I encountered a post on the PopCrunch blog this past week, The 15 Hottest TV Moms of All Time, which if you don’t remember what life on planet earth was like before there was television, might be forgiven its “all time” hyperbole.

We do know that casting roles of 30 to 40-something actresses for television fills in the entertainment media ‘wasteland’ in between honest-to-starlet status as a Sweet Young Thing and the usual grandmother roles older actresses can get if anyone in Hollywood remembers their names when they get that old. These glamorous middle-age women all radiated a certain ageless beauty from the small screen that made them memorable, and for some, allowed them to move gracefully into the older-lady roles.

The #1 pick is Florence Henderson as Carol Brady. And while that role was good for her after she grew out of the starlet stage she began with in Oklahoma!, I can’t say she was all that hot in the movie Shakes the Clown. Notables like Desperate Housewives’ Gabriella Solis and Married… With Children’s Peg Bundy are on the list, along with some whose TV shows I apparently missed altogether. Go on over to see if your favorites are included.

Meanwhile, one may wonder about those Hollywood types and how much of their long-lasting good looks, perfect skin and ageless beauty is mechanical – obtained via creative plastic surgery – and how much is attributed to outrageously expensive beauty treatments and cosmetics. We older ladies definitely know that one could spend a large chunk of annual income just trying to defeat wrinkles, dry skin, gravity, split hair ends, etc., and let’s be honest – most of us don’t bother anymore.

So it was with some sense of relief that I found a post on Brainz listing 10 Home Remedies for Beautiful Skin that just happened to include some tried-and-true ingredients this Granny swears by. The sugar and olive oil scrub is honestly the best way to soften tough skin anywhere that I’ve ever encountered, and olive oil is the #1 best general skin treatment out there so long as you’re past the acne stage. Oatmeal, honey, yogurt, lemon, cucumbers, avacado, chamomile and green tea… all the so-natural sounding stuff in the expensive treatments can all be used at home by YOU without having to spend a fortune.

Let us know your favorite at-home concoctions for staying beautiful, or at least less-than-mummified. One thing not on the list that my readers who live outside inner cities can try is a chickweed bath. I gather a good handful of fresh chickweed, rinse it in cold water and tie it into a muslin bag. Run hot bathwater over the bag, let it steep as the water cools to tolerable and take a liesurely soak. The chickweed will give you a slick feeling all over, moisturizes everywhere and stays with you. After drying off, go ahead and apply a little olive oil to make it last a bit longer, and you’ll be soft all over!

Live-in daughter and #1 grandson left for Florida just over a week ago. She’s signed on to help an old friend near Gainesville undergoing radiation and chemo for cancer, he’s working for his Dad to earn money for college and maybe a car. They’ll go to Oklahoma from there at the end of August to visit great-grandma, he’s put off enrollment until January.

Which is actually a good thing, I hear. College can be incredibly expensive, and often high school grads don’t do well if they start with just two months’ worth of break. Spending two years in academic transfer courses at the community college (all just basic requirements, straight transfer Junior year to UNC) can be a mellower introduction to college life and save a bundle.

The way it works here is that the community college is geared to cost a few hundred dollars less than the basic available Pell Grant for full-timers. Those few hundred dollars can be used for books and fees and supplies. Now, you can’t get your Pell Grant until after you’re accepted and registered, and you can’t register until you pay tuition. So to get started we and his Mom are somehow going to have to come up with the thousand or so dollars it’ll take for him to start. The grant will come in about the time his first semester is over, to be used to pay for his next semester. And we figure it’ll be January before we’ve saved that much.

We all know it’s very expensive to go to college. Daughter is still repaying her own student loans! So we’re hoping that once grandson’s on track in the system, grants and scholarships will cover the bulk of costs. Of course, in the current free-falling economy a college degree isn’t worth much (daughter has been working retail for peanuts these last few years because that’s all the jobs available). It’s just that in ANY sort of stratified economy a college degree is better than no college degree. The world – and this “artsy” region – simply doesn’t need another starving artist.

At any rate, Grandma’s just now bid so long to company that arrived just hours after the kids left, so this is Day-1 of MY vacation! No bad B Zombie movies too loud day and night in the background, no ten tons of laundry to do every day (I think they just throw clean clothes back because they’re too lazy to re-fold them), no big meals to prepare, no constant worrying about who’s coming, who’s going and who’s lost in the woods somewhere. Aaaaahhhhh… now if I only had a hot tub…