The boys are off on their survival trip — no food, no water, just some long johns and a liter bag for each boy in Yosemite (quite appropriately at Jackass Lake :). We’re just hoping they come back alive. While they’re roughing it, we had girls’ dinner (well, girls plus a 15 year old boy :) with barbequed rack of lamb, pasta, and artichokes, and lots of wine and several martinis.

I love my girls and I feel like I haven’t seen them in forever what with the Zurich trip and the family visiting. I’ve been writing a lot lately and thinking quite a bit about my age. I went and had my annual pap this week and she asked me if I had any questions and I said no — then said, wait! How fertile am I, now that I’m almost 35? Turns out I still have quite a few reproductive years ahead of me. But my eggs are getting old.

I know I’ve said this before, but it continues to amaze me to watch my girls getting more and more beautiful as they get older. I wonder if they know it. I wonder if I, too, am getting more attractive. I somehow doubt that I am, but I see them growing more and more radiant and attractive and sure of themselves and I adore them — one of my girls turns 43 next week! 43! ;)

I wish I’d taken a picture of the dinner table with my lovelies around it because it would’ve made a great photo. I came back from Switzerland and all I wanted was to be alone. I had to get over that quickly because my sister and my son came to visit (and that’s been fun!), but now I really feel like I’m ready to not be alone and it’s good to have the girls around — to remind me that growing older isn’t a bad thing, and that good friends make everything in the world better.

I just recently finished Rice Bowl Women, a collection of short stories from China and Japan as early as the 600s which, of course, includes stories of foot binding. Coincidentally, I had dinner at a friend’s house recently and she was telling us a story about her Chinese friend — a strong independent girl. Her grandmother had her feet bound (in my ignorance I hadn’t realized foot binding happened as recently as the 1930’s). One day, this young woman had her feet up in plain view and her father said to her, “Who’s going to marry you with those giant feet!”

Everyone knows that the ideal of beauty is varied and diverse, but it seems to me that the idolization of these tiny, little feet must not have extended to the naked foot. If you do a Google images search on foot binding, you’ll find actual photos of feet that were bound. I have a hard time imagining men found those deformed feet sexy. Surely men only appreciated the foot when clothed in elaborately embroidered litle shoes, no? But shoed or unshoed, the little feet were adored — and apparently, that adoration hasn’t been completely forgotten.