THE GOAT RODEO

I did a wonderful photo shoot on Saturday. I had an amazing and kid photographer, who I was blessed to work with, and an array of models of all ages and looks. Just beautiful women. Most of them. One was surly and angry and her photos showed it. She’s lovely, but her anger showed on all her pics and I can’t use one of them.

Another made a crack about my age to another model. It got back to me after, and was confirmed by my husband who was standing there, but she didn’t know the relationship. She is stunning, but I will never suggest her for a job.

This is not California. We don’t have a glut of jobs here, and even if we did, attitude is everything. I had many more models show up than planned. People who never told me they were coming. I learned a lot about rsvp’s that day, which products I love, hate, faces and working with people who blink a lot. It was wonderful and was so blessed to have that experience and a bunch of GORGEOUS shots for my book of several races and types of faces and skin. I learned to ask models for their opinion, but the final choices were mine. I also learned that Almay Eye Makeup Remover really is crap, and it’s not just me.

I also learned that there are many, many beautiful women in the world and if someone is an ass, they won’t have to be called again. I learned more in that day then I would have at months of makeup classes, which are barely offered in this state, because you don’t need a license.

I also thought hard about IMATS in Cali this summer. The place is a zoo. Thousands of people looking for makeup at a reduced rate. It would be cheaper and easier for me to join a professional group out of NYC, that is well thought of and get discounts to their show. It’s smaller, with fewer exhibitors, but a lot of hands-on classes. I think that would be a far better use of my time and that said, the choice is made. I’ll hit IMATS if it goes back to Toronto next year.

I’m pushing on my new business with a photo shoot tomorrow with a wonderful photgapher and about five models. I’m excited and teriffied. No shine, mostly neuterals, gorgeous skin. I’m so scared. What if I mess this up?? HELP!

Warning, this is a rant. I will have my soap time, then move on quietly into my day. Thank you.

Recently, “Snookie,” from, “Jersey Shore,” said she fought an eating disorder in high school. She was dismissed in a rag because the doctor said a, “a real eating disorder requires years of therapy to overcome. It never gets better without it.” BULL! I was an overweight bulimic for YEARS! I stopped after lifestyle changes and things that boosted my self confidence (climbing a rock wall, for example).

Yes, an eating disorder is serious business. Many young people do need medical intervention, but some people can help themselves and some people do. While therapists can help you see your life with clarity, and should be seen for severe eating disorders, depression, and suicidal tendencies, dismissing a human’s ability to self adapt without the, “help from a trained person, only. “Just see someone and it can be fixed, but not without a degree,” is as irresponsible as telling someone to not get help, if they are suicidal. Actually, get in your car, a plane, a bus and get to that person. They mean it, if they say it. It’s not a game. While therapy has helped me, it’s also not a be all and end all. Some people can learn to find their own inner peace through church, yoga, self love rituals (you fake it, you will make it) and family. I don’t want to knock therapy. I wish my dad would stop drinking, but he needs to want to and he needs to get help. My push for my weight loss and keeping it off was my surgery and my kids. No therapy to take it off at all. Again, I’m not knocking it. I’m just saying it’s cruel to point out that someone ate one salad a day for two years and didn’t really have an eating disorder because they didn’t get therapy. Some things do change, as we grow. Now, I see a therapist and I am learning to deal with my issues, but I have friends and loved ones who want to help, too. It’s all a puzzle and *you* own the pieces to put it together. No therapist can cure you. You cure yourself with the help of a therapist. Rant off. Please feel free to tell me I’m wrong, in a civil manner. Because I’d love to debate this one

Nu-MOANYA would be a better term. I’m whiny and bitchy, which means I’m on the mend. Today I vow to shower before noon and not take a nap. I want out of the house, but the cold air stings my lungs even with my runner’s mask. An attractive little thing that makes me look like a surgeon trying to rob a bank.

Herne is taking baths without screaming. Turns out it just took a tubful of bubbles and mom in a bathing suit. Glad I have a MONSTER tub, along with my leaky roof. LOL! Everyone, but Herne and Steven are asleep. Including all animals. It’s very nice. I’m snuggled up to Herne as we wait for the bus. Nice morning. Until the, “I don’t want to learn that,” gets up. We had a chat this weekend about expected respect and the consequences of being a dork and giving the, “teacher,” (me) a hard time. Michelle was right, allowance removal is a great motivator for that one.

No, it’s not to Sunny Spain, or Dogsledding in Alaska, it’s over my son. Yes, m 12 year old who snick into our room and camped last night. No one told me. So, at 3 am, over I go, water filled glass and all right onto my face. No damage done, except to my go and yes, he’s still alive. Barely.

I a so done with this perimenopausal crap. I mean over it, around it and through it. Fifth damn time today I’ve wanted to strip all my clothes off and lay in the snow naked and no, I don’t give a rats patoot about the color of said snow. I want to stop baking in slow incrememnts.

It’s not fair. I stink, even if I use, “Clinical Strength,” deoderant. Which I’m pretty sure is a gimmick and not really any stronger than any other antiperspirent.

I am tired of people telling me to tone down this, or not wear that for no other reason than I am over forty. Since when does 40+ equal death? I thought I had half a lifetime to go? Yet, I’m supposed to sit home, bake cookies and be grateful for my swell life cause I’m June Freaking Cleaver. Been to my house? June Cleaver does not live here.

I’m too alive for this change. Too young in my heart. Too happy.

Life is for everyone.

As Jean Luc Picard says, “Make it so.”

When I was seven, I was skinny. Not too skinny, just that grow and go skinny that little kids get. Herne has it now. Pot-belly gone, finally, he’s super thin, about to put more on so he can find the hidden, “Lindquist/Liedel,” tall Gene that only Gene’s cousin Ben has.

My dad pulled me into his room and told me I looked sick, I was so thin. That would be the last time I heard that. I pudged up. Not alarmingly so, but I was 5′2″ and 113. Fat for the late sixties, early seventies.

Now the talks went the other way. “Boys don’t make passes at girl’s with fat asses.”

My mother, deeply concerned, took me to the doctor who put a twelve year old kid on a thousand calorie a day diet. I starved. So hungry all the time. No room for moderation, no cheating and no exercise. We didn’t know then that my metabolism would see this as an assault to my body and make my body hoard food. I’ve fought my metabolism since. I don’t blame mom.

Before mom married dad, she was Stewardess. Not a Flight Attendant. This was back in the fifties. You tolerated snapped bras and girdles and passes. It was part of your job. You also needed to be tiny. Mom and I were the same height. I’m a size 0 now. Her uniform is still way to small for me. I think she was 98 pounds and bragged about it. Too Skinny is not new.

Don’t get me wrong. I adored and still adore my mom. She would complain that I was her best friend and not an adult, but she was also tough on me. As tough on me as she was on herself.

Dad was just mean. I listen to him lecture me on my weight now and laugh. When I was this size in Junior High, I was fat. A lot of the appearance of being too thin now is the extra skin on my face. It droops and will, till I get it fixed, but I am working on my new career now and the money that would fix my face, has gone to that. I feel an urgency to make this happen and happen right. Well thought out, up front, etc.

I used to dream. My acne was terrible, my hair oily, fat and got horrible grades at 13. No one knew why. Well, I did, but never told anyone the babysitter was molesting me. Mom would die. He said so. I would fall asleep imagining my body becomng covered with a thick scab. Entering a hospital because no one knew why, or what to do. One day the scab fell off and I was thin, no stress. I understood math. I cared about myself and my education. I was pretty. My acne was gone. The scab fixed it. I’d emerged the daughter my parents wanted me to be. My sister saw me as always getting the attention, the praise. I’d lose couple of pounds and I was told I was wonderful. I soaked it in, because I never believed it. I needed to hear it.

Meanwhile, my sister was pretty, smart and kept her nose to the grindstone. Mom and Dad didn’t worry about her at all. She was always held up as the example to me.”Why can’t you be more like Susan?”

They’d forgotten something I never forget. Each child is different. I lived in terror of being taken back to the foster home and told that I was not good enough to keep. An honest reason to worry, that is not my story to tell. I was afraid of success, because I’d have to keep it up and then I would disappear and they would never praise me again. Failure meant love to me, because they talked to me. I was not nice talk, but talk.

Do I blame my parents for who I am today? No. I’m forty six and resentment over my childhood would be a waste of time. I am who I am today because of the bad and the good. No one has a perfect childhood. No one.

I am thinking about it though. My doctor gave me a prescription for my acne that has made my skin peel off a layer near my mouth. It reminded me of the magic scab, for the first time in years. A butterfly emerging. I thought I never emerged. I did. Not the way I dreamed of. Not tall, not gorgeous, not brilliant, not perfect and certainly not as smart as my sister, nor as brave. Just Nancy. You know what? I have a lot of warts, but I can live with that. I reached a lot of goals in my life, with many more to come.

I forgot my password. Yes, really. I asked Gene what it was and he spent the week, “getting around to it.” Tonight I threatened him with a uncomfortable long deah and he fixed it.

I also am into, The JeerseyShore and no, I don’t appreciate the laughter. Snort.

ife is like a box of chocolates. Eventually, you run out.

I didn’t sleep last night. Okay, I did, in fits and starts. I’d wake up, not look at the clock and fall back asleep, but very lightly. Akin to when I was a new mom and listening for any noise in the night. I finally peeked at the clock on the 5th wake-up and it was only 2:20am. Then it happened. My stomach started in the pain thing from my bile duct closing on the end. It was bad and by the time I realised how bad, painkillers were not an option. There’s a point where pain pills only make it worse, instead of stopping it. Sometimes a long drink of super icy water will shock the valve into opening, but my stomach was having none of that. So, I sweated it out, curled in a ball (worse than labor, think gall-stone pain). It finally ceased sometime after four. It seemed like two minutes and the alarm clock was going off. Making it through today will be tough.

I found my eldest up at 2:20am as well. He was watching TV. He has night terrors and they are getting worse. I think it’s part of the realization that he’s not going back to school until his Tourette’s passes, or college. We made it his choice. He’s enrolling in a local school that does home-education testing and graduates students based on a body of work they send in. They’re a very good school. We can’t afford to send him to the actual school, but the home-ed program is top notch.

I just pray I’m up to this.