Odds & Ends Around the Valley

All Dressed Up

“I don’t even carry pants for little girls anymore--they won’t wear them. They all want to wear dresses now, and the more roses and bows and lace the better,” said Kathy Kahn, owner of The Little Prints, a children’s clothing store in Woodland Hills.

Two-year-old Olivia Korenberg of Sherman Oaks refuses to wear pants, although her 4-year-old sister Emilie will sometimes wear them. “They say pants are for boys,” said their mother, Francoise Korenberg. “We dance a lot and they like the way the dress turns when they turn.”

Some little girls love dresses so much that they wear two of them simultaneously. “We see a lot of little girls layer their cotton knit summer dresses,” said Cassie Thompson, general manager of The Chocolate Giraffe, a children’s clothing store in Encino. “They wear a sleeveless one over one with short sleeves, then use a T-shirt ring to bunch up the top one so you can see the other one underneath.”

Another popular summer look for little girls is skeggings--bicycle-type shorts with a skirt sewn over them.

More Than 31 Flavors

Her job is to eat ice cream every day, sometimes as much as half a gallon. “I’m forever buying ice cream at the supermarket, I’m forever going to competitors’ stores to see what flavors they have and I have samples sent to me from all around the country when someone in another region introduces a new flavor,” said Carol Kirby, vice president of Baskin-Robbins USA Co., the ice cream manufacturer with more than 2,250 franchises nationwide.

Californians are about average in their ice-cream consumption, she said. “The highest per-capita is in New England, although you’d think it would be warmer places,” Kirby said.

Since 1946, Baskin-Robbins has introduced more than 650 flavors, and the formulas and flavor essences of each are stored in the “flavor library” at the company’s Burbank headquarters.

According to Kirby, pralines ‘n’ cream is the company’s biggest seller. “As far as flavors that didn’t seem to appeal to anyone, there was date ice cream, or pistachio ice cream that wasn’t green, or ice cream with pears in it,” she said.

Some flavors that aren’t successful in the United States do very well overseas, such as mango, kiwi and papaya ice creams, which are popular in Southeast Asia and Japan. Red bean, sweet corn and green tea ice creams have all be specifically developed for Japan. “We didn’t even try to mass market them here,” Kirby said.

Other flavors make comebacks, such as peanut butter and jelly ice cream. “It didn’t do very well about 10 or 15 years ago, but it’s very popular right now,” Kirby said.

The Big-Buck Trucks

Can you imagine spending $100,000 for a truck and not even taking it for a test drive? “It’s not necessary,” said Tom Roch of Sun Valley, who has been selling trucks for 35 years. He now sells Peterbilts at Engs Motor Truck Co. in Pico Rivera.

“Just driving a truck tractor around the block, you’re not going to learn anything. You have to carry a trailer and a load to know what it’s going to do, so we rarely go out on test drives. Well, with new people you have to do it occasionally,” he says.

Today’s top-of-the-line trucks resemble compact RVs. “They have sleeping compartments with refrigerators and microwaves. Some have bunk beds that are full-sized twins. And television is very common in a sleeper today,” Roch said. “They have sinks with running water. Some have their own auxiliary power system so that when they’re parked they can have electricity other than from the batteries. And they’ve got CD players with high-quality speakers.”

Then there are those glorious lights. “It’s up to each individual’s taste. Some love to load them up with lights so they look like a Christmas tree coming down the highway,” Roch said.

Peterbilt trucks are the No. 1 seller in this area, according to Roch, although nationally they are in roughly fifth place. When asked if he owned a Peterbilt, Roch replied, “Oh, heavens no! But they are fun to drive.”

Creative Visualizations

Picture yourself sitting alone on a beach, enveloped in radiant sunlight, lost in the sound of the surf, your feet snuggled into the warm sand. Are you there yet?

Every Wednesday from 7 to 8:30 p.m., cancer patients from around the Valley meet, along with their spouses and family members, in a room at AMI Tarzana Regional Medical Center to listen to this and other relaxing scenes being described to them by Marilyn Stolzman, Ph.D., a psychotherapist with a private practice in Woodland Hills.

Called “Cancer Support through Creative Visualization,” the free weekly counseling group is “an add-on that patients can do for themselves in conjunction with prescribed medical treatment. You use the picture-creating part of your mind--the right brain--to create positive images to move you in a positive direction,” Stolzman said.

Patients are encouraged to repeat mental exercises daily to help them manage stress and to even help control nausea.

The group is sponsored by the Burbank-based Hematology, Oncology, Palliation Education Foundation and the medical center.

Carol Lyons of Canoga Park, a frequent participant, was diagnosed as having breast cancer a year ago. “I often feel out of control, and this group helps me feel more in control,” she said. Lyons is accompanied by her husband, Harry, who uses the techniques to help him with his heart ailments.

For information, contact Sue Shearer at (818) 708-5460.

Overheard

“It couldn’t be any harder to get my daughter into Radcliffe than it is getting her into a local nursery school.” --Mother of toddler at Power of Play in Sherman Oaks