The Lipstick Chronicles

Who Scares Ya, Baby?

By Sarah

If you've been calling my home lately and found you're unable to reach me, I apologize. The thing is, I'm in hiding - from my son's piano teacher.

I know what you're thinking: what kind of doofus is scared of her son's piano teacher? Wait. It gets worse. Not only is she a piano teacher, she's 82 years old and lives in a retirement home, so frail and brittle thin that I could blow her over with a feather.  At least, that's the way she looks on the outside. Deep down she's as tough as forged steel and the very thought of crossing her gives me the shakes.

At the beginning of the last school year, for example, when it became clear Sam was as into the piano (which he'd played with only creeping success since age six) as much as he was into pink Barbies, I summoned my courage and approached Mrs. Nice (we'll call her since outside of the piano world she is nice) to say that while it wasn't working out, I had signed a contract and, therefore, would take the piano lessons instead of Sam this year.

"No!" she said.

No?

There was a contractual obligation on Sam's part...yadda, yadda, yadda, she explained, and she would not accept my offer. All I knew, as my eyes glazed over, was that I was in store for another year of nagging Sam to play and me to pay. In the end, he didn't practice, of course. I decided not to give a hoot and let him suffer the consequences. The upshot was a recital last week that he muddled through. Whew! It was over.

Or was it?

Apparently, it wasn't. So while I was at Sam's baseball game happily watching him walk to first after he got hit by a ball (nice job getting hit, Sam!), Mrs. Nice was frantically calling my home, angry that I'd missed a class and that I hadn't had the decency or politeness to call ahead of time. (I always call ahead of time AND we never miss classes. Well, almost never.)

Moreover, we were missing a class so Sam could play ball. I don't know if you're aware of the Sports vs. Arts struggle we parents of school-aged children must battle, but it's out there and it's vicious. A few months before, the ski coach had battled the drama teacher over my daughter's schedule. It was not pretty.

Now I'm really, really scared to call her even though - eep! - we might have another lesson during which - eep! eep! - another game has been scheduled.  That makes me three apologies in arrears.

This is why I'm not answering my phone.

Think I'm a weenie? Look, I have been less frightened of a 6-foot-tall convicted murderer with AIDS who tried to contact me at home after he tied several sheets together and escaped from the New Jersey State Penitentiary in Trenton than I am of Mrs. Nice. Don't ask me why because I don't know.

Charlie says it's Mrs. Nice's age - the same as my mother's - but I say my upbringing is to blame. To be raised in a Germanic steel town like Bethlehem, PA, is to respect the wrath of an older generation. These are people who can hurt you, who don't mind flaying you from head to toe so that all your weakness are exposed and then scalded in hot lemon juice.

Who else scares me? Cops. The other day Charlie and I were out tooling around in my BMW M3 with the top down. We'd just taken it out of the garage (sort of) and were enjoying the lovely spring weather when not one but TWO cop cars (a local and Vermont State Police) raced up behind me, lights flashing. Remembering my old boyfriend's advice (always have your paperwork ready!) didn't help. The registration was one month expired. The inspection one - maybe two - years, too. (Hey! I'd been busy!)

Charlie was ready to tear the guy a new one for not addressing me as Ma'am instead of "Sarah." (I thought he was being friendly. But Charlie pointed out that friendly would be giving me a warning, not an $84 ticket for expired inspection.) Me? I was shaking.

Authority figures. Cops. Elderly piano teachers. Ladies from the bank and utility companies reminding me my payments are overdue. These are my bogeymen.

So who's yours?

Sarah

P.S. Anyone want to make The Call to Mrs. Nice for me? I'll make it worth your while with a free signed copy  of Sweet Love. All you have to do is come up with a good excuse.

The Amazon Kindle/Am I Dead?

By Sarah

Forgive me Mother Mary Alice for I have purchased an Amazon Kindle.

Look, I'm not happy about the direction books might - and I say might - be going, either. I love everything about The Book. I love the intriguing covers and typeface and font. I love the glue-and-paste smell of books, the cracking of the spine, the way a paperback looks when it's been read to death. (Gone with the Wind/Glass Castle.) A book is humanity recorded and captured in a once-living medium. I also love the thrill of stepping into a bookstore and marveling at the thousand directions my life could take depending on which book I choose as well as the camaraderie I share with my local booksellers. (Except the one where, uh, they all hate me.)

That said, my fear is the book is on the way out. Not the stories, mind you. Whether they've been told around fires or illustrated on cave walls, stories will always exist. Like John said: In the beginning was the Word...And now it is instantly downloadable with one click.

But wait...there's hope for books. Real hope.

First, you should know that the Kindle is a handheld reading device that's very light and very weird. If you live in a Sprint EVDO zone (Here's the map to find out if you do) it is possible to turn on the wireless button in the back and be instantly online to ....Amazon. Natch.

This is the genius part and in making it so easy Amazon has acknowledged, finally, that not everyone likes to tinker with Wi-Fi settings and channels, especially nerds like me who've been too busy reading to care.  Flip on the switch, wait a few seconds and that's it. I have to drive about three miles to get to an EVDO zone because I live in the mountains. But tiny Montpelier is covered, so chances are your town is, too. (Unless you live in Kansas. Big controversy there.)

When it's on, you can download thousands of books and newspapers for a fraction of the cost with no wireless fee or subscription. (The New York Times costs .45, but looks better on my computer.) It's a heady prospect, the idea of waiting in a doctor's office or in an airport and having any book at your disposal. And that, in a nutshell, is the major problem with the Kindle and why bookstores may win this war, yet.

Anyone, it seems, can get their book on Kindle. And browsing for what you want simply sucks. Yes, there are categories (Fiction - 119,000) and subcategories. (Including erotica, naturally, but not women's fiction.) Our very own Nancy Martin is prominent in mysteries - good move, Nancy. But it's no fun to look around as though one were in a store. Even "Editors' Picks" are limiting and feel canned.

In contrast, when I go into Bear Pond Books the children's bookseller knows me and my kids, knows about my son's reading difficulties. (She has one just like him.) And, so, she's recommended Bone and Gregor the Overlander and other greats. It was at Bear Pond Books where I asked the then children's bookseller for something funny to hold my daughter's interest. She held up a book and said it was the strangest thing. It had become such a phenomenon in Britain that adults were disguising it in adult jackets so they could read it, too.

The book, of course, was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Back to the Kindle. What I found myself doing was going to Amazon online at home, scrolling for books and downloading them to my computer and then to the Kindle. (BTW - Amazon stores all your purchases in cyberspace lest anything should happen to your device, like an inevitable upgraded version.)

I also found myself doing something very encouraging. As I browsed through books, I'd find one I liked, read the review and download a free sample. (Great idea, Amazon!) When I was done with all that, I debated whether to buy the book on Kindle or buy it on paper. Call me old fashioned, but the paper book was far more appealing. As a result, I went to the bookstore to buy the actual book even though it was more expensive. In other words, Amazon sold me two books - Three Cups of Tea and The Benedict Society - at Bear Pond. On Kindle, I bought Jack Handey's What I'd Say to the Martians and I Was Told There'd Be Cake. I downloaded loads of free samples, too. All of which qualify as disposable fluff I didn't care to keep.

I did not buy "Cherry the Rent Girl," one of the too many self published ebooks on Kindle. (Amazon has  been touting that big time.) Nor did I bother to examine the difference between the five different versions of Pride and Prejudice. (Ahh, the value of an expired copyright.) Jeff Bezos take note: too much unfiltered text will weigh down your beloved toy.

So, bottom line? The Kindle and all handheld devices will be ideal for "disposable" books that would end up at the school rummage sale anyway. And they're great if you're into Project Gutenberg. But not so great for the books you'll want to keep and give. Books are not CDs or albums, which look ugly in your living room. Books are beautiful. When they're on your shelves, they make a room cozy and can spark a conversation.

Not, ironically, a Kindle.

Sarah

PS. I almost forgot - this weekend I received the following email from an Alert Reader in the Midwest:

"Absolutely no offense intended, but I was at a book store today where the bookstore owner told us that Sarah Strohmeyer had suddenly passed away. If this is true, will someone respond by telling me when and how or anything. She will be sorely missed. If it is not true, I will immediately call the bookstore before anyone else is told the same thing.  Thanks."

In the words of Monty Python: "I'm not dead, yet. I think I'll go for a walk!"

Why Women Lie

By Sarah

Apparently, real women lie. Not real women like Harley, who, as she explained yesterday, lives a lie by keeping a meticulous, apple-pie-smelling house. I'm talking about about serious stuff such as extra marital affairs and money and whether or not his bald spot is growing. (It is.)

Now a book by Susan Shapiro Barash called "Little White Lies, Deep Dark Secrets: The Truth About Why Women Lie," claims women lie much more than we know. To prove this, Barash interviewed 500 women who answered her Craigslist (Craigslist??) ad and this is what her questionable research found - that 60% cheated on their husbands, 75% lied about money as in how much they made and how much they spent (well, duh) and a whopping half lied about their feelings of motherhood. For example, getting up three times a night to breast feed or tuck in a crying toddler or soothe a nervous teenager might not be as blissful as they claim to the playgroup.

Okay, I admit women lie and for that I say, thank heavens. I write chick lit, women's lit, whatever, and two of my stories - The Cinderella Pact and The Sleeping Beauty Proposal - are predicated on the protagonists' lies. It's no accident they've done well sales wise, I suppose, since women love to read about themselves. And look at soap operas. Some woman's always lying about the paternity of her darling new baby or whether she bludgeoned David Hamilton to death with a statue of Two Lovers. Women lie like carpet in fiction, hearkening back to Grimm's Fairytales (Rumplestiltskin) and Hansel and Gretel (it's Gretel who convinces Hansel to stick out the chicken bone instead of his arm.)

Which brings me to one reason why women lie - survival. I think this is Barash's premise, too, in part, but since this is my blog, not hers, I'm going with it. As girls, there's so much more pressure on us to be good. Boys can get into minor mischief, break a few windows and, when they reach adolescence, experiment with sex without suffering the condemnation of society. Whereas girls, of course, are still stigmatized for sleeping around. Hey, no one's paying them to lose their virginity by their eighteenth birthday and in some cultures it could spell their execution.

So perhaps that's why women are practiced at lying and why they resort to it when they get older and their problems surmount. As a reporter, I covered a number of cases - a surprising number, actually - of  women caught embezzling. Trust me, these were not women zipping around in fancy cars with fabulous wardrobes and diamond tennis bracelets. These were women trying to make ends meet.

The New York Times has reported that between 1993 and 2002, the number of women embezzling increased by 83%. Unreal. Sometimes gambling is to blame. (Porn. Gambling. Why is it that vices are the first edge of new technology?) Sometimes outrageous medical bills - but that's for another blog.

The women I wrote about were secretaries, bookkeepers and town clerks. They embezzled very little on the grand scheme - it was, after all, Vermont - but enough to get them a felony conviction and even time in the slammer. In almost all the cases, they intended to pay the money back and they stole because they needed to pay family bills. That, to me, sums up female lying at its most desperate core.

Women also lie to escape the wrath of their husbands who might hit the roof when they rip open the credit card bills. They lie to paint a more perfect image of themselves to their children. (The evolution, I suppose, of when they lied to paint a more perfect image of themselves to their parents.) And sometimes women lie because, what the hell. It's more convenient than telling the truth.

The bottom line is women lie because they lack power. And, like Brer Rabbit outsmarting the fox, they need to find the upper hand, even if that means sneaking around the back and getting a lift up.

Okay...so what have you lied about? (FYI, email addresses won't be posted and names can be aliases.)

Sarah

Entertainment as an Addiction

By Sarah

A story in this morning's New York Times notes that while consumers are willing to forgo dinners out at restaurants and even "name brand" detergents for their clothes, they are buying fancy flat-screen TVs in record numbers. Go fig.

I can already hear the rationalization on the drive to Best Buy.

Husband: "We're not going out to the movies. We're not going out to dinner. We're not going on vacation this year. We're not going anywhere. If we're going to stay home, we might as well make it worthwhile."

Wife: "But a new TV costs $2,000!"

Husband. "What's $2,000 averaged out over three years? About $1.82 a day. Can we afford that? Hell, that's half what you spend on Starbucks. Which, by the way, we have to cut out."

I know, because I've had this conversation. Except, I'm the one going for the 42" Hitachi and my husband and children (the traitors) are the ones asking why. I know I'm right. We don't go out, ever. Partly that's because we live in Vermont and there's no place to go, as they say. But mostly it's because we eat in every night. I also have given up on Tide and all name brands. The rare piece of beef we ate tonight came from the corner convenience store that just happens to buy from a local slaughterhouse.

As for Starbucks, you should know that a venti latte ordered once a day, five times a week will end up costing you...$884 a year, before tax. No scone. No blueberry muffin, either.

Which raises this question: what have you given up in this recession? Is it the gym membership? The new spring wardrobe? (Say it's not so!) Maybe you don't go out to eat as much. Or maybe you've cut back on your cell phone range.

Whatever it is, we want to hear it. There's only ONE thing we don't want to hear - that you've cut back on buying books. Books are the best deal going. Relatively cheap, tons of entertainment value and, best of all, you don't need a cable subscription. Also, as much as I hate to admit this, you can pass them to friends.

So dish! What have you been sacrificing?

Sarah

Naughty Books for Girls

By Sarah

Porn for women. It's the title of a very successful book written by the Cambridge Women's Pornography Cooperative which also came out with Porn for New Moms and The Porn for Women 2009 Calendar, bless them. The underlying joke, of course, is that real women get all excited seeing half naked men only if they're doing the dishes. Or the laundry. Or diapering at 2 a.m.

But having just come off my third Romantic Times Convention hot and bothered, I'm here to witness otherwise. Porn for women is not about seeing men, albeit handsome and built men, in the midst of domestic servitude. Porn for women is about reading.

And that simple quirk of feminine wiring just might be the ticket to the survival of publishing as we know it. Women have always read naughty stories, starting from when we were pre-teens and went snooping under our parents' beds for racy material. If RT is any indication, we can't seem to get enough.

My very unscientific study of what sold at RT and has sold in the past comes down to this: women want porn as long as it's presented in stories of desire. We want lusty, strong male characters to eye the female protagonist with lascivious thoughts they cannot possibly enact initially because the female protagonist is about to be married/a nun/or captive to the Lord Vampire. (That one's obvious, no?) Either way, she is definitely a virgin. Preferably, a quivering, under educated and oversexed fertile female who desires the man who desires her, though, being innocent, she's not exactly sure why. But she'll soon discover!

After that, we women readers just want a lot of nakedness and thrusting and caressing this and cupping that. Things rising and swelling and going in and out. We like a mix up of atmosphere and situations and gazing. We even like new men, though our female protagonist has to be loyal to one special guy. Not her fault she was carried off by virile bandits and forced to submit to the Lord Vampire's will for the sake of her family/country/financial security.

I'm halfway through Bertrice Small's classic Skye O'Malley, a story with great potential and historical importance if Bertrice had cared about great potential and historical importance. Heck, it's about a woman in the 1500s who becomes a pirate between having crazy sex.  What a tale! However, Bertrice mostly cared about thrusting and heaving and things rising and swelling. It was embarrassing reading it on the Pittsburgh to JFK Flight because, even though I knew it was bad, I absolutely loved it. But occasionally I had to hide the words from the proper widow sitting next to me.

This brings to mind all the naughty books we girls used to pass around in grade school. Actually, the books themselves weren't naughty. It was that they contained naughty chapters. Our favorites were, in no particular order, a druggy rape scene in Rosemary's Baby, Coffee, Tea or Me, Sidney Sheldon's The Other Side of Midnight and, for some inexplicable reason, a lunch scene in Jaws. Go figure.

We were in junior high school in the 70s and the dirty parts were so dog eared it was not uncommon to finally get hold of the verboten book and find the juicy parts missing. Alas, those days are gone. These days publishers are fulfilling teenage girls need to know by handing them The Gossip Girls and Rainbow Party (about oral sex). Library Journal refused to review the latter, though editors at Simon & Schuster, which commissioned the book, claimed they wanted it as a cautionary tale for teens.

Whatever.

My take is that you can publish racy books for girls, but they will never replace the adult books for women which are meant to be hidden under the bed - until they're found, naturally, by a snooping daughter. Some things never change.

So what was the book you passed around? And don't claim you didn't have one or two. This is The Lipstick Chronicles. We know how it is.

Sarah

 

No Good Deed Goes Unpublished

By Sarah

So there I was in our local bookstore, Bear Pond Books, Saturday, with my daughter, Anna, picking up a copy of Bubbles Unbound and The Cinderella Pact for the girls at the yarn shop, my other hangout, when I  caught  site of this Sweet Thing at the counter in a blond ponytail and pearls. Tres Sylvia Plath before she stuck her head in the oven.

Sweet Thing couldn't have been over twenty eight and she was so fresh and earnest she broke my heart, especially since she was asking one of the bookstore employees if she knew anyone who would be willing to read her newly finished manuscript.

"Congratulations!" the employee said.

"Thank you," Sweet Thing replied. "I'm very proud. It's quite an achievement. But do you know anyone? Because I can't give it to anyone I know and they should be someone who can give me feedback."

Well, I practically leaped over Anna and a couple of shelves to get to her. Here was my chance to help not one but TWO people. Just last week a frequent backblogger emailed me that she was expanding her freelance editing business and was on the lookout for new clients. Did I know anyone? Everyone who's used this wonderful woman has nothing but high praise for her ability to quickly read over a manuscript, find the flaws and outline the strengths. At least one Tart has credited her for saving a book. Plus, she lived several states away. She wouldn't know Sweet Thing to spit on her.

Which, I soon discovered, might hold some appeal.

For as I rushed to Sweet Thing and gushed that I had the perfect person in mind, Sweet Thing turned to me and instead of saying, "Oh, gee, thanks," her saccharine tone vanished and with steely coolness, eyes narrowed, she sniffed, "I don't think so."

Pardon?

"No, really," I continued, assuming she hadn't heard me or, you know, that without my pearls I had been deemed untrustworthy. "This woman offers fantastic feedback. I have two friends who've used her and they swear by her. And I should know because I've written ten books."

This got her interest, sort of. Pressing her lips into a tolerant smirk, she said, "Is your fiction...literary?"

At which point, Anna and I giggled and a howl of laughter went up from the guys by the cash register.The clerk said, snorting, "Are you kidding? This is Bubbles."

Sweet Thing, who had no idea what a Bubbles was, looked upon me with pity. "Well, I write literary fiction. Are you," she said slowly, like I was three, "familiar with the genre of literary fiction?"

See now, I've never quite understood this term literary fiction. By the very definition of both "literary" and "fiction" it would seem to me all fiction is literary. Plus,I was getting a teensy weensie tired of Sweet Thing's uppity 'tude. Look, honeybunch, I wanted to say, I'm trying to fucking help you. I've been around the block a time or two and I'm not sending you to Walter the semi-incontinent library reshelver. I'm giving you a hot tip.

In retrospect, I should have drooled on cue or scratched my butt and told her that while I was familiar with the Erotic Vampire Historical Novel genre, I ain't what heard of this here literary fiction. And though Sweet Thing could not answer the key question about her manuscript (as in, What the fuck is it about?), I told her to stop when she got to the writer she most admired - Jonathan Safran Foer.

"Ah, yes," the clerk said, closing her eyes in agreement. "Wonderful. Now that's the stuff I like." Meaning, not Bubbles.

Beam me up Scotty. I had made an awful mistake in trying to help this chick and now I was paying for it by being totally humiliated by her and the clerk. I said, "Well, if you change your mind, why don't you email me and I'll send you this person's address." To help her get it down correctly, I showed her my name on Bubbles Unbound and told her to add an aol.com.

"You buy your own books?" she scoffed.

"Someone has to."

"Oh my." Tittering (yes, she actually tittered) Sweet Thing proceeded to copy my name with slow and careful penmanship. Funny, since she'd be  throwing it away, I assumed, once she was back at the coffee house or garret or wherever it was she wrote about the existential agony of pursuing an unrequited love for a certain English professor who bears an uncanny resemblance to a young Donald Sutherland.

Watching her, I said, "Is this your first manuscript?"

"Hmmhmm."

"Have you ever been published before?" (Okay, so I was shifting into asshole mode. Sue me.)

"No."

"Not even in a magazine?"

"No."

"Nothing?"

"Nuh-uh."

I smiled and said, "Good luck. I'm sure you'll be very successful."

"Thank you. I hope to be." Then, relieved to done with my psycho-ness, she turned to the clerk who suggested Walter the incontinent library shelver. Sweet Thing appeared to be really excited about him.

Needless to say, I haven't heard from her since.

Sarah

Mac on Some Cupcakes

By Sarah

First, they banished the tire swings, then it was the game of tag. Now, thanks to nutritionists who just won't mind their own business, our elementary school is considering banning cupcakes. Outrageous.

I know, I know. Cupcakes are loaded with fat and extra heavy on the frosting. They're what's bad about America. But I've got a cupcake on the cover of SWEET LOVE coming out in June and let's say I feel a bit protective. Cupcakes are innocent, helpless little things. Someone who's cute and doesn't fight back is called a "cupcake." Mothers call their children cupcakes. Ditto for mob bosses to their zaftig sweethearts.

You can't frown and eat a cupcake. My daughter, Anna, whose sweet tooth is unparalleled didn't care that her godmother, mega award-winning author Patty McCormick, lived smack in the middle of Carrie Bradshaw territory. Or even that Brad Pitt used to live around the corner. Around the other corner was something better - Magnolia Bakery, a scrumptious place that makes not only the best cupcake frosting in the world (it's the extra stick of butter) but also other comfort sweets such as banana pudding and cherries jubilee.

I was given a recipe for cupcake frosting that supposedly is Magnolia's. And while I'm not quite sure this really is Magnolia's frosting, it's so damn close that all the teenagers in my house swore it was the real deal. It's below. (Use any cake mix for the cupcakes. Cupcakes are all about the frosting, not so much the cake.) And while you're waiting for the cakes to bake (much faster than regular cakes), you can watch this video that put Magnolia on the map.

Vanilla Buttercream Over-the-Top Frosting

1 cup (that's two sticks, folks) of softened butter

5-6 cups sifted confectioner's sugar (you may need more, depending)

1/2 cup whole milk

1 tsp vanilla flavoring

food coloring (optional)

DIRECTIONS - Mix butter and 4 cups of sugar with electric beaters, gradually adding milk and subsequent cups of sugar until correct consistency. Add vanilla at end and beat until fluffy. Covers about 18-24 cupcakes, unless you eat half the bowl

Sarah

PS - ATTENTION PITTSBURGH ROMANTIC TIMES ATTENDEES!! Meet the Tarts for drinks, coffee, snacks, whatever in the William Penn Omni lobby from 6-? this Friday. The Omni hotel's a couple of blocks from the convention. Look for the flashing lips. Nancy and I will be there along with Harley (right, Harley?) and Josh and Nancie and....all your friends

My Secret Life as a Peeping Tom

By Sarah

If there's anything I miss about not living in an area with sidewalks, it's that as spring approaches and it's okay to be out wandering at night, I'm not able to peek into the windows of my neighbors. Instead, I have to drive all the way downtown to break the law.

Am I sick? I dunno. I'm writing it off, like I do most of my vices, as an "author" thing. For example, a local author spoke at our high school and she admitted to the same thrill, so I might be fully justified. For me, peeking into windows and seeing how people have decorated their dining rooms (so many reds!) and positioned their chairs tells me loads about their characters. Are there books? A baby grand? Do they read? Collect art? Not give a damn? There are houses where people sit down to dinner every night around candles and stemware. Then there are those where the TV is on 24/7.

A doctor with a booming business added an indoor pool and a plasma screen TV over his fireplace. The artist a few doors down has a living room entirely of cream and white (with all those kids - how does she manage?) But what I really love are the huuuge houses and, sorry to say, there aren't enough of them here to satisfy my craving.

I'm a sucker for luxury digs, which is why I faithfully read the New York Times real estate section. Just what constitutes a $32 million condominium in NYC? This does. I love it, though it's a bit cold, even with  the fire behind the tub. The green-lit kitchen? Not gonna work. But it's represented by a real estate agent named Paddington Zwigard and if I had a million to toss on a deposit, I might consider it on that alone.

When we lived in Cleveland, our bike rides after dinner would take us around some of the more stately homes of Shaker Heights. But for real wealth, you had to go to Hunting Valley where Mike Tyson lived, briefly, thereby upping the percentage of minority residents to 1. No, that's not right. Don King spent some time in Hunting Valley, too. That might account for the white population being 99.05%.

Also living there long ago were the Van Sweringen brothers, unmarried land speculators who created Shaker Heights and who slept together in the same bedroom of their 54-room mansion all their lives. Yeah, that's normal. For that reason, and many others (like the median income of Hunting Valley is over $200,000) I used the area as inspiration for THE SECRET LIVES OF FORTUNATE WIVES.  Yet, though it's the sixth wealthiest area in the country, a five-bedroom home like this one at the top with saltwater aquarium, two-story pool house, custom movie theater, children's play room (notice the TV) a master suite the size of my house and tennis courts, etc. is a steal at $8.9 million.

I ask you, is it time for a revolution or what?

When I was little, my mother would drag me to real estate open houses, just to see who put what where. She was the one who taught me to peek in windows and to read floorplans with a critical eye. But I never saw her so in her element as during a trip to Newport, Rhode Island, where she used to work as a newspaper reporter while WWII raged. Those were the "cottages" that flipped her switch, The Elms, The Breakers and Stanford White's famous Rosecliff.

What is this urge to study floor plans and peek into other houses? Why do I devour the real estate ads? Why do I DREAM about houses, constantly, especially houses with many bedrooms? Maybe it's because I've never lived in a big house. (Three bathrooms are enough, thank you.) Or perhaps I long to roam the long halls and sleep in a different bed every night of the week. Perhaps this is why Rebecca is one of my favortie books, to stumble upon an undiscovered wing, a grand library, a yellow bedroom, an evil maid, a terrifying secret.

Yup. That's my subconcious.

Sarah (who's currently checking out this estate in Far Hills. And how about this one in Woodstock, Vermont?)

Mosquitoes vs. Men

By Sarah

Quick - which are more annoying, mosquitoes or men?

Before you answer, I should clarify that by "mosquito" I mean the high-pitched sound we adults (read, normal human beings) cannot hear but that juveniles (add delinquent) can. Until now, the Mosquito ring tone has been championed by teenagers who apparently can't live a minute without their cells. Their verboten phone rings in class, the teacher can't hear it, they win.

Can you hear this? I couldn't - until I turned the volume on. Then I could, though it gave me an odd, distinctly middle aged headache and I had to take a nap. The only person who could hear this in a crowded room would be someone salivating for a call from a hunky Justin, or maybe a  petite Jennifer. We adults have more important things to listen to, like the news.

Aha! But we're smarter than they are, right? We understand escrow. So it makes sense that it would just be a matter of time before we, the normal human beings, would turn their technology against them.

Enter inventor Howard Stapleton of the UK who has marketed the Mosquito ringtone to...convenience stores to ward away teen loiterers. By emitting the tone through two small speakers, shop keepers have been able to repel teens from hanging out front, smoking, swearing and being a bother. Now a debate - pardon me while I laugh - has erupted overseas as well meaning, but misguided grownups, ask, "Is this fair to our children?"

Granted, the baby issue is worth considering. (After all, they're under 25, too, and they didn't ask to be at the store.) But until babies take up smoking and swearing, I doubt they'll be around at 2 a.m. when the Mosquito repellent is most effective. I dunno. What do you think?

Which brings us to men.

An economist at the University of Michigan has discovered - surprise! - that  a husband adds SEVEN HOURS OF HOUSEWORK per week for most women. While married men actually "save" an hour of housework they might actually perform. As if.

This tells me two things. Marriage is slavery. (Next.) But also something more disturbing - each week single men forgo doing at least an hour of cleaning up. (Or is it eight, total?) Which explains a bachelor's bathroom. Have you ever been to one? Construction zone Port-a-Potties are more sanitary. I have witnessed toilets get up and walk away in disgust.

And in case you've been living in a cave, the good economists at the University of Michigan report children add even more housework. And single women get off easy, thereby explaining their shoe shopping, cosmo drinking, swinging sex ways. According to the story: "Single women in their 20s and 30s did the least housework, about 12 weekly hours, while married women in their 60s and 70s did the most - about 21 hours a week."

You mean...seventy-five-year-old women are cleaning the floors 3 hours a day?

Something is definitely wrong here. Frankly, I think that trumps Mosquitoes. Can't we get introduce the teenagers to hot water, soap and buckets? After three hours on their hands and knees engaged in something besides lewd acts, they'd be too tired to hang out in front of the 7-11, much less answer their phones.

Sarah

Your Mom's Kegger

By Sarah

My soccer mom friend, Sara, was perusing the chips in the chips and soda aisle of the old Grand Union when Kendall, our local character, turned the corner and stopped still. From the end of the aisle in a voice loud enough to be heard across the whole store, he shouted, "Hey! Aren't you supposed to be in jail?"

This was funny like when you're fat and someone asks when you're due is funny. Because as it so happened, Sara, who used to run a daycare, who devotedly produced the school plays at our elementary school, who took hip hop dance classes with her son and who regularly carpooled kids in her VW Passat, had, in fact, recently been taken to jail - wearing her P.J.s no less - for supplying booze to minors.

I know. Who among us hasn't done that?

Why just last week,The New York Times wine critic Eric Asimov exposed himself to similar scrutiny when he posed the fancypants question, Is it okay to allow teenagers a sip of Pouilly-Fume at the family  dinner table? His conclusion had been sure, why not? That was until he went to a high school alcohol awareness meeting for parents (his first mistake) where the answer was no, no, no. And not in a party Amy Winehouse way, either.

That story cracked me up, not only because of the lengths Asimov went to justify allowing teenagers "a taste" to educate them about fine wines or because the hundreds of comments the story generated all began, "When I was growing up in Belgium....", but because of the total absurdity of it all. Look, Asimov may be teaching his offspring woody bouquets of cherry and oak, but when Asimov Jr. is at his buddy Justin's house, all he's going to be interested in is "will this Bud get me laid"?

Alcohol is one of those scary things parents of teenagers wrestle with on a daily basis and, so far, I've found no rhyme or rule to what works. I have friends who are teetotalers (though they're not, of course, good friends) whose kids drink. I have friends who refuse to have any booze in the house and who will concoct elaborate plans to get drunk, wasted really, at hotels, etc., so their kids don't know. Their kids still drink. And then there are parents like us who drink wine and beer at home right out in the open and whose teenage daughter - as of this week - has had a few glasses in her time but who - as of this week - shows no inclination to go out and get blotto.

And for that I credit her nerdy, do-gooder, bookish friends. Bottom line is we lucked out. Charlie and I can take no applause for this one. Hell, if anything we've been the bad influences.

Then again, my parents knocked back vodka tonics every night and I didn't drink in high school either. Partly, that was because I grew up in Bethlehem, PA, (help me out here, Josh) where the idea of sitting in someone's dark basement listening to Pink Floyd and morosely downing Yuengling was about as appealing as watching the flowers wilt at the local funeral home.

But once I got to college (Tufts - then $18,000 a year) and found these great places called fraternities where sickening sweet grain alcohol punch came in garbage cans for FREE? Man, you couldn't keep me away. When I was drunk and guys were drunk they came onto me. Alcohol was a magic potion - erased all those teenage insecurities and made me the hit of the party. I was pretty! I was popular! FInally, I'd found the answer!

This is what I fear for Anna. And also, maybe, for Eric Asimov's kids.

The thing is, I come from a long line of drunks. Some were happy, like my twinkly English maternal grandfather who founded a country club and brought hail fellows back home to pound out rousing tunes  on the piano, and some were Lithuanian, which is to say, as cheerful as a gray Baltic sky. Like my Lithuanian paternal grandfather who got drunk and hanged himself from the rafters of his shack in the coal mines. It's right there in the genes, ripe for the picking.

So, with all due respect to the wine snobs of Belgium who are proud to say they're not alcoholics because they were allowed sips of Bordeaux while noshing on teething biscuits, my suspicion is they can thank their DNA. Another bullet dodged.

As for Sara, she got in trouble because she decided to host an after-prom party at her house, took all the keys from the kids if they were drinking, and made them sleep over. The cops got wind of this and let the party proceed nonetheless.

While waiting for the search warrant, they parked at the bottom of Sara's driveway and pulled over the kids who were leaving. Turned out, none of the kids who'd left had been drinking, though they were still hauled down to the station for questioning and such. You know, to teach them a lesson about the dangers of designated driving. The kids who'd been drinking were inside along with Sara who'd been asleep. They were busted, too, of course. And Sara's Breathalyzer results were published in the local paper.

Haven't figured out what lesson the cops were trying to teach there. But one lesson I learned is if your kid's going to host a kegger, don't invite her friend who's the daughter of the local police chief.

Talk about an April Fool....

Sarah