Category Archives: Musings

The Happy Pessimist

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You ever notice how Facebook women of a certain age always seem to thank their men for keeping them sane? I know I’m probably guilty of it too. Without Mr. D, my brain would be… ugh. I shudder to think.

It all goes back to Enrique’s universal truth: “All men are dumb; all women are crazy.”

And I’m admittedly as nuts as the next broad. Maybe more so. But I often feel like my crazy gets rebranded as pessimism when it suits Mr. D’s arguments or assumptions about me.

We even had a spat about this a few months back. I can’t seem to remember what exactly we were fighting about now, but I said that I’m too naturally happy to be negative. Mr. D said it’s possible to be a happy pessimist, that the two are not mutually exclusive.

And I’ve been thinking about that a lot ever since.

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Thank You, Thank You, Thank You

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This past Tuesday, two days before my eldest daughter turned six, I found myself screaming “Serenity Now” on the ride home from swim lessons.

Big A was being so mean to her little sister, so uncharacteristically bratty and whiny that when she finally said something about how Little A and another kid in her daycare ruined the dresses she had made for her stuffed animal kittens and then smacked her sister in the head, I responded the only way I knew how.

“Ohmygod, I don’t care,” I yelled. “That is NO excuse for this nonsense. KNOCK IT OFF RIGHT NOW!!!”

My angry mom voice is pretty on point when it needs to be. It shut her up for about 10 minutes.

And then it started back up. All evening it was something. One complaint followed by another.

“Ohmygod, Ohmygod, what the fuck,” I finally said to Mr. D before stepping outside to hit the bowl.

I came back to more fights. Unfinished dinners. Whines and tantrums and smacks and cries.

“Bedtime,” I ordered, around 7:30. “I am so done with hearing you both.”

They then marched upstairs and screamed in bed. Obnoxiously. Incessantly. And it might have been the 35th “MOM!” or the second bong hit, or some combination of the two, but about 15 minutes later, I realized that they were literally calling for me. That they needed me. That the only real job of any importance I have is to be there in these moments, the ones where they are at their brattiest, nastiest little selves.

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Grit and Grace

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I was robbed of the role of the Wicked Witch of the West in 6th grade. I can’t remember now whether I had practiced hard for the part, or if I just had a knack for the stage, but I was good. Damn good. Even now, 22 years later, ask me to say, “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too,” and I still got the magic.

I deserved that damn part. And when I didn’t get it, when, in fact, it was handed over to this 8th-grade Abigail Fisher, whose tepid performance and passionless cackle served to mock my very existence, I saw then the cruelty of life’s injustices.

I came home that night and cried to my dad, who said there’s nothing wrong with playing the side character (he was a proud nobody in his school production of My Fair Lady), and somehow, someway, I got over it, eventually landing the role of a “100 Grand” chocolate bar in my 8th-grade, Candy Land-based romp, where I played a trampy (but clearly high-end) gal about town, whose thick New York accent would later allow me to perfect Marisa Tomei monologues from My Cousin Vinny.

I guess that’s a really long way of saying… it all worked out! Exactly as it was supposed to! Even if it didn’t seem that way at the time.

I think the same can be said of my work woes.

I’ve already blogged about the things I’ve learned over this past year–and I wrote all that back when I still thought I was going to be denied the professional equivalent of the Wicked Witch.

But after almost eight months of talking to the casting director about this role; after being offered it on three separate occasions, only to see it snatched away at the last-minute; after a really great second audition that had me waiting two months for an answer, and after a lot of shit in between, I found out today that I got the part!

It feels amazing!!!!

Grit and Grace won! Endurance paid off! Life lessons were learned!

To quote the former Hillary speechwriter, whose remarks would one day be plagiarized by Melania Trump, I have emerged from this experience knowing that “you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you’re going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them, and even if you don’t agree with them.”

Those are really good lessons to follow! I’m so glad I did. I don’t think this particular story would have had a happy ending if I had not, and I am so happy it does. I am so deliriously happy. And proud. But mostly just happy.

Grit and grace won! It’s all about perseverance and tenacity! Hard work and talent! Integrity and kindness!

That’s the road to success. To happiness. To personal and professional growth. To boss bitch-dom.

And on that note, #BossBitchesForHillary!

Embrace it

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It’s 9:09 pm. The kids are quiet. I would love to lounge in bed and Netflix and chill with Mr. D, the cat, and a bong hit or three.

But I’m still so on edge, like my body is tingling with all this nervous, anxious energy from the little giant thing that made up a bad day, and I don’t think I can shake myself of it.

I’m also really pessimistic.

Now it’s 9:12 and the little one is at my door, screaming like crazy.

Oh, bedtime. I always feel like I’m fucking this one up.

I’m basically live tweeting (without Twitter) my high mom thoughts.

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So it’s 9:23, and I think the kids might be down for the count, and I finally know what I’m going to write. It comes from the third graph above.

Now it’s 9:30 and I just went back and edited the first graph 20 times. Ugh. I’m basically live tweeting (without Twitter) my writing process.

Alright… now I’m going to try and write something smart:

So yeah, a few weeks back, Mr. D discovered this funny thing when texting on an iPhone. (You might already know this exists, but this was news to me, as I’m also notoriously oblivious to everything. Anyway… he discovered that the phone doesn’t just autocorrect words you’re in the process of typing, but it can also predict the next word you’re about to put in. And I’m guessing it does this by some sort of A.I. word cloud that assesses your vocabulary and speech pattern).

I say that because here’s our text exchange from yesterday morning:

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(If that’s hard to read, the main exchange says:

Mr. D: I love you so much fun and addicting but it is a great day to be a good day to be a great day to be

Me: Love the D and the rest of the year and I don’t think that I have a great way for a few years back

Mr. D: It’s so funny. Do you have a sec to talk?)

Do you get what’s funny? I didn’t until Mr. D called me to say even the tone of our predictive texts reflects our personalities. I’m a glass-half-empty glum. And he is a sunny outlook kinda guy. (Which is only slightly true).

Anyway, today… I had so much to be happy about:

  • I killed an important presentation.
  • I handled a bullshit performance appraisal with my boss with grace and humility, and I told her that I see her criticisms as opportunities for growth (which I do).
  • I got an email from a headhunter asking me to consider applying for a director position at a larger institution. Not sure how this happened, but that’s more flattering than time the hottest guy in 6th grade flirted with me at a bar in my 20s.

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But.

I chose instead to be pissed off and resentful all evening. Like when I told Mr. D all my good news, I ended with the one thing that really grinds my fucking gears. This thing—this one word from my performance appraisal—was a monster in the pit of my belly. And it was hungry.

I bitched about it to a girlfriend, and it grew. I thought about it while driving home, and it grew. And when Mr. D kissed me and congratulated me about my day, I fed it some more, and didn’t even notice the colossal-sized delusions of grandeur to which it had grown.

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In fact, it wasn’t until after my bong hit that I finally felt its weight inside of me. It was so heavy and depleting. It fed off my anger and drained me of joy.

And then I farted. Long and deep. In a way that would make my fat grandma proud. I was like Martha Stewart after getting fired by the Griffins.

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And by then it was bedtime.

And I realized I could turn this into a message for my girls.

(This is not the message, but my friend Enrique’s other universal truth is that “All men are dumb, and all women are crazy.” I believe it. Because I was having this little epiphany–which I’ll get to soon, I swear–right as the kids were completely losing their shit. Big A was whining and acting a fool over not getting her way; Little A was screaming like an asshole tyrant. But fortunately I was high. And so very stress-free. And so I began to see things, finally, in Mr. D’s “it’s a good day to be a great day” light.)

Anyway, I told my kids about my epiphany: It physically hurts—your mind actually wears you down and destroys your body—when you hold onto the things that make you angry.

I wanted the kids to hear me because they need to hear this message just as much as I do. Of course, they’re 3 and 5, and I’m 32, but whatever. Age ain’t nothing but a number (RIP, Aaliyah.) (Also, thank you for spelling your name in songs so I don’t have to Google it).

And then we just cuddled in bed and listened to some instrumental Beatles, and I fluffed their sheets one last time and kissed them goodnight.

And somehow all our monsters seemed to dissipate into the stars.

Thanks, weed!

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Enrique’s theory

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I have a very cool writer friend, Enrique, who has the most brilliant theory of life. I feel so honored that he’s given me permission to post it.

Thank you, E!

As best as I can encapsulate the idea with my puny, nonscientifically-or-theologically trained mind, it works something like this: All humans – and possibly/probably all living things – are physically and intellectually/mentally/consciously connected by an invisible “life force” (probably electromagnetic in nature) that gives us a common touchpoints of psychological experience, and which allows us to “feel” the feelings of others and sense changes in the life force of others in ways that in past times have been mistakenly been described – in our pathetic human efforts to describe the indescribable – as “religion,” as “ESP,” as “intuition” and other manifestations of metaphysical weirdness.
 
I came up with this theory as a college sophomore, sitting in my bedroom on a Saturday afternoon listening to The Who on my stereo. As my mind wandered here to there, I suddenly felt a sharp, gripping pain in my chest. It lingered for about a half hour, and was intense enough to cause some worry for my immediate survival, but not enough to distract me from The Who. About a half hour later, the phone rang – it was the floor nurse at a major hospital in Phoenix, Ariz., where my father lived, telling me that he had just had a major heart attack and was in dire condition. We were told to fly ASAP to Phoenix, and my pains were soon forgotten.
 
Later, the experience caused me to wonder – was it mere coincidence that I felt chest pains stronger than I have ever experienced at the exact moment my dad was having a myocardial infarction? What could explain it? At the time, I was studying some science in school and on my own, and was familiar with a couple of scientific laws that could help explain such a phenomenon, and also show how physics might underlie a lot of the spiritual and metaphysical concepts we have developed over centuries as humans.
 
The first scientific law that seemed to be relatable to this “sympathetic” pain in my chest was the law of gravity. Here we have a force (not really a force, but stick with me) that literally is smeared everywhere in the universe, which touches everything in the universe, and which (more importantly) allows everything in the universe to instantly push or pull on everything else in the universe. It’s a scientific fact: Everything with mass has a gravitational pull that is felt by everything else with mass. When the moon passes over the ocean, its gravitational pull lifts the water toward it by a few inches – we call these tides. When you hop a bit into the air, your gravitational pull is literally pulling the ENTIRE PLANET EARTH toward you just a little teeny bit. Your gravity is felt by everything, everywhere – even the farthest star in the universe “knows you’re there.”
 
It’s like we are walking in a matrix – a force field – a sticky plasma — of gravity that embraces everything, senses everything, allows everything to impact everything. What if similar forces are in effect for life and living creatures, and we just haven’t “discovered” them yet?
 
It just seemed to make the most sense from a scientific basis, and explain so many things that we have found to be inexplicable. Since nature has provided a force that can be pervasive enough to literally connect everything in the universe to everything else, it didn’t seem outlandish to me that some other related force could serve to connect living things. When my dad had his heart attack, that pain caused “ripples” in his own life energy, and because life energy is connected (in my theory), I felt those ripples as they spread through the “life force field” like a wave, a wave that was most directly connected to me because my life force was a product of his life force.
 
The second scientific concept that seems plausibly wrapped into this whole “life force” phenomenon is energy. Weird thing about energy is that it cannot be created, or destroyed. The energy you feel in the morning, the energy you “run out of” during the day, had to first come from somewhere else, and it will go somewhere else after you throw your exhausted body into bed. Energy inhabits different forms, rides a sequential series of hosts, going from the sun to the sea to a plant to our bellies to our laughter to our dreams and then back out into the world, to be ceaselessly reused, remaining forever alive. So it seemed clear to me that the since life is essentially harnessed energy, the energy that is/was our “life” will never go away, and will simply move on to other forms. We take our last breath, and the energy of our soul simply re-enters the “life force field,” joining all the passed-away others who have added their energy to this overall force field (“Hi, Dad!”), and becoming a jumble of unseen once-living energy, full of former lives – something that that religion has come to call “Heaven.” When a new life is created, some of the energy from this field – possibly including some of the energy that used to be you – pops out of the unseen force field and again inhabits some body – a physical occurrence that humans have come to call “reincarnation.”
 
And, when many millions of humans sense (as I did) this seemingly spiritual connectedness, this churning matrix of birth and death and everlasting life, they have over the centuries come up with words like “God” and constructs like religion to explain it all. Look at how many stories in religion echo one another – not because of a shared God, or even God-driven teachings, but because of a shared sense of how life energy connects us all. We are God, all of us.
 
The life force/sustained energy theory can (if you squint a little) also be useful in explaining such mysteries as séances (since energy cannot be destroyed, my Dad is “still out there” somewhere), and could also be what’s at work when we “get a feeling that something’s wrong” with a loved one, or “believe this house is haunted,” or “feel like Mom is still with me” though she died last year, the nature of “the soul,” etc. etc. I suspect the force is especially strong between related people, but my thinking is hazy on why this would be – possible because your energy flowed out of the same original sources as their energy (same ancestors), their “wavelengths” are similar or something.
 
God, I’m crazy.
No way, dude.
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My sunshine

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To my little A,

You are the light of my life! I saw a sign the other day that reminded me so much of you. It said, “There are very few who possess something of that spirit that will brighten whatever they touch.”

That’s you!

I love you so much. Thank you, universe, for letting me be your mom (and yours too, big A!).

Thanks, Mr. D

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I probably don’t say it enough, but you are the best thing that ever happened to me.

You’re an incredible father, husband, lover, friend, life coach, writer, IT business analyst, therapist (my own personal!), comedian, reciter of esoteric quotes (“Who’s the Boss is not a food!”), and so much more.

You make me and our babies the luckiest girls in the world. Thank you for being you.

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To my artist

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Big A, my love, you’re such a beautiful artist. Tonight I asked about your favorite kind of art form—painting, coloring, etc., and you said writing.

“Yeah,” you shrugged. “I do some of that.”

We have so many great artists in our family. Seema, Sunil, Yamboo. Ada knows languages; Nani is a brilliant chef. I write. Pretty well, I’m told. Daddy will never agree, but he actually blows me out of the water. The thing about writing is even when you feel you’re good, you always know you could be better. Or maybe that’s just the way you feel about any job you love. And I love being a writer! (I hope you and Little A will both keep a handwritten journal. It’s such a beautiful way to preserve your memories.)

But anyway… You were explaining accents to me tonight. What does that mean, I asked. You hummed in the same steady note and then squeaked. That, you said, was the accent. It was brilliant and funny and loud in the awesome way you are. Then you explained what it means in art—something about big lines and then small ones? (You showed me as you brushed strokes on the page, and I must admit, I didn’t really get it.) But you did. And you draw SO beautifully. I don’t think I tell you that enough. I absolutely love your rendition of George Washington and Honest Abe. I love that you’re fascinated by history and that you think critically about the subject.

Tonight, in bed, you said you loved India. I assumed that’s because it’s the only foreign country you’ve visited, but no, you said. You told me how everyone used to want to go to India because it was the land of gold and jewels. And how everyone there has beautiful dark skin. But you don’t like the pollution and litter.

I said the water is also very dirty, so dirty that people who drink it can get terribly sick. (I thought of Flint.) I said things aren’t very good for girls there either. (We talked about how Nani wanted to come to America, how she wanted a better life for me, how this is a place where women like her can become successful.)

“What’s success?” you asked. And then you answered your own question before I could. “Happiness?”

“Yes, my love. That is exactly what it is.”

“Then you’re very successful, mommy.”

Indeed I am. All thanks to you, your sister, and your daddy.

Why weed

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I’ve liked weed since the first time I tried it at Senior Week, when a friend told me about how some guy in our high school had had sex with some girl in our high school. It was scandalous in the dumb way teenage hook-ups are, and she followed up the revelation with the usual “Don’t say anything.” But then she added: “Well, it’s not like we’re ever going back.”

That shit was deep. I was officially high.

Fourteen years later, I think those revelations are still one of my favorite things about marijuana, though the list is long. I love thinking, analyzing, getting high and gazing at the stars, feeling both the weight of my insignificance and the sense of belonging in a vast and seemingly infinite universe.

I love laughing until my stomach hurts and my cheeks turn numb, the pain in my abs harder and more wonderful than any workout could ever produce. I love polishing off the last bite of a delicious meal with unbridled satisfaction. I love waking up hangover-free. But perhaps most of all, I love the clarity and introspection of the herb, being present in a way that allows me to live in the beauty of my life and the magic of my children’s youth.

I know that makes me sound like a total stoner, which I sort of am, but maybe not in the stereotypical way. I don’t smoke nightly and there’s a part of me–a big part, actually–that worries about this blog. And not for the practical reasons, like, “Will I lose my job?”; but rather, the anxiety over the messages I want to send: About values and vices and my overarching thoughts on drugs, life, parenting, work, marriage and love.

Am I getting it right? Am I fucking up completely? I want to preface every post with: “This is what I believed at 32!” Who knows how that will change. Isn’t that the beauty of it all? That we get to keep going and hopefully reach a place where we get it right?

But I guess those are all thoughts for another post, on another day. For now, I just want my girls (and Mr. D) to know that my love for them is as vast and infinite as the universe itself. And maybe that’s what I love about marijuana. In a life that moves astonishingly fast, I get to slow down time when I’m with you.

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Nothing says I love you like a vomit hug

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Love can be candy and roses, and it’s wonderful when it is. But it’s also picking regurgitated carrots from your daughter’s curls. It’s watching your husband scrape projectile vomit from the cup holders of your car on a 12-degree day. It’s ugly and gross, in sickness or in health, for better or worse.

That’s how we spent our Valentine’s Day 2016. Not ideal, but real. And I think it was the most accurate metaphor for love.

I could probably write more, but I’m still queasy, and someone else has already articulated this far more eloquently:

Grit Is Often The Best Description Of Love. It was easy to love [my wife] when we were newlyweds. Easy for her to love me during seasons of comfort. But it’s much more difficult to fight for love when you lose a baby. Or have a huge financial setback. Or confess a really ugly secret about yourself. Fairy tales are great for movies, but real life is more often confusing, chaotic and messy. Dig in when it gets hard.