Listening To My Life

A woman has to have the Big Three

I’m not entirely sure why I feel like laying this on out there for all to read, except that I believe it, and it made Dawn snort. Maybe it’ll make you snort, too. Maybe you’ll join in on the conversation and share what YOU think. I’d really love that. I would.

We were talking today about why women (some…maybe many) stay in relationships with men where they’re unhappy.

We have talked through several such relationships in the years we’ve been friends, and today, in talking about the woman having an affair with a married man where the sex was awful, I said, said, “I don’t get it—she’s not getting even ONE of the big three.”

The big three are the chief ingredients I think have to be present in some mix or measure in order for it to make ANY sense for a woman to stick around. Women getting all three seem to me to be pretty content. Women in relationships where one is missing, or not present in a goodly quantity can be happy with the other two. But a woman getting none? Ummmm…staying is just flat out stupid (in my considered opinion, of course).

And before I say what they are, let me add that there are other ingredients that get glommed in to the three (I guess I’m saying this because I’m worried that some of you may simply reach through your monitors and poke my eyes out when you read this), and I’ll explain that in a sec.

So, the holy trinity, as it were, of relationship gimmes is: Great sex, a future, and bling.

This is where Dawn snorted.

To explain these a bit more…

Great sex (includes general affection, and a man being the kind of man you need him to be (sensitive, a he-man, etc.)
A future (includes shared values, goals, interests—all the things that would need to be present if you were to have “a future” with someone)
Bling (not just jewelry, but that wouldn’t hurt—but what I really mean is that he’s generous and buys you stuff”)

See where I’m going with this?

Great Sex + Future + Bling = Paradise

And then, depending on the woman and what’s important to her, any of the following combos could give her enough to have the relationship be just delightful:

Great Sex + a Future + little to no Bling
Bling + Great Sex - Future
Future + Bling + Less Than Great Sex, or Little Sex

Our conversational woman had no future with the guy she also wasn’t having great sex with, *and* he wasn’t buying her a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g.

So what I can’t figure out is why she keeps hanging around.

I admit that sometimes, I don’t really understand women. We have needs. We gotta get, or we will not be happy. Unhappy women are bitches. Even *we* don’t like bitches. And the bitches never like being bitches. So why don’t they move on and find a man who doesn’t leave them feeling resentful and unhappy? Any ideas?

This is what I’m pondering today. Your input is most welcome.

What's in your wordle?

Last week on VMoxie, I wrote about having used a wordle as a tool to see the kinds of things I'd been talking about. I decided to do that here, too.

What looking at this wordle tells me is that there's no specific focus (at least that can be captured by recurring words used on pages) here on LTML (except maybe the number four...what's that about, anyway??). It really is about walking my path, and commenting on the lessons learned along the way. And that's what I set out to write about. Good on me ;)

The one thing looking at this is doing is helping me be even more sure that next year's "ease" theme is exactly what's right. As the New year approaches, I get even more excited about that beginning (and yes, I sure do understand I don't have to wait till then to move into that new phase--it's just something I feel very strongly moved to do).

So, what's in your wordle, and what can you learn from it?

Made my day--a modern kid-fakes-out-grownup story

Our youngest niece, R, is nine. She is, I suppose, a very typical child of nine--"normal" and "typical" in pretty much every way. 

This Christmas, Santa left her yet another round of Littlest Pet Shop pets, two American Girl dolls, $100 because he "didn't know what CDs and DVDs she might like," and an iPod. This last was clearly her fav, and she delighted in showing it to me the minute I arrived and finished hugging her.

D said her her, "So, what kinda music do you have on there?" R replied, "Some Hannah Montana, some Michael Jackson, and the soundtrack to Forest Gump."

D, ever the smart ass, asked, "No Sabbath? No Zepplin? No Metallica?"

R: "I have those at home...just not here at Grandmoms."

D (sure R's full of crap): "Ohhhhh. So what's your fav Metallica song?"

R (without missing a beat): "I love 'Enter Sandman' and 'Sad But True'."

Priceless, I tell ya.

Longing for the magic

All sorts of strange feelings roaming around inside me today. Usually, it’s a bit of an off day, but it took me time to realize why I woke up crying and today is even more off than usual. Best guess? This is both the 18th anniversary of my father’s death (that’s the reason it’s usually an off day!), and the first Christmas Eve since my mother died (the addition to the usual).

Christmas Eve, more than any other day of the year, was a 100% magical day for me. My father always worked. My mother never did. I was out of school, of course, as a child, but even as a young adult, since I worked for her, I didn't work, either. That allowed us to continue the beloved tradition we’d started when I was very small.

We’d get up in the morning, she and I, go somewhere for breakfast (ask me sometime about the whipped cream on the waffle at IHOP story), shop like crazy people, meet my father for lunch (I’m not sure why, but this always felt to me like some super-special treat to me), shop like idiots, close the stores, then go home and wrap gifts. When my father would get home from work, the three of us would go somewhere really delish for dinner. Back at home, we’d open gifts. And although we didn’t do anything on Christmas morning, even once grown and moved to my own home, I’d always spend the night. There was just something about it—going to sleep in my childhood home in the bedroom where I grew up, after having such a great day with them..I never failed to feel cocooned in love.

It’s quite literally the only day of the year that I can remember when there wasn’t any drama, and that I could count on my mother being the “good mother” I so desperately craved, and almost never had.

So when my father died on Christmas Eve in 1990, it was a big deal for many reasons, including the fact that Christmas Eve was never again going to even remotely be the same. And although my mother and I have been estranged for some years, because she died earlier this year, today just further punctuates the fact that it really is all over. Today’s hard. Harder than usual. Much. Instead of "over it," I find myself longing for...aching for the magic.

This year was about getting rid of (as in moving out of my life) anyone who didn’t absolutely find me precious. Next year is going to be about ease (I’ll be writing more about that soon). One thing I’ll work toward is creating ease around today, so that by the time today gets here again, everything will be very different for me in significantly better, happier ways.

Wherever you are, and however you’re spending the day, I hope it’s absolutely magical for you. Happy, happy Christmas to you (even if you don't celebrate it, I wish you the very best of the day), and all those you love.

On traffic lights

I should be working. Instead, I’m listening to my BFF do a radio show.

Anyway, I wanted to share with you one of the things she just now talked about, because it was really powerful for me (and I’ve never heard her talk about it before, so I’m feeling especially touched at the moment).

Donna Amos, the host (and a fab woman in her own right, I might add!) asked Dawn about being authentic, and Dawn shared that it’s about listening to yourself, being aware of what’s going on, so that you can hear the direction you want to go in, and honoring that. It takes courage to do it, because it means that you often have to move in a direction where you can’t see the next five steps. but it’s also critical.

She mentioned seeing something—she thought it might have been a commercial—where Bob leaves his house, and en route to his destination, all the street signs say, “Yield for Bob,” and up ahead, all the stop lights are green for Bob. And she said that she believes that when you’re authentic, when you are in alignment, the road ahead is full of green lights.

Of course, she said, that people *do* get yellow and red lights in life, but they inform us. The bad stuff that happens make us who we are, and informs us. Good stuff, that. Amazing, actually. And as if it wasn’t enough, she went on: “And what happens at red lights?" (perfectly timed pause...) "They turn green.”

Huh. Such a simple thought, but such a powerful metaphor for what happens in life.

Yeah… they do turn green. And no matter how things look, they always get better. As I’m looking at some of the yellow and red lights that have appeared in my life right now, I’m super grateful for that reminder.

You can listen to the show here. And you can join Dawn, Donna, and me in our quest to reach and help solopreneurs the world over on the International Association of Solopreneurs site. Great people. Fab information and advice.

Slightly fractured

Ever since I launched StacyBrice.com and started playing even bigger in the world, I've felt slightly fractured. No longer just focused on AssistU, things require different bits of my attention. There are so many possibilities, so many truly good things going on, but I almost feel like I have to be multiple people to take it all in, process it, and decide what to do about it. MPD was never something that sounded like much fun to me...and even in jest, it doesn't sound fun now.

In reality, I think there's just a fairly steep learning curve as I work to figure out how much of my work and life goes in this direction, vs. that one, vs. the other I can see over there. There really is only so much of me, and only so much of me I can give before I reach capacity and then lose it completely. Another thing that's no fun--I'd very much like to avoid it.

More, I think it's just that I have to learn what one does when there's so much possibility that you just don't know which thing to handle first. As much as it's got me spinning a bit, I really do get that this is a delightful problem to have.

What do you do when there's oh-so much and you want it all?

Silly meme

Although I wrote about the book meme that got me out of my funk last weekend, generally speaking, I’m not one for the whole meme thing. But today, after reading the letters from my family, I was catching up with Dawn’s blog, and dammit…she’d tagged me for a meme.

 

So here I am. Just call me Meme Girl.

 

First the rules for the Fantastic Four meme:

 

   1.  Copy/paste the questions into your blog.

   2.  Type in your answers.

   3.  Tag four people on your list (note: TELL people you've tagged them or they may not know!)

   4.  Don't forget to change the answers to your own!

 

FOUR PLACES I GO OVER AND OVER AND OVER:

 

* Teavana (The center of my tea universe)

* New York (I only like the city)

* Wegmans (I used to hate them because their bakery doesn't have a bread slicer--can you imagine? Now a diabetic, I couldn't care less about the bread slicer, so I'm over it)

* Twitter (Betcha didn't know it's a destination, didja??)

  

FOUR PEOPLE WHO EMAIL ME REGULARLY:

 

No one. I hate email. Everyone I work with, including my team at AssistU, at StacyBrice.com, and all my coaching clients use Groove to communicate with me. You may email me, but you're probably not doing it regularly so I can't count you for this silly meme.

 

FOUR PLACES I LIKE TO EAT:

 

* Victoria Gastro Pub (Tori Mariner rocks, and Rolando is the best server, EVER--and according to Dawn, he's really hot!)

* Greystone Grill

* PF Changs

* Golden Unicorn (Omgosh, do I love Dim Sum!)

 

FOUR PLACES I'D RATHER BE RIGHT NOW:

 

* The Benjamin Hotel, New York

* Montreal (Ok, maybe not *right* now, but I've been missin' me some Montreal, bigtime!)

* Orcas

* See this is one of the reasons I prefer the number three; four is sometimes just one too many. Like now.

 

FOUR TV SHOWS I COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER:

* West Wing

* Lipstick Jungle (It sucks that it's been cancelled. Write your Congressman)

* Fringe

* Battlestar Gallactica (Because it makes D so entirely happy!)

  

FOUR PEOPLE THAT I THINK WILL RESPOND WITH A LITTLE LINKY LOVE:

 

* Tapestry

That’s it (not to say that Tapestry isn't enough, all by herself!). Dawn tagged me and Carla, and again, I’da had three, but not four. So now I have one. See why I hate memes?

 

Letters from the past

Last night, while doing some straightening, I came across a basket of letters.

 

Some years ago, when my paternal grandmother died, my half-sister lent me this basket of letters—most of them from our father to our grandmother when he was in the Merchant Marines in the 40s, but also some from her father to her, her mother to her, and so on. I never looked at the letters, and I obviously never returned them to my sister—who has been gracious enough to leave them with me and never mention them.

 

I’m not sure why, but I read every one of them this morning. And, for me, some interesting things have come of it.

 

1. I better understand how my father came to be who he was. My grandmother was the most manipulative person I’ve ever met (that’s something I’d known for years and only came through more strongly by reading the letters), and from the letters, it’s really apparent that there was emotional incest going on. Most painful to read were the letters (and little spur-of-the-moment notes) he wrote to her where he engaged in what I came to call in my own relationship with him, “chasing behavior.” She clearly made him feel the way he’d always made me feel—that if I weren’t perfect, he’d take his love, or himself, away. And so he chased her whenever she was even remotely upset with him—apologizing and groveling for forgiveness—much the way I would do with him years later. Abuse really does go on generationally. I remain so very happy to have not had children of my own.

 

2. It’s also apparent from letters from my great grandfather to my grandmother that there was emotional incest there, too. I don’t know why that hadn’t occurred to me as a possibility before; I’ve long known of something he asked her to do for him that was impossibly inappropriate. In short, he’d had an affair with a young woman, she got pregnant, and he asked my grandmother to raise the baby as her own child, which she agreed to. So, my father and his aunt were raised as brother and sister. The story and dysfunction gets worse, and would similarly be repeated in my own sister’s life, but that’s the short of it.

 

3. Manipulation, emotional incest, and narcissism are the gifts my family tried to give me. I’ve worked really very hard to resist all three in my life, and feel I’ve been mighty successful. I can’t help but wonder if those horrible things would have emerged had I had children.

 

4. Some better/more interesting things came from today’s trip down memory lane…

            -- I delightedly learned that my father had gotten to see some really remarkable musicians—musicians he later taught me to love--during his training at Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn. I laughed when he wrote: “Saw Sinatra last night. He was ok.” That’s especially funny because years later, Sinatra would become like a god to my father. 
            -- I got to read some letters from my great grandmother to my grandmother. I admit that I don’t even know her name—no one ever talked about her. She seemed a gentle soul. That single letter in the photo is from her—dated in 1918. I don’t know that I’ve ever held anything in my hands before that’s 90 years old! And I love how simply they were able to address envelopes then. “City” was all it took beyond a street address to get something delivered in Baltimore. 
            -- My father apparently planned to marry a “Betty” when he got out of the service. First I’ve heard of her. Makes me wonder who she is/was, and what happened to that relationship. Maybe she couldn’t handle it when my father told her (he relays this to my grandmother in one of his letters) that he wanted my grandmother to live with them when they married, that he was deeply committed to her support for the rest of her life (he wrote this when he was 20-ish), and that my grandmother would always come first in his heart. If she ran because of that, God love her—I’d have run, too.

            -- When I was a teenager, I heard for the first time the story about how my sister was kidnapped by her mother when she was a child, during a time when my father had custody. My father—an excommunicated Catholic for remarrying (to my mother) tried to get the Church to help find my sister. I got to see the letters written to my grandmother—a very good Catholic—from various church officials, denying any sort of meaningful assistance. Interesting, that.

            -- I really found it interesting the way people used language then. It’s the language you can hear in any movie from the 30s and 40s. But what’s interesting is that it came from family members, rather than actors. I guess I never thought for a second that that sort of language was mainstream—and, in fact, was only part of a well-crafted script for the screen audience.

 

All in all, I walked away with some questions answered, and some new questions I’ll never have answers for because there’s no one to ask. I realize I could ask my aunt (the one who’s really my great aunt), but it’s not as though the answers to any of my wonderings are necessities or would change my life in any way for having them, and as I’ve walked away from my family, and into a new chosen family, I’m not sure that’s the best idea, either. I’ll let this stuff settle down a bit and decide then.

 

P.S. I just realized how utterly messed up my family sounds (and was). As they’ve cancelled “Dirty Sexy Money,” maybe I should pitch this to someone as an idea for a pilot. I have to say that although she didn’t have his money, Tripp Darling has nothing on my grandmother. Maybe the outrageous story without all the glitz would be longer lasting with fans. Maybe I can get my Emmy-winning pal, Leslie, to write it. ;)

Hacked--part 4

I think I may have figure out the scam. I say "may" because what I'm about to tell you may not even be related (in which case I really need to look for the lesson in all of this!)

Part of the oddness of the identity theft has been that the amounts that were charged to my card were very small: $1, $3.25, 6.95--like that. And most of them were through rebillers for membership sites, not the actual company selling a product. My banker and I scratched our heads over it.

And then last night, in the mail, came a bottle of penis-enhancing pills (I really couldn't make this stuff up, yanno?). They were sent to me, at almost my exact address (the street number was off). I guess my mailman thought he was being a good sort and delivered them.

So, I followed the bread crumbs backwards. Went to the website for the product and called the customer care number listed there--turns out to be the billing folks for the company that makes the pills. Further conversation clued me in to the fact that the pills cost $4.95, and were part of a free trial offer that also enrolled a person in a "club." The club (if you didn't return your sample pills w/i a month and cancel your membership) would then auto-ship more pills (and charge your card) on some set schedule.

I told them what had happened, and they shut down the account, so no more pills would ship or be charged.

Then I went to the actual company's web site (puremeds.com if you care to look), and it's all about internet sales for affiliates. What I learned there is that they pay an affiliate $20 for every sample bottle of pills the affiliate sells. And that, I think, is the game.

The hackers make a purchase through an affiliate ID, charge a card for the low "free sample" price (usually just the S&H), and pocket a much larger payout. Sneaky.

So I sent an email to the company with the subject line: I suspect one of your affiliates is committing identity theft! I went on to tell my story, and asked them if they would provide me with any info they had about the person who placed the order, and/or the affiliate who received the payout. And they told me everything they knew. Here's where it gets really crafty.

The order was placed by an ATT DSL subscriber in St. Louis. It was placed through the affiliate ID for someone in China. I was listed as the billing and ship-to person. The phone number was for a plumbing company here in my town that I've never heard of or dealt with. And the credit card used? Well, all I know for sure is that it wasn't mine.

So I think the game is to place a lot of these free offers (that set people up in memberships with recurring charges) to get affiliate pay outs. They mix up the ordering info in the hopes of confusing everyone. I received the product, but it wasn't charged to my card. Someone else got the charge, but never a product--and if that person's bank traces things back, it will look like I received the product and I'm the hacker.

I'm taking this info to my banker. I'm hoping she can put me in contact, directly, with their fraud department, because I feel certain that this story would make sense to someone who deals with this stuff all day, but probably will utterly confuse my banker.

If any of you have faced anything even remotely like this, please let me know. It gets a little scarier for me now that I know they have my name and address (not exactly the right address, but pretty darn close).

Hacked! (part 3)

When last I spoke with my banker, she gave me blank affidavit forms, a print out from her computer of the charges we were going to watch for (so when they actually hit my account we could file affidavits), and a promise that she’d shut down the activity—no more damage could be done.

 

Either that’s not happened, or I’m simply not possessing the rocket-scientist’s brain necessary to look at my account and match up the stuff on her print out with the stuff that’s appearing on the account now.

 

Rather than wondering about my own abilities, I’m going back off to the bank this morning to have her figure it out.  More later.

 

Oh, but one more thing before I toddle off.

 

Early this year, I subscribed us to LifeLock. I figured any company brave enough to make the claims they were making was a company I’d pony up some cash to have protect me.  So over the weekend, once I got my mojo back, I called them (see, my brain isn’t entirely mush!). They told me that for their purposes, I needed to go file a police report, call them back with the report #, and they’d open a case file, so…if my bank refused to return any of the money I’d lost, they’d pay it.

 

At the police station last night, the 3^rd degree. Did I have proof (“Here’s the print out from my bank’s computer, and the affidavits we’ve filed so far”)? That really wasn’t good enough, because they don’t LOOK like anything the police have seen before. And so it went. The cop was finally persuaded to take a report—yay—but it was draining, too.

 

What ever happened to the police being on your side against the bad guys?  And if they’re not going to be on your side, WTF is up with them seeming judgmental, rather than just taking a freakin’ report?

 

According to the cop, in addition to the report he took, I also have to go online and report this thing to the feds. Fine by me. The more people who know this is happening the better, I say.

 

Now…to the bank with me. If I get there when they open, I’m guessing I won’t have to sit and wait for my banker. A very good thing, that. VERY good, indeed.