CRUISE SHIP FOR THE RICH

Want to go on a cruise on a ship that was built for rich people who can afford to spend just about anything for luxurious pleasures?

It's the Regent Seven Seas Explorer. Almost an acre of marble was used to decorate the interiors.  It cost more than $450 million to build and become what it claims to be -- "the most luxurious ship in the world."

Walls are decked out with $7 million in art including Picasso lithographs and Degas originals, and the menus are laden with lobster, caviar, pate foie gras, escargot, and an international array of gourmet dishes. Of course, every dish served in the Seven Seas Explorer’s various eateries can also be delivered to patrons’ rooms at any time of day. If you dine in the Regency's super-elegant Pacific Rim Restaurant, the Tibetan prayer-wheel sculpture on display near the door weighs as much as three cars and cost $500,000.

Here the main entrance.

This is one of the 5 dining rooms.

Here is a typical bedroom, plus sitting room suite.

Of course you have a private deck:

You can swim in this teak-lined swimming pool or the larger main pool below.

On the Regency Explorer's Caribbean cruise, a single passenger pays $1200 a night for the smallest suite. The fanciest suite, the $10,000 Regency suite, has a Steinway Grand Piano, an $80,000 mattress and a pillow menu, so you can choose your pillow. You can also ask for the $150,000 Savoir bed. Savoir reputedly makes the best bed in the world.

Top-notch room service includes Lalique wine glasses; silverware is Christofle. There are two sets of dishes: Bernardaud and Versace. Overhead you'll see Preciosa Chrystal Chandeliers and the glass on the walls and windows is Murano. Visiting the bathroom, anything/everything you might need is available -- they're equipped like L'Occitane cosmetics shops.

Where do you want to go? Prices start at $5,499 (U.S.) per person in a Veranda Suite for a 10-night round-trip Miami cruise, to $134,999 in a Regent Suite for a 27-night cruise to Copenhagen from London.

Um....

Well, if we can scrounge up another hundred-thousand or so, for the wardrobe my husband and I would need, I'd love to take the 27-night cruise. Even if we went to Miami, we'd need fabulous clothes to go with the fantastically fabulous, ridiculously, excessively expensive everything else.

Hmmm....

Picturing this, imagining all this, is by itself, a fun fantasy vacation from one's hectic busy life in a bustling big city....

....mmmmm....

GEENA & ANNETTE

I like Annette Bening -- whatever she "plays" always involves me and seems real. I like  Geena Davis -- whatever she plays involves me and seems real.

Both these women are over the Hollywood Star hill -- they're forty +  -- a loud age number that suggests that a woman is no longer ... What?

Geena, early 60's

Annette, late 50's

Looking at the photos closely, I see crows' feet, the center of forehead think wrinkle, indentations in their cheeks as they smile. They do not have young faces. Even so, if you saw either of them on the street, you'd excitedly stare and probably want to rush over and say "I'm a fan and I've loved your work for years."

I especially loved Geena the first time she holds up a store imitating the Brad Pitt character she slept with. I loved Annette in the scene where President Michael Douglas asks if she's nervous about sex, and she appears naked, except for wearing one of his shirts.

Burned in my mind is a vision of Geena, excited, bravely bold, and Annette, fearlessly humorously loving. There are other not young, over the hill actresses I love -- Sher, Shirley MacLaine, and just about anything Bette Davis did.

The Mount Everest of being beautiful, staying beautiful is a terrifying doomed ascent. I speak for myself, but also translate what's in the minds of many women who would love to be not aware, daily, hourly, of how they look whenever/wherever they see their reflection in a mirror -- in a bathroom, a window, a storefront, or a tablespoon. Yes, you can check the state of your lipstick, your mascara, or the shine on your nose in any piece of silverware.

Do women in cultures where old age is revered feel this way? I suspect they are aware the way I'm aware. It is a real realty.

Aging is dying. A plant dies; a human dies. Let this fact of life -- dying -- inspire you to use your time, more seconds and more and more seconds -- better-fully-richly.

Trying helps.