Category Archives: Life

I Need a Nap

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I need a nap and I’m unable to take one. There’s nothing external that is preventing me from catching a few proverbial winks. It’s all psychological. I know it. And it all started in Tiny Tots.

 

I loved school the minute I entered the classroom sporting my Buster Brown hairdo. Here I am with Mom around that time modeling our almost-identical outfits. Mom made the pants. (Is anyone else having a Brady Bunch fashion nightmare flashback? Um, yeah.

The only thing I didn’t like about school was the mandatory nap time. I wanted to play! I wanted to draw! (I didn’t like finger-painting because it was messy. Eww.) I didn’t come to school to sleep, but sleep was what I was supposed to do, right after the milk and stale Graham crackers. While some kids were peacefully sleeping and others were pinching or punching each other, I was staring at the ceiling, wide awake, counting the minutes until this nonsense was over.

This inability to nap has followed me into adulthood. The only time I can sleep during daylight is (a) if I’m really sick, or (b) if I’m really hung over. And since I haven’t had a hang over in well over a decade, that option is really out. I know there are supposedly all kinds of benefits to napping: increased productivity, better memory, reduction in stress and less overall crankiness around one and all. I have friends who are prolific nappers and I’m thrilled to bits for them. Truly, I am. I bet they are such smart, productive, calm, fun people to be around. I’d know for sure if I wasn’t so sleepy and cranky all the time and actually left my house to visit them.

I decided to look for inspiration from my favorite humorist, Robert Benchley. He wrote and starred in many comedy shorts in the 1930s and early 1940s and his How to Sleep won an Oscar in 1936. I knew I could count on ‘ol Bob. He wouldn’t let me down. Well, the results were decidedly mixed. He failed at the task of actually helping me fall asleep but he succeeded as he always does, at making me laugh.

I tried listening to ocean sounds, but that reminded me of sand and sand is dirty and dangerous. My mother, who thought that all San Francisco beaches were littered with hypodermic needles and other disgusting things, drummed this belief into my head. So, ocean sounds. Not that restful.

I experimented with eye masks and earplugs to no avail. Maybe it’s just me but rendering myself blind and deaf is not conducive to restful sleep. It sounds like a plot to a really bad slasher movie. Besides, the earplugs amplified the sound of my heart beating into my ears and that made me think of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. Boom-boom. Boom-boom. So not helping.

So, I sit here yawning and watching the bags under my eyes turn into matching luggage while my cat Bella sleeps. It’s in moments like these where being a human with human problems is highly overrated. In my next life, I want to come back as a pampered cat. Maybe I’ll finally get some rest.

Splitting Hairs?

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I think I’m a “hairpocrite”. I have coined this term by combining the words “hair” and “hypocrite”. I think it has a resonant ring to it, don’t you? Maybe I should trademark it or something. Hmm…

You may be asking yourself what I mean by “hairpocrite”. Well, my inquisitive readers, I will tell you. My “hairpocrisy” started the day I noticed gray hairs spouting from my scalp. This was perhaps 10 years ago, while I was in my mid-30s. They weren’t too noticeable at first, just a little shimmer when light would hit them just right.

I was already getting highlights in my hair occasionally and one day my stylist, Annabelle, said, “You know, the gray is starting to come in, do you want to cover it or let it go?” Without a blink of hesitation I said, “Make it go away.” This was the exact opposite thing I told my mother about 25 years earlier when she started to go gray.

My mother has beautiful, thick, curly Sicilian hair. If she doesn’t blow dry it, the kinky curls take over. When I was about 10, Mom asked me if she should color her hair to hide the gray. I adamantly said, “Absolutely not, Mom! It’s unnatural to color your hair. Look at some of those old ladies at church with jet black hair, pretending that they’re young. They look like freaks!”

So, Mom let the gray come in and it is lovely. She has the classic “salt and pepper” thing going on with her hair. Luckily, it didn’t come in all in one spot, like the middle of her scalp, rendering her a human Pepe Le Pew.

I didn’t even consider keeping the gray when it happened to me and I think I know why. One of the parts of my appearance that I’ve always appreciated has been my hair. Yes, I’ve wished for it to be less big. (Remember my recent relaxing experiment? A total fail, by the way.) All in all, though, I have great hair. When the gray started making its presence known, I felt like I was losing one of the things I really liked about myself and I couldn’t let that happen.

I “should” be able to look into the mirror and be evolved enough to love myself as I am, gray hair and all. That’s what all the self-help talking heads tell us, right? Maybe one day I will, but today isn’t that day. Call me vain, immature or yes, even a “hairpocrite”. But as Rhett Butler said to Scarlett O’Hara:

Let’s Get Physical

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If you now have Olivia Newton-John in your head with the title of this post, you’re welcome. However, the “getting physical” I’m talking about is physical therapy. Yesterday I had my first appointment for my back and leg pain. My impression after the first session: Man, do I feel stiff and old!

 

Tara, the physical therapist, is a lovely young girl, very attractive in a pixie-like way. After jotting down notes on my injury and medical history, we started in with the work. She tested my strength in both legs and determined that while my legs are strong overall, my quads and calves are weak. (I think I heard them gasp in an offended manner.) Additionally, my right hip is more rigid than the left. (Insert political analogy here.)

My shoulders are tight and sore and can tend to round. All of that tightness doesn’t help the rest of my back. And I sure as hell don’t want to end up looking like a female version of this:

She ran me through a series of exercises and stretches to help with the strengthening of my core and my other muscles. As someone who grew up playing sports, I have to admit that I felt like a wimp. I struggled with things I didn’t think I would. The competitive little voice in my head did not like this one bit.

I have been pretty lucky with my body up until this injury. With the way that I have either ignored it or abused it over the years, it’s amazing that it’s held up. I’m trying to look at things philosophically. If I hadn’t had to take time off to care for my mother, perhaps I wouldn’t have hurt myself. If I hadn’t hurt myself and been unable to return to work as scheduled, I wouldn’t have lost my job. If I hadn’t lost my job, I wouldn’t have taken the time to focus on getting my body physically well and strong.

It would be easy for me to look at a lot of what’s happened this year and feel like a victim. And there are some days when the Bobbsey Twins of Despair, Angst and Woe, settle in and won’t leave. They sit on the sofa and bitch and moan and basically make nuisances out of themselves. I let them vent and then eventually they leave.

I then try to remember that I do believe that there is order to the universe and to our lives, despite the times when everything seems chaotic and random. I’m not sure about many things, but I do believe that. Besides, if I thought that there was no reason for anything and that life was purely random, why in the hell would I bother to get up in the morning? I mean, really.

So, I will dutifully do my exercises and stretches twice a day and be ready for my next appointment on Friday. I did notice the Pilates machine yesterday and I couldn’t get over how much it looked like a medieval torture rack. I may not believe in accidents, but I do believe in irony.

Pilates machine

 

 

 

 

The Rack

Wait! It’s Not Perfect Yet!

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Sometimes I think that I have a split personality. Now before any of you can say, “Ha! That explains it!”, I’m not talking Joanne Woodward in a Three Faces of Eve kind of way. What I mean is, I seem to have two competing natures: perfection versus procrastination. This battle occurs in almost every area of my life.

For some reason I didn’t notice this as much when I was a kid. Don’t get me wrong. I was always a perfectionist but I wasn’t always a procrastinator. I was one of those kids who did all the homework due on Monday by Friday night. I finished book reports and projects days or weeks before they needed to be handed in. The only time I ever ran up against a deadline was if the teacher assigned the dreaded “group” project.

Group projects are the bane of a perfectionist’s existence because you have to rely on someone else to hold up his or her end of the project and your grade is linked to his or her efforts in addition to your own. Needless to say, I HATED group projects. Then, as now, I prefer all of the credit or all of the blame. I’m both a Leo and an only child, so I think this makes perfect sense.

I attended a very rigorous high school so I had to stay on top of my studies to maintain a B average (in everything but math and science, that is.) Thanks to the difficulty of my curriculum, college was much easier and this was when procrastination entered my life. I discovered that I could maintain a mostly straight-A average even with waiting until the last minute to complete assignments. As a consequence, I considered my graduating magna cum laude as not a major accomplishment. In fact, I’d tell myself that if I had attended a “better” college, I couldn’t have done that. Ah, well. Masochism is a topic for another post and another day.

Let’s get back to perfection versus procrastination, shall we? Take this blog for example. I’d talked about starting it for a good year before I actually launched it at the end of July. I made list upon list about possible category headings, color scheme, font style, etc. I finally picked a blog theme that I thought was going to be easy to manipulate, but it wasn’t. I got overwhelmed and then inertia set in. Since I couldn’t get it to look “perfect”, I wouldn’t do it at all. I operated under this assumption for a year. My perfection fed into my procrastination.

What changed? Well, it was something that a friend on Twitter said to me in a direct message. While I was angsting over not having the ability to create the look I wanted, she simply said, “As a reader, I’ve never paid attention to a blog’s design. Content is all, no?” I respect this person’s opinion immensely so I took it to heart.

So, I was able to let go of the perfection around the look of the blog. At some point in the future, I may ask a professional to make it look “spiffier” but for right now, I’m satisfied. I reserve all my blog-related perfection for the content and I hope that on the whole, I’ve done a good job. Now, if I could only stop procrastinating about getting rid of clutter, exercising, reading all the major works of literature…

Dream a Little Dream

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I don’t dream. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. I don’t often remember my dreams and when I do, they would be better off forgotten. My dreams fall into two basic categories: school dreams/nightmares and “Odd Couple” dreams (and no, I’m not in REM sleep with Tony Randall and Jack Klugman, thank goodness). Let’s look at these categories, one by one, shall we?

School Dreams/Nightmares: The other night I had one of the nondescript “Kelly is back in college” dreams. These dreams usually center on me realizing that I’m way out of practice when it comes to studying and time management. There is some stress in the dream but nothing too overwhelming. Just the general feeling of being the proverbial fish out of water.

The nightmare version involves me on the verge of graduation only to be informed that I have one more math class to take. Math has been my nemesis my entire life (thank you, Sister Mary, First Grade nun from Hell) and I always lived in fear that one last math requirement would crop up. This nightmare started just before graduation and has continued sporadically in the decades since.

“Odd Couple” Dreams: These are the kinds of dreams in which people you would never pare together show up. Most often I wake up from one of these dreams shaking my head and asking, “What the hell was that about?” They are just weird and almost always amusing. Take for example one dream I had involving my grandmother and Pee Wee Herman doing the lambada. My grandmother used to do the Irish jig on St. Patrick’s Day and we know all about Pee Wee’s dance moves:

Tequila Dance

What always disappoints me is that I’m never coupled with some hottie in my dreams. Didn’t Freud say dreams were wish fulfillment? Well, Siggy, I sure have lots of unfulfilled wishes, buddy boy.  And those wishes certainly don’t include Pee Wee Herman, my grandmother or school.

I’m glad that I don’t have scary dreams where I’m chased or tormented. Nan and Pee Wee is traumatizing enough. If, however, I do have to be chased or tormented in dreams, feel free to send any of the following to do the deed.

 

 

Sofia Vergara

 

 

 

 

 

Salma Hayek

 

 

 

 

 

Charlize Theron

 

 

 (Yawn.) Gee, I’m getting really sleepy all of a sudden. Maybe I should try to take a little nap…

Prepare Yourself

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The scout’s motto is “Be Prepared”. Well, I’d be a horrible scout and not just because I recoil from group activities and the great outdoors. I would suck at scouting because I’m ill prepared. I don’t mean that my checkbook is overdrawn or that I fail to pay my bills. No, I’m talking about preparation for natural disasters. I can’t even find a flashlight at the moment.

While watching Hurricane Irene prowl up the East Coast, I was reminded once again that I have no plan or preparations in the event of an earthquake. Yes, you heard me correctly. I, Kelly Reiterman, a native Californian and 4th generation San Franciscan, no less, have no earthquake plan. It’s my sense that transplants to California do seem to have a plan and all the gear ready. It’s those of us who grew up feeling earthquake after earthquake who aren’t prepared.

My grandmother was nine years old when the 1906 earthquake and fire hit and burned her family out of their flat on Clementina Street in the South of Market neighborhood of San Francisco. She was understandably terrified of earthquakes for the rest of her life but not enough to prepare for the next one. Her preparation consisted of praying at her home altar.

Little earthquakes happen all the time. You learn to discern between one that “shakes” and one that “rolls” and you’re just not fazed by them. If you were, you’d be on anti-anxiety drugs all the time. Sometimes, though, when an earthquake lasts a little longer than usual, a native has a conversation with himself or herself. It goes something like this:

Native
I wonder if I should get up and go under the door frame.
(beat)
Wait. Didn’t I hear that we shouldn’t go under
door frames any more? I wish they’d make up their minds.

And before the dilemma can be resolved, the earthquake is over and the native goes back to what he or she was doing before.

I didn’t feel the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake because I was on a bus rounding a corner downtown (not too far from good old Clementina Street) and with the usual bus shaking, there was no way to tell an earthquake had happened. That is, not until I got up to Market Street and saw hunks of buildings in the street.

I did feel the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles. I was shaken awake in my little studio apartment in West Hollywood and it wasn’t from my neighbor’s Madonna CD. I heard wine glasses falling in the kitchen area and I do remember saying out loud, “This can stop now!” Yet even after that, I never thought of preparing myself for “The Big One”.

I’m now thinking about getting more prepared. I’ve been scouring websites that offer earthquake survival kits and comparing them. I’ve gotten as far as this:

Kelly
Hmm. This one has a whistle but no wrench. Do I need a whistle?
(beat)
Dammit! Why didn’t I ever learn to whistle?!

Scoff if you must, but at least it’s a start. Hell, I even found my flashlight! Now all I have to do is find batteries…

Gratitude

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Gratitude isn’t second nature to me. My tendency is to focus on what’s wrong or missing and not on what’s right and what I already have. I’m not proud of this and it’s something that I’m trying to change, but it’s not always easy. Some of you know that this year has been a bit challenging for me. My mother had major back surgery that I helped her through. I subsequently hurt my back and lost my job. I’ve often felt like I was living in a depressing country song, without the big hair and sequins, that is.

While I realize that there are many people in extremely dire and depressing situations all over the world, our personal stuff is our stuff, after all, and it’s important. That’s why the news yesterday about my mother’s back was so welcome.

The surgeon wanted her to go for a CT scan in order to really see how her spine was fusing. Her recovery has been excellent so far. The debilitating spasms have disappeared and other pains have diminished and at age 78, she has her life back. And yes, I have been grateful for her renewed lease on life. However, I’ve still been operating in crisis management mode, monitoring practically each and every move she makes to make sure she’s not doing too much and worrying over every single thing. It’s exhausting for me and I know it’s annoying to her. This little coping strategy of mine hasn’t been conducive to slowing down for a little gratitude.

So, she went for the scan and the results couldn’t have been better. Her spine is completely fused less than seven months after surgery. This is amazing. Part of this is due to some innovative techniques by her surgeon. The other part of it is due to my mother.

She has survived more than her fair share of health issues and traumas throughout her life and she never gives up. She wants to live more than anyone I know and she puts in the work to get better. I, on the other hand, can brood about my birthday and feel that all my chances for happiness are behind me. (I know. Overly dramatic, much? I am a Leo, after all.)

Hearing that she has recovered faster and more completely than some patients half her age gave me pause. How can I not live each day fully and embrace life’s journey after watching my mother this past seven months? Without even realizing it, I became filled with gratitude, not only for her brilliant surgeon and other doctors, but also for her. I’ve always been proud to be her daughter. I’m even more grateful that she’s my mother.

What Fresh Hell is This?

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Today is my birthday and I share it with Dorothy Parker, the writer who asked the question that titles this post. I don’t know if the “fresh Hell” to which she was referring was birthdays, but it usually is in my book. I have a love/hate relationship with my birthday. Yes, I’m grateful to be alive and all that, but birthdays have had a negative connotation for me for a while now.

Birthdays, like New Year’s Eve (another occasion I dislike), offer an opportunity to gaze back on the year that has passed and take stock. You know, relive the fun things you did, the places you’ve been, and the goals that you accomplished. This might be a fun and fulfilling exercise if the past year has been full of merriment and mastery. When it hasn’t, well, stay away from the Sylvia Plath poetry and hot ovens.

Aside from the lack of fun, travel and success, there is always the age issue. I can, and do, take solace in the fact that people often don’t believe me when I tell them my age. (In case you’re keeping score at home, I’m now 46.) Who doesn’t want to look younger, aside from a kid with a fake I.D., right? However, there are benchmarks we all assume that we’ll meet by certain ages. For some, it’s marriage or kids by a certain age and for others, it’s a career goal.

I’ve met none of the benchmarks I imagined when I was looking forward to the future 20 or 30 years ago. The ominous “tick, tick tick” of my non-biological clock grows louder every year. I see so many roads not taken and chances missed. I worry that my window of opportunity has closed or at least is closing very quickly.

I give lip service to believing in some metaphysical concepts like everything happening for a reason and in its own time, etc., but what if life is random and as the saying goes, “You snooze, you lose”? What if my “best” days are behind me? What do I do then? Do I just stay in my pajamas all day and watch bad television? Do I listen to The Smiths over and over again? Or, do I do something else?

The first thing I decided to do was see what other people born on August 22nd (aside from dear Dorothy), had to say. You know, maybe there’s some wisdom I can take from them. First on the list was science fiction writer Ray Bradbury. Sci-Fi really isn’t my thing, but hell, it’s worth a try. You’re on, Ray.

Ray Bradbury: “If you don’t like what you’re doing, then don’t do it.”

Pithy, yet profound. But, can it really be that simple? Hmm. Let’s see what blues great John Lee Hooker thinks. I met him once back in the mid-1980s when I interned at a radio station. Okay, John Lee. Hit me.

John Lee Hooker: “I don’t do nothing I don’t want to do.”

Am I sensing a theme here, fellas? I get it. Only do what makes me happy. A tad esoteric, but that’s okay. I think Boston Red Sox legend Carl Yastrzemski summed up life and the big questions that plague us just right. He was referring to baseball, but it fits this little discussion. Okay, Yaz. You’re up.

Carl Yastrzemski: “This game is strange.”

Yes it is, Yaz. Yes, it is. But it’s the only game I have, so I guess it’s time to suit up and play.

Keep the PJs on the QT

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Even though I sometimes think I am, I’m really not that old. I’m turning 46 a week from today. But, there are times like this morning when I feel old. No, it wasn’t because of an achy back or shoulders that felt as hard as Jillian Michael’s abs. (Not that I’d know anything about her abs personally.) I felt old because of flannel pajamas. These were not my flannel pajamas, mind you. They were on a woman going into Walgreen’s yesterday morning. Yes, you heard that right. A GROWN WOMAN THOUGHT IT WAS OKAY TO WEAR HER PAJAMAS IN PUBLIC.

When did this become okay? I’ve never been so tired, hung over or lazy to feel that being seen in public in sleepy-time plaid was appropriate. As I watched Van Winkle (my nickname for our Walgreen’s shopper) lock her car door and walk slowly into the store, a couple of questions popped into my mind:

1.     Did she think these were actual pants and not pajamas? If that’s the case, I shudder at the thought of what she thinks is “appropriate work attire”.

2.     Did she not think anyone would notice? How do you convince yourself to leave the house in your pajamas? I imagine the conversation with herself would go something like this:

 “It’s early. There probably won’t be anyone out.” (It was 9 A.M., at a mall, just outside San Francisco. It’s not like she was in Amish country without a horse and buggy.)

“So what if I’m in my pajamas? You know what passes for clothing at the Pride parade. At least I’m not bare-assed in chaps!” (Pride is in June in San Francisco. This is Daly City in August. There is no rainbow flag and you, honey, are not a leather man.)

 3.     Did she not have anyone in her life who could dissuade her? If I ever even momentarily toyed with the idea of “SWP” (aka, “Shopping While PJ’d”), one of the following people would have shamed me out of it:

Mother: This is a woman who once designed an outfit around underwear and had to buy everything else to match and coordinate. Do you think she’d let me out of the house in my pajamas? Not even if I was wearing matching slippers, I’ll tell you that!

Gay Male Friend: Many women, straight or gay, have or have had gay men in their lives. And these men would never let you out of the house in pajamas, especially flannel. There are some lesbian friends who might. (Insert “lesbian wearing flannel joke” HERE.) I can hear the voice of a friend from college named Freddie right now: “Girl, don’t even think about it. Those pajamas make my eyebrows hurt. Get back in the damn house and change!”

I was tempted to follow Van Winkle around Walgreen’s and observe her to see if she exhibited any other signs of inappropriate behavior. I decided against it because (a) That’s kind of stalkerish and it would be embarrassing to be arrested for stalking someone wearing pajamas in public; and (b) I looked down and noticed her feet. She was wearing flip-flops. This is another pet peeve. Unless you’re going to the beach, put some damn shoes on.

So, I lost sight of Van Winkle and waited in line in the pharmacy department. In front of me was a woman with actual pants on. All is not lost! There is hope for civilization! But then, I noticed her feet. She was wearing slippers. Nooooooo! But you know what was even worse? They totally clashed with her pants. Oh, the humanity!

Straighten Up and Fly Right

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Today I’m getting my hair straightened. Yes, this girl who is so pale that the glare off her skin blinds small children, needs to make her hair calm the hell down. For those of you who haven’t met me in person, I don’t have curly locks that are wayward and unruly. I have VERY thick, straight hair that can frizz and look like a mushroom on top of my shoulders. I didn’t inherit my mother’s Sicilian skin tone or hair texture.

When I was getting my hair cut and colored last weekend, my stylist, Annabelle, suggested the straightening idea as she listened to my lament about my hair overwhelming my face. Even though my hair is in a chin-length bob, sometimes I feel like a weird cross between Cousin Itt from The Addams Family and Gilda Radner’s character from Saturday Night Live, Roseanne Roseannadanna.

I’m hoping this treatment works because I really like my hairstyle a lot. In the past, in order to avoid the mushroom cloud, my hair had to be past my shoulders so the weight of it deflated the mushroom. Think feathered, brunette Farrah hair and you’ll know what my prom pictures looked like in the early 80s. I don’t want to grow my hair longer because (a) After 45, long hair usually makes you look older; and (b) It’s too much work and I have the patience of a gnat on crack.

The other option is to cut it short. I had short hair from the 1990s until a couple of years ago. It’s easy and cute and I may go back to it someday. But, there’s something about a chin-length bob that I like. Maybe it’s the sleek, sexy quality of the cut. What girl doesn’t like sleek and sexy, right?

In life, we all have to make the best of what we have. We play up our best features and play down our less desirable ones. I will never be tall and have legs that seem to go on for days. But I do have good hair that just needs a little taming, that’s all. Wait. I now have the image of my stylist with a whip in one hand and a chair in the other taming my mane. Oy.