Let it slide . . .

I haven't posted forever, and it's not because I haven't written anything. I've written four or five things, I just haven't finished them. Heck even the ones I have finished I haven't posted.

I don't know why.

I think it's because I'm busy. And sad. But mostly busy. And sad.

I can't talk about the things that make me sad though because if I did then some people would feel bad and other people would feel happy.

Do you ever get that feeling? Huh? That there are a few people who are secretly happy when you're sad? And secretly sad when you're happy? Ain't it the darndest feeling? Maybe that's why so many people pretend to be happy. Maybe they don't want to give anyone the satisfaction of knowing they're sad.

Adam Lambert was right. It's a mad world. A mad mad world. It's a sad world too.

A sad sad world.

Why does the world have to be so sad? I don't know what to do about all the sadness so sometimes I just do nothing. Besides curl up on the couch and watch Cake Boss. I don't even like Cake Boss, that's how mad the world of sadness is.

Same goes for photographic evidence. When I take my camera anywhere I feel this sense of responsibility to capture all the beauty and wonder around me. Or all the magical expressions on people's faces that you notice when you have a camera in your hand. But it's funny how when you focus on capturing a little bit of the magic, you begin to notice how much of it you're missing, and it pert near drives you batty.

You get me?

For every great shot I get of my kids playing sports, I see a hundred other great shots that I've missed, you know.

When I leave my camera at home I can just enjoy the greatness. Either that or ignore it.

But for some reason it's harder to enjoy the sadness. Or ignore it. And once sadness has your full attention you notice how much sadness you're missing. Sadness everywhere is just slipping through your fingers like water through a net, and all you can do is let is slide.

Like yesterday my daughter came home from school and told me that one of her friends was having a lump removed from her neck.

"It's probably nothing," I said because I could tell she was worried. And also because I meant it. I knew the mom, after all. Those things are usually nothing if I know the mom. But five minutes later my daughter got a text and it turns out her friend has cancer.

How is that possible? She's a cheerleader. Cheerleaders don't get cancer in five minutes. Especially if I know the mom.

She's not the only person I know who has cancer right now either. That's what kills me. It's like take that one sadness and multiply it by a billion. Then add all the other sadnesses of the people you know, that don't even start with C, and round it off. Then square root it, to the tenth power, and solve for X and Y and Z. That's a pretty complicated equation. And that's just the people you know.

Then take me, who hasn't got a clue about math. I can't solve nothin'.

Fer reals, my GRE scores proved I couldn't even get into Harvard Elementary School.

But if anyone ever needs someone to curl up on the coach and watch Cake Boss . . .

Beautiful Losers and Ugly Winners

I remember in college I wrote a poem about beauty. It won 1st place in a campus poetry contest and was published in the college literary magazine.

I remember the difficult task of reading it aloud in front of my peers, made even more difficult by the fact that each line was written in a new font, with it's own particular voice and slant.

What I don't remember is the title of that stupid poem. What did I call it, for goodness sake!? I have no idea. All that comes to mind is the first line of the poem, which was one of the deepest, most original questions I'd penned to paper to that point in my life:

Why couldn't the beast just stay a beast?

That was my thought. Belle falls in love with him as a beast, not as a handsome prince charming so why bother with the whole magical transformation for the sake of a happy ending? I mean, he's gonna get all big and hairy and cranky eventually anyway.

Am I right, or am I right?

Now that I've had four children and 17 years of exposure to the Disney channel I understand that it is simply a beautiful metaphor for the transformative power of love. It is inner beauty symbolized as outer beauty. It is the ultimate reward for sacrificing yourself for another.

Yada, yada, yada.

Blah, blah, blah.

But fer reals, what's so bad about being hideously ugly, anyway? Or freakishly freaky? Or even run-of-the-mill ordinary? That's what I always say.

And now I understand why I always say it. See a few nights ago I found out who I am and where I came from.

My mom.

I found this out when my sister and I took my mom and our girls to see our adorable niece in her high school production of Beauty and the Beast. It was amazing, and wouldn't you know it, my mom fell in love with the beast. She fell so hard that her heart literally broke in two when he changed into a stinkin' hot calendar model. It just wasn't the happy ending she was looking for, I guess. But then she digs vampires and the artist formerly known as Prince.

But I dig Adrien Brody, so who's counting.

Anyway, it's what's inside that counts. That's what my MIL always says to her two shortest children, and I believe it. I would phrase it differently if I were cross stitching it on sweat shirts for my two shortest children, but whatevah.

I might say something like: It's what comes out that counts!

What good are beautiful insides if they never come out? You have do DO SOMETHING beautiful to be beautiful. That's alls I'm saying. Like apologize or say thank you or smile with your eyes or give someone a hug or a compliment or a chocolate truffle.

Or make something authentic. Even authentic emotion is beautiful, especially if it's expressed as art.

I'm getting a little side tracked, but have you guys heard of the beautiful losers? That group of D.I.Y artists who are a bit on the visually disobedient side? Meaning they don't bow to societal art norms. There's a documentary about them on Youtube that you might love if, like me, you want to be a beautiful loser when you grow up. Truthfully, I'd settle for being a semi-attractive loser.

I came across the documentary on T.V. by accident one day, and I few things were said that made me realize I had found my clan.

To go from being just a regular freak to being a cool freak. It's kinda nice. We were pretty stupid. And great. Awesomely dumb. It was full of people who were speaking a language where you didn't have to be smart to understand. All you had to do was have a heart and that was enough. I think nerds, or the dispossessed, do sort of inherit the creative earth. If you're not dispossessed, why make art? If you're not feeling pretty rejected and all that stuff you'll probably be a little more content and not have this need to save your life making something. If you really feel something, if there is something inside you, it's important, almost a duty, to tell your story in a different way.

Different way . . . diFFerent wAy . . . diffeRent waY . . .

But I digress. I was talking about the beast, who isn't a beautiful loser at all, but more of an ugly winner. Who then turns into a beautiful winner.

Hmm m m m m . . . I'm not connecting the dots very well, am I? I guess I'll just let you connect them for me then.

So the ending to this post is a little bit anti-climatic because after the show I went to a lot of trouble to arrange a meeting between the beast and my mom. For photographic evidence purposes. But the beast had this kind soul and these piercing eyes and I got nervous, and when I get nervous with a camera in my hand dumb things happen. Like the time I saw Obama at Turtle Bay and I accidentally put the camera on self timer. I just kept pushing the button over and over, but the shot didn't go off until Obama had stepped out of my viewfinder, leaving only the bathroom door which he had exited in view. It was a lovely shot of a presidential bathroom, but still!

So when I tried to shoot my mom with the beast I didn't realize I had the camera on video mode so I have no photographic evidence to tie this post together.


I do however have a photo with my adorable niece, Dani, who played every part in the play but the kitchen sink. (She would have made a lovely kitchen sink too, btw.)

Good job, Dani!

I also nabbed one more photo with my daughter's favorite character, Lumiere, who, besides Dani, stole the show!

Ain't it just like light to steal the show from beauty.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

P.S. Here is the video of my mom with the beast, but there is an error so don't get excited because you won't be able to watch it.

Trust me, my mom is positively glowing. With light and beauty.

Wow! I stand corrected!

Feel free to judge me now

Remember that time I came home from church to find someone was sleeping in my bed?

And she had goldie locks?

Twas a What 'chu talkin' bout Phyllis moment of which I have successfully recreated, with photographic evidence, for your viewing pleasure.

And mine.

he he he he he he he he he he he he he

Improvement and Destruction: Take Care

I told a fib in my last post. I did know that Monterey was in California when I went there last week. I'm a California girl, after all. Least I would've been had my parents not fled to Utah when I was a baby. They needed some space from three people who were too dependent on my dad (and vice versa--no pun intended): 1. his ex girlfriend with the long blond ponytail, 2. his mother, and 3. his drug dealer. Or should I say his mood alteration manager?

If it hadn't been for those three people I would have been born and raised in Long Beach instead of born and almost raised in Long Beach.

As it turned out there were plenty of blond ponytails and mood alteration managers in Utah too. And my dad's mother knew how to dial a phone.

Am I making my dad sound like a two-timing mama's boy with a nasty mood alteration habit? I don't mean to, really, it's just that some people look worse on paper than they do in real life. In real life he looked like the kindest and gentlest soul you'll ever meet, with a really big heart, and a few really small issues.

Mother/other/mood issues.

But he had his reasons. Plus it was the sixties! Drugs in the sixties were like cigarettes in the fifties.

But anyway, if I wasn't born and almost raised in Long Beach, I would like to have been born and almost raised in Monterey. I kinda loved it there. I've decided that in my next life I want to be a Mexicalian. I really dig coastal cities of the Spanish kind.

And I really dig Steinbeck too. I even bought a Steinbeck book at Fisherman's wharf to read on the plane. Travels with Charlie. It's a book of observations Steinbeck makes about Americans in 1960 after he packs up a trailer and his poodle and, at 58 years old, travels incognito across the good ole' U.S.A. GREAT BOOK! He's very observant--my favorite observation being when he arrives in Seattle, a place he spent a lot of time in as a child, and says "Why is it that progress looks so much like destruction."

How's that for profound!?

It made me think deeply. About improvement. Improvement also looks a lot like destruction in a way, for you really cannot improve something without destroying something else. Or at least losing something else.

Now don't try to argue with me and say that improvement is always good because it does have its drawbacks. Take for instance my early years of marriage. I was hell-bent on improving my figure. And I did. I looked as good as I get given my physical limitations. But while I was super hot, I was also super itchy. With a B.

It takes a lot of time and energy to be super hot. My hub noticed that I had become consumed with myself and lost my pleasant personality. He also noticed that I had become a rude driver and said he'd rather take me soft around the edges in matters of both body and soul. And also in matters of the road.

Bottom line: Improvement takes a lot of focus and it makes some people itchy. That's alls I'm sayin, Phyllis.

So I'm home now and I left Monterey a few hours earlier than my hub--6:20 a.m. if you want to know the ugly truth--not because I wanted to, but because I needed to help my daughter get ready for her Preference date on Saturday night . In other words, I couldn't stand the thought of her looking super hot without me.

But for the record, she too paid a price for beauty, in the form of a restrictive corset. Let's just say she sustained some internal bruising from having to maintain such perfect posture all night. There are three things that are next to do well with perfect posture--breath, dance and laugh.

Case in point!

So on my way home from Monterey three things happened that have never happened before.

First, my hub texted me. I was sitting in the Phoenix airport waiting for my connecting flight and I had just sent him a text letting him know I had arrived safely. I don't know why I did it, since he goes for weeks without reading his texts, and he never replies, but within a few seconds I got a text back. Take Care it said. Such a kind and . . . unusual thing to say. Kinda tickled my throat for a sec.

Second, I wore my reading glasses in public. I had to in order to read the text.

Third, my plane almost went down over Salt Lake City. I was looking out the window at the time, when suddenly the ground underneath me started dancing around. The Rocky Mountains were shaking their groove thangs like there was no tomorrow. And honestly, I was pretty sure there was no tomorrow. For a fraction of a hair of a split second I thought HA! At least my house is wearing clean underwear! But then those two little words came to mind: Take Care. Had my hub had some sort of a premonition from the Universe? Had he been warning me with his text, bidding me a fond farewell?

It's freaky what two little words can do to you when Salt Lake City is rocking out beneath you.

I reached for my phone to send my hub a final text. But what would my final text say? It's so hard to decide when you're under pressure like that. Take Care, maybe? No, he'd think I was mocking him. Sorry I didn't take care like you asked me? No, too alarmist, plus it would be too weird if the plane didn't go down after all. I love you? Again, that would be too weird if the plane didn't go down.

As I was debating with myself about the perfect final text, the plane picked up speed and lifted it's nose to the sky. Up, up, and away, turning as it ascended above the airport so that all I could see was the long term parking lot, and my car right where we left it in lot 19A.

So close, and yet, so far away. And as they got farther and farther away they all looked so . . . pointless.

From my view in the air I could clearly see the path from the lot to the terminal where my hub and I had made our amazing race just days earlier, and it occurred to me how crazy we must've looked to God that day--me in my new cheetah print ballet shoes 40 paces behind my hub, who was moving like quick silver with both duffel bags slung over his shoulders.

God was probably like "Dude, slow down . . . take a load off. Your plane won't even be there for another 40 minutes."

Or maybe he just looked down in his infinite wisdom and thought, "Take care."