love

“Love is a lot like a backache, it doesn’t show up on X-rays, but you know it’s there.”
~ George Burns

Someone asked, so I was going to give you advice on love —but I can’t.

That’s like me giving diet advice. Or advice on how to grow the biggest zucchini or play classical piano. All of which I’ve tried and sort of succeeded at. Except for the piano which I tried for like a minute, but I think the teacher moved without telling me. (Adults should take up a musical instrument only on a dare. And only if the payoff is over one hundred dollars. Only then.)

But I digress…

Telling people how to succeed at love is dicey. And by dicey I mean impossible. You can’t tell people how to feel.

Sure, there are rules and guidelines, but anyone who’s been in a long-term relationship knows that all of that—is bullshit. If someone tells you they have it all figured out—they’re lying.

You fly by the seat of your pants.

Until you reach altitude.

Then you serve drinks and a movie until the turbulence begins, at which point you can straighten your seat back and tray table into their upright position, put on your parachute and bail (like my piano teacher did), or you can stick it out and wait for smoother skies.

It really does boil down to those two choices. Bail, cut and run, break-up, whatever you want to call it—or wait and see what tomorrow brings. Which in its base form looks like an ostrich with its head in the ground, and in its purest form looks like you’re a saint.

And by-the-way, having been someone who has bailed, been an ostrich…and a saint, I can’t advocate for any of them. They all made perfect sense at the time, which leads me back to the first sentence.

I can’t tell you what does or doesn’t work. Some of the best relationships I’ve had, including the marriage I’ve been in for the past fifteen years, look terrible on paper and make no sense at all. We’re both Aries for chrissakes, and we belong to different political parties—we should have killed each other by now!

Even being married doesn’t make someone an expert on love. How could I be an expert at something I’ve failed miserably at MANY times and that I can’t explain how or why it works. If I were a brain surgeon who said that to you—would you let me operate?

Love’s alchemical. That’s my explanation and I’m sticking to it.

And don’t let anyone tell you it’s all roses.

It’s a lesson in compromise. It’s dirty socks on the floor, heated differences of opinion, vertical toilet seats, and bad politics. And that’s just a Friday night. But, listen, he could say the same or worse of me.

We put up with a lot of shit. We do. That constitutes turbulence in my book.
I guess I decided it was the kind I could weather, but honestly, I don’t remember making the decision.

And I guess that’s what it comes down to, a day by day, slow drip, decision to keep loving.

Some days are easy, others can be hard. And by hard I mean excruciating.
When my husband has the flu or a sunburn it is everything I can do NOT to put a pillow over his face while he’s complaining.

If I had to make one rule—here it is:

Your person should make you laugh—at the very least—once a week.

They should try to bring you coffee—at the very least—on the weekends.

They should give you that “Omg, you’re fucking adorable” feeling…once a month?

It would be really nice if they showed you some affection on a regular basis. Not sex. Affection. There’s a difference.

Shit howdy, will you look at that, four “rules” —and I’ve already told you, I’m full of shit.

Just love the best you know how and then try to do better tomorrow.

Carry on,
xox

“Women like confident bald men.”
~ Larry David & My Husband

Monkey: I LOVE you! You’re so cute!

Cat: Ugh

Monkey: You feel so good, I think I’ll sit on top of you.

Cat: Must you?

Monkey: I need to feel closer to you. I wish I could just crawl inside of your soft, furry little cat skin.

Cat: I already feel crowded…

Monkey: I want to kiss your face. No, that’s not even enough, I want to breathe your breath. Kiss, kiss, ohhh, your face! I squeeze that cute face!

Cat: Is it hot in here? Uh, I can’t breathe…

You guys,
Sure, this is adorable. Unless you’re the cat.

See the monkey? I used to be the monkey. I used to “love” just like the monkey you guys.
And it’s adorable for like, five minutes.

Five MONTHS later? Not so much.
The cat ends up hairless with a twitch and a bad case PTSD.
The cat hides from the monkey and eventually stops returning her calls.

Mauling someone is not “being affectionate”.

“Janet, you don’t love, you take hostages.”

My therapist at the time dropped this pearl of wisdom one day in the middle of her office. It landed with a thud and then rolled underneath the couch where I was sitting, and once I was done being offended, I got down on my hands and knees, pulled it out into the light of day, and tried it on—and it marked me for life.

I’ve never forgotten it.

Don’t love like the monkey.

By-the-way, that’s not love, that’s a bottomless pit of neediness and thank god there was no YouTube or cellphone video back in the day because I swear to you. I was the monkey.

Carry on,
xox

I have an admission to make. I love politeness.

I know that may seem untenable considering my foul mouth and general disregard for all things having to do with rules and decorum and yet…I love it when people are polite.

I’m about to reveal something so perverse you may want to hide your kids and gird your loins.
Here it is. Ready?

I’m polite.

To a fault. I open doors, Without being asked I give up my seat for those who are older than me (whose numbers are diminishing), I handwrite personal thank you notes, not emails, using real paper, and a pen. Then I actually mail it. With a stamp.

I dispense pleases and thank you’s like Tic Tacks. I even have the bad habit of thanking Siri which can start a whole “who’s on first” sort of endless labyrinth of questions. I don’t recommend it.

I let people with only a couple of items go ahead of me in line at the market, I help old ladies and the disabled navigate stairs, and I’ve been known to run two blocks to return a lost sock to a barefoot little kid in a stroller.

We all do that, right? No, not really. If it were commonplace it wouldn’t feel like such an anomaly. 

All of this to say, I know what it looks like, I recognize it in others and when its shown to me—I show great appreciation when I can. Like now.

The other day in the parking lot at Target—while unloading my overfilled cart (because, hey, it’s Target), I dropped my keys getting into my car.

I was rushing, which as we all know is the silent signal to the Universe that it must step in and slow us down—hence the key drop. Seeing that my hands were full, a lovely gentleman the age of a very expensive bottle of wine bent over to help me. I didn’t know he was there and that’s when we bumped heads…and I dumped the entire contents of my purse all over both our feet.

“Owwww!” we exclaimed in unison, laughing and rubbing our heads. He rubbed his own head not mine. In some countries rubbing another’s head makes you as good as married—so we were careful to keep our head rubbing to ourselves.

Luckily, we got distracted because simultaneously, out of my purse poured numerous packs of gum, my poo-poo spray, wallet, fifteen tubes of lipstick and enough spare change to send a kid to Harvard for four years.

Polite grandpa wasn’t even fazed although I saw him do a double-take as he handed me the pine scented toilet spray. “Yes, it’s a thing, old man. Women don’t want to stink up public restrooms so now there’s a spray for that. I know. I wish I’d invented it too. I’d be getting into a Rolls Royce while my chauffeur fetched me the Grey Poupon. ”

Anyway…as he stopped a double-A battery that was threatening to roll under my car with his foot (it was a dead battery from something, I can’t remember what, and I wanted to dispose of it properly so naturally it had been living inside my purse), I thanked him profusely for taking the time to help me out. He could have kept walking just like all of the other men and women who were trying not to stare.

That’s when he crossed the line. The line between mere politeness and hard-core chivalry. He opened my car door for me while I awkwardly climbed inside, apologizing the entire time.

Here’s the thing. I married my husband because he opened my car door for me on our first date—and every day since. Rain or shine the man opens my car door for me. That cancels out a lot of bad shit in my book. He could have the face of Shrek and smell like a thirteen-year-old boy’s feet and I would be able to overlook all of that and live with him in wedded bliss—because of the door thing.

Men, being polite to women?
Why is that so damn rare these days?

When you watch the old movies, all of the men opened car doors. (As an aside, you cannot find a photo later than 1960 showing a man opening a women’s car door. Seriously. I looked.)

They also lit cigarettes, pulled out chairs and actually stood up when a women entered the room!

The feminist in me used to find all of that demeaning, now I’m not so sure.

I blame women’s lib. I know it’s not a popular position to take, but it’s mine. I can’t blame the men these days. Any man under forty has no idea that that sort of thing, that respect toward women, used to be commonplace. When we burned our bras we also started opening our own doors and pulling out our own chairs, and all of that other stuff—because we could—and the men just followed our lead.

Don’t underpay me or talk down to me, you do that at your own peril, but it’s perfectly fine to hold the door so  it doesn’t slam in my face. I believe those things are mutually exclusive.

I suppose they’re a dying breed from another era. Men like that. My Target parking lot guy certainly was. As for my husband, well, he’s French and they still put women on pedestals made of cheese—and that’s okay by me.

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

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

Have a great weekend and Carry on, 

xox

What do you think waits for us in the afterlife?

Being that I was jeweler for over eighteen years, I imagined the afterlife, or heaven, to be the stunningly gorgeous and meticulously curated Jewelry Salon on the ground floor of Bergdorf Goodman in NYC, where all by my lonesome I could wander the aisles, open the cases, and wear whatever the hell I wanted — while wearing sweatpants.

I’ve raised the bar since then.
Now I envision my ass on a motorcycle, riding through some green, hilly countryside on my way to lunch where I will consume copious amounts of warm, freshly baked bread, and cheese stuffed deep-fried zucchini flowers. Oh, and wine. Lots and lots of room temperature Montepulciano D’Abruzzo.

What do you think about this?
In the screenplay I’m writing, one of the heroines of the story (the dead one), paints a picture of a place not too dissimilar to where we are now.

One of the really cool attributes of her heaven, or afterlife, is the fact that you carry around in your pockets some of your favorite snacks. For example, she has a never-ending supply of Fritos corn chips in her jacket pocket, her friend carries with him at all times — a bottle of Sriracha sauce.

I can’t decide what my pockets would hold. One day I’m sure it would be dark chocolate covered… anything, the next day, lemon cake from this little cafe in Italy.

I’m hoping that the afterlife is a place where changing your mind is not only accepted but revered.

THAT would be HEAVEN to me!

So I’m asking YOU, my tribe, because I want more insight into you and what YOU believe,
What does the afterlife look like to you? Or what do you imagine it to be like?
AND, OR, because I know you are not a group that likes to comment,

What snacks would be in YOUR pockets in Heaven?

Thanks, and Love you guys,
xox

“Activate in your mind only the things in your past that you want to see in your future.”
~Somebody Wise

I can’t remember who said this, Joseph Campbell? Rumi? Oprah?
Doesn’t matter. I think this is the BEST advice I consistently forget to remember. THE BEST.

Have you ever thought of someone from your past, a friend, an old co-worker or that crazy-ass woman who used to sell seashells down by the seashore? And then, out of the blue, or so it seems—they call you?

“Hello, Janet, this is Lunatica, I’m down here at the shore and I have some really great overpriced seashells to sell—and I thought of YOU.”

Ah, fuck.

I had an old luvah contact me around Christmastime. But first he had his special-needs little sister feel me out on social media.
Can you say, Schmoe?

He is someone who inhabited that very special place in my heart — the place where people go after they take my heart and break it into a thousand tiny pieces, then grind it down with the heel of their shoe into sand and blow it into my face, blinding me into thinking that I lost something special and precious. And this blind-eyed, bullshit belief caused me great suffering. For years and years. Five to be exact.

You know what I’m talking about.

I had a hard time being objective.

I wanted answers.
I wanted closure.
I wanted an apology.
I wanted a time machine to carry me back thirty years so I could ask all of the right questions I didn’t have the sense to ask at the time — and then I wanted to punch him in his squishy man-parts.

He wanted to reminisce, to catch up. After we talked I was like, “OMG, dodged a bullet!” He was like, “This was great! Let’s talk again, soon!”

Ah fuckity, fuck, fuck me running.

How in the name of God has this happened and what am I going to do about it?

Once I stopped running around with my hair on fire, I figured out that since I’d been in the process of jettisoning a ton of excess jetsam from my past that he had somehow received the unspoken, psychic memo on his way to the trash heap and just like Lunatica, he wanted to say, Hey!

I spent days writing about it. Hours of activating all of those old emotions of loss and heartbreak, bringing them out through my arm, onto the page and right back into the present.

Hello, 1986, I’d like you to meet 2016.

All it made me was more confused. Re-opening a thirty-year-old cold case and grieving the loss of a twenty-three-year-old boyfriend does not jive with gray hair. It just doesn’t.

Don’t I get to choose who comes back into my life to torture me?

Then the older, wiser, part of me, the sagging boobs and soft belly part, reminded me that YES! dammit! Yes, I do!

It reminded me of that phrase I always forget (and the fact that I need to get to the gym more often).
“Activate in your mind only the things in your past that you want to see in your future.”

Ah, fuck.

My wise friend Kim saw me spinning, on fire, and had the decency to put it into perspective for me. “Don’t waste one more minute of your time on this guy. Your life is great. Remember what that situation gave you and move on. Pronto. Like right NOW!” then she shoved a piece of chocolate into my face and gave me a slap on the ass.

That night I made the choice of exactly what I wanted to bring into my future.
I had started my spiritual practice in earnest after our break-up due to the complete bankruptcy of my self-esteem. It set me on my life’s path and brought me to where I am today.

Hey, not too shabby. Resilience, self-worth, ability to love, forgiveness, bravery, self-discipline, resolve. That’s the part of my past I’ll carry forward—the rest of it can go to hell!

When I freed up some emotional bandwidth and stopped the angst over what to do — he stopped texting.

Now I just have to set Lunatica straight.

What part of your past, if any, do you want to bring with you into your future?

Carry on,
xox

Okay. Now that I have your attention, what DOES sex have to do with manifestation?
Nothing and EVERYTHING.
Stay with me.
Here we go.
Think about something you want. Wait. Let’s use a sexier word. DESIRE. Something you desire.

Can you focus your attention on that thing for ten seconds straight? You’d be surprised how long that is AND I said straight, without interruption. That’s the thing with focus. It’s, it’s…elusive.
It gets away from you.

Unless it comes to sex.

MY sex to manifesting comparisons go something like this:

First you have to find something engaging. Something that gets your juices flowing—if you know what I mean.
Have you ever tried to have sex with someone you were not that into? Yeah, me neither.
Anyway…
Have you ever found yourself eyes wide open while they’re kissing you, searching their face or body for something appealing? You know, something to get you going?
When that didn’t work, did you find yourself racking your brain as to how it is that you have come to find yourself naked with this person?
Yeah, me too.

Here’s the thing. You’ll never manifest real happiness (or a happy ending), from something you have no passion for. You won’t have the stamina or the staying power.
You may as well play some gin rummy, or watch Game of Thrones. The end.

Then there’s the focus thing.

Focus is concentration on steroids and it is absolutely, positively necessary for the happy ending to occur.

Think I’m wrong?

Start messing around and then turn on cartoons.

Get right there, I mean right there, yes, yes! righhhhhttttt theeeerrrrreeeee!! and sneeze.

Get involved in some heavy foreplay and have your dog jump on the bed and lick your testicles.
Yeah, you know what I mean. When you lose your focus—things go…limp.
Game over.

The same thing happens when you’re thinking about that new job or project you’re excited about.
You can feel your pulse quicken when suddenly, out of left field comes your father’s voice telling you that it’s too risky, or you start to imagine all the reasons why your dream can’t possibly work.
Your focus is broken and your desire becomes…limp.

Stop. Drop. Go eat a sandwich instead.

So there you have it.
Passion, or at least excitement is required to be able to maintain an erection, focus.

Distraction kills focus and it’s easy to become distracted —except when it comes to sex.

The bottom line: It all boils down to sex. Sex and bacon.

Carry on, (That has suddenly taken on a whole new meaning)
xox