What Color is This Sweater?

What color is this sweater I'm wearing in the picture above?  I'll give you  a moment to look at it and think it over.

Did you guess some shade of blue, or aqua, or teal?  Wrong!

In reality, in person, the sweater in the picture above is very, very purple.  This is the same sweater:

OMG!  This very purple sweater just LOOKS blue in the first picture.

Why? I have absolutely no idea.  Both pictures were taken with my I-Pad Mini.  Maybe it was the lighting in the restaurant, maybe it looked blue against the backdrop of the booth.  Maybe there is some blue in the purple.  I don't see colors in other colors, but Mr. Rip does.  He is always saying things like "That top goes with those pants because there's a lot of brown in that red."

When I first saw the photo, I said to Mr. Rip, "Hey, my purple sweater looks blue in this picture."

"It sure does," Mr. Rip replied.

We didn't give it another thought, and resumed living our lives.

Then along came the Great Dress Debate. In case you somehow missed it, someone posted a picture of a dress on Tumblr with the caption "What color is this dress?"  Some people thought the dress was black and blue while others thought it was gold and white.  The debate raged across the nation. Houses were divided.

The truth?  Well, there is a very good scientific photographic explanation for it all. I am neither scientist nor photographer, but let me see if I can explain it to you in everyday language.  The dress was actually dark blue and black.  If the dress was photographed with the colors reversed it was now white and gold.  The picture posted on the internet was in an exposure that made it appear between the two extremes.  So some people saw the black and blue, and some saw the gold and white.  It was all in the eye of the beholder.

Simple, right?  Well, unless you're me.  My mind's quirky eye saw the dress as being blue and BROWN.  Perhaps I saw what actually was - in that exposure was the trim of the dress  somewhere between black and gold? Who's to say that isn't brown?  Perhaps I just have a totally unique perspective.  I'm sure that the Today show will be calling for their interview soon.

On This Day My Child Was Born

                                                   

It was February 13^th.  I was 8 ½ months pregnant and returning to work after my weekly gynecologist appointment.

My doctor said he thought I may come a little earlier than my February 28^th due date.  That was okay with me.  I had had enough of the whole pregnancy thing- the tremendous weight gain, the sharp pain in my abdomen they called “heartburn,” the inability to sit, stand or sleep comfortably.  I really did Ache All Over. I was more than ready to have my baby.

Snow was beginning to fall as I headed back to work, but I wasn’t worried.  The roads weren’t bad yet, and my workplace was just four miles from my house.  Nonetheless, I was pretty happy when I arrived at work safely, just in time for lunch.

When I stood up after lunch, I felt an unfamiliar sensation.  I realized with a shock that my water was beginning to break.  I calmly called the doctor’s office, and they advised me to return to the hospital immediately.  I wasn’t able to reach my husband, who was making deliveries for his family’s business in a time before cell phones.  I left the message with his mother that I would go home and pack my bag and he could just meet me at the house.

I let my boss and my friend and co-worker Joan know what was going on and left.  I got in the car, turned the key and…the car wouldn’t start.  I had turned the headlights on when I was on my way back to work in the snowstorm and left them on.  My car battery was dead.

Okay, so now I was beginning to panic.
  

I found Paul, my co-worker with jumper cables.  Paul felt strongly that a woman in labor should not be driving herself anywhere, especially in the snow.  He refused to jump my car.  I explained that I just planned to drive the few miles to my house, and probably wasn’t even technically in labor.  Paul didn’t care.  He offered to drive me anywhere I needed to go.  I explained to him that this was my only car, and I could not leave it there, dead, especially if I actually had the baby.  Paul was adamant.  We argued for several minutes.  I was getting desperate.  I begged.  I cajoled.  I cannot swear that I didn’t at one point grab Paul by the lapels and yell “Jump the damn car, Paul!”   Finally, Joan,  a very persuasive person, intervened and Paul grudgingly agreed to jump my car.

I drove home and packed my suitcase but hadn’t heard from my husband.  I called the doctor’s office.  “WHAT??!!!,”  the nurse said, “You mean you haven’t even LEFT yet?”  The last professional I saw get this excited was the whitewater rafting guide after I fell into the Youghigheny River.  I thought better than to mention the dead car battery.  She asked how long it would take me to get to the hospital.  About 30 minutes when it wasn’t snowing, I told her.   “Oh honey,” she said, “You need to get here RIGHT NOW!”

I called my mother-in-law to tell her that I was leaving for the hospital and to tell my husband to meet me there.  She offered to come pick me up, but after my conversation with the nurse I didn’t think I should wait. 

My mother also offered to drive me, which was very sweet but not really feasible.  My mother was terrified of driving in the snow, and lived in Swissvale, which was just about an hour away from my home in Washington, PA.  It would have taken my Mom 2 hours or more to pick me up and take me to the hospital in the snow, and I was certain that Mom would not want to drive in the snow and deliver her grandchild herself, at least not on the same day.

It was snowing a lot harder now.  When I finally arrived at the hospital, I told the doctor that aside from my water breaking and driving 30 miles in the snow, I was feeling fine.  He examined me and informed me that I was indeed having contractions and I was “officially” in labor.  Perhaps I was in shock as I drove to the hospital in the snow, and therefore numb to the contractions, or perhaps I had unknowingly been employing those breathing exercises they taught us in Lamaze class.

Meanwhile my husband had arrived back at the shop, and was so upset at the news that his parents did not trust him to drive himself to the hospital.  His family accompanied him, and his father drove.   He burst into the birthing room about an hour after I got there, in plenty of time for the birth.

I will not share all the minute details of the labor and delivery, because I hate when women do that.  However, I will tell you that I had to have a Caesarian section because the baby was large, and my birth canal was small.  I only mention this because I want everyone to know that there is actually a body part of mine that is too small, ironically located inside my body where nobody can see it.

At 10:15 p.m. on February 13, 1985, my beautiful, brown-haired, brown-eyed baby boy was born, 8 pounds and 9 ounces despite coming 15 days early.  When they put him into my arms, I was smitten- crazy about the kid from the start.  Every bit of the pregnancy and that day had been worth it.

That baby turns 30 (!) today, a milestone birthday to follow a milestone year when he married the love of his life.  One word always comes to mind when I think of him- proud.  I am so very proud of the fine man he has grown up to be.   Here’s wishing my son, who's spending the day in a warmer climate this year, a wonderful birthday.

Living Life on the Edge

Mr. Rip and I live life on the edge, and by “the edge” I mean the periphery.

On Saturday, we went to the Ross Park Mall on a mission. We were there to buy a stove.  Believe me it was time. Our current stove was probably manufactured the year they invented the electric stove.

We entered Sears on the floor where the appliances are located, we knew exactly the model we wanted and in record time, we were the proud owners of a new stove. We could have gotten out of Dodge, er, the Mall, right then and there, but I wanted to check out the one-day sale at Macy's.

As we started towards the store exit, we noticed several Sears salespeople gazing outward wide-eyed.  I heard one of them exclaim, solemnly, to the others, “It’s my worst nightmare out there.” He was trembling a little. 

Undeterred, we walked out of Sears into a huge sea of people who were waiting in line for…something. As we ascended out of the mob below on the escalator, Mr. Rip immediately began using his fine investigative skills, honed during repeated viewings of The Mentalist and History Detectives.

“There must be a Famous Person here,” he surmised and then added meaningfully, “note that they are all young females in line.”  I looked and saw that it was true - there were thousands of pre-teen and teenage girls in line.  We wondered just what teen sensation was at the Mall today.

A couple of hours later as we were leaving the mall, there were still thousands of young girls waiting in line.  Our curiosity got the best of us, so I politely asked one of the teen girls in line who they were waiting to see.

"There is a Famous Person here," she answered sweetly. Aha, Mr. Rip was right!  

"What Famous Person?" I asked.

"Oh, Bethany Mota," she answered, obviously sure that I would have no idea who that is.  "She was on Dancing with the Stars." Of course, I did know who Bethany Mota is because she was on Dancing with the Stars.  She is a video blogger who takes an anti-bullying stance on her blogs.  She danced with Derek, and they came in fourth in the most recent season. 

I was gratified to learn that all these young girls were waiting in line to meet an anti-bullying advocate and not some misbehaving untalented under-dressed attention-hungry tongue-wielding singer. Then we went home.

So, there we were at the Mall when thousands of girls were waiting for up to four hours to see Bethany Mota.  We had no idea that Bethany Mota was at the Mall and no interest at all in meeting her despite our approval of her as a role model for kids, but we knew who she was because of DWTS.

Because that’s how we roll. We are quasi-informed casual observers of today’s pop culture.

The other big event last weekend was the Super Bowl.  Mr. Rip and I never see the Super Bowl because we are always ushering at the Pittsburgh Public Theatre when it is on (except when the Steelers are playing, in which case PPT cancels that performance).  So, while the nation was watching the Super Bowl, we were watching a particularly wonderful production of “My Fair Lady” from front row center.

Strangely, we didn't even need to see the Super Bowl to find out what happened. The Patriots beat the Seahawks after a very controversial final play by the latter, Idina Menzel sang the National Anthem (after her less-than-super live performance of “Let It Go” on New Year’s Eve), and Katy Perry did the half-time show with the help of Lenny Kravitz, Missy Eliott, and a couple of dancing Sharks.

I didn't have to go out of my way to see clips of the game, and especially that final play.  It was all over the news broadcasts.  Not only did I understand what happened, when I was included in the inevitable Facebook Message conversation debating the final call I had an informed opinion. Yes, it was a bonehead call by the Seahawks-they should have run the ball.

I had to watch the video of Idina Menzel to see if she redeemed herself, and I would say that she did.  She was a success by her own modest standards because I would say that she definitely hit more than 75% of the notes in the song.

As for the half-time show, well, they had me at “Lenny Kravitz.” All in all, though, the entire half-time show (which I watched on YouTube) was wildly entertaining, including the dancing shark on the left, who improvised his movements for the most of the dance after losing his way part way through.  I sympathized, as I have found myself in that same situation on stage more than once, but never with an elaborate costume like that to disguise me.

Meanwhile, back at the Pittsburgh Public Theatre the cast of "My Fair Lady" was pretty much flawless. I did not detect any false moves or notes from them like those exhibited by the Seahawks, Idina Menzel, or the Left Shark.