Mary J. Blige said it best, "No more drama."

This month, in honor of International Women’s Day, #DearMe is encouraging women to reach out (and back) to our younger selves with some good advice. With that…

Dear fifteen year old mkromd – Do not get that perm. Contrary to what you think, it will not change your life. In fact, it will cause more problems than it solves, and your family will photographically document all of them.

Dear twenty year old mkromd – Spoiler alert, you do not go to law school, and that’s OK, because you eventually learn that Woody Allen was right, yet again: The problem with attorney jokes is that lawyers don’t think they’re funny, and no one else thinks they’re jokes.

Dear twenty-five year old mkromd – Listen to me, this is the ONLY YEAR OF YOUR LIFE THAT YOU WILL ROCK A BATHING SUIT. Go put one on now, and wear it all day, every day until your next birthday; but don’t take photos, just in case you’re wrong... In my older self’s defense, you make loads of bad choices at this age. Inventing selfies could be one of them.

Dear thirty year old mkromd – Well done you, you learn that, “Everything matches black, especially black,” and your wardrobe is forever changed. This simple fact alone helps you dodge the whole, “Pink is the new black” bullet of 2001. Because, note to self, color of any kind makes you look like the Easter Bunny on acid. If you don’t believe me, just look at pictures of the fifteen year old you ... the one with the perm. She's wearing pastels. Seriously, God should have smited her on the way to her first day of high school for that look. That he didn't kind-of makes me believe he owes an apology to the 24,000 people he killed for complaining about their bread (Numbers 21:4-9). Also, clearly you haven't yet repressed the eight years of theology you had in grade school.

Dear thirty-five year old mkromd – This is the hardest year of your life. Your entire world gets shattered, and it may not make you stronger, but it doesn’t kill you either. Also, fuck him. You are not perfect, but you are not your flaws, and anyone who treats you like you are, doesn’t deserve you. You have played that game long enough; and, to quote the late, great Nora Ephron, “It’s time to be the heroine of your life, not the victim.” PS: Really, fuck him. And, not to spoil the ending, but everything ends up OK, even if you don’t believe me right now.

Dear forty year old mkromd – You learn a simple truth that you should have learned decades ago, “Very few people let the truth get in the way of a good story.” With that, two things: One, be grateful that you spent four decades on this planet and only had to learn that now. Two, take your mother’s advice, “Don’t jump off the high road. Even if they aren’t better than that, you are.”

And finally, from my forty-three year old self to my older self – I don’t know how any of it ultimately plays out, but I hope it makes for one hell of a good laugh. And now, I’m off to Appalachia for my mom’s birthday, then Winter Park for our annual ski trip. I mean really, how bad could it be? Talk to you later.

Chasing Amy… A comedy that tells it like it feels.

Happy 2013! I’m pleased to announce that during this year’s Hooray for Heifer Drive, thanks to your comments, I:

• Met a bunch of wonderful people all over the world and got to read their blogs.
• Learned that there is a LOT of passion out there for goats… but not in an odd or hot way.
• Was able to donate $35.00 to a really great organization.

So thank you… all of you. After the chaos of 2012, humanity needed a little push in the right direction, and – to quote one of my favorite songs of all times, I Still Believe, by Frank Turner, maybe “something so simple could save us all.”

With that, I have some other good news to share. Earlier this month, I got an e-mail from a friend who said that she had just gotten published and that her book is now available on Amazon. And, although I genuinely want to tell you to go buy it, I can’t, because, if you knew her name, it’d be too easy to get mine. And – in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a huge fan of anonymity. I mean sure, while most of the people who read mkromd know me, some of you don’t. Some of you are visitors. And, to quote the lovely and talented actor, writer, and director, Kevin Smith, “I'm a big fan of anonymous visitors… especially the kind that makes coffee in the morning before they leave!” But I digress.

The point is that, all jokes aside, I began to wonder if I’ll ever become a real writer. Don’t get me wrong. I think Woody Allen is right, “I like writing. It keeps my mind off grim subjects. It's therapeutic in the same way a patient in an institution is given finger-paints.” But it’d be great to do it for a living, too. Also, for the record, don’t judge. I fully understand that focusing on my own agenda instead of celebrating my friend’s success makes me a bad person, but I think we’ve already established that I’m as shallow and competitive as a drag queen. I’m just not as fierce or as focused. If I were, I’d already be published.

Anyway… disclaimers disclaimed, my New Year’s Resolution is to give it a go. I’ve found a writing coach and am sending my manuscript to her for a full review. When I asked her to be gentle but firm, she said she’d “treat me like a proctologist who has abnormally large fingers.” Yes. Really. At the risk of over-sharing, I have to be honest, the second I read that I knew she was the right coach for me.

She also made me do some research to make sure that I really understood what this would entail… because if I didn’t, it would be nothing more than, “an expensive, time-consuming exercise in futility which was bound to end in nothing but misery and disappointment for every party involved.” Did I mention that her Pollyannaism is extremely contagious? Cause it is. At any rate,  as I started looking for information online, I stumbled across article after article about Amy Einhorn, who has published books like “The Help” and “Let’s Pretend this Never Happened.” They she has an “almost mystical editorial instinct,” and – in the spirit of full disclosure, I’ve read several of the writers she’s discovered. The people who say that about her are right. Each one of those books was excellent. Note: It should also be said that, after finishing the hundredth or so article, I felt the need to clean my Internet history… just in case somebody steals my laptop, goes through it, and thinks I’m some crazy stalker-chick. You laugh, but years ago, at another company, I left my PC in a conference room and someone hit the Back button in my Browser toolbar. No lie, it went to the home page for Guinness beer. Then they clicked it again, and it went to the homepage for Dunkin Doughnuts. Within minutes, a colleague called and said, “mkromd, did you lose your computer?” Yup.

Wish me luck, and once again – thanks for all of the wonderful comments. Happy New Year and go Heifer.

It's not gay if it's in a three-way...

Have you ever seen that Saturday Night Live digital short with Justin Timberlake, Andy Samberg, and Lady Gaga? I have no way to describe it other than saying it's hilarious. It's also the only thing that comes even remotely close to, "Two it's you, three it's me, and five it's gay..." the search string that someone used to find my blog. Yes. Really.

Now, for the record, for those of you who DON'T know me, the closest I've ever come to a three-way (let alone a five-way) is that SNL skit. Seriously. Because, although I went to Catholic school in Appalachia, I was raised so WASP that I actually once walked into the confessional and said, "Bless me father for I have sinned... and this is our family attorney, Ms. Bertling." Anyway, regardless of the reason, upbringing or education, I got the message. Group sex was off-limits. My hippie brother, however, did not. In fact, he subscribed to the Woody Allen school of thought, "Sex between two people is a beautiful thing — between five, it's fantastic." And, though he swears it never happened, when we were in college, I swear that I heard two women talking about it and him.

You see, we both went to Penn State, and during my freshman and his sophomore year, my "free-love" loving sibling lived at a commune. It wasn't a crazy religious one. It was just a bunch of like-minded, liberal students co-habitating in a socially conscious, co-operative way. My parents, to their credit, didn't like it, but they didn't stop him. After all, it was his life to live not theirs. That said, they didn't approve and when my sister needed directions to visit him, my mother said "Drive with your windows down. When you're overwhelmed by the stench of patchouli, turn left. If you don't see partially naked liberals within five minutes, you took a wrong turn."

At the risk of digressing too far, it should be said that my father was a Franklin Delano Roosevelt Democrat and my mother is a Teddy Roosevelt Republican. This is a woman who voted for Nixon... and admits it. I think she even believes that Nixon's only mistake was getting caught. But I digress. The point is that my brother not only lived there, he loved it. Too bad, my mother (though completely wrong about Watergate) was absolutely right about socialism, "It's a great hobby. It's just doesn't pay the bills." And so, when it was time to grow up, he did... kind of. Personally, I think he still subscribes to the Peter Pan philosophy that "Growing old is mandatory. Growing up is optional." It's why I will always adore him... As to whether or not I'm right about the group sex thing when he was at PSU, I can't say. It's been over two decades and when I brought it up, all he said was, "After twenty years, people are more disappointed by the things they didn't do than by the ones they did." Either way, that's the closest I've ever come to, "two it's you, three it's me, and five it's gay." Happy New Year!

It's a Good Day for the Blues

Not only is that one of the greatest songs ever written, Malford Milligan, Storyville's soulful, sage, black-albino lead singer is right, "Sometimes you fly so high, you can't find a place to land,” but still... "It's a good day for the blues." Well, I get it. Though I am the recipient of countless, huge blessings (I’m marrying an amazing man this summer, the children we share in this space are healthy and happy, we’re building a beautiful home that’s one step closer to finished every day, etc. etc.), I find myself complaining about something... nothing... everything... anything, and frankly - it's ridiculous. In fact, when I went home to Appalachia a little while ago, my mom was so exasperated that she called me on it and said, “mkromd, do you think we created language as a species to accommodate your inner need to whine? If so, do you suppose Mother Nature gave me feet to walk away from you while you do it… or to simply put my foot up your ass so you’ll stop?”

I ask you, in all honesty - is it all becoming clearer how I became this person? Is it?

The worst part is that she’s right. Scratch that, the WORST part is that she had my family jump on the bandwagon. And I don’t mean my brothers and sister – people with whom I can actually fight back. I mean her cousins and aunts, women in their seventies, eighties and nineties. People you simply can’t debate… and not just because they’re deaf or because your mother will kill you for being disrespectful. Women you can’t bitch in front of because they actually have reasons to complain… and still don’t do it. Women who have buried children and partners, witnessed more than one war, and fought for the right to vote, the right to fair pay, and the right to live their lives as they see fit. Women who did all of it with a stiff upper lip... in a corset... silently... grateful for the things they had - not miserable over the things they lost.

So, when these women tell you, “You’re missing out on the happiest times of your life.” You listen.

And then you loosely remember the words of comedic genius, Louis CK, who basically said, “Everything’s amazing and nobody’s happy. In my lifetime alone, the changes in the world have been incredible. When I was a kid, we had a rotary phone - a phone that you had to stand NEXT to and you had to DIAL it. It was so primitive that it actually sparked, and it made you hate people with zeros in their numbers - because it was more work. You were like, ‘This guy's number has two zeros, screw him.’ And if someone called and you weren't home, the phone would just ring lonely by itself. There was no voicemail… And if you wanted money, you had to go INTO the bank (during the three hours it was open), stand in line, and write yourself a check… like an idiot. Then... when you ran out of money, you just couldn’t do anything. You were broke and you were done…

We live in an amazing world, and it's wasted on people who don’t appreciate it. Everyone has their own phone and we all complain if we lose a signal - even though that signal is going to space and needs a second to get back… And that's not even the worst of it. FLYING is the worst.

People come back from flights, tell you about it, and make it sound like a horror story. They actually turn their flight into the equivalent of the Oregon Trail and make it sound like the worst day of their life, ‘First of all we didn't board for 20 minutes. Then we got on the plane ONLY to sit on the runway for 40 minutes. We had to SIT there.’ To which I want to reply, ‘Oh really, what happened next? Did you fly through the air like a bird? Did you partake in the miracle of human flight? You were flying! That's amazing! Everybody on every plane should be constantly telling themselves, ‘Oh my God, WOW, we’re flying. We’re sitting in a chair in the sky... and sure it doesn't go back a lot… and it smells... but we’re FLYING.’ Cause, here's the thing. People talk about flight delays, but you can go from New York to California in FIVE hours. That trip used to take thirty years and a bunch of you would die along the way (and/or have a baby)... Seriously, you'd be with a whole different group of people by the time you got there. Now you watch a movie and you're home…”

Or something like that. I could never do him justice, so you’ll have to Google it. In the meantime, have a great week, and don’t sweat the small stuff, because - to quote the true God of comedy, Woody Allen, “Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon.” Talk to you later.