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I very much enjoyed not trying on swimsuits at the department store.

08/28/2013 Nichole 1 Comment

Disclaimer: Free Country gave Nichole a swimsuit for review purposes.

Free Country sells outdoorsy clothing like winter coats and board shorts, so I was somewhat surprised when I got an email from them earlier this summer asking whether I’d like to try out one of their swimsuits. I am a lot of things, but an outdoorsy beach babe is not one of them.

Just a few days before I got that email, though, we’d decided we wanted to give Dollywood Splash Country a try. And do you know what one generally wears to a waterpark? A swimsuit. So I said yes, and a few days later the items I’d chosen arrived. And I realized that I’d ordered the brown board skirt and a black-trimmed “tankini” top, because apparently I’m bad at making things match. (I’m betting the folks at Free Country would’ve helped to fix my mistake, but I didn’t even contact them about it. My desire to not spend any more time thinking about swimsuits won out over my desire to match.)

I didn’t have as much need for a swimsuit this year as I have in summers past, because it was relatively chilly when we were at my dad’s house this year. The suit got most of its wear in my backyard and at Splash Country, where probably the most flattering photo ever of me in a swimsuit was taken. But I was too cheap to pay the $15 they wanted for a print of it, so I can’t share it with you. Let’s pretend I did, though, and now you’re all like “Wow, that’s an amazing photo of you with your family in a wave pool! Your hair looks so good!” and then I’d say, “Yeah, thanks, I’d just gotten a haircut that morning,” and you’d say, “What? Why did you schedule a haircut on the day you were going to a waterpark? That’s poor planning,” and I would agree with you because it was poor planning but my hair did look great in that picture. I regret nothing.

Anyway: swimsuit. I love half of it.

Let’s talk about the half I didn’t love first: the tankini. The front of the tankini is on the low-cut side for my comfort level (which, to be fair, tends toward the culotte suit). I think the low-cut problem is exacerbated by a lack of support in what Poppy calls the “Mommy parts” region. I need a turtleneck top with steel girding, is what I’m saying, and this was not that. I did, however, really like the racer-back aspect. I think the sturdiness of the racer back may have saved me from a humiliating incident in the wave pool, but it wasn’t enough to keep me from worrying about spillage while I was wearing the tankini.

The board skirt, however, I love. It isn’t made of typical swimsuit material, from what I can tell, so it doesn’t get all clingy when it gets wet, and it dries very quickly. It also has a velcro closure on the front, which makes it easy to get in and out of when one needs to visit the lady’s room at the pool.

So: minus-5 points to tankinis and 10 points to board shorts!

In the market for a swimsuit? Free Country has a ton of them on sale right now. This would be a great time to stock up for next summer!

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Music, partner campaign

The new Court Yard Hounds album is perfectly pleasant

07/23/2013 Nichole 2 Comments

Disclaimer: Nichole received a copy of the new Court Yard Hounds album, “Amelita,” for review via a One2One Network campaign. She is eligible for incentives for her participation in the campaign, but all opinions stated are her own.

Until the early ’90s, lite pop rock was the soundtrack of my summer. We’d cruise around town wailing along to “We Built this City” and “You Give Love a Bad Name,” “Time After Time” and “Hold on to the Night,” and all was well. And then Garth Brooks and his big ol’ hat released “No Fences,” the album from whence “Friends in Low Places” took over the world. Suddenly my stepmom and stepsiblings were crazy for country music, and nothing was ever the same.

That sounds pretty melodramatic, doesn’t it? Well, I was 13 and listening to Nirvana and The Smashing Pumpkins. It was a melodramatic time.

I still don’t like pop country, which may leave you asking why I’m reviewing “Amelita” by the Court Yard Hounds. Basically it’s because the duo is 2/3 of the Dixie Chicks — sisters Martie Maguire and Emily Robison; the third Chick, Natalie Maines, is now sporting a pompadour and making music with Ben Harper — and the Dixie Chicks’ version of “Landslide” usually leaves me misty-eyed. I’m a sucker for good harmonization, regardless of where the album is filed at the record store.

“Amelita” delivers on the harmonization front, and it was a nice accompaniment to the rainstorms we had last week. My favorite tracks on the album are “Aimless Upward,” which sounds like a cross between early Wilco and something you might hear at a Women of Faith conference, and “Sunshine,” a chipper and sarcastic little paean to the toxic people in one’s life.

Despite the fact that the lyrics on a lot of the songs seem pretty personal, there isn’t a whole lot of fire in the performances. I’d put it on my Pleasant & Polished But Passionless playlist (which also features Jack Johnson and Coldplay).