We usually see former Minnesota Viking and Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan Page on his walk. I idolize the man, and get starstruck. We’ll say a casual good morning, common on the paths as folks pass each other, and once out of earshot, we’ll make hilarious and strained innuendos about my imaginary future with Mr. Page. I will insist on being called MRS. Purple People Eater Page. Maybe there will be an occasion where I can haughtily say to someone That’s MRS. NFL Defensive Tackle Page to you! Or casually mention in the most routine of interactions - the clerk at Cub handing me my receipt - I’m MRS. Former Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Page.

I have been quite the Alan Page fan since the 1970s, when I was obsessed with the Minnesota Vikings. I journaled about them endlessly.

To wit (verbatim):

It hurts so much...and it shouldn’t. Viking playoff game with Dallas in 1975, December 28… lost 17 to 14 by a 50 yard touchdown pass to Drew Pearson…. Why is this so important to me? I may be just about over it now but it meant so much to me… and oddly, it just hurts. There is such a depression on my heart. Perhaps it was better now than the NFC championship or Superbowl. I trust you, Vikings, you mean a lot to me. I believe you will win the Superbowl but I fear you are getting old. Just one more year… maybe then. You have come so close… retire after you have won the Superbowl…

Another…

I feel like nobody cares anymore. About me or anyone. It’s been like this since the Vikings lost to Dallas and no one seems as upset as I do. Maybe I ought to see an analyst or something! Maybe I’ll feel better when school starts.

It’s ironic, though. The very day Dallas beat the Minnesota Vikings, Francis Tarkenton’s father died whose name was Dallas. Wow.

Yet another, the notebook pages damp from my teenage tears:

Maybe next year, Vikings. But you are getting old. I say; how can you be old when I have only been watching you for 2 years? Dallas shouldn’t have won. It was a game of miscalls and misplays. It was not right. No, not maybe. YES, 1977 Superbowl.

We know how SuperBowls have turned out for the Vikings.

Sigh.

Very truly yours,

Mrs. One of The Greatest NFL Defensive Lineman Page

When…

• You barely graduate college with a vague, amorphous degree and have a metric shit ton of student loans…

• You get yourself in credit card debt because they were virtually handing them out and you were feeling mighty full of yourself because you’d just graduated from college with a 1.5 GPA with a vague, amorphous could-do-anything-but-not-really-anything degree…

• You lose several jobs in a row, either fired or laid-off (or both if the company was really mad at you)...

• Standup comedy and freelance writing gigs turn out to be the steadiest - by comparison - employment you’ve ever had…

• You barely manage to keep up with the bills but you must because the specter of credit rating (cue horror music), even those student loans - one month maybe its $50 toward them, another month $10, back in the days of opening the checkbook, writing one out, and subtracting it from your very frail balance…

• Every day is a panic because do I even have bus fare to get to whatever job I’m at this month which barely pays the bills??

• You can clearly remember writing the check for that final student loan payment…

• You understand more and more the capriciousness of the business you’re in and how fortunate you have been not just to survive but thrive…

You don’t take anything for granted.

As my sister says, “Commit now, regret later”.

I signed up for the Minneapolis Animal Shelter’s Fido Field Trip program. Volunteers walk dogs or take them around to wherever for a day. They get a lot of volunteers (which is so very great!) and I finally found a slot on the sign up page that would work.

I followed through and - did it. A personal victory! Not to mention - DOGS.

Friends, I know I appear hale and hearty but I suffer from a debilitating situation known as dyscalculia.

Perhaps I hyperbolize. Perhaps I pathologize for dramatic effect that burbling panic when I encounter numerals. It feels like a sandstorm in my brain. Whenever numbers are present - in conversation, on paper, a freeway sign, it feels like I ought to breathe into a paper bag and flail for my fainting couch.

Do not say more than two numbers in a row to me. It will take a good five minutes for me to transcribe a phone number. You will have to repeat your three numeral address several times, at which point you will just give up and realize it’s not worth my visit. I’m getting anxious just writing the word numbers.

Every month I promised myself that I would diligently and patiently organize all my receipts so preparing for my taxes was not so daunting. My income is solely 1099 - freelancer/contract work from which taxes are not withheld. Accordingly, I itemize deductions, keeping track of business expenses which are subtracted from adjusted gross income to lower taxable income. So I tell myself, I’ll break it down into baby steps, adding it all up monthly. Yet I do not. Come September, I start getting queasy knowing the monumental, numbers-laden task that lies before me so I can file my tax return.

Year after year after damn year after damn year.

Sadly, the situation is hopeless and unalterable. No one in the history of numbers or people has ever found a work-around. It seems wasteful to avail myself of a bookkeeper, for something I should be able to do myself. And I’d be mortified to try and explain the emotional toll. So I curse the darkness rather than even look for a candle to light.

I finally finally realized all this was just no good: the torment, the anxiety, the confusion. I weighed the costs: how to put a price on panic attacks? Versus peace of mind and getting on with my life? So I connected with the man who does the numbers for the website from which I do my streaming shows. He is kind and understands my type of income. I consider it self-care and I itemize his services a medical expense.

I tried to set intentions when I’d wake up in the morning. But what are supposed to be concise mental ideas would take on a life of their own. My brain would spiral and suddenly my intentions took on codicils, addendums, qualifiers, appendix, riders, and supplemental documents - to the point where it ought to have been notarized.

So somewhere in there, I began to cling to aphorisms. Cliches to some people. But given how I spiral with the idea of intentions, aphorisms break it down and manage the constant jangling in my brain. The jangling that keeps telling me that once I get everything done - everything - then I can start my life.

Breathe.

Keep it simple.

Just do the next thing.

Progress not perfection.

Be here now.

Ad nauseum.

So I take my Dad out to breakfast. A good cuppa joe, and he devours eggs and bacon and toast and a cinnamon roll. We stop by my nephew and wife’s house to check out their new backyard deck. My Dad, the builder/woodwork, wants to see my nephew’s father-in-law’s construction. My three-year-old great-nephew looks up at me with enormous brown eyes and takes my hand - May Jo, May Jo! - to the front sidewalk to point out all his friends’ houses, his big world right on this lovely street.

And to be reminded that this is life.

And to be reminded: Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think.

Two things in one day?!

Another event after Mark’s wedding?

Was I doing cocaine or something?!

Tonight is the Minnesota Orchestra’s live accompaniment of An American In Paris. I’ve never seen it on the big screen, and I love George Gershwin. We wait in line at the food truck, chattering about the menu board, and checking the time. We’re laughing, thoughts and mouths racing, careering from the state of the world to who’s getting the pulled pork sandwich. People converge and bustle all around us, all sorts of ‘em, a big ol’ dance of humanity.

Coffee.

Eggs.

Hash browns.

Tête-à-tête with a great friend.

All is right with the world.

We have a large, flowery “With love to my sister” birthday card we give over and over to each other, signed from the other two with the year. We also give this pin/brooch to one other. One of my mother’s long-time friends sent it to me years ago, a little objet d’... something. It’s enormous - almost the size of a teacup saucer, and even though it’s lightweight, its sheer mass makes your shirt droop. It was addressed to me at my father’s house, and I was surprised. We hadn’t heard from this old family friend since my mother died. It was such a sweet gesture.

My mother would have declared absolutely darling!, pronouncing darling as derrrrrling. She would have worn it with delight. But just between us chickens, it’s hard to get past what I believe is the nose? Or whatever is in the middle of the face, that kinda looks like… ya know… I mean…

Still, such a loving and earnest gesture, it seems like we should keep it in the family.

Nellie is a labradoodle with a Muppet face and an ever-apprehensive countenance.

Nellie stays with me a couple of times a year when her family - my brother, his wife, and daughters - go out of town. When they pull in the driveway to drop her off, she goes bananas. She practically wets her puppy pants in excitement and dashes up the path to my front door. It makes me feel like I must be the best person in the world.

One of my greatest joys in life is when a neighborhood dog spots me in my yard or driveway and pulls their person along, insisting on saying hello to me.

Asta is a gray miniature poodle who can’t weigh more than eight pounds but when she starts pulling her person toward me, believe you me, I know whereof I speak, little dogs can get a lot of traction.

Sydney, a golden retriever with hindquarters so fluffy they’re like undulating cotton candy britches, just stops and sits when she spots me. She refuses to move unless she knows she can come greet me. She’ll gaze up at me and we’ll touch noses as I give her scritches. Then she lays on my feet to hang out for a while.

I always feel so honored.

My small house has felt eerily expansive and kind of hollow after Seymour. Nellie fills the space in many ways, even if it’s temporary. She clicks through the house following me around, no matter what I’m doing or where I’m going - even the ten steps from my office to the bathroom. Nellie stretches out her large paw for me to hold as I sit on the toilet, lest she lose track of me in this one-level, 800 sq ft house. At night, she jumps up on the bed with me, an effortless, elegant leap. She settles in and after a bit she’ll either start dreaming or snoring. I reach out a hand from my book and stroke her flank, like I used to with Seymour as he’d fall asleep next to me, probably soothing myself more than her. My “dog fix” in the quiet that I’m not yet used to, in the ache of these walls.

But this one? “Mobbed” sounds so pejorative. So put out.

It was anything but.

I was attending RiffTrax Live at the glorious State Theater in Minneapolis to watch my colleagues Mike, Kevin and Bill jam to “Point Break”. The place was packed. I went to the box office to get my tickets and suddenly people are saying hello and want to hug me and take selfies.

I feel my face redden.

I am a performer who doesn’t want to draw attention to herself.

On the whole, I move through the world an average person going about her average day. I am always taken aback when someone recognizes me. I am still blown away that I get to do what I do. It still bowls me over when people tell me how much Mystery Science Theater or RiffTrax has meant to them, or my book or any one of my stage shows. So many times they’ll follow up with, “I’m sorry - you probably hear that all the time”.

No… not really! And so what if I do? I’ve never gotten used to it - in the best way. Make no mistake. I always marvel that I get to do what I do.

The rest of the the slip of paper reads: “ -overwhelming but people should have such problems!”

Chris produces my streaming show, the eponymous Mary Jo Pehl Show. We get along famously - I’ve told him almost as many things as I’ve told my shrink. We are of like minds, and I’m so very lucky to do a silly little show with someone smarter than me, who can figure out all the tech stuff, and strategize, and is hilarious and creative and kind. His lady, his missus Jen I equally adore.

They’d come to town for the RiffTrax Live event.

When I have out-of-town visitors, I fall in love with the Twin Cities over and over again.

Folks often ask for suggestions when they visit and here is my standard list (which keeps growing).

In no particular order…

• Hennepin Avenue Bridge (especially at night - the iconic Grain Belt sign and a beautiful view of the river and Twin Cities skylines)

• George Floyd Square

• Matt’s Bar for a Jucy Lucy (they lay claim to the original; and yes, that’s how they spell it)

• Minnehaha Falls while you’re in the neighborhood of Matt’s

• Walker Art Center Sculpture Garden

• OddMart

• Minneapolis Institute of Arts (cloyingling rebranding themselves as “MIA”, which I absolutely refuse to call it that - still, an amazing museum)

• Weisman Art Museum (just for Gehry design itself)

• Ax-Man (any location)

• Kramarczek’s, old skool Ukrainian-Polish deli, a local institutions

• Al’s Breakfast - good luck getting in but ya gotta

• Endless Bridge at the Guthrie Theater; and Gold Medal Park whilst you’re there and the 35W Bridge Collapse Memorial

• Paisley Park (natch)

• Anchor Fish and Chips (Northeast)

• Stone Arch Bridge

That’s just for starters.

I ferried Chris and Jen around one day. I get a little insistent, almost rude, when I’m showing folks around: You have to go in the Guthrie to experience the Endless Bridge you can’t just look up at it. Even a little bite of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts - it’s overwhelming! Please let me take you to George Floyd Square because… because. I’ll pass on Al’s Breakfast but I’ll expect a report.

All this - a living diary of my life here.

I love road trips. To a point.

Because these days a jaunt to the ‘burbs on the other side of the city feels like a road trip. I’ve long fantasized about doing the Lake Superior Circle Tour . I’d planned to do it the summer of 2025. Then I took a jaunt to the Jeffers Petroglyphs for one of my “field trips”, about 2.5 hours away, and nearly went stir-crazy. I gripped the wheel on the way home: What am I thinking?? I can’t do 1300 miles alone! I’ll go bonkers!

I can handle three hours to Grand Rapids. Laughing with my grownup nieces and nephews, and their kids; grillmasters in the group grilling; a splendid summer evening Up North; and a soaring bike ride on the Mesabi Trail. Good things.

On the aging, ahem, curve myself, I love June Squibb. I would watch her read a salad dressing ingredients list silently to herself.

Mindy does not talk during movies.

Perhaps a bit of a double standard considering I’ve spent much of my career providing movie-talking ammunition but when I go to a movie not for work, I need, I want to turn off the call-and-response mechanism.

But it doesn’t mean I’m not responding. It doesn’t mean Mindy and I aren’t communicating in some way, shape, or form. Her pure and deep laughs - which make me laugh - the shared gasps and awe and awwww’s and pfffffts. We even share silent eye-rolls, not even looking at each other. Mindy is so there for it - a movie or a play, whatever it is - and then I’m there too.

But I went to my sister’s for a swim. From my vantage point on the deck, I looked down to a pool filled with my grownup nieces and nephews and all their kids. Who knows knows what any of them is going through at that very moment, but there they all are, splashing, screaming, laughing, kids shivering and purple-lipped but refusing to get out of the water, shrieking, watch this! watch this!, running around as my sister, ever the Red Cross Certified Lifeguard, admonishes hey! No running on the pool deck!

…I remember what’s what.

How can you not be swept up in all that life happening?

There it was. Right on my calendar, when I was looking for something else.

July 17, 2023, I’d made a note that I ended things with Moe. I went back to my journal to refresh my memory of the details.

To wit:

A few years after R died, i wondered if i wanted to maybe possibly perhaps maybe… date again.

My darling friend Cate was enthusiastic. Yes! You have to! She was visiting from Austin, and we stretched out on my long couch with diet Cokes, our bare feet soles-to-soles.

Go on as many dates as you can! It’s exposure therapy!

Her fervor on my behalf swept me away.

Run right into the belly of the beast!

I posted my profile on Facebook Dating with several recent photos. Among others casting a wide net, Moe “liked” my profile and sent a message. After some back-and-forth, we met for coffee. He was smart and funny and we had a lovely conversation. He was seventy, a retired engineer, bald, and a few inches shorter than despite what his profile stated. Things that didn’t matter - until they did.

We started seeing each other regularly and discussed taking things to the next level. He’d been bugging me for awhile to stay overnight on the weekends we’d get together, usually a Saturday. I kept putting him off. I very much like the physical part of a relationship - if ya know what I mean - but…

1) The more you bug me to do something, the more I’ll dig my heels in.

“You must take this no-strings gift of five million dollars”.

“You can’t tell me what to do!”

“Okay, make it ten million -”

“How dare you!” (vehemently folding arms across my chest in defiance)

2) I love my Sunday mornings - coffee, Sunday paper, taking Seymour for a walk, the specific stillness of a Sunday morning.

1. What if Moe wanted to hang around? What if he wanted to talk at me? First thing in the morning?

2. What if he… lingered? Indefinitely?

Well, feel the fear and do it anyway, we started making plans for the following weekend.

As we Face-timed, he had a device strapped to his hand that he rolled around on his pate. He explained it was a Sharper Image infrared scalp massager, guaranteed to stimulate hair growth.

He asked me if I’d ever had long hair. Oh, yes, I said, I had long hair most of my life. He asked if I had any photos. I didn’t think so, I told him.

Plans were made for Saturday, and he said he was looking forward to it.

I just hope I can get over my shyness, he said. We’d fooled around a bit and he seemed anything but. I was baffled.

Well… He hesitated.

It’s your hair.

It’s so short.

It’s just so… masculine.

I was speechless.

He went on, as if to help me process this.

I know I shouldn’t feel that way but… it’s just so - he grimaced - manly.

I finally found some words. Wow, I’m really sideswiped by this. I’m going to hang up right now and think about this.

Flames came out of my ears, and I started sending him one text after another.

You pursued me on Facebook dating. You “liked” me.

You knew how short my hair was in my profile photos.

You saw how short my hair was each. and. every. time. we got together.

You continued to ask me out.

He responded: yes, yes, I know.

Something occurred to me and I asked: So… were you thinking we’d be together long enough for my hair to grow out?

He responded: Well… maybe.

Then he wrote: I know you’re really stubborn but would you wear a wig? To resolve the situation?

My head exploded and my fingers flew. I would never dream of asking you to wear a wig - I like you for you. And I am not a “situation” - I’m a human being who was very fond of you.

I couldn’t let it rest. I googled images..

Maybe something like this? I asked.

Or how about this?

You do not get to customize me. I am not something to be “resolved”.

I’m sure there’s a long haired woman out there for you somewhere. And I know there’s a great NON-shallow guy who will adore me and who I will turn on for exactly who I am.

And I deleted his contact info (knowing I’d never remember all those numbers in a row).

I write this as a “good thing” because I rarely have clarity about a course of action. A “good thing” because I did not tamp down the anger that poured forth or try to negotiate a “solution”. He laid it at my doorstep - it was my responsibility to turn him on. Oh, how we women are socialized to problem-solve - and we are usually regarded at the problem. I was supposed to fix it for him. And - face palm - the Sharper Image device and asking about my former long hair was a manipulative on-ramp. Now I was never madly in love with him, and I knew it wasn’t a forever thing. It was fun. It was dipping my toe in the dating waters.

My weekend had just opened up and it felt so… right.

There you have it - notes from the Belly of The Beast.

Dear reader, what would YOU have done?

(Comments open!)