From time to time I’ll make up a vision board (usually after the stack of magazines I’m saving for the project gets too tall to stand alone). A couple months ago, I finally got out my scissors and glue stick and made this:
The fun part of a vision board is watching for clues that the things you placed on the board are beginning to manifest. So far, there have been some interesting “coincidences,” like all of the houses I put on there. Jeff and I are moving to the Phoenix, AZ area next week, and are for the first time planning to buy our own house and not rent anymore. That was not in our plans when I made this board.
There is also a reference to Archangel Michael on the bottom, in the center. My son-in-law, Michael, who also moved to the Phoenix area recently with my daughter, is nicknamed Michael Archangel.
I could go on, but what caused me to actually sit down and write this blog is this little piece of humor that I added to the board, just for fun. I wanted 2012 to be when I get back to work on my novel series, so this tiny picture of a t-shirt is supposed to represent my desire to do that. Plus, I thought at the time, it was rather ironic that the first novel in that series is entitled “Be Careful What You Witch For!” and the shirt starts out with the phrase “Be Careful …” You can see this in the upper, right quadrant of the board, just above the shiny bubble.
Sooooo, imagine my surprise when I opened one of my Christmas presents, this one from Jeff’s brother’s family, and found this! Isn’t life fun?
Friends up North, while able to appreciate the tropical paradise that is Florida the rest of the winter, wonder how on earth we deal with not having a White Christmas. Here is how we do it …
I found some fun places around the neighborhood. They’re not great photos because I took them with my phone, often while Jeff was driving by.
Next to the pool at the local nudist resort (no, there is no one at the pool, so don't bother looking.)
Those folks apparently got their gift early and straight from the Birthday Boy himself!
An egret does some last minute shopping at Best Buy.
This is how Santa delivers his stuff in swampy Florida. Make sure you leave your lanai unlocked for him!
And because we're moving and our house looks like this ...
... this is our Christmas Tree. Merry Christmas from Lisa and Jeff!
When Jeff and I moved to Florida (nine years ago this January) we had a plan. Yes, it was a half-assed plan, but a plan nonetheless. We moved here to sell wire-wrapped crystals on Clearwater Beach. That’s the idea that got us moved from Point A to Point B.
At the time, I had just finished writing my first book and we were done with living in the snowbelt (Fort Wayne, IN). We were looking for some way to move nearer a tropical beach, and I “just happened” to meet someone in Fort Wayne who told me about the daily Sunset Festival on Clearwater Pier. I had been making jewelry for a couple years and selling it on eBay and at art fairs, but a daily festival was a way to make a living!
What I wanted, more than anything else, was to find a publisher for what was eventually titled Shape Shifting–reclaiming your perfect body, and to make a living as a writer. Making jewelry was a hobby that I loved, and I would enjoy doing this as a way to make money while I wrote. So I quit my job in the newsroom, cashed in my 401K and we started making plans.
One thing I learned from doing art fairs is that presentation is everything … it’s how you get customers to even look at your wares. So Jeff’s dad made me a sturdy vendor’s cart, from scratch, and my good friend Linda, an incredibly talented artist, painted it for me. She even made the Carnivale mask that hangs from the front. It was, truly, a work of art and it was a wonderful gift from two people who really cared about us.
We put most of our stuff in storage and headed south in this tiny little camper, where we lived for the first several months until we moved into a (slightly larger) fifth-wheel camper, and then eventually into the house we’re in now, which Jeff has dubbed his “Monkee’s Beach House.”
Unfortunately, selling jewelry on the pier didn’t work out, for many reasons, and that gorgeous cart became a lawn ornament. Meantime, I published three books and have now signed with Berkley to write my fourth. I strongly believe that “the Universe” brought us here, to this specific place in Florida, so I would meet and become friends with my co-author, Stacey Kananen. And now that my work in Florida is done, Jeff and I are being pulled elsewhere, out to Arizona, in much the same way we were pulled here … it’s just flowing like it’s “meant to be.” And today, we gave that gorgeous, old weather-beaten jewelry cart to our neighbor Terre, who is just hippie enough to love it almost as much as we do.
It’s heartbreaking to see the empty space in the yard where the cart used to be, but Jeff and I both know that it simply marks the end of this chapter, this era, in our lives. It’s as if the door has now officially closed on our Florida years and the cowboy call of the Old West is getting louder. I have a very strong feeling that our first Amnesty for Abuse House is waiting for me to arrive in AZ and roll up my sleeves.
No, I don’t like the manual labor, but I do love a fresh start in a new house. Talk about spring cleaning! The big difference is that the question changes from, “Is this worth hanging onto just in case I might need it someday?” to “Is this worth packing and moving across the country?”
Jeff and I spent the weekend trying to get some prep work done. We’re not leaving until January, but we’re not going to wait until the last minute to get to work. We needed boxes and a place to stack them as we pack. So the shed needed to be cleaned and boxes gathered. We usually get all of our boxes behind the Dollar General store because they always have mountains of empty heavy-duty, perfectly-sized laundry soap and cleaning supply boxes. Those boxes have to be very strong and just the right size because those bottles are heavy.
They make perfect book-packing boxes, and I have tons of books, much to Jeff’s chagrin. He keeps trying to get me to throw them all away because he doesn’t want to have to be the one to lug them, but I told him that we’ll get along just fine as long as he takes care of throwing away his own things, and leaves me to throw out my own. Believe me, I’ll be throwing puhlenty of stuff away, so back off from my treasures! Otherwise we’ll be having a chat about all of those video games just gathering dust over there …
I digress. We found out, the hard way, that Dollar General now has a deal with a local recycler and sells their boxes to them. So today, after we cleaned out the shed, we tried the Family Dollar store to see if they had any boxes. Paydirt!!!
Before ...
... and after!
Now my house reeks of cardboard–not necessarily an unpleasant smell, but it’s a little overpowering. Or is that the task ahead of us that’s overpowering? Either way, I’ve done enough for today. We still have over a month to go, so no point in rushing it, right?
By the way, my co-author Stacey Kananen and I finally got our finalized, completed contract from Penquin/Berkley books! Yay!!!
Stacey Kananen and me, holding our publishing contract from Berkley Books.
The fact that I’m posting these words as a blog makes it irreversible. No backing out now. Jeff and I are moving to Arizona. And if you enjoyed my blogs about our “Here’s yew a dawg” trip, you’re gonna want to keep your eyes on this space because it promises to be fraught with typical Jeff and Lisa brand “good times and clusterfucks.”
There’s some sad stuff up front. My dad just died. What a horrible thing. I’ve had nightmares about this moment for years. I’d wake up from vivid dreams that my dad was DEAD and it was so real that I’d sit up in bed, wretching from crying so hard, and wracked with sobs for long minutes after I woke up because it was such an intense and horrific sense of loss. But when it actually happened, it didn’t hit me that hard. I was so relieved to stop seeing his body in that condition that I was blissfully relieved when we finally got that 2:20 AM phone call. That doesn’t mean I don’t fall apart in the grocery store or other inconvenient places, especially when they play Christmas music (which is starting insanely early this year). It does mean, however, that I’m able to be a lot more philosophical and Zen about his death than I thought I would be.
I have some pretty comforting spiritual views on this, which help. I’m sort of a “New Ager/Lightworker” type, but I don’t take myself as seriously as some of them do. Believe me, there are whacked out fundamentalist New Agers, just like there are in any other belief system. Some of us actually have our shit together and cringe when the fringe shows up in the news to make us all look crazy. Those spiritual views include the concept that death isn’t the end of life overall, just the end of life in the physical form. Life, free from the body, seems like a pretty groovy thing so death is only bad for those of us who are still alive and missing our dead folks.
Anyway, I have developed a pretty strong connection with my Dad, now that he’s on the other side. I didn’t expect that because I’ve never been very “lucky” communicating with the other side, even though I’ve tried for decades. Dad, on the other hand, thought psychic stuff was all “horseshit” so it’s surprising to see him so strongly reaching out from over there. But I know I’m getting messages from Dad, because less than a month after his death, I’m moving across the country to live near my mom because I think he’d really like it if I did. (I’d like it, too, or I wouldn’t be doing it, I’m just sayin’ … Dad is the one who nudged me into action).
I’ll maybe share a little about those messages in future blogs, but for now I don’t want to make this too long. It’s Thanksgiving Day and Jeff and I are relishing our last Thanksgiving in our Florida “Monkees’ Beach House.” (Jeff has, since he was a boy, wanted to live like the Monkees, in their groovy beach house. We have spent the last nine years living like that, in our own fashion, and it’s VERY hard to say goodbye to because it’s been delicious.)
But now that it’s been said aloud, let it be done. Here we go on another amazing journey! I hope you enjoy the trip as much as we will!
Jeff, eating orange "food" and drinking orange liquid. How's that for fun? Huh? Huh?
As I’ve said in many blogs, Jeff and I have become masters at making life fun for free (one of the necessities of life when you’re seriously broke). My daughter, Kristina, noticed this same ability among the locals when she was in Turkey at Incirlik AFB–the local people were terribly poor (much more so than your average American, even in “today’s economy”). She was amazed and impressed by their ability to be truly happy even though they lived in homes made of bedsheets and ropes.
Fortunately, I am wealthy enough to have a digital camera so I can take pictures of life’s little joyous moments. Here are a few recent ones:
They are not responsible for damage to your vehicle OR their sign.
Hey mister, if you’re not using that car, can I have it?
My friend, Susan, pointed this sign out to me, specifically for use in this blog. She’s obviously a regular reader, because she knew I could not pass this one up.
Yes, that’s right. The old man sitting outside of JCPenney’s is playing an accordion. Your guess is as good as mine.
Sometimes seagulls just BEG you to drive through their flock.
Who are we to say no?
Well, that was fun, wasn’t it?
Here’s you a passel o’ dogs. My favorite is the one on the lounge chair, with its legs akimbo, not giving a rat’s ass that its buddies are going crazy over a passing motorcyle.
I’m finally listening to my Inner Nag and posting a blog, just to keep the wheels greased. So here are some fun pics from the past few weeks or so.
This is the north end of a road in our area that we need to use every day, and it has been under construction forever. We’ve had to detour out of our way for what feels like an endless stretch of time. They finally paved it, but haven’t painted it yet so it’s not open, but that doesn’t mean ol’ Jeffro didn’t decide to drive the bike through there, a la Rebel Without a Shortcut. The next time we saw this intersection it was completely barricaded.
Jeff has decided, after almost two years of unemployment, to go back to school. This is a sign we saw on campus. Those of you who know Jeff can make up your own punchlines.
We saw this tank at a park recently. We don’t know who Miss Brenda is and haven’t been able to find out. We even made a point of getting off the bike and going into the park office to see if they had any literature. Not only did they not have any brochures or signage, the employees scattered like startled cockroaches when they saw curious people coming.
Oh, here’s a sign. “Keep … off … the …”
We went to the flea market today because our favorite Greek deli has a shop there, and I took this picture I’ve entitled Flea Market Karaoke. The couple singing (standing between the central pillar grouping) were very good. However, even the poor quality of this picture cannot convey the overall grunginess of the scene.
And, of course, here’s you a dog, flea market style.
Many moons ago, Jeff, the kids and I lived in California. My daughters, Kristina and Stacy, were with me in the living room when Jeff came in the front door, with an impish look on his face, holding something in his hand. He went straight to the kitchen, got a bowl out of the cupboard and said, “Come here. You gotta look at this.”
Stupidly, we gathered near while he shook something out of a cigarette wrapper into the bowl. We heard a clinking sound, as if a marble had fallen into it. Without yet truly realizing why, the three of us instinctively knew that it was time to scream like girls and run as fast as we could.
Following close behind us, an erstwhile Freddie Krueger, Jeff cajoled us, “No, wait. You gotta see this. I’ve never seen anything like this before!” We continued screaming and running until we had reached the last room in the house, my bathroom, where we locked the door and made like banshees. We shuddered and shrieked and brushed imaginary cooties off of us until our skin was raw, and told him to get the hell away from us. Ever the boy, he stood outside the door, saying, “No, really, you gotta come see this thing. I have no idea what it could be.”
After an extremely long time, he finally realized that we weren’t coming out. He took the thing back outside and we slowly and nervously went back to everyday life, not having any idea what that thing was, but knowing that we NEVER wanted to lay eyes on another one.
However, over the years as the internet has developed, I’ve tried searching for a picture of it, because I just have to know what in Lucifer’s fresh hell we had seen. What made it difficult is that I only had the briefest of glimpses at it before I fled, and I had no idea how to even begin searching something for which I had no keywords. Finally, today, I found it by Googling “scary California grasshopper.” And here, ladies and gentlemen, is quite possibly the creepiest bug in existence:
Jeff said to me this morning, “You haven’t written a blog in 10 days.” I replied, “We haven’t done anything worth writing about.” He agreed, and went back to slurping his coffee. (I make a damn fine cup o’ joe—Yuban brand, half and half, a sprinkle of cinnamon, sugar, and a squirt of whipped cream. Indulgent, yes, but it’s a pleasant way to start a day.) Little did I know that just a few hours later I’d be writing about something as stupid as buying a bag of ice.
After we finished our morning ritual, we headed out on the bike to the library to return some books, and Jeff remembered that we need to buy ice while we’re out. We go through approximately five bags a week, so we are old hands at remembering to buy ice, it’s that important to us. We are ice using people. One of my favorite things in life is a glass of ice water on my desk all day as I work.
Our favorite store to buy ice is Publix. It doesn’t have that funny, stale-freezer taste that some other stores have. The cubes are the right size and are easy to chew (I’m an ice chewer, but that’s a topic for another day). They are also the right shape, a hollow tube. For some reason that shape seems to last longer.
Yes, of course all of this is meaningless in the big picture of life, but my point is that we both make buying ice a priority in our daily life. And one of my biggest bitches and gripes about some stores is that they put the ice freezer AFTER the cashier. Every single time we’re in a store that does that—and with Publix it’s a crap shoot depending on the store—we forget to buy the friggin’ ice, even though we make a VERY deliberate point of saying to each other, “Don’t forget to tell the cashier we want a bag of ice.”
Let's play a game called "Find the Ice Cooler."
We could pick it up first thing, as soon as we walk in the door, but that only works if ice is the only thing we’re buying. We’re usually in the store for a while and the ice will melt if we put it in the cart first. So we make that the last thing we pick up. When stores put the ice cooler by the exit, after the checkout counters, we cannot logistically make it the last thing we put in the cart. We have to remember to tell the cashier that we want to buy a bag of ice and pay for it first. Neither of us can seem to do that, no matter how hard we try, no matter how many times we remind each other “Pay for the ice,” no matter how often I add it to the list, or even write it on my hand.
So today, we went to Publix on the way home from the library to buy a bag of ice. I even reminded Jeff, “Hey, this is the Publix that has the ice after the cashier, so let’s not forget that.” After all, we were only there for ice, but figured while we’re there, we’ll get a couple things. Well, we found those things, stood in line, paid for them and got all the way back out to the parking lot before we realized we didn’t buy ice. So Jeff had to go back inside, stand in line AGAIN, and tell the cashier he needs a bag of ice. Thank god he remembered it that time.
Seriously, I do not understand why stores do this. I refuse to believe they’re doing it just to be dicks, so I have to wonder: do they think it’s more convenient? Are they trying to help us? Cuz it’s not and they’re not. It’s like Bank of America telling me that they allow purchases to go through on my debit card even if there’s not enough money in the account, as a “convenience” to me (at a cost of $35 for the overdraft charge). Even after I told them that this is actually an inconvenience, and asked them to please stop helping us, they continued to ding us every time Jeff would just use the card to buy a pack of smokes or whatever nickel and diming he was doing (he was assuming that if there wasn’t enough in the account, the purchase would be denied). So, yeah. Don’t try to help me in ways that disturb my chi. Please.
How ‘bout a little standardization: why don’t you stores all put the ice with the frozen foods, near the end of the typical shopper’s flow, so it’s the last thing we see as we approach the cashiers? And then, if I don’t have enough on my card to pay for the ice, the bank can decline the purchase because otherwise that $2.00 bag of ice is going to cost me $37.00. I don’t need it that badly. I can always pull out the old fashioned ice trays and make my own.
I feel better now, having ranted a bit. Who knows? Maybe this only happened because Jeff mentioned over coffee this morning that I hadn’t written anything in a while and I said we hadn’t done anything worth writing about. Be careful what you witch for, eh?
You know what sounds good right about now? A cup of iced coffee. I’ll drink to that!
Here's you a dog, laughing at the idiot humans who can't remember to buy ice.
I promised to blog about the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, and I sincerely thought I’d be able to do it in real time (or at least “day of”). However, the trip was so different than I ever imagined it would be and I simply was unable to post anything but the most cursory blogs because of the major travel issues (and, therefore, time issues) that we encountered. So much happened, and so many blog topics are awaiting their turn, but first I want to talk about the Rally itself, the show that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert put on, because that was the reason for the trip, wasn’t it?
I sort of feel that, since this is being written so many days after the fact, everything that can be said about the Rally has already been said all over the ‘net and the media. Everyone who cares about it knows what happened and how it went, so all I can really talk about is my own experience. And my experience was mostly the backs of other people’s heads (I’m very short, only 5’2”). Once in a while the guy who stood directly in front of me (after I had already been there for hours and could see fine until he got there AFTER the show started—but I’m not bitter) would move his big fat head and I could see, but those precious moments were rare. In fact, the view of the back of his head is burned into my retinas. But that’s a story for another blog.
After realizing that I would never be able to take pictures without being able to see what I was aiming at, I stumbled upon a trick that you’ll see in this picture of the O’Jays. (If you click on the thumbnail, you’ll see where they are onstage, because I circled them in red.) I had to hold my camera above everyone’s heads and I had no idea what it was aimed at. However, there was a space in the trees just above the JumboTron, so I tried to aim my camera at that light blue space and that’s how I knew I was in the general vicinity of getting a picture of the monitor and, hopefully, the stage. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not so much.
But back to the show. As I mentioned, we got there VERY early, like 9AM-ish and the people were just beginning to filter into the Mall. It was a very cold morning, but our Sanity and Reason kept us warm. At around 10, the pre-show started on the JumboTrons that were placed all over the Mall. The pre-show consisted of all of the Daily Show/Colbert Report segments from the past few weeks where they talked about the upcoming rally, as sort of a build-up to the big day. We were all getting a little antsy, mostly because we’d been there so long. Finally, at 11:58, the JumboTron showed a countdown of two minutes. Yay!!! We all started counting down the seconds with the monitor. One minute to go! Yippee! We can’t wait! Bring on the Sanity and/or Fear! Go! Go! Go!
At straight up noon, the show began and the crowd went wild. But then we all realized, “Hey, that’s not Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert. That’s a band.” I don’t know about anyone else, but I felt like Ralphie in A Christmas Story reading his coded message, “Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.” Rats. A crummy commercial.
The band played forever and ever and ever. Yes, they were good. No, I had no idea who they were, at the time. I found out later it was John Legend and The Roots. I still don’t know who that is, but apparently that’s because I’m old, not because they aren’t well known.
Once they were finally done playing (again, it’s not that they weren’t really good, it’s that I came to see Jon Stewart) the Mythbusters, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, came out for a while and did a few crowd experiments, like seeing how long it would take a crowd this size (the official count was 215,000) to do the wave. That was actually a lot of fun, because we could see on the JumboTron (this was while I could still see it) what it looked like as the wave rippled across the crowd. They also had us all jump at the same time to see how much we could make the earth move. Adam estimated that “20 million pounds of meat” would be hitting the ground when everyone landed. The seismograph showed that our jump was “14 trillion times weaker than 1906 earthquake in San Francisco” or “100 times stronger than a 35mph car collision.”
Finally, at 1:00, the actual show started. Jon (circled in red, onstage) came out to a huge reception and welcomed the crowd.
Stephen, of course, played the fear card and made his entrance from below the stage through a tube like the trapped miners used. Funny, but even funnier, to me, was his Greatest Poem Ever Written, as read by Sam Waterston.
For me, however, one big highlight of the show was when Jon announced Yusuf Islam (forever known to me as Cat Stevens) to sing Peace Train. Although it was very funny when Ozzy Osbourne interrupted—in answer to Colbert’s request for a fearful song (Crazy Train) to derail the Peace Train—I was really bummed out because I wanted to hear Cat Stevens!!! How often does one get to do that anymore? Well, at least the O’Jays got to sing Love Train start to finish.
At the risk of making this blog too long, I’ll just post a few more pictures that I managed to snap over the heads of the tall people (at my height, that’s pretty much everyone). I got a fairly clear shot of Sheryl Crow, who sang a few songs with Kid Rock. I did not, however, get anything but a JumboTron shot of John Oliver dressed as Peter Pan, trying to bring Jon back to life with our clapping, after Stephen announced him dead and defeated with his video montage of the scare-tactic media, telling us about all the things that can and will kill us and/or our children. Funny stuff. (BTW, this is the reason I quit working in the news. I got tired of hearing the anchors using the phrase “… to keep you safe” when teasing their upcoming stories, and having to filter it out—because of my distaste for fear mongering—before I posted the news on the MSNBC site.)
I think we were all amazed to see the show wrap up with living legend Tony Bennett’s acapella version of America the Beautiful. He hit every note, right where it should be. Lots of tears were flowing by the time he was done.
Overall, I think it was an amazing show, considering how little time they had to put it together. I’ve done standup comedy (seven years on the road) so I know how hard it is to do untested material in front of a live audience. Even Broadway plays are taken on the road before they debut in the Big Apple, in order to get it just right. These guys didn’t have that advantage, and they still pulled it off, with only a couple of minor hiccups and glitches. They talked briefly about this issue in a fascinating press conference, after the show, for the National Press Club.
The best part of the show for me, even beyond Cat Stevens, was Jon’s “Moment of Sincerity” speech at the end. If you have watched none of the other videos I’ve linked to on this blog, please at least watch this one, if only to hear him deliver the magnificent line, “If we amplify everything, we hear nothing.” Wow. That hit me as one of the wisest things I’ve heard in years. I even made a point, then and there, to pull out a pen and paper to write it down.
In my opinion, Jon Stewart is a very funny man, but more importantly he’s a rational thinker. I love his centrist, moderate tone and calm reaction to the shit that life throws our way. The Rally to Restore Sanity was the sanest thing I’ve seen in a long time, and that’s why we made such a gargantuan effort to get there, to show our support for that message. There is no need for shouting. There is no need for rancor. In the words of another famous gentleman, “Can’t we all just get along?”
I could go on, but what caused me to actually sit down and write this blog is this little piece of humor that I added to the board, just for fun. I wanted 2012 to be when I get back to work on my novel series, so this tiny picture of a t-shirt is supposed to represent my desire to do that. Plus, I thought at the time, it was rather ironic that the first novel in that series is entitled “Be Careful What You Witch For!” and the shirt starts out with the phrase “Be Careful …” You can see this in the upper, right quadrant of the board, just above the shiny bubble.
even funnier, to me, was his 
Here's you a blog ... 
