#forcedfamilyfun

 

There is this hashtag on Twitter #ForcedFamilyFun that is brilliant — which is totally surprising.

Hashtag #ForcedFamilyFun was started by a TBS TV show sponsor [The Detour] and usually those crash and burn hard — but not this time.

I do not know if the show is any good I have never watched it but this time the show peeps got it so right and that hashtag stream should be funny as hell. Except  —

All these weird ass dysfunctional people [mostly parents uh ohs] are showing up and tweeting THEY HAVE FUN AND IT’S NOT FORCED!

I am not sure whether to file that under “irony” or “delusion” or “Wow Detour peeps that was totally a brilliant funny hashtag that should have worked clearly the internetz gods hate you I am so sorry.”

BUT!

It did inspire me to dig out a childhood photo.

EASTER PORTRAIT: #ForcedFamilyFun

 

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my new orleans

 

 

I’m thinking about New Orleans.   My favorite “New Awleen” heels, suede high heels that were purple and green and gold suede parrot shoes that everyone knew were my Mardis Gras shoes.

About skies that have partial clouds passing overhead and you are in sunlight and then in rain and then in hot sunlight again.

About a place where a California girl can’t lie out in the sun because the New Orleans sun is hotter and harsher than anywhere else on earth and will eat you.

 

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“Hey Mister, Throw me some beads!”

 

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Dancing in the streets, parades, a pounding drum beat.

 

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A hand grabbing me by the back of the neck and pulling me backwards three feet in a Mardis Gras crowd, just far enough back a roiling fight passes by in front of me instead of over me.

 

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A guy getting arrested for punching a horse. [Who punches a horse?] A horse a policeman is sitting on.

 

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A restaurant with the best steak sandwich in town between cobblestone walls that used to house a prison, etched with centuries.

 

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Dancing at Tipitina’s. Men with washboards they play better than most musicians play guitars.

 

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Everyone dances. Men. Women. Children. EVERYONE dances.

 

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And the kindness. I showed up in Louisiana a child of the road, a refugee, and everyone was kind.

 

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My New Orleans will always be that place. The place where a beat up battered child of the road could show up and everyone would just say, Those are pretty shoes, let’s dance.

 

this one is for kym & mara

liar liar

 

 

When I was a kid growing up, adults said things to my parents like, “Oh your little girl is so pretty.”

Or, “Oh, your little girl is so smart.”

I just thought that’s what adults say to be polite.

 

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Adults are total liars.

Any kid knows this.

They say food is delicious when it isn’t. They say houses are lovely when they aren’t. They say their feelings aren’t hurt when they are. They tell someone she looks lovely when they are thinking the whole time, Wow, that outfit is a disaster —

Adults lie about everything ALL THE TIME.

 

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How would it ever occur to me, as a kid, adults were sincere about anything nice they said about me?

 

parables from the max files: the men with gold from god

 

Once upon a time a long long time ago —

Three men were talking to God, and God gave each a bag of gold.

One man’s bag of gold was kind of small.

One man’s bag of gold was medium.

One man’s bag of gold was huge.

And God said, Hey, go out and do what you will but I expect at the end of this set period of time [which I don’t remember] you to come back and report on what you did with this gift of a bag of gold.

 

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[If God is sounding kind of like a loan shark to you there, he did to me too, but the story went on to say God did not go for things like usury so God was an okay guy and it would all work out.]

[This is also when the Sunday school teacher started looking at me real hard a lot if I raised my hand.]

[Back to studio!]

 

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So the three guys go out and one invests the gold, and he loses it all. Ahh!

And the other goes out and invests and gets rich as the Koch Brothers. Yay!

And the last guy, he burries the gold in the ground because it is God’s gold and he doesn’t want to lose it.

 

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Flash forward.

 

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It is report back on the gold day and the guys hook back up with God. And God says, Okay, guys, what did you do with the gold —

 

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[At the time I hear this story, I am suspecting this is going to go very badly for “Lost It All Guy.” But I am wrong. God is not a loan shark in the traditional sense after all.]

 

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So, report back to God time….

“Lost It All Guy” is screwed and knows it. But God taps him first so he says —

[Okay here I would have maybe tried to lie, but “Lost It All Guy” is apparently also “Freakishly Honest Guy” — yet another reason some of these parables are suspect but anyway…]

“Lost It All Guy” says —

“Sorry God, lost it all.”

God forgives him and says, “No worries.”

 

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“Made a Mint Guy” is thinking, “Fuck that! Lost It All Guy, that ain’t fair I made a profit!” But he is not stupid enough to say that to God out loud so says,

“Yo, God, made a mint!”

God says, “Good job.”

 

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“Buried It In The Ground Guy” is thinking he is home free and says, “No worries, God, got it all right here, I have kept it safe!”

And God says, “You are so in trouble, ‘Buried It In The Ground Guy.'”

And “Buried It In The Ground Guy” says, “Whut? Why? I saved your gold, I did not piss it away like ‘Lost God’s Gold Guy’ did why am I in trouble?”

 

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And God says:

Because I gave you a gift to risk and use.

And instead of risking or using it, you buried it in dirt.

 

post valentine’s day wisdom

 

 

[That is TracyMcMillan in a Ted Talk. Cool stuff.]

 

childhood vs. adulthood

 

I have finally determined the line between female childhood and female adulthood.

When I was twelve, all I wanted to do was fill out a bra.

Now? All I want to do is avoid wearing a bra.

Wait.

Unless I am on camera, the bra is pretty, and I’m going crazy dancing.

[Oh fuck me I’m still twelve.]

 

the christmas tulips

 For the early days —

Of my life, flowers were always something someone else brought or gave to you. Mostly associated with men. And death.

 

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Men came calling, men sent flowers.

[Not for me, pervo, I was a little kid, jeez, for adult female relatives and family friends!]

Loved ones died? People sent flowers. Which, if you ask me, is a kind of weird association.

Flowers = Death and Men?

That cannot be healthy.

 

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Then I worked at this interior design firm.

 

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One day one of the other girls at the interior design firm said, “Let’s go get some flowers!” She said it like that, too, with an exclamation point. We were all at lunch. But everyone rallied right then. And we all hopped into our rides and headed over to a flower place I had no idea existed and just went fucking crazy buying flowers.

 

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We’re not talking roses. Actually the woman at the flower place was a little freaked out about the roses. If you pull flowers out of any other tub — and we are talking tubs of flowers all containing a lot of water — and get any water on the roses, even just a drop, the roses are toast.

But we were not after roses. We were after every other flower in the flower spectrum. And that day, I took peonies back to the office.

 

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[Side Note: Dear Men: If you ever buy me peonies as a romantic flower gift? One, you have missed the point. Two, you will never see me naked in this life or the next.]

 

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Buying those flowers was awesome. And after? The whole office was full of flowers. And we were all insanely happy. It was like those flowers lifted five levels of unhappy off everyone who saw or touched them.

 

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After that, I bought flowers a lot.

 

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Then things changed.

 

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A couple rough interstate moves. Some of those days that say, “Maybe you should buy the pancake mix instead of the flowers. Some of those days when you start saying to yourself, “You don’t really need flowers.” And then get so used to saying “you don’t really need flowers” you just stop buying flowers at all.

 

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Today I was in line at Whole Foods behind a man and his two little girls.

The little girls were probably about nine and seven.

The little girls were dressed for shit too. Those were not fancy clothes those girls were wearing. They were worn. Cheap cotton and frayed sleeves. And they had haircuts that yelled “Mom cut my bangs and she didn’t have a level.”

And their dad’s clothes? Not so much better.

But those two little girls had sparkley shoes. One of them had red sparkley shoes. And one of them had gold sparkley shoes.

And they were carrying tulips.

 

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The girls’ dad talked to them like they were grown ups. He did not talk down to them. They were discussing things like dinner [mac and shells, they must have been East Coast, no one west of the Mason Dixon line says “shells.”] And the flowers.

One of the girls, the oldest, named Charlotte, went off to get some plastic wrap for the flowers so the flowers did not drip after being pulled out of a bucket of water while she and her sister and father were all waiting in line.

 

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I bought flowers today. White tulips.

They are my Christmas tulips.

 

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Thank you for reminding me, Dad and the little girls with sparkley shoes, flowers matter.

 

throw back thursday

The brunette days… also, um, teen model, ahhh!

i do not think it means what you think it means….

 

I keep seeing —

This comparison between auto insurance and health insurance.

The comparison of auto insurance to health insurance is ridiculous.

You have a choice to purchase a car or not purchase a car. A car is a material possession. One you cannot even legally operate until you reach a designated age close to reaching legal maturity.

Likewise, with homeowner’s insurance, you have a choice, purchase a house or not. And this usually only happens after achieving adulthood.

Birth is not a choice.

You are born into this world alive, an infant, incapable of refusing life and/or purchasing insurance for what is not, in the first place, a material possession.

Life is not a material possession. Life is a state of being. And you enter it without benefit of a choice in the matter, any choice in your health upon arrival, or the ability or wherewithal to insure either.

Stop equating life with auto ownership. It is a ridiculous comparison.