40 Is the New Awesome

I have a younger male friend who has recently (and graciously) been acting you know, maybe just a tad crushy on me.  He just broke up with his 20 year old girlfriend, and I think he’s doing a little compare-and-contrast business and has come to the conclusion that I’m kinda awesome.

(Yes, you can read by the radioactive glow of my ego.)

But honestly? I’d better be.

I’ve been around for literally twice as long as she has.  If I haven’t done something with that time to make myself more interesting, more generally awesome, then shame on me.

Good Relationships Are...

A friend of mine was talking to me today about his relationship, in that way that a person talks about their relationship when they’re not so sure it ought to be their relationship any more, and I wanted to give him some advice.  Not that, you know, he asked for it, but just because, well, I’m older, and I have extensive experience in terminal relationships.

But the truth is, I don’t know much about his relationship, and I don’t know his girlfriend at all, so there wasn’t a lot I could say.

So then I started thinking about the bigger picture, you know, the things that one could say about any relationship, the universal truths, such as they are, about what happens when two people collide.  And I wished I had said this:

Disclosure

Oh good lord, it has been so long since I have blogged that it took me two tries to correctly log in.

But I have a good excuse, or a bad one:  I have been busy getting divorced.

And, for all of you who’ve heard it sucks, let me just say: It does.

It sucks in so, so many ways—the big and the little, the serious and the silly, the transient and the lasting—that the only earthly reason I can ever imagine anyone doing it is that they honestly believe the alternative would be, on balance, worse.

The Paradox of Being Awesome

I work in a community theater.  This has lots of perks--dynamic people, an interesting field, literally every day is something new. 

And sometimes, right outside my office door, there is something really awesome going on:

That is literally the view from my office window last night--peeking out from between the slats of the blinds.  If that's not a good enough view for you and/or seems more "creepy voyeur" than "erstwhile employee just taking pictures like she was told to," try this one:

Delfeayo Marsalis. 

For real.

How do ya like them apples?

And his Quintet.  (And though I should not laugh about this, more than one person asked "How many musicians will there be?")

The performance was amazing.  Every single one of the five (FIVE!) musicians was simply extraordinary.

And while I will be the first to admit that I know close to nothing about trombones and only slightly more about Jazz, it is impossible to mistake the technical proficiency, range, and personality that shone through the music.  Marsalis and his band members created music that was by turns raucous, haunting, joyous, melancholy, and unmistakably funny--sometimes in the same number.

They were also *gracious,* and I do mean gracious, to a fault.  They chatted, signed autographs, and lingered.  Each time someone told them how marvelous the performance was, they responded as if it were the first time they had ever gotten a compliment.  Really?  Thank you!  That is so kind of you!

And it was then I knew we were really in the presence of Awesome.

Because here's the thing about the entertainment industry:  You meet a lot of performers.  Or rather, you meet their handlers or their lackeys or their groupies or their egos.  You meet their insecurities, their lack of basic good manners, and their psychological ticks.  You see a lot of lackluster performances.  Oftentimes, these two things--the lackluster and the bombastic--go hand-in-hand.

And yet here we were, thrilled to host an internationally acclaimed act in our intimate little 48-seat venue.  And they behaved and played as if it were the Royal Albert Hall.  They behaved as if they were grateful to us for the opportunity to play in our venue, and we (Lord, I hope this translated) were absolutely awash in gratitude that they were there.

Of course, they could have been demanding or arrogant or difficult, and we still would have been thrilled to host such great musicians.

But they weren't.  They were just...gracious and funny and kind and utterly virtuosic.

That the mark, I think, of greatness--whether it's great talent or power or whatever.  It's being so confident in your own competence that you let your performance speak for itself.  It's being gracious and kind and generous with your time and talent, treating each performance or audience or individual as if they are worthy of you.

So I wanted to thank Delfeayo Marsalis and his Quintet for that--for their greatness, in every sense.

But instead I babbled incoherently about what an awesome show it was and offered them bottled waters and then slipped back to the merch table to score this:

A little awesome for the road.

My Week In Nature. And Kids.

I was hanging my clothes out on the line and found this:

In one of those quirky fits of charm, one of my daughters had apparently picked a blossom from the pineapple guava tree and hung it on the clothesline.

As if could get any cooler, the next day, closer inspection revealed this:

Perhaps the world's tiniest praying mantis.  If only my cell phone camera had better resolution.

But you'll probably wish I had forgone the cell phone camera altogether when you see what my dog brought me:

Dinner!  AKA, one freshly dispatched pocket gopher.  Pocket still full of grass seeds.  Why are they always so wet when she brings them to me?  I have to admit recoiling a bit from the gift, but then my older daughter chided me, "Mom, you have to remember that in Kona's real family, this would have been like the awesomest thing ever."  Point.  So I made Kona a deal: She gave me the gopher; I gave her a treat.  Good dog.

Thank goodness she was so busy with the gophers that she missed this:

A Western Fence Lizard.  Found by my younger daughter.  In her bedroom.  On the floor.  Under a pair of jeans.  Whereupon it darted under her dresser.  Whereupon we declared Operation...um....Lizard Capture.  Fortunately, he was lethargic from hanging out in her cool, dark, and laundry-infested room, so after a few brief chases, he was spent.  I scooped him up and put him outside in the sun where, like a good little ectotherm, he perked right up.

Today, we took a little field trip to the Safari Park.  Afterward, we stopped by the farmstand on the corner, where they have the best Mexican candies--dulces de calabaza, camote, and coco.  Yummers.  I got cash out at the Park just to buy some.

Only they didn't have any candy today.  Instead, they had this:

A baby...crow?  Which had fallen from its nest in the palm tree.  A little boy was carrying it around, until he got tired of it and left it, chirping piteously, on a table.  I tried very hard not to freak out about it.  I had just finished reading - today! - Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself.

Remember, I told myself.  You didn't cause it.  You can't cure it.

But my girls hadn't read that book, and when it came time to leave, Andrea blurted, "Isn't there anything we can do???  That little bird is just going to die!"

Then the world went black, and the next thing I know, I'm driving back to Temecula while my girls coo over the baby crow starling in the backseat, feeding it half-masticated strawberries and chicken tenders and keeping it warm by cuddling it in my now-guano-covered jacket.

Flashforward  a couple of hours, some frantic googling, the resultant bowlful of improvised "corvid hatchling food," and--at long and glorious last--a phone call to a beautiful woman whose house it just so happened was both near mine and a satellite center for Project Wildlife, and the little invasive species baby bird had a new home.

Meet My Id

Meet my id:

First Aid at Knott's Berry Farm

Sunday was our first Knott's Berry Farm trip of 2012.  I greeted it the way I do every trip to KBF—with a mixture of panic-induced diarrhea and anticipatory nausea.  See, I don’t really dig most of the rides, and that alone makes me feel like (to quote King Julian) “a giant pansy.”  I used to looooooooooooove rides, especially roller coasters, but now…  I basically spend the entire time praying for a quick and painless death as an alternative to the grisly end that surely awaits me if I try my luck on the Silver Bullet one more time. 

(If you listen closely, you can still hear me screaming obscenities.)

Plus, the entire place is kind of sticky and loud and, well, last time I got to explain to my daughters what was meant by a young woman’s rather tight-fitting T-Shirt that said: