California Casual--Is Rudeness the New Rule?

In California, we have a different way of doing things.  

. For us, RSVP are four random letters that appear on the bottom of invitations, indicating nothing. An invitation means that someone is having an event and seeks your commitment. If you're naive or new to our way of doing things, you should understand that no one holds you to your promise.

As everyone in California knows, an invitation is a mere technicality. The game plan is to throw it on the counter and fuggetaboutit! No worries. The hostess will give you a ring on the day before the party to see if you’re coming. You can decide then.

Weddings, intimate dinner parties—makes no difference.

According to my friend, no-shows are very common in Santa Barbara. Yes, even for dinner parties. People respond "yes" and then wait to see if something better comes along. She blames the practice on the "Biz (the film industry.) And it gets worse the closer you are to Hollywood.

Makes sense. Why waste your time at a "B" dinner in your honor if you can tag along to an "A" event and gawk at the movie stars. Even the concept of "A" and "B" comes from California. Remember the old Disneyland ride ticket books? Who wouldn't rather ride the Matterhorn than the train?

So I live in California. Time to bring this around to me.

I have a writer’s critique group on alternate Tuesdays. This group is new and just beginning to jell. Like any newborn, it needs attention. It helps to know who will be there. I requested that everyone RSVP, and they did. As of last Friday six plus me made seven. Yeah!

Tuesday morning the house is clean. Snacks are ready. Husband is fed and out of the house. And the calls start coming in. One member has a sore throat. One is still in jammies. A third one has slept late and can make the last half. The others are no-shows. And that’s when the idea for this blog starts.

As a new writer, for three years I used to drive 70 miles round trip every other Monday to attend a critique group that started at nine. I scheduled my life around that group! The moderator was a retired grade school teacher who ran that group like her classroom. I was terrified of getting “the look” if I walked in three minutes late.

No coincidence that in the years I belonged I wrote a bazillion short stories and essays and submitted them to markets all over the US and Canada. Had thirty acceptances (a 1/23 ratio. Not bad for fiction in the era before e-publishing.) I wore out three Writer’s Market books in the process and won ten awards. Wrote two novels. I quit the group when members started writing travel stories and essays and I was the only fiction writer left.

Point is, that critique group launched me. That’s what I hope to do for the newbies in my group.

Clearly the fault is mine. I need to develop “the look”. Tough love. Next week we’ll revamp the rules and get down to business. As soon as I finish writing this, I’ll dig out my cousin’s wedding invitation from the junk on the counter and send my RSVP. She even included a stamp.

Hope it’s not too late.

Anybody have a similar experience or want to add to the discussion? Here's your chance. 

Five Steps for Organizing the Closet After You Say Goodbye to 4” Heels

Feet Hurt? Is your closet overflowing with clothes you never wear? A plan for what to save and what to dump when you start to dress for comfort

Going through my closet this week I began to realize that I'm a clothes hoarder. Even if I haven’t worn it in 10 years, I feel physically ill at the idea of parting with any of it. Sure, I watch “What Not to Wear”, but the problem is how do I finesse into a (ahem) Woman of a Certain Age.

I asked my Magic Mirror and this is what she whispered to me:

Young women dress to emphasize their assets and their hair. Middle-age women dress to minimize their deficits. Older women dress to match their shoes.

Sound harsh? Think about it.

Somewhere in the fifties the tendons and bones in the foot soften. Certain foot bones are the most frequently broken bones for women after fifty. That’s when podiatrists’ numbers get put on the speed-dial.

Out of necessity, shoes become less fashion statement and more a comfort accessory. It breaks our hearts to abandon this vestige of youth, but it happens.

Unfortunately, I have dresses that don’t “do” comfortable. They want a 4” heel. And nylons and a smoother. Without tough-love, those dresses will hang in the closet pretending they’re next-up for the party. Ten years will go by and still no party. Still, maybe when I’m seventy I’ll want to wear that sleeveless cocktail dress with the slit at the thigh that I didn’t even wear when it was new.

But the sad truth is, I’ve already dumped the heels.  So in order to downsize my closet and keep it real I’ve had to take a reality check. 

Here’s my plan:

Step One: Pick out the shoes I wear. Dispose of any I haven’t worn in three years. (I know, the rule is 12 months, but I’m a hoarder, remember?)

Step Two: Pair skirts, dresses and pants with the shoes they go with. Permission to pile them on the bed, the sofa, the floor. Use bronzer, pantyhose, hairdo, anything to get an accurate assessment, including daughters and husband.

Step Three: Try on everything with the shoes. If it doesn’t work, Get Rid of It. I picked the STYLE of shoe for a reason—comfort, style or because it fits my personality. When it wears out I’ll replace it with next season’s substitute, so if it doesn’t have a companion outfit now, I doubt the old shoe will ever have a love match with anything in my closet.

Step Four: Pack up the off-season clothes and shoes and store them. That way I'll have a new wardrobe in a few months. Vacuum seal sweaters so everything will pack down small. Kmart, $9.95 for three.

Step Five: When I go shopping I’ll wear the shoes I want to match. If something doesn’t, I don’t. It’s as simple as that. 

As a footnote—I won’t keep anything that needs a 10-pound weight loss to look good. I won’t pretend I’m anything I’m not. If I lose weight or change personalities, I’ll buy something new. Clothes are what I wear, not who I am. (Okay, who am I kidding?) But shoes do become what we wear, like it or not.

Am I right about this? Share your comments.  

Easter Bunny Blues

Is there too much "Ease" in Easter? On this holiest day of the Christian calendar I feel abandoned by my family. Because I know I'm not alone, I'm sharing my angst.                                                   

Father Hercek loves a colorful congregation on Easter Sunday so I put on my brightest bonnet and take myself to church. I arrive early to celebrate in song and sermon with my sisters and brothers in Christ. By the final blessing I have hugged twenty people, have been moved to tears at little girls and boys fresh from their First Holy Communion. Songs of jubilation ring in my ears, songs of rebirth and hope and thankfulness. 

For an hour (make that an hour and a half, Father Hercek has a captive audience on holidays,) I glow like a new bride. There is nowhere on earth I would rather be on this glorious Spring morning than in church.    

Driving home I sing “Come, Worship the Lord” while my eyes fill with tears because I’m feeling embraced by the Holy Spirit. I want to share my joy with the whole world. 

Once home I step into my kitchen ready to spill out Easter blessings on my family, but no one answers my call. The household is still asleep. In the next hour they straggle out, husband, three children, young adults all. My middle daughter is exhausted from having worked a double shift at her restaurant job, The oldest has stayed up until the wee hours, catching up with cousins who are only in town for the weekend. My son is off to go motorcycle riding with another cousin. My husband is on the phone, arranging to meet a buyer for his street motorcycle, an out-of-towner on his way home.  

I call my sister to confirm lunch at my house: pork roast, applesauce, angel food cake with pink icing, but she hedges, frazzled from trying to fit everything into a busy weekend schedule. She’s staying with Mom, who has had another tiny stroke during the night, worn out from the excitement, and is too weak to make it to Mass. My sister needs to fix breakfast and watch over Mom.

Guilty because she lives four hours away, it is her turn to help.   

In the end I take off my Easter finery and join my family for a catch-as-catch-can breakfast before everyone goes off in different directions. My sixteen-year-old will eat when he returns at dusk.   

As the afternoon wanes I try to recapture the early morning's hope. Still, I can't help wonder what is wrong with us. I don’t think we’re alone. I don’t think I’m the only mother who ever felt like she’s failed in her spiritual guidance. 

As soon as they graduated my children demonstrated their "grown-up" independence by eschewing their Catholic upbringing for an extra hour of sleep.

"We're a Christian family," I remind them.  "Easter is Our Day."  It doesn't matter that I voiced my hopes the day before in hopes of an old-fashioned bring-us-together Easter morning: church and sit-down dinner.

But again this year Easter Sunday feels like a "morning after."  

For our large extended family, Good Saturday is Easter Bunny Day: a family picnic, chocolate bunnies, egg hunt and all the fun stuff.  I don't deny that I love it. We adults organize a softball game while the kids whack away at a pinata. Later we catch up on family gossip while we graze our way from grilled linguica appetizers to a whole smoked pig, all the way to homemade ice cream. This is great stuff.  It's the next day that drives me to tears. 

Is it too much to ask that my family attend Mass with me, share an hour of elation and rebirth before they go about their business? When she's rested, Mom feels the same way. During Holy Week we attended reconciliation service and vowed that this year we would attend church as a family. But once again the Easter Bunny foiled our plans.          

Now it’s Easter evening. If I feel cheated, I wonder what Jesus is feeling.

How about you? Anybody ever felt in the same boat? 

Cheap Dates on California's Central Coast

  

Stuck for ideas about where to go for fun?  Short on money?  There's more to do on the Central Coast than just wine tours.  Here's a whole list of ways for sweethearts to celebrate Spring! Or for old timers to celebrate the fact that they're not dead yet. Don't live in CA? Substitute your own fave's.   

Hike the trail and watch the whales at Montana de Oro State Park

Picnic along the Nacimiento River

Catch the wildflowers at Shell Creek Road off Hwy 58 near Santa Margarita 

Take in the National Geographic Theater at Hearst Castle and visit the sea lions further up Hwy 1

Visit the gardens at the Cambria Pines Lodge then walk Moonstone Beach

Take a weekend drive to the Pozo Saloon for lunch or dinner. 

Visit the Museum of Natural History at Morro Bay State Park

Drive to the end of the Lopez Canyon rainforest.

Walk around Atascadero Lake.  Bring bread crumbs for the ducks

Dance barefoot on smooth concrete in the dark

Make fudge

Visit an animal shelter or a pet store

Wash and wax your cars together

Catch a movie at the Sunset Drive-In.  Arrive early for a tailgate BBQ

Go treasure hunting at the Nipomo Swap Meet

Attend services at different churches and synagogues

Pick up coupons in any hotel lobby

 Visit all the local beaches: Avila, Cayucos, San Simeon, Pismo

Hunt for sand dollars at low tide near Morro Rock

Go roller skating or bowling

Go paintballing at Central Coast Paint Ball Park or Franklin's Pond

Serenade each other on guitar/harmonica/kazoo

Climb Bishop's Peak

Go swimming at Franklin's Pond in Paso Robles, Sycamore Mineral Springs or Paso Robles Hot Springs

Play tag after dark in a park with Glo Sticks or flashlights

Read poetry on the steps of City Hall after business hours

Catch the moonrise over the hills of Shandon and have dinner at the Parkfield Inn

Fly kites on the summit of Hwy 46 West, on the way to Cambria

Hike the trail to the Indian relics at San Simeon State Campground

Take a Sierra Club hike on Saturday mornings

Ride bicycles to the beach

 Fish off of a pier

Visit the Missions at S.L.O., San Miguel, San Antonio

Drive the Nacimiento-Ferguson Road from Fort Hunter Liggett to Hwy 1

Visit the PG&E Community Center. 

Take a tour of art museums and art shops

Listen to old records on a vintage phonograph

Visit the Dalidet Adobe and the Jack House in SLO, the Rios Caledonia in San Miguel

Visit the Charles Paddock Zoo in Atascadero

Take your town's historical walking tour

 Take free golf lessons at your local golf course on Saturday

Pick your own fruit at Cal Poly or local berry farms

Hike the boardwalk at the Guadelupe Dunes

Give each other a foot massage

 I've had these and a million other adventures in my own back yard. What can you add about your own back yard? 

Ten Tips for Marriage: Advice from the Maritally Seasoned

 Here's a few rules my sister and I made up one night while we were drinking wine. Sixty three years of marriage between us. We call them "Tips for Transitioning between Honeymoon and Honey-do."

ADVICE FROM THE MARITALLY SEASONED 

1.        Tools are important to men.  When you borrow something from his tool chest, leave the tool drawer open so you’ll remember where to return it when you’re finished.

2.    Before you disturb anything, study the method he uses for storing his tools.  Know whether he sorts by order of earliest purchased, (FIFO), biggest-to-smallest (BIGO) or pile-on-the-workbench-and-search (SWEARO).

 

3.      A real man never borrows. If he plans to use a tool more than once he'll purchase the Professional Model with every attachment. No matter how much it costs, his argument is that “It’ll pay for itself in time.”

 

4.      It is a far graver thing you do by leaving his screwdriver on your kitchen counter than for him to forget it on the driveway so it punctures your tire when you run over it.

5.      When he offers to take over a chore, put it in contract form and try to get his signature notarized.  “Paper Trail” may seem like an ugly phrase now, but after the honeymoon, good intentions dry up faster than an open bottle of cinnamon body oil.

       

6.      Get him to landscape your yard before he signs up for a gym.  Try to convince him that a good push mower will work the same ab cluster as a rowing machine.  A shovel will substitute for a stairmaster.  Pulling weeds-two-three-four will stretch the calves.

   

7.      Before planting anything precious or expensive in your yard, observe his path and avoid those locations.  Men, cattle and deer make paths. Don’t try to change nature.

8.       He possesses the remote control as surely as you own your grandmother’s pearls.  He won’t expect to wear your jewelry, leave his remote alone.

9.      The toilet seat is the first to know you’re now married.  Till death do you part, the lid will stay up.  It’s the man’s trade-off for wearing a ring.

10.    A man’s memory is fail-proof. If he doesn’t remember making a mistake, then it's your fault. This rule moves up the list with each anniversary.

  

Bonus Hint: a married man keeps his dirty socks on the floor so they’re easier for you to find.

That’s my advice.  Now I have a question.  Could one of you young brides explain why all my honeymoon lingerie shrunk?   

 Got any to add to the list? Or rules for women? Thanks for commenting.

A Thank-You to the Universe for my Zihuatanejo Connection

Shameless promoter that I am, this essay is entered in Sonia Marsh's Gutsy Story competition. I'd love you to drop by and vote for me. I  write about this trip and other experiences of the Social and Sexual 
Revolution in my baby boomer memoir, Ordinary Aphrodite

The flight is on time as it descends over the basin rim into the desert. Phoenix in mid-April is green golf courses and swimming pools surrounded by alfalfa fields and sprinklers. I pull my eyes from the magazine I’m pretending to read. My hands are trembling from the apprehension of meeting my oldest daughter, Sam, to board a plane to Zihuatanejo. I know she has not agreed to this trip without persuasion.

The trip itself is the result of many hands. God has a plan.

In the taxiing plane I hear my friend’s stern voice, two months earlier, brooking no dissent:  “Just hear me out before you say anything. I’ve booked you into a writer’s retreat in Zihuatenajo for late April. You need to go. You’re not writing and you need to be. Go and let it change your life.”

That phone call had frozen me with apprehension. Mexico—alone? From the way my stomach dropped at the idea I knew I was not brave enough to go alone. My heart, my instinct, called for my daughter.

She had voiced her objections—a single week of vacation built up, not enough money—but beyond the stated, I heard her apprehension about spending a week together. And her fears weren’t without reason.

I was fresh off the farm, a college sophomore when I got pregnant. Her childhood was over before I figured out who I was and what I had to offer her. She was born at the end of the baby boomer generation—stuck between two generations without seeming to belong to either.

We were the classic Peter Pan and Wendy with no idea what to do about it. I knew she didn’t like me very much—but what if I discovered she hated me? She had left home at seventeen for college and never returned. What if after all the years of living apart—of chasing separate dreams and missed connections—this was our only chance and we blew it?

If we didn’t try we would never know. Still—maybe knowing wasn’t all it was cracked up to be!

She stalled. I fussed to her father about her indecision when secretly I was doing the same thing. It was her father who negotiated the truce, the guy who didn’t really want me to go—because it was southern Mexico and he would have no power to save me if something went wrong—this husband of mine called his daughter and told her I wouldn’t go without her.

Fate had decreed it was time.

 Miles from home, the novelty of adventure frees us. Tears turn to laughter as we struggle to find common ground, mother and daughter, offspring of my teen years when I had little to offer her except my love.

Lying on our beds that first night, lost in the weight of awkward silence, we begin to talk, first of inconsequentials, then of the disappointments we have each suffered at the other’s hand.  When exhaustion claims us my firefighter daughter demands that we make an evacuation plan. She places a flashlight and our shoes by the door while I scoff, not yet ready to relinquish the parent role to this adult daughter who has grown tenacious in the missing years.

When the first temblor rocks the hotel I accept the small earthquake as a sign that flexibility and respect might be a good thing.

Seven days later we are friends in a way we have never before managed, our hearts healed of the nagging fear that we have somehow missed our connection. Here’s what I write to celebrate our week.

                                                Thank you, Zihua’

The week was productive and inspirational. My daughter and I left our mark on the little town. I asked questions of every bartender and waiter, every vendor and taxi driver who would tolerate our Spanish. We rode a bus with broken windows to Petatlán and were taken in hand by a couple of eager seventeen-year-olds. We caught the stench of freshly-butchered pigs, ate cow head enchiladas, and brushed off flies and proposals of marriage with equal adroitness.

We adored Lenore and Veronica and Elsa and her husband. We dined with an opera singer from Mexico City and advised her in her marital distress over a bottle of wine at midnight. We rose at dawn and ate cerviche at the fish market, and enticed Jose the cantina owner into telling us his story of lost virginity at the hands of a Greek goddess who was nineteen to his seventeen.

Sweet days. We made friends with the geckos on our wall and nodding acquaintance with the iguana in our tree. We toted home fresh cocos and pinas and laced the shells with rum. We tossed Else's bougainvillea into the sea at midnight and made a wish to return. We bought Latina sandals that made our legs look long and hootchie- mama dresses that made us feel great.

We danced to a Bolivian CD in the dark and watched the houses on the hill

swell with the afternoon light. We bought morning coffee for the Indian woman who carries flan on her head, and turned down an offer of product from the local drug dealer. We taxied to Ixtapa and ferried to Las Gatas and attended Easter Mass at the church of the Virgin of Guadalupe. (And knelt in reverence at the cathedral at Petatlan) and saved our sunburn for the last day.

Oh yes, I finished twenty-five pages of most excellent prose for a total of seventy-five pages on my novel. If we missed anything we'll be glad to retrace our

steps. We have found paradise.

When we returned, my husband wanted to know why I looked so relaxed. I told him it was the humidity.

           In a lifetime a mother should be so lucky. We were both profoundly touched by our experiences. The words started flowing, woman to woman, and they’ve never stopped. Thank you, Universe, for your part in my journey.

                                                      

What's your story? Any life-changing adventures with your children or grandchildren? Share them with us and please write them down for yourself. 

When Your Body Says “No:” The Stress/Disease Connection

I came across this amazing link and I want to shout it from the rooftops. 

Vancouver-based Dr. Gabor Mate argues that too many doctors ignore the research. They’ve apparently forgotten the once commonplace assumption that emotions are deeply implicated in human well-being.

Well, HELLO! A couple of friends and I were discussing this very thing (we’re grandmas, but never too old to diss our upbringing!) 

Tina mentioned that her mother was an “I love you, BUT…” type. My friend grew up feeling she’d never quite “made the grade” with her mother. In her words, by adulthood this feeling had oozed out to include everyone in the whole world. She calls herself a Pleaser. Not surprisingly, she’s plagued with health problems. I love her the way she is, but I can see that she says “yes” way too often.

Our other friend, Mary, said her mother is a narcissist who manages to deflect every triumph back to herself. If Mary brought home a good report card, she was told she took after her mama who always got straight A’s. Mary’s fought a weight problem her entire life. Her mother, of course, is a perfect size 6. Her horror is that she will spend her golden years caring for her mother's dramatic, malingering passing. We coined an unflattering nickname for her mother that makes Mary laugh. After all, what are friends for?

My mom is a raver--in the good sense. She raves over us. Her favorite phrases involve, “Isn’t that beautiful!” or “You made this all by yourself?” Three generations of her progeny tease her about her attribution skills as we glow in the light of her appreciation. 


I took the joy of accomplishment for granted until I began noticing that not everyone had it so good. Dr. Mate says her joy helped me develop a sunny disposition that supports a healthy immune system. Were it this simple!

I inherited her attribution skills and for that I’m grateful. But my awful twin makes it easy to interject sarcasm and deflect attention to myself. My attribution skills come at a cost. I’ve had to learn to sit and really listen. To take a backseat. (See, not easy. Count the I’s and me’s in this paragraph and you’ll see.)

So what is this rant really about? To take it back to the top, I’m an expressive who apparently has been tending my immune system my entire life. If I live to be 90, I’ll have to thank my mom, my blog and everyone who has had to listen to me verbalize my feelings.

How about you? Any insights into your emotional/physical connection?

Don’t forget to check out Dr. Mate’s interview.