Rock the Silver

Rock the Silver t-shirts cheap cheap cheap

Unisex extra large jammie shirt

I've been selling Rock the Silver® t-shirts on my eBay store for a few years, and I've been wanting to get out of the business for awhile now. I just have too much going on, and I need to simplify my life. By coincidence, an unpleasant customer emailed me yesterday and I was like, whatever, I am so done being a merchant. I have a real job, thank you. Here's how it went down:

Her: While the quality of the shirt is great, the sizing runs a good two sizes smaller. I ordered and received an X-Large, and it really the size of a medium. Ut's useless to me but it's going to cost too much to return it unless you pay return shipping. I'm guess I'm screwed. You'd better figure something out about the sizing or you'e going to get more complaints.

Me: You are not screwed at all. I will refund the purchase in your PayPal account, including the shipping. I don't have anything larger, so I'm afraid there's nothing else in the store for you.

Me: Oh, I meant to say keep the shirt. I realize it doesn't fit you, but you don't have to mail it back.

Her: Wow. Thank you so much for doing that so quickly. I will have to change my assessment of your service on ebay. That is so amazing!

Can you see my restraint? I know it's just one customer. Everyone else has been wonderful, and I have truly enjoyed providing my internet friends with these lovely high-quality shirts. I was planning to get out of the shirt business anyway, mostly because it's a headache I just don't need, but that person was exceptionally annoying. Oh, about the shirts, did I mention the lack of worldwide demand?

The good news is the shirts are on sale for two weeks before I close the store for good! Just click here and you're on your way to bliss or something like it. All shirts are $9.99, shipping included. Specific sizing guidelines are included in the detailed description of the shirt on eBay. They run small. But you knew that. Just go up two sizes, and you should be fine. No returns. If it doesn't fit, or you don't like it, please re-gift or donate it to a worthy cause.

At these prices, you really ought to check out the store and see what I have left. They'd make great Christmas presents! Maybe one for the silver-haired man in your life? Or perhaps a unisex extra large for a jammie shirt?

Hurry -- my days as a merchant are dwindling to a close. The store will be dust and the shirts will be history. It's time. In the immortal words of Gary Gilmore, "Let's do it."

Not as cool as I thought I was

Things I learned this week:

First, I'm not as cool as I thought I was.

I accompanied an executive speaker to a national event encouraging equality in the workplace for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered employees. I'm pro-gay marriage, pro-gay adoption, pro-gay everything, so I thought this would be a walk in the park for a hipster like me. Until I saw the restroom.

They had a well-defined men's room. And next to it was the gender-neutral restroom. I kept looking for the third option. This event was in a luxurious hotel. Surely option three was out there somewhere. I went around the corner and back. Twice. There was no women's restroom in the vicinity, and the speaker I was accompanying didn't want to wait much longer. I immediately thought, Why do men get everything? Why can't the men's bathroom be the neutral one?

So I marched into gender neutral, and it was fine. The stalls are private and nobody knows who you are or what you do in there. Of course, I was the only one in the restroom at that exact moment in time, so my results are skewed. I don't know what the rules are for gender-neutral bathrooms. I imagine a man dressed as a woman would be happy to see that sign. Could a man dressed as a man go in there if he liked? I assume so. So big deal. I might I find myself standing next to a guy washing his hands at the sink. I guess I'd be OK with that.

Then I realize the reason they didn't convert the men's room to gender neutral is due to urinals. Men, for reasons I don't understand but find utterly fascinating, don't necessarily take their business to the stalls. There's no expectation of privacy like we have in the place formerly known as the women's restroom. Gender neutral going on in the men's room would be much for awkward for a neophyte like me.

The second thing I learned this week is that I'm not as cool as I thought I was.

I'm on this mission to stop buying clothes made in China and slowly replace my closet with American-made clothes. I've been browsing online and in second-hand stores. The choices are a bit limited, but it's definitely doable. Shoes are my big challenge. I ordered a pair of Munro American shoes from Zappos, but I don't like them, and they're going back. My husband calls me send-it-back Donna.

My snotty little feet like European shoes. And even while I was shopping in second-hand stores, I found myself drawn to European clothes. I'm thinking, well, second-hand European fashion is better for the environment than buying new and better than spending a wad on crap made under horrible conditions in China. Made in the USA is good, but now I'm wondering if I can include a few other countries in the mix. Like France. Italy. United Kingdom.

If I do that, does it mean I'm not committed to an ideal but just lazy or arrogant? I want to support American craftsmanship and American jobs, but I also discovered that I like shopping in my local second-hand shops, where I found amazing deals on beautifully made clothes not necessarily made in the USA. So, maybe I want to broaden my scope and just focus on being more mindful about where things are made, how they are made and what impact they have on people and the environment. Locally owned stores are good, too.

Some people call it slow fashion. Or sustainable fashion. That seems like too big of a commitment for me, what with my history of backing down and all. I'm going to continue to explore a new way of thinking about clothes, but I'm not going to call it anything just yet. The plan is to think more, buy less, keep learning and see where it takes me.

The buzz killer known as gray hair

Paula commented on my last post and left a link to an article about Liz Jones and her so-called battle with gray hair. It's like a train wreck. I just can't look the other way. Neither can anyone else apparently. There are more than 500 comments.

For those of you with stronger will or more important things to do, the gist of it is that Liz struggles with looking old. She dyes her hair black and hates gray roots. Lizzy mustered up a whole heap of courage and switched to the patented caramel mush with gold highlights. She feels strangely liberated.

The comments are kind of snarky. Liz, you aren't pretty enough. Liz, your eyeliner sucks. I could say that women are way too hard on other women, but it looks like some of the contributors are men. Maybe people are just too damned hard on other people. She looks fine to me. I just think it's sad and silly that gray hair is such a buzz killer.

Wikipedia says Liz is anorexic, and Liz herself has written about her struggles with food. She also wrote about her facelift and well, probably lots of other stuff. I ran out of time. I mention this not to criticize Liz. I struggled with food in my teens and early adulthood. I haven't written a whole lot about eating issues, but I did describe some of my problems in an older post I called Food fight!

I mention it because I'm beginning to realize the buzz killer isn't gray hair itself but the inability of some women to reinvent themselves as they morph into middle age. They are not who they were or wanted to be, and that skunk stripe in the mirror is just another poke in the eye. And we will continue to read about women with self-esteem issues who hate gray hair because reasonably well-adjusted women who rock the silver aren't nearly as entertaining. Be ready, and come back when you need reinforcements.

Although I am partial to silver, I recognize there are plenty of cool women out there who are evolving as they age, and they continue to dye their hair simply because they like it. It's a style choice not an act of desperation. Some of them even read Rock the Silver because they aren't scared or threatened and they might just do it some day, and if that's you, welcome!

You don't have to be gray to pull off a spectacular second act, but I say why not? It's beautiful, sexy and fun ... and to borrow from Edna Ferber, a delightful sensation once you cease to struggle.

The adventures of Larry the bedbug dog

As you will recall, Dale and I were convinced we had bedbugs. Dale researched the problem and discovered there are trained dogs to sniff them out. The dogs are an advantage because they can tell where the bedbugs are and whether they're confined to a bed, a room or if they're all over the house.

Knowing where they are is important, because then pest control experts use special equipment to superheat those areas for a couple of hours. Bedbugs can't survive in temperatures over 113 degrees farenheit. My husband also treated our suitcases by sealing them in plastic garbage bags with dry ice. Theoretically, the CO2 from the dry ice kills bedbugs.

I was in Pittsburgh when the dog arrived. His name is Larry, and they said he's already been on TV. Bruno, our cat, was banished to the backyard, which is enclosed with cat fence so he can't escape. For the record, he is a flight risk.

Dale said Larry was sweet, but Bruno was going absolutely nuts peeking through the glass doors at the dog in his house. They had to close the blinds just to keep Bruno from stroking out.

Anyway, Larry went through the house, and there was no evidence of bedbugs anywhere. We paid $150 for the service. They left behind traps in case Larry was having a bad day. That was a week ago ... nothing yet. The pest control expert also said our pattern is not typical. We only discovered bites on two or three occasions, and then there was nothing. He said once they start, they don't just go away.

One possible explanation is that they were there but Dale managed to get rid of them. As soon as he suspected we had bedbugs, he vacuumed the room well and threw away the bag. Maybe he got them all.

The good news? Apparently no bedbugs. The bad news? We don't know what bit us. More bad news? One recent survey discovered that one out of five Americans has had a bed bug infestation in their home or knows someone who has encountered bed bugs at home or in a hotel.

Check out this site for tips on how to avoid bedbugs.

Sensing my way home from the airport

I attended a management strategies program at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh last week. It was a great development opportunity, and I learned a lot. One of the things we did was the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator Assessment. Knowing your natural preferences is supposed to help you understand how to interact better in the workplace.  

A point of discovery for me was that I am a Sensor rather than an Intuitive. S's tend to be practical, literal and oriented in the present. N's are more theoretical and abstract. As the instructor explained it, S's tend to do very well in school as young children learning lots of stuff and adding it to the great big list of stuff they know. Then they hit a wall in high school.

As a cynic, I was listening with great interest, wondering exactly what could happen in high school that messes it up for the smart little S's. He said all of the sudden you have to think in patterns and discover how things are connected. This challenge came in the form of geometry. He said geometry is so hard for many S's that they somehow muddle their way through high school and end up joining the military, where you actually get to do real work.

I almost cried. Really. It was as though he read my life. I simply did not get geometry. My sister tutored me, I stayed after class for extra help from the teacher and it as though all I heard was, "Blah, blah, blah." I always had pretty good grades, but the teacher gave me an F. I was indigant, and using my advanced verbal skills, I argued for an upgrade.

As I told the teacher, I could have gotten an F by staying home or cutting class. But I made the supreme effort. I attended class religiously, sought help on multiple fronts and persevered. I said I deserved a D- at least, and he bought it.

But it was life-changing. Right about that time I took the PSAT and did very poorly. The Meyers-Briggs dude said that was common as well. We're just as smart, he said, but we see things differently and learn differently. My guidance counselor switched me from the college prep track to the vocational track. I graduated with honors in public speaking but no real math skills, and I joined the Army as a journalist a year later. I went to college after I got out of the Army and did very well. Maybe all I needed was a little more time.

I was stunned to learn that I was not the only one who had this experience. I'm not normally one to believe in all this psycho babble, but the S description was uncanny. I talked to another guy at the training, and he had the same experience. We discussed being uncomfortable, nervous, sweaty and downright ill over word problems. A red train leaves Chicago going 35 miles an hour ...

He said his mother had to keep reminding him it didn't matter that the train was red. All that mattered was how fast it was going. I was like, ooh, a red train? How cool! I wonder who's on board? Where are they going? What are they wearing? Why didn't they fly? I'm all over the place, while the N's can connect the dots and solve the problem.

S's are good at learned skills. But change a variable or vary the pattern, and we get into trouble. This point was illustrated for me in full living color when I arrived at the airport last night.

It was 8:30 p.m. by the time I found my car in the parking garage and hit the road. I was excited that I only took one wrong turn with the bag drag through the labrynth of parked cars and didn't lose much time at all. I have been known to wander for as long as 40 minutes, although I always write down where I parked. Even accounting for traffic, I should be home by 9:30 p.m. at the latest.

There is an ungodly amount of construction going on near the DFW airport. My exit to Fort Worth was blocked, so I had to take another exit heading in the wrong direction. I had no choice. I eventually was able to make a u-turn -- but even then I wasn't sure I was headed in the right direction. A huge hunk of the highway was completely closed, and traffic was bumper-to-bumper on the frontage road.

I endured about 40 minutes of that and then stopped at a gas station to ask if I was on the right road to Fort Worth. The guy gave me directions, which I misunderstood and ended up going back in the opposite direction. I kept driving thinking there would be a sign or something, and there was, but the sign said Dallas. I was getting further and further off track. Finally, I turned around again and followed all the signs for the airport, and it eventually put me back on the frontage road. An hour and a half, and I was right back where I started. Back in the long line of bumper-to-bumper cars.

It's a 30-mile drive, and it took me two and a half hours to get home. It was 11 p.m., and I had cried a river of tears. My husband had stayed up waiting for me. He gave me a big hug and went to bed. I had a beer and sat in my favorite chair dazed and confused. I'm just thinking out loud here, but if they're going to change your whole route home, the least they could do is put up a few signs that clearly outline the alternatives.

This morning I asked my husband if he has ever taken the Meyers-Brigs. He has, and it turns out he is an N. No surprise there. I have a new appreciation for N's, and in the future, I believe I will be more appreciative of his contributions to the driving experience. He sure would have come in handy last night.