Oct 31, 2008

Picture Books


The Neiman Marcus Christmas Book arrived today. It's a picture book, and I sat down ready to make jokes about anything St. John, white dresses with black hose, and old lady suits on young models, but those items were pushed aside by costumes that reminded me too much of art, too much of needing to be touched, to poke fun. NOIR designer, Peter Ingwersen, said that the purpose of clothing is for sex. When I look at a slim silk chiffon Marhesa dress in cream with tiny fur cuffs adorned with chrystals, my mind turns to everything tactile - harsh and soft and simple. The same with a DvF tank dress in black velvet with a low, low cut. It's hardly naked; maybe a better invitation. Or the Prada or McQueen offerings in black, which, although always unaffordable, can still service an imagination. How have they learned to style so much material, so much shine and zipper and fluff and collar to conjur up dominatrix? The tops are marmish, the coats too often a joke, but the dresses are probably worth every penny in an Ingwersen sort of way. If I could only think of a way to make animal print go away forever. NOIR is not in the NM catalog. It should be.

Oct 30, 2008

Eyebrow Style

Hot topics for 2009 are earrings, eyebrows, and hands. The best thing about eyebrows is that with rare exception, they don’t age so much. Jaw line sagging? Direct attention up to the eyebrow. Bags under the eyes? Tweak the arch and extend the line towards the temple. That’ll get people’s attention. I’ve always had a crush on eyebrows. I love to look at a well-groomed pair, to see in which direction the hairs grow – whether they fan or river or both – and examine which sections are full and which are thin. On the face, only the iris contains as much pattern and intricacy, but inspecting people’s eyeballs that up-close is can send the wrong signal. I'm interested in patterns, not a life commitment. Yes, a cool eyebrow is hard to beat. From their high perch, they speak volumes about the person whose forehead they adorn. For example, you know that woman standing next to you at the deli counter, the one shaped like a tiny snowman with the red rinse in her beauty parlor perm and a set of thin, drawn-ons that no one’s been able to get away with since Claudette Colbert? She got into her own groove in 1962 and nothing is ever going to disrupt her lifestyle choices. Her now equally diminutive husband has been feigning hearing loss for at least two decades. I can tell. Who needs Lillydale? It’s all in the eyebrows.

Yes, eyebrows speak volumes. A former sister-in-law plucked most of hers out in high school, and they didn’t dare come back. That’s all you need to about her. (That and when she thinks you have visited long enough, she’ll start vacuuming under your bed at six in the morning.) Then there was the time my twelve year old noticed that her eyebrows were growing in so much darker than her long locks, and I insisted on experimenting a la L’Oreal. She wore orange eyebrows for several weeks, eyebrows that told everyone the truth: she is a sweet, trusting child and her mother doesn’t know her limits.

My fascination began in high school, after a gym class when I was privileged enough to watch the prettiest girl in the school put on her make-up. She grabbed a tool I’m not sure I had ever seen before, an eyebrow pencil, and extended an already beautiful brow one half inch further out. For reasons probably known only to street corner characterature artists, that tiny extension seemed to create her face – without it, she would have been stuck scrapping it out for the Miss Congeniality award. It was also traumatic because then, of course, like any insecure teen, I had to inspect my own. Yep, there they were. Plastered across my forehead as if dragged there one car trip by the magnet in a Wooly Willy face game. The hairs didn’t follow any particular growth pattern, except to be mashed there in a shape my brother called the Lake Superior look. Widely dispersed and caret shape to boot, I was lucky he didn’t conjure up the Wicked Witch of the West moniker. I was afraid to pluck them, actually, out of fear that a thinner shape would make the caret more pronounced and turn me into Julie Newmar. Having Catwoman’s forehead while under the roof of a mother who would never let me wear a catsuit didn’t seem worth the effort.

But after about two decades, I began to notice. Eyebrows were all over Hollywood. Pixie-featured with man brows, Winona Ryder stole the stage with her Tayloresque ridge runners. And I never once over-estimated Julia Roberts big grin, understanding that her brow power deserved almost equal credit. Now, you can spot one Olsen twin sporting a set of brows thicker than her forearm, and as a second to putting meat on her bones, it works. Frido Kahlo’s unibrow was so intense she had to balance her canvas with images of black cats and monkeys, while Pam Anderson channels Jean Harlow by shaving off and starting over. She doesn’t count, though. As a man in my office said, “Who knew she had eyes?” All I needed was something in-between to give me a little drama, a look that said, “Pay attention to me,” instead of “I’m distracted and unkempt.”

I started considering my options. A pair of tweezers and a DIY mentality resulted in a McDonaldsy arch and a look my girls called my “Happy Eyes” period. But more sophisticated grooming tools, from razors and shears, to threads and hot wax, sounded more like yard equipment and cult accoutrements. I found a brow shaping kit at Sephora, but as I read about the shaping guide, all I could imagine was an architect’s template. I would pop $80 for the kit and end up with a half of a handlebar mustache over each eye. I purchased a clear mascara wand to give my eyebrows lift and direction. All I got was a desk full of schmutz. I tried pencils, hoping to recreate that high school magic. But I’m here to tell you, if you rub your temples after the sixth time your kid has called you at the office, your eyebrow extension looks like a stock market chart.

I did the only sensible thing. I walked into a make-up store, found the lone attendant, and cornered him. “I’m here for my brows. Is there any hope?”

He studied my face in that disconcerting way that wanted me to add, “No, just the brows. I’ll deal with the rest later.” Then he grabbed my jaw with his hand and said, “I can fix this.” And he did. He plucked under. Of course. Then he plucked over to lose the witch’s peak. Aha! Then he worked up and down, over and above until I felt that by now, my brother would be rendered blissfully speechless. Then he pulled out a little pot of brow shadow and a delicate little brush that I knew I would lose within the week, and said, “Use this, only this.” And apparently because he thought perhaps my make-up bag bore enough sparkle and blue eyeshadow for all the world’s Olympic gymnastics teams, he added, “And don’t be sharing this brush with anything else.”

Although I finally found a fix, the good news for cosmetics companies is that my bad brow legacy continues. “Mom!” my daughter laments. “Whenever I go in to get my nails done, the Vietnamese ladies always ask the same thing, ‘You get eyebrows done? You here for eyebrows, too? No? You sure? I’ll do for free.’ It’s not fair, Mom. I’m getting a complex!”

Maybe I can help her better this time.

Oct 29, 2008

When the TV is Off

On Grade 13 Exam:

How did George Washington get from place to place?
a. a dogsled
b. raindeer
c. old fashion car
d. walking

The correct answer, according to teacher Ms. Edit, is C.

There were other questions, such as why is a paper bag in the shape of a rectangle, and what type of pets do you have. Edit used the piano bench as her desk, and from there taught three students: a webkinz chipmunk, a webkinz cat, and our dog. Edit claimed that the dog was fairly good at answering questions, but became too much of a disturbance for the chipmunk and cat and had to be demoted from student to class pet.

Edit tells me that she is voting for O'Rock Obama, no matter what anyone else does. He can't lose with a name like that, I tell her. "Are you voting for that lady?" she asks. "That lady," I tell her, "thinks Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a Dinosaur." As Edit is less than fully versed in the meaning of the J-nouns in my response, I can only imaging that as she stares at me, she sees Palin on a sauropod. It's a payback. I'm stuck picturing George in a Model T.

Oct 27, 2008

A Rose is Nothing New Under the Sun

I came across a NY Times article for Likemind, which is networking for creative professionals who gag at the word "networking." Likemind was created by two guys - Noah is the head of strategic planning at an internet marketing company and Piers runs a trend consulting business. Both career paths are heavily dependent on introductions. If Noah were on the line at an assembly plant and Piers a registered nurse, I might trust the "just a gathering" label, but I can't. The people who go to the coffee-infused social gatherings abhor the suity, stuffy concept of networking, except that seems to be exactly what they are doing. Networking while acting too pretentious to be network makes me want to, well, like gag. Saying one thing while doing the opposite wasn't invented during the last eight years, but has it always been so prevalent? Forget technology, our best export product during the next decade should be our marketing skills. Who needs math when we can relabel, repurpose, reexist, respin anything, as is evident from the new Urban Outfitters catalog. I'd take the Silence & Noise band jacket any day because who wouldn't want to be visually connected with George Harrison (except for, maybe, his ex-wife), but the rest of the catalog is so my high school it is scary. It is all the same dusty browns, blues, and greys, the same shapeless plaids, only cut a little shorter and a little lower and worn by lithe, pouty teens instead of the wholesome Sears book models. But, again, the result is transparent, and not in a good way. We suffered in that stuff thirty years ago, and if the shopper would think long enough before getting sucked into the Midsummer Nights Dream escapism of the spreads, you see that it doesn't do much for these models, either. Throw a t-shirt or turtle over that bare breast, and it's still a big 'ol sweater from 1974 (that has most of the white across the tummy and hips, please). Even the furniture is a redo by any other name.

Oct 26, 2008

Bare City

"C'mon. You need a break. You sneaked away on your birthday, but now you're back. Let's go to Great Wolf Lodge Spa," my girlfriend said. It's an indoor water park loaded with life-sized mechanical moose and bears. "There isn't enough wine in the world," I said to my friend. "There's always enough wine," she replied, and booked space for us, and our girls.

Towns that house Great Attractions always seem stuck in 1963, except for the occasional almost-goth, not quite punk gang roaming about with one skateboard to share. Every house looks like it could use a bath, every yard a lawn service. (One front yard might have been decorated for Halloween, but we couldn't tell.) All the incoming money gets poured into and just as quickly out of the Great Attractions and the people that live around the GAs work these establishments at service industry pay scale. As my father used to say about the ghostly New York side of Niagara Falls, it had had a carnival atmosphere, a fun fair mostly about illegal fun. Once the prostitution and gambling got shut down, the carnival closed. Even when the GAs are legal, however, there is no escaping the carnival atmosphere. It shows up in lawn decorations, window treatments, and pastel pallets.

As Lexi, Edit, and I drove towards the lodge, we passed a huge, aluminum industrial complex. "This must be it," I said, not expecting much and thinking that all the inside waterworks would require such a structure. But as I drove on, looking for an entrance, I spotted the over-sized Yellowstone ranger lodge around the corner. This was more like it. At least we weren't getting tetanus just walking through the front door, I thought. Nope, we were getting mechanical howling wolves, talking moose, and one neurotic tree.

"Wait," my friend said. "I'll get us a bottle."

Everyone needs a friend like her. Everybody should be tight with someone who can come up with "I tried Rogaine on my eyebrows, and nothin'." Or "I just polished off a whole bag of goldfish in the bathroom, gross," with her disgust aimed at the fact that she ate the big lot of it, not the location of the consumption. When I think I am in the middle of something outrageous or stupid or both, she has already been there. Exponentially. She makes me feel as close to normal as is possible, but I'm not sure what role I play for her: an apprentice? Perhaps an Ethel or girly Poncho Sanza, except she is no screwbally redhead or Don Quixote. She lives quite rooted in reality, albeit a reality that requires a staff.

"Oh, do you have an organizer, too?" she asked in all seriousness, when I told her I was working hard to get my house in shape. I meant garbage bags, Ikea boxes, and a mop. She meant someone with a notepad.

After we spent hours standing in stairway lines mostly naked, waiting for a chance to ride each water slide, she uttered, "Slim balls. It's like a gastric bypass in a pill. You swallow one and it fills up your stomach. Fifteen pounds the first week." Then she laughed at herself for buying into what is most certainly a scam. I could barely get past envisioning what happened to these balls after they deflated, but I was so impressed that I managed to form the phrase, "Me want some." But there wasn't even time to dream about being the Olsen Twins. We had to find a place inside that would serve martinis. "Wait," I said, as the group was about to head out of the hotel suite. "I have to put on mascara." "What for?" she replied, forcing me to look up and about at the collection of wet heads and unadorned and consider our manless circumstances.But what she really meant was, "Hurry up already," because my friend was on more than a martini and dinner mission. The next night she and her husband were going to a Halloween party as Eliot Spitzer and escort, and she was facing a terrible wardrobe malfunction. A CO2 laser treatment to her chest gave her a sunburned decollete and white cleavage line of demarcation. She figured a tattoo of flowers or thorns along the line would soften the difference. We had to stand in line with the six and seven-year-olds, waiting her turn to ask the young spray paint artist to fix her breasts.

The kid, dressed in a pirate's costume, never broke a sweat. A true professional. And you knew he still lived at home with his mom, in one of the cottages we passed by on the way to the water park.

Oct 25, 2008

Hear, Hear

A beautiful earring compliments the side of the face and does wonderful service to hair. A big gold hoop is an invitation to mate; all that sparkles and dangles is an offer to say hey. We haven't seen much earring flash in the past few years, what with all the bangle bracelet noise and Flintstone-esque necklaces. This year's look mirrors the bracelet trends of last year, in mostly lightweight, delicate, and dangling styles, or anything bauble or rope. Just about the only look I dislike is the simple geometric shape, usually a circle or small rectangle, with the designers' names or initials etched in. Yawn to me, but guaranteed to be top sellers.

No matter the style, I can't wear them. My ears fight to heal; my lobes prove a painful battleground between the metal and the flesh, and the flesh never caves. So in the time it takes me to take out a stud and say, "Damn you, ears," the wound has healed. If I want to put the earring back in, I have to use the stud as a needle.

"I want these," I said to my husband, looking at an Annie Adams simple long raindrop loop in sterling with a tiny purple stone. "You can't wear them," he said. "It doesn't matter. I still want them." He walked away.

Earrings, from top: Gucci, Cohen, Gucci, Nak, Yurman

Oct 23, 2008

Drug Therapy

Some drugs help you gain a different perspective on life. LSD, for example, can give you a six hour escape into the mind of a kitty cat, if you should ever care to go there. And Topomax, a drug for epilepsy sufferers, offers insight into what it feels like to be Kurt Cobain. And Dan Quayle. I had received a prescription of it for migraine relief last year and quite quickly said, "Stop that" to my doctors. I had never before experienced such overwhelming sadness, along with a complete emptying of the brain. After three solid weeks of pounders, however, I recently thought I'd give it another go with the leftovers, and boom, within hours of a single dose I was crying for the last goose in the V-formation and forgetting what street I lived on. I walked into my office after the morning field walk with the dog (after I found the office) and said, "Who comes up with this shit and does anybody want to try it?"

Maybe it would be good relationship therapy for those who have to live with those who are chronically depressed. Have them dose up so they can feel it, and understand that depression can be something on beyond what most of us would feel on the worst of days. But it is also scarier than we appreciate. It is heavy, but light at the same time. "Everything is incredibly horrible and insurmountable, but nothing really matters because I'm over hear sideways on another plane," a splitting sensation that explains suicide in a way that may help us learn to prevent it.

I went back to the doctors. I asked for something that would make me feel like a serial killer, or maybe a politician. But instead they shot up my shoulder with steroids. Too much typing, they think, that's why my head hurts. I'll go with that 'til my brain returns. Now, where's the dog ...

Oct 22, 2008

Carrie Griffin

"You're like Carrie," my daughter Lex would say.

"That's nice, honey. Who's Carrie?"

Lex will grow up to be a comedy writer. She wants to be a doctor, she says, a plastic surgeon, even, sucking up to me. But I am afraid I can sense that she is born to suffer a different life. When she was five and six, when she was fearless and full of herself, she didn't mesmerize people with her uncanny recall or philosophical ponderings, no. She would say things that would make adults turn and look at her, then start to belly laugh. Ten years later she got hooked on Family Guy. I had never heard of it. I would see the animation and say, "Hey, that little guy is a creep. Why is his head like that. And are people hearing what he is saying or is he using baby speak and it is translated for us for the humor value? This is annoying. That baby is annoying. Why are you watching this?"

"Shhhhh," she would respond.

Two years later, I get it. I'm in awe. It's sideways thinking and free association comedy, and I don't hate Stewie. As much. So she knows comedy. She has a gift. And when she is done with this teenage stuff, when she can write about me without the fear of instant and proximate reprisal, she will be set for life.

None of this was my point.

My point was that she watched two series when at 14 years she had to go to a new school and hated everything and mostly me: Family Guy and Sex and the City. I let her. We have a rule in the house. Sex? Okay. Violence? No. Violent Sex? Really no. Animated crudeness and nudeness? I guess. The only thing she would ask for for a holiday gift would be a season box set of one or the other. No music. No clothes. It was all very sad.

But I wasn't following any of these programs, so when she would make remarks like the Carrie one above, it meant nothing to me. Now that I know who Carrie Bradshaw is, I think back and ask, "Why?" No, "How? How can I remind you of Carrie." She has great clothes, a fabulous career, and racehorse pony legs. She'll drop hundreds on a pair of shoes. If I even think of spending more than $79.99 on a new pair, I start to hyperventilate.

Maybe she thinks I'm Carrie because I sit in front of the computer too much. Or complain.Or sit in front of the computer too much and complain.

But anyway, one cold winter weekend, as Lexi rested completely withdrawn and wrapped to the max in my king size duvet, she said, "Come and watch with me. You'll like it." And because I sensed that finally a bigger thaw was appearing on the horizon, I did - an entire year's worth of episodes in one long overnight. That's how I learned of the series and of the fact that I'm not a Carrie. Two years later when the movie came out, Lex, who had seen the show the night before said, "C'mon mom. We're seeing the movie tonight. "You're gonna love it. I cried. Oh, and if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything. No bad mouthing. No criticism. You will love it." So we went. I ate popcorn and held my tongue. She, after making sure I got out of the house, sat by my side and texted her friends.

She's the Carrie of the family.

Oct 21, 2008

Pink Castles to Frat Houses

I barely made it on the plane back home. The gnome's itinerary said 9pm, but the flight was scheduled for 8. "You're here so late," all the beautiful brunettes said to me, looking concerned and sort of cross, although too young to do cross with any credibility. "I don't know, it says 9," I offered in brilliant repartee. "Do you have luggage?" Only the limited crap carry-on I had been cursing the whole trip. "Fine, you can try," they allowed, and I bolted towards the runway. "Nice, carry-on, beautiful, carry-on," I thought.

I was the last one to board. There was no room in the overheads, and it was the same crew that I had flown down with, in front of me was the same attendant who had to deal with the the crabby old man who didn't want to check his oversized carry-on. I pulled out my wallet, for wine, and stole her line "I'll have to gate check this, I'm sorry."

"I think we can find some space in first class," she smiled.

Mona recently told me that I'm a pushover. That I'm too nice. I don't see any need to change. I get just enough positive reinforcement from not being a dickhead to others, to believe that it is the way to negotiate life.

I banged through the front door at mid-morning, and headed into the office. I spent a day and a half on mails and magazine deadlines, but this was also Senior Week at school. I had gotten the official notice from the Dean of Seniors, something that read like, if you allow the students to have the senior party at your house, imprisonment will surely follow. "Did you see that notice?" I asked Lexi. "Oh, that. They say that every year. They don't really mean it." At 2 am, and following whatever party that someone was not officially having, I heard the front door open and kids shuffle in. A group had decided to sleep it off under my roof. After all had gotten quiet, I went back downstairs to check on everyone. As I turned to descend the last four stairs, I could see a boy's body on my bathroom floor, with an opened, overturned bucket of practice tennis balls for a pillow. I got him up and walked him towards a spare bed.

Oct 20, 2008

Mr. Blackwell and the Fishes

I kissed my Mona and her guy bye. At least he tried hard enough to buy the afternoon sandwiches at the Italian cafe, but suddenly it worked. I said, "I'm older, you lose," and he acquiesced. I mean, I like to take care of people. Besides, they don't have the money. Nobody consumed anything at the table besides the olives and the espresso. They would take the sandwiches home and survive on them for the next two days. If I were the one staying behind, I would have finished the paninis off in fifteen minutes then gone looking for a bottle of sauvignon blanc to wash down the residual from the green olives. Frugal is such an ugly word. I have finally accepted that I obstain only by preoccupation, not from any ability to deny myself, and so be it.

Preoccupied with catching an A Train for JFK, I left kids and sandwiches behind and headed for Argentina. I don't remember much about the trip. I got on the the middle seat in the third to last row. We watched a man try four times to stuff a carry-on into an overhead compartment. "Look at him. He's at it again," I said to the woman next to me, feeling uncharacterstically talkative. "I know. He's something. I work with him," she said.

"I'm sure he is lovely," I added, then straightaway took an Ambian and dreamed of pierced snake tongues for the next nine hours. I awoke in Buenos Aires, a few days before I was to be 50 years old. It was cold and gray and I wore creamy white. The city looked tired. The city looked mostly tired of not having a lot of money, except for the shiny, tall Sheraton where the convention was. The taxi would not pull up. I had acquired it at the airport taxi stand, but it must have been a gypsy, for it left me at the street below. I had to walk up the hill, with my small black roller computer bag, and a silly powder blue Nike backpack that I had to bring if I wanted both my cameras and a purse. I looked out of touch with the weather, the location, and my sanity.

The black bag contained my computer, a hard copy of my presentation, back up documents I knew I would never need, two New Yorkers, and pair of jeans and sweater for a photo excursion, and a summer dress for the presentation. I had stopped wearing suits. After two decades of suffering the man habit, I became claustrophobic. I would watch men on sweaty days, working to look collected while perspiring in woolen jackets, cotton dress shirts, and knotted ties, and think, “Take it off, guys!” and mean it in a nice way. As for me, jackets were rarely cut with any serious intention, and generally felt of the straight genre. Open blouse collars more and more threatened to catch a jowel. Buttons on dress shirts never matched where my chest was. My lower legs, the lone visual cue in a skirt suit, had become unpredictable. One day, my familiar fav pegs, the next, swollen road maps. And what about all that stuff around my middle? Who was marking Spanx or other girdle-with-a-kinder-name to put under a lined skirt with a waistband and blouse combo to make us all feel as if staged for a medieval joust? Instead of metal, however, our protective gear consists of rubber, wool, poly-silks, cotton, buttons, zippers, stiff interface, and trims. No thanks. There was a reason I wasn’t born in 1790 and mostly it was because the clothing protocol would have buried me alive. At least in this enlightened age I could show up at a meeting in a knit turtleneck dress or tailored slack and killer shoe and be appreciated.

Or so I thought. Invited to speak at a conference, I figured I couldn’t go wrong in a Kenzo wrap. Sure it was a business group, but top designers always mean business. I figured wrong. In the flash of a second it took my brain to whisper to my ego, “You’ve screwed up, big,” I counted 350 black-suited career women – women who looked equally capable of stealing a heart or ripping one out of another’s chest cavity with a ball point pen. You could open envelopes with their marathon-trained calves. Their suits were made of wool that only Oxford educated sheep could produce. Schools of these deal-makers were passing before me like an overpopulated aquarium, with not an open toed shoe in the joint. Even the wait staff wore black suits. I looked like I was dropping off someone’s musical instrument: nice, but on a different mission. I had no choice. I had to find a way to resuit.

First, the structural defects. Compression stockings worn the day before a suit call would help me fend off ankle bulge, so I visited a surgery supply shop and asked to see their vice grip collection. Did I know my size? “A small when I have them on, and a large when I take them off, maybe?” But the salesperson ignored me. “We have several styles. There is the open toe, the knee high, the thigh-high…” Thigh highs? Open toes? What, exactly, was so titillating about a legging with the transparency of an ace bandage. The thought of fat toes squishing out of one end and fat thighs squishing out of the other made me hungry for cake. “I’ll take three pairs of the black solid knee-hi’s please,” a phrase I modified to “one pair” when told the uninsured price. It dawned on me as I left the store that the end is probably near when you spend more money on Jobst than on Legg’s. Next I went to see one of the famed Argentinian doctors about my veins, on a referral from a panel-mate. “They’re neither spidery nor varicose, but they seem, let's say, tortured?" the doctor said. “Let's” I thought, as I gave permission to have each read its last rights, individually euthanized, and put out of my misery. “Might this be insured?” I asked. The office personnel just smiled.

This whole process was beginning to feel like fixing a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza, – with a never-ending list of problems I would have to cure before actually getting to the point. And what was the point, for that matter? Should I add laser lipo to my knees and inner thighs, and a tummy tuck to the mix, just so I could dress like a man in a state of perpetual mourning? On any given bleary Monday and with a cosmetic rider on my insurance policy, I’d be up for the adventure, but I had no rider and with legs already wrapped and sore from the expensive deveining episode, my head was starting to look for the exit ramp off the makeover toll road.

I explained my dilemma to a tailor. “You are not a fish. Your heart would stop if you became invisible. You need a little more bespoke in your life.”

Maybe. Was it a drug?

“I can make you a jacket of a beautiful material. Fabric solves every problem. Wear the jacket over what you already love. Get two, a short suit coat for good days, one long for not so good days. Or maybe one that is structured and with a serious weave, and another that is lightweight and satiny.” He was starting to transcend. I was starting to drop. Maybe I needed six for each of my monthly body types or maybe ten for each of my personalities, and would any of this be covered by insurance as part of a therapy treatment? I uttered only, “What do I do about my waist?” “Are you asking me to help you keep your head out of the refrigerator? I do not have that strength. But no waistbands. Elegant sweaters do not need to be tucked in. Buy only those. But you must promise me no white. White is a billboard. Oh, and one fabulous, long black cashmere coat for your entrance. Seriously, these things are all you really need. Elegant and simple and never wrong.”

He was right, of course, but he was also backing me up on a theory that simple done to magazine cover perfection can require a lot of effort and a big checkbook. I calculated that it would be cheaper to stay for two months in Argentina for a delumpifying overhaul and buy a pocket steamer and back-up Gen Y suit from Banana Republic – in black, of course – to keep stashed in my briefcase for those occasion when my own style sense misses, than to stuff my closet full of cashmere and 150 grade woolen suits. Then again, perhaps to be safe, I would have to figure out a way to do both. Either way, he couldn't fix me up in time for my lecture. But on the Pacifica pedestrian street I did find a Zara, Spain's answer to Sweden's H&M.

The day of the presentation was my actual 50th birthday. And despite the dress code, I couldn't show up in a cheap imitation. I wore thick stockings to hide my bruises, put on my open toe shoes (I know, I know you can't wear them with hose enough already), and the Kenzo dress. It was so beautiful, but still two months ahead of season. My bad, and again, I know. The program ran two hours over schedule, so I had to rush and and reorganize for the plane in the hotel bathroom, where I polished off a bottle of wine in the bathroom stall so totally against all rules of style and sanitation, but it was for me.

Anyway, Mr. Blakwell, I'm so sorry. I'm working on it.

Oct 18, 2008

The Start of the Second Fifty

I sat at a sidewalk cafe in the East Village, with my back to the sun facing my oldest daughter, Mona. We had just walked around Soho, passing Russell Simmons on his bike and store fronts I promised we would some day have the time to explore. The weather was perfect. My daughter was studying at FIT and taking extra courses at NYU. I was due on a plane that night for Argentina. We had just decided that after coffee, we would walk up the street and get a manicure together. Life, at this moment, was particularly good. Then I noticed a glint.

"Did you pierce your tongue? Twice?"

"Oh, yeah. It's called the viper. It's not like one of those big piercings up front. These are small and way back and they'll close up instantly as soon as I'm done with this phase," she said, her voice barely audible by the time she got to "phase."

"I guess it's good for sex," I said, not coming up with anything appropriate to say. "How's that work for job interviews?" I continued, unable to shut up about it and recognizing that she wouldn't be looking for a job for a few years if my keep her in school until she started to pick up the Times on a daily basis, out of habit, plan worked out.

The first free second I had, I texted my second daughter, Lex, "She pierced her tongue! Twice! She pierced her tongue, ew!" "Go easy. I like her. She's exploring." Lex texted back.

But I wasn't characteristically furious over the violation of my No Mutilation (a/k/a Body Art) Until You're at Least 25 rule. I found it kind of funny.

Funny? What was happening to me?

And then my husband and I discussed the prospect of Viper clip ons.

Oct 17, 2008

Free Kittens

"I'm going to adopt my children," my youngest, Edit told me, a few days before my annual birthday disappearing act. I was much more disappointed than I should have been to a life plan uttered by an eight year old.

As I sat there musing on why the smartest one of the lot would not wish to pass on her genes, she added, "Is it free?"

"And I'm going to adopt one from China and one from California."

The gene pool would be just fine.

Oct 10, 2008

The Presents

I'm supposed to pick something special out to mark this milestone of survival, something like a watch or a Picasso only no Picassos, really. I fought it. Birthdays - well, mine, anyway - make me on beyond sad, and the less said the better. Every year means I am a year closer to never seeing my kids again, and that completely destroys me to the point of completely detroying me.

Too bad. I lost this argument based on some heirloom reasoning and an inability to form words while choking back tears, and so now I'm looking for a gift my kids can fight over when I'm gone. I am way happier. Here is what I've determined so far.

The Patek Philippe ad dads never look like they would actually reproduce.

I found a pretty watch in a jewelry store. The shop keep said, "People with think it is a Michelle." Ironically, when people say things like that, time hangs suspended in air for a while. My brain goes into over drive; I hold back a smile. Because when inside words mean absolutely zero, then it feels more like a straight line, waiting for the punch. (It's the kind of thing comedian Mitch Hedberg would have killed with, if, well, he did high end jewelry jokes.) Even more ironically, after people say things like that, I have to spendtime finding out what a Michelle is.

So there I was, running out of time, spending time, on time I knew nothing about. And they didn't remember it, but my family had already danced on my watch heart the hear before. I had spotted a Nemoni watch from Storm on the internet: a colored link band with sparkly edging around the face for under $200. Storm, I learned, started as a small retail store in London and has found its way around the world building on a “cult of individuality.” The company sent me a sample to photograph and put in the magazine. I decided to take it out to the Albright's Muse for a little glitter and glow. Showcasing my find in front of my family, I asked rhetorically, “Isn’t this great?

“It would look better on me,” said Lex.

“Isn’t it a little young for you?” mumbled my husband.

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