high maintenance

Passing comments from unrelated friends in the past 24 hours has me wondering if perhaps I'm a freak.

One friend - not remotely high maintenance, as a human being I mean, mentioned she was getting her hair done. The other was facebook private messaging me, from Miami, while getting a mani and pedi. 

And a third friend was on her way to her salon to get a blow dry. 

I'm wondering if perhaps I'm not normal.

For starts: I do my own nails. I've ever had a pedicure, and my toes are pretty good, I guess. I've been doing them hot pink for like a year now. My nails, I change all the time, but I also do those on my own. One hand paints the other, so to speak. And not only do I blow dry my own hair, but half the time, I just let it dry naturally. In fact I haven't spent any money on my hair, apart from purchasing shampoo or conditioner (I SWEAR by conditioner, preferably Aussie 3 minute miracle, which I'm known to leave on between swims, for hours at a time). I cut my own hair with a scissor. Now mind you: I"m not saying this is a trick you should try at home, nor am I saying I'm doing a good job. I remember though that Jerry Hall - while being married to Mick - not only cut her own hair, but conditioned it - and her entire body - with olive oil.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I just don't get it about any of this. I don't understand the concept of a 'spa'. If someone, say, gifted me with a day pass at a spa, all I'd want to know is, does it have a pool/sauna/steambath, and if so, I'd bring my conditioner (see above) to compensate for the chlorine - or hopefully, they'd use that new salt based water, which is heaven - and I'd swim and swim and rest in the sauna til I was too hot and about to faint - as I did today - and swim some more. Then shampoo, conditioner, and hit the road, Jack.

But please don't come at me with beauty treatments, thank you very much. I don't like the idea of people I don't know poking and prodding me. Or pulling my hair.

Which leads me to the question: what is your idea of being pampered?

And that leads me to think of the idea of being high, or low, maintenance. I know this is just one superficial example. And the model shown here - backstage at London Fashion Week - I'm sure she can, and does, her own hair. This is work. This wasn't remotely relaxing, not in the context that I shot it. In fact the poor girl looked like she was being attacked. Which she handled with cool aplomb.

I'm just really thinking in terms of the concept of being high maintenance. I have friends who are single, and friends who are married or living with someone, and the difference has nothing to do with the texture of their hair. To a man, it seems to me that what men look for in women is are they high, or low, maintenance. Which leads me to the question: just who, exactly, are we doing all this for?

luminosity

lu·mi·nos·i·ty (l m -n s -t ). n. pl. lu·mi·nos·i·ties. a : the quality or state of being luminous b : something luminous 2 a : the relative quantity of light b : relative brightness of something 3 : the relative quantity of radiation emitted by a celestial source (as a star)

We have a screening tonight in Leicester Square - Roman Coppola's short films, and I know nothing more than that (I like to go into things - films, especially - with no preconceived expectations) - and a little cocktail party first. And I was thinking (not too hard, mind you) about what I'd be wearing. And today - perhaps because it's been so grey, cold, wet lately - I"m in the mood for something luminous.

Yesterday, for example, I wore a three seasons old Topshop sequin motorcycle jacket over layers of fine grey tees, white jeans, lots of chains and things, and dressed it down with brown Chelsea boots. Tonight will probably be variations of the same.

Speaking of stars, this is Julia Restoin Roitfeld - Carinne's daughter - and I was seeing her a lot at fashion weeks, back when I was going (I'm on a break, you might have noticed). She's lovely, a nice girl with a lot of class and not a competitive bone in her body - why should she compete? - and we became quite friendly. If that's possible, during that circus. I think she sensed that we both feel the same about it all. Like we'd rather be home, alone or with our men, with a cup of tea and a nice book.



Took these shots within minutes of each other, at Waterloo Station for the Topshop Uniqlo show.. wow, must have been a year and a half ago now. But these kind of subtle colours, and metallics and, well, haha, LUMINOSITY, are the other look I'm craving at the moment. Like when there was all that 'nude is the new black' hysteria a few seasons back, I still love the subtleness of greys and beiges together - I can't bear grey with black, but pair it with neutral tones, and the greys start to feel blue and the beiges start going all peachy..

Those definitions of luminosity are fine - and Julia's, I suppose, a star, although probably in the scheme of things, a minor one - but I kind of like this definition best:

Luminous quality. The intrinsic brightness of a celestial object (as distinct from its apparent brightness diminished by distance).

It's about, I feel, that trick of the light: the appearance of something that is reflecting back light, but appears to be glowing from within.

I don't have a wish list. I'm not a wish list kind of woman: my cup is more than half full. My cup runneth over. But if my Fairy Godmother put a gun to my head and said 'you've got to wish for something, Punkin', I'd probably wish for luminescent grey green or violet blue eyes. Something I know I'm not gonna be getting. Not in this life.

pumpkin head

Is it just me: wasn't Thanksgiving meant to be the last Thursday of the month?

I nearly missed it this year: I was all psyched for next Thursday - living in London, it's not like everyone's talking about it - and if it wasn't for one of my many American friends happening to mention on Monday that she couldn't believe it was Thanksgiving already.. anyway, the thing about Thanksgiving is, it has nothing to do with nationality, or religion.

Anyone can own this holiday. All you need to do is cook. Or show up where someone else has cooked. You don't need to come bearing gifts. You just need to have an attitude of gratitude.

And this year we had the world's smallest Thanksgiving: just me, my husband, and the cat. Corn fed Devon 'freedom food' chicken (don't ask me what that means: I just hope she had a good life) roasted with garlic, butter, leaks and thyme, tons & tons of unbelievably wonderful stuffing - a whole giant souffle of stuffing - brussel sprouts with home made maple cured Danish ham and cream, braised fennel, thinly sliced raw fennel with olive oil and sea salt, roast potatoes, carrots, onions, leeks and fennel with rosemary,  spinach souffle, fresh spiced cranberry sauce with orange zest, baked sweet potato (which I forgot to serve, it's on the leftover menu tonight), and for dessert, two pumpkin pies - one shown here - vanilla ice cream, and dark chocolate with ginger.

Because I had been doing everything in such a chilled way, starting on Tuesday, dinner was smack on time - to the minute - with scented candles and Bach playing. Very grown up and civilised, until the husband and cat had so much roast chicken in their systems that they started going mental. Feral. Fighting and chasing each other all over the house, like kids at a birthday party on too much sugar, until they worked themselves into a stupor, and crashed. Deep asleep.

This year, starting with last New Year's Eve, I lost the three most important of the older men in my life since my father died. They weren't only my loss, of course: they were each deeply loved by their family, friends, and spouses. I have many friends who lost a parent or loved one. One friend, my best friend since childhood, Sheila Fein, a brilliant artist who lost her mother this year, became a grandmother herself, for the first time.

And all through this, I don't think I've seen more of an attitude of gratitude than I'm seeing and feeling all around me. All the toxic friends - and family - seem to have melted away. They can go off being nasty to someone else. All I'm surrounded with now are loved ones, friends old and new, who feel the way I do about life. About what matters.

Today, in yoga class, our teacher spoke quietly, while we were breathing at the end of class, and asked us to picture the Middle East. Picture children laughing, free, on both sides of the wall. To picture peace. Lasting peace.

I haven't lost the people I lost: they are with me, all the time. The only thing that is lost, when Sandy first blasted her way onto the Eastern Seaboard, are the bottom 100 feet of the wooden stairs leading to my father's beach. They told my mom, who was safely in Florida, before the storm even hit, the stairs were gone. I pictured them, 100 feet of wooden stairs, floating off to sea, like Noah's Ark.

But that is the worst that happened. When Sandy left, a neighbour told my mother she could see a rainbow reaching down and touching the roof of her house. And the beach is still there. Waiting for our return.