Girl Detective

In the immortal words of Billy Joel, I'm movin' out

2004-11-28T20:40:00.000-06:00

I'm moving. Virtually, this time. I haven't even unpacked all the boxes in our new old house, but I'm on the move again, this time to a new web address. Updating on two weblogs has been tough. Once I thought I needed to keep pop culture and pregnancy/parenthood separate. Silly Girl Detective. I now understand the wishful thinking of such a false dichotomy. As it says on the Dr. Bronner's bottle, it's All One. And now it's all one weblog at the all new Girl Detective.

Thank you, and good night. I hope to see you there.

Avoiding the shopping frenzy

2004-11-26T09:43:00.000-06:00

I knew an alcholic who said that he never went out on New Year's Eve; that was for amateurs.

I feel much the same way about shopping the day after Thanksgiving. Just because everyone else is doing it not only means that I don't have to, it may be the best justification for not doing it.

That being said, our favorite children's store is having a "retirement sale". We worry that this means it is going out of business, since it is a good, local alternative to the wretched Babiesrus, a store certain to resemble a low level of hell today. So we may check out the retirement sale, since we've been meaning to pick up some climbing toys for the baby anyway.

How NOT to shop

2004-11-24T09:22:00.000-06:00

Years ago, my shopping philosophy was "If I can rationalize it, I can afford it."

Several thousand dollars of debt and many, many years later, I can say I am mostly over that very damaging piece of nonsense.

I am not, however, completely out of the woods. I realized recently that I have a new shopping philosophy:

If I can buy it at Target, I can afford it.

The scale is smaller, but the faulty reasoning that underlies it is no less full of shit.

Huff didn't blow me away

2004-11-23T09:05:00.000-06:00

Here are the things I noticed as I watched the first twenty minutes of Huff, the new drama on Showtime starring Hank Azaria.

-Stylized opening with moody music, both reminiscent of Six Feet Under.

-Hank has a weird little fountain of hair at the front. Looks like Nic Cage's. Is that the last hurrah of their front hair, or is it the tuftiness of implants?

-Oh, look, he imagines stuff, as happens on all the edgy dramas these days: Six Feet Under, Rescue Me, etc.

-He's ogling a woman with giant tits. Ew to both of them--him for ogling and her for aspiring to look like Barbie. She gives him the finger, which is ridiculous, because she is not trying to hide her assets in that pink tank top and unpadded bra. Take some responsibility for your sluttish wardrobe choices, woman.

-Boy makes accusations of incest, brandishes gun shoots himself. Sad, but it's been done. Too many times.

-Hank goes home to much younger looking wife, and not that much older looking mother. Who the hell cast Blythe Danner, the WASPiest looking WASP in the world, as Hank's mom? There's no resemblance!

-Plus, while the IMDB indicates that there are twenty one years between them, technically enough for them to be mother and son, he looks older and she looks younger. It actually looks like there might be, at most, about 12 years between them. Hank and Mom trade insults. Wife complains about Mom. We discover Mom lives on property.

At that point, I'd had enough. The hair fountain, the distortions of reality, the incongruous casting, the trite staged crisis, the creepy relationship with the mother. In sum, icky.

I watched the premiere of House last week. It was no prize either--is there really a need for another medical procedural drama? But the main character, played by Hugh Laurie, showed some promise. I'll give the second episode a shot. Both the premieres of Huff and House suffered from "been there done that", which is normal for a first episode. House had a bunch of cliches, but a few moments of genuine wit. Huff, on the other hand, was working so hard to be quirky and original that when it failed, it did so spectacularly, and became instead off-putting and unpleasant.

Out of the woods of writers block

2004-11-22T09:17:00.000-06:00

I had a thankfully brief bout of writers block the other week while waiting to hear whether my husband had been laid off. Once we heard for certain, though, I was able to get back to the business at hand, namely posting on two weblogs and continuing to hammer out bad prose for Nanowrimo 2004.

In the meantime, my friend The Blogenheimer thoughtfully sent me this link on hacking ones way out of writers block. I am grateful that I don't need it today. I've got a list of over twenty potential blog topics and I am on track to hit 50K words for Nanowrimo by month's end. I think there is something about the mad frenzy of Nanowrimo that unleashes the floodgates of all writing. I feel confident, though, that I will look back on this fruitful period someday with bitter gall, as I sit staring at the blank screen or page. And at that point, I'm going to be very glad for that article on writers block.

The vacuum cleaner was messing with me

2004-11-19T08:01:00.000-06:00

The vacuum cleaner was messing with me. Earlier this week I wrestled with the angel in the house. I think she won. During the baby's post-bath naked time the other night, I noticed that his feet got filthy as he toddled about our upstairs hallway and thought it was time to do some cleaning.

Running the vacuum cleaner is something that I can do while the baby is awake; it entertains him. One of my key lessons of motherhood is to do whatever I can do while the baby is awake, saving his precious, precious sleep time for those things that I absolutely can't do with him around, like writing. So I popped him into his play area and got out the vacuum, figuring that running it over the small area of upstairs carpet would take something like five minutes, if that.

Then I slipped into a time warp.

See, when our last vacuum cleaner smelled as if it was burning even after we changed the belt and the bag, we broke down and got a new one. We went to Target and brought home one that was medium fancy and medium expensive. My husband was really pushing for a Dyson because of its geek factor, but common sense and Consumer Reports ratings prevailed. One of our new vacuum cleaner's features is a light on the bottom that switches from red to green when the area you have gone over is "truly" clean.

The red light chased me around the upstairs hallways. I would go over an area, and over it again, and again, and get little blips of red here and there. I thought of stopping, but figured that since I had the machine out, and the baby was happy--in fact fascinated by, you guessed it, the ever-changing red/green light--that I might as well do a thorough job.

The upstairs hallway is small, but irregularly shaped, making quick, even passes difficult. The red light would flash even in areas I had just gone over that were green. Was it possessed? Was it messing with me?

More likely, I realized, it was just so filthy that normal attention wasn't even making a dent. We moved in two months ago, and had never yet vacuumed the upstairs carpet. The previous owners had a cat, two small children and they left the house in the technical definition of broom clean--fine in the middle of the wood floors and icky in the corners. Who knows how dirty the carpet was, since it is a very practical dirt-grey color.

I do not know how long it took me until I got only the green light. Twenty minutes? Thirty? More? Long enough, certainly, that I could put the vacuum away and feel I had done more than enough cleaning for quite some time.

That is, until I set off the smoke alarm in the kitchen by using the oven. Days later, I still haven't cleaned the oven. It's self cleaning, too, so in theory this should be easy. Instead, I have just avoided using the oven. That's not going to work for long, though. I feel a pumpkin pie coming on. So I hope to recover from the vacuum extravaganza soon. Not just because I hate cleaning and have better things to do. But because it's now getting in the way of pie. And that's unforgiveable.

House

2004-11-17T20:24:00.000-06:00

We watched the season premier of House last night, starring Hugh Laurie, who we remember fondly from Blackadder. House was only OK. It had more than a few howler moments of medical show cliches. But Laurie is good, and if the show can get more of the dark funny moments and less of the "random medical mystery solved" (yawn) then it might be worth watching.

Bridget Jones 2

2004-11-16T14:28:00.000-06:00

My friend Queenie and I went to see the Bridget Jones sequel last night. There were four men there, all with their girlfriends, and dozens of women. It was a chick flick during Monday Night Football--only to be expected. The popcorn was crap and the movie was too, but I didn't care; I enjoyed them anyway.

The sequel merely repeated the successful bits from the first movie. I enjoyed them then and enjoyed them again, even while recognizing their recycled nature. I found it interesting that Renee Zellweger managed to pull off looking unglamorous throughout the movie, with no Hollywood Cinderella reveal. She had reddened skin, frizzy hair with an only adequate cut and color, and carried so much weight in her torso that she looked as if she were about five months pregnant.

The book it was based on was also a lamer version of the original, so I am unsurprised that the movie could not rise above its paltry source material. Unforgiveable, I thought, was that they left out perhaps the funniest, most self-referential part of the book--when Bridget gets to interview Colin Firth, the actor who plays Mark Darcy. They probably cut this out because the reason for it--her love of Austen's Pride and Prejudice mini-series, which starred Firth as the original Mr. Darcy--was excised from the first Bridget Jones film. Still, that could have been brilliant, and hilarious.

My educated, feminist self feels somewhat sheepish for not only loving the original book and movie, wherein Bridget can't be happy till she gets a man, but also for having affection for the lame-ass sequels. Even educated feminists sometimes find it hard to shake the seductive draw of a Cinderella story, as I have noted previously.

Two mysteries solved

2004-11-15T07:45:00.000-06:00

Thanks to Nautile for doing some girl-detective work and discovering not only what my shrub was (pussy willow) but what the pink shinky-dink dots were--galls caused by a gall mite. As with many other things these days, like centipedes and our baby's rash du jour (or, more accurately rash du six semaines, au moins), it's ugly, but not harmful.

Ambivalence

2004-11-11T19:41:00.000-06:00

Most people misuse the word ambivalent, e.g., "I don't care whether we do this or that; I'm ambivalent."

Actually, the word you're looking for there, cowboy, is indifferent. Ambivalence means having feelings both ways, and can also mean being unable to choose between the two because of strong feelings both ways, not a lack of feeling either way.

My husband and I were feeling ambivalent about the upcoming layoffs at his company. On the one hand, his is the only source of income for our little family since I resigned to be a stay-at-home mom. His job is also the source of benefits like health insurance. If not laid off, he'd get to keep his job and the income and benefits. On the other hand, his job has gotten worse over the years in the wake of a poor re-org and a subsequent merger. If laid off, he would get to leave a less-then-ideal job and be given severance pay.

Yesterday, then, he was informed that he was "not retained". The good news: he will now have time and money to look for a better job with a better company. The bad news: so will the rest of those laid off, as they compete for the same limited pool of jobs. The good news: the severance pay is pretty good.

Also good is that I was apparently subconsciously preparing for the depressing part of either decision when I did recent grocery shopping, and our house is stocked with comforting essentials: three flavors of pudding (butterscotch, vanilla and chocolate), brownies, three flavors of Jello (grape, raspberry and black cherry), whipping cream, butter toffee ice cream, raspberry sorbet, Snickers ice cream bars, four kinds of cheese (Muenster, cheddar, string and parmesan), butter, Milky Way Midnight miniatures, and banana chocolate chip bread. And, thanks to last month's second-place finish by his pub-quiz team, my husband has a LOT of beer. So in case our mood starts to plummet, we are prepared with fortifying foodstuffs. If any of that actually qualifies as food.

Writers block

2004-11-10T13:52:00.000-06:00

I have been extraordinarily lucky this week--both Monday morning and this morning, the baby woke happy, and was content to burble cheerily to his duck and to his sheep blankie until after 8 a.m., allowing me time to check email and work on the computer. When I tried to fire off a blog entry for Girl Detective, though, I hit a wall. I stared at the screen. I looked at my PDA where I have a list of ideas that I jot down so I avoid thinking, "Gah, I've been meaning to write about assload relativity forever!" while I'm in line at the grocery store.

Incidentally, I have been meaning to write about assload relativity since I was a sophomore in college. Then, we used the term buttload, since we hadn't yet seen the episode of News Radio in which Bill joins the gym. Here's how my thought process on it went: OK, a buttload of beers--oh, about fifteen, which is about twice as much as a lot, and about four times as much as normal. Buttload of cigarettes? That depends on how much one normally smokes, but I'd say that would be about twice as much as normal, say a whole pack when I usually smoked ten a day. Buttload of kids? Well, the average is about 2, so I'd say a buttload would be about six, so three times the usual. Maybe I should try geometric formulas rather than arithmetic? So a buttload is normal squared? Or cubed if normal equals two? Is there no mathematical formula for a buttload? Is it simply way more than normal, and even more than a lot?

And right there is exactly where I have always stopped thinking about buttload relativity.

But back to the topic at hand, which is blog topics. I looked at my PDA list and still felt unmoved except to wonder if some of those were topics I had written about, and had accidentally been restored after one of my disastrous PDA data wipeouts. So I didn't write, and instead went to get the baby out of bed and get him breakfast and go to the coffee shop and then to the park, where I realized that the reason I could not blog was that there was an elephant in my brain. While I could try to pretend that this morning was like any other, my writing senses were telling me otherwise. They were refusing to focus on any one thing, while also pointedly trying to ignore the obvious, which is that my husband's company was announcing layoffs this morning.

Fortunately, this was not one of those situations where you think you are getting a solid answer and then suddenly get a vague one, or a delay. We got an answer, and now we get to feel ambivalent about it, just as we would have if we would've gotten the other answer.

Tomorrow's topic? The chronic misuse and widespread misunderstanding of the term "ambivalence."

No good deed goes unpunished

2004-11-09T14:25:00.000-06:00

It is hard to give away a king bed. Friends seemed interested, but were ultimately unwilling to commit. Most charities refuse them. I tried to invent creative uses for it--seating on the back porch! instead of a sofabed in the basement! Always, it was too big. After many phone calls, I found a charity that would take it. But they couldn't pick it up for six weeks. Fine, fine, I said, whatever. So it's been sitting hugely on our front porch since we moved in two months ago. Finally, yesterday was pickup day. I called the charity before 9, to see if they could give me a time estimate so that I wouldn't be cooped up all morning with the baby. They said before noon. So I didn't go out for coffee, since I didn't want to miss them and potentially have to wait another six weeks for pickup. As the morning waned, I grew more drowsy without coffee, and the baby grew more irritable as we didn't go outside, or visit his many girlfriends at the coffeeshop. At noon, I fed him lunch, then got him ready for nap. I was dialing the charity to ask where they were when the truck pulled up. Two very polite boys wearing enormous crucifixes carried away the mattress, box springs, bed frame, bedding, and some other furniture that doesn't work in the new house.

I personally believe there is a special section in hell reserved for those who keep a mom cooped up at home with a kid, waiting for HOURS. It seems especially unfair, when I took the time and effort to donate, rather than just putting it out for garbage.

Novel update

2004-11-08T20:56:00.000-06:00

I'm up to 14,900 words during NaNoWriMo. I'm amazed that writing feeds on itself--the more I do, the more I do and overall the better and faster it is.

Sort of like exercise. Which I'm not doing at all. But I'm writing! A lot!

It's just the heating system, really

2004-11-08T20:55:00.000-06:00

Why is it that every time the heating system kicks in and the radiators start up it sounds like an intruder has just busted into our house?

We didn't get the security system because of this, but it does make me feel a wee bit better, huddled in the basement watching TV, that it's probably the heat and not a criminal because the alarm's not going off.

Have I mentioned that the furnace is original to our 1917 house?

I am unrepentant

2004-11-07T20:40:00.000-06:00

I read beauty and fashion magazines. I often follow their advice. Yet there's something I must admit to, which qualifies as deviant behavior, and brazen in that it ignores all conventional wisdom, I know.

I cut my fingernails, I don't file them.
With clippers.
Toenail clippers.

I also rub my eyes.
With abandon.

I'm such a rebel.

Nanowrimo writing tip

2004-11-07T20:35:00.000-06:00

Do not use contractions. Spell out all numbers. Do not hyphenate compounds. All these things can gain you precious words for your word count!

The O.C.

2004-11-05T13:42:00.000-06:00

My friend The Big Brain recommended the O.C. He told me to watch for three reasons:
1. Peter Gallagher's eyebrows (overly groomed, but nonetheless entertaining)
2. Comic book references (many, and well-educated ones)
3. Adam Brody

To that list I will add one more: the dialogue moves so fast that there is at least one time per episode that I have to go back and replay it to get the joke, and usually there's one time per episode where I just give up and move on, because I can't be bothered to take the effort to turn on the closed-caption just to get the one liner. But the one liners can be astonishingly funny. My favorite from last night's season premiere? "Not so limber."

Adam plays Seth Cohen, the funnier-but-less-good-looking friend (that's a movie cliche category, courtesy of Roger Ebert) to the supposed-to-be-brooding-but-actually-just-boring character Ryan, played by Benjamin McKenzie.

I mentioned my fondness for secondary romances in a recent post. What's interesting about the O.C. is that the primary romance between Ryan and the utterly uninteresting Marissa played by Mischa Barton--perhaps the most annoying overexposed actress getting regular work these days, though her friend Lindsay Lohan does give her a run for the money--is not only forgettable, it's actually a deterrent to me watching the show. I loathe these characters, I am bored beyond belief by them, and these two actors are probably the worst on the show. Why they are center stage is a mystery to me, unless it's to cater to pre-teen girls. Yet everything else on the show is so well done that it almost sparkles. Last season's romance between Seth and Summer was hilarious, and I look forward to seeing how they will interact since he broke her heart by running away for the summer.

Now if only someone would kill off Ryan and Marissa, the show would be perfect.

2004-11-05T13:23:00.000-06:00

Lost: the island of Jeanne Moreau?

In an early episode, there's a recording of a woman speaking French, saying "They're all dead" that's been running for sixteen years. Then on the latest episode, Sayid, who for my money the hottest person on the island, gets clobbered. I think it's the French-speaking woman. What better person to play an old French woman than Jeanne Moreau--wouldn't that be sweet?

We are supposed to suspect that it might be Sawyer, the red-neck badass. That is, unless you have missed the obvious clues that Sawyer isn't actually a bad guy, he just pretends. And that's how it is on Lost--nearly ever person is presented as a could-be villain, and yet still no one is. The only thing on the island that seems unreservedly bad is whatever it is that mauled the pilot in the pilot. Even that, though, faced off against Locke and let him live. Locke is another one we were led to believe was bad, then was revealed not only to be good, but to play the role of spiritual guide to the others that is usually reserved for a token African American. John Locke is the only one on the cast list with two names, in case we possibly missed that the character who keeps blathering about choices and free will also happens have the same name as a philosopher.

Up till this week's episode, which gave the backstory for Charlie the drug-addicted bass player, Lost has been on of my favorite hours of television each week. "The Moth", however, is now appearing in the dictionary next to "overdetermined." As if comparing Charlie's struggle to a moth's metamorphosis weren't gag-inducing enough, we have been given YET ANOTHER long lingering look between the token black guy and the token Asian woman. We get it, already. Thank you for thinking so highly of your viewers that you telegraph every development a half dozen times.

I would wish for no more overdetermination, but I can't help but notice that Emilie de Ravin, the token pregnant woman (so pregnant that she shouldn't have been flying a commuter flight under an hour, much less the Sydney to LA. Seriously, folks, most airlines won't let you fly if you're that pregnant, because if you did begin labor, they'd be required to land.) And because this is television, I can predict with one hundred percent certainty that her water will break to signal the onset of labor. Mine did too, after the midwives and the birth classes had assured me numerous times that it only happens to 10 percent or fewer women. So I don't know whether to resent TV for perpetuating a lie that I had to let go, or because it was right in the end anyway. Either way, I'm going to be pissed when her water breaks at the onset of labor.

The only possible mitigating factor I can see is if the lost people decide to see her imminent baby as a hope (a la Virginia Dare), and then she and the baby get eaten by the monster. Or if the show's writers are gutsy enough to let her die in labor, as might actually happen. My grandmother made sure to point out that if I'd gone through my labor back in the days of the pioneers that's what would've happened to me. I'm not sure if I feel better or worse that the only reason the baby and I are around is modern medecine. I'd like to imagine that I would triumph in adversity. My labor and birth experience effectively showed me I'm not as tough as I'd like to think.

So, an open memo to the writers of Lost on easy ways to curry the favor of viewers like me: reveal Jeanne Moreau as the mysterious Frenchwoman, and have something really dark but not overdetermined happen to the token pregnant woman. Oh, and cut off the incipient thing between Michael and Sun. Right now. I mean it.

2004-11-04T13:45:00.000-06:00

What I'm fretting about today

1. I found ground ginger scattered on a shelf in the pantry yesterday. I examined the bag to see where it was leaking; there was a jagged rent in it. Could my husband or I have done that accidentally, then put the ginger back without noticing? Or is there something in my pantry?

2. There is a little hole that leads under the front porch that is usually covered with a board. Yesterday I found the board was not only down, but backwards. I looked inside, but couldn't see anything. With some concern, I replaced the board. What if something's down there? What if she has babies? Or rabies? Or both? Or is sneaking into the house to gnaw at the packet of ground ginger?

3. We have a shrub in the back yard. Many of its leaves are shriveled and covered in pink bubbles. Is it diseased?

4. The hydrangea plants are turning black. Do I cut them to the ground, or just let them shrivel for the winter?

5. Our lawn is suspiciously lumpy, with many small bare spots that look as if grass has been pulled up recently. I know we've got bunnies and squirrels. Is this their work, or do we have moles? Or something else?

2004-11-04T13:44:00.000-06:00

The theme song to Rescue Me on FX

I am remiss in that it's taken me so long to post this. I watched the first couple episodes of Rescue Me, and wondered each time who the band was singing the theme song and if it had been written specifically for the show.

Then I was randomly listening to a CD my sister Sydney sent me, and there it was.

C'mon, C'mon from Pawn Shoppe Heart by the Von Bondies, previously best known because Jack White punched their lead singer when the bands were on tour together.

Sorry for the delay.

2004-11-04T13:02:00.000-06:00

Little luxuries

When we moved, I found I had a very strange assortment of health and beauty stuff. I either had lots of one type of item (e.g six different types of deoderant), or none at all (facial moisturizers.) I have way too many things for the bath--oil, gel, salts, stuff for me, stuff for the baby. Even though we have a cool claw-foot tub in our new/old house, I don't take enough baths to use this stuff at any realistic rate. But I have found a good everyday use for the Dr. Hauschka bath products. I add a few drops of Rosemary Bath to warm water in the morning when I wash my face, and a few drops of Lavender Bath at night. It not only smells good, but I'm using it every day. If only all the bath products could multi-task like this.

2004-11-03T19:47:00.000-06:00

I am a killer of noxious weeds. And a worm, accidentally.

I feel very badly about the worm.

The yard of our new old house had several far-too-hearty thistle plants, two of them about the size of my torso. Yesterday, shielded with my True Blue gloves and armed with shears, I cut them back and poured vinegar on the stumps.

I shrieked in surprise (I am _such_ a fraidy cat, and really have no business owning a house) as a worm surged up and out of the ground, swelling and writhing. Anyone who says worms don't feel pain did not see this one. Alas, there was nothing I could do. I could not unpour the vinegar. I went out today, cherishing a small hope that the worm had recovered and moved on. It was not so. Its poor, vinegar-sodden worm carcass lay beside the gigantic thistle stump, which had begun to turn an unattractive but reassuringly soon-to-be-dead gray color.

I found the vinegar remedy for thistles online, and early results are good. I did pour the whole gallon out, though, on at least half a dozen thistles, so I'm going to have to get more for subsequent rounds. These are really nasty plants--big, prickly and ugly. I hope to vanquish them forever from our yard. Let's just hope no more worms get in my way.

2004-11-02T10:09:00.000-06:00

Election Day

Vote. (If you're a U.S. citizen, that is)

A reminder. This is a two party system disguised as one that's not. Our system cannot support third parties. It's A or B, not C. If you want to vote for a third party, don't. Instead, pick a side, then work for campaign reform.

If you don't believe me, that's fine. And if you have some argument about voting for a third party because you're confident of the outcome of your state, I have two words for you: Jesse Ventura.

Just vote. Because the only thing more misguided than voting a third party candidate is not voting at all.

We're able to vote. It's a privilege. Exercise yours.

2004-11-01T17:22:00.000-06:00

Bugs!

OK, I know they're not technically bugs. They're not even insects. How do I know? They have WAY more than six legs. They're big, they're black and they leave distubing shadows on the wall when you crush them. Are they bigger, scarier versions of silverfish, which I've also seen dithering on the lower level of the house? What are these creepy crawlies, and how alarmed should I be by their presence?

2004-10-31T20:40:00.000-06:00

NaNoWriMo 2004

I'm taking the leap and I'm going to try and pound out 50K words of a novel by the end of November. One things that's bothering me (ah, as if there's ever just one thing), though, is that Blogger is urging bloggers to blog their nanowrimo novels.

Doesn't this defeat the point?

Nanowrimo is a crazy deadline so that we novelists can sit down, write like mad and turn off the inner editors. I didn't even spell check my draft when I did it in '02. So publishing the novel is automatically making it harder to turn off that editor and just let the insides out. I understand the urge to do something by the seat of one's pants and still have someone else say, "Hey, that's good." But it's about getting to 50K. And getting to 50K in a month is ugly. I want my novel to be published, but not in a butt-ugly first draft. So in November I'm going to be blogging, and writing a novel, but I will not be blogging my novel.

Readers, you are welcome.

2004-10-31T20:31:00.000-06:00

Lucky vs. Shop Etc.

Does the world really need two magazines devoted to shopping? I think not, especially when one is good and one just isn't.

Do not judge if you have not read an issue of Lucky. Years ago, I was beyond skeptical when my friend Mod Girl said that she liked Lucky magazine. Shopping, I thought, I don't think so. But when I picked up an issue, I found an accessible, well-written, entertaining magazine. The personalities of the staff were highlighted, and I recognized many of them from the glory days of the late, great Sassy. I've been a regular reader of Lucky ever since.

Lucky does a lot of things well. Its photos and copy are clear and inviting. It shows items at a range of prices, featuring bargains from Target right next to 4 figure items from top department stores. Best of all, it is informative and educational without talking down to the reader. Style can be learned, and Lucky is teaching it.

When a new magazine on shopping launched this fall, I had to check it out. Shop Etc. had a funky, smaller shape and a nice cover with a variety of items. As I spent some time with the magazine, though, it became clear to me that it was not a worthy competitor to Lucky. Shop Etc. distinguished itself by featuring a lot more home items, and doing in-depth features on a catalog, a store and a website for fashion, home and beauty. Each of these three areas was featured, and there was a complicated explanation for the contents of the magazine, attempting to copy that of a store.

Shop Etc. tries to outstrip Lucky by offering much more information on home and beauty, but ultimately it ends up being just too much information. The sheer volume of it is exhausting, not impressive. At its best, Shop Etc. tries to capture the easy vernacular of Lucky's copy, but too often they couldn't carry it off, and I found myself cringing at the forced cliches. I noticed also that they used the same model in several spreads, which is a cost-cutting move that I know about, again thanks to my friend Mod Girl. The photo quality was fuzzy, perhaps because the paper is low grade. I didn't pick up the second issue.

My annoyance with Shop Etc. confirmed my high opinion of Lucky. Lucky is not just a good magazine about shopping, it's a good magazine in general.

2004-10-27T13:56:00.000-05:00

Heretical thought

I'm beginning to suspect that there are a whole lot of health and beauty products whose job could be done just as well with Dove soap. One bar of Dove can be used as:

Facial wash
Body wash
Hand soap
Baby soap
Baby shampoo

And maybe even as a laundry spot remover and delicates wash. One bar of soap, where now there are five to seven products. Bet you won't see that in the pages of Real Simple.

2004-10-22T13:58:00.000-05:00

Caught with my pants down, so to speak

Hey, I'm the MN blog of the day at City Pages Twin Cities Babelogue. I'm wishing very hard that I'd updated my links. Thanks for the nod, TCB, even though I'm a delinquent linker. Was it your team that took first place at pub quiz this week?

2004-10-22T13:31:00.000-05:00

On the NaNoWriMo fence

Two years ago in November, two important things happened.

1. I got knocked up.
2. I participated in National Novel Writing Month and produced a 52K-word novel.

The baby's development is going quite well. The novel's is not as good, but doesn't suck. I'm trying to finish a third re-write in hopes of getting it to a point of not sucking enough so that I can send it out. It has already been rejected twice in its "in-progress" state, for a grant and for another writing competition. Also, we just bought a house and moved. In spite of everything, the novel is getting periodic attention. I haven't yet put it in a box to gather dust. For that, I'm proud. Or delusional, perhaps.

For the past few weeks, a crazy dream has been swirling in my head. I'd finish the third draft by month's end, send it out, and write a new novel this November during NaNoWriMo 2004.

I can clearly imagine dithering over this until well into next month, when it will be too late. I haven't made even the small commitment of signing up at the NaNoWriMo site.

I've got an active 14-month old who isn't the best sleeper. Is my dream brave, or impossible? Can I finish editing by month's end, send out a submission packet, and hammer out 50K words in a month?

Ooh, Helen Reddy just popped into my head. This whole inspired/insane question is getting out of hand.

2004-10-20T20:44:00.000-05:00

The next three books

Since I began to buy books for myself, I have always bought more than I could ever possibly read. That was even before my stint in a used bookstore with an amazing discount. My "eyes bigger than my stomach" book habit got out of control there, and I've been trying to wean myself ever since. I suspect many readers, like myself, have the next three books they are going to read planned. The problem I encounter, though, is that I am not firm in my 3-book plan, so if I buy a book, it may get moved to the top of the list, or may sit, hovering on deck for years. Other things, like author readings, recommendations, friend lendings and library finds, can also wreak havoc with the order of the three.

For example, after I finished Cryptonomicon, I wanted to start Quicksilver, The Confusion and System of the World fairly soon. Yet I also wanted to take a break and read something short and fun in the meantime. My husband recommended Get Shorty, so that moved to the #1 spot. I didn't love it, though, and was reading it while we were moving, so it took me quite some time to finish. Then I wanted to read something I'd enjoy. A moms group in my new neighborhood would be reading Zippy, so I went to the library for that, then also picked up The Devil Wears Prada and The Nanny Diaries, thinking they'd be quick, fun reads. Then I heard Karen Joy Fowler was in town, so I got her Jane Austen Book Club and moved it to the top of the list. I nearly picked up two short story collections at last weekend's book fest, or else they would also have moved to the top of the list (though likely been put aside in favor of some more urgent read). Now I'm stopping Prada in the middle and not even starting Nanny Diaries, but instead have picked up Jen Weiner's new book. After that, I swear, I'm starting Quicksilver. But the third book? It might be the Confusion, or I might feel I need a sorbet between books. After reading Fowler's book, I want to read Austen's novels, so I think #3 might be Emma. The third spot remains tantalizingly vague, which could be dangerous. Ostensibly open spots on the reading list usually precede a book binge.

Readers, do you know what your next three books are? Are you more constant in your affections with your three book list than am I?

2004-10-20T15:14:00.000-05:00

Books, books, books

One of the reasons I'm so slow to unpack/organize/clean/decorate our new house is that I've been making a concerted effort to read. I had a couple bad books during the summer that put me off, but then I got my groove back and have been pretty steady ever since. I am about to abandon yet another book midstream, and I feel no guilt whatsoever. Life's too busy for bad books. And maybe even for mediocre ones. Here's what's been on my bedside table.

Shadow Baby by Allison McGhee. A sort-of sequel to Rainlight. Beautifully written with great characters. Sad, but redemptive.

Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson. LOVED this book about cryptography and WW2. Enjoyed all 1130 pages of the mass market.

Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard. My husband and I saw the movie on our first date. Our date was terrific, but the movie was just OK. So was the book. Clever and funny, but dated. It took a long time for the characters to be sympathetic. For Elmore Leonard movies, I much prefer Out of Sight. I don't care if you don't like Jennifer Lopez. It's a good film, and she's good in it.

A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland, IN by Haven Kimmel. A childhood memoir that's lovely without being saccharine. It's often funny, sometimes sad and skillfully underwritten.

The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler. She just spoke at last weekend's Twin Cities' Book Fest, so I put this on the top of the list last week. It was a fun read, with substance. Bookish and clever, it made me want to read all the Austen oeuvre.

Now, for the book that I'm halfway through but putting down, unfinished: The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger. It came out ages ago and was the it book for quite some time, leading a pack of bestseller tell-alls. It took me this long to pick it up because I didn't want to pay for a trendy, poorly written book. I am halfway through, and realize that I don't necessarily want to spend my time on a trendy, poorly written book, either. It's a barely fictionalized account of Weisberger's stint as Anna Wintour's assistant at Vogue. Yes, Wintour may be crazy, but Weisberger doesn't come off any better in her own tale. She's immature, unprofessional, priggish and boring. The writing is adequate.

The next book I was going to read was to be The Nanny Diaries, but I think I'll skip it for the same reasons I'm putting down Prada. Yes, I have to admit to not having read it when everyone else has, but is that such a loss? Probably not.

Instead, I've picked up Little Earthquakes, by Jennifer Weiner. Weiner is one of the reigning queens of the chick-lit genre. This doesn't mean that her books aren't substantive, though. Weiner's writing is good, her characters are engaging and empathically drawn, and they undergo believable development.

Then, finally, maybe I'll feel ready to tackle Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver, The Confusion and System of the World. All 2700 + pages of them. Those should keep me busy for a while. If they're like Cryptonomicon, they'll keep me hyped on geekjoy for quite some time.

2004-10-19T14:38:00.000-05:00

What is it about secondary-character romances?

I started watching Joan of Arcadia last season, after reading a review by Lisa Schmeiser on City Pages. I like the show for a lot of reasons. It has good, complex parents, a lead girl played by someone with curves, and a theology that may not be very challenging, but it's not offensive to me either, as is so much of pop culture religion--celebrity kabbalah, ack!

As the second season unfolds, though, what's holding my attention is not the sweet romance between Joan and Adam, but rather the prickly, secret one between her brother Luke and her best friend Grace. These two get only a small fraction of screen time, but they're what I enjoy most about the show. I am reminded of the romance between Michael and Maria on Roswell, a show that started off uneven and got decidedly awful from there. I was sad when the rest of the show got so bad that I had to give up on these two characters; a secondary romance cannot justify watching a seriously bad show. But when the show is pretty solid, as is Joan, the secondary romance can be fantastic icing.

2004-10-19T08:01:00.000-05:00

Desperate Housewives, episode 3

As I suspected, Desperate Housewives is relying heavily on its "guilty pleasure" motif; most of its third episode was stock soap scenes. The adultering wife caught by the neighbor kid, whom she then bribes! The shifty husband of the dead woman, telling his kid to stop asking questions! The harried mom, who foists her hyper kids on the condescending dad! The bitter divorcee, who cuts her husband's head out of all the photos! And on, and on.

These stock scenes, culled from a million and one other dramas and soaps, are awful. As is the voiceover, which tells us nothing that the acting hasn't already.

There are high points, though, so I have not yet given up on the show.

The acting is quite good, thus negating the need for a voiceover to hammer its points home. The writers need to figure out a way to have dead Mary Alice's comments add something, or just take them out.

The scene in which Teri Hatcher's character gets locked out of the house naked is awful--there is absolutely no reason that her towel should have gotten ripped off other than writer's cliche. BUT the end of the scene, when the handsome neighbor finds her in the shrubs was terrifically done--funny, good dialogue, good chemistry.

Finally, the dinner party scene in which everyone admits to something embarrasing in order to make Marcia Cross's Bree feel better about marriage counselling, was also good. Funny, real, and human. The way that it ended, with Bree cruelly slamming her husband, showed some guts to get that dark. If Housewives can get this vibe going--alternate funny, human stuff with dark, human stuff and avoid the hackneyed merry-go-round of plot points--it will live up to its hype.

2004-10-15T13:16:00.000-05:00

You're soaking in it

After we signed a purchase agreement, we scheduled an inspection and a separate radon test for the house. Our agent didn't push the radon issue, but we thought we'd like to know what we were dealing with. The results from a 48 hour test came back high. The radon guy said that because the previous owners had installed a drain tile system (yay, dry basement!) the best fix was air replacement. Other less expensive options could create a backdraft of CO2 because of the gap from the drain tile. The fix was expensive, and the owners had to be pushed to contribute even a small fraction of it, but we went ahead. While the exact amount of safe/unsafe radon is unclear, there seems to be no dispute that radon is bad. We planned to use the basement, so spending time in radon soup wasn't appealing. Also, depending on how long we stay in the house, a basement chock full o' radon isn't going to be a selling point.

The install took most of a day, and the exchange box was bigger than we'd expected. We are glad we have a large laundry room, otherwise things would've gotten really cramped, really fast. It doesn't make much noise. The initial test after the install came back still high. Had we shelled out money and fiddled with the house for nothing? A subsequent, longer test showed better results. We'll get more detail soon. It feels strange that our first fix to the house is for something so nebulous. I've got no before and after pictures for people cruising for house porn. Just a hope that the basement air is fresher, so when I collapse there at the end of the day, I'm just absorbing TV, not potentially toxic amounts of radioactive gas.

2004-10-12T14:16:00.000-05:00

Veronica Mars

This teen show on UPN is one of the most intriguing of the new season. It features a tough-talking high school outcast, who helps her private detective dad solve cases. In the premier, we learned what happened to Veronica in the last year: her mother left, her father was fired in disgrace, her best friend was murdered, her boyfriend dumped her, and she was raped at a party after downing a spiked drink. This is not your average teen show. Veronica is played by Kristen Bell, who delivers the sharp dialogue believably. Both her spiky blond hair and sassy attitude remind me of Alison Mack, who played Chloe on Smallville. The flashbacks to her previous, happy life are shot in livid color, while the scenes currently unfold in muted tones. The relationship with her father is a little too "daddy's little girl", reminding me of last year's Karen Sisco, which started off with great promise but fizzled from there. I'm hoping for better things from Veronica. MTV is airing the previous week's episode on Tuesdays at 7 p.m. Eastern/6 p.m. Central. Veronica is on UPN Tuesdays at 9 p.m. Eastern, 8 p.m. Central.

2004-10-11T13:53:00.000-05:00

Television updates

I apologize profusely if I made Kevin Hill sound as if it is worth watching. I watched the first segment of the second episode and just didn't care enough to watch further. It was full of baby cliches, and nothing about it was surprising. In just an episode, George the gay nanny had gone from having potential to being an uninteresting stereotype. And that word sums up Kevin Hill: uninteresting. Not bad, but not good. Thus, definitely not worth watching. The end.

Wife Swap, on the other hand, I really enjoyed. So did Dahlia Lithwick. She's way smarter than I am, so go read what she has to say about it here.

After the second episode of Desperate Housewives, I've figured out what is bugging me: this show hasn't hit its stride yet. It's doing an uncomfortable straddle of comedy and drama, rather like real-life moms and wives do, with more than a dash of snide camp thrown in, and they haven't found the right balance. If they do, it'll be great: funny with great performances and some real substance. It threatens, though, to devolve into something merely adequate, with cheap shots and predictable plots. For now it has enough promise to keep watching.

2004-10-11T13:16:00.000-05:00

Color-coded bandanas

A few years ago, my grad-school friend the Queen of Spleen invited me to go with her to a weekend conference. I tried to beg off until she explained that it was a sexuality conference, and a friend of hers had been nominated for (and eventually won) the International Ms. Leather competition, which would be held that evening. This all sounded way more intriguing than your usual run-of-the-mill grad-school conference, so off we went.

QoS spent a lot of time explaining the culture to me, as we wandered the halls. She clued me into some of the terms like FTM and MTF (female to male and male to female transsexuals). We went into the room with stuff for sale. There were books and movies, intellectual and otherwise. There was lots of gay- and trans-pride paraphernalia. There were sex toys galore, from vanilla to things I was afraid to ask about. And one part of the culture that I noticed, and QoS spent a lot of time explaining, was the bandanas. They came in a rainbow of colors, and were mostly tucked into one of the back pockets. The color meant what you were into, like S & M, or B & D. Which back pocket it was in clarified your role--top or bottom. We didn't stay long, and I didn't remember what any of the color and placement details meant, but I was reminded of that conference when I watched Rescue Me a few weeks ago. Sean, the dumb guy, is picked to pose for the fireman's calendar. He has to dress up as a cowboy. He protests in general, then asks if he can at least take off the bandana, which is yellow. He shoves it in the back pocket.

Huh, I thought, I wonder if that means something. But since the show didn't circle back to it for the next few episodes, I forgot about it.

Then in the epidode "Moms", they finally re-visited the topic. Sean goes to a signing and is approached by all sorts of men, who think he's into something, like golden showers or chubby men, though they can't agree on what it is. Apparently the bandana system is not as nailed down as, say, the Dewey Decimal system. I was pleased, though, that I'd remembered the conference and the bandana system. My husband, though, was less than pleased. He was reminded again of just how annoyed he had been at both QoS and me for not inviting him to the conference, too.

2004-10-08T13:29:00.000-05:00

Pre-empted television

Did you know, if a network show is pre-empted due to something like a local sports game, the local station has to air the show at some other time, like at midnight the following Thursday. So if you miss a show, or go to your Tivo to find an hour of baseball instead of what you actually wanted to watch, just give the station a call or email and they'll let you know when the displaced show will be aired.

Unless you're the double damned local ABC affiliate here, who ran Lost and Wife Swap at the same time, just on another channel. And once they're aired an episode somewhere, they don't get to air it again.
So I'm out of luck unless I can find someone who was more on top of things than I was on Wednesday.

Ah, Tivo. Its rare shortcomings are unpleasantly jolting.

2004-10-07T13:55:00.000-05:00

Kevin Hill; I'm not convinced

I finally was able to watch the premier of Kevin Hill, the much touted new drama on UPN. Taye Diggs plays a successful lawyer and womanizer whose life is disrupted when he is left custody of his cousin's ten-month old daughter. The premise is cliche all the way (anyone else remember Baby Boom, with Diane Keaton and Sam Shepard?), but various reviews made it sound as if the execution transcended the lame conceit.

Based on the pilot, I don't agree. Too much depends on two things: Diggs' smile, and the baby as a signifier of various things. Diggs has a lovely smile, but that's not a reason for me to invest an hour of my very limited time. He made a very predictable transition in a very short time, with not a lot to justify it, other than loving shots of the cute baby. I've got a cute baby, so I'm less inclined to go, "Aw, of course he's tell his boss to go to hell for you" than, "where's he gonna get the money to maintain that snazzy apartment if he quits his job?"

Speaking of the snazzy apartment, I thought there seemed like a lot of ground level electronics and CDs that were in very easy baby reach. And on the baby reality front, it is likely that the baby at ten months old would be crawling. He microwaved a bottle, which is a dirty hot no no, and seemed strangely averse to just putting the baby on the floor, especially when she's not crawling yet.

The character of the sassy gay nanny George was a high point, but like the smile and the baby, not enough to sustain an hour of my interest. George is played by Patrick Breen, formerly the owner of the bookstore in which Joan of Arcadia works.

I will give Kevin Hill one more try and see if it manages to rise above its trite foundation. Perhaps my own cute baby makes me immune to some of its charm.

2004-10-06T13:56:00.000-05:00

A review of Wife Swap

First of all, the title. It's supposed to be postmodern and clever, but somehow it doesn't ring true. It still has echoes of icky, seventies-style pseudo-sexual liberation that were just a different way of treating women as objects. Ironically, though, the sex lives of the couples are never mentioned.

In the premier, aired last Wednesday on ABC, millionaire city mom Jodi switches with blue-collar country mom Lynn. Jodi's life is shopping and pedicures, while four nannies care for her three children and a maid takes care of everything else. Lynn works all day long. She gets up at 5:30 a.m. to drive a school bus, then chops wood for 3 hours, makes breakfast for the family, chops wood for three more hours, cleans the house and makes dinner. Lynn says she wants to do this because she feels her husband Brad doesn't appreciate her or help enough. It's unclear why Jodi wants to do this, though her husband Steven thinks it will be a learning experience for her. The voiceover tries to engage the viewers by emphasizing this Green Acres/Beverly Hillbillies switcheroo.

The swap takes place over two weeks. The first week the visiting mom has to abide by the house rules. The second week, she makes the rules. Jodi and Brad clash, but by the end each softens, and they end their time in cooperation and mutual respect. The same is not true of Lynn. While Brad followed Jodi's rules the second week, even though he didn't like them, Steven stopped following Lynn's after just one night. On the last night, Lynn leaves the house, telling Steven she won't allow him to treat her so poorly.

For a reality show, this one showed some surprising empathy. It was clear that three of the four people learned and changed from the experience. Brad not only learned to appreciate Lynn, he began to try harder to help her. Jodi and Brad both got beyond their stereotypes to the real people. Jodi resolved to spend more time with her kids. Lynn stood up for herself, though her judgment against Jodi and Steven for not spending more time with the kids never softened. The only person who did not appear to have learned from the experience was Steven, who came off as a pompous jerk more interested in spending time at the gym and dining out with friends than with interacting with his kids for more than an hour a day.

As with any reality show, I wondered what went on between the scenes, and whether what was shown was mostly true or a result of skillful editing. The takeaway here--we can get beyond our prejudices and learn from each other's differences--is pretty basic. They also showed way too many clips of Lynn and Brad's three-legged dog, in case we'd forgotten we were in the country. While it's got a bit more heft than the usual reality fare, it will have to continue to explore the complex human bits and not pander to the viewers by highlighting the ugly, sensational bits. I have not yet programmed a season pass on our TIVO.

2004-10-05T13:48:00.000-05:00

I wrote a review of the pilot of Desperate Housewives on Mama Duck.

2004-10-05T13:47:00.000-05:00

Happy anniversary

My husband G. Grod and I were married six years ago this past Sunday. Was the celebration of this fact what brought him joy on Sunday? Perhaps, but not as much as the Direct TV guy who successfully installed our satellite in time for kickoff of the Eagles/Bears game. No longer does my husband have to lurk at corner tables in smoky bars surrounded by Viking fans. Dad and son wore matching jerseys and enjoyed the game together in the comfort of our own home.

Later, our friend Queenie stayed with the baby while we went out to properly celebrate the day, in spite of my bad cold. We had an array of tapas: spiced almonds, Spanish olives, octopus ceviche, shrimp in avocado vinaigrette, beef carpaccio, seared scallops, tomato stuffed with tuna, and peppers stuffed with goat cheese, all followed by lovely desserts.

Things have been rough for a while, with baby sleep trouble, selling and buying, moving out and moving in. We hope things will feel settled soon. The anniversary dinner was good, and an oasis of time to savor that hope.

Happy anniversary, babe. And congratulations on that satellite.

2004-10-04T13:01:00.000-05:00

The first days of the rest of my life

I resigned my job in May to stay at home with our baby. We sold our condo and bought a house. We finally live in a neighborhood and have more than one bedroom. All the chaos of the past few months has been so we could get here, and begin to settle and live like real people, with a lawn to mow, neighbors to chat with and entire days to fill in ways that I hope will be more constructive than just chasing the baby around, or collapsing exhausted at the end of each day. Someone asked me recently how it was to be a stay at home mom. I said I'd let her know if I figured it out.

2004-10-03T10:43:00.000-05:00

The Spider detente

My husband and I now own an old house. It's a 1917 2-story craftsman bungalow. The previous owners left it broom clean--fine in the middle, but kinda icky in the corners. In an ideal world, we would have cleaned it thoroughly from top to bottom and edge to edge before we moved in. In reality, we had to negotiate to only have 25 days between our closings, since the previous owners wanted an additional 48 hours to move out. Extra time to clean between our closing and our move-in wasn't practical.

Over the past few weeks, I've unpacked and cleaned, trying to find the right balance between not obsessive, but not putting our stuff down in filth and cobwebs. In the process, I've seen rather a lot of spiders, and webs in many of the corners. My previous rule about spiders was that if I saw them, I had to kill them. I apologized each time, told the spider it had broken the rule, and spoke the rule out loud for other spiders to hear and be warned. Now, though, I think I may have to revise my plan. I've noticed that several of the corner webs have caught other unpleasant insects. Ants downstairs and a moth upstairs. I think I would prefer a spider to ants and moths. The last spider I saw, I allowed to scurry under the bed. I did not inform it of the rule. Perhaps it's true that spiders are our friends. I'm willing to give it a shot.

2004-10-02T20:38:00.000-05:00

I'm back, and I feel crummy

I am so out of practice with writing that I feel like I'm stretching muscles that are groaning in complaint. I am back in front of a regular computer, after being on the lam for almost a month. We sold our condo, went into a hotel, went to the State Fair, blew town for PA to visit my sister and my in-laws for three weeks, then back in a hotel, closed on our new old house and voila, we are now truly homeowners, and not pretending with a condo. The movers forgot some of our stuff and had it delivered the next day, but everything else went well. Our sofabed won't fit in the basement so we're currently exploring other sleep/sofa possibilities. We've lived here for two weeks, and things are simultaneously going well, and never, ever going to be finished again. We have a few renegade boxes on each floor, waiting for attention. My goal is that all will be emptied, even the one that never got unpacked from our last move three and a half years ago. The baby and I both have colds, so have been cranky and out of sorts all day. I know ice cream is bad for colds, but my throat is sore and I'm going to have some anyway. I apologize for the diary-like entry. I promise to try to get my writing groove back as soon as possible, but with the house and the very active one-year-old toddler, things are definitely on the challenging side.

2004-08-24T20:38:00.000-05:00

Homeless

We are, quite literally, without a home. Yesterday movers came to our condo in the morning and loaded up all our stuff. I did a quick but thorough cleaning, and we were gone, never to cross the threshold again.

It was the first place my husband and I owned, it was where our baby was conceived, it was where my water broke, and where all of us spent our first year as a family. But as I cleaned it, I realized that it was just an apartment. It's been time to move on for a while.

We closed this morning, in a quick and easy meeting that was even friendly with the new owner and his agent. But we don't close on our new house for nearly a month. In the meantime we're staying in a hotel and with family and friends. When we were asked, though, what our forwarding address was, we realized that we don't have one. We are in limbo till the middle of September, and thankful for mobile phones.

2004-08-24T20:28:00.000-05:00

Please, don't let me be misunderstood

I'm afraid that I might have given the impression in a previous post that I disdain Ikea and those who shop there. Not true, and I was too hard on Ikea and its shoppers.

I realized this when friends apologized to me after admitting they'd shopped there. I have to be careful where I point my rants.

Ikea can be a fun store, with some good design at reasonable prices. My issue is that when Ikea finally opened in Minnesota, people waited hours to get inside. There was a similar reaction when Krispy Kreme first opened here. I have no problem with frequenting these establishments. It's just waiting hours to do so that puzzles me.

2004-08-18T20:00:00.000-05:00

Not finishing books

I've started any number of books over the years that I haven't been able to get into--I stop after the first chunk of pages or chapters because the book just isn't drawing me in. Perhaps it's that I'm not in the mood for that type of book, perhaps because it's got a slow beginning, as some do, or perhaps I'm just not in the general mood for a book. So I either soldier through the slow beginning, or put it down and pick up something else--another book, a magazine, a comic. But there's another, final possibility, and that is that I simply do not like the book. In the past I would read the book anyway. I would finish because once I'm made it past that beginning point, reading was like a contract--a bet with the author that they could teach me something, or surprise me, or prove me wrong for doubting them. Lately, though, I'm not up for the contract. Life with a baby is life with far less time, and I don't want to waste that on things I don't enjoy. I read A Fistful of Rain by Greg Rucka, then The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. I didn't like either and finished both anyway, to my regret. I then read Father Melancholy's Daughter by Gail Godwin, recommended to me long ago by my mom. It had some good stuff, and some annoying. The main character's voice and that of her boyfriend were far too mature for their years. The author tried to explain this, but I didn't buy it. Next I picked up the sequel, Evensong. I read just enough to realize that the things I'd found annoying in the last book were magnified. I read a fair way in, then realized that I wasn't enjoying it, so I took it back to the library and moved on. Next I picked up Life of Pi, by Yann Martel. I persevered; the reviews had been so glowing that I thought I just had to get into it. Yet two-thirds of the way through, I was still non-plussed. I had zero emotional connection to the main character. And the voice was not that of a young boy in danger, but rather of a clever, nearly omniscient narrator. The voice was neither compelling nor believable. Again, I stopped reading.

I didn't realize quite how long the list of disappointing books was till I was in the midst of writing this. I think the last book I enjoyed, finished and thought was well-written was Rainlight by Alison McGhee. So I've started Shadow Baby, the sequel, in the hope of coming out of my rut.

2004-08-17T11:32:00.000-05:00

Jeans

The purpose of jeans is to make your butt look good. Don't let anyone tell ya different.

I went shopping for clothes for the first time since quitting my job over two months ago. I had a simple mission: a new pair of jeans, not too expensive. I wanted to get a pair that are long enough to wear with sassy heels. According to fashion gurus, unless they're cropped, jean hems should skim the floor to elongate the leg. My current favorite pair is regular length, and thus can only be worn with flats.

My husband, baby and I made our way down the street we are soon not going to be close to anymore. We started at Neiman's Last Call. Very few jeans at all, in mostly weird styles, and all Euro sizes, so I had no idea what to take to the dressing room. (Vague memories that Guess jeans in high school were also in those sizes.) Then on to Saks Off Fifth. Lots of styles, mostly WAY low cut and again with the confusing Euro sizes. The baby began to express his displeasure about the non-baby nature of the baby adventure. I began to despair of finding a pair of jeans that could accomodate my booty and thighs.

Next and final stop was the Gap, where I should have gone in the first place. Nice, normal sizes, accessible signs, helpful staff who recommended I try a different style and go down a size from what I was trying. Voila. Success. I got the regular length again, and was advised not to put them in the dryer to maintain their length.

2004-08-16T09:46:00.000-05:00

Can someone help me out?

I think my reading capacity may be broken. I'm in the middle of Life of Pi by Yann Martel, which has gotten a slew of acclaim. It's a young adult novel that crossed over to adult readership, so it's not only a genre I like but also a good model for my own novel in progess.

Yet I don't like it.

Has anyone out there read it and liked it? Am I missing something?

2004-08-15T20:43:00.000-05:00

We've got a deal

My husband and I had a long, dark, tea-time of the soul last week as we wondered whether to walk away from the house with a radon problem that the owner was refusing to even help to fix. While we pondered, we exceeded our 24 hour response time, at which point the owner could have sought other buyers. Instead, they contacted our agent with an offer to pay an amount equal to half of a less expensive radon fix than the one that's been recommended to us.

Because of the drain tile they have in the basement, the less expensive radon fixes might create a backdraft of CO2 from the chimney. So we're opting for the more expensive, non-backdraft option. But they did offer to do something, so we decided to go forward rather than to withdraw and start all over again.

It's going to be a hectic month, with closing on our place, going to a hotel, me and the baby leaving town again, returning to a hotel and closing on the new place, plus moving our stuff out and into storage then into the new house. But in about a month, we'll be the owners of a 1917 2-story craftsman-style bungalow.

Then I'm sure we can just relax and enjoy, right?

2004-08-12T07:35:00.000-05:00

House thought of the moment

Somebody's got to buy that jerk's house. It might as well be us, the cute happy family with the cute (mostly) happy baby. Just because the owners are jerks doesn't mean it's a bad house.

2004-08-11T22:14:00.000-05:00

Mean people suck

We had a radon test on our new potential house. It came back high, and the recommended fix is a couple thousand dollars. We put that on our request for the buyers, and they refused. Our agent spoke with their agent. He was upset with his clients. He'd advised them to compromise in some way, but they were both standing firm, in spite of our having made a full-price offer and allowed them to keep their requested closing date, 25 days later than ours.

If we have to pay for the radon fix, then it's one more expense on top of a bunch of others that we already know about. It's an older house, so we can be fairly certain there will be some surprises that we haven't foreseen, too, so the costs keep going up.

Going beyond the immature reaction of telling these people to get bent, I seriously wonder if we want to be giving money to people who are jerks. In theory, if we just make it to closing and they leave the house in the shape it was for the inspection, then we'd have the house, which is what we want. But dealing with these people at all fills me with concern. Yes, we're buying a house, not the buyers, but we do have to deal with them at least one more time, and with a house that they leave for us. Earlier tonight I felt that we should take the high road and do what we need to do to close on this house. Now, though, I'm filled with doubt. These people, and by extension their house and the financial transaction, aren't reasonable and don't feel reliable.

I think we've got three options: buy the house with the jerky owners; pass on it and continue looking; pass on it and take a break from looking for some period of time, say six months or a year, since we have to move twice anyway. At this moment, I'm leaning to the latter, because after three months of looking we found three houses: one that was already sold, one that the agent encouraged multiple bids on, which we lost, and this one with jerky owners. I'm worn out, I'm worn down, and renting is sounding awfully good right now.

2004-08-10T09:40:00.000-05:00

Feeling Minnesota

As we prepared to sell our condo and buy a house over the past months, we considered all options, which boiled down to three: remain in MN, move to OH by my family, or to PA by his. As we've gone through this first year with the baby, we've found it awfully difficult to manage on our own. We're introverts, we don't live physicallly close to other families, and we're not good at asking for help. Also, living near family is good both for family to see the baby, and for the baby, who gets to know his relatives better. Moving to either PA or OH would mean that we were closer to the other than we have been in MN.

After much deliberation, my husband and I decided that we'd like to stay in Minnesota. First, he has a job here already; finding a new one would be a big, uncertain variable were we to move. Second, I've lived in Ohio and we've both lived in PA. While there are lovely things about them, we wouldn't even be thinking about moving if not for family.

The more we discussed it, the more we realized that we really like it here. We like the weather, the politics, the convenience, the organic food, the restaurants, the movie theaters, the used book stores, our friends, the ice cream. The schools are good here. The house that we hope to buy is located within walking distance of a decent neighborhood restaurant, a public library, two parks, and a food co-op.

Staying in MN means we'll have to work harder--at building community with other families, at visiting our extended families. Perhaps we've made a mistake and will have to move again in a few years. But based on the best guess we have now, it feels like we're doing the right thing. All we can do is see how things play out, and keep an open mind for what unfolds.

2004-08-09T09:46:00.000-05:00

House update

Our offer on the house was accepted, provided that we close on their date, which is three weeks beyond when we close here. So we have to move twice, and store our stuff. The price tag for this whole crazy process goes up and up. We had the house inspected. While the stuff is mostly minor, there are rather a lot of minor things, including a high radon reading. Now we begin the negotiation on what they'll fix before they go, and what we'll need to pay for once we're there. I hope they're going to be more amenable to repairs than they were to the difference in closing dates.

The kitchen is going to be a challenge. It has no counters and no cabinets. Literally. Both those things are in a small pantry off the kitchen, which houses only a sink, a range, a radiator and a window. Not even a fridge--it's in a cubby off to the side.

The good news is that it's an older house with lots of character. It's in great shape, even considering its age. I looked at lots of younger houses that were rickety; this one is solid. Also, the current owner has taken care to preserve the nature of the house. It's in a good neighborhood, just a few blocks from two nice parks with good jungle gyms and toddler pools.

I continue to remain cautiously optimistic. There's a lot of stuff that can go awry between now and closing, but I think we'll be able to manage.

2004-08-04T12:19:00.000-05:00

We found another house; now we wait

The third house I looked at yesterday was a good one. The agent and I made plans for a second visit so my husband could look at it, and we signed a purchase agreement. We asked for a closing date in August, but they want September, and don't want to accomodate us in any way even if we do agree to be the ones who move twice. Interim housing and storage will likely cost us a couple of grand. If we want any leeway or consideration, they say they'll wait till the next offer comes in.

This whole process is making me feel ill. Why can't people just be nice?

2004-08-03T11:49:00.000-05:00

Highs and hells of househunting

We close in three weeks on our condo, and we haven't yet found a place. Time is running out, and the mood swings are getting more extreme. I start the morning hopeful, then crash around noon, pick up again in the afternoon, and crash again when we go out and see more stuff that doesn't work. Then at night I am exhausted, but have trouble falling asleep. Do we look into rentals now, or wait till after this weekend if we still haven't found a place? The baby hates driving around, and generates some truly painful shrieks while we try to explore neighborhoods. I am brought low by wondering if we will ever find a place that will compare favorably to the one we got outbid on. Our agent says she has never yet looked at so many houses with a client.

I am able to know that we don't really have problems. Yes, it will be a pain if we don't find a house, or disappointing if we find one and feel that we're settling, but these are inconveniences, not problems. We may have to move twice, pay for storage, take a longer lease than we'd like. These can all be managed.

But if you're wondering why I haven't posted, it's probably because I'm out chasing another listing. The good thing about our long hunt is that we've learned a lot in the process: we don't like houses with a master bedroom up and the rest down; we don't want a long drive anywhere; we may have to settle for just one bath; "gleaming hardwood," new appliances and new carpet are easy fixes that sellers use to cover up shoddy properties; we shouldn't ever rule out a house based on air conditioning or lack thereof; we like the character of older houses but our price range means that they are usually still pretty rickety; we are not fixer-upper people.

So we're looking for 3 bedrooms on one floor, more than one bath, updated enough to move in and not have to do major or immediate work, with more than 1500 square feet, in a reasonably safe neighborhood, and within our price range, which has inched up over our time of looking out of desperation. I am annoyed by how difficult it has been to find this combination of features. Over the course of our hunt, we've found two properties that fit: one had already sold the morning that we looked at it, and the other we got outbid on.

I really should probably be looking into rentals right now, shouldn't I?

2004-07-26T22:06:00.000-05:00

The agony of defeat

Our offer on the house wasn't accepted. Going out to one more property, raising my hopes yet again only to be confronted by rotting wood, old windows and that ubiquitous off-white speckly carpet that every seller seems to think will look better than whatever it used to be--I just don't know if I can do it anymore.

Yet we close on our place in a few weeks, and we have to go somewhere, so we have to keep looking.

My husband's idea is sounding better all the time: take the proceeds from the sale of our place, buy a Winnebago and drive around the country solving mysteries.

2004-07-24T23:09:00.000-05:00

Househunting

It feels like we've been househunting forever. In real time, though, it's been just under three months since we began. We took a month or so off in the middle to prepare our place and sell it, then we jumped back in.

It's an exhausting process, and I'm reminded a lot of dating. There's a lot of selective presentation and artful camouflage. Each time we go look at a property, I wonder, is this the one? I begin to evaluate before we even open the door. How is the neighborhood? Are there other families with kids? And then there's the reveal when we open the door. Is it an instant wow, as a handful have been? Is it homely, needing a bit more time to discover its potential? A few days, I've come home and collapsed in tears, crashing after getting my hopes up, only to be confronted by rickety, hodgepodge properties that would never work.

Today, though, we saw a house that finally seemed to have most everything we were looking for. We made an offer. Tonight, we found out that two other people did as well, so we're well and truly in a multiple offer situation. Every so often, a part of me wonders "What if we don't get it?" in a panic. Then another part of me shrugs metaphorical shoulders and says, "Then we don't. Someone else does, they get to worry about the few question we did have, and we'll find someplace else." I'm not quite sure where this philosophical part came from, since I usually operate my life by crisis management.

So while today we're in multiple offers, tomorrow we plan to attend two open houses and do some neighborhood scoping if the baby is in a good mood and up for the car time. And who knows where we'll be in a month? Literally. We sure don't. And, for the moment, I am actually doing a reasonable job handling that whopping uncertainty.

2004-07-21T10:12:00.000-05:00

This year's election

Two friends said to me recently that they didn't know for whom they were going to vote because they hadn't researched the presidential candidates.

While I support being informed, I don't think there's a lot to decide on in the next presidential election. Our current vote counting system does not support more than two candidates. While our nation allows for third party candidates, in practice they undermine the election process because they split the vote on whichever side of the spectrum they're running. When Ross Perot ran, he drew votes away from George Bush the elder, and Bill Clinton won. When Ralph Nader ran, he drew votes away from Al Gore, which allowed the race to be close enough that George W. Bush ended up in the White House on technicalities.

So when intelligent, politically liberal friends of mine say they don't know for whom to vote, I'm surprised, because it seems very simple.

If you want to vote for Bush, vote for Bush

If you want to vote for Kerry, vote for Kerry.

If you want to get Bush out of the White House, then Kerry is the best candidate, so vote for Kerry.

If you're not wild about Kerry and want to make a statement about the validity of third parties, then what?

Go out and do something about campaign reform, and how votes are counted. But don't kid yourself. This election is between Bush and not Bush, and not Bush equals Kerry. If you don't want Bush and vote for someone else than Kerry, then you're voting for Bush anyway. This is a two party, two candidate race. Pick one.

2004-07-19T22:05:00.000-05:00

Embracing mediocrity

Ikea just opened a store in MN. What did my fellow statespeople do? They didn't wait hours to get inside a big box of a store that features cheaply made items that aren't that cheaply priced, though some of them are cleverly designed, did they?

They did.

Wait hours.

Don't you people have anything better to do?

Come over to my house. Help me clean it. Watch the baby while I exercise, or read a book, or write, or nap.

Hours to get into Ikea. I shake my head.

2004-07-15T16:46:00.001-05:00

My suspicions, foiled

Did anyone else surmise that the blond daughter of Peter Parker’s landlord in Spiderman 2 was Gwen Stacey? It seemed too odd to me that I didn’t remember her being named, she was blond, and she offered Peter cake, which, as my husband G. Grod noted after his second viewing, was the turning point for Peter.

He did not notice what I recall, which is that the cake was not actually chocolate, but yellow with chocolate frosting.

I could be wrong, both on her not being named in the film and the cake, but imdb.com lists her credit as Ursula, so I guessed wrong. Damn. I was feeling all geeky and clever.

I noticed, and G. Grod confirmed and expanded upon, several pop film references: Evil Dead when Doc is in the hospital, Jurassic Park when he’s coming for Peter in the coffee shop, Matrix when Peter jumps off a building and Superman 2 when he reaches for his uniform that isn’t there.

2004-07-15T16:46:00.000-05:00

Bad blurbs

My recent dislike of a novel that most others seem to like has left me newly aware of blurbs. I have a background in marketing, so I’m quite familiar with using what is said and unsaid to imply great things and cover up lame ones. The book I disliked had a slew of blurbs, from both newspapers and other authors. I recently came across an article about a British author who candidly (brazenly?) admitted to giving favorable blurbs to books that she hadn’t read or that she didn’t like. She said that it was a nice thing to do, it gave her and her books exposure, and someday she might want the favor returned. This somehow didn’t surprise me, yet still disappointed me. It affirmed my stance on blurbs, which has stood me fairly well:

Ignore all those by individual authors. Attend only to those from reputable news sources (for me, New York Times and Publishers Weekly for books, NYT and Roger Ebert for movies.)

2004-07-14T16:32:00.000-05:00

Why the shellac?

Did anyone else notice Jennie Garth’s makeup during last week’s episode of Celebrity Poker Showdown? It looked like someone had laid down a quarter inch of spackle. Why, why? She’s cute, and if I remember correctly, she has very fair skin with freckles. During the show she looked as if she had on a mask.

When I am queen of the world, there will be far less hair straightening, that is as long as the natural curls and waves are attractive (I’m talking to you, Nicole Kidman, Gwyneth Paltrow and Julianne Moore) and absolutely no covering up of freckles (again with you, Ms. Moore.)

2004-07-14T14:37:00.000-05:00

I never thought I'd write this, but

Another problem of being contrarian (see yesterday’s post) is that it becomes humbling when one changes one’s mind. I’ve been visiting my folks in central Ohio for three weeks. Ohio, that I have said I hate visiting, the only reason to go there is for family, and I would never live there.

Yet the baby and I are surrounded by family and friends, and while organic food is a little tougher to come by in Minnesota, I’ve spent time on two lakes (Erie and Buckeye, respectively) and continue to have a lovely time. I’m seeing more of my best friend than I have in years, and yet I still haven’t run out of things to talk about.

It drove me crazy to be an adolescent here. Was that because of Ohio, or because of me?

An ex once joked that the town I grew up in is like Twin Peaks--we’d just stopped to admire a robin frolicking in a puddle in the driveway. Yet is there a dark underbelly, or were we just being young and cynical and bitter?

Why am I looking at real estate listings here?

I’m sure my husband will put a stop to this as soon as I get back to Minneapolis this week.

2004-07-13T14:28:00.000-05:00

Countering popular opinion, a losing battle?

I recently finished reading The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, and find that I am one of the few people who disliked it. And I’m not just talking about Jane Q. Reader, but even The New York Times and Publishers Weekly liked it.

Here’s why I didn’t like Kidd’s book. I didn’t think she sustained a believable voice for her 14-year old narrator throughout the book. Sometimes it was good, but sometimes it was not. Also, the main character is a white girl who comes to self-knowledge and acceptance through the help of African American women, one of whom is not just a metaphorical nanny, but was the actual nanny to the girl’s nervous, unstable mother. Can we do away with these clichés that do no group any credit? Finally, there was nothing surprising to me in the book—a sad thing happens, it is a common sad thing and it happens to the type of person that this sad thing always happens to. Other predictable things happen, the end. This wasn’t a bad book. It was a fine book with some issues that bothered me so much that I can’t recommend it. But now whenever someone gushes about it, I’ll either have to fib, evade, or expose myself as the weird person who disliked this book that others have found so enjoyable and heartwarming.

I had as similar experience recently with Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison. It was fine. Annoying in parts, funny in others, but overall I can’t recommend it. I wrote a review at amazon.com that they still haven’t published, and if it is published, I’m certain I’ll get unhelpful votes from all the many people who disagree with me.

Some movies I’ve disliked include E.T., Circle of Friends, Braveheart, Gladiator. On the other hand, I know lots of people who hated Moulin Rouge, and I loved it. I think that there’s a lot to be said at taking things in context, and not expecting something to be more than it is. Old School, for example, is a good, funny movie that’s a good rental. I’m not going to evaluate it in the same way that I would a complex film. I think a lot of people disliked Moulin Rouge for its clichés, yet I found that the clichés worked for me—it told a predictable story in a manner that was anything but. Moulin Rouge was a spectacle, not an original drama. Of course, the fact that it had my boyfriend in it might have also made it a little easier for me to digest. But I can’t disagree with those who didn’t like it because it was trite.

Having strong, minority opinions is tough. It’s easy to be shrill or conflictual. As cranky and grouchy as I can get, I don’t actually like playing the part of contrarian. It’s tiring and there’s not a lot of personal satisfaction in it.

2004-07-12T14:02:00.000-05:00

Simple, supposedly

Every so often, I’ll have a specific thing in mind that I want or even need. I go to look for it, though, and it’s impossible to find. Either it doesn’t exist, or it exists in a form that is not what I want, or is more than what I need.

My husband and I recently had to replace our toaster oven, since the old one had been through more than one kitchen fire. (During which I always had the presence of mind to unplug, then throw baking soda.) We wanted something small, inexpensive and with a pull-out, rather than a flip-down crumb tray. We could not find it. The smallest, least expensive model had the annoying flip-down tray, which I blame for the previous fires. Models with pull-out trays were usually large enough to roast a chicken and expensive as well. We finally settled on one that wasn’t so big, and wasn’t so expensive, but I’m left annoyed. What I want in a toaster oven is simple—the ability to toast. Conventional toasters don’t work on muffins and other non-bread shaped goods, and even for those they’re not ideal. I don’t want to spend over $100, and if I’m going to roast a chicken, I’ll do it in my self-cleaning oven, thank you.

Another item that I find is overfeatured is SPF in lip stuff—gloss, balm and colors. SPF in lip stuff makes mine peel, but I have a really hard time finding stuff without it. Stupid merchandisers latch onto certain features then flood the market with them. And perhaps stupid consumers purchase them, either not caring, surfing the fad, or not noticing, leaving persnickety folks like me to our frustration.

A few years ago I searched for a new shower head—I wanted one that I could remove the water saver on for good water pressure. I have a lot of hair and regular water pressure makes washing a time-consuming and frustrating event. I also wanted one that was detachable for easy rinsing when I cleaned the shower. When I went to look, though, I could find reasonable (not good, and not tamper-able) attached heads, or detachable ones that were not at all tamper-able, and had 89 different massage features. I didn’t want. We settled for an attached shower head, and cleaning the shower has been more a pain ever since.

I find this all very aggravating. For all the simplicity movements that are out there it’s ridiculous that we have to be barraged (and pay for!) stupid features we don’t want, we won’t use, and endure products that don’t really do what we want. I think there’s a market out there for reasonably-priced stuff that does what it does simply and well. Why is that so hard?

2004-07-08T08:46:00.000-05:00

Get outta town

Sorry I haven't posted. My husband and I hired a pro to stage our condo before putting it on the market. She went down the details of which book was on which table. The thought of maintaining that, while juggling baby feedings and naps with showings was simply too much, so the baby and I are staying with my parents for the first few weeks it's on the market to give it it's best chance.

I've not been writing, but I have been reading. I finished The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead, a meaty read that I sank my mental teeth into, but the ending of which I found vague and disappointing. Next was Rainlight by Alison McGhee, a book so nearly unbearably sad that I didn't know if I could continue. It was beautifully written with characters that lurk still in my consciousness, plus it had a redemptive ending; I love those. I borrowed the copy of Julia Strachey's Cheerful Weather for the Wedding, a Persephone book that I'd given to my mom. Although billed as a bittersweet comedy, it was too sad for me. I think I should have instead got Mom Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson, also from Persephone.

I'm currently reading The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, which many people have recommended to me, but I'm ambivalent. The main character's voice, that of a fourteen year old girl, does not ring true for me, and periodically jars me out of the reading experience. I seem to be in the minority of people who don't love this book. But I'm still in the middle of it, so I hope things improve.

2004-06-21T17:43:00.000-05:00

Annoying stick figures

Are they annoying because they're stick figures, or is their annoying-ness coincident with their skinniness?

Two of my most hated TV characters are Marissa from the O.C. played by Mischa Barton, and Fred from Angel, played by Amy Acker. Will someone please buy these actresses some sandwiches?

Barton seems to ascribe to the Neve Campbell school of acting--draw out your lines, widen your eyes, pout, then widen your eyes again. Argh. Watching it is torture.

I wonder if there's any way to watch the O.C. and skip over the parts with Marissa and Ryan and just watch for Summer and Seth?

I was excited when the character of Fred was killed on Angel, though they did a stupid plot twist that kept the actress on the show. The show was cancelled, though, so she was put out of my misery in one way at least.

2004-06-21T17:32:00.000-05:00

Self tanners, yet again

In a moment of weakness, I had another go with self-tanners. I tried Clarins Soin Teinte Auto-Bronzant Tre Haute Protection Special Visage (i.e. Tinted Self Tanning Face Cream Very High Protection). The woman at the counter said it didn't smell and it wasn't orange.

Wrong, and wrong. It does smell and it is a little orange. It does a reasonable job of not looking too fake, but I will remain content having tried a sample and will not purchase the big tube.

According to a recent article in some magazine (I think the In Style with Jennifer Garner on the cover), all self tanners smell because of the chemical that interacts with the top layer of skin. Some just hide it better than others, but all of them have it.

Just for clarification, though, products like Sally Hansen Airbrush Legs are not self tanners. They are spray paint for legs. Airbrush Legs doesn't smell, but it is slightly orange, and after a second use, I don't think I'll try again. I simply don't have the energy it takes to scrub the tub of that orange coating. It's not an easy clean up. And I feel very, very sorry for people who don't use it in the tub.

2004-06-13T21:50:00.000-05:00

Our condo is a Glamour don't

My husband and I are getting ready to sell our condo. It's a one bedroom, and we probably outgrew it even before the baby arrived, but we've toughed it out till now. Our agent came to look at the place, and she wasn't thrilled. She was polite and diplomatic enough to say so, but what she didn't say spoke volumes. She recommended that we call a woman who helps stage properties for sale.

The stager came on Friday. Some of what she said I already knew--we had too much stuff, especially in the closets, and needed help weeding it out, and with organization. The tougher message, though, was that we'd need to rent furniture and store our own.

I felt like I was on What Not To Wear, with the fashion consultants saying that our stuff just didn't cut it. This evaluation shouldn't have been a surprise. Our love seat and sofa are 10+ years old. The dining room table was a cheapie from Best and we got rid of the rickety matching chairs years ago.

Nonetheless, it was tough news to hear. I don't like to think that we've got shabby stuff, but the upshot is that our place is nicer than the stuff we've got in it. In order to show it to best advantage, we've got to make it look not only cleaner and less cluttered, but like we're people with more money and better taste.

The hope is that by spending money on staging, we'll be able to sell our place for a good price, and also sell it quickly. I'm relieved that we're going to have help with the organizing, but chagrined that we need nicer stuff, and worried that it might not pay off in the end.

2004-06-09T21:34:00.000-05:00

The wedding, already

I've been writing here and at Mama Duck about my trip to England for a wedding, but haven't yet written up to the wedding itself. So here it is.

The day of the wedding was bright and warm with a breeze. England was showing off--it was something like the sixth beautiful day in a row, and no one could believe the weather had held. The setting was a country castle with stunning grounds and gardens in the full bloom of spring.

As we drove up to the castle, my American friend and I exclaimed over the sheep, the blue sky, the rolling green hills. Our English friend laughed at us, and stopped the car so we could get out, take pictures and exclaim some more.

"They're actually saying 'Baaaa!'" I noted excitedly. We jumped back in the car and distracted English friend, who nearly bumped another car as he pulled back onto the drive. That driver, understandably annoyed, did not beep, or curse, or give us the finger. No, he raised an eyebrow at us sardonically. English friend laughed at this. "Oh, that's so....ENGLISH!"

The bride wore ivory silk satin, with diagonal ruching its only detail. The groom wore a smart grey lounge suit--that's a gray suit to us Americans. The colors were pink and celadon.

The ceremony began with a civil service, at which I read an excerpt from a letter by Abigail Adams to John Adams. Another guest read from the poem "The Irrational Season". Children from the audience called out to the bride, who laughed and smiled. Two of the young bridesmaids played with the train of her dress, petting the heavy silk.

After the civil ceremony there was a Jewish blessing ceremony. The rabbi/cantor sang in a clear, tuneful tenor, the parents offered the kiddush cup and all signed the ketubah. The groom needed a mulligan for the breaking of the glass, but crushed it soundly on his second try, to joyful cries of "Mazel tov!"

Cocktails followed on the lovely grounds of the castle. A woman in a pink hat told me I had a lovely accent. Not sure how to take that, I simply responded, "Thank you." For the meal, I was seated between the gay rabbi and the bride's gay vicar cousin. I have an M.A. in religion and nearly converted to Judaism ten years ago, so she thought, correctly, that we would have an interesting table.

The vicar started by asking me, "What about Iraq?"

I sighed. "I'm sorry. I didn't vote for him. And I didn't vote for a third party person either. Did you know that the Republicans have been donating money to third party candidates in order to try to replicate the division?"

And we were off. The table discussed global politics, local AIDS activism, Jewish education and popular television. The vicar professed that he loved American sit-coms, especially Will and Grace and Frasier. I said that I didn't care for those, that I thought their best seasons were behind them, but I did take the opportunity to recommend Scrubs and Arrested Development. The rabbi complimented Americans, saying that we were one of the few countries that actually liked England; most of the rest of Europe didn't. Then he complimented American television also, singling out Six Feet Under, which I reminded him was conceived and written by Alan Ball, who is English.

Dinner began with risotto of asparagus with parmesan crisps, followed by grilled halibut with haricot verts and finished with a pudding of warm tarte tatin, spun sugar and vanilla ice cream. Afterwards, the bride and groom executed a skillful foxtrot to Sinatra. Later in the evening there were further puddings: a several-tiered "cake" that was actually a series of miniature cakes of vanilla, chocolate and berry mousse topped with glazed fruit, nuts or chocolate. Alongside coffee and tea were petit-four plates, dark chocolate espresso beans, milk chocolate almonds, and dark chocolate truffles from my favorite non-local chocolatier, with silver gift bags for take away.

At 22:00, guests were directed back out to the castle grounds, where we were entertained by an array of fireworks with musical accompaniment. At the end of the evening the bride and groom made their way to an antique Rolls Royce, which drove down a path lined with further fireworks. "It's a good thing the rockets are pointed away from the car," a friend noted, "burning the wedding couple as finale would be very sad."

2004-06-07T22:03:00.000-05:00

Lost, again

We're back in England, two weeks ago, where I was for my friend's wedding.

After a restoring cup of tea, I watched the mother of the bride try to control the six children who were in the wedding. When she achieved a level of failure slight enough to be deemed success, the children went to dinner and the father of the bride got me a ride toward town with the parents of the groom.

As sometimes happens with weddings, I found myself kindly looked after. I told them I'd get a taxi from their hotel to mine, but the groom's father insisted that they'd see me there personally. After my long journey out to the country earlier in the day, I was glad to accept.

At the hotel, I met with two friends from the states, the only other wedding guests I knew. I had just time to shave my legs and change before we set off back to the manor for dinner.

And then we got horribly lost.

In spite of two maps, and even though we stopped for directions not once but twice, we remained lost and went far south of our mark on the A4. We were trying to find the 343, which was clearly marked on the map, but not on any of the signs. We found out later that this was deliberate, so that the road wouldn't be overrun by tourists. Their attempts succeeded. We couldn't find the 343 to save our lives.

The bride called when we were thirty minutes late, and again at an hour. Someone from the manor told us to follow signs to something that sounded like "Wash Common" over the crackly mobile. After a few more roundabouts--we literally almost went back to our hotel to turn 'round and begin again--we saw a sign, let out a great cheer and were on the correct road.

Dark had fallen, so we found ourselves driving through shadowed canopies of trees, but eventually we arrived to a lovely dinner, at which more acquaintances were made. I went once, then again to the cheese plate, which had a particularly lovely white cheese called Covdale, made from semi-pasteurized whole milk. I chose to have two desserts as well. Thus fortified, I felt ready to brave the drive back.

2004-06-04T20:51:00.000-05:00

Go team!

Where was I for my husband's team's triumphant pub-quiz victory? Home, putting the baby to bed, listening to him cry for a half hour, changing a poopy diaper and listening to him cry some more. You can read more exciting details at Mama Duck. Or you could read about the pub quiz victory at Velcrometer and Frolic and Detour.

Hmm. I'm trying to make this sound funny, yet it keeps sounding bitter. I need to get out more.

2004-06-03T20:37:00.000-05:00

Getting to know the father of the bride

In my role of helper for my friend's wedding in England, I was to accompany my friend's father to the wedding dress shop, pick up the dress and ride with Dad and the dress to the country, where the wedding would take place the next day.

My friend's father was out of sorts when I arrived, anxious about having to drive through busy London to the inconveniently located shop. His anxiety was not misplaced--it took some time to get there, then there was no place to park within a kilometer. He asked hopefully if I might walk to the shop and carry the dress back to the car. I said the dress would not only be bulky, but also heavy, so we'd have to get closer to the shop. He drove 'round while I fetched the gown, then we loaded it into the car, and our troubles began.

We were to head back across London to the M4. Yet we were immediately in a traffic jam and fast running out of gas (petrol). After some time we got out of the jam and into a gas station, but continued to experience delays. when we finally made it to the manor where the wedding party was staying, we'd been travelling over three and a half hours. It was a journey that would normally have taken less than one and a half hours.

Over the course of our long drive, the conversation ranged widely, and I enjoyed getting to know my travelling companion. He could not understand why the wedding gown could not have been delivered--"absolutely crackers." I found he'd been listening most recently to Beethoven and doing a guided study of Elizabethan drama. We both agreed that the wedding ceremony was an oft-overlooked part of the modern ritual, with too many people placing too much attention on the party aspect. When I said I'd just resigned, he noted that there was a lot to be said for stay-at-home mums. (This was in interesting contrast to his ex-wife, an erudite woman with an enviable career history, who seemed baffled that we were not just getting a nanny, and looked shocked when I said the baby had been in daycare.) He recommended a book I mentioned in yesterday's entry, called The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. I countered with Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem. We both waxed ecstatic at the blue sky fluffed with white clouds, the green of the countryside, and the blooms of lilac, chestnut and wisteria.

And upon finally arriving, we both fervently answered yes when asked if we'd like some tea.

2004-06-02T10:15:00.000-05:00

The circle of hell called Selfridge's

As I mentioned in my earlier post on shopping styles, I like to shop department stores. So when I was in London last week, I very much looked forward to visiting Selfridges. After plunking down luggage, I called my friend and said I'd meet her there.

I walked in the door, looked around and thought happily, "I love department stores". And that's where my happiness ended.

I tried to call my friend on her mobile. Two problems. One, I hadn't yet used the phone to call internationally, and it didn't seem to be working, and even though I'd prepared-ly brought the instructions, they didn't help. Two, I couldn't be sure because it was so fucking loud in the store that I couldn't have heard the phone ring if it were working. I tromped up and down stairs, up and down escalators, trying to find a quiet place. I failed. Finally, I located a bank of pay phones and scraped up enough change to call my friend. I got cut off when the 30p ran out and only had 17p left so I couldn't call back. She found me, though, and fixed the number list on my phone(adding a +) so I could call both her and home.

We completed a few more errands and were finally able to leave the store. The whole experience left me rather shell-shocked. I just finished a wonderful book called The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon, the main character of which is a boy with Asperger's Syndrome. When he entered stores that were too crowded or noisy, he fell to the floor, covered his eyes and ears, and started yelling. Shopping at Selfridge's made me long to do the same. I do not exaggerate. I thought longingly of creating a counter-irritant to the store by poking myself with a sharp stick.

Selfridge's did a redesign recently,. Instead of things being grouped by category, e.g., men's, juniors, china, they are grouped mostly by designer, e.g., Pucci, Nicole Farhi, Thomas Pink. Marshall Fields, in fact, based some of their State Street store's redesign on Selfridge's example. I can't say, after having experienced the original, that I think it was a good model. The store was loud and hard to navigate. There were some fairly simple items that were probably in the store somewhere, but that we could not locate.

Over the next two days I had to visit Selfridge's twice again. Once to buy a white shirt for my friend's brother for the wedding (he'd got himself locked out of his house somehow), and again to buy an emergency suitcase since I didn't think I'd have enough room in the one I'd brought to go back since I'd bought a few things: plain chocolate HobNobs, five Persephone books, and stuff from Jo Malone.

On both my subsequent trips, I found the correct strategy. Walk purposefully into the store, quickly locate the correct area by asking, then approach a salesperson and state what I needed: first, "a white shirt, size 16, slim fit, nice but not crazy expensive"; second, "a small suitcase or duffle, not a rollaway, inexpensive, so less than 25 pounds". In both cases, the salesperson was able to locate something suitable in mere moments and I was out the door in about ten minutes, with no longing thoughts of sharp sticks.

2004-06-01T08:03:00.000-05:00

New career

I think I would be remiss in not mentioning here that which I have been writing at length about on my other weblog Mama Duck.

Two weeks ago I resigned my job, and today is my first official day as a stay-at-home mom. I have opted out for a number of reasons. The baby has been constantly sick since starting daycare in December and there was a lot of turnover there. My husband and I decided that we would like him to have one caregiver and that we would like it to be one of us. Since I'm still nursing the baby, and since my company is up for sale, I'm the one who resigned.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am going to be scrupulous about chronicling my new life on Mama Duck. I have no interest in pretending to be Super Mom. When I announced my decision at work, many women offered congratulations, said I was lucky to be able to make this decision, and that they were envious. While I'm happy with the decision, I know that it will be a challenge. I've put a serious handicap on getting future jobs, we've taken a serious pay cut, and being with the baby all day with encompass both good and bad, though in different ways than did being at work all day.

2004-05-27T20:34:00.000-05:00

Delayed, then hopelessly lost

I was in England last week for a friend's wedding. I got in Thursday morning prior to the Sunday wedding. I had only two things I wanted to do while in London. I figured I'd work them in around helping my friend prepare for the wedding.

On Friday, I offered to do the stationery run. She needed gift bags, gift wrap, cards, ribbon, balloons, and takeaway bags for chocolate. Feeling clever and confident, I avoided the tube lines with delays. I got off at Wallace Street, then walked down Tottenham Court Road first to Confetti, then to Paperchase. I found all items, though had some trouble deciding on cards. Carrying the large, heavy bag of wedding swag, I determined that I'd probably be better off walking to my next stop, the Persephone Books shop, one of my two must-visit places. (The other was Jo Malone, which I'd visited earlier, where I bought Fig and Grapefruit colognes, plus Nutmeg/Ginger bath oil and some gifts.)

I first heard about Persephone on Chicklit. They're a small publisher that resurrects titles by or about women and prints them in new, lovely soft cover editions. Each title has a unique end paper pattern selected from classic textile prints. I bought several books for gifts, and my husband eventually surprised me last Christmas by ordering some for me. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is the story of a down-on-her luck woman who goes to a job interview and gets far more than she could have imagined. It's charming and funny and reminiscent of a 30's mistaken identity movie. The Home-Maker is more serious, about parents whose roles are reversed when the father has an accident and the mother takes a job outside the home. I found its analysis timeless as I wrestled with my own decision to continue to work or to stay at home.

I made my way past Russell Square and the British Museum and was warmly greeted by Nicola when I arrived at the shop. I had planned to purchase only three Persephone titles: Hostages to Fortune because it's about parenthood, Miss Ranskill Comes Home because I like the yellow rose pattern of the endpapers, and The Blank Wall, because it was the basis for the James Mason movie The Reckless Moment, which was remade more recently into The Deep End. I left the shop, however, with six books. I also purchased Greenery Street, a book about happy marriage, for myself and my friend. Additionally, after I'd shared with Nicola that I had a 9-month old baby boy back in the States with his dad, she recommended Little Boy Lost, after reassuring me that it would not be too upsetting.

Newly encumbered, I set off for my friend's house. In addition to the stationery bag and the bag of six books, I had an overstuffed handbag, which contained, among other things, a breast pump, City Secrets London, Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd, and a gluten-free sandwich bun. When I finally made my way onto the Piccadilly line, there was standing room only. This was difficult with my many bags, and made more so when they announced that we had to disembark because the train was unsafe. The rush-hour platform was already crowded, so I moved back to the wall. A woman complained loudly to the tube staff person that it was the third delay that week. A portly, older gentleman with a round, fruity voice admonished her that she shouldn't be complaining to the tube staff. The problem, he noted to all within earshot, i.e., everyone on the crowded platform, was Bush. I sighed, embarrassed for my country. He went on that Bush and Blair were spending their countries' money on illegal wars instead of public transport. He and the complaining woman crammed themselves into the next train, but I waited for the train after next, on which I got a seat.

I exited the tube station and called my friend, who said it was a 10-minute walk past some shops. Arm-sore and exhausted, I walked, and walked, not checking the time because to do so would stop forward momentum; I'd need to put down the bloody great bags in order to check my watch. Finally I called, lost. The traffic from the road was so loud that I couldn't hear, so the mobile was useless, or even worse, because it kept ringing and answering it meant juggling bags and still not knowing where the hell I was. I did eventually find my friend, or rather she found me. I'd missed the turn to her street and blundered into the next post code.

2004-05-26T19:10:00.000-05:00

Accessory du jour

What was the most au courant accessory in evidence at the English wedding I just attended?

Blackberries, a.k.a. Crackberries.

To their credit, the guests (and bride) who had them weren't using them. Much. Though if the wedding had been the day before, concurrent with the F.A. football final, I think there'd have been more a struggle.

2004-05-25T20:37:00.000-05:00

Up is down, black is white,
I'm in London, so left is right

I'm just back from England, wherer I was for my friend Chrestomanci's wedding. My husband and I decided that discretion was the better part of valor, so he stayed home with the baby.

Yes, the English drive on the left side of the road. There are helpful notices at each street corner directing pedestrians which way to look. But even if one isn't driving, it's easy to be disoriented. Or run down.

I had trouble walking about on sidewalks and tube stations--foot traffic follows the same pattern. I had to walk on the "wrong" side to avoid collision. Tube stations were particular congested and hazardous, as they are mostly filled with harried, hurried Londoners.

The wedding was in the country--more about it later--so much car travel was required. Two friends quite capably handled the driving duties, for which I still feel a surge of gratitude. I had a difficult time navigating on foot--a vehicle felt quite beyond my capabilities.

2004-05-24T18:52:00.000-05:00

Where in the world was Girl Detective?

Just back from England, where I was for a friend's wedding. I'm exhausted, and happy to see the baby even though he's crying himself to sleep. More later this week.

2004-05-17T20:48:00.000-05:00

Shopping Styles; where's the quiz?

If you read other people's blogs, you'll see an astonishing array of quizzes. It's like Cosmo gone mad. What personality type is your blog? What book/movie star/sitcom character/world religion represents you as a person, blah, blah, blah.

I thought of the quizzes the other day when I went shopping at an outlet mall in Albertville, Minnesota. I had a specific task to complete, I'd identified the store, found it was only at the outlet mall, and finally found time to schlep 45 minutes out there, only to be reminded why I am not an outlet girl. There were hundreds of stores, and RVs parked at the edges of the lots. Outlet malls are all about having cheap depth within narrow stores. The store we visited was no different. It was crowded with parents and babies in big strollers, with grandmotherly types who kept grabbing tags and saying "These are such good prices!" The racks of clothes were so close that it was difficult to navigate, even without a baby in a stroller. (My husband had the duck in the Baby Bjorn.) I was looking for something basic and couldn't find it in the size I needed, so kept having to look at other crowded racks of stuff that I just didn't want. It all gave me a headache, but we did what we needed to do, and got the hell outta there.

I shop like a princess. I want nice stuff on racks or around aisles that are clean, tastefully done, and easy to navigate. And I want the stuff to be in my size, by a designer I recognize, and at least 40% off the original retail. Even better is an additional percentage off a markdown. I can do a Marshall's, or a TJ's, but really my ideal is a good department store having a great sale.

I don't need a quiz to tell me this but I think it's worthy of a quiz. What kind of shopper are you? In-n-out? Catalog? Outlet? High-end discount, like Saks Off 5th? Discount stores like Kohls and Target? High end department (Neiman's, Saks), middle (Bloomingdale's) or lower?

2004-05-13T20:40:00.000-05:00

Trixie Belden is back!

And I found her at Target, of all places.

There they were, four of my favorite books ever, in brand-spankin' new hardcover editions, starting with The Secret of the Mansion. The blurb on the back introduces Trixie as a 50's heroine, so they're not trying to tart her up for today's teens by modernizing her. How they would modernize things like a brother named Mart, "jeepers!" and Bob Whites of the Glen is certainly something to ponder. The cover art is pleasingly retro, striking a good balance that shows that Trixie isn't a modern gal, yet she doesn't look _that_ different.

I'm so pleased she made it back into print. I hope the young geek girls of today come to love her just as much as I did.

2004-05-12T19:11:00.000-05:00

Not Real, Not Simple

I've written before that I think Real Simple magazine is a sham. It's all pretty pictures of stuff that ostensibly makes your life simpler, but that's suspiciously expensive and complicated. For example, what's simpler? To stock up on candles, wine and other items for hostess and other last minute gifts? Or to politely opt out of tchotchke dumping and instead be a gracious guest with your behavior?

My junk mail filter informed me that I'd received yet another solicitation from them. I can't block the address, because they're doing sneaky things with the sending address to prevent that. I don't know how they got my email, but I went to their site to get myself taken off. I checked all the right boxes and then was told it would take a month for me to be removed from their list, the list of other Time Warner magazines, outside vendors and a fourth thing.

If Real Simple were really simple, it wouldn't be sneakily sending spam, taking too long to undo mail lists, and selling email addresses to all and sundry.

Bah.

2004-05-11T21:36:00.000-05:00

The siren song of mediocre movies

My friend Michael says there's no such thing as a bad sports movie or a bad teen movie, because even when they're bad, they're good. He's wrong, of course, but he makes a good point that there can be good things about bad, or just not-great movies.

Mediocre movies don't require much investment. You put them in, enjoy them for what they are (usually a by-the-numbers genre pic) and then you're done. I've watched very few movies since I had the baby almost nine months ago. Of the movies I've watched, many have been mediocre. And not by accident. I'm tired. All the time. So mediocre movies seem to be about my mental pace, plus they're usually short. But in the end, they don't satisfy. Lately we watched DVDs of The Italian Job and Shanghai Knights. They were fine. They had their moments. But they are utterly forgettable. And Shanghai Knights was about half an hour too long for how slight it was, so its length undid much of its potential charm on me. School of Rock was somewhat better, as was the third Matrix movie. But they weren't great. The other night I was finally up for something substantial. We watched Miller's Crossing. It was violent, it was cynical and it was over 2 hours. And it was really good. I miss really good movies. It's hard to work up the gumption to see them--the time, the energy, the mood if they're dark or depressing. Subsisting on mediocre ones, though, is like living on fast food. One could do it, buy why would one want to?

2004-05-10T12:00:00.000-05:00

Hey, lookie! I've got a comments feature now. Please use it with reckless abandon.

2004-05-09T21:18:00.000-05:00

We interrupt this mothers day....

I moved to Minnesota from Philadelphia in June of '98. I was unpleasantly surprised to find huge uprooted trees wherever I looked. I'd known to be prepared for bad winters. Bad springs and summers, though, felt more than a little unfair.

Last night, I'd just begun the bedtime ritual for the baby when I heard the sirens. At 5:25 p.m. the weather channel said we were in the path of a severe storm and a tornado had been sighted. We had a few minutes, so I grabbed my purse, the new Greg Rucka novel, the diaper bag and some chocolate, then made sure my husband had a backup of my novel and the computer. We put the baby in the stroller than went down to the basement of our building. The warning subsided at 6, we went back upstairs and the baby was asleep by 6:30.

2004-05-05T21:35:00.000-05:00

It's the texture, stupid

I've tried a lot of moisturizers. Both ones I've bought as well as samples I've received. I've tried expensive ones from Neiman's, and cheap ones from Target. For nearly all of them, the verdict is the same: Fine, and doesn't seem to do any harm. I've tried Clinique and Clarins and Lancome and Estee Lauder and Dr. Hauschka and Sisley and Neutrogena and Nars and Aveda and even Creme de la Mer. I could never see a difference. My skin didn't look bad, but I couldn't lie to myself and say it looked any better. There were differences, many in smell. The Nars smelled great, like fresh citrus. The Lancome and Clarins smelled too strong, as did Aveda. And I just didn't get why people gush over Creme de la Mer. It was fine. Nothing more.

There was one product by Sisley, the elixir, that did make a difference. It wasn't a daily moisturizer, though, and it costs quite a bit.

Other than that, though, there have only been two moisturizers that have held my attention. One is Darphin's Arovita C, with a citrus scent and whipped texture. I scraped every last drop out of my sample jar and have never managed to summon the chutzpah to spend the $150 or so on a a full-size jar of it.

The other is Shiseido Bio Performance Super Advanced Revitalizer. At $65 a jar, it's not an outrageous splurge. It has a light scent, and I'm not convinced that it does make my skin look better. What it does do, though, is make my skin feel better. When I put it on, I feel moisturized. It has a plush, creamy texture that's not at all waxy or greasy, as I felt the Creme de la Mer was. Its tone is a soothing pale pink. And so I will buy it again.

What distinguishes a cream, then, is less what it does, or purports to do. It's about how it makes me feel. The color, touch and smell of the Shiseido is comforting. I'll pay $65 a jar for that.

2004-05-04T19:23:00.000-05:00

Guilty pleasures

I watched the second season of Newlyweds on MTV. I'd read that the first season was funny and even when I realized that the second season was forced and not so funny, I watched anyway. It took me a while to figure out why, but I realized that I could relate to Jessica Simpson. Yes, she's a child bride, and a pretty blond pop star, while I'm old enough to be her mom and consider myself an intellectual, but aside from those....

OK, well the differences are large and obvious. I kept watching because sometimes I say dumb things. Sometimes I feel dumb. Sometimes I feel like I'm completely a frivolous impractical princess type and the only thing tethering me to reality is my nice husband with his Lutheran values. So I watched Newlyweds and secretly cheered for Jessica, and sympathized with her silly moments. I found it strangely liberating to celebrate the ditziness. And the vicarious shopping was not bad either.

2004-05-02T20:40:00.000-05:00

House hunting

My baby started crawling two weeks ago, so we called our realtor. We went on our first round of house hunting yesterday. I'd forgotten a key element to making it go smoothly: wear slip-on shoes, since most houses, at least here in Minnesota, have a sign requesting guest to remove footwear. I wore sneakers. Whoops.

We saw five houses. One looked good at first, but the entire house sloped alarmingly downhill. Another had nothing to recommend it. One was so well updated that I was trying to rationalize it, even though it was way too small. One had hardly been updated since it was built in the 40's, but was so well-kept that it was charming, not alarming. And one was a very close fit. Except that it had sold that morning.

House hunting is nerve wracking. And we've only just begun.

2004-04-29T19:51:00.000-05:00

How is it that I still love magazines when I know their secret?

It's that they're all the same. They say the same things every month, and from year to year. It's drivel, really. And yet, I cannot turn away.

2004-04-28T08:36:00.000-05:00

Estee Lauder, visionary

Estee Lauder, founder of the eponymous cosmetics empire, died this week. Thanks to my friend Myron for noting that Estee was the inventor of the cosmetic gift with purchase, a frequent obsession of mine. Estee started her career by peddling home made concoctions. To get people hooked and make them feel clever, she'd always give them something free as well. People thought she was crazy, yet she died one of the richest and most well-known women in history.

The Lauder company has continued to remain relevant over the years, buying up smaller, chic-er beauty lines such as MAC, Bobbi Brown, Stila, Aveda and Jo Malone. Most people don't know these lines are owned by Lauder, and that's intentional. The new lines are allowed to keep their small, individual-owned vibe, while Lauder diversifies its product offerings and has greater control over the industry.

2004-04-24T13:41:00.000-05:00

Amazon reviews

I just finished a book that I barely liked. Yet it received great reviews, both in the press and at Amazon, so I'd felt pretty safe spending some time with it. Now that I find that I'm wrong I wonder, is it something with the reviews, or something with me? There are a couple potential contributing factors.

First, the book could just be one that I don't like that others do. No right or wrongs about it, just a matter of personal taste. This is the most likely culprit. Closely related to it is the possibility that I just read the book at a bad time. On another day, in another frame of mind, I might've liked it. This is also possible.

The reviews, however, are suspect. I've long maintained that the reviews at Amazon are a useful tool, not to be taken as gospel. Generally, something with a very high rating will be good, or at least enjoyable, and something with a very low rating will not be worthwhile. I then delve into the review themselves, and dismiss the ones by people who can't spell, or who who otherwise identify themselves in some way as an unsophisticated reader. There was a recent kerfuffle, where the anonymity function of reviews broke down and you could view who actually wrote the review. Quel surprise that there were authors touting their own books and dissing those by competitors. I recently saw a review, well after said kerfuffle, on a mom book that was written as if it was by a mom, yet the email address was a man's, with the same uncommon last name as the author's. Hmm.

Even more suspect is the function that allows people to rate reviews as helpful or not. I've found that negative reviews of positive books tend to earn unhelpful ratings. I'm guessing that this rating is not done by someone shopping for the book whose decision not to buy was clinched by the negative review. Instead I think it is done by people, authors or their friends who slam negative reviews of books they like, or in which they have a private interest.

Consumer reviews can be great things, since they are less likely influenced by corporate pressure. It is also far easier to find consumer reviews than professional ones--there are only so many things that the New York Times and Consumer Reports and Cooks Illustrated can review over time. The problem, though, is that consumer reviews are subject to other types of manipulation. Because of this, and because they are open to all, they have a huge signal to noise ratio.

Where does this leave me, in the wake of finishing the well-reviewed book? Still leaning to my original guesses. One of the positive reviews was a starred one from Publisher's Weekly, a usually reliable index. I am left wondering, though, whether I should add my voice to the din at Amazon to cry out my contrary message. Why bother, I think, I'll only be slammed as unhelpful by the seething masses who loved this book. And yet, isn't that the beauty of a democracy. I may get slammed, but I have as much right and as much ability to post as anyone else. Perhaps I'll save another person the time, albeit slight, that I feel I wasted.

The book I didn't like? A young adult novel, Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison. I did write a review, but it has not appeared yet, even after several days.

2004-04-22T11:53:00.000-05:00

Lost in Translation: sleeper or snoozer?

On Ebert and Roeper last week, they mentioned recent complaints from people about Lost in Translation. People chastised them for recommending the film, which they thought was overrated.

Ebert wondered if viewing it on DVD was the reason people now were reacting so negatively. He speculated that it was a film that played better in the theater than at home.

I think there's some merit to this argument. I've read there is a physical difference in how our brain processes movies versus DVDs. In movies we subconsciously take in the series of individual images, and the spaces between. DVD, though, is a continuous image and is processed differently by the brain.

Whether or not this is true, I think that there are understandable reasons for Lost in Translation to receive different reactions. I saw it in the theater. Much of what I enjoyed was its mood and texture, both of which benefited from a large screen. The main characters tended to be maddeningly vague, though Bill Murray managed to make this endearing and Scarlet Johannson managed to not make it annoying.

In the confines of home and couch, I can imagine that the mood and texture would not come through so clearly,and a viewer would try to focus more on plot and character, which are not strengths here.

A few years ago, Ebert and Roeper recommended Wong Kar Wai's In the Mood for Love. They waxed rhapsodic on this film several times. When my husband and I got it from Netflix, though, we had to force ourselves to watch it through to the end. Like Lost in Translation, it is a film that relies much on mood and physical setting, with vague, sad characters and an indistinct story and ending. We could recognize that it was a beautiful movie, skillfully made. Yet we didn't enjoy watching it. We had a similar reaction to people who are disliking Lost in Translation on DVD.

Another possibility, though, is that people go in with overly high expectations, or expectations that they'll see a different type of movie. If you go in expecting My Big Fat Greek Wedding and instead see something subtle and atmospheric, you might be disappointed. Movies aren't apples to apples. Yes, some movies are just plain good. Others are good within their type, and depend on what you like. John Hughes made some very good teen movies, but they are not going to stand up well in comparison to something like The Godfather. And if you don't like teen movies, you're not going to like even the best John Hughes movie.

So where does this leave Lost in Translation? Overrated, or misunderstood? I vote for the latter. Maybe mood movies don't play well at home, or its reputation has exceeded its merits. These don't preclude it from having been a sweet little gem in the theater.

2004-04-21T22:05:00.000-05:00

Hey, can you tell how thrilled I am to be posting again on a semi-regular basis here and on my other blog, Mama Duck?

You know what I love?

Writing.

Ah.

2004-04-21T22:00:00.000-05:00

Blog topics

I write about what occurs to me on any given day. Or, since having a baby, something occurs to me that I want to write about, I forget it, I remember it, I repeat this process a few times, then finally manage to make a note of it in my PDA. Later, if the note makes sense, I actually write about it.

A recent entry on self tanners happened that way. I saw a few people on the street and thought to myself, "Ooh, fake tan--really orange. Bad decision, sister." I remembered and forgot a few times, made a note of "orange" in my PDA, finally figured out what I meant by it and wrote the entry on my continuing push/pull to experiment with self tanners when I know how wrong things can go. And at the end of the entry, I mentioned that my sister had recommended Sally Hansen Airbrush Legs. Ever since, I got several hits a day from people searching for reviews of it. I felt kinda bad that they were coming here just for a throwaway sentence, so I got the product, tried it and then wrote an actual review.

It's a funny side effect of the site meter that it can provide a little window into momentary confluences of pop culture. It's happened a few times, and I'm always surprised by what topics are getting the most searches. I certainly don't plan for it, and I can't always provide what people are searching for. And with some search phrases I wouldn't want to. But a product review of an inexpensive self-tanner that I was going to try anyway? No problem.

For those of you trying to figure out if it's safe to use self tanners during pregnancy, you shouldn't be looking to me for your answers. I'm not a medical expert, just a pop culture maven.

Instead, do what I did. Go here to have an expert at Baby Center tell you that it is.

Whether you want to is another story. Clarins Self Tanning Gel didn't work on me during pregnancy. The woman behind the counter speculated that my skin reacted differently because of the hormonal, metabolic shifts of pregnancy.

2004-04-20T19:52:00.000-05:00

Review of Sally Hansen Airbrush Legs

Though my sister recommended this product, I was prepared not to like it. It's not that I don't trust her, but rather that I've come to have a deep distrust of all self tanners.

Additionally, the claims on the label seemed over the top: "Flawless, healthy-looking legs...Imagine the feeling of absolute freedom...now at last, spray-on perfect, luxurious legs in an instant. Silky smooth to the touch--optically slimming. Weightless. Long-lasting. Transfer resistant. Enriched with Vitamin K to help treat and soften the appearance of Spider Veins, bruises and scars."

First off, I think they need to get a good copyeditor, because the use of hyphens and capital letters is a little whacked. But after using the product itself, I must admit I was wrong to doubt my sister. Sally Hansen Airbrush Legs doesn't suck.

You should follow the usual advice for self tanning: exfoliate, then shave, then moisturize and add extra lotion to the ankles and knees. It's best to apply in the tub, because you will make a mess. Wait at least the 60 seconds recommended on the label. Put on long-leg pajamas that you don't mind getting a bit discolored.

The spray formula is a little strange, but it works and is easy to blend immediately after it's sprayed on. I did get a little anxious that I wouldn't get it blended before it set, but I did OK. Use a light touch around ankles and knees because they get a bit darker than the rest. The color is a bit orange, but not overpowering. I chose "Light Glow" and applied just a little to try, and it added color without being obvious.

This is a fine product and one I recommend and will use again. It did a reasonable job of tinting my legs with a little mess in the tub, no staining of my clothes, and no obvious blotching or flagrant orange.

As for those grandiose label claims--optically slimming, soften[s] the appearance of spider veins, bruises and scars--I'm afraid I still have my doubts.

2004-04-20T07:33:00.000-05:00

Mad Scientist Manicure, part 2

Last night I started by rubbing Baby Aquafor on my hands, then added and rubbed in Clinique Deep Comfort body wash, then added and scrubbed with Fresh Brown Sugar scrub. These three products together produced a vaguely unpleasant smell, though it dissipated when I rinsed them off and finished with Sally Hansen Radiant Hands. My hands were softer afterwards and this morning than they had been the previous night.

I think starting with a good, thicker moisturizer as a base works well, but I need to find something that will work with the other products.

2004-04-20T06:49:00.000-05:00

Mad scientist manicure

Caring for a baby and changing lots of diapers has me washing my hands all the time; they've gotten pretty crackly. Last night I mixed Clinique Deep Comfort Body Wash and a couple teaspoons of Fresh Sugar Scrub and rubbed all over my hands, then rinsed and put on Sally Hansen hand cream and Dr. Hauschka's Neem nail oil.

The results were good. I'm going to continue to tinker with the recipe, though, and see if I can do better.

2004-04-19T17:58:00.000-05:00

Men's grooming products

I spend so much time obsessing on my own beauty products that the last thing I want to do is worry about someone else's, like my husband's. But trying to find a hair product for him has been a giant pain, because I can't NOT care. My biggest complaint is smell. It's one thing for me to smell like Aveda. For him to be wafting that distinctive fragrance just seems wrong. He's tried a number of products that one or the other of us has vetoed: Sebastion Molding Mud: too greasy; Zirh hair gel: didn't do a thing; Aveda brilliant anti-humectant, Control Paste and one other product that looked like Self-Control but they don't carry anymore: too perfume-y; Aveda Self-Control: easy to use too much and look stringy; Physique, Crew and who knows who elses' pomade: too smelly, too greasy, just wrong somehow.

After running through all these, my husband is resenting the hell out of me not liking how some of them smell if they work. I beg him to try one more product. And voila. Frederic Fekkai's Grooming Clay is good--little fragrance and good hold, though hard to wash off the hands.

I finally realized what I want in a men's styling product--stealth. It has to do its job, do it well, and not let you know that it's there.