Blogs on More

Eye shadow creases. Annoying as paper cuts? I’d say so.

During a hectic day last week I must have spoken to twenty different people and not one of them let me know that my shadow had turned into an oily, grease-slicked, “I’m an older person” line in the middle of my eye lid.

No matter. My solution is now to do a twice-daily hand mirror crease check. (Yup, I’m paranoid and vain.)

Recently some of the new Benefit Velvet Eye Shadows ($22) came into the office and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how long wearing they are.  Although some of the shades can be a little too high on the shimmer scale for my liking, they are wonderfully slip proof and have a lovely soft, velvety feel as they go on.  I recommend giving them a go the next time you’re in the market for a new shadow.

If, like me, you’re a woman on a crease-erasing mission, you can also try some of the eyeshadow primers on the market. I like Urban Decay’s Eyeshadow Primer Potion ($19). It’s a nude-coloured base coat for the lids that preps the skin and helps your products go on smoother. Unfortunately though, it means adding another step into your beauty routine - so I save it for big nights out or when I know I’ve got a long day ahead of me.

Remember Elizabeth Wurtzel’s 1994 tell-all memoir Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America? Well the author’s 41 now and recently published an equally eyebrow-raising piece in Elle: “Failure to Launch: When Beauty Fades.” Here’s a quote:

“Age is a terrible avenger. The lessons of life give you so much to work with, but by the time you’ve got all this great wisdom, you don’t get to be young anymore. And in this world, that’s just about the worst thing that can happen—especially to a woman.”

Oh, girl. We have got to get you a subcription to More. First piece on the list: Kim Pittaway’s A lady never tells.

It’s not that I don’t get mourning the freshness of youthful beauty - I’m still not at peace with my post-pregnancy body. But there’s so much more to life.  What do you think?

If you have a child graduating from high school this year and attending post-secondary institutions, you may be looking at dorm rooms a whole new way. Check out Time.com’s Evolution of the College Dorm for a bit of nostalgia and historical perspective.

(Come to think of it, if you’re headed for a reunion you might want to check that out too.)

I don’t know whether I would advise hoping for or against the development of this kind of Rube Goldberg machine in a dorm room.

And if your child’s chosen a room but it looks depressing to you - check out this Style at Home piece on decorating a dorm room. But be aware this may result in a credit-card-bending trip to Ikea.

Welcome back from the long weekend! I was thinking about Queen Victoria and formidable women when this link to the 60 Minutes interview with Anna Wintour dropped into my lap so of course I just had to share. (Don’t miss the outtakes page where she discusses the Winfrey cover.) What struck me is that on camera she sounds so determined to see Vogue through the recession when one suspects she might be in a pretty strong financial position to retire. (Or not… did anyone else catch Edmund L. Andrews’s piece on his own poor financial situation, despite his role as an economics reporter?)

I was also reminded of Charlotte Empey’s musings about giving up being the boss.  When I first made the leap into the crazy world of the dot-com startup (just before the 1999 crash), I took a significant step down in responsibility and pay to make the move. At first it was a tough adjustment and then I kind of enjoyed being at the bottom of the ladder - for as long as that lasted.  Maybe Anna Wintour would like to try it and enjoy a More.ca internship? Ha.

Sometimes I catch a piece on another website that I wish we had on ours, and this one from the New York Times is one of them: Tales from the back of the closet. As someone who has a few items in her closet circa 1983 (I hear it’s coming back!) this one made me laugh.

If you get inspired to spend some time this long weekend going through your excess belongings, here’s something to consider: the Yard Sale for the Cure. You agree to hold a garage sale on May 30, pay $20 to register your sale (then it appears on the map on the site!), and donate all or a portion of the proceeds to breast cancer research. And don’t worry: you can register up until May 27, so you’re not too late.

You can shop as well… but let’s not tell my closet that.

Here’s something to add to the “what the hell were they thinking?” files - Do-It-Yourself Botox.

At-home Botox kits were recently found on eBay.com, selling for about $120. The DIY packs included Botox powder, needles and a face map. They’ve since been pulled and are no longer for sale.

Certainly, some beauty treatments translate well from professional environments to home environments. You can give yourself a decent at-home facial. You can also make your feet sandal-ready in the comforts of your own home. Leg waxing, hair colour, even microdermabrasion can all be handled quite easily in your bathroom.

Buying Botox online and then self-administering it? Call me kooky, but I’ll pass.

Frugality may be the new black, but not in this case. If you choose to have facial injections, make sure they’re taking place in a professional environment. Yikes.

Response to Anne Bokma’s Bully for you piece about the long-term impact of childhood bullying really opened my eyes to the fact that so many of us have suffered at the hands of a bully at one point or another.

Now research shows that women who are bullied at work are often bullied by other women. I suppose this isn’t surprising but for someone who grew up hoping for a sisterhood, it’s a little discouraging. What’s your experience been? Have you experienced workplace bullying - or been the bully?

So what does make us happy? Dr. Valiant has been a long time director of a Harvard research study that has examined this question for 72 years, following men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage, divorce, parenthood, grandparenthood, and old age. Read the full article on Atlantic.com here, but a video of the director speaking about happiness is below. (Hat tip to Laura at 11D.)

You know the old joke where a guy goes into his doctor’s office and says “it hurts when I do this,” and the doctor says “well, then, stop doing that”?

Margaret Wente’s piece in the Saturday Globe and Mail about whether boomers are prone to worry too much about their health touch reminded me of that joke. And it’s not just worry for ourselves. It gets hard to contain the impulse to sprint across the kitchen to yank the fatty (crispy… tasty) piece of chicken skin from my husband’s fingers with dire messages of doom, gloom, and Type 2 diabetes.   Not to mention my unfortunate “Dr. Google” habit around online health information.

Maybe it’s worry I should be giving up instead of chocolate. I’ll get right on that. After I finish reading the research.

Do you think we all spend too much time worrying about our health?

Yes, it’s fair to say I’m a keener. The word has gotten such a bad rap in recent years but back in my high school days I saw nothing weird or wrong with completing assignments on time, eagerly answering questions (”Ooh, ooh, Mr. McNally Pick me!”) or using colour-coded markers to highlight key points in my textbooks.

What I don’t understand is how my teenage daughter has inherited none of my tendencies. She’s a bright enough child but for reasons unfathomable to me, she prefers to work to deadline rather than plunge into a project the day it is assigned. Occasionally this comes up and bites her in the butt and that’s when she comes to me.

Such was the case last Monday when she approached me while I was folding laundry. “Mom, I need help with my haiku,” she said. “Bless you. And cover your mouth when you sneeze,” I responded.

“No - haiku. A type of poetry? Three lines? Five, seven, five syllables? I don’t know what to write mine about.”

Well, neither did I but I was pleased at the thought of a scholastic challenge. I put down the sock whose mate I was vainly searching for and gave it some thought.

“Well let me see, honey. How about you write one about your everyday life?” I looked around. “If I was doing it, I could make it about . . . laundry.”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s lame.”

Well, them’s fighting words to someone who got the “Miss Metaphor” Award in English five years running. “Let me give you an example,” I offered.

“I don’t like laundry
I really, really hate it
Wash your own damn socks”

I smiled at her triumphantly. She looked at me like she was seeing me for the first time and wasn’t keen on the image. “Yeah. Well thanks mom. I think I’ll just go do my math now.”

“Ahh, math, a very important subject. Do you know honey that math has all sorts of real life applications. Why just last week I was out for lunch with some of the girls from my book club and my math skills were put to the test. Here, see if you can solve this one.

“Three women go out for lunch together. Mary, who’s on a diet, has the house salad which costs $6.97. Betty, who should be on a diet, has the cheeseburger and fries for $7.50. She asks the waiter for gravy on her fries which costs an extra $.50. Carol orders the $4.99 soup and sandwich special but doesn’t eat anything because she just found out her husband is having an affair and is too upset to eat. The women share three bottles of wine at a cost of $26 per bottle plus a fourth bottle sent to their table from the cute guy at the bar who helps Carol get up when she falls down on her way to the washroom. At the end of the meal, how should the bill be divided between the three women, keeping in mind that:
a) Mary and Carol are really drunk and can’t write their names legibly on the VISA slip;
b) Betty has not only polished off her burger, she’s worked her way through Carol’s sandwich and the red onions in Mary’s salad and;
c) Carol has left with the cute guy at the bar in a desperate ploy to get revenge on her philandering husband.”

My daughter just shook her head and began walking away. Maybe I was being too tough on her. I softened. “Honey wait, I’ll get some paper and a calculator. We can work through this together.”

But she was gone. I sighed. I worry about kids these days. It’s obvious our school system isn’t preparing them for real life.

[P.S. Every now and then we run haiku contests through our More.ca twitter feed - follow us, write a haiku, and win.]