PEARLS & AMBER

HERA BREASTFEEDS

Hera is the Greek goddess of marriage.

I'm sure I knew that, subliminally.  I'm sure you did too.

But, what I didn't know, not even subliminally, was that she is the Queen of Heaven, and sometimes, she's gotten out of control, maybe even in spite of herself.

For instance, it is said (at least according to The New York Times Fashion Magazine) that the Milky Way was created by an inadvertent splash of her breast milk.

Well, I can totally relate. I can just see Hera, while trying to be Queen of Heaven, with all those endless responsibilities, suddenly finding herself breast feeding her firstborn.

What they don't tell you, and obviously didn't tell Hera either, is that it is no easy thing to breastfeed a newborn baby. 

The newly milk filled breasts are enormous.  In fact, they are beyond enormous, and are as hard as rocks.  The nipples are bigger than your baby's rosebud mouth, and harder than hell to hang onto, so that you may find yourself trying desperately to nurse that tiny creature holding him upside down.  And if the little guy, starving to death right at the end of that giant nipple, actually manages to hang on for long enough to get one good suck, the milk 'lets down', in a geyser, which knocks the little bloke straight off your breast.  He then commences to gasp and choke so ferociously, that I, for one, wasn't at all sure that my tiny darling was going to survive the exercise.

So that I can see, oh too clearly, dear fledgling mother Hera swinging around to scream for help, as I did, and thereby this volcano of milk shooting out the window, and creating the Milky Way right then and there. 

Things do settle down, after...awhile, nursing the baby.  It does become a sublime event in motherhood.

And as if that isn't enough, it is true what they say--there's nothing better than breastfeeding to get the pregnancy weight off.

LOS ANGELES, BEST IN SHOW

This month WALLPAPER VOTED

LOS ANGELES

BEST CITY IN WORLD, 2007.

BACK ON TOP IN DESIGN AND OVERALL COOLNESS.

THINK HIP ART SCENE, CUTTING EDGE FASHION, AND

ARCHITECTURE TO BEAT THE BAND.

SO, LIKE, I TOTALLY AGREE.  

I MET L.A. WHEN I WAS FIFTEEN, AND NEVER LOOKED ELSEWHERE....

OKAY...THERE IS THAT PERSONAL HAPPENING GOING ON WITH PARIS....

BUT L.A., DARLING, YOU CAME FIRST.

YOU'LL ALWAYS COME FIRST.

(Okay, okay, PARIS cherie, you're right up there.  Okay, WAY up there.  We'll talk later, okay?  Oui, je t'aime, oui oui, je t'aime...sshhh, for godsake.)

no!no!

   There is a new gizmo out there called no!no!

Okay, see--I don't care what this gizmo is. I don't care what it does, what it costs, where one keeps it in the house, whether or not it should be kept out of the sunlight, the dog's mouth, or the fireplace.

I care that we, adults, are being sold something, ANYTHING, that is called no!no!.

"No no!," is what mommies say to their precious little darlings when they fear the word 'no' is going to set those precious little darlings off.  They use an infantile tone of voice in the hopes of softening the blow.  And they say the offending word twice, to make it sound like a nursery rhyme.  "No no, Baby Dearest, Mommy doesn't want you to do that."

Babies aren't fooled.  And neither should we be.

no!no! turns out to be an an appliance that claims to be a hair removal device.  It uses heat.  And brags it removes hair permanently.  no!no! comes in candy colors and costs $250.

It is not a good old fashioned (cheap) razor--

And, it doesn't work.

Maybe that's why the powers-that-be at Sephora (the parent company) chose to infantilize the name of this product.  In the hopes of lulling the victim into shelling out decent money for something not wanted, and doesn't work.

"No! No!"  I hope you are listening to me.

THE LATEST ON FROG

We called them hoppy toads when I was a wee person, living the bucolic childhood, in Massachusetts, USA.

After it rained, in the summer, they were a dime a dozen...okay there were at least a few hoppy toads to be had for catching. 

Swipe.  Then the breathless moment of opening the palm of the hand slowly, to reveal the little hoppy toad, cuter even than we were. Then swoop!  One hop and it was gone.

Sometimes it left behind a tiny memento of its state of nerves at having found itself swept up off the wet grass, and into the end of the world.  And someone was always yelling "They give warts", but that was just a myth, probably started by hoppy toads themselves, to get us to leave them alone.

Now the powers that be, I mean paleontologists, have discovered the mother frog of them all--

Beelzebufo.  It was the size of a bowling ball, had armor and teeth, therefore could possibly have eaten dinosaur hatchlings for dinner.  It lived 70 million years ago.

A big question has been raised.

Beelzebufo was found in Madagascar, but it closely resembles a type of frog alive and well in South America.  How, the question goes, did those frogs get from Madagascar to South America, since frogs cannot survive in salt water.

Therefore, this directly addresses the speculations about Earth's land masses being connected in various places, long long...LONG...ago.

So that, floated out was the idea that the frogs, way back 70 million years, could have possibly made their way across a formerly warmer Antarctica.

My mind veers to 70 million year old tulip and forsythia fossils lurking under icebergs.

PLAID

Plaid is in...again.

WHY?

Is there not one person in the fashion industry today who didn't spend time in a Catholic school?  Maybe even a lot of time? 

Or did their time spent either wearing plaid skirts (girls), or looking longingly at them (boys), etch into their designing brain an irrevocable love for plaid? 

And is there an unspoken rule that every five years plaid is brought out again, so that those such as I, who did grow up enduring fourteen years of plaid uniforms, may yet once again be flung back to the days that harkened to sunshine, Popsicles and plaid skirts so faded and ragged that their mothers begged on bended knee to be allowed to replace the offending plaid, even though the uniforms were ridiculously over-priced? 

But how could the girl acquiesce when she was about to go down in the history of her very own convent school as the girl who wore her plaid skirt to such a state of decay, it was enshrined in the chemistry lab for future generation of students to admire?

A victory eroded ever so slightly each season plaid makes a return to the catwalks.   

BATS

This is about a bat who lived 52.2 million years ago. Two bats, actually.  They found two.

The fossils were found in Wyoming, which I love because it's nice to be reminded our country has been around as long as anywhere else, including Egypt and Mesopotamia.

This discovery was a wonderful happening for all those entranced with primitive bats because the answer to which came first-flight or sonar- was answered.

Flight came first.

See, these two bat fossils lacked the the enlarged cochlea, the part of the ear that converts sound vibrations into nerve signals.  In other words, these, the two most primitive bats ever discovered, could fly, but were not yet equipped to navigate by sound.

Actually, I am still reeling from the fact bats have been around that long.  I also have to admit I've never ever given this issue a thought.  But I should have been forewarned that there is more to bats than I give them credit for a long time ago--

One early evening long ago, a six year old girl and her mother were taking a walk in their wooded neighborhood in Maryland.  A troop of small birds swooped over-head.  The mother ducked.  "I don't like swooping birds," she said.

"Those aren't birds.  Those are bats," said the little girl.

"Those can't be bats," said the mother who knew her Halloween as well as the next American.  "Bats only come out at night."

"Those are fruit bats and they don't eat bugs," said the little girl, as if the mother and all her wisdom hadn't bother to speak.  She stopped, turned around to face her mother, hands on her hips, and re-iterated,  "Those are bats, Mom.  We learned all about them today at school.  They're good things."  Then the little girl skipped on ahead.

That little girl is all grown up, so it's been a long time since I learned anything new about bats.

And today I also learned something else I didn't know about them-- 

Bats are not blind.  Not at all.  In fact, it seems that most bats can see quite well.

I wonder if my daughter is far enough away from first grade that it would behoove me to call her up and let her know.

THE PARIS BOOK

Someone writing a book about Paris whose mood is that of a person writing a book about the end of the world, is going to have a hard time

FINISHING THE PROJECT.

There are two ways to go about this HUGE issue--

One-- 

Eat large meals continuously while coping with the horror of writing a book about Paris in the first place.

Assure oneself that it's not all that good anyway, and so maybe one ought not to continue.

Take many many naps with the cat, and wait for summer to arrive.

OR

GET A GRIP, FOR GOD SAKE.

THE DIVING BELL ALPHABET

THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY is one of my favorite movies this year.

So is THERE WILL BE BLOOD.

But...and there is always a but when one is a critical and precise Mercury in Virgo...if you don't know your astrology, well, then...go back to school.

I loved these movies.  THE DIVING BELL is beautiful.  It is a painting come to life, and tells the difficult story with confidence and panache.

THERE WILL BE BLOOD is filled with incredible characters and relationships that evolve in unexpected ways.  And although I felt the alcoholic diatribes that made up the end of the  movie should have been left on the cutting room floor, certainly that is when all that blood finally spilled.

However, I have been distracted by two teeny tiny little items with each movie.  Minuscule issues, I assure you.  But enough so that unless I share, I fear every issue I have ever had with any movie (don't get me started on celluloid families looking nothing alike--)may start to keep me awake at night.

THE DIVING BELL--The movie is in French, with subtitles, and the alphabet is used extensively.  When the letters are sounded out, and Jean Do blinks to pick one, the therapist repeats the letter as she writes it down.  I was losing my mind over the fact that the letter chosen would be spoken in French, but an entirely different letter would appear in the subtitles.  "J" would be spoken.  "I" would appear boldly and confidently below.  I squirmed.  "E" would be spoken.  "A" would appear below.

As I became louder in my indignation at the blatant errors, my friend sitting next to me finally hissed--"The translation is occurring in English, for god sake."  So that when Jean Do was saying "Je" meaning "I", we were shown "I".

Oh.  All right.  I rest chagrined.  But be forewarned, in case you too have Mercury in Virgo. 

Per THERE WILL BE BLOOD--am I the only one who reads the Gothic font that was chosen for the  advertising as THERE MILL BE BLOOD?  Have a look.  The "W" in the word WILL looks like an "M".  I can't believe there hasn't been consternation over this.  At least a memo or two--

THERE MILL BE BLOOD--

There's not a mill to be seen in this movie....

Precision isn't always a good thing, in spite of Sister Josepha Kennedy telling us it was in fifth grade math class.

SMART CAR and HUMMER

These...cars?..are coming to the States.  They are actually going to be allowed on the streets--

They're kidding, right?  No one will be able to see them, and they will be run over constantly. 

This car is smaller than a Volkswagen.  I know because when someone sits in it their head makes a bulge in the roof.  Their arms flop out both windows.

The car is a cartoon.  I don't know why they don't just put the steering wheel in the middle and be done with it.

This orange monstrosity isn't a car either.  This is an elephant.  An angry elephant.  There was a time when it was unthinkable that this car would ever be seen anywhere but on a military base.   

Why is this behemoth on the streets of the good ole USA?  Because there are those who feel certain the rules of modest behavior do not apply to them.

So, we have the self righteous mouse who will snap up the Smart car.  They are the ones who don't shave their armpits and only eat vitamins.  They were the ones who got A's in school.

And we already have the buffoons who choose a Hummer for their ride.  They, of course, have face-lifts and take steroids passed the age of sixty, and are the ones who made fun of those A students in school.

They are both bucking the need to fit in, anyway. 

They are both wearing their hearts on their sleeve. 

KATE MOSS'S BANGS

I woke up this morning, after a restless night's sleep, and this thought leapt into my mind--

I HATE KATE MOSS'S BANGS.

It is probably my brain's solution for too much politics yesterday.

Or maybe because it's the first day of Lent.

Both Lent and politics can produce great anxiety for me.

So, finding out that having an opinion about Kate Moss's haggard bangs may be the panacea--

Let me immediately drag out thirty years of fashion magazines so that I can rest even easier during the rest of the primaries and Lent.