The Dysfunctional Family

Once upon a time in a far-off land called New Jersey, a young girl was fortunate to have a middle-aged aunt who was a witch. She was neither a good witch nor a bad witch. She was like a real person only with magical powers. She had the ability to cheer up people with just a well-placed comment or quip. She was not obsessed with her children--in fact she treated them like adults (which actually they were). She was a whiz at card games. She flirted with every man she could--the girl's mom even accused her sister (secretly) of trying to steal her husband while she was in the hospital recuperating from surgery. She rarely cooked. She had an extensive network of friends, preferring them to family members. And she had a tragic loss--her first husband died of heart ailments. The above attributes only added to her mystique and intriguing personality. The young girl really liked her aunt, mostly because she was the only aunt her family was speaking to during her impressionable adolescen

I''m not a big fan of this time of year. Hanukah, Christmas, New Year's. There are some logical reasons for this. When I was freelancing for magazines, I hated this season because I swore no one was reading my queries, they were being tossed in the circular file, and every editor was enjoying vacation days. So nothing got done as far as I was concerned. Also, if I had to interview people for an article, chasing them down and scheduling them for a phone interview was an iffy business. They were either crowded from work deadlines or like editors, busy shopping and making merry. Now that I'm not freelancing for magazines, I still get the blahs just thinking of the holidays. The first sign of my malaise usually comes when someone in the neighborhood puts up his Christmas lights. This year someone dared to  put them up BEFORE Thanksgiving. That really pissed me off--that someone had broken the implied contract that all decorations would be delayed until at least Black Frid

What do you do when you get up in the morning and you're irritable? You don't have a specific reason, but there it is: a massive amount of anger targeted at everything and everyone. You're even angry at the dogs, and you love them. And your feeling makes no sense since you can't attribute it to anything tangible such as a bad dream or another rejection of the writing kind. That's how I am today, and I don't know what to do. I don't think I said more than two words to my husband before he left for work. He probably suspects that I'm in a foul mood, but he probably doesn't figure that I'm angry. When I get depressed I'm usually into self blame and that's energy turned inward. But today I'm turning the energy outward. I'd really like to kill someone--then maybe I'd feel better. However the better part of aggression tells me homicide isn't going to be on my agenda for the day. Could be that the nasty feelings come from w

Are long weekends like the past Thanksgiving Day one all they're cracked up to be? Retailers like them because they help jump start Christmas shopping. Everyone flocks to malls and discount stores or logs in online and spends, spends, spends. After all, there's nothing else to do but fight with your family, eat leftovers, or go to the movies (if you can afford it, they're so expensive nowadays). So economically speaking the long weekend is a boon to marketers and sellers of anything. But what about the physical and emotional effects of a long weekend? Unless you're self employed and can work from home, you cannot even stay busy and calm your anxious mind with work projects. No, no, we're trained from birth that work is bad and recreation is to be sought after. The idea is to make enough money so you can order others to go out there and work their asses off. I'm not good on long weekends. I hate cleaning so I can't depend on that to keep me busy, an

For some families, taking turns at the Thanksgiving table to recite "Thankfuls" is mandatory before heaping food onto the plate.In other families, dysfunctional ones for the most part, everyone is wearing a pretend smile and feeling sorry for themselves that they're stuck with this bunch of pain-in-the-asses. Which family are you in? That's for you to figure out. I'm in a group that's getting more popular as we age. Both my and my spouse's parents are deceased and no sibling or cousin lives nearby. And we don't fly on T-Day. Just the thought of standing on all the lines and pushing my way through cold, rainy weather sends chills down my spine. So we will eat alone. But don't feel sorry for us. We've got the pets and Netflix, which has truly become the number one distraction among boomers and millennials. It's definitely therapeutic to list a few thankfuls at the T-Day table. For nervous, anxious, or depressive people, it's a great opp

Sometimes it seems like everyone's a lesbian but me. Once I heard that only 5 percent of the population are homosexual, but I have my doubts. A lot of people still are in the closet so they don't become a part of the statistics. That's why I think there's way more lesbians around than anyone knows. And I kinda envy them. Just a little. That's because most of the celebrities I day dream about are women. My favorite all-time celeb is Sally Field. I know, I know, The Flying Num girl. But the woman can act. And not only that, she gave up Burt Reynolds for the sake of her sanity. I could picture Sally and me going out for the evening and suddenly she becomes one of her other personalities like she did in the movie/book Sibyl. I'd make scintillating conversation with one or two of her personalities and then we'd talk about the California fire and if it impacted her house. We'd sit real close together on the bench she shared with Tom Hanks in the movie Fo

For perfectionistic souls like myself, there are past events that I regret. One is high school and the amount of studying I did. A waste, tiresome, boring and something that I was psychologically programmed to do. I could not NOT work hard. It was like an axe was hanging over my head, and I had to do whatever it took to hand in an A-plus job. It was a cross that I had to bear or to use another metaphor, I had been given lemons. So I made super duper gallons of lemonade all through college and graduate school. I graduated with a high GPA, but I always wondered if I could have achieved the same honor with less work. I remember enjoying very little of the grind. I hated memorizing facts for exams and felt more comfortable writing papers, researching stuff and churning out original lesson plans, self-evaluations and other useless crap. Little time for the dating dance. It wasn't just the lack of guys in my life that I regret. It was also the lack of FUN. For amusement and diversion