The Texture of Christmas--2014

Texture-Pattern-Shape-Color…tactile and visual attributes. It’s no secret that the fuzzier for me the better. Until now.

Restraint? Well I’m not gonna go overboard. But I do think in my old-er age I might be pulling back just a teeny bit from my Southern, country ass, GTH togged “look at me, look at me” cornpone sprezzatura. Who knows, maybe I’m unwittingly slipping into a phase of official mourning. Somber, black crepe hanging attire included. Queen Victoria did it after Albert died. And God knows she loved Albert better than Peter loved the Lord. That’s almost as much as I loved my mama. False alarm. I just realized that if you’ve unwittingly slipped into something, it’s kinda hard to then deem it official upon arrival. Hold me. I’m confused. Unofficially.

Case in point regarding my new, albeit just a teeny-tiny scooch over towards modulated fuzzy moderation…I took a pass on this orange corduroy Ralph jacket the other day. I’m only six weeks into orphanhood and it just seemed damn wrong on all levels to consider taking title to it. Plus I didn’t go to Clemson or Princeton or Tennessee or Florida or any of those other schools that claim orange as one of their school hues.

But forty years of mourning? I do think Victoria took it a bit too far. What with only wearing black and refusing to leave Balmoral for ages on end and using nothing but black bordered mourning stationery for the rest of her chubby little roly-poly life. Johnny Cash is the only fella who had the color black’s permission to singularly don it for decades on end. And he wasn’t mourning a damn thing.

Apropos of her forty years of black creped-ness, Vanity Fair reissued their original portrait of Queen Victoria in monochrome black with a mourning border when she finally joined Albert and Jesus in 1901.

Here’s the colorful original version from Vanity Fair—June 17 1897.

And another thing about Queen Victoria before we move on…What we don’t know for sure is whether or not she was getting some real bereavement comfort from her trusted ghillie John Brown. I sure hope so. And I’m not just talking about the therapeutic benefits of long walks and talks. We all know that they did a bunch of that. Lord knows I can talk. And walking still comes easy. I’m thinking I need me one of them constant bereavement companions for a while. Butcept a girl one. With benefits.

The texture of my 2014 Christmas has so far been rough and smooth. I’m alone but not lonely. My heart is still heavy—now magnified by this being the first Christmas without my mama—but I’m not wallowing in it. I drove home yesterday. In a MINI Cooper. John Cooper Works performance edition to be exact ("Performance Edition"MINI...ain't that a hoot?)...with my prostate seven inches off of I-95 for 7.5 hours. I need another car. And a smaller...

I’m typing this from my childhood cowboy bedroom and the monastic silence of being here alone isn’t depressing at all. LFG is in Florida, my brother is around the corner at his house and I’ve reconnected with a bunch of childhood friends who are here for the holidays. So I’m by myself in this once boisterous and noisy holiday house but I’m ok. I had a visceral, primal need to be here so here I am.

A tree? Of course. I’ll never have an artificial one but since I was solo this Christmas I didn’t need a big one of any type. So I nabbed a piccolo fir and just donned it with my favorite ornaments.

And thanks to Susie and Dougie for sending me presents. Otherwise the tree wouldn’t a been the only thing attenuated.

Back to texture and pattern...I had to put on real clothes the other day and make some business and personal rounds. And I coulda put on some GTH Christmas corduroy embroidered caca trousers and some retail red waistcoating like all the other holiday revellers. But I didn’t. Remember, I’m in mourning.

So it was a navy blazer and my Daddy Flusser semi-GTH Bronco Buster wool challis togs. Oh, and my Meermins which are holding up just fine in year-two by the damn way. Shut up. 

And I even got a mourning haircut. I figure another year and my follicular vacancies will be such that I’ll go back to cutting the remaindered sprigs myself.

My bereavement is evident in this Polo Chevy Chase selfie that I took while out and about. Time will bring back my smirky little pinch mouthed puckishness. But time has deemed six weeks not enough.

Oh, and by the way…don’t dress like this and visit a retail establishment lest you want them to think you work there. I don’t.

And I tried on a few things that I can’t buy. Including this bereavement brown vest. Buy it for me.

Maybe brown is my mourning color.

Kinda. Brownish green-essence with a green leather club chair. I mean really…how damned crepe laden can a fuzzy-ass flâneur like me become?

Brown. It’s a restrained color ain’t it? But who says the texture-pattern thang has to be? I vote no and you should too.

I’m gonna close this drivel load now. It’s off to the shower and off to lunch. Christmas just ain't Christmas this year. But it's ok.

Onward. Rough and Smooth.

80-g-2

Christmas 2013

It’s almost eight o’clock on Christmas Eve morning and I’ve just returned from Dulles airport and dropping LFG and her mom off for their flight to Florida. This was my year to have LFG for the Christmas break but being the accommodating piñata guy that I am, I relented and sent my baby to Florida for fun and frolic versus Florence where it will be a bit more of a vigil. Shut up.

So LFG and I had our Christmas present fun last night…And while the “still believes in Santa” excitement is long gone, the fun and fellowship with a young adult daughter is a new kind of bliss. It is. And luckily everything that I was directed to procure for our gal was available online and in the correct sizes and colors so my gift gathering was easy. There was no ambiguity regarding what my young’un wanted. Including this calf-foot-leg stretcher thang that dancers use to accomplish the aforementioned. And my gal has turned into a serious dancer so she needs seriously damn expensive contraptions like this one. Alas.

Vans tennis shoes? Yep. These things were popular in the late 70’s, no? And hers had to be this particular color and in the low-profile, non-clunky version seen here. Precision in preference. I have no freakin’ clue where this proclivity comes from. Shut…

A young girl’s grooming and beauty book. I read the reviews on it and it’s solid. None of this “let’s focus on what’s wrong with your body and make you yearn to be something you aren’t” caca here. Cosmopolitan magazine has a rapier focus on making women feel inadequate and yearning for more-different-better. We’re trying to avoid that over here. With one exception…

LFG wanted better-different Hunter boots. Plus, her foot is still growing and her purple Hunters from two Christmases ago are a bit snug. And yes, she got more of those inserts to go in them. These are cable knit topped. Yep.

But the big difference is the fat racing stripe on the back. This my friends is a game changer. It's all about fuzzy nuance and this is after all...my daughter. Bam!

So on to my goods. LFG took special delight in watching me unwrap my James and the Giant Peach DVD. She and I read and re-read Dahl’s book a zillion times when she was little. It’s one of our favorites and we even talked about writing a sequel together.

J. McLaughlin socks, a Barnes and Noble gift card and a cool pocket square. I’ll wear the socks and square if for no other reason than my daughter picked them out.

The best J. Mc. gift might indeed be the wool foulard scarf. I can’t describe the texture adequately but it’s kinda spongy. I’m going back after Christmas to see what other versions they might have of it and if they’re on sale, I might snag another one. Yes, it's that fuzzy.

But the epic gift that I of course arranged procurement was this set of little lead soldiers...Heyde Pensioners. This almost one hundred year old set of pot-bellied caricature soldiers is rare to the point of non-existence. I’d never seen them in situ before…having only gandered photos from an auction two years ago where a boxed set of these went for crazy money. LFG Dad was able to snag these for a considerably lower price. 

But not that much lower. I can rationalize anything. Shut up.

Christmas Morning

I began this story yesterday morning but had to hit the road before I finished it. I’m now home with my mom—where I should be and it’s humbling and instructive to once again be in her service. We had a nice Christmas Eve visit and today my brother will do the Christmas cooking. My mom is sweet and is as appreciative to be here for another Christmas as we are to have her. But last night when I was setting up my Christmas tree that I bought down for her and I wasn't doing things freakin' exactly like she would do it, she told me that I had the patience of a rattlesnake. I told her to zip it…or I’d make her sleep in her wheelchair. Kidding.

Onward. Smokin’ one of those little baby cigars from my new cigar box Christmas ornament.

And rattlin'.

ADG-Two

  

Holiday Miscellany

And miscellany this shall be. Shut up.

Oh…but before you shut up and I take over; let me pop this story with something sartorial. Because it seems like that’s what this venue used to focus on. I need to confess my guilt…about over-fuzzying this jacket. I’ve taken a perfectly sublime, ain’t gonna see ones-damn-self walking down the street in the same Russell Plaid jacket, ADG tasty contrivance…and tarted it up so over-the-damn-top-ly that even I, the Potentate of P-tang, can’t wear it out of the damn house. 

So I’ll have that Velveteen Rabbit meets a Vegas hotel suite sofa cushion collar…removed. And then I’ll write a proper story about how this jacket came to be. Shut…I’m serious. I don’t want to hear it.

I’ve said it to scores of people…While my blessings absurdly outweigh my challenges, I’ll be giddy when 2013 is over. It’s been a rich year, life-learning wise and my lessons learned-humility account is filled to the damn brim. My pugnacious declarations regarding my desire for 2013 to pass are  balanced with the knowing that if I crow too much about ’13 being behind us, the karma coordinators may show me a 2014 that makes this one look like a stroll through Burlington Arcade. It’s all about balance. Or something.

And one of the most amazing blessings this year has been my mother’s decision to not yet leave us. I believe, deep, deep, down in my being, that if we; amidst chronic disease or the end of our life journey, have some unfinished something that we've yet to reconcile or say or do or experience, we won’t let go. I’m not sure why my mom didn’t die in March. All I know is that the doctors remain pretty much speechless and when science and data driven clinicians use twee-ass words like miracle, I take notice. So amidst the humbling—for her and us—duties involved with helping my mom, we are all aware that every day she remains with us is indeed a blessing.

I drove over to spend one evening with her after my uncle’s funeral the other day and she was to say the least, on her game! Sharp as a damn tack and in my grill about how I was arranging her leg pillows and her three blankets that have to be just damn right and her little footies that I put on her feet inside-out and you’d a thought that I’d chopped her feet off. And then we laughed after I finally, barely, got things arranged to suit her.

I hadn't been to the family farm in years so my trip down was filled with all sorts of memories and speculations about how I’d feel when I got there. While it’s sad to see the once bustling tobacco farms essentially idle—mainly because it’s winter—we rent the land to other sower-reapers so during the seasons, there is life and activity and the fallow fields are planted and life emanates. But I loved being there and my uncle’s funeral was sweet. More later on the farm because there’s fodder for at least one story.

Before…

After…And yes, I realize that you're doing the “what the flip is this project ‘cause I know that LFG ain’t a part of it” head scratch right now. Well just wait till I write the story. 

Socks…I told you this was gonna be a disjointed pile of irreleventia and collateralia. My latest obsession is with these oversized houndstooth thangs that F. Todd HogFarmer Howell of Coffman’s Menswear has been sending me…NOT for free. I pay the freight because my man FTH has a lovely little gal to spoil and I know what kinda dough that requires. So when I find something I like, I get duplicates and I’ve had FTHogg, the most mismatched swathier alive, supply me some spares of these babies.

And I owe my man Vinnie of DeoVeritas shirts a story and review of this bulletproof pink oxford cloth shirt that I commissioned over at his site. So until I do so, please go over to his fully automated, order with ease website and make yourself one. Please.

LFG was supposed to be over here at my Bethesda digs like every other day after I moved within five minutes of her, right? I mean...wasn’t that the strategy for moving here? Well so far it ain’t happenin’. What was I thinking? That her blessed and over-scheduled life would suddenly be less so? Christmas is in six days and we still ain’t got no tree. I’m gonna go and buy an inflatable one today.

But her holiday dance recital last weekend was just great. Surprise I know, but I’m as proud a parent when in the audience as anyone could be…regardless of how the performances go.

This year was different though. I can see real talent and I can see an incrementally more skilled and accomplished dancer in my not so little LFG. Her mother and I both marvelled at how this year’s recital showed us a daughter who’s a really talented performer. And then I went home. Alone.

Meermin…If anyone should pay me for shilling…which to-date nobody has, it should be Meermin. At $240.00 a throw, I’m awaiting pair number two. Merry Christmas. To. Me.

Let me close this one out with my mom’s next door neighbor, Harry. I shared photos of Harry and my mom when we finally got her out of the house and Harry bounded over to love up on her. I posted this on my tumblr but it’s sublime enough to share again. The best by far, Christmas card of 2013.

Onward. Randomly and Houndstoothically.

Eighty-Gee. Bofe

Oh! And one more thing. My all-time favorite Christmas song is Boogie Woogie Santa Claus sung by Mabel Scott. But her admonition for Santa to ... "run, run, run Mister Santa--jump, jump, jump Mister Santa" disturbs me. He's overweight and probably a type-2 diabetic with mild congestive heart failure. And we don't need his jolly ass on Worker's Comp. bam.

The Christmas Aftermath and Trad Miscellany

It’s 533am in ADG land and not a creature is stirring ‘cause I’m the onliest creatsture (As Ernest T. Bass would pronounce it) in the house. And I’m rested at 533am because I fell asleep real early last night. 430am arrived early Christmas morning—not by design per se but I was gonna get up at 5 anyway.

Christmas eve and morning were great culminations of what was a harried two weeks leading up.  If you wanna more thorough rundown on the LFG/ADG Christmas tree, I refer you to last year’s post for an ornament, by ornament manifestation of our eclectirandoyulishness.

Wow, what a difference another blessed year makes and wow, how quickly this one blew by. Last year our tree was up by the typical 2.5 to 3 weeks before Christmas. This year LFG and I were lucky to get the thing up at all. We are no less manifest in Yule cheer but it’s just been maniacally busy for us all. As I think of it, the idea of not getting on a plane until January 6^th is more comforting than most of you can probably understand. And yes, I repaired the “blowed up Saab”…only time will tell if rescinding my decision to “not put another penny in this thing” was a good one.

Our Old Angler’s Inn get together with LFG’s mom was so nice—in every way. I’ve said it to the point of redundancy…as long as we remain focused on what’s best for LFG; we are fine amidst these special occasion summits. Old Angler’s had a nice little menu for Christmas Eve and being our little princess, LFG was allowed to go off the menu and pounce on a cheeseburger.

The Santa visit manifested visual evidence that LFG is not a cuddly little baby anymore. Clothes and electronics pretty much did it for this gal. Her “big” gifts this year were a replacement pair of Uggs and the Nook reader from Barnes and Noble. Uggs need replacing a couple of times each year because they provoke, at least from my child, an odiferous funkorama that scares me.

And the Nook…LFG begged and begged for this thing—for months. I’ll still insist (we’ll see how that goes) that she read regular books but here’s my bottom line on e-books…If the vehicle will enhance my child’s already strong appetite for books; if this platform will synergize even slightly, her love affair with words then I’m all in.

I won’t personally relent till I get an iPad…which is inevitable. But I like owning my regular books. I revel in the therapeutic unguent that two hours in a used bookshop offers me. I love that cerebral sleight of hand I inflict upon myself when I rationalize the expenses associated with my used bookshop forays as well as my dangerously capricious Amazon One-Click impulsivity. I’ll have the Larry McMurtry autobiographical trilogy finished by tonight and I’ve concluded that McMurtry, sitting down in his Hay-on-Wye attempt called Archer City Texas, writes books and screenplays to finance his addiction to collecting books. Actual books…you know, the ones whose pages can be fingered and re-read and dog eared and whose tight spines, despite the admonishment of the ancient librarian Miss Duffeld, late of Royall Elementary school, can be hyper bent-back amidst the glue crackling, for better page turning. Well there you damn go. All the reason in the world that for me, e-books won’t ever completely replace the real thang.

So LFG got all jazzed up over her orange covered Nook and we scurried soon thereafter to the airport and a handoff to mommy.

Nothing sad or somber here. My little gal’s just not quite awake yet. And no I didn’t endanger either of us while snapping these little shots. The iPhone 4 offers a reverse mechanism for shooting pictures. You just hold it over your shoulder and click away. One’s bound to be a decent enough snap to make the blog cut. Leastways by my definition of decent. Shut the ____________.

Whew. Let’s talk togs and shoddings. One of my nicest little surprise gifts was a navy blue box from Ralph. One your fellow readers bestowed upon me two pairs of great Fair Isle socks for Christmas. Nice.

And thanks again M.O. for the socks. I wore a pair yesterday. With Alden shell cordovan tassels…colour #8.

Colour #8 is the classic Alden ox blood-burgundy tone that shell cordovan is mostly known for. But I gotta tell you, the Alden shell cordovan tassel classic in what Alden calls Cigar is a stunningly patinated contrivance. The evidence above is courtesy of Elegantologist…my buddy Chris from Easy and Elegant Life. Santa bought him at my urging, a pair of Cigar shell cordovan tassels. He wore ‘em all day yesterday. Who knows, the boy may be sleeping in them right now.

My week in shoes. Just the kind of random eclectasy that had it not manifested during a week of no travel, one should worry. My travel week in shoes is just the opposite…one pair. It’s a tactic that is crucial for me to manifest my no-checked-luggage strategy. And how did that strategy play out in 2010? Perfect actually. I checked a bag once…when I went to London last January. Sorry but I’ve said it before, in a fact positing way, not in a braggadocios crow, that it’s easier being a guy.

Braggadocios Crow…shit…I’ve gotta try my hand at writing a short story...if for no other reason than to use that name for a character. Braggadocios Crow…man…he’s either an Atticus Finch archetype or a farmer or a wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys.  

I’ve never tried my hand at fiction that I’ve declared up front to be so. This entire blog is a sham so that I suppose, is one version of fiction right there. But let me give Mr. Crow a shot at life. “Bragg Crow represented anyone in Prunella County who needed a lawyer. And more often than not he was paid with chickens and butter…or a desperate promise of money sure to come, now that the farm was vaguely out of foreclosure.” 

Or... “On Sundays Bragg Crow could always be found on the front pew, white dress shirt buttoned to the neck but awaiting the necktie that was not to be. Cleaning up for church was as important as being in church but a necktie always eluded Bragg Crow. Maybe if he wore one, the rain his crops so desperately needed—the rain he so anxiously mumbled for in prayer—might finally arrive, before it was once again, too late.”

Or… “Braggadocios DeLamante Crow was off the game day and the practice clock. The wide receiver was wide-ass open tonight but not in pads. Bling and champagne replaced tape and steroids as adornments for assuring victory. Tonight his three touchdown game would manifest in victory over one  LaShonda Veronique Scipio, head cheerleader for his team. Rules be damned, he and Ms. Scipio were hot tub bound and he’d just have to pay the thirty thousand dollar fine for cavorting with Shonda’nique’s pom-poms.”

Ok, I won’t quit my day job. Shut up. But look at these fuzzies! I found my way to the Conrad Hasselbach website courtesy of Laguna Beach Trad links and found this. This Prussian manifuzzstation of tasselocity. Hold me back.

But only after you release me long enough to consider taking vert title to these grün shoddings. Again, even though it’s the holidays. Shut up.

And finally, with all of the randomosity aside, what was the most enduring gift that you gave this season? My Christmas card from a long time friend in Houston exemplified giving in the truest sense. She has a friend who now has a renewed lease on life, courtesy of one of her kidneys. God bless you both.

Merry Christmas from the Royal East Kents Regiment.

Onward.

ADG, II