Julia Child!!! She was a superhero because she demystified fine cooking. Watching the French Chef I learned to not be intimidated and get in the kitchen and cook! Re-watching the DVDs I realize what a genuine authentic woman she was. She was not pretentious and had no sense of grandness. What a classy woman and she loved cats.

I certainly am as fat as she ever was plus I look rather like her. However, personality wise I have striven most of my life to NOT be like my mother. She was a very difficult person and caused others a lot of pain. For my own well being I found it necessary to sever contact with her about 15 years before she died. When I received word of her death, my first thought was “the world is now a safer place”. This was a sad situation and I now believe she had a serious personality disorder that was undiagnosed.

I just finished re-reading “the House of Mirth”, by Edith Wharton. Lily Bart is such a contradictory character and I always get emotional from her story, even after perhaps 10 re-readings. She is a character far ahead of her time, struggling to have an authentic relationship while not tossing aside her personal history and upbringing. Many times I have tried to find a solution to her life situation and rewrite the ending. However, Edith Wharton did such a splendid job that any other ending would have been too weak. I would like to have had lunch with Edith Wharton sitting on one side and Julia Child on the other.

Even though my aspiration is to be the most stingy woman on earth, I am still wasteful. First of all, I eat more than my body needs and need larger clothes with more fabric. I do not recycle, except to buy clothes at thrift stores. Sometimes, I cook more of a dish than can be eaten in two meals and cannot face another serving. Then it sits in the refrig and grows hair. I drive more than necessary, going on jaunts to run away from cleaning chores. This does conserve cleaning supplies, but wastes expensive gasoline.

What a lot of men do not know is that many women do NOT think that having a penis conveys unquestionable rights. Men are not the center of the universe and furthermore, do not know everything worth knowing….which, to most men, excludes how to care for a home and children. Let’s not talk about men who think that what feels good for them sexually, is great for the woman. Somebody please stop me before I reveal that I think relationsips with most men are a waste of time and effort.

This is a trick question…more like a memory test. After being a “nice girl who didn’t”, I had a great time during the pre-AIDS, Free Love era. I always liked men who were different from the home boys, and a college friend told me I was a “foreign student welcoming commitee”. I never counted the number of lovers since they were a part of life and not attempts to score.

Used to sleep nude, even when alone. In more recent years I sleep in cotton knit nightshirts, or gigantic t’s. With sensitive skin, the lacy silky stuff is torture, itchy and too hot. My favorite nightshirt is a very old Lands End, faded, a few holes and worn thin. If the house catches fire I’ll be too embarrased to run outside.

My daughter never listen to advise from anyone at anytime. She should have and would have saved herself a lot of grief. However, my advise remains the same to someone listening or not. First get as much education as possible. Don’t let anyone tell you not to follow a dream. Also, romantic relationships should make life happier and richer, rather than creating drama or being a financial and emotional drain. Us elder women who are very uncool, fat, and never watch TV may still have wise words. So listen up!

Being a true coward, I have never put myself in much danger with physical adventures such as sky diving, etc. I have been, however, called brave and courageous for being independent, pursuing an education, driving cross country with my daughter, and speaking out while others looked away. Actually the most dangerous thing I have ever done is to remain fat and not have the discipline, to go on a drastic diet of twigs and pebbles. Body fat is viewed socially, and medically, as poison we carry around.

So who wants to grow up and spoil all the fun? At age 10 or so I wanted to be a ballerina. I am much older and spend very little time on my toes! I did achieve my dream of an education even though my family did not encourage book learning. As a child, travel was something other people did, especially to Europe, and I mistakenly thought European travel required weatlh. It does not. At 63 I boarded a flight to Paris, alone and had a wonderful 10 days of bliss. Then I went alone again 2 years later. The goal of achieving a balanced happy life came later and I have achieved that with my spouse/partner Diane.

Any time I have not listened to my gut instinct I have been sorry later…jobs, relationships, you name it. Sometimes I think it is psychic powers working, other times I think it may be my brain using accumulated knowledge, and clues from my past experiences. Where ever it comes from, I have learned to welcome the instinct and try to follow it or at least look harder at situations to find where/what is going on. It works…go with it.

There is no person that I take for granted…too many changes in my life. Any worthwhile relationsip should be tended with care and love. I do assume my wonderful 3 cats will continue to love me, shed on everything and bother me when I try to read.

Reading is my all time stress reliever. I can crawl inside classic literature, such as Edith Wharton, Bronte,or Jane Austin and forget my woes for a while. My favorite is “House of Mirth” because Lily Bart is a complex contradictory character. We have 3 Abys that are fun to watch and always provide a laugh…My favorite snuggle love purr face is Snazzy Mae.

I am too undisciplined to go on dramatic diets, and have never been able to afford plastic surgery. Probably the most dangerous thing I have done for beauty is the have many home perms when I was young. The chemicals made my eyes red and watery and it completely parched my scalp. Once when I was about 10, my mother took me to a beauty school, for a perm, and they used one of those Frankenstein electric contraptions that which had hot clamps for each hair roller. My hair was left like a Brillo pad and broke off near the roots. Yipes!!!

My parents divorced when I was about 6 and I did not see my Father again until I was 30. My Mother had an undiagnosed mental problem and my memories are of raging, lying, living in dirt and disorder, and being called stupid for expressing ambitions and goals. So I guess my Mother was most important as I tried very hard to avoid being like her.