My “Go Beige” Moment

I remember reading an article about Sophia Loren years ago. She (at that time) only ever wore 1 lipstick colour. It was called “Go Beige”. And when she found out it was going to be discontinued, she bought up all the remaining stock and kept it in a cooler so that she would never run out of it.

I remember thinking at the time how boring that was. I loved (and to a certain extent still do) playing with makeup and to have only 1 shade of lipstick to use seemed so limiting – so like my mother’s style of making up to go out when I was a kid: red lipstick, powder, mascara…DONE! (Ladies did not wear much else in the makeup department, back then. Not if they were “ladies”.) Her makeup collection could fit in the palm of my hand. Whereas mine takes up most of a very large and deep drawer.

I possess probably way more lipstick colours than I should, considering that I usually only apply it once a day (just before I head out to work, if I think of it) and then switch to Burt’s Bees lip balm for the rest of the day.

Yet what can I say? One is always on the lookout for the perfect-er shade of red or pink or wine or pinky-mauve or browny-pink or….

For the past 4+ years (a record for cosmetically-fickle me), this is the one lip colour I have returned to, again and again:

I wish it had a cool name like Go Beige but alas, it is just good ol’ 104.

It’s not an expensive brand of lipstick. Rimmel can be found in just about any drugstore. This colour is just the perfect matte-ish warm rose that goes well with my skin tone no matter how much or little sun I’ve been getting or what clothes I’m wearing. It’s like my natural lip colour on steroids. You might as well call it my Go Beige colour.

I was at the drug store on the weekend and happened to notice that my already inexpensive little friend was on sale. So I picked up a tube, thinking it would be good to have another on hand just in case Rimmel ever decides to discontinue (horrors!!!) this line and this colour.

I threw it in the drawer in the vanity for a couple of days, but then thought about what Sophia did and decided to move it to the fridge because it might be a year months before I have to replace my current one and it couldn’t hurt to keep it cool.

This is what I found when I opened the seldom-glanced-at top compartment on the fridge door that I wanted to store the lipstick in:

Huh! Looks like I already squirreled an extra 104 in there, at some point. Plus a partially consumed bar of chocolate I received at my MBA grad, back in June 2016.

So now I have 2 backup lipsticks. And some old chocolate. (Don’t even ask me about the Lindt bars underneath the Athabasca bar either. They have to be at least as old.)

I’m thinking there is a high probability that there will be a 104 #3 to join 1 and 2 in the fridge someday, as once again I will see it on sale and think: Hmmm, I should pick up “a” backup, just in case.

And let’s not kid ourselves – when I finally do run out of my current tube, I won’t remember what’s in the fridge. I’ll just go to the drugstore and pick up another one up.

Sometimes I find myself and the things I do unintentionally hilarious. This is one of them.

Anybody else do stuff like this? Please?

Rock on,

The WB

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This is Getting Old

The new email subscription widget I oh-so hopefully installed yesterday doesn’t work so I’ve removed it.

I tried subscribing with various emails (personal, work, theWB@widowbadass.com)…got an error message with each one when I clicked on the link to confirm my subscription. Shit.

Spent about an hour trying to figure out the problem with no success and finally decided it is not to be, for whatever reason. At least not for today. So the offending widget has been plucked, once again!

My old subscription widget (Feedburner) is still sending out emails with blog posts despite being inactivated AND deleted, so please unsubscribe (click link in email) if you receive one.

I sure hope Jetpack isn’t lying when they say people will be offered to subscribe to the blog through the comments. If someone could try it out and let me know if it actually works, that would be great.

This is all I have for today – I have to move on to other necessities of life, like grocery shopping and trying to catch up on the work backlog. See you on the blog tomorrow!

Rock on,

The WB

If Thine Widget Offends Thee, Pluck It Out*

As (insert deity of your choice) is my witness, I will figure this blog thing out!

*From the scriptures of the little known Clueless Blogger’s Bible….that I just might write someday.

So, thanks to a comment from Joanne, the WHITE SCREEN OF DEATH commenting problem related to ye olde blogge might be because of an email subscription widget that I have been using since FOREVAH.

So I have ditched it and instead activated the subscription feature that is inside of Jetpack. I have also enabled a “follow” option for commenters.  I am having difficulty testing it out because my blog already knows (and hopefully loves) me. Although I did test out commenting from outside the blog and it worked – several times! Hoorah!!!!

But because ye olde blogge knows who I am, it is not offering me the “follow blog” or “follow comments” options so I am not sure if they are even there or working.

If someone wouldn’t mind trying to comment and letting me know if they see these options or not, this clueless blogger would be most appreciative.

Rock on,

The WB

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Commenting on Ye Olde Blogge – A Public Service Announcement

Around the time of April’s A to Z blogging challenge, I learned that a subset of the few people that actually read my blog – the commenters – couldn’t. I started having replying troubles around the same time. If you go back to my posts during that challenge, you can see all my little updates and PSAs as I worked through the problem. Spoiler: Unsuccessfully.

If I replied to someone from within ye olde blogge –  through the WordPress dashboard – no problem. If I tried to reply directly from the page, I usually got the WHITE SCREEN OF DEATH. And my oh-so-carefully crafted and witty response had gone into the ether like mist on a July morning, just like it did for my commenters. GRRRRRRRRRR.

So I tried researching this problem through the good ol’ Interweb and came up with squat. Then I called Bluehost and Mr. Bluehost had no problem commenting on ye olde blogge no matter what web browser was employed. But of course you did. So no solutions found there.

This problem was so bad I wasn’t even getting spam anymore, and I complained about it to Mr. Bluehost and I think this gave him the laugh of his day if not his week.

I tried everything I could think of. I changed themes. I installed plugins. I removed plugins. I swore. I drank. I shook my tiny fist of rage at the screen. Then I begged its forgiveness. I burned incense and meditated on the problem. I laid offerings in front of the iMac. Nothing worked.

Fast forward to now – I AM back to getting spam again. Hoorah, I think?

So I thought the problem was fixed. But some other bloggers have been telling me it is still there.

So I reached out to Joanne of My Live Lived Full, who seems to have found a work-around. This is what she does, to successfully comment without triggering the WHITE SCREEN OF DEATH:

What I have learned is:
1) if I see that my info has not auto filled in the comment section (i.e. my blog name, email address etc), I know that my comment will not post and I’ll get the white screen.  If I manually enter the data, the comment will not post.
 2) my work around is that I will return to your home page and then reopen the post from your home page.  It seems that every time I do that, my data will then auto fill and I can comment without issue.
I am sorry, dear Readers/Potential Commenters of Ye Olde Blogge, that I don’t have anything more to offer than this. And thank you Joanne, for sharing the secret to your commenting success.
I am contemplating moving to a paid theme at some point, in hopes problems like these will be non-existent, or at least fixable. And then I can access some support when these things arise, amiright?
Who uses a paid theme? I’d love to discuss this with you. Please leave me a comment shoot me an email.
Rock on,
The WB
P.S. And now I can’t seem to get the paragraph spacing to work after I inserted Joanne’s workaround notes so the bottom part of my post is all scrunched together. Fuck it, I gotta go to work. Sorry.

Misery DOES Love Company

Looks something like this, I’m sure

I am backlogged at work. And I seem to have a new project or problem to solve opportunity dumped on me every day lately. I love challenge and solving problems investigating opportunities but even I have my limits.

And I hate the feeling of being reactive instead of proactive; of not being able to meet deadlines; of being so busy that items fall off of my radar at work. Of racing the clock to be ready in time for a meeting or a conference call. This is what I am feeling right now. I hope it passes soon.

My boss called me yesterday to book a meeting to get started on my performance contract for this fiscal year, which we are already over a month into. Ideally, this should have been all wrapped up well before now. I have not had a chance to even start drafting this document. So I apologized to him and made a rueful remark about barely treading water at the moment.

He said – Well, if it makes you feel any better, I feel the same way. In fact all of us over here* feel the same way.

I said – Strangely enough, I actually DO feel better hearing this!

Then we both laughed and made a date to meet on Thursday to start hammering away at the details.

Rock on,

The WB

*meaning the rest of the Leadership Team at the Head Office (which is a different location from where I work)

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The Vipassana Dream is Reawakened

You know how sometimes you come across a thought or an idea and it’s something you became intensely interested in at one point but then completely forgot about and now you are even more enamoured of it and you wonder how you could have ever let it drop in the first place? Yeah? Me too.

A couple of years ago, my then massage therapist told me of a silent meditation retreat about 2 hours north of Chez Badass, called Vipassana. I was intrigued and looked it up. And I kept returning to the site and tried to imagine partaking.

  1. 10 days without speaking
  2. 10 days of eating only 2 vegetarian meals per day
  3. 10 days without reading or writing or being connected to the web
  4. 10 days of being alone with your thoughts

Number 3 freaked me out the most, I will confess – followed closely by Number 2. For whatever reason(s) – probably because I was neck-deep in home renovations and MBA shit at the time – I dropped the idea and it was forgotten.

Fast forward to today: I am in the middle of reading an excellent book, called Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Enlightenment, by Robert Wright. (You had me at science, Bob.)

And guess what, ol’ Bob here is all about the Vipassana Retreat! The dream has been re-awakened!

I’m no longer as concerned about items 2 and 3. I think I can handle it, she writes with more confidence than she actually feels.

I have added another concern to the list, though:

5. 10 days of sitting on a cushion on the floor for hours at a time.

Last night I tried meditating – cross-legged on my bed – for five – only five – minutes, and my body complained LOUDLY the whole damn time. Who knew you had to get into shape to sit still? Hehehehe.

Realizing my Vipassana dream is still a few years away, I have decided. I don’t think it is something I will apply for before retirement from work. But I know now that it is something I WILL do.

Rock on,

The WB

 

Learning to Love Uncomfortable Feelings

November and December haven’t been happy months for me, for a few years now. Traumatic things have happened. I have lost a lot of people (including a special fur person) lately – and not just in November and December, although that is when their absence is most keenly felt. Every year lately at this time my spirits take a dive as I can’t seem to help reliving the past and the ghosts of all those feelings come back for an extended visit.

And it really doesn’t help that the rest of North America (at least according to what is blasted all over the media) goes into Holiday-crazy overdrive right after Halloween with a non-stop blitz of over-spending/over-eating/over-scheduling/over-everything until it seems like everyone is looking forward to having a magical time of it and I’m the only one that just can’t catch that buzz.

No matter how hard I try to fake it till I make it, I just don’t make it…anymore. I used to, though. I wasn’t born a bah-humbug. I was  a certifiable Christmas freak in my younger days, before life beat the snot outta me over and over again.

At this time of year I do grieve the loss of my former joyful Christmas-anticipating self on top of everything/everyone else I am grieving.  I’m not normally down so I’m not very good at dealing with myself when I am. It makes me uncomfortable.

Then a link to this post arrived in my Inbox today: In Love with the Heartbreaking Beauty of Discomfort. 

Life is hard, dammit. And beautiful. And it is a privilege to have known and loved and lost souls and then to grieve them.

I’m gonna get back into a meditation practice and let my thoughts and feelings bubble up as I know they’re gonna do when I try to quiet my mind. And I’m going to notice and acknowledge them and practice gratitude for the heartbreaking beauty of this experience.

Thank you Leo of Zen Habits. Thank you Discomfort. Thank you Life.

Rock on,

The WB

How the Widow Badass Came to Be

When Joanne and I were hiking last weekend, she asked me how I came up with the name for my blog. I then realized that I have never fully explained it, although I briefly touch on this on my About the Widow page.

The Widow Badass was born when my husband died – in the first few minutes of November 14, 2013. She had been conceived in the doctor’s office where we received his diagnosis of lung cancer, a mere 6 months earlier.

My grieving started at that moment of conception, and also my oh-so practical (this sounds so cold, but it’s true) planning for my future without him.

I was working full-time, AND pursuing my MBA online (as was he), at the time of his diagnosis. Due to his insistence, I kept working and studying. He was too weak to work, but he kept studying also. We weren’t supposed to let the cancer “win” by giving these things up.

I fully supported him throughout the course of his disease. I researched cancer relentlessly; went to every appointment and treatment; sat vigil in every hospital room; shopped and cooked and worked and studied and cared and cried and prayed; and then got up after a few hours rest and did it all again.

During my quiet moments in hospital rooms I thought about and planned my future without him. I knew I would have a huge mess to clean up once he was gone. His OCD-fuelled hoarding had managed to fill up the large building that he owned for the past 20 years, and had spilled into the residence that I owned.

Listening to the hum of the ICU equipment, I estimated it would take me a solid year of working at it every night and weekend just to empty his building of the accumulation of garbage that was his hoard (the last room was emptied just a few week’s shy of a year later).

Drinking my lukewarm Tim Horton’s tea while my husband slept, I decided I would move into his building and erase the 20 years of his neglect at great cost to make it my own (I did).

Watching the nurses take his vitals, I knew it would take a few months to clean up my property enough to make it presentable to sell but I would do that first, then move and start cleaning up all over again (done, and done).

Pacing the hallways, I vowed that at some point during all this I would complete my damn MBA (damn straight, I did).

And so it all happened. The Widow Badass made it all happen. She was/is that aspect of myself that took over and got shit done. And she had no time or patience for anybody’s bullshit. She was all: blinders on, full speed ahead and let’s deal with the wreckage later when the dust settles.

What I didn’t plan for was finding out about my husband’s unfaithfulness to me during the clean-up process, a couple of months after he died. Finding print-outs of emails between him and another woman shook my entire world-view of what I thought my life with him had been about.

But that didn’t stop the Widow Badass. Oh no. She mined the knowledge of that 18 month-long affair like it was diamonds buried in a refuse heap. She used that hurt and rage to further fuel the mission to create a new life.

So now the Widow Badass is here and here to stay. Long may she reign.

Rock on,

The WB

 

 

 

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#MeToo

I’ve had my breasts squeezed and my ass grabbed.

I’ve been grabbed by the actual pussy as I was walking down the hall in high school. The guy (an acquaintance) behind me reached between my legs and grabbed me and tried frantically rubbing my genitals (through my blue jeans), without any warning or hint of what he was about to do. I was so stunned I couldn’t speak for about half an hour as I processed what just happened to me. Then I confronted him and let him have it. Well you didn’t say anything so I thought you liked it, he sputtered as I raged at him. I hope I made such an impression on him that he never tried that again with another woman.

I’ve been threatened with sexual violence. I’ve been chased. I’ve been stalked. I’ve been harassed. I’ve been catcalled too many times to remember.

I had a guy angrily accuse me of lying about a boyfriend when I turned him down for date. He made a scene at my workplace where this encounter happened. Oh yeah, he sneered, so where’s your ring then? (I did have a boyfriend at the time but even if I didn’t I knew it was more palatable to say that you did than to turn down a guy outright. In the male mind, you were then off-limits because you were someone else’s “property” and that was acceptable whereas being refused was not.)

I’ve had more than 1 guy suddenly force his lips on mine, without invitation or warning.

When I was 16 another teenage boy attempted to rape me at a campfire. I had made friends with a gentle guy who often visited the beachfront restaurant where I worked that summer. One day close to the end of the season he invited me to join his group of friends for their nightly campfire. I asked if there would be other girls there as well and was assured there would be. So I went. And there were other girls there. A big blond guy (the group’s “leader”, I realized) sat next to me, and the guy I was friends with moved across the fire from me. At some point I looked up from the fire and realized everyone had silently vanished, leaving me alone with the big blond. Immediately I said I had to leave and asked him to point me in the direction back to my parents’ trailer at our campground. Instead he proceeded to pin me to the ground and started slobbering all over my protesting mouth. He then threw his heavy body on top of mine with such force that I vomited. This changed his mind and I was allowed to get up and leave. I realized afterwards that I was set up and the whole encounter was premeditated by the big blond in collusion with everyone else there. I never saw my so-called friend again at the restaurant. I told no one because I knew I would be blamed for this happening to me.

Once back in the early 80’s, when I complained to a friend’s father about all the catcalling I received when I waited for them on the street to pick me up to take me to university, he countered by saying if I didn’t want the attention why did I bother to dress attractively, comb my hair and wear makeup? Really? I said, Just so you know, even in the dead of winter when I stand on the sidewalk wearing no makeup and my oversized duffel coat that makes me look like a small red refrigerator I am still catcalled and honked at! Just what the hell am I supposed to wear to avoid “attention” as you call it??? There was no answer.

I just hate that no matter what we do or don’t do, say or don’t say, wear or don’t wear there are people who make sexual violence or harassment the fault of the victim, not the perpetrator. It was true when I was growing up and it is still true today. People’s attitudes haven’t changed that much. Not really.

And don’t even get me started on the bullshit attitudes and comments I had to put up with from male police officers when my ex was stalking me. I had to endure months of fear and harassment (and police inaction) before I finally connected with a female officer who immediately made a restraining order happen. Not that it helped, much…but that is another story.

We still talk about women who have been raped rather than men who have raped women. We still talk about harassment of women rather than the men who harass women. We still don’t believe the women who are brave enough to come forward.

Well, here’s me saying ME FUCKING TOO.

Rock on,

The WB

79% Shiksa. 21% Chosen People. Still Badass.

Well, colour me verklempt!

For a couple of reasons – first, it’s been now a year and two days since my last TIA  and I have been symptom-free ever since – hoorah!

Second, I did a DNA test with Ancestry.ca and my results bear credence to a family mystery. Behold:

Where I came from

Who my mother’s father was (is?) has always been unknown, at least to my mother and her siblings. My Oma didn’t talk about it. But the family story goes like this: my Oma was in love (and pregnant by) a Jewish man – they wanted to get married but because my Oma was not of the age of consent (21, in the Netherlands back then) she couldn’t marry without her parents’ permission. And that was not granted by her Christian Reformed family. I guess having a child outside of marriage (and preventing my mom from having a dad in her life) was less sinful than marrying outside of the faith?!?

Sheesh, is it any wonder I have such a dim view of religion? My mom was whispered about, shunned, and rejected by people because she was born out of wedlock – as if she had anything to do with the circumstances of her existence!!!

After having to confess her transgression(s) to the church elders, my Oma was sent to Rotterdam, to bear her “sin”…and my mother (product of aforementioned “sin”) was born in 1936 in a Salvation Army home for unwed mothers. That was the story. Then later, I was told the story wasn’t exactly true. Mom’s dad now wasn’t Jewish – he just refused to convert to Oma’s family religion.

However, thanks to Ancestry DNA, it seems that the original story was the truth! Mom would have inherited half of her dad’s genes and I have inherited half of Mom’s genes. So given the randomness of DNA mixing, I could be up to 25% Jewish in heritage. The math works.

However, I can’t call myself Jewish because to be born a Jew you have to have a Jewish mother. The dad doesn’t count. This is explained here. I am sure Hitler would have disagreed so perhaps that is why there were conflicting stories floating around about my mystery Opa –  to protect my mom from being picked up during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands?

My dad and his cousin did some digging of their own years and years ago (both are gone now), and said they located the man. He was working in (and possibly owned) a pub in Scheveningen (?), and I also heard his last name was De Jong. My mom did not want to proceed any further because she didn’t want to disrupt his life and the life of his family after all these years, with the sudden appearance of a “bastard” child. Which I disagreed with, but it was not my decision to make. I suspect that she just couldn’t face the possibility of even more rejection, even this late in her life – so who can blame her for that?

Now I am hoping, through Ancestry, to finally find out who the mystery Opa is, or could be. According to the website, they have other members who are distant relatives of mine – 4th cousins – who are Jewish people – who I have never ever heard of and are not connected to the family tree I am building (yet!).

I have to work up the nerve to contact them and see if they can help solve the mystery of the missing Opa. Surely after all this time has passed it will no longer be so scandalous?

Rock on,

The WB

 

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