water

I had my laptop balanced on my knees furiously NOT working. I was busy trolling the internet for false eyelashes or any derivative thereof—if you must know!

I had the cable news on low because I’m writing a screenplay with a more political bend and it’s basically research. But these days the 24/7 news cycle has changed from the Russia probe complete with all of the creepy villains with borscht in their teeth and shady as fuck business practices—to the appalling stories of kids being separated from their parents at the border. 

Now usually, I can compartmentalize all of the shenanigans taking place in our nation’s capital, I have to stay sane and write humor after all!  But this—this with the pictures and audios of children wailing for their parents, well, it was too much. It was unignorable. 

I happened to look up right at the end of The Rachel Maddow show because I felt something weird happening. Sure enough, she was breaking down on camera, unable to complete the report that had just broken about small infants and toddlers being set to “tender age” shelters in south Texas. 

Slowly, I shut my computer and proceeded to sob for a good ten minutes. What is happening to my country? What has happened to common decency? Why the cruelty? 

I have tried to keep this “situation” in perspective which has proved to be a Herculean task. After all, what can I do besides send money, sign petitions, call and make the lives of everyone in Washington who thinks this is a good idea—miserable? Just the same, in that moment I felt about as powerless as I’ve ever felt in my life and well, emotions are emotions and sometimes you just need to cry your fucking face off. Especially when you observe the sorry state of affairs unfolding day in and day out in our country without so much as a chance to take a breath.

Afterward, I sat there like a nimrod, checking to make sure I hadn’t cried my lashes down my face and into some no-man’s-land—otherwise known as my cleavage. 

Then I made dinner.

By the time my husband got home the entire incident had gone on the back burner right next to the cauliflower mashed potatoes. He had a particularly spectacular day so we shared a Spanish Rioja and grinned at each other a lot. 

About an hour later I heard a loud humming sound. It was so low decibel it hurt my ears. Was it a low flying plane? Did our air conditioner (which wasn’t on) have bronchitis? Or had the blender finally decided to lead a meditation class with the toaster and the coffeemaker in the pantry? 

So I did what you do when shit like that happens. I muted the TV.

“Can you hear that?” I asked my stubbornly deaf husband who thinks he can hear a pin drop—but couldn’t hear a piano if it were dropped from a ten story building. 

“Yeah,” he replied. “What is it?”

We both got up and walked toward his office where the ceiling had turned into a waterfall. I kid you not. Water was pouring from the ceiling, flooding the concrete (thank god) floor below. 

But at least the humming had stopped.

Right above his office is the attic where our water heater lives. Suspecting that it was the culprit, up a ladder he went and into a cubbyhole he disappeared. I began throwing towels down and putting buckets in place while our dog slept through the entire ordeal. 

“Yep. It’s the water heater.,” he confirmed as he carefully backed his way down the ladder. 

“The intake hose has a leak and the pan underneath which is supposed to drain any water that leaks, well, it isn’t connected either. A double failure at the same time which is rare.”

“How rare?”

“I’ve never seen it before.”

“And what was the weird humming—oh wise one?”

“Dunno.”

Huh. And no big whoop. It was just a hose and a pan thingy. 

Later that night in bed, because I’m me and nothing can ever be accepted at face value, I looked up the meaning of a water leak. The first thing that came up was “emotional turmoil” which I dismissed immediately since things around here, emotionally speaking, are pretty chill. 

Feng Shui says it’s money leaking out but that didn’t feel accurate either. 

Hey…Wait just a minute… 

Hadn’t I been sobbing my head off in despair just an hour before the waterfall appeared?

OMG.  Had I made our house cry?

You be the judge.

Carry on,
xox

Go here if you want to help in some way:
https://togetherrising.org

The harvest is always greater than the seed but you have to sow the seed first.
– Tony Gaskins

My garden is insane right now. Even though it’s a hot summer with a historic drought here in California, and it really has no right to be so happy. That’s just how we roll around here.

We are restricted in every way imaginable, and some that aren’t.
The watering days are cut in half and the times allowed are so short that everyone’s lawns are a sad and sorry shade of brown, the urban trees are dying, and the landscaping that Studio City had spent so much of our tax money on this past decade, beautifying the middle of Ventura Boulevard, and other public thoroughfares, looks like a sub-Saharan attempt to grow something green—that has been left to die.

In other words, I live in the land of brown on brown. Los Angeles is slowly reverting back to the desert landscape from whence it came.

But not my yard. Deprivation becomes it.

I have never seen my grass greener or my plants looking better. And the hydrangea. Forget about the hydrangea.
Most years I’ve had a hard time getting them to bloom for me. I see them around the neighborhood, covered with flowers, and mine just looked…anemic. A blossom here, a bloom there, they have been a consistent source of disappointment to me for years.

But not this year.
Their showoffery is so flagrant that I thank God they’re in the backyard so I don’t get arrested
I’m certain our neighborhood lawn police and water patrol would have me fined up the WhoHa. Nobody would believe that I’m adhering to the strict statewide restrictions.
I question it myself. Yet, There they are. Heavy with blooms.

I cut them. Every morning in fear of reprisal. My house is full of pink and blue hydrangea even though I don’t have a lick of pink in my home. And they grow back almost overnight. It’s spooky.

That’s the other thing.
My entire garden is filled with pink. Pink geraniums, pink cyclamens, pink nameless flower on that spiky plant, even pink bougainvillea. Pretty, right? Except for the fact that I planted red. I like red bougainvillea with a Spanish style house and I was extremely careful in my color selection. Same with the goddamn hydrangea. Blue and lavender. NEVER pink. I would never plant a pink flower. They’re simply not my thing.

So the other day while walking across my patio with its numerous pots of flowering plants, standing barefoot in my tall, lush green grass, staring in awe at my six hydrangea bushes laden with pink blooms, hose in hand on watering day, hummingbirds zigging and zagging happily around my head; my heart literally skipped a beat; I had never in the ten years of this garden’s existence seen it look so beautiful. That was precisely the moment when the voice in my head said this:

“That is what abundance looks like Janet, It is everywhere. And if you can notice it around you, you will see it in your bank account. It’s the law.”

Well, is that so?
Huh…I’d never really thought about it like that.
But they had been connected together, hand it hand, by some mystical power greater than myself. The money had started to flow back into my life at almost the exact same time that my garden exploded.

Then my perception changed and I started to notice abundance EVERYWHERE.

Every morning I would stand slack-jawed in my garden, amazed at it’s abundance; and several days a week a check would come in the mail. That has been a rare enough occurrence in my life of late that the word miracle is not an over statement.

Listen, have you walked with fresh eyes through a grocery produce section lately?
What about a farmer’s market? What about a bookstore?
There are twelve movies playing at any given time at my local multiplex and we have nine hundred channels to choose from on our TV.

I live a life awash in abundance—and I bet you do too.

Here’s the thing you guys: You can’t notice the beauty that is all around you when you have your head down, burdened with worry, doubt or despair. You have to be open to seeing it, of letting it astound and delight you.

So which came first? I’d say it was the seed of happiness the garden gave me and the overwhelming feeling of abundance shown to me each morning. Then the money harvest came. Cool huh?

As for pink, I looked it up, it represents caring, compassion and love. Alright, I’ll let it slide.
Hey, who doesn’t need more of that?

Carry on,
xox

Get a load of this library/office! Nigella Lawson amid cook book abundance for sure!