The Ole' Dirt in the Eye Routine...

I’ve been laying low and sort of not communicating too much for a hot minute.  I haven’t taken new friend requests (don’t take it personally if your friend of a friend is reporting this to you and you think there is some vendetta; I just can’t care so much about “the scene” and who hates who and who is up and coming in the world of cover music at this particular moment in my small unsubstantial world). No offense. I’ve just been sort of leery of the world, in general. I’ll get over it. I always do. It’s a season. 

The winds of transition are a-blow again and are stirring up the proverbial ‘dirt in the eye routine’ as they tend to do… When I don’t make my own noise, I’m inclined to observe more and find new ideas and things to ponder. 

To show the sweet, surprising few well-wishers that sensed my unusual state of 'meh': I’m still me and OK. I’ll share that as of Monday, here are a few of such ponderings and instances occurring in the quiet, chaotic insignificance in my brains:

1. Verrrrrrry seldom does someone say “have fun” and mean it. It means you’re going to do the thing that doesn’t include the person saying it. I’ve estimate that 78% of the time, the person verbally wishing you to “have fun”, in fact, does NOT want you to have fun at all. Actually, they want you to have no fun. They want you to rethink if it is actually going to be a fun time (without them) and subliminally impose the idea that maybe you shouldn’t go to the thing that you may have had fun at were it approved by the well wisher while they're not wishing you well. “Have fun” means “fuck you.” *Unless you’re a mom saying it to a child. In which case, it may mean “be safe” and not have fun. Unless said parent is saying 'have fun' while dropping off their child to the home of their ex-husband and his new wife “Sherill” (like “Cheryl” but misspelled to be interesting, but she’s soooo not), for their every-third-weekend, per the "parenting agreement" and they’re going on a vacation for 6-nights to Disney: a trip you could never afford and you’re surprised they can considering Sherrill ("two R's and two L's) just got her tits redone… for-the-fourth-time… while you live on canned squirty cheese and Christmas pharmaceutical- company labeled Pepperidge Farm shark-coochie boards, cuuuhhhhhleeeearly from CVS… Then, then!!!, especially, there is no genuine wish for fun. In fact: HAVE THE WORST TIME, EVER. Pfff. Yeah. “Have fun” while it rains and you have to spend the whole time watching your dad make out with Sherrill while being the third wheel, being called “my bonus daughter”, feigning smiles in the matching RIDICULOUS bathing suits she got all of you, posing on her "Bonus Mom: Fun Idea's IG" all weekend while you're actually at the "resort" in "off (ahem, cheap) season", playing FNAF on your iPad and eating over-priced, room service cold burgers shaped like Mickey Mouse while it fricken hurricanes, and your mom stays back and watches the Second Season of KUWTK to "catch up" while her "friend" has "fun" and doesn't invite her out to their thing, and so she suggested that maaaaaaybe she would attend a party she was invited to since they obviously don't want to invite you to the thing they're doing and in reply to her pathetic idea of an alternative thing to do which they KNOW SHE DOES NOT ACTUALLY WANT TO DO..., they say: "HAVE FUN." Like, even in this made-up world... it's just not a real well-wish.
2. I spoke to my Gee-Why-ENd (*who was an OB, but becomes a GYN when you're old and sneezing, eating, coughing or breathing makes you pee) doctor about the effects of having three children spontaneously fall out of my vagina, in succession, within five years. She suggested a bladder sling to hold my bladder up like a bra (they couldn't have called it a bra’dder?) slightly closer to where it should be. I vehemently refused. I listed off the bladder sling litigations that once flooded my inbox, and spoke in a whisper, as even suggesting that out loud would more than likely cause me to be re-subscribed to all the litigious websites that almost convinced me that I, too was impacted with vaginal extrusion, erosion, infection, urinary problems, medicolegal issues that lead to pain, scarring, incontinence- all while enduring the effects of my time at Camp Lejeune. She said the only other option was “kegels.” I snorted and told her “I’m Jewish, we call them kugels.” She’s a total savant from Guyana who was either offended or didn't get it. Anyway, I need a new gyno in the Hollywood area that takes Aetna if anyone has suggestions. 
3. Dogs live entirely too short of a life. It sucks that they don’t last our whole lives and yet we are forced to be there for their whole life. It seems an unnatural order. Fur children should have to consult with their friends about where to bury us when we go. Too many broken hearts go unhealed from our tenderly petted pets jetting off too soon. 
4. I’m a week and a half away from having a real-life prescription for glasses. I mean the kind you don’t get when it’s fun and cool, like in grade school when I wanted braces, a cast for everyone to sign and “purple” glasses (that I asked for from Santa after discovering he wasn’t real... and that we were Jewish)… And I got them NOT because of some terrible feigned astigmatism that was once considered grade-school-cool… nay nay… But because of old age. Like… I’m shopping for cyber deal lanyards to have them easily accessible for phone browsing and reading something at a quip. I’ll be the ultimate social worker: wearing baggy clothes from Chico’s with layered cardigans and my “lost” spare pair of glasses hiding in my messy bun for some young whipper snapper to point out when I have a total Thomas J moment and am arm-extended, feeling in front of me to find my way back to my morgue of an office to slowly decay and plan retirement cruises. Did you know that your eyebrows turn gray? Yeah, and before you get all cosmopolitan on me... know: for a fair-skinned person, dyeing them is like not an option… there are only two choices are: Grandma or Groucho. When did I go from Madame to mausoleum? 
5. I have an insectarium. Or is it a Formicarium? Terrarium? In my office. The bugs come here to die and commit to an afterlife of being in a fluorescent light display box for all to watch their slow disintegration into the great nothing. I stare at it during inane moments at work. When do they crawl there? They’re never found alive. Really…When do they get there? Do they crawl towards the light and get singed? Do they know that-that’s the dying spot? When they’ve had enough moldy attic fiber glass, they just migrate there? It’s so symbolic to this nursing home environment for me… a well-lit display box for the living to view the dead and dying. My role in being a death doula has officially spread from the homo-sapiens to the invertebrate. I’ve attempted to free the lizards that start out on my office floor before they find their way to the singe spot en route to the Grave of Eternal Display…. But, by the time we meet, they’ve all given up. If being a reptile in the tundra of my sterile office beats the carefully cultivated terrain that wraps us in a moat of flowery foliage, then they’ve truly given up. Many of us have. 
6. And just to be real-real and not just funny... This is the most un-holidays of holidays yet. Halloween was muggy and entirely not spooky enough. Thanksgiving was dry, quick and less meaningful than others. This Christmaskuh time.. it's just missing something. I'm missing magic. Yes, I could make my own. Fix myself. Double up on meds... But, as the sands in the hourglass go by and I desperately cling to the pieces of life I take for granted that are running out (like having all three kids home), looking to the future just doesn't excite me. The truth is.. I hate cruises. I dislike the beach when the sun is out. I'm not really sure what any of it means these days. It's the first time in my entire life I have felt like I didn't have a best friend. You know, that person you talk to every day that you tell them what color your shit was and riff off of every little thing and plan your life with? Sebastian has so many "best friends" and we used to giggle at the idea that every name he would present to us for the first time was knighted his "best friend." And he has many. And how beautiful is that? It seems we have all branched off into 'sometimes' friends. And admittedly, I have had a few dark, dark moments this year where I felt like I reached out, screamed out loud that I needed help, a hug, anything... gut-wrenching sobs and not one of my best friends responded. And no, I don't mean you. If you are even bothering to read this, chances are, I probably didn't ever lead on to you that I've been struggling. It's made me realize that I've isolated a lot and invested my time into illusions of things and people who didn't stick around for the sticky stuff. These poor choices and lack of investments into true friends has caused the waters to rise around the island I live on, and it's become an all too familiar feeling. I read amongst my collection of self-help memes that the reason I self-sabotage is because it allows me to predict what is going to happen, giving the illusion of self-control. So, maybe it's time to reach out again and start building up the community I so desperately think I need? Maybe I've outstayed my welcome here again and it's time to move? Maybe this complacency has bred contempt and I need to change the scenery again? Maybe this next chapter means I'm a lone wolf, as I was always meant to be? I don't know. I'm in the winter of my discontent. I'm pondering. I'm taking inventory and deciding what stays and what goes. Some parts are so so much harder than others to let go of. Crutches of glittery possibilities made for instant bursts of gratification, yet masking their delusions of safety and comfort. I'm thicker today. More "padded" these days. I'm living in a cocoon and wrapping myself up; keeping distance, "holding space for myself" for you yogis. Remembering how that rabbi said stress is like the lobster shedding it's shell to grow, because without the discomfort, there wouldn't be growth. Well, that's where I am. The shell-less lobster in its gelatinous, vulnerable, nerve-exposed state; hiding behind the coral and forming a new skin from the particles within reach I may wish to attach to my new exterior. It's painful. It's lonely. I'm clinging to hope. I'm trying. I'm trying. I'm trying.

Happy "Holidazzze"

"Have Fun."