It's a Girl!

I've gotten some great compliments from women lately. A co-worker whom I see only once every couple months asked me the other day if I had new glasses. "Nope." "Your face looks different," she insisted. So we gabbed for a good long while about my diet and exercise regimen. A friend of mine told me yesterday how young I was looking these days. Incredible compliments, I tell you --- I'm so grateful. The women around you can build up your spirits and your resolve in a wonderful way.

But it's the reaction of men that has been the zinger.

It started on the street one morning as I was walking to my office building. A middle-aged man looked directly at me and gave me an appreciative smile. It's probably the first time that's happened to this former frump in several years and it caught me completely off-guard! (I think it must have been the red lipstick.) The men I work with are all too dear and polite - and much older than I am - to even breathe a word to me about my having lost weight, but some of them smile in a new way when they see me lately. Kind of in a curious, appreciative, it's-nice-to-see-a-pretty-woman-around-here kind of way. Like they'd like to ask what I've been doing with myself, but there's a rule in the Book of Masculine Etiquette that a gentleman never brings up weight around a lady.

It's not that I'm interested in what any of these particular men think of my looks, but it has been a strange and novel experience for me even to sample that kind of admiration again. I'd forgotten the power that an attractive woman can have when it comes to men. I don't think I've sensed that power since I was in my early to mid-twenties. Oh, it was heady stuff in those days... These days, I'm more than content that the men I work with, for instance, think of me simply as a trusted and accomplished colleague. I guess they just happen to be serving as a kind of mirror to me lately. Allowing me to see myself in a new light.

Maybe it's my crush. (I'll call him Curly.) There's such electricity in the air for me these days - I don't know which end is up when he walks by. I guess what I'm trying to say in a very clumsy way is that I'm actually feeling like a woman again. And it's been a long time coming. It makes me teary even now just to try and express this in writing.

When I had to shop for some new clothes (in a new size) a few weeks ago, I picked out clothes in colors - passionate lipstick pinks and bright, beautiful yellows. What a change they brought to my old wardrobe of neutrals! Blacks, whites, grays, khakis --- now I'm reaching for colors that make me feel more feminine than I have in years. I even bought a silk flower on a clip to wear in my hair. Since picking up a set of curlers a few days ago, I've been experimenting. It feels so good to have a little bounce and sass to my hair. I'm going to start sounding like a broken record soon, but it's a far cry from the buns and ponytails and the ever popular hair-tucked-behind-the-ears look that had become my signature hairstyles.

Gosh, if this is what losing 20 lbs. can do, I can't even imagine what I'll find myself thinking and feeling - and doing - at 40!

Sweaty, Hungry, Tired --- and Glowing?

As I shave some of the excesses off my lifestyle, one of the loveliest outcomes is feeling things I haven't felt in a long time.

Like how great a good honest sweat feels... Not the kind I get in this part of the world just from going outside for a few minutes on any given day between June and September. The real kind. When I get home from four hard laps at the park and collapse on my bed 'til the air conditioning dries my sweat.

How wonderful it is to feel genuine hunger... When I eat nothing from 7:30 p.m. until I'm sitting at the breakfast table at about 7:00 the next morning, I actually feel hungry as I'm tucking into my meal. It's crazy how long it's been since I truly felt the pangs of a good honest hunger. I became so used to satisfying every passing whim of a craving, that I never had time to feel an empty stomach.

And you just can't beat feeling truly, physically tired at the end of the day... Crawling into those crisp, clean sheets and that tightly made bed feels so good when you've actually earned your rest. Knowing that I've put in a good day's work from sun up to sun down. I swear I used to have days where I'd look back and realize I'd accomplished absolutely nothing. I wouldn't even be tired, but I'd go to bed because - well - it seemed like the thing to do at 10 p.m. How good it feels to find myself yawning at bedtime! And not because I've spent most of my free time that day watching TV or surfing the net, but because I've washed dishes, made beds, cleaned windows, ironed clothes, re-stocked my pantry, scrubbed the vegetable bins in my refrigerator, and put in a good workout. Not all in one day, of course! It is an amazing thing to feel the same sense of accomplishment from each and every one of these seemingly monotonous tasks as somebody might feel in winning some great award or distinction.

A coworker of mine paid me the sweetest compliment yesterday morning. (I guess I should call her Co-worker #5.) We ran into each other on the way into the building and she told me she thought I'd looked "glowing" lately. Glowing? She said she'd been wanting to ask me if I'd been seeing somebody - she thought I looked like a woman in love. Well, no, but cool!!! (It must be those "creamy engagement ring circles" I've been using with the cold cream in the morning!) Who knows? It may be the cold cream, it may be the water, it may be the -4 lbs. And it may just be that rush of success in feeling like I'm finding my way through the woods after all those years of feeling confused and hopeless and out of control.

Bran Bread Reflections

My 1945 breakfast menu for tomorrow includes Toasted Bran Bread, so I was poking around today looking for recipes - figuring it would be just a quick bread. Well, there is a recipe in my cookbook for Date Bran Bread, but it calls for the bread to be steamed for three hours! I have never steamed anything before, but I'm giving this a try. My largest pot isn't big enough for more than one of the small loaf pans, and I don't have any used coffee cans or other metal cans hanging about, so, after doing some research online, I bought one of those aluminum foil roasters, placed water in the bottom with some stones to raise the loaf pans above the water. Covered the filled loaf pans tightly with foil and slid the whole affair inside a 350-degree oven. I have no idea if this is going to work.

This is another of those instances where the author of the cookbook seems to take for granted that her readers have some basic skills most of us no longer learn from our mothers and grandmothers. Steaming bread. Making jam from dried fruit.

It will be six weeks tomorrow since I set forth on The Great Housekeeping Experiment. Six very interesting weeks. I realized the other day that I have a much healthier-looking, better stocked fridge than I've had in years. There are grapefruits and oranges inside, together with some dried apricots and prunes in sealed containers. A couple varieties of juice - and milk and eggs that are still fresh! (That used to be a rarity.) My cupboards are better stocked than they've been in a long time: Shredded Wheat, Malt-O-Meal, rolled oats, cornmeal, Wheatena, flour, wheat bran... These were the building blocks of a '40s wintertime breakfast. If a housewife kept these items on hand, she'd be able to put a variety of breakfasts on the table.

And speaking of breakfast - these vintage menus are just as carb-heavy as I anticipated, but it's easy to adapt them to be a little friendlier to the waistline. What I've been finding - much to my surprise - is that I've come to feel a real sense of pride in making a pot of non-gummy oatmeal, lump-free cornmeal mush, and farina with just the right amount of water. I've also been getting to know my stovetop better. Just where the heat needs to be set to get the water to boil quickly, how far to lower it to keep a good simmer going. It's funny to feel so accomplished when it comes to things most of my friends wouldn't get very excited about.

Good news! I just checked my oven and the batter I left inside those loaf pans actually appears to be turning into bread!!! I'd say they're just about done. Maybe five more minutes.

Something else I've learned in the last six weeks: when I pick up the things in my bedroom and living room everyday, the job is fairly easy each time. The same goes when it comes to the breakfast dishes. Tidy begets tidy, so when my bedroom is picked up, I don't want to set something down where it doesn't belong. It's kind of nice to keep these rooms picked up by putting things back where they belong in the first place. My living room also seems a whole lot more spacious, and, boy, is it nice to come home to a dark apartment and not have to worry about stumbling over something as I'm looking for the light switch.

I've also discovered that my sleeping habits stink. In the American Home article I mentioned several days ago, the author writes that she wakes every day at 6:30 - no matter what the day of the week. This has got to be a whole lot easier on the body than my own habit of burning the midnight oil and sleeping in as late as possible, getting up at a different time nearly every day. I've got a long road to go, so this will be something I'll try and fold into my routine over time.

As I finish writing this, I'm enjoying a slice of my own Bran Bread, fresh from the oven. I can't believe I pulled this off! It's nice and moist, too. I ended up baking it for about 1 1/2 hours at 350 degrees F. I'm definitely freezing one of these loaves so I don't have to go through this again for quite some time...

A Wardrobe Question

I'm up to my ears in gingerbread this evening, but I wanted to pop in and share some of the things I've been pondering lately as I stir my Malt-O-Meal and tidy up my living room. For starters, the schedule in my 1945 housekeeping manual doesn't tell me when the housewife could shower (or bathe) and dress herself. Did she head down to the kitchen fully washed and dressed and ready to be seen by early morning callers, or was she wearing a robe with her hair still in curlers? If we were to judge by advertisements from the era, I'd say they were fully dressed at the breakfast table. In real life, though, was that really the case?

For myself, I've found that it seems to make more sense for me to get showered and dressed (and to have the bedroom straightened up) before I begin preparing breakfast. That way, if I have something that's going to take a long time - like Stewed Apricots or Prunes - I can get those started before getting dressed and have plenty to do while they're bubbling away on the back burner. Plus, I'm just not able to summon any kind of appetite as soon as I get out of bed in the morning. Definitely need some time to rustle that up! Since I have to head to work by 7:15 or so, I might as well be fully dressed as I go about my early morning chores.

Was it an age thing? Were older women more likely to be dressed for the day before leaving the bedroom? Were mothers - who also had to get the kids up and dressed - more likely to spend the early morning in bathrobe and slippers? Where do housecoats fit in? Here are some wonderful photos of '40s housewives in morning garb courtesy of the Library of Congress. The captions were written by the photographers.

Sheffield, Alabama. Mrs. Hall prepares breakfast for her husband before he leaves for work at the aluminum plant. (June 1942)

Washington, D.C. Lynn Massman, wife of a student at the Naval Air Station, eating breakfast while her eight-weeks-old son takes a nap. (December 1943)

Cincinnati, Ohio. Mrs. Cochran, the wife of a Greyhound bus driver, giving the children Sunday breakfast. (September 1943)

Frankford, Pennsylvania. Although she's one of America's vital production workers eight hours each day, fifty-five-year-old Eva Smuda still finds plenty of time to devote to home and family. Before the rest of the household is up, she has breakfast on the stove. (March 1942)

I was super excited when I found some Wheatena at one of the local grocery stores on my way home from work today. I've been looking all over for something wheat-y in the hot cereal section. And just in the nick of time, too, as I spy Cooked Whole-wheat Cereal coming up on the menu. The next item on my scavenger list: maple sugar. My breakfast this morning was building-blocks basic:

Grapefruit Juice

Cooked Farina and Barley Cereal

You know, I don't mind the lumps in my cereal very much when they happen, but I'm finding it's become a point of pride or something to make lump-free cereal. What's happening to me?!?