#robertagale

Dear Universe,

When did I become a sentiment whore and start ending all of my emails with love, luv, or xoxo? Next step is smiley faces. 

If it's a meno-phase, please get me the hell out of it--NOW!

xoxo

Note: I've been busy moistening my parched fare lately, so while I do that, an old Maryland friend is filling in for me today.

Kissy, kissy, darlings! It's Eleanor Ferrari, the Charm City's Mistress of Mouthing Off and Goddess of Gossip!

I've been hearing so much lately about this trendy new life phase called menopause  -- seems like all the fab kids in the TMZ are on it--or want to be!

Why, immediately after she popped out that adorable harlot-to-be Willow--well actually right after the post-birth tattooing ceremony-- Pink told me that she just couldn't wait to stop making Pink eggs and lose every bit of elasticity in her skin!  Can't wait to see the barcode on the back of her neck shrink down to double-digits!

Saw Tori Spelling the other day slumming in Venice with a few of those babies she pops out whenever she feels like doing another reality show. Her hunky hubby, Dean, pulled me aside and whispered (love that tickly beard!) that he hopes the big M will happen any second now, so her Beverly Hill 9021-hole will be too parched to peter! My condolences to the Canadian gigolo until then.

Old New Kid on the Block Joey McIntyre loves doin' in Animal-Style at the In-N-Out Burger on Sunset --I accosted him there with his wife Barrett (she's a bit plain--perhaps he should have picked when his hits made the charts!) and his three kids--including a rather colicky newborn. 

While Joey was ordering well-done fries, Barrett pushed me to the ketchup station to tell me she’s counting the seconds until her “end of a sentence” (period, for my poor uninitiated darlings, and what a ruthless sentence it is!) Turns out Joey may have been the youngest NKOTB, but he certainly wasn’t the smallest by any “stretch” of the imagination. Poor Mrs. Joey must have a canal as big as any in Venice!

Damn if my face was doing OK for the few days I kept it out of the sun, when it happened again—only worse this time. I figured last time I didn't slop on enough Neutrogena Ultra Sheer Dry Touch 55 Sun block with Helioplex (Somewhere a scientist is ruing the day he discovered the formula for a helix, only to have it bastardized by the same company that makes stuff that people slather on whatever part of their fat-ass body that isn't covered by a bathing suit.)

 OK, so I must have rubbed in a golf ball-sized lump of sunscreen just on my face and neck--which is the recommended amount for your entire body according to the golfing mag I read out of desperation at a doctor's office.

Advice and amounts vary as much as demographic readership. Cosmopolitan suggestively recommends one shot glass per torso while Women's Health cheerfully advises me to divide my body into three sections: feet/ legs, torso/back, and arms/ neck/face --and use a grape- sized blob for each. This seems to echo Women's Health editorial statement advising the little ladies to segment themselves into a similar triad: wife, mother, and non-entity.

When in doubt, I tend to listen to the magazine that’s closest to the register.

So after slathering golf balls, shot glasses and grapes of goo my body, I put on my 50 SPF sunscreen hat with the neck strap, the one that already looks stupid enough in a cool color, let alone in canary yellow which was the only one left on the LL Bean clearance page.

But despite slopping on the emollient , despite the ugly hat, despite hanging out in the shade with the 70-year-olds pre-aqua aerobics class;  the rash, the welts, the burning, the pain, came back with a vengeance hours later.

No calamine facial for me this time—I’m bringing out the big guns—cortisone cream in otherworldly strength-- not the wimpy crap you get over the counter,

I’m really leaning toward the sunscreen as the culprit—I may have suddenly developed an allergy to one or more of the ingredients—or maybe the chemicals are working in tandem with the anti-depressants I take in an attempt to stave off hormonal depression.

What kind of person suddenly develops an allergy to something she's never been bother by before?