DAY 1 of GIVEAWAY WEEK! Win The Tiger’s Wife: Tell Me Why I Can’t Dress Myself

Posted on by travelingmarla
New York Times bestseller
Tea Obreht was kind enough to sign this beautiful hardcover of Tiger’s Wife for the contest. I hope you win!

TRAVELING MARLA IS GIVING SOMETHING AWAY EVERY DAY THIS WEEK!

Easy contest today. You have 4 OPTIONS to enter (in other words, you can have your name in the contest up to 4 times!!). I have a hardcover of The Tiger’s Wife, signed by Tea Obreht for this contest.

But first, I need to ask why it is I don’t seem to know how to dress myself? Last night was my husband’s holiday party for his work. I was very excited to have an opportunity to wear a handmade silk outfit I had made in Hoi An, Vietnam. I had a matching tie made just so Kurt and I could play dress-up together…

Maybe those are the key words right there: “play dress-up.” Because since I am so low maintenance on an daily basis, when it comes to dressing up, I just don’t do it often enough to really know what I’m doing or pay attention. Can I use that as an excuse?

I was excited because we looked so spiffy and bright and kinda’ Christmassy (okay, so at least in terms of wearing bright red). The rest was just, well, Asian-y clothes on the most caucasian-y people you could know.

Thanks to all the training, I’m back down near the weight I was at in Vietnam (I lost quite a bit eating just fruit for 10 days because I saw so freaking hot.) so I was excited that it fit. I wore it proudly all night and got my Howard Wolowitz on by talking about the trip most of the evening, and monopolizing the entire table’s conversation. (Howard Wolowitz is a character from the Big Bang Theory who uses every opportunity to tell people he was on the space station.) Did I mention I went to Vietnam? Okay. So…

bestseller New York Times The Tigers Wife Tea Obreht
Wearing my entire outfit from Vietnam, backwards. Apparently, I’m still twelve.

It wasn’t until we returned home and I began to undress that I realized my entire outfit had been on backwards all night. Kurt and I both knew it hadn’t “felt right” when we were putting it on (I needed his help with all the weird snaps up the side) and at one point I caught my hooha in the zipper up the front, but it just didn’t occur that all the problems were because it was going on backwards. As I unsnapped and pulled it off me, I saw the tag from the AoBaBa tailor in Hoi An. It was right there, in FRONT of me.

Everything was suddenly clear. The zipper in the silk pants which caught on my hoo-ha I now remembered the seamstress zipping up in BACK of me at the tailor shop. The snaps that kept popping with movements of my arm which hadn’t done that before, were popping because they were snapped up the wrong side and not sitting correctly against my body.

Noooooooo!!!!

Yes.

Yes. That happened. All evening. With my entire outfit. On. Backwards.

Why can’t I dress myself properly?

I WISH DRESSING MYSELF WERE AS EASY AS WINNING THIS BOOK!!!

You can ENTER UP TO 4 TIMES (or you can enter just one way – it’s up to you!)

Option 1: Leave a comment on this post about my dressing incident, or about this book.

Option 2: *Like* and tell Tea Obreht “Thank you for signing a book for the Traveling Marla contest” on her Facebook page.

Option 3: *Like* and tell Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures “Thank you for bringing Tea Obreht to Pittsburgh” on their Facebook page.

Option 4: Get my blog by email. It’s easy. On the right of this page is a little message that says “Get Marla Delivered Daily!” – you can enter your email address there and once a day my new post will arrive in your inbox. (Make sure you tell your spam that I’m real ham though!) Make sure you let me know it’s you, since I don’t know everyone’s email address.  You can tell me privately by emailing me marla at marlasinkdruzgal dot com / I can then go verify it.

DEADLINE: Sunday, 16 December, 2012 at 5PM EST

 

Good luck. I hope somebody really cool (that’s you if you’re reading this blog, right?) wins this book! And remember, it WILL arrive in time for Christmas!

There are other contests already occurring, so I hope you’re entered in those as well. Check out my Contest Page, and come back every day this week because it’s GIVEAWAY WEEK!

Love, Marla

bestseller New York TimesP.S. I can’t describe this book any better than it’s already been done, so enjoy this teaser…

“In a Balkan country mending from years of conflict, Natalia, a young doctor, arrives on a mission of mercy at an orphanage by the sea. By the time she and her lifelong friend Zóra begin to inoculate the children there, she feels age-old superstitions and secrets gathering everywhere around her. Secrets her outwardly cheerful hosts have chosen not to tell her. Secrets involving the strange family digging for something in the surrounding vineyards. Secrets hidden in the landscape itself.
 
But Natalia is also confronting a private, hurtful mystery of her own: the inexplicable circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather’s recent death. After telling her grandmother that he was on his way to meet Natalia, he instead set off for a ramshackle settlement none of their family had ever heard of and died there alone. A famed physician, her grandfather must have known that he was too ill to travel. Why he left home becomes a riddle Natalia is compelled to unravel.
 
Grief struck and searching for clues to her grandfather’s final state of mind, she turns to the stories he told her when she was a child. On their weekly trips to the zoo he would read to her from a worn copy of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, which he carried with him everywhere; later, he told her stories of his own encounters over many years with “the deathless man,” a vagabond who claimed to be immortal and appeared never to age. But the most extraordinary story of all is the one her grandfather never told her, the one Natalia must discover for herself. One winter during the Second World War, his childhood village was snowbound, cut off even from the encroaching German invaders but haunted by another, fierce presence: a tiger who comes ever closer under cover of darkness. “These stories,” Natalia comes to understand, “run like secret rivers through all the other stories” of her grandfather’s life. And it is ultimately within these rich, luminous narratives that she will find the answer she is looking for.”

14 thoughts on “DAY 1 of GIVEAWAY WEEK! Win The Tiger’s Wife: Tell Me Why I Can’t Dress Myself”

  1. if it makes you feel any better, I had an Asian tailor take up a dress for me that I’d bought in a resale shop because it was extraordinarily perfect for the event (meaning in my price range – did I mention I was cheap?) and… in putting it back together, he put the slit of the skirt in the front (e.g., he sewed the skirt backward onto the bodice). I picked it up the day of the event (because I always prepare for dress-up barbie parties well in advance too) & basically said, to heck with it, I’ll just wear it that way & convince people front slits are back in style. Moral of story? I was just like a salad too – covered in Asian dressing. (no hissing necessary)

  2. So I’ve worn sweaters to work inside out, shirts backwards, all kinds of missteps. I’m a bit of a mess. I’ve taken to asking Scott when we’re going somewhere nice to look me over and make sure I’m presentable, which really does work!

  3. When Caroline was a baby, Patrick put her jammies on backwards. Not that big of a deal but they had feet. I came home, she was asleep in her crib, laying on her stomach with her feet sticking straight up. Scared me a little bit at first! And, she had a lamb picture on her back…zipper up the front. I’m just really not sure what was going on at that time that he got that wrong, but it was funny. I do have to say, since I published this mix up of his on your blog, he’s the best Dad I know. Even good dads get outfits wrong. At least you didn’t have a lamb on your back, Marla! I love the pic of you and Kurt! Really cute. And, it just doesn’t even look backwards!

  4. Having known you for only a short time and reading your blogs daily, yours today came as no surprise!! You are a really neat, cool lady who is so excited about life and so many things in life, that dressing even for a special occasion is too exciting to really check your outfit to see if it is on OK!!! Only the Marla that we have come to love would make it through an evening with her clothes on backwards!!!! Keep up the great blogs!! Just another admirer! Norma

    1. Aww, thank you Norma. I really was so excited, too. It’s fun to have a reason to gussy up and even better to get to just have a nice dinner with Kurt and hear stories of his workdays. 🙂

  5. My sister (not embarrassed to admit that), should most probably never ever dress herself for a “formal” function because she is waaaay to broad minded and accepting of almost everything and everyone to scrutinize her own appearance to the level usually required by the narrow minded “high brow” people she thinks she needs to impress! I’m quite sure you were the only one who knows it wasn’t supposed to be worn like that! Looked fantastic!! Next party, just have Kurt wear his tie on his back. 😉

  7. 1) I have some things that I intentionally wear backwards, because they look better that way. Just pretend you meant to do it! Having a self-unfastening shirt could be useful in some situations.

    4) I already get Marla delivered daily! Does that count, or does it have to be new?

    1. Thanks Amanda! When I took it off and realized the tag was on, my initial reaction was one of toilet paper sticking out of the pants, you know? But then realized yeah, maybe nobody noticed anyway.

  9. Marla – Great post! Thanks for always giving me a laugh. Crossing my fingers for the Tea Obreht book contest 🙂

    1. Awesome, thanks Dakota! I saw you thanked Tea and PA&L already. You rock!! I love going to their events and every time I hear one of these authors read I get inspired!

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