Real girls don't smoke fake cigarettes...

First of all, I don't make a habit of watching the serial Bravo has concerning The Real Housewives of Whatever...I always find the women difficult to watch and I never feel the slightest kinship with them...

HOWEVER...I have been known to overhear an episode while doing something else ...idle background noise....so I guess I do listen to it.

Last night, while getting ready to go out with my family for an incredible night of music, BE Taylor's Christmas Show...I was getting dressed, made up, cleaned up etc...

I flipped on the TV for some background chatter and there was Real Housewives of Beverly HIlls.

I 'm still trying to understand the REAL part...they were all walking adverts for plastic surgery, and personal staging, major cut and paste action.

Apparently they are "friends" and apparently were getting together for dinner after a tense weekend together in NY...Hey, I can follow this story with half my brain too.

They were meeting at Camille Grammar's house (ex Mrs. Kelsey) and she was the source of the tense weekend before.

There were about 7 or so of them and they all pretty much look alike and act alike so I can't name anyone else other than Kyle because she's the only brunette.

Camille, needing support, invited her friend and psychic Allison DuBois...Allison is the real Medium about which the show (produced by Camille and ex Kelsey) Medium is all about.

The women proceeded to get together and drink copious amounts of alcohol from the largest martini glasses ever made and barely touch their food (are you surprised) they were higher than their botox bills ...

and then it started...

dancing around the tension, taking feline precision jabs at one another...I watched Allison DuBois get very drunk, (huffing on an electronic cigarette) and very mean and say things that would cause any viewer of her show to never watch Medium again.

But that's not what this piece is about...I'm writing about the bigger picture...

I watched each woman pick up on the negative energy , take it deep in their mouth like a racing horse on the bit, and run with it...with the exception of 2 women, who were peripheral characters. who looked horrified...they saw the nasty and wanted nothing to do with it, they actually sat in their seats with their hands clutched up over their chests in a protective manner.

I believe that psychic ability exists, I think we all are "psychic", we all feel the energy, good and evil around us, we all dream of those departed, we all get "intuitive feelings". God hopes for us to learn to discern the energies...by being strong in our faith, we become very accurate. Some of us are tuned into it, some of us choose to ignore it.

And some of us, use it for manipulative purposes...and to those of you who do...

shame on you.

Allison DuBois exposed herself as a user of dark energy on national television, I watched her energy infiltrate and erupt in those women (except for lucky 2) , turning the dinner party into the party from hell.

It was easy for her to do this, because the women who engaged in the backbiting were the most weak minded and of little or no personal faith.

They took the disturbing "bait" and attacked each other, pointed fingers, drew claws,raised their already thin voices and exhibited such a distasteful frenzy...and Allison sat there calmy, the supreme b***h and smiled the whole time.

She was pleased.

That's what Dark Energy does, it tears down others, makes the moment uncomfortable, controls the tone of the room.

Don't engage in it, pray immediately, normalize the conversation, never get nasty in kind, stay strong and then get the heck out of there.

I found myself standing in front of the TV grasping my hairbrush, forgetting about getting ready...in shock over such a clear example of the Devil comes to dinner.

I shook it off and finished quickly in my assembly and jumped into the car...the rest of the evening was a piece of heaven and healing at it's best...We sat in the music hall and witnessed joy to the world BE Taylor style.

I was so happy that he exists out there to counteract the bad blood donations of Allison DuBois.

I was so happy to hear affirmation after affirmation of the power of accepting the love.... Vitamin L if you will ;)

There is no reason to live any other way.

The light erases the dark faster than a hummingbird painting a sunrise.

Next time, when I'm getting ready for a night off, I'll remember this episode of RHBH and turn on the stereo instead...BE Taylor will be my first choice.

You have a choice too, that's the kicker in all of this...you can choose whether to live on fake cigarettes or take the daily dose of Vitamin L.

Free will, still the best thing going.....

...www.betaylor.com

Encounters at Counters

Yesterday I was scanning the shelves in Tuesday Morning for some candles...they have a ba-zillion candles and sometimes they carry Tag Chapel candles, which I love because they are unscented, and do you care...anyway, I found two and got in line at the check out counter.

The woman behind me kept staring at me.

My first reaction when someone is staring at me, is to check my teeth for food, make a mental note of the What Not To Wear outfit I might be wearing,smooth my hair and check for a big ass bug in it, or make sure I haven't tucked my skirt into my pantyhose therefore exposing my who-who to the general public...ah, don't laugh, I've actually done that.

After that I sometimes recall that I have been on television or radio or on the stage for the last twenty-some years and people do "out me" and come up and chat...it usually takes me a while to figure out why a stranger thinks they know me and then it hits me, duh. It's something I will never get used to.

Meanwhile, back to the staring contest...

The woman said, "I'm sorry I keep staring at you, I don't mean to be rude, you just look so familiar, you remind me of someone."

Just as I was about to say, well maybe you know me from television...(this time of year they air reruns of the WXXX Holiday Jam over and over and over again, I get a lot of emails and hellos from that)...

she held up her hands and said " No no, its' not that you are somebody, you just look like somebody".

I nervously giggled , pondering what fresh hell might singe my non-somebody ego.

"You look like that actress, what's her name?".

I sighed an aging ingénue sigh of relief and said "Thank God it's an actress and not some WWF mud wrestler."

She was still lost in thought , head bowed, in her own analog middle-aged recall google ..."Candy, is her name Candy"

Uh oh, she's not naming a porn star is she, this could go south real fast....

"No , it's Elaine...no wait, DIANE LANE, that's it Diane Lane!" she is now doing the I-do-not-have-Old-Timer's-I can -remember- a damn-name-strut.

Oh, how nice , Diane Lane, what a compliment....she is wearing glasses though....maybe needs a change in prescription...

she goes on to tell me she was the production coordinator on the set when Diane Lane was in Pittsburgh shooting a movie I never saw, but how exciting....someone who actually saw Diane Lane in real life, says I look like her...this is big...and I can always use big.

I was about to engage her in a conversation about the local film industry and how we may have many folks in common but something held me back...I really don't know what.

Maybe I wanted to be just a random Diane Lane -in -my -dreams -look -alike and leave it at that.

I walked out into the parking lot with a big smile and wondered if Diane Lane drove an SUV with soccer gear and a 35 pound bag of dog food in the back...

and does she shop at Tuesday Morning to get a deal on candles...

would she buy the dark chocolate mint bar I just bought at the counter and it eat it...

or perish the thought, her next film might have a nude scene....

does she wear yoga pants to the store even though she didn't just come from yoga class?

and does she ever,

EVER,

have someone mistake her for someone else?

...

Drop Kick that Bird...one more time

One thing I realized as an adult is that every family lives at one level or another of dysfunction. Our level was the Grand Dysfunctional level ...and therefore the stuff of legend...I always thought we should be issued a plaque or something.

As a teenager in the 70's, I was part of the Baby boomer youth generation and it's big rebellion with our parents, the Greatest Generation. They were in a complete quandry as to just what the hell the kids were rebelling against . The clash mostly came to a head on holidays...our house was no exception...

One Thanksgiving in particular, is the stuff of legends...and so it goes.

My mother was a partial cook,mainly weekends and holidays...and it would take at least three Brandy Alexanders for her to get through the night...Thanksgiving was a challenge for her this year, because her husband Bill , our stepfather, had invited his cranky 90 year old last-survivor-of-the-Johnstown-flood-when-will- this-woman-ever-die-mother over for Thanksgiving....her name was Daisy (good God I named my dog that, is that some weird Jungian thing?) and Daisy didn't like my mom or the fact that her son had packed her off to the the Lutheran Home to spend her final days among the quilt makers.

Daisy was parked strategically in the sunporch and and barking unrecognizable orders into the air as Bill crept into the vodka...my mom in the kitchen, was announcing to no one in general that the cooking would begin and was intermittently rousting my sister and me out of bed with the mantra.."This is not the Hilton, you girls better get up and help with dinner".

I dragged my teenager self down to the kitchen to find my mother deep into Brandy ALexander Uno and her arm up to her elbow into the cavity of the turkey...I presume it had to do with the filling... God I hope so...I must of had a strange look on my face..so mother in her most grand and almost slurred way said "You know I could've been a surgeon."...well there's your explanation, pardner.

The turkey stuffed and silenced was carried and placed in the double oven on the wall.

I could hear Daisy's raspy voice yelling something from the sunporch which sent my stepfather, Bill straight out of the room and back to the liquour cabinet....
as teenager's we can never know the stress adults are under, until we become adults..all we know is that something is brewing and we want to be around to catch any loose change that falls on the ground when it's all over.

Hours later, my sister sauntered on down and another discussion about the Hilton began..apparently we are not princesses and my mother is not our maid and yada yada yada...oops I think I just rolled my eyes ...the requisite snotty teenage girl reaction to a lecture...oh and another thing if you think I was put on this earth just to clean up after you two, you are GREATLY mistaken...

Daisy barks again from the sunporch, you know the woman could've caught fire and no one would ever bother to go check...Bill heads to the vodka...my mom is now melting down over the fact that nobody helped peel the potatoes and this is ..say together... NOT THE HILTON (of course I'm wondering if we ever did stay in a Hilton and I could use a frame of reference here). The eye rolling begins and oh we are caught mid roll as my mom downs another Brandy Alexander...and the pitch is going up and up and....who is going to help me make this meal..how late did you girls stay out last night..this doesn't all happen by magic you know..I am not the maid....no one helps me around here...

and out of the corner of my eye....

I see Bill...

did he just open the oven door?

wait a minute...does he have the turkey...

where is he going....

I yelled something like "hey"...

my mother and my sister and I stop dead mid-yell....

we can hear the front door open...

we all start making our way through the hall to the door...

just in time to hear Bill saying " You want help with the turkey, here's your damn turkey"...

and then a large muffled thud.

He had dropped kicked the turkey into the yard...

the three of us stood stunned in the door way...

Bill walked right past us back into the house,wiping his hands....

a suburban Pontius Pilate.

My mother didn't skip a beat, she looked at the brutalized Butter Ball in the yard and said. "I am NOT cleaning that up."

Of course not...this is ..not the Hilton...and you aren't ...the maid.

..........
Years later we wrote a song called "Drop Kick that Bird" It was played in rotation on WXXX...my mom called everyone she knew to tell them to request it.

It became our Thanksgiving story...no pilgrims, no Indians no maize...no, just remember when Bill drop kicked that bird....

The neighborhood dogs were thankful for the free meal in the grass and I was amazed at the quickness of their removal of a carcass.

Bill was thankful it shut Daisy up for awhile.

My mother was thankful she actually didn't have to cook the rest of the meal.

My sister was thankful for the distraction from her breaking curfew.

My uncle Denny was thankful that we stopped by , although unannounced ,and ate turkey at his house.

And ...I was thankful that the word Hilton wasn't used the rest of the night.



Happy Thanksgiving, from one Grand Dysfunctional family to another...all we can do is live in victory and don't stress over getting it all right...leave the perfection to God.

....

The Chances we Get

I am writing this through tear clouded eyes. I admit it, I am a weeper, even commercials get to me, but today, today was one of those days only a morphan (middle aged orphan) can understand. An event at the grocery store triggered such a moment of mourning for my mom and a grateful feeling for the chances we get.

I am also wondering why in heaven's name do I always have these moments at the grocery store?

Really.

Today I was doing a little weekly shopping and preliminary stock up for Thanksgiving, it was crowded, lots of senior citizens...social security check day no doubt. The aisles were crowded and moving slow and cranky babies were cranking in the usual cranky way. These are the days that I put my stereo headphones on, pump up the iTunes and proceed to hunter/gather in my own little world of lush harmonies and guitars and oh my, are those free cheese samples?

I found my things without event , even had the guy at the seafood counter do me a solid on some scallops for dinner, yeah scallops, I now like them...and I slid up into line and removed my headphones to join the real world ...I was reading the tabloid headlines about Will and Kate when I heard someone yell "Help her , help her , she's falling".

I look back down onto the aisle to see and elderly woman whose legs had failed her and given out , she was hanging onto her cart for dear life, terrified that she might fall to the floor and hurt her head...I was four deep in line at the register and was quickly trying to figure how to snake out and grab her, when a another woman came up from behind her and held her, voices were yelling "Get her a chair, someone help!"

This woman was so small and frail , her hair a mass of white, she was barely taller than the shopping cart, which was filled so high it must have been a monumental labor to push.

The look on her face was one of complete fright. She was so scared and alone.

Within seconds there was a wheel chair, she was whisked into it and someone was calling 911.

I became a bowl of jello.

Tears were streaming down my face all the way to the car.

It took me back to a year before my mother came to live in Pittsburgh in assisted living and how she told me she had experienced low blood sugar and her knees gave out on her in the grocery store. She recounted how the clerks helped her and sat her on the bench and gave her some orange juice to drink...it was so disturbing to hear this. They asked her if there was anyone she could call to pick her up, she couldn't come up with a name, her husband was dead, and her daughters lived too far away....okay you can kill me right now.

These kind strangers where doing my job.

That moment marked the beginning of the move here. She needed help to shop, to bath, to even walk. It was time to say goodbye to the behemoth of the house and head to the burgh.

For 4 years I shopped every week for her...she hated the food where she was staying, and it becomes an obsession, not much else to focus on ya know...so in the midst of a full time job and taking care of a family, I became Delivery Girl...there should have been a hat involved, I'm sure of that.

Mom would call me several times a week to add things to the list, Equal was on it several times. Packets of Equal are like crack in nursing homes, they hoard it and use it to curry favors.

I pushed carts full of strange items only seniors need and I made sure I proclaimed at check out , those diapers aren't for me ...sometimes I cranked about it, sometimes she cranked about it , but it was a connection for us as I delivered and stocked the groceries in her fridge...and I would cook her favorite foods and bring those over too.

She was diabetic and wanted all the wrong foods, but here's a tip for those out there caring for an elderly parent at the end of their years...lighten up...let them have the damn cookies...you're not going to reverse the diabetes and what are we talking here, a few years left? Better yet, sit and eat the cookies with them.

I'm glad I had the chance to shop and care for my mom, and yes, caring for her turned some things upside down for awhile...but hey, I imagine I rocked her boat pretty much straight through the 70's and well, you know the saying about paybacks ...the routine became so ingrained that after my mom passed, I couldn't bring myself to go into a grocery store for quite awhile, because I was falling into tears at the check out each time.

But if I hadn't taken the chance to take care of her, what would I be thinking about when I saw that woman today?

Even though the sight of her little hands hanging on so tight to the cart reduced me to my usual quivering crying self , a voice inside me kept reminding me that for the last four years of my mom's life, she never had to rely on the kindness of strangers in a grocery store ever again because someone was there for her, taking the chance.

...

An open letter to Jeff Bezos of Amazon

Dear Mr.Bezos,

I'm sure the heading of this email is all you need to know of the correspondence ahead.

Of course I am shocked at your inclusion of a how to manual for pedophiles,The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure, and in turn, disturbed that you stand behind Freedom of Speech to sell it, but what really shocks me is your need to do so.

Because of your inability to understand the larger ramifications of your commercial rationalization of this indefensible subject, I can only conclude that somewhere down the road, you lost not only your spine but your soul.

You had the luxury of the decision as to whether or not selling this book was something you really needed to do.

Apparently it is.

Therefore our family will make a similar decision that we no longer need to order from Amazon, that would be covered under my Freedom from Creeps.

In truth,

Invisi-gal

1963 and Jackie the Tomboy Runaway

In 1963 we lived in Glen Ellyn , a suburb on the outskirts of Chicago...the suburbs were exploding with WWII vets and their families carving out the American dream.

We had two car garages and enough room for a neighborhood par three in the adjoining back yards. We had neighborhood barbecues and gangs of kids on Schwinn bikes and swing sets dotted the property lines.

Most of all, we had freedom. We kids roamed our neighborhoods as if we would inherit every house, every tree, and every stone on the ground. On summer days, we would jump on our bikes in the morning and disappear until lunch...grilled cheese, hot dogs, Campbell soup and a bowl of grapes...the meal of explorers.

I knew every good climbing tree, every stream and where to cross it and whose back yard you could cut through. I knew the yards with friendly dogs ( I always carried a treat for them) and which dogs you stayed away from (no treat for you!).

I was 6 years old then, and still convinced I could fly...I used to jump off a big boulder near our house wishing it so.

This is the year I mastered the two-wheeler NO TRAINING WHEELS THANK YOU VERY MUCH...

it was the year I remember seeing my mother weeping at the dining room table over the newspaper which held the details of President Kennedy's assassination,

it was the year I cut myself grabbing a broken Noxema jar out of the stream near Mahoney's yard , leaving the first scar I ever had.

It was the year my sister and I met Jackie the Tomboy Runaway.

At the top of Hackberry Lane, a new house was being built, otherwise known as an attractive nuisance by my mom...we loved to explore in new houses, wondering who would move in, would there be kids our age, would they have cool bikes, would their dog be nice? We always found things left by the workers, coke bottles, cigarette butts, and pieces of wood I just knew we could use in our fort in the woods...but we never expected we would find a person.

One afternoon while sneaking into the new house, we were surprised by the presence of a girl, about 15 years old, dressed in jeans and a dark jacket, she had a bandana on (the first I'd ever seen NOT on a cowboy)…she had a chain on her wallet and short black hair and Beatle boots.

We were startled at first when we saw her, but she had an easy smile and in the most disarming way said "Hi" as if she was supposed to be in this house...

I looked at my sister Ellen (at three years older she was the boss of me), and took her lead that this was okay and we started up a conversation.

Jackie was a runaway, she didn't say from what.

She was living on the road and a bit hungry. She was going to stay for only a few days then be on her "Jackie Kerouac" way.

Ellen and I, eager to be a part of this adventure, immediately rattled off the contents of our refrigerator at home and how we could sneak food to her NO PROBLEM. We are pros at this stuff, we think.

Jackie smiled.

We ran home and assembled PB&J sandwiches, bananas, apples, cheese... your typical rebel food...and on the walk back I asked my sister why Jackie dressed like a boy..."Because she's Tomboy, that's why" ...it was the first time I ever heard that term...Tomboy...wow, new word, new friend, this is what being 6 is all about.

We got back to the Tomboy runaway hiding place and proudly displayed our "get" for Jackie, all the while bragging about our stealth operation and how we told our mom we were eating lunch al fresco, translation: in the woods at our fort.

We watched her wolf down her food and then she pulled out her jackknife to cut her apple…ANOTHER first...a jackknife! This Tomboy Runaway was getting cooler by the second; free of her parents and rules, out on the open road, cool bandana, owner of a jackknife...I bet she knew one of the Beatles, she wore their boots, you know.

We walked home in inspired silence...this was more fun than any Pipi Longstocking book...this girl smoked that Eloise at the Plaza...

I couldn't wait to get back to the construction site the next morning...I had more stolen food and Bazooka bubblegum to give her. I couldn't wait to tell her what she missed on The Ed Sullivan show the night before and that we were trying to sneak a pillow and blanket out to her...

but the house was empty, no one answered when I did the secret knock...one two, one two.

Jackie was gone.

No note, no nothing, just gone.

I backed out to the dirt filled front yard, and stared at the unfinished house so like Jackie, a work in progress, yet to be defined.

The walk home was a long thoughtful one, heavy footsteps full of letdown.

I think I checked back one or two times later that week, but Jackie the Tomboy runaway was gone. She became a staple in my prayers, Dear God please bless so and so and sorry for not cleaning my room and help Jackie find her way home.

Pretty soon Jackie the Tomboy Runaway just became a story we would tell the other neighbor kids, and then something my sister and I would reminisce about as adults...we still can't pinpoint why we never alerted our parents about her.

Jackie would be close to maybe 65 years old today, that's if and it's a big if, she survived her life on the road. Or maybe Jackie the Tomboy Runaway was just a kid from a nearby neighborhood who wanted to scare her parents, to finally get them to stop forcing her to wear dresses and corsages and grow her hair long like the Lennon sisters. At least that's how my 6 year old mind defined the terms of hurt ... as an adult, I imagine there may have been a more sorrowful story behind Jackie.

Who knows.

All I know is that she felt alone enough to run from the place where you should feel safe and above all, loved. She felt compelled to risk whatever unknowns just so she could be, or find out, who she was.

God already knew who she was, he already counted every short black hair on her head, she just didn't know that.

And I knew who she was, she was Jackie the Tomboy Runaway, the most exciting thing to happen on Hackberry Lane, and maybe , just maybe, in our simple act of bringing food to her and listening to her with such awe, she felt special enough to stop the running.