You would think I would notice that the first two words in the title of this book are "Joseph" and "Smith" but nooooo....

So I was on Amazon.com placing an order for a few gifts, and at the bottom of the pages (below the reviews which I was reading, and thankfully so, as I was intrigued by this book called ‘Rough Rolling Stone’ because it had all these great reviews, but as I read the reviews, I started to learn that the book was not about The Rolling Stones, but about Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormons. And I guess it’s a good Joseph Smith book, as things go, and if you’re looking for that kind of reading.

That reminds me: This is akin to the time that I was supposed to be buying some kind of Buddhism or meditation book for someone and instead bought them a book of lesbian poetry [with the same title]. I felt bad because the lady had probably never sold a single copy of her lesbian poetry, and it had finally happened…and here I was returning it a few days later. And she may have had a full-on lady beard in the photo. I can’t quite remember. I do know that I took this kind of odd class once when I was getting my psychology degree, and was deep in the throes of ‘anything for credits toward my degree’ [which is how I ended up in a different class called 'The Prison as a Classroom' where we actually WENT TO A HIGH SECURITY PRISON!!! WTF?] and the teacher had us read all these lesbian [not homosexual. Just lesbian. And NOT The Color Purple. Just lame stuff that her friends must have written or something.] books about the first time and falling in love and being overweight [I think the class was about being overweight, come to think of it. Something like size and image. Or body image and size or something like that. As you can imagine, it had attracted some ladies of considerable size, and I stuck out like a sore thumb]. So anyway, my point here is that I do very clearly remember that on the back of the this one novel – which contained some very awkward and highly detailed love scenes – was a photo of the author and the way the light hit her was just tragic. She had a serious lady beard going on. I kept thinking WHY would you put that photo where other people can see it??? Or maybe in her country that’s considered hot?

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I’m in hand-to-hand combat with an abysmal internet connection.

This is only  marginally preferable to no internet connection (i.e. my status for the last couple days).

To catch you up, I’m staying in a little cabin right off the water and shirking all of my primary responsibilities. I’ve come to appreciate that responsibility shirking may be what I was put on this earth to do. That or sleep and have crazy dreams, a skill I possess to a degree that can only be called a gift.

What I was NOT put on this earth to do includes (in no particular order):

• Downhill ski
• Salsa dance
• Keep African Violets alive
• Anything involving staring into people’s open mouths and touching their teeth.
• Work on a chain gang
• Mule drugs across the Mexican border
• Ultimate fight
• Snowboard
• Put false eyelashes on other people
• Raise pigeons/squab/any other secret code for ‘pigeon’
• Belly dance
• Teach at clown school
• Wrestle midgets in pudding (learned THAT the hard way!)
• Impersonate Madonna
• Stalk Madonna
• Forge checks drawn on any of Madonna’s bank accounts
• Name hurricanes (although I do feel it’s time we dug into the more ethnic names: Huricanes Beyonce, Cheech, and Plaxico already!)
• Skateboard professionally
• Build a rocket ship that actually works
• Swallow swords
• Swallow fire
• Swallow swallows
• Strip dance

I could go on, but it will get boring, and I care about you too much to do that to you.

However, on the topic of strip dancing, I do have something to share: You see, I remembered something yesterday while I was running in the woods. I’m doing a 12K race on Sunday, and I’ve been running a longer distance than usual – and doing so faster than usual – in the hopes of finishing in under an hour. Thus, I have additional time on my hands with which to think worthless thoughts.

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I have a rock collecting problem.

Like any addiction, it more or less rules me.

I love rocks.

And shells.

And sea glass.

And even giant boulder-esque stone outcroppings that have any chance of being carried back with me.

Basically, anything that can quickly escalate my luggage up into the 80 or 90-pound range is just fine by me.

If I go anywhere with, near, in sight of, or on water, I immediately fill all my pockets with heavy earth-made goodies.

Once I found this amazing black triangle stone in a remote lake in northern Idaho. It was just lying there amongst a sea of round pebbles and oblong stones in varying shades of white and tan – a thin equalateral triangle in darkest ebony, with all three sides uniquely beveled. When I found I could stick it to my forehead and would stay there, I decided to keep it.

After a while I got it into my head that it was a magical rock. I would show it to people and they would always exclaim in disbelief that I had found such a thing sitting in a lake. It was perfect except for the rippled surface and some mild flaws in the beveling which made it clear that it’s strange shape was natural.

Eventually, I made a necklace out of it, and if I was on my older computer, I can guarantee there are at least two dozen pictures of me wearing that necklace, as I did so every day for almost a year. There’s actually one sitting in my bedroom that I glance at on a regular basis, taken by my friend Sam.

But I digress…  One night I went and saw David Sedaris read from a book in progress (later to be released as Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim), and he (Mr. Sedaris, in many ways a personal hero, as I adore anyone who can make me laugh – particularly with their writing. He is masterful in that regard, and some of his stories make me laugh hysterically, like the story “Big Boy” in Me Talk Pretty One Day about when he found the giant turd in the toilet at a friend’s house and was afraid people would think he’d done it and yet couldn’t figure out how to dispose of it. Hi-larious.). Anyway, what I was trying to say was that Mr. Sedaris, while signing some of my books – including Me Talk Pretty One Day – afterward, pointed out that my necklace strongly resembled a bathroom tile.

Although I was a bit hurt by the observation*, it did not deter me. I kept wearing it, even though I had to acquiese that if you didn’t notice the rippled and slightly grooved surface, it did look a bit like something you’d pick up in a set of 100 of Home Depot.

No. David Sedaris and his cruel, yet accurate, wit did not cause me to quit my necklace. What deterred me was a string of bad luck so horrific that ‘bad’ does not begin to justify it. ‘Bad’ becomes more like when Michael Jackson sang, “I’m bad. I’m bad. You know it. You know, you know…” and he meant it the other way. Like opposite day.

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So if it isn’t the seemingly incessant thunder and lightening, it’s my own brain.

A lot of people have been giving me all kinds of advice lately, and it has started to feel like there are too many voices in my head…and not remotely enough of them are of my own fabrication. The feedback runs the gamut from blunt suggestions that I may have made colossal and irreversible blunders in my life, to someone else’s remorse or lamentations at having made mistakes at my expense, although once again with the inevitable conclusion that (apparently) I am rendered quite damaged or at least not as far along the bell curve as I might have otherwise been.

These are depressing thoughts, and by and large I reject any philosophies that revolve around guilt or regret. At the same time, I had this random memory which brought home the strange realization that I may have instinctively had more figured out in my teen years than I do now.

Actually, let me restate that: I may have unconsciously been onto some things in my teen years that I am only now once again discovering. Now, bear with me, because this is probably going to sound a little strange.

What I’m referring to is the memory that when I was 19-years old and going to college in Santa Cruz, CA, I decided to stop wearing shoes. I had some theory about how it put me in better contact with the earth and that was very important, and I’d be lying if I claimed I actually remembered all of the elements that went into the decision.

I went everywhere barefoot: across campus, down to the college newspaper where I worked (crossing a particularly rocky portion that makes me cringe thinking about walking on it now, but eventually was not painful anymore), to the beach, downtown, on the bus system, riding my mountain bike,  and – most notably – in Safeway. Safeway was striking to me not only because they had a ‘no shoes, no shirt, no service’ policy that remarkably no one ever called me on, but because the floors were astoundingly slick and cold. Really, really cold.

I also shopped in some natural markets and co-ops, and they didn’t have floors remotely as icy as the Safeway on Mission. No matter how many times I went in there, I never got over the initial shock of those floors.

Anyway, the weird thing of it is that I saw a psychic in December (the first and only psychic consultation of my life) and she told me that I needed to ‘be barefoot on the earth as much as possible, even in the snow.’ Something about how it empowers me, but it is also very good for the earth and ‘she benefits from it.’ Needless to say, the advice that Tuesday afternoon got a little out there/freaky deaky at times.

What made me remember all this tonight, was that I was recently lamenting to someone very beloved to me that I needed to meditate and get balanced; I had too much floating around in my head and was feeling a little bit overwhelmed. He suggested, quite uncharacteristically, that I walk barefoot on a beach – that the Chinese say it balances your chi or something.

No beach being in my immediate vicinity, he suggested I at least imagine that I was doing so. Good advice, no doubt, I just found it ironic (particurly since this individual is about as far away as you can possibly get from New Age-y) and couldn’t help but wonder if only I’d left the shoes off, I might be sleeping in the White House rather than Mr. Obama? Actually, that sounds more burdensome than fun. Maybe I’d simply be a little closer to the realization of my life’s purpose than I lamentably find myself at the moment?

In all actuality, most likely I would have gotten tetanus or a really gnarly cut from a piece of broken glass or - at a bare minimum - eventually been refused service in Safeway. Nonetheless, I can’t help but be slightly amused at the very random and slightly demented thing I started doing so many years ago, has now come back full circle.

Perhaps I should take a look at my other strange and youthful impulses and see if there’s any other gold to be mined there? An obsession with Joni Mitchell? A vegan diet? A wardrobe comprised more or less entirely of tie-dyed clothing? Or perhaps, and most importantly, an oblivious willingness to look stupid?

Alas, as I mentioned, I’m not one for looking backwards, and I am staunch opponent of regret. That stated, I guess I’d better peel off my 4″ heels sometime in the next few days and get my footsies onto Gaia. Massive insight, wondrous emotional healing, or nasty bout of athlete’s foot?: I’ll let you know how it goes.     ;)

This one has the nuts. Which I now see that it says. Right on the package. And there's a picture of an almond.

So remember that whole ad campaign about “BE-cause sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t?”

 Well, today I don’t.

Actually, I do. I pretty much always feel like a nut, unless something really, really bad has happened, but then that wears off within a couple hours, and I feel like a nut again.

But not literally.

And not in my candy.

In fact, I still have to sing that little ditty to myself to make sure I buy the right one. The one without nuts (and, if you are like me and can’t remember much of anything to save your life, the song goes “Almond Joy’s got nuts, Mounds don’t” and then BE-cause again and you loop back through and if you don’t watch yourself, the loop could go on into infinity, although at some point you’d probably be placed in a mental institution by the people that used to love you, and they’d move on and get new lives, and you’d just keep on singing.)

Anywho, so long as it doesn’t take over my brain and drive me mad, it’s the little ditty that keeps me in line and ensures that I reach for the Mounds.

If you type "Almond Joy image" into Google, this little bit of horribleness shows up. I don't even know what sort of twisted mind created these monsters. What's that you say? GOD made these monsters!? Shame on you, God. Shame on you.

In China, if you’re driving and sleepy, you can now pull over and the police will give you raw chili peppers to eat. I don’t even know what to say to that, except ‘No, thank you. I’d rather crash and die than eat raw chili peppers.’ Clearly, the Chinese are bezerk. Why are they taking over the world again? Are the rest of us really so pitiful that the panda-hugging, raw pepper eating Chinese are the new world leaders? Sad, people. SAD.

Some lady bought a used couch that had a cat in it. That just gets into my issues about used stuff being all creepy and wondering what people did to it and on it and why it smells like pastrami and my deep hopes that I will stay financially solvent enough that I will never have to get a scratchy plaid couch with or without a rat nest inside from Goodwill ever again.

The Mexicans continue to kill the hell out of each other. I find that slightly amusing. But then there’s the death principle rearing its ugly head again…

Random quote heard immediately after changing the channel to Bravo, “Intimate is good; filthy, sort of bestial porn is bad.”

Oh, NOW you tell me.