I'd be surprised at the jeans, but hardly anyone's worn black at any recent funeral I can remember, other than on people who'd be wearing black anyway. To me the new standard of funeral-appropriate is mostly (if not exclusively) dark and fairly sober cuts -- not a lot of flouncy ruffly things, for instance.

Yeah, I was just as surprised by the lack of dark/sober as I was by the informality. And heck, even some of the not-jeans was, like, a white halter-neck sundress. Which seemed odd also.

I guess I'd think of funeral attire being black and certainly more formal than jeans. I suppose if someone didn't have something black, I'd expect them to choose something that didn't call attention to what they were wearing.

Zenkitty, my nephew's vote for the best sandwiching bread he's found is a brand called Kinnikinnick. Note, he didn't have much to say about the bread except "best he knows of" but he did give a big thumbs up to their doughnuts. They can get this brand in some of the local supermarkets, and at Whole Paycheck-Foods.

As for colors, I suppose black at funerals has gone out with not wearing black at weddings. Some friends of mine wore white - ok, he had a white suit, and she had a white floral print dress - to their baby son's funeral. As devout as they were, it was a statement that, no matter how sad they were that the baby was no longer with them, he had "gone to be with Jesus" and they refused to be sad about that.

How much of our standards of what is appropriate to wear is based in formal worship attendence? What I am trying to say is that I learned what is appropriate to wear to various kinds of events mostly as they related to church going. I'm sure I am not the only one, but then I'm equally sure that many people have successfully navigated appropriate dress for various situations without ever participating in any religious activities. But I fear that my parents would not have bothered to teach me any such thing without the need to not be embarassed by their offspring on Sundays.

When my father-in-law died a few years ago, Hubby and I were the only ones wearing black, and I went out and bought a black skirt for the occasion. His mother, the widow, objected, saying black looked too sad. We both blinked at her but wore the black anyway. I suppose we could have followed Mom's example, but I followed Hubby, and felt the need for black.

Oh, dear. I go away for the weekend, skip, and find us talking about funeral attire. Black. Definitely black.

So, anything big happen? What did I miss? I had to skip. Too chatty, we are.

The last one I went to I wore my forest-green dress, because the black things I have are too f2f-y. I actually thought it was a decent compromise...I hope her family didn't find it heathenish.

I'm back from my date. It was fairly boring, but not creepy like I mildly suspected.

I still don't wear black at weddings and do wear black to funerals.

My favorite line about funeral attire comes from Their Eyes Were Watching God, when Joe dies and Janie goes to the funeral in her overalls: "She was too busy feeling grief to dress like grief."

Truer words were never spoken.

OK, I heard about the names convo, and flipped back to read, because I'm all about talking about how much I think my name rocks, and it is such a part of me, what with the always spelling it, and its general melodiousness.

I didn't change my name when we got married and never even really considered it. I like my name, I'd used it in my career and for publishing, and I didn't think his last name was anything special. shrug

I am Sparky when it comes to this.

I was also too lazy to go through the whole changing of the name thing, though if we had been able to both change our names I might have considered it, because McWarnigle is pretty awesome. However, we did not want to confuse the nice people at Homeland Security by changing Tom's name halfway through the green card application process.

I am sort of drunk and full and am coming down from a fairly severe public anxiety attack. Not public in the sense that it was apparant to the general public, I was just in public when it happened and it was hard.

I don't want to go back to work tomorrow. I'm pretty sure I just want to stay in bed and cry a lot. I feel like I need to watch The Prom or something to get it all out.

Class (grad school) starts tomorrow. My fencing class at the Y starts Tuesday. I start up yoga and belly dancing again this week, but at least that's not really new. I haven't even started the week and it's already worn me out.

Stupid Brain! Just be happy and shut up already!