One Hundred Things
Here’s my attempt at one hundred things about Claudia
1. I started working when I was about six years old.
My mother had a scheme to recycle newspapers. My sisters and I would take our red wagon around our suburban neighborhood and collect people’s newspapers. I found the work deeply humililating. About once a month, we’d load up the stationwagon, pack it to the brim and take it to the recycling center where we’d make about 1 cent a pound. My mother would charge us for the gas money and her time. Even though my older two sisters rarely went with my little sister and I, we split the proceeds of the newspaper haul between all four of us. Thus, three hours every Saturday for a month paid about three dollars. We didn’t receive an allowance, so this seemed like a pretty good deal to me.
2. I owned my first business when I was eleven years old.
3. Around this time, I began weekend babysitting.
I like kids. And they like me. It was fun to take care of children while their parents took trips. I had a couple regular clients who I sat for until I graduated high school. I wonder sometimes what happened to these kids. Wherever they are now, I hope they are well. These funds helped pay for cheerleading wardrobes, band expenses, all my clothing, and any entertainment.
4. My first real job was at Burger King.
Even though I made more money in my other endeavors, I wanted a ‘real job’. The day I turned fifteen and a half, I went into Burger King for my interview. I liked working there. At that time, my mother went ‘on strike’ or something like that. She decided to stop buying food. Burger King was a lovely place to eat when you’re not eating. At that time, I cleaned houses, did the weekend babysitting and worked at Burger King. I was rich!
5. Cocos!
They opened a Cocos up the street from Burger King and I applied as a hostess. The pay raise was enormous ($1/hr). By that time, my mother wasn’t feeding either my little sister or me. I was able to get my little sister a job there as well. What a funny place and a funny time in my life. It was my first experience with people who just worked. They had these ‘old’ women who had waited tables since they were my age. (I bet they were thirty years old.) There was a bunch of drama that happened while I worked there -my first work drama! When the ‘new’ manager came in, he felt like he should mentor me. When I think of it now, I realize how much his words impacted me – especially with what was to come….
6. Food Service.
I went to Occidental College for a couple years out of high school. It was part of my BIG PLAN. Of course, I hadn’t planned on my parents renigging on paying for my private school education six weeks before starting. I was stuck with either withdrawing from school or doing it myself. My choice of doing it myself, and the ensuing argument, got me tossed out of my parents’ home and told not to return. Biggest paying job at Occidental College? Food service. I could only work twenty hours a week there. (I was so ubiquitous at food service that I gained a couple Occidental grad therapy clients because they remembered my name tag.) I had an enormous bill… so I worked….
7. Friedman’s Microwave Ovens.
8. Typesetting the college paper.
I didn’t do a lot of this because, frankly, I wasn’t very good at it. I mostly filled in when someone was sick or needed a weekend off. It paid ten dollars an hour! I wasn’t restricted by the work/study twenty hour a week rule because I was a contractor. We had this super fancy computer that you would type out strings of words then past onto pages. I honestly think that my lust for fabulous fonts stems from this time.
Then a whole bunch of things happened all at once. The common thread among each event was that I was treated so lovingly, and with such respect, at these jobs, that I started to feel differently about myself. I transferred to UC Berkely.
9. UC Berkeley Housing Office.
My friend Bill worked at the Housing Office. It was a great job. It paid well and had another host of quirky co-workers. (For example, one man was the oldest son of a King in Sri Lanka!) Our boss was this ‘forward thinker’ who eventually put the entire system on Apple Macintosh computers. That was my first computer experience. Because I had a wonderful financial aid man who helped with my school bill, I only had to have this one job while I went to college. I worked there until after I left college.
10. The Daily Cal.While in school, I had a job as a day photographer for the Daily California. They would send me out on assignment and I would take pictures. I loved the cool quiet of the dark room. I don’t know if I was any good at it. I really liked that job. It didn’t pay well, and affected my grades horribly, but I loved working in the newsroom.
11. UC San Francisco – Hepatitis : I graduated college just as the US economy was crashing. Massive lay offs. No jobs anywhere. Most of my friends continued working in their college jobs. I was able to get a half time position at UC San Francisco in a Herpes Lab. They had just started researching HIV and Hepatitis non-A, non-B (or now called Hepatitis C). The AIDS epidemic was just becoming national news and, outside of knowing what the virus looked like, no one knew anything about it. After three months, I was hired full time to work for a brilliant, but deeply bitter, British guy.
12. Spats! : In order to afford working at UC San Francisco, I served cocktails at a bar called Spats in downtown Berkeley. Spats was the only restaurant/bar open after ten o’clock at night, so everyone who was in town came there for sustainance. I met Russian Ballerinas, rock stars, and regular people. I slept about four hours a night to keep up with my work schedule. After a few months, I quit to preserve what was left my sanity. And luckily, I was hired full time at UCSF.
13. UC San Francisco – Herpes : At this time in my life I had the delusion that I would become a doctor. In order to fill my resume, I transitioned to another UCSF lab that focused on Herpes. The lady investigtor said that she wanted to help me to go to medical school. Of course, her husband had an affair and… Well she went completely psycho. There’s no way to know if she was like that prior to husband’s zipper problems, but she was crazy, mean and cruel. Since I had 17 years of childhood training, I was used to the treatment. I stayed for two years still believing that she would help me with medical school. When I gave up on the idea of medical school (how could I ever afford it?), I knew I had to leave.
14. Into the fire company : Suffice it to say that I jumped from the frying pan to the fire. They were a small antibody company with extensive animal labs, tissue culture and an ‘anything that pays’ attitude. Frankly, I didn’t handle the job very well. I was laid off or quit or was fired – depending on who you talk to. At the moment of separation, I felt like the entire universe hurled me from science onto the empty road of life. I had road rash for decades.
15. Combustion Engineering : Because the economy was still in the toilet, I was able to get a job right away as a temporary secretary. People were willing to hire temps, but not permanent people. I worked all over the East Bay until I got a job at Combustion Engineering. The division was heavy into personal computers (new at the time). As the group disbanded, I was their secretary. The men were smart funny and worldly. I leanred about computers, and became the assistant to a Warton graduate intern. He taught me basic accounting. Through him, I learned how business worked. After years of insanity and ego at UCSF and the fire company, I felt like I could breathe – for the first time.
I moved to Venice Beach because the former got a job at a big law firm downtown. You would think my financial worries were over. Nope.
16. ISA : Unsure of what to do next, and with massive debt, I applied for any available job. I received a job at Interviewing Services of America, a market research firm. I programmed statistical tables for large market research projects. Everything you could imagine happened while I worked there. Every piece of office drama, power play, and odd behavior running the spectrum between cocaine use (office mates), fake engagement rings (coworker) and Japanese Martial Arts. I mostly kept my head down and did my work. I met my husband there – which is another story.
17. Adventure-16 : I started working here to help pay some medical bills (another story). A-16 is a wilderness outfitters in West Los Angeles. The people who worked, and shopped there, were some of the world’s adventurers. They climbed Everest. They hiked the John Muir trail (before it was finished). They were wild people who lived exciting lives. And , if my Facebook account is accurate, they continue to live the adventure. I met many movie and television stars as well as studio people working to outfit movies. I worked as a salesperson, a cashier, a manager, and finally an accountant. I continued working at A-16 through graduate school and my first therapy jobs. For all the negative people in the world, A-16 was an oasis of “Why Not?”
18. Glendale Adventist : My first therapy job was at a Drug and Alcohol facility in Glendale Adventist Hospital. Wow. I learned so very very much about everything. Mostly, I learned that the best counselors are the ones without the degrees. I met some amazing people there and interacted with over fifteen hundred clients. For the start of a career, I couldn’t have asked for a better experience or better people to learn from.
I moved to Denver with the now-husband.
19. YMCA, Adams Community Mental Health, Insights Counseling, CETP, and any place that would give me hours : One week prior to our moving to Denver, there was an insurance crisis in Colorado. Fourteen alcohol and drug treatment facilities closed over night. And, I couldn’t find an addiction counseling. I worked as a temporary secretary for some amazing characters. One tiny job at a time, I began to piece together hours for my license. I ran groups for forth graders for the YMCA. I facilitated DUI classes for approximately forever. I worked with felony offenders. I worked with dual diagnoses people at Adams Community Mental Health. And in 1997, accumlated 5, 000 counseling hours and 500 supervision hours to receive my CAC III and my license.
20. Psychotherapy Private Practice : I saw my first private client in 1995 for twenty-five dollars. She was an alcholic who tried to kill herself by driving into a truck. She survived. What to do next? From there, I built a successful private practice. I became well known for working with PTSD clients as well as dual diagnosis. I saw mostly adults, but also worked with kids and families. I really loved being a therapist. I particularly loved working for myself. I’m not exactly sure why I ‘had’ to take a sabbatical. I can only tell you that after I announced to my clients, my husband became very very ill. I continue to see a few clients in more of a coaching capacity.
21. Entitled people : This is anyone who:
- believes they suffer more than others,
- believes they work more than others,
- believes they are smarter than everyone else,
- only sees what they give not what they get,
- who believes the world should cater to his or her needs,
- believes the world revolves around them,
- believes they are busier than other people,
- drama queens,
- Melissa Ethridge and her ‘second class citizen’ rant.
22. Liars : Rush Limbaugh can get me screaming in about two seconds flat.
23. Rich people get away with murder : OJ Simpson is probably the most famous example of this. T Cullen Davis, Susan Cummings, George Anderson, and many, many more.
24. Rich people get away with rape : Kobe Bryant – enough said.
25. Prejudice in any form : Period.
26. Abject cruelty : People can be so cruel and make excuses for it. There’s no excuse for being cruel. Not ‘oh you know how kids can be’ or ‘I was just joking’ No. You were being cruel.
27. Humiliation : This is a standard communication style in my primary family. Have a heart warming conversation? You can be guaranteed that the information you share will be used to mock you publically.
28. Feeling trapped or controlled : Wanna get me angry? Try to control me. It’s a deal breaker for me.
29. Being manipulated : This is a kind of being controlled, combined with being humiliated, combined with lairs. It’s not a good thing.
30. Heroin addicts (in general) : This is too long of a story to go into here, but suffice it to say heroin addicts make me crazy.
Dax Moy recently challenged his readers to come up with fifteen BIG goals they would like to accomplish over the course of their lives. I thought I would share with you ten goals I would like to accomplish over the course of my life.
31. To live at least one month in Paris and at least a month at the ocean every year.
32. Have enough resources – money and time – to live, exciting and joyful life with my family while having plenty of resources to donate to people in need.
33. Feel deeply comfortable with my physical manifestion – looks, age, and weight.
34. Learn the boundaries of what is enough, what is too much and where I want to draw those lines so that I can be content that I do enough.
35. Be the best wife and friend I can possibly be.
36. Learn to communicate in Spanish, French, and Irish Gaelic.
37. Have at least one novel hit the NY Times bestseller’s list.
38. Live an active, joyful and fulfilling life into my one hundreds.
39. Create a serial fiction for every major city in the United States.
40. Dedicate myself to creating quality fiction which provides the reader with an uplifting, curious, fascinating, hopeful, emotional experience.
My parents were… odd. My mother suffered from bouts of paranoia and schitzophrenia. To treat her paranoia, she drank. A lot. My father dealt with her irratic behavior by withdrawing into himself. They had no friends. They had no social life. They lived an incredibly isolated existance – the island of odd. Not knowing any better, my sisters and I believed what they said was true, factual and real.
Of course, it wasn’t.
Ten ‘facts’ I grew up with that are complete and utter bullshit.
41. Most accidents happen in parking lots : Hello? Why do they rate dangerous INTERSECTIONS instead of dangerous parking lots??
42. Bay leafs are poisonous: But of course, no one thought to either 1) not use them or 2) take them out before serving. Dinner was always like – who got the bay leaf? Whoever got the bay leaf was doomed to some horrible, but unexplained, death.
43. My mother was a gourmet cook: My brother-in-laws tell stories of my mother’s cooking. While pouring her meal down the garbage disposal, they would feed the kids. Of course, always keeping this a secret from their spouses in order to avoid the ‘my mother is a gourmet cook’ conversation. Truly, her food is uneatable.
44. Married women never wear underwear to bed: Now this is a bizarre one. I asked my mother once and she told me I’d find out when I was married. I thought there was a book that would tell me this mystery – why do married women not wear underwear to bed? When I asked my newly minted husband, he said ‘because most accidents happen in parking lots.’ 
45. People have diabetes because they are too stupid to prevent it: There’s not much I can say to this. My father told his sister that she should have known better than to get diabetes. His lack of compassion stuns me to this day.
46. Someone can ‘give’ you cancer: One of the lovely post divorce insults was “Your (mother/father) gave me cancer.” Neither explained this phenomena, nor did they provide scientific evidence. Yet they were confident this was the case. My mother use to ask people, “Who gave you this cancer?”
47. Only angry people have high blood pressure: This is a big fat mind fuck for me. I have high blood pressure because I’m genetically programmed to have it. Yes, diet and exercise help. But only to a certain extent. I’ve spent a lot of my life ashamed of my high blood pressure.
48. My chronically schitzophrenic sister always ‘knows’ what’s going on: The last conversation was about my mother’s ‘cyst on her womb.’ (My mother had a complete hysterectomy at 28 years old.) She came out of her ‘cyst on her womb’ surgery with a face lift and new size D breasts. But crazy sister says the cyst was cancer mother caught from…. (You can see how this goes.)
49. Boys only like girls who never eat: I heard over and over again, “No boy will like you because you eat.” How does that make any sense at all?
50. Every one is out to get you: If something is lost? It was stolen. If something is broken? It was done on purpose. If something doesn’t work out? Someone is intentionally doing this so that you cannot get ahead.
Ten novels that changed my life.
51. Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare : This book meant so much to me. I was such a strange and unusual kid. As a young child, I had no safe place – school was a nightmare, home was worse. I could relate to Kit, who’s entire life is turned upside down when her grandfather died. Ironically, the same was true for me. My entire life turned upside down when my grandfather died but that’s another story. It’s not an exaggeration to say that this book changed my life.
52. Dark is Rising (series) by Susan Cooper : I grew up in a household where schizophrenia was the norm. In the Dark is Rising series, Will sees evil that no one else can see. I felt very much like Will growing up. I love the mythology in these books and the luscious sense of right/wrong, dark/light and destiny.
53. The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit by J.R. Tolkien : Oh, I know. Everyone has seen these movies now. I read the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings every year from the time I was about ten years old. These books helped me survive some very dark days.
54. The Roads to Freedom by Jean Paul Sartre : When I was applying to colleges, I was completely baffled by this question – what single book affected you? How could I pick one book? I was laughing about this in the car one day with my family and my father said, “Sartre.” I pressed him later and he said it was night and day – one day I was one way, the next day I was an existentialist. I think existentialism gave me a freedom and a chance to choose my own future. These are not great books – but they were great for me.
55. The Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin : I was given the original three books by a housekeeping client. I didn’t read them for about ten years. I’m not sure why I kept them. But when I was tossed out, I brought them with me. I like Ged’s humanity, his wretched ego, and final humility. I’m particularly partial to the first three, but the others are good.
56. Mystery series - Sue Grafton’s alphabet, James Lee Burke’s Robicheaux, and Tony Hillerman’s Leaphorn/Chee : I glump these together because I love mysteries. Great characters, interesting stories, and a long series. I’d love the Alex the Fey series to last as long as any of these series. We can only hope!
57. A Christmas Carole and Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens : I have a Dickens thing (obviously). Christmas Carole (1962 version only) is a staple of my life. I love that Ebenezer is given a chance at redemption. It’s such a message of hope. I know Tale of Two Cities is an old story, but I love that one would sacrifice for a person they don’t even know. ”It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.” Surrounded by mentally ill selfish people, this message was so powerful. I can choose! I can life or die and it’s my choice!
58. Dubliners and Ulysses by James Joyce : Oh, I don’t know. I feel do stupid putting these books on the list. They changed my life when I first read them because they were so different. I loved the idea of the nearly blind Joyce worrying over every single word. Obsessed and perfectionistic, Joyce worked his butt off teaching, caring for his wife’s children, and eventually, in the middle of the night writing. I admire the man, his commitment, and his capacity to risk. Did you know Joyce borrowed every penny his brother had to print the Dubliners then the printer wouldn’t print the book! Too much blasphemy. He lost his brother’s money and had no money. Ulysses was banned in the US for a long time. I love Portrait and Finnegan’s wake … sigh… Joyce is a great example of Churchill’s “Never, never, never, never give up.”
59. The Sun also Rises by Ernest Hemingway : I hate adjectives and adverbs. Yep, it’s true. I love that Gertrude Stein wouldn’t allow him to use an adjective for a year. A YEAR! We could all use this training. Plus, it’s a good read.
60. The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy : Cliff hanger after cliff hanger after cliff hanger! This is such a fun book. If you’re interested in learning about ‘hooks’ or ‘pulling the reader through the book’, this is a masterpiece.
Only 40 left…
