Sista-Mutha

It's often been noted derisively that our "ethnic" families are so large, that the older siblings are forced to become parents quite young (like I did), and that's true; my mother was to her much-younger sister, as were both of my maternal grandparents, as many Catholic families have done before them. In fact, raising children is so much a part of our lives, it's astonishing to me when people assume that I am merely another average single woman who's "childless", alone in a sea of sameness, when nothing could be further from the truth.

All of my life, people have told me that I am their only "healthy" or "normal" friend, which is in ironic contrast to another part of my family who still refuse to see me as their natural leader, which I am. In my professional life, leadership is a quality that you cannot live without, whereas in my personal life, it's often been wrongly assumed (because I don't wear my womanhood on my sleeve for something that's simply genetic) that I cannot care for children, a family, and a home, which is so far off from my actual reality, I find it quaintly charming at times.

Doing laundry doesn't make you a good housewife, anymore than giving birth makes you a good mother. We learned in the home from our first years about babies and children, because our larger families had all sorts of kids, of varying ages, sizes, and types. My mother's youngest sister was 16 when I was born because my grandparents had her so much later in life, just like my grandmother's older sister (my grand-aunt, who also lived near us in Rockland County), because later-in-life childbirth is more common among our ancient Mediterranean bloodline. I always expected to have a family later in life, which is turning out to be exactly how I predicted it would be, and I am so glad.

I can't imagine being as great a mother in my twenties or thirties, because my background in business has added that extra experience I really needed to excel at running an excellent home, made to fit to my exceptionally high standards. It isn't about not ever having dirty dishes in the sink (for the sake of keeping up appearances); it's about genuinely being there for someone who needs you to be reliable on their timetable, just like every person who's ever relied on me (and just me) to keep to a really tough deadline on a limited budget, which is pretty much everyone associated with me.

And so it was at home, too. I've done almost every type of housekeeping chore I can think of (and some chores you modern ladies have never heard of), because my mother channeled her fussiness (honed in a laboratory) to a house full of children and one very fluffy white dog, allergies included. It was onerous hard work, and it inspired me to be something more than a kitchen drudge for the rest of my life, because being stuck in the home while chained to a dishwasher is about the worst nightmare I can think of for anyone, let alone an extremely intelligent woman. 

I can hire someone to cook and clean (not that I would overmuch, given who I am, because you can imagine the pratfalls of having strangers in the home with someone like me), but what I can't outsource is me, the essence of who I am and everything I have to teach. Who better to educate your entire family than you? What would be the point of all that time spent learning and educating outside of the home? Making money for other people and their families, over me and mine? Oh, heck no! I don't think so. Not the way this Acadian girl was raised.

Who would be better than me for my family? Nothing outperforms love, as every woman who's ever sought validation in the workplace (like a man) has found out, because children grow up so quickly, that you can <blink> and miss it. For women, there's no choice between her, her man, her home, her children, and some job, because work often represents money needed for food, clothing, shelter, and health insurance for those pricey medicines needed to combat common childhood illnesses. We've never needed ego gratification from strangers to fill our needs. Family does that for us.

For all the mothers raising other people's kids, I read you loud and clear: https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Teachers%27+Day&oi=ddle&hl=en

Office Cow

Much like Ricky Gervais and other really successful people, I always knew office life wasn't for me, from the very beginning of my post-college career. I adapted as much as I could to the guy who twitched all day long with no ramifications because he did the repetitive grunt work no one else wanted to do before they dumped him, or the violently aggressive secretary who's almost always desperately promiscuous because someone along the way encouraged this rather plain girl to use her looks to get ahead, putting a young woman in a seat of responsibility that even very beautiful women have trouble handling. How do you become a beauty on a typical office worker's salary? You don't, which is why most of the "office girls" go for men that they think have economic power to "liberate" them from the horrors of their own labors; an insanely fantastic proposition, if ever there was.

Why would most "suits" care what a woman wants, anyway? They're often as disposable as next year's younger, blonder, bustier model, leading to the next societal craze we're in right now called "reality t.v.", for the next generation of office bimbo turned alcoholic housewife. Ugh...shudder. She's the woman I've fought hard my entire life to never become, not that I could have done it easily. I love home economics and child rearing, since I've been running other people's households (and offices) for all of my life thus far, which has given me enough time to be here with you while at home, too. I've become the way to have it all that reveals how we, as women, can really do it without sacrificing our bodies and our sanity, though there's always some compromises to be made in any real life.

But growing up, we had precious few role models. I was lucky to have a classy, ethical mentor my first job out in the real world, though she does not have the traditional husband and kids, but a very long-term partnership with a man that has outlasted many marriages. There's a lot of good in it, but she realizes that if she changed one component of her very successful life, another would have to go out the window, and that was too much to sacrifice. The other model for older women in the workforce was the unfortunate 80s stereotype of the square-shouldered "power lesbian", a woman who mimicked the mannerisms of men to blend into the boy's club: definitely not the right choice for women who live openly with their beloved male counterparts, like I do. What would a masculine energy from me do for a hetero man? Not much, and I certainly don't want to be the man in my relationship.

And so I did what many healthy women in business have done before me, with their fingers crossed: I've worked hard daily to be the best, while relying on my naturally long-lived fertility that I was blessed to inherit while I jettisoned the many "Mr. Wrongs" who can't hold up their end of my relationships. And then I waited. And waited some more. And then, some more, working all the while. It takes faith, stamina, confidence, and an amazing amount of experience to master the art of patience, something my very dear maternal grandmother told me wisely more than once that I needed to learn, and her seeds of wisdom have never failed to blossom within me. She was that good, ya'll. But along the way, I've seen some really ugly stuff, tropes of broken women that I hope we successfully breed out forever.

Top of my list is the woman who picks a man to co-dependently enable by stroking his ego and feeding into his vanity, while spending his money as fast as she can, because that's the business arrangement they made. It's a form of prostitution to sell yourself short like that, one deeply rooted in a woman's insecurity and fear. Where would you be without your man? Dead?! How can that be, when we were made to live? It doesn't make any sense, and I've heard every type of justification from that type of woman that exists, shallow and dumb as they are. It's a deeply disturbing thing to do with one's life; throwing it away on the promise of a man-made freedom through money. Whatcho gonna do with all that money, any how? Sleep with it? 

That's what my people told me all my life: money doesn't keep you warm at night. People do. Not that skipping through beds and partners should be a full-time thing. Every grown woman I know gravely looks forward to a good night's sleep free of night terrors (just look at her dark under-eye circles, man), be they from yo' man or yo' kids, right? If it ain't that, then it's the dog throwing up all night seeking comfort. Amen to a nice night at a hotel somewhere and just let me sleep! Lack of sleep makes a person desperate for relief, and that was a lot of the hurt that I saw playing itself out in offices throughout the world; women just trying to stay afloat, treading water and looking for help when none was given to them without some sort of price tag attached to it. Doesn't sound Christian or hetero to me at all. Does that sound normal to you?

So, I learned to live around other people's sexualities, preferences, and/or mental disorders, because during my entire time in other people's offices, the one common message I always got was this: you don't belong there, and that's actually true. I belong here, with all of you. Like, take this one typical dyed blond booby from Long Island; she stuffed every dopey cliche about receptionists into one horrible package, like a nightmare thing from someone else's fictional story, because I sure don't play that way. She was aggressive, gossipy, bitchy, stupid, angry, openly hostile and derisive, and when that didn't work, she tried sleeping with everyone in the office (I mean everyone, male or female) under the guise of her many storied disorders which were, of course, much more important than the good work that I did daily to pay her stupid bills, which were many, too. 

Her "body image issues" were everyone else's fucking problems too, as were the gory details of her stupid sex life which, shocking and active as it was, sucked badly, because she couldn't figure out how to even do that right, even after all of her practice. She was a "poor lay" as they say, and that was the worst secret of them all, outside of her bisexual, daddy-molestation tales, told salaciously in the light of noon in a generic publishing office that was anything but the blandly raunchy bar she wanted it to be, which leads me to her classification as a day-to-day type that you all should not only run from, but fire immediately upon realization, and that is this: she was the perfect "Office Cow", a rightly demeaning term dubbed by my excellently clever ex-boyfriend from Colorado, bless his funny British/Scottish ass. You got me on that one, lad!

Kent and I met at the Denver-area recording studio that I worked at out west, after my brief marriage to an unsuitable partner was naturally dissolved with "no-fault" tied to either side (he can't fulfill normal marriage obligations due to his illnesses), and we immediately became friends. He's one smart muthfucka! We met over his low-budget punk rock project that overflowed with quick-witted lyrics and song titles. It was genius, man, and I loved him right away. We took to each other like soldiers fighting in his crazy Christian army, with his beautiful, classically-rendered tattoo of G-d's Rapture from a famous tattooist prominently displayed on his big meaty forearm proudly. I immediately loved the art behind it, like we were two angels fighting the "End of Days", thrown together by circumstance. We got on that well, initially. Even though we were actually more friends than romantic partners, we got on well enough to share home and hounds for a time.

You see, he had the same war stories of me, as the "big man on campus" who made an electrical engineers salary in an area that made him seem extremely desirable, except that he isn't, really. Not for an average office girl. My big lad from back then was a high-paid electrician (with the apprentice, equipment, and annually-renewed state license to prove it), a one-time sponsored downhill bike racer (I saw his lift ticket of him in sponsored gear from back in the day to prove it, because as big as he was, he could be dodgy on some of the details to impress me deliberately, which I actually found rather charming from a man of his size), and he had played with some of the most prominent punk bands from back in the day (making him a bona fide rock star to boot, because I saw the road pics of him as a backup guitarist with "Agression", a southern Californian skater band), and he became a private pilot during my watch, too. Top that, son!

Needless, I didn't have all that much competition from the local ladies. He told me they did weird stuff like look at his weekly pay-stubs to form dating strategies within earshot, as he passed through the office. Because they were too dumb to perform well at their jobs, they went looking for "Mr. Paycheck" instead, without taking the time to get to know him or share his interests, like I did. He told me that they brazenly gossiped in front of him (as their company's top earner), making him feel like an awful piece of meat every time he passed through the office (I saw some of the girls on one of our first dates: 
a football-viewing Super Bowl party given at one of their homes. I wore my one and only Broncos jersey that's now long gone, New Yorkers), which was part of the point. To them, your participation is mandatory in their world, even though they practically live and die off of his salary and earning power. It was something that I immediately identified with, being a "big earner" myself.

Neither one of us wanted to be used for money, sensitive as we are to being seen as disposable by multiple-marriage families. His mum decided to just start a second family by adopting some junkie's kid on the cheap, as is so often the case with sick parents who create patterns of the same wrecked families, littered behind them as wreckage they see as acceptable to their selfish aims: the anti-thesis of family, if ever there was. I was reminded of him every time I encountered a disaster of a office gal. Each and every time I met one, I often laughed to myself as the sole sane witness to a highly repetitive calamity. It became no clearer to me than during one particularly ornery job, where I struggled to keep this family's guard dog on a leash tied to their front desk from tearing out my throat in blind envy, interspersed with her loudly vocalized eating disorder that was punctuated by "mm bitch" "mm" "bitch", every time some plain girl from the Midwest dared to bring in homemade baked goods into the office, because she (of course) did it to sabotage her on purpose.

Why else would she do it? What kind of sick person makes cookies at home to serve for family holidays, and then shares them with her co-workers by leaving a warm note on top of them in the company kitchen? The horror! It was just sick, man, the way this family allowed some sick bitch to foam at the mouth while gorging herself covertly on some young wife's attempt at domesticity in a city not of her choosing, and certainly not of her birth. I mean, how dare she? Who did she fucking think she was? Bitch! Ayelet was the lead girl, and we violated her corrupt controlling by freely eating the well-made baked goods of a Nebraskan farm girl who also liked to sew in her spare time, in over her head from both this high-stress job and her new marriage in our city of many lights. Go home! Go away! Get out! Who the fuck did you think you were anyway, Natasha? "Office Cow!"

Dirt Weed

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blunt_%28cannabis_cigar%29

Years ago, after the publishing industry went bust and employers quickly set-up weirdly convoluted political climates to drive out the healthier and more expensive employees by using their cheaper and more deranged ones to do their dirty work (hidden behind a thinly-veiled agenda that was never really very cloudy or unclear, except if you had to prove it in a court of law,) my bubble burst by design, because I beat the "big boys" at their own game. 

Rich white men have always used money and the threat of impoverishment to silence those carefully observant, high-performing employees who are better than their own kids at the family business, knowing that most single women in New York City are one paycheck away from homelessness. It's a total dick way to "win", which is the point of Evil, Inc: a place where we don't do business fairly (the real company motto), but tricky knife-in-the-back games are part of what makes dysfunctional business go. Healthy people tend to share the wealth, as well as the free dispersal of information, which sucks if you can only win by rigging the game to your advantage illegally.

After that, I was on the move from place to place. At first I stayed locally, finding temporary friendship with a troubled man I met at the public library (I could tell he knew who I was behind his badly done "actor-y" facade), but times were desperate, which was the whole point behind that hurt, too. See? "If you would have just played the game, Marie, your entire family wouldn't have turned their backs on you (no one wants to see you anymore without money and help to give out freely), because you talked openly about what you saw at work." Of course, that sick family was my responsibility, too, and if I don't help sick people whenever they want it, there's abuse to be had. I should have learned my lesson years ago. I'd heard the bullshit speech thousands of times before.

Except, really healthy, brilliantly powerful women don't work that way. That's why we run this world you live in. And so, I didn't cave. There's was nothing left for me to give, anyway: no work, clothes, housing, food, rent, healthcare...all of that goes away when you speak up against injustice, whether it's at home or at work, which is exactly why I did it. I couldn't live like that anymore. It was intolerable, the injustices I've seen, like the fact that the entire Housing Court of Brooklyn, New York is currently funded by black women on layaway, hard-working women who don't want their children homeless for Christmas. The U.S. Marshall (a nice white guy from Long Island) explained to me that they are way better now, because they don't toss your stuff on the street like they used to anymore! He looked at me like he wanted consolation then, right when I had none to give.

After getting "thrown out of the inn" during Christmastime (so to speak), I lived by my native New York wits. The very woman who had illegally harassed every worker at the shop I blew the whistle on, the same one who had once bragged to me about her "street smarts" (a total joke when you face living on the streets, which is exactly what I did), while that crazy bitch went on believing that sucking dick would save her life. It didn't (spoiler alert). It did, however, buy her what she thought was enough valuable time to plot my destruction (Girl Power!), and get herself canned, too. After all, I knew it was about money. That's all it ever was, not the fact that I noticed (and documented) each and every illegal occurrence that happened there, which is why I faced off without counsel one of the company's nephews with legal experience, who asked me to hand over my notebooks to him about the situation, which I flatly refused. I still have them, dear readers.

The Neuyorican guy I met from around the way did 'hood business with me: he wanted access to my soon-to-be-gone Park Slope digs so he could use the kitchen because he was working in food service, and I wanted to get into his tenement building from 'round that way, so I could save up some money for another rental apartment. We struck a deal: I would sleep on his floor (which I did), while me and some guy named Jose cleaned the room next to his so I could move in, which is exactly what I did. I worked as a lead cover designer for some broke crooked indie outfit that was yet another spoiled Jewish kid's response to his father's valid foothold in the business, to come home at night to a bipolar guy weaning off his meds through the copious use of weed, giving him a harsh hacking cough that did not abate with time.

He seemed amazed and paralyzed by my Acadian energy. How could I work all day and then work some more at night? Where did it come from? He came from Brownsville*, a place so bad, that the main source of income is living with crazy and Welfare, which is what he did when the kitchen jobs went away. You see, my friend was "too good" to start at the bottom of the kitchen hierarchy by washing dishes. It was so obvious that he didn't want to work, even his teenage dope dealer told him so. Imagine that? Gettin' schooled by some hood rat, but that's how it went down, for real. We went over there on one really cold winter night to meet esse comin' out his mother's nice town-home apartment that's across the street from a public school playground, to meet me and Cotto on the sidewalk. At first, my friend told me to wait on the corner, but as he stood there pacing back and forth, nervously smoking his menthol cigarette, he got bored (he's manic bipolar), so he started talking loudly to me some feet away.

At that point, I was like, why not just walk up to him, when some fly kid with his "phresh" gear came bounding down the staircase to the stoop. He wore a matching bright red hat to go with his ghetto hoodie and red sneaks. Typical. He started laughing when he saw my man there speaking with me, because we looked like a broke-ass version of "Beauty and the Beast", presenting quite the pic on some slow cool weeknight in the 'hood. He made small talk with Cotto during the exchange of a dime bag for money, when my friend let him know that he wasn't happy at his current gig because he was a "real chef" (this, from an ex-con who was forced to choose a cooking program as part of his rehab in the joint), by also explaining that he never really wanted to be a chef (he sucked at it, lighting up a tea towel I gave him one night at the stove during his very brief tenure as a personal chef in my kitchen), and that washing dishes was beneath him.

The kid looked at him laughing, and to me, which I played politically correct by staying silent, to deliver one hell of a line: "Yeah, but you gotta start somewhere, though", a line his own mama must have said to him a million times when he crossed over her doorway down to the streets, buying his flashy gear and bragging about it by sporting it up and down the block, a hastily tossed up sneaker on a phone wire serving as his calling card to area schoolkids. That fuck-up from Brownsville just got schooled by his more successful teenage dope dealer, man! It was unbelievable and also totally Brooklyn, all the way down to this kid's shiny new kicks. Only in New York, you know, bro? Only in New York can a punk kid beat out a grown man without even trying, or leaving his mama's house. That's the warped view of success from around the way, and those are the people I come from. Don't you ever try to can con me again, yo. I know you.


* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownsville,_Brooklyn

Wanted Child

http://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/relationships/

For many years, we've been inside of one of the darkest ages known to man, and therein lies the answer, because homocentric societies are not actually the majority for modern homosapiens. In other words, artificial divisions between our two genders (with a very occasional third or fourth thrown into the mix) is not only atypical, it is, in many cases, highly disordered. Of course there are exceptions to this general rule, like some women in military outfits and law enforcement, but most gender-divided labors are jobs that strongly favor males who can undergo the extreme physical requirements needed (again, with a few minor exceptions), because they have the necessary strength and uncommon stamina to lift very heavy weights for long distances, over long time periods. 

Men and women are different. Oh, we'll always have a few people who think life is unfair in this respect, though I'm not sure why. As a woman, I accept those facets of myself that are linked to my sex, because I wouldn't be a biologically genetic woman without them. 
I cannot imagine as an mature adult not having a uterus, or those feminine inclinations towards home and health for loved ones, because these traits so deeply imbedded within me through my DNA, that I know these instincts developed over many, many years of evolution, for us and other closely-related primate species.

And so it has always bothered me that people confuse faith with sex, which is one of the greatest ironies of all, given that a key component to Roman Catholic service is celibacy, a necessary factor for clergy, because sublimation of the sexual self is devoted to the leading of a much bigger flock than having a single family with some children. Our Brothers and Sisters in Christ have some of the most brutally hard work schedules on the planet. They care for all of our families from birth to death, and over several lifetimes, if they are blessed with the gift of longevity. It goes without saying that is it best for clergy to live in sequestered quarters divided by sex. Think not? Imagine me as an acolyte in your faithful religious order, and you're already halfway there.

Over time, many traditional Catholic families funneled intelligent (and homosexual) children into the church, while the secular world grew up about minority sexualities. Would you want your child murdered for something they do not control? Unfortunately, sending a gay man into religious service is a lot like suiting up your really handsome young son for the army, where he will get into the best shape of his life, which is kind of like sending him to an all-hours gay bar without the cover charge, so much so that gay men joke that going to the gym is like going to "Gay Church", so lauded is being "buff" in gay culture. So why would we allow our celibate and sometimes gay men determine our reproductive health? Does it not seem like uncommonly bad logic to advise women about their bodies, when you are a devout (and possibly gay) brother or father of the cloth?

It's seems insane that we asked these young men, many of whom have never had any experience with girls and their bodies, to talk to us about what is holy in our lives, and yet that's exactly what we did. We asked them to give up sex completely to form parishes, build schools, educate our children, ordain us in every rite we have, and then seriously devote their entire intellectual lives to education based on gender. Of course, they did it, but not well. Would you ask a woodworker to weld for you? Naturally, a talented craftsman can learn other disciplines, but this is about ten thousand times harder than that. It's like asking them to attend the hardest school you will never be able to attend, while undergoing the most brutal physical training one's body can do, for people who may never say "thank you" to your face, nor understand the rigors about this act of devotion that you willingly gave up so you could take a vow of poverty with a smile on your face, while you ritualistically "marry" (for the women) a man called "Christ" who died many years ago, a man who also celibate.

And yet, the brilliant abstaining members of our church did the best they could, by advising that we don't do "that", a "that" that we know they may or may not understand. And so we did "it" anyway, then asked them to clean up our messes, which they did through discreetly concealed adoptions, a practice of buying-and-selling the children of girls and women that is still intact today. Even stranger still, it became a "sin" for women to practice responsible reproduction through the use of widely available medications (not that I think birth control pills are healthy for most girls to use long-term, but I'll get into that at some other time), and the occasional use of humane medical procedures like a routine D&C*, often for single young women who would be ostracized and forever impoverished by having children at the wrong time in their tender lives, outside of the holy sacrament of marriage.

Because the hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church has been largely dominated by celibate men for many centuries, it grew odder still: men were not sent to an Eternal Burning Hell for having a medical procedure called a "Vasectomy", while their Catholic females mates often struggled in earnest with basic healthcare and their unasked-for female reproductive organs, bodies that typically produce children whether we want it or not. We asked our many faithful to help us while they remained ignorant about our daily lives, and then blamed them when they cared for us in this regard poorly. 

It became such a weird horror show, that I was personally beset here at the public library by a demented man sitting next to me who thought that women willingly killed their own babies by crushing their skulls and/or slitting their throats as they gave birth, eagerly assisted in these supposedly satanic acts by doctors who took delight and glee in torturing women with strange medical instruments of their own secret devising, like a delusional haunted house diorama staged in an empty insane asylum for thrills and chills during the Halloween season. 

How could the outcome of our church be any different? It wasn't, for Dark Age after Dark Age to Darker Ages, still; stuck in this perpetual cycle of ignorance, fear, and hatred, when in reality, the very gifted, learned, and most assuredly brilliant-minded people of my faith knew that most people's lives are the exact opposite of some twisted fairy tale wrought by feverish minds for sport and amusement, because what we really want(ed) is a loving, holy family of wanted children, so much so, that today I want ask you to consider this: isn't it actually a most sacred and divine hope that each and every human child is born to a loving family? In truth, my most impassioned and fervent desire is that each and every child born to man and woman is a wanted child.

Welcome to the end of oppression, my good and faithful friends. Today is a brand new day! I offer you forgiveness, absolution, and a freedom from shame about your bodies that were given to you through G-d's Unending Wisdom; a beautiful human body for you and your loving partner to enjoy forever and ever, amen. His Grace, Mercy, and Kindness are yours for the taking. Take it! I offer it to you though Him, as an end to your fears, your sometimes intense loneliness, perhaps your long-suffering guilt, and what was once a never-ending shame. Start to live. Start to live today! Join us in this century. We want you on-board with us; seek and find resolution to your woes. We're waiting for you on the other side. I promise you that. 

 Every child a wanted child.

http://bit.ly/1L0S4c8

  

Your homework for today, dumb-ass: http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/S/SexHormones.html

* https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=What+is+a+D%26C+%3F

The Third Eye (Blind)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_eye

Ever since my childhood bout with chickenpox (one that I don't remember), I've had a fairly visible scar on my forehead. My mom was worried about that, because I'm the only girl in my family, and she didn't want any physical evidence of sickness conflicting with my looks, which is the first real currency women are given in society. 

My market value as a marriageable mate is still very important (to her and to me), so she did what she could to keep a little toddler from scratching, including putting on those little mitts sometimes worn by newborns who scratch at night. Despite her vigilance, a few areas escaped her notice with my unconscious scratching: an area on my thigh, a little spot on the side of my face, and a big one almost dead center. Woe is me!

With time and the thickening of my skin, it's become almost invisible in most lights, excepting those occasions when it isn't. In my quest to normalize a semi-arid city out west, my then-boyfriend and I drove to a suburb of Denver that housed the one Asian section of that sprawling, modern (and almost characterless) city. He was still nursing serious internal hurts borne by an abusive mother and violent stepdad; abuses that included sexual molestation, as well as the usual beat-downs from a stressed-out, working class Brit trying to manage his émigré status, a new marriage with kids, and another country.

I was still licking my wounds from an aborted marriage, illegal as it was, due to my college friend's legal Unfit for Marriage status, so both of us were hurting from complaints not of our doing, but deeply effected by other people's collective traumas nonetheless. Because my ex didn't eat during his manic binge phases, I had greatly changed my lifestyle to accommodate his diseases, which left me in a serious deficit all around. I went a little wild with food on my own, eating and eating and never really feeling full. It was out of control, very uncommon for me, and really scary. I could see myself ballooning up daily.

I remember my mom visiting me in Littleton (right after the high school massacres that happened there), as I sat down to eat a 2nd heaping plate full of pancakes and sausage at the cheap kitchen table my dad and his wife bought quickly for the apartment I had to relocate to. My mom asked me what was going on, with the understanding that she already knew, because she did. I have always been a size 6 as an adult "Miss", but under the stress of earning a living and righting societal wrongs, I gave in to my new boyfriend's huge Scottish appetite. We ate at any restaurant we wanted to, revelling in our escapes from the incompetent horrors of other people's homes.

With this in mind, we sought out Colorado's version of "Chinatown" to look at exotic eastern goods and, of course, eat. He went into one shop to look around, while I stood on the pavilion sidewalk outside, smoking a cigarette, another teenage escape valve I still had in place. As I strolled around the storefronts, a gentleman dressed in the tourist garb of a "guru" stopped his robotic pamphlet distribution for "Ancient Eastern Readings" to open his mouth at me. I wasn't used to agape stares at the time, because weight gain and untanned skin is considered "ugly" out west, but this was more. He looked...scared.

After a quick recovery (like most immigrants learn), he began speaking to me in a language I didn't know, pointing at the middle of his forehead over and over again. My boyfriend was out of the shop he was in, and I was walking quickly away. "What did he want?", he asked me smiling, in the non-threatened, jocular way men who are 6' and 250lbs have with shorter, smaller, and darker men. "Oh," I laughed. I was constantly tired and hungry all the time, clear depressed signs both, and I knew it. Smoking had become a dull chore that made me feel sick, too. I hated my life; a life in a foreign land that felt stiff, colorless, dull, and flat, like an out-of-body experience, and I was acting out a role in someone else's boring movie.

"It's my chickenpox scar." Where? He didn't notice things like that about me, busy as he was staying alive and staying afloat, despite the dragging down qualities of his life, too. "See? It's right here. In the middle of my forehead." And just like that, he promptly forgot about it, because that's how little spiritual significance I had to a big blond, tan, western guy with a very large and showily dramatic depiction of "The Rapture" tattooed prominently on his forearm for all the world to see, because that's exactly how limiting the scope of America can feel to someone who is perpetually outside of the cultural norms.

He lasted ten days in the cushy second story of an extremely wealthy and well-appointed Park Slope townhouse that I secured for us, upon my return home. Ten days, before he bugged out to drive back home, to a dull place where generic red trucks for good ole boys are respected as having more value than the people who sleep next to you for years. Ten days. That's all I got to right his world for him, as my world turned upside down, once again. Ten friggin' days.

Chops

Extra cabbage my mom gave me from her Corned Beef dish will do nicely!

Years ago my boyfriend's sister (then live-in boyfriend I didn't want, then fiancé, and also including soon-to-be annulled tricky disaster of a faux first marriage) went to Le Cordon Bleu in Ottawa, financed yet again by his desperate parents looking for a rock star in their two kid rubble of a messy family. Never happened, but I learned a thing or two, just like I honed my innate business acumen and musicianship on the side: I don't have time for more art forms than the many ones that I already practice at an expert level daily, but I do love to dabble, with the understanding that my dabbling is also at the maestro level. 
It doesn't go away simply because my brain is solving other types of problems, even when I may want amateur status. I like the newness of anonymity, like any other careful observer does.

Voilà! My homemade cole slaw.

And so it is with cooking, too. I cook almost every single day of my life, out of habit and enjoyment, or from necessity and want, so now I cook at the master level. I don't ever want to be a professional chef who runs a kitchen (Oh, good! Another job for me that's hard, low-paying and takes years to pay out), but I like listening. My brief "sister-in-law" did the wacky school stuff like deboning quail and many mindless hours of repetitive chopping, but she did tell me some useful stuff from her classes like: 1) pairing wines with food is a matter of preference that serves the customer well above any other snobby food rule, because a pro kitchen exists to show people a good time, not embarrass them with their ignorance. Want a nice red with chicken or fish? Have it! The "correct" choice is whatever you want and/or what beverage you think tastes good, not what anyone else says about it, unless you specifically ask a Sommelier for advice sur la table. Nothing blows the deal of a deep-pocketed repeat customer than humiliating some bourgeois "Nouveau-Riche" type looking to impress people with their freely thrown cash, so don't do it. Skills!

At the stove every damn day, people!

Same with cookbooks: 2) they can't teach you how to cook because it's about flawless timing, countless hours of practice, and the spills and mistakes that come with real trial and error mixed with ingenuity and bravery, the hard-won experience of a daily habit. That's what I have, whether I wanted it or not, because if I want to eat really good food, I often have to make it myself. And so it was with cookbooks, too. I asked her what her best recommendation was, and she told me the truth, as told to her by one of her professors: 3) it's "The Joy of Cooking", any edition and any version, from any year. The author doesn't tell you how to do it; she gives you a basic template to follow, with versions and iterations based on your choices, preferences, budget, and/or or pantry ingredients on hand. She can't think for you. You have to do that. So that's what I do, in a nutshell, every single day of my life, and maybe some day you can, too, because I don't want to be single forever, people!

Enjoy the fresh new Springtime produce that's hitting our shelves soon. We've earned it.

Perfectly cooked medium/medium-rare lamb chop, a total Spring dish.

Another perfect chop: this one a pork "Scallopine" cut in brown butter.

Perfect sticky rice with sprig of fresh thyme.

One perfect (and tiny) leaf of thyme on a bed of fluffy white rice.

Genie Jeggings!

Oh, yeah! I saw an ad for these on t.v.

Ever wonder if those "As Seen on TV" products for sale at the local drugstore are worth the money? Me, too! I've been wearing a lot of leggings and jegging-type pants lately because I'm more muscular then ever, which means additional mass on a petite frame like mine, that's still rather recent for me (read: MMA training and other physical arts). 

Sounds miraculous and life-changing at $12.99 a pair!

It also means most rough, stiff jeans are so chafing to me as to be almost unbearable, and they really haven't ever been flattering on a woman. They're designed for a man's frame. I know I've always looked better in dresses and skirts, and that's a lot for an active former tomboy like me to admit, but it's the truth. I have a fully mature woman's body. So, what else is there to wear?

They're actually double layered leggings:grey tights over spandex.

Enter a t.v. ad for a certain type of leggings that look like jeans (called "jeggings"), but are way more comfortable than the tight fit of a denim waistband that also presses a large metal button deep into your body, leaving grooves all over your body, especially when you sit in them for long periods of time. Aha! Genie Jeggings! I saw the ad, and went online to investigate. Uh oh. 

Oh...that's rather low.

I found users complaining about shady "scammy" type of behavior, with bad reviews, and/or poor customer service, no product returns, or not answering product-related emails and phone calls. Not a good sign in business, and besides that, if it's a bad deal, I don't want three pairs of the same shoddy product! So when I saw them on sale locally at a drugstore chain packaged as a single pair, I figured I'd try them out. They'd either work or not, just like any other pair of leggings or tights at a similar price. 

Ugh: the dreaded plumber's crack. That's not good...

And they do, if you like really low-waisted, tight leggings. In other words, you gotta have the body for it. They are not "miracle slimmers" as advertised on t.v., but for the average gal running around town doing errands, they're just fine: just don't wear them like ordinary jeans, with a short t-shirt. Treat them like a double-layered pair of leggings with a long shirt, and you're done! Because the inner layer looks like grey flannel, I'd also wear them in the Fall and Winter with boots and a long sweater, not in the damp heat of Spring and Summer.

...and you have to be in good shape to pull them off as replacement jeans.

Good luck, gals! It's a jungle out there, so give yourself a break today during your daily fight for truth, justice, and the American way. 

Wear something comfortable! You totally deserve it.

Definitely not like the box or on t.v.: no high slimming indigo waistband.

Ah! Much better when worn with a longer shirt.

Yep, better with coverage. I won't be followed around town!

Dr. Martin's Mix

Much like my Mom's poor attempts at her half-baked feminism and her angered infrequent bouts of cooking that she rebelled against when I was growing up, (preferring instead to replace them with compulsive cleaning chores like laundry and washing dishes), her recipes also reflect her deluded, fractured sense of self that is so inherent with her disorders and her generation.

Much as I find her "I Hate to Cookbook" a sometimes silly relic of yore that is more akin in tone to old Russian satellites falling out of the sky than it is to reality, I found a family gem among her favorite recipes, as evidenced by the splattered pages of this well-worn recipe for "Dr. Martin's Mix."

Recipe for "Dr. Martin's Mix" from the " 'I Hate to Cook' Book".

My mom was drawn to it because she likes to pretend that she is a doctor (giving herself the name "Dr. Diane" when we were kids, like a commercial advertising a fake character called "Dr. Mom", made for selling cough syrup), given her science background and the many, many hours she is forced to consider her own challenging illnesses that were fed by a constant, steady pop culture diet of t.v. shows about similarly fake doctors popular in her time like "Dr. Kildare", because she also has open crushes on "out" actors like Richard Chamberlain, also a weird reflection of the warped sensibilities of her youth.

It's not real, but the food I make from the collected shards of her self that I put together on my own certainly are, such are the strengths that a "Master of the Arts" has always had, no matter who we are with, or where we are, out there in the larger world.

Hey, what's cookin'? Oh! Yum!!

Blessings and encouragements to you this week as you fight your many, many battles. That's the fun of life on our planet! Enjoy your time here, my peoples, because it goes by so, so fast.

Stick to your ribs food: perfectly filling on a cold, wet winters' day.

MakeupFree and MakeupLess

A "MakeupFree Me" in the morning!

I periodically go through phrases that are with and without makeup. Working at some plush "rich white man" gig in the city? Oh hecks yeah, I wear War-Paint to that meeting and lots of it, if that's what it takes to make the deal go down with you, idiot! 

Me: concealer set with powder and some blush, in the afternoon!

Humbly working from home on my own stuff, on an old (and supposedly) "outdated" system? Nope, just me and my old clothes here, y'all! 

Me: morning time, hairband and ponytail, then make breakfast.

But it's really not a series of hard-and-fast rules that I rush through compulsively. Sometimes I skip the face paint AND I work summer hours at a seasonally slow publishing house. Who cares? It's hot out, and maybe my skin needs a rest in the heat. 

Woke up, tied back the curtains, and looked out the window. Who's that?

Plus, I have a lot of work to do, and quietly so, too, while the rest of humanity leaves town to go on vacation. Go, and good riddance to you! Or, maybe I want to go to the store while I'm working from home AND I also dot cover-up on that stubborn blemish. Who knows? Who cares?!

Yeah, I've got a blemish. So what? Not in the mood. Got work to do.

The point is this: I'm not on some big anti-makeup "Crusade", because if I were on that particular quest, human, you'd sure as hell know it. I'd be sportin' a big red cross (hand-sewn by me) right across my chest in recognition of that fact, yo. Besides, we fought those old battles centuries ago, and moved on from it. Far from it.

Bathed, dressed, and brushed, but no makeup. I like my hair in this one.

No, I don't hate girls with face-paint, be it a little or a lot, because I don't hate myself with it on, nor without it either, and neither do my close family and friends. After all, they have seen me in all lights (as they see me still), and they've found me worthy of beauty, along with their beauty, too. That's real. See it here, for yourself.

Right before bath time. My love asked me to take this shot.

My "Nigella Lawson in the kitchen" look, with some makeup on.

I just woke up and my eyes are still red!

Parents in town taking you to a fancy steak house dinner? "Glamour Girl"!

On a technical aside: Please note that all of the pics you see here were snapped by me and posted by me, on my (again) "old" iPhone3. I don't have a design system set up (because, once again, it's old and outdated, thus rendering it unusable, as it broke down from "Planned Obsolescence"*), so all my magic comes from me, a good camera built into a nifty smartphone, and whatever filters that I sometimes choose to use on a Mac iPhone and/or an Instagram app. You're welcome!

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

Contract-Free Living

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract 

Like most Americans, I suffered from the effects of economic fallout in the usual ways: creative firing strategies at the office designed to hide layoffs with phony blame-filled situations so as to avoid expensive wrongful termination suits, actual money mismanagement from poor business, and extremely bad planning. You know, the usual stuff when times get hard and people get shifty and desperate. You want to see humans at their worst? Restrict resources, then watch people go ape-shit scrambling after a few bucks. It's vile nasty stuff, but such is the part of human nature that a money town like "Gotham" attracts, not least of which are it's shark-y natives, which is nothing new to a girl like me. You should meet my family.

Suffice to say, I was thrust back into an extremely low budget lifestyle, those dreaded waters where many try to swim and just as many fail. I'm a great swimmer, though, so for those times when I drop down,  I'm never fully inept or incompetent; such are the strengths of my naturally inherited gifts. But it does take me to some funky places with some very sharp contours, and more on that later. Be careful out there, y'all!

So, what's a gifted artist and writer with expert publishing skills to do? You're reading one of my "hobbies" on my "free" time right now. But other than this, I get serious about adhering to a disciplined lifestyle, which includes keeping a running ledger of expenses deducted from a set amount I have on hand that I saved. And that's it, my big secret about how I do it: basic working class know-how, without any weirdo shit. No drug running, no guns, no thieving, no stealing, no begging, no bartering that's loosely called "dating", or any other immoral behavior of any kind, in any way, shape, or form. It's all above-the-board, totally legit living. No hooker stuff happening!

Yeah, but, how exactly do I do it? Well, it takes thought and a lot of experience. When I couldn't afford a pricey "smart" phone anymore, I converted the device into a smaller version of an iPad that I still use today as a music player, calendar, camera, to-do list, and public Wi-Fi enabled Internet surfer, which can also serve as a desktop publishing device in a pinch (with very tiny type: good thing I have excellent vision). That's savvy companies pay big $$ for. I'm also not some gadget addict who "has to" have the latest electronics in order to feel relevant or hip, simply because I do not use tools for purely ego-driven satisfaction. In other words, I'm  woman about it, and not some big whiny baby. I couldn't survive thinking that way.

Next, I got a cheap no-contract phone that I load with minutes as I need them, which pretty much guarantees that I never go over budget, and that I have a built-in mechanism to control the length of my conversations. Since I pay for each and every minute, I am quite aware of time passing by. Try it sometime; it works. It's "Pay-as-you-go" for the 21st century, without getting locked into a loaded contract that gives a company undue power over me, my life, and my finances, by building in hard-to-find features that allow lawyers to operate hand-in-glove with banks, making your accounts vulnerable to anyone who has the time and resources to drain it, at their say-so. Uh uh. I don't think so. Why should you be penalized by a phone company for dropping a pricey plan because you lost your job?! Makes no sense.

Next up, that all-powerful feelgood medium, The Holy TV Set, of such prominence to society that's it's placed in the center of our biggest rooms. I had an ex who was so addicted to t.v., he "had to" have one with cable, (and my old, pre-flat screen era t.v. with basic free t.v. would not do) so he forced one on me by saying it was my "Christmas" present, like an avid bowler who buys a bowling ball for his wife as an "anniversary" gift. When he turned violent on me, crashing uninvited in a drunken stupor on my couch that I came home to after a very long, hard, backstabbing day at work, he asked me to decide quickly which of his purchased items in my home he preferred I trash, in response to my break-up with him and subsequent ousting from my life and my apartment. I chose the big air conditioner he also couldn't "live" without, over his Almighty T.V., and that's what he kicked in.

But he is not like me, and he never will be. When I can't afford cable, I just go without, like I did in college, or when I'm in a tight spot financially. Feeling strapped because of the latest HD t.v.? Get a digital antenna with a digital signal converter, and now you're watching basic t.v. channels for free, just like me. No bills, no contracts, and no expensively lawyered-up financial devices to get what's left of your money that you need to buy food. You can do the same thing with Internet usage. Buy a low cost Wi-Fi enabled device, put bandwidth on it as you need or can afford, and voila: you're surfing the net without Big Brother watching you. You're welcome :)

Want to see the latest DVD movie release? Check it out for free from your local library, just like I do. My library is also a community center with timed Internet access from a bank of public computers, free yoga and Tai Chi lessons, free blood pressure readings every month, periodic blood drives, story time for kids, arts and crafts for them, too, art openings....you name it. They're always adding on stuff. There's no need for all this static over things and objects. These things do not own you; they are not more important to you than your fellow humans, so break free from these chains that bind you unnecessarily, because I want you to live in peace, my brothers and sisters. Amen to you.