The Bad Scheisse Club

This morning I woke up thinking about Teresa Guidice. I worry about her, you know, only 3 months into her 15 month sentence. Thank the sweet baby Jesus and strangely enough, I see that she is on this week's cover of Us Weekly, so hopefully I will feel better after reading that. We will all feel better.

Teresa and I are in a club together now. And just the other day I had lunch with a friend I hadn't seen in maybe 6 years; she is in the club, too. It's a sucky club. A fucked up club, The Club of People Who Have Gone Through Some Bad Shit (Bad Shit Club for short). Our club cheer is a keening of sorts that can either sound like crying or laughing, depending on the day.

There is something calming, though, about talking to a fellow club member. You don't have to dodge well-intentioned looks of pity or stupid questions. Instead you look each other in the eye, shrug your shoulders and say things directly. There is the shared understanding that life is a total asshole sometimes, something that you may think you know but you can never fully know until Bad Shit happens (and even then I have a sense that I still don't really know, please god, spit over my shoulder twice).

I don't mean to sound elitest about this. I envy those not in the club. And for the most part I don't mind stupid questions or pity, so long as they are well-intentioned. Although the other day I was at the mall and there was a lady who would not stop staring at me. I very much wanted to walk over to her calmly, place one hand on her arm and say quietly, tag, you're it. I'm not going to tell you what, I'm not going to tell you when. But you're next... 

But I didn't, of course, because that would have been mean/evil and probably against club rules.

Instead I went home and gardened. And by "garden" I mean I planted succulents in a container on my deck high up where no animals could have been in the soil because air-borne pathogens et al. Even then I wore gloves and a mask because I am not supposed to garden for a year. This is what gardening looks like now, although not pictured: the guilt and fear I have for gardening at all when I am not supposed to, I do love me some rules...

Dead ringer for Susan Powter, no?
I am also not supposed to swim for a year, not in pools or the ocean, or play in the sand. It's going to be one long, hot dry summer, let me tell you. This is what going to the beach looks like now, taken this past weekend, though truth be told this is probably what going to the beach should have always looked like, i.e. the sun damage on my chest, oy.

All this to say that I do still worry about Teresa. She's still in it, the clink, yeah, but more than that, in it. And I am out. Ish. For the most part free, though with restrictions to gardening, swimming, no mani/pedis for a year, no sushi, no raw anything, no probiotics, no, no, no. Despite all those Amy Winehouse nos, more and more my club cheer is one of laughter. Dark, maniacal, sometimes, but still. Laughter.

Keep going, Tre. You'll get there.
Off to buy my Us Weekly.

xo,
S