I haven’t felt well lately — something about impaired blood sugar and low potassium, both of which are butt-kicking maladies.  Not one to let this just slide on by without notice, I’ve concocted a chicken soup guaranteed to either cure you, kill you, or turn you into a great Jewish mother.

Here’s the recipe:

1 boneless, skinless chicken breast; 2 likewise naked chicken thighs.  I like the kind of chickens that are treated nice with all natural foods rather than those poor things who eat nothing but ground-up rubber tires and metal spikes … and they get to frolic in the woods all day and sleep on memory foam mattresses at night.  You know.  HAPPY chickens with soft thighs and breasts like pillows.

Boil the heck out of ’em in about four cups of water spiced with garlic powder, basil, parsley and dried soup greens.  Cook the chicken pieces until they really, really fall apart, probably about an hour or as long as it takes to have a nice nap.  Reserve the broth because you’ll add thingys to it later.

Slice up some carrots, celery, green onion, mushrooms, cabbage, zucchini, or anything else that strikes your fancy — except, of course, your fingers … or that chocolate bar that you’ve been hiding from the kids.  But go ahead, add the kitchen sink.  Who cares?  With this recipe, you’ll be half soused by the time you eat it anyway.  I try to use as many organic veggies as possible in this recipe.  Really.  I’d rather die from a freak encounter with a raccoon than be killed by my own soup.

Put all the veggies in your salad spinner, wash ’em down and then make them all whoo-whoo spinny, dizzy and screaming like you were in bed last night — but that’s another story entirely.

When the chicken’s done, shred it like you’d do that bad boy ex-husband of yours in court.  You know what I’m talkin’ about, girl.

Add into the pot a cup or two of some good organic chicken broth, your shredded chicken, the veggies, about a quarter cup of barley, half a package of noodles, salt and pepper to taste, and some chili powder for a bit of pow-zing.  I’d have added some dry white wine too, but I seem to have consumed it all.  Oops.  Silly me!

Cook it all for about as long as it takes to slug down a gin and tonic since the wine’s all gone.

When everything’s all soft and yummy, including your mood, spoon the soup into a bowl, add a garnish on the top and serve it to your hubby while wearing only a little French maid’s apron.

I guarantee you’ll have a great night … and your health with be better than ever!

Bon Appetit.

A few weeks ago, I came across this photo of my mother in a box filled with other such photos.  This one struck me, though.  This one seems the perfect summation of my mother and who she was.  She was Jackie-O, Lucille Ball, Keira Knightly, with a dab of Marilyn Monroe thrown in for good measure.   She was as comfortable in a ball gown as she was in chaps and boots.  She rode a horse to school and was the first of her family to graduate college.

She was a beauty!  She put up with my Dad, for God’s sake, usually with some comment like, “This too shall pass.”  She always offered him more than he deserved, he always responded with less than appropriate. Still, she’d just smile and say, “This too shall pass.”

Sometimes we’d have a special lunch with broccoli and little lamb chops and we’d sit at the table with our toes touching, our talk weaving light and laughter through it, like we were fashioning some intricate lace of what it was to be female.  She was a Republican, but I forgive her for that because that was before the Neo-cons.  She would have had a word or two about those folks, and it wouldn’t have been generous or gracious.  Or even lady-like.  She loved Goldwater, but refused to vote for him because he was, as she put it, “filled with the nonsense of war.”

She’s been gone a very long time.  Thirty-two years now.

She’s still here, though.  I catch a glimpse of her sometimes when I look sideways into a mirror.  She moves my tongue now and then with one of her pithy no-nonsense statements.  This too shall pass.  For God’s sake, don’t be a doormat for anyone.  These Republicans are gonna be the death of me yet.

She didn’t die of Republicanism, but because an undetected aortic aneurysm blew apart at 5:00 p.m. on the Friday before Mother’s Day.  I’d like to think, though, that were she alive today, she’d be a Momma for Obama and that the outspoken Joe Biden would be her hero.

I guess it’s okay that I’m a Democrat.  Mom would simply make us a special lunch of broccoli and little lamb chops and with her wry sense of humor, tell me, “This too shall pass.”

You forget.  It’s really a simple thing, this forgetting.  You do something, or think something, and moments later it’s gone.  Poof!  Gone.  Whole conversations are lost or changed or morphed into something entirely different from their original essence.

Take for instance the notion that I just spent half an hour constructing a lovely post, only to purposely wipe out the entire text with just a couple of keystrokes.  Control A, Delete.  It was that easy — and there’s no Oops! key in this software program.  No return.  No remembrance.  Just Gone Baby Gone.

I read once that in ancient days … when folks wrote their thoughts onto mashed up plant matter instead of The Internets … it was considered that our feelings and memories were kept in the stomach.  Questions and doubts were in the head.  The will was in the heart, the soul resided in the throat.  The Spirit was in the breath, mindfulness in the ears, observance in the eyes.

It all makes sense.  Especially the thing about memories in the stomach.  Already I don’t remember specifically what I spent a half hour writing, but I sure know the kick in the stomach feeling I had the moment after pressing delete.

I think great thoughtfulness must inhabit every sheet, every scroll of our ancient Papyrus writings.  By the time you harvested the plant, soaked it, smushed it, rolled it and dried it … you’d have a pretty good idea what you’d want to write on its surface.  Your inky words would spill onto your parchment and dry in the breeze.  They’d be stones of thought that would last a very long time before finally crumbling into dust.

Your words would be your strength.

I think we should write until we die.  On paper.  Every day.  Even if it’s nonsense and we forget how to form letters and our memories turn to pebbles in our stomachs.  Every day we should breathe our spirits onto paper.  Every day.

If we remember anything, may it be that for what we write now, it will one day be ancient thought.

The groomer called today with a reminder that Scarlett is overdue for a haircut.  I dunno.  I think she’s looking pretty classy.  Maybe just add a side-swept bang to add a hint of mystery — a bit of that come-hither naughtiness.

Of course, she’s been begging for a saucy little face-framing Dara Torres-style bob lately.  After all, they’re both fabulous swimmers, Scarlett reminds me.  Something that says, “I’m sporty and I know it,” she whines.   Gosh, it’s always so hard to decide on these things when it’s still August in Phoenix and our hair melts the minute we step outside anyway.  Do we go short and sassy, or stick with something that’s pony-tail versatile?  Such choices!

Well, I suppose it is time for a trip to the spa.  Besides, there’s nothing like a new do, a manicure, a pedicure and a nice whisker trim to make a girl feel like kicking up her paws.

What do you think?  Should we go for the bangs this time?

Hooray for the Happy Bunny Place.  Hooray and huzzah!

Toodlee-doot-tee-doo.  Happy Places for everyone.  Here’s a Happy Place for you … and one for you … and a grand one for you too.

Ah, to only make it that easy.  I talked on the phone with a friend today who’s going through a bit of a rough patch.  It’s that young mommy, waaay-too-much-on-the-plate thing that has flattened her to the wall and made her consider plucking her eyes out because the pain of it would help her think of something else.  She cried in my ear, great heaving, gulping sobs that gave her hiccups.  I didn’t know what to say.

Then I did a foolish thing.  I promised her that things would get better.  At least, I promised that in ten years, we would NOT be having this same conversation.  Of course, I didn’t mention that by then we’d be talking about her baby’s first bra or that our own boobs would be scraping our knees … or that we’d be trying to figure out why our ears and noses got larger the minute we entered our dotage.

I don’t know if I helped much, but by the end of our talk, she had stopped hiccuping and had moved on to something productive like pouring her second glass of chardonnay.

Yeah, that’s me — the Oprah of Happy Bunny Places.  And you get a Bunny Place … and you get a Bunny Place … and YOU get a Bunny Place!

I’m searching for a new hairdo.  One that will accentuate my beautiful eyes.  One that screams … “It’s Me and I’m Gorgeous!”  One that conversely is natural and humble.  One that DEFIES GRAVITY.

I’m taking this picture to my hairdresser tomorrow.

I’m done now with obsessing over the hair thing.  Yet one more (male) doctor confirmed this morning that I’m just gonna be a bald woman.  No big deal.  This doctor, however, tossed out the thought that a shorty hairdo might be attractive on me.  I give up on these doctor dudes who can look a terrified woman in the eye and tell her with all the matter-of-factness that it’s no big deal.  What hutzpa!

So, I’m done with the subject.  I guess being bald in the desert is not so awful.  Hey, maybe I’ll be cooler than my thick-haired sisters.

So, it’s on to brighter and more lovely ideas and notions.

The fan in my office has been squeaking lately.  Dan, my man, my hero, my fixer, changed it for me yesterday.  We found a suitable replacement at one of the big-box stores (we’ll talk later about big-boxes and why I think they were invented by Satan).  The new light/fan is lovely, stylish, and even has a remote.  A REMOTE!  I LOVE remotes.  They’re so … portable.  I can actually attach this one to my hip, as I did last night.  I thrust my hip toward my husband.  “Have you seen my remote?” I purred.

It was a good night last night.

In the dark, he can’t tell that I look like Cheetah.

I should be so lucky.  Chicken Hair!  Now, why didn’t I think of that?

Thanks to my dear friends and readers who were kind in their responses (please see previous post), uplifting, funny and generous.  Thank you all — and Yay —  HATS TO ALL!!!!

Each person who so kindly responded to my frantic plea will receive a free, all expenses paid, lovely DancingBirds.com baseball hat.  Suitable for those bad-hair days and perfect for Mall-walking or that early morning workout when you don’t want anyone to see your bed-head before you’ve showered.

I’ll send one out to Dave whose first-out-of-the-box response serves to remind me that acceptance begins with me.  One for Tom whose kindness is beyond measure.  One for Lisa whose concern made me laugh and cry and know that I’m missed when I spend a week dying on the couch.  (I’ll not brush my hair again without thinking of it as Chicken Feathers.)  Then, there’s one for each of Lisa’s dear girls who grew their hair for the sole purpose of donating it to others.  These are SPECIAL children.  Girls who’ve learned early on that the evidence of value lies in what we do for others … not what we GET from someone else.

In the meantime the hair saga goes on, but I have the image of a chicken now in my memory bank with feathers that any Dancing Bird would admire.  If only that chicken could teach me the Salsa … oh, life would be so complete.

It occurred to me this morning (as I was looking at yet another handful of falling hair) that among the three million women in America who are also currently losing their goldilocks (some as young as fifteen) and with more of us each day joining this elite club, there may be someone who has found some helpful remedy other than the abrupt notion of just cutting it all off and buying a wig.  Obviously, those in the wigged group don’t spend their summers sweating in Phoenix.  Not that I wouldn’t mind a couple of beautiful, I’d-never-guess-in-a-million-years, wiggy thing.  I’d not be opposed at all.  It’s just that wigs aren’t always compatible with 110 degrees and counting.

Also, my doctor’s pronouncement that because my father was bald, I’m also destined down that path just didn’t seem right.  It just didn’t seem like a correct analogy.  As the doctor told me his diagnosis, my head kept singing, “One of these things is not like the other.”  Now, don’t get me wrong.  If I’m gonna be a bald woman, so be it.  There are so many worse things in the world than fretting over being follically challenged.  Men deal with it handsomely, and there’s no reason women can’t as well.  I just felt I had received a dismissive and incomplete answer.

So, I wonder if someone else has walked away from a doctor’s appointment with that same nagging feeling of not having been fully informed?  I wonder if perhaps someone went on to find a lotion or potion or yoga pose that worked?  Maybe lighting some candles and saying a novena to the Saint of Falling Hair?  Maybe some veta-vita-vegamin that poofs up the hair and makes it all sticky so it doesn’t fall out of its little shaft?  Maybe some simple hugs and hand-holding until we each find our happy-bunny place of acceptance?  Something?  Anything?

I propose we gather all serious thoughts and publish them here on the website.  It’s all about helping one another succeed and doing so as gracefully as possible.  Hey, I’ll even send a lovely DancingBirds.com baseball hat to the most clever, least noxious suggestion.  So, pony up, ladies — and gentlemen too.  Let’s hear your remedies, your thoughts, even your admonitions to just suck it up and get over it.

Let’s see what we can do to help each other be the beautiful Dancing Birds we are … and perhaps learn a new step or two from someone else.

Anyone?

P.S.  I’ll leave this post up for a couple of days to give an opportunity for any and all passers-by to play.

After every meal, Wilson runs to Scarlett’s bowl to see if (oh, hope of hopes) she’s possibly missed something.  Some tidbit or morsel or lingering taste to run his tongue across.  Scarlett’s a master of bowl cleanliness, but nevertheless, Wilson runs to her bowl.  Every time.  This seven month-old puppy is a 55 pound, smiling, fur-flying box of hope.

I’ve not felt well lately.  For the past several days I’ve been under the weather, sleeping more than I’m awake, dreaming I have large hands squeezing around my chest.  Waking to some watery thought that I’ll be better tomorrow.  The couch is beginning to take on the shape of my shoulders, my hips, my indecipherable misery.  I’ve tried self diagnosis, starting with the usual benign things.  No fever, don’t have the scoots, no sniffles, no headache.  No fluish achy-breaky shivering under a quilt.  Nothing.  Just this crushing fatigue that sends me back to the couch over and over throughout the day.  Oh, and my hair’s falling out.  And I’m not much interested in my favorite consumables.

I think there’s something amiss.

Then I look at Wilson.  Smiling, wagging Wilson, off to check out Scarlett’s breakfast bowl the moment she pulls her head from it.  And he reminds me that there’s grand hope boxed up in each of us.  Okay, so what if I’m off my feed for a few days.  These things happen.  What’s important is that there’s this huge spark of hope that once I’m up and running again, I’ll quickly finish my new and improved synopsis, package it up with the first 50 and a nice cover letter and send it all off to some really nice agents I recently met.  Then I’ll run to the mailbox every day like Wilson runs to Scarlett’s bowl.  There may not be anything there, but looking is half the fun.

Thanks Wilson.  Thanks for reminding me that even if there isn’t a morsel in the bowl, it’s still worth that flying run to see for myself.

Stay well, everyone.  Stay hopeful.

Poor Miss Scarlett.  Tomorrah is anothah day.