I ? New York

I've been having lots of random incidents lately that are making me question my decision to live in this fair city.

Witness...

So last night, there I was, walking hurriedly through Times Square -- well, I was trying to walk hurriedly, but the tourists had other ideas, so let's just say, I was doing my best to make tracks through Times Square -- looking forward to meeting a friend that I hadn't seen in months, and trying to beat the apocalyptic storm that the weather people were predicting, when it happened:

I got Carrie Bradshawed by a city bus.  One that didn't even have my picture on the side of it.  And instead of the catchy theme music, all I had was honking horns and screeching brakes.

There I was, standing on the corner, waiting for the light, when I saw a little kid in a stroller enjoying an ice pop.  So I leaned down and cooed, "Looks like you're enjoying that ice pop!  I'd like one of those on a day like today," and before I could straighten up - SPLAT.

It was orange.
It was chunky.
It was cold, so it couldn't be vomit, could it?
And it was all over me.

Now, I know I have a flair for the dramatic and I have been known to exaggerate, so I'll just state the facts and let you decide:

It was on my bare arms.
It was on my shirt sleeves.
It was on my back.
It was on my butt.
It was up and down both legs.
It was on my shoes.
It was on my glasses.
It was on my face, people.

I don't know if I should be proud or disgusted with myself that instead of canceling my plans and immediately rushing home to take a Silkwood shower, I just kept walking to the restaurant at a normal pace, trying to push through the crowds, who were looking at me as if I was the grossest thing in Times Square that night -- trust me, I still wasn't.  "What's the matter people, you've never seen a woman covered in vomit before?  I bet you have, and at least it's not mine."

Anyway, I get to the restaurant and push past the hostess, who doesn't blink an eye, to try to clean myself up in some way, but aside from just cleaning my skin and wetting down my arms, it's a fruitless exercise, so I emerge from the bathroom.

Again, you'd think a person, covered in what is probably another human's vomit, would feel embarrassed and run home to flee, or at least think, "Well, perhaps the other diners don't want to sit among me and my vomit...", or even, maybe *I* don't want to sit stewing in vomit for any longer than I have to.

But not me.  I go over to the waitstaff and I'm like, "Look, look what happened!"  And when my friend Kim arrived, I said, "Don't touch me!"  But we still sat down for dinner.  Come to think of it, we got a table pretty quick -- a table on the side by ourselves.  Consider that a NYC dining tip from me to you - look like a crazy person covered in vomit and you'll get a table quickly, a nice quiet one far from the other patrons.  And I have to give Kim credit for being a good sport and being willing to sit down and enjoy her meal opposite me - now there's a friend.

When I got home and could see in a full length mirror the extent of the grossness, my first question to myself was, "What is wrong with you?  You weren't even embarrassed to be marching around in public like this?"  And you know what, I really wasn't.  It was just all in a NYC minute, which made me think, "Is this what living in NYC does to you?"

And then I laughed thinking of how this woman was trying to push around me on the steps to the subway and how, when she apologized meekly and said, "I'm just trying to get to the subway," I turned around and said, "We're ALL just trying to get to the subway," she must have been very afraid at the sight of me.   You'd think that a person covered in vomit would keep to herself.  Yeah, not so much.

Oprah says (c'mon, did you really think that I could get through a post without quoting Oprah?) the universe speaks to us all the time -- first in whispers (clearly, I have whisper deafness), then with a brick upside the head (okay, check), then the brick wall falls down.

Was getting Carrie Bradshawed by a city bus, and not even being splattered by dirty rain water, but bodily fluids, my brick wall falling down?

I have thought often over the past well, maybe two, years about not being entirely happy here, two years of debating and hand-wringing and sleepless nights.  But I usually quickly follow that thought with others like, "But who really is happy?  And what's happy anyway?" And even more along the lines of, "You can make yourself happy.  Happy is a state of mind.  Try not to be so negative."  Even Yoda weighed in, "Do or do not, there is no try."

The problem is, as a native New Yorker, actually born here in the city and raised on Long Island -- except for college years and two pretty unhappy years spent in Boston where I loved my work but hated everything else about my life so much so that I actually had a page a day calendar that I numbered backward from the day that I was leaving the city, I couldn't wait to get out --  New York has always been the center of my universe and it's hard to see a path out and away from it.

With millions of people trying to fight their way here, why would I want to get out?  I mean, I made it here -- I have a good job, an apartment in a coveted neighborhood, friends, family -- so, why would I want to try to make it anywhere else?  Isn't achieving here in the city that does its best to break you, the end-all, be-all?

And it's not like the line is, "If you can be happy there, you can be happy anywhere."   So what I struggle with the most is, "Well, maybe I wouldn't be happy anywhere."  Maybe I'd go through the hassle of uprooting my life and starting over, and I'd be just as miserable.  Maybe I wouldn't sleep in a new city either.  And moving sucks.  I'd have to find a new hairdresser, and a new laundromat, one who wouldn't kick me out when they saw a Ziploc full of vomit clothes, and a new fruit guy who would bless me every day on the walk to work.

So I don't know what the answer is.  I don't know what the road holds, but at least, last night, covered in a part of this city and one or more people who live in it, I finally allowed myself to entertain the question.

But until I figure it out, I will be wearing my helmet, hefty bags over my clothes, and sensible shoes, and staying alert for signs from the universe.

I can't afford to miss any more of them.

Crazy From the Heat...

As I've said in this space before, I hate the heat.  I like sweater weather vs. sweating weather, being able to snuggle up in a cozy blanket.  I don't like sweating or being uncomfortable, which is probably another reason that I'm not such a fan of the exercising, although I know it's a necessary evil.  On that front, I'm trying to motivate myself by taking some sessions with an amazing trainer and Nike athlete, Ary Nunez, who, among many other people, has trained Rihanna.  I will never look like Rihanna, nor should I, but it would be nice to push myself and see what I can do.  Stay tuned on that.

Back to the heat.

The extreme heat here in New York - and many other places - this week gave me an "ah-ha" moment of Oprah proportions.  I realized the main reason I hate the summer and the heat is that it's something beyond my control, and we all know how much I like and need control.  The heat makes me feel like I can't breathe and that I can't escape -- there's no way out.  Unlike the cold, where I can put on as many layers as I need to, in heat, you can only go so far in cooling yourself down.  I mean, I don't look like Rihanna so I can't get away with parading down Wall Street naked.  I'm trapped.

So this week I felt my anxiety ramping up with each degree.  I kept watching the weather and the giant LCD screen out my work window that shows the temperature.  Tick, tick, tick.  89, 93, 97.  The media doesn't help - making it sound like a heatpocalypse, that I'll burst into flames as soon as I step outside.  So I started doing what I like to do -- trying to control what I could.  I came up with a contingency plan should my A/C break.  I took cabs to and from work.  I mega hydrated -- you know because the grueling work I do SITTING AT A DESK INSIDE AIR CONDITIONING --puts me at high risk for heat stroke...

I made all kinds of small talk about the weather with strangers, including the dreaded, "Hot enough for you?" which normally would make me want to smack someone.   I worried about those working outside.  Worrying about other people helps me deal with my own anxiety -- like a few weeks ago, when, mid panic attack, I met up with a friend who was having a panic attack too.  Somehow my own anxiety seemed far away as I tried to help talk him down from the ledge.

But I didn't just worry about the heat.  I worried about my health.  I worried about getting the bugs that are going around the office making everyone sick.  I worried about the actual bug I found on the floor of my apartment -- so much so that I actually took a photo of it and sent it for review to make sure it wasn't anything too nefarious, i.e. a bedbug.  Which then made me start worrying about having them -- and what I'd do/how I'd handle it.  That kept me awake the entire night because mentally I started putting the wheels in motion, having imaginary conversations, cancelling imaginary plans to "take care of the problem."   A game plan, so to speak, because that's what I do best.  And good game plans take time to build, i.e. an entire night awake.

Intellectually I know all of the obsessing is ridiculous.  As my mother said when I called her to freak out, "If any of these things happen, they can be fixed.  These are fixable problems.  The only thing that can't be fixed is death."

Great, so now I'm afraid of dying.  Only not so much.  I reckon if I die, I die, and I won't know about it.  Even if I die in an embarrassing way, that's my family and friends' problem -- they'll be the ones who will have to retell the story.  "It grieves me to talk about it, but yes, it did involve Barry Manilow, a slot machine, a little person, and the over-consumption of Diet Coke, and yes, it's true, she wasn't wearing clean underwear.  But please no more questions."

(Now that's a lie.  I'd never wear dirty underwear.  Defend my good name.)

A few weeks ago I had a dream with ALL of the Kardashians -- even Rob, Bruce Jenner, Lamar Odom, and Scott Disick.  When the boys show up, you know that it's serious.  In said dream, the Kardashian ladies were trying to convince me that I need medication for my anxiety.  Maybe they're right.  I lost interest in what they were saying when Dionne Warwick appeared, reclining on a chaise lounge.  You'd think that, given her psychic connections, I might have gone up to Dionne and asked her for some advice, you know, "Dionne, do you know the way to San Jose?"  I mean, that's what friends are for, right?  Wrong.  Instead I asked her, "Hey, where did you get that pillow?" and proceeded to admire the pillow where she was laying her probably-not-even-psychic head.

Even in dreams I avoid -- transferring the seriousness of this Kardashian konversation over to my second favorite past-time:  hoarding things.  I could have even been a nice person and asked Dionne how she was grieving the loss of Whitney and at least given her a sympathetic look.  But I really wanted that pillow.  It was silver and glittery and would look really nice on my couch and if I didn't move fast Kim was going to get to it, and unlike me, she'd just get bored with it and discard it after 72 days, whereas I'd keep it forever, laying my still-dyed-red-head on it as I uttered my last words on my death bed in Shady Pines:

"The Kardashians were right."

Hopefully those words will come far, far from now, when maybe the 20 year old orderly at Shady Pines won't even know who the Kardashians are.

And in the meantime, I'll continue to find ways to not obsess, or at least find healthier, more productive things to obsess about.  There are 72 days left of summer, and by the end, I either want to have managed my anxiety a bit better (however/whatever it takes) or used the anxiety as fuel to cure cancer (stretch goal) or clean out my closet (doable).  If Kim and Kris kan kill a marriage in 72 days, I can make progress on my own personal goals.

Call me crazy but I think I can do it.

On Fathers and Father's Day...

A couple of months ago, one of my employees lost his dad unexpectedly.  He was sick, he was better, he was sick again, and then he was gone ... all within the span of two weeks.  This week, at work, as the weekend approached, Father's Day weekend, I kept debating whether to say something or to leave it be.  I wasn't sure if anything I would say would be the right thing or would help at all, but I wanted to let him know that I knew this time couldn't be easy for him.  I just couldn't seem to find the right words or the right time.

So there I was sitting my office, working, and working on the "right" thing to say, when these words appeared on my screen:

I'll be thinking of you this weekend.  I know it must be hard for you.

And there it was, the emotional equivalent of a drive-by shooting from another employee of mine, sending these words not to our colleague but to me.

As many of you know, as she knows, I lost my dad 25 years ago in an accident, but I hadn't even been thinking about what the lack of a father on Father's Day meant to me personally.  It's been so long that I had a dad that I don't find myself thinking about it, but the tears and sadness that her words brought made me realize that, like everyone who has ever lost someone, the loss is always there just beneath the surface, and sometimes it spills over when we least expect it.

And as I get older, as more of my friends become fathers in their own right, and my circle fills with fathers, somehow the loss feels sharper.  Maybe it's that I'm witnessing firsthand some of the things that I feel I missed.  The pat on the back comforting a cry.  The reassuring nod offered when a child turns around to make sure dad's there.  A steadying hand to wobbly footing.

It's also a bit ironic that the loss feels deeper since, as I age, more and more friends have lost their fathers so no longer am I part of some precious, rare group.  Every year I age, there are more of us in the fatherless category, and yet, it doesn't feel any better or easier.   Maybe it never will.   Maybe the loss is compounded by the inevitability and the unfairness of it all - not to mention the march of time.

It feels wrong to say that, when my father passed, the result of a violent accident that, somewhat ironically, was in no way his fault, I could finally breathe.  When someone you love is struggling, you're always waiting for the other shoe to drop, the phone to ring with the bad news that surely will come, it's just a matter of time.   Sure, I felt sad when he passed, but I also felt some relief - for him and for me and my whole family.  I didn't have to worry anymore that he'd show up at school again and try to take me with him.  I didn't have to feel guilty for not answering his calls or not returning his letters.  I didn't have to try to process feelings well beyond my emotional maturity level at 6 or 10 - or, who am I kidding? - 41.

So maybe it's that, now, as an adult, I can see beyond my fear of him to love and understanding, and that's where the sense of loss kicks in.

I've been open about the fact that my dad wasn't a perfect man and certainly not the perfect father.  No one is.  He struggled with alcoholism and his behavior was ruled by his disease.  As I get older, I realize more and more how much of a struggle he really had, and how, really, at the end of the day, we're all just doing the best that we can.  Sometimes it's not enough, but day after day, we're all just waking up, putting one foot in front of the other and giving it the old college try.

Sometimes I do things I'm not proud of.  I'm impatient and controlling and refuse to ask for help.  I'm overly sensitive to looking stupid and have an overdeveloped sense of justice.  Often, I say things I wish I hadn't and never say the things I should.  I haven't mastered the flow of thinking BEFORE you speak as I prefer to ruminate and obsess for years after instead of investing two seconds before in a moment of consideration that could save me a lot of grief - and sleep, and, on too many an occasion, calories.  But pretty much always, I come from a good place.

As I become more self-aware, I see how not having paternal support did impact who I've become - for better and for worse.   To every positive, a corresponding negative.  What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but it's better to be rubber - tough but flexible - than brick - thick and unyielding.  I've spend a lot of time working in brick.  Maybe it's time to switch to another medium.

Someone asked me recently if I felt cheated not really having a dad growing up.  Honestly, yes, but more in the fairytale way that probably never would have been a reality.  I think about being walked down the aisle at my wedding and other pop culture "dad" situations that I've seen on television and in the movies as being "perfect, bonding moments."  Aw, shucks, dad.

Real life is far messier, so I know that, in reality, my life wouldn't have played out in those ways.  In real life, I've had amazing uncles, cousins, brother-in-laws, teachers, mentors, coworkers and friends who have filled various "dad" roles at certain points in my life and will continue to do so.  I have been very fortunate to be surrounded by wonderful, caring men.  My friend Antonio is impatiently waiting for me to find someone and get married so he can walk me down the aisle and do the father/daughter dance - a role he is taking very seriously.

And my mother, as a single mom for most of my life, did a pretty great job as both mom and dad.  Which is why on Father's Day, I try to send her a small gift -- just a little something to acknowledge that, finally, as an adult, I know how hard it must have been being both parents.  And, as I get older and consider my own options, I don't know if being a single parent is something that I would be by choice, and yet, there she was.

So, on Father's Day, sure I feel a little sad, a little wistful, but mostly I feel happy watching the joy the great dads I know feel having children, and hoping they soak up the much-deserved love and appreciation on this day.

And to those who have lost their dads too soon - it's always too soon - I simply say:

I'll be thinking of you this weekend.  I know it must be hard for you.

Half Empty

I like to say that I'm an optimistic pessimist.  I'm always waiting for something to go wrong, for the other shoe to drop.  But I also hold onto a glimmer of hope that maybe I'll be wrong and something good will happen, and I always believe that only good things will happen to people I care about.  If you're going for a job interview -- friend, you're gonna get it!  Having a test?  It's nothing, it's nothing at all, you'll be fine.  It's just me that travels under a black cloud.  If this were The Brady Bunch, I'd cast myself as Oliver the jinx.

And yet I don't live under any black cloud.  And I'm not a jinx.  Bad things happen to people, even me.  Good things happen to people, even me.  Why should I be any different? 

So why do I think that way? 

It's certainly not a particularly uplifting way to spend my days.  And it's certainly not smart or efficient, and I like to think that I'm both of those things.  As Michael J. Fox (who by the way, has real problems to worry about) said, "If you get caught up in [thinking about] the worst case scenario and it doesn't happen, then you've wasted your time. If you get caught up in the worst case scenario and it does happen, you've lived it twice."

Yeah, that doesn't sound very smart or efficient, and, given the choice, I'd rather live the worst case scenario once, thank you very much.

Obsessing does have its benefits.  I've put my free time to work solving problems I don't have that I pray I never will, but, if I am ever in the position, I'll be ready.  If you went through the bookmarks on my computer, you'd think I have every major illness and problem known to man.  Being ready, so to speak, makes me feel a bit better.  But I sometimes wonder, what if I could harness all of that mental obsessing and worrying into something good?  Like, I don't know, curing cancer, or, say, solving the problems I actually have.

Now there's a thought.  I could solve the problems I actually have, you know, like why I spend so much time worrying about problems I don't have.

I read that, if you are plagued with worries, set aside a window of time each day or each week where you will do nothing but worry.  And if you find yourself worrying or obsessing at any other time, you're supposed to tell yourself, "Not now, you get to worry Tuesday from 11 to 11:15."

It sounds like it could work, but what if a meteor strikes Earth precisely in that window?

Sounds like something else to worry about.

Things I Am Loving/Hating Right Now (Part II)...

I can't believe it has been nearly a month since I posted here.  I really am awful and have no good excuse. 

It's high time for another installment of Things I Am Loving/Hating Right Now...

Jessica Simpson as the new Weight Watchers Spokesperson:  Hating it.  Well, I think we all saw that one coming, now didn't we?  Rumor has it she's getting $4M.  So let me get this straight -- Jessica got to eat and eat and eat and sit on her butt to the point where she actually looked deformed, and now she gets to make money off of it too?  I got fat for free.  I didn't know you could paid for it.  I wish that Weight Watchers would stop with the celebrity spokespeople, who have access to personal trainers and chefs, and pick a real person, like me, who is actually eating their frozen "meals," if they can be called that, and trying to fit exercise into my busy day of work and a$$-sitting.

Summer:  Hating it.  Maybe it was growing up in a resort town or reluctance to be seen in anything more revealing than a burka, but I am not a fan of summer.  I find the statement that work/life slows down in the summer to be a total myth; I'm working just as hard, if not harder, I'm just hotter while doing it.  The only things I can see that are decent about summer are The Real Housewives of NYC coming back, trashy summer reading, and the Rock of Ages movie.  I can appreciate that other people love the summer, but I just can't get onboard that bus.  I'd rather stay inside in the air conditioning.  Wake me when I can wear my sweaters again and when Mallomars are back on the shelves.

Summer Reading:  Loving it.   I read the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy and I couldn't put them down.  Yes, they are porn, and poorly written, but somehow they just get under your skin.  Like Shingles or something.  I highly recommend them.  I also loved Heft by Liz Moore, This is How ... by Augusten Burroughs, These Girls by Sarah Pekkanen, I Couldn't Love You More by Jillian Medoff, and eagerly await the new Jennifer Weiner (The Next Best Thing) and the Shawn Colvin autobiography (Diamond in the Rough).  I'm sure that 70% of my after-tax income goes to Amazon.com.  It's way too easy to One-Click and essentially buy a house or something.  When I'm in debtors prison, remind me that the road to Hell was paved with books...

Marina Keegan's Now Viral Last Column:  Loving it.  A friend I hadn't spoken to, well, in years, sent this to me in the middle of the night Sunday, long before it became a sensation.  It broke my heart, and made me cry and made me think, and above all, it made me hopeful. 

If you are one of the three people who hasn't read it yet, go here.  I dare you to not be moved: http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2012/may/27/keegan-opposite-loneliness/?cross-campus

Every day that we are alive we have a chance to turn it around.  To do something awesome or waste precious time.  To choose to hold a grudge, or finally let it go.  To apologize, or let it fester.  To take the high road, or be petty and judgmental. To let people know  that they matter, or continue to be disconnected and isolated.

Marina's column makes me feel uplifted and hopeful and grateful that I have a gift of another day -- to make mistakes and learn from them, and to try to do and BE better.  And I thank Marina for this gift of perspective and send my heartfelt condolences to her family and loved ones. 

As she says, "We’re in this together, 2012. Let’s make something happen to this world."

Indeed.

The Dr. is In...

I've said it before and I'll say it again:  This whole process of healing over the past five months has made me wish that I had gone to medical school.  Not so much that I actually think I'd be a better doctor than the doctors I've seen, but perhaps I wouldn't feel so much in the dark and feel the need to consult Dr. Google several times a day.

My friend MaryD, who suffers from a variety of annoying ailments, and I were howling a few weeks ago looking at our Google search history on our phones.  Among the winners were:  Feel like choking on nothing. 

I'd share more but that about sums it up.

And it makes me even more convinced that my acupuncturist was right when he said that Google should only allow you to search the same symptom, say, three times, and then after that, you're locked out, done, you can no longer obsess.

But then what would I do for fun?  I've built an entire life around obsessing.

Right now, I'm averaging at least three doctor appointments a week.  Most of them aren't helpful.  And it's not like I'm being a hypochondriac, which I have been guilty of on many occasions.  Each time I go to the doctor, he or she decides I need to come back again or go somewhere else or have a test of some kind that seems unnecessary to me and seems like they're grasping at straws, which maybe they are, and maybe it's no longer helpful to keep going, but I'm too much of a hypochondriac not to follow their advice.

It just seems like sometimes they're not paying very much attention -- like the doctor who called to announce a vitamin deficiency that I already have and take medicine for.  When I countered with, "Yeah, I've had that for years, and I take three supplements a day," the reaction was, "Oh, okay, forget that then."  Or the URGENT test that I had to rush in to take the NEXT day because I was having horrible symptoms (which I still have) -- and then had to chase the office down for two weeks to get results only to get a voicemail from the doctor saying, "Showed nothing, call if more questions." 

Yeah, I've got some questions.  Questions like, "Well then what is wrong?  And why am I still having symptoms?"

Thank goodness Dr. Google is always there.  I can always get an appointment anytime day or night.  Dr. Google always has an answer.  Dr. Google never keeps me waiting.  Dr. Google tells it to me straight:  It could be very very serious or it could be nothing at all.

Aside from Dr. Google, I'm pretty sure that the only doctors I would fully trust at this point are Dr. Oz and Dr. Drew.  Dr. Oz had put out a call for guests to be on his show and I'm ready to say I'm a man trapped in a woman's body who needs to lose weight (Dr. Oz loves weight loss shows so that would be my hook) just to get close to him.   I'd even eat the twigs and eye of newt that he's always pushing on the audience to demonstrate how committed I am to health.  But then he'd try to shove me in the Truth Tube, where they announce on national television how much you weigh, and I'd fight like a cat going into a carrier, and scratch up poor Dr. Oz, who, ever resourceful and a teacher at heart (like our Oprah), would use that as an opportunity to demonstrate to everyone how to properly dress a wound and educate everyone on what booster shots we need as adults (tetanus).

 So far everyone seems able to agree on two diagnoses:

"Too much" and "A lot."

And by that I mean, when I go in and describe what's going on, they're always like, "Wow, that sounds like a lot" or "You must feel like it's too much."

I agree.  And I didn't even go to medical school.

At this point though, I've crossed over into laughing about it.  I know that this situation won't last forever and that I will be fortunate enough to feel 100% very soon.  I wish it would come quicker, but I know too that my anxiety about feeling better (or not feeling better) is slowing down the process, so I'm my own worst enemy.

When I think about how I felt a few months ago, when my head was pounding 24/7 and I couldn't even open my eyes because the lights were so bright, I know I've come a long way and I'm grateful for it.

As I said, I don't necessarily blame the doctors.   As my mother once said, "They're humans too, and they learned out of books just like you did."  But as a control freak, it kills me to not know what's going on and to be at the mercy of other people to validate how I'm feeling.  One doctor said, "Your neck is really locked up," and my response was, "I know, I LIVE in this body."  I've already diagnosed myself for free with much of what the doctors have confirmed.

I'll just wait for the day that Google starts handing out medical degrees from GoogleMed.

Dr. Len does have a nice ring to it.

So much to say...

Again I promised you I'd post more regularly, and again I turned out to be a liar.

Oh well.  Such is life.

Sometimes, despite having a lot to say on a regular basis, too much to say, some might say, I often feel like I have nothing to say.

So today, instead of a post of fully formed musings and deep thoughts, here's a glimpse into what's really on my mind...

Bullying:  I literally can't take it if I see another news story about a kid being bullied.   It makes my heart and head hurt and makes me want to be a nicer person, which brings me to ...

My Starbucks Nemesis:  I am nervous because I have not seen her in a few weeks.  I hope she is okay, mainly because I have a new technique for dealing with people who annoy me.  Essentially I pretend like my heart is lighting up like ET's and that I love everyone, which brings me to ...

Neil Diamond:  Mazel Tov on your wedding, Neil.  Look at you, turning on your heart light and marrying a 42 year old lady.  I wish I had thought of marrying Neil Diamond.  I could do worse.  I have done worse, which brings me to ...

Ray J:  Seriously, Ray J is getting a $1M endorsement deal?  What has Ray J done besides Whitney and Kim Kardashian?  So far no one has been able to answer that question.   I can't.  I just can't, which brings me to ...

Zoos:  I went to one this weekend in Philly, and for the first time ever, a zoo made me depressed.  All of the animals looked like the people you'd find in a bar at 3 a.m. on a Monday night -- smoking cigarettes and essentially wondering how they got there, which brings me to ...

Marilu Henner's Mega Mind:  Marilu claims that she can remember everything that ever happened to her.  I have always been a little skeptical of Marilu ever since I read that she decorates her house so that it flatters her hair and skin color.  I'm not sure that I would want that as there is plenty I'd like to forget.  I think you'd have to be more accepting of yourself than I am to live with that gift.  I mean, everything seems like a good idea at the time, right?  Which brings me to...

Tanning Mom:  This woman from NJ is accused of putting her six year old in a tanning bed.  I don't want to believe this, but one look at this woman makes me believe that she clearly appreciates a deep dark tan.  I've never seen anything like that in nature, which brings me to ...

Jessica Simpson's Baby:  Baby girl is finally here, has a relatively normal name (Maxwell Drew) and is ginormous, weighing in at nearly 10 lbs.  Poor Jess seemed to be pregnant forever.  I swear, one more week, and that baby would have been giving birth to Jessica, which brings me to ...

Giuliana and Bill Rancic's Baby News:  Very happy news that they are expecting a baby via surrogate.  For some reason, I like these two, despite the fact that they are kinda media wh*res, which brings me to...

Lisa Rinna's Depends Ad:  Apparently, Depends is now making sexy adult diapers, ones that aren't quite so, well, obviously diapers.  Lisa says she didn't do it for the money or the buzz, but for female empowerment and for charity, as a fat donation was made to the wonderful organization, Dress for Success.  I gotta hand it to Depends for making it easier for those who need to use their product to wear them with confidence, and whatever Lisa's motivation, I say good for her for shining the spotlight on an embarrassing topic, which brings me to ...

Dr. Oz:  I have talked about my love for Dr. Oz before, but I watched an episode this week where the good doctor encouraged audience members to ask their most personal questions.  I'm not gonna lie, I'm all for being honest with your doctor and not being ashamed of your body, but these questions were essentially causing me to vomit in my mouth a little bit and pray that I never run into some of those people, who clearly walk among us. 

It reminds me of the time I was working at NASDAQ with Riina and a CEO came for an event.  He had what we thought was a hair on his collar, so we pulled it.  I can't remember which of us pulled it because it was a traumatic memory.  What we didn't know was that it was actually growing out of him from God knows where, which we only learned when he screamed "Ow" at the top of his executive lungs.   Dr. Oz would have wanted me to experience that and realize everyone is human and we all have flaws, but all I can think is, "He is a Manimal." 

With the embarrassing revelations, I felt that Dr. Oz had preyed a little bit on their love for him -- why would anyone ever agree to do go on tv and ask those kinds of questions?  What would Dr. Drew say about this?  Don't they have bosses and family members and friends?  Which brings me to...

One of the Great Mysteries of Life:  I'm told that everyone, even the most annoying and hateful people, perhaps even my Starbucks Nemesis, have friends and families who love them.  Maybe there is good in everyone.  I'm still not convinced, but maybe if I leave my heart light on, it'll make it easier to find everyone's lovable qualities. 

I'm clearly not as evolved as ET, Dr. Oz, Marilu Henner, or possibly even Ray J, but I'm getting there.