So I Think I Can Dance (and you can too)

Filed Under All Posts, Connie Stetson, Health, Media, Pop Culture | 11 Comments

Connie Stetson mixes it up with inspiration, perspiration and dizzy dancing feet.

Dear readers, we have become so close now, I feel I can tell you anything. I know you won’t judge me harshly when I confess to you how very much I love the “reality” game show. The contestants, the competition, the prize—the whole format, well, it’s all just so darn much fun.

I love Survivor, The Amazing Race, American Idol, The Bachelorette, Top Chef, Project Runway and even the great American cheese-fest, Dancing With the Stars. But by far and away, I love So You Think You Can Dance. Partly because at one time I did think could dance, and partly because I now wish I could dance as well as I once thought I could. Watching these beautiful, talented, athletic young dancers sends me into a pulse-pounding frenzy of vicarious joy; and I am with them every soaring step and heart stopping stumble along the way. I am hooked and I am also impressed.

In 2009, producer Nigel Lythgoe, actress Katie Holmes, dancer/choreographer Debbie Allen, and a host others, began The Dizzy Feet Foundation . Its mission is to support, improve and increase dance education in the United States, provide scholarships, set standards for dance education and insure that disadvantaged children have access to dance. The Dizzy Feet Foundation has also declared Saturday July 31st, National Dance Day. View the cool choreography that Napoleon and Tabitha have created to get America off our collective asses and onto the dance floor. They have made it easy enough for anyone to learn and I’m getting down right now with my very bad, very funky self. Read more

Scrambled Eggs

Filed Under All Posts, Family, Health, Prudence Baird | 11 Comments

Photo by Ana June

For Prudence Baird, dusty eggs, puppy love, and baby crack make a wicked brew with the potential for world peace

When our Irish twins*, born a mere 22 months apart, reached toddlerhood, my husband reports that I got that misty-eyed look that says, “I’ll trade you a month of blow jobs for another baby.” Able to see the writing on the wall (much of it in red ink), my intrepid partner did what most sensible men would do—he rushed out and got himself a vasectomy.

Even so, I hoped and wished for another child. With my breastfeeding years fast receding to the realm of “remember when” and sentimental boo-hoo sessions alone in my room, having a third child became my holy grail, my Turkish delight, my must-see TV.

I refused to pass along cherished baby clothes. I squirreled away cutsie bibs and blankies. Intuitively, I knew that as long as my ovaries were pumping out eggs, there was a chance—even if it meant reattaching my husband’s pipes myself using an emery board and tweezers. Read more

It Could Happen To You

Filed Under All Posts, Health, Prudence Baird | 15 Comments

Falling by Tom Bagshaw

Like a sign post that screams Watch Out!, Prudence zooms in on one of midlife’s challenges.

Falling. It happens to the best of us. One minute you are putting one foot in front of the other, and the next you’re on your ass. Or your face—with absolutely no idea how you got there so fast.

When young, falling is funny; slapstick even. Occasionally falling is painful, but having friends sign your cast or getting out of P.E. makes it all worthwhile. In fact, there’s a notorious t-shirt that mocks falling:

“I don’t have a drinking problem. I drink. I get drunk. I fall down. No problem.”

Ha-ha. Try that at age 54.

This brings me to the other morning when I heard a crashing and thrashing sound coming from the bathroom. Read more

Breast Cancer Bonanza: Stop the Greed

Filed Under All Posts, Cathy Fischer, Health, Politics | 23 Comments

Cathy Fischer is wondering how a month dedicated to something so important, could have become so irritating.

I don’t know what irks me more, being accosted by Christmas ads before Halloween, or being hit by the big pink tsunami that is…BREAST CANCER AWARENESS MONTH.

Dancing reindeer or pink teddy bears? I’ll take the caribou, thank you.

The brilliant Barbara Ehrenreich, also a breast cancer survivor, is passionate about pink. In her new book, Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, she writes about how she’d rather get “hacked to death by a madman,” then suffocated by the “pink sticky sentiment” embodied by ribbon-wearing teddy bears.

I’ve noticed that I don’t’ wear pink very much. Not that pink doesn’t look good on me, it’s that I’ve had an aversion to the color ever since my diagnosis. A year ago, I voiced my not-so-rosy point of view in “My Big Pink Protest,” where I shared my dismay about October’s pinkness, and how threads of hypocrisy are woven throughout the fabric of many a “pink” product. These so-called charitable campaigns are about as authentic as a McDonald’s Shamrock Shake. Read more

The Dreaded Word: Race

Filed Under All Posts, Carine Fabius, Health, Politics | 11 Comments

The latest news about healthcare and race has Carine Fabius pulling out her passport.

Coming up with something devastatingly original and fun to write about would have made me feel edgy and special but it turns out I am not so outré. Alas I am just like many who write about the issues of our times—I can’t stop thinking about the pervasive issue of RACE. Ever since the healthcare debate began I have felt like one giant sigh. A sigh grown so outsized that it now drives my most desperate desire: to leave the United States for other shores.

On one hand, I am in the very attractive position of having dual citizenship—American and European Union—so it would be easier for me than most. But the bigger, more annoying question is always: What country doesn’t have gaping issues? None, I suppose; it’s just that I always expect more from America, foolish, foolish woman that I am.

Tales abound about how during the Civil Rights Era, officials in towns across the South chose to fill municipal pools with cement rather than share them with blacks, thus denying all their citizens the refreshing merriment provided by the pools on hot summer days. With Obama in the House, we thought we’d come a long way, but no, baby, things are so the same it makes me want to sigh some more. Read more

My Exploding Head

Filed Under All Posts, Carine Fabius, Health, Politics, Rants | 17 Comments

Carine Fabius is experiencing strange symptoms—her blood is boiling and her poor head…

Last month a photo in the Los Angeles Times showed a bunch of North Carolina protesters lying in wait for Obama as he headed to a town hall meeting on healthcare. Their handwritten signs shouted the following inanities:

“Free Market not Free Loaders”
“Obama-Care is Not For Us”
“No to Socialism”
“Government is Not the Solution to our Problems”

No wonder my head wants to explode. Read more

Soup is Good Food

Filed Under All Posts, Connie Stetson, Health | 8 Comments

The unseasonably cool weather has Connie Stetson cookin’ up good thoughts on good food.

Up here where I live in the Sierra foothills, or the tullies, the sticks, the weeds, the outback—it is not unusual for the temps in mid-June to be tickling the soft underbelly of the low 90s. A harbinger of the dreaded dog days of summer—July, August, September, when temps reaching the high 90s to 100 are typical and loathed, and locals just sigh and say, “Well, at least we don’t live in Phoenix!”

But this June it has been downright and blissfully cool, so tonight I’m slipping into my softest, warmest jammies and I’m making a homemade soup, a split pea soup with ham to be precise. As comforting a comfort food, aside from mac and cheese, as you can get. (And by the way, if there is a heaven, I’ll expect to be able to eat all the mac and cheese I can stomach without gaining weight, so there.) I can smell it now as I type: the onions, garlic, carrots, peas, celery, the ham hocks, all bubbling together, the fragrance wafting through the house, feeling like a warm hug. If I had a cold I’d feel better already. Read more

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