Things change, especially in my colon

This was supposed to be a post about a surprisingly fun and interesting college alumni event that I attended last Thursday.

It was also supposed to be posted last Friday, maybe Saturday, at the latest. Because it really was a fun and interesting event, complete withon a cool seminar delivered by a lively speaker in a spiffy venue with bitching food and bev, which, frankly, I think is some weird, Cornellian point of pride because of that hotel school they've got.

However, as long-time readers of communicatrix-dot-com well know, I have Crohn's disease, which basically means:

1. My colon is a tyrant
2. Like most tyrants, is willful, capricious and wildly oversensitive
3. My colon likes to exercise its supreme power over me at the most inconvenient of times
4. In the war between posting and colon repair, [my colon always wins.]*

As much as I seem to rattle on about personal stuff here, I really keep the bulk (ha, ha, I said "bulk") of my personal shit (ha, ha, I said...oh, never mind...) private. Because really, how sexy is it to go into the gory details of your life when you're in the 45th year of it? You catch my drift.

Anyway. Major fires have been put out. Pesky low-grade existential crisis lingers, but all hands are back on deck, er, in L.A., safe and sound, which has done wonders for my peace of mind, which, in turn, has done wonders for my lower intestine.

But I would be remiss if I did not take this opportunity to, one more time, plug the wonders of the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, which continues to be the single greatest thing I've ever done for my intestinal health, and possibly my health in general.

It's not an easy diet to follow (quick: give up sugar, starch, and all even minimally-processed food!). I'd strayed from it over the last year because, ironically enough, I'd been feeling so good. But as anyone with Crohn's or UC (or celiac disease, or IBS, or other pesky intestinal illness) will tell you, stress is a huge trigger for flare-ups. And for me, flare-ups are only stopped with the double-edged sword that is prednisone, king-daddy of the steroids.

Thankfully, five days back on the diet with fanatical adherence and things are looking up. I have a goodly portion of my energy back, and no longer feel like I might have to drop to whatever horizontal surface I'm on to nap. (At one low point over the last few days, I actually curled up in a ball on a closet floor for 15 minutes, rock on, party girl!)

Which is good, because right now, I've got to drive a motor vehicle downtown and beg the cold-hearted DMV employees to overlook a mailing deadline I missed while I was passing out on closet floors.

So, posts on goal-free living and other fun and exciting stuff soon. Meanwhile, if you see a middle-aged woman passed out on the floor of the Metropolitan Courthouse, for god's sake, don't give her a candy bar thinking it'll help...

xxx c

*Left bracketed part out in the original post. See? My colon really does rule.

All my love, just under the wire

I am not so much for Valentine's Day, just like I am not so much for St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Halloween, Christmas or even Thanksgiving, although I mind that one the least.

After many years of grappling with What To Do On Holidays, I have finally found peace with the notion that all days are equal chances to offer love and good fellowship and even, hell, especially, candy. But if I am to honor saints or presidents or martyrs (or be honored in their names), I would rather do it with words or pictures or hugs & kisses (especially kisses) than anything you can buy in a store.

That said, this little sketchbook is still my favorite Valentine's Day gift ever. Until today, that is, when I get The BF back from duties that took him elsewhere.

And so, I am off to the airport. May you all fly with wings to the one you love.

xxx
c

The communicatrix's bathroom guide to the year's big events

Somehow, I wound up with a (free) subscription to Entertainment Weekly, a rag that has slid far, far downhill since the glory days following its launch (when I was a paid subscriber), but still holds some use as short-attention-span reading material. And so, having burned through the frighteningly well-produced SXSW newsmag whilst brushing my teeth yesterday and the current issue of Jane (which remains mystifyingly, defiantly fab years after its launch) in a long tub soak last night, I was left with one raggedy-ass copy of EW to peruse on the can this morning.

But what ho! Whilst flipping through the US-thin pages, I was struck by the muse: I'll review what EW reviews...in bathroom lingo! Short, sweet, and much easier to add to your del.icio.us than anything you read while performing ablutions. Erik, this one is for you...

The communicatrix's bathroom guide to the year's big events (film edition):

The Da Vinci Code: Poop that looks good coming out but falls apart as soon as it hits the water

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest: Occasionally perfect shower ruined by incessant flushing of neighbor's toilet

M:I III: The hallelujah poop that accompanies the onset of one's period

Flight 93, World Trade Center: Tedious issues of The New Yorker that molder away in the bathroom rack because you feel too guilty throwing them out

X3: Outrageously expensive styling product moldering away in your shower caddy because you feel like an asshole throwing it out

Casino Royale: The long-awaited re-release of the contraceptive sponge

The Devil Wears Prada: Toothpaste sample you got from the dentist you use when you run out of your brand which turns out to be halfway decent, although not worth switching to from your regular brand

Miami Vice: Overly expensive set of matching Italianate-moderne bathroom accessories that you receive via regifting

Superman Returns: Mold-infected tile that looks good for a week after you scrub it with bleach but really needs regrouting, if not total replacement

Lady in the Water: (see The DaVinci Code)

The Break-Up: Otherwise satisfying poop marred by painful and unsightly corn kernels

Marie Antoinette: Paris Hilton, the fragrance

xxx c

Horrors heaped upon horrors

I'm of divided opinion on the clustering of good and bad events. On the one hand, I've lived through some pretty compelling real-life evidence for the Bad Luck Streak; on the other hand, I'm rational and objective enough to understand that at any given moment, there are people going through much worse for much longer who manage their troubles with relative equanimity, so attitude clearly plays a large role in determining what is 'good' or 'bad' (cf Anthony de Mello's Chinese farmer story*).

The more I read about Buddhism, and I haven't read much, the more I think they have something with this non-attachment thing. And a bonus-extra goodie with Buddhism (or Method acting, or talk therapy, or lots of other ways-in) is that you can benefit from its tenets (hey! that rhymes!) no matter where you step into the river. When you're feeling crappy and resistant or angry and resentful or joyous and light, you can examine why and, if you're honest about it (and when I say 'you', I mean 'me'), you'll probably learn something incredibly useful about yourself that you can apply not ony to alleviate your situation, but to do a quicker end-run around it next time.

What's tricky for me is that I usually don't feel much like dispassionate self-examination when I'm feeling good. Feeling good is the goal in this part of the world, with the added implication that feeling good as quickly as possible is even better.

Am I preaching? I don't mean to. This is about no one else but me right now, me not getting down with whatever is happening in my Now, me being crabby and cranky and resistant. Me willfully shifting my gaze from the undeniably good, The BF, my health, my friends, financial solvency, to fret over the shadowy parts that lie just ahead. Fear slips its cool, slippery tentacles around me, one by one, and starts to squeeze slowly, until I can't remember what it was like just to breathe easily.

Okay. I'm being a little histrionic for effect. Not that fear isn't doing its slippery, squeezy thing; it is and it probably always will. The difference between how it happens now and how it happened 20 years ago is that I've gotten a little better at recognizing it ("oh, that old thing") and understanding that (a) my hard-wired, primal reaction is not the only one at my disposal and (b) if I can keep it at bay, I will probably come up with one that will be far more useful for dealing with the situation at hand.

And so I add yet another category to the messy sidebar that communicatrix-dot-com seems destined to remain: fear. I've written about it before, of course, but I've always couched it in some more positive term: 'change' or 'life' or, let's face it, 'rants'. Sometimes, though, it's just plain fear, of moving forward, of what will happen next, of the coat on the chair that looks like a monster, and there may be value in calling that particular spade a spade.

Besides, 'negative'...'positive'...who's to say?

Putting aside the real horrors of the world (which are all and always too recognizable), there's a good deal of room for interpretation.

xxx c

*It bears noting that both the title of this post and the Chinese farmer story come to you by way of my favorite ex-boyfriend, who has been nicknameless and seldom-mentioned to date, whom I now christen "The Whippersnapper" and to whom I say:

"Be careful what you wish for...Trevor."

PHOTO CREDIT: akoestner's "Bellagio Ceiling" copyright akoestner, via Flickr.

What happens when I lose my shit

About three weeks ago, I lost it.

I didn't plow into some a-hole in an SUV on that stretch of Rossmore that narrows to one lane, even though they were honking up the road and totally deserved it.

I didn't call out some a-hole at the grocery store who jumped into the newly-opened lane ahead of me even though I was next, or push someone into the poop their pet just left on our parkway or sidle up to some loud, self-important, cell-talking loser at Marshall's and cut a ginormous fart. Oh, no, nothing so plebian and tawdry as that (although where urban civility has gone, I'll never know, and as a civilian who's sick of loud-talking, SUV-driving, poop-leaving a-holes, I'm not promising I won't in future).

I cleaned The BF's laundry room. With a vengeance. And without his express permission.

I'm not a particularly neat person, or even a particularly clean one. L.A. Jan, whose own apartment has been known to be liberally sprinkled with cat hair upon occasion, confessed to sometime repulsion on coming into proximity with my cooktop; suffice it to say there are several hundred things I'd rather do than clean my appliances, including emptying my own trash. It's just that I have a certain threshold for dirt and/or clutter (which is pretty high, by the way) and every once in awhile, it's exceeded. If I happen to be somewhere it would be ill-advised to touch anything, I hightail it out of there. If not...

I try to time these freakouts to coincide with some necessary task chez communicatrix, but since I spend a great deal of time at my country house (a.k.a., The BF's), sometimes it happens there. Three weeks ago, it was a blocked laundry room passageway (note: no one needs more than ONE gigantic Hefty bag full of rags); today, it was a bedroom door that wouldn't yield for all the stuff hung on the backside of it. First, a door that won't yield; next, a pantry cabinet full of expired medicines. Pretty soon you're wandering around a battlefield of moldy dry cleaner bags and ancient Tupperware.

Somehow, and I'm not quite sure how, I managed to make my gumption even out with the piles. It is not always thus. In my own little place, I am living with the neatly stacked manila folders that house the start of a major familial photographic overhaul, along with several other begun-and-abandoned projects. There are shelves that await relining, crap that awaits eBay-ing, dirt that awaits removal. No matter. I hit my ceiling today, opening a door that wouldn't quite.

Maybe tomorrow, I'll trip over the manila folders that hold my 1099s and blaze through my taxes.

One can only hope...

xxx c

Photo: Me as the Weird Family Mom in Peace Squad Goes 99

The Matador

I wanted to open by comparing the excellence level of this film to another excellent (albeit utterly different) film, The Squid and the Whale, but I realized that in my holidaze torpor, I'd completely forgotten to write a review for it...along with Match Point, the Gay Cowboy Movie, and several popular books that other casual readers of communicatrix-dot-com could flame me about.

Perhaps I'll get around to that review someday; perhaps not. I fear part of what stops me from posting reviews is my tendency to prattle on. I fear another part of what stops me is my fear, funny, that. Even critiquing other people's work, I fear I'll never be good enough.

At any rate, The Matador is fun...and serious. It's breezy and rooted; it's formulaic and utterly surprising. It has that marvelous sense-of-place thing I love about my favorite flickeroos, along with beautiful photography, can't-catch-'em-doing-it acting and flawless dialogue.

What it doesn't have going for it (much like The Squid and the Whale and Match Point) is a good title. Bullfighting?! Bleh. There is, however, precious little bullfighting that takes place in The Matador, and I was able to spend most of its screentime refreshing myself in the fabulous powder room of the new Century City Theatres. Frankly, I'm having problems with the metaphorical aspect of matadors and this film. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure that hired killing and hired bull-killing have a lot in common. There's the, um, killing thing. And the exotic locales thing.

Really, I suppose the closest comparison is that matadors and hired assassins are an elite, and perhaps a dying breed, at least, when played with the style and wit of the former .007. (The gloriously-and-yet-never-boringly-middle-class-ness of Greg Kinnear and the always amazing Hope Davis go a long way towards setting that off.)

There is abundant wit and style to The Matador, but it's built upon a firm foundation of story and skill too rarely found these days.

Perhaps great, surprising film itself is the metaphor. So much of what we're subjected to as moviegoers is so...unsurprising. Clunky. Obvious. Modern-in-a-bad-way. The Matador, on the other hand, is both timely and a throwback, like most timeless things.

Olé, muthafuckahs.

xxx

c

Image via The Sun-Times.com

Poor, dead, #1 Chris Penn

I have no idea what Chris Penn really wanted out of life. I spent a total of maybe eight hours with him on the set of a small short film many, many years ago, and I use the term "with" loosely. He was playing an exhibit at an outdoor museum; I was playing a tour guide. It was about 40ºF and raining and every second we weren't shooting, we were all off huddling for warmth, Chris in his trailer, me in some kind camera grip's loaned parka (tour guides wear short-sleeved safari shirts and shorts, regardless of weather). Even those few times we ended up talking in a group of people, he didn't do much talking. He seemed...well, pissed, but hell, the weather did suck and his trailer wasn't much better. I'd be pissed, too. Only I wasn't, because this was my second part in a movie, ever, and I was getting to act. I honestly couldn't believe my good fortune.

It's probably different if your brother is famous and your other brother, well, he's pretty famous, too. Along with your brother's wife, his ex-wife, your other brother's wife, your dad, your mom, and probably several dozen of your closest friends. I used to have anxiety over being compared to my father and grandfather, who were both in advertising, and no one cares about advertising, even the people in it; I can't imagine maintaining my equanimity in the face of grocery lanes and billboards with my fucking family album on them.

Maybe he just wanted to act. They say there are actors out there for whom the just-acting is enough. I don't know; in my 10+ years as an actor, I've yet to meet a single one who would turn down the money and/or the accompanying fame. Yeah, sure, we blather on about our love of the theater and art and 'the work', but let's face it: we didn't exactly pick a profession where you can toil away in obscurity. You have to have an audience to be an actor, even if it's only one; that's how the work works. (And I've acted for that audience of one, for the record. In the world's worst production of The Seagull. You know, the one by that dead Russian guy, that runs almost three hours. Uncut. For one person.)

Even when people tell you what they want, it isn't always what they really want. Most of us aren't willing to cop to our secret agendas. I've seen marriages fall apart, organizations crumble and too many people freaking out on or near their deathbeds to take people at their word. True, Chris Penn was in the same little AFI short that I was for no money, so maybe it was all for the love of a-h-h-h-t. On the other hand, everything you do as an actor has the potential of raising your profile: maybe it's a coincidence that Martin Sheen ended up playing the President on a more famous show after this one; maybe not.

The point, to me, is to get super-dee-duper clear on what you want. Then say it out loud ("I'm black and I'm proud!"), even if you only say it to yourself. Say it over and over, to your friends, in a blog, in your journal, on your résumé, but don't stuff it down. I hid my longing to be an actor, and yes, the famous kind, for many years out of shame and embarrassment and fear. I still do, sometimes, although I now know it's not so much "actor" that I want to be, more like "font of immense inspiration, insight and joy". (Yeesh...talk about embarrassment.)

I hope Chris Penn had a happy life. I hope he loved every minute of what he did. (He certainly was good enough at it.) I hope he never compared himself to his brother or his other brother or his mom or his dad and felt like less-than. I hope he was a raging iconoclast who was fully self-actualized and couldn't have given a hoot about being #1 in the IMDB Pro StarMeter.

And for me? I hope the exact same thing...

xxx c

TAGS: Chris+Penn, fame, ambition

Ich bin ein pimp

So I'm lounging in front of the 12" at my country house this afternoon, sipping bourbon, going to traffic school, when who should show up but Andrew Ward, photographer, and his lovely wife, Alex (or as Supah-Pimp likes to call her, AlexandraCreative). Not a total surprise, I suppose, as Alex was to become the newest owner of The BF's old 17", and the "country house" is actually The BF's regular-usual house and he'd arranged the hand-off in advance and even maybe told me about it, but I was deep into Lesson 5 out of 155, "Interacting at Intersections!", so I probably missed the old "hi" sign.

Anyway, since Andrew is a photographer and Alex is a web designer and The BF is a genius and I am a dork, our conversations always seem to go off on some geeky tangent; as we were conducting our business in the computer resale facility that The BF's dining room office has become, talk naturally turned to RSS feeds and SEO, specifically, how to drive traffic to Andrew Ward, photographer's website (which, coincidentally, was wholly designed and implemented by Alex I. Ward, sole proprietrix of AlexandraCreative). Alex, who has designed many lovely websites, was big on hidden links. Me? I've drunk the blogging Kool-Aid, and am all about the frequently updated content. I mean, think about it: if you were a spider, would you want something you couldn't see, or lots of fresh, meaty content?

Just talking about blogs gave Andrew Ward, photographer, a big fat Irish headache; reading a bit of mine almost made his head explode. And when I suggested he tack on a blog to that terrifically-designed website of his where he sells modestly-priced giclée prints of his beautiful work...well, I think he actually stood up and adjusted himself. Or wait, did that mean he liked the idea?

Regardless, he got seriously fired up when he heard how a nowheresville burg like communicatrix lands me in the top of the search rankings for critical terms like "Colleen Wainwright", "communicatrix", and "how to kill a crab". True, the name "Andrew Ward" is a lot more common than "Colleen Wainwright," but still, your own website oughta come up in the first page of search results for your own name, right?

So to prove the power of blogging (and, by extension, communicatrix-dot-com), I am shamelessly pimping Andrew Ward, photographer (and his lovely wife, AlexandraCreative). Visit the site! Buy a print! Or just...I don't know...visit the site!

Because hey, I may be a pimp, but that doesn't mean I don't like to keep my bitches happy.

xxx c

TAGS: Andrew+Ward, Alexandra+Ward, photographers

What I learned on my trip to Chicago

1. Airborne works pretty well.
2. Chicago can still kick my immune system's ass.
3. No matter how light it feels in the store, the 12" PowerBook morphs into an Acme anvil after two hours on your back.
4. If you live in the Midwest, you resign yourself to a winter of frozen ears or Hat Head.
5. Call me "pointy".
6. Regardless of your will to pass him by, Manny, the shoeshine guy from Atlanta's, is stronger.
7. It'll cost you $8 per person, standing up.
8. Not including tip.
9. If I had to move back, I'd want to live in Wicker Park.
10. I probably couldn't afford it anymore.
11. The best espresso in Chicago, oddly enough, may well be at the venerable Miller's Pub in the Loop.
12. The chicken Kalamata at Athenian Room is still the greatest entrée in all the land.
13. Especially after five single malt pours at Duke of Perth.
14. Great friends are not location-specific.
15. No matter how many exposés they run on the filth that lives in a hotel bedspread, I'm still going to contribute to it.
16. For better or worse, Dell'Alpe has cornered the giardiniera market.
17. I really do miss public transportation.
18. I really do love L.A.
19. Everyone loves The BF.
20. Break your shoes in first.

xxx c

Shedding my ill humours

While my rancor towards a certain piggy software monolith is perfectly justified (viral marketing comment b.s. from monolith weasel-flunkies notwithstanding), I had found myself getting a wee bit cranky in general. Too much work is usually a good thing for me, especially when it involves a mix of the design and the acting varieties (the latter still pays better, by far), but too much holiday merriment and too much sunshine can only mean one thing: time to go to Chicago.

Right on cue, Chicago stepped up to the plate. When we landed here on Friday, it was overcast. When we left the hotel to train it up to Old Town for dinner, it was raining. When we got off the "L", it was, I shit you not, hailing on us. And when we finally tromped out of the steakhouse a few hours later, it was snowing like Christmas at the North Pole.

How can you not love it here?

Despite offers from my plugged-in friends to procure tickets to various carnivals, cultural events and carnivals masquerading as cultural events, I stood firm: I am here to stuff my face, see my friends, and purchase enough giardiniera to last us through the next trip back. This being Chicago, home of bar on every corner, or, more accurately, four bars at every intersection, there has also been a considerable amount of sport drinking, but the BF and I are kind of maxed out on alcohol now, so we'll probably just glut ourselves on Italian beef and Kalamata chicken (oh, god...that chicken...) for the rest of the stay.

What has been most lovely about this here stay (why is this visit different from all other visits?) is, I won't lie, having the BF in tow. (Or, on some occasions, being in tow of the BF.) Partly because it is wonderful being able to close the circle between your old friends and your new, but also partly because that boy takes some A-number-one photographs with his fancy-ass camera.

xxx c

Photo of me wearing all of my clothes at once by the BF.

Color me open source

Dear Microsoft: Go fuck yourself.

Seriously: go take a long walk off a short pier. Better yet, how about taking a running leap off a rocky cliff into a huge, gaping void and on the way down, shoving whatever loose, dangling appendage happens to be handy up your greedy, corporate ass? Because really, you should feel as much pain on the way to your ultimate demise as you do when you reach the terminus.

Whither this rancor? I'll tell you, dickheads.

I've been using Microsoft products since 1996, when I grudgingly dumped the superior WordPerfect upon rejoining corporate America buying a LEGAL copy of your product each time to use at home.

I have refused to put illegal copies of Office on other people's computers, even though I question how much you people play by the rules when it comes to corporate 'fairness."

I've continued to support Microsoft even as your buggy templates and bloated programs ate away at my hard drive and terminally crippled my data.

I've even defended you to the Microsoft haters, that ever-growing contingent of the righteously indignant, because of the remarkably almost-perfect mail client, Entourage.

But today, I couldn't launch Word to work on a document.

I couldn't launch Word because I had my almost-perfect mail client open on my 12" PowerBook, which sits two feet from my PowerMac G5 desktop, which I use, HOLD THE PRESSES, HERE, in tandem.

That's right: I have the audacity to want to have my mail client open on one networked computer as I work on a Word document on the other, which is, apparently, a violation of my license agreement, a practice which makes me the electronic equivalent of crackheads who slit throats for a fix or bearded, gold-earringed, parrot-toting seamen of old who say "Yarrrr!" a lot.

So you know what I'm going to do when I get out of this work hole I'm in right now?

I'm finally going to download that copy of Open Office I've been meaning to check out.

I'm finally going to move my email into Mail.

I'm finally going to switch all of my non-essential work documents to text, like the hardcore geeks do.

And then I'm done with your tired, mistrustful, greedy, no-support-giving, distrustful, disrespectful assholes.

Yes, the corporate world will continue to use your shitty output and yes, I'll probably have to keep using it, too, at least for the time being. I do PowerPoint presentations, yes. I'm forced to deal with Word and Excel and the rest of your buggy, shitty, unsupported-for-mac output.

But I promise you this: for every time I actually use one of your products, I will tell two people not to. I will turn them onto open source and Mac-based alternatives. And yeah, my blog only gets 150 unique visitors per day (now) and yeah, I only know a couple of thousand people anyway (now), but you know what? I'm one of those mavens old Malcolm Gladwell's been yakking about.

And besides, even though my own hit count isn't great, it's still better than your products. And something tells me I'm not alone in my dissatisfaction with the Microsoft ethos. I have a feeling if I tag the hell out of this post, and if I tag it with enough popular (yet salient) search terms, and if I link the shit out of everything in the body of the post, it might just get picked up. It might just go wide on the interweb. And who knows, maybe my insignificant flash of anger will be the tipping point (thanks again, Mr. Gladwell) that pushes you off that cliff, following crappy Suitcase and crappy Quark and all the other greedy, distrusting, software leviathans that are surely (oh, sweet baby jesus, let it be true) in freefall right now.

Because it's time to put customers first again.

Because it's time to put corporate greed behind us.

But mostly, because you and the majority of your products suck some serious ass.

Oh, yeah...one more thing:

xxx c No image courtesy of the evil empire's stringent copyright enforcement.

The dreaded dread

My name is Colleen, and I am a procrastinator.

(Hello, Colleen!)

It has been four years since I balanced my checkbook. I recently renamed my backlog of unread New Yorkers "The End Table". My closets and drawers and to-do lists have cruft so crufty, they've developed their own cruft.

I know that I have to let go and let David, but it's hard sometimes, I won't lie. I leave just a couple of messages in "in", you know, where I can see them. I might make myself the occasional daily checklist of errands and such, not trusting my collection and retrieval system. I have drunk the Kool-Aid, but I sort of fake-drank it and went "mmmm" and kind of spit it out when no one was looking.

You see, I like closing my eyes and covering my ears and going "lalalalalala, I can't hear you!" It makes me livelier in public. It is oddly comforting in private, even though I know it is bad for me and makes it also hard to watch Project Runway and answer the telephone.

But you can live in denial a long time, my friends. A long time, indeed. Hell, usually if I could just wait long enough before turning around that phone call or replying to that email, the problem would pack up its tent and go away. Of course, clients like for you to return calls inquiring after your availability or that project you said you'd finish two weeks ago, but really, how much income do you need? Not much, if you don't ever balance your checkbook.

Yesterday, though, I hit rock bottom. I'd been holding off on telling my writing partner that, for a variety of reasons, I just didn't want to work on our two person show, #1 & #2, anymore. I mean, how could I tell her? I might as well stab her through the heart and tell her I hated her and she was un-invited to my birthday party. Because this would kill her. Or our friendship. Or both.

She had gotten back from her holidays four days ago, though, and I'd had one stay of execution already when she begged off of a meeting, claiming exhaustion. I'd put off our get-together until the end of yesterday, a long day filled with its own bouts of foot-dragging and humiliation and potential disappointments. A good callback fueled me with the fire, I guess, along with that Airborne I've been popping like Tic-Tacs since everyone in L.A. has the plague right now. And I must have been filled with the spirit of David because once I was in the door, I only had a half a grapefruit, some cheese, and 15 natural segues before I blurted it out:

Speaking of wondering what projects you want to focus on for the rest of the year, I don't think I want to work on the show right now.

L.A. Jan stopped cooing at her cat, Mister, for the briefest of moments and said,

Yeah, me neither.

I think today might be a good day to start at the bottom of the list.

Who's with me?

xxx c

TAGS: GTD, procrastination, fear, satire

Illness as meditation

I had a smallish chunk of communicatrix carved out of my shoulder yesterday. It's not a particularly alarming event; given I get more sun walking from my front door to the car than most of my ancestors got in a lifetime, these occasional hinky patches of skin are to be expected.

What is alarming, and annoying, and frustrating, is having the lines of my physical limitations redrawn so abruptly. Like any 'illness' that descends swiftly, there's no time to adjust from being the together, go-go me who can burn through a to-do list with amazing speed to the sad-ass gimp who is continually making adjustments and compromises to get by. Instead of just reaching for a can of tuna, my Quasimodo-pressure-dressing hump and I have to wait for my left hand to drag the stool to the shelves, step up and grab it, then hand it off to the (gimpy, for all intents and purposes) right hand.

One of the most annoying aspects to my five-month recovery from Crohn's disease was having to sleep on my back. (There was simply too much gastrointestinal activity to risk stomach sleeping.) Last night, my hump and I had to sleep not only on my actual side, propped up with pillows all around like a baby on a king-sized bed, but on the wrong side. Suffice it to say it was not one of my more restful nights, and was mainly filled with odd dreams of attending a veddy British country wedding, with lots of pomp and changes of clothes. What-ever.

On the other hand, the hump is a good reminder to see things differently. Of necessity, I must slow down. And it's prepping me for the even more annoying task of being almost better: while the hump comes off tomorrow, I still have to baby that shoulder for the next eight days if I don't want to rip it all open and bleed on the furniture. Having a governor preps me for driving without one, which is a good thing when your tendency is to live your life with the pedal to the medal.

So I'm going to an audition today as a meter maid with a hump; after that, I'll head over to the printers (slowly) and play graphic designer with a hump. I suppose later on, I'll see if I'm up to play humpy freakshow at the Trader Joe's, and figure out what kind of dinner me and the hump can put together without using the cast iron pans. (I don't know; I'm thinking scallops in some kind of lime, chile and butter sauce.)

And in between, or during, I suppose I should say, I will probably see things I haven't seen, and hear things I haven't heard, just because I've slowed down enough to see and hear them. With every move, if my experience so far is any indication, I'll appreciate the movement I do have so much more, just as when I was imprisoned in the IBD ward at Cedars, I relished the few hundred feet I could walk outside in the courtyard every day, rolling my IV stand alongside of me.

Audition. Printer's. TJ's.

Hell, they're as good as Disneyland, when you get down to it.

xxx
c

Losers like awards, too

And in case any of you dorks missed it, time to submit your nominations for the 2006 bloggies. xxx c

How to get to happy

What are the things that make up happiness? What does happiness look like? Forget the fleeting kinds of happiness; they're pretty easily recognizable. I mean the deep, abiding kind: the kind that separates the people who pulse with joy for life, seemingly regardless of circumstance, from the ones who don't.

My own path to happiness has been a bit on the winding side. My mother's side of the family has more than its share of depressives, some diagnosed, most self-medicating with alcohol. And Dad's side? Well, they put on a good face, but I fear there were horrible pangs of what-ifs that buzzed about them in their final hours.

While I'm far from There yet, since my whack upside the head a few years ago*, I pretty much bound out of bed every morning (provided it's not too early), eager to greet the day. I find I worry less than I used to, and complain less, too. In fact, a highly unofficial poll of the people who know me pre-Epiphany and today reveals that I am far less of a pain in the ass than ever I was before**.

Anyway, anyone who knows me at all knows I am the last person to claim Buddhic-like contentment. On the other hand, anyone who knows me at all knows I cannot help but spill it if I have something inside I feel might be of any kind of use to anyone.

So, without further ado:

1. Get to know your owner's manual

Before you can identify where you want to go, you gotta know where you are. What makes you feel heavy? What makes your heart truly sing? Start small, if you like: keep a running list of what you love to do, or what you're looking forward to. Or start with what you dread. The important thing is to look at all of it. Which leads us to...

2. Don't even try to lie.

The Truth is big and scary. The Truth is small and encouraging. But the truth of the Truth is that, once you make it your friend, it will never, ever let you stray too far from the state of happiness.

3. When things look bad, focus on what's good.

Never underestimate the power of gratitude. Nothing snaps you out of a funk faster than realizing things could be far, far worse, and probably are for someone, somewhere. Shifting your focus is at least as important as gratitude. Which means the corollary of this rule is...

4. Look at what you're looking at.

If you're feeling good, see how you're seeing things. If you're feeling not so good, see how you're seeing things. Attention can be a good teacher. So, of course, can unpleasantness.

5. Let the yucky be your teacher.

There's a huge temptation to skip over parts of the process that one finds difficult, but really, you never skip steps: you just delay them. Lather-rinse-repeat may be a part of your own growth process, of course, but ironically, you can probably get to Happy faster if you take the "slow" road. (I wouldn't know; I'm a step-skipper from way back. It took me 40 years and a whomp upside the head to get it.)

6. Understand that happy may not look like what you thought it would.

Starting out in your tiny, one-room log cabin, Happy may well look like a bling-filled crib to the stars. On the other hand, if you live in a bling-filled crib (and aren't happy), you may fear the road to happiness lies in renouncing all of your beautiful possessions. Neither is true. Money and happiness are neither mutually exclusive nor hopelessly intertwined. Good news, I think.

7. Staying fluid helps. A lot.

Some people are naturally more relaxed and open. Flexibility is something I had to learn, both literally and figuratively. Stretching and yoga helps the physical part of it, and something about it (probably the slowing down necessary to do it right) also helped me to be more flexible in my thinking. But really, happiness in huge part involves embracing change, something that not all of us (ahem) are naturally good at.

8. So does having fun.

This one sounds really self-evident, but it's easy to get all serious on The Pursuit of Happiness and suck the fun out of it. Unless you're in a critically depressive phase (in which case you should seek professional help), Getting To Happy is a life's work. So relax. Whoop it up, even. Think of this as the MG in the garage you'll be tinkering at for a lifetime. No biggie.

9. Doing trumps reading about doing.

Yes, it's helpful to find good books and articles and thoughtstarters and motivational quotations and links and a million-billion other things. You know they're no substitute for doing. Go ahead and do your reading, but also do something. One thing, every day. Make it a little project for yourself, if that helps. (Of course, if you're a do-er and an anti-reader, the opposite advice is probably true, but I've a feeling if you're on squidoo, you fall in the former camp.)

10. Put on your own oxygen mask before attempting to place the mask of the person sitting next to you.

This is a tricky one sometimes: we need to balance our need to take care of others with our need for self-care. I guess I'm hoping that native common sense will prevail here: your happiness should take a backseat to your child's getting fed or clothed or comforted. Period. (Perhaps you could even derive some happiness from knowing your child is well-cared for.) But striving to find one's identity, or love, or self-worth, through the making-happy of someone else? Well, I've taken that detour. It's the road to nowhere.

11. When in doubt, get quiet and look within.

It's a big, loud, noisy, distracting world. It can be hard to make the time for quiet ventures that don't immediately pay off in goodies like money or fame or power. Thus is confusion born. Take a step back, take a few deep breaths and look at the problem or the situation or the confusion again.

12. Be nice to yourself.

When you fall, pick yourself up kindly. If you make a mistake, take the steps you can to correct it, make a note of where you erred, and move on. Be as gentle and sweet to yourself as you would a baby or your beloved. You are both. You make the world shine bright like a brand new penny. Treat yourself thusly.

xxx
c

*Whack provided by an acute onset of Crohn's disease back in 2002 which landed me in the hospital for 11 days. You can read a little more about the experience here and here.

**A highly unofficial poll of my shrink revealed that at one point, she had not only considered me a lost cause, but was ready to dump me outright into the lap of the nearest dispensing psychiatrist she could find.

Photo by carf. Check the Creative Commons license before sharing, please.

TAGS: happiness, personal+growth, self-actualization

Quotation of the Day/Priorities as Poetry Edition

Sex. Potatoes. Vodka. Crack.

One of these has got to go.

I never did care for starch.

        , Ben Hunter, in the best Christmas card I've ever received

The best laid plans of oft-laid women...

Okay, okay, I was perhaps a little overambitious thinking I could wreck-reate, Get to Empty and move the cursed blog in 11 days. Actually, had the cursed rain gods not woken me at the highly ungodly hour of 5 am, I might have sucked it up and made the move today. But me and code, we have a passing acquaintance at best. Add lack of sleep and I'd be sure to do something stupid like not bow low enough or call its mother a left-handed, bicycling whore and gum up the works for who knows how long.

On the bright side, since I promised myself I'd take care of all this crap last year, this year's resolutions are as yet unsullied.

I did, in fact, "get to empty" (vernacular for step one of David Allen's geek-approved Getting Things Done system for organization and lifestyle management) late last night, a signal event, as it involved me plowing through a solid, vertical foot-and-a-half of pulpy dread, including TWO, count 'em, TWO spiral notebooks filled with 80 college-ruled pages of line items. Each. I've been dodging those suckers for months now.

But now (non-geeks, please look away) I've dragged all those messy scraps that have been cowering in the dark corners of my purse(s), my glove compartment, my various voice mail accounts and voice memo recorders and summer jacket pockets, and stuffed them into a clutch of plain text files which fit elegantly onto a single thumb drive. Yee-hah!

Of course, now I have to keep up with the program. Collection, like fresh New Year's intentions, does not an implementation make.

However, I have hope. Outside of getting back on the SCD wagon (I fell off hard and was soundly trounced by horses bearing cupcakes and marshmallow snowman Peeps), my sole resolution for at least the next month is maintaining GTD. Hell, I may even take up smoking again! Well, not really, but I figure I may as well wait until the crowds thin out at the gym.

So no move for two weeks-ish. Until then, I'll probably stick to reviews, linkage and other stuff that doesn't require too much in the way of imagery.

Did you know you have to port all of those pictures to the new server by hand!?!

xxx c

P.S. Speaking of linkage, I am thriiiiiled to announce the arrival of my pal, Erik Patterson, to the blogosphere. His gig? One new thing every day. And he's tenacious, pups. Now all you non-Angelenos who can't get out to see Erik's fabulous plays can get a dose. Of writing. Get your minds out of the gutter...

100 Things I Learned in 2005, Part 2

Oh, god. I'll do anything to put off "Getting To Empty", won't I?

1. I really really really like living on my own.
2. I can see the day I'll be ready to give it up anyway.
3. Despite my good intentions, I probably will not finish the curtains before that happens.
4. Surprise miracles are even better than the ones you wish for.
5. The best way to make peppers is to sauté them in a bunch of olive oil, garlic and onions, a wee bit of red wine, then throw in a crapload of spinach at the end.
6. The best way to cook steaks it to let The BF do it.
7. My sister, Liz, makes the most amazing silver jewelry.
8. My sister, Cathy, is amazing, period.
9. My spirit guides were right.
10. I don't need a lot of stuff, but I need the stuff I have to be nice.
11. The red sofa is too big for my living room.
12. I am not, perhaps, the white tornado, after all.
13. I have a visceral dislike for the color mint green.
14. Vonage is cooler in theory than it is in practice.
15. My jewelry isn't worth as much as I thought it was.
16. I need more art in my life.
17. If my gut tells me something, I need to pay attention.
18. That goes for literally as well as figuratively, in my case.
19. That colorectal surgeon who withheld results from me, sending me into a tailspin of illness it took me a year and a half to climb out of didn't realize what he wasn't doing, and didn't do it on purpose.
20. I really and truly understand this.
21. I'm ready to forgive him.
22. Everything changes.
23. It is 100% worth it to buy the wireless mouse.
24. For each computer.
25. Including an extra for your boyfriend's house.
26. It is way harder to design your own logo than it is to design someone else's.
27. There will always be some version of having to go to your friends' shows just because they are your friends, even when you have effectively left the building.
28. I have way too many clothes.
29. I have more than enough money, even when I think I don't.
30. There will never be enough time.
31. Should it come to that, it will be much easier to give up booze than it will coffee.
32. Bloggy crushes are as much fun as show crushes, and very similar in nature.
33. Except for short stretches, I will never be as glamorous as my mother, either of my grandmothers, most of my friends and both of my sisters.
34. I am okay with that.
35. They always have been.
36. You do not know how beautiful life can be until you have added a delete button to your Gmail.
37. The difference between love and attachment is the short step between living and shadow-living.
38. If you buy a forest-green rug from Urban Outfitters and use it as a bedspread, you will wake up every morning with forest-green snot in your nose.
39. Holidays are better for me as an orphan.
40. My eyes will always be bigger than my stomach, so I better get jiggy with the workarounds.
41. Estrofest is at least as transformative as morning pages.
42. Implementing GTD is both easier and harder than I thought it would be.
43. My level of ongoing commitment to something is dictated by delight, shame and money, in that order.
44. I learned more about piano and guitar than I thought I would.
45. The nano was made for the podcast.
46. Despite 43 years of evidence to the contrary, I can get fat.
47. I don't need presents at Christmas, but I must have them on my birthday.
48. The St. André at Trader Joe's is not bad, not bad at all.
49. Vodka is good for summer and scotch is good by the fire but my favorite flavor of hootch is bourbon.
50. Writing things down makes all the difference.

May the lessons and gifts of 2005 make your 2006 all the richer.

xxx c

2005

• 100 things, Part I

2004

• 100 things, Part I
• 100 things, Part II

100 Things I Learned in 2005, Part 1

I have been busy gorging myself on movies, sex and certain foods I will have to give up when I resume the diet I must observe to keep the blood from coming out of my ass. Such are the holidays for me. Of course, the holidays were supposed to be devoted to organizing, blog-moving and other dorky things, but before I could properly set about arranging things for 2006, it was important that I sort out 2005.

And so, without (much) further ado, I give you that which I have learned this year, part the first:

1. Online dating works.
2. The courts don't always.
3. Tasty Bites makes one type of heat-and-eat Indian food that is SCD-legal.
4. Making your bed every day gives one an odd sense of accomplishment.
5. John Waters gives good theater.
6. Coffee tastes better in the yellow mug.
7. Tea tastes better in the blue one.
8. Given the work is interesting, I'd rather do it than a vacation.
9. Del.icio.us rocks.
10. Ditto Bloglines.
11. Double-secret-probation ditto ELF.
12. When the diet that stopped the blood from shooting out of you like a backwards bidet specifies "fanatical adherence", don't be an asshole, fanatically adhere.
13. Clogs are a lot like crack, only more expensive and your first taste isn't free.
14. Sometimes when The BF wants to spend 25 bucks on a doohickey from Dwell magazine, he's right.
15. After health, my well-being on a given day is most directly tied to how good my hair looks.
16. I cannot begin to describe how rattling that admission is.
17. Amazingly, grocery-store sushi can actually be good.
18. Even more amazingly, so can something with the total asshole name of "engagement chicken".
19. Tom Leykis and Dr. Laura Schlessinger have more in common than they'd like to admit.
20. I would rather design the postcard for a play than be in one.
21. I'm okay with that.
22. If you are the kind of chick who says "I feel more comfortable around men," you have yet to become the super-fabulous chick you can ultimately become.
23. Meyer's Dark tastes nothing like Maker's Mark, but they are apparently interchangeable in a noisy bar.
24. You cannot, under any circumstances, turn left on a red arrow.
25. If you do, it will cost you $400.
26. If you don't reply in time because it is your first mover EVER and you are too stupid to read the ticket properly, it will cost you an extra hundred and untold hours in lines at traffic court.
27. A stronger prescription has absolutely zero effect on night vision.
28. The Brits make the best soaps.
29. The Yanks make the best trash.
30. Sometimes 12" beats 15".
31. To make a really good SCD-compliant pizza, you need to put the cheese on first.
32. Then the toppings, then the sauce.
33. It still doesn't taste as good cold.
34. Old boyfriends never die; they just lurk on communicatrix.
35. Sometimes you have to wait to be proved the funniest boy in class, but when you do, your victory will be all the sweeter.
36. Grocery-store sushi kicks ass.
37. You can make a roomful of complete strangers laugh with other people's slides and videos.
38. People who drive SUVs really are ruder.
39. A bunch of cats playing pop songs from the Middle Ages makes for a mesmerizing show.
40. A bunch of cats howling in Icelandic makes for an even better one.
41. Vegas is one and a half hours too far away to be worth it.
42. Blunnies look better online than they do in person.
43. No matter how many oaths I swear not to, I will always buy more books than I have shelf space for.
44. The clients you think will be difficult can turn out to be your staunchest supporters.
45. The clients you think will be easy will inevitably turn out to be the biggest pain in the keister.
46. Given the option of any fancy entertainment available in one of the most exciting metropolitan areas in the world, I will most likely choose burgers and a movie in the 'Deener.
47. Just because someone dumps a pile of crap in your lap doesn't mean you are obligated to keep it.
48. The best movie of the year is less than 90 minutes long and has a kid wiping spooge on school lockers.
49. The Americanos are best at Kings Road and the eggs are best at Lulu's, but overall best breakfast score goes to Backdoor Bakery.
50. To spare yourself untold private misery and public humiliation, change the default setting on your blog software to "draft."

xxx c

Previous editions:

2004

• 100 things, Part I
• 100 things, Part II

Searches, we get searchesâ„¢: Year-end gala edition!

Before I leave for my sunshine winter holiday of lights, sound and fatty food, a few words from weary, wanderin' strangers 'round the globe. Lot of rhymin' fools this time of year... memory loss & crohn's disease (MSN Search)

I forget, do I have blood coming out of my ass or not?

what kind of relationships are in jamaica (MSN Search)

Lazy ones, mon.

camel toe song ppt (Google)

Now there's a presentation the boys in marketing can sit through.

what rhymes with sad (Google)

Bad...poet.

rhymes from daughters to fathers (Google)

1.

Cher Pere: Ou est la mer? Claire

2.

Dear Dad: You're rad! Love, Mad.

high tech shit (MSN)

The kind of crap I want for Christmas.

Poetry lesson and "Ball of Confusion" (MSN)

LESSON ONE: Become a Temptation.

william shatner dead wife vodka (Google)

Hm. Do you eat the pinky when you kill the bottle?

"heather woodbury" fomenting (Google)

Who says art isn't stirring, dammit!?!

sad rhymes (Google Deutsch)

Ein, schwei, drei...die, muthafucker!

And finally, to ensure that I endear myself to the fine folks at DreamHost next year by jamming their servers with useless shit:

"what does nsa mean" (Google)

NSA? You want to know the definition of NSA? You mean, you went online to Craig's List, trolled the personals, stumbled across the term "NSA", thought to yourself, "Self, I wonder what NSA means", Googled "NSA", pulled up a bunch of sites that seemed like they might "explain what NSA means", landed here...and now you're wanting to know "the meaning of NSA"? That's easy! NSA means...

"Neo-Swiftian Archetypes".

Merry Christmas, Fred! God bless us, every one!

xxx c