Sorry Not Sorry

Until last Thursday, I had never seen the movie “Love Story.” I didn’t love it, but I didn’t hate it either. The dialogue was contrived and old-fashioned, but the simplistic wholesome quality of it eventually won me over.

Ollie won me over. What woman doesn’t want a man like Ollie? To fight for her, defend her against doctors, corporations and rich fathers, to stay by her side through disinheritance, societal stereotypes, borderline poverty, illness?

Ollie never wavered. Jenny was a lucky girl.

My favorite part of the movie was something rarely mentioned in reviews of the movie. Reviewers focus on the love story itself, but I loved how when he was rich, Ollie’s path to law school was straightforward:

My Daddy will pay.

Once his father cuts him off for marrying beneath his station, Ollie had to find a new way to become a lawyer.

He did it by working. Odd jobs, cutting expenses, scholarships. Before we knew it, Ollie made Law Review, then partner.

Sometimes the obstacle is the way.

Anyway, good flick. Here’s a cute video since I’m feeling love-buggish. Not the best version, but the sexiest. I know Ella and Doris do it better, but this girl does black dress and red lipstick best. Sorry.

But love means never having to say you’re sorry.

Get Bent

It’s “Go Fuck Yourself” season.

The last nine months were the most exciting and stressful months of my life, so no one had better fuck with me. It’s time for me to relax and enjoy my little side hustle and reap the rewards of my patience and hard work. Don’t bug me, and go fuck yourselves.

I’ve been muttering “Go fuck yourself” under my breath for the past three weeks, randomly. To a loud truck gunning its engine past my house. To a credit card company that rejected me in the past but is suddenly dying for my business. To a campus that suddenly wants to hire me.

And to Dr. Jordan Peterson.

Despite whether you feel he is dangerous, an insurgent, an insurrectionist, a white supremacist or a “Nazi,” I’m a fan of Jordan Peterson. What can I say, I like his podcasts, his interviews, his books, his philosophy. I’ve blogged about him before, here’s the link:

https://www.chrysaliscollective.org/professor-piffle/

But Jordan has made a mistake. A big mistake. He left Twitter because of the mistake. And that mistake was claiming that model Yumi Nu was not beautiful. Yumi Nu who just made the 2022 Sports Illustrated cover. He tweeted:

“Sorry. Not beautiful.” Here’s the link:

https://nypost.com/2022/05/19/yumi-nu-responds-to-jordan-peterson-over-sports-illustrated-cover/

Big mistake, Dr. Peterson. Look at her again, and try not to focus on the fact that she’s not sickly skinny like your wife and daughter, and really LOOK AT HER.

She’s gorgeous. Drop. Dead. Gorgeous. Look at her eyes. Her skin. Her lips, her pearly whites, her glow. Her body, for Christ’s sake. What the hell is wrong with you? She wouldn’t give you the time of day if she met you in public. I mean, I am still a fan of yours, but seriously, Dr. Peterson:

Go fuck yourself.

I’m tired. Read the article for more detail. Have a great weekend, ya’ll.

Happy Hacks

(Thought I’d pose with my favorite pineapple for the stock image today. You’re welcome)

How’re your happy chemicals doing these days? Here’s a few hacks.

Serotonin: (Happy Hormone)

  • Listen to music
  • Meditate
  • Walk in nature
  • Journal
  • Sun Exposure

Dopamine: (Your Reward Chemical)

  • Self-Care
  • Completing tasks
  • Eating good food
  • Celebrating wins
  • Sleep

Oxytocin: (The Love Drug)

  • Hugging a loved one
  • Kissing
  • Deep connection
  • Playing with animals
  • Giving compliments

Endorphines: (The Stress and Pain Reliever)

  • Laughing
  • Exercise
  • Chocolate
  • Spicy food
  • Physical touch

You Go, Girl!

My Tuesday class was cancelled for preceptor meetings, so I am all thrown off. I missed an online payment, put my trash out a day early, and keep thinking tomorrow is Saturday. I mean, by the time you read this tomorrow IS Saturday, but I am writing this on Thursday, so tomorrow is Friday. Oh, and my last blog post for the week is a story with no point. Fascinated yet?

Here it is:

I used to teach with an insipid woman who liked to say, “You go, girl!” to the female staff. It drove me up a fucking wall. Like, maybe a woman would be enjoying a donut on Teacher Appreciation Day.

“You go, girl!”

Maybe I would be having an animated conversation with a male student in the hallway.

“You go, girl!”

Maybe I’d be teaching, and my class would erupt with laughter, and she’d be walking by:

“You go, girl!”

Maybe a female administrator or guidance counselor would be gently laying down the law about an infraction to someone in the hallway.

“You go, girl!”

I even heard her once say it to the toughest female security guard I’ve ever known. If you’re reading this and you taught with me, you know who she is. She was no one’s fool, and no one, I repeat, NO ONE, escaped her wrath. After a 35-year career as a security guard, what she said, WENT. It was her school, after all. Faculty, students, administrators, secretaries, alumni- everyone tiptoed around her, and followed the rules. I don’t know who was more afraid of her when she would appear at my classroom door- the students or me.

One morning I was working the front door with her, and she was upbraiding a student who had been late to school for the third time that week. This kid had his head hung so low his nose was brushing against his knees. She was doing her regular spiel:

“Get here. Don’t give me that, I don’t care what you have going on at home, it’s your job to get here. Get a ride. Set three alarms. Sleep in your clothes. You’re in charge of getting here, no one else should have that responsibility. You either want to get an education or you don’t.”

She was tough, tough, tough. And as she sent him on his way to class, she turned to me and began to shake her head, mumbling something about “these kids don’t have any sense of personal responsibility…” when suddenly out of nowhere…

“YOU GO, GIRL!”

Oh, no. Oh, yes. That insipid moron had just “You go girl”ed the most intimidating human being in our building. The guard just stared at this woman, and I swear to God if looks could kill, “You-Go-Girl” girl would have been six-feet under.

Her “You go girl” shit made everyone cringe, because “You Go, Girl!” didn’t seem to be as much of a positive affirmation as it was demeaning to the female staff. And “You-Go-Girl” girls never change. If they “You Go Girl” when they’re 18, they’ll do it when they’re 45.

Final part of story:

When I teach in the mornings, I can see and hear a group of female students chatting and waiting to get into their classroom. When I leave, I walk right through them, and because of her faculty credentials, I know which one is the professor. She is young and chatty, and I can hear her trying to sound like them. I want to warn her to stop.

Please stop. Don’t become friends with your students. We all make that mistake at some points in our career, but get rid of the habit early, rather than later, and you’ll make your life much easier.

But twice a week, I can hear them tearing down this woman’s personal boundaries. Looking at the pictures on her phone, ooh-ing and ahhiing over her cat pictures, scrutinizing her outfits. And every week she becomes more and more outwardly uncomfortable with it. Finally today, it happened just like I knew it would.

I was walking through their group, and the professor came into the hallway from outside. As soon as they spotted her, three of her female students shrieked:

“OMG, those glasses are sooooooooo cuuuuuuuuute!”

“Whoa, look out, hot stuff!”

“You look soooooo awwwwwwesome!”

Her smile as she walked into that pink melee was strained, but I felt no pity for her. She had brought it on herself through weeks of self-immolation, and humoring their questions about her husband, and her vacations, and her personal life.

As I swung the door open to go out into the fresh air, I heard it from behind me.

“YOU GO, GIRL!”

She will never have control of that class again.

Mamma Mia!

On a lark, I re-watched “Mamma Mia!” over the weekend, to try and figure out what I missed the first time.

The first time was in 2019 on a girls’ weekend in the Adirondacks. Three of us were staying in our friend’s vacation home, and after dinner and drinks, we were playing cards and discussing ABBA.

“I love ABBA,” I remember saying. “Why are ABBA fans ashamed to admit they’re ABBA fans?”

My friends commented that if I love ABBA, I must have LOVED “Mamma Mia.”

The words “I’ve never seen it” were still hanging in the air, and they were putting the DVD in and telling me to get comfortable for one of the best movies I would ever see.

I hated it, and I’m pretty sure I fell asleep before the end. My friends could not believe it- they had never met anyone who didn’t like “Mamma Mia!” Neither had I. Last semester my students had to write an essay about an influential movie in their lives, and the first essay I picked up was about “Mamma Mia!”

“Mamma Mia!”? Influential?

I can’t believe I didn’t like it either. All signs pointed towards it being my kind of movie:

Cast: Meryl, Pierce, Colin, Christine, Amanda? TRACEY ULLMAN? What’s not to like? I mean, beside Meryl’s singing, of course.

Setting: The Greek islands are just otherworldly. Greece is next on my travel list.

Music: I mentioned ABBA. They’re just so….good.

Themes: Weddings. Mothers and daughters. Fathers and daughters. Tans and sun-bleached hair. Mid-life crises. Gorgeous, sexual middle-aged men and women.

So I re-watched it. Maybe it was my mood that first night. But nope. Just as bad and boring. I even looked up some reviews, to figure out where I was going wrong:

Mamma Mia! is the kind of story we’re always told doesn’t exist anymore: It’s driven by women and unabashed girliness; the men are set dressing while the protagonist is an older woman. It practically gallops towards its badness in places and makes you love it as a result; it’s a rom-com where women aren’t saved or positioned as prizes to be one (sic) by strutting dicks; indeed, the men are utterly ridiculous and that only makes them more loveable than if they’d been your typical on-screen heroes.

The movie is rife with bad singing. Cliches. Entendres. Structural failings. It’s hokey and corny, with its share of bad acting, too. But audiences flock to it. Why?

I’ll never know. But I might give it a third try.

Thairapy

I’m not one for small talk, if you haven’t noticed.

I am what you would call an outgoing introvert. Outgoing introverts enjoy people and travel and events, but when we’re done, we’re done. There comes a point during any trip or gathering where we have to just leave in order to recharge. Sometimes there’s no warning. All of a sudden, you look up and we’re just…gone.

I used to leave my own dinner parties. No lie. Ask anyone who attended. One minute I would be there drinking a glass of wine and laughing at a story, the next minute I was upstairs reading to my little boys in their cushy blue beanbag chair or cuddling with the dog, just to get away from the anecdotes, inquiries and mindless chit chat.

We can only take so much.

I don’t talk much, not even in the classroom. I choose my words carefully and deliberately, and if I don’t have anything to say, my mouth stays closed. That is, unless there’s something delicious to wrap it around.

(I meant like an ice-cream cone, what did you think I meant? Sheesh. Don’t get me started, now).

Which is why it is so surprising to me how much I confessed to my hairdresser yesterday.

My hairdresser knows nothing about me. That is why I chose her, and why I continue to go to her. She is not reading this blog right now. She doesn’t recognize my last name. She lives in the city and cares very little about the shore. She doesn’t know anyone in my family, and always forgets how many kids I have and how old they are. I love reminding her every time she apologizes for forgetting.

So it’s a safe zone for me where there is no judgement, no frame of reference, no opinion, no preferential treatment. She does my hair, I tip her, and that’s it. My affinity for this type of relationship, one in which each party has a level playing field, is probably the same reason I make such close friends when I travel. Because I am able to open up and be myself, without anyone’s preconceived notions of who I am, what I’ve done, or who I’m related to.

I’m at my best when traveling alone. My absolute best.

I confided in Michelle yesterday, things that if I confided them to anyone else, they would no longer be a secret today. It is what it is. But it felt good to get a few things off my chest, knowing it would go no further than her work station. I’m sure it wasn’t even interesting enough for her to gab to her young husband and one-year old daughter over dinner.  

But I appreciate her pretending like it was. There is no better therapy than sitting in your stylist’s chair.

Requiem for a Toe

Ode to My Big Toenail

Hey, Big Guy. Let me start with an apology.

I’m sorry I dropped a 45-pound plate on you over a month ago. I know I fling weights around at the gym haphazardly and without regard for anyone’s safety but my own. I’m sorry.

There. I said it. So can we end this already?

I mean, even that day I knew it was over between us. The limping, the grimacing, the whining. And now it’s been over a month, and your demise is not only inevitable, it’s visually apparent. I won’t go into details about the color and texture of your death, but let’s just say it’s not pretty.

You’re not pretty.

And I don’t know if you have ever noticed, but my feet ARE pretty. I take a lot of pride in them, and I simply cannot take care of them the way I’d like to when you’re still hanging on for dear life.

Listen, normally I wouldn’t care. Normally I’d say, “Sure, what the hell, take your time!” I mean, why force the issue? But here’s the problem: My spring break is in less than four weeks. I need to be ready. I need my eyebrows tweezed, my pores cleaned, my hair highlighted, my muscles kneaded, my nether regions, er, landscaped.

I need a day of beauty, dammit!

And I need a pedicure. I need a freaking pedicure before I board a plane for Florida and talk in front of hundreds of people. But I can’t GET a pedicure, because of you.

I know I could take matters into my own hands, but I’m trying to avoid that. I never picked scabs or popped pimples, and I’m not going to start now.

I guess what I’m looking for here is a compromise. I promise to never fling heavy weights on top of you again, and you promise to go away as soon as possible. Every morning I wake up and think, “This is the day.” But it never is.

Please consider my plea. It’ll work out for all of us, in the end. I promise.

Love, Actually

I think most romance movies are hokey myself, but sometimes they manage to nail the concept of love. The desperation of it. The vulnerability of it. So in honor of Valentine’s Day, here are five movie scenes that choke up even ol’ unsentimental me. No “Titanic” or “Notebook” to be found on this list.

“Pride and Prejudice.” The character of Elizabeth Bennet lives in my heart, and if you’ve never read the book or seen the movie, this scene will seem incredibly corny. But you must understand what Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy went through to be together. When Mr. Darcy walks through the early morning fog to finally claim his Elizabeth, my heart stops. I cry every time. This scene is the essence of love. Neither have slept all night, just thinking of each other, the best kind of tired there is. Don’t watch this if you are susceptible to corny movie hives.

“Love, Actually.” Keira Knightley again. This is when her new husband’s best friend tells her he loves her. Just the sweetest scene with appropriate closure.

“Crazy, Stupid, Love.” HONK. This is love. Just silliness.

“Say Anything.” This scene crushed me when I was in my twenties. Both characters just brought to the edge, and finding each other there. Lloyd and Diane finally together.

“Up.” Carl and Ellie. I still have never recovered from Ellie losing that baby.

Spray Me

When you remove something from your life that you previously loved, whether it’s a hobby or a pastime or a luxury, there’s usually more than one reason.

For example, let’s say you like a certain type of coffee bean. Even though the coffee shop is an hour away you don’t mind making the trip, because the beans make excellent coffee in your French press. You also like Greta, the barista who grinds the beans for you- she’s kind, and always asks about your bulldog Harry’s allergies. On the way home you make pleasant side trips- one stop to see your old Aunt Nancy, another to pick up your favorite homemade balsamic vinaigrette at that cute Italian store, and another to the liquor store for your favorite Pinot.

But then something happens. Maybe Greta quits, and her replacement could care less about Harry. Maybe old Nancy passes away. Maybe the Italian store just seems too out of the way, and you decide to stop drinking wine every night. Pretty soon, you’re in a new routine. You’ve found a new place for beans that’s closer to home, you learn to make your own balsamic, and you save wine for the weekends.

That old routine has been replaced with a new routine.

Same with me with spray tans.

I used to be so devoted to spray tans. I’d go once a week in the winter, twice a week in the summer. My spray tans were very subtle- you could tell I had a spray tan, but I never looked garish or orange.

Just glowy.

Sitting on the beach bores me to tears, so spray tanning was time efficient for me. Just by standing for five minutes in a spray tan booth, I could have a “healthy” bronzed tan and spend summer doing things I loved rather than sitting on my arse. And when I did go to the beach, I didn’t have to suffer through that month long pasty period, or have strange tan lines. I was just uniformly tan, instantly. I loved that.

I eventually stopped getting spray tans, for many reasons. Every day I wake up and say “This is the day I start going again,” but I talk myself out of it. So except for special occasions, I think I’m done with spray tans. Here are some reasons our relationship ended:

The chemicals discolored my Audi driver’s seat. My lease is up in a year, so instead of giving it back, I may have to keep it. I’m going to bring it in to the local car detailers and see what they say, but I don’t think they’ll be able to get rid of it. By the time I figured out that I should have put a towel down on the seat in the summer, it was too late.

I stopped swimming. I love to swim in the ocean, but I was finding myself more and more unwilling to go in the water when I got sprayed, because I didn’t want it to wash off. Total sand diva, and unacceptable.

The price doubled. It used to be this nice kinda cheap thing I did for fun. Then they doubled their prices for a package of visits. It’s still reasonable, but it makes me pause now, wondering if it’s worth it.

It became a time and life commitment. “Gotta go today, gotta go tomorrow, it’s wearing off,” blah blah blah. I’ve done my lifetime of commitment, I’m not going to be tethered down by a spray tan booth. Because it gets addictive, looking glowy. When you stop looking glowy, you need it again, immediately. And you forget how you really look, naturally. That’s when women start looking orange, not knowing how much time to let lapse between appointments. I don’t want to be her.

I have my own product. There are some great spray tan products out there that you can use if you want to look glowy. Cheap, easy, and in the convenience of your own bathroom. Just use a tanning glove.

I began to work part time in a crisis center. When you are working in a crisis center with young adults who are homeless or psychologically embattled, and you walk around the hallways sporting a spray tan, you don’t look glamorous. You don’t look healthy. You look like a fucking moron. And you probably stink from the chemicals. I walked in once with a spray tan, realized how alien-like I must have appeared to them, and never walked in the center with one again.

I didn’t like inhaling the spray. Who knows what happens when you inhale those chemicals? I did my best to plug up my nose when the spray started, but who knows how much still got into my lungs?

So there you have it. An old part of my life that I sort of miss, but am glad I extricated myself from. I pass my old spray tan place every day, and want so badly to make a left, but I control myself. Anyway, pale is in, or haven’t you heard?

Does This Yard Make Me Look Fat?

The way a woman is appreciated throughout her life changes from one stage to another.

As babies, we are appreciated for our gurgles, and our life force. We are admired simply because we are delicious miracles. We scamper around charming everyone and everything, learning what works.

We eventually enter the school systems, where we are admired for being pretty, or intelligent, or funny, or athletic, or artistic. We try to do well in school, enjoy our sports and our activities, and endeavor to make our families proud by going to college or getting a good job.

Then we enter our “hottest” phase- that time of life in our 20’s and 30’s where men, young and old, just desire us. They ache for us. Our beauty and bodies and brazenness tend to knock men off their feet.

And don’t even try saying, “I never went through a hot phase.”

Yes, you did. You might have been too busy comparing yourself to others to really see it. Trust me, men thought you were hot. I’m sorry you missed it. Make up for it by enjoying your hotness now. Yes, you’re still hot, so don’t go missing another opportunity to appreciate your hotness, knucklehead. Enjoy this one.

After many years of looking, we choose the best boy we can find, get married and procreate. We proudly push our babies around in strollers, and it occurs to us that while people still smile when they approach us, they’re not looking at us anymore- they’re looking at our babies. They’re not besotted by us, but by our babies.

And we know this is good. This is right.

I once met an older woman at the playground as she watched her grandchildren play, and she complimented me on how cute my sons were. I thanked her but lamented that I myself looked terrible. With twins and a toddler, I told her it was all I could do to get out the door, much less try to look glamorous.

“Honey,” she said, “don’t worry about it. Once you have babies, no one looks at you anymore, anyway.”

Sort of true.

Then our children grow independent, and we reach that exciting stage of reinvention. Maybe we want to start a new career, or travel, or start chipping away at that bucket list. We dance like no one is watching, we take classes, we even start spending winters away from home. It is an exciting time.

For widows, this stage is all the more poignant, because you are single, and men start looking at you again. But not because you’re attractive. I mean, I like to think I don’t look like the Elephant Man, but on any given day, if a man looks at me twice, two thoughts pop into my head:

Does he desire me? Or my real estate?

Men, especially men who deal with money, are 100% positive that widows can’t handle their finances. Real estate agents especially will do anything to cozy up to a widow with desirable real estate. Anything. They hope to eventually get close enough to whisper sweet nothings in her ear.

“Oooh, baby, gimme that square footage….”

This past summer I was enjoying patio cocktails with a visiting friend, and as we chatted, my friend suddenly cut me off.

“That guy is staring at you really intently.”

I looked over to see a man walking his dogs, a man who has always coveted my property. No many how many kind ways I have tried to tell this man to buzz off, he looks at me as if I am an unwelcome birdbath squatting on the lot of his future home.

I shrugged it off. “He’s not staring at me. He’s staring at the lot.”

She stared back at him.

“Why is he standing in the middle of your yard? Doesn’t he even care that you’re sitting right here?”

“Nope.”

Widows are simply not to be taken seriously, and that’s fine. After almost five years I’ve not only grown accustomed to it, I’m fairly amused by it. Because when it comes to being treated like a big, dumb, stupid idiot, I always like to defer to my favorite saying:

I can tell how dumb someone is by how stupid he thinks I am.

Underestimate a widow with brains, intention, purpose and fire at your own peril. More tomorrow on the power of widowhood.