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Date archive for: February 2014

How My Grandma Looks

“How do I look?” It’s a funny question coming from a woman with severe bed head, a drooping lip, prune juice stains on her hospital gown, and all manner of tubes and wires emerging from various parts of her person.

So I figured you were joking. Good one, Grandma. Leave it to you to make fun of yourself just days after a stroke left you slumped and alone on the carpet of your living room. Now, propped up in your mechanical bed in the neurological wing, it figures you’d be the first to fearlessly acknowledge the rumpled old-lady elephant in the room and snicker at her unkempt state. I smiled and waited for your next line; what would it be? Something funny. A facetious quip to show us that your spunk sure as heck ain’t paralyzed. “Am I about ready for the Governor’s Ball?” you’d probably say. Or “pretty as a picture, right?” Or maybe “a face that only a mother could love.”

But the quip never came. I stopped smiling. You weren’t joking. And as I sat holding your impossibly soft hand with your impeccably shaped nails, I think I realized what you really meant.

“How do I look?”

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What the Focus This?

I’m about to take you on a journey to the dense, chewy nucleus of the grape Tootsie Pop that is my head. You have been warned.

You see, my brain is very busy. It’s a frickin’ railway junction. I pride myself on my ability to juggle, organize, and accomplish, even in a crunch — no, especially in a crunch. “Show me a quiet mind,” I always say, “and I’ll show you a to-do list that’s been criminally neglected.” This morning I did Kegel exercises while writing my column lead while being power-flossed in the dentist’s chair while feeling rather smug about it all.

But I had no right, it turns out, because multitasking is out and meditation is in. The Huffington Post declared 2014 The Year of Mindful Living, and Time magazine’s recent cover story declared, “If distraction is the pre-eminent condition of our age, then mindfulness is the most logical response.” Rupert Murdoch is meditating now. So are 50 Cent and Kourtney “it’s possible I can’t spell meditate” Kardashian. Meditation is the new kale; it’s the balm for all that ails us.

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The 'Broads & Barrels' book launch bash!

Come raise a glass with Starshine to celebrate her new book, Broad Assumptions. Get your copy signed, sip wine, enjoy Georgia’s Smokehouse food truck while fierce DJ Darla Bea waxes spintastic — and enter the “Help Starshine Write Her Column” Contest: You write the first and last lines of a hypothetical column, the crowd votes on a favorite, and our author must write THAT column for the following week’s Independent! Glory and a gift basket for the winner.

6 to 8 p.m. Thursday, February 20
Carr Winery, 414 N. Salsipuedes St., Santa Barbara

Help us get a headcount for the party: RSVP on Facebook.








Continue reading The 'Broads & Barrels' book launch bash!