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Author, Historian, Storyteller

Humor, LifeLeave a comment

Let’s be honest.  Our new year’s resolutions don’t always work out . . . or even see the light of February.

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So not to jinx myself or anything, but here are the Top Ten Probable Outcomes of my Top Ten New Year’s Resolutions.

 

Resolution #1 – Retire the “fat pants” and move back into the regular wardrobe

Probable Outcome – Technically speaking I wear the “fat pants” more often than the size 8’s in my closet, so therefore they are actually my regular wardrobe thus rendering this resolution null and void.

 

Resolution #2 – Work on the puggles’ lack of obedience

Probable Outcome – “Puggles, ignore me . . . Good dogs!”  Nailed it!

 

Resolution #3 – Read more

Probable Outcome – Does my Twitter feed count?

 

Resolution #4 – Eat more fruits and vegetables.

Probable Outcome – I’ll take a pepperoni pizza with pineapple and black olives.

 

Resolution #5 – Work out on a regular basis

Probable Outcome – Okay, this one might actually happen simply because I joined the gym that my roommate goes to on a regular basis and she said she’d bring me along . . . kicking and screaming if necessary.

 

Resolution #6 – Finish all of the dishes every night before going to bed.

Probable Outcome – Start eating exclusively off of paper plates or directly out of the pan.

 

Resolution #7 – Go to bed at a reasonable hour

Probable Outcome – In comparison, 1:00 is definitely more reasonable then say 3:00.

 

Resolution #8 – Do yoga every morning

Probable Outcome – Keeping my legs straight as I bend over to put my socks on has got to be some sort of yoga move.  Right?

 

Resolution #9 – De-clutter my house

Probable Outcome – “What are you buying?”  “A flamingo, feather-duster pen . . . but I need it!”

 

Resolution #10 – Stop calling myself a Dumbass

Probable Outcome – Dumbass . . . Damnit!

LifeLeave a comment

It seems like everyone right now is reminiscing about 2013 and making grand plans for 2014.  And what better way to do that then to make lists, especially Top Ten lists.  To get in the spirit I will be doing a Top Ten list everyday for the next ten days.  So without further ado, I present to you my Top Ten New Year’s Resolutions.

  1. Retire the “fat pants” and move back into the regular wardrobe
  2. Work on the puggles’ lack of obedience
  3. Read more
  4. Eat more fruits and vegetables.
  5. Work out on a regular basis
  6. Finish all of the dishes every night before going to bed.
  7. Go to bed at a reasonable hour
  8. Do yoga every morning
  9. De-clutter my house
  10. Stop calling myself a Dumbass

New_Years_Resolutions

What are your resolutions?

Life, LoveLeave a comment

I love Christmas.  I love the sparkle of lights, the gaiety, the carols, the childlike wonder and excitement and the fact that people are generally nicer to one another.  It’s a beautiful thing.  But as an adult, I’ve discovered that the holidays also come with a melancholy.  A deep ache and yearning to be with those that we’ve lost, that is felt so much more acutely now than any other time of the year.  For whatever reason, I’ve noticed this more this year than in the past.  It’s very conflicting.  You know that they would want you to enjoy yourself and not spend your time grieving, but the more that you enjoy yourself the more that you wish they could be there with you.  It’s a bit of a vicious catch-22.

So you stuff those emotions down and like Clark Griswold you force yourself and all those around you to have the “Hap, hap, happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny fucking Kaye.”  I think we all know how that works out for all involved.  Instead of acknowledging and embracing the sadness, we try to ignore it which makes everything worse.  There is a beauty and simplicity to surrendering to the ache, feeling the loss, remembering the pain and love and having a good cry.  There is nothing wrong with missing the people that we’ve lost, but I feel like society says that after a certain point we should be over it, have moved on with our lives.

I don’t think it works that way.  Every loss, every hardship, every trial and tribulation leaves its mark.  Sometimes just a ding or a crack, but other times massive breaks that cause entire pieces to fall away and be lost forever.  So we rebuild.  We find new pieces to fill in the gaps and we fortify the weak spots.  But all of our hard work and care can be stripped away in a moment by the simple act of discovering a long lost ornament that was somebody’s favorite, or a particular Christmas carol coming on right as you’re making cookies that transports you back to a long ago time. A beautiful memory of a moment that you haven’t thought of in years.  A memory that rips through all of your fortifications and reminds you of what caused the breaks in the first place.

It hurts.  It’s suffocating.  It feels like you’ve been blind-sided by a truck and that you will never be able to move again.  You curse the pain.  You curse the breaks and yearn to be whole and unblemished again.  A clear pane of glass without so much as a smudge to obscure the view. Until one day you realize that the window to your soul is now made of stained glass, and you are so much more beautiful for it.  It is the heartaches and hardships that forge our true spirits.  The obstacles that we overcome and the love, forgiveness and trust that is used to fill in and fuse those cracks and breaks caused by all that troubles us.  We are wiser for our faults.  We are stronger for our breaks. We are happier for our losses. Thus forms the mettle of true character and what is life but a play of characters?  A dancing drama unfolding every second of every day.  Those that are remembered are the intriguing, the flawed, the intricate ones that touch our hearts and remind us that the best way forward is with our chins up. Reminds us that the best way to live is with our hearts and not our heads.

So to all of the characters, embrace the ache deep inside.  Acknowledge and feel your loss, but be grateful for all that you have not lost.  For all that you have in hand and all that lays before. You may be broken, pieced back together and still healing, but you are standing and you are beautiful. Best of all, you get to choose how best to put your window back together. Personally, mine is of puppies farting rainbows and butterflies . . . because that makes me giggle.

Cease to be Funny

Humor, LifeView all 3 comments
  1. My dad always said that if something was worth doing it was worth doing right, I apparently took this to heart when it comes to getting sick.
  2. That being said, I have the patience to be sick for a grand total of 2-3 days, after which point I start going stir-crazy and decide that I’m not sick anymore . . . my body on the other hand never really seems to agree with this timeline.
  3. If I’m actually willing to go to the doctor, it’s because people have started to ask me if I’d like a slide show at my funeral.
  4. My voice drops even lower than normal, to the point that I should really start talking dirty and charging everyone that calls me $1.99 per minute.
  5. No matter what kind of cold medication I use I will eventually develop some sort of allergic reaction to it including, but not limited to: dizziness, double vision and seeing things.
  6. If that Dragon insists on hanging out in the kitchen, the least he could do is wash the dishes and make some coffee!
  7. I don’t crave soup, I crave pizza.  So if anybody wants to bring over some pizza I would love you forever.
  8. I go from sleeping 5-6 hours a night to sleeping 10-12 hours per night.  Which means I know that I’m finally getting better the first night that I go to bed and lay there WIDE AWAKE all night because I’m still good to go from the previous night.
  9. At some point I will swallow a cough drop whole and almost choke and die.  It happens every time.  It’s like I’m still four years old.
  10. No matter what I am actually sick with, if you ask me what’s wrong I will tell you that I have the plague.

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So apologies for the radio silence this week.  Hopefully we will be back to our regularly scheduled programming next week.  Once I’m over the plague.

Life, Live and LearnView all 4 comments

Okay, so not completely unplugged.  I’ve spent the week sitting in front of a computer all day, but I have been without my phone.  It broke on Monday morning and my replacement doesn’t arrive until tomorrow . . . I’m hoping.  I’m not gonna hold my breath on that one, but my fingers are definitely crossed.  Surprisingly, being without a phone for a week hasn’t bothered me nearly as much as I thought that it would.  I learned a couple of things though.

  1. Contrary to popular belief, there have been no dire emergencies and the world did not end when I was without a computer to stay connected. Crazy I know!
  2. When I’m by myself in a public place, I use my phone to avoid interacting with the world around me. Instead of enjoying the breeze or watching the shadows play on the side of a building I recheck my email for the tenth time that hour. I kind of wonder how much of life I’ve missed out on?
  3. I obsessively check my texts, email, Facebook and Twitter accounts. I’ve almost given myself whiplash from constantly reaching for my phone to check . . . yet again.
  4. Despite that, not once I have I had something to say to someone, that it couldn’t wait until I got home or back to my desk at work.
  5. Nobody gives a crap that I haven’t “Checked-In” anywhere in the past week.
  6. I can get places and meet up with people without GPS or texting.  We kicked it old school and showed up at the appointed time and looked for each other!
  7. I’m more relaxed. Since there is no way for me to respond to anyone immediately, I don’t stress about needing to respond to someone immediately.
  8. It is kind of liberating not being available every second of every day.
  9. A small part of me hopes that my phone gets delayed for another day or two.
  10. Once it does arrive, I think I’m going to start turning it off instead of just putting it on silent when I arrive places. Life exists outside of my smart phone.

shoesgrass

Inspiration, Life, Live and LearnLeave a comment

In my quest to build a platform for my work I have found myself chatting with a cornucopia of people from across the globe. More than a handful of those people that I have chatted with have been young woman – late teens into their early twenties.  Quite a bit of my work speaks to them, especially Heroines of History. So we chat about that, we chat about literature, we chat about what they’re studying in school and what they want to do once they’re out of school.  Without fail these young women open up and tell me the career that they long for and then type something along the lines of, “Well, that’s the dream.” I can feel the longing dripping from the screen.  It’s not like they are saying that they want to be a princess, bring peace to the Middle East or eradicate world hunger. Instead their dreams are to own their own business, or be a publisher. To these women I always have the same response, “You are using the wrong word.” I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, words are incredibly powerful. Make sure you choose the correct one.  To these women I say that that is not a dream. That is a goal and the first is much different than the second.

Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream, a dream that one day America would live up to those sacred words put down by our forefathers that this nation was founded on the belief that all men are created equal. MLK Jr. knew words.  He knew the power behind them and he chose carefully.  He did indeed have a dream, not a goal.  A dream implies that something is unrealistic; something that you hope for even though you know it is unattainable.  A goal implies something that you work toward, something that can be achieved. Martin Luther King Jr. did not have a goal because he knew that what he wished for was not attainable in his lifetime.  He knew that it was unrealistic to think that he would cross that finish line himself. But that didn’t stop him from dreaming; didn’t stop him from acting and moving forward so that one day his dream would become someone else’s goal and the race would finally be run. That is a dream. An admirable dream, and one that I hope we can achieve some day.

When a young woman tells me that her dream is to publish young adult novels I can’t help but tell her that she is using the wrong word.  That is not a dream.  That is an attainable goal. A goal that she can work towards and achieve in her lifetime, and she doesn’t need luck or well wishes from me. Instead, I wish her patience to stay the course, because any goal that is truly worth achieving takes time. I wish her perseverance to push through the hard times and never give up. I wish her the insight to recognize opportunities when they appear and most of all I wish her the courage to go after those opportunities, or create her own, with all of her heart.

This is what I tell young women. Learn the difference between a dream and a goal.  Dreams are to be enjoyed, never stop dreaming.  But goals are to be achieved, and the only way to do that is to work like you’ve never worked before.

Stairway to the sky

Life, Love, MothersView all 2 comments

Losing a loved one is never easy.  But a conversation that I had the other day has really gotten me thinking about whether or not there are degrees of loss.  Are there circumstances that make a loss easier or harder to bear?  I know that past experiences can make a big difference.  The loss of a dear pet, if that is the first death a person has encountered, can be devastating and debilitating.  On the other hand I had lost all four of my grandparents, a couple of great aunts and my mother by the time that I graduated from college.  When my childhood dog died I was sad, but since I had been through worse several times before, I was able to grieve the loss while remaining fully functional.  In essence it’s the same loss, but received very differently.  It doesn’t mean that I loved my dog any less, I was simply more accustomed to the processes involved in loss and I knew first hand that the profound ache deep inside does eventually lesson and in some cases fades into the background.

grief

But back to this conversation that I had. A friend told me of her aunt who suddenly passed away due to an aortic rupture, leaving behind college aged children. My heart immediately went out to not only her, but her cousins whom I have never met.  Especially her cousins who found themselves in the same shoes that I walked in ten years ago.  However, I feel like their path is even harder than the one I took. When I said this to my friend, who knows my history, she assumed that I meant that it is easier when you can see the loss coming instead of having someone ripped away from you with no notice.  I was taken aback by this, because that hadn’t even crossed my mind, although there may be something to be said for that.  What was in my mind was that these girls had known their mother, had sought her advice and counsel. They lost the person that comforted them when they were sick and celebrated with them when they had victories.  My mother had not been any of those things to me, she’d been too sick.  So in essence I lost the construct in my mind of what a mother is, not the physical embodiment of a mother.

To me, this seems like an easier loss to bear.  Yes, it comes with its own complications and heart aches.  I’ve had more than one person look at me with grief-wracked eyes while uttering that “I lost something that I never had.” Which is true.  When I was home sick from school I not only took care of myself, but my mother as well.  I never confided in her, I never sought her advice.  When something in my life goes horribly wrong, I don’t wish that my mother was with me, because the last time that she provided me with comfort and security was so long ago that I can’t remember.  So when she died, I didn’t lose these things.  I lost the dream of what I had always wanted her to be, but deep down I had always known that that was never possible anyway, so I don’t know that I can even count it as a loss.

These girls did lose all of that.  My best friend who lost her mother several years ago lost all of this.  She lost her best friend and her soul mate.  They stuck together through thick and thin and when her mother died, a piece of her died with her.  This kind of loss seems to me much harder to bear than the loss I experienced.  The same loss, yet different degrees of loss.  I’m still trying to wrap my head around it, maybe it makes sense to you.

Happiness, Life, LoveLeave a comment

1. Take time for snuggles.

Puppy Z on Jo's Lap 4

2. A cold wet nose first thing in the morning is more effective than any alarm clock.

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3. Patience is a virtue.

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4. Where there is a will, there is a way.

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5. One should always put their best face forward.

Photo by Lori Fusaro

Photo by Lori Fusaro

6. Chores are more fun when you have help.

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7. If all else fails take a nap.

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8. Sometimes you have to get away from it all.

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9. Take advantage of every opportunity that comes your way.

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10. Best friends are priceless.

Puppies Heart Tails

Humor, LifeLeave a comment

I love comedy, and I like to think that I have a good sense of humor.  I take pride in the fact that I can generally make the people around me laugh.  It is my defense mechanism.  My particular brand of comedy falls into self-deprecating humor.  I will make fun of myself to get a laugh more often than I will make fun of somebody else.  Probably because of this I don’t embarrass easily. This being said, there seems to be a branch of comedy that has infiltrated the main stream that no matter how open I try to be, I can’t enjoy. It’s the comedy that goes a step beyond embarrassment and into humiliation. I will go from loving a movie to wanting nothing to do with it as soon as that line is crossed.

Self-deprecating humor doesn’t bother me, if Jim Carey wants to make as ass out of himself to get a laugh, more power to him. I don’t necessarily find it funny, but it doesn’t bother me.  Everything that he does is his choice.  There is no loss of control. He is not being forced to do anything. In contrast, the scene in BRIDESMAIDS where everybody gets sick and there aren’t enough bathrooms to go around, so one woman uses a sink and another winds up taking a crap in the middle of the street, I don’t find that the least bit funny.  In fact I find it in very poor taste.

I know what you’re thinking; you think I don’t like it because the whole scene is about poop. Nope, I have nothing against poop jokes.  Poop jokes abound in Shakespeare and I love his work.  I don’t like it because that situation isn’t embarrassing, it’s humiliating.  The so-called comedy is derived from a situation, that if it happened in real life, the person would be absolutely mortified. They might shrug it off and slink away, or even try to make a joke out of it, but if you looked into their eyes, you would see that a part of them had just died inside. It is a degradation of the human spirit so cleverly disguised, that people no longer see it as such and it becomes acceptable.

In general, I am not an overly empathetic person. I have never lost sleep because of the starving children in Africa or because of the atrocious conditions of our inner cities. Some people are made to be humanitarians. I am not. So why does this bother me so much?  It isn’t somebody I know or me being humiliated after all. I think it is because laughter is one of the most powerful forces in our arsenal, and using the humiliation or degradation of others for comedy, for laughter, is one of the lowest forms of entertainment.

I don’t find that funny.

Embarrassing situations on the other hand I find very funny. I love slapstick, or situational comedy. Give me a guy stepping on a rake and getting smacked in the face and I will laugh until my sides ache.

Garfield - Rake

The kid on the bike delivering papers in WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING makes me laugh so hard I cry every time I watch the movie. For me the difference lies in the semantics. These are embarrassing, not humiliating. If no one were around to be witness you would either continue on with your day and forget that it ever happened or find the humor in it and tell a friend later to share the laugh. If no one is around to witness something humiliating, you thank God up above for your good luck and never tell anyone that it happened, but you will always remember. To me that’s the difference. Humiliation requires judgment from others. Embarrassment can be a solo activity.

And yes, that is very subjective.  I am quite sure that there are things that I would only find mildly embarrassing, while somebody who is more sensitive might find the same thing humiliating.  But my general rule of thumb is that if it is something that you will look back on in ten years and feel ashamed then it belongs in a tragedy.  If no, then it’s fodder for comedy.

Happiness, LifeLeave a comment

For the better part of my life I have felt like I didn’t fit in.  Like I was on the outside looking in.  Even in my family I was the odd man out – mom had black hair, dad had black hair, sister had black hair, I was practically blonde.  On vacations people would always comment to my sister that it was so nice of her to bring her friend on vacation.  To which she would always reply, “She’s not my friend, she’s my sister!”  Kids are cute. I didn’t fit in at school either.  I was a very serious, introspective kid.  It was hard for me to cut loose and just have fun.  Carefree was rarely a part of my vocabulary.  But I had a couple of good friends, and thirteen excruciatingly long years later I graduated and was off to college.

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Where I also didn’t fit in.  I was at the number one party school, and I didn’t really like to party.  Awkward!  I auditioned and was accepted into the BFA program where I would intensively study acting for three years with the same group of people . . . whom I didn’t fit in with.  It was an ongoing theme in my life and I had come to accept my place on the outskirts.  People tolerated my presence, and for their tolerance I made sure that I never over stayed my welcome.  I accepted that they didn’t necessarily want me around, but weren’t going to complain about it while I was there.  Here also I made a couple of close friends, and four rather quick years later (I kept myself so busy with productions the time flew) I graduated.

Enter the real world, and I found that I kept finding myself feeling the same way.  Different day, different scenario, same shit.  Until one day I realized that through out everything there was only one constant – me. Through all of these varied experiences and drastically different people the only thing that had stayed the same was my opinion of myself.  I felt like I didn’t fit in anywhere and therefore everywhere I went I didn’t fit in.  It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. A really crappy prophecy.

So I decided that since I had tried changing everything else, the only thing left to change was myself.  Which is harder than it sounds, let me tell ya!  But slowly, over many years I convinced myself that people did want me around.  And they wanted me around for me.  It also helped that I started to be able to recognize the people that didn’t actually want me around and I accepted that and moved on to find other people.  Problem solved, right?  Wrong.

I was out the other night with friends, and for whatever reason the next thing I knew my head was filled with all of those old thoughts.  They’re talking with each other not me, therefore they must not want me around.  We’re doing pictures and everyone has their arms around each other except me, so clearly they don’t want me around.  I was tacked on to the experience instead of being a part of the experience and I felt like crap. It was horrible!

And then I realized, that once more I was getting in the way of my own happiness.  I know for a fact that these friends like having me around, they’ve told me.  One of them expressed that exact feeling while we were out that night. And perhaps they were talking amongst themselves because I was reading my menu and not paying attention.  Perhaps nobody put their arm around me for the picture because I was hesitating on the outskirts like I wasn’t going to be in the picture and then tacked myself on last minute.  Maybe, just maybe, everybody else was wondering what was up with me and why I was being so sullen. Maybe I didn’t fit in, because I didn’t let myself.

Where did that come from?  Why did I all of a sudden transport myself back to the old Kat who hated her self? I don’t even know what caused the flashback, but there it was. I find it truly amazing how our bodies and our minds will hold on to things like that and all it takes is one trigger to open the door and transport you back.  Weird!  Too bad you can’t flip back to your present self as quickly.  Therefore for the foreseeable future I will be reminding myself on a regular basis that I’m pretty cool and people want me around – ala Stuart Smalley cause that makes me giggle.  So if you see me muttering to myself, never fear.  I’m no crazier than usual!