Pittsburgh Nails

Martha and I had acrylic nails put on at Bobby's Nails in Pittsburgh, PA. It took half and hour each and cost about $35-45 each. First you are fitted with plastic crazy ass long nails that are glued onto the tips of your nails.



Bobby's Nails was run by a sweet family. Mom started us off and soon her daughter Thanh came in to do the paint work. Thanh was a wise soul taking journalism. "Some people who get their nails done are trying to fill in something that is missing in their lives. But beauty is really who you are inside."



It is hard to get used to. I can't play the ukelele or even tune it with these nails. How does Dolly Parton do it? Did't her long nails even inspire the song "9-5" while she was tapping on her guiltar? One thing these nails are good for is shampooing my hair. I can give myself a great scalp scrub.



We were told the most popular colors were black and gold for the Steelers football team. There were airbrushed nails with images of palm trees, skulls, and even beloved Jesus, but you had to wait for the dad to come in to do the fancy airbrush.



Martha's zombie hands don't look quite like the "I love nails" poster on the wall. Maybe she just needs to be holding diamonds and jewels.

Last Day in Beauty City

It is our last day in Paris, a most beautiful city! We'll be leaving tomorrow morning very early. Despite the wonderful time we have had here, I am feeling a bit homesick. It'll be nice to be able to use my cell phone again, although it has been good for me to not be obsessively checking things. I should learn from this. It'll also be nice not to feel like a big dummy when trying to converse. Je voudrais un vert de vin rouge is all I can muster. Oh and... bonjour, bonsoir, et merci madames ou monsieur, can't forget those. Dang that's it! I need to learn a new language.

I'd like to say we discovered some earth-shatteringly new about beauty from the French, so far not yet, maybe we will, it might come to me later. There is still time. I saved going into one of the Pharmacies here for today. They seem to have magical creams and lotions in them, we'll see what happens. Maybe there will be a cream to cure wrinkles? Or maybe I should just leave my wrinkles alone? I'll let you know once I go in, what things I find.

Here are some random images for now. The picture above is from a beauty shop across the street from our hotel. They have red velvet stanchions and a guard outside the front to keep the riff-raff out. Each of the heads (there are many adorning the building) has a rainbow sheen when you walk past. Very fancy! I would be scared to go in though. Intimidating rainbows and beauty guards.

This is a crepe-making man. He looks super pissed to be making crepes. There definitely should be crepe stands in Pasadena. So good, yummy and simple. Why not? Hey how about a crepe truck? Tacos and crepes! Culture merge.

McDonald's in Paris is not beautiful. Supposedly there is free wifi in all McDonald's, but I just couldn't bring myself to go in. It seems like it would burn to set foot in Micky D's, like a vampire and holy water. Just not right, you know? I also counted FOUR Starbuck's in the Latin Quarter. NOOOOOO!

Not sure who these guys are on the brownie yogurt packages. I am guessing soccer players. Soccer players really make me want to eat brownie-flavored yogurt. The packaging here is CRAZY. Esther has been going to the super markets every day. So very different from Von's. She has found some fantastic things. So anyway this is just a taste. I have MUCH more to share once I get back home.

We are all the same on the whole for sure

I have had more time to hang out in Paris, but still haven't met a lot of Parisians so my thoughts are based on walking around with a bunch of Americans. Not that that is a bad thing. So my take as of day three is, people here are stunning, but they must have the same hang ups as us. I base this on the amount of flaw-correcting places I have come across strolling dans les Rues.

Suck in that gut and get some booty junk all up in your grill.

Brussez les dentes 90210 style.

Kick it lice. This is so NOT American. American's would never admit to lice.

That dude don't need nuttin. And you ain't gonna look like that with a laser on ya. That's for sure.

Please stop smoking. Yes.

See, they want lift too.

One good thing is that the naked boob is not something to be shocked by. I still can't understand the mindset behind all the fear of boob in the U.S. Boobs are good!

OK so I'll stop. Trying to meet some real French people for the real scoop. Sorry there is no art. I did not bring my scanner over here.

I am a walking cliche

OK so Paris is fricking BEAUTIFUL! I said it. Sooo cliched I know. The light is beautiful, the people are beautiful, the architecture is beautiful, the food, the breezes, the language, even the wine is beautiful. Damn. I wanted to be original, discover a pimple on the legend, but so far I can't. Well maybe here is one.

I have seen a lot of graffiti mostly bad, but there was some beautiful graffiti out near the airport that you can see from the train into the city. They used unusual colors. Lots of pinks and yellows. Very different from L.A. and NYC.

But back to beauty, what I have noticed about the women is that they look fresh and clean, minimal, natural beauty. Maybe there is a part of town where people are prone to heavy blue eyeshadow, penciled-in eyebrows, dark black eyeliner and frosty pink outlined lips, but I haven't been there yet. I'd like to go there, but as of now I have only been in the 6th and 7th arrondisements.

The men are put together and handsome, young and old, even though many are smoky smoky. No slobs in the lot. It appears effortless. Granted I am only seeing the surface. I don't know if there is a different attitude about beauty. I have noticed just as many wrinkle cream ads and beauty treatment places as the U.S. and there are the usual women's magazines with skinny glamourous models everywhere. Tomorrow I will be meeting new people and maybe I can find out more. Dig a little deeper. For now here are some pictures.

Our waiter pouring Kir Royales at Les Deux Magots to go with my croque monsieur. Touristy but quite nice.

This light is at 9:30 pm! Unbelievable.

The people at the end of the road had their giant window wide open so you could peak into their home.

A strange mannequin in a window.

I thought these were soaps, but they are macaroons. Who knew? Even the cookies are beautiful. Jerks! OK that graffiti was probably by someone from the U.S.

I am going to rent one of these tomorrow. My feet are already killing me. I am wimpy. Here is something funny. I am watching Fatal Attraction in French, trying to figure out what they are saying. Je ne seront pas ignorés!

There is a french lady in my room

This painting overlooks my bed in Paris. I thought the wifi was going to be free at my hotel but it is not, so my blogs will be few and far between until we get back to the states. 5 euros for 45 minutes. Je suis whatever. UPDATE: I will find some spots outside the hotel and keep the blog up. So far everyone I have seen outside is beautiful. I am feeling insecure. Oh my.


This is us trying to be beautiful on the RER train after flying on the lovely red eye to Charles de Gaulle. So very perty and fresh.

One of my two windows overlooking Le Rue de Tourville. My room is very pink.


This is the view from my room. I am going to stop now before my 45 minutes are up and go get some bread, wine and cheese. Trying so hard not to go to sleep right now. I need to get on Paris time. Will report more on French beauty later this week.

The Orr's Island Pearl

We stayed at Calef Brown's family cabin on Orr's Island. The one bedroom house was purchased by his father for $700 a long time ago and moved to it's present location.

Cooking in the cabin has been a treat. We picked blueberries off the bushes and made a pie! The salmon and corn taste like nothing else. At night you can see so may stars. I slept so solid. Enjoying the land with friends and family has always been my idea of beauty.



In the cabin, I found a novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe titled "The Pearl of Orr's Island," a story of a young girl growing up among strong women and fisherman on the tiny Island. I adore reading about a place I am standing in, from a text written years ago. It reminds me how special it is to be alive. How very similar and so differently we all look at the world around us, each in our own time.

Beauty on the Inside

I was trying to figure out what beauty on the inside would look like. I think it is gold and sparkly and flowery. You might not be able to see the sparkles on this. It does sparkle. REALLY!

It is our last day in Maine, maybe I'll finally catch up on our trip before we leave for Paris. I believe I left us off on the Turnpike. Here is Esther in a different Turnpike bathroom. There sure are a lot of tolls on the east coast. DANG!

Next stop Lenox, Massachusetts to meet up with the people from Blue Q. Blue Q is a great company that makes funny cool stuff. You have seen there stuff everywhere. Cat butt magnets, dirty girl soap, I am not gay but I love rainbows air fresheners, always hilarious and smart. They published a book by Esther and one by her husband Mark.

Dinner was at The Dream Away Lodge. Couldn't tell you how to get there because it seemed like we went to another world via a small windy road through witch forests. It is a roadhouse type place that maybe used to be a brothel and hippie musicians used to hang there back in the day? I think that is what they told me. It was a perfect place, a nippy cool breeze through open windows, fresh flowers, lots of cool stuff to look at, packed with people and BBQ smoky smells wafting in. YUM.




I liked this place so I posted a bunch of pictures. I guess it is in the Berkshires. This sounds so fancy, the Berkshires dahling.

So dinner was with Mitch and Caitlin Nash and Sara Paul who works for Blue Q. After dinner we went back to the Nashes and talked about beauty. I think one of the reasons I am obsessed with wigs is because my mother had cancer when I was a teenager and she wore wigs while going through chemo. I guess it stuck with me. Wigs are used to cover up things or change your appearance dramatically or make you feel normal, so it was nice to talk to Caitlin about her experience with chemo. She has such a healthy attitude about it and she is so beautiful herself, glowing and confident.

One great thing she said was that while she was going through it she got letters and gifts and notes and help from the whole community. She said she had to switch from giving (I can attest for the giving nature of this family) mode to receiving mode and now she had a whole box of these letters and notes saved that she can go back to when she needs some good cheer and beauty. It meant a lot to me.

The next day we went to visit Blue Q and interviewed Sara Paul. She is the one who said "everyone has their shit they have to deal with, we should all just give each other a break." I love that, it really is true. We all have those things we worry about too much, like wrinkles or an extra 5 pounds, that really don't matter at all. We shouldn't judge other people over these dumb things cause we all do it. You dig? We should stop being so hard on ourselves too. Right? I gotta get on that myself. She also talked about her mother having cancer and dealing with it in a very different way using make-up and wigs to cover it up. Like she said, everyone has their shit.


So we left Lenox with chunky yummy sandwiches and goodies packed by the Nashes and set out for Maine which is where I am now, writing from Calef Brown's studio in Brunswick. We have taken a little break from the beauty part of the trip and are having a little vacation, although there is beauty everywhere and you can't really turn it off. I am looking at things differently. Here are some pictures.

Esther bought this awesome painting from a place called Spindleworks. They have amazing stuff here. I bought a beautiful handmade scarf although it was meant to be a table runner. If you ever come to Maine, you should stop here.

I had to have lobster and steamers and it was delicious and amazing. I thanked the lobster for letting us eat him cause you kind of feel bad when you crack his body apart.

Here's an apple tree. We used to have an apple tree in our yard. Brings back memories.

Calef and Anissa, our hosts in Maine. They rule. We miss them.

One more thing. I was born in Maine and lived here when I was teeny. Then our family used to come up here in the summers way back when. It is really wonderful being here. Maine is BEAUTY to me.

So our next stop is Paris. I hope to write while there but my computer is hit or miss. Right now it is working and I am happy. Think good vibes.

Martha