So I'm back to the Velvet Underground... Or, I Went Grocery Shopping and I Liked It

So I'm back to the velvet underground

Back to the floor, that I love
To a room with some lace and paper flowers,
Back to the gypsy
That I was
To the gypsy...
That I was.
Gypsy by Ms. Stephanie Lynn Nicks

Hello, everyone. I'm back! I'm not sure if the PA burbs qualify as the Velvet Underground, but, like Stevie meant in her song, I'm back to the place I love and feel most comfortable, and where I'm learning to live alone again.

Where am I back from? An amazing Caribbean cruise with my kids. Here are a few pics to prove my point.

This first pic is of the beautiful Magen's Bay in St. Thomas.

The second pic is me pointing at a female pirate's booby. Yup, you read that right. Apparently, this nice Irish gal, Anne Bonney, tracked down her runaway husband in the Virgin Islands and murdered him. She also slept with many ship captains and then killed them. She was quite the role model in her day.

Pic 3: Adam & I sharing our first cocktail before we set sail.

Pic 4: Movies Under the Stars on board the Ruby Princess. We watched more football than we did movies.

Pic 5: Ethan, me, and Adam after Ethan's birthday dinner at the Crown Grill - think Morton's Steakhouse at sea.

Pic 6: Ethan and Adam in the Michelangelo dining room.

Pic 7: Ethan - on his birthday! - swimming at St. Maarten after we went helmet diving.

The cruise was filled with many wonderful experiences, including a new book idea. Sitting in the library on board the ship, I watched the ocean pass by and scribbled the first five pages to a new women's fiction story. I'm very excited about it, however, I still have to finish editing my YA novel. According to my editor, this draft may well be "the one" - the final edit before AA takes the book out on submission. So, in order to finish YA Draft 7 and forge ahead on WF Draft 1, I need to get "discipline." Some people get religion, others get milk, I have to get discipline.

Where do I find this so-called "discipline?" Can I save up cereal box tops and send away for it? Buy it on Amazon.com? Find it on one of those late-night infomercials? Is it tucked away next to the gold in the California hills? I'm hoping it's located back in the calm, turquoise waters of the Caribbean, because that's a damn fine place to be. (Which is why, I've already booked my next cruise for later this year!!!)

Along with pondering self-discipline, I learned several important things about myself on this trip:

1) I need to eat breakfast.
I know this sounds like a big, fat "DUH!!!" but I've never been a breakfast eater. My normal schedule is to get up around 8AM and have a protein shake around 10AM. Then, maybe lunch, maybe not, and a big dinner. WHAT an idiot.

So, get this. (To those of you who know me well, you may want to sit down for this next part. Seriously. Consider yourself warned.) What's one of the first things I did after coming home from my trip? I went to the grocery store! (I hear a lot of thuds out there. I hope there are defibrillators nearby.) True story. I went to the grocery story and (same warning applies) I LIKED IT!!! Katy Perry, move over. Kissing girls is nothing. I went grocery shopping and I liked it...

For those of you who don't know me well, I'd rather walk naked in Antarctica or worse, go moose hunting with Sarah Palin in Alaska (where she can see Russia from her house!) than buy groceries.

But there I went. I bought fresh fruit (not the cut-up kind - actual whole melons!!! You can cut them yourself! Who knew?!), brown eggs (from cage-free, vegetarian-fed hens - yup, I'm a card-carrying, liberal tree-hugger), low-fat, whole-wheat English Muffins, and orange-pineapple juice. I also got green and red peppers, cheese, Rosemary crackers, and shrimp (peeled and de-veined) to go with my wonderful red wine habit. (Healthy in moderation, or so me and the Mayo Clinic believe.)

2) My bed should not double as my office. (Don't argue with me. I'm on a roll.)
So, I've chosen to move my lap top down to the kitchen and do my writing there instead of sitting like a lazy bum all day in bed. I also intend to make myself tea. Every day. That's right, you heard me - TEA! (Chai with skim milk and sugar, if you must know.)

For those of you who do know me well, you're probably thinking, "Who are you and what have you done with our spoiled, rotten, lazy, JAP, Debbie?"

Never fear, she's right here; just going through a major life transformation. I'm taking care of myself now. There's no one to blame but me if I'm not as healthy and happy as I can be. And I hate being wrong, so, I may as well try and get it right.

I'm finding taking care of myself is like kissing girls and going grocery shopping.

I like it. ;-)

Thanks to Stephen Powell for the inspiration for this post.

Walking on Eggshells (No More)

Oh how I walk on eggshells. Those damn things get stuck in between my toes and scrape the bottoms of my feet and hurt like a mother. And those are just the physical effects...

I watched my favorite program today: CBS Sunday Morning. It's always chock full of fascinating stories. Today I was blown away by writer Arthur Laurents. You just might recognize some of the stories he's either written or been associated with (the first two in this short list are my favorite movies of all time): West Side Story; Gypsy; The Way We Were; La Cage Aux Folles and Alfred Hitchcock's, Rope.

When West Side Story was created for Broadway it was with the genius of Arthur Laurents' story, Leonard Bernstein's music, Stephen Sondheim's lyrics, and Jerome Robbins' choregraphy. Oh to be a fly on that wall... Arthur is 91 years old now and, as he puts it, works eight days a week. He recently finished refashioning West Side Story written in 1957 for 2009 Broadway. What's different about it? It includes some of The Sharks dialogue being spoken and sung in Spanish. Simple yet brilliant. Click here for Josh Getlin's story about this in the LA Times.

What inspired me most about Arthur (pics are of him then and now) is his extreme confidence and his belief that you should tell it like it is, plain and simple; no need for sugar-coating your opinions to please others or to be PC. If you don't tell it like it is, you must be afraid of something and you might want to take a look at what it is you're afraid of. His other brilliant observation is that all that matters is being in the moment and doing the work you know you're meant to do. "Reviews" (read: REJECTIONS!!) are completely meaningless; they simply don't matter. As he puts it, "If you listen to your critics, you're dead."

If you ask anyone who knows me they'll tell you I'm not one to shy away from my opinions. But what they may not realize is I tone things down all the time in order not to hurt someone's feelings or not to appear crass. To be honest, it wears me out. It's tiring and inauthentic. Here's a question in poem form to illustrate the prospect of "full disclosure":

What would it take to fearlessly
lay it all out for all the world to see
like Natalie Wood as Gypsy Rose Lee?

Don't worry. I won't be using that in either a novel or a song! I don't know the answer, but I'm committed to finding out. From this point forward, I promise to step away from my fears and trust myself more. I'm pulling those nasty eggshells out from between my perfectly manicured toes and walking forcefully in the direction of my dreams. Hopefully, long before I'm 91 I'll be a power to be reckoned with!

Where are the places in life where you sugar-coat your opinions or walk on egg shells? And, as Dr. Phil would say, "How's that working for you?"