Some Monday morning wisdom. Self explanatory.
Take it in.
Marinate.
Let it settle –

Big love,
Xox

Hi Loves,
It’s another Jason Silva Sunday!
The guy my husband and I both want at our Thanksgiving table.
Can you imagine the conversation? Would we get a word in edgewise? Would we care?

xox

HI Loves,
I hope this finds you enjoying the long holiday weekend – eating, watching sports, eating, shopping, eating, and hanging with friends and family. And eating some more.

That is my wish for you, for all of us really, that we age with grace and dignity, and kick some serious ass along the way!

much love,
xox

Hi Loves,
A few of you asked me to re-post the Thanksgiving essay from last year. I hope it helps ya’ll to keep it together!

I also wanted to add how extremely thankful I am for all of YOU and your big, open, hearts.
Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends!
xoxJ

Thanksgiving in the U.S. can be brutal because of all the Norman Rockwellian expectations. Unfortunately, what we imagine as warm and fuzzy, can quickly turn cold and prickly.

Even though everyone at the table is somehow related, dinner etiquette can morph
into a kind of blood sport. Back handed compliments and thinly veiled sarcasm abound, and it’s just not Thanksgiving unless someone ends up in tears.

Add a tons of carbohydrates, lots of judgement, a dash of shame, with a pumpkin pie chaser and voila – Hilarity ensues!
NOT.

When you put together people that only find themselves sitting in the same room once a year, there isn’t enough alcohol on the planet to keep you in “that loving place”.

It can turn into a real numb-fest.
The carbs numb you down,
The booze,
The sugar,
The football,
The sour cream onion dip,
Yes, you heard me. It all numbs you down, so you can smile and remain polite, making sure that everyone lives to see another holiday.

But let’s all try to remember, shall we, that everyone has the highest of intentions when they pull up the driveway.
And each year can be a fresh start.

When you make forgiveness the first course, it helps you remember that everyone is just doing the best they can and it makes the rest of the day play out differently.

My family is loving, relatively sane, and really quite civil – now.
I think that’s because we’re all so damn old.

The last time we served crazy for Thanksgiving was during the Reagan
Administration.

Gone are the comments lobbed across the table by uncle Bob, that are meant to be funny – but aren’t – followed by that uncomfortable silence.

So…let’s all practice forgiveness, humor, acceptance and gratitude; choosing to operate from the heart, remembering the true intention of this day.

Take a deep breath, put on your best holiday smile, and listen with love, as your well intentioned aunt gives you her unsolicited opinion on how much she dislikes your new haircut.

Happy Thanksgiving,

Xox

It happened over several years, with the subtle finesse we’ve come to expect from the French.

He entered our family just under fifteen years ago.
He is a foodie extraordinaire and an accomplished cook in his own right, but he ingratiated himself in the beginning, acting as the sous chef for my mother who is the culinary queen of our family—then slowly, skillfully, and sneakily—He hijacked Thanksgiving.

The only demand he acquiesces to is that it must be an ORGANIC turkey.
“No antibiotics, no hormones…no taste” he sing-songs sarcastically under his breath as he places the order every year.

I suppose we should be grateful that he hasn’t decided to switch fowl on us yet. Next year it could be pheasant or duck in the center of the table.

See, that’s the thing, we, my siblings and I, we LOVE and crave all year ‘round, my mom’s traditional Thanksgiving feast.

The one we ate as kids. The meal whose perfection is so sublime it should never be messed with. EVER.

Yet…the now reigning chef in our holiday kitchen—the one with the red passport—HE  little by little, year after year has modified each dish so completely that it bears little if any, resemblance to the original.

And my mom doesn’t give a hoot!
She’s just so thrilled that someone has taken over the culinary heavy lifting; along with the fact that I finally found a husband—and he’s French—that she sits back and happily eats what she is served; doling out the compliments like Tic-Tacs at a cigar shop.

Benedict Arnold.

This European guy feels no sense of urgency—he doesn’t start the turkey until late morning.

I remember waking up as a child, the house already heavy with the aroma of a turkey that had been in the oven for hours. Now I sit and watch the Thanksgiving parade, eyeing him suspiciously as he lingers over his coffee and sudoku.

You can’t rush the French—about anything, most especially cooking—it shows disrespect and they just won’t stand for it.

Yet…he shows the old hen no respect. He’s rude to her, slathering her with butter and olive oil and then flinging her, breast down, legs in the air (the turkey, not my mother) into a 500-degree oven for the first twenty minutes.

His mashed potatoes are loaded with creme Fraiche, truffle salt, and a pound of butter…yet oddly enough—not a single calorie. Oh, the French.

His vegetable of choice is the brussel sprout. The recipe is so elaborate,  with shredded bacon and gruyere in a balsamic reduction; that he’s only allowed to make them every other year.

That allows us to have the green beans in mushroom soup with the dried onion rings on top for the alternating years. He would never deign to eat that slop. We, on the other hand, squeal with delight in gleeful anticipation of this mushy mess of soupy goodness while his face assumes that pinched look of French disapproval.

Maybe the worst atrocity against the holiday is the stuffing; or lack thereof. He was raised in France. They don’t know from stuffing. They have bread pudding.

This year he is repeating the mushroom and leek bread pudding that he served last Thanksgiving. It really is delicious, don’t get me wrong, it’s just not my mom’s stuffing and it doesn’t go well with gravy – if you can imagine that.

As long as we’re talking gravy. His gravy is ridiculously smooth and savory, I’ll hand him that.

No one can figure out how he does it and I still haven’t caught him in the act of making it. I’m convinced it is delivered by Trappist monks to the back door just before we sit down.

Yams and sweet potatoes are not his things either so he’s given us the okay to make my mom’s killer Sweet Potato Casserole. It is heart-stoppingly delicious. La petite mort— it is THAT good.

It’s been ten years, and I’m just getting over it.

Nope, no Norman Rockwell moment at our house.

Instead, with knives so sharp they can slice a tomato, he carves the turkey up in the kitchen like a skilled butcher, arraigning it artistically by sections on a white platter; placing the drumsticks on the sides like exclamation points. I’ve actually come to appreciate the expediency of serving the bird this way.
White meat on the left, dark meat on the right.
Voila!

But this is a day about giving thanks and although He has hijacked this most American of meals, I must admit that we are lucky and ever so grateful to have this Frenchman in our family.

Every. Single. Year. He takes us on another culinary adventure, expanding our palates by spending weeks shopping, hours chopping and delivering to our family such a carefully thought out and meticulously prepared and delicious feast.

We love you!

Now let’s eat!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Racing around today, attempting to get things set up for Thanksgiving, I had to stop and remind myself what this day is all about.

It is not about finding seven matching dining chairs – it is about gratitude.

Gratitude for the blessings we have already received – and the ones that are on their way.

So I just jotted down the first three that came to mind:

Turkey basters – For the obvious, once a year reason; and also for their myriad of other uses including: getting the leftover water out of the Christmas Tree stand before you drag it across the room and out the door to the curb. ( Which BTW is one of the saddest days of my entire year, it makes me tear up just thinking about it)

Candles with wooden wicks – LOVE. I’m so sick of burning my fingers, fishing a traditional wick out of hot wax. Many a perfectly good candle has been thrown (out) due to wick drowning. And along those lines, drip-less tapered candles. SO GRATEFUL. If you’ve ever had to use a hot iron to get the wax out of your tablecloth, then you know what I mean.

Tweezers – For my migrating chin hair. Hey, maybe you guys know – Does Makita make tweezers? The hair on my chin/jaw/nose now has the gauge and strength of copper wire.

Okay, so I went first, now YOU go!
Give me three things you’re grateful for.
Come on! You can think of three.

Leave them in the comments below.

PS. Don’t be shy, nobody looks at the comments but me.

Don’t let this kid “one up” you!
Xox

Late one night last week, our dog, a nine year old boxer, startled us all awake…

The puppy heard it before anyone. She brought it to our attention by running around the bed, her nails tapping out a sort of morse code S.O.S. on the wooden floor. She may be young, but she’s resourceful.

It was 3 am. My husband got up and went to look into the old girl’s cubby in the wall, her virtual cave of a bed, to see what was what.

Querida (Dita for short) was thrashing around, on her back, legs in the air, doing the cartoon run for her life. You know, the one that gets you nowhere.

I could hear her wild breathing – the snorts and hoarse panting. It sounded like she was in the fight of her life with an invisible foe. Come to find out she was battling her own demons.

It appeared (as reported by a somewhat reliable source, my husband) that Dita had somehow become wedged between the wall and her down filled, hotel bed quality, better than any dog deserves – cushion. A crevice had opened during the night, and while she lay unaware, peacefully dreaming her sweet doggie dreams, it had swallowed her whole.

He reported that she looked like a bug on it’s back, struggling to right itself, only problem was – she was uncomfortably wedged until he was able to free her.

When he pulled her out of what I’m sure seemed to her to be a deep, dark, Grand Canyon sized chasm, my girl tried to shake it off.
She paced; wandering around our dark house, going in and out of every room, as if searching for her lost car keys. Several minutes later I heard her take herself, in her adrenaline infused stupor, outside to pee, after first tussling with the doggie door. I think she just needed the cool, fresh air.

Her breathing was rapid, she was panting, her little heart running a marathon.

As I watched my dog use the ancient instinct she was born with to navigate the terror inside that dark and twisted place that was her mind – I had a realization.

Through some fluke of nature, some law of weird science, Dita really IS my daughter, because here it is 3 am and she is having a panic attack!

Panic attacks used to be my wheel house, I know them well. Boy, could I relate.

Curiously, our attacks were identical, the reactions the same – an instinctive, primal, repetitive dance of self preservation.

I too have woken up flailing like a bug on my back, my brain convincing me of my imminent demise after falling into an invisible abyss. I too have walked the halls, alone, searching for comfort, my hand feeling its way in the dark, touching old wood in the hopes of grounding; soaking up its familiarity. I have not gone outside to pee, (there but for the grace of God), but I have spent the hours just before dawn shaking in the bathroom; waiting for my heart to stop racing.

And it is ALWAYS, without FAIL, 3 am(ish). WTF?!

Have you ever had an anxiety or panic attack? If you have you know what I’m talking about. I would not wish them on my worst enemy. On those unfortunate souls I wish a bad perm and severely chapped lips. Anxiety attacks, in my opinion, are somewhere along the lines of emotional water boarding.

They are torture.

Mine felt like a cross between a heart attack, loosing my mind, and being chased through the streets by a Velociraptor. My heart would beat out of my chest, while an elephant or two pulled up a seat right there and got comfy.
I would obsess on my breathing and start sweating, gasping for air – fight or flight in all it’s glory.
The sky appeared to be hung too low, making me feel like Chicken Little.
My sanity seemed elusive, my thoughts raced.

I have actually looked at myself in the mirror and not recognized the person behind my eyes.

Sometimes it would be preceded by a stressful situation; but often times not. Hence waking up in a full panic for no apparent reason; which just added confusion to the already fear infused emotional cocktail that was messing with my head.

Why me? Why now? When will it end?

I watched my poor pork chop of a boxer (she’s not fat, just thick in the middle, from age – again like her mother) try to navigate her fear, struggling to maintain her sanity. She had believed the story her mind was telling her, and THAT’S when the terror took hold.

She believed she was trapped ( huge anxiety trigger) and it caused her to hyperventilate (classic step two of panic attacks) which then convinced her she was going to die.

So she did what you do in that situation. You flee, you run, you take a walk, you look for someplace that holds comfort for you – you do whatever it takes to gather your wits.

Once we figured out what was happening, which took us awhile because we were all so groggy (except for the puppy, who thought being up in the middle of the night warranted popcorn, bad TV and a pillow fight) we brought her up onto the bed with us; disoriented and frantic.
Because isn’t that the final solution you come to after you’ve worn out all the other options? That you must eventually find your way back to bed?

Elizabeth Gibert wrote about just that in Eat, Pray, Love.
After spending hours crying on the bathroom floor, begging for mercy from her emotional pain; a voice in her head answered her prayer for guidance, “Go back to bed Liz” was it’s simple directive.

Since Dita was too scared to go back to her own bed, ( do you blame her? It had tried to eat her alive.) I knew the next step – she had to come up with us. (I would have crawled in bed with my parents during my attacks – if I’d lived at home and wasn’t 25, 35, 40.)

With one hand on her head, I laid there deep in thought, realizing that her fear had been as baseless as mine all those years ago.
She was fine. It was self invented – self inflicted.
Easy for me to say from where I sit NOW, but it’s true.

Her mind presented false evidence that appeared real. FEAR.
With hindsight I could see that mine had been just as ridiculous.

After another fifteen minutes she took a deep, calming breath; settled down, and fell asleep. My husband and I then took a turn, each taking our own deep breath – filled with relief.
I continued to stroke her graying, velvet ears, listening to her softly snore.

I’m happy we could help her.
Because of my (our) familiarity with this kind of behavior, we had kept the lights off and stayed calm, talking to her softly, petting and kissing her face. We hadn’t shadowed her, following her from room to room, asking her what was wrong. That would have made her feel more anxious. Animals can sense energy, they can feel your fear.
No, we did all the things I’ve learned in order to calm myself when I’m in the midst of an anxiety attack; slow, deep breaths, remaining calm and finding a place to feel safe. Apparently that works for people and dogs.

If I can tell you one thing, it’s that she is fortunate to be a dog. With a minimum of baggage, and tons of good canine instinct, she was able to calm herself in a little less than an hour. That makes her my hero; I only wish I’d been that adept.

Yep, she’s my fearful, furry daughter and clearly I’m her mom.

Happy Sunday!
Before you go to yoga, before you have your coffee, let Jason Silva Streeeeeeeetch your mind first. It’ll feel good, I promise.

You’re welcome.
xox

DON’T BECOME A MUSEUM TO GRIEF

Isn’t that a powerful phrase? A museum to grief?

Below is a new post by Liz Gilbert. But first let me say: I’m a HUGE believer in getting rid of the past – I even lit mine on fire and did a tribal dance. Here’s a little story about clearing out my own Museum to Grief in a short excerpt from
“Want A Man? Make A List.”-

“I thought it would be a good idea at the time, to take all of my ex’s cards, notes, mementos, pictures, and poems – and burn them.
I would then scatter the ashes to the wind, giving the Universe a smoke signal, making it clear that there was now a boyfriend void to fill.

With my right shoulder cradling the phone, I took Wes (my BFF) outside with me, along with my box of memories and a lighter.
It was about 8pm – cold, dark and lightly drizzling, which I thought was a good sign. I put everything on a large stone, in the middle of my wet patio and lit it up. In a couple of minutes, there was a good little fire going, and I watched our smiling faces and birthday cards filled with his once loving words, melt before my eyes. Trouble was, a significant breeze had picked up, and started swirling a small tornado of embers all around me. I was screaming, trying to get away, but the lost love delivery system, disguised as burning memories, was in my hair, my face, and my mouth and burning tiny holes in my flannel nightgown! All the while, Wes was laughing hysterically in my ear!”

Here is Liz’s story-

“Dear Ones –

ONWARD,”
Liz

PS. I just read that a woman threw her old, dark, memories in the compost pile – and used it to grow amazing tomatoes! Gotta Love that. Do whatever it takes. Be creative – then tell me about it.

xox

“We have perfected the attitude of worry. If we don’t have something to worry about, that worries us.”—Michele Longo O’Donnell

Stress is a thug and a thief.
It’s a thug because it has such little regard for our well being, and a thief because it absconds with BIG chunks of our time.
They add up.

Stress, that jerk, has looted years of accumulated hours from my life.

So I have no problem giving stress the finger, whenever I can.

I take great glee in pissing it off.

Here are the top ten things that piss-off stress.
Practice them wisely…..and often.

1) Rest.
Stress HATES when we’re well rested. We make better decisions, we’re on our game and less likely to muck things up.
Naps, long weekends and vacations are its Kryptonite.

2) A Sense of Humor/Laughing.
Have you ever tried to laugh while completely stressed out? A real, deep belly laugh? It’s almost impossible. It’s akin to keeping your eyes open when you sneeze. The two CANNOT co-exist.

3) Asking for help.
Stress can’t stand it when we realize our limitations, delegate and ask for help. It needs a frazzled, over extended, perfectionist, control freak as a host. Calling in the Calvary BEFORE you’ve reached your wit’s end, sends stress the silent Jedi signal: This is not the droid you’re looking for.

4) Believing you have enough.
If you believe you have enough time, money, resources, help and happiness, you will be invisible to stress. It will pass your house and go torment your neighbors.

5) Exercise.
Yes, it is possible to outrun stress. You can outrun it on the treadmill, or with the dogs at the park. Once that heart rate goes up and those endorphins kick in, stress will NOT be able to keep up. Stress carb loads; it always goes for seconds, eats peanut butter out of the jar with a serving spoon, and parks illegally in the handicapped space, so it never has to walk far. Stress hates a fit body and a clear head.

6) Organization.
When you’re well organized, meaning, you know where everything is, and can easily find it, stress has a shit fit.
How can it fuck with you and mess with your head, if you can immediately come up with your passport, keys, glasses, insurance papers, rent check, stamps, cat nail clipper and both of the same black sandals?

7) Behaving like a grown up.
Stress despises adult behavior. Stress is counting on us to NEVER grow up. It adores a good temper tantrum and will do everything in its power to keep us from getting our ducks in a row. As a matter of fact, it is heavily invested in the prospect of us not saving for retirement, avoiding responsibility, making uninformed decisions and never planning for the future.

8) Self care.
This pisses-off stress almost more than anything. Getting a massage, doing yoga and meditating. Those are three of its mortal enemies. It throws its hands up, shakes its head and walks away in defeat. It can’t take hold of a peaceful mind.

9) Not caring what other people think.
Once you drop that bad habit, stress will have to go find another victim. Don’t feel bad for a second. There are millions.

10) Awareness.
Stress has a fit when you call it out. It can’t stand that you know its name and what it looks like.
It would rather stay anonymous, in one of its many disguises. As a headache, an ulcer, colitis, hives, over eating, over spending, depression and anxiety.
I told you, it’s a thug.
It knows, that once you know why it’s there, it’s days are numbered.

Can you think of more ways to piss off stress? Tell me what you do, I’d LOVE to hear some comments!

Xox