The Lipstick Chronicles

Five Things to Do Before You Die....

By Sarah

So after a few revisions, SWEET LOVE - my story of a dying mother making amends by reuniting her daughter with her true love in a dessert class - was enthusiastically accepted by the publisher last week  which means I have one full week off before the copyedited ms comes back for my review. Crazy schedule you say? Well, yes. I haven't written this tightly on a deadline since a New Jersey chemical plant spewed yellow sulfuric toxic fumes minutes before the presses started rolling. (Ahh, bliss.)

Anyway, it's a week off. A whole week off to think about the next book (I've got a great idea already!), true, but also to clean the house, pay bills, do taxes and organize the stuff I've neglected for the past year. Which brings me, of course, to death.

Let's say I were to die today. Not out of the realm of possibilities considering the ice on the road and the fact I've been good and sedentary for six months. Were I to step into eternity by crossing the yellow line and saying hello to a tractor trailer, would I have wanted my last acts to have been scraping a twelve-year-old's vomit from a bed frame? (Don't ask. Bad weekend.) Or culling a sixteen-year-old's bookshelf of A-List crap? We all know the answer. Hell no.

Yet, this is the fine line we walk as mortals. Do we live as if each day is the last? (Though one can only bungee jump into the Grand Canyon so many times.) Or should we proceed with confidence as if there will be many, many more bungee jumping days ahead and to, instead, fix that clogged drain and tackle the dog's diarrhea?

Perhaps it's because I turned forty five a few weeks ago or maybe it's because scraping vomit gets really old really fast, but this idea - this list! - of what I need to do before I die is so on my mind. Yes, there are places we're supposed to see before we die, but anyone can get on an airplane and do that. My question is, what should we do now so that when the Mack bulldog encounters us head on we are prepared?

After careful consideration, here are my minimum demands:

*Bruce Springsteen. As many of you might remember, I have been a ship passing Bruce's luxury liner in the night ever since my friend Lisa was allowed to see him in Philly back in high school and I was not. Since then, I have missed him and his concerts at every turn. When I dated a rock and roll reporter for the Asbury Park Press, a man who was paid to cover Bruce's bowel movements, there were dozens of opportunities to meet Bruce one on one. And yet? I had to work. Or the weather was lousy. Or it was too late in the evening. Years afterward, Bruce's literary agent (he had a literary agent you say?) and mine were one in the same. She held out hope I could meet The Boss. Alas, no. I have never seen him. So here's my final request  - I want to meet Bruce Springsteen - heck, I want to sit in row 48D and see him belt out Thunder Road  - before I die.

*French. I want to learn how to speak it. This might be an I-live-too-close-to-Montreal thing, but it has  always bugged me that I don't know how to speak French. It's such an us versus them thing. And think how great it would be to go to Paris and actually be able to speak the language! To hear what they actually thought of us.

*Size 6. Trite? Yup. But I don't care. The last I was a size six was the day I found out I was pregnant with  Sam and it's been downhill ever since. It's not just the number, it's the opportunity to wear whatever I want and look good. Like an evening gown. Or a halter dress. Hey, I'm not dead yet. Not yet!!

*Scotland. To live. Not to visit. A wee hut. Charlie in a kilt. Mist across the moors and crags. Salmon in the stream and peat smoke everywhere. Plus, the most fantastic wool to knit. Not sure how this will fit with Bruce and the size six, though I understand the French and Scots have always gotten along well. This might be doable, especially if The Boss can take up the bagpipes.

*The New York Times Bestseller list. Actually, I'm afraid of hitting this. Oh, go on, right? I'm dying for it. True, but what then? My friends who've made it complain it's only a notch up from there. How long you stay on the list. Where you enter. Where you leave. Plus, you know that once you make it, someone in some small New Jersey newspaper who's waiting for the next toxic spill is penning your obit.

No thanks.

The beauty of this list (the death one, not the NYT) is once I wrote it down I saw how easy it was to achieve. To lose weight, learn a language, even see the boss. (Let's, for now, leave the NYT list aside.) I can DO this. Or is it...that I don't want to? That once I learn French and drop down to a size six, move to Scotland where Bruce will visit in a kilt (ohmigod) so intrigued is he to meet an NYT bestseller, I will have, essentially, dug my grave.

I'll have to think about that while I'm cleaning the basement today. Though ask not for whom the Mack truck brakes too late. It brakes too late for thee.

What's on your list?

Sarah

Dr. McDream On
by Harley

I got this letter from my doctor recently. Not a “please call re your Pap smear” letter. Less sinister. More puzzling.

Dr. Welby, as I shall call him, told me what a valued patient I am, how crazy he is about me, and how he’s eager to fill me in on the exciting changes in his life. (He’s going bald? Leaving his wife?) He then invited me to a meeting on a Tuesday night to find out all about it.

Call me crazy, but an 8 pm rendezvous with my doctor does not sound like a raucously good time. Not that I don’t love Dr. Welby (he cured my pneumonia) but I have a book deadline. I chucked the letter.

Then came the phone messages. Eager voices assuring me that I’d DEFINITELY want to be in on the Big Changes going on in Dr. Welby’s life (short-listed for Surgeon General? Nominated for an Oscar?) and to PLEASE call the toll-free number.

So I called. More ad-copy spiel about Dr. Welby’s fabulous future. Then: “Did you know Dr. Welby has 2000 patients? And wants to cut back to 600?”

“How much?” I asked.

“Excuse me?”

“How much will it cost me to be one of the six hundred?”

“There’s an $1800 annual fee, but you’ll be guaranteed next-day appointments—”

“Thanks, can’t afford it, bye.”

See, I’ve been down this road before. That’s how I found Dr. Welby—my previous physician, Dr. Kildare, had “gone boutique.” Or “concierge.” His annual fee was higher, but that’s because he’s younger, cuter, practices in Malibu, and offers mood music, aromatherapy, and designer chairs in his office. If money were no object, I’d still be with Dr. Kildare. But when I go to a boutique, I want to come home with new shoes. And to me, a concierge is someone who gets you tickets to “Blond Bond: The Musical,” not someone who hands you a plastic cup and asks you to pee in it.

Don’t get me wrong: Dr. Kildare and Dr. Welby are smart, dedicated, and empathetic. Great guys, the kind you’d want at your deathbed, or delivering The Worst News You Ever Got. They’re People Persons, working in a system that says they can spend 12.5 minutes with each patient, regardless of her/his problems. They have to run ragged, talk fast, placate sick folks who’ve been waiting an hour+, and, in Dr. Kildare’s case, still pay off medical school bills. They’re not demanding their inalienable right to a third vacation home or 18 holes of golf every Friday, they just want to earn a nice living and give their patients humane care.

And that being the case, despite the sales pitch that sounds like he’s selling time-shares, I might’ve paid up if Dr. Welby’s next big announcement weren’t going to be, “I’m retiring.” Instead, I’m doctor shopping now, while I’m healthy and (relatively) young and can live with “Tell me your symptoms, make it quick, no adjectives or adverbs. Go.”

But my bigger question: is physician-on-retainer the Next Big Status Symbol? Worse, will the day come when it’s Drs. Frankenstein & Mengele (We Take Insurance!) versus Drs. Boutique & Concierge?

If so, here’s my wish list for my annual full-fee physical:

Fluffy bathrobes instead of paper gowns.
Candlelight in the exam rooms. Plus blankets & pillows so I can nap.
No scales.
Male nurses who look like extras in a Zeffirelli film.
Valet parking. Free.
No Fox News on the TV in the waiting room, ever.
Complimentary pedicures, psychic readings, and Godiva chocolates.

Happy Presidents Day!
Harley

The Book Tarts welcome our good friend Sarah Stewart Taylor, author of the Sweeney St. George mystery series, featuring a college professor who specializes in "the art of death."  Sarah, on the other hand, specializes in many things.  Including chickens!

For Christmas two years ago, my husband gave me a card with a note inside. When I opened it up and read his writing, the words made me swoon.  "Okay, sweetie.  You can get chickens."

I know it's not everybody's idea of a romantic holiday gift, but for my husband, who had grown up on the farm we live on and had traumatic memories of shoveling chicken manure and trying to extricate eggs from underneath angry, pecking hens, it was better than diamonds.

Growing up on suburban Long Island, I always wanted to raise animals. I came by my interest honestly. My father had grown up on a farm in New Hampshire and my maternal grandfather entertained his grandchildren with stories of his own upbringing on an Iowa farm. My husband and I had raised lambs and chickens for meat for a few years before I developed my obsession with getting some layers. His arguments against it were all good. We live in Vermont. Raising animals that don't end up wrapped in neat little packages in the freezer by November means shoveling a path out to the barn when it snows. It means chipping the ice out of the chickens' water. It means leaving the warm house and woodstove to go collect eggs before they freeze.

But still, I wanted some hens. I dreamed of fresh eggs, custards, cakes, quiches. So, a couple of months after I'd received my Christmas present, we sent away for 20 baby chicks of varying breeds. They arrived, peeping cheerfully, in a cardboard box delivered to the post office, and lived in our laundry room for a couple of weeks before they were big enough---and smelly enough---to take up residence in the chicken house. The chickens (and two "accidental" roosters) are now nine months old, full grown for fowl.  It's been fun to see them grow and develop their own personalities. My beautiful Blue Andalusian hens are shy and skittish. The plump Cochins tame and docile. The prolific Rhode Island Reds are businesslike and seem to exist only to lay their beautiful brown eggs. My favorite, until she was carried off one night by an owl, was Dolores, an unidentified free "rare breed" chick who came along with our order. Sleek, black Dolores came running when I called her name and liked to sit on my arm and eat grain from my hand.

When the weather was warm and the chickens spent their days outside, I loved going out with a cup of coffee and watching them peck around in the grass for the grain I threw and take dust baths in the sun. There was something so peaceful about their little routines and I found that it put me in a good mood for the day ahead. Maybe it was standing lazily in the morning light for a couple of minutes and feeling like I was doing "chores."

But even now that it's frigid outside, the path to the barn lined with walls of snow and ice, I look forward to seeing my girls (and two boys) every morning. I can hear the roosters crowing as I make the coffee every morning and when they hear me coming, the hens start clucking contentedly, knowing food is on it way. The best part is tucking my cold hand under a toasty, feathered breast and coming out with warm eggs, white and speckled brown. And of course, the fresh scrambled eggs we make for breakfast.

Margie's Valentine's Day Story, or How VD Got Started

By Me, Margie

Well, we're hip deep in the VD madness, and I thought we could all take a little break and hear the story of how VD got started. I'm talking about Valentine's Day, and not the communicable diseases. Although, for some, love and the clap go, uh, hand in hand.

It all started, like so many things do, with food and sex. And not just regular missionary sex. Which reminds me - I wonder which order of missionaries should get credit for the man-on-top position? Perhaps a story for another day.

Anyway, there was a Roman pagan festival held in mid-February (before there even was a February, actually, that's how long ago it was) called Lupercalia, which means Festival of the Wolf. Romans are big on the whole wolf thing. During Lupercalia, they, no surprise, had an animal sacrifice. Why? Buy into whatever mumbo jumbo you want, but I will tell you the simple truth: because you cannot have a decent fest of any kind without food. And since there were no big refrigerator trucks back then, they had to pretty much kill, roast and eat all in the same day.

This festival had a bit of a twist - the sacrificed (cooked) animal was skinned, and then the skin was cut into strips. Those strips were used to, among other things, whip the young unmarried women. They said they did it because it made them fertile. Uh-huh. I've heard a lot of reasons for people going kink, but fertility? Nope. Whateve.

Then came the church. The church, in case you didn't already know, was way down on the whole pagan thing. But nobody (at least back then) was dumb enough to cancel a big party. Because you cannot make friends and get people to put stuff in the collection basket if you cancel the parties. Instead, they pulled the old switcheroo and just called the Festival of the Wolf something else.

And of course, there were the wars. The Romans were always fighting someone. For example, even now, many Romans are gearing up for battle in Brooklyn federal court, courtesy of the New York AG's task force. But that is definitely a story for another time.

So sometime in the third century, the Roman Emperor Claudius, who must have had some serious compensation issues, just saying, was PO'd because when he kept his armies out on the road for too long, they got all mushy and lonesome for their wives. He tried bringing in some, uh, professional consultants, but then they had a real run on - wait for it - VD.

Claudio was at his wit's end (which wasn't a long trip, I'll bet, especially after he got the syph) and he came up with this bonehead of an idea: no more marriages. As if. Too bad he hadn't seen, like, Braveheart or something. Because everyone knows that just won't fly. What a hoser. Not to worry though, as you can plainly see, he had so many diseases that eventually his nose fell off. So he got at least part of what was coming to him. And I'm telling you, if your nose falls off, I'll bet it's not the only thing. Just saying.

The church in the third century was apparently worthless on the subject, because they went along with this crackpot plan and advised all the priests not to perform any more marriages.

But lo and behold, (Do we all remember what that means? It means, listen up - miracle comin'.) one priest decided to defy all the dodo directions and he kept marrying couples in secret. His name? Oh yeah, Fr. Valentine.

Padre Valentine got caught. Who ratted him out? Some jagoff who was probably too much of an asshole to get anyone to marry him, in secret or otherwise. Seriously - all throughout history, any time some bad shit happens, you'll find a jagoff somewhere at the bottom of it.

Anyway, Fr. Valentine was thrown in jail and sentenced to death. While he was in jail, he fell in love with the warden's daughter. Tragedy all over this mess, huh? On the day he was sentenced to death, he left her a note, declaring his abiding love, and he signed it "From Your Valentine." The date of his execution? Yup - February 14th.

It took the church another two hundred years to get around to naming the holiday St. Valentine's Day. Not too quick on the uptake, those guys.

Like all good stories, this one has a moral. Actually, this one has several. In the spirit of Fr. Valentine, who was all about choices, I'll let you pick your favorite. Or you can make up your own and share it with the rest of us. See how nice that is? I am very nice today because I have lots of chocolate. Hidden. I'm not that nice.

Morals from the VD Story:

A. Love conquers all, including idiot commanders in chief and heads of church and/or state.

B. War is dumb as hell, and if you try to make it more important than home and hearth, you are going to get a nasty disease and hopefully die miserable and alone. (I like this one the best.)

C. Rat fink jagoffs will always try to ruin a good thing.

D. If you spend enough time in jail, you can fall in love with anyone.

E. If you do something noble and heroic, and you can wait two centuries, you might get a $14 billion dollar holiday named after you.

Happy VD to everyone from Me, Margie. The End.

Vive la Difference!

by Nancy

This one's for you, ladies.  Happy Valentine's Day.

What? You don't like what you see?  But--but---but--! This is the New Male Body, according to fashion designers!  The standard to which all hip guys should aspire. 

Runt of the litter, you say?  You've seen more meat on a corn dog?  That chicken chest would have been booted out of Frank Perdue's factory? Well, I'm sorry to report that heroin chic has come to the menswear runway. Beef cake is out. The waif look is in. The most popular male model these days is Stas Svetlichnyy, who is 6 feet tall, weighs 145 pounds and has a 28 inch waist.

Is this one more to your liking?     

Truth is, this body is likely the product of "vitamin supplements" or worse. You can't possibly be attracted to a man who's got more chemicals in his veins than his swimming pool.  Can you?

Which one floats your boat?  What combo of physical attributes sets  your heart aflame, ladies?

For years, normal-sized woman have been complaining about unrealistic female figures that popular culture has forced upon us. (Except my sister, who lives in New York City and looks forward to the February week when Saks brings all the clothes that have gone unsold in various Saks stores around America and puts them on the sale rack in NYC--where the women really are size zero--and she snaps up her wardrobe for the coming year.) Magazines, movies, television, even book covers (!!!) encourage us to look perfect---100 pounds with C-cup breasts and a waist-to-hip ratio that best attracts the opposite sex. Either you need to be skinny as a coat rack to wear current fashions, or you need to look like a porn star to attract the man of your dreams.

Fair's fair, right? Now body image issues have cropped up for men, too.  Big time. Have you seen a guy with a hairy chest lately at your local YMCA?  Oh, dear, he missed the memo!  The ideal man isn't supposed to have so much as a tuft on his body--just a fluffy John Edwards mop on top of his head, or maybe a Brad Pitt bit of stubble or the recently popular Writers Strike beard.

                   

But nowadays, the average Joe had better be waxing his back, his chest and his---well, nevermind.

And his butt? Let's just say, Joe should also be spending a couple of hours on the Stairmaster every day, not watching whatever that show is on ESPN every night that my husband watches with such rapt attention that it might as well be--well, porn. 

My brother---who's always been in great shape--decided he wanted to be in The Best condition of his life when he turns 50 this June.  He swims every day already, but he hired a personal trainer to whip his physique into fantastic shape.  Unfortunately, his 49-year-old knees won't cooperate.  His surgery and a few weeks on crutches have really put his regimen behind schedule.  I don't have the heart to send him the photo of Stas with his 28-inch waist.

To each his own, I say. Or her own.  You can't guess what's going to turn on a woman. Each of us has her list of priorities. A tight behind? A set of glorious shoulders? Forget about his mind, what about his pecs?

Since it's Valentine's Day, I wanted to give our regulars a glimpse of something truly scrumptious.  Something you can sink your teeth into when the mood strikes.  How about this:

                 

Or something even more enjoyable: 

               

But, as a happy Valentine's Day to myself, there's nothing like a shot of this:

               

Enjoy.

      

The Holiday Men Love to Forget

By Elaine Viets

Don always showed how much he loved me with wonderful Valentine presents. Our third Valentine’s Day, he gave me a single red Thunderbird. The next year, it was the perfect pair of gold earrings, tasteful yet sexy. I knew the fifth year would only get better.

It had to. I was 26 and worried. I’d found my first gray hair and yanked that sucker out. But the frost of old age was closing in. At least I had a hot romance to warm my heart.

I waited hopefully all day while delivery people came through my office carrying flowers

and chocolates – for other women

I didn’t care. Don didn’t go for crude displays. I knew he had something more intimate in mind. At last, the office day was done. I sat through dinner at home, waiting for him to bring out a pretty surprise.

It didn’t happen. By midnight, I knew the truth: He forgot it was February 14. I sobbed, my life turning as gray as my hair.

"You don’t love me any more," I cried. "How could you? I didn’t ask for anything expensive. Just one rose."

Don was hurt and puzzled. "I forgot," he said. He thought I’d be impressed by this manly admission.

I wasn’t.

He tried reason. "It doesn’t mean I don’t love you," he said. "I’ve remembered every other holiday, birthday and anniversary. I sent you a dozen red roses for your birthday. I sent them to your office, too."

He’d understood that a present was also a trophy.

"Your birthday was nine days ago," he said. "All I do is buy presents – for Christmas, your birthday and now Valentine’s Day. They’re too damn close together."

"It’s not my fault I was born in February," I sobbed. "I hate it. It’s always cold."

Don looked stricken. He promised to make it up to me.

Next morning, I heard a buzz in my office. A delivery man staggered in under a flower arrangement about four feet tall. It looked like it had escaped from a mob funeral. Garish orange birds of paradise were mixed with bizarre purple and red blooms that looked like bath brushes and sex toys. In the center of this psychosexual nightmare was a gigantic foam cupid wearing a purple ribbon that said, "Love."

I was stunned by its grossness.

"Who sent that?" the office troublemaker asked.

"Don." I was so horrified, I could hardly say his name.

"Guess he showed you, huh?" a ferret-faced manager added. "Next year you’ll be glad when he forgets Valentine’s Day."

Don called half an hour later. "So, what did you think?" he asked.

"I think I never want to talk to you again," I said, and hung up. He’d called to gloat over my shame. I knew it.

I left work early, taking the wretched flowers with me. All the way home, I thought about where I’d ram one particular weed that looked like a Roto-Rooter.

When I walked in the door with the hideous heap of hell flowers, Don looked startled. Then he started laughing. He wrapped his arms around me, and the whole story came out.

Don felt so guilty about forgetting Valentine’s Day that he went to a city florist and plunked down fifty pre-Carter-inflation dollars. He asked for "something spectacular."

Unfortunately, the florist specialized in mob funerals, political dinners and other crass occasions. Their idea of spectacular went more for size than style.

Suddenly, the whole episode was funny. All was forgiven.

That year, I got a gift that was priceless –- and unforgettable.

                                                               ***

Gentlemen, you have less than 24 hours to come up with a Valentine’s Day present for the woman you love. One perfect chocolate. A single red rose. Please don’t forget. It’s important.

By Sarah

I couldn't decide whether to write a blog about beating the winter doldrums or Middlebury College's efforts to "legislate" student/teacher romantic relationships until, voila!, it hit me how closely the two are connected. No wonder there are so many student/teacher scandals in New England. Cabin fever.

When we moved here in 1992 and I went to work as a reporter at a small New Hampshire daily newspaper (though none here is very large), immediately I was thrown into a small-town scandal involving a)psycho loner millionaire b)the girl he seduced via a singles ad in New York magazine c) the subsequent persecution of this girl's father, a mailman d) a corrupt local police department and e) the psycho loner millionaire's discovery of a widespread web of relationships between a group of high school teachers and coaches and several teenage girls. Later, Jodi Picoult of Hanover, New Hampshire, would use it as inspiration, I'm sure, for Salem Falls.

The story was that several of the teachers and coaches had seduced the girls on a local sports team with the clever use of that old perv standby - wine coolers. Only, this wasn't any ordinary seduction. The girls eventually  graduated, went to college (including Dartmouth) and left behind the coaches who were devastated, partly because a few claimed to be in love, though I suspect they loved their freedom from behind bars more.

I'll never forget the Sunday night when I was working late at the paper and one of the coaches, then under indictment for using his position of authority to gain sex with a teenager, showed up at my office banging on the window, pleading for an interview. For two hours, I listened to him wax poetically and tearfully declare his love for the teenage girl he "raped." Meanwhile, the girl herself had moved on to men her age and higher intelligence level, alledged severe psychological trauma not withstanding.

Cabin fever.

I can't say his sobs changed my mind. However, they did open it a bit. While there's no doubt teacher/student relationships are wrong, could it be that they're not avoidable, either? I remember in high school a certain math teacher with a fondness for leisure suits who proudly told us he met his future wife when she was in his SEVENTH GRADE CLASS!! Back then, I thought, huh, am I that old? Now, with a seventeen year old daughter and a son almost hitting thirteen, I'm shocked. Why wasn't this teacher fired? Or put in jail?

Partially because the laws preventing teachers/priests/psychologists/cops from using their power to extort sex from older teenage girls didn't exist. And in some ways they still don't. Teacher/student relationships happen more often than people would like to admit, especially when the teacher's barely older than the student he (or she, if recent headlines are to be believed) is seducing. A teacher I knew well in high school regularly had sex with students, a few of whom were close acquaintances, and I never had a clue.

In a more dramatic New Hampshire case from the early 1990s, Pamela Smart, then twenty four and a media services coordinator at a high school, was convicted of convincing her sixteen year old boyfriend  to shoot and kill her twenty-four year old husband, which he did. She's still in prison and her case has been turned into several books (most notably Joyce Maynard's To Die For) and a movie of the same name starring Nicole Kidman. There's not that much of an age difference between twenty four and sixteen, though those years are definitely important ones. I guess the really big difference is the use of a loaded .38 caliber weapon.

Of course, most teacher/student unions (and I'm talking strictly high school here, anything younger is a felony in my book) don't end in murder. Professor/student relationships, as anyone who's watched Animal House can attest, have to be fairly routine in college. Middlebury is expected to pass a policy that discourages, but does not forbid, romantic relationships between students and their professors. University of Vermont goes further. It forbids relationships between teachers and students when the teacher is in a position of, uhm, authority.

By the way, Middlebury College's tuition is over the $40 K mark. Forty grand a year so some horn-rimmed horn toad can lure your daughter into bed with a bottle of cheap red wine and a boilerplate discussion of Simone de Beauvoir. I ask you.

But maybe I'm being cynical. Should professors be allowed to have relationships with their students? What about TA's? And what about the twenty-two-year-old student teacher who falls for the eighteen-year-old senior in high school? Should that be denied?  Or should everyone be told to keep it in their pants and wait until graduation.

Brrrrr. It's cold here! I should look into night school.

Sarah

Kid Food

by Michele

                                

At our Super Bowl party last weekend, half the guests were under the age of twelve.  The experienced hostess knows that the best way to make sure the grown-ups have fun is to provide the kids with fun of their own -- meaning in a different room, away from their parents, with kid-friendly food, so they don't try to horn in on our action.  The goal is for Mom and Dad to be able to watch the game, eat their BBQ ribs and Buffalo wings and enjoy their adult beverages in peace with no commercial interruptions from the little tykes.  That was my plan, and I thought it was foolproof.  I had the menu all figured out.  My friend Karen's famous pigs-in-blankets (mini hot dogs wrapped in crescent-roll dough and baked till golden).  A huge steaming vat of mac & cheese.  In case that wasn't enough starch, a big bowl of tortilla chips.  And my friend Robin's famous brownies for dessert, topped with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce.

It should have worked.  The parents and the kids should have stayed in their separate corners and had their own types of fun, right? But there was a problem I hadn't foreseen.  The darn parents couldn't keep their greedy paws off the kid food!

Forget re-experiencing childhood through your children's eyes. As far as I'm concerned, one of the best things about having kids is re-experiencing it through their taste buds.  I have never stopped loving grilled cheese sandwiches, mashed potatoes, chicken noodle soup, peanut butter and jelly, and so on.  But before I had kids in the house, I didn't have the excuse to indulge.  I was a foodie living in a foodie town, constrained to a life of frisee salad, sushi and monkfish. (I know -- poor me!)  I can honestly say I'd almost forgotten the joys of a chocolate chip pancake before the little ones came along.  Will that happen again, I wonder, once they're grown and gone?  And what is up with this division between kid food and grown-up food? 

I can understand it from the kid perspective. Young children just aren't ready for jalapeno-crusted swordfish or lamb vindaloo curry.  Their little mouths are sensitive, and I honestly believe that before a certain age, you're better off sticking to the standard kid diet and avoiding the conflict.  (Parenting styles may differ, of course.)

I didn't have truly picky eaters -- you know, the kind who insist on Captain Crunch at every meal and scream if you give them anything else.  But for a long time, my younger kid (who's now eight) wouldn't venture beyond the standard kid diet of chicken breast or chicken nuggets, hot dogs, french fries, mac & cheese, pizza, bagels with cream cheese and jelly, grilled cheese, broccoli, carrots and scrambled eggs -- all doused with ketchup. (Hmm, that actually sounds pretty good.)  If we wanted to so much as go to a Chinese restaurant -- a cuisine most kids love from an early age -- I had to bring along a bagel for him.  And so I did, because I didn't want to ruin my meal or that of the other restaurant patrons with a battle over the food. 

By indulging my kids' taste up to a certain age, we avoided conflict at mealtimes, and they learned to love to eat.  Then we picked an age where they were going to start trying new things -- around six or seven for both of them.  The idea was, part of becoming a big kid was getting more adventurous with your food.  I'll never forget how liberating it was to finally go to an ethnic restaurant and not have to bring special kid food.  Now, as a family, we eat pretty much everything -- Italian, French, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, Indian, West African, you name it -- and happily.

But I would hate it if moving my kids toward a more grown-up menu meant losing the kid menu I've rediscovered for myself.  Here's a partial list of kid food items that I now realize I love too much to live without: Kraft mac & cheese, grilled cheese and grilled cheese with ham, tuna melts, plain spaghetti with butter, omelets with Kraft singles melted inside them, oatmeal with brown sugar, waffles, chicken nuggets with tons of ketchup, mozzarella sticks, pigs in blankets, meat loaf, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, graham crackers, s'mores, ice cream sandwiches, Cream of Wheat or Cream of Rice cereal with cinnamon and Oreos.  Oh, and mixing the veggies into the mashed potatoes so you don't taste them!

Sometimes, especially during our long, dark northern winters, I think I'd be happier eating kid food at every meal and forgetting entirely about the frisee salad and sushi.  There's just one little problem, or one big problem, unfortunately, and it's a problem that most young children are thankfully too active to have.  Yeah, I'd weigh about four hundred pounds!  So the kid food needs to fit in there among the healthier and more grown up options.  I'll just have to remember not to pitch a fit when I can't have my chicken nuggets!

Fan-ning The Flame

By Guest Blogger Maryann Mercer

A great TLC Welcome to our own Maryann - you've enjoyed her comments, and now you get a chance to hear more, as she blogs on a very hot topic - Fan Fiction!

Once upon a time in merry old England, there was an author who wrote marvelous tales of the city, detailing social ills, redemption, love and destiny. People clamored for his work, which was slow in coming due to several factors, including the absence of electricity and (among other things), the iMac. One dark and dank night, an avid fan declared he could not wait a moment longer to see what happened to Ebenezer and Tiny Tim in the years following A Christmas Carol, if anything happened at all. Taking the paper on which his good wife had scribbled the weekly grocery list, he lined through 'get lye for soap' and began to write. Other fans of the author decided this was a good thing and began writing their own tales of Fezziwig and Company, and later added stories of those who peopled Jane Austen's fictional world and the moors of the Bronte sisters. Stories were passed from fan to fan and happiness ensued. Thus was born the phenomenon we now know as fan fiction. Fans created stories about such diverse characters as Don Quixote and Sherlock Holmes without fear of recrimination. Some published their stories in fan magazines; others shared them with friends.

Today, fan fiction is applauded and abhorred; seen by fans as a way to create stories using some of their favorite characters from the media, seen by writers as either a form of flattery or a definite encroachment on their own work. There are thousands of fan fictions and many fan fiction sites. One such site, www.fanfiction.net, breaks the sagas down by movies, television, and books. Those who write stories based on television series or daytime drama will tell you they write out of appreciation for the characters or because they don't believe their favorite character gets enough airtime or development. Those who choose to write extensions of movies apply the same rationale. They want to know what happens AFTER the credits start to roll. Most studios seem not to protest as long as the fan/writer is not making money from the work. Some series creators use it as a marketing tool. Joss Whedon for example encouraged fans of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer to read fan fiction during the hour in which the program had previously been broadcast.

Nowhere is controversy more evident than in the area of the written series. Authors who've worked hard to become successful at their craft look on fan fiction written about the characters they've created as theft, pure and simple. Anne Rice has taken numerous steps to prevent unauthorized fan fiction of her characters, especially Lestat. Science fiction fantasy writer Robin Hobb has posted an online entry to her blog about fan fiction writers entitled ‘Vampires of the Internet'. Other authors including Meg Cabot, who has addressed this issue on her website, are not quite so vehement but worry that readers of fan fiction will pick up their published works expecting something other than the author’s own concept and characters.

Now here's the rub. Bookstores have on their shelves volumes of work, some of which could be categorized in the broad sense as fan fiction for which someone other than the original author has been compensated. Examples include the series about Mr. Darcy, and Grendel, the Beowulf saga told from the point of the monster. Geraldine Brooks has written a popular spin-off of Alcott's Little Women in her book, March. Louis Bayard has taken us into the Dickensian future with Mr.Timothy. Jasper Fforde has created an alternate universe with his Thursday Next series, in which characters from the classics hop from book to book doing uncharacteristic things. Granted, most of these classics are considered in the public domain. Copyrights on others have expired, making the term ‘fair use’ applicable.

So, I turn the discussion over to you with these questions. Is fan fiction flattery or felony? Why is Mr. Darcy fair game when contemporary heroes such as Jack Reacher are not? If an author writes about a character from another, uncopyrighted work and proceeds to copyright his current story, does this mean no one else can use the character? Is writing fan fiction a creative exercise for aspiring writers or just copycat scribbling? What makes fan fiction about characters in books more heinous than fan fiction about television or movie characters? And… if you chose to write a story about your favorite character just for fun, who would it be? Tell me. I'm all ears.

The Man Purse

By Rebecca the Bookseller

If you're like me, you remember the Seinfeld episode that included the Man Purse. These days, it might not be so funny, because the man purse is no longer an anomaly.

My first man purse sighting was all the way back in 1986, when my cousin Mario came to visit from Brazil. He carried a man purse. No trying to disguise it as anything else, either. It was small, made of black leather, and it had a thin shoulder strap. At first, a couple of the local yokels made cracks about it. Mario's English wasn't superb, but he knew an attempted insult when he heard one. Instead of bristling, he just laughed. Then he gently advised, in that fabulous accent, that he preferred women, but knew some gay men at back at home if these 'necks wanted a pen pal. Priceless.

Today, the man purse is popping up everywhere. They may call them messenger bags, or packs of all shapes and sizes, or cargos, but they hold the same things that a woman's purse holds: keys, glasses, meds, kleenex, and various items designed to assist in maintaining one's personal hygiene.

And just in case you think only the freaks or geeks or any other subset are the only ones to carry them, check out Seal and Hugh Jackman. Those two are most definitely men. And those bags are definitely purses.

And it's about damn time.

Women everywhere have been the sherpas of the family for years. The entire clan hands things off - "Hey, can you stick this in your purse?". Which would be fine if all these items were tiny and weightless.

But have you taken a look at key rings lately? They look like some kind of weapon - a cross between intersecting Ninja stars and a portable knight's mace. And forget the key content - you've got to have 14 little charms or micro stuffed animals, plus a bunch of those cards that give you store discounts in return for every piece of personal information you could imagine. Plus a cute little flashlight that never worked, and a whistle, which you could never find in time to do you any good.

Then we have the hairbrushes, which should be hermetically sealed, and the cameras, and the binoculars and whatever else people decide not to leave in the car.

As a matter of fact, I'll bet if you look in your purse right now, you'll find at least one thing that's not yours. And at least one thing that is at least three months old. How many restaurant mints are in there? Ticket stubs? Parking receipts? Before you know it, the purse weighs about 40 pounds, and you've solved the mystery of why your shoulder is killing you.

Before I was a Mom, I carried gorgeous leather bags. But once you become the packhorse of the family, the leather goes into storage. First of all, leather does not do well with various liquids. It stains. And leather, needless to say, is not washable. Secondly, since many fine purses are dark in color, the bottom becomes a black hole - you can't see what's down there. Finally, they're heavy. Much heavier than a space age fabric that can go right to the washing machine if need be.

We just got back from Florida, and I'm surprised my Vera Bradley backpack didn't burst at the seams. Never mind that my kids are old enough to carry their own crap. Why should they when Mom has that bottomless backpack? It's all on me, too. I let them do it. And to be fair, they offered to carry it, and so did my husband. Couldn't do it; Mom's backpack is Mom's job. Who else would remember band-aids with the built in anti-biotic, or three different kinds of sunscreen? Not to mention the Epi-pen and the Benadryl spray and the tweezers and the extra hat and the pens and paper, and on and on and on. That's part of the Mom's job in our house.

But next year? Guess what their Dad is getting for Christmas?