Blog Posts by The_Stir

Feather Hair ExtensionsI don't want to step on any toes here (I'm picturing an army of feather-wearing women mobilizing against me right this minute), but someone's gotta say it, and it might as well be me:

Will this feather extension thing JUST DIE ALREADY?!

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I'll admit that I have never been a fan of the feather extension, but I didn't really think it would catch on quite like it has.

I mean, in my mind, feather extensions were a whole lot like the Silly Bandz craze: cool when the first few adult trendsetters wore them for a milisecond, but as far as mainstream America goes, best left to kids and awkward middle schoolers.

The sad fact of the matter, though, is that I'm still seeing them everywhere, on women of all ages. And I'm sorry, but when I see an otherwise snappy grandma out at Sunday lunch with a hot pink feather extension clipped into her shampoo-and-set, it makes me feel a little bit cranky.

Basie, the dog who was euthanized As a dog owner, I always have the fear way in the back of my mind that one day my dog is going to run away. It's an irrational fear, I know, as I live in a yardless city, but every once in a while, my husband gets ballsy and takes our pup off his leash when we're a few buildings away from ours. And it makes me want to kill him. I can think of few things worse than little Onion (that's his name) running off into the night.

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Except having him run off into the night and someone finding him and euthanizing him without my permission. Yes, this just happened to someone.

Basie, the 17-year-old dog of Allen and Alison Holmes, was out playing in the backyard a few weeks ago. Allen had taken off Basie's collar since it was bothering her, and checked on her every 10 minutes to make sure she was alright. On one of his "checkings," though, Basie was gone. The Holmes searched the neighborhood high and low and plastered fliers

Costly perscriptionsCertain scenes from Disney flicks you see as a kid can end up haunting you forever. But as scared as I was by Ursula when I saw The Little Mermaid at 6 years old, I saw one of the most terrifying scenes only a couple of years ago, as an adult ... in WALL-E. Pixar's illustration of humanity's future -- basically, we become obese slobs who float around all day sipping Big Gulps and communicating via screens -- terrified me, because sometimes, I feel like there's lots o' proof that we're headed in that direction.

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Researchers tend to be on the same page as Pixar. Just in time for World Diabetes Day, they're reporting that less than 20 years from now, 552 million people could have diabetes. Already, 366 million people suffer from either type 1 or type 2 diabetes, but because more people are aging and gorging themselves on high-cal foods and sitting around like couch potatoes, 10 percent of people

RingHow much does your husband love you? Does he love you enough to, say, dive into a 10-foot-high pile of garbage in order to make you happy?

Let's hope -- if only for our husbands' sake - that we never really need an answer that question. But one wife in Margate, Florida, recently got her response. And it was the right one.

Try this on for a nightmare scenario: Brian McGuinn accidentally tossed his wife's diamond engagement ring (one and a half carats, worth $10,000) in the trash. (He meant to throw away a disposable razor. Oops!) It gets worse: By the time he discovered his mistake, the trash had already been collected from the couple's neighborhood.

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His heartbroken (yet quick-thinking) wife, Anna, who is pregnant with the couple's first child, called the waste management company that served their neighborhood, and the company agreed to let Brian dive into more than eight tons of garbage to

BrasUntil a week ago, if you asked me how much I'd spend on a bra, I'd say around $30. Period.

I've always chosen my everyday bras based on what's on sale, and they've all worked out well enough.

A bra is a bra is a bra. Right? Well now, I'm not so sure.

I was sent a bra to try out this past week (from a COMPANY- get your mind out of the gutter!). It was a bra I've heard raves about over the years and I'd always wanted to try it, but there was only one problem.

It cost $62.

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When I put it on, all my theories about bras went right out the window.

The bra was the Spanx Bra-llelujah, which has an elastic-free design and promises to banish back fat (not that I, uh, have ANY back fat).

SPanxThis is the bra.

As I said, friends have raved about it, so I was eager to give it a test drive. I put it on and ...

Well, there's no overestimating how wonderful it felt. It is hands

gap kids girlsI bet you didn't know this, but I am totes The New York Times' style muse. Yes, 'tis true. Just this fall I snagged an adorable shaggy faux fur vest from the girls' department at Target. And my favorite chambray button-up? Gap Kids, this time from the boys' department. And now here's the Times, blogging about what a fab idea it is to raid kids' clothing stores. Hello! I invented that trick!

What, you're not teeny-tiny? This little requirement has another blogger peeved. Do we really need to make women who aren't tiny enough to fit into Crew Cuts feel inadequate? But here's the thing -- from someone who dips into kids' clothes all the time -- those pieces aren't really all that small. And I'm not going there because I'm wee -- I'm there because those lines are cheaper than their adult counterparts.

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First of all, there is a pretty decent overlap between adult women's sizes and kids'

weight lossLadies, have you ever asked your partner whether you look fat in an outfit, only to give him the silent treatment for the next 24 hours when he can't come up with the "right" answer? This is why America has an obesity problem. Somehow it's become more acceptable to lie to our loved ones to make them feel good than it is to love them enough to spill the truth.

We'd probably be better off if we acted more like Jay Wornick and wife Angela. The upstate New York couple showed up on Good Morning America this week to explain the bet that forced Jay to drop nearly 200 pounds in less than a year.

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Married for seven years to the father of her kids, Angela is working toward a degree in nursing and said something had to change for her 366-pound husband. Her answer was a challenge to see who could drop the most weight. He won.

And then Jay sat on TV and told the world:

Date nightI gravitate to smart-alecky, big-boned men. My resume is full of 'em. There's just something that inherently attracts me to that adorable I-was-a-football-player-back-in-my-heyday look. Even my old celebrity crushes tell the story: I was in love with rapper Jadakiss once upon a time and I single-handedly headed up fellow rapper Cam'ron's unofficial fan club until he got slim (and more obnoxious). I didn't intentionally align myself with the prototypical thick, dark dude with attitude. That's just my type, I guess.

There's no fighting the law of natural attraction. We like what we like. But sometimes we get so settled into being drawn to one type of person - the backpacker intellectual, the edgy thug, the quintessential pretty boy, the upwardly mobile business man - that we close ourselves off to other possibilities. And the way the dating pool is now, we need as many possibilities as we can get.

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