Heather Barton

Room held 2 Queen beds

One of my favorite work trips is a conference held in November every year.   This year it was in Miami.  Last year I was going to meet a cub in the area and enjoy the 4 days in San Francisco with him, but he juuuuussst couldn’t get up the courage. lol.

The view from the room

I did try to use my dating site to line up someone interesting, but it didn’t prove fruitful.  Which was both frustrating and a bit of a relief.  So this year I vowed I’d bring my own fun!

And I had Hottie very interested in going, but Fate put a few obstacles in his path and he had to cancel.   Searching my phone contacts I realized how difficult it was to find that right combination of “cute enough to show off to my girls”, “has the money to pay his own plane fare” & “can and will take off work”.   And I realized Hottie was the only choice.   Most can’t take off work.  Those with more flexibility often aren’t in the positive cash flow.  And since my “girls” at conferences have all met Sex God… well, there is a little bit of a bar set! heeheehee.

Needed a bikini for the pool. Went to the hotel shop.

Anyway, I still had fun.  I enjoyed the pool, but since I didn’t have anyone to hang with in the evenings I just spent them in my room, watching t.v. and doing data entry for the job.   My “girls” went out every night networking!! lol.. and the last thing I wanted to do after a day of talking breastfeeding was to talk MORE breastfeeding!!

THAT's the price!! You don't want to know what they were charging for socks!!

In a text during the trip one of my lovers asked me why I didn’t just go down to the bar and pick up something to play with. 😉  I laughed and told them the hotel was off the beaten track in a GOLF resort.  So the only men in the bar were married men in their 40’s to 70’s in polo shirts!  Umm.. no, thanks!

Next year this conference is in Chicago and in October.  Its supposed to be beautiful.  So beautiful the boss herself might go instead of me.  Go for it, is my reaction to that! lol.

In 2012 I’ll be heading to Wash, DC in Feb, Orlando in July and maybe Cancun just before Orlando.  Ironically also back to the Coachella valley a week after I get back from the Coachella Music Festival  in April!  I might end up in Texas in June & NC in October & maybe a few other places if I find other good State WIC conferences to attend.

The question becomes… do I try to take a toy with me on any of these trips?  Well, maybe the Cancun one…. 😉

I’ve been hearing a lot about how much we all hate and blame the government.  How its completely corrupt and doesn’t have ANY of our interests at heart.  How we should all stand up and tell Congress & the Senate that we’re fed up and we’re not going to take it anymore!

Really?

And how are we going to do that?  By voting out every incumbent?  We’ve done that.  Hell we do that somewhere with almost every election!  And the amusing thing is, what are we actually doing?  Replacing politicians with what……????   Yup, with politicians.  How is that an  improvement?!

We all say we want change but the system is so big all our change actually changes nothing.  Democrats get mad at Republicans for their beliefs and at other Democrats for not being Liberal enough!   Republicans are so busy catering to the Big Money that is currently fucking them in the ass that I’m not sure even THEY are aware of what is actually coming out of their mouths!

And the masses are both confused, tired and feel powerless to do anything.

But today I had an interesting idea.   If voting won’t fix it, how about NOT voting.  Would that send a strong enough message?  I mean… imagine it.. everyone just boycotts the polls.   They’re all set up and no one shows.  NO ONE gets re-elected NOR booted out.   The confusion alone would grind everything to a halt with less protest or violence than anything alone.  And all it would take on YOUR part is staying home for the day!   Practically a win/win!

Yet I can foresee how even THAT won’t work.  All it would take is one or two other people taking advantage of those NOT voting by slipping in a few who do, thereby guaranteeing a win.  So obviously we’d have to pass an ordinance in every county or state that mandated every election have at least 50% of the populace vote or its invalid.   Then we can actually send a message by not doing anything.

After all, we’re all lazy at heart or this would have been fixed with torches & pitchforks by now!

One of the things I do often is self assess myself.  I suppose its one of the perks of being a narcissist.  We do tend to self-focus A LOT!  Some use it for good and some for evil.  Me, I try to gauge whether I’ve been keeping myself… well…  even.

See I often swing between focusing too much on ONE thing and spreading my focus too thinly on MANY things.  Confusing?  Let me elaborate.

When I woke up from the haze of 10 years of focused parenting & running a business, I realized I’d completely neglected a large part of myself.  Where was MY happiness?  Not to mention.. where was my figure!! Haha!   Naturally I did a bit of introspection and tried a few new things.  Joined a gym, tried my hand at writing, remembered what make-up was and spruced up my wardrobe with a new piece of clothing here and there.  In other words, I let myself indulge a little into MY happiness.

The amusing part was as it progressed, my own happiness trickled down a bit to the family.  But also anything that took me away from the pursuit of my happiness tended to irritate me…. also trickling down to the family.   Work didn’t progress as much as it could have as I felt distracted by what MY happiness wanted to do instead (write).  And homeschooling the oldest & dealing with his difficulties, along with the other two sometimes was extremely challenging and frustrating during that time.

As the marriage disintegrated because I realized MY happiness wasn’t going to be fully realized with a husband who couldn’t grow with me, (Although the REAL tipping point was knowing I no longer respected the man I’d married.) the idea of being single became this HUGE focus that My Happiness latched on.  And I threw myself into it.

And, oh my, was I happy.   It was a little like shedding a heavy coat I’d been wearing because I HAD to.. but now the weather was warm & breezy and shorts, heeled sandals and a sexy tank top was under the coat.  And I fairly danced in the freedom of losing that heavy thing I’d worn for so long over this preferred outfit.

And every day which I marched toward single I got happier.

I will admit I didn’t put in as many work hours as I could or should have.  (I was meeting 4 men a week for lunch.)   I admit I stopped working very much on my writing.  (Of course the blog was substituting nicely for my need to express myself.)   My family life barely changed beyond the fact Mommy wore completely different outfits now! lol  I was still a good mother to the boys.  I still cooked dinner & breakfast, did their laundry, supervised homework & chores and gave out tons of cuddles, tickles & laughing time.

And I did it with more happiness.  Because I had this goal in my head of Being Single!

And then I achieved it.   And ALL the responsibilities came back.  Bit by bit the old, heavy coat found its way back around me.  Granted it was shorter and sleeveless (after all, I did lose 200 lbs of responsibility… at least I THINK that’s what that man weighted!) but it was still a bit shapeless and it made walking in heels difficult.    But I was getting ahead at work.   I’d done a bit of outlining a few books I’d like to find the time to write.   And the kids were growing into pretty responsible young men.   Oh and my libido was more than happy with Sex God in my life.

The other day I realized I was pretty content.   I also realized that I wasn’t excited about anything.  My “passion” had dwindled.  Buried in the mundane of every day living.   Contentment is nice, it means your life is working.  But it also means you’re done striving for anything.   The highlight of my day seems to be getting ahead of the data entry in front of the television in the evenings.

I’ve written about this before.  Getting so wrapped up in keeping ALL the many plates/projects/things we do spinning along that we start to neglect one important part.  Us.   Don’t get me wrong… keeping up is necessary and if we do it right it keeps us sane.  But I look back on some of my moments of excitement and MY Happiness in the past two years and ask myself where did it go?

Then I remind myself that its been 6 months since Coachella and I’ve got another 6 months to go before next years, where Sex God and I (and hopefully several others heeheehee) can toss aside that heavy coat of responsibility and respectability and spend 3-4 days indulging in nothing but OUR Happiness.

In the meantime… well, I need to seduce someone!

I saw a personalized licesnse plate I thought was brilliant.  It has some number then MENNME…. Men & Me for those who have difficulty reading these types of things.

I smiled and remembered when I had a personalized plate.   The same plate on my ’84 Escort, my ’96 Prelude (loved that car) and my ’91 Mustang Convertible.  It said, REDI4Me.  Or Ready for Me for those who have difficulty with these.

And believe me!  I actually met someone who DID!  A friend of a friend saw me walking to my car and said, “Heather!  I didn’t know you smoked pot?”   I looked at her like she was crazy… or stoned… which she probably was.

“I don’t?”

“But your plate,” she insisted… “Red Eye for Me!”

“Drat,” I thought, “I should have gone with the E and not the I!”

Lately I’ve been missing not having visual advertisement of the new me.  Toying with the absolutely delicious idea of putting a plate that said COUGAR on it.  Or even a bumper sticker.   The shock value alone just thrills me!  I’m certainly not unwilling to tell the world who I am nor anything about what I do.

But my kids ride in my car with me.  And because they are MY kids they won’t hesitate at ALL in asking me why this is on my car and what does it mean.  While I’m not ashamed to tell the cute little buggers…. its not a Good Mom move when they are still this young.  And I REALLY dislike lying to them in any way.   So I’ve been refraining.

And toy with other little ideas that might get my point across.   Paint my car with Cougar footprints all over it?  Naw…. to subtle.   I’ve run through many possible bumper stickers from the obvious… I heart men….  to the humorous… marriage sucks…. to the obscure… this cat has claws.

Yet when I saw that license plate I realized it would be perfect.   If I added the number 3 to it I can tell my kids its cuz they are the men in my life.   3MENnME  or if that’s taken MEnMEN3 or MEn3MEN…. you see where I’m going with this?

The beauty of it is I really DO love the idea of me and three men!

I like to turn heads ONE way or ANOTHER! 😉

If we really want to stick it to wall street… pull your money out.

I’m’ serious!  Most of Middle America has their retirement set up in stocks…  IRA’s, 401Ks, Pensions of any sort… they are all in the form of investments.   And who is handling our money, our investments?   Wall Street.   And I’m curious as to WHAT Wall Street would do is we suddenly pulled all our money out.

And used it to pay off the debt Middle America is struggling with.  Used it to set up a CD cushion of cash for if/when the recession becomes personal for them.  Isn’t that what our grandparents did?  (And for those of you younger than my 48 years…. your great grandparents! Haha)   They set up a savings account with the bank because it was paying 10% or more.  It grew their money.  Prior to that, they just kept it at home in a mattress!  It didn’t grow there, but it also didn’t shrink down!!

Savings accounts & CDs may be paying very little interest but they aren’t as volatile as stocks.  Plus aren’t you paying upwards of 18% interest on those credit cards?  Seriously!!  Take a look at how much your money grows in a year in your savings/pension/IRA or whatever and THEN take a look at how much interest you are paying on your credit card debt.  Are you coming out ahead?  I know I sure as hell am not!

Ask yourself….  Can I use this money to better my life now?   Will that enable me to better my life in the future?

The definition of wealth isn’t how much money you have but how much money flows into your bank account through no effort on your part.  Are stocks doing that for you right now?   They sure are not for me.

Example One:   My mothers has a large stock portfolio.  She’s over 65 and still working strong.  I ask her, when do you think you’ll ever start dipping into that stock you set aside to retire on?  The thought horrifies her.  She’s spent soooo much time saving and building that the idea of spending it scares the shit out of her.  Worrying over it, panicking when her stock broker retired & she had to deal with a new guy she didn’t really know, dealing with the many crashes she’s weathered over the 30 years.  How is that money actually making her life better beyond the security of knowing maybe, someday, if she needs it, it might be there.  Wouldn’t setting it up as income be wiser?   And she has a HUGE CD to cover any “emergencies” that might come up and fabulous medical insurance…. really, she’s being paranoid.  And who made her paranoid?  Stockbrokers who advised her to have a portfolio for retirement.   Although at least she’s got some property investments also.

Example Two:  My ex wanted us to sell the rental property we owned in Texas to pay off our credit card debt.  I told him that was silly.  The mortgage/taxes/insurance is being paid efficiently by the renters and its set to be paid off by the time we turned 65.  Thereby providing us with $600 a month income with no effort on our part.   Selling it & paying off the credit card debt, would leave so little as a down to try and set up another rental house.  By the time it was paid off we’d be dead!   He got the house in the divorce, I got the IRA.  I got a little more than half of the joint credit card debt & honorably kept my extra debt even though it was uncured when we were married.

My Plan as Example Three:   I’m going to cash out my Roth IRA.  Its almost $20T.  I’m going to use half that to seriously reduce my debt and sink the other half in a CD.  This will be my cushion for emergencies AND my down  payment savings for my first rental house.  A savings I’ll be able to add to since I won’t be paying as much credit card debt.   I’ve already reduced as much of my monthly expenses as a mother of 3 boys can do living in the high rent area of Los Angeles! lol  I have 6 years until my oldest finishes 2 years of community college.  I hope to have a nice down payment on a property for him to live in (with roommates to pay the mortgage) near the University of his choice, so he won’t be burdened with student loans for his education.  If I set aside $150 a month I can do it.  I can’t do THAT if I’m paying high interest on credit cards.

But I’m thinking…. what would happen if we ALL did this?  If those who had stock investments pulled them out and payed off their debt.  Would the market crash?  Maybe.  But wouldn’t the banks be stronger as they wouldn’t have so much unsecured loan money out. (I’m assuming this since I’m not THAT familiar with the banking industry! ha!)   And many would buy homes with that money if they don’t have debt.  Which would shore up the failing real estate market which is half of what props up our city governments… which is why there was no money for teachers, etc!  Real Estate taxes.

Those who read the blog… feel free to comment your opinions.   I’d love the input.   I just keep thinking….   How much money does D. Trump have in stocks vs. real estate?  Mmmmmmmm???