Hold Me

Some bloggy friends have written about their love of all things infomercial. I, too, have the urge to buy things I see on tv particularly when it’s after midnight and I’ve had a Mike’s Hard Lemonade. I find myself wanting to do Yoga Booty Ballet and use “The Bean” for sit-ups.

Since my virgin infomercial purchase of “The Gut Buster” in 1986, I have steered clear of exercise products since I know they don’t operate themselves, but I have purchased the following: The Magic Bullet (B+), Mighty Putty (A), Painting Mouse(B-), and Aqua Globes (C+).

Today I want to tell you about my current favorite product of infomercial fame. I‘ve never seen the actual infomercial, but I’ve heard that the lady who invented them is now a gazillionaire. She’s probably super-annoying, too, but I must say I LOVE the product.

Huggable Hangars! (A+)

About 2 years ago I bought tons of fancy wooden hangers for Tom and me. Our closets looked orderly, but the bloom was soon off the rose because I needed more room.

This may not matter to those of you who live in houses built in the past few decades, but my house is from 1969, and while it’s a step up from the Early American days of a peg on the wall for your bonnet, the closets are still tight.

So, I bought some Huggable Hangars from Target (5 pack for $4.99). The packaging claims that they can help you gain serious space in your closet.

You may be saying, “But don’t the CLOTHES determine how much space is taken up, not the hangars?” Yeah, I know. Well, apparently not, because my closet instantaneously grew.

If you look at the pic of Tom’s closet (wooden hangars) you’ll see 50-60 garments. Look at mine-- also 50-something articles of clothing. Sorry I didn't tidy up the rest of my closet for you. Keeping it real. Keeping it real.

See all that extra space? That’s new.




Also, nothing, absolutely nothing, falls off these things. From a heavy winter coat to a strappy tank, all clothes stay put. Okay, now that I've written “strappy tank” I sound like a commercial myself.

Just wanted you to know of my latest love—Huggable Hangars. I'll probably never order them off the infomercial (shipping costs!), but I like to throw a pack in my cart when I go to Target.

Now I have the urge to go shopping and fill up some of that new found closet space. Too bad they don’t work for shoes.

What infomercial product do YOU have a hankering for?

Take My Word for It

I was reading a popular blog a few days ago and was surprised to find out that several of her posts had been stolen by another blogger. We’re not talking about a similar turn of a phrase here. Nope. It was outright plagiarism down to the last word and idea. Only the names had been changed. Ick.

This got me thinking about bloggy plagiarism. I mean, most of us blog for ourselves as a creative outlet. Is there THAT much pressure to perform that someone needs to troll the Internet for someone else’s anecdotes on daily life?

I mean we’ve all seen renowned journalists throw away their careers under pressure to come up with the perfect story, the perfect quote, or the perfect source. We’ve seen military men pad their resumes and college presidents be exposed as frauds claiming to have degrees that they don’t.

But bloggers?

I would like to think that if blogging becomes so pressured for us to produce that we can’t even fashion posts about our own lives, with our own words, we would step back and evaluate whether we needed to refocus on living life instead of writing about it.

Later on that same day I was reading a post by a favorite new blogger when I saw that she mentioned hiding from her kids in her bathroom. She also remarked how after a hard day with her children, she was glad she wasn’t the subject of a Dateline special. I felt all weird inside.

These were my sentiments exactly! I’ve talked about this before-- how I spent a good portion of my kids’ toddlerhood holed up in my bathroom pounding a diet Pepsi and wishing away their childhoods.

And Dateline? How many times had I said this very thing? My next question was, would I ever be able to blog about these matters, or would I, too, be considered a plagiarizer? Why hadn’t I blogged about it BEFORE I read her blog?

Or, is the whole hiding in the bathroom thing a universal aspect of motherhood such as thinking soccer trophies are stupid or realizing that our kids can be annoying?

What about saggy boobs? If I refer to my breasts as looking like a marble in a tube sock will I be the only one? Lord, I hope not. And my fave new blog’s awesome blog title? Stretch Marks!!! I have stretch marks! Is that copying??

I must admit a crippling sense of responsibility in dealing with similar questions throughout my life. Upon first learning about plagiarism in grade school, my desire to cite all my sources bordered on the obsessive.

In fact, I remember worrying that if my writing sounded far too advanced, my teacher would not think it original. Not much of a risk there for my 9 year old self, but I was concerned.

I also recall writing a report on the giant tortoises of the Galapagos Islands. In one of the school encyclopedias I found this priceless nugget: the giant tortoise would urinate on her own eggs. I remember being titillated by this fact and eager to include it in my endangered species report (are they still endangered?).

However, when the time came to put pen to paper, I couldn’t find the page number in any of the encyclopedias, so I reluctantly left the fact off my report. To this day I’ve wonder whether the whole urination thing was a figment of my imagination. Never mind, just Googled it—it’s true.

In case you don’t think I was odd enough as a child, this was about the same time of life that I saved all of my movie ticket stubs.

Sentimental?

Nope. I wanted to have proof of my whereabouts should I, as the wayward child that I wasn’t, be accused of any heinous crime. “No, officer, I was not involved in that stick-up at the First American bank at 3:45 on Saturday; I was at the mall seeing ‘For the Love of Benji’ and I can PROVE it!”

But I digress. Some days I feel like blogging, so I do. Some days I’ve got nothing to say, so I don’t. Some days I probably shouldn’t blog, but I do anyway. Hello? A picture of the can of beans we ate for dinner last night? Sorry.

It would be easy to read the tippy-top blogs and feel insecure enough to want to be just like them. Maybe that’s what happened to the plagiarizer, whose blog, thank goodness, is no longer on the Internet.

I guess I just want to thank you for reading! Writing this blog is pure fun, and although I may lament not being as deep or as funny as some of my favorite bloggers, I don’t feel the need to be someone I’m not. Unless that person has perky breasts and no stretch marks, that is.

Dinner when Tom is Out of Town:

1 can black beans
1 can corn

Cheese, sour cream, and heating in the microwave: optional.

Oh yeah, we also had Slurpees from 7-11, purchased with a credit card.

Bad Decision

Okay, so if you picked the slowest line at Costco at lunchtime and you are standing there growing older and hungrier by the second as your frozen food melts…you may decide to rip open a 3 lb bag of “Dried Plums” aka PRUNES and gorge yourself on them.

Please don’t.

Chicken Pudding was Yucky, but Lisa G. is Lucky!

Congrats Lisa G. for winning the very first An Inch of Gray giveaway. A $15 Starbucks card is coming your way!

Okay, I did try to give away my weird black sweater back in February but no one was interested.

Colonial Day went well. Half the class liked my dish, half hated it, and the fruit of my loins refused to try it. No big surprise there. The photos are being held hostage on my broken camera, to be shared at a later date, but it wasn’t too appetizing to look at anyway.

The SAG Awards

It's 11:30 pm and I just took the Chicken Pudding out of the oven. It looks gross and I think I may have overcooked it a tad since I was too engrossed in blog reading to check on it. This is not the first time I've mixed blogging and burning.

Anyway, not sure if my poor kid will be kicked out of Colonial Day when I show up with this crap. Also not sure if it will reheat well or be even worse tomorrow, but I wasn't about to wake up at the crack of dawn to COOK. That's not my M.O.

I need a good laugh right now, and perhaps you do too, so I'll pass along what my nephew said to my dear sister this morning:

"Mom, why, when you wake up, do your boobs hang down to your belly button, and then by the time you go to work, they are back up there?"

Why indeed? Hydraulics my dear, hydraulics.

If you haven't entered my Starbucks gift card giveaway, make sure you do by 3 pm Friday.

An Inch of Gray Giveaway

Since I’m going to be busy the next few days figuring out how to make CHICKEN PUDDING, I thought I’d do a quick giveaway instead of a long blog post.

What’s in it for you? A $15 Starbucks card! Feel free to tell your coffee-loving friends. If you would like to link to the giveaway, even better, and you’ll get an extra entry!

Just comment with the words,“I love Chicken Pudding” by Friday at 3 pm. By that time, Colonial Day will be over and we’ll all be coasting toward the weekend.