Nine More Minutes

I've never backtracked on a new mission before, but I've got to make some adjustments to this one. With four new exercises and an increase in each of my exercises to 20 reps apiece, I totally overdid it yesterday. I couldn't even do a single leg lift this morning. My abdomen felt so weak. And it feels like I might have a kink or something in my small intestine, so I'm taking it very easy today. Lots of warm fluids and nothing but my walk this morning... What I'd like to do - starting tomorrow morning at the earliest - is to go ahead and do the four new exercises, but shift all the exercises back to their original number of reps. I guess I bit off more than I can chew! I need to remember that my surgically renovated abdomen is still a fragile area and needs to be improved very, very slowly.

Speaking of broken things, my ancient alarm clock-radio stopped functioning on Friday night. You know the type. Great big digital numbers and push button controls. There's no time to waste when an alarm clock has bitten the dust, so it was off to Target - and I soon found myself coveting this lovely little double-bell alarm clock with a vintage feel to it. Why not add a timepiece with some '40s flair to my bedroom? Without another thought, I popped it in my cart and smiled like the Cheshire Cat at home last night as I carefully set the time and wound the alarm hand to a position shortly after 5:00. (That walk takes place pretty early on the weekends!)

So it seems I forgot something.

Not only is a double-bell alarm clock loud enough to jar you into consciousness in one second flat, but there is no snooze button!!! Egad. Imagine living in a world where you didn't have the luxury of nine more minutes of sleep. Without a snooze button, you don't have the option of nestling back into your pillow "for just a few more minutes." The day has begun, like it or not. Turn the alarm off to get that terrible jangling bell out of your ears --- and relax at your peril.

On the other hand, not having a snooze button for a crutch might have some real benefits. I could put that extra nine minutes - or 18, 27, or, well, 36 minutes on truly desperate mornings - to some very good use with all these exercises and chores and vintage grooming habits in the a.m. Isn't it funny how a simple little thing like an alarm clock can remind us of something in the past so fundamental to daily life?

27 + 2 = 29

Have I mentioned that it's been six years since I've been on a date? The man my co-worker wants to set me up with emailed me yesterday. Emailed me --- back in the day, he would have called. It seems a little awkward to pick up an email correspondence with somebody I've never met - knowing that he's kind of gauging whether or not I seem like someone he'd like to have a cup of coffee with - but I guess I've got to give these 21st-century dating rules a try... A younger friend of mine counseled me not to write him back too quickly. "Wait 24 hours," she told me. "Don't give him your phone number right away. Let him be the one eventually to suggest getting together." She tells me we'll probably exchange a few emails before even this takes place.

The "rules" of dating were being transformed in the 1940s as well. They've probably been changing bit by bit with every generation, but there had been dramatic enough changes by 1941 to prompt Lily Haxworth Wallace, editor of The New American Etiquette, to title her chapter on dating, "The New American Way." There's lots of wonderful stuff here, so I thought I'd share it in pieces. Here's the introduction to the chapter. How much our world has changed!

In all the realm of social behavior there has been no greater change in any of the rules than in those governing the relationship of young men and women. The chaperon, except as a purely perfunctory creature, has almost ceased to exist.

Today a young man can take a girl to dine and dance without being engaged or without any raising of eyebrows. The couple may take a long drive throughout the country all alone or they may sit in the moonlight beside some lovely lake without her father asking, "What are your intentions?" A young man and woman may be seen together frequently even though they have no intention at all to marry.

To most of us this new American freedom seems a great improvement over that custom of past generations which made it necessary for a girl's parents to sit primly in the parlor whenever a young man called on their daughter. Usually the parents were tired and would have preferred to go to bed and it is certain the young lady and her beau were dreadfully bored.

If a girl is a nice girl, with a sense of true proportions and a desire for things in good taste, she will remain a nice girl, despite her new freedom. She will probably safely end up with a good husband, a nice home, and clever children just as quickly, but with a lot more fun, than her mother.

If she is a cheap girl, she will have her future hours of deep regret though surrounded by the exaggerated defenses of the past.

Accordingly, let us not predict dire things for the new generation. Things are not necessarily right because they were always done. Conversely things are not necessarily wrong simply because they have been right for a long time. So it is in the relationship of man and woman. Many of them must be observed to keep still the tongue of Mrs. Grundy or to avoid cheapness.

Darn that Mrs. Grundy... More to come on another day. I've got a kitchen to clean!

Week Forty-one: The Mission

It's that time again... I was planning to launch a new housekeeping mission this week, but I'm itching to kick things up another notch with my vintage beauty missions instead. I've got some serious momentum goin' on and don't want to lose it!

Fitness
An article in the October 1945 issue of Good Housekeeping includes a series of exercises designed just for the "tubby teen." (They didn't pull any p.c. punches in the '40s!) Luckily, they're accompanied by little drawings, because the written descriptions are very spare. I think these would make a nice addition to my morning exercise routine:

16. Waistline. [Lying on your back,] touch right foot to left hand, then left foot to right hand.

17. Hips. Lie on back, bicycle with legs in air. Repeat, lying on side.

18. Thighs. Hold on chair to balance yourself and swing leg back and forth.

19. Ankle. Roll each ankle 20 times, making a big circle with your toes.

I think I'll do 20 reps of each. Speaking of which, for the sake of consistency, I think I'll increase the reps of each of my other "limbering and stretching exercises" to 20 apiece.

Reducing
My weekday lunches are still a work in progress. I haven't by any means mastered this mission yet. Just yesterday, I left all my plastic containers sitting in the dish drainer in the kitchen at work. Again! Which means I had to pack a leftover frozen lunch today. I'm going to continue chipping away at this goal during the week ahead. Today is payday, and y'all have given me some great ideas about lunchware - so I'm hitting the stores this weekend!

Grooming
And here's the next step in the 1946 grooming routine. After taking my evening bath (or morning shower on the weekends), drying briskly with a towel, and applying deodorant:

Give your crowning glory a good swishing with the brush, dampen ends and pin up curls.

Hmmm... Well I certainly brush my hair after my evening bath-and-brief-shower, but I can't sleep in the curlers I bought. I've been rolling my hair in the mornings after re-wetting it under the shower for a minute. This step was definitely designed for the woman who only washed her hair once a week - and needed just to wet the ends on a daily basis in order to put it up in pin curls. The next step in the routine is one I could truly benefit from in the evenings:

Brush teeth carefully.

I always brush my teeth in the mornings - sometimes twice --- but I don't always remember to brush them in the evenings. And my dentist has been after me forever to floss regularly. I think I'll make brushing and flossing my teeth each evening my new mission.

The Housewife's Tool Box: Thinking Ahead

Let's hear it for persistence... I nailed that vintage lunchbox menu today. (It's about time!) And just because I want to make sure these vintage menus are really and truly better for me, I'm going to compare the basic nutritional stats to one of my typical pre-mission lunches. I used to love having one of those table-ready cans of Campbell's Creamy Tomato Parmesan Bisque with probably two or three servings' worth of Rosemary and Olive Oil Triscuits and Trader Joe's Chunky Olive Hummus. Yummalicious! And yet:

Typical pre-mission lunch
Calories: 640
Fat: 36.5g
Sodium: 1,480mg *gasp*
Carbohydrates: 82g
Protein: 16g

Vintage lunch, adapted
Calories: 360
Fat: 23.5g
Sodium: 370mg
Carbohydrates: 27g
Protein: 17g

Yikes. My vintage lunch menu today was a no-holds-barred improvement on a typical pre-mission lunch. So far, these 1945 lunches - with a little tweaking - are undeniably a change for the better. Here's the adapted menu for tomorrow:

Organic Creamy Tomato Soup
Open-faced Cheese Sandwich with Mustard and Lettuce on Whole-grain Bread
Celery
Olives
Fresh Pear

All this fuss over lunches here at the Jitterbug household has made me think about just how important forethought was to the 1940s housewife. You might have the latest washing machine, a state-of-the-art vacuum, and an amazing storage closet, but you couldn't run an efficient home without the ability to think ahead. To anticipate the needs of tomorrow and the day after that. To plan, to remember, to always have a foot in the next meal while cleaning up after the last one. The kitchen - the basic, never-ending demands of the battle to put nutritious, affordable meals on the table three times a day --- the kitchen probably requires more forethought than any other facet of housekeeping. And when it came to rationing - a family couldn't have survived without the forethought an experienced mother and wife had ready to apply to the challenge.

My own vintage meals are several days in the making. Before doing my twice-weekly marketing, I sit down to plan my menus for the week ahead. Buying produce especially can be a trick. If I buy it too far in advance, it'll spoil before it hits the table. Produce that keeps or that needs time to ripen can be purchased a little farther in advance. How many eggs have I got on hand? How many days 'til my milk expires? Can I get a better deal on spices at the supermarket or at the natural foods store? All these questions must be weighed as I make my way through the store. I'll bet most successful housewives constantly carry about in their heads a running inventory of their pantry!

In the evenings, I must look ahead to the morning. Have I got enough space in the dishwasher for tomorrow's breakfast dishes? Is there anything which needs to be taken out of the freezer to thaw? Anything to soak overnight? My latest question: What can I prepare in advance for tomorrow's lunch? If a vintage dinner is in the works: Are there any dishes I can make up before I've finished cleaning up after lunch?

I don't think this kind of forethought has to come naturally... If it did, I'd be in serious trouble. It's a learned skill, I think. Something you just become better at with lots and lots of practice. I haven't picked it up completely myself. There are plenty of moments where I wish I'd thought of something hours ago - or days ago. But those kinds of moments come fewer and farther between these days. See? There is hope for all you last-minute types like me!

My Fruit Dollar

Housecleaning and laundry aren't the only topics covered in exhaustive detail by America's Housekeeping Book (1945). The Manual also includes a chapter on the household budget. Sixty years ago, groceries cost much, much more proportionally than they do today. In fact, the authors of The Manual note than sometimes "the entire budget must be built around this item." The housewife was charged with a vital mission, then, in planning menus that could make the best, most efficient use of every article brought home from the market. Shopping for the best price, food preservation, creative use of leftovers --- these were topics of great importance to housewives and their husbands.

It helps also occasionally to keep a detailed food record for a couple of weeks or a month with separate totals for cost of cereal foods; fruits and vegetables; meats, fish and eggs; milk and cheese; and in a final class, fats, sugar and miscellaneous items. On a modest income, in order to get a balanced diet, not far from 1/5 of the food money should go for each of these five groups.

So I undertook an experiment last winter to shed some light on my own "food dollar." Not only for budget reasons, but because this kind of spending reflects the kind of eating you're doing. For one embarrassing month, I tracked my own grocery expenditures. And it was not a pretty picture. At the end of the month, I realized that I had spent $375.67 for groceries - about $100 to $125 more per month than I thought I'd been spending. 66% of my food dollar had gone toward Fats, Sugar and Miscellaneous Items --- the category where I'd lumped in all the processed, packaged non-single-ingredient foods that hadn't even been thought of in 1940. I spent 11% of my food dollar on Fruits and Vegetables, 10% on Cereal Foods, 8% on Milk and Cheese, and 5% on Eggs, Beans, and Soy.

Fast forward six months. In late July, I started tracking my food dollar again. For one month. I've made lots of changes in my diet and should be able to see a difference in my marketing, right? Well, here are the results... My total spending on groceries for the month was $286.25. That's a significant drop - $89.42 per month I can put to a better use. (Like all these new clothes I have to buy to fit my new figure!)

Fruits and Vegetables: $105.55 (37%)

Fats, Sugar, and Miscellaneous Items: $96.03 (33%)

Breads and Cereals: $33.28 (12%)

Eggs, Beans, and Soy: $25.92 (9%)

Milk and Cheese: $25.47 (9%)

I'm not surprised that my spending on Fruits and Vegetables has risen so dramatically. I absolutely spoil myself these days with as much fresh fruit as I can possibly bring home. If I have it handy, I'm much less likely to do any snacking that ends up on my hips. I am surprised, however, that Fruits and Vegetables took the lead. And that my spending on Fats, Sugar, and Miscellaneous Items has been cut in half!!! Maybe I'll celebrate by sharing the recipe for the Rolled Oat Muffins I tried out last week. Though I was a little skeeved by soaking the oats in sour milk, they turned out incredibly. Moist and nutty and super easy to make. I ate two of them that first morning, then popped the rest in the freezer for rationing out from time to time.

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ROLLED OAT MUFFINS

2 cups rolled oats
1 cup white flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1 egg
1 1/2 cups sour milk or buttermilk
2 tablespoons melted shortening

Soak 2 cups rolled oats in sour milk overnight. Sift dry ingredients together. Beat egg; add milk, shortening and sifted ingredients. Mix only enough to dampen flour. Fill greased muffin pans 2/3 full and bake in hot oven (400 degrees F.) 25 minutes. Makes 12.

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I wish this lunch packing thing came more naturally to me. I spent a while on Sunday evening prepping Monday's lunch and promptly went to work without the Hard-cooked Egg that was sitting in the fridge. This morning I was feeling antsy about a day-and-a-half-old egg - and realized at the last minute that I'd left all my plastic containers sitting in the dish drainer at work! - so took along one of my leftover frozen lunches instead. I'm determined to grit my teeth, though, and make a success of this second lunch box menu - so I'm going to cook another egg tonight and try it one more time tomorrow. The good news is that the Peanut Butter and Lettuce Sandwich was yummy! I'm looking forward to having that again.

All this talk of food is driving me crazy. I've got a basket full of ironing calling my name. Catch you later!

New Week, New Strategy

Just stopping in quickly with a brief post about lunchmaking...

I ran into some trouble with this mission last Friday morning. I baked a batch of Rolled Oat Muffins to include with my breakfast --- and I guess that was all the work in the kitchen I could handle in one morning. With five minutes to go, I realized I hadn't even started cooking the egg that was on my lunch menu. So threw up a white flag and grabbed one of my leftover pre-mission lunches.

New week, new strategy. I'm going to try packing as much of my lunch as possible the night before. It'll be part of my evening chores in the kitchen. Usually I just empty the sink of any pots or pans that have been soaking and make sure there's room in the dishwasher for the next morning's breakfast dishes. Now I'll add making my lunch for work the next day to that list. Of course, there will always been an item or two that needs to be assembled in the morning, but I ought to be able to get the bulk of the work out of the way the night before. That's the plan anyway! Here's the original 1945 lunch menu in the works for tomorrow:

Peanut Butter, Bacon and Lettuce Sandwiches
Cauliflowerets
Carrot Sticks
Hard-Cooked Egg
Gingerbread
Grapes
Milk

And here's the menu adapted for vegetarians and/or reducers:

Open-faced Peanut Butter and Lettuce Sandwich
on Whole Grain Bread
Cauliflowerets
Carrot Sticks
Hard-cooked Free Range Egg
Grapes

Peanut butter and lettuce? I'm not so sure about this one, but I'm up for an adventure!

25 + 2 = 27

Whoo-hoo! 2 more lbs. have gone to a better place, leaving me at a weight of 167 this sunny Saturday morning. I've had my walk, eaten my breakfast, and already been out to run some errands. A pot of coffee is on the stove and it's time to finish my special monthly cleaning of the kitchen. While the weekly cleaning only takes me a few hours, the monthly job takes the better part of a day. I try to break it up. Last night, I cleaned the refrigerator. I'm headed out to a matinee later on and then over to visit my nieces, but I'll try to finish the kitchen before the end of the day today.

I haven't really talked about it, but I do have a goal weight in mind. Maybe I'm afraid I'll jinx myself by putting it down in writing. There's a number with me all the time, though. For whatever reason, I've fixated on a goal of 117. This is probably going to sound woefully stereotypical, but that's what I weighed when I graduated from high school. Yes, I know, it's been 18 years. My body's been through war since then. And yet - 117 actually does feel attainable. Through most of my twenties, I maintained a weight somewhere between 120 and 125. I figure if I shoot for the moon, that'll give me a little space to gain back a few pounds while I'm trying to find just the right balance of things.

There! I've said it. No turning back now!!! In the meantime, I like to set smaller goals so I can get a taste of achievement now and then. I've been focused for awhile on 166 and am hoping to see it by next Friday.

It's been a couple months since I discussed the latest "limbering and stretching exercises" I've added to my routine. For those of you who are new to my blog, I began adding some vintage exercises to my fitness regimen late last spring. There are tons of these things written up by beauty and fitness experts in vintage magazines and newspapers. Here's a post from June where I did a round-up of the six exercises I'd been doing every morning. I've added nine more exercises to my daily routine since then. The first is one I do just after getting out of bed in the morning. I strap on those 1-lb. wrist weights to make my arms do some extra work - and away we go. I'm pretty clumsy when I first wake up, but usually feel more steady on my feet by the time I finish this stretch:

7. Rise up on the balls of your feet, bring your arms up overhead, stretching, stretching, stretching everything from toes up, keeping chest high, abdomen in. [20 reps]

The rest of these exercises are done in the evening. I generally tidy up my living room before exercising. If everything's back in its proper place, there's that much more room to move around! I wear the wrist weights for each of these exercises as well. The first is a 1940s twist on an old classic - touching your toes:

8. Take your old friend the floor-touching one, but we prefer the floor-touching one in which you turn on the waist and attempt to touch the floor back of your heels. [20 reps]

This next one is a great stretch for the hips. I've found that my legs need to be fully extended in order to get any real benefit out of this one, so make sure you've got plenty of room:

9. Lie on your back on the floor with your arms stretched wide at shoulders. Keep head and shoulders on the floor while you raise your right foot over and cross the left, aiming to reach with a long stretch a meeting between your right-foot toes and your left-hand fingers. Then reverse, bringing your left foot and right hand into contact. At first the meeting will be very, very formal, the pair not getting together at all. But that’s all right. You’re doing something fine for yourself, your waistline, hipline, thighs, lower back and, indeed, the upper torso comes in for benefit, too. [20 reps]

Slow and steady wins the race when it comes to No. 10. My inner thighs do all the work:

10. ...stand erect, steady yourself by holding to the back of a chair, swing the leg in wide circles. Lift the foot as high as you can. You will be aware of a strong muscle pull from knees to hips... [5 reps]

No time to hit the tennis court? This next exercise mimics the workout the arms get in a favorite women's sport of the era. I love how the person who wrote up this exercise uses a piece of cookware to enhance the movement. What reputable housewife couldn't lay her hands on a pie pan? It's truly an all-access kind of fitness. The housewife who came across this exercise on the woman's page of her newspaper didn't need a country club membership or a tennis racquet in order to get in shape. Nor do we really need gym memberships, treadmills, personal trainers - you name it - in order to do the same today:

11. Simply hold a pie pan or other round, shallow pan in your right hand high above your head and look toward the ceiling as if you were watching for a high ball to come across an imaginary net. As the imaginary ball comes closer, jump a foot off the floor and hit it with the pan, driving it back across the imaginary net to an imaginary opponent. Drop arm to side, count to four slowly, then raise arm, jump and strike at the ball again. Repeat 10 times.

Reverse, holding pan in left hand and make believe that you are a left-handed tennis player. Incidentally, since jumping up and down is a simple exercise which reduces the thighs and hips, an imaginary tennis game a day may serve a double purpose.

Here's the exercise I mentioned in my post on swimming the other day. It's another all-access kind of exercise for the housewife who didn't have access to a pool. I don't have a "single bed" handy myself, so I do this exercise one arm at a time, turning on my bed halfway through so that the arm doing the work is hanging off the edge:

12. The breast stroke exercise is also recommended. Lie across a single bed so that arms and legs are not supported by the bed. Keeping head up with neck straight, stretch arms forward with palms facing each other. Now fling arms wide apart, turning palms in the opposite direction. Do this slowly and deliberately. Repeat 20 times.

You know, it's not always easy to understand exactly what you're supposed to do when reading an exercise. And No. 13 is still a complete mystery to me. When I kneel with my arms stretched overhead and try to bend in this way - it just doesn't work! If I just sort of sit on my knees I can kind of bend from side to side and feel a good stretch in the muscles wrapping around my waist, but I'm not sure if this is really what the author of the exercise intended either. Any ideas?

13. Get on your knees, keeping your back straight and arms stretched overhead. Bend your body sharply to the right side, and lower the hips as far as possible toward the floor. Then raise your body up straight, bend to the left side, and lower hips. Repeat 4 times; rest. 8 to 12 times altogether.

Another twist on an old standard:

14. Stand with arms out to the sides, and kick your right leg across your body, trying to touch the left hand. Feel that stretch? Return leg to position, and kick the left leg. Do 12 times, alternating legs.

This one's a puzzler, too. I get it, but I'm not sure exactly what it's designed to do. Roll off the fat, I guess!

15. Now get down on the floor, flat on your back, with legs straight and arms out to the sides. Keep shoulders flat on the floor. Pull both knees up to your chest and roll them over to left side, then to right. Swing from side to side 6 times; rest. 12 to 18 times altogether.

Some of these vintage exercises may seem a bit strange to me at first, but I eventually find a zone with each of 'em where I can feel the muscles doing some work. I definitely feel much more flexible now than I did a few months ago. If I find myself squatting or bending or stretching to do something at work or at home - movements that might once have made me feel achy or creaky - now I can kind of feel my strength. Do you know what I mean? I guess I'd say that I'm much more conscious of the way I move now. If I'm doing something repetitive, like scrubbing the walls of the shower surround, I'm thinking of the way my arms are moving. If I'm talking on the phone, I'll find myself absentmindedly doing leg lifts.

What's also interesting to me is how these exercises from the 1940s aren't really concerned with some of the body parts that modern exercises focus on. The tush, for instance. And the abs. A co-worker and I were talking the other day about great exercises to tone up the tush, and I realized that not a one of these exercises has really dealt with that area! The first leg lift I do in the morning is great for my abs, but most of the exercises focusing on the midriff seem to deal with muscles wrapping around the waist instead of that abdominal wall in front. I guess it wasn't considered very feminine in that day and age to aspire to a firm tush and powerful abs! There are tons of exercises dealing with the waistline, hips, bust, legs, and arms. The experts writing them up often talk about how important this or that exercise might be to fitting into the slim new fashions of the season:

The summer silhouette, highlighted in all collections of clothes for fall and winter, call for a streamlined figure. Lumps on the thighs, thickness around the waistline and bulges on the hips will be something to worry about once you get out of full, exaggeratedly flaring skirts into the new, straighter one. (August 1940)

The idea is to help get thighs and hips snugly into the trumpet silhouette this fall. (September 1940)

I'll have to keep an eye on this. Goodness knows my waist and hips will benefit from some streamlining - and my legs are getting lots of work with my walks - but I may have to add some modern exercises to the mix at some point to address some of these other areas.

Charm of Person

The system which works with best results for women who pride themselves on daintiness and charm of person is bath first, and the use of their favorite deodorant afterwards, and the deodorant used again in a few hours.

Believe it or not, it's been about 21 hours now since I applied my deodorant --- and I'm still odor- and perspiration-free! No small feat in the Southwest in August. I even left my air-conditioned office for a walk at noon. I wouldn't say I'm feeling fresh as a daisy, but I still felt quite fresh when I left the house this morning. Now I'm just neutral. Maybe there's something to this nightly application of deodorant after all.

Commercially prepared deodorants were nothing new in the 1940s - Mum was patented in 1888 - but what hadn't been invented yet was the deodorant stick. (Ban Roll-On was the first in 1952.) Whether you bought deodorant in a cream, paste, liquid, or powder form, it always had to be applied by hand.

I suspect that use of deodorant wasn't yet as universal as it is today. Women from rural areas, for instance, or from families hard hit by the Depression --- they were probably more likely to think that soap and water should be more than enough to keep oneself clean and fresh. Vintage ads for the stuff are absolutely savage and must have gone a long way toward the addition of a deodorant to many a medicine cabinet. If you didn't use deodorant, you were surely destined for spinsterdom and friendlessness:

You chased him behind that paper, Cookie.

Some things you just can't mask, Pigeon!

Hips aren't your big problem, Honey!

Even Venus couldn't get away with that.

And there must have plenty of women trying to cover body odor with perfume, because the ads sound all kinds of alarms against that practice:

Don't be that kind of a Cover Girl!

"Be a safety-first girl..."

My little apartment has been in a state of upheaval for the last few days. I had some minor plumbing issues with the bathtub/shower, but it was enough to throw off that part of my routine entirely. After cleaning the bathroom on Saturday, I didn't want the tub to get all scurvy again before I had maintenance up to scope out my problem --- so I've been taking showers only since Saturday morning. Well, the maintenance guy was here yesterday and replaced my shower head and all the metal fixtures in my bathtub. You should have seen the water pressure I got this morning! Practically blew me out of the bathroom. I'm excited to get back in the bathtub this evening, though.

You know what I did learn during the last few days in Showerland? If I roll my hair up when it's freshly washed in the morning, it doesn't hold the curl nearly as well as when I wash my hair the night before and just wet it in the morning. I also found out that I'm way more excited now by the clean-ability of my bathtub fixtures than I am by their look. Once upon a time, I might have been concerned only with the fact that they were cute. The first thing I did when I got home yesterday was to check out those fixtures to see if they'd be easy to keep clean. And I think they will. Score 1 for the housekeeper!

My lunches for the last few days have been almost identical to Monday's. (I'm a one-woman household and that soup has got to be eaten up!) I'm definitely not feeling any afternoon hunger - which is a happy surprise considering that the vintage lunch has 2/3 the calories. One more day of the creamy broccoli/egg-salad combo and I should be ready for a new vintage lunch menu on Friday. This next one sounds a little, well, strange. Will I be able to choke it down? Will I actually enjoy it? Stay tuned...

I'm going to try the night-time deodorant thing tonight. The first time I read through the 1946 grooming routine, I thought it was nuts to apply your deodorant immediately after taking your nightly bath. Wouldn't you want to be as fresh as possible in the morning? Wouldn't you sweat it all away during the night??? So I was chatting with a friend the other day and she told me that she'd recently started using one of those new "clinical strength" deodorant/antiperspirants. Strangely enough, the directions on the container tell her to apply it at night! Maybe those vintage beauty experts were onto something after all. Well, we've sure got the right conditions to give this technique a run for its money. Temps should reach 104 or 105 degrees F. again tomorrow.

By the by, 169 seems to be my watermark when it comes to matchmaking. Since Monday, no less than two people have suggested setting me up with somebody! An acquaintance wants to set me up with a 44-year-old engineer who's a friend of the family. She describes him as "a little nerdy," but very athletic (hiking and swimming). She's one of the kindest people I know, so I'm intrigued. One of my closest co-workers also wants to set me up with a friend. Which would probably be a bad idea seeing as she's also kind of a supervisor of mine. I think I'll try to pass on that one!

Eating Out

You know what I forgot? Those sodium- and preservative-packed lunches actually make it pretty easy for me to get in that workout at lunchtime on weekdays. Today was my day off from walking, but it took me a good 10 minutes to assemble my lunch in the kitchen at work. That's going to be tough to pull off the rest of this week when I've only got about 20 minutes to eat... It also took me long enough to make my vintage lunch this morning that my whole sense of timing was thrown off and I actually had to leave the house without my bed made and with dirty dishes in the sink. Eek! Just one little change and everything's a mess. Here's the menu I adapted from the original:

Organic Creamy Broccoli Soup
Open-faced Egg Salad Sandwich on Whole-grain Bread with Lettuce and Tomatoes
Green Pepper Strips
Fruit Salad (Apple, Strawberries, Blueberries)

First, I'll have to say that it was a yummy, filling meal. Even without the Crackers, a second slice of bread, and the Cup Cake. What I might have eaten for lunch today without this mission in place is an Amy's Broccoli Pot Pie with some fruit for dessert. So let's do some basic nutritional comparisons of the non-raw fruit/veggie components of these lunch menus:

Typical pre-mission lunch
Calories: 430
Fat: 22g
Sodium: 630mg
Carbohydrates: 46g
Protein: 11g

Vintage lunch, adapted
Calories: 260
Fat: 19.5g
Sodium: 690mg
Carbohydrates: 32g
Protein: 14g

Interesting... My vintage lunch was better in every respect except for sodium. Boy, that soup sure packs a wallop! I'd bet if I was making the soup from scratch with a low sodium broth, I could make a difference there. I'm loving the drop in the number of calories. Will my lower calorie lunch make a difference in my ability to resist the temptation to snack tonight? It didn't make any difference this afternoon.

I'm sure I'll get better at packing these lunches. It'd help ginormously if I actually owned some good lunch-packing equipment. The American Woman's Cook Book (1945) has some serviceable sounding suggestions on preparing and packing lunches.

Sandwich-making tips:

• Whole grain breads should be used for sandwiches. Graham, whole wheat, oatmeal, brown, raisin, and nut bread are excellent. [I guess they hold up better to sandwich fillings!]
  
  
• Pack lettuce separately, to be added just before eating.
  
  
• Fillings for sandwiches may be packed in small jars and buttered bread in waxed paper included for spreading just before eating.
  

Adding a hot or cold dish:

• Special vacuum containers make it possible to include hot cocoa or hot soup in the lunch, also a creamed vegetable, a hot pudding, or other hot food. The containers should never be filled the night before the lunch is prepared.
  
  
• In the winter have something hot and invigorating in the thermos bottle: Hot soup, coffee, tea, baked beans, hot chocolate, or stew. Something cool and refreshing in the summertime, such as lemonade, tomato juice, fruit juices, chocolate milk shake, milk, iced tea or iced coffee, canned fruit juices.
  

General packing advice:

• Stewed or canned fruits may be carried in any small screw-top container. Cold puddings, custards or similar desserts may also be carried in this manner.
  
  
• All foods not in containers should be wrapped separately in waxed paper before being placed in the box. The neatly wrapped articles should be placed, so far as is possible, in the order in which the lunch will be eaten, so that those found first may be eaten first without disturbing the remainder. The heaviest foods, however, should be placed at the bottom of the box.
  
  
• Articles should be packed compactly in order to prevent the food from shaking about.
  
  
• Lunch boxes should be washed, scalded and aired daily. Those made of lightweight metal are best. Many attractive boxes are now made with a vacuum bottle which fits the box.

It is a bit hard to imagine toting one of those old-fashioned black metal lunchboxes to work with me everyday. (Imagine if I ran into Curly with one of those in my hand!) And yet most of the soft-sided lunch bags I see out there these days don't provide much support for items wrapped in wax paper. The only tools I've got right now are a few plastic sandwich-sized containers and some custard cups with lids. Usually I just toss a few things in my tote bag --- but they're frozen, so no big deal. That arrangement isn't going to cut it when I've got soup to carry along! I'd like to find something that doesn't really look like a lunch box, but provides the same protection to my noonday meal. Any ideas?

Week Forty: The Mission

Fitness
As I continue getting used to the extra resistance those 1-lb. wrist weights add to my arms, I'm going to add a few more limbering and stretching exercises to my evening routine. These exercises targeting "heavy hips" and a "thick waistline" were featured in the March 27, 1947 edition of Salt Lake City's Deseret News:

13. Get on your knees, keeping your back straight and arms stretched overhead. Bend your body sharply to the right side, and lower the hips as far as possible toward the floor. Then raise your body up straight, bend to the left side, and lower hips. Repeat 4 times; rest. 8 to 12 times altogether.

14. Stand with arms out to the sides, and kick your right leg across your body, trying to touch the left hand. Feel that stretch? Return leg to position, and kick the left leg. Do 12 times, alternating legs.

15. Now get down on the floor, flat on your back, with legs straight and arms out to the sides. Keep shoulders flat on the floor. Pull both knees up to your chest and roll them over to left side, then to right. Swing from side to side 6 times; rest. 12 to 18 times altogether.

Reducing
My weekday lunches have gone almost untouched thus far by the changes I've made to my diet. The only thing I've been doing differently at lunchtime is to opt for fruit when it comes to dessert. I guess I've been holding out on this meal because it's the high point of a working day which can sometimes seem like a long slog! Unfortunately, my lunch choices are often quite high in sodium - and probably in calories - and filled with additives and preservatives... So I've been collecting vintage menus for the lunchbox and am planning on trying some of these out. I'll have to make some adaptations, of course. Cut down on the carbs and eliminate the desserts. Stick to vintage portion sizes. Make open-faced sandwiches. And I'll keep an eye on the calorie content of these meals to make sure I'm not exceeding what I've been accustomed to eating for lunch on weekdays. Here's the original menu that I'll be adapting for tomorrow's lunch. It's included in a chapter on "The Lunch Box" in The American Woman's Cook Book (1945):

Cream of Spinach Soup
Crackers
Egg Salad Sandwiches with Lettuce
Raw Vegetable Strips
Apple
Cup Cake

Grooming
And here's the next step in the 1946 grooming routine. After taking my evening bath (or morning shower on the weekends) and a brisk dry with the towel:

Don't forget the deodorant under your arms.

Deodorant at night? Won't I be all sweaty by the time I head to work in the morning???

21 + 4 = 25

While I was sitting at the breakfast table eating my Cornflakes this morning, I noticed some of the fine print on the jar of Vitamin E supplements. They're vegetarian softgels (400 IU) turned out by a New Jersey company called Solgar Vitamin and Herb. And it turns out that Solgar's been in business since 1947! I looked at their website this morning and - sure enough - Solgar (founded by two pharmacists and a holistic physician) introduced Naturvite, a "high potency natural multivitamin with minerals," as their first product in 1947. Naturvite's special selling point seems to have been that it used parsley, watercress, and alfalfa as the "fillers" that bound the vitamins and minerals together instead of the sugars, starches, or salts that brands such as Vimms were using.

American scientists had learned a lot about vitamins and minerals during the war. The military put a ton of cash into researching how to better fuel the bodies of servicemen and heal wounds more quickly. The Office of War Information churned out ad after ad promoting better awareness among the general public of the vitamin and mineral content of various foods. After all, it was critical that men and women working in the defense industry and keeping the home front humming also be in as good health as possible. Americans were highly conscious of vitamins during this period, so it makes sense that the founders of Solgar would find the postwar era an ideal time to launch a multivitamin.

Vitamins may have been a hot topic, but the general public still had a pretty fuzzy understanding of their benefits. This 1940 article from St. Petersburg, Florida's Evening Independent gives you a sense of just how novel all this information was to people outside the medical community:

It is true that people knew very little about vitamins until the present century. So far as they did know anything, the knowledge was in the hands of a few who used certain foods to cure illness. No vitamin had even a name 25 years ago.

Knowledge of vitamins is leading the world toward a new and better day. Babies are being fed foods which make them stronger and healthier. Adults are slowly learning that vitamins can make life better for them as well…

Vitamin A brings better ability to see in dim light. It also appears to be of help in guarding against long-drawn-out colds. It adds to a person’s general feeling of good health, and seems to play a part in guarding teeth against decay.

Vitamin B (also called B1) helps children to grow as they should. It does something to bring about better digestion.

Vitamin C does a great deal to build sound teeth. Along with the A and D vitamins, everyone who has teeth (or hope of teeth) needs it. It also joins with A in building up a feeling of good health.

Vitamin D is a bone-building and tooth-building vitamin. It is needed by the body to make use of calcium and phosphorus, which are minerals in food.

Other vitamins, including E and G, also have their important uses. Scientists are now exploring new vitamins in the B group, and facts about these will be known to a greater extent as the months go by.

Though vitamin "concentrates" and "preparations" were becoming popular, home economists also recognized that a truly balanced diet contained all the vitamins needed for optimum health --- and many cookbooks published during this era contain material on the vitamin content of various foods and how best to prepare foods in order to preserve those vitamins. A columnist for the Spokane Daily Chronicle wrote an article on this very topic in 1941, stressing the role the housewife could play:

The people of this country are more conscious of the importance of vitamins and minerals, and other nutritional factors in food, than ever before. The average housewife goes to market with a determination to buy protective foods that will give her family the essentials for better health. But if she is not careful in the preparation of these foods, the loss of their protective values will be tremendous… Natural foods have high contents of vitamins and minerals which incorrect cooking methods can destroy.

Do not cook vegetables in a copper kettle. Use a covered pan, a pressure cooker or a double boiler, and heat them just long enough to make them tender. Many vitamins are water soluble, and also are lost in high heat. Save the water, because in it are vitamins and minerals. Use it for sauces, gravies, soups, or for a cocktail to which lemon juice is added. Use little water when cooking vegetables, just enough to cover them. Green leafy types may be cooked in the water left on the leaves after washing…

Cook potatoes in their skins to preserve the vitamin and mineral contents.

Here on my own home front, I'm doing a pretty good job at taking my multivitamin. It's a three-times-per-day tablet, designed to be taken with a meal. I'm great at remembering it with my breakfast and my dinner. And at lunch on the weekends. But I'm having a terrible time remembering to take it with my lunch on weekdays! Maybe I need to bring a week's supply to work with me on Mondays so it's right there in front of me.

I'm also taking a Vitamin E supplement, a Vitamin D supplement (as the multivitamin only contains 50% of the recommended daily allowance of D), and a sublingual Vitamin B12. My doctor and my mother have been after me for years to take the B12. It's the one vitamin that's absorbed only at the very end of the small intestine. I had to have my large intestine and a portion of my small intestine removed nine years ago, so the sublingual supplement (a little pill you pop under your tongue) is one of the few ways I have of getting that into my body. My levels have always been normal, but it can't hurt to give things a little boost while I'm reducing.

Speaking of which, check out those numbers in the title to this post!!! I practically did a jig this morning when I stepped on the scale and weighed in at 169. The 160s at last! It feels like a milestone... I'm headed out tomorrow to do some shopping and see if I can finally fit into a size 14. Wish me luck!

*swoon*

Shnikeys! I was just alone in the dark with Curly!!!

Okay, yes, I was only letting him into an office where he'd printed something. An office where everybody was away on a one-day retreat and the place was all locked up and dark. Neither one of us reached for a light. And when the printer ended up being out of the right size paper, then out of a yellow ink cartridge --- well, it took a few minutes while we both worked over the printer to try and bring it to life. No success, but you know I didn't mind! We were standing there right next to each other. Shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip - just an inch of airspace between us. What a rush. I have no idea if it's possible for one person to feel such sparkly heat and the other not to feel anything at all, but there's certainly sparkles and fire on this side!

Curly and I have been thrown together in some really oddball ways during the last couple weeks. Here's this guy I've worked in the same building with for nearly two years, and I think I've seen and talked to him more in the last two weeks than in the last two years altogether. Part of me wonders if there's something more mysterious pulling the strings.

Now if I could just manage not to act like a complete tween whenever he walks in the room...

Aquacade

Is every reducer haunted by the specter of the next plateau? I certainly am. The scale seems to be cooperating with me these days, but the prospect of having to ratchet things up a notch is always in the back of my mind. They say that the pounds get harder and harder to lose the smaller you get. So I'm arming myself with ideas these days. Laying by strategies for the day when I just can't get that scale to budge.

One sport popular with women in the '40s was swimming. Beauty expert Alicia Hart explains why in this March 9, 1940 newspaper feature on actress Ruth Gordon:

When you see a woman who looks years younger than she really is, you can bet your last nickel that she does not lead a sedentary existence…

Miss Gordon believes that swimming is, for most people, the best all-around exercise for all the muscles of the body. She agrees with prominent physical training instructors that swimming eliminates bulges in the wrong places… Furthermore, no matter how firm the muscles become through perfection and practice of the crawl, or even the side or breast stroke, they just never do get too hard or knotty. You can slim down by swimming without fear of losing any of your natural feminine curves…

For those who find it impossible to swim often or, for that matter, to go in for any active sport, a brisk one-mile walk a day, supplemented by five minutes of limbering and stretching exercises in the morning, will keep muscles firm and supple, the general appearance decidedly youthful.

One of the exercises I've been doing in the evenings is actually supposed to be a stand-in for the woman who doesn't have access to a swimming pool. I'm basically doing the breaststroke while lying on top of my bed! Hey, maybe I could mix up my daily walks with a dip in the pool. They have an outdoor pool at the rec center and it might be cool enough to use it come October. Alicia Hart explains in a later article that a woman seeking to maintain her figure should "swim a reasonable distance three times a week."

Nope, no "natural feminine curves" missing here...

Responsorial

As those of you who are Catholics - or have visited a Catholic church - know, the Mass contains a whole series of responses from the congregation. Some are spoken, some are sung. One of the things I've learned over the years is that every parish has its own special set of tunes for these responses. They may be singing the same words as are sung at every other Catholic church in the English-speaking world, but the melodies are as unique as if each parish had its own thumbprint.

Here's the tough part: these melodies are almost never written down. A newcomer can stick out like a sore thumb since there's no way of knowing how to sing along with each of the responses. If you attend Mass in that parish regularly, you'll eventually get to know the tunes --- but it certainly takes time. And just when you think you've got 'em down, the choir director will decide it's time to freshen up the service with a new melody or two! I'm not sure if this is peculiar to Catholics or part and parcel of every church experience, but you gotta laugh. It's like this secret code you'll only be in on if you do indeed attend church regularly. Heaven forbid you miss Mass the Sunday that the choir director introduces a new response to the congregation! If you can't sing along, it's a sure sign to everyone around that you've been sleeping in on Sundays.

The church I've been attending for the last three weeks is one I attended probably a couple dozen times beforehand. So I'm already familiar with most of the responses that are sung. There's one in particular, though, that I can't for the life of me catch on to. The melody doesn't seem to follow any rules of nature. It twists all around, up and down, sideways and inside out. It's a really long response, too. Oy. Where's Father O'Malley when you need him?

Shallow, huh? And sadly - not quite as shallow as the fact that I've spent the last two Sundays noticing that there are a heck of a lot of single dads in my parish. I sure hope one of these Sundays I'll be able to tune out all these distractions...

This Ain't Your Mother's Farina!

Cream of Wheat is so good to eat
That we have it every day.
It makes us strong, so we sing this song.
It makes us shout "Hooray!"

It's good for growing babies
And grown-ups, too, to eat.
For all the family's breakfast,
You can't beat Cream of Wheat!
(Advertising jingle, 1942)

I've been eating my daily vintage breakfasts for several months now and farina has definitely become one of my favorites... You may know it as Cream of Wheat. My mom used to dish this up during the winter when I was a kid. It wasn't a favorite, but I remember preferring it tenfold to the oatmeal my mother made from scratch. (Sorry, Ma!) When I was a teenager, instant Cream of Wheat would sometimes appear in the pantry, usually in the maple brown sugar variety.

These days, I'm loving the cooked version, and - as luck would have it - Cream of Wheat is now available in a whole grain variety. I think it finally qualifies as a healthy breakfast. One serving prepared with water (100 calories) contains 15% of the recommended daily allowance of fiber, 50% of the recommended daily allowance of iron, and 4 grams of protein to boot! This is the kind of breakfast that sticks to your ribs and keeps you from feeling hungry for the rest of the morning.

Sometimes, I take my Cream of Wheat straight up. Especially if I'm having fruit along with it, like a dish of berries or half a grapefruit. Other mornings, it's all about the accessories. If you prefer a little crunch with your hot cereal, how 'bout sprinkling on some flax seed or crushed walnuts? Raisins, bits of date, or dried cranberries would be fantastic in farina --- especially if you added them to the cereal as it was cooking and gave 'em a chance to plump up. My favorite way to eat farina is with a smidge of margarine and a sprinkling of brown sugar. Heaven!

The key to cooking farina is to remember your whisk. Use the whisk to stir the cereal as you cook it - which only takes two or three minutes after adding the cereal to a soft boiling water. In fact, it cooks up so quickly that you can have a hot breakfast in the summertime without heating up your kitchen! Whether you rinse your pot right away or leave it to soak for a bit, it's super easy to clean up after. The ever-thrifty author of The American Woman's Cook Book (1945) even has a suggestion for leftover farina (as if!): "Mold... for tomorrow's luncheon dessert. Sweeten with brown sugar or honey and add vanilla." Farina Pudding should be served with Sliced Bananas and Top Milk.

20 + 1 = 21

The last two weeks have been a whirlwind. For those of you following my little reducing saga, you'll remember that two weeks ago I had to stop taking the diuretic I'd taken for the last couple years to help control my blood pressure. After losing 20 lbs., my blood pressure had dropped so low that I needed to begin stepping down on the meds, and the diuretic was the first to go. Within four days, I gained 4 lbs. in water weight. During the last 10 days, I've worked my patooty off and managed to lose not only 4 lbs. to compensate for the water weight but 1 more lb. to boot. And all the time I've continued drinking 64 oz. of water per day - the same amount of water I was drinking while I was taking the diuretic and the same amount I drank everyday last week --- so I'm feeling pretty confident that what I've lost this last week has been genuine poundage. At any rate, I weighed in at 173 this morning. We're back on the move, dear readers!

The red Mexican bird of paradise is now in bloom which means our long-winded desert summer is about halfway over --- it also means, unfortunately, that my little apartment is starting to smell very stuffy. I've tried to keep things sealed up in here since it became blazing hot in June. The windows are never opened and the door opened just long enough for me to exit or enter. I'm not sure what the cure for this midsummer stuffiness might be. Is there some secret none of the natives have filled me in on yet? It's too hot even in the middle of the night to crack the windows. Ah well, I guess I can endure the stuffiness for a couple more months.

The Woman's Home Companion Household Book (1948) has some wonderful suggestions for those seeking to cool their homes - in looks and in temperature - during summers in a pre-air conditioning world. Maybe these'll come in handy for you lucky dames living in a more temperate climate! It's fascinating to me how much more amenable people once seemed to adapting their decor to the season instead of fighting Mother Nature tooth and nail to keep things looking the same year-round. It was almost expected - either when you did your spring cleaning or about the time you put up your window screens - that you would switch out the furnishings, linens, and draperies throughout your home for the summer ahead.

The first few are very practical tips for cooling your home and circulating air:

• Closed windows and drawn blinds throughout the day will prevent sunshine and warm air from penetrating the house, as southerners learned long ago. Wait until the sun has left the horizon before opening windows and raising blinds to welcome any cool air the evening may bring. Opening upstairs windows and keeping the lower ones closed will permit the warm air, which has risen to escape.

• Electric fans put in action in strategic points throughout the house will keep the air in circulation... In front of the fan or fans, place a tray filled with chunks of ice - they will cool the air which is circulated by the fans.

• Evenings will be somewhat cooler if candles are substituted for electric lights.

• Sofas and chairs, which in the winter faced a cheerful fireside, should now be directly or obliquely in the path of any breeze the windows or doors may lure into the room.

These next two have the comfort of the housewife in mind:

• With an eye to relief from the burden of cleaning tasks, many housewives use a blanket cover instead of the traditional bedspread. A dressing table which has good lines can be left unskirted during the warm months.

• Summer is no time for laundering fine damask, babying fine crystal or polishing prized silverware. During the warm season, use only the simplest, most informal luncheon cloths and place mats.

This last series is all about "cooling" your decor:

• Bright slipcovers [examples: white with green ivy print or a floral print in blue, white and a bit of wine] rank high in importance among summer transformations. Not only do they play a part in cooling off the color scheme but they protect upholstery fabrics from the harm to which dust and sunshine streaming through summer-open windows expose them.

• Large rugs - Oriental, velvet broadloom, wool piles, etc. - deserve a professional cleaning annually and it is practical to send them out for cleaning and storage when the warm days arrive. Living room, dining room or bedroom floors left bare by their departure will look much cooler and will have a chance to display their own hardwood beauty.

• Use sheer white fabrics to make cool, filmy summer curtains to replace warm winter draperies.

• In place of the usual kindling wood and logs, pile laurel or pine branches across the andirons and in the woodbasket. For a more dramatic change, store the andirons, etc., and set a big potted plant or basket of greens in their place.

• Wooden bowls... are nice for serving rolls, fruits and vegetables, as well as salads.
  
  
• This is the time to use vegetable-shaped soup bowls, leaf-shaped serving dishes. Hunt out amusing salt and pepper shakers and relish dishes of all kinds. Have pottery vivid in hue - in one solid tone or colors which combine.

Soap Opera

What on earth did people do when there were shortages of soap during the war?

If there's one thing that's become absolutely clear to me with these nightly baths, it's that I'm going thru a lot more soap than I was in the shower. One bar lasts me about ten baths before it breaks into pieces and has to be recycled to the soap dish beside my sink. Now imagine if I had a family of six (considered average in the '40s). My household would probably be going thru a bar of soap every other day. Unless I had a passel of little boys, that is! I know there are tricks to making a bar stretch. Like turning the little bits and pieces into a jellied soap. But even a few tricks like that won't keep your family squeaky clean. The only thing I can figure is that folks just got used to being a little less clean than they'd like to be...

Another thing I've noticed about my baths is the bathtub gets grimier and in need of a cleaning much more quickly than it used to. It no longer surprises me that the authors of America's Housekeeping Book (1945) recommended that the tub be thoroughly cleaned each and every day. Here in a single-person household, mine could probably use a good scrubbing twice a week.

Though the vintage articles on bathing I quoted from last week were split on whether a woman should soak in the hot water before - or after - doing her washing and exfoliating, I've fallen firmly into the before camp. The water is at its hottest and most likely to take the knots out of your shoulders. And it's not all cloudy with soap scum and, well, probably dead skin cells. If I waited to lie back and relax until after I got myself all cleaned up, I'd be soaking in my own grime! Definitely, definitely a before kinda girl.

All told, my nightly baths take me about 40 minutes. That's counting from the time I begin drawing the water until I'm drying off after my brief post-bath shower (for shaving and for washing my hair). It's more time consuming than a single shower in the morning, but I love the feeling of being super clean when I climb under the covers. Even better, it's a ritual that's actually getting me to bed earlier at night. It used to be I could easily stay up until 10:30 or 11:00 puttering about, surfing the net. These days, I'm into the tub by 8:30 or 9:00 and ready to turn out the lights and go to sleep by 9:30 or 10:00. I'm all mellowed out, I guess, by the time I get out of the tub. Don't feel like watching TV or even reading. I just want to call it a day. And you can't beat a little extra beauty sleep!

One of my vintage beauty missions this week is to be very mindful of giving myself a vigorous dry with the towel after my bath. It's also made me more mindful of my towels! So I'm going to go thru them in the next few days --- thinning out the linen closet, so to speak. If it's threadbare in spots - if it's not something I'd put out for a guest - then it's time to hit the rag bag. (The ratty towels will make great cleaning rags once they're cut up.) If I spy any loose threads, I'll trim 'em off with my sewing scissors. This will clear up some room for a few new towels in vintage colors.

Wordplay

I sat down to write my post tonight and came very close to kicking things off with a saying that proves an interesting reflection on the value society has for housekeeping. What I was about to say is, "First, a little housekeeping." A funny saying, isn't it? Something you hear a lot in meetings or classes or conference breakouts when the team leader/professor/speaker has some dull details to get out of the way before they launch their agenda/lecture/workshop. Maybe they need to announce something about the schedule. Maybe it's something about the date the next assignment is due or an announcement about a room change.

As those of you who keep house know, there's nothing "little" about it. It's the kind of work that breathes life into a house and makes it a home. Work that nourishes, clothes, and provides a clean roof for a family. Housekeeping is absolutely indispensable --- and yet people who work outside the home are constantly dumbing it down and diminishing its value in the very choice of words like the ones above.

So I take it back! What I'd planned on saying is that one of my readers, Wendy, asked me a while back to add a gadget to my blog which would allow her to read it through "My Yahoo." Wendy, if you're reading this, I haven't been able to find that gadget for the life of me. If you could point me in the right direction, it'd be much appreciated.

Can you think of any other phrases that started out as housekeeping lingo but morphed into something else? I can think of a few. When you "put something on the back burner," you're leaving it be for awhile. Today, "light a fire under" someone means something quite different than it did to housewives in the age of woodstoves. Let's not forget "airing the dirty laundry" and "clean sweep."

Breach of Etiquette

Ladies, I'm sorry to say that I committed a capital breach in vintage etiquette this morning...

I went out in public with my curlers.

*gasps, shrieks, and fainting*

Granted, it was 6:15 and I was only walking to and from the laundry room in my apartment complex. And that the men who live in my complex are all frumps themselves. It takes time for those clothes to dry --- if I'd waited 'til then to roll up my hair, my hair wouldn't have had time to dry before I needed to leave for work.

Etiquette experts of the 1940s railed against the woman who lolled about at home with her hair in curlers. Your husband, particularly, should never - under any circumstances - see you in this vulnerable state. (They didn't even mention wearing your curlers outside the home. Guess that wasn't on their radar!)

There is no excuse for coming down to breakfast in hair curlers undisguised. If you put your hair up in curlers, then wear whatever is becoming to you to cover them - perhaps a bandanna tied on like a bathing cap, perhaps some pinned-on puffs. At the moments, milliners are showing evening helmets made of curled “belting” ribbon to imitate a wig. They would be excellent for breakfast! Anyway, not curlers.

“Be Polite, Even at Breakfast” by Emily Post
(Milwaukee Journal, January 28, 1940)

Women who worked outside the home had no excuses either:

She is often just as tired as her husband is - not only that but she has to take time for cold cream and curlers at some moments when they are both at home…

If you need curlers on your hair, cover them with an attractive turban. This can be made by wrapping silk or net around your head.

“Working Woman Tends to Relax Into Dowdiness”
by Josephine Lowman
(Spokane Daily Chronicle, June 18, 1940)

Despite her dictum against hair curlers, Miss Post does relent a bit when it comes to housecoats at the breakfast table:

But may you wear a housecoat? Certainly, if it be a zippered or buttoned princess dress. But not a wrapper - at least not if you go to breakfast in the dining-room with your family, still less if you work in the kitchen. And yet - if you and your husband breakfast alone and you have servants to prepare it and serve it, a negligee (if it be glamorously becoming) does fit into the picture of breakfast-for-two-at-home.

Rats! I guess only one or two of these beauties will do.

Curly Top

It's like Christmas every day here at Casa Jitterbug!

Putting my hair up in curlers totally makes me feel like a kid on Christmas Eve. I'm still very new at this, so I'm never quite sure how the curls are going to come out. It's kind of exciting --- waiting with anticipation while the hair dries. I have to remind myself to be patient. Though the hair on the top of my head dries pretty quickly, the hair on the bottom takes a bit longer. When it's finally time to take the curlers out, it feels like I'm unwrapping a present I didn't even have a chance to shake beforehand.

When I began taking nightly baths the week before last, I was psyched to have the chance to work a "wet set" into my schedule. So after looking about to see what's out there, I picked out a set of self-holding rollers by Scunci. They're wrapped in a material kind of like the prickly side of a piece of Velcro. My hair is very fine, so the last thing I need is to lose any strands unnecessarily in clips or pins.



What I'd forgotten is that you can't sleep on curlers like these! Sponge curlers, maybe. Maybe even rag curls or pin curls. I gave it a good try the first night I took a bath, but it definitely wasn't going to work. Back to the bathroom. Took out all the curlers and resolved to re-wet my hair in the morning and try it again. And that's how I've worked it into my schedule ever since. When I get up in the morning, I duck my head under the shower to get my hair good and wet again. Then up in the curlers so it can dry while I go about my morning chores. Just about the time I finish my breakfast, the hair is dry and ready to unroll and style. A little hairspray, and my style holds for the better part of the day. It's usually a bit looser late afternoon/early evening, but still pretty curly. Hey, if I brushed it a bit more and pinned up the sides, I might even be able to pull off that pageboy I was picturing about a month ago.

I haven't tried using any setting lotion or other product before curling the hair, but suspect the style would hold even longer if I did so. Any recommendations for product that'll make curls a little more glossy, but still natural-looking? I suppose the right setting lotion would've been super important was I truly a '40s gal and washed and set my hair only once a week...

Also - I'm a complete dolt when it comes to rolling my hair. My bangs definitely need the smallest curlers, but what about the rest of the hair? I'm not really shooting for a tightly curled look, so is it best to use the biggest curlers on the top of my head with medium curlers at ear level and small curlers at the bottom? Or am I going about this backwards? I don't want to end up with triangle head. And should the curlers be rolled into place horizontally or vertically?

Week Thirty-seven: The Mission

As those of you who read my blog last Sunday learned, I've now lost enough weight that my blood pressure has begun to fall naturally. This is great news! For the last two years, my blood pressure has been so high that I had to take both a medication and a diuretic to treat the condition. When I saw my doctor a few weeks ago, she told me that I didn't need to take the diuretic any longer and - if I continue losing weight - I should be able to slowly reduce the medication dosage over time. I held off as long as I could, because I knew that I would gain some water weight when I stopped taking the diuretic. As my body adjusted to carrying around a normal amount of water in the tissues, I'd see that reflected on the scale.

Sure enough, I have. Sunday was my lost dose of the diuretic. Since that time, I've gained 4 lbs. --- presumably in water weight. I've gone from a fantastic 174 to a dreary 178. I'm trying not to panic. This is a good thing. It needed to happen. I'm thrilled to see my blood pressure responding so nicely to my weight loss. But, boy, are those numbers hard to swallow. All my instincts are screaming at me, "Just stop eating entirely!" "Work out five hours a day!" "Stop drinking water!" And I'm trying desperately to talk myself down and stick with the hard work I've been doing all the while. It's working. I know it's working. I've just got to keep slogging away. My body is loving the added water weight. It's better for my skin, better for my hair, better for my organs. My kidneys alone have got to be singing "Hallelujah!" that they're no longer pulling overtime.

So here I am. 4 lbs. heavier than last Saturday, but with a decidedly healthier anatomy. Maybe the distraction of a new vintage beauty mission is just what I need...

Fitness
It's time to add some strength training to my fitness routine. I've been giving so much attention to my legs that my arms could really use some work. Rather than use the dumb bells and barbells that might have been found in a '40s reducing salon, I'm going to start with a very modern pair of 1-lb. wrist weights. I found a set made by Reebok last night and strapped 'em on before my walk this morning. They're just heavy enough to make my arms work a little harder. I'm also planning to use them while I do my limbering and stretching exercises in the mornings and evenings.



Reducing
1940s nutritionists were acutely aware that women following a reducing plan might not be getting all the minerals and nutrients needed for optimum health, so they frequently recommended some sort of "vitamin concentrate" or "multiple-vitamin preparation" to supplement the diet. This was an era of steadfast faith in science, so the idea of vitamins was hot, hot, hot. People figured if they could formulate precisely what the body needed to function then it was simply a matter of taking a scientific approach to things in order to supply those needs. I've always believed I could do that just as easily by eating a varied diet (and my bloodwork has usually agreed), but I'm not perfect. I've still got plenty of work to do in building a better diet --- so in the meantime I'm going to begin taking a multivitamin. It took some time to pick out a vegetarian-friendly formula, but I purchased one a few days ago. It needs to be taken three times a day with meals.

Grooming
Here's the next step in the 1946 grooming routine. After taking my evening bath (or morning shower on the weekends), I'm to put that bath towel to work:

Rub yourself dry, so that you tingle all over and chest and back turn a healthy pink.