Looking Like Your Mother

You Say Care-A-Bee-An, I Say Can't We Fix The Stairs

"I need to get away."

When a spouse says that in whispered tones through clenched teeth under the covers before sunrise, it really is settled. The family will go away.

The sympathy factor wears thin, however, when that spouse chooses something close to the equator in off-season, low-rent July. "Is this a group suicide mission?" I asked him. "Because I'm not so sure the rest of us are having such bad days right this very minute.

It's the end of day two on the Isle of Granada, which I politically mistook for the Falklands during mental prep time. "Finally. Some place foreign where being an American won't be the worst thing in the world," I said to my husband.

"You are a geology genius, but when it comes to geography and politics, a menace," he replied.

That I am, so I had to do some research.

According to Merle Collins, the Carib Indians migrated off the coast of South America and conquered the Arawaks who         were already inhabiting the island. The Caribs named the island Camerhogue. Another site from Skyview takes us back further, and explains that of the three Amerindian tribes in the region at the time, the Caribs were the most warlike. They sailed over from the SA mainland and massacred the Arawaks, which is bad, but were, by the same vein, well suited to keep European invaders from landing on the island and doing the same to their own people, which, I guess, is good, although this is where I begin to think that women should basically be in charge of the world, but let's not go there just yet.

Contrary to what guide books say, Columbus did not land in 1498 - but simply sailed by. He renamed the island Conception after the Virgin Mary and I guess he gave it that name because it was somewhat apropos of his landing technics: that was more a concept project, too.

To be con't....

Rabalder

The site does not have a translator, but I shop two or three times a year at Rabalder, and whatever I buy there gets me big attention. Soft, sexy, feminine and sophisticated - a can't miss combination. Take your time going through the offerings though - that's the trick. Some of the patterns are decidedly Swedish and may or may not work for you - but most succeed because the freshness translates across all jurisdictions. The line for kids works, too, without making little him or her look overly preppy. Kids looked loved and cared for without looking starched. Don't worry about the words, play around on the site and see what pops up. If you call a phone number, someone will switch to English in .5 of a second.

Emptying the Bag - Wrap Dresses to Losing NO to the WSJ

All my bags are in overfill from bits of info I see and stuff into them.

I think wrap dresses are so incredibly sexy, and I found another one, the Julia Silk Dress by Calypso. I'm not crazy about cap sleeves (been there, done that), but the sleeve offsets a wider hip, and no matter what your shape, you can wrap this one way for the office, then wrap it way sexier for the evening. Check out the wrap styles and colors. Maybe your best mid-summer closet add. At $200 it's actually a bargain because it has staying power.

I'm going to be giving the Xacti E1 Sanyo underwater camcorder recently featured in the NYTimes Circuits column. My husband has planned another family vacation of doom, so I thought it best if we get as much of it on film as possible. More on the trip and anticipated horror later.

I've been carrying around an old NY Times article "Genes Take Charge, and Diets Fall by the Wayside," because somehow when I got done reading it, I believed that I could truly be less a jerk sizist towards others. "70 percent of the variation in peoples' weights may be accounted for by inheritance, a figure that means that weight is more strongly inherited than nearly any other condition, including mental illness, breast cancer or heart disease." So, if you are genetically predisposed to a higher body mass index, staying small will be a lifelong struggle. "It's funny," I said at a party a few weeks ago. "The variation in my children is so much more than a combination of their father and me. There seems to be some contribution from everyone in both extended families, including the tall, lanky great-grandfather, the short and wide grandmother, the drinkilish uncle and the neurotic aunt."  Yes, everyone with kids seemed to agree with a sigh. Move as far away as you want. There is no escaping the family.

Libertine launches mid-prices marketing campaign with a new line at Target. Starts tomorrow through September. I have boycotted Target since they started letting their pharmacists opt out of filling birth control pill scripts, but it's still news.

National Geographic Magazine August 07 issue has a fabulously informative piece on the state of the City of New Orleans. We seem to be living through a rare geological time when we can actually watch a land mass - our own North American continent - change shape. NO seems doomed, but as the immediate crisis of search and rescue seems over, I'm not sure enough of us are paying attention anymore. We all should, especially as higher water levels everywhere seems quite clearly in our future. (At time of post, only the July issue is available online.)

Am I the only one on the planet who feels that the WSJ and Murdoch deserve each other? I have been successfully self-employed for years and I used to read the WSJ daily for the mental exercise I call: "Find the Angle." It goes like this. I read something - anything, actually - and see if I can take advantage of something from that article to help promote my business. I didn't have to put whatever I came up with into play. I just liked to try to do it because in a world of techies, medical professionals, and people with memories that can retain sports stats and Hollywood gossip, the art of the marketing spin seemed to be my own, idiot savant talent. At some point over the past five years, however, I couldn't bring myself to even touch the WSJ. The paper's editorials just got too politicized to the right, even for a paper that was always fiscally conservative. It was tied to Bush's administrative agenda, agreed with a policy of tax cuts during war time, and - worst of all to me - didn't seem particularly fond of women. I liked this perspective from the Guardian Unlimited, Roy Greenslade. Live by the sword, be willing to jump on the sword.

More dribble to most definitely be continued . . .

Liar Liar Brain on Fire

I really should be posting on Paris, and how Raf Simons tops and shoes deserve applause and that YSL should stop putting men in its women's line and fat man's wear already. (Not everyone cares for Raf this season, but if you you don't let the legs throw you, one can see that Raf's details will be surfacing for years.)

I should also be doing something to honor Elizabeth H. Blackburn, the cell biologist who tells us that stress eats away at telomerase, the enzyme that keeps our chromosome tips (telomeres) in shape. These tips - think of them as the plastic bits on the end of shoelaces - are our best defense against degrading, fraying chromosomes. It is in the degrading and fraying that we age. I mean, I am glad she has found out this information, not that it is likely I can do anything much about the stress levels in my life. It's just kind of, well, I guess, good to know, in a way. Shoot. I am so aging fast, aren't I.

Thanks, Liz. Thanks a lot. You'll be picking up your Nobel prize while I'll be signing up for one of those feel-good yoga classes.

But all this "should be" writing has to wait because it is Margaret Talbot's piece "Duped" in the July 2 New Yorker that so completely took over my Saturday morning. Talbot takes on No Lie, a company promoting fMRI as a brain scan lie detector test, and I couldn't be happier. Why? Because I know for certain that if I ever had to take a lie detector test, I would get the chair.

Call it a hunch.

I was in the 4th grade. I remember the classroom, how the desks were arranged, and that the teacher had dark hair. During a test, a girl seated to my left (towards the windows and on the other side of me from where the teacher sat) asked if she could copy from me. I recognized the anomaly, felt sorry for the girl, and cooperated by failing to shield my paper. Several days later, the teacher kept the two of us after class and accused us of cheating. I was flummoxed by the charge. I had no recollection of the event.

My recall returned within 24 hours of meeting with the teacher. I remember the room I was in (bathroom) and what I was doing (about to take my bedtime bath) when the memory came back. I was disturbed about the empty space in my head and mortified as to how it must have appeared to the teacher and the student. I tried to explain my relapse recovery the next day, but I had little optimism it would be received well. From that event I learned that I could never fully trust my memory and that for the rest of my life I was either going to have to live in isolation or completely and absolutely behave.

It also meant that I would make one lousy lie detector test taker. I would always be in doubt, always second-guess, always panic.

It doesn't help either, that over the next few decades I earned a living on my imagination. If you train your brain to work in free fall, and someone asks you to recreate something that just happened two hours ago, such as "Honey, what did you do with the keys?", then you are fully capable of building an imaginary treehouse and thinking that you may have put those keys under the treehouse threshhold mat for safekeeping. Ok, maybe not that much leeway, but in response to that question I can see myself putting keys on the table and believing it, and five minutes later see myself putting keys in a coat pocket in the closet and believing, no, it happened that way, instead. During the process of trying to locate keys I am not lying. In fact, I am trying so very hard to be correct. But knowing that I have the capacity for these near misses makes my heart pound, my blood pressure skyrocket and my brain activity sparkle and crack over the most mundane things that regular functioning folks take for granted.

Then there is the free association. Think Robin Williams manic. The lie detector man says, "I'm going to ask you a series of baseline questions and then the zinger" or something like that. Maybe he doesn't tell me that is what he is doing, but I know how it works. When asked the zinger question, if I am lying, then the brain scanning device should show more brain activity than the level of activity produced during the other questions to which I do not feel I have to lie. The theory is that lying takes more brain work than telling the truth. The trouble I face is kind of the complement to, how did one of Ms. Talbot's sources put it:

"With brain imaging, the assumption is that the conflict is cognitive: the liar has to work a little harder to make up a story, or even to stop himself from telling the truth. Neither is necessarily right. 'Sociopaths don't feel the same conflict when they lie,' Phelps says. 'The regions of the brain that might be involved if you have to inhibit a response may not be the same when you're a sociopath, or autistic, or maybe just strange.'"

I'm a little strange, not necessarily in the sense that I won't emit a response (provided I can remember what I did the hour before), but that I am likely to emit a damning response for an entirely wrong reason. Let's say, for example, that someone shot my mother. The No Lie technology is in place. The interrogation process is that before being told that a loved one has been murdered, all family members are taken into custody and brain scanned.

Interrogator: Date of Birth

Me: Should I give him both my real birthday and the one I use when I buy things on the internet to protect my privacy? He probably has them both and I don't want to seem like I am hiding anything. No, but that answer will sound too stupid and I am not stupid just sometimes uncertain as to how internet things work. "Jun 5, 1967."

Interrogator: Lots of activity. She doesn't want to tell me her age. She has probably lied about this one a lot and doesnt want to blow her cover, heh, heh, heh.

Interrogator: Name of Father:

Me: "Charles"

Interrogator: Name of Mother:

Me: Oooh, I was supposed to call her yesterday. Now I'm in so much trouble. "Maureen." It was on my to do list and everything. She thinks I'm such a screw up. What is wrong with me. Now I'll have to take her shopping at Chicos to make it up to her. Boy I don't get that store. How many tunics can there be in medium ugly.

Interrogator: What kind of car do you drive:

Me: "Volvo"

Interrogator: Have you ever touched a hand gun?

Me: Stupid guns. That damn Charlton Heston. I used to have the ... "No" ...biggest crush on him from his old movies I watched him in at my grandpa's. Stupid NRA. He and his false teeth and Columbine and what does he know about today's kids and their stress. It's crazy today and he hangs out in his rancho commando compound in his jammies.

Interrogator: Lots of activity. Bingo.

Interrogator: Where do you live:

Me: River Oaks

Interrogator: Are you right or left handed:

Me: These guys are scientists of sorts. I should tell someone here of the phenomenon that two of my kids are left handed, despite having right ... Right. ... handed parents.  I mean, I wonder if I was supposed to be left handed or if it means that there is something special about their brains. Maybe I should have them tested. Maybe I should ask someone.

Interrogator: Lots of activity. I wonder if she knows about the bullet entry issue.

For me, a truthful response can result in way more a brain activity that anyone might expect. And maybe that would get me off the hook eventually, lots of brain activity to the word "popcorn" and question "do you like clouds?" might actually save me, if it doesn't get me put away into an insane asylum first. But the brain scan is being touted as a tool as valuable to truth finding as DNA analysis, so enough about me. What we know about the brain is that we don't know enough to be comparing results with DNA exactitude - not even close. So the public needs to raise a stink before it is forced upon us, and the Talbot article is a great place to start the edumacational process.

There is nothing more frightening that junk science.

Except for, perhaps, my lousy memory.

Bartoli New IT Girl

Watching Wimbledon despite a million other things to do. It's the finals and Venus is ranked against, how did my husband put it, "Some girl named 'Bartoli'."

She is the Ugly Betty of tennis and I cannot take my eyes off of her. I want her to win soooo bad. I can't even say I know what her face looks like, but she doesn't have the long lean power legs of Venus or the little taut body of Henin or the powerhouse build of Serena or the masculine stretch of Mauresmo. She might even lose, but she is in the final because she is a fighter and I am so proud.

Ahhhh, Deadlines Met

My arms ache after meeting deadline. So much photoshop and typing and surfing and driving and swearing at programs that freeze. My neck aches, too, and spelling and grammar (barely constituents on a good day) have left the building. I look for whatever wine exists in the back of the fridge, hoping against odds it hasn't turned to vinegar yet.

A Spot Checker for Your Spot Protector

Sunscreen site:  The Cosmetic Safety Database  I popped in my favorite sunscreens (Colorescience Sunforgettable and Biotherm Sun 50) and no surprises. Sunforgettable gets great ratings and Biotherm isn't in the database because it comes from Europe and has more Mexoryl than the FDA has so far approved.

Use the site to test your sunscreen.

Forget the Insight from Breakfast . . .

Food is merely one insight into another's culture. How they eat, when they eat, and what they eat can be enlightening, entertaining, fatiguing, and, well, yeah, disgusting. My own recollections inevitably involve visions of plates of food and flash images of rushing servers, patrons, or passers-by. From Barcelona, I retain images of late night tappas with dome lit food bars and tall dark women in red.Greece gave me plates of red, white and green, sunny blue skies and waving tree branches. Because I am not a true foodie at heart, the memory is always visual, rarely related to the palate.

When it comes to culture, I get a better insight from other countries' hospital emergency rooms. The queuing system, type of health problems, and level of cleanliness, sympathy, and bureaucracy tell me lots. When a disturbing skin rash began taking over my daughter's body, we sat for hours in the Greek ER, despite being the first ones to walk into the facility that morning. The woman across from us at intake sat on the phone for hours. We could not make ourselves understood to her, so her eyes told us to sit and wait. The room itself looked like an unkempt version of a 1950's built public school foyer. An extremely incoherent, toxic looking young 20-something was brought in by his parents and led through to the doctor's area without hesitation, as were two old women in traditional widow black garb, and a couple with an infant. None of my daughter's afflicted skin parts showed. "Can't you look ready to die already?" I asked her.

We sat until I accepted the fact that no one knew we were there despite attempts to make our needs known to the woman on the phone. I sent my daughter over to a cashier, a man who, with his large, drooping, graying mustache and eyes, looked like the kind of underemployed accountant who would either shoo her away or be grateful for the pretty girl's distraction. The man had sturdy English skills and was up for the part of good Samaritan in getting us in to see the doctors.

Except that there were no doctors, only a nurse who spoke English and took what little history we could provide. Without washing her hands from attending to the patient on the other side of the curtain, the young nurse with the big doe eyes touched my daughters skin and wrote out four prescriptions that in combination would likely combat whatever it was we were up against. The entire cost? Fifty bucks for the ER and fifty bucks for the four scripts. My daughter's skin began to clear up within 48 hours. I reckoned the sweet nurse would be dead in ten years from whatever germs she was collecting from work.

Lesson:  Even if we plan on being self contained within our group and the hotel people speak our language, get a translation book for emergencies. I should have at least had that to try to communicate with the woman on the phone. Opinion: Compassionate, tough, and worn.

When I miscarried in Sweden, it must have been at an hour when no one as was at the hospital. I only remember pristine walls, windows, and doors (lots of all of them) and no bodies. I entered the waiting area, took a number from the number machine, and sat. The number machine looks like the ticket giver at every large grocery store deli counter in America, and everything in Sweden runs from those machines. When my number was called, my husband explained the situation and we were led to a large white room containing one female doctor. Yes, I was losing the fetus. Now get dressed and go home. No I didn't need any other treatment. Women had been miscarrying for tens of thousands of years she said, and now it was my turn.

Apparently I had checked into the Ice Hotel by mistake.

Within a week and back in the States I could barely climb a flight of stairs. My body kept trying to cleanse itself of the failed attempt at procreation and I was losing lots of blood, which of course earned me a ticket to an ER room at home. I kept hearing the Ice Doktor say "Women have been doing this for tens of thousands of years," except for not me. This woman - me - really sucked at losing things, at being natural, and I hated the doctor and the big white room with its sonogram equipment.

Lesson: Always get a check up when I return home from hospitalization in Scandinavia. I am a wimp compared to them, and will probably die from the things that that group of folks just handles with a band aid, if they even have band aids. Opinion: Spotless, efficient, and without a soul.

And I Can Eat All the Ice Cream I Want

I think I am supposed to buy my next swim suit from here, Sunprecautions.

No, really, I am going to check this out. All I have to do is pretend I am a surfer. Dude. (Can't forget to say, "Dude.")

Rolling Away

"I can't roll it. It will destroy my Y chromosome," my business partner says, whenever he offers to help me with by computer bag. He always elects to pick it up rather than roll it along as it was designed to do, never breaking a sweat or grimace in the process.

My husband has been rolling oversized brief cases and computer bags for years. "That's what they are dsigned to do," he says, in his big, secure male way.

So, there you have it, the two macho camps.

But actually, there is a third, unmacho camp. Mine. I resent my roller bag because it is ugly. I want a chic computer bag, like an ACME, because of how it looks. But, alas, I know what will happen over time because I carry too many things. The ACME bag will end up stuffed inside of something else 90% of the time.

Tumi has let me down. Victorinox (Swiss Army) is hip, but also only in the big black box sort of way.

Perhaps the solution is to go with a backpack like this. But this Leathertree bag, which is thinner because the laptop is inserted sideways, might prove the best solution.