40 lashes. More or less.

21st Century lashes gone mad

I learned last week that eyelashes are a recent development in mankind’s history.
I have photographic evidence.

Look at this lady.

Nice jewelry. I wouldn’t mind a necklace like that. But if I had to choose between it and eyelashes, I’d go with eyelashes every time.

Or this woman. 

 Such a pleasant face. In spite of the fact that her eyes are apparently killing her, trying to keep all the 17th century dust out of her eyes. Because she has no lashes.

Here is a pretty young lady. Look at that hairstyle. 

Just think what she could have done with a nice fringe of lashes. Even just a top set.

This poor little girl. 

Feeling all pensive that she is lashless. She is wishing on a handkerchief bunny rabbit. Please, please little hanky bunny. Bring me some lashes for my birthday.

By the 19th century things were looking up.
See this wedding procession?

Hardly anyone is smiling. Especially the young women who aren’t the bride.

Now look at a close-up of the groom’s face.

 He is looking smug, sort of like, “Oh yeah. I got me one with those new-fangled lashes.”
 
When my son was born I, the concerned mother, asked the nurse if it was normal that he had no eyelashes. She promised me they would come in and they did. How nice that he could have been born in the 20th century. 400 years earlier the nurse would have just looked at me and asked in puzzlement, ‘What’s an eyelash?”

Raspberry Filling Women: To Tea or Not to Tea

Sure, it looks pretty now. But wait till it is filled with tea.

I don’t like tea. I like the notion of tea. Not the beverage. At intervals of my life
I’ve given tea a fair shot.
 
-My coffee-guzzling parents, for some odd reason, served tea post-Sunday afternoon nap, pre-evening worship service. They drank their coffee black, but loaded up their tea cups with cream and sugar. So did I. We all dunked our Rippin’ Good cookies in the tea. We all looked morosely into our half-filled cups of sugary, milky, sodden-cookie crumbed tea. And then my father would say, “Time to get ready for church!” and we would dump the tepid messes down the sink. And then we would do it all over again the next week.

-My best friend in 8th grade gave me a box of Bigelow’s Assorted Teas all wrapped up in fancy paper for my birthday one year, along with a little teacup. I was captivated. It was the prettiest wrapped gift I’d ever gotten. Its beauty, and my loyalty to our friendship, sustained me through the entire box of tea. When it was gone my mother asked if I would like to put more tea on my Christmas list. I burst into tears.

-Several college friends from New Jersey were attached to their tea routines by an Orange Pekoe and Earl Grey lifeline. I learned that I could be a quite fabulous actress when my East Coast Cool Factor was at stake. I sat through numerous dorm room tea gatherings, smiling and agreeing to second cups, which I swigged with a hatred usually reserved for rodents and algebra.

And now I am an adult. A coffee-loving adult at peace with her tea enmity. An aficionado who clips articles about the health benefits of coffee. A coffee patriot who has tried to ignore all the raves about how women my age should drink green tea, or ginseng tea, or chamomile or hibiscus or lily of the valley tea. They promise me youth, vitality, and an efficient digestive system.

Once again I make my wistful way past the coffee delights and slump in front of the tea display.
Thirty minutes and thirty dollars later I have a tea to fight colds, one to reduce blood pressure, one to increase antioxidants, and one to make me relax.
Exhausted, I head home, and put on a pot of coffee.

Captions United Against Sandy

Hurricane relief will (hopefully) pour into the east coast.
This may be the only called CUAS (Captions United Against Sandy) 
Here's how it works. Below are photos of The Prude's dog.
YOU come up with a caption (or just a comment)
for one of the first 2 photos of Bonny.
(The third one was already brilliantly captioned by my middle son)

For every caption (or even comment) that is made here, on Facebook or Google Plus
The Prude will donate a dollar to the hurricane relief on the east coast.

Designate your caption for
-the lip photo
-the ear photo

Seeing the devastation and frustration and no-end-in-sight misery in New York
and New Jersey makes us grateful for our blessings, realize the next natural cataclysm could be in our town, and leads us to wish we could do more to help.

And it gives me another chance to share pictures of my ridiculously cute, zero-dignity dog.

LIP PHOTO

EAR PHOTO

THE MIDDLE SON'S WINNER

ARE YOU MY MOTHER?

Can't wait to read these!

Raspberry Filling Women and the 40 Winks

Want to see a twinkle in the eye of a lady on the plus side of 50?
Brawny-chested men won’t put it there.
Chocolate? Possibly, but there is a more immediate craving.
Jewels? Vacations? A lifetime supply of Oil of Olay Deep Wrinkle Remover?  Is that the best you have?
Fuzzy slippers, an afghan and a recliner?
Oooooohhhh.
Now you are talking.
We don’t always want our pulses to race, our taste buds to quiver or our social status to elevate.

We want a nap.

Not a long one. Enough to release stress but not so long that we forget what year it is. Or which millennium.
Our sleep should be deep enough for little cherubs to do a happy dance in the corners of our mind, but not so deep that the cherubs metamorphasize into winged dust globules with digestive issues.

A satisfying nap will do a Raspberry Filling Woman more good than a shot of Botox, a shot of 5 Hour Energy or a Valium shot. It will give her brain a chance to clear, her creativity and energy a chance to recharge and those funny little wrinkles along her top lip a chance to relax.

We’ve been storing away missed nap opportunities for years and now, with kids a bit older, or some time off from work, we want to cash in on all the naps we pined for during our education years, our child-rearing years, our career building years.

The nap helps build stamina. It is good for our hearts. It helps make up for sleep lost at night because of demented hormones, a snoring spouse or a barking dog.

Ladies. Throw off the shackles of guilt, the fear that we’ll be labelled as lazy and libeled as slugs.
Stonewall Jackson, Ronald Reagan, Winston Churchill, Thomas Edison, JFK, and Napoleon Bonaparte all benefitted from naps. They achieved greatness. And they are all men. This, my friends, is why women our age do not get the notice we deserve. We aren’t famous because we’re behind on our naps.

Let’s change all that, starting about 1pm today. Cuddle down, cover up, and snooze. Rise up, go forth, and change the world. A grateful nation may name an airport for you. Or at the very least, a dessert.

Passing Fancy

I must like this post. This is the second time I've reprinted it.

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Midwestern leaves, exhausted from dressing up every day for the gala event of Autumn, slip into soft brown dressing gowns and fall any which way into heaps and piles for their winter slumber.

The sun decides it has lavished enough radiance on us to last through next year. It grants a few gracious hours but transfers the bulk of its favors to another hemisphere that has impatiently waited its turn for light-drenched days.

Creatures that abandon the Midwest and follow the sun call anxiously to each other to hurry. Snow is coming! Hurry! Those animals required to stay spend waning days gathering food and fatness to themselves, driven by an uneasy urgency. Male deer, knowing that late fall will shed their enticing, entrancing antlers as ruthlessly as it sheds leaves from trees, parade in front of females, libido-impelled to ignore dangers of shotgun blasts and headlights.

The ground feels the warmth seep away, sparing only a bit for some hardy mums and asters. It steels itself to endure the crushing weight of tractors, rakes, and combines, hugging the knowledge that soon a comforter of snow will shield it from raw winds and ravaging machines and it can rest and recuperate till spring.

Then comes the wind. It bullies from branches the few leaves that were hoping festivities would resume. It shouts down the birds who spent the summer singing in the dawn until, recognizing an adversary with greater endurance and endless reserves, they give up altogether and are silent.

The glorious extravaganza of a Midwest autumn is over. It won’t celebrate again till next year. It retires to dream up the perfect date, theme and invitation list for Autumn 2013, and allows Fall to work out last minute details with Winter on the exact date the White and Ice Festivities will commence.

The Myth of the Severed Umbilical Cord

The new mom double-checks with her husband.
Yes, he assures her. The baby is fine, and the doctor did cut the umbilical cord.
You’re sure?
Of course. They even offered me the opportunity to cut it but I figured, hey, it’s their job after all.
And, New Mommy reminds him gently, you were trying not to faint.
There is that, he admits.

New Mom knows better. She’s heard of this condition but half hoped it wasn’t true. The cord only seems cut. In spite of all  empirical evidence to the contrary, including the clamp on her little one’s tummy, it is still there, linking mother to child. The child may be unaware of its presence, but Mom is uncomfortably certain it may be a permanent part of her own essence.

Sometimes the cord is almost unnoticeable. Sometimes it pulses with painful fear for the health and safety of the child on the other end. Or pride wells up when baby proves to the world it is the genius Mom knows it to be. Other times–teething, potty training–Mom can be heard calling the umbilical cord nasty names.

The invisible cord has some remarkable characteristics. It attaches its fully formed link the first time an adoptive mother holds the child of her heart.  A father is astounded to feel, somewhere in his midsection, tugs of fear, sadness, pride and delight for his offspring.

Wouldn’t you think as children get older, move away, get jobs and get married, that the cord would finally snap? If nothing else, it has to be getting brittle with age. Mom is lulled into a false sense of release. I still love my kids, she thinks, but at least I don’t need to worry about them like I used to.

Silly Mother. It only takes one phone call. Mom, I lost my job. Mom, he broke up with me. Mom, I have the flu. Mom, the ultrasound shows there may be something wrong with the baby.

The umbilical cord kicks into high gear. Mom’s insides are twisted and knotted and all she can think about is how to help. Prayers intensify. Somehow the crisis is endured, and Mom has to come to peace with the umbilical cord that will always link her to her children, and then grow little branches that attach her love and concern and pride to her grandchildren. The cord was never really cut. It just moved higher and now is attached firmly to her heart.

God's World

Poets give utterance to the wordless passions of our souls.

Edna St. Vincent Millay must have gone through an autumn similar to the one God graced the Midwest with this year, and her words give voice to our joy in it.

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
   Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!

   Thy mists, that roll and rise!

Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag

And all but cry with colour!   That gaunt crag
To crush!   To lift the lean of that black bluff!

World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all,
         But never knew I this;  

         Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart,—Lord, I do fear

Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me,—let fall

No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

Edna St. Vincent Millay