2006-02-10 - 4:21 p.m.

2/4/06

OK, I had my follow-up with the GI doc so I can discuss the current state of things (which I would term "good"):

TMI ALERT

- Abdominal and pelvic ultrasounds show nothing. My favorite line in the reports: "The pancreas is unremarkable."
- Endoscopy showed a small hiatus hernia, but the GI doc doesn't think this causes a feeling of fullness. It's not giving me GERD so I'm not worried about this at the moment. I can do some spectacular belching though.
- The biopsies taken during the endoscopy showed some lymphocytes, which could just mean I have a fussy stomach (surprise, surprise), but he wants me to get a blood test for celiac disease. That would majorly suck, as several people on my friends list can attest, but it's not a die-in-six-month disease so I am not worrying about that either.
- Most likely diagnosis is IBS. LOVELY. Like I thought, my digestive system has thought up new and interesting ways to annoy the hell out of me. I'd rather feel stuffed all the time than have belly attacks though.

I am pretty much back to normal, except for the modified eating patterns, I'm still gaining weight, and anxiety is no longer an issue. So if you were worrying about me, you can stop now, but thank you for thinking of me. :)

END TMI

And now, moving on to a topic dear to my heart that I've been neglecting while I was feeling crummy: FASHION!!

The Spring/Summer runway shows were held back in September, when I was sick to death of anything summer-related, so I held off on looking at the slideshows on style.com. Now that the magazines are coming out with the Spring/Summer fashions, I have been looking at them, and my favorite outfit by FAR has been this brocade pantsuit by Nicholas Ghesquiere at Balenciaga:

I have that picture saved to disk, I've cut out pictures of it, and I've been looking at it with longing sighs. I love brocade. Where the hell would anybody wear a suit like that, though? Not to mention I actually have THIGHS above my knees, not another set of calves.

So anyway. Last weekend I went shopping and got a couple of excellent bargains. First I went to Zara, where they were having the tail end of their fall/winter sale. I'd had my eye on a particular jacket all season. I adored the jacket, but wasn't sure if I could make it work with any clothes I had, since it's a cropped jacket and almost all my current pants are below the waist. But when I dropped in last weekend, they had ONE LEFT, and it was a SMALL, and it was more than half off, at $30. I couldn't resist. And then I got home and found out that my fishbone pants are high enough to meet the bottom of the jacket:

Here's a closeup, so you can see the pattern in the fabric and the rounded shawl collar:

I also went to Lord & Taylor, with my $50 gift card from Christmas burning a hole in my pocket. After a frustrating series of try-ons wherein NOTHING fit, I was about ready to leave when I walked past a mannequin and my eyes bugged out. I checked the price tag -- it was winter clearance, $37 after my coupon -- then checked the size tag. It was MY SIZE. After looking around for a salesperson I just started yanking it off the mannequin, since I had not seen this anywhere else on the floor and my size is always on the mannequins or displays anyway. Then I tried it on and it FIT. Check it out:

Can you BELIEVE that?! Original price was $158. I don't even think I can really pull this look off but I love the jacket so much I don't care, plus it was free with my gift card. Just the kind of thing a gift card was made for: something beloved but impractical.

That picture makes me want to chop all my hair off into a Twiggy haircut but I am afraid Poindexter might actually cry if I did. And he's not one for cryin'.

2/10/06

So Poindexter and I had our driver's licenses renewed. He was clowning around, making me laugh when I had my picture taken and the result, in one take, was the best driver's license photo of me to date:

OK, so we are interviewing contractors and getting estimates for something to be done around the house. In the interest of protecting privacy, I'm going to pretend we're having our bathroom re-tiled. Lord knows it needs it. So this contractor comes, and he's got an accent that sits on the border between difficult to understand and charming. Imagine he sounds like Antonio Banderas, OK? And he looks around, and then he quotes us a price that is about twice our other quotes. He says, "I usually charge about twice what the other tilers charge."

Now, I'm willing to pay more for better quality work and materials, so I ask him:

Evelynne: Since you charge more, I'm assuming this means you do higher quality work. What do you do that is different from the other tilers?
Tile Guy: Do you follow sports?
Evelynne: [thinking, "WTF!?"] Um, kinda.
Poindexter: I like hockey!
Tile Guy: Well ... let's move to music. [says some stuff I don't catch] I am ... an artist of the bathroom.

An "ARTIST OF THE BATHROOM".

The only thing that allowed me to keep a straight face was that I thought perhaps I'd heard him wrong. He went on to say very vaguely that "we do it right", but had absolutely nothing to offer by way of explanation of the shortcuts that other contractors might take, or shoddy materials they might use, or the special details he is attentive to. Just "we do it right."

Hmph. The first guys we talked to gave a very detailed estimate explaining exactly what they were going to do and what materials they were going to use. This guy comes up with a price twice as high, a vague claim to artistry, and "we do it right".

Now, I don't dispute that there are people who have talents above and beyond the average contractor, people who understand how to use texture and color or who are technical masters of the work. My Papa, for example, is a perfectionist carpenter. He makes beautiful furniture for their home. He can recognize shoddy carpentry and he can recognize the brilliant carpentry my grandfather did and he can tell me in detail what is so great about Pop-Pop's work compared to what I can buy at Target. From an "Artist of the Bathroom" this is what I expect to hear.

I don't think we're gonna go with this guy. Perhaps I am missing out on some great artistry for my bathroom, but I'm not all that artistic anyway so I probably won't know what I'm missing.

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