writing

“Better language can create better realities.”

So…I’m back on the killer hill. Hiking. Or otherwise known as taking my life in my hands to walk on dirt, uphill, in black stretch pants at 8 am for no good reason.

I’m still fucking around with my little WiFi experiment, but interestingly enough, the signal has been uncooperative since those two miraculous days last week when all the stars aligned to give me my NPR.

But I’m still at it. My middle name is tenacious. Janet Tenacious Bertolus.

There may have been some begging even though I know that begging is the surest way to silence.

Through the years, I’ve been told by pretty reliable sources that The Universe doesn’t keep score, or prioritize, and I know for a fact that The Universe can’t be bothered with begging.

Asking? Sure. Prayers? Absolutely! Begging? Not so much.

Especially begging for something as ridiculous as WiFi to distract from the excruciating “discomfort” I put myself through trudging up that freakin’ hill every morning.
It sticks its fingers into its ears and LA, LA, La’s until I stop.

Anyway…no begging this morning, just resigned acceptance when the signal cuts out.
Shit.
Then I laughed because it’s getting funny.
Not.

Have I mentioned what an opportunist the Universe can be? Oh, yeah.
Just at the point where I am my most vulnerable; hands on my hips, bent into the hill, drenched in sweat and gasping for air like a sherpa about to summit Everest; the WiFi kicks in and Abraham on YouTube comes back on.

The Universe decides that this is the perfect time for a teaching moment.

I am elated.
This will help me summit my own humiliating, Studio City version of Everest. Except for one thing. I’ve already listened to this part. It didn’t pick up where it left off, it went all the way back to the beginning. Back to what I’ve already heard for the last forty minutes.
Shit.
A mild wave of disappointment washes over me as the smile leaves my face.

Immediately the signal cuts out. Silence returns.

Awwww come on! I actually shout out loud. What the hell?!

I stop and fiddle with my phone for a minute. Nope. Nothing. It’s no use. Resignation sets back in as I pull up my big girl stretch pants and soldier on.

It’s then that the Universe decides to give a lecture series entitled: Split Energy (Will Fuck You Every Time).

‘You split your energy. You do it all the time and you needed to see an example of how it can stop the momentum of a desire in it’s tracks.’

Clarify please, I barely have enough oxygen to keep me upright let alone understand what the hell you’re trying to tell me.

‘You desired WiFi. We gave you WiFi. And may we point out, in a place where WiFi doesn’t exist, so there’s that…’

I know! And I was so happy about that!

‘For a minute. Not even. Then you were disappointed by the specifics. That’s split energy and it will stall a desire faster than anything else.’

‘So what should I have done?’

‘You can’t stay grateful for a miracle for like five minutes?…What do we always say?’

‘I don’t know…be kind to others and don’t say fuck so much?’

‘Besides that. We remind you that disappointment is taking score too soon. When you ask for something and it arrives, don’t say, Oh, not THAT! it seems ungrateful and it hurts our feelings. Wait awhile before you take score.’

‘I suppose you’re right.’

‘Of course, we are! We’re the Universe! Whatever we deliver to you is ALWAYS perfect.’

Always?
Always.
What if…
Always.
What about that…
Always.
But…
What part of ALWAYS are you not understanding?

Point taken.

‘I’m at the parking lot and I have to pee so arrivederci and thanks for the chat.’

Listen you guys, who among us hasn’t questioned a wish fulfilled because it didn’t look exactly like we expected it to look?
We’ve gotta cut that out. Me included.

Carry on,
xox

Hi All,
This is from a year ago January, but I was feelin’ it today.
Carry on,
xox

I had coffee with a friend this week and she mentioned the blog, Hala! and God bless her.

She was particularly triggered by the post I wrote about paying people compliments, and the fact that we can be pretty stingy with our admiration.

http://www.theobserversvoice.com/2015/01/5123/

“You know why I don’t get compliments?” she asked me, apparently not expecting an answer because she didn’t let me get a word in edgewise.

“Because I deflect them. I’m like a superhero with a shield. They make me so Goddamn uncomfortable that my face and chest get bright red, and I either start laughing or I tell the person to shut up.”

Did I hear that right? I’d seen her blush, maybe even giggle, but the shut up part…
She could tell by the expression on my face that her statement needed further clarification.

“I just did it the other day, the guy at the car wash complimented my choice of vehicle and I ran away. Like a nine-year-old. But before I did, I told him to shut up. It was completely unintentional, a reflex, a hit and run, I just blurted it out…Shut Up!” she was clearly mortified but on a roll.

“Hey, you have nice eyes. Shut up! Fuck you, Perv!” Now she was acting it out, with hand gestures and everything.

“Nice job on that report. Shut up! Asshole! It wasn’t that great! Raise your bar! You need higher standards!

“Oh My God what is wrong with me? It’s like I have Compliments Tourette’s.”

We were both laughing, yet at the same time, I realized that what she does is more common than we’d all like to admit.

Why can’t we take a compliment gracefully? The key word here being: grace.

I used to be AM terrible at it too. I stare at my feet and mumble a hurried thank you, when all I want is for the perpetrator of the abomination to fall through a trap door in the floor.
Insecurity I suppose. Feeling unworthy? You betcha.

Back in the day, people used to compliment me on my big, white teeth, (now thanks to Crest White Strips they are a dime dozen) and it made me cringe. I had done NOTHING whatsoever to earn those teeth. Okay, maybe I’d worn braces and brushed, but honestly, they were just the luck of the draw, like having good hair. So it never felt like it was right to say thank you.

Now I do. I jump at the chance. Sure, God and my parents gave me great teeth, but I’ve maintained them and appreciated them EVERYDAY. Plus after fifty, you’re just so grateful when someone says anything without prefacing it with for your age.

These days I also chase that good feeling you get when you give a compliment.
I give out compliments like Tic Tacs. Because people deserve them. AND it gets me as high as an addict with a drug.

“Oh but wait” my friend warned, holding her palm up to face me, “It gets worse. If you don’t hate me already, you will after this!”

“Well Okay – Don’t leave a sister hanging – spill it!” I teased, playing along with her game of ‘true confessions’.

“I don’t pay ANYONE a compliment, doesn’t matter what they did, even if I’m thinking it, I don’t say it because I want to save them the humiliation that I feel.
That’s fucked up…right?”

I wouldn’t dare judge her. That actually made perfect sense to me and it possessed more altruistic overtones than not wanting to make a fool of yourself, which was the most common reason I used to come up with for not complimenting the people who deserved them.

We had a laugh, a damn good cup of coffee…and cake. But it really got me to thinking…

What do you guys think about this?
Are you like my friend? Is it all just too humiliating for words?
Does that humiliation override how good it feels to give or get a compliment? Or have you become so grateful, like me, when someone throws one your way that you can’t say thank you fast enough?
Have you developed grace or are you still searching for it, like my friend? How did it happen for you?

I’m curious. Tell me in the comments.

xox

Not always the easiest choice–but most definitely the wisest.

Darling reader, you had to know I would love this! Thank you for sending it.

Carry on,
xox

“Dear Lord — Please keep one hand on my shoulder, and the other hand over my mouth.”

Hard to find a better prayer than that.

When you are in the act of defusing a situation, be it a political argument or an obtuse disagreement about the pronunciation of the word foyer; and I say that because everyone knows there is only one correct pronunciation of the word foyer—Foy-yay—anyway, I highly recommend, if at all possible, a minimum of talking.

Think about it. We mostly defuse anger or frustration. We seldom defuse joy. When I say seldom, I mean never. When was the last time you said,’Oh, Holy Hell, there is just too much joy in this room, I need to change the subject!’
See what I mean?

Defusing is an act best left to heavily outfitted bomb squads, street mimes, or those who have, through some cruel twist of fate, found themselves without a voice.
I say that from experience.
Words tend to get… wordy, meanings become misconstrued, and at a certain point nobody is listening anyway so I say the fewer the better.

Silent nodding is my preferred method.

Then there’s petting. I’m a big believer in defusing a tense or uncomfortable situation with some awkward physical contact.
I’ve been known to braid a person’s hair or lint brush the shit out of their jacket in the midst of that kind of kinetic, twisty energy.

I do all of those things because it is next to impossible for me to keep my mouth shut. Hence the prayer at the top.

Question: Have you EVER helped this kind of situation by stating the facts, calling for common sense, or getting the last word?
Yeah, me neither.

There is always humor but humor is subjective and it can backfire and not in a funny clown car kind of way.

Let’s face it, there are times when people want nothing more than to vent. Or argue. Some like to pick fights.

It’s been my experience that this seldom ends well if I put in my two cents, so I’ve learned to keep my small change to myself and wait for people to ask for my opinion (which they don’t), or I keep my mouth full of cake. Cheese will do in a pinch, but cake takes forever to chew and swallow, especially without coffee, and by the time you do—the topic has usually shifted to something else.

Like the deterioration of the Antarctic Ice Caps and how the ice in my drink and the car I drive are contributing to the imminent death of the Planet.

Head… silently…nodding…

Cake anyone?

Carry on,
xox

What I know for sure besides the fact that salted caramel anything has become my Kryptonite and that those shoes with toes creep me out—is that those who have crossed-over use technology to reach us.

They do this because technology is a frequency, think Wi-Fi, and well, now so are they.
It’s easy for them. So much easier than moving furniture or materializing at the foot of your bed. That stuff takes work and our dearly departed ones tend to be lazy. They are always looking for the path of least resistance and since if you’re like me, your phone or computer are always within arms reach, this makes getting our attention a cake walk.

Please don’t argue with me on this.
I didn’t believe it at first either. And I’m not saying I’m one thousand percent sold on the concept, but…being that I’m not as gullible as you might think, I stubbornly ask for proof—which has been provided to this professional skeptic repeatedly. Over and Over and OVER again!

It has become irrefutable. Ask my tribe. I send them example after example which has made believers out of (most) of them.

The past few days I decided to have some fun with this recent discovery of mine. The one about technology.

Almost every morning, unless I’m not feeling it or a gooey cinnamon bun has my name on it (I believe there is an unwritten law that states that it is immoral to hike with white icing on your face), I take a 3.5-mile hike in the hills above my home. Unless I’m distracted, talking my head off with a friend, the only thing that gets this ass up those hills is live streaming NPR, a juicy podcast or something inspirational on YouTube straight into my ears via my phone and some comfy ear buds.

The last quarter-mile is all uphill. A slow vertical ascent that takes my breath away, pisses me off, and makes me want to cry and vomit—all at the same time. At the end is the parking lot where I hug my car and wait for my heart rate return to something life sustainable.

Unfortunately, right at the base of this climb—at the same red brick mailbox—the WiFi cuts out—and I’m left to listen to the voices in my head. Two which are cheering me on and the other 1,065 which scream at me in no uncertain terms—that I am an idiot and this hill is certain to kill me.

For months, I have suffered the same shattering disappointment at exactly the same spot at the base of that fucking hill.
Silence.
Until Wednesday. That day I asked my disembodied friend to extend the WiFi signal past the familiar brick mailbox to the top of the first hill. The “killer” as I like to call it.

‘Just let me continue listening to Abraham to the top of the killer’ I asked playfully. Then I laughed at the absurdity of asking for an internet connection from someone marinating in Pure Positive Energy—not lottery numbers or stock tips—and the fact that this has become my new normal.

Sure enough, the signal remained strong, cutting out at the very top of the killer hill just as I had requested. I was jubilant! Not only for the audio distraction on my way up the hill but for the sign I received from my friend.

“All you have to do is ask, and then not care”, I heard her say, so I decided to try again the next morning.

Thursday, as I approached the killer, I decided to ask for something more audacious.
If this was a game—then why the hell not?

‘I’d love to listen to Morning Becomes Eclectic all the way up to the parking lot’ I requested. Then I waited with a huge smile on my face as I chugged slowly up the killer hill. I lost the music briefly at the mailbox…but only for a second.
Sike!!

As I crested the top of killer hill and continued on to the dirt path I couldn’t believe my ears! WiFi! On the most remote part of the hike!
I can’t tell you how I got to the parking lot. I’m pretty sure I skipped or floated. It was everything I could do not to yodel my joy at this technological miracle.

Once at the parking lot, I did a sweaty slob-kebob dance to celebrate the music that was still going strong in my ears!

How was that possible? Was it a sign? An answer to my asking?
Someone I told yesterday, I can’t remember who, surmised that the neighborhood had probably just gotten tired of shitty internet and boosted the signal. I thought the timing was interesting, but I’m not gonna lie, it burst my miracle believing bubble a little bit.

This morning, Friday, I just assumed that the boosted signal would continue all the way up to the parking lot …and beyond, but alas, right at the brick mailbox…silence.
What?

I tried to get it to work as I slogged along but it was behaving badly just as it had for months.
Suddenly, about fifty yards from the end, the music came back on, strong as ever. It actually startled me in the middle of an argument with my disembodied friend who insisted that MY WiFi connection had nothing at all to do with a boosted signal.

‘It was the answer to an asking, a sign, a game’, she insisted, ‘and as long as you remember that, the music will play uninterrupted.’

Man, I love not taking life so seriously! Treating it like a game. You guys have to try it! It beats the alternative.
I’m starting with the small stuff until I get the hang of it. Come with me!

Carry on
xox

This is a Flashback from a couple of years ago that I was telling a friend about just the other day. Her husband has to fly up to the Bay area in a couple of weeks for a mediation on a lawsuit that is one of the bat-shit craziest wastes of time you could ever imagine. I can SO relate and it’s easier for me to repost this than to tell them the story—and I figure maybe a few of you might need to read this too.
Big love to HT & CT.

Carry on,
xox

“Anger is just Sad’s bodyguard… and Shame’s too, I think.”

Someone tell me, how come the crazy ones never lose any sleep?
Is it their complete lack of a conscience that causes them to appear so slick, smug and impossibly fresh?

Not a hair out-of-place.
Barely a hint of the devil that lies within.

While those of us that possess a moral compass and have the misfortune to find ourselves in their orbit are sleep deprived, disheveled, walking disasters.

That will always bother me.

The fact that people who operate outside the constructs of polite society close their eyes at night and sleep the uninterrupted, peaceful sleep of the just.

Why is that?
How can it be?

The night before an arbitration with the attorneys for DWP to discuss the fact that their one-hundred-year-old water main had burst and turned my store into an aquarium; I tossed and turned until the sheets were knotted up around my head and neck, fashioned into an unattractive turban/noose—and I ground my teeth down to nubs. Which left me the next morning gumming my toast, with a foggy brain and pronounced sheet marks on my face that didn’t fade until after lunch.

The team of He, She and It, that represented the water company, entered the room that morning laughing.
Uproariously.
Like they’d all participated in a hilarious episode of Carpool Karaoke on their way to work.

I felt at a distinct disadvantage. Out of the loop, like the punchline to the funniest joke ever told was lost on me. Was that their plan?

They were meticulously coiffed and groomed, cool as the proverbial cucumbers, while I was drenched in flop sweat, permanently wrinkled and frantically struggling to remove a poppy-seed from between my two front teeth with my tongue.

Note to self: Don’t accept half a poppy-seed bagel when you’re out of coffee. And you forgot your water.
You’re going to need something to rinse your mouth with when the big guns enter the room.

If I’d had more sleep I would have remembered that.

They all seemed so nice, so genuinely happy to meet me; that is until the bell rang and we went to our respective corners. Then the gloves came off and the crazy started to show.

They made shit up. Their entire alibi was jack-crap.
With graphs, documents and flow charts. Listen, if you show me a flow chart, I’ll believe anything…almost.
Somehow they double teamed my attorney and me. In the most well crafted, legal babbly, thinly veiled insulting way, they pinned the whole thing on me.
ME!
They made the accidental, midnight break of their water main seem like MY fault.

Business was slow, debt was high, it was 2009, and I need out—only I was too stupid to commit arson.

Seems bat-shit crazy, right?

When we broke for lunch even I wanted to throw the book at me.
The picture they painted of me was that of a sad-sack, loser of a business woman. Which was exactly how I felt at the time. I think my lawyer drank the Kool-Aid too—they were that convincing. She wouldn’t make eye contact, skulking in the corner on her phone, and then disappearing for the entire lunch break.

But you wanna know what trumps sleep deprivation? Rage. That’s what.
It also instantly removes sheet marks from your face.

It also overrides all shame and victim-hood.

Crazy and Rage are curious dance partners and they should never be left alone in a room together.
Let me tell you why. Crazy is so put together, so charming, pretty, and unflappable. Crazy looooooves a victim, she gets off on them, they get her panties wet.

Rage is no victim, he’s a gangster. He’s raw, he’s greasy and he talks real dirty. He wears a wife beater t-shirt and too much Aramis; and he has only one thing in his crosshairs—Crazy.

Crazy gets high on Rage and it quickly becomes a street-brawl.

But Rage is better than Sad, which is where I’d pitched my tent for eighteen months. Some say you can get caught in anger and never feel despair. The opposite had been true for me.
Sad victimhood covered in shame is like chum in the water to Crazy.

So Rage felt better. It felt…empowering. Sadness felt like quick-sand—Rage, like solid ground.

It got my attention and cleared my vision, so I could finally see the truth and it kicked Sad’s ass to the curb.

I locked myself in a public bathroom stall kicking, screaming, and raging for nearly an hour before taking a walk around the building to help me come to my senses—and find my courage.

I knew my opponent. I was very familiar with Crazy.
You see, I had met her as a teenager in the form of my father’s second wife. I had witnessed her devouring her victims and I was smart enough to remember that Rage threw her into a sort of drunken feeding frenzy.

I also remembered that nothing can get to Crazy. Nothing touches their heart. There is no reasoning with Crazy. There is no sympathy, empathy or compassion and absolutely nothing is open for discussion.

They act as your judge, jury, and executioner.

And the more they sense is at stake; the faster and louder the accusations come. Their aim is to keep you off-balance, on the ropes.

Remember they are rested, ready and strong after their peaceful night’s sleep.

How is that fair?
Because they get a buzz off this shit and they don’t care about anything other than winning. So it’s not.

I sure wasn’t feeling sad anymore, Rage had hatched a plan but I knew better than to let it enter that room. I waited outside the double doors of the conference room until I saw my attorney exit the elevator. I could hear the team of Crazy, Crazier, and Craziest, whopping it up inside.

“You handle this, I’m leaving” I announced. I had her by the arm and was walking her back down a long hallway of endless doors, out of earshot of the hyenas.

“What?” she asked, looking surprised.

“You don’t need me here. They can smell my fear and sadness, and well, their offer is beyond ridiculous. See what happens when they can’t focus on me. When they have to deal with you and only the facts.”  We had walked in a circle making our way back toward the bank of elevators.

“Give me a number you’ll you settle at”, she asked as she reached into her bag for paper and a pen. She actually seemed relieved, like the day could be salvaged. Like it could go back to a language she understood—the law.

I wrote a figure down. She looked and nodded in agreement, folding the paper into a small square and tucking into her suit-jacket pocket.

The elevator chimed, opening right on cue. People were packed in like sardines, but as I stepped inside she grabbed my purse strap, making me turn around. “This could end today”, she said with a hint of a smile, letting me go as the doors slowly closed.

A hairy mystery hand reached around me and pushed the button for LOBBY, getting me the hell out of that DWP building. I know it was Rage. I could smell his Aramis. But I made sure I left him behind, losing him in the crowd.

*I got the call a couple of hours later that they’d settled on the figure I’d written down. “Piece of cake”, I remember her saying in a distracted voice; she was already on to her next case.

We all slept well that night.

I know some of you guys needed to hear this,
Carry on,
xox