Ask Clarissa

It was a little strange returning to Santa Barbara after the holidays knowing I am now in in my last semester at UCSB and that these next few months will be the ones where everything will change.

Lauren and I will graduate from college, and Abigail, who is starting to show battle scars from the war the cancer is waging against her, will graduate to whatever kind of paradise awaits her on the other side of this life. I won't be living in a dorm and I won't be living here in Abigail's house after May. I am most likely headed to LA to go get my MBA wherever I can, wherever I can afford it. It seems like I will be starting all over again. Just when I got comfortable with my life.

We don't really talk much here in Abagail's house about what the future holds. It's just the three of us now. Ryan got an apartment with her sister - unwilling, I think to live in a lovely house where someone is dying - so it's just me, Lauren and Abigail after Esperanza goes home at the end of the day. We've started another book in our little book club of three, not Pooh this time. We are reading Sonnets from the Portuguese from Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Abigail's choice, course. Love poems. After all these empty years, Abigail is in love with love.

John Beckett took me to meet his parents over Christmas. I should rephrase that. I didn't go to meet his parents. I went to a party at his parents' house in LA and they were there and I met them. When he brought me back home, John told me he'd been gone the month of January on a business trip to Tokyo. And he asked if perhaps while he was away if I would not see anyone else.

"See someone else?" I said. "You want me to keep my eyes closed for a month?"

He drew me close. "You know what I mean."

I did.

I kissed him this time.

Abigail met John Beckett that night. She told me after he left that he suits me. I reminded her that she just met him. She told me, "Yes, but you've been living here in my house all these weeks since you met him. He suits you."

Dang it all. I miss him . . .

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It was bound to happen. I knew there would come a point in our budding relationship when John Beckett would ask the "If There's A Good God Then Why" question.

Everybody has to ask themselves that question at some point, you know? They either come up with an answer they like or they don't. If they don't, they ask other people that question - many times over - 'cause they simply have to have an answer for it. It's the question of the ages.

We got into it, like John and I usually do, at the coffee shop, on my break. Some little kid who lived in the neighborhood where he grew up was kidnapped, abused and then killed. He knows the parents. It's horribly tragic. So right now John Beckett's pretty ticked at God. I mean, if there's a good God and he can do anything, then why the heck didn't he stop it?

I told him I agree that the situation is horrendous. Tragic. The person who did this is a monster. But I asked John if he was ready to take his question all the way to its logical conclusion? Which is what? he said.

Which bad things do you want God to stop? I asked him. All bad things? Just some of them? Which ones? Where do you draw the line? On a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 is cataclysmic natural disaster, and 9 is mass murder, and 8 is the killing of an innocent kid, and 7 is the car accident that leaves you paralyzed, and 6 is your spouse leaving you for another person . . . well, you get my drift. Where do you draw the line? You want God to intervene all the way to 1? All the way to you getting a flat tire or breaking your ankle playing tennis? No? Then where do you want him stop? At 5? At 8? Where do you want him to intrude on the natural outworking of our moral choice? Do you realize if you want him to intervene all the way to 1 you have just eliminated the need for doctors, nurses, lawyers, judges, policemen, the military, hospitals, prisons and courthouses? Where do you want him to stop, John?

There's no reason he couldn't have stopped this, John said, pointing to the article in the paper about the kid.

Well, how many reasons have you thought of? I asked. Do you really think mere mortals are capable of thinking of ALL the reasons there could be?

He started to get mad. Whose side are you on? he growled.

I laughed, but not in a funny way. I said, Who said anything about sides? This is just the way it is. It's a matter that is too big for sides. I am just telling you if you are going to stick with your argument, you need to consider how it shakes out when you take it all the way to where it stops.

John stood up. You want to tell that to this little boy's parents? he said coolly.

They didn't ask me, John. You did.

Well, what if they did ask you? What if they did ask you why God let this happen?

That's a different question, John. I don't know why. I don't think anyone has the answer to that one.

John stood up to leave. I didn't think you were such a big fan of God, he said.

I didn't think I was either, I told him. I am however a fan of keeping it real. If you're going to believe in something, believe in it all the way. If you're going to believe God should stop bad things from happening, then believe in it all the way. Keep it real, if you're going to bother to keep it at all.

John said, If this kid was your little brother, I doubt you'd feel the same way. Then he left without saying goodbye.

Everyone's convictions about what they believe are tested when they lose something - or someone - they love. Maybe John is right. Maybe I would feel differently if that little boy had been my brother.

But this isn't about how any of us feel. It's about what is and what is not. . .

I don't want to think about it anymore, it's making my head spin. And I have to get back to work. The afternoon crowd is coming in for their hits of caffeine. I'll ask Lauren about it tonight. She's a fan, as John would say. . .

Ask Clarissa

I went to Abigail's beach house just to get away from school and life and the coffee house and maybe even John Beckett for the weekend. I read the Pooh book, which Abigail told me over and over is not a Pooh book, and had really nothing to contribute to any conversation about it. It was a cute book, I guess. I will probably save it to give to my own kid someday. But it didn't, like, move me. I didn't have sticky notes protuding out of mine like Lauren had in hers.

And I wasn't pondering the illustrations like Ryan was. I am not even sure she read the dang book. She was just all over the illustrations; their charm and poetic imperfections and wonderfully abstract shadows. Whatever.

The first night at the house we decided to have our dinner outside on the patio (Esperanza grilled salmon) and discuss our overall impressions of the book. Oh, yeah. We're talking about When We Were Very Young. Lauren went on and on about this and that, Ryan murmured one-word super-niceties about the illustrations, Esperanza said she wished she had known about the book when her kids were little and I said I didn't have any overall impressions.

All right, Abigial said. How about underall impressions then, and the other girls laughed.

Do you have a favorite line? Lauren asked.

I cracked open the book to the Pooh poem and said, "A bear however hard he tries, grows tubby without exercise." And I snapped it shut.

Lauren and Ryan giggled but Abigail didn't.

I love that line, too, she said.

And then Lauren and Ryan stopped laughing because Abgail was serious.

Think of a bear, she said. A bear lives alone unless it's a mother with cubs. They hunt alone, they walk alone. They sleep alone. And if they just sit in their cave and do nothing, they increase their size but never their influence. They never make a difference to anybody. They just get fat.

It got quiet then.

I don't think Pooh minds being chubby, I said. He likes it. It's part of who he is. And other people like it about him. Other people love that about him.

That's not really Pooh, she said. It's before he was Pooh.

It's Pooh and you know it, I said. Besides, it says "however hard he tries," Abigail. That's the opposite of sitting in a cave and doing nothing. Even Eeyore would tell you that.

She broke into a smile and then began to laugh.

Abigail seemed different after that moment, like something big and heavy that she'd been carrying around for decades had just fallen into the ocean below us.

We all sat and talked until well after dark. And when I went to bed, in the room Abigail had slept in as a child, I opened the book and started to read it again from the first page. It wasn't like the first time I read it. This time it made me feel young, like a kid. And I fell asleep thinking of my old bedroom and the sound of my parents talking in low tones as they shut down the house for the night, and Fruit Stripe gum and new boxes of crayons and watching the stars come out.

I began the weekend just wanting to get away and I left it not wanting to go back. Life is complicated when you are an adult. Too complicated.

John Beckett, who can just about drive me crazy with his opinionated diatribes, kissed me tonight. I wanted him to. . .

Ask Clarissa

It's been a little creepy around the house. Ryan extended her stay in Europe for another week - can't say as I blame her. Lauren's been home at her parents' the last few days reconnecting with Raul now that's he's back from Guadalajara.

So it's been me and Abigail at the house. Me and Dying Abigail.

At first I didn't quite know what to say to her. But heck, if I am anything, I am transparent. I just flat out told her, "Abigail, I don't have a clue what to say to you about this. I can't tell you it's all going to work out just fine, 'cause we both know it won't. I can't tell you don't be sad; you've lived a good, long life because that's like saying hey, get off the planet and make room for someone else. So I mean really, what can I say?"

And she said, "You can say, 'Let's go to Cold Stone.'"

I said it. So that's what we did.

While we ate cake batter ice cream with cherries and chocolate I asked her if there were any books I should read before she, you know, because it was always Abigail's intention to see that I read the classics while I lived in her house.

She licked her spoon, cocked her head and told me she thinks it would be a good idea if she and I both read A. A. Milne's When We Were Very Young.

I thought only for a moment that she was pulling my leg. But only for a moment. A woman in her 80s who has known mostly sadness her adult life is dying of cancer. It's the perfect choice. But she doesn't have it in her library. We decided to order five copies. It will be book club at Abigail's. Me. Abigail. Lauren. Ryan. Esperanza.

I am actually looking forward to this.

And yes, since you must know. John Coffee Shop Beckett and I are seeing each other. We never get to finish our arguments in the coffee shop. So we simply have to pick up where we left off later at dinner. I don't call it dating, per se. Lauren asked me who is paying for dinner when we go and I told her to shut up and mind her own business.

The books are due in tomorrow. I don't think I want to wait until Ryan gets back to start.

Ask Clarissa

Okay. Yes, it's true. I am sort of going on a date with John Beckett on Friday. Yeah, the cell phone guy. It's his idea. And I wouldn't actually call it a date. I'd call it a deBATE. Huge difference.

But Lauren's calling it a date. And now Abigail and Esperanza are calling it a date. Just because a guy says, "Hey, you want to grab some dinner and talk about this?" that doesn't mean the upcoming dinner is a date. We got into a discussion about politics and capitalism (can you see this is so NOT pre-date talk?) and he told me democracy is the only form of government that works and I said democracy is only as good as the people in charge and we couldn't finish the conversation because other people were waiting in line and getting all jittery waiting for their java.

So we're going to finish the debate on Friday. Yes, over dinner. John Beckett is a prime example of arrogance and opportunistic behavior. I said it to his face. And he has told me on numerous occasions on his daily stop at the coffee shop that I wouldn't last a day in a place where everyone had as much power as everyone else. He so doesn't get it.

Lauren says I am the one who doesn't get it. He likes you, Clarissa, she said. Does not, I said. Then why does he keep coming to your coffee shop? she said.

We make d- - - good coffee, I said.

She just laughed.

In a sad way, though. She and Raul are having issues.

But that's besides the point.

It's not a date.

Not a date.

Ask Clarissa

So I am in the coffee shop this morning and this guy comes in during a much-needed lull. He’s got his Bluetooth thingy in his ear and a laptop and the morning paper under his arm. He’s drenched in cologne, is wearing a gray suit that looks and smells like he just picked it up from the dry cleaners, and he’s chattering away to someone he is obviously trying to impress. On his phone.

So he gets to the counter. He’s looking right at me while he’s telling Prospective Client how wonderful his company is. He holds up a finger like he might need another minute before he can reenter the real world where I and the coffee shop exist.

I smile nice and say loud enough to make his pointed head jerk a teensy bit, “No prob!”

It is delicious turning away from him and busying myself with the pastry shelves. I get the attention of Mindy who’s building the drinks this morning and I tell her the guy at the counter is mine. She smirks and gets a big bag of beans to grind for the next onslaught of caffeine addicts.

Mr. Cell Phone is pacing a little. He wants his coffee. He wants the deal. He wants everything. He leans over the counter to get my attention. He snaps his fingers. Dear Mindy grinds the beans next to me. Clever girl. I pretend I don’t hear him. Mr. Cell Phone grabs a napkin from the counter and a pen out of his pocket and scribbles something. I am thinking it is his coffee order. I begin to hum a happy tune. Mindy grinds a few beans.

A man comes in the store and smiles at me. I cheerfully ask the new guy what I can get for him. He happily tells me he wants a dark roast with room for cream and a blueberry scone. We complete our transaction with lots of cheerful small talk and the whole time Mr. Cell Phone is jockeying for position so that he can wave that napkin in front of my face, all the while chattering way on his Bluetooth. I give the new guy his change, wish him a fantastic day and immediately turn back to the pastry case to straighten the straight doilies.

At long last Mr. Cell Phone says goodbye and the moment he does I look up at him. “All set?” I say oh-so-sweet. He huffs, with a little smile of his own on his face, like I am a cute, dumb blonde who needs a lesson or two on napkin-waving. “I was trying to get your attention!” he says, shaking his head in just about the most patronizing way he could.

“I was trying to get yours,” I say, just as cool as you please.

His mouth drop opens a bit. His glassy, I-need-my-coffee eyes widen. Have I just said what he thinks I have just said?

Oh.yes. I have. I detect the slightest snickering from Mindy.

Mr. Cell Phone simply doesn’t know what to say. I can tell he wants to turn on his fancy heels and go get his coffee elsewhere. But he needs his coffee and he’s got an incoming call.

“Tall cinnamon latte, no cream,” he says flatly.

“You got it,” I respond and I take his five dollar bill. I hand him his change and ask for his name so that I can write it on his cup. He says, “This is John Beckett,” but he is saying it into his Bluetooth, while looking straight at me. He tips his head, as he continues his phone conversation, like he’s saying, “There, smart aleck. You have my name.”

I write “This is John Beckett’s latte” on his cup and wish him an exuberant nice day and I hand the cup to Mindy.

He walks away, and looks back once, and I can tell he’s wondering if he should report me to the manager.

“I am the manager!” I call out to him, with a smile and a wink.

After John Beckett finds the farthest corner of the shop to finish his phone call, Mindy turns to me.

“You know that guy?”

“That’s John Beckett,” and I pick up the napkin he left on the counter. It is scribbled with T Cin lat no w c.

I crumple it and toss it in the trash.

I gotta text Cole. He’s gonna love this. . . Oh, yeah. We went on a date Saturday night. But there’s nothing to tell. Yet.

Ask Clarissa

I can’t believe I am saying this but I can’t wait to get back to Santa Barbara and Abigail’s mausoleum of a house. I am home for the three-day weekend, and it’s hot here in Bakersfield and I am finding the older I get the more I don’t fit here anymore. A bunch of my high school friends are here for the summer; some have jobs, some don’t. All of them seem to have this itch to be like we all were in high school – back when nothing really mattered but who liked you and who didn’t.

I am glad beyond words that I took on the job as assistant manager at the coffee shop and that means nearly full time work this summer. Lauren’s going to be around some, too, since she and Abigail are going to build the arts center - you know, the one that she is convinced will appeal as much to the struggling blue collar machinist as the upwardly mobile CEO. We shall see about that.

And Lauren has plans for us to spend any weekends I am not working at her parents’ house in LA. Cole will be around. And Raul, after he gets back from visiting his parents in Mexico. Should be an interesting summer. Ryan has a summer internship in Paris, lucky her, so the studio will be available for me to flee to when Lauren is gone and Abigail is moody.

Graham finally got a job at an upscale men’s clothing store. in SB. It’s actually the perfect job for him. He’s knows all about expensive clothing for men. He practically sold his soul to the devil to finance his gambling habit - all the while wearing $2,000 suits.

And now that he has a job, he wants a car. We convinced Abigail not to buy him one, but she did decide to let him borrow her old Mercedes until he can afford his own wheels. She never drives it. It’s like a thousand years old. Graham turned his nose up at it and I wanted to clobber him with the broken gear shift on the bucket of bolts I am driving around. But he ended up taking it. He wanted Abigail’s Jag. He said it without saying it, if you know what I mean. I started to whisper “Don’t!” to her but I didn’t have to. She told him it was the old Mercedes or her Schwinn.

I am almost starting to like her. . .

Gotta run. A party tonight. Last one. . .

Ask Clarissa

I never set out to be the kind of person who is good at giving advice. And you have to realize there is a difference between being a person who gives good advice and being a person who is good at giving advice.

Think about it.

You could be a wisdom powerhouse but have not one scrap of skill on how to give anyone good advice. I'm sure you've met smart people who have all the answers but who suck at advising people on what to do.

I know I don’t have all the answers, but I’ve been told when I do give someone advice, they never feel stupid. They never feel like they should’ve been able to figure it out on their own. And I guess I’d rather be good at giving advice that may not always be 100% perfect than bad at giving advice. Obviously if you give good advice badly no one will listen to anything you say. If you give mostly good advice, well, eight times out of ten you will have made difference in a person’s life, perhaps for the rest of their life.

Abigail asked Lauren and I last night if we thought she should buy Graham a car. A used one. So he can look for a job. I didn’t answer back with, “Why should a healthy, capable 50-year-old who has struggled all his life to be free of your well-meaning, but back-firing enabling miss out on the joy and challenge of buying his own car?” Instead, I just told her what she really already knew. She wouldn’t asked if she didn’t already know: Buying Graham a car will keep him in poverty – every kind of poverty there is.

“He doesn’t have any money,” Abigail said.

“People with jobs have money.” I said. “And you can’t just give him one of those, either.” Which she already knows.

She asked me how a person without a car can possibly find a job.

“People without cars find jobs all the time. It’s their determination that gets them where they want to go, not four wheels and a steering wheel. You never give Graham any reason to be resolute. About anything.”

Lauren told me later she thought I had told Abigail something she had needed to hear for decades.

Surprised the heck out of me. I wonder how many dunderheads tried to tell Abigail she was totally blowing it with Graham and totally blew it themselves. I wonder if they even bothered.

Almost makes me want to change my major.

Almost.

Ask Clarissa

I don’t have but a minute or two. The coffee shop is hopping tonight. The manager has brought in live music and everyone’s loose and lively ‘cause we’re all back from spring break and no one’s going crazy with overload yet.

I finished the book Abigail gave me to read. As I Lay Dying. My first by William Faulkner. It’s a strange book. I am not used to fifteen different people telling me a story. Fifteen dysfunctional people. I really can’t see what Abigail sees in it, unless she likes spending time with people who make her sad life look normal.

Lauren, who’s read the book, thinks Abigail probably relates to it because the characters spend their sorry time in the pages struggling to bury their dead mother. Lauren had to remind me Abigail lost her mother when she was just a kid and then had to live with a grumpy father for the next fifty years. Yeah, well, that sucks, but what did Abigail really expect me to get out of a book like this? My mother isn’t dead. She and I went shopping together for swimsuits a couple weeks ago.

I’m not saying the guy isn’t a great writer. He writes really good depressing stuff. Abigail will want to chat about it this weekend. She’ll end up thinking I have no patience for anything more complex than once-upon-a-time crap. I so can appreciate something a little deeper than Dr. Seuss. But she’s right. I don’t have the patience for slow motion. If I am going to go deep I want to jump off the cliff at full speed, not hack my way down a mine shaft with a Barbie-size pick ax.

Oh, and hey, btw, I had a pretty good time hanging out with Lauren and Raul and Cole last week in Palo Alto. Get this. I think Cole is falling for me. Well, not really. But kind of. We'll just have to see. He kept looking at me.

Lauren has been instructed by her father to take the relationship slow with Raul. Like, don’t rush into anything, baby girl. I can read that man like a book. He’s desperately afraid of losing her to another man.

And here Lauren’s spent the better part of her life thinking her dad wishes she was a boy. . .

Ask Clarissa

I usually hate Mondays but it was actually a relief for the weekend to end. Ryan and Lauren both had other places to be and I was alone with Abigail the entire weekend in that tomb of a house. Esperanza was around on Saturday for awhile but not on Sunday. I couldn’t wait to get out of there and come to work at the coffee shop.

Something about Abigail creeps me out. I already told you she can seem younger than she is. Don’t ask me to explain it. She just does. And then the next moment she’s like this worn out, wrinkled bit of humanity that has always had too much money and too little fun. The weird thing is, she knew without me even saying anything that I didn’t want hang around the House without the other girls there. She even joked about it. Lucky for me I had a date on Friday night and double shifts on the weekend.

The date was okay. The guy’s name is Nathaniel Chance but everyone just calls him Chance. He’s a senior psych major. Psych majors are probably the hardest people to go out with. Think about it. They are into your brain the whole time. Not so much because they want to be, but because they are spending all their good hours absorbed in the study of how people behave and think, and they are doing that because they chose it. They chose the major, which means they like that stuff. Really like it. They want to be at it the rest of their working days. So they can’t help it. I couldn’t help but wonder if Chance was secretly and subconsciously picking apart everything I said or did. And if he knew that’s what I was wondering, he would find that very interesting.

I kinda like him though. I wished he had asked me out again on Saturday, but he didn’t, so I had to go find some friends to hang out with so that I wasn’t wandering the catacombs with Abigail.

I am reading a book Abigail loaned to me. It better hold my interest more than the last one did. I have hope for this one. It’s As I Lay Dying. When she handed it to me I told her hey, that was the name of a heavy metal band out of San Diego and she told me no, it was book by William Faulkner.

Thank you, thank you it’s Monday and Lauren and Ryan are back . . .

Ask Clarissa

Okay, so it’s been a few days in the Big House and it’s not like it's perfect, but I gotta tell you there’s nothing like having a bathroom all to yourself. I can put up with the morgue-like quiet, the chunky silverware, the ticking of clocks everywhere you turn, and all-the-cans-in-a-row (didja see Sleeping with the Enemy?) in the kitchen if it means having my own bathroom and only having to look at my own toothpaste spit in the sink.

Ryan’s the lucky one. She has the gardener’s cottage for her studio and it is super cool. When the House gets too housey, she can just say she’s got homework and can head over to her studio. I am going to have to take up painting.

I don’t have much time for this post. I am at work and writing it in between making lattes and cleaning out the leftover scones from yesterday. But I just have to say Abigail seems older than she really is sometimes, and then she will seem younger. Way younger. It creeps me out. I catch her looking at Lauren and Ryan and me and it’s like she’s one of us, like we’re a quartet of some kind, instead of three college students and an old lady. It’s weird. I can’t explain it. Not right now anyway. I gotta run. And hey! I have a date tonight!! His name’s Chance. No joke.

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I have agreed to read Anna Karenina during my Christmas break. Lauren recommended it. Abigail, too. I am not a huge fan of fiction. I am not a fan at all. But Abigail says Anna Karenina is not what anyone could rightly call fiction. There is nothing of pretense about it.

But it’s a novel, I said.

And she said, it’s a commentary on family dynamics. On relationships. On the human condition. What is imaginary about that??

It’s actually her copy I packed in my suitcase when I drove home to Bakersfield. There are notes in the margins. In different shades of ink. Abigail says she learns something new every time she reads it.

Abigail has asked Lauren and I to rent rooms from her. I hardly know what to think. Her house is enormous. She has a housekeeper who has little jars of capers and shallots and saffron threads in the pantry. And the pantry is a room, did I mention that? She has gardeners and a man she pays to drive her around. Her house is bigger than the three houses I grew up in all put together.

Lauren is warming up to the idea. She says Abigail is waking up after years of reclusivity. She is lonely. She likes our company.

I don’t know. The room I’d have is something out of a magazine photo shoot. And Esperanza is an awesome cook. There’s just something about pretending I fit into that life that irks me. Lauren says it is no different than her having lived in a dorm with a shared bathroom the last year and a half. You don’t stop being who you are just because you change from sleeping on Kmart sheets to Egyptian cotton.

I am not sure she is right about that. And that’s what’s bothering me. Is she right? Who is not changed by their environment? Name someone.

I am not saying I would change for the worse if I lived in a house like that and had imported truffles tossed into my omelets. I am just saying I would change. And that has to be considered. Tell me I am wrong. . . If you can.

Ask Clarissa

Okay. So since my last post that song by Pat Benatar, “Love is a Battlefield,” has been tumbling around in my head practically driving me crazy. I don’t even like that song or that kind of music. But a customer came in the coffee shop the other day, ordered a tall minty mocha and told me he’d read my blog post and asked me what I meant when I said love is a solid, not a space to be filled.

He said that’s like saying love is already there. And he told me he’s not in love with anyone right now and when he was it was like a complicated maze that made him feel like he was grappling for a handhold the whole time. A war zone. Now that he’s not in love he says he’d very much like to feel that there is no empty space to be filled. But he does feel like there is a void, even though he doesn’t want to.

I told him I didn’t think love was the war zone. That had to be something else. Desire. Lust. Greed. Control. Jealousy. Need. Those troubadours of conflict show up in the romantic relationship we call ‘being in love.’ Being in a space. Those are the things create the friction, the sense that there is chaos in the space.

The love I am talking about is not in the space. And yeah, it’s already there. When you climb out of that crazy place that empties and fills, thrills you one minute and haunts you the next, you bump right into it.

And then what? he said. You live happily ever after?

You live, I said.

He took his cup, smiled and told me he’d like to come back in five years and ask me how that little declaration still shapes up for me.

I told him I wouldn’t be in this coffee shop in five years.

He laughed. Gave me a big tip.

I don’t think he understood a word I said.


Ciao,

Ask Clarissa

Let's get one thing straight before we go any further.

I am not here to tell you what you want to hear. If that's what you want, you need to go call your mother or get a fan club or something.

I like to tell it like it is. I have never seen the sense of telling it like it's not. So you can expect a straight answer from me. All the time. That's just how I am.

You might be wondering what qualifies me to give advice. Here's the thing. We're all qualified to give advice, we're just not all qualified to give good advice. And the word 'good,' as you must already know, is a relative term. A book can be good, a child can be good, a day can be good, a pizza can be good. Advice is good if it helps you make a wise decision. Someone can give you really crappy advice but if it helps you make a wise decision, well, you see my point.

I grew up in a lower-middle class home, whatever that means. My parents have blue collar jobs, they own their home but every extra penny goes to make the mortgage payment. I have a brother and sister, both older than me, and I am paying my own way through college just like they did. I also had a younger brother. He died when I was 14. Leukemia.

I've been in love twice. Once in high school and once in college. But now I am out of love. Isn't that dumbest thing you've ever heard? In love one moment and out of it the next. Out of love. That just goes to show you it wasn't the real thing. I don't think the real deal is a space that is filled one day and empty the next. I don't think it's a space at all. I think it's a solid.

So there you go. There's my first conversation starter. True love is a solid. Got a question for me? An observation. A snarky response? Post it here.

~ Ciao,