blame

Oh, Holy Christ on a cracker is that ever true!
We just had a Capricorn new moon and that my friends, facilitates jettisoning all that is not working in our lives.

We get a cosmic do-over. A universal re-write (the best kind of re-write there is).

Wait. This all feels eerily familiar. That’s because, if you’re like me, we’ve done a full, life-retrospective every damn year around this time.

And some years look better than others. They just do. But for those jinky ones, the ones that make you cringe with regret, oh, how I’ve relitigated the past. I’ve played the roles of judge, jury, and executioner.

Then I move straight to the special effects department and I whitewash the mutherf*cker with some heavy duty gauzy filter.

In my heavily CGI’d version, I’m so much smarter, prettier, and wittier, I have the most epic ideas, rebuttals and combacks, and my hair looks impossibly, hatefully perfect—even after a nap.

In one version, nothing is my fault. In another everything is. It depends on which chapter you come in on.

In my dreamy, rom-com version,  I get chased by a horrible dragon, captured by a giant cyclops, and saved by a naked, brave and handsome knight (we know he’s a knight by the chainmail codpiece he’s wearing). That scenario is the only way I can introduce all of the magic that permeates my life—otherwise, nothing would make sense and nobody would believe me.

But I can’t justify how I got to where I am any more than you can. Sometimes shit just happens.

Often, when I look back I feel bad for her, for me. She simultaneously appears to be the heroine and the villain of her own story and that is a hard pill to swallow. Sometimes I want to warn her, “Hey, idiot! Watch out for that guy, he’s a …oh, there goes the bra…nevermind.” At other times I try to congratulate her. “You, yeah, you. Ya did…okay. Next time try to suck less.”

Most of the time I want to duck tape her mouth shut and put her in the corner with baby.

All of these years later I realize nothing good comes from looking backward. It’s all water under a rickety bridge guarded by angry trolls. It’s all ancient history, filled with faded Polaroids and lots of bad clothing choices and the worst part of it (besides a stint with eggplant purple hair) is that focusing on my past, however riveting, keeps me distracted from where I’m headed.

Someone once said, “Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.” Well, I think quite the opposite is true. Selective amnesia is our friend AND those who look in the rear view mirror MUST be driving in reverse. I know I was. Also, and of this, I’m quite sure—my best times are not back there, behind me. They are ahead of me!

A few things that may be included while I create my future are (In no particular order): chocolate, naked knights, dog kisses, and predominately minding my own business and looking dead ahead because the future I envision for myself doesn’t resemble my past IN. THE. LEAST. (except for maybe the good hair).

What about you?

Carry on,
xox

How many of you are blamers? Or married to a blame? Or were raised by a major blamer?
Show of hands, please. Uh-huh, I thought so.

I had a boss for almost twenty years who was a blamer and it drove. me. nuts. He was a shamer too. I’m convinced blame and shame are siamese twins, but that’s just me. Let’s see what the expert, Brene Brown has to say about blame in this short, funny and insightful video.

As for me? I’m not a blamer, I’m an “I told you so-er”.
I have to bite my tongue not to say in some way, shape or form, “I told you so” to my husband like, forty-five thousand times a day.
Seriously.
Like today. He saved all of his outdoor tasks for this morning. The morning we were ALL warned that El Nino was going to hit us like well, like a big, fat, super soggy storm full of really wet rain.

And like the shining example of good wifery that I am, I reminded said husband of his shitty decision making,choices, —timing, before I left for the gym and it was only drizzling.

But alas, he waited until the REAL rain hit to empty the dog poop can into the main garbage bin, get the dead Christmas tree out to the curb for pick-up, and fiddle (fix in man-speak), with the sump-pump (all of which we talked about just yesterday), and then sent me a text and left evidence (wet pants in the shower), of how soaked he got. (Who is surprised here? What woman is the least bit surprised by this?)

See how I did that? Never once did you hear me say I told you so. I wanted to. So very, very, badly.
My tongue has permanent grooves.

Listen, I don’t want to tell Brene how to run her social media, but I think that needs to be her next video.

The seemingly repressed but clearly expressed I told you so.

What do you guys think? (That’s for you, Jim)

Love, soggy in Studio City
Carry on,
xox