Continued from Part 1.

Beautiful women, such as my daughter, don’t need help in attracting men. As proved by my experiment, they can post a head-shot and write a meaningless profile and within moments, hoards of eligible bachelors will magically appear, sniffing around their virtual yard and begging for a date.

But Mother was right. Beauty does have a price. And sometimes, beauty exacts a price from men, too. Like 20 years of alimony payments.

Many of these newly-divorced men liked to tell an obviously well-rehearsed and emotional story about how much they despised the mother of their children. Speaking as a woman who’s read four billion self-improvement books, I can not imagine sharing this type of story on a first date, where you’re (supposedly) investing your best energies in hiding your personal psychoses and neuroses and bad habits.

“My first wife is such an unbelievable witch,” these middle-aged men would often tell me (and that’s “witch” with a capital B).

“She’s depressed and she’s depressing and she’s lazy and she’s crazy as a loon. And she sleeps half the day and she drinks like a fish and smokes like a chimney and swears like a sailor and she’s a lousy mother, too. And she likes to eat cheezy fizz right out of the can. She’s really disgusting.”

On and on they’d go, telling me how utterly awful their ex-wife was. When they’d exhausted themselves, I’d look ‘em right in the eye and ask a single, simple question:

“What attracted you to her in the first place?”

Their answer was always, and I mean always, the same. Sometimes they used different words, but the meaning and import never changed.

“She was so beautiful,” they’d tell me with their eyes glazing over. “She was a real knock-out.”

The more troubled men would often continue with, “When I walked into a room with her on my arm, all the men would turn and stare. They were so damn jealous, their eyeballs would pop out of their head. Man, she was gorgeous.”

In Between Men, Eve Sedgwick says that men are often more interested in having a relationship with other men, rather than having a relationship with a woman. She says that a man’s sense of self-worth is fueled and fed by the envious gaze of other males. Women become pawns in a game, and Sedgwick says their purpose - in the eyes of men - is to cement the “bonds of men with [other] men.”

To read another excerpt, click here.

To learn more about Rose’s new book on internet dating, click here.

Schadenfreude. Who’s ever heard of it?

It’s a German word that means delighting in the misfortune of others. I had never heard of this word until I was doing some research for my book The Ugly Woman’s Guide to Internet Dating: What I Learned From 70 First Dates. Before this, I’d heard it described as “The Crab Theory.”

Put one crab in a five-gallon bucket and Mr. Crab will do everything in his power to scale its smooth wall and crawl out of that bucket. Put two or more crabs in a bucket and when one starts to climb up, the others will grab him and pull him back down into the bucket. Unfortunately, humans sometime exhibit the same tendencies as crabs.

In my own life, I’ve struggled mightily with envy, and I’m sorry to say that too many times, I had a decided leaning toward the crab/schadenfreude side.

And then one day, I read a story in the Christian Science Sentinel about a woman who’d spent a lifetime cultivating the habit of gratitude. She said that her mother had taught her to feel sincerely joyous and grateful for the good things that happened in other people’s lives, and to take it as a personal promise from God that, if it happened for them, it could happen for her, too.

The Buddhist have a word for this: Mudita. It’s the practice of finding joy in other people’s success and happiness.

The fact is, we’re all cracked pots and fallible and prone to foibles and missteps and mistakes and even lapses in good judgment. Who among us hasn’t lost our temper and said something we deeply regret? Who among us hasn’t surrendered to temptation when we could have done better? My point is, maybe the real need is to stop staring so hard at other people’s sins and take a better look at our own shortcomings and work on improving those.

Maybe we need to stop cultivating the habit of schadenfreude and work on mudita.

Last week, I spent countless hours bundling up the children and getting them ready for their new homes. Shipping books is a lot of work and time-intensive, and standing in line at the Milan Station (Norfolk Post Office on 38th Street) is a foretaste of hell, but…

It sure is fun to think about this book - Montgomery Ward’s Mail-Order Homes - leaving home to be enjoyed by others. Dale Patrick Wolicki and I spent five years researching and writing this book, and it’s new research on a new topic. As I’ve told my husband and my friend Dale many times, this book will still be in use as a reference work many years after we’re all gone from this earth.

If you’d like to learn more about Wardway Homes, click here.

If you’d like to give your friends and relatives the perfect Christmas present, click here.

And if you’d like to support your local library by donating a copy of Wardway Homes, click here.

Wardway books leaving home

Handsome hubby poses with the new book. Two cuties together in one photo!

Recently, I drove to Cape Charles to photograph some of the kit homes there. First off, let me say that I *LOVE* that community and if anyone would like to bequeath The Sears Lady (that’s me) a piece of property in Cape Charles, that’d be just dandy. It really is a beautiful place and I’m surprised it did not make Forbes’ “Best Places to Live” list.

Really and truly.

I’ll be expanding this post as the days go by (these picture-heavy posts take time), but here’s a few very interesting homes I found on the main drag into Cape Charles.

To read more about Sears Homes, click here:

The Aladdin Sheffield was a very popular house for Aladdin.

Here's an Aladdin Sheffield in Cape Charles, Virginia (on the Eastern Shore)

____

This was one of Sears' biggest and nicest homes.

Right down the street from the Sheffield (see above) is the Sears Glenn Falls. Although it's partly obscured by the trees, you can see the familiar lines of the Glenn Falls.

____

The Pheonix is one of Sears' most unusual kit homes. Interesting design and lots of fun details.

Sears Pheonix - in the flesh - in Cape Charles, Virginia

Side view of the Pheonix

____

Sears Somerset

The porch has been altered, but I'd be willing to be money that this is indeed a Sears Somerset.

____

Sears Walton

This "Walton" is one of two, side by side, in Cape Charles, Virginia

And you thought your kitchen was small? The ad below came from a 1925 architectural magazine and the ad was promoting the fine, smooth drain board (on the right). After The Great War (also known as The War to End All Wars, as President Wilson assured us), there was a fantastic housing shortage. Housing analysts estimated that 1-2 million housing units were needed immediately to ameliorate the housing shortage caused by World War I. And there was something else going on after World War I.

Hyperinflation.

For a few months immediately following the Armistice (11-11-1919), hyperinflation hit America hard. The price of building materials increased 100% in some places. Because of this and because of the housing shortage, many people converted their spacious single family homes into boarding houses and installed a few of these tiny kitchen units to accommodate their new paying tenants.

Notice, that’s a refrigerator on the right side and a gas stove on the left, and that’s a Veribrite Drain Board (for kitchens of all sizes) on the right top.

This is one wee tiny kitchen (From 1925 American Carpenter Magazine).