DIY

My husband took my son to his grandparent's in Connecticut for the weekend and with him, the car. My car, I suppose you could say, the one I mostly drive. We agreed he should take it because it's safer and I had no distant plans-- the station car would do just fine.

It wasn't until later, as I was putting on my coat, that I realized that my make-up bag was in the side door of my car, traveling up the Garden State Parkway, and I had social plans. What on earth was I to do? My self-image as a Separated Lady in My Forties is tenuous at best, and I was about to introduce myself to a whole new crowd of potential future friends. And I'm not even talking boyfriends, Godforbid, I'm just talkin' peeps to hang out with. How could I possibly show my face without that subtle tint of health and vibrancy playing off my cheeks? Was there a social statement to appearing wan that I wasn't aware of? Would they think I was a lesbian, and if so, did it matter much? And what of my eyelashes-- two of my best and only standout facial features along with my eyeballs. They would be nekkid for all the world to see. Or not see in this case. I was disappointed but I had options, or so I thought. I shifted into "panicked burglar" mode.

First I checked every possible pocket in my dazzling panoply of purses, backpacks, tote bags and travel pouches. How many? I'll tell you when you're older. Then it was back upstairs to the deepest recesses of the top right bathroom drawer for what held, for purposes of obsessive
compulsive archiving I suppose, a blush that I've had since high school. I opened the compact, sized up the pink and realized I couldn't do it. It's an otherworldly pink, circa 1984, which only Blondie would have worn on her cheeks or Adam Ant, perhaps, on his eyelids. I looked longingly at the lipsticks but then remembered that never, not once in grade school, had I successfully smeared my Mom's lipstick symmetrically onto both cheeks. I had been down that road before, thank you very much, and had rubbed off enough lipstick and creme blush in my day to sink a ship.

I had been wearing the two missing blushes-- no, I couldn't find the spare either-- for eight years. I was introduced to the color just before my wedding day. A real life make-up professional in a fancy department store had deemed it My Color and so, not one to eschew an expert opinion, I've worn it ever since. It was more of a dusty tawny rose, the color of terribly faded cherry oak, than bubble gum pink and I'd grown to accept it as part of my organic composition. I didn't even know the name of it-- not that there was any time to zip off to the mall-- but still, I should at least know its name. I realized now that I took it for granted. It's a huge part of my life although I hadn't thought of it as such until that moment, and now I also felt ashamed. My blush was gone and with it, the lion's share of my attractiveness and my precious appearance of youth.

OK, perhaps you're wondering why anyone would keep her make-up bag in her car. My car is my portal to the outside world. It's the conduit of choice for most of my face-to-face human interactions. If I'm going to see a neighbor, I stop off for a quick visit to the driveway, where I sit in my car, one leg out and one leg in, putting on a quick swipe of mascara and blush, before closing the car door and heading merrily down the street. When I lived in L.A., I also kept a toothbrush, toothpaste, mouthwash and deodorant in my car, it was such a huge part of my life. But that was nothing compared to most Los Angelinos, who keep a change of clothes, their entire cache of sports equipment and assorted birth control in their cars.

My inner McGuyver took over. What could I mix together to make blush. I could grind up a clay pot from the patio. That would only take 45 more minutes or so. The party might be over by then. I could prick my fingertips and smear the blood on my cheeks like they did in concentration camps to avoid the gas chamber. Too macabre. I headed for the kitchen. Flour? Yep, I had flour, and smushed raisins for color? Too paste-y. Ground cayenne pepper? Too orange. Nutmeg! The color was better, but that smell-- too pungent. Cinnamon could be nice. What harm could I do to smell like mulled cider? None! I rubbed some on my cheeks. It looked... it looked like I had cinnamon on my face. Like some crazed baker who had just finished baking an apple pie in a frenzy of creative verve, I looked too harried to wipe the cinnamon off my face before changing out of my frilly apron and kerchief. And mascara? I lost the will to hatch a DIY mascara plan because time was ticking. I had the fleeting thought of using a sharpie to individually color the tips of each lash, but there again, I was stopped by the specter of potential blindness. "Permanent Blindness by Permanent Marker!" the Post headline would read. The pull quote would just say, "Duh."

I settled for lipstick on my lips. Too dark and too matte for what the hip ladies are wearing these days, but better than nothing. I thought of Cate Blanchet and her signature style of just deep lipstick and little else. I would channel Cate, pinch my cheeks and call it a day.

Of course, about a minute after I walked in the door of the party, I totally forgot about my lackluster lashes and my withering youth. I accepted an hors d'oeuvre and delicious homemade beer and immediately fell into an engaging conversation with perfectly nice people. They didn't comment on my advanced age or tell me that I must have been a real looker in my day. They didn't ask me if I was feeling all right or needed to sit down. And none of them, not one of them, asked me the proper name of my estranged blush of eight long years.

A good time was had by all.

The Point

I was, in my early days, known to craft back when Girl Scouts ruled the earth and long before craft was a verb. Recently though, I've taken up needlepointing to save my hollow soul from utter self-destruction. At first glance, you might see me sitting in the park and think, "How 2002-post-wave-feminist-nod-to-gentler-times-y." But it's more than that. Beyond my Little House desire to "Take Back the Yarn" and channel my underutilized creativity healthily, needlepointing is also taking my fragile sanity and channeling it into attractive throw pillows.

When my son was about two years old, my Mom Friends all had a second babies. I had tried and tried to have a second child to no avail, and still deeply distraught, found it challenging to hang out with friends who'd had no trouble conceiving again, especially with all the complaining they did (and still do) about how overwhelming it is to raise two kids. On most days I tucked my envy up my sleeve and enjoyed the meaty little cherubs almost as if they were my own. Every precious waddle into my arms or sticky kiss on my cheek reminding me of what I was missing but I soldiered on, alternating between graceful acceptance and whiny self-pity. My son, off playing happily and autonomously with his friends (the older siblings), no longer needed me for the most part. My work, for this phase at lease, was done.

I was now knee deep in the bench-sitter phase. I actually got to sit on the benches at playgrounds, which I and so many other new parents had only dreamt about when our children were just walking and needed us near. I wasn't one of the helicopter-parenting contingents, but even the laziest caregiver has to stay on her feet for the months or years after an intrepid toddler learns to climb and before he learns to fall. Back then, benches were those things that held our diaper bags. We glanced at them longingly from behind the swing set or seesaw, but sit on them? No chance. We were crouching mothers, swaying standers, forever at the ready, always on the move.

Now, I was sitting often. Conversations started between my froend and me only to be inevitably interrupted by youth's infinite caprices and then up my friend would go. Off to push a swing or referee a fight, she or he could be gone anywhere from 20 seconds to four minutes depending on how long the child wanted to play catch or slide down the fireman's pole. Sometimes our conversations continued over great distances like two hard-of-hearing great-aunts shouting across the great sandbox divide. More often than not, I got my lazy ass off the bench and went and stood next to my friend with my hands in my pockets while he pushed his younger son on the squeaky swing.

About half the time I didn't tag along, like when there were sobs to be consoled or disciplinary actions to be handed out. It's not really appropriate nor is it, quite frankly, easy to maintain a chat about a hilarious piece on The Onion's site while simultaneously counting down a time-out laced with stern looks of disapproval. When toilet training was involved, my alone time on the bench stretched out before me like those endless, wordless days, backpacking through Europe, when my travel companion managed to find a new boyfriend, no matter what country we were in, and take off with him, leaving me alone.

I tried thinking. And I should have been able to enjoy the quiet solace of dappled sunlight on wood chips but all I could think about, while surrounded by strollers, was of all the babies I wasn't having. I needed a distraction. I started keeping a rolled up New Yorker magazine in my back pocket. I kept it in my car and even brought it to the playground when it was just me and my son, because chances were pretty good that he might make a friend, and then, I would be abandoned again.

Reading was good but also proved challenging in it's own way. I would arrive at the park, hone in on my bench and my friend would take off. No prob. I would take out my trusty New Yorker and, invariably, get engrossed in some saga, totally sucked in to that piece about the crusty container ship captain and how his vessel was taken by rogue pirates in murky international waters and then he was tied up and knew he was gonna get it. The pirate captain demanded he give up his wedding band and the crusty captain said, "No!" which the pirate captain sort of respected him for and then, all of a sudden, my son was standing before me with his crusty nose needing wiping and now it's snack time and does anyone have an extra wipe? I tried to go back and forth between the fidgity sociopathic pirates and handing out fig newtons to grubby kids only so many times before losing the thread of the story and the will to finish. Time and again this happened, so I gave up.

I thought of knitting, briefly. Knitting is, in case you didn't know, very in. In fact, it was so hugely in for a while that it might even be passe at this point. History may prove knitting to be to the oughts what macrame was to the seventies. But who am I to care what's in when I'm just trying to save my own sanity. I tried knitting and I loved it, I really did. Knitted on the subway, knitted in meetings, knitted my little heart out. But when I got to the sleeves I froze. Sleeves and necks involved counting and dropping and decoding patterns and ripping out mistakes, and I just. Couldn't. Do it. I would need absolute silence and uninterrupted control over my environment in order to focus and concentrate and count, and the Turtleback Zoo was not going to give that to me. Nor was his T-ball clinic or the town pool. So much for knitting.

Needlepointing seemed the logical choice. There's no counting or decoding involved. It's paint by numbers for the craft-challenged. I can be needlepointing away on the bleachers while my son's getting a lecture from the coach and when it's his turn at bat, I can stop, lift my eyes and be fully invested in the game. When things get dreary again, I can just go right back to where I left off. No brain necessary.

I took to it like bees to honey.

I found a canvas at a rummage sale for eight bucks and the yarn for another seven. It rolls up and fits in my purse and never gets bigger. It's with me where ever I go. Long lines at the post office? No prob. Inept cashier at the supermarket? Not an issue. Paralyzing shyness at a PTA, 12 Step or Divorced Ladies Peer Group meeting? I can handle it. My needlepoint is my friend, my go-to-gal when I'm seized by a moment of such irrefutable discomfort that my only other option is to throw myself onto the nearest plastic fork and hope for a swift disembowelment. Of course it's a crutch, I admit it. But it's better than whipping out a crack pipe, or keeping a flask in my glove compartment. I know I should be meditating or breathing deeply, but jeeze, I can only do so much to hold it together.

So I needlepoint. And now, when my friends disappear to attend to their younger kids, I relish the chance to take a little break, nestle into my bench and enjoy my new hobby. It's dorky. It's queer. But it's saving me from my suffering these days and I'm slowly gaining peace, acceptance and some nifty new pillows for the sunroom.

Nice Belt

When one is separated and divorce is imminent, one of the topics bandied about by well meaning well-wishers is, "Don't worry, you won't stay single for long."

"Really?" me thinks, "You mean I'll soon get another chance to date forty seven wrong guys before finally honing in on the most best wrong guy before launching into the cringe-worthy world of relationship re-entry?" Oooh, goody. Sign me up. I am positively chomping at the bit to saunter down the well trod path of Will He Like My Cooking? And When Is It OK to Pee in Front of Him? again. Throw in Getting To Know His Parents and His Favorite Foods and Pet Peeves and I pretty much want to throw up. But not on him, goodness, no. Wouldn't want to diminish my chances at "'Til Death Do We Part -- The Sequel."

Which isn't to say that dinner isn't fine. I'll have dinner 'til the cows come home, but that's as far as I'll go for now. Just chit-chat and cloth napkins and who am I kidding? Who the hell am I going to have dinner with? Please. Looking beyond the fact that I don't want to be dating, I shouldn't be dating. Even if I wanted to, which I don't. I have towers of riotous self-help books all over my bedroom waiting for my somber attention like literary stalagmites, the likes of which have brought an unusual topgraphy to my bedroom sanctuary. And I have more crying to do. Certainly a first date isn't the place for an onslaught of heaving sobs, unless of course, we catch a little local Ibsen before dinner and I want to appear deeply affected, moved really, by The Theater. Which brings me to sex.

Here's my sales pitch for a patent pending number on this really great little gadget you just gotta check out. It's not a chastity belt, per se. Chastity belts went out with lemon wedges as tampons sometime after the Crusades. No, this is for the modern woman with a rice paper defense who just might need to be reminded after a glass and a half of wine that her dinner date should end at, "Check, please."

You remember, those bulky home-forged nuisances made of rusty iron? The ones that had padlocks and no spare keys? Well, I'm talking about a chastity belt for today's demanding woman. Something cozy and breathable, made with a cotton/lycra blend that a modern woman can slip on and lock up to remind her that she is in no condition whatsoever to even consider the possibility of sex until she gets her ducks in a row. And I mean all of them.

It's called the "Me Time Belt." It comes in six fashion colors and has a touch pad lock with re-programmable passcode. I would offer it in a barely-there reinforced brushed cotton for the warmer months-- something in a 320 thread count for durability while allowing for a smooth sillouette under summer skirts, and a fleecy warm silk and satin blend for colder climes. That one, called the Shiver Me Timbers, would come with a built in dial for "Warming your cockles when there's no chance of cock!" during those seemingly endless cold, dark winter afternoons.

Wikipedia says: "On February 6, 2004, USA Today reported that at Athens airport in Greece, a woman's steel chastity belt had triggered a security alarm at the metal detector. She was allowed to continue her flight to London on the pilot's authority."

I think she would make a good spokesperson or at the very least, my first customer, don't you?