Zental Floss

As Religious As I Get

noreply@blogger.com (Laura) — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 06:57:00 +0000

The 'Publican and I will be in Seattle next week so I can worship at the Church of Coffee, otherwise known as the original Starbucks. Have a great week, everybody and I'll be back with pictures and a few pithy posts to go with them, too.

Therapists We Love To Hate - Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Laura) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 05:49:00 +0000

Remember the Bob Newhart show? Well, this clip is not the Bob you remember - he's a Bob who's struggling to survive in the age of managed care. Seriously, if you went to therapy with this guy maybe you would get better. As a therapist myself, I don't think I'm going to be using his technique anytime soon, although there is a good point here, too. Plus, the session's cheap!

A Walk Down Another's Memory Lane . . .

noreply@blogger.com (Laura) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 19:47:00 +0000

So yesterday for many hours, the 'Publican and I watched videotapes (yes, remember those?) of his home movies. We started out trying to find a portion from 1990 of a vacation trip from California to Washington, D.C. including the July 4th Fireworks display on the Mall. Growing up here, I've seen fireworks lasting about 20 minutes, sometimes 25 at the most. The ones in D.C. were a good 45 minutes and frankly quite spectacular, even on the videotape.

To get to the tape of the fireworks we waded (a fair amount of fast forwarding included) through about 6 hours of tape over a couple of hours. And did I mention - these were of my husband and his former wife and their much younger kids. It's 19 years ago, after all, and I've only been with this man for the past 5 1/2 years. It was just weird to see the ex-wife all over the place.

I should mention that I have only met her exactly once, and I was hardly at my best on that day. Frankly the only thing I remember was that she seemed a bit fragile. And by fragile, I think I'm referring to the voice and maybe the physicality, although I'm not entirely sure. Yes, she seemed thin, but it wasn't exactly that. By the time I rather accidentally met her coming in to pick up or drop off a kid and me just being in the kitchen at that exact moment she entered the house, I knew she was a bit older than me, and had had some issues with her bones, having to have a hip replacement at a youngish age. I also knew she had a lot of panic attacks and other mood issues like depression, so maybe all of that went into my sense of her as "fragile".

So here she was in the tapes, younger and healthier and not seeming to be at all anxiety-ridden (except for their trip up the Empire State Building where she really did look scared). The same for my husband. When I met him, the 'Publican had graying hair and male-pattern baldness. But watching the tapes he had a full head of lustrous sable hair - almost too "pretty" for a man. Amazing what 19 years can do to people, eh?

The fun part was seeing the kids, one of whom was 6, the other 9. The 6-year-old was so cute, running hither and yon, karate-chopping the air at odd moments, making those candid comments that parents just love (in Williamsburg's old stables, he can't help himself - "It stinks!"). That part was very enjoyable. And poignant. My father-in-law had given the video camera to my husband and his first wife as a present and they used it over the years to document their kids' lives as well as their own good times.

I never had a videocam and I never documented my son's life when he was young, except in still photos. I know this doesn't mean I'm a bad mom or anything, but seeing the videos sure made me wish I had had the living, breathing movement of a little boy on vacation or at play, to enjoy again. Although I can certainly see a picture and remember where we were, how old he was, what was happening. But more of it is in my imagination and memory and we all know how unreliable those can be.

Oh well.

After the 1990 trip video, we also watched a tape that had been edited by my in-laws which included a fair amount of footage with my husband's brother on it. It started with the wedding of my husband and his ex-wife in 1976 and went up to 1984 or so, when their second child was born, an eight-year period. In the middle of this somewhere, the 'Publican's brother was killed. Of course, I've never met him so it was interesting to see the videotapes, to see how much taller he was than my husband, to see who he favored in what features. In some photos the brothers look very similar but in most, they don't. Of course, it was his brother who stood up for him at his first wedding - at ours, it was the 'Publican's second son who did the honors.

I know it was emotional for my husband to see his brother, more so than it could ever be for me, since I never knew him. None of the kids knew their uncle, either, and he left no wife or children of his own, although he did leave a boat and other artifacts, some of which my in-laws still have, almost 30 years later. I sometimes wonder what it must be like to lose a young adult child, but I can't know because it hasn't happened and I hope it never does. I sincerely hope my son outlives me by many decades. But none of us knows what will happen when we have children.

Perhaps that is why faith and prayer are so important for most of us, religious or not. We have these kids, we do our best, we're imperfect, and at some point we have to send them out into the world somehow. I know I've posted some of this sentiment before and I still get those "I can't protect him anymore" twinges about my own son. Truly, parenthood is not for sissies.

It was strange watching the tapes of my husband's first wedding, seeing how happy and full of promise he was when he first got married with the knowledge of where it would eventually go. We both were left with some "what if's" since there were people (his brother for one) who didn't think they should marry, primarily because they were so young. But the 'Publican didn't know it then and wouldn't know it for a long time. I think watching this was like watching a movie, having read the novel beforehand, so you know the hero shouldn't marry that woman because it will only lead to heartache.

The "what if's" are fun at times, but obviously not the point. Because if not for that marriage and eventual divorce when it happened, maybe we would never have met and married. Certainly his four sons would not have been born, although had another marriage happened at a later time, probably other children would have been born, just not these kids. And they are the kids he knows and loves.

My story is similar, but I think I always knew in some place of my being that I was not in the right marriage for me. Of course, that nascent knowing didn't stop me from marrying my first husband or having my son. And I was married for nearly seven years, so it wasn't all terrible. But for me, too, I think the history was what it had to be to get me to the place where I needed to be that led up to my meeting the 'Publican.

One thing that my husband has always told me is that his first wife's weight had been up and down, but since I'd only met her one time and she was pretty thin, I'm not sure I believed it, but the videotapes didn't lie. Her weight was all over the place and I guess, in that petty girl part of myself, I wasn't totally unhappy with that fact. Who said I didn't have the capacity to be secretly pleased that my predecessor had weight issues, since I have had my own? Like I said, it's a petty part of myself, shared by most women. Hey, I'm not proud of it.

Ultimately, walking down someone else's memory lane was an interesting experience for a holiday afternoon and evening.

Folie a Deux a la Madoff

noreply@blogger.com (Laura) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:29:00 +0000

I was just over at Aldon Hynes' blog, Orient Lodge, leaving a comment about one of his posts. Of the many blogs out there, Aldon's is one of the more thoughtful, well-written ones around. But he stated that he thought Ruth Madoff should keep her $2.5 million and basically live with the shame of it all (I'm paraphrasing a bit).

I disagree. I remarked that Ruth had decided long ago to stay with Bernie and was his 'partner in life and crime'. Plus any money they made was the Madoff's victim's money, not theirs.

I think, and others have stated publicly, that Bernie Madoff appears to have Anti-social personality disorder. That may be. But at the very least, he seems to fit the classic pattern of a person with NPD (narcissistic personality disorder). The primary trait of which is a lack of empathy for others. What's interesting is what may have been the draw for Ruth Madoff. I suspect we'll learn more in the following months and years, but I'm going to throw in some armchair psychology. Narcissists don't marry other narcissists (d'oh - and share the spotlight?), but they do frquently pair up with individuals (mostly women) who have traits of BPD, or Borderline Personality Disorder. And these two can do the dance for a very long time. The narcissistic man can be just nasty enough and the borderline woman can have just low enough self esteem that they never leave each other - in fact, they desparately need each other.

(As an aside - although the full-blown personality disorders may not affect huge numbers of people in the population, traits of these two disorders can be found in much larger numbers. I'm not their psychiatrists, and I don't know if either Madoff has had a thorough psych evaluation by anybody, but at least as to Bernie, we're reading and hearing about Anti-social PD. I think the NPD is even more likley, though, with some anti-social traits. By the way - we now use the Anti-social term, but we used to call these people sociopaths which I prefer.)

Now, to all appearances, Ruth Madoff seems confident and attractive enough and so on to not be a sufferer, but borderlines can hide their affliction because their primary trait is a deep feeling of emptiness with a history of unstable relationships with important people in their lives like their parents or siblings or friends, and that kindof stuff might never show. Some borderlines do have histories of suicide attempts and/or other self-harming behaviors like cutting, but not all do. But the real deal is that they are in desparate need for affirmation that they are lovable and loving, that they even "exist" in a sense. Does this describe Ruth? We'll have to wait and see.

With such a pairing, though, you would expect to see a wife who, because she has invested so much of her self worth with her narcissistic husband, would keep his 'secrets' as conferring upon her a sense of being his special woman or love. What would she do for him? She would mirror him 'perfectly' which is what the narcissist so desparately needs. How that might look would be an almost hero worship of her flawed and imperfect man, of 'seeing' him completely AND accepting him completely. Basking in this, he would feel he could confide in her - and his confidence in her would, in turn, allow her to feel his specialness as her own, too. It's a perfect feedback loop. It's also a gordian knot that is not easily unwound. Under these circumstances, if true, Ruth would never rat out Bernie. Isn't it the case that everyone has said how devoted Ruth and Bernie were to each other? Even to the exclusion of their two sons who by all accounts may not have had much knowledge of Bernie's crimes. They had what I call a "marriage of two" which really didn't allow outsiders in, even the kids. And I don't think it matters that Bernie had a little black book of hookers; they only ministered to his body whereas Ruth mirrored his special and secret soul.

That's why we have a psychiatric term for the shared delusion - we call is a folie a deux. The "folly of two". It's a powerful reminder we ought not forget - we not only behave differently with others, we even think and feel differently, too. Scary, isn't it? Such is the power of the limbic system and our mirror neurons. It is why we can so easily learn our baby's specific cries and coos. It is why our animals "know" when we're happy or sad, and especially with dogs, behave in ways to soothe us when we're sad or agitated (yes, animals like all mammals have fairly well developed limbic systems). It's not magic or psychic - it's nature. It's the way we're designed to survive in families, packs, tribes and cultures.

The last act of Bernie is also an act of his narcissism because only HE had the power to save Ruth by falling on the sword and saying she had nothing to do with it. I don't buy it. But I can see how he might need to do this because it keeps secure his place as the only one who did it, and the only one who should be imprisoned. Ruth is secure, due to him and his omnipotence. As long as she's not culpable, he stays in the limelight, which is one place the narcissist loves and needs. It's just all about him with she the innocent spouse. Right. She was the bookkeeper in the early days and I don't believe for a second that she wasn't intimately aware of the scam.

I think the point is that, even if they had a folly of two and were in a marriage of two emotionally damaged people who found each other and eventually found a way to scam their friends, families, and others - what they both did was wrong. Ruth had the power to pull the plug at any time. Now I don't believe based on my possible scenario that this would have been easy for her, but this doesn't make her a victim of him, either. At the very least, she had to wonder how it was that only Bernie could do so well year after year, when others had dips as well as good years. She isn't stupid.

I'm not suggesting, either, that she should have an adjoining cell - but I do think she should suffer financially for these shared crimes. At least to the extent of their shared victims. If she has to rent a room somewhere or live with one of her sons, okay. If she has to get a job at Walmart or Starbucks to supplement her social security, I'm okay with that, too. Even if you think that she is innocent, like all 'good' wives of criminals, she may have to pay in other ways for the choices she made - even if that choice was only to be loyal to her husband. Even mafia wives have to get jobs sometimes, after their hubbies go to jail. Why is Ruth Madoff any different?

Once Again, The Survey Speaks!

noreply@blogger.com (Laura) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:23:00 +0000

Gee, it's been awhile since I did one of these silly surveys, but this one, thank goodness, came out okay. Can you imagine if it had gone the other way? The 'Publican would have been horrified, I tell you. He thinks I'm a feminine woman, after all. Joke's on him, almost.

Your Brain is 53% Female, 47% Male

Your brain is a healthy mix of male and female

You are both sensitive and savvy

Rational and reasonable, you tend to keep level headed

But you also tend to wear your heart on your sleeve

What Gender Is Your Brain?

Trifecta of Death in Hollyweird

noreply@blogger.com (Laura) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 22:44:00 +0000

This week we had our trifecta. You know the "bad things come in threes" moment here in Hollyweird. Well, and if you add in Thailand, maybe it comes in fours (I'm thinking David Carridine, but for the moment, he's not in the discussion). So first up - the perpetual side-kick and pitch man - Ed McMahon. When we heard he had died, I turned to the 'Publican (aka my husband) and said, "well, no more ads for selling our gold teeth!).

And then yesterday we had a two-fer.

First up was 62-year-old Farrah Fawcett. I didn't watch her cancer documentary on TV that was on recently. I'm not sure why - maybe I thought it would be depressing and I might cry. Maybe I thought it was going to be fairly self-serving, badly done or just overly narcissistic. Maybe there was just something else on the tube that I was more interested in. But for whatever reason, I knew she was quite ill with cancer, didn't have that long to live and yet when I heard she had died, I felt more than a twinge of sadness. Now here's something interesting - everybody said she had cancer but nobody was saying what type of cancer she had. Yesterday for the first time, the radio announcer stated it - she had anal cancer. My husband opined that this was probably why nobody was saying much about the type of cancer she had and, in fact, he didn't even know you could get anal cancer.

Well, yes you can. In fact, since cancer is cellular mutation you can "get" cancer anywhere on or in your body. Even in yucky places that we don't like to talk about. Now if someone says, "well, you would have known this if you'd seen that documentary" - fair enough. Maybe they talked about the type of cancer on the show - and maybe not. It obviously was a sensitive topic for the family and friends of Farrah and one can only wonder what type of treatment was needed because she fought the cancer for awhile. Once again I say "Yuck" and I'm not all that squeamish.

So I say, rest in peace, dear Farrah. What happened was awful and you fought well and hard. You had an amazing life filled with career highs (think "The Burning Bed" and "Extremities" more than "Charlie's Angels", okay?) and you had love in your life, too. You left an impression on us - some of us more than others. That means that I, too, had a Farrah haircut for years in the 1980's, since my hair is basically the same type of hair. Not that I ever looked like her - drat!

R.I.P. Michael Jackson!
Originally uploaded by Double With Cream (away for a while)

Now to the third death of the week. Michael Jackson. This one just annoys the heck out of me. And here I may annoy you, too. What I wrote in a blip (blip.fm is a musical sharing site patterned about twitter) last night was that he was a "musical genius and a tortured soul" and I think that about sums up the nicest things I can say about him.

Musical genius - yes, absolutely. I remember the Jackson Five since I was a kid during their heyday. Great songs and little Michael was absolutely adorable. And I was certainly blown away by "Thriller".

What I didn't know - none of us did - was how he and the rest of the Jackson kids were truly brutalized by their father, Joe. I don't take this away from MJ - he was abused, at least emotionally and physically. Although I doubt his father sexually abused him, I would not be surprised to hear that MJ was abused by somebody close to the family.

So tortured soul - yes, absolutely. He was a man-child who never became a true man. There is enough evidence that he was a pedophile but because he was not the worst type of pedophile, many tend to dismiss his behavior as a quirky or idiosyncratic "lifestyle", and can't believe that he did the things we think pedophiles do.

Not all pedophiles have intercourse (RAPE) with their victims. Not all pedophiles stalk their victims. In fact, they tend to emotionally seduce their victims AND their victims' families. Most say they love their victims - and they mean it. Some, like MJ, just go to second or third base (touching and maybe oral sex) with their victims. Again, if he is emotionally about 11 or 12 years old, he's going to behave this way with other boys in close age proximity (his favorite victims). Sex play between pre-pubescent boys of the same age and maturity is not that uncommon. It isn't necessarily sexual abuse because the relationship is not, by its very nature, exploitive. Now if a 12 year old boy is touching a 5 year old - that is not mutual. It's not just sex play - it is abuse.

But here's the thing - it's still pedophilia. It's still wrong. It's still against the law. The fact that he wasn't convicted does not mean he didn't do it - it means the prosecutors didn't have enough evidence to prove their case to a jury of 12. It could also mean the prosecutors DID have enough evidence, but the jury of 12 wasn't going to convict MJ because he was a celebrity. Remember the idea of "burden of proof" and "reasonable doubt"? So for whatever reason, the jury did not believe the prosecutors had met their burden of proof and/or there was reasonable doubt. But . . . that doesn't mean he didn't do it. Remember - MJ paid off the first boy's family to the tune of $25 million.

Look- the bottom line is that he was a victim and a victimizer. I think he had erotic desires for boys of a certain age and those desires are not ones that we, as a society, tolerate. We are not a NAMBLA nation, nor do I want us to be. Children are too easily manipulated by adults, and even if I believe that MJ had the emotions of a 12-year-old and in his own mind, he was just playing with a playmate, he was legally an adult. In effect, he needed others in his world to say no to him - and there's no evidence that anybody ever did.

(By the way - don't get me started on the families of MJ's victims. As far as I'm concerned they pimped their kids out to a pedophile for their own needs and they are worse than MJ. After all, MJ was just MJ and wanted what he wanted, but the parents of the victims should have had enough sense to keep their kids away from him. They didn't and they preferred to cash their kids in. Unspeakable and disgusting.)

I suspect what we're going to learn is that MJ died from a combination of drugs that lead to cardiac arrest. Something like another sad soul, Anna Nicole Smith. Doctors kept him doped up - family members and sycophants never stopped it - and he's dead.

We'll see. MJ seems like a very concrete fellow without much insight into himself or his history or motivations so that much of his internal distress was probably somatized (that is, he would have a lot of physical complaints of pain, gastrointestinal distress, etc.) and he chose to find doctors who would continue to maim him or dope him up, rather than help him psychologically. I'm not saying that psychiatrists and therapists weren't ever called in - I'm just saying that they were probably not listened to by either MJ or his entourage. Easier to do another plastic surgery or give him another injection of demerol or morphine.

Had he been more psychologically minded it's possible that he might not have been able to live with himself - but I don't think we're going to learn this. I don't really think this was a suicide - although the idea of this is tantalizing. But it would mean that he would have to have the ability to see himself clearly - or to want to save his kids from himself. I don't think that was possible and I don't think the entourage would allow it anyway. After all, their paychecks were at risk.

Ultimately, he was a commodity - one that eventually just got used up. And that's tragic.

My Life In the Chair

noreply@blogger.com (Laura) — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 21:35:00 +0000

I want to finish up my series of posts on how I came to decide to commit to my chosen career, which even as I write that, reads odd. After all, the idea of choice and decision implies commitment. But not in my case, apparently.

The other installments of this missive can be found here, here and here. I should probably start and explain that yes, this picture is not taken from flickr or istockphoto but is, instead, a picture of my actual chair in my actual office. It's not the coolest chair around (in my very humble opinion, the coolest chairs are Eames style chairs with leather ottomans), but for now, it suffices and I can curl up in it which sometimes feel the best thing to do. I've even fallen asleep in this chair.

In any event, I left off in my last installment mentioning I had spent a lot of time in psychotherapy and that my own therapist had mentioned that maybe I should consider this as a career. I think on one level I always knew I'd get to grad school when I was ready. By the time I was 42, I was pretty ready. By then my son was 15 and my job was fairly stable and it just was time. I spent a month or so taking the tours of the local freestanding graduate schools and decided upon a program that seemed to combine the academic with the practical. One thing they had was one-way mirror observance and training and they started on this right away. I mean - why waste time just studying it in books? I think the decision was, on balance, probably a good one, but it turned out not to be as academically inclined as I might have liked. Ultimately, it doesn't matter, but when I was in school and spending pretty big money on all of this, I wanted to be challenged a bit more than I was.

Oh well. Really what it takes to be a good therapist is probably not all that academic - and this is borne out by lots of folks who say they went to see the guy who wrote the book or taught the course and they were "cold" or "preoccupied" or even "downright lousy" therapists. But, on the other hand, just having a sense of it in your bones or intuition isn't enough, either. (Although you'd never know that by the number of people who call themselves "counselors" "therapists" or "coaches" with minimal or no amount of education or training and no oversight by governmental bodies (e.g., licensing) which means they can do anything they want and consumer be damned. Good luck in suing them for malpractice.)

But that's another rant for another time.

I do think the blend of formal education, internship (hands-on training) and going through the licensure process all contribute to becoming a good therapist, but these have to be added to the individual's traits like warmth, empathy, curiosity, humor, and intuition. And that really important trait of being able to help without letting it hurt the healer (in other words, having good boundaries and your own personal life). I spent my whole last post talking about my all important hospice volunteer work which helped teach me that I had this last trait.

I was always a life-long learner type, so the idea of keeping my nose in a book for the rest of my life didn't phase me, and I've always had an innate curiosity of people and their motives. I have a quirky sense of humor which tends toward being dry but is also fairly gentle, not sarcastic. Being able to see something humorous in life has been very helpful in being a therapist - after all, we're all in this together and nobody gets out of it alive. I think and others have said that I am easy to talk to and non-judgmental, and I have the ability to just listen and not just jump in and offer lots of pat answers. And I've always been pretty intuitive (at one time in my younger life I had a lot of psychic events which I now attribute to intuition, not psychic ability).

Becoming a good therapist takes a lot of time and work. I'm still in the beginning stages of this and I've been at it a total of ten years, from when I started graduate school to now. I did my 3000 hours of internship, and I've had all sorts of experiences - from clients who threw things at each other, and stomped out of the session, to people who showed up in psychotic states and couldn't sit in the room, but insisted I do therapy with them on the sidewalk (I took a chair outside), to people forced into therapy by the court system who were more interested in scamming me than using their time to actually gain insight into their situations, which is one place my intuition has come in handy.

I've had actors, prostitutes and ex-cons, lawyers, clerks, and nurses, and other therapists as clients. Some of my clients have been markedly manic and others horribly, suicidally depressed. More than a few have had traits of Boderline Personality Disorder and a few were probably candidates for Antisocial PD. Almost every child I have seen in therapy has been in a situation where it was the parents who needed to be there more than the kid and, as a result of this, I decided to not do direct work with children only. I do see family constellations, though, such as parent-child, but, if possible, I prefer to work with the parents only, either individually or with their spouse, since that is usually where the family distress begins.

Over time I found myself drawn towards creative adults such as actors, artists, writers, musicians and singers. Although I have never worked as an actor (not even community theater), I took drama in school and I played first chair flute in orchestra, so I do know something of the anxiety that comes from performing. My son is also a creative person, who performed in many plays throughout school, and is a writer, artist and videogame designer. So although I'm not an ex-actor, I feel I have always understood the personality type fairly well. Plus I like creative people - I understand their desire to give their gift to the world and make money at it, too. It's a pretty natural fit for me.

And hey, I live and work in LA, so creative types are all around me. But . . . it hasn't been the mosst lucrative work around, as many of my clients are struggling to find acting work and living hand-to-mouth on their wits and waiting tables. They do come to therapy and get a lot out of it, hopefully to the point, of becoming more successful, but at first they have no money. And I have been fairly conflicted about making money as a therapist. I'm not alone in this.

And in my case, I have always had the backdrop of my other career to fall back on. So for most of my actual working life as a therapist I have also maintained either a full- or part-time job as a paralegal. This didn't even change last August when I was finally laid off from my last paralegal job. For the first few months I was consumed with getting some projects done at home and then the holidays with the idea that, once January 2009 rolled around that surely the seas would part and I'd find paralegal work again. It didn't really occur to me to question this, since we needed me to work and this was a more consistent way to do it.

But guess what? January came and then February and March - and no work. I think I went on exactly one interview for a contract job which I didn't get. And although I was still getting unemployment, that was running low, so I started re-thinking my assumption that I'd keep working as a paralegal while maintaining a practice. I mean, what was the real job and what was the side job?

I was like the person who has managed to put one foot on the ice floe while keeping the other foot on land, and the ice floe is moving slowly away from land. At first it's imperceptible but over time, you're straddling two worlds. I'm not sure that the "land" wasn't my therapy practice, but it sure was hard to make the decision to be in one place.

You know how sometimes you find inspiration in odd places? Well, a few months back I had bought a drink at starbucks and actually read the quote on it (usually I just drink and toss).

Here's the quote:

The irony of commitment is that it's deeply liberating -- in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life.

Now the person who is quoted, Anne Morriss, is just a person, a customer from New York who describes herself as an "organization builder, restless American citizen, optimist." I have no idea what an "organization builder" is (heck, it could be anything), but the other two descriptions fit me fairly well, too. And it was in reading and absorbing what this quote meant that the last pieces fell into place. I had always hesitated being a full time therapist due to the money, but couldn't really make more money as a therapist until I was willing to put all my emotional and mental energy into building the business and getting clients. So all my 'rational hesitation' began to seem silly - I was using my "I'm going to get another job!" thinking to keep my practice small and then I'd complain about the size of my practice and use it to justify why I needed to get another job. Meanwhile, the ice floe was floating further away and it was getting to be pretty difficult to straddle the open water.

So I jumped back to land (yes, I guess the land was my practice). And I now stand there and say when asked, "Oh me? I'm a psychotherapist. And you?"

Maybe This Twitter Thing is Cool . . .

noreply@blogger.com (Laura) — Sat, 02 May 2009 06:03:00 +0000

Here's something cool I just got from Rainn Wilson (yes that Rainn Wilson from The Office) off Twitter:

Now I haven't necessarily been a fan of the Twitter or the Tweet or the Re-Tweet (c'mon guys... ugh!), but if this is the kind of stuff one can get from having a Twitter account and following weird and/or cool people, then . . . well, have a listen for yourselves.

Fabulosity for a Friday evening.

My Life on the Couch

noreply@blogger.com (Laura) — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:03:00 +0000

This is part three of a longish series of posts about how I've gotten where I am today. You can find the other posts here and here.

So we left off, gentle reader, with me trying to figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life at the ripe old age of 38. As I mentioned, occasionally my therapist would mention ideas to consider but generally I would dismiss them - after all, I didn't think movie producer was a likely career choice at my age, although it sounded intriguing. But then there were the offside comments like, "you'd probably be good at this work," or "well, you've been doing this all your life . . ." to describe my once again attempts to fix my friends' lives (to the exclusion of my own usually). And even, "well, if you're going to do this, you might as well get paid!" I don't think she was necessarily suggesting I should become a therapist, but she felt it warranted a look.

And I agreed with this, but between considering it and doing it took some time. My first time looking at it was attempting to volunteer at a local counseling center, but it was clear to me that I wasn't remotely ready to do it. Sitting in a room, hearing people's problems for an hour at a time? I mean, I was the complainer, not the listener. A few years later, though, after a tough break-up with a boyfriend, I decided to try again with a somewhat different venue. I'm not sure how I found out about it, but I applied and eventually became a Hospice Volunteer with Kaiser Permanente. For those who don't know, Kaiser is the first and, by some measures, premier managed care facility located mainly in California. I was a volunteer for a little over a year and it was life, and career, changing.

Kaiser had developed their Hospice program in an effort to save money, of course, but even so, it was staffed with wonderful clinicians and us volunteers, comprehensive, humane and very moving for those who chose to spend their time with the dying and their families. My first week there I had three AIDS patients, all close to death, but after that, I mostly dealt with patients who were a bit further away from their final reward, so I had the opportunity to get to know them and their families. The program was set up so medical and social work services were delivered to the patient in their homes but they could check in to the hospice facility for a week a month for respite care - this was to give a respite for the caregivers (usually a spouse).

I learned a few things from this experience. One, You die as you live. If you were a grouchy grump in life, you didn't magically transform into Mother Theresa while you were dying. And those with a real joy of living seemed to keep that sense, even in pain and suffering and indignity. As one patient said to me, laughing, "Gee, except for the cancer, I'm healthy as a horse!"

I was once assisting a nurse in bathing a gentlemen who couldn't resist winking and making comments about his "studly" physique (he was pretty emaciated by then) and we would chuckle and comment on his musculature, keeping it all professional of course. On the Hospice ward the rules were somewhat relaxed, so family brought in small pets and kids to visit (as long as they were well behaved), and it wasn't unknown for a patient to take a nip of the brandy that a family member brought in. Why not? They were dying, so stupid hospital rules be damned!

Another lesson was this - you are alive until you are dead. Sounds obvious, but what was amazing to me was how strong the individual personality was even to the very end. Again, if you were a jokester type, you kept it up - you just couldn't help yourself - until you drew your last breath.

There was also a corollary to this lesson - death is both an event and a process. The first patient I ever saw die proved this to me. He'd had brain cancer and was very agitated the day he died, so the nurses had put soothing music on the boom box in his room. Sometime that morning, I entered his room and remember seeing him calm and for a change, sleeping. As I went up to him, though, I realized he wasn't asleep, but had in fact probably died. He looked so peaceful. I went out to find a nurse and we went back into the room about ten minutes later. She pronounced him dead and left to call his family. I stood there with him, just taking it in, and realized that in the few minutes I'd been out of the room the energy in the room had shifted. It was obvious the patient had died sometime before I'd entered the room the first time, but it "felt" like he was still there - in fact, that was what I'd thought, that he was asleep. But by the time the nurse and I re-entered the room, it felt colder somehow and he seemed less present.

I know this sounds all woo woo, but I don't mean it that way. All I can say is that there was a definite moment when he took a last breath and a definite moment when his heart stopped beating and his brain stopped firing neurons (although each of these events may not have happened at the same exact moment in time), and that each of these events were part of an overall process of the body shutting down. If there is this thing called soul or spirit apart from the body well then I had a small experience of that because somehow the patient was less present in the room than a mere ten minutes earlier.

There were very hard moments when I had a patient who was just about my age and, of course, children and teenage patients were excruciating to deal with (well, often they were more philosophical and accepting of their own demise, but it was their haggard and exhausted families who were harrowing). Luckily, I guess, most of the patients were elderly and had lived long and full lives. Even so, I remember times of crying in my car before I would drive home, but once I got home I still had a child to raise and a job to get to. It was difficult to completely shake the experiences there.

When people asked me about this it was usually "how can you do this?" What was particularly hard to explain was how wonderful it was and how alive we all felt. For me at least, I don't think it was the helping aspect that made it wonderful, but it was that I was privileged to be with these people who allowed me into their lives for a moment, to share a smile or a joke or a story.

Which led me to my last lesson - We're all dying every day. I remember one time being with a patient around my age who was quite aware she had little time left and I had a momentary sense of "that could be me!" I could have cancer in my body right now but it just hasn't gotten to critical mass yet, so I'm not sick. But . . . it could be growing and multiplying and . . . that could be me! And it was true. But I need to emphasize - it was just an awareness, not the start of a hypochondriachal journey down the rabbit hole to find a disease. It was an awareness that we all will die of something some day. The important part is how we live on those days in between.

Yes, that patient in the bed really wasn't so different from me and there was a time when she had been perfectly healthy and now was within six months or less of death. So yes, on some level every day we're here and alive and healthy is a gift and also is one day closer to that day when we will take our last breath, think our last thought and pump our last bit of blood throughout our bodies.

What did I learn ultimately, along with my lessons? For me, I learned that I could feel very deeply the sadness of what was happening, but I didn't need to take it home with me. I could shift gears pretty easily. And this was what I needed to know about myself before I made my decision to attend graduate school to become a therapist.

We're almost to the end, dear readers - so hang in and I hope to finish this up and bring the last ten years to a conclusion.

Will Work for Porn

noreply@blogger.com (Laura) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 04:53:00 +0000

Me: "Hey honey, we got something in the mail from the Red Cross today. Because you have A positive blood, they'd like you to give platelets."

The 'Publican: "What's that?"

Me: "They take the blood, run it through some sort of filter for the platelets and then send it back into your body. Takes longer - about 90 minutes."

The 'Publican: "Geez, that sounds awful. Bad enough we give blood every 56 days."

Me: "Well . . . they've got movies."

The 'Publican: "Have they got porn?"

Ahhh... Friday Silliness

noreply@blogger.com (Laura) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 07:48:00 +0000

Since it's now Friday, I thought I'd just go and do a bunch of dopey quizzes. Let's start with this one - my "supervillain name":

Your Supervillain Name is Toxic Warrior

Muhahahaha!

What's Your Supervillain Name?

And another one:

You Are a Snow Leopard

You have learned that you must rely on yourself, and yourself alone, to live a happy life.

You are understand the world better than most people you know. You are very perceptive and intuitive.

You need lots of space to think. If you don't get the space you need, you're likely to bite someone's head off.

Because you are so thoughtful and solitary, people find you to be intense and mysterious. You're even seen as intimidating.

What Big Cat Are You?

Well, okay, "intense and mysterious" - well, if you were a Snow Leopard Supervillain named Toxic Warrior you might be intimidating too.

Now this next one is too true. Keep in mind that I'm married, but if I weren't . . .

You Should Never Date an Aquarius

Freaky, unconventional, and downright strange - it's likely that any Aquarius will weird you out.

And if you do happen to fall for an Aquarius, you'll probably find them too emotionally distant to connect with.

Instead try dating: Cancer, Pisces, Capricorn, or Virgo

What Sign Shouldn't You Date?

Ha, ha ha! This is a separate blog post, no doubt, but I WAS very much in love with an Aquarius once in my life. I did, however, marry the 'Publican who is definitely NOT one. (no disparaging of you water bearers out there . . . !)

Of course this next quiz is right up my alley:

Your Mind is 55% Cluttered

Your mind is starting to get cluttered, and as a result, it's a little harder for you to keep focused.

Try to let go of your pettiest worries and concerns. The worrying is worse than the actual problems!

How Cluttered is Your Mind?

I'm glad this quiz told it to me straight, because, heck . . . I'd never know this about myself! Ha.

Lastly, something I've always wanted to know - just what should I name those appendages affixed to my upper chest?

You Should Call Your Boobs "Bubble & Squeak"

Sexy!

What Should You Nickname Your Boobs?

Well... and I thought "Lucy and Ethel" was okay!

Here's to a wonderful Easter weekend for everybody - we may have some rain tomorrow which hardly seems like a Spring weekend here in LA, but that's life - and as we're always being told, we need the rain.

My Della Street Years

noreply@blogger.com (Laura) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 00:58:00 +0000

In my last post (here), I was talking about working for an attorney named Marc. And how he was a mess of a guy - smart, screwed up, a sometimes good lawyer hanging with some rather questionable characters, only some of whom he defended in court, and with a fondness for the white powder. And how I had a big crush on him. Well, yeah, of course I did. I mean why would I want to have a crush on a normal fellow? Looking back, it's probably a good thing that he didn't know about it or feel similarly about me.

Anyway. I worked for him about two years and during that time I was going through a separation leading to a divorce, had a very small child, and decided that if I wasn't immediately headed to law school I could, at the very least, become a paralegal. I entered the paralegal program at UC Irvine which was quite new and based on the one at UCLA, only it was in south Orange County. In my mind, UCI was a pretty poor relation to UCLA in many ways, but this was also 25 years ago, too. The program was fairly good and I graduated with honors. One of the big results of it was meeting the woman who was to become one of my closest friends to this day.

After I finished the program at UCI and had worked with Marc for two years I knew I had to move on - for one thing, I was tired of doing his research and writing and being paid to type. For another, he paid me a measly bonus at the holidays and the check bounced. That was not good. He wasn't happy about my plans to leave, but he wasn't going to stop me, either. Of course neither of us knew it would take nearly five months (and almost 30 job interviews) before I got my next job. Talk about a marathon. When I finally got my next job, I knew it was a good move. Instead of working for a one-person office in Orange County, I was in a big law firm in downtown Los Angeles. And as a paralegal, not as a secretary who was allowed to do some paralegal work on occasion, when it suited the boss.

Over the next 12-13 years, I worked first at this firm and, when it closed it doors, for another nationwide firm. I was lucky to work on high profile litigation matters and with famous (and infamous) lawyers. I even applied for and got admitted to law school. Which had always been the goal, right? I remember driving to Loyola Law School with my application package on the very last day they were taking applications, and then finding out just a few weeks later that I'd been accepted, much faster than I expected.

That summer I flew to New York to visit an old friend and during the trip she asked me why I was going to law school in the fall. After all, my son was about 4 years old and, even though he didn't live with me full time, it was pretty clear that working more than full time and going to school four nights a week was going to be a grueling schedule and once you added in studying on the weekends, when was I going to see my kid? And certainly that was part of it, but I justified that I'd end up being happier and making a lot more money and that would make it okay. But what my friend was asking me was more profound - WHY was I going to law school? I'd answer that I wanted to make more money and she'd ask again. And I'd answer that I thought I'd be a good lawyer and she'd ask again. After a few days of this socratic dialogue, I was stumped. What was the right answer?

I'm not sure I ever figured out the right answer, because on the flight home, crying, I realized something was very wrong. School was starting in less than 2 weeks. I remember calling a work friend who besides being a paralegal, had also gotten her master's in psychology. Blubbering, I managed to tell her I couldn't figure it out, but I could not go to law school in two weeks. And I didn't know why. Her words are still with me . . . "I think you need to talk to somebody and I have just the person" and proceeded to give me a phone number. I called and started therapy.

Now I wasn't a complete therapy virgin. I'd gone when I was in high school (my mom wanted me fixed) and had done a bit of marriage counseling (well, really divorce counseling since that was the final result), but I'd never gone for myself, on my own except once or twice with a therapist who seemed afraid of me. This time it was different. I stuck around and ended up sticking for a long time. Although I didn't know it then, I needed the time.

So I ended up not going to law school - I made the call to the school and gave my regrets and they gave my spot to someone else. Of course that person probably makes like a million dollars a year now. Oh well.

I continued to work as a paralegal, my son moved back in with me a few years later and I stayed with my therapy work. This pattern continued for a long time while I raised my son. Like I said, I needed to do some pretty deep work in therapy and it was harrowing at times. I had to dredge up my childhood trauma and really develop a stronger sense of myself. At work I had my ups and downs - I enjoyed the work, but it never felt like it challenged me enough, or maybe it challenged parts of me too much. The parts like being tremendously organized which I resisted a lot. I was always going back and forth on that one - and if a paralegal is anything, they had better be organized. So most of the time, I did a great job and some of the time I did a lousy job. And I had issues with authority and working with lawyers who were dismissive or patronizing of me. But the part I really liked was that it didn't touch me emotionally - it was just intellectual and organizational work. That worked for a long time until it just didn't anymore.

But what would I do? A few years after I'd gotten into law school, I had contacted the law school again but found out I'd have to re-take all the entrance exams and get higher scores to get in. Frankly, that was okay since I never really wanted to be a lawyer. I had no other marketable skills and I've always been pretty realistic about my own abilities. Of course every so often I'd complain about my work and just as often my therapist would listen and once in a great while she'd suggest I consider other careers. What she suggested and what I eventually became will be the subject of the next part of this story.

Memoirs of a Wannabe Fool . . .

noreply@blogger.com (Laura) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 04:56:00 +0000

I'm not into the traditional April Fool's Day folderol. I look at this as the Holy Fool's Day - a day for rediscovering your inner holy fool. Luckily, I did.

I recall in my tarot days we would study the major arcana and here was this funny card that started us off on our personal journey - the zero card. The fool set off with his knapsack and his trusty canine companion. Voltaire's Candide was a fool; so was Pollyanna; so was Chance the Gardener from Being There. I remember reading Candide during college and thinking it was both funny and sad because throughout Candide's travels and travails, he loses some of his innocence, although not all of it. The subtitle to the book is "Or Optimism" and that certainly is one of the qualities that Candide keeps.

Same for our girl Pollyanna with her "Glad Game." And Chance - well, he's the Barack Obama of his day - people project all their hopes and wishes on him and bada bing, bada boom, he ends up a Senator (well, not yet President, but if Peter Sellars had lived, perhaps....). Chance is a simpleton, and the movie is played for laughs and satire, which is appropriate, but there's a more somber and wondrous aspect to him, too. Everything in his experience is new and the fact that he learns through the TV is both ridiculous and yet tender.

I've always been a closet optimist. I wasn't able to be openly optimistic because to do so would have been to risk too much of myself in an unsafe world. I remember the mid-60's singing group Up With People (and here's a little bit of trivia - Glenn Close has a long-ago history with the group) which I remember renaming "Up With Lunch" even as I desperately wanted to have the innocence that these kids seemingly had with their Ozzie and Harriet lives, singing their positive ditties.

When I was 13 the paperback of The Godfather was being passed around, with a page prominently dogeared where Sonny has sex with one the bridesmaids against a door at his own wedding! It was shocking and arousing for both the boys and girls, promising a raw and urgent sexuality, and not too long after that my girlfriends began heading around all of the bases; one in particular was having S-E-X at age 14. But worse than any activity was the attitude of extreme casualness to the point of cynicism about our nascent sexuality. Yes, some of my friends were giving bj's to their boyfriends to retain their virginity bragging rights - even in 1973.

Now understand I'm not advocating virginity in thought, word and deed for everybody under the age of 30, but later when I was in my own therapy and began examining my own behaviors, thoughts and feelings I realized I'd lost, or thrown away, something quite precious indeed. It wasn't about the sex, but what it meant to be promiscuous with my body, especially with boys and men who didn't love me and who I could barely remember their first names. (hey, it mostly was the 1970's here). What I'd really lost was the capacity for wonder, for seeing the goodness in others and in myself. I didn't have a lot of enthusiasm for anything and I was bored a lot. I was cool, but unhappy and my way out was to allow myself to become a fool.

For this to occur, I had to allow myself to look, sound and act "foolish" at least part of the time and for that to occur, I had to feel safe in my world. That took time, but eventually I realized that my original innocence was back, at least most of the time. Since then, I've been accused of being a "Pollyanna", naive and even stupid.

But I remember what Marianne Williamson said (which I have to paraphrase)

"The innocence of a child is beautiful, but even more so is the innocence of an adult who has gone through hell and back."

And yes, there are times when I slip back into hard-edged cynical wariness of this world in which we're all just trying to do our best to survive. Mostly, though, I live with more fool and less cynic - I'm often awed by the beauty or fascinating ugliness of this world and of my fellow humans. I'm almost never bored, that's for sure.

On My Way to ????

noreply@blogger.com (Laura) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 04:54:00 +0000

When I was a kid, girls were allowed to dream only so big. I mean, I remember distinctly wanting to be a ballerina (ha! FAT chance of that one, but I did take tap and ballet for years), a flutist (again, years of lessons), and about here I kindof stopped. Of course, lots of careers didn't even exist yet - my son plays videogames for a living (well, he's a game tester which is much less cool than it sounds) and nobody foresaw that, or all the careers in computers that we now have. My mother had been an elementary school teacher (one of the time honored careers allowed women - you know, teacher, nurse or secretary) and hated it, so she eventually got a job with the County of Los Angeles as a social worker. In those days, you just needed a college degree which my grandparents had insisted she finish even though she'd gotten her Mrs. degree. (Yes, they were prescient as my parents did divorce and she needed to use that degree to get a job.)

There was a time when I wanted to be a teacher, but since it was the career my mother had loathed (I think she loathed children and we all know that's going to be another post or series of posts), it wasn't a desire I could easily voice.

As I got older, I thought I wanted to write, but the most I could envision was working at a newspaper, so I spent part of a semester at The Daily 49er, the campus newspaper of Cal State Long Beach. It managed to be both boring and stressful, not a great combination. The writing wasn't particularly interesting, but the deadlines were merciless.

In high school I had taken a typing class (probably my mother's idea) which served me well, as I could always eat, and for a number of years, I did just that. I'd dropped out of college after a semester and was doing secretarial work and taking night classes at Long Beach City College. It was there, in a math class, that I met the man who would become my first husband and after a bit of time, I was able to quit my job to finish my degree. I didn't have a major, so even though I wanted to major in that really practical course of study called Comparative Literature (you know those grads - they're the ones who ask you if you want foam or no-foam on your lattes), and my husband was insisting I should be a business major (for some reason, that was just anathema to me - perhaps because he was pushing for it hard), so I compromised and majored in economics.

But I didn't think I wanted to be an economist - I mean, what REALLY was that anyway? - no, somewhere along the line, I set upon the law as a career. I had watched hours and hours of Perry Mason and it seemed like you were either Perry or Della Street, his scrappy super secretary. And since I was in college I figured I was heading over to be Perry. But try telling that to my husband. His attitude was that he'd helped me get my college degree and it was time for me to go out and work. This was the same man who said it had been two weeks since I had given birth, so it was time to go back to work. You see why we've been long divorced.

Of course my BA in economics really didn't prepare me for anything (again, was that a caramel macchiato?) but that ability to type saved me once again, although this time I got a gig as a legal secretary for a small law firm. And then I worked for another lawyer, a man I'll call Marc (since that was his name).

Now Marc was a mess. Smart, funny, savvy (he was from New Jersey), and even a good lawyer on occasion, he was also lazy, paranoid and had a fondness for cocaine. He was a sharpshooter who kept thousands of dollars in his coffee can at home. He had an, shall we say, "eclectic" practice consisting of suing the local community for dog-bite cases, and defending members of the Vagos Brothers, the local Mexican motorcycle gang. And I had a big crush on him. My marriage was on the rocks and his was a mess and he didn't know I existed and, well, he was just so dreamy. Plus, because he was lazy, he let me play Perry instead of just being Della. Frankly, it was quite unethical, although when you're having so much fun doing the research and writing the briefs, you don't worry your pretty little head over such trifles. You don't think that what you're doing has much connection to the people whose case it is. You just don't think.

And on that note, stay tuned for the next part of this story.

Another Chapter From the Bad Girl

noreply@blogger.com (Laura) — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 04:25:00 +0000

Yes, the Entrecard Police have caught me. I received an ominous warning that my blog had not had enough "quality posts" in the last 90 days. And yep, it's true. I've had a few posts since the beginning of the year, but none for about two months.

Okay, so enough of the mea culpas. Nobody likes to read them. And I'm certainly no fan of writing them, either.

What have I been up to in my absence on the blogosphere? A lot. I was having a difficult time being unemployed and I'm still, technically, unemployed. But really I'm unemployed from my "B" job, not from my passion or Work (with a capital W).

One of my struggles was figuring out the content and balance of my days. So a few weeks ago I did an interesting exercise which I'll post about shortly. Suffice it to say (see, I'm learning . . . one topic can generate more than ONE blog post), the results were illuminating. And after some teeth gnashing and tears, I had a rather big insight which is now leading to some big changes in my life.

And as to the home front, I'll also hint at it - the 'Publican and I are just about ready to act like wild and crazy in love teenagers (which basically we've never been able to since we've been together five years ago, except on vacations.)

So glad to be back. I'll send an email to the Entregods and hopefully, they'll let me back in the pantheon. Fingers crossed, kids.

Signed, Sealed, Delivered . . . He's Ours

noreply@blogger.com (Laura) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 07:37:00 +0000

If there's one moment from today that I loved, it was seeing now-President Obama placing the step for his youngest daughter to stand on. This showed me the type of father he is that he took the time to help his youngest child be high enough to see her father take the oath, and I hope it bespeaks of the type of leader he will be over the next four years. Not that I think we need a parental leader, per se, but the quality of care this simple gesture showed to me was touching.

I think no matter what your politics are, today was a momentous day for all of us. Have we finally eradicated the historical stench of slavery? I hope so - I sincerely hope so. I know I felt a sense of completion and teared up several times.

Now I don't think President Obama is some sort of godlike character, but it is true that aspects of his personality and character have allowed us to project our hopes and anxieties onto him. He is a mere mortal and he will make mistakes and errors. No matter what, he will please some people and groups and anger other people and groups. His job is really a no-win proposition and yet I, like all of my fellow countrymen, want him to succeed in his oath, to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution."

I'm not one to pray but even for us godless ones, I wish him and his family well - but for our sakes, not his. We desperately need a leader to believe in, to inspire us, to make us want to be better men and women, and yes, better citizens of America and of the world.

Let history say of us, 'These were golden years - when the American Revolution was reborn, when freedom gained new life, when America reached for her best.

This quote was part of another charismatic president's inaugural address - Ronald Reagan's 1985 address. I think it is time for us as a country to 'reach for our best' - we deserve nothing less than an American Revolution reborn.

. . . And We're Leaving Again . . .

noreply@blogger.com (Laura) — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 07:45:00 +0000

Just when I got back I'm gone again, but this time just for a short vacation. Yes, we're off (again) to Las Vegas to experience the desert in January. We're staying at the Excalibur which has to be the cheesiest casino on the strip, but the rooms are mucho cheapo, so we can survive and walk across the street if we need to be anywhere that's just not quite as cheddar-like.

It is the Excalibur that has recently installed automated poker tables where you sit and play with opponents, but no dealer or real cards, just a video screen for each player and a display for the community cards. It sounds weird to me, but the 'Publican is game to try his hand in not tipping a dealer.

As to this Delight business, I had one of those days that was getting through a lengthy to-do list (laundry, groceries, pedicure, bank, ordering prescription refills, putting away xmas and putting together a list for the step-spawn in our absence), but I have managed to think about how it would be to live in delight more of the time. I'm not sure, but when the young woman doing my pedicure made a mistake and we had a mini-geyser on our hands (and up my skirt!), I just laughed. What else was there to do? It was only water, after all.

We'll also be celebrating our wedding anniversary on the 6th and I'm hoping to get to see another of Cirque du Soleil shows, as long as I can get discount tickets. We'll see on that score - I have to assume LV has their own version of Leicester Square somewhere.

Have a great few days!

The Word for the Year . . .

noreply@blogger.com (Laura) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 00:27:00 +0000

I'm passing this on from Christine Kane's blog which is a wonderful self-improvement blog. Like most of you, I'm done with making and breaking resolutions. Whether I changed the name to goals or decisions or whatever, the most real change I've made has come when I focused less on the doing of a behavior and more on who I wanted to become. Instead of just repeating what Christine has to say about it, I'm just going to direct you here and here to read for yourself.

Delight. I’ve decided that this word will help me this year. I want to take delight in my life, my work, my family and friends – I also want others to say, she’s delightful (full of delight). To me, being delightful and delighted can lead to more joy and fun in my life.

Let’s face it – there’s enough junk out there to occupy any of us. I’m not immune to this. I’ve had a bad long term relationship with anxiety and have struggled to find ways around feeling anxious and fearful most of my life. I’ve made a lot of decisions motivated by a desire to avoid feeling anxious and scared. And as a result, I've often limited my life.

What a difference to be motivated by delight! Whether that means I want to move towards feeling delighted by all aspects of my life, or creating delight for someone else (e.g., pleasing them), it has a lot of implications for me including the truth that I may have to allow myself to feel anxious, scared and worried at times.

So here’s to Delight. Wherever it may be found.

Another Anniversary of My Birth - !

noreply@blogger.com (Laura) — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 01:53:00 +0000

Woo hoo! Happy Birthday to me. And to the 'Publican. Yep, our birthdays are two days apart (mine is the 24th and his is the 26th).

So as a hopefully wonderful treat for you all . . . I present a short video that is sure to put a smile on your face.

Enjoy!

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

A Little Minuet with Satan - Or Welcome to My Brain

noreply@blogger.com (Laura) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 05:41:00 +0000

To start off with, here are some more unconscious mutterings (#294):

Cut the crap :: cut it out!!!

Scent :: of a woman

Vanishing :: act

Wetness :: stop it with an anti-perspirant

Cheap :: but not inexpensive

Badges :: of glory (or is that blades of glory?)

Puppy :: love (aaahhhhh)

Problem solver :: Geez, I wish I were a . . .

Gambling :: addiction

Sophia :: Loren (who else?)

Those are fun, I must say.

Geez, it's been an age, eh? I'm just all embarrassed for not writing more often in the last month, but to review:

I was laid off from my b-job where I was working for almost two and a half years. Yes, since the lay-off was in August, I became part of those wonderful national statistics, even though the 'Publican keeps reminding me that really my situation is different since I was only a temporary employee and this was only supposed to be a two-month job. Basically, I was lucky to hang on as long as I was. Well, yeah . . . except right about now we could continue to use the money that all my luck was bringing in, right? Now is not the best time to be laid off since it turns out that, for once, big corporations are not suing each other with the normal level of vociferousness as is the usual - although I expect that to change eventually given the news of just today. Basically, litigators profit from others' misery.

Here in California, even though we still have no budget in place and are told we're basically broke, the unemployment department has allowed an additional 13 weeks of payments to the normal 26 weeks. Of course, the award is pretty sparse compared to what you can make at almost any job. Although, hey, I'm not complaining at receiving my first check today, even though the thought of the check bouncing did cross my mind.

I've been trying to stay busy every day with varying success because as we all know . . . "Idle hands are the Devil's Workshop". So today I did a lot of knitting, which kept the digits pretty busy, but didn't bring in any scratch. However, last Friday, I didn't get out of bed until nearly noon with the excuse that I didn't feel good - okay, I had a froggy throat thing, but mostly I was just depressed and going through a general "loser" phase, which included lots of whining, moaning and teeth gnashing as requisite sound effects. Had I a hair shirt, I would have been wearing it. Okay, I'm lying (of course. . . come on, you didn't think I'd really have that big of a pity party, did you?), but you get what I'm talking about. I had a pretty bad day, topped off by scarfing down copious amounts of Round Table pizza and Ben & Jerry's. I can feel bad about not working AND put on some weight, too! Woo hoo! Now that's what I call productive depression.

Besides the general lethargy of my b-job's prospects at the moment, we also have had a few financial surprises this past month, too. First, the 'Publican needed these super amazing, neato, keeno new glasses to the tune of $800 (man, you could get lasik cheaper than that!). Then one of the cars that is reserved for the spawn needed repairs to the tune of $900 (which is cheap considering they wanted to do repairs for something like $2800 when the car is only worth about $2500.... yeah, right). Both of these were on top of what we paid our financial advisor for you know, financial advice, which seems pretty funny at the moment although I suppose eventually we'll be real glad we did this, since we aren't getting any younger, dontcha know.

We're also having some family issues at Casa Zental Floss which aren't entirely resolved, although we're getting close. All I can say right now is that it sucks to be a step-mother and it sucks to be a good father in a newish marriage. I'm worn out. The 'Publican is stuck in the middle. And it just all sucks.

And lastly, I've been deathly afraid to get sucked into the blogosphere - so much so, that I've actively avoided it for the past 3-4 weeks. Well, d'oh, you could have figured that one out, since I haven't posted in a month. Since I've emerged somewhat from that productive depression and am dealing with the financial issues attendant to possible long-term unemployment (I still have my business . . . or really expensive hobby, depending on how you view it), I realize my own private Devil's Workshop of a Brain hasn't been telling me the absolute truth. The blogosphere isn't really Hades and I'm not doomed if I spend a moderate amount of time here . . . right?

If not, I'd better get on those dancing lessons. Yep, I've been told Satan is rather partial to the foxtrot.

Wordless Wednesday

noreply@blogger.com (Laura) — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 06:30:00 +0000

Introducing . . .

Buster, the 18-pound cat, stuffing himself in a pretty small cat basket, kindof like getting into those skinny jeans.

Opus Without the Magnum

noreply@blogger.com (Laura) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 02:24:00 +0000

I’ve been having a big problem with this blog. I want it to be perfect. I know – shock and horror! But it’s causing a real problem with me.

I started this blog to give me an opportunity and a vehicle for regular writing. And like a lot of beginning bloggers I really wasn’t all that clear on what I’d be writing about – vaguely I thought I’d weave stories from my past and my present, with some humor and maybe a little lesson culled from my work with mindfulness in there somewhere. I don’t know that I ever thought anyone else might read what I wrote, at least not at the beginning.

So what changed? I started having an audience – maybe they started out just dropping an Entrecard, but some stuck around to read a post or two, and even a few let me know how my writing affected them. When no one else was actually reading what I wrote, I was just doing a more advanced “Dear Diary, today I ate fish sticks. Marsha is a big toad!”. But now I wanted what I wrote to be well written, polished, and to the level of a professional writer, which I assuredly am not. I’ve ended up writing long essay-like posts with long periods of nothing in-between. I don’t know that there’s anything wrong with this, but the purpose was to be doing regular writing, not irregular writing. So along with my perfectionism has come procrastination and paralysis (the evil triumvirate).

Ultimately, I love reading good writing of all forms (I subscribed for years to The New Yorker and still have it delivered to my office where I sneak read it before putting it out in my waiting room!). But my writing? Well . . . I’m going to have to rethink what is possible for me. I already have one business and one “second” job; I’m not sure I want this blog to be a third job, too.

The best I can come up with at this moment is something an old boyfriend used to say, “Writers write.” He never said “writers write really good stuff.” Or “writers write really lengthy stuff.” No, it’s simple and profound, “Writers write.”

Vegas, Baby!

noreply@blogger.com (Laura) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 05:40:00 +0000

Las Vegas Sign Tattoo by Jon Poulson
Originally uploaded by Las Vegas Tattoos by Jon Poulson

I’d planned on writing a great post about our vacation – and then work intervened and the 4th of July and . . . well, you know how that tune goes. Time gets in the way. Work gets in the way. Real life gets in the way.

So yes, we went on vacation and, irony alert, we went to Las Vegas where it was about the same temperature as home had been a few weeks before. Of course by the time we got to Vegas the temps had moderated at home, so here we were in Las Vegas at 105 degrees. Yeah. If you read my last post, A Bitch in Heat , you know I don’t love the heat. I like it cooler – always have, always will. I don’t love cold weather, exactly, just that perfect 70 to 72 degrees that we have more often than not in Southern California. Probably one of the reasons I’ve not been able to move anywhere else, no matter how much I complain about traffic on the northbound 405.

However, being in Vegas, even in summer, isn’t about being in the heat. The only times you really are in the heat are when you’re walking from your car to the hotel or casino and from one casino to another casino, and that’s about it. I think if you worked it right, you’d be able to spend about 97% of your time in air conditioning. But the one thing you cannot escape, whether hot or colder, is the dryness of the air. I wouldn’t exactly say that LA is particularly humid, either. But that desert aridity is striking. I don’t normally need to put anything on my lips, but I was slathering on lipstick and rubbing on moisturizer a few extra times a day. I’d wake up in the morning feeling all dried out and pruney (is that a word?). And start the moisturizing rituals all over again.

Right now, Las Vegas is a big bargain. Hotels are lowering their prices and one I can send you to right away is Excalibur which is doing a $41/night fare for midweek as long as you book online. Check it out. We paid less than this, though, because we stayed in a timeshare which, although on Las Vegas Boulevard, was as they say there “off strip” meaning a couple of miles south of the strip. If any of you are on the west coast you’ve probably heard the radio spots for Tahiti Village and that’s where we stayed. There are these D-level celebs (no, not Kathy Griffin!) shilling for it (Alan Thicke and Tanya Roberts are the main two) and they offer the free 3-night stay as long as you sit for the pitch.

Last October when we stayed at New York New York we got stopped by the shills and were persuaded to sit through the pitch in exchange for Cirque du Soleil tickets. It actually worked out pretty well – we didn’t buy anything and we got to see a Cirque show. This time, I paid for a co-worker’s time at his timeshare. However, I made the mistake of mentioning that I wasn’t an owner, which energized the Tahiti Village employees to try and get us to sit for another 90-120 minute pitch. No thanks. Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt (and the hat). It was rather comical as the front desk tried stalking us with promises of a “welcome package” which just had one teensy tiny little condition attached to it.

As I mentioned, this was a follow-up trip from last October, which was my first time in Vegas. Up to then, I’d spent almost 50 years thinking I would really hate it because it was so fake, and plastic, and inauthentic and so on, ad nauseum. The truth is, I was afraid. I was afraid I’d like Vegas and that I’d like gambling. And I didn’t think I could tolerate getting involved in any other compulsive activities in my life. Last October, for the first time in my 50 years I played a slot machine. And I won. Not big, but enough. And I felt that euphoria that you get when you win and think it will always happen. And then, inevitably, I lost. And I got to experience what it was like to wonder if the next time I’d win. From whence comes madness.

Luckily, I had the ‘Publican with me, who’d done enough gambling in his time to understand these feelings but could still control himself with his frontal cortex. I, of course, was more controlled by my dopamine receptors, the pleasure and reward areas of the brain. Basically, he said, “here’s the deal – we have $300 and once it’s gone, it’s gone.” Pretty short leash, but it worked. We never took out more money and it turned out to be enough for our trip; we even took some money home.

After the October trip, I started crawling the web and learned about random number generators and odds and even got interested in learning blackjack and poker, because obviously slots, as fun as they are, are always going to be the winners, not you (in the long run).

In between these two trips, we also went to a few local Indian casinos for day trips and got over to the Hustler Casino to play poker (well, I watched that time as the ‘Publican played.)

This trip, we again did the $300 leash and I won almost that much the first night – yes, on the slots. So our bankroll was up to almost $600, which I proceeded to more slowly lose over the next few days. But that was okay, since our deal was preserved. It was entertainment money and we had enough for the ‘Publican to get in some poker cash games and a few extra hold ‘em tournaments.

I’m not sure how I feel about all of this stuff. I did experience some of the rush of gambling my first time, but this trip, I was a lot more zen about it. I just realized that there wasn’t a trick to it – sometimes you hit and sometimes you don’t. It’s all random and it’s all independent – the next time I press that button or pull the handle could be the same or completely different. There’s no such thing as a lucky slot machine. However, it may be it’s doing it’s bonus rounds when you’re on it – so for you, it’s lucky. That’s what happened my first night. It was definitely fun cashing in and getting hundred dollar bills.

But whether I was winning or just feeding dollars into the machine, it was all the same. Of course when I was in the middle of the losing, it felt . . . unfair! One day, I was having some luck playing a particular game and was sitting next to this guy who was just winning all over the place (just like my first night). When he left, I decided to move over to his machine, figuring – hey why not? It was hitting for him, it’s on a streak. Of course, you guessed it, it was one big dud. The worst thing, though, was when a woman came by, sitting down at the machine I’d abandoned and guess what? Of course – she’s now winning! Nothing to do but breathe, you know? Oh yes, and laugh.

What I’ve decided about Las Vegas is that it truly is an adult Disneyland. It’s quirky and weird and kitschy and overblown and just plain tacky. And I love it. For what it is, not for what it may even want itself to be – some high class fantasyland. It is fantasyland, of course, and in some cases, it’s quite lovely (think the gondola ride at the Grand Canal Shoppes at the Venetian, or the bar at Paris), but come on. We’re really not in Venice or Paris here – we’re smack dab in the middle of the desert, where a bunch of mobsters came half a century or more ago, to create a place to take our money. I can live with that. And I can have a great time while they take my money.

Las Vegas Beauty
Originally uploaded by ATC Queen

Mediate on this Monday - Unconscious Mutterings #285

noreply@blogger.com (Laura) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 22:31:00 +0000

So a rather fun little weekly game is played over at Luna Nina called as the title says, "Unconscious Mutterings." No, I don't think these are the kind that would suggest calling the authorities.

Here's my list for this week. I realize in a couple of cases, that the word triggered a song - one, "My boyfriend's Back" and the other "This Masquerade". I honestly couldn't tell you much about either song except I've heard them over and over and now they reside somewhere in my memory. Who sang these songs? No clue - I'm lousy at the details.

By the way, thousand brought up a city here in Southern California - I suspect only us Californians would come up with this one, but it really was the first thing that popped into my pea brain.

I almost hate to post these, but if you liked this, go over to the Luna Nina site and pick an archived one or put yourself on her reminder list to get these in the future. She does them weekly.

Intimated :: whispered

Brush :: hair

Masquerade :: love and this lonely game we play

Procedure :: medical

Tattoos :: ink

Square :: pegs

Tuck :: in (your shirt!)

Boyfriend :: my boyfriend's back

Badass :: motherf*cker

Thousand :: Oaks, California

A California-style July 4th Greeting

noreply@blogger.com (Laura) — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 05:31:00 +0000

July 4th
Originally uploaded by pescadero

Seen at a beach in California today.

Happy Birthday, America!