Stirring the Pot Read online

  A less trivial example: I knew when to stop having babies.

  I love and need my kid like air. He’s a total blessing and I cannot, cannot, cannot imagine my life without him. But I don’t need the kid in my life to become plural. Kids take time and focus, and I know myself enough to know my limit is to focus on just one. Having one child allows me to say yes to his needs and to have a work life, too. I wasn’t cut out to be the mother of five who has no time for herself. No apologies there, people. I know my limits and my limitations!

  Be Able to Say “I Don’t F*cking Know”

  I’ve always had trouble sleeping. Wait, let me take that back. I’ve had trouble sleeping since I was old enough to start worrying about jobs, bills, and boys. I often lie in bed and contemplate and ruminate and waste my precious sleeping hours. It’s exhausting. Vodka, Ny-Quil, or Ambien can be helpful (never all three!), but it’s been clear for a while that I need to find another way of shutting off my mind.

  Well, a solution recently hit me square in the face. In an offhanded way—totally casual and not at all preachy—a wise friend of mine recently said, “Don’t ask yourself questions you can’t possibly know the answers to.” I’m sure we were shopping at the time and I was asking why the seams on my jeans were a different color than the seams on the ones she was wearing. Or maybe I had just peeled a callus off my foot and asked why it was shaped like the state of Illinois.

  But wow. Even if we weren’t talking about deep spiritual enlightenment at the time, that was an Oprah lightbulb moment for me. “Don’t ask yourself questions you can’t possibly know the answers to.” Fucking mind-blowing, that’s what it is. I couldn’t think of a more brilliant statement or one that would better help me shut down the “what if?” and “will I?” questions that keep me up at night.

  LETTING GO OF KNOWING:

  A RECIPE FOR SUCCESS

  Need another strategy for holding worry at bay? This works for me. Whether the concern is about my job, a guy, or the amount of my next royalty check, I try to imagine it as a bar of soap I’m holding in my hand in the shower. If I squeeze the soap tight to try to control it, it slips out of my hand. So the next time you are consumed with worry or obsessed with making something happen, stop squeezing the soap.

  Know How to Say No

  We all know someone in our lives who overuses their favor card. It doesn’t matter if they overstep just one time too many or ten—one favor too many is too many. (If this describes you, you seriously need to stop this shit before you don’t have any friends left.)

  Sure, it’s great to help out a friend in need, but when the favors outnumber the quality time spent, you’re probably being used. Is there someone in your life you call only when you need something, or are you on the other end of that phone call rolling your eyes at a friend who didn’t call to talk but instead called to ask for something (a “tiny” favor, a loan) again? Ever heard of the power of a loving no? Get comfortable with it. A huge part of self-love is being able to stand up for yourself when you are feeling taken advantage of.

  Be Able to Take No for an Answer

  Sometimes people say no because what you’ve asked is unreasonable in the first place: “No, I can’t find you a five-star hotel with a Vegas-style bathroom near the set in Zimbabwe.”

  Sometimes people say no because even though they would like to help you, they honestly can’t: “No, Jenny, I’m sorry, but my hands are tied. You and your sister got yourselves axed from Madonna’s after-Oscars party this year because of the Thailand-style strip club performance you gave there last year.”

  Sometimes people say no because they are law-abiding wimps: “No, we can’t keep the bar open for you and your friends. We will lose our liquor license.”

  And sometimes people say no because they are assholes and it makes them feel temporarily good about themselves to insult you while they are denying your request: “No, you can’t star opposite Brad Pitt because you are past your prime.”

  The High Road?

  Wait, wait, wait … did you interpret that last chapter to mean that I think you should always turn the other cheek? Ha! Being able to take no for an answer doesn’t always mean that you have to take someone else’s shit. Repeat after me: when it comes to gracefully reacting to an obvious or implied criticism, you do not always have to take the high road. In fact, I urge you to develop your sense of where the shorter, more direct route lies and when taking it just might be the best course of action.

  Let’s work on that. See if you can spot the correct response to each of the following situations from my own life.

  Scenario 1: Evan has just swatted my hand away from his dinner plate while making a heinous seagull caw-cawing noise as he flaps his arms like wings. In other words, he has just cleverly accused me of being a food scavenger. (Yes, this happens all the time.)

  Should I (A) flip his plate over on the floor to express my disgust and then mock his seagull noise by making the snorting sound of a pig, or (B) give him a high five and then silently take a bow for having raised a young man who’s both observant and funny?

  That one was easy. (Wait, you said A, right? No need to take crap from an eleven-year-old and/or take the high road in the comfort of your own home.)

  Scenario 2: I’m walking into the lobby of my apartment building after a long day of work and a “reporter” (you get quote marks if you’re from TMZ, guys) appears out of nowhere, shoves a microphone in my face, and yells (it always feels like they’re yelling!), “Hey, Jenny, why is it that you can’t seem to stay in a relationship?” Or maybe he shouts, “Hey, Jenny, is it true you’re about to be fired?”

  Should I (A) give him the benefit of the doubt and choose to hear his question as a compliment? You know, choose to hear “You help our ratings when we can flash a photo of you out on a date with someone new, so thanks and keep up the speed dating!” or “A nasty and public fight over your day job would sure sell magazines, so we’re rooting for you to get canned ASAP!” Or should I (B) make a heinous seagull caw-cawing noise at him (to express my feeling that he is scavenging off the crumbs of my life) and colorfully tell him where he can shove it?

  Right again! “Reporters” always deserve the benefit of the doubt.

  Scenario 3: On the rare occasion I happen to be listening to National Public Radio (let’s assume that I’m trapped in a town car and I’m too polite to ask the driver to change to dance tunes), I overhear someone being interviewed about special-needs parenting. The highly educated expert interviewee says confidently, “Jenny McCarthy doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

  Should I (A) whip out my cell phone and call the radio show so that I can give the “world-class researcher” (also often deserving of quote marks) a swear-laden monologue about my half semester as a special-ed major, for one thing, and oh, gee, maybe explain the difference between laboratory statistics and what a mother sees with her own eyes? Or should I (B) bemusedly place the criticism in context while calmly reminding myself that debate is good and that none of us has all the answers, then ask the driver to change to dance tunes after all?

  I’m not going to tell you the right answer to that one. I know you’ll choose wisely.

  Decade-by-Decade Decision Making

  I’m in my four tens now. My very early four tens, but I’m in them fair and square.

  Four tens: that’s the way to say forties using the Singapore Math method that they’re teaching kids these days. I didn’t appreciate the merits of Singapore Math at first, but then I figured out that it’s a handy way of confusing people about how old you are, how much you weigh, or how much money you make (if they are totally rude enough to ask any of those questions). The only people who are going to immediately know what you’re talking about are the good citizens of Singapore and the small American children who are using it now to learn to count. Neither of those populations gives a crap what the answers to any of those questions are. Win-win.

  When I was in my two tens (when you actually mostly want
people to think you’re older than you are, the whole Singapore Math confusion doesn’t help the cause), I was very adventurous. You could convince me to eat chocolate-covered scorpions or jump out of a plane, and I would try any diet or exercise fad if it had a celebrity endorsement. I’d drive to Vegas on a whim or take off on a trip to who knows where with who knows whom at the drop of a hat. In your twenties you’re still trying to catalogue the things that turn you on. You’re on a fact-finding mission to experience the things that will become reference points for your future taste. In the process you learn which things you never want to try again. Discovery—good and bad—is a thrill in its own right.

  In my three tens (stay with me here, math morons—that means my thirties), I was still pretty open to trying new things. The experience of motherhood was one of those things, as were germy indoor ball pits (nightmares), Mommy and Me classes (snore), and strained peaches (so damn delicious).

  Probably because of becoming a mother, the three tens were also a time when I began to develop a better alarm system for when to try new things. I learned that there is a time for cutting loose and a time to take a pass in favor of going with what you know you like and what you need.

  Take restaurants. In my three tens I had a couple of favorite “no reason except that it’s Thursday” restaurants and only tried a new place or a new dish if it was a “special occasion.” Not that Thursday isn’t special in its very own way, but on Thursdays it was usually just my son, Evan, and me, and I didn’t want surprises. That still holds true. When I’m on the mommy clock, I want predictable routine with the highest chance of happiness for our time together. A Thursday place is where I go to get the food that I know Evan likes, and the grilled cheese and tomato soup I know they make so well. Veal scaloppini? Thank you for the offer, it sounds delicious, but I want the thing that I know makes me happy and that I might be able to share with my son.

  And so here I am in my four tens and I am happy to be able to say that I have a pretty finely tuned sense of what I like and what I don’t like. More important, I have a good sense for what might be worth trying (hey, I’m still pretty game!) and what I can’t be talked into trying or liking on the grounds that it’s on someone else’s bucket list. For instance, I don’t have to go to jail to know I wouldn’t like it. (There was a time in my two tens when even that experience sounded like it might be worth having, if only to have a story to tell.)

  At four tens I’m a pretty good judge of what is worth my time and what I can go without trying in favor of honoring what I know to be true for me. That doesn’t mean that I’ve completely sworn off trying new things, just that I’m old enough to know that I’m not going to miss out by not trying everything that comes my way.

  As Popeye said before popping a can of spinach into his piehole: “I yam what I yam.” And man, it feels good to have arrived at this stage of the game.

  Try Anything Once

  RECIPE FOR SUCCESS

  Ingredients:

  An open mind

  The ability to laugh at yourself

  The ability to not laugh out loud at someone else’s expense

  A little upper-body strength (optional)

  In the game of Truth or Dare, I’ve always been one to pick the dare. Telling the truth just isn’t much of a challenge for me. As you know, I’m only too happy to tell you what’s on my mind and to admit to what I’ve done.

  I’m also a sucker for pretty much any self-help book or self-improvement program out there. Which means either that I need a lot of help or that I’m an evolved soul always searching for a new level of consciousness. Care to take a stab at which?

  But what happens when you put my interest in challenge and self-improvement together?

  Well, take color therapy. Totally mind-blowing, that one. Better (healthier and more relaxing, certainly) than a good ride on Ecstasy.

  During my first color therapy session, the guru/​goddess/​high-priestess/​practitioner/​licensed-by-some-entity/woman-in-charge talked a lot about the meaning of various colors and explained all about portals and openings and being open to letting things flow in. Ya, I had to hold back a laugh, too, but get your mind out of the gutter … she was talking about spiritual passageways! Then she placed a bunch of colored bottles in front of me and asked me to choose those that “spoke” to me. I listened hard, but none spoke up clearly. The green one seemed to be clearing her throat to say something but never got much further than that. In the end, I just picked the colors I thought were pretty, green among them.

  Next, she had me lie down on a massage table and sprayed mist in my chosen colors around me while tinkly music played in the background. Then she placed the colored bottles at key chakras on my body. She balanced one on my forehead, placed one at my feet, and put three at my crotch. Should I have questioned the focus on my crotch? I didn’t. I just giggled.

  After an hour and a half of listening to the trippy music and lying still so as not to disturb the bottles, I actually felt floaty and started seeing colors, too. Oddly, this was way better than a deep muscle massage. The stillness was kind of a revelation. (Or maybe there was something funky in the colorful mist I had inhaled?)

  As much as I wanted to laugh at the whole idea at the start, I have to admit that I now see colors as being deeply meaningful. Turquoise, for instance, is apparently a color that helps you express your thoughts through the heart. Hey, maybe I’d talk less out my ass if I wore it more often. I’ll try it. That said, turquoise also happens to be a color that indicates a connection to dolphins and to the lost city of Atlantis. I can’t find a way to make those things relevant in my life (and wardrobe people are great, but they really don’t care about these things), so I just focus on the talking-through-the heart benefit.

  Another wacky “therapy”? Tapping. Not Gene Kelly tapping with shoes. Tapping with fingers. Your own. As self-administered therapy. It’s called the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), and the theory is that tapping on certain pressure points—your wrists, your chest, you name it—will help you resolve issues and attain goals. I have to admit that I found the tap-tap-tapping soothing. I can also admit that having to focus on a specific body part while thinking about a specific problem has a way of focusing the issue. It’s not something you want to do in public, though, because you end up looking like you have multiple personality disorder and one of your personalities is Woody Woodpecker. I’d also rather have someone else tap on a certain body part while I focus on pleasure for a while, if you know what I mean.

  And then there’s rock climbing, a challenge I put myself through recently that was decidedly less relaxing. I’m not sure why I thought this kind of outdoorsy, roughing-it thing would be any more enjoyable than, say, that fire pit in Zimbabwe, but I’d heard you can get a rush from the danger, so I gave it a try. I do not recommend it. No high, just PTSD.

  Even without the snow-covered rock face and terrible weather conditions like you see in a North Face ad (because this was an indoor facility), and even wearing a harness that had been tightened, checked, and re-checked, I could only get myself to the first level of the climbing structure—about ten feet off the ground. Rock climbing takes upper-body strength, but more than anything, it takes balls. I thought I had them. Apparently not enough. I couldn’t force myself to climb any higher and told the instructor she was just going to have to build me a little platform and hoist my meals up in a basket. With lots of coaxing (something tells me that my kind of paralysis was not new to them), the instructor talked me into letting go of the support beam I was clinging to and allowing her to lower me down via the ropes and harness. I will say that that part of the program was cool—I liked the feeling of briefly floating in space. There are simpler ways of getting that kind of high, though. And it’s now legal in several states.

  Last but not least (and no doubt not last, either), there’s my attempt at the twenty-one-day Complaint Free challenge. A self-help guru named Will Bowen thought this one up, arguing that complaining is manipu
lative, reveals low self-worth, is physically and psychologically unhealthy, alienates friends and family, is addictive, and stops us from realizing our dreams. Seems like kind of an overreaction to a mostly harmless little complaint, don’t you think? I would argue that as addictions go, complaining is pretty G-rated. Complaining doesn’t cause tooth decay, liver disease, or bankruptcy. Just saying.

  But I’m game and open-minded, remember?

  The basic idea is that you wear a rubber bracelet—like the Lance Armstrong one, but in purple—and switch it to your other wrist every time you complain (only spoken complaints count; you are allowed to complain in your mind as much as you want). The goal is to go twenty-one consecutive days without switching the bracelet at all. Anytime you have to switch the bracelet to your other wrist, the clock goes back to day one and you start again. Apparently, when you finish—um, if you finish, or if you claim to have finished—you can go to Bowen’s website and order a “Certificate of Happiness.” Not to complain or anything, but that sounds to me more like something you get after completing a course in tantric sex.

  Within just a couple of days of starting (and restarting) the challenge, I discovered three things:

  1. Complaining bonds people. The magic of several of my closest friendships is that we can comfortably and safely bitch about others to each other. Much as I’d like to finish what I started, I realized that I don’t want to give that pressure valve up just yet.