Do Be Ridiculous ~ Part Deux

My first trip to California this summer was so fabulous that not taking another would have been.......ridiculous.  This time it was really a vacation.  A whole week.  No kids or grandkids.  No reason to be late.  But I was.  My son's girlfriend drove me from Peoria to Chicago to catch my 9:20 am flight.  We left in what, according to Map Quest, should have been plenty of time to arrive an hour before departure.  Wrong.  Construction and traffic and pit stops, oh my.  We pulled up to the airport at 8:55 am.  I got to the ticket counter on the verge of a nervous breakdown and the woman informed me that I didn't have time to get checked in and would miss my flight.  I wasn't shocked but I was devastated.  She gave me a stand-by boarding pass for a flight that evening at 5 pm.  Not only was it full, but I had a train to catch once I got to LA that would be leaving there at the same time that I was leaving here.  I walked away to look for somewhere to cry.  Just as I spotted an open seat by a woman who didn't look like she'd be too disturbed by my sobbing, one of the other women from behind the Virgin America counter came over to tell me that the flight had been delayed and if I hurried I might make it. My destiny depended on luck and speed.  It didn't look good.   I got to the security check and waited for what seemed like hours.  When my turn came I walked through the security gates and waited for my belongings to be scanned.  As soon as they came through the curtain I grabbed my bag, my laptop, my purse and my shoes and RAN,  barefoot, to Gate 35B.  Out of breath I thrust the boarding pass at the man behind the counter and explained my situation.  He entered some information into his computer, looked at me and told me that they had already given away my seat.  My heart stopped.  Then he added that they did have a seat, but I would have to sit between two other people.  I promptly informed him that I would sit on his dick if it getting on that plane.  California, here I come!

 

 

I want to say that I have flown Virgin America several times and I love their staff, their amenities and their Turkey Protein Platter which includes sliced turkey breast, Greek yogurt hummus, whole wheat pita, carrots and cucumber sticks for dipping, muenster, cheddar and brie cheeses, tomatoes, olives, seedless grapes and a cage-free hardboiled egg.  I was so stressed out and exhausted by the time we were in the air.  If that egg had been in a cage, I never would have gotten to it.  Thank you Virgin Air, you think of everything.

 

 

 

One of the first things that I did while on my vaycay was to go to a wine tasting with my daughter and her husband (the ones who claim that I snore? you ask......yes, them) and Sammie their manny.  We walked through the beautiful grounds of Sculptura a winery and art gallery all in one, into the main building and up to the counter to begin our tasting.  Now I do stand up comedy and when, after a show, I am standing at a bar, with men, we are doing shots.  Well blame it on muscle memory cause when my first sampling of wine was placed in front of me I slugged it down like it was a Misdemeanor or a Vegas Bomb.  It was delicious and I turned to share my observation with my fellow drinkers and to my horror they had not even tasted the wine yet.  They were swirlin and sniffin,and finally sippin.  I thought someone was gonna start singin One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others and then a trap door under me would open and drop me into a pit with all the other no class mouth breathers or I'd be given a scarlet G (for gulper) to wear on my chest which would signify that I was, henceforth, relegated to drinking only the wines that came in boxes or with screw tops because that's all I deserved.  Although they noticed my wine tasting faux pas no one said anything and I sipped my way through the rest of the tasting making mmmmm and ahhhhh sounds and wishing I had something intelligent to say about body or oakiness. 

 

 



"Let's go to the beach," said my daughter, Samantha.

Are there any more lovely words in the universe?  I love the ocean.  It has a way of calming, centering and renewing me like nothing else (even a quick shot of wine).  So I put on a somewhat skimpy maxi dress, gathered my book, water and towel and we were on our way.  Now keep a few things in mind.  I anticipated a relaxing lounge-around after a leisurely walk from the car to the beach, I am almost fifty years old, I am so far out of shape we don't even share a time zone and I am afraid of heights.  This is where they took me:

Let me be more specific.  The TOP of this is where they took me and then we climbed down to the beach.  Did I mention that I am afraid of heights?  Did I mention that I had on a long dress?  Did I mention that I am a hundred years old and crippled?

There was one point where I had to traverse a narrow ledge that, had I slipped, I would have fallen to my death (which, I suppose would have kept them from having to listen to me snore).  It took forever for them to talk me into going across and when I finally did I ran and got my foot caught in my dress.  My daughter couldn't understand why I would run, but I just wanted to get it over with, one way or the other.  When we got to the bottom we did have a lovely walk.  There were tide pools with all kinds of aquatic creatures including anemones, starfish and snails. I made friends with two snails in particular.  If fact I flipped them over, announced that their bodies looked like tiny vaginas and licked one of them.  Don't try to make sense of it.

After a nice walk and sexually assaulting a snail I had a decision to make.  I could either climb back up from whence I came or I could find some big rocks and Virginia Wolfe it into the Pacific. I had some events coming up that I was looking forward to and had just bought some new underwear so I decided I'd try to climb.  Sam and Lucia went ahead of me and stopped to give me what I'm sure they thought were helpful tips for scaling my way back up that rock face every now and then.  At one point I had to get from a lower rock to a higher rock.  Sam wanted me to step onto the higher rock just like I was walking up stairs but between the distance, my bad knees and my fat ass that was not happening.  After much thought and hiking up my dress I traveled from rock to rock in the best way that I could at which point Sam lost her shit.  The sound of your child's laughter is a joy, right?  Wrong.  She's laughing hysterically and asking why I would just throw myself from one rock to the next.  Uh, cause it was my only option?  What she should have done much, much sooner than she did was to inform me that my entire left tit had escaped from my dress.

We made it back to the car and drove a quarter mile down the road at which point Sam pointed to a pretty little area off the road and announced, "That's where you park if you want to take the stairs down to the beach."


The impetus for the second trip (read: excuse for us to spend time together) was a Tough Mudder in  Tahoe.  If you aren't familiar with Tough Mudder's they are obstacle courses that run over 10-12 miles and treat it's participants (read: victims) to 20-25 obstacles, a few of which are called Artic Enema, Funky Monkey and Everest.  In other words it's HARD.  Almost as hard as my rock climb probably.  Lucia and three of his friends were participating and Sam and I were signed up to volunteer for the event which raises money for The Wounded Warrior Project.  We parked and took a bus to the resort area and then a ski-lift further up the mountain to the obstacle course.

The view was breathtaking and the energy was electric.  I am a big boo hooer when it comes to things that I find inspirational and my tears started flowing at the volunteer meeting when they talked about how the event couldn't be a success without me......ok, us  Sam and I were sent off to sign the participants in when they arrived and, among other things, give them their bracelet for their free "end of the run" beer.  Yea, very important shit. And I was determined to be the best Mudder volunteer Tahoe had ever seen.

We started our shift at 11 am and the people came at a pretty steady pace.  Now Sam is pregnant and it was hot so she drank lots of water to ensure that she stayed hydrated.  Every time she got a bottle of water for herself she would also get one for me.  At 12:45 she had a healthy baby and I had a full bladder but did not want to leave my post (else how would I put all the others to shame).  Sign in closed at 2 but things had to be packed up.  I tried to stay and help, but I had to PEE!  I told Sam where I was going and headed to the porta potties that were set up behind the volunteer's tent at the bottom of a hill.  I got about halfway down the hill, slipped on the gravel and my legs both went out from under me.  I fell.  Down.  Hard.  In front of people.  Three of them started toward me to make sure I was okay.  I waved them away with assurances that I was fine.  I was, however, not fine.  My knee was scraped and bruised and I could have used some help getting up, but I didn't want them to come near me because.........I wasn't sure when I was going to stop urinating!!!!  Oh yea.  Not a little "Whoops I peed a little when I sneezed" kind of situation.  Every bottle of water that Samantha had brought to me was currently running down that hill.  When it finally stopped, I managed to get up and hobble to the porta potty even though I didn't need it anymore.  I texted Sam, "Fell down a hill.  Pissed my pants".  I'd like to say that she was shocked at my clumsiness or incontinence, but based on the casual look on her face when I opened that potty door I would have to say that she wasn't.  "Let's go have lunch, Peepee Pants" was all she said.

You would think that after almost missing my flight on the way out that we would get to the train station on the morning that I left to come home in plenty of time.  You would be wrong.  We got up early enough and then dawdled around until what turned out to be the last possible minute to leave the house.  My train was leaving at 6:55 am and we pulled up to the train station at 6:54.  Sam and I leaped out of the car grabbed my bags, ran to the train and flung them through the doors.  I got a quick hug before the doors started to shut.  Just as they did I thought I heard someone say that the train was headed north.  I jammed my arms between the doors before they could close and managed to force them back open.  Sam thought I had just changed my mind about returning to Illinois (could you blame me) until I yelled that I thought that I was on the wrong train.  In hind sight the fact that it was the only train should have dawned on me.  A group of three people on the platform assured me that I was on my way to LA.  I'm sure they were thinking that Sam and I should definitely be on next season's Amazing Race. I got my bags dragged up to the second floor, showed the conductor my ticket and got myself some breakfast.  I had a five hour ride ahead of me and had had the foresight to bring some Netflix movies to fill the time.  I chose a French film called Rust and Bone about a street fighter and his relationship with a killer whale trainer who, after a killer whale incident, lost both legs from the knees down.  Don't believe me?  Google it.  I put the disc in my laptop on the tray in front of me and got comfortable.  Too comfortable.  When I fell asleep the two main characters were just friends.  Not so much when I woke up.  My first conscious thought was "What is that noise?'.  Well, it was these two former friends goin at it.  Hard.  And loud.  He was on top going to town.  She was on the bottom, stumps flailing every which way.  I shut my computer as fast as possible, but I have no way of knowing how many people had watched the brown chicken brown cow that had been going on in my lap. 

As I traveled (South) along the coast I couldn't help but wonder if other people have such ridiculous things happen to them on such a regular basis.  It doesn't seem like it, or maybe they do and just don't tell everyone.  That would be a shame.  Wave your freak flag, tell your story, laugh any time you have the chance and enjoy the view.

Thanking Anne Lamott

In February 2007 I got arrested after a misunderstanding with the law.  Apparently they frown, heavily, on calling in your own prescriptions.  I saw it as eliminating the middle man; they saw it as a felony.  They won.  It was a horrible experience, but it was the beginning of the end of a twenty year battle with opiates.  Getting arrested probably saved my life and definitely saved my sanity.  Two years of visits with my probation officer and random drug testing left me little choice about using.  I guess if I had been willing to go back to jail I might have continued to use, but the three days I spent locked up was enough for me.  Horizontal stripes and community shoes?  No thank you.  I began to believe that living above the influence instead of under it might actually make things easier, but I hadn't a clue how to go about that or why my attempts to stop using in the past had never been successful.  I went to NA meetings because the court mandated it.  I listened to people who were having varying degrees of success at living a drug-free life because I had enough sense to do so.  And I read.  A lot.  Anything and everything I could find about overcoming addiction.  That's how I found her.

Browsing the shelves at Barnes & Noble one day I found a book of essays and interviews of well known people's stories of their experiences with addiction.  The list of contributors included Richard Pryor, Chuck Negron, Alice Cooper, Richard Lewis, Steve Earle, Malcolm McDowell, Grace Slick and several others with whom I wasn not familiar.  It was a great list (seriously they had me at Richard Pryor and Alice Cooper) and I had no doubt that it would be an interesting read.  I picked through and read the chapters of the people with whom I was familiar and then went back and read the rest.  All of them were heartbreaking and inspiring and hopeful and it felt like each of these people, in their words and their willingness to bare their souls, had given me a gift.  I finished reading Dock Ellis' story.  It was late and I was tired.  I turned the page to put in a bookmark and there was Anne Lamott.  Soft eyes with lines of knowledge and wisdom and experience around them and the most fabulous blond dreds.  I put down the bookmark.  One more chapter.  One more story.  The story that would touch my soul and change everything.

As she described herself as a child she also described me.  Never feeling like she fit in or belonged.  Always feeling like she was "too much" or "not enough".   And how that first mind altering substance changed all that.  Made everything right until it made everything wrong.  She wrote about not using drugs but what she also wrote about, in this essay and in her own books of essays, was how she was this wonderful, crazy, neurotic, silly, irrational, perfectly imperfect person even without any mind altering chemicals in her system!  That's when I had my epiphany.  I had been willing and even able to give up the high, but what I'd never been able to let go of was the built in excuse for being a fuck up.  It was so easy to tell everyone, myself included, that my words, actions and decisions weren't really my fault because I was wasted.  If I quit using drugs on a regular basis I would have to take responsibility; but what I realized thanks to Anne was that I didn't have to be perfect just because I wasn't wasted.  And that was the key to my freedom. 

I've read just about everything she's written and while I love her fiction, I devour her essays.  She has a strong faith in God and talks about this part of her life often.  I am an atheist but respect and admire how she can use her belief system to inspire others without ever making you feel like she's trying to convert you.  In the essays where she talks about her church she refers to it by name.  It is located north of San Francisco and just happens to be mid way between Lake Tahoe where my daughter Sam and I volunteered at a Tough Mudder last month and my daughter's home.  When I realized that, on the weekend we were spending in Tahoe, we would be driving back to Sam's home on Sunday it occurred to me that I knew where Anne Lamott would probably be that morning at 11 o'clock.  Now it crossed my mind that as an atheist, my going to church to try to meet Anne Lamott was a bit like a vegetarian going to a butcher shop to try to run into Lady Gaga while she was trying on dresses and I struggled with the idea that maybe it would be wrong, but I talked to a few friends about whether my plan bordered on stalking and after much thought I decided.  I was going to church.

It took a while to convince my son-in-law that my pagan daughter and I were not punking him when we told him he needed to get up at seven in the morning and drive three hours so that we could go to church but we finally did and he got up and drove us there.  Bless his heart.  We found the church and parked.  I had a card that I had written a little something about how she had changed my life, her book Bird By Bird that I planned to ask her to autograph and my phone so that I could get a picture of myself with this woman whom I idolized.  I was having a bit of a panic attack while trying to decide if I was really going to go through with this craziness when a car pulled up next to us and she got out.  Her dreds make her so distinctive that there was no "Is that really her?" moment.  There was no doubt.  She walked into the church and I just sat there.  My daughter gave me a "shit or get off the pot' look and we got out and went inside.  It was a small church with a small congregation and it felt very welcoming.  Anne was sitting across the sanctuary.  Even though I could see her it didn't seem real.  The sermon was given by a visiting pastor and was a story about a gift that she had sent to her brother and how much it meant to him to know that someone was thinking of him.  She knew that he appreciated what she had done because he called her and thanked her, telling her how much it had meant to him.  Do you know what he didn't do?  He didn't ask her for anything more.  That would never have occurred to him or to anyone with half a brain and one eyeball who was expressing what he was trying to express.  Gratitude.  Appreciation.  Humility.  And so, after the service, when I had the honor of meeting Anne Lamott, I told her how her willingness to share her experience and her talent for putting words together had made it possible for me to change, to be a better mother and friend and to truly enjoy the life I was living.  I gave her the card and then I left.  I didn't take out my book or my phone, because I was there to honor her and an autograph and picture weren't about or for her.  They were about me.  Asking for more when I had had more than enough was not okay.  Making this about me instead of her was not okay.  Being selfish instead of grateful was not okay.  How do I know these things?  Anne Lamott taught me.

Do Be Ridiculous ~ Part One

It is better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring ~ Marilyn Monroe

How many blog posts does it take to exhaust me to the point of needing a two week vacation?  Apparently three.  It wasn't even so much that I was exhausted as that I was crazy busy.  Feel bad for me?  I was busy getting ready for a one week trip to California.  Feel bad for me now?  It was my second trip to California of the year.  How bout now?  I thought that it was ok to miss the first week because I was overwhelmed with getting things packed and making sure that the people and pets that I was leaving here would have what they needed while I was gone and I had a belief that I would spend time on my vacation writing.  That belief turned out to be ridiculous.  Actually, ridiculous may be the running theme of my two trips to the coast.

On my first trip I flew to San Francisco to pick up my two oldest grandchildren and bring them back here for the summer.  We, along with my daughter Sam and her husband Lucia, spent the day in beautiful Golden Gate Park.  Our first stop was an old carousel that we thought the kids would be delighted to ride, but as they climbed onto the ride they looked back at us with less than joyful looks on their faces.

Me:   They don't seem thrilled.
Sam: They've seen Mary Poppins enough times to know that this could get weird real quick.
Me:   They're probably thinking "Hey, don't Dick Van Dyke us around, we know what's gonna
          happen".
People around us:  Eye rolls.

Ridiculous.

Later we walked up a path that led to a large pond.  When the water first came into view the kids took of running toward it and a bench at it's edge where four people were sitting.

Me:  Stay away from them; they're fishing.

Now this would seem like a logical and polite thing to instruct the kids to do except for the fact that they were not fishing and there was nothing going on that would lead me to believe that they were.  Apparently I just came to this conclusion in a part of my brain that has no connection with reality.  At this point the four people have turned around and are looking at me like I am the crazy person that I apparently am.  I felt ridiculous, so in an effort to not draw further attention to myself I begin laughing like a hyena.  A very loud hyena.  We walked along the water and thankfully got to a point where they can no longer see us and then realized that the waterfall which was our destination requires us to go back the way from which we just came.

Me:   I don't want to walk back past those people.
Sam: You hang out with people whom you've made a fool of yourself in front of all the time.

I can't argue with that and start walking.  When we get close to the bench the foursome gets up and leaves.  I'd like to think that this was their plan before they saw me returning, but I can't prove it.

Ridiculous.

There is a couple sitting at the next bench that we walk past.

Me:   Happy birthday.
Woman on bench:  Thank you.
Sam and Lucia:   Looks of WTF.
Me:  What?  She had a gift bag sitting on the ground between her feet that said Happy Birthday.
Lucia:  Oh, I just thought you had fully commited to being crazy.

Not ridiculous.

At dinnertime we made our way to The Beach Chalet, a restaurant located above the Golden Gate Park Visitor's Center.  The center was closed, but the lobby features frescos by artist Lucien Labaudt done during the 1930's that were absolutely fantastic.

Before we went to dinner, Sam and I got out at the beach to take a picture of me pointing a my "lady lounge"while standing next to a sign that said "People Swimming And Wading Have Drowned Here".

Ridiculous (but hilarious)

As we were walking to the sign we noticed a man pulling a wagon inside which there was a pug.  I thought that would make a cute (read ridiculous) picture, so I asked the man if we could take one.  Quick as you please he flung down the wagon handle and scurried up next to us.

Man:    You can take a picture of my dog.  Not me.  (read: I have warrants)

Now the picture seems less ridiculous and not that funny but we are obligated to take it and, it seems, to have a conversation with this man.

Sam:   You're gonna spoil that dog. (laughing)
Man:    (In a bit of a huff)  He can't walk. He is paralyzed from the waist (we never did see a waist)
             down.  He is twelve years old and is a four year cancer survivor.  He's been through more
             than most people. Urgh!!!

Sam and I both know lots of people who have been through some pretty awful things, but not knowing what this camera-shy probable felonious dog lover was wanted for we decided not to argue.

The man continued to talk, a lot, as Lucia and the kids gave us dirty looks from where they were waiting, and waiting, in the car.  Finally the dog barked (kind of) and I saw an opportunity to encourage our new found friend to be on his way.

Me:    Looks like he's ready to continue his walk.  (Meaning "pick up the wagon and pull your
           wretched dog out of our lives)
Man:  (Angry and yelling)  I TOLD YOU HE'S PARALYZED! HE CAN'T WALK!!!!!!

Man storms off.

Ridiculous (the story, not the picture which was supposed to be ridiculous)

When Lucia come out from booking a room at the hotel after dinner he was beaming.

Lucia:   They gave me an upgrade because I'm military.
Me:       What is it?  A hot tub?  A muffin basket?  A masseuse?
Lucia:    A kitchen.

Well, isn't that the bee's knees.  He must know that as far as I'm concerned no vacation is complete until I've cooked or washed some dishes!

Ridiculous.

I showered and got in bed, exhausted, and fell asleep while everyone else got cleaned up and went for ice cream.  It was some time later that Sam woke me up to tell me that I was snoring. I rolled over and went back to sleep.

The next morning I awoke and looked over at the bed where Sam and Lucia should have been.  They were not there.  Nothing was there except the fitted sheet........and the kitchen door was closed.  I tried to pretend that maybe they were in there cooking up some breakfast and wanted it to be a surprise.  Or maybe after spending the day in a beautiful city they were feeling romantic and wanted some private time.  Even the possibility that they were being held behind the kitchen door by crazed kidnappers who had mistaken our family for one who could or would pay a ransom crossed my mind.  But I was pretty sure that the truth was much, much worse.  This was confirmed about an hour later when Sam emerged from the kitchen.

Sam:   I know why HUM (see previous blogs) hasn't called to profess his undying love for you. 
           YOU SNORE LIKE A FREIGHT TRAIN!

Apparently when they woke me and told me I was snoring, I rolled over and went back to sleep, not making a sound for the next hour and a half while they watched television.  Then, as soon as they turned the tv off and the lights out I started back up.....loudly.

There was talk of a plan to use a device made of a toilet paper roll stuffed with toilet paper and secured to my face with hair ties to muffle me.  It had also been decided that on our trip to Tahoe in July they would pick an unsuspecting victim, buy him shot after shot and while they were getting him drunk they would regale him with stories of the fabulous blow jobs that I give thus ensuring that I would spend the night snoring in his room and not theirs!

So my son-in-law and pregnant daughter ended up sleeping on the kitchen floor.  Thank goodness he's military and got that upgrade.

Ridiculous.

When they took Maggie, Ryker and me to the airport Lucia took the black bag that had their clothes for summer and checked it along with their car seats.  The flight from San Francisco to Chicago was uneventful but even so, by the time we landed I was exhausted and still had to drive three hours to get home.  We got to the baggage carousel and the plastic bag with the two car seats came around.  It was awkward but I grabbed it without incident.  Then the black bag came toward me.  I grasped the handle and lifted.  Nothing happened.  It didn't seem heavy when Lucia checked it in but apparently he has more upper body strength than I gave him credit for.  I let go of the bag and on it went back for another lap at baggage claim.  I pondered whether the kids could get by with the clothes that they were wearing for the entire summer, and decided that I better give it one more shot.  This time I was prepared and managed to drag the two ton bag off the carousel and onto the floor.  However, I still had to get this bag, two car seats and my bags across the airport, onto a train and through a parking lot to my car.  Oh yea, and two kids.  I hollered at the kids to follow me with their bags and I drug the car seats and that fucking black bag over to the machine that dispenses luggage carts.  I procured one and piled the bag, the car seats and my bag onto it. 

Maggie and Ryker:   Should we put our bags on top?
Me:       NO! Carry them and head that way.

So we make our way to the elevator.  We go up to the floor we need, walk across to another area and then take an elevator down to the area where we will catch the train to the parking lot.  As the door opens the first thing I see is a sign.

Sign:   NO LUGGAGE CARTS ON TRAIN

Ridiculous (and possibly disasterous)

Seriously, I'm screwed.  I gather the kids around me.

Me:  When the train comes and the doors open you guys need to get yourselves and your bags on board.

They both nod at me solemnly and when the train arrives they do just as they've been told.  I manage to fling the car seats onto the train and drag the bag in just as the doors close.  At the moment when I'm feeling like we are going to make it, at least to the car, without incident I hear:

Ryker:  (to anyone on the train who will listen)  Maggie has three dads but I only have two.
Compassionate stranger to me:  Don't worry honey, you'll never see any of us again.

Ridiculous.......the next generation.

WWCBD

 'Life gives you lots of chances to screw up which means you have just as many chances to get it right.' ~ Carrie Bradshaw


There is an event coming up in my life this August the idea of which, for a moment, blew my mind.  It's my high school class reunion.  The part that feels strange is the fact that apparently thirty years have passed since I graduated.  How can that possibly be true.  What did I do with all those years?  The common cold still exists; didn't cure that.  Bread was already being sliced in 1983; didn't come up with that.  And, even if my life depended on it, I couldn't tell you if the chicken or the egg came first. 

Even the things that I did right, I did at times, manage to screw up to varying degrees.  I have four fabulous kids, but haven't always been the best mother.  I graduated from nursing school, but then, after almost twenty years, flushed what could have been a wonderful career down the toilet behind an opiate addiction.  I've been married a couple times, but, much like elevators and escalators, got monogamy and monotony confused........a lot.  After many mistakes and acknowledging the fact that I am no longer a spring chicken I think that at some level, I adopted the belief that it was too late to start something new and that I probably didn't deserve a fresh start.  After all, I'm the only person to have made mistakes, to have let myself and people that I love dearly down or to have lived as a lesser version of myself due, at least in part, to abusing drugs and alcohol.  Right?

I've lived, in many ways, a monaural and monochrome life as a result, at least in part, of fear and denial of my own worth and from making decisions that I thought would please other people and earn their acceptance instead of believing I had every right to make my life decisions for myself whether they approved of them or not. I realized that this duet of bullshit had kept me from what would have probably been some fabulous adventures when, recently,  it almost kept me from yet another one.

When HUM (see previous blogs) invited me for grown-up alone time I would love to say that my reaction was "Well, of course he wants to spend a night in the company of someone as fabulously fun and interesting as ME".  But that wasn't my reaction.  AT ALL.  First I tried to figure out why in the world he would be interested in "someone like me".  What does that even mean????  I have many friends that love to spend time with me and I don't second guess them or their motives.  Then I started to wonder what was wrong with him???  I wanted, with all my might, to have a sexy, romantic and fun night with him, but there was always the Poodle Factor to consider.  Now I would have, at this point, assumed that everyone knew what the Poodle Factor was except for the fact that the two people I spoke to when trying to figure out if this sleepover was a risk I wanted to take had no idea what I was talking about or what drugs I seemed to suddenly be using.  Let me explain.  As I said before, I thought this man was fabulous.  But what if I was wrong.  What if we went to his room and instead of the fulfillment of the wonderful way I imagined things would unfold he pulled out a poodle and said (in a squeaky PeeWee Herman voice because even his sexy voice turns out to be fake)  "Lick Fifi's asshole.....it's what I'm into".  Boom!  Poodle factor wipes out any positive thing I ever thought about this man and life as I've known it since forming an opinion about him in 1987 (based on a character not him, yeah I know) is over.  My friends, with the help of a hitter or two, convinced me that the odds of my fairy tale turning into a freak show were fairly slim and it was a chance worth taking.  Well, as I am sure you are all devoted readers, you already know that the night turned out wonderfully.  So fabulous was it in fact that, with my orgasm, I got a side order of epiphany.  Even if he'd surprised me with a poodle it wouldn't have been the end of the world.  It would have been a bit of a disappointment, yes, but NOT the end of the world.  I would have simply walked away, reported him to the SPCA and gone on with my life.

In hindsight it's easy to say it was worth working through my craziness and taking a chance, but I needed a way to ensure that, when faced with opportunities in the future, I would be willing to embrace them, not without, but in spite of, fear and doubt. How could I facilitate this.  I needed a new way of thinking.  A new mantra.  Then it came to me.....What Would Carrie Bradshaw Do??????  Would she doubt herself and her worth?  Would she come up with ridiculous scenarios in her head about how everything would surely go wrong?  Would she try to talk herself out of fantastic opportunites?   OF COURSE SHE WOULD!  Then she would, with the help of a quirky outfit, a Cosmopolitan or two and her friends, find it within herself to go forward ~  seeming bold and looking gorgeous. 

And so, in the spirit and with the aplomb of CB, I am approaching life with a new attitude. I am writing with the confidence that I am good and am going to get better.  I am going to be more open to the idea of love in whatever form it presents itself.  I am going back to school, full time, in the fall to major in English and take classes like Basic Drawing and Art Appreciation.  This one was a toughie.    I registered for these classes knowing full well that the people who raised me would, from here and from the grave, raise their eyebrows and tell me that this was not a practical decision.  I don't care.  Writing is my passion and art brings me joy.......and I deserve joy.  Besides, it's what Carrie Bradshaw would do.

I signed up for Basic Drawing with CONFIDENCE in spite of the fact that the top picture is my interpretation of the bottom picture!!! I have much to learn.

Curable

"Incurable"
by Dorothy Parker

And if my heart be scarred and burned,
The safer, I, for all I learned;
... The calmer, I, to see it true
That ways of love are never new-
The love that sets you daft and dazed
Is every love that ever blazed;
The happier, I, to fathom this:
A kiss is every other kiss.
The reckless vow, the lovely name,
When Helen walked, were spoke the same;
The weighted breast, the grinding woe,
When Phaon fled, were ever so.
Oh, it is sure as it is sad
That any lad is every lad,
And what's a girl, to dare implore
Her dear be hers forevermore?
Though he be tried and he be bold,
And swearing death should he be cold,
He'll run the path the others went....
But you, my sweet, are different.

As I alluded to in my last post my choices in men have been less than stellar. Even worse I could have written the above poem by Dorothy Parker, because as much as I hate to admit it, there was a period in the beginning of each relationship that I believed that this cad would be different.  I have not delved into the reasons that I choose the men that I do with a professional therapist, but there are a couple factors that I think may have played a role.  I was raised a Cub's fan and as such held a belief that it was okay for men to be losers.  If they were unemployed or abusive or slept with your friends you just kept on loving them and figured that surely things were going to get better.  When?  Maybe next year.  I've seen The Sound of Music dozens of times starting at the Palace Theater in downtown Peoria circa 1973 and at some point my mantra must have become, "If Maria VonTrapp can make play clothes out of curtains, then by god I can make healthy relationships out of red flags." 

And so it went.  I married my first husband, even though he hit me sometimes.  We were moving to Virginia and I assumed he wouldn't do it there.  WHAT?  The ocean is calming; it could happen.  I married my second husband because he didn't hit me.  Of course he would never stand up to me either.  Ever.  This got old fast.  A man without a backbone is even less attractive than  a man without a chin.  By the time I had had enough I wanted to have my first husband hit my second husband.  The next long term relationship was with an alcoholic, Hispanic musician.  I'm a crazy, red headed comedian and Lucy and Desi were hysterical so why not us?  We were a horrible combination and didn't last, but he has since quit drinking, we have a fabulous thirteen year old and he's one of my best friends. Do I want to be his woman now that he's living a good life?  Nope.  I wasted a couple of years on another man who was going to leave his wife and quit selling drugs as soon as he got his money right.  Neither of those things ever happened.  I finally got my head right and left.

I spent the day of my date with HUM (from the previous blog) running errands, taking my daughter to an art class and driving my son to his father's which is about a two hour round trip.  By the time I got home and got my other kids fed I had very little time to get ready before I was supposed to meet HUM at the show.  A funny side note: The first show at the club usually starts at eight.  I didn't realize that it started at seven that weekend so when I showed up at eight I must have appeared very "see you when I see you" casual when, if fact I was "can't freakin wait to see you".  After I got out of the tub and got dressed I was walking down the hall from the bathroom to the bedroom and had what I can only describe as a vision.  It consisted of receiving a letter from a man with whom I had had a three month relationship about a year before.  I could have made a circus tent out of the red flags that came with this guy.  I met him a day after he was released from prison.  None of his crimes had been violent, mostly a result of the stupidity brought on by drug addiction.  But he said he had learned his lesson and was all about making changes and a better life for himself.  I believed him and at the time I think he believed himself.  Things were fun for about two and half months and then he started using again.  You wouldn't think that someone with an ankle monitor that confined them to within 100 feet of their abode would be able to cheat even if they wanted to do so.  Not true.  When I found out he tried to deny it, but not with a lot of effort.  Over the next few months I found out she was a hooker.  He left me for a hooker.  Not long after that I saw her.  He left me for an ugly hooker.  In my mind they were happy and having a wonderful life together.  In reality they were in the grips of heroin addiction and their lives were falling apart.  She had her neck cut in the parking lot of her apartment building, allegedly by someone who wasn't amused by the fact that she wanted to pay for drugs with oral copulation instead of old fashioned cash.  He fell off a city bus, broke his foot which got infected and had to be partially amputated.  The swan song of their story is his being arrested for robbing two banks and escaping on foot.....literally.

This experience for me was the final nail in the coffin of me thinking that I deserved a decent man or that I would even recognize one if he bit me on the tit.  For a little over a year after it ended I busied myself with everything but a romantic relationship.  Then, out of the blue, I had this vision of hearing from him as I'm going out for my fairytale evening.  I didn't think anymore about it.  As you can imagine my thoughts that night were all on HUM and my thoughts the next day were all on......well, still HUM.  I was lying down for a nap the next afternoon and my twenty-one year old son came in my room with an envelope in his hand.  "You're not going to believe who this is from," he said.  I knew instantly who it was from (even before I saw the prison postmark) and the weirdest thing was that I wasn't surprised.

He basically was just apologizing and saying that I didn't deserve the way he ended up treating me.  Now logically I already knew that, but for some reason the combination of being pursued by a real gentleman who had lots of options when it came to women and having the man who chose drugs and a strumpet over me acknowledge that the choices he made were not a reflection of my worth sparked an epiphany in me.  Previously I thought that there was something that malfunctioned when I chose the men with whom I wanted to share my time and in some cases my life.  But it wasn't my judgment about the men that was off.  It was my judgment about myself.  About my worth, my zany uniqueness and the fabulous things that I bring to the table.  I am starting to look at perspective men through the eyes of my family and friends who love me, see the qualities that I have and can't always acknowledge and ask myself, "Is this a man they would pick for me?".  I believe and am determined to prove that this dog can be taught new tricks............first new trick ~ no more dogs.

 

A hand in the pants is just the prequel to two in the bush

I consider myself to be a smart and intuitive person, so the fact that it's taken until I am almost fifty to realize that I need to be crazy grateful for the life that I've had and continue to have is ridiculous.  It took a kick in the pants  (actually a hot celebrities hand in my pants) to awaken me to the fact that some cool (and often crazy unbelievable) shit happens to me and that not everyone is lucky enough to have the life experiences I've had.........

"You just lived out the fantasy of millions of women!" was my friend Bettina's response when I answered her "How was your weekend?" text the Monday morning after Mother's Day.

I knew I had had a fabulous weekend, with a fabulous guy and maybe that fact alone was so rare for me that my mind had yet to process the fact that over the past twenty some odd years of this man's television career there had literally been millions of women who fantasized that they were in the position (all the positions, in fact) that I had been in with him.  Now let me pause here and tell you that it is killing me not to be able to reveal who he is, but even if I have no respect for my own privacy I do have some respect for his. I first met him about a year and a half ago when we worked together and I was star struck.  At first it was hard to separate him from the suave, sexy character he was known for but it wasn't long before it became clear that the real life man was far more interesting than the one he had played. 

When he came back to town in May I decided I would go down and say hello, fully expecting to have to do the "I don't know if you remember me......" reintroduction.  (Note to me: work on self esteem)  However, as I was on my way, I got a text from a friend that said Hot Unnamed Man was asking about ME!!  I was momentarily filled with confidence and then momentarily panicked by the "What if the question he was asking about me was 'That weird red-head from last time isn't going to be here is she?'".  Fortunately I realized this was a ridiculous assumption (OK, I didn't "realize" it, I asked the guy who had texted me and he told me it was a ridiculous assumption) and I was able to greet HUM (Hot Unnamed Man) with some genuine confidence.  On his previous trip here he was married, but he mentioned casually that this was no longer the case and asked if I would be at all the shows over the weekend.........adding that he hoped I would.  PSA ~ pinching yourself in front of someone is weird. I base this on the look he gave me when I tested to see if I was dreaming. 

"I guess so, sure.  It would be good for me to get out.  I've been kind of a home body lately,"  I replied.  Even though the truth was that I had every intention of being there to bask in his beauty for the entire weekend and when he expressed that he would enjoy basking in whatever it is about me which he found appealing my "inner Billi" did a happy dance at several levels in the Billi Disco.  I know that my body is supposed to be a temple, but super cool dance club is as close as I'm able to come.  But trust me when I say that my tiny dance club patrons were shaking their booty's with delight on the rooftop and on the lower levels.

So, why then, can't my face and response reflect that?  Why can't I gush and purr and whisper that there is no place that I would rather be?  Something, at least, that doesn't scream ennui.  I was pondering whether this is a defense mechanism or some sort of apathy tourettes later that night in bed (alone)  and decided that I needed to do something to let him know that I really did want to spend time with him.  I decided to text him an invite for lunch the next day.  He responded quickly and said that he was busy during the day but would love to hang out after the shows the following night.  This was even better than lunch and my fairy tale was right on track.  I'm not talking "happily ever after".  I am, if nothing else, a realist.  This man had been a sex symbol, celebrity for a quarter of a century.  He worked day after day with beautiful, talented women with perfect bodies.  I wasn't sure what his attraction to me was about, but I WAS sure that it was a phase and I saw it as a perfect weekend that would end and be a wonderful memory.........and that would be enough.

Both shows went great the next night.  Great but S  L  O  W, because let's be honest, I just wanted it to be "after the show".  When he had signed all the autographs and taken all the pictures that were asked of him, he walked over to the bar and asked, "What do you want to do, monkey?".  Now this doesn't seem like it would be super sexy, but it HUM's voice it made me think I should have brought an extra set of panties.

I had no suggestions, so he proposed (I paused a while at this point to pretend that was the end of the sentence......I had no suggestions, so he proposed. Ahhhh)  that we go back to his hotel and watch a movie.  Now we're talking, I had wanted to "watch a movie" hard with this guy since 1987.  I nodded demurely and we were on our way.  I'd like to say that we got his room and barely made it through the door before he had me up against the wall, ripping off my clothes and confessing how hard it had been for him to keep his hands off me for so long. 

The truth is we watched a movie. 

Notice the lack of quotation marks around watched a movie? 

That's because we watched a movie. 

Not even a good movie. 

For an hour and a half. 

We watched a movie. 

Just when I thought that there were no air quotes in his watch a movie invitation he made his move.  He lifted up the arm he was leaning on to put it behind my back and...........elbowed me in the eye socket.  Hard.  I saw stars.  Him, plus the ones brought on by my frontal lobe assault.  It wasn't sexy, it wasn't suave, it wasn't something that would have ever happened to the character he played.  But what it was, was hilarious.  It was exactly what we needed to get us from movie watching to "movie watching".  I won't go into a bunch of detail, but his lovemaking was as generous and fun and wonderful as he is.  It was a lovely and memorable night and in the morning I kissed him on the forehead and turned to leave.

"Are you coming to the club tonight," HUM asked.

"Yes," I responded.

"I'll be there,"  he said.

"I know.  That's why I'm coming." 

One small step for Billi in admitting her true feelings.

"There's my girl," he called across the room when I arrived at the club that night.  This statement may not seem like a big deal to those of you who haven't spent time with shady folks.  But I have and it meant the world to me.  We had a lovely evening that, unlike the evening before went all too fast.  I thought it would be easy to say good-bye.  As I said, I'm usually not an emotional girl.  But it was starting to feel different. I really didn't want him to go.  Before he left he mentioned the possibility of our doing shows together in Chicago which for the comedian in me was fabulous.  When he turned to get in his car I said "See ya,".  "Soon I hope," was his answer which for the girl in me was also fabulous. 

I had seen him as a prince charming on television for years, and for the past couple of days he had been one in real life.  I felt like Cinderella, but it was midnight.  I don't know if there will be a "happily ever after" for this story, but while I'm waiting to find out, I'm determined to keep having more fabulous experiences with fabulous people and writing about them.  And maybe making a pie out of my car if it turns into a pumpkin.