SO YOU WANT TO LOOK TEN YEARS YOUNGER YESTERDAY

Help is on the way. There are beauty products that really do work that can help you look at least ten years young and this article will tell you what they are. First off, the problem of sagging skin, wrinkles, fine lines and skin that just looks old. Is it inevitable with age or can we do something about it? Big name products sell well because of advertising, but they often don't really do much. One thing that will knock off years for sure is healthier looking, whiter teeth. Get a good tooth whitener and give it a go. You will attract compliments right away. What else do we know that works for sure? The secret to youth is collagen. Collagen is the key to skin that ages well. And the product that researchers have proven works to generate collagen is Retin-A or AHA (Alpha Hydroxy Acids). Of course, we should all know by now that the number one way to keep collagen from breaking down is to avoid the sun at all costs. Dermatologists continue to warn us that up to 90 percent of wrinkles, dark spots and sun damage are caused by sun exposure. You must use sunscreen regularly. The best sunscreen in the world? LaRoche-Posay Anthelios XL, dermatologists tout it. It has a chemical called "Mexoryl" that is well-known for protecting skin from UVB rays. However, if the damage is done, there are some products you can try. Vitamin A (retinoid) creams. These will prevent wrinkles or keep them from worsening. Look for products containing vitamin A like prescription Retin-A, Differin or Renova. Used nightly, these creams stimulate collagen renewal. They prevent skin cells from breaking down. Your skin is extra susceptible to sun damage while using these creams, so make sure you don't go out without sunscreen. Alpha-hydroxy acids or microdermabrasion is good if you're in your mid-30's and worried about wrinkles. Try exfoliating once a week with alpha-hydroxy acid (AHA's) or a microdermabrasion kid. Don't overdue it. Make sure it's in a creamy base. AHA's are glycolic or lactic acid formulated to increase collagen in sun-damaged skin. They will also reduce blotchiness, fine lines, redness and reduce pore size. Recommend MD Skincare Alpha Beta Daily Face Peel ($68 for 30 applications at Sephora.) For crow's feet you need a retinoid wrinkle reducer that hydrates. Recommend MD Forte Skin Rejuvenation Eye Cream or Estee Lauder Perfectionist Power Correcting Patch. Then throw on a nice dark denim (not light, makes you look older) pair of jeans and hit the town.

AGE GRACEFULLY BY ACCEPTING YOURSELF

There are a lot of different anti-wrinkle creams sold, some with "secret" ingredients that sound exotic and hike up the price quite a bit. What's known to work is Retin-A, retinoid wrinkle reducer that hydrates for the eyes, antioxidants and moisture creams. That's pretty much the basics of your full artillery programs. Things you read about movie stars using like bird poop and fetuses, just fall into that secret, but not necessarily effective ingredient category. If you've been good about using sunscreen then you have reason to rejoice. If you haven't, you can still try the retin-A creams. And the thing about cosmetic surgery is that it is being done in epidemic proportions almost forcing you to consider it at some point. In 2007 there were 11.7 million cosmetic procedures done. That's a 457 percent increase since 1997. If everyone around you is having procedures and you're not, it's like you've aged ten years. You're the athlete who's playing by the rules. The others are using appearance-enhancing drugs, you might say. How to make your age recede as an issue? Is your posture good? Are you in good physical shape? Is your hair nicely cut and styled? Are you wearing current clothing? Are your teeth white enough? People will forgive you a lot if the like you. You don't have to work on your appearance so much as blind people to your flaws. Do for others. Look out for others. Give to others. They won't be judging your looks. Accept yourself inside and out. Perhaps the best advice is to find things you're interested in and that you enjoy. Don't spend all of your time fretting in front of the mirror or having work done or recovering from work. Don't waste hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars every year on creams that don't work. Get out and explore new things. Take the focus off of how you look. Accept that you'll never look 25 again. Age in a graceful way. Be interested in what you do and be happy. People complain that once they hit a certain age they are invisible. If you just smile at people when you're talking to them, they're really happy to talk to you. Henry David Thoreau: None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.

THE NIGHT I MET THE LOVE OF MY LIFE

I will never forget the New Year's Eve I met George for the first time. I had recently left my husband of five years. I was 23 years old. I was broke as I could be, but I wasn't going to let that stop me from going to college. I had lived near this college town, Carbondale, Illinois, for the past five years and I was tired of just sitting by envying all those kids who got to go while I was stuck in my hum-drum boring life. I had read in the local paper that, thanks to the Democratic party, anyone who wanted to go to college now could. I took them at their word. So far they had done well by me. I had enough loans and grants to get started. There had been a problem figuring out where I was going to live and how, but then I saw an ad for someone to be a personal attendant to a paralyzed woman in return for room and board. I had never taken care of more than a turtle and it died, but I was game if she was. So I moved into her apartment out on Lincoln Avenue where mostly grad students and alumni lived. It was kind of quiet and I liked that. The only wild one was old Janet, the quadriplegic woman I was caring for. Turned out she was a nymphomaniac which I hadn't been aware paralyzed people could be. Oh yes. One night she had invited over a man, also in a wheel chair, with cerebral palsy, and she wanted me to stick his penis in for him. I had to refuse. I tell you that nowadays after having lived quite a few more life experiences and losing most of my prim and proper mind sets, I would do it. But then I was shocked and repulsed, I'm embarrassed to say. Anyhow I wasn't looking forward to anything out of the ordinary happening on New Year's Eve. Same old same old, but then old Janet up and surprised me. She had gotten one of her lucky wrong numbers, kept the guy on the phone, and convinced him to come over and have sex with her. I don't know how she did it, but 99% of the time she was successful. I guess it was the advantage of living in a college town full of horny young men. So this meant, she told me in no uncertain terms, I had to get out, but I wasn't to go too far in case he turned out to be a creep or she needed me for some other reason. This meant, in other words, I was to spend my New Year's Eve sitting in the most depressing, dreary "lounge" of a TV room tacked on to the front of our apartment building. Most people wouldn't be caught dead being seen there any day, and I would be there on New Year's Eve. What the hell. So far most of my life had been spent not really giving two shits what people thought about me. I had grown up the poor and ill-dressed daughter of raging alcoholics who embarrassed me daily, and then as I grew, I became an outrageous "freak the people out" hippie myself, so I was really beyond caring very much. I got my special celebratory bottle of Cold Duck that I had paid less than five dollars for, and a book and headed on down there. I hoped nobody would be sitting in there watching the damn TV. Watching Lawrence Welk or some damn thing--now that would be depressing. But the coast was clear. I set out my cigarettes and filled up my water glass with the Cold Duck. Could be worse. I could be back in Sand Ridge, pop. 50, sitting with my ex-husband watching the geese run down the street, which was about the only action in that one-horse town. I'd no doubt be drinking suds from a quart bottle, and he, abstaining as usual, would be launched into his routine about "whatever happened to the sweet flower I married". It was enough to make me puke. I was so sick of him running his mouth on the same old subjects. I tell you nothing could get so bad in my new college life to equal the misery of my old married life. I had gotten married at 18. That shit ought to be illegal. Everybody and his uncle tried to warn me against it, but I knew better. I was so damn smart. I filled my glass again and got out my book. This kind of thinking was going nowhere but down. The book was a novel by Kurt Vonnegut for English class. It killed me how they were giving me college credits for reading books I would be taking out of the library and reading on my own anyhow. What a scam--giving me loans and grants to do it too. What a wonderful world. So I sat and read for a couple of hours. Once I got up and stood outside of Janet's door. I didn't hear anything suspicious so I guessed she was alright. Just before midnight a man walked into my solitary confinement. He turned around a few times, as though he wasn't sure where he was or why he was there. "Hello," he finally said. "Hello, to you," I said in a friendly voice. He didn't look like he was out picking up women that night. In fact, he was carrying a briefcase. He was also wearing a wrinkled, old black trenchcoat that Columbo would be proud to wear. "Are you waiting for someone?" he managed. I guess he was trying to figure out why I was sitting in there by myself on New Year's Eve at midnight. "No, well, I'm sort of waiting for my roommate to be finished with her personal business so I can get back into our apartment." "Oh, is that right?" He had a nice country drawl to his speech that drew out his words and sentences and made it seem as if you were saying the most interesting things he had ever heard. "You know I live here too. Right across the hall from you, in fact." "Is that a fact," I replied. "Want some of this warm duck?" "No, no I don't believe I do. Would you like to go out and get a real drink--it being New Year's Eve and all?" I thought about for about two seconds but made it look like two minutes. He had such beautiful blue sparkly eyes. I imagined angels had eyes like his. And when he talked to you, he looked full at you as though he could see into your soul. "I'd have to ask my roommate if she'll be alright without me first," I told him. "Why don't you just go do that," he directed. When I got into the apartment I saw that a little party had formed without me being invited. Oh, well, I was the newbie. What did I expect? Maureen, her last personal attendant was there and she had brought some mutual friends. Janet was pretty well smashed, but she assured me that Maureen would look out for her. I went in the bathroom and tried to do something about my plain-Jane weekday looks. It was kind of hopeless without attracting unnecessary attention. What was I going to do at this late hour? Put on a sparkly dress? I put on some lipstick and some blush and went back to the lobby. Surprisingly, he was still waiting for me. "What's your name, anyhow?," I asked him. "George, George Mack." "I'm Jeanine Casper. Nice to meet you." We went and got into his very cute little orange and black, convertible Kharmin Ghia. I was such an old hippie hick it might as well have been a Jaguar for my excitement. It was then that I got wind of his pheromones. Now I had been a hippie chick hanging out with the unwashed often enough to recognize pheromones from a good, long distance, usually to my great revulsion, but these were angelic pheromones. If I guessed right he was an all-natural kind of guy and knew his natural scent was a giant turn-on and so didn't use after shave or even deodorant. And why should he? He smelled of a manly scent that reminded me of sex and heaven. I wanted to just sit and smell him forever. I was nervous with him. He'd told me that he had been at work that night. He worked at the state hospital with alcoholics. He was a psychologist. He had just gotten his Ph.D. from S.I.U. a couple of years ago. He had been working that night with his alcoholic social club that he'd set up. I was touched with how much he genuinely seemed to care about his clients. I felt very unworldly and unsophisticated with this man with a doctorate. I noticed I was trying to clean up my language and to speak English the way I know you're supposed to. I even minded my manners and let him do things like open the car door for me and pull out a chair at the restaurant. When he ordered a rob roy, I said I'd have one too, although I had no idea what it was. I really didn't care for hard alcohol and liked beer and wine better. But I sipped my rob roy and found myself telling him the story of my life. He knew all the right questions to ask. He acted so interested. You would think that I had about the most interesting life story he had ever heard. I chalked it up to his being a psychologist. I guessed they were just really interested in people. Our hands brushed briefly one time when he was lighting my cigarette. I felt a spark. This man who looked like an angel with his long natural ringlets of golden brown curls could be dangerous for a nobody like me i told myself. For him it was New Year's Eve and he had missed all the regular dating and parties because of having to work. Tomorrow he would get back to his real life and forget all about the nobody across the hall. I told myself I was alright with that. We had two drinks apiece, barely enough to get me started and I wasn't even counting the Cold Duck, but suddenly I didn't want to look like a lush. We drove back the long way. When we got to the building, he invited me to come over for a nightcap. I was kind of surprised at the starkness of his apartment. It made me feel sorry for him. He admitted he had recently been divorced, and that his wife had taken pretty much everything. He actually used cement bricks and pieces of lumber for bookcases just like the college kids. He had a couple of director's chairs for furniture and a couch that pulled out to a bed. The rest of the place was kind of empty. He apologized for it, but it endeared him to me. I realized then I couldn't have dealt with a swanky bachelor apartment. I liked good old honest humble living. He put on some Bob Dylan. Then later he took it off, got out his guitar and played "Lay Lady Lay" for me. It was about the most romantic moment I had had since I couldn't remember when. Then he surprised me by putting some soul into "Give Me That Old Time Religion." I liked it that he liked that old standard so much. Then it was time to call it a night. He made some moves that I ignored. Finally I just came out and sort of told him that I hadn't been with anybody but my husband in five years, and I wasn't likely to start hopping into beds with men I barely knew now. He accepted this. In fact, he gave me a smile that seemed approving, and I went home to dream about him all night.

I wrote this poem yesterday. It reminded me of why I love being a mother. Goodnight Stars When you wake up you don't know Which days are diamonds and which are stones One diamond day I just came home from working And my son was still up, and I got to read him "Goodnight Moon" He was about two years old at the time and ablaze with life and wonder The book got me thinking, "Good night stars." I scooped him up in his p.j.'s and ran him out to the backyard. It was a perfectly clear, brilliant night for stars. This was early in the summer and it was warm. I held him tight against my chest and pointed to the sky, "Stars" I showed him with my heart full of love. He grinned from one ear to the other, "Stars" he repeated. Then he laughed from the pure joy of it--in absolute awe. He totally got it and let those stars shine into his world, his life. He laughed some more at the pure ecstasy of the experience. I could only grin at how eager he was to let in more life, more beauty, more love. I wanted right that minute to take him across the country and show him an ocean. Or wait up all night and watch his face as he thrilled to his first sunrise. Where was a bird's nest full of baby birds he had never before seen? Why couldn't it be winter and I could take him to see the frozen waves of Lake Michigan? The Grand Canyon would just have to wait, along with telescopic views of planets. Goodnight world everywhere full of countless wonders for a rich mother to give. Goodnight stars.

HAVING A BLAST AT FANSTORY.COM

Hey, kids, want to have some writing fun? I have spent four days now having a blast and I want to tell you about it. I haven't had this much fun since roller skating round and round with the big Hammond organ playing, and my favorite boy of the hour holding my hand. I have been hanging out all day every day at one of Writer's Digest "101 Best Websites 2008 for Writers" and it's called FanStory.com. What can you do there? What can't you? You can submit a story, essay, script, novel chapter or poem and have it instantly reviewed by other writers. They will rate it on a six-star rating system plus review it in a few sentences or more. If there are any SPAG (spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors, an acronym I learned there pretty quickly), they will fill you in on these. Everyone is a writer and everyone is a reviewer. There are lots of prizes for writers and even prizes for best reviewers. I submitted a poem on day two that won "recognized status". The next day it won "all time best status". I will include the poem after the post so you can see for yourself if they are honoring just any old thing or not. They have monthly prizes and yearly prizes. Everyone works to keep up their numerical ranking on a one to six score. There are a bunch of contests, most with $100 prizes. Some are free to enter and some cost "member dollars" which you earn by reviewing the writing of others. And, dig this, if you want to you can even make up your own contest and run it complete with prize money. And, yes, you can enter you're own contest, but no, you don't get to be the judge. The voting peers are the judge and you might win the prize pool of money collected for entries. It is so exciting! I am wasting whole days over there writing and reviewing. Round and round I go reading my reviews, replying to the the feedback, reading the replies to my reviews and sometimes replying to that. Then I have to check my e-mail box there to see what's come up. I have become a fan of several people and they might have posted something new. And today I learned one of my short stories has received special recognition. Wheeee! I may not be earning any freelance money, but the kind of writing I'm doing is personal and from the heart--just what I wanted to do before I started resorting to counting keywords or some damn thing that I don't consider real writing. And I'm in a writers' group communicating and sharing with real people who do what I love. You sort of have the feeling that you're at the rink and everyone knows everyone. They all stop by to welcome you when you're new. The people there are anxious to see what new tricks and steps you've brought to display and to show you some of their steps--their new tricks and some of their old standards. So it's one big happy family show and tell at the ol' roller rink and it's as exciting as hell. Oh, yeah, all the writing is not brilliant and ready for prime time. Don't ruin it for yourself by bringing your pretensions. A whole lot of it is poetry. Poetry is the majority in fact. Short stories and novel chapters are next. But you'd be surprised. Not all of the poetry is as bad as you might suspect, and some of it is very, very good. Some of the short stories and novel chapters will also delight and surprise you. Some of the writing is written by published authors who show off their ISBN numbers and book covers. Other stuff is written by writers dreaming of getting published for the first time and even some high school kids are in there trying. It's all happening at the writing/roller skate rink where anything can and does happen. The writers are all ages and all backgrounds. Some are retired professional people, some are working people, some are students. There are farmers, C.P.A.'s, English professors, and waitresses. It is an unbelievable mix of strange bedfellows united by the common bond of a love for writing. Here's the poem I submitted that got all the attention despite the fact that I gather quite a few were not used to free verse and some rated it highly while calling it "more of a story than a poem": Bunny Boy My son, the semi-grown man-child, memorizes rap music and says fuck too much. He wanted something to love, never having had a girlfriend and his Dad died. Now he has a tiny, baby, long-eared, softer than baby hair, white and brown rabbit That follows him wherever he goes. It eats bright green, crunchy lettuce from his hand. He makes little cardboard houses for it to crawl in and out of. I was there the first time the little bunny let him pet her with two extended fingers. His touch was barely there, almost above her, as though he were petting her aura. His smile was so gentle and loving as he petted her, the door to his heart was left wide open. Anyone could have walked right in. I sure did.

WILD CHILD

Not the Coolest Kid

 It was hard to be a seventh grader in Catholic School and be as wild as you want to be, but I gave it my best shot. My peak achievement, I suppose, was coming razor-thin close to getting expelled. That happened because the nuns took the class downtown (Chicago) to watch a boring old war movie ("The Longest Day"--and it really was).

 Anyhow about fifteen minutes into the movie, my friend, Joan Ryan, and I sneaked out of the theater to go pick up sailors we'd seen when we were going into the show. We had a much, much better day than our goodie-goodie classmates I can tell you. Too bad though we were embarrassed in front of the sailors on account of being in our queer old uniforms. What can a girl do? Light up another cigarette so you have some semblance of looking cool, that's what. We lost track of time, not that we were wearing watches or knew when the damn movie was getting out anyhow.

 By the time we sashayed our little plaid butts around the corner and down the street back to the theater, the entire seventh grade and all its nuns were boarded on two buses waiting for us. "Way to go, Joan" I tell her. She's cool, putting out a fag like nothing is going on. Well, all the talk was about expulsion for the rest of the week. I enjoyed the week at home watching daytime television while Mom and Dad were at work. They weren't as upset as you might think since they were both alcoholics and didn't pay a lot of attention to the everyday family problems. As long as they had a bottle at the end of the day, everything in their world was just peachy.

 Joan's mother was a big muckety-muck with the PTA. She was always running up to the school to help out the nuns. It was the least she could do I figured. She had nine kids in the damn school. Anyhow, Joan heard from her Mom that the nuns were cooling down now. The talk was drifting from expulsion to separating the two of us. That wasn't such great news since there were only two seventh grade classrooms: the bright class that we were in and the remedial class still reading aloud like molasses moving down the side of the jar. I had a feeling that I would get the worst of it with Joan's Mom being an Altar and Rosary Lady and every other damn thing up at that church and school.

 My parents had never put in an appearance. I would be easy to sacrifice, and I could count on no parents running up to the school to complain that it was totally unfair. Hell, it was totally unfair. I made better grades than Joan. But the next six months found me living in some of the slowest time outside of the state penitentiary. I swear it took one year for those kids to read a paragraph,  and I was trapped in my seat with nothing to do but stare at the page.

 I'd already been caught reading James Bond books underneath my Scholastic Reader. Seventh grade was turning out to be the biggest yawn imaginable. I almost lost interest in being a rebel. One afternoon I had to set my bus pass on fire just to prove to myself that I still had the stuff. I think my protest was vaguely about how I didn't want to have to carry a little card to ride the bus or some such crap that makes no sense to me now. So as if things weren't bad enough, now I had to walk back and forth to school every day in the heat and in the cold. But lunch time was good. Our class had the same lunch time as the smart kids so I got to see some of my old friends, flirt with some boys and hang out with Joan.

I was supposed to stay right there and hang out on the playground after eating, but Joan lived nearby and one day she talked me into sneaking over to her house.   It was an experience. All her nine brothers and sisters were there. It was like something out of an insane asylum movie: Snake Pit II: The Suburbs.

That was the day I was shattered to learn that the whole damn family was ten times wilder than I could ever dream of being. The funny thing was all the weird stuff that went on happened while the non-working mother was home. I looked at Joan's Mom closely and realized I was only seeing her shell. The real woman was far, far away. I guess having nine kids will do that to a person.

Anyhow, we get in the house and her brother Jimmy heads straight for the phone.

"Check this out," Joan says, lighting up a cigarette right there in front of her mother. In fact she had taken one of her mother's fags from her pack

 "He's calling the convent," she tells me while blowing smoke out of her nose. "He does it every day.

 I hear Jimmy on the phone, "Yeah, hello, is this the convent? I want to know what you wear under those fucking habits and I want to know now." He's laughing a little but we were laughing more. "Do you wear special nun underwear? I want to know if it's black and sexy, or if it comes down to your knees and has crucifixes on it." He has made his voice so deep it's funny in itself. Joan's Mom comes into the room.

 "Hurry up, Jimmy. I need to make a call." That's all she has to say, and she leaves.

 He finally hangs up, the nuns were staying on the line for some reason,  and Joan's sister, Molly, picks up the phone and orders a pineapple pizza. I hate pineapple pizza so I stop paying much attention until I hear her tell the pizza place to deliver it to the Sisters of St. Joseph and she gives the convent's address. These kids don't play, I think. I get up to go use the bathroom, but I have to come right out again.

. "Joan, there's a loaf of unwrapped white bread soaking in the toilet," I scream.

 "Oh, that Johnny. He's going to get it this time. Hey, Molly, where's Johnny? I'm not putting my hands in the toilet."

 Then she turns to me, "Just pee on it, Mare.. It's just bread." She sounds kind of bored like this happens all the time. I watch her sneak and grab her Ma's purse and sure enough she grabs a ten-spot out of her wallet. Her Mom never glances over from where she's sitting smoking in the kitchen.

 "Let's say we go out after school, huh, kid," she says to me with a wink. Joan's sister, Maggie, the polite one, comes over to me.

 "Did you have any lunch?" she asks sweetly. "We've got some okay cereal you can have." I realize I am hungry.

 "That would be great, Maggie," I say.

 We go join her Mom at the kitchen table. Maggie hands me a box of Cocoa Puffs. Someone has written really bad swear words all over the box about how rank the cereal is. "Fuck this shit" it reads where it should say "Cocoa Puffs". Joan's Mom doesn't seem to notice as we pass the box in front of her nose. I can't help but laugh.

 Just then the Dad comes home for lunch. I smell booze on his breath. I guess he starts even earlier in the day than my parents. He is full of wide smiles on his bright red face. He greets each one of us broadly, patting me on the head and calling me Joanne, the name of one of the other kids. It must be hard when you have so many kids. We eat our cereal while he drinks a beer. Maggie reaches over and gulps down half of it.

 Then it is time to leave the nut house, surrender my unofficial title as the wildest girl in the seventh grade, and head back to school to spend another couple of years at my desk that afternoon. Boy, I had a dull home life--even with my parents parking in the front lawn most nights.