My Cotillion friend, Beth, told about this article.  Read it and weep for the sorry state of parenthood - at least some of the parents.

Melanie Engle was trying to just pluck the stray hairs here and there. She was trying to deliver an age-appropriate eyebrow wax to her client. It was hard, though, because there was a foot tapping next to her, and a voice shouting in her ear: “No! Not like that — like a supermodel’s. I want them arched.”

After years in the beauty biz, Engle had seen her share of crazy ladies demanding perfect, Glamour-cover-worthy brows. But this Crazy Lady wasn’t talking about her own brows. The brows in question belonged to Crazy Lady’s daughter. Who was eight.

After sweating through the kid’s eyebrow wax, Engle, today an aesthetician at the Adolf Biecker Salon/Spa outposts in the Rittenhouse Hotel and Strafford — and, it should be noted, one of the most sought-after eyebrow specialists in the region — was directed to give her pint-size client a … bikini wax.

Engle was, predictably, extremely uncomfortable with the idea. But she sent the girl next door to the spa to have it done anyway. “It was clear that this girl was getting a bikini wax no matter what,” she says. “Better for her that we did it, instead of her mother dragging her off somewhere else to get it done.”
There’s more, but it’s almost more than I can stand to read.

Every now and then I think that perhaps it would be nice to have a little plastic surgery to take away some of things I don’t like about my physical body.  However, then I see people like Priscilla Presley, and that’s all it takes for me to thank God for my natural looks - even if my looks are aging much too quickly for my taste.  But, oh my goodness!  I was watching “Dancing With the Stars” tonight, and Priscilla Presley looked awful!  There’s so much botox in that face, she can hardly move it - and all her facial features look unnatural and frozen.  She’s just a couple surgeries away from entering Michael Jackson territory - and that’s sad because Priscilla has a lot of natural beauty that has been ruined with her very plastic appearance now.

Update:  I Googled Priscilla and found that recently she admitted that she’d had plastic surgery from unlicense doctors - which resulted in her botched looks.

The best line on TV tonight was the bachelor who remarked about one of the contestants:  Sometimes I think she’s “one sammy short of a picnic.”   Reality TV - you gotta love it.  Well, maybe not.

(less than 10 minutes later)  Okay, I take it back.  The best line of the evening is when the bachelor guy (don’t know his name) and some chick (don’t know her name) were getting a massage, and the chick says, “I like it hard.”  Supposedly she was referring to the intensity of the massage, but with obvious double meanings.

Two years ago when RT and I were in Alaska, we chartered a plane to fly us from Camp Denali back to Anchorage. It was WONDERFUL - especially when compared to the 6+ hour crowded and very bumpy bus ride that the charter flight replaced.   Then I compare that flight with the commercial flights I took last month to and from New York City.  We spent literally HOURS waiting in airports, fighting the crowds, and dealing with the possibility of delayed and/or cancelled flights.  The hassle and waste of time that’s involved in commercial flights are the reasons that RT got his pilot’s license and his own plane.  Unless absolutely necessary, he flies himself wherever he needs to be for both business and pleasure.

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After trying NutriSystem and finding the food mostly awful (although the chocolate crunch bar was quite tasty), I decided to make up my own diet.  Really, with all the 100-calorie packs of everything and the good-tasting, shelf-stable, already-prepared food available in grocery stores, there’s no need to spend two or three times the money on tasteless garbage from NutriSystem.

So I am working on THE MEDIAN SIB diet which will list food selections from the grocery store that will keep you within the right calorie range but with better tasting food.  It’s not exactly rocket science, and I wonder how it is even possible for NutriSystem to come up with such nasty-tasting food.  It’s almost as if they believe that diet food HAS to taste like crap.

One of my favorite TV shows is “The Amazing Race” and one of the destinations that they’ve traveled to on the show is Africa.  What a fascinating place!  When RT and I retire, I want to do a lot of traveling, and Africa is one of the places I want to visit someday.   I was checking out the Dialaflight.com website and I noticed that they have flights to South Africa, along with flights to other prime vacation and tourist spots around the world.  Dialaflight is a leading UK travel company that handles flights, hotels, car rentals and complete vacations throughout the world.  The website has all kinds of helpful information for travelers.   Whatever type of travel suits your fancy, you can find information about it at Dialaflight.  Check out the website or give them a call.  They’ll make sure that all your travel needs are met.

I know all the grandparents out there will understand my fascination and obsession with my two grandgirls.  They are truly the lights of my life.  Our daughter and son-in-law wanted to visit friends in Memphis this weekend, and so we volunteered to babysit the girls.  I think they enjoy being with us because we so totally get into playing with them.  When we play school, RT and I take our turns being the students or the principal or the teacher - depending on what roles the girls want us to play.  We can play for hours.  So this weekend I was Principal Grandma Carol, and RT was Teacher PawPaw, and the girls were the students. 

It was fun and enjoyable - especially when the students and the teacher planned a special music and dance performance for Principal Grandma Carol.  The performance was held on the front porch.  We have two rather prissy little grandgirls who love to pirouette and dance, and they insisted that Teacher PawPaw do the same dances with them for the performance.  Words can’t express how much I wish I had a videotape of that performance.  Just pause for a moment to get the full effect of that visual.  60-year old very macho Paw-Paw dancing across the front porch.  The phrase “twinkle-toes” comes to mind.  I could have used that wished-for video as blackmail against PawPaw to get anything in the world I could possibly want.  

I have to admit, though, that I would have done the same thing if my role had been Teacher Grandma Carol.  The things we do for those grandgirls!

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William Teach - over at Pirate’s Cove - lists eight ways that liberals/progressives handle negative stories.  Enjoy.

Exactly how do liberals/progressives go about discussion of of stories that do not bode well for them? (cross posted at Right Wing News)

1. Ignore the story - pretend it is not happening, or deflect like crazy.

2. Find some sort of moral equivalence or a story from 30 years ago saying a Conservative did something sort of similar.

3. Come up with some conspiracy theories. This is usually the most amusing part, reading and hearing all the strange stuff they come up with in their reality based chat rooms.

4. Blame Conservatives for bringing the truth to light. How dare they do dat!!!!

5. Concoct strange defenses based on wild psychological discourse, which no one understands, including the writer, but it sounds good, and allows a liberal/progressive to say there is no problem.

6. Whine about the discussion of the topic, proclaiming that it means nothing, and why aren’t we talking about X? This is usually the point where Liberals/progressives truly understand how bad the issue really is for them, typically when even the NY Times cannot ignore it, so, now they want to have an in-depth discussion on the point of the Iraq War, which you have had 1,000 times, but, they strangely have never had.

 Alternately, this is the point where some liberals realize that they did not receive their talking points emails, so haven’t a friggin’ clue how to respond.

7. Declare victory! Those dastardly Conservatives have been proven wrong again, and why do you keep asking so many questions?

8. Ignore the issue. It never happened. This is similar to the 10 Stages Of Success. See below the fold.

Many may wonder why the irrational seething, virulent vitriol and disgusting language, personal attacks, and abject hatred has not been mentioned. Well, this of course is the natural state of the modern liberal/progressive, and can not only occur at any time, but will occur throughout any discussion. It is a pervasive state of nature for those on the Left.
SUCCESS:

At age 4 success is . . . not peeing in your pants.
At age 12 success is . . . having friends.
At age 16 success is . . . having a drivers license.
At age 20 success is . . . having sex.
At age 35 success is . . . having money.
At age 50 success is . . . having money.
At age 60 success is . . . having sex.
At age 70 success is . . . having a drivers license.
At age 75 success is . . . having friends.
At age 80 success is . . . not peeing in your pants.

I love visiting Alaska.  RT and I have been there twice.  Those were two of the most wonderful trips I’ve ever made.  We were even re-married in a park near Anchorage in September 2006.  One of these days, I’d love to enjoy an Alaska cruise vacation.  On our previous trips to Alaska we flew directly to Anchorage and then explored Alaska from there.  However, I think a cruise would be wonderful - being able to get close-up views of whales and other sealife - not to mention seeing glaciers up close.  When I think of the night we had trouble getting a room reservation and almost ended up spending the night in our rental car, it reminds me of how wonderful being able to have marvelous shore excursions and then return to our comfortable stateroom would be.

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