Archive for January, 2012

Here’s my well-intended but ultimately misguided new habit, which is putting a dent in my bank account while simultaneously not putting a dent in the overflowing stash spilling from the hot pink bins and buckets in my Beauty Armoire: I get an idea in my head – “Let’s try sparkly Kyle Richards eyes!” – and then proceed to round up all the necessary gear to make that idea happen.

And more often than not, I end up buying something.

This is not brills. I need new beauty products like I need a hole in my head. And I don’t need a hole in my head, because I have a hard enough time as it is keeping all my marbles trapped inside my fake-blonde noggin.

Like so many of you – please, I see the search-terms you use, don’t play coy – I’m mesmerized by the disco-ball action on Kyle’s upper lids. And this season, she seems to be glittering around the clock, no matter what manufactured scenario we “catch” her in. No task is too mundane, no outfit too schlubby for the full-tilt eye glitz.

It’s unnerving, but fascinating, too, like viewing some exotic and vibrantly marked creature in its native habitat. I recently caught the last few minutes of “Birds of the Gods” on the Nature show on PBS, which was all about the spectacularly plumed and multi-hued feathered beauties of paradise in New Guinea. Immediately, I thought of Kyle and her sparkly eyeshadow.

So in preparation for a chicks’ cocktail hour for my friend Vix’s birthday, I decided to try to glitz it up myself. Building my little project around my new Tom Ford Eye Color Quad in Silvered Topaz, I started scrolling through my mental Rolodex: Do I have the right brushes? Where are my brushes? Will I need to pick up a few new ones to get the right look?

Um, no, Momover Lady. You will not need to pick up a few new ones to get the right look. (But of course I did. More on that shortly.)

First, on a trip to Target for the express purpose of picking up new undies – but I couldn’t deal with the chaos of those shelves, I need order - I considered buying a Sonia Kashuk eyeshadow brush. “Wait a minute,” I said to myself, “don’t you have the equivalent of a warehouse of Sonia Kashuk brushes at home?” Yay! Saved myself $10 bucks, or however much that little number was.

But today, on a run to the mall to fetch those undies I so desperately needed (six pairs of Vicky Secrets’ lace thongs in nude), as well as a gifty for my pal Vix (sssshhhh…it’s a yummy box of Godiva), I foolishly popped into Sephora.

Ka-ching.

I am now the not-proud owner of a Slanted Eyeliner Brush, a Classic Double-Ended Flawless Complexion Brush for applying foundation and concealer (not that that has a damn thing to do with creating sparkly eyes, but I just had to have it) and a bottle of Daily Makeup Brush Cleaner to spiff up all the brushes I already owned.

Grrr…I could have saved a whale with that money. And I should have saved a whale with that money.

Okay gotta go get Kyle-sparkly for Vix’s girls’ bash.

I’ve known for a while that I need to work kale into my life. Either that or Swiss chard. Some type of healthy greens that are leaps and bounds beyond iceberg. (Kidding; I don’t do iceberg. But maybe I should. According to this raw foods website, its nutritional value is not to be scoffed at.)

Sooo….I bought a big ol’ mess o’ kale on our last trip to A & P Fresh. And then it sat there, in the crisper, taunting me. Should I cook it? But how? As a rookie cook, I need a clear calendar and a clear mind before I skate out there on the thin ice and merge fire with new ingredients. And since I’ve been working like a dog recently, cooking the kale wasn’t gonna happen anytime soon. Lame, I know. Who cares if I eff it up?

Anyway, I decided to pulverize it instead, with that never-been-used Braun Deluxe Juice Extractor I discovered in my cabinets when I hired the Kitchen Whisperer to help me clutter-bust a few months ago.

So that’s actually two Trys* in one: Using the Extractor for the first time, and kicking off a hopefully long love affair with kale.

*FYI, I’m starting a new feature on Momover.net called ‘The Try.” And it can be anything I think might roust me out of my cozy little comfort zone, be it a return to sewing or creating one of those geeky vision boards.

Back to the juice.

Of course I didn’t have the user manual for the Extractor. Why would I? It was beauty editor graft gifted to me ages ago. In fact, I don’t even know if Braun makes this particular model anymore. Still, I’ve owned other juicers over the years (er, decades), so I figured it couldn’t be that hard to fathom.

And indeed it wasn’t.

Luckily, and this never happens, there was a bag of green apples on the counter that were left-over from Hubby’s stint this week as a Helping Parent at the Wee Lass’s school. (Part of the job description for this once-a-year gig is providing a healthy snack for the totlets. Thus the green apples, which were paired with gluten-free cinnamon-flavored rice cakes. Remember when gluten was a non-issue? Along with nuts and dairy? Jesus, these poor kids can’t eat anything anymore.)

Riiiight….the juice. So I pulverized approximately five million green apples and several fistfuls of kale. I even tried to get some stems and stalks in there, but the Extractor seemed to get extremely pissed-off at that, so I backed off on the stems and stalks and focused solely on the fistfuls.

If I’d been really organized, I’d have had all the ingredients on hand for a more professional spin on green juice. Because it’s certainly a “thing” right now. And quite soon, I intend to whip up Kim Snyder’s famous Glowing Green Smoothie.

But I have to say that even though I’m no Kim Snyder, my little makeshift Kale + Green Apple Concoction was really yummy. Kind of a lot of work – all that green sludge to clean off the Extractor, post-juice – but healthy and tasty and absolutely a successful Try. Yay!

I don’t know about you, but my Friday the 13th was way more fun than freaky.

First I jumped rope (2003 jumps, yay!) while watching The Today Show, then I zipped into Gotham for a yummy, chatty lunch with my hyper-groomed friend Jenny, the one I’m always writing about, the one who could win Olympic gold for pulled-togetherness.

Après roasted Brussels sprouts, and as soon as l’addition was settled, I hightailed it back to the wilds of Joisy. But first I had to stop at the magazine store because I accidentally left my new Vanity Fair at the resty and felt the need to replace it instantaneously.

Crazy, right? I could have just as easily turned around and gone back to Blue Water Grill for my precious February VF, thus saving myself $5 or whatever. But I’m like a shark; I move forward or die. Plus, I also wanted to nab the new issues of Oprah, Harper’s Bazaar and Town & Country. Magazine-junkie, thy name is Momover Lady.

Happily, I made it back to Casa Moi just in time to scamper up to our family room and click on Dr. Oz. I had already gotten the heads-up that my Mama Guru and go-to holistic mentor Susan Blum would be making her first appearance, and I didn’t want to miss a second of it.

It was such a great show. She was one of four “disease detectives” Dr. Oz feels are really upsetting the traditional medicine applecart in completely positive way. Specifically, she discussed the underlying causes of fatigue, and how she and her crack team treat the root causes in addition to the symptoms. (If you missed it, you can read Dr. Blum’s article about fatigue and functional medicine on the Dr. Oz website right here.)

Afterward, Dr. Blum also appeared on Fox 5 News. So of course I watched that too.

I took notes on both of these fatigue-centric telly segments – please, we all know what a wellness geek I am – and here are my 4 key learnings:

1. If you have thyroid issues, as I do, get your T3 level checked. Apparently, many traditional docs just hone in on the more-standard thyroid-function markers, namely TSH and T4. Dr. Blum calls T3 the “gas” hormone, aka the one that revs us up. So know your number.

2. Yes, vitamins are important. But if you’re tired all the time, minerals are even more crucial. Dr. Blum’s big three are zinc, selenium and iodine. Previously, I’ve blogged about Dr. Blum’s easy ways to get iodine into your diet. Please read that before gulping down a handful of iodine pills.

3. Food is medicine. We hear this so much lately – and I have to say I think Dr. Oz is doing this country a huge public service with all his chatter about about eating well – but do we really know it? According to Dr. Blum, not only do we need to determine our own unique nutritional deficiencies, we all need to steer of certain items that are universally horrible. Enemy Numero Uno? Sugar.

4. When it comes to de-stressing, knitting is great. I turned a massive cartwheel when I heard Dr. Blum say that on Fox 5 News. J’adore knitting, even though I’ve only recently re-discovered it and am firmly stuck in scarf-mode. Essentially what Dr. Blum was saying is that stress-relief is incredibly important to our health. Meditation is a great method for that, obvi, which is why her Blum Center for Health offers lots of how-to classes. (I took one and loved it.) But don’t discount other de-stressers and mood-improvers, be it “knitting, painting or going for a walk in the park.” Loved that. Loooooved that.

You’d never know it from my zippy and in-depth blogging, but I’ve been under considerable stressure of late. I’m in the city three days a week working on a doozy of a project (lots to do, and a microscopic amount of time in which to do it), and on the other two days, I’m ping-ponging between other assignments and a smidge of life-maintenance and mommying.

(For you Word Cops out there: I know it’s supposed to be “smidgen” rather than smidge. But smidgen reminds me of pigeon, perhaps my least favorite bird…)

Miraculously, given all that’s going on, my sleep has been fairly decent. I pretty much konk out by 10, and don’t wake up until about 6 or 7.

But there was one day this week, I think it was Tuesday, when my eyes popped open before 5 and I just went with it. I got up and stayed up. I didn’t need to get the Wee Lass to school until 8:30, nor leave for Gotham before 9, but there I was, starting my day at least two hours before I really needed to.

This is, obvi, far from ideal.

Thus I’ve decided to pretend my bed is a giant iPad docking station.

You know how you plug your Pad into its power source and it flashes that cute little green battery with text reading “52% Charged” or “63% Charged”? Well, I want to be 100% Charged when I start my “official” work day. None of this 49% Charged bullshit, which is inevitably the way I feel when I get up at ungodly hours.

Last night circa 3:45, Thunder and Lightning were knocking the stuffing out of each other, hissing and clawing, as cats are sometimes wont to do. And of course it woke me up, because they were engaged in this loathsome activity at the foot of my bed.

I lay there, awake, for more than an hour. Which brought me to roughly 5 a.m., contemplating: Do I just get up now? Or do I force myself to at least rest here in my cozy docking station, recharging?

I chose Plan B, and lo and behold, I fell back asleep. And lemme tell ya, 100% Charged feels pretty freaking great.

My, my, have I set the bar high for myself: Not only am I up at the crack of dawn blogging away, coffee at hand, but – so as to not taint or influence myself in any way – I categorically refuse to read any other DA recaps before I write my own. (Please wait until I wrap it all up before bursting into applause.)

I promised a brief synopsis of Season 1 before diving into Season 2, and here goes:

There is an impossibly well-mannered English clan, the Crawleys-slash-Granthams (the name thing is a tad confusing, just run with it as I bounce back and forth between Crawley and Grantham), living in a house in the Brit equivalent of the sticks. Flawlessly manicured, but the sticks nonetheless. This house, Downton Abbey, is roughly the size of Texas.

The spectacular estate has been in the husband’s family for generations. But as Lord Grantham is house-rich and cash-poor, he and the three Crawley daughters have been utterly reliant on the wealthy American mama’s inheritance to stay afloat. And since there are no lads in the familial lineup, something called an “entail” is now being invoked against the property. In short, it means that either one of the three girls (Lady Mary, Horrible Lady Edith or Lady Sybil) must marry someone rich enough to handle the expenses of Downton Abbey, or the house is duly handed over to Distant Cousin Matthew, The One With The Piercing Blue Eyes.

It’s beyond-important to me that I refer to him, at least on first reference, as Distant Cousin Matthew. Why? Because the Crawleys are determined to marry Lady Mary off to him. And here in the States, cousin-marrying is very much frowned upon. But now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I will say this: Matthew is lovely, and Mary should have said yes to his proposal. But she didn’t. And that refusal, plus a few other tidbits I’ll weave in as I go along, is by far the most important plot point of Season 1. Selfish but glamorous Mary has put the family’s entire future in jeopardy. This is not good.

Damn you, Mary.

Season 2, Episode 1

Two years have elapsed since we last set eyes on the Crawleys, and England is embroiled in World War 1. Matthew has been pressed into service, at a very high rank, which means he is pretty much bossing all the soldiers around. But he can’t escape doing time in the trenches, and it’s safe to say that the whole thing completely flips him out.

And why wouldn’t it? He’s an attorney by trade, and is about to inherit a drop-dead gorgeous estate that is, as I’ve already noted, rawther large.

It seems Matthew has not spent much time lamenting the fact that Mary wouldn’t marry him. Instead, he has gotten himself engaged to a pretty little thing named Lavinia. She seems pleasant enough, and the fact that she is so smitten with Matthew bodes well. Someone needs to be smitten with Matthew; he’s very smite-worthy. Still, Lavinia has a sinister backstory, which was hinted at via a tense encounter with a new dude Mary has set her sights on.

The new dude, Sir Richard, owns a bunch of tacky tabloid rags that the Crawleys would never deign to read. But he has money. And for that reason alone, Mary’s aunt – the very one who convinced her not to marry Matthew – is pushing hard for a Mary-Sir Richard alliance.

I haven’t yet formed an opinion about Sir Richard. On the one hand, he’s a little handsome. And I like how straightforward he is about why he wants to get hitched to Mary. Together, he says, they would be a power couple the likes of which Britain has never known. Tempting, n’est ce pas?

But on the other hand, there was that tense encounter with Lavinia. I suspect we’ll soon learn that Sir Richard is a colossal creep. Plus, I don’t know how much I’m digging his matchy-matchy suits.

Although Mary confides in Anna (poor Anna! more on her in a moment) that she will indeed accept Sir Richard’s power-proposal, she is awash in mixed feelings. Lo and behold, fickle Mary has decided she made a massive mistake in refusing Matthew, and spends the entire two-hour episode screwing up the courage to tell him she loves him.

But she never quite ekes it out, and off he goes, returning to his bombed-out bunker with some stupid “good luck” stuffed animal she manages to slip him. WTH, exactly, was that? A rat? A rabbit? All I know is, it’s no substitute for telling him she made the biggest mistake of her life in not becoming Mrs. Distant Cousin Matthew. Grrr….

I will conclude this initial recap with what is, to me, the most compelling sub-story of this series: The ill-fated love affair between two servants – Anna and Bates. She is young and beautiful, he chubby and, I think it’s fair to say, un-beautiful. (Ratcheting up the sympathy factor: He limps.) But Bates is the very definition of a stand-up guy, and he has spent decades trying to shed an albatross of a positively gruesome wife.

(Btw, do any of you fellow TV junkies recognize Bates’s evil broad from The Tudors? She was one of Henry VIII’s many starter wives, until he tossed her aside for that hottie Anne Boleyn.)

In Season 1 we learned Bates went to prison for this bitch. And now in Season 2, upon learning Bates has come into a small inheritance because his mom kicked the bucket, the gruesome wife has come back to claim him. She blackmails him into leaving Downton Abbey by saying that if he doesn’t, she will reveal a whopper of a secret about Lady Mary. It’s a doozy, and one that will effectively bring great shame upon the Crawleys-slash-Granthams if the cat slips out of the proverbial bag.

I’ll tell you about the shameful secret in the next recap.

But for now, please join me in saying: Damn you, Mary.

For those of you eagerly anticipating my first-ever Downton Abbey recap, alas, this isn’t it.

Hubby would only let me watch the first hour before he called lights out, and then proceeded to scroll through roughly eight zillion financial websites on his laptop before officially shutting down Hubby + Wifey Central.

Grrr….

Thus, I must watch the second hour tonight. And while I was literally screaming at the telly during the initial 50 minutes – poor Bates and Anna! – I need to get the full lay of the land before I can do the episode proper justice.

In the meantime, I simply must sing Elizabeth McGovern‘s praises from the rafters.

She was always gorgeous; that isn’t even remotely up for debate.

And now she is an equally luminous 50-year-old woman who is giving hope to all of us who aren’t completely convinced that shooting our faces full of Botox and fillers is the best way to sail into our futures.

Granted, I have no idea what McGovern, who plays the warm and charming matriarch Lady Grantham, does of a beauty nature. For all I know, she’s at the dermatologist for injections every other week.

But I doubt it. Because unlike so many actresses, she actually looks her age.

Of course, when she’s in a scene with the crinkly-fabulous Maggie Smith, McGovern looks like a young hottie in comparison. But when she’s with her TV daughters she just looks like a blissed-out, well-dressed mama hen clucking over her unlined chicks. The antithesis, in other words, of a Real Housewife jamming herself into a pair of bedazzled jeans.

Last night, while I was watching McGovern, I wanted to reach through the flatscreen and give her a massive hug for showing us there is indeed another way to go about this aging business. Writing this blog post is the digital version of that thank-you snuggle.

On paper, it would seem like I’d be a perfect candidate for yoga addiction. I’m super-crunchy, love meditation and I totally buy into the notion that poses “massage” certain parts of our bod and get the lymph fluid moving.

The problem: I just don’t like to actually do it. When it’s too easy, I feel like I’m not getting enough of a workout. And when it’s too hard, it hurts like a mother-effer.

Last year, when Hubby and I were embroiled in P90X, we both detested “yoga day” in the workout rotation. There’s nothing breezy about P90X, but that 90 minutes of Yoga X is a killer. And we weren’t alone in our disgruntlement; there is much chatter on the World Wide Interweb about the difficulty – and ouch factor – of that routine.

Yes, I know there is a happy medium, some blissed-out middle ground between a wussy, wimpy faux-ga class (ooh! I just coined another new word! “faux-ga”!) and Yoga X.

But I probably won’t be seeking it out. And in the back of my mind, I’ll also now be recalling snippets of a rather damning story in today’s New York Times Magazine. Entitled “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body,” it’s excerpted from a new book, and delves into how competitive the practice has become. And how today, no one wants to be caught dead executing simple poses.

Rather, they want to twist themselves like a pretzel, à la the joint-popping possessed chick in that creepy new exorcism movie that’s blowing up the box office this weekend.

In all honesty, I haven’t finished reading the rawther lengthy article yet. I’ve been on serious laundry detail today – seven loads and counting! – and I also had to design the festive invitations for the Wee Lass’s birthday party, which is once again nipping at our heels.

But I’m sure the author will wrap it up with a lovely bow, and tell us how great yoga is for our mind, body and spirit, and how we should totally keep doing it as long as we’re careful not to morph into contortionists just to get that elusive nod of approval from our yoga teacher. Or, better yet, envious glares from our mat-mates.

Or maybe he won’t. Maybe we’ve entered a new era of yoga-bashing, with this William J. Broad dude leading the charge. I won’t know until I finish reading. And that’s after I finish Load 8 of laundry.

An admitted pop culture fanatic, my tastes swing wildly between high (all things PBS; many things HBO, Showtime and AMC) and low (Jersey Shore).

Hubby, who is my partner in a lot of TV-watching crime – our latest on-demand fave is the heart-thumping Homeland, with Claire Danes and the crazy-good Damian Lewis – would prefer to stay in the upper stratosphere. At least that’s what he says; on many occasions I’ve busted him watching RHOBH over my shoulder.

I guess Beverly Hills is kinda-sorta okay by his lights, because those broads are genuinely cashed-up. It’s the fake cashed-up gals, like the Teresa Giudice-types, that he truly can’t stomach.

Still, for some reason I’ve yet to fathom, I can’t really get my betrothed super-psyched for the costume dramas I so adore. Like Downton Abbey, which I’ve loved from the get-go, and is returning to my telly tomorrow night.

I’m just gonna go out on a limb here and posit that the reason Hubby doesn’t particularly dig a Downton Abbey-esque show is the same reason he never reads the works of my favorite author, Edith Wharton. (I’m sorry, but in my humble opinion, House of Mirth is the best book of all time): On the surface, not much happens of a dynamic nature. A good chunk of the time, it’s just a bunch of old bitties sitting around fancy drawing rooms gossiping and ringing the bell occasionally for the butler to bring in a spot of tea.

But that’s precisely what I love – that endless chatter, that talking-things-to-death business. Oh, and the frocks. The frocks are so key.

To me, it’s fascinating to peek into an era, or eras, in which women had to conduct themselves in an utterly different manner just to survive. And by “survive,” I mean to marry well. Marrying well was everything in those days.

If you didn’t catch Season One of Downton Abbey, which is also very much centered around the marrying-well theme, don’t despair. There were only four episodes. And because I’ve decided to get into the recapping game here on Momover.net, I’ll give you a synopsis of everything that down when I recap Episode One of Season Two.

You can also read tons about it here.

I hope you’ll join me in my telly obsession du jour. Let the costumed drama begin.

I’m such a sucker for a sales pitch.

Last weekend, as we were combing the aisles of the local A&P Fresh for provisions (sadly, there’s no Whole Foods by us), I happened upon the tea section of the bevvie aisle.

And there, beaming out at me, was an adorable Indian elephant on the box of Celestial Seasonings Antioxidant Green Tea. “With White Tea for Smooth Taste,” it trumpeted. I was intrigued.

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve read or heard that green tea is the secret to living to 150 and beyond, I’d be heiress-rich.

So that alone should be reason to drink it on a regular basis, yes?

Um, no. Because I detest the taste. Okay, maybe detest is a little strong. But I most certainly don’t like it. So bitter. Of course I could probably add raw sugar or honey or somesuch, but you don’t really do that with green tea, right?

Anyway, over my loooong career as a wellness journalist, I’ve let probably 10 boxes of the stuff expire in my kitchen cupboard because I diligently buy it and then proceed to never drink it.

Thus, obvi, it was with great trepidation that I chucked that box with the cute little bejeweled pachyderm into our shopping cart.

But I’ll be damned if it doesn’t indeed have a “smooth taste.” I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it’s lovely, in the way, say, that chamomile or peppermint are. But it’s at least drinkable.

Oh happiness. Now I can sip all those antioxidants and vitamins A & C. And I just read on Web MD that green tea may help lower cholesterol and fend off diabetes and other modern health scourges. So I’m psyched to find one I actually don’t mind sipping. Bottoms up, my lovelies – and a hearty TGIF.

Om shanti, my lovelies. I don’t even know what that means, but it’s crunchy. And I’m crunchy, so there you have it.

I swear I could literally watch all four or five or however many hours of the Today Show that are on these days. Especially recently, because they’ve been devoting so, so, so much time to self-improvement and and keeping resolutions.

Just this morning, as I was pushing the Wee Lass out the door for drop-off (thank the lordy we live right across the street from school), I heard Dr. Nancy Snyderman chiding everyone who thinks they need to hit the gym just to get a workout. “Our mothers weren’t fat,” she barked. “They had a baby on one hip and were pushing the vacuum cleaner around with the other.”

Our mamas moved it, in other words, and folded calorie-burning into their daily activities. Not like us chubby old couch potatoes.

Okay, I’m on bedtime-story detail this evening, so I have to make this blog post fast and furious.

There were two super-useful health takeaways I got from the Today Show this week that I want to pass along to you:

1. From a new book called The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works & Why It Matters: Willpower is at its peak in the morning, and is especially strong if you’ve had a great night’s sleep. After seeing that segment (here’s the link), I immediately switched my meditation from the evening to the morning. I have my coffee first, read a little HuffPo or the New York Times on my iPad, and then I head straight to my meditation chamber, aka my walk-in closet. And surprise, surprise I really love it.

2. From a diet resolutions chit-chat with Dr. Oz, who I’m convinced is taking over the world. (I mean, he’s everywhere. If he weren’t a heart surgeon, I’d be worried that he’s about to keel over from a heart attack.): Making your goals public means a higher likelihood of achieving them. So I’m officially going on record with the fact that I want to work out 200 times this year. I tried in 2010 and got pretty close. This year, I’m determined to get there.