Its true! I’m writing a story for the December issue of Health about overrated and underrated places to have sex, like the shower is overrated because someone is always half out from under the warm water and politely freezing their butt off. But a powder room is underrated because its usually small so you can wedge yourself up against the sink or cabinet, it’s on first floor away from sleeping children or visiting in-laws.

So anyway I have to come up with 8 of these underrated overrated situations and I need “expert” quotes to amplify why they do and don’t work. It’s due this Wednesday and by Friday no one was calling me back. I tried Em&Lo, the ladies at Babeland in San Francisco and Dan Savage. Nuthin! So I went ahead and emailed Paul Joannides author of The Guide to Getting It On. He’s a psychologist who has nice, earnest take on how to do it. I was looking for someone with a bit more attitude, but like I said time was running out. I sent him an email requesting he be our expert. His response follows.

Dear Francesca,

If you need to feature me as your expert on this story, you must be desperate indeed! I’ll do my best for you. However, I would need for you to explain to me what you mean by “sexual set ups.”

Thanks,

Paul

——

Dear Paul,

You are very funny—and right! I am desperate but my editor just asked to me to hold out for a woman because it will be more comfortable and girlfriend-y if our expert is a female. Anyway thank you for responding so quickly. If you know of any women sex therapist who are funny and smart please send them my way. The premise of the story is coming clean about overrated and underrated sexual situations, like the beach is overrated and the woods are underrated. Airplane lavatories are overrated, powder rooms are underrated.We would want the experts to explain why one is better than the other.

Thanks again!

——

Francesca,
I am so very relieved you require a female expert! I’m of the old school where getting sex of any kind regardless of the situation is a sign that the heavenly father above and Zeus from his lofty mountaintop are smiling kindly upon you–powder room, coat closet, woods, beach, where ever, it’s all good. So I would be useless for your story.

Best,
Paul

The bottled water aisle at Super Shop and Stop in Clifton, Friday August 26th around 1:30pm.

Why does the fact that Jonah Hill has lost so much weight  feel weird to me? I know it’s a good thing and I’m totally on board with being healthy, naturally I don’t want him to suffer the same fate as John Belushi and or Chris Farley. But there’s something about it that makes me uncomfortable. Even weirder, at at the same time Jennifer Hudson’s SELF magazine cover feels like victory—but when I look at Jonah, I feel badly for him. My first thought was okay so he had to, his weight was keeping him from roles, his weight was dangerous. Yet, it doesn’t feel like a triumph to see him so gaunt on the cover of New York Magazine with Brad Pitt. I mean despite all my teenage Monday nights at Weight Watcher meetings, in some unfortunate way it still feels like capitulation. Is it me? Or is there something true to my odd wish that he remain as big and as authentic as he was when I first met him in Superbad?

I’m done with big projects. Going to work during the week. Trying not to eat too much ice cream and suddenly last night I was bored. Until David found this PonPon Video on BoingBoing.

Video Link

Okay so I’ve noticed a new trend among friends and family. Drinking in bed. Not cozy hot cocoa, but hard liquor like vodka tonics and Limoncello aperitifs.

One friend casually mentioned that she and her hubster got a little drunk in bed watching funny movies on their computer and drinking vodka tonics. When I pressed her for details she explained that it all started when her inlaws were visiting and rather than keep them up they retired to their own bedroom to booze it up relax.

Another pal told me that she and her boyfriend go to bed with tumblers of Limoncello. Night after night. She says it’s habit forming.

Then I remembered that when I interviewed Nigella Lawson she told me that she kept hot sauce and spicy mustard in her bedside table so that she could nibble on dinner with her mogul husband Charles Saatchi when he came home late from work. (I know its different, but I still like it!) Nigella’s story reminded me that once Heather Locklear said she had a fridge in her bedroom and the correct term for it is a New Jersey Kitchen. I probably need to check that, but if anyone knows what a New Jersey Kitchen would be, its Heather Locklear.

So the other night, after David worked late he brought a vodka tonic into bed and we watched Game of Thrones. It was weird, but he was in good company.

*Actual husband not pictured.

This image is from a NY Times story on The Field Lab, a sustainable living homestead developed by a true modern cowboy, John Wells. Check out the pics. His lifestyle seems both lonely and enviable at the same time. Those stars beat out a store bought chandelier any day.

I just read the following in WWD!

Jay Fielden Heads to Town & Country, as Stephen Drucker resigns as editor in chief. See more here: http://bit.ly/firMGm
For those of you not in magazine publishing: Jay Fielden is the editor of the now shuttered Men’s Vogue, Stephen Drucker, my decorating hero was the editor of House Beautiful for five inspiring years until he moved over to T&C  in 2010.

Okay so what’s with all the copper gutters in Montclair? The other day I almost had a car accident because I was practically blinded by a house outfitted with iridescent piping. I love patina too. But these gutters are so bright and peachy that I can’t imagine having the patience to wait for them to oxidize. The owners of this house must have the same feeling a new mother does when she’s handed a wrinkly newborn. Friends may only an ugly pink face, but they can see the future and know their baby will turn into a swan.

Apparently, there are two other patient home-owners in town because very recently I stumbled on these houses also outfitted with copper though both used a more considered approach.

I know its hard to see because I took the picture with my phone but you can make out a pinkish gleam under the roof. It’s as if the house is wearing a simple necklace. Say what you will about the scroll ornamentation above the door but when the copper oxidizes over those curves its going to streak and drip creating a spectacular patina. According to copper.org it can take 20-25 years for it to turn into that ivy league pale green but it will be fun to watch in the meantime.

Here copper laid above the windows on the and the arch above the doorway (again the my phone doesn’t do it justice). Apparently, copper that’s laid horizontally will oxidize faster that copper that’s laid vertically because it’s exposed to elements more so these folks won’t have to wait very long for it to pay off. The rust-color is already there and it will turn green in five years.

Okay so as you can see from my wallpaper, I have a thing for birds and not just the motif, I like birds the real ones that fly around the sky, not just the kind embroidered on throw pillows.  I just read the following on the Daily Beast:

“So a storm may have been responsible for the 3,000 dead blackbirds that rained on Arkansas shortly before New Year’s, but what about these birds? Five hundred dead redwing blackbirds and starlings turned up in Louisana, three days after the ones in Arkansas. The birds suffered internal injuries that led to deadly blood clots—possibly from falling from the sky.”

As nightmares go, the NYC bedbug epidemic is top on my list and now that New York Magazine has run this excellent article on the Upper East Side’s secret service exterminators, I love New Jersey suburbs more than ever before. Granted, I’m not so naive to think that we will remain bedbug free, they will come here with all the other migrating families. But for now I am glad to feel safe and unbitten in Montclair.

I have a friend who is so obsessed and fearful of her home in Dobbs Ferry being infested she has laid down some very strict rules that after reading the article now sound like common sense:

She won’t allow anyone who lives in NYC, SF or LA to spend the night at her home. These cities all have bedbug epidemics.

She won’t stay in a hotel in any of these cities.

She won’t ride the subway.

She won’t shop at estate sales, ever. Bedbugs can live in wood. They can burrow into your phone and you have to painstakingly steam clean, chuck or burn everything in order to get rid of them.

“Everything had to go. Margaret recalls a “special company wearing what looked like hazmat suits.” The men removed everything that couldn’t be dry-cleaned—rugs, books, luggage, paintings, shoes, toys, computers, even radios. Only simple, hard-surfaced items, like china and silverware (which even bedbugs can’t burrow into), remained in the apartment.”

Other things you should know but people don’t tell you or talk about:

Bed bugs have an odor (how freaked out are you now!)

Pest Away, a firm mentioned in the peice, receives between 50 and 75 calls about bedbugs from the Upper East Side every week—and that’s just one firm.

Bedbugs tend to bite in threes—either in a line or in a triangle. In the article is says, “In exterminator jargon, this pattern is known as “breakfast, lunch, and dinner.” They have been known to leave triangular shaped bites on victim’s foreheads.

And now for some service: The number one way to turn a problem into an infestation:

If you have them in your mattress get rid of your mattress. Don’t move to the couch. If you move to the couch, they will move to your couch and infest your whole apartment. According to my friend, “they just want to stay with the food source.”