Second Chances …

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If people would listen to Jack, life would be so much easier.

So much easier.

 

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Just So You Know …

 

🙂

 

 

Everybody Has a Little Jack in Them

 

Image courtesy of StatusShuffle.com

 

Apparently he thinks I’m like Jack.

 

Jack is back … Are you ready?

 

And you know what?

Sometimes I am.

Although I may need a little more than 24 hours to save the day and a lot of chocolate to celebrate.

Things get rough and tough, whether you’re married, or divorced. Parent or living single. I’ve learned that everybody has a struggle. Everybody has something in their life that challenges their patience, their zen-like state of mind, and their road to happiness. Everyone has something that will eventually burn them out. I know something pops up for me at least once a week.

But I think I’ve found it.

Perspective. Sometimes I lose it.

Yeah it’s gone missing a couple of times during road rage, relationship disasters, and personal crises. Writer’s block attacking you when you’ve only got an hour to spare, mother reminding you of things you just can’t bear, rejection letters piling in, anti-aging creams that are just not working,  kids that love you but don’t listen, and student loans that don’t seem to be shrinking. All this burns me out, but it doesn’t completely ruin my day anymore. I don’t know if I’ve developed a thicker skin. I’d like to think that I’ve just managed to find my Jack Bauer.

Yeah … I eventually have a light-bulb moment and it comes back to me.

I’ve found a routine that’s helped me uncover it … helped me find my hidden Jack Bauer. Normally it takes a triathlon or climbing 1,400 stairs to ignite this bad-ass nature but I can still capture that feeling without running a race or achieving a Bucket List Adventure.

Through my hour of power in the morning, which includes a Rocky Balboa type of work out minus the raw eggs of course, thoughts on gratitude although on days when everything blows up I’m just grateful that I have clean underwear, and my pump-it-up jams which often include 80s music and Pharrell Williams, and my meditation challenges in the evening which at times lead to a snooze fests in mid session because I’m not as Zen as I’d like to think, just exhausted. With all of these steps I’ve managed to improve my outlook in the last couple of months.

I’ve managed to find my inner Jack Bauer. My badass.

Dude … everybody has a little Jack in them.You just have to remember to let him out.

Jack is back.

 

 

Kiefer Sutherland Drawing Out My Road Map

I’ve said it before … I hate it when people say “…everything happens for a reason…” but ever since I saw Kiefer about two months ago I’ve learned to hate it a little less. I didn’t believe that “everything happened for a reason,” I thought it was bullshit … until Kiefer touched me.

Yeah he touched me … in his Kiefer way.

No…not in that way. In a philosophical-Nietzsche-blind-faith kind of way.

He’s awesome at connecting the dots of the universe with his emotionally challenged son, Jake, in his new show Touch. It’s a story about the relationship between a son and a father… and how they communicate.

The premise: “Our lives are invisibly tied to those whose destinies touch ours.”

Dude.

Pretty deep, and I really don’t get deep in this blog. But it’s Kiefer and The Guat can get deep. 

I know it’s just a TV show, but sometimes shows are so awesome they change your perspective by sheer entertainment and good writing. Hot actors  too. I’m not going to lie.  Hot actors definitely help. Just like LOST, 24, The Sopranos, Sons of Anarchy, or Mad Men. Maybe there wasn’t anybody too hot in the Sopranos, but it was just a good show.

Kiefer changed my perspective once before in my first Kiefer post: I Don’t Believe Everything Happens for a Reason Unless Kiefer Sutherland is Involved, and now he did it again.  It’s Kiefer.

Serendipitous moments creating a chain reaction of events sometimes called fate. Coincidence. Some people call it coincidence … yeah I guess that’s true … in some cases being forced to make a right turn because there’s construction blocking your path, just means you’re making a right. Don’t get all crazy.

But if you see the same construction worker three different times in three random locations, the universe is trying to tell you something stupid. Other than stalker possibilities, watch out, Kiefer may be in the mix, trying to gear you in the right direction.

There are no coincidences with Kiefer. Things lead up to something. A road map. This is what happens in Kiefer’s new show.

I hadn’t thought about it before, but I’d like to think of it as a road map, instead of those “everything happens for a reason” words. Destiny Road Map sounds better … sounds like something Tony Robbins would say. But Kiefer drew this one out for me.

 So I take it that all the writer rejections will lead up to something somewhere. I mean I’ll keep writing, it’s their job to read it and say yes or no, that’s what they do. It’s just my job to put it out there. 

I take it that this temporary living situation at my parent’s will give me an aha-moment soon. 

I take it that all the weariness, gray hair, and tired-struggles of a 35-year-old Guat staying afloat with two kids and trying to take showers on a daily basis led up to this mother-and-son moment:

I’m weary, I’m on four-hours of sleep. I haven’t worked out. I’m not too thrilled about playing monster trucks for the 247th time. I’m not too thrilled about being in the heat, playing construction site with my son for the 248th time. Then he turns to look at me: “I’m glad you’re my mom.”

Dude.

I don’t know if that would have happened if I wasn’t in my parents’ back yard. Maybe…maybe

But that was the road map for the day.

 

The Cat Burglar’s Demise

I thought of myself as a great dog owner. Walked the dog three times a day, fed her food infused with glucosamine, gave her baths, bought her Greenies for a fresh breath, and bought her toys. Toys for crying out loud. I barely had toys growing up. I had to play with sticks and rocks, and here I was buying my dog a toy. But I did it for good reason. I figured I would rather have her chew on her toy instead of my couch or shoes. But when the toy fell apart on the first day…what was I to do?

Fat Cat Inc. — The Cat Burglar

Just throw it in the trash?

Dude.

Times were tough back then…they still are. So I wrote one of my letters in hopes for a coupon or something. But these Fat Cat Inc. Toy People stepped it up a notch….

Dear Fat Cat Inc,

Honestly, I was cracking up in aisle four of PetCo when I saw the Cat Burglar. It reminded of a cartoon character you would have seen on Looney Tunes or something. So I just had to have it!  I knew my dog would love it. She’s funny, like me.

Pinta, my wonderful, clumsy, zany, and beautiful Dalmatian enjoyed it so much on the first day (literally the first couple of hours) that his limbs had been severed and were later found under her doggie bed. A CSI investigation found his right leg a few feet away, next to the KONG rubber toy.

Triple stitching??? Your description says triple stitching and heavy-duty canvas. Are you sure about that? Because the Cat Burglar’s “maximum flop ability” was tested, and he failed miserably. We tried to fix him STAT! But alas, Pinta’s enthusiasm for the Cat Burglar was better than my novice sewing skills. I mean really, who sews now a days? Don’t you just ask mom or grandma? Or take it to the dry cleaners?

Anyhow she squeaked the life out of it and enjoyed doing so. It was just too bad that she didn’t get pleasure from it long enough. She didn’t have toys before we got her and maybe that’s why she was so excited to get one, which resulted in the Cat Burglar’s demise. You know she was like that kid in your building…the one that never gets any toys and then he finds an old discarded Happy Meal with the toy still in it and he’s on top of the world. That was Pinta.

She’d been rescued from the pound. But we’ve known her since she was a puppy. Confused? Let me explain.

You see, my husband’s had her since birth and since he lived with his parents prior to our nuptials Pinta was staying over there. But  once we tied the knot, he moved out, leaving her behind. We wanted to get settled and thought it would only take about two weeks to get everything organized before we could bring her to live with us.

My church going in-laws had a different opinion. Apparently they felt the need to drop Pinta off at the pound without informing us. They felt that their house, which had a front and back yard was not big enough for her. Apparently they felt the need to get chickens. Chickens in the inner city…Well because of these inner-city chickens, our dog had been imprisoned like a felon and I had to drive down to the other side of town to bail her out. I felt horrified and mortified.

I drove down there and found her in a cell about the same size as our coffee table, sharing her space with a smelly, filthy, white fuzzy dog. I told the officer dog guy that’s her. That’s my dog.

The embarrassing part was that I could not tell the Dog Pound People that she was originally my dog. Apparently if we adopted her it would only cost eighty something dollars, but if we said we were the owners and wanted her back, we would have to shell out one-hundred and thirty-six bucks. Punishment I guess for abandonment. But since I was innocent I felt the need to pay the lesser fine.

So there I was trying my best to pretend I didn’t know Pinta, meanwhile there she was smiling and wagging her tail. The sheriff or Dog police was pretty amusing. He said he had never seen this dog take to anybody the way she did with me, but that I had to be careful because they didn’t have any background information on her. She was just dropped off. Owner Surrender is what her file said.

What’s worse was that I was considered a “hero” for adopting a dog. They take pictures of these heroes. I tried to evade the Kodak moment he was so insistent upon, but the dog police guy caught me when I returned for my change. So now my Polaroid is pinned up with about forty others. The heading on the billboard reads: “We Thank Our Proud New Owners … Heroes”.

Pinta’s a great dog that’s been through so much, it surprises me that she doesn’t need Zoloft, but with toys like these she probably won’t need it. The only bad part is that they are a bit pricey and we can’t always afford to get her one, but it seems that out of all of her toys the Cat Burglar was her favorite. She still carries his beat-up ragged body (now just a piece of tattered cloth) out to play. I can assure you that she truly enjoyed the toy, but we were saddened at its 24-hour existence. If only Jack Bauer were here … but since he’s not we’ll have to save our pennies and see what we can come up with in the future. That is unless you can help us with a Fat Cat Inc replacement toy or coupon to ease Pinta’s withdrawals. She’s in need of another Fat Cat Inc. fix.

Sincerely…

About a month later we received something similar to The Incredible Strapping Yankers Dog Toy.

Fat Cat Inc. Toys

It was just as awesome. Not as funny as the Cat Burglar, but awesome just the same.

Pinta slept with it.

I Don’t Believe That Everything Happens for a Reason Unless Keifer Sutherland is Involved

Image via Wikipedia

I hate that saying … “Everything happens for a reason.”

It’s like nails scratching on a chalkboard when I hear it. Do we still even have chalkboards in America? Ugh. You’re down in the gutter of disillusionment, clinging to life by a rope made of dental floss and someone says…”Well, everything happens for a reason.”

What is that?

You don’t want to hear that.

Does anybody else hate that?

That just makes me want to tie a noose with that dental floss rope and hang off a bridge. 

At the moment that your hemisphere is crashing on you, all you can think of is what crappy luck you have, because it can’t be karma. You’re scared of that bitch so you tend to walk a straight line and only live vicariously through characters on AMC or FX shows.

So you never really give thought to that saying. You chalk it up to bad luck or bad decisions. As in a bad decision for that person not to give me that job so I’m broke, or bad luck that I got a flat tire and there was no spare in the back. Nothing happens for a “mysterious reason” that will probably never appear. 

I’d probably drive myself into a drinking coma if I tried to find the reason. I’d learned that it was just bad luck and I was probably suffering one of the worst batches of bad luck in the universe, like a degenerate gambler clutching onto his last chip because he gambled his house away and now he’s letting it ride on red 32.  But apparently the universe is interconnected in some way. This is what Kiefer says and it was completely laid out in his new non-Jack Bauer show: Touch.

I normally don’t write about television shows, because I figure everyone has their own sense of great television from Mad Men to crazy reality television on Bravo. But after watching Kiefer’s show last night I finally “got it”. 

All these people were having pretty much crappy existences culminating in one day and Kiefer’s son sort of connected the dots. It was a good visualization of “things happening for a reason,” although the man who lost his daughter and the phone containing his only pictures of her…yeah the universe would have to cough up some more meaningful answers, because that sort of thing never makes sense and has no reason. But the “eventually” happened for everyone in the one-hour show, granted for the characters it was more like a week or so, and for real-life Guat time it takes years. Maybe a decade.

So Kiefer as everything happens for a reason…I’m still waiting for my retrospective moment as to why I’m stuck living with a Dr. Jekyll-Mrs. Hyde mom that does laundry at eleven o’clock when your kids are sound asleep and then woken up to the sound of Gloria Vanderbilt jean buttons whacking away in the dryer. Or perhaps the retrospective moment will happen when my 93rd loss of “Battle of the Bottles” occurs and I say screw it the baby can learn to drink from a straw. 

So now that Kiefer opened my eyes to the road map and the Chinese unbreakable red string that mysteriously connects all these people in my path…what up Kiefer? When am I getting out of purgatory and how many dots in my-everything-happens-for-a-reason map need to be connected for that?

Thanks to Kiefer I’m aboard the train now, just waiting for the transfer to kick in.

Giddy up!

Up A Notch

Ever feel like you’re failing every day? Trying to catch up with what ever it is that you do in life only to realize that you’ve gone only from an F to an F+?

For me that’s parenthood. Well at least, right now. It’s normal, I deal with it. I mean I’m not one of those baby mafia moms that go to the sandbox in their Gucci sunglasses, $1000-diaper bags, and fashion ensembles that make it look like they’re going clubbing. They sit there in their little pack chit-chatting about how their child was potty trained at 12 months, painted a masterpiece, is already reading at first-grade level, and never misbehaves when they know damn well that he’s the kid eating the sand and having tantrums in the car.

Needless to say that isn’t me. I’m up in the sandbox playing with bulldozers and catching my son as he whooshes down the slide. He wasn’t potty trained at 12 months, he paints blobs, he reads at his regular Cat-in-the-Hat level and has attitude. Plenty. I’ve got no shame. When something is wrong, something is wrong. Things suck sometimes when you’re a parent. But I realized that they suck only because you’re trying to do the best. Anyone can be a parent, but it takes sleepless nights, extra patience, wisdom, common sense, and a whole lot of heart and effort to be a good parent. Well … that alcohol and the “bad-assness” of Jack Bauer. Same philosophy applies in my writing career.

But just when you think you’ve fallen through the grading curve. Something awesome happens and it pushes you up a notch. You get the “+”.

I used to be the crazy mom…well not crazy like reality TV crazy, but crazy in the sense that I used to call my son’s preschool teacher every day until he was fully transitioned. It’s heartbreaking to leave your kid for the first time, so as a mom there I was delaying my departure and arriving earlier than usual for pickup and calling the teacher everyday just to see how long it was before he stopped crying. Enfadosa, my  mom would say.

Aren’t you worried that they’ll think you’re crazy? But there’s the thing. I don’t hide it. I’m not ashamed. I am enfadosa when it came to my kid. And I’ve accepted it. It’s like rehab … you’re only successful if you realize that you can’t change yourself. You change your habits, but you just have to accept who you are.  I know … pretty deep, but I can’t take credit for that. I saw that on a Breaking Bad episode. AMC…pretty awesome.

So, anyhow in my crazy acceptance as an enfadosa mom when my kid started school, I picked up some of his artwork, blobs and all, and asked him: What is this?

 His response…

“That’s me. That’s you mom. That’s the phone.  Teacher say you call me everyday. Friends call each other and say hello. You my best friend. You say hello all the time.”

 Ohhhhhhhhhh. I’m up a notch.