As Little Harm As Possible

You Dress Your Age; I'll Dress Your Handicap

2008-09-16T21:42:00.004-04:00

Today I put a clean soup plate away in the microwave instead of the shelf. Lex and I looked at each other. The end is near.

An article out of Orlando, Florida tells us to be more covered up as we age. Don't go short or bare or tight after 35. It's unseemly, tacky, trashy, sad. What was sad were the outfits they demonstrated as our acceptable alternative. We are now limited to an up to the chin, three-quarter sleeve, below the knee skirt, and a clunky shoe.

As if.

"Tried and true" dressing tips for women of "a certain age:" "Find comfy but stylish shoes." Here's a writing tip. Never use the word "comfy" in the same sentence with "stylish." It sounds wrongly connected, like "the goofy IRS auditor." Or "learn to drape a big scarf," like over our heads, I guess Ms. Jean Patterson means. "Use a full length mirror." Actually, everyone who cares about how they look, regardless of age, should have one.

I have a better tip. Take your partner with you shopping. Buy something that he or she likes. If your big chested, get a great bra; if you are big-ended, find a jacket that comes down below your glutes. Don't rely on the salespeople at the store to be honest with you, unless you have an ongoing relationship or they are willing on your first meet to tell you that something doesn't work. And buy anything you want, even if it is trendy or a little bit trashy. The trick is more in how you fold it into the mix.

The College Essay

2008-09-12T06:00:00.003-04:00

We are down to five schools, with a pretty typical chance spread, I think. One dream school that Lex says is beyond her reach, one great school to which she will apply non-binding early admission, another that would put her in a great place and great school but not the best for her intended major, and two safety schools that I can afford.

We began working on the essay last night. Her first stab two weeks before was back to, "Now I am going to tell you everything I know about penguins" out of nerves. She hasn't written without saying anything in years. So I suggested my favorite technique, an interrogation about a critical and relevant experience. Suggested is an understatement. Insisted is the better word, and I'm constantly amazed she doesn't stab me in the back with the barbecue fork one night.

But there is a reason I'm such a pain in the ass. Sometimes it works. From "I don't remember any of it, Mom" we got five pages of reconstruction (along with two hundred, "Why do you keep asking me the same question over and over; I don't remember"), and some insight into her perspective that at the end made us sit back in our chairs and stare at each other from across the table. "Who knew?" I said. "I never thought of it that way, before. That's so neat," she said. It was like the college choice version of Law & Order, only no one would watch.

Way cool. From here I'll work backwards and forwards.

Notes from the Stacks and Racks

2008-09-09T03:27:00.003-04:00

I have been working for weeks on a fashion shoot at the new Burchfield Penney Art Center, a building that has gotten so much ill-directed dissing because of it's block concrete, oversized appearance. But the building looks so hot to me - and I'm not wrong about architecture, albeit unstudied, that I have to figure out why it seems so right. The finished product on the fashion piece gave me goosebumps, that's how good it was, and now all I want to do is defend the outside of the building. (The inside is not part of the dispute.) In the meantime, if I've had a spare second to post, it's been over at my magazine's blog, Spreeblog, but I so desperately need a place to put things I need to remember for later articles. I have a two foot stack of back reading material and an entire Sunday Times at my side, and Fashion Week to get to.

And then there is my day job and a bunch of family photo requests.

And I want to fix the house up, to prep it to keep the outside out and the inside in. I mean, me doing insulation and foundation grouting and varmit protection - so much goofball DIY, so much need, and I can't get to it.

And the kids say the most damning, funny stuff every day and I'm not getting it down - killer stuff that completely crucifies me, and I'm not recording it. And I reconnected with my childhood girlfriend thanks to the internet, and I need to get back to her.

I miss my quiet dark nights. I need a system.

Anyway, the rest is just notes for me.

1. "A Face Not Even a Plastic Surgeon Could Love" by Camille Sweeney, NY times 9/4/08, on how plastic surgeons must learn to spot a difficult patient (Scarface the Surgery Junkie, Litigious Louis, the Bad Mouth, The Wannabee, Greta X. Pectations, The Whiner) and turn them away. "Many times the motivating factor of someone wanting a change in their appearance has more to do with an emotional issue than the actual physical issue ... they may want to get a marriage proposal, save a marriage or hold on to a job, and no amount of surgery no matter how well done can guarantee that's going to happen," says Dr. Donn Chatham.

Now that doctors have pushed the lawyers around, are they going after those bad, bad patients? There is enough bad plastics results out there to justify sites like Make Me Heal and Real Self. Plastics is practiced for financial gain by enough doctors who don't have the requisite artistic eye, vascular surgery skills, or bedside manner, to make skilled plastics docs to cringe. Heal thyself, Doc, and control the trade performance, Docs, before blaming poor performance on the Wide World of Whacko Women who keep you in Beemers.

2. "I don't want to listen to what's selling," Miuccia Prada, 2007.

3. "It was the one thing that got me out of bed in the morning," said New York artist Slater Bradley. "I could take pride in walking out the door. It was the clothes that held me up when I had nothing else to."

4. "Whenever the economy gets tough, fashion responds by playing it safe," says Jim Moore, the creative director of GQ. Well, maybe the buyers do. See grunge.

Notes from the Stacks and Racks

2008-08-24T08:11:00.004-04:00

Eight year old Edit to seventeen year old sister, McAllister, as we drove by Buffalo's museum of modern art: I'm going to get married in the flower garden of the Albright.
McAllister: May I be your bridesmaid?
Edit: Sure!
McAllister: What about Mom?
Edit: I don't think she'll be alive by then.

Joel Stein, Time: "[Obama] is black which is not the old Jews' favorite minority. If [Obama] were an old Asian guy who knew Krav Maga, he'd take Pompano in a landslide."

Saddleback and Rick Warren. Because if you cannot trust the super-egoed evangelical pastor of a megachurch, who can you trust?

"They scream, the sing, they fall down, the take their clothes off, they cross-dress, they vomit....It is only the British people - not the Germans or the French." Greek Island Malia's mayor, Konstantinos Lagoudakis, as quoted in August 24, 2008 NY Times. Well, the cross-dressing was the giveaway. A better way to comment on this quote might have been:

"They scream, the sing, they fall down, the take their clothes off, they cross-dress, they vomit."
"Who are the British on vacation, Alex."

A new pair of boots at Firebrand really bought me. This morning I spotted a pair of Chloe Beattle boots that flashed me right back to them. Sans buckle and cut way above the ankle, they aren't identical by any means. But trendsetting in their own way. It's the kind of boot you buy and spend the next four months telling people where.

Hard Landing, Run for Cover

2008-08-07T12:32:00.003-04:00

More confining than an Albanian blood feud.

More confusing than androgen insensitivity.

I hate July. It's as demanding, claustrophobic, and bank-busting as December.

Tomorrow is another college trip. I'm sure my daughter has spent the day bleaching her hair a lighter shade of white and getting a new push up bra for the event.

God, it feels so good to be back home.

Notes and Poor Moms' Month

2008-07-12T16:09:00.008-04:00

The Miss Lacy chair is so typically Stark. Great to look at, but horrendous to actually use as a seating implement.

I look at the stunning Miss Lacy and think, "Ow, ow ... ow, ow, ow."

In deciding whether to read King Lear or a collection of Disney Cliff Notes as a bedtime read, I decided it was time for my daughter to hear my lecture on why Disney is not such positive material on strong maternal figures. We laughed as we played, "Find the Missing Mom" and at some point my daughter looked at me with devilish, confessional eyes and said, "You know, sometimes when we play house, nobody wants to be the mom." No wonder. It's a great, best job, but from the outside it must have the allure of fish cleaning.

I spend so much time looking at materials on home furnishings that my house looks like a paper mill exploded inside. I study home decor but can't seem to live it.

Why do people get married?

Country is coming back, but somehow it is different: :refined and thinned out, as if stone wear is mixed with porcelain, and put all the floral patterns on a diet. I suspect that this is a result of going green. I'm seeing straw and natural fiber mats, which is harder to mix up with stainless steel and laminate.

Is vintage glamour just another name for steampunk, or are we moving past it, heading straight for baroque-tech. Okay, you come up with the new movement's name. Image from Cole & Son.

Boy, confess to one person that Paul Smith is a name unknown, and if he suddenly isn't on every other style sheet, in all shops. Recognizing Smith is mostly in the stripe. He uses vibrant colors in his thin, generally vertical line creations. But mod works as a descriptor too.

Inspired by all the back of the bra showing in the Sex and the City movie, I picked up a Miss Sixty dress that has done all the work for me. The bra is sewn right into the dress and visible. The label is Beebe trashy, only more avant-garde, to the extent trashy can be avant-garde. Anyway, I performed the usual test, and the dress passed in record time. In my closet, worn once, then *poof* gone. My eldest grabbed it. Afterwards the middle child said to her, "Don't take Mom's clothes. She doesn't have much."

Gandia Blasco makes living and sleeping and having sex on the beach look like an actual option. If I could choose a different life for a month, it would be a Gandia Blasco life. I can't capture an image that does the product line justice. Check out the site.

So you always have enough to spend on yourself, keep children's furniture costs to a minimum with conversions. The Oeuf collecection may look a little like School of Jailhouse Rock, but - or for that reason - I like it. Available at Room.

2008-06-06T16:00:00.002-04:00

Mutiny if we don't get to shop. And I did. $300 dollars worth of books, goddamn it. A history book about the islands from a non-white perspective. And a photo book. And a flag. And tee shirts and you name it. We had been denied the opportunity to shop and now I was buying up whatever we could find. Snow globes were a hard one in this part of the worlds. We hit Port Elizabeth.

Taking Notes

2008-06-06T10:19:00.002-04:00

Design Art. Art Furniture. Decorative Art. One of kind furniture pieces that try to meld two worlds and always seem to fail at both. "It's not really good looking art, and as a table, there's not much top space ...."

I need to find some that does work. Later. Researc Design Miami/Basel, Studio Job, Robber Baron, Maarten Baas, Studio Makkink & Bey, Peter Saville, Toolsgalerie.

Sex and the Family Guy, Season 17

2008-06-03T23:35:00.004-04:00

"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. It's not based on intuition or some other ether excuse, no. When she was five and six, when she was fearless and full of herself, she would say things that would stop adults on the spot. They would turn and look at her and start to belly laugh. Ten years later she was hooked on Family Guy. I didn't even know what it was, and I would walk in 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 don't want to get it, but I do. It's out there and sideways thinking and free association comedy, 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 she switched to a new school and hated everything and mostly me: Family Guy and Sex and the City. And I let her. We have a rule in the house. Sex? Okay. Violence? No. Violent Sex? No. Animated crudeness and nudeness? Whatever. I can't keep up. In fact, 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?" I ask, "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. I have three pair with worn out heels, and 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.

But anyway, one cold winter weekend, as she 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. That's how I know about Sex and the City series and that I'm nothing like Carrie (but Lex doesn't need to get filled in on that detail).

"C'mon mom," Lex texted, two years later. "We're seeing the movie tonight." Lex already had seen the movie, but was excited at the prospect of seeing it with me. "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."

I've reviewed the movie here. I want to show it to Lex, but maybe it's best to think fondly of our time in the movie theater together, while I ate popcorn and bit my tongue, and she texted her friend.

2008-05-31T23:10:00.016-04:00

Car window smashed in, purse stolen.

Dog injured and on "be still" medicine.

Road trip to Wisconsin, via Columbus, for niece's graduation. Twenty-five hours of within 72 hours. The other 47 hours spent in front of a computer Photoshopping ten years off of all the relatives in the graduation photos. I can still feel my hips spread from that seat feast.

I returned from the trip and sat at the table, in a fog. The phone rang and I heard my eight year old daughter say, "Yeah I like my life! I mean, there are sleepovers, the trampoline, my yard, my dog. I like to plant flowers and there is playing and my mom and dad and sisters and friends..."

It was nothing short of excellent to hear her say that. But what prompted the kid on the other end of the line to ask the questions in the first place: "Are you happy? Do you know what happiness is?" Anyway, sleepovers and puppies, at any age, is a good answer.

2. Having a transcendentally happy white retriever, on the other hand, is weird. So big, so hairy, so witless and goofy, so spring-up-in-the-air energetic, and so white she looks like the perfect dog companion for Space Ghost, but big white hairy Pyranees-type dogs are usually humorless thugs, leash-walked around the city bearing a "Get out of my way before I stomp on you," attitude. Her energy is sufferable in the house only if she gets in two or three miles of grossly inadequate duck hunting and fishing a day (if only she had opposable thumbs or an understanding that, no - the animals do not want to play with her). So regardless of weather or schedule, she must get out and usually it is to Rumsey Field, as I did on Friday.

I rounded the park lake, and walked by a group of teenagers with down syndrome. The kids saw the dog and wanted to know about her. London went up to the last kid along the water and stopped. The boy took her head in his hands, then slowly worked his way down to massage her massively thick neck. London's entire back-side wagged. The boy lifted his head and smiled to the sky, then closed his eyes and kept rubbing the dog. If I had a puppy in my pocket, it would have been his. Heck, I walked away from the kids wanting to give each one a puppy. I was proud of my dog for giving some stranger such joy.

Best dog. Best dog ever.

I walked another five minutes up out of the park feeling the bright moment of the day, when I spotted my car with a window smashed mostly into disappearance. I didn't usually leave a purse in the car, but I was multi-tasking that day. It was gone

Stupid dog I have to walk. Stupidier me. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

3. Mood ring after-purchase talk of eight-year-old: "I wonder what mood I'm in." At least now the ring will let her know. I should wear a mood amulet, as a warning sign for others.

4. Posh, called to tell me she had finally had enough nerve to say hi to one of the guys in her NYU summer program accounting class. His response, "You must have some kind of networking scheme going on to go from FIT to join us here at NYU."

Yeah, cause he just proved what an Einstein he is. Smooth. I'm thinking of suggesting to her that she gather what resume insight she could from the comment and then screw his best friend. Ok, maybe I should keep that to myself.

What's it called when you're not the cool mom, something way more dangerous?

2008-05-21T10:24:00.000-04:00

When filling out the Scholastic book order forms. Edit picks everything that has a bracelet, cd, or animal charm attached to the book.

"What is this, a 'Littlest Pet Shop' figurine?" I ask. "And this fairy bracelet?"

"Oh, I don't want that," She said, looking closer at the newsprint order booklet. "I thought it was a necklace."

I ordered her a rhyming dictionary instead. Give me four more years of parental overlordship and I'm sure I can produce a Silvia Plath.

.......

Comments from the Middle Child that almost get her killed, ##1-5:

"In the future, I would appreciate it if you would bring me my mail."

"I'm kind of ready to stop school and start my life now."

"Do you think that the rooftop outside my bedroom window would support the weight of a human being?"

"I find that teacher so frustrating. I think in the future I'm just going to do all the assignments and contribute in class. He'll be sorry."

"I know you said I couldn't go, but listen to me. I'm 150 miles from home and I think I'm driving the wrong way on the highway. You're not half as upset as I am."

(There are so many more, but they are temporarily repressed.)

More Proof that Photogs Sleep With Models

2008-05-20T00:08:00.007-04:00

The Danish Day, by Birger and Mikkelsen, enchants me. I finally figured out why. When I see the clothes I have a fairy princess flashback.

Not fairy princess as in prom dress or wedding cake topper. It's in the fabric - even without encrusted diamonds the pieces seem bejeweled and look as if they should be accompanied by a knight. This season the look is Marrakesh, which means Princess Jasmine. The sweater I have in my closet from three seasons ago is more structured, more Princess Aurora. (Do I really know my Disney this well?)

But getting to Day today was unintentional. I wanted to talk about Acne Jeans.But one of the Acne collection shots got me searching Scandinavian lines to see if Acne's approach was now the norm: actually seeing the outfit is so pedestrian.

I suspected this with my first Filippa-K catalog. It would arrive and get passed around the office. The shots looked of after-party parties, outdoors, tilted and in shades of dark grey, de-saturated indigo blue, and muted hunter green. "Tunic" the page descriptor would read. We would see only the toe of a shoe starting to come around the back of a tree. "We must have that tunic," we would say.

Here is Acne's denim jumpsuit on the left and a Day top on the right.

Party on. Cross posted at Spree blog.

Or Knitting. Knitting is Good

2008-05-19T19:50:00.004-04:00

Note to self: wait for The Landmark Herodotus to come on on tape. I barely made it through the New Yorker review, and it was terrific. Plus, going back in time means I'm going to have to relearn the map. Again. And that's frustrating. I like the name Persia, so it sticks. I listened to Thucydides on tape. It was a lot of "Then the ships landed at the seaside village and everyone was massacred," only in a deeper voice. It got to the point where I figured there had to be only 150 people left on the planet, all big, hairy mean guys.

"Listen to this passage," I said to my husband, who was trying to sightsee while I sat in a Taxi reading: "On hearing that the Persians were so numerous that their arrows would 'blot out the sun,' one Spartan quipped that this was good news, as it meant that the Greeks would fight in the shade. ('In the shade' is the motto of an armored division in the present-day Greek Army.)"

"Sure," he said. "All six guys."

"Yeee-ouch," I thought. "Euro-snotting." Life could be such fun.

I'm not completely Western centric, the love of "Persia" notwithstanding. I know there were like, eleven other continents with populations on then. Or penguins. But think about it. If it was happening on the tiny Aegean in such epic proportions and with a steady rollover from one century to another, it had to be going on everywhere else, too.

The next time someone complains about the evils of television, throw "The Landmark Herodotus" at them and remind him or her how important it is for some people to have a pacifying hobby.

Macletae

2008-05-18T23:44:00.003-04:00

"We're going to the opera," I said. "Macbeth." I started to pretend to hold a skull in my outstretched hand.

"That's Hamlet," my friend corrected.

"Oh, right."

"MacBeth's not such a Danish name," he mocked.

"Neither is Hamlet," I defended, completely defeated. "I know, I know. Macbeth's the one where the mom was bad."

"The wife. The wife was bad," he corrected, again.

"She looked like a mom the last time I saw it," I replied, faintly recalling some poor PBS production from two or three decades ago. Had I never actually read it? I must have. "But I remember the witches. There were three of them and they shared an eye."

"Greek. You're doing the Greek Graeae now," he said, suddenly keen on hearing my next plot twist, but I decided to stop talking.

"Go on. Do you know what the witches told MacBeth?" he pushed.

"Unto you a child will be born?"

In the week that led up to me accompanying some opera fans to hear the Metropolitan Opera sing Verdi's Macbeth at Lincoln Center, I heard a lot of debate amongst others over who was worse, MacBeth or his Lady. Fortunately by that time I had learned enough to know to offer no opinion at all.

When I get alzheimers, no one will be able to tell.

Tweet Tweet

2008-05-18T23:11:00.006-04:00

Everything in print these days seems to be gaga over superhero costuming. Michael Chabon provided his caped apparel perspective in his New Yorker's "Secret Skin." Cathy Horyn of the New York Times reviewed the Superhero show at the Costume Institute at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I don't have a cape.

I don't have any interest in wearing star-encrusted underoos and a red bustier when filling the gas tank and manning the copy machine.

Can't I just pretend to be the Black Canary on parent teacher conference day?

How much I would kill to be able to do that for my kids, as long as they never found out.

Cate Cate Abate

2008-05-18T22:23:00.005-04:00

I've had a bunch of wine and discussed bad sports parents with complete strangers for the past few hours. I love being the single person at the couples dinner table. I always end up drinking too much.

Oh, heck. I always end up drinking too much.

I have a stack of product literature to get through, like a brochure from J Beverly Hills. It's a collection of necessary hair care products from the think tank capital of the world. I'm not above the study of good product from any tank, but the company's owner is Juan Juan, and he created the Juan Juan Salon. The product names are, "Leave On," "Everyday," and "AddBody."

Mystery is apparently overrated. I'm thinking the same of alliteration.

It's over. My research is stalled. I cannot get past the "Juan Juan Salon" and its "Leave On" conditioner without the aid of a Shel Silverstein and Brian Regan.

Product Finds

2008-05-17T18:12:00.004-04:00

Great desk, comes with a name: Milk. Clean, with its pedestal and capable of supporting a small fish tank. There's a catastrophe in here somewhere, which is half the desk's charm.

Or the Seed lamp, something more inviting to sleep with than bare alumunium.

Balenciaga Up On Blocks

2008-05-17T13:41:00.002-04:00

I ventured into the Balenciaga shop in Chelsea almost by accident. It looked like a whitewashed cave entrance, guarded only by a vault-shaped glass door. An auto repair sign hung on the building wall above the entrance. At first I figured BMW or Rolls repair. Then I saw the name on the glass and started to jump up and down like a four year old in front of the Disney store. I walked through, with a solemnity reserved for an art gallery, because the pieces seemed exactly that: extremely not massed produced, pieces of art.

Founder Cristobal Balenciaga died in 1972, and family ran the business for years afterwards. In 2001, Gucci Group, in partnership with Nicolas Ghesquière as creative director, acquired the House. Such big business, such little pieces. I can't really wear the look, sometimes like Chanel (and often more saccharine), other times more S&M (and often S&M with lolipops.) Always novel and inspired. What I saw in person was a bit more office friendly, acid-colored, and big floraled than what I clipped here. But no matter what the pattern, it is very itty-bitty and structured like a child's colored building blocks.

2008-05-15T23:12:00.002-04:00

When GD II (the second Great Depression) hits, I'm sure that spas and cable internet access will be the first to suffer. For the love of Google we need to be doing something to fix this mess.

I don't know why I'm so pessimistic about the state of the economy. but I suspect it has something to do with excess. I just found a piece I had ripped out of some Sunday paper magazine about over-wealthy mothers taking their pre-pubescent daughters to a salon for a "But there's nothing there yet!" bikini wax. (No, really. They should list it on the spa menu that way. How fun!) I vaguely recall wanting the reference for some piece I was writing, but it didn't get used and now the tale it contained is nothing but a sad suggestion of "Let them eat cake."

Let us spend money on something unnecessary with psychotic undercurrents and neurotic results.

They'd All Starve

2008-05-15T23:02:00.002-04:00

I hesitated to visit Free Rice out of concern that it might turn into a new solitaire addiction. No worries. I felt like I was playing Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader or the Millionaire show, breezing through the first few then SMACK, a word I'd never seen or heard uttered or made up on a bad spelling day. Then I began wondering if I was taking too long to dissect the etymology of the word - actually thinking that someone might think I was looking up the correct answer on the Internet.

Either the game's too hard and I'm too stupid. But either way, people will starve.

I'll make my kids do it. That'll make for some good material.

Notes

2008-05-14T16:20:00.002-04:00

Crate & Barrell Ikea, or as it prefers itself to be called, CB2 has Andy Warhol butterfly plates for $1.95. This is an item that I will never own. I'm not washing those things curvy odd-shapen things, and can't you just see the spillage? Put the heavy steak on one of the wings and start sawing away. "Plop" and "Fido, stay away from that" will be the next two sounds you'd hear. Hurry, before they're sold out. www.cb2.com.

Passages

2008-05-14T01:30:00.000-04:00

Sorenstam is leaving the LPGA tour, Henin is retiring from tennis, and Robert Rauschenberg has died. Rauschenberg, whose American Flag painting might be the most readily recognizable, grew up so poor that his mother often pieced together his clothes, making them from scraps of material she had sewn together.

Art - no matter how abstract - is always firmly planted in reality. Someone's reality.

Sorenstam is 37, about to get married, and wants to start a family. Oh, and she is designing her fifth golf course and plans to produce a line of golf clothing, too. Living the good life of hotel rooms and elevator dings just doesn't have the luster it once did. I know nothing, really, about her. Nor do I get any sense of her beyond appreciating that she was the shot of youthful Wie before Wie. I just spent the morning out on a golf course doing a fashion shoot with pretty young non-players who could make even steel blue polyester look great, a local hall-of-famer pro who did her own stint with the LPGA and could wear clothes like a mannequin, and two stylish boomer players who generated more energy and pop than a room full of Fisher-Price kindergarteners. With so few stars to look up to, it's a shame to lose one. "I'm second on the money list," said Sorenstam. "People who know me know I don't settle for second."

On the other hand, maybe it is time for her to leave.

But as for Henin, I am saddened. A regular, slight, fit, quiet, hardworking professional athlete solid enough to win Grand Slams and grounded enough to not try dress to entice a male audience to yell out, "Show us your tits!"? She may be the last one and at 25, she is done.

Current Events

2008-05-13T22:37:00.002-04:00

I just spent two hours explaining to the Dean of Students why my high-schooler is tardy a lot. Now I'm going to be late for bed.

I shouldn't have offered any excuse. As my high-schooler says, "There is no excuse for being late." But she's up until midnight studying every night. (Lately she's been falling asleep to the Confederacy of Dunces assignment.) The alarm goes off at 6 am. She is getting dressed by seven and she has to take her younger sister to elementary school. Any worse hours and she might as well be a farmer. I suspect straightening every strand of hair on her head each morning doesn't help the rush hour flow so much, and then there is the time it takes to find the top that reveals the most cleavage possible, but the morning sounds around here are happy, energetic sounds and I don't want to mess that up with a lot of yelling "ARE YOU READY YET" up the stairs. We are so civilized lately, I can't stand it.

And that's not easy. I have two modes (just ask the dog): sweet and yellalish. Really. It's hard to explain. I'm nice and almost calm most of the time. But if I have to educate someone on something they should already know, like a clean white towel is not a eye-make up remover pad, or about something ridiculous, like the fact that piano keys are not wider and hence the location of the notes at variation from one Steinway to another, I can go straight to loud without any warning.

And because being loud is as stupid as being stupid in the first place, trying to stay calm is important. And to do this I cannot disturb the current operations of the household, no matter how dysfunctional they may appear to someone on the outside. The girls and I are all quite fine 'round here, and that's a very, very good thing.

Ohhh, I miss you, blog.

In the Blink

2008-04-14T18:57:00.005-04:00

About a month ago I suffered the second of two falls. The first was a foot skate across a suddenly frozen back porch. During my traverse, I focused on the stairs in front of me and the concrete patio at its base. I quickly realized that if I slipped the four feet to the top of the landing, I would pitch forward, bang my head on the planks, and lay semi-nude and unconscious in the 10 degree air. Because I was only up to let the dog out and it was 2 in the morning, I knew that no one would know I was there - except my "I'm no *bark bark* Lassie *bark bark*" dog - and I would most certainly pass away as the dog whined softly to get back into the warm house. All this went through my brain as my body traveled the short course. I have no idea how, but I managed to throw my upper body weight in a way to send it slamming into a wall edge and breaking my fall. I breathed hard for a few seconds, after which I probably yelled at the dog to hurry up and pee already, and most likely went back to bed.

I didn't remember any of this until 1 1/2 days later when I noticed that my mid-back felt as if I'd been dropped from an airplane onto a bed of door handles. And because people really don't care about this sort of thing unless you really do die, I kept quiet about it. I thought it was fascinating, the part about how much problem awareness and solving can be done in the passage of a second of time or less, but still, no one really cares unless you die. And then mostly they just worry about the survivors.

About the time that my back ribs felt mended, I slipped on a piece of paper left on the hardwood stairs. Up I went, like a respectable cartoon character, and again, the brain went into action. "If I fall this way, then I might tear out my rotator pins. Besides, that half took the biggest hit on my last adventure. Let's go for an ab crunch and try to stick most of the landing on the other side, and yeah, use the forearms and hands. It's a stupid move, but screw it; they haven't been hurt in a while. Oh, and darn it, there's the makeshift dog gate with the sticking out metal parts, all fallen over and pointing up the stairs. I really should try to avoid getting impale...." Down I went, into the stairs. I avoided the claws on the dog gate, but two bats swung simultaneously by a hormonally charged MLB player, cracking across my glutes, shoulder blades, and forearms couldn't have done more damage.

The next day I called for a referral to the ER x-ray room, where I am apparently contributing to a new wing.

The bruising and swelling lasted two weeks. The muscles leading to my neck danced like popping corn whenever I tried to use my arms. I developed a crushing, three day migraine, but with a deadline looming, I couldn't take to bed with a six pack of Vicodin. I used ace bandages and kitchen towels to tie bags of frozen vegetables to the top of my head and across my back and triceps. My kids didn't even blink. Long ago they stopped wondering what I was experimenting with, and ignored the Birdseye bags and Civil War-style attachment apparatus.

"Can someone bring up the laundry?" I asked.
"Hunh?"
"Grocery store, anyone?" I begged.
"You look fine, Mom. You can do it. Just take off the peas and corn. They'll think you're stealing."

Enough, I thought, and broke open the bank vault for both chiropractic and massage therapy. "I think something inside is way off," I said to both medical practitioners. "Stuff like this doesn't happen to me. As soon as I'm better I'm back in the gym. No more sitting in front of the computer all day."

On my first day back in the gym, I took a couple of shots at the basketball hoop in what I affectionately call my fat burning boots, a pair of platform, curved sole MTB shoes that make me feel like Tiger when I'm on the court. But it had been a year since I could shoot a basketball, and I forgot how the shoes rolled. Too much effort to catch a short ball forced my body into one of those cheerleader reverse "C" contortions. Something low snapped and I stopped breathing for a while. This time, instead of being able to think forward as to how to avoid a worse injury, I only had the chance to fire off a rapid reprimand: "Stupid shoes, stupid me, stupidier shoes. How could I be so stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid." I actually needed a cane for the next few days, but was too vain to visit the Old Broken Body Store.

"Do you know what your hip flexor muscles are?" the therapist asked.
"Am I going to be learning all the parts of the body this way?" I replied.
"You have to start more slowly," he said.

And I'm starting right here.

Luftwaffe Pilots and USA Today TV Critics

2008-03-17T11:40:00.004-04:00

Horst Rippert, an 88-year old former pilot of Germany's Luftwaffe, thinks he may have shot down French writer and war pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupery in 1944, as Saint-Exupery flew near Marseilles. but the nerves of steel rat-a-tat-tat man isn't sure. So he's taking credit, backing away, apologizing, and saying what he big fan he has been all these years, while hoping he didn't kill him. That story is so odd, could I have been confusing the Times with the Onion?

The USA Today's television critic, Robert Bianco, also has me confused. John Adams was short, unattractive, often confounded, and brilliant enough to be vexed at being confounded. And that's what I'm seeing on my television screen. Perhaps the real problem is that Robert Bianco has a low tolerance for people unpretty. Meanwhile, David Morse (Washington) could have done just as well holding up the famous First Man's portrait and cutting out the lips to talk. I've only seen one expression so far from Stephen Dillane (Jefferson) - spoiled malaise - and hasn't the same actor played Franklin in every Franklin role, ever? It's a can't go wrong part. In fact, these three men were physically imposing figures who because of our familiarity with them can be portrayed almost as thinly as charactertures and be accepted. Adams couldn't get away with that in real life, and on screen he shouldn't be presented other than as he was just for the sake of our viewing tolerance. Review the work, not the looks. If I had wanted America's Next Top Model - God Save These United States - I knew what channel to select.

Oh, and "facts are stubborn things," is one of my favorite quotes, and it's his. I had forgotten.