Category: Chick stuff

Chick stuff, View from the Shoe

Badass Mrs. Potato Head

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Humans don’t come with interchangeable parts. Sure, we can switch things up, like that nose and chin that came with your original birthday suit. But, if you opt for more deluxe models or major tweaks to the basic prototype, you’re into more uncharted territory. In the wild, wild west of plastic options, you can put in your order for bigger, better or just different. Or, you can choose to keep the original factory settings. It’s up to you.

Some adjustments may be necessary, some even a blessing. Replacing what breast cancer takes away bestows critical self-confidence to women already devastated by a take-no-prisoners disease. When terrible accidents play havoc with faces, skin or other critical pieces of our being, plastic surgery is a miracle. But,  reconstructive surgeries aside, which get my 100% vote, some serious re-thinking is in order.

While we weren’t looking, our society seems to have ascribed to an if-it-ain’t broke/STILL-fix-it society. When The Graduate’s Benjamin Braddock was told “There is a great future in plastics”, maybe he should have listened. Though I’m certain cosmetic surgery wasn’t what his father’s friend had in mind, it was nifty advice.

Every year, more than 18 million people spend billions of dollars on cosmetic surgery. Billions. Think about it. To be sure, I’ve had my OMG mirror moments. You know those times when you lift your chin back where it used to be before gravity took over and it looks oh, so much better? Yup. Unfortunately, my bathroom mirror’s Broadway backstage lighting are a bit too Lon Chaney to be inviting. Still, I’d be lying if I didn’t say firmer skin, and erasing those little WTF lines between my eyebrows don’t annoy the heck out of me.

We are each our own worst beauty enemy. Continue reading “Badass Mrs. Potato Head” →

Chick stuff

Ode To Joe’s

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happy teenage hippy girl in shades with peace sign

How do I love Trader Joe’s? Let me count the ways.

I hate grocery shopping. As a new bride, supporting my then husband through school, I budgeted groceries for two through a nefarious envelope system. There were the years I shopped with one babe on my hip and one attempting his escape out of the cart. There were years adolescents begged for snacks they knew were not on approved list of mom’s good-for-you eats —through every aisle of temptations.  When all the birdies flew the nest, grocery shopping became an even more irritating chore. My late husband, however, oddly enjoyed the food shopping gig and happily took over the the gritty household item list, knowing he could also drop in treats that weren’t on HIS healthy list. The upside was, that also left me with grocery nirvana – Trader Joe’s.

Disclaimer:  Before you think this is merely a PR shill for the store, no groceries have been harmed in the writing of this blog; nor has Trader Joe’s contributed to my advertising earnings. (Damn it) Any words of praise were simply written as an ode to grocery shopping done right – in my humble opinion.

People’s shopping preferences are as different as tomato/potato.  As for me, there’s nothing like picking up ‘just two things’ (hah!) in the welcoming aisles of Trader Giotto’s. If you’ve never been, it’s hard to articulate the contrasting experiences of weekly foraging. Maybe it’s TJ’s mellow-yellow vibe, where flower children of the 60’s can subtly dance with their grocery carts to reminiscent funky tunes or maybe it’s the Haight-Ashbury playlist. Either way, I’m totally cool with it. Continue reading “Ode To Joe’s” →

Chick stuff, Holiday Madness

Flower Grinch

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I may have come from the land of misfit toys but, full disclosure, I’m not the biggest fan girl of flowers. Shocker – and on Valentine’s Day, too. But, I have no intention of turning in my woman card. I’m still a warm and fuzzy Libra girl who just isn’t a total sucker for a floral bouquet. Working in my parents’ florist shop might have something to do with my blasé attitude toward blooms. Nothing says bursting the floral mystique more than frantic holidays of cranky last minute orders, stripping thorns and using enough floral tape to giftwrap the entire planet.

Admittedly, flowers are pretty, gorgeous even, but well, they die. Ooops. Shakespeare once asked “Is it better to love and lose than never love at all?” Despite that great advice, the concept of ‘perishable’ never held a lot of appeal – especially in these last 3 years. Still flowers can make your day and have made many of mine, but for reasons other than their horticultural wonder.

“At my age, flowers scare me.” George Burns

The mushy artist in me has been super appreciative of flowers that came to my door looking utterly gorgeous, especially the exotic, wildly lush ones. Some have been flashy, in eye-popping colors and some sailed in, softly hued and gentle as fairy dreams. Humans are wired to love flowers simply because they are beautiful. In fact, when we think of the word beautiful, one of the first things that comes to mind IS a flower. Continue reading “Flower Grinch” →

Chick stuff

4 Chicks at the Cape

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I’ve been a goner for an elbow shaped piece of land called Cape Cod since I was 6 years old. It’s always been my happy place. I’m pretty sure, that in less than 5 minutes of meeting me, you’d know more than you ever wanted to know about it. I dragged my husband, who didn’t quite get the attraction, there many times but only in the last few years of our travels did he come to see what drove my addiction. In fact, he fell a little in love himself but our last trip 3 years ago never got a rerun. He died A few short months later.

Last week I finally paid a return visit to ‘my Cape’.  I’m not sure if my four widow friends decided to share the trip to help celebrate my milestone birthday or see if the island lived up to my constant hype. I was just pretty darn grateful to cross that Sagamore Bridge again and in whirlwind few days, I was hellbent to leave no shell or lobster roll unturned.

“The waves of the sea, help me get back — to me.”

As a fresh-faced little kid, the trek from New Jersey to the Cape took a whole lot longer than it does today. In the wee hours of the morning, my father would stealthily carry me and my brother’s (nearly) sleeping forms into our spiffy green station wagon. Edging into the early morning darkness, my dad naively hoped we’d sleep until the sun came up over the Cape landscape. Um, no. Before we ever hit Boston, (the route of the ‘old days’) he’d hear a chorus of “are we there yet” and “I’m hungry.” My mother doled out snacks to hold us over, but there was no way to hold back our excitement. My parents were doomed.

Back in the day, utopia was a small group of weathered shingle cottages, complete with shuffleboard and concrete pool, nestled in a copse of towering pines. Even without air conditioning, we slept like hibernating bear cubs in open-window bedrooms, cooled by scented nights. I can still picture Nancy Drew mysteries and games of Old Maid on the beach. Our stubby feet ran along seemingly endless low-tide beaches and I can still see my father’s surprised face as he tasted his first (and last) spoonful of Indian pudding. Far from the creamy concoction he envisioned, the sturdy cornmeal dessert was an epic fail. Luckily, my brother and I opted for ice cream.

“The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.” Costeau

Friday night tradition dictated strolls along Hyannis’ Main Street, past an endless booty of gift and candy shops. Not one ever bask in the sun now, my rosy childhood skin is imprinted in my memory. Decked out in a gaudily colored swim tube and bathing cap (yes, I did), I paddled contently in the Cape’s salty Atlantic waters; the same waters that churned up boxes of multi-hued taffy. Once, in that said tube in Cape Cod Bay’s calm waters, I had the brilliant idea of raising both hands up, happily waving to my parents. Wrong move. When I found myself looking UP at the water, too stunned to register that oh, yeah – I’m going to drown, you could say I was a little confused. Luckily, my visit to Davy Jones Locker was shortto tell the tale.

“Heaven seems closer in a little house beside Cape Cod Waters” Beverly Baldwin Continue reading “4 Chicks at the Cape” →

Chick stuff

What’s in YOUR wallet?

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I admit it. Guys have us beat in the travel light department. Wallet? Check. Money? Credit card? Check. Ask me if I’ve ever left the house with only a wallet in tow and you’d get a resounding heck, no. I don’t even take a walk without phone, tissues, reading glasses (just in case) and whatever else might make me emergency ready. So, when it comes to my purse, I may be just a wee bit over prepared.

“You always got to be prepared but you never know for what.” Bob Dylan

I don’t have a huge bag; it’s just methodically packed. Why do you think I bought one with so many handy zippered compartments? Okay, well, partly because the color was awesome but all those little pockets sold it. As often as I try to pare down, it seems to fill up without my permission.

A woman’s bag is a puzzle. Pieced together, each item reveals her personality. Toting only bare necessities might nail you as a no-nonsense kinda girl who keeps her car spotless, desk organized and house neat as a pin. There’s obviously never any expired yogurts in your fridge. One of my role models fits that bill exactly, carrying only what fits in the palm of her hand. When I grow up, I’m going to be just like her.

Then there is the gal who stashes everything but her bedroom in her larger than life bag. Shoes, every receipt from the last two months, a Tide stick, a mini medicine cabinet, nail polish and enough makeup to rival a cosmetic counter. If she happens to be a mom, add diapers, baby wipes, baby Tylenol and all things sticky to the traveling bottomless pit of ‘stuff’. This prepared woman’s bag, which gets larger with each replacement, becomes an alternate dimension, like stepping through the door of the Lion, Witch and Wardrobe. But she’s ready for anything. She’s just not going anywhere fast.

Handbags speak louder than words.

True to my Libra need for balance, I hover in the middle. Most of my bag’s contents make perfect sense, at least to me. Why wouldn’t I need two pair of glasses – for sun and reading? Wallet, phone, checkbook (yes, on occasion you need to write a check, right?), tissues, pens, comb, Purell, keys (complete with furry pompoms) and business cards. Then I veer off into kooky with a few herbal tea bags, some supplements I never leave home without, a phone charger, 3 or 4 (or more) makeup basics and on any given day, snacks for grandkids; nuts for grandma.

Maybe it’s my Catholic school training about “a cluttered purse is a cluttered mind’ but at the end of the day, I try to weed through the detritus. I pitch an occasional string cheese wrapper, unused coupons and completed to-do-lists. I reassure myself that I’m not paranoid; just prepared. I could stuff things in an even smaller bag – but why? Continue reading “What’s in YOUR wallet?” →

Chick stuff

Life is poetry . . .

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poetic-pen

. . . that almost never rhymes

“Read the manual.” Yeah, no. That’s really not how my right brain works. I’m more of a show me kind of girl. Subscribing to the ‘pictures are worth a thousand words’ schtick, I often put the words on the back burner. Dual brain that I am, they had to escape occasionally in essays, journaling and sometimes even found their way into poetry — or my version of it.

Since my husband died, I’ve done a lot of leafing through memory lane, which apparently was paved with a heck of a lot of writing, including reams of poetry. I wouldn’t bore you with most but this one seemed still relevant to the journey we all take at some point in our lives. Continue reading “Life is poetry . . .” →

Chick stuff

Kids — The Footprints You Leave Behind.

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“A hundred years from now it won’t matter what sort of house I lived in, or kind of car I drove but, the world may be different because I was important to the life of a child.”

Between escalating birthdays and widowhood, I reflect a lot these days (it happens) on the meaning of life – and the brevity of it.  My tiny children are now parents of their own small, wonderous kidlets, and running on the same parental hamster wheel of schedules, homework, errands and laundry that once filled my days. Then comes the empty nest and wipes those days away. But, there is still nothing I wouldn’t do for those worrywart, race-against- the-clock times, and the babies who inhabited them — back again.

From the minute those squalling little bodies are placed in our arms, our hearts swell so large we think they’ll burst from our love for them. And every day thereafter, we’ll do every crazy thing we can to keep them safe, healthy and happy – or try to. I remember when my neighbor and best bud and I went on a no-nitrate, no additive, all homemade binge, convinced we would rule as health-conscious moms. The good news? We became homemade bread champs. The bad news was we were the only ones eating this healthy fare. (damn, that was good bread) During those months of banned hot dogs, Wonder Bread, bologna and all things artificial, we were on the bottom rung of our kids’ hit parade. Those little buggers much preferred Campbell Soup and Marshmallow fluff moms and eventually we sold out, coughed up some hot dogs, but to our credit – they were turkey dogs.

Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see. Neil Postman

Today threats to children’s well being lurk around every corner, or at least it seems that way to helicopter grandmas who endlessly email and/or snip random articles about GMOs, guns, and social media bullying. Everything, short of a zombie apocalypse, seems like a possible threat to my grandchildren’s well-being, no matter how remote. Continue reading “Kids — The Footprints You Leave Behind.” →

Chick stuff

Seize the (Birth)Day

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0-mCUEodc9AMkbMyenI’m not old, at least, that’s what I tell myself. The number on my driver’s license would have a snarky response, as well as the fact that I can’t clean both floors of the house in one morning flat anymore, would say different. And with another age showing up uninvited this weekend, I’d better make up the guest room because it’ll take up residence.

“Just remember, once you’re over the hill you begin to pick up speed.”  Charles Schulz foretold. In fact, some years those age numbers seem to actually burn rubber! Reminiscing with one of my Cub Scout grand boys, I told the tale of another scout and his Pinewood Derby adventure. Smart aleck mom that I was those years ago, I stuffed a fishing weight into the belly of my son’s little wooden hot rod before he sanded the heck out of the wood putty that covered it. Since there were no strict rules at the time, we were pretty free to think out of the box and did. Mixing creativity with built-in speed, he won the Derby handily that year. Made sense but doesn’t explain the acceleration that now propels birthdays so swiftly around the track. I’d say it was the junk in my trunk but oddly, the J-Lo butt has sailed and age-related gravity lightened that load. The only ballast left is the iPhone in my back pocket.

Gone are the Dixie cup ice cream and pin-the-tail games of kidlet birthday fetes. With life flashing before your eyes at an amazing rate, I’m darn lucky just to grab a brownie before the supply runs out. Watching my life replay at warp speed, gulp, it’s equal parts thriller, romantic comedy, chick flick, and tear jerker. I suspect it’s a lot like yours, give or take some emotional special effects. Whether or not I love everything that flashes on that big screen in my head, it all happened and it all made me who I am today, whoever that may be. But no matter how anyone would rate my life’s movie reel, it is entertaining, though not always in a good way.

“Some day, we will all die, Snoopy,” said Charlie Brown.
Snoopy answered, “True. But on all the other days, we will not.”

I’d like to say ‘I’m not getting older; I’m getting better’ but I’d have to ask — at what? If the answer is perception, sensitivity, awareness, I’ll take it. After all, if the best years of a woman’s life are the 10 years between 39 and 40, I’m way past my expiration date anyway. I need to hold on to all the good stuff about this age and the numbers to come. Continue reading “Seize the (Birth)Day” →

Chick stuff, View from the Shoe

Pick A Number

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kiciPq8jLo1zC-qI3lyNCKi6Css-gWqyIo2U_s2KH2lqlzawKXmtqkD962y4E3aYV_iLT4VeagOkJYAbATo=s640-l65Hah! If age was just a number, how about we pick one we like, say a single digit one, and stuck with it? It might be really cool to be 7 again. Picture running barefoot in the summer grass (minus wasps and ticks) with an orange popsicle dripping down your arm. Who doesn’t remember the Pavlov’s dog call of the Good Humor truck, or halter tops minus bras (we didn’t need them at 7), lazy afternoons with paper dolls and Nancy Drew books?

Well, stop dreaming; that’s not going to happen. The truth is, knowing all the good and not so good that’s happened along the way to where we are now, would we be content at any age forever? I don’t think so.

When I thought of getting older, I set pretty low bars. I yearned to ditch the Saturday morning weeding chores.  I couldn’t wait to wear the makeup I saw teen girls artfully apply and even thought, that once I grew up, my younger brothers would stop trying to get me in trouble. Well, the weeding was traded in for an entire house a mom of three needed to keep clean. Makeup became a must not a dreamy thought and, at least one of my brothers doesn’t ever tease me anymore. He died before he ever really got to live.

So much for setting goals high.

As a kid who always loved to draw, I thought I’d go to art school and become a passionate artist. Oops, I totally forgot Women’s Lib had yet to visit my house. My big idea being the next Norman Rockwell took a backseat to making sure my brother went to college. Like many households back in the day, women became teachers, nurses and/or wives instead. So, I sidestepped plans of a paintbrush in my hand and tested out my father’s theory that I should instead become a dental assistant. That idea barely lasted through one part-time job in an interminably quiet dental office.

But I digress. Continue reading “Pick A Number” →

Chick stuff

Bad Hair Day

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BadHairDay

Full disclosure: I am a hair freak. Anyone who knows me can tell you I am a royal pain about my hair — and always have been. Winter hats and good hair days don’t mix; neither does humidity, which obviously precludes southern living. And hair is the reason I’d never get a convertible.

A friend, used to hearing my sudden outbursts about needing a haircut NOW, once perceptively asked ‘what’s wrong?” What? Nothing’s wrong – except my HAIR! But, after we hung up, I thought about it.  She was right. Yes, it IS all about my hair.

All over the world, hair documents different life phases, from personal evolutions to ways of expressing life events. In a weird way, hair, every single strand of it, echoes life, death and rejuvenation. People worldwide express grief and sadness through their hair, either consciously changing it or completely losing it during a life crisis. (No, I’m not talking about bad haircut grief – that’s another tale) The Sioux cut off all their hair in a time of mourning, (sorry, honey, but no, not even for you.) Celts believed hair had magical powers and the Cree claim hair is another part of the soul.  Now that would almost justify my fixation.

When things in my life are most out of control, I’ve always wanted to just grab a scissors and snip away.  No, I’m not THAT crazy but I have been known, to my hairdresser’s chagrin, to make little ‘tweaks’ when her calendar is booked. What could go wrong? Normally, I remember to “keep calm and call the hairstylist’ but you know those days when you just have to have chocolate NOW? Well, substitute hair. Continue reading “Bad Hair Day” →