Enjoying birthday celebrations this year even though winter COVID resurgence has tapped a few of my friends. Linda H. treated me to a yummy, festive, and expensive lunch at Willi’s Wine Bar and today Joyce is taking me out for dim sum. My kayak buddies celebrated with tacos in downtown Santa Rosa — Justin snapped this picture.
Downtown Santa Rosa December 2023
Shonda Rhimes was a guest on Andrew Ross Sorkin’s annual DealBook Summit and I was intrigued by her intelligence so I read her 2015 book “Year of Yes” when she forced herself out of her writing shell by accepting speaking and social invitations, learning to stand up for what she really wanted, and how to gracefully accept a compliment.
I knew about “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Private Practice,” and “Scandal” all being in production at the same time but Andrew Ross Sorkin pointed out that she had shed 150 pounds. Knowing, as I do, that the five food groups for writers are caffeine, sugar, nicotine, alcohol and fat, I wanted to learn more. I loved how she captured the nuttiness of TV production but the first three-fourths of the book has almost no self-disclosure. The photos start on page 233 and the good stuff follows.
She was the youngest of six to academic parents with a very strong marriage. Her older siblings are insightful and supportive and Delorse muttered, one Thanksgiving, “You never say yes to anything.” Shonda chewed on that as she realized that, as successful as she was, she wasn’t really happy. It’s nearly at the end of the book when we learn that she was engaged to a wonderful man that she didn’t want to marry and that’s when her weight started to really go up. By saying “yes” to telling the truth, she broke off the engagement and broke her pattern of suppressing her feelings with food.
Over the course of the year she discovered that healthy, kind people find each other and that some of her friends did not like how she was changing and growing. She realized they were not really on her side and she had to let them go. She explained, brilliantly, why it is SUCH a problem when people interrupt a writer who is in flow with dialog and story.
She describes “five miles filled with chocolate cakes, good wine, books I want to read, emails that have to be answered” and she has to get past this five miles every times she sits down to her computer to write. In the beginning it takes a day, or an hour, but it never takes less than 20 minutes to get past the five miles of distractions and get back into the flow. Even if the interruption is a well-intended, “would you like some coffee or water?” breaks the flow and she has start running again to get past the five miles.
At the end, Shonda explains to big sister Delorse how much the muttered phrase “you never say yes to anything” changed her life — saved her life. Delorse shrugged.
You did all the work, but it’s like you needed permission. I’m your big sister. I gave you permission and I’m extremely proud of you. You were joyless. All you ever did was sleep. Now you have completely transformed. You’re alive. Some people never do that. You are this happy because you said yes to not getting married.
Shonda explains that having it “all” is no guarantee of happiness, especially if what you want doesn’t conform. We spend our lives punishing ourselves for not living up to some standard we think applies across the board to all of us. The book is a plea to recognize that happiness comes from living as you need to, as you want to.
Pathological Overconsumption of Food was Cured by Telling the Truth
Left home at 4:30 on a Wednesday morning to bypass SF and San Jose rush hour traffic on my way south on 101 to Los Olivos, just beyond Santa Maria. Highway 101 is so much easier on my 1994 Volvo than Highway 5 (in gray) because on the travel speed is a temperate 65, not the 85 mph demanded on the 5.
As I approached Salinas, daylight was just cresting above the Gabilan mountains to the east, a silver ribbon outlining the gray ridge, then trimmed by overhead rows of gray clouds of varying stripes. The Coastal mountains on the right grew brighter as the sun rose and I pulled into Salinas to enjoy breakfast at Dudley’s.
Salinas at Daybreak
After breakfast I walked around for a few blocks and admired the creativity of the Hallowe’en decorations in a downtown alley.
At 10 am there was no one in my lane for as far and the eye could see, forward or backward. The drive was beautiful and meditative, and around noon I stopped in Santa Margarita, high in the mountains and still shrouded in fog, even though it is just 10 miles straight uphill from San Luis Obispo. At about 3 pm I met up with my friends at the VRBO in Los Olivos and we visited some of the shops and wine tasting rooms.
Rocking my Moroccan Bag in Downtown Los Olivos Which is Three Blocks Long
I cooked up a quiche for our first night, and on our second and final night we visited restaurant Bar le Côté.
At Bar Le Côté: Regina, Jane, and Moi
Shopping at Garden Supply in Los Olivos
We hadn’t seen each other in ten years, since the 50th high school reunion that we organized. It was such a pleasure to catch up and to fill in the blanks about how we got to where we were. They spoke about what they felt when they visited my house when we were in high school.
Jane: your mother seemed like a child.
Regina: your father was handsome but very scary. Manipulative.
It was such a relief to feel seen and understood. Because I departed at 10 am, the Friday afternoon trip took seven and a half hours but I enjoyed digesting all the insights and camaraderie.
Great trip.
I subscribed to AppleTV+ to watch the new season of “Morning Show” and the premiere of “Lessons in Chemistry,” but the big find was “Bad Sisters,” originally titled “Emerald.” Brilliant writing, bang-on characterization of four Dublin sisters trying to help the fifth sister who is trapped in an emotionally-abusive marriage. And it’s funny!
Bibi, Grace, Eva, Ursula, Becka
It won a 2022 Peabody award and four nominations for Primetime Emmys and I am thrilled to learn that it has been renewed for a second season. Set in Dublin and shot on location in Ireland, it is based on the Flemish series “Clan” and was developed by Sharon Horgan who plays Eva, the eldest. Deeply Irish in the way it deals with the bad husband, it never considers divorce or trying therapy to get the physically-enormous-but emotionally-stunted man to grow up. The photo reflects that there is wine in nearly every shot as they are harried by an insurance firm run by two brothers who are secretly in deep financial trouble. It moves at a brisk pace and I loved that I could not figure out how it was going to end until we got there. Very satisfying.
The dog in this NYTimes article by Alexandria Horowitz is named Quiddity by his two lexicographer “parents” (they don’t say owner). Quiddity is a “mid-sized mixed-breed dog with a sleek black coat, a scruffy schnauzer-like face and Brezhnev-esque eyebrows that gave her the appearance of a wise old man.”
Because Alexandra Horowitz, 53, knew the dog’s mother and saw the puppy on the day she was born, “her early life was not full of trauma, and yet nonetheless she was not the dog I hoped she would be at first. She wasn’t responsive to us in a way that I wanted her to be.” Quid was impulsive, eager to run heedlessly after squirrels and other elusive creatures, inclined to bark more relentlessly and with less apparent purpose than Horowitz’s two older dogs.
“I feel now that I was way too focused on dog behavior,” she said. “In the beginning, nothing would slip by me, and it was too much for a puppy to bear. Over time, as I began to release my vise grip on the idea that she should be someone other than who she was, I began to appreciate her for who she really is.”
Alex’s lexographer husband said, “I think she’s fascinating and full of excitement and love and she has a hairy joie de vivre. She is untrammeled in her enthusiasms, which is nice. Nobody’s interested in a jaded dog. She is also kind of a pain in the tuchus because of those untrammeled enthusiasms.” I looked it up and enthusiasm can be countable or uncountable. Apparently, he can count her enthusiasms, which include squirrels, tennis balls and untrammeled barking.
Quiddity can be defined as the essence that makes something the kind of thing it is and makes it different from any other. Quid is latin for “what” so if your dog was named Fred you would love his “fredness.”
I think Quiddity is what Dr.Rita Levi-Montalcini had in mind when she urged the Praise of Imperfection.
Paulin Creek Is Dry
The neighbors, some of whom have been here longer than the 20 years I have, are fretting because Paulin Creek has gone dry for the first time in memory. So far this year, we have escaped wildfires in this area, but the anniversary of the 2017 Tubbs fire is a couple of days away. This summer has been cool — I have only worn shorts a couple of times — and we got a few sprinkles of rain in September, but the fire hazard does not abate until the first good rain. No rain is in the 10 day forecast.
As soon as he survived the recall election, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law:
S.B. 9 allows duplexes to be built in most neighborhoods across the state, including places where apartments have long been banned. It essentially ends single-family zoning, but with a modest shift: Under the bill, property owners can build up to three additional units on their land, allowing single-family homes to be transformed into as many as four units.
S.B. 10 reduces environmental rules on multifamily housing and makes it easier for cities to add high-density development.
It is true we need more moderate-income housing and new shelters to accommodate the homeless, increasing population density as water supply diminishes and wildfires become annual predicts a downtrend in quality of life for Sonoma County. The number of county residents who were shelterless became exacerbated after the Tubbs/Nuns fires in 2017, the Kincade fire in 2019 and the Glass fire last year (2020). I realize that the outlook is trending in the wrong direction.
Fragrant Sterling Silver Roses and white iris
Pink and peach roses with blue iris
We have been been ordered to “shelter in place” for the past month to be safe from Corona virus. I am now wearing my expensive French perfume because there is no one to complain. Safe from the “scent-free” people of Northern California, my house is a cacophony of fragrance!
A quick note to self with some grounding practices. First, Max Strom as recommended by Therese Smith. I call this 4-6-8 breathing.
Second, the University of Rochester Medical Center 5-4-3-2-1 technique for coping with anxiety and to reconnect to your body and to the earth.
Slow, deep, long breaths can help you maintain a sense of calm or help you return to a calmer state. Once you find your breath, go through the following steps to help ground yourself:
5: Acknowledge FIVE things you see around you. It could be a pen, a spot on the ceiling, anything in your surroundings.
4: Acknowledge FOUR things you can touch around you. It could be your hair, a pillow, or the ground under your feet.
3: Acknowledge THREE things you hear. This could be any external sound. If you can hear your belly rumbling that counts! Focus on things you can hear outside of your body.
2: Acknowledge TWO things you can smell. Maybe you are in your office and smell pencil, or maybe you are in your bedroom and smell a pillow. If you need to take a brief walk to find a scent you could smell soap in your bathroom, or nature outside.
1: Acknowledge ONE thing you can taste. What does the inside of your mouth taste like—gum, coffee, or the sandwich from lunch?
The techniques to deal with TMS as described by Dr. John Sarno are described Alan Gordon
iRest practices that include listening to meditations on this page and Body Sensing. Feel the earth, feel your feet. Ground your electrical charge into the earth.
Contact water will ground a dangerous electrical charge: take a warm shower, wash your face, wash your hands, take a drink of water.
NYTimes article on Cutting as a form of self-soothing.
Quotes from Carl Jung.
Could Humility Be the Antidote to Co-Dependency? Click Image for NYTimes article
What Beyoncé Taught Veronica Chambers, Past Tense Editor, About Self-Motivation