Bon Voyage, Mes Amis

I Have To Say I Love You In A Blog

 

Spring is here and love is in the air!

 

Well, it's not, but it should be and I'm about to do something about it.  I've planned a bit of a get together.  A soiree with four of my favorite people and the man who I've believed for years would be the love of my life, if only.........

 

I've picked the four people very carefully.  The men both bring out "the best of Billi".  They make me feel alive and giddy and girly.  He will love this.

 

 

Wolfie will arrive first.   He is usually the last to leave, but not tonight. There is no one who can get a party going better or faster.  But a small gathering can't be "balls to the walls" the whole way through.  That's where Edgar steps in.

 

He's a wild card to be sure, but his lively sense of the absurd makes the risk worth taking.  Not one moment will be wasted with silence or dull banter.  So long as the topics remain on the merely morbid and absurd not crossing the line into politics, Dorothy will be fine.

 

Her wit and Etta's voluptuous sensuality are qualities that I possess in ONE package.  A package that I hope my love will be unwrapping before the night is through.  He can't help but notice and be impressed by my confidence in inviting these fabulous women and my belief that they will enhance and not lessen my own fabulousness.

 

 







I considered inviting Tallulah Bankhead, but I'm not that confident....no one in their right mind is.

 

 

So everything is in place.  Brie with fruit to start.  Cornish game hens with an asparagus pilaf.  Wine, ale and whiskey.  (I know, I know "Should I really give this crowd alcohol?......It's not like I have to worry about killing them).

 

“I wish I could drink like a lady / I can take one or two at the most / Three and I'm under the table / Four and I'm under the host” ~ that Dorothy, what a hoot! (But good to know in case things don't work out as planned)

 

The music, of course will take care of itself.

 

Everyone is here, everyone but him.

 

And then he arrives.

 

 

 

I've known since I was about thirteen, when I realized that songs like Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown and Rapid Roy that Stock Car Boy and I Have To Say I Love You In A Song and Lover's Cross all came from the same beautiful mind under that curly beautiful hair, that he was my soul mate.  He was the man who imprinted a love for "sexy-ugly" men on me like a little duck.  He was the man who convinced me that "cool" is quiet and that "style" is being comfortable in your skin as well as with your feelings.

 

I've known since I was thirteen that this man died five years before I fell for him.  I've know since I was thirteen that I would search for and be attracted to men with some Jim Croce in them.

 

 

This blog was inspired by writer's block, a weird dream and a young man (I almost said boy, sorry Ryan) in my class who has Jim Croce hair that I want to touch like normal women want to touch pregnant bellies.

What Am I Afraid Of?

Heights.  Definitely heights.

 

But really, for the most part I can avoid heights.  I have control over whether I climb a ladder or go to the edge of the balcony of a fourteenth floor hotel room.  If I decide to go to out on a ledge of a cliff and I start to freak out I can back up.

 

What I can't avoid, what I don't have control over is the safety of my children.  It's so hard to balance keeping them safe and encouraging to have an exciting and fulfilling life.  There are so many scary things out there.  Even if they make wise choices at every turn (I've met them, they aren't going to), even if they wear seatbelts and don't experiment with drugs there are so many things out there that I have no control over whatsoever. 

 

When my oldest daughter was a baby sleeping in a crib I remember looking at her and thinking that she was so tiny and helpless and that this MUST be the scariest stage of motherhood.  I was wronger than wrong!  That kid is twenty-six now.  In the Army.  Living in California.  Climbing rocks, jumping out of planes with babies of her own.

 

Now a couple of my babies have babies.  The idea of losing any one of my four children paralyzes me.  The idea of losing one of my grandkids is, in some ways even more frightening.  The thought of losing them and having one of my children go through the pain of losing a child makes me want to huddle us all into a "safe" room and sit.  And be safe.  And be sad.  And not have a life.  It, of course, is not an option.

 

I love seeing them live and enjoy life and I love having them return home safely.

 

 

 

 

 

I owe it to them to teach them to love life and to live life in the safest and most fantastic ways possible.  I owe it to them to hide my irrational fear as best I can.  I have to do it even as I watch a friend go through the unimaginable.  A friend of mine is in day nine of hell.  Her son is missing after a tragic mudslide in Washington state.  Her pain is heartbreaking.  It has literally brought me to my knees.  However, one of the things that I believe will get her through the dreadful unfairness and pain of her son's life cut short is the beautiful adventure of a life that she gave him.  The hiked and skied.  They didn't just live life they embraced and attacked it often outside in the mountains of the beautiful part of the country where they live.  Was he out in the wilderness taking risks when he was taken.  No, he was watching television in the safety of his step-father's basement.

 

I will do whatever I can to help my friend through this nightmare.  I will learn what I can from her loss and from the way she lived her life and taught her son to LIVE his.

 

 

Gobsmacked

 

I was more than shocked when I heard of L'Wren Scott's suicide.  I was gobsmacked and I'm having a hard time shaking the need to make sense of it although I know that there is no sense to be made.  I have attended three visitations for young people whom my twenty-six year old daughter was friends with during her grade and high school years.  All three chose suicide, chose to die.  While that is an enormous tragedy it is something that's easier for me to understand.  They were all in their early twenties.  This is a point in life where, when things go very badly, it's hard to imagine them ever getting better.  However once you get to forty-nine, as L'Wren and I have done, it seems that you have gone through the ups and downs of things seeming hopeless and have come out on the other side and that that would be enough to get you through even very dark moments.  For L'Wren Scott it wasn't enough.  Not enough hope, not enough love, not enough empathy for those who were sure to be devastated by her decision.  Not enough.  It twists my soul to think of the anguish that led up to her making and following through on the decision to end her life.  The decision to completely cease to exist.  Unable to reach out.  Unable to trust the people who could see her worth when she couldn't and who loved her when she didn't.

 

It's made me rethink the direction of my blog for the time being at least.

 

I had visions of writing on creams that would make your skin shine and outings that would make your heart sing.  I was going to tell you that by dressing appropriately for your age with a bit of personal flair added that you would look much younger than if you tried to dress your daughter's age.  I was going to talk about the joy that reading, art and music could bring to your life and if these were already things you loved how looking outside of your normal choices could be fabulous.  I was going to encourage you to do the things that brought you joy as a child....color a picture, take a dance class, ride a horse.  I was.  But first I need to do something else.

 

 L'Wren had so much access to the things that I had in mind.  If I was to put together a life in a Mr. Potato Head kind of way it would be fairly close to the life she seemed to be living.  Beauty, a successful, life-long career centered in the world of fashion, a rock-star boyfriend, fabulous parties, etc. 

 

Why wasn't it enough?????

 

What was missing????????

 

Something else happened soon after I heard of Ms. Scott's death.  A copy of Oprah's magazine arrived in the mail.  With thoughts of "What makes a life worth living" bouncing around my head I leafed through the latest issue and a piece reached out and grabbed me. It's title was 20 Questions Every Woman Should Ask Herself.

 

Do I examine my life enough?

 

Do I care too much what other people think?

 

How do I want to be remembered?

 

Have I forgiven my parents?

 

These questions, and the rest, challenged and excited me. They are what I want to take a detour and devote my blogging to for now.  Maybe they will take up some space that is being haunted by questions about a choice that I don't understand made by a woman that I didn't know. 

 

 

 

 

Here's to finding answers where we can and finding hope......always.

 

 

Spending My Life




You knock her down......we'll fuck her up

 

 

 

Ugh, what a horrible experience. I started feeling sick a week ago Friday and today is the first day that I didn't believe death would be a step in the right direction. My energy was non-existent, my tolerance for everyone and everything.......gone. The first few days were bad but interesting. When I'd lie flat it sounded as if there was a Pop Rocks convention taking place in my chest. This was amusing....for a while.

 

I spent those first few days in bed, emerging only when absolutely necessary. I felt cruddy, but to be honest, it was a nice break. I watched some fabulous movies with imaginary Ethan Hawke curled up behind me.

 

Ethan: "Can I get you anything?"

 

Me: "No, your just being here is enough."

 

If he'd really been there I'd have sent him for soup, but pretending to get and eat soup would have been ridiculous.

 

After about four days I started feeling worse instead of better. My kids were being neglected, my homework was falling behind, I couldn't go to work and could see my next paycheck shrinking and you could barely see the clutter in my house because of the clutter piling on top of it.

 

Anxiety and depression started to kick in.......as well as something else. I realized that I waste a lot of time on things that aren't important - such as napping and television. During this time when all I could do was nap and watch tv it dawned on me that the things that I really wanted to be doing were the things that I tended to put off. 

 

I remember reading a quote that was something along the lines of "How you spend your days is how you spend your life". This past ten days has led me to reexamine how I'm choosing to spend my days and to make choices that will please me when I look back at how I spent my life.

 



(Relatively) Reckless Abandon

This past Friday night I went, with a few friends, to a drag show.  Talk about people who live with abandon.  Drag queens and kings lead such techno colored lives in spite of the fact that chances are pretty good that their paths have not been without more than their share of bumps.

As a younger person I lived with what I would have described as reckless abandon, but what I now realize was mostly just stupidity.  Drug use, blackout drinking, a belief that "safe-sex" just meant having a padded headboard.

Now I see reckless abandon differently.  It's taking a chance with your heart even though you're terrified.  It's choosing a path that isn't practical but makes your soul sing.  It's ignoring the self-conscious voice in your head that keeps you from saying or doing things that bring laughter to yourself or the friends and strangers around you.

That's what I did Friday night. There was a benefit going on at the show and I was the lucky winner of the first give-away.  It was lube.  I held that bottle up like it was Simba and announced to the room, "When Billi Casey wins lube....EVERYBODY wins lube." 

The crowd loved it.  People that we would have simply coexisted in that space and time with ended up being part of our group for the evening because the walls between strangers had been eliminated by ridiculousness and laughter.




How many times do we think things and not say them?  Things that would have made someone laugh or smile or gain some confidence.  Is it crazy to reach out to people that we share this ride with if it might make us look a little wacky?  Or is it crazy not to?

Pour Some Sugar On Me

 

 

In the name of love, I can't get enough.......POUR SOME SUGAR ON ME!!!!!

 

 

If my body is a temple......it's probably located in a bad section of Detroit.  It started out fit and lovely and at some point I apparently decided to see just how much abuse it could take by filling it, over a period of decades, with drugs, alcohol and crap food and beverages, resulting in a sluggish brain and a bulky body that often make me feel older than I actually am.  I'm starting here on my quest for improvement because I firmly believe that everything else that I want to change wagonwheels out from the fact that I feel like shit.  There are places I'd love to go and things that I'd love to do but chose not to because I don't look and/or feel the way I would wish. 

 

You might think that it would make sense to address the drug/alcohol issue before tackling what I'm eating and drinking.  You would be correct, but for the fact that the "law and order" system of Illinois took care of those issues before you guys got here. In 2007  I had a bit of a misunderstanding with the law over writing my own prescriptions.  Who knew they would frown so heavily on what I saw as "eliminating the middle man".  They saw it as a felony. 

 

I got probation and had to go to Narcotics Anonymous which is like Alcoholics Anonymous except for smart attractive people.  At NA they convinced me that I had a problem but they didn't convince me that it was my fault.  I grew up in the 70's when the entirety of the anti-drug campaign was one commercial where they'd show you an egg and tell you that was your brain.  Then they'd proceed to fry it in a skillet and tell you it was you brain on drugs.  I was already on drugs and I knew that wasn't my brain and I wasn't going to be taking advice from someone who was apparently more fucked up than I was.

 

I doubt if those ads kept anyone off drugs.  They probably got a few pot heads out of the basement and off to Denny's for a Grand Slam Breakfast.  I guess that's something.

 

So although my drug use was eliminated and my alcohol consumption downsized I, being the resourceful little minx that I am, managed to continue to abuse my body and mind in a damaging but completely legal way.

 

When I was growing up I developed a love/hate relationship with Pepsi products.  They were the drink of choice in our home.  I loved popping the cap off a bottle of Mt. Dew or Pepsi that had been in the freezer for just the right amount of time. 

 

Not long enough - might as well have been in the fridge. 

 

Too long - frozen and broken....it happened more than you'd think considering the fact that my mother admonished anyone who could have possibly been the offender to NEVER put another bottle of soda in that freezer.

 

I have several older brothers and sisters but they all either grew up in another family or were adults when I was adopted.  The only exception was my sister Jan who sat on the window seat waiting on the day of my final adoption hearing hoping they'd come home without me.  There was a family that lived on the corner, two doors up from us, who had eleven children.  They drank tea, which I found disgusting.  I was sure that at a certain number of offspring you must have to switch from soda to tea (you can't have everything) and was glad that we fell under that particular cut off.

 

While I loved the fact that, on any given day, soda was available to me, I despised the process that had to be endured to make this happen.  At that time we, along with everyone else, got our soda in a cardboard carrier with eight glass bottles that, when empty, were returned to the store in order to get your deposit.  We were much more involved in the recycling process back then. 

My job was to haul the cartons of "empties" from the kitchen in the back of the house out to the car parked in front on the street.  This was an arduous and embarrassing task.  We never finished just one carton and took it back to get more.  The process of return and procure always involved at least a dozen cartons and several trips.  I felt like the whole neighborhood was sitting at their windows watching me through a slit in their curtain and feeling sorry for the Pepsi hauling kid. 

 

 "At least we're not drinking tea!!!", I wanted to scream. 

 

I never felt cooler than when I mastered carrying two cartons by their handles and balancing another two on top of them. 

 

 I was not opposed to carrying cake....just Pepsi.

 

 

I won't even go into the torture that occurred when we got back home and had to haul in the heavier, full bottles with their metal caps that would scrape and scratch you with their jagged edges. (I guess I went into it a little.) Carrying them in was far more work, but whomever took the first load inside knew that we'd be thirsty when we finished and to put a bottle in the freezer......when my mom wasn't looking.

 

I still have a love/hate relationship with Pepsi to this day.  I love drinking it to the tune of several hundred calories per day, but I hate it and myself because I now have the knowledge that not only does it lack anything that could benefit me in any manner, it is doing damage to my health and making me feel mentally and physically sluggish.  I continue to do it anyway.  I started to google "harmful effects of soda consumption" but then called bullshit on myself.  You all know that soda is poison so you are not in need of that information.  I know it and believe it. 

 

Guess why? 

 

Last year I went for a month and drank nothing but water with meals and in between. 

 

Guess what? 

 

I felt FANTASTIC.  I had energy, my aches and pains were greatly lessened and my hair and skin shone like the sun. 

 

Guess what again? 

 

After a month I decided to celebrate with a Pepsi and that was the end of that.

 

Stupid. 

 

So in the interest of giving up soda and cutting back on stupidity I say.....POUR SOME WATER ON ME!!!!!!!

 

 

 

 



 

 

In the interest of full-disclosure I want to tell you that I was going to write this post about my deep desire to quit smoking.  I was going to talk about how smoking was blackening my lungs and causing wrinkles around what would soon become my unkissable looking lips.  I was going to tell you the story about how my Grandma Taylor burned a hole in my favorite outfit when I was three and how my sister Jo got ladybug patches and sewed them all over the outfit to cover up the hole which made it my double-favorite outfit but the emotional damage had already been done and how I now have a very similar ladybug tattooed on my left (just in case that's significant) foot.  I was going to vow to put down the cigs, air out my house, Febreeze my car and start a new, smoke-free life.  But I don't smoke.  I've never smoked any more often than one or two, a few times a year when I'd be at the bar and be drunk enough to forget that I don't smoke.  I was going to have a (very successful) blog and attempt at quitting something that I don't do to buy myself one more week with soda.  So there ya go.

 

 

 

 

 





 



Mixed Signals ~ Unattractive at any age (or cup size)

I saw this dog at the cafe at ICC. He was gorgeous. Soft. A soft in which you wanted to bury yourself. Alas he had a sign on him that said  "Working Dog Do Not Pet". I understood, but it reminded me of something that I don't understand. Ladies...don't wear deep V, cleavage displaying tops and have a "hey you're a jerk if you don't look me in the eye" attitude. If I'm displaying the girls I'm fine with admiration for the exhibit. If you play your cards right, that exhibit may become "hands on" (don't laugh, it's a real thing). Mixed signals, especially purposeful ones, are so very unattractive at any age.

The Big L

"If you can't get out of something, get into it."



Ahhh, the words of my lord and savior Kris Kristofferson. There aren't many things in life that you really can't get out of.....taxes and death being the most famous.....and if you manage to avoid death for long enough then you can't get out of turning fi , fi, fif....L. L as in the Roman numeral for fi, fi, fi. I can't say the f -word which I know is ridiculous. Not saying it doesn't change anything.  It's still half a century, two-thirds of an average life-span, a whole lotta shades of gray.

I turned forty-nine about a month ago and believe me I fretted (a word that people who are almost L use) about it for months.  A good friend of mine told me to relax.  She assured me that forty-nine was the new thirty-nine and when she did I realized something.  She........is an idiot.  As far as I can tell forty-nine is the same forty-nine it's always been.  It's the forty-nine where hip hop leads to hip replacement.  It's the forty-nine where after a night of sex everything is sore.......except your pussy.  Let me pause here to explain that it's not completely the end of the world.  Young, handsome guys still make my panties wet.  Of course so does sneezing.

After my birthday came and went I realized that what I was freaked out about hadn't been turning forty-nine at all.  It had been the fact that once I turned forty-nine nothing else stood between me and, well you know (I don't give two shits if it rhymes with nifty....it isn't).  I had to face the fact that whether I did it kicking and screaming or with a positive attitude ~ chances were good that I was going to turn FIFTY.

So I've decided that, in the words of the great poet, I am going to "get into it".  Fifty doesn't feel like the winter of my life.  For me it feels like an Indian summer day in late fall.  A day where you wake up and realize that it's beautiful out and life is full of possibilities and that you wasted a lot of summer days.  I've had a lot of wonderful people and things happen in my life.  Far too many for me to complain.  But I've always gone through life in a haphazard kind of way.  Making mistakes and putting out the fires that result, as opposed to making well thought out choices from the start.  Having a very  "play now, pay later" attitude most of the time.  Living with a lot of chaos  and crazy due to a lack of discipline and an apparent allergy to organization. 

I imagine that this will be a journey much like the one we go through as we move through our teens and young adulthood and decide which pieces of our past we want to hold on to and which we have outgrown.  It was a time when we fought hard to define ourselves and our relationship to the world around us and the people in it.  It wasn't easy and you may wonder why I would decide to do it all over again.  This is why... because this time I'm going to be doing it on my own terms.  I'm going to edit and add and polish based on what will feed and fulfill me and the people that I love.  I didn't have that luxury when I faced this challenge as a young adult.  I had well-intentioned people in my life who made me feel that I couldn't be trusted to make my own choices.  People that convinced me that dreams and goals did not eat at the same table.  That if my choices were different from their ideals that love and approval would be withheld and maybe lost.  Although I have the confidence and self-worth now that I didn't have then  I don't expect this to be an easy journey, but this time it will be mine.

If I'm making this seem like it will be an arduous, boot-camp like experience let me apologize.  Yes, some of my plans involve change and hopefully growth which, while worthwhile and satisfying in the long run, can be less than pleasant at the start.  But it won't all be gut-wrench, soul-searching, angst-producing (book selling? lol) work.  After all, there will be fun things to figure out.  For example, through much sampling I hope, how to take care of skin that is L or how to ease my style into my new decade .

One last detail before I start the "making fifty fab" journey.  I'm doing this on a very small budget.  I'm sure that it would be less painful to ease into fifty with some Restylane, a fantastic new wardrobe and six weeks on the French Riviera being pampered by a cabana boy  called Romareo, but how many women, myself included, can afford to do that?  I hope that the fact that this is a blog about how to go gloriously into your fifties on a shoestring budget will make the process more interesting and appealing as opposed to less.  Maybe I shouldn't have told you, but you'd have found out when my "How To Use Your Link Card For Good And Not Evil" post came out.  ; )