Why I will never have babies

Warning: this post could be triggering. Mention of theoretical babies and death.

This post isn't really funny at all. It's actually pretty sad. But I wanted to write it last night when I was getting ready to fall asleep, and I still wanted to write it this morning, so I decided to just go on and do it.

So, I've never really longed to have children the way some women do. I've been telling people my whole life that I didn't want to have children. That "once you have kids, you have to keep them", and other funny remarks like that. I love babies and how cute they are, with their tiny little feet and hands, but I just never thought that I would have one. And it's always been awkward when people insisted that I would want to have babies when I got older.

You see, my body decided NO, no babies for Erin. There's nothing wrong with my uterus, though. I have epilepsy. I specifically have complex partial tonic-clonic seizures. Put simply, I pass out and have what you call a grand mal seizure. Those are the big scary ones, like they show on House all the time. Yes, women with epilepsy can have children. They generally need to go off their medication while pregnant, though, since several of the drugs can cause fetal abnormalities.

"So what's the issue? Do you just really not want to go off your meds for 9 months?" No. The issue is what could happen when I was taking care of my theoretical baby. See, my seizures are mostly controlled by medication. The key word of course being mostly. I only have the odd seizure every 2 months or so. So it's just a problem for me when I total my car, slicing my leg open to the bone and requiring a cane for a year. Or when I seize in the shower and slam open the skin under my jaw. Or in my bedroom and literally break my bedpost with my skull. Or just fall down and seize.

But women with epilepsy are recommended to only change their baby's diapers on the floor and not to bathe their babies alone. Take a moment to think about that. I have a niece and nephew that I love more than any other children that could possibly be on this earth and I didn't know about those rules when they were babies. The possibilities of what could have happened are making me sick. I can feel the horror and anxiety roll up from my stomach to my chest and sit there like a heavy weight, and I'm crying at the thought of what could have happened and what could happen with a theoretical baby.

The thought of a child accidentally being hurt while I have a seizure sickens me. After my car wreck, I surrendered my driver's license. I've never petitioned to get it back. I live out in the boonies, and have to depend on other people to go places. I love to hold babies while their mama's are right there watching. But I will never have a child. And I will never drive again. I can't bear the thought of hurting or killing someone while I seize. And if I ever get married, it will only be to someone who understands that we will not be having children.

I hate you and your face

Why didn't anyone tell me my ruffle was all kerfluffled?

 When things don't go right for me, I usually go on a rant (to myself) about how I hate people and their face. Honestly, until I started writing this, I had no idea where I picked that up. Apparently, I got it from Waiting for Guffman. The full line is "Well, then, I just hate you... and I hate your... ass... face!" The odd thing is that I don't like that movie. It's my least favorite Christopher Guest movies (favorite of course is A Mighty Wind, assuming we're not counting The Princess Bride). But I do like to tell my family that I hate their face.

This is the pose my Dad has been forcing me to make for days. The Weather.com guy for the Today show, the one who's been down in Florida, poses like this while he's talking. Like he's a little teapot, telling us all the important news about which towns have been flooded. It is very hard to take him seriously. (And yes, I would obviously have the same problem with a woman posing this way. Little teapots don't differentiate by gender.)

At 7:15 this morning it was a delightful 80 degrees outside. In my office, I'm wearing a heavy cardigan, while outside it's now 90. Temperature is confusing, ya'll. Couldn't we just put a dome over the world and have it stay around 70? Rain only at night? Sound like a plan to everyone else? Good.

Top - Avenue, Pants - Simply Be, Shoes - TOMS, Necklace - handmade.

Big skirt, short legs

Long skirts are an excellent way of not showing your unshaven legs. I HEAR. And this skirt is so long on my itty-bitty legs that it comes almost to the ground. I don't know if I've ever tucked a shirt into it before though. It's a childhood rebellion thing, where my mom was/is a big proponent of tucking in shirts and I am totally not, Mom, so, like, leave me alone! But, um, it looks better this way. Shh. Don't tell her. I might also have started wearing the occasional slip and their even better cousin, pettipants. When my thighs are naked, they stick together and make me cranky.

As a grownup, I can now acknowledge that my mommy knows a great many things. I just don't always have to tell her that. But blazers are still not required work wear. Cardigans are totally the new blazer. Right? Right.

American Eagle shoes from Payless

I bought these on Tuesday for a cousin's wedding this weekend, and decided to give them a wear today to get all potential ouchy spots identified. I had a serious lack of non-black/non-purpley dress shoes that needed to be amended, so I picked up these little denim blue flats to go with a Joe Browns dress.

My father kept telling me to open my eyes. Then he told me that I opened them too much, and he could see all the way into my head. Old people are picky, ya'll.

Top - Avenue, Skirt - One Stop Plus, Shoes - American Eagle, Necklaces - self-made.

Evil flowers and hair

I went for a Veronica Lake hair-do today, one side down and one side tucked back behind my ear with a jumbo clippy. My natural shampoo/honey conditioner seems to be having quite an effect on my hair growth! I've been cutting the back of it up over the past few months, since the front had ended up shorter than I wanted back in January, so it's been a process of evening it out.

If you have noticed that my deck is suddenly free of gigantic, overtaking, evil wisteria (the bane of my house), it's all due to my sister. She tackled it one day with...I dunno, fire and a hatchet, or something, and beat it down. See, wisteria is very pretty...BUT it grows like it's been soaked in pure evil. So it will climb up your house, your porch, your trees, and strangle them all in a lovely web of purple flowers and wrist-thick trunks. It's like kudzu with a flower.

Dress and leggings - Walmart, Tank - Avenue, Shoes - TOMS, Necklace - self-made.

Hourglassy rambles

 
I am not extremely technologically apt. Maybe medium for my age? The problem is that I'm fairly geek-adjacent in terms of computers, so I have lots of written knowledge of what people are able to do, but I personally am not able to do any of that stuff (coding, anything useful, etc). I just know how to do basic office stuff. So I am highly impressed by myself when I adjust the colors on a photo to be all striking-like. (This is the way real bloggers talk, you know, obviously.) And while I fully realize that my photos are not fantastical, I am amused and interested by the contrasts. And by my odd faces.
 

I am also amused by how this photo shows off my intrinsic shortness and hippy-ness. Some short people are perfectly formed, just tiny. I have short little legs and arms, and a long torso. And great big waves of hair. My feet do appear teeny-tiny, but I wear a size 8. I'm just always shot from above, since my dad is taller than me. I used up the last of my homemade shampoo yesterday, and I was too lazy to make more last night, so it was back to an old bottle of store-bought today. I also used store-bought conditioner instead of honey, and my hair felt all...slick? It was sort of gross, and it started to get frizzy pretty quick this morning, so I pulled it back into a half-ponytail. I'm definitely mixing up some more shampoo tonight.

Shirt - Simply Be, Pants - Denim 24/7, Shoes - Dexter, Necklace - Self-made.

Dexter shoes and You

Top - Avenue, Pants - White Stag, Shoes - Dexter.

I don't have that many followers, so it sometimes feels oddly like I'm addressing a small bunch of friends instead of a huge crowd, like some bloggers do. At least, that's the reason I'm using for my lackadaisical style, and the odd things I talk about. It helps that the people who read my blog are just as strange as me. (Kiss! I love you all!) I can talk about what I dub "neo-hippie" stuff, like making my own shampoo and buying GladRags, or talk about my love for Regina Spektor, and several of you will pipe up in the comments about how much you like/use/make the same thing/person. So basically, this ramble turned into one about how awesome YOU are. Aren't you glad you kept reading?
 

Anyway, this outfit is from my patented Comfy Collection©. Tunic top, loose black pants, and Dexter flats. If you haven't noticed, I tend to wear these flats every other day or so. They are Dexflex Dexter flats from Payless, and they aren't on the website anymore, although they do have a number of cute boat shoes and little black flats from Dexter there. I'm a big fan of Dexter, because they (almost) always do their dress shoes in Wide Widths, and they're super comfy. Boat shoes are my secret preppy addiction as well.

Birds and Buns

This print on this tunic is just too pretty not to show. I love how delicately the birds are colored, and how they're both upside down and rightside up on the top. So I love everything about the top but how it makes me look a little...house frau like. I don't know, it's just something about the way it snugs right up under my bosom without any support that feels fine but looks awkward to me.

Tunic - Fashion to Figure, Tank & Jeans - Simply Be, Shoes - Dexter

And since I was going to be at work all day with my headphones on, I slacked off on my hair, and just screwed it back into a bun. I get dispensation since I was sick yesterday. This picture was also apparently taken by a drunken gnome. Or maybe by me, with the camera twisted all behind my head.

Harder Better Faster Stronger

Shirt and pants - Avenue, Shoes - TOMS, handmade necklace.

Sometimes photo time is surprising. I've worn my TOMS quite a bit lately, and I thought it was time for me to do a review. The style I bought are the Morocco Women's Vegan Classics, because they are super cute. (I personally have no real feelings about vegan shoes.) They're $54 before shipping, and the shipping varies depending on where you live. My only beef with them is that they don't come in a wide. You can stretch them out with a shoe stretcher pretty easily, since they are a canvas shoe. They're not what I would consider a $50 shoe, though. The whole deal with TOMS, though, is that for every pair you buy, they donate a pair to a child in need in a developing country. So, cut the price in half, and with my shipping it was around $30. I would pay that much for these shoes. I keep expecting them to suddenly be filthy or the soles to be falling apart, but they're holding up really well. The elastic bit does leave a mark on my feet when I wear them all day, but I don't really have anyone examining my feet at the end of the day. On the whole, a decent (and adorable) pair of shoes, but I'm not a rabid fan.

As for the hair picture, when my hair was much longer, this was one of my quickest easy-styles. And I'm really glad it's long enough to do this again, even if the resulting ponytail is teeny. It's easy-peasy, too, just a ponytail split in half and fed through the hole. And that description didn't really make sense at all, did it? I may be a little backwards when it comes to hair descriptions, other than "big", "wavy", and "in a pretty braid".

Tucked ponytail with added silver streaks for awesomeness.

Commune

Blouse - Target, Shirt - Avenue, Pants - Walmart, Shoes - TOMS

I realized yesterday that while you could say I live in a multi-generational household (parents, children, grandchildren), you could also say I live in a teeny-tiny commune. Wikipedia says "A commune is an intentional community of people living together, sharing common interests, property, possessions, resources, and, in some communes, work and income. In addition to the communal economy, consensus decision-making, non-hierarchical structures and ecological living have become important core principles for many communes." My hippie-art-teacher outfit obviously helps solidify my point. The necklace is actually half of a set of earrings that a co-worker gave me after she bought them on sale at Wal-mart. After trying them on, she realized they were too big to wear comfortably, so she gave them to me for jewelry experimenting. My mom has a huge love of geodes and rock slices that she passed down to me, so I eagerly slapped this puppy on some chain for a long dangly necklace.

Big hurrrr

So, some people were interested in seeing a pic of me with my big hair. This is somewhat faux big hair, since I had it in two french braids all day yesterday, then just took it out this morning. It was just so impressive, I figured it needed a good photo! My hair definitely says that I'm a Leo, right? I always forget whether the rest of it matches up or not, since I don't really care, but I definitely have a lion mane of hair. I had a lovely weekend, with a nice date. :) How about you guys, how were your weekends?

Shrug - Avenue, Tank - Simply Be, Pants - Denim 24/7, Shoes - Dexter.

Have you ever seen Joe Versus the Volcano? It's one of my family's favorite movies. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan (in 3 roles), back in 1990, so they're both all baby-faced still. A fable-type of movie with lovely (if strange) story, I've seen it hundreds of times. My favorite bit might be the opening, though, just because of the song, 16 Tons, sung by Eric Burdon, and the great/depressing imagery that goes with it. I convinced my voice teacher in college to let me sing this song during lessons, due to it's awesomeness. Take a look.

Flowing like a boho fiend

Wednesday: Shirt - B'leev, Pants - who knows, TOMS shoes.

 I'm still a little sick. Evidently I displeased the god of mucus and/or happiness, so I'm being punished for it. Hence the even more bohemian then usual outfits. Today is an unspecial day at work, filled mostly with address changes and a rush excel file for a coworker, so I decided on supreme comfort. And yes, I do have feet under this maxi dress. Unlike Gracey, this is fashion for munchkins (or at least the short-legged). I can feel all Grecian elegant-ish in this dress, when really it's made out of cotton and feels like a t-shirt nightie. All that you're missing is a shot of me with my glasses and big headphones on, hunched over a computer sitting cross-legged in a desk chair, and you would see my real day.

Dress - Mai Tai, Jean Jacket - Gap, Sleepy face by Erin.

Cardigans are open sweaters

I got stole this idea off Pinterest, from the Simply Be boards. This is Jessica from Fatshionchic, and seeing how she totally rocked this same cardigan in purple made me want to copy it. Since I'm at work today, I added a tank underneath for cleavage coverage. I rummaged through my belts for a bit, then decided on this corset-like one, which has an elastic back. I could lie and say the purple shoes are an homage to Jessica, but really, I just like them!

Cardigan and Tank - Simply Be, Belt and Shoes - Target, Pants - Denim 24/7, Necklace - thrifted.

All the rowboats

THANK YOU TIA FOR MAKING ME ADDICTED TO REGINA SPEKTOR'S NEW ALBUM. Particularly "All the Rowboats".  Who am I kidding, like it wasn't going to happen anyway?  Pure awesomeness, and you should all go buy it right now. The MP3 version is $5 on Amazon, so go buy it and eat lunch in one day this week.

Devil-face.

I don't know why I make this face so much. My hair looks great, though, and you can see my silver streaks, so the devil face will be shown. I might be completely in love with this cardigan. I've bought both colors, and if they made more, I would bought those as well. It's probably my favorite cardigan at the moment, and it's available in sizes 10-22 (and 26).

Shirt and Pants - Avenue, Cardigan - Simply Be, Shoes - TOMS (getting broken in), necklace - self-made.

Doing it for the kids, man.

I bought my first pair of TOMS, and they came in yesterday. They're a little on the tight side, but everything I've read says they loosen up over time. (A matter I'm helping with my wooden shoe stretcher at night.) As you know, since I'm such a loving person, I did this all for the children, and not at all because these shoes are totally cute. They're a little pricier than I would usually spend, but really, since they do give a pair of shoes to a child in need, I figured that it was worth the extra money.

The death cold seems to be slowly leaving, but I'm all wrapped up warm anyway just to be cozy. And we all know what a proponent of coziness I am! I just want to be all cuddled up in softness. I need to start shaving my legs regularly so I can just wear my cotton maxi dresses to work with little cardigans over them. (If it ever stays warm here in the mountains!)

Cardigan and Jeans - Simply Be, Sweater - Target, Shoes - TOMS, Necklace - self-made.

Recovering

Sweater - Lane Bryant, Pants - White Stag, Boots - Simply Be

 I've been battling an evil death cold for the past few days weeks, and I finally stayed home from work yesterday, after spending a couple of hours Tuesday night sneezing and coughing up mucus. (I'm so sexy.) I'm still sore all over and feeling horrible, but it's back to work for me. I've just felt so blah for the past few days because of this, that I can't summon up any kind of excitement for much of anything.

Has anyone found the origin of this pin? I've seen it all over Pinterest, but never leading anywhere. It's beautiful, and the message is fantastic.

Pantyhose are the devil.

Untidy belt is untidy.

I need to wash this dress to see if it shrinks up any. But for now, a lace-trimmed camisole will do to cover up the edges of my bra. Also, why are pantyhose evil? Seriously, I have a knee length pair of "shaper" shorts that I'll wear instead of panties under skirts in the summer, and they feel just fine: no muffin top or unnecessary pain of squishing. But pantyhose are the devil - regular or control top. They end up too tight, too short (on my short little legs!), and they always roll down. I give up. It's leggings or bare legs. And it was too cold this morning for bare legs.

Plain honey as a conditioner is working well, although it is harder to comb my hair. I just have to go slower. My hair is perfectly soft once it dries, it's just not as slick when it's wet now that I'm off the chemicals. My hair gets a little bigger in the afternoons, but...people seem to like it. I'll have to snap a picture sometime of my huge hair.

Dress - Simply Be, Camisole - thrifted, Leggings - Walmart, Shoes - Dexter, Necklace - thrifted.

Scenic Parking Garage

It looked like we were going to run late today, so you get a shot in our parking garage at work. I might be turning into a a big hippie. I've made my own shampoo, now my own conditioner*, use a DivaCup, and I bought some GladRags yesterday. If I was writing this while listening to The Grateful Dead, the transformation might be complete. Luckily, I'm listening to Polyphonic Spree and wearing several man-made fibers, so I haven't quite crossed the line. I'll just take the label "green" instead. When you grow up in a county that's pretty evenly split between rednecks and hippies, you just want to be a normal geek.

Cardi and Pants - Simply Be, Shirt - Avenue, Shoes - Dexter, Necklace - selfmade.

*Okay, made might be a big stretch. Did you know that you can use honey as a conditioner? And that it doesn't leave your hair sticky like you might worry it will?