advice

This is from back in 2016. I was reminded of it, (try to stay with me, it may be a challenge) because my husband sent me a text earlier today, letting me know that “The city is covered in butterflies.” I spent a good amount of time wracking my brain to figure out what he meant because, well, he speaks in metaphors. And sometimes they’re French. And they’re always obscure. 

Did he see a bunch of little girls in tutus? Were people flying kites at the beach? I dunno. Eventually I gave up. 

 Later, I was out driving and well, I’ll be damned if the air wasn’t filled with butterflies! Hundreds of actual butterflies who were obviously on their way to lunch. And the best part was (yes, it gets better) they were managing to navigate their way above the traffic. Not a splat in sight! 

They were freakin’ butterfly matadors! Or Coreadors. (Not Toreadors because no horse, but you get the picture.)

xox

“Beyah mahtahdah!”He yelled in his frequently indiscernible accent.
“Wait. What?” I whimpered pitifully in the middle of a six-lane highway, traffic whizzing by us on both sides.
“Beyah mahtahdah!”
I shook my head, shrugged my shoulders, and threw both arms in the air which as we all know is the universal sign for, I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE FUCK YOU’RE SAYING!

Not waiting for a break, he grabbed my hand and ran us both out into traffic, weaving and bobbing in between cars out to a place I try REALLY hard to never find myself. The middle of a busy intersection.

There are no words in the English langauge to express how much I hate that shit. Glockenspiel will have to do for now.
Here’s the thing, I will NOT play chicken in traffic. Why?
1) Because I have a brain in my head that very much wants to stay there and not become a splat on a windshield and…
2) There is no place I need to be in such a red-hot hurry that I can’t wait for a break in traffic, or walk to the corner cross walk thank you very much.

But to my French husband, a red light is simply a suggestion and jaywalking on a busy boulevard is a bloodsport—a skill he mastered as a youth on the impossibly dangerous streets of Paris.

It is a bullfight. And he/we were Matadors. Gulp.

Me: (leaning in, yelling above the noise of the cars) I’m gonna…we’re about to…wait, what? Did you say…a matador?

Husband: Yes! Stand still! Don’t let the cars smell your fear.

Me: (Squeezing his hand like a vice grip, hoping to illicit pain) Seriously? Are you crazy? What are you talking about?

Husband: (Yelling back at me through a smirk) Listen to me, all the greatest Matadors are French!

Me: You’re kidding me right? They are so NOT French—they’re Spanish!

Did you see what he did there? He took my mind off of my predicament, knowing I would argue with him.
Well-played husband, well-played.

Husband: I’m telling you, they’re French! They’re called Coreadors.

I was laughing my nervous hyena laugh. Mostly at the absurdity of the conversation and the fact that I hadn’t made any plans to die that day. I’m sure I appeared squirmy and maybe just a tad hysterical. That comes from knowing that you’re probably going to end up as some random, gray-haired stain on the front hood of a Prius.

Me: Shut. Up. They are NOT!

Husband: (Leaning in, yelling above traffic) Or Toreadors. Those are the guys on horseback. 

Me: (Feeling queasy. close enough to death to relate to the bull) Uhhh! Stop! Bullfighting is barbaric! The French don’t have bullfighting! They’re WAY too civilized for that!

Husband: (Amused by my argument) That’s what YOU think!

By the way, can you believe we were still standing in the middle of a busy street? Me neither, but we were!

Me: (Wishing I’d ordered the french toast as my last meal) Egads. Bullfighting. Brutal. Whoever thought that was a good idea?

Husband: The Romans.

Me: Figures. Rome. Brutality central. 

With that, the last car hurtled past us as he yanked my hand and ran me to the safety of our car on the opposite side of the street. We were both laughing, not at bullfighting because it’s a horrible practice* —but at the absurdity of our entire conversation.

Husband: God, you can be such a baby!

Me: God, you’re weird! And damn, the Romans were assholes!

Some story on the radio in the car changed the subject, but I had to share this.

Words from a French wise guy I know: When you’re in the middle of chaos—stand still—be a matador.

Carry on,
xox

*Don’t get your panties in a bunch. We are in no way condoning bullfighting and no bulls were killed in the telling of this story.

Have you ever wanted something so bad you could taste it? Like dark, black chocolate on the tip of your tongue, or a sour patch kid that made the glands in your neck ache? Like that visceral? Something so big it could change the trajectory of your life? (Although I don’t recommend putting that kind of pressure on, well, anything.)

What did you do?

Did you go after it, or did the courage run out of you like melted ice cream through a cone on a hot August day? 

I only ask because I took a shot as brazen as a half court toss at an ALL STAR  game, hopeful, no, make that knowing—that I would make the basket—NO net—and then I didn’t. You have to admire that about me. I have so much conviction in the most unlikely of circumstances. It’s either endearing as hell—or bat shit crazy. No one can decide.

Thwack! was the sound the ball made as it hit the headboard, or the backboard, or whatever they call that clear plastic thingy behind the basket that keeps the ball from killing the crowd. 

I hear it was a near miss, but it was a miss just the same. 

I tried to duck but the thing had momentum as it careened off my face, bounced once, and hit me in the gut knocking the wind out of me. That’s when I realized there was no ball or missed throw, I had probably just swallowed my Adams apple on account of disappointment.

The crowd laughed. Not really. Nobody said a word. 

Even the voices in my head had the decency to take a short coffee break. And if you ask me, that’s why the feeling of having failed on an epic scale only lasted a few seconds. No peanut gallery dared chime in. They just let me marinate for a sec. When I regained my breath I read the email again. It was so fucking polite and encouraging it almost made me forget they’d rejected my work. Almost.

Maybe reject is too strong a word. They took a pass sounds better. Less soul crushing.

“We hope this “no” lights a fire in you to chase that “Yes”! Were their exact words. Who’s soul can stay crushed when they put it that way? Not mine, that’s for sure, especially since I’m profoudly NO challenged. Always have been. Cannot take it for an answer—EVAH!

Someone much wiser than me once said, “Disappointment is taking score too soon.”  And being a retired “scorekeeper” I immediately tried to tally how many years I’d wasted, until I ran out of fingers and toes and then I just decided I had to take that advice to heart.

Besides, when is no ever really no? I mean in my book (the only one that matters) it’s always been the placeholder for not yet.

I’m not gonna get into the weeds with this thing, I’m only here to encourage everybody to take chances in their lives. To get into the game. To do the hard things. To feel scared. To stretch like a goddamn piece of saltwater taffy. I’m not gonna lie, the sting of rejection—yeah, it hurts, but it only lasts a second, like a flu shot. And even though a part of me felt like shit, a bigger part of me was absolutely EXHILERATED!  Because for me, knowing that I never even tried was unacceptable.

Ask anyone who’s had any success and they’ll tell you about all the times they got knocked down to the ground. But, honey, at least they were in the arena.

Since at my age, unless you’re attempting something extraordinary you rarely, if ever, hear the word NO, (seriously) I have had a pretty amazing day processing all of this. And I have to say that as the disappointment faded, the void that was left was filled with something unexpected… pride. For having the audacity to dream as big as I did. 

All of this to say, you guys, please don’t live small, afraid of the pain. DREAM BIG! You can take it from me, it’s not gonna kill ya, l know that because last time I checked—I wasn’t dead.

Carry on,
xox

The other day I found out that I’m allergic to basil. Not in a peanut allergy, drop dead kind of way, but still! That’s like being told you’re allergic to puppies or Oprah. I mean what did basil ever do to anybody besides inspire the invention of pesto and be delicious?

Apparently, for me it was symptom-less. Sneaky. On the sly, late at night, it caused gut inflammation that only some fancy blood test dared reveal. And as we’ve all been brainwashed into knowing, inflammation is the leading cause of evil in the world. You may have thought is was global warming or Alex Jones, but I’m here to tell you—it’s inflammation. 

Inflammation has other talents too, it masquerades as belly fat and belly fat not only causes your pants to fit tight in the waist but baggy AF in the ass (which can make the jean-buying experience even more harrowing than it already is, and causes a serious slide toward elastic waisted yoga pants)—it is a precursor to heart disease because let’s get real here—the heart is a drama queen that can’t be ignored, even for a second, lest it suck all the oxygen out of the room. (Sarcasm intended.)

I’m heartbroken that in order for my heart to mind its own business and my pants to fit properly I’ll have to live a Caprese salad, pesto free life. But I’ll live. And the next time I go to Italy none of this will count. 

Next on the list was soy, but that one I understood perfectly!

In most bodies soy just turns to poop, but in other bodies, soy can turn into estrogen. My body took that little suggestion and ran with it while completely ignoring the other suggestions like the one about chocolate triggering an endorphin that makes eating it as good as sex (it’s not—unless your partner is covered in it—then maybe) and red wine having an anti-aging property (if that were true I’d be fucking Benjamin Button).

Nope. My body is a fucking mad scientist where estrogen is concerned. The Magic Merlin of this hormone laden secret sauce. A Jessica Rabbit look-alike alchemist gone awry. Estrogen makes you…womanly, whatever THAT means. My body heard ‘boobs!’ and interpreted that as something womanly women everywhere must want (they don’t) so the moment it heard that thing about soy it/she became overzealous and indiscriminating— turning EVERYTHING I ate into estrogen. 

Soup. 

Pringles.

Airport sushi.

green tea.

Churros.

Fucking EVERYTHING.

My doctor and I had a of decade of good laughs about this. 

“It can be a blessing,” she said one day after looking at my estrogen levels which could have given a thirty-year-old’s a run for her money. 

I was fifty-two at the time. 

“Your skin will stay moist… and you won’t dry up like an old lady,” she reassured me with a wink, wink at fifty-five.

Meanwhile I was growing a baseball team of fibroids who soaked happily in bubbling hot tubs of estrogen the mad scientist kept replenishing. 

All that to say, soy has never been my friend. I may have had skin supple enough to baffle the dermatologists, (or it could be my mother’s genes, the DNA test hints) and yet, I remained one edamame away from a hysterectomy which finally happened because someone couldn’t practice dietary self-restraint. 

I’m not sure I like these fancy tests that tell you all about yourself. I think I was better off not knowing what I know so I don’t have to feel bad about not listening to any of it. Besides, being afraid of inflammation is highly overrated, don’t you think?

I mean sometimes a stomach ache is just a bad burrito. Am I right? 

Carry on,
xox

This is from back in 2015. Four fucking years ago and all you have to do is replace the kale with celery juice and the holiday shit with Spring Breaky shit and you have my life today. Again. Did you get that it’s four (Twenty-eight in dog years) later? When the fuck will I get over myself and just decide to be happy? To live on Cinnabons, bacon, pie and diet Dr. Pepper? When? (It’s rhetorical, don’t write me.)

I seem hangry, don’t I?

I’m not. I’m mentally hilarious. 

xox

It’s Tuesday morning.
The start of day three of my sort-of-self-imposed green drink  celery juice fast.

My stomach is growling so loud it woke up the dog.
It sounds like the insistent, angry growl of a lion eyeballing a Gladiator like a pork chop.

I would kill for a pork chop right now. A thick juicy slice of pig-on-a-plate.
Or bacon.
OMG. Don’t get me started on bacon. If I smelled the savory aroma of bacon cooking right now I would drown in my own saliva—I just know it.

Instead of a mass of bloated puffiness, after two days I am now all gaunt and boney.
Seriously.
Okay, not really. But anyway…

“Feel that!” I urged my husband last night in bed, taking his hand and rubbing it down my right side.
He humored me with a couple of hand passes before rolling over.
“Those are my RIBS! I shouted for emphasis. “I can count them! Do you know how long it has been since I could count my ribs? You’d better take a good look at your wife because she is literally wasting away!”

I heard him snicker from his side of the bed—now to be referred to as ‘Outer Siberia’.

On Sunday night, that same guy stood in the kitchen and finished off two pieces of cheese pizza and half bottle of wine while I stood feeding kale into a blender.

“Everybody knows that calories don’t count if you’re standing,” he responded to the slings and arrows of my dirty looks. “But in solidarity I’ll eat power bars and protein shakes for the next three days.”

What a guy.
As of this morning, he’s lost seven pounds. SEVEN POUNDS! In TWO days!

I have never weighed myself, I go by how my clothes fit. Besides, for me this is about finding clarity, not weight loss.
Yeah, right.

But my gaunt and boney self wants to hurt him—just a little.
I can’t lie. I’m too hungry to lie. It takes too much energy to lie.

My dreams have changed. They have been colorful and epic in their scale and scope.
I dreamt of swimming and running and laughing and dums.
And my sleep had changed too.
When my eyes opened this morning, BAM! I was awake. Wide awake.
No sluggish slugginess, no urge to meditate or ask questions.
Just BAM! Up and Adam. Protein shake, celery juice here I come!

It’s now 9 a.m. and I’m going out to run all my errands. Too Da Loo!

It is now after three and I ran every errand with the speed and efficiency of a woman in labor on a scavenger hunt.
Then I came home and chopped up some shit, made my mom’s sweet potato soufflé and baked a pie.
I also garlanded a wreath within an inch of its life and planted some white poinsettias while the pie was in the oven. I even found my smile—it was hiding in the kitchen junk drawer.

Who am I? I don’t even recognize me.

So clarity…

It is clear I have waaaaay more energy That is for sure.
And I’m not hungry anymore.
And I may be taking this whole thing a tad too far. I accidentally licked some baked sweet potato off the spoon and promptly spit it into the sink. Crazy, right?

It’s a Decathlon people, not a sprint, and I must not cheat—tomorrow is the home stretch.

Okay, enough chit-chat, it’s time for tea.

Lots of love from your gaunt and boney, seriously delusional, green drinking, whirling dervish, mentally hilarious friend—me.

Carry on,
xox

Luckily, it’s three years later and I mostly hang out with animals and department store mannequins so this doesn’t happen to me so much anymore. But I was talking about this very thing to a friend this weekend, about not caring about getting to the bottom of things and the heartless asshole who taught me the extremely valuable lesson of not going there. 😉

Generally speaking I suppose you could describe me as an optimist. A Pollyanna even. After reading about my life I think that’s pretty safe to say.

So naturally, people come to me to have their spirits lifted. To lighten their emotional load, so to speak.

But what ends up happening if I’m not careful about my energy is: I cheer them up—and they cheer me down.

Not too long ago I consoled a friend whose business had fallen on hard times. I can do this, I thought through her torrent of tears.

No big deal. My business tanked almost seven years ago. I’m over it! I said to myself. And I meant it.

But her stories of debt collectors, empty bank accounts, no customers, and an evil, puss-pocket, scum-bag, hell beast, shit gibbon of a partner (he must have been related to my old landlord), sent me down the rabbit hole.

Obviously.

Before I took my journey to hell, I did manage to mumble a few things I thought might help. She felt so much better when she left. “I feel so much better”, she said. That’s all I can remember. My transformation into Zohar, the gatekeeper of hell had already begun, so my understanding of the English language became sketchy.

Driving home I came down with a splitting headache and a couple of hours later I was in full-on migraine mode which for me looks like incoherent muttering in a dark room about f*cknobs, the horrors of retail and the unfairness of life—with breath that could peel your face off—and an attitude to match.

WTF?

It doesn’t happen to me a lot, but more often than I’m comfortable with, and I see you my coach/motivational expert/fellow optimist friends. I can see your exhaustion, your edge, and your drastic need for a break because This shit can wear you down!

We may have no problem listening to our friends vent about their shit. But maybe we’re not doing anybody a favor by re-telling the story over and over again. I know, I know! We do it because we love them (and they’ve sat through our endless bitch sessions)  but I’ve gotta say, it is hard work keeping their shit from sticking to my shoes. Especially if I’ve been through anything even remotely similair—which is pretty much everything they’ve ever been through except maybe an alligator chewing off my arm.

The optimist in me has started to scream Awwwwww! My arm! My arm!

Besides that, I’ve started to remember the advice I received from someone very wise who was trying to help me crawl out of a bottomless eddy of despair over twenty-five years ago. Talking about something over and over again is NOT helpful, and he refused to do it, much to my dismay.

He would listen my sad story ONCE. Only one time would he listen before holding his hand up and shushing me. That’s right, he shushed me! (Truth be told, that was the only way to shut me up once I was on a roll.)

“You think you’re going to find answers to your problems by talking about them,” he said. “But the answers aren’t found in the problem and it’s just making things worse. It’s keeping you from progressing and I won’t go there with you.”

Huh… And fuck you.

I think that’s when I lunged over the table with a fork and threatened to tenderize his face. All I wanted was to hurt him as much as I was hurting, and that’s the truth.

But he would have none of it.

Because he knew how sticky that shit is when you give it life with words. “When you speak its name and give it language, you give it power,” he said. And he wasn’t willing to be cheered down. Not under any circumstances. Not even love.

Besides, what I know for sure is that if he’d gone to the depths with me to chew on that problem—I wouldn’t be here today. Swear to God. I needed him to stay with his head above water so he could throw me a line when I was drowning. You know what they say about rescuing someone who’s drowning: Be careful or they’ll pull you down with them.

So, I guess my advice to all of you optimistic uplifters out there would be (if you’re asking), speak briefly to each other about the shit. Don’t dwell on it and if you’re not up to it energetically—don’t sacrifice how you feel—even to temporarily lift a client/friend.

And check your shoes. ‘Cause that shit can stick.

How do you feel about this? Do you hate it? Does it feel shallow and selfish and other names that start with an ‘s’? Or, are you strangely relieved? Like, thank God I have permission?

Carry on,
xox

The rain was monsoonal, something as out-of-place in LA as a face with so much as a hint of a forehead frown line. 

I watched it coming down like an aggressive shower curtain of water slapping against the window while I waited in line at Trader Joes. So much for timing my run to the store in-between squalls. I knew I shouldn’t have lingered over the bone broth. What’s the thing with bone broth anyway? It’s like the second coming of Christ. And why do I do that? Why do I decide to do the deep dive into researching an item on Google, before deciding whether to buy it or not while I’m actually STANDING IN THE STORE?  

When I see people like me I just want to kick ‘em! Don’t you? 

Anyway, TJ’s was packed, just like most places are when it rains. It’s a phenomenon I can’t explain but it’s real. Ask anyone who’s ever worked in the service industry and they’ll tell you that the harder it rains the more people decide to put on pants (or not) under their raincoats—and shop. Or eat out. Or eat out then shop. 

It’s a thing. Trust me. 

Once I snapped out of my weather induced coma, it occurred to me that my line wasn’t moving. Isn’t that one of life’s great mysteries? How we always manage to get in the slowest line? Even after I do my due diligence by standing back and carefully sizing them all up! Even after deciding on the speediest checker, somehow, SOMEHOW, mine is the checkout line where the old ladies’s eggs fly out of the carton. Or the nice young man who’s bagging the groceries and has been blessed with the gift of gab discovers he went to middle school with the customer in front of me’s daughter and what a perfect time to get all caught up! Or the twenty-five pound bag of dog food (the only thing the man in a hurry in front of me is buying because god forbid he shows up at home without it—I’ve seen that look from Ruby) springs a leak right when he picks it up and kibble sprays like it’s coming out of a firehose, EVERYWHERE or, or, shit!

I decided it’s just the fickle-finger-of-fate and there’s not a fucking thing I can do about it now. Meanwhile, our line was at a standstill. So naturally, like a morbidly curious lookie-loo at the scene of an accident, I moved in for a closer look and you’re never gonna guess what it was that was holding us up. 

Go on, take a guess! Nope. Wrong!

The guy behind me must have seen it too because he went apoplectic. “Oh, sure, that’s just great!” he announced in his outside voice as he craned his neck in search of a quick escape.  

Here it is. Here’s what was causing the delay and subsequent pileup: The woman in front of me was going to WRITE A CHECK!

That’s right. A paper check. Like, one that’s been happily retired, living in a checkbook with all of it’s antiquated friends for the past several decades. I felt like I’d slip streamed the timeline back twenty years. Back to when I was thin and blonde, and..hey, maybe this wasn’t so bad…

Anyway, she was mid apology when she overheard the guy behind me loose his mind. Flop sweat appeared on her upper lip as she looked around nervously. Then she asked the checker for a pen. 

“I’m sorry, I’m so embarrassed,’ she said.

I was embarrassed for her.

“No problem,” replied the checkout girl, but I could tell it was a huge problem for her since she couldn’t find a pen that worked.

Having once been a Girl Scout, I fished one out of my purse and handed it to her.

“Here you go,” I said.

“Thanks,” she replied, and proceeded to write as fast as a human hand can move a pen across paper.

“Oh, for the love of god!” Cried the mom with two kids dressed in matching yellow rain coats who’d just gotten into line behind me. “Really, a check?” She was livid.

“What’s a check mommy?” one of the kids asked as she huffed away. “It’s a relic from our distant past,” she answered in her snarkiest mommy tone.

The woman in front of me was shaking as she handed me back the pen. Our eyes met as an explanation tumbled out of her mouth like popcorn does at the movies.

“My entire backpack was stolen in Barcelona, along with my wallet and passport,” she explained to no one in particular. “I had to go to the American embassy just to be able to get back in the country.”

I nodded sympathetically. I’ve traveled extensively in Europe and that sounds like my worst nightmare. I can’t imagine what she went through. 

“We got home late last night and there’s no food in the house…”

The cashier interrupted. “So I guess I can’t get any ID then, right?”

The hungry woman shook her head.

I’d heard enough. I pulled out my wallet but the manager, who I’m sure had noticed the back up, showed up right about then. “It’s cool,” he said. “I’ve seen her here million times.” He smiled a reassuring smile while scribbling his initials on the front of the check. “Haven’t done THAT in a while,” he said as he walked away. 

My anger had long since dissipated. After an entire line at the market had check-shamed her, now all I felt was compassion for the poor woman. No debit card to get cash. No credit cards. No drivers license. How else was she supposed to eat?

I imagined being in the same predicament and doing the exact same thing. 

Man, there were SO many lessons in that encounter.

People! Slow down! What’s the fucking rush?

Shit happens. 

Barcelona is divine but criminals live there too. 

American Embassies are essential in times like that.

There’s SO MUCH distracting candy around the checkout counter at TJ’s that found its way into my cart that it’s ridiculous. 

Have some compassion. Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.

Carry on,
xox

I have a confession to make… I like politness.

I know that may seem untenable considering my foul mouth and general disregard for all things having to do with rules and decorum and yet— I love it when people are polite.

(She’s gonna die when she sees this!!)

There it was. Right smack dab in the front of my fuzzy, black wool sweater, sitting there smug and defiant like it was doin’ me a favor.

A long, silver, pubic hair!

“Oh fuck!” is the first thing that went through my mind as I picked it off with a tweezer. How did that get so far out of it’s jurisdiction? Then, Really? Silver? That can’t be mine! Followed closely by, Well, if it’s not mine then whose is it? and gagging sounds. 

That’s when the thought of it being my own rogue, white, pubic hair became more palatable to me than having it be some stranger’s who was hitching a ride. Still, the fact that it was silver was like a double tap to the forehead.

Completely unnecessary since I had died the moment I laid eyes on it.

Immediately, I started to reverse engineer my day. Where had I been? Who’d seen me wearing this hirsutal brooch and why had nobody told me? I’m positive I would have told a woman she was wearing a silver pubic hair on her sweater…oh, maybe not. 

Never mind.

Anyway, that’s when the cold sweats began. Followed by a wave of terror so profound I was sure I was going to finally hurl up the vomit that had been collecting in my throat.

You see, I had just video’d myself. And I’d downloaded that video onto an application for my dream job. 

I felt dizzy. The ground was spinning. What the fuck were they suppose to think of me besides the fact that the carpet matched the drapes and I’d been too lazy to run one of those sticky roller things over my sweater before I sat there smiling like an idiot, selling myself for a position where pubic hair need not apply?

Once I regained consciousness, I was reminded of the fact that  I’d only downloaded the application — I hadn’t hit SEND. 

I CAN SAVE MYSELF!  I screamed. 

All I had to do was look back at the video to see if the pubic hair was upstaging me and then make another five hundred, one.

That’s when this whole thing took a turn for the worst, or the better, depending on how you view life. 

I clicked on the video link in the application only to find that it hadn’t been formatted properly. It just sent me back into my files. So I went back into the video file only to NOT find it anywhere.

Maybe the universe had done me a favor. Maybe, yet once again, it had saved me from humiliating myself.

I could shoot another video of myself but since I’d lost that great, “golden hour” lighting —it would have to wait until the next day. Because…lighting.

I stood there scratching my head. The whole thing didn’t make sense. I knew I’d save the video…or had I? I called in the tech cavalry, otherwise known as my niece and nephew, and as I tried to explain the whole clusterfuck, (leaving out the pubic hair part so we can all make eye contact the next time we see each other) I suddenly remembered where I’d gone wrong. 

I found the video and viewed it again, this time making sure to look for the silver culprit.

Thankfully, since I’d pulled in pretty tight on my face—the little fella was out of camera range. Lord have mercy, I could exhale! I promptly refiled it feeling grateful that I’d found the formatting snafu before it was too late.

Later, as if my day hadn’t been ego busting enough, I took a hand mirror and checked my lady garden for any stray gray. Upon not finding any, I threw my black wool sweater into the fire for collecting pubic hair in the first place and causing me such grief. I had to make an example of it to my other fifty black wool sweaters.  I expect better from my clothes. 

As I took off my bra (stay with me) the dents and bruising reminded that I’d had a mammogram earlier that day and gotten dressed and undressed in the same little dressing room (actually calling it a dressing room is an insult to dressing room everywhere. This was more like a very narrow and shallow box, think gym locker, where the little pink curtain could cover your tits or your ass but not both at the same time) —that dozens of women had used before me. 

Mystery solved! That’s where I’d picked up the silver hitchhiker!! 

Do you think the day will ever come when I can just get a mamo or do a video without having to notify the Health Department?
Jeez.

Carry on,
xox

I have a question for ya– can an inanimate object hold a vendetta?

Don’t answer that. 

The answer is obvious. Yes. Yes it can.

Case in point: The Ralph’s parking lot.

You may remember back a few months, in the heat of summer, I locked my keys in the car (another vendetta holder), and was forced to walk home to get the spare pair.

While wearing flip flops and teeny, tiny white shorts. 

Okay, I know. It appears that my biggest brain-fart moment and my most questionable fashion choices both coexisted in that one, brief moment in time, only to add to my humiliation and misery.

The dark, black pavement was the temperature of boiling hot tar—and my flip-flop chose that very unfortunate moment to break—and as a result it seared my foot the color of a piece of fine ahi tuna. 

Since I had an additional quarter-mile to walk to get my keys, I burnt my foot over and over again until, by the time I got home I could barely stand on it. 

As you can probably tell, I have a moderate case of flip-fop-failure PTSD. Which comes with (at no extra charge) a very bad attitude.

Nevertheless, you’d be surprised to know that I still wear flip-flops and I still go to that very Ralphs to shop. What can I say? I am a creature of habit. 

So, today. Today could not have been more opposite than that hot, summer day. It was about fifty degrees, raining cats and dogs. But apparently the parking lot was holding a vendetta, patiently waiting for months and months to exact its revenge for all of the bad press (vis-a-vis this blog) that it had gotten for burning the bejesus out of my foot. 

You see, that is the very definition of vendetta: A prolonged bitter quarrel or campaign against someone.

So, back to the rainy parking lot.

The pronouncement had been made this morning. We were out of coffee and I was trying to time my run to the store in between squalls. It had been raining for over twelve hours straight so the streets and the black top were riddled with deep puddles. Flooding was imminent.

Not to be overlooked—but it was—by me—it was also slippery as fuck.

So as I pulled up the hood on my jacket to keep my hair from getting wet and frizzy, and I started to dash (nice word for spazz running)  toward the entrance, the very same burned flip-flop foot hydroplaned, sliding out from under me, forcing me into a split.

It was a spit so perfect, so…committed, it would have gotten me a ten from the Russian judge. It also simultaneously filled my shoe with water and plopped my crotch smack dab into the middle of a puddle.

Groin pull! Was all my brain could think, the white-hot pain shooting up from my Achilles tendon straight into my unsuspecting vajay-jay who, only seconds before had been minding her own business.

I rolled on my side in the pouring rain, splashing around like a fish out of water, trying to get myself upright as fast as I could. Cars were waiting for me to get out of their way but nobody got out to help me for fear of being swept away by the invisible current that had obviously taken me down.

“Nothing to see here!” I yelled as I picked up my wallet which had fallen out of the bag I had brought to bag my own groceries—naturally.

Later, as I was attempting some yoga stretches, I began to laugh. I’m turning into my mother, I thought. 

Notes to self: Don’t run on wet pavement. Buy more coffee than you think you need. And try not to hold a grudge, they’re like boomerangs, they always come back to hit you in the head—or grab your foot.

Carry on,
xox

Often, when I go into the dark recesses of my blog’s analytics, I can see whatcha all are looking at.

Having written close to 2000 blog posts, what happens next is I see titles of posts that I don’t remember writing.

This was one of them.

And when I went back to read it—naturally, since it was written way back in 2016 (which in Earth 2.0 years is like a thousand) I started to edit–which bascially turned into a re-write.

That being said, this is just a long-winded way of saying, Happy Friday—and I plagiarized my own work.
Carry on,
xox

Oh, Holy Christ on a cracker is that ever true!
We just had a Capricorn new moon and that my friends, facilitates jettisoning all that is not working in our lives.

We get a cosmic do-over. A universal re-write (the best kind of re-write there is).

Wait. This all feels eerily familiar. That’s because, if you’re like me, we’ve done a full, life-retrospective every damn year around this time.

Anyway, some years look better than others. They just do. But for those jinky ones, the ones that make me cringe with regret, (You know the ones) I relitigate the past. And when I do, because I’m me, I play the roles of judge, jury, and executioner.

Then I move straight to the special effects department and I whitewash the mutherf*cker with some heavy-duty gauzy filter.

In my heavily CGI’d version, I’m so much smarter, prettier, and wittier, I have the most epic ideas, rebuttals and comebacks, and my hair looks impossibly, hatefully perfect—even after a nap.

In one version, nothing is my fault. In another everything is. It depends on which chapter you come in on.

In my dreamy, rom-com version,  I get chased by a horrible dragon, captured by a giant cyclops, and saved by a naked, brave and handsome knight (we know he’s a knight by the chain mail codpiece he’s wearing and his very…long…sword). That scenario is the only way I can introduce all of the magic that permeates my life—otherwise, nothing would make sense and nobody would believe me.

But I can’t justify how I got to where I am any more than you can. Sometimes shit just happens.

Often, when I look back I feel bad for her, for me. She simultaneously appears to be the heroine and the villain of her own story and that is a hard pill to swallow. Sometimes I want to warn her, “Hey, idiot! Watch out for that guy, he’s a …oh, there goes the bra…nevermind.” At other times I try to congratulate her. “You, yeah, you. Ya did…okay. Next time try to suck less.”

Most of the time I want to duck tape her mouth shut and put her in the corner with baby.

All of these years later I realize nothing good comes from looking backward. It’s all water under a rickety bridge guarded by angry trolls. It’s all ancient history, filled with faded Polaroids and lots of bad clothing choices and the worst part of it (besides a stint with eggplant purple hair) is that focusing on my past, however riveting, keeps me distracted from where I’m headed.

Someone once said, “Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.” Well, I think quite the opposite is true. Selective amnesia is our friend AND those who look in the rear view mirror MUST be driving in reverse. I know I was. Also, and of this, I’m quite sure—Most of those lessons are learned and besides, my best times are not back there, behind me. They are ahead of me!

A few things that may be included while I create my future are (In no particular order): chocolate, naked knights, truffle almonds, dog kisses, a creative use of filters, and predominately minding my own business and looking dead ahead because the future I envision for myself doesn’t resemble my past IN. THE. LEAST. (except for maybe the good hair).

What about you?

Carry on,
xox