Make it count!

Looking back over the blogs I've written, I see a lot of grief and sarcasm and negativity. I guess it's only natural when I've been hurting so much... But I wonder how people can like someone who hates facial hair and does not want children?
I realize that writing it all out helps, and though I'd rather be writing blogs that are reporting on some amazing nail-biting overseas journeys, or vital work on a mission somewhere, doing something very important for mankind, this is where I am now:
Still here in Santa Barbara, taking stock of my life after the profound loss of my mother. Like the Nick Cave song where he says "on the occasions I came up for air
I saw my life and wondered what the hell I had been living"...I wonder how I got to here. I drink too much and I need to stop. I need to wake up earlier and live more. Live BETTER. I really want to live my life like there is no tomorrow, like my ass is on fire. Really make every moment count, and truly make a difference. GO PLACES and DO THINGS. When I realize how many years I have lived in SB not going anywhere it shocks me. And how can I accomplish this better life if I mostly want to stay in my comfy warm house and hibernate from the world? Maybe the answer lies in getting outside of my comfort zone...
I want to leave things a little better than when I came in. I want the people I love to really know it (and that probably means YOU if you are reading this). Sometimes, when I take stock of it all I wonder if I am doing this to the full extent of my ability. Usually the answer is no, so something has got to give.

I'm now thinking about and preparing for the next big stage in my life. This will be a big change, an upheaval of epic proportions. I'll turn everything upside down and uproot it all, to lay it down in another city, and when I do, I want to be taking my spiritual temperature too... making more room for God in my life and doing more for mankind. Volunteering more, traveling more, reading more, learning more, doing more. Life is so beautiful and wonderous. LOOK at where we live! Just the other day I had lunch with some of my co-workers at Mussel Shoals. Let me tell you, it was gorgeous.
So... I hope that my blogs will begin to take on a better and more hopeful feel. I want to make it count. As time passes, I want to evolve and be the very BEST me I can be.
I love you all so much.
XOXO
~Sheryl

The measure of success...

Am I crazy for not wanting children?

Sometimes I wonder...
When I was about 10 I remember being in my beloved grandmother's kitchen and she mentioned something about when I would grow up and would have children of my own. I remember the moment almost as if it were yesterday, when she said it I was aghast. "But, Grammma, I don't want kids! I'm never having kids!" I protested firmly, as if I already knew then. Maybe I did. I had plenty of chances, but it never happened. I didn't pine so much for it, as I did for a spouse. I wanted marriage and security, someone to grow old with, build a home with and lovingly read bits of the newspaper to over coffee every morning, but children never really factored that much into it. I pictured a lovely home filled with art and books, and a mature deeply loving relationship that filled every need. I thought about kids, but it wasn't the yearning that a lot of my friends expressed. For me, it was always more of a vague concept...
I thought of a little beachy sandy-footed blonde girl who loved to draw. A little me. It was a nice thought... until the baby in the booth next to me would start screaming bloody murder and the thought vanished fast and violent, like so much shrapnel into the atmosphere. Nope, crying and noise was not for me. Neither is a giant belly, hopped up hormones or sore nipples. I would be intolerable. They'd have to lock me up in a barn somewhere where my loved ones would not have to hear me moaning and complaining.

To paraphrase from a recent article I read, "There are those who neatly mark all their accomplishments in life by family position and children - a universally recognized measure. And what if you (gasp!) don't have children or a spouse? Then, you'll need to find another purpose, another measure by which to judge whether or not you have been a successful human being? And that is a very frightening road less traveled (even more frightening to society than to those traveling it!)". Here I am, in the time when most people are watching their kids grow up and out of the house, and I still have never even been married. I'm still working on my art, my career, I'm working toward buying my first house, and that's my number one real goal at the moment. I don't need a mini me... I'm still working on me! There are even those who call this sort of thing "selfish". This really puzzles me. Isn't bringing yet another life into this dreadfully overpopulated earth even more selfish? When the world's resources are being eaten up at a break-neck speed and will be depleted by the time our offspring reach middle age, why would I want to bring a lovely little new life into that? I would take it one step further and say that people should pass some sort of competency test before they are allowed to have kids. Heck, you need a driver's license just to be able to drive, how much more important is raising a child?
Furthermore, since I'm older, perhaps I would die when my child only was in their 20's or 30's. Having just lost my mother, I am not willing to put another person through that particular circle of hell. On the other hand, I wish I could have given my beautiful mother a grandchild, and if I had, would her life have been changed or saved? I often think it would have. Something fresh, new and fragile to love and protect. Something to offset the HELL of having a life-long drug addicted son. She really wanted grandchildren and I regret not being able to give that to her.

Women's magazines are notorious for pigeon-holing women into the mother role. We, as women are just supposed to want children according to society. I wonder why there is hardly anything written for the growing population of people like me who do not have children - most of them by choice. For the record, as a woman, I equate having a child (my own) with emotional and financial bankruptcy - I don't think I'd have the stamina or the financial resources. I cherish the kids in my life and my "chosen" role as the cool auntie. Yesterday I babysat for Etta and had such a nice time with her. She's a lovely beautiful little soul, inside and out, and I can't wait to see who she becomes. But when she went home I closed the door to my room and lied down before having to go to work. I cherished every second of quiet. It felt like a balm to my soul. But this is not about Etta. She is not the reason for my decision. I think I made that decision when I was 10. It's just who I am. It makes perfect sense for my life.
Sometimes I still encounter child-bearing friends who say things like "But you don't like kids..." No, I love them, (in small doses). I just don't want my own!

seeds of hope

Today it was a lovely blustery rainy day. I stayed indoors for most of it. I decided to do a little cleaning and I ended up going through my zine collection to thin it down and sell some of them on ebay. This made me re-read some of them and I got nostalgic. I remember how I was in the days when I was doing a zine and the future seemed a little bit brighter. I had so much to say then. I was excited, motivated and idealistic about everything, music, writing and art... about making the world a better place. Even though now I am much more established, in some ways I had a lot more going for me then.
It's just different.
In some ways I wish I had now what I had then. How boring. I never wanted to be someone who said that. Ugh.
I miss the heck out of my mom.
I miss her all the time. What can I say? It saps me dry and makes me depressed.
I am just so sad. And the tears still come. After I got home from work tonight I looked up at the sky, stunning as it was in this full-moon, with its silver lined clouds, and I cried. Hard. I just stood in the driveway and cried. I want to reach for her. Call her. Hug her, hold her hand. Talk to her. I do talk to her, but she never answers. How can she? She is gone, her soul somewhere else on the next part of her journey, she doesn't exist here anymore, and I have such a hard time wrapping my mind around it. I have such a hard time letting go. Does she know that I miss her? I feel so lonely in this world without her. I could never have prepared for how this feels. Sometimes she visits me in my dreams. I am thankful for that. Upon entering the house I poured a hot bath and a glass of wine and tried to think about relaxing this pain away. I wanted a xanax, or something... but there is no pill for this.

My friends came together and held a benefit show for me (for my mom, in her honor). It was Saturday the 9th, and in case you weren't there, it was a smashing success. I felt warm and loved. I was so grateful my heart was to the bursting point. Truly. We raised a good chunk to donate to Sarah House, and in addition I was able to pay off some things that I needed to as a result. There was art and great live music. And the best part? I made some new friends and got closer to some existing ones. It was good all around. No, it was great.
I've never had anyone throw me a surprise party, but I imagine that that's pretty close to what it would feel like. Grand. Spectacular. Lucky.
So it's over now and life is back to normal. In the quiet times I realize how nothing is the same anymore, nothing is "normal" now, not like it was... but I call it the "new normal".
Now it's late, and I can hear the wind howling outside my window, rattling the panes. I love this house when it rains. I want to have hope that I will feel better and that life will be good again. It hasn't been in so long. I am depressed in the fullest sense of the word. People tell me that I will get better, but it doesn't feel like it right now. I'm still grieving, still in the full throes of it, and that will be its own process with its own time line.
I need a symbol of hope. Something to focus on to guide me.
So I think of this:
A thing I used to see all the time while driving in LA were these little palm trees growing up through the concrete. They seemed to pop up in the oddest places, like in the cracks of the freeway dividers. It seemed impossible that this little imported beauty of a tree could thrive in conditions like these... this smog laden noise polluted concrete covered dirty city. But they do. And how they pop up through the cracks out of nowhere is a wonder to me. I need to be like the palm tree when my landscape seems barren and lost. I just need to persevere. Keep breathing. Know that the sun will come up tomorrow and keep breathing because you never know what the tide will bring in.

here it is

Hi everyone, take a look at the article that came out in yesterday's Independent:

I hope you all can make it down to Muddy Waters Saturday (tomorrow)!


Click here to see what the Santa Barbara Independent says about it.

If you can't make it in person, you can always donate right here. There's a button to the right of this post. Please help. The more money we can raise the more people it will help. Thank you, lovlies.
XOXOXO
~Sheryl

OK, everybody freeze!

Friends, old and new

This weekend I went down to LA to see my good friend Kat and to see Thee Oh NOs play. They played at a fancy little club called Bordello, right across the street from Joe Shea's old loft downtown. OH, I wish he was still there, he had just emailed me only 2 days prior to say he had left the building. All night long I kept wanting to run across the street and introduce him to my friend David, the drummer for Thee Oh NOs. I wanted to show David Joe's impressive studio and art collection. The show was great. Fun was had. It worked to lift me out of my blue mood that I seem to have been in for days now, only for the mood to return upon waking the next day. Jamie came out and DJ LEE from the Rockaround was there too. Lots of good music, and I danced for their ENTIRE set in 4 inch high heels! Ouch!
The next morning it was breakfast in the rain at Auntie Em's Kitchen, one of my favorite cafes near Kat's house. They sell the most scrumptious red velvet cupcakes! Then it was over to Galco's Soda Pop Shop, the supermarket of soda pops. I got cucumber soda and rose petal soda and Zots candy. Mmmmm, a throw-back from when I was a kid! The Soda Pop shop is one of my favorite stops in LA. The 10,000-square-foot shop still looks like a timeworn Italian deli, down to the chipped linoleum and faded 1950's sign out front. But the half-dozen aisles are now lined with over 500 varieties of soda and 425 of beer, both new and long forgotten. Among the most interesting are Manhattan Special Espresso Coffee Soda, a mud-like drink loaded with caffeine; Red Ribbon Cherry Supreme, which is neon pink (I HAD to have one); and Jamaica's Hot Hot Hot, a ginger beer so spicy that it almost burns your lips. Most are packaged in old-fashioned glass bottles.
Several exotic brands come from distant shores, like Sangaria Ramune, a melon-flavored Japanese soda with a marble in the bottle; and Kolashampan, a cream soda from El Salvador. The owner, Mr. Nese is always there when I go,

and he is friendly and helpful from the moment you walk in. Whenever possible, he tries to carry sodas with natural ingredients. Nuky Rose Soda, one of my favorites, is made from crushed rose petals, and Plantation Style Mint Julep from Pennsylvania is flavored with real mint. I'm starting to sound like an ad, but I really love the Soda Pop Shop!

It's nice to see old friends like Kat and David. It makes me nostalgic for the old days, and makes me realize that I work far too much and I should take short trips like that much more often. I also love to see the architecture in other cities. I forget that everything isn't the Disneyesque white stucco and red tiled roofs of Santa Barbara. I saw so many little Craftsman bungalows and garishly painted houses I could barely drive without being a lookie-loo. I need to get out more!

Sarcasm

For anyone who read my beard blog and thought I was entirely serious, please know that it was peppered with jeers, sarcasm and bitter humor. While it's true I don't like beards so much, I happen to REALLY DEEPLY LOVE some people I know who have them. I was just going off on a tangent and trying to be funny... I suppose some guy could write a blog about how he HATES women with long blonde hair and how vapid he thinks they are, etc. I wouldn't be personally offended. I'd probably laugh and agree. I like humor that's bitter and mad. That's all. Hope I didn't offend anyone...and if I did? Well, have a Bologna sammich and shut your pie hole.

And for a sample of some of what I'm talking about, check out THIS PAGE: Click HERE:To go to The Best Page In The Universe

NOT COOL!

I cannot grasp the current men's obsession with facial hair. It seems to be everywhere. Quite a few men are sporting beards and messy long hair. I'm not talking goatees here, (which can actually be quite attractive), I'm talkin' full-blown all out BEARDS, big long hairy messy beards, not shaven into neat shapes, just a sasquatch hair free-for-all. The young men are the ones that really trip me out with it. Didn't their papas teach them how to shave? I don't get how this is the new trend. Where did this ugly thing start? With bands? Because a lot of bands are doing it too.
Or Play off beards? I have heard about guys not shaving until the playoffs or other similar contests. But really, guys, unless you're ZZ TOP,

Or a Hasidic jew

Or an old homeless guy

Or an Amish guy...

...the shit aint cool! C'mon fellas, it's 2008. The Neanderthal look went out in the late Pleistocene Epoch (roughly 30,000 years ago).
David letterman had a hideous rug on his face. Ugh. Made him look 25 years older. As it does with EVERY man who grows one. Granted, his was a statement about the writer's strike... but still...GROSS!

There are only 2 men I know who can rock the beard properly and handsomely... Jason and Chuck. That's IT. But they keep it nice and clean, you know?



No one, not even your mom, wants to kiss a face with wiry messy hair all over it that scratches you or worse yet has tiny food particles lodged in it. SICK!
Just SHAVE already! Save us from the horror. Give me time to stop being grossed out by this so I can worry and ponder about other more important things, like, WHAT, on God's Green Earth makes a white person think it's cool to grow dreadlocks??? There's a reason they are called DREADlocks. They are DREADFUL!!!!