Tee Hee Hee
I couldn’t make myself laugh out loud today. I just couldn’t do it. I tried. Oh man, I tried. I watched the David at the Dentist video today to make myself laugh — but alas, despite the fact that the video always makes me giggle, I barely mustered a smirk. I made myself remember the time that my cousin told my mom and I the story of her not-so-romantic wedding night where we were laughing so hard that I thought I was going to be sick. I was literally hitting my head on the car window with laughter. And although the memory is funny, it didn’t make me laugh today.
Today was the day I was supposed to laugh.
I was charged with the topic of Laugher for Me You Health‘s Daily Challenge for today’s challenge. But truth be told, when I made myself focus on laughing, I just couldn’t. Hee-hee, haa! or even a measly LOL text were more than I could muster. I’m not sure why, since I spend most days laughing from my gut. Maybe it was the flashing neon sign today saying “LAUGH” that made me unable to deliver. Call it performance anxiety, but today was the first day in a long time that I didn’t laugh at something. And, now, I think I know why:
I believe in laughter. I find things funny all the time. I have a running commentary racing through my mind that is always somewhat inappropriate, almost always racy and to me, really funny. I live to laugh. I love to laugh. The darker the situation, the better fodder for my humor. But ask me to find something funny and I can’t. Leave me to my own devices and I’ll bust-up at something silly. A funky doctor at The Mayo Clinic? Hysterical. An tongue-in-cheek work email to a senior executive? Drew roars of laughter. A random sign on the side of the road? Got it! Singing on top of the bar? Done it with belly laughs and cheers.
Like today’s Daily Challenge reminds me: Laughter is good for my health! Oh, I must be healthy then, I’ve got the laugh lines to prove it.
Here’s my formula for giving yourself a daily boost of good ‘ol belly laughter:
1. Finding humor and irony in everything is key. Even if you don’t tell a soul, the smile inside is what matters.
2. Give yourself permission to laugh the kind of laugh that make you look really ugly. You know, the kind where your makeup runs, mascara rolling down your face with tears, some crazy sounds coming out of you (I’ve been known to snort from laughter). Tell yourself it’s okay to bust-out.
3. Laugher is contagious. I find myself laughing sometimes because someone else is laughing and I have no idea why. My son laughs sometimes and I just sit there laughing my head-off because he’s laughing. Most of the time, I never know what the hee-hee-hees were all about. Who cares?
4. Don’t bother with crap that you think is supposed to be funny but isn’t. I can’t do comediennes or any live comedy shows. I refuse to pay for a laugh. I don’t like emails with jokes or stupid lawyer or “two lesbians walk into a bar” type jokes. That stuff isn’t funny to me. Find what makes you laugh and let ‘er rip.
5. Surround yourself with people that make you smile. I have a friend that makes me smile when I see her. It’s like having an automatic surge of good juju. A smile leads to a laugh and a laugh to a giggle and a giggle to a roar. Be afraid of people without a sense of humor. It’s not worth it.
My life is so full of good and bad and ugly and beautiful. In all these things I find something to laugh about, or at least give a good chuckle at. I hope you will too.
This post is inspired by and solicited by Me You Health and their Daily Challenge on Facebook that I find pretty darn fun.
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Gas Station Stalking and Other Random Acts of Kindness
We sat quietly in the corner of the parking lot – inconspicuous as we could be, staking out the Rotten Robbie gas station. We watched people come and go, and waited patiently to pounce. Who was the next target of the day going to be? We wanted unsuspecting citizens — unaware of our stealth plan.
Inside the car, the four of us whispered, sitting low in our seats and diverting our eyes from suspecting passersby. How we’d pull-off the job was thoroughly discussed. And then, our opportunity arrived: a white Ford Explorer, driven by a 50-something woman. As we gave the O-K sign, I crouched down low and ran from our car into the gas station and shoved $20 into the attendant’s hand:
“HER!,” I whispered, “We want to pay for her gas! Now! Pump 4! Go! Go!”
I put my cap down and walked unsuspectingly back to our car, quietly closed the door and started the car. Next it was time for LaGringa’s part of the job. The woman walked into the station to pay for her gas and we peeled out of the parking lot, whipping an illegal u-turn and zooming up to the woman’s car. La Gringa jumped out and put our calling card on her car door. Then we took off, finding shelter, parked stealthily across the street and waited.
The woman came out of the gas station looking around in both directions — she was clearly suspicious of our actions. She walked carefully to her car and picked up the card on her door looked at both sides of it before reading what it said:
You received this act as part of Yahoo!’s effort to spread joy around the world. We hope this inspires you to make the ripple grow by doing something good for someone else. That’s how good grows. Share it at kindness.yahoo.com
Our car exploded with excitement. We pulled-off the job! Slowly, we creeped our not-so-stealthy red SUV out of the parking lot in cheers.
Back at the lair, we surveyed our booty: we secretly had hit three gas stations paying fo gas for unsuspecting citizens, bought bagels for two senior citizens who’d just gone for a run, and given out Lottery tickets to strangers on the street throughout San Jose. We were high on the thrill of secret giving. The feeling of giving a random act of kindness was not only contagious, but addictive. We piled in the getaway car and headed south, casing out our next target.
As part of my role with the Yahoo! Motherboard, I was given $100 in cash to pass-on random acts of kindness during the holiday season. You can learn more at: How Good Grows, Start a ripple of kindness with one simple act. kindness.yahoo.comRead More
Celebrate Today
My children are sleeping deeply tonight — three days of magic will do that to a 7-year-old.
We are home now, back in Silicon Valley where neighbors are milling around on a Sunday afternoon; there’s homework to be done and nothing seems to have changed in 72 hours. Funny. It has for us.
I watched my kids, exhausted, full and happy walking off the airplane after the weekend filled with the kind of emotion that only Disneyland can offer. They seem so carefree now, my boy’s blue Micky Mouse wizard hat casting a shadow on the jetway; my girl’s hair still perfectly in-tact after two days since being coifed by the Bippity-Boppety-Boutique maidens. Even I felt free. Disneyland will never know how much their “Celebrate Today” theme moved me to tears, and how it has left me inspired to live in the moment — today, and more than ever, tomorrow.
As I type, clothes are in the dryer. In the morning, I will re-board a different flight, this time to The Mayo Clinic in a Hail-Mary type pass to see if the doctors there can help my mom. By now you know the story of my mom…
All through the Disneyland park, you feel the passion of Celebrate Today. Anything, anyone is worth celebrating. It’s hard to remember that life itself is worth celebrating, especially when life isn’t playing nice. But, inside Disneyland, there is a celebration for everything! A celebration at the extraordinarily lit “it’s a small world,” every 15 minutes when the clock strikes and children of the world dance. Did you ever notice that at Disneyland? The children of the world are dancing, just because.
I watched celebrations of children’s first visit to the Magic Kingdom, an old man’s birthday, an informal family reunion, a marriage, a life beginning, and in one special case we saw this weekend, a life ending. We saw the Make-a-Wish Foundation in action with a massive group of people boarding the Toy Story ride, partying like there was no tomorrow. Why? Because they were Celebrating Today for a child in their family that won’t have many more tomorrows. I asked a cast member on the ride what the impromptu FastPass was about and he told me, “They are Celebrating Today.” Yeah, baby. They are.
Celebration is Disney. My mom celebrated her high school graduation in 1962 with my step-dad at an all-night fete at Disneyland. I celebrated many birthdays here, my grandmother brought my cousins and me here. My mom brought us here just because. My aunt performed here, my father was one of the original Mouseketeers (shhh, don’t tell!). I’ve celebrated summers and winters and random school breaks here at Disneyland. One day, my mom and teenage brother went to Disneyland on a whim, ditching life and celebrating their day. There are so many celebrations of my family life on the streets of Disneyland over the past 50 years.
Disney is celebrating holidays today and every day for the next six weeks. Celebration is different than decoration. Decoration are designs and wreaths and bulbs. Celebration is the understanding that there is something in the air that enlightens people. We celebrated this weekend — and for us, where the holidays will be uncertain with my mom’s health — it might be the single greatest holiday celebration of our year.
I was not paid for this post, however, my children and I were treated to an extraordinary weekend of holiday magic at Disneyland, courtesy of #Disneylandmoms.
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Pink Ribbons Are Boring. Do More.
Oh man. Here it comes the month when every fricking thing is pink or perfectly normal with a little pink ribbon on it. Blah. Ick. Puke. Here comes the pink ribbon month. Marketing blah blah. Pink ribbons mean nothing to me. Green dollars mean something to me.
I’ve seen the debate on the Facebook ‘like’ promotion for Breast Cancer Awareness. I’ve heard the breast cancer fighters pushing back. I’ve watched friends recover from breast cancer surgeries ranging from proud little tiny scars to wonking radical mastectomies. My paternal grandmother did not survive breast cancer; my aunt has barely scathed by. That said, this is not my pet project, my “I’m going to wear an unflattering t-shirt” level of passion (leave that for the Myelin Repair Foundation and ProMujer). To be honest, pink ribbons turn me off — it seems so marketing-y. The only way I knew it was Breast Cancer Awareness Month this year was when I saw hardcore NFL defenseman Jared Allen, wearing a pink sweatband, tackling a QB who was donning a pink chin strap on live TV.
It took NFL Sunday for me to notice awareness month, but I’m no fool. Breast cancer is a deadly bitch. The breast cancer numbers are staggering. Shocking, really. I’m always so moved by the women I’ve seen walking for days on-end with pink bras and ta-ta jokes hugging and laughing and talking with their flat-chested, bald-headed friends. That is some serious courage. Sometimes the subject of breast cancer makes me feel uncomfortable because I happily had my breasts reduced. I don’t like boobs. But I don’t want to have to lose them because of cancer, either.
Supporting Breast Cancer Awareness month used to be a stretch: I just couldn’t give money to a “Precious Moments” figurine and make the connection between that stupid trinket and the balls-out-hair-on-fire research that this disease requires. But all that’s changed. Women and marketers have gotten keen to the mutually beneficial attention to the Breast Cancer cause. For goodness sake, wineries are busting out massive donation campaigns this year. Now there’s a donation I can get behind. And that’s not all.
Did you know you could donate a mammogram by just clicking once? I thought it was total B.S. so I looked it up on Snopes and validated it. Yup, just a click donates a mammogram to a woman who cannot pay for one. Um. DUH. Before reading on, do that.
I met two incredible designers when I was at SocialLuxe this year — if you attended, you saw their cool greeting cards too. My favorite is featured on the top of this post: “Thinking of you as you Bitch Slap cancer” made me smile and gave me a shot of anger too. Both worthwhile feelings, if you ask me. Buy these cards and 50% of all proceeds go to Young Survivors Coalition.
Into cupcakes — and good cupcakes? Sprinkles Cupcakes, arguably the best cupcakes I’ve ever eaten, gives 100% of proceeds of their pink cupcake to Breast Cancer research. Okay, that’s cool. I can do that. And after I eat a dozen of those puppies (at $4 a pop), I’ll have to use my Yummie Tummie to squeeze into my clothes. This company has one of my favorite products ever – the Survivor Tank which is designed for slip-in cups for mastectomy needs. Oh, and 100% of the proceeds go to the City of Hope Research Foundation. Even if you do have your boobs, it’s a great product. I own one, I should know.
Then there’s every other product under the sun from Purina Cat Chow to Donna Karan perfume that give proceeds to Breast Cancer research during the month of October. But do me a favor, don’t bother buying any product just for the donation element. It’s only a drop in the bucket. Ten percent of profits on your cat chow purchase is less than 25 cents. For goshsake, if you’re going to donate to Breast Cancer research then save yourself some time and a crappy pink ribbon product and just donate directly to the Susan G.Komen fund by TEXTING the word: “KOMEN” to 90099 to donate $10. That’s a lot more efficient than 10% off some pink water bottle you didn’t want anyway.
This post is inspired by my purple pals at Yahoo! who donated $50,000 to the National Breast Cancer Foundation this month.
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The Kids are Only Moderately Alright
Reading From Left to Write Book Club‘s October book, The Kids are Alright made me want to hurl the book across the room. The kids are not alright, not alright. It’s never alright to lose a parent. It’s not alright. Never.
My friend and neighbor died on Friday, just a day after I finished reading the book. He has three young children, ages just around the ages of Amanda, Dan and Liz. They are alright, as far as your-dad-just-died-but-don’t-forget-your-science-project-homework thing goes.
But, the truth is, those three beautiful kids will never be alright. There will always be a piece in them that lost their father when they were young. There will be a piece that is forever part of any puzzle — from father-daughter nights to wedding day aisle walks, from warm talk about manhood to power struggles with being the man of the house — it will never be alright that the family they built will forever have a piece called Dad that simply isn’t there.
The kids might be alright, but it will never, ever be right that they lost their dad this week.
Surprisingly, watching my neighbor friends take on death, taught me a lot about how I want to live. And for me, living means lists. The Kids are Alright did the same for me: it made me want to write lists. Maybe it’s a matter of controlling the uncontrollable. But from this week of reading and loss came a five-item To-Do List:
1. Get a living will. How come I don’t have this? Why doesn’t @la_gringa have this? I think because it’s money we don’t want to spend on a topic we don’t want to think about. But it’s been long enough. We each need a living will. If you’ve got a good estate attorney, let me know. We’re going to make this happen before the end of the month.
2. Talk to my family about what I would want to happen with my children in the event of my death or terrible illness. This is different that a living will for me. This means having the Talk. I want my family to know what my private dreams are for my children as they age including what I want for them idealistically (things like: secretly, I don’t care if my kids try smoking pot, but I do care where it comes from. Or: happiness comes before education no.matter.what.), and, what I want for my kids literally (i.e.: birth control pill as soon as the word ‘boyfriend’ hits her mouth without any judgement whatsoever. Or: If he gets in a fight on the playground remember to check his wounds both internally and externally before grounding his sorry ass). These are not estate issues, they are philosophical beliefs I have and want to share if something should happen to me.
3. Get a physical. Have @la_gringa get a physical. We have terrific health insurance and we’re in good health. But why wouldn’t we get an annual physical? Lame. No excuse. Just lame of me. What if I could have caught something early enough to fend it off? Or at least early enough to buy time to do the stuff I want to do. Get tests — cholesterol, blood pressure, mammograms — all things I never check that I really should. Calling now.
4. Go to church. Now you all know how I feel about this topic, but I am reconsidering all this right now. My friend who died this week was a tree hugger, full of love for nature. He was a believer. I don’t care what church it is or where it is, for that matter. I just care that if something happened to me and @la_gringa, that my kids would have a great, vast, large network of people who believe in the greater good and of the peaceful destiny of their parents. One thing about The Kids Are Alright that really bugged me was that there was little-to-no village for the kids. We’ve got a friend and family village, but I want one of faith for them to fall into.
5. Examine and up our life insurance policy. I have no idea why this keep sticking with me. But it does. What are the percentages? Should I have it or just @la_gringa? How much should it cost? What’s reasonable? We’ve always had some life insurance, but as kids age and needs grow, we need to look at this before the end of this month. Who has good rates? Good reputation. Again, if you know of a good one, let us know, we’re looking to do this now.
I know checklists are all for peace of mind. But peace and piece of mind both broke my heart for Amanda and Dan, Liz and Diana. I want to kick their dead parents in the gut, which is a horrible thing. But it made me angry to think they hadn’t provided for the What Ifs of life for their kids and family. I plan to take that frustration and put it into action immediately. If anything should happen to me, the kids wouldn’t be alright, but I would want to make sure they had the best chance to grow up as alright as I can possibly muster for them.
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Privacy Meet Transparency, Your Ugly Twin
It has been a long standing debate in our industry about the value of transparency in communication. It breeds trust, gives tangibility and street cred. Being transparent is cool. Until it’s not. Equally, we look at privacy protections, safety of our families online and the need to use code names and words for just about everything from the dog to the husband. But transparency has come to a place online where being truly transparent and completely private online are both pointless, fruitless battles. It’s us against the (PR/marketing/Google) machine, and we’ve lost.
I’ve used code names for my kids and self for years. I worked hard to keep my LinkedIn separate from my blog. I put my online personas into buckets: Facebook/LinkedIn in one bucket; Blog and Twitter and Flickr in another bucket. I went so far as to set search alerts for my name with my user names and cross reference the searches with my kids names — all for the sake of being both transparent and private. But somewhere along the way, the web got smarter than me. Oh, it just took one link to here or there, one re-tweet, one comment that used my real name to put it all together. Mark 2010 as the year that the Internet truly began to never forget.
The biggest problem with working in online communities has always been transparency — both the lack of it, the strive for it and the freakout when it comes to pass. It’s true that most people I know online know me as Garza Girl, and when I introduce myself I expect the blank stares, but as soon as I use my online name, the recognition comes. But the yucky side of that is that if you know me online, you know my dirt, because it is there in the cloud, where I, like so many others, have the false security that I’m writing anonymously. Transparency as we know it is dead because if it has to be staged, hidden behind user names and goofy profile pictures, then it’s not really transparent. Online transparency has a new norm: bare all or someone else will.
My someone else day has arrived.
I’ve been selected to be one of 15 iVoices for NBC/Universal’s iVillage. This means attaching my real name to my real face to my real life. This means being a face of a two-mommy family. This means the world will know that I feed my kids organically to prevent my daughter from having early puberty. This means that my crossed-eyes can’t be hidden. It means being transparent about my opinions on parenting to the world, not just in my backyard between like-minded friends. It means my exes — from the super insane thief to the one that got away — will be able to access me in all my 10-lb weight gain glory.
This move toward transparency also means that I will be able to work on stories that I am passionate about. It means I will put my image fears to the forefront of challenging myself to look in the mirror and into the camera. It means I’ll be able to offer a peek at what it’s like to be a two-mommy family. Being transparent means I’ll have to keep myself in check (can’t rant at the kid’s teacher anymore), keep other’s privacy in check, keep myself open to failure when it comes. It means, above all, that I’ll be living externally and that my role is to ensure I’m living that same life privately — the best I possibly can.
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Side Gigs
