sadness

This is a Flashback from a couple of years ago that I was telling a friend about just the other day. Her husband has to fly up to the Bay area in a couple of weeks for a mediation on a lawsuit that is one of the bat-shit craziest wastes of time you could ever imagine. I can SO relate and it’s easier for me to repost this than to tell them the story—and I figure maybe a few of you might need to read this too.
Big love to HT & CT.

Carry on,
xox

“Anger is just Sad’s bodyguard… and Shame’s too, I think.”

Someone tell me, how come the crazy ones never lose any sleep?
Is it their complete lack of a conscience that causes them to appear so slick, smug and impossibly fresh?

Not a hair out-of-place.
Barely a hint of the devil that lies within.

While those of us that possess a moral compass and have the misfortune to find ourselves in their orbit are sleep deprived, disheveled, walking disasters.

That will always bother me.

The fact that people who operate outside the constructs of polite society close their eyes at night and sleep the uninterrupted, peaceful sleep of the just.

Why is that?
How can it be?

The night before an arbitration with the attorneys for DWP to discuss the fact that their one-hundred-year-old water main had burst and turned my store into an aquarium; I tossed and turned until the sheets were knotted up around my head and neck, fashioned into an unattractive turban/noose—and I ground my teeth down to nubs. Which left me the next morning gumming my toast, with a foggy brain and pronounced sheet marks on my face that didn’t fade until after lunch.

The team of He, She and It, that represented the water company, entered the room that morning laughing.
Uproariously.
Like they’d all participated in a hilarious episode of Carpool Karaoke on their way to work.

I felt at a distinct disadvantage. Out of the loop, like the punchline to the funniest joke ever told was lost on me. Was that their plan?

They were meticulously coiffed and groomed, cool as the proverbial cucumbers, while I was drenched in flop sweat, permanently wrinkled and frantically struggling to remove a poppy-seed from between my two front teeth with my tongue.

Note to self: Don’t accept half a poppy-seed bagel when you’re out of coffee. And you forgot your water.
You’re going to need something to rinse your mouth with when the big guns enter the room.

If I’d had more sleep I would have remembered that.

They all seemed so nice, so genuinely happy to meet me; that is until the bell rang and we went to our respective corners. Then the gloves came off and the crazy started to show.

They made shit up. Their entire alibi was jack-crap.
With graphs, documents and flow charts. Listen, if you show me a flow chart, I’ll believe anything…almost.
Somehow they double teamed my attorney and me. In the most well crafted, legal babbly, thinly veiled insulting way, they pinned the whole thing on me.
ME!
They made the accidental, midnight break of their water main seem like MY fault.

Business was slow, debt was high, it was 2009, and I need out—only I was too stupid to commit arson.

Seems bat-shit crazy, right?

When we broke for lunch even I wanted to throw the book at me.
The picture they painted of me was that of a sad-sack, loser of a business woman. Which was exactly how I felt at the time. I think my lawyer drank the Kool-Aid too—they were that convincing. She wouldn’t make eye contact, skulking in the corner on her phone, and then disappearing for the entire lunch break.

But you wanna know what trumps sleep deprivation? Rage. That’s what.
It also instantly removes sheet marks from your face.

It also overrides all shame and victim-hood.

Crazy and Rage are curious dance partners and they should never be left alone in a room together.
Let me tell you why. Crazy is so put together, so charming, pretty, and unflappable. Crazy looooooves a victim, she gets off on them, they get her panties wet.

Rage is no victim, he’s a gangster. He’s raw, he’s greasy and he talks real dirty. He wears a wife beater t-shirt and too much Aramis; and he has only one thing in his crosshairs—Crazy.

Crazy gets high on Rage and it quickly becomes a street-brawl.

But Rage is better than Sad, which is where I’d pitched my tent for eighteen months. Some say you can get caught in anger and never feel despair. The opposite had been true for me.
Sad victimhood covered in shame is like chum in the water to Crazy.

So Rage felt better. It felt…empowering. Sadness felt like quick-sand—Rage, like solid ground.

It got my attention and cleared my vision, so I could finally see the truth and it kicked Sad’s ass to the curb.

I locked myself in a public bathroom stall kicking, screaming, and raging for nearly an hour before taking a walk around the building to help me come to my senses—and find my courage.

I knew my opponent. I was very familiar with Crazy.
You see, I had met her as a teenager in the form of my father’s second wife. I had witnessed her devouring her victims and I was smart enough to remember that Rage threw her into a sort of drunken feeding frenzy.

I also remembered that nothing can get to Crazy. Nothing touches their heart. There is no reasoning with Crazy. There is no sympathy, empathy or compassion and absolutely nothing is open for discussion.

They act as your judge, jury, and executioner.

And the more they sense is at stake; the faster and louder the accusations come. Their aim is to keep you off-balance, on the ropes.

Remember they are rested, ready and strong after their peaceful night’s sleep.

How is that fair?
Because they get a buzz off this shit and they don’t care about anything other than winning. So it’s not.

I sure wasn’t feeling sad anymore, Rage had hatched a plan but I knew better than to let it enter that room. I waited outside the double doors of the conference room until I saw my attorney exit the elevator. I could hear the team of Crazy, Crazier, and Craziest, whopping it up inside.

“You handle this, I’m leaving” I announced. I had her by the arm and was walking her back down a long hallway of endless doors, out of earshot of the hyenas.

“What?” she asked, looking surprised.

“You don’t need me here. They can smell my fear and sadness, and well, their offer is beyond ridiculous. See what happens when they can’t focus on me. When they have to deal with you and only the facts.”  We had walked in a circle making our way back toward the bank of elevators.

“Give me a number you’ll you settle at”, she asked as she reached into her bag for paper and a pen. She actually seemed relieved, like the day could be salvaged. Like it could go back to a language she understood—the law.

I wrote a figure down. She looked and nodded in agreement, folding the paper into a small square and tucking into her suit-jacket pocket.

The elevator chimed, opening right on cue. People were packed in like sardines, but as I stepped inside she grabbed my purse strap, making me turn around. “This could end today”, she said with a hint of a smile, letting me go as the doors slowly closed.

A hairy mystery hand reached around me and pushed the button for LOBBY, getting me the hell out of that DWP building. I know it was Rage. I could smell his Aramis. But I made sure I left him behind, losing him in the crowd.

*I got the call a couple of hours later that they’d settled on the figure I’d written down. “Piece of cake”, I remember her saying in a distracted voice; she was already on to her next case.

We all slept well that night.

I know some of you guys needed to hear this,
Carry on,
xox

Happy Sunday you guys, this is my New Moon wish for you!

There was a New Moon in Capricorn at 8:30 PM EST, January 9 (so, last night). It signifies new beginnings, as do all new moons.

According to astrologer Leo Knighton Tallarico:

“This one is in Capricorn and as such it prompts us to get back out into the world, to organize and plan, to be more disciplined, to do what one needs to do, to make firmer boundaries, to be in one’s integrity, to demand more from yourself and others, to concentrate more on work and accomplishment, to have greater self-respect, to be more logical and realistic.”

Amen to that! I could use some more organized discipline and I’m always working on setting those boundaries!

If you want to read the rest of his take on the new moon (and he also does some astrological predictions for some of the Presidential candidates which I found interesting, here’s his website:

https://spiritualtherapy.wordpress.com

Carry on,

xox

Goddamn, I love rituals. Beginnings and endings. Marking time. Rites of passage.

I figure that love seeped into my DNA after sitting in a smokey Catholic church inhaling Frankincense for pretty much my entire youth (it may also explain a ton of other crazy attributes I’d rather not go into).
What it DOES explain is my obsession with incense, focused prayer, incantations, and human sacrifice. Well, that and the fact that I’m certain I had a past life as some kind of mystical druid sorceress taken right out of the pages of Mists Of Avalon.
Or better yet, Merlin.
But more likely the medieval court jester who wore a silly hat, sported pointy shoes with bells and lived under a bridge with the trolls.

Anyhow, I decided to take everything that had to do with my failed business and burn it.
A perfectly legal Ritual Sacrifice. Of paperwork. Paperwork that held power over me.

2015 was the year of dealing with paperwork. I would have rather had a root canal without Novocaine.
I finally found it in me to throw what merchandise remained into an auction and dissolve the corporation which had been insolvent for several years but had retained a kind of sick sentimental place in my heart—like a shitty high-school boyfriend or a threadbare flannel nightgown.

I basically broke up with ATIK. It was time. Actually, it was way past time.

The relationship had become unbalanced. In a nutshell, it had become completely, horribly and totally dysfunctionally one-sided. I was doing all the emotional heavy lifting, holding the history of our love together while Atik went on an extended five-year vacation with a stripper named Trixie, forgetting my name and the fact that we once meant the world to each other.
Oh well, shit happens.

Once the litigation shitastrophy dust had settled I was left with a HUGE satchel that I’d been toting around for years filled with tons and tons of legal fuckery.
It was heavy in all the ways you can imagine and others you cannot. It lived in a shed in the backyard as physically far away from me as sadistic legal paperwork feels comfortable and even though it’s my office— I seldom went back there. I hated that thing.

So I decided to burn the contents as a ritual releasing of the old dragged-behind-a-car energy of 2009-2012 in order to move on.

2016—The Year of Unbearable Lightness. Burn that shit and get on with it!

So I did.

I had to let it go. Stop life-support. Kill it. Put us both out of our misery.

Time of death of Atik Inc. 12 p.m. December 26, 2015.

After quickly going through the toxic waste of debauchery to make sure I wasn’t, in my haste to dance naked in the flames, torching something important, I started the gas in my fireplace, set my intention “DO NOT EVER Darken My doorstep with your toxic bullshit AGAIN!” (I cleaned that up. It was much worse than that).

And then I said thank you to the worst thing that has EVER happened to me for all of the valuable insights and gifts it has delivered. I really did you guys but it’s taken me six years to get there.

Then I squealed with unabashed joy as I watched it go up in smoke. All of it.

My husband came in from outside and said the smoke smelled really bad. Oh, I bet it did.

That paperwork held so much sadness and failure and hopes dashed. It was filled with terse language and mean words. Horrible words. Words that cut me to the core. Words that human beings should never say to each other. Mad words. Words filled with rage wrapped in legalese.

I’m surprised the smoke didn’t get all Voldemort and come back inside the house and strangle me. I’m telling you, that was a satchel full of failure and it wanted to finish me.

But, I have already risen from the ashes—I am FREE.

I may have a had a little help with my pyro-ritual. There may have been a fellow recovering broken-hearted soul who was throwing his/her “annus horribilis” into the fire right beside me.

So now WE are free.

I cannot recommend this ritual highly enough.
Please, please consider doing this with anything toxic from your past. You don’t need a fireplace! I did it many years ago to free myself from a relationship whose grip I could not escape. I just put a large metal pot in the kitchen sink and lit a match burning all the old photos and letters. Many years later I did it again in my backyard on a rainy night (you may remember that post).
http://www.theobserversvoice.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1877&action=edit

Fire is healing.
Smoke is healing.
Endings are healing.
Rituals are healing.
Starting a new year feeling lighter is healing AND freeing.

And I’ve come to realize I’m a bit of a pyromaniac.

Love you all & Carry on,
xox

Ruby supervises the process about half-way through.

I told myself I wasn’t going to “work”. I could lay off the writing for a week. Just seven short days, right? Take notice of my exotic surroundings without my head buried in a computer?

Note to self: No head burying. Be present. Take it ALL in.

Wrongo. Add this to the looming list of other lies I’ve told myself. And promises I’ve broken. To me.

But I can’t help it! (said in the voice of a whining five-year-old).

Here’s the thing you guys and I’m betting, with all my chips on the table, that YOU are a lot like me.

I came to this glorious place to unwind—to free my spirit. But it’s making me sad. My spirit is unbounded—but sad. I’m going to bed sad. Okay, maybe a little buzzed too, but most definitely sad.
And I’m waking up…sad.

In fucking paradise!
How is that possible?
What in the hell is my problem? This should at the very least be a misdemeanor, right?

I don’t like it when my emotions are mismatched inappropriately to a situation. Like that time I laughed hysterically all the way home after being fired or acted chirpy, grateful and giddy when our dog died suddenly.

It makes me profoundly curious—and deeply suspicious. What’s the back-story here? Wtf is going on?
Wait. Am I alone here? Does that happen to you?

For three days I’ve “observed” the feelings. I’ve “observed” the shit out of them.
Huh. I said over and over. Huh. Sad in paradise. That’s just not right. Someone should take away my humanity card.

Then my head started to hurt.
Huh. Look at that. Headaches in paradise. Clearly I’m a hopeless case.
You guys, I’m an ungrateful, whining, hopeless case of a sad-sack.

Finally, after many hours of contemplation and tons of Advil, I figured it out. Duh. (not the sharpest tool in the shed either).

I was sad and my head ached from all of the unexpressed ideas I was having!
My brain was overflowing with inspiration, but I had made a pact with myself to simply enjoy my vacation unencumbered by my compulsion to write.

The thing is, I usually write the ideas down in the moment they occur. Which was waaaay more often than even I realized.
I grab any random scrap of paper, candy wrapper, gum wrapper, fast food wrapper (you get the idea). Or, I dictate these flashes of brilliance, these nuggets of wonderfulness into my phone.
“The color orange is my new religion” or “I am just the toaster.”

I know. I KNOW! Don’t revolt now. At least wait until the end.

You see, that’s how posts like this one get started, and if I don’t get the ideas out of my head they pile up. My brain becomes constipated and I get a whopper of a headache. And I get sad. And bitchy.
It’s a blessing and a curse. What can I say?

I Can’t Always Just Write. I Want to Live My Life Too!

“Aren’t you supposed to be basking in the Mexican sun?” my dear friend Steph asked me after receiving my third snarky email in a row. And a video. I sent her a hilarious YouTube video. From Mexico. The poor thing had become my only outlet for all things creative—and funny.

This morning over coffee. Coffee in paradise. I informed my sweet and patient husband that I would be finding a cabana by the pool, someplace in the shade so I don’t melt, and I would be writing.

All damn day.

Someplace where I can look up and admire my surroundings, take a moment to express my immense gratitude to the Universe, and then write my face off.

Just the thought of that made me giddy.

Here I am, ratting myself out to all of you—again, and I don’t even care. Not a flinch. I actually have a gigantic smile on my face.

Personal epiphany: Writing is not work to me. It is an integral part of my life.
A part I cannot ignore or push aside (who knew?). It fuels my soul. It makes me deliriously, ridiculously happy.
Happier than paradise.
Well played but…Sorry paradise.

What makes you sad if you don’t allow yourself to just fucking “do it?”

Carry on,
xox

After years of exhaustive, mind-numbing, soul-crushing research and a lifetime’s supply of tears—I have found this to be true.

Sadness is pretty much at the root of anger. And jealousy. And insecurity. And, and, and…

Are you mad? What are you sad about waaaay underneath all that rage?
What is anger protecting?
What is so raw that you’ll pick a bar-fight in order NOT to look at it.

Hey, listen, don’t kill the messenger!

Tell your bodyguard to back off.

Love you,
Carry on,
xox

*This post is from a couple of years ago, but it is forever intertwined with our wedding anniversary, so I can never forget. I don’t think we should.
xox

It is ridiculously dark in a hotel room with the black-out drapes closed.

It is a trip over stuff because it’s a strange room; blink, blink, blink for your eyes to adjust; bang your shin and stub your toe, kind of dark.

I experienced all of those things on the way to answer my phone which was shoved in my purse, somewhere under piles of room service napkins, magazines, and assorted other crap.

La la la la la la, my phone chimed its little heart out.

Who is calling me? Everyone knows I’m on my honeymoon and judging from how dark it is, (forgetting the drapes) it MUST be the middle of the night. How rude!

Five minutes earlier the ringing had woken me up, and I had stumbled like a drunken sailor, half asleep in the pitch blackness, to the bathroom. ‘Wrong number‘ I thought, still half asleep as I felt my way like a blindfolded mime, back to bed.
I heard it go to message. Now I was awake.
Hmmmmmmmm…that’s weird.

It started to ring again; this time, I could swear it sounded more insistent.
LA LA LA LAAAAAA!
Curious, I quietly slid out of bed and started moving heaven and earth to find it, only to hear it go to message a second time.

Not even a moment later, as I was finally holding it in my hand, it started to ring again.

At that same instant so did my husband’s phone charging next to him on the nightstand.  Then the hotel room phone on my side of the bed. It became a cacophony of three different rings, each one of them trying desperately at that point to get our attention.

I heard my husband’s voice behind me in the bed, “Shit, this CAN’T be good”. He was suddenly wide awake as he grabbed both the room phone and his cell, putting one to each ear.
“Hello!” he announced tersely into both.

I had just flipped mine open only to listen to my best friend Jen, mumbling and weeping. At the same exact moment, we both lunged for the remote as three different people screamed into our ears “TURN ON THE TV!”

We were two days into enjoying our post wedding coma. Ensconced in a room overlooking the Pacific at the Biltmore in Santa Barbara, still feeling giddy from the excitement of such a magical night.
Exhausted, we had given ourselves a couple of days to decompress before we were to fly to a friend’s party in Chicago and then on to Italy to have a motorcycle honeymoon.
None of those plans would come to pass.

My brand new husband pulled open the drapes with one swipe to reveal bright sunshine; it wasn’t the middle of the night, it was after six in the morning. This must be a movie, I thought, as we both slowly sat on the edge of the bed; watching in stunned silence as the second plane hit the tower.

I think I screamed. I know I screamed. A movie scream.

Everyone we loved was calling; apologizing for bothering us, but wanting us to know.
Because that’s what family does. They share bad news.

Just thirty-six hours before, they had all been loopy from too much champagne and wine, laughing, toasting and celebrating love…now they were crying and asking me, Why?

I couldn’t wrap my brain around what was happening. Everything felt surreal, like a slow motion disaster film.

I certainly didn’t have any answers.

My husband is an architect/builder. He knows about steel and fire and in his most serious Bob The Builder voice he didn’t pose a question or wonder aloud—he made a statement:
“I hope everyone’s out of there, that building’s coming down.”

And right on cue, as he finished that sentence…the first tower fell.

“Shit, shit, shit!” he yelled, sitting up straight on his knees.
I was screaming and shaking, “No, No, No…Oh MY GOD!”

Peter Jennings’ solemn voice said something to the effect of, “This has turned from an act of terrorism to an act of war.”

Time stopped. The planet shifted, and in my mind, that was the moment it happened. There will always before 9/11 and an after.

It was impossible to look away from the TV and I could not stop crying.

My mom called to tell me that Pam, who is like a big sister to me, and had flown in from San Francisco for the wedding, had to deplane on the tarmac at LAX and run for her life. The pilot had directed them all to run as fast as they could, away from the terminals and the airport.

Really. He told everyone to RUN!

No one knew what was going on, and where the next attack, if there were to be others, was going to take place. Lee and my mom picked her up as she ran east on Century Boulevard with a whole crowd of other panicky and confused thwarted travelers.

Many of the women had ditched their heels along the way, running in bare feet and business attire.

They had no idea where they were going.

How far would they run?

How far was far enough?

Where could you go that day to feel safe? I sure as hell didn’t know.

If you had told me a place—I would have run there with you.

After the second tower collapsed and the news went into that perpetual recap mode, I couldn’t watch another second; so I pulled on some sweats and sunglasses to hide my red swollen eyes and walked like a zombie downstairs to the lobby.

My inner historian/collector had kicked in and I went to see if they had the newspapers in the gift shop without the headline of the event, and the later edition, with it.

The adrenaline of the past few hours had subsided, which had dropped us both into a kind of numb stupor—so we also needed coffee. Bad.

The lobby was a ghost town. Everything was closed. No gift shop, no Starbucks, nothing. There wasn’t a soul in sight…this huge hotel felt deserted.

Back upstairs, I called room service.
It rang for what seemed like an eternity, then the voice that finally answered sounded out of breath and off of hotel protocol. She didn’t say Hello, Mrs. Bertolus, (which I was loving by the way), like they had been doing for the past couple of days.

“Yes? Hello, I mean, room service” she said.

“Um, are you guys open? Is it possible to get a pot of coffee?”

“I’ll try my best, I’m sorry ma’am, but no one has shown up for work this morning.”

“Oh my gosh, I completely understand—it’s just so terrible…”

“Yes ma’am,” she said, “it’s so sad.”
She started to cry, which set me off.

“Don’t worry about the coffee” I sobbed, feeling like an ass. “Just forget it, I’m sorry to bother you.”

“No ma’am, don’t be silly” she had composed herself, now the epitome of professionalism, “Your coffee will be right up Mrs. Bertolus.”

Ten minutes later a young man brought up a pot of coffee and some croissants, and after some caffeine and food, the shaking stopped and I started to feel a little better.

The government had halted all air travel until further notice. Planes were finding a safe place to land and staying put. It was unprecedented and I was relieved.

The absolute LAST thing I wanted to do was get on a plane.
We had a lot of phone calls to make and rescheduling to do.

Against my better judgment we kept our reservations that night for a seaside dinner. The place was beautiful… and depressing as hell. Everyone seemed to just be going through the motions. I sobbed like a three-year-old through the entire dinner, having a hard time forgetting those faces we’d seen all day of the people who were missing.

“How can I enjoy any of this? People lost husbands and fathers, brothers and wives and sisters. So many people died today!” I put my head in my hands, I couldn’t eat.

“How can you not?” my husband whispered, resting his hand on mine.

“Those people would give anything to be here, where we are right now, enjoying life. We don’t join them in death, that’s an even greater waste. We enjoy our lives. Every minute. Every day to the fullest. I think that’s what they would want. That’s what I would want.”

Damn, he’s good.

Just writing these memories makes me cry. It instantly brings me right back.

I think it’s important to tell the story. To never forget what happened.
Everything before 911 feels different, simpler somehow, like as a country we lost our innocence.

It just happens to coincide with my wedding. I can never think of one without the other. I celebrate the ninth of September, and I light a candle on the eleventh.
In my life, they are forever intertwined.

Just like our parents had the Kennedy assassination, this is our generation’s “where were you?” moment.

Do you have a 911 story? Tell us.

much love,
xox

Happy, Healthy, Dead.

That is the clarion cry of the spiritual community I belong to. The one that lost Wayne Dyer this weekend. By the way, he isn’t really lost…but that’s another story.

I can’t remember where and when I heard it first, but it made one hell of an impression: happy, healthy, dead.

Irreverent I know, but just irreverent enough for me to embrace it wholeheartedly. A new idea about the transition of death. How you want to leave this earth. The day you depart you want to be healthy, happy, dead. Lights out. Just like that. In a chair in front of the computer (right after you hit “send” on the best thing you’ve ever written), in your sleep (hopefully in clean pajamas), or sitting at a stoplight (at the end of an amazing road trip). Boom. Gone. Sayonara. That’s that!
And that’s exactly what he did.

Transition. Why is it so fucking hard, so goddamn always?

September is a big month full of transition. Fall begins, the days get shorter, the nights get cooler (in theory), my big, fat, flip-flop feet have to squeeze themselves into shoes; and as the summer begins to wind down we all get a little bit squirrelly.

School starts. The nest empties. The time changes back to whatever the hell it was in May, and fucking Christmas decorations show up in the stores.

I like to say I’m pretty good at transition. But I also like to say other things that I know deep down aren’t completely true. Like: I’ll only take a couple of bites of your dessert or female politicians don’t lie.

I’ve discovered I’m okay with transitions as long as they look, feel, and taste EXACTLY like what just ended.

When I move, the joke is that my new place will be unpacked, with pictures hung, and fully decorated within twenty-four hours of receiving the keys. Everything will be in its place and it’ll look as if I’ve lived there for a decade. I even break down the boxes and drive around until I find a back alley dumpster. Anything to keep the place from looking chaotic and temporary. THAT my dear friends is not an example of someone who has a facility for change.

It is the white-knuckled fingers of control around the neck of my anxiety.

Why can’t transition be easy? The next logical step? The next great adventure? And since it’s a necessary part of life—why can’t we just chill?

How come we can’t remember what it felt like to graduate? To get our first job? To fall in love that very first time? Those were all transitions. Big ones. Ones that formed us. And they were pivotal in the unfolding of our life’s narrative; they were uncharted territory; fresh, new, and exciting!

Have you got an empty nest? Fill it with all the things you’ve been putting off for…Oh, I don’t know, almost twenty years!
Listen, now you get to look forward to college graduations, foreign travel, potential new family members, and maybe, eventually, the patter of little feet that go home when you’re tired of them.

I love me some summer and dread its ending, but then I remember that I also love fires in fireplaces, the smell of burning leaves, cozy sweaters, hot mint tea and rainy days. So what’s the big deal?

Transition. Happy; healthy; dead. Easy, peasy, Parcheesi.

Excuse me while I go wedge my paddle foot into some sexy black boots.

Carry on,
xox

Judgement alert! There may be some judgment leveled here. Hey, I’m no saint.

How come the crazy one’s never loose any sleep?
Is it their complete lack of a conscience that causes them to appear so slick, smug and impossibly fresh?

Not a hair out of place.
Barely a hint of the devil that lies within.

While those of us that have the misfortune to find ourselves in their orbit are sleep deprived, disheveled, walking disasters.

That will always bother me.

The fact that people who operate outside the constructs of polite society close their eyes at night and sleep the uninterrupted, peaceful sleep of the just.

Why is that?
How can it be?

The night before an arbitration with the attorneys for DWP to discuss the fact that their one hundred year old water main had burst and turned my store into an aquarium; I tossed and turned until the sheets were knotted up around my head and neck, fashioned into an unattractive turban/noose—and I ground my teeth down to nubs. Which left me the next morning gumming my toast, with a foggy brain and pronounced sheet marks on my face that didn’t fade until after lunch.

The team of He, She and It, that represented the water company, entered the room that morning laughing. Uproariously.
Like Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon had driven carpool. I felt at a distinct disadvantage. Out of the loop, like the funniest joke ever told was lost on me. Was that their plan?

They were meticulously coiffed and groomed, cool as the proverbial cucumbers, while I was drenched in flop sweat, permanently wrinkled and frantically struggling to remove a poppy-seed from between my two front teeth with my tongue.

Note to self: Don’t accept half a poppy-seed bagel when you’re out of coffee. And you forgot your water.
You’re going to need something to rinse your mouth with when the big guns enter the room.

If I’d had more sleep I would have remembered that.

They all seemed so nice, so genuinely happy to meet me; that is until the bell rang and we went to our respective corners. Then the gloves came off and the crazy started to show.

They made shit up. Their entire alibi was jack-crap.
With graphs, documents and flow charts. Listen, if you show me a flow chart, I’ll believe anything…almost.
Somehow they double teamed my attorney and me. In the most well crafted, legal babbly, thinly veiled insulting way, they pinned the whole thing on me. They made the accidental, midnight break of their trunk line water main seem like MY fault.

Business was slow, debt was high, it was 2009, and I need out—only I was too stupid to commit arson.

I know, crazy, right?

When we broke for lunch even I wanted to throw the book at me.
The picture they painted of me was that of a sad-sack, loser of a business woman. Which was exactly how I felt at the time.
I think my lawyer drank the Kool-Aid too—they were that convincing. She wouldn’t make eye contact, skulking in the corner on her phone, and then disappearing for the entire lunch break.

But you wanna know what trumps sleep deprivation? Rage. That’s what.
It also instantly removes sheet marks from your face.

It also over-rides all victim-hood.

Crazy and Rage are curious dance partners and they should never be left alone in a room together.
Let me tell you why. Crazy is so put together, so charming, pretty, and unflappable. Crazy looooooves a victim, she gets off on them, they get her panties wet.

Rage is no victim, he’s a gangster. He’s raw, he’s greasy and he talks real dirty. He wears a wife beater t-shirt and too much Aramis; and he has only one thing in his crosshairs—Crazy.

Crazy gets high on Rage and it quickly becomes a street-brawl.

But Rage is better than Sad, which is where I’d pitched my tent for eighteen months. Some say you can get caught in anger and never feel despair. The opposite had been true for me.
Sad victimhood. It’s like chum in the water to Crazy.

So Rage felt better. It felt…empowering. Sadness felt like quick-sand, Rage, like solid ground.

It got my attention and cleared my vision, so I could finally see the truth and it kicked Sad’s ass to the curb.

I locked myself in a public bathroom stall and raged for an hour before taking a walk around the building, coming to my senses, and finding my courage.

I knew my opponent. I was very familiar with Crazy.
You see, I had met her as a teenager in the form of my father’s second wife. I had witnessed her devour her victims and I was smart enough to remember that Rage threw her into a sort of drunken frenzy.

I also remembered that nothing can get to Crazy. Nothing touches their heart. There is no reasoning with Crazy. There is no sympathy, empathy or compassion and absolutely nothing is open for discussion.

They act as your judge, jury and executioner.

And the more they sense is at stake, the faster and louder the accusations come. Their aim is to keep you off-balance, on the ropes.

Remember they are rested, ready and strong after their peaceful nights sleep. How is that fair?
Because they get a buzz off this shit and they don’t care about anything other than winning.

I sure wasn’t feeling sad anymore, Rage had hatched a plan but I knew better than to let it enter that room. I waited outside the double doors of the conference room until I saw my attorney exit the elevator. I could hear the team of Crazy, Crazier and Craziest, whopping it up inside.

“You handle this, I’m leaving” I announced. I had her by the arm and was walking her back down a long hallway of endless doors, out of earshot of the hyenas.

“What?” she looked surprised.

“You don’t need me here. They can smell my fear and sadness, and well, their offer is beyond ridiculous. See what happens when they can’t focus on me. When they have to deal with you and only the facts.” We had walked in a circle making our way back toward the bank of elevators.

“Give me a number you’ll you settle at” she asked as she reached into her bag for paper and a pen. She seemed relieved, like the day could be salvaged. Like it could go back to a language she understood—the law.

I wrote a figure down. She looked and nodded in agreement, folding the paper into a small square and tucking into her suit-jacket pocket.

The elevator chimed, opening right on cue. People were packed like sardines, but as I stepped inside she grabbed my purse strap, making me turn around. “This could end today” she said with a hint of a smile, letting go as the doors closed.

A hairy mystery hand reached around me and pushed the button for LOBBY, getting me the hell out of that DWP building. I know it was Rage. I could smell his Aramis. But I made sure I left him behind, losing him in the crowd.

*I got the call a couple of hours later that they’d settled on the figure I’d written down. “Piece of cake” I remember her saying in a distracted voice, (yeah, once the chum had left the building), she was already on to her next case.

We all slept well that night.

I know some of you guys needed to hear this,
Carry on,
xox

Dear Woo Woo Crew,

My brother has found himself in the midst of a personal shitastropy. You know, just like we all do from time to time.

And even though it’s winding down — it’s winding up (isn’t it weird how that happens? It gets really bad before it goes away. Like that stubborn boil on your ass). So the fan is blowing shit all over the fucking place. You know, like it does.

Anyhow, he’s had your help. I call you his Woo Woo Crew because of the alchemy you have performed through your love, loyalty and laughter. You have helped my brother weather his dark night of the soul with your special brand of magic.

Now, before you get all weepy on me (Billy).
Can we just talk for a minute about the medicinal properties of laughter? Guffawing your way through tears is highly underrated. It has a Merlin-esq magical quality to it. Laughter is the best medicine is no joke. Doctors should prescribe a visit to a comedy club (or humor blog) for depression. Seriously.

And as I see it, that’s been an indispensable part of his cure. You, his WWC make him laugh.
A lot.
Everyday.
The joke is often at his own expense—but that’s okay—he’s freakin’ funny.
You aren’t walking on eggshells. You aren’t worried about what YOUR future holds. You show up to his business with smiles and hugs and donuts. (I took artistic liberties in assuming there are donuts. It just seems like you would have something deep-fried and I like icing, so….)

Hey, don’t get me wrong, you work as hard as you play. You are so smart, so good at what you do, that I want to buy you all ponies. Well, Billy already has a pony, so maybe cars for the rest of you.

You are loyal, you are loving, you cut him slack when it’s needed and pick it up for him when he’s down.


I could not send bigger love to Y’all. I mean it.

My hope is that all you guys out there have your very own Woo Woo Crews. If you don’t — find one fast.
They will save you.

Better yet, maybe you are a card-carrying member of one.

My friend Kim is also walking the temporary tightrope of terrible. Again, like we all have; and I see or speak to her almost every day.

Seems my life makes her laugh.
My triumphs, my tragedies are…funny to her. I suppose it’s in the delivery, but still, we laugh A LOT!
The thing is, when I see her walk up the driveway with a sad face and then later, I watch her walk back to her car and she’s still laughing about that thing I said. That makes me feel good.

Listen I’m no Mother Theresa.
The other day I yelled at her mid-cry, right to her sad, soggy face: “Stop crying! Stop being sad!”…and instead of punching me in the face — we both burst out laughing. Like doubled over, can’t speak laughing.

Dammit, it was time. Time for her sadness to turn the corner, lose its grip and get the hell out of her life!
Just writing this make me giggle because I can still see the shock that washed over her before she started laughing. I’m sure my face looked the same.

It was priceless. Like a two-year-old. Tears one minute, laughter the next.

Why can’t we do that? When did we lose that talent? Why does the laughter dissipate so quickly but the tears stay for…weeks?

Woo Woo Crews Unite! Be funny! Be kind! Be goofy! Bring donuts! Buy ponies!
Turns some frowns upside down (yes I did say that).

Write love letters to people who are making a difference, so they can become aware that they are.

Enough rambling.

So incredibly grateful for you guys,
Carry on,
xox

Here’s some medicine for you — Happy Friday!

Today I heard the most beautiful Buddhist meditation/prayer for fear.

It is recited by Colleen Saidman Yee at the end of her yoga classes.
I just love it and I thought you would too.

Here are her words.

“It goes something like this: Sit down and notice where you hold your fear in your body.
Notice where it feels hard, and sit with it. In the middle of hardness is anger.

Go to the center of anger and you’ll usually come to sadness.
Stay with sadness until it turns to vulnerability.

Keep sitting with what comes up; the deeper you dig, the more tender you become.
Raw fear can open into the wide expanse of genuineness, compassion, gratitude, and expectancy in the present moment.

A tender heart appears naturally when you are able to stay present.

From your heart you can see the true pigment of the sky. You can see the vibrant yellow of a sunflower and the deep blue of your daughter’s eyes.

A tender heart doesn’t block out rain clouds, or tears, or dying sunflowers.
Allow beauty and sadness to touch you.
This is love, not fear.”

Isn’t that beautiful you guys?
Happy weekend,
xox

You can catch Colleen’s entire interview with Marie Forleo and hear her say the prayer on my Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/Theobserversvoice

Colleen’s new book:
Yoga for Life
A Journey to Inner Peace and Freedom

http://books.simonandschuster.com/Yoga-for-Life/Colleen-Saidman-Yee/9781476776781