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Ima­gin me wear­ing stir­rup stock­ings with this dress and kit­ten heel pumps … yep, how 80’s!

Well, since I finally made it home this week­end I got a chance to find a cou­ple more 80’s pic­tures … includ­ing that one pic­ture of me in a dress that reminded me of this one … the one I wore at the Addy Awards last weekend.

It’s actu­ally quite funny, when you think of it. Because both dresses actu­ally are a mod dress inspired from the 60’s fash­ion styles. And yet … here I am wear­ing one dress in the 80’s and another one, some 20 years later again. Amaz­ing how fash­ion styles recycle.

Any­hoo … Pretty scary that I was only 14 years old in that pic­ture. And I seri­ously can’t believe my par­ents let me out of the house in that dress. What’s even more “scan­dalous” (well, at least in my eyes), is that my Mom was the one that picked this dress out. Because look­ing back at this pic­ture now … it’s a pretty sexy dress for a 14 year old to wear, don’t you think?

True 80’s Fashion …

But I remem­ber the occa­sion at which I wore this dress for, which was a fam­ily friend’s 18^th Birthday/​Cotillion. It was dur­ing the sum­mer before start­ing high school and I remem­ber feel­ing quite self-​​conscious in the out­fit. Which is prob­a­bly why I can recall how socially “awk­ward” I felt that night.

And I real­ized this past week­end how some things never change. Hubby & I had some time to spare before head­ing over to my in-law’s house to cel­e­brate my nephew’s 13^th birth­day. So we headed to the local mall just to walk about. (It was such crappy weather all week­end long, that doing any­thing out­side was useless …)

Any­way, as we were there I headed into the local Sep.hora to look at some body lotion that a co-​​worker rec­om­mended to mois­tur­ize skin, but not leave it all moist and clammy espe­cially when in the midst of a hot flash*. Now, I’ve never been inside a Sep.hora before; the rea­son behind it pretty obvi­ous to any­one who knows me. I’m just sim­ply not into make-​​up and dress­ing up.

A Bonus 80’s Shot for y’all

I mean, I’ll dress up … when the occa­sion calls for it, I clean up quite nicely … but on an every­day basis? I’m the type of gal that’s more com­fort­able in a pair of jeans and a tshirt. And com­ing from a com­pany where we could wear jeans daily to a com­pany that requires lead­er­ship to dress busi­ness casual every day … well, that’s been a challenge.

So get­ting back to Sep.hora, I fig­ured that while I was there I’d get some lip gloss to mois­tur­ize my lips … and maybe add a lit­tle color to it. Except I couldn’t believe how many choices were out there and I sim­ply became over­whelmed. I mean seri­ously … all I wanted was a “leee­tle” plum-​​rose color to my lips and what I saw was 50 zil­lion dif­fer­ent vari­eties of plum or rasp­berry. I ended up just walk­ing out of there with nothing.

But going back to the “some things never change” bit … I’m just not a “girly” girl and I never had been. I was the girl that climbed trees and ran her bike through muddy trails. I was the same girl who loved walk­ing through pud­dles at school (seri­ously … when­ever it rained, there would be this huge pud­dle in the mid­dle of the park­ing lot that I believe I named “Lake St. Vin­cent”). I was that pre-​​teen (or “tweenager,” as they’re now called) that still loved to stay up and watch the movies at slum­ber par­ties rather than play dress-​​up or put on make-​​up.

For that, I still believe it’s because I never had that con­sis­tent female “bond” with another girl … a sis­ter, or a men­tor that could coach me through some of those things. And I still believe it’s because I was that first-​​generation Filipino-​​American; my par­ents not quite famil­iar with what typ­i­cal Amer­i­can things that pre-​​teens (or even teenagers) do.

This pic was taken after one of my “mod­el­ing” classes I took. I think this is the class they taught me how to put on makeup … ha!

I give my par­ents credit though. They did the best that they could do. And they, par­tic­u­larly my mom, did try to encour­age me to do things that most teens might do (within rea­son, of course). One of them was sign­ing me up for mod­el­ing classes after I turned 16. Now, I must be hon­est … this would have been some­thing I would totally wanted to do at the age of 13 or 14. But by 16, my per­son­al­ity was such that doing any­thing that sur­rounded using your “looks” to get ahead with any­thing was some­thing I was SO against. (Hel­loooo .… New Wave/​Goth chick, here!) But I faith­fully went; partly out of oblig­a­tion, as my Mom shelled out a lot of money for these classes. And partly out of sheer curios­ity. Because, the girls that were in my class … they were the antithe­sis of who I was.

And what did I learn from these classes? Pos­ture (which still sucks), poise and grace (which doesn’t work with my two left feet), and that I look best in “Sum­mer Col­ors” when it comes to clothes and makeup. I think that last thing is the only last­ing impres­sion from that class … because I real­ized recently (after years of sim­ply wear­ing black and/​or white) is that I do like to dress myself in those “Sum­mer Colors.”

Not that it mat­ters too much any­more … but some­times I won­der how I come across to other peo­ple, look­ing the way that I do. Given that I tend to wear my hair pulled back in a pony­tail (or even piggy tails … not. kid­ding. you.) and I am one for sac­ri­fic­ing fash­ion for com­fort, I think peo­ple think that I’m young and imma­ture. (Which I can be … ) But after talk­ing to me for any length of time, these same peo­ple tend to real­ize that I am older and more mature than they orig­i­nally thought. That I’m smart and intel­li­gent. That I’m knowl­edge­able in cer­tain areas. But that’s only after they get to know me. And prob­a­bly after they see how much grey hair I actu­ally have.

In any case, going into that Sep.hora brought me straight back to those days of self-​​consciousness. And back to such an awk­ward phase in my life.

But enough of looks and awk­ward­ness and fash­ion and lack of make-​​up. Let’s talk about how much fun I had being back home this week­end. We cel­e­brated my nephew’s 13^th birth­day on Sat­ur­day and I still can­not believe he’s offi­cially a teenager now (well, really he’ll be one offi­cially on the 12^th …) by hav­ing din­ner at a local restau­rant and then head­ing over my in-​​laws after­wards for birth­day cake. From the moment he saw us, my nephew didn’t want to leave our side. And as I know those moments are going to start to be few and far in between, I rel­ished every moment of his close­ness. I also got to see my niece for the first time since Decem­ber and I can’t believe how much big­ger she’s got­ten. She’s now 6 months old and her per­son­al­ity has def­i­nitely started to develop. My favorite moment of that night was this fol­low­ing video.

This video was taken while my SIL and I were “video chat­ting” in iChat on our lap­tops. We were both in the din­ing room fac­ing directly across from each other. And when my nephew sat down to chat with me, he took his baby sis­ter with him who, of course, was fas­ci­nated by see­ing me (and her­self) on the com­puter screen. I wish we started record­ing it sooner, because the first few times were price­less … but this video is still awe­some. She (and my nephew, of course) is such a cutie!!

And Sun­day, I was sup­posed to meet up with a cou­ple of grade school friends for brunch. Unfor­tu­nately, since the weather’s been suck­ing a$$ right now I think we’ve all come down with some sort of sinus thingy; one of my friends worse than myself and my other friend. It would have been great to see them both, as I haven’t seen them since … like, for­ever … but we’re going to resched­ule for the end of this month when I should be back in town to help Hubby move.

Instead, Sun­day was spent going for dim sum with my par­ents. It was nice to sit and talk with them; and I think I gen­uinely sur­prised them by mak­ing the time to see them dur­ing this week­end home. The truth is, I would have made the time any­way … I just didn’t have a chance to call them until I got into town.

And while at that restau­rant, I ran into one of my best friends from Nurs­ing School. He’s now work­ing as a pro­fes­sor for a local Uni­ver­sity and we’ve recently caught up in Face.book. But noth­ing beats actu­ally see­ing him and hug­ging him in per­son. We man­aged to make plans to catch up next time he comes into my “neck of the woods.” Can’t wait for that.

And now … about 6 hours from now, I’ll be board­ing the train back to the City. Another week­end home gone so quickly. This being the sec­ond time I’ve been back to Detroit since mov­ing, I real­ize how much I miss parts of this area. I miss all the shops and the abil­ity to jump in my car and find park­ing any­where. I miss how much cheaper going out to eat and/​or see­ing movies are. I miss see­ing Sab­rina on a daily basis. But the thing I miss the most? Yep, my family.

But the good thing is … we’re never that far away by email or phone. And not even by phys­i­cal distance.

Yay fam­ily!

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

* Nope, not hav­ing hot flashes so much any­more. But when walk­ing the dis­tance I do from the train to my office build­ing every morn­ing … I do tend to work up a sweat. It usu­ally is worse when­ever I take a shower in the morn­ing (and there­fore putting body lotion on at that time) … Any­way, I’m sure this was more infor­ma­tion that y’all needed to know.