Issue # 7, 20 – 26 July 2008

Show: Brooke Knows Best
Episode: “Best Roommate Ever” (1×02)
You Can Watch It: Sundays at 10pm on VH1

This week on Brooke Knows Best, we learned that the show should have been called “Brooke Knows How to Make an Ass of Herself on National Television.” Glenn and Brooke were still hot on the trail looking for a third roommate. The pair, feeling desperate, decided to create hand-drawn posters and plaster all of the Miami hot spots they could think of with their ad for a roommate to which, of course, no “freaks” need apply. They went to all of the gyms and dance studios they could think of, and the amalgam of responders they received for their efforts proved to be not worth their time. Continue reading »

It knows where I sleep…

So I’ve had the Wii Fit for about a month now, which means I’m around the time where I would normally start slacking off. Last week, I skipped two days instead of my allowed one per week. I felt guilty, but then I did walk from Murrayfield stadium all the way back into town on one of those days because we went to see a pre-season football(soccer) match and there was pretty much no chance in hell of getting a bus afterwards. It’s a pretty long walk, so I got my exercise.

What I hadn’t been getting was yoga practice, so when I did get back on the Balance Board after two days of absence, I could really tell the difference. So I’ve got to be better about keeping up with the yoga. I’ve unlocked all the different poses now, but I can’t do them all because I either don’t have the balance or I don’t have a mat to do the floor based ones.

I’m not exactly making progress towards the weight goal, but I’m in roughly the same place as I started, so I’m happy with that. Today I’ll be doing a nice long session. I try to do 2 or 3 30 minute sessions a week. My walk to work (two days a week) will be getting quite a bit longer this week too because the office has moved. Hopefully all the extra walking and stuff will allow me to catch up on my health, because I had a bit of an indulgant weekend.

Issue # 6, 13-19 July 2008

Show: Brooke Knows Best
Episode: “Movin’ In” (1×01)
You Can Watch It: Sundays at 10pm on VH1

If anyone was going to press a young star into doing a reality show at the most inappropriate, awkward time possible, it would be VH1. Brooke Hogan, having just come off a hiatus from taping her life for the past four years as part of the VH1 series Hogan Knows Best that chronicled the lives of all her family members, now has a spin-off all about herself. Brooke Knows Best premiered this week, and while this seems to be the worst possible time for Brooke to be prancing around flaunting all of her now-legal goodies and promoting her sophomore album, the show must go on. Continue reading »

“$3.99 a pair? That’s GAS prices!”

Feminism starts small. You don’t wake up one morning in your grandmother’s living room with a mohawk introducing your life partner. You aren’t on the bus and words like “patriarchy” and “fascism” start falling out of your mouth. At first, there might not be a large difference to the people around you but when you are a feminist, there is a change in you that is just as real and valid as plastering stickers on the bumper of your Subaru. There is no universal battle that defines the female experience for every woman. There are personal conflicts that are personally tailored to each woman’s situation. For me, it was those damn stockings.

I hate stockings. They are the most useless article of clothing ever created. It is fabric so sheer that it offers no elemental protection. They are expensive and no matter how many you buy, you always need another pair because they are completely destructible. They force you to change the way you interact with everything around you. The world is full of sharp corners and chairs with snags. For me, stockings are the cruelest form of mental bondage–they tie you to a seat and inhibit your movement until you transform into a mannequin. A run in your stockings is a chink in your armor and it lets everyone see the real flesh beneath it, the flesh that has scars and stubble. Be ashamed of it. Hide it away. Cover yourself. As a grown-up (or what passes for one), I have no hatred of stockings. I find them sexy at times and I have enjoyed wearing them when the mood fits. As a young girl, I found them confining because of what they symbolized. Stockings were what ladies wore.

Now, I’ve worn stockings on numerous occasions and I’ve done several unladylike things while wearing them. My first sexual experience was in the basement of a church. The young man I was with grew impatient with me and ripped the crotch out of an expensive pair of pantyhose. I remember protesting but he slid his hand through and under the material until he reached behind me. It was the ultimate act of subversion for me to be dressed so primly while being taken on a dusty floor. Wearing those ripped pantyhose during the rest of service was a silent thrill.

That’s when it began.

That’s when I started to realize the hypocrisy of it all. I could look like a lady with smooth sheer legs while hiding so much underneath, like a very ruined support top. A lady has to be more than stockings. For that matter, who gets to decide what is a lady and if so, who wants to be one of those lady thingies anyway? The next Sunday, I didn’t wear any at all.

My mom was livid. There is a proper way things are done and ladies don’t walk around barelegged. Ladies don’t flaunt themselves. All the reasons she gave me for wearing them only strengthened my resolve.

“You mean, I can’t be a lady without stockings? What about women in the Bible?”

“If my stockings snag on accident, am I not a lady anymore?”

“If I can’t afford stockings, can I still be a lady?”

“If my legs are enticing men, then doesn’t that mean they need to be gentlemanly?”

There were several Sundays when I’d leave the house wearing them only for them to “accidentally” rip. There was a struggle for a while. My mother started to carry a back up pair and on several occasions I was told to walk down to the nearest store to buy a pair. I don’t remember the final conversation but at some point, I stopped discussing it. She’d complain about my bare legs and I’d ignore it. She’d lecture me on proper dress etiquette and I’d nod along. Things progress to the point where I realized that I don’t have to justify my life and my choices to anyone besides myself.

Stockings are thin destructible pointless rules that made me feel like my nakedness is too hairy and pockmarked to be beautiful. Fuck stockings. We should burn then in a compost heap filled high with your bras, her veils, someone’s makeup and whatever else binds us to the sexism of a society that will never be satisfied. Now I know that what I am is dictated by more than what covers (or does not cover) my body. I play the lady role when it suits me. I have the dresses and the accessories. I love a cute pair of peep-toe pumps like the girliest of them. It’s almost perverse the pleasure I get from slipping some pumps on and walking out into the world with my brown bare legs.

Step, step, step

I’ve unlocked boxing and a longer version of the step game in aerobic exercises, and I’m pretty excited about this.

The boxing instructor has way more personality than the yoga/muscle exercise trainers. He’s a mii instead of a weird attempt at a human, and he’s got this gruff, quite motivating voice. He seems like a pretty nice guy. Plus, I’m way better at boxing to a rhythm than I am at the original Wii Sports boxing, where I tend to get knocked out pretty fast. Perhaps I should try kickboxing.

In step aerobic land, I can only be amused. After a while, I got the hang of all the stepping up and down and back and forth and kick and sideways and yada yada yada, which to me is a feat. I’m terrible at keeping up with games in which you have to stick to a certain beat (PaRappa the Rapper, Donkey Konga, DDR, etc. You name it, I get confused and the program tells me I suck.) so I can’t believe I managed to get this down in one or two practices.

For some reason, you’re on a stage in front of a full audience doing step aerobics. Scott pointed out that pretty much no one would want to go see that, much less pay for it. I couldn’t agree more. Especially when one might be able to sift through one’s mother’s old exercise tapes fromt he early 90s and see professionals doing it on a beach in Hawaii in much more ridiculous clothes and perhaps make a drinking game out of the experience.

In any case, the Wii takes miis from your mii channel to put in the step show/class thing with you. It often decides to put Mii-Liam or Mii-Ridgaway or someone as unlikely as anyone in the world to be standing next to me in a step aerobics class clapping along enthusiastically to the beat. Now, you may not know these friends of mine in real life, but I’m sure you can think of plenty of people who wouldn’t be caught dead doing step aerobics as happily as if they’d invented it yesterday, much less on stage in front of a crowd. So you understand the hilarity of the situation when a whole group of these people appear around you on screen and look as though they’re itching to throw up the jazz hands and step-class their way to heaven.

This is just SO much better than a gym membership.

Issue # 5, 6-12 July 2008

Show: Law & Order: Criminal Intent
Episode: “Kissinger” (7×15)
You Can Watch It: Sundays at 9pm on USA

This week’s episode of CI encapsulated one of my worst nightmares: baby Einsteins. Three-year-olds taking Chinese language classes. Parents paying higher tuition for one year of preschool than all four years of college. The vomit on the bib—that’d be mine. Goren and Eames investigated the murders of several parents; all with children applying for admission to the same prestigious preschool (why is there such a thing?) Well, this “gateway to the Ivy Leagues” turned out to be more like a gateway to hell. Between the pressure of ensuring a youngster’s future and the demands of a beyond neurotic mother-in-law, one stay-at-home rich wife decided to take things into her own hands by targeting parents who were seemingly keeping her toddler from getting into Harvard. Continue reading »

Issue # 4, 29 June - 6 July 2008

Show: Law & Order: Criminal Intent
Episode: “Assassin” (7×14)
You Can Watch It: Sundays at 9pm on USA

Criminal Intent got political this week when it mirrored (maybe more like alluded to) the life of prominent female activists such as Benazir Bhutto, who was the first woman in history elected by a Muslim state and was sadly assassinated last December after leaving a rally for her political party. Perhaps that sounds familiar. The Bhutto-esque character in the episode, Bela Kahn, becomes the victim of a string of attempts on her life—the first of which comes after she holds a secret rally for members of her party in the New York City area. Mysteriously, every time there is an attempt on Bela’s life, someone else ends up dead. Continue reading »

Weekend hair!

I’ve been pretty good. I skipped Sunday, but I figure one day off a week isn’t bad, as long as it doesn’t turn into two and three and four.

In any case, Scott and I discovered on Saturday that the trainers in the game wear their hair down on weekends. This was after an entire session on Friday making fun of the male trainer’s ponytail. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with guys having ponytails, but this guy’s was just silly. Plus, I like making fun of the trainers. They’re just… awkwardly over-human. Or something.

I’ve unlocked the super hula hoop game, and DAMN, let me tell you, hula hooping (sans actual hula hoop) is a really good workout. And I’m only doing it for three minutes at a time. You do 90 seconds hula-hooping in either direction, and it feels like you’re really getting somewhere in terms of getting your heart going. I always feel a little silly at the end because you feel like you want to keep hulaing. It’s hard to go from hula-60 to zero in a few seconds, so I just end up swaying around for a bit. But it records your balance through the whole thing and you get to see it racing around on the screen at the end in little circles. I just unlocked the 6 minute version, but I’m not sure if I’m ready for that yet.

Also, when you hit 30 minutes of exercise in a day, your pig jumps up and down in happiness. I really do like that pig.

Plan, Plan, Plant!

Planning is a key word for me when it comes to vegetable gardening. I spent a good part of December, January, and some of February thinking about and planning the garden to come this spring. I ordered lots of seed catalogues, browsed several websites, and had long talks with my dad about what should be done, and when to do it.

Since I was starting from scratch the first thing I had to think about was location. Location, Location, Location. It’s imperative that you chose the correct spot, your plants depend on it. Plants need sun to grow, and not just a little sun here and there for an hour a day; they need full sun. Which means anywhere from 6-8 hours of sun shining down on those little seed pods, heating them and drawing them up out of the dirt. They also need water, most vegetables and fruits contain a large percentage of water-a tomato is 95% water! If your plant lacks the proper amount of water, you probably won’t see anything worth eating once summer rolls around. Keeping the water source close to the garden ensures that you will have an easier time watering, which means you should be able to do it on a regular basis. If it’s a pain in the butt, you probably won’t do it.

So I looked around my yard, which is mainly tree covered. Overhanging trees are a garden’s arch enemy. I learned this last year when my tomato plants gave me absolutely nothing to eat. Take your time if you have to, scope out your yard or patio, see what areas remain sunny and warm throughout the day. I chose a spot on the empty lot that I own on the other side of my house. Not too many trees, open and flat, plenty of sunshine, not so water convenient, but I had no other option. I would just have to figure something out-water moves a little easier than the 200 year old maple trees in my yard. I understand that I have more room then some, but the same principles apply, find the sunniest spot you can, and hopefully the water is close.

Once you’ve got a spot, it’s time to prepare the soil. The spot that I had chosen was just a nice grassy area, so it had to turn into soil first. I decided to create a rather large garden, about 20 feet by 40 feet, but only do what you think you can manage. I have a full time job, a dog to love, a husband to socialize with, laundry to do, Sims to play, flowers to grow, and dinners to cook. Needless to say, I am never sitting around staring at the wall just LOOKING for something do. So I’m going to give you details on how I got my garden started, which you could do yourself, but I’m a busy woman.

At the advice of my father, I started looking through the classified ads in the newspaper at around March 1^st . I was looking for someone who was offering a rototilling service. A rototiller is a little machine that you can walk behind; it churns up the dirt and mixes it all together. I eventually found a man who was offering said service, and I gave him a call. I suggest that you get several quotes from different people, I was quoted $900 by someone, and eventually ended up paying about $150 when I finally found someone else. Let me also mention now that I am not rich, at all. You can also rent rototillers from equipment rental companies, and some mega home stores, just take a browse through the yellow pages or online. When the rototilling is done, you want to have soft soil that has a little height to it, something that looks like you could dig into it. Now you can also test your soil for PH levels and all the jazz, but I’ll just be real and say that I didn’t do that and I really don’t care to. If stuff didn’t grow then I might think about it, but I like to fly by the seat of my pants.

Here’s my dad, helping with the tilling!

Once the tilling was done.

Your next step is to decide what you want to grow, I figured this out over the winter, it gave me something to look forward to when it was snowing outside. I had recently read a book called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver (I strongly recommend this book) and after reading her chapter on hybrid seeds and big seed companies I decided to only grow Heirloom plants.

Heirloom plants are plant varieties that were grown back in a time when people weren’t so concerned with how round and symmetrical a tomato was, and they weren’t worried about how they would travel thousands of miles, or how long they would sit on a shelf. These are the vegetables and plants of yesteryear, back before 10 year old girls had boobs. There is no genetic modification with these types of plants, and that’s how I like it. They may no be the prettiest, but they are the tastiest and most nutritionally valuable, and quite honestly I don’t want a squash that some scientist has modified in any way, I want it how it was meant to be, tasty!

After deciding that I wanted to just grow heirloom varieties, I started thinking about what I would actually eat, there is no sense in growing something unless its going to be eaten, either by you, people that you live with, or your neighbors.

So here is what I’m growing:

• Brandywine tomatoes
• Church tomatoes
• Black krim tomatoes
• Red potatoes
• White potatoes
• Strawberries
• Zucchini
• Yellow Squash
• Spaghetti Squash
• Jalapeno peppers
• Yellow bell peppers
• Green bell peppers
• Connecticut field pumpkins
• Corn
• Beans
• Sunflowers
• Sweet Potatoes
• Lots of Herbs!

When you buy seeds they come with instructions for planting, and speaking as someone who never reads directions, read the directions! I didn’t read the directions on my strawberries and now they aren’t doing so well. So please, if only to avoid wasting money, read the planting instructions. Water the seeds after you plant them, and then pay attention to the weather-there is no sense in watering if it’s going to rain the next morning or overnight. Over watering can kill your plants so pay attention to how moist the soil looks and how green everything looks. Things will look sad for a few weeks, but once those seeds get going, you’re going to wonder what you were thinking with all that planting, or is that just me?

Garden Photos from early in the spring.

Planting Potatoes! You have to cut them in half when you plant them.

Once they start to sprout you have to hill dirt up around the stems, otherwise they fall over, and potatoes don’t like it when their stems fall over. We planted these in late march, by June I was digging them up periodically for dinner, oh they were good! I still have about 30 feet of them in the ground, I just dig them up as I need them, they will just continue to grow as I leave them in the ground.

40 Feet of Potatoes!

This was my first planting of tomatoes, these are Brandywine and Church varieties. You put the cage around them for when they get larger, otherwise they fall over, and your tomatoes get all nasty on the ground.

Just an FYI, tomatoes and potatoes can be grown in buckets or barrels on a deck or patio that gets plenty of light!

My Basil, Oregano, and Parsley. I tend to grow herbs in containers on my deck, that way when I’m cooking I can easily pop outside to gather some for dinner.

what a strange, long trip it’s been

hello, friends.

thanks for visiting the second installment of Lucy, the newest women’s mag to hit the web. As you browse our latest installment, I hope you’ll appreciate all the hard work our talented writers have put forth in bringing you great content for this month. From Beth Kerr’s journey to find the best place to call home to Anastasia Steinbrunner’s decision to help the planet by not populating on it, I think most can agree that there’s a story here for every woman… or, (as we’ve begun to notice), every man, too.

as Lucy and our readership continues to grow, I just want to take a moment to thank everyone who has worked so hard to bring interesting and original content together for one fabulous site. As the content editor, I can tell you that coming up with new ideas for stories may sometimes be challenging, but oftentimes our writers already have amazing ideas and life stories to draw from, (which makes my job much easier!)

I believe that our most recent efforts will appeal to a broad spectrum of people because we have people sharing a broad spectrum of experiences, thoughts, and ideas. From life lessons in Ireland to an outhouse in Alaska, to a mother sharing her experiences in South Jersey, Lucy represents the voices of women every where.

And our goal as we continue to produce new content is to provide an even greater range of stories and information. If there’s anything you’d like to see here, or would like to write about, please be sure to contact us! And most importantly, please keep reading! We certainly hope you enjoy Lucy as much as we do.