Archive for the ‘Big Wide World’ Category

3|15|12: UPDATE, THE BIG REVEAL, WHERE I’VE BEEN, WHAT I’M DOING:

Okay, first can I say how much I miss blogging for you lovely Momoverettes? This is how much: A lot. Tons. As big as the ocean.

Anyhoo, I’m the new Beauty Director at BRIDES. I’ve been there for a month now, and I’m utterly loving it. And I have every intention of totally wedging myself onto the BRIDES website. Seriously. The crack-a-lackin BRIDES dot.com team is gonna rue the day I darkened their door.

So in short, as soon as I start posting content on BRIDES.com, I’ll let you know. It will be wall-to-wall beauty, fitness, spa and wellness content – and not so much the groovy spiritual fare (and bragging about my knitting) that I’ve been known to dabble in here. But that’s okay, right? If you’re desperate, you can always read that jazz by clicking the “Crunchy” and “Artsy Craftsy” categories in the nav bar at left.

Until then, peace-out my mamas.

Love, Dana

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I’m such a diligent blogger that whenever I go AWOL for a while – like during the unspeakably fantabulous Road Trip 2011 - I get a massive case of the guilts.

But something is brewing in Momover Central that’s pretty maje. Not the special project I’ve been toiling over for the last few months. Something else of a career-y nature.

I’ll let you know what it is just as soon as I’m at liberty to share it with y’all.

Until then, feel free to poke around in the archives at left. According to the dashboard of this site, I’ve written 414 blog posts. And I know you haven’t read each and every one of them.

And if you have read each and every one of them, I love you more than words (or blog posts) can even say.

Xoxo times a billion.

TGIF, my lovelies.

For those of you who live in NYC – and have a little lady with long locks underfoot – you might want to carve out some time on Sunday afternoon to learn how to create this adorable heart-shaped braid, courtesy of Cozy’s Cuts for Kids.

But fret not, all ye who reside elsewhere: A little closer to Valentine’s Day, I’ll be back with a chit-chat with Cozy herself – and step-by-step directions for this crazy-cute hairstyle.

Trust me, no one needs a lesson – or Cozy’s great kid’s detangling and styling tips – more than French braid-challenged Momover Lady. Bon weekend.

I used to call Charla Krupp my doppelgänger; we’re both teensy-weensy, with big eyes, big smiles and (chemically assisted) long blonde hair.

“Please,” she’d shoot back whenever she’d hear me say that. “I wish I looked like you.”

Although Charla may have longed for the date on my birth certificate – we were born were a decade apart – on numerous occasions I wished I were her lock, stock and barrel. Hilarious and chock-full of chutzpah, she was a force of nature – a woman who grabbed life by the unmentionables and bent it totally to her will.

Years after I got to know her through our mutual bestie, Charla segued from covering the entertainment business to beauty. And briefly, we toiled together at Glamour. She was the Big Chief, and I was the Indian, and when we weren’t flipping out about getting our beauty pages to the printer on time, we laughed our little (chemically assisted) blonde heads off.

And frankly, I never saw such a hard worker in my life. Sure, she may have flitted around all day going to breakfast, lunch and tea with various VIPs in the cosmetics industry, but then she’d come back to the office and work until midnight, easy. On Fridays. Who does that?

Later, after a few career plot twists, Charla really hit her professional stride. Her first book, How Not to Look Old, is a classic that every woman on this planet should have in her bookcase. From pretty much the second that hit the shelves, her life changed forever. Millions of women wanted to hear Charla’s hyper-researched, brutally honest advice about beauty and fashion, and she spent the last few years of her life zipping from public speaking engagement to book signing to television appearance.

She was everywhere, and she was over the moon about it.

When I signed my own book deal, Charla took me to lunch to try to pump some sense into my feeble head. If Momover was going to have a snowball’s chance in hell of being successful, she told me, I’d have to fight tooth and nail for it, and really put myself out there. You know, the way she did.

I chuckled, because I knew that that would never happen, never in a million years. Because I’m not Charla, as much as I might have wished I were.

After a courageous battle against breast cancer, lovely and steely Charla passed away last night. I will miss my tiny, brave doppelgänger – as will the rest of the world. Xoxo times a billion.

Many, many years ago, I was assigned a story for W about an upcoming Chanel perfume commercial, which was being directed by the legendary French artist Jean-Paul Goude. The very young and impossibly gorgeous Vanessa Paradis was starring in the spot, and I was to visit the Union Square set, absorb the vibe, chat up the ultra-charming Goude, and hightail it back to the office.

I arrive, and Paradis is literally swinging in a massive, human-scale bird-cage. (Here’s a rickety old YouTube link to the commercial, it’s pretty major.) Though she’s up in the air, I can see from a distance how ravishing she is, and exactly why Chanel cast her as the “face” of its Coco scent.

Later, on a break from filming, I talk with her a bit. And I am seized by a level of jealousy I have not felt before this encounter, nor since. I’d been around so many of the glamazons of the day – Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, etc – but none of them pierced my self-confidence bubble quite the way Paradis did.

Thus it was hardly a surprise to me when I read that Johnny Depp fell in love with Paradis the second he laid eyes on her. They had two kids and lived a semi-secluded, deeply glam life – homes in France and LA, their own private cluster of islands – mostly away from prying eyes.

So much for the away from prying eyes bit; this week’s People informs us that the gorge couple is now leading “‘sad’ separate lives.’”

It’s not a happy tale, as you can imagine. And while I certainly wish Paradis well, I couldn’t help but feel that little jealousy-pang boomerang right back when I cracked open my issue of the mag.

Her entire upper body – arms, shoulders, chest – looks like it’s carved from a block of Carrara marble. I had no idea she was in such great shape. I want to know her workout secrets, and I can’t find them anywhere.

Project!

I’m from Tulsa, so I can ask it like this: Did any of y’all happen to catch Paula Deen on Doctor Oz a while back? The episode in which she revealed her deepest, darkest health secret, which was that she smokes like an effing chimney?

Not that she had diabetes, which she’s known about for three freaking years – and easily could have shared with the good doctor, and by extension, us. Nope, that little bombshell she saved for now, when the holidays are behind us and many mamas, myself included, are grappling with the remnants of all that pumpkin pie and fruit cake welded to our asses.

Anyway, back to that Doctor Oz ep. I’ve never really watched Paula Deen’s own show, so for me, this was my first real television encounter with her. And I have to admit I was a little charmed. (I’m not now, which we’ll get to in a minute.) She was working the Fun Southern Granny schtick to the max, and when she finally quasi-copped to the ciggy thing, she said, basically, “I really only hold ‘em Doctor Oz.”

“Well, how many do you ‘hold’ every day?” he asked.

“Oh, about 20,” she shot back, to guffaws from the audience, and much fluttering of her inch-long falsies.

I think it was 20 – but I wouldn’t testify to that in a court of law. I’m up early because I have a ton of “real” work to do, and I don’t have time to go and fact-check meticulously. This is more of a soap-boxy, riffy ranty blog post; if you’re demanding top-notch journalism right this second, please look elsewhere.

Anyway, the net-net of the Oz ep was that Deen wanted to stop smoking – her hubby had already done so – and Doctor O promised to help with that. Both of my three-pack-a-day parents died really early – and I struggle with not smoking myself, which I’ve blogged about - so I wish her luck with that. It’s insanely hard to stop smoking, some experts believe it’s even tougher than kicking heroin. Grrr…

Cut to yesterday, and I’m rushing around like a madwoman trying to get the Wee Lass ready for school, and myself ready for work in the Big Apple. Flicking on The Today Show, I see a teaser for Deen and her big sit-down with Al Roker about her recently-revealed diabetes. “Oooh, Momover Lady sooo wants to see that,” I said to myself, stripping for the shower, clicker in hand.

And I did see it, just enough to make me want to vomit up my flaxseed organic oatmeal.

If you guys didn’t see the segment, and would like to, here’s a link to it.

So here’s what put such a massive bee in my bonnet: Deen refuses to admit that her crazy-ass high-fat, high-cal cooking is the key, key, key reason she now has full-blown Type 2 diabetes. She essentially tried to pin it to genetics and age, and said she’s always practiced “moderation.” Bull–t, babe. Consider me no longer charmed by your Fun Southern Granny, Mile-Long Falsies routine.

Huge, huge props to Al, who basically called her on every last bit of her bull—t, including the fact that she’s now being heavily compensated by a diabetes-drug manufacturer. It was in his lovely Al way, but he was tough nonetheless.

Fun, gratuitous factoid about Al and Momover Lady: Back in the day, we both used to work out at the same private gym, and he was such a sweetheart, huffing and puffing away on that elliptical, and greeting everyone with a hearty howdy. Al knows the value of exercising and eating well. He’s had to learn it firsthand.

And also, huge props to Today Show contributor Dr. Roshini Raj, who also did her bit to burst Deen’s “moderation” bubble. Dr. Raj point-blank said that being overweight is “the most defined risk factor” for Type 2 diabetes.

So there you go, Paula Deen. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

It only took a week, but I’ve finally figured out which way my New Year’s Resolutions will be “trending” in 2012.

Faithful readers might recall that I was considering two paths: The pile-your-plate-so-high-you-can-barely-see-over-it method, à la The Happiness Project, and the lean and mean, keep it simple Zen Habits approach.

And the winner is: Zen Habits.

Not by a landslide, mind you; I seriously considered creating a Happiness Project, and even got so far as to create a profile on the website.

But then my head started to explode thinking of just how I would wedge in all that self-improvement alongside a huge work project I’ve committed to for the first half of the year.

Who knows? Maybe when I wrap the paid gig, I’ll get Happy. I’m already lower-case happy, so the next step is probably to get upper-case Happy.

Right now though, I feel better knowing I’m narrowing the field to just five interests: Meditating, cooking, knitting, de-cluttering and Frenching.

Okay, so maybe five interests / rezzies  is still a lot, but I don’t intend to drive myself nuts by attaching any particular time-frame or hyper-specific goals to them. Not yet anyway. Plus, I can stretch stuff out over the course of the year if I want. For instance, when it’s like 1000 degrees outside in July and August, I expect to be knitting up a storm because I won’t be working. While the Wee Lass is crafting her little heart out at day camp,  I hope to be taking classes at Purl SoHo.

And I’ve re-discovered a very cute way to improve my French.

Mid-career, when I ditched magazine-ville to toil at the biggest beauty company in the world, my boss (le patron) insisted I take oodles of classes at Berlitz so that I could become “business proficient” in French. I don’t know that I ever achieved that, but I did start writing all my emails in French, and I could certainly make my way around Paris when I went there for projects (les projets).

Still, I remember climbing the walls at Berlitz because there were soooooooo many tenses to learn. Oh my lordy. Passé composé, l’imparfait, le subjonctif, etc., etc. Many was the time when I thought to myself, “If only I just had to learn one tense instead of like eight million. Such joy that would bring me.”

Flashforward to me reading the festive Marc Jacobs profile in this month’s Vogue. A good chunk of it took place in his Louis Vuitton workrooms in Parigi, and I totally loved the description of him rolling around on a wheely desk chair from outfit to outfit, puffing on a ciggy and instructing his staffers to move a pin over here, slide a ruffle over there.

Of course, a lot of those atelier staffers are French. And here’s how the American design god communicates with them in their native langue: Only in present tense! How cute is that? He has a basic vocabulary of fashion terms, and he doesn’t bother to eff around with any of this l’imparfait or subjonctif nonsense.

Yes, I know, it isn’t nonsense; there’s a reason for all those godforsaken tenses. But just really mastering one feels super Zen Habits to me. And super 2012.

Whoa, upon reflection,I was quite the busy bee in 2011.

The first six months were pretty brutal, with lots of 7-day stretches of paid assignments – and the sheer evil of “workends” aka weekends packed with work – that kept me hopping. Unfortunately, it kept me complaining too. Thus, I apologize profusely for all the digital whinging I did during the spring and early summer.

But then, after a 16-day road trip to Heartland America hinged around my family reunion in the great state of Oklahoma, I had tons of time off.

And oh my lordy, having July and August free basically re-wired my entire brain. To distract myself from Hubby’s, ahem, aggressive driving during the road trip, I taught myself to knit again. Happily, that unleashed a whole dormant artsy craftsy side of me that I’d thought was gone forever.

And when we got back home, I was also introduced to a room in my house that I’d like to call the kitchen. Who knew?

Other fond bloggy memories of the past 365 days: My “near-needle experience” with über-derm Dr. Brandt; my massive crush on the PBS costumed drama Downton Abbey; my inspiring chit-chat with Momover giveaway winner Daina; and the fact that Rach and Rodg joined the parent ranks.

So to send a great year off with a bang, I’ve compiled a list of the most popular posts and features, followed by other stuff I loved writing about. Enjoy!

Five Super-Popular Posts + Pages

1. Mama Guru: Mally Roncal

2. White-blond hair is looking really good to me right now

3. Rebecca Giles: Cookie “dictator” for a great cause

4. I ask myself: Would Kelly Wearstler work like this?

5. Chew on this: Juice-cleansing ain’t the only way to detox

Five (Okay, Six) Personal-Fave Posts + Pages

1. Visual proof that I am, in fact, knitting

2. Shocker: I totally chickened-out on the face reno

3. I’m with Marina Rust on this fighting-gravity stuff

4. Extreme Parisian chic evidently runs in families

5. Hot-Mama Appreciations: Gwyneth Paltrow and Rachel Zoe

In a particularly riveting section of Dominique Browning’s très excellent memoir, her new gynecologist, “Dr. Pat,” becomes alarmed at info Browning is relaying during the initial consultation. It seems Browning, way back in her 20s, had had a harrowing encounter with a decidedly gnarly kidney stone. The pain the stone caused literally brought her to her knees, writhing in agony, but once it passed, that was it; she never paid her kidneys much nevermind after that. No follow-up checkups or screenings, no follow-up anything.

Upon hearing this, Dr. Pat insists Browning schedule both a baseline vaginal ultrasound and an abdominal scan tout suite. But because she is at that time (but then she gets fired, which is pretty much the centerpiece of the book) the Editor In Chief of the now-defunct House & Garden, Browning doesn’t hop to it immediately.

But Dr. Pat doesn’t let up, and months later Browning finally gets her kiester to the radiologist. It had been 16 years since her last ultrasound, which she had in conjunction with the birth of her second son. And because she isn’t anticipating any bad news, she asks the technician for a guided tour of sorts, to essentially walk her through every organ as he’s scanning it. “There’s your bladder, looks perfect,” he says. “There’s your kidney, excellent.”

Aaaah, but it was the other kidney that was the problem. It was riddled with cancer. And if hadn’t been for Dr. Pat’s pestering, Browning’s story would have had a very different ending.

I thought about Browning, as well as a few very sick friends of mine, this morning, as I headed to the Upper East Side for my annual mammogram and breast ultrasound.

About five years ago, in the run-up to getting my implants out (yes, you read that right; don’t have a cow – I already outed myself in my Momover book), my plastic surgeon demanded that I have my first-ever mammogram. Even though I was already in my 40s, I’d never had one, mostly because I figured implants would make getting an accurate read next to impossible, so why bother?

I wasn’t entirely wrong about that; it is definitely harder for doctors to see what’s going on with your breasts if you have implants. But that’s absolutely ZERO reason to skip your mammogram. You’ll simply be assigned a technician skilled in “implant displacement views” and that godforsaken squishing and squeezing will be turned down a notch. Got that? GO!

Long story short, my first-ever mammogram uncovered a suspicious mass, which was subsequently biopsied and found to be benign. But since then, I’ve been religious about getting both a classic mammogram and an ultrasound every year.

Thankfully we have good insurance. But I would gladly pay out of my own pocket for both of those procedures. Because as much as I hate going – I’m a bundle of nerves for weeks in advance, and I lie on that table silently freaking out – it’s obviously better to know than to not know.

Dominique Browning almost didn’t know. And that is truly scary.

I think I’ve mentioned a few million times that I love The Nate Berkus Show to pieces? But that, even if I’m working from home, I feel too guilty sneaking off for an hour to watch it?

Well hallelujah, it’s Xmas break, and I can do whatever I damn well please. Besides, his show – soooooooooooo freaking sadly – won’t be with us after this season wraps, so I need to get my fix in before the jig is up. Or, rather, before his gig is up.

Anyway, I think this week is mostly re-runs, so I’ve been pleasantly surprised to encounter two segments of “House Proud.” I never knew about those, and I am so smitten with the over-the-top creativity and design smarts of the HP moms I’ve watched in the last 48 hours.

One was “Jen from Wisconsin,” a mother of three boys who has an adorable blog called I Heart Organizing, and who, not-so-shockingly, has a home that’s ordered to a fare thee well. Even the refrigerator is immaculately color-coded. I was hyperventilating when I saw all that, and I’m sure she could hear me clapping in applause all the way from Joisy. Yay Jen! I heart organizing too!

Today’s segment, on “Shaunna from Alabama” was crazy-inspiring, I’m sure in large part because I utterly love her décor taste. All that distressed white furniture was completely speaking to me. Her office is beyond, tricked-out with a stunning daybed she created by chopping up the doors of her childhood home! Shaunna has a gorge blog too, and I intend to spend much Q-time combing the archives.

That is, when I’m not watching DVRd episodes of Nate. Sniff sniff, sob sob. I mean, WTH? There are all these shitty shows, that aren’t cheerful and groovy and completely dedicated to living well on a dime, and no one drives a stake through their heart.

I know, I know; it’s a business. And young Mr. Berkus will surely thrive after he leaves our living rooms. But I still wish he could continue, for maybe just the next decade or so, bringing us his special brand of double-breasted cardigan joie de vivre and his super-creative House Proud mommies.

I trust we all had a wonderful holiday? And that our assorted tot-lets turned cartwheels over their prezzies? The Wee Lass certainly did, especially over her pretty new Schwinn Dee-Lite, as well as her bespectacled Molly McIntire doll and the mega Palomino to go along with it.

And how’s this for perfect? Last Thursday, the Wee Lass thought it would be “fun” to hide one of her Zhu Zhu pets in a box of packing peanuts headed for the recycling center in our building. Guess who freaked out when she realized, much later in the day, what she’d done? Quelle surprise, after begging our super to sift through all the crunched-up cardboard in the basement, he came up Zhu Zhu-less.

But happily – if 1000 percent coincidentally – Aunt Jan had sent her another Zhu Zhu for Xmas, complete with a skateboard and U-turn track. Crisis averted.

Of course, the best news of all is that she doesn’t seem that into her new toy Singer sewing machine. Which is exactly what Momover Lady was hoping would happen. Thus she won’t know, or care, if I spirit it off for a few covert stitching sessions.

Aaaaah life is good. And it was made even better when I nipped off on Friday for a little pre-holiday pampering at the Vinotherapie Spa by Caudalie at the Plaza.

I guess I should have realized how packed the Plaza – perhaps the most storied hotel in New York – would be at this time of year. And indeed, it was Tourist Central, with peeps literally tripping over each other with their shopping bags and packages.

But tucked away on the fourth floor, the Caudalie spa is the very definition of oasis. So quiet and soothing, with a wine bar in the central hub, so you can get a tad hammered between treatments, if you’re so inclined. I didn’t imbibe, shockingly, but I will circle back to the wine bar in a second.

My purpose that day was to test-drive one of the “Beauty Under An Hour” treatments that I’d learned about when I attended the FITist FIT MOM press event several weeks ago. There are four treatments in total – all lightning-fast combo packs for face and body -  and I chose “Vine Power,” which included a full facial, manicure and a “petite” pedicure. (Which basically meant a buffing, sanding and clean-up for the tootsies sans nail lacquer, which I don’t bother with during the non-summer months anyway.)

The facial rocked. My aesthetician, Aniko, was a straight shooter, doling out the stern advice and the compliments in equal measure. On a nice note, she said my skin looked “excellent for your age” but she was not down with my recent Refissa use, which she thinks is rendering my mug entirely too sensitive. Though it might be okay in warmer months when the humidity is higher, right now, it’s giving me the scalies and flakies. Not good. Thus, I agreed to scale back to once every four weeks or so, to see how I fare.

Oh, and she was a little appalled by my messy eyebrows, which are actually kind of growing, thanks to my diligence with the neuVeau Brow. “I’ll just clean up a bit, if you don’t mind,” Aniko said, whipping out her tweezers. “No charge.”

Meanwhile, Gina, my nail technician, was busily engaged in ministering to my feet and hands. I feel like a Kardashian, I thought, as one woman tended to my facial pores as the other buffed and sloughed.

Though I almost never wear nail lacquer on my hands – because I don’t have the patience to wait for it to dry and I abhor chips and smudges – I thought I’d try it to appease the Wee Lass, who is forever up in my grill for not being fancy enough. Her frequent lament: “I wish I knew you in your high heel days.” Sniff sniff.

But I have to say that at the Caudalie spa, waiting for your nail lacquer to dry is a blast – especially for une Francophile comme moi. That’s because the wine bar | lounging area is packed with books like Paris Living Rooms.

Ooh la la – how did I not know about this book already? It sooooo has my name written all over it. Why? Well, the very first of the living rooms is Carine Roitfeld’s, stripped down to its bones. I mean, it looks exactly like a hotel. And faithful readers know I am forever on a quest to make my home look as austere, forbidding and utterly untouchable as a high-end hotel. How much does it figure that one of my idols has already completely nailed that look? In fact, it’s even less cozy, because La Roitfeld doesn’t even have a single piece of art on the walls.

Okay, I’m on nanny duty this morning so I better jet. But here’s to successful holiday prezzie-gifting, gorgeous spas and homes that look like hotels. Yay!