It took me a long time to get to this point, but I'm ready to be out and proud about how much I love the GAP. They're kind of amazing. I just bought 2 totally work appropriate and stylish blouses and 1 silk-ish skirt (also work appropriate) for like, $45. That's better than Joe Fresh prices, folks. Buying something full price there is a chump move, but the lack of chumps is probably what's contributing to the instability of the brand. The GAP is in trouble! They're not making enough money! What am I going to do if they go under (what are the chances that they would go under?)??!!??
The stuff that makes the GAP good is also what makes them vulnerable - the insane return/exchange/refund policies (ie. my friend G told me about how she bought her kids' winter jackets in like, August, knowing that this way they could "hold" the sizes they needed, keep the tags on them and then return the jackets and buy it for the reduced sale price in a couple of months - side note: they were advised to do this by GAP staff!!!), the crazy sales, the roomy dressing rooms and knowledgeable and helpful staff. Competition from stores like H&M probably isn't helping the GAP either, but lemme tell you, I was nosing around the H&M at the Eaton Centre before class on Tuesday night and that place is rank GARBAGE. The clothes are totally uggie and so cheaply made and everything is itchy and falling apart and to put together an outfit there (exempt from the garbage classification: kid's clothes and **some** accessories) would make you look like either one of the denizens of Grey Gardens.
I guess this is a plea to save the GAP and check it out and shop there. Or, if you're not going to do that, don't buy any of the Really Skinny Pants so that I can stock up before they go kaput.
In other news: my dodgeball team WON last night!!!!! Which was kind of a big deal because we've been getting our a**es handed to us ever since the season started. We totally needed a big win and we got it - all the more commendable because we only had 6 people show up and we 6 had to iron-man it and play the whole time.
In other other news, my academic book club selected Anne of Green Gables and Little House on the Prairie for next month's reading and those books are sick. They totally hold up. This is literally my 10 billionth time reading them both and present me finds them as engrossing and engaging now as 8 year old Karl Lagerfeld did, lo so many years ago. Anne of Green Gables holds up a little more - the story is fantastic and you gotta say this about L.M. Montgomery - the b***h could write. She had a way with simile and metaphor and description that is unparalleled - especially in describing the natural world. The descriptions of Avonlea, the changing of the seasons, the way the tips of firs look against a deepening, darkening sky are so plummy and evocative and rich that you could lose yourself in them for days. So too is her way with human emotions - the passages that describe Anne's feelings of loss when her beloved Matthew Cuthbert dies in particular resonated:
Two days afterwards they carried Matthew Cuthbert over his homestead threshold and away from the fields he had tilled and the orchards he had loved and the trees he had planted; and then Avonlea settled back to its usual placidity and even at Green Gables affairs slipped into their old groove and work was done and duties fulfilled with regularity as before, although always with the aching sense of "loss in all familiar things." Anne, new to grief, thought it almost sad that it could be so--that they could go on in the old way without Matthew. She felt something like shame and remorse when she discovered that the sunrises behind the firs and the pale pink buds opening in the garden gave her the old inrush of gladness when she saw them--that Diana's visits were pleasant to her and that Diana's merry words and ways moved her to laughter and smiles--that, in brief, the beautiful world of blossom and love and friendship had lost none of its power to please her fancy and thrill her heart, that life still called to her with many insistent voices. "It seems like disloyalty to Matthew, somehow, to find pleasure in these things now that he has gone," she said wistfully to Mrs. Allan one evening when they were together in the manse garden. "I miss him so much--all the time-- and yet, Mrs. Allan, the world and life seem very beautiful and interesting to me for all. Today Diana said something funny and I found myself laughing. I thought when it happened I could never laugh again. And it somehow seems as if I oughtn't to."
"WhenMatthew was here he liked to hear you laugh and he liked to know that you found pleasure in the pleasant things around you," said Mrs. Allan gently. "He is just away now; and he likes to know it just the same. I am sure we should not shut our hearts against the healing influences that nature offers us. But I can understand your feeling. I think we all experience the same thing. We resent the thought that anything can please us when someone we love is no longer here to share the pleasure with us, and we almost feel as if we were unfaithful to our sorrow when we find our interest in life returning to us."
I can't find a better description of the guilt I felt immediately after Poppa D died when I found myself laughing at some antic of the Big Yam's.
Little House on the Prairie isn't enticing from en English-language, literary perspective. It's more like a written trip to Pioneer Village. This could be seen as either boring OR fascinating depending on your ideological leanings (full disclosure: I LOVE romanticizing about pioneer times.) I can't believe how different a time it was - how good Laura and Mary are with so few things to entertain them - just some scraps of wool and a dried apple for a doll. As my book club friend said, "Ma and Pa are my new heroes...if only my kids did their chores unasked, just for the pleasure of seeing me smile ever so slightly." LOL! It's all about Ma giving a slight smile of approval and that meaning the world to the girls. Anyway, the book is pretty informative, if your interests lie in knowing how log houses are built or if talk about "sizzling corn cakes" "molasses" and "fried salt pork" set your taste buds a lather (full disclosure: I mainly read the Little House books for the description of the food.)
Last night for dinner we had braised pork chops and apples, braised with onions in a mixture of apple cider and beer. Served alongside roasted garlic mashed potatoes (is there a more comforting dish on a blowsy, sleety weeknight than bowl full of mashed potatoes?) and kale chips.
Tonight for dinner we had spicy grain soup and grilled cheese sandwiches with the roomie, who came over for dinner.
Fin.
