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My Hollywood Wifestyle


It occurred to me not long ago that I had become the kind of woman that as a single working girl, and then a married working mom, I had scoffed at. My day was punctuated by the odd chore between the pursuit of totally hedonistic self-gratification. I was even hearing myself say,

“Perhaps I should get a part time job for fulfillment rather than actual need of a paycheck.”

Okay, I didn’t say it exactly like that, but it was the subtext. And when your own mother thinks that having a job would “get you out of the house a bit”, which is code for “you need a real life” as opposed to the fantasy life of a writer, then perhaps you do live in La-La Land and it’s time to re-evaluate.

When I ran my theory past my husband, that my life was…..well…..all about me…. in a way it hadn’t been since I was in university, he agreed.

“You are practically one of those Hollywood wives,” he told me.

“No! I am not,” I protested.

But I am. I could totally be Posh Beckham, if only my best friend would marry a questionably balanced Scientologist and agree to split dinner salads with me when we do lunch. Seriously, that’s all that is holding me back at this point. That and a BMI in the double digits. And laugh lines. If only I could get past that irrational fear of botulism injections. In my face. Read Full Article

John Cusack is the Song Lyric Inspiration for This Thursday


What would the world be like without XM radio, I wonder? How would I be reminded of all those romantic songs and movies of my youth?

In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel is a song I knew long before John Cusack became the sad-eyed romantic figure of my generation. The song is wonderful. It speaks of longing and finding kindredness that is frightening but can’t be denied.

I am a sucker for great lyrics and this song qualifies.

love I get so lost, sometimes
days pass and this emptiness fills my heart
when I want to run away
I drive off in my car
but whichever way I go
I come back to the place you are

all my instincts, they return
and the grand facade, so soon will burn
without a noise, without my pride
I reach out from the inside

in your eyes
the light the heat
in your eyes
I am complete
in your eyes
I see the doorway to a thousand churches
in your eyes
the resolution of all the fruitless searches
in your eyes
I see the light and the heat
in your eyes
oh, I want to be that complete
I want to touch the light
the heat I see in your eyes

love, I don’t like to see so much pain
so much wasted and this moment keeps slipping away
I get so tired of working so hard for our survival
I look to the time with you to keep me awake and alive

and all my instincts, they return
and the grand facade, so soon will burn
without a noise, without my pride
I reach out from the inside

in your eyes
the light the heat
in your eyes
I am complete
in your eyes
I see the doorway to a thousand churches
in your eyes
the resolution of all the fruitless searches
in your eyes
I see the light and the heat
in your eyes
oh, I want to be that complete
I want to touch the light,
the heat I see in your eyes
in your eyes in your eyes
in your eyes in your eyes
in your eyes in your eyes

Fathers and Daughters


When I was ten years old, I spent several weeks going through magazines and cutting the Surgeon General’s Warning out of the cigarette ads and then leaving them anywhere in the house where I was sure my dad would find them.

I rolled them up into his socks one week. Every single pair he opened contained that little warning linking smoking to cancer and death. Another time I put them in his shirt pockets. The same pockets where he kept his Pall Mall’s, the unfiltered kind.

I left them on top of the beer bottles in the garage and under the seat of his car with his Brach chocolate star stash. He found them in his wallet, his toolbox and in both pockets of every pair of work pants he owned. I think I even placed one under his pillow.

I never saw him find a single one, and he never said a word to me about what I was doing, but eventually he decided that enough was enough. He told my mother to tell me to stop, which she did.

And he didn’t. Stop smoking that is. Read Full Article