The Dysfunctional Family

What's with this new sweet and salty #food trend? Isn't it just another advertising ploy to get us to empty our pockets of hard-earned cash? Everywhere I look it's #sweet and salty--#popcorn, ice cream, bacon cinnamon rolls--BuzzFeed lists 24 "awesomely" #delectable sweet and #salty foods. https://www.buzzfeed.com/ariellecalderon/24-unexpected-sweet-and-salty-combinations?utm_term=.vvaL The idea behind it is you don't have to choose between a salty snack and a sweet #snack. You can have both in one package. #Yippee!! And while this may be true in the world of foods, there's something inherently sinister and insidious about informing people that the Age of #Rational Choice has come to an abrupt end. Just because the Food Fairy has decreed that you now can have your cake and eat it (pardon me, but this worn cliche seems to apply here) doesn't mean you can do it in The Real World of Serious Shit. For instance, take income. Choose teaching kids inste...

I'm so excited. I got my first #dirty photos yesterday on the #Internet. They were created especially for me--I'm sure of it-- and sent via #Messenger. I couldn't help but look at them, once, twice, yes even a third time. I wanted to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing: the manly organ in all its erectile #glory. So I had to keep looking and looking.  Okay I confess that after the first fifteen looks of profound disgust, I looked out of prurient interest. To put it simply, the obscene titillated me. Oh come on. You know it's hard to resist looking at porn. It's like a cartoon or a picture in #Playboy. You cannot help but read the tagline and then, hopefully, you laugh your head off. But the guy who sent the dirty photos is not laughing now. I immediately did the right thing and barred him as a friend. I kicked him off my circle and I hope he regrets his #misbehavior. Forever. I'm sure he's doing "hail Marys"or their equivalent even...

It's not my fault that I think about #suicide a little bit more than the average nut case. It's all around, spreading like a #virus. Ebola. Hantavirus. Herpes. Suicide. If it's not celebrities like Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade, it's average folks like my friend's 19-year-old daughter or the #suicide-by-cop felons or  mass murderers who maim and kill until they finally stop taking human #life by thankfully turning the gun on themselves. And now I'm reading David Sedaris' new memoir in which he describes the death of his youngest sister, Tiffany. I'm not sure he has any greater insight into her death than the average sibling. His remembrance struck a chord in me because Tiffany's #toxicology report revealed that Klonopin was the drug of choice with a plastic bag tied over her head. Death by asphyxiation. #Death by Self. I too (only a few years back)  took too many Klonopin one desperate night, but my husband called 9-1-1 and I was detoxified. It...

I just returned from the #veterinarian with Maddie, my eight-year-old #schnauzer with valley fever. She's on a half dose of her meds, and we're seeing if this has any positive or negative influence on the course of the #disease. Valley fever is a plague in the Southwest, especially Arizona, and it's one of the crazier #fungal diseases out there. For instance, Maddie never showed any #discernible symptoms but when I chanced to test her for the disease, she showed a high titre. So either the test was really wrong-----about three times in a row--or else Maddie's immune system is so good that it's #clobbering the disease but not ridding the body of it. This is a long way of stating the obvious. Although dogs like Maddie as well as cats, miniature horses and even  bunnies are regularly being used as #therapy animals at nursing homes, hospitals, schools, and all kinds of venues, they also are capable of traumatizing people or just plain breaking their heart. Wai...

I grew up never believing I was as good or as #successful as the next guy, and it's a common problem or so my shrinks seem to think (some of these good doctors have earned six-figure salaries on just this one patient complaint alone).  But after all these years of #consigning myself to the role of second-class citizen, I've figured out that success is just one of those meaningless words--like #beautiful or wonderful--that can be tweaked any way you want it. In other words, success is what you make of it.  Take our #President for example. Here's a man who practically reeks of success by anyone's definition. He's built hotels, put together company #buyouts/mergers, fathered children, married, and earned the title of Most Important Person in the Land (perhaps the Globe). On the other hand, we could, if we wanted, tweak the word success into its opposite: failure. Trump has been divorced several times, declared #bankruptcy, been sued by countless litiga...

I'm a self-avowed #neurotic scared of many things that well-balanced people don't care a fig about. Like, for instance, big parties. Large gatherings overwhelm me. Too much stimuli, human and #nonhuman. I'm surrounded by too many people and too many tables and food trays. My eyes start roving over the entire room, and it's like I'm trying to #gobble everyone and everything up into a tasty cake so I can swallow it and be assured that I haven't missed a thing. Control is my problem and also my main defense weapon, but I usually run out of coping mechanisms early on and wind up standing like a statue with an insincere grin plastered across my face. I hope no one recognizes my #immobility as the frightened paralysis it really is. I'd rather they take me for a long-lost relative who was talked into coming and who doesn't give a shit about anything or anyone. Here are a few more things that I can't tolerate. Other people may also disdain them. Maybe o...

It's clumsy to see an ex-boyfriend at a #festive occasion. For a #neurotic like me, I always flashed back to the "way we were." And since I'm not #BarbraStreisand, I don't always appear calm, cool and collected. (Neither do I sing at these festive occasions, but then I expect you assumed as much). Usually I lack the poise to do anything but stare. What if Ted and I had only spoken to each other? Would my attachment problem have resolved itself or worsened? Would I be a happier ex-girlfriend now or would I be #depressed again? I'll never know. Neither of us ever  broke our implicit vows of silence. Neither of us could tolerate the #discomfort of speaking to each other as one mature married adult to another. Neither of us made a move to change how we related to each other. And then just like that the opportunity to change the dynamics of the #relationship was quashed. It happened like in the movie "Love Story" (which is an inaccurate comparison due to...

Since I had concluded Ted was cheap, at least when it concerned me, I was prepared for his #inexpensive birthday gift. What I wasn't prepared for was the lack of imagination that went into the selection. #Stereotypes were popular fodder for Ted, so despite women's #liberation, birth control pills, and Ms. Magazine, Ted figured incorrectly that I would like a fancy compact. He might have bought it in a pharmacy or stolen it from one of his sisters, but in any case, it was not suited to my #lifestyle. I hardly expected a piece of jewelry, but a compact? I was lucky if I had a tube of lipstick at the bottom of my handbag. Later I threw it away. I not only associated it with loss, but I knew I'd never use the damn thing! The break-up had been in my sights long before it happened, so I can't say it was unanticipated. Regardless, it hit me hard, and I mourned Ted's absence more than I had mourned anything up to that point. I walked through my senior year at Kean College...

Have you ever #dated or met someone you wanted to know better, but either the feeling wasn't reciprocated or logistics precluded the continuation of the #relationship? I have, and recently it's been cropping up in a not-so-great way at all times of the day and night.   Perhaps by writing the story for public #consumption I can accomplish two things: share a human reaction many people experience and purge the feeling once and for all. It's about a summer #romance and a guy, but you probably knew that already. A friend of the #family introduced us when I was 19 and he was about 26. (Let's call him Ted because I have neutral feelings about this particular name.) For me, Ted was the physical embodiment of all my fantasies of what a good-looking guy was. I always preferred the cute types to the #muscle-bound. Although his hair was already thinning a little and he didn't have the toned #physique of someone who worked out at the gym, I was charmed by his...