Juno the MaMa Cat
It’s a beautiful spring day.  Flowers are blooming in our yard and new life abounds. We have been fostering a semi-feral pregnant cat in our playhouse for the last week. I named her Juno because she is a pregnant teen-ager.  I just went out to check on her and clean the litter box and guess what?  Three kittens!  No kittens at breakfast, three kitchens at lunch!  She even gave birth in the fancy cardboard birthing box with beach towels I made for her.  I never see her when I go in to feed her because she hides but she stays right with them now.  How brave of her.  She is scared to death but stays with her babies.  She has them all cleaned up and everything. I wish people had the same parenting instincts as cats.  It is life affirming to witness this and I am so excited and relieved it all went well. Anyone want a kitten?
Juno the Cat with her new babies.

Just a Post

I need to post today because I have to post at least once a week to be on the BlogHer list of women’s blogs but I can’t think of anything to write about.  I am in the Salt Lake Airport waiting for my Mom.  We are here to visit my Uncle Jack who is fighting a brain tumor. As I sit here in the Delta lounge drinking my free coffee I realize I’m afraid to see him this time.  I don’t know that anything is different it’s just that every time we visit it becomes a little more real.

The other night I did my yearly obituary search to see if my Dad is still alive. He is. I think. It appears that he lives in Northern California somewhere.  Doing an intrnet search on him never tells me anything to make me want to call the phone number I can get for paying $29.99 to a location website. No, an internet search just yields his occasional drunk driving report or trouble with the California Bar Association.  You know, the usual.  I have come to a place where I am not mad at him any more, but I still miss him and I feel really bad for him.  Hmmm…. Are you seeing a connection here between my fear of losing My Uncle, the only father figure I have left, and checking to see if my real Dad is still among the living?  Well you are a step ahead of me.  I just figured it out as I wrote it down.  And where is the justice here?  Who would you chose to get a brain tumor:  a man who abandons his family or a man whose family comes before anything else?  I know life isn’t fair and it may seem harsh that I am offering up my own Father as a trade for Uncle Jack.  But I am.

Well, that was cheery. I think we all just discovered that my stream of consciousness is actually a river of darkness. Next time I’ll tell you about the kittens. There is nothing depressing about kittens.  Unless they are dead kittens.  I’ll stop now.

Gay? O.K.!

Senator Rob Portman announced today he is for same sex marriage.  The conservative Senator once considered a possible Romney running mate says the journey to his new perspective began in 2011 when his son came to him and told him he was gay.  It illustrates what I have been noticing as the “now that it effects me I understand” mentality I see with some Republicans.  In my “totally non scientific and doesn’t count for anything except I can write it down and it saves Don from having to listen to me rant” observations I find Republicans have a difficult time caring about things that don’t concern them directly.  I wouldn’t call it lack of empathy, but more the “I got mine go get yours even though we will not give you equal opportunity to get yours oh wait my son is gay so he should get married too and my sister needs a student loan so that is ok and my cousin has cancer and is uninsured so I like Obama Care don’t tell anyone I said that.” mentality.

Sofie’s Goddess Mom’s getting same sex married.

I do not mean to take away from Senator Portman’s announcement.  I think it is wonderful he has been able to see a situation in a new light and realize he needs to change.  Not many of us can do that. (I can, but as I have said before I am pretty morally superior to the rest of you.)  He also has put his job and position in the Republican Party at risk.  He should be commended and I think I will send him a note today to tell him that.  He’ll be so happy to hear from me!  If the Party gets too mad at him for using his heart and his brain he can join my other favorite Republicans John Huntsman and Chris Christie in the “Oh for God’s sake I can’t stand this anymore you idiots are driving me crazy and Tea Party really is ridiculous wait now that I could actually get elected even by Democrats and certainly Independents you are shunning me,  what?” club.  I think he will be in pretty good company.

Habemus Papem

The year: 2002.  The place:  All Saints Episcopalian Church in Beverly Hills.  The venue: some meeting room/cafeteria.  I was there attending the first in a series of Alpha Classes teaching about the Episcopalian Church for those of us with an interest in joining.  I was really excited because the first part was a lecture and then you got to sit at smaller group tables and eat dinner while you discussed what you learned.  I had been attending All Saints for a few months and part of what I really liked about it was the thinking aspect of the church.  It seemed to be a place where alternative view points were not only tolerated but encouraged.  My table had all just sat down with our food when I said, “Wouldn’t it be interesting if Jesus was not actually the son of God?  Wouldn’t it be then an ever greater leap of faith to embrace Christianity?”………………………………………………………………………………….
……………………………………………………………………………………………. Even the Episcopalian crickets were silent.
 Everyone stared at me for what seemed like an eternity before the facilitator at our table moved the discussion in a different direction.
 When I returned home I told Don what had happened and how I was disappointed because no one wanted to even think about it.  Don reminded me that I had attacked the very center of the Christian religion, the Virgin Birth being the most fundamental part of the whole thingymabob (my word) and all. I did not join the Episcopalian Church and they were not sorry.

As I told you I was really in to the the election of the Pope.  I was pulling up to an AA meeting yesterday when Anderson Cooper announced that there was white smoke! I was worried the new Pope would appear before the meeting was over and because I am basically cured of alcoholism and don’t really need to go to meetings anymore (ask anyone) I drove home to watch.  I came in the house yelling, “Habemus Papem!” and asked Beatriz, our housekeeper,  if she wanted to come and watch with me.  Beatriz doesn’t know I know she secretly makes the sign of the cross over our children to bless them.  Come to think of it maybe she is doing it to protect herself from them.  I don’t know and either way is fine with me. Beatriz and I also watched Pope Benedict elected eight years ago.  It’s a tradition! I made Andrew come watch with us and I think he thought it was a little weird I was so nervous and excited considering we are not Catholic.  I was even more excited than Beatriz, a previously devout Catholic who hasn’t attended church in over three years because she can not forgive the church for the sexual abuse against children.

The truth is I really wish I was Catholic or Jewish or Morman or Muslim.  I yearn for the ability to put away all rational thought and embrace a belief.  I really want to belong to a group of people who know and care about my family.  I want someone who actually knows me to eulogize me when I die.  I can’t find it.  I could quite possibly put aside the Virgin Birth stuff but I can not put aside the treatment of women and gay people.  I certainly can not put aside how some so called loving Christians use the cross as a weapon, far more dangerous than any gun,  to excuse behavior and believe the stupid theory that God is on “our side”.  I have considered converting to Catholicism,  Judaism, and Mormonism, but I know that once I was in I would then spend the rest of my life trying to reform it.  I should just leave them alone.

I wish I could find a place that would take a semi-believer like me.  I believe there is a God and I believe she loves me.  The world is too wonderful and I have experienced too many miracles that I can only attribute to divine intervention to think God in some form does not exist.  The problem I have is most churches are pretty black and white with their beliefs.  I have always found God is in the gray where I don’t have to make sense of everything and it doesn’t matter that I don’t have the answers.  If you find a church like that please let me know.

Our Lady of Perpetual Embarrassment

It is official.  I am now an embarrassment to all of my children, even Addie.  Yesterday when I took her to school she told me I couldn’t walk her in because I embarrass her.  Now, I can understand if I was taking her to the public school in La Canada.  Yes, perhaps I am a bit colorful for our conservative neighborhood, but Addie goes to Waldorf School!  I am not the most embarrassing parent at Waldorf by far.  In fact I am probably known as, “poor Addie’s Mom who can’t paint, sculpt, or even felt a handbag.”  I mean really,  even the one Dad that wears a suit (I am not kidding there is only one) gets to walk his kid in to the school.

Seriously?  I’m embarrassing?

Addie:  Mom please just drop me off. You embarrass me.
            (I wasn’t even dancing or singing or anything.)

Me: Why? The other kids are letting their parents walk them in and they aren’t embarrassed.

Addie: The other kids parents are kings and queens.

Wow, I did not know that.  Poor Addie.

I want to write about all the women CEO’s in the news but I don’t have time today because I have to decorate my house for Easter and go to yoga so I will tomorrow.  I guess there is no wondering why I am not successful in business.  I will however have an opinion for you on all this no flex time leaning in stuff soon.

Also, I am really into the election of the Pope.  I am not Catholic but I still love watching an ancient rite take place in our lifetime.  I am, of course, rooting for The Reformers (huzzah!) as opposed to The Romans (boo, hiss).  If Cardinal Timothy Dolan was to be elected I might even convert.  I think he is way cool.  Although I don’t know if he believes in gay people or women, I am pretty sure he thinks sex with children is a bad idea.  Go Reformers!! Carpe Diem!!

Check in here tomorrow to get the final and only opinion you need about women in the workforce.

Ciao

Letters to DD Part Dos

I have been trying to name my new class/blog and here is what I have come up with so far:

Lilith’s Revenge
The Faded Rose
The Dangling Participle
The Pity Party
The Biddy Bash
Women Helping Ourselves to Remain Empowered or WHORE
What do you think?  Here is the rest of David’s letter dated November 23,1986.

Letter’s tLetter’s to DD

There I was slogging my way through the next days homework when…I turned the page and there was a full page publicity photo of Shirley Maclaine looking particularly gamine in a flapper costume seated on a steamer trunk! I felt like Jennifer Jones in “Song of Bernadette”.  I was witnessing my own personal legal stigmata.  Apparently the text book authors had also become hopelessly bored with the wholesale coal prices they decided to giddy things up a bit with a little foray into entertainment law.  As luck would have it we were allowed to request cases we found interesting for class recitation.  So I did and I did an in depth study and brief on the case of Parker v Twentieth Century Fox.  Fox had tried to shaft Shirley.  It was obvious.  They contracted her for the musical “Bloomer Girl” with director, script and choreographer approval rights.  Then Fox shelved the project for some reason.  Instead they decided to have her do do a western on location in Australia called “Big Country” at the same money as the musical.  Shirley sensibly realized that the two projects were completely dissimilar and refused to do the western.  She sued for her full salary under the “Bloomer Girl” contract.  Fox said she had unreasonably refused to mitigate her damages by refusing to do the western.  At this point I patiently explained to the class why the two projects were dissimilar.  The professor tried to intimate that Shirley was being childish,  After all, he said if she is such a great actress it shouldn’t make a difference whether she does a musical or a western.  They are both movies.  Luckily the California Supreme Court knew enough about the matter to realize the western was “different and inferior” employment and awarded Shirley full salary under the contract.
And the rest is history.  Once I started finding cases I could relate to I was able to get really enthused about law school. And it has proved highly advantageous to have had some life experience to bring to the study of law.  I don’t mean that it has been a breeze.  Exam times are highly stressful.  Each time they grind around I think I am going to have to seek professional counseling for the splinters on the windmill of my mind but then I get through it somehow.  I’ve even done well academically, Dean’s List and Honor Roll both times, which to my mind is a miracle on the order of loaves and fishes.
I still dance a little.  I teach at a local studio a few times a week and help out with the spring musical at the high school.  I don’t have a lot of time but I try to keep a toe in, so to speak.
Last month I entered the political arena.  I ran against four other candidates to fill a senator slot as class representative to the Student Bar Association and won!  What a hoot! Me in student government.  I have to watch myself though.  I wouldn’t want to get too colorful at meetings.  I don’t exactly blend into the woodwork as it is.  Last week they said the school was going to do a big talent show.  I can see it all now.  Thank God I sold all those costumes.
 (DeAnne’s note-  David then goes on to quote lines from the book Miss Piggy’s Guide to Life” but I am leaving that out because I doubt anyone has read it which is a pity.  I have it if you want to borrow it.)
Merry Christmas,
DD

New Class

My post last week, Scaling Down,  seemed to touch a nerve with some of you women folk.  It turns out I am not the only person with body issues.  Who knew? We are the one of the fattest nations in the world and we have more diet, weight loss programs, and fat free foods than any nation as well.  What is wrong with this picture?  To my untrained unscientific eye it would appear that there is no connection between diet obsession and weight loss. I am not seeing a real connection between diet obsession and positive self image either.  So, this along with your comments,  started me thinking (uh oh).  We women of a certain age have been sold a bill of goods.  This we know.  What most of us don’t know is what to do about it.  How do we stay healthy, take care of our children, take care of our parents and freaking age with some modicum of grace?  We are going to live much longer than we thought.  Think about it.  When we were kids (those of us born in the 60’s and earlier) people died at around 65.  Now that is considered really young to give up the mortal coil.  We need to reevaluate  some things here or we will all be ninety-year-olds  propped up on the couch unable to move as our Great Grandchildren self levitate past us and we are thinking, WTF?

I am starting a class probably on Thursday nights.  We will move, learn something, have tea and discuss.  I will use my fitness and dance background to lead a fun movement and stretching program that will be suitable for any age and fitness level.  If you are in peak form you can just go crazy.  If you are one more cookie or year shy of sitting on the couch unable to move you will be able to do this too.  I will teach you what I am learning about aging, women’s health, and how to weed through all the junk out there and incorporate things that really work for us. Then we will have some tea and talk for a bit.  So many of us have no idea how our bodies work and so so few of us have a support system. There will be no fee for the class as I work out the kinks and practice on you.  Eventually I will charge on a sliding scale but no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

If you are in the Pasadena area and would like to attend please e-mail me at deanne@pobox.com.  If you can’t attend but would like to keep abreast (so to speak) of what we are doing email me and let me know.  I am very excited about this.  Let’s change things!

Hug Your Kids

A kid committed suicide by jumping off the library roof at La Canada High School this afternoon.  I drove Sofie and her friends over to the school because they wanted to find out who it was.  They don’t know yet and they are all hanging out together at McDonalds trying to figure this out.  I am heartsick for the parents and family of this boy.  I can’t believe it was just a little over a year ago when I was at UCLA with Sofie having her evaluated as a suicide risk.  I thank God she was able to accept help.

Talk to your kids tonight.  Make sure they are ok.  Give them a big hug and tell them you love them.  There is a family here in La Canada that will not have that ability tonight.  God Bless them.

Scaling Down

Here is what I want you to do.  Go into your bathroom and get your scale.  Then take it outside and either put it in the trash or the “to donate” pile.  I’ll wait.

Finished?  Yes!!  Welcome to the Scale Free Club. Now hopefully you didn’t do it like I did and walk naked into the driveway and hurl it into the street. After the police left, assured by my husband they should let me stay home to “rest”,  I decided  having a scale serves absolutely no good purpose whatsoever and I am through letting some stupid little piece of equipment dictate my mood.  (I am talking about the scale not my daughter.)

Last year I started doing Bikram, training for the Avon Walk, and casually and I mean casually following Weight Watchers.  I was not in the least food focused and I lost a whole bunch of weight.  More importantly I felt great.  Not only that,  I actually felt like I looked great.  Cut to now- still going to Bikram but my food portions are starting to resemble plates from Land of The Giants.  I signed up at Weight Watchers and began weighing myself everyday and obsessing about weight loss instead of just paying attention to what I ate and exercising like I did before.  I was becoming very unhappy.  Even if I felt good in the morning if the scale didn’t reflect a significant weight change I was depressed.  Hence the terrible naked scene in the driveway.  I will interject and say I think Weight Watchers is a very good program and is pretty easy to follow.  I just got all weird about the numbers on the scale.

After all,  what can a scale tell me I don’t already know?  If I gain weight my clothes and my kids tell me.   If I am exercising and feeling good it does not, for obvious reasons, behoove me to check and see if I’ve lost weight anyway.  Staying happy about how I look is way more mental than it is physical.  It seems as if a recent study even agrees with me.  It shows that after two weeks of exercising the participants had a much improved body image even without weight or body shape changes.  http://hpq.sagepub.com/content/18/1/110

 So, join me.  If you didn’t do so when I told you to the first time get rid of the scale now!  I am not a doctor* but my advise is: Let’s take care of ourselves by eating good food and doing physical exercise we like and get on with enjoying our lives.  Being a healthy happy person can not be achieved through shame or feeling bad about yourself.  Pick someone else to feel bad for- like Republicans.

* But I have played one on TV as well as a nurse, bank teller, and stripper among others.

Letter’s to DD
Madrid 1981 I’m in the pink (literally)

In 1980 I moved to Madrid to rehearse and perform in a show at the Hotel Melia Castilla. We were the first cast of this still running company and because they were behind schedule the theater wasn’t finished when we began rehearsing.  They were building the theater during the day so we had to rehearse from 8pm-4am every night.  It made for some very interesting times as the multi functional stage which included various elevators, stair cases, fountains, and skating rinks all had to have the kinks worked out.  It was winter so it was cold, but it got better when they finally got the roof finished.  At least it kept the snow out.  I was one of only four American’s in the show and we all lived together in an apartment at 347 (that’s tres, quarente-siete) Bravo Murillo.  It was a life changing experience for me.  It formed my work ethic, my way of looking at the world and most of all my humor.   I was highly influenced by these much much much older and experienced roommates who I love to this day.  (who? whom?)

Roommate Linda returned to the States and after a few more years dancing returned to law school and became an attorney.  David returned from Europe a few years later and became an attorney as well.  I think both of them got tired of being pulled through too many contractual loop holes over the years.  Roommate John is the Artistic Director of the Diamond Head Theater in Honolulu.  I was fortunate to spend a very formative twenty first year with three of the smartest funniest people I have ever met.  
David died of complications from AIDS over twenty years ago and I still think of him almost every day. The following is an excerpt from one of the many letters David sent to me after I left Madrid.  I am compiling a book of our correspondence for John and Linda and I wanted to share a bit so you could know DD (David) too.  
November 23, 1986
East Lansing, Michigan
Let’s just avoid a lot of argument and admit that this is, after all, just another Christmas Letter.  This is my second attempt at penning this missive.  The muse who accompanied me through the birth process of last year’s edition has been conspicuously absent around here lately.  I’m sure it has everything to do with the new, boring and jurisprudent persona I am now in the throes of acquiring.  Surely it could have nothing to do with the fact that I wrote last years effort while nibbling croissants and guzzling vin rouge as I contemplated the continental panorama from my charming Parisian Garret window.  While in contrast I am now searching in vain for a flash of inspiration among the parked cars of my midwestern condo parking lot as the thermometer takes a nose dive toward Wuthering Heights.  Is it any wonder the Bronte girls couldn’t come up with any good musical comedies?
Linda and David  Principal Dancers Scala 1981
I’m in the pink -always

When last we spoke I had just decide to take the GREAT CAREER PLUNGE… well I did it.  And came up spluttering.  What a brutal awakening!  What a cold shower of reality.  For the first month of school I felt like an out of place toucan that had mistakenly been swept up in the migration pattern of a flock of barn swallows.  Instead of the Amazon jungles of my natural habitat I found myself perched in a chair in a climate- controlled lecture hall with numbered seats, 1-160.  An intimate room grouping.  And I was surrounded, not by colorful show folk chattering away in their many native tongues, but by real average people all bundled up against the winter cold and all speaking English.  As you can imagine I was reeling from the shock when the enormity of what I had done began to set in.  And the homework!  I who had not cracked so much as a Time magazine in ten years now had to write something called briefs (written, not apparel) about contracts for bushels of wheat and reluctant tomato farmers and boxcars of coal at wholesale prices.  Week after endless week until I reached my own little, “Turning Point” and wouldn’t you know, Shirley Maclaine was responsible.

To Be Continued…  I will be happy to post more if ya’ll are interested.