Walking on sunshine. How quaint.

Monday, March 3, 2008 at 11:37 pm (Smile Lines)
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What a treat on the third of March to be walking outside in shirtsleeves, shaking off the cobwebs and breathing in cool, unfrigid air — especially when the temperature on the second of March didn’t venture above freezing. I thought the neighborhood would be full of walkers, as it usually is on warmer days, but the roads were mine alone. 

Such high hopes for such a walk on such a day. How exhilarating, how cleansing. How lovely to see the earth, How promising to hear water rushing in the creek as if spring were already here. How satisfying to see the sad remains of melting snowmen in soggy yards. How reassuring that my favorite houses are none the worse for winter wear.

 And oh, how painful. 

I haven’t “power walked” in four months — a fact I am acutely aware of before plodding half a lap. Even my pedometer — usually quite inspiring — failed me, apparently unwilling to be roused from its peaceful winter slumber to measure a few thousand stinkin’ steps.

It’s amazing how slowly watch hands can move. (Only 20 minutes? What about now? Four more minutes — is that all?) And it’s downright pathetic that hills you climbed not so long ago with nary a huff now leave you puffing quite audibly. And that you skip the big hill altogether to do the “flat part,” and end up skipping half of that so you don’t have to walk past crazy neighborhood eccentric guy again, who is loading wood ever so slowly into his dilapidated pick-up and, you swear, eyeing you as you walk quickly by, holding your breath as you think “don’t talk to me, don’t talk to me, don’t talk to me, don’t talk to me. whew.” And then you catch a glimpse of all those unflattering bulges in your shadow that even late-afternoon lankiness can’t hide.

Of course, there is some satisfaction in having walked for 38 minutes instead of sitting in front of the computer or lounging in front of the TV. Satisfaction that will quickly be replaced by aching muscles. But no worries, I’ll have plenty of time to recover — 65-degree March days are as fleeting as my willpower. When the next warm day surfaces (in April), I can lace up my tennies and start the whole painful getting-back-in-shape process all over again. As this process takes longer every year, I should be hitting my stride in late July — just in time for summer heat to force me inside again.

I really don’t think I need buns of steel. 
I’d be happy with buns of cinnamon. 
                                   ~ Ellen DeGeneres

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“April is the cruellest month…”?

Tuesday, February 26, 2008 at 9:34 pm (Cottage Industry)
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Who was T.S. Eliot kidding? From where I sit, wrapped in a blanket in front of my computer screen with sleety snow falling a dark windowpane away, April seems like a distant image of heaven — a paradise of popping bulbs and budding forsythia. And the three remaining days of February — one extra this year — an eternity. Only to be followed by more of the same in March — dreary, windy, blustery March.

Boo hoo — such is life north of the Mason-Dixon Line. We’re all sunlight deprived, you know, and SAD is a fact of life. Or maybe it’s depression brought on by sugar deprivation. (I gave up sweets for Lent in my annual nod to my Catholic upbringing. It about kills me every year.)

Every winter I think, “Why the heck do I live here?” And every spring, summer, and fall, I remember why. What’s keeping me going now is the notion that we finally have someone lined up to do our retaining wall project (in theory anyway). After staring at and maneuvering the cars around a mountain of mud for a year, I can almost envision the lovely “hardscape” that I’ll be able to garden around and that will give the back yard a polished “someone loves me” look. And the thought that we’ll actually finish those garage and porte cochére projects that cold weather forced us to abandon last fall. And maybe this will be the year the front porch gets its much-needed overhaul. And those atrocious collapsing railings around the porch roofs will finally disappear. Oh, and we should really get those storm windows we talked about. And those slates on the garage roof need attention, not to mention the rotting eeves. And all those bricks to move somewhere else — the ones we thought it so important to save when we knocked down the old pier in the driveway. And I can take off the back door and refinish that too, and maybe we’ll spring for that new storm door…

On second thought, why am I in such a hurry for spring? Maybe April really is the cruellest month. I wonder if T.S. lived in a fixer-upper too…

Winter is the time of promise because there is
so little to do – or because you can now and then
permit yourself the luxury of thinking so. 
                                        ~ Stanley Crawford

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Made for Me Marketing

Thursday, February 21, 2008 at 7:48 pm (Smile Lines)
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Every morning it’s the same thing. I survey my collection of hair goop “product” and decide which largely ineffective concoction I’ll go with that day. Nothing lives up to the hype: My roots are not boosted, my hair is neither big nor sexy. It has not been inflated to extreme volume. The “hold” is nowhere near, all-day, super, ultra, or able to withstand rough weather and high humidity (or gentle breezes or the simple force of gravity).

Now, I’m not one of those people who goes for “salon product” that adds $25 to an already $30 haircut. But lately, I’ve been desperate and experimenting with the expensive stuff. I now have $50 worth of useless products to use up, instead of $10 worth, before I can try something else.

How I lament — every darn day — the passing of the 2 or 3 tried-and-true products that actually worked. One, a moderately priced salon find, was taken off the market 4 years ago or so. For a while, I could buy someone’s hoarded stash on eBay, then that too dried up (no pun intended). The second, and most lamented, was $2 hairspray that I’d been using for at least 15 years. Suddenly, it was no more. I went online and found others also searching, wondering, and finally crying that it was no longer being made. So, to eBay I went again, but unwilling to pay $20 a bottle for $2 hairspray, I was defeated — and deflated, from the scalp up.

So that got me thinking — How are these companies making the decision to get rid of products that some people absolutely love? Heck, entire Web sites and message boards are devoted to “discontinued” cosmetics and hard-to-find products, as women desperately search for their favorite shades and scents.

Have a little compassion, companies — and a little marketing savvy. Use this devotion to your advantage!

Why not have a page on your Web site where people can sign up to be “XYZ Junkies” or “Rabid 123 Fans” or charter members of the “Don’t Ever Take Away My Ripe Sienna Plum Club.” (Yes, the lipstick shade I wore for 20 years or so until that too was discontinued.) Publicize the heck out of it in women’s magazines (and on Oprah) and see what kind of response you get.

Then, if you do get the bright idea to discontinue something, tell your fans! Do you think there’s a woman out there who wouldn’t buy a case or a gross of her favorite product if she thought it was going away? (Don’t you people watch Seinfeld? Ever heard of  The Sponge, Sponge-worthy, ring any bells?) And, of course, it’s not just hair & make-up, it’s toothpaste and soap and laundry detergent and cleaning products and underwear and panty hose…and on and on.

As those savvy eBayers know, you could make a fortune selling these discontinued items “online only” at a premium to your devotees. And I guarantee you’d earn the undying loyalty of millions of us out here happy to forgo the “next best thing” if we can simply keep using what works.

I’m tired of all this nonsense about beauty
being only skin-deep. That’s deep enough.
What do you want – an adorable pancreas? 
                             ~ Jean Kerr, The Snake Has All the Lines

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