awareness

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

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

I startled a squirrel in my backyard Saturday morning and in its attempt to make a hasty retreat it ran up my back – rearranged my hair – and then jumped onto a tree branch where it sat, out of breath, giving ME stink-eye.

I may have peed a little.

At the time I was not strolling peacefully through the patio, nor was I happily trimming the roses.  Nope. I was wrangling a wind chime that is a good foot taller than I me, with chimes the size of a giraffe’s neck. With its five-foot long baritone chimes bonging away with each step I took as I walked out to the courtyard to look for a place to hang it, I was struck by its weight. That sucker was heavy as I held it up over my head in an awkward attempt to keep it from tripping me.

Note to self: Next time pick a spot to hang it first.

Let me just mention that my boxer, Ruby, was also underfoot freaking out at the bongity-bong absurdity of it all.

Bong, bongity, bong…I walked, when half way across the courtyard it happened.

Apparently, the squirrel had a weekend appointment at the spa that is the fountain outside my patio door. It was never expecting a five-foot tall walking windchime to interrupt its Saturday solitude. Scared shitless, it leapted off the fountain and in mid-air is probably, I suspect, when it spotted the dog.

I’m feeling sorry for the squirrel now, aren’t you?

Anyway, I’m assuming that’s when said squirrel used me as its own personal stairway to freedom. I’m sure I wasn’t its first choice—just the best choice since I was between the dog and the tree.

As it reached my hair I realized what was happening and that is when the screaming began. Screaming for me is rare, but when I do scream you can smell buttered popcorn because it is a full-throated, bloodcurdling, horror movie scream that comes from my big toe. It is a scream that chills hearts and strikes fear in everyone who hears it. Dogs bark, glass shatters, birds fall out of the sky, and horses buck their riders, jump their enclosures, and run for open ground.

My husband and Maria (our blind cleaning lady), both came running outside. She was carrying the vacuum cleaner as a weapon. He came loaded with a smirk. He thinks it’s hilarious when I scream.

Whatever.

I blame the screaming for the peeing. It is literally impossible to scream that loud and NOT pee. Swear to God. I think there have been studies. 

As the scream echoed through the courtyard, our neighbors called over the fence “OMG! Are you guys okay over there?”

“Yeah, she’s fine”, my long suffering husband answered.

Shaking his head, he grabbed the giant, 5000-ton wind chime from me, and carried it effortlessly on one finger, like a feather, over to the table.

That’s when it hit me, you guys! Even after a string of bad decsions, exacerbated by a squirrel crawling up my back and doing the Macarena in my hair—I did not drop the wind chimes!

Please, you gotta give me points for this one thing.

Carry on,
xox

I think we can all agree at this point—this is an energetic universe and we are receiver/translators.
Our eyes translate waves of light into images.
Our ears translate sound waves into something we can recognize—and so on.

I always forget the part about ‘accumulating of the energy I’m focused on’—until I’m reminded in a not-so-subtle ways.

A few weeks ago, my husband, who’s the love child of Mad Max and Evil Knievel, an irresistible combination of dangerseeker and excellent rider wrapped in badasserry, broke his leg, and of course it had to be done in a spectacular fashion. No slipping in the shower or tripping on a step like a normal sixty-six year old man! He jumped off a moving motorcycle before it lost its shit and flipped over—on the freeway, another car basically forcing him off the road. 

Needless to say, he’s been a terrible patient, what with the cast, boot, scooter and all. Asking him to take it easy and put his foot up is like asking a fish to ride a bicycle. 

In the beginning although his foot (in an act of solidarity) was swollen the size of a watermelon and black as tar, the entire leg wasn’t that painful. It’s never really been about the LEG pain. It’s more about a critically bruised ego and the fact that he’s been rendered immobile.

So, this leg in a cast thing was sucking all the oxygen out of LA, California, and beyond. It’s been our overriding concern. Keeping it up and out of danger. Have you felt dizzy in Europe? Light headed in Africa? It could be a drop in the CO2. Just sayin’.

Anyway, last week while skipping gleefully down the hall, like I do, the toe next to my pinkie toe failed to jump the flagstone step into our bathroom, instead choosing to bend backwards toward my heal, breaking the tip, and cutting it’s own throat, just under the nail. While writhing in agony, I had time to ponder my fate. How in the hell had this happened? Toes usually follow the leader, the foot and all the other toes, when running and jumping, AND I can’t believe I’ve injured my LEFT FOOT too!

“WE have wonky left foot energy around here!” I whined to my husband who acted as sympathetically as a man in a boot and knee scooter can muster for a toe injury. 

I’m sure he rolled his eyes—but I knew it was true. 

The next day, my ginormous black toe and I were talking to a friend, when she told me about her reoccurring bladder infections. “It’s so weird,” she said, “they keep coming back.”
“Is it?” I asked, reminding her of the months she’s spent taking care of her mom who’s had a hell of a time recovering from bladder cancer surgery.

All of this to say, the universe will always remind you where your energy is focused, whether you want to know or not—which you do, before you lose a toe or end up in urgent care.

Carry on,
xox

This is for all the unicorns out there. You know who you are.
My messege to you four decades later?

It all works out better than okay. Swear to god.

Now, go out there and live life like the lucky anomoly you are!
xox

I was married at twenty and divorced by twenty-six.

It was the eighties, the decade of Princess Diana and Madonna, and it seemed everyone was doing it—getting married young and divorcing.

Even my best friend at the time shocked me when she suddenly filed for divorce. When someone close to you calls it quits you take a magnifying glass to your own relationship, searching for the cracks. Well, no close inspection needed for ours, it was shattered to bits; held together with ducktape, spit, and glue.

I have to admit, in the beginning, her divorce left me reeling, after all, they were the perfect couple. But after they’d been apart a while, I saw how happy they both were and that’s when it finally dawned on me that deep down—my husband was probably as miserable as I was. Relationships don’t happen in a vacume. That’s when I decided that for the sake of our continued happiness as human beings—we could not stay married for one. more. minute.

NOBODY LIKES A QUITTER

It was impossible to paint a picture of my ex as an insufferable troll.

People understand when you divorce a man who is a cheater, an addict, or someone who can’t hold a job. It wasn’t him it was me. That line is cliché I know, but some sayings become clichés because they’re so damn true! My ex-husband was/is one of the nicest men on the planet and that sucks even more. I left an all-around-great-guy because I yearned for something more.

“More than what?” my dad asked upon hearing that I wanted a divorce. “What more could you possibly want? It doesn’t seem like anyone can make you happy!” He was right about that. That was my job, only I didn’t know it at the time. I only knew that something profoundly wonderful was missing. Something…untenable, indescribable and indefinable—and I wasn’t able or willing to settle for less.

That made me feel greedy. And wrong.

Other people settle. Why can’t I? It would be so much easier!

God, I had so much to learn! I had gone from living under my father’s roof to living under my husband’s. I identified as someone’s wife. Until I wasn’t.

HIDDEN BENEFITS

I would say the biggest benefit was becoming comfortable with my own independence. I had been half of a couple, a team, and now every decision, every mistake, was mine alone. I needed to figure out who I was and what I wanted from life, and in the process I was forced to wrap my brain around living without a man.

When there was a creepy sound in the middle of the night who checked it out? Me and my trusty baseball bat.

I started taking some risks, teaching myself how to invest money. I bought stocks and bonds, which scared the shit out of my dad, but ended up rewarding my courage with surprising dividends.

I also became skilled at all manner of apartment maintenance and eventually acquired a power drill and a small, red toolbox. Woof!

DATING

I had a hard time with the label divorcee. Every form I filled out asked me my marital status and checking the DIVORCED box reminded that I had failed at one of life’s most cherished milestones.
In my twenties.

Guys aren’t sure what to make of a twenty-six year old divorcee. No wild-eyed desperation or ticking time clock here. Some of them acted relieved. Many seemed a bit bewildered. Truth be told, it scared the bejesus out of most of them.

I don’t know where all the other twenty-something divorcees went to date—but in my circle, I was as rare as a Unicorn.

A twenty-six year old divorced Unicorn.

TRANSITION IN MY THIRTIES

Once I realized, much to the amazement of my single girlfriends, this controversial fact: that most of the men out there really did want to get married and have babies; and that a divorcee was way too much of a wild card for them at that stage of the game—I was able to formulate a game plan.

I dyed my blonde hair red, which narrowed the field even further. Only serious, artsy guys need apply.

I decided that unless I met someone extraordinary, marriage and children would probably not be a reality for me; and except for about a month when I was thirty-three and everyone around me was having babies—I was more than okay with that.

I made a great life for myself. I had a career I loved; great friends, wonderful family and I made foreign travel my passion.

That all felt amazing. Until it didn’t.

EVEN UNICORNS GET A SECOND CHANCE

After I turned forty, stability became my middle name. I settled down, bought a house in the burbs, let my hair grow longer and went back to being a blonde.

I started dating. Seriously, and a lot. Eighteen unmarried years had gone by and men my age and older couldn’t have cared less that I got divorced in my twenties. Most of them were on their second or even third divorce.

I was no longer an anomaly, an outsider.

I decided to go on a blind dating binge and that’s how I met the extraordinary man I married at forty-three—he was definitely worth the wait. At last I found that indescribable, indefinable something I’d spent nearly two decades searching for—and he found me.

Isn’t timing everything? Ain’t love grand? Maybe it was greed. I don’t know; I think it was all just dumb luck.

We all know how lucky Unicorns can be.

photo credit: http://therealbenhopper.com/index.php?/projects/naked-girls-with-masks/

I have a friend who’s a bit of a germaphobe.
Before and after every meal I’ve ever shared with her she has to run to the restroom. “Washies” she says doing that shoulda putda ring on it gesture with both hands, you know, the one from the Beyoncé video.

Inside ladies rooms, even the swanky ones, she won’t touch the doorknobs, sink or faucet handles.
She has an elbow that is so dexterous it could tie rope into a Mariners knot. The automatic electric eye and the hot air hand dryer (which I can’t stand by the way, give me a fucking paper towel goddamnit) are her friends.

I once heard her freak out because there weren’t any toilet seat covers. She actually screamed.
When she begged me for one, her fingers grabbing frantically under the shared wall of our stalls, and I informed her that mine was empty as well and that there was full, unprotected ass-to-toilet-seat action happening right in the stall next to her, our freindship tooks months to recover.  Meanwhile, from what I heard, she went through an entire roll of toilet paper to protect her lady parts from those nasty germs.
But guess what?

I could see her handbag on the floor between us. Her black Marc Jacobs messenger bag just sittin’ there, soaking up the Ebola, and enjoying the view from the floor of a public restroom.

I wasn’t going to mention it, you know, I wanted to have a reasonably sane lunch—until she put her bag on the table. That’s a deal breaker for me, go figure.

A different friend shares a similar affliction. She won’t eat or drink anything that she’s not certain is…safe. Because the story she tells herself is that all food is out to kill her.
Restaurant dining with her is a lark. Such a relaxing and pleasant experience (that right there, is sarcasm).
The menu is frantically read and re-read like it’s the assembly directions for a FLAAGENHOOPER from Ikea. Even the small print. Especially the small print. “That’s where they hide the fact that they use MSG or GMO’s” she whispers conspiratorially across the table.

Like I care.
I eat any gluten-laden, GMO ridden, piece of warm bread you put in front of me. Real butter? Even better.
Oppps. Fell on the floor? Butter side down? That’s okay—five second rule.

One day at lunch, said friend was relaying the story of another friend’s upcoming nuptials. “Oh, that reminds me. I had better get this card in the mail TODAY” she announced, pulling a pale pink envelope out of her purse and dropping it onto the table.
Suddenly her hand dove back in. Soon it was both hands rifling around inside her bag, pushing stuff all the way to one side, then the other. Exasperated, but with absolutely no break in the conversation she removed its entire contents, piling it up beside her plate.

“Hmmmm…that’s funny” she mused, searching the bottom like a deep-sea treasure hunter.
“Ah, there you are!” she said, triumphantly producing a stamp.
One single postage stamp. It was obviously the lone survivor of a role used up long ago.

Covered with purse lint and flecks of tobacco, hair, the sweat of a troll, and who knows what else—she stuck out her tongue and licked it—placing it squarely on the upper right hand corner of the card. “There” she said, pressing it down firmly, pleased with her salvage mission.

I know my face must have registered my horror, so I hastily picked up my napkin and pretended to wipe my mouth, smearing lipstick all over my chin.

Although I probably could have eaten the stamp—I don’t think I could have licked it. Ewwww.

I have some other friends, a couple whom I adore, that eat super healthy, work out like beasts six days a week, drink alkaline water, fly separately so their kids will always have one living parent — and smoke.
Cigarettes.
I know.
What gives?

Fear of germs. Fear of disease. Fear of dying. Fear of life.
It’s all relative. Subjective. Open to interpretation. One man’s perfectly good butter-side-down bread, is another man’s germ infested trash. (FIVE SECONDS!)

It’s tragic. And hilarious. And we all do it.

Pay attention to your fears. What are you doing that is in direct opposition to what you say you’re afraid of?

Carry on,
xox

PS: I’m afraid of her bra…

Fear is the least interesting thing about me. One hundred percent.

It is petty, immature, and unoriginal.

It’s list of greatest hits hasn’t changed since I was a kid, because that’s where it gets its ammunition.

I think we can all agree, fear never had a fresh idea in its life.

Fear’s goal is to keep my life small. To keep me safe and sound and boring as hell.

It thinks its doing this for my “own good” but really, that’s just a tired old story it keeps telling itself.

And me.

And I know it’s doing this to you too. I’ve seen it.

We’re all fucked.

Or…what if we confronted fear? Told it to take a seat, or a hike, or a long walk off a short pier?

What if we told it we didn’t need it anymore? That we weren’t eight years old. That we were grown ass adults who knew how things worked—and a broken heart never killed anybody. That a lot of the times failure led to something better. That a life well lived is so much more interesting than safe and sound could ever dream of being.

What if we thanked it, you know, for all of its hard work and overtime? I know my fear could use a rest and I’m pretty sure yours could too.

Carry on,
xox Janet

A bass drum thrummed like a heartbeat behind the wall next door.

No big deal. There were only twenty of us, sitting on the other side, in lotus, attempting to meditate.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Is that Drake? I wondered for a hot sec.

I’ve participated in that Sunday morning, nine-thirty meditation for six months now and this was the first time the thump thump “music” had encroached. 

Huh. Interesting. 

That wasn’t the only thing that was different. 
Laurie, our usual teacher, and the ONLY one I’ll go to because she isn’t twenty-two, with a Valley Girl accent, spray tan, and a whopping year and a half of mediation under her Gucci belt—was absent. 

In other words—there was a sub.

I tried my best not to get all twitchy, but I’m not a fan of substitute anything.
I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, Veggie burgers, Vegan cheese—just to name just a few.

I could feel the anger rise up inside me. My ears caught fire and I started clenching my jaw like I was arguing a case before the Supreme Court. “Your honor, YOU can’t handle the truth!”

In other words, I was losing my shit—in meditation class. Which translates, in every language known to man and some that aren’t, as an “epic fail”.

Every fiber of my being wanted to jump to my feet—flip a table—start a fire—spill hot coffee—and then race to my car.

Repressed rage, party of one?

‘There’s a reason Laurie’s not here,’ the calmer, less violent part of me reasoned as it gorilla glued my butt to the cushion. ‘Stay and figure it out 
Maybe this woman will be good. 
Maybe you’ll learn something. 
She’s just different, not BAD.’

Fine. You win. (But insert resting bitch face here.)

So I did. And she was, maybe not better, but really, really good.

Then, in the middle, just when I’d started to drool, the thump thump began.
Huh. Interesting. Drool. 
Seriously? Drool.
I’m so glad I’m in here and not in…drool.

When we came out of mediation, the first thing Kim, the sub, remarked on was the thump thump.

“Does this always happen?” she asked the class. Half shook their heads no, while the other half said yes, which wasn’t true, but that’s what happens when you ask a group of people to weigh in on anything. 

“Because I have a thing with ambient music,” Kim-The-Sub confessed, ratting herself out.
Oh, really? Over the years I’ve struggled with the frustration that comes from trying to meditate in a city like LA. Don’t get me started on leaf blowers!

Anyway, I could relate so I went full meerkat.

“Ever since a Buddhist retreat in 1999 (okay, how much do I LOVE that not only was she was alive in 1999—she was at a meditation retreat!) music seems determined to interrupt my meditation. From jinky Tibetan street music, to heavy metal, to the ice cream truck, it’s all out to get me!”

Makes sense, right? That explained why that strange thump, thump tried to interrupt our class for the first time in well, ever. 

Because just like the rest of us, Kim brings herself wherever she goes! She has her narrative—about annoying music— complete with traveling evidence!

Can I get an amen? Because, I mean, who doesn’t love proof of the obsurd fact that we bring our shit wherever we go?

I’m feeling warm fuzzies for Kim-The-Sub who may have just rocketed to the top of my list of favorite meditation teachers. 

I’m thinkin’ she’s a keeper.

Carry on,
xox

Get a house in the suburbs, they said. An ivy-covered cottage with mature trees just north of the hills.
That way you’ll get to experience all of the flora and fauna the area has to offer, they said. So much better than the concrete jungle of mid-city, they said.

So, we did.
We listened to “them”.

And for almost twenty years it’s been exactly as advertised—idyllic—except for that July a few years back when the coyotes ate my two Siamese cats. I can honestly say that put quite a damper on my summer. Still, we have managed to co-exist with nature in a very cordial and symbiotic way.

I leave past-its-prime fruit out for the squirrels so they’ll leave my bird feeder alone; we tolerate the enormous spider webs that are mysteriously woven overnight in high traffic areas and happen to always be at face level. There’s nothing like walking outside in the early dawn hours with a cup of coffee and becoming entangled in a giant, sticky, web that entraps you like a mummy and leaves you batting at your hair like a crazy person—all the while wondering where the damn spider went.

But like I said— we agree to co-exist.

Well, except for the crows. My husband wants to shoot them because they’re colossal pains-in-the-asses whose poops are ruining the paint on our cars. I fight, like a cheap defense attorney, for their right to occupy our giant tree in the front even though the evidence is overwhelming AND it pisses me off too. The sheer volume and size of their shit attacks are hard to fathom. I had one last week, the size of a serving platter, that blotted out the entire driver’s side of my windshield. And it was purple. Wtf?

Nevertheless, I won’t allow him to kill them although I’m pretty sure he’s already had target practice with a few.

But only the ones that laugh at him. Crows laugh you know.
At you.
At your dog.
At your poor choices in cargo shorts.
But you wouldn’t know that unless you live in the suburbs.

Aside from that; things have been quiet. That is, until this year, or as we like to call it: The Year That Wild Kingdom Took Over Studio City.

Lest you label me a complainer—I will first tell you some things I love about living amongst nature.

I love the squirrels, they’re chatty and cute and they hide peanuts in my flower pots… Yipppeeee.

I love the birds. They sing and crap joyfully while building their nests in the drawers of the outside potting table where I keep the clippers and the tiny garden spade—so I can’t get to them until the babies are hatched and raised and go off to college.

I love all the spiders and their cobwebs (which I learned recently are abandoned spider webs that have dust bunnies stuck to them) but I already said that.

I love the hummingbirds who actually come up to my face and make their cute little brrrrrrrrrr sound while I’m watering.

Ok. I’m done.

This year has been the year of the skunk and now, as of late, the year of the raccoon—and I don’t mean I’ve gone schizophrenic on the Chinese calendar.

We have captured and released three skunks after our beautiful but stupid boxer, Ruby, got skunked four times.
It has cost us the equivalent of a monthly car payment for an exterminator to wait them out and once caught, have them relocated to a more hospitable zip code.

But who needs money anyway?

Once those little rascals went bye-bye we mistakenly let down our guard thinking that the worst was over.

Until last week when twice, Ruby and I were woken up by the smell of skunk. Again.

One of my friends joked that the skunks are hitchhiking back to our house because they miss us. I had her killed.

This week there hasn’t been any skunk stench. Nope. Just the terrifying screaming that accompanies Raccoon Fight Club which starts promptly at 2 am—two shows a night—two mornings in a row. The sound is SO loud and horrific I’m certain that if a skunk were anywhere in the vicinity the smell would be scared right off it, but it was not the deterrent I’d prayed for.

“It’s just cats”, my husband mumbled in his sleep the first night. That’s his answer to everything.

“Yeah, if a cat is as big as a dog and screams like a child whose foot is caught in a bear trap,” I replied. To add to the racket, Racoon Fight Club had a cheering section—like it was a fucking championship prize-fight in Las Vegas. The rats who inhabit the Bougainvillea covered fence like it’s rent controlled apartments, were squealing their little hearts out. Favorites were picked. Bets were placed. Peanuts exchanged hands.

Oh, the rats? Haven’t I mentioned them yet? Oh, pardon me. Yeah. Our house is a veritable torture museum obstacle course of mouse traps that are set…everywhere. Apparently, all of Studio City is infested with rats.

They say it’s all the ivy and mature trees. Fucking “they”!

Anyway…After fifteen minutes of cowering in the corner with Ruby, it finally stopped. All of it. The screaming, the squealing, and our whimpering.

Last night it started again only this time it was so deafening and ferocious I could have sworn they were inside the house. Ruby and I jumped into each other’s arms, shaking like two pitiful Chihuahuas. It even woke up my husband and forced him to put on pants.

You don’t want to do that in the middle of the night.

You don’t want to make my husband put on his pants because then he means business—and somebody’s gonna pay.

I heard him grab the giant industrial flashlight that occupies valuable real estate on his nightstand. I hate that thing. It’s ugly AF, weighs a ton, doubles as a weapon, and is so bright I’m sure they can see the light from space.

Husband opened the door to the backyard and yelled “Hey!” because wild animals respond to bald guys holding klieg lights yelling at them. In reality, the screaming didn’t even miss a beat. I wondered how any of our neighbors could sleep through this horror movie nightmare, I’m sure I’ll read about it in the neighborhood blog: Neighbors hold middle-of-the-night, illegal racoon fight club on their rat infested fence.

After another ten minutes of relentless screaming from the raccoons with the rats cheering loudly in the background —I’d had enough. Someone had to do something! I left the safe embrace of my cowardly dog and barefooted my way out the door to the deck on the far side of the yard. I could see the glaring beam of light shining from the flashlight on the other side of the lawn where my husband was hiding standing.

It seems he had bestowed stadium lighting upon Raccoon Fight Club which only caused the rats to cheer louder!

“It’s two raccoons”, he whisper-yelled over in my direction. I could barely hear him over the commotion. But I know they heard us, those two raccoons, yet, whatever they were fighting about overrode their fear of two humans.
And a dog.
As an aside: Where’s the memo that goes out to the wildlife in the neighborhood that lets them know that our house is probably not a good idea for staging Fight Club because —IT HAS A DOG. A little brown dog that will…right.

Anyway, this next section sums up our marital partnership in five or six sentences. Maybe it will sound familiar to you?

“I’m hosing ‘um!”, I yelled over to my hero who was shining his beam of light right on them like it was the Super Bowl half-time show. Meanwhile, the raccoons gave not. one. shit. They just kept on with the scream fighting. So I turned the hose on full strength and blasted them with everything I had.

I think for a minute they thought it was part of the show. But Lord have mercy it shut them the hell up.

Blessed silence.

“They’re gone”, he informed me. “Good idea”, he added as he powered down the klieg light they can see from space.

”Uh, ya think?” I muttered under my breath as I wound up the hose and stood for a moment like Wonder Woman—and then went back to bed.

Being the woo-woo, California knucklehead that I am, I saged the entire yard this morning concentrating on that corner, which I’m convinced is a portal to the mouth of hell.

Hmmmmm...I wonder… how much is it going to cost us to trap and relocate two raccoons? They are definitely meaner than the skunks. Hear that? I’m starting to miss the damn skunks!

I think I’ll start a Go Fund Me Page.

Carry on,
xox JB

Churches talk. Especially old stone ones. The statues, the stained glass, and all the voices that have been raised in song and worship are now a part of the wood, glass, and ceiling plaster. And it all has something to say—if you listen.

I was like a lot of you yesterday, emotionally gutted as I helplessly watched Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris burn. I have many memories of her. All of them good. All of them sacred nuggets embedded deep into my cells. Her rose windows left me breathless—every damn time. It didn’t matter; dark grey day with little light or super heated summer day with a blazing blue sky, the color wash on the walls was transformative.

She is Paris to me. Mysterious, exquisitely beautiful, and a little over the top. But mostly eternal. To even entertain the notion that Notre Dame would cease to exist was more than I could handle.

Last night, attempting to dive below my grief, which was bubbling right at the surface, I sat to meditate, asking for the ‘bigger picture’, you know, the reasons things happen that stay hidden from us until we ask. Notre Dame did not disappoint; that grand old Dame, started to talk—and she had a lot to say!

Believe it or not, the lady was in dire need of a major facelift and this fire was the path of least resistance for her rebirth.
Real “Phoenix from the ashes” kind of stuff.
You see, they’ve tried over the decades to raise enough money for a major restoration but refurbishing an old cathedral has never really been on the minds of well, anyone but all those amazing people who care about that sort of thing, like historical preservation types, and they just haven’t been able to make the subject sexy enough for people with money to open their wallets.

Long story short, they’ve piecemealed the fixes and they were in the middle of one of these fixes when the fire broke out and it may actually end up being the cause (gasp). Anyway, we all know how it works when you piecemeal shit together—it doesn’t. The new parts just make the old parts look bad, which in turn makes them feel lousier about themselves than they already did and fall into disrepair faster, just to get the much-needed attention. The gargoyles are the WORST— there’s not enough attention in the world for them so naturally they’re crumbling, ready to fall to bits during the next electrical storm—or so says Notre Dame.

By this point, almost nine hundred years into her reign, the ancient cathedral was so sick and tired of looking sick and tired (underneath the fabulous, of course) that she took matters into her own hands and lit a fire (literally) under the Powers That Be for a compete and total restoration—and NOW, finally, that’s what she’ll get.

As I write this, over six-hundred-million euro has been pledged toward her rebirth and it’s been less than twenty-four hours. Additionally, President Macron assures us all that it will be completed in five years. Five years! That’s like nuthin’ in Notre Dame years!

So, in the space of fifteen minutes this venerable old church did what old churches are meant to do—it comforted me.

I don’t mean to get all Jesusy on you, but the timing isn’t lost on anybody, especially me. It’s freaking Holy Week for St. Pete’s sake! A week whose sole focus is death and rebirth. And she’s united the entire world in a way we haven’t seen in decades which, these days, is an Easter miracle. (Another example of Divine intervention— the votive candles along the sides have remained lit—despite the fire, the roof falling in, and the waterfalls of water from the hoses outside—THEY, PEOPLE’S PRAYERS AND INTENTIONS— ARE STILL LIT.)

So, you’ve gotta hand it to the old Dame, she sidestepped total destruction and when the dust settles, she will be a more spectacular version of herself than anyone could have ever imagined. Bravo!

Hot damn Notre Dame—well done! (Sorry, too soon?)

I’m feeling blessed and reborn, how about you?

Carry on,
xox