writer

This. This can be tricky but the results are remarkable. It’s an approach that is different but I think it’s so important to remember.

Try it.

With a lover,
With a friend,
A co-worker,
and your boss.

With a client,
a new idea or concept,
your kids,
your neighbors,
and most especially these days — your politics.

Be FOR peace instead of against war.
Be FOR a Democrat instead of against a Republican.
Be FOR the F-word instead of…well, you get the gist.

Carry on,
xox

Then I am a genius because I’m am seriously dumb about the learning to be smart part.

“Learning something new is frustrating. It involves being dumb on the way to being smart.”
~ Seth Godin

This has always been a challenge for me. I LOVE knowledge, but I HATE feeling dumb. There is nothing I hate more—except maybe old fat guys playing volleyball on a nudie beach. GOD! I HATE THAT!

I remember getting hives the day our new jewelry program arrived at work. I knew the old inventory system so well I never even looked at the keys. It took eight key strokes to enter an item. Not four and not eleven. Eight. The tech guy who was drowning in too much cheap cologne and smug gave us all a crash course and a number to call in case we faltered. After he left I tried a couple of things he had just shown us and had to be restrained from throwing the entire fucking computer into traffic—before the nerd even made it to the parking lot.

MY frustration turns to rage. Who’s with me?

Frustration as a contact sport? Uh, yeah. Especially with technology. Don’t get me started.

I Google it. I email my smart friends, peppering them with questions. I watch endless tutorials on YouTube and I STILL can’t get Suri to work for me the way I want. The way I was promised. She is cold and distant and I don’t care for her attitude.

As for technology, I’ve been shamed by a pimply faced genius at the Genius Bar and Billy who works for my brother on his way to world domination.
THEY were never dumb. Ever. They were smart on the way to brilliant. I want that. I’ll have what they’re having.

I’ll admit it. I was/am the poster child for “I want to be an expert on my way to being an expert.”

Here is how that plays out in my brain: Don’t fucking talk to me about “a learning curve”. I cannot be bothered with that nonsense. “Learning curve”. Ha! That’s just a nice way of saying: ”You’re the little train that couldn’t on the downslope to stupid.”

Brutal. I know. Can you believe the shit my smack-talking brain says to me? Jeez. It’s a wonder I get up in the morning.

Back in the day, I longed to be fluent in a beginning French class. (What? Don’t turn on me now).
When it was evident that French was a hopeless cause for me due to the fact that I am seriously “language challenged”, (it’s genetic. My tongue is not made to do some of those things. You should feel sorry for me instead of judging), I hijacked the class with my crazy antics. I turned it into I Love Lucy Takes French. At least that way they were laughing with me, not at me—the densest person to ever attempt to learn a foreign language.

I finally discovered over time and many hours of navel lint contemplation, that it’s the feeling dumb part that I hate.

The part that I LOVE is acquiring knowledge. I love to grow and change and know new stuff. It was then that I decided to reframe it. You know, to offset the frustration rage.

What if I was…curious? Not stupid.
Wow.
That feels better already. Curious is a much better thing to be than dumb. At least is was for me.

What if I was trying to “figure something out” as a part of learning? Kind of like a math problem. Except nothing like math because I sucked at math on a count of  it made me feel dumb. Well, THAT was a full circle moment. Anyhow, “figuring out” sounds smart. I like that.

What if I could remember that everyone has an awkward first day at everything. No one comes in as an infant knowing how electricity works or exactly what the iPhone 6 can do—except Tesla and maybe my little brother.

What if I could simply lighten the fuck up and make learning fun? Huh?
Well, these days I’m learning to do that (see what I did there?).

How about you?
Are you okay with feeling dumb on the way to smart? Really? What’s in your coffee?
Help me out here. Share some of your insights, Please.

and then…Carry on,
xox

Ray: I’m thirty-six years old, I love my family, I love baseball, and I’m about to become a farmer. And until I heard the Voice, I’d never done a crazy thing in my whole life.

Voice: If you build it, he will come.
~from the movie Field of Dreams

I’m baaaackkkkk! And I missed YOU!

I went away to devote a block of time to the screenplay I’ve been enlisted to write.
The one about death and life thereafter.

The comedy —the buddy picture—my own person Field of Dreams complete with a cryptic voice and characters who are invited to participate in this magical fairy tale I’ve been fortunate enough to be gifted with writing.

I haven’t always felt that way.

At first, it was so (insert baseball pun here), out of left field, that my inner skeptic was pooping her pants. I have a nose finely tuned for bullshit and this entire endeavor reeked of it.

But after a while, after a ton of questioning and “prove it to me’s” I plowed under my corn and built my field just as I’d been directed. I started writing a screenplay (which I had no interest in doing and absolutely NO experience at), that was dictated to me by my pal, the dead screenwriter.

And you know what happened? The more I got out of the way—the better it got. So much so that now, when I read it to people, ( even people I’ve just met  like the women at the retreat last week), THEY SEE THE PLAYERS ON THE FIELD. In other words, they believe in the magic and that never ceases to amaze me.

I remember loving Field of Dreams when it came out. Who doesn’t want to believe that there’s more to life than the mundane and ordinary? What Ray did seemed crazy but his courage (disguised as wavering conviction), wins everyone over in the end—even me.

I know. It’s a movie. But crazy as it sounds it’s also become a template for my life.

All ideas start as crazy fantasies. They do. Every. Single. One. of  Them.

They come out of nowhere, bite you on the ass, and invite you to come along for the ride.
What do YOU do when that happens? Do you up the volume on the radio (get caught up in life), to drown out the voices (ideas), or do you plow under the corn (take some risks), and build the field for the players to come and play (give your ideas life)?

I used to ignore the Voice. For years, I turned my back to the players on the field. But what kind of life is that?

When magic presents itself—I say, make the leap.
Not everyone will see the players on the field but that’s okay, those that do far outweigh the ones who cannot.

Plus, Magic can’t be contained. It bleeds into all other aspects of your life and that does NOT suck. I promise.

I’ve gotta go now, it’s the second inning and I’m up at bat.

Play ball!
xox

John Kinsella: Is this heaven?

~Dialogue from the movie FIELD OF DREAMS

I stole this from Liz Gilbert because I LOVE words. The odder the better—the only thing I love more are my husband, my dog…and bacon.

Because, come on! Bacon has no calories, it isn’t bad for us and goddamnit, apparently it cures grief!

BLT.

Mac-n-cheese with bacon.

Swiss bacon burger.

Bacon wrapped hot dogs.

Comfort food.
Yeah, I might know something about that. I ate bacon as a Vegan.
Oh, relax! I also had sex before marriage as a Catholic. Clearly I can’t be trusted to follow the rules—anyway—how did this get to be about me and my questionable boundaries?

This is about BACON.

Enjoy some levity on your Sunday and indulge in some Bacon!
xox

This is SOooooooo true! You know why my tribe?
Because they are the MOST interesting, sensitive and insightful souls.
Because they see the world differently than most.

Slightly tinted, and a bit skewed through the outsider’s lens.

Because they have an edge.
In their work and words and life.
It wraps it’s pointedness around their soft gooey hearts to keep them safe and sound, and if they let you inside, it feels like the Fourth of July, your first kiss and Christmas morning all rolled up into one.

Are you one of these wonderful, ragged, gypsy souls?

Then know that I love You.
Happy Saturday.
Xox

Yeah…I was going to write something high-minded and profound on the subject of forgiveness, but after today—sometimes it really is just this simple.
You’re an asshole —and I forgive you.

It doesn’t mean that you need to overlook what that person did wrong.

It doesn’t mean it wasn’t a shitfest.

It doesn’t even mean they were completely wrong and you were completely right.

I’m pretty sure it takes a party of two to get a table at the shitfest—right?

Here’s what I do know for sure:

The object of our forgiveness may never change—but we can!

Carry on,
xox

Love, lust or any other addiction.

It hijacks the brain and its ability to reason, the mouth and it’s ability to bargain, a vagina for obvious reasons; and is apparently able to override a fear of heights.

In the mid-eighties, I left my husband. We had a perfectly lovely life — just absolutely NO sexual chemistry…and I wanted some. BAD.

I read about it in books. I saw it in the movies. I dreamt of it and fantasized about it; this elusive beast, and being that I was in my twenties, I was damned if I was going to live a life without it.

Cut to 1985 — I’m sharing a dive apartment in drug infested hookerville with my little sister who had just left our father’s cushy home to find her way out from under his thumb and forge her own independence.

It was Flashdance meets Friends only without the great clothes, the sexy dancing and the killer apartment.

My sister had moved a saltwater fish tank up two flights of stairs only to have the summer be so fucking Africa hot on the second floor; in the Valley; with no air conditioning; that even after trying to cool it off with trays of ice cubes — eventually, all the fish cooked.

Later, after she’d emptied most the water and cleaned the green slime off the glass, and since we had no entertainment budget, we organized races with little plastic wind up swimmers from the novelty stores on Ventura Boulevard.   Frogs, Snorkelers, a fat man in an inner tube whose legs furiously tread water; even an alligator doing the backstroke.

These were real races. Beers were guzzled. Bets were placed. Money may have exchanged hands.

I’m tellin’ ya it was the wild west inside that toasty little shit-hole with the sticky green shag carpet in North Hills.

After the Feds shut down the toy races, we floated three basketballs in the tank.
It was art.

Speaking of art, one morning when I was getting my fried, I mean permed, blonde hair nice and Bon-Jovi gigantic, my blow dryer gave out from exhaustion. The eighties were a rough time for blowdryers and a boom time for hairspray. My sister and I could go through a case of Aqua Net a week.

Anyway, my blow dryer started throwing blue sparks, and inside of a small unventilated bathroom full of Sebastian Hair Fix fumes, well, the whole apartment could have ignited — blowing us all to kingdom come.

Since only half my head was coiffed, I finished with my sister’s very upscale blow dryer and hung my little flame thrower from a plant hook in the corner of the dining room.

At night we would turn off all the lights and plug it in; then sit and watch that thing shoot blue sparks into the air — because it was art.

It was beautiful and dangerous art. We just had to be diligent about keeping our hair a safe distance away.

How we’re not both dead is beyond me.

Which leads me to the window in my room.
It was rectangular, running from floor to ceiling and narrow, about the width of an average person. Because it was so freakin’ hot, even with my fear of heights, I would sit on a towel (there was no way I was going to let my ass touch that disgusting carpet) next to the window at night and read, paint my toe nails, or talk on the phone.

I talked on the phone a lot.

You see, I had fallen hard for a much younger boy/man who had lived with us for one glorious summer and then gone off to college (yes, that young). I pined for him something awful, so we’d talk on the phone late into the night, he from Cal State Long Beach and me in front of that window, smoking cigarettes, searching for a breeze.

That window became like a portal.
All sorts of weird shit happened around that window.
It just so happens that there was a street light directly below, one of the few in the hood that hadn’t been blown out. I always tried to park my car under that light, you know, for safety, although thinking back I’m not sure why I bothered. Anything valuable had been stolen off of, or out of, my piece of shit Mazda within the first month we lived there.

Parked under that very street light — in full view of that window.

Late one hot summer night, the three of us were startled awake by the sound of shouting and car engines. Of course we went to the window to see what was up. My sister soon joined us, all the noise had woken her up but she couldn’t see the activity from her uneventful, non-portal window.

Our three sleepy, middle-of-the-night faces were now wide awake and fascinated, silently poised right above all the action as we watched more and more police cars surround a vehicle with two men inside. Soon a police canine unit and tow truck joined the crowd. “Drug bust” my boy-toy whispered.

We watched for hours as they carefully and methodically stripped the car down to its skeleton. The seats, the dash, the inside liner — they had this down to a science.

We got snacks—we took potty breaks—all the while staying quiet enough to be eyewitnesses to a potential drug bust. Then, just as we were beginning to lose interest, and it seemed as if the drugs didn’t exist, we heard a cop yell, like they do on TV, “Bingo!” and fifty cops descended onto the metal frame, like ants at a picnic. There it was, bag after bag of some illegal substance, hidden in the dark recesses of that car’s guts. They hauled the two guys away and it was all over in fifteen minutes as if it had never happened.

Yeah, I know, great neighborhood. Not really, it was the site of drug deals, used condoms and hookers, Oh My!

Another evening, as I waited for my sister to get home with pumpkin pie (we both worked at Vons at the time, so we’d call the one who was working late, right before their shift was over, with junk food cravings), I was sitting next to the window, writing a letter to my beloved — yes, with paper and a pen — when I thought I heard moaning.

Now, moaning was a regular occurrence in our apartment. We had a couple with a very active sex life that shared a wall. She was a moaner and he had white-boy rhythm as evidenced by the intermittent, uncoordinated frenzy of headboard banging that used to make us howl with laughter.

But this moaning sounded different — like a wounded animal.
I turned down the TV that was always on to keep me company; and listened. Just below the window was a balled up something on the dead, dried up grass under the street light.

I decided to investigate.

I put on my dime store flip-flops, took my keys to the security gates with me, and walked down two flights of stairs to the street below. It was just slightly cooler outside than inside the apartment but still around eighty degrees — an Indian Summer night in the Valley.

As I slowly closed the gate by hand behind me so it wouldn’t slam (a habit), I could still hear a low moaning. Walking slowly toward the street light, I still couldn’t figure out who or what was there. It was rolled up tight into the fetal position, small, like a dog… or a child? I remember it was beige, the color of skin. Could it be a person?

“Hello?…are you okay?” I ventured closer.

“Do you need…” I screamed and reflexively jumped back.

“Oh my God…” I kept backing away slowly, terrified and unsure of what to do.”I’m, I’m, I’m going upstairs to call 911!”

Her face (I didn’t know it was a woman until later), looked up at me, toward the sound of my voice. Her ear was missing, replaced by shredded skin. I knew she couldn’t see me, her eyes were purple and swollen shut, and her face didn’t resemble anything human. It looked like a hideous Halloween mask.

I ran so fast I flew out of my flip-flops.

No such thing as cell phones in those days, so I sprinted back up to the apartment, made eerie by the juxtaposition of the TV laugh track and the scene on the street below as I dialed 911. The phone was on the floor in front of the window and I watched her like a hawk the whole time. I was shaking so hard it took me three tries to dial 911 correctly.

A squad car pulled up before I even had a chance to speak. I hung up, turned off all the lights in the room and watched from my second story perch as they slowly, cautiously, got out of the car and walked toward her. One cop poked her with a stick and when she moved and looked at up them — even they flinched. The other cop was calling it in as his partner crouched down to talk to her. The paramedics and a fire truck were there in minutes and I watched, nervously biting my nails, from my dark window as they took her pulse, assessed her injuries, loaded her almost totally naked body onto a gurney and took her away.

My sister got home just about that time, “What’s all the commotion down there?” she asked.
It took me a minute to gain my composure. “I’ll tell you over pie” I replied.

As the story goes, and I can’t quite recall how we got this information; the woman was a regular at one of the local dive bars peppered throughout our neighborhood. The drunker she got the more she bragged about getting a big bonus at work. As she bought round after round of drinks, she exposed a thick wad of bills that was like fresh meat to the low-life wolves at the bar. Apparently, as she walked to her car, under the safety of the street light, two of the animals beat her in order to get her purse (which she fought to keep, ladies, don’t ever do that, just let them have it). She fought so hard they practically pulled her clothes off — both of her hands sustained multiple fractures. The last I heard she was hospitalized with a cracked skull, and in need of massive plastic surgery.

It happened right under my window, under the street light, and I never heard a thing.

Why didn’t we move?

Last but not least is the story about the time I jumped out that window. That second story window. To chase after a boy.

“I loved him somethin’ awful” If someone says that, believe them. It was awful.

I had, at long last, found me some chemistry. It burned hot, and was highly combustible, constantly boiling over like those science experiments gone awry.
My whole body was on fire. I was consumed by lust which I was calling love, because honestly, I didn’t know any better.
My brain went offline.
My mouth said things that still, to this day, make me cringe. It bargained and begged.
I was reduced to a writhing pile of pheromones and sex organs. He was a beautiful disaster.

When this boy/man said he had to leave after spending three days straight in bed with me; well, I went a little berserk. I couldn’t see my way clear of the crazy.
I stumbled to the window over the dirty dishes, coffee cups, food scraps, and piles of clothes that had surrounded and sustained us that entire weekend.

It was over and he had to go back — to school — cringe.

I heard his car pull away as I got a running start and literally flew, in one giant leap, through the screen and out that portal/ window without thinking.

“Noooooooooooooo! Don’t go!” I screamed in mid-air. The large rectangular screen made it to the ground first in a twisted mess. I managed to clear a shrub and stick a nice tuck-n-roll landing, but that still didn’t bring me to my senses.

It’s amazing I wasn’t hurt; clearly people that stupid are indestructible — That does not bode well for the gene pool.

My screaming continued to echo outside and around the block.

“Don’t leave, not yet!” I got up as fast as I could and ran out into the street, where I could barely see his tail lights at the corner.

“Waaaaaait!!!!!” I wailed at the top of my lungs and sprinted as fast as could after his car and right out of my flip-flops. (What is the deal with that?)

I’d obviously lost my sanity AND my shoes, and now I was losing my voice but it didn’t matter, I continued to scream his name at the top of my lungs until I saw him pull into the Seven Eleven parking lot around the block — the one just before the entrance to the 405 freeway.

When I saw his face I knew I’d gone too far.
Who was I? What had come over me?
I was bent over, trying to catch my breath while he sat in his car looking stunned.

When I could finally manage to speak all I could say was, “I’m sorry…I just…this is so NOT sexy, right?”

He shook his head slowly, got out of the car, gave me a mediocre hug, got back in the car and drove away.

As I took the slow walk of shame back to the apartment I could see the crumpled screen lying dead on the sidewalk, but there was no sign of my flip-flops.
Someone, some other size seven, had stolen them while I’d made a fool of myself — chasing after a man in a car — barefoot — for no good reason other than addiction.

That stunt shocked me…finally!

To say it was not my proudest moment is an understatement.

I learned so much about myself that day. What I was capable of, how, if I let my vagina make all the decisions I could really get hurt since in her narrow-minded focus on chasing desire, she had little regard for my personal safety — and that we needed to get the hell out of that apartment.

It changed me, I started thinking about self-worth, boundaries, and personal responsibility so that nothing even remotely like that would EVER happen again.

I blame that fucking portal/window.

Okay. So who here hasn’t done a crazy-ass window jump in one form or another in their life — show of hands? Uh-huh, I thought so.

Tell me about it below.

Carry on,
xox

Sally: He just met her… She’s supposed to be his transitional person, she’s not supposed to be the ONE. All this time, I thought he didn’t want to get married. But, the truth is, he didn’t want to marry me. He didn’t love me.
Harry: If you could take him back now, would you?
Sally: No. But why didn’t he want to marry me? What’s the matter with me?
~From “When Harry Met Sally”

We ALL have him/her. That “one that got away.”
Even if we were the ones that broke it off, when that someone moves on – we suffer.
“That could’ve been me” we whine into our wine.

Saying they wanted to marry you or that they weren’t the marrying kind and then GETTING MARRIED. For some, this person is extremely high-profile – I can’t even imagine how that must feel. Seeing that person captured by the paparazzi, on the cover of every magazine, having the audacity to go off and be happy…with someone else. Ugh.

It’s bad enough when you just hear it from a friend or spot the happy couple at the Farmer’s Market; as you duck behind the organic apples, in order to avoid eye contact, because you still have bed head and you’re wearing your baggy sweats, and they look like they’ve just jumped off the pages of the J Crew catalogue.

A mutual friend posted something a couple of weeks ago about one of my former boyfriends.
He was no George Clooney, but he was a large liver. Large liver’s are those guys/gals that are highly successful in high-profile professions, have money to burn and style to spare.

Seems one of his country homes was published in a prominent shelter magazine, so I stupidly went to take a look.
Do you ever google yourself or people from your past?
I never have, but I did, and I can tell you – BIG mistake.

This guy is living the dream. Beautiful wife, kids, homes all over the world, tons of money.
Part of me thought, ‘Hey, that could’ve been me’ then, as I read further, the rest of me slapped some sense into me, ‘Hey, that would NEVER be you. You still have nothing in common.’
Shit. That part has an epic memory and is always right.

We met on a blind date. Fixed up by a mutual friend.
By the third date, he was professing his love. Every time he told me he loved me I’d smile and say: “well, thanks, but you don’t really know me yet.”
I was at least that self-aware; something he didn’t appreciate.

He was nouveau riche, meaning, he had gone from making fifty grand a year to well over a million – overnight.
It became his idea of fun to spend the entire day on Sunday, trying to spend all of his money. He already had a house, a boat and a couple of cars, so, hey, why not.

We did have tons of fun and laughed our heads off. Did I mention he was funny?

Oh yeah, he was handsome, smart and funny.
He had an amazing job and was the hottest new wunderkind in his profession.

And you could tell – he was wife shopping.

It felt to me like he was taking a walk on the wild side by dating me. He liked the waspy prom queen types; I was way too bohemian at the time; all blonde hair dyed red, vintage clothes, new age, alternative music – me.

The truth was – we were completely incompatible.

He had a boat – I got seasick. I was Yoshi Yamamoto, he was Chanel.
He made fun of my bleeding heart liberalism, my altruistic nature, the spiritual books I devoured and all my flea market finds; not in a mean way, but enough to keep me off-balance.

We didn’t have a thing in common besides the great sex and our senses of humor, and I was seriously considering overlooking that…for the lifestyle.

By the end of the first month together he launched the relationship into anxiety overdrive by asking me to go on a uber luxurious trip to Paris and the South of France with him for three weeks. I only had a week’s paid vacation time left, so he offered to pay my rent.
He’d also paid for my move to the city, to be closer to him. It was all making me extremely uncomfortable. He thought my squirming was cute.

One Sunday he took me shopping in Beverly Hills in that Pretty Womanish way: walking in, sizing up the joint, acting like a big shot, asking for champagne and pointing to the most expensive things in the store; while calling all the shop girls “sweetheart.”

It wasn’t sexy, or charming, like the movie. It was mortifying, and I had my first of many anxiety attacks in the dressing room, gasping for breath, watching through the curtain as the shop girls rolled their eyes at him.

Since he had Saturday and Sunday off, he immediately started to voice his disapproval of me working on Saturdays.
I was a jeweler, Saturday was non-negotiable. Hey, I was a shop girl…sweetheart.

He let me know he didn’t care for my roommate. He also disliked my friends and family, virtually isolating me from my old life. We only spent time with his friends, at his work events, on his boat or at his house.

His large life kicked my sweet little life’s ass .

Then the whispering started.
“He’s going to ask you to marry him in Paris” his friends whispered, giving me a head’s up…and a stomach ache.

Shouldn’t I have been elated? He looked amazing on paper, the anomaly every girl I knew was looking for; a wealthy, smart, thirty-something guy – who wanted to get married!

I sat in the bathroom staring at the bidet (wondering how it worked) that first night in Monaco, shaking like a leaf, experiencing another anxiety attack. I was thousands of miles from home, on his dime. All I had on me was the three hundred dollars in my wallet and a credit card with a fifteen-hundred-dollar limit. He was the only person I knew there, and not even THAT well.
ALSO
He had Henry Higgins’d me until I barely recognized myself.
I was acting like the biggest fakity-fake- fake, with the fancy clothes and the $500 bikini’s he’d purchased for me, smiling my big, white, toothy smile on the arm of this guy I barely knew, who I wasn’t sure I loved and was supposed to become engaged to.
For me, the fairy tale was unraveling.

The trip went…okay— long story.
Suffice it to say we did not get engaged. I told you, we weren’t compatible.
Yet, when things cooled off and he stopped calling and coming around – I was shocked and hurt. He was able to dismiss me as quickly as he fell for me. I kept asking myself, what had I done wrong? Why didn’t he love me anymore? It’s hard when the spotlight of someone’s affection shifts away from you when you have to return to your sweet little life, garment bags of gowns hanging sadly in the closet. I’m sure George’s former paramours can relate.

I hope they had fun and I hope they learned the lessons I learned:
1) When someone professes their undying love for you just days into a relationship – It isn’t real. I knew it, my anxiety was my indicator.
(My current husband used the appropriate vocabulary; he said he didn’t want to take me home after a date because he was infatuated with me, and that made me swoon.)

2) If your person isolates you, never wanting to spend time with your friends and family – run. He’s leading you away from all the people who take you by the arm and talk sense into you when you’re acting like an ass and a fake and making horrible decisions.
That would end up being a litmus test for future men. I would marinate them in my friends and my life and if they balked…I’d end it.

3) Really get to know someone before you leave the continent on their dime.
It’s all so romantic, but it’s a huge imbalance of power and you’ll feel it in your gut.
Don’t let the champagne and the sex override that, your gut is always right.

4) If it’s the lifestyle you miss – provide it for yourself. I realized I LOVED Europe and made it a priority to travel abroad as often as I could. On my own dime.

So, when you’re feeling that little pit in your stomach, thinking: ‘that could’ve been me’, you have to ask yourself: ‘Really? Could you have gone the distance with that person? Did you feel like the best version of yourself when you were with them?’

I think not. Because I believe we’re always where we’re supposed to be, in every moment.

Deep down, Stacy Keibler knew things would never last. She obviously wanted to get married and be a mother—she did both less than a year after the breakup with George.
But when he got engaged I’m sure she thought for a second ‘that could’ve been me.’ We all did.
But, I know, just like me, she’s exactly where she’s meant to be.

xox

BEFALL:
verb: (used without object), befell, befallen, befalling.
to happen or occur.
to come, as by right.
3.verb: to happen to, especially by chance or fate.

I have become aware of late, that I am a pain in the Universal ass.

I suppose I always knew it, I suspected as much, but today I feel that it has become an undisputed fact.

You see, when I take off on my morning walks, one of the first things I ask the Universe, besides helping me to sidestep the dog poo; is to give me a message — hey guys… you know what I want — show me something I need to know!

That means the Universe has to put down its coffee, get dressed, and pay attention to…me.
The pain in the ass.

If you follow me regularly you are well aware that most days I get jack-nuthin’, (the Universe gets caught up in an article on the Huffington Post) while other times I actually receive some answers in the form of a cryptic haiku on a Post It, a tiny gnome village or a bird-strike omen — you know, the usual.

Anytime I spy something out of the ordinary I pick it up, truly convinced that it holds a message just for me, and today was no different.

It seems our entire neighborhood is under construction these days, developers tearing down the smaller, quaint, 1930’s homes to throw up another two-story, Leave It To Beaver style behemoth.

At eight in the morning, the streets are lined with construction trucks, roach coaches…and men. Lots and lots of virile young men.

Now, as a woman, I have a kind of built-in shame meter that makes me automatically cross the street when I see men in tool belts and hard hats. All those years of wolf whistles and cat calls have trained me well.

The thing is, I am no longer the age where I elicit that sort of display of machismo. I am just south of sixty, and even though I am still technically a woman, I’m sure I am older than most of their mothers.

These days they are polite, they smile at me and say “good morning” like I’m their fucking grandma in yoga pants. I haven’t heard anything resembling a cat call in over ten years  (she says with immense resentment) yet, still I run. Middle aged wishful thinking I suppose.
Anyhow…
This cruddy, yellow flash card caught my attention as I jumped up on the curb after sprinting across the street to avoid a construction crew and their catcalls.

I actually ran past it in my zealousness to escape the nonexistent wolf whistles, but once I had seen it I knew I had to take my chances and double back around to find out what it was. When I bent over to retrieve the card I made sure my ass was pointed in the opposite direction of the men—you know, so as not to tease them.

It was the flash card pictured above. It has the word “befall” in middle-school-aged boy scrawl, with a couple of the definitions on the back.

It was trash day yesterday so I’m pretty sure the card had just escaped its fate by falling on the ground. I have to tell myself that to override any guilt I have about sabotaging some kid’s English final by hijacking card #2 with the word befall on it.

Technically I was picking up litter, so calm down.

Befall. What an old-fashioned, Elizabethan kind of word.

“What fate will befall you Janet Bertolus?”
Can’t you guys just hear those words spoken by a handsome King, who wants me to be his Queen (naturally) as I ride off into the sunset on a white horse with a young construction worker who has found me irresistible? Yeah, me either.

My immediate reaction? Foreboding. Like it was a warning.
But when you throw down a word like BEFALL Universe, you get me thinking. And then I remembered the bird strike, and omens, and the fact that sometimes things that SEEM awful…aren’t.

What if it’s foretelling something magical that’s going transpire by chance or fate? What if befall means: to come as if by right — like I’m entitled to everything wonderful?
Much better, right?

“Great success was to befall Janet Bertolus in the very near future.” Oh, I like that one.

So you guys, what if you were as big of a pain in the ass as I am, and you asked for a sign from the Universe? What word do you think you’d get? Remember, these guys are tricky — nothing is ever obvious.

What fate will BEFALL you this fine weekend? A trip? A graduation? A great meal? The time to curl up with a good book?
More importantly, what are you entitled to?

Aren’t you liking the word BEFALL more and more? I am.

Carry on,
xox

So… here I go again, back to the land of a thousand mosquito bites, unlimited guacamole, and full body rashes.

My destination is a writing retreat (which my husband is referring to as the seven-day long  “girls night out”), and my intention is to work on my screenplay, which is a comedy—about death (because death is fucking hilarious).

As luck or fate or whatever runs the works behind the scenes would have it — the timing is perfect, and I am giddy excited.

I will always marvel at how perfect the timing is when your collaborator is a disembodied dynamo who isn’t subject to the limitations of space and time.

Nevertheless, I’ve been informed that the internet is sketchy at best, so starting Tuesday, for a week, the posts will be…reprises. (I just hit the deck because my brother just chucked his laptop across the room from 1500 miles away! He is one of a group of you that has been kind enough to let me know that you despise reprises).

I’m flattered and scared to death of you, all at the same time.

Anyhow…I’ve got to do it this way so; there will be some that I liked, some that you guys liked, and a couple that no one liked because I like to give those posts the chance of a new life.
Here’s how it’ll work:
Read ‘um, don’t read ‘um, (Jim).

Catch up. There’s probably a few that you’ve missed.

Browse around the page, there are over 1,000 posts, come on, you can’t remember them ALL!

If you’re new, welcome! Have fun, get to know me, and when I come back I’m sure they’ll be no shutting me up.

If you’re like my brother and you’re thoroughly disgusted, go make yourself a sandwich and check back here on February 2nd for what I’m sure will be the start of some crazy-ass stories of my adventure in screenwriter-ville

Love you guys & Carry on,
xox