Life

“I have a real conundrum”, was how he answered my standard nightly inquiry which goes something like this:

Me: “How was your day?”
Husband: “It was (fill in the blank).”

Usually, he says “good.” Other times I can tell by his face that I shouldn’t ask. More often than not there’s a story or a funny anecdote that starts a conversation that carries us through dinner.

But never, in the almost seventeen years I’ve asked the question has it been answered this way.

“Wow, really? A conundrum. What happened?”
He hedged.
I don’t like hedging. Hedging makes me anxious.

“I’ll feed the dog,” he volunteered.

When it comes to eating our dog is probably a lot like yours. Since she comprehends any sentence that has the word food or feed or treat in it — the “spinning around the kitchen” phase of the evening begins as she excitedly waits for her dish to be prepared.

“Come on! Tell me what’s up!” I urged as he shoveled kibble into warm water.
When he bent down to give our whirling dervish her dinner, I spotted some residual unsteadiness left over from the bout of vertigo he’s been battling for the past couple of weeks.
Slowly, he came back to standing, leaning on the kitchen counter directly across from me.

Those corners in the kitchen, those are sacred. Over the years they have become our preferred conversation spots.

If I think about it, almost every conversation, big or small, has a least started in those corners.
We may shift back and forth while we prepare dinner but it all begins in those corners.
If things get tense, we maintain our distance, like fighters in the ring.
But I have laughed my ass off and been flooded with tears (often at the same time) in the corners of our kitchen.

We hug a lot there too.I don’t know why, but kitchen corners are conducive to hugging.

Anyway, it took a while for him to explain.

“I wanted to get you a tree,” he said looking at me sheepishly.
“I wanted to surprise you…with a Christmas tree.”

“What?”

You see, since we met, Christmastime at our house can be…complicated.

For me, it is the BEST time of year. You can find me Ho, Ho, Ho-ing my way through December.

For my husband—not so much. No, No, No-ing is more like it for him.

It could be due to his horrible, Jesuit boarding school, Oliver Twisted childhood—no one knows for sure.

All I DO know is that Christmas can be a minefield, a subject we have litigated into the ground only to come away without any reasonable solution as to how we can navigate without blowing somebody up.
If you read my last blog post you know that I’ve decided to go treeless this year. It was a compromise I’ve never been willing to make—until no——made easy by some brilliantly timed post-holiday travel.

In an act of holiday self-care (which,I highly recommend for everyone) I decorated my sister’s tree on Tuesday which was a fix for this Christmas Junkie.

So, I’m good with it. Really.

And that’s the part that confused him.

He continued, “On Monday, I finally felt up to driving to that awesome nursery where we saw those live trees,” he said.
“The ones with the silver needles you like?

He could see the bewildered expression on my face but he kept going.

“So I had it in the back of my van and I was going to set it up this morning…until I read your blog.”

I still wasn’t following so he continued.

“You said you were happy that you didn’t have a tree. That you liked the ease and simplicity…”

“Well, yeah…but…”

“So I drove back there to return it, but they don’t take back Christmas trees.” I could see a look of chagrin trying to hide behind his sexy, white beard.

I started to laugh. “What? No you didn’t!”

“Yep,” he said, starting to see the humor. “You are the proud owner of a living, silver pine tree which has been driven all over hell and back the past two days and is now lurking in the back of my van trying not to feel rejected.”

“Awwwwww, come on! You did not!” My eyes filled with tears as I launched myself into his arms. I told you those corners were for hugging.

“Lemme see him!” I squealed.

“I’m sorry.” He nuzzled his face in my neck. “I just can’t seem to get it right.”

“Don’t be sorry. Ya did good.”

Sometimes when you let something go. Like really let it go with no residual bullshit–it hunts you down and lurks in a van in your driveway.

Bible.

Carry on,
xox

Hi All,

Recently, at the urging of my BFF, who sent me an email with six words: You need to submit to them — I dropped everything and submitted a short piece on my relationship with my tits, more specifically the contraptions that house them—bras. It was a fundraising event for a worthy cause, THE YWCA-GCR’s 7th ANNUAL BraVa! —an event held at The Arts Center of the Capital Region, located in Troy N.Y., that raises money and awareness for women in need. This event was bra/binder specific so they wanted stories, songs, and poems from women of all ages regarding our personal relationship with our bras. As you can imagine, I had a lot to say!

Three weeks later I was notified that my essay had been chosen to be read at their event. Hazzah! But since I had a scheduling conflict I couldn’t do it myself. F*#k! I mean…you know me so you know I died a thousand deaths over not being able to read this myself to a room full of rowdy women.

Anyhow, here it is, in all its glory, my essay on tits and their bras. If you’re a man, I’m sorry. But for extra cool points I think you should show this to your wife, girlfriend, or daughter—they’ll totally get it. 

Carry on,

xoxJ

Every woman has a relationship with her bra. 

Mine started as the pipe dream of a flat-chested seventh-grader who wanted more than anything to wear a bra. You see, Debbie had transferred to our school. And like some rare, exotic creature from a faraway land called The Bay Area, Debbie exposed me to the foreign notion that a girl my age could be “sophisticated”. 

That she could frost her lips with Yardley’s Slicker Lip, wear shoes other than Mary Janes with her uniform, and gosh darn it, she could wear a bra!

It was 1970. Every Catholic schoolgirl worth her salt couldn’t wait to hit seventh grade and shed the shackles of the bibbed uniform. Bibs were for babies and we were seasoned twelve-year-olds. Young ladies. Women. Who were able to overlook having to wear the same thing every day, because the promised land of seventh grade promised the long-awaited liberation of a white blouse and a plaid skirt. 

The wardrobe equivalent of the ‘adult’s table,’ at Thanksgiving, it carried with it all the cache you can imagine.

Enter Debbie, from the Bay Area. And her Brassier. 

No longer content with the hint of a camisole or tank top under my white blouse, I wanted a proper bra strap to show. A wide one with at least one, preferably two, hook and eye closures in the back. You know, like all the sophisticated twelve-year old’s were wearing. 

Unsurprisingly, I had a mother who pronounced Debbie “precocious”. She urged me to slow down. Enjoy being a kid. I was the oldest of three and she wasn’t ready to succumb to the realization that puberty was right around the corner. Nevertheless, after caving to the pressure of my constant begging, she took me bra shopping. Giddy with glee, I walked into the store imagining myself leaving with a bra, only to be told by the saleswoman that there was “one thing missing” — I had no breasts! Exchanging conspiratorial glances with my mother, she assured me that things would change and handed me a ‘training bra’. Similar in every way to a camisole, a training bra is a cotton consolation prize. A participation trophy for having the guts to walk in demanding a bra when you’ve got no tits. 

Now, before you start feeling sorry for me, rest assured—my boobs came in.

And when they did they were… gigantic. 

At a certain point in my mid-twenties, because my breasts had started to migrate out the top and sides of my Sears bra, I went to a fancy department store for a professional fitting by a retired ice skating judge from East Germany. Ulla, in front of my horrified BFF, pushed, pulled, moved, and measured my girls in ways I could have never imagined. Once she determined I’d been sufficiently mortified, she pronounced my cup size to be somewhere in the middle of the alphabet, charged me more than a fancy steak dinner for two brassieres—and sent me on my way. 

From that moment until I turned sixty, all I wanted was to ditch the ugly beige, underwire, old lady bras, with cups the size of pasta bowls, that can stand in the corner by themselves. All I dreamed of in my thirties, forties, and fifties, was going free-range. Wearing a teeny tiny tank top or a pale pink flowered camisole with spaghetti straps instead of the wide, steel cables that nestled into the pre-existing grooves in my shoulders that have been worn there by decades of heavy lifting. 

Now, at sixty-five, with my breasts at the mercy of gravity for decades, I’ve entered the realm of radical self-acceptance. I’m finally happy with my bra, size 38 DDD LONG.

I get it. Everyone wants bigger breasts, and while this may sound cliche, I caution you—be careful what you wish for and always, always be grateful for what you have. 

“At times the world may seem an unfriendly and sinister place, but believe that there is much more good in it than bad. All you have to do is look hard enough, and what might seem a series of unfortunate events may in fact be the first steps of a journey.” ~ Lemoney Snicket

Sunday morning dawned not with its usual slothful inertia, but with the same flurry of activity that had swarmed around me since he’d been admitted to Cedars Sinai late Saturday night. An endless stream of texts and phone calls double-teamed me, rendering me all at once distracted, informed, comforted, and overwhelmed. 

In a nutshell, after a week of spiking fevers, some as high as 102.6 degrees, at the urging of our indispensable doctor friend, Jeff, Raphael had finally agreed to stop under-reacting, and “Just go to the damn emergency room!” Thursday he’d been put on a pretty gnarly antibiotic but not much had improved. Come to find out, the bacteria that had spent the week ravaging his immune system was antibiotic-resistant. Cue the BIG GUNS. A drug so strong it took seven doctors to reach consensus to even prescribe it. It had to be given as an IV drip and his blood and urine had to be monitored. Around the clock. For at least the first three days of the nine-day treatment.

So much for the quickie emergency room visit we both believed would chew up maybe two hours of his Saturday afternoon. 

Clearly, we are two of the most clueless Pollyanna’s you’d ever have the misfortune to know. We also believe ice cream is good for you, dogs understand English, and the truth will always prevail. When you look up the word naive in the dictionary you see a picture of the two us, accompanied by the sound of uproarious laughter. 

Anyhow, it was all so unexpected and laden with fuckery that by Sunday morning I was feeling a bit…unmoored. So, you ask, what do I do when I feel like that?

Buy donuts.

Into Ralph’s I marched, wallet and keys in hand. Laser focused as I strode down the aisle, past the produce, past the dairy section, looking for…what was I looking for? Head down, reading a text that was attempting to explain something unexplainable to anyone without a medical degree, I suddenly remembered why I was there—donuts. Pivoting in place, I swung a hasty 180— promptly knocking over a free standing display of Peet’s coffee that only a few seconds before had been loitering there, minding its own business. Shit, shit, shit, shit! Laying on its side, its guts spilled everywhere, it shamed me as I bent over to pick up all the bags of Peet’s.

Get your head in the game, Janet! It sneered.
Get off your phone!
Slow down!
Pay attention!
You’re acting like the sky is falling, Chicken Little.
He’s fine!

That’s when I noticed the additional set of hands helping me pick up the mess on aisle five.

“Oh, thank you, I’m so clumsy,” I said, just assuming the hands belonged to a store employee. 

I could not have been more wrong.

Down on my knees, my hands filled with Peet’s, I looked up and smiled directly into the face of—a scary clown.
SERIOUSLY! A SCARY CLOWN!

There we were, ten thirty on a Sunday morning, and a woman over six feet tall, wearing a bright orange wig, her face painted like the joker, was helping me pick up coffee!
Me: dropping the coffee—Holy shit! You’re a scary clown!
SC: I am.
Me: Well, thank you…scary clown…for…wait…how are you a scary clown?
SC: smiling through painted black tears— Because sometimes scary clowns are there when you need ‘em.

MIC DROP

Scooping up the remaining bags of coffee, my brain surged into overdrive. How…why…what…huh?

Satisfied that the Peet’s coffee display would live to sell another bag, I brushed myself off and looked around only to watch the back of scary clown leave aisle five. “Thanks again!” I yelled, muttering the rest under my breath, “…freakin’ Sunday morning scary clown.

I think we can all agree, my life is absurd.

A random series of magical realities strung together like gumdrops, embellishing the Christmas tree that masquerades as my life.

Super deep universal truths delivered by scary clowns in supermarkets are absurd.

An antibiotic resistant bacteria that plays hide and seek for a week is absurd!

So is hospital food and compression socks and showers with non-existent water pressure. 

So is fear. Fear is absurd.

It’s all a fucking clown show my friends—but it’s my life.

Carry on,
Xox JB

Friends, 
Angels? Do you believe they walk among us? I sure do!
Read this and see what you think.
xox

As we rushed out through the smokey maze of the Casino at the old Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas, it suddenly hit me that he had once again forgotten to give me my show bonus. The monetary incentive he used to physically wring me dry.  

The realization stopped me in my tracks.
F*#&!

We had just finished a week-long, Estate Jewelry Show.
I was bone tired from being on my feet for over twelve hours a day—in heels, and to add insult to injury, our plane reservation left us no time to eat before the flight home, so to top it all off—I was hangry.
In other words—I was in NO mood for any fuckery!

We had grossed over one million dollars—in a week. The two of us. And I was about to fly home empty-handed, once again.

You see, I had a boss who hated to pay me. He just did.
And no carefully scripted notes or heartfelt talks, or angry outbursts on my part had done anything to change that.

I had coached him repeatedly on the merits of showing respect. It wasn’t difficult, all he had to do was pay me. And not make me ask for my money, which I HATED.

What would this be, the third time that day I’d had to ask him for my money? I was quite familiar with this humiliating power play, and I was sick of it! Listen, I had done everything I could think of to sidestep this idiocy! Even after years of his bonus structure consisting of whatever loose cash he had in his pocket, not his fat, overstuffed money clip mind you—but his pocket change, I had won one hard-fought battle by finally getting him to agree to a pre-set bonus amount.

“Why are you stopping?” he bellowed back at me impatiently. His aluminum wheelie suitcase, a rectangular R2D2, skipped from wheel to wheel, trying to keep its balance. I could’ve sworn it looked in my direction with a help me face.

He continued his frantic march through the casino toward the door.

“I’d love to get my bonus before we leave?” I asked for the third time, running to keep up. I knew that if I let it slide, even for a day or two, the odds of getting it would become so slim even a Vegas bookie would pass on that bet.

I wasn’t sure he’d heard me until in one fluid motion, he swung to the right, deftly executing a wide, sweeping, u-turn back in my direction. Still in motion, he reached into his murse (man purse) and dumped a handful of gambling chips in my direction. Surprised, I reached out with both hands in time to catch most of them. Several of them did make a break for it, the slippery little buggers rolling on their sides underneath the dollar slots nearby.

“That should cover it,” He insisted. “Now hurry up, we don’t want to miss our plane.”

I stood there red-faced and flabbergasted, knowing that he’d left me no time to cash them in. Quickly, I shoved the chips in my purse and proceeded to get down on my hands and knees to see if I could retrieve the ones that had made their escape.

A pot-bellied, middle-aged woman, with a cigarette with two inches of ash precariously dangling from her lipstick-stained lips, was straddling two stools in front of three slot machines. Without ever looking away from the rapidly rotating numbers she was counting on to change her life, her foot kicked the chips my way, like a bedroom-slippered hockey stick.
“Uh, thanks” I mumbled, crawling around on the ground in my skirt and heels, totally in awe of her unbroken focus.

“Janet, let’s go!” He chided from inside the automatic revolving glass exit doors before turning right to join the cab line.

I could hear the damn plastic chip clattering together in my bag as I ran to catch my flight back to LA.

In the hour it took to get from Vegas to Los Angeles, I began to seethe with rage.
Not only had he made me repeatedly beg him for money he had literally thrown poker chips at me in lieu of my bonus! I had never felt so disrespected. In. My. Life.

I don’t know about you, but when I get in touch with that level of anger, I have a tendency to burst into flames tears.
Hunched down in my middle seat toward the back of the plane, I cried and cried and cried. Big, wet, sloppy tears.

I decided I would rather die, covered in honey and tied on an anthill than take the prearranged ride home to Park La Brea with him and his wife. What I knew for sure was that someone was going to die if I got in that car with him. And I was way too overdressed to spend a night in jail.

As we exited the terminal, the crowd spitting us out onto the curb, I spotted his wife’s car to the left. Without making a sound, (or so much as an indecent hand gesture) I made a beeline to the right, jumping into a single cab that just happened to be waiting there for me.

The moment the door shut and we pulled away—I freaking lost it.

I began to ugly cry, complete with gasping for breath and rivers of snot running down my face.
There I was, trapped in a horrible working situation with no solution in sight. What do you do when you ask someone repeatedly to treat you with respect and they blatantly disregard that request?

I know what you’re thinking, quit! But I couldn’t. I had the kind of career everyone wanted. Travel, great pay, jewelry, prestige. Which led to a lot of financial obligations, AND I was thirty-seven and single. Wahhhhhhhhhhhh. That sad truth made me cry even harder.

As we wound our way through the late-night traffic on LaCienega, I spotted the dark, soulful eyes of the cab driver, staring at me in the rearview mirror. His deep brown skin, white turban, and singsongy accent gave away his country of origin. India.

“Beautiful lady, why you cry?” He cooed.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh, I’m just feeling so sad,” I boo-hooed. “I don’t know what to do.”

I watched his eyes search my face in the mirror as I inadvertently wiped snot into my hair with the back of my hand.
“Beautiful lady, don’t be sad, it can’t be that bad,” he murmured in his soothing, heavily accented voice.

“Ohhhhhhh it is, I think I hate my boss…he doesn’t show me any respect…he paid me with…”

I started to wail. Loudly. “With, with, poker chiiiiiiiiiiiiips!”

I grabbed a couple out of my bag and tossed them onto the front seat for dramatic effect.

“Beautiful lady, you have God’s respect and that’s all that matters.”
“Really? I  mean, I guess…”

At that moment, the cab came to a slow, rolling stop in front of my high-rise apartment building.

Since I had cried the entire ride home, he had to wait as I scavenged around in my bag for cab fare. In the meantime, the lovely man retrieved my suitcase from where I had launched it, the driver’s side backseat, opened my door, and wheeled my bag inside the lobby, depositing it in front of the elevator doors. When he returned to the cab, I had composed myself enough to hand him his fare, including a generous tip for being such a good listener.

“Here you go, thank you for being so kind to me,” I said sheepishly through the tissue that was attempting to wrangle my false eyelashes back into place.

“Oh no beautiful lady, you keep that. This ride is on me.”
And before I could even argue with him, he pulled away into the dark Los Angeles night. As I watched his tail lights fade into the distance, I realized a couple of things that were not normal. And they gave me goosebumps.
They still do.

Number one: I never told him where I lived!

I just got in the cab and fell apart while he drove me home — to Park La Brea, a literal labyrinth of apartments, turnabouts, and one-way streets. My friends refuse to pick me up lest they never find their way out. Even with my best directions, many a cab driver has made a wrong turn and been spit back out onto Wilshire Boulevard.

Number two: There are ten high rises inside that complex. How is it that he had managed to navigate all the twists and turns and one-way streets and deposit me right at my door?
I’ll answer that. He was an angel. My angel. Plain and simple.

When I finally managed to come out of my stupor, slowly walking inside the lobby, I noticed he had propped the elevator doors open with my bag. Getting inside I was stunned to discover he’d also pushed the button to the ninth floor!

My floor! How did he know?

I really, truly believe that angels are everywhere and only show themselves when we need them.

THAT is the story of my Angel in a Turban.

Carry on,
Xox

“Miracles can happen, even to those who are small, flammable, and dressed all in black.”
― Lemony Snicket

Friends, I just found out like, last week, that my life fits into a literary genre — Magical Realism.

And being someone who never wants to fit into anything, ever—as it turns out, I may have to admit that the writing world may have figured me out. You see, within a work of magical realism, life is still grounded in the real world, but fantastical elements are considered normal in this world. Magical realism blurs the line between fantasy and reality (with a straight face—my words).

See what I mean? Then when you add some snark and a bit of humor you have…well…me.

Most of the writers I know write memoir. When I thought about my memoir, I was immediately reminded of this blog and all of the posts about the crazy shit that has happened, and continues to happen to me. And you know what? Those damn genre mavens were right!  My memoir would actually sit comfortably on the shelf next to any work of magical realism!

I’ve been working on two magical realism novels, and much to my own amazement, all I’ve had to do is draw on my own experiences to give them the magic. 

Looking back has given me the opportunity to recall all the events, places, people, and thousands of essays from my past. And when I sat down to remember, this was just one of many wild stories culled from my own life of mystical realism that came to mind.

Stay tuned, I’ll post more…

If you recall, I was having a hard time of it back in the early nineties.
I had a good life. Great job, money, travel, the whole shebang, but I had opened myself up to a very life-altering spiritual experience – awakening is a better word, and it had knocked me on my ass in every way imaginable.

With one foot on terra firma and the other one in god-knows-where, I was having a hell of a time staying grounded. Which has its own set of problems. Lost and alone in a world of my own making, I was completely void of humor, whimsy, or any other emotions besides fear and loathing. In other words, I found NO joy in life.

“If this is enlightenment, you can have it!” I’d yell to anyone who would listen. 

It is my belief, garnered from the very extensive and exhaustive study of ME and my years of data; that in the midst of an up-leveling (as I like to call it) the Universe, in order to keep you in the game, lays a red carpet studded with mystical miracles at your feet. And in a blatant display of showoffery, these mystical experiences are so IN YOUR FACE that as whacked out and pissed off as you’ve become – you can’t miss them.

So, here’s how this one went down: I was a wacko with a big job, on my way to work a weekend jewelry show. Seeking joy in whatever way I could,  I stopped at a drugstore along my route to get some Carefree peppermint gum, my favorite at the time,  It came in a hurt-your-eyes, bright yellow package, with twenty-four sticks of minty yumminess. It was one of the few things that made me happy, so of course, the drugstore was out of it. Deciding nothing else could assuage my surly disposition, I left, gum-less and grumpy.

I pulled onto LaCienega Blvd. and waited at the light directly across from the Beverly Center. As I sat there, stewing in my own misery, I heard the radio blaring in the car to the left of me. Even with my windows up, it was unmistakable. Rod Stewart’s song Have I Told You Lately That I Love You. Annoyed, I shot the two young men with questionable musical taste, my best exasperated, too cool for school, are you fucking kidding me, stink eye. In response, the one sitting in the passenger seat motioned for me to roll down my window.

Did I mention they looked like a couple of angels who’d walked straight out of the pages of GQ?
It was West Hollywood in the nineties. All the men who looked like that batted for the other team, so, I just assumed they were going to ask me for directions.

Deciding to comply, I rolled down my window at the longest red light in history, and the beautiful GQ model/angel reached out to hand me something. I know I was wearing my resting-bitch-face as I pulled my whole body halfway out the window to be able to reach my arm far enough to take what he was so intent on giving me.

And there it was. Wrapped in a bright yellow wrapper. A stick of my favorite Carefree Peppermint Gum!
I kid you not.

I sat there slackjawed, holding the gum, while the drivers behind me began to honk. Apparently, in magical realism, life goes on. The light had been green for a second already. These real people were very important. And my magic was making them late.

The two smiley guys pulled ahead, the Rod Stewart song still hanging in the air like cheap perfume.

If you know that section of LaCienega heading south, you know there are several lights in quick secession that are synced up in such a way that they are perpetually red. It’s a sadistic joke, and if I hadn’t been on my quest for joy via some gum —I would have avoided it at all costs.

So, in less than a minute, I find myself stopped next to my new best friends. I glance over to find them still smiling so broadly, the whiteness of their teeth hurt my eyes. Meanwhile, Rod was still singing about how much he wanted me to know he loved me, and the entire scene was so ridiculous I’m surprised I was composed enough to remember my manners and mouth a quick Thank You while holding up the gum.

For three lights we stopped next to each other and they smiled and Rod sang. Until they finally turned left. Either the song had finished or they were embarrassed that they had given me their last piece of gum.

Okay, so, I added that to my growing list of things too weird to mention—and told no one. Which was no big hairy deal seeing that I had turned so dark and flammable at that point, dressing all in black with pennies in my shoes to ground me, that I don’t think anyone was taking me or anything I had to say very seriously anyway.

And here comes the plot twist.
After doing the show in Santa Monica for three days, when I got back to the shop I went about my usual mindless tasks, one of them being to check the answer machine. It was the early nineties, remember? Cell phones were the size and weight of bricks. We all had answer machines and the one that day at work told me it was full.

Machine Full—73 messages, it read for the first time ever.

Jeez. Okay. Must be some kind of jewelry emergency!

Press Play.

Have I told you lately that I love you?
Have I told you there’s no one else above you?
Fill my heart with gladness
Take away all my sadness
Ease my troubles that’s what you do

Yep. Rod Stewart, THAT song. Every message. All 73. Until the tape ran out.

Explain that away. You can’t because it’s magical realism! Boom!

Xox Carry on

Tell me about your miracles!

I couldn’t figure it out at first…

Apparently, Maria, our beloved, devout Catholic, long suffering housekeeper of over twenty years, who has tolerated, but WILL NOT touch, move, or dust our collection of nudes, or fish with tits—has somehow, just learned the word FUCK.

And since, as a friend of mine observed, our house is an actual fuck store, Maria is APPALLED—as evidenced by her silent protest which I’ve immortalized on my Insta page — @jbertolus.

Mia Culpa dear Maria

All of this reminded me of her backstory, a viewer favorite from 2017.
xox
Enjoy!

Our house is a maze of contradictions so, how can I blame Maria for being confused?

Maria is a our once-a-week housekeeper. 

She came along with all the motorcycles, cars and dogs; in other words, the menagerie that was my husband’s dowry of sorts when we got married.

Now, after all these years of cleaning my toilet, and going through my medicine cabinet, and that drawer next to the bed—Maria qualifies as family.

She has to be. She is the keeper of all of our secrets.

And like any self respecting family member, she screws up and I want to kill her—here’s why: For the life of her, she cannot tell the difference between trash and a treasure.

I collect little pieces of nature which I’m lucky enough to find all around our property. Assorted nests, abandoned beehives in the eaves, fallen branches filled with hummingbird nests, heart shaped rocks, found scraps of paper, and even dollar bills with cryptic messages scrawled on them that I’m sure are just for me. I’ve stumbled upon old skeleton keys, petrified tree pods, pinecones, old worm wood, even animal skulls, bones and teeth. 

Then I go out to flea markets and various other secret haunts to deliberately look for this kinda stuff.  Afterwards, I cart home my finds to live among the seashells and rocks, beach glass and mermaids. 

I also collect cool, rusty old metal mermaids.

And shiny. I can’t resist sparkly, shine stuff. 

A sparkly mermaid would render me speechless with joy.

Then I go about artistically displaying all of my found treasures around the house on tables and bookshelves—as art. 

I found them, I love, them, and I want to look at them everyday.

Saturday is the day Maria comes. It is a day of bittersweet agony. 

The house smells of lemon pledge, Murphy’s oil soap and all things holy. It is spick and span’d within an inch of it’s life. 

THAT is the sweet.

Now for the bitter.

Maria does not appreciate my taste in art. The woman is convinced I am batshit crazy.

For instance, I have the most realistic looking pair of ceramic fortune cookies displayed in my kitchen. I used to move them around at will. Sometimes they lived on the shelf next to the cookbooks, other times over by the oils and salts next to the stove. 

Then, one Saturday night, I noticed they were missing. Did she break them? She has broken so many things—irreplaceable, expensive things—yet, she remains—because she’s family. Her habit, after she breaks something into a million pieces, is to put all the bits on a napkin, or if at all possible, prop it up, waiting to be discovered. In other words, she doesn’t dispose of it. 

Still, my instincts told me to check the trash. There they were, outside in the black bin, my ceramic fortune cookies completely intact at the bottom of a plastic Gap Bag filled with vacuum cleaner hazarai .

When I asked her in my broken Spanish about it the following week, she looked at me as if I were wearing an Iguana as a hat, and carefully chose two words: STALE. TRASH.

For weeks she threw them away, until I finally was able to convince her they were…art.

My sweet Maria tries so hard to grasp this concept. 

I get it. Nests, (even thought I’ve sprayed them with clear polyurethane) are hard to dust, animal skulls are supposed to be buried, and crumpled paper with sociopathic looking scrawl on it—well that’s just trash!

She has even put the five or six cryptic dollar bills I’ve collected IN MY WALLET. Where I’ve pulled them out and almost tipped a valet—with my own treasured art.

Last spring in Santa Barbara, I found an abandoned, giant bird’s nest. It is a masterpiece. A gift from God. Stiff with shellac, yet extremely delicate, I have it displayed in a place of prominence—as art. Nature’s art.

As many times as I’ve asked her not to, begged her to just skip over it; I know she picks it up and dusts because I find pieces of it which look suspiciously like random twigs, in the trash. 

“It’s okay” I tell her, “Please don’t touch this, I’ll live with a little dust”. 

 But she cannot help herself—it’s not art to her, it’s a table full of dirty wood. And so the nest—my treasure—is dwindling away.

My collectables have confused her to the point that she leaves crumpled paper (legitimate trash) right where she finds it, and asks if she can throw away an overripe peach. I just have to laugh.

I have to mention the real art. The nudes. I collect vintage and current photographs and paintings of female (and one male) nudes. 

To her that is Not art. It is pornography.
She does not go near them. She cannot bring herself to touch them, I can tell by the inch of dust they accumulate until I get around to dusting them.

And by-the-way, a mermaid is an abomination. It is topless fish. A dusty fish with tits.

To Maria, one thing is clear. I’m an iguana wearing pervert, who likes to collect trash, pornography, bones that should be buried, and stale food—and call it art.

And while I am certain she owns a Jesus painted on black velvet, that makes it easier to forgive her. Becuase art is subjective.
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. 

Carry on,
xox

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” ~ William Shakespeare

I took a bunch of improv classes back in the day and lemme just validate what you probably already know—improv isn’t easy.
If it were, everybody would be doing it—and they’re not. Most of my acting friends at the time said they would rather do stand- up, or sing a song at an open mic night than be stuck on stage for one hot second doing improv.
Reasons Given: There’s no set story, no plan. There are no parameters, no written lines to rehearse. To be any good you have to (gulp) surrender to the moment. And, you have to listen with your whole body.

Fuck no! They yelled as they ran toward serious drama. That shit’s too scary!

Me being me, I thought it looked fun. You just make shit up and everyone has to go along with it? Cool!  So I decided to try it. And just like you do when you find yourself committed to trying something completely terrifying for no rational reason and no money, I puked like a rockstar backstage before I stepped one fearful foot into the lights.

How bad can it be? — famous last words.

“You’re hard candy at the bottom of a grandmother’s purse!” Someone yelled. Oh hell no!  I thought, frozen in place. I’m not candy…candy can’t talk…what am I doing?…why am I here?…Jesus H. Christ, I feel naked…am I naked?…am I dreaming?…have I died?…where’s the exit?

The other actor on stage, the good one, really got into it. His candy had a backstory, a history. Separated from our wrappers and passed over by the grandkids, it was just the two of us, he insisted. Left to our own devices among the stray Kleenex, tiny envelopes of artificial sweetener, and our arch-enemies, THE COUGH DROPS — we had a shared destiny to fulfill!

I could barely hear the guy over the voice of my ego screaming inside my head. There must be an easier, less mortifying way to spend your time! It railed. Then fear took over.
My legs grew roots.
Paralyzed, I couldn’t move a muscle.
I tried to swallow but my saliva had turned to dust.
I’d also gone mute.
I’m sure this only lasted a minute or five, but it felt more like an hour as I stood on stage in a stupor, listening to this guy yammer on about his imaginary life as a purse candy.

Once the blood found its way back to my brain, I remembered the number one rule of improv: Say Yes. Always agree and SAY YES.

Finally, my hard candy comrade ran out of things to say. Having finished an impromptu five-minute monologue, he stood there glaring at me, every minty molecule of his being willing me to die play along. Rule number two: Don’t Deny. Denial is the number one reason things go south. Taking a deep breath, I attempted to override my ego whose pernicious idea it was to stand like an idiot deer in the headlights.
Like that wasn’t weird at all.
Like it was the lesser of two evils.
Like nobody would notice.

Epiphany #1 — What my ego was advising me to do was no less humiliating than acting like a candy!

There was somebody on the stage who was begging me to join him and it would be impossible to look any worse than I did right that minute. I went for it. Putting my hands on my head I teased my big eighties hair into a cotton candy frenzy. “Can I ask you a question?” I said, “How do you keep all of this purse lint from sticking to you?” Off we went…I can’t tell you what we did after that, or what was said, all I know is that was the moment the suffering stopped. That was the moment it got fun!

People laughed.
I didn’t die.
I learned a TON.
And in the future (yes, I kept at it) every time I overrode my ego’s impulse to make me hurl or bolt for the exit, improv got… easier.

Epiphany #2 — As I studied spirituality, meditation, and being in the moment— as I read all the Ekart Tolle books and Michael Singer’s The Surrender Experiment, I realized that most suffering comes from wanting things to be different than they are, instead of saying yes to what the universe, AKA the best improv partner ever, has put in front of you.

But it takes practice! I constantly have to remind my ego: Say YES. Let go of your agenda (don’t deny). Listen to what you receive and build on it. You can’t be wrong. Make your partner(s) look brilliant. Keep moving forward. Surrender, surrender, surrender.

Epiphany #3 — Life is one long improv sketch! You can listen to your ego and do everything in your power to keep from looking weird or making a mistake, which I have found is the quickest route to dullsville OR in a world full of choices— you can be the hard candy!

Epiphany #4 — Always agree with Stephen Colbert.

Carry on,
xox J

“I’m not falling apart, but I’m perpetually not okay.” —Brene Brown

Hello Observers,

Soooooo great to be back, it’s been too long.

If you’ve been inhabiting the planet for the past two years, you’ve probably uttered that phrase. Me? I’ve mumbled it into my pillow, the hood of my sweatshirt, and the empty vat of raw cookie dough at least a dozen times.

This month.

Besides all the global fuckery, (and oh, for the love God, please, please make it stop) many of us have been grappling with intense, personal issues. And while ‘getting a grip’ has previously been our super-power, I can’t help but notice friends (mostly women) experiencing an emotional unraveling.

And who can blame us?

IT’S 2022 = The Year That Broke The Camel’s Back.

I think I speak for all of us when I scream into the void:

I CANNOT HANDLE ANOTHER VARIANT. THIS WHOLE TWO-YEAR, HYPER-VIGILANT-PANDEMIC STORYLINE HAS FRAYED MY VERY LAST NERVE!

I CANNOT HANDLE ANOTHER EMERGENCY SURGERY HEALTH SCARE!  SO, HUSBANDS, KIDS, PARENTS, DOGS, CATS & FRIENDS—CHEW YOUR FOOD THOROUGHLY, WATCH YOUR STEP, STAY OFF YOUR MOTORCYCLE—AND CONSIDER YOURSELVES FOREWARNED. SERIOUSLY.

I CANNOT WATCH THE CARNAGE IN UKRAINE. IT GUTS ME AND RENDERS ME USELESS. I WILL CONTINUE TO PRAY, JOIN GLOBAL MEDITATIONS, AND DONATE MY ASS OFF—BUT I MUST UNPLUG. I MUST.

“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” ~ Anne Lamott

If you’ve been following me for any length of time, you know that when I unravel emotionally, it’s usually because being a Pollyanna is freaking exhausting and like you, my adrenals are shot from holding up the sky. You also know the priority I place on finding balance—and that includes hormones because stress burns them away like a goddamn fiery Super Nova.
Everyone I know is depleted.
Misfiring.
Out of whack.
So, I partnered with a friend and got to work.

The other day I got busted—

“Are you sending this to the entire world?” a friend asked.
“Uh, no.”
“Why not? The women of the world are FRIED! They’re asking for this!”
“Mmmmmkay, but how do I do that?”
“Your blog, duh!”

OMG.
Women, in over 100 countries.
Of course, The blog!

*If you’re a woman who’s feeling FRIED —or, you know and love someone who is—check this out.



WE’RE HAVING A HOT FLASH -
AND THIS IS THE KIND YOU DON’T WANT TO MISS!

We’re positively on fire about this new way to experience Croneology! It will have the same Croneology snap and crackle, with one interesting difference—these recorded calls will be stand-alone Q & A’s—with a guest expert—open to women of all ages.
Experience Our First Flash!
Thursday, March 24 at 5pm PT / 7pm CT, with Dr. Christine Farrell—A renowned hormone and wellness expert, and Croneology round table favorite, Christine has a talent for making the complicated not only easy to understand but relatable. She blew our freaking minds with her knowledge of all the latest data, recent hormone advances, and the sage wisdom she delivered with empathy and compassion. Christine is a fierce advocate for women’s health and the education of women (and their doctors) about everything hormone-related. You can find her at www.bioidenticalwellness.com

Who can join? 
Women. Of any age.

How much? 
$55 per flash.

Do I have to ask a question?
Nope. While we’d love to see your face, camera-on is not required, and mics will be muted. You’re welcome to ask a question and share with the group or simply be there to listen and take notes. You’ll also have the option to email your questions to us in advance or type them in the chat during the call.

How do I sign up for a Hot Flash?
Respond to this email with “hell yes!” and we’ll send you the payment options.

Can I share this with my friends?
YES! Please! Spread the word!

With love from your Croneology guides,
Janet Bertolus + Geraldine De Braune

P.S. head over to www.croneology.net to learn more about us and give us a follow https://www.instagram.com@croneology444 on Instagram.

This podcast is for anyone of any age who is having trouble finding joy right now:

Brené with Karen Walrond on Accessing Joy and Finding Connection in the Midst of Struggle

Okay, I know this was a lot and I apologize for being so long-winded, but it’s been a while and I had so much to say!

I love you.

Carry on,
xoxJanet

“These are the times that try men’s souls.” ~ Thomas Paine

The sun is hot, water is wet, and my husband brought home Covid. For the past two years, I knew it was inevitable, and yet, at the moment he announced his test was positive—I was shocked, appalled, and I wanted to slap him into next year!

“Don’t feel bad,” our friend, who also happens to be a doctor of infectious diseases told me that night, “Everyone who gets Omicron feels like the last kid left on the dodge ball court.” He was employing his best bedside manner.

“That’s exactly how I feel! “

“Listen, it’s insidious and it’s everywhere,” he said, “lingering like cigarette smoke in an empty room. (insert uncomfortable pause here) “And eventually, we’re all gonna get it.”

DUH DUN DAHHHHHHH (cue ominous music).

“I know, you’re right, but what do I do now?”

“Watch his symptoms (he’s asymptomatic) and mind yourself.”

“Mind myself?” I tried my best not to screech in his ear.

“Don’t get scared. Stay positive, don’t Covid-shame him (too late), isolate, wear your mask at Trader Joe’s, don’t let him lick people’s faces while he’s testing positive—and test yourself in five days, even if you’re without symptoms.”

In other words, pivot, stay fluid, adapt, adapt, adapt

Now, I can feel many of you rolling your eyes, but we live in Los Angeles, in the state of California, a state where restrictions have been stricter than most, and as much as “I am so over this”, I witnessed, first-hand, the effects of hospital overwhelm when I wasn’t permitted to visit this same husband in the hospital three weeks ago.
After emergency surgery.
Where he was given a bed—but no room.
Seriously.

A huge medical facility, in the largest city in the state, and THEY HAD RUN OUT OF ROOMS.

Of course, I’d heard about this, but I guess I figured it was happening somewhere else—to someone else. Sheesh.

So now, like millions of you, I have Covid in the house. The monster is out from under the bed and his cigarette smoke is lingering all over my happy place.

You’ll also be surprised, shocked, delighted to know that five days in, I’m staying positive and testing negative.

PS: I also love sleeping in my (according to my BFF) “Dark chocolate Hershey’s kiss” of a guest room. Maybe too much.

PPS: Still minding myself.

Carry on,
xox Janet

It was 8 pm. We had just settled in after a long day.

I was on the couch, wrapped up in a fur blanket, living off the fumes of a recently completed, particularly fabulous zoom call.  He’d just completed a day running around, “putting out fires”, (the irony of this will be evident shortly. Wait for it) which is the way he’s always described his life as a contractor.

“I’m so ready to have this beer and chill,” he said, his flannel jammie-pants signaling his surrender.

That’s when the power went out, throwing our den into a darkness so complete I never saw him leave the room.
For a brief moment, it went back on.
Then blackness.
Three times the power tried to return, each attempt producing a mournful groan. “What is that?” I asked no one in particular. It was a sound so weird I can hardly describe it, residing somewhere between a whale fart and elephants singing the blues, it triggered an anal kegel.
“I have no idea but it doesn’t sound good.” He’d found a working flashlight the size of a light-saber and was headed outside.

The Santa Ana winds had picked up at sunset, but they were nowhere near as ferocious as it takes to knock out the power. But apparently, ferocity isn’t necessary when you have bamboo branches to do the job for you.

“Siri, turn on the flashlight!” I ordered, following a loud popping sound as I traversed the pitch-black obstacle course previously known as our living room. He’d left the door to the driveway wide open, the wind whipping a frenzy of leaves into the garage.
The minute I looked outside I could see why.
I froze in my tracks. Ruby, who’d been hot on my heels, recoiled, the bejesus scared out of her by the roman candle of fire roaring and popping like gunfire directly across the street.

Holy shit, I whispered under my breath.

All the neighbors who hadn’t left for the holiday poured into the street. “Has anyone seen Raphael?” I yelled, the wind carrying my query up and down the block. Half a dozen people pointed toward the fire.
“He’s back there with Marty, they’re putting out the fire!”
Of course he is.
Across the street was total chaos. People were either yelling and running like headless chickens, or standing like zombies their faces frozen in fear as the wind whipped hot embers over the rooftops. Two large cables had fallen from a transformer igniting a wall of bamboo behind a gray two-story with a white picket fence, and then, in an act of contrition, the bamboo promptly lit itself on fire.

Before I could get my bearings, a hysterical woman handed me a terrified, shivering toddler who’d had the misfortune of being in the bathtub of the bamboo house when the power went out.
“Take him!” she screamed at me. “I have to go back for the baby!”

Wait. There’s a baby inside?

NOOOOO! the gathering crowd screamed in unison, reading my mind. I couldn’t help but notice, as I ran him across the street into the waiting arms of his grandmother, that the naked little boy was wrapped in one of Ruby’s dog blankets.

That explained why the door to Raphael’s van was open.

Within minutes, five fire trucks showed up. Checking for smoking rafters and smoldering bushes, it was their job to make sure all the fire fighting the brave men of our neighborhood had kept the fire from spreading. Soon, the crowds broke up and we all returned, safe and sound, to our eerily dark and silent homes. Y’all, there is no silence like the absence of technology. No humming in the background. No beeping, whirring, or clicking. Just quiet. And total, dark-side of the moon, blackness.

Full. Stop.

Things I’m grateful for this Thanksgiving:

Our wonderful neighbors, who really showed up for each other and restored my faith in humanity.

Raphael, the de facto mayor of Bakman Avenue, and a man who runs towards fire while wrapping wet babies in freshly washed dog blankets. And did I mention he makes a mean turkey and his gravy is sublime?

The fire department.

ELECTRICITY! Omg! We take it SO for granted—until it goes away.

The DWP, who restored the power at 3 am with the help of mayor Raphael who just happened to be awake, see their truck, and show them the way into the neighbor’s backyard. wtf?

Flashlights with working batteries.

Solar candles.

And an Honorable Mention shout-out goes to the Emotional Support Pie we stress-ate by candlelight.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone in the US and Thursday everywhere else.

Carry on,
xoxJ