I occasionally yearn for a more modest swimsuit. The outfits of the 40's and 50's seem to do my body type a little more justice. Go ahead and admire my rack, while the little flippy skirt thing does the best it can to camoflauge my upper thighs. I'm not fooling anyone, but no one needs to see it in bright, unforgiving sunlight. It does feel a little weird to be in what amounts to your underwear in public, but there is something a bit freeing about it as well.

I will even use the quaint Victorian phrase "Bathing Costume." Steve has asked repeatedly over the years for a red and white striped bathing costume, and I even have a girly clown costume one left over from a beach bit we wrote at RBBBCC.

There is a reason we have come away from Victorian Bathing Costumes, and modesty is not the main factor. Drowning is. If you have ever fallen in to deep water fully clothed, or taken your Red Cross certification, swimming while wearing much more than a modern swimsuit is hard at best, and dangerous at worst. To attain a certain level of Red Cross proficency, you must tread deep water fully clothed, then remove your top, pants and socks, blow them up, knot them off and make flotation devices in the water.

With that in mind, check out these new suits. I notice there are no suits for young, strapping men. I guess when you live in a society that suppresses women so completely, women are not going to complain about the small pleasure they get from discreetly eyeing the torso of a 16 year old boy.

Perhaps in whatever society these young women live in, they are not currently allowed to swim at all, and these modest suits will allow them some sort of freedom. I hope so!

A little something from Heather over at Matted Spam. Here's what I am!

Your Hair Should Be Pink

Hyper, insane, and a boatload of fun. You're a traveling party that everyone loves to follow.

What's Your Funky Inner Hair Color?

I'm working with Lisa this week on making some crazy hats for That's So Raven. They have some weird space age toilets on the lot at Hollywood Center, the kind with two flush volume choices. We got to talking about the auto flushers, and how they are annoying.

Taking a few moments to yourself in the stall, you perhaps may lean forward to rest your head in your hands, with your elbows on your knees, a la the Rodin sculpture "The Thinker." This then puts you below the range of the electric eye, and WHOOSH! you are hopping up so your fanny doesn't get wet. Perhaps you are arranging the paper seat cover. As soon you get it settled and turn around to get semi-undressed to sit down, WHOOSH! it's gone, and you have to start all over.

Still, I'm grateful for our technology. As of 15 years ago, the commodes in Eastern Europe were poorly designed at best (the poop shelf???) and a trough in the floor at worst. If we want to improve upon an already good thing, I'm okay with that.

Is it truly possible that every child in this family is getting all the attention they need? My uterus hurts just looking at them gathered around her hospital bed. If the Dad retries his Senate bid in 20 years, I know where he will find 16 more votes.

We are back from Epic Sibling Wedding Trip during the month of October #1. This trip took us to the east coast, NYC and various points in Connecticut, where Autumn has not really begun, despite all the PR materials claiming such.

We flew into JFK which is normally an ugly nightmare. No longer, at least if you are flying with American Airlines. Brace yourselves. The terminal they have been building for 20 years is COMPLETED AND OPEN. It is a modern marvel, the size of Heathrow with clean bathrooms like O'Hare. It is Kubrickesque, with entire white rooms containing nothing but giant silver columns. There are helpful native English speaking workers in red vests to point you in the right direction. You then take a spiffy monorail to the new Howard Beach Subway station to take the A Train into the city.

We hung for few days in the Boerum Hill nabe of Brooklyn with good pals, Charla and Mike. The night of our arrival was Char's actual birthday, and Mike made a Argentinian feast of steak and potatoes. Much wine was drunk and homemade birthday cake eaten. A lovely dinner party on a stolen Tuesday night.

The weather for our entire trip was either warm, humid and threatening to rain, or humid and raining, with both the warm and cold varieties. The strangely New England tradition of not being able to give directions and just having you "follow me back to the highway" was fully in place all week. My Uncle Al lead us past not one, but two, perfectly good entrances to 84 east, in broad daylight, because there was "a difficult curve in the road" on that section of I-84.

The wedding itself was at a beautiful perennial garden in Stonington, CT called Kentford Farm. Both bride and groom, my sister Carole and Scott, were deliriously happy and lovely all weekend, despite the weather. They had been married earlier in the year in a little civil ceremony, so the pressure was off.

Back in Southington, I got to hang out with my old friend, Cheryl Hilton, gossiping until way into the night, and on another evening going out for a hilarious dinner with Lisa (Kochol) Carroll and her little family. Because of the weather, Steve and I were unable to go to the Apple Harvest Festival or Lake Compounce, both local traditions. Steve didn't care about the Apple Harvest, but was really bummed to not go to the oldest amusement park in the US, and ride the wooden Wildcat Roller Coaster.

The trip home was long but uneventful until we got to Burbank, where it was revealed that they lost Steve's suitcase, but not mine. They delivered it the next day.

OMG. Giant ziploc bags. An OCD dream come true.