My Girl Crushes

My Girl Crushes:

1.  Allison Janney:  Loved her in "The West Wing," loved her in "Juno," loved her in "Away We Go."
She's so candid and tall. 
2.  Diane Sawyer:  I think she's wearing her original face.  In this age of pillow cheeks and duck lips, to see    a woman age so beautifully makes me love her.  And that's beside the fact that she's brilliant and funny.
3.  Terry  Gross:  Honestly, I was shocked to learn that she's not a lesbian.  Or a brunette.  I was listening to her being interviewed (for a change) and she laughed about how widespread the notion is that she's a lesbian.   She told of her mother-in-law being at a party where another guest, in cocktail chatter, said, "I so enjoy that radio show 'Fresh Air' with that Terry Gross.  She's a lesbian, you know."  I must admit, I was disappointed to find out she wasn't a brunette.
4.  Christina Hendricks:  As Joan Holloway on "Mad Men."  I think she might be the most womanly woman I've ever seen.
5.  Laurie Partridge : (Not Susan Dey.)  She was the girl I always wanted to grow up to be.  For a while, I'd set my jaw and purse my lips just because she did it so well. 

Women I Thought I Would Love, But Actually Grew to Dislike the More I Heard Them Talk:
1.  Ayelet Waldman:  Author of "Bad Mom."  I thought I'd feel simpatico with anyone who considers herself a bad mom.  But when you cite such evidence as, "I knew I should get the kids to bed at a reasonable hour, but we were all having such fun composing sonnets and sharing them with each other, " I don't like you so much.
2.  Ellen Burstyn:  She's one of the most beautful older women around, and she seems so elegant and strong.  Turns out, as I listened to her read her autobiography on CD, she's rather selfish and not so nice.
3.  Carrie Fisher:  She drank too much!  She eats too much!  She's had bad luck with men!  What's not to love?  How could I not adore her?  Well, after reading her memoir "Wishful Drinking," I figured that she considers herself so crazily madcap and fabulous that I really don't have to.

Too Fat for My Earrings

I've gotten so fat, my earrings don't fit.  Okay, I don't even think that's technically possible, but I've certainly gotten too fat for my earrings.  I hadn't worn earrings in about fifteen years because of a nickel allergy, but I decided to try to get back in the game.  I so used to love my huge, funky earrings.  My husband's nickname for me was "Chima," because my earrings were like windchimes.  At this stage of the game, I had no desire to go quite so flashy, but I did want earrings with a bit of pizazz.  I found some pretty amethyst-colored dangles that my eight year-old daughter adored and I liked too.  I started wearing them and putting on mascara and even wearing real shoes (instead of my raggedy Lands' End clogs of six years).  I've always put on eye makeup pretty much every day.  (And since I've copped to my propensity for being furry and fat, it's fair for me to admit that I do have beautiful eyes - big, green, and well-lashed.)  Because my lashes are naturally lush (the only good part of furry), I only use mascara when I'm being fancy, and I was trying to bring a little fancy to my life.  And then my jeans got tight (these being my fat jeans).  And stayed tight.  Without invoking the Sarah Palin/lipstick debacle, let's just say I didn't feel in a position to hang ornaments from myself. 

I realize I have several options here.  First, I could slim down to my earring size.  Second, I could embrace the beauty of who I am now and celebrate it (I'm making that cat-with-a-hairball noise).  Third, I could get over myself and wear earrings or not, without the sturm und drang.   I envy the attitude of Kristin, my daughter's piano teacher.  Kristin is about twenty-seven and a pretty girl with a bit of extra poundage.  She dresses her age, wears makeup, has cute hair, blah blah.  She gives lessons from her parents' gorgeous home.  While my daughter takes her lesson, I sit on the couch and read.  Last week, I noticed a coffee table book of Kristin's wedding photographs.  I told her she was a beautiful bride (and she was).  She thanked me and mentioned that she's lost about a hundred pounds since then.  I honestly hadn't noticed.  The photos in the book were of a lovely girl on a happy day.  More important, she was still proud of her wedding pictures and didn't hide them away because they were of the fat Kristin. 

Yesterday, I was sorting through cartons of old family slides to be transferred to DVD as a Christmas gift for my mother.  Going through the slides from the time of my parents' wedding and my and my sister's early childhood (til about the age of 8, when the photograph took place of the slide), I made of pile of stuff for  my mom's DVD, including her wedding, Christmases, vacations, first-day-of-school/birthdays/etc., with just enough inclusion of my dad to acknowledge his presence without making the whole thing a big downer.  The pile for my dad included all the pictures I'd excluded from my mom's pile, plus a few representing us girls in our early years.  (To stem complaints of short-shrifting him:  when my dad left my mom, he apparently took the slide projector and all the slides from his year in Vietnam.  I'm guessing that if he'd wanted the memories of us as little kids, he'd have taken some of those as well.)  My third pile, and a large one at that, I simply labeled "Yuck."  These were mostly fat pictures, often of my mom, but sometimes of me and my sister.  None of us were fat all the time, with my mom winning the award for greatest pendulum swing, and my sister and I were never fully fat, just off-and-on chubby.  Even though I was as young as seven in some of those pictures, I felt such shame looking at them.  More pathetic, I was mortified by the thought of my husband seeing them. 

I don't need to worry about ruining the surprise of my mom's Christmas gift, because while I post this, she's just arrived in Bhutan, the first stop of her trip to Tibet (her first time in Tibet, second time in Bhutan), and she's not likely to scroll backwards through this blog.  My mom, at 73, is traveling with a group of strangers halfway across the world.  The only reason she's traveling alone is because Art (her boyfriend/partner/whatever) can't handle the altitude.   Since my dad left, my mother has continued to gain and lose weight, but she's also traveled to the five continents she hadn't yet been to (and now can say she's hit all seven), and found a man who acts as though he's the president of her fan club.   Somehow, my mom and I have been conditioned to consider just the first of those to define her.  It stands to reason that I define myself with those same parameters (though my mom has always thought me beautiful).  I just don't really want to anymore.

Breaking Up is Hard to Do

I've been trying to break up with a friend of mine (we've gone in different directions; we have nothing in common anymore; it's not you, it's me), and I've been going about it the way the men in my life have: half-assed and cowardly. The old, "I've got a big project right now but I'll call you," type thing. And because I haven't seen this friend in over a year anyway, it's more a break-up-by-attrition, which doesn't bring many tears. I just don't enjoy our times together so much, since she's so often judgmental and didactic.

Yesterday, I realized a friend of mine is breaking up with me. I haven't seen her in over a year. My overtures of coffee and chat are put off until after the holidays or the semester or the equinox. I'm heartbroken (and embarrassed that it took me so long to figure out). I'm pretty sure why she might want to call it a day on our friendship, though. It's my tendency to be a bit judgmental and didactic. Dammit.

Very Cheap Things I'm Loving Right Now

I am now a true believer in using white vinegar instead of fabric softener (both liquid and sheet). I do have a fabric softener dispenser in my washing machine, but if I didn't, I'd get one of those Downy balls that you fill with the stuff and toss into the wash. The vinegar is cheap, environmentally friendly (guess which one of those really matters to me), and doesn't leave the build-up I've seen from fabric softener. Rest assured, the clothes do not smell like salad.

Another cheap thing: Pumice. The older I get, the more frightened I am by my feet. Since my family goes to TaeKwonDo twice a week, and many stretches involve bending the head towards the foot, I am frequently vowing to do something about this wretched state of affairs. But I'm not about to pay for a pedicure (as no one who uses vinegar as fabric softener would - except for the friend who told me about it). I tried the scrubs and the buffers and the creams, but it was the pumice stone that saved me. For less than $2, this grainy rock taken to my wet feet has brought me a peace I thought I'd never know again.

The last cheap thing: Me, when I was in college*. Not really, but I couldn't think of a third thing (one part of that last sentence is a lie).

*Here, by "cheap" I meant "easy," because today I'm the kind of cheap to which you can add "skate."

If I only had a chip-and-dip

My friend Mary is a nag, and I love her for it. God knows she has enough people in her home she's obligated to nag on a daily basis ["Did you take a shower?" "Did you use soap?" - and that's just her husband (ba-dum)]. That she would make the effort to nag me too warms my cockles. She and my sister are the only folks in this lifetime whose nagging I appreciate. Neither one wants anything from me, except for me to try to be happy. And Mary nags me to blog (and since she is indeed my audience, I could either give her what she wants or keep her wanting more).

But yikes. I'm dry. So Mary said, knowing my area of expertise, "Write about anything! Write about potato chips!" Of course, I didn't. Then (and this always happens to me) my Yahoo! homepage greets me with a little article about the ten best brands of potato chip! I have been studying this field for years, and these staffers think they can take a quick trip to the 7-Eleven, rip open a couple of bags, and pontificate. And they awarded the Best Chip to Kettle brand's salt and pepper chip. I actually threw away a partially eaten bag of those chips! And I consider the size people bring to picnics to be a single serving bag! Plus, they completely ignored the chip of all chips, the pinnacle of potato! Until you've had a Good's chip (and any flavor is a winner, though Salt and Vinegar, Jalapeno, and Salt and Pepper are tops on my list) you have no business making a list. Give one a try, then read the ingredients. First listed is potato. No surprise. Second listed (and the secret to its glory) is lard. Yes, lard. To be fair to the other lard chips (whichI think includes Martin's and Dieffenbacher's) are just as delicious, with that suet-y silkiness. All of these are indigenous to central/Eastern Pennsylvania. The few times I can find a lard chip in Pittsburgh are great days indeed. My sister has a house in the Reading, PA area. She introduced me to Utz (not a lard chip, but indeed a gateway one - "Utz are better than nuts!"), then to pure animal fat deliciousness.

A few Thanksgivings ago, I was driving with my girls to my sister's house for Thanksgiving, since Bill would follow the next morning. I reached her house earlier than expected and knew no one would be home, so I drove around looking for a place for dinner. I was a little misplaced, and eventually truly in the middle of nowhere, when I saw a sign saying "Utz Potato Chip Outlet," with an arrow pointing up a gravel path. I might have gasped. But it was dinner time, and I had children with me, so I backtracked to civilization and a restaurant. I never forgot that sign. My sister said she'd never heard of such an outlet. She even called Utz, and they said there was no such thing. Maybe each of us has their personal Brigadoon, existing once every hundred years for a brief but glorious time. Mine was shown to me, but I was too scared to follow the sign.