advice

THE LAW OF DIMINISHING RETURNS

(the law of) diminishing returns
phrase of diminish—

1. Used to refer to a point at which the level of profits or benefits gained is less than the amount of money or energy invested—

I talked to a man recently, a very accomplished man, who acts like he has the world by the tail. And by that I mean, he looks down on everyone who hasn’t had the good fortune of being him.

Whatever life decisions you’ve made, how you’ve chosen to invest your money, even what music you listen to is met with butt-puckered lips that to go along, like a fine wine pairing, with his disapproving face. (I have it on good authority that when you purchase them at the Smug Store—they come as a pair.)

That’s okay, dude. Gimme all ya got. I worked in Beverly Hills for two decades. Water off a duck’s back.

Anyway, all evening long, as I listened to his risk-averse, conservative, privileged and inflexible views on life, I couldn’t help but wonder, How does his poor wife put up with this shit?

Then I remembered. She does it by trotting off on one of her horses, that’s how.

Oh, dear God, how I wish I had that ability.

The ability to bend to someone else’s will. The ability to let someone else run my life. To bankroll it with a marionette’s worth of strings attached. And then buy me a pony to reward my compliance.

I wish I had a price for my silence. It would have made my life SO much easier.

Because, you see, I was born with a big mouth. A big, loud, mouth that says stuff that makes guys like that shrivel in their underpants. Stuff like, “You’re not the boss of me!” And “Take your fucking pony and shove it!”

Some women trade all of the flack, disagreements, head-butting, and power struggles that happen in relationships for diamonds, vacations, fast cars, and ponies.

Not me. I call that foreplay… or Tuesday.

Unfortunately for me, (and probably for any man who has had a serious relationship with me) I have never been one of those women you could placate with bling. Biting my tongue and swallowing my opinions is much too high of a price to pay—for such little reward.

The law of diminishing returns.
Just one of the laws I have come to live by.
Along with no right turn on red, and chew before swallowing.

Carry on,
xox

Hi guys,

There was a time back in 2013 where I would sit up in bed, in the dark, first thing in the morning, and write down whatever came to mind. Often, it was poetry. I’m not kidding. Like, rhymey with a message kinda stuff.

I’d marinate in this early morning creative soup and jot down my notes for about fifteen minutes and then get on with the rest of my completely ordinary life.

I say that because even though they were just this side of craptastic as fine poetry goes, it felt special and rather extraordinary and I regret not doing it anymore. These days you can find me practicing my tandem snoring and drooling routine until the last possible minute because, well, I want to medal when it becomes an Olympic sport AND I write all day. The poetry has a myriad of entry points in twenty-four hours—so why write in the dark?

But lately I’ve been thinking…maybe I should pick up this habit again. Couldn’t hurt, right?

This one made me snort-laugh. I hope it has the same effect on you because:
Everything can be reduced to a food analogy.
And nothing too serious is going on here. Just livin’ life.

We all need to remember that!

Carry on,
xox

Whilst sitting and lamenting that your life is in shreds,
Tis no faux pas, there’s been no flaw,
Even though you’re filled with dread.

Get up, and make coleslaw instead.

The Universe may leave you for dead,
Life’s thrown up in the air, there’s water to tread,
You keep ruminating, worrying, running it through your head,

Don’t do that, make coleslaw instead.

Now, you can take lemons and make lemonade,
Or you can find problems that sour your day,
The choices are easy when acceptance is present.

Get up and make coleslaw instead!

Friends,

I was talking about joy with an acquaintance the other day—or the “J” word as I like to whisper—since talking about finding joy in life is about as triggery of a trigger as chatting about politics, God, or pumpkin spice anything.

Tempers flare. So do nostrils. It can get ugly.

Unfortunately, our conversation went downhill kinda like this one because some people have a hard time reaching for more joy in life. They will argue against it with the tenacity of a dog with a rope. Like there’s a lifetime joy quota and their’s has not only been reached, it’s been exceeded.

Their best days are behind them, they say. Right. Yada, yada, blah, blah, blah.

Anyhow, I was reminded of this video from 2014 otherwise known as a helluva long time ago. It makes me laugh at the absurdity of this argument every damn time I watch it (which is bordering on an obscene number of times)!

Seek joy you guys! Trust me, there’s always more lurking around the corner!

Here’s a good minute and a half minute to start you off!

Carry on.
xox

“I Have Fear.

There’s a common mistranslation that causes us trouble.

We say, “I am afraid,” as if the fear is us, forever. We don’t say, “I am a fever” or “I am a sore foot.” No, in those cases, we acknowledge that it’s a temporary condition, something we have, at least for now, but won’t have forever.

“Right now, I have fear about launching this project,” is quite different from, “I’m afraid.”
-Seth Godin

Fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck. Seth nailed me on this!

And it got me to thinking. What other feelings am I forever-izing?

The first one that comes to mind is this. “Gawd, I’m an idiot.”

(Which, sadly, I would never say to another human being other than myself.)
But I must admit, I say it to myself All. The. Time. Especially when I put periods after single words for emphasis.
I must make a concerted effort to follow Seth’s advice and acknowledge that my chronic idiocy is in reality only a temporary condition. (Monday thru Friday 8-5. Weekends my idiocy turns to slothiness which is somehow infinitely more acceptable.)

I have an idiot temporarily making all of my decisions, will be my new mantra.

“I am hungry.”

This is another one of my greatest hits. The only time it feels temporary is while I am actively eating. Once I put my fork down, all bets are off. In a cruel twist of suckiness, once it enters my body, pasta or even a steak and baked potato have the ability to disguise itself as Chinese food leaving me starving again in half an hour. I’ve always filed this under the heading of Life’s Not Fair, but now, when I’m famished I’ll tweak my thinking and say: “I feel like eating my foot” —because I only have two, so…temporary.

“I am horny.”

In my twenties and thirties and maybe even half of my forties, and three weeks in my mid-fifties, I would have fought Seth on the temporary nature of this condition. With the sexual appetite of a man, it felt like a 24-7 forever kind of thing to me. I was horniness with arms and legs. But now that sixty is breathing down my neck, yeah, I get it. With my fifteen minutes of randiness every other month, now “I am horny” feels like a lot like over-committing. Maybe “Rollover honey, because right this minute I’m thinking about sex!” is more like it.

Hey, I showed you mine—what are yours? What do you own that is in reality only a temporary condition?

Carry on,
xox

“Go see if he can fix it” There they were, the six most dreaded words spoken at my dry cleaners. 
Apparently, they’d tried to launder one of my husband’s favorite shirts, but its threadbare condition, aside from giving it ’security blanket status’ in the eyes of my husband, had made it nearly impossible to mend. 

Not that I mend. I most certainly do not. 

I do a lot of things like sit for twelve hours on the back of a motorcycle with a smile on my face in a foreign country and I’m great at finding little, off-the-beaten-path restaurants, but I cannot and will not sew on a button or fix a hem. As for altering a garment, well, I advise you to do what I do and seek the services of a professional. 

There were two women in front of me in line at the alterations desk which was going to give me the time I needed to get up my nerve—and gird my loins. There he was, the alt (alterations) Nazi, all five foot nine of him, lecturing a woman about the ‘quality’ of the jacket he held in his hands like a piece of roadkill. 

I’d like to say he was in ‘rare form’ but this was the only form I’d ever seen him in.

“Don’t spend the money,” he sneered. “It’s not worth it.”

I could see the woman shaking her head in agreement as he continued to eyeball said jacket with contempt. I knew the shame she was feeling. I’d basked in the glow of his approval as he reverently inspected every impeccable inch of a Chloe suit I needed tailored in time for A New Year’s Eve party.  But I too had been on the receiving end of this exact lecture as he handed me  back a dress of mine that he found substandard—beneath his ability to fix.
I hate to admit it but he was right.

“If it were only better quality,” he continued, his words made that much harsher as they ran through the filter of his indiscernible accent, “It would be an investment.”

He handed her back the piece-of-shit-jacket and then wiped his hands on his pants like the poor quality had somehow left a bad smell. Jacket woman skulked away avoiding any and all eye contact with the rest of us. 

Shit. I’d been in her shoes more times than I’d like to admit. 

Rumor has it, his name is Navi although I’ve been afraid to call him by that name in case it isn’t and besides, I’m hardly on a first-name basis with the man. I highly doubt his mother is. 

Some say he worked in New York in the garment business back in the seventies and eighties. There have even been rumblings that he sewed for Halston. That would certainly explain his incredible skill set—he is THE BEST. He’d worked miracles on more articles of my clothing than I could count. He did have a certain air about him. Aristocratic, with more than a hint of snob. Maybe he was French.  That would also explain the highfalutin attitude, and the reason everyone in Studio City puts up with it. 

“I think he’s Lebanese,” another victim in line a few years back informed me when I wondered aloud about his accent. 

“I heard he’s Israeli. Ex Mossad,” the short bald man in front of me that day said with a sly wink, like he knew something the rest of us didn’t.

That didn’t surprise me. I could see him on the battlefield, fashioning an eyepatch for Moshe Dayan out of a spare pair of Israeli military standard issue underwear. That would also explain the gruff exterior and complete lack of social graces.
After all he’d been through, here he was spending his golden years altering clothes at a dry cleaners in the Valley. That would make even the sweetest pear prickly. 

 “Next!” he bellowed from behind the counter as the woman in front of me stepped forward.

“Morning Navi!” she chirped with the chirpiest kind of fake familiarity. He looked back at her with disdain. Either that wasn’t his name or he had no idea who she was. Maybe both. Probably both. Either way, she was off to a rocky start.

I cringed for her. For what was coming next. 

“So…” she started off strong, “These are the same pants you fixed last time.” She thrust a pair of black dress pants in his face while juggling her phone and a fancy latte from the latest neighborhood hipster coffee joint. “I pulled the hem out with the heel of my shoe. Again!” 

He let them drop to the floor between them.

I died a little inside.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, laughing a nervous laugh that would have made hyenas run for cover. “I’m such a klutz!”

“Obviously,” He replied straight-faced. 

This was not going well. My heart started racing. I wanted more than anything in life to open a time/space portal and step inside. 

“This is the third time you’ve pulled out the hem on these pants,” he scolded.

“Second.” She had the audacity to correct him.

I looked around for a place to seek cover. 

“No!” he said, pushing the guilty pants back at her.  

“No?” She was gobsmacked.

“No,” he said firmly. “No more hems. Next!”

The woman looked around stunned. She was obviously someone who didn’t hear that word directed at her well, ever. 

“No?” She asked again, incredulous.

I took a step back.

“Next!” he yelled, the look in his eyes giving her face frostbite.

I had no idea what to do next, push her out of the way—or run.

I decided to push her to the side while she gathered her wits. It’s hard to hear NO from an asshole.

Swallowing hard I handed him my husband’s wobbie, I mean shirt. While searching desperately for saliva, I was able to point and mime to the place where the shirt had ripped open.

“This your shirt?” he asked, inspecting it like he was counterintelligence searching for a bomb.

“Oh, no,” I said, giggling like an idiot. “It’s my husband’s”

He continued the inquisition. “I see I’ve fixed it before.” He began pointing out the four thousand other repairs he’d done. 

The room started to spin.

“It’s his favorite?” He asked, locking eyes with me. I swear I felt the red dot of a sniper rifle on my forehead. 

I’m gonna die, I thought. He’s gonna start yelling and I’m going to melt into a puddle of humiliation right here at the alterations counter of this stupid Studio City dry cleaners!

“Uh, yeah, I mean yes, one of his favorites!” I said, nodding wildly like a jackass. Riding a bucking bronco. 

“Fine.” He scribbled something on a scrap of paper and pinned it to the shirt. Probably the number of a safe house my husband could call because I was clearly someone who was not in her right mind.

“Fine? I mean yes, yes, you’ll do it?” I asked in my tiny mouse voice.

“I will. I have a shirt I love like this. It’s good.”

Wait. Had he inadvertently given me insight into his soul? 

He has a threadbare shirt too? Wait. He felt love? Of course he did! He’s a human being…when he’s not at the alterations counter. 

I slapped my own forehead, stepping over the body of the woman ahead of me as I left.

A week later when I picked up the shirt I tried to renew our bound, you know, because we’d had a moment. 

“I’m here to pick up my husband’s shirt, the ratty one, I mean comfortable one…like you have?”

His face could not have been more blank as he held out his hand for the pick-up slip. He didn’t remember me at all. 

Or my husband. I was crushed.

“Go pay cashier!” he ordered. “Next!”

Carry on,
xox

Loves,
Maybe it’s the heat or the way the planets are aligned, or the damn solar flares are back, but I have several people around me, strong, capable, overachieving types——who are really struggling. And the very fact that things are feeling unmanageable for them has sent them into a playback loop of Why the fuck can’t I do this? — and I should be able to do this!
It’s like someone threw a Molotov cocktail laced with vulnerability and self-doubt into their lives and they don’t have the skill set to reach out to the bomb squad for help.
That’s where WE come in!
This is a post from back in 2014 where I attempted to explain a little bit about being one of the strong ones and what you can do to help us in a crisis. My hope is that it reaches the eyes it was intended for.

Carry on,
xox

When I walked up to my husband I had tears in my eyes. That is NOT a common occurrence in our home, in our relationship or pretty much ever so he looked at the picture I had in my hand, that I had walked over to show him. It was the photo above. He, on the contrary, is a “major weeper” so naturally, he became a puddle in seconds.

You know why?

We are both “strong people” and no one EVER asks us how we’re doing or if we’re okay.

Does that happen to you?

It’s really not that people don’t care to ask you, they just don’t think of it.

Since childhood, we’ve both known that about the world, so we ask each other with the promise that we aren’t allowed to answer with the obligatory I’m fine if that’s not the case. It’s a no-bullshit zone. Complete honesty is required. We have earned each other’s trust, so it releases us of any reservations about letting our guard down.

We understand that being strong is a blessing—and a curse.

I’ve had some really nasty shit happen to me in my life, and when it did everyone around me just assumed I was going to be “fine”. I always am, so they’re right.
But…

Filled with sadness and rage, (because we know those two always travel together) I have screamed at whoever was in the room, “What do I have to do, bleed? Does blood have to pour out my eyes in order for you to see how much emotional pain I’m in?”

The response was always the same. “I just figured you were okay.”

I love that I instill that level of confidence in people. It must be my stiff upper lip or that ability I have to stand upright in the midst of a crisis.

But please ask me how I’m feeling. Ask me how it’s going, or if I need help because I’m a big girl and I’ll let you know if you have overstepped my emotional boundary, although that’s pretty hard to do.
I’ve talked recently to many other strong people I know, to ask them what they need when the shit hits the fan.

I’m going to give you a few simple steps in my GUIDE TO HELPING THE STRONG:

1. Sometimes us strong ones, we need a hug. If you’re too uncomfortable to talk to me, hug me. I promise, I won’t ever push you away.

2.  Just a simple “I’m here for you,” when you don’t know what to say to us, is beyond appreciated.

3. We’ve heard “You’ve got this” all our lives, and eventually we will, because we’re the strong ones, just please don’t say that.

4. If we ever get from you the opportunity, willingness to listen, and the space to vent, please let us. We won’t self indulge and stay there long, we’re the strong ones, it just helps us process.

5. We will NEVER call YOU in the middle of the night, that has not been OUR role. WE get the calls. So, if you know something has just gone down, like a death or a huge loss, firing, humiliation, fight, whatever…call us.

If we cry, let us. I promise it’s not the end of the world.
Don’t try to get us to stop, or if you want to help at all —please don’t tell us we’re overreacting. I can assure you we’re not. Not even a little bit. How do I know? Because it’s not our nature.

One lesson I’ve learned: People HATE to see strong people vulnerable. It scares the fuck out of them.

I know for a fact that several of my love affairs ended because I showed vulnerability and upset the dynamics of the relationship. I was supposed to be the “strong one”.

If you’re one of the strong ones I suggest you email this to all your friends and family because I can tell you from experience that they’re at a loss as to how to handle you. And please, if you know a strong one, please take this to heart.

You strong ones, do you have anything to add?
What helps you?

I’d love to hear what YOU think.
Carry on, 
Xox JB

I wrote about this a long time ago, but I’m going to post it again.
Partly because there are so many new readers, but mostly because I’ve told this story more in the past few weeks than I have since it happened. AND it is a fuckin’ great story.

If you’ve heard it before, go make yourself a sandwich. And please, don’t give away the ending.

In the spring of 2010, I went to Hawaii with my dear friend Wes to get some clarity about which direction I should take my life after the death of my store, Atik. Sudden loss can strip a person of their trust in life—and themselves, and I was not lucky enough to escape that unspoken step of the grieving process. Besides, misery loves company.

Oh, who am I kidding? We went to drink Mai Tais, eat like escaped death row convicts, sit on the white sands of Waikiki Beach all day gossiping and people watching—and get massages.

All we did was laugh. Well, he laughed, I cried—then he laughed at my crying. Then I cry-laughed. It was wet and sloppy. Lots of running mascara and snot-bubbles.
You get the picture.

About mid-way through our seven-day trip, I got the sense there was going to be a tsunami.
You know—like you do…
That evening when Wes met me at the bar for happy hour I voiced my concern. “I want to move to a higher room in our hotel,”  I said, stirring my drink. “I think there’s going to be a tsunami and I’m not going to be safe on the second floor.”

“Did you start without me? How many drinks have you had?” he was laughing, flagging down a waiter in order to join this crazy party he figured I’d already started.
“I’m serious. You’re on the third floor, but I’m not even sure that’s high enough. Let’s look into moving.”

All I could see in my mind’s eye were those horrible images from the tsunami in Sumatra the day after Christmas, 2004.

His eyes said: Have you lost your mind? But in order to calm my fears, he immediately whipped out his phone and started to look up ‘Hawaiian tsunami’.

“The earliest on record was reported in 1813 or 1814 — and the worst occurred in Hilo in 1946, killing 173 people.” he recited, reading a Wikipedia page.
“So it happens kind-of-never, and I’m okay with those odds.” He raised his drink to toast “To surviving that rarest of all disasters—the Hawaiian tsunami!” We clinked glasses as he shook his head laughing at my continued squirminess.

Still laughing, he mumbled under his breath, “But if it does happen, which it could, ‘cause you’re pretty spooky that way— it will be one hell of a story.”

The first week of March the following year, 2011, our great friends, the ones who ride the world with us on motorcycles, asked if we wanted to join them at their condo in Maui. You don’t have to ask me twice to drop everything and go to Hawaii. I was printing our boarding passes before I hung up the phone.

On the beautiful drive from the airport to Lahaina, the air was warm and thick with just a hint of the fragrance of tropical rain as we wove our way in and out of the clouds that play peek-a-boo with the sun all day on the Hawaiian Islands. With a view of the lush green mountains formed from the ever-present volcanoes to the right, and the deep blue Pacific churning wildly to our left, that place really felt like Paradise Lost.

That’s when it hit me. I turned down the radio of the rental car that was blaring some five-year-old, Top Forty song.
“We’re going to have a tsunami,”  I announced.
It didn’t feel like if — it felt like when. A certainty.
“I think we’re more likely to have a volcanic eruption than a tsunami,” my hubby replied nonchalantly, turning the radio volume back up just in time to sing along with the chorus.

Damn, I love my husband. He cohabitants with all the voices in my head without batting an eye. Most men would run for the hills. He just stays rational. A volcanic eruption in the Hawaiian Islands is the rational supposition.
God love him.

I had never mentioned my premonition from the trip the previous year—too odd; but I let loose for the remainder of the drive, wondering aloud about what floor their condo was on and worrying if it would it be high enough. Having never been there before, neither of us had any idea and I’ve gotta tell ya,  I breathed a sigh of relief when the answer came via text. The sixth floor. Their condo was on the sixth floor, overlooking the pool, facing the ocean.

We spent the next week eating and drinking amazing food and wine, snorkeling, swimming, driving around, and whale watching. As a matter of fact, the ocean outside of our resort was a veritable whale soup.

There is a passage between Maui, Lanai, and Molokai (both which we could see in the distance), that the whales like to use instead of the open ocean, and we could see them breaching from our balcony. They were present in high numbers and especially active. “It was extraordinary!” The guys on the whale watching boats agreed with our friends—they’d never seen a year like that one!

Two days before our departure, on the eleventh, it all seemed to come to a screeching halt.

The ocean was as passive as a lake. I hiked down the beach to a little cove that was supposed to be like “swimming in a tropical fish tank”—nothing. Literally no fish. People kept remarking how odd it seemed. The guys on the whale watching catamarans were perplexed. Suddenly, there were no whales.

That night after my shower I turned on the TV in our room for the first time the entire trip to catch the results of American Idol.
We made dinner at home that night and I was just the right amount of sunburned, buzzed, full and sleepy.
As I got dressed and dried my hair I casually flipped around the channels. American Idol, Baywatch re-runs, CNN. Then I saw it.

The bright red BREAKING NEWS banner at the bottom of the screen: Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami.

I screamed something incoherent as I ran out into the family room, half-dressed, knocking things over, becoming hysterical.
“You guys, Turn on the TV! Oh my God! Turn on the TV!” I grabbed the remote, but it looked like something that powers the International Space Station, so I threw it toward my husband.

“Oh, I don’t want to watch TV…” I heard someone say, but Raphael could tell something was wrong. He said later that it felt a lot like 9/11 when everyone was calling and the only thing they could manage to say was, turn on the TV!

“CNN. Find CNN!” I was so freaked out I could barely speak.

When the images came up on that big screen HD TV they were even more terrifying.
It was a helicopter shot, high above the coastline of a small city. There was a wave with a white cap as far as the eye could see. it looked like it spanned almost the entire coastline and it was headed straight for cars, boats, houses…and people.

Now we were all transfixed. Silently glued to the screen with the frantic sounding Japanese commentary running in the background. This was all happening LIVE.

The CNN anchor sounded reassuring, telling us that Japan had one of the most advanced tsunami warning systems on the planet. Sirens had started sounding a few minutes after the large off-shore earthquake, warning the population to make their way to their pre-determined evacuation points up on higher ground.

We watched in horror as churning brown water began rushing onshore with a ferocity that was nauseatingly familiar.
It just kept coming and coming. Undeterred by the breakwater…and the thirty-foot wall they had built to withstand a tsunami.

“God, I hope they had enough time,” I whispered.

Suddenly the CNN picture was minimized as the face of a local anchor at the Maui station took up the entire rest of the screen.
“Good evening,” he read off the cue card, “The entire Hawaiian Islands have been placed on tsunami watch due to the large earthquake off the coast of northern Japan. We will keep you posted as scientists get the readings off of the tsunami buoys that dot the span of the Pacific Ocean from the coast of Japan to the west coast of North America. If it looks like a tsunami is coming our way, the watch will turn into a warning.” He swallowed awkwardly, I saw his Adam’s apple quivering.
“Stay with us for further instructions.”

The screen was filled again with the escalating destruction in Japan.

I started to shake uncontrollably, my eyes filling with tears.

Then I saw him flinch out of the corner of my eye. It got my attention and when I looked his way his face looked as if he’d seen a ghost. With the remote still in his hand, my husband turned toward me slowly, deliberately.
His mouth dropped open, his eyes were full of…questions.

Then with no sound; his eyes locked on mine as he mouthed my prophecy from earlier that week: We’re going to have a tsunami.

As an aside, I cannot explain to the wives reading this, the satisfaction I felt when the look on his face telegraphed to me that my tsunami prediction had been real and not the result of some questionable tuna salad at the airport.  

Then I snapped back to reality. The hair stood up on the back of my neck. Really, the hair on my entire body. Even my chin hairs stood at attention.

The shrill wailing of the Disaster Alert Siren brought us both back to reality.
It was official—the tsunami was imminent.

To Be Continued…

LESSONS FROM A TSUNAMI ~ THE CONCLUSION
(It’s a throwback, I’m not gonna make you wait!)

What in the hell was going on? I had unwittingly been given a front-row seat to a disaster that I’d known was going to happen—for a year!

Why in the hell was I in Hawaii again? What was my part in this tragedy?

I never wanted to be someone who predicts disasters. Seriously Universe? Give me another job. Anything.
Something else. Something not so fucking scary.

Be careful what you wish for. Now I talk to dead people. But not the scary ones. Funny ones. The bossy but kind ones.
Thank God.

Anyway, the local anchor came back onscreen to inform us that one of the deep ocean buoys had registered a tsunami fifteen feet high and getting larger, with a velocity of over five hundred miles per hour, and it was headed directly towards the Hawaiian Islands.

It would get to us in five hours.
3 a.m.
Fucking three a.m! Of course, it was coming in the middle of the night!
The witching hour. The time when nothing good ever happens. Oh, and by-the-way, dark water is one of my biggest fears.
I was petrified!

Ginger was feeling sick and went to bed. The guys opened another bottle of wine and started playing cards, remaining lighthearted, partying while waiting for the inevitable. Just like they did on the deck of the Titanic.

I went back to our room, shivering under the blankets with anxiety, glued to the TV while the disaster siren wailed in the background. Right around midnight, they announced the second buoy reading. The wave was larger and picking up speed as it headed our way. Suddenly the intercom came on inside the condo. Nobody even knew there was an intercom connected to the main resort which was run by Marriott.

A voice cleared its throat.

A young man’s voice, extremely nervous, shaky, cracking and squeaking, blared loudly throughout the condo. Haltingly, he instructing everyone in units below the fifth floor to evacuate to the roof. “Bring blankets…pillows…water and, um, your shoes, it’s going to be a long night.” His anxiety was palpable.

Uh, okay Voice of Authority.
Didn’t they have anyone available with a more mature tone? Something deep and fatherly? A voice that could console us and instill calm. I was thinking Morgan Freeman or James Earl Jones.
This kid’s voice and delivery were comical to me. In my imagination, he was the pimply-faced nephew of the lady who fed the stray cats behind the parking garage. One minute he was doing his calculus homework, the next, he was behind a microphone, advising hundreds of tourists what to do during an impending disaster. He was the only one that was expendable in an emergency. Everyone important had a task.
Holy crap, he was the best they had!

Thank God something was funny.

One of trembly, squeaky, scared guy’s announcements advised us all to fill our bathtubs in order to have plenty of drinking water in case the sanitation plant was wiped out. Intermittently he’d come back on with further instructions, Anyone with a vehicle in the lower garages, please move them to higher ground behind the main hotel, he advised, sounding as if he were on the verge of tears.

Not long afterward, I heard voices, car keys, and the front door slam as the guys went to move our cars.

In the dark from our balcony, I watched the groundskeepers running around like headless chickens rushing to clear the sand and pool surround of hundreds of lounge chairs. Then they emptied the rental hut with its kayaks, snorkels and fins, inner tubes and dozens of surf and boogie boards.

If you watch the Thailand tsunami videos it is those seemingly innocuous beach toys that become deadly projectiles in fast-moving water. You may not immediately drown, but a surfboard or a beach chair coming at you at hundreds of miles an hour will kill you for sure.

It was too much. The destruction in Japan was too much for me to handle.
I watched multi-story buildings get washed away like they were kids toys. We were so close to the water. Could our building withstand the rush of the initial wave? How high would the water come?
The third floor, the fourth—or higher? What was going to happen?

I finally turned off the TV plunging the room into darkness. Once it was quiet I instantly felt a drop in my anxiety level. Say what you will, cable TV can suck you into an endless loop of death and destruction—it’s like a drug. Unhooking the CNN IV, I grabbed my phone, inserted my earbuds, pulled up a meditation, and started to calm my nervous system down. Slow…deep…breathing. In…and out… after a few minutes, I could feel my shoulders drop and my face relax. I’d been unconsciously clenching my jaw for hours.

Slowly, my mind started to unwind. The siren went way, fading into the distance, the boy’s terrified voice becoming a muffled form of white noise.
I actually slipped into a half-sleep state. Aware of my surroundings, but extremely relaxed.

The meditations came to an end. Silence. I was still okay.
No longer spinning in fear. No longer afraid.
“What’s going to happen, how bad will this be?” I asked no one in particular.
Just a question I needed answered.

Here’s where the magic happened.

A very loving, clear and calm voice answered back:
What do you want to happen? How bad do you want it to be?

What? I get a vote? This answer left me flabbergasted. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but this felt extraordinary. Somehow, instinctively, I knew that I couldn’t say make the tsunami go away—there are some things we are powerless to change.
What I could change was MY experience of it. What did I want to happen to me—to us?

Script it the voice said, and that has changed my life.

Okay…I said in my head, remembering the videos from Sumatra, You can come up to the palm trees that line our pool area and define the boundary between the beach and our resort. That’s it! To the palm trees only—NOT into the pool—and NOT into our resort.

No further conversation was needed. No idle chit-chat, no more Q & A.

I fell asleep. A deep sleep rich with meaningful dreams that I can’t remember
Inside one, a muffled voice that felt like it was underwater warned: Stay away from the ocean, Do NOT get near the water. We are on lockdown, stay inside your rooms.

It must be happening, crossed my mind, but I was too deep to care.

Only as far as the palm trees…up to the palm trees…

When I finally opened my eyes I could see daylight. Raphael was asleep next to me and I could smell coffee.
Obviously, the tsunami had come and gone—and everything seemed…normal.

These are pictures of the waterline the tsunami left behind. It may not look like much but it is still waaaaay up the beach at this point, about three hours after it came ashore. It surged forty feet UP the beach, over dry sand, and stopped right at the palm trees that line the pool of our resort.

Script it. Imagine it. Feel it. Ask for it. Relax.

That proved to me, without a doubt, that we can script our circumstances. There are things we can’t control, but there are so many that we can.

Get calm, and set boundaries. How bad/good do you want it to be? What do you want to happen?

We have control over our immediate circumstances.
Script it.

This changed my life–I hope it changes yours.

Carry on,
xox

Taller, shorter, fat or skinny. Different, not wrong.
Black, white, orange or polka-dot. Different, not wrong.
Red hair, blue hair, or no hair at all. Different, not wrong.
Tattooed, pierced, bearded, half a shaved head. Different, not wrong.
Head-scarf wearer, wig-wearer, fully covered or barely covered at all. Different, not wrong.
Democrat, Republican, Independent, Libertarian. Green Party, Etc. Etc. Different, not wrong.
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Transgender. Different, not wrong.
Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic, Jew, Muslim, Unitarian, Baptist. Etc, Etc. Different, not wrong.

This is a post from back in 2014 when things seemed a little less complicated.
Carry on,
xox

The other day in line at my version of The Happiest Place on Earth, Target or “Tar-Jeh” as I like to refer to it; I overheard a couple of women in front of me mercilessly scrutinizing the cashier.

“My God, will you look at those fingernails, they’re so long! And that color!”

Her friend stopped unloading the contents of her cart onto the conveyor belt just long enough to lean forward to get a better look.

“Oh yeah,” she replied, “How does she do anything?

It appeared to me that she was doing her job just fine.

“And that blue color, bleck, all the kids are wearing that and I just don’t get it. It’s hideous.”

I was hoping that our checker Tracy, couldn’t hear them, even though they were making no effort to lower their voices, speaking with the same loud, rude, audacity I’ve heard some American’s use in a foreign country when they assume the victim of their vitriol doesn’t speak English.

Once they had finished verbally annihilating Tracy, they went to town on the lady in the line next to us.

“Oh jeeeeeez, she’s too old to be wearing shorts. Not with legs like that! One of the women snorted. “She should get that vein stripping surgery that Nikki had done, then maybe she could wear those things…but then only in the privacy of her own backyard for godsakes.”

“Looks like a freakin’ roadmap. Disgusting! My eyes can’t un-see that,” her friend chimed in, throwing cat food, tampons and a Snickers bar on the conveyer belt.

Suddenly, I realized that because I was behind them, at any moment I could become fair game. Terrified, I set my head to the swivel setting, looking around for another line in which to hide. Certain I was about to become the next victim of the Target Fashion Police, I started to pray…

Dear God, if you care about me at all (and I would understand if you don’t recognize me or even know my last name because, well, it’s been a while) please help me vanish into mist. Seriously, I can’t walk away now,  I just can’t, that’ll give them a perfect shot of my ass in yoga pant, my blue toenail polish, and this old CURE concert T-shirt I wear when I want to feel relevant. Fuck it! I’ll be damned if I’m going to give them all of that ammunition for their nastiness. Better I just stay put, duck down, start to drool, or become mist…yeah, mist would work.
…oh, shit, thanks, I mean, Amen.

Do you know people like that? That judge anything that’s different from THEIR “normal” as wrong?

Hey, ladies, with your overdone Botox, orange skin, and fake designer handbags, (sorry, but you asked for it) it’s not wrong – it’s just different.

I once took a friend to a group meditation which I attended once a month. She was interested in starting a practice, and I’d known these people for over ten years. A previous friend I had taken, described this group as an old, cozy pair of slippers – warm and welcoming. I thought so too.

Meditation was great. My friend seemed to genuinely like the people, chatting and laughing afterward while sipping her alkaline water.

On the way home in the car, I was in for a rude awakening.

“Ernest guy…what’s his story?” she asked.
I knew who she meant, one of the men IS very earnest in his social interactions.
“Oh I don’t know, I’ve known him forever. He can be kind of intense – but he’s sweet, really.”
“Well, he creeped me out. Then that Birkenstock, ferret-faced lady, ha! She’s something else.”

“Hey! These are my friends, sort of…anyway..they’re sweet and harmless and they seemed to really like you.”

I was trying to keep my cool, but I wanted to punch her in the throat. OMMMMMM back to a loving place.

“Yeah, well, they’re not my people, too granola, woo woo, Patchouli, for me. But I did like the water. And the meditation.”

Too bad sister, because I’m never taking you again, I thought silently to myself, not wanting to start a car-fight.

Truth is, I’d heard this same friend level judgment on everyone around her in ten seconds flat, but they were usually strangers, not people I knew. (I can only imagine what kind of animal MY face resembled.) Seems anyone who didn’t fit in some little box she had envisioned as “correct” – was somehow wrong.
They were ferret-faced, creepy, granola-eating (so what) freaks.

“Look at that pedophile waiting at the corner for the light?”
“Look at that girl’s eyeliner, who did her make-up? A raccoon?”

I know this seems like a duh, but I’m going there anyway. Obviously, SHE had some self-esteem issues or she wouldn’t be looking around with such a cruel eye and a sharp tongue.

After I ditched that judgy friend for good, I still couldn’t escape it, the judgment that is—I started to notice it everywhere.

Two guys at Starbucks sneering judgmentally at one of those overly complicated coffee orders the Barista was shouting out at the pickup counter. You know the one: grande, half-caf, sugar-free, one pump, vanilla latte with extra foam.

So what! Why is my order any of your business and why is it somehow wrong?

Variety makes the world go ’round. I personally relish it.
In my opinion, it makes life and people watching supremely entertaining.

Because it is so glaringly obvious to me now, I promise to try not to make you wrong.

Be your badass selves.
Fly your freak flags.
Wear your blue nail polish, go ahead! Pierce, tattoo, flaunt those daisy dukes, wear that red MAGA cap to the picnic (Gulp, I had to add that).

I LOVE IT. 

DIFFERENT inspires me! It gives me ideas, things I would have never have thought of.

As far as I ever contemplate pushing the envelope—someone has been there, done that, SO last Tuesday.

Start paying attention, see if you can catch yourself or someone around you judging different as wrong.
It’s okay if someone loves pickled herring or sleeps until noon or sings the wrong lyrics to every song (that’s actually endearing).

What do you think? Clue me in. Tell me about it in the comments!

Love you, my tribe,
Xox

“Would you enjoy a trip to hell? …then you might enjoy a trip to Death Valley. It has all the advantages of hell without the inconveniences.”
~ 1907 advertisement in a local mining paper.

“Hey, whatever happened to ‘What the fuck Friday?'” asked no one, ever.

I haven’t written one of these WTF stories in a while but I was reminded of this one by a story I heard on the Moth recently, about a woman dealing with her fabulous but haunted apartment in Paris.

Let me just preface this by stating a not-so-obvious fact: Ghosts love me.

How does she know this? You might ask, convinced that I must have fallen and hit my head, or eaten some questionable shrimp for dinner.

All I can say is, I have the evidence to prove it. They make themselves known to me in such hard to dismiss ways such as hijacking my technology, changing the radio station, or stealing my clothes that I can no longer avoid the fact that—
ghosts love me.

They are attracted to me like a moth to a flame. I’ve made peace with it and I’m more discerning about who gets to visit, nevertheless, I have many, many stories. This one’s pretty cool.

“Let’s go on a ride to see the super bloom,” my husband announced one day referring to the proliferation of wildflowers that sprung up around Los Angeles a few years back. Every April, if we get more than our usual teaspoon full of rain, the hillsides and deserts explode with color.

“It’s a sight to behold!” he said, trying to convince me that I’d love it, as he prepared the motorcycle for the ride to Death Valley. He loves the desert. He thinks its stark, desolate brownness is beautiful. And the heat doesn’t bother him at all. He’s ridden the wildflower trail to Death Valley half a bazillion times and as he tells it—it Takes his breath away every single time.

We could not be more opposite. I despise heat and crispy, brown, flora makes me mad.

And yet, I did have my breath taken from me—but not on the ride. It happened at the Furnace Creek Ranch which only lives up to one half of its name. It is hotter than a furnace there—but there’s not a creek in sight. Let’s put creek in the name! Someone from marketing said, obviously delirious from the heat.

Anyway, the flowers were pretty, at least what I could see of them through my bug-splattered visor. Super blooms have a tendency to invite super swarms of every bug imaginable. By the time we arrived at the ranch, the entire front of my husband, and less so myself because I sit behind him, was dyed the bright neon yellow of bug guts.

So, not only did I hate the desert, I’d taken thousands of bugs down with me on my way to hell. Good times.

Get to the ghost part! you’re saying, so I will.

Since the outside temperature was a few degrees cooler than high noon on Mars, I spent the rest of the day in the ranch’s heated pool. Yes, you read that right, you can’t make this shit up. Trust me, it was better than sitting inside, where the air conditioning was a thousand years old and ready to throw in the towel. The ranch, which was built in 1927 felt like it was ALL ORIGINAL if you catch my drift. Even though our room had a ceiling fan to help the AC along, I could tell a coup was afoot.

That did not bode well for our stay that night.

Staying wet as long as I could, I was forced out of my swimsuit by the NO SWIMSUITS ALLOWED rule prominently displayed in the dining room.
Well now, how fancy.
Hanging my suit on the bathroom door to dry, along with my towel and a hat, I showered and put on something white and gauzy for our dinner in the not-super-fancy dining room with all the fancy rules. The food was colder than the ice in my drink and that was not on purpose. Let’s just say it was far as you could get from fine dining and still have cloth napkins. I do remember having chocolate pudding for dessert and that tells you a lot about the menu.

It also saved the trip as far as I was concerned.

Later that night, with my husband tucked in beside me, snoring his face off, I turned off the light, eager to forget all the bug lives we’d tragically snuffed out so that the two of us could gape at a bunch of wild poppies.

That’s when I felt something or someone lay on top of me.

It felt heavy, like a body, and its “face” was right in front of mine in the dark. Even though my eyes were closed I could feel it staring at me. I wasn’t about to open them and have the bejesus scared outta me. I have my limits.
“Get him off of me,” I managed to say to my husband as I poked him in the side with my right hand, trying like hell to wake him up, “I can’t breathe!”
“Huh, what?”
“Oh, thank god you’re awake, jeez it took you long enough, I can’t feel my legs. Turn on the light!”
“Why?”
Just DO IT!”
I felt him reach over and turn on the light—and when he did, the pressure subsided.

Now, you have to picture me, laying on my back, eyes shut tight, breathing hard, sweaty and frantic.

“There was something laying on top of me, I couldn’t breathe!” I gasped. Sitting up, I finally opened my eyes. Suddenly, the room had taken on a decidedly more sinister vibe. I shot imaginary laser beams, like you do, into all the corners to kill the boogie men who were hiding there. Could you blame me?

“There’s somebody in this room and he’s messing with me!” I said, staring over at my husband for some kind of support.

That’s when the ceiling fan stopped spinning.

Cool as a cucumber because this is, by far, not the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to us, he looked over at me, and with a voice dripping with compassion said, “I don’t see anyone.”
Then, HE TURNED OFF THE LIGHT!

Against my better judgment, I laid down, but the moment I did I could feel the weight of “it” on top of me again.
“Turn on the light!” I screamed.
“Oh, for the love of… seriously?”
“I’m not kidding!” I was struggling for breath.
“I’m not saying you are… maybe you’re just hot.”
“Now is not the time for a debate! I can’t breathe! TURN ON THE LIGHT!”
The minute the light came on, the passive-aggressive ghost went away.
Jumping to my feet, I checked the windows, looked in the bathroom, opened the closet and all the drawers, and ever so timidly checked under the bed for the pervy perv who’d snuck into our room and was laying on top of me—in bed—next to my unsuspecting husband. Surprisingly, I didn’t find anyone.
“We have to sleep with the lights on,” I announced, after a sweep of the perimeter. “It, he, won’t leave me alone otherwise.”
“Fine,” my husband mumbled, rolling over and falling immediately back to sleep.

That is a talent, and one I don’t process; being able to sleep like a baby in a haunted room.

Needless to say, I was up all night.

Packing up is easy on a motorcycle, especially if you know you’re gonna sweat. You don’t give two shits. No shower, no blow dry, you just brush your teeth, wash your face, change your underwear, and put on the same gear you spent an hour scraping dead insect body parts off of—and go.
“Have you seem my bathing suit?” I asked my husband who was busy cleaning our visors for the ride. “It was hanging right here with the towel and my hat,” I said, pointing at the door.
“That’s where I saw it last,” he said, sounding slightly annoyed. “I stepped in the puddle it left on the tile when I got up to pee last night.”

So I checked everywhere—twice. That’s so weird, where could it go? I mean, it couldn’t just walk away.

Later, at breakfast, we, he, had a good laugh as the waiter relayed a story about the place being haunted by a former chef. “You dissed the food last night,” my husband remarked with a smile, “That’ll teach ya.”

Ha ha ha ha. Not funny.

What it did teach me was that I needed a gatekeeper. Somebody to monitor my energy. Because what I learned was that if I was ornery, which we can all agree I was that night, then that’s the kind of ghost who would show up. You have to be a match. I decided that I like ghosts who are friendly. Ones who respect personal space boundaries. Ghosts more like Casper. Or Nora. So I became my own gatekeeper. Who better than me to tamp down the ornery?

By the way, I never did find my bathing suit. Apparently, it simply vanished into thin air. Or maybe the ghost took it for a friend. It was very slimming.

Carry on,
xox

https://themoth.org/radio-hour/ghosts-angels-and-motorcycle-rides

In my humble opinion, this is one of the advantages of aging. To be able to look back on all the asinine things you were convinced, in that moment, that you absolutely, positively HAD to have—and be thankful to God they passed you by.

Several come to mind. Certain jobs, men, tattoos.

Lace-up leather pants.

So does a haircut straight from the pages of Vogue that my hairdresser, (who has remained a friend, probably because of this very thing) talked me out of at the last second.
“You can’t carry it off,” he said, after downing his second or third glass of liquid courage as I showed him a picture and begged for his compliance.
In the end, he was dead on. I didn’t have the neck length, face, cool factor, body, zah-zah zoo, bank account, self-esteem, etc. to wear the equivalent of Madonna’s armpit hair on my head. Permed. Long in the front. Dyed purple. Shaved on the sides for effect.
Think Apollonia in Purple Rain.

Lord have mercy.

Don’t get me wrong. If I’m honest, which I try to be, well, at least every other Tuesday in months that end in a Y,
I’ve fought for and gotten many things which in hindsight I wish someone had just locked me in the attic for a decade or two until I came to my senses and reconsidered. I bet you have too.

An all-white kitchen. Had to have it. Huge regret. Giant. And one I live with daily.

White kitchens, unless you employ a staff of tens to clean and repaint the walls and cabinets on a weekly basis, look good for the first five minutes. You feel like the luckiest woman to ever wield a spatula as you survey, hands on hips, the blinding white glory that your eyes behold.
Then real life kicks in with real dogs (big dogs, not purse pooches) with their eye snot, dog food laden jowl drool, and the snarfed face smear-fest that is perpetually showing up on every surface at about knee height. Never mind the bacon splatter, tomato sauce, and wine stains. Oh, and the chipped paint collateral havoc that living your best life seems to wreak.

Needless to say mine, because my husband is a contractor and as such insists that in the small print somewhere in our marriage contract it is stated that he MAY NOT smell wet paint or drywall dust at home—my kitchen is in a constant state of “long in the tooth” which is just a colloquial term for shabby. And not in the chic way which is tragically out of style anyway.

If you aren’t listed on the Forbes Wealthiest Americans list and you show me a picture of a Nancy Meyers, all-white kitchen you love and are thinking of building and you ask you my opinion—I will take a page out my hairdresser’s book.
“You can’t carry to off,” I will say, knowing you have neither the time, staff, nor fucks left to give.

And you will thank me.

I like taking this time to look back and see how life has saved me from myself. To be grateful and count my blessings for all of the bullets I’ve dodged.

I only wish I’d bought stock in those Mr. Clean spot remover thingies I use every damn day for the white kitchen cabinets I absolutely HAD to have.

Carry on,
xox