FIVE URGENT DIET FACTS plus one

This is what I have learned so far, over and over and over:

1. Some substances being sold to pour on your cereal or in your coffee can disgust you so much that you rush to a coffee shop and put three sugars and two creams in your coffee.

2. Absolutely put down the spoon between bites even if you are reading the exciting part of the mystery novel.

3. Chewing each bite 26 times prepares food for your stomach and can make you late for work.

4. After a certain age, losing a lot of weight can make your skin hang like a monk’s bathrobe.

5. After you reach a weight your doctor likes, you still MUST view your rear when trying on pants.

6. It is not nice to punish your kids by making them drink the stuff mentioned in #1.

Good for John Frieda

When the sprayer stopped working on my daily standby Frizz-ease    leave-in conditioner, I had to go to work looking like...well, picture Raggedy Ann with her little cloth thumb in the electric socket.  The online help wasn't making me feel better, so this morning I called the 800 crew. 

I got an actual grown woman who seemed to want to help!  She asked for a lot of numbers off the bottle, and quickly promised me a coupon for a replacement.  

She said it will take 8 to 10 days for the coupon to get here, so til then, the looks of this hair will at least provide fun for the local grooming police.   But the bottom line is, John's customer service is SO far above the other companies I've called in years.

HIPS HAVE COME A LONG WAY, BABY

I figure it started in the caves. Despite the hassle of preparing mastadon dinner without fire, Cave Wife has developed a little junk in the trunk, so to speak. Cave Husband stops packing for his hunting trip long enough to point to her buns and snarl. He holds up a much bigger and stiffer animal skin and demands she put it on. Their pet saber-tooth, Sabey, snarls at him to get away from the wife. Cave guy smacks the tiger one and stomps out. A neighbor has heard the commotion and shows Wife how to fasten the tight skin with strips of sharpened bone. The word was out--no pudge, no jiggle.
No kidding.

For centuries, women complied. Not content with whalebone corsets, women even egged each other on to bite the bullet, or the stick, and have lower ribs removed to give them the perfect wasp waist. At least they didn't have to go to boring corporate parties until they healed. Botched rib-ectomies and changing styles led us back to the corset. It even filtered down to the middle classes. What a bear trying to get something out of the oven or the wringer wearing those whalebones.

WWII put many women in overalls and pipe wrenches. That pretty much guaranteed the decline of the corset. Luckily the hard work and the swing dancing kept us thin.

Then Lucille Ball arrives via TV, vacuuming in heels and a turbo waist cincher. We laughed. And we bought the Playtex girdle. NO bones, no laces, no air. A women with a bad back couldn't even pull one on. My boyfriend said in public that I should always wear a girdle. He was replaceable.

Spoiled, we demanded even more comfort, like the new control top pantyhose! We swore by them for years.

Now TV strikes again. We don't look like Sex and the City! All that rotten time in the gym didn't make us look like Top Models! Barefoot sandals, so no control tops. Jeans with almost no rise. We don't dare sit down. Muffin tops are scaring small children.

Again the manufacturers come to the rescue--with Spanx. No jiggle from chin to ankles. Back problems? A friendly orthpedic nurse helps you pull it on. No bones, no laces, no air. Free at last.

FACE WORK AND GROCERIES

The recent dental unpleasantness left me with a slightly unmatching left side of the face. Later, I'll probably preach about dentistry being in the stone age. And right now, any photo ops are right side only.

Meanwhile, I took a recipe from Nina Garcia's THE STYLE STRATEGY, and risked the honey facial. Perfect for multi-tasking while ironing, despite the danger of dripping on my work blouse, or someone coming to the door.

For years I'd thought groceries as cosmetics were funny. Then came the day I had to throw out my sunscreen-to-prevent-farmers-tan. It was announced worldwide as THE BAD SUNSCREEN. Gotta wonder what else in the medicine cabinet and the bedside table might be THE BAD CREAMS.

So into the honey pot. It did seem to ease the redness that made the doctor forbid wine for four weeks. It also made my cheeks kinda nice and soft (alas no one noticed but me.) Best of all, I didn't need a bowl scraper and trowel to get it off. You know how you don't dare touch your toast-with-honey or you'll stick to the tablecloth and even the table. But it washed right off.

Buoyed up by that success, I was ready to follow her advice and put the plain yoghurt on my T zone. (That's the middle of the face, guys.) The grocery didn't have individual plain yoghurts, so I didn't get to make my pores disappear. Maybe next week I'll get the big tub of plain, and foist the rest of it off on someone who would actually eat it.