head case

i hate being sick. i've been sick a lot in my life. and every time i get sick again, i feel like there has been no time in between and i have always been sick. of course, this is simply not true, but it feels true. and sometimes, that's really all that matters.

brrrrrrr.....and it's only october

i can't believe that i really grew up in new england and have remained here to this day--50 years-- because i tell you i was supposed to be raised in the tropical waters of hawaii, the palm tree filled neighborhoods of st. john, the perfect year round weather pattern of santa barbara. I WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THE DAUGHTER OF A SNOWMAN. i hate the cold. i hate it like it's hitler, charles manson, GEORGE BUSH. there is nothing, really, honest not one thing i like about it.

and another thing, we have way more cold here in new england than we have warm. it's not some even split, you know. it used to be when i was a kid, but not anymore. now it's like summer for july and august and winter from november to april. really, this is the truth. this is what we're living with here in this god forsaken part of the country, that everybody is always all, "but don't you just love the seasons?" and i'm all like, "uh, well, nope i could really just live without them if you could just give me more than two months of warmth."

in good times and when i want to potato peel your nose.

i tell you that being married is the toughest job there is. forget housewife, the army, being a mother, a proctologist, marriage beats 'em all. it's a beast, fraught with every kind of drama there is. there are days, like this one, that i want to pack my stuff up and leave (i'm not because it would be a big job). i want to grab the man i've been married to for 23 years and smack him upside the head in an effort to let him know how intellectually impaired he is, how TOTALLY FUCKING STUPID everything about HIM IS.

i'm mad. my stomach is gurgling with anger. and yet, at some point, it will be over and we will be better. but for today, i can't really imagine when. and for now, that will have to just do.

it all depends on where you started

my friend claudia, who i have so much in common with, i could be related to, did a song and dance the other day about this ridiculously successful woman who is married to a mega gazillionaire she used to go out with. "if i hadn't been so needy, so whiney, so immature, such a total and complete mess," i could have been her," claudia said while sitting on the picnic table at the dog park. "if you had a head and body transplant you could have been her," i said.

i can fall fall into this trap too, wishing i were someone else, someone else who seems to be made of entirely different genegic material and is able to turn every damn thing she touches with perfectly manicured fingers into gold, but the thing is, i'm not that. i'm me. and me grew up with a secret alcoholic father who did his best to bestow me with a self-confidence so low, an ant can't crawl under it. an uber loving mom who never left the man who stole my optimism and nobody helping me to create a positive, exciting adulthood. no, i don't have my friend deb's ability to do 100 things in a day, nicole's skill at running two houses and a family of 3 with the aplomb of a dancer for the ny ballet, toni's keen and innate competence when it comes to all things home, sarah's capacity for having a killer bod and a killer career. but i didn't start where any of them started. i started in a whole other place, and anything i've done in my life, i have had to sort of do on my own. i have to measure my success, however minimal, by the distance i've traveled, not by comparing myself to martha stewart.

so, claudia, think about your beginnings, which you've told me were not optimal and then figure out how many times around the track you had to go before you even got to the starting gate, and then let's talk about that woman and all the other ones like her. nope, you aren't her, but that doesn't mean you're not just as amazing.