I see London, I see France...

Here's something I never thought I would do:  today I posted, on a Facebook page, mirror selfies of myself in my underwear.

The page is a private fitness motivation and accountability group that I've been running for a few years, originally about 10 members strong, but now comprised of about 40 people - 39 women and 1 man (the husband of one of my good friends from high school in India). It grew out of my Beachbody coaching business, which I tried to build as a business until two things happened:

1) I finally accepted the fact that I fucking hate network marketing.  Not overall as a concept, but I hate it for myself.  I never enjoyed the business building part of it at all. God knows I wish I did - I know a number of people who are great at it and are now making in the high six-figures (or more) after a few years of focusing on building a coaching business.  But I suck at it and never enjoyed it and it never felt like me.

2) The shitty events of the last couple of years sucked any motivation to build that kind of business right out of me, even assuming I could have been any good at it.  

But I always liked and was good at the actual coaching part - the part where I get to help people get in shape.  That part of it is really fun and rewarding.  

So I put together a private online group for people who were trying to lose weight and get fit, and who wanted some support from others who were in the same boat.  My rules are pretty simple - nobody has to buy anything from me (though they can if they want to), no negativity, just kindness and support.  A totally safe space where we can all cheer each other on, celebrate each others' successes, vent when we need to, ask questions, seek motivation, and basically treat each other the way human beings should treat each other.  

Much of it is about fitness, posting about our daily workouts, lamenting the number of Reese's cups and Cadbury creme eggs inhaled over easter, wondering why it's so hard to increase weight beyond a certain point when doing biceps curls, celebrating the fact that someone can do push-ups on their toes rather than their knees.  If you ask for help, you get it.

And as we all interact on a daily basis and are truly good friends, much of it is about life.  A number of us have been dealing with the untimely deaths of friends and family.  Others are faced with the "sandwich generation" task of raising children while also caring for ailing parents.  There are difficult relationships with parents and siblings (which make me realize, for the billionth time, that I hit the fucking jackpot when I was born into my family).  We talk about coming to terms with aging, both for ourselves and for our significant others, and the struggles with getting some of our loved ones to get off their asses and lose some weight.

It's deep, personal stuff, and yet we don't hesitate to bare our souls and be vulnerable, and in return, we are rewarded with unwavering acceptance and support.  Causing Jessica to share this post today:

Let's all move forward on this glorious #MotivationMonday 🙌 Tag a Smart Girl sitting next to you! (📝: @rupikaur_ )

A photo posted by Amy Poehler's Smart Girls (@amypoehlersmartgirls) on Apr 4, 2016 at 11:57am PDT

Other discussions are far more prosaic, like the frustrations associated with assembling IKEA furniture:  

F&$*%ng IKEA where's a f&$*%ng Allen wrench when you need one gaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhggggg.

Prompting this response:

And the instructions inexplicably require two fat men with no pants.  

And of course, because my close friends and I talk about everything and have no filter, nothing is off limits.  We discuss, in great detail, boobs (both the pregnancy and non-pregnancy variety), menstruation (including the term "shark week" to describe it, which is beyond awesome), the relative merits of pole dancing, sex and relationships, and poop.

Have you ever taken such a huge poop that you were dying to show it to someone?

This question has consumed us today for HOURS.  In the process, I have learned the following:

• one time a guy who Nicole had just met showed her a picture of his poop, which blows my mind;
• there is a Dutch word for a particular type of cinnamon bun that literally translates as "Hague Turd";
• Bas went to school with a guy who did "figure pooping" as opposed to "figure skating," i.e., he made shapes...;
• a girl who lived on Karen's hall during her first year at UVA got so drunk one night that she took an epic shit in the middle of the hallway;
• the term "poop shy" is a thing; and
• Koreans are somewhat obsessed with analyzing their poop, and there's even a poop-themed cafe in South Korea where they serve lattes in toilet mugs.

Plus, we're all now addicted to Bitmoji, so of course I couldn't resist posting this:

We're a close and uninhibited group, is what I'm saying. 

So I posted pictures of myself in my underwear.  My 25 year college reunion is in 10 weeks, and while I'm generally happy with how I look, I've put on a few pounds of winter fluff that I'd like to get rid of before I see all of my old classmates (and hookups) again, so I'm starting a 10 week program that will get me there.  And there had been an earlier discussion among the group about the benefits of tracking your fitness progress and staying motivated by taking before and after pictures.  I thought it would help me stay focused, and putting on a bikini when I woke up this morning seemed like an unnecessary pain in the ass, so I just took the pictures in my undies because that's what I was wearing.

Mind you, fully half of the people in the group are people I have never met in real life (including my classmate's husband).  But I posted the pictures without any hesitation or self-consciousness.  I knew that sharing the pictures would add a level of accountability and incentive to my efforts over the next 10 weeks, and that I would receive no judgment, only support.  It was a no-brainer.

I mean, once you've talked about that feeling of intense lightness that comes after an enormous poop, there are really no more barriers to intimacy.

Or maybe we're all just crazy.

Me and my head high, and my tears dry, get on without my guy

"Maybe you don't really want to be with someone."

I was talking to a friend of mine about my recent dating foibles, and this was her observation.

I was both surprised and not at all surprised.

The past couple of months have felt jarring and left me with a sense of disjointedness.  I had a birthday I wasn't thrilled about (although I'm as healthy as I've ever been and, as ever, it's better than the alternative), and then a week later Lori died, and then construction started on the kitchen, and now the kids have been gone for a week on spring break.

I feel emotionally pushed and pulled.  The past six years (and particularly the last two) have involved so much trauma, death, and heartache - it's hard to deal with it all while at the same time being a present and productive mother, daughter, sister, friend, and functioning member of society.  I keep thinking I'm old and washed up and nearing the end of my shelf life.  I don't know what I want.

She was so sweet and bubbly.  And I miss those South Park pajama bottoms.

I keep thinking about Emma and bursting into tears.  When I was in New Hampshire for Lori's funeral, someone gave me a picture of two-year-old Emma sitting on my lap on the porch of our beach house at the Outer Banks.  We are deep in conversation and she is telling me something interesting and I'm gazing at her like I can't stand how gorgeous or cute she is.  I love this picture, but it fills me with sadness.

And my physical surroundings do nothing to provide a sense of calm or stability.  The downstairs of my house is virtually uninhabitable.  The kitchen is almost done, but it'll be another four days or so before I can start putting things in cupboards and drawers, and before I can actually use it.  So everything is dusty and there are still boxes and appliances and plastic sheeting everywhere.  I have no idea where anything is.  The only place I can really hang out is in my room, which after a while gets depressing.

So I have almost compulsively kept myself busy and out of the house.

It's been relatively easy to keep my dance card full.  I thought, given that most of my relationships have made me miserable, why not just date for the sake of dating?  Keep it casual.  Be noncommittal. Have fun. And outside of one dinner with a guy who I found repulsive on every level, it hasn't been unpleasant.  They're all very nice and enthusiastic.  We have dinner and drinks and tell our stories.

But every time, I feel them start to get too interested and attached and anxious, and I reflexively pull away. This one has mannerisms that annoy me.  That one isn't dynamic enough.  The other isn't smart enough, though smart enough for what, I don't know.  It's my own intellectual snobbery at play.

At first it was fun to be so busy all the time.  But now I'm bored and I just want them to leave me alone.

I fucking hate that I do this.  Even just reading over what I've just written, it sounds obnoxious and awful.  My friend remarked that I should give one of them a chance.  But I don't want to.  When it comes to men, it turns out that casual and noncommittal is not in my DNA. As much as I crave both the emotional and physical connections, as much as I so enjoy the experience of hanging out with someone I respect and am attracted to, I can't fake it or force it when it's not there.  I wish I could just love the one I'm with.

But the truth is, I'd rather be alone.  I'd rather read and listen to Amy Winehouse's Back to Black album.  I'd rather get caught up on movies I've been meaning to see.  It feels less lonely than being out with someone I don't really want to be with.

This is a strange discovery to make at this point in my life.  But there you have it.

Rescue me

After all of the sadness and gloom, let's talk about something happy, shall we?

My house is a shit show.

Two Czech guys named Mirko and Andrej are in my kitchen making lots of banging noises.  Neither of them is wild and crazy; rather, they are polite and workmanlike and efficient.  There's nothing worse about construction than coming home and having everything look the same day after day, without any sign of progress - that's what happened with my Atlanta kitchen.  But every day, I come home and it's different.

The night before. Everything is cleared out.

The cabinets get delivered.  They sit in the front parlor.

Everything that was in the kitchen is now in the dining room. I'm living out of a mini-fridge and cooking via toaster, microwave, and electric skillet.  Which means I eat out a lot, because if I cook at home I'm washing dishes in the tiny sink in the bathroom.

Day 1. Demo.

Day 3.  Running the gas line to the other side of the room.

Day 5. Assembling the cabinets.

Day 7. Prepping the walls to hang the cabinets.

So everything is proceeding apace. There's no reason to assume that it won't be completed on time, in another two weeks.   

But in the meantime, I'm living in what feels like squalor.  The one room downstairs that was relatively habitable was the living room, but once the guys used the front parlor to assemble the cabinets, all the furniture in there was moved to the living room, so it's totally crazy now.  I am not a particularly neat person (I've gotten much better as I've gotten older, but it just doesn't come naturally to me the way it does to some people), but even I have my limits, and I passed them a week ago. T

To keep myself from going completely insane, I have kept as busy as possible.  Want to grab a drink? Dinner? Movie? Sure.  Want to come over and watch basketball? Most definitely. Will you come babysit? Yep. 

 Seriously, I'll fold your laundry or vacuum your car or walk your dog. Anything to be out of the house.

The final straw

So many cards were stacked against her.

Depression ran in her family, and it affected her.  While she was bubbly and funny and interesting on her best days, other days were a struggle.

I have been lucky in my battle against depression.  It took me a long time to understand the symptoms and to know how to deal with them, but I've gotten there.  Between that, regular exercise, and medication, it's managed. Now when I'm sad, it's because I have something to be sad about. But I don't get that amorphous, free-floating sense of anxiety for which I am unable to pin-point a cause.  I don't remember the last time I had that feeling of a heavy, cold metal ball lodged in my chest when it wasn't tied to an actual event.

She wasn't so fortunate.

And then tragedy struck.  First her daughter was in a terrible accident that almost killed her. And she - the mother - suffered tremendously.  She was traumatized and haunted by the accident, which she witnessed.  Day to day life was difficult.

And then, a few years later, at the point when she and the rest of her family finally felt like they could put the accident behind them - when they could finally relax and exhale and feel like they weren't constantly in the clutches of fear and anxiety of something bad happening - tragedy struck again.  Her daughter - the same daughter who had been in the awful accident - was killed in a car crash.

She never recovered.  She was incapacitated by grief, and her physical health suffered as well.

As an added twist, she was abandoned by her own mother.

Her father lived with his new family 6 hours away, and they were rarely in contact.  And her mother, also depressed but one whose disease manifested itself in an incomprehensible cruelty, turned on her.  When her mother wasn't ignoring her, she was accusing her of causing the daughter's accident and then her death.  And the accusations weren't oblique or simply implied - they were expressed and deliberate.

"It's your fault."  "She's dead because of you." "You must have done something to the car she was driving."

These are actual words her mother said.

I can't imagine anything more callous, hateful, or cold-blooded. To be treated that way by one of my parents would wreck me.

Rightfully so, her husband barred her mother from their house and their family.

In the end, the weight of all of the tragedy, trauma, and parental neglect crushed her.  In the end, the thing she needed as much as anything else - the thing that could have helped her deal with everything - was the love and support of her parents. And when she couldn't get it, it sealed her fate.

In the weeks after her funeral, her mother reached out to her husband.

"Can you forgive me?"

I guess that the feelings that would be familiar to most decent human beings started to nag at her. She felt guilty.  As well she should have.

But it was too late.  The answer was "no."

Adventures in Online Dating: the student becomes the teacher edition

I think my daughter is better at this shit than I am.

The other night I was in the bathroom with her while she took a shower.  She and I were talking as I handed her shampoo and conditioner, and she was talking about Adam, the kid in her class with whom she has an off and on relationship.  Apparently, after Nick was her boyfriend for a little while, Adam became her boyfriend again.

"Well, he was my boyfriend, but then he broke up with me."

"He broke up with you?  What do you mean?"

"I mean he's not my boyfriend anymore," she huffed, exasperated that I wasn't keeping up.

"Why did he break up with you?  How do 6-year-olds break up?"

"He broke up with me because he said I was disgusting," she explained.

Girl, wut??

"What are you talking about?  Why would he say something like that??" I demanded.

"He said I was disgusting because I suck on my fingers," she responded.  "But I can't help it! I suck on my fingers because I need to chew on something.  I need a chew toy.  Will you get me a chew toy?  Something I can wear around my neck or something?"

"Sure, I'll get you one of those rubber stretchy coils that you can wear as a bracelet or something. And you're not disgusting. I can't believe he would say that to you."

She shrugged, unbothered by it.

I clearly need to learn how to adopt this kind of DGAF attitude.  If someone I liked told me they thought I was disgusting, I would be devastated.  Fortunately, the men I go out with are far more tactful than your average 6-year-old, so it's unlikely to happen to me, but still.  I wish I were that cool.

And she is learning to juggle better than I do.

In addition to handling the scheduling issues that come with trying to date a few different people while also having 50% custody of the kids, I've never been one to date a bunch of guys at a time.  It's nice to have full dance card, but my nature is to fall for and want to be with one at a time.  I'm not going to have the red hots for more than one person at a time.  At heart, I'm a romantic and I believe in being a one-man-woman.

But Josie is unburdened by such concerns.

Turns out, she and Adam are back together.  He told her that he likes her again.  During center time when they're working on iPads, they draw love hearts for each other.

"Yeah, Mama, so Adam is my boyfriend, and Trina is Mark's boyfriend. And Trina kind of likes Adam, but I told her she can't be his girlfriend because I am.  But Carl wants me to be his girlfriend too."

"But you're not his girlfriend because you're Adam's girlfriend, right?" I need to keep it all straight.

"Weelllll, I kind of like both of them.  I kind of want to have both of them as my boyfriend."

This girl is my role model in so many ways.

Reality bites

The process feels so familiar that it's almost seamless, like stepping back into a room that I only just left a few minutes before.  I walk into the house and it's filled with the same people who were there last time.  They all know me and they hug me tight and whisper, "I'm so sorry."  I hug them back and we say some words about how awful it is, and maybe crack lame jokes about how "we've got to stop meeting like this."

It's surreal.

There's food and beer, and we sit around and tell stories, some of them relevant to the situation, others more random and organic, as if we all just got together on a Wednesday night to hang out. Politics.  Gossip.  What the kids are up to.

But then it's the day of the funeral, and as the time grows closer and we're dressed and heading to the funeral home, that's when the walls really start to close in.  I look over at my brother and see that the strength that he's been projecting up to now is starting to crack.  He's such a rock, but he's hurting.

In the room where the service is, there's a slideshow of pictures, playing in a loop.  Pictures of Lori from all different points of her life, looking vibrant and happy, her bright blue eyes shining.  It's so fucking sad.

But what's even more heartbreaking are the pictures of her and Emma.  Emma as a baby, as a toddler, as a teenager.  Seeing them together is a punch in the gut.

Josh has kept it together so well, but when it comes time to eulogize his wife, whom he loved with his whole heart, that's when the pain he feels becomes so obvious.  That's when everything shifts from surreal to utterly fucking real.  He cries and tries to speak, but has to stop to compose himself, until finally his older daughter joins him at the podium and reads the words that he can't bring himself to read on his own.  It's an extraordinarily moving moment, actually.

He lost his daughter and then his wife in the span of a year and a half.  His daughters lost their sister and then their mother in the span of a year and a half.  Plus a few weeks ago, one of their dogs died when she was hit by a train.

It's beyond tragic.  If someone were writing a fictional story with these facts, an editor would be all, "ehhh, it's too much. Too melodramatic.  Not believable."

Later, back at the house, everyone gathers again for beer and deli and coffee cake and condolences. And eventually, the youngest daughter, my niece who is Zeke's age - who has been remarkably composed in a way that's hard to fathom - finally falls apart.  And I find myself sitting in the bathroom with her on my lap as she sobs uncontrollably on my shoulder.

I hold her as she cries and cries.  I can't say anything except, "go ahead and cry as much and as long as you need to, honey.  We can sit here as long as you need to."  I rub her back and stroke her head and hug her to me.

"I want my mom," she wails.  "I want my sister back, I want my mom back, I want my dog back."

I bury my face in her hair and start to cry as well.  The depth of her loss and her grief is overwhelming.  How is an 8-year-old child supposed to deal with something like this?  How is her sister, a 13-year-old child, supposed to deal with something like this?

What I do know is that if anyone can guide them through, it's my brother Joshua.  His strength, his decency, his integrity, his commitment to doing right by his girls - all of that will be their saving grace.  He will lead them and protect them.  And his family and his friends and his community have his back - being here and seeing the extent of the support he has, the amount of love and respect he has among his friends and family, is awe-inspiring.  He's such an amazing guy, and everybody sees it and loves him for it.  It makes me proud to be his sister.

But damn, the road ahead will be long and bumpy.

I am weary, let me rest

Bad luck, I guess. It floats around. It's got to land on somebody. It was my turn, that's all. I was in the path of the tornado. I just didn't expect the storm would last as long as it has.

- Andy Dufresne, The Shawshank Redemption

At this point, all that keeps running through my head is a question.  "When is it enough? At what point does the universe recognize that one person has shouldered enough of his share of tragedy, trauma, heartbreak, loss?  How much does one person get saddled with before the fates decide, 'yep, we've tormented him enough, let's move on?'"

That's all I can think of today, ever since I learned that my sister-in-law Lori - my brother Josh's wife, Emma's mother - went to sleep last night and never woke up again.

She had been battling demons for a long time.  Emma's accident, and then her death, devastated Lori beyond imagining.  But I spoke to her a few days ago and she sounded good.  There was a lightness and clarity to her voice that I hadn't heard in a long time.

But when I asked Josh what happened, he said that she died of a broken heart.  A part of her could never conceive of continuing to live in a world without Emma in it.  And now she doesn't have to. 

I can't make any sense of it. It is beyond the capacity of my brain to accept or justify, under any concept of the cosmic forces of fairness or justice or decency that might exist.

But of course, the problem is, there are no cosmic forces of fairness or justice or decency.  It's all bullshit.  There is no god, no inherent benevolence or goodness at work. It's all random and arbitrary and unfair, whether for good or for ill.  Horrible things happen to good people, and great things happen to horrible people, and that's just the way it is.  So fucking get over it.  Be happy or don't.  Hug your kids closer today or don't.  It doesn't make a goddamned bit of difference.

Because otherwise, what could possibly explain or justify my brother Josh being the one to suffer this kind of tragedy, again? After everything he's already been through? How can my nieces lose their beloved sister and then their mother, in the span of less than two years?

When Emma died, the power of the shock, in addition to the power of the grief, was overwhelming. It was unfathomable.  How could this happen to her, after everything that had already happened?  I felt like my heart was bursting with every imaginable facet of grief, but also with every imaginable facet of love as well - love from family, love from friends, love sent from well-wishers from across the globe.

And now?  Now I am numb. I am furious. I cast a narrowed, jaundiced eye upon the world and think, "et tu?" at everything I see or encounter.  

There are little things that keep popping into my head.

Like the particular tone in my father's voice that is now instantly recognizable as Barry's Vocal Inflection for Announcing Death and Destruction.  "Wendy, Emma was hit by a car..."  "Wendy, Emma was killed in a car accident..."

Today I answered the phone just as the kids and I were heading into the car wash.  "Wendy, Lori died last night..."

I love my father, but I am weary of that endless loop of his voice that I hear in my head, announcing the various tragedies that befall my brother.

Then there's the fact that this kind of horrible thing always seems to happen when my mom and dad are apart.  When my grandma Ruth died, my father was white-water rafting in Idaho and was totally incommunicado - he didn't even know about it until days later.  When Leo died, my dad was in Denver.

When Emma died, my mother was in Brazil on business.  When she found out from the embassy duty officer that my father was trying to reach her because of a death in the family, she thought to herself, "it must be one of the kids or grandkids, because the old people are all dead." She spent the long flight home crying on the shoulder of her coworker.

And this morning, my mother had just arrived in South Africa on another business trip.  She got the news, talked to my dad and then to me on the phone, and got on another plane to come back.

What do these patterns mean?  Nothing, undoubtedly.  None of it means anything.

Once again, we will head to New Hampshire and circle the family wagons. We will try to provide each other with comfort, to comprehend the incomprehensible, to fathom the unfathomable.

We've gotten depressingly good at it.

#TBT: I get a peaceful easy feeling, and I know you won't let me down

My dad was always big on photographing the family - my parents have dozens of photo albums at their house, chronicling their (and our) entire lives, from the time they themselves were children.  One of the Thanksgiving traditions that my brothers and I have is to go through old albums and remember all of the wonderful and interesting experiences we were fortunate enough to have growing up.

And as the first-born, I had a dedicated baby album, complete with the pink and blue cover that said "Baby."  

But the album is old and and the pictures are getting brittle and faded.  So a few years ago, as a gift to my parents, I took the album, scanned all the pictures, and created a photo book that exactly duplicated the pictures and the layout of the original. 

This picture above is from that album.  That's me, probably around 6 months old, give or take. We're at Kyrenia Harbor in Cyprus, where I was born (Cyprus, I mean - I wasn't born in Kyrenia Harbor). The shirtless dude in the picture was named Costakis. He worked at the harbor, maybe as a fisherman or something. I don't know how my parents knew him - maybe my nanny Christina (the one who had me baptized in the Greek Orthodox church - it never hurts to cover your bases) knew him. And what am I doing there with him? Is he babysitting me?

In any event, this is one of my favorite pictures.  There's a lovely peacefulness about it - the scene feels carefree and full of joy.  Costakis seems to be such a gentle, sweet guy with a way with babies. I feel comfortable with him. It's a beautiful sunny day by the water. Life is good.

Plus I love the relaxed (and very dated) casualness towards baby safety - that rickety baby seat perched on a tiny, rickety table -- near water, no less! -- would not fly in the helicopter parenting world we live in, with hyper-emphasis on how car seats must be constructed and how and where they may sit (not on a tiny table, that's for damned sure).  And there's a full ashtray on the table next to me. If this were a recent picture posted on Facebook or similar, the hysterical mamas with nothing to do but lecture other people on their shortcomings would be commenting furiously about how my parents or caregivers should be reported to CPS because I'm clearly in danger.  

But I'm obviously fine. I'm happy. I am surrounded by people who love and care for me. I'm safe.

I have no idea where Costakis is now. But I would love to be able to send him this photo and let him know how much I love it.

Peanuts! Popcorn! Get your red hots here!

We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and die. The storybooks are bullshit. Now I want you to come upstairs with me and get in my bed!

- Ronnie Cammareri, Moonstruck

We are doing the "ask a bunch of questions" thing, but not in a way that feels forced or awkward. More like fun questions that I like asking because it's way more interesting than, "so, do you have any brothers and sisters? where do they live?"

"Have you ever been arrested?"  "What kind of recurring anxiety dreams to you have?"  "If you wanted to run for public office, are there any incriminating photos or videos that would stand in your way?"  "How old were you when you lost your virginity?"

I love questions like that.  We chat in that vein for a while.

Then he asks, "so what are you looking for?"

Ah.

What do I want?  Which should really be, who do I want?  Who should I want?

It's the question that keeps me in a perpetual war with myself.

Because sometimes I wonder if the who is less important to me than the what.

The what being that particular feeling that is so rare.  The chemistry. The butterflies, the tingles, the charge in the air, the excitement, the sense that when you're together, you're in on a secret that no one else is in on. What my eloquent friend Lisa refers to as the "red hots."  It doesn't happen with many people, but when it does, oof.

And so I find that I will endure quite a lot for the what.  Sometimes the who attached to the what - those elusive red hots - is, on an objective level, not the who you might have put yourself with, all things being equal.  The who might be a pain in the ass, or be persnickety in ways that annoy you, or be self-absorbed and infuriating.  Most of the time, it might feel like he's utterly wrong for you.

Except when it doesn't.  And when it doesn't, the feeling is intoxicating, and so hard to let go of.  He might make you miserable, but you can't get him out of your head.

Is it worth it?  Is the euphoria worth the pain?  At some point, do you need to give up the yearning for the red hots in order to achieve some emotional stability?

"What are you looking for?" he asks again.

I put on my best Mona Lisa smile and shrug.

"Let's just see what happens."

But deep down, I know.  I can't live without the red hots.  And it's always been my downfall.

Adventures in Online Dating: Good artists copy, great artists steal?

After a short period of wallowing, I have jumped back into the world of online dating.  I have a number of single friends who do it but hate it, but I actually kind of love it.  It's certainly flattering.  I get a lot of messages - most women on those sites do, way more than men generally get.  And while the majority of them are from men I'm not going to go out with, a decent number are from guys who have some potential.  So I've decided that my approach will be to play the numbers game - if a guy asks me to meet him for a drink and he seems smart, funny, nice, attractive enough and age appropriate, I'll say yes.

And really, why not?  My attitude is, most of them will only be first dates, but maybe a few will lead to second dates, and who knows?  I keep my expectations low.  At worst, I'll spend an hour having a drink and chatting with a nice enough guy who I never have to see again, and at best, I'll meet someone really cool.  There's really no downside.

The result is that my dance card is filling up to the point that I'm having to schedule dates two and three weeks out.  It's fun.

And I won't lie - my ego enjoys the feeling of being complimented and pursued.

Plus, even the ones I don't go out with provide some entertainment.  There are messages from those I call the Young Guns - guys who are a solid 15 years (or more) younger than my target market, but whose brashness and enthusiasm I find sort of charming.  Who knew that 25 year old guys would be interested in a 45-year-old divorced mother of two?  I even got a message from a guy who is 19.  If I had been remotely interested in going out with him, we couldn't have gone to a bar.

Then there's the international crew.  I have been written to by men from Israel, Canada, England, Ireland, France, and a couple of other places.  And that's not counting the ones scattered around the United States, even though I have no interest in dating someone outside of Denver (even the suburbs would feel like a long-distance relationship to me).

Another category I haven't come up with a name for, but it's characterized by guys whose profile pictures include them shirtless, or a bathroom mirror selfie, or posing in front of their car or motorcycle (or even a picture of just the car).  Dude, I don't need to see your nipples before I meet you.  And I'm not impressed that you drive a Beamer.  Move along.

But tonight I hit upon something that really blew me away.

One of the things about how my brain works is that I have crazy recall for certain things that I read and hear - conversations, dialogue, movie quotes, text message exchanges, that sort of thing.  My brother Sam has similar abilities - he and I can hear something that reminds us of a line, and one of us will say it, and the other one will immediately get it while everyone else is wondering what the hell we're blathering on about.  What sometimes triggers it for me is distinctive or unique uses of language - a way of expressing something that strikes me as interesting, a particularly descriptive or powerful statement, a statement that seems incongruous or inconsistent with what I know about the speaker.

Anyway.  Tonight I was dicking around on my computer while the kids were playing, and I got an email that someone was interested, so I went online and checked his profile out.  And when I read it, I  immediately had a sense of deja vu - there were two sentences in there that I knew I had seen before.  So I looked back at another guy's profile that I had read about a week and a half ago, and he had used the exact same sentences.  Verbatim.  Word for word.  (And it's a distinctive couple of sentences - absolutely no way was it just a coincidence.)

That made me curious.  So I took the sentences and googled them.  My head exploded when the search resulted in at least 40 hits, all linking to dating profiles on a number of different sites, all by men using the exact same language.

I dug a little more, and that led me to an article advising men on how to write a compelling online dating profile.  The article included a number of sample profiles and talked about what was good or bad about them and what kind of message and attitude they conveyed.  And one of the sample profiles, which was at least 4 paragraphs long, was one that I had read in the last day or so - the guy had literally cut-and-pasted the entire thing into his profile, without changing a word.  There were other samples in the article that I hadn't seen duplicated in their entirety in any one guy's profile, but which had certain elements or phrases that I recognized from different profiles I had read.  I checked back at the profile of a guy I had actually gone out with once, and it was an amalgamation of different sentences and paragraphs taken from the different samples in the article.  There was not a single thing in his profile that was original.

I find the whole thing fascinating, almost like a peek into the male psyche.  I get that many people are not natural writers, and that it's hard to write about yourself.  I get doing some research on some of the dos and don'ts.  But that level of rank plagiarism seems crazy to me, if for no other reason than it's so easily exposed.

In any event, I'm not sure what to do with this discovery, but it's very amusing nonetheless.

We're boss at denial but best at forget

Yesterday I got a text message from the kids' dad, telling me that they had been on their way to the mountains to ski, but that in the bad weather bearing down on Colorado right now, the car they were in (a friend's truck) lost traction and slid off the road into a big pile of snow.  He wanted to let me know that it had happened, but also to let me know that everyone was fine.  Apparently Zeke's remark was, "that was scary but kinda fun."

I feel like I should have been more freaked out.  But the truth is, I wasn't remotely fazed or worried by the news.  Partly because I trust their dad to keep them safe, and I know he wouldn't do anything to jeopardize their safety - and hell, I've had my car slide around on those snowy mountain roads.  It happens.  But more fundamentally, because I am convinced that the forces of the Universe - forces that I don't know that I actually believe in, mind you - would not allow something as awful as the death of another grandchild to happen to my family again. That after losing Emma, it can't happen to us again.  It can't happen to my parents, to me, to my brothers, to any of us. It simply cannot happen.

It is the worst kind of magical thinking.  There is no logic to it whatsoever, especially because I am deeply, deeply ambivalent about the existence of a god or higher power or anything like that.  Plus, that kind of faith in some level of universal fairness didn't apply to Emma in any event, given that she was killed in a car crash four years after almost being killed in a car crash.  So I already know that it's bullshit.  The Universe doesn't give a fuck about fairness or justice.  My own experience makes my magical thinking more absurd than it already is, and I know it.

But nonetheless, every time I have been in the slightest bit of perceived danger, whether from icy roads, wicked turbulence, whatever, I'll have a moment of fear and then think, "no, it can't happen.  Everything will be fine."  "This plane won't crash if the children and I are on it.  Because it can't happen to my family."

Not that it shouldn't, or that it would be sad or unfair.  It can't.  It's an impossibility.

This insanity doesn't actually affect my behavior, which is the important thing.  I still put my kids in booster seats and make them buckle their seatbelts.  I drive carefully.  I make them wear helmets when they ski. I protect them as much as I should.

But I don't worry as much because in my mind, nothing bad can ever happen to them.  Which I guess isn't so terrible.  Whatever gets you through the night.

#TBT: Take all the money in the bank, I think I'll just stay here and drink*

In college, my general rule of thumb when it came to alcohol consumption was that I had about a four to five hour window - if I started drinking in the early afternoon, say, if we were hanging out at Chris Greene Lake on a lazy sunny day, I would be done and ready to go to bed by early evening.  If I was heading to the Corner with my sorority sisters and we left the house at 10 p.m., I was good for a late night.

Which is why it was kind of astounding to me that on a hot, sunny day in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea, at the ripe old age of 31 - when the tolerance I had built up in my early 20s was long in the past - and with my mother, no less, I was partying for 12 hours straight with no ill effects.

I was in PNG visiting my mom, who was serving there as the U.S. ambassador.  After hanging out with her for a couple of days in Port Moresby, we took a trip out to the island of New Britain to get some beach time and scuba diving in.  We stayed in Rabaul at the Kaivuna Resort Hotel, which was owned by an Aussie couple.  My mom had stayed there before and knew Bev and Brian, the proprietors, and they treated us like family.

Which meant that they expected us to start drinking with them immediately.  Because that was what they and their friends did - they drank.  All day long.

We had been in our rooms after checking in for about 20 minutes and were unpacking our suitcases and thinking about what to do for dinner when the phone rang.  It was Brian.

"You gails comin dan to th' baaah?"

It doesn't quite work if you don't imagine it with the heavy Aussie accent.

"We'll be there!" I responded.

So we went down to the bar.  We had burgers for dinner, which was good because we needed something in our bellies other than all the beer we ended up drinking.  And we met the motley crew of Australian and New Zealander expats that formed their little community.  They were of different ages and professions, including a guy named Hamish who was about my age and was super cute, and who ran the local car dealership or something like that.  But they had their common culture and their common love of beer to bind them together in this remote place.

The nightly gathering at the Kaivuna bar

The next day, Bev had arranged for an excursion for us out to Little Pidgin Island, an uninhabited little stretch of sand and trees and driftwood.  She and Mom and I hopped on the boat at about 8 in the morning, enjoying the views of the beautiful ocean and the still smoldering Tavurvur volcano which had ravaged the area seven years earlier in a massive eruption.  The cooler she packed had some sandwiches and some cookies, but it was mostly filled with beer.  We were set up with beers in hand by 9 in the morning.

on the boat

Tavurvur

our destination - Little Pidgin Island

Beers in hand

I don't remember exactly how long we were hanging out on Pidgin, but it was at least 4 hours, not including the boat rides out and back.  But in any event, that wasn't all that was on tap for the day. 

After a quick shower and change, we were headed to the Rabaul Yacht Club - which sounds much hoity-toitier than it is because it's nothing but a rather rudimentary open-air wooden structure - to celebrate Oktoberfest.  As one does in Rabaul (much like one goes to Reykjavik to celebrate Passover).

What ensued was hours of drinking beer, putting on bizarre costumes, engaging in games, and generally acting ridiculous.  In other words, it was awesome.

First one to chug their beer and then place empty cup on head wins

Hamish has a conversation with the love child of Marilyn Monroe and the Easter Bunny

I helped my team win some sort of race involving carrying a full pitcher without spilling it.  The University of Virginia prepared me well.

Mom, Bev and I toast to a great day

We were at Oktoberfest until around 5 or 6 in the afternoon.  Remarkably, Mom and I were all still in relatively good shape.  I couldn't really say the same for some of the other folks, though.  But we decided to keep the party rolling and headed back to Kaivuna, where we congregated out by the pool.

We were hanging out around a tall table, having some food and drinking more beer, telling stories. Hamish and I had gotten a bit flirty, and at one point he invited me to go out to an abandoned airfield to "look at the stars."  I was tempted, and to my surprise, even Mom was encouraging me to go, but I thought better of it and declined.  I was having too much fun where I was.

Peter is drunk enough that it seems like a good idea to eat sauerkraut with his bare hands.  Brian is horrified.

Even at night, it was warm and humid, and between that and all the beer, we were all feeling toasty. So of course, we took the tall table and put it in the pool.

Hijinks ensued.  There was pool dancing. Pool drinking. The pool proved no impediment to smoking. One guy even slipped and cracked his head on the side of the pool - we cleaned him up, put a bandage on it, and kept going.  It was an epic experience. 

Peter and Campbell in the pool.  Note Campbell's lovely head wound.  It ain't a party until someone almost loses an eye.

Finally, at about 9:30 - when it felt to us like 2 in the morning - we decided to call it a night.  We bade goodbye to our crazy friends and headed to our rooms to go to bed.

Miraculously, we woke up the next morning a bit tired, but remarkably hangover free.  When in Rome....

_______________________
*In the spirit of Facebook's Throwback Thursday meme, I've decided to do the occasional #TBT post.  It's fun to look back and remember stuff like this, especially when I have pictures.

Lift up your spirit with a song, it's family time, it's family time

When I was growing up, my grandparents were people I saw once or twice a year, at most.  Meaning that for my parents, their parents were people they saw once or twice a year, at most.

That was the paradigm.  That was our normal.  And it was the normal of just about everyone I grew up with, as they were all similarly situated - we were overseas, living exciting and exotic lives in exciting and exotic faraway places.  The exciting and the exotic took the place of the familiar.

When I was younger, it didn't occur to me that this experience wasn't everyone's experience. That it wasn't normal and natural for families to scatter as the children reached adulthood.  That it wasn't normal and natural to see your grandparents only sporadically.

As much as I love the way I grew up, as much as I cherished the exciting and exotic - as much as treating the exciting and exotic as the normal and ordinary has shaped so much of who I am - I am realizing how much I miss the familiar.

Emotionally, I feel extraordinarily close to my family.  I talk to my mother just about every day.  I communicate with my brothers regularly.  In my heart, they are a huge part of me.  I have friends who openly yearn for the kind of relationship with their mothers that I have with mine.  They talk about wanting to be adopted by my family, and I think they are joking, but a part of them wants it not to be a joke.

But like my parents in their adult lives, I don't actually get to be with my parents or my brothers very often.  None of us live in the same city.  My parents getting to see their children - or their grandchildren, who, let's face it, are the real draw these days - is the exception rather than the rule.  No regular sleepovers at Mimi and Papa's house.  No growing up with their cousins on a day to day basis.

Fortunately, my parents have the means and the good health to visit relatively frequently.  And we have our annual beach and Thanksgiving get-togethers.  But increasingly, as we all get older, it doesn't feel like enough.  I feel like I have cheated myself in choosing the life I chose.  Like I cheated my children.  But I can't leave now.

So we have our visits every few months.  My parents come and we spend time together.  The kids sleep over at their hotel and have fun swimming in the hotel pool and riding up and down the elevator and running up and down the halls.  We do fun things like go to the zoo or go to the mountains or go to the rodeo at the National Western Stock Show.  I feel safe and protected, enveloped in the love of the people who care about me more than anyone else.

But it's never long enough.  After two or three days, our chests tighten and we have to say goodbye again for a few months.  The children hide rather than give the hugs and kisses that mean that they won't see Mimi and Papa again for awhile.

And I resume the mantle of full adulthood once again, feeling like I'm taking care of everyone but without anyone to take care of me when I feel like need a break.  It's a cold and lonely island, until the next time the bosom of the family can envelop me once again, even for just a few days.

A day on the slopes

In every direction, it's whitish grey and the visibility is limited - clouds plus blowing snow from the wind.  The lift ends above the tree line, so it's all very bare and exposed - there's something almost desolate feeling about it. I'm well bundled up, but I can feel the frigid air on the gap between the top of my goggles and the top of my balaclava, and on the tip of my nose.

Ascending into the void. #skiing #keystoneresort

A photo posted by Wendy Jacobs (@wendyalisonjacobs) on Jan 16, 2016 at 12:14pm PST

I ski over to the top of the run, where the incline starts. It's a steep run, classified as a black.  I'm wearing my low/flat light goggle lenses, but I'll have to really focus on the snow, both to avoid ice patches - there have been a few of them today - and also because the light sometimes makes the surface look like nothing but a fuzzy white expanse, without any ability to see the detail.

I start down, at first at a mellow pace, checking out the snow and the light.  The snow feels good - my skis turn cleanly, and I can see the surface just fine.  So I pick up speed. I feel my heart rate start to increase, the muscles in my legs engage, feel the wind on my face and the rush in my ears.  The run makes a big curve to the left, and right at the curve there's a sharp increase in the pitch.  I take it down at the steepest point, picking up even more speed. I'm going very fast, bringing me right to the knife edge of safety - if I catch an edge or lose control at all, I'm in real danger of being severely injured. So I pick a line and stay on it, keeping my core and my legs rock solid, shutting out everything in my life except what my body is doing at this very instant.

My legs start burning, so I hold the line until the terrain levels off a little bit and I can stop to take a rest near some trees. Feeling the pounding in my heart, I take some deep breaths, giving my muscles a short break.  I look around and marvel at the beauty around me - the grandeur of the mountains, the snow on the trees, the sun that's starting to peek through the clouds.  I stand there and smile as my heart rate starts to go down again.

After a minute or so, I head down again and finish the run.  And I spend the day going up and down and up and down the mountains, trying to cover as many different runs as I can.

It's exhilarating. I love the gorgeous setting and the strenuous physical exercise. I love the speed. I love that I have to be totally engaged and focused, both mentally and physically, in order to avoid killing myself. I love that sometimes it's a little bit scary. I even love the cold - it assaults my senses and makes me feel alive.   The entire experience shuts out every stressor in my life and puts me totally in the moment, which, with my constantly buzzing brain that I can't turn off, is a respite.

At the end of the day, I head back to the front of the resort and make my way down a final run to my car.  Along the way, I see a ski patrol person on a snowboard, pulling a sled behind her containing a guy who apparently injured himself.  She passes me and I'm surprised she's going as fast as she is, because it's a blue run that has some steep sections where it seems like it would be harder to maintain control if you're attached to a big, cumbersome sled behind you.  But hey, what do I know?

All of a sudden she catches an edge and falls, and the sled carrying the injured guy passes her and starts sliding down a steep incline.  She's on her stomach with her arms out in front of her, holding onto the rope attached to the sled, digging the edge of her board into the snow in an effort to slow herself down.  But the sled is too heavy, and it continues to slide down the hill.  Then it hits a bump and the sled tips over, dumping the injured guy onto the ground and grinding the whole spectacle to a stop.  I ski over to her and ask if she needs help or if she wants me to call someone.  She waves me off, clearly annoyed and embarrassed.

I feel like it's all a metaphor for something, though I'm not sure what.

I know what boys like, I know what guys want.

This is how I know that, in whatever psychic form it takes, the Universe has a sense of humor.

Because my "I'm licking my romantic wounds but hope is not lost I am woman hear me roar" post hadn't been up for three hours before I got hit on by a married man.

A few days ago, I got a Facebook friend request from a guy I didn't know.  Which isn't that unusual - I've gone to so many schools and lived in so many places that often I'll get a friend request from someone who also went to one of the overseas schools I went to, only at a different time from when I was there, or friends of friends who I'll feel like I know virtually because we're all commenting on the same posts or whatever.  So if we have no mutual friends and I have no idea who the person is, I'll block the request, but if we have mutual friends, I'll usually accept it.

So this guy, who I will call "Don," sent me a friend request.  And we had a couple of mutual friends, so I accepted the request, not really thinking anything of it.

Then tonight, as I'm trying to muster up some interest in the national championship football game, drinking bourbon while wearing sweatpants on my couch, Don sends me a private message.  He has seen comments from friends sending love and support, hang in there, that sort of thing, so he sends me some well wishes.  I assure him I'm fine.

He keeps sending message that have a little too much cute information, like he's trying to flirt.

I check his profile - he's married with kids.  His profile picture features his wife and children.

I roll my eyes, and provide perfunctory responses to his inquiries.

He suggests wine or whisky to drown my sorrows - I tell him that I'm already on it, glass of bourbon in hand.

"You are so totally impressing me," he says. "You're so engaging.  You're so attractive."

Then he asks me what I'm wearing.

I should probably cut the conversation short and block his profile right then, but it's so ridiculous that I'm curious to see how far he'll take it.

I tell him, "sweatpants and a Washington Capitals t-shirt."

That brings up comments about what a beast Ovechkin is and how he just scored his 500th and 501st career goals.  

I tell him that 500 was a good goal, but that 501 was the one that was really insane (and a replica of 499, which led the Caps past the hated Rangers in overtime the other night).  I throw this detailed assessment out on purpose, because I know what his reaction will be.  It's almost too easy.

"You're totally pulling off the super cool chick - bourbon and hockey?  C'mon."

Yep.  He's such a fucking cliche.  But yes, bourbon and hockey.  I'm that girl.

We go back and forth like that for another minute.  He tells me his height and weight, makes some more suggestive comments and tries to get me to respond in kind.  I get bored and beg off, claiming I'm heading out to meet friends.

He leaves me with, "Thanks for chatting with me Wendy. You managed to be at once sweet and sexy. Almost like a good dish at a Chinese restaurant."

What. The. Fuck.

And also, how perfect.

I have a good chuckle.  It was a nice little ego boost.

And then I block his profile.

We push and pull and I fall down sometimes

It is the dilemma of writing a public blog that sometimes the thing I want to write about is the thing I need to be careful writing about, either to protect someone's privacy or even to protect my own to a certain extent.  Which raises the obvious question of, "why not just write about it privately?"

And sometimes I do.  I have a journal that I scribble in, often when I'm trying to work out a thought or a feeling, or when I just want to think by engaging in the physical act of taking pen to paper. But I feel like I write differently, and more carefully, when I write for an audience, so usually when I feel compelled to write about something, and write it well, I do it here.  After nine and a half years, it's a hard habit to break.

Which brings me to my current predicament.

My heart hurts today.  That's all I'll say, because the details are tangential to the point of this post.

Over the weekend, I was voice-messaging with my high school friend Kristin, who is one of my favorite people.  She lives in Switzerland, and I haven't seen her in a million years, but we're in pretty regular communication nonetheless. Our favorite way to keep in touch is by Facebook's messenger system, which allows you to send recorded voice messages.  The wrinkle is that each recording can be no more than one minute long, so rather than type, we talk by sending a series of digital voice messages, however many it takes to form the sentences and paragraphs we mean to convey.  It actually isn't as cumbersome as it sounds, plus I don't have a problem hearing my own voice, probably from years of writing briefs and legal correspondence via dictation when I was in private practice.

Anyway. I was explaining my situation to Kristin, who, in addition to being a wonderful and wise friend, is also a therapist, so she's a great listener and gives good advice.  And I didn't really need advice so much as validation of my own sense of what I already knew I needed to do, which Kristin was happy to provide.

But one of the things that really struck me was when she told me that she could hear the pain in my voice, and that even though it sucks to be hurting, it's healthy that I'm allowing myself to feel and express the pain  - "you're in it," was how she described it - rather than bottle it up or repress it.  A couple of other people have made the same observation.

Which, in a way, I find comforting.  Because as much as I'm feeling heartsick today - some of it exacerbated by a lack of sleep plus the exhaustion that comes from crying - I also know that feeling like this means that I was willing to put myself out there, that I was willing to risk being hurt by allowing myself to be emotionally open and honest.  It's how I've said I want to live my life, so at least I'm practicing what I preach.

There's something to be said for that.

I want something else to get me through this semi-charmed kind of life

I had a couple of hours free this afternoon while the kids were at a friend's house, so after making an effort to deal with the seemingly endless detritus that my children leave in their wake, I sat down, fished around for something interesting on HBO, and settled on a documentary about heroin abuse in Cape Cod. Apparently it's a huge problem. All these kids from solid, middle class families, good students who play sports and have friends and are loved by their parents - they get caught up with drugs out of boredom or peer pressure or, most depressingly, because they suffered an injury for which they were prescribed Vicodin or oxycontin and got hooked and graduated to the harder stuff, which is cheaper and easier to come by.

The documentary features interviews with young people, including young adults with children, who want so desperately to not be slaves to their addiction, but who can't kick it, and end up overdosing or in jail or jumping from one detox program to another, or just living horribly depressing lives in which every day consists of getting high and then figuring out how to get enough money to get more drugs so that they can repeat the same pattern tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow after that.

One of the kids mused that every person on Earth is an addict.  Everyone is addicted to something.  The shitty thing for him is that he is addicted to heroin, and it will probably kill him.

When I heard him say that, my first reaction was to scoff and say, out loud, "not me."  And from a physiological perspective, it's true.  I used to smoke socially in high school and college.  I know plenty of people who have smoked and tried to quit, but had a terrible time with it.  I've heard that for some people, nicotine can be as addictive and as difficult to quit as any opiate.  But I could totally take it or leave it, and when I decided that I didn't want to do it anymore because I wanted to train for a half-marathon, I didn't.  I didn't miss it, I didn't crave it, I didn't need it, and I don't remember the last time I either touched - or wanted to touch - a cigarette.

Same with alcohol.  I like to have a glass of wine, or a cocktail if I'm out for dinner or a drink, but if someone told me I could never have another sip of alcohol, I would shrug and say, "fine."

Even with opiates, which I have taken for pain after surgery or when I separated my shoulder, I enjoyed the buzz that they gave me, but once it wore off, I didn't care and didn't need to seek it out again.

But the kid in the documentary wasn't just talking about physical addictions - he was speaking more globally.  And after initially taking the superior attitude that I was above that sort of thing, I couldn't get what he said out of my head.

What are the different things that people crave, and what does it do for them when they attain them?  Material possessions?  Status?  Sexual conquests?

It made me think about people who collect things - stamps, spoons from the different states, glass figurines, baseball cards, dolls.  I never understood the desire to collect anything like that, largely because it always struck me as such a fundamentally unsatisfying venture.  As soon as you got that rare stamp, that new doll, that baseball card you were seeking, you'd enjoy it for 5 minutes and then start thinking about the next stamp, the next doll, the next card you want.  You're never done.  You never truly have what you want.

But what about cravings or obsessions that are more intangible?

I know people who have an overwhelming need to know things - to memorize dates and facts, to always know the answer, to acquire knowledge for the sake of knowing more than the next guy.  Or people who flit from one romantic venture to the next, never settling down with one person, always looking over the shoulder of the person they're with to find the next person they want to be with, out of a fear of missing out or a fear of being tied down or a fear of getting bored with one person.

It makes me think of Rose Castorini, the mom in Moonstruck, who knows her husband is cheating her, and she keeps asking the men she encounters, "why do men chase women?" What do they get out of it?  If they have a good woman who they love, why would a man need more than one woman?  And the answer that she lands on is, "because they fear death."

That revelation leads to the great line when her husband comes home after being out with his mistress, and she says to him, "Cosmo, I just want you to know that no matter what you do you're going to die, just like everybody else."

No matter how many books you read, no matter how many people you sleep with, no matter how many mountains you climb, you're going to die, just like everybody else.

On the other hand, maybe our addictions are what makes it all worth it - if we're going to die anyway, we may as well go after what we crave.

So what's my addiction?  It's not drugs, it's not stuff.  As much of a know-it-all as I am, it's not knowing everything.  It's not sexual conquest.

I actually know what it is.  It's the thing that, for me, has always made life more worth living than anything else, and which has led me to the poorest judgment and the biggest mistakes.  It's just hard to say it out loud.

What's yours?

And soon, in a park that was Girl Land before, you'll do what you like, and you'll be who you are.

Yesterday when I picked up the kids from their after-school program, Josie announced, "Mama, I have a new boyfriend."

She has a new "boyfriend" fairly regularly, generally some poor little dude who becomes the object of her hugs and hair scruffles and occasional kisses on the head.

She's not a shy girl, is what I'm saying.

Which, hey, why not, right?  It's the 21st century.  There's no reason women can't or shouldn't go after what they want.

But still, a part of me wants to tell her to play at least a little hard to get.  She's only six - a little young to get herself branded as the Violet Bick of the elementary school,

"Who's your new boyfriend?" I asked.

"Adam," she said.  A cute boy in her class with a gorgeous head of curly black hair.

"So what does it mean that he's your boyfriend?" I asked. "Does it mean you talk to him or sit with him at lunch or something?"

"I give him pictures that I draw."

A relationship based upon exchanging works of art.  I like it.

Later, when we were at home chilling out and watching a movie (the Karate Kid remake, which was surprisingly not sucky), Josie sat at the coffee table in the living room and worked diligently on a picture she was coloring.  She worked on it for at least an hour and a half.

At one point, I said, "kids, as soon as the movie is over, you're going to bed," and she huffed at me, "Mama!  How am I supposed to finish Adam's picture?? I won't have enough time!"

I rolled my eyes.  "Then you'll have to finish it in the morning, but you're going to bed when the movie's over."

A little while later, she came over to show me the picture.  She had done a beautiful job, coloring the moon and stars in bright colors.

"Does Adam draw pictures for you too?"

She gave me a look like I was high.  "No, of course not."

"What do you mean?  Why not?"

"Because I do stuff for him, he doesn't do stuff for me."

What the fuck??

"Josie, if he's your boyfriend, he should be doing nice things for you, too.  Don't act like you're his servant."

"I am his servant," she responded.

"No, you're not.  Girls don't exist to do things for boys.  Girls and boys are equal, and if they're friends or boyfriend and girlfriend, they should both be doing nice things for each other."

She blew me off and went back to writing, "To Adam, love Josie" on the bottom of the picture.

I found this entire exchange very disturbing.

I am an unabashed, enthusiastic feminist.  And not in the bra-burning, humorless, man-hating sense that certain people have wrong-headedly taken the word to mean.  I love my bras, I have a great sense of humor, and God knows I adore men (my life would be so much easier if I didn't, but alas).  No, I am a feminist because I believe women should be treated equally before the law, in business, and in society in terms of their opportunities, that they should be granted the same agency and autonomy as men, and that they shouldn't be judged according to double standards, sexual or otherwise.

Nothing about the way I conduct myself or live my life could possibly give my children any reason to believe anything but that women should be in relationships in which they are true partners, that they should strive for whatever career they desire and are qualified for, or that they should in any way be viewed or treated as lesser than men.

So why is my daughter overtly declaring that having a boyfriend means that she is his servant?

Not sure how to handle this one.  It might be time to download Free To Be You and Me, which I never thought my children would need, a full 43 years after it was released.

Now here I go again, I see the crystal visions

When I lie awake in the middle of the night or early morning, I often feel like my brain is buzzing.  I can't turn it off.

I have a tendency (annoying as hell to many, I'm sure) to over analyze every little thing.  It could be something that someone said, and I will think about it and parse the sentence, or wonder at their word choice.

Why use this word as opposed to that word? What I think she actually meant was the other word...

Or I'll think about a conversation or an interaction, and pick it apart from a psychological perspective.

Why is her attitude toward me so quick to change? What's going on?

When my job involved litigating cases, I would write briefs in my head.

I'm obsessed with being able to remember things.  At one point, back in my early years living in Atlanta, I got it in my head to memorize, in alphabetical order, all 159 counties in the state of Georgia. During bouts of insomnia, I would recite to myself, "Appling, Atkinson, Bacon, Baker, Baldwin ..."

 No reason except that I decided I wanted to do it, so I did. Seriously, what the fuck was that about?

Or I'll go through my life and try to remember the layout of every house in every country I've ever lived in, or the names of all the teachers I've ever had.  Phone numbers. Song lyrics.  Movie dialogue.

It's a little crazy, I know.  But at least it's a benign crazy.

Sometimes I play the time machine game.

If I could go back in time and step into my life at any particular point, where would I start?  Maybe I would go back to India, relive that happy time, and then, when applying to colleges, make a different choice.  I was accepted to the honors programs at both Michigan and Virginia, and I chose Virginia. What if I had chosen Michigan?  Who would my close friends be?  Would I have gone to a different law school, or not gone to law school at all?  Maybe I would have gone to medical school instead.  Where would I have worked after that? In which city? Doing what?  Who would I have dated or loved?

Maybe I would go back to Atlanta.  What if I had worked at a different firm?  What if I hadn't made a mess of the relationship that was so important to me?

What if I hadn't gone on the surf trip to Costa Rica, but had decided on a different vacation?

Or what if, in Costa Rica, I had let a fling be a fling and left it at that?  Instead of behaving completely out of character and pursuing something that had pretty much no chance of working out, and if I'm honest with myself, that a part of me knew that but I pursued it anyway.  Ignoring what I knew about myself and my needs and tendencies, disregarding my own judgment and character, living a life I knew was wrong for me.

Kind of like being in a mild version of a fugue state for 10 years, but without the amnesia.

Every little choice affects the path you end up on, in ways that seem imperceptible at the time.

As I I lie there in the dark, my ability to immerse myself in that alternate reality is powerful. Even fully awake, I'm so present in my imagination that it's almost like I'm in a particularly lucid dream, one of those that feels entirely real.

But of course, I know that I'm awake.  At the heart of it all, I am fundamentally a realist.  And after a few minutes, I roll over, look around my room, and bring myself back.  I think about the day to come, my schedule, my obligations, and I make a plan.