Moment Magnitude

Allergan's Vivite - A Second Report

I am a skeptic.

So. When something seems to work, I am surprised. Often, I say to myself, "Sucker!" I don't want to suspend my ingrained disbelief.

It would appear that this stuff works. I mean, this Vivite skin product regimen. When I write "works," I mean this: My skin feels softer. Much softer.

Now, it could be that I am paying more attention, scrutinizing my face more than usual. But I think not. It is softer. Score one for the folks at Allergan.

The samples are just about gone. The eye cream went first. Then the daily facial serum. I'm going through the last if the night cream. Not surprising, the last to go will be the exfoliating cleanser (the "sandpaper").

Let's see how long the effects last. For the record, I see no change in any of the fine line-wrinkles.

But hey, check Julie Christie in the gorgeous, touching film "Away from Her." If ever there was a testament to timeless beauty, then she is it. 

I have to (begrudgingly?) admit that this Vivite line is far superior to the chain-drugstore-supermarket brands I've been using.

Another bonus: The samples from Allergan (the creators-purveyors of Juvederm, the injectable wrinkle-line filler), also included Scott Barnes' "Kiss & Make-up Kit."

Scott Barnes is advertised as a "celebrity make-up artist." The concealer is pretty terrific. The lip gloss is great, but too sticky. I wish the sample had come in a tube - since I have to wipe off the excess from my fingers - and when I don't have tissue at hand, that poses a slight challenge. (Wipe it on the butt of my jeans?)

All up? I wish I had the Vivite samples in hand after the Active FX treatment. I might have thought better of the (lack of) after-care.

Another special thanks to the good folks here - who sent the samples. There are more, and more reports to come. 

Allergan's Vivite - A First Report

Round one of various skin products review(s).

First of all, there is an accent on the final "e" in the name Vivite. I just don't know how to make that happen here in Typepad world. It's the kind of accent that leans to the right, like it will fall over. Got it? Good. Work with me here.

I read the brochure - and almost forgot everything in it the instant I read it. Instead, I surveyed the various packages I received in the mail, and opted, for no discernible reason, to try the Allergan Vivite (accent!) skin care products first. A crap shoot decision. Like throwing a dart at the map of the world, and traveling to wherever it lands.

Okay, maybe not so much.

The sample packet contained four products in a small plastic snap-shut envelope. The darned snap resisted easy closure nine out of ten times, a small nuisance. The packaging colors are soothing shades of pink and some version of white. So compact, so cute - don't we love travel-size bottles? The Thelma and Louise syndrome.

The products themselves included an exfoliant, a light, almost clear hydrating fluid, an eye cream, and a night cream. I checked the full-size prices online - this stuff does not come cheap.

I've been using them for the past week. I went on instinct, like I do. I may have remembered what I read from the brochure, but if I did/do, I am unconscious of it. I have used skin care "regimes" for many years, so I am familiar with the typical procedure of cleanse/exfoliate, hydrate, protect, etc.

Still, every time I use a micro-bead (or variant) cleanser, it feels like I am sandpapering my face. I just don't like that, never did. Vivite's exfoliant feels very similar to any other exfoliant product I have used: That odd admixture of rubbing sand on my face - even as it oils at the same time.

Now, I know these products are available from doctors' offices, but good lord, they could add some kind of pleasing fragrance.

This stuff smells like a medicine-y olive antipasto, and when I taste it (okay, if I smear the stuff all over my face, that includes my lips - I am not taking mini-spoonfuls of the stuff), it tasted like very salty olive oil. Like a dirty martini. Maybe salt and olive oil are really, truly, good for my skin.

If that's the case, then generations of Italian grandmothers (mine included) are right.

I do not like exfoliant-sandpaper cleansers. In a post I wrote months ago, I confessed that I don't like to wash my face. I cold cream the eye makeup (I do not use whole-face makeup anymore - I don't need to), splash warm water, moisturize, and that's it.

In the spirit of this experiment however, I have used the sandpaper exfoliant. But only two or three times a week. And a revelation, holy cow. When I re-read the brochure, it recommended that the exfoliant be used at that same frequency, no more. Either I'm damned clever, super-intuitive, or the latent memory kicked in.

I confess, I like eye creams. This one is a bit stiff, it doesn't rub in as easily as I prefer. It makes me pull the skin around my eyes more than I like. But I discovered that if I rub it between my thumb and forefinger, it warms up (ah, friction), and glides on better.

The everyday hydrating fluid, although of a very thin consistency (I do like the mini-pump action), seems to retain its moistness after application. But it, like its companion products is salty-oily like the afore-referenced olive antipasto and cocktail.

The thicker night cream is, well, a thicker night cream, more of the same antipasto-dirty martini flavors.

All up, sure, my skin feels great. Do I see any kind of age-reducing change? No. Call me blind (that's easy - anyone who knows me knows the strength of my eyeglass prescription), but I got nuthin'. In fact in the three sample before/after photos included in the brochure, I cannot discern any change - even with the light pink pointer arrows. What are they attempting to show? I am baffled. 

Back to the brochure. Okay: It seems as though I am using the products according to the prescribed regimen. Oh, and the model on the brochure looks like Naomi Watts. She's a helluva'n actor. See The Painted Veil.

But with this list of botanical ingredients: Chamomile, aloe, wild mango butter (sounds tasty), green tea, pomegranate, licorice root, and caffeine, couldn't the good folks at Allergan make this stuff smell better? Oh wait, the last listed botanical is olive leaf extract.

See that? I knew it. Antipasto.

Active FX - One Year Later

Since writing the initial post here over one year ago, this section of Moment Magnitude has taken on a life of its own - even as I have written that there is so much more to the aggregate blog than the Active FX post. That stated, I have a fresh reason for writing - and will copy this message as a new post to the opening page of Moment Magnitude.

Unlike some contributing commenters, I have very good skin. I had the procedure as a courtesy experiment, with little explanation upfront, no before-after photos, and no long-term follow-up. The office in which I had the procedure was not pleased with the story I wrote - albeit intended as self-deprecating and ironic - and so the name of the office is not included here.

Over a year later, I see no results, and that's fine, no big deal. The tiny broken capillaries on my nose, and the little scar on my upper lip remain.

What is interesting however, among the outpouring of reactions submitted here, is one in particular. And that comes from Kevin DeBias, of The Institute for Laser and Aesthetic Medicine. His father, a board-certified physician, specializing in aesthetic medicine, innovated the protocol used for "fractional CO2 (carbon dioxide)," which the kind of laser used in Active FX (if I have that right).

Go to Mr. DeBias' October 7, 2007 comment to find various hyperlinks. It turns out that Mr. DeBias has very generously offered to supply me with a suite of (long-term) sample skin care products, with careful instructions - something I never received from the NYC plastic surgeon's office where I had the procedure (admittedly, I signed waivers - it was an experimental trial, and free of charge).

So, now that many commenters have written in about after-procedure skin creams, I hope that I will be able to provide some reasonable (and dare I suggest useful?) feedback on these products. How's that? I'm keen to begin. Stay tuned.

Alchemical

A week before my period, I get emotional. I still do.

I used to think that one ovary was the angry ovary, throw-knives angry. My temper would trigger fast, the heat would rise up my neck, and I would struggle to "stay - in - control."

The other ovary would be weepy. I would cry at almost nothing, at Hallmark Cards television ads. Pathetic.

The angry ovary is on hiatus. Anymore, I get the weepies. I cry at the drop of a hat. It happens mostly when I am by myself (preferably) watching gooey television, any romantic film on cable or Masterpiece Theater, renditions of anything Austen, Bronte, Copperfield, or James.

I'll watch such weepies on purpose. I like the way it feels. It reminds me how hard it is to be in love, of the endless yearning and hopefulness.

"I cannot live without my life, I cannot live without my soul."

Right. My big brain knows that obsessive love doesn't work. The couple of times I was the object of obsession, it felt like a vise encircled my neck, and that it was tightened to the point of suffocation. I was good at running away.

Except for the handful of times when I obsessed. Right after a breakup. It's as if I went into shock, my brain slowed, and I did irrational things.

Even today, when I recall some stupid behavior, I blush from embarrassment. And then I chuckle. I've learned how to forgive myself, and I've learned how to keep those nutty impulses in check. They never last anyhow, and for all I know, they might be healing.

Comedy equals tragedy plus time.

Sometimes, one other feeling lingers. The feeling of waiting, of the belief that the real thing will someday come along and grab me by the shirt.

In truth, I've had some of those shirt-grabbing moments.

I thought I would describe a handful, but one in particular is doing its every-few-months lap around my memory. (Except for another one, a funny guy I knew turned up at my apartment while I was painting...picked up a brush and helped me finish. Okay, there are others.)

They tend to be Erasers.

The one I remember happened maybe ten years ago. I was finishing a mid-summer ecological science conference in Snowbird, Utah. A scientist himself (geologist), he had just returned from lengthy field research project in the high deserts of western China. And he popped into Utah for a long weekend. We had a history by then of a couple of days here and there around the country. We lived on opposite ends of the country, in so many ways, yet we managed to get together now and then.

Push pins in a map of the United States: Georgia, Massachusetts, Nevada, Washington, D.C., New Mexico, Utah...

We hiked up a Snowbird mountain together. We started at 8000 feet above sea level, summitted at over 11,000 feet, took the ski tram down, and wound up in the middle of a belly dancer festival on the Snowbird resort grounds.

Never mind the belly dancers (Mormons?).

I remember I had the time of my life, not so much for our easy and funny conversation, but more for his way of always making me feel like I was the only person in the world who mattered.

I also recall that he had an altimeter and thermometer in his wristwatch. Plus, he could describe the geological history of the montane region just east of the Salt Lake basin. It was as if he was reciting Shakespeare's sonnets to me.

The last time I saw him was maybe five years ago. He had a girlfriend and I had a boyfriend. We all met for dinner. At one point in the conversation, I remember he still had that twinkle, and if we had been by ourselves, something else would have happened.

In that, our desires and energies were well-matched.

We talk every now and then - usually when he is on a long drive somewhere in the great Southwest, heading to another research trench-digging site. He always has a good story.

Or a sad one. A few years back, he had his heart broken for what sounded like the first time. It took the piss out of him, and it took time too. (I broke my own a couple of years later - as hard as I ever have, only for me, it took less time that time.)

He could be married now. 

But whenever I recall our times, I smile. I have no regrets.

Someday, maybe I'll get lucky. Maybe a roll of the dice will present another such person, who "poof" will be there before me, and grab me by the shirt.

Only maybe I will see him, and pay more attention.   

My Eggs Lake

Peanut Cascade on the Palisades, NY.

When I was nine or ten, living in Germany, my best friend and I laughed our little girls heads off. Maybe we had been at Girl Scout day trip (Troops on Foreign Soil), but our legs ached from some athletic exertion. Heck, maybe it was ballet class. My memory is fuzzy.

She said "My eggs lake."

As soon as she did, she realized her gaffe. And we laughed. Oh, how we laughed. We laughed until we cried. The silly giggles, the kind that self-generate, self-perpetuate, until we lay on our backs, gasping, exhausted.

My legs ache.

Every couple-three months, I take a friend or two up to hike the trail at the State Line Lookout on the Palisades Interstate Park, a mile south of the NY State border. It is the toughest hike within an hour's (maybe even two hours) drive of the City. It's a bear of a hike. The Park materials call it "the hikes of hikes."

I've been hiking the Peanut Cascade-Giant Stairs loop for fifteen years. I argue that it keeps my legs in shape for when I visit the mountains in Colorado, New Mexico, or California (Arizona and Utah too).

But it also busts my butt, quads, iliotibial bands, and lower back. Mostly the quads. For two days afterward, the front of my legs hurt, a lot like the two days after I ran the New York City Marathon. Only once. Once was enough.

Going down stairs kills.

It will get better, And in a couple-three months, I'll take a friend or two and do it all over again.

   

Back on the Stick

The winter pelt, the winter welt.

I know I may be exaggerating, but it seems as though I have a little roll around my lower abdomen, and another just just above the flat of my hip sockets. The tone is still visible in general, but I feel the need to tighten up.

I took a break from my regular workout regime - for over a month. The late start, but then seemingly endless winter cold weighed me down. I didn't want to leave the loft. I slept more than eight hours a night. I hibernated.

I was not alone. At least three of my girls relayed similar sentiments and experiences.

But now it's time for a change. The weather is about to turn warmer, and when it does, it feels as though I can breathe better.

So I'm back in the gym, pulling that heart rate up to its optimal training zone, back on the mat, sweating my butt off. And aching all over - again. It won't take long now. The muscle soreness will abate. And Advil helps.

Oh, and I hope to be hitting the rocks on the Palisades Peanut Falls soon.

Personal Space

On a fourteen-mile-long island of eight million full-time residents, you'd think we would be better at paying attention to personal space, both our own and other's.

Permit me a little self-indulgence.

I know, that as a native - four generations on one side, three on the other - how to weave my way through a jammed sidewalk, subway, or event at a nightclub. It's almost second nature. I say to myself, you can always tell the non-natives: They seem oblivious to their surroundings. And in this town, that can spell anything from annoyance to downright danger. Not that all non-natives are so unmindful, mind you.

(An aside: The word, "annoy" and its variants, "annoying," "annoyance" seem to be the word(s) of the moment. It's annoying.)

For some screwed-up reason, I find it most glaring when I work out, at The Gym.

After almost thirty-five years of working out in this city, from crazed-competitive aerobics classes in the early eighties, to holistic-spiritual aerobics classes and personal trainers into the 90s, to the realization that I was just better off doing my own thing, in the twenty-first century, I think I have a handle on work-out etiquette.

I go off-hours, since the after-work rush makes getting on a preferred heart-thumping machine, or wiggling in to an available space on a communal mat almost impossible. 

At The Gym, the key offenders of oblivion, and worse, the willful takers-over of space, are the personal trainers. Like water, they spread and seep into all available corners.

A word on some of the other patrons of The Gym. During the relative peace of the mid-afternoon hours, I have seen Kyle MacLachlan work out. He wears a bandanna and glasses, spends most of his time on weight machines, and has very skinny calves.

I have seen Matthew Modine too, who looks great. He is bigger and taller than I realize - every time.

(All we would need to complete this holy trinity is Campbell Scott.)

And then there are the too-thin, tallish, wannabe models. Ah, the dears, with their squeaky, high-pitched voices, chatting among themselves (I have seldom, if ever, seen any break an actual sweat) about this or that fashion magazine, or the E! Entertainment re-run about Demi Moore's boyfriends and husbands. Yes, The Gym has flat-screen televisions all over the place.

Nope. It's the trainers, walking purposefully in their black outfits, the word "Coach" stenciled in orange on their chests and backs. They are a mostly young set, and judging from overheard conversation, they have come to New York from other States. They cannot make two sentences in a row without saying "I was like...," that great substitute fill-in for "I said," or "I thought." These people are not rocket surgeons, no.

So often, when I am on the mat, going through my self-taught, old-fashioned, mat-Pilates sequence (I loathed the way William Gibson attempted to exploit the practice by assigning it obsessively to his main character, in his novel Pattern Recognition. I remember harumphing at first, then cursing it later. Awful, trite, annoying.), a trainer, client in tow, will take up all available space, without making the slightest acknowledgment that hey, there might be another person there, on the floor.

Call me kooky-obsessive, but I always eye-scan and check for available space, making sure that once down on the ground, there is sufficient space all around, for one very simple reason: I don't want to kick anyone in the head.

Today, at 2:15 p.m. the worst. I was mid-way through the core sequence (the midsection), when a trainer and three others took over half the mat, to conduct a chat - about shoulders? - when one opened a container of food, and started to eat. I think they were all trainers. But food? Distinct garlic-smelling food, on the mat - when someone less than a foot away is simply trying to complete their daily workout?

The Gym ain't cheap. I have never registered a complaint. Until today. I left the mat, and padded to the manager's office, to say something. And then I returned to the mat, where the kumbaya-kids were still sitting. Another trainer came over and told them they could not eat on the floor (news flash), and they looked at me funny. Clue-free and living in the big city.

I picked up my stuff, walked off to another mat, completed my workout, and left.

These people need to get some city smarts. Yesterday would be good.

Active FX

Active FX is not the name of a summer blockbuster movie targeted to the teenage boy demographic.

I know. Last month, I was part of an experimental group of women who underwent a new-ish procedure. (And no, that is not why I slowed the frequency of posts here at MM.)

In a sentence: I had the skin on my face burned off.

The easiest way to understand this is to recall an episode (Season 5, Episode 71) from Sex and the City, when Samantha had a chemical or laser facial peel, she looked into the mirror, and shrieked when she saw her red, oozing face.

The procedure is intended to slough off micro-layers of dead skin to reveal the younger-looking skin below. The argument goes that afterward, the appearance of fine lines is greatly reduced, and that the results last for at least a couple of years - if not more.

The Active FX laser renders almost identical results to the more intense and longer-recovery chemical and full-laser peels, except that it is supposed to take not more than five days to recover, allowing folks to return to their busy lifestyles faster.

In truth, the office that arranged the procedure is familiar to me. I figured that offering myself as a guinea pig was the least I could do.

Here's how it was explained to me:

It will take three to five days to recover.

The procedure itself will take less than an hour.

The office will take photographs before the treatment.

A follow-up visit will be needed to take the after-pictures.

Okay, that sounded simple enough. I signed up for a Friday afternoon appointment. I took the subway and arrived on time. The office was running behind, and I took a seat in the waiting room. A woman, wearing a light aqua-colored, gel face-mask was chatting away on her telephone. I tried not too look, thinking that people in a plastic surgeon's office prefer privacy.

I was told that she had just had the Active FX procedure. Well, I thought, she seemed animated, not in obvious pain.

They called me in to the pre-treatment room. The attending nurse asked if I preferred Vicodin or Valium. In addition to Tylenol or Motrin.

Boing. Huh? Warning signal. Vicodin or Valium? I needed a sedative? In addition to...?

My mind raced. Don't people get instantly addicted to Vicodin? I asked for Valium. And aspirin.  I can count on one hand the number of times I have taken prescription painkillers.

The nurse reclined the chair and my feet came up from the floor. She gave me the pill and a paper cup of water. Then she smeared a cold gel or cream all over my face. Sure enough, in about twenty minutes, I felt stoned. Whee. Someone came into the room and wiped the gel off my face. My lips felt numb, as if I had applied Novocaine lip balm. Turned out my whole face was Novocained or something like it. Whee.

I was high and giggling. The nurse walked me into another room and sat me in another recliner. People were talking and I either did not understand what they were saying or I didn't care. I remember "We'll take two passes under the eyes."

The eyes. Right. I am so queasy about my eyes. I cannot watch people insert contact lenses. My knees go all squidgy. It's probably because I've worn glasses since I was two years old, essentially a protective shield between my eyes and the world.

The doctor was there, suddenly, very close to my face. "Look up," he said. And I did. Then he did two things to me that when I reflect on them now, I just shudder.

He lifted my top lid and sprayed a stinging solution into one eye, and before I could yell "No! Are you nuts?" he lifted the other and sprayed the same.

Blink, blink, blink. What??? Sting. Blink.

The next part is still too unreal to me.

While high, semi-oblivious, blinking, and stinging, the doctor then popped in a little suction cup device right onto my eyeball. Oh shit. Oh, holy shit. The stinging spray had numbed my eyeballs and now they were covered by suction cups. Oh, holy shit.

An image went fleeting across my mind's eye (since my actual eyeballs were in shock). I must've looked like an alien or a hell-demon from a science-fiction-horror-slasher film.

A small voice in the back of my fuzzed mind broke through the haze, "Your eyes have to be covered because they are going to laser your face. Otherwise, you may go blind."

And laser they did - although by then I had given up control and let it rip. It felt like a million little stinging pin pricks. The only weirdness was along may hairline, ouch. I wiggled my feet and made small squealing noises. The nurse told me to hold her hand tight - and I did.

The whole thing lasted not more than fifteen minutes, after which the doctor popped those nasty little eye cups out of my head, someone wrapped me in a blanket, and walked me back to that first room. There, they put one of those cold gel face masks on me. Frozen, actually. Oww. At first, and then my body warmed it up. And then they replaced it with a new, fresh, frozen one. Again, oww.

At some point, I was returned to the waiting room, whereupon I started shivering. I felt cold down to my core. I could not get warm.  They gave me a cup of tea and saltine crackers. It took an hour or so, but I managed to regain the feeling in my fingers and toes.

I was given a bag of various creams to apply continuously. I figured I was recovered enough to return home. And so I left. I walked back to the subway, and standing on the platform, it appeared that no one looked at me in a strange way. I supposed I looked a bit sunburned, nothing more. The tail-end of summer, not too out of the realm of possibilities.

At the Grand Central transfer, however, I tripped going up the stairs, and broke the tips of both my big toenails. Damn. Must've been a residual effect from the Valium. So how do people take that crap on a regular basis?

I was more concerned about my feet than my face, and after switching two more trains during rush hour (everyone must have been staring at my shredded feet, never mind my face), I hightailed it to the local mani-pedi salon, and got the toenails fixed and repainted.

Some time later, when I went to sleep, I laid my head gingerly on my pillow. It hurt a little.

The next morning, when I woke up and looked into the mirror, I had another oh-shit moment. My face was angry-red and swollen. Thank god it was Saturday. I could not leave my loft. I would scare small children.

After I applied the cream, I read the label. It was a copper-based ointment, And I thought, wait, burns are often treated with something called Silvadine. Copper, silver, there had to be a connection. I had to use Silvadine once after I fell off a bicycle, which resulted in wicked road rash on one forearm - a kind of burn. Ergo.

Full facial burn. I tried to quell the little fear ticking in my mind: Would I ever get my nice, normal skin back? Would I be scarred forever? I signed a waiver, didn't I? Breathe, be calm, I told myself.

The next day, I saw tiny, perfectly patterned dots all over my face. Angry, crimson dots. Over the next two days, the dots turned brownish, dried, and hardened. At a slight distance, it looked like snakeskin. Now I was lizard face. The tiny scales did peel away, first around my nose and mouth - the moving parts - and then more gradually outward. Funky. Fascinating.

The area under my eyes felt tight. In fact, it felt as though my skin was pulled back from the center of my face. Maybe this thing was working.

Four days later, I returned to the plastic surgeon's office for after-pictures, and a luscious facial, where the last of the brown scales were planed away. Planed = razored off. I cannot make this stuff up.

Then, wow: I had new, pink baby skin - and a lot of sun protection factor lotion since. We'll see how this turns out. They say the full effects don't really kick until six or so weeks later.

Good thing fall is here. The radiator started to hiss yesterday. My nose is stuffy. but I need to get back on the wheel, back to the gym, regular.

My face looks normal again, maybe improved and updated. Time will tell. Whew.

Ouch and Ouchey

I've been hearing about foot injuries in recent weeks. I refuse to accept that it has anything to do with our shoes.

La Latina bemoaned the state of one of her feet. She thought she might have a stress fracture somewhere across her instep. Ouch. Or as she might say, "Ouch-ey."

She asked if any of us could recommend a podiatrist or an orthopedic surgeon.

I phoned her and told her the story of the orthopedic surgeon who treated me for plantar fasciitis in 1993 - after I ran the New York City Marathon. Running was my habit, but the pain in my right heel grew until I walked with a noticeable limp. Excruciating pain stabbed the bottom of my foot when I got out of bed in the mornings.

I remember the doctor's office. I didn't wait long before a nurse called me in to the examination room. I vaguely recall that the waiting room didn't contain the usual stack of celebrity magazines. I do recall posters or plaques from some of the New Jersey Nets players, his patients. That looked good.

When I climbed up on the examination table, the doctor took my foot in his hands. He pressed the area where the heel connects to the arch, and I almost jumped through the ceiling. I think I yelped at least one expletive.

"Plantar fasciitis," he said.

Then I heard, "Fuck, shit, cunt." He uttered the words, sotto voce, but rapid-fire.

I twitched my head a fraction of an inch, and looked over to the nurse, thinking, "What did he just...?"

The doctor continued, "Yes, you have a stressed tendon. I can give you a cortisone shot now to ease the pain, but you will have to be fitted for orthotics. Shit. Motherfucker. Cunt."

I guess the Emily Post training of my youth snapped into gear. I had no idea why the doctor was using foul language - while describing my foot. Were my feet that offensive? I didn't think so. I glanced again at the nurse, who appeared nothing but placid, undisturbed.  I figured something else was at hand, something beyond my immediate comprehension.

I agreed to the cortisone shot - which was pure torture. The doctor stuck a huge needle right into the flat of my heel. I think I hissed "Yeeeeesh," and dug my fingernails into the palms of my hands. Somehow, I didn't want to scream another cuss word.

The doctor, however, reeled them off one after the other.

After the needle therapy, after the burning sensation, and then the numbness, I walked back into the waiting room. This time I spied pamphlets, brochures. Every one of them described Tourette Syndrome, "How to live with Tourette Syndrome."

Who knew? Why didn't someone just come out and say so?

The doctor had Tourette's. In the weeks after, he fit me for orthotics - he told me I had "floppy feet" - and in time, the pain subsided. I still run today, though not as much. And many times when I slip the orthotics into my running shoes, I think of the doctor's speech tics.

I told all of this to La Latina. And in good conscience, I told her, I thought maybe she might prefer some other doctor. She agreed.

A week later, she found and visited an orthopedic surgeon who explained that she did not have a stress fracture, but that she had a serious strain of the soft tissue in her foot. He prescribed a wrap of sorts, something to keep her foot immobilized for a while.

In this go-go city, anything that hampers movement of the lower extremities is a burden, born with aggravation at best and full-on screams at worst. We walk everywhere. We wear heels. We dance in high heels. We run to the gym, we run on treadmills in the gym.

In the case of La Latina, her kick-boxing routine was curtailed. I'm sure she's getting itchy, impatient.

Heck, I can hear her now. ""Motherfucker, shit, fuck." And that ain't from no Tourette's speech tic.

A Dog's Breakfast

Except that I just ate dinner.

Okay, bits and bobs.

Item. I read in the New York Times Fashion and Style section this week that the "new" thing in men's fashion is the Grizzly Adams look. Facial hair, full mustaches, flowing beards. The newspaper of note suggested that the top men's couturiers were putting forth a new look, a reaction to the hyper-groomed man of the last decade and a half or so. To which I say, right on. A man who takes more time and effort with his personal toilette than I do is - gay. Not in the homosexual way, no. My gay posse rules. No. I mean in the I-am-a-complete-self-absorbed-but-clueless-asshole kind of way.

Nota bene to all My Girls. A beard is softer than sandpaper face. We've all experienced razor burn in tender places. And it ain't no fun. Remember the day after? When you rifle through your medicine chest or cosmetics bag looking for last summer's aloe? Right. Exactly.

Maybe I anticipated the curve, the tipping point. For once.

Item. I get a twinge in my abdomen once a month. I know I'm not imagining it. There is a distinct pain, like a muscle contraction, and each month, it switches from side to side. This month, it was my left side. I pushed my fingers deep, right inside my hip bone, in an attempt to locate and massage out the ache. I looked it up in The New Our Bodies Ourselves (anyone remember the original? From The Boston Women's Health Book Collective?), and I can't figure out if it's a marker of ovulation, or of the disintegrating unfertilized egg. But that little bastard can hurt like hell. I think it's the latter - given my cycle.

Item. I was out with a girlfriend last evening. We met at Pastis. She looked very polished, having arrived from an earlier affair, very Jackie O. We caught up with each other, rapid sentences exchanged as we took note of the crowd at the bar. One fellow stuck out, caught both our attentions. Tall, chiseled good looks, small wire frame glasses, salt-and-pepper hair. On closer inspection, this well-turned-out fellow appeared to be on his own, alone. I caught his eye - noticed from my periphery - but saw a flash on his left-hand ring finger as he pushed it down into his front pocket. My girlfriend and I both noted his other jewelry. Around his neck, what looked like a Scandinavian-designed Italian horn. Yep. And on his right hand, a huge silver-framed agate ring. And I mean huge. My girlfriend didn't like the ring. I said, "Maybe it's a Western thing."

I know I could have smiled and engaged him in cocktail patter. But I didn't. We were jostled by the crowd, and a group of twenty-something girls pushed through to the bar - the too-straight-obviously-striped hair, little tops over low-slung jeans and high heels. I confess, I am dog-tired of the look. I wore my seventies-style, vertical-striped, cuffed cords, and I always get a compliment or two on them. They're fun. Not the usual uniform.

Anyhow, this fellow leaned in to talk with one of the twenty-somethings. I could hear the high-pitched twitter and giggle. I saw he put a hand on her shoulder. My girlfriend flashed a look at me. A few minutes later, an older gal - mid-to-late thirties - muscled her way up to this guy. She had the sad, shortish haircut of a woman who is less concerned about her look. I may wind up holding the clipboard behind the velvet rope to hell's doorway for suggesting this, but this woman had the look of a mom, of someone raising kids. Once she pushed herself up to the big-agate-ringed guy, he looped his arm around her, then dropped it so that his palm hit the flat of her butt, where it remained. My girlfriend remarked, "Well he moved fast."

"No," I said. "That's his wife." And sure enough, they left not a minute later, together.

Sometimes, I just get it right.