Thirteen Black Garbage Bags/Oscar The Bear

Another Monday. The weekend, unhappy but productive. I kept telling myself, "Bring it home, Baby!" about the clothes/organization project. James came over and his eyes popped to see the quantity of clothes I had washed, folded and organized. And yeah I resented having to do it - none of it was my clothing. A promise to be home last night to go through the piles and make final selections - no show. Then a text saying we could do it bright and early this morning - but this AM not in their bed. The project had to be done today with my birthday party looming. I reached the end of my rope with being blown off over and over again. So, just a few hours ago, I bagged up thirteen large black garbage bags of clothing and took them to the charity drop off box - all of it. Fireworks as you can imagine but choices were made by default. Pleasure was chosen over responsibility resulting in consequences. I'm sad it played out that way - I had hoped for and envisioned a collaborative, productive, positive approach to the clothes problem. That didn't happen - I got stuck holding the bag as usual - thirteen of them.

I'm feeling very sober, sad and disappointed in a lot of people these days. To start, forty (count 'em) people didn't respond to my birthday party invitation even with a reminder. It's really easy to respond - all electronic so you just "click, click" and voila, response logged! Friday, I sent a second reminder and then reached out to each person individually. I shouldn't have had to do that. And what does it mean?  That people don't value me or my efforts? Starting to think that is the case. People don't ignore people they really care about. I've been ignored a lot lately - calls to my sister, texts to friends, e-mails to people I really care about. Seems I'm mostly the person who reaches out and makes stuff happen - if I stop doing that there will be very few people in my world. Hurts.

So, let's be cheerier! Thursday I promised you I would share James' writing with you. And, OMG, it's brilliant! Remember, as I said before, he thought of this and wrote it in only fifteen minutes. The prompt was a headline from the NYT, "A Surprising Risk for Toddlers on Playground Slides." You will be amazed!

“I dunno, Billy. It doesn’t seem safe.” 

“Sure it is, you big chicken,” Billy said, flapping his arms in the universal gesture of implied cowardice. “I been down it a thousand times.” 

Jack glared over his shoulder at Billy, squaring his shoulders and taking a deep breath. The ladder for the slide seemed to rise a least a mile into the air, puffs of wispy cloud painting the top rails with beads of dew. The slide itself was a mighty corkscrew, twisting and turning like the abused DNA of a radiation scarred mutant from the Saturday afternoon monster flicks. Harsh steel gleamed in the sunlight, blazing away in the summertime heat. 

“My momma says these things are dangerous,” Jack said, one foot already on the ladder.
“Don’t be stupid,” Billy sneered. “Look, I’m telling you, the bear at the bottom of this thing is mostly tame and he’s old. You shoot out the end, bounce off of him, and than run. He’ll never catch you.” 

Jack shook his head. “I’m not afraid of old Oscar, ya dunce. I helped raise him from a cub when your dad hit his momma with his semi-truck 10 years ago.” 

“So what, are you afraid slide trolls? You have the fifteen cents for the toll, don’t ya?” 

“Of course I do. After what happened to Jeremy and Susie last year. Hell, Susan was only a nickel short and now she has to write everything left -handed.” 

“Well, it can’t be the pit of carnivorous fire ants at the half-way point.” 

“No, no. I’m wearing wool socks this time. Everyone knows fire ants can’t stand the smell of wool.” 

“And you know,” Billy said,” the troop of rabid baboons left earlier this year. The only thing you’ll have to deal with is a little baboon poop, and that’ll wash right off.” 

Jack nodded, his face settling into a grim line. 

“I know, I know, I know all that. I’m not even worried about the asexual goblin king right before the last turn. You know the one, don’t you Jack? He knows fashion, reads Cosmopolitan, and just wants to be friends” 

“Well, than, what is it, Jack?” 

Jack sucked in his gut, straightening his spine and rising to his full heights of four feet 7 inches.
“My momma says these things are covered in germs.” 

“Germs?” 

“Yes, germs,” Jack said. “She says the average slide is covered in little kid poop, stem to stern.” 

“Which part of the slide is the stern?” 

Jack shrugged. 

“So, take a bath when we’re done than. No get up the ladder and slide.” 

So up the ladder Jack went, and down the slide he sailed. He expertly flipped his fifteen cents to the slide troll as he skittered passed, flew past the fire ants, which shied away from this wool socks (fire ants being repulsed by the smell of wool), avoided being drawn into conversation with the asexual goblin king, and even refused to get so much as a speck of baboon poop on his dungarees. 

And out he flew from the mouth of the slide, to bounce on the soft fur of Oscar the bear.
And this is where Jack’s trip down the slide took an unexpected turn. It was true that Oscar was old, not the young, spry cub he used to be. IT was true that Oscar, the year before, had been slow and easily outpaced by the young children. 

But this year Oscar had watched his diet, and began working out when the children were not around. 

Oscar speed was surprising to young Jack. Surprising indeed.

James has this posted on his blog which is packratnest.wordpress.com.  I think you'll agree he is a phenomenal writer. But ha, ha, not as good a Scrabble player as me! We've been playing a few times a week and I win routinely which really pisses him off because he aspires to play tournament Scrabble - he figures if he can't beat me, he isn't good enough. Last night he introduced a timer to the game and he wants us to use only words in the official Scrabble dictionary and not do what we usually do, which is look up an occasional word. I prefer the relaxed approach but I'm willing to play ruthlessly if that's what he wants. In that vein, after he left last night, I memorized all the legal two letter words. Did you know there are non-consonant words like aa, ae, ai, oe, oi? And there are a handful of acceptable non-vowel words, hm, sh, mm. My freaky-ass memory should hold me in good stead as I apply it to learning tricky, useful Scrabble words.

Challenge today is embracing the Monday. If you're less than thrilled to have the weekend over and feeling enervated, remember that even Monday's deserve their due. Yesterday as I faced an unexciting day with lots of chores, I said to myself, "What does this day have to offer me?" Then I smiled to realize the answer, "Nothing."  Had to rephrase the question, "What do I have to offer this day?" Hated the day. Hated the weekend, but I packed it full of productive living. These days, though, feeling so sad - it's hard not to think of how happy I was a year ago at this time. But this Monday is still precious - it is a gift even if it's cold, damp, rainy and depressing. Effective people, according to Stephen Covey, do not let their efforts be affected by the weather. Hang in there with me and let's make today productive even if it's not filled with warmth.

Peace,
Sarah

Halfway/Celebrate but Take it Home

A few weeks ago, I detected a change, a shift in my personal tectonic plates. Made me think of that scene from Mary Poppins where the weathervane does a 180 degree turn, the wind blows up, people hold their hats and look expectantly at each other, knowing something is about to happen. In that case, it all heralded the arrival of Mary Poppins. In my case it's not yet clear what it was I felt.  I said to myself, "My life is about to get better. Not easier necessarily, but better." I attribute the shift to the foundation I've been mortaring for myself. Gaining mastery over stuff like diet, exercise, alcohol consumption, chaos - it's the precursor to happiness. While I trudge, one foot in front of the other, I urge myself forward, my mantra, "happiness will come." Still in trudge mode, but like I said, the winds are shifting. Something is happening. Something to make me smile.

Tonight Schaller's with another big crowd. If you're local, consider coming down and sharing the fun with us.  New friends Judy and Bernie, a few of their friends, James, and even 22 year old Shay who is coming to hear me sing. We have fun together - he's an old soul. And Mike another new friend, impossibly tall and handsome and a budding great singer who is just learning to embrace the old standards. And dear sweet Christ who I will torture and tease. Fun even with one judicious glass of Cabernet. I've always said if you have to get drunk to enjoy the friends you're with, you're with the wrong friends!

Lately loving "halfway" - being on the home stretch. When you're taking on challenges, getting to the halfway mark is such a great feeling, a pinnacle feeling. Lots of halfways for me these days and the more I think of the word, the more I relate to it. Little stuff like seeing that huge pile of laundry reduce from a15X5' pile to something like 8X5' - yeah, Sarah=organizational, laundry maven! Glancing at my pedometer mid day and seeing that I'm over 5,000 steps, only another 5,000 to go. Being on the elliptical and getting to the 15-20 minute mark - that's when all the joints start to loosen and lube and it starts feeling great - up to that point it's ugh.

Then there's the bigger halfway marks. For me deciding I had to lose  200 lbs and getting to the 125 lb mark. More than halfway. Being over fifty - if I live to be 100, I've passed the halfway mark of my life. I'm proud of my accomplishments so far - proud that my life has been important and worthy. I remember when my kids were little, I begged the gods to allow me to live until they were adults. It's all I wanted - it was the bargain I made. And I joked at 40 that any years left were a bonus - "if I were a Pilgrim I would be dead by now". These back stretch years are a gift and a reward and I intend to make them the fun ones. Leave the ponderous, serious considerations to youngsters!  I put in my time!

Do you have halfway marks that give you satisfaction? Halfway to paying off a 30 year mortgage or a 3 year car loan? Halfway to getting your kids through college? Halfway to retirement?  Halfway to a fitness goal?  Maybe you're training for a Marathon and you just logged a 13 mile run! Thinking we can be so consumed in crossing the finish line that we fail to mark the importance of sailing past the half way mark of the race. If you were climbing a mountain, the challenge would be the ascent and the descent. The pinnacle would be your halfway reward.

One blogger talks about the importance of the halfway mark - in fact, her blog is entitled "The Halfway Point".  I quote:

This blog is for anyone who has lived long enough to slip, fall, awaken or thrive. The halfway point lies somewhere between the beginning and the end, full of potential, excitement, tension. It's a time when we can honestly say we've done some living, have wonderful memories of the past, have a long list of adventures for the future, but also have painful regrets we can't shake and a desire to do better going forward....at the halfway point, a lot of unexpected things can happen. What do we do when we hit a rough patch? Do we take responsibility for it or do we blame someone else? What if it looks like we won't get to our destination? Do we reassess our strategy? Do we jump ship? Do we call for reinforcements?

The challenge today could be thinking about this concept of measuring your life's initiatives - identifying the challenges you've taken on where you have stayed the course and now find yourself on the back stretch. And if there is something you're working on like being a great songwriter or learning flamenco and you are feeling stuck at the halfway mark (maybe you're marking time without appreciable progress), how about the concept of taking it home - reaffirming your goal, swallowing your fears and setting your sights on the finish line?  Halfway there calls for celebration - mark it, celebrate it, but don't linger there. Take it home - whatever it is.

Peace,
Sarah

Tits To The Sky/Stuff=Suffocation

Writing group was great last night. Everyone loved my prompts, especially the picture prompts. I cut out great images from magazines. Each person got three of the pictures (randomly chosen) and had to weave a story out of them. And some were really weird, i.e. a ghostly man with a derby reading "From Here to Eternity"; a woman dressed a la Marie Antoinette; an evening picture of Venice. Catherine, a Northwestern student studying organic chemistry or something like that, got those three images that I taped into a mini collage. She wrote a very compelling piece. The eerie man longed for the beautiful woman who spoke alluring French in the softest of voices. She asked him haltingly to come away with her to Venice (Si'l vous plait, Monseiur). With great sadness and out of duty he declined her offer - it was his job to sit on a perch in the clouds and record the comings and goings of humans. His job - the recorder of human deeds. I felt so sad for him - sitting there for eternity, watching but not participating.

Later we wrote pieces inspired by the New York Times top e-mailed stories of the day. We are a creative group indeed to derive inspiration from titles like "Debt Collector is Faulted for Tough Tactics in Hospitals", or "A Surprising Risk for Toddlers on Playground Slides", etc. James wrote a hysterical piece about slides. It was astonishingly good and as soon as he posts it to his blog, I'll provide a link. You will hoot with amazement when you read it, especially if you keep in mind that he conceived it, wrote it and wrapped it up in 15 minutes.

I chose the NYT headline, "A Place for Old Chickens, Outside the Pot". Here is what I wrote. People were very touched.

Her name was Bernadette and she was a Rockette or something like that - something with the word rock in it - maybe Rock Island Red.  Like a Rockette, she just didn't know when to call it quits. And like a Rockette, she strutted her stuff all around the barnyard, her overly plump breasts, now a little saggy with age, thrust out before her.  I swear she even clucked "tits to the sky!" - probably heard it from Ma who was always on our case about our posture. 

Bernadette had beautiful legs, at one time they probably would have been delectable, but her feet were hideous. Have you ever seen chicken feet? They are the stuff of nightmares. Unaware of her unattractive digits, she kicked her shapely chicken legs like she was in a chorus line. One, two, three, cluck, kick. One, two, three, cluck, kick! The other chickens had long since given up trying to figure her out. 

I never figured Ma for a softy. She could hang and slash the throat of a pig as well as Pa and she made short work of thwacking a goose or chicken against the side of the barn to break its neck. She preferred that method over twisting it. 

Turns out Ma had a soft spot in her heart for Bernadette. It was before I was born that Bernadette finally got to be a mother. True, she had to steal the eggs - on top of everything else weird about her, turns out she was infertile. Bernadette devoted herself to her pilfered orbs, never left the nest even for water. She languished - her feathers fell out as Ma tells it, and still she waited with devotion. When the babies came, Bernadette brought them to Ma for her approval. She was so weak she shuffled behind them, nudging them forward with her beak, staggering a little. Her joy was infectious and the barnyard rejoiced with her. 

Then the hawk came. Bernadette was uncharacteristically half the barnyard away from the chicks. She felt the shadow before she saw it. In a flash, Bernadette beat the hawk to her little ones, spreading her wings over them protectively. The hawk lifted Bernadette, who was holding the six babies, into the sky. She held them as long as she could but she was too weak - she swooned to see them fall a hundred feet to the ground.  Somehow Bernadette survived. There was no way Ma could put her in the soup pot. From that day forth, she was part of the family.  

Shay is back from Florida (remember him? Madeleine's old boyfriend who is like a son to me). It's great to have a man about the place. He's here at the office helping me get things in order for the impending sale. We just surveyed all the stuff that either has to be thrown out or moved to the house. He grew wide eyed when he surveyed my pandemic flu preparedness supplies, especially the medical supplies. I had to explain why it would be necessary to have a portable commode in the event of a pandemic. Duh! I'll bet you have one, right? That and Tamiflu and a case of hospital gowns and cases of MREs, and bushels of dehydrated fruits and vegetables, and 25 pounds of dried kidney beans and gallons of maple syrup and pounds of instant potatoes and, and....the list goes on - think I spent about $10,000 back then!

Life is about to get crazy and confusing. My birthday party in just over a week, then the move of the office. Good news is that I'm on my last three loads of laundry at the house. I'm winning the organization challenge.  When I'm done with all of this downsizing, my life will be manageable for the first time in a very long time. The stuff was winning there for a while - it just about swallowed me up. Stuff=suffocation.

Your challenge today is thinking about stuff. Are you, like me, overwhelmed with stuff? My friend Judy said it well this week. "I'm old - I've accumulated lots of stuff!" Her daughter is spending a week with her going through everything in her house.  Like me, she will breathe easier when there is less. Maybe you too can do stuff battle. Be ruthless. When it doubt, ditch it!

Peace,
Sarah

Carbon on the Valves/Amyloid Placque

Wednesday - every 2nd and 4th Wednesdays of the month are the writing group. Tonight I'll lead the prompts and report in tomorrow on whether they were well received. I hope I write well tonight - hope the muse is in attendance.

This morning as I put in my time on the elliptical, I thought about all I've been reading about exercise and staying mentally fit. For some reason, I flashed on a very funny scene from an old movie. Do you remember A New Leaf with Walter Mattheau and Elaine May? Very funny about a well to do woman-hating bachelor who loses his fortune and is forced to find a wealthy woman to marry in order to maintain his lifestyle. The opening scene appears to be set in a hospital operating room with a touch-and-go operation. "Will she survive?" Camera pans back and you realize "she" is a car that is being "operated" on - Matthau's fancy car apparently has "carbon on the valves" and it's not sure if it will survive the procedure to remove it. For some reason, that scene stuck with me, and I worry from time to time if my car suffers from carbon on the valves (James tells me that modern cars don't have this problem). Nevertheless when I'm getting on the highway, merging from the on ramp, I gun the engine, pedal to the floor, and my Fusion's V6 engine roars. At those times, I think, with satisfaction, that if there were any carbon on the valves, I just blew it off.

Talking with Victor and he elaborated on the discussion about how exercise is crucial for brain health. He too has been following the research. Think placque on your teeth - there is, apparently, a similar buildup that occurs in the brain (amyloid placque). Most people diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease have this kind of buildup in abundance in their brains. What's emerging are observations that we all need hard aerobic, sweaty exercise just about every day - an hour of it. It's the equivalent of gunning the engine and blowing the carbon off.  Thinking there is absolutely no substitute for a rough hour of sweating.  In the book, Younger Next Year, the authors swear that the fountain of youth is an hour of cardio each and every day with maybe Sundays off. If you're like me, you are grimacing. Surely there is some other study that contradicts this thinking! If we wait long enough they will discover that strenuous exercise is contra-indicated for humans, that by raising our heart rate on a regular basis we are shortening our lives! Don't hold your breath - you and I both know no such study is forthcoming - there is no place to hide from the current findings. Study after study tells us to take this seriously.

Confession.  I am a liar. I don't love exercise as I have asserted in recent blog posts. Truth is, each morning I try to wheedle out of it. Amazing how duplicitous and clever our minds can be in rationalizing what we want!  So yeah, I would be much more content sitting for an extra 35 minutes with my coffee, gazing dreamily at my beautiful elm tree. Lately, though, the shoulder with the angel has been prevailing and exercise wins. And when I said I love exercise, I wasn't being totally untruthful. When I'm done, I feel wonderful, accomplished, healthy, pain-free, energized. And the walks with the dog on the lakefront in the afternoon - they are really nice.

Maybe it would be helpful to share some practical things about my exercise regimen with you - maybe some of you don't even know where to start. It's almost a project to begin and put the things in place that will make you successful. Here are some things I do or had to do to get started.

• Shoes - I wear the Vibram Five Finger shoes. They align your skeleton properly and all the foot pain, much of the knee pain and other skeletal pain I used to experience disappeared by wearing these shoes. They look goofy as hell but more and more people are discovering them. My aunt just got a pair at my urging and her osteo doctor was ecstatic with how she stood in them. She wears them almost exclusively these days - even went out to dinner with me, wearing them!
• A good piece of home equipment.  I like combining exercise at home with time spent outdoors. And when it is inclement (or winter) it's vital to be able to work out indoors. I guess you could go to the gym but it's one less impediment if you have a good system at home.  Don't chintz out if you buy an elliptical or cross trainer - you'll hate working out on a cheap piece of machinery!
• I-Pod. Surprisingly a lot of my friends still don't have an I-Pod or the equivalent. You need great music to endure the boringness of a workout. Go to the Apple store, get an IPod, get on line and download I-Tunes and build a library of great music by uploading all your CD's and by downloading music from the I-Tunes store.  
• Get a pedometer. I use one from Weight Watchers but if you go online, I'm sure there are tons to choose from.
• Consider getting a heart monitor. I haven't worn mine in a while but now that I'm turning up the volume on my effort, I'm curious to see if I'm working out at an optimal heart level. Chris Crowley in Younger Next Year has good guidelines on how your hour workout should progress. Part of it should be done at a brisk stroll, then more effort until you're doing the equivalent of a sprint for 10-15 minutes, followed by backing off to the brisk walk pace. There should be an arc to your workout that mimics the kind of activity you'd get if you were a nomad hunting on the steppes of Africa, first walking with intent as you look for prey and then racing after it in pursuit, followed by a return to a quick gait as you return home with the carcass.
• Download some really intense tunes. When I started working out on the elliptical, I actually Googled "good workout music" and people shared their favorite workout songs. You'll laugh, knowing I usually sing old-fashioned songs, to know that much of the time, I'm working out to songs like You Shook Me All Night Long by AC/DC, Stacy's Mom by Fountains of Wayne, Since U Been Gone by Kelly Clarkson, Black Dog by Led Zeppelin, Do Ya by The Move, Vertigo by U2, etc.  
• Here's the big one if you're just getting started. Commit to being on the machinery for a full half hour, regardless of what shape you're in.  I remember thinking I couldn't handle more than 5-10 minutes on the elliptical but deciding that, if I was ever going to get to thirty minutes, I might as well just commit to being on the machine for the full half hour, even if twenty minutes of it was just standing on it! Seriously! I just dove right in and didn't cut myself much slack. For the first week, I worked hard for about five minutes and the rest of the half hour was Sarah=molasses which was fine. I put in my time even if it wasn't pretty at first.  
• Be amazed that in very short order you'll go from sloth to swift (swifts are one of the fastest birds in the world.) It's amazing how forgiving your body will be when you start to exercise it.  Believe that.

All for today. Your challenge is to take this exercise challenge thing seriously. Figure out how you can make it work. Obviously, I am not intending your path to mirror mine exactly. I shared my process with you  but you will have to find your own way with it. I'd encourage you to start by reading the book, Younger Next Year. There is a version for both men and women. Then just take the plunge! Blow the carbon off your valves!

Peace,

Sarah

Loss/Paint Your Own Coffin

Tuesday today.  Sang really well at Petterino's last night. Not a Day Goes By and a fun upbeat song (for a change!) - Them There Eyes. Here at the office with Joey at my feet. Tonight a rare night home and I'll be anting my way through the piles of laundry. I say "anting" because when I'm faced with a monumental task that seems undo-able I derive inspiration by visualizing my efforts like an ant tunneling and carrying sand out of a hole, one grain at a time. The effort seems so puny but over time the ant gets the job done - persistence.  So this pile of laundry that was amassed by finding every single stitch of kid clothing in my house, is so large it would make you gasp. I'm talking something like 15' long by 5' feet high!  How did she get that many clothes!? Astonishing. My goal is for her to have a manageable amount of clothing that actually fits in her dresser and closet. The clean clothes are being arranged in my dining room by type and when I'm done, I will allow her to go "shopping" with restrictions, i.e. "you can pick five pairs of jeans, ten tee shirts, four hoodies, etc. Keep in mind the kid has somehow amassed about 200 hooded sweatshirts. Picking her favorite four is going to be traumatic. Expect fireworks.

It's a loss, right? But a necessary one. No one can live under an avalanche of clothing. And loss is what I want to talk about today. God, I hate the feeling of losing something or someone I hold dear, don't you? It just sucks to use a sophisticated word. I'm here at the office which will soon be someone else's office. In negotiations as we speak (offer, counter-offers, etc) with a potential buyer of the space. And really I'm mostly OK with it all. It's been silly for a long time to have this space. Most days it's just me in 2400 SF - the folks that work for me work in their homes. Time to move on. And yet, I've loved it here. Lately I'm remembering the excitement of purchasing the storefront in 2000, flying in Steve's decorator friend, buying all the Herman Miller furniture, selecting artwork, picking out an art rug, installing a beautiful hanging sculpture, feeling so successful and accomplished to be the owner of a brick and mortar business. Now, I'm divesting it - getting rid of most of the contents. Slimming down. It feels right but it still hurts.

Not all losses are bad. This week lost 5.4 lbs on Weight Watchers. You know I've lost over 100 lbs, right? I stalled in the past few years and actually put some back on over the holidays and in sad January, but I've found my way again and it feels SOOOOO good to have that part of my life humming. Between the eating well, the cutting way back on booze (just the occasional glass of wine) and the 10,000 steps a day, I'm taking great care of myself. I am proud of me.

It's the loss of relationships that is the hardest to bear. I'm just not good at it.  Maybe I've told this story before. When Elizabeth was in middle and early high school she had a boyfriend named Skyler. She expected me to hate him because he had a green Mohawk a foot high and skin-tight studded clothing.  He also rarely smiled (turns out he was pretty shy). I adored him almost immediately and he became like a son to me. He, in turn, came to trust and need me (and love me too, I think). They dated for years and predictably the relationship ran its course and they broke up. I told Elizabeth she could break up with Skyler but I wasn't going to. For about a year, he stayed in touch with Steve and me and came to dinner when he knew Elizabeth wasn't there - she understood. I still miss him. These days my Skyler substitute is Madeleine's old boyfriend, Shay. They haven't been together for a long time, but he still comes over for my cooking and to help around the house. Couldn't let him go either.

I think I didn't walk the walk yesterday. By writing about the rift with my friend, it was a "fuck you". True, I didn't mention her by name, but just writing about our falling out publicly was an act of aggression, especially knowing how much she hates the blog and fears being mentioned in it. So my final act of the friendship was to 'dis her in a public way which, if I were really cool, I wouldn't have done. Fuck, this being mature thing is really hard!  I went against my mission statement which includes phrases like, living with integrity and honesty (did I exhibit integrity yesterday? - probably not), treating people with fairness, patience and compassion (failed on that one), accepting sadness and loss (if I had accepted the end of the friendship with grace, I wouldn't have lashed out publicly). Losses are really hard. They stir up all kinds of stuff: anger, fear, sadness, disappointment, confusion. Thinking most of us aren't really very talented in managing our emotions when faced with loss.

Loss. It is inevitable. Can't run from it. People come in and and out of our lives. Fortunes rise and fall. Health blooms and fades. People die. Dreams fade. And yet, we act surprised when we're faced with a loss and reel from it as if it's so unexpected and unfair. I'm toying with an idea. What if we listed our sure-to-be losses and spent time getting comfortable with each of them? I'll start. I'm going to die. I ask myself, "Are you sure?" "Yes, you will die - it's a certainty." "No way around it?" "Nope." So what to do with that  inevitable loss - the big one?  How about planning for it?  Not in a morbid way or anything, but in a way that takes the fear out of it. Things like making sure my affairs are in order so anyone trying to make sense of my papers would have an easy time of it. I can decide whether I want to be cremated or buried and what kind of funeral ceremony I would like to have. I can write notes to my loved ones to be opened when I die. I can even write a eulogy for myself to be read at my death ceremony. I'm thinking that, by doing these things, I would feel less anxious about dying. Accept the concept and invest myself in the outcome. My mother's friend, Leilani, died years ago from cancer - an artist living in Woodstock, New York.  In the last months of her life, she joyfully painted her own coffin and planned a party for her friends. On the flip side, a dear friend of my Aunt Jeanne died this past winter and she never accepted the end, never admitted death was around the corner. She had about a year to plan and wrap things up and she failed to prepare herself or her family for the loss. It made the inevitable end painful and confusing for all.

We can take this concept - facing the fear of loss - and expand on it. What if it were easy to acquire an aged photograph of ourselves - a computer generated picture of ourselves as an old person?  We could take that picture, frame it, put in on the wall and get to know that person, love that person. Wouldn't that be better than fearing the mirror, scanning anxiously for new signs of aging? In the same vein, we could make a list of our friends and realize that friendships have an arc and an end. We could mentally write an end story to each of the friendships. James fell in love with the woman who waxed his back and moved to Wyoming with her and her three small children. Each year I receive a form Christmas letter from him and each year I swear to visit him but never do. Liza moves to The Netherlands to start a new school for the deaf. She and I talk as often as international phone rates allow but soon she is embroiled in a new life with a new Dutch husband and a new baby named Thijmen . Etc.

Sarah=sad today.  I'm working on being philosophical about the losses I'm experiencing. Wishing I were a Buddhist and had mastered the concept of relinquishing attachment. Your challenge today could be thinking about inevitable losses.  If you're a head-in-the-sand type of person who lives with an undercurrent of anxiety - waiting for the next shoe to drop, then how about you seek some mastery over the inevitable losses?  I'm not saying be a control freak - you can't manage your destiny.  But maybe if we worked on getting comfortable with the inevitability of loss, itemized what our likely losses will be, maybe even put some  thought and planning around the losses we know are coming - maybe, just maybe, we could enjoy today more.

Peace,
Sarah

Doing Battle In The West Wing/Jettison a Friend

Monday!!! Interesting weekend. How was yours? Mine was jam packed full of living. Friday, Schaller's was incredible. There were seven top notch singers there - the management was stunned and amazed. The regular patrons probably felt invaded (but in a good way)! It's different for me these days - I've been bringing in a lot more singers which means I sing a lot less and I also only have a single glass of red wine, so it's not the hilarious experience that it used to me. Oh God, I just flashed on one particular night when I'd had way too many martinis and Liza asked me to sing Peel Me A Grape. I protested - it's a wordy song and I hadn't sung it in a while and the lyrics were never solid. She insisted.  I relented and sure enough got up there and it all just disappeared from my head so so I just kept singing the few lines I remembered over and over, laughing to be saying chop suey over a dozen times. Luckily it was at the very end of the night and the older patrons had left because I seem to remember ending the song, singing to Liza to peel me a fucking grape. Those "Sarah out of control days" seem to be behind me. These days life isn't quite as much fun without a vodka toast in my hand, but I'm not embarrassing myself and I wake up feeling great the next day. Problem solved.

Saturday a concert, Ann Hampton Callaway and her sister Liz singing songs of the '60's  Fabulous. She is amazing and you should check her out if you're unfamiliar with her. You'll recognize her voice because she wrote and sang the theme song to the Nanny. Sunday, I dug down deep and decided to do battle with the west wing. The west wing is what I call the kid portion of the upstairs of my house.  I have tried different strategies over the years to try and maintain cleanliness and order - nothing has worked (threats, punishments, daily monitoring and removing offending items, cleaning it myself, you name it). It is a battlefront I have conceded. But soon I'll be moving my office back into my home and I decided I just can't inhabit the house with mayhem in the west wing. Pissed off to be spending my Sunday cleaning other peoples' filth, I rolled up my sleeves and, armed with a full box of garbage bags, I jettisoned 9/10's of the crap.

Today I want to talk about friendship. Without good friends I can't see how life would be worth living. Sure a quiet night at home with a book is a pleasure, but it's the connections we have with other people, that define us, right?  Family is its own topic, so I'm not talking about spouse=friend or daughter=friend. Reason I'm thinking about this today is an unsettling dinner I had last night with a friend that got me to thinking about what kind of friend I am, what kind of friend I should be and what kinds of friends I need.  I'm also invested in the idea that Patrick and I can complete the transition to friends. He is important to me well beyond the romance. But what does that look like?  Is there a roadmap, are there rules? Need to figure this out. Should we talk on the phone regularly to catch up or maybe just have a quarterly meal together, or should we just be unstructured and reach out as the spirit moves us? Confused but invested in putting some healthy structure around a new kind of relationship with him - something that meets both our needs.

Anyway, the unsettling dinner. This gal and I have been friends for a while. We have a bunch in common, both writers, both high powered business women, we both march to the tune of our own drummer and don't take shit. I have been there for her as she struggled with business and relationship problems, listening compassionately, giving advice when asked to. Since the breakup, she has lost patience with me as my life deconstructed, telling me to snap out of it, move on or I would lose my friends who were becoming weary of my sadness (kind of a threat), and at one point she decided my broken heart was a topic that would no longer be discussed - she wanted the old Sarah back. So as I entered the restaurant, I prompted myself on how to "be" with her so that she would still like me. I would be upbeat, funny, optimistic. I wouldn't talk about my problems at all and just let the focus be on her. Kind of felt like I was going into a job interview.

First thing she said, "I have a problem. It's your blog. It makes me very uncomfortable." She went on to berate me for writing it, telling me it was inappropriate, shaming me. I stood my ground, furious, and said that writing the blog brings me joy, that there are lots of people who enjoy reading it (even people who don't know me) and that the solution was simple - just don't read it!  She persisted in berating me for living so publicly (she is an obsessively private person) and the rest of the dinner went downhill from there. Made me sad.

So, loss of friendship. It happens, right? It's serious though and ending a friendship is not something that should be done lightly. I have to separate my anger and hurt from the larger question which is, is this just a misunderstanding or have we both stopped meeting the needs of the friendship? I think I've decided a friend is not someone you have to walk on eggshells around, not someone with whom you censor yourself in a nervous way before meeting for dinner. A friend accepts and embraces the differences and doesn't rebuke or shame. A friend is patient when you're not at your best and they don't just love you when everything is going great.

Today, Sarah=hurt, angry, disappointed and sad. I have been a good friend to this person. Truth is she has failed the friend litmus test over and over. The old Sarah would write her a scathing letter and derive satisfaction from some well placed wounds. The new Sarah is going to try something different. Her friendship was, at one point, important and valuable to me. I am grateful for the good times we had. I won't close the door completely but I will let her know that the friendship has ceased working for me, that I feel judged harshly and that is not something I want in my life. I will also tell her I'm willing to talk it through with her if she feels there is a misunderstanding that could be cleared.

Challenge today is thinking about what kind of friend you are and whether you are getting your friend needs met. Life is too short to surround ourselves with people who make us feel "less than". I'm thinking there are people in our lives who linger there out of habit or sentimentality when really we should be closing the chapter and saying good-bye. Who we choose to spend our time with defines us. Be selective and fussy in your choice of friends! Good friends love us, accept us, give us succor, tickle our fancy, need us, and are a source of joy and inspiration. If you have a friend that makes you feel like shit, take them on an airplane ride, make sure they're sitting in the ejection seat and then push the button!

Peace,
Sarah

Wunder-mother/Med-el or Cochlear

Hey there....Friday=good, right? Tonight Schaller's with a good sized group. Christ again...hmmmm, I'm spending a whole lot of time with that guy. He's darling. Yesterday evening, a three hour session with Martin. I love my time with him, massage, bodywork, and also time to just "be" and to relax. We've been in each other's worlds for about three years - he has always been a port in the storm. Today, up and at 'em and exercising bright and early. It's a gloomy rainy day but I'll still do the lakefront walk - rain walks can be lovely. Life is good these days, hard but good. Glad to be here.

So, my head is spinning. Just checked out three new articles on NYT about exercise - a continuation of yesterday's discussion. The titles, Can You Make Yourself Smarter?, How Exercise Could Lead To A Better Brain, Post Prozac Nation. I read them all but I haven't digested them yet - it's like an avalanche - all this new research about the brain. The irony is that it's making MY brain hurt in trying to make sense of all of it. I'm going to digest this, read the articles again before I write about them. There's a lot there.

And really I need to make the blog post shorter today because I have a homework assignment. Liza has asked me to do Internet research on two types of cochlear implants. Her son Henry is a candidate for the procedure and now she is doing due diligence on the options available. She is also faced with a doctor at Children's Memorial who is the regional expert but who is also formidable and intractable  in her opinions.  Liza is feeling steamrollered into making a quick decision based on this woman's recommendations. Apparently most parents just accept her word as gospel. Not Liza. She is a wunder-mother and no one is going to do anything to her Henry without her having examined the options every which way from Adam. The little guy has been through so much. He was misdiagnosed as a baby with the flu when what he really had was meningitis. If the doctors at the E.R had made the right call, he wouldn't be deaf today. There was a critical hour, when he was in the E.R., where his hearing could have been protected from the ravages of the meningitis - something they would have administered to him immediately that would have stopped the damage. Sad, right?

Anyway he is a beautiful boy, smart with great people skills and Liza is determined he will speak some day. To date she has opted NOT to go the implant route because of her fear of another bout with meningitis - implants create an open aperture to the brain which carries its own risk of meningitis. What a hard decision it is for her - she feels like she is being asked to make godlike choices for another human being - with each option available carrying a set of risks.

So, got to go and start Googling so that I can weigh in on the pros and cons of each of the two companies that make implant products.  She wants all the smart people in her life to evaluate the choices dispassionately. I'm expecting it to be a bit like Beta versus VHS. I think the implant that Liza hopes for is made by a smaller, more innovative company. The one the doctor wants to use has been around longer, may be less efficacious but it's the "known" and the one she's comfortable with. It's doubtful the doctor would accept Liza's insistence on using the less well known device which may mean Liza finds a doctor elsewhere in the country and whisks little Henry to someplace like Johns Hopkins in Washington, D.C. If that's the right thing to do, you can be assured Liza will make whatever sacrifices are necessary to get the best for the little boy. Like I said wunder-mother.

The challenge today is BE THANKFUL!  Recently I picked up a girlfriend for lunch and she was full of angst about her financial planner being over-solicitous.  She got in the car in a foul mood, on a rampage and she, I think, expected me to feel compassion for her dilemma. "Should I fire the gal, give her a second chance, or just humor her?" she asked. In her world, at that moment, in her privileged universe, she was wrestling with a really serious problem. As she looked at me with agitation, I laughed at her. "You, my friend," I said, "are having rich girl problems!" My guess is that if you are wrestling with something this weekend, a kid that's not towing the line, too many proposals to review before Monday, a tiff with your spouse, too much to do and not enough time - you are NOT trying to decide which implant to put in your kid! Everyone think good thoughts for Henry and be grateful for your own mundane problems.

Peace,
Sarah

NADGB

Sell Your Pride/Rabbit Rabbit

Thursday.  Fun last night at The Blue Star Wine Bar in Wicker Park with Mark Burnell on piano and a lot of good singers sitting in. Christ was good company. He made a very thoughtful decision about what flight of wine I should order. And how cool is it that I had exactly enough WW points for 7.5 oz of wine and on the menu it said, "flights of wine are 7.5 oz"!  Three reds delivered to me with labels and Christ led me through the ceremony of swishing/oxygenating each of them and then shoving my nose deeply into the glass, closing my eyes and letting the bouquet transport me. His nose is more discerning than mine. He described one glass as floral and another (Sirah) as bacon cooking on a campfire. Can't remember what he said about the third glass. I sang three songs - the first two were OK, works in progress still. The last one, Not a Day Goes By, was epic - I sang it exactly as I think it should be sung. Afterwards Mark, who usually either says nothing or makes constructive comments, just said, "Wow!".  I guess it's my new signature song, one that I sing with all my heart and conviction. I hope I get to sing it to you sometime. Sondheim is powerful.

So, it's easy to have a head of steam when you're feeling rested and good but not so much when you have a fitful night's sleep and wake with a splitting headache. That was me this morning. Then the mental excuses start, the internal bargaining. "It wouldn't hurt to skip one day. One day makes no difference in the scheme of things. I'm just not up to it." And that's it, right? How we conduct ourselves when things are not obvious and easy, when we're tempted to take a pass? I reminded myself of goals, had a stern talk with Sarah Slacker (we all have an internal slacker - the side of ourselves that begs for permission and indulgence), took some aspirin and a bracing cup of java and then hit the elliptical and gave it 150%. Staying the course and not disappointing myself is a better way to live. I was proud of myself because I REALLY did not feel up to it and yet....I was my own mini-hero this morning.

And the last song of the workout made my heart soar - it was a gift to me - of all the lyrics that move me, these are the most important, written and sung by a man who saw his own share of trouble. I'll copy and paste them here in a minute, but let me paraphrase and explain what they meant to me. So Sarah, age 50 or so, with a mess on her hands. I was inhabiting a bad script that was written in part for me by life's circumstances and in part by me as a way to deal. The script held me together for all those years - it wasn't all bad. I was a victor on many fronts, strong, effective, results oriented. Early on, I armored up and went out into a tough ass world and with chutzpah, smarts and weapons I made my mark without anyone's help. Didn't need anyone. Wanted kids though and I always thought I'd be a good mother because, well for no other reason than I was good at everything - motherhood was just another project to be undertaken and completed on time and under budget. Husbands were chosen as a means to an end. I soldiered my way through my adult years, my family fell in line for the most part under my leadership. I was CEO. But guess what?  CEO's can be effective, they can be admired and respected, and certainly needed, but at the end of the day, you don't love a CEO. If you're an underling, chances are you probably hate the CEO and chafe at their control of you.

So this song says to me, "Stop before it's too late. Stop playing a game, and following a bad script. Why are you so worried that, if you put down your weapons, people will think you are weak? You can run but you can't hide from your need of other people - dominating people is not loving them. So, just take the leap of faith that surrendering to the people you love won't weaken you - and put your foolish pride away. The rain may fall - things might fall apart a bit. It might make you uncomfortable to not be calling all the shots, but that's OK. Let the rain come, tears and all. You won't melt. And the song, written and performed by James Taylor is, of course, "Shower The People". If you're like me when someone posts poetry or lyrics, there is a temptation to skip over them.  Please humor and honor me by reading this. Chances are you know the song, but reading the words as poetry is, in some ways, more powerful than hearing them sung.

You can play the game and you can act out the part,
even though you know it wasn't written for you.
Tell me, how can you stand there with your broken heart ashamed of playing the fool?
One thing can lead to another; it doesn't take any sacrifice.
Oh, father and mother, sister and brother, if it feels nice, don't think twice,
just shower the people you love with love, show them the way that you feel.
Things are gonna work out fine if you only will do as I say, just
shower the people you love with love, show them the way you feel.
Things are gonna be much better if you only will. 

You can run but you cannot hide, this is widely known.
Tell me, what you plan to do with your foolish pride when you're all by yourself, alone.
Once you tell somebody the way that you feel, you can feel it beginning to ease.
I think it's true what they say about the squeaky wheel always getting the grease.
Better to shower the people you love with love, show them the way that you feel.
Things are gonna be just fine if you only will what I'd like to do to you.
Shower the people you love with love, show them the way that you feel.
Things are gonna be much better if you only will. 

Shower the people you love with love, show them the way that you feel.
You'll feel better right away.
Don't take much to do, sell your pride.
They say in every life, they say the rain must fall, just like pouring rain, make it rain.
Make it rain, love, love, love is sunshine, oh yes,
Make it rain, love, love, love is sunshine. Everybody, everybody

Sarah=sap today, right?  That's OK. I still have a core of steel and a will of iron when I need it. I'm just using them differently these days. The challenge today is to give some thought to strength and what real strength looks like.  In films, we are attracted to heroes who kick butt and knock down doors. I'm not saying that we shouldn't have a bottom line, a respectful sense of ourselves and a demand to other people to respect our boundaries - that's not it at all. What do you think about the idea that, when a strong person evolves, they put their weapons on the shelf, away from them. The weapons are still there to be used if they're really needed, judiciously needed.  I'm thinking the evolved person learns to internalize and transform blows, neutralize that energy, absorb force and return compassion and love. Maybe it takes a lifetime to learn that true strength can look very passive. Maybe that is why many cultures look to their elders who've traveled this path of understanding.

Today I shower the people I love with affection, not just in thoughts but in deeds. I'm overdue in making small but meaningful kindnesses to the people who make my life worth living. Soon it will be May Day. For those of you on text, each month I send you a text that says, "Rabbit, rabbit". This is an old British tradition that bestows good luck to the recipient on the first day of every month. When I was little I looked forward to May 1st - a day my brother and I made little, floppy construction paper baskets, filling them with whatever wild flowers we could scrounge. We put the little baskets on our neighbors' door handles and ran away. Maybe this year I'll resurrect that tradition and shower the people I love with affection and spring flowers.

Peace,
Sarah

NADGB

Exercise Can Make You Fat and Addicted/Or Not

Wednesday. Spending this evening with Christ - we're going to Mark's open mic at the Blue Star Wine Bar in Wicker Park. He and I have several songs we do together - his favorite, The Look of Love. I adore teasing that man. He is proper and staid and always a gentleman, still reeling from a bad breakup and not ready to date. So we just hang out and have a blast enjoying each other and our mutual love of the music, food, talking about artsy movies, books, and more. It's perfect and yet, I'm never satisfied without making him squirm a bit. Today I told him to work up a love song to sing me tonight. Sarah=always pushing boundaries. Told you I was trouble!

Today I read two really interesting articles, both about exercise, in the NYT that I'll share with you. The first entitled Does Exercise Make You Overeat?  The second, How Exercise Can Prime The Brain For Addiction. In both articles there was good and bad news. In studies, it was discovered that exercise can quiet the part of the brain that asks for food. We've always heard about the whole endorphin effect of exercise and it makes sense that the sense of well-being that comes after a workout would replace nagging cravings. No surprise there, right? What was surprising was the group of people in the study who experienced the exact opposite effect - for them exercise excited the part of the brain that asked for food! For them, the positive effects of exercise were negated by increased calorie consumption. So, huh? What to think? It seems that a bunch more research needs to be done to understand this better. Preliminarily, it appears that the kind of exercise you do, your current fitness level and other factors may determine the brain's response. If you are young and lean and your workout is high octane, then chances are you'll experience the appetite dampening effect. If on the other hand, you're venturing off the couch, starting exercise after a lifetime of lethargy and your workout consists of an easy 20 minute walk, then it's highly possible you might be appetite stimulated. But really they don't know yet what the deciding factors are. We need to watch this unfolding story.

The second article was astonishing with implications well beyond addiction. It seems that exercise stimulates brain growth in a very significant way. You've probably read, as I have, the emerging research that encourages people, who want to stave off dementia, to step up exercise as a way to stay mentally fit. Even though there is probably merit in learning a foreign language, taking up a new musical instrument, or doing Sudoku puzzles as a way to stay mentally young, turns out it just might be physical exercise that promises the biggest benefit. The article talked about the increased capacity for learning from exercise. It was discovered that people who acquired addictions after commencing a workout regimen, actually had a much harder time giving up the addiction. People with active addictions, who then started working out, found it easier to give up the drugs.

So, the researchers propose, the animals that had been running before they were introduced to cocaine had a plentiful supply of new brain cells primed to learn. And what they learned was to crave the drug. Consequently, they had much more difficulty forgetting what they’d learned and moving on from their addiction. 

That same mechanism appeared to benefit animals that had started running after becoming addicted. Their new brain cells helped them to rapidly learn to stop associating drug and place, once the cocaine was taken away, and start adjusting to sobriety.“Fundamentally, the results are encouraging,” Dr. Rhodes says. They show that by doubling the production of robust, young neurons, “exercise improves associative learning.”

Not intuitive, right?  The reason? - exercise increases (in their studies doubles!) the brain cells in the hippocampus - the part of the brain responsible for associative learning. Associative learning is what we do when we learn to associate a new thought with its context. It's the kind of learning you do when you challenge and break destructive patterns and learn, for example, how to be sober. The author of the study, Dr. Justin Rhodes concludes, "“Exercise is good for you in almost every way. But it is wise to bear in mind," he adds, "that, by exercising, you do create a greater capacity to learn, and it’s up to each individual to use that capacity wisely.”

So, if your hippocampus is stimulated by new cell growth because you're running miles a day, and you then decide to pick up a new addiction, the addiction will be very sticky and hard to shed - your brain will make a positive connection with the new habit and devote resources to reinforce it.  I worry about young girls who decide they're too fat and who become fanatic gym rats. If subsequently, they decide to over-diet or take drugs or adopt any other new destructive habits, yikes! On the other hand, a couch potato pot head who decides to make positive changes could really benefit by hard exercise!

Exercise. Loving it.  7AM this morning found me on the elliptical again putting in 3500 steps and listening to fabulous music. When I start the day that way, it's almost easy to get in the 10,000 steps which equates to about 4-5 miles of walking. Soon, I'm going to turn up the heat and kick this thing up a notch. 10,000 steps will be just a backdrop to my fitness - a given, the minimum I do. Stay tuned for Sarah The Athlete.  Between WW and serious exercise, I'm going to be taking excellent care of myself. My goal by the end of 2012 is to have shed much of the excess weight (would love to think "all" but that may not be realistic). I will be able to do fifty man pushups, I'll be muscle-y and my hippocampus will be bursting with new brain cells! Yeah! If you were here with me I'd butt your head with mine! (Ouch!)

Your challenge today is to read the articles and think about your own exercise regimen. It seems exercise is no longer just a lovely thing we should do to tone our bodies. More and more, the research urges us to exercise or suffer decay. Exercise or go senile. Yesterday, a fellow I spoke with, pondered how I find the time to write this blog every day. Truth is, it takes me less than an hour to write, edit, find a picture and publish the post - I'm a fast typist and verbose. I was slightly offended that he seemed to think it was an indulgent waste of time.We do the things we need to thrive - writing grounds me and nurtures my spirit. I hope each day you have something similar, something that makes your life juicy. I should have told him that the hours he spends watching television are hours for me spent creatively. The hours we carve out of the day to take care of ourselves are really crucial! - the most important hours of the day! (Here comes the nag.) If you say you don't have time to exercise, are you being honest with yourself? Is there an hour of television you could forfeit? Just saying!

Peace,

Sarah

Picture is a brain cell!

NADGB

Role Models/Is There a Picture on Your Wall?

Kaveh today and no plans for tonight which means I'll have a delicious evening home alone. Thinking long bath with lavender bubble bath and a cup of chocolate matte tea and then time at the piano working on what could be my new obsession - learning to play the piano using the chord method.  I studied piano for years and got decent - an intermediate player but this is different. Playing by the chord method means taking a musical chart that has symbols like G7,  Cm6, D#aug7-5, etc and translating that into notes on the piano. The end game is being able to accompany myself when I sing. How cool would that be?  I could even gig out if I could accompany myself - it would make me an affordable performer. Diana Krall, watch out!  (well maybe that's a bit grandiose).

Over the past year, from time to time, Kaveh asked me to give thought to whether I have had, or currently have, a female role model. This question has stumped me. There are women I admire, mostly some of my friends, but to say they're role models? -  not sure. It's always been men who inspire me - my go to hero, Abraham Lincoln. I'm a Founding Fathers groupie, John Adams being my favorite FF.  Kaveh, himself, is a role model surely as is Patrick and sometimes Nick. But a woman? I've just not been able to relate - real or fictional. Hillary Clinton, nah.  Madeleine Albreight, not so much.  Margaret Thatcher, no way.  Mother Theresa, just can't relate. Fiction. Elizabeth Bennett from Pride and Prejudice - a maybe, but a weak maybe. And so I have searched my mind, thought about the question off and on for the last year. And I realized Kaveh was on to something with his concern that I lack an appreciation of other women - that I haven't been inspired and modeled myself on any number of great woman role models who are right under my nose. Maybe it's because women can be less obvious than men. We are different, different strengths, different domains, different agendas. Being a great woman is, I think, a subtler and trickier thing than being a great man. Great women are not always as obvious.

Finally and with absolute clarity, I realized I have had, all along, a female role model - someone who I've modeled myself on all these years - my girlhood hero. It is so obvious that when I mentioned this subject to Elizabeth this morning, and said it was a childhood fictional hero, she guessed immediately. My heroine is smart, fearless, crafty, has wonderful people skills - she's energetic, a great communicator, a leader among her friends, clever and responsible. Like me, she lacks female role models herself, no mother. She has a great relationship with the men in her life who think she is the bees' knees and who support her in all her endeavors. Mostly she is very independent of them (her boyfriend and father) but once in a while she gets in over her head and they come to her rescue. She is, of course, Nancy Drew. Ich bin Nancy Drew. I am SO her, even now at my age!  Sarah = intrepid, bold, smart, fun, clever, hard-working - just like her. I also love the men in my life and appreciate and need their support and protection. And it seems I'm not alone.  Nancy Drew has been a role model for some very powerful women, Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey and Judge Sotomayor to name a few. Two other gals on the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Sandra Day O'Connor, huge fans.

So, I'm curious - who you would list among your role models? Thinking when we get together this would make a great coffee table discussion. What's more, should our role models change and mature as we ourselves mature? Is it a stunted thing to be a woman in her mid-'50's conducting herself like a teenage girl detective? Should we trade in Zorro for Ghandi or Desmund Tutu as our life view becomes more sophisticated and nuanced? Or is it OK to cling to our childhood heroes and make them the gold standard by which we measure ourselves over the span of our lives?

Thinking a good exercise would be to imagine the type of woman Nancy Drew turned out to be. What strengths from her childhood did she carry into the world? How did she approach motherhood. How did she balance her need for independence and self sufficiency against her need to be loved and cared for? Did Beth and George finally tell her off and tell her not to be so bossy, not to be such a smarty-pants?  Did she always see the world in black and white - good and evil? How did she handle her own limits and deficiencies? And did she forgive herself and the people she loved, for not always measuring up to her Nancy Drew ideal of a perfect world? So many question for the grown up Nancy Drew!

The challenge today is to ask yourself who your role models are. Maybe you already know and have a picture of them up on your wall or maybe you'll be stumped as I was! Are you stuck in the past with your role model(s) or have your ideals changed over the years? If you are religious, chances are your role models are the greats, Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, etc. If you're not, then maybe, like me, you are finding things to admire in the people who inhabit your life, inspiration wherever you rest your eyes.

When Michael Jordan played that deciding game with the flu, I was forever inspired to be a person who could reach deep within myself for that extra something when everything seems lost. I wasn't alone.Turns out the great singer Renee Fleming was similarly inspired by that game - when she has to go on stage and sing for hours while running a fever, she thinks of MJ. Friend Liza is an inspiring mother, putting her own needs on the back burner, sometimes using sleight of hand to find resources for her kids. Carol's unflagging interest in everyone she meets inspires me to seek out other peoples' stories and to be less self focused. Pam's joie de vive, in spite of some major life disappointments, models for me an attitude of acceptance and abundance. She could make a party with a package of wieners and a six pack and it would be the most talked about party ever. Pat's grace in managing a serious illness humbles me. Dorothy's quiet solid values - you could set a course to her moral compass.  She walks the walk. Natalija inspires me in her devotion to her family. She has figured out that all the other stuff is fluff.

Female role models everywhere.  I just wasn't looking hard enough.

Peace,
Sarah

NADGB

Bad Santa/Fun Sarah

Monday again and again and again. They just keep coming! I hope your weekend was good. Friday all my plans dissolved. We had a large group going to Schaller's - ten plus folks, new faces, good singers. It promised to be a great, fun night but then at the last minute a call from Bobby the pianist - his gig canceled because it was the White Sox opener and all the patrons would be focused on the game and annoyed by the distraction of music.  Plan B - James came over and we hung out and played Scrabble and I was elated to beat him by over 200 points - my score 434!

Saturday Becky Menzie and Tom Michael's annual show at Davenports. Just as it was about to start, a phone call from the man who quickens my pulse. It was wonderful to catch up with him, no big crisis to discuss, no agenda other than a nice chat and dinner plans for my birthday. So the wisdom to moving on seems to be doing just that, moving on. But I'm not like most people - I'll do this my own way. He and I will do this our own way and the only guarantee is that life doesn't stay the same. There is an arc to this relationship that we are riding - it goes who knows where. That's the beauty and mystery of life. We can't just turn to the last page and peek at the ending. We have to just throw our hat into the ring, be bold, trust our instincts and live. That's my story and I'm sticking to it! Yesterday was that "wince" day - our first date a year ago and what a year this has been! Then, Sunday, family dinner with the girls and Mark from downstairs to celebrate his birthday. Split pea soup simmered all day long with the ham bone left over from Easter, salad and lemon pepper ginger cake for dessert. I'm hard core back on WW so I watched my points really carefully and did great.  Chose a small piece of cake over a glass of wine for the same points.

This morning on the elliptical I put on a genius vocal mix and waited for my "tarot card" reading which is really me just infusing connect-the-dot meaning into the random selection of songs that the IPod chooses for me. I know it's silly, but harmless right?  I know there are no cosmic forces imparting messages to me in my morning workout, but hey, whatever it takes to find one's path! In a great mood, I waited for the message of the day. It wasn't until about minute 25 that "the" song was revealed to me.  Santa Baby!  (yeah, I know the IPod isn't holiday aware). Even though I was winded, I laughed and laughed at the lyrics - I'd never really listened closely before. So when Eartha Kitt croons, "Think of all the fun I've missed. Think of all the fellas that I haven't kissed.  Next year I could be oh so good, If you'd check off my Christmas list," I said, "yeah!"  And then when she sang, "Come and trim my Christmas tree," I remembered the Santa piece I wrote years ago for the writing group. That's a story worth telling!

So, I was brand new to the creative writing group - this was the group prior to the current one that James, Liza and I chair.  No one knew me, most of the members were much younger and hipper, and to them I must have seemed like a pleasant, unassuming middle aged woman - harmless. Amanda brought an unusual prop for a writing prompt - about ten essential oils that she passed around the table. Our assignment was to write what came to mind as we sniffed each of the different scents. I wrote things like citrus, balsam, cinnamon, Christmas, sushi, Florida, sex, lysol. Then we wrote a piece using some of those words. I was the last to read. The pieces before me were mostly sentimental with reminiscences about crunchy fall walks in the woods and the smell of burning leaves, sitting in Grandma's kitchen salivating over the smell of cooking raisin cinnamon bread, opening presents under a Christmas tree, sipping mulled cider. Blah, blah, blah.....as people read, each sappier than the one before. Then I read mine:

Santa for grownups.  I want to sit on your lap and put my tongue in your ear. When I kiss your bow shaped mouth and nestle my face in your powdery white beard, I smell lemons and sweat - you've been working hard to make this day perfect for me. Fill my stocking with tickets to Florida, poker ships, frankincense and myrrh. Light my smoky Christmas fire!

There was silence. Horrified? The sound of jaws dropping, I swear. And really the piece wasn't much - I've written much more compellingly since then and it's only suggestive - not X-rated.  I think it was just unexpected. The set up - everyone lulled into sentimentality with the saccharin readings before me and then, the unexpected. Sex with Santa read by a woman who looked like she should be baking cookies.  The moral of that story is be careful when you judge people!  I love the idea of writing an unexpected back story for the people you observe as you go through your day. That fat waddling man wheezing his way across the street? He used to be a porn star!

So, Santa Baby and Sarah's Santa infatuation, how is that a message worth taking into the day!? Why was that "the song"?  It felt so good to laugh this morning as I worked out.  Life can be so serious - there are so many responsibilities and mandates in a single day. So much serious living to do that sometimes, I think we forget just how important it is to have fun, a LOT of fun, along the way. "Think of all the fun I've missed!"    This has been a tough year for me, the broken heart and all the other stuff.  Eartha Kitt would tell me to put my worries aside and get out there and make some mischief.  The guy I really want to be with isn't available to me so I can either sit around and pine for his thick white hair, salt and pepper beard, soft bow-like lips, strong hands and large inviting body, or I can find me a substitute. That's the message of the song!  Since I can't have him (he's holed up at the North Pole - ha ha gotcha!  You thought I was describing Patrick!), I'll find someone else to "trim my Christmas tree"!

Your challenge today could be giving thought to whether or not you're having enough fun. If you're Robin, you have been working seven days a week since January with absolutely no fun. If you're Liza, you have given yourself over entirely to the welfare and needs of your children and can't even remember the last time you had an adult conversation (I never see her any more)! If you're Karen, you are working too hard and traveling constantly. If you're James, you've wrapped rules around your life that delay gratification until some unknown date in the future. Too many of my friends are running too fast and hard and not taking time to play. Not Sarah. April 15th is the start of a new tax year. It's the anniversary of a great lost love. It's also the day Sarah got her fun mojo back. Watch out! I can be trouble!

Peace,
Sarah

NADBG

Humble Flowers/Preparedness

No post yesterday cuz I've been sick battling a chest cold - trying to keep it just a chest cold and not something more serious like bronchitis or pneumonia.  Am venturing out tonight to go to Schaller's although I probably won't be able to sing.  OK though to be audience 'cuz I will have a full posse there tonight.  Judy and Bernie and friends of theirs, Pam who always makes any occasion hilarious and fun, dreamy Kenneth, my "date" Christ, and this new gal Trish I met at Maggiano's piano bar.  She is an amazing singer, truly amazing - good enough to win any contest.  Her looks belie her singing - early '60's, retired schoolteacher with tailored good looks and perfectly coiffed blond hair.  Beneath the exterior must lie the heart of a true romantic because when she sings a song like "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" be prepared to weep.   I did and remembered a certain bunch of inexpensive flowers that I later made fun of just to wound him for wounding me first. What I would give to take those words back! Anyway, the song made me think of those flowers and it was a good thing I wasn't wearing mascara. So Trish=new friend I hope and maybe a third member in the new Andrews Sisters act that Bobby Benson wants to put together.  Me, Pam and Trish?  All good singers.  Could be a lot of fun.

Today I'm thinking about spring, rebirth, change - on so many fronts.  Even the little things bring anxiety.  Yesterday Catherine stopped by - she is on spring break (works in a school).  She eyed my etagere full of old dusty photographs that were jammed into drawers like sedimentary layers of our family life waiting to be excavated.  She said, "I bet you don't want most of those pictures!"  In my mind I disagreed, sure that I would find myself nostalgic over each and every photo.  Instead of putting up resistance, I gulped and said, "OK, let's look through them."  She made short work of a full drawer - years of family pics.  And she was right.  There were pictures of unknown landscapes, people I didn't recognize, blurred shots of cats' butts taken by a kid.  Once the unknown and unwanted were disposed of, there was a tidy stack no higher than a few inches that made the cut.  It was quick, simple and almost fun to go through them and so gratifying to be able to throw away a full trash bag of old life.

Now at the office that is also a relic.  2400 SF of unneeded space.  I've been trying to sell it with no takers and now I'm poised to just let the bank have it back.  There is SO much to go through, so much stuff, so much that was once valuable and meaningful - now albatrosses to be dealt with.  Two full closets full of pandemic flu preparedness supplies. There were those two years when I lived and breathed H5N1.  I was a virtual flu scholar (still am, ask me anything).  It's a rabbit hole to start the thought process of what happens when there is a threat to civilization as there would be with a lethal pandemic flu.  There is no end to the concern.  I hope you realize that our civilization is built on a paper towel.  Get that paper towel wet and everything will fall.  There are false illusions that we are a resilient society, that we are well equipped to deal with catastrophe.  The truth is, we are incredibly fragile, lack self sufficiency.  With just in time manufacturing and supply chains there is only enough food in most cities for a few days.  Our Internet dependency means we are just a few keystrokes away from financial ruin.  Most of us have no intrinsic skills - we do not know how to take care of ourselves in a survivalist way.  Our medicines are made overseas.  I could go on and on.  It's really scary and because there has not been a national catastrophe in our lifetimes, we are complacent, lazy, unprepared and deluded about what could happen.

So, I amassed supplies, cases of MRE's, medical supplies, survival items.  It was my goal that, with the supplies we had on hand, I could care for my family for a full year without leaving our home .  I also planned on defending those supplies and as such, I learned to shoot and had plans to fortify my home and arm the family.  It all seems unreal, right?  Crazy Sarah?  I'm not crazy.  If there was another pandemic flu like in 1918, we would be screwed.  If H5N1 which  kills more than 50% of its victims mutated to be a pandemic flu (a brand new flu that no one has immunity to), half the world population would be gone in three years.  We would find ourselves in a new dark age, anarchy and chaos - guaranteed.  If Sarah=crazy, it is probably to think that I could defend our turf and supplies. That was probably my delusion.  The people who will survive will be those living in remote areas far away from rabid city dwellers who would otherwise overwhelm them.

So, what to do about all the supplies?  Keep some and hope that we dodge a bullet in my lifetime.  We're overdue for a super volcano (Yellowstone blows big every 70,000 years or so)  The last one almost wiped out humanity - humans were reduced to just over 1,000 surviving souls from which we're all descended.  We are statistically overdue for a pandemic flu (did you know that most plagues were pandemic flu's?).  And don't get me started on meteors and comets!

Spring, rebirth and change - it's here whether we're ready for it or not!  The challenge for us could be to look change face on, embrace it, find our new place and carve out a place at the newly set table, even if that place is not at the head, and simply enjoy the ride and the wonder of it.  Yesterday I commented to Madeleine, "Look at the new crop of spring babies!"  It's the same every year in the spring - the baby animals - whether at the Farm in the Zoo or on the sidewalks being pushed by young mothers.  Time's a marching.  The new babies are coming to take their place in the world (our place) and there is nothing to be done about it except to pinch their little thunder thighs and breathe in their wonderfullness.  It's life and it marches along.

Peace,
Sarah

Picture of Yellowstone - caldera

NADGB

Vagina Men/Landmark

Today Wednesday.  Not yesterday.  For some reason I had it in my head yesterday that it was Wednesday and I actually went to my writing group and at 7:05 wondered why I was the only one there!   Guess cuz I'm not feeling well, I'm a bit foggy in the head as well as the lungs.  At the office with dawg.  Feeling a bit better than yesterday.

The best part of my day yesterday was reading Debra's Good Friday sermon which was inspired by some of my blog posts (the ones about being the most human human).  Here is the link.  Go to the sermon for Good Friday.   I enjoyed it immensely even though I'm not religious and was so proud to be quoted!    Another good thing was that I took the plunge and signed up for The Landmark Forum. If you don't know about this group it's kind of hard to describe and if you Google it, there are mixed reviews with some people expressing concern that it's cultish.  These are the former EST folks and the seminar I signed up for is a 4 day intensive workshop where they essentially sleep deprive you, break down all your defenses, turn you into a blubbering mess and then reconstruct you in their image.  Can you tell I have some ambivalence?   Friends I respect have gone through the process and come out the other side stronger, more self aware and eminently more effective in managing their lives.  These days I feel I have little to lose and I'm open to new ways of being - I NEED a new way of being.  I will surrender myself at the door, do all the exercises, share my most troubling issues, deface myself if necessary, suspend judgement, etc.   This will be a departure for me - drinking the Kool-Aid.  I'm not a Kool-Aid drinker!  I'm the one who yells, "Don't drink the Kool-Aid!" I'll probably come back like a Stepford person and the rest of my days will be evangelizing about Landmark.   If that happens, I forgive you in advance for not continuing to read this blog!

Last evening I had an exchange with a fellow I dated once - remember "Nice Dave"?   He said he wanted to be friends so I hit him up on text.  He was driving back from an exciting first date with someone he was very attracted to.  I counseled him to play it cool, to keep her on edge, not over-communicate, make her sweat it out a bit.  He was skeptical that this is really what women want.  I assured him it is. Maybe it's counter-intuitive to a nice guy like Dave to keep a woman guessing - he kept saying he wanted her to like him and he was afraid if he ignored her (as I counseled) she would look elsewhere.

That got me thinking about vagina men.  First heard that term from Kaveh - think there was a book of the same name.  It's a crude expression, right?  The thinking is that Western men have become emasculated due to a number of factors, modern culture, feminism, economic hardships, and the loss of omnipotence that came from having faceless enemies (cold war, terrorism, etc). Think Alan Alda and Phil Donohue as the poster vagina men.  There is a backlash against these overly sensitive men who end up being more like our girlfriends than satisfying partners.  Most of the men I've met on the Internet dating site fall into this unfortunate category.  Maybe it's rare these days to find a manly man, one who respects the boundaries between men and women, who embraces his role as protector and defender.  I for one, need a man who will say "no" to me from time to time.

So when I Googled "vagina men", looking for the book reference, I found an alarming site that described the toppling of the World Trade center as a castrating event for Western men.  The author went on to say that what was left, the fiery hole in the ground, was representative of current modern culture - a smoldering vagina.  Wow I hated this analogy!  The smoldering vagina represents the insatiable consumerism of the west, the hole that gobbles everything in sight.   This is woman hating imagery for sure!  One step away from Peter Peter and his pumpkin chastity belt, right?

Where is the truth in all of this?  I think it's a strange and interesting time for men/woman dynamics. There is the recent friction over reproductive health that has many women hopping mad.  I liked the placard of one protester that read, "Women brought all politicians into the world.  In 2012, women can take them out!"  Women are pushing back, challenging laws that require for example, a vaginal ultrasound prior to getting an abortion.  Some female legislators have, tongue in cheek, proposed laws that would require a man seeking medicine for an erectile dysfunction to submit to an invasive prostate exam as well as undergo psychological counseling to ensure the malfunction was not a psychological problem.  The sexes are facing off again in this political year.

It will be telling to see how men and women in this country relate in years to come.  I'm hoping the pendulum swings to the center.  Think there are more and more women like me who want equality of the sexes in the courtroom but still want their men manly.

Peace,
Sarah