writing

Remember this old Huffington Post piece? I didn’t either. Ha! Here it is again on this Throwback Thursday.
Carry on,

So, we’re at a family wedding.

Not immediate family. Extended family.  The worst kind. The judgiest ones in the bunch. The one’s who keep inviting you as an afterthought, because, well, you never come anyway, so when your husband convinces you that it’s an afternoon of cake and dancing, you RSVP Yes + 1—and blow their judgy little minds.

I’m the black sheep of our family, one of several, and so they’ve seated us at the “loser’s” table. I actually overheard someone at the wedding call it that.

It really is the loser’s table.
It’s the absolute worst table in the room. It’s all the way in the back next to the kitchen, so far away from the action that the music takes a minute or two to reach us. It’s so bad that the band’s lips are out of sync, like an old Charlie Chan movie. They run out of food by the time it’s our turn to hit the buffet. And cake. My hubby and I share the last sliver of cake.

We are seated with two non-recovered alcoholics who are shit-faced and speaking what sounds like pig-latin to each other, what looks to be someone’s fourteen-year-old pregnant niece, an old hippie who took way too much LSD in the’60’s—and a convicted felon.

In stark contrast, the horrible bitch-faced woman who was married to my dad and quite literally drove him to his grave, is smiling sweetly at my husband from the bride and groom’s table (I can see her with my binoculars)—because she knows how to write epic thank you notes—and she plays the game.

I can remember looking at pictures of myself as a baby and wondering if I’d been a stowaway on a ship from some far-off galaxy that was looking for signs of intelligent life and when they realized this was an okay place to leave me—they did just that—in Santa Monica California—so, not too shabby.

With my thick white hair and tanned skin, I didn’t resemble my pale, dark haired, freckle-faced siblings in the least.

I also arrived with the most vivid imagination, a song in my heart and a skip in my step. And it saved me.

Rickets skinny with large buck teeth, I forged my way through childhood wondering if my people were ever going to swing back by this way and pick me up. That had never been their promise but still, I held out hope.

I’ve always been different. I can’t explain how or why and at times it caused me a world of hurt.
As much as I loved Catholic school, (especially the uniform. See, I told you, weirdo), the dogma never made sense to me.

The wrath of God? A punishing God?
Whose God were they referring to anyway? Mine told me knock-knock jokes and led me to the fields with the most lady bugs to catch. Mine wasn’t hanging over my head bleeding on a cross, mine lived happily, laughing and loving in my heart.

This caused me to question things. Mostly authority. I could never do or believe something just because someone older told me to. And I just could NOT bring myself to “play the game.”

That spells trouble for a kid. Trouble, with a capital T.
And not the obvious punky trouble. Rather, the kind that challenges parents and teachers with all of its “Why’s”.

I will ALWAYS pledge allegiance to the wild side, and by wild I mean overgrown. The unbeaten path.

I remember asking my fifth-grade teacher what I was actually promising by pledging my allegiance to the flag. It opened an hour- long conversation about Patriotism and love of country and she seemed genuinely happy to be asked something she’d ‘never before given any thought to.’

I broke some of our unspoken family rules as a teen by addressing the elephants that had taken up residence in pretty much every corner of our house. It sounded like sass, back-talking, and disrespecting authority and it was resoundingly underappreciated. But because I kept my 4.0 GPA and honor roll status, it saved me from long weekends grounded in my room.

I was an anomaly at the time. Not a paint-by-numbers slacker and not your typical hippie-druggie—just a high performing, insufferable, pain-in-the-ass.

Black sheep.

I think my dad first labeled me. He could never figure me out. That day it had something to do with the fact that I got an A in Science Class without ever buying a book, yet, I wanted the teacher fired for being a dumb-ass.

Black sheep. I’m guessing most of you were black sheep too.

I quit college to act.
I retired from Catholicism.
I prefer the cookie dough to the baked cookies. Always have.
I didn’t want to work the “family business”.
I believe in energy and the power of thought.
I was divorced by twenty-six.
I decided NOT to have kids.
I’m unafraid of confrontation.
Until I went gray, I couldn’t have told you what color my hair REALLY was I dyed it so many different colors.
I don’t like ambrosia salad.
I hate green jello, bridal showers and babies breath in flower arraignments.
I love to sing and dance. Anytime, anywhere.

And that vivid imagination that led me to believe that there was something greater out there for me. I know many of you feel the pull as well.

I’m back at the wedding, with all of its criticisms hidden in polite discourse.
“So, I guess no children for you, Janet?”
“No Aunt Barbara, You do realize I’m over fifty now.”
“Huh. And you’ve finally married. A Frenchman. American men aren’t good enough for you?”

I decided right then and there, in the midst of this family of strangers, to declare my status.

“I guess not. You know, I’m a black sheep.”

The old woman looked up at me with something…recognition?…as I gently guided her back to the “winners table”.

Carry on,
xox

Got any good “black sheep” stories?

Hamilton
Orpheum Theatre

There really is a God.

I know this for a fact because she’s answered my prayers. Or at least two so far.

1.) She gave me boobies back when I was thirteen and prayed every night for them. I prayed and prayed like a nun in a whore house—so how could she say no.

2.) I got Hamilton tickets. Two of them. For $89 bucks each.

Now, this may feel like a waste of a prayer to those of you who live on planet Earth where shitty stuff happens. But believe me, I pray for world peace, I have since I was little and I’m still waiting to see an improvement.

I pray for children to go to sleep at night with bellies as full as my dog’s, cancer to be eradicated, aging to be reversed and a cure for shortness. I’ve done the legwork and I haven’t seen great results so I don’t feel like a jackass throwing in the nightly ask for a lottery win aka Hamilton tickets.

Now, I know my limits. I’m not gutsy enough to pray for Hamilton tickets on BROADWAY. I have it on good authority that Jesus Christ himself walked on water all the way to NY and even HE couldn’t get tickets when Lin-Manuel Miranda was the star so…I waited until I heard the touring company was going to be in LA before I ramped up the BIG ASK. Every night before I went to sleep I’d just say in very conversational tone so as not to seem too desperate, “Gee, (Gee is a great prayer opener. It makes it seem like it’s God’s idea. She likes that) Gee, wouldn’t it be great if I got some Hamilton tickets?”

See how open-ended that prayer is? It allows God to come up with a myriad of ways to make that happen.
I wasn’t specific about how many, when or the price.

The price. Good Lord, the price. I say, good Lord because he had nothing whatsoever to do with keeping the prices of tickets down where someone without a trust fund or a hedge fund or any other type of fund had a rat’s ass of a chance.

I saw tickets on certain third-party sites going for as much as $12,000 a seat!

Listen, I love Musical Theatre as much as well, more than the next guy (unless the next guy is Nathan Lane) but I like to eat too. And have a roof over my head. So as much as I wanted tickets my fiscal sobriety kept me from overpaying.

Last Thursday my sister Sue and I walked up to the theater box office with great confidence and fanfare. Not really, we were sufficiently terrified. We’d heard an Urban Myth that claimed that tickets for Hamilton could be purchased—at the box office—for (wait for it) FACE VALUE! In other words, a mere $175!

Hazah!

The dude at the window was a millennial hipster. One with a particularly epic eye-roll. I know this because he rolled it in our direction several dozen times.

“We’re here for Hamilton tickets!” I announced.
He rolled his eyes pushing the seating chart toward us.

“We have these,” he said pointing to the middle Orchestra section, “For $650 a seat.”

My sister and I looked at each other and gulped. That’s a lot of Botox, we, I thought.

This time he looked bored while he rolled his eyes.

“You got anything up your sleeve?” my sister asked good-naturedly. He twisted his face like a baby tasting a lemon for the first time or a guy with a wooden arm at a poker game.

“Ha, ha, ha, ha,” I laughed my big, fake snort-laugh. “Like nobody ever asks you that!” I think I slapped Sue’s back.

Yuk, yuk, yuk. We waited. There it was. The eye roll of all eye rolls. I’m surprised the momentum didn’t flip him over.

Remember trying to get into those exclusive clubs and restaurants back in the day when you cared about stuff like that and you had to work the guy at the door? Yeah, me neither, I used to just flash my boobs (thanks again, God). But anyway it felt like that seemed.

We had devolved into a female version of Bevis and Butthead and I’m pretty sure he took pity on us. Or it was getting close to break-time. Nevertheless, he pushed the seating chart forward again.
“We have these over here” he was pointing to a little section of about six seats on the side. “This is usually for wheelchairs but we’re putting folding chairs there…”

“How much?! I interrupted.

“Eighty-nine dollars a seat.”

“Can you see the stage? Is there a pillar in the way? Is the sound obstructed? Is that the night all the understudies go on? Is there an orchestra? Is it sock puppet show? What the fuck is wrong with these tickets?!!!” I was getting slightly hysterical at the prospect of actually seeing the show.

It was not how I expected this to go.

“Nope.” he said with a minimum eye roll, “Just folding chairs.”

My sister looked at me gobsmacked “Those are actually decent seats.”
“I love a good folding chair,” was my reply.

“We’ll take three!” we sang out in unison.

And the heavens opened and the choir of angels sang (Something from the soundtrack) and we walked away with cheap-ass folding chair seats to Hamilton.

So, clearly you guys, there is a God.

The End. And Carry on,
xox

Hey there, tribe,
I was talking to a friend earlier this week about setting boundaries (good) and delivering ultimatums (bad).

For years I didn’t know the difference—do you? Then I remembered this essay from days of yore. 
Take a look and see what you think.

Carry on
xox

ul·ti·ma·tum
ˌəltəˈmādəm/
noun: ultimatum; plural noun: ultimata; plural noun: ultimatums
1. a final demand or statement of terms, the rejection of which will result in retaliation or a breakdown in relation — final offer, final demand, take-it-or-leave-it deal; threat

Recently, I was asked to write some real life examples for the Huffington Post on a story they were doing on ultimatums.

Oh, that’s an easy one, I thought, I’m the Queen of Ultimatums! But upon reflection I realize I was the Queen-of-Setting-Boundaries, not delivering ultimatums. Big diffrenece—and one that took me years to learn.

Boundaries define your borders. Ultimatums are final. They have lasting consequences.

In my world, communication begins when you cross my imaginary line in the sand. When my boundary is breeched—that’s when détente begins.

For example, when my husband is out on a motorcycle without me, he is required as set by the mutually agreed upon rules of our marriage and basic common decency, to let me know when he’s off the bike for the day. Even though I’m not a big worrier, that is the moment I can take a deep breath and relax knowing he’s safe and sound. It is also the moment I can take off my bra, put on my pajamas, and open the wine because I know I won’t be getting a call from the hospital.

Although recently, when I hadn’t heard from him due to a text malfunction—he had some splainin’ to do.

Communication starts when a boundary is crossed.

Ultimatums, on the other hand, are where the talking stops.

Men love that. “I love a good ultimatum”, said NO man—EVER.

Or woman for that matter.

It smells like take-it-or-leave-it. I hate choices like that. Don’t you?

That being said…there was one ultimatum I did level at my husband right after we got engaged and here’s why.
Soon after we met we decided on full disclosure, you know, who had the higher FICO score, how our astrological charts lined up, showing each other old passport photos and admitting that we had each maintained a platonic friendship with a significant other. Once it was out in the open it was no big, hairy, deal and neither of us felt the least bit threatened, but when my husband went to tell his ex of our engagement, he chickened out.
“It was gonna get emotional”, he explained.
“Tough shit” I replied. “And if you care more about hurting her feelings than you do mine—you guys aren’t over each other yet and this engagement is off.”

He immediately picked up the phone, arranged another meeting and told her the next day.

Did that sound like a threat? You bet your ass it was.

…And that concludes today’s clarification on the difference between a boundary and an ultimatum. 😉

Carry on,
xox

I don’t like to give advice about men. Mostly because I don’t feel qualified.

But today at lunch with my beloved nineteen-year-old daughter/friend I couldn’t help myself. I found myself dispensing sage relationship wisdom like tic tacks to Donald Trump.

If you ask me, my friend is behaving like the perfect girlfriend. She’s just the right amount of friend, lover, chill companion and boundary setter. I would date her if I was a nineteen-year-old boy. Then again I would probably be too busy smoking pot, touching my own dick, and taking a hit from my beer bong because, well, I’m a nineteen-year-old boy.

And therein lies the rub.

SHE wants him to cut it out. To party in moderation. Drink in moderation. Be only moderately corrupted by his ne’er-do-well friends. In other words— Be his best self, not some stupidly stupid facsimile.

She’s been asking (via text of course) for him to straighten up and fly right.

But then again, I seem to be living in an alternate reality. It may as well be a different century where I’m wearing petticoats and a bustle.

Face to face conversation is SO twentieth century!

Still, she was obviously desperate for some feedback so she listened to me.

After years of exhaustive research my advice went something like:

Boundaries are good. Children need them, dogs demand them, and relationships turn rancid without them. Everybody needs a line in the sand like, “You may not date inside this relationship.” Clear, concise, and to the point.

Boys are boys until…well…forever. It’s all at once adorable and a shame. I’ve witnessed the same behavior in a three-year-old and a sixty-year-old. There will always be some small part of a grown-ass man who thinks it’s cool to light stupid stuff on fire, walk around in their underwear, become mesmerized by an on-screen car chase, burp, fart, and scratch their balls while they watch Vin Diesel do pretty much anything.

You should never expect perfection. Not from yourself and not from your man. It is an unattainable goal that will drive you both insane.

I’m sorry but nineteen-year-old boys fuck up. (So do girls, but it’s seldom as epic.)
They don’t know shit about shit and that’s completely age-appropriate. She has to let him tie himself up in knots and just look away while he learns to Houdini himself free. She can say “I told you so”, but I wouldn’t suggest it if her objective is relationship longevity. Just nod and listen while he tells you his tales unless they hurt you or cross an established boundary.

Then dump the chump.

Which leads me to chump dumping. I medaled in this for twenty years.
Once you get your feet under you (sometime around thirty), and you realize your own self-worth—don’t take anyone’s shit (this goes for both men and women). If the other party can’t seem to value you or the relationship, if they are disrespectful or emotionally, psychologically or physically abusive—dump their ass.

My mother used to say “There are plenty of fish in the sea” and that there was “A lid for every pot.”
She may have meant them as culinary references but I took them as relationship metaphors.

My parting advice—Culinary and otherwise.

If it smells bad—it’s bad—throw it out… and …relationships are work. Just not REALLY, REALLY, HARD work.

Carry on,
xox

Hi everybody,
I wrote this back in July 2013 when I was writing mostly poem-y stuff.

When I read the words they felt even more timely than they did back then.
We had no idea at that time what was coming, the challenges our county would be facing just four years later.

Courage and Independence. To me, they are dance partners.

I don’t think you can have one without the other. Maybe independence leads—or maybe it’s courage. Perhaps they take turns. What would our Founding Fathers think?

What do you think?

On this Independence Day, I’m going to be grateful that I live in a country where independence and freedom are a RIGHT—not a privilege and I’m going to ask the Universe, or God or Bob or whoever grants such prayers to give me the courage to make sure it stays that way.

Happy 4th y’all!

Carry on,
xox

Do you have the courage to be yourself?
To not follow the crowd?
To meet YOUR OWN standards?
To march to your own drum?
Do you have the courage?

Do you have the courage to go left when everyone else around you goes right?
To know that on the other side of darkness
there is always the light?
Do you have the courage?

Do you have the courage to smile for no apparent reason?
To laugh out loud in a crowd?
To wear a hat no matter the season?
To stand out, tall and different, and proud?
Do you have the courage?

Do you have the courage when all eyes are upon you,
To always speak your truth?
To never compromise your convictions?
Even when you can show little proof?
To set the example, to start the trend?

Do you have the courage, my friend?

“America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.”

~Harry S Truman

This childhood memory came flooding back to me the other day and I felt compelled to share it. I’m curious to see what you hink.

I have a thing about promises. They make me uncomfortable mostly because they’re seldom kept.
I have a bad history with them so I try not to make them and I’m wary of the people who do.

I will never understand how someone can look you in the eye and make a promise they never intend to keep.
It’s a character flaw disguised as a talent. One that I’ve seen come in handy in politics, poker and adultery.

I can trace it back to my first broken promise which was one summer when my me, and my little sister and brother were kids.

The summers seemed hotter as a kid in the early 1960’s and although we were fortunate enough to have a house with central air which I realize as an adult was like being born with not only a silver spoon but the entire set of sterling silver flatware in your mouth; but…to balance that out we also had a frazzled mother who was perpetually locking us outside.

And not in a neglectful, call Child’s Services kind of way—more like the “get out of my hair—go outside and play” way.

But that wasn’t us. We weren’t cut out for suffering. God’s smart. He puts the altruistic, brave kids with tons of stamina in Africa. He sends all the weak sucks to Los Angeles, California.

So, needless to say, if anyone owned or had access to a real built-in swimming pool, well, we were on them like white on rice.

My dad, (who, as it turns out also had a very loose and one-sided relationship with promise keeping) had these two friends/employees, a set of identical twins named Bob and Ray. They were single young men in their early twenties who were young and ambitious. They had that “we’re good with kids” quality that was like catnip to the three of us.

So, they played with me, and rough-housed with my little brother and held my baby sister in their laps and just basically sucked up to their boss by paying attention to us when they came over for beer and a bar-b-que.

I’m sure they were exhausted when they left. I’ve been them. The single person at a family home who gets to entertain the young kids while the parents take advantage of that time to suck down a couple of cocktails and do the unthinkable—speak in full sentences to each other.

On one such occasion Bob or Ray, I can’t remember which (I hadn’t quite mastered telling them apart), mentioned something about a swimming pool. I think they were staying somewhere that had a pool or they knew someone who did. Anyway, if anyone says the words “swimming pool” in front of little kids (who are only several years removed from being fish) it triggers them like the secret code word in a bad spy movie. We kind of froze and our eyes spun around, and then the begging began.

“Can we come over and swim? Pleeeeeeease? Pretty pleeeeeease? With sugar on top?”

Completely unashamed, we crawled all over them like a couple of spider monkeys and begged until our throats were sore and no more sound came out. Looking back I’m sure that was fun for them.

Knowing the begging would only cease when my mom (who I’m certain secretly wore earplugs) would shoo us off to bed and in order to shut us up and gain back control of their adult evening, one of them, ( I think it was Bob. No. Maybe it was Ray) anyway, he caved and invited us to come and swim.

“You guys want to swim? Sure. Maybe on Monday.”

Well, we were little kids—we took this to. The. Bank.

This is the point in the story when I grab you by the chin and make you look me in the eye, and I say to you with all the sincerity I can muster, “Please do not EVER promise little kids that you will do anything—let alone take them swimming—if you have no intention of doing so. Because kids take you at your word. They take you seriously. We most certainly did.”

Monday! Monday! We were going to a real swimming pool. To swim. On Monday!! Yeah!!! Was our chant.

Finally, (in dog years time) Monday arrived and a miracle occurred. Our mom didn’t even have to encourage us to brush our teeth and get dressed because my brother, my little sister and I were in our bathing suits and ready to go by 8 am. But by mid-morning things turned vague. I remember it distinctly. That weird sinking feeling in my belly. Suddenly, my mom wasn’t really sure the swimming was happening THIS Monday.

“Wait. What?”

I can’t remember exactly how this next part came to pass but somehow we got Bob and Ray’s telephone number and before you could say Cannon Ball—I called them. Me. Little seven or eight-year-old me. And one of them answered. I think it was Ray but it was probably Bob saying he was Ray because he was about to break the hearts of three little kids.

“Oh not today, sweetie”, he said, “We’ll do it soon”, he promised. I could barely breathe, a wave of something I later learned to identify as disappointment washed over me.

“Okay”, I said, trying not to cry. “But when?”
“Soon”, he said and hung up.

Dial tone. Remember dial tone? It’s the soundtrack behind both a beginning and an end. Anticipation and sorrow.

That day is still so vivid to me. I was changed after that. Maybe some innocence was lost.
I know. Boo hoo, Some children know REAL disappointment. In Africa.
But this felt huge to us.

After lunch, we went outside to play and run through the sprinklers. I remember my mom, sensing our disappointment, giving us fudgesicles as a treat.

Chocolate and disappointment. Now I can trace the birth of this unbreakable partnership to that very day.

Carry on,
xox

There are those of you who tease me in a semi-snarky way about never making a misstep. Of projecting the illusion of a perfect life.

This post is for you.

Sunday started out like a cream puff of perfection if a day can be such a thing. (Don’t get mad. Keep reading, it’s gonna go south fast.)

After the brutal heat of the past week, the morning dawned clear and cool. The sky was so blue it hurt my eyes.

My coffee was perfectly creamed, my bed head only mildly Einsteinian, and even though we’d splurged on some fried food the night before, the little white shorts I’d found in the back corner of a bottom drawer fit like a glove. Okay, so maybe as tight as the OJ glove—but fuck it—I didn’t have to wear my Spanx (I have a “no weekends” rule with them) and even then the velcro stayed closed—so I’m calling it a win.

After spending an hour watching Sunday morning politics I put my head in the oven to stop the madness but nothing happened so I had another idea—food numbing. I texted my friend the “Hike Nazi” about meeting me for breakfast after she was finished hiking (any cardio in temps over 68 degrees is unacceptable to me)—and she agreed.

On my way up the hill, I could see that the temp had already climbed up into the eighties so I made a pact with myself. After breakfast, I would complete all tasks that required being outside before noon. I had to water the plants in the back and run to the market. Then I would spend the rest of my alone time (Raphael and the whiney little brown dog had left early for a car show) watching movies in our den which for some unexplainable reason gets as cold as a meat locker when we run the AC.

Say what you will, at least I know myself and the fact that this older 2.0 version of me has a very low heat tolerance, ask anyone. I am a delicate flower and I no longer have the stamina for triple digit heat.

Up at the top of Beverly Glen is a little deli my friend frequents so we met there and that is when she introduced me to Mrs. Harris.
I’m in love with Mrs. Harris.
I want to lick her all over.
Before you barf up your bagel let me explain. Mrs. Harris is a scrambled egg and cheese sandwich on rye bread (because any bread other than rye would be a crime against humanity) that completely erased any memory I had of Trump, Mitch McConnell or that miserable snake woman, KellyAnne Conway.

Life was good.

(Insert sound effect of a needle scratching across a record, the air being let out of a balloon, or a giant dog fart.)

When I went to pay for my Mrs. Harris I noticed that my debit card was missing from my wallet. No big deal I thought, it’s probably at home or in the car or…anywhere other than my wallet. Nevertheless, I had like seven dollars on me and when I pulled out the pockets of my tiny white shorts to check for change—tiny moths flew out. In other words, my friend paid for breakfast.

On my way down the hill, I forgot about it completely because Prince was on the radio. Right? I mean, Prince!

Anyway, when I got home I immediately went online to check and make sure that some culprit hadn’t absconded with the gigantic balance in my checking account. You see, my much too enormous to talk about health insurance payment gets automatically taken out this week. I’m never sure exactly what day that happens, so I could picture the money being spent on somebody else’s idea of fun, like bungee jumping or a trip to see the world’s largest sticker ball in Longmont, Colorado, and the Blue Shield ordering the hospital to put my uterus back in!

I could picture the crooks furiously hacking their way into my account only to experience emotional schiophenia—hysterical laughter followed by unexpected feelings of pity—and then rage—at the colossal waste of their time. Minutes later I see my card being thrown out the window of their fast-moving car into the dry brush on Mulholland.

After I was assured that my vast fortune was intact and that there had been no activity since Thursday, I felt bad about my boring life and the sad fact that I hadn’t been anywhere or done anything that cost money in three days— then I breathed an enormous sigh of relief and started wracking my brain while I watered my plants.

Where in the fucking fuck was my debit card? 
I don’t normally lose things. I misplace them, that’s different. It’s one of the quirks that makes me delightful.

You know that sinking feeling that grips you in the guts when you can’t find your wallet or your credit card goes missing? I had that. The dreaded gut grab.

I mentally retraced my steps (there weren’t many so it didn’t take long), called a couple of places, struck out, and finally decided I’d cancel the card and then just let it go. But alas, I couldn’t let it go. In the supermarket, I appeared to anyone watching to have a nasty case of Tourette’s. I’d walk halfway down an aisle, stop, think of a potential debit card scenario, yell “Shit!” or “Fuck it!” when I’d realize that it wasn’t a viable solution—and then keep walking.

In other words, I was mildly obsessed.

I bagged my milk and frozen stuff together at the self-check-out putting everything in a “cooler” bag and made my way back out into the one-hundred-degree heat. By the time I got to the car, I was a mumbling, twitchy, sweaty mess. Since I only brought my car keys (which this high-tech vehicle only has to smell to open and start) and my wallet with me, I threw them in the bag with the groceries and then watched in horror as the back hatch of the station wagon clicked shut…and locked.

With the keys inside.

Not surprisingly this had happened to me once before and the experience was burned into my memory. In a frenzy I called Raphael, whose reassuring response went something like this: “How can that happen?” and “What can I do from here?”

For some reason, the doors won’t lock if the keys are in the front of the car but I have it on good authority that the car can’t sense them all the way in the back—in a bag (or at least that’s what the internet says).

So, that’s when I went full Tourette’s. I ran around the car trying every door while cursing a blue streak. It was like a scene out of Saving Private Ryan—flying f-bombs landing everywhere!

Nooooooo! It was so hot I could feel the skin on my shoulders sizzling. I didn’t even have my phone with me to call Raphael so he could say the same damn things and offer the same useless solutions. Finally admitting defeat, I threw my hands up in the air in surrender.

I knew what must be done.

That’s I started the one-mile walk home in my stupidly small white shorts and flimsy black flip-flops, wondering why it felt like August in the Sahara Desert, and why in god’s name I was dressed like a seventeen-year-old Daisy Duke impersonator at a 4H State Fair. 

Looking at the big picture the whole thing was kinda funny. I mean, I was so wrapped up in the debit debacle, and that energy got so much momentum going, that it distracted me enough to make me do something I swore I’d never do again!

The lock and walk. 

Then it happened. I hadn’t even made it fifty-feet when I experienced the mother of all fails. The fucking flip-flop fail.

My flip-flop chose that exact moment to fall apart causing my bare right foot to hit the superheated black top, scalding it in an instant. Imagine being barefoot on hot sand or walking across hot coals. Yeah, like that.
“Fuck, fuck, fuckity, fuck!” I yelled, hopping backward on one foot in the middle of the parking lot while awkwardly bending over like some ridiculous French fried Flamingo to pick the thing up, fix it, and nonchalantly walk away. “There’s nothing to see here!” I yelled in my head. But I had to admit…there was.

Soldier on. Keep walking, I told myself.  Three steps later it flew off again! Foot burned. Fucks flying.

Always a quick study, I hopped over to a postage stamp sized bit of shade to assess the situation and that’s when I started to laugh because:

A: I was shit out of options. I knew I’d have to hop on one foot the entire mile home or just burn the shit out of my foot and deal with it.

B: Once momentum gets going in a downward spiral you’d better figure out a way to change its course—or else. (Or else your clothes start on fire and your shoes explode.)

C: I’m sure I looked beyond ridiculous! A sweat-drenched fifty-nine-year-old woman in tiny white shorts, one flip-flop, and a scarlet red right foot hopping down a busy street. I mean, I can’t even!

Holding the irreparably broken flip-flop in hand, I hobbled home praying the entire way for Raphael to be there so I could beat him with it, he could hug me, kiss my blistered foot, and give me a ride back to my melty groceries. He wasn’t, and I couldn’t walk on my right foot it was so burned, so I grabbed better shoes (ouch), and the spare key, jumped into his big van, and drove myself back to the scene of the crime.

I figured we could pick up my car later.

I was gone all of five minutes but when I got home he was there—wondering how one person was driving two cars. He figured the van had been stolen. As I told him the story he shook his head (because he knows I’m Lucy Ricardo) and gave my foot tons of sympathy.

Wait!… Don’t you want to be me? Don’t you wish you had my glamorous life? And is anybody still worried about the debit card?…ha! exactly!

#flipflopfail
#Sundayfootfry
#animperfectlife

Carry on,
xox

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

So, we did.
We listened to “them”.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ok. I’m done.

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

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

But who needs money anyway?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blessed silence.

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

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

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

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

I think I’ll start a Go Fund Me Page.

Carry on,
xox

I worked as a supermarket checker until I was thirty. It was mindless work, paid decent money, and had the flexible hours I needed for the other things I cared about; school and acting.

I was a damn fine checker. The best. Fast, nice, with a minimum of small talk. Standing and scanning groceries has a zen quality about it. The repetition can send you into a zone of complacency. If you’re lucky faces blur and time flies.

That was the case for me maybe 10% of the time. The other 90% of the time I was judging the contents of everyone’s carts, making up stories about what they were buying and why.

I know! Your worst nightmare, right?

I was the girl who stifled a giggle when the dude with the greasy hair and the porn mustache who was drowning in Brut came thru the express line EVERY Friday night with a case of Coors, a carton of Marlboro reds and Maxim condoms (whose tagline was printed on the box: For those who live large). His story was a no-brainer.

“For those who live large!” Can you stand it? I couldn’t. The minute he was ten paces out into the parking lot, racing toward his Trans Am—I’d burst out laughing. Nobody else in line was paying much attention so my outburst probably appeared a little manic.

Whatever.

There was Ms. Shaw, an ancient, (she was probably in her late forties at the time) spinster/cat lady who arranged her cat food in neat stacks by flavor in her cart. Anal-retentive doesn’t do her justice. She bagged every red delicious apple in a separate plastic bag and grouped all of the green vegetables together—away from the other colors. And none of the food could touch. (Is this making you a bit twitchy?) She also bought bourbon if I remember correctly, which seemed so out-of-character that I made up an imaginary life for her. In my imagination, she still lived at home with a boozy parent.

There was a woman who came in once a week and bought six bottles of Clairol #6 blonde hair dye. She had dark brown hair so I’m not sure what that was all about. Maybe she dyed her kid’s hair. Or her pubes. Who knows. Maybe she was a hairdresser who only likes to use that one color because she believed that blondes had more fun.

Whatever.

There were a lot of women back then that bought douche. Is douche still a thing? I read somewhere that it’s unhealthy for you since your vagina is self-cleaning, like an oven. Anyhow, if it went on sale there’d be a run on douche, these women would buy entire baskets of it. We often ran out and had to manually write up “rain-checks” for Summers Eve douche while they made the entire line wait so they could take advantage of the sale price another time. I had one woman who bought douche and two pints of rocky road ice cream EVERY DAY. Eventually, the store had to put a kibosh on the douche hoarding. They came up with a limit. No more than three at a time. When we tried to enforce that rule I thought there was going to be a riot! These women wanted their “fresh feeling!”

I’m curious—Is douching addictive? Does your va-jay-jay forget how to self-clean?

Speaking of fresh, I had a man who used to bag his meat and Irish Spring soap together and when I’d try to separate them he’d grab them away from me and reunite them. Finally, I asked him why. “I like the way it tastes”, he replied.
My intuition told me he lived alone. One evening the assistant manager was helping out, bagging groceries for me and when he saw me throw the soap in with the meat he just about lost it. “It’s okay”, I assured him, “he likes the way it makes the steak taste.” He looked back at the customer who was nodding enthusiastically. The guy swore by it.

I never had the courage to try it. It reminded me of menthol cigarettes. Bleck.

I’m going to say this—I can’t help it. The buying habits of the general public are weird. There were people who lived on TV dinners, people who, in my humble opinion drank WAAAAYYY too much diet coke, people who spent all their money on junk food and cigarettes, and the young anorexic girl who only and ever bought celery.

You can tell a lot about a person by what’s in their grocery cart. It’s a snapshot into a life—a peek into some of our most private habits—eating and personal hygiene.

So, I curate my cart when I go to the store. The implication of shame keeps me honest. Lots of fruit and kale, no candy or donuts. I know that no matter how disinterested they look the checker is making up stories about me so when I buy anything remotely embarrassing (like Monistat, lubricant, four boxes of Triscuit, or the second bottle in a month of the sour mix for my whiskey sours) I go thru the self-check-out line because I’m a damn fine checker. The best. Fast, nice, with a minimum of small talk—and mot of all—discreet—not at all judgy.

Carry on,
xox

“What is with all those people who are shouting their shitty statistics at us? Stop it! Stop trying to convince me that the world is a horribly dangerous and massively disappointing and unfulfilling shit-show!”
~Me

The doctor stands there with his hands together, fingers interlaced, the corners of his mouth downturned into a solemn expression.
“I’m afraid your prognosis is grim”, he delivers the news in an equally grim monotone.

Then it starts.

“The odds are against you. Only sixteen percent of people with this thing you have live past a year. Eighty-five percent survive the chemo and radiation only to expire after ninety days.”

Blah, blah, yadda, yadda.

I know you’re just doing your job but I can assure you, nobody heard a thing after the word grim.

I know some really amazing doctors who have saved a ton of lives but why do they insist on immediately covering us with a sauce that smells like death?

Because they don’t want to give anyone FALSE HOPE.

False Hope
To look forward to something that has a strong chance of not happening—that you may or may not know.

Yeah, that would be awful. By all means don’t look forward to anything that might not happen.

Wait. Most things in life have a strong chance of going down the drain. We have no idea how they will play out. That’s why it’s called hope. We hope for the best. Otherwise, it would be called certainty, or ForSuresville.

I remember being a single forty-year-old when I was told that I was more likely to die at the hands of a terrorist than to get married.

What?

A very successful and famous writer, who an entire room of us not so famous and successful writers had gathered in order to hang on her every word, ended a really sweet and uplifting day with this nugget.
“You can’t call yourself a writer unless you’ve been rejected many, many times.”
That was the “let’s get real” portion of her talk. It was supposed to be motivating but for me, it was mildly nauseating because if you know her story that was not necessarily the case for her and I think, like the gloomy-Gus guy in the white coat—she doesn’t want to prescribe any FALSE HOPE.

If you beat the odds you’re lucky. I suppose I agree. Or tenacious, delusional, persistent and optimist.

Here’s the thing, this is not a one size fits all world. If it were we would all be the same color, height, and weight. We would all look like Cindy Crawford or Bradley Cooper. Then and only then could anyone tell you EXACTLY how something was going to go down.

There are as many different possible scenarios as there are individual souls in this world. So, at last count just over seven billion.

I don’t care how many people survived six months. If you tell me that, I just may believe you because you’re a doctor—and then I’m fucked. I can’t have my own journey. I won’t make my own miracles.

I don’t care how hard it is to get a movie made in Hollywood. Four or five come out every week, so I know some bozo beat the odds.

I don’t care if ninety percent of writers fail at the premise. Ninety percent of screenplays and eighty percent of novels are rejected because of poor structure.

Dan Brown’s three novels before The Da Vinci Code all had printings of less than 10,000 copies.
Other rejection counts: Gone With the Wind, 38 times; Dune, 20 times; A Wrinkle in Time, 29 times; Lord of the Flies, 20 times; Kon-Tiki, 20 times; Watership Down, 17 times; Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, 18 times; Chicken Soup for the Soul, 33 times; James Joyce’s The Dubliners, 22 times; Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, more than 100 times; MASH, 21 times.

I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care!

I believe in FALSE HOPE. I love FALSE HOPE. I spread FALSE HOPE on crackers and eat it.

All of those people had hope, false or not, that they would succeed—or they would have given up. The same goes for those who survive past their expiration date. They didn’t listen to the statistics and I can guarantee you they mainlined FALSE HOPE.

I for one, think we all should all believe in FALSE HOPE. About everything. All of the time.

I shudder at the alternative.

Carry on,
xox