Lennon and McCartney



Paul McCartney (left) & John Lennon (right)

Ouch!  It's Monday morning and you had a great weekend, a busy weekend full of fun, and now, all of a sudden, you're back at work.

Work?  How did that happen?  Don't worry.  You're not alone.  Michele Woodward knows how you feel and she's here to give you a jump start and get you going again.

A work colleague told me about Michele and I went and checked out her website (http://www.lifeframeworks.com/) and the blog she writes for Psychology Today called Getting Unstuck.  Her straightforward writing style style and her down-to-earth message about abandoning the idea of perfection is timely and refreshing.  Not that I am seeking perfection, but there is this idea out there in the American psyche that we can do it all and have it all when in reality we can't.  Something in our lives always has to be compromised in order to do something else.  It's just a fact.

There's no theory here.  Michele know this because she's a divorced Mom.   She's a real person, facing real challenges, like a real adult with responsibilities.

The following link will take you to a column of hers about John Lennon and Paul McCartney that jumped out for me right away and I hope you like it too:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/getting-unstuck/201105/the-college-lennon-mccartney



A Wedding Shower

Two gleaming, freshly polished silver tea sets sit in my house right now in anticipation of my niece's bridal shower this Sunday.  Originally, the sets belonged to my grandmothers and each set is as different as the woman who owned them.  They now belong to my Mom and she generously agreed to let me borrow them for this special family event. 

I loved both of my grandmothers, Nana and Gammy, and it's a tender feeling to see the tea sets resting in their new and temporary locations.  I knew my Mom's mother very well and have lots of wonderful, warm memories of her but I didn't get a chance to know my Dad's mother the same way since she died when I was very young.  I do have some special memories of her and her home but mostly I know her through family stories.  I often think about the way they lead their lives and know that they both were unusual women.

Besides the tea sets, I'm also using a crystal punch bowl that also belonged to my Dad's mother.  My sister brought it to my house and our Dad joked about handling such a treasured family heirloom by saying, "If you break it (the crystal bowl), you're out of the will!"  We both laughed because we knew that would never happen!

I can picture each of my grandmothers using their tea sets and I know they would love that the sets are part of the upcoming bridal shower.  For sure, they will be with us and we'll tell lots of stories about them during the party.  As my niece begins a new chapter in her life, another generation will come to know their family history while also adding to it.

It's been a lot of work but now it's time to have fun and celebrate!!

Online Chatting

Courtesy of Good Magazine

You're online and you decide to chat.  It's a normal, casual thing that lots of people regularly do.  It saves time and money and you don't think too much about what you're saying to the other person except that you keep it brief.

Blah, blah, blah.....blah, blah, blah.

Yet is online chatting really as casual as you think?  It's popular now for people to save their chat records just as they save copies of their email correspondence or a voice message left on an answering machine. This is a new concept for me because I have no idea how you would save an online chat.

When I think of chat records or transcripts I think of police sitting around and reading out loud the chats of people involved in criminal behavior.  Or people using chat records as evidence in a trial.  Other than those instances, a chat record is a unique animal to me.  Once I'm done typing and chatting, the chat is over.  I'm done and it's out of my head.  

But now you can add chat records to the list of momentos people hold near and dear.

In the Fall 2011 issue of Good magazine, author Rebecca Armendariz discusses and publishes portions of the online chats she had with her boyfriend, Clark, as he was diagnosed with metastatic melanoma, his surgeries, his chemotherapy and his weeks of hospice care.  Their insightful chats reflect two people moving through the different stages of physically and emotionally fighting cancer and their determination to keep their daily lives as normal as possible.

Even today, she says, many years after his death, she will type his email address into her computer's search box just to see what will appear.

"The ease of our everyday interactions is what kills me," Armendariz writes.  "The way we spoke to each other about what I'd bring home for dinner or whether it was a PBR or a Grolsch kind of night."

I would imagine that going back and reading a chat transcript that you had with a loved one could have the same effect as a song, transporting you to that moment in time when the chat took place and reminding you how you felt about the person on that day; a snapshot of the words and phrases you would use with each other.

Here is the link to Rebecca Armendariz's story in the Fall 2011 issue of Good Magazine:

http://www.good.is/post/chat-history/

And the Winner Is...A Monday Laugh

Tina Fey (left) and Amy Poehler (right)

Amy Poehler broke new ground at the Emmy ceremony last night and I hope you saw it.  I loved watching as the nominees for lead actress in a comedy series were read.  Amy's name was first and she immediately jumped out of her chair, ran to the stage and then stayed there.  Nobody knew what she was doing but they knew it was going to be funny.

Then as the rest of the category's nominee's names were read -- Tina Fey, Martha Plimpton, Melissa McCarthy, Edie Falco and Laura Linney -- each one also ran up on the stage and joined Poehler.  Holding hands and looking at each other nervously as they waited for the winner's name to be announced, people were laughing and clapping before they knew who had won.  Melissa McCarthy won and it was a riot.

Amy Poehler and Tina Fey are always the best!!! My son reminded me about the hysterical Saturday Night Live sketch they did on Hillary Clinton.  Maybe it will make your Monday a little more tolerable by making you laugh...or at least smile as you face a new week.  Here's the clip:

http://videosift.com/video/SNL-Tina-Fey-on-Hillary-Clinton-Bitch-Is-The-New-Black

It's a Dot Com!

YEAH!! I finally figured it out!

Cry, Laugh, Heal is now a dot com!

I am so happy to announce that my Baby Blog has matured and become an Adult Dot Com!

To my wonderful, fantastic readers who give me great feedback and support, I thank you so much!!!!!!!!

Now you can type in http://www.crylaughheal.com/ and you will arrive at the same blog that you have been enthusiastically supporting for the last 10 months.

Please continue to pass around the link and tell friends and family to "like" the Cry, Laugh, Heal Facebook page.

MANY THANKS!!!!

Stress-O-Rama



Courtesy of Ben & Jerry's


A million things are jumbling around in my brain today and I am trying to follow my own advice about being what a good friend of mine calls "a little stressy":

Breathe

Eat Well

Exercise

Get Sleep

Rest

Take it step-by-step

Break the work into 10 minute increments

Breathe

Righttttttttttt.....What I really want to do is eat a pint of Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream or a whole bag of Ruffles potato chips.  Now that would really do the trick!!

Michelle Williams Now

Actress Michelle Williams is healing.

By setting her own pace and allowing herself to feel the pain and imbalance of grieving, Williams has found new strength, new energy and hope as she takes on the complex role of Marilyn Monroe. 

In a new interview with Vogue magazine, Williams talks about the 2008 death of actor and ex-boyfriend Heath Ledger as a deep loss that continues to affect her outlook on life, changing her as a parent, a friend and as an actress. 

But with the passage of time, she is rebuilding her life, adapting to her new reality and gaining more control over her emotions.  To her surprise, three years later, "My life has kind of repaired itself," she told Vogue.

Previously,  the few times that she spoke in public about Ledger's death, she talked about the need for privacy in raising their daughter, Matilda, and how difficult it was to fit the pieces of her life back together.

Interviewed by ABC's Nightline last year, she said this about the first year of grieving: "In a strange way I miss that year, because all those possibilities that existed then are gone.  It didn't seem unlikely to me that he could walk through a door or could appear from behind a bush.  It was a year of very magical thinking and in some ways I'm sad to be moving further and further from that."

Here is the New York Daily News story about Williams containing a link to a Vogue picture gallery:

 Michelle Williams talks to Vogue on life after Heath Ledger: 'My life has kind of repaired itself'

BY Adam Rathe
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS WRITER

Tuesday, September 13th 2011, 11:01 AM

Annie Leibovitz/Vogue

Michelle Williams spoke to Vogue about playing Marilyn Monroe and life after Heath Ledger.

Michelle Williams is moving on the best way she knows how.

The actress, 31, graces the cover of the October issue of Vogue and opened up to the magazine about playing Marilyn Monroe, raising her daughter Matilda, 6, and life after Heath Ledger.

"Three years ago, it felt like we didn't have anything, and now my life -- our life -- has kind of repaired itself," said Williams, whose "My Week With Marilyn" opened at the New York Film Festival Tuesday morning.
Ledger died from an accidental drug overdose at age 29 in Jan. 2008, leaving his ex and their daughter behind. The loss, Williams said, has influenced part of her life ever since.



"It's changed how I see the world and how I interact on a daily basis. It's changed the parent I am. It's changed the friend I am. It's changed the kind of work that I really want to do."

With "Marilyn," Williams seems to have found a role that fits her new criteria. She's long admired Monroe and the part gave her an opportunity to sink her teeth into a character she cared for and play a glamorous bombshell at the very same time.

"I've started to believe that you get the piece of material that you were ready for," she said.

"As soon as I finished the script, I knew that I wanted to do it, and then I spent six months trying to talk myself out of it," she said. "But I always knew that I never really had a choice."