relationships

Hello luvs,
This is my latest Huffington Post.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-bertolus/an-open-letter-to-the-rec_b_12250902.html

It’s about divorce. And life after divorce. And dating. And dating after divorce. And maybe, just maybe the sex as my friend Sandra refers to it.

Please feel free to comment, like and share. I’d love it if you would!

Carry on,
xox

I see you there, under the covers with your swollen eyes and a nose as raw and runny as your recently broken heart. Darling, I can see you because I’ve been you.

I also see dead people. And right now you are a zombie. Numb inside. A card carrying member of the walking dead.

But you will re-join the living—I can promise you that. How do I know? Because I too crawled out from beneath the smoldering rubble of a divorce—and lived to tell about it.

And as your future self, I can assure you that not only will you survive—you will thrive!

Am I an expert? Well, yes. Yes, I am. Even though no two divorces are alike, once you’ve lived through one you are part of a select group who can speak about it with authority. Kind of like plane crash survivors or those unfortunate souls who are born with a third nipple.

Besides, I am your future self. I am older and wiser and I deserve your respect.

Listen, everyone on the planet has had their heart broken at least five times, once, and very few (less than one percent), fail to fall in love again. So it goes without saying that the odds are in your favor. That your dried up raisin of a heart will eventually heal enough to try this love thing again.

You may even get re-married—but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

I can assure you that once the initial shock wears off you’ll silence the Adele, stop eating raw chocolate chip cookie dough straight from the roll and get back to wearing pants instead of pajamas bottoms. Your skin will clear up, you’ll get the best haircut of your life, and on a random Thursday night, you’ll finally agree to meet friends for drinks. Once there, you’ll only cry a little when someone brings up the holidays. Later that night, alone in bed, a turning point will be reached. You’ll have the realization that for the first time in like forever—you actually had—what’s the word? Fun.

Now a word of warning. Everyone and their cousin will try to fix you up with someone they know who’s “perfect” for you.

It is the craziest thing! No one can stand to see a divorced person single for more than five minutes. It’s just a fact of life so accept it. Now, this is either going to become a great distraction—or send you to bed for a month. Don’t get discouraged. I’m here to tell you this immediate aftermath is not the phase where anything meaningful happens so don’t worry about it. Take a lot of bubble baths, drink tea, catch up on your reading, watch every Nora Ephron movie, and eventually send out a search party to find your sense of humor—you’re going to need it.

Because here’s the thing. You are going to want to date again! 

I know, right now that sounds about as fun as walking barefoot on hot coals, or picking them up and putting them in your mouth—but hear me out. Eventually, you will meet someone you really like and when that initial rush of excitement hits you, it is going to feel like a combination of Christmas Eve and the Fourth of July. The body has sense memory where this is concerned. Trust it. You may be tempted to go slow, and that’s probably advisable, but after your protracted post-divorce hiatus from fun, laughter and (gulp) sex, this new attraction will feel as like a tall glass of ice water in hell.

We can talk about sex if you want to. I think we should.
I know it’s making you throw up a little in your mouth, but that’s all the more reason you will need to get back in the saddle, so to speak. Probably not right away…but sometime this decade. There’s just no way to get around this so I’m gonna give it to ya straight. Sex for the first time with someone besides your ex is going to feel extremely weird and titillating, and awful, and wonderful, uncomfortable and ridiculous.

A confusing mixed salad of emotions that will be hard to overcome.

There’s no denying that. But you must. And you will. Please, I beg of you, don’t listen to your self-sabotaging brain chatter. It will only fuck things up—in a bad way. I am here to tell you this can be exciting as hell and you will definitely be On. Your. Game—so don’t worry. You will feel present, awake and alive which I’m just guessing is very different than what was happening in your marriage just prior to your split.

Listen, I’m your future self, so I already know what went down. No judgment here. I only want to congratulate you on the progress you’ll make.

Listen, I thought this would be a good time to come talk to you in order to assuage your fears, dry your tears, and at the very least help you to crack a smile because, hey, it’s a start. It means you broke through the numbness and felt something. Something besides sadness, shame and anger.

I also highly recommend breathing and putting one foot in front of the other because that helps too, just keep moving forward.

I can promise you, the more time that goes by, the less you will look behind you at that jackass who doesn’t deserve you, and the more enthusiasm you will start to feel toward the future.

I can promise that because I am you. Only, I’m in the future. I am healed and whole and happy as shit—and I’m waiting for you here.

xox

Hi loves,
This is a couple of years old but seems just as relevant as ever!
Happy weekend all you self-sacrificing mommies. I’ll be at the pool with a cocktail.
I know, I’d better pray I don’t choke on an olive because I’m going straight to hell.
Carry on,
xox

Being that I’m in my fifties most of my friends have grown kids.
But since age is just a number and I’m  just immature enough, I have several younger  friends with very small children, kids under the age of ten.

I was talking to one of these younger moms and she asked my advice.

Not about mothering of course, since I forgot to have children and she doesn’t want to go to jail, but about the level of commitment she and her girlfriends have to their kids and their spouses, and about how epidemic it is—this crazy, twenty-first century level of parenting and wife-ing.

Oh, and about how they don’t have the same level of commitment to themselves.

Seems she was chatting with a friend of hers, a fellow mom, and they were joking about how clueless their sons and husbands were. They mused that without their loving guidance these males would be feral, running in packs, eating garbage and living under bridges with trolls.

They commiserated that it was an all-consuming job with no time off  for good behavior and no fancy vacations.

We laughed of course, but it all sounded very familiar to me because that has been a recurring theme for most of the moms I have known.

“If it weren’t for me they wouldn’t eat, or they would live on Cheetos and Dr. Pepper. Their growth would be stunted, they would be spindly and stupid from lack of proper nutrition.”

“If it weren’t for me they would wear the same filthy clothes, brush their teeth once a month when they showered (or fell into some water and called that a bath), and their ears, fingernails, and feet would be caked black with dirt. Even their lice would have lice.”

“If it weren’t for me they wouldn’t have one lick of manners, as a matter of fact, they probably wouldn’t have much of a grasp of proper English or any social graces whatsoever. They would scratch their balls, grunt, and   never look up from their phone, iPad or computer. They would be complete social misfits.”

In a nutshell, if it weren’t for the tireless sacrifices, commitment and love to these guys (and girls) they would be just shells of their current magnificent selves. They would have NEVER made the team, passed fourth grade, gotten that big job, done a speck of homework, learned music, gotten braces, written that speech, etc., ect., ect.

It’s okay if it’s a two-way street – but let’s get real here – it can be very one-sided.

So I listened, and laughed and then got tough with her – because I love her – and she asked.

“That’s all ego talking. You have to justify all that time and energy so you tell yourself basically, they’d be nothing without you.”

Is any of that true? Probably not. As a gross generalization, woman DO tend to bring out the best in men. And children. And small animals. And other women too.

I explained to her the oxygen mask theory. It’s amazing actually.
The airlines have to tell you that in the case of cabin depressurization, it is imperative to put the oxygen mask on yourself FIRST and then your child (hopefully your husband can put on his own or you have bigger problems than you think.)
They give you permission to go first; which seems completely counterintuitive to mothers –– so they have to be reminded.

“You and your girlfriend have to put your oxygen masks on first, otherwise you’re no good to anyone.”

Then a thought entered my mind like a lightening bolt. I got chills it was so profound. It was Divine Guidance. I certainly didn’t come up with it, it was too good.

“Oh Jeez, hey, I just got this.
If you really believe what you’re saying, who would YOU be if you had devoted the same time, energy, commitment, sacrifice and LOVE to yourself that you have put into your family all these years?”

Then we both teared up.
Holy shit that’s big.

If you’re devoted to making everyone around you great, when is it your turn?

A ton of woman do it when they become empty nesters, but why wait?

This doesn’t apply to only kids and family.
I did it with my boss and my job, until I wised up, woke up, and set boundaries.
We make their lives easier, smoother, more fun and better, while we lose sleep at night.

I think it’s time for the oxygen mask first thinking to prevail, and taking the time to figure out how to make our own lives become great too.

Are you with me?

Can you relate to this kind of sacrifice and commitment to family? Have you found a balance? Let’s hear it in the comments.

Big love to the moms out there,
Xox

This is the cake my tribe gets almost every time we get together because we have SO much to be grateful for that if we listed everything there wouldn’t be enough room for frosting!

*”The running commentary that dominates my field of consciousness is kind of an asshole.”
~ Dan Harris ABC News Nightline Co-Anchor

Who hasn’t felt like that about those saboteurs that dominate your brain-chatter? Listen, did you know that you can banish them for good? Well, you can, so let me tell ya how!

I’m in the middle of Pam Grout’s new book Thank and Grow Rich which is about the unimaginable power of gratitude.

Although the title insinuates it is about accumulating money—it is so much more than that. It is THE gratitude handbook. A  manual on how you can start thanking your way toward a “rich” life in every damn way you can imagine.

Love, relationships, creativity, peace of mind, and FUN!

Yes, life can be fun.

*”Life is a ticket to the greatest show on earth.”
~ Martin H. Fischer Physician and Author

Here’s the rub. *“Quit thinking, start thanking.”

I could blah, blah, blah, all over this page giving you a synopsis of what the book is about but I think I’ll let Pam, the author, do that instead because she says it way better than I ever could, as a matter of fact, she did! Here is a quote from page 72.

*AMASSING ALCHEMIC CAPITOL

“The bliss, the wisdom, the creativity, the laughter, the friendships, the joy, the serenity and peace that have been, for the most part, seen as an impossible dream will become your most ordinary state of being.”
~ The Way of Mastery

More than another book on counting blessings, this is a book about climate change. Changing the climate of your energy field, upgrading the resonance with which you perceive the world.
Practicing gratitude, more than penciling a written list, is to practice alchemy.
Looking for the good in life literally changes things. Physically changes things.
Financially changes things.
Mentally and emotionally changes things.
It literally changes atoms and rearranges molecules.

Cynics like to discount gratitude, downgrade it as sweet, nice, something for naive Pollyannas.

What I’ve discovered is that living on the frequency of joy and gratitude causes cataclysmic reverberations.”

So I, for one, am getting my Thank You on. What do you think? Are you with me?

Carry on,
xox

*Taken directly from the book Thank and Grow Rich
https://www.amazon.com/Thank-Grow-Rich-Experiment-Shameless/dp/1401949843/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1474414863&sr=1-1&keywords=thank+and+grow+rich

Hi guys,
I have a few friends out there in the cold, hard, dating world so I was looking for some stories about dating. I wrote this a few years back and all I want to make sure you know is this:
1) I am in no way advocating lowering your standards.
2) Dating sucks unless you find a way to make it fun.
3) Compromise is not a dirty word—in my opinion, it is the magic component of relationship longevity.

Not submission. Not rolling over. Compromise.

Carry on,
xox

COM.PRO.MISE

ˈkämprəˌmīz/
noun
1) Settle a dispute by mutual concession. (In my opinion, this is ABSOLUTELY the cornerstone of a happy relationship. Pick your battles, people)

synonyms: meet each other halfway, come to an understanding, make a deal, make concessions, find a happy medium, strike a balance; give and take.
“we compromised” (yes, yes, yes, yes and yes!)
(And my personal favorite, agree to disagree, Relax! we’re not attached at the hip)

2) Accept standards that are lower than is desired.
(What? No! ABSOLUTELY NOT That is NOT what it means to compromise. No wonder people are still single. Jeez)

My sweet darling, husband and I are celebrating our thirteenth wedding anniversary today.

We met and fell in love late in life. I was 42. He was 47.

He is a wonderful man, but he is a self-described curmudgeon.
He has a giant heart, surrounded by a hard, opinionated, veneer…wrapped in bacon.

When a friend asked me today what the difference was between people who marry late and the people who never marry at all…I said:compromise.

Oh, don’t get your panties in a bunch, sit down and hear me out.

I think the people who wait and wait and then never find the “right person”, believe that the second definition is true.

I did for a while. Okay, years. Make that decades. I thought compromise meant I had to lower my standards.

“No way! I will not! I want what I want, and I will not rest until I have dated every guy in LA (maybe it just felt like it) to find the man of my dreams. He must be perfect in EVERY way.”

Good luck with that Janet.

And like the amazingly flexible person that I was (not); I wanted my life to stay exactly the same…except exponentially better.

More love, more travel, more money, definitely more sex, more friends, more, more, more, more, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I was willing to give up…nothing.

“GIVE UP something to be with a man? Nope, if that’s the case, then he’s just not the right guy for me.”

My husband is a contractor, and he espouses his Triangle Theory and assures all his clients that THIS is the way things work in the world. It goes like this:

Money + Time + Quality
When building something, you can only have two out of the three.
Quality is not cheap.
Fast is not cheap.
Quality takes time and costs money.

Cutting corners either in cost or time spent, sacrifices quality.
It is impossible to get all three.

Along the way, I slowly and clumsily learned this lesson.
Compromise became my co-pilot.
Was everything on my list REALLY non-negotiable?

Here’s my triangle from back in the day.

Gorgeous, and artsy = unemployed.
Rich and smart = hooker fucker
Rat faced but kind = the fall-back guy you date in between rich and smart; gorgeous and artsy.

Maybe you can’t can’t get the Prince Charming trifecta but you can get damn close, and that’s okay.
It’s NOT settling. It’s being a grown up and realistic.
Just like I’m realistic, acknowledging that I’m no prize.
I’m only two out of three, and that’s okay (can you guess which?)

Is it a compromise if your two out of three match your beloveds?
I think not.

Carry on, know that there is someone out there for you.
Do you want to be right…or happy?
Stop looking for perfect.
It’s highly overrated.
And expensive.

Love, love,
Xox

A few months back I was wondering why things felt like a ton of effort. Mis-communication was rampant. Things were sticky and sucky all at the same time. Since my wise dead friend pretty much knows what I’m thinking about all the time, she offered this nugget one day, “Don’t answer an unasked question” she said, “It never goes well.”

Well duh, I thought to myself. Who does that anyway?

At first, what she meant was lost on me, too opaque, it’s true meaning hidden among the words.

After I thought about it for a minute—or fifteen—I began to get the gist.

Who answers questions no one has asked? Uh, Me! Turns out I do it all the time! And as I shared this little saying with a few of my friends it seems that they do too!

We’re all familiar with unsolicited advice. You can find it here, from me, every day. Ha!

But the truth of it is, if you’re here, chances are you wanna know what I have to say. Unlike my husband. The poor guy, he’s just venting and I’m bent on solving all of his problems in the kitchen every night while we make dinner. It starts with “Here’s what you need to do” and ends with “I know, I’m sorry, I should just keep my mouth shut”.

Every freakin’ night. The man’s a saint.
But seriously!

What about when you meet a friend for coffee and the first thing they say to you is, “You look tired” (translation: you look like shit warmed over). Aren’t you tempted to reply “No one asked you”?
I am. But I never say it. Too jackassy.
But seriously!

Just to clarify, here is what she meant.

Don’t talk to people about their kids—unless they ask you and even then it’s dicey. NEVER, EVER do it if you are childless. It could be hazardous to your health.

Don’t go on and on about your fabulous vacation, love life, doggie day care, kitchen remodel, new handbag or stories about your boss if you haven’t been specifically asked. There’s no faster way to clear a room.

The same holds true about voicing your feelings about politics, religion, race relations, the Olympics, mental illness, ADHD, OCD, or any other acronym that ends with a D.

Wait to be asked.

Don’t offer the steamy details of past romances with your current mate. Even if they ask. Change the subject.

Giving other writers feedback on things they’ve written? Oh, hell no! Don’t do it unless you’re asked.

Along those lines, don’t send out unsolicited manuscripts—they get thrown in the trash or people feel obligated to give you their “feedback” which are often not-so-thinly-veiled insults.

The same goes for flash drives filled with songs you wrote or pictures you took. Wait to be asked or suffer the consequences.

Recently, a friend making conversation told her sister, whom I had just met, about my screenplay. “You need to read it”, she enthused. “You’d love it!” I cringed. “Uh, sure”, her sister replied uncomfortably. “Here, let me give you her email”, my friend continued. I could tell her sister would rather have dental surgery. It was beyond awkward. I wanted to die.

There is a larger force at work here and it is what my deceased friend was referring to. It’s Energy. It’s so much better if you stop and read a room, the collective asking so to speak. It’s easy to tell what they’re asking for but you have to take a minute, be quiet and tune in.

That’s also true for the world at large. Even though nobody was specifically asking for a movie about large highly evolved blue aliens on a distant world endangered by humans, James Cameron hit the collective nerve/jackpot with Avatar.

He answered a question buried so deep we didn’t even know we were asking. He tuned in.

That’s turning out to be the answer to everything in life these days!

Carry on,
xox

In case you didn’t see the latest from Liz Gilbert. It’s SOOOO good!
xoxJ

Dear Ones –

I’ve been going through a lot of big life transformations lately — moving through divorce, and loss, and the terrifying illnesses of loved ones, and outrageous upheavals of emotion — and none of it is easy.

Sometimes our transformations bring out the best in us, and sometimes they do not. When the ground breaks open because of an earthquake, you can be certain that everything — absolutely EVERYTHING — will be upturned, unearthed, or cracked open.

When you get cracked open, you will not always love what you discover about yourself. You wish you were a better person (whatever that means.) You wish you had handled this or that crisis with more grace. You wish you were stronger. You wish you were more certain about things. You wish you could go back and have that conversation all over again, and do it more wisely. You wish you were more forgiving. You wish you were more honest. You wish you were less judgmental. You wish you were less emotional. You wish you had figured things out sooner, or better, or smarter. Sometimes, you must face the truth that you have caused pain to yourself. Sometimes you have caused pain to others.

In short: You wish you were different. And wishing that you were different always, always, always hurts.

This is all very natural.

But we can choose in these difficult moments of self-doubt and regret and confusion whether or not we are going to hate ourselves for any of it…or whether we are going to practice self-love.
This is important.

The parts of yourself that you do not love are terribly vital, because they demand that you dig deep — deeper than you ever thought you would have to dig — in order to summon compassion and forgiveness for the struggling human being whom you are.

And until you learn to treat the struggling human being whom you are with a modicum of empathy, tenderness, and love, you will never be able to love anyone or anything with the fullness of your heart…and that would be a great shame. Because this is what we all want, isn’t it? This is what we came here for, right? To learn how to love each other with the fullness of our hearts?

Please know this: Whenever you withhold love from yourself, you are withholding love from the world…period.
We really need you to stop doing that.

The world has enough problems, without you withholding any more love.

Please understand that these difficult parts of yourself (the shameful parts, the regretful parts, and those episodes of your biography that are so spiky and troublesome and contradictory and embarrassing that you simply don’t know what to do with them)…please understand that these difficult parts of yourself are your ultimate teachers in compassion. Those parts of yourself are where you must begin learning how to love.

You guys? This is not a simple or straightforward moment in my life right now. There is a lot to sort through. There are a lot of parts of myself that I must examine now with unflinching honesty, if I am to grow.

I am willing to practice self-honesty. I believe in it, fully.
BUT SELF-HONESTY WITHOUT SELF-LOVE IS NOTHING BUT SELF-ABUSE.

And here is what I am finding, as I age: I simply do not have the stamina for self-abuse anymore. Just can’t do it anymore. I dip into it sometimes for a moment or two, but I can’t stay there — my heart just isn’t in it anymore. I used to be so good at self-hatred and shame! I could attack myself for YEARS — drowning in an endless wave of self-criticism. But I’m out of shape these days when it comes to self-hatred. I’ve lost that special kind of emotional endurance which is required for nonstop self-degradation and attack. I can’t do that to anyone else, and I can’t do it to myself, either. Too much practice in empathy and too many years of tenderness have ruined my chances to collapse ever again into the job of full-time shame.

I have loved all the hatred for myself out of myself.
(Well. Mostly, anyhow.)
🙂

And so now, when I suffer and struggle, I ask myself, “What part of you is hurting, Liz, and how we can love it — even as you are hurting?”

We must begin there — with the parts that we do not love.

This doesn’t mean being complacent. This doesn’t mean living in denial. This doesn’t mean that I have stopped trying to grow and transform. This doesn’t mean that I am excused from being self-accountable. This doesn’t mean burying my head in the sand, or telling myself lies. It just means: There is no part of myself anymore that I do not believe is deserving of love.
And that’s good news.

Because the only way I’m ever going to learn how to love any of you beautiful freaks — by which I mean all 7 billion of you gorgeous, unpredictable, troubled, weird, contradictory, struggling, devastatingly inspiring, broken, and perfect humans with whom I share this difficult planet — is if I can learn how to love my own freaky-ass self, too.

If I can accept me, Dear Ones, I can accept anyone.
So this is where we shall begin.
OK?

LG

I wailed woefully at the top of my lungs and launched into a violent secession of rapid-fire kicks to the defenseless cabinetry that had the misfortune of being in line with my right foot.

Huge crocodile tears fell from my eyes into the batter, adding more salt than the recipe called for.

With one fluid motion fueled by rage and befitting a segment of one of those dumbass reality shows where the women have major public meltdowns, I swept my right forearm along the cutting board which held the two bundt cake pans launching their recently mixed liquid contents into the air, coating the entire kitchen in one swipe, like a chocolate-chip Jackson Pollack masterpiece.

Fraidy and Teddy, my two Siamese cats who were the ever-present, blue-eyed witnesses to the hijinks that was my life, were watching the entire debacle from the other side of the kitchen atop the microwave. As they jumped down to sample the brown, gooey goodness that literally dripped from every surface, I shooed them away, remembering chocolate is bad for cats but bemoaning that fact because I needed their help.

I had a long night of clean up ahead of me.

All the while, the catalyst for the onslaught of my melt-down, the melancholy molasses voice of Karen Carpenter played on speakers from the den nearby.

“I am dreaming tonight of a place I love
Even more than I usually do
And although I know it’s a long road back
I promise you

I’ll be home for Christmas
You can count on me
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents on the tree

Christmas Eve will find you
Where the love light gleams

I’ll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams

Christmas Eve will find me
Where the love light gleams
I’ll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams

If only in my dreams”

Ugh. Kill me now.

If you know me at all, you know that the day after Thanksgiving the Christmas music goes into heavy rotation and I start baking.

Always have – always will.

It usually makes me stupid happy.
That year, 1999, it made me sad, with an unexpected side of mad.

It had all started when I bought my house the previous April. I should have felt such a sense of accomplishment for having the courage to put my whole life in storage, save my ass off and find the perfect little house to purchase

On. My. Own.

Just me, and my two cats.
But THAT ended up being the problem.
Huh, didn’t see THAT coming.

The day I moved in, when the last friend and family member said their goodbyes, and I stood amid the contents of my life stacked around me, along with all the empty pizza boxes—I had never felt so ALONE.

Wasn’t this a milestone you were supposed to share with that special someone?

Wasn’t there supposed to be that moment where you realize you’ve done something monumental, and you and your guy slow-dance in candlelight with your nauseatingly cute matching pajamas (him, just the bottoms, you, just the tops) to music from a portable radio?

Then don’t you drink champagne from paper cups, toasting your good fortune, christening the house by making love on a mattress on the floor surrounded by boxes, books, bicycles, and skis, while your cats have the good manners to look away?

Hey, I’m ashamed to admit it, but I wanted that!

All of the sudden at forty-one, after being divorced for fifteen years, I wanted a significant other, a partner, a mate, a beloved.

I wanted a (gasp) husband with whom to share my life.

I’d often wished, late at night, for a shoulder to cry on when things were going down the toilet, but this was different, I wanted someone with which to share my…joy.

My accomplishments, the good things in life.

Oh great.

That was a completely unexpected side effect that must have been written in the small print of the mountains of paperwork that made up my mortgage and homeowners insurance.

Damn, it shocked me. It really did.

My house echoed back its emptiness to me.
It was just me and the cats.
No matter what I did cosmetically it didn’t feel like a home.
.
Backyard lawns are there to run on, screen doors are made to be slammed, big kitchens should be hot and messy with sticky floors and the constant smell of something burning.

My friends referred to my house as “the museum.”
No noise, no chaos, no dirt. Nothing out-of-place.
Ugh. I didn’t want to live in no freaking museum—I wanted a home.

One week that June I went to Vegas for an annual jewelry trade show. I got a call about 9pm one night from one of my neighbors, the husband half of the lovely couple next door with two kids.
Steve was yelling into the phone over a loud siren. It was my house alarm, which had been going off for fifteen minutes.
It sounded like someone had escaped from Alcatraz.
Did I have a hide-a-key and code for him to go in and disarm it?
Another male voice yelled loudly in the background, “Maybe we can call her husband, do you have his number?” It was the police who had been sent by the alarm company.

“She doesn’t have a husband…she has cats!”

The alarm had gone silent. Suddenly, Steve’s voice sounded hugely amplified, as if he was yelling through a megaphone, announcing my sad predicament to everyone whithin earshot.

Thanks, Steve. I don’t think they heard you in Malibu.

I wanted to die. Kill me now, I’m the fucking cat lady of Studio City.

This sudden urge to marry has a name. It is the taxi cab analogy. Single men are like taxi cabs, roaming the dark streets of the big city, light off, ignoring a real fare, out looking for action.

Then suddenly one day, their light goes on. Just like that.

These rogue cabs are ready to go legit. A man’s light has to go on, then he’ll settle down, until then….good luck.
Once a man’s light goes on, he marries the next girl he meets.

It’s all timing.

That was me. Suddenly, my light was on.

I wanted a husband and whatever that meant at that age.

I yearned for complicated, noisy and messy. No more order and no more museum. So hearing that song about love and home and Christmas had sent this Spinster Auntie (as I jokingly referred to myself) over the edge.

Isn’t life crazy? Just when you think you have things all figured out…..

Sometimes you don’t know until you know.
Oh, brother, we’re back to that again.

But it’s true, some seemingly innocent accomplishment, tragedy or happenstance can suddenly become the catalyst for change in your life. It happens quite by surprise when you’re not even looking.

It’s all about timing.
BAM!
Your light goes on and that changes EVERYTHING.

Tell me about the time this happened to you because I KNOW it has!
I’d love to hear your stories too!

Carry on,
Xox

ul·ti·ma·tum
ˌəltəˈmādəm/
noun: ultimatum; plural noun: ultimata; plural noun: ultimatums
1. a final demand or statement of terms, the rejection of which will result in retaliation or a breakdown in relation — final offer, final demand, take-it-or-leave-it deal; threat

Recently, I was asked to write some examples for the Huffington Post on a story they were doing on ultimatums.

Oh, that’s an easy one, I thought, I’m the Queen of Ultimatums, but upon reflection I realize I was the Queen-of-Setting-Boundaries, not delivering ultimatums.

Boundaries define your borders. Ultimatums are final. They have lasting consequences.
Big difference.

In my world, communication begins when you cross my imaginary line in the sand. When my boundary is breeched—detente begins.

For example, when my husband is out on a motorcycle without me, he is required, as set by the rules of our marriage and basic common decency, to let me know when he’s off the bike for the day. Even though I’m not a big worrier, that is the moment I can take a deep breath and relax knowing he’s safe and sound, his ass on a bar stool somewhere in the world.
Recently, when I hadn’t heard from him due to a text malfunction—he had some splainin’ to do.

Communication starts when a boundary is crossed.

Ultimatums, on the other hand, are where the talking stops.

Men love that. “I love a good ultimatum”, said NO man—EVER.

Or woman for that matter.

It smells like take-it-or-leave-it. I hate choices like that. Don’t you?

That being said…there was one ultimatum I did level at my husband right after we got engaged and here’s why.
Soon after we met we decided on full disclosure, you know, who had the higher FICO score, how our astrological charts lined up, showing each other old passport photos and admitting that we had each maintained a platonic friendship with a significant other. Once it was out in the open it was no big, hairy, deal and neither of us felt the least bit threatened, but when my husband went to tell his ex of our engagement, he chickened out.
“It was gonna get emotional”, he explained.
“Tough shit” I replied. “And if you care more about hurting her feelings than you do mine—you guys aren’t over each other yet and this engagement is off.”

He immediately picked up the phone, arranged another meeting and told her the next day.

Was that a threat? You bet your ass it was.

…And that concludes today’s essay on the difference between a boundary and an ultimatum.

Carry on,
xox

I’m just going to come right out and say it: my husband’s ex-wife died on Saturday of meanness exacerbated by crazy cancer.

It should have a certain amount of…what?…What emotion am I searching for? Sadness? Closure? Relief? attached to it if it weren’t for the fact that she was in prison…for murder. First-degree murder.

Good. I have your attention.

Late last year we heard through the grapevine (because a story like this is just too juicy and implausible to stay geographically contained), that his ex of nearly twenty years had shot a young man dead in her kitchen. The exact details are still pretty sketchy, and due to the fact that he was clearly a victim of bad choices, one of them being wrong place/wrong time, and the other—finding himself on the shot-gun end of her bad side—I will leave this stranger-than-fiction story of cold-blooded murder at that.

Oh, except to say that she held the sheriff’s and SWAT at bay for nine hours by shooting at them while barricaded inside of the house with the dead body.

That explains the five counts of attempted murder.

After her decision to surrender was helped along by a canister of tear-gas, she was hauled off to jail where they found out she was extremely ill (in every way imaginable. Their words, not mine), so arraignment was delayed because it looked like she wouldn’t live long enough to stand trial.

She went into remission long enough to cause trouble in prison. Seriously? Cause trouble in prison?
If I have a head cold I’m too uncomfortable to stand up for myself at the DMV, yet she’s rowdy enough to have all of her priveledges revoked. What?

Here’s why I’m telling you all of this.

When I met my husband for the first time on a blind date he said his ex-wife was crazy.
I rolled my eyes.
He said she tried to kill him.
I sighed and looked at my watch.
He explained how he had left their ranch one night with basically the clothes on his back.
Yawwwwwwwn.

If you date long enough this kind of ex-bashing plays like a broken record. I’d say ninety percent of the men I dated, by their account, had certifiable ex-wives.

I can be fairly certain that’s one of the nicest things my ex says about me!

I pegged him as a wolf-cryer, that is until a few friends corroborated his stories—and I saw Gone Girl.

So, on Monday when we heard that she had died, my husband contacted her brother. The sane one.
The one who knew that husband had been forced to cut and run and never looked back—and he totally understood why (actually she told everyone Raphael was dead. Are you creeped out yet?)

“You’re welcome to come by the ranch on Friday to see if there’s anything you want”, her brother, now the executor, offered graciously.

He was seriously considering it. Looking at his calendar to see how easy it would be to clear his schedule.

“I’m coming with you!”, I volunteered. I was curious. I wanted to see where this woman lived and the big log house my husband had built with his own two hands—and then been pushed far enough to just walk away from.

Almost the moment I said it I wanted to suck the words back in like they do in the cartoons. I got an enormous sinking feeling in my gut and not the good kind that gives you a flat stomach—the sickening kind.

What was my motivation?

To be supportive? To be helpful? To end my week with a road trip?

Sure. All of those things. But when I dug deeper I had to admit—my main motivation was morbid curiosity.

It has been my experience, learned in hindsight, that nothing good can come when the motivation is MORBID curiosity.

How does this add to my life?
How does this drive my life forward?

Those are the questions we ask ourselves now. Finally!

We are both trying to have less and less of those Shit, I shouldn’t have done that, gone there, said that, moments.

In order to do that, we have to ask ourselves those two questions over and over again, sometimes twenty times a day. (Well, I do, I’m a slow learner).

How does this add to my life?
How does this drive my life forward?

Morbid curiosity can’t stand up to cross-examination.
What was I thinking? What were WE thinking?

That ranch is not a feel-good place. In fact, it’s worse than just the bad juju his ex spread all over the place, and her lousy choice in drapes—it’s the scene of a murder.

The other feeling, the ‘I want my stuff! The stuff I left behind but I haven’t thought about it in twenty years’ feeling—that’s not great motivation either.

You have to ask yourself why you suddenly care so goddamn much.

One percent sentimentality.
One percent nostalgia.
One percent schadenfruede.
Ninety-seven percent morbid curiosity.

We not going to the ranch. Neither of us.

We both decided that a trip up there would add absolutely ZERO to our quality of life, not to mention the fact that there’s not enough sage in the world to cleanse the bad juju off anything we might bring back.

We both felt lighter. Better. Closure.

Damn this conscious living thing takes a lot of consciousness! Who knew!

Carry on,
xox

Carry on,
xox