The Yellow Line

I'm standing at the edge of a train station leaning forward to see what train is coming down the track. Got the visual? Now let me ask you this question. Have you ever gotten into it with your family, friends or husband/boyfriend or wife/girlfriend in such a way that you can't make it stop? You begin to feel like a dolphin caught in a fishing net and the more you struggle the worse it gets.

So what does all this have to do with a train? Well I look st the train tracks as my life and the on coming train as more crap coming straight at me because of course I'm leaning over and into its path. That is until a small voice inside said "Step behind the yellow line."

I was in a situation where nothing I was doing was working out. My thoughts were always going to the worst scenario and when that happens whatever the "thing" you're in doesn't go away. It can't. The "thing" takes on a life of its own. It doesn't matter that you were not the cause of it or even that you were right.

I realized that I wanted to make things right again. By "right" I mean in balance or in harmony and what I was doing was just not working. So I made a decision to get out of the way. I decided to step aside and let the universe do its thing without my help. Whenever I got it in my mind to "help" things along I would just breath and not act on the emotion. I gave it a month.

The month isn't over yet but I'm not caught in the net anymore. I've had a few times where I've had to "breath" but it is better than hyperventillating and filling my lungs with bad emotions that lead to bad actions. In the mean time, at least I'm not getting hit by any oncoming trains!

In Whose Image?

I was getting dressed to go out. Nothing fancy so there was no outfit planned for the occasion. So I get dressed and I look in the mirror and it just wasn't flattering. We're supposed to leave in a matter of minutes. I want to have fun and not let my clothes ruin my evening so I asked the man in my life if we had 5 minutes because I wanted to change clothes. He took a deep breath and I changed my outfit in less than five minutes!

So nu, what is the big deal? This kind of thing happens everyday in every part of the world except for nudist colonies and there I'm guessing the woman would just choose to stay in! The deal is that woman are so tied in with their physical appearance. Much more than men. Case in point, my husband. He knows this happens to women but being a man he doesn't get it on a molecular level. I don't think even the most metrosexual man would get it.

My issue is really with myself or rather myself as I think the world values and or judges me. I realize that the reality is a little different. Instead of a long dissertation about me it's probably more like, "she gained a little weight" or "she used to be so thin". Then for those who don't know me it's "so that's his wife..hmmm". We all know that as we age we are checking other people out to see how they are aging. It's like a measuring stick where you are either above the notch that say's "she didn't age so well" or below "damn how did she keep that body."

I know men get judged but not to the extent that women do. I think as women age we are judged by a harder to attain standard of beauty because it is a younger standard of beauty. The irony in all this is that I am the definition of low maintenance. I can't tell you the date of the last manicure I had because it has been that long. So how do these feelings surface for someone who would rather be doing other stuff than primping?

One answer, and it would be true, is that I have a little more vanity than I like to admit. However I do not have a lot of shoes no matter what my husband will tell you! I'm pretty sure these gremlins called negative feelings come out when I lose my balance. It happens when the scales of my self esteem weigh in too much on the low side. As the name suggests this esteem comes from none other than our selves. We can give and we can take away from our esteem.

Over time I have discovered just how much I tied my image, the outer wrapping, to my weight because I was always the skinny one. No diets and I could wear anything. I forget the akwardness and yearning for a few curves when I'm in the midst of one of these funks. In my funkadelic mind trip I rocked! Pair that with societal standards and you know it's not going to end well.

I don't have a magic solution. I changed my outfit but that doesn't always work. Breath. Have a glass of wine. Tell your bad vibes to go fuck off. Hang with the people that love you. Look at the judgementalists as if *you* are judging *them* and then walk away laughing. Okay so you're really laughing at yourself. On second thought skip the laughing if you are by yourself! Choose one or all of the above. The wine goes well with any of them, red or white. While you're busy with your plan the feeling will pass. They always do. Wine helps!

School's Out For Summer!

The path I take to a blog post is quite often not a straight line. Case in point, the words you are reading right now. It all started on a bright sunny day when I took my dog out for a walk. I saw two girls that were probably junior high school age walking down the street. Something about them reminded me of me at that age. It was like looking at myself and my best friend when we were oh so cool.

As I watched them walking in a way that only young teenage girls can, it struck me how little thought we as teens, gave to older people that walked in that teenage way before us. At thirteen you assume that any one older was simply always that way. You can't imagine what they might have been like as teenagers themselves because it never occurs to you to try. Which is okay since I think that's where the swagger comes from!

So I was going to write about that. In fact I was sitting at my computer when a cool breeze blew across my face and it triggered a memory. I'm back in school and it is the end of June. Like the last couple of days left to school. Tests have been taken. Assignments handed in. No one is really listening. Not even the teachers. Especialy the teachers?

Can you remember that feeling? You could smell the freedom just around the bend. For me freedom smelled like suntan lotion and freshly cut grass and candy all mixed with the slight smell of bug juice or maybe it's insect repellent! Visions of me and the summer love I was finally going to have danced in my head. How powerful was that feeling of anticipation? Jumping into two months of anything can happen fun!

As adults we go on vacations. We don't even have to wait for summer to do it. And yet, what I would give to bottle that feeling as the last minutes tick by on the last day of the school year! I'd add to it those first moments of freedom when the bell finally rings and you are out the door!

A Tale of Two Stories

With age sometimes comes wisdom. The key word here is sometimes. Sometimes you gain it from a story told by someone else. I've heard my fair share of stories, as you can imagine and these two are among my favorites. I'm reciting them from memory and while I may have more wisdom, the words may not be the exact words of the storyteller so if you've heard the story told a little differently, well, life is like that.

THE ESKIMO STORY

Two guys are sitting in a bar in Alaska and they're talking. After a while the conversation turns to religion. Seems that one of them was a believer, and the other was an atheist.

The atheist tells the believer "You know I gave your God a chance to prove himself to me but he didn't.

"Oh really, how so?" asked the believer.

"Well I'm driving alone in the middle of nowhere. It was getting dark and my car breaks down. I left my car to go look for help and a blizzard starts. Before long I was totally lost. I was freezing and quite sure I was done for. In that desperate moment I fell to my knees, looked toward the heavens, and said "God, if you're really up there, prove it to me. Save me from this horrible death."

The believer looks puzzled. "I don't get it. How can you still not believe. I mean, you're here. God must have answered your prayers."

To which the atheist replied, shaking his head "No, it was some fucking Eskimo that found me and took me back to safety!"

LEO'S STORY FROM THE WEST WING

Preface: You don't have to know who Leo is or to have ever seen The West Wing to enjoy the story.

This guy's walking down the street when he falls into a hole.The walls are so steep he can't get out. A doctor passes by and the guy shouts out "Hey you, can you help me out?" The doctor writes a prescription and throws it down the hole and moves on.

Then a priest comes along and the guy shouts out "Father I'm down in this hole, can you help me out?" The priest writes out a prayer, throws it down the hole and moves on.

Then a friend walks by. "Hey Joe,it's me, can you help me out?" And the friend jumps in the hole.

Our guy says "What are you stupid? Now we're both down here!" The friend says "Yeah but I've been down here before and I know the way out."

Take a Flying Leap!

Love is a leap of faith. Yes, even at this age. Our age. In fact it's almost a bigger leap than the first time you told someone you loved them. Actually when I think about it the leap is the same because you are stepping out into unknown territory. Will you fall into the abyss or will you land with both feet on solid ground?

That's the thing about love. When you've been at this crazy thing for a couple of decades (give or take!) you accumulate a lot of stuff. Most people would call it baggage. So while that first time in your life when you say "I love you" is really scary what you are afraid of is the unknown. As you gain experience what you are afraid of is not unknown. You've seen the boogey man's face. In other words you know all the ways that you can be hurt.

Should we take this leap of faith? Even if we know now what we didn't know then? There's no way around the leap. I think we all may be just a little crazy. We are willing to leap tall buildings in a single bound for something we can't actually see or touch in the most basic physical sense. Love lives somewhere between the physical world and the dream world. It's beautiful and it's messy but it is "what it's all about!" (great wisdom can be gained from doing the Hokey Pokey)

I'm not any different than most people. I've had my share of bruising when I haven't nailed the landing. In a long lasting relationship you will probably have to jump more than once and the longer the relationship the scarier it gets. I think they make you jump off a higher cliff!

So do you jump? How the hell do I know?! I just finished telling you about all my bruises. But me? I jump!

PS To Whom It May Concern, Thanks for catching me!

It's Not Rocket Science

Are men from Mars and if so are they taught to bullshit there? Oh women bullshit too but there is one thing that men bullshit about way more than women. No, it's not cheating! Everyone will lie about cheating if their backs are to the wall. I can't speak to the statists of which sex cheats more and frankly I don't care to speak to statistics period. They are just so manipulative! What I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt is that men are the almost exclusive users of the following line in one form or other.

"You know me, I'm not a romantic."

"I don't do romance."

"I don't know how to be romantic."

I could go on but it would just get me pissed off. It's a lazy ass lie. Sometimes guys use it to cover up in case their efforts are deemed not good enough but the rest of you? Seriously? Why not just admit the truth? You are either taking someone for granted or you're just not that into her.

Here's why I'm not buying the "I'm not a romantic" line. It's not always about the grand gesture, however, if the moment calls for it, you would have had to be living under a rock not to see how it is done. Are there not enough movies or TV shows out there? You tube is filled with great examples. If you don't need visible instruction then look at facebook or twitter. Its out there. But then, you (guys) knew that.

Then there is romance where a Hollywood moment isn't needed. Ironcally those little moments can be more powerful than the fully orchestrated kind. Can you buy her a present out of the blue? Just a little something like her favorite candy bar. Can you hold her hand while you're just watching TV? Can you tell her she is beautiful? "You look "nice" doesn't cut it. In fact the word "nice" shouldn't even be part of your vocabulary if she is the one. Can you call her for no reason? Can you brag about her? Whether it's her painting or her total geekness with computers? Of course the key is that she somehow overhears it! In short, can you just man up?

Someone once told me"I'm not much of a romantic and you know that." Then he wrote me a love letter. He went out of his comfort zone and he told me how he felt. He was *that into me.*

Romance is not the remedy for screwing up. Not screwing up again is what you need to do! Romance is a thing you do 365 days not just on Valentines Day or birthdays and anniversaries. Romance isn't hard. In fact when you really love someone it's like breathing. You do it without thinking and you do it all the time.

Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

I was talking to a friend of mine, a doctor, about a sad case he is dealing with. Basically for this patient midlife looks to be around twelve. We started talking about how we should live our lives because you know...you never know. Then as my conversations tend to go we took a left turn as I started to talk about the years I spent raising my kids.

Well maybe I didn't really hang a louie. I was telling him that the years I spent raising my kids were kind of a blur. A mind numbing blur. It isn't that I don't have any memories, it's that I don't have any memories of me. I wasn't me. I was the mother of thing one and thing two!

I have sweet memories of my kids as they grew up. They made me laugh as often as they made me pull out my hair! That was a PSA in case one of my kids read this or someone thinks I'm a bad mother!

I just remember that when my kids were old enough to go out and live their lives it was like a fog lifted. I began to feel like me again. The me at this end of the adventure realized that now it gets important to do the things that make me happy and less of the things that don't. I still clean but it's not a priority. I still go to work but I'm less invested in the politics and more interested in having fun while "the man" pays me. I listen to music, watch TV like crazy, I devour books and most of all I write.

Yawn. They're contagious so go ahead! I mean yadda yadda yadda what is the point here which is the equivalent of "are we there yet?!" from any family trip taken anywhere in the world said by every kid in the world at least once but probably more!Here it is, our final destination. It may be impossible to change the dynamic of what happens to your life while you're raising your kids unless of course you can hire enough help so that *you* aren't actually raising them! However once that fog lifts take the advice of some wiseguy or rather wise guy and "enjoy this moment because this moment is your life."

See Red!

I don't do anger well. The I'm not gonna take it any more kind. I'm working on it. While I am firmly rooted in the late sixties/early seventies WoodStock generation I think something of the fifties seeped into my irrigation system. Well at least the image of women in the fifties. What? Life isn't like a sitcom? Hell at this point in time does it really matter why I don't do anger well? The bottom line is still the same.

It's not as if I'm a shrinking violet when it comes to letting it out. Those would be my daughters exact words. "As." "If." I do upset and I do frustrated and while they may appear very much like anger they are not. If they were the same I wouldn't be writing this and Webster's would be shorter by one word.

Now anger comes in different sizes and different shades of red. I'm not talking about the kind that is like the path of a giant tornado. Not the kind that pops your bloodvessels so your eyes turn red like the devil's. I'm talking about the garden variety red gardenia kind. It's when someone, your friend, your boss, your colleague or your guy does something that makes you mad. Not every little thing they do but that one thing that was wrong and thoughtless.

See red. Be angry. Not upset or hurt. You may feel those things too but let yourself get angry. I prefer my anger to come with a steel look in my eyes and a quiet voice. The yelling thing is never as effective. You yell and then you cool off and then they rinse and repeat. I rarely can achieve this quiet kind of anger but I'm working on it.

I think I have been afraid of anger. Maybe they won't like me anymore. Even I know that's just stupid. Ha! And you guys are taking advice from me! These moments are not about being "the bigger person" which usually means backing down. These moments are about saying "hey I'm worth it so pay attention."

Don't apologize for being angry. Let them apologize and when that happens, just like that, let it go!