Adding Comedian to my Bio Starting Now

Me on the left, sister on the right

I fell in love with comedy at an early age. I grew up watching Saturday Night Live with my mom and I watched in awe as my dad could instantly put people at ease with his quick wit and humor. I learned early on that making people laugh felt good, and it was something I was pretty good at doing.  I always gravitated towards people I found funny and I always had nothing but respect for people who made people laugh for a living.

I was told more than once that I should do stand-up, and it was always something I wanted to try, but I could not think of anything that sounded more intimidating than to be on a stage in front of strangers trying to make them laugh. After Brett died 2 1/2 years ago, I started to realize that this is it. We get one life and I was letting fear hold me back from something I wanted to do.  Earlier this year, I decided that this was my year to do it.

I had been working on material for a few weeks and I thought it was pretty funny. My comedic hero, and all-around dream man, Zach Galifianakis, advises comedians to go with material they find funny, and not to try to write FOR any particular group of people. If you get no laughs, who cares, try again. This was good news to me since I live in a college town and kind of don’t know what college-aged people find funny.  I sent my rough material to my sister and she told me it was funny, and that people in her office thought it was funny.

By some amazing stroke of luck, Greg, my niece’s ex-boyfriend, had been doing comedy for years and he was at the first open mic that I attended just to watch. He was then, and is now,  incredibly supportive. He told me about a workshop that local comedians attend to try out material and my god I hate the term but I’m going to use it, brainstorm, on material together. The day of the first workshop, I actually sat in my car, psyching myself up to go inside. I was afraid to go inside alone, because Greg had said he was running a little late. I didn’t know anybody else. And I’m old. And I’m a woman. An old woman who knows nobody. And I was petrified. The guys I had seen at the open mic I attended were funny, some funnier than others, but hell, they were all up there trying.

I sat there in my car texting a friend and my sister asking for positive thoughts because I was scared to even go inside the stupid coffee shop where the workshop was being held. They came through and I got out of the car and strolled in and nobody was there yet, so I sat down on one of the benches and ordered a giant glass of wine and waited.  Soon I started to recognize some of the guys from the open mic I attended. I introduced myself to them as they asked me who the hell I was (probably said much nicer than that. Just injecting some drama).  Greg came in and I almost instantly felt better.

Everybody took their turn in front of the room running through bits they were working on. Greg looked like he was born on that stage and I was jealous. I was so nervous about the whole thing, but I got up and went through some of my material…and some of them LAUGHED. These 20 something guys found humor in my stories about being a 44-year-old single woman in a college town, online dating, and my kids. Although embellished for the sake of comedy, this was my life, and they laughed.  I felt empowered. I decided that I would do an open mic in a few weeks.

I think I was less nervous before having my chest sawed open and having open heart surgery. I think I was less nervous driving my Aunt’s car in Washington DC the summer I was 16. I think I was less nervous before any first day of any job or any school year.  I almost talked myself out of doing it several times throughout the day and a couple of more times while sitting at the club waiting for my name to be called.

My sister came into town so she could spend some time with me and my niece and we went to dinner and dropped my boys off with their dad for the night so I could get to the club to sign up by 8:30.  I had spent the last few days in front of my bathroom mirror speaking my material into a hairbrush. I also ran through my material in the car with my sister.  By the time I got to the club, I was sure I had forgotten all of it.

I got up on the stage and my sister and niece were in the front row. I did not forget all of it. I did forget some of it, and while my first open mic was FAR from perfect, I felt really good about it. I still feel really good about it, but I am over being in love with myself and more into what I can do to improve.  I feel like if the material is good, my delivery and saying UMM all the time and nervous tics and stuff on stage, will get better with time. I’m working on more material, and I’ll be doing another open mic on this coming Tuesday, and will be competing in an amateur comedians showcase contest thing in a few weeks.  My plan is to do as many open mics as I can the weeks the boys are with their dad.  I plan to keep writing new material, and polishing this material, because it is ME. This is material I think is funny, and yes, I cuss, and I have some adult themes, but if you’ve read this blog for any amount of time, you should know this is who I am.

My dear sister recorded this and I had no plans to share it with anyone at all, but a lot of people wanted to see it, so now I am posting it everywhere. I am nothing if not totally fickle.  The response has been mostly positive.  I’m working very hard on not letting the negatives overshadow the positives. I’m proud of myself, and proud of my material.

Also, so many people have expressed an interest in doing stand up. Two words…DO IT. I greatly regret that Brett and my dad, two of the funniest human beings I have ever had the pleasure of knowing, are not around to see me do this.

You Say Narcissist Like It’s a BAD Thing

This morning The Huffington Post called me a narcissist. They might not have called me out by name, but they might as well have. It’s like they have been following my blog and wanted to let me know exactly how they feel about me.

I know many of you will not click the link above and read the entire article, so allow me to condense it for you.  Narcissists don’t take to aging well. They (we) feel a disproportionate amount of sadness when we realize we are not receiving the same attention we once received in our youth. We may do things like get a lot of plastic surgery to try to convince people that we are actually still attractive, or we may try to garner attention by, say, trying something we have always wanted to try, like stand-up comedy or something. Okay, they don’t SAY that, but it is there, between the lines.

Per the article, these are the 5 surefire signs that I am a narcissist

1. Believing that you’re better than others
2. Fantasizing about power, success and attractiveness
3. Exaggerating your achievements or talents
4. Expecting constant praise and admiration
5. Believing that you’re special and acting accordingly

What I find interesting, actually I find MANY things interesting about this article, is that there seems to be a very fine line between self-confidence and narcissism.   I teeter on the line between feeling like I deserve anything at all to feeling like I deserve everything. It’s crazy-making and something I work on constantly to obtain balance, but I didn’t know it made me a narcissist.

The second trait listed above really puzzles me because isn’t this what we are TAUGHT to do? Even my new-age hippie vision board is really just a bunch of pictures of things I fantasize about so that I can manifest my own destiny or some such bullshit (and yes, I have a vision board. I’m allowed to call it bullshit).

I am writing this tongue in cheek of course. I don’t think I am a true narcissist, but, and the article fails to mention this, each and every one of us has to have a bit of narcissism for our own self-preservation.  When this kind of thing is written in a flowery script with a pretty background, it’s inspirational. When it’s on the list of the traits of a narcissist, it’s scary.

I have never been one for labels or boxes, but I do believe that in the realm of psychology labels have their place. The thing about that article, and many like it, is it sort of spews all this information out then leaves it there for public consumption for all of us to diagnose ourselves. I try to stay away from WEB MD when I have a stomach ache so that I don’t end up convincing myself that I have a tumor.  I imagine I should probably stay away from articles like this one for the same reason.

I wonder, does the fact that I think this applies to me MAKE me a narcissist or would I be more of a narcissist if I read the article but saw none of myself  in it?

Enjoy this humorous video that totally applies to both this post and my life.

Oh No…She’s Talking About Sex Again

I grew up hearing the same bullshit stuff that presumably many girls grew up hearing about sex. Things like “sex is a girls most precious commodity”,  “don’t give it up to someone easily”, and my personal favorite, “why buy the cow when he can get the milk for free?”  What does this last one even mean? Am I the cow in this scenario? Are we telling our girls that in order to snag the man of their dreams that they need to play games to finagle an engagement ring out of him? What if a girl WANTS to be the cow that enjoys giving away her milk, is that cow doomed to walk the earth,  sadly mooing alone, forever?  This could go on for days, and while I enjoy a good metaphor as much as the next person, let’s mosey on from this one.

This “fun” and “informative” little video called The Economics of Sex that was made by The Austin Institute pretty perfectly sums up the claptrap that I was taught as a child. Go on, watch it, it’s short. I’ll wait.

SO MUCH WRONG, am I right? I imagine I believed all of that at the time. I might not have really understood it, but I believed it.  However, I had a lot of guy friends who were not being told the same thing. In fact, it seemed they were being told almost the exact opposite.

I attended a very small private Christian school for two years in 7th and 8th grades where I learned that YES, having sex is bad if you’re a girl, and so is listening to Van Halen, whether you are a girl or a boy, and the fact that I didn’t REALLY believe in all of what I was hearing didn’t really stop me from carrying that information with me when I went off to high school (except for the Van Halen part because those guys rock).

My guy friends who were having sex in high school were being high-fived while the girls with whom they were sexing (yeah, I know that’s probably not exactly the correct way to phrase that but let’s go with it) were called names like “slut” and were widely regarded as being somehow less…everything…than the girls like me who weren’t having sex in high school.

Before that comes off sounding like I am high atop Mt. Betterthanyou, I was a virgin until after high school mainly because I just didn’t date in high school. At all really. I just wasn’t asked. At all really. The first person I went on a date with after I graduated is the guy with whom I lost my virginity. I was 18 and felt like BEFORE having sex for the first time that surely I was missing out on something incredibly amazing. AFTER I had sex for the first time, I thought…something different. Let’s just say sex didn’t get good for me until many years after that.

As I grew into a young woman, my feelings about sex remained complicated. I tried to stick to what I had heard was the “right” way to nab a man, and that meant the three date rule. Don’t give it up until at least three dates in. This will show the guy that you’re a highly valued commodity, and not some piece of trash that has a lot of sex because it is…gasp…enjoyable.  If you want to get into these culottes, you sir will need to take me out on three actual dates and yes, McDonald’s all three times does count. Maybe I needed to work on the “highly valued” part, or maybe I just loved the McRib sandwich, in either case I understood that having sex right away, even if I wanted to, was just BAD, and would make ME BAD.

After my first relationship with a guy that I dated for 3 years, off and on, then my next relationship with a guy that I dated for 3 years, off and on, what counted as three ACTUAL dates with the couple of men I dated casually changed quiet a bit, and sometimes, they weren’t dates at all.

I wasn’t sure how to rectify my feelings that I was actually starting to enjoy sex and yet I still wanted to be considered a “nice” girl.  How could that BE? This was an absolute impossibility, right? Once I started enjoying sex didn’t that mean that I was one step away from just being a filthy porn star? It was a slippery K-Y lube-covered slope as far as I was concerned.

As I had more relationships and life experiences and matured (SHUT UP) I feel like my views on sex have become clearer. Not clear as in things are either black or they are white (I am so not going to make a 50 Shades of Grey joke here but god help me, I want to) but clear in realizing that there IS a whole lot of grey. My views are mine, and while they might be controversial,  I no longer buy into the whole “sex is a commodity” thing. I don’t think it’s right or even fair (yes yes, a word I TRY not to use because it’s pointless) that there is such a double standard regarding sex.  Regardless of my feelings about marriage in general, I think any man who doesn’t want to marry someone because she is  having regular sex with him is an idiot. I also think that any woman who feels the need to wrangle some poor not clearly thinking because his mind is clouded by all the sex you’re refusing to have with him man is also an idiot (please pick up on the sarcasm in this sentence). But, I’m not judgmental, I hope these two idiots live happily ever after (maybe not so much sarcasm in this one).

I do sometimes stumble upon something that gives me pause as far as how I actually feel about sex and what being sexually liberated means and this is one of those times.  I read about this and went through a plethora of emotions in a short period of time.  For your reading pleasure, here is a brief re-creation of my emotional state after reading about this comedian/writer having a romp with James Deen on film.

9:02 pm – WHAT? This woman,  (and I cannot find her name for the life of me and I have read the piece 3 times) who is a comedian/writer responded to a Tweet to be in a scene with James Deen? That’s kind of weird and gross.
9:03 pm – Well, I can see how it would be an empowering thing to do. She’s an adult. He’s an adult. It’s her body.
9:04 pm -Google JAMES DEEN just to jog my memory as far as what he looks like
9:10 pm – I wonder if he is going to Tweet this offer again?
9:11 pm – Follow James Deen on Twitter

In just a few minutes, more than I should have taken because I got sucked into the Googling portion, I came to the conclusion that it was her choice, and as a feminist, a choice I respect, and while it would not necessarily be something I would do, on film anyway (okay, in a film that would be seen by a lot of people) her choice doesn’t make her a BAD person, it doesn’t make her anything other than what I know about her, a woman who chose to have sex on film with a guy who makes his living by doing just that. I don’t know anything else about this woman, but I would not jump from woman I know nothing about to woman who has sex on film so she is obviously a terrible person. Not a leap I would make because it makes no sense to me.

At this point, at 44 years of age, I feel like the crux of true feminism is that women are free to pursue their happiness however they would like. If that means they choose to not work outside the home, then they should do that, if that means they work construction, they should do that.  It also means that if they choose to have a lot of sex because they want to then they should do that.

Every choice has its consequences, however. If you read the piece above, she mentions that people were hurt by her choice. I surmised that she has a significant other who was none too pleased with her decision, though she does not go into detail. That is unfortunate.  Also, if you read the comments connected to the piece, and really, I highly recommend you don’t ever read comments of anything posted on the internet, but I felt it was necessary in this case,  if you even take 20% of what is said as not trolling and as the real thoughts of those commenting, this woman is now thought by many to be “diseased gutter trash”, “a disgusting whore bag”, and my favorite a “morally bankrupt sex object”, yet not ONE person commenting says ANYTHING about the fact that James Deen is ACTUALLY A PORN STAR, which means nothing to ME, but why does she get lambasted while he is absolutely left alone?  I guess with a great penis comes great respect. Yeah, I don’t know, it just SUCKS that this is the double standard in which we reside.

I think the person going by the name Truth, who left this comment, can close out my feelings on this whole thing –

So you don’t like girls who do things like this? Big deal. Hang around with girls who don’t. But don’t pretend that everyone should be or think like you.

Boom.

Also, I will add on to what Truth said and say if you don’t want to BE a girl who does something like this, then don’t. The world is your oyster, do with your clam what you wish.

Good as NEW

It is well-documented that I have had my share of broken hearts.  This blog became way too “Dear Diary” for a while, but when I need to process something, I write, and I needed to process my feelings about tumbling headfirst into something (someone) that ended up hurting me and I wrote about it at length and made everybody uncomfortable in the meantime but if Taylor Swift can turn her heartbreak into songs that make her a lot of money then why can’t my blog do the same? Yeah, it can’t. I cannot guarantee that I won’t devote a large portion of this blog to future broken hearts, but I can almost guarantee that there WILL be future broken hearts, because YOLO. I think I am reaching the age where I will not be able to use YOLO and not sound silly. What? I reached that age 20 years ago? That term wasn’t even around then.  I think I see the point.

While I am absolutely over the particular situation that plunged my blog into having the same emotional maturity as a Sweet Valley High book, and in fact, me and the guy I tumbled for (no, not Boy George) are friends, when I was going through my little melodrama, I kept hearing the same things over and over. Those things were said with the best of intentions (hopefully, or some of you really hate me and are passive aggressive jerks) but they were just not helpful.

In the interest of being helpful and friendly (though who am I kidding, I just told someone I’m not getting any friendlier and I have nothing and nobody to blame. I was born this way. Like Lady Gaga) I thought I would compile an easy to use list of things that are acceptable to say to your friend who is nursing a broken heart.  To make things easier on me, I will be using the pronoun HE.

• Instead of saying – You dodged a bullet, which did nothing but make me feel like a HUGE masochist because at that time all I wanted was to be shot with that particular bullet over and over again, try saying I PROMISE, you will feel better. I am here to listen. Time will help. Let me buy you a drink/ice cream/clothes to soften the blow. 
• He  is acting like this because he got scared of the powerful feelings he was having for you. While I do particularly enjoy this one, because it lets me live within the delusion that someone was so damn enamored with me that they would rather thrust themselves onto the sword of douchebaggery to try and drive me away rather than just face up to their feelings, their oh so strong and real feelings for me, I have sadly seen the movie He’s Just Not That Into You enough to know that is probably not the case.  Saying this makes you sort of an enabler and it is not helpful in the long run.  Try saying I PROMISE, you will feel better. I am here to listen.  Time will help. Let me buy you a drink/ice cream/clothes to soften the blow. 
• Telling someone you were way too good for him anyway is kind of like the first bullet (HA…bullet about a bullet). At the time it is usually said, it’s difficult to wrap your head around the fact that someone deemed not good enough for you, was at that very moment rejecting you. It’s like Inception or something and I still have not seen that movie but I will continue to reference it when I feel it is appropriate.  So this means I am actually not even good enough for the people who are not good enough for me? This leaves me with no options whatsoever as far as dating. Those who are not good enough for me don’t want me, those who are too good for me presumably don’t either. This is the definition of Forever Alone.  Try saying I PROMISE, you will feel better. I am here to listen. Time will help. Let me buy you a drink/ice cream/clothes to soften the blow. 

Perhaps you are noticing a trend. In all seriousness,  my friends did an excellent job coaching me through my broken heart(s) and holding my hand and letting me angrily text them that YEAH, that guy IS acting like a jerk, and I DO deserve better, and I DID dodge a bullet, but I had to come to those conclusions on my own.

Being the one with the broken heart sucks, but being in the position of helping a friend try to recover from one is not very fun either. You all were right, I feel better, and in part it’s because you all were there to listen to my incessant rambling.  Also, I couldn’t help but notice that there was a disturbing lack of drinks/ice cream/clothing bought for me in my time of need. It’s okay, you can catch me on the flip.

PS  – I so greatly appreciate every single person who tried to make me feel better and cheer me up at that time. Every comment those blogs received, every text message, every Facebook message, every Tweet.  Thank you and much love to you all.

Who Cares That You’re Gay?

Michael Sam is gay. GAY GAY GAY.

Michael Sam is an all American defensive lineman from The University of Missouri and he may just be the first openly gay player drafted into the NFL.

Why should we care that he’s gay? We SHOULDN’T CARE whether he’s gay or not, BUT as long as there are men being beaten up because they choose to hold hands with their partner (who is also a man) and *GASP* be openly affectionate  or there are high school students who receive death threats after coming out as being gay, we SHOULD care that a football player has chosen to be open about his sexual orientation. I cannot WAIT for us as a society to be at a place where truly NOBODY CARES, but we’re not there yet.

We have made progress towards being the type of society that doesn’t care. Not long ago gay celebrities and athletes led closeted lives because of the very real threat that coming out as gay would mean the end of their career.   Rock Hudson’s sexual orientation was a rather well-known secret in Hollywood, but he was closeted to the general public largely because it was thought that  moviegoers didn’t want to believe that the 6’5″ dreamboat Hudson could possibly be gay, and they presumably wouldn’t pay to see Hudson in movies where as an actor he was playing the part of a ladies man.

Today, openly gay actor Neil Patrick Harris plays ladies man Barney Stinson on TV’s How I Met Your Mother.  The show is popular which leads me to believe that if anybody has an issue with a gay man playing the part of a ladies man, it’s a small amount of people. Maybe I’m naive, but this is progress to me.

If you’re feeling like celebrities and athletes are “pushing their sexuality in your face” and you truly don’t care whether they are gay or not, then ignore it. Tell yourself that their proclamation is not for you. It’s for children who perhaps feel they would not be supported if they publicly embraced who they are. It’s for people who read the stories I linked above and feel that they are too scared to come out.  There is strength in numbers. If there is one young gay man who plays football who now feels less alone, then it matters. If there is one  young  lesbian woman who now feels the courage to pursue a career in broadcasting because of Robin Roberts, then it matters.

Breaking news – Ellen Page is gay. GAY GAY GAY.

The Oscar nominated actress came out this past week  in a speech to the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.  Why is this important? In her own words, let her explain –

“I’m here today because I am gay, and because maybe I can make a difference to help others have an easier and more hopeful time.”

I started writing this post BEFORE she gave her speech, but we are on the same wavelength. If it doesn’t matter to you, cool. Certainly not every person who is in the public eye has an obligation to be open about their sexuality. We are not owed that by anyone.  Just realize when someone chooses to come out, it isn’t about anyone “pushing an agenda” or “putting their homosexuality in your face”. It is about the hope that someday it really WON’T matter and it will be a non-issue.

Happy Galentine’s Day AND Happy Valentine’s Day

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day and today is, from what I understand, Galentine’s Day.  What, prey tell is Galentine’s Day? Galentine’s Day is from an episode of “Parks and Recreation”, a show starring the very talented and hilarious Amy Poehler as well as an equally talented and hilarious supporting cast including Nick Offerman (and his EPIC mustache), Aubrey Plaza, Aziz Ansari,  Rashida Jones, Chris Pratt, and Rob Lowe. See? Why aren’t more people watching this show? Including me actually since I don’t watch it on the regular either. I know, I suck, but in my defense I just now figured out how to program my DVR.

Anyway, Galentine’s Day is a day invented by Amy Poehler’s character Leslie Knope,  to celebrate the women in your life. It doesn’t matter if your gal-pals are married or otherwise attached, Galentine’s day is a day to let the gals in your life know that you love and appreciate them. Here is what Leslie Knope herself has to say about the day –

What’s Galentine’s Day? Oh, it’s only the best day of the year. Every February 13th, my lady friends and I leave our husbands and our boyfriends at home, and we just come and kick it, breakfast-style. Ladies celebrating ladies. It’s like Lillith Fair, minus the angst. Plus frittatas.

Sounds like fun! I am extremely fortunate to have an excellent support system of women near and far that I call friends. Some are family members, some have been my friend for over 30 years, some for not that long, some I haven’t even met in person but thanks to social media we have become friends. I share in their lives and they share in mine. They are my biggest cheerleaders and I know when I need anything, they are there. We have cried together, we have laughed together, we have gotten outraged together over my seemingly endless bad luck regarding relationships, and we have nervously laughed at my sometimes terrible decisions, because if WE can’t laugh about not being able to stop texting someone who clearly doesn’t want to be contacted simply because I think I thought of the PERFECT way to explain why I sent so many texts to him BEFORE, then who can?

So to my gal pals I say Happy Galentine’s Day! I love each and every one of you and I thank you for being there for me.

As for Valentine’s Day, I grew up with a father who felt it was important to give his daughters Valentine’s presents and/or candy and/or flowers and because of him, the day is much LESS about having a romantic relationship than it is to shower those you love with love, and a balloon or little box of Scooby Doo bubblegum balls (spoiler alert, that’s what my children are getting from me this year).

I have my fair share of stories of Valentine’s Day plans that went terribly awry. My personal favorite is when I was dating someone and we had plans for him to come to my house for dinner, this was when I was in my 20’s so when I say “my house” I really mean a crappy studio apartment. I searched all day for a heart-shaped baking pan and I made a delicious yellow cake and topped it with whipped cream and strawberries. Rick never showed up that night or called until the next day.  I don’t remember why he couldn’t come over, but I do remember that over the course of about 6 hours while waiting for him, I ate that entire cake with a fine white wine (just guessing since I don’t remember but it was probably from a box).

I’m not involved in a romantic relationship this Valentine’s Day, BUT I can guarantee you, I will feel loved and I will show love. I will be spending the day with my two favorite Valentines, my kids, and I will tell them that I love them, just as I do every day, and I will hug them a little tighter than usual and I will tell them that no matter what, their mom will always be their Valentine, and this will creep them out immensely, but hopefully when they are older they will carry on the tradition of looking at Valentine’s day as a day to show appreciation and love to everyone just a little more than they do every day, and that being single on Valentine’s Day is not a big deal.

And I may or may not, just for old time’s sake, eat a whole cake with some wine.

 

 

Who’s Funny? I AM, DAMMIT

I’m tough. I AM tough, dammit.  I have lived through many hours of unproductive labor, two C-Sections,  open heart surgery, a whole lot of other surgeries, personal attacks, multiple broken hearts, and sometimes people on the internet call me names, and yet, I live. I lived through all of it.  Some would say I’m worse for the wear but I don’t think I agree with that.  I am definitely scarred, literally and figuratively, but dammit, I’m here and I’m tough.

YET…I am not tough ENOUGH.  I know this about myself. I get my feelings hurt and take things to heart more than I should. Not ALL the time, but recently I was reminded just how thin my skin really is, and how I absolutely HAVE to work on just…for lack of a less awesome term…not giving a fuck sometimes.

Not long ago, I met someone cool and I INSTANTLY wanted to be his best friend. His BFF. I thought he was funny, he thought I was funny, and we talked all night the first time we met. Seriously all night, and it was wonderful. I felt like I might have found a really good friend who would be around forever. He reminded me of my Brett.  We clicked instantly and had the same sense of humor.  We talked a lot over the next few days but I could tell something was just off and the day before  we had planned to spend together working on my comedy material and eating pizza, he blew me off.  Something came up. It was an abrupt turn around from where we were a few days before.

To say I was cool about the whole thing would be a lie. I came in like a wrecking ball and if he was sort of on the line about my sanity, I sent him enough texts trying to explain why I was so hurt about being blown off that by the time I was finished, I have no doubt he had firmly crossed that line into CrazyAmyLand.  I KNEW this, yet I could not stop. I really wanted to explain, and I really wanted to still be his friend, and I really wanted to just turn the clock back. This was in the span of a WEEK you guys. A WEEK.

I could see he was reading all of my texts, yet he was not responding,  and why would he?  He doesn’t know me that well and he doesn’t know that I am in fact, not insane. So now I’m in that awesome place where I feel so stupid for my actions, and lack of impulse control, and sad that someone I thought was cool does not feel the same about me.

The thing is, he’s not my Brett. Nobody will ever be my Brett, and I can’t forge a friendship with someone in a week that is anything like the friendship I had with Brett that we nurtured for almost 30 years. It’s not possible, and it’s silly to try.  It’s not silly of me to miss Brett, and I do every day, but it is silly to try to replace him.

Even when I was in the middle of Bad ChoiceaPalooza 2014,  I knew part of my motivation was that I desperately needed him to think I was funny, because I thought he was.  For any of you who don’t understand that, let me try to explain. Making people laugh has been my goal, my defense mechanism, my way to endear people to me, my entire life.  Considering I contacted this guy because he is a working comedian in town, and one I found funny, I felt like if he didn’t think I was funny then I wasn’t. It. Is. NUTS.  This is called having very little self-esteem and faith in the fact that I AM funny and that I CAN get up on a stage and make people laugh and that I don’t need anybody’s approval or help.

When I’m up on stage I need to be prepared for whatever happens, including hecklers, or drunks, or drunk hecklers.  I can’t let them shake me. At this point I plan to agree with whatever negative thing is said about me when I’m on stage. “Get off the stage, you SUCK” would be met with “I know, I really do”. I don’t know if this will work but it’s all I’ve got right now.

I wish a thick skin was something I could just purchase on ETSY, but I’m afraid it is something I will have to work on myself. I have made friends with my self-destructive streak, I have sat down with my broken hearts and made peace, now it is time to KNOW I am funny and that I have nothing to fear on that stage.  Learning the subtle nuances between being passionate and not closed as far as my emotions are concerned and going crazy and having no impulse control is a lifelong battle, I’m afraid. For NOW, getting myself up on a stage and conquering that fear is where my main focus lies.

The F Word. No, Not That One

fat

adjective

adjective: fat; comparative adjective: fatter; superlative adjective: fattest

1.(of a person or animal) having a large amount of excess flesh.

“the driver was a fat, wheezing man”

Jennifer Lawrence wants to outlaw calling someone “fat”.  I like Jennifer Lawrence. I like that she is outspoken and that she seems to have a handle on the whole shallow Hollywood machine (as do I, living in a small town in Florida and having no experience with it whatsoever, but I digress).  I find her to be refreshing and while she may be off the mark sometimes with her comments about body image, at least she is commenting and she is trying to bring about positive change.

The clip above is from an interview when she was chosen as one of Barbara Walters’ Most Fascinating People of 2013.  If you have an aversion to clicking on a link and watching a video clip, her actual quote is below –

“The word fat, I just think it should be illegal to call somebody fat on TV. If we’re regulating cigarettes, and sex, and cuss words, because of the effect it has on our younger generations, why aren’t we regulating things like calling people fat?”

I absolutely understand what she is trying to say. On the other hand, it’s just an adjective. I feel like making it illegal to call someone fat is giving the word a ridiculous amount of power and it makes it seem like it is something SHAMEFUL to BE fat.  We’re talking about an adjective, not he who shall not be named (VOLDEMORT).  It’s just an adjective, a descriptive word, that honestly is not scary at all, unlike Voldemort.

I find it extremely offensive that often when someone tries to “cut me down” they resort to calling me “fat”. It’s not offensive because I’m so hurt that someone would call me fat, but it shows a huge lack of imagination on their part.  I have claimed that word, it does nothing but describe my body. Or,  maybe not. It is an adjective, but like a lot of adjectives, it is subjective. What is FAT to one person may not be to another.

When my sister and I were younger, we did what my boys do now, we would pick on each other, usually focusing on our physical traits. My sister said I was the Heat Miser, because I was round and had red hair, and I called her the Snow Miser, because she was thin and had a longer nose than I did (and she had a penchant for wearing straw hats).  Is it stupid? Absolutely. Did it hurt my feelings? Maybe a little bit but soon I realized that I WAS rounder than she was, and I DID have red hair (until I stopped dyeing it but not because of anything my sister said or did). We did it because we were kids. The fact that adults still feel the need to “pick on” other adults for their physical attributes is really silly to me.

Fat is just an adjective.  Just a descriptive term. Being fat is not some horrible fate. I would like to see people get away from making FAT be something that is tantamount to traits that I find much more heinous like being mean, or hateful, or judgmental, or racist, or unkind.

A while ago I was involved with someone who wrote a story with me as the main character. I was depicted as sensual (because DUH, I’m all kinds of hot and spicy) and described as having “legs that were shapely, and strong, but not fat”. I asked him if he felt the need to add that part because he was concerned about how I would perceive it or if he was afraid that this woman who was portrayed as sexy would not seem realistic if he didn’t add that she was “not fat”.  If he had an answer for me, I don’t remember it, but I blocked a lot of that relationship out for my own sanity.

Instead of making an adjective be illegal, I would like to see more real life people of all shapes and sizes be featured in roles that celebrate them for the multi-faceted individuals they are.  How about we have a movie that features Melissa McCarthy as a woman who is involved with a man, or a woman, and their relationship has ups and downs, and not ONE of them has anything to do with the fact that she is the size she is.  She doesn’t break any chairs (Shallow Hal, I know you have good intentions, but no), there would be no friends who talked about how the male lead character could “do better”, there would be none of that.  Before you say “well, that sounds dull as dishwater” I’m not saying there wouldn’t be any conflict, just don’t make it centered around her weight.  There are a lot of mushy relationship movies that manage to do this. Granted, I stay away from them but that’s because I’m not a fan of Rom/Com movies. I enjoy trying on every outfit in my closet in a musical montage as much as the next person, but on the whole, romantic comedies are not usually my movie genre of choice.

In a perfect world, we wouldn’t feel the need to try to hurl words at one another in an attempt to belittle each other. That whole “blowing out someone’s candle doesn’t make yours shine brighter” thing,  BUT, I know that is asking for too much. I don’t feel it necessary to make the word “fat” illegal, but how about we stop focusing on it and making it seem like there is no higher insult than calling someone “fat” and we accept the word for what it is, just an adjective.

It’s My Party

In just a few short days I will be turning 44 years old.  I have written before about things I thought I would have accomplished by this point, and I think I wrote that last year, so presumably, more things have landed on that list.

This past weekend I went to the discount store with a friend and I bought, among other things, a shower curtain. I am still loving renting and living in the house that belongs to my brother and sister-in-law, but the color scheme in the house is not my personal color scheme.  I don’t dislike it, I just have everything in shades of blues and greens and in this house there are very few blues and greens, rather maroons and browns. I had been using my old shower curtain that had circles in blues and greens all over it, and it totally clashed with the wallpaper that has muted shades of red and pink on it, with a border at the bottom of pink. I found a shower curtain and told my friend who was shopping with me that “I think things will finally start coming together for me, because my shower curtain will match my wallpaper”.  I was kidding, but it made me think  how when I was a kid, I really did think that things would just “make sense” by the time I reached a certain age.

I don’t know what age that is, but I can tell you, I haven’t reached it yet.

My eldest son commented that our house feels like a motivational seminar because of all the signs I have chosen to hang in our home. I am a huge believer in the power of the universe. I have written about my vision board and I really do feel that words have the power to motivate and bring about change. Whether that change is positive or negative depends on the words and images in which you have chosen to surround yourself. I’m not DELUSIONAL. I think it takes more than just hanging a few posters in your house to affect change, but I do think it helps.

As I sit here typing this with the television show Iyanla Fix My Life, playing on my TV behind me, it strikes me that there isn’t a magical age where everything suddenly makes sense. I don’t know for sure,  but I don’t think anybody wakes up one morning and all of a sudden they’ve got it all figured out. I do think that each morning we wake up we can choose to try to live the life we want to live or we can choose to be afraid to make changes that may lead to that life.  I don’t want to ever become comfortable with just existing. I don’t want to be ruled by fear. I want so much for my boys to take to heart everything that is on this sign, and I want to show them by example.

“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.”- Eric Roth

That damn shower curtain still doesn’t match the wallpaper but instead of getting stuck in thinking that by this age I should have it more together than I do, I will revel in the fact that I am not where I was 5 years ago, or 1 year ago, or 1 month ago, and that is because I have made forward movement.  Things have not fallen into place exactly how I would like them to, but this is my kaleidoscope, and I have the power to turn it myself to make a more pleasing pattern.

Really, how am I not writing greeting cards or something? That last sentence is a thing of freaking beauty.

Never Fear…It Is STILL My Year

I am such a good planner that I went ahead and got the health issues and hospital stay out-of-the-way first thing in 2014.  Sometimes I amaze myself…with my own stupidity.

The congenital heart defect that led to heart surgery about 4 years ago that makes me tick (literally and figuratively I suppose) requires that I take blood thinners. Forever. Forever and ever. The amount of blood thinner in my blood must be monitored weekly by in my case a clinic that must be the busiest clinic in the south because every trip there from beginning to end, travel time included, is about 3 hours.   If my levels are relatively stable, the clinic visits go down to once a month. I never managed to be very stable and it felt like I was spending a lot of time at the clinic. I have learned through a series of bad decisions on my part that spending a lot of time at the clinic beats spending 2 nights and 3 days in the hospital, or any time at all in the hospital.

I don’t know if I am so terrified of committing to anything that I felt the need to break up with my medicine or if I really do think I’m invincible, but after hearing lots of stories from friends and loved ones about people who knew people who had a stroke after being off of their blood thinners for two days and stories of people who died, and 1 very curt doctor who had me in tears, and my sister who really could make lecturing her life’s work, I realized that no matter how busy I am, or the fact that I moved, or that it was the holidays, I can’t mess around with my health like that. While there is no doubt that I am fabulous, I am not immortal, and my kids deserve to have me around  to torture them with my long drawn out speeches about injustice in the world. They need me around to make more vision boards and badly sew pillowcases for them. I’m their mom, and there is only one of me. I want to be around for them and I want to be here to see them bring home their first girlfriend, or boyfriend, because whoever they are is who they are and of course I love and accept them, for whoever they are (at this point they would be screaming at me to give it a rest.)

In the spirit of near-death collisions, I have put up another profile on OKCupid.  The latest iteration of my profile has been up for about 36 hours, and I have received some interesting messages,  including one from a man who says he has a Master’s Degree, yet his profile is riddled with spelling errors. I mean, where did he type his profile that NO spell checks noticed that one of his favorite books, presumably Water for Elephants, is not Water for Ella Phants, unless Water for Ella Phants is a book about a woman named Ella Phants who lives in a desert and is on a quest for someone to bring her water, and in that case, color me red.

 

I have received two messages within 12 hours from the same man, who I guess thinks surely there was a computer glitch and I didn’t receive his first message because why would I NOT immediately write someone who took so much effort to not fill out anything on his profile and who sent a message telling me how much better my hair looks straight rather than curly. Thank you for your unwanted and absolutely unnecessary opinion, man whom I will never message.

My absolute favorite so far is the man who simply sent me a message saying “u don’t look fat”.  I presume I brought this on myself because in my profile I have the audacity to state that while I am not a tiny little person, I am “comfortable in my skin”. This translated to him that I was fishing for compliments I guess, and in his mind, the worst thing a woman can think of herself is that she is “fat”.  What I really want to put on my profile is “don’t worry, I will never ask you if my butt looks big in anything. I have SEEN my butt, it is fantastic, and looks big in everything.”

Ah online dating. Honestly, at least I get a lot of really hilarious and hilariously bad stories out of it.  Keeping an open mind. HEY, maybe I’ll meet someone at the clinic.