bad habits

Condoms, Meat, Soap and Douche ~ Why I Curate My Shopping Cart ~ Throwback

I worked as a supermarket checker until I was thirty. It was mindless work, paid decent money, and had the flexible hours I needed for the other things I cared about like school and acting.

I was a damn fine checker. The best. The kind you’ll wait in the longest line for. I was fast, nice, with a minimum of small talk. Standing and scanning groceries has a zen quality about it. The repetition can send you into a zone of complacency. If you’re lucky, faces blur and time flies.

That was the case for me maybe 10% of the time. The other 90% of the time I was judging the contents of everyone’s carts, making up stories about what they were buying and why.

I know! Your worst nightmare, right?

I was the girl who stifled a giggle when the dude with the greasy hair and the porn mustache who was drowning in Brut cologne came thru the express line EVERY Friday night. With a case of Coors, a carton of Marlboro reds and Maxim condoms (whose tagline was printed on the box: For those who live large) his story was a no-brainer.

“For those who live large!” Can you stand it? I couldn’t. The minute he was ten paces out into the parking lot, racing toward his Trans Am—I’d burst out laughing. Nobody else in line was paying much attention so I’m guessing my outburst appeared a little manic.

Whatever.

There was Ms. Shaw, an ancient, (she was probably in her late forties at the time) spinster/cat lady, who arranged her cat food in neat stacks by flavor in her cart. Anal-retentive doesn’t do her justice. She bagged every red delicious apple in a separate plastic bag and grouped all of the green vegetables together—away from the other colors. And once it was placed on the conveyor belt, none of the food could touch. (Is this making you a bit twitchy?) She also bought bourbon if I remember correctly, which seemed so out-of-character that I made up an imaginary life for her. In my imagination, she still lived at home with an even more ancient (sixty) boozy parent.

Then there was the woman who came in once a week and bought six bottles of Clairol #6 blonde hair dye. She had dark brown hair so I’m not sure what that was all about. Maybe she dyed her kid’s hair? Or her pubes? Who knows? Maybe she was a hairdresser who only liked to use that one color because she believed that blondes had more fun?

Whatever.

There were a lot of women back then that bought douche. Is douche still a thing? I read somewhere that it’s unhealthy for you since your vagina is self-cleaning, like an oven. Anyhow, if it went on sale there’d be a run on douche and these douching women would buy entire baskets of it. Inevitably, we ran out and I had to manually write-up “rain-checks” for Summers Eve douche while they made the entire line wait so they could take advantage of the sale price another time. I had one woman who bought douche and two pints of rocky road ice cream EVERY DAY. Eventually, the store had to put a kibosh on the douche hoarding. They came up with a limit. No more than three boxes at a time. When we tried to enforce that rule I thought there was going to be a riot! Pandemonium broke out. Nothing was going to keep these women from their “fresh feeling!”

I’m curious—Is douching addictive? Does your va-jay-jay forget how to self-clean? Whatever.

Speaking of fresh, I had a man who used to bag his meat and Irish Spring soap together and when I’d try to separate them he’d grab them away from me and reunite them. Finally, I asked him why. “I like the way it tastes”, he replied.
My intuition told me he lived alone. One evening the assistant manager was helping out, bagging groceries for me and when he saw me throw the soap in with the meat he just about lost it. “It’s okay”, I assured him, “he likes the way it makes the steak taste.” He looked back at the customer who was nodding enthusiastically. The guy swore by it.

I never had the courage to try it. It reminded me of menthol cigarettes. Bleck.

I’m going to say this—I can’t help it. The buying habits of the general public are weird. There were people who lived on TV dinners, people who, in my humble opinion drank WAAAAYYY too much diet coke, people who spent all their money on junk food and cigarettes, and the young anorexic girl who only and ever bought celery.

You can tell a lot about a person by what’s in their grocery cart. It’s a snapshot into a life—a peek into some of our most private habits—eating and personal hygiene.

So, I curate my cart when I go to the store. The implication of shame keeps me honest. Lots of fruit and kale, no candy or donuts. I know that no matter how disinterested they look the checker is making up stories about me so when I buy anything remotely embarrassing (like Monistat, lubricant, four boxes of Triscuit, or the second bottle in a month of the sour mix for my whiskey sours) I go thru the self-check-out line because I’m a damn fine checker. The best. Fast, nice, with a minimum of small talk—and most of all—discreet—not at all judgy.

Carry on,
xox

The Batman And Robin of Vices

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You know those things you do in your life that seem like a good idea at the time?

How when you’re young you feel as if you have all the time in the world to change them if they turn out to be nothing more than a bad habit?

Like jaywalking, talking with your mouth full, or unprotected sex?

I smoked cigarettes. Not all the time. Just socially. At parties mostly, and clubs, or with my roommate at the Formica dining table we had in the kitchen of the little rental we shared with my sister, who did not partake in this most unhealthy of habits. We kept a pack of Virginia Slims in the freezer with booze and a little bit of ice. Two liberated young women, beating the odds in a man’s world — Baby, we’d come a long way! Sexy, right?

Meh…now I keep coffee in my freezer. And an unopened bottle of Vodka. And a non-GMO corn crust pizza.
That’s almost-sixty-sexy.
I know. Meh…anyway…

Gossip was served in that shitty little kitchen most mornings and evenings and nothing goes better with gossip than a cigarette. They are the Batman and Robin of vices. In my opinion, you cannot have one without the other. Even now, when I smell cigarette smoke I want to divulge something dishy.

I want to speculate on Tom Cruises’ sexuality or get the dirt on Melania Trump. Is she really a fembot?

I suppose I should also designate gossiping as a bad habit. I thought I did that several decades ago but this talk of cigarettes and vices has opened Pandora’s Box—or a time machine—and inside is a Star Magazine and a pack of Virginia Slims.

This all changed for me the minute a guy told me I smelled like an ashtray. I’m lying. No man ever said that to me. They weren’t stupid, they wanted to get laid.

In my twenties, at parties, and in clubs the smoke was so thick that everybody smelled like an ashtray. Looking back I’m convinced most ashtrays actually smelled better than my thick, curly hair which absorbed all the bad breath, BO, eighties music, and smoke within a ten block radius. That transferred to my clothes, then my car and finally to my pillow. After awhile (several years), when I’d wake up and all of those smells would hit my nose in the first few seconds of consciousness—I’d want to ask—are Angelina Jolie’s lips real?— no, seriously, I’d want to puke.

There comes a time, (thirty) when you ask yourself: Is this the woman I thought I’d become? At least I did that. And I came up short.

I was letting a man emotionally get the better of me. How was that okay?
I was dabbling. I wasn’t serious about much of anything.
I was jaywalking, talking with my mouth full, and smoking, gossiping and apparently lying.
I was having protected sex. So, one point for Janet.

All of that seemed like a good idea at the time. Because I was completely unconscious. I had no idea who I was or who I wanted to become.

When, on the five-millionth smelly pillow morning, it finally dawned on me. I need to get my shit together. I need to figure out where I’m headed, who I want to be, and how that person behaves. And good lord, I need a shower.

I’d love to say it all happened overnight, easy-peasy-Parchesi, but I’d be lying (and that’s prohibited), it was progressive. And messy. It took focus, intention, and tons of introspection. In other words, it took decades to craft the ADULT woman I wanted to be and for starters, she wasn’t a smoker.

A Small Confession: I still miss smoking.

The reason this came up for me was the fact that now, at almost sixty, I’ve begun to craft what kind of “older” woman I want to portray. Do I continue to eat whatever I want and put elastic in all of my pants? Do I forgo red lipstick because it spreads all over my face like Heath Ledger’s Joker? Do I succumb to sensible shoes?

Luckily, because I’ve done this before I know the work that lies ahead of me—and I’m exhausted already!

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Carry on,
xox

Look What The Cat Dragged In…

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I heard the story recently of a woman and a cat. Not the usual story of feline obsession. There were no special little kitty-cat outfits or freshly massaged beef flown in daily from Japan. Nope. The cat became this woman’s catalyst for change. Long, long, overdue change. Here’s the story:

A woman lived in an apartment for a long time. Too long. As the landlord aged, his saint of a wife passed, he fell into ill health and his temperament changed. He turned from a basically okay guy into a pot-bellied, yellow-toothed rat bastard.

Meanwhile, the once lovely building began to fall apart. Not all at once, but systematically. First, it was the single elevator which became a hit or miss box-of-terror. The out of order sign was permanent and if you didn’t feel like walking the seventy-eight steps up to the third floor with your groceries, you took your chances. But not without a valium. And a crowbar.

Everywhere you looked the paint was peeling faster than a bad sunburn. The front buzzer hadn’t worked for years, (friends just shouted up for the keys to the front door from the street below her window), and her oven either made lukewarm everything or charcoal briquets.

Everyone who visited the apartment urged her to move. But after eighteen years of rent control, she just couldn’t bring herself to leave. And they allowed cats. That is until the fateful morning he came banging on the door to personally deliver a UPS package addressed to her that he claimed was loitering in the front lobby. When she answered the door, the friendly feline came over and wove itself in and around her feet, rubbing its face on her three-day leg stubble, purring loudly.

Too loudly.

“What’s that?!’ her landlord hissed between teeth the color of aged ivory piano keys.

“Oh, uh…that’s my cat”, she stammered.

“I don’t allow cats in this building!”, he bellowed, his fat belly quivering for emphasis.

“But I’ve always had it”, she replied nervously, trying to shoo the cat away with her slippered foot.

The cat thought it was a fun new game and began tightly hugging her muck-luckity clad foot with its front paws while furiously rabbit kicking it with its rear legs She grabbed the box from his twisted, cigarette stained fingers and closed the door to just a crack in order to hide the madness happening below her bathrobe.

He was undeterred. “The cat goes or YOU go!”, he yelled. “You have one week or I’m evicting you.”
With that, he managed to propel his girth away from her door and with enormous momentum practically plummeted down the stairs. She slammed the door leaning against it for support, trembling. The cat strolled away contentedly, convinced it had beaten its foe. Exhausted, it jumped up onto the chair by the window, rolled into a ball and promptly fell asleep in the warm morning sun.

What am I going to do?, she wondered. She had to admit that the place had transformed over the years into a shit-hole and the landlord into a troll, but the thought of moving sent her into a full blown anxiety attack. She had savings, it wasn’t that. She wasn’t good with change. She hated the thought of leaving, of looking for a new place. She was used to it there. Even though she knew her quality of life could be so much better—she was willing to settle. For everything that was wrong with the place, the voice in her head came up with a million reasons why it was easier to stay.

Her tolerance for mediocrity, misery, and sub-standard living conditions had reached an all-time high.

Terrified, she hid every sign of the cat.
Late at night, she’d load its dirty cat litter and empty food cans into bags and lug them three flights down, out to the scary-ass alley where she’d walk several buildings over to dump them. The cat box took up residency in her shower when she wasn’t using it and she played the radio to hide the sounds of any meowing. One Sunday it took her nearly the entire morning to move the gigantic carpeted cat tree from its sunny place next to the dining room window into a dark corner of her bedroom. She made sure to keep the blinds closed on all of the windows—just in case.

One night, laying in bed, she literally made herself sick with worry. She realized that not only was she miserable, she had now seriously diminished her dear cat’s quality of life as well.

And THAT was the last straw!

The next day she begrudgingly mentioned to someone at work that she needed a new place— a place that took cats.

Not even three weeks later, she found the most adorable little house-behind-a-house owned by a terrific man, his equally fantastic husband, and their two siamese cats. A fresh start! Fresh in every way. New paint, shiny refinished hardwood floors, even the unfathomable! A stackable washer and dryer! Not only that, it was at ground level, the oven worked like a charm, and the front porch was screened with a perfect spot for the cat tree. Nobody was happier than the cat.

Now…you may be wondering, did the cat make this happen? Did it show itself at just the wrong time to get this ball rolling? Perhaps.

But I think the real moral of this story is the habit many of us have of dragging our feet on the way to our own happiness.
I’ve done it and I’m sure my friends—you have too. It’s about self-worth and why our cat’s, friend’s, spouse’s (fill in the blank), everybody else’s happiness is more important than our own.

It’s also a story about how there are great possibilities out there, possibilities we could never have imagined— if we can only just step out of the complacency and fear.

Take it from this cat story, the very thing you dread could be the best change you’ve ever made.

Carry on,
xox

Insanity, A Chocolate Chip Cookie, and Mrs. Garcia ~ Reprise

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Family is visiting, and I’m left with very little time to write. So, there may be some reprises this week…and they may start today.

Carry on with your summer,
xox


Man! That’s a hard lesson for me.
And lately, revisiting a situation in the same old manner I’ve done in the past just. Isn’t. working.

It’s insanity. Truly. Or in plain speak, it’s crazy making.

Thursday, I tried something different, something new, and I found my way out of crazy town. I know I’m not alone with my over-stamped passport and resident’s visa to crazy town so I thought I’d share what happened.

Things in my life have been going really well. Better than well. They’ve been magorific!
The writing is fun as hell, the possibilities on the horizon — endless. I have found myself happier than I can ever remember being.

I know that saying that out loud is deemed a subversive act, but it comes into play here—I just can’t help it—and besides, wtf’s with THAT?

Anyway…I’ve begun to realize inside this massive reinvention of my life, that my past comes into play pretty much…NEVER.
Nothing I’ve done in my life up to this point, besides learning to read and write, has made a rat’s ass of difference in what is transpiring these days.
That at once feels daunting — making me feel like a complete novice in my mid-fifties, a time where you’re supposed to know shit — and liberating — like I want to take off my bra and run topless down the beach just as I may have done as a girl.

The very day I was reveling in this realization, my past came to visit me. To test my resolve.

The City of Los Angeles wanted more tax money from my long since dissolved corporation. I’ve been sending e-mails and faxing paperwork to them for a couple of years. My corporation ceases to exist which means… I owe them nada.

This is the perfect time to say: I have little tolerance of bureaucracy, even less for bureaucracy when they bug you for money, and none at all when they aren’t entitled to the money they’re chasing.

Meanwhile, they’ve gotten creative with their estimations of my imagined sales and have compounded the penalty interest daily. I’m sure you know what that feels like.

It’s like arguing with an elderly, obstinant, and profoundly deaf, assholish uncle — who hates you.

When I saw the envelope my stomach sank. It sank so deep they were going to have to send James Cameron back into the inky blackness of the bottomless Marianas Trench in search of my poor stomach. Then the pit turned to venomous victimhood, which is the thug cousin of regular, generic victimhood.

It took me down the dark allies of shame and lack, places I am VERY familiar with.

My knee-jerk reaction was to rip it up or light it on fire, which is pretty much my knee-jerk reaction to everything.

Instead, I called my accountant and basically said, “Make this go away.” She barked back “It is tax season, I don’t have time for this!”, I think I heard her take a sip of beer or a hit off a crack pipe. “You’re going to have to do this yourself. Go to their Van Nuys office in person and take care of it.”

She may as well have suggested I jump into a pen of wild tigers while wearing Lady Gaga’s meat suit.

I hung up, ready to have a cigarette with the thugs in the alley of “this is not fair”.

“Damn. I’ve been so happy”, I lamented. And that’s when it hit me.
I’d rather stay happy than go back into those OLD feelings of victimhood and shame.
My past has NOTHING to do with what my life looks like now. This is NOT going to take me down! I will gather up my own stomach out of the pit of despair, go deal with the bureaucrats myself, and take care of this thing once and for all.

Are you with me?! Can I get an AMEN?!

But first I’ll eat a chocolate chip cookie, look at the paperwork with fresh eyes, see a phone number I’ve never seen before hidden on the back — and make a call.

Due to extremely high caller volume, (from people who were obviously much smarter than I was with much fresher eyes), I was asked to leave my number and they would call me back. “Bullshit!” I sneered and started to hang up. But that was the old way I always dealt with The City of Los Angeles. This new me left my cell phone number cheerfully on the recording.

By dinner time, I realized they hadn’t called me back but instead of fuming I just went back to Plan A.
I will go to Van Nuys and speak face to face with a human being, something I probably should have done years ago. There was no stomach pit, no malice, just anticipation of releasing an energetic albatross that’s been around my neck for years.

I woke up this morning waiting for the sinking feeling I’m so used to. Even as I was reminded of my impending visit to the exitless labyrinth of bureaucracy, I felt only relief. That was HUGE for me.

At 9 AM, on my way out the door to the gym, I glimpsed the pile of paperwork I would need for my visit to Van Nuys, and I remembered leaving my number for a callback. You’d better take that with you, what if they call you while you’re at the gym?, I reminded myself. Before I could start laughing at the absurdity of that thought, the phone in my pocket started ringing.

It was The City Of Los Angeles.

I’m not kidding. I can’t make this shit up. No one would believe me.

It was Mrs. Garcia (I love how when I asked her for her name she told me, Mrs. Garcia. I was in middle school all over again), and she was all business. She asked me a couple of unanswerable questions before we found some middle ground, I stayed light and shameless, and in the space of ten minutes, a chain of pain that has been severely knotted up for several years — fell away.

Turns out I owed them nada. (Here’s where I want to scream I told you so!!!)
Thank you, Mrs. Garcia!

And thank you happiness for the giant attitude adjustment.
And thank you past, for teaching me this valuable lesson.
And thank you chocolate chip cookie for just being delicious.
And thank You Guys for reading.

Carry on,
xox

Gratitude, Graffiti, and Molotov Cocktails

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We had a day of gratitude yesterday, me and my husband.

As we mentioned to each other how grateful we were for the simple things in life, parking spaces appeared (with time left on the meter), hassle-free food at a crowded concert showed up, there were even two empty seats in front of us for the first half of a sold-out show.

Now, I know what you’re thinking.

Shut the fuck up! What do we have to be grateful for? Face reality! The world is a horrible, threatening place filled with uncertainty, hate, and people who are looking to do us harm.

Well, maybe you’re not saying that, but people do. A lot of people. And they get very angry when the word gratitude gets mentioned.

These days, saying you’re grateful has become a subversive act—the molotov cocktail of declarations. If you have the audacity to utter the words in mixed company, say at a bar-b-que or something, it can make you a lightning rod for a spew of vitriol the likes of Linda Blair in The Exorcist.

To some folks, it’s as bad as admitting you want Hillary—or that you slap puppies.

Too bad.

Yesterday we felt gratitude. There. I said it.

We are blessed in so many ways and whatever argument you yell in my face you cannot talk me out of it—so please stop trying. And I realize it is just as impossible for me to change your mind.

Reading this will not help. Words will never change you. That I know for sure.

You have to be willing to look at things differently, literally take your eyes out of your head and dip them in something pleasant–and preferably fizzy—perhaps some pink champagne or one of those fruity Pellegrino drinks that are a “thing” right now. Let the bubbles help clarify your vision.
Do something, anything shocking to break the pattern.

Because only seeing the shit in life is a BAD HABIT.

And…right about now you want to take a fork to my face. But listen, I know that from experience!
It was my bad habit too. My default setting. I was so fucking vigilant and valiant in my suffering—I would have made ya proud.

Sound familiar?

OMFG, do I have bad habits!
I chew my cuticles until they bleed, I dispense unsolicited advice, I say the word fuck before breakfast more than Richard Pryor did in his entire career, and at certain points in my life I have fallen into the habit of pessimism—and I’m oversimplifying the depth of my angst by using that word. Call it depression, call it anxiety, call it a four-years-long bad mood—NEVER have any of my other bad habits tried to systematically dismantle my soul day in and day out—like that fucker did.

From the moment I woke up until the moment I closed my eyes and even those hours in between when human beings are supposed to be asleep, I could ONLY see what was going wrong and how unfair, unjust, and just plain awful my existence had become.

Can you say Shit. Show?

So, I get it.

You guys, I don’t pretend to know how any of this works, this perpetual darkness thing, what I DO know is that eventually, I hated feeling so damn bad–it was exhausting, like breathing water—and I wanted a way out.
Desperately.
I drank excessively, I ate too much, I meditated, I exercised fanatically, I chanted, I cut my own bangs and I Ommmm’d my ass into submission, seeking and searching. Like a five-pack-a-day smoker, I sought a patch, something to slap on my arm to numb my addiction to feeling bad.

But this was what kept showing up:
Practice gratitude, I read somewhere.

Fuck you!

List five things a day you’re grateful for.

I can’t fucking think of one!

Keep a gratitude journal Oprah advised.

Fuck off Oprah! Gratitude, shmatitude! What do you know about suffering? YOU were born into extreme poverty—in the deep South—in the 1950’s and were repeatedly abused.

I have REAL problems!

But it wore me down. So, I tried it. But just for a minute because it sounded asinine and completely counterintuitive, and here’s the thing: when you let even just a glimmer of gratitude in, like ‘I’m grateful my dog’s not a puppy anymore, she was such an asshole—more things to be grateful for will rush in to meet it.

Will they really?… No.
They were there all along, you’ll just start seeing them with your fizzy new eyes. The ugly graffiti (not the beautiful, artsy kind) of cynicism can deface the most beautiful building, but that doesn’t mean the gorgeous architecture doesn’t lie just beneath the surface—it’s just hidden—temporarily.

Have I made gratitude a new habit? Why, yes!…hell no.

I promise myself that I’ll try every day, but that’s like saying I’ll make it a habit to wear anything other than yoga pants—highly unlikely—but I’ll try.

So it’s worth writing about when I can maintain it for an entire day. Wanna join me?
There’s safety in numbers andIt’s free.

Carry on,
xox

Bad Habits, Bad Service, and Bacon Coulee

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I’m not proud of what I’m about to tell you. But I think you’ll thank me. Mostly for admitting that I’m just another deeply flawed human being walking this spinning blue planet—and for telling the truth.
I like to pride myself on being rather unflappable. Emotionally steady and able to find the humor in any situation I’m placed in and yet… some are triggers and can toss me like a piece of trash into a swirling eddy of unhappiness, anger, and even revenge.

Maybe, just maybe dear reader, you know what I’m talking about.

It was 7:00 pm on a balmy Friday night. After a week full of jumbly-stuff, all the two of us could focus on was enjoying a scrumptious meal at one of our favorite local foodie hangouts—and a nice red wine. I had the foresight to make a reservation so getting a coveted table on the patio was no problem.

As we were guided outside past the bar I couldn’t help but notice how packed the place was. It was loud and lively, filled with couples and groups of friends starting off their weekend right. That felt good. The place had recently re-opened after an extensive renovation and I was happy to see the neighborhood showing their support.

After being seated by the hostess we both smiled at each other, exhaled deeply, and held hands across the table. Everything was perfect.

We had been assured that our waitress, Sara, would be with us shortly so we started talking about this and that, catching each other up on our day–you know, your basic pre-dinner chit-chat. Ten minutes later, after running out of small talk, we started looking around. That’s the moment I realized we were invisible. That no one had come by to acknowledge our presence.

If it’s Friday, the end of a long work week, and wine has not been offered to my husband in a timely manner—he gets fidgety.

Enter bad habit number one: I try to ease an uncomfortable situation by justifying it.

“It’s really busy tonight”, I say just to cut the tension that’s building with each moment that goes by wine-free.

“Yeah, but they have a lot of staff”, he replies looking around the restaurant. And he’s right. I can see five waiter/waitresses just servicing the patio. One of them MUST be Sara.

Enter bad habit number two: I’m going to turn my attention away from my partner and make things right by catching the eye of our waitress.

It was then that I caught a glimpse of someone walking toward us with purpose. A girl in her mid-twenties, cute and blonde and wearing an apron, so I assumed she was OUR Sara.

Hallelujah! Wine at last, wine at last, Thank God Almighty, wine at last!

“Here she comes”, I declare just as she walks all of that purpose directly to a table behind us.

He looks at his watch. “It’s been twenty minutes”. Now he’s getting annoyed, looking around with his head on its maximum swivel speed.

My husband has sparkle. He just does, And never is it on display more than with the wait staff at restaurants. But I fear his sparkle is diminished; long gone as Sara finally approaches our table from behind my back.

“I like your hair”, she deadpans, referring to the purple underneath the gray. “I like your earrings”, I spit out immediately, laughing a little too loud, trying to diffuse the tension.

Enter bad habit number three: It’s really just an extension of BH#2. Soothe and diffuse. It can be jokes, laughing, even tap-dancing.

“I’d love some wine and a bottle of San Pellegrino when you get a chance”, he wedges in-between the phoney-baloney compliments.

“Great”, she smiles and disappears and when I say disappears I’m not exaggerating. I swear I saw her walk into a magical cupboard and enter an imaginary realm where she is a princess and not a waitress who is getting slammed on a busy Friday night.

7:38…and counting…and still nothing. No water, no bread. And definitely no wine. Now I’M looking at MY watch. Mama needs some alcohol.

Enter bad habit number four: I absorb all of the mad in the room and take it on. I fight the urge to get all Norma Raye and stand on my chair railing against every social injustice including bad service while dining out. (I thought I had a handle on this but apparently not.)

Things are starting to spiral downward. This is the point when you start looking at the tables around you, taking score. “They came in after we did and they already have their drinks and appetizers”, I found myself saying. I hate doing that. It’s petty and stupid but you just can’t help it when you seem to be seated in NO MANS LAND.

I know what you’re thinking, I really do. Tell somebody that you need some attention!
We start to debate the issue and I have to tell you, without wine, common sense has flown out the window. Who do we tell? The hostess who is running around like a headless chicken? The waitress herself? I’d need to send out a search party to find her and I’m assuming she’ll just get defensive. Maybe the manager?

When did my (our) happiness become so conditional? Why can’t we just chill and enjoy our evening in the midst of sucky service?

Good question!

I don’t want a scene so I haven’t told my famished, wine deprived, crab-ass of a husband that I can see Sara (who has apparently escaped the cupboard), standing and chatting at the bar. I’m assuming she went there over twenty minutes ago with the best intentions of getting us our wine but…I’m suppressing another urge my body has summoned. The one to saunter over to the bar, grab Sara by the ear, take her out back and beat the shit out of her.

I really hate it when things that seem outside of my control hijack a good time. The mood at our table has shifted from buoyantly jovial to passive-aggressively pissed off.

Sara walks toward us with a large tray of drinks balanced on her shoulder. “This has to be us”, he says hopefully, straightening up in his chair as I observe a warm basket of bread being placed two tables over by a waitress worth her weight in gold. Sara walks right past us being sure not to make eye contact. Can we all agree that selective eye contact is a dark art?

He turns in his chair to stare in her direction. Can she feel his laser-like gaze burning a hole in the back of her head? I wonder, will her hair catch fire?

Oh, hello bad habit number five: Wishing bad things on perfectly lovely people who are acting like asshats.

Just then somebody else brings us our drinks. I grab this angel in human form’s arm before he can leave and order two appetizers, It’s not his job to take our order and he looks at me funny but shakes his head okay.

Sara returns with one of our orders and plunks it down in the middle of the table as her eyes scan the room, and leaves without giving us any share plates. It’s after 8 pm and I’m suddenly starving. Mama needs some foodies. Fast. The alcohol is going to her head and things could get ugly so I start eating, making the long traverse with my overloaded fork from the plate—across the table—to my mouth. My husband follows my lead and before we know it we both end up with grits in a bacon coulee all over the front of us. I’m hungrily sucking pieces of bacon off of my sweater. Can this night get any better?

“What should we do?” I ask with earnestness now that I’m buzzed with more food on the front of my outfit than in my stomach. If I had my sense of humor and wasn’t hostile from absorbing all the mad— it would be funny. I usually find everything funny. But four people who sat down a half hour after us are happily finishing their dessert. Satiated and ready to leave.

That’s just not fucking funny.

“We’ve let it go too far. We should have said something to someone an hour ago. Now we just look like a couple of starving idiots who are wasting a perfectly good table in a very busy restaurant.”

My husband gets up, folds his napkin neatly into triangle and walks toward the back.’Oh God, here we go’, I think, ‘he’s going to complain, and they’re going to spit in our food’.

Back in the day, my husband worked his way through college as a waiter in a fancy French restaurant in Beverly Hills, and his stories of cranky customer retribution are stomach turning. Fingers and other body parts jabbed into food and drinks…cigarette ashes in sauces…terrifying but true. But that experience has also made him endlessly patient with waiters. He can recognize hard work and a job well done. He laughs with them, validates them with compliments and tips them well.

While my head is turned searching the place for the enigma called Sara, (I’m afraid he’s going to be the one to take her out back by the scruff of her neck and beat her senseless), the table is cleared, silverware and all. As she whizzes by, I relax a little at the sight of her alive and well, and then I remember that she’s our waitress goddamnit and I yell out our entrees and inquire about the second appetizer. She stops in her tracks and looks at me as if I told her she could never have children and does a thing with her head, like, ‘can’t you see how busy I am?’ —and walks away, back to the bar where she takes root for another ten minutes.

The same lovely gentleman who delivered our first appetizer delivers the second one, (full of ashes or finger pokes, I’m sure), this time with plates. I’m so busy gushing my appreciation that I forget to mention that we have no flatware. When I ask Sara for a fork she looks bewildered like everyone else is eating with their feet or elbows and I—the overdemanding, spoiled woman at table seventeen—wants a FORK!

My husband returns and suddenly things start to look up. The sparkle has returned and I can only imagine why. Some things are better left unsaid. Within a minute, the flatware appears—as if by magic.

It’s amazing how when you are treated like shit, the smallest gesture, like being given utensils, feels like a gift. Like when a restaurant starts to act restautraunty it can make you feel giddy.

Our food arrives in an appropriate amount of time delivered by an effusive upper management looking woman. Then a man in a suit brings us water. Finally, water! After an hour. I wanted to give him a kiss on lips and a standing ovation!

We are so bad at this!” I lament on the walk to our car. “God! we have such a hard time dealing with bad service”.

And there it is, bad habit number six: I say We when I should say I.

My husband gives me side-eye which is our silent signal that he ‘took care of the situation’ which could mean that Sara has taken up permanent residency inside of the magical cupboard OR he tipped her only ten percent, which in California is practically punishable by law.

So, you guys,
I hope you can see ALL of the places where I went wrong and how my bad habits, just when I think I’ve kicked them, seem to have a recurring role in my life

What do you do in situations like that? I’ve done it all and had mediocre results. The waitress or waiter usually gets defensive, the host couldn’t give a shit and although management wants to hear about poor service, IN THEORY, they have rarely been magnanimous in the moment.

Carry on,
xox

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Another Day, Another Bad Habit

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Bad habit #319 – I offer unsolicited advice.

I know! It sucks—big time.
I’m working on it, but sometimes I can’t seem to help myself.
I write a freakin’ advice blog for God sakes!

It’s a very masculine trait, problem solving, one of the last remaining vestiges of working in a male dominated career and making it a priority to develop only the male side of my personality.
But enough of that, that’s a huge generalization and an exercise in stereotyping. If I try to reverse engineer how I became this way…well…
I’m the eldest of three, and the younger kids would often need my help with…stop it Janet!
Enough!

You see, if presented with a dilemma I will chew on that bone, sucking out the very marrow of it until I’ve come up with a plan.
Make that three plans.
Usually a Plan A which is the best, (of course), to Plan C which I recommend only as a last resort.

From directions in the car—to what to order at my favorite bistro—to how to dump the chump, if you seem…uncertain—I’m your girl.

But you see, that’s the thing. I haven’t paid enough attention, or taken the time (a minute and a half), to distinguish what’s going on with you.

Is that look on your face the I’m working this out, I’ve got this look? Or, are you lost in a fog of uncertainty only wishing I would open my mouth and help you out? (No one has ever gotten that far so we’ll just have to imagine that one.)

Or this, right out of left field—maybe you’re just making conversation!

It’s a subtle difference (not really), and once I started to observe THE MASTER—I understood, and I decided to take a page out his play book.

My husband has developed a sort of super power.

It was acquired and has been honed after years of having his head bitten off.
Like an exasperated praying mantis after yet another beheading, he started to pay closer attention. He learned how to read me and slowly but surely he has become the Master of Silent Advice.

Now you may be wondering what the hell I’m talking about.

He has mastered the skill of silence. Not indifference, make no mistake—the two can be easily confused and he’s lost his head a few times over that one too.

No, he’s observed me closely when certain situations have presented themselves in the fifteen years we’ve been together and he listens; waiting for just the right moment, because honestly, whether I’ve got things covered or I’m lost in the fog—I look the same.

It’s a nuance thing.

And here’s key, the Golden Ticket so to speak:
He only extends me a hand or offers me advice—when I ask him.

What?
If you wait, someone will ask you?
What a concept, that is genius!

So if you’re around me these days you may notice a strange look on my face as you tell me about your day. Oh God, don’t mistake it for disinterest—I’m literally biting my tongue…listening.

Waiting for you to ask me what I think.

You’re gonna ask soon—right?

Because I’ve got this.

Plan A is genius (if I do say so myself, humility is my next hurdle).

So ask me already!

Being aware you have a problem is the first step…right?

Carry on,
With big, big love and buckets of gratitude for putting up with me,

Xox

Never Can Say Goodbye

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Never Can Say Goodbye
Never can say goodbye
No, no, no, no
I never can say goodbye
I keep thinkin’ that our problems soon are all gonna work out
But there’s that same unhappy feelin’ there’s that anguish, there’s that doubt
It’s that same old dizzy hang-up can’t do with you or without,
Tell me why is it so?
“Never Can Say Goodbye” by The Jackson 5

The other night in our Women’s Group, we did a simple exercise.
We closed our eyes and surveyed a line of people that had played various roles in the movie of our lives. They were our bosses, co-workers, lovers, friends and family. We acknowledged them and the part they played. We took responsibility for our role, in order not to have to repeat that shit again. We blessed them and honored them for the lessons they imparted. We offered an apology or forgave them as needed. We wrote down their names. 
There were no running tackles, no hands around their necks, or endless strings of curse words.
It felt solemn and sacred. It was an exercise in clearing our pasts, in order to be free.

But something unexpected happened.
As we perused our lists, several of the suspects kind of stepped forward, in that criminal line up kind of way. One of the women looked up, amazed. “Can I just say something?” she asked, “There’s five or six people here who ALL have the same thing in common.”
“I struggled with endings………I never can say goodbye.” 
She elaborated, “None of the endings were elegant. Nothing was easy. Either I’m afraid to end the association, or I’m the one that won’t let go.” 
“One man napalmed our life, just to get out.”

All our mouths were hanging open. Another woman shook her head, “Me too, I don’t know how to end a job OR a relationship.
I stay in them wayyyyyy past the expiration date.”

I could relate.
I remind you all how my therapist cautioned me back In the day: “Janet, you don’t love, you take hostages. Watch that.”
Obviously, I wasn’t alone.

There are some people that cut and run at the first sign of trouble. I’ve dated them.
The opposite is true here. Trouble comes, sets up camp, builds a house, and stays………with a very convincing argument as to why we can’t kick them to the curb.
We buy the seat next to them on the GUILT TRAIN, listening to them explain how their “will to live” shall evaporate when we leave. Soon we can’t imagine our lives without this long expired person. They have become a bad habit.

A spiritual teacher back in the day, “T”, gave me stink eye as I whined about canceling dinner plans with a friend.
I wasn’t feeling it. It was a “school night” and I was just too tired. I worried that that wasn’t a legitimate reason to cancel. My friend would be mad at me for leaving them high and dry without dinner plans.
T} “That’s all ego, your friend will be fine. They’ll probably thank you.”
J} “Hey, thanks pal.”
T} “Your ego tells you that you are so important to the other persons happiness, that their evening will be ruined, when quite the opposite is true.”
J} “Fuck you.”
T} “Call her”
So, I called and sheepishly canceld. I may have even coughed, hinting at an oncoming cold. She was relieved. She’d had a hell day at work and all she wanted was a bottle of wine and a bubble bath. We cheerfully rescheduled.
T} “Works for relationships too”
J} “Don’t be a smug know it all”
But he did know a lot about this subject. And I slowly learned.

That ego is a shifty character.
He can show up in the disguise of kindness and loyalty. He convinces you to ignore your feelings, to be the people pleaser. He tells you you’re not a quitter, that you’re in it for the long haul. Sorry, but if it feels like a long haul to you, it does to the other person too.
Even if they’re begging you to stay, you’re just THEIR bad habit.

If you stand in your truth, that truth being that the relationship or job or whatever has run its course. If you use loving vocabulary, and come from the heart, an ending doesn’t have to be a cut that never heals. They will be fine. They will find someone who’s a better fit. And so will you. It’s the more loving act than “going for the long haul.”

The same holds true for anyone that you have handcuffed to a chair. If they want to go, let them go. Don’t even take it personally. It’s about them, just like you wanting to leave was about you.
Say goodbye…..so you can both regain that forward momentum in your lives, and break that bad habit.
It’s a Win/Win. I swear.

Do you have trouble saying goodbye? Have you stayed too long in a job or relationship because you were afraid of hurting the other person? Do you believe that it’s the ego at work? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

Xox

Hi, I’m Janet

Mentor. Pirate. Dropper of F-bombs.

This is where I write about my version of life. My stories. Told in my own words.

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