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My horoscope this morning reads:

Taurus (4/20-5/20) 

This day will be partly cloudy, but you should try to think of it as partly sunny to help yourself keep a more optimistic attitude. If the clouds get you down, communicating your feelings to others will go a long way toward coaxing the sun back out. Making verbal connections is almost as helpful as making emotional connections today. So even small talk (about the weather — what else?) will remind you that life’s downs are matched by its ups.

Again, if Yahoo does nothing else, these horoscopes are really uncanny, don’t you think?

I had a conversation with a very dear friend the other day who I haven’t seen in a while because she’s been traveling extensively. She came home and had to deal with the ending of a long relationship that had ended a while back but hadn’t really found closure from her significant other. But now it had. She felt incredibly sad, but relieved. I said to her it’s funny to be a certain age and realize that you can love someone so deeply and yet not be with them, but it happens. And you move on, and you grow, and you make another life but there is always a twinge of sadness that remains.

Somebody said to me today this is a landmark day and it is, I’m leaving the company I have been working at for more than a decade and about to venture off into my Plan B and while I’m electrically excited again and feel all juiced up and ready to go, I’m also sad because I shared so many wonderful moments with so many wonderful people and now I’m moving on.

This morning Tin woke up feeling peaked and threw up his breakfast and then clung to me like a leech moaning and feeling miserable. I think I have written before of these sort of awful moments when he is sick and needs to wrap himself around my body till there’s no space between us.

The awful and the good. Isn’t that what life is all about?

Kinda, sorta.

Yesterday was another whirlwind of LaLa madness – moving the gas pipe that was installed in the flash hot water heater to the outside of the laundry room to transform that room into a kitchen, which of course led to moving the dryer exhaust which had been improperly installed to begin with – all of this was going on under my office floor, when I tried to run out for yoga from having been in the sitting position for way too long (according to my body), I came sprinting down the stairs only to discover the workers’ truck blocking my truck and all I could hear was a lot of grunting under the house as they were dealing with things like gas pipes, electrical wiring, and mud. It would have been hard, even for me, to say, um, could you crawl out from under the house so that you could move your truck and I could take my achy breaky body to yoga?

Late in the afternoon, I went over to WWOZ to talk about Re-Bridge and the $220,000 we are seeking to raise for the two historic bridges that cross the bayou and from there headed to the PTA meeting to discuss the fundraising gala for the Waldorf School as well as committee assignments – obviously I forgot to wear my STOP ME BEFORE I VOLUNTEER AGAIN button. The truth is that I am a believer in the Waldorf alternative method but in a world where our primary jobs are facing shrinking returns, it’s challenging to be a part of so many good works that need so much in return.

On my way home, flying solo for a change, I stopped at Meaux Bar to go to a place where everyone knows my name. There at the bar, I engaged in a conversation about living and how we are all need of a change. While we discussed this topical subject, I ate a lardon salad that was yum yummy and had a cosmopolitan. And here’s what the conversation netted down to we, as a nation, and as a model to the rest of the world, had gotten caught up in a system of getting and spending, and perhaps it is because we are a nation of baby boomers who had reached that age when you are acquiring and building and spending, but now we as a nation have reached our limit and are seeking an alternative path in our lives.

What’s interesting about this phenomenon is that I am listening to Ram Dass on my iPod who ascended to his popularity in the late 60s, and here we are nearly 50 years later, a lifetime for me, and he is speaking to us about the need to disavow the material world, to welcome in the compassion and nourish our spiritual selves. So for 50 years, we went off track, headlong into unadulterated capitalism and now here we are again, tails tucked between our legs, begging for forgiveness so that we can walk the true path.

Decisions were made last night, to be true to our spirit, to seek time alone, to foster time away from the grind, to think differently (thank you Steve Jobs), to find ourselves again as a nation. And once again, much like what happened in the 60s, we are being led by the nose by the youth of our nation. The Arab Spring swept into our country and inspired our own to stand up and Occupy Wall Street, to say enough of running ramshod over our humanity, enough of easy money and indifference, enough of us, we the people, buying into this lifestyle.

This morning I was walking the dogs and ran into an old friend and so we walked and talked a little together as I was not headed out for a long one and he was headed home. I was recounting my story of late, the rise and feared fall of the LaLa and I said, “What was I thinking when I did this? I thought I was all that.” And he responded in perfect timing, “And now you’re just that.”

I was reading the Tao and Lao-tse wrote that “The skilled walker leaves no tracks” and I thought back to an article I had read when I worked for The Nature Conservancy and a man had written about how he and his partner rented a cottage and grew their vegetables and had purposefully scorned home ownership because they wanted to leave as little tracks as possible. I had read that at a time when San Francisco was just starting to feel the effects of the recession that had hit across the rest of the country. In a mere couple of years that would turn on its head with the dot.com phenomenon. And I would once again revisit the notion of home ownership.

I know I am very similar to many people who began to have success in their career which then translated into home ownership, which also led to a developed acquisitive personality around things and then boom. I don’t remember when I started to think I was all that, I think I thought that in hindsight but don’t actually believe there was a moment in time where I stood there looking in the mirror, lips upturned in the corners, a twinkle in my eye pointing my finger gun at myself and going, “Girl, you are all that.”

No I rather believe that I was going with the flow; looking back offers me a view of how I was carried away by the current vibe to own a home, own more that you can afford, acquire things, any things in catalogs or boutique stores that catch your fancy, and be stressed out in a job that constantly is supporting this way of life. That was the flow.

What was I thinking?

Now that I am aware I was on the wrong path, and now that I am trying to center myself on a path that is closer to the earth, more organic, and less about all that, I am really sifting through everything to find out what is that. Last night, I took a bottle of champagne over to my neighbors to celebrate a day of victories and they had a huge one to share as well. We raised our glasses to toast and my neighbor said, “To getting your flow back.”

I’ve had simply an amazing day that all started with chaos and through the storm of more LaLa maintenance I received four very wonderful things into my life – a visit from a friend who has been traveling around (now that she’s a celebrity), a call from someone I respect telling me how I might get money from a tax credit the federal government offers, a call from another guy I adore telling me some good news, and a call from another friend offering me up something I had wanted.

Four great things happen here today – I’ll just take a moment to pause, thank the Universe, and enjoy.

I was walking with a good friend yesterday and talking about my latest undertakings and I told her about some Cassandras coming out of the woodwork, and she said, “It’s frightening to have someone at middle age decide to do something outside the norm, outside convention.”

I wonder all the time about what in this life of mine is cliche and what is original, is there anything left in the world truly unique. I use myself as the test, I thought I knew what love was and then a friend told me up at the family alpine cottage that what I knew to be love from my father, was not love indeed. Revelations abound.

Next I moved into a landscape that was filled with husband landmines only to have any hope of finding myself a mother, a perfect wife, a perfect daughter in law, a perfect something dashed on the rocks by one statement that I think led to my undoing, a dress that serendipitously arrived at my doorstep, I thought it was sent by my mother turned out to be rightfully intended for me, but I put it on thinking it was a fluke and actually fell in love with the long flowing black swirl of cotton on my legs. I put it on and was told that I shouldn’t wear sleeveless – my arms – always the size of a football players – were unattractive.

So I put away all tank tops, and continued unsuccessfully for years to try to pour my voluptuous body into jeans that never fit, and I developed a tick. Well no, not really a tick, but a default that my body was bad, that my role playing was flawed, that even when I thought I was being a risk taker, I was being a coward (my therapist told me this one – a keeper), and life plodded on in its most usual and unusual way.

When the world was going nuts in 1995 I didn’t like it one bit. I didn’t like moving back to the Bay Area in the midst of an economic explosion from 20 year olds making way too much money on smoke and mirror type companies. I didn’t like having dove into that world, watching it collapse around me after I went ahead and decided to adhere to the tenets of getting and spending.

Now that I know for sure I have spent too long trying to protect what never served me to begin with, wasn’t it three wise men in the years 2006 to 2008 who advised me that finding a man for me would prove to be tough, if not downright impossible, because I’m so, uh, how do you say, me? Was it a friend who asked about my mother in New Orleans and imagined she lived in a big beautiful house, the one that I had been trying to procure for my mother my whole life, when a friend/colleague took me aside and said, “Buy the house for yourself,” and I did but then almost lost it to the Federal Flood, and to my ex who I offered it to (oh, if only he had taken it!), and then I told my therapist, I don’t deserve this house, it’s too showy, too big, too rich for my blood. And she said to me (again, with the sharp tongue), what? your house is not that big, there are more expensive ones and showier ones, what makes you think your house is so grand?

I have had to let go of many things in my life, a friend said of me not too long ago, that I have made a practice in my life of letting go and that it has gotten easier each time. I doubt this, I think I cling longer and harder even when I don’t want to. I have given up on the notion of men and me, because I don’t arouse in men the sympathy I should. I have given up on being plugged into a large organization that is merely about getting and spending. I have given up on knowing that A leads to B because there is no straight line between two points.

The LaLa with all the doors that seemed to be closing is now filled with windows that seem to be letting in light. I spoke with an ex colleague who is onto some creative work and I thought, well now, see you can be creative even in times like these. I do think it is in framing of the question, instead of why me, how about all of me, arms, hips, breasts, and a whole lot of me poured into a ever shifting mold made out of a highly flexible material.

Last night a few of us gathered by the banks of the bayou and had some cocktails and some laughs then we ordered a pizza. A guy was happening by and we struck up a conversation and he pulled up a chair. He was half our age but he hung out with us the entire time and seemed to dig it – he participated intelligently in our conversation, voice his opinion, laughed and ate pizza.

We were scratching out heads as to why anyone would want to sit around listening to a bunch over middle age people wind up their week.

A few people I know and love said some interesting things to me over the last year that helped guide me in my next steps. The message was heard loud and clear, if you don’t like your life, change it, but be creative enough to envision a life of your own making. And so began the crawling, baby steps, and now strides towards making that all come true. We went live on our VRBO, AirBnB and Google website end of the week and as I write, Tatjana is downstairs painting the laundry now second kitchen, this amazing blue color. We have a chest that a friend gave us that is going to tie the whole thing together beautifully and then WaLa, European kitchen.

We walked outside yesterday morning and the plein air painters were on the bayou in front of the LaLa, Tin kept asking me, “What are they doing Mommy?” And I said they are painting what you see, how they see it. And that’s how this leg of my journey is coming together, how I see it.

I walked down with Tin and friends to catch Gal Holiday & The Honky Tonk Revue at the Fall Festival in City Park and I found myself there in ADD mode – watch Tin, try to relax and enjoy, do this, do that, and I realized that getting me to relax into this new life is going to take some work, but it’s a hell of a lot better than the life that was being handed to me.

My maiden name is Namer, which is a Sephardic name and means Tiger in English. And sometimes I feel that I should be wearing a tiger tail to fully explain that I often have a tiger in my tank and that’s what makes me all juiced up all the time. Or like Tigger says, my top is made out of rubber, my bottom is made out of spring. My horoscope today said that I need to stretch outside my comfort zone (check) and it wrapped up by saying, a leopard may never change its spots, but you’re no leopard. You are a wise, courageous human being!

Let the games begin!

We went by Fatoush because Tin wanted to go “to a restaurant and eat cake, chocolate and cookies.” I said I know just the place, Fatoush Coffee and Juice Bar. Then we went over to Cafe Istanbul where we had just missed Henry Butler rehearsing. The microphones were still live so Tin sang a song for us, first It’s A Wonderful World and then You Are My Sunshine and then C’est Si Bon, and ended with When the Saints Go Marchin In. He has quite the repertoire, although I’m not speaking to him right now because he tore up the cover of his Where the Wild Things Are while he was in his room supposedly napping.

Meanwhile, today we went to Perserverance Hall in Louis Armstrong Park and the U.S. Navy Brass Band was there again. Sunpie Barnes asked Tin to come on up with the band and he put him in front of a drum set and so Tin jammed with the band all morning. One of the young trumpeters’ grandmother was standing beside me and as the navy guy was telling her grandson something about playing, she said to me, “He’s scolding him for not playing real music, but he plays traditional music and I told him that traditional music was good enough to get your name on the airport so it is good enough for him.”

The hard life of a stage mom (grandmom).

Expand Your Reality

Expand your reality to the point where you
pursue what you love doing and excel at it.
Involve yourself in high-energy levels of
trust, optimism, appreciation, reverence,
joy, and love when you engage in every
activity in your life. Dr. Wayne W. Dyer