Discover Fresh Start Gum, while Gloria decides to keep it simple

In case you fell asleep under the rhododendron and woke up thinking all the original ideas had been taken, please pay a visit to Fresh Start Gum at this amazing post.

Yes, there really is a bright side of the street.  Be subversively attentive.




Episode 6: Gloria Decides to Keep It Simple

It starts when what used to fit - socks, shoes, underpants - no longer does.  You become a wicked stepsister whose enormous feet cannot be greased, stuffed or otherwise installed in those low-cut red flats that could have come from Audrey Hepburn's closet.  Then the rosy flowered socks, too cute with the cropped olive linen pants, right? now fit like a child's anklets and leave your aging, bared limbs looking like cold oatmeal.   Whatever has befallen the underpants, still new enough that their label can be read with the human eye, they now, even when put on the right way, feel as though they are on backward or your ass has become something so much greater (in a manner of speaking) than it was the last time you wore them.

The poor fit extends to every object that your critical gaze catches, try though they may to become invisible or pull on a quick disguise.  The voice in Gloria's head screams, "Tea SHOPPE?  SHOPPE?  Was I mad?" as she begins to dismantle her sign and discard every business card, menu, coaster, postcard and catering brochure with the offensively-spelled word.  Refinement, Gloria reminded herself, is an outgrowth of simplicity.  Too many flourishes mark one as, if not an amateur, at least one who has not given sufficient thought to the problem.

"I may have to go home and cut my hair off with the red-handled knife," she muttered.  "Everything has become too much."  She stopped herself just short of pitching all of it - furniture, dishes, baked goods - into the sea.  "Even in simplicity," she noted, "one must maintain a sense of proportion.  Damn you, Noel Coward.  It all used to work just fine."  For an abbreviated moment, Gloria forgot that Mr. Coward was part-owner of the map to the bright side of the street.