Hello, here are some words I would like to obliterate from our vocabulary, dictionaries, lexicons and consciousness.

Bureaucracy (byuu-rok-ra-see) – excessive official routine
How does bureaucracy sound? No, ma’am, I can’t schedule that appointment for you until your doctor faxes us an authorization; No, ma’am, we can’t set up online management of your corporate account until we order an ATM bank card for you (even if you don’t want or need one); Yes, ma’am, if you want to raise the limits of liability on one of your cars, you will have to do it for all three of the cars on this policy. I am so sick of talking to robots, aren’t you?

Cancer (kan-ser) – a disease in which malignant growths form
I think everyone on this planet can say that they know someone who has cancer, someone who had cancer, or someone who died from it. And far too many can say that they currently have cancer. Who invited this bastard to the party?

Depression (di-presh-on) – a state of excessive sadness or hopelessness, often with physical symptoms
Has depression reached epidemic proportions, or what? Every time I turn around, some formerly rational friend is having trouble making simple decisions, is crying about something that happened years ago, wants to get into bed and stay there, feels like life isn’t worth living or is reaching for Xanax, Prozac or Wellbutrin. Is there something in the Kool-Aid? Whatever the cause, this piece-of-crap mental state of affairs is pissing me off and needs to get the hell out of town by sundown.

Racism (ray-siz-em) – belief in the superiority of a particular race
What does racism look like? People in white robes and pointy hats (unbelievably silly); individuals with sunburns on their necks (Haven’t they heard about skin cancer?); Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas (Was that guy born blind and raised by a white family wearing pointy hats?); a dead young boy carrying candy and wearing black skin and a hoodie in a mixed neighborhood; more black men in prison today than were enslaved in 1850. Holy bloodhound! Black men make up 40.2 percent of all prison inmates even though they constitute just 13.6 percent of the U.S. population. What’s up with that? Racism is unbearably old-fashioned, committed to being dull, noisome and has zero sense of humor. This sucker’s from another planet and he’s breathing too much of our air. Let’s send him back.

Insomnia (in-som-ni-a) – habitual sleeplessness
Check it out: that’s me waking up two hours after going to bed—usually for a trip to the bathroom—and then rousing again between four and five o’clock and staying awake until 45 minutes before I have to get up at eight. Isn’t that nice? To Satan, maybe; but I am not Satan. That bleary-eyed, thick-witted person you see bumping into walls around four in the afternoon? That’s me too. And I am not wrong when I say there are multitudes that look just like me. Human beings are meant to lie down when they are tired, fall asleep, stay that way for a consecutive number of hours, and then get up feeling refreshed, lively and ready to start the day. Something is wrong with this picture and I’m blaming it on the hostile jackass who will only retreat if you throw Ambien at him. Forget warm milk and homeopathic pellets; that’s for puppy dogs. Insomnia has invaded the lives of people over 50 at an alarming speed. We need to write that out-of-control asshole’s name on a chalkboard and then erase the shit out of him.

Do I seem just the tiniest bit angry to you? Honey Badger don’t care! Besides, getting mad is often the first step to taking action. Let’s go after that cancer bastard and give him a grand escort out of town. Care to join me in forming a posse?

What’s got you heaving?

Last week, my husband and I got the sad news that our friend, artist Burton Chenet, was shot to death in his home by an intruder. His wife, Christine, sustained a serious injury when the gunman shattered her elbow with another shot before fleeing. The tragic incident took place in Turgeau, a residential area in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Although ours was not a very close relationship, I liked Burton a lot, kept in touch with him by email, usually called and hung out with him when in Haiti, and on the day we heard about his demise, it so happened that two of his lyrical and whimsical paintings graced the walls of our contemporary ethnic and Haitian art gallery’s ever-rotating display of works.

As usual, when something like this happens, human beings want to know: Why? Why? Why? — a man in his prime with two young children, a prolific and successful artist whose paintings presented the lighter side of Haiti while nonetheless exploring its complex and mysterious Vodou ethos. Why? Once the undecipherable nature of the enigma settles in, the next impulse is to re-evaluate life. Death does that.

It makes you look at your own life within that new, more immediate and harsher reality. That could be me. But for the grace of our own individual destinies, anyone of us can come home to find a burglar aiming at our hearts with a gun. So, maybe we think about our life, what we’ve done with it, how we’re living it, and do we nourish it, cherish it, feel gratitude for it?

A close and aging relative of mine has taken to constantly wishing out loud for release from what she perceives as a terribly difficult life. A friend of mine, under the crushing weight of lost love occasionally wonders aloud, What’s the point? And another friend, blinded by the opaque and troublesome veil of antidepressants, recently took his own life to escape an obviously unbearable existence. I bet Burton would have a thing or two to say to these folks. I bet Burton would say, challenges be damned, life is the point.

Our friend, Carl, currently lies stock-still in a hospital bed, tethered to a morphine drip and nothing else, awaiting death in preference to life in an Alzheimer’s haze. And I don’t disagree with his position. I honor it, and that of any person who chooses to give up their life when they can no longer live it. But when one tragedy followed another — that Trayvon Martin’s, and then, Burton Chenet’s lives were snatched away without their say-so — the answer to that enigmatic Why? came into relief for me: Untimely death happens so that the humans left behind might take another, fresher look at their lives, experience renewed appreciation for the gift they can still claim, and become a bit more thankful, a bit more humble.

All featured paintings by Burton Chenet. In descending order: Blue Birds, Croix Baron, Baron, Tree of Life. All photographs by Pascal Giacomini

“What? You and three other people?”

That’s what a friend of mine said when I told him I went to see John Carter. And in fact, there were just about three people in the audience. And that’s a shame. What a waste. All that crazy money — $300 million to make and promote — all those creative people who worked their tails off, and the movie is derided as a “mega flop” by just about everyone after only two weekends in the theaters. And why is it a flop? Mostly because, from the start all anyone ever talked about were the production delays, budget overruns, problems on the set and all other kinds of backroom, Hollywood hand-wringing issues that the movie-going public could care less about. Negativity breeds negativity.

Even though Disney’s billboard had done an excellent job of wetting my curiosity about the film, when my husband said he wanted to see John Carter, my first reaction was why? I hadn’t read any of the details, but somehow I just knew it was baaaad. It was in the air, something you pick up because it’s hard to miss. You think you know something when you don’t really know anything at all. My husband contended that the film had gotten mixed reviews, not bad reviews, and that made me reconsider. I never forgot how I had gone to see Sister Act based on a good review, and vowed to never again pay attention to these obviously deaf, dumb and blind critics who stay up nights thinking of scintillating titles for their very important opinions (“A Hilariously Divine Comedy!”). I’m still boiling mad at what a waste of time that movie was, and that dud opened back in 1992. Who says I hold grudges? And as if its existence wasn’t insult enough, Sister Act 2 came out shortly thereafter! I almost fainted from shock when I heard.

The other thing that made me decide to accompany my husband was an article I read that lumped John Carter with a bunch of other recent flops, including Hugo. I loved Hugo. “That’s it!” I said. “Let’s go.” And I’m glad I did. I don’t love Disney, I don’t care about Disney, I don’t even know anyone who works at Disney, and I’m telling you, the movie was fun. Great creatures, good storyline, a hero you can root for, a bad guy you can hate, a princess who can kick ass. What else do you want? It’s not a work of genius or anything, and it doesn’t fall into the “underappreciated gem” category, but it doesn’t deserve the thrashing it’s gotten in the press and elsewhere. As a matter of fact, you could do worse things than to go lose yourself in this fantasy for a couple of hours.

You hear all the time about special interest group loyalists, who despise a film without ever having seen it. In this case, there are a legitimate number of film goers who dislike the film, but that’s par for the course. The bigger problem is this special interest group — a bunch of Hollywood insiders, whose only concern is the bottom line. And who cares about them? Maybe I just like bucking the system, or maybe I just don’t like being told what to do. In Hollywood, the unfortunate El Capitan Theatre is duty bound to screen the film until April 19. Why don’t you go check it out and make up your own mind?

A friend of mine decided to create a line of T-shirts that lament this country’s woeful mangling of the English language. I think it’s a great idea. As a writer, I’m into words, and punctuation too. Ah, the vagaries of the misplaced, missing or underused comma; the overused exclamation and question marks — What the ????? And new permutations of words just because they look hip spelled that way! I begged him to call attention to the plight of the little-understood apostrophe — how, how, how to differentiate the possessive from the contraction? Even the New York Times can’t get it straight! Here is Exhibit A from a recent article in the paper:

“My salary was revealed to embarrass me, and there’s no one on the nonartistic side who’s salary is being revealed.”

When I was a child, finding a mistake in the New York Times was considered sport.

I am especially enthusiastic about these T-shirts because I’ve just gone through the drama of reviewing a steaming pile of resumes in response to my Office Assistant ad. I saved a few of the sexiest entries in The Most Awful English Strangulation category, with “highlights” reproduced here exactly as submitted, punctuation included.

From the Cover Letter Wellspring

Entry #1

I would like to apply for the position of a secretary/ receptionist bilingual you are offering. I have experience in handling a secretary’s jobs for the last year (see my resume for the detail) and am now interested in joining your team taking responsibility for a further more career. My currents job also requires having a constant communication with customers and clients effectively using e-mails, phone calls, and meetings. I would appreciate the opportunity to discuss any further questions regarding my experiences that will be useful for you as the further consideration. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Entry #2

hi, my name is Anthony I’m currently 23yrs old I’m very perfect for this position because I have experience I’m a fast learner, I make things happen my motivation is off the charts I love to be very busy in my job and be on top of my task’s. I speak and read both English and Spanish would love to work with you and your company I will bring my A game and all my work ethics and knowledge into this , hope to hear from you soon thank you

Entry #3

My objective is to use my experience from other jobs and succeed as well as present the best service to be positioned a stable job which I will bring my great personality and will enjoy as well.

Honestly, could Sarah Palin do any better?

Believe it or not, I don’t think bad grammar or poor spelling reflects stupidity. One of my best friends couldn’t spell her way out of an open cage but she is a brilliant professional in her chosen career, and her impressive stream of spectacular ideas has me constantly encouraging her to run for mayor. Some of the world’s greatest authors couldn’t spell, and would still be banging their heads against that cabinet full of unpublished manuscripts if not for their life-saving editor. As a matter of fact, I can guarantee you that, should the editor of my last three books see this post, he would send it back to me covered in annoying red corrections. (I love and hate him for that.) And, just to drive my point home, the person I hired was guilty of several crimes against apostrophes on his resume. I can’t believe I did that, but everything else about him was so spot-on, I gave him the benefit of the doubt — and the job.

Still, the hacking and sacking of the English language remains one of my pet peeves. Texting and shortcutting our way through communication only exacerbates the problem, but I fear it may become the new normal, if it hasn’t already. So, in the interest of being au courant I’ve decided to join ‘em.

See, I’m thinkin that we lose mosta the war’s we fight anyways: Vietnam, and opposition 2 da one in Iraq; the war against the merging of politiks with entertainment, advertising with editorial, church with state; the battle against planned crassness, and the blatant use of sex to sell everything, from television shows and movies to opinion’s and undergarment’s. Check out this Xcellent Xample (my photo will never convey how giant and in-your-face is this billboard on Sunset Boulevard):

So, I might invest in that T-shirt line. Its bound 2 go down in the anals of history as testamint 2 a time when people still cared about da way we rote.

Photograph by Hans Silvester from the book, Natural Fashion: Tribal Decoration from Africa

Originally posted on www.fiftyisthenew.com.

My new novel, Saturday Comes—A Novel of Love and Vodou, is out, and I am the reigning queen of book autography. I am sitting behind a stack of books at a recent author event, happily writing friendly messages to Franceska and Tim, Samantha and other kind human beings, when a man named Chaz comes over, leans down very close to my face and says, “Can you tell me about your natural recipes?” It takes me a moment to figure it out. “Oh, did you read that blog I wrote on Huffington Post?” I ask him. He nods yes and waits. He wants natural, homemade beauty recipes for his face, and he wants them now.

Of all the blogs I’ve written over the last five years, this is the one that’s gotten the most attention, comments, emails and phone calls. Step aside, nuclear Iran; Obama and Mitt; scary economy and gas prices; new assault on abortion rights. People just want to look good. In fact, after writing that piece, manufacturers of skincare products contacted me, hoping I would write about their lines, but I wasn’t interested. My blog advocated a natural skincare regimen with items from our refrigerators and kitchen cabinets, as opposed to spending outrageous sums on miracle products that never work miracles. However, a company called Dairyface convinced me that some people would never have the time or the inclination to do it themselves. Oh, the perks of writing for free: I agreed to let her send me some samples.

Dairyface is all about the benefits of milk for the skin, and what they sell is yogurt-based products for facial masks that include beneficial fruits, vegetables, herbs and oils. I was curious but skeptical. I was sure that I could just buy some yogurt, slap it on my face and get the same results. But I have to admit that their product kicked ass. My face looked great, and when I tried to replicate the treatment with organic yogurt and specific essential oils known to address middle-age skin issues, I didn’t get quite the same hit. However, I’m sure all I need is a little more time to get it right. I think two treatments for $19.95 is costly; but that’s just me. In the meantime, let me share a few of the dirt-cheap recipes I either found or created that totally make me happy.

Facial Cleansers
1 tomato
2 tbsp milk (regular, coconut)
1 tbsp fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 tbsp fresh squeezed orange juice
Combine all ingredients in a blender. Presto! Keep in refrigerator for approximately eight days.

1-2 tbsp plain, organic yogurt (skip the fat-free stuff)
Combine with 1 ½ tsp fresh squeezed lemon juice, OR 1 tbsp baking soda or sugar for a scrub
Squeeze a ¼ lemon into your palm, add some salt, mix together and rub gently over your face. Tons of minerals!

Moisturizers
The recipe for my peaches and cream moisturizer (in the Huffpost blog referenced above) is phenomenal; but I would add this: when peaches are not in season, use frozen peach slices (available at Whole Foods) over peach juice from a can, bottle or box. It just doesn’t work the same.

Organic coconut oil – I was away over the holidays and could not find peaches or the right cream, so ended up using coconut oil as a moisturizer instead. Fantastic. It is a known wrinkle fighter and smells great. (A mayonnaise-size jar is $6.99 at Whole Foods.) If you prick a Vitamin E capsule and squeeze a couple of drops into your palm, add the oil and mix, you will get major lifting and firming action. I use this combo at night and the peaches and cream in the morning.

Two hot tips for frizz-free curly hair
Use carbonated water as a final rinse (something to do with the low PH level). That can get expensive, but one of my best pals gave me a Sodastream for making soda water at home. Super easy and cost effective, long term, if you buy a lot of sparkling water.

Forget shampooing. Wash your hair with a good, natural conditioner instead. I use Australian Organics conditioners. You won’t believe how shiny, soft and fabulous your hair will look. You can find it at Walgreens.

It’s all too much fun, and I could go on and on, but giving away free recipes doesn’t help me sell books (although Chaz did buy one at the signing)! But, giving away books has been known to generate good word-of-mouth buzz. Oh, oh, lookoutworld! I’m getting an idea…

The first 20 people who promise to review my new novel on Amazon.com can have it for free! Including shipping! Even bad reviews are welcome. Just go to my website here and enter Affiliate Code: “50new” at checkout. Who said nothing in life is free?

Saturday Comes—A Novel of Love and Vodou

If you do get one, PLEASE! Be a pal and go to Amazon.com and Goodreads and leave a review. I would be very appreciative! (Promotion starts February 3, 2012).

Non-Haitians and some Haitians hear the word Vodou — or voodoo, in Hollywood parlance — and shiver with fear and worry and pity and condescension. Ignorance can really make a person feel bad. So, let me do a quick rundown on Vodou, this way everyone can hurry up and get back to feeling good.

Like Judaism, Vodou is a religion and a way of life. As with Catholicism Vodouisants (or practitioners) believe in an all-powerful force called God; but standing in for the Catholic saints are the lwas, God’s helpers on the physical plane. In the same way that Hinduism is predicated on a number of gods and goddesses, all with specific personalities and powers, the lwas of Vodou are also imbued with wonderful and terrible powers to put order or mayhem in human beings’ affairs, depending on their behavior. However, there are two very important distinctions that set Vodou apart from other religions:

1. Whereas adherents of most religions seek communion or a merging with God either before or after they leave their bodies, Vodouisants seek to have their bodies possessed by the gods, thereby becoming gods themselves, if only for awhile. Very powerful, confidence-building stuff, wouldn’t you say?

2. The gods of Vodou come from Africa. Need I say more? Okay, what I mean is that these spirits are made of raw, intense, salty stuff. Their essence is hardcore; they are theatrical and lively, they respond to drums, and in exchange for their services, they expect to be served. In fact, there’s a saying in Haiti about the lwas: you don’t have to believe in them, as long as you serve them!

So, about the Spirit of Death. He has a name — Baron Samedi (Samedi means Saturday in French) — and he somehow manages to take the somber business of death and turn it into something vital. See, he’s not just the Spirit of Death; he’s also the Spirit of Sex because part of his job is to oversee the cycle of regeneration: helping the departed into afterlife while assisting those spirits entering new bodies on the earth plane. And while the Baron can be a seriously foreboding character, he also has a crazy sense of humor. Practitioners love the hell out of him. Is it any wonder that two years after the formidable earthquake, which claimed over 200,000 lives (there is still dispute about the actual number), Haitian people are looking to the promise of a better tomorrow as laid out by their new president, a beloved musician whose former onstage antics ran toward the eccentric habits of the god who owns Saturday night? I was in Haiti over the Christmas holidays, and I’m here to report that there is hope in the air.

For the record, I don’t practice Vodou or any other religion, but there’s something about that Baron that appeals to me, so much so that he stars in my new novel, Saturday Comes, A Novel of Love and Vodou, which he co-narrates. And it isn’t just me and all those Vodouisants, either. The UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History is getting ready to wow Los Angeles with a Baron-centric exhibition in September, 2012 titled In Extremis: Death and Life in 21st Century Haitian Art.

Back in 1995, The Fowler Museum hosted the groundbreaking traveling exhibition, The Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou, which brilliantly elevated the thinking and dialogue around this misunderstood religion (no, believers don’t stick pins in dolls). In Extremis will “explore the interface between the catastrophes of the past decade in Haiti, and the corresponding emergence of dramatically new forms of art in sculpture, fabrics, paintings and altar installations.” Keep a lookout for it. Who knows? Maybe the Baron will drop in to entertain us while we live. And since this is Los Angeles we’re talking about, I won’t be surprised if he gets offered his own TV series. He’s that good.

*This blog was originally published on Huffington Post.

That’s what a guy in his late 30s said to me at a gas station the other day. I’m 55, and my mostly brown hair was pulled back in a pony tail, exhibiting the very white streak that lives around the crown of my head, and which I stopped dyeing three years ago.

“Thank you!” I said.

It was a weird compliment but it cracked me up. No doubt about it, gray hair makes you look older, but so what? I am older. However, I admit to recently heeding my own advice, offered up to a woman who, upon seeing my boldly displayed gray, said she was having “a life-changing moment” in regard to growing hers out.

What I told her was this: Do yourself a favor as you go through the process. Don’t be a militant; give yourself a break. That may mean going for highlights to soften the harsh reality of gray roots pushing through a forest of uniform dark hair; or adopting one hairstyle for several months if it helps you remember that the evil queen in Snow White did not keep asking the mirror, “Who’s the ugliest of them all?”

So, you’re probably wondering what I did to my hair.

Well, even though I long ago made peace with my gray, I still hated how (warning: cliché alert) “dull and mousy” the rest of my hair looked with that 20 percent sprinkling of gray throughout. So, after trying a rinse made of turmeric, lemon and water with no luck, and two weeks of debating with myself and friends and husband about it, I decided to try this all-natural, spray-on, permanent coloring system called Gray Riddance (cute name, no?), which promised to subtly transform ONLY the gray and leave the rest of my hair alone.

I dutifully parted and pinned the gray at the crown of my head away from the rest of my hair (because I like my white streak), and sprayed away. It worked! The gray turned into a soft golden color, which looks a lot better than that just-dusted-with-cocaine effect.

Except for one thing: while I thought I had protected the hair around my crown, some of the product managed to make its way over to the forbidden territory. So, my once striking, super white streak is now a weird yellow. Nice! People tell me it’s all in my head, (exactly!), and that I’m the only one who sees it. Exactly! Which brings me to the point I wanted to make.

It doesn’t matter what anyone else sees when they look at you, it’s what you see and how you feel about it that counts. A woman I know once said she didn’t give a shit about how big her ass was because she didn’t have to look at it. I love her.

The thing is, whether you’re cutting a green grape in half and rubbing it on your face to tighten your skin and pores (which works, by the way) or mashing up half a banana and a slice of papaya to make a skin-firming mask (which also works beautifully), or injecting yourself with Botox, it doesn’t matter if people think you’re delusional about looking younger or better. Who cares what they think? If you see a difference, and think you look younger, you probably feel younger, have a bounce in your step and have an urge to wear pigtails. Go for it.

If you read my last post on going all homemade and natural in the beauty department, you won’t be surprised if my next blog is on how you can naturally bleach yellow hair away forever. In the meantime, I’m going to forget that when the guy at the gas station approached me, the hair around my face was bright white; I’m concentrating instead on the part where he said, “You look YOUNG!”

As a matter of fact, I must be feeling young because I corralled a couple of people and headed down to the Occupy Los Angeles march a couple of weeks ago. It was great. There were thousands of people walking through the financial district, feeling purposeful (screw the bankers!) and carrying witty signs like: “Seriously, stop.” And, “Take the filthy out of rich.” And, “You know it’s serious when a realtor is marching.”

It felt so right, standing behind all those brave young people who saw runaway greed endangering their futures, and got off their butts to do something about it. Because in this scenario, no matter what color our hair is, we’re all young.

The issue has been on my mind lately because a good friend of mine has written a very powerful screenplay, now in preproduction, called The Prop is The Girl, and it hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks. It is a full feature indie about rape culture and sexual abuse.  Writer/director Stephen Coombs leads a very believable cast (Zarah Mahler – “Manson Girls”; Bonita Friedericy – the TV Series “Chuck”; Dustin Ingram – “Paranormal Activity 3″; and Bryan Barter – “The Social Network”). Seen through the eyes of a twenty-three-year-old girl, this gritty and unapologetic depiction of America’s modern party culture sheds light on the shocking reality of sexual abuse and drugs. Based on a true story, the film seeks to empower the countless victims of sexual abuse.

In addition to the film, the creators of the project have built an online forum at www.thepropisthegirl.com giving victims of sexual abuse a place to anonymously share their stories and be encouraged by others. They were stunned by the number of visits to the site, and not surprisingly, they have been inundated with stories. I applaud my friend Stephen Coombs and his team for providing this forum. I wish the project well!

“What are you going to do with that tomato?” my husband says to me the other day, suspicion written all over his face.

“It’s going in the blender, do you mind?” I say.

“But it’s a delicious, super sweet tomato that came from the farmer’s market!” he says with a pleading look on his face.

“Should I go to the supermarket and get my own tomato?” I ask, forgetting to mask my sarcasm.

“No! Go ahead and use it if you want to. It’s okay.”

“Oh, thanks so much, Mr. Tomato Nazi,” I say.

He laughs. I laugh. A few days later it starts all over again.

“Where are you going with those eggs?”

Most of the time, my husband thinks what I’m doing is really cool. It’s just that he has to occasionally re-adjust to the idea that the tomato is going on my face instead of in my mouth. (That’s good food!) The thing is that I’ve become a convert to using items out of my refrigerator and kitchen cabinets to make my facial cleanser, moisturizer, skin-tightening mask, blusher and whatever else I can think of as I lie awake at night, eyes wide open like an owl’s, trying to figure out what else I can do on my own instead of spending insane amounts of money on skincare products. Did I mention that I’m now cooking up my own pet food too? Ah, the satisfaction.

It’s not that I’m cheap, although my husband sometimes accuses me of this, even as he thanks the stars that I’m not the type to drop big cash on items of clothing. (I’d rather spend it on travel or art, when I can, or on organizing fundraisers where I always seem to spend more than I collect.) It’s just that I’m having so much fun making moisturizer, not to mention how effective nature is! Ever heard of a “peaches and cream” complexion? Here’s all you need:

1 ripe peach, heavy cream

Peel the peach, remove the pit. Using a fork, mash the peach to a pulp then, using a spoon, push it through a strainer to expel the juice. However much juice you end up with, add equal parts heavy cream and beat with a fork for a couple of minutes. Voila! Your new, fabulous moisturizer is ready. Your face will glow. People will tell you how great you look without knowing why. Keep it in the refrigerator. It will stay fresh for a week to 10 days. Now, all you have to do is resist eating the thing. Yum, yum, yum.

Extra tip: If you have a juicer, get yourself a beet, juice it and add approximately ½ to ¾ teaspoon of the juice to your moisturizer. It will turn bright pink. When you put it on your face, you will look like you sat in the sun and got a golden tan. If you don’t have a juicer, you can order 100% organic beetroot powder from a company called MountainRoseHerbs.com. It’s inexpensive and all you have to do is add water to get your beet juice — which can also be used as a lip stain! Okay, Miss Rosy Glow (and you too, Mister), now go get yourself a tomato…

Alert: before you go thinking I’m soooo clever, I have to disclose the awful truth: I found the peaches and cream recipe online. All you have to do is Google “homemade natural moisturizer” or any variation on that theme, and all kinds of sites come up, like this one, where I found many of the recipes I use. Adding the beet juice to the moisturizer for that just-blushed look was my idea, but that’s just because I was having too much fun experimenting. So, sue me for having egg whites on my face. Using them to close the door on pores is the best revenge.

Let me tell you something: there is no miracle anti-aging product that will make you young again. But I can say right here and now with no conceit: I’m in my mid-fifties and I swear I look better than a lot of celebrities my age with their super smooth foreheads and no smile lines (hello, Stepford Wife, robot, scary lady). And I have wrinkles! I’m healthy, fit and I look like a real woman. I look normal! And although some of my friends hate it that I stopped dying my gray hair, I receive compliments all the time on how I look, and especially on my skin, lately.

Man, am I itching to tell you about what you can do with coconut oil… Next blog! Right now I have to get online to use some of that money I’m saving to buy my Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Los Angeles yard sign. Members say that what they want most is for people to show support for the movement everywhere, including their front lawns. If you want to order yours, click here. Go 99 percenters! You’re looking good. Need a natural sunscreen?