Winston Churchill, Lyndon B. Johnson, Napoleon Bonaparte, John F. Kennedy, Thomas Edison, Stonewall Jackson, Ronald Reagan and Salvador Dali were napping enthusiasts, proving that the nap is a powerful tool for…powerful men. When I searched Google for ”influential women nappers” I got Lauryn Hill, Nicki Minaj and Lil Kim. Apparently hypnogogic siestas are responsible for some dope rhythmic and rhyming chanted speech. The only other slammin’ female napper I could find was Eleanor Roosevelt, who enjoyed a lovely catnap before speaking engagements. (They didn’t call her the First Lady of firsts for nothing. I believe it was she who introduced the mic drop.)
Are we to believe that women shouldn’t nap—that we would not benefit from a mental breather in the middle of a hectic day? Aw, hell, who wouldn’t gain from lying down, closing one’s eyes, clearing one’s mind and drifting off to a restorative island of content and thoughtlessness—a floaty, calm and gentle slumber. But you know what would happen? Someone would poke you and ask if the milk was still good. Never mind he could remove the cap and do a quick sniff test himself. It is preferable, apparently, to ask someone, a female, if a dairy product has turned, because everyone knows we keep a mental list of expiration dates for all the food groups in our heads.
In my zeal to unearth all that I could about the power nap, I dug a little deeper, and discovered that every single article, blog, scholarly work and piece of anecdotal research having to do with napping has been written by men. Coincidence? Yeah, no.
JFK took a 1-2 hour nap every afternoon. Jackie would always join him, no matter what she had going on, often leaving an assistant to entertain her guests until after naptime. There’s no historical evidence to back it up, but I am betting that the Prez liked to drift off midday with wifey at his side, and the minute he started to saw logs she was up, cleaning out a closet, sorting socks or answering mail. The leader of the free world could knock off for a couple of hours in the middle of the day. The FLOTUS had work to do. Socks don’t sort themselves.
Rosa Parks, Susan B. Anthony, Sacagawea, Helen Keller, Amelia Earhart, Madam Curie—not a napper in the group, and we know Sacagawea must have been dead on her feet. She walked from North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean with a couple of guys who definitely never asked for directions, and probably couldn’t tell whether the milk had spoilt.
All women would benefit from a little afternoon shuteye, but dare we flout history and take to our beds in the shank of the day? Yes, we should flout in the shank, and here’s why:
1. You’re going to be up late. You’ll want to take advantage of a planned, or preemptive nap. When you know you’re going to be up later than say, the 9P rerun of Law and Order, you grab a few Zs after lunch and you’re still awake like a grown-up at 10P. At that hour you’d just be sitting down to dinner in Europe, where naps are a necessary part of a civilized culture.
2. You were awake like a Yugoslavian all night long. By 10A you can’t keep your eyes open. You crawl under your desk and utilize the emergency nap. Or if you’re a photographer whose name rhymes with Hermit, you crawl into a cubby in the production department and sleep until your agent hunts you down like a dog.
3. You are completely useless every day at the same time. Après lunch your eyelids grow heavy and you just know that report is not getting written until you’ve “run down to the car for that thing” and squeezed in a solid 20-30 minutes of snoozola. Elderly folks take 40 winks at pretty much the same time every day, energized, awake and ready thereafter for dinner at 4:30PM. For centuries, babies and politicians have utilized the “habitual nap” to stave off hissy fits and give their mommies a break. Consistent nappage is responsible for the Potsdam Agreement, the Civil Rights Bill of 1963 and Justin Bieber’s only Grammy.
4. You’re a big dreamer. Approximately 70 minutes after falling asleep we enter the REM period of slumber, characterized by rapid eye movements, and most importantly, super vivid dreams which spark an intense period of creativity immediately upon awakening. Thomas Edison allegedly sat bolt upright after a nap and said, “Hey, a light bulb just went on in my head!” Then he invented the light bulb.
5. You want to lose weight. This one is so obvious it’s ridick. According to Weightwatchers, naps can help you stay on your weight-loss program, because napping may help get you though late-afternoon munchies. By applying math, I figure three naps a day, during mealtimes, would guarantee weight loss in the double digits within three days. With all that beauty rest you’ll be gorgeous, thin and well-rested. What woman wouldn’t love that?
Support Pam at HuffPo! (She’d really appreciate it.)
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The quintessential symbol of motherhood is a mama duck being followed dutifully by her chicks, waddling across perilous terrain, facing imminent danger, until reaching the safety of a pond or lake.
It is the stuff of lore. Brave calendar-worthy firemen with yellow hats and axes, slipping into sewer drains to rescue wee birdlets that have fallen through the grates. Burly truckers and ornery cabbies, halting traffic so that a mama mallard and her brood may safely cross a busy street. In the face of mayhem, murder, war, pestilence, famine, sand tar conflagration and political meltdown, there is always time for a “mother duck and her chicks story” to remind viewers there’s more to life than mayhem, murder, war and all the other stuff that boosts ratings. In network parlance, duck stories are the goose that lays the golden egg.
In honor of Mother’s Day, I’d like to share a duck story of my own.
I think I was about five years old when my mother decided it was important to teach me evasive tactical maneuvers while she was driving and I was a passenger in the front seat of our Rambler. I don’t know what model it was, or what year, but the Rambler was old, white and had a tan interior, like my Uncle Ray and certain American politicians.
There was a lot going on the world – the war in Vietnam was limping toward its conclusion, clothing designers were mass producing tie dyed couture, Diana Ross was fixin’ to leave the Supremes, and in West Allis, Wisconsin, my mother was going to be sure I was prepared for any foreign or homegrown danger.
The first time it happened we were driving along Greenfield Avenue, en route to South 78th Street where we lived in a little duplex with my maternal grandma. It was a summer day. The car windows were down. We were young and happy when my mother suddenly yelled, “DUCK!”
Naturally, I sat forward on high alert, scanning the road for a domestic waterfowl in our path. My mother slammed on the brakes, looked at me incredulously, and told me that when she said “duck” I had better duck.
“What is happening?” I asked.
“Anything could happen,” she responded.
Huh. Guys had already walked on the moon, the Stones had killed on Ed Sullivan and The Brady Bunch brought us our first taste of the blended family. What was left? We turned onto Becher Street just up the block from our house.
“DUCK!” my mom screeched.
I remember it like it was yesterday. Me, turning in slo-mo toward my ma, the word just forming…”Wh…” when smack! She thwacked the back of my head and said, “When I tell you to duck, duck!”
I blinked. “Why?” I asked, completing my original thought while checking to see if any teeth had come loose.
Exasperated, my mother reminded me that “anything could happen,” and it was for my own good. I rubbed the back of my head and was hoping Beverly Grossman was out when we got home. It was amusing to watch her pick caterpillars off the maple trees and eat them.
That night over a dinner of fried ring bologna and burnt lima beans, my mom expressed her frustration that I was a poor ducker to my dad.
“Duck?” he asked. “Why?”
My thoughts exactly.
“Anything can happen these days,” my mom told him, adding, “by the time I explain it to her, it could be too late.”
My dad looked away for a moment. He looked sad. So did my mom. Even though it had been years since it happened, people still talked about the young president that had been killed, and how the world would never be the same.
This ducking business went on for a long time, always with the same result. I was obstinate, plus I liked danger. I once ran headlong into our kitchen door believing the incantation “romper stomper bomper boo” would enable me to teleport onto the set of Romper Room where I would replace Miss Nancy as the host. That did not work, either. Grandma Teuber found me sprawled on the linoleum, out cold.
In spite of multiple head traumas that should have served as a warning to me, I never caught on to the actual reason for the whole ducking affair until I was in my 30s. (For those of you who don’t know me well, this was just recently.)
Anything could happen. A young, vibrant husband and father could be riding along in a convertible one day, his lovely wife at his side, with what seemed an entire nation looking on in genuine affection, when in one split second it ended. He ended. They ended. And the idea that anyone just riding along, no matter how dearly beloved, could be ended.
All my mom had hoped to do was deliver me safely to the water’s edge. On this Mother’s Day (and every day) I want to thank my mom for everything she has done for me my entire life, but most especially of all, for her ducking love.
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My dear friend Lois Keller, of Studio City fame, hosted a book club gathering at her home yesterday featuring my novel Feng Shui and Charlotte Nightingale. Lois served Charlotte’s fave dish, Emperor’s cashew chicken, which I couldn’t fully enjoy as I sat in via Skype. (Anne E. Schwartz, author of the definitive book on Jeffrey Dahmer, and one of my besties here in Wisco, accused me of wearing “those big slippers shaped like animals” because no one could see my feet on the screen. I guess you become suspicious when you’ve spent time with a Milwaukee serial killer cannibal.)
One of the book club guests asked me how long I’d been back in Wisconsin. I moved to Los Angeles in 1994 and spent 20 glorious years in the sun and surf before returning to the mothership – this much I knew. Even so I had to think for a moment.
“Uh, couple of months,” I answered. Lois spit a cashew at her iPad; it looked big as a bratwurst on my monitor. I suddenly realized, Good god! It’s going on three years!
The same woman asked me if I’d ever written about transitioning from L.A. to Milwaukee, and my first reaction was that I would do so once I’d settled in, unpacked, caught my breath. Three years later I’m as settled as I’m ever going to be no matter where I am, I’m unpacked but for the 500 boxes in storage, and although it is the end of April I am breathing in ice cold air accented by bits of frozen rain. (I refuse to call it snow because I occasionally revisit the 1st stage of the L.A. to Wisconsin transition—denial.)
You don’t just up and leave paradise and become a cheese head with a heart of gold (and green) overnight, ya know. It’s a little like death, with 5 stages.
1. Denial. I told myself I was here for an extended vacay. I would shortly return to Southern California where my mosquito bites would be but a distant pockmarked memory, where the only frostbite I’d get would be from my agent, and where people wouldn’t know a cheese curd from a carb.
Where housewives aren’t real at all, but their body parts have warranties, and the only American vehicle you will ever see is an Escalade. Where nothing is deep -fried. Everyone has a subterranean sprinkler system, and people wear flip-flops to work. In December. This little “visit” to Wisconsin is a blip. I will be back in the warm embrace of the Hollywood Bowl and the Glendale Goddess Association in no time.
2. Anger. My “people” could have gone from their unheated yurts in Eastern Europe in the early 1900s and settled in, oh, I don’t know, SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA! No, they chose Wisconsin, which is Algonquian for “where the frozen waters gather to die.”
I’ve read that during the “third great immigration wave,” from 1881-1920, people gravitated to areas which most resembled their homeland—topographies they understood, knew how to navigate, farm and make flourish. I knew my grandparents pretty well, and my parents, and I am here to tell you it had nothing to do with familiarity, and everything to do with suffering.
There is just something in the DNA of those two generations that love a nice long painful test of human endurance. I understood this at an early age when I would be sound asleep on a Saturday morning, awakened by the sound of a vacuum cleaner beside my head.
“Get up,” my mother would bark. “Time for chores.”
My cousins went through the exact same thing. Although we had an entire day to clean our rooms, vacuum, sweep the porch and build the addition on the garage, it had to be done by 7AM. Why? When you love suffering, as much as the Eastern Europeans in the third great wave of immigration, I guess it’s natural to want to share it with your children.
3. Bargaining. If I shovel the snow without crying, buy the big black sleeping bag with arms and wear it in place of my groovy moto jacket, and switch out stilettos for mukluks, then I will be rewarded with a short, temperate winter, a sunny and cheerful spring, a long, languid summer and a crisp-as-a-honey-crisp autumn during which the Packers will win every single game en route to the Super Bowl.
In lieu of that I will go to temple, church, mosque, meeting house, Parthenon and shrine and I will kneel, jump, lie prostate, hopscotch, milk a goat and do back flips if whatever or whomever it is that controls the weather will please be nice.
4. Depression. I am wearing a big black sleeping bag with arms. Kill me now.
5. Acceptance. Snow in April notwithstanding, I am home now. I’ve reconnected with some dear friends, and made new ones that I can tell already will be life-long. Last summer was the loveliest season ever. It smelled sweetly for months on end, everything was lush and verdant, and for some reason I didn’t get even one mosquito bite. Winter was mild, although it has reached nearly into May, but even that isn’t so bad.
I’m home. This is the place my ancestors wanted to be, where they carved out lives, raised families, and woke their kids up at the crack of dawn to milk cows and vacuum.
I wouldn’t eat a deep-fried cheese curd if it had hollandaise on it, but I am addicted to Friday fish fry, old-fashioneds and frozen custard. There is nothing that compares to a Wisconsin blue sky with cotton ball clouds floating above a cornfield; the corn’s soft golden tassels undulating gently in the breeze.
Do I miss my old life, the goddesses, citrus trees, Calvin Klein underwear models named Mario and the ocean? Oh, yeah. Every day. But for now I am home.
Be sure to check out Pam’s interview with Ron Hood here.
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Photo courtesy NASA, ESA and Allison Loll/Jeff Hester (Arizona State University)
“The world is awash in purple,” said my cousin Colleen Anderson. And so it is. From the Eiffel Tower to the Superdome to NASA, which released an image of a purple nebula in honor of our sweet Prince, the world is in mourning even as we get on up and dance to his funk-filled legacy.
It never occurred to me that we could lose Prince. No person, much less “entertainer,” was so alive, electric, electrifying, radiating and vibrating, and transcending mortality than the Purple One. His energy came from somewhere else – not anywhere on earth, that’s for sure. He was an explosion of matter—dust and gas and particles—visible in the night sky as a bright patch, an outburst, a detonation. He was a purple nebula.
For the past two days all I can do is watch videos of his performances, and interviews that revealed him as incredibly bright, incredibly thoughtful, incredibly funny—incredible. He was funky. His soul, in every sense of the word, drenched the arenas in which he played. How could you not be effected? Infected? And up on your mofo feet!
It soothes my broken heart to know how much he meant to the world—to civilians, musicians, other artists, and even presidents. I don’t fully understand why his passing has wounded me so deeply. My throat keeps closing up and the tears come over and over, like I’ve lost a family member. My heart literally hurts.
Then I watch more videos, and from somewhere in the cosmos that music, that energy, that love fills me up. The purple nebula burns brightly for eternity. Farewell, sweet Prince.
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This year April 15th shall go down in history, for me, as the end of the world as I know it.
In the past, I used an accountant to do my taxes. Self-employed as a TV commercials director, writer, producer, photographer, and media consultant, there were just too many variables for me to take on the IRS all by my lonesome. But this year, all I had income-wise were proceeds from a brand new photography business and books sales from my novel. (Uh, you guys have to schedule more photo shoots and buy more books. Seriously. I honestly didn’t think I needed help tabulating my “income” this year.)
Au contrare, Pierre, as they say in I-see-London-I-see-France. This, from the IRS website, “If you made or received a payment as a small business or self-employed (individual), you are most likely required to file an information form with the IRS.” In essence, if someone paid me $5 for taking a photo of his dog with my iPhone, I must file a separate tax return in addition to my personal income tax return.
Knowing full well that the thought of filing taxes turns mortals into Jello, the charmers at the IRS have devised this thing that is meant to sound helpful. I say “sound helpful” because there could be no way for an actual human to believe this thing is actually helpful. The thing is a form to which a government clerk has added the letters EZ, i.e. forms 1040EZ and Schedule C-EZ.
One would think the letters EZ are meant to indicate, oh, I don’t know, a procedure that by comparison to brain transplants and speaking Lithuanian with a high degree of fluency might be construed as EASY. EZ. See what they did there?
But no.
I foolishly set aside two days this week to do my taxes. My Uncle Ivan was the bookkeeper for our family’s advertising photography studio, and he drummed it into my head to save every receipt, annotate all paperwork with excessive detail, keep records of any transaction in triplicate (including dry cleaning bills even though one would never dream of deducting such an expense unless the clothing had been soiled during a work-sanctioned food fight with mandatory attendance – we did, after all, work in advertising), and assume accountants from the government would terrorize you if the corporate checkbook wasn’t balanced to the penny.
One wouldn’t normally place the word “terrorize” in the same sentence with the word “accountant,” a term more generally associated with the phrases “date from hell” and “I’m sorry, I fell asleep. What did you say?” But these are the Feds we’re talking about.
Fully aware that the term “accountant” may not cast quite enough fear into the hearts of American citizens and others who pay U.S. taxes, the federal government has bestowed upon their “accountants” a more fitting and ghastly title—agent.
I don’t care how old you are or where you grew up, when you put the word “agent” in the same breath as the word “government” you’ve pictured a sinister man in a raincoat whose goal in life it is to do you harm. I believe, verbatim, this is in fact part of the actual job description of the IRS agent.
It was demoralizing to discover that in spite of my record-keeping—a feat of human organization and skill unmatched by anyone whose uncle was not Ivan Ferderbar, I would be unable to fathom the instructions for filing my taxes.
I’ve read Finnegan’s Wake—an experimental novel with no clear plot, of approximately a million pages, single-spaced in a tiny font—that is written all stream of consciousness, consisting of idiosyncratic language, i.e. quirky strings of words that you wouldn’t exactly call “sentences,” based on free association, and that as best I can tell, is an attempt at capturing the feeling of dreams—and not the ones you remember or can fly in. 77 years after it was published, Joyce scholars still can’t agree on what it all means, but they unanimously concur it is easier to read and understand than form 1040EZ.
I tried calling the IRS Helpline. Only government agents, i.e. sadistic psychopaths, would have the audacity to use the word “help” to describe a thing (you can’t really call it a function as it lacks purpose) that is actually 100% a hindrance. They should call it the IRS Ironyline. Or Glitchline. Make up your own name for it. It’s a better use of your time than calling the number at 10AM (CDT) on Monday, April 11th, only to get a recorded announcement telling you the office is currently closed, and to call back during normal business hours, defined as Monday through Friday, 7AM to 7PM. (The message did not state whether this was central daylight time or Martian winter hours, but 10A (CDT), no matter how you slice it, falls within any definition of “between 7Am and 7PM” anywhere in the contiguous United States, except for maybe a place in Texas where they believe the earth was created 6,000 years ago and Christian people rode domesticated triceratops to work.
My guess? Just like in a cartoon with a squirrel and a moose, a diabolical yet small man wearing a trench coat came into work at the IRS at precisely 7AM on Monday morning the 11th of April, 2016. He reached for the “off” button on the office answering machine, but his finger hovered, not quite disengaging the device. A sinister smile crept across his oily face, making his pencil mustache go up at the outer edges, like evil punctuation. He left the answering machine on.
“BWAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA,” he exclaimed, before sitting down at his desk and determining whom he would like to audit next. Then he grabbed a folder with the letter F on its cover, and opened it to the name Ferderbar.
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You’re getting sleepy. Your eyes are getting heavy. NOT!
Even as a teenager I wasn’t a big sleeper. My friends would still be crashed at noon and I’d be hopping around my room like a nervous cat, waiting for someone, anyone, to answer their damn phone so we could go out and do something fun.
“Hello, Mrs. Fliegelman. This is Pam Ferderbar calling. May I please speak with Beverly?” (This is how teenagers use to speak to adults, yo.)
“It’s only one o’clock, dear. Try back after three. How’s home Ec this year?” (Which is how adults used to speak to teenagers.)
I’d wander the streets of Delafield waiting for someone my age to get the hell out of bed, which is why I ended up dating grown men with motorcycles who apparently didn’t require as much sleep as boys my own age.
When I was just a little older I was prone to “disco nap” – that delightful 8 – 10P snooze that allowed one to dance all night, go to bed for 15 minutes and still make it to class on time, fully functioning. It never occurred to me that one day I would despair of the fact that I. Can. Not. Sleep.
Oh sure, after a few glasses of wine I doze off in the passenger seat of a guy’s car without fail. Step one, buckle up. Step two, ZZZZzzzzz. I am a necrophiliac’s dream date. Likewise, if I’m in for the night, whether I’ve had wine or just a bag of potato chips, Zzzz. If my butt is on the sofa and it’s after 8P, I’m a goner. Until 11P, when it’s time for bed. Then I’m all, whassup? Me! If it weren’t for Law and Order marathons I’d kill myself.
“Why don’t you read yourself to sleep?” you may ask. Reading before bed reminds me that I am supposed to be writing a second novel, but I didn’t finish the prospectus for a juried exhibition for my photography group yet, and there are 283 emails I need to get out reminding people we have a fundraiser next week, which reminds me I need to do laundry, note to self, put laundry detergent on shopping list, and I should really pick up the dry cleaning before they give my stuff to orphans (do they still call them orphans?), but the neighbors are on vacation and I have to feed their cat. Crap. I let the dog out this morning and never let it back in.
I am simply better off hearing “DONK DONK…In the criminal justice system…” At least I have a fighting chance of nodding off at some point, in spite of consistently disturbing dreams that involve Benjamin Bratt – if I’m lucky. Fred Thompson if I’m not.
My physician told me, although officially she doesn’t recommend it, that when she can’t sleep she gets up and works out in her home gym. Our veterinarian has a yacht, which I believe is named the Ferderbarge, so I imagine I helped subsidize a few dumb bells in the fitness center of my doc’s chateau on Pine Lake.
I have a recumbent bike in the basement, so I tried the “getting up and getting moving” approach, willing to experiment with anything in order to poop myself out. I ended up sweaty and wide-awake at 3AM. A shower, no matter how luxurious and hot, does not put a person to sleep. I’ve taken up Skyping with “friends” in Europe, strangers whom I more or less “befriended” specifically for their alluring time zone.
I have tried over-the-counter herbal remedies, teas, and gnawing on the leaves of a valerian plant. Tylenol PM gives me a weird taste and Benadryl just makes me hyper. None of it worked until my husband-at-the-time had sinus surgery, and they gave him hardcore sleeping pills. That man could hibernate standing up in the express lane at the grocery store, so sleep was the least of his problems. He didn’t need the pills.
Even after his operation he continued to snore like an inbred bulldog, so I figured, hey, who says I shouldn’t try one of these little beauties? He was fast asleep, standing beside the bed, when I knocked him over, took one of the tablets and got under the covers. Within two minutes I felt as if I were enveloped in a heavenly cloud of melted Velveeta, only better. I awoke exactly eight hours, to the minute, later and vowed I’d never take another one of those wonderful wonder pills. I totally get how people become addicted. What could be better than floating in warm cheese? (I’ll admit this may be a sensibility peculiar to Wisconsin.)
Last night I decided enough already. No TV. No lights. No whirrrrrrrr of the stationary bike. I would lie in bed, first counting sheep, then counting backwards from 1000, then I started to think about something I read that said we should pay more attention to circadian rhythms if we want better sleep, and in the winter months, especially if you live in a place like Wisconsin, set up a light to go on at a certain time of the morning – a light that replicates the sun, and be sure to shut off the lights at a certain time of the night, mimicking the cycles of…what? A cicada? That has got to be where the word circadian comes from, right? So that weird bug that comes out of the earth for like a minute every 17 years – I think cicada is another name for katydid, but they don’t call it katydidian rhythms – makes a buzz saw noise to beat the band and then dies right away, what kind of life is tha…Z Z Z Z Z z z z z z z z
Our dear friend Helen Sanders, Chief Editor at HealthAmbition.com has some really great tips for getting more and better Zzzzzzzzzs. Check it out!
Here are some ideas for beating insomnia from the Mayo Clinic.
Wendy Rhodes at Weighted Blanket has written a comprehensive and informative piece on beating insomnia. Check it out!
Dr. Morgan Crowley, aka Dr. Slumber, has excellent insights into getting a better night’s sleep at slumbersmart.
And our friend Alisa at Nest Maven has some really great tips, too. Sweet dreams!
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1. Zuzu is a straightforward communicator.
At her most vociferous, such as when a deer, wild turkey, postal carrier, door-to-door religion salesperson, chipmunk, squirrel, robin, bunny, leaf or twig appears in her yard and she howls like a shewolf in heat, her oratory is still not as shrill and bombastic as the majority of other candidates when they open their mouths.
While Zuzu occasionally barks at the wind, she would not say something just because pollsters have told her it’s what you want to hear. If anything, Zuzu is honest to a fault. If you’re cruel, mean or have liver sausage in your pocket, Zuzu will call you on it.
2. She would not embarrass herself, or the American people.
Although she may eat deer poop and lick her own private parts in public, she is still more dignified than most of the others. To be fair, she will kiss babies, but that is only because they usually have food on their faces.
She won’t go full dork and lamely pitch the first ball at a baseball game. (See “she has no thumbs” below.)
Zuzu would not engage in an any discussion about paw size or whether someone’s wife is a dog. (I mean, seriously. She was incensed by that one.) A firm believer in a bitch’s reproductive rights, she has proudly been spay, but would never disparage someone else’s lifestyle choices, even if they had a litter out of wedlock or named their children after math functions and trees.
3. No doubt about it, Zuzu would 100% warn us if a bunch of Wall Street bankers were about to rob us blind.
As a founding member of the Dogalist Party, Zuzu does not believe might makes right, but if Bernie Madoff or the marauders at Goldman Sachs had come to our house, Zuzu would have bared her teeth and growled like a cornered Chiweenie, while quite possibly soiling their $1900 Ferragamo loafers at the same time. Our politicians swept open the door and bowed while the Wall Street crooks waltzed into the bank and took everyone’s money without so much as a warning arf.
Zuzu will sleep with one eye open, just waiting for the criminals at Morgan Stanley and their BFFs at the SEC, to walk past her cedar chip beddie. (A cup would be a wise investment, fellas, as she’s likely to go straight for the nads.)
4. She is not judgy.
She doesn’t make assumptions about people based on skin color, income, the car they drive, the religion they do or don’t practice, sexual orientation, gender, culture or whether they prefer dark or milk chocolate. She takes one thing and one thing only into account when assessing the quality of a human being, and that is their smell.
Zuzu could march straight into the U.N., nose twitching, and immediately know who to trust, and who was likely to pull a Ukrainian invasion, test a nuke, or cheat on his #3 mistress.
5. What you see is what you get.
When her tail is wagging and she is smiling, Zuzu is genuinely happy, and would bring the country its slippers, curl up on its lap, and charm the pants off international leaders at State dinners by wearing a plain cloth coat from Petco, and serving farm-to-table kibble.
If, however, an opponent were to disparage Zuzu’s humans, make fun of the fact that she doesn’t know who her parents are, where she was born, or because she was homeless on the streets of L.A. for a time, her ears would go back and her eyes would narrow to steely slits, and she would take away his liver treats until his behavior had improved.
6. She has no thumbs.
She cannot hold nor fire a weapon, but she can still give hugs. She cannot perform the gag-inducing “thumbs up” gesture that, no natter how asslike it makes them look, every single politician does regardless of age, party or fitness to hold public office much less go around indicating everything is hunky dory.
She cannot place her thumb on the scales of justice, but would treat everyone with the same even handedness.
7. She finds the goodness in nearly every situation.
If there’s one square inch of sunshine on the floor, Zuzu is in it. A candidate who knows how to follow her bliss is more likely to lead us in the right direction.
Unless you are a cat, Zuzu does not care what you do in the privacy of your own home. (She only cares about what cats do because she doesn’t believe for one second that they are really that independent, and eventually, Zuzu believes, they will be found out.)
We’ve had grumpy, loud, crass, argumentative, hot-headed, orange, lyin’ eyed, trash talkin’, comic book villain, snarky, sharky dolts representing our country during this election cycle.
It is time for a tail waggin’, butt sniffin’, happy, sappy little dog to make the rest of the world smile, and think of Americans once again as a well-adjusted, well-behaved people, not a bunch of bitter contestants in a reality show on a crap planet.
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When I was kid growing up in West Allis, WI, a hard-working, blue-collar community just west of Milwaukee, there was a grouch who lived on our block, who’d keep your ball if it rolled onto his grass.
Our neighborhood was populated by small clapboard duplexes, many of which had been single-family homes until the attics were transformed into little income-producing apartments. People didn’t use fences, hedges or “landscaping” to create “private family retreats” on their postage stamp lots, so a kid could run from one end of the block to the other, across 16 yards, only occasionally having to hurdle a peony bush or two.
Mr. Krabowski lived smack in the middle of the block—a wrinkled, pinched, pointy, bitter and criminally hostile geezer. If your ball went on his grass you’d hear the chain coming off the inside of his front door, and you’d freeze in place, burgundy grape ICEE replacing the blood in your veins. A moment later the old crank would scuttle outside with a look of such utter disdain for the human race—children in particular—that we’d scream and run away, abandoning the ball altogether.
Even my parents wouldn’t talk to the old vulture. “Every block has one,” was all they’d say. My idea to place skateboards, roller skates, marbles and banana peels outside his door was met with incredulity. No one had the nerve to set foot on his property, and as any hijinks superhero will tell you, it is essential to position your props “just so” if you want someone to wipe out in the most fulfilling manner possible. (I had lots of great ideas back then, but I lacked the necessary staff and execution skills to pull them off.)
So we’d hide behind one of the huge elms that lined the street and watch Mr. Krabowski snatch the ball, shake it at the sky like an angry sharecropper with a boll weevil problem, and then shamble back inside clutching the ball as if he were expecting a late hit from Clay Matthews.
By then Jimmy Traut had usually wet his pants. Beverly Grossman was picking caterpillars off the tree bark, and eating them fast as she could, and the Deedie sisters had begun to slap each other across the face in a lively game of hit-you-harder.
No one was laughing at the time, because we didn’t have rich parents, and new balls weren’t a foregone conclusion when one was lost to an ornery crackpot with a nice lawn. We knew better than to complain to our folks over dinner, which often consisted of fried ring bologna and burnt lima beans—a specialty in our house. “Don’t bother him,” was the most they would say on the subject of the cantankerous creep two doors down. So we banded together—a tribe of bug eating, face swatting, pants wetting rug rats, united against a ball-thieving enemy.
There have been many Mr. Krabowskis in my life. Some were teachers, others co-workers, there was a condo board member, and one was a blind date. He was allegedly a “doctor” involved in some kind of “research.” He had long crusty yellow fingernails and a hairy wen in the middle of his forehead. Dr. Nosferatu was not only physically repulsive, he was also, worst of all, a big fat grouch.
He brought up politics almost immediately upon meeting. As luck would have it, my worldview did not align with Satan’s. He told me I was uneducated, naïve, stupid, and much too tall to wear high heels. As if watching an episode of Hoarders, I was powerless to move as he ordered dinner, and separate checks.
He complained loudly about the food, the service, my hairstyle, and “people’s children.” When I looked into his eyes, which was only for a nanosecond—it was hard to look away from the wen—I saw a closet full of balls taken from neighborhood kids.
No one was noshing on Lepidoptera or wetting their pants, that I could tell, but I felt like the waiter, bartender and other diners were all standing behind an elm tree with me, wishing for a bolt of lightning to explode a man’s head off.
Maybe that’s the whole reason natural selection and justifiable homicide haven’t eradicated the grumpy old cuss, the picklepuss, the a-hole; it gives the rest of us cause to stand with people we might not otherwise be friends with. If it weren’t for Mr. Krabowski, I’m pretty sure I would have run the other way from a girl my own age, who ate bugs.
I wish I could say that Mr. Krabowski taught me how to get along with people like Mr. Krabowski, but it didn’t, because there is no getting along with people whose sole purpose in life is to steal your balls, which is clearly a metaphor for something. No sideways glance from a waiter, well-constructed email, or call from the president of the condo association is going to convince a meanie to be nice.
All we can do is hide behind the giant elms of life with our friends, old and new, and laugh at the absurdity. Every block has one.
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“He that can have patience can have what he will.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
“Patience is a conquering virtue.” ~ Geoffrey Chaucer
“The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.” ~ Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
“Blah blah blah, we’re not getting any younger here!” ~ Pam Ferderbar
I try to be patient. I really do. Many people I know are able to shrug it off, roll with the punches and take it in stride when service is abysmally slow, people are late, and someone uses 100 words to answer a question rather than the five or six that would suffice perfectly.
Me? I tap my foot and sigh loudly, construct and fire off texts about the importance of being punctual, and on occasion I have reached into someone’s mouth and literally torn the words out. The latter may be a slight exaggeration, but not by much. I am not a patient person.
It has come to my attention by way of texts, emails, snail mail, voice messages and a note affixed to my front door by a medieval crossbow-type arrow that some people don’t appreciate my particular brand of impatience. I would like to point out that I am the progeny of a man whose motto is “time is money.” It’s really not my fault.
My…let’s call it “eagerness to have things happen in a timely manner,” which manifests in a variety of ways, often upsets the people I care about, so I have decided to become more patient. I made a list of 5 ways to accomplish this goal, because that is what patient people do with their time
1. Focus on the positive.
When someone is late to an appointment, dinner party, or to pick me up on a subzero January morning after I’ve said ten times I am happy to take a cab, but they insist on picking me up anyway, and then they arrive half an hour after they promised to be there, I will simply focus on the fact that I am the high level kind of person who has appointments, there are humans and canines with whom I can dine at will, and I’ve got electric underwear that prevent me from becoming Wisconsin ice sculpture.
2. Go to my happy place.
Next time I ask someone a simple question, such as “are you free for lunch?” or “what time is it?” and the response includes the words gluten-free, microaggression, anthropogenic, Angela Merkel, digital darkness, almond shaming or mommy-and-me it will appear as though I have lapsed into a drug-induced coma. In reality, I will have taken a subconscious sailboat to the South of France, where a waiter named Jean-Luc awaits me with a chilled bottle of Sancerre and a crusty baguette.
3. Practice empathy.
Rather than erupt with homicidal rage the next time it takes three lights for the person in front of me to make a left turn at an intersection, I will ask myself, I wonder what he’s going through in his life that a simple driving function such as making a left hand turn at a light causes him such consternation, and whether my boot up his…nope. Nope nope nope. The new me will walk a mile in his shoes, not ram one of them up his keester. Perhaps he is happily daydreaming of Jean-Luc and French bread, or a kinder, simpler time when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and turning at a light was less stressful because there were fewer cars.
4. Take a deep, slow breath.
Off a bong. Just kidding, although once it’s legal in all 50 it is not a bad way to go. I’m pretty sure it’s a lot easier to be patient when you’re giggling like a schoolgirl and shoveling Doritos into your maw.
5. Have sex.
Nothing says “slam on the brakes” like a roll in the hay. No good comes of telling the other person, “Get on with it already! I’ve got a Lean Cuisine in the micro!” Sure, we’ve got our quickies and nooners, but it’s the languid hours of lovemaking and long sultry nights of lust that become literature, make cinematic history and add to the list of “happy places” we retreat to when people use lactose intolerance as an introduction to a much longer discussion about the benefits of high colonics, when all we really wanted to know was whether it came with fries.
Listen to the super awesome podcast, “Perception v Reality” featuring Pam Ferderbar on The Year of Purpose here.
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These days I feel like I’m being punished for all the times I slept late, took a mental health day, went to the movies, napped, played with dogs/boys/friends, golfed, hiked, swam or made it to the gym for half an hour.
I bolt upright at 3AM, taunted by a to-do list that begins with, “Wake the hell up!” I swear there are fewer hours in a day than there used to be. To quote Rickie Lee Jones, “The world is turning faster than it did when I was young.” To quote myself, “WTF?”
When I take a nanosecond to really think about all that’s lost in the nanoseconds that I toil away, obsessed with “gettin’ it done” and my slash and burn approach to the to-do list, I realize not only am I deficient in vitamin D and fresh air, I am missing an essential nutrient to my well-being. And that element is joy.
My cousin Melanie Roach-Bekos, the Executive Director of the Wisconsin ALS Association, who spends each and every day with people who are dying from Lou Gehrig’s disease, and who have just tragically been diagnosed, sent me a video the other day, which she said, “will bring you joy.” Immersed in what is the most heartbreaking sadness imaginable, my cousin mines for joy, then she takes that moment to share it, often it seems, just when people need it the most.
The video Melanie sent me is of a college senior who got to play guitar with Bruce Springsteen.
Some day when his to-do list pokes him in the brain in the middle of the night, that kid is going to burrow deeper into his pillow and think about being on stage with the Boss, and the 30,000 people who cheered just for him. He may still bolt upright and decide to get a head start on work, but he’ll be smiling. That, dear friends, is joy.
The look on his face while he was livin’ his dream set something off in my brain chemistry that made me scan the databanks for my hidden joy. Where is that thing I can tap into when I need a fix of bliss?
I shut down the mental to-do list, closed the mythical door of “gotta get it done now” and yanked the keys out of the “faster, faster, faster” ignition. The mere act of stopping in my tracks evoked a flood of memories, moments, treasures, plums and nuggets—an entire mine’s worth, of joy.
I don’t remember it, of course, but to this day my parents become overwhelmed with the story of my utter delight upon seeing a balloon for the first time. The joy is in their telling of it.
I recall the kaleidoscope of butterflies that fluttered wildly in my stomach the first time I kissed a boy—the only logical medical explanation for which must be classified…as joy.
It all came back to me. I’ve watched babies being born. Been there for graduations, weddings, and the moment a friend announced she was cancer-free. I’ve seen a scruffy little dog rescued just before she was to be euthanized, witnessed my beloved godson get down on one knee and propose to his beautiful girlfriend, and sat quietly on a beach among my dearest most cherished girlfriends while the sun sank into the Pacific.
Lovely recollections—each of these things, but I’m digging pretty deep for my nuggets here. None of this happened yesterday. Or today. So I decided to up my joy quotient—in the right here/right now.
I had tea with a new friend yesterday afternoon. We sat toasty warm in her art gallery, amid silver gelatin prints and cream city brick walls, mist off the lake swirling around the fire escape just outside the window. We spoke of photography as we spread clotted cream and preserves on scones, which we nibbled off paper plates. Latvian folk music played in the background. For two relaxed and lovely hours, we got to know one another.
Plain and simple. It was joy.
We deserve it daily.
“Everyone knows they re going to die,’ he said again, ‘but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently.”
― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie
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