Wednesday Words: The Creation of Spanx

Spanx official site...Please oh Please check this out.

Calamitous events start with someone’s ambitious plans, at least in the creation of Spanx.

With just a fraction of a brain, Glen envisioned a glittering future with his new creation: the ultra-female girdle.  All lumps, bumps, and globs of middle fat would magically disappear when one wore this new girdle.

“This will be indispensable for most females!” He declared to his wife, Ginger.  “Here, try it on!”

Ginger managed to pull it up to the thighs and got stuck.  Glen rolled it down to her feet, and she kicked him out the door. Some colorful metaphors were exchanged and Glen stayed in the garage for a week.

Thus the Spanx was born.**

**No actual truth can be attached to this telling.  Plus Melissa McCarthy uses no profanity in this Ellen episode.  

Each week, Delores at Under the Porch Light tosses 6 words out, and suggests participants see what can be created in either prose, poetry, etc.  Please access her site by clicking on the lonely railroad tracks in the upper right bar.  This week she tossed in "Spanx".  Really?

Band of Pianos and St. Crispin's Day

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I loved the nobility and passion of Henry V/Kenneth Branagh’s rousing speech in which he extols his men to remember that battle on St. Crispin’s Day.  Band of Brothers…reminding them how dear this relationship would always be.  Still gives me goosebumps.

What do we hold dear?  Many things throughout the stages of our lives are dear to us.  For me?  I cast back to the age when I was eleven years old and wanted a piano so much, so very much. Any piano, even a toy piano with a measly fifteen keys.
   

Amazon

This thought now leaps from Henry V to piano to Mythbusters, a program for nerds and physicists, like my family. I know, right?  Bear with me here...

A recent episode recently had the three younger ‘Busters address some question sent in by a viewer about:  An exploding piano

I will tell you this.  My heart broke each time they blew up a wonderful piano.  NNNNOOOOOO! I cried each time. 

Each piano, the noble band of treasured and worn pianos, splintered into pieces every single time.  The pianos would never know how dear they once were, how hard they endured through many practices, but they felt the music.  The worn and scarred keys declared their courage.

Henry V and the band of pianos.  Hard to make that leap, but I see it in my mind.    

A huge upright grand piano was moved into our house when I was 13.  It was so heavy that it took six strong farmers.  How I treasured it.

Intelligent Design

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It is obvious that 1970s "ranch" houses were designed by men.  In a rush to churn out neighborhoods like ours, blueprints were stamped and approved; wood framing, fiber board walls, wall-board, stucco, and roofs were thrown up, and painted. 

I know the houses were designed by men for two reasons: kitchen cabinets, and placement of the bathrooms.

See the corners? 

If pots or cook ware are placed in the bottom shelf of the cabinets, they will creep further and further back into dark cavernous corners from which nothing emerges.  

A female or child must take a flashlight and crawl in to retrieve the damn things. (My husband closed off those corners and who knows what lives back there right now.)   Also, placement of the appliances of the U-shaped kitchen makes working in the kitchen with two people difficult.

Up the stairs, to the left, and over the living room...

Bathrooms?  The main 1970s ranch-style house bathroom is off the hall and next to the living room, dead center of the house.  Anything that goes on in the bathroom is heard by the whole house—seriously.  Archie Bunker, re-enacted. Newer houses have these bathrooms next to the dining room and kitchen. Again, is that intelligent design?

No female architect would have allowed houses with these designs off the drawing table.  

For anyone whose house design resembles the above, no offense is intended.  Our house is in serious need of re-modeling, and has all the design flaws listed.