Who dreams in color...

Last night In had a dream. I took a picture of my dream for my blog. Sorry I don't always dream in color...

Ask Me a Question....

Ok, I have to admit I’m a self declared Google and research junkie.

I’m the only person I know who actually spends an entire hour playing with Google Earth zooming in and zooming out, mezmorized like an idiot.

I think the bottom line is that I have issues with avoidance. I know I should be writing something or paying bills.

That means I have to either think or cry.

I have wiled away entire afternoons researching brain tumors, DNA strands, why candy canes have red stripes (Jesus blood, honest) the Holocaust, Peruvian pie plates, stocks, electrolysis, relationships, (don’t even bother) the sex lives of Siamese twins, the Chia-Pet, if fish can smell, true crime and reviews on NYC bathrooms.

This research addiction started at the tender age of 6, although my parents just pegged me as dreamy and inattentive, I clearly remember hot summers spent in my “fort” behind the big living-room chair with a fan, paging through the Almanac and encyclopedia.

I was simply fascinated by flags, maps and medical stuff.

I memorized every country flag, bone and muscle that summer while learning about platelets, white blood cells and that skin is the largest organ of the human body. I tried to figure out what an appendix really does, and why we have wisdom teeth. (Never did) I read under my covers (still do) on lakeside docks, in cars, and spinning on my grandmother’s Lazy- Boy for hours devouring Erma Bombeck and Reader Digests series of short stories at age 9.

Later, the entire Nancy Drew series, thirty in one summer vacation over thirty perfectly golden grilled cheese sandwiches. One book every three days to be exact. Later I upgraded to “Harriet the Spy”, which naturally compelled me to start an “all girls spy group.”

Once bored with that, I somehow discovered that if you whip cream long enough it becomes butter. I made butter everyday for a month driving my mother mad.

Researching medical junk can be dangerous. Everything seems like something you, or someone you know, has.

I once “diagnosed” my ex with twenty-two diseases in one year, sending him for several unnecessary doctor appointments where he swore they stuck him with needles the size of Bic pens.

With the co-pays he spent I could have had lipo.

The man came home from sleep apnea clinics with wire leads still stuck in his head, funny glasses from excruciating eye tests which resulted in HUGE alien pupils, a visit to an oral surgeon because for a month I swore he had metallic "foil" breath, a sure sign of Wilson’s Disease.

Next to a neurologist for Turret's’s Syndrome, (he blinked too often) an E.N.T. (sniffing...drove me NUTS!) a nutritionists, where he came home very angry with tiny plastic food for portion comparisons, a food chart poster and vegetable magnets.

Next a diabetes clinic (thought his urine smelled funny), ADD testing, (I was right on this one...has it, totally)....

A shrink until he was shrink-wrapped for "passive-aggressive avoidance and intimacy commitment issues", (did not work...hello) testosterone clinic, (don’t even make me go there) I watched him get a vasectomy in glee clapping like a monkey on a cupcake, peeled him off the ceiling than insisting we go shopping afterwords just to torture him.) Epilepsy (twitched while falling asleep..)

So I should have been in the CIA or FBI.

Ask me a question, go ahead, I dare ya.

Take a Pill Already

If women ruled the world, we would already have in place a reliable synthetic substitute for good judgment, PMS, menopause, and for hitching a trailer to men who treat women like crap. Already on the market is an FDA approved drug called Nalmefane, which wards off compulsive shopping, or if you have gone completely Winona Ryder, kleptomania.

I want a new pill, one to cover all ailments afflicting women. It would be a tricky job for even the best A- list PR firm in New York City to brand. This female invented wonder drug would protect women against having sex with men who live with their mothers, who take online classes between shifts as a bouncer and brag about it, are selfish in the sack and think a G-spot is a musical note.

This drug would be most commonly prescribed for women over the age of 40, who now use a magnified mirror and obsesses about every little wrinkle, sun spot and the fact that their necks are changing faster than we can say “Oh my God, am I growing a mustache…WTF is up with that anyway”? …while collecting a mass of turtle necks in every color. Plus if we added up all the hours we spend plucking, we could own a horse.

This pill will be proven to be especially effective for women who find themselves smearing fish oil capsules on their face at night, waxing everything that grows, and who feel exhausted all the time.

It will also relieve symptoms of overwhelming desire to pour yourself a stiff one at 10:00am, strangle your kids for tracking dog shit into the house and taking the last of the gum out of your purse. It will treat symptoms of generalized anxiety caused by ex husbands, lack of regular sex, DSL issues, running out of stamps on bill day,and corks that break into expensive bottles of wine.

It will erase past memories of being free and happy at 17 while making out with Derek Stumper in the back of our Fathers 1976 Dodge Maverick with brown side paneling, while unceremoniously slurping Coors beer purchased from Seven-Eleven with a fake ID,never even thinking about the possibility of becoming pregnant.

Of all those times we drove drunk and used no protection and nothing happened.

(With my luck now, if I tossed my underwear into a shared dryer with a random guys underwear at the Laundromat, I’d get knocked up. No fun involved, no big “O”, just wanting to save a bit of money. The only reliable information that I would have to tell his unfortunate offspring would be something like… “Your Daddy used Downey dryer sheets and had a blue laundry basket, sorry honey that’s all I know; it was a long time ago.”)

Now if I go three miles over the speed limit I get pulled over and crying doesn’t work anymore either.

This pill will protect women from becoming old broads with a cigarette and a Cool Whip container of liquor in our hand at 3am while reading a trashy novel in a pilled bathrobe from Zayer Shoppers City while wearing mucklucks. It will keep us from joining any neighborhood book club, or taking up hobbies like stained glass window making, puff paint sweatshirt art, cake decorating or scrap-booking.

It would make us all reformed academic sinners, making up for all the terrible times we skipped classes in college to meet our friends at Chi-Chi’s only to eat the free chips and salsa while ditching out before our order was taken.

It would protect women from meeting men online and taking a trip to Mexico with him a week later.

It would keep us from staring at our asses in the three way mirrors at Banana Republic and constantly scrutinizing our profile wondering what it would be like without the bump on our nose or with breasts that stood at attention instead of stuffing them into insanely expensive bras that do everything but the dishes while cutting into our shoulders all in the name of cleavage.

This miracle pill would let women sail through bouts of hormonal bitchiness and premenopause symptoms such as the newly discovered 17 day lavish period that leave us so damn iron depleted that we look like we've been dead for three weeks and can hardly crawl across the bathroom floor or lift a mascara brush to our face.

The side effects of not taking this magic cure all pill would be all of the below but not limited to:

A broken heart, unplanned pregnancies at 40 with images of going to a high school graduation in a walker, STD’s, huge cell phone bills, financial ruin, acute absentmindedness, dressing way too young for our age, buying everything two sizes too small at stores like “Wet Seal” thinking we look sexy, drinking way too much wine and waking up with a greasy beach artist in California ten years our junior, getting ass tattoos, making drunk dials to men who could give a shit if we live or die, adopting foster children at 55, or worse yet signing invitro papers after a bottle of Tequila with our girlfriends, selling our eggs for shoe money, letting in-laws move in above the garage, taking out a loan for a Prada bag, honing a disinclination to shave our legs in the winter, telling people off who steal our parking space and fail to use a turn signals, wearing white pants or gauchos ( these look good on NO ONE) and other idiot things we do to sabotage our freaking lives.

Resolution Solution

I was recently asked to speak to a group of women about marketing a new home based business. I was told I would be on at 12:30 for a roughly 30 minute talk. Somehow wires crossed (a nice way to say someone fucked up royally) and in actuality I was suppose to be speaking at 11:00. (I swear it was 12:00, I have the original phone notes…honest)!

I walked in a mere hour late to a silent room of 250 women with empty plates and clinking forks. Once spotted, I heard a gasp as if they saw the second coming of Christ. (Unless you re Jewish, in that case it would be the first)

Then a … “Oh thank God she’s here! Let’s give a warm round of applause for our key note speaker Lisa Wynn”! I hear a few lame claps among whispers.

There I stood in my winter coat holding a bag of literature blinking in the doorway of the County Convention Center, feeling as if I were in a bad naked dream where you can’t locate a classroom and your legs won’t move.

The only thing missing was that feeling of falling.

In dead silence I walked up to the podium as if walking to the gallows. It was so quiet I could hear my hair grow.

Where were my damn notes.. in my purse? I began to dig now. I unearth a pen with two TUMS stuck to the side of it and a dried up lip-gloss wand.

I did what I do best when befuddled or ready to cry.

I made some lame joke about embracing your inner Franklin Planner and how my speech was about becoming a successful business person, which included confirming things.

I was pitting out my new red shirt.

And here I thought I was running early and stopped at Wendy's to down a chicken sandwich and a Frosty in the parking lot, while singing to Sisters Sledge on the radio.

Thankfully I recovered quickly and had an hour long lineup of people wanting to talk gleaning 21 new members to my business group.

Somehow, I always fix stuff.

It's the nurse leftover in me. I cannot stop trying. Cannot fail. Nothing can die.

Not on my shift.

My friends and family say I "make them nervous". They ask how things always happen to me that:

A) Don't kill me and

B) I don't wind up in jail for.

Someone said to me today: "Why don't you make a list of New Years Resolutions..you know, be less spontaneous for once."

Ok, for those who really know me, and God help those who are just getting to, I have always been known as a fly-by-the-seat of my pants sorta gal. I don't like structure, or tight schedules. I was forever driving on fumes and getting tragically low in my check book through college and beyond.

Like to three cents.

I have been known to sleep in box cars in Greece, too tired to care that rats shared close quarters, went paddle boating naked in Austria (as a cruise ship strolled by honking its horn with 2000 passengers screaming off one side.) I was held as a prisoner by two mafia members all while refusing to pay extra for "water" at their hotel, I visited 16 countries on $600 and came home with 15 bucks leftover, 600 pictures and a killer tan.


I have held three jobs as a single mother, started six companies over the course of ten years, if I include the cleaning toilets gig, watched people be born and watched people die, navigated the Tokyo subway system at 3am drunk and smoking (I don't even smoke), spent three weeks on Patong Beach Thailand, missing the Tsunami that washed it away by five years,three days and two hours.... swam in a cave in Phi-Phi Island off the coast of Vietnam, and rode an elephant through the rain forest after a mud slide. (Don't ever scream while riding an elephant going up a hill...no traction on those big round feet)

I have successfully changed a tire in the dead of a Minnesota winter on a 79 Dodge Polara at 47 below windchill, broke into and stole blueberry muffins from a bakery after a night of binge drinking with my old roommate Cheryl, ran into Harrison Ford on the beach in La Holla Ca, literally, and almost crashed in a 747 en route to Hawaii in 1986. (Rocking and praying takes on a whole new meaning here...)

Every day is an adventure that I could never plan even if I planned it.... and with that, stuff magically happens to me, good stuff, good people, good times, incredible memories.

Maybe God feels sorry for me and is making up for lost time because he was really busy with other things when I was a kid. Perhaps due to the fact that I was raised by a sect of evangelical freaks who thought dumpster diving was Christmas shopping and powdered milk was good, or knocking the wind out of a kid was fair punishment for not hearing your name when called for dinner.

Whatever the case may be, just maybe he is blessing me now with rich life experiences and good friends.

My brother Jeff regularly mumbles “only you” and rolls his eyes every time I excitedly tell him another "Lisa" story as he likes to call them, which usually consists of how I happened to sit next to Oprah on a misconnect flight from Toledo to Chicago and how she wants me to do all her PR and then hands me the key to her house in case I happen to be in the hood…well not that, but close.

I get pretty lucky not trying, For 2007 will try not to try more. That's when life happens. When we don't plan, resolve, resolute, plot, schedule and make silly lists for ourselves.

I kinda like it that way.

Friends in Deed


The first time I met Brenda, three years ago, we were both standing in my entryway scolding our kids. I knew I liked her right away. She was tough but fair..not a typical mom, no Christmas sweaters, no craft hobbies. She was a personal trainer and coach she said..I was so impressed.

She had fire in her eyes, and a warm smile.

Our boys soon became inseparable. Their typical boyhood antics drove us both crazy. Running through the neighborhood, forgetting everything.... they were all over the board that year.

We were both exhausted.

We instantly bonded at her kitchen table that sweltering hot North Carolina summer.

I, flipping though the pages of her fitness magazines, her crazy running around doing nine things at once while frantically re-pushing the button on her damn Sensio coffee maker as if it were pods of heroin.

Within two years of our friendship, we began acting WORSE then our kids.

I now fully expect Brenda to pull down her jeans and press her white ass against her front door window each time she sees me pull up. She has shamelessly taken off her underware at a fine restaurant without anyone knowing, (skirt) and launched it across the outdoor patio over top of patrons heads. (The manager brought them back to her reminding her of the importance of keeping them on)

We have been known to hold hands in public just to shock, grab each others boobs in pictures, and tear through a store to remodel her entire house in 20 minutes while she was on break from work. (Yes its true, chairs, area rugs, pillows, artwork, plants and a complete Queen sized bedding ensemble)

We soon found out we both share the same passion for writing and escaping life at times, love the beach, NYC, and sometimes even share the same dreams for the future...

We concluded that we don't cook much (we heat) we have testosterone and should have been men minus the "unit" or back hair, working out is a must, and we will buy into any facial product because we are gullible and desperate. (dog shit? For wrinkles? OK I'll take three.)

We have traveled together, laughed together, drank together, told each other our deepest thoughts and biggest secrets and sobbed over hurts. She has read me a Dr. Seuss book as I lay my head in her lap...("oh the places you'll go"...I think I even sucked my thumb...)

I am miss "sassy pants..gotta know what the hell is on your mind".... and she puts up with me.

She looses everything.... and I put up with her..

We honestly share true joy, fun, honesty and gratitude for each others friendship. There is nothing I wouldn't do for her. (OK, I'd donate a kidney but draw the line my Sephora lip plumping lip gloss...she'd loose it in a heartbeat.)

This week we had a photo shoot together for some business promos we had, and a mini fashion shoot I did to send to a local agency who sees a need for a 42 year old women in a much to low-cut vintage dresss... dunno...a print ad for Geritol..? Fiber? (Look she is constipated and still wears polka-dots, walks, talks and smiles)!

We had a blast together that day,..messing around...being stupid... she...trying to make me laugh in the background...

The proofs popped into my email box tonight as I sat curled up in bed with a glass of wine....it brought tears to my eyes and made me smile to realize I had to move 1200 miles from MN just to find her....when I am an old woman I will look at these pictures and know that I lacked nothing in her selfless friendship and I am blessed.