I've been called an aesthete. I've been called a lot worse, but let's not go there.
Since an aesthete is a person who loves beauty, you'd think that was a good thing. No way. Loving beauty is SO last century.
And it's not just this year. From the first time we were told to "let it all hang out," we have been on a slippery slope, slip-sliding away from beauty and moving towards a very unattractive world — although not without contradictions. At the moment, we are breathtakingly ambivalent about beauty, both chasing it and chasing it away.
 Sure, we love Angelina Jolie as the genetic wonder she is, and worship at her lips, if not her feet. As a couple, Brangelina wins first place in the Hubba Hubba Couples Olympics. We also forgive a lot if a person is good looking. Two words: Sarah Palin.
On the other hand, we're really into the ugly, the edgy, the uncomfortable. Take the movie, Precious. Critics loved it, warning that it's a difficult movie to watch. They say this as if you get extra points for looking at something disturbing.
You do get many politically correct points if you don't mention that its star is not merely overweight, but dangerously fat. Extra poundage isn't necessarily ugly; it can be attractive or at least comforting. Think of your favorite, always-struggling-with-her-weight, Aunt Sadie. We used to call it "pleasingly plump," and full-bodied women have been worshipped from prehistoric times to Christina Hendricks on current cover of New York Magazine. Talk about Hubba Hubba . . .
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 Dear Reader:
Guess what? Today is not just Valentine's day — it's the first anniversary of this blog!
A year ago today I launched something truly dangerous: A blog that wasn't about cats, politics, economics, celebrities, or the political economics of cats owned by celebrities.
Whoa! I have nothing against cats. I like them! They like me.
But I felt there was a place on the blogosphere for essays on a wide range of subjects linked only by the inescapable fact that I seem to see things in a manner somewhat askew. Rather like that sentence, if you get my drift.
 One of the first blogs, and still a favorite, is: I'VE LOST IT! about how the detectives of Law & Order should come to my apartment to find all those things that are missing, because these cops can toss a crib and find anything. Besides, who doesn't love Olivia?
Another was: OH, YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO TOSS COINS! about losing my  underwear near the Trevi Fountain in Rome. No, really.
Readers also liked IT'S CURTAINS FOR ME about my decorating disasters, and grown women wept over WITH A THONG IN MY HEART, about the heartbreak of buying a bathing suit.
Soon, comments started rolling in . . .
(Go to READ MORE)
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I love my book club.
That's The Geez Louise International Book Club to you, bub. AKA "GLIB."
And I beg to differ with Motoko Rich, who writes in the Times ("The Book Club With Just One Member"), that there is a "different class of reader" — people who are more serious about reading — who don't join book clubs. People who feel that "their relationship with a book is too intimate to share with others."
HA! Actually, I don't beg at all. I loudly proclaim my right — and the right of book clubbies everywhere — to differ like hell!
Our book club consists of the usual suspects: Louise (hence the Geez), Betsy, Sharon, Diana and me. We had Silvia, but when she moved back to Italy, we kept International in the title. Because we could. We are (or were) all involved with publishing — as writers, editors, consultants, and yes, even publishers. We all love books. We lived for them, literally.
 Like Ms Rich, as a child I read books by flashlight, or even the light of the radio. I knew there were secrets in those pages (They were!) that the grownups weren't telling me (They weren't!). The experience was all the more delicious for the naughtiness of it all.
But that was then, and this is now.
I still stay up late reading, but I use a book light. Now that I think of it, though. . . flashlights were a favorite prop of Nancy Drew, whose books my company produced for over a decade, although she usually used it for detective work.
Nancy very conveniently had no mother and a very indulgent father, so only Hannah the Housekeeper could stop her from staying up all night with her favorite novel. If Nancy had wanted to use a flashlight, Hannah would have brought some extra batteries and some freshly baked cookies. That women, bless her heart, was a real pushover.
Now, The New York Times may think that my love for Nancy (shared by Justice Sotomayer, among many, many other prominent women) makes me unserious about reading.
Unserious! Moi! You wouldn't say that if you saw my apartment . . (Go to Read More)
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 I am so lonely.
Some crazed woman was here yesterday to clean out my closet, if not my act, and she left here toting 6 large shopping bags headed for Goodwill.
She got in there and dragged things out I didn't know I had, made all kinds of piles, had me try on things to decide which pile they went in to: a whirling dervish on a mission.
My closet is neater than it has ever been in the history of me, amazingly organized, and I am thrilled and happy but a bit unnerved. I truly do understand the concept: clutter is not just bad for your closets, it's bad for your head. Maybe even your karma. Don't want to have bad Kloset Karma. No way.
Besides, the more you have jammed in there, the more you tend to wear the same three things day in and day out. Am I right?
It's a good idea, especially in these financially trying times, to "shop in your closet," instead of going forth to Macys or Bloomingdales, where you inadvertently buy the same thing over and over because you don't remember what you have. Of course, I advertently buy the same things all the time, but that's another story.
Now. If you're going to shop in your closet, it has to look like a store, not a warehouse. Sigh. I so get it, I really do. But I feel a little . . . empty. I mean, it's unnatural to have spaces between your clothes when you live in a New York apartment.
We've all seen this kind of closet cleansing on Oprah and Queer Eye and What Not to Wear, but when it happens to you, you need to be brave . . .
(Go to READ MORE.)
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 I don't want to multi task.
I don't even want to task.
I'm a girl, so I just wanna have fun.
Take doctors. Please. (Sorry about that.) Sometimes, I just want them to tell me what to do. I may not do it. In fact, I probably won't. But I want an opinion, not a bunch of options, which will necessitate yet another task in my life: doing the research.
Oprah says that this is what we all must do with hormone replacement therapy, among other things. And who can argue with Oprah?
But HRT: What a can of worms! According to the "experts," it could be good, it could be bad, it could be sorta good or sorta bad, or good in some ways but not in others, and good for some women but not for others, or maybe it's only good for Jackie Mason . . . And in the final analysis, you have to figure it out for yourself.
It's like playing doctor – without benefits . . .
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