anger

Hello loves,
Yesterday, the analytics informed me that the algorithms had decided, that this ranks as the MOST read post since 2020 when Covid hit—so I thought you may enjoy a reprise.

Carry on,
xoxJ

“I have been so mean to my body, outright hateful. I disparage her and call her names. I loathe parts of her and withhold care. I insist on physical standards she can never reach, for that is not how she is made, but I detest her weakness for not pulling it off. No matter what she accomplishes, I’m never happy with her.”

~Jen Hatmaker Fierce, Free and Full of Love

In the ‘before-times’, right before Covid rocked our reality, I was listening to Jen Hatmaker’s book while on my morning walks with Ruby, our six-year-old boxer who, ironically enough, has the body confidence of a super-model. Most of the book had me laughing. Other parts had me shaking my fist at Audible for the fact that I couldn’t dogear a particular page, or highlight every other paragraph with yellow marker. 

Like the one above. 

This one stopped me in my tracks. It had me fumbling to hit rewind while juggling a full bag of poop (Ruby’s) all while eliciting deep unexpected sobs of recognition—in public. Sort of. 

If you’d questioned me about my own body image a week earlier I’d have rated it as ‘pretty good’.  Then I heard Jen wrestle with her own emotions while reading her extremely vulnerable admissions without choking on her own snot. Seriously. She did a far better job at keeping the full-blown ugly crying at bay than I did. 

I too had been hateful. 

I’d set unattainable standards.

I’d done all of the shitty stuff you can do to a body and as I’ve aged, I may have even been guilty of cranking up the volume on the insults. 

Crepey skin, burgeoning neck waddle, old lady pillow tummy, ugh, HOW IS THIS MY BODY?  

The five stages of grief were quickly overtaking me.

Denial— (Catches own reflection in storefront window) That’s not me, it can’t be. That’s my mother! 

Anger— (Age spots appear as if by magic) Seriously? You’ve GOT to be kidding me!

Bargaining— If I drink the celery juice can I eat nothing but carbs on the weekends?

Depression— I feel bad about my boobs which are now a pair of 38 longs.

But I hadn’t quite gotten to the acceptance stage. Until I heard the words she wrote. THAT changed everything for me.

I apologized to my body. Profusely. Every morning and every night. 

I saw her for what she was, my ally, not my enemy. 

I looked at all the evidence and discovered she has ONLY EVER had my best interests at heart. 

So, I started to lavish her with praise, compliments, and love. After a while, it became a habit.

Then the pandemic hit and being over sixty, I was considered to be at higher risk of complications so I upped my little ritual to include extreme gratitude for my continued good health. 

Every morning when I woke up, I’d thank her for her stamina on the hikes, her cheerful disposition in the face of looming uncertainty, and her strong immune system. And as the Covid numbers in Los Angles rose, I assured her that even if she caught it, I wouldn’t hold it against her, on the contrary, we would fight it together and she would be fine. 

It reminded me of experiments researchers have done with water and plants, the ones where they verbally abuse them or shower them with praise —and then study the results—which are astounding.

https://yayyayskitchen.com/2017/02/02/30-days-of-love-hate-and-indifference-rice-and-water-experiment-1/

The ones that are praised, thrive, while the ones that are subjected to hateful speech/emotions, literally wither and die.

Which brings me to yesterday and my fall down the stairs. 

Well, I didn’t so much fall, as get pulled down the flight of concrete steps by Ruby. To be fair, she’d spotted a discarded half-eaten cheese sandwich at the bottom, and who among us hasn’t lost their mind and sprinted toward cheese? Nevertheless, it happened too fast to even let go of the leash so I was knocked on my ass and pulled down the entire flight of stairs on my back until I managed to get her to stop—by yelling STOP at the top of my lungs. I know it was loud because it echoed back up the stairs and out onto the street before waking the dead. 

Lying there in a heap, I assessed the damage. Ankle slightly twisted, elbows, ass, and back bruised and battered, but eventually, I was able to get up and walk —which I took as a good sign. Reflexively, I thanked my body for not breaking a hip or anything else for that matter and went on with my day. But as the hours passed, a deep soreness set in. At about seven in the evening I felt as if I’d been hit by a caravan of trucks carrying elephants. “Wait until tomorrow,” my husband warned, handing me the Motrin. “The next day is the worst.” Later, in bed, I tried not to move a muscle, lest I scream and wake the dog. 

“You’ve got this,” I told her, lying there together in the dark.  “Nothing is broken, which in itself is a miracle because YOU ARE A BEAST! You’re sixty-fucking-two and you fell down a flight of concrete stairs and barely missed a beat! You ROCK!” I tried to shift position and moaned. Everything hurt. Even my hair.

“I will take care of you,” I reassured her. “If you need bed rest, I will make sure you get it. If you need CBD rub or Motrin at regular intervals, you can count on me. We are in this together because I love you—now go to sleep!”

“How do you feel?” my husband asked through a grimace, expecting the worst, as I wandered out for coffee and a hug.  “Actually, I’m fine,” I responded by doing a deep lunge and a high kick, twisting and lifting both arms to prove my point. 

And I am. Fine. No aches, no pains, no bruises of any kind to speak of. I give all of the credit to my body and our recently renewed love affair. 

Not a big story, not life or death, just proof to me just the same that Love really does work miracles y’all. 

Carry on,
xox

This post has been languishing in my drafts folder for over a week. It felt too negative to press send. Too raw and ragged. Not so much like me. I live to laugh, and this wasn’t funny. 

You see, we ignored all the stories, signs, and butt clenches that should have warned us away from foreign travel this summer—so I’m here to reinforce any trepidation you may be feeling about going abroad. Listen to it. And if you must travel, temper your expectations, pack your patience (in your carry on with an air tag) and steal yourself against disappointment, because if you’re at all like me—it will be your constant companion. XOX

In her novel Eat, Pray, Love, Liz Gilbert immerses us in her love of all things Italian, including the language and how gorgeous the words are in their full expression. At the end of her year-long journey of self-discovery, Liz chooses her favorite Italian word, attraversiamo—at that point a word dripping with nuance, (the literal definition being, to cross over)—as the word that best defines her. 

That being said, while I’d love nothing more than to brag to y’all that we are one millimeter as deep, insightful, and self-realized as Liz—we are not. Still, there are a couple of more pedestrian things my husband and I do share with Liz— her love of Italy, and the act of defining ourselves with a single Italian word. Ours is scarpetta. 

Now, by no stretch of the imagination is scarpetta as gorgeous, sexy, or fraught with hidden meaning as attraversiamo.

Nope, the Urban dictionary considers scarpetta Italian ‘street slang’.  In Italian, it means sopping up all the sauce left on your plate (or in the pot) with bread. Italian waiters love the word. Basically, anyone who feeds us in Italy (oh, who are we kidding, anywhere in the world), takes one look at us, hand us a basket of freshly baked bread, and whispers, “scarpetta” to us like a prayer. They identify us as kindred spirits. People who love to eat. Foodies. We are their kind of people—and believe me when I say—we do not disappoint. And while I am simultaneously humiliated and proud to admit that no plate has ever left our table that we haven’t scarpetta’d so clean they didn’t have to wash it—upon refection I like to think it says more about us and our quest to savor “everything good in life”, than gluttony, so please humor me.

Normally I would just leave us here, fat and happy, reminiscing about savory sauces, clean plates, warm bread, and everything wonderful about Italy. 

But we just returned from a short visit, and while we happily scarpetta’d our faces off all through Tuscany, I could not help but notice that just like the rest of the world, post-pandemic Italy is different. Travel sucks. Service sucks. The infrastructure is a gazillion times more broken than it normally is. Covid is everywhere, our luggage was missing for three days, and the locals, who are normally delightful, were all out of shits to give. Oh, and it was hotter than the any place without air conditioning has any right being.

I honestly don’t know what I was expecting, but I gotta tell ya, it hit me hard. 

Hidden just below the surface was so. much. shit. 

Chaos, turmoil, anger, and grief. 

And Italy reflected mine back to me in spades. 

I have a bestie, Steph, who is obsessed with the etymology of words, their origin, and how their meanings have changed throughout the years. Normally I leave that up to her, but she’s rubbed off on me enough that I remembered that the literal meaning of scarpetta is, “little shoe, or child’s shoe” which comes from thinking that just like dragging bread across a plate will sop up every scrap, a shoe will pick up whatever is on the ground. 

You know, the dregs, garbage…dirt…shit. And since that sounds awful, I’d always ignored that definition.

That, and the one that says, ‘scarpetta was born from scarcity. That the poor were only allowed the scraps’. Gahhhhhhh! 

Those just didn’t jive with the “savoring the good” parts of my narrative—until last week. And now, in this year of our Lord 2022, I regret to inform you that I must add the word scarpetta to my list of things that have turned more bitter than sweet.

The world is nothing like it was in the before-times. Not yet. And maybe,(gasp) it never will be. Don’t get me wrong, everybody’s pretending it is, they’re wearing their best Mona Lisa smiles,(possibly obscured by a mask) but it’s all smoke and mirrors with a cauldron of I’m-not-sure-what-the-fuck-is-happening roiling just below the surface.

Sometimes it smells like fear, other times rage, mostly it reeks of disappointment. 

But you know me, I’m the eternal optimist, the perennial Pollyanna, so I’ll be giving the world like, a hundred more tries to get it right. And I suppose that after a shit-ton of trials and errors, I’ll know right when I feel it. Until then, I’m determined to stay closer to home, manage my expectations, and hold out hope for the best.

Who knows, we have a wedding to attend next year in Positano. Maybe by that time, Italy, and the world, will be more warm bread than shit-shoe to me again.

Carry on, 
Xox Janet

https://youtu.be/g-jlQaYKN9M

This is a clip from the movie First Man which chronicles the life of astronaut Neil Armstrong in the years before he becomes the first man to walk on the moon. I saw it this weekend and this is one of the scenes that stuck with me because this is how I felt Saturday morning.

Spinning. Wildly. Uncontrollably. Completely untethered.

That’s a thing for me. I hate feeling out-of-control. And I hate it even more when the world feels like it’s lost its mooring.

Another mass shooting. An antisemitic hate crime. After a week of pipe-bomb mailings. When will it end?

All of my teachers and just about every spiritual book out there drives home the fact that “We cannot control the uncontrollable. We can only control our response.” Well, I want to go on record as saying that seems like the suckiest of all arrangements—and I’d like to speak to the manager.

If you’re too squeamish to watch the clip (and I don’t blame you) here’s what happens. It’s the 60’s. The infancy of our burgeoning space program. Gemini 8 is practicing docking with another vehicle in space. This is the dry-run these guys need to be able to leave the command module while it orbits the moon, go down to the surface, run around and gather rocks, and then re-dock with it and come back to earth. Piece of cake, right?

All goes well—until it doesn’t. You have to remember, all of this is unprecedented. It’s never been seen or done before.
Unprecedented. I know that word gets overused these days but I’m being deliberate when I use it here. Because when we’re observing things at a level we’ve never seen before—it feels pretty freaking out-of-control.

Okay, so our heroes have docked, and unexpectedly, the whole thing starts to spin. Like a carnival ride gone ape-shit. The revolutions (over 250 per minute) make it next to impossible to problem solve, let alone stay conscious.
And that’s the key.
Caught in this runaway spin cycle, these men have to maintain consciousness (through training and breathing) in order to gain control of an uncontrollable situation.

And that’s when it hit me!

Wait. Just. A. Minute. Here. (Insert foehead slap) I may be able to stop my own spinning! I have the training! I know about the breath and how it can calm down the “fight, flight or freeze” reaction my body has when everything seems out of control. The part I struggle with is staying conscious. And by conscious, I mean awake. Present. In the moment.

Just like those astronauts, a part of me wants to close my eyes and go to sleep. To slip away.

I want NASA, or Glennon Doyle, or somebody else much smarter than me to figure this shit out. I’m too busy spinning to be of any help, right? But I can’t, WE can’t lose consciousness. Not right now, it’s too important to stay awake. To breathe and remember our training.

We may not be able to stop the spin entirely, but we can’t slow it down at all—not if we go to sleep.

We can do hard things you guys. We trained for this. Let’s stay awake.

Carry on,
xox

On beating yourself up

Almost everyone does it. I’m not sure why.

After the fact (or even during it) all the blame, second-guessing and paralysis. We say things to ourselves that we’d never permit anyone else to say. Why?
1. It leaves us bruised and battered, unlikely to do our best work while you’re recovering.
2. It hurts our knuckles.
3. It distracts us from the work at hand.

Perhaps there’s a more humane and productive way to instill positive forward motion. I’m sure there is.
At the very least, this is a dumb hobby.
~ Seth Godin

Once, back in the nineties, I took a boxing class.
I figured that with the boss I had and all of the sex I wasn’t having—I must have a lot of hostility to work out. And besides, I had read in Vogue that you could burn 1200 calories an hour boxing!

Sign . Me. Up.

The instructor, a tall, Mandingo Warrior named Frejah (pronounced Free-Jay) who trained professional fighters at a famous gym in Venice, would have us carefully bind our fists with tape, lace up our gloves, and stand in front of a six-foot tall dark blue leather punching bag that was suspended by a heavy black chain from the ceiling. Every class he’d stand behind us, kicking our legs into a wider stance as he ghetto-yelled “encouragement” which could have easily been mistaken for harassment—all in the name of motivation.

“Come on you little pussy” He’d holler at Kenneth, a guy who came in wearing a white shirt with a pocket protector, “You couldn’t hurt your grandmother, who by-the-way, said to say hello to you this morning.”

Some of us may have giggled.

“Oh, you think that’s funny?!” he swooped in beside me and bellowed in my ear like a drill sergeant, “Do ya?!” I shook my head no emphatically as I pawed at the bag like a baby kitten. “Is that how you hit a fucking bag?!”

He went and stood in front of all of us as we tried in vain just to make the heavy bag swing on the chain.
We all sucked. And this was like week four.

“Hit the fucking bag!” he screamed, foam escaping the sides of his snarled lips. “Hit it like you mean it!”

There was a timid girl next to me, Tina, wearing glasses and a ponytail. Her face was filled with determination but every time she hit the bag her glove would just slide off and she’d almost do a face-plant on the behemoth. Frejah became silent as he watched her punch and lose her balance, punch and lose her balance.

His silence was not a good thing. It meant that the pressure was building—and he was about to blow!

I couldn’t watch.

As I sent a flurry of kitten punches into the body of my bag, Frejah got into Tina’s face. Inches away he started sneering insults. “What the hell do you think you’re doing you little mamby pamby?”

I had no idea what that meant, it just sounded bad. Weak and lame. Frejah was right. We were a bunch of mamby pambys.

He grabbed the glasses off her face and tossed them over to the side. Oh, fuck, I thought, How do I watch what’s about to happen and still look like I’m hitting the bag? My talented right eye traveled over somewhere around my ear to get a good view. (It never happened before—and it has never happened since.)

Frejah was yelling obscenities at Tina while pushing her in the chest with his glove.
Goading her to hit him.
“Your daddy an asshole?” he sneered, “I bet he’s a reeeeeal piece a work. You hate him dontcha?” He pushed Tina a little harder with just one gloved fist.

“Hit me. I’m your shitty daddy. Hit me! You know you want to!”

But that bitch stood her ground. She didn’t budge. Until she did.
Without so much as blinking Tina landed a solid left hook squarely on Frejah’s right jaw. Then she walked out. I found out later that she drove all the way home (without her glasses!) with her hands still bound in the bright red boxing gloves.

We all froze in place like life-size, mamby pamby ice sculptures. Frejah barely flinched. His glove went up to his face and he nodded. I think I saw..admiration?

After waiting the appropriate three minutes to thaw,  I found my nerve, grabbed Tina’s glasses off the floor, unlaced my gloves, and never went back to class. Boxing had started to seem like a really dumb hobby, dangerous in more ways than one. I decided to take up running. Getting run over by a car seemed like a gentler way to go than boxing with Frejah.

One of the guys who stayed, told me later that Frejah only got more abusive as the months went on (it was a twelve-week class) but that in his defense everyone who stayed (one heavily tattooed girl who was more masculine than Vin Diesel, and looked like she could kick the shit out of Frejah if given the chance—and five guys) —they all got REALLY good.

I guess that form of abuse “motivates” some people.

I met Tina that Saturday for coffee at Borders to give her back her glasses and basically say, “What the fuck, girl?!” I told her I wasn’t going back. Tina nodded, “Frejah sounds like all the voices in my head,” she said, “I don’t need to pay someone to talk to me like that!”

“I know. What a dick,” I agreed.

“But I can’t tell you how silent the voices have been since that night. I think I scared the shit out of them!” Tina laughed.
So did I.
Then she leaned in, “And for the first time in over three years I called my horrible father” she whispered like he might hear her. “How did Frejah know?” She looked at me with an odd combination of wisdom and naiveté.

“It’s his job. I think guys like that can smell it,” I said and went to order a giant slab of pumpkin bread so I didn’t have to think about how much I wanted to slug my shitty dad.

Maybe I should have kept boxing?

Carry on,
xox

Once upon a time, there was a couple, a man and a woman of middle age who’d been together for close to two decades.

Now, truth be told they were generally delightful, sharing many things in common such as their love of dogs and their wiggle butts, foreign travel, and food. But alas, they also had their differences.

Besides politics—she was a life-long bleeding heart and well, his heart, although reduced to mush by babies, sappy songs, and car commercials had never shed any blood (politically speaking) so, besides that, driving together had begun to come between them.

In all fairness, the man’s job required him to traverse the city of freeways numerous times a day. Frustrated, he operated one notch below full-blown road rage as he shared the streets of LA with the other clueless, dumb-shits, commuters.

She, on the other hand, drove very little; and when she did, a book on tape, podcast or favorite music mix would delight her, making her commute almost…bearable.

When they rode together to dinner, the movies or to see friends all the way in San Diego, great caruments (car arguments) would ensue. There was yelling, tears and bad language and it all started to get in the way.

Feeling more and more like a Crash Test Dummy she may have used the words aggressive and dangerous when describing his driving, He preferred the words assertive and tactical.

When he drove, cars seemed to jump out of nowhere, threatening the poor sucker in the passenger seat (the woman), at an alarming rate. He was oblivious. He started to find her constant criticism more than mildly annoying. She found herself blaming him for her high anxiety and lack of fingernails.

All of this to say: When they drove together he was an assbite and she was fast becoming a wing nut.

On one such occasion, just the other night, the situation reached critical mass.

Winding their way home through the canyon after a delicious steak dinner and wine with friends, the woman noticed that he was driving uncharacteristically slow. Like pace car slow. Like “rush hour” slow. Like Asian tourist slow.

Curious as to the cause of this anomaly and sensitive to the fact that her nagging caused him to get defensive which never ended well, she delicately broached the subject.

“You’re drunk aren’t you?” she asked, “Otherwise why would you be driving like an old lady?”

He didn’t flinch. He didn’t adjust his speed or move his head. He just stared straight ahead, following the curves in the road at a glacial pace.

He must not have heard her she surmised, so she asked again, only this time louder.

“Is there a problem? Are you drunk? Why are you driving so damn slow?”

Undaunted, he stared straight into the night.

“Hey!”

“I hear you.” he finally replied never taking his eyes off the road. “I’m ignoring you.”

“Why?” she barely got the word out before he continued.

“You’re not happy when I drive fast and you complain when I drive slow”, he replied. “Besides, I’m a drunk old lady and I can only do one thing at a time.”

His response caught her so off guard that a giant force built inside her until her body could no longer contain it and out it burst. Big guffaws of laughter filled the car. It must have been contagious because his face broke into a Cheshire grin and slowly he started to laugh too. For ten minutes straight, they laughed and they laughed and before they knew it—they were home.

Where they continue to live happily ever after (unless they discuss Hillary, health care, or how to get anywhere fast on the 405.)

Carry on,
xox

I told a man to go fuck himself today, and I’m not even going to apologize for it. That’s because he deserved it—and I don’t feel bad. At all.

Now, let me begin by saying, He started it! This will infuriate my mother. Maybe not. She was known to throw out an occasional, well-deserved f-bomb in her day.

Anyway, this guy. This guy who looked to be someone’s husband. Someone’s good ol’ dad. Their Pop.
Without even knowing me, he judged my parking. Actually, he said, and I quote: You can’t park there  You. Dumb. Bitch!

Okay. Now, in an act of full disclosure, I will admit that as far as parking goes—he’s warm. I can be a parking challenged. Even though I could win a parallel parking contest any day of the week, sometimes I am guilty of squeezing my station wagon into a “compact” space, creating a space where there might not be one, and taking ten tries to get into an awkwardly angled spot.

But who hasn’t?

Just to be clear, HIS outburst was not provoked by ANY of those things. My parking was flawless.

Flagged into a rare metered spot in front of my favorite cafe by the valet himself, I was just running in for two seconds (five minutes, maybe ten) to pick up take-out salads for my sister and me. As is our unspoken custom, the lovely man gestured for me to take the space. Listen, it was his space to give, but apparently, the judgy guy’s car was sniffing my car’s butt—because he was thisclosetome—convinced that meter had his name on it.

Unsuspecting, I cheerily jumped out of my car salivating for my favorite Chinese chicken salad which is like crack, or bacon, or bacon crack, or chocolate covered bacon crack to me.

In any case, that’s when the bad man pulled up next to me, rolled down his window and called me a dumb bitch.

“Excuse me, what did you say?” I asked, dumb (bitch) founded.

“You heard me,” he snarled.

“Did you call me a dumb bitch?”

“Well,” he sneered, “If the shoe fits.”

After that, I’m not exactly sure what happened. Everything went into slow motion. My saliva dried up, birds fell out of the sky, music played backwards, and before I even had time to form a thought—my mouth did the talking.

I wasn’t mad. Not really. I bent over, a big smile on my face, leaned into his passenger side window, gave him an unintentional cleavage shot (you’re welcome old man)—told him to go fuck himself with a little hand gesture and everything. Then I strolled away like a boss.

I could smell the burning rubber as he screeched away.

I can’t explain it—but you guys, it felt FANTASTIC!

Like empowered, hands on both hips, Wonder Woman fan-fucking-tastic!

I don’t ever do stuff like that! I’m polite. I’m nice. Too nice. I apologize for stuff that’s not even my fault.

Maybe it was the addition of the phrase “dumb bitch.” I can’t be sure.

Anyway, you guys, I’m not advocating telling strangers to go fuck themselves. Or maybe I am.

Bottom line: Don’t take anybody’s shit.

Carry on,
xox

“Dear Lord — Please keep one hand on my shoulder, and the other hand over my mouth.”

Hard to find a better prayer than that.

When you are in the act of defusing a situation, be it a political argument or an obtuse disagreement about the pronunciation of the word foyer; and I say that because everyone knows there is only one correct pronunciation of the word foyer—Foy-yay—anyway, I highly recommend—if at all possible—a minimum of talking.

Think about it. We mostly defuse anger or frustration. We seldom defuse our joy. When I say seldom, I mean never. When was the last time you said, Oh, Holy Hell, there is just too much joy in this room, I need to change the subject!

See what I mean?

Defusing is an act best left to heavily outfitted bomb squads, street mimes, or those who have, through some cruel twist of fate, found themselves without a voice. I say that from experience.

Words tend to get… wordy, meanings become misconstrued, and at a certain point, nobody is listening anyway so I say the fewer the better.

Silent nodding is my preferred method.

Then there’s petting. I’m a big believer in defusing a tense or uncomfortable situation by deflecting attention away with some kind of awkward physical contact. I’ve been known to braid a person’s hair or lint-brush the shit out of their jacket in the midst of that kind of kinetic, twisty energy.

I do all of those things because it is next to impossible for me to keep my mouth shut. Hence the prayer at the top.

Question: Have you EVER helped this kind of situation by stating the facts, calling for common sense, or getting the last word?
Yeah, me neither.

There is always humor but humor is subjective and it can backfire and not in a funny clown car kind of way.

Let’s face it, there are times when people want nothing more than to vent. Or argue. Some like to pick fights.

It’s been my experience that this seldom ends well if I put in my two cents, so I’ve learned to keep my small change to myself and wait for people to ask for my opinion (which they don’t), or I keep my mouth full of cake. Cheese will do in a pinch, but cake takes forever to chew and swallow, especially without coffee, and by the time you do—the topic has usually shifted to something else.

Like the deterioration of the Polar Ice Caps and how the ice in my drink and the car I drive are contributing to the imminent death of the Planet.

Head… silently…nodding…

Cake anyone?

Carry on,
xox

I am not proud of what I’m about to say next but I need to vent…so here goes.

I HATE to be carded.

Above is a picture of me with my beloved tribe taken on our trip to Nashy (Nashville) last week. That face is the default annoyance setting that my face naturally morphs into…when you card me…and then take my freaking picture.

My face can’t help it and neither can I.

This “carding everyone” has apparently become a “thing”; a regular practice in hipster bars across the country. Never one to pass on a ridiculous fad I expect as much in LA, but Nashville, you? You definitely surprised me.

Being carded at thirty, or even forty is squeal worthy. Trust me. Although it happened infrequently (which is just a kinder way of saying almost never), I’ve squealed the flattered squeal with the best of ‘um.

But now, three days shy of my fifty-ninth birthday I am by no means flattered by this charade.

I wear my gray hair with the purple fringe with pride.
I exercise and take pretty good care of myself.
Genetics, (for which I can take absolutely NO credit) has been kind to me.

But there are no circumstances, no amount of great lighting or make-up, of farsightedness under which I can be mistaken for under twenty-one. I know it. You know it. And if we stopped a random person on the street and asked them, they’d know it.

So cut the crap.

Here’s the thing, I’m totally okay with it. I earned this head of gray. Every. Single. One. So don’t condescend to me by telling me you’re “required to card everyone”, or smirk as I fumble for my license while you hold my overpriced artisan cocktail for ransom. Show me the respect I’ve earned.

I have handbags older than you. And books. And memories. In bars.

There. I said it. I’m finished. But be forewarned. I may slug the smug off of the next millennial who asks me for I.D.

Carry on,
xox

“Be a matador” he yelled as I whimpered pitifully in the middle of a six-lane highway, traffic whizzing by us on both sides.

Not waiting for a break in the traffic he had grabbed my hand and run us between cars out to a place I try REALLY hard to never find myself. The middle of a busy street.

I hate that shit.
I will NOT play chicken, I’ll wait, or walk to the corner crosswalk thank you very much.

But to my French husband jaywalking on a busy boulevard is in his blood, a skill learned as a youth on the impossibly dangerous streets of Paris.

It is not a chicken sport. It is a bullfight. And he/we were Matadors.

Gulp.

Me: (leaning in, yelling above the noise of the cars) Wha…what? Did you say a matador?

Husband: Yes! Stand still! Don’t let the cars smell your fear.

Me: (Squeezing his hand like a vice grip, hoping to illicit pain) Are you crazy? What are you talking about?

Husband: (Yelling back at me through a smirk) Listen to me! All the greatest Matadors are French!

Me: You’re kidding me right? They are NOT French, they’re Spanish!

Did you see what he did there? He took my mind off of my predicament, knowing I would argue with him. Well played husband, well played.

Husband: I’m telling you, they’re French! They’re called Coreadors.

I was laughing nervously. Mostly at the absurdity of the conversation. I’m sure I appeared squirmy, uncomfortable and maybe a little hysterical. That comes from knowing that you’re probably going to end up as a splat on the windshield of a Prius.

Me: Shut. Up! They are NOT!

Husband: (Leaning in, yelling above traffic) Or Toreadors. Those are the guys on horseback. 

Me: (Feeling queasy. close enough to death to relate to the bull) Uhhh! Stop! Bullfighting is barbaric! The French don’t have bullfighting! They’re WAY too civilized for that!

Husband: (Amused by my argument) That’s what YOU think!

By the way, can you believe we were still standing in the middle of a busy street? Me either, but we were!

Me: (Wishing I’d ordered the french toast as my last meal) Egads. Bullfighting. Brutal. Whoever thought that was a good idea?

Husband: The Romans.

Me: Figures.

With that, the last car hurtled past us and he yanked my hand and ran me to the safety of the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. We were both laughing, not at bullfighting because it’s a horrible practice*—but at the absurdity of our conversation.

Husband: God, you can be such a baby!

Me: God, you’re weird! And damn, the Romans were assholes!

Some story on the radio in the car changed the subject, but I had to share this.

Words from a French wise guy I know—When you’re in the middle of chaos—stand still—be a matador.

Carry on,
xox

*Don’t get your panties in a bunch. I am in no way condoning bullfighting and no bulls were killed in the telling of this story.

After waking up at 4 am to catch a 7 am flight back to LA, I braved a dark and frigid Vancouver morning

Once through security and my full body scan, (you can’t be too careful when it comes to us pasty, gray-haired fifty-something jihadists), I hurried up and waited.  That gave me a chance to get all caught up on the breaking news in the US (of which I have been blissfully unaware of for three days), thanks to a giant TV screen every three feet.

That’s when I saw it.

The Senate, led by the majority leader Mitch McConnell had shushed Elizabeth Warren!

Fueled by a profound lack of sleep, too much airport coffee, and a red-hot rage, I may have yelled back at the TV, “Oh, now you’ve done it! You don’t ever shush a woman!”

No crowd gathered. No one shouted their agreement (because it was before five in the morning and the only ones who heard it were a janitor cleaning the carpets…and a potted plant. Still! You guys! Seriously?

EVERY man knows that if he wants to live to see his next birthday—you don’t tell a woman she is overreacting —and you never try to shush her—in public. EVER! Most especially Senator Elizabeth Warren.

“What is wrong with you fools!” I may have sneered under my breath but still loud enough for the carpet cleaner to hear it over his machine and jerk his head in my direction. Soon there were hand gestures and some fist waving. “Don’t cite some archaic rule and twist it into a mandate fitting your agenda. Jesus on a cracker! Do you not have wives? Daughters? Someone you love who has a vagina and was born in the 20th century? I KNOW you don’t get away with this at home!”

In reality, they shushed two women when they forbid her to speak. She was reading a letter penned by Coretta Scott King back in the 1980’s in which she was criticizing Jeff Sessions who was then a nominee to become a federal judge.

No big deal. Just the widow of civil-rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

It seemed apropos to read it aloud seeing that now he’s nominated to become the Attorney General. Right? I mean are we so far through the looking glass…? Let’s see…too racially biased to be a judge…perhaps not fit to…you get the picture.

Sadly, they are trying to shush us all.

Oh, brother, this gets my hackles up. This boils my blood. Big Time.
Luckily for the gathering crowd at gate 82, I was obligated to hurl through the air at five hundred miles per hour in a metal tube for three hours. It gave me a chance to cool off. I hadn’t planned on writing anything but I have two plus hours up here with no internet and I’ve finished my People magazine–so here goes.
Here is me cooled off:

Dear House and Senate,
If you think you can shush us women into submission—you have another thing coming you silly, silly men. Weren’t our marches on Washington, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, London, Paris, Rome…just adorable? With our knitted caps and cardboard signs? Aren’t our phone campaigns that fill your inboxes to capacity just darling?
You ain’t seen nothing yet. You will hear our voices in every way imaginable.

You may have won the battle but you will not win this war.

Okay. I’m beyond tired. I’m going to bed.

Who’s with me? Not in bed…in outrage?
xox