- There are some New Year’s resolutions we need to let go of—things that are not worth our energy—like trying to be mistaken for Halle Berry in the make-up aisle of Target when one is 65 years old and has the figure of Whoopi Goldberg.
- On being a worry wart: No matter how organized a day, how strategically planned a goal, or how focused a vision—shit happens. Did you read about the guy in Tampa who was in his bed sleeping when a 100 ft wide and 50 ft deep sinkhole opened up and swallowed him whole? Just what did he do to piss off God? Consequently, I’ve been poking holes in and around my house ever since—checking for depressions in the soil to find any clues of a potential center of the Earth slip-n-slide to China! It doesn’t matter that I don’t live anywhere near Tampa—one can never be too careful when it comes to being obliterated.
- Life is a hop, skip, and a jump into eternity: one day you’re nineteen looking like “all that and a bag of chips,” and the next thing you know is that you’re in your sixties trying to figure out who let the air out of your lady lumps.
- I am discovering that money will come and it will go, things will always happen that we can’t control, and people will mess with our minds until our heads explode. But joy is what is eternal. It is attitudinal and no one—absolutely no one—can take that away from you.
- The Devil is not at all like everybody thinks he is. First of all, his name is Murphy (as in Murphy’s Law) and he hates me. I can’t categorically prove this, but I think he’s trying to set me up. I think he hates you too.
- On wearing flesh colored tights with a short top (in public) on a windy day: All of us (kings, queens, rich, poor, celebrities, and everyday peeps) are one exposed-ass event from disaster because we humans tend to believe our own press—“Girl, I am lookin’ good: I’ve got one fine-lookin’ ass even if I am 95 years old and 200 pounds!”
- Sometimes being underestimated is a great way to get away from the monsters that are hell-bent on destroying you.
- I can’t save anyone: that has been the hardest lesson to learn about being a parent and a slayer of monsters. Each person is responsible for the throw down of their own monsters.
- I personally don’t believe in love at first sight—that’s called lust. But I do believe that when in the midst of the worst temptation, hardship, or disappointment a couple says, “I choose you (over everything and everyone else), no matter what the cost – I CHOOSE YOU!” Then love rules – love wins!
- A person can have all kinds of ideas about how they think children should be reared, but until you are actually a parent, none of it is worth the paper it is written on because kids have a trump card called “free will.” When it comes to rearing kids, free will is a bitch!
- I wish I had had an “onboarding” course or interview before I made my debut on Earth. It may not have made my journey any easier knowing what to expect, but at least I wouldn’t have travelled through most of my life looking for a monster under every bed and in every closet.
- You know you deserve the WTF Award in life when: . . .you insist on buying sushi from the Mexican teenager at the second-rate grocery store on the corner (“because I love it so much!”) on a hot summer’s night, and you get parasites that take you eight months to get rid of.
- You know you deserve the WTF Award in life when: . . . you refuse to read directions about anything (be it “how to drive” to “how to work your new iPhone”) because your arrogant attitude about life is: “How hard can this shit be?”
- The poor choices you make in your teens can derail your life into your twenties, and the poor choices you make in your twenties can kick your ass until your forties, and Lord have mercy on the poor choices made in your forties, because they may just end your life.
- The ability to choose is the impetus of our greatest ambitions and our worst holocausts.
- I am discovering that there are human beacons in the past and present that illuminate our encumbered pathways to the fulfillment of our dreams. They show us by example how to “get over.” We just need to stop, listen, learn, and never, ever, ever, ever give up!
- I am discovering that our lives are a compilation of stories that sometimes we have little or no control over. But we do have choices. We can choose to hang tough with and for each other until we’re rescued from getting trapped in a fire swamp, or we can give up and die, and let someone else write our story.
- I am never, ever going to join the world of “The Twitter.” My mouth is too volatile. Just in trying to explain to a group of twenty-something friends of my daughter at a party why I wouldn’t engage with the little blue bird, I said: “I don’t tweet, I don’t twit, and I don’t “twat.’” No one has ever asked me to tweet anything again, and my daughter just now started showing her face in public.
- I am discovering that the core of a hero’s heart is love, and the single-most deterrent to becoming a hero is self-centeredness.
- I am discovering that “group think” is a bitch. Merriam-Webster says group think is “The practice of thinking or making decisions as a group in a way that discourages creativity or individual responsibility.” Word!