Lovings

Few things:

Lots of inquiries about my TED talk. What can I tell you, it takes TED a loooooong time to edit these talks. I guarantee they will not post it until it is perfect. When I get it, you’ll get it, so simmer down. It’s not like I’m hiding it. Sheesh. Don’t you think I want to start racking up views?

A friend texted me and asked me if I would ever personally confront Jordan Peterson about his comment about Yumi Nu, that is, if I were to meet him in person. Um, no. I’d be a coward, or I’d faint. I’m a huge fan of JP, like HUGE. I find him irresistibly charming, stoic, erudite and yummy. The older man thing, you see. But I’m still peeved at him. Beauty takes many different forms, and who is Jordan to say this young girl isn’t beautiful, just because she’s not a size 00? I’m not saying she should be on the cover, or that she shouldn’t be. I’m not a magazine editor. I’m simply saying beauty is relative. Oh, and newsflash: size 10 girls like wearing bikinis on the beach too, and look damn good doing it. Kudos to Sports Illustrated. If you found her girth distasteful, just flip to another page. Problem solved.

Things I’m loving right now:

The Zaha dress from Sophie Grace. Perfect for work, slimming and sexy. I have the blue.

“The Lincoln Lawyer” on Netflix. Based on the best-selling novels by Michael Connelly, this show stars Manuela Garcia-Ruffo as Mickey Haller, the best criminal defense lawyer in L.A. Ruffo is gorgeous in a nefarious way. If I can find some time and stop doing word finds and binge-watching “Seinfeld,” I want to get into it.

Skims. Thin, light undergarments for women. I’m a huge fan of smoothing undergarments when I work, even in the summer, and these provide smoothing without making you overly hot. Yummy. And they’re half the price of Spanx. Sara Blakely better stop taking trips into space with Elon Musk, and watch her product- it’s not what it used to be.

The new olive color of La Creuset. I want. But I don’t need. So I shan’t get. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world if it made fiscal sense to buy every new La Creuset color when we wanted? Wah.

The Fruity-Dipped cone at Dairy Queen. I’m kidding, I don’t love this. Don’t waste your money or your time, it’s terrible. The outside “fruit” dip tastes like…wax lips. You know the wax lips “candy” that tasted like candle wax? Dairy Queen disappointed me, I was so looking forward to this new product. Yuk.

Catch you Wednesday.

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.

Back to the Roost

Yesterday morning I went into the kitchen at 5:00 a.m. to make my coffee, and as I ran the faucet, looked out towards our garage in the dim early morning light. And there was a possum, sniffing the outer edges of the garage and trying to figure out a way into my sons’ man cave. He kept pushing his snout into the door, which while not completely closed, would not yield to his weight.

Thank goodness for them, because if he got in there, there’d be no way I would have chased him out.

I sat down in my chair to drink my coffee and do a Word Find, when I heard it.

Rahck.

My head popped up. Could it be?

Rahck.

My heart beating in anticipation, I looked out towards my bird feeders and saw them standing on my stoop, looking towards the house.

Mr. and Mrs. Duck are finally back. May 14th, the latest date they have returned to my yard in all the years they have been visiting me. I’m so happy to see them, and they seem very grateful for the expensive critter food I had ready for when they finally showed up. When they were done eating, they just sat in my yard and took in the sights, relaxing to finally be what I like to call their “home away from home.”

My bunnies are back, too. We must never rush nature. It is on its own schedule.

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

Flasks

The Hydro Flask® company must have such a difficult time figuring out a way to market their product to to get their customers to purchase more than one.

Most things we buy wear out, break or get boring, right? Socks. Underwear. iPhones. Cars. It doesn’t take much of an advertising budget for those brands to titillate us. But everyone’s individual Hydro Flask® is so personal and beloved, and their products are so strong and durable, how and why would people need more than one?

I would love if that were so.

Not that there’s not a variety. There are flasks for cold, for hot, for soup, for noodles. Lids, straws, sports caps, large-mouth, small mouth. And the colors are endless. I was shopping yesterday, and just drooled over the biggest Hydro Flask display I’ve ever seen. I even tried to narrow it down if I were to actually purchase one, but it was impossible.

No matter. I wasn’t planning on purchasing one, because I love the size of mine, the lid, the color, and the stickers on it that I have spent the better part of two years choosing very carefully and lovingly. I bring my flask everywhere, and I mean everywhere.

Hydro Flasks® weaken me. I almost caved yesterday when I saw a beige and yellow flask announcing, “Limited Edition!” This gets me every time, when a Hydro Flask is made in a color that we will never see again once it’s gone.

I also love giving them as gifts to my boys. A few years ago they each got a small hot flask. Two years ago, they got a medium. This past Christmas, they got a large. I don’t know if they will ever use them, but I love buying them in delicious fun colors, wrapping them up, and seeing them emerge from the wrapping.

I especially like when they put them in their rooms for safe keeping, forget about them, and then I slink in there and steal them until the flasks eventually become mine.

Always a method to my madness.

This Not That Part II

I was going to post a Mother’s Day gift list, but everything I saw I was like, “Ew, don’t get her that.” So I’ll save the list for another time, because here’s a list of what NOT to get her:

Don’t get her: A hat. They’re always a mistake. Always. Beach hats, fedoras, Stetsons, you name it. If she wants one, let her make the mistake, not you.

Get her: A flowery scarf big enough to wrap around herself.

Don’t get her: Health products from Goop. Don’t make pretentious Gwyneth Paltrow, who is the CEO of Goop, any richer than she is. I’m sick of her profiting off the message that women are living their lives wrong.

Get her: Something from your local beauty store, keep the money in town. Homemade soap, for instance.

Don’t get her: Cocktail makers. Take her out, instead of getting stuff for her to stay in.

Get her: A great table near the piano player at the swanky beach bar.

Don’t get her: A “Binge-Watching Survival Kit.” C’mon. Mask mandates are lifted, it’s going to be summer soon. Don’t buy her shit to encourage her to sit around the house. This made me incredibly sad.

Get her: Concert tickets to a comedian or a band she loves.

Don’t get her: Sleep masks. These seem like a good idea, but they’re really annoying to wear at night. Don’t waste your money.

Get her: A cute light-diffusing alarm.

Don’t get her: You’ve Got This! book titles. I get annoyed when anyone tells me “You’ve got this!” or “You go, girl!” It’s very condescending.

Get her: A cute journal for her thoughts and doodles.

Don’t get her: Electronics.

Get her: Rifle Paper Co. stickers to stick in her journal. I love playing with stickers in my journal and appointment book. After all, we’re all just little girls at heart.

Bolognese

I’m a whore for Scottsdale real estate porn. I even found the perfect house a few months ago.

I’ve been receiving emails about available Scottsdale properties for almost twenty years. I know what I like, and I know what I want. So when this perfect little house sitting jauntily and alone in the desert popped up on my feed, I inquired to the agent.

“Sorry, Mary,” she said. “It sold in 36 hours.” It would seem that someone else is now living in MY house. Ugh. Well, we all know what the real estate market is like now. Too many buyers, and not enough houses. Or some shit like that.

I spent Palm Sunday in the Scottsdale Quarter while my friend worked for a few hours at her job, and I passed a real estate office with virtual tours. You’ve seen these. You punch in the number of the house you want to see, and the screen takes you through the house on a video tour.

I looked at the available properties, and decided just for fun to look at a 25 million dollar mansion in Paradise Valley, propped up on what looks like a personal meteor. I would be hard-pressed to explain accurately the opulence of this property. The sitting room in this house is bigger than a football field. It must be a sitting room for a blue whale. The pool looks like it loops around, I don’t know, Saturn. Twelve bedrooms. Fifteen bathrooms. A landing strip with an air control tower.

I’m not joking.

But now I have a guy named Bolognese contacting me about this house. All day as I walked the Quarter, he texted me and emailed me. Here was the first text:

Hi Mary, I work with a lot of lenders that can save you big in the long run. When you decide to buy, do you plan to pay with cash or need financing?

I’m not trying to waste his time, but it was too fun to resist.

Me: Cash.

Bolognese: Great! Looking to buy or sell or both?

Me: Haven’t decided yet.

B: Great, do you have any questions about the property I can help you with?

Me: A few. First, do any of the three pools have waterfalls?

No, but that’s easy to put in.

That’s a concern for me. Also, did I read right that this house only has two kitchens?

Yes.

Hm. Ok. The theater room, do those chairs recline?

Hold on, let me look….uh, yes, they do!

Excellent. Last, al fresco is my life, so would you say that the house provides not only privacy, but that it would be like living on a concealed oasis?

It certainly does.

That air traffic control tower, is a controller provided, or would I have to hire someone?

Oh, you would supply that.

Very good. Let me think about it and get back to you. I’m not too sure about those wood beams, and the open floor plan is a little TOO open. But you’ve been a dear. I’ll be in 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.

Blow(dryer) Jobs

*(I added the “dryer” at last minute- I chickened out).

Over the last few months my hair had not been coming out well after styling, and I didn’t understand why.

Until recently.

I’m crazy with my hair, and that observation cannot be overstated enough. I take hair gummies for shine and texture, and I can tell when my diet is off because my hair gets depressed. If my hair doesn’t look good, I don’t feel good, so ultimately, my hair predicates my mood. I don’t even like hairdressers styling my hair at the end of an appointment, because there is only one way I like it to be styled, and that’s my way. No curls, no straightening, no bouffant, no hair spray or gel.

(The only exception to this is before a photo shoot. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: no matter what your stylist says will look good when you’re photographed, BELIEVE HIM/HER. They know what they’re talking about. Every good photo session I’ve ever had is because I put my complete trust in the stylists and photographer. That’s the magic combo, baby).

But for a regular hair appointment? “Just hand me that blow dryer and I’ll do it myself.” Stylists are baffled by this, because part of their fee is for a blow-out and style.

So imagine my dismay the last few months as I’ve watched my hair turn brittle, lifeless and flat. I tried every imaginable product, added an extra gummy to my diet, bumped up fruits and veggies, rinsed with cold water, but nothing worked. Every day I looked at my split ends, dumbfounded as to what had changed in my routine.

The first day I arrived in Tampa, I took a shower and did my hair before the first Meet-and-Greet, and as I was blow drying my hair, I could immediately tell that something was different. For the first time in months my hair was being cooperative. It was soft and shiny, and responded to my styling method. And even when it got a little humid out, my hair stayed sleek and healthy.

Weird. Was it the water? The air? The sun?

It wasn’t until the second day that I realized what was different. As I was drying my hair with the villa blow dryer, feeling the tingle of the powerful hot air on my scalp, I became curious to know what brand blow dryer was giving me such a good blow job. I glanced down.

Baby Bliss Pro.

Boom chaka-laka.

Of course. It was the blow dryer. I have always used a Baby Bliss Pro, but a few months ago mine had finally died after years of use. So one day I was in Walgreens, and I grabbed a Revlon blow dryer for 30 bucks, because hot air is hot air, right?

NO! NOT RIGHT! WRONG!

The Baby Bliss Pro has 2000 watts of power and dries hair quickly for reduced split ends and frizz. You’d have to use a high-quality blow dryer to understand a low-quality one. My crappy Revlon dryer took forever to dry my hair, the AC motor so cheap that it exposed my hair to more damaging heat for longer.

Here is a description of my Baby Bliss.

Hairstylists covet Dyson blowdryers, others like Hot Bar or Hot Tools. Regardless of what kind of blow dryer you use, just be aware that you get what you pay for.