Overall, I liked this book quite a lot. It traces anorexia nervosa from its 19th-century roots to the 1980s.

I typically hate books intended to “explain” something or other to a mass audience–the authors tend to take a sensational, emotionally charged position and to ride it to its limit and beyond despite any evidence to the contrary. Brunberg did very little of that, particularly in her coverage of historical anorexia. In fact, it is exactly that coverage that so impressed me. Most people–even professional historians–who try to approach a specific theme over time usually end up distorting the times they attempt to represent out of all all recognition due to lack of perspective and lack of a breadth of expertise sufficiently broad to understand the periods well enough to place an event within its context in a culture. Brunberg, for the most part, understood the eras she dealt with remarkably well–her understanding of fasting in the Middle Ages is incredibly insightful, for instance, a thing that is amazingly rare when dealing with a phenomenon so far removed from our world.

There were some areas that are a little weak. For example, she tried to make the social language of food in an environment of surplus a uniquely modern Western phenomenon, when food was perhaps even MORE important (and just as available) among the upper classes of just about every traditional civilization. If we’re looking for the roots of unhealthy attitudes toward food and body image, you have to look no farther than the ritualized vomiting of late Roman feasts or the incredibly elaborate, symbolic, and sumptuous banquets of traditional China. So I find her explanation of the appearance of anorexia in that way fundamentally insufficient.

Her grasp of the conflicts of mysticism and rationalism was quite good, too, though she drew the line badly (putting religion almost by default on the mystical side when there were many devout Protestants who loathed mysticism as a Catholic or “New Age,” as we now call it, phenomenon).

Her representation of medicine in Victorian society is dead-on, and the book is very well worth reading for that reason alone–sort of like “the whole of the system through a keyhole”–an intimate kind of study.

The book actually begins to fall apart more in the coverage of the contemporary–to the date of publication–manifestations of anorexia nervosa. She got the body image issues down pat, but the ideas of control and rebellion, of manipulation and anger just sort of fall away. I suppose 19th-c girls were supposed to feel these things, but not the emancipated woman of the 1980s. Whatever her reason, dropping this thread makes the book become an anemic look-what-the-media-is-doing-to-our-girls stereotype at the end, which does the rest of her excellent scholarship a great disservice.

People interested in history will enjoy reading this book for a glimpse into the medical and social world of the Victorians from a very different angle than that which is normally represented in books. Historical writers might find inspiration for a character among the historical case-studies and descriptions of physicians and patients. The book is also, importantly, well-written, so the read will be easy a pleasant, no matter what your reason for reading it. And most critically, I think, it isn’t “dumbed down”–unlike SO many modern authors, Brunberg is not afraid to give a complicated answer to a complicated question.

One great way to save both time and money is by restricting the days that you shop. Set aside one day per week for grocery shopping, and once a month do all other errands.

On average, people went shopping 14 times per month in 2006, in 2008 1.9 times per week or 8.2 trips per month for grocery shopping alone.

You can reduce this to 4-6 shopping trips per month with little pain, gaining many hours of spare time back–and save yourself from impulse expenditures at the same time. All it takes is a little self-disciplined list-making and planning. Every so often, you’ll mess up and have to make an extra trip, but as you adjust, you’ll become more and more used to your system and will make fewer mistakes.

The process is simple:

-Keep a separate list for each store.
-Add items to your list as you realize that you are running low, before the moment of emergency.
-Take one large trip once a month to any of the non-grocery store places for which you have a list that is long enough or critical enough.

List-making keeps you from forgetting things and keeps you from impulse buys, as well–of which Ic an be as guilty as the next person! You go in knowing what you need, you get it, and then you go–without the leniency of window shopping, you get much better results.

Some stores send out coupons regularly, so try to time those shopping trips so that you can use the coupons. For example, Bed Bath & Beyond is usually outrageously overpriced, but they have items that can’t be found elsewhere for cheaper if you figure in shipping. I get 20% Off On One Item of $10 Off Any Purchase of $30 Or More fairly regularly. When I wanted two rather expensive spice racks, I waited until I had a coupon good for that weekend to buy them. I also get Home Depot coupons with predictable regularity. I get $5 Any Purchase of $50 Or More once every couple of months and 10% Off Any Purchase Up To $2,000 about three to four times a year. Knowing this, I put off going to Home Depot whenever I can until I have $50 of items on my list and a $5 coupon.

Now that we’re REALLY homeschooling, the Bear has been talking a lot about both his future and my past. He declares that he’s going to marry a woman who will homeschool his kids like I homeschool him and that he’s going to work as a computer scientist for Lockheed. (He’s also upset that he doesn’t know who he’s going to marry yet and is worried about finding the right girl. Seriously. My five-year-old. *rolls eyes*)

He’s been asking me, too, about whether or not my own mother taught me this or that thing that I am teaching him. I’ve explained that I went to public schools, but he still can’t quite accept that my mother wasn’t totally involved in every aspect of my education–or that she didn’t, at least, know everything I was taught before I learned it. I’ve told him that my mother doesn’t know Spanish or how to play the violin, and this has caused no small amount of consternation on his part.

Today, he was drawing my attention to the fact that he was holding his eating utensils like an adult. “Did your mommy teach you to hold your knife and fork like you taught me?” he asked. Before I could reply he added, in a tone tinged with gentle pity, “Or maybe she didn’t know how.”

I laughed so hard I nearly peed.

Hair washing is something that almost every historical writer, romance or not, gets wrong. How many times have you read a story in which a heroine sinks gratefully into a sudsy tub of water and scrubs her hair–or, even worse, piles it up on her head to wash it? Or have you watched the BBC’s Manor House and other “historical reenactment” series, in which modern people invariably destroy their hair by washing using historical recipes?

Historical women kept their hair clean, but that doesn’t mean their hair was often directly washed. Those who had incredibly difficult to manage hair might employ a hairdresser to help them wash, cut, and singe (yes, singe!) their hair as often as once a month, but for most women, hair-washing was, at most, a seasonal activity.

“Why?” you might ask. “Wasn’t their hair lank, smelly, and nasty?”

And the writers who embrace ignorance as a badge of honor will say, “Well, that just goes to show that people used to be gross and dirty, and that’s why I never bother with that historical accuracy stuff!”

And then I have to restrain myself from hitting them…

The reason that hair was rarely washed has to do with the nature of soaps versus modern shampoos. Soaps are made from a lye base and are alkaline. Hair and shampoo are acidic. Washing hair in soap makes it very dry, brittle, and tangly. Men’s hair was shirt enough and cut often enough that using soap didn’t harm it too much and the natural oils from the scalp could re-moisturize it fairly easily after even the harshest treatment, but in an age when the average woman’s hair was down to her waist, soap could literally destroy a woman’s head of hair in fairly short order.

Instead, indirect methods of hair-cleaning were used. Women washed their hair brushes daily, and the proverbial “100 strokes” were used to spread conditioning oils from roots to tips and to remove older or excess oil and dirt. This was more time-consuming than modern washing, and this is one of the reasons that “good hair” was a class marker. The fact that only women of the upper classes could afford all the various rats, rolls, and other fake additions to bulk out their real hair was another. (An average Victorian woman of the upper middle or upper class had more apparent “hair” in her hairstyle than women I know whose unbound hair falls well below their knees.) Women rarely wore their hair lose unless it was in the process of being put up or taken down–or unless they were having a picture specifically taken of it! At night, most women braided their hair for bed. Now that my hair is well below my waist, I understand why!

The first modern shampoo was introduced in the late 1920s. Shampoos clean hair quickly and also remove modern styling products, like hairspray and gel, but the frequent hair-washing that has become common leaves longer hair brittle even with the best modern formulations. (From the 1940s to the 1960s, many if not most middle-class women had their hair washed only once a week, at their hairdresser’s, where it was restyled for the next week. The professional hairdresser stepped into the void that the maid left when domestic service became rare. Washing one’s hair daily or every other day is a very recent development.) That’s where conditioners came into play. Many people have wondered how on earth women could have nice hair by modern standards before conditioners, but conditioners are made necessary by shampoos. Well-maintained hair of the 19th century didn’t need conditioners because the oils weren’t regularly stripped from it.

Additionally, the oils made hair much more manageable than most people’s is today, which made it possible for women to obtain elaborate hairstyles using combs and pins–without modern clips or sprays–to keep their hair in place. This is why hair dressers still like to work with “day-old” hair when making elaborate hairstyles.

There were hair products like oils for women to add shine and powders meant to help brush dirt out of hair, but they weren’t in very wide use at the time. Hair “tonics”–mean to be put on the hair or taken orally to make hair shinier, thicker, or stronger–were ineffective but were readily available and widely marketed.

If you have a heroine go through something particularly nasty–such as a fall into a pond or the like–then she should wash her hair, by all means. This would be done in a tub prepared for the purpose–not in the bath–and would involve dissolving soap shavings into a water and combine them with whatever other products were desired. Then a maid would wash the woman’s hair as she leaned either forward or backward to thoroughly wet and wash her hair. Rinsing would be another stage. The hair would NEVER be piled on the head. If you have greater than waist-length hair and have ever tried to wash it in a modern-sized bathtub, you understand why no one attempted to wash her hair in a hip bath or an old, short claw foot tub! It would be almost impossible.

A quick rundown of other hair facts:

Hydrogen peroxide was used to bleach hair from 1867. Before that, trying to bleach it with soda ash and sunlight was the most a girl could do. Henna was extremely popular from the 1870s through the 1890s, especially for covering gray hair, to such an extent that gray hair became almost unseen in certain circles in England in this time. Red hair was considered ugly up until the 1860s, when the public embracing of the feminine images as presented by the aesthetic movement (Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood) gained ground, culminating in a positive rage for red hair in the 1870s to 1880s. Some truly scary metallic salt compounds were used to color hair with henna formulations by the late 19th century, often with unfortunate results.

Hair curling was popular in the 19th century and could either by achieved with rag rolls or hot tongs. Loose “sausage” rolls were the result of rag rolling. Hot tongs were used for making the “frizzled” bangs of the 1970s to 1880s–and “frizzled” they certainly were. The damage caused by the poor control of heating a curler over a gas jet or candle flame was substantial, and most women suffered burnt hair at one time or another. For this reason, a number of women chose to eschew the popular style and preserve their hair from such dangers! Permanents were first in use in the 1930s.

This is the second one I’ve really tried. I don’t often read horror–and when I do, it’s usually fantasy-horror–so Pet Sematary and the like never captured my imagination. My friend Bekke sent me a King novel about a group of boys in a walking competition–The Long Walk. The premise was that the winner got some incredible prize (I forget what), but when a participant stopped walking, you’d be killed, and there could only be one winner. I read the first 50 pages and pegged instantly who would win, who would die early, and who would make it to near the end. I flipped to the back and discovered to my disgust that I’d gotten the order perfectly right, and it really felt like a waste to read any book so predictable, especially since the writing style was contrived, clumsy, and grating.

I knew it was an early book, and the end wasn’t *so* clearly telegraphed that just anyone who read it would figure it out, but I still wasn’t all the interested in trying another one. Bekke sent me Dolores Claiborne anyway, and I let it sit on my shelf for several years, not reading it and not sure when I would.

I started it not long ago, and to be honest, I wasn’t exactly enthralled at first. Eye-dialect is all well and good, but reading an entire novel in it? Erg. Well, I soon was able to ignore the phoneticisms, and I started to enjoy the story. And do you know what? I liked the book a lot. The only bits I didn’t like were nods to King’s horror roots–I thought the visions of the young girl just mucked up the story, and the husband-who-wouldn’t-die got unintentionally funny. The book was too real and too well written for these bits. Overall, though, the story was quite excellent. The voice of Dolores was very convincing, even if she was a tad too insightful and eloquent for her background, and the story was beautifully crafted. I could easily believe that it was a woman speaking–and that is so intensely unusual when a man writes a book that it’s worth noting explicitly. The writing itself was very effective and much more fluid and natural than in The Long Walk. Even having a pretty good idea from the very start what the bones of the story would be, it was a compelling read.

So I definitely recommend!

I couldn’t help but playing a game with myself after I read it about what it would need to make it lit-er-ah-toor rather than popular fiction–and I mean that in the most self-aware, snobbish sense possible, as in the genre of literary fiction, not the actual canon of great works. It was far better written than 99% of lit fic, and it had many of the trappings–regionalism, feminism, the kinds of relationships–that would make it work in such a role.

I decided that:

-The story would have to be fundamentally more grim. The last chapter or so is positively upbeat. If Dolores was to be left money, she’d have to die in a lit fic book. And overall, Dolores has a bit too much humor. Works great in the story, but it wouldn’t cut it as lit fic.

-The story would have to be more self-aware. It’s pretty darned self-aware now, but self-consciousness is always a bonus in lit fic.

-King would have had to have used some sort of silly convention in place of quotation marks to show that he really was a Very Serious Writer.

-The news clippings would have to go.

Other than that, it works as lit fic. But honestly, I think it is better as a STORY as it is. Lit fic-ing it would have destroyed some real substance in the book and would have lessened it as a story.

Anyhow, I may be reading more King books in the future. I’ve heard very mixed things about his current fantasy series, but I might go back and pick up The Firestarter because I have a weakness for books about “powers.”

(I do wish someone would explain why all his author photos look like they’re being taken from 3′ high, looking up the man’s nostrils…)

I brought the Bear and Werewolf to their first dance class. There are now three boys and seven or eight girls (and there are now four kids whose parents don’t speak Russian in the home )–it’s funny because even two levels up, the numbers even out. Anyhow, the instructor’s already earmarked a partner for him. They’ll be so cute together! Of course, the Bear is shorter than all but one of the girls.

We should probably stop being so lazy and learn Russian one of these days…. Right now, I know only a couple dozen words. Pretty sad.

The best way to get a good deal on clothes is to decide how much you’ll spend before you go into the store.

For me, I will spend up to:

$10 on casual shirt
$20 on a nicer shirt
$30 on a dress or a pair of pants

For the Bear, I try to spend:

$5 or less on casual shirts and shorts
$10 or less on pants or formal shirts

For Stinkerbell, I try to spend:

$5 or less on casual shirts and bottoms
$10 or less on play dresses
$15 or less on fancy dresses

For DH, I try to spend:

$25 or less on work shirts
$35 or less on slacks

With these limits, I know to go straight to the sale racks at the right times of the year, and I simply pass over things too far above my budget. If something is 50% off or 70% off, it’s only a “deal” for me if it ALSO fall under my maxes for clothes prices.

This doesn’t mean that I buy junk that will wear out. I’ve bought crappy clothes now and again–and regretted it!–but for the most part, I stick with department store brands and quality. But I do shop deals! My wardrobe has recently gotten beyond pathetic, and so I’ve had to replace much of it. I bought around 60 items and spent around $250 last month–all on name-brand clothes and averaging about 85% off on each item. So you do have to make decisions about not buying everything you like, but you don’t have to compromise quality or style if you don’t want to, nor do you have to spend so much time hunting bargains that you might as well spend the money, anyway!

And that way, you’re less likely to fall for this kind of thing.

The house got to the point where I had to either clean it or burn it down. I’ve been on vacation most of the past 4 week and insanely busy otherwise, so it got really disgraceful. Anyhow, after some deliberation, I decided to clean. Kids can make an astonishing amount of grime, I’d like to mention. Just in case anyone didn’t already know.

They promised me self-cleaning houses! Where are my self-cleaning houses? *g*

Seriously, once I’ve gotten rid of all the carpet in this house, we’ll get a Roomba for every level and maybe even a Scooba. I’m getting–much sooner than that–one of those Scrubbing Bubbles shower spray thingys, too. But those are pathetic replacement for a robotic housekeeper!

There’s a new trend in home-oriented magazines and articles to push certain upgrades as good for the environment and for your wallet because they save energy or water. I found an article on CNN.com that enthusiastically recommended replacing all your old appliances with Energy Star models and your old toilets with new 1.6 gallon models. The article claimed boldly that you’re doing your wallet, as well as Mother Earth, a favor.

Just for the heck of it, I decided to do the calculations to determine the payback time for replacing a toilet. I began with the guess that a family on well water was paying more for their water than a family on city water. Well, after two different calculations using numbers from two different sources, I turned out to be dead wrong. The *energy* cost of having a well is quite low–only about $60 a year at the most for most families. The cost of well water comes from the equipment–the well head, the pressure tank, the purification system, and the septic–and their maintenance, not from the energy used to get the water from the ground. (The extra wear and tear on this equipment because of the additional water it handles due to high-flush toilets wasn’t estimated, but it’s probably pretty negligible.)

Let’s add a second, fictitious family that has an average monthly municipal water bill of $150 a month, which is apparently possible in some desert locations and areas of California, for an annual rate of $1800. And to make it a bit more sane, let’s throw in a third, who has a modest $25/mo rate (say, in Beaumont, TX), for a yearly total of $300.

Next, I looked at data for what percentage of domestic water consumption goes to toilets when old models are used. A generous estimate is about 40%. So, you take $60*.4=$24. A high estimate for how much a family on a well will spend directly on pumping their water for flushing the toilet is $24.

The folks in California spend $720 a year flushing their toilets.
The folks in Beaumont spend $120 a year.

Each of these families toilets that use 5.5 gallons per flush. If they change to 1.6 gallon toilets, they will save a sum that is equal to their current expense * 1.6/5.5.

So the well water family will save $7.
The CA family will save $209.
The Beaumont family will save $35.

Now, if you renovate your bathroom, you are required to buy a new toilet rather than just replacing your old one in most areas if the old one doesn’t follow current guidelines. But if you are thinking of replacing a toilet yourself for purely economic reasons, consider these payback periods.

The cheapest toilets run about $70. Anything you spend beyond that you can’t justify by pointing at water savings (the cheap-o Crane toilets-in-a-box are perfectly capable now, unlike 10 years ago) but just because you want to spend more money on a toilet that you either like better or think will work better. My advice is to go with Toto or Caroma if you’re into performance, and buy Kohler only if you really like the style. And don’y say, “But look at all the money we’ll save…” You’ll save more by buying the Crane. What you spend beyond that is justified by wanting something prettier or with a super-high-tech-anti-marking coating or something like that. It’s a frill, which is fine as long as you admit it.

If there is one toilet in the house, it will take:

10 years for the savings to equal the cost for the well water family
4 months for the CA family
2 years for the Beaumont family

If there are two toilets, it will take:

20 years for the well water family
8 months for the CA family
4 years for the Beaumont family

If there are three toilets, it will take:

30 years for the well water family
1 year for the CA family
6 years for the Beaumont family

If there are four toilets, it will take:

40 years for the well water family
1.33 years for the CA family
8 years for the Beaumont family

Of course, not all toilets are used to the same degree. So while it would make financial sense to replace all four toilets in the CA house, it might be better to replace the two (out of four) most heavily used ones in the Beaumont house with a payback time of, say, six years and leave the other two alone.

What about me? Well, I have four toilets in my well-water house. Three of them will be replaced when I remodel the bathrooms they’re in–not just because I have to but because they are blue, yellow, and mustard-colored. The fourth is white and is used maybe ten times a year. I’m leaving it well enough alone!

What if you’re on a well but you want to make the very best environmental decision, rather than an economic one? Even then things get mess. You’re using very little additional energy to put that water through your pipes, and it’s very hard to quantify what, if any, damage you might possibly be doing by putting the water into a well maintained septic field. Additionally, you have to consider that a new toilet has some very definite energy and material environmental costs associated with it in its production and shipping. I’d bet that your best choice, environmentally speaking, would be to leave the toilets you have until they suffer damage. But quantifying that sort of thing will be highly individual according to the circumstances–and devilishly difficult, as well.

The Bear fell in love with opera after a short (too short, according to him) children’s presentation of Englebert Humperdinck’s Hansel und Gretel months ago. Ever since, he’s been badgering me to see more. Now that our New Mexico house has sold and we’re paying half as much into our mortgage (that’s INCLUDING the extra I’m putting in every month!), we’ve got the money to spend. So on Wednesday, I took him and the neighbor’s kid Werewolf to downtown Washington, DC, for “Cox and Box,” a Sullivan one-act operetta put on by the Victorian Lyric Opera Company.

It was really funny because this was a part of the Capital Fringe Festival, which is overall very artsy/liberal/edgy/FREE in a very (PAINFULLY, I daresay) self-aware sort of way. And here I am, bringing two small children into a box office which is giving out tickets for things like “7 1/2 Habits of a Highly Effective Mistress” (a one-woman show by a former callgirl!) and “The Sticking Place”, which features “bloodplay, thrill killing, and twisted sexual politics.” The folks working the counter got more than a leeetle uncomfortable before we said what show we were here to see–challenged their “open-mindedness” more than they probably thought it could be challenged. Heh. I so wanted to say “Four to see The Naked Party, please,” (with on stage nudity, of course!) but I behaved myself and let the *oh*-so-rebelliously tattoo’d and nosering’d employees (”rebellious” as only upper middle class white kids CAN be “rebellious”) give us our musical theater tickets without harassing them too much.

Okay. I’m being unfair. There were also some members of the we-wanted-to-be-hippies-but-were-born-10-to-20-years-too-late and-so-we-went-to-Wellesley-instead crowd working there, too. It’s been a long time since I’ve been around people trying so HARD to be cool.

The operetta’s staging was minimal, but the acting was brisk, the energy high, and the singing fun. The boys had a great time, but Werewolf got restless near the end, so that means “yes” to Cinderella for him (a shortened translation of Rossini’s Italian opera for kids) but “no” to the rest of the works we’re going to hit this year.

Today, I hauled the Bear along to Shakespeare in the Park–”Merry Wives of Windsor” was being put on, and it was really a great production. The Bear started to get restless near the end–but since we started with a 45-minute youth play and Merry Wives had a 2.5-hr running time, it was no wonder! I realized that this was going on just last week, and so I didn’t have time to pick up a Shakespeare for Children sort of retelling for the Bear, so he enjoyed it less than he would have if he’d better understood what was going on. He was *most* confused by the crossdressing, though–a lot of male parts were played by females, and he had a hard time keeping track of who was supposed to be a man and who a woman! Still, overall, he had a very good time–even though it wasn’t opera.

Next up is The Mikado in August, followed by Don Giovanni in September. I’m not so sure how DG will go for me, at least–it’s a tarted/moderned-up translation, and I tend to like my operas in their original language, not because I think the librettos are great art or anything but mainly because the music is meant to go with the syllables and sounds of the original language. I hope I like it, though! As far as The Bear goes, I hope it’s not TOO racy.

There are no fewer than 12 different groups within driving range that produce either opera (10 groups) or operettas/older musical theater (2 groups). Since I’m staying away from the “everyone dies” operas, we’re left with maybe a third to a fifth of all the productions that the Bear might like, so having that many to choose from is a boon! I’m trying to schedule one a month, which is enough for any five-year-old, I should think!

DH came and enjoyed himself with Cox and Box and Merry Wives, and he’s coming to Mikado, but he’s going to opt out of most of the operas. If I can get the $25 tickets to Turandot (put on by the Washington National Opera Co.), I think I’m dragging him along, too, to see if he’ll enjoy it. Puccini’s as accessible as you get, and Turandot will be GORGEOUS.

I still don’t really get why opera’s considered an upscale entertainment (versus, say, a rock concert–same price). I mean, they were mass entertainment in Italy for centuries, and the ridiculous story lines and outrageous settings and the like show it. They’re the Hollywood blockbusters of previous centuries crashing at high speed with a soap opera (there’e a reason it’s called soap OPERA!). They just happen to also be completely self-indulgent sybaritic aesthetic experiences, too. Oh, and an excuse to get terribly soppy over silly things. Instead, they have a stuffy, fat-lady reputation. :-/

I’m seriously considering a subscription to the Washington Ballet, too–kids’ version. The Bear loves dance (hmmm….I wonder why that could be?), so I think he’d love it. They’re pretty pricey, though, so I’m still deciding.