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Blather Getting Old Sucks NaBloPoMo

I Blame Menopause

nablopomo_novemberMy mind is a jumble this afternoon, which has become my go-to state… and is one of the reasons I find it so tough to write these days.

I blame menopause.

I find myself blaming menopause for everything that goes wrong in my life: I blame it for my mood swings, my uncontrollable weight gain, and my inability to focus on anything for more than 10 minutes at a time.

I blame it for my recent hysterectomy, which you might not think fair. After all, it took decades for my uterine fibroids to swell my womb to the size of a small turkey. (Yes! That was how my doctor described it the morning after she and the oncologist removed it from my body. Go ahead and think about that in a couple of weeks while you’re shopping for Thanksgiving dinner. How would you like to be walking around with something that size inside of you? Fortunately, all of my growths were benign. They were the size of grapefruits, but harmless nonetheless.)

They were already pretty large when my doctor started monitoring them. She actually wanted to take the whole works out from the start, but I wasn’t ready for that. I knew the surgery would mean several weeks of recovery, and at the time, my daughter was only 13. I couldn’t take that time off. How would she get to school? So we adopted the wait-and-see approach. The fibroids were supposed to shrink after my body stopped producing estrogen. Instead, they kept on going — which alarmed my doctor a lot more than me. And she refused to prescribe any kind of HRT to help alleviate the hot flashes and night sweats and other indignities I’ve began to endure once my periods stopped.

The one symptom I actually wanted from menopause (the shrinking of the fibroids) was the one thing I didn’t get. Therefore, I think it’s fair to blame menopause for my surgery, after all.

A lot of people told me I would feel so much better after my hysterectomy, because all of my symptoms would be gone. But after menopause, I had no symptoms. The only time they bothered me was when I had to go to my doctor’s office to get an ultrasound.

It’s a funny thing about ultrasounds at the OB/GYN: When I was pregnant, I couldn’t wait for them. I paid attention to what was on the screen and was excited to see how much my baby had grown. I asked for printouts and proudly showed them off to my friends before sticking them to the fridge with a magnet.

Getting an ultrasound when you’re not pregnant is a completely different experience. If you’re not pregnant and you’re getting one, that’s a sign that things are not good. The technician working the wand barely talked to me, just grunting periodically while she measured the growths. And frankly, I didn’t care to have any conversation with her. I had to drink a gallon of water immediately before coming in. All I could think of during these ultrasounds was how much I needed to pee.

It never occurred to me while I was getting those ultrasounds that my body was behaving abnormally. Of COURSE, the fibroids were shrinking, because that’s what they were supposed to do. And each time the doctor told me, I was shocked.

I blame menopause for that, too – even though that’s probably my own fault.

Yesterday, I went in for my second post-op visit. She was happy to hear that I’m feeling a lot stronger and have stopped taking the painkillers — although I do get a little achy in my abdomen by the end of the day.

“That’s your organs rearranging themselves,” she told me.

Again, we’re back to the image of the turkey. With my uterus taking up all the real estate in there, the rest of my organs were doubling up. With the turkey gone, it’s like they’ve got all this extra room — and they’re figuring out where to hang. I recounted this theory to my daughter when she called this afternoon. She didn’t appreciate it.

Anyway:  the doctor said I still have a little way to go before I can resume all of my normal activities (even though it’s been seven weeks, the size of the thing meant additional incisions that have yet to fully heal). I did get the go-ahead to drive short distances, which means my period of house arrest is finally coming to an end. As for physical exercise, I am OK to start walking and can add more strenuous activities as I feel better.

And she gave me some HRT samples to see if we can do something about my hot flashes, discomfort and general fuzziness.

So my friends were right: I just may start feeling better.

 

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Blather Empty Nest NaBloPoMo

Because I Really Do Care

care package

nablopomo_novemberI love the first couple of days of the month. Not only does it feel like a fresh slate, but there’s the added joy of finding NO NEW BILLS in the mail.

But today’s mail included an envelope addressed to “Parents of” from my daughter’s college – with the notation:

“FINAL EXAMS INFORMATION ENCLOSED.”

Naturally, I opened it right away — only to discover that it was a solicitation:

Subject: Send your student a Final Exams CARE Package

I guess I was mistaken by thinking the days of buying magazines, candy and wrapping paper to raise funds for school ended with graduation. Apparently, my daughter’s college gets a cut from parents who order “care packages” sent through their vendors:

“The success of this program helps us to support all of our student activities. All you’ve got to do is select the Care Package you want. Our goal is to get each and every parent to participate.”

OK. I get it. And it’s not like I haven’t been sending my kid little care packages anyway: Aside from shipping her items she forgot to pack, we’ve ordered her little trinkets from her favorite stores, novelties and favorite food items. I was planning to send her something this month anyway — so this might just be a little more convenient.

“Ordering is a snap. Just write your note and seal it in the yellow envelope… Your card and package will arrive just in time for exams.”

There’s just one problem with this service: the “tasty and wholesome foods” in the different care package options are mostly JUNK: Rice Krispie treats, Pop-Tarts, Wheat Thins, Ramen, Oreos, Slim Jim… etc. etc.

I’ve never been a strict adherent to healthy eating. I think there’s a time and a place for junk food (in moderation). But most of the stuff in the packages are not foods my daughter likes. She’s in an apartment-style dorm with a full kitchen and no meal plan, so she and her roommates have to shop for their own groceries. I’m pretty sure they already have a stock of M&M’s and ramen on hand.

I actually had another option in mind for a care package: Something just as unhealthy — but better quality — which she isn’t going to be able to find at her local Jewel/Osco. Something like this.

 

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Blather NaBloPoMo

Marshall McLuhan was Right

nablopomo_novemberDoes anyone study Marshall McLuhan any more? He was all the rage when I was in high school and college, even making a famous cameo in “Annie Hall.”

I never really got him, even though I was first exposed to his work in high school and am pretty sure I had to read him as a media major in college. I vividly remember sitting through a film of “The Medium is the Massage” in 10th grade English — even though that Wikipedia entry in the link seems unaware that such a film ever existed. It did. I could not make up anything as surreal as I remember that film being. I remember walking away feeling perplexed by the pun in the title and quotes from Buckminster Fulle and the sight and sound of the cellist used to illustrate some of McLuhan’s descriptions of “hot” and “cool” media.

And now that my memory of that film has been challenged, I will probably spend the rest of the night down the Google rabbit hole, looking for evidence that the film did indeed exist.

I’ve digressed a great deal from what I wanted to talk about when I decided to name this post after McLuhan. You see, even though I didn’t take to McLuhan’s theories, the phrase “the medium is the message” actually did stick with me, 44 years after I watched that film.

I think of that phrase all the time when I am writing, because I feel the media I use to record my thoughts has a huge effect on my process and the resulting work. I write differently with pen and paper than I do with a word processor…

…and tonight’s NaBloPoMo post is a particular challenge, because I waited until the day was done and I am attempting to write this using an app on my iPad.

And I’m afraid that the results are going to be lacking, which is too bad, because if I am going to get through 30 days of daily posts, I expect at least half will be composed this way.

Perhaps I’ll come out of this exercise a better writer on the iPad. Or better yet – a better writer overall.

Anyway: today was a good day.

REVISED: I did not imagine the film – someone else remembered it too, and it looks like it’s available on YouTube. I may have to watch and see if I appreciate it more than I did at 14.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

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Blather Empty Nest NaBloPoMo

Re-Entry

re-entry

NaBloPoMo November 2014My sister had planned to visit me this weekend, but the weather got in the way. Don’t get me wrong: we’re both really happy to see the state get a little rain — but we’re both smart enough to know that driving on wet roads in this state can be treacherous, especially during the first storm after months and months of hot and dry weather, which tends to make the asphalt all the more slippery.

Besides, the only thing worse than driving alone on the 5 from Sacramento to Los Angeles is doing it in inclement weather. So I supported my sister’s decision to stay home last night. Instead, we talked: about how relieved she was that she didn’t have to worry about the dog she would have left in the care of a friend… and how lonely it’s going to be over the next two weeks while she has her house all to herself.

“I really haven’t adjusted to the empty nest,” she said. And that makes a lot of sense: Even though the youngest of her three children is now a sophomore at UCSC, the other two have periodically cycled back home a few times… so her nest has never really been all that empty. Until now.

I haven’t adjusted to mine, either. How could I? After we left our daughter at her dorm back in August, I immediately went into preparation mode for my hysterectomy and have spent the last six weeks recovering from that. The surgery took a lot more out of me than I expected it would. While the pain wasn’t all that debilitating after the first week, I was surprised at how fatigued I was. I had no problem at all following my doctor’s order to take a daily nap. I had even fewer issues with the admonition to let my husband do all the heavy lifting and housework.

But after six weeks of near-isolation, I’m slowly beginning to re-enter the world. I work at home and a couple of weeks ago, began putting in half days. I had to: we had an event on Tuesday that needed to be managed, and by golly — I did so, even though I needed to rely on others to get there and I wound up spending all of Wednesday in bed. It was a start.

I expect my re-entry will accelerate after Monday, when I expect my doctor to give me permission to drive again. Once I get the OK, I won’t have to be confined to the house… and I’ll be able to resume normal activities.

The problem is, I’m not sure what those are any longer.

For 18 years, my life was dictated by the needs of my daughter. My days were planned around HER schedule: I piggybacked shopping and errands and socializing around school drop-off and pick-up and playdates and athletics. And now…?

My re-entry consists of finding a reason to leave the house.

My re-entry needs to be social: I am going to have to plan coffee dates and lunches the same way I used to meticulously put together playdates and classes when my daughter was little.

My re-entry needs to be physical: Menopause has kicked my butt and made it large. I need to force myself to be active. I’m probably not going to be able to handle strenuous exercise just yet, but I think my doctor will applaud a commitment to make sure I get some walking in each day. After that… who knows? Maybe I’ll join a gym again, or maybe I’ll just take some classes. I used to like to dance — maybe I’ll try that.

My re-entry needs to be personal: For a long time, I was a committed blogger — and then, I stopped. Part of that was pressure from family, who did not like it when I shared their stories. I understand that and adjusted the way I wrote and the things I wrote about, but I never could understand exactly where to draw the line. It was easier just to stop trying.

And once I landed the client that keeps me busy working on marketing events, writing for myself took a back seat to activities that pay the bills. The thing is, during those years when I was a stay-at-home mom focused on raising a child, I credited this blog with keeping me sane. I think now that my child is all grown up and on her own most of the year, I need this outlet more than ever.

So on a whim, I decided to commit to this month’s NaBloPoMo activity and today – November 1 – is my first entry. I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it through the entire month. I’m a slow writer and have two more events this month, which means that some of my posts may be no longer than a Facebook status update. The Thanksgiving holiday weekend will also be a challenge, because with all that family around it’s hard to find the solitude I need to put my thoughts out there. I’m not even sure I can write that well any longer — it’s been such a long time since I’ve done so consistently.

But I am sure I need to re-enter the world. And this is a start.

 

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Blather

Where I’ve Been and Where I’m Going

road

It’s been a rough three months.

My daughter started college in a city nearly 2,000 miles away and just like that! We have an empty nest. A few weeks after that, I had to submit to something I’ve been trying to avoid for years: a total hysterectomy. I’ve been feeling like a woman torn apart, both figuratively and literally.

I started blogging eleven years ago. It was both a creative outlet and therapy, and for a long time I credited it with keeping me sane. But this year, I have had difficulty finding the words for how I’ve been feeling — not to mention how hard it’s been to make the time while trying to earn the money we need to pay for the child’s college expenses. That said, I have missed it.

Earlier this year, as the empty nest loomed larger, I wondered if I should give up the SoCal Mom identity I’ve used since 2003, when my little girl really was a little girl. Because of my domain name and my Twitter handle, I receive an unbelievable amount of pitches for things like diaper bags and toddler toys. But parenthood goes beyond your children’s baby years. My daughter may be a young adult now – but raising her these last eighteen years has irrevocably changed me. Even when she is 50 and I am 90, I will always be her mother.

So I’m keeping SoCal Mom. It’s the name I used to stake my little Internet claim and I’m not ready to give it up, even if I need to shift gears a bit. For a while, I tried to focus my writing here on travel pieces and local attractions. One of the ways my husband and I have been adjusting to life without our daughter is by returning to a bit of the lifestyle we led before she was born: Every weekend, we try to get out and about and explore this fabulous region we live in. We joined the Huntington Museum and are determined to get our money’s worth by visiting the place once a month. We take our cameras and photograph the transformation of Downtown Los Angeles (and often get there via the Red Line, which adds to the adventure). The two of us have always enjoyed taking little road trips, so when we hear of something happening that sounds fun to see, we get out and see it.

And we still travel occasionally. Moving our daughter to Chicago gave us an opportunity to explore that great city. I have posts to write about all of that, and I think SoCal Mom is a good place to do it. So that is what my focus will be here.

But I still need a place to work out my thoughts and feelings.

Over the summer, my sister and I made yet another attempt to write a blog together. It’s called Two Drinks Away, and we conceived it to be a conversation between sisters. We haven’t done as much with it as we would like: Linda is dealing with some of the same life changes as me (empty nest and a newish full time job), which is one of the reasons we think we’ll actually get some good conversations going there. But finding the time — and the energy — is going to take some work. And my participation has not been helped with the recovery from my surgery, which has taken a lot out of me. Anyway, I wrote about my fears about my surgery over there and will continue to post about the journey from stay-at-home San Fernando Valley mom to…

…I don’t know. Fabulous, fascinating mature woman? I hope.

Let the journey begin!

 

 

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Blather Original Blogsta

Another Year, Another BlogHer

On Friday night at BlogHer, I found myself in deep conversation with a woman who was in the process of reinventing herself after sending the last child off to college. You know, much like I’m trying to do. She told me she had just sold her business, which consisted of a couple of hobby and crafts stores in the San Diego area.

“You look so familiar,” she said to me. “Are you a scrapbooker?”

And that’s when I had to laugh… because just that morning, I was featured in the BlogHer conference’s opening video, where it was made emphatically clear that I am not the sort of woman who keeps a scrapbook:

 (My apologies to her, and to any of my crafty friends and people who blog about crafts and scrapbooks. I do actually admire you and your creativity; I don’t simply share your abilities.)

Since 2003, this blog has been the repository of all my creative energy. There have been years when I’ve poured everything I’ve got into it, and there have been years when my bandwidth has been stretched so thin that I don’t have much left to give. That’s kind of where I am right now: This transition from being a “mommy” to whatever it is I’m becoming should be fodder for lots of emotional posts (and I might feel better if I used the blog as a kind of DIY therapy, where I could write it all out). But my kid is starting college in just a few weeks, and every hour I spend writing a personal blog post is an hour where I’m not earning the money I need to pay for said college.

So this post is going to be brief. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

In 2005, when I attended the inaugural BlogHer conference I wrote a total of 22 posts about it.

Last year, I wrote just 2.

I don’t want anyone to think this is an indication of diminishing interest or returns from attending the BlogHer conference. While none of them has lived up to the magic of the first one, each has had its own energy and takeaways.

In 2005, just being in a room with a couple of hundred other blogging women was a revelation. Back then, I had to explain to most of my friends what a blog was (that is, if I even told them that I kept one)… and that explanation would usually morph into a conversation about why I would do something as crazy as write about my life in an online forum for the whole Internet to see.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had a conversation quite like that. These days, I don’t have to tell anyone what it means to be a blogger — although I am often asked why I continue to do it when I don’t make any money from it, or why I continue to attend the BlogHer conference (especially when there are now so many other gatherings where women can network with brands and work on monetizing their output).

I have never been to those other confabs. I’ve got nothing against them. I simply don’t have the funds to attend more than one big conference per year (and some years, I don’t even do that). I keep coming back to BlogHer because that’s the one that made me realize I could do bigger things with my little blog. There were people there in 2005 who are still in my life, and I get to see them at BlogHer.

I am one of those people who comes to BlogHer for the sessions. I hear a lot of grumbling from folks who feel the sessions aren’t advanced enough, and when I hear that, I think that I must have a blogging disability or something, because after 11 years of being a blogger, I always walk away from BlogHer with some new knowledge or insight or skill that I did not have before.

I come to BlogHer for the connections. I’m not talking about the brands on the expo floor (although I enjoy a good trade show as much as anyone and wholeheartedly participated in this year’s “selfiebration” contests to win prizes). This year, I spent a lot of time up in a suite hosted by the folks at California Women Lead, a non-partisan organization dedicated to promoting more women to serve in public office, where I met some smart, intelligent, capable women who are making things happen. I attended a reception hosted by EMILY’s List, where I met some of the women who are running for office this year in California (including Sandra Fluke, who expressed an interest in appearing on my MOMocrats podcast! Fingers crossed!)

I come to BlogHer for inspiration. The annual Voices of the Year presentation is really the heart of the BlogHer community. The essays and images chosen by the entire BlogHer community are both funny and sad (sometimes all in the same reading). The Voices of the Year touch me deeply and make me want to be a better writer (and also leave me a little bit depressed, because — so far — I’m not there yet).

In 2012, I had the privilege of actually working behind the scenes on the conference and I got to be intimately involved in the production of VOTY with Polly Pagenheart and Shannon Carroll. This is an experience I am truly grateful for, and has made the VOTY session all the more special to me.

So you would be surprised to learn that this year, I did not stay for the entire VOTY persentation. I was surprised, too — but the most important reason I come to BlogHer is for the people I never get to see anywhere but a BlogHer conference. VOTY ran late (as it usually does), I needed to be in that California Women Lead suite at 8:00 — and there was a dinner organized for some of my favorite OG blogging women, which I did not want to miss. So I chose spending some quality time with quality friends over staying for the entire VOTY presentation (and the reception that followed).

You see, BlogHer is about hard choices. At any given time during the two or three days you’re there, you are faced with a multitude of offerings SIMULTANEOUSLY. I can’t be in two or three places at once, and frankly, I’m getting too old to handle the onslaught of information and people and products and noise without a little downtime. This year, I sorely missed the “serenity lounge” where you could escape to recharge (both your devices and yourself). Or maybe I just missed where it was? This year, whenever I was faced with a hard choice between attending a session or spending some quality time with friends, I picked the friends.

One thing I did not miss at this year’s BlogHer was the huge, overwhelming, circus-like energy I felt when the conference was in New York and San Diego. Don’t get me wrong: I enjoyed those conferences — a lot. But this year, back in the Bay Area, it was s smaller, quieter, more manageable event.

I liked it a lot.

There’s a lot of speculation in the community about where the conference will be held next year – or even if it will be held at all.

I hope a location is announced soon. And if I have the money in 2015, I hope I will go.

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Blather

BlogHer, Empty Nests, Uteri and Heart

Once again, I am at the annual BlogHer conference. I got here the old-fashioned way: I drove the 318 miles from my home to the San Jose Convention Center in a little over 5 hours (which isn’t bad, considering how many pee breaks I need to take these days).

I was lucky that I did not have to make the drive alone: I had a friend along for company, and for entertainment — the mix CD my daughter made me for my birthday (a fascinating melange that includes tracks from Alabama Shakes, Vampire Weekend, MIA, Rizzle Kicks and Sam Smith. Yes, it is soooo good…)

The drive was actually rather pleasant after a frantic week of trying to get ready. For one thing, I needed to get as much paid work done as I could before taking three days off.

And part of that prep was making sure my aging Volvo is ready for the drive. I remember I bought that car just a few days before making the same trip up to the second BlogHer conference in 2006. Has it really been eight years?

We had a major service done a few weeks ago, so all that was left this week was a tire check and rotation – which turned into a tire purchase. (Oops! I guess it’s been three years since I’ve done that.)

Somewhere my late grandfather is smiling, because he was always lecturing me on the importance of “good rubber.”

But even more important than getting the car ready was taking care of me: What I really needed to do this week was get a haircut (I mean color) and wax my brows and lip.

“Otherwise, everyone is going to know I’ve just given up,” I told my friend.

I confessed to her that I might be suffering a teeny bout of clinical depression, triggered by all the capital-C Changes I’m experiencing right now: Menopause… Empty Nest… and a Big, Scary Surgery in September.

Note: other than being overweight – AGAIN – I’m in fairly good health. The surgery is the final chapter in my battle with benign uterine fibroids and the fibroids have won; we’re just going to take out the works. It’s probably routine for the doctors – but a big, effing deal to me, mostly because the recovery time is about six weeks.

It was originally scheduled for July 30, which would have seriously interfered with my ability to help my daughter move into her dorm in August. So the new date is September 10, which seriously interferes with my ability to do anything else. (I have events I am planning for work on the 16th and on October 2nd, and I won’t be able to work them — nor reap the hourly wage for it.)

I guess there’s no such thing as a convenient time to let a doctor cut you open, and it would be really awful if a delay causes me some actual health problems (this was kindly pointed out to me by the oncologist I had to visit to rule out those actual health problems).

So I’m dealing with all this stuff and I confess I’ve had trouble doing any blogging at all lately (which makes it a little awkward to be a BlogHer attendee this year). My last post here was on my birthday – in May. I have been using my writing energy coming up with emails for work, and even began work on a brand new blog with my sister – but you haven’t heard anything about that here. (Until now – it’s called Two Drinks Awayfollow. Check it out. I’ll wait.)

To be honest, the only reason I registered for this year’s BlogHer is that I got a special rate because I attended the very first one. They’re calling this their 10th anniversary event, but that strikes me as a little off. It is the 10th BlogHer conference but the first one was held in 2005, so I always thought the anniversary would be celebrated NEXT year?

Maybe they’ll treat it like one of those actors who never ages and fete their 10th all over again in 2015.

Even though I’ve been somewhat under-enthusiastic about attending this year, it has nothing to do with the conference itself. At lunch today, my friend was stressing a little bit about the presentation she will be making here on Saturday. I had to remind her that she will be speaking to a room full of friends. OK, so it will be a huge ballroom with a couple of thousand people — but BlogHer attendees make up the most supportive, welcoming audiences I’ve ever seen.

She’s going to be fine. In fact, she’s going to walk off that stage feeling like a million dollars because of all the love in the room. While a lot of newer conferences focus on things like branding and marketing and monetization, this one still prizes the singular, emotional, one-of-a-kind point of view that each of us brings to our own personal blogs. Yeah, the marketing advice is still there — but the people who get the standing ovations here are the ones who have moved us by baring their souls.

“This conference has a lot of heart,” I told her.

She agreed.

Now, if only it can help me find my voice and passion for writing again – that would be sweet.

 
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Baby You Can Drive My Car Blather

The Day Before My Birthday

Birthday Card
My husband's romantic birthday greeting.

I celebrated my birthday this week.

I suppose “celebrate” is too strong a word. At my advanced age (58!! OMG!), all I could muster was an acknowledgement that another year had passed all too quickly (impossible to ignore, thanks to Facebook and dozens of birthday greetings from friends and acquaintances, which I have to admit: I do enjoy). I went out to lunch with my friend, Marsha and a rare weeknight dinner with my daughter, who paid for it with a $50 bill my husband had slipped her.

He could not dine with us: He had a business meeting on Tuesday night that he HAD to attend. He did, however, slip home when I was gone to leave me some flowers and this card:

Birthday Card
My husband’s romantic birthday greeting.

What can I say? We have never been mushy poetry people — we’ve always preferred to go for the joke. But I have to admit that this card grossed me out a little.

Maybe next year I might welcome a few hearts with my flowers.

But an unexciting birthday turned out to be a refreshing respite from the day that preceded it.

Over the weekend, my Volvo had a close encounter with a parking lot post. So Monday morning began with an appointment at the insurance adjuster’s.

I should count myself lucky: The two cases that preceded me were accidents where the car got totaled. All I was dealing with was a dented door and door jamb (or whatever you call that bit of the car below the door). But the complexity of the earlier appointments meant that the adjuster was running late, and I spent a lot longer time there than I had planned.

By the time I finished with the adjuster, dropped the car off at the body shop and picked up a rental, it was already lunch time. And I was late to another appointment. As I gathered my things to inspect my rental, the agent informed me that there was only an eighth of a tank of gas.

“We’ll mark it as empty, so feel free to return it that way,” he said.

Great. I had to buy gas. Another delay.

I was near Costco, so filled up there – and noticed that the tire pressure light was on.

I don’t know about you: But I always resist getting upsold at car rental agencies. I have auto insurance and have supplemental insurance when I use my American Express card to rent, so I’m covered. But I still get a nagging feeling every time I initial all the spots on the rental agreement indicating that I refused to pay an extra insurance fee… and that idiot tire pressure light was giving me visions of having to pay out of my own pocket for a tire blow-out. So I checked the car, determined that the driver’s side front tire was the low one and pulled up to the air dispenser.

The tire pressure light would not go out. I decided to get back out and try some more – and promptly locked myself out of the rental car, with the key in the ignition.

This would not have happened in my Volvo. I still don’t know how it happened in the rental. I am not mindful of actually choosing to lock the car.

So that’s how I found myself at a Chevron station in Northridge, without my phone or wallet (they were both locked in the car). I checked for money in my pocket and came up empty.

“You really are a loser,” my sister laughed when I told her this story.

Yes, I know.

I explained my situation to the clerk in the gas station mini-mart and asked if I could borrow his phone.

“It only goes to Chevron. But everyone has a phone these days. Ask one of them,” he said, gesturing to the line of people behind me — all of whom were doing all they could to avoid making eye contact with the crazy lady who was wandering about the gas station without money or phone. But the guy at the end of the line couldn’t escape me: I begged and he relented and I called the rental company…

…only to be told I needed to call a different number for roadside assistance. My gas station Samaritan needed to get back on the road, but he pointed to a dental office in the building next door and suggested that someone there might let me use a landline.

I didn’t have any better options, so I walked in to the dental office, told my tale of woe to the receptionist, and voila! She dialed the number for me.

I was on hold. I eventually got to talk to someone, and then I was on hold again, while she made arrangements for a locksmith to help me back into my locked-up rental car. All this time, I stood in the dental reception area, while the receptionist handled phone calls and appointments from another handset.

All in all, I was in that dental office for about a half hour and then waited another half hour for the locksmith, who advised me that I would have been better off ignoring the tire pressure light on the rental car.

Yeah. That’s useful advice.

It was now 2:26 on the dashboard clock. There was no time to grab lunch – just enough to pick up a couple of cold drinks for Megan and me before I picked her up from school. I drove up a block to Starbucks, ordered some ice tea and purchased a gift card for that receptionist who let me use her phone. I imagine her first thoughts upon seeing me back were “What now?” But she looked genuinely surprised – and pleased – when I handed her the card.

I told her she saved my life. And while that may be hyperbole, at that moment, that’s how I felt.

And a little less like a loser.

 

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Blather

April Was the Cruelest Month

April Cherry Blossoms in DC

It’s bad enough that the Ides of April coincides with Tax Day – but this year, we had the extra expense of a large auto repair bill (thanks, Volvo)… and some last-minute travel.

Megan got in to seven out of the ten colleges and universities she applied to. That was the good news. The bad news is that the three campuses that rejected her were all in California, and so what we were left with was a collection of very different schools thousands of miles away.

I exaggerate. We still had two California colleges to choose from: UC Davis and California State University, Northridge. While Davis is a well-regarded university and located in a lovely town, it’s a more rural experience – and they don’t offer a lot of the programs my daughter is interested in. And although CSUN is a much more dynamic school than it was in the 1970’s when I attended, it is still a commuter campus located practically in our back yard. This is not the college experience my daughter has dreamed of (nor the one I dreamed of for her).

The most attractive thing about CSUN is that the cost to attend for four years is exactly the amount we’ve got in my daughter’s college account. All the other choices will require us to supplement those savings, by a lot.

But let’s throw those practical considerations to the ground. Thanks to my personal history, there’s an emotional aspect to that choice: I transferred to CSUN after one Freshman quarter at UCLA — and I hated it. It was a decision made under duress, by a 17-year-old without much in the way of counseling. In the end, I spent a total of seven years — on and off — studying for a Bachelors degree I never actually attained (I went through the cap and gown thing but was 2.7 units short of what was needed for a degree, and did not bother to complete them).

I had a problem with life getting in the way: My first boyfriend died in a car accident my Sophomore year and I went into an emotional tailspin. I was depressed and flailing and looking for ways to dig myself out. I quit school, moved out of my parents’ house and threw myself into a full-time job at our local newspaper (working in the classified advertising department).  I ended up moving back home and continuing where I’d left off, but I discovered I wasn’t good at splitting my time between my education and the part-time work I needed to help pay for it.

I realize my dislike of CSUN has nothing to do with what is a perfectly good state university, but that doesn’t erase my memories and my general disdain for the place. So while CSUN was the obvious choice for financial reasons, and I hoped she might see it as a good choice for her, there was no way I was going to force my daughter to go there if she didn’t want it.

And not surprisingly: she didn’t want it.

So that left us with five very different choices that were all thousands of miles away.

So we spent our Spring Break exploring three of those campuses, which gave us the opportunity to take a family vacation, driving up and down the East Coast. And then, when we still could not decide, Gareth and Megan finished the month with a quick flight to Chicago to visit the one remaining choice. So we made the decision at the very last minute prior to the May 1 deadline.

Megan will be attending Columbia College Chicago. Ironically, that was the first school to send an acceptance package, way back in December. And at the time — before we got the bad news from her California choices — I put that one at the bottom of the list.

I think this just shows how prescient William Goldman was when he wrote “Adventures in the Screen Trade”: “Nobody Knows Anything.”

Sure, he was talking about motion picture producers. But I have found that phrase to be a useful summary of just about every aspect of my life.

Nobody knows anything. So you may as well plunge right in and see where life takes you.

Right now, it’s taking us to Chicago — at least three more times this year, as we need to return for her orientation, her move-in and then Parents’ Weekend.

And then … I don’t know.

Is it wrong to wish that time could just stop? Or that you could pick one moment and just stay right there? These are the things I think about when I ponder what’s in store for me.

Nobody Knows Anything. That can be a statement of optimism as well as fear.

Believe it or not, I choose optimism. At least, I’m trying to.

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Agents of Zeitgeist Television

Comedy is Hard

comedy

The #CancelColbert controversy over the weekend has gotten me thinking about the perils of being a comedy professional — which I am not. However, some thirty years ago I was an aspiring sitcom writer and was working behind the scenes in comedy television, and totally agree that Comedy is HARD.

So is navigating the many avenues of race and ethnicity in 21st Century America. It’s a subject I tend to shy away from — not because I don’t care, but because I know that no matter how hard I try to understand and articulate my feelings of support, I am destined to put my foot in it. I am a middle class white woman and yes – I am privileged.

But, like everyone else in this so-called melting pot of a nation, I am not defined only by middle-class whiteness. I can also relate to being the Other, because in some contexts, that is what I am. Back in the 1960’s, ours was one of just two Jewish families at my elementary school in a blue-collar neighborhood of the San Fernando Valley.

On top of that, my mom was an immigrant from Cuba. The other kids saw my olive skin (which is usually tanned a shade of warm brown) and pegged me as Mexican-American. But I didn’t fit in with the Latino kids either, as they were the ones most likely to call me names for being Jewish. Plus, I didn’t speak Spanish.

The point I am trying to make is that context matters. I cannot know the indignities my Latino and African-American and Asian and LGBT friends must suffer from the thoughtlessness of others – even my own. But what I can do is listen when they call me out on it and try to learn from my mistakes and not repeat them.

Which brings us back to Colbert and the Twitter controversy.

I am not going to describe what happened: It’s now been almost a week, and if you still haven’t heard what went down, you can get a pretty good idea of what the bit was about and how it blew up on Twitter here, here and here. And the reason for my long preamble above is to explain why I am not about to weigh in on the larger issue of racism.

But I do have a few observations about the nature of comedy and the writing of jokes.

And I want to emphasize that these are merely observations. Although I do have a little experience writing comedy scripts (and even sold a couple, which is how I ended up a member of the WGA), I was pursuing the area of character-driven stories – not sketches, and certainly not jokes. However, as the secretary to Johnny Carson’s staff of ten comedy writers at the Tonight Show in the late 1980s, I typed a ton of one-liners, gags, sketches and prop pieces. I was privy to a number of conversations about jokes, what makes a good joke and the nature of comedy. Finally, I got to see one of the all-time masters of comic timing and delivery — on good days and bad.

Observation #1: Writing Comedy is Hard.

My first duty every day while working at the Tonight Show was to haul in a huge mailbag filled with newspapers and distribute them to the writing staff: The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Herald-Examiner (this was when we had two papers!), the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Additionally, the writers read People, the National Enquirer, the Star, Harper’s, and several other periodicals filled with dire stories about wars and famines and terrible things that human beings do to one another…

…and they would take all of this material and by noon, turn in five or six pages of one-liners.

I have never understood how they could do that. I would read the same material (I had little else to do while they were writing their jokes) and usually ended up just feeling depressed by it. I could see that they possessed a very special talent. And that they were probably all a little bit sick. I concluded that you have to be crazy to become a comedy writer, because it helps.

Observation #2: Nobody knows anything.

This is the money quote from William Goldman’s book, “Adventures in the Screen Trade,” but I have found it applies to all creative endeavors. What works in the writers’ room may bomb in front of an audience. I’m sure Stephen Colbert was shocked at the backlash against him last weekend, because the bit worked in the writers’ room and it worked with his studio audience… but it didn’t work (out of context) on Twitter to an entirely different audience.

This is why Broadway shows have out-of-town tryouts and why Saturday Night Live does a full dress rehearsal in front of an audience before they do it for broadcast. And even those activities fail to offer full protection from a joke or routine that fails, because…

Observation #3: Funny is in the eye of the beholder. 

The Tonight Show writing staff when I was working there was a boys’ club. I used to cringe every time I typed a joke making fun of Oprah Winfrey’s weight or sketches featuring a “dumb blonde” with big boobs. I loved what actress Teresa Ganzel did with that character – I just didn’t share the guys’ opinion that there was something inherently funny about her appearance. And I thought that relying on this particular stereotype was a cheap laugh, much as I think toilet humor and foul language get you cheap laughs.

When I pointed this out, the guys’ reaction was that because I am a woman, I had no sense of humor. Thank goodness they didn’t actually attack or bully me for voicing my opinion, but this was 20 years before the invention of Twitter and it’s harder to do that when you’re having a discussion face to face. But I think this is at the heart of the controversy, and it’s a direct result of the lack of diversity on writing staffs (not just in late night comedy, but behind the scenes in television production across the board).

I hoped that by now, there would not have to be campaigns to find an African-American woman to join the cast of SNL – or that the staffs of writing nominees at the Emmys would be gender balanced. And finding Asian-Americans both in front of and behind the camera is a futile task.

Would diversity in the production of our entertainment make a difference in our culture? I can’t prove it – but I’m inclined to say “yes” – much as electing more women to Congress has resulted in a spotlight on more issues that women care about.

Observation #4: A good joke is bound to offend somebody.

This is another assertion the Tonight Show writers made that had me arguing back – but I’ve come around to agree with them. If you spend all your time trying not to offend anyone, you’re not going to say much of substance. It’s probably better to focus on making your work good than worrying about who might not like it, because…

Observation #5: The audience will forgive you anything — as long as it’s funny.

This was something Johnny told the writers, and I think it’s still true, despite observation #3. But because funny is in the eye of the beholder and we’ve become a much more fragmented culture, I don’t think we’ll have many more comedians like Johnny Carson, who appealed to such a wide swath of Americans. My nephew thinks Comedy Central’s Tosh is a riot, while I think he’s simply obnoxious.

I personally love Colbert and the way he calls out what I think of as conservative hypocrisy. And I really loved the way he handled himself when he was back on the air after #CancelColbert trended so high on Twitter.  But that doesn’t mean that his critics don’t have a point. I would love it if the next time his writing staff gets introduced at the Emmys, it better reflects the population of the United States (instead of its current makeup, predominantly of white dudes).

We are not a colorblind society and I’m not sure any more whether that’s even desirable. Imagine how much funnier our entertainment might be with full representation of our diverse population. I think it would rock.

 

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