Six Words Can Speak Volumes

Phew. Valentine's Day is over. As any girl not in a relationship can tell you, Valentine's Day quit being fun after elementary school candy and card parties ended.

Now I'm not a compete cynic, I love showing other people that I care about them - I bought the three ladies in my office heart-shaped donuts from Dunkin on Monday! However, somewhere along the line, sharing your feelings with loved ones in honor of St. Valentine became a showy sport. Watching all your coworkers get flowers, hearing about battles over restaurant reservations and stepping onto a train full of guys carrying dozens of red balloons and bouquets of roses is just not that much fun for the rest of us. Am I being cranky or does that all seem a tad cheesy? I for one, would not know what to do with a bunch of balloons, and roses don't really thrill me (I do love the yellow ones, though)...

Rant over, but in honor of love - both present and lost - and the not-always-so-fun holiday that just passed, I wanted to share this. The New York Times recently posted an article about SMITH Magazine, a literary magazine that compiles narratives from readers, one of the most popular being their Six-Word Memoir project, the recent subject being love and heartbreak. It's Twitter-meets-poetry! These pared down love letters are beautiful and simple. Some are funny, some are sad, some are just plain heartwarming. Check out a few of my favorites:

Happy endings...

• Wounded heart healed by good man.
• Dog approves; maybe this guy's good?
• Clueless Newlyweds Kids Laughs Still Thriving
• Ups, downs and repeat. That's love.
• Just married. Still figuring it out.

Not so much...

• Love hurts. Choose vodka or valium.
• He wasn't worth the panic attacks.
• Loved her madly - then went mad.
• I loved, he tolerated, then left.
• Background check first; give heart second.

What would your six word memoir on love (or loss) be? Here's mine:

College love ended. I became me.

Censoring our Love Lives

I caught this video on the Glamour magazine blog, Smitten the other day and I LOVE it. It's hilarious, sad and oh so true.

Why do we do this to ourselves? And when did we learn to do this? I want to say at some point in my life, before I was cynical and before dating was a group activity where everyone weighed in with their personal rules and guidelines, I spoke the first draft of my mind to boys.

Ahh, sweet sweet naivety.

God forbid we look foolish, or put ourselves out there when we're unsure of what the response will be. Don't get me wrong - nobody should bring out the crazy too early in a relationship, but there's something to be said about acting honest and being yourself. In the video, they erase every twinge of emotion from their conversation. In an effort to look cool, they make sure that neither one knows that they like one another at all.

At my first real job post-college, my boss was blunt and no nonsense. Her first comments on an email I drafted for an editor? Way too long and WAY too many exclamation points.

I learned to bland-ify my emails and make them more business-like, which was important for sure, but I always felt like they read as a tad rude. Emails and the written word can be so easily misconstrued. I'm a friendly person and I want editors and clients to see that through my correspondence.

Now at my second agency and with more freedom and trust from my boss, I write emails the way I want to. Are there exclamation points used? Yep. Even -gasp- emoticons from time to time. But, I learned my lesson from my first boss, and I keep my exclamation points and smiley faces to a minimum. I don't ever want to come across as cheesy, which is apparently my weakness.

The lesson here? Send your second draft.

I try not to obsess over what I say to the opposite sex, or anyone for that matter through email, gchat, facebook... BUT, I do try to keep my crazy in check, and read it over once to make sure I get my point across without going overboard.

I'm a Stainiac!

The weather in NY has been brutal since Christmas, so I'm stuck in that winter mindset that feels as if there is NO END IN SIGHT. I'm always cold, my skin is pale, my lips are chapped, my hands are dry...blech.

However, what's the one nice beauty benefit to cold weather?? Rosy cheeks and just-bitten lips!

And on that note, I've found my new favorite cheek and lip stain to enhance what Mother Nature gave ya - Stainiac in Beauty Queen (a deep raspberry pink) by TheBalm Cosmetics. It's a water-based gel, so it glides on really smooth, blends well and doesn't "set" til you're ready (aka no leftover streaks!). I love the lip gloss applicator wand - it makes it so quick and easy to use.

I especially love how it looks on my cheeks - the color is subtle, but it stays put, too. I dabbed it on my cheeks at 8:30am this morning, and my cheeks still have rosy definition now, past 10pm. Amazing!

It works a couple ways on lips, too - I've been dabbing on a quick hint of Stainiac in the morning before work to boost life back into my chapped, weather-worn lips. Topped with a thick coat of Vaseline and Chapstick, it still guards against the blistery weather. The effect is probably only noticeable to me, but it gives that extra little something to my lips and keeps me from feeling too washed out.

When I layer the Stainiac on more, it takes on an near-lipstick look that's great for nights out. I hate feeling like I have gunk on my lips, so I'm not a huge fan of lipsticks and colored glosses, but a stain like this layered under lip balm and/or a clear gloss looks really nice. And on the plus side, you don't have to reapply...this sucker stays on for the long haul. Here's a little pic of me out with friends wearing it on my lips and cheeks. Love it!

I've tried 2 other cheek and lip stains in the past - Tarte Flush and Benefit Posietint, and so far I like this one better than both others. Posietint is a really pretty pale pink and leaves a great sheen on summer skin, but if it's not rubbed in quick enough, I notice faint blotches on my cheeks. And Tarte blends really well and has a cute color, but I feel it fades fairly quickly.

I'm so glad I discovered TheBalm! I spotted it recently at Sephora and the kitschy cute packaging and flirty product names (similar to Benefit) called my name. Ironically enough, both brands are based out of San Francisco, but TheBalm has one major point of difference - they love pugs just as much as I do!! The company site lists bios for three pug mascots in the office - Wheezie, Buddy and Guinevere...all almost as adorable as my Marlon. Not only that, they have a product called TheBalm to the Rescue, a vegan lip treatment (great for this time of year!) whose proceeds go a pug rescue organization in the Bay Area. That's next on my shopping list for sure.

So if the cold winter weather has got you down, perk up your mood and your lips and cheeks with a fun new stain!

New Year reviews and resolutions

The New Year is here and I have to say, I have high hopes for 2011.

I do make resolutions, but I really attempt for doable things - last year my goal was to run a 5k (and I did it...4 times!). This year, my physical goals are to run a 10k and get my finances back in shape. My loftier (read: mental) goals that I hope to tackle this year are finding the clarity within all my daydreams and putting some direction in my life. And further than that, having the courage to take action and make the changes I'm seeking. I have some things in mind, but I won't go into detail here just yet...

This year seems like a promising year for me to make significant changes. Back in San Francisco when I visited the psychic, she told me that in the coming year, my life would come together and I would be happy. I also recently figured out my numerology chart for 2011, and out of the 9 year cycles our lives go through, this is my year 1 - my banner year! Here's the sum-up of what a personal year one denotes:

Personal Year 1...A New Beginning In Your Life
The current year is the beginning of a new nine year cycle for you. It holds the promise of being an exciting new adventure, with life taking on new challenges that pave the way for the next cycle of nine years in your life. This is a time to clarify your goals and it is a time to act on them. Hard work may be necessary to get a new venture moving. Your physical strength will be up during this year, perhaps higher than it has been for some time, as you have some special needs for this extra energy. If you are unable or unwilling to answer the call to change and make the move in your life the appears necessary now, your prospects may be delayed until the next cycle begins in nine years. Because of this, you feel like an adventure, a major change in your life, something new. New goals should be clearly set and worked toward, as this is really a new beginning of a nine year cycle and it is best not to dwell on the past at this time. This will be fairly easy for you to do because most of the problems and disappointments of the past will tend to disappear, leaving the way open for these new challenges. This is a great time; use it to its full advantage.

Please don't take me for a gimicky weirdo that reads too much into the zodiac, but sometimes, I really do feel like there's something to it. Not that I rule my life by horoscopes...it's just another way to understand your personality and where you stand in the world; another perspective to look at and measure your life and experiences against. And you know what, the psychic, the numerology chart, and even my fortune cookies on New Year's Day this year (a pleasant surprise is in store for me, and my existence has a positive contribution to mankind!) excited me. They give me hope and mirror what I've been feeling inside for the past several months - that I am figuring it out and that the sky is clearing up ahead for me.

Aside from resolutions, packed bars with expensive cover charges and crowded gyms, the New Year for me mostly signifies a passage of time. My birthday does the same. Each year on these memorable days, I find myself reminiscing about previous years and how much I've grown (or not...) in the past year. Sometimes it causes a few tears, but normally it's nice to take some time to reflect on the previous year and the highs and lows, and where am I am now compared to where I was before. I found a really helpful tool for this in the December issue of Whole Living magazine - check it out below (the print is a little small - my apologies).

I just did my "Year-End Review" last night, and I really liked the thinking and free-flowing writing it allowed me to do. Even though I enjoy writing and do it often for work and for this blog, I'm a perfectionist and typically re-read and fix things many times before sending or publishing. It was nice to not think about grammar or proper sentences and just let my mind and pen wander for once. Now I just have to figure out a place to store it so I don't lose it before the next New Year! I definitely think this is something I want to put into practice for each year.

Happy New Year, and may all your resolutions, hopes and dreams for the coming year come true!

the Dragon Tattoo Phenomenon

After hearing so much talk about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series, I finally tackled the trilogy of novels.

Set in Sweden, the first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo introduces a cast of characters including investigative journalist and ultimate bachelor Mikael Blomkvist, genius hacker and antisocial 90 lb Lisbeth Salander, and private security company owner Dragon Armansky. Through a series of events, they team up to solve a near 50 year old crime and sift through an intense family drama that includes more scandal than you would ever think possible.

In the second book, The Girl Who Played with Fire, we learn the backstory of Lisbeth's own family drama that shaped her life and caused her general mistrust of all authority figures. Along the way, Lisbeth is wrongfully (maybe??) accused of 3 high-profile murders and is the center of a nationwide manhunt.

And finally, in the third book, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, Lisbeth's small group of trusted confidantes comes together to expose a huge government cover-up that's lasted 30 years and ruined many lives, including Lisbeth's and her mother's.

The three books all carried a common theme of exposing sexual violence towards women, but more than that, it even felt a bit like feminist literature. It seemed odd at times that it was in fact, written by a man. All the female leads were incredibly strong women - Lisbeth is 4'11", 90 lbs, bisexual, and knows how to box, handle weapons and kick any guy's ass, Erika Berger is the Editor-in-Chief of a major magazine and has an open and sexually creative relationship with her husband, Monica Figuerola is a hardcore policewoman, body builder and remains single and unattached to guys...you get the point.

Each chapter in the first book opened with an alarming statistic like this one: Eighteen percent of the women in Sweden have at one time been threatened by a man. In the third book, each chapter opened with a story tidbit about women in power throughout history, for example: An estimated 600 women served during the American Civil War. They had signed up disguised as men. Hollywood has missed a significant chapter of cultural history here - or is this history ideologically too difficult to deal with? Historians have often struggled to deal with women who do not respect gender distinctions, and nowhere is that distinction more sharply drawn than in the question of armed combat. (Even today, it can cause controversy having a woman on a typical Swedish moose hunt.)

Reading the various statistics and watching the development of these powerful women through all 3 novels almost made me feel bad. It brought me back to my 'French Women in Literature' class during my freshman year of college. I've just never felt "feminist enough" or something. Of course I'm proud to be a woman and I'm incredibly grateful for the women who have come before me and allowed me all the freedoms I enjoy today, but I've never felt like a minority and don't really feel the need to call so much attention to those topics.

But reading these books made me think. Do I play into gender stereotypes and baby myself because I am a girl??

Silly example, but over the past few years, I've been attempting to improve my athleticism. I've never been a couch potato, but now that I'm grown, I don't have three nights a week of dance classes and cheerleading practice and I want to fill the void with skills that are more universal and can be continued all my life, like running. But do I give myself excuses because I'm a petite woman? I've been running on and off for about six years, but I never felt confident or any good until this year when I trained and signed up for my first 5k race. I'm still pretty darn slow and I tell myself it's because I'm tiny...but really, I probably just need a drill sargeant to light a fire under my ass and make me go harder, longer, and without stopping in order for me to really improve.

It's an interesting thing to chew on. I mean, women and men are built differently, but do we play into these differences too much? Women's rights have come a long way, but we definitely still think of certain careers and lifestyle choices as more masculine or feminine. How much of it is necessary and how much is basic prejudice and stereotyping? I feel like this is a debate straight out of a Sociology 101 class, but if we didn't give girls dolls when they were little, would they still ask to play with them?

Ah well, anyways, it's a great set of novels and really pulls you into the drama. The only negatives I'll say about the stories are that they suffer from "Stephen King syndrome" - they're super intense and full of action, but drop-off in the ending (I could've done without the last 1/4 of the first novel). And on a minor note, the Swedish character names can be really difficult to keep track of; they all look the same! I'm excited to see the film adaptations of these books in the next year or two - hopefully they don't disappoint (even though most book translations to movies don't ever live up...).

I'm domestic, who knew? The Pecan Pie Adventure

It's one of those classic stories from my childhood that I'm still teased about - one time while trying to make chocolate chip cookies with my best friend, we didn't read the recipe correctly and put a 1/2 cup of baking soda in the batch instead of a 1/2 teaspoon. Salty and disgusting, it was determined that I was not a baker.

Over the years I've learned how to cook various things, and when provoked, I really can cook a nice meal. Problem is, I'm not provoked enough and the "kitchen" in my studio apartment is literally the size of a small recessed closet, so it's extremely difficult to make anything of substance in there. I'm a work in progress and still waiting to figure out what kind of cook I'll be when I "grow up."

My mom is what I'd call a good midwestern cook - she loves the crock pot, her top dishes are meatloaf, chili, baked mac 'n cheese, and homemade soups/stews, and she's known for her crunchy fudge sandwiches (a butterscotch and chocolate version of rice krispie treats - yum). And somehow, she didn't know until about 5 years ago that garlic came in other varieties than powdered seasoning. My dad is the grill master - he loves his classic Weber charcoal grill, and uses any opportunity to bbq. Every year we do our Thanksgiving turkey on the grill in fact, and it never disappoints.

In college, I dated an Italian guy, and discovered all sorts of delicious foods I hadn't been exposed to previously. I never thought I'd learn to like anchovies or olives, and never realized just how delicious a good veal cutlet was. My stomach grew 3 sizes while we were together. I acquired so many great recipes from his grandma and impressed my Irish/German/French/Dutch/English family (I'm basically the European Union) on vacations with alige, mashed chi-chi beans, zucchini pie, and sauteed vegetables.

Living in France, I learned the value of eating real things versus synthetic and processed foods. There is no substitute for real butter, herbs, cream and sugar - if you're gonna do something, do it right. Helping the chef Bernard in the kitchen of the monastery in the mountains, I saw the care he put into each dish, and the joy of creating a meal from scratch and presenting it to others.

I try to take something from all the great cooks that have touched my life, but I've never conquered baking. I don't have as much interest in it (I have a latent sweet tooth, and I'm a mindless eater, so it's best for me not to make or buy sweet treats) and I'm always afraid of screwing it up. With cooking, you can sort of fudge your way through things, but not so with baking - one little mistake and the whole thing gets messed up!

This Thanksgiving, however, I decided to learn to make a pie. I wanted to pick an interesting one to be my sort of "signature." I decided on Southern Pecan Pie. Yes I knowww it's like one of the sweetest, worst-for-you pies, but if you only eat it once a year, it can't be that bad. Plus, it's delicious, not your basic apple pie, and reminds me of my Florida roots and my Aunt Regina that used to always make it for holidays growing up. And guess what - it was easy and I didn't mess it up! Maybe I can bake after all!

Here's my Aunt's recipe:

3 eggs

2/3 c. sugar

dash of salt

1 c. light corn syrup

1/2 c. melted butter

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 and 1/2 c. broken/chopped pecans

1 nine-inch unbaked pie crust

Beat eggs thoroughly. Add sugar, salt, corn syrup, vanilla, butter and continue mixing with a whisk or hand mixer on low setting until it starts to foam/bubble (about 5-10 minutes).

Layer the bottom of the pie crust with pecans. Make sure the bottom is completely covered and that no pie crust shows through. Pour mixture over pecans (the pecans will rise to the top).

Bake 350 degrees for 50 minutes and voila - all done!

I admit I used a pre-made Pillsbury pie crust, though. One step at a time people!

Ombre Hair

I first read about "ombre hair" around January of this year. I was bored with my haircolor and kept seeing pictures of celebs (including one of my favorite style icons, Rachel Bilson) with dark hair that gradually faded to a light brown/blond at the tips. It looked so naturally un-perfect with just the right hint of surfer chic. It made me wish my hair could be sunkissed despite the frigid cold temps and I made the goal right then to go lighter and get these "ombre" highlights as soon as the weather warmed up.

As the months went by and I continued to daydream about kickass highlights, I saw more and more articles about the style... WhoWhatWear, Allure, Glamour, etc. It seemed like every actress I loved was embracing the look, too. So I assumed that when I went to a Manhattan salon in late May, the hairstylist would totally understand the look I was going for. Au contraire, my friends. She had no idea what I was talking about when I said "ombre highlights."

"You don't want your roots done?? Umm okay..." (with a scrunched up stank face, I might add) was her response.

Uh oh. Thank goodness I brought pictures with me. I know every magazine tells you to show your stylist pictures of celeb hairstyles you like before a cut/color...but do you guys actually do that? I always feel so corny whipping out a fan photo of Nicole Richie. Well, pride aside, I've learned my lesson over the years, and sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand descriptive words. Good news - the highlights turned out great. It was subtle and pretty and grew out to look even better than it initially did. And, special bonus, once I actually got some sun over the summer, the highlights lightened even more! I haven't had to touch the color since May.

But now, six months later, the color is fading away and my hair is unruly (it's long and thick and turns into a knotty bird's nest if I don't trim it every few months), so I decided to redo the color and get a cut over Thanksgiving at a salon back home in Pittsburgh. Good ol' mom called and booked the appointment for me yesterday and guess what - hairstylists still don't know what ombre highlights are! Say what you want about Pittsburgh, it's no New York and sometimes trends do get there a little slower...but the term "ombre highlights" has been used on ten million beauty blogs and magazines over the past year and 1 in 5 Hollywood celebs are rocking the look. Why do I still have to fully explain myself and sound like a crazy person that "doesn't want their roots done?"

...Or AM I a crazy person? Does no one else outside of the beauty PR world know what ombre highlights are?

Sigh, someday you all will catch up to my coolness and ahead of the curve-ness (kidding).

*check out my lovely little montage of various ombre-headed actresses...plus me, with wind-whipped and messy but oo-la-la ombre hair in Cali this September. Jolie, ne c'est pas?