Conclusion of United Flight 6960 from Chicago to Columbia, South Carolina.  Parts 1 and 2 immediately precede this tale of unusual punishment.  

Whoa.  Finishing up my tale of woe is going to be a bit more difficult than I’d planned.  I’m now in my Hilton branch office the next day.  I have the television on the History Channel…and, right there, splattered all over the big flat screen is a re-enactment of the Battle of Valley Forge.  At the moment, three emaciated soldiers, their frozen bare feet wrapped in rags, their eyes blank from pain and starvation…are sitting against a tree.  “Only the bravest, most loyal men stayed the winter,” the kind-voiced narrator explains.  “The weaker men long ago ran away in the night.  Those with wounds died horrible deaths, gangrene taking over their legs, inch by inch. The rest…too weak to break the frozen ground, can do no more than drag their comrades’ bodies a few yards into the woods to be devoured by animals in the night.”

Even the boney scavenger wolves competing over the gangrene ridden dead soldiers are starving.  This makes it really hard to complain about the meal I finally secured once I reached Columbia, South Carolina.  Really hard, but not impossible. I hesitate to continue….Much can be said for ignorance. …and whining is so unattractive…BUT, as I was saying…

Eventually, a guy in a blue jumpsuit delivered paperwork to United 696o on the tarmac at Chicago O’Hare  Airport.  Our plane is backing away from the gate–which you’d be thinking is a good thing. But aha!  Leaving the gate is only a delaying ploy…sort of a decoy move to keep passengers in the delusion that something is happening.  I glance over my shoulder to soak in Army Arnold’s admiration at how I’d called the situation perfectly.  How the guy in the jumpsuit delivered the needed paperwork.  In sort of in a long JIFF.  My Army pals and I sigh with relief.  It’s been fun getting to know each other…but all that was over…time to get back to our separate lives….Army Arnold and pal land cots at Ft. Jackson and I slide between cool sheets at the branch Hilton.

Army Arnold, hanging on to our relationship, punches the back of my seat asking if it is safe to fly in a blizzard such as the one outside his window?   Further flaunting my extensive flying experience and all-around travelling cool, I related several air travel stories for Arnold’s amusement.  He said he envied how I was so relaxed, so able to go with the flow.  “Oh, I dunno,” I say, “I’ve learned to take these little changes in stride.”

Once we’re in line for take-off, Arnold remarks at the number of planes ahead of us and I throw out some random number that I claim is the number of planes O’Hare handles every day. …Now our plane initiates a slow left turn out of line.  “I knew it!  Something’s wrong with the plane!” says Arnold.

Denial Danny, designated flight attendant, is already digging in his bag of fabulous free treats.  This is not good.  Pilot Positive Pete comes on the intercom:  “Well, folks, because we had to wait for the paperwork…well, enough time passed for ice to collect on the plane.  (Arnold gasps and punches the back of my seat.)  So, ladies and gentlemen, we’re now returning to the gate to have the wings de-iced.”

The plane goes a few yards and stops in a cross track.  Positive Pete amends his promise: “Actually, we cannot head into a gate to get in the line to be de-iced….We cannot locate an open gate, so we are now in in line to get a gate,  where we will get in line to be de-iced, then will return to get in line to take off.

Tick…tick.  We begin hour three on the plane.  

My Emotional Guidance System is going berserk, screaming:  This is horrible!  I can’t take this!  However, since I have Army Arnold behind me saying out loud what I am thinking, I must not crack, I must continue to feign sophistication and self-control.  Next to Army Arnold’s genuine terror of flying…if I were to unleash my relentless bitching over my inconvenience….Well, I’d look a bit petty.

Thus, I am repeating to myself: “While the changes in my plans… are unfortunate, uncomfortable, and inconvenient ….this is not a disaster unless I decide to make it one….While the changes in my plans are unfortunate, uncomfortable, and incon….”

Okay.  We’re in a gate, in line for de-icing. Denial Danny unleashes the beverage cart.  Not good. We aren’t going to be airborne in any hurry.  Army Arnold is asking his buddy if it’s true that if you’re in the military you can order alcohol on planes?  As Danny hands Arnold his Coke (full can, definite bad sign), Arnold asks Denial Dan if the pilot has ever flown in a snowstorm before.  After beverage service is complete, Danny is back to pushing ‘free’ pretzels.

6960 is now almost four hours old.  The Army boys aren’t going to make Ft. Jackson by midnight, but I should be under those comfy covers by then.  Because now the craned de-icer equipment is spraying us down.  The plane swaying like a baloon as the de-icer pressure spaxxrer sweeps along, ArmyArnold is starting to babble about how maybe he should have gone to college first, but he needs the Army money to go, but maybe college isn’t that important…..

“Alright!” Positive Pete exclaims as if we’d just safely swung across the Grand Canyon on a rope.  “De-icing is complete. We are ON OUR WAY, ladies and gentleman.”

You’d think the words…ON OUR WAY would indicate imminent movement.  But no.  We sit, tray tables in upright and locked positions. Denial Danny pops into the aisle with his plastic goody bag informing us that silly old Positive Pete meant that we were now waiting for a runway assignment. As he passes my row, D. Danny warns he only has two ‘free’ granola bars left.  I pretend I can’t hear him.  A move I shall deeply regret.  (Note eventual menu for the evening.)

Snow swirls outside.  Army Arnold pushes his knee into the now familiar dent in the back of my seat.  I turn around.  Nothing to worry about, time-wise, I say. Because we’re already late, traffic control is probably waiting to give us a good spot, I said, because I’m so cool and know everything.  Arnold squints at me.  “It’s snowing,” he says. “We never had snow in California…I should have taken the bus the whole way.”  He drains his Coke.

Tick…tick…tick…an hour passes since Pete’s jolly send-off. “While the changes in my plans….are unfortunate, inconvenient…”  Denial Danny comes by and asks me if I need anything.  From his expression I’m pretty sure that uncontrollable, self-destructive part of me that takes over when I’m pulled over for a speeding ticket…has now taken charge of my relationship with D. Danny.  Now that my true self had slipped out, like the many lawmen before him, Danny isn’t going to be cutting me a break.

Tick…tick…tick… Then Petey said, “Oops! Sorry about this ladies and gentlemen, but we’ve waited so long here in line to get in line that we’ve iced up again. We’re going back to get in line for the de-icer.”  He keeps making statements like the one above as if we were supposed to be thrilled.  An hour later the de-icer returns.  Tick…tick.  “Oh happy Day!” the de-icer runs out of anti-freeze.  We get de-iced.  We wait to get in line for take off. We are into hour six.  Six. Army Arnold is asking me stories about my childhood the way people do in movies where the players all know they are going to die. 

Tick…tick.  Take-offs currently suspended due to visibility. Denial Dan doesn’t come around much any more. He did take a bathroom break in the rear luxury spa, but he blew by me so fast I wasn’t able to stick my foot out in the aisle.

But, get this…this is the best part….It is now 3:15 in the morning.  We take off….and here it is…wait for it….Denial Danny picks up his mike and ACTUALLY SAYS…”We at United want to take this opportunity to thank you for choosing United Airlines and PERSONALLY extend an invitation for you to join the United Frequent Flyer Program….Just fill out the brochure you can find in the seat pocket in front of you….

 Oh, and the final menu on reaching my destination….to be revealed in next post.  Not a picture post.  No one should have to see what I stuck my plastic fork into that early morn…with dreams of granola bars in my head.

Maybe I’m just too immature to fly.  The ticket agent in Austin telling me my flight was three hours late and I’d need some serious re-routing…she seemed to be of that opinion.  She kept saying, “Would you stop saying I’m ruining your day….I am not personally doing anything to you…Also, would you mind picking your forehead up off the counter, ma’am?”  What did she want from me?  I’d already stopped crying.

Dateline: American Flight 2486  Austin to Chicago.  Right now I am high above the clouds after an on-time departure at 1:15.  Sounds simple enough, right?  Well, not really.  Since I wasn’t planning on going to Chicago…Or, for that matter any further north than Dallas.   But I am not captain of my fate.

Instead of the trip I booked—Austin (Leave at 10:43a.m.) –Dallas (an hour later)-Columbia, South Carolina-Arrive Columbia at 2:00. 

My current routing is —Austin-Chicago (Yes, I actually lose ground)-Wait 4 hours, then Arrive Columbia at 10:00 tonight.  

Now I’m squeezed into a middle seat in the back by the toilet on American Flight 2486 to Chicago (instead of the exit leg-room seat I’d so carefully reserved in that little ole thirty minute leap to DFW) I am surrounded by a family of five adults and one child from one of those less hygienically obsessed nations.  Boarding of the plane was held up when this family attempted to board with ten freight-sized luggage carriers way beyond the size of carry-on.  In all, the six were coming aboard with thirteen bags thinking they’d discovered a loophole in Americans policy of charging for extra checked bags. Apparently, my seatmates were moving to Chicago and hoping to save on the moving van. …I don’t want to be rude…you of all people know how desperately I wish I wasn’t noticing any of this stuff.  But I want you to know what I’m working with here.  This is more than my usual what-no-almonds-only-peanuts flying trauma.

Knowing that these six people dressed in a manner uncommon among U.S. citizens…actually drug all these bags through security without a flicker…well, it’s scary, that’s all I’m saying.   Usually, security spots overage issues.  Once preparing to board flight from Kansas City to Tulsa to attend a wedding…I attempted to board with a computer, a book bag, and the dress for the wedding in a plastic laundry bag.  I was stopped and told—“Two carry-ons, one which must fit under your seat, ma’am,”…forcing me to….while in line… remove the dress from its hanger slide it up over my jeans…wiggle out of my jeans…then holding the dress up as best I could over my top half, pull my T-shirt over my head, catching the sleeves up and re-covering myself…all of this while walking and not holding up the line… as I stuffed my jeans and shirt into the book bag.

Oh well.  Refreshments….Sometimes the flight attendants start the beverage cart at the back, sometimes the front, even the middle once in a while for variety. Wanna take your best shot at where they’re starting beverage service on this flight?

Okay.  Instead of focusing on the unpleasantries of my situation, that is, instead of listening to my Emotional Guidance System… which is screaming: “This is ridiculous!  Overwhelming! This should not be happening!” …I am going to attempt a leap…a little hop…in functioning.  I am going to play around with a few sentences I have heard represent the internal dialogue of more mature persons.

Therefore I shall use this screen to practice saying to myself:

Okay, I can’t just leap into this.

I need to make a couple of things clear at this point.  The changes in my plans include: triple time in the air, nine and a half hour later arrival, almost six hours on layover, another night of vending machine food instead of a nice bounty from Hilton room service, crap television watching prison reality shows heavily dosed with infomercials instead of watching the University of Texas basketball game at 8 o’clock and AROUND WHICH I CAREFULLY SCHEDULED THIS WHOLE TRIP, stand-by seat assignments over preferred seating, who knows what kind of hotel room, since the only rooms left will, for sure, be dingy closets next to the clanking ice machine [Okay, I’m not totally sure this will happen. It’s possible I’m judging the future on my own history of switching rooms.]…And, since I will have passed up my usual go-to-sleep window by the time I’m settled in my shabby hole-in-the-wall with my stale peanuts and staring at violent prisoners throwing body fluids on staff…I will end up taking some Benadryl to drop off…which means waking up tomorrow with dry mouth and slight memory loss.

I just arrived in Chicago.  I asked the agent where I could find the gate for the next flight since it was another airline.  The flight attendant looked at me and asked, “Are you going to WALK the whole way?” 

“I guess,” I said.  “Is there a bus or train?” I asked.  The attendant said, “No.”        

To be continued when I can stop the shaking.  All did not go well.

Living Now:  the Power Hose Incident Revisited

What would it take to get you to relax…Now?  What if…this is as good as it gets?

Dateline:  Second story veranda in Texas.  I am in my underwear power-hosing the doggie run…to be sure you have the full picture …see “How to Ruin a Relationship, the Power Hose Incident.”

In my right hand is the power hose.  In my left is a broom.  I am alternating hose spraying and broom pushing water off the edge and I soap and rinse the outdoor carpet.  I am doing my best to hurry, to get the job over.  This isn’t fun.  My arms ache.  Water keeps oozing back toward the wall.  I’m a bit peeved at the whole concept of spending a piece of my life hosing and sweeping…hosing and sweeping…hosing and sweeping.

Which is when a dangerous thought occurred to me….a thought which will change your life…if you ‘get’ it.  It’s a biggie…a toughie…but we can try this together.  In several sections.

What occurred to me was this question:  “Would I be ‘doing’ the job of hosing and sweeping differently if I were being paid for the job?”

Which led to the thought:  “How would my experience of hosing and sweeping be different if I were being paid by the HOUR to do the job?”   That is, I had to out on the veranda hosing and sweeping for a preset number of hours.  How would my internal experience be different if I wasn’t trying so hard to ‘get finished’?

I slowed down.  I stopped pushing the broom as hard and fast.  I danced in long, sweeping movements.  I slipped into a few stanzas of Delta Dawn….I noticed the beyond the balcony.  Corny, I know.  But, that’s what happened.  “Del-ta-uh Dawn…What’s that flower you have on?…”

Which is when I asked myself, “How would my life experience be different… if when my lifetime was assigned to me, God had looked at me and said, “You do realize you have been given an hourly job…that there’s nothing you need to finish?”

“People round Brownsville says she’s crazy…”

The Fashion Statement Diet

Lose Weight WITHOUT Changing What You Eat!

Emerging research suggests that the High Fashion Diet could be effective for weight loss (combined with a low calorie menu and exercise). Yes, you can lose weight simply by dressing with the appropriate amazing gadgets.  Or, How to Dress Like a Walking Emotional Guidance System… that is…as if you’ve said….I just give up…I’m never even going to try to think….ever.

Diet Plan:  There are a few purchases required here, but they’re each $19.99!… plus shipping and handling.  Oh, and lots of batteries.   Lots.

First, step into a pair of those Skechers Shape-up roller shoes (See previous Skechers post.).  These babies will take care of whipping your lower half into shape.

Second, strap one of those zapper belts that sends jolts into your abs so to make sure your amazing thigh and butt toning doesn’t get ahead of your tummy.

Certainly, you’ve bought two of those shaker tubes you hold in your hands…the ones that jiggle like crazy up and down and all you have to do is hang on baby… (I know, looks prit-tee pornographic to me….) Okay…put those down for now, you still need your hands.

Now, place the chin squasher torture instrument you bought off television that one time at three in the morning. You know, the one with a coil from a mattress that you place under your jaw.  Then you mash the spring down against your upper chest.  Ten minutes pushing that puppy down and you have a long slender neck and a few hard to explain bruises. 

Now, pick up those shaker tubes again.  You’re set…looking gadget fabulous. Roller shoes, zapper belt, chin squasher, and a tube wiggler in each hand.  Drive to Walmart, step out of your car, hit the on buttons on all your new-found miracle gadgets,  and walk around the perimeter in your new outfit.  This is the perfect weight loss program…unless you get arrested or run into someone from the office.

But Wait!  Just pay separate shipping and handling and you’ll receive the perfect accessory….one of those ball caps with a beer can and a flexible straw on either side.

There I was in Vegas… with a surly waitress and some crummy little shrimp and… I was as disappointed as a four-year-old staring out the window at the rain.  See the “Surly Waitress” incident. 

What to do?  What to do? sought direction.  I called on my two guidance systems.  

The Emotional Guidance System said:  You are being a brat here.  This meal costs twenty-five dollars, you CANNOT just leave an expensive meal.  You’re making too much of this!  You are too picky.  Hundreds of thousands, no, millions of people around the world, are going to bed hungry, and you, you are turning away from an expensive meal of shrimp.  There was a time when you and the special person travelled with a steno pad and wrote down every penny spent, staying in ratty motels and able to get lunch for a dollar (loaf of bread and a can of bean dip).  What’s happened that you are now such a brat?  It’s your fault for ordering seafood in the middle of the desert. These shrimp were flown in over many miles.  Think of it, woman.  These shrimp have given you their lives!

The Thinking Guidance System said:  Okay, probably life would be easier if you were a bit more adaptable, but the FACTS ARE…you can afford to walk this joint and find a cozier place with a happier staff. While there was a time when you would have to do without something else that day if you spent five dollars extra on a meal…but that was then.  This is now. You can afford to escape. The reality is, no one but you will be inconvenienced by your changing restaurants.  No one. 

I decided to split.  I asked for a to-go box and packed up the shrimp. (Which I dumped in the trash on my way to the next restaurant, as intended…but I thought taking the shrimp to-go and faking a mild emergency made me look less foolish….Okay, I know…I didn’t say I escaped the waitress from the frowny side of the street and her tiny shrimp without some concessions to my Emotional Guidance System.)

I left the waitress a ten dollar tip and a smile, hoping her day might pick up and headed for the buffet and a really perfect booth where I computed and piddled for hours. (Did you know the buffets in Las Vegas now have all day passes for tourists wanted to have it all and often?  I ask you, could this be a good thing?)

The Point:  Sometimes you can escape.  Remember the people who grew up in the depression and couldn’t spend money in accord with current circumstances?  Of course, many people attempt to spend themselves out of anxious situations when they cannot afford the cost … and end up causing all sorts of long-term problems.

An important contribution of the Thinking Guidance System is in avoiding generalizations.  The Emotional Guidance System lumps situations together saying, “If you allow yourself to switch restaurants and end up paying for two meals, what’s going to keep you from buying a bunch of timeshares in Tahiti you can’t use?”

What?

Decisions.  I’m doing several posts on decisions.  For starters, it helps in making decisions to know to how our Thinking Guidance System and our Emotional Guidance System are sharing in the duties.

Cut to Brett Farve.  Brett Farve didn’t do anything the rest of us haven’t.  So why am I having such a tough time getting past that retirement speech?  For those of you who still watch the regular news…Brett Farve is that quaterback for the Minnesota Vikings who turned 40 this weekend.  Before quarterbacking for the Vikings he was the many-times-over award winning quarterback for the Green Bay Packers.  In between was a one year run with the NY Jets.

Brett Farve who still looks good in Wranglers and he’s the football player…none of non-Wisconsin people knew all that well…until that speech.

What did Brett say?  Here’s an excerpt:  

“I’ve given everything I possibly can give to this organization, to the game of football, and I don’t think I’ve got anything left to give, and that’s it. I know I can play, but I don’t think I want to. And that’s really what it comes down to. Fishing for different answers and what ifs and will he come back and things like that, what matters is it’s been a great career for me, and it’s over. As hard as that is for me to say, it’s over.”

No big deal,a man retires from a sport and the world pays way too much attention (according to people who still watch the regular news).  But Brett didn’t just retire…he took a bunch of us immature….see it and fuse with it people…down with him.  Brett cried.  To quote a president whose Emotional Guidance System driven decision in the Oval office is the one act most remembered by the general public….I felt Brett’s pain.

I lamented his decision, I was awed by his courage, I re-thought my hard-line refusal to consider moving to Milwaukee with that first great offer with the University of Wisconsin when I was first out of graduate school…

I’m not proud of this…Since people whose level of functioning has some gaps (all of us) are more likely to lose their boundaries and take on the other person’s feelings as if the feelings are their own…and therefore get stuck twisting ourselves into pretzels trying to fix THEIR feelings.  We are driven to fix them, to fix ourselve.

Okay, back to Brett…and the sad truth about taking on other people’s feelings.  You see, I believed Brett.  I invested in what he was saying. 

…And…Brett came back the next year to play with the Jets….and the next year with the Vikings…So, Brett, what am supposed to do with my feelings?  

When we take on other person’s  feelings, we get  over-invested in the future choices that person makes…as if he or she owes us.  

As for  Brett, in reading his bio, I see that he married his girlfriend after 12 years of courtship.  And the world was surprised when he reversed his retirement?

Now just about any time a guy bungees off the Rio Grande Bridge in New Mexico…I’ve got to figure his Emotional Guidance System had something to do with that decision.  I can think of no fact-based reason to make such a jump and I can think of about a million fact-based reasons making such a jump is a really bad idea.

One of which is what happened to the guy in the tape I just watched.  The guy that jumped off the bridge….and ever-so-slightly miscalculated the distance from the bridge to the rocks.  Turns out the drop was about twenty feet less than figured…not that you’d expect two guys into this sort of thing to be math geniuses.

So, yes, John, the buddy taping the jump is heard saying something like this, “And there goes Andy!  What a thrill! What a leap!  You da man!……..Oh, God….I just watched Andy die.”  Pan to a blob of jeans and orange jacket on the rocks below.  (Now, I don’t know how you are with your friends, but I have to say…I’m a little troubled that buddy John continues the taping and the play-by-play.)

Later, John is videotaping his bud, Andy, this time from his hospital bed.  John says, “I knew I shouldn’t jump that day, I knew something wasn’t right (so far, we still have the Thinking Guidance System trying to stay in charge)….but then, (here’s where the Emotional Guidance System adds its two cents)…but then…it’s just that we’d driven all that way to get there and everything…”

The point here is that when we decide to do something or to keep doing something just because we’re so far in we don’t want to admit that all the effort thus far has been for naught…that’s our Emotional Guidance System blabbing and blabbing.  Which is how I explain ending up in this hideously over-crowded, over-priced restaurant in some tiny Colorado town over a hundred miles from where I intended to stop for lunch.  I’d driven north from Denver thinking (?) I’d find just what I had in mind…a lodge-looking mountain kind of place with excellent steaks and college football on at least two screens…on the outskirts of the city.

When I didn’t find the lodge/sports bar on the outskirts, I thought…I should turn around because I very hungry…but then saw the sign for Boulder…I thought what the heck…For sure, there’ll be a lodge/sports bar in Boulder…When I didn’t, I thought, I should turn around because I’m starting to get faint with hunger…which made me crave that steak even more….

And, there was the sign pointing to Estes Park which is on the edge of the Rocky Mountain National Park…There’s got to be a lodge/sports bar in Estes Park…what the heck, what’s another thirty-five miles….Of course, I hadn’t factored in the car hauling the double trailer about twenty cars ahead of me that never went over 18 miles per hour.

Thus weak and shaking I arrive in Estes Park….to discover that the place is over-run with tourists in town for Octoberfest (Yes, I noticed it was still September, too.)…I thought, hey, I should just cut my losses, chew another stick of gum and go back to Boulder or even Denver…then I thought “it’s just that I’d driven all that way…” and here I am a hundred miles from my hotel eating corn dogs standing up…

The point:  When you realize you aren’t absolutely sure your bungee cord is shorter than the distance to the rocks, settle for any ole café on the way out of town.

Dateline:   October Evening, East Texas Highway.  Driving with myspecial person on the way to visit a relative in Shreveport, Texas.

It’s late, both of us have worked full days before starting on the 250 mile trip.  The purpose of the trip was to comfort an uncle and aunt after uncle was given a diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.  Why am I adding these details?  Because later, when I’m decribing the movie of the world I have chosen to live in…I’m going to need some excuses. 

Looking Cool Tip:  Gaining sympathy is a useful technique when you realize you are being a jerk.  Prepare others for your jerk behavior by beginning every conversation by relaying how much you’ve been working lately, that you haven’t been sleeping well, or eaten in days.  The best excuse…and this is gem, so save it for when you’ve really made a mess of things…The best explanation for your out-of-control emotional spraying of others is…to say, “My doctor (’cardiologist’ has the best pull) has me taking a new medication and I think I’m having a bad reaction…”   The I’m-on-a-new-medication-for (pick important body organ) and I think I’m having a bad reaction is so good…the very people you have been abusing with your immaturity will calm down and try to help you.

The road is a two-lane highway, only one each direction through hilly country.  Thus, the ability to pass was limited and iffy.  Most of the time a “no passing” stripe occupied the center of the highway.  At some point along this lonely stretch of limited visibility…in my rearview I see an enormous truck growing in my rearview of my small sedan.  (Read: economical…this helps with the sympathy factor.)  “I can’t believe this guy!”  I glare in the mirror as if the truck driver is a mass killer who knows me… and has sign in his windshield announcing he hates me and I am his next victim… “What is thabt bozo back there thinking?”  I ask my special person in that little superior lilt that comes so naturally.  

“He can’t be thinking he can pass on this stretch of highway?”

That’s when the roaring started.  When I clutched the steering wheel in disbelief, barely able to hold my economical sedan on the road (at least that’s the way I was acting) as the White Freightliner pulled up alongside and stomped the diesel pedal with all he had.  The White Freightliner Maniac blew by me, then swung back in front of me.  Of course, I yelped and hit the brake as if I could barely avoid hitting him…which clearly wasn’t a problem since he’d outrun me already.  “I can’t believe he just did that!  Can you believe that?”  I ask.  “Get me some paper!  I’m taking down his license plate.  Look, there’s the number for his company.  Can you see that?  Get it down.  Just wait until his company’s going to love to hear what this guy has been doing!”

Armed with the Maniac’s phone contacts, I’m planning my scathing report to end jerko’s truckdriving career, when we stop at a station for fuel and a cold drink.  I notice the White Freightliner parked on the street.  I go in the mart for the drinks. While waiting to pay I notice a man at the pay phone. (It was a while back before cell phones, and of course, before I grew into the totally mature person I am now.)  He’s saying, “Ah, honey, I know it’s hard with the twins both sick. And junior teething and you still recovering from surgery…I’m coming as fast as I can.  Just hang on, I’ll be home soon…and stay up with the kids so you can get some sleep.”

I take the paper with his numbers on it out my pocket, tear it up…and slink back to the car.

Dateline:  Going live here.  Airport, Austin, Texas.  Goal: Chicago and certain unfamiliar spots in eastern Iowa and Illinois.  (I, a product of the hot sidewalks of Falfurrias, Texas, and other near-border villiages, none of which you have ever heard of, I am not disparaging the rural and small town.)

****Remember, I show you my trembling journey because you, too, are working on becoming more of  A SELF-DESIGNED PERSON?  Because you, too, want to better manage the anxiety keeping you in chains and wasting your life?… If this isn’t true… if you don’t have any of these issues…there’s always Dr. Laura.

Random Emotional Guidance System Self-talk:  “I don’t want to go.  I’m too tired.  My special person just had three surgeries in ten days.  (Good surgeries…the kind done to help you function better.)  I’m still not recovered from book launch party as I am congenitally deficit when it comes to hosting crowds….My feet are already are killing me and I didn’t have time to get a pedicure so that my appearance as a street person is complete… I have too much junk to carry…I don’t have any idea where I’m supposed to go…who I’m supposed to meet…and did not I go to graduate school SPECIFICALLY because I’m not good at selling stuff?” 

Emotional Guidance System is now in PRIMAL WHINE mode.

Specific Emotional Guidance System “WHAT IF”  Fear-inducing Statements in order of CRITICAL IMPORTANCE:

1) WHAT IFs concerned with appearing “cool and in-charge”:  (These fearful statements are the fertilizer for ‘blah’ feelings.)

“What if I show up at the book-signing without enough books and come off as silly for going to so much effort?”  Even more tragic, “What if I brought too many books and look silly and amateurish?”… “What if I get a lousy, unimpressive rental car?”  Or worse, “What if Avis only has SUVs left like happened a couple of weeks ago in L.A. and, like then, I underestimate the height of the vehicle and rip out a couple of water pipes out of the ceiling of the Hilton parking garage?  What if I over-react like I did then, back up wildly, and pop off that striped garage entry arm like it was a toothpick?”…  “What if I’m the oldest fattest worst dressed person there…given the chipped toenails and all?”

2} WHAT Ifs concerned with “survival”:  (These fearful statements actually stir up a little energy, though survival is a concern coming in a distant second to the concern to come across cool and sophisticated.) 

“What if I can’t find Galena, Illinois and Dubuque, Iowa?  What if it’s too hot?  What if it’s scary?  What if it’s rush hour traffic when I leave O’Hare in my rental car? What if, if I’m fortunate enough to find Dubuque, but room service is closed down by the time I get there?”

By the way, the need to appear cool and in-charge pretty much ended my ill-fated, short-lived relationship with skiing.  I know, I know…catching the lift seat under your rear is easy (right); and no one crashes off the lift after landing on her face the first four or five times…well, guess what?  I can handle my lack of cool in most circumstances and I looked as hot and with it as anyone else buried in my ski togs, goggles and wooly hat….but….it was the screaming that got to me…not mine…I refused to utter a peep as careened off the lift chair, gave a little swush, then accomplished more triple axels and whirling manuevers than an Olympic figure skater on crack…before sliding on my face until an act of nature ended by journey.  The watchers…the really cool ones…they were screaming in fear.  They screamed, too, everytime I got knocked down by the next lift chair when I tried to get up from my first fall. Bunch of weinnies. 

Okay, Illinois and Iowa.  Here I come.  Be gentle.  My knees are shot.

Each of us has three limited entities–time, energy, and money.  And one boundless entity–love.  Love we can afford to splatter around and we’ll never run out.

How we “use up”  our time, our energy, and our money…is another matter.  How much of your time, your energy, and your money…is thrown away in the service of your Emotional Guidance System?  How much of your time, energy, and money is sacrificed in efforts to rid yourself of anxiety?  (See ‘What Would You Give Not to Feel?)

‘Worrying’ is the king thief of time.  Saying ‘yes’ when we mean ‘no’ and ending up on projects we don’t value takes lots of energy.  And money?  Well, someone’s buying that tape that you place over your chubby spots and it sucks the fat away while you sleep.  Someone’s out there renting a storage locker to escape the anxiety of making decisions.  And, “Yes”  the reason my name is listed with five stars next to it on every company that makes downloadable emergency disk rescue software…is because when my computer crashes in the middle of the night…I thrash around like a big, desperate fish on a sidewalk, clicking “Buy Now” on every rescue offer popping up and promising to save me.    The ‘Water Tower Place Incident’ provides an example of FUSION (when the functioning of one person is determined by the functioning of another person) and how the breakdown of boundaries led to one person (me) almost spending some of my life ‘time’ doing something I had no desire to do.

Dateline: Chicago, a while back, still in graduate school and attending a downtown conference.  Mental state: google-eyed impressed with the opportunity to have my expenses paid in a wonderful, sophisticated city I’d never visited.

Exact place:  I am on the escalator of Water Tower Place, a multi-storied shopping complex with all the best stores…when I realize my physical self has been invaded by the Body Snatchers.  “How did I get here?” I’m asking myself.  “How did I end up on this escalator in a monster shopping mall?”  “This couldn’t be me.  I don’t even like shopping at home, how could I have chosen this place for the afternoon?”  

The fusion:  Earlier that week back in Austin, I’d remarked to a professor–a world-travelled, highly respected researcher and writer, who I greatly over-valued as I did most of my teachers– that I was going to Chicago.  With my excited annoucement, Over-valued World Traveler said, “Oh, you are going to have a great time.  You want to put shopping at Water Tower Place at the very top of your ‘must do’ list!”

I said something like, “Oh, that sounds perfect!  I can’t wait!”  Then it was: fly to Chicago, check into the hotel, and take the first opportunity to check out Water Tower Place.  Had I consulted my Thinking Guidance System, I’d have asked myself, “How did things turn out the last time someone (at least she had been with me, not just in my imagination) talked you into going to a shopping mall?  And I wouldn’t have woken up standing on a crowded escalator wondering how in the hecko I’d gotten there. 

Okay, this example is kind of ‘fusion-lite’, but it’s still fusion.  Fusion of this sort–when you agree with someone because you value them as a person without thinking for yourself–is common.   Careful now, I’m not saying that the ’self-defined’ move…when the professor says ‘you must go shopping at Water Tower Place–is to pop back with “Well, I don’t really don’t enjoy shopping, so I won’t be going to Water Tower Place.”  To respond with an unsolicited negative response is just as much having behavior determined by the other person… as was the ‘unconcious’ following of her advice.

Now, back to … as the stomach turns, we return to the hotel dining room in Kansas City (See Previous Post) … and observe the terribly dangerous and relationship-determining autographing incident.

Not only would I never asked for an autograph, I have made an art out of being next to someone famous and pretending I don’t even notice….breathing normally as if being next to celebrity is such a common experience for me. (I had the opportunity to calmly pretend to read my book at a horseshow while Patrick Swayze stood next to me watching horses warm up in the coliseum in Albuquerque. He’s shorter than you’d think.) And here’s the thing.  My special person says he loves me and I’m thinking he probably does.  And he KNOWS I freak out and get all weird and over-excited around famous people or college basketball players and thus it is very important for me to PRETEND I DON’T NOTICE I’m surrounded by famous people or college basketball players.

My special person knows how I need things to go (I’ve certainly told him often enough) … and, yet, he just goes right on being himself.  Nudging and teasing…chuckling, really.  He really likes me, too, so he thinks I’m kind of cute all nervous like that. I give him the Disapproval Death Stare”, which only makes him giggle, nudge, and he hands me a napkin and a pen…”

My Emotional Guidance System is SCREAMING.  I’m tempted to unleash the EGS monster and claim, “You couldn’t possibly care about me and keep doing this!”  To which he’d likely chortle and say, “What are you going to tell the judge?  That you were the victim of forced autograph getting?”

Here’s my 2 percent victory:  First, I recognized the anxiety before I fired shots at my special person.  I recognized my rising anxiety as something I could handle differently than I had in the past.  Usually, I would go on the offense, “What’s wrong with you?” “You‘re acting like a child.”  “You should not be doing this to me.” 

Instead, I was able to take responsibility for once.  I was quiet (but not pouty) for a few minutes.  I engaged my Thinking Guidance System… The facts: no one cares one way or the other how I conduct myself in a hotel dining room in Kansas City; most people asked for autographs are flattered and don’t consider autograph askers to be hicks and fools; there isn’t a ‘right’ and a ‘wrong’ behavior code when in the presence of celebrities and college basketball players. … and I was able to say something like, “I really admire the way you are more comfortable in public than I am.  I get all twitchy and weird even thinking about asking for an autograph, but it’s not your fault that I get all anxious.”

Okay, what I said wasn’t that good, but it was in the ballpark.

You get the idea.

Hang on…Hang on.  Don’t get your hopes up.   Do you think Iwant to teach myself right out a career?

“How to Treat Yourself” is about…okay…how you treat yourself.  We spend a lot of time and energy struggling to get other people treat us well.  With limited success, I might add.  Other people are so resistent to training.  “Here…here’s your script, dear.  When I say this….you say….and never say….Also, you are required to compliment me…and never mention that little, okay, moderate less-than-perfect feature…never, ever and I can tell by your expression you’re thinking about it.”

Not only are other people difficult to train, they often are distracted attending to their own lives….Speaking of annoying habits.

Thus, “How to Treat Yourself” is a self-employment opportunity.

The Show Horse Philosophy.  A friend and I followed had a lead on a horse prospect, a small bay with three white socks.  Outside of the socks, the horse had little to catch the eye or, in my case, hopes for a big future.  We located the scrawny fellow in a field outside of town, trailered him into the show barn, and walked his dusty, a undersized body into the stable.  Disappointed with our find, I leaned against the wall, waiting for a next move.  Not my friend.  To my wonder, she immediately located her grooming tools and set to work on Three Socks. She cross-tied the prospect, brushed out the dust and loose hair, oiled his hooves, trimmed his ears, then stood back to survey Three Socks.

From where I loitered I asked: “Why did you go to all that trouble?”

She said:  “I’m not letting him go without a chance.  What I”ve learned is, treat a horse like a show horse and he acts like a showhorse.”

Did Three Socks end up Hunter Champion of the State?  Did he go on to prove his doubters wrong?  (Theme from Rocky here.)  No, he didn’t. 

Here is the great beauty of the Thinking Guidance System over the Emotional Guidance System.  My friend wasn’t going for future trophies.  While my Emotional System was asking, “Why go to all this trouble and still be a loser?”

Her Thinking Guidance System used facts.  Not “potential happenings” from some mystical future where, apparently, we all expect… if we can make the right decisions..we will be transformed by having more money, a better job, recognition…winning the lottery…whatever we are holding on to that’s going to happen so that we will be happier… My friend operated with the fact that “Every minute you are alive…you can make it great…have fun with it….If you make it great….no way to be a loser.  Or, you can stand on the sidelines (with me) criticizing and thinking of a future which may or may not happen.”

How’s your “Own Little World?” 

How great would your own little world be if you were suddenly Star-Trek-rematerialized as a child beggar along a filthy bridge where no prospects came along beyond a few street drunks, a tourist or two from small Pacific Islands where newspapers are scarce….and one dopey blond who ignores the truth about Mexico today because her mother, who died suddenly at forty-two, had, along with Dad, every summer, loaded up the peach-colored van, the blond, her sister, and brother…to spend summers in Colonial cities and Indian villiages, while Mom wrote her travel column on Mexico adventures with children?

How great would your little world be if you were on that bridge?

Dateline: Tijuana, Mexico.  Crossing the riverbed bridge. 

Incident:  The day is hot and windy.  Sand swirls on the bridge stinging those very few of us who still dared to cross the Big Brown Line.  The landscape is grim.  The future looks worse.  The police wear masks to keep the drug lords’ slaves from taking their pictures then going to their homes and murdering their families. 

My Own Little World’s a mess.  My feet are killing me.  What’s wrong with me that I just had to come across?  What was I thinking?  I mean, the armed forces have banned their personnel from crossing into Mexico… Why do I get myself in these ridiculous situations? I hear a siren, and whirl heading back to the USA at a trot.  My head down, charging for the border, I hear a wild squeaking sound and tiny high-pitched shreiking voice.

What?  I spot her.  A little girl, in full Tarahumara modest garb–full-length dress, hightop leather shoes, leggings, and a straw hat.  Maybe five, probably four.  She sits with her back braced on the inner wall of the bridge, her legs stuck out in front of her.  Her blue-black Indian hair squirts off her scalp in pert ponytails.  On her lap she holds a squeezebox.  Her eyes are closed but still she’s grinning big-time.  She’s singing a tune only she knows as loud as she can and clutching her squeezebox in and out with her happy screeching.  She’s having a good time in the middle of all this.  She’s singing her song as if the whole world and all the angels are listening.

How can she do that?    Who knows?   Exactly, I mean.  If there was a formula, if it were as easy as positive thinking, there’d be no exaggerated braking and hand-signalling on the freeway, no relentless dieting and gaining and useless machine buying, no avoiding high school reunions, no picking at the spouse when we know that action never turns out well, no criticizing at all since criticism is only anxiety shot outward and stuck on someone else.

Behind me, in the bar of my San Diego Hilton national world branch office I hear an ESPN story asking if a quarterback with too many interceptions had considered suicide . . . And I see that little girl’s estatic face.  Sure, she had a dirty paper cup between her ankles, hoping.  Sure, her shawled four foot mother was only a block away holding the cheap bead earrings she’d strung last night into the path of every hopeful.

Why this blog?  I want what that little girl with nothing had.  I want you to have it, too.

But ours will not be a journey for the weak or the crowd looking for easy answers.  Take that back.  For I’m certainly among the weak.  However I am determined.  There’s no easy formula for managing what goes on inside our chest cavity….no list of tricks to change our hearts and our energies…  Speaking for myself, of course.  Could be for you…being told to “get over it,” “think positive,” and “Dr. L. on the radio telling you to grow up and do what she–as a descended goddess of all that is ‘right’…maybe that  works for you.  Naaah….

You’ve read this far, so you’re trying along with me.  You’re trying to better understand and learn to manage anxiety. 

“Which is more important?  The world of facts, the world you can touch?  Or the world you are making up to fit your fears?  The world you are responding to?”

Come along….Next we take a look at how we’ve put our own little worlds together….

The goal?  To sing like the world and all the angels are listening.  Nothing less.  I will settle for nothing less.  Yes…I’m going crazy.  Care to join me?  The music’s terrific. 

Note: For those of you still wondering, I haven’t forgotten I still owe a Mexico confession of utter Emotional Guidance System idiocy. 

 

 

 

While on the topic of  not wasting so much time and energy wishing other people weren’t themselves, why not really go for it and give parents permission to be themselves?

Which brings us to the infamous Triple Blame Whammy.

And, no, you don’t get the Triple Blame Whammy at Dairy Queen.

Part one of the Triple Blame Whammy:  “If only my parents had loved me enough… (and showed me appropriately)…I wouldn’t have the problems I do now.”

Take a look at the photo.  See how young these people are?  Your parents were them.  Yikes!

There was a time a few years out of graduate school when I was ready to switch professions.  This was the era when ’hospitals’ sprang up in every neighborhood for the treatment of addictions and insurance paid big money for 28 day programs for ’co-dependents’, ‘family jesters’, and ’scapegoats’.  Each family member was given a title to identify with and each was encouraged to take time out to remember all the ways they’d been wronged by family members… and how these wrongs caused their current problems.  The ‘theory’ was that by family members (courageously) taking turns describing just how they’d been terribly wronged, some sort of change miracle was supposed to happen.

And, as is true in lynch mob behavior, most participants do, for the moment, feel as if something life-changing has occured(I guess for the lynch-ees, something life-changing events has taken place), when all that’s happened is a big burst of emotional togetherness (momentary closeness based on fusion and group think) and…people swinging in nooses.

**Self-loathing alert!  I’ve vented with the best of them, justifying myself the whole time.  Pitching my version of victimhood…ala the family from my point of view…Oh, my view isn’t reality?  This is not a case to pretend nothing bad happen–our goal is to get free of  the powerless position of hanging on to ‘reasons’ we are the way we are…that define us into mindsets wasting time and energy and even hope.**

After all, can we really buy that we are the first generation of adults having children who have tried their hardest and done the best they could by the children?  Are we so arrogant as to think such a thing?  Are we really so different?

Of course, the relentless Emotional Guidance System encourages false superiority.  Could be…parents are products out their emotional systems just as we are.  Not that much worse, not that much better.  If this is too scary, you can cheat a little and hang on to the illusion of functioning way up the ladder from your parents. But it is kind of annoying.

Cheater phrase when others or self tempts you into discussing what messes your parents are and how they messed up your life….” Oh well. I guess everyone comes by who they are naturally. Say, did you here about that guy who tied a bunch of weather balloons to his aluminum lawn chair and floated up into the flight path at the local airport?”

  Change your Mind . . . Change your Choices . . . Change your Life.

To what degree do your emotions run your life? A review. The human has two guidance systems which compete to direct our decisions.  Think of them like rival gangs. 

The Emotional Guidance System  is that part of our brains that pushes us to make decisions based on the pressure of our feelings.  The EGS is not a thoughful advisor. The EGS has one and only one reason for pushing our decisions. That reason is to get rid of anxiety. Dogs, cats, and even snakes have Emotional Guidance Systems–automatic moves to dive away from perceived threat. If you stress a group of apes and watch from the arbors, you’ll see one run to be alone, another cling to the leader, one will get bossy, and another will start a fight. These are the same automatic responses humans have, but we have made up rationalizations, causes, and descriptions.The Emotional Guidance System  is based on getting comfortable Now. The EGS is incapable of considering the facts of the past.  Incapable of asking, “How did it work out the last time I (ate the whole thing?  went back to the man who cheated on me? put off a task that needed to be finished? hit the snooze button three times? stayed in my comfort zone at a conference? , etc.? 

The Emotional Guidance System  is incapable of considering the future. Incapable of asking, “If I don’t send in an application, what are my chances of reaching my goal? If I show up at the office (or at home) always complaining, how will that affect how other people relate to me? If I present myself as a victim of my childhood, how does that affect my life and my current relationship with family? How do negative comments affect my spouse’s and children’s relationship with my family? If I talk negatively about my “demanding” mother, how does that affect my child’s future relationship with me? If I never start the training I’m interested in, what are my chances of being chosen for the next job I’d like to have?

The Emotional Guidance System  is not interested in the facts.  The EGS will scare us, flatter us, lie to us, come up with rationalizations and fake lines of “thought” … “I can do this tomorrow…One more purchase on this account won’t hurt…Because these items will never again be on sale….Those diet pills might work and afterall, they’re free, just the shipping and handling…What I need to turn my life around is a new piece of exercise equipment…a different sized ball, or a treadmill that does jumping jacks…I don’t care what people think…It’s important to say everything that crosses my mind, that’s just me…I should never be criticized…I shouldn’t be inconvenienced…Making choices on purchases isn’t necessary, the only thing that matters is cash flow per month…It’s important for everyone to know how I feel, that’s what it means to be a person…If someone does me wrong, I never forget, grudges are great…He’s a jerk, she’s a bitch, they’re are a bunch of nuts…”

The Emotional Guidance System urges choices based on feedback from others.  

There is hope.  Tomorrow, The Thinking Guidance System

 Yep.  Nail another of the reliable psychobabble topics to the wall.  Just rip it out of your head and ram a spike through it.

We’re supposed to have this SELF-CONFIDENCE  BEFORE we accomplish tasks, projects, and relationships.  Fine.  So Just where are we supposed to get S-C? 

We can’t buy it, obviously, since people with lots of stuff are missing S-C as often as the rest of us bargain hunters.  Okay, so your parents, right?  Your parents, if they loved you, were SUPPOSED to GIVE you Self-Confidence.  So that worked, right?

Well, no.  So, phooey there.  Every parent I’ve ever worked with loved their children and most desperately wanted to GIVE their children S-C.  Their love didn’t do it, and given that little confession, I guess you get it that a psychololgist can’t GIVE it to you, either. 

Things are looking pretty desperate.  But wait!  We can marry someone who loves us enough to GIVE us Self-Confidence.  Right.  Talk about a way to wear out a relationship.  And your kids?  Even if they do everything right and the family is doing great. . . Nope, they can’t GIVE it to you. Even when they try very hard.

So what now?  Oh, yeah.  We already nailed that S-C business to the psychobabble-I’m-not-going-to-look-for-Stuff-That-Doesn’t-Really-Exist-WALL.

This Self Confidence business has held us back long enough.  Part of the effort toward a life based more on facts, and less on wild emotions, toward a life with more solid successes that come from steady progress (no eat-cookies and lose weight, send in your old gold and go to Tahiti,  or borrow more money to save yourself money funny business) . . .

Means facing the REALITY that to accomplish anything, we have to take the first step, SELF-CONFIDENCE or NO SELF-CONFIDENCE.  The only thing that matters is that first step.  Then the one after and the one after.  Knowing we will fail sometimes.  That if we aren’t knocked around a bit, our goals are way to low. 

As for where having 14 babies while unemployed and single comes from? . . . Now there’s a woman taking LIFE RULED by the EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM TO A NEW LEVEL.

 Okay.  Some more on FUSION . . . sticking yourself to someone else’s anxiety.  Making THEIR anxiety about YOU. 

We lose power over ourselves when we cannot operate separately . . . when our “mood” is determined by the “mood” of another person. When our sense of doing okay is dependant on another person (usually a spouse or a child) doing okay . . . we are going to try very hard to keep the other person calm so that we can be calm.  Though, of course, we deny such a motivation.  We say we are twisting into a pretzel to keep them calm . . . because we are just TRYING TO HELP THEM. 

  Operating to keep everyone around you calm is very tiring. 

The “Women in Therapy” Incident:  At last, this example is a time when I actually managed to stay separate, calm, in charge, and barely ruffled.  At least I did in “Women in Therapy, Part 1.”

  Part One.  My husband had an important deposition on this particular afternoon.  I was out at the stable schooling my horse in a jumper ring away from the barn.  The stable phone at the ring chimed several times, but as it was always for the kids that rode and dismounting to pick it up was a real hassle, I paid no attention.  When I finished riding and returned to the main barn the phone continued to ring and, as I was right by it and not on a horse, I answered it.  It was my husband–ballistic.  His car wouldn’t start and he’d been trying to reach me. (We lived near the stable.) I rescued him as quickly as possible. Still he filled the twenty minutes to downtown in a rain of fury . . . of course returning to the faithful topic of the time and money I spent on the horses. 

Here’s the thing.  My big moment of emotional steadiness.  I did not get angry or even particularly anxious. I knew he wasn’t really upset by me. I knew  he was okay with the horses.  He was anxious about the trial to come and providing the best deposition he could for his client.  What he said, for once, didn’t set off defensiveness. I took in my book and read in the lobby during his deposition.  On the way home he apologized as I knew he would.  And I said I was okay, I knew he knew I would never have intentionally left him out to dry.

Okay.  That was Part One.  You did notice the halo and the little blue birdies fluttering about?   Cue up “Whistle While You Work.”

Tomorrow, Part Two.  It’s not nearly as lovely. 

 

It’s really hard to change the way we habitually deal with anxiety.  So celebrate your little victories and do not water the times when your EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM takes charge and you waste time, can’t sleep, make a fool of yourself, irritate someone you love, procrastinate, get into too big a hurry and make a mess… and others. 

Think of the emotional field of people, job, traffic, weather, friends, etc. as the GARDEN IN WHICH YOU LIVE.  And, while we’re MAKING UP THE WORLD IN WHICH WE LIVE (since we humans can’t help it.) Your garden has rows and rows and rows of blooming possibilities. Some rows were planted for you (family) and some you planted yourself.

A garden is a CHANGING ORGANIC ELEMENT.  We tend to the of the SELF as stagnant.  Fixed.  Maybe even broken and stuck that way.  A good part of our SELF GARDEN we keep hidden from others, some from ourselves.  The good news?

A garden CHANGES ALL THE TIME.  Some change is out of our control–weather–so we’re not going to waste energy trying to change what is beyond our power, right?  If you’re short, you’re short. If you’re young you’re young and if you’re not young, you’re not–no matter how many Extenz drinks you buy (Yep, you only pay shipping and handling, of course. But have you really ever thought how much it might cost to receive a soft drink through the mail? And that doesn’t count how much it costs for them to “handle” your drink–another one of those “let’s just make up a figure” expenses.) 

Or creams or surgeries or, God forbid, have you even seen that full-body spandex thing info-mercial? It’s a garment that, somehow, the women in the ad are able to get into and the “before” and “after” shots are prit-tee impressive. I will mention that the photos are all of women standing.  Attempt to sit down or breathe and all bets are off.

Where is Yoda when I need him?  Manana.