The Real-Life Adventures of A Former Glamour Girl

Right-size me please!! (But not too hard God!)

“Shut up Naomi!”  (This I say to myself several times each day as Naomi is chiming in with her demands of “what about me?  Look at me!  Don’t forget me!”  She makes these demands when my higher self seems to be in control.)  Naomi is my ego.  I named her for the country singer of the same name whom I have come to love in spite of her narcissistic demeanor.  I know she has a good heart. 

I AM Naomi, except for the fame and riches.  I’m a girl who likes to wear sparkles and too much make-up and high heels even though I have absolutely no business doing any of that at my age.  Naomi is full of herself.  She pats me on the back with what a great job I’m doing, asking why no one else is making a fuss.  “Shut up Naomi! “I say again in my head.  “Jeez!  Everything is not about you!”  Naomi thinks it should be.  About me, that is.

She does not talk much when I’m striving.  Not when I’m struggling, not when it is clear that I am right-sized. Never when I am resting in true humility.  She talks to me when things are going “right.” She whispers in my ear, “look!  You’re a big shot now!  People think you know something.  It’s about time!”  Shut up!”  I say again and again.  “I’m working here.”

There is an acronym for ego; it is E G O, edging God out.  That’s Naomi.  She wants to believe she has had something, no everything to do with what is good, and sweet and clear about my life.  She wants to believe it is she who puts me on the right track and leads me out of the messes I’ve made.  I don’t think so dear!

Last month I attended a spiritual retreat.  I did not want to go however I had committed to being one of the retreat leaders so I prepared my part and showed up with a smile.  It took all of about ten minutes for me to realize that this particular retreat was EXACTLY what I needed.  (Funny how that happens.)

I had been on a fast track, running to meetings, being of service, lunching with my friends and just doing my life.  I had forgotten how restorative it can be to just slow down and notice.  The fact that the focus of this retreat included continuing to take a personal inventory and communion with my higher power in meditation was an added gift.  When I finished the retreat on Sunday I felt like a new woman.

For the next several days, maybe a week or more, I floated.  I was clear and deep in the knowledge of all things being in perfect and divine order.  I felt in touch with a “deep inner resource” that was guiding me. I was in harmony with my fellows and all of creation. That’s when Naomi got restless.  “What about me?  They should ask me!  I’m more spiritual than those other people and besides, I said it first!”  Yah, yah, yah, take a time-out, oh sparkling one! 

So today I am doing just that.  I am sparing my friends the blinding light of my presence and staying home.  No, I am not making them pay.  I am giving them and my ego Naomi, a break. I am grounding myself with the filling of bird-feeders and the slicing of peaches.   Some of us are slower than others.  Some should never reach the peak of their own perfection.  I am one of those.  God knew exactly what He/She was doing when slapping me with a lifetime of flaws and questions to unravel.  “Keep coming back,” they say around here.  It’s going to take more than one lifetime for you and your fancy friend. "But, but ...!  Oh shut up Naomi.  Sit down and give it a rest!"

My life is so glamorous!  It’s just not fair, lucky for me!!

 

Fourth of July and after.

I was thinking in my morning meditation (that consists of staring out the window at the birds while consuming copious amounts of very strong coffee,) about what independence day means to me.  Yes, today is the fourth of July.  The first thing that came to mind is what it has cost in human sacrifice for the every day freedoms I very much take for granted.  My father and grandfathers were veterans of World War I and II and when I see service men and women in airports and on television and I think about the sacrifice they and their families are making every day, I am humbled.  I do not believe I could be so generous. 

The next thing I think about is freedom of speech, which translates to “freedom to blog.”  I have written about all sorts of taboo topics including my bathroom habits, my face-lift, my spiritual beliefs, my sex life, my children, my friends and alcoholism.  I am sure I have ruffled some feathers and rattled some chains somewhere; at least I hope so, as I believe art is supposed to make us think, feel and possibly sweat.  The fact that I CAN write and talk about anything at all, is such a gift, and one I hold very dearly.

Just because I CAN say anything does not mean I should.  Sometimes there are harsh consequences for what is written or said.  Last week for instance, the general in charge of the war in Afghanistan was relieved of his duties as a result of his comments in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine.  Personally, I thought he was an idiot, but that’s just me.  I mean how stupid is it to bad-mouth one’s boss in print? Especially when said boss is the President!   Maybe he wanted to retire.  Who knows?  But he had the right to say what he thought.  That is a gift of immeasurable quality.

Freedom of religion is pretty spectacular as well.  We in the United States of America can pray to a God of our own understanding in any way that makes us feel connected.  We also have the right to be non-believers.  Personally, I have always believed in God, however my concept of God is ever evolving.  Though I’ve spent some time in church, my connection with God has been mostly found by listening to a bunch of drunks and in nature.  I get to do that and have that here in my country.

As a woman in the US of A I am especially blessed.  When Tom and I visited Botswana a few years ago, I was struck by a question a poler on our little macarro asked me as we floated between the tall grasses and reeds in the river;  “Do you have many tribes in your country?”  Yes, we do.  “Are women allowed to go to school?”  Yes.  They are required to go to school, just like the men.  So much I take for granted.

I would not make it in a third world country.  I am far too mouthy.  In fact, I don’t think I could survive parts of our own country, even though my rights are mostly the same as they are here in California.  The south, for example, might throw me out.  I know how to act like a lady but I don’t always do so.

We have free enterprise here.  We are allowed to work hard and create a life to our own liking.  In some cases, such as my own, my husband does the work that provides for us and I just make things pretty.  One of the things I love about Americans is that we are a generous bunch.  Not only do we pay taxes in order to be self-supporting through our own contributions, but we also give to those less fortunate and those who suffer the results of earthquakes, floods and oil spills.  We take care of our own, mostly.

I’m disappointed about the homelessness and joblessness in our country.  Things seem out of whack and upside down when good, hard working people can’t find work and end up losing their homes.  When I was a single working mother, I was always just one paycheck and my 401K away from pushing a cart with my three kids and dog in tow.  I was just lucky, not special.

So when my family comes over later for the Fourth of July festivities, we will have plenty to eat.  In fact, we will have leftovers.  I won’t be sending a doggie bag to China or whatever place my father would have told me had starving children.  I will however pause to give thanks. 

Thanks that I live in the most loving, generous, productive, FREE country on the planet, and that the freedom I enjoy to write and pray and work and do most anything I set my mind to doing, was won and is guarded by brave Americans most of whom I’ve never met.

I can kiss my grand kids good night and know that tomorrow they will wake up in a place that Americans have fought and died to protect.  The girls and the boys, can and will start school in September and the ones that are eighteen and older will get to vote in the next election.  Even the girls!  I will remember that I, as an American, have a responsibility to share what has so freely been given to me, to protect the constitutional rights our forefathers have so dearly set down for us and, remember daily to be grateful for all I have, that I don’t deserve.  Happy independence day, and the day after that and the day after that and on and on and on ……….

My life is so glamorous!  It’s just not fair.  Lucky for me!!!

 

The making of a Father.

What do you give the man, (or in my case the men,) who has given you everything?  No, I am not talking about my parade of husbands.  I am talking about my final husband Tom, and my Father.  

Today, after all, is father’s day.  A day when children and wives pay tribute to the fathers and husbands who stand silently in the background as gifts are being opened and hugs are going out.  Who, when on many such occasions, mothers and grand mothers have shopped for and wrapped the gifts, while he often does not know its contents until it is opened.  Tom says ‘Kathy gets all of the thank-you notes, and I get all of the bills.”  True, so true.

Tom is a lot like my father.  They are/were both Capricorns, the anchors in my life that have kept me grounded in what is real and practical, or at least have tried to do so.   My Sagittarian ways would have seen me floating among the stars and dreaming big while never even glancing at reality.

My father died fifteen years ago on father’s day.  I got the call from my mother at 2:00 am saying, “its over.”  It being the life of the only man she had ever loved who had loved her through and through.  They had married three days following my mother’s seventeenth birthday and were two months shy of their fiftieth wedding anniversary when he died.  I had been the last to see my father alive and my mother never forgave me for having had that honor and the words I had spoken to him.

I sat with my father the afternoon before he died as he slept in his hospital bed, propped up, mouth agape, comfortable with the morphine drip turned on.  A mason jar of freshly cut sweet peas, brought earlier that morning by my daughter, his eldest grand child, sat on the windowsill with the San Gabriel Mountains we had hiked together as the back drop. 

I took his calloused hand in mine.  It felt warm and strong as I spoke to him out loud, saying that it was okay for him to go.  That he had been the best of fathers and husbands and that my sister and I would take care of our mother.   Less than twelve hours later, he was gone.

My father was a tremendous influence in my life.  He loved nature in all of its forms and thrilled at sharing this love with my sister and me.  He craved music of all kinds, big bands, jazz piano, blue grass and country.  He loved that I loved to sing, and he loved that I passed along the lessons from my ballroom dance classes on Wednesday nights while my mother played bridge with her friends.  My father was the only man I could ever really dance with.

His favorite passion aside from my mother, was fishing.  My daddy loved the ocean!  In summer when the weather was hot, we would drive to the beach in the late afternoon and there with his lantern and surf-fishing rod, he would catch fish well into the night, while my mother and sister and I played in the surf, changed clothes in the tent of umbrellas and towels and roasted hot dogs and marshmallows until bedtime.

My father’s religion was the “golden rule.”  He lived it and taught it to his daughters.  He was a warm and welcoming host as well as being generous to a fault, more than any gift he gave me, is the appreciation I have for the standard from which I have chosen Tom as my husband and father to my grown daughters.

Tom was forty-one on our wedding day.  He had never before been married or had children.  I had both been married and had children, in fact on our wedding day; I was a grandmother to four.

It is true that he really had no idea what he was signing up for that day, but he has more than risen to the occasion.  Not only has he embraced my three daughters and their men as his own, he has truly been a mentor, a guide and a friend. He has sat up with sick kids in our bed, told numerous, original "boring-stories" to put them to sleep, played board games, taken them on hikes,to the zoo, the the natural history museums,  thrown them in the pool, taken all nineteen of us on family vacations, babysat their dogs and birds and turtles and picked up the check at many family celebrations. Tom was present for the births of the last five grandkids and kept the little ones busy while their moms gave birth.  He and I gave Shelley away at her wedding at our home and welcomed her new stepdaughters into our lives.

I think the thing that makes him a father is the fact that like their mother, he sees our kids and grandkids as the focus of our lives.  Each home we have purchased we have done so with the idea that there would be rooms and beds for all.  Being Jewish, Tom had never really celebrated Christmas.  Well now he has.  Big time!  I’ve watched him put lights on a ten foot Christmas Tree, carry wheel barrows filled with gifts down the stairs on Christmas morning and had his help well into the wee hours of morning wrapping gifts and filling stockings.

When our kids have gone through rough spots or needed money, they knew whom to call.  It was Tom, not me.  Last year when one of our sons in law lost his job in the recession and I asked if they could come live with us, he did not hesitate at saying yes.  When they wanted to bring their dogs, I drew the line, but Tom pointed out that the dogs were part of our family too, and our house filled up with squeals and barks and love.  There was never a moment of complaining from this father.

One of the things that make him happy is being asked for help with homework or projects for school by one of the grandkids.  This year, Meredith, Quinlan, Cadence and Arianna all took advantage of Poppy Tom’s genius.  He was in Heaven!

I realize that unlike my usual writing, this piece is disgustingly mushy! Here are a few of the annoying things about some fathers in particular:  he doesn’t always set the best example.  He says bad words, has less than flawless table manners, (I know there are more but they’re not coming to me.)  Oh, he doesn’t well tolerate whining.

Then again, Tom has given me everything; a life that I dearly love and peace in being supported as a mother and grandmother.  We sat outside yesterday afternoon enjoying the sounds and fragrances of nature in our beautiful garden together.  He is my best friend, my lover and the partner that I never imagined I would have.  He asks for nothing but our happiness.  What I try to give him every day is my gratitude. Gratitude and a couple of surprises now and then.  Happy Father’s day honey!  I think I'll surprise him with breakfast.  That will be a BIG surprise!!

My life is so glamorous!  It’s just not fair.  Lucky for me!!

Just a little detour.

My sugar wagon has crashed in a ditch!  After ten years of eating no sugar, I had a little slip when we first moved to Santa Barbara.  No big deal.  I went to see a Hypnosis-therapist and she helped me get back on track.  For a year I remained abstinent.  Well that is over.  I’m not sure what precipitated my fall from grace, but I have fallen.  Actually it was more of a plunge.

I don’t even want to recount the awful things I have been eating.  It is embarrassing, even for me, the “tell everything –girl.”  Let me just say that I have thrown away three quarts and four pints of Haagen Daz in the past two days after consuming as much in a couple of sittings.  That did not dissuade me.

Last night I had a few of my girlfriends over for a little dinner and a meeting.  I never serve desert at these things, so when Cathy asked me where I kept the chocolate, I said, I didn’t have any in the house.  That’s what I thought.  Really!

After the girls left I was sitting alone in the living room.  Tom had driven down to his office in LA.  At about 8:30, a little switch went off in my brain.   I got up from my place on the sofa, went to the freezer and started moving things around.  That’s when I found them.  A hidden quart of vanilla ice cream.  No problem.  I put it in the sink and ran hot water on it.  Back to the freezer to move the frozen Amy’s entrees.  That’s when I found it.  “It,” was a box of chocolate and toffee covered pistachio nuts from a basket of goodies and snacks we received at Christmas from Kym and Billy.  I bit into one as a test, (to see if it was worth it; it was,) and sat back down on the sofa eating every last one of the little gems until they were finished.  I was happy.  Sort of.

This morning I started my day as usual, eating a healthy breakfast and vowing to start over with the no-sugar plan.  I went to my meeting, saw my friends then headed to trader Joes to buy Green Pills for my grand daughter, Arianna.  While I was there I decided to stock up on nuts.  For Tom.  That’s when I saw the new nuts.  “Sweet and Salty Trek Mix.  Sounds healthy doesn’t it? Trek Mix.  Something hikers eat.  I’m a hiker, well not lately.   (Actually I have not exercised once since my surgery.  I’m supposed to wait four weeks.  It’s just been almost three.)  So I bought some Trek mix.  Five bags of it, just in case. 

I made myself a healthy lunch and waited an appropriate few moments then went to fetch the Trek Mix.  I cut open the bag and took it into my room where I plopped on my bed and dug in.  A half hour later the Trek Mix was gone and I was quite ill.  I pulled the other four bags out and set them on the counter.  Now what?

I feel bad throwing good food away.  Tom hates waste, so do I.  That’s part of why I try to eat things, so they will not be wasted.  Uh, huh.  Anyway, I know myself.  I know that if I do not get rid of that Trek Mix, the trek mix will redesign me.

Obsession, addiction, compulsion.  These are the three wild horses I am trying to wrangle.  I have warring parts in my brain.  One is the voice of reason and sanity, the other, well we all know the “other!”  The other is out to get me!  Not just to make me feel sick and fat and disappointed in myself, but hopeless.  That I cannot tolerate!

At five o’clock the doorbell rang and the nice man from the pharmacy delivered our prescriptions.  I met him at the door with a twenty and four new bags of Trek-Mix.  “You’re very generous” he said looking at the trek mix.  Oh no,  not really, YOU are the generous one!  You’re doing me a favor, really!

So as is the norm, it has been a few weeks since I began writing this piece.  It is afternoon on a beautiful Santa Barbara Thursday.  I’ve had a busy, purposeful morning of working out on the beach with Shelley and Erik at dawn.  I made a trip to the doctor for blood work before my annual physical next week, had breakfast with a friend,  ran a couple of errands, made a lovely a salad for lunch and took a little tiny nap.  Tonight several girls will come over for dinner and a meeting.  I’m making chicken fajitas and serving it with Bertha’s special rice.  No desert is on the menu.

There is a package of vegan cookies in the freezer, yuck!  There is a fresh bag of peanut butter filled pretzels, which I purchased yesterday, in the fridge.  Currently none of this holds any appeal.  I think I may be winding down, running out of steam, growing bored with all of the food/sugar/compulsivity stuff.  I hope so.  I still do not know for sure what brought it on.  Maybe I never will.  When I was newly sober I wondered why I drank.  Now I don’t care.  I’m just grateful and happy to be clean, sober and for this afternoon, free of this most recent and long abiding monkey; extra food and sugar.

The day is still young.  Tomorrow is a new day.  I bought paper and watercolors, brushes and frames.  Everywhere I look I see beauty.  I sat in the sun on the lower terrace today without wearing sunscreen.  I’m living dangerously, boldly, fully.  I don’t always understand the “whys” of what I do.  Maybe I never will.  If I am supposed to know it will be made clear to me.  The girls will be here for dinner in a couple of hours, there is still time for another little tiny nap.

My life is so glamorous!!  It’s just not fair.  Lucky for me!!  

Just tear it off and throw it away.

Last week I finished writing what I thought was a beautiful blog post.  I think it may have, in fact, been perfect. It took six or seven days to complete with writing and editing, and I’m pretty sure it was my best ever! 

When I write my blog, I do so in the “word” program and then copy and paste it into my blog’s format.  This way I receive all of the help I need in spelling and punctuation (see you don’t know it, but I just had to use that tool to spell punctuation,) and then I can copy it and do a couple of final passes of editing  in the “preview” format.

So on Thursday, when I was happy with the final product and had added my tag line, I highlighted the essay in preparation to copy and paste, when suddenly my left pinky finger made a rogue visit to the escape key, and “poof” my essay was gone. Forever!

At first I thought it would not be a problem to retrieve it.  I went to the toolbar and hit “undo edit”; at least I think I did.  Anyway, the title of the piece was still there but when I pulled it up, (about forty-seven times,) the title was clearly at the top of the page, but the copy was GONE.  A blank page was all that remained.  I checked the trash, gone; I checked file, opened the hard drive, the time capsule and everything I could think of without any real knowledge of my Mac.

Next I resorted to calling my techie son-in-law, Ted, in Alabama.  Ted has always been able to ease me out of the problems I’ve encountered with my computer in the past.  Not this time.  My piece seems to have evaporated.  Permanently.

I took a deep breath and decided to rewrite the piece right away while it was still fresh.  After all, I had just read and reread it several times in editing, but no.  I could not recreate the brilliance of the first piece.  Another deep breath.  This is art, I told myself.  It comes from the creator.  Just tear it off, throw it away and go to the source for more.  Yeah, right!

The piece I wrote originally was about the sisterhood I have found in my life.  It was the chronological evolution and the meat and potatoes of that sisterhood, beginning with my Mother.  I’m telling you, it was powerful!  Well, forget about it.  You’re not going to see it!  Apparently what it really was, was some sort of thank you note to the computer Gods or a bunch of big fat lies.   No matter, it’s gone.

As a writer, there is always the fear, a deeply held belief on some days, that whatever I have written yesterday that a reader or I love or  find relatable , was a fluke.  That it was an accidental stroke of luck.  That it came together, told a story, and in the most unusual of epiphanies, touched the heart, BUT I can never do it again.  (Cancel.  Kidding God.)  That is the fear.  That fear has been around for me since I wrote my first poem nearly forty- five years ago.  Those thoughts invade my brain when my ego has taken over.  That is when I believe that I am in fact, the writer. On my best days, I know that is not true.

I believe that art is a gift that floats on the air like a feather.  That it can be lifted, and expressed, snapped up and sung or written or painted, by anyone who is tuned in to the real creator’s frequency.  Or, it can float on by, rise into the ethers or glide to the ground and land, unseen and undiscovered in some corner never to be seen again. The universal artist is unlimited in its source of creative ideas.  That is why, much to my disbelief, I have over the course of my lifetime as an artist, expressed creative ideas more than once.  Like a tablet, I can tear it off and throw it away.  The source has plenty more where that came from.    

I think the same is true for any creative idea.  For example, when I was in my early twenties I had a lover who lived in Boston.  I had not heard from him in a few days or weeks or some unacceptable amount of time so I made up a little questionnaire, giving him a chance to select his response from a multiple choice of answers.  I wrote it by hand and sent it off to Boston with a stamped, return addressed envelope.  I received his response within a few days.  He had filled in all of the boxes and written that it was without a doubt the most brilliant, creative letter he had ever received.  I thought so too.  In fact, I thought it would do well as a card and made a note to show it to Hallmark.  Of course I never did, and a couple of years later, Hallmark had it anyway.  It was a creative idea that had come through to me.  It was up for grabs.

So my blog about the sisterhood is gone.  The feelings are still there as is the gratitude I feel.  Maybe dredging up the emotions I had to feel in order to truthfully write about it were too much for me to feel again.  I don’t know for sure.  Maybe I will write about it again one day and that piece will go deeper still into my heart.

In the meantime I must be grateful for whatever creative crumbs of genius I can grab.  Yesterday I went to an art supply store and bought water color paper and some new brushes.  I feel a painting coming on.  That is if I can find a way to work painting in along with my naps.  For now, at least I can sit at my Mac and not hate the thing.  My ego is a bit bruised but I’ll slap some arnica on it and get back to work.

My life is so glamorous!  It’s just not fair.  Lucky for me!!

 

 

 

 

Is it done yet?

I have turned into a bird watcher.  That’s right, it has come to this!  I sit in a chair, on a sofa or a bed and I watch the birds.  This is somehow interesting to me. (Oh dear!!)  I can recognize the individual birds and their mates, their children and their cousins.  They are a part of my family but I have stopped short at naming them.  I have too much time on my hands.

It has been a week today since my little venture into the world of plastic surgery.  I am now at the “wait and see”- stage of the process.  I am waiting to see what the newly refreshed me will look like.  So far it has been colorful, but not painful.  For this I am grateful.

I was up very early last Monday for the express purpose of consuming a full cup of black coffee prior to the administering of the anesthisia.  No milk, just pure caffeine.  I am an addict, after all.  I was far more afraid of having a caffeine- withdrawal headache than I was of having my face and neck peeled off and my eyelids pruned.  I have been deprived of caffeine before.

I presented myself at the surgery center at 7:00 sharp.  I was dressed in soft sweats and a cotton cardigan sweater with a robe.  Something that would be easy to put on after the addition of my new head-wrap.  Dr. Improta came out to the lobby and casually sat on the arm of my chair.  In his hands were the four “before-pictures” he had taken a few days earlier.  We took a look.

You know how it is when your hair is driving you nuts and you just HAVE to get a haircut?  Then the day of your appointment you wake up to have the best hair-day ever?  Well it wasn’t exactly like that, but on Sunday I was thinking I looked pretty good and who was I to mess with God’s handiwork?  Well, when I took a look at those pictures, all of my fantasies about my appearance vanished.  I looked like a retired Russian KGB matron.  (No offense intended to any such people.)  My eyelids were hanging over my eyelashes and my chin, though held up with layers of soft-served neck ruffles, was non-existent.  There was no doubt I had come to the right place, and not a moment too soon.  NO doubt!

Dr. Improta is GOOD!  He was very gentle in his approach when he suggested a chin-implant might be in order.  “Ah, ya think?” I said, mouth agape.  Yes, I think it would help in giving you the illusion of a CHIN!”  (That’s not exactly what he said, but I definitely got the message.  Off we went for the arts and crafts portion of the program.

I hung up my clothes in the little closet they provided and slipped into a gown.  I looked in the mirror for one last farewell to comrade-Kathy, and stepped outside to meet my maker’s helper.

Dr. Improta asked the lovely nurse Mary for a pen, while she covered my legs with a nice heated blanket. (I could get used to this.)  For the next hour or so, Dr. Improta drew on my face and neck and eyelids.  A circle here, a dash there, just mapping out what would stay and what would go and where it would land.  He used some nasty tweezers to pull out and measure exactly what amount of skin would be removed from my eyelids.  I just held still.   After he was happy with his sketches, he stood back and took a big breath.  A new player appeared in the room.  It was Dr. Swanson, the anesthesiologist. 

“Do you have any allergies, contact lenses, questions?” No, should I?  “Most people have questions before I put them under.”  Really!  What do they ask?  “They usually want to know what I am going to use to put them to sleep.”  Okay, what will you be using? (As if I would know what the heck he was talking about!)  Proponyl.  Oh, isn’t that what killed Michael Jackson?  “Yes!" he said.  "See you do know!”

Dr. Swanson was very happy with my veins.  They were plump and purple and ready.  When I said I had no more questions, he gave me a little “sedative” and out I went.  Six hours later I came back into my body.

The first feeling I was aware of was of having a very sore throat.  The second was congestion in my lungs.  I wanted to cough.  They recommended I try NOT coughing.  I heard the nurse on the phone with Laura saying she could come to get me.  Amy the adorable got me into the bathroom to get into my clothes.  I couldn’t resist a look in the mirror.

Now instead of a KGB matron, I looked like something from an old movie.  I think it was a cross between The Invisible Man and Cleopatra.  I had a very dramatic, though unflattering gauze and foam head wrap which covered my head and neck.  My eyelids had been, sliced, stitched and covered with white, now bloody, steri-strips. Amy came back in to the room to help me dress and said, “Oh, you looked.”  I couldn’t tell just yet if I had been restored to my formerly youthful self.

Laura arrived, helped put my glasses on so I could at least try to see and they wheeled me down the ramp to the car.  The next eighteen hours were non eventful, at least for me.  I had purchased a wedge pillow the day before at Brookstone, since I’d been warned I would have to sleep in an elevated position.  Laura doled out the pain meds as prescribed and I sat in bed and dozed.  I ate cottage cheese and pineapple, then beans and rice from El Pollo Loco; we watched a little TV and waited for morning.  I woke up around one or two and tried to see if I needed a pill.  No, I went back to sleep.  At five I got up and took one.  It had been over eight hours.

In all truth, the pain was minimal.  It was more of a discomfort.  Laura was a saint,  though I had no trouble at all bossing her around to bring me this and fetch me that. She maintained her sunny disposition and sense of humor for the whole of three days and nights.  At nine the next morning we were back at the surgery center, Starbucks in hand to have the bandages changed and the lower lid stitches removed.  So far so good.

Laura drove me home and stayed with me until after my first shower on Wednesday.  I was glad she was there when I nearly lost it and had to sit down and throw up a few times. All of that standing and shampooing made me tired.

As of today, I have stayed at home in bed or on the sofa watching the birds for six days in a row. Tylenol has replaced the pain meds.  This morning Stacy drove me back to see Dr. Improta to have a few more stitches removed.  He took out the ones from under my new chin, the upper lids and a couple from somewhere in my head.  He said everything is healing well.  Aside from looking like the wrath of God, with big purple and green bruises under my eyes, a fist size bruise on my left jaw and a very green and purple neck where they apparently scrubbed away any trace of fat or muscle, I look swell!  

I have a cute little chin and a sleek, though somewhat shallow neck and eyeballs that I can see in the mirror without the aid of tweezers or fingers to hold them open.  I am still an over-all shade of pasty-white, with tinges of green.  My eyes are red and a bit swollen, but it looks like me (after a bender,) staring back in the mirror.

I am facing another full week of rest and recuperation before I can begin to resume my sweet, sweet life. I am planning to enjoy the downtime.  In the meantime miracles are happening around me.  It is spring and the birds are nesting and plentiful.  The garden has come to life in shades of green and lavender. There are bees and humming birds and butterflies adding to the view outside my window. 

On Saturday Stacy brought me some crafting materials to make use of this new block of unstructured time. Waiting,healing, this is new to me. Yikes! 

Is it done yet?

 My life is so glamorous!!  Not fair, though, lucky for me!!

Going under the knife.

I have never believed in a punishing God.  My God loves me with all of my quirks and flaws and honors the intentions of my highest self. My highest self wants to be of maximum service to as many as possible and have fun while wearing cute shoes and lipstick along the way.  My God knows that I am grateful beyond words for the sweet, simple beauty of my life.  

So with all of this in mind and a nod to my parents and that loving God again, I say “thank you”!  Thank you for my excellent health, my long legs, my cheek bones and my mostly straight teeth.  I hope no one will be mad at me, but tomorrow morning I’m going under the knife.  That’s right, I have caved to vanity and perfectionism and I am having my neck and eyelids taken in, and my beginning-to -sag-jowls hoisted.

There really is nothing more to say, except that this decision was made over a period of many years, and not one that I take lightly.  My friend Laura is kind enough to go with me and put ice packs on the eyelids and give me sips of kefir out of a straw.  The rest is a mystery to be discovered.  I have tried and failed, to not be self-obsessed, and for that I am truly sorry.  Though I may talk about myself and my “whatever” way too much, you can believe me when I tell you that there is far less talking than the constant chatter that goes on in my head. 

My daughter Shelley has pointed out to me quite clearly that it is the inner beauty that counts.  I believe that, I really do.  I told her I think this may be a generational flaw or belief or whatever we want to call it, but I’m one step ahead of my parents generation because at least I know it’s not the outer beauty that really counts. I just cannot completely surrender the old idea that I should look my best.   I am not doing this for anyone other than myself. My husband though supportive, thinks I’m crazy.

I feel wonderful!!  I am healthy, fit and fully alive.  I love my life every single day!  I want my chins, my neck and my eyelids to look as perky as I feel.  It is embarrassing, but it is a fact for me.

So there you have it.  Laura will pick me up in an hour or so and we will drive south to a hotel to be near the surgery center for my seven o’clock check-in in the morning.  Dr. Improta will draw on me, and Dr. Swanson will put me to sleep.  At around twelve thirty, Laura will come back to get me and we will retire to the Hampton Inn for a date with ice packs until Tuesday morning at which time we will go back to Dr. Improta for new bandages and a smaller helmet.  (Sounds glamorous, doesn’t it?)

I consider myself a spiritual being having a human experience.  I love being human, and this is a part of it for me.  Self-obsessed, flawed, trying to be open and honest about all of it and taking it one step, one stitch, one minute at a time.  Wish me luck!!

My life is so glamorous!!  Lucky for me, it is not fair!

 

Just the other day ......

I had just come back from a brisk, morning walk on Butterfly Beach.  The wind had blown away the clouds and rain from the previous day and although it was a bit windy at first, it was fresh and clear and beautiful.  I gave Mother-Nature some well-deserved compliments on the balance, color and splendor of the whole scene.  Even the wreaked boat that had come to rest on the rocks towards the east end of the beach was a nice touch.

I always think of my father when I am on the beach, especially so, on a blustery winter day.  My father loved the ocean.  He was a fisherman at heart and worked as a deep-sea salvage diver in the navy during World-War II.  He wasn’t a fan of sitting on the beach.  That was saved for my mother.  She loved the sun, but my dad loved all of the drama, mystery and bounty the ocean had to offer.

As a little girl, it was a special treat to go fishing with my father.  He would wake me early, well before dawn, to ride in his green pick-up truck the fifty miles or so from our house in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains to launch our little boat into the bay off Newport Beach.  I didn’t so much like the fishing part as I did this special time with my Dad.

My Mother would pack a lunch for us the night before that consisted of sandwiches on soft white bread with crisp lettuce.  The best part of lunch was the home-made,  waxed paper-wrapped chocolate-chip cookies with walnuts.  My Father carried a thermos of hot coffee for himself and a thermos of cold milk for me.  After lunch I would take a nap in the bow of the boat, covered with my dad's scratchy old army blanket that had come to smell of fish.

On that particular morning before my walk,  I was looking for my prescription sunglasses and while I did not find them, I came across one of my Father’s old handkerchiefs.  I brought it to my nose to see if I could still smell him.  I could not.  Still, I tucked the handkerchief into the pocket of my jacket then left for my beach-walk.

My father always carried a clean white handkerchief.  He had an abundance of them since handkerchiefs were the go-to-gift of my sister and I, nearly every Christmas of our lives.  Socks and handkerchiefs, that’s what we gave him, year after year, after year.  My Father was a gentleman.  He was quick to offer his handkerchief to a lady in tears or a ruddy-faced kid with a green snotty nose.  He didn’t wait to be asked, he just pulled it out of his pocket and handed it over.  Skinned knees, or elbows were also gently swabbed or bandaged with daddy’s hankies. 

When my father died nearly fifteen years ago, I asked my mother for his socks and handkerchiefs.  “What?  Why would you want those old things?”  She offered me some new ones that had not yet been opened, but I quietly reached for the soft, folded aged ones my father had worn on his feet and carried in his pocket.   I slept in his socks and wore them around the house for the first few years after his death.  I kept his old fishing hat and some of his favorite fishing shirts too.  A year ago I finally gave away his favorite sweater with the patches on the elbows but I still have a drawer full of his handkerchiefs.

There is comfort in these old squares of cotton.  Just feeling them in my pocket that day made me feel protected.  Like I could handle anything.  My nose always runs when I take my walks in the morning.  The wind, the sun, just being awake, makes it drip, drip, drip like a faucet.  If I were in trouble, I could wave the hankie like a flag.  If it were too hot and sunny I could make a bandana or a sunshade.  If I had to cry, I could pour my sorrows into the pillow of the cloth.  My daddy would be there.

These are the little bread -crumbs that guide me through the forest of life.  Memories of having been loved, as only a parent can love.  Here I go again, being grateful! 

My life is so glamorous!  Lucky for me, it is just not fair!!

  

Abandoning my training.

I used to have nice manners.  Actually the only formal training I received to prepare me for life (except for girl scouts, how to make Welsh rarebit and how to sew an apron,) was in etiquette.  My parent’s highest goal for me was to marry well and be a lady.  You know, the kind of lady that gives teas and vacuums in high heels while wearing pearls.  (Hah!  Who vacuums?)

From the age of ten and even younger, I was taught to sit like a lady, speak when I was spoken to and write thank you notes. I learned how to introduce a lady to a gentleman, how to shake hands while maintaining eye contact, how to dance the fox trot, the waltz and the cha cha and how to make a variety of tiny, one-bite delectables that could be piled on a desert plate with a cup of Earl Grey.  I was a Ticktocker for crying out loud!

Ticktockers, for those who don’t know,is the daughter’s branch of the Mother and Daughter philanthropic organization called National Charity League, of which my Mother was a member.

Being a Ticktocker was apparently quite an accomplishment.  It cost my father a small fortune every year from the time I was age ten and through high school, just in white gloves and party dresses.  Not including the charitable donations that were expected, the dance lessons and the gold jewelry and charm bracelet.  This, my Mother felt, was important to her standing in the community.

My Mother came into life feeling “less-than.”  She was, (unbeknownst to most people,) a high school-drop out.  She married my farther just three days following her seventeenth birthday shortly after the end of the Second World War.   From the time she married into the Campbell family, my Mother worked overtime to prove she was worthy.  She was a lady to the core, if by no other means than osmosis and the hats she wore. 

From the time we could hold a pencil, my sister and I were required to write thank you notes.  We wrote notes of thanks for gifts we received, parties we attended and sleepovers where we were eaten alive by mosquitoes in our friend’s backyards.  If we received a gift, we were not allowed to use or enjoy the gift until after the thank you notes had been written, stamped, addressed and dropped in the big blue mailbox on the corner of our street. 

My Mother pointed out more than once, that if someone had taken the time and been thoughtful and generous enough to choose a gift for one of us, the least we could do was express our thanks in writing within two days of having received the gift.  It was a good habit I am sure and most of the gifts were worth the trouble.

Over the years I became quite adept at writing lovely thank you notes.  I took pride in my composition and pleasure in selecting note cards in lovely shades of linen and finding pens with complementary colors of ink.  I tried to think of different and personal ways to say, how much I loved and appreciated the beautiful pink nightgown, or the book of poetry or the new ironing board and steam iron, (which I received from my first set of in-laws for my eighteenth birthday.)   Sometimes it was a stretch to be credible.

My birthday is in December, the twentieth to be exact.  I loved all of the hoopla, the trees and lights, cakes and presents and parties, but when coupled with Christmas gifts, I could easily develop writers- cramp just from the stack of thank you notes I was expected to turn out.  When I had kids, it became more complicated.

Now I was in charge of their social graces as well as my own.  Three girls equaled lots of gifts and gratitude.  I tried to employ the same no-thank-you-no play rule, with my girls that had been imposed upon me.  It worked, at least for the years they were still under my spell. As for me, I had begun to slack off.

At the age of twenty-eight, I acquired a second birthday.  The twenty second of December, (I know, bad planning on my part,) became my AA or sobriety birthday.  Because of the wonderful people I met and came to love, gifts were a part of the tradition.  Now there were three events in one week from which thank you notes needed to be generated.  Problems of abundance, I know.

When Tom and I fell in love and I was introduced to his family, I pulled out my best manners and wrote lovely notes to everyone.  His mother, his two favorite aunts, his cousins and brothers.  Everyone.  Finally, his aunt Sel asked me to stop.  She said I was making them all look bad.  What?  No problem.  I hate writing thank you notes!  I think that was the beginning of my downhill turn in manners.  Then it spread.

Last year when the kids came to live with us for several months I pretty much had to throw in the towel, so to speak.  I stopped setting the table for dinner.  Everyone wanted to eat at the breakfast bar.  When I did set the table, I stopped using placemats.  Less laundry in a house where the washing machine was running sixteen to twenty hours a day, seven days a week already.  The big change came when I stopped putting milk and condiments in pretty pitchers and dishes and just set the ketchup bottle and the milk carton on the table.  My other grand children were appalled!

“Grandma!  Are you okay?  What’s happened to your standards?”  Then came my birthdays.  This year I celebrated thirty -five years of sobriety.  My friend and sponsee, Cathy, gave me a beautiful sparkling party with thirty or so of my new friends.  I was deeply touched by all of the love.  I asked that there be no gifts because I knew, with the houseful of people and chaos in my house there would not be a quiet moment in which to reflect and write a thoughtful note.  Some people cannot follow directions.

Not only did my friends write beautiful notes and poetry, which many of them read aloud at the party, several of them gave me lovely gifts.  I knew I was in trouble.

So here we are today.  My friend Barbara came up to me after a meeting recently and asked; ”Did you like the necklace?”  Yes of course I liked it!  I loved it!!  (I am a total slouch!)  I did not write any thank you notes.  None.  Not even to my friend the hostess.  I did not write a note to Mary who gave me her very own thirty- five –year chip which was given to her my her sponsor.  Or to Laura who gave me a chip and a beautiful scarf, from my favorite walled city in Italy or to Brigid who gave me a beautiful be-jeweled box with a chip inside and a perfect ceramic lotus dish to hold my treasures as well as a little hand-painted bowl from Turkey which is filled with my earrings to admire every day.  Or to Peggy who gave me lovely soap, a scented candle and a bracelet that spells Love – Gratitude, just in case I forget how blessed I am. Or to Catherine who gave me a beautiful pewter picture frame, and Kym who gave me a special box with my initial and a chip inside.   There were more, so many more.  The truth is that I did not open most of them until January, after the kids moved out.  It was only then that I felt I had the precious time to sit down and notice what was in the bag in my closet, including the beautiful notes, cards and poetry.   Still, that is no excuse.

So even though I know this is NOT an acceptable replacement for a proper thank you note, I am going to do it anyway.   (Sorry Mom!)

Thank you!  Thank you all!  (You know who you are.)  I am deeply grateful for your friendship, your generosity of time and spirit and thoughtful gifts and all of the lovely notes each of you has written to me.  Though I love them, please do not give me any gifts, ever again.  I cannot be trusted to acknowledge them.  I was taught better, I know better, but still, I cannot be trusted.

My life is so glamorous!  It’s just not fair, lucky for me!!