insanity

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

I won’t sleep a wink. Not this week. That’s because this week ends on December 1st and besides starting the most stressful month with an “R” in it—December 1st means only one thing to me and my sister. 

That is the date we attempt to make our yearly reservation for Christmas Eve dinner.

I cannot be held accountable for the lengths I will go to secure a reservation at this famous, Beverly Hills, Prime Rib establishment which I shall not name (but it starts with an L and ends in a WHY?)

For reasons too numerous to mention, (okay, it’s cheaper and so much less work than hosting at home), dinner here has become a tradition in our family and I am not about to disappoint the entire family which at this point consists of a bunch of eighty-something’s who look forward to this all year long—by fucking it up. 

Let me be clear, a Christmas Eve reservation at this place is as coveted and hard-to-get as they come. You are more likely to book lip injections with the guy who “refreshes” all the Kardashian lips, (not that I would EVER! I read somewhere there is a five-year waiting list) than you are to get a table for ten, on the night before Christmas. 

Back in the day, I had no problem playing the absurd LA reservations games that the hot, new places put you through to get a table. It was all about seeing and being seen. But that ship has sailed. I don’t give a rip about getting a table if I can’t book it the same day on Open Table. Not to be indelicate but I don’t care how good a restaurant is—it all gets pooped out the next day, so why bother?

That being said, regarding Christmas Eve I have learned that you MUST make the reservation for as many people as you can. You over-book. You add two extra chairs just to play it safe. We generally have eight people but god forbid somebody unexpectedly brings a date or decides at the last-minute, as a Christmas miracle, to reconcile with their ex. I have learned the hard lessons that are still—years later—too painful to recount, that you may absolutely, positively, NOT ADD A PERSON TO YOUR RESERVATION! 

Apparently adding one chair will tip the balance of the universe and all life will cease to exist—or a least that’s how serious this place is about that rule. (If you subtract a person they’re not happy about that either, but a death certificate usually gets you off with just a stern warning.) 

You see, the problem is the restaurant. They have become heartless savages. They know they have you by the short hairs so as far as holiday reservations go—they keep moving the goalpost. For years the date to call-in was October 1st. Easy, peasy Parcheesi—no sweat! I got all kinds of time in October! 

That morning I would set my alarm for 6AM which gave me plenty of time to stretch and do my vocal warm-ups. At nine-fifty-nine exactly, I would sit down with my coffee and start the speed dialing. By 10:05 I would get an actual living, breathing, woman named Nancy or Carol who I could tell wore sensible shoes and was short on the chit-chat . A serious pro who was teed up and ready to book me a table. 

Oh, Holy night.

Then, suddenly, a few years ago when I called on October 1st, the woman who answered seemed startled, unprepared. She sounded…young. Her name was Tiffany. 

“Uh, Christmas Eve?” she asked a little confused. I wasn’t having it.

“Yeah! What’s the problem?” I yelled, feeling not one bit ashamed of my outburst. I had trained all month for this day and her I’m a little confused game was not about to side track me. She could save that BS for the newbies, the amateurs. This was not my first rodeo. After close to a decade of this shit—I was a pro. 

“Well  played, Tiffany,” I said with a little chortle and a hand gesture that was completely lost on her because…telephone. “It’s ten o’clock, the assigned time to book a table for Christmas Eve and that’s exactly what I intend to do!”

There was silence.

“Hello? Tiffany, are you there?” I screamed hysterically.

A minute went by. I could hear her breathing, and turning pages. It was the longest minute of my life. You know how they say that in the midst of a crisis, time stands still?

Time froze.

It ceased to exist.

All I could think of were the large tables being booked by other operators while Tiffany and I were caught outside the time/space continuum.   

“Oh yeah”, she finally answered. “They moved the date for Christmas Eve reservations to November 1st.”

“Novem…wait. What? You can’t be serious!” 

“Let me check.” Then he put me on hold.

ON HOLD!

An instrumental version of Feliz Navidad tried its damnedest to soothe me while I waited.

For a goddamn table. On Christmas Eve!

After speaking with the manager and the manger’s manager, I was convinced this was not some cruel tactic to put me off. It was a fact. The date had actually been changed. Again! 

November 1st dawned dark and dreary that year. A cold rain fell as I cracked my knuckles and cleared my throat waiting to commence the speed dialing. Just to be sure we got a table, my sister was calling and checking the internet at the same time. We would enlist the old “double team” tactic and if one of us got through we would text the other immediately. 

Listen, if our family wants over priced Prime Rib on Christmas Eve, no one is going to keep my eighty-year-old mother from her Diamond Jim cut of beef!

My sister got through first. It was 10:10 AM and the only tables they had left were for 3:30 in the afternoon.  That seemed…asinine. What should we do?  

“Tell them your Sandra Bullock’s assistant and the table’s for her and she can’t eat solid food before 5PM!”

“Too late.”

“Shit!”

But in the end, after dropping every name I could think of, we took our allotted thirty-seconds to decide that maybe the old people would actually love it. You know, a real early, early bird special. Dinner not only started but completely finished by five! No heavy meal sitting in their stomachs at midnight. No meat sweats. No indigestion. No Alka-Seltzer. No Tums needed. Everyone would have plenty of time to digest. And if I knew my mom, by eleven-thirty she’d be back out in her kitchen, like Henry the Eighth, gnawing happily on that enormous bone. 

Grateful, we booked the damn thing, profusely thanking them like idiots for allowing us to basically spend north of a $1000 for lunch. 

This year, November first, we coordinated by text before the 10AM call in time. I had a jam-packed day and so did my sister, but we knew that in a few short minutes the suspense would be over. Even though we might be eating Prime Rib for breakfast we’d have our table for nine and all would be right with the world. Let the speed dialing commence! 

I put my phone on speaker and set it on the table next to me while I ordered Christmas wreaths online. 

“Hello, this is Barbara.”

I texted my sis, “Im in.”

“Good morning, Barbara, I need a table for nine on December 24th…”

“That’s Christmas Eve, right?” 

Uh oh. Barbara was clearly not the brightest crayon in the box. I tried not to lose my patience.

“Uh huh. Every year.”

“The day to call for that has been changed to December 1st.”

I took the phone off speaker and put it to my ear. 

“Don’t you fuck with me Barbara,” I hissed. “It’s now November 1st, which after a generation of being the date to call was changed from October 1st. I get it. You want to separate the wheat from the chaff, cut out the riff-raff. But if you look up my phone number you can see that we book a large table every…”

“I see that Ms. Bertolus”, she said. I could tell Barbara was used to being cursed at, my f-bomb rolling right off her back. I felt bad. This was about Christmas after all. 

“So call back at 10AM on December 1st?” I changed my tone and I didn’t insist on speaking with her supervisor.

“Yes. I know it feels like they change it every year,” she laughed a little, so I did too.

“Okay, I’ll talk to you then…happy holidays.”

I will not sleep a wink this week. December first is cutting it really close. By that time we won’t be able to book another place and it’s not fair to have one waiting in the wings only to cancel it of we get in. And if we don’t get a table?  I see a Google search for “How to cook a prime rib” in my future. 

Or my husband’s future.  Same thing. 

Explain to me how any of this makes sense? It doesn’t. It’s a Christmas nightmare, tradition that will most certainly die when my mother does just like all great but totally annoying traditions do. I’m sure a small part of me (maybe my spleen) will miss doing this when she’s gone. But who knows, by that time they might make it first-come, first-serve, and half of LA will stand in line all night like we do outside the Apple store for an iPhone.

Carry on,
xox

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

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

~Albert Einstein

When the past tries to repeat itself what do you do?

I hide in the closet behind all the clothes, facing the wall…

But seriously. When you see yourself; on your ass; sliding down that same old slippery slope—what’s your strategy?

I take out my contacts and pretend I can’t see the colossal shitstorm bearing down on me…
Like the ostrich and the toddler playing peek-a-boo, if I can’t see it—it didn’t happen.

Bad decisions. Lousy choices.

In men, jobs, tankini bathing suits, and those nachos drenched in the horrific orange plastic cheese at the movies.
Why do I always think “this time it’ll be different?”

Humanity at large; and women in general, possess the “benefit of the doubt” chip.

As a card carrying member of both of those groups you can rest assured that many, many, questionable, less than desirable people and situations have benefited from my doubts.

That is until a friend along the way reminded me of the quote above by Albert Einstein.

It was the polite way for her to deal me the insanity card.

For a few years my entire deck was filled with insanity and jokers. I gave everyone another chance
.
“That’s okay.” I’d reply out loud.
“Hurt me again” my heart echoed silently.

Until I had had enough.

He cheated and cried. Big alligator tears of remorse. Then he did it again.

Apparently he had a complete lack of impulse control. When his dick saw a pretty girl it chased her down and dragged him along with it. So sad really. Such a sacrifice.

“It’s just sex, it’s not love!” he pleaded.

Was that supposed to make me feel better?

I was all doubted out. I gave no more benefits.
Even though he had begged, once again, for my forgiveness, I packed all of his shit into my car; drove it an hour to his apartment; and because I could hear him just having loveless sex from the street— I left everything on the sidewalk under his window.

And that my friends was the road back to sanity.

Teeny tiny postscript…

I had a temporary lapse about six months later. Hey, it happens!

Our chemistry was still intact, hotter than hot; I needed to get laid, and there may have been some Margaritas involved.

He swore he had never stopped loving me.
“What about the others?” I inquired. He knew what I wanted to hear, so he obliged. “Baaaabeeee” he cooed, kissing my neck, “I haven’t been with anyone in months, I’m concentrating on work.”

The lie caused his pants to go up in flames, but I never even noticed.

He had broken that unwritten rule, you know the one—he had stopped playing fair. Everyone knows neck kissing is the Universal signal for: You are one minute away from insanity… And away I went…

“Oh My God! He did it to me AGAIN!”
My screams reverberated throughout the entire house. “I truely AM insane!”

After I finally composed myself it was time to come clean (pun intended).

“We have crabs” I shamefully informed my roommates as I burned the bath towels, stripped all the beds and threw away my favorite pair of jeans.

Several days, many hours of creepy itchiness, and three bottles of anti-lice medicine later I had learned my lesson for good.

The Universe will up its game if you don’t get the message the first thirty-five times.

“The guys a louse” it said, biting its tongue, trying its best not to say: I told you so.

Point taken.

You can close your mouths now and Carry on,
xox