Stephanie Dolgoff's Blog, page 9

The Formerly Venn Diagram

Too freakin' true. This is by Jessica Hagy, on her blog, Indexed (I hope she doesn't mind that I lifted her art to show it off. Go visit her, too! Thanks, Cory, for sharing.)

I'll only add that I can deal with the pimples and I can deal with the wrinkles. It's the pimples ON the wrinkles that really kick my ass.

Future shock

Meet George Jetson, his boy Elroy, etc.

My girls, who are 7, Skype their little friend Dahlia from school like it's nothing. And it is nothing to them. But to me? It's huge. I remember when "video phones" were a fantasy. I used to be relieved that there was no such thing so I didn't have to worry whether I was dressed or bleaching my mustache before answering the phone.

I know it's incredibly square and old-sounding to say this, but I feel like we're living in the future and any day now, we'll be strapping on the jet packs and zipping off to school, eating pills from a home vending machine that encompass an entire meal and being waited on by a robot maid.

At the same time, the hapless dad will still have rough days at the office and a priggish boss and get stuck in air traffic and the mom will look like Betty Rubble and be way smarter than him and the daughter Judy will want to be in a pop band and the world will not have changed at all but for the bells and whistles.

Let's do an inventory of what was on the Jetsons or was the stuff of our imagination when we were kids that has now come to pass: video phones, robot domestics…what else? I seem to remember a lot of conveyor belts, which Whole Foods has for sushi, but I don't think that's new. I remember wondering why everyone didn't have walkie talkies, and now we all essentially do. What am I missing?

Bo Canada

Sorry for the long post drought. I have been busy–getting ready to move, work deadlines, all of that. I have a few posts queued up in my head, but for now, check this out. Sarah Hampson of the Globe and Mail up in Toronto says it well and no, I don't just like her because she interviewed me for her article (although I'm glad she did.)

More soon and have a great day.

Photo by Vancouver Laser CC

Color me Formerly

Our family goes gray late, and so I haven't yet thought seriously about coloring my hair. I have maybe eight or 10 visible grays, not enough to do anything about, if that's what I decide to do. Oh, who am I kidding? I will totally color my hair when he time comes. I can already tell I won't have the beautiful silver grays so much as the pale wiry yellowish grays that defy a flat iron.

My girls (who are 7) have been pestering me to put a streak in their hair for years now. Their little friend has had one (pink, then green) since pre-K, and honestly, I didn't see a reason to say no. It's hair, not a tattoo. It can and will be undone with the passage of time. I'm not one of those people who believes dying your hair an unconventional color is a like gateway drug to satanic worship. And I didn't like spraying that toxic temporary stuff we used every so often. So with their dad's OK, I took them over to Supercuts this weekend. The results, above. They are thrilled.

I did notice the complete lack of desire on my part to dabble, which is not surprising. I've never felt the urge to before, and at 43, none was forthcoming. The girls didn't even ask what color I wanted to try, and neither did the stylists. Not that long ago, I might have found that mildly offensive, as in, What, I'm so obviously Formerly that fuschia bangs are not an option for me? Now, not even a pang. That's probably more telling than anything having to do with hair.

Yep. Officially over myself.

Officially over myself

OK, now I'm really starting to worry.

Those of you who have been reading this blog since the beginning and/or have read My Formerly Hot Life know that while on any given day I veer wildly between shock and occasional horror at the realities of adult tweendom and good-humored acceptance of aging, mostly I strive to laugh at the whole ridiculous inevitable mess and get on with my day. Laughing at myself for caring as much as I do about no longer being young takes the sting out, and I can truthfully say that the overall direction of my emotional trajectory is toward greater happiness and acceptance and life satisfaction.

And then something comes up and knocks me on my disappearing ass and I'm startled anew by the whole process.

I was just in the gym and the TV was tuned to Regis and Kelly, a show I used to catch as I dressed to leave the house and, well, feel a little superior to the folks somewhere calling in to the trivia portion with answers about yesterday's celebrity guest that proved they never missed an episode. What did Emeril Lagasse say was his least favorite vegetable as a child, that he used to feed to his dog, who puked under the table, thus revealing his deception to his mother? Please. I had someplace to go, which I thought made me better, somehow a more evolved human. I'm not proud to have been such a snob, but that's what flashed through my head.

Today, for whatever reason I found myself CRACKING UP at the two of them. Like, laughing out loud as if they were Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert, who are much cooler to find amusing.

I've always had a soft spot for Kelly. She's disarmingly kind and funny, and has a way of channeling her obvious intelligence for good rather than snark in a way that leaves you unable to dislike her, even before you've had your coffee.

But Reege was always the symbol of old fartdom. His grumpy routine struck me as false and trumped up and I didn't care about his affinity for Notre Dame or golf or how much trouble his wife and daughters were giving him at home. He represented a demographic I consciously didn't want to be associated with.

But there I was, giggling like an idiot at some joke he made about the Neti pot (which Kelly had him use on TV for comic effect) being akin to waterboarding and that she had to stop, that he'd tell her anything she wanted to know. I have no idea why that was funny to me. (A Neti pot is one of those tiny teapot things that you use to pour salt water in one nostril and out the other to clear your sinuses. I use one on occasion.)

It really wasn't that funny, and my  younger self would have had the ability to discriminate between the truly funny and the cheap laugh, which that was. Not me now. I went on to laugh for the rest of the segment, out loud with my headphones on, like one of those people at the gym who, well, laughs out loud with her headphones on!

I found myself starting to feel mildly sentimental about Regis retiring–when did I start to care about stuff like that? The next thing you know I'll be invested in who is replacing him and probably calling in to the trivia portion of the show. What is happening to me?

Or maybe he is and always was just plain funny, and I was too cool for school and so couldn't let myself laugh because, as many young people do, I thought that liking something so mainstream and middle-America meant I was mediocre, and hence easily amused. Or maybe I am now closer to being an old fart and so Regis is now speaking my language, or I his, and I just don't care that I'm the lady laughing at the gym with her headphones on.

Either way, my name is Stephanie Dolgoff, and I enjoy Regis and Kelly. I am officially over myself.

Photo by David Shankbone CC

How cool is this?

My Formerly Hot Life has been out since August, so when stuff like this pops up, it makes me smile and reminds me people are actually reading the thing…very cool.

Not crazy, just a little unwell

The results of a 12-year Danish study of thousands of women published in the New England Journal of Medicine suggest that having an abortion does not harm your mental health, but that having a baby very well might. Here's the report in the Associated Press.

Whatever your views on abortion, what this says to me most of all is that either children make you nuts (which 2 hours with any toddler on any day in Denmark or Dubuque would tell you) or that people who want to have children are already nuts to begin with. Anxiety and depression were the biggest complains of those in the study who sought treatment.

I'd go so far as to posit that women who accidentally get pregnant and decide to have the baby are marginally less bonkers than people (like me) who spent thousands of dollars on fertility treatments in order to have kids, and then wind up with twins, which will make you exponentially more mentally ill than a single baby. Accidental pregnancy is a passive act (although of course passive acts like not using birth control are decisions of a kind) whereas undergoing IVF requires great effort, discomfort and expenditure of resources. It also requires you to have your partner masturbate into a cup to much-fondled porn magazines in a sterile room in a clinic, which means you've managed to draw at least one other person into your insanity.

(Love my girls, desperately wanted them, would die for them, etc. But they still stretch the limits of my mental health on a daily basis.)

So: Should birth control pills be prescribed for one's mental health before the fact, as opposed to Xanax or Prozac after?

Or was the 15-minute argument over whether Sasha could wear her sisters' brand new suede Minnetonka moccasins in the 20 inches of snow we have here in New York City simply the start of a challenging day?

Ahem.

Stop the presses: Nicole Kidman admits to using Botox.

I know you'll find that hard to believe, because, like I was, you were positive that her forehead was naturally paralyzed and weirdly waxy like those $4 apples they sell on the Upper East Side.

I mean, there were so many other reasons she could have looked like that, such as, well…hmmm.

OK, perhaps she was born with a particularly rare form of a neuromuscular disorder that only affected the forehead area. Right? Now I'll bet you feel bad for thinking she was simply worried about looking older, like the rest of us vain, shallow, petty people. Or maybe she had the foresight not to furrow her brow over the previous four decades of her life, like, ever. Didja ever think of that? I mean, I'm sure if you or I had been smart enough to have never worried or laughed or reacted in a surprised manner, ever, we'd look just like her. I'm 43. So is she. Until today I figured my lined brow was my out freakin' fault for being shocked so often at how celebrities lie.

But it turns out, no. Per People.com:

"I've tried a lot of things, but aside from sports and good nutrition, most things don't make a difference," Kidman, 43, tells the German magazine TV Movie. "I have also tried Botox."

"I didn't like how my face looked afterwards," she says. "Now I don't use it anymore – I can move my forehead again!"

First of all, I haven't noticed any radical forehead movement happening of late.  Second, what's with the "I've tried it" business? If you're going to admit it, you may as well say, 'Yeah, I used it a lot a lot a lot. Still am, and you know what? I'm a movie star. Get off my case." It's like that Bill Clinton "didn't inhale" silliness. Riiiight.

This smacks of a dumbass PR decision–she was starting to look silly for denying it (as opposed to looking silly because her forehead gleamed like a beacon in the distance, warning ships of rocky shores) so someone told her to just admit to trying it. "That way, when they say you're addicted to Botox, your story will be out there already: You're not addicted. You tried it, didn't like it, and why would you admit to trying it if it were a problem for you?"

Sigh. Why indeed.

Photo by Edwin Martinez1 CC

Low moments in parenting, Vol. 489

Scavenging the unslurped milk from my child's store brand Honey Nut Cheerios bowl for use in my coffee because, through nobody's fault but my own, I am out of milk and unable to drag my carcass to the grocery for more without benefit of coffee.

This scene was closely followed by another which you'll just have to use your imagination to picture: Me, with crazy bedhead and a teaspoon, trying to corral soggy generic Cheerios as they swam away like pollywogs. I considered using a tea strainer but couldn't face looking for it and in the end gave up and drank the coffee with the cereal in it. Which wasn't bad, actually, if a little sweet. Which reminded me that my kids eat too much sugar, which made me feel momentarily crappy about my parenting, thus topping off this particular Low Moment in Parenting.

I quickly let that go, though. On balance, a good morning. I have two beautiful, healthy kids; I have coffee; I have hair product to tame the bedhead and it's cold so I get to wear a hat. All things considered, It's a good day.

I hope you have one, too.

Where we live