childhood

Ah, perfectionism – you rat-bastard.

You are the behind the scenes ruin-er of every event.
You are the “I told you so” inside every mistake.
You are the “It could have been better, you should be thinner, I’m a freak, a fake and a fraud” whispered in my ear at the end of every day.

In short, you are the cause of so much grief.

Perfection, like a 22-inch waist, a man who asks for directions, and delicious vegan cheese—is literally impossible. It is a myth and an illusion.

Perfectionism starts in childhood.
The dolls lined up perfectly on the shelf, school papers stacked in neat piles, worn thin by rigorous erasing. I should know.

Perfectionism stifles creativity.
They cannot co-exist; creativity is messy, I don’t care what anyone says. When you’re in the flow, you can just throw perfect punctuation and grammar to the wind.

Have you ever seen a painter’s studio when they are creating? It is a catastrophe! There is shit everywhere – Empty coffee cups, brushes and tubes of paint in heaps, tarps, stacks of ideas, even some paint on the ceiling (?).

Perfectionism would never be caught dead in the swirling vortex of creativity – it might mess up its perfect hair!

When you take perfectionism to the office; well, yeah, good luck with that.
It is the bully in the room, taunting you with thoughts of inferiority, assuring you that you’re not good enough.
Work harder, be better, PROVE YOUR WORTH, it sneers.

Perfectionism sabotages joy.
It’s a punk. It steals its lunch money and gives it a wedgie. Perfectionism hangs out with those two thugs, anxiety and stress.
It is my belief that perfectionism is complicit in every nervous breakdown. Most especially, the ones suffered during the holidays.

I can speak to this with authority.

I am a retired perfectionist.
It started to wane when I got married again. Perfectionism doesn’t compromise, and compromise and relationships arelikethis.

The exact time of death of my perfectionism occurred when we decided to live in our house during a remodel. Any last vestiges that remained hit the road, (along with the tiny bit of modesty I possessed.)
You reside in so much chaos, dirt, and destruction; I can remember wiping 4-5 inches of plaster and drywall dust off random surfaces in order to sit and drink the coffee we made in the bathroom. The refrigerator was in the dining room and we were sleeping in the garage.

It got so bad I actually started to throw trash (gum wrappers, receipts) on the floor, fuck it, what’s the use, it’s a disaster, I’d tell myself. The upside was that I’d never in my life felt so FREE! So I ran with it, and I haven’t looked back!

Living in a construction zone is like aversion therapy for perfectionists.

It’s time to join me and retire from perfectionism. Take off the twenty-ton shield and fly.

Maybe you want to talk about how you kicked perfectionism’s ass, or how you’re still struggling? Either way, I’d love to hear about it in the comments below. Don’t be shy. It doesn’t have to be perfect. 😉

Xox

My dad.
The enigma.

He passed in his late sixties from cancer in 2005.
Too young.

For most of my adult life we maintained an uneasy truce, where we agreed to disagree on pretty much everything.

He got a kick out of me and my sister when we were small and sang our camp songs, and wore our hair in “piggy tails.”
I loved to make him laugh.

He expected good grades, clean rooms, and no sass.
Oh well, two out of three.

His blood runs through my veins, so I know that’s where I got my work ethic, ability to fix stuff, love of science fiction, his colossal sweet tooth, temper, love of cars and driving, his goofiness, skinny legs, boney feet, blue eyes, control issues, and lack of respect for authority, and tolerance for stupid people.

I actually feel him more and have a better relationship with him now that he’s on the other side. It’s just the two of us, so it’s so much less complicated.
From that perspective, he “gets” me.

Happy Father’s Day Dad! Love you.

Xox

When I was a kid, I walked a mile straight up our street, to my little Catholic Grammar school, St John The Baptist De La Salle. When I wasn’t struggling with my overstuffed, fifty pound ( my mom weighed it) book bag, the one that was covered in the same blue plaid as my skirt (groovy, I know, don’t be jealous) I was looking at all the houses that lined my path.

It was one of the residential neighborhoods deep in the recently developed, middle class, suburban sprawl of the northern San Fernando Valley in the early 1960’s. Where once there were only orange and lemon groves, now stood, one to ten year old tract homes. I remind you it was the sixties, very cookie cutter; they lacked imagination and color. Some were ranch style with big lawns in the front, the garages in an alley around the back. Others had driveways with some generic plants in the front. They alternated, with the floor plan switching up every so often. Every few blocks the pattern would repeat itself.
It was new families, new sidewalks, sprinklers and the hum of “central air conditioning.” 

As an eight or nine year old I was already full of opinions. I knew which of the houses on my walk, I liked the best. Being the anal, Type A, control freak that I was, I preferred the ones that were well maintained, and I actually felt sorry for the ones that weren’t.
If the lawns were perfectly manicured, mowed and edged, the bushes clipped and the roses in bloom, I figured all must be well on the inside too. If the paint was peeling, the lawn needed weeding, and the place was a wreak, well, I thought maybe life wasn’t being so kind to those occupants. I noticed the screens that were brown with nicotine at the corner house, where the man smoked like a chimney, and I actually got frustrated when people chose bad window treatments, like beads, which were all the rage, or kept foil or sheets pulled up over their windows.
Couldn’t they see how that screwed up their curb appeal? Didn’t they care?

That was when I learned two very important life lessons: Things are not always as they appear, AND, some people pay more attention to what’s going on on the outside, than on the inside.

There were two houses that I can still remember loving. One was a light yellow, with white and yellow roses in the front. I approved of their window treatments and I even thought the decorative screen door was charming. It also allowed me to catch snippets of music, TV or conversation as I walked by. A nosey eight year old’s dream. I still love to catch a candid glimpse of how other people live. Although…..
One morning as I walked by, I heard an augment. It sounded bad. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but a man and woman were definitely yelling at each other. It stared happening on a regular basis, and went on for years. It was like, “okay, it’s 8:15, and in this corner, wearing the pink housecoat and slippers and weighing in at one hundred and forty pounds, the middle class champion…..” 
I began to pick up my pace, speed walking, just to get past without getting any of that vitriol on me.

Interesting observation number one: Life on the inside seemed to be a hot mess, while outside from the street, there didn’t appear to be a leaf out of place.

The second house was white with blue trim. It had the driveway in front, with two cars parked side by side. I watched the slow steady climb to prosperity that the house revealed on the exterior. It had a very fancy dichondra lawn, which required ridiculous maintenance. My mom tried one once. She was out there every afternoon with cuticle scissors and tweezers. I’m not kidding. It makes maintaining a bonsai tree look like a walk in the park. Anyway……beautiful house, stunning, professionally landscaped yard, a gardener and two cars that got nicer and more expensive every couple of years. I never heard any yelling. I really never heard or saw any people or signs of life. It was the perfect picture of suburban utopia, and I LOVED it.
One day, miss nosey pants here, noticed there had only been one Cadillac in the driveway for a couple of weeks. After that, the lawn started to get overrun with dandelions, and the flowers that seemed to magically appear in full bloom every couple of weeks were dried up and dead. Signs of human occupation appeared now on the crispy brown front lawn. A bicycle haphazardly discarded, like the rider had just flown off in a full sideways skid and disappeared. Trash and old papers collected on the porch. One afternoon I noticed a reddish curtain hanging, like a velvet tongue, out through a newly broken front window.
Not long after, a For Sale sign appeared. Divorce had beaten the shit out of my favorite house and apparently the family inside. That was shocking to me. Everything looked like it was going so well for them. I never saw any signs, there were no arguments for public consumption.

Interesting observation number two: Sometimes the exterior circumstances can reflect SO perfectly what’s happening on the inside. Mimic the slow decline. It can be unexpected, no yelling, no shot across the bow, and it’s heartbreaking.

Which one am I? Do I put up a good front when the walls are crumbling down?
I used to. It was exhausting. When I divorced my first husband, people were SHOCKED. No one saw it coming. Not even him.
But I’ve changed. I’ve become pretty transparent.
Ms. Cellophane.
I’d like to say I hide things. Save face. Maybe for a day or two, but I’m more like the second house. When my shit hits the fan, I don’t think anyone around me, who sees me, is surprised. If I were a house, MY big red velvet tongue would be hanging out a broken front window.

Which one are you? Have you encountered both? Were you surprised?
Tell me, I’d love to hear about it.

Xox

Damn, my mom looks good. She looks like Jane Fonda from her “Klute” days, in this picture.
Makes sense, it was taken in the early seventies. She was about 35 years old.

My mom was just getting aquatinted with herself right around that time.
Divorcing my dad, getting out from under her Jackie Kennedy bouffant, becoming politically active, getting back into the workforce and finding her independence. Her musical tastes changed from Andy Williams to Bruce Springsteen.
She became a free spirit, a hippie of sorts.

I have a very different experience of my mom than my brother and sister.
I was the oldest. To me, growing up, my mom was a hard ass.
The disciplinarian. The enforcer. Strict but fair.

She made sure my Catholic School uniform skirt touched the floor when I kneeled.

She took me to see live theatre, which in turn got me hooked on live theatre.

She insisted I walk the one mile to and from my Catholic school every day, rain or shine. It was no big deal back then. ( I was the only one in the family that went to Catholic School all the way through grades 2-12)

She enrolled me in Girl Scouts so I could learn teamwork, sales and acquire some camping and outdoor skills.
(It barely worked)

She enforced a strict 7pm bedtime, even in the summer, when it was still light 
outside.

She indulged my fear of the dark. She checked under the bed for monsters, never shut the door to my room after saying goodnight, and made sure there was a nightlight on in the bathroom.

She “locked” us outside in the summer with a kiddie pool bought with green stamps. (She made a game out of wetting the sheets with a sponge and putting them in the books) and prompted us to run through the sprinklers.
At noon she provided a lunch of bologna sandwiches and pitchers of Kool Aid.
At three, homemade Popsicles made from freezing grape juice in Tupperware Popsicle forms. All the neighborhood kids hung out at our house.

She sat with me, and nursed me back to health when I had Scarlett Fever at seven years old. She would walk up to my school every day and get my first grade schoolwork. I missed almost the entire year.

She washed my mouth out MANY times with soap for being sassy.

She made every holiday a big hoopla. Parades with red,white and blue streamers on our bikes, watermelon eating contests (with no front teeth) and backyard fireworks for the fourth. Egg hunts and clues that lead us to HUGE elaborate baskets for Easter. Imaginatively wrapped presents (my name in red licorice whips, my sister’s in Hershey’s kisses) under a giant tree whose every branch was lit, ornamented and perfectly tinseled. Elves on shelves and Gumdrop villages. Cookies and milk for Santa, who left a ridiculously nasty mess of ashes and wood on Christmas morning.

She never gave us soda, so I got to sidestep that addiction.

An addiction she did introduce me to was the Rose Bowl Flea Market and my wallet has been the thinner for it.

She made sure my dad bought me a swing set after I escaped to a neighbor to swing on theirs.

She gave me an appreciation of history and current events.
She sat me down in front of our black and white TV for the 1968 Democratic Convention and corresponding riots, the Watts riots, the March on Washington,the astronauts stepping foot on the moon for the first time, the coverage of Apollo 13 and the funerals of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. And Bobby Kennedy (for whom she campaigned).
Classic mom phrase: Pay attention, this is history!

She always had the Dodger game on in the background……always. Still does.
Vin Scully’s voice is like a natural sedative to me.

She gave me books and talked with me about sex. (funny story alert)

She made sure I did my homework, polished my shoes, loaded the dishwasher and made my lunch in my Partridge Family lunch box (sigh) every night before I went to bed.
Often she would write me a love note on my napkin and sneak it inside before I left in the morning. I felt love and embarrassment at the same time, so I threw them away. But I did thank her now and then.
(I wish I’d kept them all)

She taught me how to: 
walk, talk, go potty in the potty, tie my shoes, ride a bike, tell time, read a book (I knew how to read before I entered kindergarten), change a diaper, burp a baby (my sister), set a table, say please and thank you, whisper, write a thank you note, braid hair, swim, roller skate, brush my teeth, paint my toenails, make chocolate chip cookies, wrap a present, embroider, climb a wall AND a tree, pick myself up and brush myself off, collect lady bugs, collect leaves for our silk worms, finish a puzzle, love cats, love food, love music, sing, clean a house, be on time, love the holidays (especially Christmas), weed a garden, trim a rosebush, body surf and love the beach. To name a few.

She thought I could DO anything and BE anything. She still does.
Thanks mom, I wouldn’t be who I am without you.
I love you.
Happy Mother’s Day!

Xox

Hi All,
So here’s the thing. While I was being a slug on the couch Friday night, my husband inquired as to my plans for Saturday afternoon. Seems after reading my post about the kite
http://theobserversvoice.com/2014/04/02/go-fly-a-kite/
He went on Amazon, bought me a kite and researched the places within a thirty mile radius of our home with optimal wind conditions.
Is your mouth hanging open like mine was?
Just that he continues to read my blog gives him so many husband extra credit points, then to actually decipher the emotional content….
So yesterday we actually woke up to a blue sky, breezy day, drove to a perfect little park in Silverlake, and for the first time in 40 years, I flew a kite. I still can’t wipe the smile off my face.
Happy Sunday!

XoxJanet