Donny, Tony, Duran Duran ... and James Spader? Teen fantasies still serve a purpose.

When I was growing up in the ‘70s, I, like most girls my age, had a collection of posters. In fact, I had an entire wall that was surfaced in cork so I could poke thumbtacks to my heart’s content and not worry about harming the perfect robin’s-egg-blue paint that adorned my walls.

As I recall, I hung giant pictures of Donny Osmond, David Cassidy and Tony DeFranco; a poster of Peter Frampton featured the questionable song title “I’m In You” printed above his shaggy blond head, and that one resided just above my headboard. Later on, in college, I used my half of the dorm room to pay homage to Duran Duran – fragile-looking little guitarist Nick Rhodes was my favorite – and Robert Smith of the Cure. And when I had my own apartment, I hung a giant Howard Jones poster on the back of my door, and tried in vain to find a comparable representation of the guys from Tears for Fears.

Unfortunately, I got rid of those posters as my tastes changed; what I wouldn’t give now to have that mint-condition likeness of Donny, leaning against a building in a groovy outfit that included purple socks and a jaunty beret to match. But the posters long ago settled at the bottom of some long-forgotten landfill, and I’m left wondering if it’s appropriate for a woman of my age to once again affix cork squares to a wall so I can indulge my fangirl passions.

What I’m getting at, really is this: I want a poster of James Spader.

Not the James Spader of my formative years, the one who played Steph in “Pretty in Pink” and the creepiest guy in “Less Than Zero.” I want a poster of the bald James Spader as he appears in The Blacklist – wearing a fedora, and looking a little puffy and world-weary from having to kill bad guys all the time to protect maybe-his-daughter-maybe-not Lizzy from the likes of international terrorists and her own husband.

What does this mean? I’m not sure. I’m happily married and not delusional, so I haven’t set my sights on James Spader as I’d set them on Tony DeFranco in junior high (hey, he’s Italian, I’m Italian; our families would have approved); most people my age stopped being “cute” a long time ago, so, fedora aside, the guy  looks like the branch manager of your bank.

But then again, for most of us, as we age, our tastes keep up; while I don’t see Justin Bieber as attractive, there’s something in the balding Spader that takes me back and makes me feel … well, not so old. My husband looks at his celebrity crush, Meg Ryan, and doesn’t see that her plastic surgery made her look like Batman’s Joker; he sees Annie from Sleepless in Seattle and probably thinks back to a hopeful time when the possibility of finding a perfect romance with a virtual stranger seemed entirely plausible. I look at the 53-year-old Spader and see myself as 20 and wearing pearls and a sorority pin, giggling as I made drunken snow angels in the middle of a blizzard.

I’m wondering if looking at a poster of Spader might cause me to take an even longer trip in the Wayback Machine; to pretend I’m Demi Moore and sneak cigarettes with the hope of making my voice deep and husky, and to watch “About Last Night” and “St. Elmo’s Fire” while taking notes on how to make a spiral perm look just-so. I wonder if I’d deconstruct “Pretty In Pink” and "The Breakfast Club" as I did in the old days, knowing I should prefer the jock but really did have a hankering for troubled, slightly grimy Judd Nelson.

I’m expecting too much of a poster, but I’m wondering if it might transform me, even for a little while, to a time when I dressed like Madonna (“Borderline”-era Madonna, not “Like a Virgin” Madonna) and really, truly thought Rolling Stone would swoop me up and send me on the road to write about Billy Idol or the Bangles. I wonder if it might take me back to a time when I thought I’d leave some sort of professional legacy.

A saying I like to repeat warns us all that while others might not remember the things we say or do, they’ll remember the way we make them feel. My posters, my silly celebrity crushes, made me feel – as warped as this sounds – as if anything was possible. Not only could I meet Robert Smith, but the rest of the world was also waiting for me and my fingerless lace gloves and my typewriter and my pithy, witty words.

Thirty years later, I don’t see the world the same way; I love the life I created for myself, but I’m also sad for what could have been, had I been a little braver. “Why haven’t you ever written a book?” a friend asked me yesterday. My real answer: Because I've been afraid. Somewhere along the line, I stepped inside a corporate box and stopped thinking I could be anywhere else.

But into the night, late, I wonder sometimes: Does that have to be true? They say 50 is the new 40 or 30 or something …. could there be a second act out there for those of us who took down our posters a long time ago and began collecting crock-pot recipes?

After running some 5Ks in the fall, I created a small bulletin board in our kitchen. Onto it, I pinned my race bibs, a couple of political buttons and bumper stickers, some quotes I found meaningful, and the receipt from my first pair of real running shoes. When I look at it, I almost see … I don’t know … possibility. Promise. Something that takes me back, but also might move me forward.

I still can’t quite explain why this would be, but if the board were bigger enough, a poster of James Spader might look pretty good, right smack in the center. And he’d tip his fedora, and who knows? Maybe I might find the courage to think back to that girl with the fingerless gloves, and wonder if she still might be able to shake things up a little.

The mom and the evil stepmother living happily ever after? It really must be Christmas.

My 16-year-old stepson is on Twitter, but I don’t follow him; he had gotten off Facebook because he was tired of his parents and stepparents reading and commenting on his status updates, so I decided not to stalk his tweets. A few people I know follow him, though, and one of them alerted me last night to something he had posted. With a little trepidation, I took a look, and he had written:

I'm so glad my parents still get along even though they are divorced.

I found that amazing in a couple of ways: First, I love that he, a 16-year-old male, is willing to put his feelings out there for all to see. And second, I love that he recognizes and is obviously comforted by something that’s been a long time coming.

Like most marriages that end, his parents’ didn’t end happily; there was a great deal of friction at first, and when significant others were added to the mix, the friction quadrupled. Kevin’s ex, Leslie, was someone I had known when the two of them were married; our daughters were friends, and we’d do the pick-up-and-drop-off thing; I wasn’t close to her, but I had liked her just fine.

So when I started dating Kevin, I had no reason not to like Leslie, so I still liked her fine. But then it became clear that because feelings were still pretty raw, I needed to choose one camp or the other, so I “sided” with my now-husband and decided I’d better not like Leslie anymore (proof, mind you, that adulthood is a lot like seventh grade, except with taller people).

So we became … something strange. Not enemies, but certainly not friends. And then she remarried, and then Kevin and I married, and suddenly we were dealing with hordes of hormonal pre-teens and teenagers, and no one liked anyone a whole lot. Kevin’s kids were loyal to their mom, of course, and they knew she and I didn’t get along well, so our animosity fueled their dislike of me. And rather than rise above the whole mess, I allowed their dislike of me to hurt me, and I guess that in turn, I blamed their mom.

And for years, we collectively churned, and we festered, and we cried, and I wondered why I had embarked down this path; no one was happy. Looking back, I don’t know how Kevin and I managed to keep our marriage intact.

But then, one day, we looked around and realized most of the kids were grown. And as Kevin’s kids became interested in real-life pursuits, they seemed to hate me less, or at least they showed it less. There were no tear-filled mea culpas, but there seemed to be a détente of sorts. And then one day, I got a text message from Leslie. It was about one of my stepkids -– one who was upset over what she perceived as my dislike of her. Leslie wanted me to be aware of the way her daughter felt. The message, and its contents, chilled me.

I had been so upset over the dislike I felt from the kids that I hadn’t given a thought to the fact that the kids thought I disliked them. And Cinderella’s evil stepmother flashed before my eyes, and the fact that I was being called out –- quite rightly –- for some pretty poor behavior brought me to my knees. I had never, ever set out to be that person.

But I was that person -– at least in the eyes of a few kids I truly did care about. And as I set about making things right, I realized what an extraordinary thing Leslie had done in reaching out. And over days and weeks as our communication increased, I realized that this was a person I really, truly still liked.

From that point, things turned around. Although my stepdaughters were on their own, they saw the four of us -– their mom and stepdad, and their dad and me -– interacting at events. At home, I’d make sure to bring up, with my younger stepson, something funny his mom had said, or I’d offhandedly remark that she had texted me about something. When Logan’s baseball team went to the state tournament, we sat together, and when the team won, we rejoiced together. Logan was able to look up from the field and see his entire family cheering him on from the same row of seats. I thought at the time: I hope this means something.

And it became clear last night that it did, and it does. As Leslie’s and my relationship thawed, that freed Kevin and Leslie to become friends as well. Time is a funny thing; few events are more wounding than divorce, but if we’re lucky, those of us who divorced relatively young are able to look back with more mature eyes at what went wrong, and to forgive our former spouses and ourselves. As I look at my own ex-husband now, so many years down the road, I see the qualities that attracted me to him in the first place: his kindness and humor and the knowledge that he’d be a good parent. I think Kevin and Leslie are at that stage as well.

The four of us don’t hold hands and sing Kumbayah; we’re different people with different interests. But we’re a part of one another’s lives, and the kids witness our interactions on almost a daily basis. And Logan’s tweet last night drove home the point that these mended relationships have meant something. I wish it could have happened when the girls were still home, but here’s something I hold on to: There’s another generation in the picture now, as one of the girls has a baby of her own. And thankfully, that little girl will never know our relationships any way other than the way they are now.

Leslie texted me the other night. “Got your Christmas card; it’s great!” She said. I responded: “Thanks! I think you took the picture of Carly that I used on it; guess I should have told you I stole it from your Facebook.”

And I laughed, Kevin asked me what I was laughing at.

“Oh, just Leslie,” I said. And he shook his head.

“You guys are weird,” he said.

But he was smiling.

She's been gone for a while now, but for me, Christmas is Grandma.

Grandma and me, 1967

(Note: This was published as a Des Moines Register guest essay in December 2005.)

Three years ago Christmas, my grandmother died. The date is significant; my grandmother was a diva before the word entered the popular vernacular, and family members joke that she wanted to make darned sure no one forgot the anniversary of her death. 

Even more significant to me, though, is the fact that she wasn’t my grandmother at all. Not really, if you’re a purist who would classify a grandmother as a flesh-and-blood relative.  But she was more a grandparent to me than any of my “real” grandparents, one of whom died long before I was born, two others who died when I was 4, and a fourth who died when I was 20 after never really seeming to know my name or like me much.

Grandma came into my life shortly after I arrived. Her son was preparing to marry my sister, who is 20 years older than I. Grandma, an only child, was the mother of an only child, and she reportedly became excited at the possibility of having a baby around.  The first mention of her is in my baby diary, written by my sister because our mother was ill after my birth. “Louise brought a beautiful velvet romper suit from Younkers,” the notation reads.  “I’m afraid Lisa has already outgrown it.”

As also is chronicled in my baby diary, my mother never shook the infection that took hold of her when I was a newborn, and cancer claimed her when I was 4; during her last two years, she was too ill to care for me, and my sister and brother-in-law, Jon and Teresa, took me in, as well as my father, who came to live with us after Mom died.  Jon and Teresa started their own family at the same time, giving me, for all practical purposes, siblings.

Into this confusion swept Grandma and Grandpa, as well as Grandma’s parents, Nana and Papa. Nana and Papa lived next door to Grandma and Grandpa, and in the two houses that made up their little compound on Des Moines’ southwest side, I became the princess.  Whenever anyone says, “Oh, it’s so sad that your mom died when you were little,” intimating that my life must have been awful, I wish I that person could have known the kindness with which my new relatives treated me.

Part of their regard for me was, I believe, borne of being Italian. In the Italian culture, children are revered; there is no such thing as “seen but not heard.”  Every Sunday at noon, when we walked into Nana and Papa’s house for dinner, I promptly was handed peanut M&Ms and a Pepsi, even though I made a mess every time by dropping the candies in the soda to watch their colored shells dissolve. And although I was too little for the Chinese checker game on the top shelf of the closet in the foyer, I could play with the marbles, even if I had lost some the previous time. 

It’s impossible to approach Christmas without thinking of them – in particular, Grandma.  Walking into her house on Christmas Eve was a child’s wonderland come to life: elegant tree and presents, trays upon trays of sweets, table that had been set with china days before, then covered with plastic to keep out the dust. And there was Grandma herself, lacy apron over festive pantsuit, planting kisses our cheeks, sometimes leaving traces of lipstick or flour. Telling me, awkward and frizzy-haired as I was, that I looked beautiful. 

And when it was time to open presents, hers were always, always my favorites. Books, usually -- Laura Ingalls Wilder and Louisa May Alcott when I was little. Later, the Bronte sisters and poetry – the Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath volumes I yearned for, as well as her own preference, Robert Frost. Gradually, my family came to realize I could not open a present from Grandma first, or I’d go off to a corner and bury my head in a jumble of pages the rest of the night.

Grandma was not a conventional type of Italian nana; she preferred décolletage to housedresses, heels to sensible oxfords. She smelled not of pasta and sauce – she cooked, but preferred baking -- but of Tabu, her signature fragrance. She and my grandpa loved for us to visit, but didn’t relish our spending the night; they kept their beautiful home tidy and liked to go to bed early, and we tended to interfere with both those things. She was artistic, painting china and doing elaborate needlepoint.  She believed in her talents and loved the praise she received when she showed them off.

She also believed in me. Perhaps because of the early loss of my mother, I was slow to trust, slow to reach out. In a book of poetry Grandma self-published when I was a young teenager, she called me “aloof,” a word that stung at the time, but was no doubt accurate. And yet she, along with Grandpa and her parents, persevered. They loved me wholeheartedly and accepted that I loved back cautiously. 

As I grew into my teens, I began to lower the wall that had kept me from being as demonstrative as I so wanted to be. I finally was able to become the affectionate granddaughter, the one who was able to reach outside myself and visit on my own after school, to sit in Grandma’s kitchen as she baked. We would talk about boys, about my schoolwork, my plans for college, for life. Grandma had quit teaching when she married, and she told me again and again to work, and to keep working. She kept trying to make me believe I was beautiful, but she praised my brains more.

When you’re a child who has lost a parent – even if you have the most wonderful parent-substitute and functional nuclear family – you are different. The effortless way Grandma and her family accepted and loved me made me feel less so. Names and labels are important to children, and labeling relationships was a big deal to me; I may not have had a mother, but I had a Grandma. She called me her granddaughter. Later, she called my son and daughter her great-grandchildren. She went a long way toward making me feel whole.

It was hard to let her go. It still is. She died in the early hours of Christmas morning after having spent Christmas Eve surrounded by all of us. My sister and I had stroked her smooth skin and told her how lovely she was. She wasn’t able to speak, but her dry lips shook a little, and she smiled.

I think of that moment tonight as I rush around my kitchen. I’m not much of a cook, but do I like to bake, and I’m going to make trays this year, the way she did – different kinds of cookies, even candies if I can manage it. As these things tend to go, I wish I had told her, when I had the chance, how much I appreciated her for loving me. For being my Grandma. 

She would have told me it took no effort at all – that God had given her three grandchildren, and I was simply the eldest of them.   

I've never spoken or understood Italian. But I think I know why it makes me cry.

I was walking Isis around Lion's Park tonight when I heard music coming from the park's shelter.  I stopped and listened, and what I heard was church. A church service of some kind, and it was in Spanish.

Isis was distracted by something in the grass, so we were able to stop for a bit.  And as listened, something began taking me back.

Except for two years of fumbling though it in high school, I don't speak Spanish; I probably picked up more watching Sesame Street with my kids than I ever retained through class. So it makes little sense that it took me back, but it did; warmth washed over me, and I felt myself tearing up a little.

And then I realized that the feeling came from somewhere far, far back, and that the sounds I was hearing, while not an exact match, were so very close to sounds I used to hear when I was little. And even though I'd be hard-pressed to identify any of the words, they reminded me of words my grandmother and aunt and other family members used to exchange.

I can't speak it, and I can't understand it. But I was remembering Italian.

My sister, who can get by in both languages, has always told me Italian and Spanish resemble one another; like many languages, both have Latin roots, and the word and sentence structures are much the same as well. And she'd know; when she was a little girl and our dad was serving in World War II, she and our mother lived with our mother's parents in the heart of Little Italy on Des Moines' southeast side, and when my sister was old enough to begin speaking, she was bilingual.

Although my grandparents could speak English, when they were home, they preferred the language they had spoken until they had come to this country as young adults. I don't remember my Grandpa Jim, who died when I was 3, but my Nana lived until I was 20 and was a big part of my life. And I don't think she ever spoke an entire sentence to me in English.

I don't remember my mom, either, but my sister tells me when Mom and Nana spoke to one another, especially on the phone, they spoke Italian.  I do remember my mom's sister, my Aunt Mary (or Aunt Mim, as we called her) speaking to her mother in Italian; my grandmother was Mama, not Mom, and the conversations I remember were ones that implored "Mama" to do something, or to stop doing something. A lot of eye-rolling and head-shaking on the part of my aunt would follow those conversations.

My little-girl self followed all that dialogue as if following a tennis match; my head would turn to each as she spoke, and I can recall the drama, always the drama, behind those words I didn't understand.  My dad and my grandmother spoke Italian to one another as well, and from the little I was told, the words that were exchanged were never exactly flattering.  I'd ask Dad what he'd said, and the response was always the same:

"You don't need to know.  That woman ... [insert more Italian here]. But you know -- one thing I've gotta say, she sure as hell can cook."

The more sedate part of my family also spoke Italian, but with perhaps a little less passion.  When my sister married and she and her husband, Jon, set about raising me, I inherited Jon's family, including his grandparents, Johnny and Lizzie Renda, also known as Papa and Nana (yep, another Nana).  They were dear, sweet, gentle people who also had grown up in Italy, and their native tongue was their chosen one inside their home.  I think of them and I think of M&Ms and Pepsi and Chinese checkers, and of conversational Italian going back and forth when the adults were speaking of things the kids didn't need to hear.

It's pretty easy to understand why I never learned Italian; my mom and two grandfathers died within a year of one another, and a few years later brought the deaths of my aunt and uncle on my dad's side, and Papa Renda; everyone had more to be concerned with than why little Lisa, who didn't really need to speak Italian, didn't know how.

And there was more: In many immigrant families, there's a desire to assimilate, and my family was no exception. As the oldest generation died, no one saw the need for our family to appear anything but American. So as people passed away, the language, for all intents and purposes, died with them.

This feeling I had tonight, though, made me wonder just how much a part of me this language is. Although I can neither speak nor understand it, I wonder if my subconscious reacts to it; did I hear it in utero, when my mother spoke with her mother?  Did anyone -- my Nana, my aunt -- speak or sing to me in Italian when I was a baby? My reactions when I hear Italian remind me of the way Isis perks her ears when she hears a name or word whose sound and cadence she recognizes; she can't define it, but it holds meaning for her.

I wanted to stay and listen tonight, but I felt that I was intruding somehow, and before too long, other sounds pulled Isis away, and I had to follow. I wonder, though, if this happens every Sunday night -- this church, and the singing, and the strange-but-not-so-strange language. Isis and I usually walk earlier in the day, but something tells me on Sundays, we may have to hit the park a little later.

I already feel bad about my neck ... sorry about my whole face, too, I guess.

I don't know who this is, but I wonder if she initially saw a plastic surgeon because she was concerned about her neck.

So I have this problem with my neck. To be specific, I have a problem with the way my neck looks.

What I didn't realize, though, is that I should be having a problem with my face, which is apparently kind of a mess; my neck is just a part of that mess. Oh, and my body could use some work, too.

I'm being flippant, but the opinions above were expressed during my first-ever visit with a plastic surgeon. To be fair, he was a nice guy who of course didn't say I'm a mess, and his job is to upsell, so he was steering me in a direction that was best for his business.

But, wow, what a sad and puzzling appointment. I guess I shouldn't be puzzled, but I have a certain naivete that frequently lends itself to such confusion.

Let me backtrack. When I visited my family doctor a couple of weeks ago, I remarked that while I'm pleased with my weight loss, the folds of extra skin on my neck have been bothering me. I have extra skin in other places as well, but strength training is helping somewhat; plus, most of those areas are covered by my clothing.

Plus, I'm not 20 and I don't wear a bikini, and if my husband isn't grossed out by me and I'm not grossed out by me, I figure we're good.

But the neck ... my neck is out there for all to see, and the skin is really loose and folded, and it makes me uncomfortable. My doctor commented that because I had had so many surgeries on my neck years ago during my thyroid-cancer odyssey and subsequent infection, the elasticity of the skin on my neck could have been impacted, leading to exaggerated problems with the area after weight loss.

"Let's have you see a plastic surgeon," she said. "Insurance just might pick up the cost of tightening that up, since you had trauma to the area."

Well, that sounded like an OK plan to me, and off I headed a few days later to meet the surgeon. I stressed, both to his nurse and to him, that I was concerned only about my neck; we went through my history, and then he poked and prodded the area, asking questions and listening to my thyroid story.

He admired my thyroid scar, asked who had done the work, and then noted that I'm missing the platysmal bands (those ropy-looking things you see when you stretch your neck) on one side.

"Your surgeon must have cut them," he said off-handedly, and I surprised myself then by tearing up, instantly flashing back to that period of my life some 15 years ago. My cancer was almost a side note to the staph infection that almost killed me, and my personal life around that time did a pretty thorough job of killing me inside. I wanted to hug the young woman I feel so disconnected from now, the one who lived with a drain in her neck for a year and a half and felt like a walking Halloween costume, the young woman who not only was physically ill, but felt unloved and vulnerable and made some heinous relationship mistakes because of those feelings.

And going back in time to that dark place probably was responsible for the way I began to feel as the plastic surgeon continued his critique. "You're pretty jowly," he said, pulling up the skin on either side of my mouth. "And your chin isn't well-defined; for some people, we do offer a chin implant. So when we're lifting the neck, we'll just want to go in there and make it a face lift. That will smooth out the lines you see here" -- again, prodding and pointing -- "and will give you more definition overall, and a more youthful appearance."

(A youthful appearance? Did I say I wanted that? I recall saying I just don't want my neck to look like the neck of a Shar Pei. A reasonable request, one would think.)

"I'm OK with looking my age," I told him. But he kept talking and pulling, and as he pulled, I began to see the faces of Meg Ryan and Joan Jett and every Real Housewife in my own visage; the flattening of the features. The stretching of the cheek plains. The shininess and perpetual look of surprise. The removal of any connection to my own face, my own past, my own imperfections.

I was looking at a Lisa Lavia Ryan mask in a funhouse mirror. And it almost made me want to throw up.

The doctor began talking price then, saying I'd be sent an estimate, chatting about potential complications ("Infection is rare," he said, and I almost smirked; really, buddy? Did we not just talk about my being a walking staph magnet?) and reassuring me that he doesn't "make people not look like themselves." I was gracious and polite, but I left there knowing that my sad, scrawny, wrinkly, deformed neck and I wouldn't be visiting there again.

And all the way home, I felt ... grateful. But I also felt really sad.

First, the gratitude: I felt thankful for the period in my life 15 years ago that brought me to where I am now, thankful for the resilience and the support and the faith that enabled me to see my own beauty and worth, as cheesy as that sounds. I felt thankful for the way I was raised, which allows me to feel valued for my intellect and curiosity, with any perceived physical shortcomings dramatically downplayed.

And I felt so very grateful to be secure enough in myself that when I flipped down the visor and looked in the mirror, I still liked my face, my 50-year-old face, jowls and undefined chin and all.

But then, the sadness: What about the other women, the ones who were where I was 15 years ago? The ones whose self-esteem has been trounced, the ones who see their worth only in unlined skin and perfect breasts and thighs that don't touch? I'm not saying that plastic surgeons prey on vulnerable women; especially when it comes to reconstruction, plastic surgeons perform a valuable service, and I respect the fact that they have businesses to build and maintain.

And to be fair: I went to his office because I was unhappy with an aspect of my appearance. I can't blame him for assuming I'd want him to fix all my physical flaws in one fell swoop.

I realized what was happening and didn't go for it. But what happens to women when they're essentially told they're not good enough, and they believe the people who are telling them that? For many people, white coats carry more than their share of weight. How many wide, flat, unlined faces are sculpted, and how many women, unhappy with those results, wish they could take back the imperfections that brought them to those doctors in the first place?

And me, with my neck issue ... am I really as evolved as I think I am? Or am I one snip away from allowing the kind of "work" that will render me indistinguishable from Marie Osmond or, for that matter, William Shatner?

I like to think not, and I like to think I'll just live with my neck. But if I can find another approach that's not so all-or-nothing, maybe I'll go with it. After all, I should be able to fix this small thing, this thing that could have been caused, at least in part, by the prior surgical trauma. I mean, come on: My neck itches all the time. The skin is crepe-y and weird, not like the rest of my skin. I don't like it.

But the real takeaway from this experience, for me anyway, is the full-on realization that a multi-zillion-dollar industry has been created from the ashes of our collective vulnerabilities, and that's indicative of so many issues.

And it's not even about my silly neck, this larger issue. In my ongoing naivete, I'm saddened that we can enter a doctor's office feeling fairly attractive, and leave feeling downright ugly. Because no matter how you slice it -- pun intended -- that's just not OK.

Poppin' some tags

I'm gonna pop some tags/
Only got $20 in my pocket/
I-I-I'm huntin'/
Looking for a come-up/
This is (bleeping) awesome.

So says rapper Macklemore in his homage to the thrift store.

And so say I -- with maybe a little variation -- as I become increasingly immersed in what Macklemore is rapping about. (I still don't know what a "come-up" is, though.)

I may not be his demographic, but I'm all about his message, which essentially is this: If you don't shop at thrift stores, you're missing out on all kinds of awesomeness.

Let me show you what I'm talking about. Today, I'm wearing the outfit in the photo above: a black boatneck shirt under a black cardigan, a turquoise skirt, embellished black ballerina flats, and a funky green necklace. And tights. And the whole outfit cost me $38 and change.

That's the cost of the whole thing. Not the shoes alone. Or the sweater alone. The best thing is, too, that I've gotten nothing but compliments on my ensemble today. And minus the tights and cardigan, it's all from thrift or consignment stores.

What's the difference between thrift and consignment stores, you might ask?

• People donate items to thrift stores. The thrift stores then sell the items for very little -- usually under $6 for apparel, and very often for much less (my camisole was $1). Winter coats can cost up to $10.
• Consignment stores buy items people don't want anymore, and they turn around and sell those items for prices that are slightly higher than those of thrift stores. When the item sells, the store shares the money with the person who consigned the item.

I've ventured into thrift stores at different times in my life, most notably my son's freshman year in high school, when his social conscience stopped allowing him to wear any clothing with labels. As I recall, I outfitted him that year for $57.

But I wasn't consistent in my thrift-store shopping, and consistency is key. Thus, I wasn't terribly successful. But necessity is the mother of invention, and a couple of months ago, when I found myself needing an entirely new wardrobe and not having hundreds of dollars to allocate to such a need, I made it my mission to outfit myself -- in cute clothes, mind you -- on a shoestring.

First, I had to throw off the mentality that thrift stores are filled with crappy clothes. And here's how I did that: I remembered that when my dad passed away, he left a closet full of clothes, never worn, with tags still on. My dad was a sartorially elegant guy, with custom-tailored suits and Ralph Lauren shirts clipped and sewn just so to fit his small frame and short legs. And with the exception of a few items passed on to my husband, those clothes were donated to Goodwill.

So I went in search of the female equivalent of those high-quality items. I decided to start at consignment stores, which I viewed as the halfway point between retail and thrift. I started with Plato's Closet, a West Des Moines store frequented by my always smartly dressed daughter; it was a store I had avoided simply because I hadn't been able, when I was plus-sized, to fit into its clothes. But now, I figured I could give it a shot.

One lunch hour later, this was the tally:

• Embellished Merona black ballet flats, pictured above: $9.99
• J. Crew poly-blend skirt, pictured above, $7
• American Eagle gray cardigan (now easily my favorite sweater), $11

The prices were less than half of what I would have paid new. The items looked new, and were age- and office-appropriate. I was hooked.

Armed with newfound confidence, I headed for the Urbandale Goodwill superstore after work. That trip resulted in, among other items:

• Two J. Crew crewneck fisherman's sweaters, $2.89 each
• Tan corduroy fitted jacket, $4.89
• Gap jeans, $3.89
• Gap khakis, $3.89
• Relativity (Younkers brand) silk blouse, $2.89

Those items all looked nearly new. The brands were current. The clothes were so, so cute. I was sort of in shock. I went home and washed everything but the sweaters and blouse, which I took to the dry cleaner (still a bargain, any way you slice it) the next morning. And the day after that, I started sporting my new wardrobe.

Know what followed? Compliments. And gasps of disbelief when I responded with, "Guess where I got it? Goodwill."

If you're new to thrift or consignment shopping and would like to give it a shot, here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Most have no-return policies, and a few have very limited ones. Try things on; make sure you like what you're buying, as it's likely you'll be keeping it.
• If you're starting a wardrobe from scratch and feel overwhelmed, look for base pieces in a certain color palette. I started looking for black, gray and white items, accenting with turquoise and fuchsia. As you buy more, you can branch out more, and accessories are also a good and inexpensive way to add other colors.
• Plan to spend a lot of time shopping. Thrift stores are usually pretty organized, but Goodwill is not Von Maur. People who stock the shelves and racks are often volunteers; you're going to find things in the wrong places, and chances are if you're looking for something in particular, you're going to go through most every clothing item in the entire store.
• Don't be an elitist jerk. You may be able to afford to not shop at a thrift store, but that's irrelevant. Thrift stores are for anyone who likes finding unique items and saving money. Don't act superior; don't make fun of the clothing. Remember what your mama taught you, and treat employees and volunteers with respect. 
• Thrift stores sometimes have a unique smell; deal with it. In my experience, it's not a foul, body-odor-type smell; it's an old-house smell. Hint: To get that smell out of thrift-store clothing, add a little ammonia to the washing machine. It won't bleach the clothes, and anything that takes the smell out of hockey jerseys can take care of anything. Trust me on this.
• Shop on sale days. Yes, thrift stores have sales. I was at St. Vincent de Paul, my favorite Des Moines thrift store, last week, and all women's apparel was 50 percent off. I bought a pair of Gap boyfriend jeans, tags on, for $1.50. Swoon.
• Shop often. Thrift-store inventory changes daily, so frequent shopping can be the key to finding what you're looking for. And here's another trick: If you're looking for a jean jacket, say, ask the staff to be on the lookout and call you if one comes in. I did this at Barbara's Consignment Boutique in Des Moines and had my hands on the perfect jacket three days later.
• Be prepared to spend a little money on dry cleaning. You'll want to wash those used items right away, and some things, like coats and some sweaters, can't go in the washer. 
• If you're reluctant to go all-thrift-all-the-time, start supplementing your from-the-mall items with occasional thrift-store finds. Hey, saving money is saving money.

I'm going to be writing about my thrift-shopping finds from time to time, so if you have bargains to share, let me know. And if this is a new idea for you, go out this weekend and take the plunge. You'll be glad you did.

I'll never hang on him in public, but I'll write things like this.

I've never been terribly trusting of the nature of relationships whose virtues have to be extolled from rooftops. Like all of us, I'm at least somewhat a product of the environment in which I was raised, and in my family, couples historically just aren't syrupy-sweet and hanging on one another. The message I received growing up was that "real" relationships shouldn't have to be broadcast, and, right or wrong, I guess I've carried that over into my marriage.

But today, protocol be damned, I'm feeling the need to do a little broadcasting.

Kevin and I have been married a little over seven years. Both of us were married before and brought kids to the relationship, and each of us would be the first to tell you the ride hasn't been easy. No matter how much a person cares for his or her stepkids, the relationship is different from the one between a parent and his or her own children; your stepkids have been raised by people who aren't you, and the transition to functional, caring steppparent/stepchild relationship can be daunting. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.

I'm happy to report that we seem to be past all that now, and we have a pretty great family. But there have always been, and still are, other bumps: financial issues. Illness. Parents' deaths. Menopause and more than a touch of OCD (me) and efforts to quit smoking (him). But we've hung in there, and I'm pretty sure we still like each other.

And the last couple of days, cheesy as it sounds, I've been realizing just how lucky I am that my initial attraction to this person happened to turn into a relationship that makes me certain that if we're lucky enough to grow old, we'll be growing old together.

Oh, wow, you're thinking. What a boring blog post. But please bear with me, because Kevin deserves for you to read about him.

In March of this year, I announced to him one Friday that we needed to go out that weekend and eat our way through the greater metropolitan area, because I was planning to start Weight Watchers the following Monday. I'll spare you the details, but suffice it to say I was over 200 pounds at 5'5", and I was unhealthy and unhappy. I'd had enough.

As we ate our Chinese and Mexican and pastries that weekend, I proceeded to also tell him that as of Monday, he'd be on his own, food-wise. Now, anyone who knows me is aware that a warning that I'd no longer be cooking likely wouldn't be met with shrieks of dismay, but this was his response: "Whatever you need."

So, for six months, not only have I not participated in any sort of culinary activity for anyone but myself, but I've shopped for no one but myself. To a large degree, with the exception of my kids, I've thought of no one but myself. And he's complained exactly zero times.

This is the point of the post at which my friend Beth would ask, "Why did you feel you HAD to cook for him? Simply because you're a woman doesn't mean you should have been expected to cook." Exactly, and the way it actually worked was that we shared the shopping and cooking, and we also ate out several nights a week. So what I was doing, essentially, was saying, "My end of the bargain is done. Oh, and the whole eating-out thing, which I know you really enjoy? That's over, too, unless you take someone else."

I was presenting to him a real 180, then. And his only balk was worrying that my chicken breasts and green beans and Smart Ones dinners would take up the entire freezer. (And they haven't ... not the whole freezer, anyway.)

Let me step back and point out that this man never said a word about my gigantic weight gain in the first place ... never pointed out that being fat was clearly making me unhappy, and that my raiding the pantry in the middle of the night and eating two packages of Swiss Cake Rolls was somewhat troubling behavior.

Now, am I advocating that spouses berate one another for physical changes? Of course not, and I wouldn't be married to someone who behaved that way. But I didn't even sense concern or disapproval from him as my weight climbed and climbed. It was as if he was saying, "You're a grown, smart woman, and I trust your judgment, so you eat your Swiss Cake Rolls if you want to, and I'll do my thing over here."

Back to March, and every Monday since. Although he's probably sick to death of hearing about pounds lost and miles run or walked, when I get home from each meeting, he not only cheers me on, but finds someone to tell about my progress: his mom. One of the kids. A co-worker. And his comments aren't just of the "you look great" variety. He talks about being proud of my determination and my strength, and he tells me how glad he is that I'm healthy.

He also tells me -- not a small thing -- that the gross loose skin I'm left with is nothing compared to the years I've (hopefully) gained through taking control of my eating. Believe me, many parts of me are not attractive with 50-plus pounds gone. And again, not that I'd be married to someone superficial, but he goes the extra mile by telling me just why the Sharpei-like wrinkles on my neck don't gross him out.

I need to add some context to this love-fest. When I hit the 50-pound mark, some friends surprised me with balloons and a card. Kevin didn't do anything special, and as I was feeling especially hormonal and downright bitchy the next day, I made a nasty remark to him about having not acknowledged what I considered a giant milestone. I even had the audacity to complain to a friend about what I perceived as a lack of support on Kevin's part.

And then I thought about the fact that the guy is trying to quit smoking, so he's going through some struggles of his own. And I thought about all the restaurants he goes to with his kids -- not that he minds that; he loves it -- but that he goes just with his kids and without his wife, who's at home eating a Smart Ones dinner as she tries to work through her neuroses about eating food she can't track exactly.

And I thought about the ongoing support he provides me, in his non-flashy but consistent way. He doesn't bring me flowers, but he hugs me a few times a day, then exclaims about how much smaller I feel to him. "It's working," he'll say. And it's great to have that affirmation.

"For better or for worse," he said back in 2006. And since then, he's tried consistently to find the better in the worse, and the worse is often me. And I'll probably never be cuddly with him him public, so I'm being cuddly with him here. No funny, cute closing; I'm not even going to try. Just this:

Thanks, Kevin. I am grateful. And I hope you know how it means to have you around.