Thanksgiving 2008

Everyone seems to be doing Gratitude Posts this Thanksgiving, so what the hell--I'll give it a shot.

I'm grateful for the post-modern broken home where being together as a family is still on everyone's agenda.
The boys and their father....

The daughters-in-law, who may look serious at the moment I took this, but it was a break in the non-stop laughter and talk.

And the mother-in-law in the mirror.











The granddaughter building a magnificent gingerbread house with Aunt Julie...








Oh, and the pecan pie (among others...)

Of Hair and Other Such Man-Made Disasters...

This is not the first time I have written of such subjects. See here and here, if you will. My quest for a decent haircut NOW THAT I LIVE IN ELK GROVE has taken me on another journey. This time I went to a stylist recommended by two friends of mine. I like their haircuts. They touted this stylist as one who is au courant, not to mention up to the minute on the latest hair tricks and styling whatnots. They also said her salon was a bit...well, I didn't really hear what they said. I was so taken with an au courant stylist within a five mile radius. Not to mention one who charges $35 a cut.

The salon: took me a while to find it. Kept driving by it because it is in the back of some huge government building where they pass out visas to barely legal aliens, or some such thing. When I finally found it--and it was in the back, down a long lonely corridor--I passed two women on their way out. They had perms. Those kind of perms that makes one's hair frizz and kink and resemble rusty brillo pads. But I persevered, because I trust my friends and they both swore by this stylist.

And they were right. She is absolutely au courant, having just taken a class in texturing from some Hollywood bigwig. She textured the absolute shit out of my hair. I thought texturing was the new word for layering. But I think they use the word texture because whatever they're doing to your hair gives it a really weird texture. In the normal course of events, I have really thick hair. It's very shiny, healthy, and is a point of pride being my crowning glory and all that. Here's what it looked like in high school--okay, the face is different, but the hair, really the hair is pretty much the same, with the added bonus of a streak of silver.
I no longer have this hair. I, who used to be the envy of all thin-haired girls, now seem to have thin hair myself. I have been textured into near baldness. My ponytail droops, a hundred hairs shy of its former self. And now way could I wear my hair down; there are no more thick waves to flip up at the ends. Well, there is on one side, but the other, near baldness. My glorious silver streak has been textured into salt and pepper. When I get up in the morning and see myself as I brush my teeth, I'm scared. I look like a hag. Frizzy and frizzled and thinning and--oh woe. Oh woe. I've already cut the back myself. Grabbed two handfuls of hair and chopped of an inch or so. It is marginally better. By a very slim margin.

When I spent that six weeks in the hospital after having a cerebral aneurysm, my hair showed the consequence of all the drugs and disaster. This time, I didn't have to spend six weeks in the hospital to get a similar look. And I only paid $35.

Yet again and still forever, I am twisting my hair up, shoving a clip in it and thinking--oh, well, who was I wanting to impress?

Marriage, Death, Kids and Family

1. Twenty years ago today, I got married. Not to the English actor; this was to the California country boy who I met in a bar in the foothills of the Sierras. We didn't meet cute or neat or however Hollywood calls it. I was in the bar with friends; he was there for a beer after work. I can't say I was bowled over, but I kinda thought I knew him from somewhere. So we talked, and he thought so too, and I gave him my number. He called that same night. We went out the next weekend. I still wasn't bowled over. There wasn't that instant chemistry that I knew from other relationships. There was just something about him that I couldn't stay away from. It wasn't sexual. I didn't understand it then; I just went along with it. Three years later, we were married. Now, twenty years later, we're not. I am better off for not being with him now, for all sorts of reasons. But that something about him that drew me to him then? It still exists. I don't know why. I still don't know what it means. I guess I just have to live with it.

2. This summer my cousin got married. He and his wife were expecting a baby in the new year. Last Sunday, they were having a meal in a restaurant. My cousin got up to pay the bill, turned around to look at his wife and watched the life leave her eyes. They couldn't save the baby either.

3. Today I had a conversation with a young woman I love who has two children. First, much talk about the cousin and his wife. Then much talk about the young woman I love and her pregnancy. Then I sang Happy Birthday to Son #1 and listened to Son #2 babble to me. Then the young woman asked how I was, and I started to tell her. She is one of the few people in my family who hears me. But #1 and #2 were hungry and cranky and wanted their mom's attention. So before I really got into anything important to me, she had to get off the phone. The feeling I was left with was not unlike what happens when you've been making out with a guy, he comes, and then says I gotta go, finish yourself. I know the young woman I love didn't mean for me to feel that way, but I did.

4. This afternoon I went shopping for light bulbs at the hardware store. I love hardware stores, but today, today it made me miss my dad. He kept me furnished in tools and up-to-speed on how to use them. I still have the love of all the gadgetry, but without him, I'm not sure what to buy. He was another of the few people in my family who could hear me. And my mom. As I wandered around the lumber department, I thought of how my parents had spoiled me. Not with gifts or money or any of those things. They liked me and they wanted to know what I was doing and thinking and wanting and knowing. So they spoiled me for this time when there really aren't very many people around who feel that way.

Night Sky Facing West, Elk Grove

I suppose all West-facing skies are gorgeous. I can't imagine that it's just the ones I see from my backyard. One after another, they are glorious and I've taken shot after shot of them. I don't get tired of looking at the pictures and I don't get tired of looking at the reality. If there is nothing else that says to me this world is bigger than my life, then these West-facing skies do the job. This one is another shot just from outside my backdoor. With my crummy camera. Would it be any more glorious if I was working with something good?

The next two are also West-facing, but I took them down the street a bit at the railroad tracks. Can you see the train going by?

The Past is Still Too Much With Me...

The strain of remembering my illustrious past, not to mention digging out photos of same, was too much for me. I have had to recline on my camp stool these past few days and fan myself.

What an image, no?

Like this skirt?

What about this one?

Actually, they're the same skirt. Tis a reversible number that I bought last year at a CAbi party.

Never heard of CAbi? Carol Anderson By Invitation--get it, CAbi??? Think of it as Tupperware to wear. You get invited to the party by someone you know who puts out some crackers and fruit, a bit of wine and cheese, and allows a CAbi salesperson wheeling giant clothing racks to turn her home into a Lohmann's sale. Hoards of women, the invitees, descend on the clothes and strip off to try them on in whatever room is available. It's exciting. Really. And also exhausting in some ways. The sight of all those women trying on this that and the other made me DETERMINED TO BUY SOMETHING. Anything. Like the above-pictured skirt.

Actually, the skirt really is quite pretty. It's some sort of filmy, floaty fabric and descends in tiers to what I believe may be called a handkerchief hem (or maybe not--someone with a better sense of such things might know better). I had great fantasies of it being the foundation of my winter wardrobe--until I tried it on.

It looked like shit. On me, that is. On someone else, it would look terrific and would indeed be the foundation of their winter wardrobe. So I'm selling it on eBay. Go have a look. Bid it up. Save me from myself.

Come All You People Now, Smile on Your Brother...

A Story in Several Parts, not to be sung:

1. Not so long ago in a town far away...no, make that: a long long time ago in a town not very near, I was a young bride. Not so much a blushing bride because this was post Sexual Revolution, or at least the start of it, so when I married to my college sweetheart, I was neither technically nor actually a virgin. However, I was a Nice Jewish Girl who aspired to matching Garland sweaters, A-line skirts and circle pins. I married an actor, an English actor,and post wedding, we hied to England so he could go to drama school.

2. The actor, a fine and handsome young man as you can see, was admitted to that bastion of British Acting, The Central School of Speech & Drama (known also as the Central School of Screech & Trauma). I, as befitted a young wife of that time, worked as a secretary. All of you post-feminists should know that back then EVEN WITH A DEGREE IN PHILOSOPHY, secretarial positions were the zenith of one's expectations, unless one was a teacher, which I refused to be (a story for another time). So, by day my hunky husband lounged about the halls of Central, mixing with all manner of other hunky people. And I toiled on Great Titchfield Street, typing the inanities of Mr. Platt, Vice President of Foreign Operations for Associated Dry Goods.

3. Was I a happy camper? Noooooooooo. But it is beyond the scope of this simple blog post to elaborate and enumerate all of the reasons why. Suffice to say, I was dependent on my mate for ALL of my social needs. Fortunately for me, people seemed to like him (he was quite hunky).

4. One of the people in his year at Central was Dave Clark, of the Dave Clark Five. You know, that Dave Clark Five. Not the Beatles, certainly, but the DC5 was hot shit to some. Dave was seeing the wrong side of his career as a teen heart throb, so he enrolled at Central (one presumes he did not have to audition) to try and get up to speed on an acting career. And Dave, Dave really liked my hunky husband. Consequently, I, that is we, spent an amazing amount of time with Dave and his posse. Ah, the stories I could tell....

5. This particular album photo was actually the cover for a single the DC5 put out sometime in the '70s. "Love One Another" was the song, and Dave thought it would be a cool idea if all you people was actually his friends from Central. We traipsed off to a recording studio somewhere and for an entire evening sang over and over and over again

"C'mon you people now,
Smile on your brother,
Everybody get together,
Try to love one another
Right now...."

over and over and over again. Dave and Mike Smith and the others of the DC5 did the verses. We were the chorus, and while we were singing our blessed little hearts out, someone was taking photos. Did I know that we were going to be featured on the cover? No, I did not. I had come straight from work and that outfit I'm wearing? It's a sweet doubleknit suit, pleated white skirt and navy jacket. My hair? It's up in a secretarial top knot; you could probably find a pencil in there if you looked hard enough.
6. When I look at this photo, I think what a fish out of water I was. All those drama students and me, the secretary. But you can tell that I sang away for all I was worth, and as I recall, a fine time was had by all. I think we even made an appearance on Top of the Pops, so the DC5 could promote the record. For that, I was dressed more appropriately, but I don't have a photo (and I don't remember what I wore), so you'll have to take my word for it.

Remembering The '70s...

I was actually more of a Beatles fan, but you see that girl in the front with the white skirt? That's me.

Is this a story I have to tell?

My Brain's Connected to My Femoral Artery...

When I had that ruptured cerebral aneurysm six years ago, I got lucky because the neurosurgeon who would normally have gotten my case was on his honeymoon. So another guy, the radiologic neurosurgeon got to ply his trade on me. That meant a number of things: My head wasn't shaved and my skull wasn't sawed open to fix the aneurysm. Instead, the doctor pushed a wire with a titanium slinky at the end of it into my upper thigh (well, okay, it's my groin, but that sounds so, I don't know, dirty or something), went into my femoral artery and snaked the whole business up into my brain, where the slinky was deposited to fix the aneurysm. I had no scars. My glorious hair was intact. And my recovery did not include the rigamarole of brain surgery.

I thought of this the other day when Mom Central sent me some information about minimally invasive gynecological surgery. Did you know that according to US News & World Report 85% of all hysterectomies are still being performed with the old slice 'em open and clean' em all out abdominal surgery instead of the well-proven laparoscopic procedure that leaves the ovaries and cervix still there? That was the case with my friend Wendy last year. She had a history of heavy periods and major PMS. The doctor convinced her the cureall was to have everything removed. She did and she was in the hospital for almost a week and off work for a month or so.

I wish I'd known then about AAGL, an association of laparoscopic surgeons, who have a web site that offers a lot of information about less invasive procedures for gynecologic procedures, so that I could have sent Wendy there to at least find out what her surgical options were. Her doctor, being a cutter, gave her no choice. As my doctor, being a cutter, would have given me none with fixing my aneurysm. How do I know that? He told me so.

Doctors do what they're trained to do; it's up to us not to take their word for it.

Vote YES on Prop 2

I was going to write a well-reasoned, journalistically sound, philosophically adept (and adroit), not to mention incredibly convincing post about why everyone in California should do as I'm doing: Voting Yes On Proposition 2.

However, to do so would require that I carefully consider the opposition's point of view. This I cannot do. I know what they're saying; it just pisses me off so much that I tend to start flailing about and screeching obscenities.

Okay, let me see if I can calm down a tad. But first, an illustration:
Proposition 2 is the "standards for confining farm animals" initiative. It's basic tenet is that cows raised for veal, egg-laying hens and pregnant pigs be kept in cages that allow them to lie down, stand up, fully extend their limbs and turn around freely. That means that right now, these animals are being kept in cages that restrict their movements.

Like that pig above, the one with a bunch of piglets feeding at her. Here, have another look:See those bars. Their purpose is to stop the sow from standing up. Because she might step on one of her wiggly little piglets. And that would be very bad for the economy, because that piglet is MONEY IN THE BANK FOR THE PIG FARMER. Not to mention cheaper bacon and pork chops in the stomachs of American consumers. When I queried the UC Davis vet techs at the State Fair where I took these photos, they seemed quite proud of this contraption. Before someone came up with this pig prison cell, you have no idea how many wiggly piglets were lost to mommy-stomping.

I am voting YES on Prop 2 because I am absolutely certain that our humanity, and therefore our success as a nation, is tied to the way we treat animals. The connection between violence to animals and violence to humans is well-established. We're understanding that where our family pets are involved, but farm animals? Nope. Why bother about some dumb animals. Dumb doesn't mean stupid here; that phrase is using the archaic word for inability to speak. Those pigs can't cry or complain. Animals can't communicate in our language so we feel quite comfortable in doing with them as we wish. Until recently we did the same to human infants. Since they were pre-verbal and thus assumed to be without memory, we performed surgery on them without anesthetic. Now we know better. The inability to communicate in spoken language does not equal the inability to think, to feel, to need, to want.

Okay, now I'm going to be calm and speak to the opposition's arguments: I can't. They have everything to do with food production and food prices and California's egg industry. Frankly, my dear, I give a shit about any of that. I'm far more concerned with the production of our morality, of working to recreate an America that is not the font of corrupt capitalism (hello, Wall Street..hi there, sub-prime mortgages).

There is no question that this election is a watershed one for us as a nation. We have the chance to return to being a people of hope and promise, to be the country the Founders imagined when they saw this land as the City on the Hill. Vote to give us back our humanity.
Do it for this pregnant pig.

NaBloPoMo? No! No!

I'm not doing NaBloPoMo this year. I simply haven't the lust for whatever NaBloPoMo is supposed to give me. Certainly not the prizes because I never win anything--and I didn't in the past two years. I suppose I have gotten some traffic from it, but these days I'm all "Traffic? Meh!" I may be one of the few nonBloPoMos this year because I've gotten some group grope emails from Eden Kennedy in which she talks of Ning being overwhelmed, as is she, with the response. So go elsewhere to read the daily posts of my fellow bloggers. Here you will only find the daily posts of those of us still doing Blog365...well, almost daily.

Happy Halloween 2008

We have waited for this day. Our costumes are ready.

The Devil Dog waits for the leetle children to come trick or treating.

Instead, this is the day that the rains came down...

and we are left with this

...to deal with on our own. Not the Devil Dog, because chocolate is poison to dogs....but the Witch. She will have to deal with the detritus of Halloween 2008. Now.

When I Was A Girl, I Could Read Two Books in a Day

Now that I'm a woman, all grow'd up, I wouldn't even think of it.

Is this a non sequitar? No, it's a continuation of a conversation going on over at Mad Madge World about our changing reading habits.

There was a time when I inhaled books. My delight was in going to Crown Books (remember them?) and buying $30 worth of paperbacks, which was at least six or seven books. When I got home, I wouldn't know which to read first. I don't do that anymore. For one, Crown Books is gone and $30 buys me a couple of trade paperbacks. For another, I'm just not into that kind of reading anymore. What kind of reading is that? Escapist.

When I was reading two novels in a day (DH Lawrence, if you don't mind), I was a miserable coot stuck in a cold flat in a country where I didn't want to be. So I read. To get out of that flat. Obviously if I was reading Lawrence, I wasn't as concerned with getting out of the country.

I think another reason I don't read so much anymore is that--sigh! I've read all the great ones. Okay, that's not true, but you can't have completed the course work and exams for a PhD in English Lit without knowing, and I do mean knowing, most of what the Western world considers great literature.

All that reading spoiled future literature for me in several ways. For one, I can't turn off the critical faculty that was honed in grad school. In some ways, I know too much--about the genre, the author, the culture that produced it. So I'm never reading just for plot and the writing has to be stunning for me to notice it.

With contemporary fiction, I am most often disappointed. I've just finished The Secret Life of Bees. Eh. A bit simple. Innocuous. Sweet. Etc etc etc. Thinking that, I'm wondering what was in the contemporary fiction that I read in my twenties and thirties that was so dynamic: ah, that was the second wave of women coming into their own as novelists. Didion, Jong, Drabble, Lessing: even the mediocre books had some breathtaking piece of wisdom for me. I was learning how to live, and the novels I read were my guidebooks. Now? I guess novels can't do that for me anymore. It's not that I think I'm done learning how to live, but that the majority of the books that I see today are guidebooks for a younger woman.

Therein, I think, lies the issue: it's a midlife thing. The coming of age story or the young wife battling for her independence--they just don't have relevance when you're in midlife. I don't want to know Jo March's story; I want to hear Aunt March's version.

DeMille Dwellings: The Guy Who Lives In The Garage.

He prowls at night, that I know because I see him when I'm taking my garbage out. The first couple of times, he scared the living bejesus out of me. It was a dark and stormy November night…. (no, actually, it was April. I told you I have a weird predilection for overplay when it comes to language).


Whatever--it was night and dark and I was out back dumping my trash. This being an apartment complex of sorts, we don't have normal cans. We have the supersize bins with the lids that require brute strength to tip up. The kind where bodies and hacked limbs are being found. Every week the garbage master comes around with his huge truck, from which he thrusts two vicious metal prongs into slots in the bottom of the dumpster, which is then hauled up skyward until it is just hovering over the gaping maw of the truck, when the lid flies open and there is an avalanche of big black bags and medium white bags and little beige bags from the grocery stores along with tiny bags of dog shit and candy wrappers and snot rags and rubbers (the condom kind) and the aforementioned body parts and who knows what else, and then ever so gently, like a tender lover after he's finished, the metal prongs move the bin down, down, down until it is resettled on the ground and the prongs recede and the truck drives away and that is garbage collection for another week.


The Guy who Lives in the Garage watches TV on a 5" portable he's spliced into one of the fuse boxes out back. I've watched him watching. He's partial to I Love Lucy reruns and he seems to lose himself in them. He'll hunch forward on his chair as if to get right into the screen. When the payoff comes, he'll scoot back and throw his head up and his laugh both looks and sounds like a braying donkey.


Last night he entertained a guest down there. It was The Waif from across the way. She's a pathetic little creature who barely has the energy to breath vital air. She's all promise and no realization.

DeMille Dwellings: The Narrator

You are probably wondering about me. Who I am. What my story is. And so you should. But you'll find that I'm far less forthcoming about myself than I am in my opinions of others. Perhaps it's that I know myself and therefore know the complexity that underlies all of us. I can reduce the others to if not caricatures, then exemplars of a type. I can't do that to myself; there are too many ifs, and, buts, and maybes to simplify my own self-portrait. So you will have to discover me on your own and perhaps in the end, that's what I'm wanting you to do. For me. So that I can know as well.

Wordy Wednesday

What is it with this Wordless Wednesday business? Does anyone not get that it's a con. Shove a picture up on your blog and you've done your Wednesday duty? I don't think so. Be that as it may, I'm willing to go along to get along (ha!). So here's my offering for Wordless Wednesday. Except, of course, it has words. Because, people, this is a BLOG! Not a photo album.
This is a photo of my lunch. It is, some of you might recognize, a concoction from WeightWatchers frozen meals. When I was on Weight Watchers oh those many years ago, I lived on this stuff. And it wasn't bad. Either I've changed or they've changed, because this Chicken Mirabella was Mirabad. For one, the pasta, which was about ten stages past al dente, was coated in a gelatinous, yet incredibly taste-free sauce that had an odd shine to it. Almost a glow, in fact. And see that piece of chicken in the upper right corner of the dish? That was one of two--count 'em two--chunks of chicken in the dish. Since the box cover showed FIVE chunks of chicken, I believe I have the makings of a truth in advertising claim on Weight Watchers. Of course, if I won, they'd probably award me a lifetime supply of the stuff.

Fashion is the topic again on MidLifeBloggers. This time it's about the dreaded trip to buy bluejeans. Go have a look.

Where oh where has my allergy medicine gone?

...Drixoral is suddenly and without any warning Missing From The Drugstore Shelves. I have taken Drixoral for oh--mumble, mumble--years now. Every since the nice little allergy doctor scratched the skin on my back and told me I was allergic to household dust and mold.

Back in those days, Drixoral was on Prescription Only. Then it moved to the OverTheCounter section. Then it got very popular with the Cooking Crank crowd. Then it got moved to behind the pharmacist's counter and I had to proffer and sign several documents to get my monthly dose (Ritalin was much easier to obtain--go figure). Then suddenly, apropos of nothing, it was gone. And no one knew why.

Since then I have been suffering with my odd assortment of allergy symptoms: itchy eyes, such that I'm rubbing my eyelashes into oblivion. Itchy throat, such that I am forever trying to scratch it with my tongue, a maneuver that is more attractive (and less effective) than you can imagine. Hideous fits of incessant sneezing.

So when I learned from MomCentral that there was a new allergy spray on the market, I said Yes, indeedy, send it over. It came FedEx, which you know makes me feel important and like I'm getting a wonderful present. And I tried it toute suite, which means right away (although my genders may be off because all those details to learn in French? Just too much pour moi).

It's called anywhere, because it's an anti-allergen fabric spray that you can put on anything. I elected to spray my pillows and my bed, or at least that part of it closest to my nose. As I sprayed my feather (yes, I know!) pillows, I thought out you damn dust mites; begone you household mold. At first I was a little concerned because anywhere is made by Clorox and eau de bleach was quite apparent when the fabric was first sprayed. But it dried with no odor and I took to my bed that night anticipating the first allergy-free sleep since Drixoral disappeared.

Which is exactly what I enjoyed.

But--there's always a but, isn't there?--anywhere cannot take the place of my beloved Drixoral, since I would have to spray my entire house and all therein, regularly, and constantly, and zealously. But--here's the good but--for those of you who have localized issues with allergies, dog and cat beds and the like, I do think anywhere can be the exactly right product in the exactly right place at exactly the right time.

On The Road Again, ByJane's Version

...which is basically you stay at home and fantasize about trips you would take. I spent a lot of time doing that the summer of '06, better known as the summer in which I was suddenly no longer married. On the one road trip I did take, accompanied by my trusty sidekick, Molly, I thought what a wonderful life it would be to just hit the road with her and go wherever. I spent a fair amount of time on Interstate 5, driving from Sac to Seattle and back again, checking out the RVs I saw. This, it seemed to me was the perfect way for Molly and me to go. Driving down the byways and highways in our own little home, two turtles sharing a single shell.

I haven't done it for a simple reason: I lack the courage. To drive one of those behemoths, to travel endlessly and aimlessly as a single woman alone, to go into the unknown. So when Robin of MidLife On Wheels got in touch with me, I knew I had to publish her story on MidLifeBloggers. Go have a look at MidLife Crisis? Take A Trip. Does what she's done make you as envious as it does me? Anyone wanna join Molly and me in a roadtrip somewhere?

Not In the Kitchen with Gwyneth and Mario

There are carrots and potatoes and maybe a head or two of garlic roasting in the oven. I've tossed them with olive oil and lightly sprinkled them with sea salt and ground pepper, the four variety kind. To what end, you ask? I'm not sure. They were what was in the refrigerator--you may remember them left over from my last culinary adventure--when I got VERY HUNGRY watching Mario Batali and Gwyneth Paltrow in On The Road Again in Spain.

This is an odd program. The premise seems to be that chef Mario Batali and Gwyneth Paltrow are on a culinary road trip through Spain. The purpose? Well, there is a lovely cookbook that they're flogging at the end of the show, written by Mario with assistance from Gwyneth. I don't think of her as being a particular expert on any cuisine, let alone Spanish. Doesn't she exist on a macrobiotic diet? Or love alone? But, no, Mario has told Oprah; Gwyneth has a healthy appetite. Is that sufficient expertise? What do you think?

They are, at least in the episode I watched, accompanied by a middle-aged man who seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place him, and a lovely young brunette, whose sole purpose seemed to be to offer a visual contrast to Gwyneth. The foursome drove for a while and then dined for a while. Driving and eating, this is the stuff of great drama.

Actually, it is unscripted television at its most banal, and I'm someone who loves reality shows. But the ones I watch are produced by people who understand arcane dramatic concepts such as story arc and dialogue. The successful reality show are cast so there there is a variety of personality types and edited so there is a narrative line throughout. But the characters in On The Road Again are, with the exception of Battali, bland, insipid, a bit like rice pudding without the raisins. Further, there is no story and the dialogue--well, think of the talk at your dinner table when everyone's mouth is full. All the four can offer is a variation on the theme of "Mmmmmmmmmm."

So in some way this is a gentle form of porn, watching Gwyneth Paltrow put things in her mouth and lick her lips and moan appreciatively. Perhaps that is its purpose after all. But on PBS--isn't that too cheap a thrill?

Great Minds Think Alike--or, I Don't Own My Words

Years ago, another lifetime ago, I wrote a book. It was about kids in commercials and it was published by Doubleday. Cool, right? Eh, not so fast. My title, The Commercial Kids, was axed by the sales staff in favor of How To Get Your Child Into Commercials and Modeling. The former was kinda cute; the latter was to me, a serious journalist, an embarrassment. But at least in those days, Doubleday did not give mid-list writers much choice. Grin and bear it, I was told; bend over and smile--all the way to the bank. But that trip to the bank never came, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that after my book was published, a deluge of similar works came off the presses. I tried to ignore them; what else could I do. But I would check each one out as it was published and one day I picked up the latest version and started to read the Introduction. And the words sounded familiar. Very familiar. I'll never forget that kick in the stomach feeling I had when I realized that my words, my writing had been stolen. First, I was incensed. Then I felt the futility of doing anything about it. And then I was depressed because not only had my book turned into an embarrassment for me, but it had been plagiarized. Talk about a double whammy. I could have gone through that second book, highlighted every sentence that duplicated one in mine and taken it into a court of law. The choice not to sue was mine, and I made it because I didn't want to spend an inordinate part of my life looking backwards and being bitter. So I said, "Whatever...", hoped the second book would tank (it did, they all did) and marched off bravely into the future. I haven't forgotten, but I have moved on.

As one who has spent the better part of her life as a writer, I have some fond, perhaps archaic feelings about my ideas and the words I use to express them. Before the internet existed, before everyone and their uncle was a blogger, that had some meaning. Now? Not so much.

A couple of years ago I wrote a post in which I took the words Blogito Ergo Sum as my motto. Since then I've used those words and/or their translation, "I blog, therefore I am" as a constant on my site. I was a Philosophy major as an undergraduate; Descartes was drilled into my head and so it was not all that creative when I gave his words a spin because they said so perfectly what I feel about my blogging. But I went a little nutsy the other day when I saw them as a title of a session at BlogHer DC. Obviously I was not one of the panelists and obviously there are a lot of other former philosophy majors out there, but still--

Another instance: A month or so ago, I wrote a post called John McCain versus the GOP. In this week's Newsweek, Jonathan Alter has a column called, "Crushed by the Elephant." We both said pretty much the same thing. My line was "John McCain--the Hanoi Hilton didn't break him; the Republican party did" and Alter's was "a man who survived five and a half years as a Vietnam POW and a thousand political battles is being crushed by a dying elephant." Did Jonathan Alter grab my idea? Don't be ridiculous. I prefer to think of it as, great minds think alike.

The good news about blogging is that it has given a voice to me and many others who would stand shrieking in their closets if not for the internet. The bad news is that a lot of other people can hear you now. That means that ownership of ideas is impossible. I'm sure a mathematician could come up with the odds of how many people would have the same idea at relatively the same time. I'm seeing the Alter-ByJane coincidence as a teachable moment for myself, one that's allowing me to put the I blog, therefore I am incident into perspective.

Yet, there are definite consequences in the marketplace. For one, Alter got paid for his column and umpteen thousand readers (Newsweek hopes) read him, while I got bupkus and my stat reader rarely goes above double digits. But I don't think there's anything to be done about that, short of deep breathing, marching bravely into the future, and moving on.

Midlifebloggers: Fashion for the Forty and Over Set.

What's your opinion on that? I've been reading More magazine and frankly, it's pissing me off. Last month Lesley Jane Seymour devoted her Editor's Column to dressing one's age. She described standing behind a woman at a hotel in Hollywood and trying to figure out how old she was by the visual cues: long blonde hair meant 40, mini skirt pushed it to 35, and bright colors signalled "under 30, for sure." Then the woman turned around and revealed

"(cue screech music from Psycho) a woman of a certain age who was trying desperately . . . to avoid looking a certain age. . . .Being of a Certain Age myself, I felt terrifically sad that this woman had gazed out over the fashion landscape and seen no appealing style stops between Thirty-Five and...Dead. . . .deliberately dressing 20 years younger than your birth date is setting yourself up to commit a kind of sartorial shock and awe."

It's taken me a month to stop sputtering at the slings and arrows that Seymour was flinging at me and every other woman who doesn't fit the New York fashion world's version of what she calls "Age Appropriate Style." What does that mean, anyway? Seymour asks us these questions: "If you have great legs, should you still show them off at 60? If your arms are trim and fit, can you go sleeveless at any age?" Hell, yes, I say. I certainly don't want to scare Seymour (or anyone else who is standing behind me in line), but my hair is long and my skirts are not because that's the way I want them. I have thought both issues through and I'm sure of my reasoning, and it has nothing to do with trying to look younger.

What bothers me so much about Seymour's edicts is that More is the only mainstream publication that focuses consistently on midlife women. They do a good job of offering articles that encourage us to take chances, break out of the box, go for as full a life as you can possibly imagine. But this encouragement clearly doesn't extend to our physical selves since the magazine offers a steady round of stick thin models wearing designer clothing. I don't know about you, but this midlife woman hasn't been stick thin since she was in her thirties, and she cannot afford, especially in this economy, $1500 dresses and $800 shoes.

So here's my challenge. How are you dressing these days? For comfort? For fashion? For yourself or your significant other? Think about it; maybe you have some photos to share. I'll publish all that I get on MidLifeBloggers.com. Let's turn that into the fashion magazine for midlifers, the one no one else is publishing.