I was out and about shopping for article research on Saturday, and doing a little recon for myself. As usual, I found it a fairly annoying experience.

I had to go to Sephora and Ulta, two mega beauty stores, which just about put me into anaphylactic shock. My god, so many, many, many products for making us better than we are. What a sorry excuse for a woman I am … I use so few of these products. At Sephora, waiting for a cashier requires standing in line in a lane of impulse purchases, like the candy racks by the supermarket checkout. Except all these little doodads are expensive. The least expensive I noticed was some sort of Bliss moisturizer for $8. Everything else was $15, $20, $30. Yikes. Does everyone else in the world really have that much dough to toss around on impulse? What’s wrong with me?

However, in researching this same article, I’ve been spending some time perusing beauty blogs looking for new and interesting products. In particular, I’ve been reading BeautyAddict and actually liking it.

I was interested to note that Beauty Addict has a particular wand up her tush about Maybelline Great Lash mascara, which has long been a beauty icon. She considers it highly overrated. I’ve been using Great Lash since I was a teenager but I was willing to listen. She’s obviously given it a lot more thought that I have.

Her favorite mascara, as discussed here, is Lancome Fatale, but I’m simply not the kind of person who spends $23 on a mascara. However, I was willing to give her drugstore favorite a try. L’Oreal Voluminous costs a couple of bucks more than Great Lash. Wow. I’m sold. My puny lashes looked a hundred times fatter under the influence of Voluminous than with Great Lash. I’ve purchased my last pink and green tube. The times, they are a changing….

I got a $5 coupon from DSW as a birthday present from the company, so of course I had to pop in there to see what I could see. While I was rapidly glazing over among the rows and rows and rows of shoes, I overheard one woman saying to another, “I just want to find a pair of simple…”

I didn’t hear the rest of the sentence but knew immediately that her search was doomed. When you put “just” and “simple” in the same sentence these days, you are setting yourself up for heartbreak. It only sounds like it should be easy. It would be much easier if you said, “I’m looking for something impractical, over-the-top and crapified with too much chazzerai.” Or, “I’m looking for a pair of hot pink patent leather fake lizard sandals with five-inch heels and overly shiny gold buckles.” Those, I almost guarantee you could find. But “just” and “simple”? Good luck, lady.

This is especially true of handbags these days. My goodness, they’re crapified. As far as I’m concerned, nothing makes a purse, shoe or garment looking cheaper and cheesier than lots of big buckles and logos and danglies and snaps and zippers and what-all.

Evidently, though, that’s just me.

Finally, since I was in a mall, I decided to pop into Lenscrafters and look at glasses frames. I’ve been wearing the same glasses for at least five years and I’m ready for a change. I had a shape in mind but of course, that’s a recipe for heartbreak. (I just want a simple…)

What’s completely bumfuzzling to me is that Lenscrafters was filled with dozens and dozens and DOZENS of nearly identical frames. The shape of the moment is a sort of narrow squared shape like these, and that’s pretty much what everyone is making in various colors and fabrications. I like them, they’re cute, they look OK but honestly, couldn’t we have just a little variety? Does everyone need to be on the same bandwagon? It seems to foolish. And it’s definitely frustrating.

That is all.

Labels: beauty, cosmetics, eyeglasses, products, purses, shoes, shopping

This Florida company, Ultrababies, will bring an ultrasound system to your house so you can throw a party featuring images of your precious unborn bundle.

Wow--baby worship now has to start before birth? Let me give moms-to-be a little tip: You probably shouldn’t invite friends who are childless by choice to this soiree. Their eyes will roll so far back in their heads, they may freeze that way and you’ll be responsible for blinding them. (Friends who have trouble conceiving might have different problems with the festivities.)

This same company also offers belly casting, because, “Although pregnancy seems never-ending while it is occurring, years later the memory will fade.” A belly cast—belly only or torso, hands and belly, will become "a priceless, personal piece of art that fits beautifully into any part of your home.”

So tell me, friends who have had babies—do you wish you had a belly cast hanging in your living room “as a lasting reminder of the precious time of your pregnancy”?

And if you have more than one child, would you have more than one belly cast, so nobody would feel left out? Or would this be just one more honor the first child would receive while subsequent kids are popped out with decreasing fanfare?

I’m kinda glad I’m past the age of having to attend baby showers. I've ooed and ahed over enough adorable itty-bitty garments.

Of course, I find grandparenting takes nearly as much of my friends’ time and attention as parenting did so that rebirth of old friendships I expected isn't exactly happening. As with parents, I have to work around the kids.

That’s why we selfish, cold-hearted childfree couples tend to hang together.

While we’re on the subject, here’s an essay I published a couple of years ago:

Don't forget the grown-ups

Look at all those shiny happy children’s faces beaming from my refrigerator door! I get photos in the mail all the time from friends and family -- school photos, holiday cards, graduation photos. The children all are beautiful and I love seeing how my friends’ offspring are growing up.

But few of the people I care about most turn up in my mailbox because only rarely do the photos include mom and dad.

What about the grown-ups?

In every case, the grown-ups in the families represented by these photographs are the point of connection for me. But where are they?

Why is it that once children enter the picture, grown-ups seem to fade out?

I like kids. Though I have none of my own, I enjoy visiting with other people’s children, especially when they are old enough to converse.

But I’m mostly a grown-ups’ grown-up. Given the choice between spending time with friends with or without their small children, I often choose adult-time.

When I’m invited to a baby shower, I usually bring a gift for the mom-to-be, whose body has been taken over and who will spend at least the next 18 years catering to the little need machine. As friends cross this important threshold, I want to honor the women they are as well as the moms they are about to become. Many of my friends seem to give up a lot when they become parents – things like careers, exercising, time for dreams beyond those they have for their children. I try to remind them of all they are along with being parents.

Sometimes it seems our culture treats us like new cars -- the moment you’re driven off the lot, you lose half your value. At holidays, charities are flooded with teddy bears and Barbie dolls but many fewer items for teens. Textbooks about developmental psychology peter out after young adulthood. Current research shows that despite the advice of financial experts, parents are putting money away for their children’s college education instead of their own retirement, even though scholarship money is far more readily available than retirement funds.

Children clearly are valued more highly than grown ups. But aren’t grown-ups just children a bunch of years down the road? Can’t we be as tender with adults as we are with children?

Growing up doesn’t automatically put an end to the need for affirmation and affection. It doesn’t automatically make you secure or confident. It doesn’t mean you don’t need a “there, there” now and then, or an “atta girl,” or a band-aid for a psychic wound. But grown-ups don’t get that stuff often, especially not mommies -- bottomless giving pits who learn to expect no thanks from their miniature masters. I try to be the atta-girl girl for my friends, parents and not.

Being friends with parents can be tough for those of us on the other side of the decision divide. I know my needs will always come second to my friends’ children’s, as it should be. I respect that and don’t count on my parent friends for much time, since they usually have birthday parties, soccer games, piano recitals and car pools running them in circles.

I have been unable to maintain friendships with a couple of people after they became parents. One woman informed me that “life is nothing without a child” – a red flag that our priorities were irredeemably at odds . But other friendships have withstood the addition of children because we both make a concerted effort to appreciate each other as valuable individuals separate from our choices in the children department.

I sincerely care about my friends’ kids. Children are swell. But their parents are even more important to me. I like grown-ups.

Labels: parenting, personal growth, pregnancy, products