Where Have All the Manners Gone? – 8/20/2019

Look, I may have plenty of negative qualities, but I’m no prude. I can trade insults with the best of them and swear like a sailor on shore leave.

But call me crazy if I think it’s wrong for 6-year-olds to be doing the same. And that’s exactly what I heard as I passed the local day camp at the elementary school this morning:

Two tiny children (I’m being GENEROUS by calling them 6-year-olds; they could have been younger) were practically singing at each other on the playground:

“F**k you, f**k you, f**k you!”

Not 10 feet away, the so-called “counselors” (who couldn’t have been older than 11 themselves) were mindlessly scrolling on their phones. I thought they hadn’t noticed the younger kids’ obscene chant, but then one of them shouted, “Hey, shut the f**k up!”

Like I said, I’m not a prude. It’s not the language in and of itself that offends me. It’s the fact that tiny children (and the also-tiny children who are supposed to be supervising them) are using it.

I mean, seriously: Where are the adults? And, for that matter, where has basic decency gone? Where are the manners?

Me? I’ve still got ’em.

My occasional salty language aside, I DO know etiquette. In fact, certain simple acts of common courtesy are so deeply ingrained in me (thanks for that, Mom!) that I noticed the other that I say, “Excuse me” when my prerun energy drink makes me a little gassy and I let out a tiny burp while running, alone, on the empty road, hours before dawn when there is no one (except perhaps the occasional screaming skunk) to hear me.

Now, THAT’s manners!

And the thing is, it’s not hard to be polite. So, what’s stopping people? Does anybody even think anymore?

Take this other example:

A while back, I went to lunch with a women’s Meetup group. It was a brand-new group, our very first meeting, so you knew going in that you’d be encountering a bunch of strangers.

In other words, you’d be making a first impression.

Most of us seemed to get that. We dressed in slightly-nicer-than-everyday clothing, put on a little makeup, and made sure our hair was neat.

Except, that is, for one woman, whom I’ll call Sue. Because that was her name.

Sue showed up wearing not just sweatpants, but torn and muddy sweatpants.

She was also clearly not wearing a bra. (And again, I’m no prude, but if I can tell—while studiously trying to AVOID looking at your boobs—that you’re braless, something has gone awry with your wardrobe choices for the day.)

Sue had neither brushed her hair nor colored it in, oh, about six months, seeing as she had a solid five-inch stripe of gray on either side of her center part.

Hey, I’m all for NOT being fancy and high-maintenance, and I fully support every woman’s right NOT to color her hair. But the thing is, if you DID color it, you need to commit. Until the old color is gone, you’ve got to use some of that spray-on stuff (unless you WANT people to think you’re completely nuts, as we all did in regard to Sue).

Lest you think I’m merely harping on Sue’s physical appearance—no, no! Her breaches of etiquette did not stop with the superficial.

She spent the entire lunch complaining, belching (without even an “Excuse me” like I give in response to my early-morning running burps), chewing with her mouth open, and stealing food (without invitation) off other people’s plates.

And this was a woman well into her 50s. If SHE has never learned manners, what hope is there for the younger generations?

I guess we know why 6-year-olds are cursing each other out on the playground. They never learned any better, because (apparently) they’re being raised by people like Sue, who (and the reason for it is a mystery) also never learned any better.

And that? Is a disgrace.

 

Close Encounters of the Wildlife Kind – 7/30/2019

You never expect this kind of thing. Running, after all, is supposed to be GOOD for you. So, it never (or almost never) occurs to you that it could be dangerous.

Okay, sure, there was that one time I fell like a clumsy oaf while running in the local park (I’ve still got the scar under my left eye as a daily reminder). But for the most part, I feel like I’m being silly, way overcautious, when I strap my pocketknife to my hip as I head out the door for my run in the morning.

I USED to feel silly, that is. Until the other day.

I still don’t know what it was, exactly.

I keep telling people it was a skunk, but I’ve never seen a skunk bigger than a coyote, nor have I ever heard one scream. And there’s no other word but SCREAM for what this thing did, as it stood astride the road, blocking my path, maybe 50 or 100 feet ahead of me.

I almost screamed right back at it.

This animal—whatever it was—was pissed off, and it was NOT backing down. It had laid claim to that particular stretch of Orange Avenue, right where the road meets Frazier Place (yeah, I checked the GPS to determine EXACTLY where the incident happened—I’m a geek, what do you expect?). And this creature was basically telling me (with its awful screaming):

“None shall pass!”

Now, here’s the thing: A lot of the local skunks have gotten used to me lately. I’m out there running well before dawn several days a week, and we seem to have developed a mutual understanding. That is, I get the hell out of their way and, in return for my cowardice, they choose not to spray me.

Hey, it works for us.

But this creature was NOT used to me. And it was not, at all, afraid of me.

The feeling was not mutual.

I turned on my heel and ran.

No, let me be more precise: I FLED.

I booked it out of there like a mouse running away from a cat or a French soldier running away from the battlefield.

I hightailed it down some dark and unfamiliar side street and wound my way in the general direction of my house, hoping the streets would connect so I could find my way home—and hoping even more that the animal (again, WHATEVER it was) hadn’t decided to follow me or skirt around to the next block to cut off my path and scare the wits out of me again.

So, was it a skunk? Was it a badger (which, my nerdy online research tells me is possible, if unlikely, where I live)? Or was it, perhaps, the infamous New Jersey Devil?

I have no idea. All I know is that it may be a while—a LONG while—before I hit the roads for my run again.

 

Rules Are Made to Be Broken? – 7/9/2019

A couple of weeks ago, I (briefly) sat down with my dad to watch a little bit of a women’s basketball game.

Don’t ask me what league it was or who was playing exactly. I have no idea. Basketball, to me, is about as thrilling as cleaning the toilet. Scratch that. Gimme the toilet. At least I GET something out of THAT experience.

The point is, basketball is boring, but there WAS something about the game that caught my attention: the uniforms.

Well, let me rephrase that: I’ll call them “clothes” because I’m not sure you can properly call something a “uniform” when no two people on the court are wearing the same thing.

Look, I’m no slave to convention, and I dislike being told what to do as much as (or more than) the next guy. But some rules exist for good reason.

Uniforms, for example, are worn to make the players on a given team—get this!—appear . . . UNIFORM. The same.

When everybody is allowed to wear different shorts, different armbands, different tank tops, how are we (the people like me who aren’t obsessed enough with sports to already know who plays for which franchise) supposed to know what’s going on???

I tell you, it was anarchy on that court.

It’s bad enough that I had to watch one of the world’s most mind-numbing events (some of the other top contenders being golf and, of course, soccer). But at least help me differentiate one team from the other. Honestly, it’s the least they can do, and isn’t that the rule, that each team wears the same thing?

Some rules are, indeed, made to be broken—that pesky one about making us pay huge chunks of our salaries to the government, for instance (just kidding, IRS!).

But why not follow the simple ones? Our world is chaotic and ugly enough. Why make it even worse?

 

Living in the Moment (When the Present Moment Sucks) – 6/18/2019

Buddhists, New Agers, psychologists, health professionals—they all seem to spout the same advice: True happiness comes from living in the moment.

The argument goes like this:

If you’re stressing over the bills you have to pay, you’re living in the future (where nothing is guaranteed, so you might as well wait and see what happens).

If you’re dwelling on old hurts and mistakes, you’re living in the past (and you can’t change it, so you might as well move on).

The only place we can ever really be content is NOW, in this very moment.

I get the theory. I do.

But what are you supposed to do when your present moment sucks?

Call me a pessimist, but in my life, the undeniably good moments have been few and far between. I’d go so far as to say I’ve never actually experienced a pure moment of unspoiled joy.

For me, the only possible happiness lies in the anticipation of something better in the future, the belief that someday, my life will (finally) be at least halfway decent (see? I’m not asking for great riches or fame—just “halfway decent”).

I have to look to the future for happiness, because the present moment really blows.

Take right now, for example—this exact moment.

I’m writing this in a dark, stifling room that belongs to someone else, so I can’t open the windows or let in any light. I have a head cold, dueling ear infections, and it’s raining outside (again), so every joint in my body aches.

Other than (maybe) the fact that I’m currently alive, I can’t really come up with a whole lot to be “happy” about in this moment. (And despite all these facts, I DO manage to come up with at least 10 things a day for which I’m grateful—go figure!)

Even on “good” days, it’s tough to find the bright spots in my life.

I remember the day of my wedding, which is supposed to be one of the happiest days of a person’s life.

Even on my wedding day, the “moments” were terrible. As each one passed—as I watched my bridesmaids get drunk while I struggled to get dressed alone, as my bridal party fooled around like idiots throughout the photography session, as the limo jolted around and seemed to deliberately hit every pothole in town on the way to the reception (preventing me from drinking the expensive champagne I’d bought, which spilled all over the floor of the car)—I recall thinking, “I can’t wait to get to the good part.”

Only that “good part” never came. It never does.

For me, the present moment—that magical place everyone else seems to be raving about—is solely about surviving whatever agony and misery I’m currently facing (there always IS some; that’s not even a question).

The present moment is not a happy place. It never has been and I’m beginning to fear it never will be.

And yet, I keep hoping that the moment after this one will finally be good for me. Call me delusional, an eternal optimist, or just plain stupid. But you never can tell, can you?

 

Chess for One – 6/4/2019

I’ve always been a loner. I’m okay with that. But recently, I’ve started to think the amount of time I spend alone verges on abnormal, and maybe it’s time to do something about it.

Not that I haven’t tried.

I mean, I was married, which is always a sign that a person is taking the whole “togetherness” thing pretty seriously.

Beyond my (failed) marriage, I’ve gone out of my way—a lot—to make friends, but somehow, people always seem to drift out of my life. Whenever I’ve changed jobs or left school (back in the day) or moved, the people I’ve been close to just don’t seem to keep in touch.

It’s not me. I swear.

For the first five years after I moved from New Jersey to Pennsylvania, I sent letters, emails, even gifts to my closest Jersey friends, and I took (at least) quarterly road trips back to visit them.

Not once were my efforts reciprocated.

Ditto when I made the reverse move, coming back to New Jersey from Pennsylvania after being away for 11 years. Despite arranging (this time) almost monthly trips back to see my PA friends, everyone quickly stopped returning my messages. Eventually (and no, it was not soon enough for me to be proud of), I took the hint that these people had had enough of me.

Even here, where I’m living now, I try to meet people all the time. I’ve been a member of Meetup since 2011 and I go to just about any get-together nearby (within reason). And still, I can’t seem to find anybody I’d consider friend material.

Maybe I’m a huge bitch and don’t know it? Maybe I talk with my mouth full? Maybe I have a serious case of BO? I have no idea. All I know for sure is that my hard work in the friendship department does not seem to be paying off.

If people don’t like me, so be it. At the heart of things, all that really matters is whether I like me—and I do.

But still, there are times when it might be nice to have a buddy. Take this past Christmas, for example.

For years, I’ve wanted to learn to play chess, so I got the idea to buy an inexpensive chess set for a Christmas gift to myself, just to see if I could learn the basics.

What I learned instead? Chess for one sucks.

There are certain things that are simply better with two (or more) people: sex (I dare say), playing on a seesaw, having a game of catch, and yes, chess.

But for me, it looks like I’ll be playing solo for now. I guess I should look at the bright side:

I always win.

 

 

Magical Thinking – 5/21/2019

I may be working too much these days.

I caught myself thinking the other day that I could really go for a short stay in the hospital. Nothing life-threatening, mind you—maybe a gallbladder operation or something, where they’d have to keep me for a few days but I’d be just fine in the end. That’s how exhausted I am.

The thing is, this has happened before.

Back in the spring of 1999, I had the same thought: I was too busy for a real vacation, but figured a couple of days in the hospital would get me rested and back on track. Mostly, I just wanted some free time to read a book. Sad, I know.

And boom!

Just like magic—a ruptured appendix landed me in the hospital for four days. (And before you ask, no, I did not somehow rupture my appendix on purpose; I wouldn’t do that even if I knew how.)

People always laugh about superstition and so-called magical thinking, but hey, sometimes it seems to work. And if a stray thought 20 years ago could burst my appendix, how much stronger might my powers have become over the years? I’m not exactly the luckiest person in the world. If I let myself think too much, I’m afraid I may end up needing some kind of transplant.

So, no, I’m not tired. Not overworked. No way. I don’t need a rest. Nope. All good here.

 

The Track Walkers Return – 5/14/2019

It’s that time of year again—the mystical, magical month of May, when every overweight person in my town decides now is the time to “get in shape” and descends upon the high school track, conveniently located just across the street from my house.

I greet the track walkers, as I call them, like the phenomenon they are: a passing migration of butterflies, maybe, or those birds that always fly back to San Juan Capistrano. The track walkers are just as predictable—and just as fleeting.

I know from my experience as an avid “track-walker watcher” that their ambition won’t last long.

By June, when the weather warms up enough to make them break a sweat before completing their first lap around the track, they’ll retreat once again. Back to their comfy couches they’ll return, and back to the ease of watching other people do stuff on TV instead of doing it themselves.

I applaud them, gazing out at them with admiration as they trudge around the blue-paved track with all their hope for a brand-new start shining brightly in their faces.

I know it won’t last—just as the migrating birds and butterflies will eventually fly home. But for now, I wish them well.

 

Gum, Gum Everywhere . . . – 5/7/2019

I’ve got to ask: What is with all the gum, people?

Lately, whenever I’m out walking my dog, Rosco, it takes every ounce of my concentration to keep vigilant and make sure he doesn’t step in a fresh pink or green wad that somebody has chosen to hawk onto the sidewalk.

I mean, no joke. The path around the local high school track looks like a particularly ugly Jackson Pollock painting.

The real question is: WHO is chewing this crap?

I haven’t chewed—or seen another person chew—gum since high school (and that was 30 years ago). Even back then, we only did it because we felt like rebels, sneaking our forbidden chewing material into class right under the teacher’s nose. It wasn’t like we actually enjoyed the gum itself.

So, who is spitting gum everywhere these days?

Let’s be honest: Gum isn’t all that great. After about 10 seconds in your mouth, max, it has zero flavor, so all you’re doing beyond that point is wearing down your teeth.

The dentist I used to go to, back when I lived in Pennsylvania, hated gum. And I had to trust her opinion, seeing as she was not only the only female dentist I’d ever met, but also the only one who seemed to have more than half a brain. Plus, she was the first dentist I’d ever been to who seemed to be in the profession for the health aspects rather than, you know, the sadism.

Anyway, my dentist put the anti-gum argument well: She said that chewing gum was, essentially, CHOOSING to grind your teeth—something lots of people go to great lengths, using everything from psychotherapy to elaborate mouth guards, to avoid.

But hey, this is America. Go ahead and destroy your teeth, if you want. I’m all about personal freedom.

All I ask is that you find a suitable trash receptacle for your little wad of DNA and herpes (or whatever diseases you might have going on) and NOT just spit it randomly on the street.

We’re living in a society, my friends. And if I’m picking up Rosco’s turds, you can very well dispose of your gum properly. Frankly, your gum is a whole lot more disgusting than what’s coming out of my little dog’s butt.

 

Observations (Or, Crazy People Everywhere!) – 4/30/2019

I don’t know if it’s the warmer weather or if somebody has put crazy juice in the water lately, but I’ve noticed some strange behavior—more than usual, and that’s really saying something!

Take yesterday.

While walking my dog Rosco past the local elementary school (which was off for spring break), I noticed an older lady approaching a picnic bench full of kids beside the busy playground where everyone was enjoying the spring weather (and the freedom from school).

Naturally, I assumed the woman was somebody’s grandma, dropping by to chat on her way home from her afternoon walk, but from the bewildered looks on the children’s faces as she came over, that was definitely NOT the case.

Nope. She was just a nutty old broad who decided it would be fun to sit at a table full of 8-year-olds and stare at them with a creepy and much too intense grin on her face.

I considered calling the nearby dementia treatment facility to report an apparent escapee, but frankly, I have enough on my plate without trying to rescue EVERYBODY.

And besides, there was another crazy person demanding my attention on the very next block.

This one was a man, late 30s maybe, riding a bike, wearing a heavy-duty winter puffer coat with—get this—the shortest short-shorts I’ve seen since those Nair commercials that used to air back in the 1970s. (You know the ones: “Who wears short-shorts?” and so on.)

The outfit itself was weird enough, but the expression on the guy’s face was what really got me—because it perfectly matched that on the face of the old lady sitting on the school bench with horrified children all around her.

I’ve got to know: Has the government been handing out loony pills or something, and I just missed my share?

Jump to this morning. While walking Rosco (against his will) in the rain, I spotted my neighbor and HIS dog.

Now, this guy seems to be retired, because I see him walking his dog, Buddy, at all hours of the day (and night), all over town, in all kinds of weather.

You might say that’s a nice thing, that I shouldn’t make fun of someone for taking good care of his pet while also engaging in plenty of cardiovascular exercise. And normally, I’d agree with you. But you haven’t seen poor Buddy.

This yellow lab HATES his walks. Every time his owner drags him out of their house, whether it’s at 4:00 A.M. or 2:30 P.M., you can tell by the look on Buddy’s face that a little piece of his soul is dying.

It’s not the walking itself, I think, that Buddy hates. It’s the fact that his owner refuses to let him stop—to pee, to poop, to interact with other dogs or people—for any reason at all.

Every time the dejected-looking creature glances over at me and Rosco, his eyes full of hope that maybe THIS time, he’ll finally get to meet someone new, his owner drags him along, and Buddy’s tail droops back down between his legs (where, apparently, his master thinks it belongs).

I mean, why have a dog if you don’t want to let it do dog things? Clearly, what my neighbor actually wants is a walking partner—someone who will keep to his pace and never get distracted. He seems constantly frustrated that Buddy is failing at the task. And Buddy seems to feel the same way about his owner.

It’s not cruel. It’s just . . . well, crazy. But then again, it wouldn’t be MY neighborhood if people were anything less than flat-out nuts.

And those are my observations for today.

 

Springtime Is the Worst – 4/23/2019

I know this won’t be a popular sentiment, but I think it needs to be said, just to get it off my chest. So here goes:

Springtime? Is the worst.

Oh, sure, I get what other people like about it—all those pretty flowers blooming and the trees bursting back into life. Hell, the green grass alone, set off against the bright blue sky, is enough to make an artist swoon.

But, as with most things in life, we’re only looking at the superficial when we all lose our minds over the arrival of spring.

Peel that onion just a bit and you’ll find the truth—and it’s nowhere near as lovely as those flowers popping up in your yard.

Let’s be honest: Spring combines the worst aspects of winter and summer, and then adds a few crappy elements of its own.

For starters, you’ve got frigid mornings where you still need your heaviest coat, but by afternoon, you’re sweltering (or, at least, you find yourself envying people who live in geographic locations that lack real seasons).

I mean, seriously. What ARE you supposed to wear in the spring? (And if you say “layers,” prepare for a punch in the throat—that, my friend, is the ultimate copout answer!)

So, weather-wise, you’re suffering the extremes of both hot AND cold—always delightful, especially within the same 24-hour span of time.

Throw in the rain (and the meteorologists’ complete inability to predict it with any degree of accuracy) and you’ve got the makings of a few undeniably miserable months.

But in the words of the old infomercials: Wait . . . there’s more!

Don’t forget (drumroll, please): allergies!

For those people (like me) lucky enough to have outgrown childhood pollen allergies only to have them reemerge in our 40s with, like, quadruple the power, spring kind of feels like three months of having someone beat you over the head with a mallet while your nose runs faster than your tissue supply can keep up. I swear, I’m spending half my disposable income on Kleenex—no to mention allergy meds (which, by the way, are getting their BUTTS kicked!).

So, don’t come up to me, all sing-songy and cheerful, going on and on about how glad you are that winter is finally over and spring has sprung. Do so at your own risk. I may have no choice but to smite you with one of my many empty Benadryl bottles. And you, dear reader, will deserve it. ????

 

My Life Revolves Around Food – 4/16/2019

I noticed something the other day—something I probably should have noticed years ago:

My life pretty much revolves around food.

I plan everything, schedule my entire day, around what I intend to eat.

Today, for example, I knew I had a big lunch out with some friends on the calendar. So, instead of just making sure it was marked down in my datebook and looking forward to the outing (like a normal person would do), I took it further. A lot further.

I spent 20 minutes yesterday scrolling through the restaurant’s website to decide exactly what I might want to eat off the lunch menu. (And just to be safe, I revisited the website as soon as I got up this morning—I mean, come on: I’ve gotta make sure I’m still in the mood today for the shrimp fra diavolo that sounded so good yesterday).

Convinced that I was right about my choice, I sucked down my pre-run protein shake and headed outside for my workout. A solid 10K later, my belly was rumbling, but I refused to eat the “second breakfast” (as I like to call it) that I usually enjoy after a hard run, just so I could give myself some extra calories to play with—that way, I’d have the option of ordering a dessert out at the restaurant if the mood decided to strike (and I knew perfectly well it would!).

After my shower, my friend Annie texted to let me know that lunch had been canceled. I flew into a panic—I mean, seriously: All that hard work choosing the fra diavolo for NOTHING?

Then she texted again and asked if I still wanted to go out to lunch, just the two of us. By this point, I was starving—almost delirious with hunger—so, of course, I said yes.

And that’s when she threw in a monkey wrench:

“Let’s go to the Mexican place instead of Italian.”

Now, I have no inherent preference for one cuisine over the other. But this little wrinkle in the plan sent me spinning—and right back to the Internet to hunt down the Mexican restaurant’s lunch menu.

Yeah, okay, enchiladas sound good. And ooh, yeah! Chips and guacamole!

But wait . . . I was going to make taco salad for dinner and the meat is already defrosted, so there’s no turning back now.

So, maybe tacos are Mexican, but enchiladas aren’t tacos. It’ll all be fine.

Yeah. This is my life. Other than highly ritualistic anorexics, I can’t imagine anyone spending as much time or energy obsessing about food as I do.

But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

Spring Is (Almost) Sprung – 4/9/2019

 The sunshine is a liar.

The buttery yellow glow, plus the knowledge that it’s now officially spring, by a couple of weeks, tells me to step outside after lunch for a walk. No coat needed, no gloves, no hat. I’m halfway down the block before I find myself regretting that.

Still, the weather IS beautiful, and I know in just a few more blocks, under that merciless sun, I’ll be glad I left the woolens back home.

I feel a pang in my gut. I should’ve brought the dog.

But no. I refuse to let myself ruin this. Even the most dedicated, selfless pet mom deserves a little time to herself here and there.

Besides, Rosco would have wanted to stop and pee or sniff a tree every ten steps—or more—and I’d never get moving fast enough to ward off the chill in the air. This is better. A little “me” time.

I turn my face up toward the sun and (just for a second) close my eyes (no sense tripping over my town’s crazily uneven sidewalks).

Crap. I’ve forgotten my sunscreen.

I sigh. THAT, right there, is the reason our childhoods (well, mine at least) felt so free: You could take a walk in the sunshine without worrying about SPF and dog pee. You could just do what felt good in the now, in the moment, and enjoy it.

I miss being young. But for today, I FEEL young and it’s (almost) spring and I have time for a walk and (for now) maybe that’s good enough.

 

The Cleaning Lady Chronicles – 4/2/2019

Last week, I was talking about the woman who cleans our house and what an incredible luxury it is to have her. And it is—not only is our cleaning lady kind and generous, but she’s also the most thorough cleaner I’ve ever met.

We used to have an antique hutch in our kitchen that weighed, oh, about 500 pounds. One day, she moved it, easily, on her own, to clean the floor behind it. Just for comparison, it took my father, another grown man, and me to get it set up—I’m not sure how our cleaning lady did anything more than budge the thing slightly. It’s no joke: The woman has super-human strength.

The thing is, she doesn’t quite seem to KNOW her own strength, which (at times) makes her just a smidge rough on things.

In the 9 months or so since she started cleaning for us every 2 weeks, she has done all of the following:

• Bent the slender metallic hand on my favorite wall clock three times (I now hide the clock in the furnace room and replace it with an ugly old painting whenever I know she’s coming)
• Yanked my bathroom storage shelves (which were screwed in) right out of the wall
• Smacked the knob on the radiator (which used to stand straight up) down to a 45-degree angle (the thing is made of some kind of old-school, heavy-duty cast iron—like I said, the woman has super-human strength!)
• Broken my nightlight (yes, I’m a 47-year-old woman who needs a nightlight—shut up)
• Smashed my toothbrush holder (it was only from the dollar store, but still, it deserves a quick mention and RIP)
• Knocked the glass panel out of one of the shelves of my barrister-style bookcase (the glass is unbroken, but now it moves around all willy-nilly)
• Shattered two different ceramic planters (so much for my attempt to grow parsley and oregano at home)
• Jammed my sink stopper so deeply into the drain that my dad had to use an electric drill to go THROUGH it and pop it out like a wine cork (but not before the cleaning lady attempted to pry it out herself with my fancy and very expensive ceramic paring knife—luckily, I was able to stop her before she broke that, too)

Besides breaking the occasional item, she does a few other strange things. For example, this week, she inexplicably threw away the soap from my shower, even though it was barely halfway used. I guess maybe she thinks I need to try a new brand.

Or there’s the way she flips my throw pillows (which have butterflies embroidered on them) upside-down, so the butterflies appear to be standing on their heads.

She also seems to hate our dish-drying mat for some reason. Every 2 weeks, it ends up in the basket where we keep our empty bottles and cans before they head outside for recycling. I guess that’s her way of giving us a hint.

You might ask: Why do we keep letting her clean the house if she does all these things? It’s a fair question. And the simple answer is: Because she’s THAT good. I mean, who else would move a quarter-ton hutch just to sweep?

Oh, there’s one other, rather vital thing that I forgot to mention: Our cleaning lady is approximately 4 feet, 10 inches tall and weighs (at most) about 85 pounds.

She is a teeny-tiny bundle of sweetness, who is somehow also a whirling dervish of destruction.

As much as I love her, I have to admit: Whenever she comes through the front door, I hear the distant cries of Japanese villagers screaming in terror: “Gojira! Gojira!” (That’s “Godzilla” for all you heathens who’ve never seen a cheesy old-time horror movie.)

It’s a tradeoff, but at least for now, I think having a clean house is worth feeling like a giant reptile has come crashing through our home.

 

 

Cleaning for the Cleaning Lady – 3/26/2019

My dad and I have a woman who comes over every 2 weeks to clean the house. It’s the greatest luxury in the world, no exceptions. I’ll take a sparkly shower that I didn’t have to scrub myself over a fancy bottle of champagne or lobster dinner any day.

Whenever our cleaning lady is scheduled to come, I take half an hour or so to tidy up before she arrives.

Yes, that’s right: I clean for the cleaning lady.

A lot of people laugh at this and tell me it defeats the purpose.

But I’m not CLEANING so much as clearing away the clutter so the cleaning lady can get to the underlying surfaces and actually polish them. And as someone who reads and writes for a living and has dozens of books and pens and papers scattered around the house at any given time, I assure you that I make a LOT of clutter.

As much as people make fun of me for this practice of cleaning for the cleaning lady, I would argue that we all do it—and worse—in our daily lives.

Think about it.

When was the last time you saw a friend’s social media feed with actual, normal, daily events on it? Nobody’s posting on Facebook about the bloody gums they had while brushing their teeth or the dust accumulating on top of their picture frames (but not mine—I have a cleaning lady ????).

We don’t post about these things—not just because that would be boring, but because we all want to present the best possible version of ourselves to the outside world.

In other words, we clean up for the cleaning lady.

We make things looks better, more interesting, than they really are, partly (perhaps) to fool those around us, but mostly (I believe) to fool ourselves into thinking that our lives are more exciting, more packed with fun-filled memories, more . . . well . . . CLEAN than they actually are.

It’s human nature, I suppose. But once in a while, I feel the urge to just leave my clutter out in plain sight, if only to see the cleaning lady’s horrified reaction. I kind of wish we could do the same on social media—just lay the bare facts out for all to see, warts and bloody gums and all.

Hey, it’d be better than scrolling through your old college roommate’s dull vacation photos, wouldn’t it?

 

Exercise: The Wonder Drug – 3/19/2019

I had my first appointment with a psychologist when I was in second grade.

My school district forced me to see a counselor, during school hours, at least once a week (and usually twice), all the way through middle school because the administrators believed (based on my tendency to burst into tears when my teacher made me perform in spelling bees and do speed-math calculations) that I was emotionally unstable.

(Um, just a hint, school administrators: NO eight-year-old, no matter how stable, wants to be forced to stand in front of a class of thirty of her peers and spell words that even adults would have struggled with—that’s right; my teachers also gave me harder words than the other kids because they thought I was “gifted and talented.” If anything, it was SCHOOL that made me “unstable.”)

They tried to get me to keep seeing a school counselor even after I hit high school, but by then, I was a little bit (just a little) more self-assured and I outright refused.

I mean, what was the point? After second grade (and the forced spelling bees) ended, I stopped crying in class, and it was obvious (even to my counselor) that our sessions were a waste of our time (which explains why she spent most of our time together balancing her checkbook and letting me draw or write in a journal instead of actually talking to me—ah, yes, that’s taxpayer money at work, folks!).

My point is, I’m no stranger to “mental illness.” And, I’ll admit, the “instability” that my school thought it saw in me actually DID surface in my late teens and early twenties.

In 1994, I was (incorrectly, it turns out) diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and spent the next 15 or so years going from psychiatrist to psychiatrist and medical test to medical test, trying to figure out why I got depressed and moody so often and how to stop it.

I took every mood stabilizer and antidepressant on the market and never found anything that really did much to help. My moods still cycled constantly, and I was irritable and sad most of the time.

All the meds seemed to do was make me lethargic (and hungry—I gained LOTS of weight during my years of trial and error attempting to find the right cocktail of medication).

It was only when I lost my health insurance (thanks, Obamacare—I kind of thought the point was to GIVE insurance to the uninsured, not cancel the plans of those who already HAD insurance, but nice job!) and was forced to abandon all my medication and therapy entirely that I finally found something that worked for me: exercise.

Now, I know it must seem pretty obvious, with everything we know these days, that exercise helps regulate mood (not to mention all the physical health benefits), but apparently, none of my doctors knew about the link—because not once, between my earliest counseling appointments all the way back in second grade and my abrupt departure from therapy and meds in the mid-2000s, did a SINGLE person suggest that I try exercising. Even as my weight climbed at every medical checkup, no one ever said maybe taking a walk or something might do me some good. No, no. Drugs were the only possibility.

In fact, the only reason I DID start working out was because I was newly divorced and wanted to lose some of the pounds (and pounds and pounds) I’d gained before venturing back out into the dating pool.

But exercise changed everything.

Suddenly, I was not only almost 50 pounds lighter, but my moods, though still changeable, were easy for me to manage. Sure, I still got (and still get) irritable and angrier than usual at PMS time, but for the most part, I feel good, happy(ish), and stable, almost all the time.

Exercise is not only the most effective treatment for what ails you (in almost every case, I’ve found), but also the cheapest one (which is terrific for me, because I STILL don’t have any health insurance).

I’m just sorry I didn’t discover it sooner.

Sometimes I ponder how different my life might have turned out if I had found running (which has become a huge passion for me, almost the centerpiece of my life these days) back when I was a teenager instead of when I was already in my 40s.

Maybe I would have been fast(er). Maybe I would have joined a track team or something. Maybe I would have skipped the decades of misery and angst and depression and excessive weight and just been . . . happy.

I can only wonder. But at least I have exercise now. Small blessings, right?

 

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*** – 3/12/2019

I’ve always been a worrier.

Whenever my dad and my dog Rosco leave for one of the zillion or so walks they take together each day, my stomach clenches up tighter than a fist and I feel like the back of my throat is closing up until the moment they both arrive back home, safe and sound.

Call me silly, if you like, but in most cases, the worries I feel are grounded in reality. After all, it was less than 2 years ago that my pug Chip was killed by a horrible neighbor’s vicious dog while out for one of the very same walks that Rosco and Dad go on every day.

I’m neurotic, sure, but you can’t say I don’t have good reason to be.

Still, I’ll admit, it’s not a pleasant way to live.

So, when a friend (who’s also a worrier) told me about a book he was reading—The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson—I figured it was worth taking a look.

What I learned was that, in terms of broad philosophy, I already do most of the things the book advocates—for example, not paying much heed to the “expectations” of society or caring a whole lot about what other people think of me. You can’t live a happy life as a hermit in a basement unless you’re NOT too tuned in to what society thinks is “cool.”

But there WAS a valuable message in the book for a person like me: You should save the f***s you give for the big and important stuff because it’s just not worth fretting over the little things.

And, boy, do I fret.

Not only do I worry incessantly about things like my dog’s health and safety, but I also let myself get angry over petty matters. No, let me rephrase that: I don’t just get angry. I get PISSED. Furious. Filled with blinding rage.

Basically, at any given moment during any given day, my guts are roiling over something I find irritating: for instance, my neighbor’s failure to walk his dog often enough or to shovel his walk after the latest snowstorm, leaving the sidewalk an icy mess.

After reading The Subtle Art, I’ve been working hard to let these little annoyances (which could easily take over my life, since they are EVERYWHERE) roll off my back.

And, for the most part, I’m succeeding.

It’s funny: Life is a LOT more pleasant when I can allow myself to laugh at my lazy neighbor instead of getting riled up with anger (especially now that karma seems to have stepped in and given him . . . wait for it . . . BEDBUGS!).

So, maybe I’ll keep doing my best to relax and save giving a f*** for the bigger things, like keeping an eye out for nasty dogs on Rosco’s daily walks.

 

What Do I Want to Be When I Grow Up? – 3/5/2019

Now, I know that most normal people like to listen to music on their iPods when they go out for a run or hit the weight machines at the gym.

Not me.

I prefer to listen to lectures while I work out.

Whether I download my courses from some random (free) academic website or buy them through a company like the Great Courses/Teaching Company, I like to learn a little something while I sweat.

Yes, I know. I’m a big nerd.

Lately, I’ve been listening to a particularly terrific course given by Professor Dorsey Armstrong, all about the history of the Black Death in Europe.

(Hey, shut up: I already SAID I was a nerd.)

The point of all this is that the more I listen, the deeper I delve into whatever subject I’m learning about, the more I get the urge to completely change my career path.

For a few lectures, I wanted to be a medieval historian like the professor.

Then, I wanted to be an epidemiologist, studying the origins and causes of disease.

And it’s not just this recent interest in the Black Death that’s got me wondering if maybe I’m on the wrong path in life. In the past year or two alone, I’ve contemplated giving it all up to become all of the following and more:

• A therapist
• A veterinarian
• An art historian
• A fortune teller
• A meteorologist (oh, wait, I already mentioned becoming a fortune teller, and a meteorologist is basically the same thing)
• A tattoo artist
• A neurosurgeon
• A mortician

Of course, I realize these ideas are totally unrealistic.

I’m too firmly established in my “career” (if you can accurately call the scribbling I do by that name) to turn back now.

And as much of a nerd as I am, I don’t think I have the energy (not to mention the money) to go back to school for an advanced degree now.

But still, I can’t help but wonder if it’s a common affliction, or if I’m the only middle-aged woman in the world who’s still trying to figure out what I want to be “when I grow up.”

 

The Social Contract – 2/26/2019

So, I was walking my dog, Rosco, the other day and I witnessed something that left me confused. No, more than that. Reeling. Freaked out. Wondering when the hell the rest of society abandoned all pretense of following “the rules.”

It wasn’t a crime or even somebody just being rude. It was something much less dramatic, but for some reason, it’s stuck with me in the days since. Call me a drama queen or easily offended, but I just can’t get the image out of my head.

What was it?

Okay, here’s the story.

As Rosco stopped to pee for the three-millionth time in our walk (elapsed time: 12 minutes), I noticed a delivery van pulling up in front of a brick duplex a few blocks away from our house. The driver got out, carrying a large bag of food, and started up the porch steps.

The customer, who lived in the duplex, came outside to meet him.

Now, normally, I’d applaud such promptness and consideration. But in this case, the customer should have stayed inside and waited for the delivery man to ring the bell.

Why?

Because she was wearing nothing—nothing at all, literally—but a much-too-short, tie-dyed T-shirt.

Now, as I writer, I tend to notice details, and I feel like it’s my job to report them so that you, the reader, can clearly picture the setting in your own mind. Therefore, I feel compelled to also mention that the woman in question was about my height (5 foot, 5 inches), and I’d estimate her weight at just shy of 300 pounds.

Hey, now, before you get all pissed off: I am NOT fat shaming.

I assure you, I’d still be writing this—and I’d be just as offended—if a svelte supermodel with a “perfect body” (whatever THAT is!) came wandering out of the house without any pants on.

The woman’s weight is not the point. Her state of undress IS.

I’ll be the first person to champion the idea of being comfortable and wearing whatever you like. IN YOUR OWN HOME.

But once you leave the house, even if it’s only the 3 feet between your front door and the porch steps, there are certain rules you—and I, and ALL of us—need to follow: Like, for example, you have to put on something to cover your hoohah, ladies.

Had this young woman been curled up on her couch bingeing on Netflix, I’d be cheering her self-assurance and nonconformity, both of which I find admirable.

But the moment she dragged the unwitting delivery driver into the mix, she created a social situation—one in which she is expected to follow the rules. And those rules state that you don’t leave your house and interact with strangers when your genitals are on display.

It’s called the social contract, and it’s what separates us from the wild beasts of the savannah.

Look into it, won’t you?

 

Things Versus Experiences – 2/19/2019

I’ll admit something embarrassing: I’ve read a lot of self-help books, the kind of books that tell you to simplify your life, to focus on being grateful for what you have rather than whining about what you don’t have, yada yada yada.

All of these books have one thing in common:

They always tell you that it’s better to spend your money on “experiences”—going out with friends, seeing a play or movie, a day at the beach—than on accumulating “things”—like knickknacks, books, or collectibles.

In my humble opinion, based on my (almost) 47 years of experience, this advice is dead wrong.

Now, I’ll grant you that this might be one of the many cases where what works for everybody else is terrible for me.

Take protein, for example. Everybody claims that a protein-heavy meal should fill you up for hours, but for me, eating protein leaves me wild with hunger, but eating lots of carbs fills me up and leaves me feeling satisfied for ages.

Maybe the “things versus experiences” debate is like that, but all I can say for sure is that I’ve never had an “experience” that even came close to comparing to the crappiest little “thing.”

Do I just have boring people in my life?

Why is it that an evening with “friends” feels like torture, but browsing the aisles at Barnes and Noble all by my lonesome is heaven? Why do I remember the gift shops at various tourist attractions more than I remember the TOUR?

To me, experiences are always disappointing. And don’t try to tell me that I’m building things up too much in my mind, so I’m setting myself up for failure. If anything, I go in hoping only to SURVIVE. My expectations are about as low as they can get, so it IS strange that dinners, movies, or whatever other outings I try are almost always awful.

Case in point: All I can remember from my childhood class trip to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia (besides the overwhelming stench of urine inside the “Heart” exhibit) is buying astronaut ice cream in the gift shop. Clearly, one of the country’s most respected science museums made a big impression on me.

And more casual experiences, like lunch out with friends, are no better.

I go in each time thinking THIS one could be different. This time, we’ll have laughs and create memories. This time, it will be a bona fide “experience.” Instead, my friends end up blathering about the meal they had last time they were at the same restaurant or how the premium on their life insurance policy just went up.

Seriously? Is there NOTHING more interesting these people can think of to discuss, in this huge, crazy world of ours?

And don’t tell me I should speak up, steer the conversation in a better direction. For someone as painfully shy as I am, just BEING there is hard enough. I can’t do all the conversational work, too.

Basically, I come away from “experiences” wishing I could blow my brains out. But “things”—like the books I might pick up at Barnes and Noble or the souvenir I choose at the museum gift shop—always make me smile, even for years after I first bought them, even if they cost mere pennies.

Things let me experience the memory I HOPED for, rather than the lousy one I actually got.

So, I say: Forget the experiences (unless you’re lucky enough to have MUCH better friends and MUCH better museums and movies than the ones to which I have access). If I get to choose, bring on the things.

 

See Something, Say Something? – 2/5/2019

We’ve all heard the Big Brother-y motto the government has been drilling into our heads since 9/11: “See something, say something.”

I get it. We all know we live in a potentially dangerous world, and it’s always a good idea to be vigilant.

But my question is: How do you know when you’re actually “seeing something,” as opposed to when you’re just witnessing your fellow humans behaving like the (reasonably harmless) idiots they are?

Take the other day, for example:

A squirrelly-looking guy pulled up in front of the house next to mine in a generic white Ford sedan. He was wearing all black, including one of those wool beanie hats that all the cat burglars wear in every single crime film, ever. Naturally, I instantly became suspicious.

It was not quite noon and broad daylight, which made the all-black outfit look even stranger, especially for a guy in his late 40s/early 50s (as opposed to some hipster kid who thinks he’s cool for “discovering” the idea of dressing all in black).

But it wasn’t just the clothes that made me think something was awry: The guy was also looking all around, with those hunched, quick movements common to those hoping not to be noticed.

I followed him.

Now, before you declare me insane, I was walking my dog Rosco, so I wasn’t being a creeper—well, not JUST a creeper.

We live less than a quarter of a mile from a school, and (of course) that was where the guy was headed.

Had school been in session that day, I would have heaved a sigh of relief and gone on with my (somewhat paranoid) life after watching the man climb the steps to the main doors of the building.

But school was out for Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, so I knew there was no obvious reason for the man to be there—and if there WERE a good reason, why wouldn’t he have put his car in the conveniently located parking lot right by the doors he was pulling as he tried to force his way inside, instead of parking over two blocks away and WALKING to the school?

It didn’t add up.

I would love to say I stuck around to find out exactly what he was up to, but you can only linger so long when you’ve got a dog with you who really wants to move on to sniff the next fire hydrant. So, Rosco and I walked along, and I never saw exactly what the guy did once he realized he couldn’t get into the school.

All I know is that 20 minutes later, after I brought Rosco home, I happened to look out the window to see the guy come running—no, make that “sprinting”—back to his car. He got in and drove away, leaving me to ponder what the whole point of his visit had been—and whether the school was going to, like, blow up or something.

(For the record, it did not. Not yet, anyway—for all I know, this beanie-wearing dude plays the long game.)

That’s just one example. Here’s another:

There’s a kid in my town (I’d say 17 to 23 years old—I’m not great at judging age anymore, not since I passed 45 and EVERYBODY looks about 12 to me). He rides around town on a motorized skateboard (can there BE a lazier contraption, seriously?), with a camera, a tripod, and a surly attitude.

I’ve caught him taking photos of banks, businesses, and (yes) the same school Mr. Beanie was trying to break into. I’d write it off and say the kid is just an aspiring photographer, trying to capture the decaying charm of a small town, but every time he sees me, he hurriedly packs up all his equipment and rides away.

Who behaves like that?

Criminals, that’s who!

At least, that’s what I’ve always thought, and up until just a couple of years ago, I would have instantly been calling Homeland Security upon spotting either one of these people. But now? Not so much.

Why?

Because, as far as I can tell, ALL YOU PEOPLE ARE NUTS!

Every single day, without ever leaving the eight-block radius around my house, I witness at least 50 different shady-looking or totally insane things.

I see people turning left at an intersection labeled (in two places) “No Left Turn.”

I see my redneck neighbor sitting in the bed of his parked pickup truck, (badly) playing a guitar, like this is the backwoods of Alabama circa 1850 and not New Jersey in 2019.

I see (and hear) grade-school children under the age of 10 loudly screaming profanity at each other on the playground while the “adults” who are “supervising” them thumb through their iPhones, entirely oblivious.

How am I supposed to know when something is truly dangerous or when the horrifying things I see are just more examples of all the crazies out there being themselves?

It’s a dilemma.

 

Am I Enough? – 1/29/2019

I’m a writer.

I write every day, even if it’s just a couple of sentences, squeezed in between other, more pressing tasks (that is, the kind of tasks that pay the bills and allow me to buy groceries and food for my dog, Rosco).

To date, I have written 21 books (and managed to have 8 of them traditionally published).

I write this blog every week, without fail, even if it means posting on Christmas or my birthday (there ARE no vacations for “real” writers, in my humble opinion).

In other words, I work my butt off to produce vast quantities of the best writing I can come up with.

And absolutely nobody reads it.

Now, I’m not whining (well, maybe a little). I’m just taking stock, stepping back, doing my best to rationally analyze my life and my work. And, maybe, I’m wondering why the hell I do it.

Is the point of writing to have that writing read?

Or is the point simply to get your ideas down, into a form that CAN be read by others, whether anybody cares to read it or not?

There are writer-philosophers on both sides of the debate:

There are those who say that writing is a business and only “matters” if you’re making money from it (I assure you, I am NOT making money—at all).

And there are those who take a purist stance and say that writing is something done for its own sake, regardless of whether anyone reads it or not.

I admit, I probably fall more into the purist category than that of the businesspeople. But still, sometimes I can’t help but get a little sick of just writing for myself.

Don’t get me wrong: Unlike a lot of women I know, I have very good self-esteem and I consider myself an excellent audience. But I’m an audience of one, and sometimes that can get a little lonely.

But even if I wish for more—if I wish my books were on the bestseller lists and flying off the shelves (hell, if they even MADE it onto most stores’ bookshelves, I’d be happy!)—I still know the truth about myself:

Even if I’m the only audience I’ll ever get, if I really am the only person who will ever read and appreciate the words I spew on the page every day, I’m going to keep doing it. I’ll keep writing, no matter what.

Because I’m a writer.

And yes, I’m enough.

 

First Kill All the Meteorologists 

We all know the quote: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers” (Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2).

And though I agree wholeheartedly with the Bard that the lawyer herd could use some thinning, I might suggest a slight modification to Shakespeare’s quote and instead take aim at the one profession that has proven (more than lawyers) a bane to MY existence: meteorologists.

Here’s the thing: Back in the olden days, when I was a kid (that is, the late 1970s/early 1980s), most of the time the weather forecast was, more or less, right on target.

If the weatherman on the evening news said to expect rain, it usually rained. If he said snow, we had snow. Rarely was the forecast completely and totally WRONG.

But today? With all our “advanced” computer models and sophisticated weather-predicting equipment, we seem to have lost any trace of accuracy. And clearly, nobody working at the Weather Channel is bothering to LOOK OUT THE WINDOW before typing up the “current” conditions for distribution to our phones and mobile devices.

What makes me angriest is the weather forecasters’ obvious low opinion of the public’s intelligence. Clearly, they don’t believe we’re capable of remembering from one hour to the next what they said the weather would be. Sorry, guys—you’re wrong about that. If anything, we’re a LOT smarter than you are. So stop trying to pretend you weren’t wrong. I’ve got the screenshots to prove it.

Look, I get it. You can’t be 100% sure what the weather is going to be. There are all kinds of variables involved, and (just about) anything can happen.

So, why doesn’t the Weather Channel or the radio news or any other weather professional seem to understand that?

If you declare that there is a ZERO PERCENT chance of precipitation, you are an arrogant ass. You are saying that you are 100% sure of what the weather is going to be.

Not only that, but you’re screwing over the countless people who rely on your forecast—people like me, who live in basements and can’t just glance out the window to tell what’s going on in the world.

I need you to tell me the truth about what the weather is doing. And if you have no idea what that is, ADMIT it!

Not like the other day, when the weather report, from three different sources, said there was a 0% change of precipitation, and I awoke to an inch of snow.

Um, in case you didn’t learn this in meteorology school: Snow IS precipitation.

Or how about this past weekend? My local forecast was calling for the “storm of the century,” but all we got was a little bit of light rain.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the folks at all the weather channels are in league with the ones selling ice melt and shovels at Home Depot and the people selling bread and milk at the grocery store. The weather forecasters whip us into a panic so these other businesses make more money—and then give the weather guys their cut.

Now, I’m as much of a capitalist as the next American, but that? Is just plain WRONG.

Honestly, how do these people get away with it? I’ve encountered fortune tellers on the boardwalk with a better accuracy rate than today’s meteorologists. These people are wrong MOST of the time, and yet they make an average salary (according to Google) of—get this—$88,850 a year.

Seriously.

I have a proposition:

Let’s eliminate meteorologists, along with their arrogance, lies, and exorbitant salaries.

And then let’s take all that extra money and give it to people who have jobs that are actually USEFUL to human society—people like me, slaving away (for a LOT less than $88,850 a year, I assure you!) to preserve the English language in a world of LOLs and emojis.

Or to people who clean toilets for a living.

We deserve it.

 

My Twisted Runaway Train of a Mind – 1/15/2019

I learned long ago that my brain never entirely shuts down, no matter how tired I am. It’s the reason I sleep so poorly and why I am always wide awake by 3:00 a.m., regardless of what time I might have gone to bed the night before.

Recently, though, I realized something else about my overactive monkey mind: The only “train of thought” I’m capable of having is a full-on runaway train.

Case in point:

I was trying to fall asleep one night a few weeks back, doing my best to ignore all the random thoughts running through my brain (like always). When I turned over and looked at the clock, after what felt like hours of tossing and turning, I noticed that I had been in bed for only 3 minutes.

Obviously, my mind had been working pretty hard if 3 minutes felt like 3 hours. So, what had I been thinking about?

Well, at that exact moment, I was thinking about the time my boyfriend and I took my two fat pugs to a park, where we all sat on a stone bridge and watched a great blue heron fish in the lake. Well, that is, we HOPED it was going to fish; all it actually DID was stand there, so (needless to say) the video I captured (a full hour’s worth) wasn’t particularly exciting.

How, I wondered, as I was lying there in bed, did I get to thinking about that great blue heron, something that happened several years ago and wasn’t exactly a thrilling memory, something that should never have been keeping me up at night?

To try to figure it out, I started tracing the path back along the “tracks” of my train of thought.

Before the park and the heron, I had been thinking about herons in general, because, for several years after a close friend of the family died, I always saw a great blue heron on the anniversary of her death.

Before that, I had (obviously) been thinking about that family friend, Joanie, and how much fun we all used to have back when I was in my early twenties and we all used to go out to have drinks or listen to live music.

Before that, I had been thinking about another friend I used to have, who (like Joanie) was a couple of decades older than I am. Her name was Arlene, and one night, she chickened out on me after we had signed up to sing the Killers’ “Mr. Brightside” at karaoke night at a local bar.

Before that, I was thinking about (well, okay, singing, right there in my bed, though under my breath) “Mr. Brightside.”

Before that, I was thinking about the scene in the movie The Holiday where Cameron Diaz is singing “Mr. Brightside.”

Before that, I was thinking about how The Holiday isn’t REALLY a Christmas movie, per se, and how annoying it was that TV stations kept playing it that week (it was just a few days before Christmas) as if it were Rudolph or something that was actually full-on Christmas-y.

Before that, I was moping because I hadn’t caught the holiday spirit yet.

All that, in lots of rich detail, in—that’s right—under 3 minutes.

Exhausting, isn’t it? You’d think maybe I’d be able to get a little sleep.

Runaway train, indeed.

 

What a Difference a Week Makes – 1/8/2019

Last week, on New Year’s Day, I was fighting a crippling bout of depression and hanging by my fingernails onto a slender thread of hope that things might get better in 2019.

Today, I’m feeling (almost) like myself again.

I know I’ve said it before, and I know I’m probably a little bit crazy, but I have to give most of the credit to winter.

Unlike the rest of the world, I seem to thrive on arctic blasts of wind and nightfall coming even before my dad and I eat our early-bird dinner sometime around 5:00 p.m.

The crisp, cold air; the gray skies keeping things looking (to me, at least) calm and steady (as opposed to too much sunlight, which I always find painful to the eyes and distracting to the brain); and, of course, the fresh start of the New Year: These things always seem to combine to leave me feeling terrific—at least most of the time—until the hot weather comes back, sometime around May (if not earlier, these days).

I’ll take whatever mood boost I can get—and I’ll enjoy it even more because I can see that most people around me are feeling exactly the opposite:

Where I’ve become chipper and cheerful, everybody else has turned surly. And seeing just how grumpy everyone is makes me notice even more how good I feel (after being down for so long).

And I need to feel good because there’s a lot of work ahead, not just with my actual writing and editing, but in my personal life.

Here’s a confession:

I finally mustered up the guts to step on the scale for the first time in almost 2 years, to discover that I’ve gained nearly 20 pounds (gasp!), only a handful of which I can legitimately blame on the huge calf muscles I’ve been developing from all my running over the past several years.

I should probably feel sadder about the 20-pound gain, but if I’m being honest, I kind of expected the number to be 30 pounds, so I won’t complain. I did enough of that in 2018.

And the fact that a jarring piece of bad news like this big weight gain hasn’t soured my mood—and has, in fact, increased my motivation to run more, eat better, and keep working harder every day—tells me I’m finally back on the right track.

Thank you, 2019—and thank you, Old Man Winter.

 

Happy New Year! – 1/1/2019

 This is a first for me. Usually, when I write these posts, I do it at least a couple of days ahead of time, but today, I’m writing off the cuff.

Why? Not because I’m feeling spontaneous (trust me: I NEVER feel spontaneous).

It’s because I’ve been so blue and depressed the past several weeks that I couldn’t even bring myself to jot down a few words, which is not at all normal for me.

I blame 2018.

Not that it was a bad year, necessarily.

On the contrary. In a weird sort of way, I feel like I spent all of 2018 cringing, walking on eggshells, treading lightly while I waited for the other shoe to drop, after all the terrible things (like the death of both of my dogs AND my Volkswagen Beetle) that happened to me in the previous year.

When 2018 turned out to be a relatively uneventful (and, at times, even pleasant) year, it struck me (illogically, I know) as a little bit of a letdown. (I know, I know, only a crazy person like me could get depressed over having a decent year!)

But it’s 2019 now, a new year, a new start, and this time, I’m determine to MAKE things happen instead of sitting around waiting for them. Let’s do this.

Wishing everyone a happy and healthy New Year!

 

Merry Christmas! – 12/25/2018

It’s Christmas morning and I’m taking the day off (mostly) to do all my favorite traditional holiday stuff like opening presents (and toasting the best ones with a big glass of Grand Marnier) and eating as much unhealthy food as possible.

But at some point today, I’ll also be doing some writing—even if it’s just a little bit—because even on Christmas, a writer writes, am I right? ????

Wishing all those who celebrate a very merry Christmas from me and Rosco!

Random Acts of Meanness – 12/18/2018

Remember a few years back, there was that whole movement called “Random Acts of Kindness?”

I recall hearing about it—everywhere, ad nauseam—but I don’t remember actually witnessing a single random act (outside of the ones I committed myself, like giving the tollbooth operator an extra dollar to pay for the person behind me, just because it’s a nice thing to do).

The reason the only acts of kindness I saw were on cheesy talk shows and not in real life, I suspect, is because most people aren’t exactly predisposed to going out of their way to be kind.

In fact, in my experience, it’s quite the opposite.

Most of the people I encounter on a daily basis seem to be creating their own movement: Random Acts of Meanness.

How else do you explain all the thousands of inexplicably nasty things that people do on a daily basis?

Like the person who gets in the 10 items or less line at the grocery store with precisely 400 items.

Or my next-door neighbors, who seem to think their poor dog isn’t actually a living creature and therefore is just fine with being left out all day in driving rain, subzero temperatures, or dangerous heat.

Or my personal favorite random act of meanness, which occurred back when I was a sophomore in college. I was driving with a friend in my new (used) red Ford Escort. While waiting to make a left turn into a gas station, a driver coming straight down the road stopped and waved to me, to let me turn before him. As soon as I waved to say thank you and began to move, he gunned his engine, hit my car, and then took off, laughing maniacally.

That was a major random act of meanness. Luckily for me, my car was basically indestructible and didn’t even get a scratch.

Once in a while, you can chalk up people’s nasty behavior to the

fact that they’re in a hurry or (most often) to sheer stupidity. But usually, it’s just plain meanness with no rhyme or reason. And it’s enough to suck out any faith you might have left in humanity.

At least, that’s what I thought until last week, when the woman who cleans our house showed up randomly (not on her day to clean) with an early Christmas gift, not for us, but for our dog, Rosco: a beautiful, handmade holiday sweater, with a matching Santa-style scarf.

It was my first time experiencing a random act of kindness.

So, maybe there’s still some hope for the human race left. I won’t hold my breath—but I WILL cross my fingers.

 

Fixing the World, One Grocery Store at a Time – 12/11/2018

I know I’m complaining again—or, rather, I’m about to—but here’s the thing: If I don’t point out the errors of the world, how are we ever going to fix them? Because clearly, and no offense, but y’all seem to be overlooking a whole lot of nonsense.

So, the other day, I went over to our local Acme (the one in Kenilworth, New Jersey—I am NOT about to protect the guilty in telling this story) to grab a few quick groceries. It was 6:15 a.m., and the store had been open since 6:00.

Now, I should mention that I rarely go to Acme. When I first moved here, I tried it several times (because it’s by far the closest supermarket), but I found it incredibly overpriced. Just as an example, the multivitamins that I like—same brand, same size, same everything—cost only $8.99 at Walmart but Acme was charging a whopping $19.99! (That’s a big price difference for two stores within two miles of each other.)

For a quick hit, though, I’ll sometimes go to Acme, mainly because it opens at 6:00 and nobody else opens before 7:00 or even later—a big deal to someone like me, who starts her day by 4:00 at the latest. (I SO miss the days when most grocery stores were open 24 hours; I HATE having to wait until after DAWN just to do my food shopping—what kind of world are we living in??)

Anyway, I entered the store, which, every time I go there, has shelves so barren, you think you’ve somehow time-traveled to Soviet-era Russia. I half expect Stalin to pop out of the manager’s office to tell me, “Comrade, these sacrifices are necessary for the success of the Five-Year Plan.” No joke. It’s that bad.

Paltry selection aside, I finally managed to find most of what I needed (even if it was at exorbitant prices—$6.99 a pound for chicken breast, when it averages $2.99 a pound across town? Yeah, Acme, you’re just being douchey).

At least, that is, until I arrived in the produce section. There, instead of the fresh cilantro I needed, I found a stack of yellow, moldy, smelly stuff that Acme was claiming to be cilantro (and maybe it was, once, several WEEKS ago). And the price? $1.49 per bunch (as opposed to the 99 cents I pay for a LARGER bunch at the Shoprite).

By the time I reached the bagged salad section (which was literally empty, with a sign citing the more-than-a-week-past romaine E. coli scare as the reason for the lack of selection), I was already muttering to myself about the idiocy and incompetence of everyone who currently works or has ever worked in this particular grocery store.

That might have been the end of it—me red-faced and in a slightly worse mood than usual—but then I got to the registers, where the geniuses of Acme had decided not to open ANY lines except for the self-checkout.

Here’s the thing: Normally, I PREFER the self-checkout. I’m faster and more efficient than even the most professional scanner, and I run circles around any bagger I’ve ever seen (and I’m completely self-taught, thank you very much!). But when you have 30 items, 10 of which are pieces of produce that will need to be looked up and weighed? It’s time to have the person who gets PAID to scan stuff do a little bit of work.

A young employee (the only one I’d seen in my 20 minutes in the store) came over and I confirmed with her that there were no actual lanes available, that I was expected to scan and bag all of my groceries on the less-than-one-foot-wide slab of space intended for people who had dashed in to buy nothing more than a tin of breath mints.

Fabulous.

I got to work, and despite my skill (????), within moments, the bagging area was overflowing and (of course) this confused the register’s sensors, so it kept coming up with a message: “Unexpected item in bagging area.”

Um, aren’t the groceries I JUST scanned kind of EXPECTED to be in the bagging area? Just sayin’.

Every time the machine displayed this message, the employee had to come over, enter her employee code, and override the error so I could resume scanning and bagging.

Now, you’d expect someone who does this for a living to KNOW her employee code, but in the (no kidding) 12 times that she had to input the code, she didn’t get it right on the first (or second or third) try once. No. She kept blindly punching at the screen (and then finally consulting a cheat sheet in her pocket). TWELVE TIMES. Or, rather, 4 times EACH for 12 different attempts, so a grand total of 48 attempts to punch in her code. Yes, I counted. And shut up. I’m not the villain in this piece.

It took more than 25 minutes to scan and bag my 30 items. That’s right, folks—nearly a full minute per item, thanks to the obviously intellectually gifted Acme employee. I wanted to tell her that Mensa wasn’t going to be contacting her anytime soon, but I was pretty sure she wouldn’t have had any clue what that meant.

So much for my “quick trip” to the grocery store.

Kenilworth Acme? You stink all around: bad selection, high prices, rotten produce, and incompetent service. And that is my official review.

I’m just doing my part to save the world, one crappy grocery store at a time.

 

The Worst Thing You Can Say to a Writer – 12/4/2018

Let me set the scene:

It’s Thanksgiving and we’ve just enjoyed a festive, if somewhat tense, holiday meal (what do you expect? Family brings out the crazy in everyone).

We’re sitting around the table, letting our food settle while we wait for the coffee to brew so we can stuff some dessert into our already-full stomachs.

The conversation suddenly stops and we’re all sitting there in amiable quiet, when my sister’s mother-in-law, seated beside me, turns to me and says the absolute worst thing you can ever say to a writer:

“I read your book.”

Now, before you say, “So what? Don’t lots of people say that to you, seeing as you’re a novelist?”

The answer is yes, lots of people do. The sentence itself isn’t the worst thing you can say to a writer.

What makes it the worst thing? The silence that followed the statement.

She didn’t say, “I read your book and I loved it,” or even “I read your book; sorry, but it just wasn’t for me.”

She just said, “I read your book.” And then . . . nothing.

What the hell am I supposed to DO with that?

Am I supposed to come out and ask if she liked it? Smile and nod (which is what I did, since I’m a big fat coward)? Grab her by the lapels and demand a thorough, page-by-page review?

It’s just a terrible situation to put someone in.

Look, people, we writers are a fairly thick-skinned bunch in general. I mean, rejection is a part of everyday life when you’re struggling to get your work published and read by the masses.

But to tell a writer you read her book and then not give any inkling of what you thought?

That’s cruel and unusual.

I’m not asking for praise. I’ll be the first to say that writing novels is NOT my greatest strength. I will always be a much better editor than a writer.

And it’s okay if you agree.

So, if you don’t have anything good to say after reading my book, either TELL me it wasn’t your favorite or—here’s an idea—just keep your trap shut.

Our grandmas were often full of useless old wives’ tales and false wisdom (I mean, my Nanny regularly served sticky white rice, mashed potatoes, and bread all during the same meal and thought it was “healthy”).

But they did get one thing right: If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

It’s better than saying, “I read your book” and sending a writer into a cyclone of anxiety and self-loathing that will last well past Thanksgiving dinner (and likely far into the New Year).

This has been a public service announcement on behalf of all insecure writers. Thank you.

 

The DMV – 11/27/2018

Last week, after four years of straddling the line between being a resident of New Jersey and a Pennsylvanian, I finally bit the bullet and went down to the NJ DMV to become an official citizen of the state where I was born (but that I no longer feel is my home—not that anyplace DOES seem all that homey, these days, but that’s a story for another time).

I didn’t have much of a choice. My PA license was getting ready to expire and I was going to have to endure the insanity and lines at a DMV one way or the other. It just seemed like time to accept the fact that I’m a Jersey girl again, whether I like it or not.

I knew it wasn’t going to be easy.

New Jersey requires “6 points” of identification to do anything at the DMV, and the kind of things you’d expect to be worth a decent number of points—like a valid driver’s license or your original, 46-year-old Social Security card—might as well be junk mail. No joke, a non-U.S. citizen with a fake but believable-looking passport can more easily get a license in New Jersey than I can—someone who was born here and lived here for all but 12 years of my life. But that’s a gripe for another time, too.

Nonetheless, I’m a dedicated and resourceful gal, so I gathered up a solid 13 points’ worth of ID, in addition to extra documentation showing why, at one point, I had a New Jersey driver’s license under a different last name (while I was married, before I got divorced and changed my name back).

I got to the DMV precisely one minute before they opened at 8:00 a.m. and parked in the lot across the street. The last time I was there, twenty-five years ago, parking was free, but now (surprise, surprise!) you have to pay. My experience with motor vehicle divisions told me it’s always better to err on the side of “too much time,” so I sprang for the full 4 hours’ worth of maximum parking. Good-bye, two dollars.

I was about to cross the street and head into the building when I noticed something strange: a line of about 20 people standing on the curb, not in front of the DMV but on the same side of the street where I was, on the edge of the paid parking lot.

I asked the last man in line what was going on and he said, “We’re waiting for the DMV to let us in.”

That’s right. The DMV doesn’t let you inside, even when it’s open (and even though it has a very large waiting room with tons of seating). No. You stand outside, across the street, as if you’re waiting at Six Flags to ride on a roller coaster. (Perhaps this is the DMV’s way of making you think you’re going to have a pleasant experience when you finally get inside? I don’t know.)

I took my place at the end of the line. Oh, and I should mention that it was mid-November, and the temperature outside was approximately 33 degrees with wind gusts making it feel more like 20. The DMV isn’t just ripping us off on our car-related documents; it’s also inducing hypothermia.

Luckily, my fingers were only bright pink (and not blue) when the security guard decided to let our group inside to be corralled at the reception desk like cattle, where we were given forms to fill out based on what we were there to do.

Just in case you’re wondering if I’m some sort of Luddite idiot who hates technology and never thought to check online for the forms, to fill them out in advance, I assure you: I did. They are NOT available.

No, no. Don’t be silly. This is New Jersey. We’re still living in the 1980s, with the big hair and stirrup pants (no kidding—I saw a lady with both just last week.)

No online forms here. Instead, you have to get these ancient-looking colored paper cards and fill them out—while sitting on a chair, with the paperwork on your lap, your hands numb from standing outside in the cold. Oh, and if you didn’t bring a pen with you? Just go home now and try again another day. You’re not allowed to use theirs.

When my number was called (which happened surprisingly quickly, given the fact that it’s, you know, the DMV, and isn’t exactly known for its speed and cheery service), I took my many forms and all my “points” with me to the first desk: document verification.

That’s where they review your many forms of ID and decide on a whim that half of them are not usable, like my state tax correspondence, for example, despite a clear statement on the DMV’s website that a state tax document is one of the few acceptable ways to prove your current address (and the only one listed that I actually possessed).

“Ain’t ya got a car insurance form? That’ll work,” the cantankerous document checker asked me. Even though car insurance is NOT an accepted form of residence proof, I did (thank heaven) have that, so I was able to show the woman that I did indeed live in New Jersey.

Even without the state tax document, I still had enough points to prove I was me, but (as I expected) the woman at the desk argued with me about my divorce decree and name change form.

Though the woman had a lot of trouble understanding the legalese, once I talked her through it, she finally accepted the document and let me pass through. (I found myself grateful that I once taught a class of second-graders—I was able to use the same patient tone with her that I once used with my class. The fact that it worked suggest to me that a second-grade reading level is ever so slightly above what is required to be an employee at my local DMV.)

After that, it was (fairly) smooth sailing, though even after two tries, my new license photo makes me look like a grumpy blond terrorist who really needs to poop.

It wasn’t, overall, my worst DMV experience ever (though I DO miss Pennsylvania, where you’re in and out with your new license in hand in approximately 3 minutes).

Still, New Jersey, you’ve got to get it together. Online forms that can be filled out ahead of time (and already entered into the computer system) would save everybody a lot of time and money and headaches.

And about that outdoor waiting thing? Seriously. You’ve GOT a waiting room. Use it. We GET that you don’t respect us or consider us human beings, but isn’t it against, like, the Geneva Convention to make people line up in the cold like animals?

I’m just glad it’ll be another four years before I have to do it all again. Who knows? Maybe my state will finally decide to get a functional website by then, like the rest of the world did circa 1997.

 

The Lonely Road, Part 2 – 11/20/2018

Last week’s post, all about how lonely I’ve been feeling as I take part in this year’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) got me to wondering: How much do I actually interact with my fellow human beings on a daily basis?

Now, first off, as anybody who reads my posts regularly already knows, I DO live with my dad, so I see him pretty much every day—not that we interact a ton, but I think we’re both okay with that, since we both seem to enjoy a good amount of alone time. Plus, my dad has a pretty full social schedule of his own—one I sometimes envy: Dad seems to be having a lot more fun in his seventies than I’m having in my forties (or had in my twenties, if I’m being entirely honest …).

So, other than Dad, how often do I interact with other people? Let’s take a look at last week.

 

Sunday

I spent the entire day holed up in my basement room, doing laundry, reading, writing my daily quota of words for NaNoWriMo, and (of course) working on various editorial projects.

Social interactions? Zero.

 

Monday

Monday was a big day.

I had to ship something at the post office, so I got the exciting opportunity to enjoy a brief chat with the guy who works at the counter. He knows my dad, so he’s aware that he knows me, though I can tell he has no idea what my name is, so he just calls me “Sweetie.”

Definitely the highlight of the week.

 

Tuesday

Big, big day. Not only was it grocery shopping day, but I also had to return my books to the library and pick up a few new ones. Lots of human contact there:

I nodded hello to the cashier at the Shoprite (who also asked me if I had any coupons, which meant I got to reply, “Nope, not this week!”). Very exciting.

And at the library, I got to talk about the weather (torrential downpour, same as it’s been since, oh, early June here in New Jersey) with the lady at the checkout desk.

I was almost overwhelmed with the excitement.

 

Wednesday

Nothing but work.

 

Thursday

Nothing but work.

 

Friday

I took an early-morning trip to Walmart to pick up the cheap moisturizer I like and a couple of other things. The cashier didn’t speak any English, so our interaction was limited to an amiable head bob.

Nothing else.

 

Saturday

Nothing.

 

I’d say it was a fairly typical—perhaps more socially active than usual—week. The previous week, though, was a VERY social one. Beyond the routine things like food shopping and getting gas, it also included a meal out with a Meetup group I’m in that gets together for lunch about once a month.

As usual, I spent the whole time listening to the other women dominate the conversation with talk about their children and/or other Meetup groups they’re in. I didn’t manage more than a few words in edgewise, and the food was terrible, so overall, I can’t help but look at it as $40 down the drain, plus the loss of almost 3 hours I could have been working and feeling productive instead of pretending to be interested in the dull lives of virtual strangers.

Call me crazy, but I just don’t see the appeal. What is it that other people are getting out of these painful social interactions? Truth be told, I’d rather feel a little lonely back home in my basement than be stuck listening to people who bore me, with no escape in sight.

My road may be lonely, but at least it’s interesting. I’d like to keep it that way.

 

The Lonely Road – 11/13/2018

It’s November again and I’m deep in the trenches of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), the semi-crazy challenge where you sign up to write at least 50,000 words between November 1 and November 30. It’s actually easier than you’d expect. In fact, this is my 10^th year, and I’ve successfully conquered the 50,000-word goal every time so far.

But it’s not the relative ease or difficulty of writing 50,000 words in a month that I want to talk about today, though. It’s the loneliness.

We all know that writing can be a lonely business. It’s work that usually gets done in solitude, behind closed doors, and writers can be a hermit-like breed.

The thing is, I keep seeing people on social media talking about how “communal” NaNoWriMo is. One person told a girl who was considering taking the challenge for the first time: “You can do it—and you’ll love it. You make TONS of new friends.”

My question is: Who and where are these new friends? Like I said, this is my 10^th NaNoWriMo and I have made a grand total of . . . ZERO friends.

It’s not for lack of trying. I’ve forced myself to overcome my shyness to interact on the many message boards NaNo offers on its website. I’ve even dragged myself to the only two NaNo-sponsored events ever held within a 50-mile radius of my home—once when I was living in Pennsylvania back in 2005, and the other last year in New Jersey.

The first time, when I was 33 years old, only one fellow NaNo writer showed up for the event: a 19-year-old girl who talked my ear off for 2 and a half hours about the Star Trek fan fiction she was writing—and then never even bothered to friend me on NaNo’s website.

The second time, last year, I waited alone in a reserved room at a local library for almost 4 hours and nobody else showed up. Not a single soul. If I had realized there’d be NO other people attending, I could’ve stayed home, saved the drive and the gas, and gotten just as much writing done.

I even offered to create and lead a whole new geographical region this year, to try to get at least a handful of events going SOMEWHERE near me and increase my chances of making some friends. The organizers rejected the idea. (That’s right: I can’t even get the people who RUN NaNoWriMo to be my friend! ????)

So, how is everybody else making all these awesome friendships? If nobody replies to you on the message boards and there ARE no in-person events anywhere near you, how are you supposed to meet people?

I’d say it was just a glitch, that my experience in NaNoWriMo is unique. And maybe it is—but it’s definitely NOT unique in MY life.

What I mean is, this is the kind of thing that always happens to me. Completely aware of my tendency to isolate myself and avoid other human beings, I practically throw myself out into the world, trying to meet people and be more sociable.

Want to know how that works out for me?

Let’s see. Here are just couple of examples:

A couple of years ago, I fought back my nerves and used Facebook to reconnect with my oldest friend, a guy who had been my best friend back in grade school. Within a year (long story short), he had basically tricked me into giving him my life savings and then he just abandoned me without another word.

A while before that, I managed to develop a close friendship with a neighbor at my apartment complex. We did everything together, talked every single day, spent holidays with each other’s families. Within a month after I moved (just one hour away, not to Antarctica or something), she had unfriended me on Facebook and had stopped replying to my messages. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess.

I’ve never been lucky in friendship (or romance, but that’s a story for another time). It seems like people love hanging out with me for short bursts of time, but as soon as circumstances change, even just slightly, they move on without glancing back.

My mouth gapes in awe when I hear about people who’ve stayed best friends with people they grew up with. How? What are they doing that I’m not doing? I wish I knew, because it’s hard enough to make friends once you leave the high school/college years; try having to do it all over again every couple of years once you’ve passed forty because all the new friends you’ve made have disappeared! Let me tell you: It ain’t easy.

You get used to it, I suppose—walking the lonely road. And I have to admit, in a way, I prefer it.

Because I’ve spent so much time alone my whole life, I’ve reached a point where being around other people actually sometimes annoys me more than it gives me pleasure. Once you’ve gotten accustomed to your own internal chatter, where you (and only you) get to control the topics of conversation, the silly, boring things other people have to say can really get on your nerves.

So, I’ll get back to it now—my solitary NaNoWriMo experience and my lonely little life. Don’t feel bad for me. I guess some of us just aren’t meant to be social creatures. And I’m okay with that.

 

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do – 11/5/2018

I decided this week that the time has come to end a long-term relationship.

Now, that might not seem like a big deal to a normal person, but here’s the fact: I’m 46 years old and I’ve been through a failed marriage and had my fair share of serious boyfriends, and yet I have never once broken up with anybody. Ever.

Sure, I’m done the ghosting thing where you kind of fade out and hope they get the hint and move along without any direct confrontation (they usually do), but I’ve never had to come right out and say, “This relationship is over.”

Until now.

The bad news is that I’m about to break a lifelong streak.

The good news? The relationship I’m ending isn’t with a man.

It’s with my Fitbit.

I have no regrets about the decision. We’ve had a good run, my Fitbit and I. We’ve been together for over 3 years, and we’ve (literally) done everything together, since the damn thing has been strapped to my wrist 24/7 (except for those torturous hours when it needs to recharge).

But lately, I’ve been feeling like my Fitbit’s getting kind of selfish. What I want doesn’t matter. At all. Sometimes it feels like my every waking hour needs to be about doing what Fitbit wants me to do, regardless of what’s going on in MY life.

And that’s not cool.

Call me crazy, but I think the person who’s paying for the device should be the one who gets to be in charge, not the other way around.

Some days, I feel like I exist only as the Fitbit’s slave—rushing around the house to get my steps in, making sure to be awake and active during the hours the Fitbit decrees, not even being able to enjoy a normal lunch out with my friends because the Fitbit thinks I need to step away from the table and get in at least 250 steps for the hour.

Sometimes, being with your friends is more important than walking 250 steps. Health is about more than just movement. And if Fitbit can’t be flexible (or accurate, but that’s a whole other story), it’s just not the right “fit” for me anymore.

It’s more than that, though.

The truth is, I don’t really NEED the Fitbit anymore.

When I bought my first fitness tracker back in 2012 or 2013, I was fairly new to the health and wellness thing and I needed all the help I could get. But in the years since, I’ve become pretty knowledgeable, not just about health in general but about my own body and what I need to function at my best. In fact, I’d have to guess I’m a bit MORE knowledgeable than Fitbit, since I’m aware that the human body needs to REST now and then, but Fitbit doesn’t allow for that without penalizing you.

At this point in my fitness journey, I don’t need help to know how active I am. Even on days when I don’t go for my usual run, I average close to 20,000 steps a day, almost twice the recommended goal of 10,000. I do strength training several times a week, I (for the most part) eat right, and I’m even sleeping better than usual (believe it or not—and I hope I didn’t just jinx myself!).

I’ve got this on my own.

Besides, something weird is going on at Fitbit’s app. As I mentioned in a previous blog, the social media portion of Fitbit has become a veritable meat market, and I’m just not comfortable fending off the aggressive advances of multiple men every day.

Unless the shame and discomfort you feel as you wince while reading the creepy men’s messages are part of a deliberate attempt by Fitbit’s designers to help me burn extra calories, I don’t see any reason for continuing to expose myself to it on a daily basis. These dudes? Are just plain gross.

So, the time has come, and I have to say, “Fitbit, it’s over.”

I’d like to use the old “It’s not you, it’s me” line, but in this case, it most definitely is YOU, Fitbit.

It’s time for me to move on.

My wrist will feel naked without you.

 

The Ghost of Halloween Past – 10/30/2018

Tomorrow is Halloween, and though I rarely have the time, money, or energy to pull together a costume for myself these days (let alone anyplace to WEAR said costume), I’ve always had a soft spot for the holiday.

Back in the day, I used to put a lot of effort into my costumes—or, rather, I put in a lot of thought and then made my poor mother put in all the effort (thanks, Mom!).

I was thinking about Halloweens past and wondering how many of my costumes I could remember. Let’s see, shall we?

In kindergarten, I was an angel (Mom made the costume, including big gold wings).

For first grade, I was a bride (thanks to Mom’s deft alteration of somebody’s used First Communion gown).

In second grade, I was a gypsy (Romani, if you prefer, but we weren’t PC back in the 1970s). Mom made the costume and expertly tied my head scarf. I lost a Marco Polo­–style game at our class Halloween party because my jangling chains and pendants easily gave away my location.

For third grade, I was a cheerleader (thanks again to Mom’s sewing skills). (It occurs to me, in doing this list, that I wasn’t the most original—or the most progressive/feminist—in my choices for costumes. It’s actually kind of scary, but that’s okay; it’s Halloween, after all.)

Fourth grade was one exception to that rule: I was a clock, and it was possibly my favorite costume of all time. Mom sewed the elaborate brown quilted jumper that turned me from a preteen girl into a grandfather clock (complete with a mouse running up the side, just like in the old nursery rhyme).

In fifth grade, I was a birthday gift—less sewing, but it was still Mom who created the wrapped box I wore around my waist.

In sixth grade, I was a cat (wearing parts of a costume Mom had made a few years earlier for a school play).

My memory fails me when it comes to seventh grade, but I’m pretty sure I wore a lavender gingham 19^th-century-style dress (another creation Mom had sewed for a school play).

In eighth grade, I was a clown. Talk about boring. And scary. I HATE clowns.

Ninth grade, I was a baby (and I realized that year that the whole costume thing was starting to get a little boring, now that I was too old to go trick-or-treating anymore).

In a dramatic swing, in tenth grade, I went as a prostitute. (Another wonderful and empowering choice for a young woman of the 1980s.)

In eleventh grade, a group of us went as KISS (I was Paul Stanley).

In twelfth grade, my two best friends and I dressed as Snap, Crackle, and Pop from the Rice Krispies box (I was Crackle, with the red-and-white stocking cap).

I officially gave up on Halloween costumes in college because dressing up suddenly seemed inherently uncool, but I dove back in during my twenties, going in various years as a vampire, Greek goddess, witch, the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz, and the inevitable “girl from the 1950s,” with the poodle skirt and saddle shoes.

My most recent Halloween costume was a geisha back in 2009, when my boyfriend and I went to a party.

I haven’t dressed up since. That makes me a little sad. It’s too late for this year, but hey—I think my old poodle skirt made need to make an appearance come next Halloween.

 

The Fitbit Hit (Or, Why Social Media Sites Are Destroying Society) – 10/23/2018

Okay, I have a question: When did Fitbit’s online social network turn into Match.com?

Seriously.

I’ve been a member of the social media section on Fitbit’s app for a little over a year now, and what I’ve noticed is that every week, at least 20 men send me a friend request, and if I click “Accept,” within an hour, I receive a vaguely (if not outright) inappropriate message.

Here’s just a quick sampling—from TODAY:

Scott L. writes: “Hello gorgeous good morning” (the quotation marks are mine; you’ll quickly notice that none of these men seems to be aware that punctuation exists).

Eric says: “Good afternoon my lady” (trust me, Eric; I am not now, nor will I ever be, YOUR lady).

Lester says: “Good morning pretty” (apparently, Eric and Lester live in different time zones, from each other and possibly from me, begging the question: Why are they hitting on someone they will never meet?).

And finally, MacDonald (who, judging from his photo, is, in fact, the “Old MacDonald” of kindergarten-song fame) writes: “Hello pretty how are you doing? I like your picture and you [sic] smiles too”.

That last one makes me throw up in my mouth a little.

All right, so that’s just a sampling: all of them messages I received within an hour of accepting a friend request, and all obviously intended to be at least somewhat romantic/sexual.

On the Fitbit site.

I can’t help asking: Why are these men hitting on me? Isn’t Fitbit supposed to be a FITNESS TRACKING site, not a place to interact with swinging singles?

Now, before you think I’m just trying to brag about how appealing I am to all these men, let me clarify something. This? Has NOTHING to do with me.

How do I know?

Because my profile picture would appeal to NO man—or woman—in his or her right mind. Hell, even the crazies would run screaming if they were actually LOOKING at me.

In my photo, I’m wearing no makeup, I have my glasses on (which are NOT cute and would make even a supermodel look undesirable), and I have apparently neglected to brush my hair. The photo was a quick and grainy selfie I took right on my laptop, just to fill in my Fitbit profile, never thinking anybody would actually look at it, much less be checking me out to assess my long-term romantic potential.

Had I realized what I was in for, I would’ve tried to look even worse (if that’s even possible).

My point is that these men aren’t hitting on me because they truly believe (despite the content of their messages) that I’m “gorgeous.” They’re approaching me because I’m female and, well, alive. As far as I can tell, they’re more or less carpet-bombing Fitbit (and probably every other social media site), tossing out pickup lines and hoping to get just ONE successful hit.

That? Is what guys do.

But why are they doing it on Fitbit instead of trolling new arrivals on Tinder or PlentyOfFish?

A (male) friend of mine gave me a pretty good answer to that question. He said, “Because it’s FITBIT.”

In other words, unlike an actual singles site, where PhotoShop rules and misrepresentation is rampant, these guys can be at least moderately sure that the women they’re flirting with on Fitbit actually get off the couch and exercise once in a while.

It’s a reasonable explanation, but I don’t find it—or the men’s behavior—any less repulsive just because I can see the logic behind it.

Look, I have no problem with men looking for compatible women. But my argument is, they should be doing it where it makes sense.

Don’t send creepy, poorly spelled and punctuated text messages to women on Fitbit who are simply trying to check how many calories the walk they just took burned off. Save your 1970s-style cheeseball come-ons for the dating sites, where they belong.

Here’s the thing: I (and, I imagine, most sane people) would never consider dating (or doing anything else with) any man who addressed me—a complete stranger—with “Hello pretty.” (It’s gross in both sentiment AND in its lack of punctuation.)

Nor would I consider a relationship with any man who thinks the Fitbit app is an appropriate place to meet women for romantic purposes (as opposed to a place to offer genuine, friendly support to fellow fitness enthusiasts, which is what the site is SUPPOSED to be).

Maybe all these social media sites we use every day have blurred the lines, made interacting with people we don’t really know in a too-personal way seem “not so bad.”

But I’m here to tell you that there ARE—and need to be—some boundaries. And trying out your pickup lines on women who are innocently pursuing their fitness goals? That’s crossing a boundary.

So, gentlemen, I implore you: BE gentlemen.

If you want to talk to me, try writing, “Hi, Addison. I’m John. How’s it going today?” Do NOT write, “I like U sexy smiles.”

Just because we live most of our lives online doesn’t mean that all etiquette should go out the window. Use the manners you learned back in grade school (or, if you missed that lesson, read some Emily Post).

Be polite, treat other people with respect (not sleaze), and, for the love of God, use commas.

 

Where Have All the Hobbies Gone? – 10/16/2018

As much as I hate the way every retail store jumps the gun and starts putting out Christmas stuff even before the back-to-school season is over, I do agree with the idea of getting an early start when it comes to one aspect of the holidays: Christmas shopping.

Call me crazy, but I like to know that particular burden (and financial hit) is over and done with well before Halloween, so I try to get the bulk of my shopping done between late August and mid-October. That means, at this point in time, I’m pretty much done with my Christmas list except for one person: my 11-year-old niece, Morgan, who is just about impossible to shop for.

It’s not Morgan’s fault. I get the impression that she’s a product of her generation, and I can’t help but notice that most kids today seem to have no genuine “interests” outside of swiping their fingers across touchscreens.

Here’s the thing: How do you choose a gift for someone who has no interests?

Me? I’m about the easiest person in the world to shop for because I have distinct hobbies and areas of interest—and I have LOTS of them: mythology, writing, languages, astronomy (heck, I’d live with ASTROLOGY, if you don’t spell all that well), art, history, and, of course, books. Get me anything even remotely related to any of these topics and I’ll be perfectly content. Or, if you’re feeling lazy, get me an Amazon gift card and I’ll love you forever. I’m easy.

Morgan is a different story.

Technically, I guess you could argue that she DOES have interests. They just lack focus and rarely last longer than the life of the average fruit fly. Actually, much, MUCH less, since a Google search just informed me that a fruit fly can live 40 to 50 days. I’d estimate Morgan’s interest in a subject will last about that many HOURS, most of the time.

There was, for example, the year she claimed to love fashion design, so I bought her design books and a kit for creating your own sketches and patterns to produce unique looks. I don’t think she even opened any of it once the wrapping paper was off.

Or, a few years ago, she swore that her newly discovered passion for sewing and knitting would be the one to last, so we teamed up to get her a well-equipped (and rather expensive) sewing kit, worthy of a semi-professional seamstress. Last I checked, it was still sitting (untouched) in her family’s living room.

I don’t blame her. She’s just a kid, after all, and few kids (myself excluded, but I was always a nerd) have much of a clue about what they like and how long they’ll like it.

I blame youth—TODAY’S youth—in general.

As far as I can tell, over time, with the rise of technology, young people have not only become lazier physically but more passive mentally. Like my niece, kids can’t tell you what interests them because taking an interest in a hobby or subject matter requires WORK: You need to think and study and practice to really engage with something, and doing all that takes a lot more effort than kids have ever been forced to put in. I’m convinced that once the great minds at Apple come up with a way for kids to scroll on their phones and iPads without actually having to lift that ONE swiping finger, these young people will simply never move a muscle again.

What kind of life is that?

Maybe I’m a geek, but I love having widespread interests—things to read about and learn and talk about and enjoy. Being curious and exploring everything our huge world has to offer is what makes being alive worth all the crap we have to go through to stay that way. You just feel better about yourself when you use your brain actively instead of letting the world “happen” to you.

Kids today are missing out on the business of “living,” allowing their devices to do all the work—and have all the fun—for them.

And that? Is just sad.

 

When Living in the Moment Is a Bad Thing – 10/9/2018

All the self-help gurus tell us all the time that we need to “live in the moment.” They say happiness comes from focusing on the present and not dwelling on the past or worrying about the future.

I get it. I do.

And I agree that sitting around crying over past mistakes and the people who’ve done you wrong gets you nowhere (trust me—I did it myself for years, so I know).

And fretting over the future can paralyze you. If you really let yourself stop and think about all the millions of terrible things that might happen (and how unlikely it is that good ones will happen instead), you’d be too terrified to climb out of bed in the morning.

So, sure. Living in the moment is a good idea. But it also has a downside. Hear me out.

A few blocks away, in the town where I live, there’s an apartment building where a number of “economically challenged” people live.

Often, on one of our walks, my dog Rosco and I will see them all sitting outside on the dilapidated stoop, smoking, chatting, and enjoying an adult beverage. In fact, they enjoy a LOT of adult beverages. Every recycling pickup day, they put out three massive cans all overflowing with empty cans of beer. That’s one entire can for each of the three residents of the building.

They’re friendly folks, and they seem to have a great time day to day. Somehow, they always seem to have plenty of liquor and smokes, and there’s a little party going on pretty much every evening, as long as it’s not raining outside.

The thing is: By the end of the month, the electric company has cut off their service for lack of payment and the landlord has to call in the police to mediate a screaming fight over the rent, which is still unpaid even though it was due way back on the first of the month.

Watching this scene unfold (month after month, never changing), I can’t help but think that sometimes, living in the moment can make you lose sight of the things that are more important in the long run. And I think it’s hard to argue that having running water and electricity is ultimately more essential to daily life than having enough beer and cigarettes.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t begrudge these people the pleasures they’re seeking. I’ve been poor myself. Truth is, I’m still poor now. I know all too well how much you need a treat now and then when you’re struggling so hard just to survive.

But when you let your life be nothing BUT a treat, when you live only in the moment, you end up hurting yourself—and maybe the world around you, too. Because when you focus on the present moment—enjoying the pleasures at hand without a thought to what comes next—you’re like a leaf floating on a stream: drifting along without rhyme, reason, or purpose.

And no matter what the self-help books say, TRUE happiness comes from having meaning in your life—something you can only really gain if you live in the present while also keeping an eye on your goals for the future.

 

My Dog Is Not a Racist – 10/2/2018

My dog, Rosco, is not a racist.

He’s a lot of things I could live without: a horribly early riser, a halitosis sufferer, a butt licker, and a nonstop whiner. But he is not a racist.

In case you think that’s an insane statement, I should mention that I HAVE met racist dogs before. My friend’s dog, Yukon (a purebred white Bichon), absolutely hate all people of color. (I know this because he would embarrass me to no end with his violent yapping and snarling every time he spent a few days with me at the very diverse apartment complex where I used to live.)

In my experience, canine bigots like Yukon are the exception and dogs like my Rosco the rule. Dogs seem to be very good at knowing which people are good and which aren’t, regardless of the color of their skin.

In fact, the two pugs I used to own were such excellent judges of character that when they disliked a new man I had just started dating, I immediately kicked the guy to the curb. I knew my dogs were always right about people (after all, they hadn’t been all that fond of my ex-husband and they were dead-on in that case).

I believe most dogs can read people. That’s not the thing that I find unusual. For me, what’s mysterious is the criteria that dogs use to make their evaluations.

I like to think I’m not a prejudiced person. I try to form my judgments about people based on the way they treat me rather than how they look.

But I think we can all admit that there are times—like when you’re a small woman walking alone with a tiny dog in the pitch-black darkness at 4:00 A.M.—when you need to make a quick assessment of people based (mostly) on the way they look. Safety demands it. You need to be able to tell, almost at a glance, whether a particular person represents a threat.

Here’s the thing: Rosco and I make these kinds of evaluations VERY differently.

To Rosco, the mellow elderly lady, minding her own business and sipping a cup of coffee on a bench just outside the Dunkin’ Donuts is so terrifying, he needs his mama (that’s me) to drag him away as he barks and snarls like he’s just encountered some sort of hell demon.

But the 300-pound, 6-foot-5 man with the scowl on his face, hanging out in a school parking lot at 5:00 A.M. even though it’s the middle of summer and school is NOT open? That’s Rosco’s new best friend.

I have no clue how Rosco judges people. I wish I did—because he’s undeniably good at it. That scary mountain of a muscle man, for instance, broke into a huge grin and patted Rosco with unexpected gentleness the moment he spotted us walking by.

Rosco was right—and, yes, I admit, I was wrong.

I wish Rosco could explain to me the system he uses, because frankly, he seems to do a much better job at picking people to be in his life than I do.

 

My, How Things Change (Or, My Thanks to the Onion Rings) – 9/25/2018

About ten years ago, my diet consisted mostly of deep-fried mozzarella sticks and fettucine alfredo.

The mozzarella sticks were by far my favorite food, and I was a true connoisseur. I ordered them at every restaurant and had an elaborate rating system I used to keep track of which place had the best ones.

Other than the occasional cream puff (which I could eat by the 92-pack in a single sitting), I wasn’t a big sweets eater. I often suggested ordering another round of mozzarella sticks in lieu of dessert with our coffee and after-dinner drink.

Basically, if something came out of the deep-fryer, it was on the menu.

Needless to say, I was overweight, lethargic, and miserable.

That changed dramatically after I got divorced from my fellow fried-foods addict of a husband and started cooking for myself and learning more about healthier options. Forty-some pounds and several years later, I now lead a very different life.

I eat out less, I cook all the time, and I mainly find myself craving healthy foods, like raw veggies dipped in hummus, instead of the deep-fried appetizer sampler at the local chain restaurant.

That’s all good news.

The bad news, I discovered recently, is that my body has changed along with my attitude. Though I’m a firm believer in letting yourself indulge in the occasional cream puff or order of mozzarella sticks, I do so only rarely—and my body, I’ve learned, isn’t thrilled when I do.

This past week, for example, I had a nice lunch out with my mom. We enjoyed some wine, split an appetizer of fried green beans, had a (not so great) key lime pie for dessert, and shared some very greasy onion rings.

That last item, I believe, was the culprit.

It’s been a long time since I had an onion ring—the non-frozen kind, the kind still dripping with oil straight from the fryer. I admit, it tasted AMAZING going in. But within a few hours, I was feeling anything but.

By dinnertime, my stomach was churning, I couldn’t stop belching (and trust me, those onion rings were NOT as tasty the second time around), and I had a headache that felt like someone was tightening a steel band around my forehead.

To give you an idea of just how bad I felt, I did NOT eat dinner. Me? Skipping a meal? I assure you, it NEVER happens. This girl likes to EAT.

As I sat there that evening, mindlessly staring at Netflix because I felt too lousy to do anything else, I realized something: I had felt this way before.

Back when I was still married, when every Saturday’s lunch was the fried mozzarella and chicken finger platter at TGI Friday’s and every Sunday included chicken parmesan from Olive Garden, I had that feeling—headache, nausea, sour stomach—ALL THE TIME.

The thing is, back then, I had no idea that that feeling wasn’t normal. I thought it was just “how you felt” after a meal. It never occurred to me that food could make you feel better, not worse, that it could be fuel, not just entertainment.

I just never knew.

My, how things have changed.

I’ve become accustomed to NOT feeling sick after eating. I’ve grown used to feeling just as energetic AFTER a big meal as BEFORE.

Feeling good has become my new normal.

And, though they won’t be back on the menu for a long, LONG time, I’m grateful to those greasy onion rings for showing me just how far I’ve come.

 

 

Taking Pride in the Little Things – 9/18/2018

This morning, I was walking my dog Rosco and we came across a heavy-duty paper plate, torn in half and obviously abandoned by some trash-picking raccoon.

For some reason, Rosco decided that the larger piece of the plate (which was nearly as big as him, in all his 12-pound glory) was a real prize. So, he bent down and went to work, eventually managing to lift the plate with his tiny mouth.

I’ll never forget the glow of pride in his eyes as he beamed up at me before we set back off for the rest of our walk. He had achieved his goal and he couldn’t have been happier.

It got me thinking: When did I stop taking pride in the little accomplishments? I’m not sure when it happened, but I know it did.

Here’s just one example: A few years back, when I first started running, the day I ran 5K (in a painfully slow 40 minutes) was cause for jubilation. My boyfriend and I got dressed up and had a nice dinner at a fancy(ish) restaurant to celebrate. It was something to remember. In fact, I can still tell you the date: February 12. It was a day of victory for me.

But within about six months, I’d progressed enough with my running that 5K (especially a 40-minute 5K!) was no longer anything special to me. These days, if I “only” run 5K, I’m almost embarrassed by it, so much so that I barely even consider it a “real” workout.

How did THAT happen?

I guess it’s human nature. We want something—until we get it. And then we want something else.

It’s a never-ending cycle, and I guess, in a way, it’s good. Without that hunger for new experiences and new goals, we’d never achieve anything at all. There’d be no new inventions or technological innovations. We’d all still be sitting around gawking at a stone wheel at the campfire in front of a cave.

We need to want more to keep moving forward.

But does that mean we shouldn’t still recognize—and cheer ourselves for—the smaller accomplishments?

Why shouldn’t we be glad we made that phone call we were putting off or finished that boring project at work? Why shouldn’t even a marathon runner take some pride in a solid 5K? Why shouldn’t we look at OUR paper plate on the side of the road and be just as proud of ourselves for getting it as my little man Rosco?

I think we should, and if we’re not taking pride in all the little things we achieve every day, we’re missing out on one of the greatest aspects of being alive.

And here’s the other thing: That kind of pride, that joy in achieving a goal, goes the other way, too.

When we fail, we should also take a cue from Rosco—because he only managed to carry that piece of paper plate for, oh, about 4 full steps before it got too heavy and he had to let go of it.

But (unlike his mom), he didn’t blush in shame or curl into a ball, all depressed and defeated. He just took one last look at that paper plate of his dreams and walked on—ready for his next adventure, whatever it might be.

I think we can all learn a little something from Rosco.

 

The Death of Fashion? – 9/11/2018

Last week was the first day of school in my town. The temperature was set to climb over 90 degrees and the humidity reached even higher digits. It was a miserable day, and it got me thinking about my own back-to-school days (yes, they were in the Dark Ages, but believe it or not, I still remember them).

Being a bit of a nerd, I always loved back-to-school time. After a whole summer with nothing much to do, I longed to have some structure back in my days, along with some purpose, like studying and homework. (Hey, I already told you I was a nerd.)

Best of all, though, were the back-to-school clothes. My mom always took me and my sister to the local Sears, a stand-alone department store that was always well stocked with the latest (for 1980) line of Winnie-the-Pooh brand kids’ fashions.

The thing was, and it’s still true today, by the time you go shopping for school clothes sometime in August, the stores only have autumn/winter things on display. So, you end up buying a whole new cool-weather wardrobe and get all excited about showing off your new duds, only to have the late-summer heat that’s still in full force when you finally head back to the classroom make you wear the same old grubby outfits you wore LAST year. (And yes, I do realize that these are more or less “rich people problems.”)

My point is, I recall all too well how much I looked forward to wearing something new to start a fresh school year, and I couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for the kids in my neighborhood, heading back to school in even worse first-day weather than I remembered from my own distant youth.

Then I remembered something else: Young people today don’t care about fashion.

Maybe I’m the only one who’s noticed, but over the past, oh, 20 years or so, there’s been a marked decline in the style sense of people under age 18 (truth be told, EVERYBODY pretty much looks like a slob to me, but it’s especially troubling to see in children).

Back in the day, my classmates and I painstakingly selected every detail of our school ensembles, from the Skedaddles brand saddle shoes on our feet to the just-right-neon-color Swatch watch. Kids today, on the other hand, all seem to sport one of two basic looks: shorts and tank tops or T-shirts in the warm weather, and leggings or jeans with hoodies in colder weather.

There’s never any attempt to “dress up,” and no accessorizing (beyond the ever-present smartphone in hand and earphones/earbuds in ears). You would never be able to tell, just at a glance, whether a young person on the street was headed to school or to the gym.

As disgraceful as I find this refusal to even TRY to look halfway decent, I also find it interesting. It occurs to me that perhaps we have reached a whole new level in our fashion evolution.

Perhaps we have reached the stage at which human beings have stopped caring what they look like, and maybe this is the final stage before we decide to just abandon all pretense at individuality and adopt the inevitable color-block or monochromatic jumpsuit that every human (and other alien race) wears in every futuristic science-fiction drama.

I’ll admit, there IS something about the idea that appeals to me. Like Einstein, who is said to have worn the same basic outfit every day to free himself from the burden of choosing clothes daily, I think I would get a lot more done if I never had to think about what to wear out to lunch with my friends or go shopping to replace worn-out garments.

Of course, young people these days don’t seem to DO much of anything besides stare mindlessly at their phones, so I’m not quite sure why they need all the extra time they free up by ignoring basic style (and, too often, hygiene).

But hey, I’m a busy person, and I certainly could use whatever extra hours I can muster up, so maybe it’s time I surrender and follow the herd. Bring on the jumpsuit!

 

The REAL Citizenship Awards – 9/4/2018

There are all kinds of awards out there that celebrate individual (or team) accomplishments: the Nobel Prize, the Stanley Cup, the Pulitzer, the Medal of Freedom, to name just a few.

I’m all for recognizing the incredible achievements of the select few. After all, it’s the kind of ambition and drive these great people possess that propels us forward and helps us come up with new ideas and inventions.

But in my opinion, our society is missing the kind of prizes that would celebrate basic citizenship, reward people for doing the right thing, and help unite us as caring and considerate human beings.

To remedy this problem, I would like to propose three new awards to help take one small step toward saving the world by encouraging people to do the little things we all already know we SHOULD be doing:

 

The Good Citizenship Award

We’d give this one to people who encounter inflammatory political posts on social media and, instead of clicking “Like” or commenting, just scroll on past. Let’s face it—we all know that the current political situation is a mess. But all these nasty arguments—from both sides—aren’t helping matters at all. The kind of people who post hateful vitriol NEED our comments and “Likes.” They feed on it. If we just withhold the fuel they need to survive, eventually, they WILL go away. Therefore, we present this award goes to anyone sensible enough to JUST SAY NO to political posting.

 

The Use What You’ve Learned Award

This one goes out to people who actually bother to proofread their social media posts and emails for spelling and grammar. I’m not asking for your Twitter feed to be made up of great literature, but we all had to learn the essentials back in elementary school, so why not put that knowledge to use? It’s true what they say, for spelling and for everything else in life: If you don’t use it, you lose it. Plus, if you’re not willing to make use of what you learned in school, then you’re pretty much saying that schools aren’t important and we might as well dismantle them and save the tax dollars. So, if you believe schools DO deserve to stick around, show it: Use what you learned back in school, and you’ll be one of the lucky winners of this new award.

 

The Pick up After Your Dog Prize

I’d like to nominate myself as the only recipient of this new award, as I seem to be the only person in any of the four states in which I’ve lived who not only understands what those poop bags they sell in stores are FOR, but also how to USE them. If anybody else would like to join me in the daily struggle to keep our sidewalks clean and prevent the spread of communicable disease, I would welcome the company.

 

I invite your suggestions for other awards we can at to the list. With practical, achievable prizes like these, we truly CAN make our world a better place.

 

 

On the Evils of Showering – 8/28/2018

 

I hate showers.

 

With a passion. No, it’s more than that: I hate showers with the fire of a thousand suns.

 

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not dirty.

 

Despite how much I loathe the experience, I DO shower every day. But if there is ever a choice between a bath and a shower, I’m ALWAYS going to opt for the bath (it’s still gross, but it’s slightly less horrifying than a shower).

 

Honestly, I find it mind-boggling that scientists have not yet come up with an alternative body-cleaning system that doesn’t rely on water in any way. I mean, we’ve made virtually NO progress on the self-cleaning front since ancient times!

 

So, what is it I hate about showers?

 

Everything.

 

Frankly, I’m mystified by people who claim that a long, hot shower is their idea of heaven on earth. When I hear people say such things, all I can think is: Are they crazy?

 

Which part do they like best?

 

Is it the shower spray, driving down from the nozzle and into your skin like a million jagged little needles? Yes, that’s VERY pleasant. I have three tattoos that hurt less than my daily shower, even with the nozzle set to a fine mist.

 

Or perhaps they enjoy the wildly fluctuating water temperature—too hot or too cold, but NEVER, no matter what you do, comfortable. And God forbid somebody flushes a toilet or runs a faucet anywhere in the house—then you get to enjoy a second-degree burn as well. Lots of fun!

 

Maybe they enjoy the way the water flows down over your face and directly into your eyes, burning your eyeballs and destroying your contact lenses (which, I’m sorry, but you HAVE to wear in the shower despite the warnings on the box, because how do you shave your legs when you’re completely blind??).

 

Or perhaps they take pleasure in the way the soap (and the water itself) leaves a fine, sticky film all over your body, which you can never entirely wipe off, no matter how absorbent your towel might be. Yeah, I thoroughly enjoy feeling like I’m coated in marmalade for an hour every morning. It’s a true pleasure.

 

I shudder at the mere thought of a shower.

 

And before you say I’m strange, that I’m the one who’s experiencing it all wrong and the rest of the shower-loving world is right, think about it: How can you be sure?

 

You can’t. Maybe YOU are lacking nerve endings or have dull skin or something. Anything is possible.

 

The thing is, growing up, I always thought that EVERYBODY hated showers, that it was just one of those things about being human and alive that we all agreed to endure, despite the unpleasantness—like toenail clipping and Pap smears.

 

It was only when I met my boyfriend (he of the 45-minute shower, minimum) that I realized I was in the minority on the shower front.

 

So, I did a little research. I even talked to my doctor, who concluded that my shower aversion may be the result of a very mild case of Asperger’s syndrome–related hypersensitivity or possibly some residual nerve damage sustained back when I had meningitis at the age of three.

 

Whatever the cause, it seems I’m feeling something that other people are not.

 

Which makes me think: Maybe I’M the one who’s right—maybe showers really are among the most disgusting aspects of daily life, and all you shower lovers are just numb to what’s happening to your bodies.

 

But man, how I wish I could feel what it’s like to shower in your shoes (or whatever)! Life would be a WHOLE lot easier.

 

 

 

Cure Laziness, Heal the World – 8/21/2018

I was walking my dog Rosco one morning recently, on our usual route, past the gas station, when he stopped dead and refused to step over a particular patch of sidewalk.

I couldn’t blame him. The owner of the gas station had let his blackberry bush grow into a veritable tree, which is now raining overripe fruit down onto the sidewalk, resulting in a thick, slippery, purple sludge.

I had to drag Rosco through the blackberries and over to the clean sidewalk beyond. (Now, before you report me for animal cruelty, please note: I considered carrying him over the messy section, but I was afraid I’d slip and fall, injuring both of us. Giving him a little tug seemed like the kinder option.)

I was about to rant to Rosco about the blackberry bush owner’s laziness in failing to clean the sidewalk (or trim the bush in the first place!) when, not three feet beyond the blackberry pile, I stumbled over a half-eaten ham sandwich—bread, mayo, and all, just lying there on the sidewalk.

All I could think was: What is this world coming to? How inconsiderate have people become that they can neither take care of their landscaping nor throw out a sandwich in the trash can (located less than 10 feet away)?

How lazy has our society become?

As Rosco and I continued our morning walk, the more I fumed—and the more I thought about the situation. And then I realized something:

All of civilization’s ills (more or less) come from human laziness.

Look at disease.

Sure, there are illnesses out there that we can’t control (as there are exceptions to every rule), but the vast majority of disease is linked to poor diet, lack of exercise, and, in short, to being too lazy to take care of ourselves properly.

Racism? At heart, it’s the result of being too lazy to get to know the other guy before rushing to judgment.

Even war really boils down to the simple fact that people choose not to bother to make the effort to talk things out before resorting to force of arms.

Why are people so lazy?

I’m asking out of genuine curiosity here, because I may have a lot of negative traits, but laziness is NOT one of them.

My typical day (weekdays, weekends, and holidays—it makes no difference to me) begins around 4:15 a.m., when I get myself ready and go for (at least) a 5-mile run, before coming home to grab Rosco and head back out for a 2- to 3-mile walk.

Basically, before 6:00 a.m. on any given day (before anyone I know is even thinking about getting out of BED), I’ve already traveled around 8 miles. On foot.

After breakfast and a shower and dealing with email and business-related social media posts, I drink some green tea while I take an hour to myself (I’ve earned it) to write, study my languages, and ease into the regular workday, which begins no later than 8:00 a.m. (about the time most people I know are finally easing themselves out of bed).

With only about a 15-minute break for lunch (and perhaps another short walk for Rosco), I work straight through until it’s time to cook dinner, starting around 4:00 p.m. (I’m not a TV dinner or takeout kind of gal—the meals are cooked from scratch, all the way, in my house.)

After dinner, it’s another walk for Rosco and then back to work for a few hours, before finally settling down to read for a while before bed.

Basically, I never stop working (or moving, if I’m not technically working on a paid project).

It may not be an exciting life, but it makes me happy, and I’m by far the most productive person I’ve ever met. No, I am not lazy.

It would never occur to me to hurl my half-eaten sandwich onto a public sidewalk or allow my blackberries to cause a walking hazard.

It would also never occur to me to NOT pick up after my dog, though I seem to be the only person in my town who knows why stores sell those plastic poop bags. . . .

I ask again: What is it that makes most people so lazy?

And how can we make them stop?

If we could get just a handful of people to start following a schedule a little more like mine (and a little less reliant on the smartphone and the snooze alarm), the world would be a much better place. Trust me: When you’re as busy as I am, you simply don’t have TIME to wage war or engage in racist behavior.

So, join with me. Let’s (to bastardize Neville Chamberlain’s famous “peace in our time” quote just a smidge) “end laziness in our time.”

It’s easy. The first step is getting off our butts.

 

Does Anybody Else Work Anymore? – 8/14/2018

It’s 1:45 on a Monday afternoon as I write this.

School is still in session (for a few more days, at least), and it’s not a holiday of any kind.

Yet, for some reason, there are at least 10 people out in my next-door neighbors’ backyard, getting drunk and swimming in the pool.

I know some of these people. They’re my neighbor’s sons, who are in their early to mid-twenties.

They’re not students (so you can’t explain their free time during the day as a well-deserved break between semesters at college).

Supposedly, they work full-time, but they seem to be home all day, every day—and I should know; I myself am generally home all day, every day. The difference is that I’m working at least 16 of those daily hours.

My question is this: What are they doing drinking and playing in the pool (and, yes, making it very difficult for me to work, between the constant crash of beer bottles and the frequent squeals of their prostitutes—um . . . I mean, “female companions”) in the middle of a random Monday?

I have to say, I notice this phenomenon a lot—more and more each year since I started working from home back in 2005. I’d blow it off, assuming that it’s all a question of business practices evolving, that more people are (like me) working from home. But here’s the thing: Of all the people I’ve ever known, I only know ONE other person who works from home like I do.

So, who are all these people who are free to do a whole lot of nothing during the day (and at night—as an insomniac, I get the joy of seeing it ALL)?

Why does no one work anymore? And how do they all seem to have money (to buy beer and hookers), while I work myself half to death and can’t even afford to buy groceries some weeks?

Something is off here. I don’t know what it is, but I don’t like it one bit.

And yes, I know I sound like the crotchety old man shooing the rambunctious kids out of my driveway, but seriously. Who are these people and why do they all have this mountain of free time (and free money), when I have absolutely none of either?

I beg you to tell me what’s going on—and how I can get in on the action.

 

In Praise of Memorization – 8/7/2018

I love to memorize things.

Ever since second grade, when my dad helped me learn all 50 state capitals, I’ve felt strangely powerful when I manage to master a new body of knowledge.

Sure, maybe I’ll never use it, but there’s something about having all that information, tucked away in the filing cabinet of your mind, that makes everyday life and all its challenges feel just a little bit easier.

The Periodic Table of Elements? I’ve got them all down pat—that’s 118 elements, everything from hydrogen to oganesson. Easy peasy.

The U.S. presidents, in order? No problem. I learned those bad boys back in sixth grade as part of a school project (though I admit that I had to give myself a bit of a refresher this past year—I’d gotten a little hazy about the order of the presidents around about the Warren Gamaliel Harding era).

The names of the Greek gods and goddesses and what they ruled over? Got ’em. And having all those names squirreled away in my brain helps with lots of things, from catching obscure literary references to understanding vocabulary words (like geriatric, from Geras, the name of the god of old age).

My boyfriend one asked me why I bother learning all this stuff—and not just learning it, but committing it to memory.

All I could think to reply at the time was: “to ward off Alzheimer’s disease.”

But there’s more to my love of learning than a desire to keep my brain sharp.

Knowing a little bit of this and a little bit of that makes me feel like I’m “in on” the joke—whatever the joke might be. I’m part of the great whole of the world’s civilization and I have at least a passing knowledge of most major historic, literary, religious, and scientific trends.

I read a lot these days about how schools no longer require kids to memorize things, saying children don’t learn well through memorization and that (thanks to the Internet) they can easily look up any information they might need (I guess schools now believe you don’t have to know things at all if you happen to be in a place that lacks Wi-Fi …).

To me, that’s just sad. It actually pains me a little to know that so many children will miss out on the pure joy of being able to announce at a moment’s notice what the 66^th element on the Periodic Table is (it’s dysprosium, in case you’re not a geek like me).

It also makes me wonder if NOT memorizing stuff is partly to blame for why so many of the children I meet today seem to be so far behind in terms of basic knowledge. (Of course, their stupidity COULD be because they pretty much do nothing but play games on their iPhones.)

The point is, memorization isn’t just a pleasurable way to pass the time (much more fun than playing a video game on an iPhone). It’s also a way to build the base I need to develop deeper knowledge about the subjects I find interesting or useful. And I often do.

Memorization isn’t an end in and of itself, but, for me at least, it’s the perfect way to embark on broader—and much more profound—studies.

And what’s wrong with that?

 

Why Comparisons Are Absurd – 7/31/2018

I once had a writing client call me, close to tears, on his 33^rd birthday. He was upset because he had reached the age Jesus Christ had been at the time of the crucifixion, and (in my author’s words) “I just haven’t done nearly as much as Jesus did!”

It was all I could do NOT to say, “Well, duh. You’re not Jesus.”

The thing is? In a weird way, I understood what my author was feeling.

Sometimes, I do feel a little crappy about myself when I read about the vast accomplishments of great figures from history—people like Leonardo da Vinci and Benjamin Franklin. These were people who did so much during their lives, it’s almost ridiculous.

When you look at men and women who invented things and left behind massive legacies, it can be easy to feel a little like you don’t measure up.

But then I remember something else: The people I respect and admire most (da Vinci, Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and yes, even Jesus) lived long before the invention of the zillion little distractions that face us every single day in our modern world.

Ben Franklin? Didn’t have to deal with the annoying ping of a new email coming in every ten seconds.

Leonardo didn’t find himself blowing off work, wondering instead whether the latest season of Orange Is the New Black is available yet on Netflix.

And Jesus? Didn’t have to worry about being sucked into the black hole of social media, forever repeating the dreaded cry we all make (admit it!): “Just one more click and THEN I’ll get back to work!”

When I think about all that, I feel a little better. I bet I’d get a lot more done if I weren’t being bombarded by digital nonsense all day, every day.

Besides, what’s the point in comparing yourself to other people? The only comparison that makes any sense is to compare your current self to your past self—and if the “new” you is better than the old one, then you’re doing just fine.

And so am I. I may not be Ben Franklin or Leonardo—and I’m certainly no Jesus—but I’m doing all right for who I am.

 

 

The Salon – 7/24/2018

For lots of women, the salon is a luxurious place—a safe haven away from the demands of the real world, where they can shuck off the need to be “Mom” or “wife” or “worker” and just pamper themselves with a blowout or a manicure and feel like a woman.

To me? The salon is hell.

Call me a workaholic if you must, but to me, there’s nothing pleasant at all about sitting in a painfully uncomfortable chair for hours on end while someone paints stinky chemicals on your head and slaps your hair into foils with a smidge more roughness than is strictly necessary.

Once, my boyfriend gave me a complete spa day as a “treat,” as he called it. It took all my willpower not to cry.

For almost 9 hours, I was forced to sit in one hard, backless chair after another. I was poked and prodded. I was tweezed, sanded, and wrapped. And finally, I was highlighted, cut, and curled, only to emerge looking like a reject from some junior beauty pageant, while wearing sweatpants and disposable green foam flip-flops.

That? Is not relaxing. It’s torture.

Ever since that awful day (which, I DO realize my boyfriend intended to be pleasant—and I AM grateful for the thought, if not the execution), I’ve done my best to avoid salons whenever possible.

Poverty helped. You realize quickly that highlights aren’t all that crucial when you’re having trouble keeping food on the table and electricity running through the house.

To make things easier, I switched my usual blond hair to an auburn red I could do myself with the $6.99 box from Walmart. And that was fine—until my “natural” color began, this year, to be less “dirty blond” and more “Golden Girls gray.”

Let me tell you: It’s a LOT harder to hide grays in red hair than in blond!

Something had to give.

So, I saved up my pennies and got an appointment at a recommended salon, where, recently, I sat for—count ’em—over 4 hours as the stylist stripped the brassy red color out of my hair and painstakingly painted my remaining tresses until they resembled a dark blond that one might actually find in nature.

It’s not the process I’m complaining about. It’s boring and slow, yes, but I understand that some things (like a great risotto) take time. The worst part about the experience, for me, was the sense of being in some kind of time warp.

For starters, all the women there—my fellow customers—were there as long as I was, even though not one of them had so much as a dark root in sight. From what I could overhear, these women show up at least every other week for “touchups”—not because they need them but because they (egad!) ENJOY being at the salon. It was like something out of the 1950s, when the weekly visit to the “beauty parlor” was a required part of life.

Not being able to read, email, or write during all those hours sitting there, I couldn’t help but listen to the conversation around me.

It was NOT scintillating.

Most of it revolved around an article the women were reading in a fashion magazine. I didn’t get a look at it myself, but I can only assume it must have been decades old because, among the “revelations” it shared was that you should try to drink at least 8 cups of water a day (yeah, that’s a news flash!) and that heart disease is the leading cause of death in America.

Those facts were not shocking—at least, not since I first learned them back in, say, 1985.

What WAS shocking was that not one of the women around me expressed even a hint that she already knew about these things. They all seemed genuinely astonished:

“Heart disease? Really? Not cancer?”

“Eight cups? My goodness, that’s a lot of water!”

I wondered for a while if they were playing a joke on me, the new girl, but I quickly realized they actually had no idea about these common facts that, to me, have been old news for longer than I’ve been an adult (and I’m 46 now).

Which brings me to my question:

Is the salon located in some other dimension?

Is it, perhaps, the rock people talk about when they say, “What, do you think I live under a rock?”

What is going on there that made these people—who clearly get out of the house a lot more often than I do—miss so much of what’s been going ON in the world for so many years?

All I can say is, beauty is nice, but I’d rather have knowledge, and my salon experience seems to suggest that we’re not allowed to have both.

 

Where Has All the Good Food Gone? – 7/17/2018

Back when I was married (and fat), I fancied myself a halfway decent cook.

My repertoire basically consisted of deep-fried chicken, pasta with alfredo sauce (extra cheesy!), and sandwiches. It seemed like a pretty wide variety to me—but mostly because heavy, fatty foods like those were all my ex-husband and I ate.

I look back now, of course, and I cringe—not just because my diet was so awful but because I had the palate of a nine-year-old.

Once I was divorced and no longer required to cook for someone whose idea of “too fancy” food was chicken sautéed in a pan (instead of deep-fried in oil), I learned a bit more about cooking. Not only did I lose almost 50 pounds, but I came to realize that there’s a lot more to food than pasta slathered in cheese.

The thing is, as I’ve developed my food knowledge and expanded my culinary horizons, the rest of the world (outside of the Food Network, at least) seems to have gone the opposite way. The more I go out to restaurants with friends, the more I realize that NOBODY seems to know very much about food anymore.

I can’t speak for all of America, but here where I live in New Jersey, among the people I’ve met, almost no one cooks anymore. Even the women I know who have children at home get takeout or go to restaurants for almost ALL of their meals. The only thing they might have at home is a snack (prepackaged and bought at the store, of course).

Now, that wouldn’t be so disturbing in and of itself, but what I’ve noticed is this: The more you eat takeout food, the less you’re able to distinguish GOOD food from BAD food. It all seems to bleed together in your mind, the same way takeout food bleeds together in that Styrofoam carrier. Eventually, your only standards are: Good = You don’t have to cook, and Bad = Not having something quick and easy to shovel down your gullet.

Just as an example, take a Meetup group I attend. These nice, intelligent women in their 40s and 50s have been meeting about every other week or so for over a year and a half, to have lunch together at different restaurants. In all that time, of all the restaurants we’ve tried, I found only a single one tolerable. Not great, mind you, but tolerable.

Now, you could say that I’m just a complainer, but I’m not (my rants here notwithstanding). In fact, I tend to give a little extra credit to food when I didn’t have to prepare it (probably because, in my mind, my own homemade food can never be “good enough” or “special” in any way).

So, if the dish I cook on an average Tuesday night puts the restaurant’s $25 salad or $40 pasta dish to shame? I’m not the one at fault.

And it’s not just the bad food—or the exorbitant price—that bothers me. It’s the fact that I’m the only one in the group who ever seems to notice that the food isn’t good. I’m the only one who can tell that the rubbery chicken has been microwaved and that the restaurant substituted feta when the menu specified bleu cheese.

I work hard not to be negative, but how can I rave about the “amazing” food when I’m supposed to be eating the menu-advertised roasted red peppers and they’ve served me grape tomatoes instead? If even the CHEF can’t tell what’s what, I guess it’s no surprise the diners have no clue.

But food is an important part of everyday life—even more important than sex (which you can live without; trust me ☹). So, why are we, as a society, so ignorant about it (and getting worse with every passing year)?

Why are we settling for crappy, frozen foods in restaurants (and paying as if we’re being served farm-fresh, expertly prepared cuisine)? When are we going to wake up and demand something more?

The longer we all stay clueless and accept lousy food (because we don’t know enough about cooking to tell the difference), the easier it will be for restaurants to keep scamming us. And they ARE scamming us.

Let’s stop settling. Food isn’t just fuel to keep you alive. It can also be one of the most exquisite pleasures of the human experience. And you have to know the difference between garbage and gourmet before you can enjoy it.

Okay, rant over. But please join me. It’s lonely out here in this food desert.

 

Writing and the Green-Eyed Monster – 7/10/2018

I’ll admit it.

 

Whenever I hear about some writer getting an amazing contract, receiving a massive advance, winning an award, or even getting a halfway decent book review from some random stranger on Amazon, I feel jealous.

 

No, it’s more than that. I seethe with envy.

 

The jealousy tears me up inside, wondering why that can’t be me. I work hard. I do my best. So, when is it going to be MY turn to pen that New York Times bestseller or get that million-dollar royalty check?

 

When I finally stop whining and start looking at things objectively again, I come to grips with the truth: I’ll probably never be “that” writer, the one with the fancy book on some exclusive list or winning an esteemed prize.

 

My work? Is just a lot more modest than that.

 

And that’s okay.

 

What I realize (when I stop seething and start thinking like a normal person) is that I’m not the only writer who feels jealous of other writers. In fact, I would wager that there’s someone out there right now who is jealous of ME (or would be, if they had any clue who I am).

 

I mean, why not? I’ve been published (fairly often), I get to write (at least a little) every day, and I enjoy the luxury of making (some) money from my writing. Not all writers—not even most—can say that.

 

What I’m finally starting to learn is that it’s stupid to be jealous of other people and their success. It’s impossible to measure YOUR success by looking at someone else’s accomplishments.

 

Maybe the goal should be to remove other people from the equation and simply strive to make your past self jealous of the life you’re living now.

 

And my past self? Is seething.

 

On Mutts – 7/3/2018

My friend and fellow Blydyn Square Books author Everett De Morier has a theory when it comes to dogs.

He says a purebred dog is carefully created to DO something—whether the job in question is retrieving or hunting or, in the case of the two pugs I had for 15 years, behaving like the Asian royalty they are and being waited on hand and foot by their human.

A mutt, on the other hand, has no specific function programmed into its genes and, therefore, Everett says, it can just be a DOG.

Until I met my new dog, Rosco, I had no direct evidence of the accuracy of Everett’s theory in practice. But now? Call me a convert.

To get technical, Rosco is what they call a chug—a deliberate mix between a pug and a chihuahua. But no matter what fancy name you give a dog made from two different breeds—Labradoodle, Puggle, Chug—let’s face the facts: It’s a mutt.

And I couldn’t be happier with my little mutt.

Don’t get me wrong: My pugs, Caesar and Chip, were great dogs. I loved them more than any human parent could ever love an actual child (I’m intense like that ????). But they were a LOT of work.

Bred to be lapdogs, pampered and praised, my pugs refused to do much of anything beyond eating and resting, no matter how much I might want them to do it.

Sit? Only if there’s a snack involved, thank you.

Go for a walk? Only if it was THEIR idea and the weather was neither rainy nor above 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

Besides being picky about what commands they’d deign to obey, they also demanded homemade food and absolutely refused to eat anything store-bought. I spent hours every week creating a gourmet concoction of chicken, sweet potatoes, broth, and vegetables that would rival the entrees in most of the restaurants I’ve tried lately.

My pugs were not exactly dogs.

They were, in more than just the sappy sense, my children. They didn’t exist to please me, like people expect a dog to do. Instead, it was MY role to please THEM.

And for 15 years, I had no idea that our relationship was in any way abnormal. When I’d complain about how difficult it was taking care of dogs, people would give me odd looks. It’s only now, in the “Age of Rosco,” that I’ve learned not all dogs require more work than your day job.

My little mutt Rosco? Is a whole different story.

His entire life (even after only knowing me and my dad, with whom I live, for about a month) is about making his humans happy.

From the time he gets up in the morning, crying and freaking out in sheer ecstasy at the mere sight of me in the kitchen, upset because he can’t quite kiss and hug me enough, until the time he crashes into sleep at night, his whole day is about looking for ways to make our lives richer and fuller.

Sure, his ideas for improving my life may differ a bit from mine—like, say, the walking. I already get plenty of exercise and could probably do without Rosco forcing me into an extra 3 to 4 miles a day. And I have to admit, it wouldn’t be my first choice to have a smelly dog tongue bathing my face every time I try to sit down and read.

But the point is, Rosco means well and everything in his brain is focused on making his humans happy. Being a source of unconditional love is his one and only job, and he does it extremely well.

Plus, he eats dry kibble straight out of the bag—no muss, no fuss, and no sweet potatoes. Victory!

So, kudos, Everett De Morier. Your mutt theory? Is right on the money.

 

You can read more about Everett’s theories on dogs, food, and other vital topics at his website—www.everettdemorier.com—and in his soon-to-be-published collection of essays, The Invention of Everything: Insights on Life, Food, and One Good Thermos (available for preorder at https://www.amazon.com/Invention-Everything-Insights-Life-Thermos-ebook/dp/B07F228C89/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1530616100&sr=8-2&keywords=everett+de+morier).

 

 

 

On Dogs, Death, and Betrayal – 6/26/2018

I have a new dog.

Now, in most homes, a new pet is cause for celebration—a new family member to love and enjoy. And yes, there IS some of that. Rosco (my new two-year-old chug—that’s a pug/chihuahua mix) is a great little guy.

But for me, there’s sadness behind the novelty and the joy, because it’s only been a little over a year since my pugs, Caesar and Chipper, died.

Even as I write this, I have to stop myself from referring to Caesar and Chip as my “real” dogs. But somewhere deep down inside me, that’s exactly what they were.

No—they were more than that. They were more than pets to me. They were my best friends, my children—the only children I’m ever going to have.

And because they meant so much to me, Rosco’s arrival has left me feeling ambivalent, torn.

Because here’s what I can’t help but think:

If I love Rosco, it means that Caesar and Chip never mattered.

Intellectually, of course, I know this is nonsense.

Nothing can or ever will change how much I loved my “real” dogs (there it is again). But even when I tell myself how silly I’m being, I can’t help but feel that letting myself care about a new dog is a betrayal of the old ones.

I get how stupid that is. According to this logic, no widow could ever remarry, no parent could have a child after losing one, no goldfish could be replaced (or maybe even upgraded to a hamster). But the heart is not a logical organ, and right now, it’s my heart that’s doing the thinking, not my brain.

I know these feelings will fade over time. I’ll feel less like bursting into tears every time Rosco climbs on my lap and gives me a kiss. I won’t feel the need to offer a silent apology every time I pass the photo of my pugs that I keep on my dresser.

Eventually, Rosco will be a normal part of my everyday life and that will be okay.

But for now, I’m betraying my children—and that doesn’t seem okay.

Still, I can’t help liking the new guy. I mean, how can you NOT fall for a face as goofy as his?

Yeah, I think Rosco and I will be just fine. We just need a little time.

 

Being Ernest Hemingway – 6/19/2018

 

Please note: I wrote this (and did the “experiment”) a few months ago. I am NOT in imminent danger of alcohol poisoning, nor do I need to be enrolled in a substance abuse program. Got that? Okay, then, read on. ????

 

Today, I’m going to be Hemingway, using alcohol in an attempt to unleash the creative muse. And also writing mostly in short sentences. Probably because you can only manage short sentences when you’re drunk.

Let’s see how it goes.

 

Stage One:

You (that is, I, but let’s experience this together, shall we?) pour a glass of wine.

It’s cheap stuff, out of the box. You don’t need anything fancier when the point is to alter your consciousness, not complement the taste of fine food.

Your nose gets in on it first—and it’s not good. Wine always smells like vinegar at first, to me, at least. Or sometimes like feet. Vinegar is better.

It TASTES better than it smells (thank God!). A little, anyway.

Better than the taste is the warmth—the flood of well-being and hope, the sense that anything is possible—that happens the moment the first sip of wine travels down your esophagus.

That’s when the switch flips and it’s all you can do NOT to take another sip. So, you take one.

But the magic is gone. Now you’re just wondering what happened. How can you get back that momentary feeling of power and possibility?

So, you keep drinking, even though the sensation is gone.

The wine goes down easily, too easily. After that first sip, the rest of the glass is like water, but the thirst you feel never quite gets quenched.

It’s at this stage where you realize how easy it must be for some people to become alcoholics. You thank the heavens at this point that you’re NOT actually Hemingway (because if you were, you’d be searching for a gun pretty soon).

 

Stage Two:

The sleepiness sets in next, not even halfway through the first glass of wine. Your eyes feel tight around the edges, and if you wear contacts, like I do, they MUST COME OUT SOON!

Things start to get hazy and everything seems like a little too much of a hassle.

Cook dinner? No, thanks. I’m not all that hungry.

Go inside to use the bathroom? Uh-uh. This bush over here looks good enough.

Go out? Nah. I’m fine zoned out right here in front of the TV tonight.

Everything feels stiff, almost plasticized, like the world has been dipped in a thin coat of shellac.

This is also the stage where you’ll want to pee. Avoid it. Break the seal too soon and you’ll never stop running to the toilet (or back to that bush).

 

Stage Three:

On to glasses two and three:

You spill a little as you pour—just on your hand, but it’s a sign of things to come. Your reflexes are already off. You’re not yourself. Do NOT attempt a cartwheel now. Trust me.

This is the danger zone. You can stop drinking now and be just fine or you can settle in and commit to the ride.

College kids and alcoholics? Head straight for Stage Four.

 

Stage Four:

You can’t write by hand anymore—or drive, or work any sort of machinery. You might still THINK you’re okay, but you’re not.

For those of us who just drink too much once in a while (or as part of a writing experiment), this is the point where we know we should stop, but we think the whole night be end up being “special” if we keep going. So we—that is, you—do.

Writers (like Hemingway, I imagine) reach Stage Four and think we’ll suddenly make a breakthrough and figure out how to pen the Great American Novel.

Artists? Swear this will be the night they produce their finest masterpiece.

I imagine musicians think this is the evening they’ll write the song that changes the whole world.

But instead, whoever you are, you end up watching TV, playing games on a tablet or phone, or flipping aimlessly through magazines.

The truth is, you can’t create when you’re this fuzzy, no matter what they tell you about Hemingway. There’s a reason his books are all about the same repetitive “man” stuff. You can’t come up with new ideas when you’ve reached Stage Four (or beyond).

So, you keep drinking, pass the time, and either drink some water to try to ward off the hangover or head directly for Stage Five.

 

Stage Five:

One more drink! One more!

You say this every 15 minutes or so, honestly believing that each drink will be the last, but you feel that compulsion, that magic (or so it seems, in Stage Five), and you keep going.

If you’re normally on the reserved side, you become the life of the party. If you’re normal, you may become a bit of a slut. If you’re already a slut, you’re likely to end up in some serial killer’s van.

Avoid Stage Five, because of all of this and also because it’s inevitably followed by Stage Six.

 

Stage Six:

Vomiting.

Headache.

Fatigue.

All of it for longer than you believe is humanly possible—and for WAY longer than you spent drinking (which is inherently unfair).

 

When you look at it this way, you can’t help but wonder what the point is in drinking at all. Basically, it’s 2 minutes of magic followed by several hours of avoiding reality (and not in that GOOD way we writers have—by writing an alternative reality), followed by hours (or even a full day) of complete and utter physical misery.

Sorry, Ernest. I don’t think liquor is the best writing tool on the market. From now on, I think I’ll stick to green tea.

 

Can’t We Please Speed Things Up? – 6/12/2018

I always hear people say that the world moves too fast and how much they wish they could slow things down, stop and smell the roses, yada yada yada.

To me? The world feels like the slowest turtle ever to walk the Earth, plodding along at a pace too slow to be seen with the naked eye.

At least a thousand times a day, I find myself screaming silently at the world around me: “Hurry up already!”

I admit, I’m an irritable person, so it stands to reason that even a slight delay—that slow-loading web page, that always-running-behind lunch buddy—would grind my nerves.

But honestly, who has time for this nonsense?

I go to fill my water bottle and have to wait (yes, I count—blame my OCD, but I count just about everything) 30 whole seconds!

I log on to Twitter to post my daily quote about writing and have to wait an ungodly 10 seconds for the site to load.

I go for my run in the morning and have to wait DECADES while the idiot in the white SUV (who has clearly not had his first coffee of the day) to cruise past before I can cross the road. Hey, buddy, here’s a clue: I shouldn’t be RUNNING faster than you are DRIVING!

Most days, I feel like I’m the only person (or thing) on Earth moving at normal speed and everyone and everything else is in a perpetual state of slow motion. Hell, sometimes it seems more like NO motion.

I’m not entirely impatient, I assure you. I once sat in a bank for almost 5 hours while the incompetent staff attempted to sign me up for a new checking account and I never uttered a word of complaint or, you know, killed anyone.

I just don’t like to waste my time—and losing 30 seconds at the water cooler? That’s a waste of time.

The thing is, the Poland Spring water cooler can’t help itself. It’s been engineered a certain way and can’t physically operate any faster.

But those of you, my friends, who are creeping along the highway at 30 miles an hour in the fast lane (always in the fast lane!) or taking up the whole sidewalk and barely inching forward while I struggle to find a way around you? You DO have a choice.

I have so much to do and time is not my friend. I’m working hard to make this ugly world of ours a better, more beautiful place. And I’m not asking anyone to get off their butts and help. I’m only asking you to be considerate and not slow ME down.

Consider this: Maybe the reason the world seems like it’s moving so fast is because YOU are moving so slowly. Trust me: We’ll all enjoy smelling the roses a lot more after all the work is done, so please step off the path and let me get on with it. You’ll thank me later. ????

 

Lady with an Ermine – 6/5/2018

One of my favorite pieces of artwork has always been Leonardo da Vinci’s painting Lady with an Ermine.

I’m not sure why I like it so much. Maybe it’s because I love da Vinci himself. Leonardo was the ultimate Renaissance Man—dabbling in everything from the art he’s best known for to scientific inventions to theater and athletics.

As someone who grew up nerdy and completely hopeless in sports, I always dreamed of being the kind of well-rounded cultural and physical dynamo our pal Leonardo was.

My reverence for the Renaissance Man is probably why I do so many things (with far less success than da Vinci, I’ll be the first to admit): writing, studying languages, learning about art and architecture, and trying to find my athletic side (these days, I’m a passable runner).

I’ve even tried my hand at painting, like Leonardo himself (with rather disastrous results). But at least I know now that I’m not a painter.

I’m better as a critic.

For example, I have to note that Lady with an Ermine is, in my opinion, not quite perfect. The woman’s hand, for starters, is an almost comical claw that reminds me of a rubber prop for some kid’s Halloween costume. Sure, it’s better than anything I could ever do, but it’s not the most exquisitely rendered hand in history—not by a long shot.

And maybe that’s something else I love about the painting. Even magnificent Leonardo didn’t always hit it out of the park. His finished product was, on occasion, less than brilliant (even if he himself was always pretty brilliant). But even when he didn’t achieve perfection, he didn’t quit; he didn’t (like so many of us) stick to doing only the things he was good at.

For good or for bad, Leonardo continued to dabble, to try, to learn and grow, in any field that interested him.

Shouldn’t we all be doing the same?

I hate when people say we need to specialize, choose a path, avoid being a dilettante. Life isn’t a restaurant with just one fixed course on the menu that you have to eat forever.

No. Life is a never-ending buffet and our job is to try everything that looks good—even if not every single one works out. The point isn’t to be perfect. The point is to enjoy every minute we get as much as we can. Just like Leonardo.

 

Sleep and M: An Unhappy Friendship – 5/29/2018

I’ve never been a good sleeper.

Even as a child, I don’t recall ever feeling well rested in the morning, and when people talk about “waking up,” I hardly know what they mean. I’m rarely asleep long enough to “wake.” I’m lucky to drift in half-sleep long enough to have part of a disturbing dream before jolting back to consciousness.

Needless to say, I live life in a pretty groggy state. You know how you feel at the end of a really hard day, or after crying for hours? How your eyes feel so heavy, it’s a battle to keep them open? That’s how I feel all the time. Only I know if I let my eyes close, my brain will instantly kick into high gear, preventing me from falling asleep.

I’m like one of those dolls—you know the kind. When you lay the doll down, the eyes close, and when you stand it up, they open. Only for me, it’s more like: Stand up, eyes want to close; lie down, eyes pop open.

It’s not an easy way to live.

I’ve been through all the medical tests—sleep studies, drug trials, behavioral and environmental modifications. Nothing has ever worked.

All the doctors can tell me is that, for some unknown reason, I get over 3 times less deep sleep per night than the average person. Most of the time, if I fall asleep at all, I get stuck in REM sleep and wake up for good before I ever reach the deep-sleep stage.

That’s why I’m tired all the time.

In my whole life, I remember only one night—one blissful, never-to-be-repeated night—of good, uninterrupted, restful sleep.

It was at a crummy motel halfway through a road trip from Pennsylvania to Texas, somewhere in the backwoods of Tennessee. I’d been up (like usual) since before dawn, but maybe all the driving I had done—for hours, through pounding rain, over the winding and hilly roads of Tennessee—was what made the difference.

I slept. And it was phenomenal.

That was 8 years ago and I still think about the night—so perfect (despite the smelly motel room with its moldy shower)—just about every day.

I can’t help but envy all you “normal” people who get at least a few hours of real sleep most, if not all, nights. Gotta say it: I kind of hate you!

My biggest regret is that I can’t drive over treacherous, mountainous roads every day. I might actually turn into an ordinary person, sleeping soundly every night.

I wonder if there are any job openings to become one of those ice-road truckers? That sort of thing might just do the trick.

 

S.A.D. – 5/23/2018

Lots of people get depressed during the cold winter months—so many, in fact, that there’s a name for it: seasonal affective disorder, or SAD.

Me? I’m the opposite.

I thrive during the dark days of winter but slowly peter down to an inevitable depression every year as the days grown longer and hotter.

Maybe it’s the fact that I hate the warm, sticky weather.

Maybe I hate all that extra sunlight, which keeps me at work (and awake) even more than I’m already inclined to be.

Or maybe this time around, it has something to do with the fact that today marks a year since my precious pug Chip was brutally attacked (and killed) by our neighbor’s dog.

Whatever the cause, I can report that this dip in my state of mind happens every year, without fail. And the only surefire cure? Autumn.

It doesn’t help the situation that this year, we had a particularly brutal winter and a rainier than average March and April, which screwed up my usual running schedule and left me feeling even more off-kilter than I would in an ordinary spring. I’m fighting my way back now, but it’s not easy.

For now, all I can say is, I miss you, Old Man Winter. No matter how much everybody else complains about your blustery ways, you’ll always have a fan in me.

 

On “Spring” Cleaning – 5/19/2018

I was throwing out all my hoarded-up paper and assorted and sundry trash, trying to get myself organized, and vacuuming behind those tough-to-move pieces of furniture the other day when something occurred to me:

Why do we do SPRING cleaning?

I’m not saying we shouldn’t clean in the spring. Truth be told, I think we ought to be cleaning at least a little bit every single day, not just once a YEAR! ????

What I’m asking is: Wouldn’t FALL cleaning make more sense?

Hear me out.

We have this cultural compulsion when the flowers bloom and the air gets warmer to open the windows and sweep out the dust to celebrate the change in the weather.

And that’s fantastic.

But wouldn’t it logically make more sense to do all that cleaning and airing and scrubbing in the autumn? You know, right before we shut ourselves up in our airtight houses, surrounded by all our dust and filth?

So, join me, won’t you, in praise of FALL cleaning. If you’re only planning to scrape the accumulated mud off your floor and the egg off your frying pan once a year, you might as well do it in October instead of right now. At least maybe the scent of spring tulips and hydrangeas drifting in from outside will mask your stench and let you skip the spring cleaning.

 

Living Life and Saving the World – 5/15/2018

Sometimes I feel like I’m not exactly living my life.

Sure, I’m breathing, eating, moving—I am ALIVE. There’s no question there. But many days, when I stop to think about it, I realize there are few times when I DO anything that has a real impact on the world.

As much as I love writing and editing, and I DO believe I play a valuable role in protecting the sanctity of the written word (and, I hope, making the world a slightly more beautiful or at least interesting place with all the words I put out there), I’m not exactly Alexander the Great, am I?

I’m not conquering lands, building an empire, or creating a legacy to last for thousands of years.

On the other hand, I’m also not slaughtering villagers, spreading disease, or enslaving the masses, so I suppose there’s a balance involved when it comes to living an impactful life.

All I’m saying is, sometimes I feel like I should be doing . . . MORE.

Instead of reading about other people’s exploits or watching the people on the screen save the world, I feel like I should be getting out there and having a few adventures of my own.

But let’s be honest: Who has the energy or the time? Between running, yoga, working at least 12 hours a day, keeping up with my zillion hobbies, and trying to maintain at least some semblance of a social life, there’s very little time (or motivation) left over for me to use to invade Persia—or even write a second daily haiku poem.

I guess the lesson is that we all affect the world in our own way and we have to learn to be happy with our unique (if tiny) role. And for the most part, I’m happy with mine. It may not be quite as exciting as, say, putting down a Mongol horde, but I like to think making books has some value.

Of course, if you happen to spot a rampaging Mongol (or other) horde, give me a shout. Maybe I’ll have enough energy after editing this history textbook to ride on out and save civilization. Just this once.

 

A Slave to My Stomach – 5/9/2018

Some days, it occurs to me that my entire life pretty much revolves around food.

Now, before you sign me up for Overeaters Anonymous, let me clarify that, for the most part, I tend to eat pretty healthy, and I work out more or less every day, so this is not some kind of cry for help. It’s just an observation.

I get up in the morning and the first thing on my mind (after my run, of course) is tea.

Yes, I know tea is not food, but it IS something you put in your stomach, so I think it counts, because my body does NOT let me start the day without it.

While I drink my huge pot of green tea, I think about what I’m going to eat for breakfast. (I do other stuff, too, but no matter how productive I am while I’m trying to get my head together and start the day, the idea of breakfast is always there, nagging at me).

After tea (and breakfast—which is usually something fairly light, like a yogurt parfait with berries and granola), I get to work. As much as I love what I do, it still takes less than an hour before my mind is drifting away from the project at hand and back to—you guessed it—food.

“What’s for lunch?” my stomach demands, usually with a little growl (as if we didn’t just eat our weight in mixed-berry yogurt).

If I don’t have an answer that my body likes, along with a planned time to EAT the lunch in question, I will be so distracted all morning, I might as well just abandon work entirely.

Now, no matter what time I eat breakfast—whether it’s 5:00 or 9:30 a.m.—I’m still starving by 11:00, because in my head, that’s the best possible time to eat lunch. Don’t ask me why. I couldn’t tell you.

So, at 11:00, I take a short break from work and eat my lunch, which (even while I’m eating) gets my stomach wondering about what we might be having for dinner. Really, it never quite ends.

Thankfully, I learned about these food-based idiosyncrasies of mine a long time ago and I’ve figured out some ways to work around them.

For example, I always plan my dinners for the week on Sunday, so in most cases, I can easily remind my nagging, annoying stomach exactly what home-cooked delight it can expect to enjoy at 5:00. (If I try to push back dinner any later than that, I’m pretty sure my body would force me to gnaw off my own foot to avoid starvation—that’s how hungry it always thinks it is.)

Knowing what I’m going to eat and when is the only way I can shut my stomach up and let my brain (you know, the part of my body that actually holds our whole life together) get some stuff done.

It’s not an easy way to live, but I don’t seem to have much of a choice.

I guess I should just be grateful that my body is generally satisfied with vegetables and hummus, chicken breast and fish, and other foods that are fairly good for me. There was a time when things were different and my stomach was nagging me not just to EAT, but to eat mozzarella sticks and chicken finger baskets with fries. Things could be a lot worse.

Now, what was on the menu for lunch again? Ugh . . .

 

Body Versus Mind – 5/1/2018

Sometimes I think my body is sabotaging me.

I love to DO things—run, write, read, learn, cook, hang out with friends, and, of course work (mostly work). I may, in fact, be a bit of a workaholic. The more projects on my plate, the happier I feel. In some strange way, I think I like the feeling of being ever so slightly overwhelmed.

But the me who likes that feeling seems to exist only in my mind. My body? Is a different story.

My body seems to like to do absolutely nothing (except eat—a LOT). And every time my brain and I get ourselves good and excited about all the books we have to read and the projects we have to edit, my body decides to get sick.

Usually, it’s just a touch of the sniffles, a dull headache, or an overwhelming sense of fatigue—nothing life-threatening. I admit, it doesn’t take much to throw me off my game (after all, I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in years, maybe decades, so it’s easy to make me feel like I just can’t go on).

When my body pulls one of its stunts, I always end up—for at least a day—crashed out on the couch, barely able to move (other than to get more food many, many times), until my lazy body gets its fill of nothingness and lets the rest of me get some stuff done.

Now, before you say I should proactively let myself take a break now and then, so my body won’t feel the need to shut down, let me tell you: I do.

I’ve always done my best to listen to my body and take care of whatever it needs, in terms of food, exercise, plenty of water, and rest. My body pretty much always gets its way.

I just wish it would return the favor once in a while!

Is the Universe Evil or Does It Just Hate Me? – 4/24/2018

I live in a perpetual state of annoyedness (if that’s even a real word—I’m too annoyed right now to bother looking it up.)

They always say don’t sweat the small stuff, but trust me, when EVERY little thing in your life (and pretty much every big thing, too) tends to go wrong every day of every week of every—well, you get my drift—you’d start sweating it whether you wanted to or not.

Just this morning, for example, I was taking a shower and, as I watched, my razor—which was sitting perfectly still, not being touched by me OR the water stream—decided to leap off the shelf, several inches straight up into the air (apparently, to gather speed), and then flew straight down to the floor to slice my foot.

Little things like that—jars inexplicably flying out of the fridge and breaking when I’m nowhere near them, books sliding off perfectly flat shelves even when there’s NOT an earthquake in progress—happen to me all the time.

Basically, around me, the laws of physics and gravity are suspended if it means God or the universe can find a funny new way to upset me. I’m sure it’s all quite hilarious to other people, but when you’ve been living this way for forty-some years, it stops being a joke pretty fast.

Here’s the thing: I’ve always liked the idea of karma. You get what you deserve based on how you behave. There’s a certain cosmic justice to the notion that simply makes sense.

But if there IS karma, then clearly, I must have been Hitler in a previous life, because I seem to be suffering a thousand little tortures every day, yet (to my knowledge) I’ve never harmed another person in THIS life. Honestly, I even feel guilty killing bugs.

So, if there’s no karma, then it must be a random universe.

But that doesn’t work when you use my life as the test, either, because if everything were truly random, then occasionally, once in a great while at least, something good would happen to me, even if it was only by accident. The fact that it never does tells me things are NOT random, and that I really am being punished.

But for what? I’ve known a lot of people in my day and, I have to say, I haven’t known a whole lot of kind or good people.

Which makes me wonder: Am I being punished for being GOOD?

Maybe what I think of as “good”—being nice to others, being generous with my time and money (what little I have), feeling compassion, avoiding hurting anyone, working hard to make a contribution to society, staying out of petty (or large) squabbles, and trying to take care of myself in body and mind—is, in fact, what the universe considers evil. And that, in my opinion, would make the UNIVERSE evil.

It’s the only thing that makes sense when I put all the variables together.

Then again, maybe the fact that I haven’t slept more than an hour a night in over three months has left me feeling a tad hypersensitive to all the nasty people out there and the zillion little minor irritations that surround me every day, and so I’m starting to come up with bizarre philosophical explanations for how things work that don’t have any basis in reality.

Nope.

I think the universe must just be evil.

 

 

The Missing Piece (Or, Why I Love to Shop) – 4/17/2018

I’m not a hoarder or a shopaholic.

Before I go any further, I need to establish that right up front. I’m neither of those things, but I admit, I CAN understand the impulse.

See, I do love to shop. But it’s not about spending money or being materialistic or wanting to keep up with some mysterious Joneses.

For me? Shopping is a way to change my life.

Wait, let me rephrase that.

When I go shopping—whether it’s to an outlet mall or flea market or just for a weekly grocery run—I’m always convinced that THIS shopping trip will be the one, the one where I finally find that missing piece from my life. I’ll buy it (whatever it might be), and then suddenly, magically, everything will fall into place and my life will be perfect.

Now, it doesn’t take a trained psychologist to know that there IS no missing piece—at least, there’s no missing piece “out there,” waiting to be bought at the garage sale down the street.

No, no. I get it. The “missing piece” is inside of me—or, rather, it’s missing FROM inside me and the only way to fill it and finally live that “perfect life” (that is, beyond realizing that such a thing doesn’t exist) is to acknowledge all my hopes and dreams and loves and disappointments, work through it all, and become a fully self-actualized human being.

I totally understand that. And I also know that creating a “perfect life” takes effort.

These days, however, I have way too much other work on my schedule, so until I have a little free time to spend self-actualizing, I think I’ll take the lazy way out and just do a little shopping, because sometimes, the anticipation of finding the perfect thing is almost as good as actually getting it.

Want to meet me at the mall?

 

In Defense of “Loneliness” – 4/10/2018

Why do people always assume that someone who’s alone a lot must be lonely?

Take me, for example.

I lead what most people would consider a lonely life.

I spend most of my time alone—reading, writing, working. My idea of a “fun” night is curling up with a book and a glass of wine, not heading out to some loud restaurant with a bunch of people so I can struggle to hear them talk over the clamor of the crowd and the boom of the piped-in music.

To most other people, that sounds pathetic. I know. And I’m aware that people pity me. They tell me I need to “break out of my rut,” “make some friends,” “take up a hobby.”

The thing is, I already DO all those things; I just tend to do them on my own.

Break out of my rut? I’m not in a rut. How could I be? This week alone, through the power of my imagination, combined with the written word and a little bit of Netflix, I solved murders across America and observed mountain gorillas in Africa with Dian Fossey.

That? Can hardly be called a rut.

Make some friends? Oh, sure. Let me make some friends like the ones I already have, who make me pay more than my share when we got out to lunch and spend the whole time we’re out chewing my ear off with boring tales about their boring kids (whom I’ve never even met), never once expressing any interest in what I might be doing.

The friends I’ve made in my novels—the ones I read and the ones I write—treat me better than those I know in real life, so why be treated badly when I can be alone and be happy?

Take up a hobby? Ha! I do more hobbies before breakfast than you’ve done your whole life, scoffers.

I run; I do yoga; I study Italian, Spanish, Mandarin, Latin, and ancient Greek; I have memorized the Period Table of Elements; I am well versed in the finer parts of mythology—both Greco-Roman and Egyptian; I study art and architecture; I learn about history (especially Tudor England, the Italian Renaissance, and ancient Egypt, though I’ve recently started to explore Byzantium); and I’m a proficient cook, actively engaged in an ongoing exploration of the cuisines of the world.

Trust me, I am not lacking when it comes to entertainment.

I just prefer to be alone.

I know I’m a nerd, and I don’t mind being the person other people laugh at. Those people? Don’t get it. I have led a THOUSAND lives, thanks to the “lonely” way I live. Those other people who think I’m wasting my life are the ones who are doing it wrong. 🙂

 

In Praise of (Occasional) Excess – 4/3/2018

Anybody who knows me knows I love my routine. I do best when I can plan my day (and week, month, year, and—you know—entire life).

At least once a year, though, things come up and kind of throw me off my game. The most predictable of these events is my birthday, which happens in the middle of March. This year was no exception.

Now, I love my birthday. I’m pretty much as bad as a (bratty) small child, expecting special treatment, lots of cake and gifts, and basically for everyone to recognize my birthday as the equivalent of a federal holiday (which, I argue, it SHOULD be). I try not to get TOO disappointed when all that stuff doesn’t happen.

To make up for other people’s complete and utter failure to treat my special day with the reverence it deserves, I do whatever it takes to make my OWN birthday rock. I’ll get myself a little gift, treat myself to a day of shopping, bake (or buy) my own celebratory cake, and take a day or two off work to devote all to enjoying my birthday.

The thing is, my body and brain do NOT enjoy the break all that birthday activity forces me to take from my usual routine—and they rebel against the change by more or less shutting down.

For days after my birthday, it’s all I can do to get out of bed, eat anything besides chocolate and Marshmallow Peeps (another downside of my birthday, which always falls during the Easter shopping season), and not feel completely depressed.

I used to think the depression was related to getting older, which can mess with anybody’s head. But the truth is, I’m in better shape now, at forty-six, than I’ve ever been, both mentally and physically. The truth is, I don’t care (much) about getting older.

For me, the emotional crash has to do with the lack of routine—and, more specifically (and philosophically), with the fact that around my birthday, I make an abrupt and excessive turn away from the joy that I normally take in PRODUCING and instead become wholly devoted to CONSUMING.

Yup, Birthday Me is a consumer extraordinaire:

I consume things—buying clothes, books, whatever I can afford (which, fortunately, I suppose, isn’t often all that much!).

And I consume food—in fact, I recall one birthday in recent years where I demanded to eat every meal out at three of my favorite restaurants and I annoyed my boyfriend the whole day by singing (to the tune of that old Lesley Gore song “It’s My Party”): “It’s my birthday, and I’ll eat if I want to, eat if I want to, eat if I want to . . .”

I’m not (too) ashamed of it.

Granted, we all know excess isn’t good for your body or your soul. But a little splurge now and then is actually probably (almost healthy). And for me, I try to keep it down to once a year around my birthday (though the Christmas season DOES tend to try to get in on the game as well—I’m working on that).

But being TOO obsessed with consuming more, more, more—the way I get around my birthday—is really just not me.

And my body knows it, so it does whatever it takes to bring me back: to my routine, to my morning run, to working too much (because I love it, not just because I have to).

Every year, my workaholic body reins in my shopaholic/overeater alter ego and brings us all back into alignment, back to normal life, back to where we all belong.

But cheer up, Birthday Me. Only eleven months and one week before you get to come out and play.

The Mystery of Easter – 4/1/2018

I like to think that we live in a reasonably logical world, but every year at Easter time, I realize there’s almost no rhyme or reason when it comes to people’s behavior.

Case in point? Easter dinner.

Now, Easter, as we all know, is a celebration of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ was . . . a devout Jew.

That means, obviously, that Jesus adhered to all the strict laws of kosher food preparation and restrictions. And one of the biggest taboos for Jews who keep kosher is pork.

So, why is it that every year, Christians all over the world rush to the grocery store to buy . . . ham???

You see, in my family, we usually ate turkey at Easter, mostly because I hate the stench of ham so much, I refused even to taste it before I was twenty-four years old (and that’s when I realized I’d been right all along—ham truly is a vile concoction!).

It was only after I became an adult that I noticed all these silly Christians celebrating the savior’s sacrifice by cooking a meal that Jesus, the presumed guest of honor, COULD NOT EVEN EAT!

It makes no sense at all, and I can’t help but think that if I were Jesus, I’d be a little bit peeved. (Then again, I DO tend to get ticked off in general a lot more than Jesus ever did.)

So, I implore you. Be logical, be kosher, and skip the bizarre and profoundly nonsensical Easter ham this year (mostly so I don’t have to endure the rancid smell of dozens of hams cooking from the open windows of every home in my neighborhood).

Thanking you in advance. Happy Easter!

 

The Italian Hot Dog – 3/27/2018

I had my first Italian hot dog the other night, and I just have one question to ask: How drunk was the person who came up with THAT idea?

I can almost hear the tipsy thought process behind it:

First, let’s take a giant piece of bread that would actually be better suited for an extra-large gyro than a hot dog or sausage of any kind.

Then we’ll add a teeny, tiny, withered hot dog ALL the way down in the bottom of the roll—the smaller, the better.

If possible, the wiener should look as wrinkled and decrepit as one of those ancient movie-theater hot dogs that have been on the rotating spit for decades. And be sure it doesn’t taste any better than it looks—that’s critical!

Add just a hint of mustard—you don’t want to overwhelm anybody with, you know, flavor. Make sure the mustard coats the hot dog JUST enough so it slides around the roll, preventing the eater from biting it, but not enough so it actually tastes good.

Next, let’s slop on a couple of slimy pieces of onion and a little bit of almost-raw green pepper. And again, be sure not to season anything. Flavor is NOT your friend.

Finally, let’s top the whole thing off with something REALLY tasty: half a pound of greasy, undercooked, sliced potatoes. Don’t you DARE add any salt or pepper! They MUST be flavored solely by old fryer grease. Yup, potatoes—just the thing you want to bite into through a thick piece of bread. Yum.

I can’t imagine that the Italian hot dog could have been developed in any other way. It’s simply not a rational set of ingredients to put together I’m still fighting the heartburn, even now, the next morning.

What sober person would come up with or eat such a thing? The answer is no sober person would.

It occurs to me now that maybe drinking is the key: Maybe you can only enjoy an Italian hot dog if you, too, are as hammered as the person who created it.

I guess that’s something to think about the next time my dad suggests Italian hot dogs for dinner. . . .

 

 

Just Let Me Be Me (Or, Benjamin Franklin Was Right) – 3/20/2018

Why do people always feel the need to tell you what you’re doing wrong?

I mean, even when I’m doing well—taking care of my editing business, writing books, running most days, eating well, doing everything right—there always seems to be someone hiding around the corner, ready to pounce with some words of wisdom about how I can do “better.”

The other night, the person with the good intentions was my dad (sorry, Dad!).

I was doing my usual nighttime routine, shutting things down and saying goodnight before heading off to my place to go to bed, when I made the mistake of mentioning that I was feeling particularly tired.

Now, here’s the thing: For starters, it’s perfectly normal to feel tired after a long day full of exercise and hard work. On top of that, I was suffering from my . . . ahem . . . shall we say, female troubles? So, I was feeling just a hint drained (no pun intended).

That, of course, was NOT something I was about to share with my 75-year-old father, which meant I had to endure a lecture on how I’m tired because I get up too early and how I really need to change my routine (read: my entire life) so I can be more “like other people.”

Um—in case nobody else has noticed? Most “other people” these days are kind of idiots and/or jerks. And besides, what’s wrong with the way I live?

Sure, I may keep hours that others consider a little bit odd. I’m up well before dawn so I can go for a run, leaving me with plenty of morning hours (my most alert and productive time) for writing and other work, and I’m in bed by 9:00 p.m. so I can get up and do it all over again the next day.

That may sound crazy to the average 21^st-century American, but if I get to choose (and I DO, thanks very much!), I think I’d rather follow the habits of an American from a different century: Benjamin Franklin, who famously extolled the virtues of “early to bed, early to rise.” If I have to pick a role model, I’d rather it be Ben Franklin than the people hanging around the local bar at 1:00 a.m. on a Tuesday night. Just saying . . .

So, Dad, no offense, but you can keep your advice to yourself. And that goes for everybody else. I may not be “normal,” but I’m doing just fine.

On Animal Cruelty, Human Trauma, and Why I Hate Sarah McLachlan – 3/13/2018

Anybody who’s read this blog with any regularity probably already knows how much I love animals. My two pugs, who died over this past year, were my whole world and I miss them every day.

But it’s not just my own pets that I loved. I’m crazy about pretty much all animals.

I’m that weirdo crying in the office over some sappy video where a crippled dachshund gets a new lease on life when somebody donates one of those wheelie things.

I watch all the silly videos: the clumsy cats falling off tables or trying to squash themselves into too-small boxes, birds talking like people or dancing to hip-hop tunes, dogs barking along with the radio. I love them all.

What I hate? Are those horrible commercials and posts on social media about animal cruelty, like that famous one—you know it: the one with the Sarah McLachlan song that always seems to pop up out of nowhere when you’re trying to enjoy a nice, mindless episode of cheesy reality TV.

Here’s the thing: Even a quick glimpse of one of those anti-cruelty ads absolutely scars an overly sensitive animal lover like me, so much so that I keep seeing even the most fleeting image over and over and over in my mind for days, weeks, even years after the fact.

What the people who post these things seem not to realize is that I’m already on their side. Making ME feel horrible isn’t helping the cause; it’s only piling a little human on top of what the animals are already suffering.

It has ZERO effect on the kind of bastard who would willingly harm an animal. In fact, I can’t help but think that those kinds of awful images might almost serve as “cruelty porn” for people who think it’s cool to treat animals badly.

Basically, those ads change nobody’s mind and actually make things worse.

So please, I’m begging you: Stop putting these things up in places I can’t avoid—like at random in my Facebook feed or halfway through the rerun of Restaurant: Impossible I’m watching while doing my best to relax for once in my life.

I promise, I’ll send you all my money to help prevent cruelty to animals if you just promise to stop engaging in cruelty to ME first.

Do we have a deal?

 

I Beat Myself Up—and I Like It – 3/6/2018

People who know me well often tell me that I can be a little too negative.

They say I’m quick to spot even the slightest problem and call attention to it, making an immediate global declaration that everything sucks and all people are ___ (fill in the blank with the appropriate word for the situation at hand: morons, jerks, etc.).

I won’t go so far as to say these so-called friends of mine are wrong. I AM an editor, after all, and part of what makes me so good at my job is my uncanny ability to pick out the tiniest mistake—and fix it, if possible.

So I won’t deny that I DO see the bad stuff—and there’s plenty of bad stuff to point out in this world. Even if I really let myself go wild, I’d barely scratch the surface.

What I DO take issue with is the implication that I’m somehow harder on other people than I am on myself, or that I think I’m “above” the fray.

Quite the opposite.

If my friends and family could hear what goes on inside my head? They’d be begging for mercy. FROM me and FOR me.

If I’m a tough critic, then I’m also my own biggest victim.

It occurred to me this morning, when I was berating myself for almost putting away the batteries I’d just bought without first taking out the two I needed for my running headlamp, that I yell at myself pretty much all day long.

“What are you, an idiot?” I’ll think. “How can you forget to flush the toilet?” (Mind you, I’ll still be standing in the bathroom, hand poised above the flush knob when I think this—I’m VERY quick to jump on myself.)

So, yeah, I’m hard on myself, but I think it’s a good thing.

By cutting myself down BEFORE I screw up, I prevent a lot of errors from happening. If I DIDN’T yell at myself while still in the bathroom, I’d probably forget to flush half the time and I’d wander around with toilet paper dragging from my shoes.

As someone who tends to get lost in thought (mostly because I’m constantly thinking about my work), it’s all too easy to get distracted. I NEED to beat myself up so I don’t accidentally, you know, burn the house down or something.

Here’s the thing: No matter how often I make fun of myself or call myself an imbecile, I don’t actually think I’m stupid or an airhead or worthless. Overworked? Sure. Maybe a little bit ADHD? Absolutely. But if anything, I tend to think that I pretty much rock.

And here’s why: I know I’m making fewer mistakes in general than the average person, who is cruising along, mindlessly putting away those new batteries and then having to double-back to get them later.

Somehow, there seems to be a weird inverse relationship going on between my internal nastiness and my positive attitude. The more severely I berate myself, the higher my self-esteem; meanwhile, other people rarely seem to correct themselves (as evidenced by all the obvious mistakes I see them making every day), yet they’re always crying about how they feel lousy and sad and unworthy of love.

Maybe that’s the trick: By calling YOURSELF a moron, when you know perfectly well that you’re plenty smart, you create some sort of shield. Nothing can hurt you because you’ve already thrown the worst the world has to offer at yourself and come out unscathed.

Whatever the psychological reason behind the phenomenon, I’m grateful for it, because I pretty much feel terrific most days. Even if I CAN be a bit of a dummy sometimes.

 

In Praise of Routine – 2/27/2018

People are always telling me to break out of my “rut,” to mix things up, that there’s nothing to be gained from doing the same basic routine every day, week after week, year after year.

Those people? Are morons.

Just for the record: Routine is NOT a four-letter word. It’s not something to avoid for fear you’ll stagnate or turn into a boring person.

You know what’s boring? Lazy people who never DO anything. And you know who has no time to be lazy? People with a routine. Like me.

These past few years, since I turned 40 and started realizing that this is NOT a dress rehearsal and I’d better get started living NOW rather than waiting for some indeterminate “later,” I’ve noticed that I absolutely THRIVE on routine. In fact, I kind of fall apart when my routine has to be broken for too long.

Take the first few weeks of this year, for example.

In my area (central/northern New Jersey), we had a prolonged cold snap for weeks, which left the roads a mess (because the snow and ice just kept building and never got a chance to melt). Between that and the subfreezing temperatures, I was forced to stay inside, skipping my usual morning outdoor run—which has become the cornerstone of my daily routine.

And I went CRAZY!!!

Deprived of my run (even with other cardio workouts filling in so I could keep burning those calories), I felt depressed, spaced-out, confused, not like myself at all.

I stopped getting even a little bit of decent sleep (not that I ever get much!) and I found myself ready to burst into tears at the slightest provocation (and no, it was NOT just PMS! ????).

I think the body and the mind like to know what to expect each day. Routine makes you feel safe, leaving room for you to focus on other, bigger things.

For me, routine makes it possible to get more done than anybody I know. There are days (like today) when I know for a fact that I did more before 6:00 a.m. than my best friend has done so far this week. Routine keeps me moving, driven, productive.

It’s kind of like how they always say that great minds like Einstein wore the same clothes every day to free up their intellectual energy for larger pursuits. I’m not saying I’m Einstein, but I totally get it: Following the same general routine—morning run, shower, breakfast, whatever it might be—lets you stop worrying about what comes next and gives you the chance to put your brain to good use.

Don’t get me wrong: Even I DO change things up every now and then. Lunch or dinner with friends, a day out at the park, a little bit of shopping, a much-needed vacation: Sometimes you have to do something different just to recharge your batteries—and to remind yourself why routine is such a good thing. Even the greatest vacation would get old eventually—and that’s when the body longs for home. And routine, for me, is home.

 

Caesar: In Memoriam – 2/21/2018

A year ago today, I had to say good-bye to my pug Caesar.

He was almost 15 and had been suffering from crippling arthritis for years (not to mention he’d gone both deaf and blind). It wasn’t like I didn’t know my time with him was running out.

But it still came as a shock that day, last year, when I came home and found that, even with his heavy-duty pain meds, he couldn’t even walk across the lawn. He just hurt too much.

I had already pushed it out of my mind how, that same morning, he had had trouble finding his way to the kitchen (his favorite room) to eat his breakfast (one of his three favorite meals—my boy could EAT!).

Or how, again that very same day, after wolfing down his food, he had become so disoriented trying to find his way back to his bed that he had stepped, full on, into his water bowl, soaking himself—and, judging from the look on his sweet wrinkly face, scaring himself a little bit, too.

Putting all those things together, I knew it was time for me to let him go. Keeping him around—confused, afraid, in constant pain—might have been a comfort for me, but not for him.

And he deserved whatever comfort I could give him, because he had been MY comfort—through marriage, jobs, divorce, success, and failure—for all the years of his life.

So, I did what was right for him, if not for me. And even now, a whole year later, I still feel a flash of alarm, of physical pain, every time I realize he’s not here anymore.

He’s not waiting at the top of the stairs for me to come and give him his dinner or to drag him outside for one of the walks he hated so much (even before he was in pain—he had never been much for exercise!).

Not having him here is a shock that doesn’t seem to be going away. Then again, I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise. Caesar was probably the closest thing I’ll ever have to the love of my life, and they say true love stories never end.

 

 

The Joys of Poverty – 2/13/2018

I didn’t grow up poor. We weren’t rich, but we certainly weren’t poor, so even if I pouted at times (like, I imagine, most kids do), in reality, I rarely wanted for anything.

Poor came later, after a bad man and a bad divorce in a bad economy.

I’m still poor, more or less—certainly poor by my former standards, back when I was a fancy executive editor and paid the bills ahead of schedule every month, never even thinking about whether there was enough in my account to cover them.

I remember actually feeling ANNOYED at the office on payday, when some assistant from human resources would come around and pass out our paychecks, which (because I worried so little about money) just felt like one more errand to run (a trip to the bank).

I laugh at that old me now. If she had seen what was coming, she would have jumped for joy every time the poor HR kid came to her office—and she would have held onto those paychecks like grim death.

Things change, and now I think—and worry—about money all the time. Will there be enough? Do I have enough set aside in case there’s some kind of emergency? What if this month’s car insurance bill is higher than usual? What if, what if, what if . . . ?

But here’s the thing: In a weird way, I’m grateful for this experience, this poverty (which I really hope is only a temporary bump in the road of life).

It’s made me stronger, sure, but it’s also made me realize just how little I actually need to be happy—again, more or less. I’ve learned that there is more than one way to define “rich,” or even “enough.”

And, although the old (almost rich) me would stare in horror at how “deprived” this new me is, I can’t help but feel satisfied. I have enough. I AM enough. And I can handle anything that comes my way.

 

On Blue Herons and Mothers: In Memoriam – 2/8/2018

Every year on this date, through some bizarre miracle (or coincidence, depending on your attitude toward the unexplained), I seem to spot a great blue heron—that is, every year since 2011, when my mom’s best friend, our longtime next-door neighbor, the woman I grew up thinking of as my “second mother,” died.

Joanie was a part of my life for as long as I could remember. She’d been there for all the big (and many of the little) moments of my life: from first eyeglasses to first dates, from my engagement to my wedding to my divorce.

She was a drinking buddy when I turned twenty-one, and she helped me get my first “real” job after college.

She was even the one who, to my extreme embarrassment, took me to the emergency room with a severe urinary tract infection that the doctor blamed on . . . ahem . . . activities with my long-term boyfriend and (yes, I’m quoting) “all that pounding.”

The fact that I didn’t die of shame right on the spot should demonstrate just how close a relationship Joanie and I shared.

Joanie was a second mother, but the kind of mother I didn’t have to worry (too much) about disappointing. She had her own kid to be disappointed in. In other words, she had the influence of a maternal figure combined with the easygoing nature of a friend—the best of both worlds.

When she died after a long battle with cancer, I was living temporarily in Texas, and I couldn’t afford to fly home for the funeral. I bawled my eyes out down there in Dallas while everybody else up here in New Jersey got the chance to say good-bye.

I felt guilty about it for a year—until, on the anniversary of her death, I saw a great blue heron, a bird that, for some reason I can’t really explain, I had always associated with Joanie.

I knew, somehow, that she wasn’t mad I hadn’t made it to the funeral, and I finally managed to stop beating myself up. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have needed the silly bird (which has reappeared each year since) to tell me Joanie wasn’t angry—she had certainly forgiven me for worse things than being poor over the years. She was always cool like that.

And I really, really miss her.

I’m just grateful I still have my “first mother” around, now that my second mother is gone. Mom may lack some of Joanie’s laidback, casual attitude (at least when it comes to me and my screwups!), but she’s pretty frigging cool, too.

 

On Groundhogs, Seasons, and the Power of Change – 2/2/2018

It’s Groundhog Day, and though I don’t necessarily trust the meteorological forecast of a large rodent, I imagine it can’t be much worse than the never-accurate predictions I get from the Weather Channel app on my tablet.

But I don’t want to talk about rodents—either the groundhog or the weatherman variety.

I want to talk about change.

If you get down to it, Groundhog Day is only a holiday because it marks a turning point. The pagans called it Imbolc, and it marked the day when everybody collectively agreed they could see the light at the end of winter’s long tunnel and they knew spring was coming soon.

Now, anybody who’s read my blog this year knows I’m kind of a fan of winter—or, at least, the way the cold weather makes my poor, overworked brain feel like it can work a little faster than it does during the hot, muggy summer.

But today? I realize that it’s not so much WINTER that I embrace every year but CHANGE: the changing calendar at the New Year, my changing body and attitude as I carry out my goals, and, of course, the changing seasons (which, luckily, we get to experience here where I live in New Jersey).

I always hear about how much people fear and hate change, doing anything they can to keep things exactly the same in their lives, and I find myself thinking: Are they crazy?

Me? I love change. Can’t get enough.

At least once every six months, I feel compelled to move my furniture around into some new arrangement. Even that kind of small change makes me feel empowered, like anything is possible.

I’m always starting some kind of new self-improvement plan or taking a class because, no matter how well I might be doing, I always fervently believe I can still change for the better.

Change may be my oldest and very best friend.

And as much as other people seem to cringe when they hear that things might be changing, the truth is, they’re fooling themselves. Whether they realize it or not, they love change, too.

Just look at Groundhog Day—when people go nuts counting down the days left until spring. That little transition from winter snow to spring flowers? Hate to break it to you, folks: It’s change.

And change is a wonderful thing.

 

Time Flies When You’re Having Fun – 1/30/2018

It’s the end of the first month of this “New Year” (which is no longer all that new) and I can’t help but wonder: Where DID the time go?

I know it’s true that we perceive time as passing faster as we get older and I (basically) understand the neurological factors that cause the phenomenon. The thing is, understanding why it happens doesn’t make it any less disconcerting!

I remember being a kid, maybe nine or ten, and saying to my mother: “Don’t you just feel like you’ve been alive FOREVER? I do and I’m young. You? You’re ANCIENT!”

Now that I’m “ancient” myself, I completely comprehend and appreciate the dirty look my mother gave me that day.

But time going by faster these days isn’t all in my mind. Well, okay, technically, it is. I know there are still the standard 24 hours in each day and all that.

What I mean to say is that I really DO have less time these days. And by that, I mean “free time”: time to relax, sleep, be with friends, and basically enjoy the kind of leisure-dominated life I led as a child.

Which makes me wonder: Does the perception of time change based on what you’re doing with it?

As a kid, when all you do is play (and go to school once in a while), time seems like an ocean—a never-ending, massive body of water spread out beyond any limit that the eye can see.

But as a grownup, when you’re working and cleaning and cooking and trying to squeeze in exercise and hobbies and friends and, you know, eating and breathing? Time’s like a fast-moving stream of water flowing out of a small bottle—and you can see just how little of the water is left before it’s all gone.

Maybe the key is to take a cue from children and just . . . slow . . . things . . . down.

Maybe time would seem to move a little more slowly if we took a bit more of a break every now and then (which is unlikely in my case—my last vacation was my honeymoon, all the way back in March 2000).

The thing is, I love what I do and I’m glad I have so much on my plate and I adore the feeling of being absolutely exhausted—both mentally and physically—at the end of another hugely productive day.

So, I guess I just have to accept that time is going to keep rushing past and enjoy what I do with the hours I have, trying not to let that rapidly emptying water bottle give me the willies. At least not too much.

But all you normal people out there: Maybe try a nice vacation or a little time spent relaxing. Let me know if it helps.

 

Yeah, I’m Bitter—So What? – 1/23/2018

People are always saying to let things go, to forgive (for yourself, if not for person who did something wrong).

But there are some hurts that just can’t be forgiven. Some things you just can’t let go of, because if you did, if you let them fly off into the universe like the seeds of a dandelion puff, you would alter the balance of karma and turn the scales toward evil for the rest of eternity.

Some hurts? Need to be cherished and held tight for the sake of the greater good.

And what my ex-husband did is one of those hurts.

He ruined everything. He stole from me—not just my money and my home (though he took all that, yes), but my peace of mind, my security, my credit score (which is still in the toilet 10 years later), and, really, my whole sense of who I am and what the world is like.

I had always been the kind of dorky, optimistic girl who (contrary to all experience) believed I could do anything, that the world was (at least in general) a fair(ish) place, and that I would receive in proportion to what I gave—for good or for bad.

But when he left on a whim and took everything I had worked my whole life for with him (leaving me with two dogs, a cat, and only the sad 20-dollar-bill I happened to have in my wallet), he changed me.

I’m still (somehow, believe it or not) an optimist. But I don’t trust the world—or most of the people in it—without LOTS of evidence of good intentions.

I can’t believe things are fair or that I get back what I give out—because after all the kindness, generosity, and hard work I’ve put out (both to my ex and to most of the people around me), I rarely seem to receive anything that feels much better than a kick in the face.

To change someone’s entire worldview that deeply, the way my ex did? Is pure evil. And he doesn’t deserve to be forgiven for that.

Sure, I try to move on, to keep the focus on the positive, to not him ruin my life anymore. And I’ve come a LONG way from where I was in those early years after he left, when every day was a struggle just to get out of bed and find something, anything, to think about other than what he did.

I may not have forgiven him, but over time, I HAVE forgiven myself for falling prey to him. And that’s progress, in my book.

I know I can still be bitter and exaggerate how crappy my life is (hence, the “kick in the face” remark). But it doesn’t happen often, not anymore.

But this week is my ex’s birthday. That’s he’s on my mind, and that’s why the bitterness has come creeping back around, looking for a little extra attention. And though there’s a little tiny part of me that fervently hopes this will be the jerk’s last birthday, a bigger part knows being angry isn’t the answer.

I’ve learned that much. The only way to get revenge on someone like my ex really IS to live well (even if that seems like the biggest cliché in the world). And living well is precisely what I intend to do.

On Comfort Foods – 1/16/2018

I may be a little bit weird. I get that. I seem to be the only person in the world (except for people who love snow—yuck!) who actually likes this time of year.

But for me, loving winter isn’t really about the weather. It’s about the food.

Here’s the thing: I’m a healthy eater (mostly) and just about everything I cook (and I cook almost all of my meals) is good for me. But what I’ve learned over the past five years is that you can cook healthy and still get your comfort food fix.

And this time of year? Is a comfort food BONANZA!!!

Gooey, creamy, cheesy pasta dishes. Piping hot casseroles straight out of the oven. Oven-roasted vegetables, caramelized to perfection. Slow-cooked soups and stews you can set up in the morning and savor smelling throughout the house all day long.

Winter is the best!

Something about summer (and the fact that the kitchen becomes a hundred degrees by dinnertime) just isn’t conducive to good eating. And please don’t chime in with all that “fresh veggies” and “grilling” nonsense—there is absolutely no contest between a homemade baked ziti and a stupid grilled kabob!

So, join me, won’t you? As much as everyone’s complaining these days, winter isn’t actually going to last forever. Enjoy those comfort foods while you still can. You’ll have to drag out that darn grill before you even know it.

 

Hooray for Winter! – 1/9/2018

 

I love this time of year.

I know, I know. Most people think I’m crazy. What’s to love about subzero temperatures, icy roads, and darkness setting in at 5:00 p.m.?

I boldly answer: Everything.

Okay, I’ll admit—the snow and ice kind of do stink, and I hate having to check the temperature before going out for my run so I know if there’s a danger I might lose a limb to frostbite along the way.

But the rest of it, the winter, this time of year? Is glorious!

First off, it’s still early in the New Year, so if you’re anything like me, you should still be feeling all kinds of motivated and excited to achieve your New Year goals. It’ll be another couple of weeks before even the laziest resolution-maker will abandon the effort entirely!

If you’re doing well with your resolutions, like I am at this early stage in the game, you’re eating right, exercising daily, getting plenty of sleep (okay, the truth is I almost never sleep, but I DO try), and doing all the right things for your body, mind, and spirit.

And all that should feel great (hooray!).

Second, it’s cold outside. And for me, that always makes my brain feel quick and active, ready to take on any challenge. In summer, when it’s hot? I feel like my brain is melting, barely able to function at all, so I love the winter for letting me feel smart again.

Third—and I know this will be unpopular—I kind of LOVE that it gets dark early.

See, I’m a little bit of a workaholic. Always have been. In my mind, if the sun is in the sky, if there’s even a hint of daylight left, I need to be working. (Another reason I hate summer—I never get even the tiniest break from the daily grind!) I thoroughly appreciate the winter sun going down early, releasing me from my heavy burden, setting me free.

I’m always astonished when I hear people complaining about suffering from seasonal affective disorder (SAD), feeling lousy and depressed because of the lack of light at this time of year. Me? I’m like the Energizer Bunny every January—I just can’t get enough activity!

So, winter, feel free to stick around a little while, at least here in my neck of the woods. You’re making me very happy.

 

My New Year’s Resolutions – 1/1/2018

I am a planner. Always have been.

The only thing I enjoy more than getting stuff done is making extensive lists of things I PLAN to get done.

For a chronic list-maker like me, this time of year is pure joy: The New Year gives you a blank slate, ready to be filled up with tasks and plans and, of course, the inevitable New Year’s resolutions.

Only I don’t call them resolutions. I call them New Year goals instead because, to me, goals are positive things that you strive to achieve, whereas the word resolution seems to imply that something is wrong with you and needs to be fixed.

I may be flawed, but I’m not broken, and I DON’T need fixing. But I DO have goals. Lots of them.

The problem is, I have a tendency to overestimate the amount of stuff I can realistically get done. Sure, I’m a pretty productive person. This year, just as an example, my goal was to read at least 75 books. I read 110. I’m no slouch. ????

But sometimes I have a little TOO much faith in my ability to radically (and instantly) improve my life.

I remember, back when I was about 50 pounds overweight, setting a New Year goal to lose those 50 pounds within 6 months—and then having to set the exact same goal the following year (only now it was 60 pounds because instead of losing the weight, I’d gained even more!).

There’s something to be said for “slow and steady wins the race,” especially for weight loss and fitness, and when I finally eased up on myself and stopped focusing on the number on the scale, setting goals for exercise and nutrition instead, I lost the weight and kept it off.

Unfortunately, my brain never got the memo that I should probably be using the same technique I used for weight loss in the rest of my goal-setting life, which means I still tend to overreach.

This past year, I set a total of 22 goals for myself (which, I’m sorry to say, was actually my attempt to improve upon 2016’s disastrous 45 goals, few of which I achieved!).

Among those 22 goals were the obvious things, like maintaining my weight, running at least 20 miles a week, doing more yoga, reading more books, and forcing myself out of my hermit-like existence to connect with friends and family now and then.

I can objectively say that I achieved 16 of my 22 goals for 2017, and I can’t decide if that’s good or bad. It’s more than half, better than average, but still, I can’t help feeling a little bit like a big fat failure.

And so, for 2018, I’m taking a cue from weight-loss me (as opposed to crazy list-making me) and putting one goal at the top of my list: to be kinder to myself.

This year, I’ll try to be more realistic, using everything I’ve learned from my many years of setting (and achieving—or failing to achieve) goals.

I’ll follow the age-old advice to make my goals SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant/realistic, and time-bound.

I’ll stick to the big things I really want to do, the things that make me happy, instead of burdening myself with extra work when I know I’m already much too busy.

And I won’t put “Meditate daily” on my list (for the fourth year in a row), because it’s about time for me to face the fact that I have monkey mind and I’ll just never one of those peaceful people enjoying enlightenment in the lotus position—and that’s okay. There are other ways to become enlightened, and I’ll find mine eventually.

This year, I will put myself first and I’ll be proud of every little victory, no matter how silly it might seem to someone else. These New Year goals are for me and only for me.

And that is okay, too.

Wishing you all a happy, healthy, and goal-filled New Year!

 

And So This Is Christmas . . .  12/22/2017

It’s almost Christmas and I’ve been thinking a lot about Christmases past and how much emphasis I always seem to put on this one day to be the anchor for my whole year—kind of like a little kid waiting impatiently for Santa to come, even in March when the rest of us are anticipating spring flowers.

I’m still almost that bad.

Of course, a lot of the time, I find myself feeling a little bit empty as Christmas passes—partly because it’s just not as magical as it used to be when I was a child (if I’m not deluding myself with false memories) and partly because I just don’t like seeing certain things change.

It’s pathetic, I know, but I miss the way Christmas USED to be, and I wish it didn’t have to be any different (of course, that would also mean I’d still be eight years old and stuck perpetually in grade school, which would REALLY stink!).

I have so many memories of Christmas traditions:

• Every year my family would host a party on Christmas Eve—sometimes with five people, sometimes with fifty (we could never quite be sure). We’d exchange gifts with our neighbors from across the street, our closest family friends, and it would feel like a sneak preview of the bounty to come the next morning after Santa had arrived.
• We’d put up the tree and all the decorations on what I dubbed “Holiday Spirit Day,” usually the first Saturday in December. We’d start early in the morning and work all day, something that became a lot more fun when (after I became an adult) we lubricated the process with copious servings of Bloody Marys.
• I had my own rules for Christmas morning: I never sneaked even the tiniest peek at the presents under the tree until it was officially time to open everything (because even a glimpse of a pack of socks hanging out of my stocking would somehow ruin the whole experience!).
• Watching people open the gifts I had painstakingly chosen for them (or, often, made myself), hoping my efforts would pay off, was almost as much fun as unwrapping my own presents (which I did slowly, savoring every moment).

Christmas is different now. It’s still a nice time of year, but it’s not a mysterious and mystical event like it was during my childhood—or even, I’ll admit, right up through my mid-thirties.

Poverty (after my divorce my ex-husband taking all my money) changed things. Though my family, growing up, was never exactly rich, there had always been enough, and I suppose you never realize how rich you are until everything you had has been taken away!

I know Christmas isn’t supposed to be about “stuff,” but when you go a few Christmases without anything—no gifts, no special dinner, no parties, not even that pack of socks in your stocking—you can’t help but miss the “stuff” just a little.

And maybe that’s what soured me on the holidays over the past few years. But not entirely. I still love Christmas, and what’s more important, I’ve come to realize that I can’t—and shouldn’t—rely on other people to make the holiday special for me. Like everything else in life, Christmas has to be our own responsibility.

So, this year, I’ve made my own merry little Christmas (as the song says).

I made my “tree” out of books (which are plentiful and therefore more or less free in an editor’s house!).

I bought myself just enough gifts—enough “stuff”—to make it feel like a special day (and not some ordinary trip to the grocery store).

I sent my cards, I watched the cheesy Christmas specials on TV, and I sang the carols at full volume (but only when I’ve been alone in my car—my gift to humanity, so that others can have a merry Christmas, one without my terrible singing!).

And that? Is good enough for me.

Sometimes I think you have to redefine your concept of “plenty,” of what you consider enough, acceptable. Maybe my standards are a bit lower these days than they used to be. And maybe that’s not a bad thing.

My Christmas may be small, but it’ll be merry. And that’s what’s really important.
Christmas Cards – 12/14/17

I’m mailing out my Christmas cards today.

That means I spent hours last night, painstakingly choosing the perfect card from the five different styles I purchased so each and every recipient on my list will get exactly the right one.

After all, you can’t send a card with Jesus in the manger to your Jewish friends or that card with the menorah on it to your neighborhood nun.

Jewish, Christian, whatever—it doesn’t matter. If you’re in my book with a valid mailing address, you get a card from me (at least, if I can afford the postage that year—stamps ain’t cheap and a freelance writer’s budget doesn’t always stretch very far).

I send Christmas cards every year. And I’ll tell you: It was a LOT more fun when I used to do it with a glass (okay, a bottle) of red wine. Now that I’m trying to be healthier, the worst thing I drink at the holidays (at least when I’m alone) is a stiff mug of hot chocolate—and it does NOT take the edge off that cramp you get from writing out dozens of cards by hand the way wine used to do.

So why do I do it?

I’d like to say it’s for the friendship, the love, the pure holiday spirit filling my being. But if anything, the feeling I get from sending Christmas cards is pretty much the opposite of love. Almost nobody, other than my mother (who doesn’t count—no offense, Mom!), ever bothers to send me a card in return.

Even people who used to send me a card back when I was married have stopped now—almost like I’m no longer worth the 49-cent stamp (when did THAT happen, by the way?!?).

Gotta say—it makes a person feel terrific.

So, do I send Christmas cards out of a sense of tradition?

Maybe a little. I DO like tradition. I love the idea of certain things having meaning for you, being important enough to do over and over again, year after year (even if other people think they’re silly).

But if my cards were JUST about tradition, I’d still be sending them only to the same ten people I did back when I was in grade school (and a lot of those folks are dead . . .). So, no, it’s not just about tradition for me.

Then why do I do it?

Because it makes me feel good.

I know, I know. It sounds crazy. I just told you how rejected I feel when I don’t get cards back and how frustrating, painful, and time-consuming the process of getting the cards ready to mail can be.

How in the world does any of that make me feel GOOD?

I guess it’s the same way exercise makes me feel good. Or eating healthy. Both of those things are a pain in the butt, but I do them anyway.

I do my Christmas cards for myself (not for anybody else, not even the people whose names get I hand-write on the envelopes). I send them because they make me feel good.

So join me, won’t you? Send a Christmas card this year. It may not make you feel as awesome as a 5-mile run, but it WILL make you feel good. Especially if you have some wine . . .

 

Christmas Shopping (Or, Why I’m Being Selfish This Year) – 12/6/2017

 It’s Christmas shopping time, for normal people, at least. And the more I see those “Buy your wife a car” or “Your kids NEED this toy” commercials on TV, the more I realize that I didn’t do Christmas shopping this year the way other people do. Maybe I never have.

My Christmas shopping? Has been done since before Halloween.

That means those hyped-up holiday commercials have no effect on me. Which is just as well, because I couldn’t afford to buy anybody a Lexus with a red bow on the roof (even if I wanted to), and I don’t have any kids screaming bloody murder at me to get them this year’s fad toy (whatever that is—I’m out of the loop and grateful for it!).

Even back when I was married and making plenty of money at my old job (before the economy fell apart and I got divorced and lost everything), I was never exactly an orthodox Christmas shopper.

I hate crowds, I hate parking lots, and standing in line for anything at any time absolutely makes me cringe. Honestly, if I needed a kidney and it required waiting in line outside a Best Buy for more than three minutes, there’s a decent chance I’d opt for death.

So, back when I had tons of people (and dozens, if not hundreds, of gifts) on my Christmas list each year, I made sure to get my shopping done early and (if possible) online.

The last time I remember being in a mall at Christmastime, I was around 21, had a high fever, and kept my mom entertained spouting lines from Christmas Vacation (“What did I say, nipple?”) while my sister waited in an endless line to buy a scarf for our grandmother.

I learned my lesson and never did it again.

Usually, like this year, I would have all my gifts bought and waiting in a closet by Halloween, and I was ready to wrap by the day after Thanksgiving (any earlier and you pretty much become one of those people who starts celebrating Christmas in July, and I have to draw the line somewhere).

Over the years, between divorce, death, moving, and the thousand little complications that bring people in and out of your life, the number of people on my list has grown shorter (which is a good thing).

In fact, this year, by mutual agreement with friends and family, the only person I had to buy a gift for, besides my ten-year-old niece, was—myself.

You read that right. I am the only person on my shopping list this year.

Hear me out. I assure you, I’m not a heartless monster or some kind of “Bah, humbug!” Scrooge who hates Christmas.

Quite the opposite. Christmas is my favorite time of year—always has been, probably always will be.

When people say things like “Christmas is for children,” I want to punch them directly in the throat.

Because Christmas? Is for ME, no matter how old I get! It’s for everybody, as long as they carry the magic of the season in their heart. (See? Now I sound like Scrooge, but AFTER he meets the Ghost of Christmas Future.)

The reason I’m not shopping for other people this year is a simple one: It’s been a tough year—financially (like it always is for a freelance writer in a world that no longer values the written word), physically (I took a bad fall running over the summer and am still sporting an UGLY sore/scar on my knee), and emotionally (both of my sweet little dogs died this year—one of them after being viciously attacked by a neighborhood jerk’s dog).

If anybody has a right to feel like skipping Christmas this year, it’s me.

But I realized even before the summer was over that I DIDN’T want to skip. Not at all.

As sad as I find the idea of spending the holidays without my beloved dogs for the first time, I could never let the season pass by without savoring all my favorite things about it: the decorations, the carols, sending Christmas cards (even if I rarely get one back), the food (especially the cookies), and of course, the presents.

But doing all those things takes money, and it came down to a choice:

Buy a crappy little token gift for everybody I love and forget about all the rest of the things I love about the holidays, or let everybody else off the hook, focus on enjoying time together (instead of just stuff—which we can all just buy for ourselves anyway), and only spend money on the things I wanted most this Christmas.

Maybe it’s selfish, but here’s the thing: So what?

The older I get, the more I realize how important it is to take care of myself first. It’s one of those “Put your oxygen mask on before helping those around you” kind of situations. I’m of no use to anybody if I’m not healthy and happy.

And this Christmas? I intend to be happy.

And I wish everybody out there the same!

 

The End of NaNoWriMo – 11/30/2017

Every year, by the end of November, I find myself sitting on a mountain of words—more than 50,000 of them, thanks to the magic of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).

What are you supposed to do with all those words?

That should be the easy part, at least in theory. The geniuses behind NaNoWriMo figure that if you make it through the challenge successfully, then you have the rough draft of a full novel, ready to be cleaned up and polished (like the turd it likely is!).

Of course, the reality is that 50,000 words would be a VERY short novel, and I’m nothing if not longwinded, so the truth of the matter is that what I have here at the end of November is, maybe, two-thirds of a novel (more like half, if I’m being honest).

I’m also left with a grueling case of carpal tunnel syndrome and an aversion to writing in all its forms, after doing almost nothing BUT writing for a month.

The last thing I want to do right now is keep going with this book and these characters (all of whom I hate at this point, which makes me understand exactly what George R. R. Martin is thinking when he systematically kills off all those Game of Thrones characters …).

It’s kind of like spending a week with a close friend, stuck in a hotel room because you made the tragic error of choosing the Caribbean resort during hurricane season: By the end of that week, you pretty much want to kill her—or at the very least, never see her again.

That’s how I feel about writing: I. Never. Want. To. Do. It. Again.

But the middle of next month, when I’m busy wrapping gifts and mailing Christmas cards and stressing out over the holiday menu, writing will start (again) to look like the escape it’s supposed to be.

And then I’ll go back—little by little. I’ll eke out a sentence a day, a paragraph here and there, until the drive to create seizes me again and I have no choice but to finish what I started here in November.

And then? I’ll have a novel on my hands.

So, thank you, NaNoWriMo. I’ll see you next year.

 

Another Thanksgiving, Another Memory – 11/22/2017

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving.

Maybe I’m getting old, maybe I’m just feeling sappy and nostalgic, or maybe I just have some free time on my hands because I don’t have to cook the dinner this year, but I’ve been thinking a lot about Thanksgivings past.

I have so many memories—good and bad—tied up in this holiday. Here are just a few:

• Each year in elementary school, on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, we had a half-day, but we only had class until around 10:00. Then they brought us down to the cafeteria and showed us a movie—something appropriate for kids our age (and our time, the late 1970s/early 1980s), like Escape from Witch Mountain or That Darn Cat (the original). When the movie was over, they served us Burger King, brought in from the local fast-food joint, before sending us home for the holiday weekend. To this day, I can’t pass a Burger King without thinking fondly of those Thanksgiving Eve burgers.

 

• In middle school, my favorite teacher made us write an essay describing our family’s Thanksgiving traditions. In composing mine, I unwittingly pissed off my mother by mentioning that she spent the predawn hours of the holiday not only prepping the turkey feast but buffing away any speck of dust from the furniture, in anticipation of the guests we invited each year (I’m not sure how that’s an insult, but she certainly took it as one!).

 

• In high school, my on-again/off-again boyfriend dumped me after one of our standard (and spectacular) blowup fights right after the Thanksgiving Day football game. I had to walk home, crying and alone, in the cold holiday rain. Do I need to mention that we kissed and made up before nightfall, only to break up yet again the following weekend? Ah, young love.

 

• In college, when I was finally (sort of) seen as a grownup, I was allowed not only to have wine with the official Thanksgiving dinner, but I also sat up with my mom and her best friend, our neighbor Joanie, the night before the holiday, talking and laughing and playing drinking games. Even now, all these years later, I often feel a hankering to play a round of Three-Man on the night before Thanksgiving …

 

• And then there was the year my grandmother died on the day before Thanksgiving, and we all said it was because she just didn’t want to have to decide whose house to go to for dinner that year. Sometimes death really DOES seem easier than dealing with family.

So many memories—and you get to add a new one to the collection every year. I wonder if I’ll be looking back wistfully on tomorrow’s events in another couple of decades.

I hope so.

 

Downtime (Or, When Not to Fight the Laziness) – 11/18/2017

 

Some days? I just get lazy.

Take last Tuesday, for example.

I woke up at my usual time, around 4:00 a.m. (although I should say that the phrase “waking up” doesn’t really apply to me—I almost never sleep for more than an hour at a stretch, so there’s rarely any kind of “deep sleep” to “wake up” FROM . . .).

Anyway, I woke up, looked at the clock, and rolled over, knowing I had a decision to make.

Sleep or run? (Sometimes the choice is sleep or WRITE. . . .)

It’s the same choice I have to make every morning, and most days, the decision is simple: Drag my exhausted, sleep-deprived butt out of bed and get out there for my run.

It’s a simple choice because on the days when I run, when I do the “right” thing, when I don’t give in to the lazy streak that hides out there in the back of my mind, I feel better.

Even when I haven’t slept a wink (again), when I have a touch of the sniffles, when I’m overworked and underpaid, I feel good—great, even—when I force myself out there and act like the person I want to be. She may not be perfect, the person I want to be, but she’s a heck of a lot better than the person who curls back up in bed and pretends to be asleep.

But there are other days when the choice isn’t so easy to make. And even though I know I’ll never get back to sleep (and that making any attempt to do so is pure folly), even though I know I’ll feel like garbage all day long if I stay there in my warm and cozy bed for even a minute longer, I can’t make myself get up.

On those days, the laziness is like a snowball rolling downhill, getting bigger and bigger and knocking down every healthy option in its path.

Do one thing wrong—like skipping my morning run—and it’s nearly impossible to avoid other “bad” behavior, like eating a whole bag of Swedish fish or sugary granola bars or whatever nutrition-less piece of empty calories happens to catch my eye.

It’ll also be harder than usual to do the everyday things that are normally so easy—like, you know, my job (which is to write and to read).

All day long, I’ll fight the urge to stretch out on the couch and “rest my eyes” (or just abandon life entirely for the day and get back into bed, even if it means more tossing and turning, just like I do at night).

I’ll wander around in a foggy haze, wondering what happened to all that motivation I felt just—when? Yesterday? On lazy days, it feels like forever since I had any energy at all.

But here’s the thing: I’ve learned to accept it, my laziness. In a weird way, I’ve come to see it almost as a friend.

Because in truth? It’s NOT laziness.

It’s my body telling me I need just a little bit of downtime.

You can’t keep going the way I do—working out, reading and writing and editing for long hours, driving yourself to do more, day after day after day—without eventually breaking down.

Last winter, I ignored my laziness, tried to fight it, and ended up with a knee injury that kept me from working out (or doing much else) for over a month.

So now, I’ve learned to listen to my body, which (to my surprise) is a LOT smarter than my brain.

My body—and my laziness—tell me when I need to rest. And they also get me back out there—better, stronger, faster—the very first thing tomorrow morning.

 

Making Art (Or, How NaNoWriMo Is Going So Far) – 11/15/2017

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m deep in the midst of National Novel Writing Month, working hard to crank out 50,000 words between November 1 and November 30. I’m well on my way—and I noticed that my protagonist (a writer like me) had something kind of interesting to say (which, I realized, was just ME talking to, and about … well, ME).

Here’s an excerpt:

I think people picture writers sitting in a room alone, searching their brains (and maybe the thesaurus) for the perfect word before writing so much as a line. But it’s not like that, at least not for me.

Well, okay, the alone part is dead-on. Ba-dum-bump.

But I don’t spend a lot of time (any, really) trying to pick the exact right word. I don’t try to make “art.” I just try to put the story that’s playing kind of like a movie in my head down on paper so other people can see it, too. It doesn’t matter if the words are just right—only that the essence of the story is there, for me and for anybody who comes by and reads it.

There are two schools of thought (maybe more) among writers: 1) those who make “art” and need to be inspired, and 2) those who write garbage-y first drafts but tell good stories. I like to think (or hope) I fall into the second category.

I “just write” and I don’t care if it’s “just right.” I scribble, I curse, I ignore the conventions of grammar and maybe even human decency (because you can clean that stuff up later).

I do NOT make art.

The art? Is IN the making. The art is DOING it, creating something that nobody else bothered to make. And to me, that’s more artistic than even the most beautifully rendered sentence in history.

 

Feeling Like a Writer, or: My Journey to Little House on the Prairie – 11/7/2017

It’s Election Day and while everybody else is ranting about politics and violence and the terrible state of affairs here in America, I thought I’d take a step back and talk about something completely different, something innocent and simple: the first time I felt like a writer.

I was in elementary school. I’m not sure what grade—maybe third? Hard to say, now that I’m getting old and those early memories seem to be getting fuzzy around the edges sometimes.

I’d already written plenty of times before. I mean, I liked to write and make up stories from the time I could hold a pen, and I dreamed that someday one of my books would be there on the shelves of the library for everyone to see (wonder when THAT’s going to happen…).

In first grade, I wrote a (painfully cheesy) story about a baby deer and its parents (cleverly titled “Baby and His Parents”—titles have never been my strong suit, and frankly, they still aren’t!). The story was published as part of an anthology of creative writing by local kids. It wasn’t exactly the New York Times Bestseller List, but for a seven-year-old, it was pretty cool.

But even so, it didn’t make me feel like a writer (whatever that meant). That feeling came later, with another story that I wrote for a school assignment.

I remember the worksheet our teacher gave us to introduce the project. Those were the days (the early 1980s) of handouts mimeographed (not photocopied or printed out or read on iPads) on damp yellow paper with indigo blue ink that left smudges on your fingers.

The handout had a paragraph on top describing the task—to write a story about time travel—and maybe 10 blank lines at the bottom, where the student was expected to write the story.

Everybody else in the class eked out the bare minimum (writing as largely as possible to fill up those sad 10 lines). But I was longwinded as usual. When I was done, my story came to nearly 50 pages—typed (thanks, Mom, for humoring me and serving as my typist as if I were, in fact, a REAL writer and not just a pretentious grade-schooler).

Unlike everybody else, I not only wrote way too much, but I also wrote about the past.

My classmates all wanted to use the project, their very own time-travel opportunity, to go to the future. They dreamed of living like the Jetsons. But me? I wanted to travel back in time and spend a few days with Laura Ingalls Wilder in the Little House on the Prairie.

For me, it was mostly about the clothes. Back then, I assumed that by the year 2017, we’d all be wearing ugly silver jumpsuits and speeding around space. Not exactly my cup of tea. And frankly, I’ll take a calico prairie dress over a Star Trek–style coverall outfit any day!

But really, the reason I wrote so much was because, for the first time, I realized that I could be anywhere, anyone, in any time—just by writing about it. It was more than a free vacation. It was a whole new life.

Creating a different world for yourself, making things YOUR way—that’s what it meant to be a REAL writer. I had discovered the key to the clubhouse.

And sure, I’ll admit the obvious truth: Writing has never been so easy since then, but it IS still just as rewarding. It has to be. No person who’s even reasonably sane would keep doing it otherwise.

 

My Book Launch – 11/1/2017

My novel is being published today, and I honestly don’t know how I feel about that.

It’s not my first book. I actually counted all the books I’ve ever written the other day while I was having a bit of an OCD moment and I realized I’ve written 18. I’m pretty sure I know people who have never READ 18 books, much less written them, so I guess I should feel pretty good about the accomplishment.

Of course, that’s just the writing part, not the publishing. Of the 18 books I’ve managed to finish writing—to reach that victory line where you get to type “The End” (only to have your editor delete it because it’s old-fashioned and a little cheesy)—only a handful have actually been published.

Seven of the published ones were young adult nonfiction books—the kind of thing you’d take out of the library if you had to write a report in seventh grade, back in the olden days before kids just plagiarized Wikipedia instead of actually, you know, LEARNING anything.

But one of the published books was my first novel—Eye of Horace. I was so proud of it, so thrilled to finally have something published that meant more to me than another paltry freelance writing paycheck.

And basically, nobody read it.

I know, I know. I shouldn’t be whining.

Most writers would just be happy to have a real book with their name on it and leave it at that. They wouldn’t care so much about whether anybody actually READ the stupid thing.

But still. It would’ve been nice.

For me—for most writers, I think (I hope)—the truth is that being a writer isn’t about the readers or finding a publisher or any of the end-goal stuff. It’s about the writing.

We HAVE to write, just like we have to read. Words are as essential to our survival as water and oxygen. So we keep up with it, all the words and the writing and the typing, even if we don’t really seem to be getting anywhere.

People always say life is supposed to be about the journey, not the destination. And for a writer (at least, for me), that’s very true.

You do it because you just can’t do anything else and you don’t care (or you pretend not to care) about book sales and reviews and all those accolades that OTHER writers seem to be getting.

You just keep writing.

But when you get the chance, you DO still beg people to read your book. So here’s my plug: My new novel, The Birds of Brookside Manor, is now available on Amazon, bn.com, Kobo, and “where good books are sold.”

Plus, there’s a launch party (a virtual one, which, for a shy person like me is the best kind because it means I don’t have to leave home!) this week, on Saturday, 11/4, on Facebook. Sign up to “attend” and you can win some cool free stuff!

 

NaNoWriMo, Here I Come! – 10/31/2017

I may have mentioned before that I’m doing National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) this year.

In case you’re one of the few readers/writers left out there who hasn’t heard of it, the goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a 50,000-word (or more) novel between November 1 and November 30.

I first discovered this amazing (free, nonprofit) program (https://nanowrimo.org/) back in 2005. I’d just started freelancing again, and I found myself with all those hours on my hands that I used to waste sitting in Philadelphia commuter traffic five days a week.

I know, I know. Most people would just get some extra sleep, not try to write an “extra” 50,000 words for no good reason.

But I quickly found out that there IS a good reason.

The reason is: You get stuff written. And really, isn’t that every writer’s goal?

Believe it or not, completing the NaNoWriMo challenge is a lot easier than you might think.

Fifty thousand words may seem like an ocean—deep and unfathomable—to a nonwriter, but anybody who’s been at this dreadful, wonderful job for more than a few hours knows perfectly well that 50,000 words are chump change.

You can crank them out in 30 days without any problem, even while showing up faithfully to your regular job and still seeing your family (if you really want to!). You just need to set aside a little time every day and, even more important, be willing to write absolute crap.

Here’s the thing: I used to be one of those writers who labored over every syllable, carefully weighing the merits of “a” versus “the.” And I never finished writing a single damn book.

With NaNoWriMo, you have no time to agonize over the “right” word. ANY word will do—at least for the first draft. And as an editor, I can tell you frankly that even the best first draft is still a total piece of garbage, so why torture yourself? Just write.

To me, NaNoWriMo represents freedom. It murders your Inner Critic and lets you JUST DO IT (to use an awful Nike cliché—something that is perfectly acceptable in a first draft, after all).

Just get the words down and worry about whether they’re any good later. That’s what editing is for anyway (and I’ll be the first to admit I’m a better editor than I am a writer, so why not use my skills to their best advantage?).

In the years since I first tried National Novel Writing Month, I’ve successfully completed the 50,000-word challenge eight times (and written several additional books in the “off-season”). This year’s NaNoWriMo, which begins in a few short hours, will be my lucky number nine (barring any unforeseen tragedies, of course).

It’s time to stretch my typing fingers and shake the cobwebs out of my imagination. I have another shitty novel to write.

 

Where Has All the Talent Gone? – 10/28/2017

 

For a much as I read, you’d think the words would—I don’t know—TOUCH me more often than they do.

 

It’s the end of October and my Goodreads Reading Challenge counter tells me I’ve read 100 books so far this year.

 

And in all that reading, how many books have made me laugh out loud (I mean REALLY laugh, not a generic LOL)? How many made me cry? How many—to put it frankly—made me feel anything at all?

 

Precious few.

 

Every now and then, there IS a book that makes me sit up and take notice and say to myself, “Wow. I wish I could write like that.” But it doesn’t happen often.

 

Like so many people these days (I hope!), I find myself starved for any glimmer of talent, constantly wishing I could spot some accomplishment that seems extraordinary, larger than life—not just in writing, but in ANY aspect of human existence.

 

So much today seems mundane, boring, not even worth of notice.

 

Most of the books I read are exactly the same: barely worth the paper (or screen) they’re printed on. They’re loaded with grammatical errors and typos (even those produced by the big publishing houses—shame on you, Big Five!), and the stories are trite and pointless. And because I read so much, I can’t help but wonder if I’m wasting all that time.

 

Here’s the thing: I work my butt off: with my writing, with my editing, with pretty much everything I do. Yet I fully recognize that I will never be one of those rare geniuses I’m searching for—which, really, makes it all the more depressing that I can’t seem to find anything out there that’s . . . well . . . genius.

 

And sure, there are books and authors I love, such as my fellow Blydyn Square Books author Everett De Morier, for instance; or novelist Chris Bohjalian, whose books often make me gasp out loud (would that be GOL?) at some unexpected plot twist; or Jen Lancaster, who never fails to make me pee my pants just a little because I laugh so hard.

 

But, as seems to be the case in all facets of life nowadays, these glimpses, these moments of awe and wonder at someone else’s pure talent, are much too few and far between.

 

But I’m keeping my eyes open.

 

 

Words Words Words – 10/21/2017

 

My head is spinning. It’s all words, words, words these days.

 

I know that’s probably true for any writer, but I’m an editor, too, so sometimes it’s hard to figure out where my words stop and somebody else’s begin.

 

And, as if I don’t have enough words in my life already, Blydyn Square Books (my publisher) wants me to blog. God, that’s such a goofy word, blog, and if feels SO 2005. Plus, there’s the whole who-cares-what-I’m-up-to aspect of the thing…

 

But here goes.

 

Just to give you a hint of all the words in my life right now, here’s a sampling of what I’ve done so far today (bear in mind it’s only 1 p.m. as I write this):

 

• Got up at to run at 4:30 a.m. (while listening to Stendhal’s The Red and the Black as part of my 2017 New Year’s Resolution to read all those classics I somehow managed to miss along the way, which I can do while I run—thank you, Librivox!)

 

• Edited a couple of chapters of someone else’s novel, which was actually very good (a rarity!), but it filled my head with beautiful words that seem to be haunting me (a good sign for the author, who is clearly talented, but not so good for my poor, exhausted brain)

 

• Edited several chapters of a painfully dull, awkwardly stilted nonfiction educational book (unfortunately, THOSE are the kind of words that pay most of the bills around here)

 

And now it’s time for my own words, and I have to decide what to do first:

 

Research the book I’m planning to write for this year’s National Novel Writing Month, coming up in November?

 

Struggle to eke out a few coherent paragraphs on my tortured work in progress?

 

Read a little (because what writer doesn’t like to pretend that time spent curled up with a good book counts as “research”)?

 

Or maybe just pop a few aspirin and lie down with a cool cloth over my eyes to nurse the migraine all these words have given me.

 

Bring on the Bayer.