Summer's End

As I happily wrap up my work week in anticipation of the long Labor Day weekend ahead, here are a few data points that hopefully will help to keep you sane as we rush headlong through the remainder of the year.

1.     There is a holiday weekend every month remaining in 2013.

2.     Sweater weather is just a few weeks away – useful for those of us who carry a tire around our middle that is difficult to hide in seasonal summer duds.

3.     Cooler weather at night = better rest, or at least it does for me.  And better rest means I’m nicer and kinder to others.  Just ask my husband.

4.      Once you hit Halloween, the year is essentially over.

5.     The end of year holidays offer ample opportunity to eat the things you like the most. Now that’s something to look forward to!

6.     The New Year holiday means you can do penance starting January 1 for eating the things you like the most.  No guilt!

7.     People just seem a bit friendlier as they get closer to the holiday season.

8.    New Year can be all about a “New You” if you want it to be.

9.    You’re one year closer to retirement.

10. You’re still here.  Isn’t life grand?

Enjoy the last gasp of summer and don’t work on Labor Day unless they’re putting a little something extra in your paycheck, ok?  Which also means that, unless my check is in the mail, you won’t see me again until next week.

 

 

10 Things that Make Me Crazy About My Husband

He is sometimes argumentative.

He is (almost) always right.

When he buys groceries, he mostly buys what he likes.

He hates giving me backrubs (and he's very good at giving them).

He rarely walks the dog on weekends.

Did I mention that he's messy?

When he starts something, it can take him weeks to finish it.

He doesn't always like to talk to me.  (Imagine!)

He leaves his shoes everywhere.

His handsome face and blueish-green eyes.  Sigh.

 

Day One

My daughter was a little glum last night when I asked about her first day as a 7^th grader.

 

“It was sooo boring, Mom, ” she whined.

That’s not how I remembered 7^th grade.  For  me,  changing classes and dashing to your locker to get a notebook you needed while trying to wave, chew gum and make an afterschool date at the same time was thrilling, even if the school work itself wasn’t always.

“I have 8^th graders in my PE class,” my daughter noted with dissatisfaction.

“What wrong with that?”

“They’re not my friends.”

“They’ll become your friends.  You make friends easily.”

“None of my friends are in my classes.  I want my real friends.”

“They’ll be real friends. And class is about learning, not hanging out with your friends."

“Oh, nevermind,”  she said.  “Plus Global Citizenship is boring and I have that teacher twice during the day.”

I hate the word boring because it’s so…boring.  And that teacher would be Ms. Epstein.  She is smart, she is pretty and she is probably tough in the way 7^th grade teachers need to be.  (Unlike, say, 6th grade teachers).

On the plus side for the first day?  No homework and our inaugural carpool experience, which is liberating my husband and me from the daily task of getting into work late, or leaving early, to accommodate our daughter’s school schedule by ourselves.

It takes a village. 

In fact, once we get the hang of our new 7^th grade routines, I’m pretty sure we’ll all like it.  But this morning, enroute to our carpool pick up (it was my turn today) my daughter was having none of that.  She looked out the window and said, somewhat wistfully, “I wish I didn’t have to go to school today.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that she has at least 10 more years of it ahead of her.  Guess she’ll realize that at some point on her own.

 

 

Back to School

My daughter’s extended August vacation jaunts to camp and Florida are over and the cooler mornings of the fall are just around the bend.
In the 3 days since her return…

1.       Her father rimmed our driveway and stairs up to the front door with nearly 2 dozen balloons and posted a “Welcome Back” sign so that my daughter knows how much she was missed while she was gone.  (I think she got the message.)

2.       My daughter’s had light highlights put in her hair under the trusted care of my colorist.  Given her young age (2 months away from the big 1-3) I wanted to be sure that they would be subtle but satisfy her thirst for blonde.  We settled on a pretty caramel-color – beautiful -- and even her father approves!

3.       I’ve spent $200 at Staples on school supplies.  And here’s the thing:  We didn’t deviate much from the list of required items from the school.  I’m talking notebook, dividers, pencils and pens, math tools (protractor, calculator, rule, etc.), dictionary, highlighters, paper, lock for the locker…that sort of stuff.  Wow.  When did pens become so bloody expensive?

4.       My daughter and I put together most, if not all, of the above items in said notebook so we are properly prepared for the important work of 7^th grade learning.

5.       I’ve taken a gaggle of neighborhood girls to the movies at the Mall to see the new Percy Jackson movie.  Now, if only I could get my daughter to read the book!

6.       My daughter finalized 3 book reports on summer reading assignments – which will receive the first grade of her new school year.  My daughter did these on her own, and it’s pretty clear she’s not into novels.  I’m just saying….:-(

7.       I interrupted the iPad production of a zombie movie directed by my daughter and featuring above-mentioned gaggle of neighborhood girls.

8.       We celebrated a summer Sunday night with an impromptu barbeque with our next door neighbors and our respective girls. 

Bliss.  Life feels like its settling back into that lovely rhythm of school-life-work. 

Here’s to Fall!

IM

I hate arguing via text message.  It’s so…aggravating.  Preparing a snappy comeback (take that, oh 12-year-old daughter!) is really hard on my crappy phone’s touch screen where I seem to miss every third letter in what I type.
Yet I’m increasingly turning to text messaging to reach folks because (1) people are hard to reach, despite the fact that their phones go everywhere they go and (2) people hate to make time for phone conversations with each other.   Now that we’ve made our phones so smart, we want them to shut the *#@! up.

This is especially true for my child and her friends:  none of them really enjoy talking on the phone but my-oh-my they love their text messaging.   I originally encouraged my daughter to text because any written language usage was good in my book, but now I’m not so sure.  First off, I’m worried that she will permanently write the letter “u” for “you” and secondly, her tone is sometimes (I really mean often) kind of bossy.

Hmmm.  All of this presents a true dilemma because I’m a word gal.  Speak ‘em, write ‘em, doesn’t matter to me – I’ll write and spew or talk and spew, either way works for me.  But written words, I think have the added benefit of being able to last (until deleted or tossed away, of course) which also makes them more powerful than they sometimes should be.

In any event, all of this is on my mind today because my tween is coming home tonight after spending nearly 3 weeks away from her overbearing Mom.  In breathless anticipation of our reunion, it seems we’re getting back into mother-daughter practice by engaging in a few texting jousts over admittedly small stuff but stuff, nevertheless.  All I want is a hug when she comes home, and I fear that what I’ll get is attitude.  All she wants is her way and, what she fears she’ll get is her fearsome helicopter mom. 

We’re both right.

Thank god school starts next week.  Thank god the world will return to the routines that matter and the reality of our relationships as a family.

Signing off for this week because I have way too many back-to-school errands to get done before Monday and I need sufficient time to match wills with my daughter.

Have a great weekend.

 

My Sentimental Education

A friend recently shared on Facebook a Buzzfeed list of 32 books that “will actually change your life.”

I’ve read about 6 of them.  Frankly, I thought it was a pretty grim and eccentric list, weighted overwhelmingly to late 20th century fiction and the struggle to find meaning in modern life.  But it did get me thinking about the impact of books – you know, the ones that stick in the brain like chewing gum because they baffle, surprise, delight or sadden, or just satisfy in a hot fudge sundae sort of way.

Because my list of favorite books is as long as I am old, I thought I'd just share with you my “Vintage Jan” Top 25 today; these are mostly fiction books that made an impression in my youth (e.g., under the age of 20) for all the reasons stated above…my “sentimental education,” as it were. 

You will readily note from reviewing this list that I read these books for pleasure, not for development of the higher mind, and in fact, a few of them have no redeeming social value beyond entertainment.

The Kid Lit List:

1.        A Wrinkle in Time. (1962)  Spooky book with a plucky tween heroine, Meg, and three intriguing ladies with magical powers…Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which.    

2.       Little Women (1869) This American girl fell madly in love with Jo March and her wonderful, aggravating, heroic sisters. 

3.       Dr. Seuss.  All of them, each and every one.  And they still bring a smile to my face.

4.       The “Blue Book” biographies.  I think my love for all things historical was initially stirred by this blue cloth covered series of books --  short biographies in my elementary school library of our Founding Fathers with a few outstanding women thrown in for good measure, like Betsy Ross, Clara Barton and Helen Keller.  I devoured them.

The War List: 

5.       Gone with the Wind (1936).  Whatever you think of this sentimental and not so subtly racist romantic novel of the Old South, Scarlett is something else.  And so is Rhett. 

6.       The Winds of War (1971).  Epic family saga against the backdrop of World War II.  Hard to put down, especially if you’re a history buff.

7.       Exodus (1958).  A novel about the post-war establishment of Israel.  Ari Ben Canaan is one of the great, sexy heroes in 20^th century fiction.  A gripping read.

8.       Mila 18 (1961). Heroic retelling of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.  Another terrific Leon Uris page turner.

9.       Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960). I was a little obsessed with World War II and Nazis for a while there.

10.   Slaughterhouse 5 (1969).  Grim, bitter and brutally funny when Vonnegut isn’t breaking your heart.

11.   Book of Daniel (1971) A great historical novel by E.L. Doctorow about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and the impact on their children of the Rosenbergs’ espionage and subsequent execution.

The Anglophile list: 

12.   Great Expectations  (1861).  My favorite Dickens novel.

13.   David Copperfield (1850).  “I was born….”

14.   Tale of Two Cities (1859).  Madame Defarge knits as the French Revolution unfolds and heads roll.  ‘Tis a far, far better thing I’ve done than I have ever done before…”   

15.   Pride and Prejudice (1813).  Mr. Darcy, sigh.  Elizabeth Bennett, a truly modern woman of her time.

Dickens and Jane Austen (whom I’ve written about recently).  Enough said.

The “All American” List:

16.   To Kill A Mockingbird (1960).  Scout, Jem, Dill, “Boo” Radley and Atticus Finch, a truly heroic father figure for the Civil Rights era.  One of my favorite books ever. 

17.   The Godfather (1969).  It took me out of commission for days because I could not put it down.

18.   Catcher in the Rye (1951).  Published the year before I was born (!) Holden Caulfield remains the spiritual role model for angst ridden adolescents in contemporary American fiction of the later part of the 20^th century, male or female.  It is simply un-American to be a teenager who hasn’t read Catcher in the Rye.

The “Grown Ups Sure Are Complicated” List:

19.   The Group (1963)  Oooh, the naughty book about the post-collegiate life of eight Vassar girls.  Yum. By the witty, dark Mary McCarthy.

20.   The Bell Jar (1963) Tragic Sylvia Plath, of course.

21.   The Sun Also Rises (1926).  The only Hemingway book I truly loved.

The “Pop Goes the Culture” List:

22.   Rosemary’s Baby (1967).  Spooky good.  Gotta love the Dakota!

23.   The Exorcist (1971).  Nothing like a foul-mouthed, 12 year-old girl to scare the beejeezus out of you!

24.   Candy  (1963)  Terry Southern’s porno-satire of a female “Candide.”  Very funny, very dirty, very 60s, and certainly memorable.  I was probably 15 when I read it, having discovered it hidden away in the back of one of my older sister’s drawers.  Not sure what I was looking for at the time, but reading this made the search worth it! J

25.   Valley of the Dolls (1968).  What a bad, bad book and good, good read.

Take it from me, most (if not all) of these books are worth reading at least once.  Enjoy!

 

Ode to August

Florida heaven of Seaworld, Legoland and Gulf Coast beaches

occupies fully the last few days of my daughter’s summer

Our small dog whimpers, lost in a dream on a puffy sofa pillow in Arlington

The King of our castle sits in his throne chair, lazily fingering the TV remote,
searching for something worth watching while reading his Kindle with one eye

Time to make dinner.

It will be whatever we want to eat

Lazy mornings, lazy days, lazy nights

Text messages provide reassurance that all is well near and far away

The child will return home a teen

but tonight

August is alright with me

 

My Favorite Films: Comedy Edition

I’m in the middle of a biography of the great actor Spencer Tracy, who really was ahead of his time in terms of the naturalism he brought to each role and the sheer versatility of his talent.  Tracy could play anything:  thug, priest, sexist sports writer, heroic fisherman, noble judge…

Reading about Tracy (who of course was famously coupled for a quarter of a century with the late, great Kate…as in Hepburn) made me think a lot about movies I’ve loved through the years.  Today I will share a short hit list of a few comedy favorites…movies that made me weep with laughter or double over in pain because of a laughing assault to my midsection.

Here goes:

1.     Some Like It Hot.  Jack Lemmon, Marilyn Monroe and a surprisingly funny Tony Curtis.  Men in drag and Monroe at her sexiest.  Enough said.

2.     Tootsie.  Dustin Hoffmann as an out-of-work actor turned hit “soap opera star in drag” and a very young, lovely Jessica Lange.   A very funny movie.

3.     Annie Hall.  The first Woody Allen comedy on my list because it really is a comedy.  (I’d love to put Manhattan and a few other Woody films on the list, but I consider them dramas – and among the best dramas of the last 40 years).  But Annie Hall is the whole package:  Funny, full of heart, with just a touch of that fabulous bitterness that makes Allen so distinctive.  And on my Top 10 list of best movies ever (which at some point I’m sure I’ll write about).

4.      Sleeper.  My 2^nd Woody Allen film and classic early Woody, before he became the Ingmar Bergman of comedy. 

5.     Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.  An amazing cast and a sublime Peter Sellers at the height of his comic genius as a former Nazi rocket scientist with a disturbing “Zeig Heil” tic.  A hoot.

6.     The Producers.  Gene Wilder.  Springtime for Hitler.  Thank you, Mel Brooks!

7.      Young Frankenstein.  Gene Wilder.  Cloris Leachman as Frau Blucher.  Peter Boyle as a dancing and singing Frankenstein who is “Putting on the Ritz.”  Sidesplitting.

8.      A Fish Called Wanda.  This one is a laugh out loud caper movie with John Cleese surprisingly sexy, Kevin Kline over-the-top funny, and Jamie Lee Curtis holding it all together with her surprisingly sane take on the madness.  It even up with repeat viewings as a great comedy should.

9.     Groundhog Day.  Bill Murray has a problem with time and “I’ve Got You Babe.”  One of the best comedies of all time and one I can see over and over and over and…

10.  Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.  Why not?  Matthew Broderick at his most winsome, Jennifer Grey as the snarling older sister, and Charlie Sheen in a cameo as a sexy, rebellious teen under arrest. Funny and very 80s.  Check out the big shoulders and big hair.

Note there are no 21^st century comedies on this list, despite the heroic efforts of Judd Apatow and others to revive the genre.  (I guess I don’t find potty humor all that compelling, but that’s just me; I’m getting old).  Give me story, story, story every time – and funny, funny, funny characters to bring it all to life.

I’ve left lots of much loved comedies off this list…movies like Broadcast News, Victor/Victoria, Mrs. Doubtfire, Mr. Roberts, Adam’s Rib, Philadelphia Story, The Pink Panther, When Harry Met Sally, Big and so many, many more.  But now, I’d love to hear about a few of your favorites so I can start checking ‘em out on Netflix!

Time for some popcorn!

When is it really time to go?: A Pop Quiz

As I move into the second half of my 60^th year on the planet, I’m trying to be prudent and practical about my future.  Do I really think I’ll live long enough for it to wait until I’m 66 to collect Social Security?  What will I do with the final act of the story that is my life? And most importantly, when is it really time to retire?

 I don’t think I’m ready now answer that last question, but when I find myself nodding in agreement with at least 7 of the statements below, it’s probably time for me to head for the nearest Starbucks and sign up for barista training. 

For those of you closing in on retirement, see how your answers track.

You know it’s time to retire when…(Y/N)

1.       You don’t know the name of anyone you pass in the hallway when you arrive at work in the morning

2.       No one knows who you are either – and they don’t have a clue what you do each day

3.       The average age of your workforce is 26, and they could all be your children

4.       You feel like you need a nap after lunch

5.       Everyone shrugs when you say you can’t communicate what needs to be said in 140 characters or less

6.       You’re the only person in the office who no longer owns a suit

7.       Your secretary knows more about conducting research online than you do

8.       You don’t know what Vine is

9.       Your office-issued smart phone never works for you and furthermore, you don’t really know how it does work

10.   You nod off during meetings

11.   You can easily take a month-long vacation and not be missed at all

12.   You thought BYOD had to do with alcoholic beverages.

As I said, this list is the thing that’s keeping me honest.   I’ll let you know when it’s really time to go.

Black Holes

The cosmos is in an uproar – is Einstein right about the general theory of relativity or are quantum theorists correct?

At stake is not just our whole understanding of the universe as we know it, but my LV totebag.
In other words:  The Black Hole.

I don’t really understand the ins and outs (literally!) of quantum mechanics with its theory that information particles falling into a black hole are not forever lost.  Alternatively, I’ve never understood Einstein’s theory that space-time is smooth even though I read the book Einstein’s Dream years back in the hope that I would get it at some basic level, which I pretended to but didn’t really.

Here’s what I do know.  I’ve lost more stuff in my black hole of a bag than I’ve ever put in.  You know how when you wash socks and, somehow, you lose one from the pair when you take stuff out of the dryer?  That’s what I’m talking about!

Inevitably, I lose my keys in my bag or my BlackBerry or iPhone or lipstick.  Then I run around the house like a crazy person until, desperate to be proven wrong, I re-search my purse and….bingo.  Keys found.  BlackBerry buzzing.  iPhone ready to roll, etc.

This experience, which repeats itself on a regular basis, does shed some light, however, on the whole Einstein versus quantum mechanics debate.  In an effort to try to overcome the “paradox” associated with particles staying or going from a Black Hole, some physicists speculate that particles stay connected to the black hole through a wormhole, where only one link connects the particles.  If this is true, than both Einstein and the quantum mechanics of the physics world are both right according to my source, Tuesday’s Science section of the New York Times. (Credit where credit is due:  I can’t make this stuff up, I’m not smart enough). 

The coming together of the two theories makes perfect sense to me with respect to the mechanics of managing my black hole of a purse.  It would, for example, explain why sometimes I can’t see that iPhone….and then I can.  Or how I can rummage around for a pen one minute, and then one hour later find 6 of them.   Blame it on the wormhole! 

Now, what if this theory has relativity regarding my retirement savings:  money would never be lost,  and money leaving the black hole of my account would remain forever linked to more money in the black hole, meaning that I should experience no anxiety about spending or not spending cash.   (OMG, I think I’ve just find a solution to the whole government spending/debt/deficit debate!  It’s a wormhole – so let’s get the US economy humming again, people, by spending some CASH!)

However this debate among physicists ends, I will remain deeply interested in the outcome – and I believe it justifies the acquisition of a new purse so that I might experience anew the delightful  conundrum of my  own personal limits of physics. 

Amen, Dr. Einstein.  Good luck oh pioneers of modern science.  Hello, you beautiful new Black Hole….!

 

Big Data

We have no secrets anymore.

Our smart phones and computers have betrayed us.  What we watch, buy and communicate online has brought us to the ultimate “emperor has no clothes” reality of our lives today.  And actually, I’m sort of ok with that.

It’s true that our government has taken advantage of the information technology revolution to protect the Homeland by tracking our whims and whereabouts.  But while libertarians hate the fact that “big government” invades our privacy on a regular basis, they should really be worried about the tsumani coming our way due to the corporatization of Big Data.

Yup, Big Data has become Big Business – and companies are only now realizing what a gold mine they possess in terms of marketing behavior and consumer preference insights, sliced and diced in any way you want – by demographic, geographic, religious or cultural preference.  The promotion of goods, services, videos, anything and everything is coming to your email box or smart phone in greater and greater volume every day and that’s just the beginning.  Technologists are scrambling to keep up with the sheer velocity of this new marketing universe and the speed of light changes that characterize it, so that they can develop the tools you’ll absolute need and have to have in order to weed out the crap from the stuff you really want.

It’s why the ad/pr agency conglomerates Publicis and Omnicom are merging.  It’s why privacy advocates are up in arms.  It’s why Edward Snowden lives in Russia.

Big Data, baby. 

I’m sort of reminded of Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman (there’s a 60s cultural reference for you!) and his mantra, “What?  Me worry?”  All this Big Data will generate big money that hopefully will generate big jobs and products and services that keep the global economy humming enough so that my kid is employable 12 or so years from now.  And the Big Ideas that drive the Big Data economy will mint a whole new generation of Big Data Billionaires. 

So what if it costs us a little bit of our privacy?! 

If only I had been born with a geek chip in my brain instead of a fondness for good fiction and bad satire.

Here’s looking at you, kids, we're counting on you.  Stop texting and start inventing the next Big Data thing.   We need your billion dollar brains working overtime so we have Medicare and Social Security when Boomers turn 100.  Because it's all about us.  All of us.  But especially us.

Like I said, “What?  Me worry?”

 

Sharknado

My nearly 13 year old girl is in week 2 of her August vacation away from Helicopter Mom and Easy-going Dad. It’s making me a little bit of a wreck.

Last week, she was at sleep away camp, a more than 4 hour drive away from our Northern Virginia suburb to the southern tip of the eastern shore of Virginia. She loved the whole camp thing – from new girls hailing from different places like Manhattan and Atlanta, to the food (imagine!) and the water sports (fun!) and she’s decided she’s interested in becoming a camp counselor one day.  Yeah!   Then she told me about the 2 dead sharks she saw on the beach there….

We are now in week 2 of the August Vacation Away from Parents, and my daughter is in Florida with a family friend and her daughter.  After arriving in Tampa yesterday afternoon, they headed out to the beach after dinner for a quick swim and sunset watching.  Last night, after several nervous and unanswered texts from me, my daughter texted me back and wrote this:  “Oh, me and Camille went to the beach and I saw a shark near the shore so I said ‘Camille, get out of the water’ and so she got freaked out and so it was cool but scary, and goodnight, love you guys.”

Yikes. 

I blame author Peter Benchley and Steven Spielberg for my shark phobia; I was a beach obsessed teen growing up on Long Island when both the book and the movie of Jaws came out, which undermined my confidence and made me an extremely cautious ocean swimmer.  When I see dolphins dive lazily in the ocean not too far off shore, I’m convinced they’re sharks in dolphin clothing.  I mean, I have a real thing about them.

I immediately texted my daughter back with all the cautions about being careful, staying observant, not going too far out, not going in alone, blah, blah, blah; if I was there, I’d be on shark attack lookout, trust me.  My daughter texted back, reassuring me that she wasn’t going to go to that beach “much” and she would be careful and that I should go to sleep and forget it. 

Today’s shark attack?  The hair color attack.  There will be a trip to a hairstylist today and my daughter says she “only” wants a few blondish streaks.  Her friend has been known to have brown and pink ombre hair from time to time, which looks great (sort of), I just don’t want my daughter to have pink hair. 

Because my phone battery was dead this morning, my Helicopter Mom defense perimeter was down. My concerns about hair color may be ignored, as underscored when my daughter responded to my text on this subject: “Ya ya mom ok bye.”

The point of this post?  It occurs to me that the teenaged “Sharknado” years have just begun.  Whether real or imagined, there are sharks everywhere for my daughter and me to navigate:  Today, it’s a one-color hair color process – tomorrow it’s a fender bender or first boyfriend. 

In my own, sometimes over-the-top way, I trust my daughter to swim around those pesky sharks through the use of cunning, common sense and sound judgment.  And my kid is a good swimmer, just so long as she doesn’t go out too far.   

In the meantime, I’m standing on the shore, observant and ready to pounce if I have to.  Because sharks have big jaws and sharp teeth.  I know.

 

 

 

 

Suit Up, Ladies!?

The Wall Street Journal has declared it, so it must be so:  Power suits for women are baaccccck!

It seems that suit sales have surged 12% among younger women (they’ve been up among men for a while now) in the past year which has gotten the attention of major designers once again.  Today’s suit may not have the big shoulders of the “Dynasty” 80s or Feminist 70s, but they feature tightly cut jackets, pants or pencil skirts that signal ambition and sex appeal at the same time.

In the Journal’s article, Giorgio Armani, the once and future king of power suiting says that, “Power now can be feminine.”  Silly me, I thought it always was!  That said, power suits come in many varieties today, because women want choices (duh):  Pants can be long or cropped, skinny or wide-legged; skirts are short, narrow, knee grazing, or “trumpet”-like; and jackets are “strong,” whatever that means.  (Tight? Armor-like?  Black and grey? All of the above?). 

Apparently the cultural zeitgeist is supportive of this tread, with TV heroines like Kerry Washington (the crisis management guru of “Scandal”) being one prominent example of a power suitor.  But I must tell you, I’ve worked hard over the past 5 years to move beyond the matchy-matchy female work warrior look for the more laid back, West Coast-ish comfort of stretchy/flowy separates. I’m all about comfort now -- even on days when I have a big business meeting, and then, I’ll more likely wear a dress (if I must!) than a suit.

Suits feel, I don’t know, itchy to me now.  And I can’t comfortably sit cross-legged in them, which I do sometimes in meetings because I’m 60 and I still can. 

It doesn’t mean I don’t get the occasional hankering for a Katharine Hepburn moment; but when I put a suit on, I almost immediately wish I hadn’t.  So then, next time, I don’t.

Every fall, I try to treat myself to at least one new outfit for work.  Because the stores will likely be dominated by suit looks, I’ll probably try one on.  I hope I’ll have the good sense to throw my shoulders back, keep my head high and walk instead in the direction of the racks of more comfortable clothes.  Power is as power does and, in my case, the suit doesn’t make the girl.

Up in Smoke

“I really miss smoking,” my 85 year-old mother confessed to me a few days ago.  She stopped at the age of 70 after many decades of smoking.
It wasn’t so very long ago that I might have said the same thing.

I was a smoker from my mid-teens to my early 50s and did my share of damage to my lungs which I continue to pay for today.  My husband told me before we married that if I continued to smoke, we wouldn’t make it as a couple.  Ok, I was a sneaky smoker for the last months of our courtship and first years of our marriage; he knew it and loathed it but didn’t threaten to divorce me, thank god. 

Lord knows I tried to quit – many times – beginning in my early 20s.  As smoking became increasingly unacceptable socially, the physical isolation of standing outside in the pouring rain or on a 10 degree day just to have a cigarette got to me.  And then, in a sure sign from God, I got pneumonia and that did it.  After years of patches and gum and pills and hypnosis, I finally went cold turkey and my smoking days came to an end.

For the first year or two after my last cigarette, I couldn’t have a glass of wine or a stressful day at the office without fondly recalling the significant relaxation “benefits” of smoking.  But by the third year, something surprising and wonderful happened:  I realized that I had lost that compulsiveness and wacky thinking that always anticipated my next cigarette.  Before, if I was at home when the craving hit (and it did, often), I started plotting my escape to the grocery store or cleaners or mall so I could have a cigarette. If I was at work, I’d count down the minutes until I could take a small break and step outside for a butt – and then, once outside, serially smoke 2 or 3 cigarettes in order to “dose up” until the next crashing nicotine craving.

All of this is to say that the growing e-cigarette phenomenon is really concerning.

First, the positive news for smokers:  E-cigarettes don’t stink, so you don’t stink after smoking (or “vaporing”) one.  You use the device over and over again, so it ultimately reduces the cost compared to regular cigarettes.  And you don’t inhale smoke, which means you can smoke in bars, restaurants, movie theaters, etc.  Wow. 

Now the bad news:  E-smokers inhale water vapor filled with flavored nicotine from a cartridge inserted into the device. The vapor exhales like smoke without the particulate matter and tar of cigarettes but you do have the nicotine dependence. 

Did I not just say nicotine addiction is crazy making? (See paragraph 4 of this post as a reminder).

As they become more widely used, e-cigarettes are raising serious concerns and questions about public health, nicotine addiction and etiquette issues over where and when you vapor.  More concerning to me is that they are making smoking (which it is, regardless of the vapor v. smoke question) cool again to young people.

The safety of e-cigarettes is based on a false premise; nicotine is a drug.  E-cigarettes are drug delivery devices.  And as someone once said to me, getting over nicotine is the most difficult addiction to overcome.  Here’s hoping that parents remain vigilant as these products become more visible in daily living environments.  Let’s not vaporize the real progress that’s been made in battling nicotine addiction in the past 10 years or all that good, hard work will go up in smoke.  Again.

As for me, I’m coming up on my 7^th anniversary without a cigarette.  And no, I don’t miss it.