Just because they only come every four years...

When NBC began its pre-, pre-, pre-Olympics coverage, I was a little fascinated by swimmer Ryan Lochte. Not so much by him as a person, but by what I heard about his training leading up to this Olympics (that, I should add, earned him an individual gold medal and at least one team gold). His trainer was a former "Strong Man" competitor, as in the Strong Man competition they used to inexplicably always have on the TVs at the so-called sports bar we frequented in college. (I'm pretty sure it was just a looped video, because Lou Ferrigno always seemed to win.) But I digress... Lochte was shown pushing tractor tires down a street and tossing kegs in the air in an effort to bulk up, Strong Man style. I was impressed.

But then I saw his grill.

Then I heard he's been wearing the grill since the 2008 Olympics.

Then I decided he's not only a jackass because he wears a grill designed like the American flag, but a jackass who can't come up with a new idea even given four years to think of something.

Then I saw this guy commentating on NBC yesterday and I wondered if he has considered a new look since the last Olympics. He's still rocking the soul patch-ish thing on his chin:

Does he ever wake up, start to shave it off and then wonder if anyone will not recognize him?

And then there's this guy:

Shaun White has had these lovely, beachy waves for at least the last two winter Olympics, and I just saw him on NBC the other morning. Same 'do as before. Does he make the appointment to get it cut and then think to himself, "But wait, if I cut my hair, no one will confuse me with Carrot Top!"

Time for a makeover. boys. As for Lochte, based on how he comes across in interviews, he might just need a whole new personality.

Is this the real life?

I saw this car today, in a parking lot. It's a 1970ish Mercury Comet. Okay, full disclosure:  this is an image I found on Google, but the car I saw was just like this PLUS it had black fuzzy dice hanging from the window. I completely forgot about fuzzy dice.

But wait, it gets better. Then, I saw the owner of this beaut. He had an awesome, giant mustache. A Burt Reynolds-circa-1979 mustache.

THEN..."Bohemian Rhapsody" came on the radio. For about 5 seconds, I had a flashback of being six years old, riding down West Broadway in Council Bluffs in the back of my parents' green Buick station wagon.

(I am trying to forget that the owner, a very young man, was trying to be ironic with the mustache, the car and the fuzzy dice. Damn you, hipster.)

How did this happen?

I admit, as a stay-at-home mom (and these days, with a now regularly napping infant on hand, I literally "stay at home" most of the day), my day to day uniform is pretty casual. Okay, it's really casual. If I change out of a spit-up-stained shirt before I leave the house, and remember to wipe the crumbs from breakfast (which I ate standing up) off my face, it's a good day. A few weeks ago, though, I started to really notice something. We, as a society, really need to pull it together. Especially the women.

I was stopped at a red light in an adjacent suburb when I spotted a 55+ woman waiting for the bus. Now, I know, I know, she's riding the bus. I'm not expecting her to be in a dress and heels if she's not on her way to work. A glance in the mirror before she let the house in her outfit might have been a good idea, however. She was a bit of an apple shape, with thin legs but a round middle. Not obese, but maybe a little overweight. She was wearing dark purple leggings, some type of orthopedic sandal if memory serves, and a t-shirt that hit her just above the hip. It barely met the leggings at the spot where I imagine her waist was supposed to be. Did I mention she wore leggings? To her credit, she had a long-ish button down shirt on, but it was unbuttoned and waving in the breeze, giving all who drove past on that five-lane street a pretty good idea of what she looks like undressed. The shirt was tight, and I'm pretty sure there were no underpinnings pinning her under. Rolls were exposed. Three of them. One. Two. Three. I counted. Again, she wasn't terribly overweight. Just wearing the wrong shirt.

I saw this woman in the middle of the latest season of my favorite show (despite it not being that great this time around), "Mad Men," which is celebrated for its meticulous costumes from the early and mid-1960s. I believe that era marked the beginning of the end for true foundation garments, come to think of it. Seeing this woman made me imagine a person like the character Joan Harris, played by the lovely Christina Hendricks, who could fairly be called full figured but whose dresses are perfectly tailored and whose perfect posture is credited to all the crap she has on underneath the perfectly tailored dress. I imagined Joan Harris being transported to this day and age, in which people wait for the bus in what can best be described as a cotton-poly-blend sausage casing. What would someone from her era think of our society? That woman at the bus stop is not alone. Her peers dress that way. Most adults do these days. Worse yet are the teenage girls in my suburb who wear shorts so short you can see cheek, and their hair is always piled on top of their head in a mess of elastic. Do their moms mind that they look like this? What are their moms wearing? They are probably dressed like me - in stained shirts and yesterday's mascara on because they were too tired to wash their face before going to bed.

Did women have more time for hairstyling, ironing, getting dressed and checking themselves in the mirror back then? People didn't watch as much TV. They didn't have smartphones and tablets to distract them. Is that the problem? Are we too busy texting and looking at Facebook to realize what we look like?

I'm not saying I'm going to start a one-woman campaign to bring back the girdle. I'm just thinking maybe we can pull it together a little bit. I mean, literally, that woman at the bus stop could at least button her shirt.

Things I Would Do With A Little Extra Time

• Read the new Dave Eggers novel, "A Hologram for the King." 
• Write a fan letter to Dave Eggers, my favorite author, and read up on his literacy organization.

This is the best they could do?

• Write a combo letter to the producers of the Today Show congratulating them for finally getting rid of the error-prone Ann Curry, but questioning their judgement in replacing her with the almost as annoying Savannah Guthrie, who talks like she is 14 and has a weird haircut. Back to morning radio for me. 
• Tweeze my eyebrows. 
• Find a new favorite band. I am way behind - finally downloaded the Black Keys' El Camino a few weeks ago.
• Re-educate myself on the intricacies of my camera. The more I try to play with it, the worse my pictures turn out. Thank god for "Auto" mode. And so much for that photojournalism class I took in college.
• Blog more.

Dust off the cobwebs

What's that? You're still trying to read this blog? But it's been so long. Oh, where do I start? Much has changed since my last post from October 2011. We have a fantastic new family member, and are all adjusting accordingly. "Little D" was born on December 28 via induction followed by a relatively easy and quick labor and delivery. Like his brother, he seemed to just want to stay in there, all warm and cozy. By the time we were attending all the usual Christmas events, during which I probably looked like an ornament with limbs in my one nice maternity blouse*, I was ready to be done with being pregnant and asked my doctor to bust out the Pitocin.

The first few weeks at home, I will admit, were a little tough. E was pretty good overall, but there were certainly days when he got tired of watching me feed the baby, watching his dad change the baby, and otherwise found it boring just watching the baby sleep. There were a few touch and go moments in the first week alone, one in particular I'll never forget. I was still in that post-delivery, slow-moving phase where I was barely supposed to climb stairs, let alone carry a toddler up with me. E wanted some attention, but I had to take D upstairs to change him. E frowned and began to cry, "no, put that baby down, carry E___!" Tears literally shot out of his eyes like they were faucets in need of repair, and he held his arms out to me and fell onto the steps. Being hormonal, I lost my shit, too. Tears were shooting out of my eyes! Then D started to scream in my arms. We were a collective mess, frozen there on the stairs. Brian had gone outside for something so didn't hear any of the commotion. I don't even know what I did to fix things. I think I sat down on the step with him until he calmed down, and until I calmed down, and the baby continued to scream. Eventually I talked us all off the ledge and we made our way up the stairs without damaging my post-delivery stitches (E walked up).

Fortunately, times like that were few, and now that D is nearly six months and very interested in anyone who wants to make him smile or laugh, we all find him more fun. He looks at E like he's the most hilarious, entertaining being on the planet. (He looks at me like I'm exactly what I am:  his next meal.) Once we realized that dealing with a baby is about 95 percent physical, while having a toddler is about 95 percent mental, we were okay. And E no longer refers to his brother as "that baby."

*I hate the word blouse. Slacks is a close second. The shirt in question could only be described as a blouse, it was loose and shiny and I think it had a tie/scarf feature around the neck. Yep, definitely a blouse.

Okay, Now I Must Really Look Pregnant

Oh, the seventh month of pregnancy. I'm just starting to recall the discomfort brought on by the third trimester, both physical and social. These days I find myself grunting my way through bending down to pick things up off the floor, including this morning's pile of swept up kitchen crumbs. A friend suggested training Eamon to pick things up, which works in terms of his toys and other things that get dropped, but unfortunately his motor skills are not yet refined enough to handle a valet broom and dustpan. So, for now, I'm resorting to sounding like Serena Williams at the French Open.

Aside from the business of bending over, there is the business of being out and about and getting comments from people, including relatives with awkward or developing social skills. The other night at a family party, I had not one but two nephews look at my belly -- which is probably hard for them to avoid as it is eye level to them, at 8 and 6.5 years of age -- and ask, "Are you pregnant?" Both were equally matter-of-fact and grown up about the question; I was both impressed and amused.

On the flipside of that charming query is the observation made by a certain relative who has a knack for saying things she might deem in her head as conversation starters, but that are, in reality, insults. An example from our first meeting a few months after my wedding: "Hi,...you've gained some weight, huh?" The other night, it was, "Wow, you look like you're ready to go, but you're not actually ready to go." Why, thank you, for telling me I look to be roughly 40 weeks pregnant when I've actually still got ten weeks to go. It's comments like that that really make the time fly!

You, Sir, Are No Don Draper

I don't watch a lot of network TV, except for a couple of comedies I refuse to miss ("30 Rock" and "Modern Family"). Last night, we ended up watching a new set-in-the-60s show, "The Playboy Club." It's one of two network shows debuting this season -- "Pan Am" being the second -- piggybacking on the popularity of AMC's "Mad Men," albeit about four seasons too late. Both of these new shows pale in comparison to the genius (in my humble opinion) of "Mad Men," in their recreation of that era, the writing, the costumes, basically everything. Okay, so I wasn't even planned for in the 1960s to know about the costumes and sets, but from what I have read about "Mad Men" producer Matthew Weiner's obsessive attention to detail on his show, and what I've seen on the networks, they just can't compete. As one critic pointed out, no one is even smoking on these shows.

Scripts and sets aside, I also have a beef with one "Playboy Club" actor in particular. I'd never seen Eddie Cibrian in anything except the pages of US Weekly, where he became moderately famous for his affair and subsequent marriage to LeeAnn Rhimes. I think he mostly did soap operas and Lifetime movies before this show. So congrats to him for landing a prime time acting job. Unfortunately, I think he sincerely believes he's Jon Hamm. Or rather, Jon Hamm as Don Draper.

I know. Blasphemy.

But watch this clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Sz4egzKDEk4

Wearing a grey suit, clutching an Old Fashioned and having half a can of pomade in your hair does not make you as slick as Don Draper. Just like setting a show in the Kennedy era and giving your actresses bouffants does not make the show an award winning drama.

In an effort to make up for mentioning LeeAnn Rhimes in this post, here is a photo of Jon Hamm. As Don Draper. Cheers!