getting 50 shades

you've seen it right? the trailer?

i will see the movie, not for the elevator sex, but to check out ana's closet at the penthouse. i read the series awhile ago, and i've forgotten all about christian's peculiarities and the playroom, but i can still tell you all about mrs. jones’s turkey soup. weird, i know, but i want to be ana, not because of christian but because of his hired help.

mrs. jones, christian's housekeeper. i mean what would life be like if you had a live-in cook slash maid? i can tell you. you’d finally get to eat mushrooms with everything because gourmet dinners tailored to your tastes only would be left out on the counter,  brown bags lunches  would be ready in the morning to bring to work, and you'd always come home to a clean penthouse. and, by the way, if you never had to walk over your man's socks, if the shower never had any soap scum, you'd probably be in the mood more often too.

then, there is caroline action, anastasia's personal shopper from neiman marcus with an unlimited budget. . omg that's a certain kind of nervana right there for sure. i'd give anything to tell someone i’d like an orange a-line sundress that makes me feel adventurous, camouflages my thighs and will put me in the mood to return my mother-in-law’s call. caroline would have found my camel-colored soft leather purse in less time than my two month search. i’m pretty sure i just had to put the book down for a moment and control my breathing at the point when ana walked into her penthouse closet full of designer clothing that she didn't have to hunt or pay for. ana will, for literary eternity, have clothes that fit her perfectly without ever using a florescent lit dressing room again...ouch.

and don't forget elena lincoln of esclava salon. i think our ana got way too worked up over elena being christian's former lover. didn't she realize that one day she will go gray and having unlimited access to a top salon would be a huge score? seriously ana! all i could think about was how i'd march myself right into esclava every morning and have the team of professionals go at it. and if the ex was lurking about while i got my seaweed facial and neck massage, not my problem.

last but not least the taciturn jason taylor must be included here. who would want a silent driver, always on time and knows the best routes around traffic? uh, me. forget grey and his helicopter, i'll take taylor, especially if he'll drive the kids to swim practice.

getting house envy

On my way to the library , I pass a house that sits on the corner, has the audacity to be all-white but pulls it off mainly because of the showy wrap -around porch.

I love it.

Even when it was being built, its light wooden floors sealed it for me. My floors, by the way, are Shell Station Bathroom Grey tile. Big windows, high ceilings, light wooden floors, it has that look of a white sheet on a laundry line blowing in the summer breeze. Just looking at it makes you feel cleaner, like you've just put an Altoid in your mouth.

Around the 4th of July, I drove by and spotted on the just finished wrap-around...and did I mention the wrap-around porch?...porch tasteful star-spangled throw pillows and a few other red, white and blue pieces arranged in that geometric precise way, more Architectural Digest than House Beautiful.Next to those pillows would be equally smart people in titanium square framed glasses at their amazing 4th of July party. They'd talk uninterrupted of the fabulous things they do for a living and their future European vacations  while the hired magician amused the little people far away across the expansive lawn.

That's when the house envy hit.

But it got worse when I happened to drive by and saw the mother and children playing out front. First, they were happy. Second, I swear they were all wearing crisp white shirts. Three, They were unbelievably blonde and beautiful in the GAP ad I'm-a-former-model-mom-and-we're--future-ones-after-we-try-rock-star-first-children  way.

I mean isn't there some universal law of compensation that's been broken here? Beautiful home, beautiful family and happiness? That's way beyond the scope of the American Dream. Forefathers just promised a chicken in every pot, ok, maybe a car in every suburban driveway. But this?

I had to think about this.

I tried to remember all this times I was in a beautiful hotel or home for more than an hour or two, like actually stayed there, which dwindled it down to less than a handful. Still, house or hotel, it was always the same. Stage 1:Ah this is how I'm truly meant to live. I should always be using crazy plush towels for everything.

Stage 2: This salmon is amazing, the cucumber relish a delight but this AC's too high, I don't even know what an aperitif is, and I'm drinking it, and if that guy asks me one more time to join him in a Coignac...

Stage 3:  I have to head down to the lobby ( kitchen) just to get a coffee in the morning which means no sweats or hair pulled up but total makeup and corporate casual at 6 in the morning. I'm ready to go home.

I could, all too readily, picture myself inside that corner house but sooner or later, it would not be so new, and I would have fully arrived, meaning the other part of me with all of my cherish neuroses that would find fault in any paradise.

The drool's fine, but really no matter where you go, there you are.

getting past inertia

A body at rest says at rest unless acted upon by an outside force.

Sometimes I think nothing less than a eighteen-wheeler coming straight at me would get me going-- body, mind and spirit. I'm not exactly a sloth in any of these, meaning I move around,  think about lots of stuff and feel connected, love and am loved.

But it's that low-level fog thing I'm talking about. Intermittent, mild depression, the sort that hangs out in the corners and steps in and out according to the weather.  Insidious in its own way, it's slippery because its not the obvious, non-functional-- I can't get out of bed or stop crying-- sort to plant you on the therapist couch.

Rather, it's the fly that you can't get  with the folded newspaper.

It's always good to be clear, they say, on what you want. Oprah says that what you ask of the universe will be exactly what you will receive, but I've read too many fables about the villager getting exactly what he wanted, and then it's hell in a handbasket because his only son or the prized pig had to die so the wish could be granted. I'm sorry Oprah, but I'm not convinced it is that simple.

If I tried on what they call happiness, how it would fit?  Like most things, loose in the waist and too tight in the butt? Same with bliss, joy, contentment, peace.  I do want less itchy tiredness around the eyes, less weariness in the bones, more zip, more can do. I'd like to remember my sense of humor more and forget shortcomings even more often. If that could be my default state, I'd really like that.  

So what to do? Listen to Deepak, practice an attitude of gratitude, then what? How to get to Gatsby's green light, the orgiastic future...run faster, stretch our arms out farther, cut out gluten? Get arm definition, hit the self-help aisle, yet that orgiastic future year by year recedes before us. And one fine morning--we're back to square one; it's law of nature--a body at rest, stays at rest.

Me Version 2.0? Better. Be me more and more of me would laugh a lot.

getting it nicely

I could text a lot faster if  I wasn't always pausing to translate what I want to say into what someone wants to hear.

I want to text:  R U kidding? Im already watching ur kid n now u want me to drive him to u? Get ur kid by 3!!!What I do text: Glad ur taking time for u , love my mani +pedis. WIsh I could drop ur son off  but boys are in middle of things. Pls come. at 3.

Socially acceptable me has said to my children, "It is hard not to get what you want. I see you're frustrated but please eat the sandwich, even if it is cut into rectangles and not triangles. Thank you." Other me would go ballistic, seriously."Just eat. I don't always get what I want. If I did, I wouldn't be making your sandwiches but Consuela would  and then you can then give her hell about the bread shapes, but good luck with that because she only speaks Spanish."

Other me is a character that Scorsese would love to get his hands on, the 'you lookin at me?' type. Other me rolls her eyes a lot and acts exactly like an 11-year old girl (and for those of you who don't know, teenagers have nothing on this new generation of TWEENS). Social me shoots for a cross between Mother Theresa and Gloria Steinem, kind but cool, firm but compassionate (but not too much because compassion, I have learned, only opens the flood gates in another and then you stuck like fovever standing there, nodding at them and wishing you were at home).

If I could be like Angela Bassett in Waiting to Exhale and set that car on fire or Mad Men's Betty Draper and shoot at birds with a bb gun, maybe everything would be more real or at least a lot more interesting.

There are times, though, Other me rushes forth, unheeded especially when I'm tired, when I'm dealing with crotchety senior citizens or people who save seats or talk during movies or have cell phone conversations in doctor's waiting rooms, and I make a right spectacle of myself.

But that's ok because, Angela Bassett, Betty Draper and all your girhhhls  we all got a double snap in there somewhere.

getting it fixed

BY THE WAY: If I happen to be writing on top of my bed and also sitting indian-style, I invariably picture Carrie Bradshaw drinking from a glass of ice water ( I don’t know why but it has to be ice water, and she always  crunches on the ice as she rereads her computer screen) , her designer top slipping over one shoulder as she types.

There’s isn’t much I can say about getting it write (for one, I don’t think write is possible but more on that another day) but getting it wrong or, the hot topic in this household, broken, I have a few words to say.

This week, some things flat out quit working like the vacuum and dishwasher. Other things were just a slow bleed like the fluorescent light bars that decided maybe I will or maybe I won’t turn on in our bathroom, the kids’ laptop that wouldn't get past the Windows Welcome page, my phone which suddenly dropped calls in all the places in my house I hide to actually have a full conversation, and the kitchen faucet that leaked upward, meaning when you turned it on, you got sprayed in the face, on me it was near my eye, my husband it was his forehead and my kids luckily it just went straight over their heads ( not much else does because they're both precocious as hell and follow me around saying  ’ Did too. I heard you. You said “F— that!' ).

So what did I do?

First,  I kicked the dead bodies.  I pushed the dishwasher buttons again and again. Damn it, yellow light. I turned on the vacuum, ignored its sputtering sounds until the burning smell was eclipsed only by true puffs of smoke. They couldn't die. I wasn't ready. I didn't know any repairmen, and  I still haven't gone into the Sew-Pro's Sewing Machine and Vacuum Center across the parking lot from Trader Joe's to ask them why they are lumping two very obviously dissimilar things together.

Second, with the bleeders, more tough love. If the lights in my bathroom were going to be that way, fine! I didn’t need them. I kept the light on in the adjacent toilet room and carried on brushing my teeth. The faucet was duct taped until my husband, swearing like a sailor, switched it out. With my phone I discovered new rooms to hide in  with better locks, impossible for the kids to pick open with the nails they find in the garage. And for their laptop, I discovered the once and future king, the F8 key which when pressed literally booted the machine's ass into gear.

When things break, they need the attention that I don't want to give. I'm not interested in offering them my time or money. They stopped working on purpose, to teach me Yoda-style some life lesson, to make me think  about the err of my ways as I sucked the water out of the bottom of my dishwasher with a turkey baster.

getting it started

I have a dear friend who lives in Brooklyn. 

She suggested I do this.

She irons her hair straight, and yes when she told me this years ago, I had some version of a Black & Decker iron, complete with steam and ironing board  in my head. I figured since it made her really curly hair uber-straight it must be a technical and very electric procedure beyond the scope of someone who fears curling irons because she can't remember to shut them off. 

Many, many moons and years later, I chanced upon such an iron because a new hairdresser "strongly suggested" its usage. It wasn't that hard. In fact, I guess I was pretty good at it because it made my hair so straight, board-straight that when I moved, the sides of my hair swayed as uniformly as two 2x4s would... if they swayed, that is. However, the revelation here is not my styling technique (I still have none), but that everyone else I had been seeing on the streets and in magazines for years had that Gwyneth Paltrow  silky straight Asian hair because they knew about this flat iron, and I didn't. You see, I have regular straight hair, and regular straight hair does not and will not get to Asian silky straight, no frizz or fly-aways, without this apparatus.

So what did I do? I called my dear friend in Brooklyn of course.

"Hey to get your hair straight like that, are you using that flat iron? You are? OMG!  I never knew it did that. Ok, what else? Seriously, I want to know. There must be more. What are these products that like every other woman on the planet knows about but me?"

She didn't stop laughing, but she did text me later: Spanxs and Bumble & Bumble Hair Powder.

That's why I love my dear friend, and that's why here I am.