The cashier asked me if I wanted a bag for my tampons and I said "no" without thinking about it. Then I realized that I had to walk all the way back to work and into my office holding a box of tampons. I tried tucking it into my shirt, but that just made me look like I'm trying to hide a box of tampons. It's not like I'm advertising that I'm on my period, but why should I have to hide it? It's been a fact of my life for twenty years.

Just for today, I don't have to feel ashamed of the menses.

P.S. I would just like to thank "penis enlargement" for his regular visitations to my site and for commenting on my "cool blog" (which I didn't publish because it included links to porn). Thanks, dude.

It's not that I believe that women should have to work out, and get
plucked, waxed, dyed, padded, and thonged, to be lovable...but having
done my share, it's a little unnerving to go out with a guy who doesn't
seem to notice it. I don't know if that makes me shallow or an enemy to the women's movement or whatever...But for someone who analyzes life and spirituality to the point where I can't really have any normal conversations, i.e. news, weather, sports (does LA have a basketball team?) , I think it's pretty harmless to indulge in some straightforward shallow vanity. At least that connects me to the legions of women strung out on self-maintenance (it's healthier than heroine...right?)

Just for today, it's OK to be a little superficial...

Can't I say anything about wanting community and love in my life without being condescended to like some pet hippy freak? Is our society so competitive that if you'd rather drink de-caf with your friends than wallpaper the town with your resume or headshot, you're automatically labeled some patronizing term for women with no boundaries. I'm all for unconditional love, but that doesn't mean that I don't want people to be a little afraid of me. I'm just tired of hiding my granola.

Just for today, I can stand up for myself when people condescend to my values.

As lonely as I am, I know that there are women out there sleeping with warm bodies who are equally, if not more, lonely. Because nothing is lonlier than walking, talking human beings who are in an emotional coma (zombies have to be a metaphor for someone). The point is the idea of waiting around for a man, or a cat (although I refuse to become Creepy Cat Lady, it is tempting), or a child, to give my life meaning is starting to sound pretty lame-ass.

It's sort of like in "Terms of Endearment" when Jack Nicholson and Shirley
MacClaine are lying in bed and he says that the greatest moment of his life
was when he landed on the moon (or something like that...he was a former astronaut), and then Shirley MacClaine says, "this is mine...this is mine..." (which is a totally different scene from the Deborah Winger, death-bed "I know you love me!" scene, but both are stuck in my psyche like some bad drug experience). Anyway, I remember watching that scene when I was a kid and thinking, "She's gotta be kidding. That's what I have to look forward to?!" It was kind of a bummer to think that the culminating moment of a woman's life would be lying in bed with an alcoholic sex-addict. Even at ten I thought "Hey, lady, get your co-dependent ass in therapy!" (though I didn't know the word "therapy" at that time). Well, now, twenty years later...just for good measure, I've been there/done that and it's ok. Nothing to write on my gravestone (I imagine Shirley MacClaine's character's headstone would say something like, "I Slept With Him!") I think I would rather find my own ticket to the moon. And then if I meet some guy there, then great, we'll have the same greatest moment. And there won't be weirdness for me or him, or any little girls looking to me as a role model.

Just for today, I'm going to the moon solo.

I celebrated Father's Day by eating Costco hot dogs with my friend and discussing why we weren't calling our fathers or sending cards. I guess if I didn't feel so much pressure from this Hallmark nation to make my life look like a Mervyn's commercial, I could have sent him a card pointing out his assets.

Dear Dad,

Therapy was a disaster.
But at least you went.
Happy Father's Day.

But Hallmark doesn't have a section for relationship grey areas...yet. I see a whole line: "Break-up sex" cards, "I love you, but I need my space" cards, and "Go with God, because I'm done" (which isn't so gray)...

It's becoming clear that I'm no longer fit for polite society.

Just for today, I experience holidays in my own way.

At approximately 5:00 PM yesterday an agent to whom I had submitted some writing samples called to give me "positive feedback." He said he wasn't interested in signing me, but that my writing was good and that I should keep it up. At approximately 10:30 AM this morning I returned his call to thank him, and to see if I could kiss his butt in any other way. It was then that I was told that ""XXXXX is no longer with this company."

Sometime in the 17.5 hours that passed this man was either fired [which is weird because I didn't know that people could be fired after 5:00 PM (he had to work the WHOLE day) or before 10:30 AM (he had to wake up and DRIVE into work)] or he quit his job (notice my incredibly proper use of brackets). OR maybe they called him at home at 11:00 PM while he was putting on his jams and watching the "Friends" episode where Joey breaks his chair for the 86th time.

Either two things could have happened: after making the very kind and generous gesture of giving me much needed encouragement, the universe threw a foul wrench into this man's life. OR, after calling me, some wave of inspiration informed him to make a change, at which point he decided to leave his job and pursue his life-long dream of performing the role of Tevya in a mid-level production of "Fiddler on the Roof," or of making sand sculptures on the Venice boardwalk, or of scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef, or training for the upcoming gay and lesbian rodeo...

What really happened, I may never know.

Just for today, I stand in awe at the weirdness of life.

(Please note: if this hadn't happened, you would be reading about the ants I found in my vendor-machine cup of Nescafe...)

The good news is that I'm having a good skin day. The bad news is that there's no one around to impress, so I'm wasting it on the people I work with.

There's something about crying sessions over emotional abandonment issues that makes my skin really appear a lot healthier and more glowing. It's a secret that would destroy the beauty industry. If women all over LA started to tap into their feelings of abandonment and fears of being unlovable, there would be no need to buy $50 Dermatologica face cream, or all the other crap women spend their hard-earned cash on. (This is not, by the way, the reason why I break down in tears. I just notice the difference it makes on my complexion.)

I'm no super-model, but I think vaseline, swimming (chlorine is a great astringent), and the occasional emotional break-down is a prettty good skin care regiment.

Just for today, I can take care of my skin.

My mom likes to say that everyone turns into their parents. This (to me) translates into, "It really annoys me that you're not my clone." I used to apologize for being myself and, well, different from her, but I now accept that I am just sometimes annoying to her.

If I had to break it down to one thing, our relationship suffers from a fundamentally different approach to the inherent pain and sadness of living. My mom belongs to the school of thought that pain, not only should, but, can be avoided with steely optimism and the triumphant resolve to "just be happy." Whenever I was sad growing up she would say, "Just don't feel that way." Rejection, alcoholism, and floundering self-esteem were no match for this simple recipe. In some ways it made sense, and sometimes it actually worked...for her. She could, like my volleyball coach used to say, "shake it off." Maybe it's because she's a Sagitarius and I'm a Pisces, or maybe because while she was able to divorce my father, I had no choice but to keep downing the Shirley Temples and browsing the juke box at every bar, or maybe I'm just different...

Still, sometimes it's nice to think that maybe it's that easy.

Just for today, I'll try to "just be happy."

I always have said that the Catholic church is my spiritual home. That is, it feels like home in the same way that the smell of rank day-old stale beer outside of a bar on a Sunday morning sort of feels like home. Not that the Catholic church smells stale and rank - it's a different kind of association. There isn't a smell for guilt, martyrdom, and drama. Let's just say that the Protestants are really lacking in personality when it comes to creating deities (not to mention the costumes, props and decor) associated with the creator of all living things.

When I first began thinking of God as something more akin to The Force (as in Start Wars - see blog below), I decided that the Catholic God is an alcoholic parent - irrational, manipulative, but capable of seducing you with the promise of fulfilling your deepest desires for love (i.e. heaven) with all the careless charm of an addict too preoccupied with self-destruction to waste time on your petty little needs.

But since I've never let emotional unavailability stop me from pursuing men, why should I let it get in the way of my road to God? However, attending church as an adult has always left me teetering between my childhood awe and wonder of the mysticism of the Catholic church and apt reverence for something so much greater than myself, and my adult skepticism of an institution that is inarguably perverse, outdated, and dowright strange. But as a child, it was all too weird to not be a little fun. I kind of dug the brass cups of blood (sybolically speaking), solemn super seriousness of old ladies dressed in black obsessive-compulsively muttering over beads, and priests bathing grown men and women with water. To this day, going to church is not that different from watching a really good production of "Jesus Christ Superstar."

However, having gone to college, I can see other things; how easily politics creeps in the pulpit, how scary people are who take the bible literally, and how little women can participate in leadership...to say the least. It's more a microcosm of society, than a safe space...

Sometimes, I wonder if it's time to let it go...

Just for today, I am a struggling Catholic.

This is how angry I felt the other day.

If Yoda can raise a sunken starfighter, I most surely can have a successful career and find someone to fall in love with.

Just for today, I'll let the words of wise people or, in this case, short hairless talking green creatures (what exactly was Yoda anyway?) speak for themselves.

For reasons that I don't quite understand, I volunteered to organize a pot-luck barbecue for my office. I sent out an e-mail requesting certain food items and after recieving a swell of RSVPs, I now am responsible for a pot-luck consisting of chips, juice, and lighter fluid. Apparently, I'm not the only office party freeloader. I'm going to have to trust in the universe to bring something substantial for the grill.

Just for today, I can have faith in my office barbecue.

I just wanted to take a moment to experience a reality check of gratitude for my life. Despite my complaining and whining, my life is pretty damn good. While the great majority of women in this world are living in abject poverty, exploited for cheap labor, overwhelmed with the responsibility of parenthood, and trapped in abusive relationships by shattered economies, I am free to live a overly-analyzed, self-obsessed existence (which, I have to say, I far prefer to worrying about feeding my kids, getting AIDs from my husband, or keeping my $.10 a day job making shoe laces...but that's just me.) I am oppressed only by the voices in my head.

Yes, I hear voices. These voices tell me that until I'm married, My Life, in all it's confusing glory, is not yet complete; I am in limbo, living in a proverbial waiting room. Until I'm in a relationship, all the adventure of my creativity, friends, and (albeit brief) romances, is the metaphorical equivalent of sitting in the dentist's office, flipping through People, and listening to Muzak while breathing recycled air.

The REALITY is that as far as women's lives go in this world, I'm in the top 5%, if not higher. So long as I can maintain the awareness and self-esteem to tell (some) women's magazines, (many) television comercials, and (all) mysoginist men (and women) to go #%&* themselves, I am high up on the freedom ladder (an expression I just invented...see how free I am?)

Just for today, I am grateful for my life.

I was watching Season 5 of Sex and the City (it was a quiet weekend) and in one scene Carrie says "I am one bad date away from bitter." I'm not quite that close, (maybe six bad dates), but I do think that, besides being a sad and lonely state, Bitterness, like dieting, makes women lose collagen (it's not "scientifically" proven or anything, it's just what I think)... So I know that it is imperative not just to my health, but to my attractiveness, that I approach bitterness the way some people regard carbs.

I had one boyfriend who came on really strong with all the right words and stories about white picket fences (can we say Red Flag?!), and when I asked him if he was scared he said that no matter how many relationships didn't work out he refused to ever give up on love (can we say Red Flag, again?!...I sure wish I had). He showered love on me all the way into his next relationship.

Were I to base my life on observations, I would believe that adult homosapiens become more fragile and frightened of love as they get older, and when we get hurt or rejected we shatter like the posse of knick knacks on my grandmother's dresser. But I can't live my life that way anymore because it makes taking risks and experiencing dissappointment another project, like painting my kitchen, and I don't have the energy anymore to fight against my fears of rejection. If Michael Moore was right that America is a culture of fear, then what do I have to worry about? I can' t base my lovability on how scared everyone else feels. All I can do is love freely, and if someone can't love me back then he's either not the right person or is to scared and hurt to feel worthy. To be honest, it sounds kind of simple (as in not smart), but I'd rather be simple and filled with tacky platitudes and affirmations, than Bitter.

Just for today, I can practice loving freely.

Yesterday, my boss asked me to be "brutally honest" about something, and so I was. For a moment, everyone looked at me like I had violated all the cardinal rules of office culture before they agreed with me. Serious life lessons have taught me to taper my natural inclination towards honesty, but when used sparingly, it can be effective.

Indirectness was never an issue in my family of origin. When it came to opinions, there was little subtext or need for further inquiry. Growing up, I rarely heard, "But what do you really think?", or "Come on, don't hold back," or even, "I can take it, really. I want to know." If my madre didn't like my hair, I was privileged to know about it. If my late grandmother didn't like the gift I gave her, it was in the trunk, on it's way back to Sears. I didn't think that I had the genetic make-up for this kind of directness, but apparently, when asked, I do.

Just for today, I can be honest (when asked).

Tonight, I'm going to fill the hole in my soul with a pedicure. I'll try not to feel guilty that someone is dealing with my feet (more on that later) or think that any time the pedicurist laughs at something her co-worker says (I should really brush up on my Vietnamese) that she's really laughing at my feet ( I know they see feet all day, so why would I think mine are so hilarious? Because I am self-obsessed.) Anyway, the point is that filling my soul with God never helped me look more attractive in open toed shoes.

Despite my best efforts to seem "evolved," the name "God" has always referred to a hologram of an older white man in the clouds who moves people and events around like chess pieces with the logic and gamesmanship of John Ashcroft. Anyway, maybe I'm becoming more holisitic, (even while I take advantage of the struggle of Vietnamese immigrants so that I can sell out to LA's labor intensive beauty standard), or more conservative, like John Wayne, but my higher power doesn't extend beyond the molecules of my body anymore.

The point is that sometimes stupid things like pedicures and silly movies like "The Day After Tomorrow" do have a far more positive effect on me than sitting in a forced coma for twenty minutes waiting for the hologram guy in the cloud to make a bush explode.

Just for today, I will listen to my new (more materialistic) higher power.

Judging from the population migrating through the shower accessories aisles of Bed, Bath, and Beyond (before Laker tip-off), I wasn't the only one not invited to a barbecue this weekend. After deleting a flurry of abusive span e-mails making fun of the size of the penis that I don't have (which I guess makes it really, really small), and reading a Time article about what scientists say about love and sex (apparently, this may come as a shock, but human beings like sex! Amazing what scientists can do with research grants), I went to the movies and saw "Saved." It was almost REALLY AWESOME, until the last thirty minutes when the writers turned the script into a case study for Robert McKee's story structure theory. I started to criticize the movie to my friend for failing to delve deeper into the relationships in the movie, in favor of a tie-me-up-in-a-bow ending, when I realized that I can't criticize someone for failing to write about deep relationships when I can barely have them in my own life. All my screenplays come to a sudden halt after the romantic male lead gets annoyed at the romantic female lead for having an opinion...and then they sit on my desk-top and quietly mock me.

It was an eventful Memorial Day.

Just for today, I can appreciate national holidays.