Prior to my divorce, I hadn’t asked anyone out since 1976 when I asked Richie Brooks to be my date for the senior prom. In other words, it had been awhile.

Being thrown back into the dating pool, I had to sink or swim. I learned a lot in a hurry.

For instance, which is better? Dinner or drinks?

In the beginning, I had dinner with my first dates. Bad choice. Too much time and too much money and too many calories. Drinks are better and more affordable and it’s easier to split the tab. I preferred to pay my own way, but - I didn’t argue if he insisted on paying.

Secondly, how do you talk to a guy you just met?  It’s easy. Treat him as you’d want to be treated, and don’t ramble on about your ex, your health problems, your flaky skin, your weight or your diet.

Ask questions. Remember, she who asks the questions controls the conversation. Learn about him and his interests, because your goal is to figure out if he’s worthy of a second date.

Next, there’s the good night kiss. Many men will move in for the good-night kiss at the end of the first date. If you’re already feeling like there’s not going to be a second date, avoid the kiss. It just muddies the waters.

When a not-so-great first date was drawing to a close, my preference was to step back and extend my hand for a warm and meaningful handshake. Then I’d say, “Thank you so much for a delightful evening” and walk away quickly. This simple action spared me many awkward “what do we do now” moments.

If he asks for a second date, be honest and straight-forward. If you don’t want a second date, have a ready-made phrase ready for moments such as this. Mine was, “I had a lovely time but I don’t feel like we’re a good match.”

Don’t get mired in an argument over this. If he wants to argue the point, just say, “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to change my mind on this,” and walk away.

If you do want a second date, be clear and forthright. Above all, ignore those so-called “Rules” that tell women to play games in order to snare a man.

Be authentic and be real. Don’t play a part.

In short, treat Mr. First Date the way you’d want to be treated, with honesty and grace and sensitivity and forthrightness and good manners.

Next:  Red Flags to Watch Out For!

Buy Rose’s book here.

A gorgeous 25-year-old woman named America Ferrera plays “Betty Suarez” on the popular ABC sitcom “Ugly Betty.”  The Hollywood-inflicted “uglying” of this Hispanic beauty is a paper-thin veneer, and really does little to hide Miss Ferrera’s natural good looks. It’s not hard to look beyond the extra-bushy eyebrows, gray-metal braces, uncoiffed hair and unattractive glass frames, and see that Ms. Ferrera is quite beautiful.

In addition to her lovely facial features, Ms. Ferrara has a well toned, shapely, feminine form. Slap on some braces and stir up the extra-bushy eyebrows and voila, you’ve got instant ugly? If that’s the case, there’s little hope for the rest of us.

If “Ugly Betty” is the measure of an ugly woman, we’re all in trouble deep. We “average women” are in trouble. Mainstream media is constantly force-feeding us the crazy notion that we have to be beautiful to be worthy, or even worse, to be loved.

In the powerful book, Flesh Wounds author Virginia L. Blum talks about an interview she had with a famous plastic surgeon. He told her,

The way you look has a lot to do with whether you’re going to attract somebody else. Let’s be pragmatic about the fact that if a woman cease to be attractive physically, it affects the physical, intimate relationship. I’ve seen women who have not had particularly good relationships or haven’t had a relationship with men for a long time and I make them look younger and prettier and they go on to get married and have wonderful, stable relationships. There’s absolutely no question that the face-lift helped them. We live in a real physical world (p. 127).

Ms. Blum responds to this with her own insights:

[The plastic surgeon] spoke with such authority. Yoked to his honesty is a kind of fiction about the transformative possibilities of plastic surgery. You can change her life. You can make her someone whom someone else would be willing to love. More to the point, if she isn’t succeeding on the dating/marriage market, it must be because she’s not attractive enough. That’s the most unsettling part of his account, isn’t it?

The self-evident undesirability of the woman who isn’t young and pretty. Young and pretty. You can’t have pretty without the young. As a feminist, I am indignant. Outraged (Flesh Wounds: The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery, Virginia L. Blum, p. 127).

Like Ms. Blum, I also feel indignant and outraged. And Ugly Betty may be an award-winning sitcom, but the problem with it is, it perpetuates the tiresome message that’s been drilled into women’s heads for decades now. Ugly is a problem. Fix ugly with money. Spend money. Get pretty and then you’ll get love, because then you’ll be worthy of love.

In other words, money buys love.

In The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf writes that women’s magazines make their money by selling women on the idea that they’re suffering from a disease of “terminal ugliness,” and that this opens the to sell billions of dollars of “cures.”

And that seems to be the subtle message of Ugly Betty. We “less-than-beautiful” women need to spend a little more money on better glasses and better haircuts and invisible braces and electrolysis and then - only then - will the burdensome mantle of “ugly” be lifted off our shoulders and our true beauty will be revealed. And then, maybe then, we’ll find true love.

We just need to spend a little more money to be cured of that horrible disease of “terminal ugliness.”

I live for that happy day when I turn on the evening news and find that the male news anchors are young, svelte, well-coiffed and gorgeous, and the women news anchors are pudgy, untanned, hairless and unkempt. That’ll be my proof that the age of enlightenment has begun.

In the 1930s, The “Monitor-top Refrigerator” quickly became one of General Electric’s most popular appliances. Its design was based on a sound principle and a highly efficient plan: The compressor sat atop the fridge, and heat extracted from the appliance cabinet naturally moved up and away from the refrigerator.

According to all reports, these were also unusually well-built appliances, with a life expectancy of 25 years - or more. Today, appliance aficionados are always on the look-out for these vintage refrigerators, because with a little work and a few new parts, they can be restored to their original condition and live on - indefinitely.

Heretofore, no one has created a reproduction Monitor Top refrigerator which is a surprise, especially consider how hot these used appliances have become. A thoroughly restored three-door Monitor Top fridge (fully restored) can fetch $10,000 or more.  For more information and detail on these appliances, click here.

When I was researching The Houses That Sears Built, I read 32 years of American Carpenter and Builder, a popular building magazine of the early 1900s. Whilst studying its pages, I found an ad for a Monitor Cupola and a few bells rang in my tired brain. Was this where the “Monitor Top” fridge got its name? The resemblance between this Monitor Cupola and the GE’s compressor was sound. I’ve googled all the terms I can think to google and yet to no avail. I love to know - is this the source of the moniker Monitor-top?

Update: A friend found a link explaining that monitor-top GE refrigerators got their name from the iron-clad Monitor Ship from The Civil War. Maybe that’s where Monitor Cupolas got their name?

Want to read more about Rose? Click here.

Ad from 1915 building magazine showing Monitor vent

An image from a 1930 magazine, showing the GE Monitor Top

Full ad from a 1930 magazine

The time really does go by so quickly. It seems like a couple years ago that my youngest daughter Corey (now 22 years old) was just a baby. When she was little, my dear Mom would drop by our little house on Arizona Street in Portsmouth, just long enough to hug me and hug the baby and drop off a little gift. Sometimes it was a potted mum or sometimes it was a box of Little Debbie’s or sometimes it was a $20 bill to buy ourselves a little treat.

She’d look at my babies and say, “I know this is hard to believe, but this chapter of your life will be over before you know it. In no time at all, they’re grown and gone and what remains are the memories. I know this feels like an intense time of life, but enjoy it. Relish the moments because you’ll have the rest of your life to reflect on and remember these happy days.”

My mother was very wise.

On Thanksgiving Day, my husband and I sat quietly with each other in our spacious dining room and enjoyed our freshly-cooked turkey and home-made stuffing and yams and pumpkin pie. I’m sure we were both thinking about our children. I’ve had a couple Thanksgivings utterly alone and I can tell you, it’s 5000% better to have someone with whom to share a holiday and yet, your thoughts return to those days when there were little kids running around the house making their happy noises.

Corey - about seven months old in this photo

From 2002 - 2006, I had 70 first dates. And I learned a lot about men during this experience. And based on what I’ve observed amongst the current crop of single men, I believe that for many of them, this is their first incarnation on two legs.

If you want your own examples of this swinish behavior, log on to an internet dating site and scan a few male profiles. Just do a search using the keyword, “fat” or “overweight.” Another fun word is “chemistry.” (And if you want to see how unoriginal most men are, look up “Prince Charming.”) Or if you really want to see the ugly side of single men, do a keyword search of “bitch.” (Men freely use that word to describe any woman who does not conform to their twisted notions of Dream Woman.)

“Sorry, but physical appearance is important,” writes a 40-something man in the space where he describes his ideal mate.

Another man writes, “If you are overweight or obese, please don’t waste my time” or worse, “If you are grossly overweight, please get some help.”  And then there’s the kinder, gentler version, “I am only attracted to slender women.”

The part that is almost funny about this is the men’s profile picture. Many of the guys that are making the most outrageous demands for their life partner have serious weight problems of their own. And yet, despite their own glaring inadequacies and defects (and bloated bellies), they have a very perverted and distorted sense of entitlement.

Hollywood fuels the fire. From Beauty and the Beast to Hitch, it is always about the pathetic loser man hooking up with gorgeous, perfectly-shaped, well-endowed and legs-to-die-for babe. How many movies offer the contrary theme, of an ugly woman scoring the gorgeous guy? None that I can think of. The only good thing that happens to ugly women in movies is that sometimes, they’re portrayed as powerful women. But somewhere in that 90-minute flick, those powerful ugly women are stripped of their independence and strength and left in a lamentable state; powerless, beauty-less and usually, alone and lonely.

In the popular book, He’s Just Not That Into You, the co-authors suggest that perhaps some of the onus is on women and that we should expect more from men and stop putting up with pig-like behavior from the less-fair sex. In their concluding comments, they suggest that men might be forced into better behavior if women started demanding it.

Sounds good in theory, but I’m not sure I agree with this in practice. Women are already assigned with too much responsibility for men and their recalcitrant ways. We’re already overwhelmed and overloaded with the busy-ness of trying to stay “attractive” for men and grow our careers and shrink our bodies and make healthy life-style choices and make sure that our children don’t end up on a psychiatrist’s couch before the age of 15 because their single mother screwed them up for life. Let’s not heap “101 ways to subtly improve the bad behavior of the male species” on women’s plates, too. We’re all busy enough with our own lives. Why should we busy ourselves with the improvement of men, too?

To read more of Rose’s new book, click here.

I purchased this picture on eBay for $3.00 many years ago. What a thrill to find an original picture of a Sears Home from the 1910s!

This house came out of the Sears Roebuck catalog and was shipped in 30,000 pieces.

The house was shipped by railroad and after the boxcar arrived it was moved over to a siding. You then had 24 hours to unload all those pieces of house!  Typically, it took many trips to and from the train station to get the boxcar unloaded and that’s why Sears Homes are often found within 1-2 miles of railroad tracks.  Each piece of lumber was stamped with a letter and numbers to facilitate assembly (see image at bottom of screen).

A 75-page leather-bound instruction book, with the homeowner’s name embossed in gold on the cover, gave precise directions on the proper placement of those 30,000 pieces of house. The book offered this somber (and probably wise) warning:  “Do not take anyone’s advice as to how this building should be assembled.”

In 1908, Sears estimated that a carpenter would charge $450.00 to erect your spacious two-story foursquare, with its hipped roof and a lone shed dormer in the attic. However, Sears also promised that a man with an elementary understanding of construction techniques would be able to assemble the house.

According to their calculations, a painter would want $34.50 to paint the two-story house.  The plasterer’s bill would be around $200, they figured, which included nailing up 840 square yards of wooden lath and applying three coats of plaster.

Masonry (block, brick, cement) and plaster were not included in the kit, but the Bill of Materials List advised that 1300 cement blocks would be needed for the basement walls and foundation.

The salutary effects of living in a modern home were extolled throughout the pages of the Sears catalogs. Beyond the financial freedom and comfort in old age that owning a Sears home would surely bring, Sears promised that their modern homes would improve the health, morals and well-being of its occupants.

The term “Modern Home” was part of the vernacular in the early 1900s. It was a descriptive term indicating that a house had modern amenities (that we take for granted today), such as a primitive, centralized heating system, electricity and indoor plumbing. In some cases, the houses were more modern than the communities in which they were built.

An original photo of a Sears House from about 1912 or so

Here's the catalog page from a 1913 Sears Modern Homes catalog

Picture of marked lumber from a Sears House. The mark is usually found about 2-8" from the end of the beam and is often in black ink. The "D" represented that this was a 2x8, C for a 2x6 and B for a 2x4. This mark, together with that 75-page instruction book facilitated construction.

To buy an autographed copy of  The Houses That Sears Built, click here. It makes the perfect Christmas present!

Did I mention that it makes the perfect Christmas present?