Expectations: How Low Can You Go

Last Man Standing, "The Passion of Mandy": 

"Mom," her 14-year-old daughter asks, teary-eyed and broken-hearted. "Will I ever like another boy again?" 

"I promise you: There will be many, many, boys. And they will all be equally disappointing."

The Practical Side of Lipstick

Hurricane Sandy left a large population homebound and powerless, and I was no exception. 

Huddled beneath layers, I certainly did not bother applying Face; I figured it was a good opportunity for my skin to have a vacation. Although the neglect was mostly from depression. 

By the second day, my lips were agonizingly chapped. I don't lick my lips (lipstick breaks that habit pretty quick), so I couldn't understand why they were in such bad shape. I repeatedly shmeared on various lip balms, petroleum- (blah) and beeswax-based. Instead of providing any relief, a painful and irritating crack formed midway on my lower lip.

I then recalled that a day when I don't don lipstick of some sort is a rarity. On a lark, I coated on an old red-pink lipstick that I needed to use up. 

Practically immediately my lips began to flake off the dead, chapped skin. Unlike lip balms, lipstick has better staying power, so it was able to provide moisturization for longer. It seems I am not the only one with this theory.

Matte shades tend to suck moisture out, so I would say satin finishes provide better lip love.     

Battle of the Bulge: A New and Improved Pyramid

I didn't mean to become one of those annoying people advocating healthy eating. I didn't, really. It just kind of happened. 

I've always been a grains sort of gal. But I then noticed (about twenty years too late) that it is a lot of calories for too little food, even the whole wheat. So I began to restrict its intake, converting to vegetables, of which I could eat a lot more of. For instance, a regular meal for me is a sauteed onion, with all sorts of vegetables added in; mushrooms, broccoli, sweet potato, chickpeas, spinach, peas, parsnips, carrots, and so forth. The great thing about a meal like this is that I am stupendously stuffed and I feel fabulous, whereas a lunch of bread and butter can have me munching through an entire loaf. 

Since I started opting for more veggies over grains, I have noticed some distinct weight loss. 

I do watch Dr. Oz from time to time, and he featured Dr. Joel Fuhrman, who has rearranged the standard food pyramid. 

His position is that if we change the way we eat, not only will we lose weight, but we can stave off all sorts of disease. We can be medication-free. We can age yet keep our marbles intact. 

Vegetables, Fuhrman rhapsodizes, contain amazing components, which have ridiculous benefits, as well as being multi-taskers. For instance, the anti-cancer nutrients are also fat annihilators. 

Since I already eat somewhat (okay, just fractionally) what he recommends, I am heartily drinking the Kool-Aid (metaphorically. Please don't drink Kool-Aid.) 

As he presents in this video, we can take control of our health when we "Eat to Live," which is the name of his book (I have not read it).

Since he claims his plan will prevent the common cold, and I have been sneezing this past week, I am apparently not doing something right. But I am not one to practice extremes; small changes can have great benefits. 

To begin, utilize G-BOMBS, his acronym for certain superfoods. 

Greens: I'll be honest, I am not a salad person. But broccoli, cabbage, spinach, oh my! Frozen greenery is very versatile; it can be chucked into a soup or sauteed with a little garlic powder for some easy and low calorie yumminess. 

Beans: No problem, we eat chulent, right? Time for our Jewish stew to get a makeover. No kishkeh. Sorry. Instead of the fatty chulent meat, try turkey instead. Consider additions like sweet potato (that orange hue makes it a nutrient powerhouse) and lentils. Add more onions for more flavor, since onions are . . . 

Onions: . . . are aaaaaawesome. Besides for making everything delicious, they are disease-killers. Garlic is also included, and these two make a beautiful friendship. Press the garlic clove beneath the flat of a wide-bladed knife (like a Santoku) before mincing to squeeze out the most flavor. 

Mushrooms: Who knew a fungus could give us so much? Some claim that they are great replacements for meat. I could never believe the amount of exotic taste these provide to my lazy risotto: saute with onions and garlic, add water and brown rice, stir occasionally for an hour or so, season with black pepper.

Berries: My household can no longer function if there are no blueberries. These go on morning oat bran, or added to a yogurt. The trick is with beneficial produce is that the deeper the hue, the more magical the nutrients. Strawberries are horribly abused as chemical compounds masquerading as its natural taste; they deserve to be eaten whole, not as gelatinous syrup.

Seeds: My morning cereal is usually sprinkled with ground flax seed (ground as opposed to whole is easier for the body to absorb), or I will cook my oat bran with a spoonful of chia seeds. They don't have overpowering taste, and add protein to keep one fuller for longer. Just sprinkle a little in with a variety of cooked dishes; no one will notice. Really.

I am certainly not going to take on the full plan anytime soon, but one doesn't have to go that far to consume all sorts of nutritional benefits.  

I think have been annoying enough for one day, but the next time in the supermarket, give the produce section some deeper consideration. 

Fantasy Shot to Hell

I'm sure I am not the only one to have an unrequited love. The fella one sees from afar, wishing perhaps some sort of happy accident, like both bending over to pick up a dropped item and bashing heads, to make him notice you.

So months, perhaps years pass, of chancing across this local bachelor, my ideal Jewish nerd. Perhaps one's stomach may swoop as he appears, walking mindlessly by as one's devotion screams silently across the distance. "If only," one ponders hopelessly. 

Then the miracle happens. Someone redts him! "O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'' (The Jabberwocky, Lewis Carrol) Years of painful longing to be cast aside, as true love always triumphs! I now believe in romance, as divine music floats serenely above, awash in the glow of rainbows and ponies! 

The date flops. His monotone, tedious dissertations had me dozing off. Our mindsets were not remotely eye to eye, providing we even made eye contact. Perhaps there was one bare chuckle of a shared joke. My soul's yearning has reverted back to Data. 

After scurrying back into the house, praying for never any chance encounters again, I now see him more in the span of two weeks then I ever had in two years. 

Dagnabbit!

Photographic Memory

Remember that time before digital cameras? Boy, that was brutal. Film wasn't cheap, and it cost so much to have it developed. As a kid I was never allowed to touch the camera, lest in my trigger-happiness I snap while everyone is blinking. 

When I got a PowerShot my life changed. Click, click, click, click, click, click, click. Trigger-happy-me was in heaven. We know that the best way to take a great picture is to keep on snapping, and chances are that out of fifty there will be one image that is frame-worthy. 

Lucinda Rosenfeld will concur that digital photography is amazing progress. But, she opines, it cheapens the beauty of the captured moment. 

Going through the pile, I got to thinking that digital photography’s chief selling points — the abilities to see the finished product instantly and to take countless pictures without incurring any additional charge — have turned out to be mixed blessings. With effort and cost excised from the equation, photos have become too plentiful. And at the same time — as more and more pictures are taken on smartphones, “shared” on social media if at all, then lost to the cacophony of the digital universe — meaningful images have become too scarce. Many of my friends, forever switching among their laptops, tablets and smartphones, can no longer even say where their photo files are located. 

If there is too much of something, us humans mentally devalue it. But since so many photos remain inside digital devices, Rosenfeld theorizes, we no longer truly see them and process them.  

Ultimately, the loss is maybe less about numbers than about quality and permanence. Printed images are crisper than pixelated ones. They are also tangible: material objects that can be grasped, pasted, or leaned against a dresser mirror. Digital images have a distant, once-removed quality — kind of like dead fathers, come to think of it. In any case, many of us no longer look to print photos to safekeep our memories. In some respects, maybe it’s for the best. When you gaze at the same snapshots over and over again during the course of a lifetime, the images become part of the recollection itself until the two are interchangeable, and it’s hard to say what you remember at all. 

Do I really remember standing in front of Big Ben as a child, or do I just remember the photo of me doing so? I can no longer say for sure, but I do know that that photograph became part of my sense of self.  

True. It doesn't take much for me to invent memories, and those photos of my gosh-darn-cute toddler self that I would look through on a long Shabbos afternoon became recollections in themselves. 

I can’t help wondering whether — with every digital image we casually take and delete from our iPhones or Androids — we’re stripping photography of its awesome powers to keep the past in our sights.

Now that Rosenfeld has made me aware, I will try to keep on top of things. Pretty much as soon as I take a batch of pictures, I scroll through them and winnow out the worst shots, then upload the finalists for another cut, then order prints to be developed. When they are ready, into the album they go. Then the book can be whipped out when a niece insists on proof that she isn't adopted.

Photography has been an amazing invention. We are able to remember better with its help, to be given a tangible reminder of where we come from, and how far we have traveled. 

I hope it always stays so magical.      

Purim Best

When it came to dressing up for Purim when I was a kid, Ma had very specific Hungarian guidelines. 

"You should look pretty," she insisted. 

I was a cowgirl for years (I was happy with that; I had a fake pearl-handled revolver, along with adorable pigtails) until I grew out of my costume. Then, alternately, I was Chinese (thanks to the cheongsam my aunt gave me), a Spanish niña (¡Olé!), and one year a rather dapper male in Luke's outgrown suit and trench coat, my hair tucked into a gray fedora (I was 11, a last huzzah if you will). 

There are so many cultures out there with beautifully garbed females, along with stupendous makeup—women, think twice before climbing into that banana costume! 

No.

Guys, you are included in this one as well, except you must look good, if "pretty" isn't the adjective you seek. (Please don't cross-dress. While that may be cited in some texts, I want to heave when I see a 5 o'clock shadow paired with smeared lipstick).

Instead of wearing the orange coveralls of a convict, or a clownish rainbow wig, or the hot dog getup: Ladies, be lovely and exotic. Men, dashing and handsome.

That's why Esther is such a grand choice for girls; being dressed as a queen is automatically pretty. Especially if one tries to go for the authentic: 

Tiffany Dupont as Queen Esther in "One Night with the King"

Now, for the dudes. Is it just me, but when I consider the most dashing masked man of them all, I come up with: 

Zorro! Zorro! Zorro! 

Even George Hamilton's Gay Blade won me over, in all its farcical glory. 

  

Get my Hungarian drift?

A glamorous Purim to all!   

Honeybee Gardens Nail Polish Remover

When it comes to nail polish remover, I had always stuck with the drugstore-issue acetone variety. It takes off everything easily, whereas the non-acetone is absolutely useless. My high school had kept a bottle around in case a student was violating the rules, and I ended up scraping off my clear coat of nail-reinforcing polish as the remover seemed to be noxious smelling water. 

I had purchased once from Vitacost Honeybee Gardens Nail Polish Remover since I had become temporarily paranoid about the chemicals in my other remover, and it ended up percolating beneath my bathroom sink. 

One day I ran out of my other stuff, so I used the Honeybee remover on my maroon nails. Now the acetone is getting chucked. 

Usually, after removing dark colored polish, my nails would be stained afterward with the hue, and the color wouldn't truly go away until the nail had grown out. 

Via lydiasparkles.com Mine would look like that.

However, with the Honeybee, my nails were perfectly pristine, devoid of any evidence of the previous nail color. They looked vividly pink, healthy, and natural. 

I have to make sure the cotton ball is soaked thoroughly through with the liquid, then the Honeybee takes every single presence of color away.