Posts

Seeing Red: How to REALLY Deal with Anger

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I have been full of rage lately.

Unexplainable-chili-pepper-hot-blown-out-of-proportion anger over trifles.

I’m pissed about burnt English Muffin toast.

I’m livid over the fact that I unsubscribed from HBO right before season 2 of Game of Thrones began.

I’m fuming over abysmally written novels that I’ve wasted half an hour on before I toss them out of my third floor window.

I want to mentally throw lukewarm Red Ginger tea in the face of folks on Facebook who act completely fake from the person I know them to be in the real world; people who write incessantly about helping others but don’t actually lift a manicured finger to do so.  Peeps who write about the importance of friendship but suck at it. Read more

On Death & the Next Grand Adventure (Oh, and Bilbo Baggins)

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I had an epiphany this morn. Like a choking on a slurp of my Ginger Red tea kind of epiphany.

I am Bilbo Baggins.

It all started with this

There was a study released recently that you are what you read. A scary proposition, eh, and I don’t know about you but I’m not particularly keen to become anything like Pap Finn, Iago, Sauron, Satan, Voldemort or Grendel. Plus, unlike Bilbo, I’m really not short. I don’t puff on a pipe (though I did once when I was fifteen and having a nicotine fit.) I do, however, shave the little wisps of hair on my big toes, but I most definitely don’t have hair in my ears. Yet.

I don’t know if I was Bilbo before I read The Hobbit or after. But, there’s really no question that I am Bilbo Baggins. Bear with me and I’ll explain. Read more

“It’s Not You, It’s Me.”

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Ever heard this line? – “It’s not you, it’s me.”

I’ve heard it many times myself. In the past my typical response was usually, “Bullshit, you dick. Grow some balls, coward. I’ll do better. Fucker. Liar. Please don’t go. Bastard. Stay. Asshole. ” These utterances were usually followed by a week or so of tears, some cuddle time with Ben & Jerry watching reruns of Little House on the Prairie, a few tattoos so that I could feel the pain inside in a tangible way on the outside, the eventually donning of my Superwoman cape, heading out with my friends, my first few laughs post break-up, tequila, Jagermeister, Beam, Stoli O and cranberry juice with slivers of an orange, flying kites in thunderstorms, swimming in fountains, stealing tractors, sweaty soul train dance parties, and Journey concerts. Hey, everyone has their own personal process. Read more

Soul Mates: Fact or Fiction?

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I need your guts.

Ladies.

Gentlemen.

I need your gut instincts, your intuition, your introspection on a subject that keeps coming up for me.

Soul mates. Fact or fiction?

You see, I met a guy about ten years ago. I had no interest in dating at the time. I had just left a ten year marriage and was sewing my wild grains with a top o’ the line industrial sewing machine, threads of sinew, and my liver.  But I felt inexorably, inexplicably drawn to this person. We went our separate ways after our first meeting but we kept running into each other. Over and over and over. It was like “moth to a flame” shit. I would think about this Dude. Every. Single. Day. And… according to him, his words, his experience was the same.  It made no sense to either of us. When I looked into Dude’s eyes I was lost in some time-space continuum of I don’t know where or when. But our relationship was rocky, dysfunctional, messy, overwrought, too much. It was like Disney on an icy glacier after a couple bowls of meth. Read more

Glimpse of a Life Through Lyrics

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So I speak to you in riddles
‘Cause my words get in my way
I smoke the whole thing to my head
And feel it wash away (1)

Words speak and choose
make sense and lose
capsize the tall tale, but always fail
words speak and choose, make sense and lose
forfeit the tall tale, I always will (2)

I am colorblind
Coffee black and egg white
Pull me out from inside
I am ready
I am taffy stuck and tongue tied
Stutter shook and uptight
Pull me out from inside
I am ready
I am fine (3) Read more

Battery Power Low! Otherwise Known As God’s Little Voice Box

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I don’t want to freak you out or anything but God has been speaking to me through my fire detector.

It’s true.

Some people have vivid, colorful dreams of weathered hermits riding royal purple Yaks and wake up feeling inspired and motivated around their life purpose. Others make an omelet and see the face of Jesus in the burnt, crusty bits of Gouda and head out on a pilgrimage. Moses had the burning bush.

But, nope. Not me. I have a Kidde fire alarm. Read more

Confessions & Quests: Finding my Tribe

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I have a confession to make and I feel pretty damn vulnerable putting fingers to keys around it.

(No, I haven’t been watching The Bachelor.)

You ready?

I spent almost two decades of my life wishing I were Native American. What’s more is that, for many of those years, I didn’t consciously recognize it.  Essentially I just wanted to be of this culture as part of a tribe of a people and history that I looked up to.

Instead, I was born into a family of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) which traces back to my 4th or 5th Great Grandparents who lived near Joseph Smith and, upon his death, traveled with Brigham Young to Utah. While my family is amazing, the garments just never fit me and I’ve been searching, studying, and “trying on” different religions and different types of spirituality since I wore a retainer and a turtleneck with frogs smattered on it. Read more

The Gift of Clearing Clutter

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I’ve never been more in love. Since I was a tiny tot I’ve been an organizational freak and used to line up all my patent leather Mary Janes with level precision so that I could hide crackers and Halloween treats in them. My shoes are still lined up, though I now keep the crackers in the cupboard and the Halloween candy has its own drawer, so when I saw this 2012 Declutter and Organize Calendar on mysimplerlife.com I nearly passed out with joy.

Why is this the #1 gift you can give yourself in 2012? Well, I wrote about it a bit here but suffice it to say that when you’re surrounded by heaping mounds of crap it affects so many areas of your life; your spirit, your mental health, your ability to get stuff done, your energy levels. There are even health benefits in decluttering. Clearing your space of clutter opens you up energetically to expand (and even to receive more – though do you really need another pair of Jimmy Choo’s?) Read more

The Rollercoaster of Life

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“You know, when I was nineteen, Grandpa took me on a roller coaster. . .  Up, down. Up, down. Oh, what a ride! I always wanted to go again. You know, it was just interesting to me that a ride could make me so. . . so frightened. So scared. So sick. So excited and so thrilled all together! Some didn’t like it. They went on the merry-go-round. That just goes around. Nothing.” ~ Grams on “Parenthood.”

Some have said I’ve been on one hell of a rollercoaster ride this year. I would argue that it’s been more like the Millenium Force at Cedar Point after three corn dogs slathered in yellow mustard and a large plastic baggie full of blue cotton candy. In the past seven months my rickety car has climbed toward the sky, stayed suspended at the top for a few moments in time, and plummeted down at lightning speed – taking my breath away. Read more

How to Write

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I’ve been writing a novel since the beginning of time. Okay, perhaps that’s a slight exaggeration, but it sure feels like it. In actuality, I started it in 1999 and have been working on it, on and off, for twelve years or so. It’s all kinda fuzzy.

And I’m only about 160 pages in, so take my advice with a single molecule of salt.

The How

Start with a clean space. Spic and span. Not a grain of dust. Get out your Swiffer and, quite literally, go to town. Buy fresh flowers and spend six hours arranging them flawlessly. Run to Bed Bath & Beyond in your pajama bottoms and 2 XL tee. Peruse the Yankee Candle aisle, picking each jar up by its bottom (you don’t want to have to buy all that broken shit), and smell each fragrance until you find the one that matches your flower arrangement. Go home, take two Excedrin to rid yourself of the fume headache that likely ensued. Take a nap.

It’s not like I spent that whole eleven years writing every day. I spent twelve years getting my education. I spent a few years drinking Jim Beam and Jagermeister. Mixed. I spent some time on a tractor at a Journey concert. I’ve been busy. Read more