money

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

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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

If I can say one thing with conviction, it is that those ink cartridges for your printer ALWAYS run out when you need them the most.

Case in point: The other morning while I was at the gym (trying to find my abs), my husband was in his office busily preparing invoices on his computer for the five or six different jobs he’s working on right now.

We like invoices. Invoices are check magnets. Checks allow us to eat. And we love to eat, so there you go.

Anyhow, when I returned he was circling the printer, cursing a blue streak. It seems his printer had run out of black ink and subsequently had refused to print the invoices. “I thought I had another black cartridge in here”, he grumbled through gritted teeth while rummaging through a cabinet like a bear searching for a baloney sandwich. Slamming the door shut, he slumped in his chair. “Great. Now I can’t print these today.”

What? No money—No food. I could barely hear him over the growling of my stomach.

You’ve gotta know a thing about my husband. He is very old school. Not only does he email his invoices, he prints up hard copies for his files along with copies for his clients to hold in their hot little hands. He has found that these same hands are much more likely to write checks when they’ve just held one of his carefully prepared, itemized invoices. Nobody gives a shit when you email them a bill so basically, paper wins over technology every time.

This stopped me in my tracks. “What? I mean, what about the color cartridge? You could print them in blue or purple?”

He shot me a look that straightened even my pubic hair.

“Listen”, I said, remaining calm. “You aren’t dressed yet, but I am, I’ll make a quick run to Staples and get you a black cartridge. I’ll be back before you’re out of the shower.”

After presenting a few lame protests, he agreed, so off I went.

As I closed the door I heard him offer to give me some cash. “I’ve got it!” I replied, sprinting to the car. I remembered having about $50 in my wallet, I mean, how much could it be?

Not fifty dollars I can tell you that! Not sixty-dollars either. That fucker was SEVENTY-DOLLARS!
PLUS TAX!

“Whyyyyy?” I whined, waving the cartridge at the boy stocking the printer paper. He just shook his head, avoiding direct eye-contact.

“Why is this so expensive?” I hissed, interrogating the check-out girl. “It’s a tablespoon of ink in three dollars of plastic!”Without even looking at me she offered a rebate. A $2 rebate that takes eight weeks to take the two dollars off my SEVENTY DOLLAR printer ink purchase.

“People pay this? This is extortion!” I yelled as the manager walked up. He seemed hardened to this argument. He had talking points. “You save when you order in bulk”, he said, motioning to alert the three-hundred-pound security guard. I knew that guy would understand my plight. We needed to invoice! We needed to eat!

“Ha!” I guffawed loudly, a little bit of spit landing on my chin.

Embarrassed, I mumbled under my breath while handing the cashier my debit card “Bulk? You’ve gotta be kidding me. A bulk order of this ink is equal to a car payment.” I grabbed my cartridge made of gold—and the receipt with the fucking rebate to fill out and mail in. I wasn’t giving them that extra $2 godammit!

“What a racket.” Were my parting words as I passed the bemused security guard. He nodded in agreement even though I’m relatively sure he had no idea what I was talking about.

This whole thing really pissed me off. Our immediate need for this overpriced product stripped away any and all negotiation power leaving me with no options. My husband needed to print invoices. Today.

I opened all the cars windows on the way home, hoping the cool, fresh air would change my mood. It was a beautiful morning. I had already accrued my ten thousand steps. The invoices would be printed and we would live to eat another day.

“Let it go, Janet,” I said to myself. “This is how they’re able to sell printers so cheap.” 

Then I started to think about the other NECESSITIES in our lives where they have us over a barrel.

Epipens came to mind. Raising their price 400% is just a crime. Plain and simple.

And Razor blades. Have you purchased a pack of razor blades lately? They’re so valuable people steal them. (Like saffron at the supermarket and Sudafed at the drug store.) You have to ask for them up at the register at Target.

Tell me why? They’re three, one-inch blades of steel, encased in fifty cents of plastic!

That got me thinking, maybe the razor blade price gouging started this beard phenomenon we’re experiencing. Maybe men just threw up their hands and said: “Fuck it!” I can eat or I can shave. (Everything comes down to eating with me.)

BTW: I was wondering who to blame. Not every man looks good in a beard you know.

So the moral of this story is: It’s the principal of the thing. Even if I can afford it, I don’t like being taken advantage of for no good reason.

I know I’m not alone here. Tell me what gets your blood boiling.

Carry on,
xox

Since I refuse to iron clothes (it is too time-consuming and besides that, I have a mild form of PTSD from a couple of “hot iron left unattended” incidents back in the day) I take all of my hubby’s shirts to the dry cleaners to get them laundered.

They have coupons online that make it so cheap it’s free.

Anyhow, this all started when Raphael insisted he LOVED to iron. He said he found it very “zen”, like drying dishes and baking pies—all three of these fantasies have NEVER happen in our house. Ironing went the way of many other good intentions gone awry. The iron itself turned into a heavy object that fell on my foot or got tangled up with all of the other useless laundry items we have stored (and that’s just a nice way of saying shoved in a haphazard way) next to our washer and dryer.

And don’t get me started on the ironing board. It met with a terrible accident recently and had to be put down. Let’s all take a minute…

Now, let’s cut to the real reason his shirts need ironing.

We have a dryer that cost more than my car but the lovely Swiss or German people who manufacture it have neglected to include a simple “fluff” cycle. Obviously, it was designed by men. Men who either have wives who love to iron or take their shirts to the laundry—and they’re too clueless to know how in the hell they live a wrinkle free life.

Anyway…I owned a piece-of-shit Kenmore for like a thousand years and it had the most magnificent “fluff” cycle imaginable. That freaking fabulous fluff cycle was one of the contributing factors for me turning my back on ironing clothes. You could throw a wizened 2500-year-old mummy in that dryer for ten minutes and it would come out looking like Heidi Klum. All you had to do was spray a little water on the wrinkled garment (even linen, *gasp) and voila! The fluff would work its magic.

Ten years ago when we upgraded to our present washer and dryer I was disappointed but I didn’t want to sound like Bratty McBraterson so I kept quiet about the loss of my beloved “fluff” cycle. After all, these fancy appliances had brains and sensors that could sense all of my deepest emotions—so I just assumed they’d figure something out.

But that never happened.

Every day Raphael would throw on a shirt that was clean but looked like it had been tied in a knot and then wedged into the tiny crack between the wall and bed to dry.

Remember scrunchies? They all looked like scrunchies.

He looked ridiculous. Like no one loved him. Like a sad, unloved, shlumpadinka (it’s an Oprah and Gail word—look it up).

“You need to iron that shirt before you leave.” was our default goodbye every morning. He never did, (you know, because it’s a fucking hassle) so he looked like a hobo. Like a 6’ 4” bald hobo. Nobody wants to hire a giant hobo/schlumpadinka to build their multi-million dollar dream home. Believe me, it’s in the small print.

So my solution was to get them laundered. Problem solved.
I know. Wife of the Year!

Cut to yesterday, when I was picking up his shirts (and one blouse of mine) and taking in some dirty ones to be laundered, I let the delightful little man who works there help me with the five-thousand smelly shirts that I had piled up in the back seat of my car (I put them there as a reminder—it works…seldom). He is an older gentleman who stands outside every day and helps all of us back and forth to our cars with our dry cleaning. I never see him without a smile and a freshly pressed shirt. My guess is that he’s retired and can only take so much of Fox news or the golf channel.

Anyhow, since it was close to ninety outside (he sits in the shade) and since he’d helped me schlep my shirts inside and then carried the clean ones to my car while I paid, I grabbed a couple of extra dollars bills (three to be exact) and mused aloud if it was okay to tip him.

Me, addressing the girl who worked there and anyone else within earshot while holding the money in my hand:
“I should tip him, right? I mean, does he accept tips?”

The woman next to me with the tightly pulled ponytail, dressed in head-to-toe LuLu Lemon huffed under her breath, “How rude.”

The girl at the register just shrugged.

“It’s rude to give him money…or it’s rude not to?” I asked, dumbfounded and a little embarrassed.

“What do you think?” She replied looking me up and down like a dog looks at a lamb chop—or like I was the unfortunate victim of a dryer without a fluff cycle.

“I don’t know! That’s why I asked!” I sneered at her in my best shlumpadinka voice.

She turned on her expensive, designer, limited edition Adidas and walked out giving me stink eye the entire time.

That’s okay. I burned a hole in the back of her head with my superpower bitch repellent as she struggled to get into her Range Whatever. I’m surprised she could drive.

After she left, the girls who work there rolled their eyes so hard they all did backflips and then told me that it was okay to give Ernesto a couple of bucks. “A lot of people do,” said the woman with the chartreuse hair and the painted on eyebrows (she’s my favorite).

So I did. And it didn’t feel rude and he didn’t seem the least bit offended.

Take THAT you ornery bitch-faced woman!

Okay, Now back to a loving place.

Carry on,
xox

According to me, this applies to men too.

There are those of you who tease me in a semi-snarky way about never making a misstep. Of projecting the illusion of a perfect life.

This post is for you.

Sunday started out like a cream puff of perfection if a day can be such a thing. (Don’t get mad. Keep reading, it’s gonna go south fast.)

After the brutal heat of the past week, the morning dawned clear and cool. The sky was so blue it hurt my eyes.

My coffee was perfectly creamed, my bed head only mildly Einsteinian, and even though we’d splurged on some fried food the night before, the little white shorts I’d found in the back corner of a bottom drawer fit like a glove. Okay, so maybe as tight as the OJ glove—but fuck it—I didn’t have to wear my Spanx (I have a “no weekends” rule with them) and even then the velcro stayed closed—so I’m calling it a win.

After spending an hour watching Sunday morning politics I put my head in the oven to stop the madness but nothing happened so I had another idea—food numbing. I texted my friend the “Hike Nazi” about meeting me for breakfast after she was finished hiking (any cardio in temps over 68 degrees is unacceptable to me)—and she agreed.

On my way up the hill, I could see that the temp had already climbed up into the eighties so I made a pact with myself. After breakfast, I would complete all tasks that required being outside before noon. I had to water the plants in the back and run to the market. Then I would spend the rest of my alone time (Raphael and the whiney little brown dog had left early for a car show) watching movies in our den which for some unexplainable reason gets as cold as a meat locker when we run the AC.

Say what you will, at least I know myself and the fact that this older 2.0 version of me has a very low heat tolerance, ask anyone. I am a delicate flower and I no longer have the stamina for triple digit heat.

Up at the top of Beverly Glen is a little deli my friend frequents so we met there and that is when she introduced me to Mrs. Harris.
I’m in love with Mrs. Harris.
I want to lick her all over.
Before you barf up your bagel let me explain. Mrs. Harris is a scrambled egg and cheese sandwich on rye bread (because any bread other than rye would be a crime against humanity) that completely erased any memory I had of Trump, Mitch McConnell or that miserable snake woman, KellyAnne Conway.

Life was good.

(Insert sound effect of a needle scratching across a record, the air being let out of a balloon, or a giant dog fart.)

When I went to pay for my Mrs. Harris I noticed that my debit card was missing from my wallet. No big deal I thought, it’s probably at home or in the car or…anywhere other than my wallet. Nevertheless, I had like seven dollars on me and when I pulled out the pockets of my tiny white shorts to check for change—tiny moths flew out. In other words, my friend paid for breakfast.

On my way down the hill, I forgot about it completely because Prince was on the radio. Right? I mean, Prince!

Anyway, when I got home I immediately went online to check and make sure that some culprit hadn’t absconded with the gigantic balance in my checking account. You see, my much too enormous to talk about health insurance payment gets automatically taken out this week. I’m never sure exactly what day that happens, so I could picture the money being spent on somebody else’s idea of fun, like bungee jumping or a trip to see the world’s largest sticker ball in Longmont, Colorado, and the Blue Shield ordering the hospital to put my uterus back in!

I could picture the crooks furiously hacking their way into my account only to experience emotional schiophenia—hysterical laughter followed by unexpected feelings of pity—and then rage—at the colossal waste of their time. Minutes later I see my card being thrown out the window of their fast-moving car into the dry brush on Mulholland.

After I was assured that my vast fortune was intact and that there had been no activity since Thursday, I felt bad about my boring life and the sad fact that I hadn’t been anywhere or done anything that cost money in three days— then I breathed an enormous sigh of relief and started wracking my brain while I watered my plants.

Where in the fucking fuck was my debit card? 
I don’t normally lose things. I misplace them, that’s different. It’s one of the quirks that makes me delightful.

You know that sinking feeling that grips you in the guts when you can’t find your wallet or your credit card goes missing? I had that. The dreaded gut grab.

I mentally retraced my steps (there weren’t many so it didn’t take long), called a couple of places, struck out, and finally decided I’d cancel the card and then just let it go. But alas, I couldn’t let it go. In the supermarket, I appeared to anyone watching to have a nasty case of Tourette’s. I’d walk halfway down an aisle, stop, think of a potential debit card scenario, yell “Shit!” or “Fuck it!” when I’d realize that it wasn’t a viable solution—and then keep walking.

In other words, I was mildly obsessed.

I bagged my milk and frozen stuff together at the self-check-out putting everything in a “cooler” bag and made my way back out into the one-hundred-degree heat. By the time I got to the car, I was a mumbling, twitchy, sweaty mess. Since I only brought my car keys (which this high-tech vehicle only has to smell to open and start) and my wallet with me, I threw them in the bag with the groceries and then watched in horror as the back hatch of the station wagon clicked shut…and locked.

With the keys inside.

Not surprisingly this had happened to me once before and the experience was burned into my memory. In a frenzy I called Raphael, whose reassuring response went something like this: “How can that happen?” and “What can I do from here?”

For some reason, the doors won’t lock if the keys are in the front of the car but I have it on good authority that the car can’t sense them all the way in the back—in a bag (or at least that’s what the internet says).

So, that’s when I went full Tourette’s. I ran around the car trying every door while cursing a blue streak. It was like a scene out of Saving Private Ryan—flying f-bombs landing everywhere!

Nooooooo! It was so hot I could feel the skin on my shoulders sizzling. I didn’t even have my phone with me to call Raphael so he could say the same damn things and offer the same useless solutions. Finally admitting defeat, I threw my hands up in the air in surrender.

I knew what must be done.

That’s I started the one-mile walk home in my stupidly small white shorts and flimsy black flip-flops, wondering why it felt like August in the Sahara Desert, and why in god’s name I was dressed like a seventeen-year-old Daisy Duke impersonator at a 4H State Fair. 

Looking at the big picture the whole thing was kinda funny. I mean, I was so wrapped up in the debit debacle, and that energy got so much momentum going, that it distracted me enough to make me do something I swore I’d never do again!

The lock and walk. 

Then it happened. I hadn’t even made it fifty-feet when I experienced the mother of all fails. The fucking flip-flop fail.

My flip-flop chose that exact moment to fall apart causing my bare right foot to hit the superheated black top, scalding it in an instant. Imagine being barefoot on hot sand or walking across hot coals. Yeah, like that.
“Fuck, fuck, fuckity, fuck!” I yelled, hopping backward on one foot in the middle of the parking lot while awkwardly bending over like some ridiculous French fried Flamingo to pick the thing up, fix it, and nonchalantly walk away. “There’s nothing to see here!” I yelled in my head. But I had to admit…there was.

Soldier on. Keep walking, I told myself.  Three steps later it flew off again! Foot burned. Fucks flying.

Always a quick study, I hopped over to a postage stamp sized bit of shade to assess the situation and that’s when I started to laugh because:

A: I was shit out of options. I knew I’d have to hop on one foot the entire mile home or just burn the shit out of my foot and deal with it.

B: Once momentum gets going in a downward spiral you’d better figure out a way to change its course—or else. (Or else your clothes start on fire and your shoes explode.)

C: I’m sure I looked beyond ridiculous! A sweat-drenched fifty-nine-year-old woman in tiny white shorts, one flip-flop, and a scarlet red right foot hopping down a busy street. I mean, I can’t even!

Holding the irreparably broken flip-flop in hand, I hobbled home praying the entire way for Raphael to be there so I could beat him with it, he could hug me, kiss my blistered foot, and give me a ride back to my melty groceries. He wasn’t, and I couldn’t walk on my right foot it was so burned, so I grabbed better shoes (ouch), and the spare key, jumped into his big van, and drove myself back to the scene of the crime.

I figured we could pick up my car later.

I was gone all of five minutes but when I got home he was there—wondering how one person was driving two cars. He figured the van had been stolen. As I told him the story he shook his head (because he knows I’m Lucy Ricardo) and gave my foot tons of sympathy.

Wait!… Don’t you want to be me? Don’t you wish you had my glamorous life? And is anybody still worried about the debit card?…ha! exactly!

#flipflopfail
#Sundayfootfry
#animperfectlife

Carry on,
xox

Hello Tribe,
I don’t know about you, but lately, money issues have been as viral as that nasty flu bug I just managed to survive.

Everywhere I turn, almost everybody I talk to is stressing about money.

Even those people around me who typically can’t close their wallets because they’re packed with so much cold, hard, cashola.
It feels like a phase.
Bad ju-ju perhaps.
And what do I do when the ju-ju goes south?
Well, I write a letter, of course.

Below is one I wrote three years ago and you’re welcome to copy and send it with your name attached.
It’s my understanding that money has ADD and a very short memory.

Carry on,
xox

Dear Money,
I know our relationship has felt strained these last few years,
but we’ve always been so close and…..I miss you.

My darling Money…I think we should reconcile.
I know it looks like my life’s been all topsy-turvy for a while now, and I seem like a bad risk, but I can assure you, I’ve worked really hard on myself and I’ve grown so much.
I feel like I can meet you half way.

You must admit, you’ve been very elusive, really playing hard to get.
You barely even show your face, and when you do, I turn around and you’re gone.
That hurts because I can still remember all the good times we had.
All that crazy spontaneous traveling we did together, remember Italy, with all the shopping and long lunches?
You were always so there for me. I want to make more of those memories!

We even bought a house together for cryin’ out loud!
I think I showed my commitment to the long haul, what about you?

Sure, I made a few mistakes, but who hasn’t!
We had “it” once and I think we can have “it” again.
That kind of friendship doesn’t just evaporate.

My choices may have seemed questionable at times, but now, if you could just stick around for a while, you’d see how they’re all working out for me.

You’ve said in the past that I’m overly sensitive, but you’re the one who’s stayed away for so long…and without even a goodbye.

I’m willing to forgive, forget and move on…together, hand in hand…like the old days.

Take a few days to think about it…I know how you are about ultimatums… and begging.

xox Janet

I have to remind myself that this could be—this should be—true when making any decision.

Right? I mean just the thought of making a decision unfettered by financial restraints makes my heart beat faster.
I palpitate all over the place.
Possibilities start to appear.
Were they hiding? Not really. I was just too tangled up in penny counting to see them.

But maybe I can only speak for myself.

The thing is, I’ve talked to several of my friends this week who were also weighing options. Career, geographic relocation, relationships. You know, the stomach-clenching terror-trifecta. They were making lists of pros and cons, calculating risks, and looking for signs. Anything to give them a clue.

I was right there with them, looking to the sky, turning over every rock. Listening for a booming voice inside of a burning bush.

I’m looking at having an elective surgery (nothing major), around the end of the year. The doctor I want to use is out of network (insurance speak), so I will have to dig deep into my own pockets—or be okay with a complete stranger cutting me open.

“What if money wasn’t an issue?” I asked my friend at brunch on Sunday. She’s barreling toward some biggies in the next few months. Good stuff, life changing really. No pressure. She has a lot of options, but sometimes all those choices complicate things. They muddy the water.

“Mmmmmm…” she mused, enjoying a bite of ricotta pancake. “That’s easy.”

“Then that’s the answer!”  I announced, and suddenly, we both had clarity on our respective conundrums. And bacon. We had bacon.

Fuck you money! You are not the boss of us!

I always forget it really IS that easy. Don’t you?
Money is figureoutable. It really is—if we can step out of fear’s grip.

Maybe I can unimagine Edward Scissorhands having his way with me in an operating room because of my belief in lack. And hey, I am most certainly aware that my angst is a result of giving it a face—and way more power than it deserves.

Maybe you’re at a crossroads. Maybe you needed to see this right now. Maybe you need to ask yourself  “What would you do if money wasn’t an issue?”

Carry on,
xox

I don’t normally make it a habit of being one of the last guests to leave a party. I also don’t arrive first and I don’t leave straight after dessert—I’m not an asshole.

But this was an exceptionally fun party with a LIVE Karaoke band who stayed later than planned because when my friend Orna’s posse (who are SO game with the LIVE karaoke), aren’t finished singing—THEY DON’T LEAVE.

It was after midnight when they pried the microphone out of my hot little hand and I wedged my swollen feet back into my heels. After a few goodnight hugs, I made my way to the parking lot which was nearly deserted.

There was the valet, a lovely man around thirty (that is a man, right?), sitting alone on a black wooden stool, almost hidden by a fog that had come in on its little cat’s feet (a bow to Carl Sandburg), while we wailed away the hours like a bunch of wannabe rock stars. I can only imagine what he was thinking right around hour three when a bunch of us got up to murder “Summer Nights”, which was followed immediately by a drunken but rocking’ version of a Doors song by an accountant livin’ his dream.

Of the three sets of keys still left hanging on the board next to the stool, mine were the easiest to pick out. The brightly striped KCRW mini-membership card made them easy to distinguish from the other Benz keys hanging there, (a little aside, here in LA the joke is to go up to a valet and say “the black Mercedes” and watch his head spin around. It’s like describing your black canvas wheelie bag to the angry dude behind the desk at airport baggage claims).

Anyway…

As he went around and opened my door for me, I asked him how much I owed him.
“Five dollars”, he replied with a smile.

That seemed like bargain considering how late it was and the torture that poor man had endured for hours on end…sitting on a stool…in a damp fog…listening to us—sing.
I was going to give him ten bucks. Just because.

That’s when I reached into the cute little clutch I had strategically jammed full of everything I would need for the evening right before I left the house.
Altoids, lip gloss, drivers license, insurance card, phone, one migraine pill (because nobody wants to get hit with a migraine at a LIVE karaoke party), and a tiny tin of customized “Orna’s Big 5-0” M & M’s that were given out as party favors.

Everything it seems except money.

Even in the dark I’m certain he could see how crimson my face was becoming. I was mortified.
He held my keys out to me as I stammered and sputtered and continued looking in vain through my now useless little bag for something valuable to give the man.

Without making eye contact—I handed him the candy.

“I. Am. So. Sorry”, I said as I finally looked up at him with those huge cat eyes from the cartoons. One giant cat eye stayed glued to his face, which was smiling broadly, while the other was looking around to see if someone else would come walking out so I could bum some money.

“I don’t have any cash”, I could hear the words coming out but I felt so awful and the sudden let-down from my LIVE karaoke buzz was so excruciating that I wanted to slide under the car and die.

“It’s no problem, it’s just money”, he said in a soft, sweet, heavily accented voice.

“I knooooow, but I feel like a…”, was what my mouth was saying. My head, on the other hand, was screaming, ‘Just get in the car! Drive! Get outa here! NOW!’

“It’s okay lady”, he said, interrupting my argument. “You should go. It’s very late. Don’t worry, it’s just money. Please”.
He put my keys in the ignition and gently guided me into the driver’s seat as I babbled on, pleading with him to forgive me.

After he shut the door I sat there for a second like a cash-less idiot. Before I pulled out onto a foggy Pacific Coast Highway, I rolled down my window for one last heartfelt apology as I folded the tin of Altoids into his hand.

“Here take these, I feel awful. But be careful. They’re curiously strong”.

“Please don’t worry”, he said with that huge smile beaming at me like a lighthouse. “I want you to forget, so you can drive safe. It’s just money. Drive safe. Please.”

I got all misty-eyed as I drove away. Sometimes just a random act of kindness can do that to you. It can remind you of what is important in life. Like friends, love, LIVE karaoke and the gentle, wise and forgiving kindness of strangers.

Not money.

And that worrying while driving in dense fog is not advisable.

P.S. I found my wad of folded up cash on the floor in the dining room just where it had fallen during the great purse switch.

Carry on,
xox

“Wealth is not about having a lot of money; it’s about having a lot of options.”
~ Chris Rock

Being the obedient, Catholic girl and rule follower that I am, when I was advised by my accountants back in 1998 to save every dime I could scrap together, scavenge every couch cushion quarter I could find, and buy a house–I did just that.

I took my sister up on her very generous offer to move in, put everything in storage except for the scratch post/cat palace and my pillow, and called a small room with Teddy and Fraidy, my two Siamese cats, home for a year. We all went on what I referred to as ‘The Austerity Program’. The only thing tighter than our living conditions was my wallet.

Oh, don’t feel sorry for them. As I came to find out cats have little concern for square footage. Think about it. They tend to claim one or two spots in your house as their own, which they mark with coughed up fur balls and claw marks and that’s where you’ll find them hour after hour, day after day. For mine, it was the three story cat palace during the day and my pillow at night.

Anyway…Austerity became me. I excelled at it.

Living small became a mindset that I was assured would come in handy once I purchased the house and was subject to the “sticker shock”. Except for some measly living expenses and a car payment I banked every dollar. Contrary to my former way of living there were no extravagant trips, expensive new shoes or shiny new cat toys. We all hunkered down.

I had been ‘pre-approved’ to a certain dollar amount meaning that if I exceeded that imaginary line in the sand, I did so at my own peril. Of course, as I started to look around, spending my Sundays at open houses, everything in my price range was dreck. Run down with peeling paint, wonky, un-permitted additions that looked as if they had been slapped together with playing cards and duck tape, and bathrooms that were one mold spore away from being condemned by the health department.

Did I mention the amount I had to spend was HEALTHY? Like, buy me a castle with a moat AND an alligator in Ohio, healthy?

I was advised to stay away from the properties that were over what I could spend, so I immediately made a beeline for the homes north of a million dollars. These were my people. They had taste and class and lush green grass. Alas, even if I robbed a bank that would barely cover the property taxes, so most Sunday nights saw me drowning my austere little sorrows in a bottle of two-buck-Chuck, my face buried in a cat hair covered pillow to disguise the sobs. I felt sorry for myself that I only had the equivalent of a king’s ransom to spend. Oh, poor me.

Are you feeling bad? Maybe for the cats?  Please don’t.

Eventually, I did find something I liked. It had just been reduced to the very tippy top of my price limit, so I pounced, made an offer, and I’m sitting happily in that very same house writing this today.

As it turned out the peanut gallery was right; my mortgage, gardener and other responsible homeowner generated expenses kept me waist deep in austerity for a couple of years. Then so did my business. Austerity had become the gum on the bottom of my shoe. The mindset that wouldn’t let go.

Recently, I have felt the tug diminish. I’ve begun to dream of a compound in Santa Barbara.

Yep, you heard me. A compound. It may seem as unlikely as catching me gardening in a bikini, but everything starts as a dream, right? I’ve pulled up Santa Barbara real estate on Zillow the past few Sundays as a lark, and due to some residual austerity that stuck to my face—the prices caused an accidental nose-douche with ice-tea.

Fuck it! I yelled to no one in particular after almost drowning, then I clicked on an 8.9 million dollar property.
‘I have all the money in the world to spend!’, I told myself.
‘No limit, no imaginary line in the sand to keep me down! SHOW ME A COMPOUND!’

Then the funniest thing happened. And it surprised the shit out of me.
I felt a blinding white hatred for the 8.9 million dollar house. It was dark and medieval with a wine cellar that could double as a torture chamber for a serial killer. The kitchen was enormous… but it was trying was too hard! Custom this and custom that—bleeeaaaack!

I felt the same about the 12.5 million dollar monstrosity on the hill.
And the ranch with a view of the ocean.
I don’t need nine bedrooms.
I don’t want a horse property.
I don’t need a vineyard…

Come on people! Show me a decent house!

A 5 million dollar FIXER-UPPER! Yuck!
A 3.9 million dollar nightmare dipped in gold leaf. Puke!
I started to laugh. LOUD. Here, I have all the money in the world to spend…and I still can’t find something I love! I mean, at those prices—you’d better love it.

Since succumbing to the austerity mindset, I had convinced myself that the things I couldn’t afford were the things that would make me happy!
Which made me wonder. If I really had let’s say, only 2 million to spend, would I be loving these pricier properties and cursing my sad little austere lot in life, like I did before?

Uh…NO!

I actually liked the 2-3 million dollar homes better.

So, it wasn’t about the money. It was NEVER about the money. It’s a mindset.
Even with an imaginary wallet full of cash, what you want may be hard to find.
Good taste doesn’t come as a result of having a lot of money (Donald Trump).
And real wealth has nothing to do with dollars and cents.

Isn’t that good to know?

Carry on,
xox

For one brief and shining moment in the mid-nineties, I had a live-in boyfriend.

And as I came to find out, live-in anythings tend to ruin most of your possessions, especially the ones that they do not have a dollar invested in—which is pretty much EVERYTHING.

That goes for all significant others, dog, cats, pygmy pigs, and children. They systematically destroy all the material things you love the most.

Case in point, I had an expensive bespoke coverlet made to match the fabric of a very cool bed that had an upholstered headboard that resembled a couch. I know! right?
It was the color of  buttercream frosting, it cost me a fortune, and I loved it more than coffee.

Okay, I mention coffee here because it plays an important role.

One glorious Sunday morning, in a lapse of better judgment, I overlooked the fact that said boyfriend had broken a cardinal rule, the one which stated NO COFFEE IN BED.

He had frothed us each a cup of particularly delicious cappuccino and in a show of my appreciation, well, things got a little out of hand. I’m not going to get into it lest you think poorly of me or worse yet, ask me for details. But let’s just suffice it to say…
A foot (or some other body part, this memory is a bit fuzzy for me), met with two, 3/4 full cups of coffee on the nightstand, which caused one to fly up and into the ceiling fan spraying coffee and frothy milk EVERYWHERE, while the other landed face down in the center of my priceless duvet cover.

It would have been funny if there hadn’t been so much brown on the buttercream and if I’d had a sense of humor at the time.

While we cleaned the floor, walls, and the ceiling, the coffee/milk stain caused our Siamese cat to pee on the bed. Numerous times. I get it. Coffee does that to me too. It was a phenomenon that had never occurred before and never happened again—but it added insult to the injury.

To stop the madness, the brown and smelly bedspread took up residence in my car until I could figure out what to do. Apparently, the giant coffee stain was the least of its problems.

After I got the coffee out of places where coffee should never be, I went to search the cat pee drenched coverlet thingy for a care tag. You know, those tags that have all the symbols telling you how to clean it, but since it was custom-made, no tag.

I was just about to wash it in one of our giant apartment laundry room washers when I remembered that they had teeth and preferred to dine on expensive fabric. Never the stuff from Target. Explain that to me.

So, I decided to accompany a friend to the laundromat, but when she saw the velvet brocade type of fabric on that thing she advised that I get it dry cleaned. That made sense. The fear of this prize possession getting ruined was ratcheting up. Can you feel it?

So, to the dry cleaners I went. The expensive one. The one that had a guarantee and specialized in decorator fabrics. Only the best for this investment of mine.

What could go wrong?

They called in their resident “fabric expert”, a stern woman with black fuzzy caterpillars as eyebrows and huge, magnifying lensed glasses on a chain around her neck. She did a thorough inspection of the coverlet, rolling the thick fabric between her thumb and forefinger, then she paused, skewed her mouth which in turn crinkled her entire face, causing the two caterpillars to kiss just above her nose and form a spooky looking unibrow. She then grabbed a nearby pencil which looked as if it had been chewed to a nub and wrote something on a piece of paper, slide it across the counter to me—face down, and looked at me with her over magnified eyes and the two judgmental caterpillars—waiting for a response.

I turned it over and the dollar amount made me gasp. Her lip turned up slightly at the corner into a smile..or a sneer…I couldn’t tell which.

“Zhah chat urineeen schemel meh nahver comb out, oot zhat meehlk meh churrdle”, she said attempting English in an accent that sounded like a combination of Dutch and Chinese.

I nodded, pretending to understand. “Fine, that’s fine”, I replied signing that scrap of paper as verification that the equivalent of a monthly car payment would be the price paid to save my beautiful coverlet.

About two weeks later I received a call from the cleaners. There had been a “problem” and I needed to come and talk to the manager Mr. SomethingorOther. The trouble was that every time I showed up for the chat…he was out to lunch, off the premises, or had just gone home. Black caterpillar lady was nowhere to be found, and when I asked to talk to her they acted like I wanted to have an audience with the Pope.

I’m going to cut to the chase—here’s the good news: The bedspread that had committed suicide by cat pee wasn’t brown anymore. But it wasn’t a bedspread anymore either. Now for the bad news: It looked like it had run with scissors—or fallen into a wood chipper.

It resembled a shredded mass of buttercream velvet held together by cat hair.

Well, you have to fix this!” I screamed.
“It’s no charge”, said the tiny Hispanic woman who had obviously drawn the short straw in the back room. She crumpled our paper agreement and threw it away as she pushed the buttercream mess my way.
I pushed it back in her direction.
“Fix it.” I hissed, knowing full well that unless they had a loom in the back that was pretty much going to be impossible.

That night, as I plotted my revenge, I splashed wine with abandon all over the cheap cotton duvet cover that was acting as understudy until the Star returned. Should I sue them? Should I make them pay to have it replaced? By midnight, I knew what had to be done.

But days turned to weeks and I never went back to deliver my ultimatum.

One morning when my boyfriend got back from a bagel run, he was acting weird, clearing his throat, mustering his courage.
“Did you ever solve that comforter cover debacle?” he croaked.

I felt my face instantly catch fire. “No! I need to go back there…”

“You’d better wear your asbestos underwear”, he murmured, walking into the kitchen.

“What are you talking about?”

“The place burned down last night. It’s still smoldering.”

We immediately jumped in the car and went to join all the other patrons around the caution tape, ready for a fight. But when I saw the utter destruction and the people crying over their burnt up wedding dress or the loss of their daughter’s baptismal gown, I realized what an idiot I was.

I saw the part my fear of losing a material possession (albeit a beautiful one), had played in this entire fiasco, how I continued to make one bad decision after another, how I couldn’t see how much the freakin’ bedspread just wanted to die…and that’s when I finally laughed.

Carry on,
xox