The Best Kept Secret Blog - Wine Not

New research indicating a link between alcohol consumption and cancer in middle-aged women is sobering. While not quite ready to jump on the alarmists band wagon and stop drinking entirely, I for one will definitely be cutting back. My plan is straightforward and simple and I’ll only be drinking under the following circumstances:

Birthdays and Anniversaries

Statutory Holidays - One drink per statutory holiday with the following exceptions: Christmas, which is fraught with so much family tension that a minimum of three glasses of wine are needed to achieve a festive level of celebratory revalry; and New Years Eve, since giving up drinking is part of my extensive resolution list, set to kick in the next day. Oh, and Ukranian New Years (one week or something like that later) when I will be consoling myself with the knowledge that statistics show no one keeps resolutions anyway and life is tool short to live it like some virgin, sainted martyr.

Minor Holidays - These include Groundhog Day, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day and especially Halloween when all the parents in our neighbourhood escort the little ones on the trick-or-treat circuit with environmentally friendly, reusable cups filled with Merlot.

Fridays - As a reward for reaching the end of a long and trying week.

Saturdays - Just to be social.

Sunday - Enjoyed in an artsy, reflective , mildly sexy, Diana Krall kind of way while contemplating the week ahead.

Wednesday - To celebrate sticking to the plan and not drinking Monday or Tuesday.

Girls Night(s) Out - True, we’re no longer girls but this moniker is so much better than Middle-Aged Women’s Night Out. Though at 40- and 50-something, we’re able to afford much better wine than the plonk we drank when we were girls. While my plan at these events is to limit consumption to two drinks, extra glasses may be consumed under the following circumstances: 1) Someone in the group announces a major mid-life reinvention; 2) Someone in the group has failed at a major midlife reinvention; 3) Someone in the group is having an affair; and 4) Someone in the group is having an affair with the husband of someone else in the group.

Like I said, I’m not jumping on the abstinence band-wagon but I do encourage all of you to follow my example and rethink your alcohol consumption. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to pour myself a glass of wine. It's the 46th anniversary of the invention of the pipe cleaner.

The Best Kept Secret Blog - The Three R's

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's assigned. Occasionally this comes up and bites her in her 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 too 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 she's 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.

The Best Kept Secret Blog - So Popular

Now that women over 40 are the hot new thing, I’m afraid to leave to the house lest a sex-starved college boy be lurking behind my rose bushes, waiting to seduce me. So far the only thing I’ve seen back there is the Rakowski’s poodle doing her business but I know it’s just a matter of time.

It started when the marketing types figured out that we control the purse strings. Suddenly we couldn’t pick up a magazine or turn on the t.v. without seeing an ad telling us know how smart, sexy and confident we are. At first I kept looking over my shoulder, certain they must be talking about someone else. “Who? Me?” I wanted to ask. But the messages continued, assuring me that 40 is the new 25.

Well, who am I to argue with all these smart advertising men. If they say we’re smart and sexy then gosh, I guess we are. Though I do think my friend Audrey took the message too much to heart when she went to that southern resort last winter. I don't care how sexy we are, a 200 lb. woman who's had three C-sections should not be wearing a bikini on a public beach.

And then there was poor Dorothy, newly divorced and trying to get back in the dating scene. I told her to lie about her age when she filled in her LavaLife profile but oh no, she had to be honest and put down 45. Well, she couldn't keep up with all the responses she got from 20 year-old guys wanting to meet her. After all, dating a cougar is the latest must-have status symbol.

"I really don't enjoy dating these guys," Dorothy told me. "They treat me like some Sugar Mamma, always expecting me to pick up the cheque. And then there's the sex thing. Not only do they assume my hormones make me want it all the time, they think my age and experience means I can teach them all kinds of tricks. My ex and I did buy a copy of the Kama Sutra once but we had only gotten to the second position before the dog chewed it. And by then, the kids had come along and we were so tired that we just never bothered learning anything new after that. "

And now, thanks to Susan Boyle, things have gotten even harder. It's not enough to be a middle-aged woman, we have to be middle-aged women with a talent. Suddenly everyone's looking at us, expecting us to burst into song or dance at the drop of a hat. I feel immense pressure to go out and take voice lessons, or maybe tap, so I can impress the check-out girl at the grocery store. I just can't bear the thought of disappointing everyone when they learn that my hobbies include scrapbooking and reading Harlequin Romances. Interesting, yes, but the stuff of reality shows? I think not.

How I long for the days when I was simply invisible and could let myself go. I just didn’t know how good I had it back then. But I’ll play by the new rules and keep up my gym membership, reinvent myself as a life coach and flaunt my beauty to the cougar hunters at the bar. I just hope pop culture’s pendulum swings soon and people get on to some other hot new thing. Like middle-aged men.

The Best Kept Secret Blog - Dead Rodents

There's a dead squirrel in my driveway. I don't quite know how it got there. It just kind of showed up there one day.


When it first appeared, my first thought was to call 911. But almost immediately I thought no, they won't see it as the same kind of emergency I do. It crossed my mind to call someone at the city but what with all the cut backs lately I was pretty sure they wouldn't be of much use. We barely get our garbage picked up, let alone dead squirrels. And even if they did have that kind of service, everyone knows what a horror it is trying to get through on those phone systems. I could just imagine it. "If you're calling about dead raccoons, please press 1. If you're calling about dead squirrels, please press 2."


I almost called my husband at work. I would have asked him to come home immediately but then I remembered he was away on business all week. Isn't that just like him to never be around when I really need him.

I know you're probably wondering why I just didn't pick the stupid thing up myself but I have a phobia of dead rodents. And live ones. And pictures of them. I was paralyzed.


With no other plan coming immediately to mind, all I could do was go about my day. I got in the car and left to get groceries. It wasn't until I got back and parked the car that I realized I had run over the squirrel. Twice.


The upside was that it was flatter and I hoped this would make the squirrel less noticeable. In fact, I could have forgotten all about it if I hadn't happened to notice our elderly neighbour out walking his poodle. My goodness, who would have thought that Muffy could tug on a leash so hard. Why I thought she'd pull Mr. Johnson right off her feet trying to get to that squirrel.


Hiding behind the curtains so Mr. Johnson wouldn't see me (I just hate when Mr. Johnson waves that cane around when he's mad) I knew I had to do something, but what?

I'm fully aware that a normal person would have just picked it up with a shovel and put it in the green bin for garbage pick up but I couldn't do that. Not only does my phobia prevent me from going near it but I couldn't stop thinking about what it would be like every time I took the trash out. It would just be laying there, staring at me.

As the week went on, it got easier and easier to run over the squirrel. Off to the PTA meeting? Vroom. . . the squirrel was flatter. Coming home from yoga class? Vroom . . . it would be practically invisible. But try as I might, the thing never disappeared, causing dog walkers and mothers of small children to start and jerk their young charges quickly away.

By Saturday, my husband was home and ready to deal with the problem. Strangely, I had grown an affinity to the squirrel. I had grown used to it in the same way one grows used to a soccer ball or sprinkler that gets left in the yard. It's part of the landscape and things just look off without it.

The Best Kept Secret Blog - Dear Oprah Winfrey I'm Grateful That I'm Broke

Dear Oprah

How are you? I am fine.

Well, actually I’m not so fine since the stock market crashed and we lost half our life savings but I’m trying to keep positive. Why the first thing I did when I got the bad news was a visualization exercise like they suggest in The Secret. So far the only thing I can see is me eating dog food but I’ll keep on trying.

I’ve been checking your website everyday (at least until we couldn’t pay the bill anymore and the phone company cut off our Internet access) to see what you and your friend Snooze Orman might suggest. Gosh she’s smart and so money-savvy. Why just looking at her hairdo I can tell right away she saves plenty of money by not spending very much on a hairdresser.

I love her awesome suggestions like, “Cut out the things you don’t really need.” I took her advice when the cat died recently and we opted for cremation instead of some over-the-top burial. We saved oodles of money and had a moving ceremony with just the family. Things went really well until the very end when the wind came up as we were scattering Fluffy’s ashes in the park. But as I told the kids, is it really such a big deal that she ended up in our clothes and our hair? Isn’t the Universe just giving us an opportunity to carry Fluffy with us for a little while longer?

It just makes me think of all your spiritual friends who have been a real source of inspiration! When Elizabeth Lesser told one of your viewers that she should rid herself of the idea that life is supposed to be a certain way, I thought she was talking to me. I always thought my midlife reinvention would be about running a marathon or starting my own business. Who’d have guessed I’d be looking for work and reinventing myself as a greeter at Wal-Mart.

My husband’s a little concerned about what’s going to happen when my prescription for bioidentical hormones runs out and we can’t afford to get it refilled. But I’ve told him plenty of times that menopause is a natural part of a woman’s life and all those stories about out of control, hormonal 50 year-olds who bludgeon their husbands are pure fiction. I think.

That’s it for now, Oprah since I’ve got to start dinner. Oh, and that reminds me of another thing I have to be grateful for due to this silly recession. Because we can only afford to eat one meal a day, I'm losing all sorts of weight. I call it the Recession Diet. Let me know if you're interested in the details.

Best,
Karen

The Best Kept Secret Blog - My Five Seconds Of Fame

For some reason it seems important that she like my hair.

I think it's because it's been snowing or raining all the other Wednesday nights so far this semester which means I've been arriving for class with really bad hair, looking way too much like a suburban, middle-aged mom and not enough like the hip, downtown writer I'm aspiring to be.

I am thick in the throes of midlife reinvention and I have a dream - class-parent and volunteer lice lady by day, hard-hitting journalist by night. (Well, as long as I can get a babysitter, that is.)

As I navigate the mini-van through rush hour traffic on my way to class, I think that I'm looking good.

And I'm feeling good. For I have written the most brilliant article that has ever been produced by a journalism student on the face of this earth and tonight is the night I'm presenting it to the class.

Half my fellow students, I'm sure, will slam their books closed, throw their pens on their desk and declare that are just giving up - that they'll never be able to compete with the likes of me. The other half, the nice ones who have no time for sour grapes or axes to grind, will just stand up and applaud.

My accomplished instructor will love it too. Why she'll whip out her cell phone right then and there, call an editor friend at some über cool magazine, and shout for her to stop the presses - that they simply have to shift things around to accommodate my utterly engaging piece, How To Pack A Grocery Bag.

I'm early for class and the only people in the room are my instructor and one other student. We begin chatting and it turns out we all need a caffeine fix.

"Come on," says my instructor. "Let's start class five minutes late and take a field trip to the Tim Horton's across the street." I'm thrilled. I'm going for coffee with my oh-so-savvy instructor!

We chat about the weather and cold and flu season as we wait in line for our java. "This is going so well," I think to myself. "Maybe we'll become friends and get together over a glass or two of wine while we discuss writing and the publishing industry and debate which author we like better - Danielle Steele or John Grisham."

I order coffee and a couple of Tim Bits and daydream about what to serve if I end up inviting my instructor and her partner for a weekend at the cottage.

We ride the elevator back up to our floor and I think I notice my instructor eyeing the Tim Bits. I'm about to offer her one when I remember that of the many things she's published, she's perhaps best known for her recent book exploring Canada's foodscapes. I suddenly recall a passionate discussion from a class or two ago on the merits of organic food and the evils of just about everything else we can put into our mouths. I tuck the Tim Bit bag into my purse and give up on the thought of roasting weenies with my instructor at the cottage.

More students have arrived by the time we return and I'm turning to say hello as I set my coffee down and shrug out of my coat. It isn't until I hear half the class exclaim, "Ohhhh" that I realize something's wrong. I look down to see brown liquid puddling on the floor. It's coffee. My coffee. I've knocked it over and it's flowing across my desk, onto the floor and into my purse.

I'm guessing the discussions over wine are out now too.

I try to be calm as I sop up the mess with a roll of toilet paper retrieved from the Ladies room; as if spilling a full cup of coffee is an everyday thing and that I'm totally cool with it. I still have a quarter of a cup left and I drink this slowly, prolonging the feeling of being part of our intimate little coffee drinking group. When it's all gone, I even suck on the cup for a while - no one can tell it's empty with the brown plastic lid still attached.

We begin presenting our articles and finally it's my turn. Everyone reads my piece and begins scratching their criticism and feedback on the copies I've brought in. At first I sit back - I know it's good and apart from a little thing here or there, I can only expect praise. Then I notice my instructor writing something on her copy. I hear her bracelet hitting the desk again and again as she circles paragraphs and words. Then I see her bending down and retrieving something from her bag. It's a large red pencil. Is she striking something out?

At the end of the day it's no better or worse than the rest of the people in my class. No one's shouted "Stop the presses" but nor have they kicked me out of the class.

I climb into my soccer-mom mini-van and drown my disappointment in the Tim Bits I've fished from my soggy purse. I console myself by remembering that we learn more from failure than we do from success. This makes me feel a little better and I begin thinking about next week's assignment. Hmmm. . . Maybe I'll bring in cookies.

The Best Kept Secret Blog - Eyebrows - The Final Frontier

Ever since 1979, when I tumbled out of the Merle Norman store with fuchsia cheekbones and four - count 'em, four! - shades of shadow gracing my eyes, I've had a love affair with make-up.

My 1980's work wardrobe included shoulder pads, pert bow ties and an eye-shadow to match every power suit in my closet. I spent an hour in the bathroom every morning during the 1990's working hard to achieve a "natural" look and even as recently as the early 2000's I was hot on the trail of the perfect shade of red lipstick.

Then things started to change.

The eye shadow was the first to go. Instead of making me look youthful and wide-eyed, it began to make me look tired and slightly clownish, like I'd lost a run-in with a tropical fish.

The lovely brown-red lipstick that I had worn for more than ten years suddenly made my mouth seem lifeless and drawn, as if I'd spent the better part of the day sucking on a rusty pipe.

And even a light application of eyeliner looked like I was wearing too much.

I had entered the "less is more" era of makeup.

And while I can't say this was entirely a bad thing - cheaper and less fuss - I sometimes missed the days when I could have a little fun with making up my face; when I could spend hours putting on make-up for a big night out on the town.

So can you really blame me for getting excited last week when I bellied-up to the new Brow Bar at a swanky, downtown department store?

I had read about this Brow Bar in our local paper when it opened. Below the picture of beautiful, lab-coat wearing 20-something girls with serious Brooke Shields brows, was a small story assuring me that all a woman needed to look polished and chic was a pair of well-groomed eyebrows.

I was downtown anyway, killing time between meetings, and figured checking out the Brow Bar couldn't do any harm. The young woman working the counter was ever so nice and before you could say "Groucho", I was on a stool in the middle of the cosmetics department getting my brows done.

Now my brows suffer from the opposite problem of the Brooke Shields clones - apparently I need more, not less, in the brow department. No tweazing nor waxing for me. I need filler and powder and all manner of grooming devices to achieve a strong and natural looking brow.

The earnest technician set to work with quick, feathery strokes that would make Picasso proud and ten minutes later, I was rushing out the door, now late for my next meeting but feeling sexy and strong, thanks to my professionally groomed brows.

I should have been tipped off by the quizzical looks I got from my associates during the meeting. At the time I just thought they were having trouble understanding my proposal but now I'm not sure.

After my meeting, I proceeded to the school to pick my daughter up at the end of her day. "Mom, are you mad at me?" she asked as she climbed in the car. I thought that was a a little strange as greetings generally go but then again, I usually am angry with the kids about one thing or another so I didn't give it much thought.

It wasn't until I got home and had a good look in the mirror that I understood the strange reactions. I looked like I had two fuzzy brown caterpillars dissecting my face.

My erstwhile brow technician had gotten carried away and while my new eyebrows were fashionably full and expertly arched, they made me look angry and puzzled, like a woman who’s favourite show is about to start and she can’t figure out how to work the remote.

So much for my eyebrows, I thought as I washed all trace off my face. At first I was disappointed - the last bastion of make-up for middle-aged women was no more. But then I got an idea. I rummaged through the medicine cabinet until I found what I was looking for, something that surely would cheer me up. My fuchsia cheek colour.