I love this guy. Dr. Paul Aijian is the best, most courageous physician in Santa Barbara. Most importantly, he believes in patients being informed about their options and—most radically, for a doctor today, also believes in them making their own choices.

When the Covid craziness hit, he signed the Great Barrington Declaration along with other vaccine skeptic medical authorities. Which made him a renegade and a subversive in Santa Barbara.

He weathered the controversy beautifully, writing and speaking out about it. Dr. Aijian does not just talk to his patients about their options. He has the guts to go public.

My first experience with having my own physician was as a teenager in Santa Barbara in the late sixties. Her office was in Goleta. She was devoutly Catholic and did not believe in giving young women The Pill. Which, btw, I didn’t need because I was a virgin throughout high school. The whole Free Love thing was too confusing for me.

For example, I had a huge crush on an older UCSB art student. I was thrilled when he asked me out to a movie at the Magic Lantern theater in Isla Vista and to a beyond-lousy vegetarian dinner, and then, as we got in his VW bus, offered to show me his etchings at his nearby studio on what was then a strawberry farm.

At last I’d be losing my virginity! As we walked up the creaky wooden stairs to where he lived and created, we passed his landlady. The look she gave me as I went upstairs made me realize that she, too, was sleeping with this guy. And the peace sign she also sneeeringly sent me made me realize I was way out of my depth among these five-years-older hippies.

I quickly developed menstrual cramps and spent the rest of the evening in the bathroom while I could hear him and the landlady gettin’ it on. I did not lose my virginity that night.

So much for even asking my doctor for The Pill and being treated to one of her lectures about saving It for marriage.

But when I told her one day that I needed to lose weight, she had no problem writing out a prescription for diet pills. I lost thirty pounds on those things, and started staying up all night, watching Johnny Carson on my little bedroom tv, then the late show, then the late late show, then staring at the test pattern. (If you’re asking where my parents were, then you obviously didn’t grow up during the late sixties.)

I was as skinny as Twiggy and I loved it! However, the diet pills gave me a kidney infection and I ended up in my doctor’s office holding my stomach.

“You’re pregnant!” She insisted. I wanted to say, “Only if it’s the Immaculate Conception.” But I just sat in misery until finally she was convinced I needed the ER, where they gave me curing antiobiotics.

Needless to say, I did not have a great faith in the medical establishment after this initial experience with a physician. My cynicism lasted for decades and way too long for my own good.

It’s only been in the last three years, since my two hospitalizations, that I even got a primary physician. And I made a great choice in choosing Dr. Aijian.

I can’t wait to read his book and plan to give copies of it to friends who express the same disillusionment with the medical establishment that I felt for so long.

The medical-industrial-complex is still failing us in too many areas, even as it also saves lives (including my own) in near-miraculous ways. But I’ve developed an enormous respect—and love—for those doctors, nurses and medical staffers who are in this profession because they truly want to save lives and make those lives healthier.

Bless Dr. Paul Aijian for being one of the most devoted of all of them. And congratulations on publishing “A Doctor’s Stories: Laughter and Tears.”

Buy it on Amazon here. Visit his website here. Or stop by Dr. Aijian’s office at 5350 Hollister in Goleta and pick up a copy there, along with some of his for-sale home grown avocados.

That’s me today in a tankini I designed and sewed over the weekend. I’ve got my trekking poles to walk into the gym and head to the pool. Time to test my design out!

I made it a two piece (important, easy pee when you dash to the pool restroom), and with a top you could wear by itself.

I’ve spent the last year and a half in Physical Therapy after my bout of Septic Shock. Take a look at my ankles. They may look thick to you, but compared to what they were six months ago they are de-swollen and I am de-lighted!

It’s been a long stint of physical therapy to get to this—time in the gym and in the water. If you’ve ever been in this situation, then you know how hard it can be to face the baby steps you have to make to get better.

When I’m either in the PT gym or in the new aquacenter at Goleta Valley Hospital, one thing I see is the number of older women who are trying with everything they have to get back into shape after accidents, operations, illnesses.

Older ladies, I applaud your resolution and courage! I see you every time I’m there myself and you are working out. You are doing everything you can to get your lives back.

And here’s the thing that makes me angry: while these older women are often getting terrific PT and the use of a beautiful swimming pool with aquacise classes, they are being completely let down by the fashion industry.

What is it with the clothing world that they think any woman over 60 has no interest in looking sexy, elegant and beautiful? Because she’s struggling with physical difficulties? How about raising her spirits with a little fashion? But when I look at the swim tankinis and exercise wear available for older women I realize how removed from the reality of the older ladies I know the industry is.

One of my hobbies is designing and sewing clothes. I love to make Hawaiian shirts for men, although most of the guys I’ve sewn one for have no idea how to wash clothing and destroyed it. And I made lots of clothes for my mom in her later years when she was confined to a wheelchair and her assisted living apartment. She was always a super glam woman and hated the kinds of clothes that women her age had to choose from—drab, shapeless pants and tops that made her feel depressed.

My mom was seldom down. She loved her apartment at Vista del Monte assisted living and was proud of getting to 95 and all the living she’d done. But those yucky clothes she had to choose from did make her hate her age and place.

So I made what I hoped were clothes that she could sleep in or go out in, that she didn’t have to worry about maintaining and also—and most importantly—made her feel like she was having fun and being stylish.

Here she is at 95 in a casual and comfy jacket I made for her. Isn’t she gorgeous and ready for anything a night might bring?

Now that I’m an old lady and in physical therapy myself, I’ve decided to design and make swimwear that puts a smile not just on my face, but on all the older women splashing around in the aqua therapy pool with me.

I don’t know where I’ll go with it. But I’m already pleased at the reactions I’m getting from my fellow swimming pool gals. A couple of them even asked if they can place orders!

I’m not sure where I’ll take this since I’m a lazy old hippie chick. But I’d like to inspire the fashion industry to stop taking over 60 women only as a monetizing dump for the worst material and designs they can come up with, and instead start treating us like the experienced and desirable fashion market we really are.

POLLY’S DICTIONARY:

uncontradictory contradiction: that which is so in opposition to itself that it defines itself without opposition

EXAMPLES:

• I love him too much to talk to him.

• I hate how I make the money I love.

• I would never wear a dress like I am wearing to an event like this.

I am the living embodiment of “uncontradictory contradiction” (make that plural in my case, “uncontradictory contradictions”), after a week of up and down emotions that made me think I was either schizophrenic—or the healthiest, least repressed person on the planet.

Like that photo at the top of this post. That’s me with trekking poles that enable me to walk the city streets rather than fall. Does wearing a maxi dress while using hiking implements meant for mountains seem like a contradiction?

Not if I have my way! I want to make trekking poles so glam that I never feel like the partially disabled person I am. I want to make walking with trekking poles into a four-star restaurant be the best entrance.

I’m proud of my right leg! It weathered Flesh Eating Disease and Septic Shock, a coma and numerous surgeries while I was hospitalized for two months in 2025. I’ve come to accept my right leg may never be able to walk without assistance. But it lets me stand on it. And it lets me take it out for a spin.

I love my right leg! A slinky dress and trekking poles are one of the Uncontradictory Contradictions I embraced this week!

Here’s another: my new Milk Tea colored tresses.

I got my hair done today by Michael Romo, standing next to me in front of his downtown Santa Barbara studio, Salon U, the best in this city. If not anywhere.

For those of you who don’t regularly read my Substack—don’t you hate people who pepper their conversations with references to their Substacks?—my bout of near-death Septic Shock in January 2025 changed my hair from straight to 1970s disco curly. It also darkened my old California blonde color.

I was faced with a major hair decision to make: do I keep it darker or get some highlights to brighten it up?

Not exactly on the level of Sophie’s Choice, I know, but a girl and her hair have got to be at least compatible if not in a super-charged romance.

I didn’t want to be a Santa Barbara blonde anymore. All you women—and that would be nearly every woman in Santa Barbara—who have that same Beach Boys California girl color, you’re great.

But I can never tell you apart.

I wanted some distinction. I decided to go what’s known in hair circles as “Milk Tea Blonde.” If you’ve never heard of it, think of it as a hair color you’d like to drink on a day when you just want to stare out the window at the changing leaves or contemplate finishing that short story you began in eighth grade.

Think Chai Tea with almond milk in it, or even a proper British cup of Earl Grey with clotted cream, swirls of light and dark color that make you sip differently than you bolt your coffee. You feel like you’re in one of those cozy, costumed PBS British series your granny had you watch with her.

Yet, it brings up questions. Why on earth would you want to drink your hair? Why has the hair industry come up with these edible colors? Why, instead of being a “brunette” do you have “chocolate raspberry” hair?

We recoil if we find a hair in our food at a restaurant and send it right back to the kitchen. After even the best sex, it’s annoying to fish a lover’s hair out of our teeth.

I don’t get these hair colors that would be better served on a plate or in a cup, but I love my Milk Tea Blonde color. I’m not alone. It’s a favorite with Asian women as well. If you do a search on Milk Tea Blonde you’ll find a page like this.

Hair you’d like to eat sounds like a contradiction, but with the PR geniuses behind the hair dye industry it’s an Uncontradictory Contradiction.

Another Uncontradictory Contradiction of my week: I still own an apartment in the Village in NYC that I have to pay monthly maintenance on. And no, much as I cherish your readership, you can’t stay in it for free next time you want to go there. My point in bringing it up is that this is a nine-story apartment building with the most left-wing, not just socialist, but communist bunch of owners—and board members—you could imagine. If you voted for Trump or any Republican ever in your life they’ll make sure you never live in that building.

I used to run into one of them in the laundry room and, in between his name-dropping (the kind that only New Yorkers would expect you to recognize) he’d go on about the evil that is Republican voters. He still had that venom in him at 1 in the morning folding his boxers, after spending the day writing internet rants about how you absolutely must not invite any Republican relatives to Thanksgiving and if you find someone in need of emergency help lying in the street, ask them what political party they belong to before you call 911.

Just to let you know: I’m not a politically partisan person. You can vote for anyone you want, including writing in yourself for president. As long as you’re interesting we can be friends. Boring people, keep your distance.

This week I had to mail a check in for the maintenance on my apartment, since the internet payment site wasn’t working. I called the New York City office and asked the mailing address to send it.

And the mailing address for all the money collected every month for this nine-story apartment building of CCP enthusiasts is… in Florida!

Is this a contradiction? No, it’s an Uncontradictory Contradiction. Socialists and communists I’ve known are among the most money-obsessed people on this planet. Of course they don’t want Mamdani handling the money for this apartment building! They want Florida Republicans!

They just won’t invite them to dinner or save their lives in an emergency.

I like to think I’m not narcissistic, but here I go, writing about myself again, putting up a photo, and acting like I’m some influencer. Look out, Gwyneth Paltrow!

But I just sewed up this spandex dress and I have to show it off. It’s a style of maxi-wear I call “Slide Into Me.” A heat wave’s comin’ to the California Central Coast this week and I’m ready for it, even if my post-Septic Shock body isn’t. My body now wants a perpetual perfect 72 degrees.

I’ve made three new long and slinky dresses to keep my body feeling as comfortable as possible during the next blast furnace week. All the same pattern, an old McCall’s I found on Etsy.

For those who don’t sew, the great pattern houses are no more, you buy print-out PDFs which I just don’t relate to. I love having a tissue paper pattern I carefully unfold, pin to fabric and cut. God bless Etsy for keeping these vintage patterns alive! Like this one from the Disco Era.

I hope Simplicity included a warning: ‘Honey, just so you know—the man who wants you sewing this for him is GAY!”

This is where my post-Septic Shock narcissism kicks in. When I picked these photos to put on this post, at first I cut off my puffy feet. I have these swollen lower legs and feet courtesy of Sepsis that I’m slowly de-puffing through Lymphatic Therapy, exercise and diet. For the first year and a half of my post-Sepsis, I hated for anyone to see my feet. I felt like “Princess Fat Feet,” a character in a book my mom used to read to me.

Now, here I am showing them off. They are my feet, dammit, they’ve been through the Sepsis wars and they’re still here, marching me around. Often reluctantly, often painfully. Almost always still with the help of my trekking poles or walker. But my feet are heroes! And I’m proud of them.

I call this “Healing Narcissism.”

Ever since Christopher Lasch brilliantly dissected our self-obsessed culture in his 1979 “The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations,” we’ve heard about the toxic effects of this personality type. Most of us—especially those who fit most into that category—try as hard as we can not to be narcissists. Or at least to disguise it so we won’t be recognized as fitting into this diagram.

While those aren’t exactly great personality characteristics—I highly recommend staying away from people who exhibit them—there are times when self-obsession has its place.

Healing is one of them. If you aren’t obsessed with yourself, you won’t get better. You have to think about how you are walking, how you are eating, how you are sleeping. You have to be a raging narcissist about yourself.

I get up every morning and start issuing bulletins (to anyone who’ll listen) about how I’m doing. “My hip aches are worse than they were yesterday. But my leg aches are less than they were yesterday! Wait ‘til you hear about my last bowel movement! What? Why did you start wearing headphones over breakfast?”

Yet, it’s this self-obsession that has gotten me better. If I weren’t consumed with my own wellness, I’d just stay in bed and surf the internet all day. And get worse and worse.

But even I get bored by my healing narcissism. That’s where a hobby like designing and sewing clothes comes in. Once you start cutting, pinning, serging and sewing, you have to set aside your self-obsession or you’ll wreck what you’re working on. Actually, you can’t think about anything but what you’re doing at that moment or you might hurt yourself as well.

Which is bliss! I sew, I forget about myself. But at the end of a few hours, voilà! I have a new outfit to try on.

Here’s when my healing narcissism gets to have its best time. I have someone photograph me. I critique how I look. I need to lose a few pounds! But then I remember the French movie star, Catherine Deneuve’s great line, “At a certain age, a woman has to decide between her fanny and her face.” I embrace my ass! Great booty, girl, I say to myself. And I even smile at the return of Princess Fat Feet.

I’m ready to keep working on getting better! Healing can be the most boring thing in the world. But with the right amount of narcissism and a good sewing machine, you can really enjoy it.

And here is the greatest design and sewing school in America. You don’t have to live in NYC to learn from Kristine Frailing who taught me. I adore this woman who decided to Make America Sew Again!

That’s me this week with the amazing Lymphatic Therapist, Catina, whose studio is in downtown Santa Barbara. And that’s her massage table and her Lymphstar Pro machine which she uses to great healing effect. She’s coming to work my lymph system over twice a week for an hour and a half each time.

It’s doing wonders for me. I don’t have lymphedema. But I do have compacted accumulations of crapola in my lower legs and feet which keep me from the mobility I crave.

I had been doing a year and a half of excellent physical rehab after my near-death bout of Septic Shock. If you’re in Santa Barbara, I can’t recommend enough my Physical Therapist, Scott Saley at Goleta Valley Hospital Outpatient Services.

I’d also cooked most of the meals I eat and made sure they were “nutrient dense,” as the health influencers like to say.

And I walked and did light weights, stretching, core and those damn squats three times a week.

The results were encouraging. The swelling in my lower legs went down about 70 percent. Now, mind you my lower legs and feet felt like gestapo boots after my Septic Shock. So getting them down that much was great, but not the elimination of my mobility and vanity woes.

Here I am six months after my hospital release, with Santa Barbara’s best, smartest and most empathetic hair guy, Michael Romo at his Salon U after he did his best with my thinned out hair (after a 2/3 post-Sepsis loss). I lost several inches in height with my body fluids and fat descending into my lower regions….

And here I am after a year and a half of exercise and diet.

Back to my Valkyrie height! But I knew I needed something to knock my body around and go the rest of the swelling reducing distance. Diet and exercise weren’t enough.

And there was another problem besides the swelling. Now that I was moving better—not just trekking around the sidewalks with my poles rather than walker, but doing thrice-weekly water exercises at the new Goleta Aquacenter—all these dark feelings were being unleashed from my body.

I had repressed a lot of the PTSD I had from Septic Shock and it was lying there waiting to be released and scare all my happy-go-lucky-Santa-Barbara-mellowness out of me. And replace it with—I don’t exaggerate and I’m not trying to get your sympathy—the first suicidal feelings I ever had.

I had several of terrific Somatic Tracking sessions with Kailin Collins at Goleta Valley Outpatient Therapy. Somatic Tracking is so trendy now, you have to be careful you get the real deal, a Somatic Tracking therapist who actually knows who the founder of it, Peter Levine, is and who’s really licensed to do the work. There’s a lot of quack Somatic Tracking around.

I decided to find a Lymphatic Therapist who could take my swelling down, down, down. And that’s Catina.

When she works on you, she’s really getting into how your lymph system is now serving you. Catina will explain how our lymph systems need a push to start doing what they’re supposed to.

My lower legs and feet are now close to normal!

There’s something else: Catina’s massages are taking the accumulated PTSD and instead of it just causing me to feel like jumping off a cliff, it’s dispersing! Almost like I can feel the PTSD just floating off into the air.

This whole thing of what to do with trauma lodged in our bodies is a mindfuck, isn’t it? You gotta do something. But you gotta do it right or else you won’t just feel like jumping off a cliff, you will actually do it.

I have come to believe there’s both a spiritual and physiological reason for this. The spiritual one is that when you are near-death you experience it and it’s no longer this thing you fantasize about.

People who’ve had Sepsis report the fear they have afterwards. I personally didn’t experience it as a fear of death. Death was ok. Not very interesting in my experience just like turning out the lights and going to sleep. But it was something now that I knew. As much as I know the experience of being alive, I know the experience of being dead.

The fear I have is that death has become so easy for me I feel like anytime life becomes too tough, the PTSD calls out “come to me.”

Except that I really do love life unconditionally. As the pianist Arthur Rubinstein said after his botched suicide attempt, that he now loved life unconditionally.

I want to live. My feelings of jumping off a cliff when life gets too tough are just my tired body toxicizing me with PTSD.

That’s why I—and you—have to do something cellular to atomize that PTSD lodged in us after trauma.

You and me, baby, we gotta live and live well!

POST-SCRIPT:

I wasn’t going to put this in. But here it is …. when I was in my twenties it was back in the Dark Ages when we used typewriters. I made a little living typing up manuscripts for L.A. writers. One day, a woman asked me if I would type up her mother’s handwritten manuscript. I agreed. The woman was a Holocaust survivor. She wrote about the horrors she endured from both the Germans and the Russians. I could barely type it up I was crying so hard. But I finished and gave it to her daughter. She thanked and paid me. A short while later I ran into her daughter at a store and asked about her mother. “She put her head in the oven and gassed herself,” her daughter said, took my hand, then walked away.

Above dish: Duck Legs braised in juice from fresh oranges (many thanks to my neighbor Michel for giving me a bag off her trees), oyster sauce, hoisin sauce, soy, ginger and stock (for sheer decadence you can’t beat D’Artagnan’s Duck and Veal Demi-Glacé).

The meals I made were high fiber, high protein, lots of good Omega 3 rich fats and low in carbs and sugar. Just your average Metabolic diet of today.

I love to throw together salads using ingredients I make up in advance: quinoa, beans from Rancho Gordo, fruit, greens, protein (in this case chicken baked with a Tamarind/Chipotle glaze sweetened with zero-calorie Monk Fruit powder), and acorn squash.

It isn’t that hard to prepare meals under these guidelines: just avoid or limit white rice, regular potatoes, corn, bread, pasta, sugar and make the food yourself. Limit the prepared meals to prepared ingredients like tinned fish, avocado mayonnaise, preserved lemon paste—instead of complete meals that will sabotage any good you did for your body the last time you actually made the chili yourself instead of opening a can, even if it’s from TJ’s.

But how to keep meals from seeming like Metabolic Diet chores rather than something you can’t wait to taste and which don’t leave you feeling like you need a high carb snack right afterwards? The word “satiety” is everywhere right now.

And I think I achieved satiety in the above thrown-together meal. I make up enough quinoa every week to use it in different dishes. In this salad I dressed the quinoa with avocado, pickled red onions, accompanied by more of that chicken and watermelon slices.

Beyond satiety, you need to come away from your meals feeling like life is worth living. Like your senses have been awakened. Your body aroused. You feel like dancing after dinner!

The other day I cooked some Rancho Gordo Masur Dal (Split Red Lentils), adding a heaping teaspoon to the chicken broth (I use Brodo Broth) I simmered them in. A friend was visiting and took a nap in a guest room as they cooked and he awakened saying he’d had the most extraordinary dream of being underwater with mermaids who were tying him up with octopi tentacles. He devoured the lentils at dinner and then happily drove home. I hope he stopped at the beach along the way and met some mermaids. There’s nothing like Bondage Curry to give you both satiety and just the right kind of erotic hunger.

People will ask me what surviving Septic Shock is like.

Here it is: it’s like being married forever to someone. You thought you knew them inside and out. Sure, they had their annoying traits, but you were tight and in it for life, there for each other, supporting, nurturing, protecting each other.

Then one day you realize. OMG, I’m married to a psychopathic killer! I’m married to a serial killer worse than Hannibal Lecter or Ted Bundy—and they’re trying to kill me!

Yes, I know, people tell me that the Immune System is really only trying to protect your body from a severe infection when it goes into a Cytokine Storm and blasts your organs and limbs to the point where they stop functioning. Sure. Thanks, buddy.

But y’know, the Immune System has been dealing with Sepsis for thousands of years and it’s time it got its shit together and evolved into a competent protection force. Period. End of story.

It makes me think that the Immune System is as incompetent as the organizations running this country! As full of bloat and out-of-date practices as any government office! I now see my Immune System as needing a major overhaul in its workforce. You can’t have employees who go nuts and start shooting up the office and everyone in it.

And don’t get me started about the other systems in my body that haven’t come through for me. Like my Lymphatic System. It should be draining proteins instead of accumulating them and causing my feet and lower legs to swell. And why do my intestines think that forming hernias is a good idea?

You know what system is actually damned efficient and acts like a real professional? The Autonomic Nervous System, that organization devoted to making the Brain’s Reward System give you orgasms and all the dopamine that comes with them. That system is also rife with decadent workers who don’t just bring in the good old organic stuff like sex (with appropriate partners, including yourself). No, the Autonomic Nervous System also works to make you enjoy and crave things like drugs, or ice cream, or spending all day lying on the sofa watching pro wrestling. Dopamine production is dopamine production to the Autonomic Nervous System. It’s an equal opportunity employer!

So here’s what I’ve learned about loving my body again after Septic Shock. I have to give it absolute love. But I can never trust it again to run smoothly on its own.

I realized six months into my recuperation that I had to become the Mama Boss of my body. I had to tell it what to do. Yes, I listened to it when it was too tired to swim or craved more sugar than my recuperation diet allows. But I no longer trusted that my body knew what’s best.

Yet, I’ve come to love my body and all the systems running it, however incompetently. Because it is me. My mind and body are together in this lifetime. And maybe it messed up by setting off that Cytokine Storm and causing Septic Shock. But it also came through for me. I survived because of my body. I am able to walk again because of my body. I can take great pleasure again because of my body.

Whoever said that marriage was easy? The mind-body problem is a thing for philosophers and theologians to endlessly discuss. But there’s one other part of us that we often forget. And that’s our souls. How we use our minds and bodies is how we nurture our souls. And how we prepare our souls for their next adventures in their next lives in mind-body form. And that’s as important as any other thing you accomplish during your rehabilitation from Septic Shock: to heal and nurture and strengthen your soul.

Ever wonder how some people manage not only to live in Santa Barbara, but actually live the Santa Barbara lifestyle while living here?

They have long blonde hair. Not just blonde, but Santa Barbara Lifestyle Blonde, a highly guarded secret shade of blonde, a Prestige Cuvée Blonde that says “you can’t have me for less than private jet travel, a 20-bedroom Montecito estate and a budget for my own influencer channel that will make Gwyneth Paltrow goop with envy.”

They have perfect bodies that run on Butterfly Beach, show off the world’s finest Downward Dog and—because they can do masturbation better than Gwynnie—have their very own line of vag-scented body lotion!

And they have the perfect husband. That’s him, below. He’s accompanying her to a Climate Change convention so she can promote her latest social/environmental/lipstick cause.

You may be asking: how do I monetize my Santa Barbara lifestyle when I don’t have the blonde hair, the vag that gives good scent or the husband who gives a shit about my social causes? I can barely make the rent on the crappy Home Depot ADU I’m living in!

Don’t despair! With my Santa Barbara Lifestyle App, you will immediately be living the Santa Barbara Lifestyle. You will instantly be the woman every woman in the world dreams of being. And because you’re that woman, you will make millions—just like our Gwynnie—on influencing, so you can continue to afford to live the Santa Barbara Lifestyle!

All it costs you is just $9.99 a month to live the Santa Barbara Lifestyle dream. I’ve made it happen for hundreds of thousands of women around the world. And I can make that dream happen for you!

Look at me! I’m living the Santa Barbara Lifestyle—and monetizing it, just like you will when you download my app.

Oops! How’d that photo get in here? I’m talking about LIFESTYLE, not LIFE!

That’s better! That’s me, living the Santa Barbara Lifestyle, having an over-priced lunch at the Ellwood restaurant.

John Lennon said “Life is what happens to us while we’re busy making other plans.” No, actually, it was most likely Allen Saunders, creator of the comic strip “Mary Worth,” who said it.

And guess what—“Mary Worth” was set in Santa Barbara!

But whoever said it first, this is why life sucks in comparison to lifestyle. You can’t control it.

I say “Lifestyle is what happens when you forget about life.”

Happy lifestyling!

When was the last time you wrote a letter to someone and decided not to send it? A better question would be when was the last time you actually wrote a letter at all?

I don’t mean one of those flyers you mass-printed for the protest march you kind of helped organize. Or for the Mahjong tournament you’re putting on at your house for $25 a person in hopes that you’ll be able to justify all the time you play it to your spouse.

No, what I mean is a real letter. The kind people used to write. To people they loved. To people they hated. To people they wanted money from.

Like Ludwig van Beethoven, who immortally wrote immortal love letters to his “Immortal Beloved.”

When was the last time you composed a letter like that? Sure, you sexted just this morning with your BoyToy du jour.

But how does his sext back to you, “yeah my booty I cummed did you cum cuz I need to get back to work big score cumming for yr #1 AI dude” compare to Beethoven’s “Can you change the fact that you are not wholly mine, I not wholly thine - Oh God, look out into the beauties of nature and comfort you heart with that which must be - Love demands everything and that very justly….”

It’s time to get back to the lost art of letter writing! Let’s say that instead of sexting you write an erotic—not just erotic but philosophical and spiritual—letter to your own Immortal Beloved? Okay, it can even be to your Immortal BoyToy. But it must be a letter on paper, put in an envelope. Addressed by hand. Put in the mailbox with the flag up. Don’t forget the stamp. That’s why you bought forever stamps because you knew it would be forever and a day before you wrote a letter.

If you start now, you will not only be practicing the lost art of love letter writing, you’ll be practicing the lost art of slow sex, as you wait and wait and wait … and months go by as you continue to wait for your lover’s epistle to arrive in your mailbox. But when that letter arrives, it will blow your soul. Unless your Immortal Beloved is writing to say his love was all too mortal and gone with the wind.

But here’s the real lost art: NOT sending that letter you so lovingly—or hatingly if it was addressed to a relative or former lover—composed.

And no one in recent history was such a maîtresse of the unsent letter as Eve Babitz. If you don’t know who she was, here’s a terrific book to get you started. Toss out your copies of Joan Didion with her endless flat prose designed to please the NYC intelligentsia that they were right to look down on SoCal.

Read Eve Babitz.

And read Lili Anolik’s trip into the sixties with Eve in these two books.

That’s Lili on the left, one of my favorite current writers. She picks great subjects. She’s done witty, deliciously researched podcasts about Traci Lords and the L.A. porn industry and the Bennington College era that produced Jonathan Lethem, Donna Tartt and Bret Easton Ellis, among others. She’s written YA thrillers that make me want to go back to my miserable middle school years just so I can read them in the right hormonal mood. Here’s her website.

Lili also edited and compiled a volume of Eve Babitz’ letters, “Too L.A. Letters Never Sent” (Book cover photo at the top of this Substack) that was just published. I read it in one night. I couldn’t put it down.

“Too L.A.” is the best cultural history of the sixties and seventies in SoCal you will ever read. It is so good that I’m going to give it to all the young people I know who think they understand that period—that Boomers had a blast, lived like rock stars on nothing and fucked up the world for all the younger generations that have followed.

“Too L.A.” is the most accurate depiction I’ve ever read of that time, how it came together, how some people became legends and some of those legends died young. And most of all, how life as a young artist or musician or writer at that time was not that easy. Nor was everything handed to anyone with any smidgeon of talent—or great boobs (which, incidentally, Eve had). Hers even got to play chess with Marcel Duchamp in this infamous photo.

The Main Character of “Too L.A.” is Eve Babitz. And as a virtuosic literary performer, she knew that the most unforgettable divas make everyone around them feel like the real Main Characters.

Eve is our L.A. lady of Unsent Letters, writing to the numerous Immortal Beloveds she knew and loved. Really knew. Really loved. After reading her letters, you’ll really get to know those sixties and seventies legends you thought you knew.

Thank you, Lili Anolik. You are a cultural goddess for helping to preserve Eve’s legacy in all its forms.

And now I’ve got to write some letters—and not send them.

Prior to nearly dying from Septic Shock—which in my case was a complication of Necrotizing Fasciitis (less appetizingly known as “Flesh-Eating Disease”)—I had straight hair. Sure, it would frizz in ultra humid weather or when I tried to take a diffuser hair dryer to it in the early 1980s to get that Big Disco Hair, but it was mostly straight.

Sepsis is like putting your finger in a light socket. Your whole body gets zapped. Surviving it is like walking around with a blitzed house for a body. I was lucky not to lose any organs or limbs, with eternal gratitude to a genius surgeon, Dr. Christopher Quijano (known as “Dr. Q”). Dr. Q also happens to be an athletic, super nice guy in my town of Santa Barbara, that rare alpha member of the medical establishment who will take the time to explain your options before cutting.

It’s been a long slog for me to get my life back to 80 percent of what it used to be. I can walk now after weekly PT with the amazing Scott Saley at Goleta Valley Hospital. And I have much of my old energy—and snark—back after eating three nutrient dense meals a day (which I cook) and taking supplements. I swear by these: Biotin, Vegan K2 and D3, Kyolic, Ubiquinol and PQQ.

But some things in my body have changed, possibly permanently. One of them is my hair. It’s routine after Sepsis for hair to fall out about three months after the attack. Mine grew back, thicker and healthier than it was before—which I credit Biotin Shampoo and Conditioner (and the Biotin pill) for doing.

Like chemo, Sepsis can turn your hair curly when it grows in and can change the color. Unlike chemo which is usually a temporary change in hair, Sepsis is usually permanent. At least in my case, my hair has only gotten curlier.

At first I straightened it.

As best I could. But the moment my hair encountered any humidity, even the slightest steam from my stove top as I cooked, it would turn to this:

Help!

I turned to the best, most popular hair guy in Santa Barbara, Michael Romo who owns Salon U on Figueroa Street downtown. Michael and I decided the time had come for me to celebrate, rather than hide one of the few gifts Septic Shock gave me—a new head of curly hair!

Michael cut my hair in the layered above-the-shoulder style Pinterest is showing on so many influencer ladies right now (only they probably have to get theirs permed, I don’t!).

And I love it! I think I look like an aging groupie who just gave a BJ to a seventies rock star doing a geezer gig at the Chumash Casino and I’m thinking “ain’t dead yet.” 😇 GRILFs of the world unite! BTW, (I like GRILF for “Granny I’d Like to Fuck” better than the more media sanctioned GILF).

Grandma’s on the loose again! It’s time for us Boomers to put away our boring “No Kings” posters and bring back those delicious moments in seventies movies when the heroine (usually played by Jane Fonda) would have her hair go “natural” (actually permed and styled by Hollywood pros) after she cheated on her husband with a hunky liberal paraplegic skilled in cunnalingus, like Jon Voight, in his pre-MAGA days.

One of my favorite seventies moments was when Jon would go on college campuses to talk about the Vietnam War, promote his career (and no doubt get effortlessly laid) after Coming Home—and rows of women would shout “Eat me, Jon!”

MAXINE TATLONGHARI, MY SEPSIS SISTER

I often check in on the Sepsis Alliance. If you’ve survived Sepsis or have a loved one who’s going through it, I can’t recommend this site enough. And be sure to check out the Sepsis Stories. Last week I read a new one by an accomplished, successful L. A. woman, Maxine Tatlonghari about her road back from near-death Sepsis in 2025 (the same year I had mine).

It was so honest, moving and had such a great spiritual energy to it that I subscribed to her Substack, called “Kintsugi Diaries.” I’ll let Maxine explain the practice of Kintsugi to you, but for anyone who’s been broken, Kintsugi is the art form you need to study. I’m hoping Maxine will teach classes in it that I can take in Santa Barbara!

ONE OF THOSE MOMENTS THAT PUTS YOUR OWN NEAR-DEATH-EXPERIENCE IN PERSPECTIVE

I was at the dentist last week getting a crown replaced and the anesthesia made me a woozy—I’m walking around town with poles now, getting away from a walker, but I don’t risk any fall and asked my husband, Ray, to get my walker from the car.

He took the poles I’d come in using and had fun trying them out as hiking sticks on his way to the car. An older, fit and Silvery Foxy looking man stopped him and said “Practicing your next hike in Nepal?” Ray explained that the poles belonged to me with my Septic Shock mobility recuperation and the guy said “I was in a wheelchair for three years. My sky diving parachute didn’t open.”

Then the guy strode off to the parking lot, hopped in his Corvette and roared off.

When Ray told me this story, I was full of admiration for that guy. What zest for life! I should be hopping in a sports car soon and challenging the fates to kill me for real this time!

Then I thought, maybe it’s better to learn from experience and not tempt fate. I went home and made myself a cup a coffee (sweetened with Monk Fruit, my zero calorie natural sweetener in recuperation). The caffeine was excitement enough for this GRILF. I put on some seventies music and ran my hair through my curls. Even the excitement of a geezer rock group at the Chumash Casino couldn’t lure me away from my comfy, safe sofa.

I love it when Santa Barbarans write about the history of this city. I was very pleased to see this new book about the De La Guerras, one of the families that defined the cultural and community life of Santa Barbara.

The De La Guerras of Santa Barbara by local fiction and history writer, Willard Thompson (with genealogy research by Michel Nellis) is a thorough and fascinating read. Ir’s also a perfect summer gift book for local friends and a great night table companion for house guests new to this magical city.

Nellis is a delightful friend. I’ve never met Thompson, although I’ve long admired the care and dedication he’s put into his writing about this area. You can read about his books here.

We need more Santa Barbarans like these two!

I’ve been using a walker since my Septic Shock in 2025. I plan on walking without aid by the end of summer. But my turbo walker—a Dolomite I bought at our local Santa Barbara independent pharmacy, Federal Drugs—has been my companion and protector from falls for the last year and a half. And I’m very fond of the big bruiser.

I use it for my three walks a day in my neighborhood and when I go out to restaurants and shopping.

And here’s my experience of being semi-disabled: people are really nice and courteous to you. I have yet to encounter any disable-ism. Nobody bullies me or makes fun. Stores and restaurants are very accommodating.

However, our Santa Barbara government sucks when it comes to making my semi-disabled life easier. Sidewalks and parking lots in Santa Barbara are a disgrace. I really feel for people using a walker or wheelchair who aren’t as strong as I am, because they‘re an invitation to an accident. They’re uneven, they require you looking at the ground (meaning you hunch over the handlebars even when you don’t physically need to).

One of the worst parking lots, ironically enough, is the one at the Sutter Clinic on Pueblo where I go to see my terrific dermatologist, Dr. Peter Ford. I would not be surprised if patients trying to walk into the clinic didn’t end up in the ER instead of their doctor’s office.

But the most pleasant surprise for me as a femme d’un certain âge is that more men approach me to talk and offer help than when I was fully ambulatory. They couldn’t be more welcome—despite being married for thirty-seven years, I’m a glutton for male attention.

There are, however, some people of the female persuasion who I know mean well, but they talk very loudly, because of course, the reason I use a walker is I have hearing problems, not that my legs are still too weak from the Septic Shock I had. They also behave as though I must have escaped from my house where children have me under lock and key—for my own protection, they don’t want to inherit a thing—and are desperately trying to find me having been run over by a car. (I don’t have any such children, or children at all, in case you’re worried for me.)

Part of this concern is due to the zig zaggy way I walk to negotiate Santa Barbara public parking lots and sidewalks in order not to jam my walker and keel over. I probably do look a little dotty. But it’s not like I’m wandering around singing “Hotel California” or “Ventura Highway” off-key and talking loudly about the blow job I gave in 1977 to two of The Eagles. Wait a minute, shouldn’t “blow job” be plural? Or is it singular if you were essentially giving it to the band? Who knows, I never went to an Eagles concert. My brain does meander in this way, but that doesn’t mean I’m not completely focused: I’m a woman on a mission to buy a few things, have lunch or get some exercise.

So…yesterday I decided to display a sign on my walker.

We’ll see how it works. I’m thinking of adding a sentence at the bottom:

“IF YOU ARE A CUTE GUY, IGNORE THE ABOVE.”

But, sometimes I really do end up someplace that I have no idea how I got to. And if you find me there, come walk with me and we can sing together. Any song but “Hotel California” or “Ventura Highway.”

I don’t care who you voted for — that’s your business. What I do care about is that Santa Barbara has become so divided by party politics people have forgotten how to fight for what’s best for this beautiful city.

In the last ten years I’ve watched how politicians, our elected officials and the media have used party differences. They’ve created a terrible division between people in communities. And they’ve deliberately done this to control and use us taxpayers and voters for their own ends. Ends which have little to do with their promises and everything to do with furthering their own money and power interests.

Let’s take back our city!

Stop thinking in political terms. Start thinking in community terms. Talk to your neighbors. Talk to your fellow Santa Barbarans. Ask the if they’re bothered by the same things you are. Do they think the airport noise is obnoxious and abusive to the people who live under the flight paths? Do they wonder why we’re paying millions to supposedly make the traffic flow better, but all that happens is that it becomes more clogged and makes Santa Barbara look like Anywhere USA? Do they want downtown State Street opened up the way it used to be instead of it turning into a graveyard of political corruption?

You will find that in many cases they do think the way you do. No matter who they voted for in the election today, you are together on the issues that directly affect them and you.

That’s why I am first and foremost a Santa Barbaran. And my political party is a distant second. Let’s get together and make Santa Barbara OUR city!

Dear Laura,

What is it with your Ukraine colors? You’re supposed to be representing the best interests of my district, #2, which is in the Goleta area of Santa Barbara.

But you never have and you never will.

A few years ago we asked you to come and meet with us on the streets of our neighborhood. We asked you to help us with the airport traffic and noise—which has been a completely unnecessary menace to the well-being of Goleta.

You could have fought the airport to have better flight paths and quieter jets that don’t disturb the sleep and peace of the Goleta area, an area that is home to many of the hardest and longest working people of Santa Barbara. People who keep this city going. People who need their sleep and peace in order to do so.

But all you did was drive up in your expensive car, and exit like you were on your way to a really important date, perhaps on Al Gore’s private jet to Davos. Poor little princess, you had to spend time with us, the people who actually pay your salary, the people who actually make it possible for you to live in Santa Barbara.

You spent as little time with us as possible and did nothing more than give us your phony-baloney inherited Capps’ “I feel your pain” smile. And for the last several years after granting us the meeting, you did absolutely nothing

You did nothing for us. Your taxpayers.

Your excuse? The airport is federally run. Your pretty little princess hands are tied!

Oh, but you’re willing to fight DC for the sake of illegal immigrants, aren’t you?

But to you, Laura, the illegals, like Ukraine, like “Climate Change,” like your avowed anti-racism, are what matter. And we, the white people who pay for your virtue-signaling lifestyle and your expensive car and yellow and blue outfits—we should feel guilty and ashamed of even asking for anything. We should pay for our sins. Because we’re white.

Well, guess what, Laura. You are as white as they come.

But that’s not why you are a Scumbag in Paradise. No, your sin is that you are a dishonest carpetbagger masquerading as a Social Justice Warrior.

And if you really want to pay for your sins, there’s one simple thing you need to do:

Get the Hell out of Santa Barbara.

The women in your Tai Chi Walking group were talking about sexting. Nancy told a story about how her grandson, Josiah, was caught getting a racy text photo during a Bible Study class on the Crucifixion.

“You can’t believe the things these young girls will video themselves doing!” Nancy said. Then added, “I’d pop my replacement knee out if I tried to get a photo of my behind like that!”

The other women all laughed, including you. And then, the conversation shifted immediately from sexting to popping out knees and sharing stories of replacements they’d had. Jill was thrilled with how her third ankle replacement had worked out. “Look at me Tai Chi Walking! I lost a pound last month.”

The other women applauded. You did too, but this sexting story had you wondering: am I really too old for love anymore? You thought about Jack and … well, it had been ages. But you’d produced two exceptional children who gave you six bundles of joy—your grandkids. Life with Jack was pretty good, even if he fell asleep snoring during your favorite Netflix series.

You finished up the Tai Chi Walking and told the ladies you’d be missing it next week. You were off to Madison, Wisconsin, alone without Jack, for a No Kings rally and a visit with your grandtwins. “Jack says he’d rather pick trash up off the freeway than participate in a No Kings rally,” you sighed.

“I feel for you,” Corrine said, shaking her head. “Honestly, finding a MAGA hat in my husband’s sock drawer, like your did with Jack, would be worse than finding out he sexted.”

The other women nodded in agreement. You were proud of these ladies. Not only were they Tai Chi Walking together, they also held No Kings poster making parties. They were good people. Being with them was better than watching The View.

You waved good-bye to Jack as you walked into the airport. He was a decent man. He just watched too much Fox News during his last hospital stay. It changed him.

Oh darn, the flight was overbooked and full of loud children and their complaining parents. At least you had a window seat. But did the child in back of you have to kick so much before you even took off?

And then, there he was. “Lucky me,” the man said. “I’m next to you.”

He looked about Jack’s age, but with such a difference. Where Jack went everywhere in sweats with holes in them, this man was wearing pressed jeans, a tee that showed off his pecs and a blazer. His grey beard was trimmed and his straight silver hair brushed back. He took off his sunglasses and sat down. What did they call men like him? Silver foxes.

Whew! You weren’t doing Thai Chi Walking today!

As you flew, you chatted about your ultimate destinations. He smiled when you mentioned the No Kings rally. “Good for you,” he said. “Would you like a glass of wine?”

You felt something stir. Recently Jack had taken to calling you a “wine granny.” But this man saw the sophistication it takes to sip a glass when it’s not yet noon.

“What takes you on this flight?” you asked.

“I’m going to Summit Orthopedics in Vadnais Heights, Minnesota,” he said. “Hip replacement. All those years playing competitive squash, you know.”

You clinked glasses. You talked effortlessly. He listened to the same NPR shows you did! And then, all too soon you were about to land.

“I see the rings on your finger. But I can’t help asking for your contact info. I’d like to know more about you,” he said.

You fetched your purse and gave him your business card.

“You’re still working,” he said. “I like that in a woman.”

There’s something attractively masculine about a man who isn’t put off by your status in the work world. Well, what it once was, anyway.

You smiled and said, “These days, I keep my hours under control, but it’s good to have the benefits.”

“I’m retired, “ he said, “but I have a few founding projects I’m working on.”

So he was a founder, not just some guy who worked for a corporation!

He leaned in close and whispered, “Do you have a personal mobile number I could call you at? I like the vibe we’ve got.” He took out his phone as you whispered your phone number to him.

“Does this work for texting as well?” he asked.

You knew just what he meant. Shivers went through you. What he really meant was “sexting.” This was moving awfully fast! What should you do? You did what you always did under stress, you bolted the rest of the wine.

“Yes,” you murmured.

The plane landed. You walked out together through the airport. Your daughter and son-in-law were in the distance. “I need to say good-bye now,” you told him.

He turned to face you and smiled. “We’ll be connecting,” he said.

And connect you did! It took some maneuvering with the babysitting of your grandtwins. But while your son and his wife went to a pickleball party and the kids were off with the nanny in the poolhouse—and your guest room door locked!—the sexy texting began.

“Let me show you my hip replacement,” he wrote.

“I hear those Summit Orthopedic ones cost a fortune!” you said.

“I only go for the best,” was his answer. Firm, decisive, the kind of answer you recognized from the CEOs you occasionally met in person at your work.

And then there it was, on your iPhone! A photo of him naked, giant bandage on his hip. His manhood was impressive and not the slightest bit tired after that replacement surgery.

“You’ve got all of me now. It’s only fair I get a little of you,” he said.

This was going faster than you’d expected! You should stop now! This was cheating!

Or was it? You’d watched that episode of The View where it got vicious between the women debating whether or not sexting constituted adultery. Unanimously, the women all decided sexting wasn’t cheating if your husband voted for Trump.

“Okay,” you texted him. “It’ll just take a few minutes.”

You shimmied out of your dress, removed your granny panties, picked up the No Kings poster you made for the rally and fanned it as you took the shot. Then sent it to him. Be still my heart!

“It’s completely out of focus,” he texted back. “But I know the next one will be hot!”

He sent a photo of his hand on his erect love machine.

You tossed aside the No Kings poster and got down to business, sending him shots of every part of your lusciously over-65 body.

Let the sexting begin! It would not just be sexting for seniors. It would be sexting for the history books.