“Oh, bummer! The murderer? It was me all along.”

 (The quotes below are taken randomly from my favorite book.     http://tinyurl.com/mh7xly8)  Is this shameless marketing?  Yes.

     

My life is like food I have purchased that clearly says, ‘refrigerate after opening,’ and I keep glancing at it on the shelf and think, ‘oh yeah, I really should refrigerate that.’

     You have only to remember Willa Cather’s My Mortal Enemy where there’s a realization at the end of life that the person you’ve been living with is your mortal enemy.   And suppose the person is you?  Of course it’s you.  Now that I think about it, it has to be you.  That’s why you have to take care of these things while you still have a chance.  You don’t want your dying words to be, “Oh, bummer! The murderer?   It was me all along.”

     I was no better than The Manchurian Candidate when I got married.  I had a chip inside me that was like a homing missile.I think I had no sense of safety.  Yes, I’m sure that’s it.  Back then, women had no sense of safety unless they were married. 

     I looked for my old thought catalogue: this house is falling apart I can’t stop eating Katie Couric looked good on The View. I haven’t been outdoors in two days the lawn needs cutting the big tree in back is going to fall over and kill me where is my hairbrush I’m afraid of taking Tylenol p.m. because I might not wake up my feet still look good the gutters are filled and there’s no one stable enough to climb a ladder and get them out I can't stop looking at J.Lo I need a manicure and a pedicure my eyebrows need shaping the ground turkey that is a staple has been recalled but I already ate it I love Alec Baldwin why did I think I could manage my own brokerage account if I thought about the money I’ve lost, it would make me pass out and why did I sell the New York apartment so soon when now it’s worth five times more the rich guy next door has the loudest air conditioner I’ve ever heard and it runs 24/7 he waters his lawn so much there’s a perennial puddle in front of my house where mosquitoes are breeding by the millions but I am annoying the neighbor on the other side with my huge tree that sheds leaves and other debris all summer long and keeps his driveway filled with stuff and oh, the kids.

      I have given up on too much. I have said “okay” to the absence of nurturing work and real intimacy and a reliance on love as a hub of life.

     While I’m talking about scent assaults, I may as well call your attention to the soap Lever 2000.  I went up to my second floor one day because I smelled the overpowering scent of cheap perfume mixed with stale sweat.  I thought a cologne-crazed robber might be hiding up there.  The smell was suffocating and it was coming from an unwrapped bar of Lever 2000.  I began to feel nauseous and had to take it far out of the house and throw it away.  I would vote for any candidate that would outlaw perfumed soaps, shampoos or anything else.  Thank god for scent-free All.

At the check out, the woman in front of me had every item I would never buy and yet I wished I knew her.

What kind of person buys this at Walmart:  individual packets of Whiskas, Shout Out, Pringles, Devil Dogs and miniature-sized lemon-scented S.O.S. pads. If you’re picturing overweight and slovenly, forget it.   She was thin as a rail and neat as a pin. I knew this much about her:  she doted on her cat, she could tolerate fake scents, she took her snacks seriously and she didn’t need Real Simple Magazine to give her any bs ‘aha’ ways to get stains out. This woman had chosen everything in her basket with a purpose and knew exactly what she was going to do with each item whereas my purchases were random and impulse driven.   I wanted to ask her  what was the worst stain she had dissolved with Shout Out and if the miniature S.O.S. pads were a better value.   What came to mind as I waited for her to pay was how appropriate it was for Spiro Agnew to have called us  “an effete corps of impudent snobs” to characterize the East Coast intellectual voting block. This woman (who might be a Harvard-educated neuroscientist for all I know) was exactly why people like my friend Delores seldom got their candidate elected.  She represented the whole big other section of American life and it’s their America, too.

The triumph of imagination over intelligence

The other day I was looking for a pair of shoes I hadn’t thought of in five years and stumbled on a huge stack of fabric yardage that I hadn’t thought of in eleven years. 

By stack I mean a Kansas wheat silo tall column.  

only fabric inside

Wow, I thought this good fabric could help me reinvent my house.  When I say re-invent, I don’t mean it would turn my house into a thoroughbred horse but it would help my abode look almost as elegant and promising.

Dimly I remember that I had the very same thought when I stashed the fabric in this attic closet for safekeeping as if the huns were paying a visit to East Hampton to take it away from me.

I'm coming for the fabric

I chose a large roll of black and white plaid seersucker and decided to slipcover my yard sale one-and-a-half chair.  Do I know how to sew a slipcover?  Sort of if sort of means I’ve never done it but I saw some pictures in a book written in 1964 and put out by The Singer Sewing Machine company titled “How To Make A Slipcover.”

This is the place where I use the word counterintuitive which means something is exactly the opposite of what your good sense is telling you because as I read through this little book, no more than a pamphlet, I find that you have to pin everything on the furniture inside out and when you sew it inside out you also have to include something called piping that is made ahead of time out of yet another gazillion yards of fabric (cut on the bias and stitched together to make a mile or two of this piping.) When you invert the finished product this piping is acting as a sturdy border around every seam.

you need about a mile of piping

 The next thing I learn about making a slipcover is that even if you only have a 12 inch footstool to cover it takes a gazillion yards to cut the pattern especially if the fabric also has a pattern and has to be matched.  

fabric matching at a very high level (not mine)

This is the point in the project where my left brain is saying “Perhaps on your first try you should choose a solid color because matching the pattern on a curved back chair might be a tad beyond your ability.” My right brain is picturing a garden with everything in bloom and lots of ceramic lawn mushrooms sheltering bunnies and squirrels.  My right brain is seeing childlike happiness.

Really, need I continue with this post?  Will Jesus turn my ten yards of plaid seersucker into a well-fitting pattern-matched slipcover with perfect piping all around the way he turned water into superb wine at the wedding feast at Cana? What do you think?  What Oscar Wilde said about marriage can apply to this project: the triumph of imagination over intelligence. 

An heiress and her slave in Charleston, circa 1800.

(Viking/Penguin offered me The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd, an Oprah book club selection for review)

I grew up in Washington, D.C. still very much a southern town in my early childhood.  I remember accompanying my beloved Corinne Griffith (who worked for my family) to her segregated part of the beach because I preferred her company. Even then as a tiny girl, I felt the risk of defying convention. I brought those memories with me to read this story of Sarah and Hetty - an heiress and her slave in the city of Charleston, South Carolina in the early 1800’s.

The book is an expertly researched fictionalized version of the life of Sarah Grimke and her sister Angelina, who rebuffed their upbringing and religion to become notorious as the first female abolitionists speaking and writing in favor of liberty and equality not only for slaves but for women.

Where the novel diverges from the true story is, for me, it’s heart.  Here the story is of two girls and two families.  Sarah’s family, powerful and wealthy withdraw any support for her realization and ridicule her ambitions. Hetty’s mother, with neither power or funds to support her, instills a grim strength in Hetty to never succumb to captivity or part with one iota of herself.

This is an emotional book filled with symbols and spirits and outcomes that make the reader weep. Ms. Kidd shows us what has to be the truth of owning another human being - the fear of losing the power leaches all humanity out of the owners and allows them to rule with blind cruelty. 

The United Overstates of America

(This is a re-issue of a post titled "Thank You So Much."  It's resolution making time.  I thought we might revisit the land of "so much.")

Everybody does it.  Prince William did it when he was out in California with Kate. “Thank you so much,” he said in his fabulous British voice.  Even with that upper crust delivery I was disappointed that he, the standard bearer of all things subdued and traditional, had to add ‘so much.’  He had me at “thank you” and then lost me at “so much.”

‘You’re welcome’ is a perfect response but frequently I see the word ‘most’ squeezing through to leach some solidity out of ‘welcome.’ The physical equivalent is if someone takes your hand in both of theirs and squeezes it as if they are wringing out a washcloth instead of using a regular handshake.

The United States of America is now the United Overstates of America. Why?  Oh, wait, I know.  We overstate to cover up for lack of emotion and real engagement.  How do we really feel about anything?  We don’t know how we really feel and does it even matter?

We say: “Your guacamole is awesome.”

We mean, “I can’t get excited about anything you do but I don’t want you to dislike me.” 

We say: “That dress looks amazing. “

We mean: “Who cares how you look but if I don’t quell your insecurity, we’ll be here all day.”

"I worked my ass off" and "I was blown away," would both, if true, have terrible consequences and do not elicit the approval you are seeking.

Drew Barrymore was and is appealing.  She stood on David Letterman’s desk, pulled up her sweater and flashed him for his birthday. But sweet Drew led us down a wrong path when every third word out of her mouth is ‘amazing,’ or ‘awesome’.  Thanks to Drew and her ilk, many perfectly good words have been downgraded in the tsunami of “this rocks,” and “you rock.”

A “thank you” without frills means:  "I've proven that I'm polite,  now leave me alone.”

Nice means bland and boring

Good means tolerable or it is used like a period to end a conversation.

Pretty means “I've given the opinion you are after now let's move on.”

Pleasant means "In my present and future this (event, person) is invisible."

Satisfactory means “This is disappointing but what else is new?”

“Good morning” still means “Good morning.”  Let’s leave it that way.

Bad Marriage News is Mostly Delivered in the Kitchen

(Penguin/Viking sends me books to review. I select a few to share.  I liked this breezy, feel-good self-discovery story and gave it four stars on Amazon.  Ms. Pancol is a bestselling author in France.)

The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles by Katherine Pancol

Most bad marriage news is delivered in the kitchen while the wife is preparing a meal for the dirty dog who is about to break her heart.

So it is with Josephine, the heroine of The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles who receives the news that her unemployed, self-indulgent husband is having an affair with a manicurist.  She tells him to leave and he is happy to oblige.  Josephine has been preparing all of her life to be trod upon.  She has played the plain nerdy sister to ambitious well-married Iris. She has played the socially inept daughter to her icy mother Henriette and she even allows her teen-age daughter Hortense to pile on the insults. Did I mention that Josephine is being left with only her own tiny salary to sustain her and her two girls and without a clue how to manage the finances?  If you haven’t guessed by now from the names, this book (a huge bestseller in France) has been translated for American audiences.

The reader knows that this heap of trouble for Josephine is the perfect roadmap for a journey into the land of self-discovery, new beginnings, and “look who is laughing now.” We aren’t absolutely sure how things are going to get better for Josephine or how her detractors (family) are going to be left with egg on their face but unless the author is playing a ghastly joke we are pretty sure it will happen.  The trick in these breezy romps into “Life couldn’t get worse but oh, look, it’s better now than before” is to keep heaping trouble on the main character until we beg for mercy.  The other trick is to let us see the weak underpinnings of the supporting cast slugs who beat up on our heroine.  We want a front row seat when their downfall arrives.

Ms. Pancol delivers all of this with good pacing, a colorful cast of characters and an

interesting menu of sub-plots and dénouements. The translation is clumsy in spots especially in the transitions and idiomatic expressions but not enough to spoil the story.

It's New Year's Eve. I'm sitting in my office in the house.

It’s New Year’s Eve.  I’m sitting in my office in the house. There are two windows in the room and I’ve covered them with venetian blinds because the sunshine in the morning is so beautifully invasive that I can’t see my computer screen. 

This room was originally a bedroom.  It was the Jill part of what developers like to call a Jack and Jill set up.  I sleep in the Jack part across the hall from the bathroom.   This room is located inches to the right of the front door and in the early days (I was still tolerant) when carousing co-workers needed a place to sleep I would tell them to come in the door, make a sharp right and just get in the bed. I never locked any of the doors even though my house is only one block from a main road and the Railroad Station. (I was tolerant and crazy.)

With the arrival of my first dial up internet connection I made the bedroom near the front door my office and moved the bed upstairs. This became the room where I re-invented myself as a publisher and purveyor of digital books that I learned to build and upload to Amazon.  I also created a rudimentary blog and began posting simple ideas that seemed brilliant in the shower. In this room I've received good news and disappointing news.  I’ve cried in here several times. (Not recently,)

Here is some of the good news I’ve received in this room over the years:

1.  Can you come in to town, I think I’m starting labor?

2.  Can you come in for the award luncheon?

3.  I’ve been asked to work on a show.

4.  Grandma, it’s me.  Can I come over?

5.  We got the house.

6.  Consuela, I read your manuscript last night.  It’s wonderful. (This from my devoted agent who never in twenty-five years has gotten my name right.)

7.  “Daughters is the best book I’ve read this year.” (Daughters has received 119 5-star reviews and 47 4-star reviews.  One reader gave me four stars because she was mad when it ended.

8. One Hundred Open Houses does not sell well but when someone buys it and connects - aaah! “I loved this book.  Now, how did the author get into my mind and pick out every thought I’ve ever had, do have and will have and get it all together in this book?” This is my personal favorite.

9.  Hello, Ms. Baehr.  This is Rachel from Fast Company Magazine. We’d like to include you in our Kings of Content article if you’re willing. Do you know anything about me, I asked?

10. We’d like to publish Thinner Thighs in Thirty Years as a Kindle Single.  Ok. 

2013 was a good year.  I got rid of a couple of bad habits. (Well, almost.) I did not lose a single pound although I was sure I would lose about five every single day. (Oh, you have to stop eating? Who knew.)

What I liked best were the e-mails and comments from people who read The Repurposed Writer.  The post goes out with a little click and the next morning readers weigh in.  I’m always surprised.  Who knew these good times were waiting for me?  Thank you. Thank you.

Happy New Year! 

High profile. High stakes. Hijinks

(Everything in this post is alleged.)

I’ve been thinking a lot about President Obama and not because of the Healthcare dust-up.  I’ve been thinking about him because of the dust-up at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela especially after I read in the National Inquirer (What? No good?) that it wasn’t just the selfie with the Danish Prime Minister.  There was a lot more to it.

I strive to get my news from many outlets and by that I mean standing in line at the supermarket and reading the tabloids. What I love more than anything is when they give me a drama that has so many potentially explosive repercussions that I have to step to the side and let the person in back of me go ahead.  (What? They make up stuff?)  That’s what I thought until John Edwards.  Besides, in the case of the Anglo/Dane/Yank selfie we have PICTURES.  And by the way was David Cameron acting as the beard?  And it’s not just the selfie.  The National Inquirer has more pictures and although you won’t believe it one of them is of the President kissing - yes, kissing, the Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt.  (All right it was a greeting kiss.) 

The headline writers had a field day Flirting with Dane-ger!  You’re going to get Helle from Michelle.

You know what’s strange?  We’ve become so enamored of the dazzling hook-up - good golly Miss Molly -two good-looking heads of state shamelessly flirting for our viewing pleasure. This hook up is so novelistically right that we DON’T CARE if it’s the Prez and his wife is sitting right there witnessing it. Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing? AND AT NELSON MANDELA’S MEMORIAL SERVICE!!!  It doesn’t get any better.  Who cares about unemployment and the economy when we have this vignette to contemplate.

Anybody who saw Michelle’s scowl and bought the spin that her expression was photographed at another event or she was reacting to something else is delusional. I’ve seen Michelle show displeasure. She tends to roll her eyes as if to say, “Can you believe I’m being subjected to this crap?” as she did during lunch after the 2012 inauguration.  Everyone denied that she was rolling her eyes at John Boehner who was seated next to her.  Anyway, Michelle’s expression almost corroborates that something unusual was going down.

Here’s the story in pictures.

Barak is carousing with Helle - Michelle is not amused

Seats are changed

Barak kisses Michelle’s hand to show his devotion and Helle looks annoyed.

Barak continues flirting.

Michelle strikes back by putting her hand on Bill Clinton’s knee.

Is this any way to run a country?

Yes. Yes, it is.

Now I’m going to tell you something serious.  You know Charles Krauthammer?  He’s the political commentator and although he comments for Fox News (What? You know it as Devil News?) he also has a column in the Washington Post, has won the Pulitzer Prize, has been a presidential speech writer and was once a Democrat.  Although most of the viewing public was not aware of it (myself included), he is partially paralyzed and uses a wheelchair.

Krauthammer stated this about Barak Obama recently and I believe it is a brilliant and astonishing observation.  Whatever scandal afflicts the White House - IRS targeting, citizens’ phone tapping, Benghazi, the billions given to and lost by Solyndra, the untruths about the Affordable Care Act, the un-kept promises about transparency, banishing lobbyists, closing Guantanamo, the increasing use of executive privilege for passing legislation, the stealthy way the Affordable Care Act was passed in the first place, none of it - NONE OF IT - is ever fundamentally ATTACHED to the smart, ironic, well-built Harvard dude known as Barak Obama. He can do anything he wants and we are almost embarrassed to call him on it.  His trust numbers are down.  His performance numbers are down.  But his popularity is not down.

Fox News can run a continuous loop 24/7 of Obama saying “If you like your health plan you can keep your health plan” (this won the “Lie of the year” award from PolitiFact) but in our mind’s eye he is not a Nixonian liar with a five o’clock shadow, he is the smiling hottie ordering a burger with his posse at the local joint and nobody cares about consequences? Is it any wonder the Republicans are so stressed?  The president has the kind of charisma that is so mesmerizing - we are in a trance. And gosh darn it, as Stuart Smiley used to say, people like him.

He has us in his thrall.

Disclaimer:  Naturally, this scenario comes out of my own highly inventive head and I cannot confirm that it actually happened.