Archives for 2012

The Girls Deserve Better…

May 16, 2012 By Talya Tate Boerner

Disclaimer: This post is for girls only…

I HATE every single bra in my underwear drawer. I remember when I couldn’t wait to wear a training bra. I’m sure I pestered Momma about it until finally she took me to Belk’s in Osceola and bought one for me whether I needed it or not. TinyLittleCottonCuteThing with pale pink flowers. Such a rite of passage. But sadly, it was a lemon. Apparently the ‘girls’ were never properly trained on how to be comfortable in the grown up underwire contraption.

Remember when the annoying boys popped your bra strap at school, mainly on the playground? It was embarrassing, but not needing to wear one was even worse. Even then, in those early years, the silly smelly boys knew it really worked better as a slingshot.

Today, I do have one that I semi like. Yesterday when I put it on, the wire clasp was sticking straight out like a thumbtack in my backbone. I was too annoyed to find the pliers to solder it back into shape, so I tossed it smooth ass into the Goodwill bag. Do they really even want used bras?

Wonky painful hook

My friend told me about these wonderful bras at Target that are super inexpensive and eliminate back fat! They are pretty great other than I think the fat just gets oddly redistributed to the underarm area. Plus there is a bit of the uniboob look going on which is less than pleasing. The girls need to breathe.

Nineteen years ago, I had a nursing bra I loved. I wish I still had it.

Several years ago, Oprah declared 8 out of 10 women wear the wrong size. She devoted an entire show to this topic, and women of all ages and shapes and sizes were absolutely giddy to be measured on national television in ugly, misshapen bras. To their delight each discovered they were not a 36B but a 32DD or a 34C. There were Gs and Hs and LMNOPs. All the ladies left glowing and seamless with zero back fat, looking 15 years younger, 3 inches taller and 25 pounds lighter. Evidently, Oprah has that life-changing affect on people.

So since Oprah knows everything about everything, I decided to get measured at Nordstrom’s where the official certified fit specialist and I became super friendly in the changing room. She measured the chicas from top to bottom, up and down and all around. It was bit awkward, but I was ok with it, excited to finally learn my true size after all these confining years. The skilled bra whiz calculated and totaled and measured while I realized this must be one of those rare uses for algebra…After a pause and a virtual drumroll in my head, she declared I was exactly the same size as I thought. “Really? Did you calculate twice? You should always total twice in any accurate math problem,” I reminded her. Apparently I just had crappy, uncomfortable bras in the right size? This was NOT my a-ha moment promised by Oprah!

The so-called fit specialist, whom I now doubted, helped me put on bra after bra, searching for that perfect one, as if I couldn’t fasten it myself. I could do that with my eyes closed balancing in tree pose. I can take a miserable one off in seven seconds flat driving down the highway without removing my shirt. Not that I’ve ever done that. Nevertheless, she made adjustments with her cold hands much like the dreaded mammogram but without the physical torture. I did end up with a bra I semi liked which is now the one in the Goodwill bag.

In high school one year, the annual musical was Oliver. I had a lesser role as a pickpocket, along with several of my friends. Because the pickpockets were all boys, we had to bind ourselves before each performance, using something like ace bandages. This pickpocket tourniquet was more comfortable than any bra I currently own. I wish I could remember exactly how we did it. Maybe Mrs. Brasfield remembers?

If I can stomach it, I shall go today in search of a comfortable, life-changing bra. But I may be walking in braless.

Anyone need a slingshot?

Smiling on the outside
Ill-filling bra on the inside
Bright blue bra strap showing…

talya

Musical Pairings: (no pun intended)

“Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”, Cyndi Lauper

“Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, Norah Jones

“The only gossip I’m interested in is things from the Weekly World News – ‘Woman’s bra bursts, 11 injured’. That kind of thing.” Johnny Depp

Our Painted House

May 15, 2012 By Talya Tate Boerner

laugh lines?

Until you paint every nook and cranny of a house, repairing cracks and spackling hundreds of nail holes in the most peculiar places, I don’t think you really get to know her. Standing on a rickety ladder looking at the top of the never-before-painted dusty door moldings or lying on the kitchen floor painting the floor trim underneath the built-in shelving, you become pretty cozy with one another. Until then, I’m not sure you can really claim her.

We’ve painted every square inch inside our Munger Place home. And because of this, we can confirm there are no square inches in this house. Her floors slope and creak and doors shift from time to time resulting in the reappearance of certain hairline cracks. Like wrinkles. After 102 years, she’s allowed.

Years ago, I worked with a strange girl who bought a 60’s ranch style home near Ft. Worth. Once she was settled into the home with her furniture and children arranged to her liking, only then did she paint around the furniture. The trim behind the couch was stained dark brown but on either side the trim was white. If a chair was slightly budged from position, the dark trim behind it would shine like a rotten spot. HOW did she sleep at night? I could barely even go inside, just knowing this.

When my mother turned 40, she decided to paint the outside of our home in Arkansas. After years and years of living in a boring white house, she thought it was high time for a color change – beige. Willing to tackle the project single-handedly, she explained her plan to Daddy who was completely against it. He felt sure she would get one side painted and quit. He feared her painting work ethic would be much like her cotton-chopping work ethic. The Tate girls weren’t his best cotton choppers.

She ignored his advice, didn’t mention it again, and patiently waited a few weeks until he started picking cotton. Now, if you weren’t raised on a cotton farm, you may not be aware of the delicate art of picking cotton. When the bolls burst open, there are only a few weeks to harvest before the yields begin to decline. So there’s no lollygagging around during this time. No sleeping or eating, no laughing or vacation days, no television watching or smiling. It’s an amazing race against Mother Nature, and not for the light-hearted. To keep things interesting, this all happens just at that time when vast tropical storms are lined up back to back in the Gulf of Mexico.

Daddy left the house before daylight and dragged home well after dark. And he worked 7 days a week until all the cotton was out. The first day he started picking, Momma started painting. High up on a ladder, she painted the eaves, the side, around the windows, all day every day. She cleaned up or hid all evidence before he lugged himself home late each night, dog-tired. She collapsed each night as exhausted as he, sore and achy. For a couple of weeks he unknowingly snored in a two-toned house. The next morning, she started back again right after he left. She too was in a race.

Tate Farm House
aka BAT cave

Perfectly timing the entire project, she was finishing her last day of painting on his last day of picking. And that’s the day he decided to come home for lunch. Driving into the driveway, he saw her atop a ladder painting the last section of the house. He must have been shocked. He must have laughed to himself. The entire house was a different color. And the shutters were brown. She washed her hands, made him a sandwich, and he never said a word about it. Ever.

While he was busy picking cotton, he had no idea what had been going on under his roof. Of course, he never really did.

talya

Musical Pairings

Johnny Cash, “I Never Picked Cotton”

Miranda Lambert, “The House that Built Me”

from a pew away…

May 13, 2012 By Talya Tate Boerner

At Brinkley Chapel we all wore roses pinned to our dresses on Mother’s Day Sunday – white if our mother had already passed away and pink or red if our mother was still alive. I really don’t know if this is a tradition everywhere or just at our little church in Arkansas. We had lots of unique traditions there.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Momma ordered a corsage for Nana from the flower shop in Osceola. It was always a white Gardenia, her favorite, the most fragrant of all flowers. I could smell it from a pew away.

Momma wore a red or pink rose corsage with a bit of baby’s breath, but Staci and I were too little to wear big, fancy, store-bought corsages. We ran outside on Sunday morning, getting our shoes wet in the grass, and clipped a tiny pink rose from the bush beside the driveway. Luckily the rosebush was always in full bloom on Mother’s Day, as if it understood the importance of its job.

Momma always told us to pick one of the buds not fully open. If we wore one of the pretty big roses already in full bloom, the petals fell apart before the invitational hymn leaving only a pin and a thorny stem on your dress. No telling what the significance of that might have been.