Heather H. Howard/Chore Whore's blog

I woke up this morning to the headlines reading that Jade Goody has died.

I knew this was coming.  Sort of.  I wanted to believe that the media was hyping it and that truly someone as full of life as Jade could not possibly be dying. 

But I know it's true.

I'm at a loss.  I haven't told Cayman as he is still sleeping. 

Few Americans had heard of Jade until the whole Big Brother debacle recently where she made some racial blunders.  I had just left London it seemed only a short time before she burst on the international scene with that scandal.  Reading what was posted about it and watching effigies of Jade burned in India was horrible.  At the time I shook my head and hoped her career was not going to tank.  I felt as if she would pull herself out of it and she did.

I feel scattered and yet I know that if we do indeed chose our lives, no matter how short, she did come here and do it in a big way.  To think that her short time in the limelight brought attention to matters of cervical cancer in a way no Public Service Announcement ever could.

Jade had a joie de vivre and a lack of shame I hadn't seen before her or since.  Whereas most people feel a sense of embarrassment when they need to ask what a word means, she was brazen and inquisitive.  The first time on the set of Jade's PA when she asked what the word "charisma" meant, I thought it was an act.  I really did.  Then a few moments later when she asked what the word, "construction" was, I knew it was an act.  But as time wore on and production days were in full swing, I realized that she not only didn't know what these words meant, she had never been exposed.

While she had charisma popping out of every pore, her lack of education and exposure to the world outside her neighborhood, was very limited.  People will jump down my throat for saying this when a nation is mourning, but she was treated terribly by those who despised her.  Instead of feeling compassion for a girl who was raised by "wolves" (her parents were not in any run for mom and dad of the year), she was dragged through the mud for her lack of knowledge.  The truth was. Jade was smart as a whip.  She just hadn't been exposed.  She had street smarts in some ways and yet was a total innocent in others.  She trusted those she shouldn't have.

Thank goodness it was only her body that died, as the energy that is Jade is still going strong, just in a different form.  Once you met her, it felt like a tornado that sideswiped a town.  You'd never forget it.

I know that I have essentially been MIA for a couple months now.  The little everyday things have bogged my life down to the point I barely have time to come up for air.

Living on a farm, out in the sticks, is a lot of work.  Five acres left to tractor mow before it gets too dry to do it.  A fire was already started a couple weeks back when my neighbor was mowing and his mower blades got wrapped around a piece of barbed wire.  Got the weeds to pull, piglets to get, goat to feed, chickens to get started and a baby cow to obtain and wean.  I sound as if I'm complaining but I'm not.  I love it but it leaves very little time for socializing.

Today we came home to a baby bird that fell out of her nest.  By the time I got to her the cat had her in her mouth and was sitting down for a small and bony meal.  Cayman shot the cat with a squirt gun (I knew there was a good use for those things), the cat dropped the birdie and we went into rescue mode.  My neighbor intervened (thank God because I don't like touching things like wild animals) and it turned out to be an endangered species of bird.  Figures a rare bird would decide to make my porch home.

We got her back in her nest and mama bird came home none the wiser to her baby's adventure inside a cat's mouth.

Also turns out that quite a few of the birds on our land are endangered.  Before the Big Valley was inhabited these birds were prevalent and nested in smaller trees, close to the ground.  But when humans came, their domesticated house cat came too thus wiping out these easily hunted birds. 

When my sister saw the mama bird making the nest she said she'd tear it down.  I didn't have the time or inclination and am glad I didn't.  I'm thrilled we helped save a baby from being a midday snack.

Off to bed--early to bed, early to rise.  The life of a converted farm girl.

I have ignored my poor blog site for so long I'm surprised it's still here.

Life has taken me by the horns and tossed me around.  I like to fool myself and say that I perform better under pressure but I have decided that that's one of those little lies I tell myself to feel better.  Sort of like the lie I believed when I pretended to the other mother's at my son's school that I could go camping just like they could.  Less than 24 hours after I pretended that, the car was packed and the mountains were left in the dust.  The only version of camping I can do is from a hotel with indoor plumbing, electricity and a bed sans black widow spiders.  Nature and I have trouble getting along.

So I convinced myself that I must get on with nature so I don't have to repeat the problem in my next incarnation.  Yep, learn it in this life so I won't have to do a do-over.  Take note, with other personal challenges, I haven't felt the drive to fix it this time around. 

I left the big city for the slower life.  I enjoy the ideals of living closer to nature.  The picture of country living that I carry in the mind's wallet is glorious...sun setting over the grape vineyards, corn stalks gently blowing in the winds.  Kids able to run and play and ride bikes without a maniac barreling down the road and flattening them.  All this holds firm in my mind.

So when the opportunity arose that I could leave the big city, I did.  Then the opportunity arose for me to leave town and actually take up residence in the country.  Real country.  Walnut groves.  No sewers....septic tanks.  Wells, not city water.  Coyotes, eagles, hawks live close by rather than the teenagers who had a bomb lab in their mom's garage.  At night, the concept of light pollution was miles away.

The country house....oh, the house!  The previous owners took the time to research the style of old adobe homes in the Presidio of old Santa Barbara, I think.   Done in that exact style, the house has 16" thick walls, radiant -heated floors, and a gorgeous hacienda-style patio with a compass rose stained into the floor.  The whole east side of the house is floor-to-ceiling windows where you can sit and watch the sun rise over the Sierra Nevada mountain range.  What better place to get over my nature problem than this!!!!

Three weeks later, we're moved in and country-living has introduced itself to us in all it's glory and fervor.  Death hit the farm on move-in day. As I approached the previously-mentioned row of windows, box in arms, there on the patio lay a bird, dead.  Broken neck.  A ring of feathers stuck on the glass door where it crashed.  I know blue jays and robins but this looked like a kingfisher.  I don't think there are kingfisher's in my neck of the woods but from my memory of looking through bird books when I was a child, that's what I thought.

I don't like dead things.  I get the creeps at the idea of touching them.  I asked the guy helping me move to get rid of it.  Like throw it into the neighboring field or somewhere far away like that.  He told me that I was going to have to get over being a wimp if I wanted to live out in the country.  He said this as he was picking the bird up with his bare hands.

Gulp!

Bare hands.  What if he got the bird flu?  I made him wash his hands with anti-bacterial soap and made a mental note to re-scrub the sink where he washed his hands.  My editor for CHORE WHORE made me cut out parts of the book where I seemed too wrapped up in cleanliness....said I seemed paranoid.  I had never thought that I seemed too OCD about not wanting ickyness hanging around.   Maybe I was, a little.

Since moving out here I have become a little more involved with nature than I had intended.  But that's yet another blog entry.  I'll get on with these a bit more.  Now, I need to return approximately 165 emails I haven't answered. I wonder if I have any friends left.

So I had a live radio show call me yesterday wanting to do a show with me today.....in Ireland.  Great fun and was happy to do it.

Usually they call me at home on the phone and we talk from here.  I had no problem with that except I knew I needed to control the external forces:  Cayman and his friend, Kanai who was with us for the day.  My sister and the dog.

the kids knew they had to go in another part of the house and be quiet until i came out to get them.  My sister was in her part of the house writing...knew she'd be safe and quiet.  I knew Duke, velcro boy, just wanted to be near me and would sleep soundly through almost anything excluding someone out and out banging on the door.

So the station calls, the show is live on air....Drivetime radio about those moments in life when you just have a brain fart....put books in the fridge; go upstairs to get something and by the time you reach the top flight, you can't remember what it was you wanted...those types things.  My art was to say the types of brain farts celebs have...okay.  Good enough.  had a few notes.

1)  the time Matt Dillon went to a party, parked the car then couldn't find it.  Heather searched venice Beach for hours looking for the rental car--had to chalk it up as an insurance claim.

2)  the time a client couldn't remember where her dad was buried and I had to go find him so I could get mom interred next to him, etc.

So Drivetime DJ asks me if I, as an assistant, ever had those memory lapse moments and I said that I didn't have many.  I got plenty of sleep, didn't drink liquor (that just about killed him....didn't drink?????  WHAT???) and ate relatively healthy foods...fish, veggies, brown rice, etc. 

Then out of seemingly nowhere Duke, our 200 lbs. of Old English Mastiff love (yes, the same breed that just got taken away from Ving Rhames because of the death of his friend...actually his double/a screenwriter by supposed dog mauling--it wasn't...his death is still a mystery according to the coroner) lets out this low guttural growl and then starts barking ferociously....on air in Ireland.  I was mortified and with one hand held the phone and with the other was trying to clamp Duke's mouth shut.

Of course the DJ brought it up in a "Did you just have one of those moments yourself, Heather?"  Because anyone else would have had the dog out of the room when speaking live....all after I touted that as a PA I didn't have many brain lapses.

Turns out that m sister came out from writing, saw the kids playing quietly in the dark and decided to go open the curtains.  If you open them before 11:30am tones of sunlight pours in and the house heats up.  After 11:30 am, at 11:37 approximately, when I was smack dab in the middle of an interview, she decided to open them.  Metal scraping on metal (patio curtains) on the outside patio sounded like an intruder to Duke and he sprang into action.

I was so frazzled after the interview I dropped a bottle of balsamic vinegar and it shot all over my white linen shirt and pants, all over the white kitchen...all over EVERYTHING.   ARGH!

I felt like a complete ditz.  Egads!

I received a UPS package last Friday from Harper Collins and couldn't wait to see what goodies it contained.  I tore open the package and there were two copies of my book in Polish.  And a totally different cover.  A cover, in fact, that I LOVED.  Very reminiscent of the 1960's movie posters I just viewed on a website last week.

My family and I went through the book with a fine-toothed comb and had real fun doing it. The names!!!!  My son became Caymanowi.  Spielberg became Stevena.  And for every idiom used there was a footnote....didn't know I used that many idioms. 

Now I'm waiting for the versions in Turkish and the unifying language of Indonesia.  Weird story about that--Harper Collins Jakarta had written to the New York office requesting Chore Whore be converted into their language the day AFTER the huge tsunami.  I kept thinking about that...how devastation happens all around and life goes on without even taking a breather to inhale what has just happened.  Same thing happened on 9/11....everywhere was closing down.  Folks weren't out on the streets.  But producers had their plans and I was called to work to carry out those plans.  The producer and his wife were walking about and carrying on as if nothing had happened.  In fact, the producer had just got news that his mother was in a Queens hospital and had no word as to whether it was WTC- related or not.  he honestly didn't look too concerned.  And he was one of the NICEST and most loving people I worked for.  I don't get the disconnection from tragedy and quite honestly, hope I never do.

Swim team has ended and so has structured Monday through Thursday workouts and activities.  Since Cayman has decided that he's a "night person," he thinks he must (and deeply wants to) stay up every night until at least midnight.

"I come alive at night."

I sleep like a log at night....until the light is turned on and he wakes me up to tell me something that I have deemed a non-emergency.

We have started fencing on Saturday mornings.  No, not fencing is the street sense of the word as in receiving stolen goods.  The foil or sabre, the cool mask and coat that goes between your legs and zips up the side.  The chest plate so you don't end up with a sword through your heart type of fencing.  I could definitely see continuing that throughout the year.  But that's for one hour, one day a week.  With Cayman's friends spread all over the place and none really in our hood, it has made summer entertainment difficult.  We do go to the movies twice a week but again, that's for an hour, hour and a half max.

I tried to introduce him to the way grown-ups spend their off time (or at least how this grown-up would like to spend some of her off time).  We went to Borders, sat in the aisles reading, got a Starbucks coffee and continued to read.  I might as well have thrown him into a pit of despair.  BORING.

Visalia is surrounded by land for miles around but the idea of surfing sounded cool.  And there is a sports park with some type of indoor surfing park going up in Lindsay, but it's not up yet. 

Friends are away on summer vacation....what's a curious 12 yr. old boy to do?  He hates summer camps and there aren't any groovy ones in this area.  The thought of trouncing up and down a field playing football in 101 degree heat isn't thrilling him either.  The other day he actually confessed that he's looking forward to school starting.

Oh my God!

....or a job overseas where he can explore new cities and see what new thrilling things they have to offer is more of his style.  Then we hit on something.......something we forgot about for some reason.

We're going to build a go-kart.  1950's style.  From scratch.  He and I doing it together.  I've watched enough HGTV to be able to handle a screwdriver....I think.  We have the wood and nails but we need to find some tires.  That's what the internet is for.....freecycle.com, my new fave website.  We'll deal with where he's going to drive the thing after it's built.

Maybe summer isn't so boring after all.

So last night, I spent half my free time ironing Yugioh cards and trying desperately to explain to my son why just because something gets slightly damaged, it doesn't mean he needs a brand new set.

Yesterday, as we do every Monday through Thursday, I took Cayman to swim team workout.  And as we do every Monday through Thursday, he wanted to bring a deck of Yugioh cards to look at just in cases of extreme boredom....like if Mom gets in a conversation about houses, Europe, brush fires, food or the supernatural.  As with most preteens, most of my conversations with other adults bring on rounds of yawns and thoughts of nooses in my kid (yes, he's a little dramatic.)

When we arrived at the pool, I told Cayman to leave the cards in the car since he was a little late and needed to get directly in the pool.

"No, they're my good luck cards," and he stuck them in his pocket.

After he did his first lap and i had settled in the shade to wait out the workout (and write) he came up to me dripping wet with a look of absolute despair on his goggled face.  He reached into his pocket and took out a deck of dripping Yugioh cards. 

Oh dear.  What a mess. 

I took them, directed him to continue his workout, and I proceeded to dry them off one by one.

The cards were completely salvageable in my mind but I knew of the drama to come on the ride home.

In the car, zipping through miles and miles of orange groves, Cayman had worked up a completely logical argument.

"I've been needing new god cards anyway.   The Winged Dragon of Ra was my favorite card and look at him now!  He's peeling apart....it's enough to make a grown man cry."

Uh-huh.

"And Slifer the Sky Dragon, how could you have known that you bought a fake.  I'm sophisticated enough now to know a fake from the real McCoy.  Obelisk the Tormentor, that one I'll give it to you, he's real.  But I've played with him so much, he has wrinkles and he's fraying at the edges.  On Ebay some guy is selling all his god cards for $23.95.  Do you know what kind of a deal that is?"

Deep, deep breathes.  The years of conversations that we've had about being happy with what you have and not having to have the latest and greatest have been set aside.   The times we've driven by men standing on the corner with their children  begging for food for their kids, out the window. 

My talent manager, Michael and I are always talking about how we are attempting to teach our kids about how fortunate they are versus folks living in cardboard boxes scrounging around for a simple meal.  In a town like Hollywood where what you have equals your value and worth, this is a lesson the kids need to be taught again and again.  Where Michael's daughter seems to have her sympathy dial set correctly, Cayman listens intently, pretends to have huge vessels of sympathy and compassion for those with so little, then promptly asks for a replacement of wet Yugioh cards.

"No.  Not going to happen.  I'll iron your cards and if need be, glue them and press them in between heavy books but I will buy more cards.  These cards are like Cayman droppings in the forest.  They're everywhere in our house.  On the kitchen counter, the living room floor, in my bamboo hutch.  I even found one stuck to the dog's mouth and one in the guinea pig's cage once.  No more cards.

So, as I ironed, I watched Chef Gordon Ramsey on "Hell's Kitchen" and Cayman put together a different deck.  On the commercial, he came in and hugged me and told me that truthfully he felt ashamed that if others knew he got in the pool with his cards on him they would think he was a poor "keeper of the cards."  Almost like a poor dad.  Who would want that label?

"Thank you mom for understanding and helping me to keep my pride intact. I know you think I'm still in my narcissus phase, but I'm really not.  Grown men don't go around dunking their toys, like stereos and weed whackers in the pool.  I wouldn't want to be emasculated that way and let all mankind down.  Besides, you're right. I have more cards than most kids and I have a great mom to boot."

Oh dear.  More drama.  The manipulation has just started.  I can feel him revving up.

"Maybe you can sell some of my other things on Ebay and when I have sold enough to put 50% of it away in savings for an emergency, I'll use the other half for a new set of god cards."

I'll keep working on him.....a real work in progress.

As a personal assistant, I was always an updated source of information.  The hottest restaurants, the best gift ideas, the car dealerships with the quickest valet service. 

But it's been two years.  People can't seriously think I'm at the forefront of that kind of knowledge anymore, can they?  I've retired from that life and style and now live in a bucolic, hot little town in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley.

Yesterday I was preparing one of my income properties for rental.  I was doing the final walk-through before it was to be cleaned and occupied.  It was blazing hot, pushing 100 degrees, the a/c was pumping and I was making a list of the last few touch ups. 

My phone rang.

"Shelly" from LA was calling.  Shelly who was named so in my book.  Wanting info.  After our greetings and niceties she quickly cut to the question.  "Hey girl, do you know of a trusted doctor you could recommend to me?"

Uh, yeah.

The "trusted" part of was emphasized.

"For what?" I wanted to know.

"One that would prescribe male sexual enhancement drugs," she spit out. 

I could tell that she was at work.  There was a formality in her voice I've heard many a time before.  The type that subtly told me other people were listening in.  But knowing what type of work she does (real estate) and with whom she works, this topic of conversation was straight up odd.   Sexual enhancement drugs?

"Legit ones?" I inquired.  "Like Viagra or something else?"

I'd had a very interesting experience with Viagra when a client was overseas and wanted me to pick up his prescription of it, scrape the V off the little blue pills and Fed Ex them to him in Italy masquarading as Flumadine.  I don't know if you've every shipped prescription meds overseas but you have to state the type of drug it is.  In fact, I don't think you can even do that anymore.  But as a PA I've done many naughty things one is not supposed to do but I did anyway.  All in a day's work.

"Not Viagra, it's........" and Shelly proceeded to name some pill of which I had never heard.

It was at that moment that I realized I'm no longer on top of the types of things I used to be.  I'm finally an ex-assistant.

"Since it's obviously not for you, why doesn't this guy just go to his doctor and ask for the pills himself?"

"It's a male ego slash embarrassment issue," she said, still with that tone that I was increasingly not understanding.  She was obviously at work but talking freely yet guarded.  Hmmmmm.

"Well my General Practitioner is just down the road from you and Mickey Fine Pharmacy is downstairs.  You can make an appointment for him there," I offered.

"I couldn't just call it in?" she asked?

"Uh, no!  This fella would have to make an appointment, tell Doc what the problem is, probably have to get a full physical.  It just seems like it would be better to get over his embarrassment and tell his own doctor."

Why are men so afraid of the doctor?  If they can't perform up to the usual standards they NEED to see a doctor.  This is just not a source of embarrassment for me, so I can't wrap my mind around the shyness part.

In fact, because my 50+ clients were always on the front pages, and they sure as hell were not going to be caught dead at the porno store or picking up their prescriptions to rid themselves of the disease of the week, I was the one doing it.  The poor pharmacy we all went to probably thought I was one of the freakiest girls in LA. I was the one who in the span of a week was picking up Viagra, birth control pills, pregnancy test kits and Herpes meds. I can guarantee someone wanted to tell me that it just might be better if I kept my legs closed!!!  And I did it with a straight face.

Additionally, I was the one picking out the edible underwear, blow-up dolls, the dildo and the amazing array of vibrators, again without mumbling the self-incriminating line of, "They're for someone else."  Uh-huh.  Right.

Wasn't much of a help to Shelly I'm afraid.

I admit, I did want to ask who the big wussy was.  Who would put Shelly up to asking such a nutty question.  I hope he, whoever he is, paid her sweetly to do his bidding.

Maybe when I trot back down to LA I can take her out for drinks and get the truth out of her and then again, maybe I can't.

We'll see.

My friend Marilyn (formerly of E! and now of CNN) has introduced me to a fellow "E!er" (in that we were on the same show but different scenes), Elijah Shaw of Industry-Icon Executive Protection and Bodyguard Services.  I recently read through his website and watched some of his youtube.com interviews.

Watching him do his work brought back a very funny thing that happened on the West End when we were filming an episode of Jade's PA. We were filming the episode where Tara was finally getting to do her biggest challenge of getting Jade on the stage in a West End production.

No small feat.

On the night of the show, the directors were shooting me arriving at the theatre from a couple different angles.  I had on my Harry Potter cape (not really but feels very Hogwart-ish) and was supposed to walk out the theatre's front door, not look directly into the camera and walk away as if I was leaving the theatre.  Try not looking in a camera when it's the only place your not supposed to look!  Sort of like not looking at the elephant in the room type of thing.  And then if you look somewhere else that's not naturally in your line of vision it feels fake as all get out.

So we do the shot once and then the director requests it once again for good measure.  Since I don't have an ear piece on me, I am told to go in the theatre and count to three before I exit looking natural....ah, yeah. 

I count to three and push the theatre door open.

Suddenly I was enveloped in a crowd and the flashbulbs of paparazzi were going off in my eyes.

I thought that Jade must have arrived at the theatre as I was coming out.  The cameras kept rolling.

As I tried to look "natural" in a totally unnatural situation I was grabbed firmly by the shoulders and darn near lifted out of my shoes.  A bald-headed black man in sunglasses and sporting a decidedly American accent took his hands off my shoulders after literally moving me out of the way while saying, "Sorry ma'am but you can't go here."

My negritude wanted to scream, "What?????"  But the momentary  confusion of the camera rolling on me, the flash bulbs and pap's camera clicking away and then Adam Sandler appearing dead in front of me....I suddenly thought I was back in LA.  One of those temporary confusions that lasts a millisecond.  Adam, to me, equals home.  Hollywood.  San Joaquin Valley where they filmed part of "Click" which was premiering in the movie theatre a few paces away.  One of those confusions you don't speak about unless you wonder if folks are going to wonder if you'd imbibed during work hours.

When my director yelled "cut," he ribbed me and said, "Bet you thought the pap was for you, didn't you."  I'm not that delusional but it was weird to walk into that scene by accident and literally be picked up and moved.  I'm no featherweight so this was a task but Mr. Bodyguard was no small man.

I think I can now say that I have literally been swept off my feet...and almost out of my shoes.

I've changed the background design on my blog to "cityscape Los Angeles" instead of London.  I searched the entire site looking for cityscape Visalia....hmm, not one there.  Go figure.

So, I'm reading this little book called, "Before I Got Here: The Wondrous Things We Hear When We Listen to the Souls of Our Children."  The book is tiny and I read it in one sitting.  The consistent theme is that children choose their parents.  No, those souls saddled with parents who are doozies might think that is NOT what has happened but I find the whole concept most fascinating. 

Of course anything in the realm of reincarnation, the paranormal or supernatural, I have my face in right away.

I love, love, love hearing stories about supernatural (or to me, actually, not super, just natural) experiences.  The unexplained.

Back when I worked for Laura Dern and Billy Bob Thornton, they had a lovely woman working for then from Central America.  She was a hardcore Jehovah's Witness and wouldn't so much as entertain anything having to do with reincarnation.  That was until the day came where an American Indian man showed up to help with a move.  The above referenced woman took one look at this man (who very much identified with his Native American roots) and burst out crying.  I couldn't figure out why she was so upset.  I tried to console her.  She shook her head and informed me that she felt something she didn't understand.

She had no idea why but every time she saw ANYTHING having to do with Native American she was overwhelmed with emotions.  This was unexplainable to her as she had no experience (in this lifetime--me saying that, not her) with Native Americans that would cause such grief.  But the mere sight of this man, with his head pulled back with a leather tie with beads and a feather broke her.  Okay, I confess, if there were anyone who looked like the classic vision of what we would identify as Native American, it was him.

And later he proudly announced his roots.  That day was a form of hell on earth for this poor housekeeper.  She wouldn't agree that there was any such thing as reincarnation but it did make her wonder why she had such strong emotions surrounding America's native people.

I even asked her about Central America's indigenous people....not such feeling about them...not that she had any negative feelings, they just didn't rouse such emotions as our original folks here did.

Would love to hear your experiences with the unexplained...but no negative weirdness please.