Perception

As I wove around the corner, snaking slowly through the canyon on my way to the hike this morning—I spotted it.

Something wounded or dead right smack dab in the middle of the road.

Immediately my heart sank a little and my body tensed as I straightened in my seat and turned down the radio in order to get a better look. That is essential. My eyes see better in complete silence and the days of multi-tasking are over for me. I can barely drive and apply mascara anymore. I used to be a pro. Now I suck.

Besides, the music was too cheery, too hip-hoppy, for such a morbid scene.

From a distance, it appeared to be an animal. With black fur. In a pool of blood. Something larger than a cat and smaller than a dingo. Perhaps it was a skunk or a possum? They never seem to get the memo explaining how streets with cars lead to death.

It was often out of view, hidden by the cars as we wound our way, bumper to bumper, to our respective destinations.

That’s when my mind took over. This was a living creature. Cut down in its prime. Maybe it was a mother scavenging food for her babies in the dry brush of the drought-ravaged hillsides. Singles mothers can never catch a break.

It was someone’s baby. Another animal’s friend. They had frolicked and played and in all of the excitement it had forgotten to look both ways. It was then that it’s luck had run out. Splat!

There it is. I can see it again. Is it moving? Oh, dear lord, no!
Why aren’t people stopping?! Someone needs to take it for help, or drag it to the side of the road at the very least!

I’ll do it!

I was working myself into one hell of a lather.

When I get close, I’ll stop my car and block traffic in order to access the animal’s well-being. Someone must! I decided.

If you hear of the murder of a woman in yoga pants in the Hollywood Hills by a mob of angry commuters in Friday morning gridlock—it’s me.

When the poor creature came back into view it looked to be lying still. “Oh thank God it’s dead”, I muttered aloud. That is not a sentence that feels good coming out. It is something you never want to hear yourself say. But I meant it. It looked like its suffering was over.

“Why the fuck is everybody running over it?” was the next thing I heard my mouth say. But it was true. No one was swerving to miss it. In their rush to get wherever they were going, they were running directly over the poor thing. I don’t care if it’s a dead possum. Swerve a little!

It was disrespectful, to say the least.

The time had come. Ten minutes had passed and I was almost upon it.

Do I look and ruin my morning?
Or do I look away?
Do steal a quick glance and say a little prayer?
Or do I stare and gross myself out?

I looked. Right at it. And I tried to swerve to miss it but I couldn’t without dying in a head-on collision—so I did my best.

Thump, thump. I cringed.

The right side of my car ran over it at the exact moment that I saw what it was. This roadkill that had sabotaged ten minutes of my morning.

It was a pile of black socks on top of a red sweater.

I know what you’re thinking and you’re right.

Carry on,
xox

I can say in all honesty, with a straight face, that I don’t need a beach house to be happy.

I’ve made it this far in life without one and things have been pretty terrific so far.

That being said, when one is offered to me for a night I don’t hesitate to say yes. I’m not daft.

The house in question belongs to one of my husband’s clients. It is an architectural marvel that sits on the sand in a private cove of only six other homes. It cost in excess of fifteen million bucks and a famous rapper/music producer is living next door for the summer.

All of that makes your butt pucker, right? Me too!
Like how can I relax and enjoy the experience? I can’t handle the grandiosity, the smell of money in the air. I won’t be able to touch anything for fear of destroying something it would take me ten years to pay-off. Like red wine on a white chair. Or sand…anywhere.

This house and this couple are not like that AT ALL. They are gregarious and tons of fun. They have kids and dogs and everything in that house says, ‘Come on in! Relax! Have fun! Make a mess! Enjoy! Feel rich!’

What? Feel rich?

As you know, I’ve been trying that “rich” thing on lately.
I’ve told you of the hours I’ve spent on Zillow looking at homes for sale in Santa Barbara. Montecito to be exact. The hometown of Oprah. And to clarify even further—five to ten million dollar homes. With land. And nifty views.

So, the house this weekend could have felt intimidating, but it didn’t.

Not at all.

It felt like the next logical step in my search for a dream house.

And that’s when the magic started to happen.
Duh.

Hubby, Ruby dog, and I, spent Friday night enjoying stinky cheese and a bottle of my favorite red wine as we listened to Adele sing her sad songs of love gone wrong while the waves crashed and the negative ions had their way with us.

I could not have been happier. I felt rich in so many ways.

The next morning I went out to my car for something important (poop bag) and found a neatly folded twenty-dollar bill on the ground just behind the tailgate.

“You must have dropped this”, I said as I handed it back to Raphael knowing full well that Ruby only travels with hundreds and I had all of eight dollars left in my wallet after buying the cheese. (The stinkier the cheese the more it costs. Why is that?)

“It’s not mine”, he argued. “The only time I walked over there was at 5 am when I took Ruby to pee and contrary to stories you’ve heard, I don’t carry a wallet when I’m not wearing pants. It looks like it’s yours”, then he smirked in response to the look on my face as I pictured him balls to the wind, and went to make himself another espresso on the F-you espresso machine that lives in the kitchen.

“I’m rich!” I yelled, like Leonardo DeCaprio on the bow of the Titanic. (I know, he said I’m King of the World—just go with me here.)

Now I had twenty-eight smackers! Time to go buy some more cheese. Instead, we sat around all morning covered in dog hair, as a low, gray ceiling of clouds hung overhead making the view outstanding and the house impossibly cozy.

“I’m not leaving!”, I announced after he had laid out his plan for the rest of our day. Shower, lunch, drive home—and then what? He had plans that afternoon and all day Sunday.

I did not. I had no obligations. Nada. Zilch. Zero.

“I’m not leaving”, I said again out loud, just to hear the words a second time. Sometimes I just say stuff for dramatic effect. Like ‘I’m not leaving’ means ‘I’m having a good time’. Like that.

Was I serious?

“Fine. I love that”, he said looking at me kinda funny. “You’re keeping the dog—and what about your computer? Remember? You didn’t bring it. You can drive back in your car and get it. It’ll only be a three-hour round trip because it’s Saturday.”

I thought about it for a minute. I needed to post Sunday’s blog…but the internet sucked.

“Fuck that!” I exclaimed. Why would I kill my beach buzz?”

Sorry, but I shirked. I shirked all responsibility and sense of obligation and, and, and.
I was so relaxed at that point I was literally drooling.
I blame the ions. The ions made me do it.

“Exactly!”, he agreed, and he meant it.

In a spontaneous act of whatthefuckery, I called my friend Sally to come after work and partake in some of my stinky cheese, wine and mind altering ions. In an uncharacteristic act of selfishness—she said YES!

Sunday morning as I sat bathed in the wealth of my weekend, looking around at the house on the beach, the one with dog slobber on almost every wall and knee high handprints on the bank of windows that looks out over the endless expanse of Pacific Ocean, I received a text from a dear friend. That alone was a mini-miracle due to the shitty WiFi.

You see, a mystical, magical project I’m working on has to be delivered to just the right people.
Or I’m fucked.
Until I could guarantee that, I’ve been sitting on it. Praying. Trusting the powers that be to pull a rabbit out of someone’s ass. That text, that Miracle in Malibu text, held the answer to my prayers and it was so implausible that if I told you—you wouldn’t believe me—and you’d have me arrested for public drunkenness.

I’m tellin’ ya. Being irresponsible, selfish, and acting rich has gotten a bad rap. It really worked magic for me this weekend.
You should try it.

Carry on,
xox

*Sally and Ruby-do in the ‘Bu

In case you want to try this yourself:

http://www.zillow.com/santa-barbara-ca/

“What is with all those people who are shouting their shitty statistics at us? Stop it! Stop trying to convince me that the world is a horribly dangerous and massively disappointing and unfulfilling shit-show!”
~Me

The doctor stands there with his hands together, fingers interlaced, the corners of his mouth downturned into a solemn expression.
“I’m afraid your prognosis is grim”, he delivers the news in an equally grim monotone.

Then it starts.

“The odds are against you. Only sixteen percent of people with this thing you have live past a year. Eighty-five percent survive the chemo and radiation only to expire after ninety days.”

Blah, blah, yadda, yadda.

I know you’re just doing your job but I can assure you, nobody heard a thing after the word grim.

I know some really amazing doctors who have saved a ton of lives but why do they insist on immediately covering us with a sauce that smells like death?

Because they don’t want to give anyone FALSE HOPE.

False Hope
To look forward to something that has a strong chance of not happening and you may or may not know it.

Yeah, that would be awful. By all means don’t look forward to anything that might not happen.

Wait. Most things in life have a strong chance of going down the drain. We have no idea how they will play out. That’s why it’s called hope. We hope for the best. Otherwise, it would be called certainty, or ForSuresville.

I remember being forty-years-old and single and being told that I was more likely to die at the hands of a terrorist than to get married.

What?

A very successful and famous writer, who an entire room of us not so famous and successful writers had gathered in order to hang on her every word, ended a really sweet and uplifting day with this nugget.
“You can’t call yourself a writer unless you’ve been rejected many, many times.”
That was the “let’s get real” portion of her talk. It was supposed to be motivating but for me, it was mildly nauseating because if you know her story that was not necessarily the case for her and I think, like the gloomy-Gus guy in the white coat—she doesn’t want to prescribe any FALSE HOPE.

If you beat the odds you’re lucky. I suppose I agree. Or tenacious, delusional, persistent and optimist.

Here’s the thing, this is not a one size fits all world. If it were we would all be the same color, height, and weight. We would all look like Cindy Crawford or Bradley Cooper. Then and only then could anyone tell you EXACTLY how something was going to go down.

There are as many different possible scenarios as there are individual souls in this world. So, at last count just over seven billion.

I don’t care how many people survived six months. If you tell me that, I just may believe you because you’re a doctor—and then I’m fucked. I can’t have my own journey. I won’t make my own miracles.

I don’t care how hard it is to get a movie made in Hollywood. Four or five come out every week, so I know some bozo beat the odds.

I don’t care if ninety percent of writers fail at the premise. Ninety percent of screenplays and eighty percent of novels are rejected because of poor structure.

Dan Brown’s three novels before The Da Vinci Code all had printings of less than 10,000 copies.
Other rejection counts: Gone With the Wind, 38 times; Dune, 20 times; A Wrinkle in Time, 29 times; Lord of the Flies, 20 times; Kon Tiki, 20 times; Watership Down, 17 times; Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, 18 times; Chicken Soup for the Soul, 33 times; James Joyce’s The Dubliners, 22 times; Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, more than 100 times; MASH, 21 times.

I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care!

I believe in FALSE HOPE. I love FALSE HOPE. I spread FALSE HOPE on crackers and eat it.

All of those people had hope, false or not, that they would succeed—or they would have given up. The same goes for those who survive past their expiration date. They didn’t listen to the statistics and I can guarantee you they mainlined FALSE HOPE.

I for one, think we all should all believe in FALSE HOPE. About everything. All of the time.

I shudder at the alternative.

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

I forwarded this to my honey yesterday. He is two weeks into a minor but highly annoying post-surgical recovery.
“Thanks”, he said, nodding his head, “I needed the reminder”.
“Me too”, I replied as I reassuringly rubbed his back. Then I thought of you guys.
I think at one point or another we ALL need the reminder that everything is energy…and we are a self-healing masterpiece/miracle in a meat-suit.
Love you,
Carry on,
xox

Your body has self-healing superpowers
by psgrout

“Life is not about healing; it’s about accepting that we are already healed.”–Annie Zalezsak prescription-pad

Yesterday, I invited readers to share a meme from the old paradigm, a meme they are now re-writing, thank you very much.

A wonderful reader named Bob brought up a meme that is in our face night and day. “Getting old means your body is supposed to fall apart.”

This meme is such a big player in the current paradigm that I thought it deserved its own post. We are constantly being slapped around with the crazy idea that our bodies are plotting against us.

Just watch an hour of television. The drugs ads warn us into great vigilance:

Better watch out for this symptom.

Make sure you’re aware of that problem.

It’s only a matter of time until your body is going to reach out and strangle you.

Here’s the ad I’d like to run:

Your body is a self-healing masterpiece.
It is brilliantly equipped with natural self-repair mechanisms that fight infections, repair broken proteins, kill cancer cells and keep you in tip-top shape. The only thing that ever stops it from doing its job is your ridiculous belief that it is not your closest ally.

I got this story the other day from a reader of E-Squared. It was one of a long list of things she says she manifested:

“I regulate my own health.
If I ever feel like I am going to have an allergy attack or something in my body hurts, I simply give myself command not to entertain it, and the allergy attacks and pain go away immediately. I used to pop anti histamine almost daily in spring and summer seasons. I have not taken any allergy medicine for a while now. I simply tell myself, I don’t believe in allergies and I am the overlord of my body and nervous system. My body obeys what I ask, nicely of course 🙂

“Using this, I have stopped allergy attacks, aches and pains, fever, upset stomach etc. experimenting with my own abilities is just so much fun! Anytime I meditate, I reach a new level of self control and enhancement of my ability to control my own health.”

And lastly, I thought I’d re-run this blog post from a year ago about this very topic. Enjoy!!

“It’s supposed to be a professional secret, but I’ll tell you anyway. We doctors do nothing. We only help and encourage the doctor within.”–Albert Schweitzer

At the party of “anything is possible,” there’s always the one cranky uncle who sits over in the corner. More times than not, the belief that stubbornly refuses to budge is the body as in “My mind has no control over my health, disease, aging, weight and any other fool thing my body decides to do.”

So today, I’ve got a packet of Reese’s Pieces and, like Elliott who was able to lure E.T. out of hiding, I’m hoping to lure out that curmudgeonly uncle to at least take a spin on the dance floor.

Reese Piece No. 1: Dr. Lissa Rankin’s book, Mind Over Medicine. After years of being a physician, Dr. Rankin finally got fed up with the seven minutes she was allowed to see patients and the refusal by her colleagues to acknowledge the most powerful component of a person’s health: their beliefs and their thoughts. Initially, she was as hard-nosed and closed-minded as any doctor, but after investigating 50 years of peer-reviewed medical literature (New England Journal of Medicine and Journal of the American Medical Association, to name a few), she found ample evidence proving that beliefs play a powerful role in a person’s biochemistry and to ignore those findings was irresponsible, a betrayal of the Hippocratic Oath.

Reese’s Piece No. 2: The body is wired to heal itself. Our bodies are self-regulating, healing organisms, constantly striving for homeostasis. But instead of teaching our children this all-important fact, we teach them they need someone or something outside themselves to heal. The minute they get a fever or an earache, we rush them to that all-knowing doctor. This, at a very early age, cements in the fallacy that our bodies can’t heal themselves. Most of the thoughts in our default setting are planted before age 5.

Reese’s Piece No. 3: Placebos are often as effective as drugs. Patients have been able to grow hair, drop blood pressure, lower cholesterol, watch ulcers disappear and cure about every other symptom after being treated with nothing but sugar pills. It was their belief they were getting “medicine” that cured them, not the medicine itself.

Dr. Bruce Mosely, a surgeon and team physician for the Houston Rockets, performed arthroscopic knee surgery on two of ten middle-aged, former military guys. Three of the 10 had their knees rinsed (without the scraping) and the other five had no surgical procedure at all. It was an exercise in just pretend. After two years, all ten believed their surgery was a success. What Mosely discovered is that the bigger and more dramatic the patient perceives the intervention to be, the bigger the placebo effect.

Reese’s Piece No. 4: Our beliefs are the hinge on which our bodies function.
Rankin tells the story of a guy with tumors the size of oranges. After begging his doctor to try an experimental new drug he’d read about, he was treated with the drug and his tumors disappeared. Several weeks later, reports hit the airwaves that this new drug was not as powerful as originally thought. The tumors returned. His doctor, by now savvy, gave his patient a placebo, telling him it was a stronger form of the drug and that the ineffective trials had been using too little of this powerful drug. Once again, the tumors from his stage 4 lymphoma began to disappear. Finally, the FDA pronounced the drug ineffective and pulled it off the market. The patient, who had been rapidly recovering, died within a week.

Okay, enough candy. I could go on and on about how 79 percent of medical students develop the symptoms they’re studying. Or about the woman with a split personality who has diabetes in one of her personalities and normal sugar levels in the other.

But I’m not a doctor and would never dream of prescribing anything.

But I do know this:

We should teach our children that their bodies have self-healing superpowers.

And we should quit hexing ourselves by looking for disease.

And we should remember that if chimpanzees can lower their blood pressure at will, something Harvard doc, Herbert Benson, discovered in his research, there’s probably not much we CAN’T do to heal ourselves.

Uncle, are you ready for that dance?

Pam Grout is the author of 18 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality and the about to be released, Thank and Grow Rich: a 30-day Experiment in Shameless Gratitude and Unabashed Joy.

To all of you out there, and there are many, many of you, who are willing to be toast on your way to transformation—we are all in this together—and I applaud you with my crispy, toasted little hands!

Love,
The piece of burnt toast you’re smelling right now.
xox

Hi you Guys,
You’re going to LOVE this story. Trust me. I know. It’s just what your dear hearts ordered.
Carry on,
xox

“When the world feels cold and dark and lonely, take heart: Anybody can make their corner of it brighter.”

By Elizabeth Gilbert

Some years ago, I was stuck on a crosstown bus in New York City during rush hour.
Traffic was barely moving. The bus was filled with cold, tired people who were deeply irritated—with one another; with the rainy, sleety weather; with the world itself. Two men barked at each other about a shove that might or might not have been intentional. A pregnant woman got on, and nobody offered her a seat. Rage was in the air; no mercy would be found here.

But as the bus approached Seventh Avenue, the driver got on the intercom.
“Folks,” he said, “I know you’ve had a rough day and you’re frustrated. I can’t do anything about the weather or traffic, but here’s what I can do. As each one of you gets off the bus, I will reach out my hand to you. As you walk by, drop your troubles into the palm of my hand, okay? Don’t take your problems home to your families tonight—just leave ’em with me. My route goes right by the Hudson River, and when I drive by there later, I’ll open the window and throw your troubles in the water. Sound good?”

It was as if a spell had lifted. Everyone burst out laughing. Faces gleamed with surprised delight. People who’d been pretending for the past hour not to notice each other’s existence were suddenly grinning at each other like, is this guy serious?

Oh, he was serious.

At the next stop—just as promised—the driver reached out his hand, palm up, and waited. One by one, all the exiting commuters placed their hand just above his and mimed the gesture of dropping something into his palm. Some people laughed as they did this, some teared up—but everyone did it. The driver repeated the same lovely ritual at the next stop, too. And the next. All the way to the river.

We live in a hard world, my friends.
Sometimes it’s extra difficult to be a human being. Sometimes you have a bad day. Sometimes you have a bad day that lasts for several years. You struggle and fail. You lose jobs, money, friends, faith, and love. You witness horrible events unfolding in the news, and you become fearful and withdrawn. There are times when everything seems cloaked in darkness. You long for the light but don’t know where to find it.

But what if you are the light? What if you’re the very agent of illumination that a dark situation begs for?

That’s what this bus driver taught me—that anyone can be the light, at any moment. This guy wasn’t some big power player. He wasn’t a spiritual leader. He wasn’t some media-savvy “influencer.” He was a bus driver—one of society’s most invisible workers. But he possessed real power, and he used it beautifully for our benefit.

When life feels especially grim, or when I feel particularly powerless in the face of the world’s troubles, I think of this man and ask myself, What can I do, right now, to be the light? Of course, I can’t personally end all wars, or solve global warming, or transform vexing people into entirely different creatures. I definitely can’t control traffic. But I do have some influence on everyone I brush up against, even if we never speak or learn each other’s name. How we behave matters because within human society everything is contagious—sadness and anger, yes, but also patience and generosity. Which means we all have more influence than we realize.

No matter who you are, or where you are, or how mundane or tough your situation may seem, I believe you can illuminate your world. In fact, I believe this is the only way the world will ever be illuminated—one bright act of grace at a time, all the way to the river.

Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of, most recently, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear (Riverhead).

Read more: http://www.oprah.com/inspiration/Elizabeth-Gilbert-May-2016-O-Magazine#ixzz46OWzc4wR

“We are Starstuff and we remember what we forgot”
~Carl Sagen

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” – W.B. Yeats

Marinate in those two thoughts today you guys and make your Sunday a great one!

Carry on,

xox

Mishap/Miracle #74 – Expectations

I have come to believe that life is a series of strung together mishaps and miracles that stretch us, inform us, teach us, and more often than not — amuse us.

At least, that’s the way my life has looked so far.

But the things that never cease to bite me in the ass—are my expectations.

Never ones to disappoint, good or bad they meet me, leaving their sharp, pointed little teeth marks on my tushy as they leave.

Sometimes all you can do is laugh. One such story goes like this:

As a thank you, a client gave my husband an extremely generous gift certificate to the latest, greatest, can’t get a seat for a year restaurant.

After staying up one cold December night to be the first caller to their unlisted reservation line, which is answered for only fifteen minutes at three in the morning (slight exaggeration), I was able, with an adequate amount of lying, begging and my AmEx card number, to secure a reservation for a Tuesday evening the following June (no exaggeration).

When the big night arrived it was unseasonably warm so my husband decided on a tan brushed suede jacket in lieu of a traditional sports coat.

Actually, he pulled it out, put it on, and put it back on the hanger three times, and here’s why:

That jacket was purchased on a whim at the Barney’s Warehouse sale, after too much wine at lunch…and robbing a bank. You see, even at the reduced price it still cost more than our monthly mortgage payment. Times three more. It was so expensive I even blanched — but love is love.

The reason my frugal hubby paid this kings ransom for a jacket is because the moment he put it on it was like wearing a second skin (literally) or marshmallow cream– it is that comfortable, and comfort is his middle name (Marcel translated into English = comfort).

It is made of a suede that is so light, buttery soft and supple it is literally a chamois (shammy) cloth. Are you getting how soft it is?

Chamois, as everyone knows, are super absorbent by nature.
They are thirsty little devils that draw liquid to them and as such are never to be worn in the humidity of Miami. We felt safe in old parched, drought-stricken, wizened raisin California.

What could go wrong?

Oh hell, I don’t know, maybe this…?
My husband wore that jacket three or four times.
Each time when he returned home there was a giant “spot” on the front or the sleeve.

That little chamois assbite had quenched its thirst on olive oil or mineral water or some other random liquid at the next table.

And it cost us. It cost us dearly.

You see, when you buy such an “investment piece” for your wardrobe, you are required to call your money manager to set aside a maintenance budget.

We neglected to do that.

Hence, the cleaning bills for the magnificent, thirsty, chamois jacket were budget busters. We ate Spam for weeks in order to pay them.

So you can imagine our expectations on that balmy night in June.

Wear the jacket, feel great, look fantastic and throw caution to the wind?
OR
Leave the jacket at home and be able to afford a vacation?

I checked our bank statement. “What the hell! Let’s live!”, I yelled, yanking the jacket off the hanger and swinging it over my head like the hellraiser with deep pockets that I am. NOT.

Doesn’t the ad say –– “Wearing your favorite f-you expensive, wildly comfortable chamois jacket to the obnoxiously haughty, over-rated, of the moment restaurant – PRICELESS!?”

But on the ride to the West Side, in the back of our minds… we were expecting the worst.

So we hatched a plan.

They don’t have coat rooms in LA, so he was to take off the jacket when he sat down and put it to the side. Preferably as far away from food as it is possible to do in a restaurant.

As they sat us in a big, comfy booth we surveyed the scene and put our plan into effect.

I took the chamois bastard, folded it neatly, and tucked it halfway under the table on the seat next to me. Then I pushed it even further away, to the far end of the booth.

Whew! Safe!
We toasted our good fortune with a lovely Bordeaux, and as the gregarious waiter who was feeding off our giddiness, went to put the bottle back on to its coaster, it didn’t quite make it.

As if in slow motion, all three of us watched in horror as the three-quarters full bottle of red wine teetered…then wobbled…then fell over onto its side –– glug, glug, glugging its contents directly onto his light tan chamois jacket, turning it the most beautiful shade of red.

The waiter, unable to right the bottle in time to stop the calamity was mortified, he gasped so loud the entire room turned around and went silent.

Bus boys came running from every direction with white towels, but there was no need—not a drop to clean up. Nope. Chamois is efficient that way.

It had soaked up the entire bottle.
I think I heard the jacket hick-up.

My husband and I looked over at each other and when our eyes met we burst out laughing.
Not an appropriate, embarrassed giggle. Oh no! Huge  loud, face contorting guffaws.
The kind of laughter that’s contagious; working its way around the room, making other people laugh for no apparent reason.

I could tell by their faces that most of the patrons were convinced we were insane.

Our sides hurt from laughing, I cried my false eyelashes off.

Within seconds, the waiter, who was certain that fateful night was his last, led the manager to the scene of the crime in order to smooth things over and calm us down. I think our hysterical laughter unnerved everyone more than if we had started cursing and yelling. Interesting, right?

“I can get this cleaned for you, or we’ll replace it” she offered in her best managerial voice.

That just made us laugh louder. “Too…expensive…” My husband gasped.
“You’d have to sell the place first” I managed to say, dabbing at the eyeliner that had run all over my face.

Then at the same time, we assured her “Oh, don’t blame the poor waiter…it wasn’t his fault — it’s this damn jacket!” Bahahahaha.

Expectations met. Jacket ruined. Check that one off the list.

*Addendum: The manager kept the chamois nightmare insisting she had “people” who could get the red wine out or they would replace it. We never expected to see it again. My husband found the charge on his AmEx just in case. Then we forgot about it.

Three months later she called to say that it was ready to be picked up. “Good as new” were the words she used.
I was skeptical, but there it hangs, in the closet, our little tan chamois mishap/miracle that reminds us all the time — you get what you expect.

Carry on,
Xox

If you haven’t read this yet…you must. I mean it.

I’m visiting a friend who is about a decade older than I am and often runs circles around me—and I love her for that! She was remarking with great disappointment the other day, how all her contemporaries do when they get together is complain about their health.

Fuck that!
I say, get younger friends!

One newish member of my tribe is thirty-five. Which mean she could be my daughter. The beauty of having her in my life, besides the snort laughs and introducing me to different emojis, is that fact that I know Steph would NEVER tolerate me going to bed early when she visits or hearing me complain about my sacroiliac (whatever that is).

So read this. It’s by Liz Gilbert and it may change your mind about things.
Carry on,
xox

Dear Ones –
This is a line my (73-year-old) mother said to me the other day while she was issuing a gentle warning not to fall into the trap of letting your life get smaller as you get older.

She was talking about how frustrating she finds it that — somewhere around the age of 50 or 60 — she watched as so many of her peers stopped making goals and long-term plans for adventure and exploration in their lives. Instead, they began shutting down, and making their lives smaller, and their minds smaller, too. She got so weary of listening to them making self-deprecating jokes about how old they were, and how much their bodies hurt, and how bad their hearing and eyesight was getting… She felt they had surrendered to age far, far, far too soon. My mom said, “Nothing is more frustrating to me than listening to people who are still vital saying, ‘Well, at our age, you have to be careful…'”

No. She begs to differ.

As you get older, there is no more time to be careful, and no more REASON to be careful — at least as my mom sees it. Instead, this is time to seize as much life and joy and adventure and learning and novelty as you possibly can. As my mom said, “I hate seeing people slide themselves into the grave far before their time. Death will come when it comes — but it’s crazy to sit around waiting for it. If you’re not dead yet, you’re not done yet.”

My mom thinks that everyone should have a five-year plan for their lives, and also a ten-year plan, and a twenty-year plan — and that every few years you have to revisit your plans to see if your goals and aspirations have changed…and that you should never stop making these plans, even as you age. (Especially as you age!) She has shared with me the travel she wants to do in the next 20 years, and work she wants to finish, the projects she wants to begin, the cultures she wants to explore, the people she wants to enjoy, her fitness goals…

It’s inspiring.

I have heard people speak of their lives as if they were finished at 30, done at 40, washed up at 50, too late to start over at 60, no more chances at 70…

But are you still here?
Then you aren’t done yet.

Don’t make your life smaller as the years pass. If it’s time to start over, then it’s time to start over. If you aren’t where you planned to be, then it’s time to make a new plan.
Today, I ask you all to share the most inspiring stories you know (from your own life, or the lives of others) about people who refused to be done yet because they aren’t dead yet.

Rise up, everyone, and keep rising.
We are still here. There is much to be done and enjoyed.
Let’s go.
ONWARD,
LG