Oh the frustration

I have a pair of jeans that I bought in a second hand store.
I generally hate buying/ wearing jeans, especially now that they are all these low-rise skinny-leg part-of-the-conspiracy-to-make-women-hate-their-natural-figures type clothes.
But THESE jeans, oh my, they fit perfectly, they even make me look pretty good.
The label is very worn, so worn I can't read the size (another reason I love them, right?) but they are Route 66 brand.
My pair are practically falling to pieces and Mom swears she won't patch them any more (she said that the last 3 times she patched them, but really, they are getting beyond wearable). So I went online to google and typed in Route 66 women's plus size jeans, expecting that I would find them rather quickly.
Instead I have wasted 2 hours of beautiful October sunshine stuck here on the computer, and on the phone, trying to find a store that still sells them.
I have found lots of rave reviews from other plus size women who love these jeans, but I can't find anywhere that actually sells them still. I even called up several stores and asked, but no, I can't find them. And the brand Route 66 apparently does not have a home web site. (I've found lots of stores of that name, but not the brand.)
Why does finding decent clothes in this day and age have to be so darn hard???

The Most Beautiful Place in the World

The other evening, shopping at Costco,
I came out into the parking lot to see the most gorgeous alpenglow.
Everybody should have been oohing and aahing,
but hardly anyone was paying attention.
I had my camera, though,
and I stood by the side of the parking lot watching the light
until it faded down to gray.
I am so lucky to live here.

The Inadequacies of Google Image Search, Or, Why I Photograph Everything

I was creating a power point presentation on medieval devotional strategies and I wanted to illustrate how modern Christians sometimes continue practices that were popular in medieval times, such as putting actual clothes or jewelry on statutes of saints, especially the Virgin Mary. I knew I had seen examples, usually in Europe, so I tried googling for an example.
I tried all sorts of word combinations- statue, Virgin Mary, clothing, real clothes, ornamentation, and so on. I kept getting lots of sites that wanted to sell me images of the BVM but no decent pictures of the kind I needed.
Frustrated, I finally remembered that back in 2007 when I was in York for the summer I saw an example in one of the York parish churches. (There are over 20 surviving medieval parish churches in York. I have photographed them all.) Searching through those files I finally came up with this modern Mary wearing a veil, from near the rood screen at All Saints North Street, York.
Admittedly google and wikipedia and so on can be useful.
But when one specializes, it's best to have one's own resources.

What Real French Women Wear

Okay, so French is often equated with Fashion.
And Fashion these days consists a series of ill-concealing,
unflattering,
skimpy,
unattractive clothes.
Like the window above.
Granted that it is below freezing here
and nobody (even a twenties-age twig)
would wear such a thing outdoors,
I have been crowd watching
and there are far more round-sized,
middle-aged ladies in puffy coats and elderly scarves
than the France Fashion image leads one to believe.
In fact the ladies here are so normal,
I feel very comforted.
But the question has always nagged me:
where do these women SHOP?
They clearly don't buy their clothes at the Skeletal Boutiques.
As I was going through the weekly flea market on my way home,
I unexpectedly found my answer:

This row of granny nighties, my friends,
is REAL French lingerie.

Endings and Beginnings

In general, I am always happy to see February come to a close. It means spring is that much closer.
This February I am also pleased to see the conclusion of a project I started last October: the organizing and metadata entry for my entire digital photo collection. I had a lot of duplicates, but even weeding them out the total was over 30,000 images. So far. I plan to take a lot, lot more.
I have spent many an hour in the evening watching TV in the background while I sorted photographs on my laptop. It's become routine, soothing. I almost miss it, even though I am very grateful to have the project done- and all my photos burned on backup DVDs (very important to have backups, lots and lots of backups.)
My new project will be (re)starting my book manuscript in a serious, businesslike way. I expect that will keep me occupied for many months. In fact, I look forward to it.