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.

I’m mid-way through my second day of using Nutri-System.   The news is not good.

Day 1 Breakfast:  Cereal.  It came in a small envelope that reminded me of the envelopes of seeds that you buy at Home Depot.  It was quite small.  Certainly not a complete serving.  It tasted okay, though.  And since portion-control is a major issue, I figured it was good to make myself get accustomed to eating smaller portions of food.  So the small amount didn’t bother me.

Day 1 Lunch: Black Beans and Rice.  It came in a styrofoam cup that I added boiling water to and let stand for a few minutes.  It looked horrible – black gunky paste.  However, it actually tasted okay.  So it ended up being better than I had anticipated.

Day 1 Dinner: Thick crust pizza.  I love pizza, and I figured it would be difficult to mess it up completely, and so I ordered a bunch of these for this month trial.   The crust was maybe 4-5 inches across.  Certainly much smaller than any individual pizza I’d ever seen.  But I was learning portion control – right!  I could handle it.  It had a little package of pizza sauce – about the size of a ketchup packet.  And there was a very small packet of grated cheese.  I put a couple slices of a fresh tomato on top and popped it in the oven.  With a salad on the side, it wasn’t bad.

Day 1 Dessert: A chocolate/caramel bar.  It tasted like a vitamin bar – kinda pasty with a chalky aftertaste.  Definitely NOT something I would choose to eat.

None of the food could even remotely be described as “delicious” but none of it was horrible either – although that chocolate/caramel bar came closs.  It was an okay day.  One day down – 34 to go.

Today is Day 2.  Here’s how it has gone so far.

It’s Sunshine’s 5th birthday, and so we were up at dawn  (well – a little before 7 A.M.anyway) to go to Kroger to get some balloons to take over to Sunshine’s house and tie on the mailbox.  Sunshine met us at the door, and we gave her the balloons and birthday cards from us and from Grandma Ruth.  She loved them.  Then RT wanted to go by Panera Bread for breakfast. 

Day 2 Breakfast: I did pretty well for my first dining out experience while on NutriSystem.  I didn’t get my usual sweet bagel and cream cheese.  Instead I got one of their new egg sandwiches.  It was truly delicious and I savored every bite.  I figure my breakfast took up two protein servings for the day – plus bread and fat.  So I blew some of my allowances with that one breakfast.  However, it was worth it.

Day 2 Lunch:  I hurried with all my errands and got home around 1:00.  I had eaten an apple on my way home for a snack.  I decided to try the pasta/parmesan/broccoli lunch.  Again, it was a styrofoam cup that I added boiling water to.  The “broccoli” were a few tiny specks of green mixed in with the pasta.  The “parmesan” was apparently part of the sauce that in no way resembled a cream sauce.  I managed a few bites, but it was truly inedible.  I checked the calorie total on the package – then threw it away and ate a carton of yogurt that had about the same number of calories.  NutriSystem should be shot for selling a dish as awful as that pasta dish.  Yuck!

So that’s where I am right now.  If you decide to order NutriSystem, do NOT order the pasta/parmesan/broccoli dish.  It is beyond awful. 

I remember about ten years ago my face suddenly started breaking out. There hadn’t been a change in my diet or anything else that I could pinpoint. I just knew that I was in my 40’s, and suddenly I had acne.  I felt so self-conscious.  After all, my teen years were a distant memory!  Fortunately, I saw a commerical on TV for Proactiv Solution, and I decided to give it a try.  The package arrived quickly and I started using it.  My face started clearing up immediately, and within a few weeks my acne troubles were a memory.  I was thrilled, to say the least.

Acne.com is a website with a lot of information about acne – its various causes and effect,  the types of acne, how to take preventative measures against it,  along with the common myths and claims about acne.

From my own personal experience, I know that Proactiv works.  If you’re bothered by acne – at any age – give it a try.

If you’ve read The Median Sib recently, you probably already know that I started a diet last week, but I have deifnitely not been happy with the progress so far.  So I’ve been looking for other resources to help me lose weight.  When I read that 95 per cent of people who lose weight end up gaining it all back – plus at least a few pounds more – I feel discouraged.  It sounds so simple: Just eat less.  Research has shown that emotional eating is the greatest cause of regaining lost weight, and that makes sense to me.  Why else would someone eat something that wasn’t good for them.  There are reasons besides hunger. 

Today I was looking at www.ShrinkYourself.com – an online weight loss resource – which stresses that it is more important to look at WHY you eat instead of WHAT you eat.  They offer a free emotional eating profile – which I immediately took.  The results were not only insightful but helpful.  It clarified some of the reasoning behind my emotional eating.   I will look into it further.

I remember as a young girl reading the book The Pearl by John Steinbeck.  What a wonderful story of the search to find beautiful pearls, along with the determination and training necessary long ago for divers to go deep enough in the sea and stay there long enough to find the oysters that contained the prized pearls!  Ever since then I’ve been fascinated by pearls.  Oysters and pearls have always been almost magical – the whole idea of finding something that is valuable and cherished in something as ordinary as an oyster. 

Since I’m an avid reader and writer, I’ve thought about how cool it would be to write a story about finding a magical bed of oysters that, when opened, yielded a truly unusual prize.  I’ve thought and thought, but what could be more special than pearls?  So that’s as far as that particular line of thinking went.  I still think it’s a good idea for a fantasy story, though.

Did I write earlier that oysters are ordinary?  Well no, they’re not!  I also remember having oyster stew as a child.  There’s just nothing that tastes quite like oyster stew.  I love it.  When RT and I went to New Orleans back in 1975, I had raw Gulf oysters for the first time.  I was hesitant since I’d never had raw oysters before, but RT assured me they were wonderful.  So we sprinkled a little hot sauce on them, put them on a cracker, and down the hatch they went!  And he was right – they were great!  Since then, I’ve had fried oysers a few times, although I haven’t tried raw oysters again.  RT, though, always orders oysters on the half shell whenever we’re at the beach and he knows the oysters are fresh.

I’ve learned, though, that eating raw oysters can be dangerous for ‘at risk’ people because of the Vibrio vulnificus bacteria.  At risk people are those with a weakened immune system, diabetes or liver disease.  However researchers are busy developing methods of processing oysers so that they aren’t a threat to at risk consumers.  They are also educating consumers on determining if they are at risk and how to enjoy the delectable taste of oysters without putting themselves at risk.  The webiste with all the information is the Be Oyster Aware website.  Click on over to find out if you are at risk and how to protect yourself.  You’ll find some great oyster recipes while you’re there, too.

 

When I was young I didn’t pay much attention to skin care.  I wish I had.  I hate to admit that I loved going to tanning beds.  It just felt good, and so every spring I would go to a tanning bed to get a good tan before beach trips.  I would also spend time lying on the beach and soaking up the sun.  I knew it was bad for my skin, but I loved the way a tan looked, and I loved the feel of the sun on my skin.  I was even heard to say more than once that a mild sunburn actually felt good.  YIKES!  What was I thinking?  Fortunately, I didn’t take tanning too seriously, and so I only did it for a few weeks each year.  So the damage to my skin was not as bad as it could have been.

Sometime in my thirties I started being a little more careful about my skin, but it really wasn’t until my early fifties that I realized that my naturally good skin was no longer so naturally good.  I had to do something.  I started trying various skin care products.  I tried just about everything – from expensive department store brands to products that could only be ordered online to inexpensive discount store products.  One system required about 30 minutes in front of the mirror every evening doing all the cleansing, toning, masking and moisturizing.  It was crazy.  Some worked well and some did absolutely nothing for me.

Now there’s Borba which has excellent skin care products.  There’s a Borba blog, too.  I enjoyed surfing around the Borba blog and reading all the skin care information available there.  BORBA nourishes your skin – both from the inside and from the outside, and all BORBA products are dermatologist tested and recommended.

Right now, BORBA is offering a special promotion for website visitors who spend $100 or more.  The promotion changes each month.  So click the link to find out what is offered for this month’s promotion.  Oh yes, Borba has skin care products for men, too. 

What an utterly stupid day!  First, I went to bed last night with a “scratchy” throat which went from scratchy to downright painful during the night.  I was awakened at 6:00 a.m. by the phone ringing.  It was the school system’s automated calling system letting us know that school would start two hours late this morning because of icy roads.  Late starts just screw up the whole day.  Starting late serves no purpose other than screwing up people’s schedules.  Either call school off for the day or have a regular schedule.  

But, hey two free hours are two free hours.  So RT and I had breakfast and enjoyed our coffee, chitchated awhile and watched the news on TV.  Then RT headed off on a one-day business trip, and I headed to the shower.  Just as I was about to step in, the phone rang again.  By now it was 8:30 a.m.  It was the school system again.  They had decided to cancel school after all.  Mind you, at my house there had been no precipitation at all – frozen or otherwise.  However, it’s a big school system, and the schools in the western part of the county tend to get worse weather.  So that was okay.  Except, after the 6:00 a.m. phone call, I hadn’t been able to go back to sleep.  So it’s a snow day, and yet I got up earlier than I normally do.

I already had a dentist appointment for this afternoon, but with my scratchy throat, I decided to call my dentist to see if they still wanted to see me.  No, they wanted to reschedule.  No sense in taking a chance at catching something from me.  That was fine.  I would have done the same.  Who wants to take a chance on getting strep throat or whatever.  I rescheduled the dentist appointment for the middle of March (the first available appointment), and then I decided to take advantage of the free day by getting a massage.  My neck has been hurting a lot lately, and getting a massage always helps.

So, I got an appointment for a massage.  It was wonderful.  I headed home – almost stopping for lunch at a restaurant along the way, but finally choosing to fix myself lunch after I got home.  At home, I decided to make a bagel and scrambled egg for lunch.  Don’t ask me why, but that sounded really good to me.  Mid-way through my bagel, I bit into something very hard.  What the . . . ?  A tooth had broken.  Not a crown, but a tooth.  A bagel and scrambled egg had broken a tooth?  The bagel was chewy, but not THAT chewy.

So now I NEEDED a dentist appointment for this afternoon, even though I had just called a few hours ago to cancel the appointment I already had.   Of course when I called I found that the dentist office is closed for lunch from 1:00 – 2:00.  I called at 1:05.  So I have to wait almost an hour before I can even call and start begging for an appointment today.  Wish me luck.

Update:  It’s 2:04 – and they can see me as soon as I can get there.  So I’m on my way.  Gotta brush my teeth first, though.  I WILL not think of drilling and filling and  the sound  and smell of that drill.  Just give me nitrous oxide – the more the better. 

Later Update: A new crown is now in my mouth.  Fun, fun.  It feels too big.  I wonder why they made the temporary crown so big?  Surely the permanent one I’ll get in a few weeks will be a more normal size. Lord, I hate going to the dentist.  My daughter has to have some dental work done on Monday, and her dentist gave her a valium (a prescription for ONE valium) to take before going in for the work.  The dentist assured her it would make her not care much better than the nitrous oxide.  Of course she has to have someone take her to the dentist and then home later.