My Mom “Likes” me!

My beautiful amazing mom “likes” me on Facebook.  She said she wished there was a button for “very, very much.”

Asking people to like me on Facebook takes me back to the sticky hand-holding friendships of grade school – when being liked was a matter of life and death and wearing the wrong socks could bump you to the “not cool” table.

How did we survive the growing up years?  It's a miracle we made it through, but it was all worth it to arrive at the grown-up friendships of today.  I am constantly amazed and humbled by the kindness, generosity, and love of friends – and count my mom as #1 on that list.

My funny, kooky, brilliant, beautiful friends have stood by me on the long road to being published.  They have held me (and Mom) on their strong shoulders as we lost my dad and both of my brothers.  They celebrate every little success with me as if it were their own (it is), and tell me when I have spinach in my teeth (most of the time).  They help me decide who will play each of my characters in the movie, and spend inordinate amounts of time deciding what we will all wear to the Oscars. 

They would help me hide a body (hopefully not necessary) and stood by me when cops pulled me over for driving through a barricade (kind of a long story).

If you don’t have good friends, try to find some.  If you haven’t been a good friend lately, maybe change that.  And if you know someone who could use a fabulous person like you as a friend, think about adopting them.  The to-do list can wait one more day.  Call a friend, send a funny card, meet for lunch, have a laugh.

At the end of the day, your “likes” on Facebook will come and go, but your true friends will walk with you down this windy, pot-hole filled road of life, to the end.

Mean People Really Do Suck…or Living, Breathing Free Radical

No, silly…a free radical isn’t the same thing as an uninhibited liberal.  In the simplest terms, free radicals are molecules responsible for aging and tissue damage, and maybe even disease. They float around and steal electrons from other molecules, which in turn causes that molecule to become a free radical, and the snowball effect ensues, creating havoc for your cells. 

Free radicals can cause damage to your cardiovascular system, immune system, brain, skin and organs – just to name a few.  They can cause cancer and most experts agree they lead to aging.

Those same experts would have you avoid smoking and drinking, eat a healthy diet, and get some exercise.  But what is one of the biggest troublemakers?  Stress.  And what is one of the biggest causes of stress?  Mean people.

 

We all know a few mean people, those energy vampires who try to suck the life out of everything good.  If you can, avoid these people at all costs.  But if you must be around them, try to limit the amount of time you spend with them, and remember to breathe.  Just breathe.  Take three deep breaths and feel sorry for them.  To be a mean person must be a miserable life.

And if you are a mean person?   Knock it off!  You’re shortening your own life, and maybe even the lives of the people around you.  Do you really want that on your conscience?

The Circle of Life is Killing Me

If I feed the fox, will it stop trying to eat the baby magpies?  If I let the deer eat the columbines in my front garden, will they leave the tomatoes alone in the back garden?  If I leave milk out for the cats, will they stop going after the chipmunks?  If I leave apples and strawberries out for the hawks, will they stop trying to eat the cats? Honestly, this whole thing is wearing me out.  

Here in the mountains near Aspen, everyone tells you not to feed the wildlife.  We have lots of bears, and they are always hungry.  They can sniff out a dried up Kind bar in the glove box of your car from 3 miles away.

But also, according to experts, we need to leave the animals alone, because they know what they’re doing.  And we, clearly, don’t.  When we try to step in, we invariably screw things up.  Here are a just a few examples of our brilliance:

In the 1990’s a crate of 1,000 giant African snails was smuggled from Nigeria into the United States and sold to exotic pet dealers.  A single one of these baseball sized slugs can eat an entire head of lettuce in one sitting.  (will someone please explain to me how a 16-ounce snail makes a good pet?) 

Continuing our strange exotic pet theme, walking catfish were imported from Southeast Asia as aquarium fish in the 1960’s.  They escaped from breeding tanks in Florida.  These strange fish are able to breathe and crawl on land, and aggressively go after other fish and wildlife.

The kudzu plant was introduced to the South at the New Orleans Exposition in 1883.  A fast-growing vine, it quickly became a favorite of Southerners looking for cover for their porches, or vegetation to feed their livestock.  It’s now known as the vine that ate the South, and there’s even a poem warning Southerners to close their windows at night to keep the vine out.  It has become an invasive menace and now covers more than 7 million acres in the south.

The wise guys (spiritually advanced people) say that there is perfect harmony in the universe, if we will just leave it alone and stop messing with it.  

My mom had a tiny hummingbird nest in one of her trees.  Last year the mother came back to the nest, and Mom witnessed the miracle of two babies hatching, growing, and taking their first flight.  This spring, the nest blew out of the tree in a storm.  Knowing how much she loved watching them, I agreed with her that using Gorilla Glue to reattach the nest was a great idea.  You’ll be shocked to learn that the mother hummer wasn’t impressed. 

You can’t fool Mother Nature.  And you can’t fool a mother hummer.  I bet even the gorillas are laughing at us. 

Voila! Something Bad For You!

I don’t like to brag, but I am really, really good at taking a perfectly healthy food and turning it into something dreadfully fattening and not the least bit good for you.  Sure, I eat kale, but I sauté it in butter.  Quinoa with black beans?  Love it!  Smothered in cheese and sour cream.  Green tea?  Absolutely.  Hand me the honey. 

I can walk into a health food store and within minutes sniff out the one thing that probably shouldn’t be in a health food store.  Healthy food?  Not so fast.

Case in point:  Today I went to my favorite local health food store for oranges, apples, kale, and coconut oil.  But I accidently bought Dark Fudge Sea Salt Carmel Drizzle popcorn.  At the checkout stand I got behind one of those people.  You know, the ones who would rather eat razor blades than sugar.  She took inventory of my cart and sadly shook her head.  

If any of the following foods are considered fruits or vegetables, I am a total rock star at eating healthy: 

the aforementioned popcorn

banana chocolate chip muffin

zucchini bread

carrot cake,

apple fritters

peach schnapps (kidding)

Being a vegetarian for me means not eating creatures.  But unless cookie dough is a health food, I could maybe use a little work on my diet.  I wonder if I could check myself in to the Betty Crocker clinic to try to get clean. 

You Rock! (or…Happy Erf Day!)

(In honor of Earth Day a few weeks ago)

When my nephew was three, he came home from Sunday school with a cattywampus, semi-crushed circle drawn on a piece of orange construction paper.  “God made the erf!” he said, so full of excitement he could hardly stand it.  Unfortunately, he’s a bit older now and can say all his words perfectly.  I really miss his three-year-old take on the world.

When did we stop being excited about the erf?  This spinning ball of mystery and secrets?  This third rock that rotates around a sun that is one of billions of suns, in a galaxy that is one of billions of galaxies, in a universe that may (or not) be one of many universes?

We can’t make this stuff up!  It’s amazing!  Did you know:

Only 14% of the earth’s species have been identified.  (Exactly how do we know that if the other ones haven’t been identified?  How can we know how many things there are that we don’t know about?)

106 billion people have existed on the earth.  (Take that, Facebook!)

While you go nonchalantly about your day, you’re spinning through space at around 1,000 miles per hour (unless you’re visiting Santa at the North Pole).

Feeling stiff in the joints after your hike?  The earth is 4.54 billion years old, and you don’t hear the old girl complaining.

The sun weighs 333,000 times as much as the earth.

Only 11% of the earth’s surface is used to grow food.

Over 90% of our oceans are as yet unexplored.  Can you say Loch Ness Monster?

The core of earth is hotter than the surface of the sun.

Go home and tell this stuff to your kids, or let them tell you.  The erf rocks!