Sign in to wowOwow

Enter the email address that you used when registering at wowOwow.
The password field is case sensitive. Click here if you have forgotten your password.

Please register for wowOwow

Newsletter subscriptions
Sign up to receive wowOwow's weekly newsletter and get our best picks delivered right to your inbox. Our newsletter content is hand-picked by the wowOwow editorial team and provides the top features, news, and commentary from our site. Subscribing to our newsletter is free and safe. We will never share your email or other information with a third-party without your direct consent.
By registering, you indicate that you have read and agree
with our privacy policy and terms of service.
Home
Livia Jones

Livia Jones

My Comments (149 so far…)

Let Down and Felt Up? by E.D. Hill

I had a mammogram in my 40s. It was extremely painful and the resulting pictures were impossible for the staff to read. They made me do it again, just as painful the second time. And the pictures looked exactly the same. They gave me a clean bill of health because there wasn’t much else to be done with it. Since I have no history of cancer of any kind in my family, I’m going to stick with occasional self-exams and take my chances rather than submit to that horrible experience again. If they want to look inside my breast tissue, how about a sonogram? Now that I would go for. 

Has your mother's style influenced your own? In what way?

Yes. Neither of us has any sense of style. For the most part, our clothes are simple, practical, and cheap. 

Caption This!

Mrs. Counselor Nugent is discreetly informed that Big Hat Day was LAST week. 

Music was the great divide between ourselves and our parents. Will technology be the dividing factor with the new generation?

I’m 53. I don’t have children, but it’s clear that none of my nieces and nephews have anything on me technologically. Sure, I would rather listen to Dylan’s latest recording than anything Miley Cyrus is doing, but if she’s around long enough I’ll probably listen to her too. Check out the celebrity playlists in the iTunes store. Even very young celebrities include so-called "boomer" music in their lists. There are generational gaps, but technology and music are no longer what define them. I think the difference between generations has more to do with the stage of life people are experiencing than cell phone usage or musical tastes.  

One study from Yale says that women are evolving to become shorter and fatter. In recent years have you shrunk or gotten fatter?

I’m more than an inch shorter because I was put on high doses of prednisone for several years, without knowing it was turning my bones into filigree. Fortunately, a new specialist did a bone scan and was able to reverse the damage, but it didn’t make me taller again. I’m roughly 40 pounds heavier than I was 30 years ago. That puts me, technically, a few pounds into the overweight zone, but I don’t care. The extra pounds I have only because I’m shorter and therefore not entitled to them anymore are NOT MY FAULT. 

Caption This!

Alien dog. We call him Spot. 

The Truth About Marriage, by Carin Rubenstein

Sometimes I do more. Sometimes he does. I’m better at laundry than he is, but he does a lot more of it. I guess that means I’m not superior. I’m completely okay with that. I had one of those do-nothing husbands for a while when I was very young. I divorced him. 

Liz Smith: Brooke Astor's Sad Legacy – Money Changes Everything

Familes get unhinged over money. Don’t assume that your children will be generous with each other. Assume that anyone with a key will be in your house grabbing the good stuff before anyone else gets a chance, that more than one executor will mean way too much of your estate will be spent on lawyers, and that the responsible kids will not "understand" when you leave more money to your needier loser kids. Everyone should find a good lawyer, take the good legal advice you are paying for, and get an effective will that reflects your values and wishes. 

Candice Bergen: Where Have All the Linguistics Gone?

Someone good at this should jump into this obvious cultural gap. 

Should Roman Polanski go to prison?

Didn’t this thing happen two days after his pregnant wife was butchered by the Mansons? Maybe a lot of people would do something stupid under those circumstances. And the girl isn’t 13 anymore, and she has forgiven him. And decades have passed. Here’s something else. If he’d done this in North Carolina, having sex with a 13-year-old wouldn’t have been a crime. A crime in one state is a consensual relationship in another. I say we should give it a rest. 

Dear Margo: Her Mother, the Dinosaur

I’m sure people really look forward to staying with you. 

Dear Margo: Her Mother, the Dinosaur

Re #2, Asking that a couple of things be tossed in the wash with the towels is hardly a houseguest crime. This is all it takes to set her off? This makes someone a "head case"? 
The huge drama made of what sounds to me like a non-issue makes me suspect that she simply doesn’t like the woman, and that her other failings have been similarly grossly exaggerated. When I have guests, I always ask if anyone needs something tossed in the wash. I’ll bet that the rearranging of the bookcase was nothing more than taking a book to look at and putting it back in the "wrong" place.  I say the writer needs to get a grip if she wants to be a part of this family. I think SHE is the head case. 

Jeremy Hit Rock Bottom, by Sheila Nevins

I believe that substance abuse is essentially self-medication. Just because the doctors and the counselors don’t know what’s at the root of the problem doesn’t mean there isn’t a root of the problem that leads to the rest. "Addicts" are expected to will themselves better. It doesn’t work with cancer either. 

Hate the Gym? How Very French, by Mireille Guiliano

I won a $100 gift certificate to the fanciest restaurant in town. My husband I went and were served plates I can only describe as "funny little food." It was fine, and we enjoyed it with wine to the tune of a few more bucks than the certificate was for. But I can’t sign up for the pay more, get less theory of weight loss. I’d rather stay home, prepare my own meals, and just eat less of that. And I do. 

I’ve been on an exceptionally healthy vegetarian diet for the better part of a year now. I’ve surely cut thousands of calories out of my diet by refusing cookies, potato chips, candy, chips and salsa, and everything else of that kind. I have whole grains, fresh vegetables and fruit, small amounts of nuts, green tea, and a square of dark chocolate with red wine as an evening treat. Surely my overall health has improved. My cholesterol numbers have dropped. Yet I haven’t lost an ounce. How can that be? It makes no sense to me. 

I was very slim well into my 30s. I started putting on "marriage weight" after and have settled firmly into that size 14 place. I don’t think these things are as easy as the simple formulas you find in diet books and online.

I don’t buy the exercise to lose weight theory either. If that were true, why on earth would Olympic gymnasts and figure skaters have to watch their weight? Humbug!  

123456789next ›last »