oh. my.

April 29, 2007 -- FORGET alcohol - Lindsay Lohan is addicted to shopping. "I talk about my impulses with my therapist - I have a shopping problem. I love to shop too much," she told Nylon magazine. As for life in front of the cameras, Lohan said, "I get embarrassed about the paparazzi if I'm in a chic restaurant, or when I was in the AA meetings . . . I feel really disrespectful because those people are doing that for themselves and it's no one else's business. But that was the only time it was embarrassing. Other times, I obviously like it . . . I wouldn't ever want them to not take my picture . . . I'd be worried. I'd be like 'Do people not care for me?' " New York Post, Page Six

with cheeeeeeese.

check out sidepony for some uber-witty, uber-adorable cards and other whimsical nonesuch to make you giggle.

tate william laskey

my brother lance and his wife wendy welcomed a new baby boy yesterday, april 23 at 9:12 am. tate weighed in at 8 pounds 15 ounces and is a lanky 21.5 inches long. mom, dad and baby are well and wonderful...

while big brother grant is still assessing the situation...

it was really awkward.

waiting on a table of four from Pennsylvania this past sunday afternoon at the pub.

"can i get you guys anything else?"

"are you an actress?" one of them asks. the one in the tangerine-colored polo shirt who keeps smiling at me whenever i walk past, as if he recognizes me.*

"i am," i sheepishly admit. "among other things."

"i knew it!" one of them exclaimed. "doesn't she look like a model?"

absolutely NO RESPONSE from the others at the table. just blank stares. apparently, they didn't agree. ha.

"um...uh," i stutter because one must say something in such situations to fill the blushing silence. "am i supposed to tip you now?"

*and gay, i should note, but don't they always have the best taste?

or the size of your jeans.

i love this, i love this, i love this, i love this!

“A career takes more than talent. It takes character.”

kitty carlisle hart 1915-2007

“I’m more optimistic, more enthusiastic, and I have more energy than ever before,” she said just after her 79th birthday. Energy, she said, came from doing the things she wanted to do. “You get so tired when you do what other people want you to do,” she said.

amen, kitty, amen.

i met her a couple of times when i was working in event planning. she was just as charming and sweet as they say. not at all snooty - like one might expect her to be. usually the folks that have a reason to be a bit snooty aren't, and those who really have no grounds for snootiness, are the snootiest snoots in the world.

is snoot a word?

yes.

the (gay) nose knows.

lately, i've been thinking about changing my fragrance. i've been wearing Sud Pacifique's Vanille Coco for over a year, but in honor of spring (if it ever gets here), i was looking to lighten up a bit, try something a little more fleuriste, a little less pâtissier. i don't know that i want to smell like a vanilla sugar cookie with chocolate icing for the rest of my life. i went to Sephora, i tested, i tried, i borrowed friends' noses, i narrowed it down...

i still wasn't sure though. i do like Vanille Coco, and i get lots of compliments on it (mostly from straight men who have i-still-want-my-mommy-to-bake-me-cookies issues, but whatever).

the other day, while i was still wearing V.C., a drunk gay man told me i smelled like a vanilla-scented candle from Pottery Barn.

that clinched it.

i'm now wearing this.

mmm...liver pate en masque.

"You could eat this log. Or you could stick your hand in a rusty kitchen grinder. Yeah, have fun."

don't ya love laughing maniacally to yourself in an otherwise completely quiet, though completely occupied, office? me too. people tend to leave you alone when you do that.

i spent my friday afternoon in such a state. i discovered this. Wendy McClure, author of the blog Pound and the book I'm Not the New Me, found these Weight Watchers recipe cards (circa 1974) in the basement of her parent's house. she's posted them all here along with her hysterical commentary (now available in a book called The Amazing Mackerel Pudding Plan).

it's really not any wonder people might lose weight on this diet. just the images sort of make me want to vomit...or never eat again.

and he doesn't even have to use mousse.

grant, my brother's son...just because...he has the best hazel eyes and a halo of curls that i am equally envious of...and lookit those lips...if a rosebud could pucker, it would look like this.

the only sorority-endorsing i'll ever do...

my Aunt Charlene sent me this link last week. it's a public service message from the sorority Delta Gamma. the message is a good one - particularly that it encourages friends and family who think a loved one might have an eating disorder to do something about it - say something, tell someone, make noise. it even goes so far to say that it's worth losing a friendship. a powerful, scary statement and easier said than done, but true.

when i first developed anorexia at the age of 13, it was my friend courtney, a very brave 8th grader, who called my parents and told them they needed to get me help. she was a recovering anorexic herself who had just spent three months in an inpatient program. i imagine she saw a bit of herself reflected in me, and wanted to stop it before i became a full on facsimile. i think i recall being sort of pissed at her (like most co-anorexics, i probably thought she was jealous), but i thank heavens she had the chutzpah to do what she did. i got help before it got too horribly bad. sure, i've struggled with eating disorders since then, but never to the extreme that some people do - i never had to spend time in a hospital; i haven't suffered from serious medical problems as a result of my disorder (yet) - and i credit that early intervention with keeping me from slipping into the abyss.

so anyway...don't just sit there...say something. sure - hard to think of what to say in such a situation, but far easier than trying to think of what to say at a funeral.

i know that sounds extreme, but people die from these disorders:

Anorexia nervosa has the highest premature fatality rate of any mental illness (Sullivan, 1995).

‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’

kurt vonnegut 1922-2007

Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’

when i was working at The Comfort Diner in 1997, i waited on Mr. Vonnegut and his wife. i had absolutely no idea who he was, but another waiter did and was beside himself. shamefully, i had never read any of Vonnegut's books (and i still haven't), but after reading the obit in the Times, particularly the quote above, i will.

what i remember - he drank lots of coffee and didn't smile much.

a perfect day.

someone (else) washes and blowdries your hair;

you do laundry, and all the socks find their partner;

and you fall asleep in clean sheets that smell like SweetTarts.

show me the curves.

"Everything that's happened to me in the last year
has only made me feel more like a normal person...but in the most beautiful way."

America Ferrara, one of television's curvier if not outright curvy actresses (she's only a size 6, for heaven's sake) dons the cover of May's W magazine. notable, of course, because this mag is notorious for slapping the skinniest and the scariest on it's cover and all throughout.

so, hurrah for America, but i can't help but notice that i don't see many curves in this picture (excepting that hint of a breast we see in the lower right hand corner). if you're familiar with W, you'd know that they usually show more of the cover celeb's body - at least from the hips up. what we've got here is essentially a headshot that conceals her lauded curves instead of celebrating them.

so yay for A, but a little bit of boo on W too.

big is not a four letter word.

Alison Bales, Duke University Center

...The difference today, at least in basketball, is that big women are more secure in being and playing big, said Goestenkors, the Duke coach. She said that Bales, the Blue Devils' center, proudly wore three-inch heels, which made her 6-10, while the team was in Cancún, Mexico, in December. Bales said a photograph of her in heels on Duke's Web site had elicited several grateful messages from tall girls or their parents.

...from an excellent article my friend sent me the other day stemming from the debate over whether women competing in sports should be weighed or not.

some feel it's just a part of measuring an athlete's overall health (most argue it's to monitor for quick weight loss or gain), but others (and, surprise, i fall into this category) think it causes unnecessary anxiety about a factor that isn't particularly indicative of an athlete's health or ability to perform optimally, and can lead to the dreaded female athlete triad - eating disorders, amennorhea, osteoporosis. it's an interesting debate, and i recognize the flaw in my thinking. i want women to be given the same advantages that men are given - in sports, in business, in life - but is asking that female athletes not be weighed and their weights not be made public (like all male athletes are required to do) asking for preferential treatment? or is it just protecting our young female athletes from the reality that is our weight- and size-obsessed culture?

i suppose what we ultimately want to strive for is a redefinition of what it means to be

BIG

TALL

WOMAN

all at the same time. many of the young women the article mentions - college basketball players Courtney and Ashley Paris, the Williams girls, the women of the WNBA - seem to be doing just that, god love 'em. in the same article, Courtney Paris is referred to as "the female Shaquille O'Neal." and that's a compliment. i love that. i know sports is not the cure-all, there are plenty of eating disordered athletes out there, but i do think it can help shift ones relationship with the body from passive - the body to be preened, plucked and paraded - to active - the body to run, to dance, to leap, to lunge.

(unfortunately, i think the article is now only available if you have a subscription to the Times, if you're desperate to read it, let me know, and i'll email you a copy. hush hush.)

pardon, it's the nyquil talking.

oh, heavens. i am so sick. it's really just a bad cold, but i really don't get sick that often, so when i do, it feels like "so sick," even if it's just "under the weather" for some folks. little phlegmatic elfin creatures have latched themselves onto my lungs and are holding on for dear life. i'm doing my best to drown them in ginger ale and tea, but they're tough little suckers.

when you lay in bed with nothing to do, you start to obsess about very stupid things...

case in point:

i've been shot in the chest. not really, but that's what it looks like. i have an ENORMOUS ZIT right in between my breasts. funny to me, because just as i'm getting more comfortable sharing my decolletage with the rest of the world, a garagantuan redhead troll takes up residence there. of course, i also tried to pop it before it was ready, so it's now mostly likely infected, and it will now live there for the entire summer, thwarting any of my attempts to wear low-cut tops, attract a suitor who i will fall madly in love with, marry, and will slow dance with every evening to the din of the dishwasher as our three pink-faced daughters - isa, plum, and adele - sleep in their beds overhead.

life is so unfair.

i'm going back to bed.

and where the greens are probably brown.

i just loved the look of this little diner on the LES. have never been, but will go someday. how can a girl resist a place that advertises DAIRY & MEAT FOOD so proudly?

vitamin T

my friend im'ed me at work yesterday.

"i keep wanting to cry."

"have you?"

"no."

"maybe you should."

"oh no, but then i'd have to give up control."

it's really too bad that crying is seen as something that is considered so damn awful, so bad, so weak, so pathetic:

if i'm crying than my world might very well be falling apart.

or maybe what we're really scared of is:

if i cry OTHER PEOPLE might think that my world is falling apart.

here's the thing - i feel 4 million times better after i cry, so why shouldn't i just let the tears flow? folks indulge in all sorts of unhealthy behaviors in order to make themselves feel better immediately - they take pills, they drink too many martinis, they eat ice cream until they're sick, they engage in twisted relationships - all to distract them from the real issue at hand - they're sad, they're angry, they're frustrated, they're depressed.

true, crying is not elegant. it is not clean. in all likelihood, you will not look like Demi Moore in Ghost when you cry - tiny crystalline tears slowly trickling down your perfectly composed face. no. it's a messy thing. but i can certainly say that since i've begun to react to the tingle of tears like this:

"oh. there they are again. okay. hold on, let me get a tissue and duck into the bathroom for a spell."

i've been a lot less likely to engage in those less than ideal behaviors i was talking about above. i've lost a little weight recently, and i attribute much of it to the fact that i've been giving myself permission to feel all those "bad feelings" - sadness, anger, fear - instead of shoving them down by overeating malted milk balls (i still eat them, just not pounds of them). i've actually come to prefer tears to the other stuff. whodathunk?

crying is just a part of my week (if not part of my day). VITAMIN T, i call it. T for tears. cheaper than One-a-Day, and it doesn't make my pee bright yellow.

so, cry little ones, cry.

and if people ask you if your world is falling apart, just tell them,

"oh, no...i'm just watering the flowers."

see ya in the bathroom.

the perfect fit

Magic Numbers

The colour of my eyes is dependent on how much I weigh today. They are either the silver grey of a morning mist across a Canadian lake as the sun rises and catches the cold gleaming water. Or they are the colour of dishwater, greasy and thick with grime, dirty with all of the family's Sunday roasting pans, and forks and knives, and casserole dishes and baking trays - murky and grimy and ugly.

Depending on what I weigh, my hair might be the browns and caramels of a thick chocolate bar that melts and shines and drips promise by the fire. Or the flat brown of a library carpet, laid in 1972, and trampled on by cheap shoes and schoolchildren every day since - tired and thin and lifeless...

Depending on how much I weigh today, my breasts may be round and full, reminiscent of a Russ Meyer vixen, ready to be grasped, voluminous and juicy. Or they are veiny and sagging, the skin at the top indented and ravaged by stretched tears, sitting lazily on my ribcage, flattened, blotchy, and dry.

I will love or hate myself, depending on how much I weigh today.

the first chapter in The Perfect Fit, a book by British novelist Louise Kean. i'm only on page 78, but so far, it's a very insightful look (ohmigod, that's me!) into the conflicted life of a former fat girl. what to do when you've lost the weight, you still have oodles of problems and you don't have the weight to blame or diet to keep you distracted anymore?

exactly.

because i can laugh at myself...and so should you.

a parody of the beloved Dove commercial.

oh, and she could use a bit more mascara too.

the "homely" portrait...and the Photoshopped version.
she actually looks a little thinner too, doesn't she?

i'm a huge fan of Jane Austen's works. Persuasion might very well be my favorite book (and movie) ever. i used to watch the A & E version of Pride and Prejudice every sunday as i folded my laundry, moon-eyed and swooning as Mr. Darcy boldly declared his love for Elizabeth Bennett.

an interesting article in this past sunday's New York Times about Jane Austen's "looks." a British publisher recently decided to Photoshop her portrait as they found it too "homely." was she pretty? was she not? and why does it matter to so many of her fans to think of her as attractive?

i suppose i'd like to think that she was a lovely, graceful creature who chose not to marry in order to engage in her literary pursuits untethered, but i suppose it is quite a bit more plausible that she was quite plain and wrote these books, not just to critique the circus of society, but to create a place for herself in it - the only place she might ever have, being that "Austen lived in an age when a woman’s physical attractiveness was, next to her fortune, her greatest asset." (and sometimes i'm wondering if things have changed?)

and having these assets was almost absolutely necessary if she ever wanted "snag herself a man," as my Grandma Horsfall would say.