Life

Hello, fear. (Said with sneering disdain, like “Hello Newman” on Seinfeld).

Fear reared his ugly head again on Tuesday.
Like me, you probably woke up to the report of yet another terrorist attack on innocent civilians in Brussels. And again if you’re like me your first response was to gird your loins.
To hunker down, plant your feet, cross your arms and close your mind.

In your body you probably felt, along with me, a nauseous gut pit, turning to sadness, then empathy and finally anger. Oh, yeah, and all of that with a fear chaser.

You know you guys, it reminds me of those pharmaceutical ads on TV and their heinous side effects. You know the ones I mean. They’re laughable.

“For chronic chapped lips try *Chaplipocine. Taken regularly, it reduces the symptoms of chapped lips in only three days!
Side effects may include (and this is said at the speed of a professional auctioneer), flatulence, headaches, amnesia, seizures, constipation, swelling of the tongue and testicles, facial hair in men, women, and babies, eventual loss of consciousness — and death.”

And it’s making billions because people are willing to suffer those consequences to get chapped lip relief!
Wtf?

But just as ridiculous and shoved down our throats even more aggressively, are the side effects of fear. They consist of paranoia, anxiety, uncontrollable security cravings, unwillingness to travel, suspicion, inability to turn off CNN, intolerance, giving away your privacy, dis-empowerment, not living your life — and death.

Seriously?

I for one, feel that’s unacceptable.

We all have a choice of how to respond.
I can eyeball the hipster next to me suspiciously while he sits there on his computer with his luxurious man-beard and wonder if he’s crafting his jihadist manifesto. And I can cancel my trip to Europe that I saved years for.
Because I could die. We all could die.
Because it’s too dangerous. The airports. Subways. Cafes. Sidewalks. Everything.

These are some of the side effects I’m not willing to suffer. How about you?

Listen, we have to be aware. We can’t and we shouldn’t walk with our faces buried in our phones or our head in the clouds. But there’s a difference between awareness and suspicion.

Don’t shake hands with fear. Please.

Girded loins never did anyone any good,

And chapped lips go away in three days regardless of the medicine you take.

So don’t endure the heinous side effects just for the illusion of being saved.

Anyhow, carry on,

xox

*you know this product doesn’t really exist, right?

This is Bob.
Bob is a scout. Scouts by definition are out looking for something.
They go ahead of the others. Often, even they don’t know what they’re looking for. They’re…scouting.

Bob crossed my face seventeen times last night. I assume he was looking for food.
The last time I checked I don’t keep spare food on my face. I keep my chin hairs pretty short. They don’t catch food anymore, so Bob was shit out of luck, but that didn’t stop him from looking because that’s what scouts do…they scout.

Bob was tenacious. He was determined, undeterred.

Which made me want to kill him. To roll him between my fingers until he was reduced to a balled-up version of himself but I didn’t have the heart. I admired his tenacity.

I look up to the Bob’s of this world, those who march on with conviction into the unknown. Way ahead of the huddled masses. Scouting.

I’ve only recently started it, scouting that is, and I’ve gotta tell ya, it ain’t easy.
Louis and Clark, I am not. I want detailed maps with well-marked routes and plenty of rest stops. This scouting thing means that you may very well be the first one to venture down a certain path. That sort of thing used to make me… nervous. Twitchy. When I got to the unmarked fork in the road—I called a cab and went back to the hotel pool with the shitty drinks and the scratchy towels.

Let’s just say I’m no Bob. But I’m learning.

Scouting takes a certain fearlessness. Bob was a prime example.
He crossed the unmapped craggy Mars-like terrain of my face seventeen times. Undeterred by my forest of eyebrows, large, black nose caves, or the chin hairs I mentioned that have the tensile strength of steel cable and are sharp enough to cleave him in half with one false move.

I can’t venture into an unfamiliar neighborhood without Google maps, global positioning, snacks, and my knowledge of the three points on the human body where if you kick a man—he dies instantly. But these days, I’m getting much braver about  moving into the uncharted territories of my life.

On a scale of one to five, one being fraidy cat Janet at the crossroads, five being Bob — where do you stand?

These days I’ve inched up the scale to the middle somewhere. You know how it goes, one step forward two steps back. But that’s okay, I’ll always have Bob’s example to keep me moving forward.

Because I want to know the unknown, discover the undiscovered — in other words, be a scout. Because scouts…scout.

Carry on,
xox

Do you walk into a room and get the luke-warm treatment?

xox

 

I was talking to a friend the other day and all I’ll say is THIS post from a year and a half ago came to mind. Does it sound familiar? Yeah, I know. Me too.
xox

As I write this, I can feel the soft, cool underbelly of the big, older dog snoozing on my feet.
The puppy appears to be asleep except her eyebrows give her away. They signal that she is following my every move. She is plotting another caper and is patiently waiting for me to quit writing, get up, and leave.

“Everything that falls on the floor is MINE!”

That is their credo, their theme song, and the canine unspoken agreement.
If I’d let them get tattoos, that’s what they’d say.
But that statement gives ME a pit in my stomach. It sparks a crusty, old, unkind memory that hits me like a sucker punch.

“Everything that falls on the floor is MINE!”, is a quote is from the cover of a book about dogs.
It’s kinda funny, but it got me to feeling and thinking, which makes me run to start writing. Isn’t it weird how something as innocuous as the title of a dog book can trigger an emotion?

“Everything that falls on the floor is MINE!”
That is a declaration of ownership of…the scraps.
The stuff that is tainted enough that it isn’t fit for public consumption.
It can’t even pass the five-second rule.
Most likely the crap on the floor came off the bottom of someone’s shoe — literally.

“I call it! It’s mine!” That’s fine for Fido, but not for us.

“Everything that falls on the floor is MINE!”
It is the cover page and the first rule in the Dog’s Life Handbook.
Not ours. Our first rule is “Call Your Mother.”

But what about us? How many times have you and I settled for the scraps in life?
From the blouse at Target that is marked down to 99 cents but is missing a button, (which as much as we say we’re going to—we never replace), to accepting pity sex from your ex-boyfriend?

That shitty “bridge” job that was just supposed to get you through the summer?
What happened? It’s five years later, why are you still there?

I’ve been so broke I have lived off scraps. Specifically, days of leftovers salvaged from one meal or my sister’s “doggie bag” from El Toritos. The irony of the name does not escape me.

I drove a piece of shit car that wanted nothing more in its life than to shimmy sideways.

I’ve also settled for the scraps of affection thrown to me in a dying relationship.
I’ve been seated at the table. I’ve enjoyed the love feast. But when I sensed the end, I did not push away and say my goodbyes with dignity. I dove for the scraps.
Ouch. Oh, hi Fido, funny to see you down here.

I have pretty healthy self-esteem, but there have been some glaring lapses.
I wasn’t alone. Gwen Stefani of the band No Doubt had a hit song “Bath Water” during that time.
Part of the chorus being: ‘Cause I still love to wash in your old bath water, Love to think that you couldn’t love another, Share a toothbrush….you’re my kind of man.’  UGH.

At a certain point, I’m gonna say around my mid thirties, I said: no more scraps.
And I meant it.

No more second-hand clothes, no more beat up chairs-full-of-promise fished out of dumpsters. Enough of the stuff left on the curb because it didn’t make the cut at the neighborhood yard sale. Enough of the sloppy seconds from lovers. I was finished being broke, I was done with settling.
I deserved better than that. I deserved the best.
The best love.
The best life.
The best-made plans.

“Everything that falls on the floor is MINE!”
That is my dog’s credo, I’m clear about that now and they can have it.

Tell me, have you ever settled for the scraps?

Carry on,
Xox

Two weeks ago I mailed my brother in Arkansas a birthday card.
That is unremarkable except for the fact that I may have forgotten to address it. Which these days is not that surprising. Recently, I have gargled with body wash, left my purse in my unlocked car overnight and put my phone in the fridge.

I got a text of the picture above on Tuesday, so two weeks after mailing it, with the caption: WTF?

From my brother, the most sceptical of sceptics. Here was this brainiac, computer nerd, prove-it-to-me kinda guy holding a blank envelope in his hand, asking me to explain how in the holy hell it had made its way to not only the state of Arkansas — but to his office?

Remember that thing I said about magic? How if you have it in one aspect of your life it bleeds into the other places. Magic doesn’t know boundaries. I love that about magic. It starts showing its face EVERYWHERE.

So, you think that’s pretty cool right? It looks like the card got wet and no trace of the address was left, OR a distracted sister forgot to address the thing and it still got to its intended destination.

Harry Potter’s owl dropped it off. That’s clearly the only plausible explanation.

Wait. Here’s more magic.

When the text arrived I was at lunch with my friend Kim. Kim is the Janet whisperer.
When I get wobbly — she sets me straight. She doesn’t take any of my shit. She quotes all of my insights back to me. Bitch.

Anyhow, at the very moment the text came through, Kim had just finished saying “Quit worrying! Your screenplay will get where it needs to go — NO MATTER WHAT.”

Just like the little yellow birthday card.
Magic.

So right now you’re asking yourself what is that? Is that an easily explainable mistake or the result of a clairvoyant postal clerk?  Nope. That’s just some damn good magic right there ladies and gentleman!

I’m sharing this because I’m sure I’m not the only one who worries about the how’s and why’s of life.

We gotta cut that shit out! Let the magic bleed all over the place!

Carry on,
xox

You’re gonna love this essay by Danielle La Porte. I did. Keep reading and you’ll see why.
Then, Carry on,
xox

Just don’t expect crazy people to be sane (cause that’s crazy).
People are going to be who they are most of the time. In character, not out of character.

Guys with anger issues can complain about kittens and unicorns.

Folks who run a lot of anxiety will worry about the days of the week coming on time.

Positive thinkers figure that the train derailment saved them from disaster down the tracks.

Punctual people are punctual.
Sweet people are sweet.
Takers, take.
Givers, give.

People change and evolve. Breakthroughs happen. But hey…

Don’t expect crazy people to be sane (cause that’s crazy), or super emo girls to behave like stoics (did you think she wasn’t going to cry just this one time? Of course she’s going to cry. That’s how she is.) The guy who’s kinda wimpy? Well, he’s probably going to wimp out. That girlfriend of yours who runs on chaos like a truck runs on diesel? Ya, she’ll probably keep making choices that make chaos — she likes it that way. The overly generous soul, she’s probably going to be illogically generous and it’ll get her into some trouble — but most of the time it works. The friend who’s always late? Chances are they’re going to be…late.

People are — for better or for worse — generally predictable. An old gentleman friend used to say to me, “Well what do you expect from a pig, but a grunt?” Oink. Point taken. And, Eagles soar. And, you can rely on reliable people.

It’s useful to analyze the stuff of people’s character. Hunh. So why IS he such an asshole? Judgement is inevitable, it’s part of conscious discernment — but sometimes, it makes us a judgmental asshole.

There’s so much sanity to just flowing with someone’s predictability — their norm, their nature. Accept it. Forgive it. Just tolerate it; or peace out if you don’t want it in your life. But don’t waste too much time trying to change it.

All for Love,

Danielle

He was adorable and sweet as hell, but not that smart and after a while I got bored. I needed some intellectual acrobatics.
Note to self. They can be pretty, but I need some MENTAL stimulation occasionally too.

He introduced me to jazz. He had accumulated the most elaborate vinyl collection of jazz I’d ever laid ears on.
Miles Davis, Coltrane, Mingus, and Brubeck. Hours and hours of rain on the roof and piano riffs. It was heaven, Eventually, I tried to introduce him to Sting, and Seal. Even The Beatles. But he wasn’t having it—so neither was I.
Note to self: I love to be introduced to new things, but I also love making introductions.
I like to call it Two-way-streeting, .

He was an AMAZING cook but he had no money.
And by no money I mean NONE. Moths flew out of his pockets on a regular basis. So, he’d rack up $300-$400 dollars a week of bills at Whole Foods on my credit cards — and I’d come home from work to a culinary masterpiece EVERY night. Unless he could figure out a way to make food that great on something less than the budget of a small country (he could NOT), we were doomed.
Note to self: I will do almost anything for a good meal. Except go broke. I can live on peanut butter in a pinch. But not in a cold cardboard box. Just saying’

He was king of the jerks, but so funny my sides still ache from laughing.
One day I was laughing so hard I didn’t realize that The Chump had dumped me. Ouch.
Note to self: Chumps are chumps even if they haven’t chumped YOU — yet. It’s just a matter of time. And jokes aren’t funny when they’re at your expense

One of my ex’s had such a great job and made so much money he probably owns a small country by now. But workaholics seldom come up for air. And by air, I mean the rest that life has to offer.
Note to self: I love ambition — but I also love vacations, uninterrupted dinners, conversations, and movies. You get the idea.

I was so nuts for a guy that one summer we took off for Europe, got Eurail Passes and trained around for a month.
Turns out some people don’t like sightseeing, or people in small towns in Italy who don’t speak English, or packing and unpacking, or food that tastes different — or trains for that matter.
Something I guess you don’t know until the excitement wears off and you’re 7000 miles away from home.
Note to self: Never leave the country with someone you’ve never spent 24/7 with. And learn to be okay on your own.

So it sounds like I had one hell of a bad streak (25 yrs) in the love department.
Au contraire, mon Frere.

I took those notes to self — gathered them up — and crafted the best man for me. And after years of tireless research — he eventually came around.

After a while it became clear to me that what I needed was:
Sweet and cute
Smart
open-minded
expert or aficionado at something
good cook
funny and kind
good job, mildly ambitious, but still lives life.
Good traveler. LOVES to travel.

Good to know, right?
You know you can do this for ANYTHING. What you DON’T want leads you to what you DO want.

I hear people, sure, bitter people, but still people who say that relationships that don’t work out were just a waste of time. I couldn’t disagree more! It’s not a waste of time.

It’s an education.

About who YOU are and what you like.

You know, invaluable stuff like that!

Carry on,
xox

Carry on,

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 where you’re supposed to know shit — and liberating — like I want to take off my bra and run topless down the beach like 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 obstinant, deaf, assholish elderly 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 venous victimhood, which is the thug cousin of regular, generic victimhood.

It takes 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’s 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 land 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 better take that with you, what if they call you while you’re at the gym?” 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.

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), 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

These may look like the random ingredients of a food challenged schizophrenic’s lunch. Or they belong to a Russian peasant whose secret ingredient for her award-winning Borscht — is Fritos.
They are both.
They are mine.

These are the ingredients which will eventually make up my future.

What? I hear you asking. (Actually, I toned it down. It’s still early.)

It’ll make sense in a minute. Let me explain.

My Muse loves Fritos so I snarf them down while I write. They make her happy, so in turn, I suppose they make me happy. And they make me salty. And puffy. And maybe ten pounds over the twenty pounds over that last five pounds I just can’t seem to loose.

The beets were to replicate a ridiculously delicious beet soup I had with my writing tribe in Mexico last month. Yes, beets and delicious belong in the same sentence. Nettie gave us the recipe after observing six grown women reduced to a band of bowl licking freaks. I’m dead serious.

I even used my food processor. I NEVER use my food processor.
I chop, microwave or order out of menus.
My food processor is just for decoration.
It says to people, “Hey, this chick is the real deal, she follows a detailed recipe, processes stuff, and serves it to people who enjoy their food the consistency of baby food.”
Mostly my food processor sits quietly collecting dust. That is until my husband fires it up to process fancy baby food for us to eat.

And it turns everything pink. Like bright magenta pink.
Not the processor. The beets.
And by everything I mean pee and poop. Oh, sorry. Is it too early?

Anyhow, all this to say I have a shit ton of weird ingredients around me these days (because my life barely resembles itself anymore), that make me happy in some way or another. Some I’m aware of, like the beets and the Fritos, others I am not, like the…well, I’m not aware of them so…I’ll let you know as soon as I find out what they are.

When I’m happy I keep moving forward. My feet aren’t stuck in cement and I’m no longer wishing I was anywhere but exactly where I’m standing. It’s fucking liberating.

It’s so interesting to look around and see the actual things that are coalescing to become your future. Blogs, and musicals, screenplays and articles all facilitated by happiness. Simple Frito and beet happiness. And chocolate. Barges and boatloads of chocolate.

Look around right now. What are YOUR ingredients?

Fido. Fido makes you happy AND he gets you out walking which puts your lazy ass in nature and as we all know, walking in NATURE is when all the great ideas come. And it lifts your ass and puts pink in your cheeks.

That bicycle taunting you in the garage. You rode it last weekend, the nature thing happened, AND you met a nice guy when you were stopped looking at the view ( allowing your heart rate to come back to a level that was a little less lethal). When you look back you’ll remember THAT was the day you met HIM.

The invitation to that dinner party you keep forgetting, avoiding to RSVP to, where you will sit next to the guy who will eventually become a good friend and give you the loan to start that business you’ve always dreamed of.

The book on the nightstand that will say something to you that will resonate so strongly that your boobies will tingle and it will change the way you think about things for the rest of your life.

I can hear you. “Wait!”  you say, “Those aren’t ingredients that will combine and lead to my future. They’re just a dog, a book, my bike, and an annoying dinner invitation.”

Are you sure about that?

That feet in cement thing is something I wrote yesterday, as a note, potentially for the screenplay:

“It turns out that by denying the life that was calling me, I kept my OWN two feet stuck in cement. I wouldn’t allow MYSELF to fly.”

That makes me tear up.

Hey, if I cry do you think my tears will be pink?

Carry on.
xox