awareness

“And then, when you’re off chasing a dream, you miss out on what’s happening right under your nose.”
~Charles de Lint

Oh, hello Paris, it’s me, Janet…Again.

In my mind, we are old friends given the fact that’s this is the third time in a decade that I’ve visited your beautiful City of Lights.

You might not have recognized me. My hair is a softer shade of red now that I’m rounding the bend toward forty, and I may even resemble a local Parisian woman, not the ‘American in Paris’ tourist whose skin I inhabited the other two times.  Much to my surprised delight a Frenchman asked me, ME,  for directions this very morning.  Anyway, it’s okay if you didn’t know who I was.

Paris: Bon Jour Jeannette, good to see you again. Nope, sorry, you are right, I didn’t recognize you because all American tourists look the same to me.

Me: But the man asked ME… uh…right. Was it sitting on the wall on the banks of the Seine, having my picture taken that gave me away?

Paris: No. Well, yes, that and the metro schedule and map of the city that I can see protruding from the little bag you’re carrying. Also, and I say this with the all the sensitivity I can muster ( I am Paris after all), no self-respecting French woman would be caught dead walking around my city with a sweater tied around her waist.

Me: Right.

Paris: Enough idle chit-chat, what brings you here?

Me: Oh, uh, it’s kind of awkward. I’m here with my boyfriend, but I can see the writing on the wall. We’re here for a friend’s wedding, traveling around Europe for three weeks by train and I’m sorry to say we can now add long distance travel to our ever-expanding list of incompatibilities.

Paris: Right. Sorry. How can I help?

Me: Ugh. I’m so tired. Chasing love for so many years is exhausting. Although…I do have to say I love your men. I think my next serious relationship has to be with a European man.

Paris: Well, Ma Cherie; there’s European men and then there are French men. Do you think you are ready for a Parisian man?

Me: Yeah, sure…no, you’re right…probably not. But I think they are sublime. I’ll aspire to one, yeah, that’s what I’ll do, I’ll…

Paris: You can start by untying the sweater from around your waist. Try your shoulders instead.

Me: Right. Listen, do you think I need to move here to find true love? You know, I’m not getting any younger and I’ve fantasized about doing that for years! What do you say? Rent an apartment here, eat cheese and warm baguette while walking the city, find an amazing jewelry job and a gorgeous French husband all at the same time?

Paris: This may surprise you but—I don’t believe in chasing dreams. I say go back to Los Angeles and be yourself. Wear your sweater as a belt and let the love of a Frenchman find you there. You never know, there could be the Parisian man of your dreams living within a ten-mile radius. Fate will intervene. If you are meant to marry a Frenchman…he will find you. Stop running.

Me:  Thank you Paris. I have to go now. I’m wearing a dress and the rough stone is exfoliating my ass and not in a good way. I love you.

Paris: Je t’aime Jeannette.

This is a true story. Mostly.
Actually, the moment our plane landed back in LA my boyfriend and I broke up. That was okay. I had my European dream and I just kept putting it our there and lo and behold, four years later, on a blind date in Los Angeles…I met the most delicious Parisian man…who it turns out lived within a ten-mile radius of my house. Fortunately, he was able to overlook my poor use of sweaters—and married me nine months later.

To me, that just goes to prove that ANYTHING is possible!

Carry on,
xox

On my way to meet my friend for lunch on Tuesday, as I rushed my face off because I had totally spaced and the only thing that got me away from my computer was her phone call at 12:15, asking me where I was, and did she have the wrong day? 

As an aside can I just say right here and now that I can’t believe I’ve turned into THAT girl—the one who forgets about plans because she’s chasing a dangling participle around a particular paragraph, or worse yet—she gets sucked into a FaceTime vortex that morphs time and spits her out somewhere inappropriate. And late.
Lord. Have. Mercy!

Anywaaaaaaaaayyyyyy…
I was traversing a crowded parking lot when I observed with my own two eyes, something so perverse it filled me with rage.

I saw two millennial men, strolling to their car(s) eating ice cream cones! On a random Tuesday! In broad daylight! 

It wasn’t National Ice Cream Day (I, of all peole would have known) so I had trouble wrapping my brain around what I’d just witnessed. 
Here is just a snippet of my internal dialogue —aka—food rage (maybe you can relate):

Me: Huh. Must be nice. Look at them, they probably think by walking to their car they’re working off the calories.
Men.
I’d have to walk to Nebraska and back just to justify the sugar cone. 
I wonder who’s idea that was? Did one guy say ”Gee, let’s get an ice-cream cone,” and the other guy said “okay” without any argument? Without reciting all of the reasons why that was a bad idea? What are they, nine?
Women don’t do shit like that! We insist we’re full when in reality we’d trade our first-born child for an ice cream cone. Everyone knows women don’t do spontaneous dessert! We have to have an excuse! Like a bad break-up or being on vacation. And even then we feign disinterest.
Me: “Oh, look, a new ice cream shop. Should we go check it out?”
Everybody’s Fucking friend Sheila: “Oh, I don’t know, ice cream, really, we just had lunch.”
Me: “You’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking,” I say, wishing a car would jump the curb right then and put us both out of our misery.
But not these guys! They’re clearly making no excuses!
And it’s obscene the way they’re flaunting it! Strolling like that! Like they’re in some fucking piazza in Tuscany! They have some nerve!!

As much as I wanted to, I could not become the better version of myself. Things started to snowball downhill to a bad place. I wanted to trip them both for acting so carefree, sending their cones splatting onto the pavement. Nobody needs to see that shit out in the open! All it does is makes us feel bad about ourselves! Or better yet, I wanted to accidentally stick my face, tongue extended, into their cones, you know, for quality control purposes…That’s when I almost got hit by a car which pulled me out of my food rage because that’s what happens when a woman of a certain age spirals out of control on account of ice cream. 

Question: Can anyone relate to this or is it just me who’s carrying this deeply buried, unexpressed dessert rage?

Carry on,
xox 

Is this creepy? It feels a little creepy to me. 

I think this is one of the most moving things I’ve seen in a long time. I’ve always believed that musical notes hold their own energy. They go from ink on a piece of paper to an instrument that translates them into sound. Sound that reverberates and rearranges every molecule they touch.  The air, animals,nature, our cells—think about it—it can bring us to tears. Watch what they do to the ice around him as he plays.

Enjoy your weekend.

xox

At the request of Greenpeace, award-winning Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi created an original masterwork titled “Elegy for the Arctic.” He performed the piece while floating on a platform in the Arctic Ocean, with the towering Wahlenbergbreen Glacier (in Svalbard, Norway) slowly melting in the background.

In this SuperSoul Short, Einaudi’s soul-stirring composition provides a somber soundtrack for a majestic yet fragile ecosystem in crisis.

Read more: http://www.oprah.com/own-super-soul-sunday/elegy-for-the-arctic#ixzz5iH7oCAjV

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

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.

Tribe…Just so you know, it is now 2019—and nothing has changed.
xox

My house is a maze of contradictions so how can I blame Maria for being confused?

Maria is a our once-a-week housekeeper.
She came along with all the motorcycles, cars and dogs; in other words, the menagerie that was my husband’s dowry of sorts when we met and decided to get married. Now, after all these years of washing my unmentionables, going through my medicine cabinet and that drawer next to the bed—Maria is family.

She has to be. She is the keeper of all of our secrets.

And like any self-respecting family member, she screws up and I want to kill her and here’s why: She cannot tell the difference between trash—and a treasure.

I collect little pieces of nature which I’m lucky enough to find all around our property. Assorted nests, abandoned beehives in the eaves, fallen branches filled with hummingbird nests, heart-shaped rocks and found scraps of paper (even one-dollar bills) with cryptic messages that I’m sure are just for me. I’ve stumbled upon old skeleton keys, petrified tree pods, huge pinecones, old worm wood, even animal skulls, bones and teeth.

As if that weren’t bad enough, I go out and peruse flea markets and various other secret haunts, deliberately looking for that kinda stuff. Then, I actually pay money for it! Afterwards, I cart home my finds and carefully place them among the other seashells and rocks, beach glass, and seahorse skeletons.

It may look like a madman’s nightmare, but in reality— it’s MY carefully curated dream.

Oh yeah, I also collect cool, rusty old metal mermaids.
And don’t forget shiny. I can’t resist sparkly, shiny stuff.
Trust me when I say this: A rusty, sparkly mermaid would render me speechless with joy.

Anyhow, then I go about artistically displaying all of my found treasures around the house on tables and bookshelves—as art. I found them, I LOVE them, and I want to look at them everyday.

Saturday is the day Maria comes. It is a day of bittersweet agony.
The house smells of lemon pledge, murphy’s oil soap, and all things holy. It is spick and span’d within an inch of its life.
THAT is the sweet.
Now for the bitter.
She does not appreciate my taste in art. Better said: the woman is convinced I am batshit crazy.

For instance; I have the most realistic looking pair of ceramic fortune cookies displayed in my kitchen. One Saturday night I noticed they were missing. I wondered, did she break them? (She has broken so many things—irreplaceable, expensive things—gulp, remember, she’s family), but her habit after she breaks something into a million pieces is to lovingly arrange all of those pieces on a napkin, or, if at all possible, prop it up, where it waits to be discovered.

In other words she doesn’t dispose of any of the evidence.

Still, my instincts told me to check the trash and my suspicions proved correct. There they were, my ceramic fortune cookies, outside in the black bin, completely intact, with assorted food scraps and the contents of the vacuum cleaner at the bottom of a Gap Bag.

The following Staurday, when I asked Maria in my best broken Spanglish about it, she looked at me in complete bewilderment, as if I were wearing an Iguana as a hat, and said two words:
STALE. TRASH.

For weeks she continued to throw them away until I was finally able to convince her they were…art.

She has since, on occasion,  left me unwrapped, real stale fortune cookies on the shelf next to the…art.

But I know, in her heart of hearts, my sweet Maria is trying so hard to grasp this concept.
I get it. Nests,(even though I’ve sprayed them with clear polyurethane) are hard to dust. Animal skulls are supposed to be buried. And crumpled paper with sociopathic looking scrawl on it—well anyone can see—that’s just trash!

But not to me.

She has even put the five or six cryptic dollar bills that tell the secrets of my soul— IN MY WALLET, where I’ve inadvertanly pulled them out and almost tipped a valet—with my own treasured art!

This is a picture of a giant bird’s nest I was fortunate enough to find last spring in Santa Barbara. It is a masterpiece. A gift from God. It is stiff with shellac, yet extremely delicate.
I have it in a place of prominence—as art. Nature’s art.

She just doesn’t get it.

As many times as I’ve asked her not to, begged her to just skip over it, I know she picks it up and dusts. I can tell by the pieces of it, which I have to admit look suspiciously like dirty, random twigs—that I find in the trash.
“It’s okay” I tell her, “I’ll live with a little dust”.
But she cannot help herself—it’s not art to her, it’s a table full of dirty wood.
And so the nest, my treasure, is slowly dwindling away.

I just have to laugh. Hahahahaha!
My collectables have confused her to the point that she leaves crumpled paper (legitimate trash) right where she finds it, and asks if she can throw away an overripe peach.

I must also mention the real art. The nudes. I collect vintage and current black and white photographs and paintings of female nudes.
To Maria (Who I’ve neglected to mention is a devout Catholic) that is Not art. It is pornography.
Not only can she not bring herself to touch them, she cannot go anywhere near them which is apparent by the inch of dust they accumulate until I get around to dusting them.

And by-the-way—in case you were wondering—a mermaid is an abomination.

It is a topless fish. A dusty fish with tits!

To Maria it is clear—I’m an iguana hat wearing pervert, who likes to collect trash and stale food—and call it art. Which is only half-true…
But I’m family.

So you see, it’s easier to forgive when you realize—it’s all in a person’s perception. 

(I’m certain she owns a Jesus on black velvet.)

One man’s trash really IS another man’s treasure.

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