Friday, June 19, 2009

Victoria's Secret, meet Red Green

It was not the best of days yesterday. I got up at 4:30 a.m. in order to try to fix a mistake I'd made the night before with the swimming pool. The pool is up and running but I'm still fighting with the water quality it to make it something that one might want to swim in, rather than something one might stock bass in, and I got up early to try to rectify the problem and still get the girls up, dressed and fed and dropped off early at daycare so I could be on time for an early workshop at work. (What I did wrong with the pool would take an entire blog post on its own to describe -- suffice it to say it involved 3 kilograms of stablilizer granules, a black stocking, a tug-of-war, and much angst. But I digress...)

So there I was, half asleep, trying to get dressed and moving. The high humidity of the morning, coupled with the fact that I had run out of hair conditoner, meant that I looked disturbingly like this:

And to top it off, my last good bra had popped an underwire -- making it even more of a medieval torture device than it is already. What could I do? I was running out of time. While brushing my teeth, I was seriously trying to figure out which shirt I could put on that would best disguise the fact that I was reduced to wearing a bikini top to work, when suddenly, the solution came to me.

Duct tape.

Good for everything, including emergency underwear repair. And the silver colour is so sparkly and feminine. Red would be proud.

(Keep your stick on the ice.)

14 comments:

  1. Ouchy. Good thinking though!

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  2. What (or who?) is Red Green?

    I've had that happen with bras before and it is painful. I've never used duct tape though. I bow to your greatness.

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  3. Jen S. - Yes, ouchy. The tape is only an interim fix though. I'll have to get the needle and thread out, or failing that, undergo the horror that is bra shopping.

    Jen B. - Red Green is the title character of The Red Green Show -- a lazy Canadian handyman who generally tries to find shortcuts to most of his projects, trusting the vast majority of his work to duct tape (which he calls "the handyman's secret weapon" and the "universal adapter"). He is the president of the Possum Lodge, a fictional men's club in the small northwestern Ontario town of Possum Lake, near the also-fictional town of Port Asbestos. He and his fellow lodge members have their own TV show (which is more or less the show itself), in which they give humorous lessons and demonstrations in repair work and outdoor activities (such as fishing and camping), and advice for men on relating to women, among other things.

    Here he turns a lawnmower into a dragster: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0d_KEiIHiU

    Often the last thing he says as he signs off is "Keep your stick on the ice." Or sometimes it's the lodge members reciting the Man's Prayer: I'm a man, and I can change. If I have to. I guess.

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  4. So wish I could buy you a margarita right now. Or a new bra. Then we could watch Red Green together. I had the underwire thing happen while I was at Eve's ballet class once. Boobs are a pain in the... wait, that wouldn't make any anatomical sense. Never mind.

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  5. Whatever happened to just tucking the boobs into the jeans? It was good enough for our Latvian grandmothers, so it should be good enough for us, right? In the meantime, I wish for you to become independently wealthy so that you'll wake up to the pool boy getting the pool ready for your morning swim (at 9:00) instead of you getting up at 4:30. Sincerely...

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  6. PS: Who is Jen and why doesn't she know who Red Green is?

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  7. Oh I can so relate. My favorite bra pops its underwire every other time I wash it. But it fits so well and gives just the right amount of support without making my cleavage look bigger and without those awful creases you can get in the top of your boob if it's too small. And of course I can't even identify the brand on it anymore as it has been used so much. And I despise bra shopping. Invariably I find one I like and then get home and wear it for more than 5 minutes with my real clothes and it either is way uncomfortable or makes my boob look like Dolly with an orange road cone in her shirt.

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  8. You lead such a Canadian life -- so enterprising, so hilarious!

    I recommend wire-free for the replacements :).

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  9. Biblio - Margaritas and Red Green sounds like the recipe for a good evening. It could even morph into a drinking game: take a sip every time he uses duct tape, speaks to the camera with a message to his wife, or says "If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy."

    XUP - While I can *almost* tuck the boobs into the waistband, I do like a little support. And a pool boy and a 9:00 swim sound lovely. Maybe if both of us hope for the independently wealthy thing to happen to me, it might. Jen can be forgiven for not knowing Red Green. She's a good friend who lives in Virginia, and doesn't watch TV.

    SaraJ - I KNOW! Bra shopping is horrible, so you do anything you can to eke another couple of months out of a favourite bra. I nearly peed laughing at the Dolly with an orange road cone line. Now I'm picturing you with Madonna-style pointy boobs.

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  10. Lynn - thanks for dropping by. I will definitely look for wire-free. Do they give as much support as underwire? Because I really need the support.

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  11. Ha ha! I would probably have just pulled the wire out. ;) I hage one of my bras that is getting close to popping!

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  12. Ha ha! I would probably have just pulled the wire out. ;) I hage one of my bras that is getting close to popping!

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  13. Ooooooh... on the bra not your boobs!

    sorry very tired ATM...

    I was going to say I hope you took some of the stick off with a towel.

    "If they don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy."

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  14. apparently celebrities do it all the time :)

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