if you win. You have to be eighteen or older. A pair of them came back with "Together our age is over eighteen!" And I replied that divided by four, my age was almost 18, too. That scared them into leaving.

Then there was the U of Miami kid who tried to convince me that he needed a bigger discount, because he was a poor student. I told him that I was a minimally employed old lady, and he wasn't getting pity from me.

The managers were very happy with how I handled the door. I'm so proud.