awakening

“At times the world may seem an unfriendly and sinister place, but believe that there is much more good in it than bad. All you have to do is look hard enough. And what might seem to be a series of unfortunate events may, in fact, be the first steps of a journey.”
― Lemony Snicket

I have a guilty pleasure. Well, I have many, but this is one I feel okay mentioning in public.

I love HG (Home and Garden) TV. There I said it.

Watching these shows borders on an obsession. What I love is the fact that they depict complete remodels in under and hour. You know, the ones with the unrealistic timelines and the implausible budgets to match.

“Hi, Um, I’m Tiffany and I’m a barista and my boyfriend Todd sells seashells by the seashore. We have a budget of 1.3 million…”

This makes my contractor husband’s head spin around like the Exorcist. Most likely because it continues to feed my instant gratification fixation, and now I too have come to believe that you can get a complete kitchen gut and renovation in under four weeks. And a gorgeous home in a good part of town for no money.

“That’s bullshit!” he yells indignantly at the TV to the good looking brother team who are right out of central casting. “Not if you want it done right!”

Calm down, big guy. It’s TV.

Regardless, I get lost in the marathons they string together on Sundays. I DVR them and sit like a drooling fool for hours.
The other night I watched seven. In a row. Without peeing. I’m not proud of it. I may need help.

Hey, here’s an observation: there’s definitely a good cop and a bad cop in every relationship.

Most often the men in these remodeling scenarios are pretty accommodating and easy going unless the budget blows up. Then their voices raise an octave, their eyes bulge and their heads explode. Still, even then they’re pretty quiet about it, suffering silently, with some stiff upper lip flop sweat, looking into the camera for a little viewer pity—or spare couch cushion change.

The women, I’m afraid to say, and I’m generalizing here, are bitches.
Barbazillas. Plain and simple. Bad cops on steroids. Changing things and then yelling about the timeline, popping in unannounced and then second guessing the process.

They hate how the marble looks.
“Why is the white paint so white?” they wonder loudly, hands on hips.
“Who the hell picked out THAT floor tile?” they huff.
“I said FRENCH DOORS!” they scream.
They are belligerent, pouty, whiny and just plain awful.

Then, as a frontal assault on my sense of truth and decency, they cry big, sloppy, Tammy Faye, fake television tears of joy at the reveal.

Bitches, please.

But I must say – It’s some God-damn GREAT TV.

Anywho…

One kitchen I watched being demo’d last night was indicative of what’s been happening to most of us lately.
I even wrote a post about how to handle it…yesterday.
So it’s kind of out of order, but that’s the way life works sometimes, I hope you’ll forgive me.

WARNING: Put the sandwich down. Don’t eat anything while you read this.

Okay, so, as the contractor, with his perfect, white teeth, helped the homeowners demo the shit out of dated, drab green, 1970’s kitchen, (they are always enlisted, supposedly to keep the costs down, but again, it’s good TV to watch an accountant swing a forty pound sledgehammer while his wife looks on, a teeny bit turned on), the upper cabinets collapsed and the ceiling caved in.

What ensued next was a shit storm – literally.

Feces rained down from inside the ceiling, obscuring their vision, getting in their hair and covering their clothes. Apparently sometime in the not too distant past, the house had a cockroach AND mouse infestation. Even the macho contractor screamed like a little girl. The wife ran into a wall trying to escape the shit as it rained down on all three of them. I think she may have broken a nail…like I said GREAT TV.

But honest to God, there it was, right in front of me, three people’s reaction to a shit storm, on TV, and I have to say – it looked pretty familiar, and it made me laugh my ass off.

The screaming and the running and the general disgust. They acted surprised even though mice had been alluded to in the inspection.

We all do the same thing.

We get plenty of warning that the ceiling of our lives is about to collapse and that the feces of poor decisions, bad relationships, and lousy judgment, may rain down; then we run around screaming, crying and acting surprised when it does – WTF?

Hey, I’ve done it.

Was I surprised that I got fired last year? Hell to the no!
I could smell it coming. I was just shocked he had the balls to do it on Christmas Eve. (Best thing that ever happened to me BTW, BECAUSE…another observation of mine is this: there is always a silver lining inside a shit storm.)

Was I surprised my store was flooded? Well, yes, yes I was. But only because the method was so…so biblical.
Listen, deep down I knew the end was near one way or another—so not really. I had called it in. I had prayed for it. Yet when it happened, I screamed and ran into walls; the shame of it getting into my hair and covering my clothes.

We’ve got to cut that shit out, that wide-eyed-acting-surprised-shit. It’s starting to feel as staged and fakity-fake as it looks on TV.

Let’s get real here. There is always warning prior to a shitstorm – always. It’s an argument or an email, a bad job review – a stain on the ceiling or an inspection report.

If we pay attention and read all the signs they’ll be no shock and awe. We’ll know what’s coming. We’ll have choices. We can go clean up the attic before the demo, put a tarp down, or wear a hat and step aside.

All that collapsed ceiling, screaming and running into walls – that’s all for TV.

This is real life.

Sending Big Love,
xox

The energy since the first of the year has been intense. No, it is not your imagination. It has been howl at the moon, scare small children, eat an entire pizza by yourself level intense. But as fate, or luck, or all our answered prayers would have it, it is leveling the fuck out.

The good part has been that it cleaned out all the muck. Good way to start the new Year – muck free, don’t you agree?

One friend asked her massage therapist last week to virtually “get in
there with a Q-tip.” I like that. Getting into the corners and crevices and really digging that shit out.

This energy, bless it’s heart, cleaned out our collective closets. It shook all of our Etch-A-Sketchs. It threw all the plates in the air. It emptied the refrigerator, even way back on the bottom shelf.

You get the picture.

But that can make life VERY uncomfortable.
Some people get sick in response, ‘cause if you’re in bed, binging on Netflix, you don’t have to deal with the shitstorm…yet.
Others are just pissed off. Cantankerous bastards who keep yelling “get out of my way!” We can forgive them though, right? Hey, their Etch-A-Sketch is blank – and the glass is cracked.

I took the coward’s way out. Kidding, but only a little.
I meditated, went to the movies, wrote and slept, as I waited for the shitstorm to pass. Oh, and I played this little ditty on an endless loop. You remember this from earlier this summer. Deva Premal, her voice and this chant in particular, lull me into a sort of coping coma.
If this is playing in the background, I can read the snarky email, deliver the bad news, eat the last of the disgusting holiday leftovers, listen to someone’s squed logic, and watch three minutes of CNN (with the sound off, it’s easier to stomach that way and hey, the ticker says it all).

All that to say, here it is again. Let it help the dust to settle. Let the sound and the calming effect arrange the dust in a more pleasing pattern, so that when we all emerge in the next week, from our caves of confusion, things will make sense…or at least look better.

Happy Sunday
xox

As I write this, I can feel the soft, cool underbelly of the big, older dog snoozing on my feet.
The puppy appears to be asleep except her eyebrows give her away. They signal that she is following my every move. She is plotting another caper and is patiently waiting for me to quit writing, get up, and leave.

“Everything that falls on the floor is MINE!”

That is their credo, their theme song, and the canine unspoken agreement.
If I’d let them get tattoos, that’s what they’d say.
But that statement gives ME a pit in my stomach. It sparks a crusty, old, unkind memory that hits me like a sucker punch.

“Everything that falls on the floor is MINE!”, is a quote is from the cover of a book about dogs.
It’s kinda funny, but it got me to feeling and thinking, which makes me run to start writing. Isn’t it weird how something as innocuous as the title of a dog book can trigger an emotion?

“Everything that falls on the floor is MINE!”
That is a declaration of ownership of…the scraps.
The stuff that is tainted enough that it isn’t fit for public consumption.
It can’t even pass the five-second rule.
Most likely the crap on the floor came off the bottom of someone’s shoe — literally.

“I call it! It’s mine!” That’s fine for Fido, but not for us.

“Everything that falls on the floor is MINE!”
It is the cover page and the first rule in the Dog’s Life Handbook.
Not ours. Our first rule is “Call Your Mother.”

But what about us? How many times have you and I settled for the scraps in life?
From the blouse at Target that is marked down to 99 cents but is missing a button, (which as much as we say we’re going to—we never replace), to accepting pity sex from your ex-boyfriend?

That shitty “bridge” job that was just supposed to get you through the summer?
What happened? It’s five years later, why are you still there?

I’ve been so broke I have lived off scraps. Specifically, days of leftovers salvaged from one meal or my sister’s “doggie bag” from El Toritos. The irony of the name does not escape me.

I drove a piece of shit car that wanted nothing more in its life than to shimmy sideways.

I’ve also settled for the scraps of affection thrown to me in a dying relationship.
I’ve been seated at the table. I’ve enjoyed the love feast. But when I sensed the end, I did not push away and say my goodbyes with dignity. I dove for the scraps.
Ouch. Oh, hi Fido, funny to see you down here.

I have pretty healthy self-esteem, but there have been some glaring lapses.
I wasn’t alone. Gwen Stefani of the band No Doubt had a hit song “Bath Water” during that time.
Part of the chorus being: ‘Cause I still love to wash in your old bath water, Love to think that you couldn’t love another, Share a toothbrush….you’re my kind of man.’  UGH.

At a certain point, I’m gonna say around my mid thirties, I said: no more scraps.
And I meant it.

No more second-hand clothes, no more beat up chairs-full-of-promise fished out of dumpsters. Enough of the stuff left on the curb because it didn’t make the cut at the neighborhood yard sale. Enough of the sloppy seconds from lovers. I was finished being broke, I was done with settling.
I deserved better than that. I deserved the best.
The best love.
The best life.
The best-made plans.

“Everything that falls on the floor is MINE!”
That is my dog’s credo, I’m clear about that now and they can have it.

Tell me, have you ever settled for the scraps?

Carry on,

Xox

We first met on December 18, 2000. Then he died. On this, the nineteenth anniversary of our first blind date here’s a recounting of just what happened from back in 2014. This is our very personal Christmas miracle.

“Life is a dream walking. Death is going home.” – Chinese proverb

He died for a minute and 56 seconds. His heart stopped and his breathing ceased. I’d just say 2 minutes, but hospitals and doctors are exact. They are to-the-second precise. So, when he tells the tale; he died for a minute and 56 seconds, because four seconds more would be way too long.
Just writing this makes my eyes well up.

He…is my husband.

In December of 2000 he contracted bacterial spinal meningitis on an airplane. Or as I now call them, flying, metallic, germ delivery systems.
He’s a car guy, often referred to as a gear head. That second week of December he took a one-way flight from LA to Houston to look at a car, which he then purchased and drove back with a buddy. Trouble was, he boarded that flight with a bad head cold. It was mid-December, everyone’s sick with something around the holidays. Right?
As luck would have it, that was just the route an opportunistic virus used to infect him. The meningitis rode in, like a sinister villain in a spaghetti western, on the back of streptococcus pneumonia. Once the pneumonia had chewed up his lungs, to the point where they resembled snowflakes, all the meningitis had to do was dismount, and stroll on in.

Meningitis is a jerk.

He’s a fragile, lazy, coward of a virus. If everything isn’t just so, he takes his badass self and leaves town. But pneumonia is efficient and the path had been prepared, so he set up camp in my husband’s lungs.

Three days after he got back to LA, as pneumonia went about doing its dirty work, he felt pretty lousy. Meanwhile, meningitis was still lurking in the shadows. He felt lethargic. By then he was probably running a fever, but men don’t check that stuff. He just got out of bed, showered and dressed. He had plans that night.
He had arranged a blind date with someone who was recommended by a friend’s girlfriend. She sounded…intriguing. And she had big boobs. Yep, he was just that shallow.

That someone was me.

The blind date story is epic and meant for another day. We got married nine months later, so I’m gonna say it went pretty well.

I’ve always been fascinated by near-death experiences (NDE’s.) Now I live with someone who’s had one and he’d be the first to tell you, it profoundly changed him, it set him free.

Two days after our first date, he drove the new car up to San Jose, with his dog, to celebrate the Christmas holidays with his younger brother, his wife and their two young kids.
He was driving five hours to cook the Christmas bird.

If a turkey is involved you drop everything and call my husband. He is the turkey Whisperer. THE turkey cooker extraordinaire. The next morning he did all the prep, in between long stints in bed. He was trashed, feeling sicker with each passing hour and had developed the headache from hell. Now, he figured, he had a hell of a bad flu bug.

I will remind you, my husband is a BIG guy. He’s 6’3″ 230 lbs of big handsome, and that helped save his life.
When he makes a promise, he keeps it. It’s one of the things I admire about him, and damn it, he cooked that turkey. From his sickbed, even though he never had a bite.

The next day he got out of bed once and collapsed. The paramedics were called and he was rushed to a local teaching hospital that was affiliated with Stanford.

During transport, the paramedics called him Ralph. “Stay with us Ralph. Any pain Ralph?” My husband’s name is Raphael. I’ve been told they do that to piss you off and keep you conscious and talking. It worked. “My name is Raphael” he kept correcting them.
Genius.
But it was short-lived.
His brother told the doctor all he knew, that Raphael had complained of a terrible headache and the flu. He used to have migraines but this was different. The ER was about to send him home with migraine meds, but his brother refused. He’d never seen Raphael that ill. HE really saved his brother’s life.

Just about that time, it ceased to matter. His blood test came back with an astronomical white cell count, and he had gone into a coma. Now suspecting meningitis, they did a spinal tap. So normally our spinal fluid is clear and under pressure. Normal is: 70 – 180 mm H20, his reading was over 400 and the fluid was thick and black, like oil. As the story goes, it was right about this point in the evening where he flat-lined. After they brought him back, they wrote TERMINAL on his chart, pumped him full of morphine and wheeled him into a room to die.

It was during this time that Raphael remembers a foggy, all-white environment, no walls, ceiling or floor. He could see all sides at once. The best thing was, he was out of pain, his head no longer hurt.

He was looking at three beds which contained three Raphael’s.

The Raphael on the right was saying: I am suffering, why would I stay in this bed, I want to go where it’s peaceful. Where there’s no pain. Pointing at a bright white tunnel.
He represented the physical self.

The Raphael in the bed on the left said: Go ahead and go! Quit complaining. That’s fine, it really affects no one except those that are left behind. He represented the intellectual self.

The Raphael in the middle was the observer. He just listened to the two others arguing. He just WAS. No attachment. He represented the soul.

That white tunnel was the path home. It was a silent, pain-free, deliciously peaceful place where he wanted to stay forever.
But they started his heart and he came back.

That night a female doctor very much like Dr. House from TV, took a look at his chart. She specialized in ONLY terminal cases. Since it was a teaching hospital, she was allowed to literally throw everything in her extensive medical arsenal at these patients, searching for a cure. It was equal parts medicine, alchemy, and wishful thinking. She did everything she could, then she just handed it over to a higher power. Her success rate was 3%. I know, calm down, they were terminal after all.

It was the fight of his life and he was on the ropes. At that point, his size was the only thing saving him.

By that time the hospital had reported their diagnosis of bacterial meningitis to the CDC. Thirteen people from his flight to Houston had come down with it, four had died. Raphael’s brother was told to get his whole young family tested. It was a stressful, scary time.

I remember hearing it on the news. It struck me because one of the women who died was my age at the time, 43. Shit. I have to get on a plane in five days, I worried.

Since he was away, I had no idea he was even sick. We only had our one blind date, with a promise of a second on December 28th. He never showed. I called twice, which was only mildly desperate, and both times his cellphone went right to message. So I left for New Year’s Eve in Miami. When I didn’t hear from him by the end of the first week of January I told my friends, “He better be abducted by aliens or dead by the side of the road, because those are the only two excuses I’ll accept.”

Yikes! We still laugh about that.

His medical file is as thick as a phone book with the lists of drugs and scans his doctor administered that first night. There is even a straight jacket included. She did say he put up a hell of a fight to live. Apparently so.
By the middle of the second day of her treatment, he was slightly improved. She determined he would live, but he’d be a vegetable from the cerebral fluid pressure and its horrible condition.
No brain could never recover from that.

His family, his siblings, who were all now at the hospital, looked at each other to determine who would care for him and for how many months.

A couple of days later, with the determined doctor holding one hand, one of his sisters holding the other, he woke up. Just like that.

Startled, the doctor shooed everyone out of the room and started asking him questions, which he answered…perfectly…in detail. Not just, What’s your name? But since he’s an architect, and French, she quizzed him on the architectural intricacies of the Pompidou Centre, even speaking French with him. It was evident he could see her, he could hear her, and he was still his whip-smart self. THAT she could never explain. She considered him a miracle. Everyone at the hospital did. Honestly.

Finally, he asked what day it was. When he found out it was January, he said: I have to call Janet. For those standing around him, some doubt set in, because no one had heard of any Janet. They thought he had an imaginary friend. Uh oh, brain damage.

Nope, apparently, infatuation survives near death. I love that part of the story. It’s like a movie.

He remembers dying as easy, with nothing to fear.
He recalls that he had a decision to make, and either way everything was going to be okay.
Afterword, all the outpouring of love, together with the morphine, broke open his heart—and he was a changed man.

Luckily, he decided to stay and give me a second date, and for that, I am forever grateful.

Happy nineteen years baby! I love you.

Carry on,
Xox

I love me some Mary Barra. She is the CEO of General Motors, and right now they are in some pretty hot water over the handling of an ignition switch recall. People were injured and some died from these faulty parts. At the time, 2004-2008, GM was in serious financial trouble, and we, the tax payer, bailed them out in 2008.
They are now the new and improved General Motors, with Mary Barra coming in as CEO in January 2014
Now, I don’t usually have all these dates and details at my finger tips, I was just stuck in traffic, and heard the story today on the radio. It’s still me, don’t be alarmed.

Here’s why I love Mary Barra. She said “I am deeply sorry.”

“Today’s GM will do the right thing,” she said. “That begins with my sincere apologies to everyone who has been affected by this recall — especially to the families and friends of those who lost their lives or were injured. I am deeply sorry.”

No one from GM has offered anything close to an apology up until today.
What? Why?
Lawsuits, no admission of guilt, blah, blah, blah.
Say you’re sorry damn it!

You get a lot of mileage from saying “I’m sorry.”
To someone who’s lost a loved one it isn’t enough; but it is a start.
It shows compassion. Corporations generally haven’t shown empathy or compassion, because they aren’t human. But they’re comprised of human beings, so where’s the disconnect?

What is the human resistance to apologizing?
In your life does saying “I’m sorry” signal weakness?
I think it signals strength. Like bad ass Ninja warrior strength; because it’s hard to say.
Something happened. Shit went down. Feelings got hurt. You played a part.
“I’m sorry.”

Just those two-word can defuse SO much energy.
Have you ever tried to continue your rage rant when someone has just offered you a sincere apology? You can’t. Well, you can, but you’ll feel like a real bitch. Then the tables are turned.

If it’s insincere, there’s nothing worse and it doesn’t count.
Get mad. Lawyer up. Show no mercy.
But if it’s heartfelt….it starts the healing…or the conversation…or the hot make up sex.

I’ve said it when I’ve been wrong, and I’ve had it said to me, and I gotta tell ya, it’s magic. It’s like water on a fire.
You feel heard and understood.
So next time your back’s up against the wall, and you’ve messed up,
just say you’re sorry, and mean it, you Ninja warrior, you.
It’ll feel good; I promise.

Xox

Do you say your sorry when your wrong? Do you accept it when it’s said to you?
Agree or disagree?
Start the conversation in the comments below.

*I wrote this a while ago, waiting for the time to post it. The memories should start to be getting fuzzy after twenty years, but on the contrary, they are crystal clear. Still, I’m glad to be finally writing them down.
I decided to post this, because yesterday Dr. Lisa Rankin (whose work I love) wrote about her recent spiritual awakening on her Facebook page. She is still processing it, and had the courage to share it, feeling that there are more of us out here that can help each other. Everyone’s awakening looks different. This is mine.
If you want to hear the rest, let me know.
XoxJ

We Have An Agreement Part I

Almost exactly 20 years ago, I went a little crazy.
Even more than I already am.
Well, not actually, but you could have fooled me.
A wise friend smiled and told me I was insane = in sanity.
What?
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck….just sayin’

It all started with meditation.
This is not a cautionary tale, it is a historical account.
Don’t get your panties in a bunch!
I’m not saying meditation drives everyone crazy, it just felt that way to ME.
(Legal disclaimer…I think) 

I had always sucked at meditation. Yet, I studied it for years.
I even had a Meditation Master who gave me a mantra when I was about 19.
I just couldn’t calm my monkey mind.
I would ponder what I was going to have for dinner, or what song that was that I could hear faintly playing in the distance, or why my nose was constantly itching, and my leg was falling asleep.

Time. stood. still.

Shit! An hour and a half seemed more like two weeks!

I could never reach that place of inner peace and transcendence that I had heard and read so much about. It was like the donkey and the carrot, always just out of reach.

But man I gave it my all…for many years.
I decided to stop for a while, worn out by the struggle.

Then there I was 35, when I suddenly got the urge to start again. I was able to ignore it for a while, but it kinda turned into marching orders and I was compelled to oblige.
THAT should have been a preview of coming events.

So every night at 9 p.m. I sat down to meditate. And what transpired was not at all what I expected and pretty mystical.
Now bear in mind I lived alone, thank God.

Not only was I able to calm the monkey mind, I started to leave my body and “observe” it from above.
Sometimes, I could see myself all fallen over into my own lap, (which is frowned upon in meditation class, it’s all about the straight spine.)

Other times I was siting and spontaneously rotating counter-clockwise from the waist up in a slow circular motion.

Twice I did this hysterical laughing, that took turns with hysterical sobbing…which I “observed” from above.

I kid you not.

Often I smelled incense, when I wasn’t burning any…or roses.
My lips, face and hands would tingle and vibrate.
Not only that, 45 minutes would go by like that (snap)

Just disappear.

Where had THAT been hiding years ago? I coulda been a superstar in class.

After about three months, I started to notice that all the clocks in my house, wind up, digital, even the clock on the VCR ( which I had set on the correct time, thank you very much, it’s called reading the directions, people.) it didn’t matter, even my quartz watch, they were all off by 45 minutes.
They were 45 minutes BEHIND my starting time after I came out of meditation!
Now keep in mind this was the early 90’s when people still looked to clocks and not their phones to tell time.

Anyway, that made me late for everything AND it freaked me out.

This was the dark ages, before cell phones and Facebook and most importantly,Google.

I couldn’t look any of this phenomena up, and I didn’t have the foggiest idea what was happening to me.
Spiritual and mystical topics were not on TV or a part of popular culture like they are now.
There was the Bodhi Tree bookstore here in LA, a kind of spiritual Mecca, where I held everyone in high regard,(don’t ask me why) so I went and whispered to some guy who smelled like patchouli, what was happening, and he just shook his head and handed me a small crystal for protection.

Some protection.
The following night as I start to meditate, (now, aren’t you thinking to yourself, why is she still doing that?…I am!) I heard this deep booming voice say “We have an agreement”
Well… My eyes flew open, I jumped up, protective crystal flying under the bed, and I started to run around the room.

Seriously…like a chicken.

Then I hear it again, this time in my living room “We have an agreement”
Uh oh, I’m gonna pee my pants AND what can of worms have I unwittingly opened?

Now I’m getting scared.
Okay, intrigued and scared. I needed some answers.

Note to self: stop meditating.

But I can’t, I’m compelled to continue…until things start to really get weird.
(to be continued)

Xox

In an interview he did in 2007, Peter O’Toole, that beautiful, blue eyed, scalawag actor, was asked the question, “What do you want written on your tombstone”?

He leaned back and told the story of his beloved tattered leather jacket.
He said it was soaked in sweat, covered in blood, Guinness and cornflakes?!
Which of course made it his favorite.
Eventually it went to the cleaners.
It came back with a note pinned to it, that all these years later still made him chuckle.
It read:

“It distresses us to return work which is not perfect”

That’s was his answer, and I couldn’t agree more!
Because otherwise, what’s the point!?

When I leave this mortal coil, I want to be “distressed.”
I want to show I’ve lived.
That perhaps it wasn’t a pure and “perfect” life, but dammit! It was a life well lived!

Just like his jacket, I want to be worn in, with the wrinkles and scars to prove it.
I want to be covered in sweat, and dog hair, with smeared lipstick and wine stains.
…Maybe even cornflakes!

I want unpaid parking tickets in the pockets.
Along with a motorcycle key and a wad of foreign currency.

I want the leather to smell like a combination of caramel,tobacco, Shalimar, and coffee,
I want it left on the back of a chair in George Clooney’s suite in a Paris Hotel.

I want to remain perfectly imperfect.

Then I want to be “returned to sender, postage due.”

How about you?
Xox

There come times in our lives when things suddenly change.
They go south,
The wheels fall off the cart.

But instead of becoming panicky—use your art of negotiation!

Children are masters at this.
Watch, listen and learn.
They will negotiate everything from bedtime, computer time, to eating kale.

No subject is off-limits.
If they think they can sway the situation to their advantage, high level diplomatic talks begin.

My friend calls her son Henry Kissinger.
In his world EVERYTHING is open for negotiation.
As much as this irks her, she also admires it.
He’s gotten so good, that sometimes she doesn’t realize until later, that he worked her.

No isn’t always no, it’s a very firm maybe.

Why do we lose that skill as adults?
We kinda take things at face value,
Everything’s a done deal.

If done correctly, negotiating things in life could have a ripple effect.
Using our imaginations to offer an eyelash to the tooth fairy,
so to speak, could inspire others to have that same cleverness when
things appear to go wrong, and THAT’S a world I’d like to live in!
Xox Janet