But I’ll come to the point: Here is a picture of my neighbors’ Halloween decorations:

Yes, it's the Wizard of Oz Family.

And just in case you’re not properly impressed, here is what hung from the tree to the right of this family gathering:

The Wicked Witch of the West

Now let’s look at my Halloween decoration (yep, that would be singular, not plural).

And I can’t even take credit for the face. I bought it already cut out for only an additional $15.

Here is the thing—at first, I clapped my hands with glee when I saw said neighbor’s Wizard of Oz decor. I can appreciate fabulous creativity as well as the next person. But then people started driving onto my property to park and take pictures, and I started to get irritated. Friends commented on the difference between my Jack O’ Lantern and the neighbors’ production. Over and over again I came home, drove past their house, and felt the giant chasm between them and me. But in the end I let it go. I gave it up for their brilliance, deciding that Halloween must be their favorite holiday, and I can live with it for one month a year. I even stopped by to tell them how cool the entire thing was. Really, I did. And I meant it. Oprah has taught me nothing if not to be authentic.

Then a week or so ago, they were out there taking it all down. Wow, I thought as I drove away. They’ve been out there for hours. I had no idea it could take so long to dismantle such a thing as Dorothy and her band of brothers. (By the way, there should have been another girl in Dorothy’s band of Yellow Brick Road Travelers. Dorothy and three men? I will have to address that issue in a future blog.)

Anyway, I come home a few hours later to this:

Really?  Come on. Are you serious? Look at that friggin’ turkey for God’s sake? Who does this?

Then I started to get anxious about Christmas. Should I hire someone? Do I move? Will they do Valentine’s Day?

There are so very many things to get anxious about these days, and I’m not willing to allow keeping up with the Jones’s holiday decorations to become one of them. I should add, by the way, that they are the nicest couple ever. Really. The problem is me, not them.

Anyway, I’m moving. I’ve checked out the neighbors who live by the new house, and I think it’s a better fit. They have a decaying car in their yard.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Lady Gaga was Stephanie someone-or-other, and she grew up in New York City at the same time as my fabulous daughter, Sarah. She went to the Convent of the Sacred Heart, the very name of which tells you that they didn’t celebrate her desire to wear only a few token pieces of clothing on any given day and otherwise go around pretty much naked. But her parents always told her she was fab just the way she was. And good for them, because she is. I can’t help wondering: if I had told Sarah it was ok to go to school in her underpants, would she have forgone law school in order to get onstage at Madison Square Garden and sing about following your dreams? Sorry Sarah, if I inhibited your sense of self. You do the best you can, and when you know better, you do better (thank you Maya Angelou).

My first inkling of Ga Ga’s brilliance and talent came via 60 Minutes. She was smart, articulate, and sincere (although who really knows; one of my colleagues once worked with Jeffrey Dahmer and he thought he was a nice guy). Most of all, her music was amazing. I didn’t realize she could sing. Her music is her own, and her lyrics actually speak to me.

My mama told me when I was young

We are all born superstars

She rolled my hair and put my lipstick on
In the glass of her boudoir

There’s nothin’ wrong with lovin’ who you are
She said, ’cause He made you perfect, babe
So hold your head up, girl and you’ll go far
Listen to me when I say

I’m beautiful in my way
‘Cause God makes no mistakes
I’m on the right track, baby
I was born this way

Don’t hide yourself in regret
Just love yourself and you’re set
I’m on the right track, baby
I was born this way, born this way.

She puts it to fabulous music, and while her performance attire is outrageous, I now find myself looking forward to seeing what she is going to wear next. It is a total package.

I see kids crying during her performances, not because they are worshiping her, but because she is telling them they are ok the way they are in that moment. I wish that Paul Simon had told me I was ok the way I was instead of telling me that he would be my Bridge Over Troubled Water, or to go look for America. I don’t really mean that, Simon was my Bridge Over Troubled Water when I cried my seventeen-year-old self to sleep to that song over and over again over Bob Reid, whom I had rejected for some silly reason that made no sense to me immediately after I did it. But I never felt like he knew me, or was supposed to know me personally.

I don’t know if Lady Ga Ga is an anomoly, or if today’s social media platforms allow performers (she says she is a performance artist) to speak more personally to their fans. But whatever it is, take a look at her, peers of mine. It is well worth the trip.

Sometimes my pauses can be mistaken for laziness. I can pause all afternoon, and if it happens to be in front of Turner Home Movie’s thirty-thousandth showing of Pretty Woman, all the better. I’m a short distance runner. I go at high speed and then crash for whatever time, and then start up at high speed again. I struggle with the term lazy, as it’s something I really have always considered as an adjective that does in fact describe me.

“You are crazy,” friends will comment when I mention my lazy self. “You make me feel like I don’t do anything.” But I know they don’t know the me that sits in front of the TV, or ponders stupid things like valet in LA and where they park the cars. Or, why I am missing trees so terribly much when I never stopped to look at them when I lived back East.

In computer terminology, lazy evaluation is the technique of delaying a computation until the result is required. So in Christine’s world I’m a lazy evaluator. I will delay a decision or action until the result is required. I will not write my blog much before the 6 a.m. deadline so it gets fed daily to you amazingly discerning readers who follow it. I will not decide on which apartment to rent in LA until the day before heading back to NY to get my packing done because I don’t need to decide before then. It’s not lazy; it’s result oriented.

Ok, that works for the actions I actually take; however what about the ones that I haven’t taken? What about the inspiration that does not come to me because I’m too lazy to go out and experience that which I have not experienced so it can inspire me? So, as usual, I make a plan. I will go to the beach in Venice, which I haven’t visited yet, and walk and walk in an unlazy-like manner and the inspiration will come to me in a flash. I will be the happy person that exudes delight in what is yet to come like my new hero (sorry Obama), David Hockney.

So, I head to the beach where I start walking. There are tons of people there; it’s very hot here in LA in October, and so I have to walk around them and not just wander so the inspiration can find me. Not only that, but I forgot my sunglasses and sunscreen (sunscreen in October should be outlawed) and I’m hot and getting an uninspired headache as I have to concentrate hard to not step on some unsuspecting person sitting on the beach not realizing they are sucking up my inspiration space. Surely the inspiration can’t find me because I’m weaving around the beach like my dog Luke does when he’s following a scent.

I head for home. I look at the boxes in the house that have not yet been unpacked, and I know in my heart of hearts that unpacking them will not inspire me one bit. And not unpacking them is surely the definition of lazy as the verb Hockney meant it to be. Needless to say, once again, I’m a failure with the best of intentions. I still like Hockney’s work, and I recognize that he’s on to something, but the truth is, I will not benefit from it on this day, this weekend, or this month.

Thank God Van Gogh isn’t on YouTube. Can you imagine what I’d have to do to find a connection to him?