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Author, Historian, Storyteller

Live and Learn, WomenLeave a comment

Don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate the role that pantyhose play.  There are definitely days that I am a fan of the “control top.”  And who hasn’t put on their last pair of clean dress pants only to immediately spill coffee all over them and thank the stars for a pair of dark colored nylons to cover up the fact that you decided to sleep in an extra fifteen minutes instead of shaving your legs?  These are all good things, and for people as lily white as me, a good pair of pantyhose is the only way you will ever see my legs with that oh so attractive tanned hue.  But unless you happen to be the exact size of the pantyhose model, they don’t fit right.  If you’re short you get build up at the ankle.  If you’re tall the crotch lands just above the knee.  I don’t even think they fit right on averaged sized people and don’t get me started on knee highs!  There has got to be some sort of pantyhose fairy that goes around to make sure that whatever size you buy, no matter how long you study that little chart on the back, something about them won’t quite fit right.

I am well aware of this. Yet somehow I always forget while getting dressed in that rosy-hued, half-asleep oblivion of the morning where I believe that I will actually be comfortable wearing women’s clothing all day, that at some point during the day there will be a pantyhose meltdown.  A point at which the pantyhose revolt, and refuse to play nicely anymore.  They stage a coup on your comfort and sanity and you wind up with the crotch twisted up against your inner thigh which cuts off circulation to your other leg a little bit and no matter how much you tug, shimmy and cajole they won’t budge!  So you fight and struggle with them until finally in your frustration you pull just a little too hard, or your nail catches just so and a huge run screams down the length of your leg faster than you can exclaim, “WHAT NEW SWEET HELL IS THIS?”

Sometimes this melt down happens at the end of the day.  But on some glorious, I love being a woman days it happens the second you are far enough away from the house that it is no longer practical to go back and remedy the situation.  Forget a horse, my kingdom for a razor and some shaving cream so that I can rip these suckers off once and for all and go about my day like the somewhat sane person that I usually am.  Although that’s not really an option either, because you just know that the second you start, that woman from the office down the hall with the styled hair, perfect make-up and never a seam out of place on her matchy-matchy outfits will walk in and give you that look.  You know the look that I’m talking about.  That haughty, “You call yourself a woman, get your act together!” look.

So you suffer in silence, escaping to the bathroom on regular intervals to tug and cajole but usually only succeed in making the situation worse.  Until one time you’re in there losing the battle and she walks in.  You brace yourself for the look, but it never comes.  Instead she gives you a look of commiseration and takes off her suit jacket so she can fight with her rogue bra strap.  Then it hits you, she’s not perfect.  Like you, she’s just trying to keep her shit together and make it through the day.  So you shelf that little green jealousy monster, and adjust the bra strap of the perfect stranger.  Why?  Because solidarity sister, our clothing is out to get us; we have to stick together.

Characters, Happiness, Live and LearnLeave a comment

I have been struggling lately, and have struggled before, with why I write.  Who wants to read it? Why does what I have to say matter?  This is probably why the majority of what I have written has never been read, and I’m not fishing for compliments or validation here.  Anybody that has “gone fishing” before knows that all of the praise in the world doesn’t make a bit of difference if you don’t already believe what they’re saying yourself.  That’s the funny thing about praise.  Those who need it can’t hear it, and those who don’t need it, can.  I’ve always pondered this but never shared the question with others, until today.  Today I posited this question to my friend Stacey, who hands down has read more of my writing than any other person.  She’s my sounding board for my novel, she’s my confidant, she is brilliant and beautiful and talented and one of my best friends.  Her response to me, was to share an epiphany that she had recently had herself – maybe you can’t find the answer, because you’re asking the wrong question.  What does your writing mean to you?  How does writing make you feel?  When all is said and done, isn’t that what really matters?

Cue my brain exploding.

But in a good way.  What does writing mean to me? I write because I always have, it’s always been the best way to express myself.  I write because it is a part of me, the best part of me.  I write because if I didn’t the thoughts and stories and imagery would get so backed up and piled up in my head that I wouldn’t be able to see straight for the commotion.  I write because sitting in a dimly lit corner with a notebook and pen, or a blinking cursor, makes me happier and gives me more fulfillment than anything else.  Yes, a blank page terrifies me, but it is also my best friend because there is always more blankness to be filled.  There is always more room for another story, another character, another thought.  There is no feeling in the world like putting pen to paper and letting a world unfold before you.  Like letting a character loose in that world to live their life.  I don’t care how much thinking I do before hand, how much outlining I do, I never know where a character is going to go or what they’re going to say until the pen hits the page.  Sometimes they’re predictable, but sometimes they surprise me.  Captain Henry breaks my heart.  I want to like him, I want him to be a good man so badly it hurts, but he does bad, bad things.  And every time he does my heart breaks all over again.  He does good things too, but the lady of justice stands sentinel in my heart weighing his deeds, and I have no idea which way the scales will tip when the story is finished.  I hope they tip to the good, but I don’t know.  I don’t know that he does either, we’ll have to wait and see.  Maybe I just have to like him despite the bad things that he does, accept him with all of his faults.  I talk about Henry like he’s a real person, because to me he is real.

This is why I write. Good, bad or indifferent, I write because it makes me happy.  Writing completes me.  That’s the answer.

Dating, Happiness, Live and Learn, LoveLeave a comment

I’ve spent quite a bit of time lately talking with a friend who is in a bad relationship – and we’re talking bad with a capital B – and it’s really got me to thinking that maybe it’s better to be alone than with the wrong person.  It seems like a lot of people stay in bad situations largely because they fear being on their own.  As someone that has been a single more than I have been a couple I really don’t understand that.  True, I’ve never been in a long-term relationship, or a marriage so I can’t fully relate, but I can’t help but think that alone has got to be better than bad.

Now that’s not to say that I want to stay single for the rest of my life.  I would love to find someone that I can spend the rest of my life with.  That’s something that I want very much, and there are times that it weighs very heavily on me that I haven’t come anywhere near that.  But I have also learned that I can be very happy on my own, which, I think, is why I don’t put up with guys treating me like crap.  I walk away.  Yes it sucks to watch something crumble.  It sucks to go from “+1” to “1”, but I’ve never regretted the decision to walk.

I’m single now, and I’m in one of those “it sucks to be single” moods.  Which is ridiculous because I have so much going on right now that my brain would probably implode if I tried to throw a relationship in on top of everything else, but hey the heart wants what the heart wants.  I think that’s the saying anyway.  But I know one thing about my heart, it knows exactly what it wants and exactly how it should be treated and listening to my friend’s tribulations has firmly cemented that conviction.  So for now I can leave all the “Mr. Wrongs” at the bar and walk away knowing I made the right choice.  Sometimes being alone is better, because with the right friends even though you’re alone, you’re not lonely.

Fathers, Live and LearnLeave a comment

With summer coming up, for some of us it’s already upon us, there seems to be a lot of talk about kids and boredom.  Which kind of makes me scratch my head.  Growing up, my sister and I were not allowed to be bored.  Okay, we were allowed to be bored, but my dad made it very clear from a very young age that we DID NOT want him to “solve” our boredom problem. His theory was that there were always things to do, so how could someone possibly be bored.  Therefore he was more than happy to direct you to one of those tasks like: sweeping out the garage, hauling firewood, picking up dog crap in the backyard, sanding the front deck (not with power sanders mind you, a block of wood with sandpaper stapled to it), etc.  And should the word “bored” escape from your lips these were not suggestions, these were directives. Generally half way through the assigned task he would holler from the door, “Still bored?  I’ve got more stuff for ya!”  We learned quickly that we were NEVER bored.  EVER!

We were kids though, so there was generally the yearly reminder at the beginning of the summer when one of us would let it slip.  Or worse yet, one of our friends would let it slip.  Our father had no problems setting any child under his roof to a task to “cure” boredom, and cure it he did!  We did not have video games or computer games, we did not have the internet and we did not have 200+ channels to choose from or movies on demand.  We had books, board games, bicycles, the great outdoors and our imaginations.  We used all of them and quickly discovered that there was no need to be bored.  We had the world at our disposal . . . as long as we stayed in the yard and came in when it got dark.  But truth be told, even that was negotiable.

While I am sure the ten year old me sanding the front deck would disagree, I think he did all of us a great service.  I can’t remember the last time that I was bored.  It’s not in my vocabulary.  I always have something to do, can create something to do to amuse myself.  I don’t need outside stimulation or motivation.  He taught us to be independent, starting with something as simple as our own entertainment.  Well played dad.  Lesson learned and deck sanded . . . I’m still a little bitter about the deck . . . not that you’d notice or anything . . .

Happiness, Live and Learn, Love, MothersLeave a comment

My nephew was born this weekend.  Okay, disclaimer, he’s not really my nephew.  Not by blood anyway.  His mother and I have been best friends since we were two.  I have no memories pre-Jolene.  We grew up together and went to college together.  I have a standing invitation at her parent’s house and her Aunts’ house whether she’s there or not.  She is my sister from another mother and therefore, I reserve the right to claim this new little bundle of amazing-ness as my nephew.  I am Crazy Aunt Kat and I come armed with pirate onesies!

Despite the fact that I have not yet gotten to meet him in person and hold him, I am so in love with this little boy.  My heart melts every time I get a new picture, and I am not one of those people that generally gets all mushy over babies – puppies yes, babies no.  So for me this is a very new thing and got me thinking about the very nature of love.  How something so small, whose only accomplishment/contribution to date is being born, can elicit such fierce emotions so quickly.  In fact thinking about him makes me feel so good, it bubbles over into the rest of my life.

Then in contrast I saw this extreme jealousy today, because someone paid attention to one person instead of the other.  It was almost as if by paying attention to Person A, it meant that Person B wasn’t loved.  I seriously think that there are people out there who believe that love is a finite thing.  There is only so much to go around, so you better Bogart all you can when you have the chance.  I know people like this, I’m sure you do too, and I just want to grab them by the lapels and shake them into better senses.  But that’s not really an accepted form of dealing with other people so I restrain myself, and instead would like to say to them:

Love is not a cookie jar!

Let me explain.  I think that there are people out there who believe that love is like a cookie jar; I will use a completely fictional person named Jill as an example.  Jill started out life with a cookie jar, chock full of cookies, and every time she showed someone love she had to give them a cookie.  As a child she gave love freely, her jar was full, there was no conceivable end in sight.  But as she grew older, and discovered that she had maybe given out some of those cookies to people who didn’t deserve them, she became more covetous of her cookies.  She realized that she would eventually hand out her last cookie and then what would she do?  So people had to earn her love, they had to work for their cookies.  Worse yet, she became jealous when someone that she loved gave a cookie to someone else because that was one less cookie that they could then give to her.  So Jill sabotaged those relationships until the only person left for her significant other to give cookies to was her.  She hoarded her cookies and congratulated herself on the fact that her partner only gave cookies to her.  Life was good . . . except that it wasn’t.  Life was actually very lonely because she had driven most everyone away, despite the fact that she still had plenty of cookies in her jar.  The sad thing is that if Jill had simply taken the time to look inside of that jar when she pulled out a cookie for someone, she would have seen that no matter how many cookies she took out there were always some left.

I truly believe that love is not a finite thing.  It is not something that can run out.  For every person that I love, for every person that I show compassion towards, I get some of that back.  Sometimes I might not get back the same amount that I gave and sometimes I might get back far more than I gave.  You never know, but the point is that you always get something back.  Love is infinite and no matter how many times you dip your hand into that cookie jar you will always come out with a cookie.  The more that you can give truly and freely, the more you will get back, until that jar is overflowing.  In my mind, that is how love works.

So I guess that love is a cookie jar.  It’s just happens to be the best damn cookie jar that ever existed, because there will always be more.

Cookie Monster

Who wants a cookie?

History, Live and LearnLeave a comment

I think that I have finally figured out why I was never good at improv.  Total non-sequitor I know, but stay with me on this one!  I trained as an actress for four years.  In all of that time, I could never get the hang of improv.  It’s not that I can’t think on my feet.  I’m pretty dang good at thinking on my feet.  It’s that I could never relax and go with the story at hand.  Improvisation made me a nervous wreck and I could never figure out why.  Well, I finally have.  It’s because I knew I wasn’t telling the best story that I could.  I was telling a story, but there was something better, lurking underneath that I hadn’t had time to come up with.  And that is what I am good at.  Pulling out the story that is lurking underneath!

My process is simple.  I observe.  I ask questions.  I discuss.  I research.  Then I let all of it kick around in my head until finally my brain sifts through it all and says, “Aha!  This is what is relevant.  This is what is significant.  This is the story that needs to be told!”  And then I sit down and write.  But I can’t write until my brain is done with the sifting.  Everyone and everything has a story, you just have to dig it out.  Excavate out all of the crap and detritus that have accumulated around what is really important until the crux and the anima of the subject at hand are revealed.

To do that takes time.  In Improv you have no time.  If you take time, your audience gets bored and leaves.  This is why I can’t do improv.  I need time.  I need to reflect and sift through what I know.  Ask questions to expound on what I don’t know and then sift some more.  I am not built for improv.  I marvel at those that are, because that is just not how I function.  But that’s all right.  It takes all kinds, and I have some research on heavy artillery used in the Civil War that is just dying to be read, kicked around and sifted through . . .

Change, Happiness, Live and LearnLeave a comment

I studied theatre in college – and no I don’t want to hear your stories about how you did theatre in high school.  Why do people always do that with the arts?  You tell anybody that your career aspirations are in an artistic field and they HAVE to tell you about how they once, or sometimes still, dabble in that too.  I swear I’m gonna start telling engineers about when I used to play with Lego’s and business men about my lemonade stand and how those experiences make me a kindred spirit in their chosen career path!

 

Any who . . . not the point I’m driving towards, so I’ll step down off of THAT soapbox.

 

I studied theatre; namely acting and directing.  In my first BFA acting studio we did a Sanford Meisner exercise where you stand about two feet apart from your acting partner, face to face.  Then you both repeat the same thing back and forth to each other until organically the words change into new words.  The idea is to let your brain disengage so that you can truly feel and communicate honestly with your partner.  Well after repeating back and forth absolute nonsense for lord knows how long, my conscious brain disengaged and before I knew it out popped, “Why do you always have to be so funny?”

Now mind you, this was a classmate that I had known for a couple of months at best.  This is not something that you say to someone that you hardly know, especially in front of a group of people!  Naturally, she was offended by my question, but following the rules of the game she had to repeat the same thing back.  She had to use the words that I had thrown at her to convey her emotions back to me.  So she was offended, which made me victorious because clearly I was succeeding in the game (and I do have a bit of a competitive streak, not gonna lie), which made her even more offended (rightfully so!), which made me realize that I was being an ass and so on and so forth.  We worked our way through an entire argument using words that had quickly become nonsensical, until finally all we could do was stand staring at each other and break out in giggles.

It was one of the most surreal, honest, genuine moments I have ever had in my life and definitely as an actress.  I am no longer an actress.  It is a skill that I possess, but not a career that I want.  I learned very quickly that I am not brave enough to be an actress.  I am not brave enough to stand face to face, every night, with a character and do them the honor and justice that they deserve by opening myself up and allowing them to answer through me why they’re so funny, or sad, or strong, or whatever.  I prefer to spill my soul on paper in the privacy of my own head.  I tend to be fairly introspective that way.

But, if I were able to go back in time, to when I was in college in that BFA studio, I wish that I could have stood in front of a mirror and turned that question in on myself.  Only slightly different, “Why do you always have to be so strong?”  That was my thing, my mantra.  I didn’t ask for help, I did everything by myself.  Because to need help was weakness and I was “too strong” for that!  Which I now see to be total and complete nonsense, and really wish that I could have figured that out much earlier in life!

I think it’s absolutely healthy to realize that you don’t have to be strong and put together and “perfect” every day.  Because putting that kind of pressure on your self is exhausting, and life is hard enough without adding all of that on top.  Some days are “eat the Nutella straight out of the jar” kind of days, and there is nothing wrong with that!  I think I could have been a lot happier if I had figured that out all those years before.  After all, truth be told, it takes a hell of a lot more strength to ask for help, than to suffer in silence.

Today was not an “eat the Nutella straight out of the jar” kind of day, just an introspective kind of day.  Although some Nutella does sound pretty good . . .