Wednesday, April 28, 2010

PTSD -- post traumatic smell disorder

I was pawing through a messy drawer and found a tube of hand lotion and promptly squirted some onto my hands. (I cannot pass lotion or chapstick without partaking but it's a problem that doesn't hurt anybody and so I live with it.) Well. Pow. Apparently it was the stuff I was wearing about the time ex left me. One whiff and I was back in pre-loved hell. Smells do this to me. My grandmother had been gone for years when somebody in Macy's walked by me wearing her perfume, Emeraude, and I started crying. The smell of frying meat makes me depressed -- some sad memory of walking home from a friend's house on a Sunday night. And YSL's Paris makes me feel insecure and chubby since it was what I wore when I first got out of college and landed a job in advertising where I had no idea what I was doing and got fat from sitting all day. The paste, powder soap and chalk smell of my grade school, the carpet cleaner smell of the rehab facility where I spent a couple weeks, the sweaty leather scent of my old ballet school. Aaah! Smells trigger me.

I'm sure there must be smells that trigger happy things. I sniffed eucalyptus oil the whole time I was pregnant and excited about the baby. Narcissus, coffee, and cigarette smoke remind me of my grandparent's house at Christmas. Good times! And a whiff of Old Spice, Big Gun's deodorant, makes me all tingly.

Do smells do this to you?

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

What if you signed up for a divorce support group and nobody came?

Two weeks ago I decided that what I needed was to sit in a room full of equally miserable, traumatized divorcing people and kvetch so I went on Craig's List, found a group in Menlo Park, and paid my $20 via Amazon. I just got an email that it's been canceled due to lack of interest. What does this mean? Is nobody divorcing on the peninsula? If they are, are they not miserable and in need of support? Am I the only f-ed up pre-loved person out there? Hello?

(On a happier note, I haven't felt angry in almost two weeks. Depressed and blue, yes, but that's because I haven't gotten any calls in response to the numerous resumes I've sent out. I have this fear that I'm too old to hire and that my skills are obsolete. I'm thinking about getting a face and booty lift and lying about my age. I have this idea -- and it's possible that it's not based in reality since many of my ideas aren't -- that there is a golden age in advertising for women and I passed it about ten years ago.)

Friday, April 23, 2010

Addendum re: control

In my post about the 12 steps and specifically step one, I stated that we have no control over anything but what's between our ears. A friend of mine corrected me on that one: sometimes we don't even have control over that. You know what I'm talking about -- those thoughts that tell us we're lazy, stupid, worthless, and incompetent and can back this up with rational proof such as the fact there is a hole in the toe of our sock or our child has run out of clean underwear. I stand corrected. Sometimes we don't have control over anything at all.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

They're back.

On the left is Comet. He is in love with our guinea pig, Giselle. When he's not eating or walking this is what he does, watches and wants. I'm sure he wants to take her to Carmel for long walks on the beach and candlelit dinners; she's vegetarian. On the right is Kelpy. He's full of existential angst. He always seems sad and wanting, not Giselle but something deeper, world peace maybe. I think he misses his person, my friend D, but she said he's like that with her, too. Possibly he's waiting for his next evolution as a Buddhist monk. I find I'm more like Kelpy than Comet. I, too, walk around wanting and find it difficult to live in the moment in peace. Right now I want a part-time job that pays full-time wages. I want Big Guns to pay more attention to me. I don't, however, want more shoes or panties or wine or pills. For that, I'm grateful.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Woo woo alert

I recently completed my second breath work seminar. What's a breath work seminar? A group of people lay down in a room and breath for several hours with a guide. It's not synchronized, but deep; we use our diaphragms and exhale "om" or whatever word we use to call God. So. I'll just say it: I talked with angels and fairies. My guiding angel is Gabriel who just happens to be the archangel of writing and communications. (I should have guessed that one.) And the fairies are like tiny Cyndi Laupers; they just want me to have fun. They said that I live too much in my head and need to get down and dance, preferably around a tree. D says deep diaphragmatic breathing causes people to hallucinate from a lack or surplus of oxygen. My fellow breath workers had equally interesting but completely different journeys. One woman went on a trip on the back of her Shaman crow. (Can I just say how jealous that made me? Like I totally want a Shaman tiger. That would be bitchin, eh? I've gone all Canadian valley girl.)

On a woo woo scale of one to ten, I'd put myself at a six. I'm not as skeptical as some, and airier than others. As my friend D says, I'm willing to accept the miracle. However, at these seminars I fully expected to spend the day freaking out or napping. I was awesomely surprised, which is why I've done it twice now. If I'm hallucinating, I don't care. It's legal and safe and kicks ass. Yeah!

Monday, April 12, 2010

Pictures from my housewife life.

http://www.whorange.net/.a/6a00e5506da997883301347fcf0a95970c-pi
http://www.whorange.net/.a/6a00e5506da997883301347fcf0b69970c-pi
http://www.whorange.net/.a/6a00e5506da997883301347fcf12bb970c-pi
I was trying to share these photos that some other blogger blogged that summed up my life as a housewife. If only the big blond had red hair, shorter, fatter legs, smaller tits, a bigger ass, and a martini glass in her hand she would look exactly like me! Amazing.

home works: miles aldridge

home works: miles aldridge

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Wednesday, April 7, 2010

DVD review: World's Greatest Dad.

 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f7/Worldsgreatestdad.jpg 


I didn't really want to see this movie. My dental hygienist recommended it. I was expecting a Mrs. Doubtfire or Dead Poet's Society. In fact, I planned a family movie night and was going to watch it with my baby who, at the last minute, decide to play Call of Duty instead. Thank God. This film is no Mrs. Doubtfire. There's auto-erotic asphyxiation in the first five minutes. As confessed earlier, I haven't even covered oral sex with my big boy yet.

Anyway, Robin plays a frustrated, unpublished writer. (Gotta love that.) He has terrific boundary issues, i.e. none -- (He's a male version of me.) -- and is trying desperately to parent and befriend his vagina-obsessed/foul-mouthed teenage son who plays his dad so fiddlely well it's stomach wrenching to watch. Other characters are hoarders, alcoholics, and cutters. All the neuroses are covered! The plot escalates. Almost every character does abhorrent things and acts despicably. As weird as the story is, it turns out to be more conventionally hopeful. In the end, we the viewers are led to see that no matter how odd you are, you will be redeemed if you live in integrity. It also has something to say about teen angst and our quest for fame.

It's like a Lars Von Triers film in that it gets in your head. It was written by Bobcat Goldthwait, that comedian who talks funny.

Don't rent it if you're in the mood for something softly sentimental. If you're pissed about being force fed news of Jesse Jame's and Tiger Wood's infidelities and need a scathing satire, this is the movie.

Monday, April 5, 2010

I shoulda been a lawyer

I just got a bill from our mediator for $175 to "review Eileen's email." I don't need to comment on this. I'll just let it sink in.

Friday, April 2, 2010

Finding the Buddha within.

I've been doing the steps again. Not the fox trot, The 12 Steps. You don't have to be a drunk or addict to reap their rewards; anybody can do them and should. They are an emotional housecleaning and design for good living. Here's a brief description of how it works:

First, you admit that you don't have control over anything but what's between your ears and surrender to the possibility that you'll never know how it's going to end. (I would have given a million bucks to skip ahead read the final page of my life's story.) Next you examine all the reasons you're pissed off. (This can take a long time -- years, even -- depending on the layers of crap you've accumulated.) Then -- and this is key -- you pick up those hurts, turn them over and, like discovering creepy, multi-legged  bugs under a rock, you find the part you played in creating those hurts. This is not easy because it requires taking personal responsibility. (Personally, I'd like to blame the rest of the world until the end of time for all the things that haven't gone my way in life.) Then you clean these things up and apologize to people, things, or places if warranted so you can start anew with a clean slate. You won't stay squeaky clean for long -- maybe minutes -- before you start screwing up again because -- hello? -- you're human so you commit to wiping up after yourself from here on out and reaching out to others -- sharing your spiritual dust rag, so to speak. That's about it. There's more and better information out there on the steps if you're interested.

So. I'm on step three and thrilled to report that I'm finding the spirit within. I did not have access to my own higher self or higher power the first time around. I was still firmly a piece of shit that the world evolved around, a contracting galaxy on a path of implosion rather than an expansive universe. I wouldn't say I'm expansive yet (size of ass withstanding), but I have felt, after prayer, anger replaced by compassion. My desire for ex to be alone and covered in weeping sores was replaced by a shared sorrow for our situations. It was nothing less than, as my friend Charlotte says, "a Christmas miracle."