What I'd Do For Beauty

What I’d do for beauty.

RHYS BOWEN: One sees the darndest things on Facebook. This week I saw a video of a woman getting a snail facial. That’s right—she was letting snails slither all over her face, lots of them, over her eyelids, lips…. Yuck.

Watch the video: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/01/snail-facial-skincare-treatment_n_5064790.html

Proponents claim that it's like micro-needling and that their slime contains anti-oxidents, anti-bacterial properties etc etc. The treatment is being offered in UK for fifty pounds a go. (quicker and easier to go out into the garden, methinks)

And I found myself thinking that there was no way I’d let snails slither over me. I’d rather stay unbeautiful. Which got me to thinking about what I would do for beauty. I’ve had enough facials. Usually I find them a waste of time. I lie there, while they put cucumbers over my eyes, and smother other sorts of gook onto my cheeks and I find myself thinking “I should be writing. I could be doing the laundry.”

I’ve tried microdermabrasion, and various other silly things like light therapy and radio waves and electric current. They do make the skin a little smoother and nicer, I agree. Not that I’ve ever looked at myself in the mirror and said, “Wow. Who is that gorgeous woman?”

But I’ve stopped short of going under the knife. I saw a face lift on TV once and they pulled back the skin, just like peeling an orange, and then they stretched it over the face and stapled it at the hairline, and I thought “My God, that looks scary.” Even though I have friends who keep urging me to get a little tuck, stretch and smooth here and there so far I’ve chickened out. Now I fear it is too late!

So it’s confession time: who has undergone some sort of facial or therapy that was fabulous? Inquiring minds want to know! And who would undergo a snail facial? Or who would like to share a disaster?

ON WHAT LIES BENEATH

"Originality consists in returning to the origin."

Antonio Gaudi

HANK: The front of our house fell off.Well, not totally off. But pretty much.Our house, a three story not-quite Victorian was built in 1894. And when I moved in, in 1995 (which is kind of cool, coming in a hundred years later...and I'm still hoping there are many ghosts, but there seem to be mostly moths) it was white siding, that (kind of) looked like wood.

Well, last week there was a huge hailstorm here. Yes, hail, and I was home to see it. I took photos, it was literally white-out conditions. Here's the view from the front porch, through the roses. Then the hail on the porch, taken though a second floor window.
Here's a close up of the hail on the porch, with a little maple thing so you can see the size.

The next day, the front of our house was battered. The siding was pooching out, like it had a little belly. And the next day, the belly was bigger, and then bigger. Kevin our contractor guy came over, and shook his head. The siding is coming off, he said. No way to stop it.

Oh, man.

So. They started taking off the siding. And underneath? Are beautiful grey wood shingles. Beautiful, weathered, New England-y grey shingles. Fantastic.

See? Under the whiteTyvek, and just below, are shingles. The rest is gray clapboard.

It's hard to tell. But this house used to be all white siding. Now it's gray.

However. Not all of the shingles are in good shape. A lot of them are. A lot of them aren't. Around the windows is raw wood.How much would it cost, I asked, to just rip down all the siding and fix the shingles?

Jungle redders, you DO NOT even want to know.

So. Do we put up all new siding? Put back up the old siding? (Which would look terrible and patchy.) Have the shingles just in the front?

Now right about here, this blog could turn the corner into editing. How it's all about finding what lies beneath our over-written first drafts, and revealing the beautiful origins?

Or it could be about the money pit. You guys choose.

JAN: I'll go the editing route. Right now, I'm working on a screenplay and I've decided to just let myself get the scenes out. Every other one is too long, or too full of cliches, but I'm getting the conflicts in place. For me, writing is not so much about renovation - unveiling what lies beneath -- but reconstruction. Writing it wrong helps me see what would be right. Either way, the fun part is refinement.

BTW, to really understand Hank's post, you have to understand Hank's house, which is just a wonderful place with nooks and crannies and the details that obviously inspire all sorts of creativity.

RO: Bummer! Hank, I LOVE your house..every time I visit I discover another room that becomes my new favorite.

I'm going the money pit route. First, my first drafts are lean to the point of anorexic. I need to layer, not strip down. Second, I'm currently living in a house with no countertops, no kitchen sink and no floor in the kitchen. And the contractor just sent me an estimate that's double what I thought it would be. (This is why you should never have a handshake deal with anyone holding a sledgehammer..)

If you just replace the shingles in the front what would you have on the sides and back of the house?

HANK: Well, yeah, ain't that the question. I'm considering the "facade" approach. You know in vintage buildings, they leave the old front, and make the back new? So in our case, the back and sides would be from the 1960's, thewhite siding, and the front would be shingles. If you stand in the front yard, looking at the front of the house, you can't see the sides. And thanks for the kind words, guys, about the house. We love it, too. It just needs a little, um, facelift.

HALLIE: Old front, new back. Reminds of me of the wonderful Erma Bombeck essay about her version of home improvement: painting the the house down to the bushes. Our house must have been inhabited by her relatives--only the edges of the floor visible around rugs were finished.
In home improvement, I'm definitely a minimalist. Cheap and easy. But in writing, I tear it back to the studs if I have to...but save the pieces in case I decide to dial it back.

ROBERTA: Ay-yi-yi-yi, more construction metaphors. Recall that I am still a woman with a giant-sized dumpster in her driveway and dusty men tromping through all day! Pardon me while I wander and maybe I'll come up with something useful to say...Isn't it so odd the way the construction workers begin to feel like part of the family? The guys we have yanking off the front of our house love animals. If I take the dog out, they all yell out "Tonka!" from their scaffolding perches. The other day, one commented that they really needed a fourth person to wrestle the windows up the ladders. I demurred. "How about TONKA!" they yelled. "We want Tonka!"

Let's see, what was the question? Money pit, definitely! And Hank, just do the whole house. It'll be cheaper now than in a few years when you decide you made a mistake and call the contractor back to finish the job.:)

HANK: It just makes me think about writing. Yes, it really does. I'll be sitting at the computer--staring at a blank page. And I'll say to myself: what does this scene mean? And when pared down to my original meaning, my orginal goal, suddenly it begins to work.

Still. I'm not sure that means rip the siding from the whole house.

Come back Wednesday for a chat with a brand new mystery author whose book just hit the shelves...and Friday, we'll talk about names.