Archive for February, 2011

Oh the irony. I’m so busy temp-editing in the beauty department of a magazine that I’m sliding into home plate with this week’s much-anticipated Beauty Armoire Monday.

(Okay, so I was also detained trying to YouTube swoony Colin Firth’s Oscar acceptance speech. I’m only human…)

Sadly, I need a haircut like nobody’s business. I have a new cutter who completely rocks (and totally looks like a dude from Scorpions, that kickass German heavy metal band, so the fact that he rocks is quite fitting.) But I haven’t been in to see him since mid-December, and eight weeks between trimmy trim-trims is pushing it.

When my locks need pruning, and when it’s also been raining like cats and dogs as it has been in Gotham recently, my frizz goes into overdrive.

So I just dove head-first into a big hair bucket in my BA, and grabbed two Redken post-shampoo conditioning treatments that are specifically geared toward fakey-fake dyed hair like mine: Color Extend Rich Recovery and Color Extend Total Recharge.

I’m too mentally whupped right now to figure out the big difference between the two of them, but Recovery needs to stay on the hair a lot longer than Recharge. So given that I don’t have five spare seconds in the morning lately, I think I’ll be recharging much more frequently than I’ll be recovering.

But speaking of recharging and recovering, Mommy needs to go forage for dinner and then try to stay awake long enough to catch the season premiere of Bethenny Ever After. Night-night, my gorgeous (frizz-free) Momoverettes.

If it weren’t for not-so-occasional transgressions like eating an entire bag of Pepperidge Farm Montauk cookies last weekend, I have no doubt that my man Tony Horton would be handing me the bod of my 40-something dreams on a silver platter. After all, I’m wrapping up Week 6 of P90X today, and there are indeed positive changes afoot.

Such as…a seriously deflated post-baby kangaroo pouch and size 4 pants that I had to keep hiking up when I wore them recently. The very definition of awesomeness, one suspects…

But next week, the calendar clicks over to March. And that’s when I typically mentally steel myself against the rest of the East coast winter and haul my ass – and my fitness routine – back outside. Sure it’s still nippy, but not excessively so. And the endorphin payoff is just soooo huge that a touch of frostbite is totes worth it.

While there’s a bit of jogging in place at the start of virtually every P90X workout, the regimen’s mostly about the stuff that really changes your body, like weights. I’ve blogged many times about my running addiction, and how it often blocks my desire to do anything else of a fitness nature. And as much I’d like to believe otherwise, weight work – and using your own body for resistance (think old school push-ups and Plank pose) – are the way to move the needle on mama flab.

So that’s why I’m heading upstairs to the family room for a brutal session of Ab Ripper X, followed by a routine called Kenpo X that’s martial-arts based and involves lots of kicks to the (imaginary) groin and blows to the (imaginary) head.

For now, I’m trusting in Tony. But as soon as I wrap P90X in another six weeks, I’ll be running. Running like the wind.

When I was on staff at the dearly departed Cookie mag, I was with child and completely committed to rocking the spikes to work every day. To me, baby belly + insane footwear was business as usual.

But then one afternoon, when I was taking the subway from a beauty editor shindig in SoHo uptown to the office, I was flat-out ACCOSTED by a perfect stranger.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” she hissed, staring at me with daggers in her eyes. “Pregnant and wearing those shoes!”

Instantly, I felt like Bad Mommy. (And this was, technically, several months before I was even an actual mommy.) That crazy, judgmental bee-yotch popped the bubble of my perfect day, spoiling my delusional notions of myself as a tough as nails hot-mama-in-training.

So it was with great bitterness and horror that I read some of the scathing comments that followed HuffPo’s piece on my darling Rachel Zoe and her sky-high stiletto boots. It was like my scary subway encounter all over again.

Faithful Momoverettes know that I love Rachy Rach (and her hubby Rodg, too). So please, World, I’m officially asking that you lay off as she enters the unique hell that is the last few months of pregnancy. Right now, she looks incredible in her styled-up, cashed-up riff on maternity gear. Let’s let her have that, shall we?

Is there no end to my talents?

K-i-d-d-i-n-g. For starters, I’ve completely forgotten how to drive, which is a basic life skill for a mom. The guilt…

Still, smart people sometimes ask me to chime in on this, that and the other. Recently, it was Blogs.com, for which I pulled together a list of my all-time favorite crunchy self-help sites. Oh my lordy, how much fun that was!

And now, launching today, is a new digital initiative called Say 100, which has identified one hundred “voices that matter” in 10 categories. I contributed the parenting piece of the illustrious puzzle, and you can see my picks for influential mommy (and daddy) bloggers here.

I can’t tell you what a treat it was for me to sleuth-out fellow bloggers who can write their pants off and are wildly, insanely creative.

And speaking of awesome, the entire Say 100 package rocks. I am honored to be in the company of Jane Pratt and Amanda Hesser, who weighed-in on style and food, respectively. Not that all the curators are female; there are also high-profile dudes dude-speaking about technology and business.

Take a look. I guarantee you’ll discover many new blog gems.

I posted yesterday about my scary new temporary work ID, and how, every time I glance in its general direction, it rudely mocks that one small part of me (the cheerful, upbeat, rose-colored glasses part) that still believes that my face hasn’t changed that significantly over the years.

But of course it has – duh times a million. I need only whip out an ID from yesteryear to see how much. And at this point, sadly, the only real fix will be found at the hands of a derm or plastic surgeon.

Since I like to pretend that I have control over every aspect of my life – the denial bit again – I attacked my Beauty Armoire today with a fierce determination to uncover a few skin beautifiers that might make me look, if not pulled as tight as a drum, at least a little zippier.

Almost immediately, my eyes seized on a set of sleek, miniature vials of mystery goo, Kanebo Sensai Cellular Performance Recovery Concentrate Ampoule Treatment. There are 14 in total, and it’s meant to be a two-week “hyper-intensive programme to recharge tired and troubled skin.” That’s me: tired. Tired and troubled…

For years, as a twenty- and thirty-something beauty editor, I would kind of mentally zone-out and go to my happy place whenever it came time to listen to the rocket science-y marketing spiels attached to big, expensive products like this high-tech Kanebo potion. But now that I’m at an age when I could actually use some help, my ears are perking right up.

Still, I’m old school, and if I have my druthers, I prefer simple ideas that I can wrap my feeble mind around. That’s why I also nabbed a little trio of brews created by celeb skin guru David Colbert. I’ve blogged about Dr. Colbert before; he’s the one who wrote the super-great High School Reunion Diet.

Now I’m moving three of his products to the top of my To Do list:

1. Intensify Facial Discs, which act as a microdermabrasion and are designed to make the skin glow like a sparkler on the Fourth of July

2. Heal & Soothe Night, before beddy-bye, after the Recovery Concentrate

3. And on the ol’ crinklies and crow’s feet, Nourish Eye Cream

All of these products are pretty expensive. And I know there are loads of drugstore potions that might help you achieve similar results. But they were languishing in my Beauty Armoire, just waiting for me to put my little mitts on ‘em. So I decided it was high time I put them to work.

Not that I’m a major job-hopper, but I’ve definitely switched gears a few times. And at least with one place of employment, I came and went with abandon.

Thus, I’ve amassed a tidy stack of work ID cards. And for a reason that now escapes me (other than the fact that I’m obsessed with god-awful pictures of myself), I’ve hung on to most of them. When I’m feeling masochistic, I splay them out like a sinister deck of cards, from my 20s, to my 30s, to my….you get the picture.

This week, because I’m pitching in at a magazine for a spell, I acquired a new one. And although I didn’t even attempt to smile while the photo was being snapped (bad idea!), I was still shocked – shocked - at the end result: the incontrovertible evidence that I need to run to the nearest highly credentialed, seriously board-certified derm or plastic surgeon.

You’ve heard of nasolabial folds – those grooves that bookend your schnoz like an evil set of parentheses? After decades of not giving them a second thought, I now have them in spades.

In short, I require a filler, be it Juvéderm or some other type of hyaluronic-acid based formula, such as Restylane. That’s just a straight-up fact.

But until I can squirrel away the pocket cash for that, I can probably take a few smaller steps to make myself feel a little better. Like dusting off my NuFace contraption, which has been languishing in the cabinet under the bathroom sink ever since I took up P90X and decided I’m incapable of doing more than one thing at a time to make myself look like a mom-babe.

And since tomorrow is Beauty Armoire Monday, I can also conduct a search for one of those facial “volumizers” that temporarily plump up your mug.

Or…I can just refuse to look at that new ID and get on with my happy little President’s Weekend. Bingo!

Personally, I won’t be availing myself of this info until circa 7 p.m. this evening, but a little birdy told me that today is officially National Wine Day.

I know what you’re thinking: “Wait! What about the other 364? Isn’t every day National Wine Day?”

Actually it isn’t. And that’s probably a very good thing, indeedy.

Though I’m simply hazarding a guess here, I think today was chosen for the following reasons: It’s kicking off the three-day President’s Weekend (cartwheel time!) and it’s a nod to the fact that all of us weary mamas are so wintered-out that we need a fresh new reason to live.

To make your cocktailing even more festive, you might want to check out these zingy goblets from Lolita, which have yummy drink recipes oh-so-conveniently stamped right on the bottom.

And if you over-imbibe, I highly recommend Mercy, my post-New Year’s Eve miracle cure. After all, tomorrow’s Saturday morning. And you know what that means – cartoons, pancakes and all-around mayhem. Cheers!

This happens often in New York, and it can get a little uncomfy: You show up at a posh restaurant to have a fun lunch with one of your gal pals, and they seat you side by side on a banquette rather than across from each other. Just for good measure, they remove all chairs so you can’t even pull a switcheroo once the hostess toddles off.

What that means is that you and your meal-mate are THISCLOSE to one another for a good solid hour. (Longer, if wine is involved. And it always is, because you’re so weirded out by the whole thing.)

But here’s what it’s great for: Scrutinizing facial flaws at close range.

You’ve already “met” my hyper-groomed friend Jenny in a previous blog post. She’s the one who is always (and I mean 15 solid years of always) impeccably turned out. But sexy. And super-friendly. Not uptight in the slightest.

Because she could win an Olympic medal for pulled-togetherness and she’s super-friendly, I didn’t flinch when she gazed into my eyes and said, “I think you could use some Line n Grow. It would really help with that…sparseness.”

Après dejeuner, I of course immediately Googled the mystery beauty brew. It turns out that Line n Grow is an “Extreme PM Lash & Brow Enhancing Treatment” that might just be able to do double-duty by helping with my eyelashes and that loathsome thyroid-induced bald patch on my left brow.

(There’s also a companion product, a tinted liquid liner, available in a bunch o’ eye-friendly shades. Like eggplant. Trust me, although it sounds wacky to line your lids with a super-deep purple, it can be right purty…)

For now, I’ll start small, with the lash and brow goo, which I figure is definitely worth a shot. Especially since Jenny recommended it.

After attending that wellness seminar at Pure Yoga last week, I was reminded of just how sharp Oz “Nutritionist to the Fabulous” Garcia is, and how I need to listen to him on a more regular basis.

To me, and a lot of other New Yorkers, he is the original Dr. Oz. He has a bit of an edge to him, dresses like he just stepped out of the head-to-toe-black issue of GQ, and is such a go-get-em adrenaline junkie that he freely admits to being the type of “urban animal” who dives for his BlackBerry first thing in the morning.

So, in theory, he’d be totally into the Wyoming-sized “Trenta” coffees Starbucks is about to unleash on the world, right?

Wrong, wrong, wrong my dear mama friend.

In an eye-popping piece for the Huffington Post, Oz heaps abuse on the new size, which contains roughly the equivalent of four – FOUR! – 8 oz cups of java.

The problem with the larger than life Trenta, per Oz, is essentially two-fold: One, along with the coffee, you’re imbibing that much more cream and sugar (or the fakey-fake artificial sweetener stuff, which, IMHO, is actually worse), jacking up your daily calorie count. And two, you’re shooting your caffeine consumption through the freaking roof.

I always learn a lot when I read what Oz has written, but I was shocked to see him connect the medical research dots between caffeine overconsumption and possible diabetes down the road.

That’s pretty scary. And so is a 31-ounce cup of joe.

Cabin fever has officially struck. Mr. Harsh & Interminable Winter, I would like you to go away for a very, very long time. (In fact, if you decided to enter the seasonal equivalent of the Witness Protection Program, I would not be at all unhappy about that.)

While I count down ’til our spring break at Jakes in Jamaica, I need endless small pick-me-ups to get me through the still-freezing days. And one of them is to wear my favorite fragrances while I sit here, jack-hammering away at my computer keyboard until the Wee Lass gets home from school.

For almost 20 years – yes, you read that right – I have worn Aqua Motu by Comptoir Sud Pacifique. In the tiny but wildly important category of scents that smell like the ocean, Aqua trumps all others. Notice how I’m not even attaching an “in my opinion” qualifier to that bold declaration? I don’t need to; the truth is the truth.

Sadly, I’m down to the last nano-ounce of my beloved brew. But because I’m fully committed to Project Beauty Armoire, meaning that I want to consume what I already own before plunking down the plastic for new stuff, I’ve gone sniffing through the teeming shelves.

And happily, I’ve rediscovered a few crisp and yummy Aqua stand-ins, including BVLGARI Eau Parfumée Cologne Au Thé Vert and limited-edition riffs on the classically gorge Issey Miyake L’Eau d’Issey. (For the ultra-curious, the riffs are “Souffle” and “Soleil” and they’re nab-able on eBay.)

After P90X-ing, and showering, I spritz with abandon – even though I’m the only living creature around these parts during the day save for Thunder & Lightning, the fat and sassy meow-meows. And at night, as part of my pre-bed ritual, I make sure to dab on one of the beautiful patchouli-drenched numbers whipped-up for me by perfumer Stacey Bresnahan. So basically I’m scented 24/7. And really, why shouldn’t I be?