Stop. Breathe. Think.

I’m a pragmatist. I know I’ve mentioned this. I’m one of those left-brainers who approaches a problem as methodically as possible. I’m not so much a creator as an implementer. And with the exception of my brilliant (in my mind) idea to become Jewish Mother for the Foo Fighters, I don’t think of myself as particularly creative, artistic or imaginative. I’m a fixer. A problem-solver.

I don’t come up with the big, remarkable, extraordinary ideas.  That’s someone else’s job. But when those ideas are implemented and something goes awry; when the wheels come off, and the train derails, as it often will, I’m the person who gets called in to fix things. And when I get there, I’ve also brought brownies. People assume I do this to curry favor, but it’s really so everyone will sit quietly, mouths full, and let me think. And breathe. Breathing is really important.

While I’m breathing, my approach to problems is three-pronged: ONE: What was supposed to happen? TWO: Why did it NOT happen? And THREE: How do we course-correct and make it happen? In the event that the answer to #3 is a shoulder-shrug, finger-pointing, screaming or some combination thereof, there is a caveat: How do we salvage what we have and create the best outcome?

Most of the time, I’m very good at working my way through the issues and getting the train back on the track. And if that’s not possible, I’ll call a bus, get everyone loaded into it, and get all passengers and their luggage to the station. Usually on time.
It’s all part and parcel of the Jewish Mother role. Take care of everyone else. I’ve done it all my life. Lately, though? I just don’t know. I can’t seem to do it for myself.

These days, I can hardly string a coherent sentence together. What the fuck is up with that?

I’m pretty sure the problem is focus. Or a lack thereof. My head feels like it is so full of thoughts and ideas and concerns that it could explode at any time. And with so much racing around in there, I can’t grab any single thought and hold on to it for more than a minute before it just slithers through my fingers. This lack of focus, it’s screwing with my mind. It’s distracting me from joy and fun and contentment. It’s keeping me from sleeping.

It’s stressing me out!

It started about a week ago. I was getting ready for work and going over a mental check list of things I needed to do that day, a mish-mosh of work stuff and home stuff. And everything was fine…for a minute. And suddenly a few hundred other things snuck up and collectively bitch-slapped me, and I felt the room spin.  I had to put down my hair dryer and go sit in a chair. I could feel my heart racing and I was covered in flop sweat.

I’m not being dramatic. I’ll admit it’s not uncommon for me to break out in a sweat. I’m 52 and fully ensconced in the arms of menopause (sorry for the overshare, but if you’re gonna read me, eventually you’re gonna know me,) so my internal thermostat has been on the fritz for what seems like decades.

But this was different. The racing heart, the dizziness – they were new. And unpleasant. And more than a little scary. I was freaking out over a derailment of my own creation.

And here’s the really unsettling thing. There was no derailment. I was panicking in anticipation of things that hadn’t even happened! Because that’s what I do. I pre-worry.

To be fair to myself, I have a shit-ton of things looming on the horizon. My job is not exactly seasonal, but I work for a college, and September is the start of a semester and all the things that go with that, including a major project that I manage. It also marks the start of my personal academic commitment, which, in this case, is my next semester of grad school.

I now have a commitment to my blog and my readers. As much as I love telling my story and having you follow me on my meandering journey, sometimes the words come easily and other times they don’t come at all. And I need to have some time to practice my craft, so I have to block out some kitchen time and maintain my ninja-like cooking and baking skills.

Oh, and my husband is running for a Congressional seat. For the second time. Indeed, this is not our first Congressional rodeo…

We did this once before in 2000, and when it was over (he didn’t win), I told him, unequivocally, never again. And if he ever got a hankering to make another run, he was going to have to do it with a different wife. I’ve been a political candidate’s wife. I’ve also had a kidney stone. Both were excruciating. But the kidney stone was over in a week. The campaign season went on forever.

I guess the lesson here is “never say never.” This time, we discussed it at length, and he said he wouldn’t do it if I was absolutely opposed to the idea. And when I thought about it, I realized I wasn’t.

It’s not that I’m a different person than I was 13 years ago, just that now I’m more my own person. I told him I would support him, just not to the same smile-and-shake-hands-and-look-demure way that I did the last go-round.

Serving in the U.S. Congress is his dream job. I have my own. And I made a commitment to finish school. I can’t give up on my dreams just to allow him to pursue his. So we have agreed to walk our paths together, even if sometimes those paths might diverge for a time. We can stay on them and keep walking, and even if we may not stay in sight of one another for every step, we can always holler to each other. Always.

So, there you have it. All the things that were running through my mind that early morning last week, boiled down to a nutshell. I took everything that I knew would be coming up in the next 16 months and let it swallow me in an instant. And if that wasn’t enough, I tossed in the uncertainty of what might be added into that mix. I walked myself right into a doozy of a panic attack.

And I forgot to breathe.

So I have made myself a promise. I will take each day as it comes, and not worry how to get the train back on the track unless there’s an actual derailment.

I will follow the wisdom from that great cartoon dog Blue, and his pal Steve. Yeah, I know it was a kids’ show. But the wisdom is still sound.

I will stop, breathe, and think.  And listen to music. Lots of Foo Fighters.


**This will be the final post at this address. The new address is willworkforfoosblog.wordpress.com, so please make sure you've subscribed**

"How Do You Get To Carnegie Hall?"

Have I mentioned that I cook?
 
I didn’t really start cooking in earnest until my early 20s, when I got married, and then I did so regularly for nearly 30 years. My husband is also a competent cook, and we traded kitchen duties occasionally due to schedules and activities that took one of us away from home at mealtime. But when our kids were younger, most of the cooking responsibilities were mine.
 
Years of cooking for a family, often under great time and budget constraints, made me a lazy cook. During those hectic years when I was rushing myself or my kids to or from work, or dental appointments, cheerleading practices or orchestra rehearsals, it was important to get something on the dinner table that was edible, acceptable to fussy eaters, and with at least a modicum of nutritional value. I didn’t have the time to experiment with new things, so we had a pretty standard rotation of things that fit my criteria.
 
And that was okay. Nobody went hungry. It just wasn’t particularly exciting.
 
Now, of course, I have a renewed interest in all that goes on in the kitchen. In fact, since I decided that I wanted to become the Foo Fighters’ Jewish mother, cooking for me is no longer a hobby, or a chore, or a necessity. Now it’s a mission.
 
Over the last two years, since I got my crazy dream job idea, I’ve begun to look more critically at food, at recipes, at techniques, at equipment, and most importantly, at my own skills and limitations.
 
I’m good. I know this. But there’s no reason I can’t be better.
 
What’s the old joke? “How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice!”
 
And so I do. As often as possible.
 
Since choosing this path, I’ve begun to collect recipes at an impressive rate. Fifteen to twenty new recipes a week is not unheard of. I find them on the internet, print them out and file them by category in binders. I pore over cookbooks looking for dishes I’ve not tried before. I ask friends to share their recipes with me.
 
I don’t have the time to fix them all, but I prepare at least four to six new items each week. And what I haven’t prepared, I file away for the future. I’m building an arsenal. Everything from breakfasts to appetizers to soups to main dishes. And dessert, of course. I have one binder that’s nothing but desserts! It’s like my own Library of Congress for food. When the day comes that my band asks me to step up, I’ll go to work well-armed.
 
Because I don’t yet know what Foo Fighters eat –well, save for Dave’s fried fucking chicken – selecting recipes is something of a crapshoot. I go with things that sound appealing to me. After thirty-odd years of feeding me and mine, I like to think I have a decent sense of what’s good. But you never really know how a recipe will turn out until you’ve fixed it, so my kitchen is a busy place on the weekends.
 
Now that cooking has become a passion for me, I have a list of rules that I have promised myself I will follow in pursuit of said passion. One is to use the best ingredients I can find. The second is to use the proper tools to get the job done. And the last is to be as fearless as possible while practicing my craft. And I’ve found that when I follow them, things turn out pretty well. But even if they don’t, I learn something from the experience.
 
It’s common sense, really. A frozen pie crust is fast and easy, but nothing beats the taste of one that’s freshly made. Dried herbs are more convenient and keep longer, but fresh herbs create better flavor in any dish.
 
Kitchen tools are important, too. My once very basic kitchen now has an array of gadgets and vessels and accoutrements to allow me to be a better cook. Hand-held juicers and a zester, and a pastry brush, and a dough blender. Three different diameters of springform pans for a variety of cheesecakes. Cookie dough scoops and a melon baller.
 
I could still cook without all of these items, but they have made a difference in the quality of the food I’m fixing. And that matters to me. Regardless of who I cook for, my skills as a cook are improving daily. Practice, practice, practice.
 
Then there’s my last rule. The scary one, being fearless in the kitchen. It’s taken some effort.
 
I fear failure when I cook. And I know exactly where this trepidation originated.
 
It was 1989 and I was a stay-at-home mom with two toddlers. I decided to fix chicken and dumplings for dinner. Easy enough, right? Except it wasn’t. To this day, I can’t tell you what went wrong. Maybe I misread the directions, or I skipped a step. Maybe I got distracted by one of the kids. But what should have been the perfect “comfort food” meal was instead a charred, smoking disaster. What should have been fluffy dumplings were burnt clumps of doughy goo. The chicken, at least what I could identify as such, was blackened. The vegetables had dissolved.
 
It was a cooking disaster the likes of which I had never experienced, a science experiment gone terribly wrong. The smell in my kitchen was horrific. As soon as the smoke cleared, everything went in the trash, including the Dutch oven, which was beyond salvation. I’ve not attempted the dish since.
 
Twenty-four years is a long time to be intimidated by chicken and dumplings. Yet it’s stuck with me, all this time.
 
But I know now that it wasn’t just about the chicken and dumplings. It was really about motherhood and marriage and wanting to be perfect at both and being terrified that I wouldn’t measure up to somebody’s pie-in-the-sky standards of successful womanhood. And measuring up to someone else’s ideals was important to me then. But I was younger. I didn’t yet know that perfection is impossible. Not to mention highly overrated.
 
My kitchen is now my safe place. It’s my laboratory, my playground, and my sanctuary. When something goes wrong there, I can usually figure out a way to fix it, and if I can’t fix it, I can toss it out and start over. And what anyone else expects doesn’t matter to me now. I only have to measure up to my own standards, which are pretty fucking high without influence from anyone else.
 
I’m ready to tackle the chicken and dumplings again. And I shall be fearless.

Leave It To Bieber

It’s never a surprise to me to hear that some famous person – an actor, singer, or politician – has been behaving badly.  It must just be the nature of the beast. Too much money and not enough sense seem to be common elements at work in such situations.

You know who I’m talking about. Tiger Woods. Chris Brown. More elected officials than I can even remember. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person who would be happy to never hear about Anthony’s weiner again. Ever. And I SURE don’t want to see what he’s posting on Instagram or sending out via text. Seriously? Eeeewww.

Still, like most disasters, celebrity bad behavior is almost always big news. Maybe it’s schadenfreude that peaks our interest in the rich and famous getting tangled up in their own notoriety.

I walked into the break room at work recently and encountered a banner headline on the big screen TV during the noon news hour. “Freedom Watch,” it said. Really? Was there a political dissident somewhere being granted asylum? Maybe some wrongly accused person was being released from prison after new DNA evidence proved his innocence!

But no. It was just Lindsey Lohan getting sprung from jail. Again.

Much as I try to ignore this sort of behavior, I’ve just about reached my limit over the past month. And I blame it all on Justin Bieber.

What in the hell is wrong with that little twerp? He’s 19 years old, he’s a beloved pop idol (though as someone who does not fit his target demographic, I’m at a loss to explain why), and he is, as we say in Texas, richer than six foot up a bull’s ass! So what’s his fucking problem?

The behavior seems to change from week to week. He’s wrecking his Ferrari. His friends are wrecking his other cars. He’s posting rants on Twitter. He’s stranding a pet monkey in Germany. Huh? He’s walking out on his $1600 tab at a recreational venue. He’s pissing in restaurant mop buckets and telling a former U.S. President to “fuck off.” And if none of this qualifies him as Tool of the Century, now he and his little entourage of junior Tools are leaning over hotel balconies and spitting on his fans. What the hell?

An interview with his mother went like this: She blames this behavior on his youth. He’s 19 now, and she says she doesn’t have as much influence as she used to. “I’ve got to let go and let him make some of his own decisions,” she told Access Hollywood Live, adding that she prays for him.

Really, Mom? That’s all you have to say? Sure, just shrug your shoulders and play the “he’s young and immature” card. As if that excuses him. Or you.

When my kids were 19, they were both putting themselves through college. They had part-time jobs. They did not “rant” on social media. And they would never have walked out on a tab of any sort. I realize that my kids aren’t international pop stars with a seemingly endless supply of money, but if they had been, suffice it to say they would have never behaved so disrespectfully, be it to a former President, a fan, or a janitor in a restaurant.

I hear these stories and it makes me wonder what the 19 year-old version of Dave Grohl or Pat Smear or Taylor Hawkins was doing back in the day. I would not be so presumptuous as to claim that the younger Foo Fighters were saints. I can’t speak to that. But if I had to venture a guess, I’d guess that when most of them were the Bieb’s age, they were playing in garage bands, trying to break into the music scene. Or they were spending night after night playing dive bars and practicing their craft, and sleeping in the back of a panel van between gigs, and making just enough money for gasoline, beer and junk food. And knowing their commitment to their music, I suspect they were just fine with that.

In the Foos’ documentary “Back and Forth,” Dave says at one point that when the band performs in a big live venue, like Wembley Stadium, it’s important to him that the show is just as good to the folks up in the nosebleed seats as it is to the ones in the front row. In other words, if you’re a Foo Fighters fan, the guys want you to enjoy the show. It doesn’t matter how much you paid for the ticket, they’re just happy you came to the show.

It takes more than just talent to become an icon in the entertainment world.  If you want to last, or if you give a shit about earning anyone’s respect, or both, it also takes a healthy dose of humility. Any musician, or actor, or professional athlete would be wise to recognize and acknowledge that he has gotten where he is because there are thousands of regular working stiffs out there shelling out a piece of a paycheck to buy a ticket to seem him do his thing.

I’m pretty sure the Foo Fighters get this. Justin Bieber apparently doesn’t.

And so, Justin, I may not be your mother, but I am A mother, and when it comes to respect, humility and class, my kids would leave you in the dust. That’s how I raised them. So let me offer you some unsolicited advice:

In exchange for your mediocre singing ability and your mysterious appeal to pre-adolescent girls, you’ve been given the world on a silver platter. If you quit buying and wrecking sports cars and start investing wisely, you will likely be financially set for life. If you want to show your friends a good time, by all means do, but pay the bill when you’re done and leave a nice, generous tip. And then take some of that vast wealth and pay someone else’s tab too. Go to a nice restaurant and pay for the other patrons’ meals for a change. Don’t pee in the mop bucket. Use the restroom like the rest of us mere mortals.

Even better, how about you put some of your money to really good use and donate it? Instead of buying another exotic monkey, why don’t you write a check to your local humane animal shelter? Or a homeless shelter? Or a community food pantry? There are a zillion charitable organizations out there that could desperately use your excess cash. And you’ll never miss it.

Last, but certainly not least, be respectful of your fans. The life you’re living now is due to their generosity. You mean something to them, even if they mean nothing to you.

So behave yourself. Pull up your damn pants. Be grateful for your good fortune. Grow up.

And for God’s sake, stop behaving like a dick!