Life

“I will not write sales copy about the death of my mother.”

Writing, even under the best of circumstances can be an excruciating endeavor.

Authors, like most wizards, are supernatural in their ability to create something from nothing. Memoirists are a special breed altogether. I don’t know how they do it, how they manage to let us inside their lives, warts and all, literally turning themselves inside out— (I’ve seen it up close…it’s messy) and in the process wringing every emotion from their raw and ragged guts, and then managing to translate all of that pain, joy, grief, and love into words that live on the page long enough for our eyes to devour them.

It gets me all verklempt when I even try to imagine it, the tears running brown from the emotional-support chocolate that’s smeared all over my face.

Anyhow, my best friend, Steph Jagger, her life a seemingly endless series of Heroines Journeys (which comes in handy because nobody, except you guys, wants to read about a person’s mundane life) writes memoirs. Tales of courage and triumph, love and loss. Her latest,
Everything Left To Remember — My Mother, Our Memories, And a Journey Through the Rocky Mountains 
centers on her mother’s slow decline into early-onset Alzheimer’s disease and how that profound loss effects Steph and her family. Here, her editor describes it better than I ever could:

“An inspirational mother-daughter memoir that follows two women on a poignant journey through a landscape of generational loss. As they road-trip through the national parks of the American West, they explore the ever-changing terrain of Alzheimer’s, deep remembrance, and motherhood.

A staggeringly beautiful examination of how stories are passed down through generations and from Mother Nature, Everything Left to Remember brings us the wisdom of remembrance under the constellations of the vast Montana sky.”

I mean…come on!

And this is where you all come in. I love my blog community so much, wickedly loyal, you have been with me since 2012 so you know I love writing, connection, and passing along all the things I adore—And I adore my friend, and LOVE this book!

Here’s the deal, since the advent of social media, authors are expected to build an audience, publicize their own books, and endlessly pitch their stories to the various mediums. It can be soul-sucking, especially when your story starts living a life outside in the world while still inhabiting all your exposed nerve endings. There comes a breaking point. A boundary that begs to be set. I’ll just let Steph explain in her own words:

“It has been the greatest honor of my life to be able to write about my mother, to put our story into words. I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude about the opportunity I have to share that story. And I am terribly excited about the idea of those words being in your hands.

I’m also looking forward to being on podcasts, to visiting book clubs, to talking with you about your mothers, and fathers, and sisters, and friends who have been, or are on, a similar journey.

I cannot wait to weave my mother’s aliveness, all the things she has left to give, into the world at large.

I am committed to doing that by way of words, shared in as many ways and in as many places as I can.

And . . . I will not write sales copy, for my mother and I are not things to be sold, but precious beings to have and to hold.” 

So, I suppose as an author you leave that to your council of writers, right?
Your friends.
Your sisters of the pen.
You let them be your hallelujah chorus and shout your name from the rooftops, “Come, pre-order and read Steph’s book, you will be the richer for it!” 

You guys, when have I ever steered you wrong?

Carry on, xox

Pre-order made simple: Amazon link 

https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Left-Remember-Memories-Mountains/dp/125026183X/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Hate Amazon? Here’s a link for Indie Bound —and Eagle Harbor Books, Steph’s local bookstore, where you can get yourself a signed copy!

https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781250261830

https://www.eagleharborbooks.com/signed-everything-left-remember-steph-jagger

More Steph: https://www.stephjagger.com

The tree surgeon paused out in front of our house for a long time. Too long.

He’d been called to do a “health assessment” on our two large trees.
The one in the front is a behemoth. Big-boned, magnificent in her splendor, she’s an almost two-hundred-year-old ash tree we call Grandmother. She’s a legend in our neighborhood. Cars stop and stare. People visit her on purpose. Once, when I was watering, a man took out a tiny flute and played a song he’d written just for her. I swear to god.

The one you’re looking at now is Mother.

Mother is a Chinese elm that was planted so close to the house I cannot squeeze between them without losing a boob. But that was over eighty years ago and we’ve appreciated the shade she so generously provides our courtyard, that although advised otherwise, we’ve ignored any suggestion that she’s compromised the foundation.

Anyway, one of Mother’s roots had started to crack and lift the tile and seemed to be headed toward the house, prompting concern.

I talked with her. Everyday. “Don’t do this,” I warned, “Don’t force us to make a decision like this.”

Just to be clear, I know my role. I am just the latest custodian of these beauties. There have been several before me, and there will be more when I leave. “I know, I got a little house with my trees,” is what I tell anyone who visits us after they close their mouths.

The surgeon’s mouth wasn’t agape, he was too cool for such an overt display of awe, I mean, caring for trees is his job.
But you could see it in his eyes as he stepped back, taking in Grandmother’s canopy. He was impressed.

“She’s a beauty,” he finally said. “And she’s so happy!”

Raphael’s face broke into a broad grin, I exhale for the first time in months.
You see, California has been suffering through a sustained drought and I’ve been so worried about our trees and all the stress they’ve been under. If anything happened to Grandmother I’d just die, but not before we were run out of town by an angry mob led by a dude with a flute.

“Seriously, are they okay?” I asked.

I really wanted to know. Or did I?

If he came back with a grim diagnosis, what would we do? Cut them down? Cut them down? CUT THEM DOWN?!!!  See, I cannot even write the words. What kind of a sick Sophie’s choice was the universe handing us? Kill the tree to save the house? It was unthinkable!

“I’m not cutting this tree down!” I announced defiantly. My arms were wrapped around Mother as far as they could reach as our tree surgeon inspected the cracked tiles.
“Oh god no!” he responded in shock. I just about died of happiness. “It’s an easy fix,” he said and then went on to explain in  tree-surgeony speak, what sounded like a very complex series of steps we had to take to keep everybody alive and well.

“She hugs these trees,” Raphael told him as he wrapped up his visit.
“See, I told you. You’re gonna be okay,” I assured Mother while caressing her bark.
“And she talks to them too.” He was making that she’s so crazy face he makes when I do stuff like that in front of strangers.

“So do I,” the surgeon admitted. Of course he did.
I wanted to tell him I loved him, instead, I told him he had a good face. He took it well.

Carry on,
xox J

                                                                                          GRANDMOTHER

A bit of Wednesday Wisdom from me—via the School of Hard Knocks.

When Having Something Is Better Than Nothing

A number on a scoreboard.
Dust at the bottom of a bag of potato chips.
Flip flops on hot sand.
A single match.
A piece of shit car.

Tits.

A thimble-full of milk for a bowl of cereal.
Crooked teeth.
Cankles.
A light sweater in a blizzard.
An ancient, stretched-out bikini in a hot tub full of strangers.

Common sense.

A hand towel after a shower.
Somebody’s toothbrush.
Map folding skills.
A bottle of Vodka in the freezer.

Talent.

But never, ever, under any circumstances do these apply:

Any man/woman/dog who you no longer care for—in your bed.
A crap-ass, dead-end, bridge-job.
A rat-infested, rent-controlled apartment.
An abusive partner.
A cubic zirconia.
Mean friends.
Moldy cheese.
A Toupee.

Are we clear?

Carry on,
xox

This post from waaaay back has been requested twice in the past few months and I keep forgetting. So Sorry.

“My fake plants died because I did not pretend to water them.”

I could have died last Thursday. You laugh. But I could have.

It was a distinct possibility. I was going to be put under general anesthesia. As dead as you can be without actually ceasing to live. The thought of my demise was planted via the doom-delivery-system otherwise known as the mountains and mountains of legalese the hospital, doctors, parking attendant, and cafeteria lady gave me to sign. This charming pre-op ritual made it clear that I was to hold absolutely no one responsible for my death—should I find myself actually dead while faking it.

Doctors make you do that just before they put you under.

“Do you have a pen?” The person in charge of responsibility-dodging asked with a straight face. “I’m wearing a paper gown, what do you think?”

Culpability. It’s a thing.

I could have choked on my pastrami sandwich at lunch today but the deli didn’t drown me in documents before I took my first bite.

Sheesh.

I get it. It’s their duty to remind you. That’s the thing about being injected with drugs that render you ‘fake’ dead so they can cut you wide open—they up your odds of becoming ‘real’ dead.

Anyhow, it got me thinking about dying.

About my “exit strategy”, which is a term my deceased friend uses to refer to death. “Everyone has one, you have several opportunities actually” she reminds me all the time. Apparently, it presents itself in the form of an illness, a car accident, an egg salad at the beach, or airport sushi.

Everyone keeps telling you that shit’ll kill ya.

So even though I didn’t have a reasonable reason to feel as if my days were numbered—I just did.

I lived as if I was going to die.

Imminently. Like Thursday.

I’m not gonna lie, my fake death made me a little fake sad. Mostly it made me crave bad food (because hey, why not)—and wish I’d had time to get my hair straightened (good looking corpse rule #2. Rule #1 – Mani-pedi.)

Oh, and it made me pay attention to my life. I was suddenly ‘all in’. No half-assing.

Everything I did I felt like I was doing for the last time, so I savored it. Kissing my dog was delicious. Ice cream tasted better if you can imagine that.

Dislikes became definitive: I can’t stand cheap vanilla candles or cologne on men in elevators.

I noticed things I tend to overlook: The sound of the rain as it hits the pavers in our courtyard.
And have you ever noticed that lots of people hold hands? Have you? I never did. And not just parents and kids. Couples of all types. Young, old, fat, skinny, young and skinny, old and fat, didn’t matter. hands were being held. I think that’s sweet.

Did you know that studies have found that holding hands is good for your heart? I looked it up.

I took my time. I dawdled. I went to the movies in the middle of the day and ate a hot dog—with extra mustard. I walked my neighborhood without my earbuds. I noticed my feet and my legs and how they move me through life and instead of run/walking everywhere like I normally do, I wandered. I looked more closely at the street art. I splashed in puddles. I said hello to strangers which isn’t new, I just noticed how often I do that.

I wondered if my fake death was making me lazy? Oh, look, a fake problem.

You wanna know what I didn’t do?
Hold on tight to anything.
Worry (why waste my time?)
Diet.
Walk on eggshells.
Work more.
Forget to say I LOVE YOU.

Saturday I came down with the flu and just like that it felt as if the rumors of my death would pan out to be true.

My surgery was canceled, and as suddenly as it had appeared, the energy of my “exit strategy” passed.

Again, just like that.

It has left my consciousness so completely that as hard as I try I can’t even conjure the feeling.

I know that when I do get this surgery the thought of dying won’t even occur to me.

I had my fake dry run and the take-away was something real.

Appreciating my life.

Carry on,
xox

STORY OF THE TAOIST FARMER

“There was once a farmer in ancient China who owned a horse. “You are so lucky!” his neighbors told him, “to have a horse to pull the cart for you.” “Maybe,” the farmer replied.

One day he didn’t latch the gate properly and the horse ran away. “Oh no! That is terrible news!” his neighbors cried. “Such bad luck!” “Maybe,” the farmer replied.

A few days later the horse returned, bringing with it six wild horses. “How fantastic! You are so lucky,” his neighbors told him. “Maybe,” the farmer replied.

The following week the farmer’s son was breaking-in one of the wild horses when it threw him to the ground, breaking his leg. “Oh no!” the neighbors cried. “Such bad luck, all over again!” “Maybe,” the farmer replied.

The next day soldiers came and took away all the young men to fight in the army. The farmer’s son was left behind. “You are so lucky!” his neighbors cried. “Maybe,” the farmer replied.

When we interpret a situation as an ‘opportunity’ or a ‘disaster’ it shapes the way that we respond.

But the Taoist Farmer shows that we can never truly know how a situation is going to turn out. There are no intrinsic ‘opportunities’ or ‘threats’ — there is only what happens and how we choose to respond.

In which case, doesn’t it make sense to look for the opportunities in every situation?

Are you facing a crisis at the moment? How might you turn it into an opportunity?

SO much has happened in the past year.

Some good, some just so-so, and a lot of it bad. Life had been a veritable roller coaster of disappointments.

“So much fuckery!” I am fond of saying. But,(and I’m asking you to bear with me here) what if there’s magic in the mess?

Inspirational speaker Rob Bell cautions us against judging a situation before we let it “play out”.
“Disappointment is taking score too soon,” he warns.

THAT has become my North Star and THAT is what has been playing out around me over and over and over again recently, so much so that I just had to write about it!

Imagine if you will, a non-believer in all of this hooey. We will call him, Husband.

A lovely curmudgeon of a man who, when confronted, refers to himself as a “realist”. Now imagine that as a cosmic joke perpetrated by the universe’s wicked sense of irony, this man lives with yours truly!

Now, take another leap and imagine that some of my woo, through acts of osmosis over twenty years together, has rubbed off on him.

Case in point: In the middle of the 2020 lockdown, he got kicked out of his “man cave” a place that smells of gasoline and beer, where he and his friends have hung out, tinkering with their various internal combustion gizmos while scratching their balls and watching car porn for over seven years.

“It’s the end of the world!” he howled into the wind.
“Maybe,” I responded from a safe distance away.

“I guess I could call my friend and see if he wants to split a place,” he posed one day after the crying had ceased.
“Sounds good,” I said, exercising a surprising economy with words.

“OMG! We found the PERFECT place but the landlord is a dick!” Husband complained one morning. “He wants to see every bank statement, five years of tax returns, social security, baptismal, confirmation, divorce and marriage certificates, AND a fifty-bajillion dollar deposit!”

“Feels to me like there might be a better place. I’d keep looking.”

“Noooooooooooo!!!!”

But there was. A better place.
The perfect place. Closer, cheaper, with a terrific landlord who basically agreed to the deal the day he met them—with a handshake.

And this has led to the man cave of all man caves and a side business that puts a sustained smile on that curmudgeon’s face the likes of which I’ve rarely (if ever) seen.

“What we need is an orange, rolling metal ladder!” Husband announced one day after breaking and building shit at the new lair.

And that is why god in her infinite wisdom invented the internet.

A couple of days later he received an email alerting him of the delivery time. You must be there tomorrow at 9am to unlock the gate to the parking lot and take delivery, it read.
“Yippee!” Husband exclaimed because this new 2.0 version of the curmudgeon is given to sudden outbursts of joy (but that’s a story for another day). He was about to receive the ladder of his dreams—only it wasn’t orange. “No worries, that’s just paint,” he assured me when I asked. This new guy was starting to freak me out 

Later the next day he returned home deflated, pissed, and ready to rumble—in other words, his old self.

As he tells it, he arrived for the delivery fifteen minutes early only to find the giant metal ladder crumpled into an origami swan inside the locked gate. Not only that, their brand new fence had been damaged in the process. Later, according to the footage from their security cameras, he watched the two delivery guys arrive really early, back their truck up to the fence, and after several failed attempts (and lots of fence bashing) they chucked the ladder in its box (which exploded) up over their heads and into the parking lot.

“This really sucks!” Husband hollered as he navigated the Amazon third-party refund labyrinth.
“Maybe,” I texted from the bedroom.

It turns out that damning security footage is just the evidence you need to get a full refund AND money for gate repair.
And in the meantime, he found an even more perfect ladder (if you can imagine that).

Taller, wheelier, cheaper…and orange.

“Wow! You’re so lucky!” I exclaimed.
“Maybe,” he replied with a wink.

If Husband can change his tune—we all can. Who’s still taking score? Not me!

Carry on,
xoxJ

Hello friends,

Pardon the interruption, but I couldn’t help but share this. If you’re one of my tens of Instagram followers you can go make yourself a sandwich because this is a repost from today, but if you don’t social media (good for you by-the-way) and you want to feel lucky take a look at this!

In the midst of this pandemic, I realize it’s easy to be infected with fear & fuckery.

But one thing I know for sure is that it’s just as easy to catch the good stuff and I truly believe magic is contagious. I believe that sharing it, talking and writing about it transmits it like a goddamn super-spreader!

So consider yourselves infected! Happy Friday you beautiful humans.

Sent with an embarrassing amount of giddy love,
Carry on,
xox

“0h look, a dollar!”

I shrieked inside my head so as not to scare the dog. 

I’d gotten the “hit” to walk an hour earlier than normal. And since it had been drizzling all night I also received the idea to take the road less traveled. 

A paved path with only a slight chance of mud, it was a bit more out of our way, but I listened just the same. 

Let me admit this right upfront—I’m someone who LOVES to find money. In coat pockets, crumpled up inside the car, but most especially—out in the wild. 

That’s why I’ve maintained the practice of leaving wads of dollar bills on neighborhood sidewalks, next to the trash can at my local car wash, and on the floor of the produce department at Trader Joe’s. 

I do it when I’m feeling “broke”. 

It may not make sense to you but it shifts my perspective. 

A lot. 

I mean, you must have an unending supply of money if you can just throw it away like that! Right?

Besides that, I love how it feels to find money. It makes me feel lucky, like someone’s looking out for me. 

Like I’m a magnet for blessings. 

So you can imagine my glee when, after I took this picture, I realized it wasn’t a dollar bill after all, but a FIFTY!!

Y’all, all I can say is Follow your “hits”.

No matter how counterintuitive. 

No matter how out of the way they seem to be taking you. 

And feel lucky as often as you can. I swear this shit is magic. 💫✨💫✨💫

Carry on,
xox Janet

“Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from making bad decisions.”
~Mark Twain

Bad Decision Insurance was a bright idea I had recently while:
(1) daydreaming instead of writing,
(2) eating a giant mound of whipped cream with a slab of pumpkin pie under it for breakfast,
(3) While wearing camo leggings, no bra, and a bold, Amy Winehouse level swoop of black eyeliner over each eye—in broad daylight.

And while I have to admit that these harmless bad-decision-misdemeanors would have spun my head around ten years ago, these days, I’m like, “Who am I killing?” and mostly the answer is, just your imaginary reputation as a fashion icon, so…

Don’t get me wrong, I KNOW that even though they make the best stories—if my life were a movie every bad decision would end up on the cutting room floor. I also KNOW that no matter how carefully I craft a persona to present to the world—who I really am  bleeds through.

And I would never be who I am without my horrible, awful, really bad decisions.

Nevertheless, the thought of being able to file a claim after making the shitiest calls in life, well, that gave this wicked heart of mine some rest.

Back in daydream mode, strolling around the virtual airplane-hanger-sized-warehouse where my bad decisions are stored, a couple of doozies came to mind:

I once jumped out of a second-story window, running barefoot after a lover’s car when I was old enough to know better. Any way you look at that decision—it sucked. And what I’ve come to know is true for split-second decisions like that — We only know it’s bad the minute we know it—and not one second sooner.

That being said, I would have totally filed a claim to soothe that walk of shame home. “Hello, Bad Decision Insurance Hotline? This is Janet, and oh, man, you’re never gonna believe what I did this time!”

And who can forget that time I re-signed a lease on a struggling business during the financial crisis instead of just calling it quits and closing?

                                                                                    Big mistake, HUGE.

Even the Bad Decision Insurance adjuster would have judged me on that one and everybody knows they are as neutral as Switzerland. “Are you sure?” the kind woman on the other end of the phone would have asked after a long and awkward silence. “Yep!” I would have replied with conviction (because wildly expensive bad decisions like that one come with a great legal team who argue their case for them).

They convince you up is down, day is night, and to turn left when every sign is pointing right.

What the fuck is up with that?

As I write this, two things come to mind. First, a company that insures against bad decisions would be a terrible idea. I mean, they would go broke in minutes.

And second, there would be no accountability. No consequences. Would I have learned as much if I knew I could get immediate compensation on the other side of dumb? If the blow had been softened would I have adjusted my behavior after both of those mistakes, vowing never to let them happen again?

Would you?

Just some of the things I’m wondering about these days.

Carry on,
Oh, and pass the pie.
xoxJB

Dear Janet,
This is a letter from the most neglected thing in your home at the holidays (besides your legs, which go unshaved in December as a timesaving measure)—the back of your Christmas tree.

I mean, I know I face the street, and people really can’t see anything beyond the white lights as they walk by, but this year I feel pressed to complain about the meager amount and shall I say questionable (I’m being delicate) choice of ornaments you’ve chosen to hang (a better word might be, hide) back here.

But enough with decorum.

She can’t be serious, I thought to myself, when you hung that dumbass plastic snowman who’s supposed to also be a construction worker (clever. Not really) in what I consider a prime spot of pine tree real estate. But hey, I get it. I’m the BACK of the tree. What did I expect, the sparkly gold-flecked Buddha? The peacock with real feathers, or the man in the spaceship? Noooooo. Those are your favorites so they get to hang in the FRONT!

This is an almost seven-foot tree and you’ve hung a total of five ornaments back here. FIVE!

To say it looks sparse would be like saying water is wet.

If a mullet says business in the front, party in the back, then this tree is an example of a mullet in reverse. We can hear the party happening in the front while back here it’s crickets. And I’ll tell ya why.

The ornaments you’ve relegated to this “no man’s land,” this great forgotten evergreen expanse, are either ones you’ve been gifted and don’t give a rat’s ass about—or they’re broken. Take for example the beloved ice skater from your childhood who had the misfortune of losing a leg in the Great Tragic Vacuum Cleaner Incident of 2011 (perpetrated by your blind housekeeper Maria—whose coke bottle glasses should read: Objects are closer than they appear).

Anyway, she—the skater, not Maria—let us all know in the first five seconds that she used to reign over one of the coveted front and center spots on the tree, but now things have changed. My how the mighty have fallen (literally) and so we all (the other four misfits and myself) we have to listen to her go on and on about her freaking triple Axel, the morally bankrupt Russian judges who couldn’t recognize real talent if it skated up their skirts—and how unfair her life has become!

Oh, I’m sorry. Has your privileged life as an imaginary elite athlete in a wildly expensive sport taken a turn, sweetie? Tell your troubles to Jesus! I’m dying! I was cut down in my prime so you could hang here and complain all the live-long day!

Listen, Janet, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, judgey, and bitter—but I am, so deal with it. It’s Christmastime. Shit gets real. And the backside of trees, we have feelings too.

That’s all. I guess I just needed to vent. Hey, is that Celine Dion singing Silent Night? I LOVE that song! I have to say, I’m feeling so much better!

Merry Christmas everybody!

Carry on,
Xox

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Hey there, and happy December, otherwise known as the last month of 2020 fuckery—and the portal to some other dimension.

I spent Thursday morning on the phone with the bank which for me is tantamount to a root canal without Novocaine.

To be completely transparent, I was on the offense when I started the call. You see, SOMEONE had made a big mistake, making overdraft transfers to cover two checks paid out of an account that had carried a balance of $2 in it for like, ever.

Just for context, that account has been dead to me for years.

It was from days of yore, from an old life when I was fancy and moved money around from account to account because that’s what I was taught you do with money— you move it around. You have the bill paying money, money saved for Europe, money set aside for property taxes.

You get the gist, blah, blah, blah, never mind, it is what it is.

Anyway, there it sat that ancient account, out of sight, out of mind. Occasionally, with its staggering $2 balance, I could feel its audacious Judgy McJudgerson attitude toward me—slow-blinking its disapproval at the mundaneness of my current life. So I just ignored it, like it didn’t exist.
Except it did.

In a parallel universe where I go by the name I had before I got married! A universe where I have literally $2 in my account, but I still have checks so I write them out of phantom checkbook books that aren’t real and haven’t been for twenty years!

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

If you’re at all like me (and I know you are) not only have you spent 2020 baking too many cookies, you’ve also Hazeled the shit out of your respective domiciles because let’s face it—you didn’t have anything better to do.
The one drawer I never got to was the one that houses my outstanding bills and my checks. It is seldom used because… it’s the twenty-first century and most of my banking is done online. And since my house is as old as the lint in Noah’s navel and because that drawer is so ridiculously deep it can’t be used for anything you don’t want to send a search party after—I have organized it in a way only I understand.

The newer used checks live in an open box in the front. Duh.

The older used ones exist in the middle. A metaphor for life.

Boxes of new unused checks line the sides of the drawer. And I have to tell you, they do it in the most embarrassingly satisfying way that it leaves me breathless. It’s like the drawer was made for them! There they sit, perfectly fitted pieces of a deep-drawer-puzzle. If I ever finish a box and have to throw it away I will probably panic and have to seek professional help. (That last part, that is called forshadowing).

That brings me to the checks I take photos of for mobile deposits. Those buggers are free-range, loose and unencumbered, inhabiting the dark unreachable recesses of the back of the drawer. (Have I mentioned that the back of the drawer resides in a different zip code? It does. Don’t challenge me on that.)
Folded in half and left to their own devices, the mobile deposited checks wander this bad neighborhood like pirates and I only mention this because I’m convinced that at some point this year when I was busy not living my life—they managed to open a portal to another dimension thereby sabotaging the check drawer.

Here’s what happened: The nice lady from the bank insisted that those two checks were written from an old account.

I insisted, using all the best adjectives, that that was impossible.

She read the numbers on the bottom to me and asked me very nicely to match them to the ones in my checkbook.

I mumbled obscenities, went and found my checkbook, and just about died when I saw the name at the top (see picture above) because that is not my name and it hasn’t been for twenty years!

Then I ran, like a hobble-footed, older woman wearing shearling Birkenstock sandals, a gazelle, over to that check drawer to somehow prove to Belinda (the nice bank lady’s name was Belinda) and myself, that something supernatural was afoot because even though I was holding a book of time-traveling checks in my hand—they couldn’t possibly exist.

Belinda was gracious in that way mamas teach their kids to be in the mid-west. And Canada.

She hardly laughed at all as I proceeded to toss that sinister, trouble maker of a checkbook back into the drawer while pawing through boxes to look for accomplices. But things took a turn when she asked me the simple question, “Do you want to close that account?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Then can you tell me if there are any other checks that need to clear, or was it just those two?”

“I can’t imagine, but lemme look.”

“No problem.”

But there was a problem. As hard as I looked I could NOT find that phantom twenty-year-old checkbook!

“You’ve gotta fucking be kidding me!” I said, pulling the drawer all the way out of the wall, tipping it upside down, and spreading it’s contents onto the floor with my foot.

“Pardon?”

“Oh nothing, its just…I can’t seem to find that book…”

“But you just had it.”

“Right. I did. Didn’t I? I mean, shit, am I going crazy?”

“Noooooo…you’re not crazy,” Belinda replied unconvincingly, folowed by a long, uncomfortable pause. Then finally, “It is 2020, who isn’t a little crazy?”

Poor, sweet, Belinda. Now she was so far down my rabbit hole she was pretending I was sane so I wouldn’t feel bad. I hoped for her sake she wasn’t moonlighting as an actress—because she sucked. Bless her heart.

I spent the rest of the afternoon shredding things that should have been shredded years ago, and finding things I didn’t know were lost. Like an old silver dollar, an address book from 1999, and ticket stubs from a museum in Italy.

But still no checkbook. It has literally vanished. If you can explain that to me I’ll buy you a puppy.

Carry on,
xox JB

“I have been so mean to my body, outright hateful. I disparage her and call her names. I loathe parts of her and withhold care. I insist on physical standards she can never reach, for that is not how she is made, but I detest her weakness for not pulling it off. No matter what she accomplishes, I’m never happy with her.”

~Jen Hatmaker Fierce, Free and Full of Love

In the ‘before time’, right before Covid hit, I was listening to Jen Hatmaker’s book while on my morning walks with Ruby, our six-year-old boxer who, ironically enough, has the body confidence of a super-model. Most of the book had me laughing. Other parts had me shaking my fist at Audible and the fact that I couldn’t dogear a particular page or highlight every other paragraph with yellow marker. 

Like the one above. 

This one stopped me in my tracks. It had me fumbling to hit rewind while juggling a bag full of poop at the same time eliciting deep unexpected sobs of recognition—in public. 

If you’d asked me about body image a week earlier I’d have told you mine was pretty good. And then I heard Jen struggle with her own emotions while reading her very vulnerable admissions without choking on her own snot. Seriously. She did a far better job at keeping the full-blown ugly crying at bay than I did. 

I too had been hateful. 

I’d set unattainable standards.

I’d done all of the shitty stuff you can do to a body and as I’ve aged, I may be guilty of cranking up the volume on the insults. 

Crepy skin, burgeoning neck waddle, old lady pillow tummy, ugh, HOW IS THIS MY BODY?  

The five stages of grief were quickly setting in.

Denial— (Catches own reflection in storefront window) That’s not me, it can’t be. That’s my mother! 

Anger— (Age spots appear as if by magic) Seriously? You’ve GOT to be kidding me!

Bargaining— If I drink the celery juice can I eat nothing but carbs on the weekends?

Depression— I feel bad about my boobs which are now a pair of 38 longs.

But I hadn’t quite gotten to the acceptance stage. Until I heard the words she wrote. THAT changed everything for me.

I apologized to my body. Profusely. Every morning and every night. 

I saw her for what she was, my ally, not my enemy. 

I looked at all the evidence and discovered she has ONLY ever had my best interests at heart. 

So, I started to lavish her with praise and compliments and love. After a while, it became a habit.

Then the pandemic hit and being over sixty I was considered to be at higher risk of complications so I upped my little ritual to include extreme gratitude for my continued good health. 

Every morning when I woke up, I’d thank her for her stamina on the hikes, her cheerful disposition in the face of looming uncertainty, and her strong immune system. And as the Covid numbers in Los Angles rose, I assured her that even if she caught it, I wouldn’t hold it against her, on the contrary, we would fight it together and she would be fine. 

It reminded me of experiments researchers have done with water and plants, the ones where they verbally abuse them or shower them with praise —and then study the results—which are astounding.

https://yayyayskitchen.com/2017/02/02/30-days-of-love-hate-and-indifference-rice-and-water-experiment-1/

The ones that are praised, thrive, while the ones that are subjected to hateful speech/emotions, literally wither and die.

Which brings me to yesterday and my fall down the stairs. 

Well, I didn’t so much fall, as get pulled by Ruby down the flight of concrete steps that lead to her daily free-range walk. To be fair, she’d spotted a discarded half-eaten cheese sandwich at the bottom, and who among us hasn’t lost their mind and sprinted toward cheese? Nevertheless, it happened too fast to even let go of the leash so I was knocked on my ass and pulled down the entire flight of stairs on my back until I managed to get her to stop—by yelling STOP at the top of my lungs. I know it was loud because it echoed back up the stairs and out onto the street before waking the dead. 

Lying there in a heap, I assessed the damage. Ankle twisted, elbows, ass and back bruised and battered, but eventually, I was able to get up and walk —which I took as a good sign. Reflexively, I thanked my body for not breaking a hip or anything else for that matter and went on with my day. But as the hours passed, a deep soreness set in. At about seven in the evening I felt as if I’d been hit by a caravan of trucks carrying elephants. “Wait until tomorrow,” my husband warned, handing me the Motrin. “The next day is the worst.” Later, in bed, I tried not to move a muscle, lest I scream and wake the dog. 

“You’ve got this,” I told her, lying there together in the dark.  “Nothing is broken, which in itself is a miracle because YOU ARE A BEAST! You’re sixty-fucking-two and you fell down a flight of concrete stairs and barely missed a beat! You ROCK!” I tried to shift position and moaned. Everything hurt. Even my hair.

“I will take care of you,” I reassured her. “If you need bed rest, I will make sure you get it. If you need CBD rub or Motrin at regular intervals, you can count on me. We are in this together because I love you—now go to sleep!”

“How do you feel?” my husband asked me this morning as I wandered out for coffee and a hug. His face was a twisted grimace, bracing for the worst. “Actually, I’m fine,” I said, twisting and turning to prove my point. 

And I am. Fine. No aches, no pains, no bruises of any kind to speak of. I give all of the credit to my body and our recently renewed love affair. 

Not a big story, not life or death, but proof to me just the same that Love really does work miracles y’all. 

Carry on,
xox