THE LAW OF DIMINISHING RETURNS

(the law of) diminishing returns
phrase of diminish—

1. Used to refer to a point at which the level of profits or benefits gained is less than the amount of money or energy invested—

I talked to a man recently, a very accomplished man, who acts like he has the world by the tail. And by that I mean, he looks down on everyone who hasn’t had the good fortune of being him.

Whatever life decisions you’ve made, how you’ve chosen to invest your money, even what music you listen to is met with butt-puckered lips that to go along, like a fine wine pairing, with his disapproving face. (I have it on good authority that when you purchase them at the Smug Store—they come as a pair.)

That’s okay, dude. Gimme all ya got. I worked in Beverly Hills for two decades. Water off a duck’s back.

Anyway, all evening long, as I listened to his risk-averse, conservative, privileged and inflexible views on life, I couldn’t help but wonder, How does his poor wife put up with this shit?

Then I remembered. She does it by trotting off on one of her horses, that’s how.

Oh, dear God, how I wish I had that ability.

The ability to bend to someone else’s will. The ability to let someone else run my life. To bankroll it with a marionette’s worth of strings attached. And then buy me a pony to reward my compliance.

I wish I had a price for my silence. It would have made my life SO much easier.

Because, you see, I was born with a big mouth. A big, loud, mouth that says stuff that makes guys like that shrivel in their underpants. Stuff like, “You’re not the boss of me!” And “Take your fucking pony and shove it!”

Some women trade all of the flack, disagreements, head-butting, and power struggles that happen in relationships for diamonds, vacations, fast cars, and ponies.

Not me. I call that foreplay… or Tuesday.

Unfortunately for me, (and probably for any man who has had a serious relationship with me) I have never been one of those women you could placate with bling. Biting my tongue and swallowing my opinions is much too high of a price to pay—for such little reward.

The law of diminishing returns.
Just one of the laws I have come to live by.
Along with no right turn on red, and chew before swallowing.

Carry on,
xox

Hi guys,

There was a time back in 2013 where I would sit up in bed, in the dark, first thing in the morning, and write down whatever came to mind. Often, it was poetry. I’m not kidding. Like, rhymey with a message kinda stuff.

I’d marinate in this early morning creative soup and jot down my notes for about fifteen minutes and then get on with the rest of my completely ordinary life.

I say that because even though they were just this side of craptastic as fine poetry goes, it felt special and rather extraordinary and I regret not doing it anymore. These days you can find me practicing my tandem snoring and drooling routine until the last possible minute because, well, I want to medal when it becomes an Olympic sport AND I write all day. The poetry has a myriad of entry points in twenty-four hours—so why write in the dark?

But lately I’ve been thinking…maybe I should pick up this habit again. Couldn’t hurt, right?

This one made me snort-laugh. I hope it has the same effect on you because:
Everything can be reduced to a food analogy.
And nothing too serious is going on here. Just livin’ life.

We all need to remember that!

Carry on,
xox

Whilst sitting and lamenting that your life is in shreds,
Tis no faux pas, there’s been no flaw,
Even though you’re filled with dread.

Get up, and make coleslaw instead.

The Universe may leave you for dead,
Life’s thrown up in the air, there’s water to tread,
You keep ruminating, worrying, running it through your head,

Don’t do that, make coleslaw instead.

Now, you can take lemons and make lemonade,
Or you can find problems that sour your day,
The choices are easy when acceptance is present.

Get up and make coleslaw instead!

*This is a reprise of five posts I did that started back in October 2013. The entire debacle is celebrating it’s tenth anniversary this week, and in retrospect, it changed me in more ways than I care to admit. I feel like a completely different person!  

Loves, we all have our shit, and sometimes that shit can roll you into the gutter and redirect you because you’re too dense to get the hint(s), and in the process facilitate a huge life change. I got both rolled and redirected so…yeah.

I’ve formatted them back to back to be able to read them all at the same time. It’s longer than usual, but hey, it’s the weekend.

Carry on! xox

Epic Fail or Epic Win?

I owned a business in Studio City, California.

It was several years ago now.
I left a good job that I had been at for close to 20 yrs.
I put all my proverbial eggs in that one basket.
My money, my creative juices, my blood, sweat, and tears.

I was excited at the prospect of being my own boss, of displaying my wild ideas for all the world to see,
using the skills I had acquired throughout my life.
I felt vulnerable, really vulnerable for the first time ever because I was putting myself out there in the arena, on the big stage, with no excuses.
This store would be a reflection of me, curated by moi, everything I loved, cared about, and thought was cool.

This was it! I was 50 and this was the beginning of my beautiful “second act”.

The first year was awesome!
It was tons of hard work with no days off, but I was okay with that.
This was my baby.
It needed me to nurture it, to make it my only focus, and all was well.

The following year was 2008.
Things got dicey.
There was a feeling of dread in the air like everyone was silently holding their breath waiting for the shoe to drop.
Money slowed waaaaaay down.

Then it was 2009 and the entire closet of shoes dropped and it was loud!

The bottom seemed to fall out of everything.
People were scared. Fear reigned supreme.
I did my best to stay out of the fray, knowing that the fray is never where you want to find yourself. People who had money would still stop by and shop, but when they did they confided that even they didn’t want to be seen walking out with bags of new purchases.
Shopping Shame. It was like nothing I’d ever seen in all my years in retail.

Everything that was creative and wonderful and fun was gone.
Replaced by unpaid bills, days of not a single customer, and sleepless nights with me wondering how I got myself into this! How had I taken such an abundant, wonderful life and created this perfect shit storm?

Then in September of that year, God, in her infinite wisdom (and because she was tired of hearing me complain) took pity on me.
But as we all know, God has a wicked sense of humor and a flair for the dramatic.
She sent a flood. And not just any flood. A biblically rare and random urban flood that snuck up in the middle of the night and wiped out my store.
Bible. I’m serious.
One of the firemen at the scene told me he’d never seen water make a hard right turn. But it did, and it all collected around and inside my sweet little store.
The one that was trying so hard but just couldn’t stay afloat (see what I did there?).

This was the first time I asked myself the question:
Epic fail? Or epic win?
What do you think so far?

(To be continued)…

Epic Fail or Epic Win Part II

Sometimes we have no idea what the Universe has in store for us.
We can have our sails aimed into the wind, sailing full speed ahead, when in an instant, lightning will strike, and a giant rogue wave will capsize us and shred our boat to smithereens.

We think we have it all figured out. Right? I KNOW I did!

But life took me by the shoulders and spun me around, just like a mother does to a kid with a chocolate smeared face who lies and says she washed it.
It shook me like an Etch-a-Sketch and sent me packing….in the exact opposite direction of where I thought I should be going.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I can tolerate, even appreciate, a little course correction at times.
But I don’t like drama, and I like to think I don’t draw it in.
Now, this. This was something so ridiculously out of left-field—the total loss of my business. Overnight.

I had plenty of insurance, so I wasn’t worried… at the beginning.

With the other stores having only twelve inches of water damage and mine under four feet of slime and muck, recovery mode looked different for me.
It wasn’t clothes and shoes that had gotten wet, or the cosmetic damage the restaurants sustained.
I had one-of-a-kind furniture and original art, art glass lamps and perfectly aged leather chairs, you know, stuff that shouldn’t marinate in four feet of filthy water for six hours.

I heard everyone saying: “at least three weeks to get back up and running.”
That seemed like a long time to be closed up.
I began to ask myself: Did I even want to get back up and running? Things really hadn’t felt like they were running at that point— more like a pathetic commando crawl.

Was it a possibility? Would I even be able to repair the inventory?
Lord knows I didn’t have the capital to buy more.
That’s when the first of two miracles occurred.
Surprisingly, I even knew when they were happening that they were miracles, that’s how in my face they were.
(To be continued)…

Epic Fail or Epic Win (Miracle I)

Webster’s dictionary defines a miracle as:
“A surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency.”

I’ll agree with that.

A miracle also makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end and your heart beat faster than is survivable.
Or at least it does that to me.

The first miracle occurred not too long after I arrived at my store to find it ankle-deep in a slimy, sludgy, mud, which was the lovely parting gift the flood had left me.
I was walking around in circles with my mouth ajar. I mean I was professionally assessing the damage.
Like the people on the evening news say when something awful has just happened, you really do go numb and it is beyond your comprehension to believe it is happening to YOU.

The file cabinet behind my desk had filled with water, so I was busy peeling apart my insurance papers to find the number to call, to get the adjuster out quickly.

It was 6:30am the Sunday of Labor Day weekend. Good luck with that!

When I finally did reach him, he informed me that he was away for the weekend and would get back to me Tuesday. Like my toilet had overflowed or something.
I told him to turn on the news so he could see me flipping him off on LIVE TV.  Crews from every channel were crawling all over the place, waiting to get in. The fire department had caution taped the shit out of the entire block, and they were doing some cleanup on the street, so we had to prove we were the business owners to even be allowed near the place.

I was inside for about 30 minutes fumbling behind my desk like an addled nit-wit, when a scruffy, middle-aged man walked into the store and started looking around, shaking his head and making a tisking sound.
I was on my phone looking for a flood cleanup company, and when I asked him what he was doing, he ignored me, continuing to walk around tisking, with his hands on his hips. That’s when I asked him nicely to “get the hell out”.

As he left he mumbled something under his breath like “Your insurance is never going to understand and pay you for your this stuff, it’s too esoteric”. My husband, who had fallen into a coma and I both did a cartoon worthy double-take and yelled, “Hey, what did you say?” in unison, like some kind of vaudeville act.
He explained as I took notes. “They’ll deny the claim because flooding is subjective,” he said, “And even if they don’t, they won’t pay replacement cost. Pennies on the dollar…maybe.” Looking at the ground, he pulled something out of the mud with the tip of his shoe, shook his head and told us we were in for a long fight. As he left, almost as an afterthought, he recommended that I call a Public Adjuster. “They’ll take over everything and deal with the insurance company. For a fee of course.”

Wait. What?!  I’m starting to feel panicky.

I’d never even heard of such a person so I ask him for a recommendation. He used a certain company during his own personal calamity and gave me the name, but he said there were several, and that I should call a few.
Writing furiously on some wet muddy paper, I looked up to thank him but he was gone.
I immediately ran outside but he’d simply vanished. When I described him to the firemen they had no idea who I was talking about, nobody fitting that description had crossed their security line. As a matter of fact, several friends who’d come to get a load of what had happened had to call my cell so I could get them past the security line, yet somehow this guy had found his way in and given me the information I needed.

Back inside, I eeny, meeny, miny, moe’d my way through the companies and picked one out of the three names I found.

Gary arrived in an hour, fired the cleanup crew that was walking around clueless and overwhelmed, hired some pros that specialized in art and antiques, and had the whole thing under control by noon. He was professional and comforting and knew exactly what to do. I would have paid him a million dollars at that point so ten percent sounded like a bargain.

For the first time that day I took a deep breath and started to cry.

Oh, and my scruffy, middle-aged angel? He was exactly right! When the insurance adjuster finally showed up on WEDNESDAY!!….he denied the claim. He said “flooding” was open to interpretation, and I probably wasn’t covered anyway (I was).

But that was okay, I had Gary, and we were in for a long fight.
(To be continued)

Epic Fail or Epic Win , Miracle II

The second miracle occurred during cleanup.

We were about four days in.
The mud had been squeegeed away, but the floors, walls, windows, and merchandise were still covered with a layer of smelly slime.
We covered our faces with hot cloth masks and plugged ahead.
Oh yeah, did I mention it was over 100 degrees?

This was the day I was told that the walls of the building had to be cut wide open up to 5 feet in order to air them out and avoid the dreaded black mold. That hit me so hard, I can’t explain why, but it did. I went outside and sat on some hard concrete steps across the parking lot and cried while I watched the reciprocating saw carve up my beautiful little store.
This felt serious…and sad.

Gary came outside and put his arm around me as we sat silently watching the carnage. When he finally did say something, he asked me if I wanted to go in and box up the things in the bathroom storage closets that hadn’t gotten wet.
Since the walls would be wide open, someone could potentially get inside and help themselves to whatever was left behind, so he suggested I go take a look. I think he also just wanted to keep me busy, so he didn’t have to look at my big, sad, soggy face.

Without electricity, the bathroom was pitch dark as I poked around in the back closets with a box and a garbage bag, waiting for my eyes to adjust. It felt weird to me to be salvaging Windex, paper towels, and toilet cleaner, and I thought of just leaving it for the salvage crew or any would-be looter. Totally numb, I was going through the motions, trying not to cry, when I reached for a box of Tampons with the top torn off that was tucked in the back of an upper shelf. All my good customers knew it was there, and I would occasionally bring a handful from home to refill it. To men, this is a mystery, but all the women reading this know what I’m talking about. There were several left in the box, so I shoved them into my pocket and tossed the empty box in the trash. But it wasn’t empty…something heavy slid around the bottom of the box as it hurtled toward the heavy-duty garbage bag. I reached inside and pulled out the expensive watch my husband had given me for our fifth anniversary.

I stood there in the dark, the hair on my arms, legs, neck, and toes standing at attention as I started to shake violently and scream.
That watch had been “missing” for about 2 years.
My husband had just recently mentioned how disappointed he was that I hadn’t yet found it. We both knew I wasn’t someone who lost my jewelry. In my previous life as a jeweler, I had worn the watch a lot, but since opening the store, it seemed too fancy so I only took it out of the safe for special occasions. I NEVER wore it to the store.
One day I had gone into the safe to get it—and it was gone.

Did I mention I found the watch on September 9th?
Our anniversary is September 9th.
The missing watch had mysteriously appeared after 2 years on a sad but significant day in an impossible place.
It was a sign. Don’t lose hope. Miracles occur.
I couldn’t call my husband fast enough.
(to be continued)

Epic Fail or Epic Win Part III

The claim was denied. Then it wasn’t because you know, law.

Then the insurance wanted to pay me $10,000 to settle.
They sent a letter basically patting me on the head and sending their best wishes on my “fresh new start”.
I was advised not to settle, so I didn’t.

The 100-year-old pipe that ruptured and caused the flood was called a “trunk line”.
It is 6ft in diameter and carries water from the reservoir into the city. That night, I was told by a DWP official, 30,000 gallons A MINUTE had burst through the asphalt and formed a flash flood that took out my store. It took them over 6 hours to turn the water off. Are you wondering if they were liable? Yeah…DWP said to have my lawyer file the paperwork and they would get back to me in a year and a half. After all, they were busy, they were having water-main breaks almost daily. Days turned to weeks, weeks to months.

Now, I know what you’re saying, life isn’t fair.

I once had a snarky t-shirt that said something to that effect.
But I did everything right, and I trusted the system. I carried the big insurance policy, with the giant monthly premium, I kept meticulous records. I had every receipt. My books were completely transparent, and yet somehow that wasn’t good enough.
Somewhere the tables had turned and I was the villain in this drama. Farmers Insurance asserted that I somehow had a direct line to God and had arranged for a flood to come and wipe out my store because business wasn’t great. Like you do.
It was 2009. Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual Bank, and Circuit City were among the over 200 big businesses to file bankruptcy that year.

Stupid big business! They could have just asked God for a flood and saved themselves a lot of trouble.

After 18 months it was clear, I had to lawyer up to get any real money from the insurance company AND DWP. Oh yeah, and a third lawyer because my landlord was suing me for every dime of back rent.

Realization number one:
Well, life isn’t fair is number one, so…
Realization number two:
Insurance companies will do ANYTHING NOT. to. pay. you.
They will drag their feet, and lie and be just horrible. And that surprised me.
Realization number three:
You still have to pay all the bills on a flooded, cut up, closed business.
No slack…no kidding. That STILL gives me a stomach ache.
Realization number four:
Next time ask God for a fire.

It’s feeling pretty Epic Fail right about now, isn’t it?
(To be continued)

Epic Fail or Epic Win Part IV

Let’s get to the Win, Right?
I’m gonna tie it all up now in a nice neat bow.
Readers digest version. Get the Kleenex.
Kidding…sort of.

I sued and was sued every which way you can imagine.
And it is really not my nature. I’m not the litigious type.
I’m the artsy-fartsy type. I’m a lover, not a fighter.
I was a fish out of water…swimming with sharks.
In one of the numerous depositions I found myself wanting to blurt out, Can’t we all just get along?

Some of the people who worked with me were great. Gary and his company were great. Others were not. Let’s just leave it at that. You know who you are.

There were no more miracles.
God had shown off early in the game, with two back to back and I knew I was lucky to have those.
But the quota had been met, and now she was uncharacteristically quiet.
She must have been working on more important matters…like world peace.

So I prayed for an answer. Why me? Crickets.
I prayed for relief. There was none.
I felt ignored and alone.
When I felt emotion at all, it was rage.
Now I realize she WAS there, she just wanted me to go inside.
To pull up my big girl pants, and find my own courage there.

After three years I eventually recouped 80% of the COST of my merchandise. Then the lawyers took 40% of that.
I owe everybody in the world money, and I’m slowly paying them off. I probably owe you some money—get in line!

I’m normally an optimistic, happy person. My sister used to ask me “who blew sunshine up my ass.” This had turned me into a sad sack. I became super serious, with absolutely no sense of humor, (which COULD have saved me).

I’m not proud of what I’m about to say: Having reached my fifth decade of life and never really having failed at much of anything—I had absolutely NO coping skills whatsoever.

Some people handle adversity with strength, wisdom, and grace. Yeah. That was NOT me. I was more likely to go live under a bridge with the trolls. I hated answering the phone or looking at the mail. It always seemed to be bad news.

But…I’m SO lucky!
Honestly!
I always had a roof over my head and plenty of chocolate to eat. My husband never left me, which was a miracle, given my disposition and the fact that 2009 sucked for his profession, construction, as well. We made it through with our deep unabiding love.

Oh, come on! Let’s get real! That and copious amounts of wine!

My friends and family have also been there for me, helping me feel like I wasn’t a total deadbeat. “Look, you took a shot at your dream,” they said, secretly grateful they still had their day jobs.

The bottom line is this:
I know things always work out for me.
I WILL pull a rabbit out of my hat!
Some days this transition feels big and beautiful and perfect. Others, not so much. But that’s okay too.
Now looking forward to the next chapter,
And I’m starting to believe that the best times of my life are ahead of me.
I’d say that’s an Epic Win!
(To be continued)

Epic Fail or Epic Win Finale

My reasons for sharing all of this are twofold.
I must admit he first is purely selfish  I still have a dark pocket of pain around this situation that still holds me down.
And I’m finally done.
I’m done with the shame.
I’m done being scared.
I’m done feeling unworthy.
I’m done not trusting myself because I think I led ME astray.
I’m done punishing myself
And I’m done being diminished.
And by that, I mean living a small and measly life because I’ve listened to the peanut gallery and they’ve convinced me that’s what I deserve

Here’s where the Epic Win comes in.
I NEVER would be writing this blog had things stayed the same. This energy has been wanting a conduit for 20 years and I wouldn’t allow it. Not as a jeweler, because I felt safe and not as a store owner because I never had a minute to spare.
But the real reason was: I wasn’t in enough pain.
There! I said it!
The pain made me do it and it’s been such a gift.

So now that I’ve found this outlet of writing,
I wanted to share my feelings at the same time I was processing all of the curious things that happened around the loss of my business. It has been at once cathartic…and extremely uncomfortable.
Re-living these events can bring me right back to the smells, sounds, and most importantly now, now that I’m finally able to really process them…the shitty feelings.
I was in “get it done” mode, so I stayed pretty numb.
I’m done with numb!

When you numb the sadness you also numb the joy.

That is a price I’m no longer willing to pay.
I’m not certain if it was just that it’s the same time of year,
or that four years have passed.

Sometimes it seems like a million years ago or the day before yesterday.

Maybe it’s my newfound commitment to vulnerability,
But I felt compelled to share this story via my blog.
What I know for SURE is we all experience a wake-up call in our lives. It can be disguised as an accident or an illness, a panic attack at three in the morning, a divorce or break up, the death of a loved one or another profound loss.
It leaves us open and raw and ready for change.

So there you go!
That’s the second reason.
Everyone’s life looks so shiny and perfect from the outside.
I know mine did. But here’s the thing, we all have our shit.
Really. You are not alone. Here’s MY expensive, crazy, messy, miracle inducing, wake up call.
It’s changed me in ways I can’t even express.
But it didn’t kill me.
I’m a grown-up now, finally! My eyes are WIDE OPEN, and that’s a good thing. I feel endless compassion for people going through their hardships.  I’m done pretending things are great when they’re not, so I’m an open book, (much to my husband’s chagrin, because he’s still pretty private).
I’m reaching out and helping people, at least that’s my intention.

Thanks for indulging me.

Wanna tell me your Epic Fail/Epic Win stories?

Xox

Friends,

I was talking about joy with an acquaintance the other day—or the “J” word as I like to whisper—since talking about finding joy in life is about as triggery of a trigger as chatting about politics, God, or pumpkin spice anything.

Tempers flare. So do nostrils. It can get ugly.

Unfortunately, our conversation went downhill kinda like this one because some people have a hard time reaching for more joy in life. They will argue against it with the tenacity of a dog with a rope. Like there’s a lifetime joy quota and their’s has not only been reached, it’s been exceeded.

Their best days are behind them, they say. Right. Yada, yada, blah, blah, blah.

Anyhow, I was reminded of this video from 2014 otherwise known as a helluva long time ago. It makes me laugh at the absurdity of this argument every damn time I watch it (which is bordering on an obscene number of times)!

Seek joy you guys! Trust me, there’s always more lurking around the corner!

Here’s a good minute and a half minute to start you off!

Carry on.
xox

“I Have Fear.

There’s a common mistranslation that causes us trouble.

We say, “I am afraid,” as if the fear is us, forever. We don’t say, “I am a fever” or “I am a sore foot.” No, in those cases, we acknowledge that it’s a temporary condition, something we have, at least for now, but won’t have forever.

“Right now, I have fear about launching this project,” is quite different from, “I’m afraid.”
-Seth Godin

Fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck. Seth nailed me on this!

And it got me to thinking. What other feelings am I forever-izing?

The first one that comes to mind is this. “Gawd, I’m an idiot.”

(Which, sadly, I would never say to another human being other than myself.)
But I must admit, I say it to myself All. The. Time. Especially when I put periods after single words for emphasis.
I must make a concerted effort to follow Seth’s advice and acknowledge that my chronic idiocy is in reality only a temporary condition. (Monday thru Friday 8-5. Weekends my idiocy turns to slothiness which is somehow infinitely more acceptable.)

I have an idiot temporarily making all of my decisions, will be my new mantra.

“I am hungry.”

This is another one of my greatest hits. The only time it feels temporary is while I am actively eating. Once I put my fork down, all bets are off. In a cruel twist of suckiness, once it enters my body, pasta or even a steak and baked potato have the ability to disguise itself as Chinese food leaving me starving again in half an hour. I’ve always filed this under the heading of Life’s Not Fair, but now, when I’m famished I’ll tweak my thinking and say: “I feel like eating my foot” —because I only have two, so…temporary.

“I am horny.”

In my twenties and thirties and maybe even half of my forties, and three weeks in my mid-fifties, I would have fought Seth on the temporary nature of this condition. With the sexual appetite of a man, it felt like a 24-7 forever kind of thing to me. I was horniness with arms and legs. But now that sixty is breathing down my neck, yeah, I get it. With my fifteen minutes of randiness every other month, now “I am horny” feels like a lot like over-committing. Maybe “Rollover honey, because right this minute I’m thinking about sex!” is more like it.

Hey, I showed you mine—what are yours? What do you own that is in reality only a temporary condition?

Carry on,
xox

“Go see if he can fix it” There they were, the six most dreaded words spoken at my dry cleaners. 
Apparently, they’d tried to launder one of my husband’s favorite shirts, but its threadbare condition, aside from giving it ’security blanket status’ in the eyes of my husband, had made it nearly impossible to mend. 

Not that I mend. I most certainly do not. 

I do a lot of things like sit for twelve hours on the back of a motorcycle with a smile on my face in a foreign country and I’m great at finding little, off-the-beaten-path restaurants, but I cannot and will not sew on a button or fix a hem. As for altering a garment, well, I advise you to do what I do and seek the services of a professional. 

There were two women in front of me in line at the alterations desk which was going to give me the time I needed to get up my nerve—and gird my loins. There he was, the alt (alterations) Nazi, all five foot nine of him, lecturing a woman about the ‘quality’ of the jacket he held in his hands like a piece of roadkill. 

I’d like to say he was in ‘rare form’ but this was the only form I’d ever seen him in.

“Don’t spend the money,” he sneered. “It’s not worth it.”

I could see the woman shaking her head in agreement as he continued to eyeball said jacket with contempt. I knew the shame she was feeling. I’d basked in the glow of his approval as he reverently inspected every impeccable inch of a Chloe suit I needed tailored in time for A New Year’s Eve party.  But I too had been on the receiving end of this exact lecture as he handed me  back a dress of mine that he found substandard—beneath his ability to fix.
I hate to admit it but he was right.

“If it were only better quality,” he continued, his words made that much harsher as they ran through the filter of his indiscernible accent, “It would be an investment.”

He handed her back the piece-of-shit-jacket and then wiped his hands on his pants like the poor quality had somehow left a bad smell. Jacket woman skulked away avoiding any and all eye contact with the rest of us. 

Shit. I’d been in her shoes more times than I’d like to admit. 

Rumor has it, his name is Navi although I’ve been afraid to call him by that name in case it isn’t and besides, I’m hardly on a first-name basis with the man. I highly doubt his mother is. 

Some say he worked in New York in the garment business back in the seventies and eighties. There have even been rumblings that he sewed for Halston. That would certainly explain his incredible skill set—he is THE BEST. He’d worked miracles on more articles of my clothing than I could count. He did have a certain air about him. Aristocratic, with more than a hint of snob. Maybe he was French.  That would also explain the highfalutin attitude, and the reason everyone in Studio City puts up with it. 

“I think he’s Lebanese,” another victim in line a few years back informed me when I wondered aloud about his accent. 

“I heard he’s Israeli. Ex Mossad,” the short bald man in front of me that day said with a sly wink, like he knew something the rest of us didn’t.

That didn’t surprise me. I could see him on the battlefield, fashioning an eyepatch for Moshe Dayan out of a spare pair of Israeli military standard issue underwear. That would also explain the gruff exterior and complete lack of social graces.
After all he’d been through, here he was spending his golden years altering clothes at a dry cleaners in the Valley. That would make even the sweetest pear prickly. 

 “Next!” he bellowed from behind the counter as the woman in front of me stepped forward.

“Morning Navi!” she chirped with the chirpiest kind of fake familiarity. He looked back at her with disdain. Either that wasn’t his name or he had no idea who she was. Maybe both. Probably both. Either way, she was off to a rocky start.

I cringed for her. For what was coming next. 

“So…” she started off strong, “These are the same pants you fixed last time.” She thrust a pair of black dress pants in his face while juggling her phone and a fancy latte from the latest neighborhood hipster coffee joint. “I pulled the hem out with the heel of my shoe. Again!” 

He let them drop to the floor between them.

I died a little inside.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, laughing a nervous laugh that would have made hyenas run for cover. “I’m such a klutz!”

“Obviously,” He replied straight-faced. 

This was not going well. My heart started racing. I wanted more than anything in life to open a time/space portal and step inside. 

“This is the third time you’ve pulled out the hem on these pants,” he scolded.

“Second.” She had the audacity to correct him.

I looked around for a place to seek cover. 

“No!” he said, pushing the guilty pants back at her.  

“No?” She was gobsmacked.

“No,” he said firmly. “No more hems. Next!”

The woman looked around stunned. She was obviously someone who didn’t hear that word directed at her well, ever. 

“No?” She asked again, incredulous.

I took a step back.

“Next!” he yelled, the look in his eyes giving her face frostbite.

I had no idea what to do next, push her out of the way—or run.

I decided to push her to the side while she gathered her wits. It’s hard to hear NO from an asshole.

Swallowing hard I handed him my husband’s wobbie, I mean shirt. While searching desperately for saliva, I was able to point and mime to the place where the shirt had ripped open.

“This your shirt?” he asked, inspecting it like he was counterintelligence searching for a bomb.

“Oh, no,” I said, giggling like an idiot. “It’s my husband’s”

He continued the inquisition. “I see I’ve fixed it before.” He began pointing out the four thousand other repairs he’d done. 

The room started to spin.

“It’s his favorite?” He asked, locking eyes with me. I swear I felt the red dot of a sniper rifle on my forehead. 

I’m gonna die, I thought. He’s gonna start yelling and I’m going to melt into a puddle of humiliation right here at the alterations counter of this stupid Studio City dry cleaners!

“Uh, yeah, I mean yes, one of his favorites!” I said, nodding wildly like a jackass. Riding a bucking bronco. 

“Fine.” He scribbled something on a scrap of paper and pinned it to the shirt. Probably the number of a safe house my husband could call because I was clearly someone who was not in her right mind.

“Fine? I mean yes, yes, you’ll do it?” I asked in my tiny mouse voice.

“I will. I have a shirt I love like this. It’s good.”

Wait. Had he inadvertently given me insight into his soul? 

He has a threadbare shirt too? Wait. He felt love? Of course he did! He’s a human being…when he’s not at the alterations counter. 

I slapped my own forehead, stepping over the body of the woman ahead of me as I left.

A week later when I picked up the shirt I tried to renew our bound, you know, because we’d had a moment. 

“I’m here to pick up my husband’s shirt, the ratty one, I mean comfortable one…like you have?”

His face could not have been more blank as he held out his hand for the pick-up slip. He didn’t remember me at all. 

Or my husband. I was crushed.

“Go pay cashier!” he ordered. “Next!”

Carry on,
xox

Loves,
Maybe it’s the heat or the way the planets are aligned, or the damn solar flares are back, but I have several people around me, strong, capable, overachieving types——who are really struggling. And the very fact that things are feeling unmanageable for them has sent them into a playback loop of Why the fuck can’t I do this? — and I should be able to do this!
It’s like someone threw a Molotov cocktail laced with vulnerability and self-doubt into their lives and they don’t have the skill set to reach out to the bomb squad for help.
That’s where WE come in!
This is a post from back in 2014 where I attempted to explain a little bit about being one of the strong ones and what you can do to help us in a crisis. My hope is that it reaches the eyes it was intended for.

Carry on,
xox

When I walked up to my husband I had tears in my eyes. That is NOT a common occurrence in our home, in our relationship or pretty much ever so he looked at the picture I had in my hand, that I had walked over to show him. It was the photo above. He, on the contrary, is a “major weeper” so naturally, he became a puddle in seconds.

You know why?

We are both “strong people” and no one EVER asks us how we’re doing or if we’re okay.

Does that happen to you?

It’s really not that people don’t care to ask you, they just don’t think of it.

Since childhood, we’ve both known that about the world, so we ask each other with the promise that we aren’t allowed to answer with the obligatory I’m fine if that’s not the case. It’s a no-bullshit zone. Complete honesty is required. We have earned each other’s trust, so it releases us of any reservations about letting our guard down.

We understand that being strong is a blessing—and a curse.

I’ve had some really nasty shit happen to me in my life, and when it did everyone around me just assumed I was going to be “fine”. I always am, so they’re right.
But…

Filled with sadness and rage, (because we know those two always travel together) I have screamed at whoever was in the room, “What do I have to do, bleed? Does blood have to pour out my eyes in order for you to see how much emotional pain I’m in?”

The response was always the same. “I just figured you were okay.”

I love that I instill that level of confidence in people. It must be my stiff upper lip or that ability I have to stand upright in the midst of a crisis.

But please ask me how I’m feeling. Ask me how it’s going, or if I need help because I’m a big girl and I’ll let you know if you have overstepped my emotional boundary, although that’s pretty hard to do.
I’ve talked recently to many other strong people I know, to ask them what they need when the shit hits the fan.

I’m going to give you a few simple steps in my GUIDE TO HELPING THE STRONG:

1. Sometimes us strong ones, we need a hug. If you’re too uncomfortable to talk to me, hug me. I promise, I won’t ever push you away.

2.  Just a simple “I’m here for you,” when you don’t know what to say to us, is beyond appreciated.

3. We’ve heard “You’ve got this” all our lives, and eventually we will, because we’re the strong ones, just please don’t say that.

4. If we ever get from you the opportunity, willingness to listen, and the space to vent, please let us. We won’t self indulge and stay there long, we’re the strong ones, it just helps us process.

5. We will NEVER call YOU in the middle of the night, that has not been OUR role. WE get the calls. So, if you know something has just gone down, like a death or a huge loss, firing, humiliation, fight, whatever…call us.

If we cry, let us. I promise it’s not the end of the world.
Don’t try to get us to stop, or if you want to help at all —please don’t tell us we’re overreacting. I can assure you we’re not. Not even a little bit. How do I know? Because it’s not our nature.

One lesson I’ve learned: People HATE to see strong people vulnerable. It scares the fuck out of them.

I know for a fact that several of my love affairs ended because I showed vulnerability and upset the dynamics of the relationship. I was supposed to be the “strong one”.

If you’re one of the strong ones I suggest you email this to all your friends and family because I can tell you from experience that they’re at a loss as to how to handle you. And please, if you know a strong one, please take this to heart.

You strong ones, do you have anything to add?
What helps you?

I’d love to hear what YOU think.
Carry on, 
Xox JB

“Tread lightly and do no harm. Approach the problem from a passive direction and everything will simply come together.”-Skunk

“Oh, F*uck, Ruby!!!”

Our boxer-pup Ruby has been skunked three times in past nine months, the last time being Saturday night. I know what you’re thinking: What a glamourous life you lead!

Everything we own has the lingering aroma of skunk woven into its cellular structure. I say aroma instead of odor because the inhabitants of my home react to it like it’s a new scented spray from GLADE, or a particularly cloying potpourri because well—we’ve all gone nose-blind.

We don’t smell the residual skunk in our shower, on our blankets, or in our clothing until we leave the house and come back.
And you know what? I have to say, it’s really not that bad!

Human beings are mysterious creatures. We are so incredibly adaptable and as if to prove that fact my entire family has adapted to the stench.

The first time, it caused my eyes to water profusely and I drooled like a cartoon wolf eyeing a pork chop.

The second time I gagged. Loudly.

This time the smell barely made me flinch.

Even the little brown dog seemed unfazed and her sense of smell is ten hundred billion times more sensitive than mine.

Here’s the thing, if you visit me three times…you’re a totem. I don’t care what you are. Grasshopper. Praying mantis. A Girl Scout selling Thin Mints. And since I am not one to miss an opportunity to ask “why?” I looked up “skunk totem.”

“If Skunk is your Animal Totem;
You are the ultimate pacifist, always preferring to avoid conflict and turmoil. You walk a very fine line between being a people “pleaser” and balancing your own self-respect and always maintain a “do no harm” attitude. You know how to be assertive without ego. You know how to attract others and are very charismatic. You have a good understanding of energy and how to use energy flows to get what you want.”

This makes no sense. It fits absolutely NO ONE in my house! Not one word of it. The three of us bicker like an angry pack of honey badgers. Ego is our middle name, and if charisma smells like skunk, well then okay. Otherwise…

My husband insists that this only goes to show that sometimes a “cigar is just a cigar, Janet—and a skunk is just a nuisance.” This all makes me mad because it proves that he is right yet again. 

And so…this bleeding heart has agreed to catch and release—the trap has been set and the skunk-scented potpourri is about to leave the building.

Geesh.

Happy Humpday y’all!

Carry on,
xox Janet

I wrote about this a long time ago, but I’m going to post it again.
Partly because there are so many new readers, but mostly because I’ve told this story more in the past few weeks than I have since it happened. AND it is a fuckin’ great story.

If you’ve heard it before, go make yourself a sandwich. And please, don’t give away the ending.

In the spring of 2010, I went to Hawaii with my dear friend Wes to get some clarity about which direction I should take my life after the death of my store, Atik. Sudden loss can strip a person of their trust in life—and themselves, and I was not lucky enough to escape that unspoken step of the grieving process. Besides, misery loves company.

Oh, who am I kidding? We went to drink Mai Tais, eat like escaped death row convicts, sit on the white sands of Waikiki Beach all day gossiping and people watching—and get massages.

All we did was laugh. Well, he laughed, I cried—then he laughed at my crying. Then I cry-laughed. It was wet and sloppy. Lots of running mascara and snot-bubbles.
You get the picture.

About mid-way through our seven-day trip, I got the sense there was going to be a tsunami.
You know—like you do…
That evening when Wes met me at the bar for happy hour I voiced my concern. “I want to move to a higher room in our hotel,”  I said, stirring my drink. “I think there’s going to be a tsunami and I’m not going to be safe on the second floor.”

“Did you start without me? How many drinks have you had?” he was laughing, flagging down a waiter in order to join this crazy party he figured I’d already started.
“I’m serious. You’re on the third floor, but I’m not even sure that’s high enough. Let’s look into moving.”

All I could see in my mind’s eye were those horrible images from the tsunami in Sumatra the day after Christmas, 2004.

His eyes said: Have you lost your mind? But in order to calm my fears, he immediately whipped out his phone and started to look up ‘Hawaiian tsunami’.

“The earliest on record was reported in 1813 or 1814 — and the worst occurred in Hilo in 1946, killing 173 people.” he recited, reading a Wikipedia page.
“So it happens kind-of-never, and I’m okay with those odds.” He raised his drink to toast “To surviving that rarest of all disasters—the Hawaiian tsunami!” We clinked glasses as he shook his head laughing at my continued squirminess.

Still laughing, he mumbled under his breath, “But if it does happen, which it could, ‘cause you’re pretty spooky that way— it will be one hell of a story.”

The first week of March the following year, 2011, our great friends, the ones who ride the world with us on motorcycles, asked if we wanted to join them at their condo in Maui. You don’t have to ask me twice to drop everything and go to Hawaii. I was printing our boarding passes before I hung up the phone.

On the beautiful drive from the airport to Lahaina, the air was warm and thick with just a hint of the fragrance of tropical rain as we wove our way in and out of the clouds that play peek-a-boo with the sun all day on the Hawaiian Islands. With a view of the lush green mountains formed from the ever-present volcanoes to the right, and the deep blue Pacific churning wildly to our left, that place really felt like Paradise Lost.

That’s when it hit me. I turned down the radio of the rental car that was blaring some five-year-old, Top Forty song.
“We’re going to have a tsunami,”  I announced.
It didn’t feel like if — it felt like when. A certainty.
“I think we’re more likely to have a volcanic eruption than a tsunami,” my hubby replied nonchalantly, turning the radio volume back up just in time to sing along with the chorus.

Damn, I love my husband. He cohabitants with all the voices in my head without batting an eye. Most men would run for the hills. He just stays rational. A volcanic eruption in the Hawaiian Islands is the rational supposition.
God love him.

I had never mentioned my premonition from the trip the previous year—too odd; but I let loose for the remainder of the drive, wondering aloud about what floor their condo was on and worrying if it would it be high enough. Having never been there before, neither of us had any idea and I’ve gotta tell ya,  I breathed a sigh of relief when the answer came via text. The sixth floor. Their condo was on the sixth floor, overlooking the pool, facing the ocean.

We spent the next week eating and drinking amazing food and wine, snorkeling, swimming, driving around, and whale watching. As a matter of fact, the ocean outside of our resort was a veritable whale soup.

There is a passage between Maui, Lanai, and Molokai (both which we could see in the distance), that the whales like to use instead of the open ocean, and we could see them breaching from our balcony. They were present in high numbers and especially active. “It was extraordinary!” The guys on the whale watching boats agreed with our friends—they’d never seen a year like that one!

Two days before our departure, on the eleventh, it all seemed to come to a screeching halt.

The ocean was as passive as a lake. I hiked down the beach to a little cove that was supposed to be like “swimming in a tropical fish tank”—nothing. Literally no fish. People kept remarking how odd it seemed. The guys on the whale watching catamarans were perplexed. Suddenly, there were no whales.

That night after my shower I turned on the TV in our room for the first time the entire trip to catch the results of American Idol.
We made dinner at home that night and I was just the right amount of sunburned, buzzed, full and sleepy.
As I got dressed and dried my hair I casually flipped around the channels. American Idol, Baywatch re-runs, CNN. Then I saw it.

The bright red BREAKING NEWS banner at the bottom of the screen: Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami.

I screamed something incoherent as I ran out into the family room, half-dressed, knocking things over, becoming hysterical.
“You guys, Turn on the TV! Oh my God! Turn on the TV!” I grabbed the remote, but it looked like something that powers the International Space Station, so I threw it toward my husband.

“Oh, I don’t want to watch TV…” I heard someone say, but Raphael could tell something was wrong. He said later that it felt a lot like 9/11 when everyone was calling and the only thing they could manage to say was, turn on the TV!

“CNN. Find CNN!” I was so freaked out I could barely speak.

When the images came up on that big screen HD TV they were even more terrifying.
It was a helicopter shot, high above the coastline of a small city. There was a wave with a white cap as far as the eye could see. it looked like it spanned almost the entire coastline and it was headed straight for cars, boats, houses…and people.

Now we were all transfixed. Silently glued to the screen with the frantic sounding Japanese commentary running in the background. This was all happening LIVE.

The CNN anchor sounded reassuring, telling us that Japan had one of the most advanced tsunami warning systems on the planet. Sirens had started sounding a few minutes after the large off-shore earthquake, warning the population to make their way to their pre-determined evacuation points up on higher ground.

We watched in horror as churning brown water began rushing onshore with a ferocity that was nauseatingly familiar.
It just kept coming and coming. Undeterred by the breakwater…and the thirty-foot wall they had built to withstand a tsunami.

“God, I hope they had enough time,” I whispered.

Suddenly the CNN picture was minimized as the face of a local anchor at the Maui station took up the entire rest of the screen.
“Good evening,” he read off the cue card, “The entire Hawaiian Islands have been placed on tsunami watch due to the large earthquake off the coast of northern Japan. We will keep you posted as scientists get the readings off of the tsunami buoys that dot the span of the Pacific Ocean from the coast of Japan to the west coast of North America. If it looks like a tsunami is coming our way, the watch will turn into a warning.” He swallowed awkwardly, I saw his Adam’s apple quivering.
“Stay with us for further instructions.”

The screen was filled again with the escalating destruction in Japan.

I started to shake uncontrollably, my eyes filling with tears.

Then I saw him flinch out of the corner of my eye. It got my attention and when I looked his way his face looked as if he’d seen a ghost. With the remote still in his hand, my husband turned toward me slowly, deliberately.
His mouth dropped open, his eyes were full of…questions.

Then with no sound; his eyes locked on mine as he mouthed my prophecy from earlier that week: We’re going to have a tsunami.

As an aside, I cannot explain to the wives reading this, the satisfaction I felt when the look on his face telegraphed to me that my tsunami prediction had been real and not the result of some questionable tuna salad at the airport.  

Then I snapped back to reality. The hair stood up on the back of my neck. Really, the hair on my entire body. Even my chin hairs stood at attention.

The shrill wailing of the Disaster Alert Siren brought us both back to reality.
It was official—the tsunami was imminent.

To Be Continued…

LESSONS FROM A TSUNAMI ~ THE CONCLUSION
(It’s a throwback, I’m not gonna make you wait!)

What in the hell was going on? I had unwittingly been given a front-row seat to a disaster that I’d known was going to happen—for a year!

Why in the hell was I in Hawaii again? What was my part in this tragedy?

I never wanted to be someone who predicts disasters. Seriously Universe? Give me another job. Anything.
Something else. Something not so fucking scary.

Be careful what you wish for. Now I talk to dead people. But not the scary ones. Funny ones. The bossy but kind ones.
Thank God.

Anyway, the local anchor came back onscreen to inform us that one of the deep ocean buoys had registered a tsunami fifteen feet high and getting larger, with a velocity of over five hundred miles per hour, and it was headed directly towards the Hawaiian Islands.

It would get to us in five hours.
3 a.m.
Fucking three a.m! Of course, it was coming in the middle of the night!
The witching hour. The time when nothing good ever happens. Oh, and by-the-way, dark water is one of my biggest fears.
I was petrified!

Ginger was feeling sick and went to bed. The guys opened another bottle of wine and started playing cards, remaining lighthearted, partying while waiting for the inevitable. Just like they did on the deck of the Titanic.

I went back to our room, shivering under the blankets with anxiety, glued to the TV while the disaster siren wailed in the background. Right around midnight, they announced the second buoy reading. The wave was larger and picking up speed as it headed our way. Suddenly the intercom came on inside the condo. Nobody even knew there was an intercom connected to the main resort which was run by Marriott.

A voice cleared its throat.

A young man’s voice, extremely nervous, shaky, cracking and squeaking, blared loudly throughout the condo. Haltingly, he instructing everyone in units below the fifth floor to evacuate to the roof. “Bring blankets…pillows…water and, um, your shoes, it’s going to be a long night.” His anxiety was palpable.

Uh, okay Voice of Authority.
Didn’t they have anyone available with a more mature tone? Something deep and fatherly? A voice that could console us and instill calm. I was thinking Morgan Freeman or James Earl Jones.
This kid’s voice and delivery were comical to me. In my imagination, he was the pimply-faced nephew of the lady who fed the stray cats behind the parking garage. One minute he was doing his calculus homework, the next, he was behind a microphone, advising hundreds of tourists what to do during an impending disaster. He was the only one that was expendable in an emergency. Everyone important had a task.
Holy crap, he was the best they had!

Thank God something was funny.

One of trembly, squeaky, scared guy’s announcements advised us all to fill our bathtubs in order to have plenty of drinking water in case the sanitation plant was wiped out. Intermittently he’d come back on with further instructions, Anyone with a vehicle in the lower garages, please move them to higher ground behind the main hotel, he advised, sounding as if he were on the verge of tears.

Not long afterward, I heard voices, car keys, and the front door slam as the guys went to move our cars.

In the dark from our balcony, I watched the groundskeepers running around like headless chickens rushing to clear the sand and pool surround of hundreds of lounge chairs. Then they emptied the rental hut with its kayaks, snorkels and fins, inner tubes and dozens of surf and boogie boards.

If you watch the Thailand tsunami videos it is those seemingly innocuous beach toys that become deadly projectiles in fast-moving water. You may not immediately drown, but a surfboard or a beach chair coming at you at hundreds of miles an hour will kill you for sure.

It was too much. The destruction in Japan was too much for me to handle.
I watched multi-story buildings get washed away like they were kids toys. We were so close to the water. Could our building withstand the rush of the initial wave? How high would the water come?
The third floor, the fourth—or higher? What was going to happen?

I finally turned off the TV plunging the room into darkness. Once it was quiet I instantly felt a drop in my anxiety level. Say what you will, cable TV can suck you into an endless loop of death and destruction—it’s like a drug. Unhooking the CNN IV, I grabbed my phone, inserted my earbuds, pulled up a meditation, and started to calm my nervous system down. Slow…deep…breathing. In…and out… after a few minutes, I could feel my shoulders drop and my face relax. I’d been unconsciously clenching my jaw for hours.

Slowly, my mind started to unwind. The siren went way, fading into the distance, the boy’s terrified voice becoming a muffled form of white noise.
I actually slipped into a half-sleep state. Aware of my surroundings, but extremely relaxed.

The meditations came to an end. Silence. I was still okay.
No longer spinning in fear. No longer afraid.
“What’s going to happen, how bad will this be?” I asked no one in particular.
Just a question I needed answered.

Here’s where the magic happened.

A very loving, clear and calm voice answered back:
What do you want to happen? How bad do you want it to be?

What? I get a vote? This answer left me flabbergasted. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but this felt extraordinary. Somehow, instinctively, I knew that I couldn’t say make the tsunami go away—there are some things we are powerless to change.
What I could change was MY experience of it. What did I want to happen to me—to us?

Script it the voice said, and that has changed my life.

Okay…I said in my head, remembering the videos from Sumatra, You can come up to the palm trees that line our pool area and define the boundary between the beach and our resort. That’s it! To the palm trees only—NOT into the pool—and NOT into our resort.

No further conversation was needed. No idle chit-chat, no more Q & A.

I fell asleep. A deep sleep rich with meaningful dreams that I can’t remember
Inside one, a muffled voice that felt like it was underwater warned: Stay away from the ocean, Do NOT get near the water. We are on lockdown, stay inside your rooms.

It must be happening, crossed my mind, but I was too deep to care.

Only as far as the palm trees…up to the palm trees…

When I finally opened my eyes I could see daylight. Raphael was asleep next to me and I could smell coffee.
Obviously, the tsunami had come and gone—and everything seemed…normal.

These are pictures of the waterline the tsunami left behind. It may not look like much but it is still waaaaay up the beach at this point, about three hours after it came ashore. It surged forty feet UP the beach, over dry sand, and stopped right at the palm trees that line the pool of our resort.

Script it. Imagine it. Feel it. Ask for it. Relax.

That proved to me, without a doubt, that we can script our circumstances. There are things we can’t control, but there are so many that we can.

Get calm, and set boundaries. How bad/good do you want it to be? What do you want to happen?

We have control over our immediate circumstances.
Script it.

This changed my life–I hope it changes yours.

Carry on,
xox

Taller, shorter, fat or skinny. Different, not wrong.
Black, white, orange or polka-dot. Different, not wrong.
Red hair, blue hair, or no hair at all. Different, not wrong.
Tattooed, pierced, bearded, half a shaved head. Different, not wrong.
Head-scarf wearer, wig-wearer, fully covered or barely covered at all. Different, not wrong.
Democrat, Republican, Independent, Libertarian. Green Party, Etc. Etc. Different, not wrong.
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Transgender. Different, not wrong.
Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic, Jew, Muslim, Unitarian, Baptist. Etc, Etc. Different, not wrong.

This is a post from back in 2014 when things seemed a little less complicated.
Carry on,
xox

The other day in line at my version of The Happiest Place on Earth, Target or “Tar-Jeh” as I like to refer to it; I overheard a couple of women in front of me mercilessly scrutinizing the cashier.

“My God, will you look at those fingernails, they’re so long! And that color!”

Her friend stopped unloading the contents of her cart onto the conveyor belt just long enough to lean forward to get a better look.

“Oh yeah,” she replied, “How does she do anything?

It appeared to me that she was doing her job just fine.

“And that blue color, bleck, all the kids are wearing that and I just don’t get it. It’s hideous.”

I was hoping that our checker Tracy, couldn’t hear them, even though they were making no effort to lower their voices, speaking with the same loud, rude, audacity I’ve heard some American’s use in a foreign country when they assume the victim of their vitriol doesn’t speak English.

Once they had finished verbally annihilating Tracy, they went to town on the lady in the line next to us.

“Oh jeeeeeez, she’s too old to be wearing shorts. Not with legs like that! One of the women snorted. “She should get that vein stripping surgery that Nikki had done, then maybe she could wear those things…but then only in the privacy of her own backyard for godsakes.”

“Looks like a freakin’ roadmap. Disgusting! My eyes can’t un-see that,” her friend chimed in, throwing cat food, tampons and a Snickers bar on the conveyer belt.

Suddenly, I realized that because I was behind them, at any moment I could become fair game. Terrified, I set my head to the swivel setting, looking around for another line in which to hide. Certain I was about to become the next victim of the Target Fashion Police, I started to pray…

Dear God, if you care about me at all (and I would understand if you don’t recognize me or even know my last name because, well, it’s been a while) please help me vanish into mist. Seriously, I can’t walk away now,  I just can’t, that’ll give them a perfect shot of my ass in yoga pant, my blue toenail polish, and this old CURE concert T-shirt I wear when I want to feel relevant. Fuck it! I’ll be damned if I’m going to give them all of that ammunition for their nastiness. Better I just stay put, duck down, start to drool, or become mist…yeah, mist would work.
…oh, shit, thanks, I mean, Amen.

Do you know people like that? That judge anything that’s different from THEIR “normal” as wrong?

Hey, ladies, with your overdone Botox, orange skin, and fake designer handbags, (sorry, but you asked for it) it’s not wrong – it’s just different.

I once took a friend to a group meditation which I attended once a month. She was interested in starting a practice, and I’d known these people for over ten years. A previous friend I had taken, described this group as an old, cozy pair of slippers – warm and welcoming. I thought so too.

Meditation was great. My friend seemed to genuinely like the people, chatting and laughing afterward while sipping her alkaline water.

On the way home in the car, I was in for a rude awakening.

“Ernest guy…what’s his story?” she asked.
I knew who she meant, one of the men IS very earnest in his social interactions.
“Oh I don’t know, I’ve known him forever. He can be kind of intense – but he’s sweet, really.”
“Well, he creeped me out. Then that Birkenstock, ferret-faced lady, ha! She’s something else.”

“Hey! These are my friends, sort of…anyway..they’re sweet and harmless and they seemed to really like you.”

I was trying to keep my cool, but I wanted to punch her in the throat. OMMMMMM back to a loving place.

“Yeah, well, they’re not my people, too granola, woo woo, Patchouli, for me. But I did like the water. And the meditation.”

Too bad sister, because I’m never taking you again, I thought silently to myself, not wanting to start a car-fight.

Truth is, I’d heard this same friend level judgment on everyone around her in ten seconds flat, but they were usually strangers, not people I knew. (I can only imagine what kind of animal MY face resembled.) Seems anyone who didn’t fit in some little box she had envisioned as “correct” – was somehow wrong.
They were ferret-faced, creepy, granola-eating (so what) freaks.

“Look at that pedophile waiting at the corner for the light?”
“Look at that girl’s eyeliner, who did her make-up? A raccoon?”

I know this seems like a duh, but I’m going there anyway. Obviously, SHE had some self-esteem issues or she wouldn’t be looking around with such a cruel eye and a sharp tongue.

After I ditched that judgy friend for good, I still couldn’t escape it, the judgment that is—I started to notice it everywhere.

Two guys at Starbucks sneering judgmentally at one of those overly complicated coffee orders the Barista was shouting out at the pickup counter. You know the one: grande, half-caf, sugar-free, one pump, vanilla latte with extra foam.

So what! Why is my order any of your business and why is it somehow wrong?

Variety makes the world go ’round. I personally relish it.
In my opinion, it makes life and people watching supremely entertaining.

Because it is so glaringly obvious to me now, I promise to try not to make you wrong.

Be your badass selves.
Fly your freak flags.
Wear your blue nail polish, go ahead! Pierce, tattoo, flaunt those daisy dukes, wear that red MAGA cap to the picnic (Gulp, I had to add that).

I LOVE IT. 

DIFFERENT inspires me! It gives me ideas, things I would have never have thought of.

As far as I ever contemplate pushing the envelope—someone has been there, done that, SO last Tuesday.

Start paying attention, see if you can catch yourself or someone around you judging different as wrong.
It’s okay if someone loves pickled herring or sleeps until noon or sings the wrong lyrics to every song (that’s actually endearing).

What do you think? Clue me in. Tell me about it in the comments!

Love you, my tribe,
Xox