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Last week I was a giant welt—with arms and legs; carrying a smart handbag. Living on Benadryl.

“I read there’s microscopic mosquitos who’ve shown up in the US for the first time,” my husband warned me after the fact.
He has a tendency to do that. To warn me about the shark sighting after my leg’s been bitten off. Stuff like that. Anyway…

“They’re so tiny you can’t see or hear ’em. You never even know they’re biting you until it’s too…” he could see the look on my face so he stopped himself. He knows that look means his death is imminent.

But how rude is that? Not my husband’s misguided whatever, I mean the mosquito! I count on the buzz to warn me.
“Incoming!” I’ll announce, which is code at our house to run for cover. Or to turn your head because a kiss is coming, which can make for a confusing couple of seconds, but that’s another story altogether.

All of this welty madness reminded me of this post from back in 2015 when mosquitos had the common decency to announce themselves. To at least make it a fair fight.

Fuck you microscopic mosquito. You suck! (See what I did there?)

Carry on,
xox

Thank you gluttonous mosquito for turning my Saturday night into your own private all-you-can-eat buffet.

We are lucky enough in So Cal to escape summers of swarming mosquitos and bugs in general; we traded them for earthquakes, epic traffic jams and no NFL football team, so yep, I still think we’re ahead.

There is only one of you, you persistent little shit, I can tell by your distinctive, stuttering, high-pitched whine (you might want to get that checked out). I have no idea how you got into the house seeing that it’s been as hot as the surface of Mars these past few weeks and no door or window has been open for more than the three seconds it takes to exit or enter our seventy-five degree, humidity free sanctuary.

It was the doggie door wasn’t it?  Well, you’re resourceful, I’ll give you that.

I apologize for trying to kill you, swinging wildly in the dark every time you dive-bombed my left shoulder.
I’m a pacifist at heart. Really.
I carry spiders outside for crying out loud —because spiders have the good sense to hang out up on the ceiling and they leave my left shoulder alone. Besides, spiders are fellow artists, spinning their stunning webs all over the property. What beautiful thing have you created lately, besides this humongous welt on my back?

Still, I have to thank you. You taught me patience and you made me appreciate my little family.

First the patience…okay, well, that was about as long as that lasted.

I have exactly zero tolerance for a mosquito that has no self-control and can’t realize when it’s full. You served yourself at my shoulder four times, my knee (I don’t even want to know how you got under and out of the covers)—and my pinkie. Seriously?
You, my friend, need to practice some portion control!

After several hours of hearing your deranged buzz, and feeling you near my face as you flew your little scouting missions, I wanted to scream and pull out all of my hair! Instead, I got up, ran to pee (I didn’t want you to follow me, I was trying to avoid a fish in a barrel situation in the bathroom) and made sure my husband and the boxer-bitch were covered.

My husband is made from very rare and delicate French stock.
His skin is…different from my tough American horsehide—it just is.
It is void of pores and as soft as a baby’s ass, and when bitten it gets as hot, angry and red as Donald Trump’s face when asked the names of foreign Heads of State.

The boxer-bitch is simply too spoiled to bite.
Super cute, but ornery as hell—I know you wouldn’t bite a teenager for the same reasons, but I covered her nubby little butt anyway. As I found my way back to bed, flailing my arms around like a crazed scarecrow, trying to find you in the dark, I was filled with love and appreciation.

I kid you not.

I was thankful I wasn’t in the Amazon with bugs so prolific I was forced to sleep in a bed under a full mosquito net—or in South Africa avoiding deadly black mamba snakes on my way to pee. (With those guys you hit the ground dead in three minutes, so I know my last thought would be: Did I pull up my pants?) I was ever so thankful that I had a tube of Benadryl handy for the itching—and I was thankful there was only one of you. It made me feel better about my odds of hunting you down and killing you.

Thankfully, I fell asleep and we all survived the night.
Since I knew you were fat and happy, and we had formed a relationship, an uneasy truce of sorts—the next morning while it was a bracing 78 degrees at 6 am, I opened all the doors in the bedroom to facilitate your clean getaway.

Thank you and you’re welcome.

Carry on,
xox

So there she is…

Ready and waiting for him. Ridden hard and put away wet, she still has the mud from her last adventure through the desert Southwest caked to her sides. She’s a badass. Locked and loaded. His steel horse; our steel horse, although I have to admit we haven’t taken a long ride together in a while. 

He’d say it’s because I’m a fair weather rider who can’t tolerate the heat.

I’d say it’s because he keeps getting hurt.

When I met the man he’d already been riding for over thirty years. His boasting, “I’ve never fallen!” was corroborated by the posse of fellow riders who shadowed his every move along the winding roads of Southern California. 

So I got on the back and I never, for one minute, felt afraid.  

Then, when he turned fifty, he took up “off road” riding. Not the kind you do on the weekends with a beer in one hand and a light and nimble bike between your legs. No, he excelled at taking an already heavy touring motorcycle, loading it up with another 50-80 pounds of gear, traveling to Namibia, or the Atacama desert in Peru, and then having the skill/balls/lack-of-sanity to will that now 700 pound sucker up a steep hill composed of loose gravel and rocks the size of watermelons. 

Falling became as common as pooping. 

Picking up the heavy bike on a sandy slope, or after sliding on slippery rocks in the middle of a rushing river, or slow-motion falling with it next to you down a steep and jagged ravine was nothing to be ashamed of. On the contrary, it made for great tales of testosterone-fueled jackassery around the campfire every night. 

As he approached sixty, he took up Crossfit to stay in shape. He needed more upper body strength.

“Not only do I pick up my bike,” he told me, “I ride sweep, so I help all the other guys when they fall.”

Great…and why?

A few years back, on an adventure ride with a particular group of buddies in the wilds of British Columbia, he cracked four ribs in the middle of the trip. Did he stop? Nope. He just kept on riding the rough and ragged terrain, sleeping every night on the hard ground, and picking up bikes for the remaining SIX DAYS without a complaint. 

Until he got home.

Ladies you know how that goes. They’re stoic as fuck until they cross the threshold and see your face. Then they fall apart like a nine-year-old boy. The amount of wincing, whining, and Motrin consumption that took place for the next few months exceeded any woman in the throughs of labor. 

On the next trip with the same group of guys, I got a call on day two from the emergency room. A call that someone in my position (waiting at home while your significant other indulges in life threatening, male-bonding activities) dreads. He’d reactivated an old injury and felt it best to “Let the guys go on ahead”. He drove the seven hours home that same day in great pain and discomfort, and that entire fiasco led to a corrective surgery. Scar tissue had built up from all the riding. He’d never been off a bike long enough to let the injury heal.

I won’t even get into the behavior of a post-surgical husband. I have PTSD and the flashbacks alone may push me over the edge!

Then, in April, all healed up, free of any scar tissue, feeling fit and strong, he headed out with that same group of hoodlums to shred up Colorado, Utah and Arizona. “The trails are brutal’, he texted me everyday; or something to that effect. It should be mentioned that my husband is now sixty-five, a good twenty years older than any of the other guys.

Anyway, I got another call. Only this one was from Intensive Care. That kind that makes your heart race—and then stop—and then do a couple of flips before resuming its regular rhythm. 

“I fell.” he said.

“How bad?” I asked.

“Not bad, really,” he answered.

“I find that hard to believe seeing that you’re in Intensive Care!”

“I have a ruptured kidney and my spleen is pretty fucked up too,” he said. “My MRI should tell us more.”

After two days in Intensive Care in a hospital in the middle of an Indian Reservation in Arizona, a couple of his buddies drove all the way from LA to bring him, and his trusty bike, back home.

So, there she is. Sitting in my driveway, all ready to carry him on another adventure. She knows how I feel about it so she won’t even make eye contact with me. Four days with this same posse in Montana. I have to wait until noon on Tuesday to exhale.

“It’s not all riding,” he said, tying to reassure me. “They’ll be some archery, range shooting and fly fishing too.”

With those guys? Great. What could go wrong…

Pray with me and carry on,

xox

I should be ashamed I love these things.

But I’m not. 

Not really.

I suppose I should be because, well, they’re not the usual suspects like springtime in Paris, or pug nosed babies and equally pug nosed puppies.  But hey, how boring would that be? We all love those things. Right?

No, these are specific to my twisted brain unique sensibility. What I DO feel the least bit of a tinge of shame over is the ferocity with which I love these things. It’s the way I love them. My love is true. My love is mad and my love runs deep. I mean what’s the use of living if you don’t love all the wonderful things that life dishes up with all the…gusto…you can muster. So, although I know you weren’t wondering—without further ado, here they are:

1. Grilled cheese sandwiches. And not just any grilled cheese sandwich. It has to be just so. The trick is to use nice, thick bread and then butter and grill both sides. If that much butter bothers you, order a salad instead and by-the-way—I don’t think we can be friends.
2. Words. Well, certain words like, onomatopoeia, pomplemousse, inert, tiddlywinks and hippopotamuses. I like the way these words make my mouth feel when I say them. Don’t make that face!
3. Homemade croutons. Made from stale sourdough or better yet, brioche bread.
4. False eyelashes. (No secret there.)
5. The very rare natural redhead with brown eyes. My niece is one such unicorn and people literally fall all over themselves staring at her hair. I had blue eyes (still do) when my hair was dyed red—so yeah, I was batting zero for two.
6. Pink champagne. Does this need an explanation? I didn’t think so.
7. Straws in my drinks. I like the metal ones. Oh, and no umbrellas and please, no plastic monkeys… (okay, just one).
8. Hikes with trees. Like a forest hike, not those dirt trails where there’s no shade and the terrain resembles Death Valley.
9. Science Fiction ANYTHING. Movie, book, TV show, it doesn’t matter.  I repeatedly tell my husband that in my next life I’m coming back as an astronaut/archeologist/deep space explorer. I’m pretty sure that won’t be for a while since I don’t want anything to do with our current space program. I want to be on a ship with gravity. Where I can run around, not need money and replicate whatever my little space exploring heart desires. So, see ya around the year 3033.
10. The chinese chicken salad at Joan’s on Third. There is only one that is better. My mom’s. (Hi mom!)
11. Jeans. Don’t you love jeans? Can I just go on the record as saying that I just love that we live in a day and age where pantyhose are no longer required. Thanks. Non sequitur. Anyway, jeans! Woo Hoo! And if they’re not faded and you wear them with a black jacket and nice shoes, in LA you can get in almost anywhere. Except maybe a funeral. Wear a black dress or real pants to a funeral for godsakes. Show some respect.
12. The chocolate pie my friend Ginger made for my birthday. ( Are you sensing my love affair with food?) She made two and we had a least one piece a day for my entire stay. I didn’t ask for the recipe because I’d like to fit in one airline seat the next time I fly.
13. Flashmobs. These little surprise theatre concerts kill me. I will scream like a little girl and then die if I ever see one in person. They make me crazy! You can surprise me with one anytime.
14. Nora Ephron movies.  My favorite is You’ve Got Mail, but I also adore Sleepless In Seattle, When Harry Met Sally, Michael, Silkwood, Julie And Julia and…

So…what do you love with a fiery intensity that you might never admit except here, as an anonymous reader in front of tens of  my other readers?

Carry on,
xox

There are some compromises we make in a marriage that keep the wheels from gumming up and sticking. 
I turn a blind eye to the dirty dishes that sit overnight, while he helps me make the bed every day.

I have a thing about making the bed. I suppose you could say I’m anal about it. What can I say? I like to get into a freshly made bed every night. I even make the bed in hotel rooms. It stems from my childhood as an obedient, little Catholic saint-in-training, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.

I know, I know! It’s a habit, but I don’t think it’s one that warrants an apology.

His aversion to a “made” bed is the result of spending his formative years in boarding school, under the Draconian rule of a bunch of Jesuit’s who had nothing better to do than to teach boys how to fold corners of sheets with military precision.

By the time he left, at fifteen, he swore he’d never make another bed. He seriously couldn’t care less if he climbs into a tangle of crumpled blankets and sheets. (Just writing that makes me squirm.)

Then he met me. The bed making nazi.

I’m sensing a pattern here. Something to do with religion and rules and something-or-other.
Never mind…

I also put my dirty dishes directly into the dishwasher when I’m finished with a meal.
Not him. He piles them on the side of the sink and leaves them for the morning. He likes to wash and load while the coffee is brewing.

The thought of waking up to dirty dishes gives me hives.
I tell him that while I try to sneak them into the dishwasher every night. It’s like a dance. By the dim light over the stove (I don’t alert him to the fact by turning on the lights) I soap up the sponge and start to wash. He sneaks up behind me, grabs my soapy hands while suds fly around all willy-nilly, and insists, “I’ll do them in the morning.”
Then we kiss. Like you do at the end of a lovely waltz.
As I eyeball the pots and pans on my way to bed, all I can think is “Just kill me now.”

I know he feels obligated to help me make the bed because he tells me so. “It’s my bed too,” he says while he fluffs and karate chops each of the decorative pillows (there are six) just like I taught him to do when we first met. 

Recently, after almost seventeen years together, I’ve decide that Sunday can be free-the-bed day. It takes every ounce of willpower I possess, but it remains purposely disheveled, frozen at the exact moment we got out of it…for the entire day. 

Once he noticed, he declared, “I love it!”

“It looks inviting, doesn’t it?” He said, grinning broadly as he flopped down backward onto the sheets. The white sheets which that day had fresh, muddy paw-print polka dots all over them. Ruby was grinning too. Like a muddy fool. It didn’t take a pet psychic to tell me that she freakin’ loved free-the-bed day too!

I know when to admit defeat. 

There are some compromises we make in a marriage that keep the wheels from gumming up and sticking. If you can’t eventually, after almost two decades together, remove the stick that’s been stuck up your ass and go-with-the-flow, then I suggest a giant vat of WD-40 for the gummy wheeels—and sheets the color of mud. 

Carry on,
xox

Let’s be serious here. Since I know we all have a saboteur, this is a really important question to ponder. You’ll get what I mean in a minute.

Who is that person that derails you? Your harshest critic personified? Not necessarily just that voice in your head, but an insecurity that has taken on real flesh and blood to become your saboteur?

Danielle La Porte admitted on a recent podcast with Brene Brown, that in the past, her’s was the Silicon Valley dude sitting in the front row of a talk she’s giving. He’s wearing a $700 hoodie, not giving a rat’s ass about who she is or what she’s saying. “He thinks I’m too woo-woo, too flakey. I can see him and I can tell he can’t wait for me to shut up so he can get the hell outta there.”
Off. The. Rails.
Saboteur 1
Danielle  0

Brene’s saboteur was any academic colleague.
With twenty-something years in academia, she can spot her nemesis in a hot second: Arms crossed with the prerequisite scowl. Academics want hard facts. They want words, no pictures. They don’t trust anything heartfelt as ‘fact’ and vulnerability, Brene’s wheelhouse, is well, it’s better left to Super Soul Sunday — don’t call it hard research.
Big shame happens in that space (another Brene Brown specialty).
Off. The. Rails.
Saboteur 1
Brene      0

Stand-up comedians can tell you exactly where the ONE person who wasn’t laughing was sitting.

Actors on stage have literally stopped the show to confront the guy who’s on his cell phone.

When I’m in the middle of telling a story or reading something I’ve written, and the listener yawns or sees something shiny and changes the subject—that sabotages me — every time.
Clearly I’m a bore! I lament to myself. I take it personally. It can be a stranger or my best friend. It is often my husband — It was ALWAYS my Dad.

We all feel like we’re being judged and not only that — their reaction confirms that somehow — we’re not enough.

Brene Brown had a great suggestion. She says to her critic, “Hey, you can look at me however you want. You can judge me all day long. I know you and I know your story. Everybody has a story that would break your heart.” She goes on, “Even the Silicon Valley dude. They armor it up. What I’ve learned is to never take on a job or a project JUST to win over this critic, this saboteur.”

Amen sister.

That, you guys, is the takeaway. Well, one of them anyway.
Don’t waste one moment of your precious life trying to win over the saboteur.

You ARE good enough. Better than good enough, you’re the best YOU on the planet!

Don’t read your reviews, even on Yelp, especially on Yelp, and DO NOT listen to the haters.
Haters gonna hate.

I want to hear from YOU but I don’t want any comments unless they’re nice and by-the-way, I saw you yawning.
Carry on,
xox

If you like writers, and who doesn’t, you can check out the Beautiful Writers Podcasts on iTunes, they’re awesome!
http://beautifulwriterspodcast.com

Okay, so…

I saved this. I saw it a few months back and stuck it into one of the gazillion files I have for things I like.
It resonated with me.
I knew I’d use it, someday…
Well, you guys, today is that day.
It’s one of Seth Godin’s daily blogs, and it said what I wanted to say. Only it said it better. It was smart, it stayed somewhat a-political, and it remained void of any swear words (a feat I am incapable of, especially when writing about politics).

But it still hits the mark.

What a week we’ve had inside this reality show Presidency. The Joker has unlimited powers and Superman is nowhere to be found. I think I’ll go devour a sheetcake.

Yep. A real slow motion trainwreak…
Carry on,
xox

A slow motion trainwreck

We like the flawed hero, bad behavior, tragedy and drama in our fictional characters.

Batman and Deadpool sell far more tickets than Superman does.

If we use social media to attract a crowd, we will, at some level, become a fictional character. Reality shows aren’t about reality–they’re shows.

Which means that it’s tempting to become the sort of trainwreck that people like to watch and jeer and root for.

Personally, and for our brand as well.

Every time DC tries to make Superman more popular, they create drama that isn’t inherent in who he is. Brands fall into this trap all the time.

For a long time, people would confirm that they’d rather watch a flawed character, but deep down, they’d like to be Superman. Because his humility, kindness and resilient mental health are a perfect match for his unlimited powers. Unfortunately, as we’ve turned our lives into a reality show, more people seem happier emphasizing their mess.

It’s probably a bad idea to vote for, work for or marry a trainwreck. They belong on screen, not in real life.

Everyone has some Superman in them. But it takes emotional labor and hard work to reclaim it.

~ Seth Godin

https://seths.blog

I heard a story recently about a woman and a cat. Not the usual story of feminine-feline-obsession. There were no special little kitty-cat outfits or freshly massaged beef flown in daily from Japan. Nope. The cat became this woman’s catalyst for change. Long, long, overdue change. Here’s the story:

A woman lived in an apartment for a long time. Too long. As the landlord aged, his saint of a wife passed, he fell into ill-health, and his temperament changed. And not for the better. He turned from a basically okay guy into a pot-bellied, yellow-toothed rat-bastard.

Meanwhile, as an act of solidarity, the once lovely building began to fall into disrepair as well.
Not all at once mind you, but systematically, in baby steps. First, it was the single elevator which became a hit or miss box-of-terror. The out-of-order sign became a permanent fixture and if you didn’t feel like walking the seventy-eight steps up to the third floor with your groceries, you took your chances. But not without a Valium. And a crowbar.

Everywhere you looked the paint was peeling faster than a bad sunburn. The front buzzer hadn’t worked for years, (friends just shouted up for the keys to the front door from the street below her window), and her oven either made lukewarm everything or charcoal briquets.

Everyone who visited the apartment urged her to move.
But after eighteen years of rent control, she just couldn’t bring herself to leave. And they allowed cats. That is until the fateful morning he came banging on the door to personally deliver a UPS package addressed to her that he claimed was loitering in the front lobby. When she answered the door, her roommate the friendly feline, came over and wove itself in and around her legs, furiously exfoliating its face on her three-day stubble while purring loudly.

Too loudly.

“What’s that?” Her landlord hissed between teeth the color of aged, ivory piano keys.

“Oh, uh…that’s my cat”, she stammered.

“We don’t allow cats in this building!” He bellowed, his fat belly quivering for emphasis.

“But I’ve always had it”, she replied nervously, trying to shoo the cat away with her slippered foot.

But the cat thought it was a fun new game and began tightly hugging her muck-luckity clad foot with its front paws while furiously rabbit-kicking it with its hind legs She grabbed the box from his twisted, cigarette stained fingers and closed the door to just a crack in order to hide the madness happening just below her bathrobe.

He was undeterred.
“The cat goes or YOU go!” he yelled. “You have one week or I’m evicting you.”
With that, he managed to propel his girth away from her door and with enormous momentum practically plummeted down the stairs. She slammed the door leaning against it for support, trembling. The cat strolled away contentedly, convinced it had beaten its opponent into submission. Satisfied, it jumped up onto the large, carpeted, cat tree next to the window, rolled into a ball, and promptly fell asleep in the warm morning sun.

What am I going to do? she wondered.
She had to admit that the place had transformed over the years into a shit-hole and the landlord into a troll; but the thought of moving sent her into a full-blown anxiety attack. She had savings, it wasn’t that.
She wasn’t good with change.
She hated the thought of leaving, of looking for a new place. She was used to it there. Even though she knew her quality of life could be so much better—she was willing to settle. For everything that was wrong with the place, the voice in her head came up with a million reasons why it was so much easier to stay.

Her tolerance for mediocrity, misery, and sub-standard living conditions had reached an all-time high.

Terrified, she hid every sign of the cat.
Late at night, she’d load its dirty cat litter and empty food cans into bags and lug them three flights down, out to the scary-ass alley where she’d walk several buildings over to use their dumpsters. The cat box took up residency in her shower when she wasn’t using it, and she played the radio during the day while she was at work to hide the sounds of any meowing.
One Sunday it took her nearly the entire morning to move the behemoth of a cat tree from its sunny place next to the dining room window into a dark corner of her bedroom, where she made sure to keep the blinds closed on all of the windows—just in case.

One night, laying in bed, she literally made herself sick with worry. She realized that not only was she miserable, she had now seriously diminished her dear cat’s quality of life as well.

And THAT was what turned out to be the last straw!

The next day she begrudgingly mentioned to some friends at work that she needed a new place— a place that took cats.
Not even three weeks later, word came of the most adorable little house-behind-a-house owned by a terrific man, his equally fantastic husband, and their two Siamese cats. It was a fresh start! Fresh in every way. New paint, shiny refinished hardwood floors, even the unfathomable (and something she’d never dared to wish for)—a stackable washer and dryer! Not only that, it was at ground level, the oven worked like a charm, and the front porch was screened with a perfect spot for the cat tree.

Nobody was happier about that than the cat.

Now…you may be wondering, did the cat make this happen? Did it show itself at just the wrong time to get this ball rolling? Perhaps.

But I think the real moral of this story is the habit many of us have of dragging our feet on the way to our own happiness.
I’ve done it and I’m sure my friends that you have too. It’s about self-worth and why our cat’s, friend’s, spouse’s (fill in the blank), everybody else’s happiness is more important than our own.

It’s also a story about how there are great possibilities out there, possibilities we could never have imagined—if we can only just step out of our own complacency and fear.

Take it from this cat story, the very thing you dread could be the best change you’ve ever made.

Carry on,
xox

Throughout the years I’ve run my life through numerous filters. I think we all have. And most of mine have ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous.

After a nasty break-up, my filter informed me that ‘all men cheat‘. If things went south for me in business, the filter which I ran my life through convinced me that I ‘couldn’t catch a break’.  For a short period of time it even told me that leaving the house without lipstick was ‘bad luck’.

It has become my practice, as of late, to run everything I do through the most recent filter—the shit to value ratio—which is exactly like The Law of Diminishing Returns, except it has to do with shit, and how much we take to get what we want.

It’s not very scientific, and in fact, it flies in the face of most societal norms. But it makes life so much easier, which makes me happy, and at this stage of the game I’ll choose happiness over almost anything else.

If you’ve never heard of it, it goes something like this: How much shit must I endure to get value?

Here are a few examples from my life. I think you’ll see what I mean.
For instance, how long is the drive (i.e. how many hours of my life will I lose sitting in traffic) for that thing I absolutely need to do? (The answer for me is: if it goes beyond 30-40 minutes—I rethink it. But there are some exceptions, I’m not an asshole.)

How much mindless chit-chat is required to get to the authentic, substantive, issues that I’d rather discuss? (My endurance time is getting shorter and shorter. Soon, I’m afraid I’ll stick a fork in my eye at dinner parties after only ten minutes.)

How many horrible, unreadable first drafts come before I can cobble together one good sentence? (The answer is nine.)

How long do you stay in a loveless relationship just for the security, or because you’re too lazy to leave? (The answer for me was seven. And that was four years too many.)

How many hours and dollars will you spend to battle the effects of aging? (I stopped dying my hair blonde which turned out to be the best money I haven’t spent in years!)

How many years will you suffer the whims of a terrible boss? (Twenty. And he wasn’t all bad. Said the woman who stayed too long.)

And how much pain will you endure? THAT is a biggie for me and the answers these days is… NONE.
I won’t suck it up and suffer for anyone anymore.

I won’t continue to hike with oozing blisters.

I won’t get the lip injections on a whim because I met you at the dermo before lunch.

I won’t get micro needling, dermabrasion, or that Hannibal Lector looking peel to promote collagen. Fuck collagen. It’s highly overrated. (But just in case I’ll drink some collagen protein.)

I won’t starve myself to be a size six.

I won’t let the highly recommended, sadistic woman with the indiscernible accent, burn skin tags off my body with a glorified cigarette lighter. (I got up and left when she wanted to look for them around my ass.)

I won’t try to keep my uterus inside my body. I won’t lalalala my way around that fact that it’s let it’s true feelings be known to me FOR OVER A DECADE. It protested in the only way it knew how—pain and bleeding. After I ignored that, it enlisted my bladder as an unwitting accomplice. Apparently, my uterus was going to ride it like a manatee low enough into my body that if I had a good laugh, or a sneezing fit, they could just slide out of me. No big deal.

Last year, I finally ran my loudly protesting lady-bits through this new filter—and had the damn surgery!

I recently read that Lena Dunham relinquished her uterus and while I know she is so much younger than me, it’s the perfect example of shit to value—and it had to go.

Too much shit for not enough value.

I’ve also recently begun running “the revisiting of old emotional wounds” through this filter. Listen, It was all the rage to do this back in the day. I did it. We all did it. We dove head-first into our pain, writhing around in it like pigs in shit.
But now I see my younger friends wanting to go down that road and I’m not sure I think it’s a good idea to go back in time and dig up all the buried bodies. Why?
YOU’RE DIGGING UP SO MUCH SHIT.
SO MUCH! The wounds are old—and they’re DEEP! 

And looking back, if one dollar is the highest return on that emotional investment, I may have gotten, in the end, maybe, forty cents on the dollar of value.

All I’m saying is that perhaps there is another way? A better way? A less painful way?
I suggest that first you run your life though this shit to value filter. I wish someone would have suggested it to me when I was thirty.
Or forty.
Or fifty.

Carry on,
xox

Hello everybody,
This was posted by my dear friend Leslie, on her Facebook page.
Everyone has a dear friend Leslie; someone you haven’t seen in years but manage to feel connected to through the miracle of social media. I met her over a decade ago, and even in those first few moments, as she helped me pick out only the coolest coffee table books to sell in my store—I knew we’d be friends for life.

I’d like to think we have the same taste. We don’t. She’s wayyyy hipper than I could ever dream of being, but that’s beside the point. One day, she told me that I had to have an exhibition of her husband’s art in my store, I did, and it kind of ended up defining the place.
So, now I cyber-stalk her on Instagram.  
When I see her post a particular swatch of fabric she loves, or a throw pillow, charcoal sketch, headboard, or couch she’s just purchased—I think to myself, Yes! Well done Leslie, I love that too!

When I grow up I want to be more like Leslie.
More diverse in my musical tastes (although I’m pretty sure we love all the same artists), more committed to finding small batch, off-the beaten-path, artsy-fartsy-folksy things to prop on a shelf in that very purposely, not-on-purpose way she has. Maybe I’ll even spring for a used-brick, New York lofty, so-good-it-makes-you-want-to-die, office getaway just blocks from Venice beach—only to be near hers.

Leslie is an adult. She’s good at it! But only in the best sense of the word—not in that stilted, 401K watching, void of any fun, kind of way. She’s a mother, a reader, a life-reinventor, a deep thinker, and an even deeper feeler (is that even a thing?). Leslie will know.
And besides all of that, we share the same sense of humor—self-deprecating and a little twisted, which often makes me snort-laugh coffee from my nose.

Anyway, Leslie posted this beautiful piece by Rania Niam the other day and of course, it touched my heart, I LOVED it, and wish I’d written it.  I think you’ll love it too, and Leslie. But you can’t have her. She’s mine. 

Carry on,
xox

You’re allowed to leave any story you don’t find yourself in. You’re allowed to leave any story you don’t love yourself in.

You’re allowed to leave a city that has dimmed your light instead of making you shine brighter, you’re allowed to pack all your bags and start over somewhere else and you’re allowed to redefine the meaning of your life.

You’re allowed to quit the job you hate even if the world tells you not to and you’re allowed to search for something that makes you look forward to tomorrow and to the rest of your life.

You’re allowed to leave someone you love if they’re treating you poorly, you’re allowed to put yourself first if you’re settling and you’re allowed to walk away when you’ve tried over and over again but nothing has changed.

You’re allowed to let toxic friends go, you’re allowed to surround yourself with love, and people who encourage and nurture you. You’re allowed to pick the kind of energy you need in your life.

You’re allowed to forgive yourself for your biggest and smallest mistakes and you’re allowed to be kind to yourself, you’re allowed to look in the mirror and actually like the person you see.

You’re allowed to set yourself free from your own expectations.

We sometimes look at leaving as a bad thing or associate it with giving up or quitting, but sometimes leaving is the best thing you can do for yourself.

Leaving allows you to change directions, to start over, to rediscover yourself and the world. Leaving sometimes saves you from staying stuck in the wrong place with the wrong people.

Leaving opens a new door for change, growth, opportunities and redemption.

You always have the choice to leave until you find where you belong and what makes you happy.

You’re even allowed to leave the old you behind and reinvent yourself.

Author: Rania Niam

https://thoughtcatalog.com/rania-naim/