anger

I’ve been thinking about the state of things lately because, well, they’re inescapable. Those darn things. And their twisty state.

What has been so curious to me are people’s reactions—my own included.

When I don’t stay high, as Michelle Obama in her infinite wisdom advised us all to do, and instead go low, like subterranean, send a search party, “where are your pants?” low—I am NOT my best self.

I know that’s shocking but it’s true!

After I find my way back into the vicinity of common sense, (no thanks to GPS, you useless piece of shit), I have begun to reflect on the familiarity of these feelings that have left me all feely and not in a good way.

I remember these feelings of acute frustration!
I remember this rage!
I remember feeling completely disempowered, gutted and left for dead.

Most of all I have the clearest sense of Deja Vu when “alternative facts” are used. That’s because we had a very similar parallel universe in my house when I was growing up.

Up was down.
Day was night.
Cats were fish.
Dogs had more value than actual human children.
And A’s on your report card were mandatory but being smart, or a “smart-ass”, (as it was called if you questioned ANYTHING) was discouraged and by discouraged I mean cause for punishment.

Sound familiar?

We kids coined the phrase “Koo-Koo talk” because, well, nothing our step-mother said ever made sense except to her, her dog, and occasionally our dad. She was a Kellyanne Conway doppelgänger, a decade younger than our father, a man who had ended up on the sad, lonely and desperate side of our parents 1970 divorce. When she came along with her platinum over-teased hair, thick black Carol Channing false eyelashes (not the good kind like I wear), and age inappropriate mini skirts, he was…let’s see…the word grateful comes to mind.

She hated kids and was nuts (maybe not in that order). And not charming or funny nuts. She didn’t wear silly hats or knit sweaters for hamsters. She was mean nuts. Infuriating nuts. She was a giant windbag of salty, mean nuts. And she was fluent in Koo-Koo talk or as we’re calling it all these decades later—alternative facts.

Or lies. Let’s all call them what they really are—lies.

I suspect that one of the reasons I get a bit twitchy when people lie is because of my childhood. And I also suspect the reason you all might be feeling like strung out wacko is for the same reason.

We’re all smart people whose stock has recently been devalued and we have finely tuned bullshit meters. Can you blame us?!

I don’t know about you, but when I go low I want them all to choke on their lying lies. I want karma to make a speedy round trip, like a boomerang thrown by Thor to dispense justice. I want heads to roll.

Then I pull back, find the stairs and make the long and arduous climb back up to the land where I’m in charge of how I feel.

That is what the Koo-Koo talking, mean-as-hell nut-job taught me four decades ago. That I can stay in the fight, pointing out all of the injustice and lies which just bounced off the Teflon bitch—or I can rise above it, intellect intact (because all that Koo-Koo talk kills brain cells), pick my battles and stay sane.

Because as we’ve all witnessed, you cannot reason with crazy. It will drive YOU crazy!

If you can relate—I advise you to try to do the same.

Carry on,
xox

My tribe,
If you haven’t already read this, you must.
It resonated deeply with me and several of my friends and I know it will with you too.

I’ll let Danielle take it from here.
Carry on,
xox

All of my failures can be traced to my silence. Every. single. one.

Getting fired from the company that I co-founded happened because I had gone months without speaking up. Lots of money on the line. Better keep my mouth shut and give this a chance to work.

When I hurt a colleague’s feelings, which was completely avoidable, it was because I didn’t have the courage to speak to them directly. I overpaid for some things because I didn’t want to appear unreasonable, so I just stopped… negotiating. I didn’t want to demotivate people who worked for me/with me so I just… didn’t bring it up. Shit, I have a tattoo that I’d really rather not have because I didn’t talk back to the tattoo guy.

Failed to protect. Failed to love. Failed to lead. Failed to make art. Failed to speak up.

“Failing” and “succeeding” aren’t very poetic terms.

In-between the labels of “failure” and “success” are all of the painful things that make us so much more beautiful.
But after you lose out (like, on a BIG DREAM) because you kept your mouth shut; or you take a piece of someone’s heart with you because you took the easy (silent) way out, then speaking up starts to seem like less of a heroic act and just way more… practical. “Practical” as in… voicing your truth becomes a life practice.

Truthing isn’t necessarily easier to do, but it brings incredible ease to your life. And the more you do it, the easier it becomes. The courage, the classy delivery, the compassionate humor, it all becomes more accessible when you’re using your voice every day.

Your voice is a muscle. You need it to rise to the occasion of your life. That’s why it’s called speaking up.

Danielle LaPorte is an invited member of Oprah’s inaugural Super Soul 100, a group who, in Oprah Winfrey’s words, “is uniquely connecting the world together with a spiritual energy that matters.”

A speaker, a poet, a painter, and a former business strategist and Washington-DC think tank exec, Entrepreneur Magazine calls Danielle, “equal parts poet and entrepreneurial badass…edgy, contrarian…loving and inspired.” Her charities of choice are VDay: a global movement to end violence against women and girls, and charity: water, setting out to bring safe drinking water to everyone in the world. Her favorite person is her 12-year-old son.
You can find her @daniellelaporte and just about everywhere.

http://www.daniellelaporte.com/#

This is an essay by my bad-ass, snort-laugh inducing friend Mel Maure. She can be funny right now because well, she’s Canadian.

I figured it would be perfect for today because maybe, if you’re like me, you’ve just emerged from your own twenty-four hour tantrum, you’re suffering from a terrible case of post-election tight-assery and you need to lighten up and just fucking say “thank you.”

Thank you Mel! Just like chocolate lava cake—you are deliciously gooey on the inside and always hit the spot.

Now if you’ll excuse me I’ll be:
1) Searching for my sense of humor.
2) Taking back all of the power I gave away to this election.

Carry on,
xox

I throw spiritual tantrums. There. I said it.

What does said tantrum look like? Think of the ugly cry steeped in performance enhancing drugs. There is gnashing of teeth, snot runners and long bouts of standing in the corner of my stylish bedroom banging my forehead against the wall. And let’s not forget the weird keening sound that rises from my clogged throat.

When I throw down like this it’s not that I have been diagnosed with some raging incurable case of gout or have suddenly been forced to live in a cardboard box.

These beatific blowouts arise when I have not received exactly what I have prayed, asked, pleaded, lamented for, forgetting that my squirrelesque brain may not be the most reliable source of knowing what I need when I need it. I have a history of embarrassing romantic relationships to prove that.

In this unnerving place of wait and trust, I convince myself that my disconnection from the divine engine is terminal and there isn’t even a Kenny G tune to lull me while I sit on hold. I’ve been known to patiently wait at least three hours and fifteen minutes in this interminable holding pattern. But who’s counting?

In an attempt to ease this unsightly spoiled behaviour, I made a pact with the Cosmic Smoothie — what I think of as Universal Superfood, or God if you prefer. My somewhat anemic pact went something like this:
“I will refrain from pitching fits when the rate of jaw-dropping blessings coming into my granular existence is slow,” I vowed.

“When I meditate and don’t feel the rash of exhilarated connection to the Universe I jones for like a kismet junkie, I will be patient,” I promised.

“When the beasts of the forest are not swooping, roaming or stepping gingerly onto my path as unabashed signs that the Universe is there to soothe my drama du jour, I will be a quiet little angel of contentment,” I assured.
This sacred accord lasted three hours and twenty-seven minutes.

So why am I so quick to stop, drop and bang my head on the ground like a spoiled kid in Walmart’s toy section?
Simple. My memory sucks.

I am a dementiated, addled, lucky-if-I’m-wearing-pants kind of spiritual adventurer. And I don’t believe I am alone in this tendency of being lackadaisical. I refuse to believe I am the only one whose heart is akin to a sieve on good days, unable to retain the fullness. And on bad days is more like a defunct smelly well — the Stephen King kind with a creepy clown hunched and waiting at the bottom.

Being an impatient sort of soul does nothing to further the cause.

Once again, I am fairly certain I am not the only one who plugs her ears and hums a tune to drown out a greater knowing. A wisdom that says it’s not the best idea for us, in our limited fallible skin-suit, to drink from the cosmic fire hose.
So what is a petulant, forgetful, impatient spiritual sojourner to do?

First step: get up and stop thrashing about in the dirt. It’s contaminated with all kinds of bullshit. And by bullshit, I mean that potent noxious blend of fear and doubt. The only thing that brand of dirt grows is mould and poisonous fungi.

Second step: Record, write, make cave drawings if you have to, of all the times when you were doused with magic and thrumming with exhilaration. And if you are one of the more efficient spiritual travellers who keeps a log of every step and has a slide show to prove it, be nostalgic. Remember. Pour over every detail like an old high school football QB reliving the glory days. Caress every stitch across the pigskin of your divine moments.

Third step: Enjoy the reprieve and say thank you. It’s quite simple if we think of it like food. We cannot eat nonstop…God knows I’ve tried…at some point we all need to stop and digest what we’ve swallowed. Assimilate the sacred nutrients. When I skip this rest and digest place, I often mistake a wicked case of gas for the energy of the universe moving through me. It’s not a pleasant affair.

Fourth and final step: Have fun. For the love of God; quite literally, unclench.
Tight-assery is not a divine construct and no one wants to hang out with a downer or tight-ass, except for other tight-ass downers. Why would the Cosmic Smoothie be any different? There is no room for amazing things and mind-numbing blessings in the realm of the anal-retentive.

The final caveat to all of this: we are bound to find ourselves in the throws of petulance again and again. Our greatness cannot help but thrash inside the constraints of our humanness.

So if you see a fellow traveller rolling around in the dirt, producing bizarre mewling noises, please kneel down and whisper in her ear that she needs to stand up now. It would do her well to say thank you. It will restore her to remember all the jaw-dropping moments. For this invites more of the same.

For more flawed thoughts and very human fumblings from Melanie
https://medium.com/@melmaure/the-spiritual-tantrum-of-a-kismet-junkie-5f6cc779df07#.ugt3ruknx

Hi, Guys!
This is a throwback that I forgot about. I was only reminded of it because when I put the word “shit” in the dashboard search behind the scenes it comes up! Ha! Go figure. Many, many posts come up when I put the word “shit” in the search. An embarrassing amount. Maybe too many? Nahhhhhh…
Oh well, I suppose it goes along with the shit on your shoe piece from yesterday. I also remember laughing out loud at that cartoon at the top because I’m a unicorn…or rather I wrote about being a twenty-six-year-old divorced unicorn, sometimes I just scream UNICORN! for no reason, AND I included the words unicorn balls in a piece and one of my besties, Steph, never lets me forget it!
#unicornballs
Anyhow, carry on,
xox

This graphic has nothing to do with anything—it just made me howl with laughter.

The bigger question today was: Heeeeeyyyyy…Why does my car smell like a horrible fart?

It’s not Ruby, the one we blame for all things foul smelling—she’s with her dad.
So…I’m the only one in here and as far as I know I haven’t passed gas.

Why do the bank and the market and the stroll on my way to the beauty supply also smell like ass gas? I wondered.

Thought process of an intelligent woman: Maybe that rotten egg, sulfur smell is a natural gas leak? Yeah, that’s it.
We must have a major gas leak in our neighborhood. That could be dangerous.

Note to self: When I get home I need to call the Gas Company to come out and check that out.

That could be a lifesaver, especially with all of the cooking and candle lighting going on the next few days. Nobody wants their face blown off while lighting a candle.

What actually happened: I promptly forgot.
I had other things on my mind.
It was the day before Thanksgiving. I was busy!

Someone else has probably called by now, I figured. It is going to have to be up to another Good Samaritan to save our lives.

Silent prayer just before lighting a candle: Dear God, I hope it’s not my face that gets blown off. Thank you. I mean, Amen.

I was reminded that I forgot, (See how that works?) by the smell of dog fart inside my own home!
The same one I had spent all day Hazeling. The one that was minus one poopy puppy.

Sourly odoriferous. That’s the smell!

I went inside and washed out my nostrils. I did! It was like that dog-farty sour smell was somehow stuck up inside my nose, tainting my entire day.

I lit incense. Nothing helped (but at least I didn’t blow up.)
It just hung over the stench for a while. A delightfully nauseating Nag-Champa-Poop blend.

Turns out I had dog poop on the bottom of my shoe and it had accompanied me all day long, everywhere I went.

Has that ever happened to you?

See where I’m going with this?
I’m not even going to say it because you guys are so smart you already know that I’m going to say that the poop on my shoe was exactly like a metaphor for a bad mood. Anger or even sadness.

We take that you take that shit wherever we go.

Damn, you guys are good!

Carry on,
xox

Sounds counterintuitive. Right?

But if we armour up, we fall prey to exactly what the cruel ones want. We turn on each other…

What a fucking nightmare of a week this has been.

But remember.

The world is not cruel. Only a few.

Say that again.

The WORLD is not cruel—only an angry few who view things as so hopeless that they see no way out other than violence.

Anger is sad’s bodyguard, remember?

Be courageous. Try to stay in your heart.

Get angry—then get back to your heart.

Be sad—then find your way back to your heart.

Feel hopeless—then search for love. That’s what I’m attempting this weekend.

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 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 with some 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 Antarctic 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

This is a Flashback from a couple of years ago that I was telling a friend about just the other day. Her husband has to fly up to the Bay area in a couple of weeks for a mediation on a lawsuit that is one of the bat-shit craziest wastes of time you could ever imagine. I can SO relate and it’s easier for me to repost this than to tell them the story—and I figure maybe a few of you might need to read this too.
Big love to HT & CT.

Carry on,
xox

“Anger is just Sad’s bodyguard… and Shame’s too, I think.”

Someone tell me, how come the crazy ones never lose any sleep?
Is it their complete lack of a conscience that causes them to appear so slick, smug and impossibly fresh?

Not a hair out-of-place.
Barely a hint of the devil that lies within.

While those of us that possess a moral compass and have the misfortune to find ourselves in their orbit are sleep deprived, disheveled, walking disasters.

That will always bother me.

The fact that people who operate outside the constructs of polite society close their eyes at night and sleep the uninterrupted, peaceful sleep of the just.

Why is that?
How can it be?

The night before an arbitration with the attorneys for DWP to discuss the fact that their one-hundred-year-old water main had burst and turned my store into an aquarium; I tossed and turned until the sheets were knotted up around my head and neck, fashioned into an unattractive turban/noose—and I ground my teeth down to nubs. Which left me the next morning gumming my toast, with a foggy brain and pronounced sheet marks on my face that didn’t fade until after lunch.

The team of He, She and It, that represented the water company, entered the room that morning laughing.
Uproariously.
Like they’d all participated in a hilarious episode of Carpool Karaoke on their way to work.

I felt at a distinct disadvantage. Out of the loop, like the punchline to the funniest joke ever told was lost on me. Was that their plan?

They were meticulously coiffed and groomed, cool as the proverbial cucumbers, while I was drenched in flop sweat, permanently wrinkled and frantically struggling to remove a poppy-seed from between my two front teeth with my tongue.

Note to self: Don’t accept half a poppy-seed bagel when you’re out of coffee. And you forgot your water.
You’re going to need something to rinse your mouth with when the big guns enter the room.

If I’d had more sleep I would have remembered that.

They all seemed so nice, so genuinely happy to meet me; that is until the bell rang and we went to our respective corners. Then the gloves came off and the crazy started to show.

They made shit up. Their entire alibi was jack-crap.
With graphs, documents and flow charts. Listen, if you show me a flow chart, I’ll believe anything…almost.
Somehow they double teamed my attorney and me. In the most well crafted, legal babbly, thinly veiled insulting way, they pinned the whole thing on me.
ME!
They made the accidental, midnight break of their water main seem like MY fault.

Business was slow, debt was high, it was 2009, and I need out—only I was too stupid to commit arson.

Seems bat-shit crazy, right?

When we broke for lunch even I wanted to throw the book at me.
The picture they painted of me was that of a sad-sack, loser of a business woman. Which was exactly how I felt at the time. I think my lawyer drank the Kool-Aid too—they were that convincing. She wouldn’t make eye contact, skulking in the corner on her phone, and then disappearing for the entire lunch break.

But you wanna know what trumps sleep deprivation? Rage. That’s what.
It also instantly removes sheet marks from your face.

It also overrides all shame and victim-hood.

Crazy and Rage are curious dance partners and they should never be left alone in a room together.
Let me tell you why. Crazy is so put together, so charming, pretty, and unflappable. Crazy looooooves a victim, she gets off on them, they get her panties wet.

Rage is no victim, he’s a gangster. He’s raw, he’s greasy and he talks real dirty. He wears a wife beater t-shirt and too much Aramis; and he has only one thing in his crosshairs—Crazy.

Crazy gets high on Rage and it quickly becomes a street-brawl.

But Rage is better than Sad, which is where I’d pitched my tent for eighteen months. Some say you can get caught in anger and never feel despair. The opposite had been true for me.
Sad victimhood covered in shame is like chum in the water to Crazy.

So Rage felt better. It felt…empowering. Sadness felt like quick-sand—Rage, like solid ground.

It got my attention and cleared my vision, so I could finally see the truth and it kicked Sad’s ass to the curb.

I locked myself in a public bathroom stall kicking, screaming, and raging for nearly an hour before taking a walk around the building to help me come to my senses—and find my courage.

I knew my opponent. I was very familiar with Crazy.
You see, I had met her as a teenager in the form of my father’s second wife. I had witnessed her devouring her victims and I was smart enough to remember that Rage threw her into a sort of drunken feeding frenzy.

I also remembered that nothing can get to Crazy. Nothing touches their heart. There is no reasoning with Crazy. There is no sympathy, empathy or compassion and absolutely nothing is open for discussion.

They act as your judge, jury, and executioner.

And the more they sense is at stake; the faster and louder the accusations come. Their aim is to keep you off-balance, on the ropes.

Remember they are rested, ready and strong after their peaceful night’s sleep.

How is that fair?
Because they get a buzz off this shit and they don’t care about anything other than winning. So it’s not.

I sure wasn’t feeling sad anymore, Rage had hatched a plan but I knew better than to let it enter that room. I waited outside the double doors of the conference room until I saw my attorney exit the elevator. I could hear the team of Crazy, Crazier, and Craziest, whopping it up inside.

“You handle this, I’m leaving” I announced. I had her by the arm and was walking her back down a long hallway of endless doors, out of earshot of the hyenas.

“What?” she asked, looking surprised.

“You don’t need me here. They can smell my fear and sadness, and well, their offer is beyond ridiculous. See what happens when they can’t focus on me. When they have to deal with you and only the facts.”  We had walked in a circle making our way back toward the bank of elevators.

“Give me a number you’ll you settle at”, she asked as she reached into her bag for paper and a pen. She actually seemed relieved, like the day could be salvaged. Like it could go back to a language she understood—the law.

I wrote a figure down. She looked and nodded in agreement, folding the paper into a small square and tucking into her suit-jacket pocket.

The elevator chimed, opening right on cue. People were packed in like sardines, but as I stepped inside she grabbed my purse strap, making me turn around. “This could end today”, she said with a hint of a smile, letting me go as the doors slowly closed.

A hairy mystery hand reached around me and pushed the button for LOBBY, getting me the hell out of that DWP building. I know it was Rage. I could smell his Aramis. But I made sure I left him behind, losing him in the crowd.

*I got the call a couple of hours later that they’d settled on the figure I’d written down. “Piece of cake”, I remember her saying in a distracted voice; she was already on to her next case.

We all slept well that night.

I know some of you guys needed to hear this,
Carry on,
xox

This one hit a nerve and I’ve had a ton of requests (okay, five) to re-run it.
Here ya go!
xox

Thank you, doctor, for keeping me waiting forty minutes for my fifteen-minute, two hundred and fifty dollar consultation.
I’m your second appointment of the day. It’s 10 am. How the fuck could you already be running that far behind? Never mind, it doesn’t matter. I’m firing you on account of bad time management. I may not have all the letters after my name — but my time is just as valuable as yours.

Thank you, dear friend who is chronically late because she can never find parking.
Because of you I keep a ten-minute window ahead of all my appointments, even lunch dates, to make sure I can wrangle the admittedly criminal lack of sufficient parking in Los Angeles.
I love you so I’ll tolerate this one character flaw.

Thank you every commercial airline I’ve ever flown.
You treat departure and arrival times as loose suggestions, which has forced me to get all the apps that alert me of your lateness so that I don’t end up getting trapped at the airport, overspending at the duty-free shops, or standing so long at the arrivals gate that I end up printing a random name on a box lid just to fit in.

As long as I’m venting, thank you private jet travel.
I’ve been fortunate to partake in your luxurious expediency and I must say: You have ruined me.
It is my belief that NO individual who is financially incapable of sustaining their own jet ( which is 99% of us), should be allowed to fly private.
It is a mind fuck on steroids.
When they say they’re leaving at 10, you may arrive at 9:50, but you will be wildly, inappropriately, “rookie” early because by 9:53 someone will have taken your bags, lead you to your double-wide, leather, Barcalounger; peeled you a grape, dipped you a strawberry, massaged your feet and told you a joke. There is no long security line, no barefooted X-ray pat down or frantic belt removal.
And if everyone is on board by 9:54 — they just take off.
What?
It’s too good. I can’t take it! Never again.

And last but not least thank you over-entitled rock singers. You know who you are.
At my current age of fifty-seven I’m well aware that I’ve wasted vast portions of my youth, hundreds if not thousands of hours, waiting for you to start your fucking concerts and I’m pissed and I want that time back! I know you’ve been to the arena or stadium. You had a soundcheck and a driver for Pete’s sake. Why can’t you manage to be fed, made-up and dressed by showtime? I can.
Is that too much to ask for the millions we’re paying to see you live? I just don’t get.

And thank you, Taylor Swift. Although I’ve yet to see you live, I heard you start your set right on time. Just one of the things I love about you.

Sorry about that, I just needed to vent. I have a thing about punctuality!
What about you? Are you late as a habit? Do you think it’s rude? How long will you wait for someone?

Carry on,
xox

HAPPINESS
1. “Happiness is a mental or emotional state of well-being defined by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. A variety of biological, psychological, religious and philosophical approaches have striven to define happiness and identify its sources.

”

And they can’t.

Because defining happiness is like describing a boobie to a blind man. You just have to feel it.

Uh, that word happiness.  It’s such a trigger.

I once heard happiness described as being “As important to living as oxygen.”
At the time, it pissed me off something awful. What wing-nut would equate happiness with life? You can live a perfectly fine life as a miserable bitch—just ask my dog.

Listen, our Founding Father’s did. They even wrote it into our country’s Bill Of Rights — “Life, Liberty and The Pursuit of Happiness.”

Have you ever tried to pursue happiness? The big smiley face kind? I have.
That is one slippery, elusive, and habitually unattainable little fucker—when pursued.

That’s the thing. You have to let happiness come to YOU. Find YOU.

What about JOY. If you hate the concept of pursuing happiness, you’re going to loathe the word JOY.

I hear you, Joy sucks. Does it even exist? Joy? I mean really? Who walks around JOYFUL?

Stop being so angry for a second and consider of this:

Have you ever felt curious about something? Approaching it with wonder and awe?

Have you ever been in love? Maybe romantic love has passed you by, but did you ever win a fish at the inky-stink neighborhood Carnival? Or collect ladybugs at the vacant lot around the corner? Or help a hummingbird find its way out of your house?

What about when you fix something that’s been broken? Or find something precious that’s been lost?

I helped a little boy who was lost in Target find his mother.

We are completely blind to the ordinary occurrences in our lives, forever looking, PURSUING, the big, jumping in the air, new pony, fireworks and screaming, Red Ferrari, giant Happy Face moments which, if we’re lucky, happen a handful of times in our lives.

I needed a steadier stream so I learned to redefine what it meant to feel happiness and joy. I expanded the parameters ( Yes, you can do that) to include, well, everything, and I retired my track shoes. I ended the pursuit and opened my eyes.

This says FIND THE JOY IN THE ORDINARY. I say, SEE THE JOY IN THE ORDINARY, that feels SO much more doable to me. How about YOU?

Happy Hump Day y’all,
Carry on,
xox

This would be funny if it weren’t so freaking sad.

Screw you 2016!

In just fourteen days you’ve taken two of our best and left us with…well, Donald Trump and that creepy Burger King with the plastic hair and psychotic smile.

Earlier this week I was shocked and a little pissed at the loss of David Bowie. I walked around the entire day in a fog, almost as if I could feel the creative void he left behind. I was just getting my groove back when this morning I woke up to the news that the delicious Alan Rickman had passed.

Wait. What?
Things have gotten out of hand, this has just got to stop!

Both were sixty-nine years old, which from over here at fifty-seven seems really young and waaaaaayyyy too close. (Uh, oh, now my own mortality chip has been activated), AND they both died from cancer.

Fuck you cancer!

So now we all know what happens—we wait for the third one to go. It’s some kind of weird numerological anomaly that always proves itself to be true: celebrities die in threes.

When Raphael came home from the gym this morning he was met with my sad-sack face which stopped him in his tracks. I’m sure for a second he assumed I was upset over the fact that my ticket had not won us the  1.5 billion dollars (which I was), or simply that I’d finished my coffee—but he asked me what was wrong anyway.

“Alan Rickman died,” I sort of half sobbed.

“The guy from Harry Potter? The guy with the voice?”

“Yes!” I exclaimed with genuine shock. You see, my husband is so bad at remembering names, movies, actors, and anything pop culture that this was like a fifth grader correctly answering a $1000 Jeopardy question about life on our planet before computers. (As he explains it, he doesn’t want to waste the brain space.) Ouch. That always makes me feel like I need Will Smith to put on his sunglasses and flash that light in my face to free me up some brain bandwidth. (See what I did there?)

“Yeah, yeah, he was in Harry Potter. But oh my gawd, what about Love Actually, and Truly, Madly, Deeply* and Die Hard; oh, and we just saw him in A Little Chaos, remember?”

“Not really”.

“Ohhhhhh, I loved him…and now he’ll never know. I always wanted to meet him so I could ask him to record the outgoing message on my phone.” (Sigh) That voice…I can’t even…”, I could feel a lump growing like a goiter in my throat.

“Oh man, you’ve had a rough week. All your favorites.”
Awwwww, that was nice, some real sympathy. Then he turned on me.

“You know they always go in threes—I hope the third one isn’t Jean-Luc Picard—that would suck.”
He had a slight grin on his face as he ran out of  left the room, “Uh oh, what if he’s six-nine?” he shouted from a safe distance.

Okay, now he was just fucking with me.

I had made a dark secret of mine public knowledge a couple of years back in a speech I made at Raphael’s 60th birthday “roast”— the fact that I had a mad crush on Jean-Luc Picard and had used him as a husband template. Not so much the actor Patrick Stewart, although don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t throw him back. No, more specifically I had the hots for the French, bald, serious, thoughtful, smart, capable, man-who-could-solve-any-problem that the Universe (literally) threw at him and dare I say sexy, Captain of the Starship Enterprise—Jean-Luc Picard.
And I came damn close with Raphael. Except for the Starship, I nailed it.

“Natalie Cole!” I screamed down the hall. “She was the first. Jean-Luc is safe!—Natalie Cooooooole!”

“That was New Years Eve. Doesn’t count. It was still 2015.”

Shit, Game on.

“What about the Motorhead guy?” I was grasping at straws, my brain was scrambling, Google! Google!
Fuck that, “Siri! How old is Patrick Stewart?”

“Motorhead guy was still 2015”.
How did he know this shit? He must have been Googling as fast as his fingers could type. I could hear in his voice that he was trying not to laugh. Jerk.

“Patrick Stewart is seventy-five!” I yelled, filled with genuine relief. “Oh, thank God, he’s safe,” I muttered to myself under my breath, not realizing, because of all of the brain space filled with useless trivia, that that only meant he was six years closer to the pearly gates.

“Why are you yelling? I’m right here,” he said, standing in the doorway wearing only a smirk. (Not really, he was wearing pants, but it makes for a better story.)

All of this to say: Why are all of the great ones dying? Sixty-nine is middle-aged, people play stupid guessing games about who’s died instead of crying, it’s starting to suck being a baby-boomer, death is not the end, and considering who joined the general population this week—Heaven is going to be a blast!

Its been one-hullava week—wanna weigh in?

Carry on,
xox

*”Truly, Madly, Deeply” which came out in 1991, is one of my all-time favorite films and so I went on Amazon to order a DVD so I could watch it this weekend and cry my eyes out—and there was only ONE copy—for $200! WTF?