At The Risk of Alienating The Holiday Happy

Taking this risk, I'm going to tell you what my last few days have been like. Happy Holidays, by the way.

Okay, if you've been around for the last two posts, you already know the wrangling I've been through with the cattle at Target. Suffice it to say that, in the end, I feel I just had a bit too much personality still, even when I toned it down as best I could. I don't do sheep well, and cattle even less so. But I gave it my best shot, even moreso. And they have a right to want "normies." So anyone who sent me notes about boycotting Target, don't bother. I know I won't, especially since I still need three of everything in the store. But I just might go without for the rest of the year, just on principle. I doubt they will suffer.

Yesterday, after getting my swing swinging again, I witnessed my puppy Gus have two, count them, two Grand Mal seizures again. After having his first a month ago. This time I knew what they were so I knew what to do (basically nothing but get everything out of the way) but it certainly didn't make it any easier to witness - or to clean up! Really, mondo frightening. So we go to the vet and they take blood and examine him and, thank god almighty, clip his toenails and they send me home with Valium for my dog. Which is Valium for big people too, but I made my phone calls and we all agreed that I don't really think Valium would make anything any better for me or anyone else around me. Not.

So now my dog is on Valium until Saturday, when they start him on Phenobarbitol for seizure disorder. So far, the effect of the Valium has been interesting. He has licked an entire wall of my bedroom and tried to head-butt the closet door open in my office. His legs don't work so good, so he's needed to kind of army crawl up my front steps after "walking" around the block. The first hour after he takes the pills, not unlike his mom, he is wound tight and needs to patrol and re-patrol the inner perimeter of the house until he falls down from exhaustion. He then sleeps like the dead for about an hour, and begins the patrolling all over again. He is 70 pounds and is now "sitting" on my lap while I'm trying to write at my desk. I'm sure he wishes I wouldn't have lost all that weight, as my lap is not as big as it used to be.

This perimeter patrol pretty much kept me up all night, as my bed appears to be one of the regular checkpoints, which is not good for me as I am an addictive sleeper. So I was really tired when I got up and answered the door for the Fed Ex man, who handed me an envelope from Bank of America. These are the people who hold my mortgage and who helped me work out my Making Home Affordable new mortgage that I signed last Tuesday. I say, "Golly, thanks pal, and have a great holiday." Thinking that they are returning their signed part of my home documents. Bbzztt, wrong!

They have returned my papers, saying that they did not receive them until a couple of hours after they were due and that they were reneging on the deal. Did I want to start over? Okay, this "deal" started well over a year ago, with someone in upstate New York. Today the guy I get on the phone is from Texas who talks to me about the present documents that were sent to me from Pittsburgh. So naturally, in order for me to start this process all over again, I have to talk to the guy in Arizona. And while they are all affiliated with Bank of America, none of them know each other and I have found that taking their names down makes no difference at all whatsoever in working through anything. They say they are making "notations" in my "file" every time they speak with me, and I can hear them typing, but apparently Bank of America employees don't actually have to read anything, just type. So - I would have to get all the doctors from Harborview Medical Center to write letters again, re-contact Jim McDermott's office (my congressman), write several letters explaining that I am not a slacker, even though on paper it certainly looks that way because I cannot get a job, and re-explain to all the persons all over the country who call me to re-discuss my default all over again for another year that my ex-husband is severely disabled, in what way, and on SSDI? After crying and crying and being unable to enunciate words for a couple of minutes...big breath...I tell the Escalation Officer in Texas that either the deal goes through as is or they can have my house. Period. "Call whomever you have to call, do whatever you have to do," was basically the end of that conversation.

Happy Freaking Holidays. Can I get any more down? No one gave me a Hanukkah gift, which was all right because I knew there was no one to do it. My daughter is only 13 and her dad is still too much of a bundle of continuous self-preservation to think of taking her shopping. And there will be no Christmas for me. Even though I'm Jewish, I was raised with Christmas and my mom, who passed away in 2005, was the only one who took it as more than "another chance for Hallmark to make movies and get people to buy stuff" (per my father). Although this year,my father actually did send me a card with a gift, my only gift this holiday season. You know what that gift is?

A TARGET GIFT CARD.

I kid you not. Need I say more about my dad? YES, but not today!

So. I knew what I wanted for the holidays, and today I went to get it. It's a print of a painting that I saw hanging in an art show recently and I happened to know where to get it. And I brought it home and I wrapped it and I told my daughter that I would appreciate it if she could give it to me on Friday and wish me a Merry Christmas. I'm lucky that she thinks this is "cute." Then I went and got something small that I know that I'd like for my birthday, which is the 4th of January and I brought it home and I wrapped it up and I will open that on the 4th.

Today I'm having a lot of trouble finding something to be grateful for. A lot. I'm grateful for the woman who stopped to give my battery a jump on the way out of the gallery parking lot. I am grateful that there is something we can do for Gus. And I am grateful that the holidays are almost over. I hate to say it, but I am. After all, this sentiment has at least provided a place for me to find gratitude.

Best Interview Answers To Best Interview Practices

At the urging of a friend and former co-worker, I have agreed to post my answers to the aforesaid corporate interview questions (please see previous post, "Torturous Interviews With An Egomaniacal Entity") to underline the injustice of such arrogance:

Interview Question Number One:
Tell me about a time when you and another employee had a disagreement.
Well, there was this one time? When I was a carhop on rollerskates at A&W? And I got into a fight with another girl who worked with me about which burger was the best? Because I definitely think it was the Mama burger and she thought it was the Papa burger and she was so loud that I just wanted her to Shut Up so I grabbed her by the throat and pinned her up against the little shack where we got the food from? And then she kicked me between the legs and I accidentally let go and I rolled back over the curb and into the parking lot? Between the customer's cars? And then she like started to push off and roll after me? And, you know, it was that girl that we used to call "Roller Derby Hippo Legs" and she was big and coming at me fast so I landed a good one right below her ribcage? With my skate up, like this? And so she flew back and landed right on her butt next to the shack? And she couldn't breathe for a minute, so some customer just gets on out of their car and shouts - "Hey! Where the hell's my Mama Burger, you nutjobs?"

Okay. And how did this experience work out for you?
Well, you know, since it was the Mama Burger they were looking for, we both kind of thought it was a sign. From Jesus. Or maybe like Gandhi, I guess. So we both started laughing so hard with like tears and finished delivering our orders? And then we asked our boss if he could get us a six pack of tall boys? Because, we were, like, 16 and he was, like 22? So, we ended up having fun that day after all, for sure.

Interview Question Number Two
Tell me about a time when you had an idea to make things better.
Well, yeah, I guess that might be when I brought up in the manager's meeting at Barnes & Noble, you know, about the day before, when I ran after this really hairy guy who I had seen stuffing DVDs down his pants and then just walking stiff-legged out of the store toward the parking lot. You know, they tell you that you can't do that, like, chase after them and all but, hey, the guy was laughing to himself and talking to somebody who wasn't there and I thought he was a pretty easy mark, so I went for it. And I scared the bejongas out of him by shouting that they were all coming down on him if he didn't drop the merchandise NOW and, luckily I had thought ahead and brought along some tongs to pick up the DVDs with, because, ugh, they came down through his pant leg and I sure wasn't going to pick them up, right? So, anyway, I think we should be allowed to bend the rules for obviously crazy people, right? Like, I got the stolen merchandise back, right? I mean, who are the police gonna believe, me or him?!

And how was this idea received?
Strangely, they, I mean the other managers, laughed and shook their heads and I guess they thought I was just kidding. This happens to me sometimes. Huh...

Interview Question Number Three
Tell me about a time when you had to deliver negative information.
I remember there was this time? There was a guy who used to work for me, in like a customer service capacity, okay? And he had really, really awful, horrid breath, like every day. Okay, as if this isn't bad enough, he had really, unbelievably offensive taste in clothes! You know, they were always within the dress code but, come on already, he was old enough to know better, right? And I took it upon myself to sit him down finally and have a talk with him, because none of the men managers would and, I mean, somebody had to, especially about the one-piece jumpsuits. So I just told him, as painlessly and quickly as I could, that most of what he wore fell within the code but that it was what I would classify as "white trash," and that he was really setting a poor example for the younger college guys at work who were still trying to figure out who they were and who their signature designer was going to be. Then I suggested a designer that I thought would probably cut clothes big enough for him. Oh! And then I just added in, like as an aside, that he needed to brush his teeth and floss or I'd fire him.

And what was the result of this...meeting?
Well, he just remained a total mess. And, believe it or not - they wouldn't let me do another thing about it! So wrong! But what can you do? It is what it is, right?

Interview Question Number Four
Tell me about a time when you had to help someone when you were doing something else.
Oh my god, was this all the time or what? People, especially the Ladies Who Lunch from Laurelhurst, think that they deserve a free, personal shopper, right? Like I'm there to be their slave. And you smile and ask, "Can I help you find anything today?" while your arms are absolutely loaded with merchandise and the store is packed and they just think they are the hottest thing walking, okay? So you're supposed to just drop everything and help them find Every Single Thing on their list! And then, if it's not on the shelf, they want you to go to a freaking computer and order it for them and then they want it all personally gift-wrapped - BY YOU. I know part of it was that they were just jealous because my hair was naturally blonde and theirs was from some bottle. Jeez Louise!! New money can be so tacky!

And how did this work out?
Well, you know, they're never happy. What-ever!

Interview Question Number Five
Tell me about a time when you made someone feel good.
Oh my. Well, I don't know about that. I would never do that at work, you know...THAT! I just, you know, I have always thought that it was wrong to, like, fraternize with your boss or anything, you know...what if somebody walks in on you?(blush)

And so there you have it. I mean, you be the judge: fair or unfair. You do know I'm kidding, right? Today I am grateful to have people in my life who understand me and push me toward higher ground.

Torturous Interviews With An Egomaniacal Entity

I am just now getting out of bed after two days of being up and down and up and down. If I didn't have a kid or a dog I'd still be lying flat. I'm not sure if any of this is physical, even though I do have a low-grade fever, but I am certain that it's the result of the end of six, count them, six interviews with Target.

Yep, six. Not two, not four. Six. I was referred in by a friend of a friend who is now a friend too, since I've been around the Target Experience so long. Can you imagine how many interviews you'd have to withstand if you weren't actually referred by someone reputable within the company?

In a couple of decades of being interviewed, and another of being the interviewer, I have never, ever heard of anyone being questioned by so many people for such a lengthy amount of time. Except by perhaps the FBI or the Spanish Inquisition. Actually had it been the Spanish Inquisition I'd have been stretched on the rack and dead a month ago.

Target got my resume in September, called and started the interviewing in November. It's now almost the New Year. The supposed position available was retail management, of which I have eight years experience in an 18 million dollar Barnes & Noble, the third largest grossing out of 800 stores in the United States. All of my reviews were fairly shining and if one were to seek out former employees I believe they would speak quite well of me. I left of my own volition, with no bridges burning and no skid marks.

Easy, right? So - talk to me, see if I'm mentally impaired, whether I smell okay, if I know not to wear jeans to an interview, even try to provoke me and see if I bad-mouth my former employers. Go ahead, use a big word on me, and then use an "insider" sales term and see if I know what you're talking about. Pass me off to another person and then call my references. At most, set me up to later see the "big guy/gal" on a third interview to see if I know how to behave myself in the face of cold, hard authority and see if I can show up on time for it at an obscure location almost an hour away. Appropriately, I'd be somewhat nervous, but really, piece of cake in the end.

Aforesaid company does not use this model as a best practice. They have a big packet of questions that two people ask you in separate rooms; teensy, tiny, windowless rooms that make you wonder if anyone weighing over 120 or asthmatic could ever be eligible to work there. The questions are, of course, overly simple, and the same as the questions the last person asked you but they are worded just slightly differently. Then they let you go and say they will call.

Then they call a week later and set you up for "an" interview for a week after that. This time you speak with not two, but three different people, in three different beensy, minute, airless rooms and they ask you questions from a different packet, although the questions are still the same, really, just worded differently. They are very mysterious as to what they're looking for, and I ask them after I simply answer the questions if my answers made sense to them. Each looks up slyly as they're jotting away on their pads like some Freudian shrink, and says, "Oh yes." Then they send you home and say that someone will call.

In fairness, they do ask you if you have any questions for them, but for god's sake, it's a freaking retail floor management position, not engineering for NASA, so as hard as I try, I can't really come up with anything. Other than perhaps what shade of red they think I'd look good in. No, I didn't.

They now call on a Sunday, because they're retail and want to know if you can speak without a slur on the weekend, and set you up for another interview, somewhere in the distant hinterlands, to speak with someone else. A person with only one name, like Cher or Madonna, who has an obscure title that you've never heard of that must be an insider thing and, for the love of allah, I just need a fucking job already, I'll scrub your toilets for minimum wage, WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME ALREADY!! No, I relax, sure I can look it up on MapQuest and I'll be there whenever you want me to be there.

WTF, what position are they looking at me for? El Presidentress, Tsarina, walker of the company bull terrier - and WTF is up with meeting somewhere else? I just want to sell toys for Christmas and rearrange your housewares department. So, I drive out of Seattle a ways and find this, this other place and walk in and ask for the one-named person on which my future lies. She is busy, can I wait? Uh, yeah, I can wait. And I smile at all the shoppers for awhile, thinking, hey, I could be a security deterrent for awhile if nothing else and forty-five minutes after my scheduled interview time the one-named woman shows up in front of me. No introduction from her, just "Ah, who are you?" I extend my hand to shake hers and say "Hi, I'm Nancy and I've been sent over from Northgate to meet with you." She hesitantly takes my hand and gives me that half-handed, withered dead fish non-grip and says, "Ok, yeah, and what are you here for?" I say, "I've met with five people at Northgate and then HR sent me here to see you." I Am Not going to help this chick out, okay? She takes me back to a larger, windowless cubicle and takes out a packet and asks me exactly the same questions the other five have asked only this time in monotone:

Tell me about a time when you and another employee had a disagreement.
Tell me about a time when you had an idea to make things better.
Tell me about a time when you had to deliver negative information.
Tell me about a time when you had to help someone when you were doing something else.
Tell me about a time when you made someone feel good.

You get the gist, right? Fuck, you are not going to get a more creative question answerer than me, all right?!?! Yet, as I stayed on track for the first five people, by the mysterious and extraordinarily bored sixth, I probably did not deliver with all the enthusiasm she wanted. Or maybe I did. Who knows?

Because you know what? The very next day, Human Resources called and said, "Hi Nancy, Happy Holidays! How are you today? I'm sorry to tell you that we do not have a place for you here and I wanted to let you know as soon as we knew."

I can't breathe. She's called while I am looking over my new Making Home Affordable mortgage papers. I say, very small, "Really?" She says, "Yes, I'm sorry it didn't work out." I wait a moment, quiet, not letting her hang up on me without SOMETHING, Anything, and I ask, "Well, do you have any feedback for me? After SIX interviews with your company?" She says, "Well, we just do not believe that you would be a good fit for our culture."

I feel slugged in the stomach. It appeared to be such a sure thing, any position would have been fine, really, WTF. And I leave my house and I walk miles in the rain down Greenwood Avenue and I cry and people are watching me, probably thinking somebody died and I could give a shit because it's all just too much. My wonderful neighbors bring over dinner because my one-of-a-kind daughter tells them I'm down and out and my friends send me messages on Facebook of love and support and all I want to do is my drug of choice, which is sleep. Please see former post, "Sleep Is My Drug Of Choice."

I get up today and I am enraged, pissy and cannot quit going from sighing to barking at those around me. I miss my mom, who absolutely loved Christmas, like most moms do, but she was fun and we baked and decorated and laughed and cried and sometimes just sat held each other on the couch while we watched a movie. But that's not going to happen anymore. And I'm lost. Again.

Today I am grateful for my sanity, that continues to be tested by some of the most unworthy opponents. Okay, that didn't sound very grateful. Today I am grateful, so much, for my super-supportive friends and neighbors who are not afraid to show up, even when I just want to crawl in a hole, and bring me kudos and chicken cassarole.

To Have Or Have Not

I have the most fabulous kid on earth, and that's a fact. And I hope she never reads this.

I have read that the highest rate of divorce occurs between people with children, when their children are age four. I'm fairly sure that this is strictly an American statistic, and that would make sense to me, since "family" means something a lot "looser" here than in just about any culture on Earth, except for maybe Canada. Please see future post, "I Just Don't Know What The Hell To Think About Canada."

My experience in this potential marriage-breaking endeavor, this bringing forth of progeny, pretty much holds true to this statistic, except that the actual breakup of my marriage occurred six years later than the norm, even though it was over long before that. My own specifics will not be gone into here, but suffice it to say that upon questioning my divorced and not-divorced-but-fantasize-about-it-regularly peers, this theory appears to hold some water.

Let me give you a random situation in a nutshell: let's say...Jancy and Mavid meet. They go out for about a year, move in together and live happily together for another year, they get engaged and a year later they get married. Mavid says to Jancy one day, "Hey, what say we try to have a kid?" Jancy, thinking, what the hell, I've never been pregnant even by accident, says, "Uh, yeah, sure, why not?" I have found that the majority of married couples I know put exactly that much thought into the creating of another life. Because, what the hey, our parents did it, right? How hard could it be?

And wouldn't everyone like to have a little onion bun that looks just like them and has their funny expressions and blows bubbles and wants to play and help you keep your fun, youthful spirit hopping about for as long as it can? I mean, besides the mandate that that's what your supposed to do after marriage and besides the ongoing nudging of your parental units claiming, ad nauseum, "But I want to be a Grandma!!"

You know why she wants to be a grandma? She'll even tell you this one: Because I get to be the good guy and have all the fun and then send them home when I'm done with them. "Grandma loves you! Bub-Byeeeee!!" And the door goes, "Slam."

And won't your so-far loving and satisfied husband love you even more once you've pushed that big bowling ball out of your tiny little pin hole, right there in front of him, with all the attendant blood, sweat, bodily functions and the exclamations of sheer hatred that pop out during hard labor? Okay, maybe everybody's not quite that bad, but I'm trying to build my theory here. Childbirth can be thoroughly disgusting. Beautiful and gross all at the same time. I have photos if you want to see them.

You bring this little sweetie pie home and voila! It sucks and cries and poops and vomits and sleeps every once in awhile, and then it sucks and cries and poops and throws up and doesn't sleep for a couple nights straight. And on and on. And for a woman, your hormones are whacktastic and other-worldly anyway, but now you're not sleeping, even though your husband helps you as much as he can but he doesn't produce milk so...and even if you pump, your screetching child will not latch onto a bottle so he can't help you anyway...zzzzzzzz.

This part goes on for a couple of months, which feels like a couple of years because you're not sleeping and even when you're sleeping you're programmed to be listening. And you really do have some beautiful times, especially when your kid gets gas and you imagine that she/he's smiling at you when really they just need to fart. But it's cool anyway.

All of this said, this is not even touching upon what's happening to your All-American romantic relationship. Your husband asks the doctor, while you're still in the childbirth recovery room, "So how long til we can DO IT again?" If he's lucky, you don't hear him because if you do, there could well be hell for him to pay. Even after a couple of weeks, after the episiotomy heals and you stop the non-stop bleeding, you haven't slept in...forever. This phase is not unlike psychoses. And it's not that you don't love your husband anymore, but your needs have become very, very simple, primal and, quite frankly, unimportant. Your body is no longer your own, it's become breakfast and lunch - and a picker-upper and a bender-overer and changer. And unfortunately you haven't even thought about the fact that his needs have not altered in this profound way at all. He still wants to DO IT. And once y'all DO IT again, he will assume that y'all will again resume your regularly scheduled impromptu sexing. But you can't. And it's going to be awhile before you can and even then, you're going to be DOING IT as a mom. If that kid cries, you're stopping the show, regardless of what scene you're on.

I remember a pregnant friend once saying to me, "Well, nothing will change for us. We will still hike with little Harold on our backs and travel and ski and everything else we've always done. He'll just come with us!!" Right. What if your kid doesn't like sitting in that backpack and throws a fit until you take him out? What if your kid doesn't like to sleep anywhere but home? What if your kid finds the cold too irritating and the hot too crabbifying? I mean, they're not born little blobs who can be molded into whatever fits your lifestyle. My kid decided she was a vegetarian at age 4 and announced it at the dinner table while I was in the middle of cutting up my prime rib. At 13, she still is. I have to cook two different meals. Oh, you say I don't? I bet you don't have a kid.

But I think the bottom line on the maintenance of a good, loving relationship while being parents is not really any of this. I think it's more of a psycho-spiritual roll of the dice than meets the eye. I think there are a lot of factors at play, physical, mental and spiritual, and so many of us didn't take the time to examine our own personhoods before we so glibly stopped the birth control. So much of what happens to form a good and loving relationship has to do with the unconscious and the subconscious. It's not all about what we think or decide. Most times it's decided for us by something much bigger than us. Isn't that what real love is?

And what I have found for myself, and from what I've studied of other newly parental relationships, is that a profound shift occurs that we have no control over, in parts of our psyche that we are not able to steer in any direction - we don't even know they're there! Something happens to a man when his woman starts being called "Mommy" and to a woman when her man starts to be "Daddy." Sounds warm and fuzzy, but that's not always the case.

We owe it to ourselves and to our potential children to perform great, painstaking personal reflection with major internal housecleaning before we go pitching the condoms. Did we have wonderful powers of example in parenting? Did they? Are we really willing to amend our full-disclosure intimacy with one another or our satisfying lifestyles just to do what people may think is right or that we'd be "good at?" And what would make us "good" at it? Because we're childish and haven't even grown up ourselves yet? Do we really feel like relinquishing our cherished child-likeness to an actual child for whom we now have to set a power of example? Most of all, do we realize, fully realize that the spiritual life of this little blue-eyed bumpkin is going to be our responsibility 24/7, 365 days a year, really, for the rest of our lives? Because even when they leave home, we will still think about them all the time and wonder if they're happy.

I don't know about you. Your experience may differ, and more power to you, for sure. But these are my thoughts tonight, and they're not fully coherent, even to me. What I do know is that almost every single day, I see evidence of more and more heartache and hearts breaking over what seems to have been a couple's easiest decision to make. And none of them seem to know why they hurt, or where the pain started.

And yet, here again - I have the most incredible daughter a person could want. I couldn't have designed a better kid, even if I were given all the options I could have dreamed up. But this has come at a huge, tremendous personal price to someone without a prayer or a clue or a handbook.

Today I am humbled with the gratitude I have for my Sasha and for my survival as a now single mother - but I am grateful most of all perhaps, that I realized just in the nick of time that it really DOES take a village to raise a child well - and that I am able to avail myself the help of that village. Let's spread that love, right?

I Heart RWE - But Could RWE Ever Heart Me Back?

"Don't tell me who you are because who you are is thundering so loudly that I couldn't hear you anyway." Ralph Waldo Emerson

This saying by Emerson has been resounding through my chest cavity and bouncing off my ribcage ever since I first heard it probably twenty years ago. It was quoted to me by that same good friend of mine who spoke with me of disappointment: please see former post, "The Fabulousness Of Disappointment." She felt moved to quote RWE to me in response to my attempting to give her an extremely lengthy justification (droning on and on and on) for why my being a control freak was so necessary for the survival of the species. Please also see future post "My First Fourth Step." (Yeah, I doubt it!)

I think the woman who originally quoted it to me was really just saying, "Wow, give it a rest, wouldja? Give other people more credit for their own intelligence and perceptions - who they think you are is more about what your actions say than it is about your words!!" Or maybe, "Shut it, already!! We got your number a long time ago!" That sounds more like Ainsley.

Ironic, isn't it, how we're always the last people to know who we are? I remember after being clean and sober for awhile, warily approaching a long-time, dear friend of mine who had told me to pretty much get lost a year earlier because, in her words, she didn't want to watch me kill myself with booze and drugs. Now I was terrified that she would hate me once I told her the truth about me but I did it anyway. I met her for coffee at the corner of 42nd and Ninth and shyly told her that I was sorry for anything I had done to upset her, but that I thought she should know that I quit drinking and that I was an...an alcoholic. Her response to me was to laugh and say, "Yeah, no shit!!"

I recently had a fatal fallout with a different friend, specifically about "the obvious." I told her how I saw a situation where she was desperately trying to change and control some of our mutual friends. True, I could have stated it more simply myself, but she went on to write email after email, paragraph upon paragraph of explanation, justification and the theory behind her rightness. And then to show up later to publicly recruit other people over to see it "her way" too.

I know what this is. I know it because I've done it myself, all too many times, particularly in work situations where I thought someone was a bitch or I felt threatened by someone else's good fortune that I thought was undeserved. And I have felt perfectly justified and righteous in making my correctness known worldwide re this given situation. Only to go home and later feel baffled as to why I hate myself so much and feel the need to eat an entire layer cake or scratch at my wounds or cut my nails too short. Little did I know that it was Ralph and his wisdom, thundering their way up through my denial, telling me, "Hey, you don't believe that crap is right anymore, remember? Knock it off!"

These days, when I don't act well, I don't feel well, no matter what I've said and to whom. I still do these things on occasion, although only about 1/24th of the time I used to. But now I know what to do about my regression into fearful self-absorption - own it, baby, both with myself and with those I've visited it upon. And best of all, I get to do it with the helpful insight of my beloved friends.

Today I am grateful for the path and all the challenging mirrors I find along the way. Even if they sometimes don't look "right" to me.

Facebook Burnt My Dinner - Again!!

I know. I have to own this, don't I? Even though most of my friends are also hooked on Facebook...and, come on, Facebook doesn't MAKE me attach my psychic consciousness to it all day...so it probably is, at least somewhat, my fault that I didn't get up when the timer went off for the pizza. Again.

Crap! It was such a beautiful pie, too. I got it freshly made at PCC. Which in itself is saying a lot - please see my vile November post entitled "Life Amongst The Encapsulated, Part 1" to fully know how hard it is for me to revisit that slow-motion, tree-hugging, nightmarish establishment. Yet I did, and I was anticipating such succulence, even if it was organic.

I think George Clooney could have been waiting on me in the boudoir with tactile-enhancing oil from the yumyum plant and I wouldn't have budged tonight. The subject on the thread was "Glee," the musical, and the way Rachel nailed her rendition of one of my all-time favorite Broadway hits, "Don't Rain On My Parade." I mean, I wept and had goosebumps for an hour afterward! Fuck Dinner, Right?!?!

Gawd, I can be so ambivalent. Pizza, Facebook, pizza, FB, pizza, fb...?

Today I am grateful for: being able to afford something to eat, certainly pizza; for having a psychic consciousness at all (much less one that can attach to FB drek); for being able to own my own part in the demise of things dinner (kind of); for George Clooney and the ability to be moved to tears by Broadway show tunes; and for being able to consider the possibility that I will someday enjoy a PCC experience.

Not necessarily in that order.

I Let Nixon Do My Hair

Like most mothers, my mom had a couple of supremely annoying stock lines. Ones like, "Because I said so," and "If you keep scrunching that face up it's going to stay that way," etc. The one that's creeping up my consciousness ladder today like an old choke weed is "A woman's hair is her crown of glory!" Ugh, gawd. Not in front of my friends!

Translation, for those lightly baffled, is: If your hair doesn't look good, forget about the rest of your day. It's going to suck. Please see future post, "Princess Diana's Hair Was Never Quite Good Enough."

Funny, this coming from a woman who could have singlehandedly destroyed the ozone layer above North America with the way she wrangled her tresses through the spray of a full can of AquaNet. She was a high-teasing, redheaded, beehive hairdo champion of North Suburban Minneapolis, she was. And for her era, she was as good as it gets in the excellent hair day department.

Still, puberty had a way of making much of what she said creepy and I guess today I'm still hearing her "glory" saying through pubic ears. It could be because I got up this morning and looked at my hair while brushing my teeth. I tend to avoid this early sneak peek, not because I never like what I see, but because I can't predict which days I won't. So I usually put it off until after caffeination. This morning my hair just sucked, plain and simple. I totally hate the last haircut I got, it's growing out wonky, it's too short to cut any differently just yet and I'm simply having to live with it for awhile. But today, as it just lays there dead to the world, up from the depths comes that inane mommy quip to frost my already paltry cake.

Ack! Of course I have to do something - and I have to do it today. Whenever I find the time is ripe for hair modification it must happen on the same day the thought occurs. Everybody's got their thang, all right?

I phone my usual colorist. It's the holidays so naturally she's booked out for three entire days. Breathe. So, after a small amount of panic, I say to the receptionist, "Okay, go ahead and book me with whoever has an opening today."

What?! What am I thinking?! Who in blazes do you think is going to have an impromptu opening in their schedule this close to the holiday?

I get to the salon, check my coat, and am informed by the receptionist that I am to be the lucky "guest" of one of the newest members of their design team. Ah! Greaaaaat...and who would that be? "Nixon," that's who. A brand-spanking new hair school graduate with the same name as one of our nation's most embarrassing Yankee leaders to date. How could this possibly bode well?

I'm not going to describe Nixon. The photo to your left is not her (although the first thing she said to me upon shaking my hand was, "I am not a crook"). She is actually a lovely young woman with a lavender crewcut...who has no idea how or where to slather and fold the foils as necessary for the lightening of hair (she started in the back!). And let me just wrap this up by saying that, because I let Nixon do my hair, 85 dollars later it looks exactly the same as it did in the mirror this morning. There shall be no glory in my crown today.

However, let it be said that because I do know quite a bit about haircolor processing itself, and after watching Nixon "do" my hair, today I am extremely grateful to have any hair left at all.

No Lipstick, No Dancing, No Movies - Oh My!

"Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith. I consider the capacity for it terrifying." - Kurt Vonnegut

Grandma Valborg used to bring us to big stadiums filled with Unadulterated Believers and heavy men with large circles of armpit sweat, shouting over microphones, "Bring your sins up the aisle and throw them onto the stage! You can still be saved! Do it now, while there's still time!" My mom would get drunk (how? did she have a hip flask?) and I would hide underneath her skirt.

Many, many years later I was to find out that Valborg started life out as a Jew hiding in Denmark, making my mother Jewish and me too. Please see future post, "Oy, What A Relief It Is."

Which is what made her unflagging, vehement faith in fundamentalist christianity even more whack. And yes, it was whack even without that information.

No lipstick, no dancing, no movies. These were not only some of the "commandments" my mother grew up with, but apparently, according to Valborg's church, they are also confirmed in the bible somewhere. I remember asking where, specifically, since around Jesus' time and before there was no Revlon or cinema yet. And I seem to remember dancing mentioned in an upbeat, rather positive way (you know, unless it was around a golden calf or some other false idol...). My grandmother would look toward the heavens, shake her head, and make that sound, the one with the tongue that is so hard to replicate in writing: "tch, tch" or "tsk, tsk." And, of course, she would not answer. She was Danish! Please see future posts, "If You're Scandanavian, Please Raise Your Children Italian" or "The Silence That Is My Father."

Also, according to Valborg's church, no one but they are going to heaven. As a kid I understood this as having to do with the three aforementioned commandments. She feared, often verbally, for all our lives, filled with things like the The Twist and Lipsmackers and The Dick VanDyke Show. Or worse yet, full length features, like Singing In The Rain. When one of us got sick, the mourning would begin ahead of time, in preparation for the time to come when she would never see us again. "Ever!" she would weakly wail.

My Mom would smirk and take no heed, and I have to give her credit - these antics must have dragged up countless deprivational childhood scenes on her internal screen: of her father, Walter, having to push her out the back door while shoving a buck into her coat pocket, telling her to go ahead and go to the movies with her friends; of going to the school dance under the guise of attending a bible study; of chapped lips.

I bet leaving home was more of a relief to Mom than it was to most - and having her own home even more liberating. For whenever Grandma came over for dinner, it seemed to me that Mom would put on her full makeup regalia, turn the television toward the dinner table, flip the channel to a movie (any movie), and do the Charleston while dishing up the plates. While this could have had as much to do with the diet pills/methamphetamines she took daily, it sure looked to me like it was in direct response to them auditorium revivals we were dragged to where Grandma would beg her to go up to the front and throw her cigarettes onto the stage. Where Mom would get mysteriously, contentedly soused and my brothers would duck under the bleachers to dodge the flying spittle of the unquestioning believers while I hung onto my mother's leg, hoping to get home in time for Get Smart.

Today I am so very grateful to have had my mom as a mom. For even through all the dysfunction, confusion and sometimes tragedy of my childhood, my mom taught me, among many of life's lessons, that to be myself was the most powerful thing I could ever want to be.

The Fabulousness of Disappointment

My closest friend once told me that I've earned the right to be disappointed.

What?! - I mean, is she pissed off at me, does she feel I should suffer more (as if!), did I wink at her husband again? (I have Tourette's Syndrome. Please see future post, Tics, Clicks and My Inability to Retain What You Just Said.)

No. She meant it. And positively.

The theory goes: if I can just readjust my habitual look through my own life's prism, shift just a tad over from the dread view to the view of anticipating the best, or even just something good, out of a possible situation, or person, etc., then I will have spent the majority of my time feeling warm and fuzzy hope. Instead of the usual crappy-ass "oh well" gloom I have been so programmed to believe in, even before anything happens, which supposedly protects me from the Big Fall. Or maybe protects me from feeling stupid for believing something good could happen. But why stupid, and in front of whom?

If I can do this, believe this...thing, situation...can actually happen, then even if everything goes to hell in a furious ball of flames, I will still have enjoyed the majority of my conscious time on the way there.

I mean, if you're going to fall off the cliff, may as well have fun on the run up to the edge, right? And maybe you won't fall at all. Maybe you'll just leap through the air only to land lightly onto the next plateau.

Which brings to mind another of my sage's [old] sayings about me - "There she goes again, kicking and screaming her way from one plateau of joy to the next." That could really use a painting to go along with it, don't you think?

Today, I'm grateful for disappointment.