The Day I Went Into a Full-On Panic Attack at a Joan Jett Concert

I was in Vegas on the old strip, but I wasn't there for the concert. It just so happened that Joan Jett was playing a free concert down at one end that afternoon, and because it was free, there were more people than the area could handle. It looked very much like the crowd in the picture (courtesy of the Four Queens Hotel). Wall to wall people. 

I was in the Four Queens Casino with my friend Dawn and I wanted to go back to our hotel, but she didn't. She said, "go around the long way because you don't want to get stuck in that crowd." Well stupid me, I didn't want to go the long way, I wanted to go as the crow flies, LOL, so I took the short route. 

I had gone about 50 or 60 feet into the tunnel when I noticed the mob scene in front of me. I turned around to try to go back out but the back had gotten as bad as the front. I had nowhere to go but forward. 

I don't like crowds. I don't like tight spaces. I can't handle being trapped. So I completely freaked. A policy officer came by and I yelled, "Please get me out of here, I'm claustrophobic, I can't do this! Please help me!" There was nothing he could do and he kept going. 

We were moving forward, but in small baby-ish steps, and I couldn't see the end. I had no idea how long I was going to be trapped for. It could have been hours for all I knew. 

At one point, I remember grabbing the back of the shirt of the guy in front of me and yelling that I was freaking out and claustrophobic and I needed help. He said it's OK, just hold on. I held on like I had fallen off a cliff and he was the only thing that was going to save me.

Behind me was a woman. She started making rude comments to me. I was so frozen I never even turned around to look at her. I couldn't. All I could do was face forward. I guess it was his girlfriend or wife or something and I had come in between them and separated them and didn't realize it. At one point she yelled, "You shouldn't have come here if you couldn't handle it!" And I said, "I didn't mean to be here! I'm not here for the concert. I was just trying to get back to my hotel!" I think she shut up after that. I don't remember. 

I kept trying to breathe but it was hard. I was terrified. Then after about 20 minutes we had gotten through the crowd and all of a sudden I was free. I let go of the guy's shirt and I said thank you so much I really appreciate it. He said no problem or you're welcome or something. He was really nice. 

To this day I can't tell you what he looked like or what she looked like. I can't tell you what color his shirt was or what kind of shirt it was. All I remember is being trapped on all sides by a mob of people. It was my worst crowd experience ever. I hope and pray that I never have to deal with anything like that again! Whew!

If you like fiction, please read my novel. It's a story of strength and success, but it has plenty of crime, deceit, backstabbing, and of course, love. Find In Fashion's Web on Amazon. It's available in print, on Kindle and on Audible. 

My "Woodstock-esque" Concert Experience

When I was 18, I went with a few friends to Englishtown Raceway in Englishtown, New Jersey to see an all-day concert with Marshall Tucker, New Riders of the Purple Sage and Grateful Dead. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect it to be Woodstock-esque. There were 150,000 people! The entire Grateful Dead concert is posted on YouTube. Here's the video! 

Anyway, we had to park over a mile away on a side street. But we never had to ask anyone how to get to the concert because the line was like the proverbial line of ants at a picnic! It followed a straight line, but then deviated to the right and went into a liquor store (LOL), came out of the liquor store, and then proceeded forward!

It's been 50 years, so I don't remember very much of the concert, except there was this one moment where they announced a woman down near the stage had gone into labor and they were creating a clearing so they could bring in the Grateful Dead's helicopter to take her to the hospital. They were supposed to come back later that day and tell us what she had but they never did. 

I remember one time standing up to go find the port-a-potties. When I saw how many thousands of people there were, I got dizzy and sat back down. When I finally did leave, I had to step over blankets and people! There was no clear path!

Heading home at the end of the day, I gave my carkeys to my friends Lisa and John. They were supposed to arrive at the car before the rest of us did but we got there first and they ended up going in the wrong direction and getting lost. So here it was 3 a.m. in the morning and the streets were loud with people everywhere. Thankfully, the house in front of where we parked had its living room lights on and the front door was open. I went and knocked and asked whether the man had a crow bar. I explained that my friend who had my keys was lost and said my purse was in the trunk and that I had a spare set of keys in it and could he help me get them out? He was very helpful. He pryed my trunk open. I pulled out my purse and then he tied the open lock hole down to the bottom of the trunk with some rope.

We drove around for about 15 minutes and finally found Lisa and John walking about a half mile away. But I'll never forget this experience! Today, I avoid crowds. I can't even imagine being in such a crowded situation now. You couldn't pay me enough to be in that kind of a situation, LOL. 

If you like fiction, please read my novel. It's a story of strength and success, but it has plenty of crime, deceit, backstabbing, and of course, love. Find In Fashion's Web on Amazon. It's available in print, on Kindle and on Audible. 

How to Sell Ticketmaster Tickets

A few years ago two girlfriends and I bought tickets almost a year in advance for the final concert of Kenny Chesney's stadium tour at Fenway Park in Boston. The concert sold out in 15 minutes, so it wasn't like we could have waited to buy those tickets! You had to be first in line or your didn't get any. Not unusual for a headliner of any genre.

But a year later, all three of us found ourselves in completely different places in our lives. I had started a new relationship with my boyfriend and moved in with him. Lillian and her husband had sold their house, retired and bought a house in Maine. Carol Lea and her husband bought Frank's parents' winter home in Florida and started spending a lot of time there. 

We found ourselves in a predicament we never thought we'd be in: making time for a concert for one of our favorite singers/performers was going to be tough. So we made the difficult decision to try to sell the tickets. 

I started out posting on Facebook, with no response. But then I received an email from Ticketmaster: "Can't make the concert? Sell your tickets on Ticketmaster.com." So I hit the button. I found the process to be really easy. All I had to do is say how many tickets I wanted to sell -- 3 -- and set a price for the tickets. I think I may have entered the full price of the tickets, I don't remember. 

Then, a few weeks before the concert, I got a message that our tickets were sold. Ticketmaster handled everything from selling to payments and reimbursing me! In the end I think we only sacrificed about 10% of the cost, which was well worth it. 

I highly recommend using Ticketmaster's easy selling option rather than trying to sell tickets on your own.

If you like fiction, please read my novel. It's a story of strength and success, but it has plenty of crime, deceit, backstabbing, and of course, love. Find In Fashion's Web on Amazon. It's available in print, on Kindle and on Audible. 

Why I Thank God Every Day for My Voice

I'm a singer. I can belt very high and hold a note for a decent amount of time. 

I also have the capability of talking to a room of 500 people without a microphone. I can get that loud. And I proved that today at church when we didn't have the key to get into the sound console to get out the microphones. We had to do everything sans audio today!

But it surprises even me that I have this capability. I feel that it is entirely a blessing from God. Here's why.

I was born with asthma. I was two weeks early. When I was born, my lungs were so filled up with fluid that they had to hang me on a downward angle with tubes in my lungs to drain them. I couldn't breathe. I was drowning in my own fluid. And if I had gone full term, I might not have made it. 

As a child, I couldn't run. If I ran, I would get out of breath, and my body didn't have the capacity to regain it's breath without medication. If I was playing kicksocker and I ran to first base, that's it. I was done, I had to go in the house because I was having an asthma attack and I needed medication to bring it under control. 

I spent a lot of time in the hospital. Up until I was about 12, I was in the hospital at least a week a year. Twice a day a respiratory tech would wheel in a big breathing machine -- they're obsolete now and replaced by nebulizers -- and I would have breathing treatments. When I was 10, I was in an oxygen tent. 

During the holidays, I was always sick. I was allergic to Christmas trees and I remember being four or five and not being able to lift my head up off the pillow. My siblings would come upstairs on Christmas morning after opening all their gifts and ask if I wanted to come downstairs and open mine and all I remember is saying no and how guilty I felt because I felt like I was letting them down and I know they felt the same way about me. I could see the guilt on their faces. I could barely lift my head off the pillow. One Christmas I made it to the couch but didn't really feel like opening presents. Someone had to open them for me. 

I could never play outside in the winter because the cold air would aggravate my lungs. In elementary school, during the winter, I always went inside and sat in the classroom alone for 20 minutes while everyone else stood outside in the freezing cold.

In second grade, I missed two months of school. In third grade I missed two months of school. In tenth grade, I got a doctor's note to get out of gym class because in ninth grade I had multiple asthma attacks trying to run around the gym. 

When I was 16, inhalers were approved by the FDA and made publicly available, and they changed my life. Suddenly I could breathe. I could exercise. I could do sports. So all my life I was on a daily maintenance inhaler and I also carried an emergency inhaler. Also, in my early twenties, my body developed the ability to regain its breathing pattern without medicine. All I had to do was stop whatever strenuous thing I was doing and my breathing came back to normal in 5 minutes. 

Meanwhile, all this time, I loved to sing to the radio and to records. Music was such a huge influence in my life. I used to write down lyrics. I spent my babysitting money as a teenager on 45s and albums. But I never had what I thought was a very good voice. I sang with the church folk group when I was 14 and was always afraid to sing loud because I didn't think I sounded good and nobody ever told me that I did so I figured if I did, they would have told me. 

When I hit about 40, I found singing to be so therapeutic that I would come home from work and sing for hours every night. Usually, it would be one song that I had fallen in love with and would sing over and over and over and over, until I fell in love with the next song and did the same thing. I eventually took singing lessons and became a karaoke junkie, going out six nights a week to sing. I was good at belting and hitting high notes. 

At the beginning of COVID, however, I had been suffering from laryngitis for three months, and I knew it was because the daily maintenance inhalers had been known to do damage to vocal chords. So I spoke with my doctor and told her I wanted to try going off my daily maintenance inhaler for two weeks and see how I did. If I couldn't breathe, I'd go back on. I had been on a daily maintenance inhaler for 48 years!

I've never gone back. Much to my surprise, I could breathe! Two weeks turned into two months, and then two years, and I have been off a daily maintenance inhaler now for five years! And, I gained back the two lowest notes on my singing register that I could never hit before!

The bottom line is, who would have thought that with all my lung problems, that I could sing, and not only sing but hit really high notes and hold them for long periods of time? It can only be God at work. 

If I had been born in the 1800s or 1700s, I would not have survived. I would not be alive today. I am grateful and thankful that the medicine worked when I needed it to but also that I no longer need it today. But I am most especially grateful for this gift I have been given from God. 

If you like fiction, please read my novel. It's a story of strength and success, but it has plenty of crime, deceit, backstabbing, and of course, love. Find In Fashion's Web on Amazon. It's available in print, on Kindle and on Audible. 

My Favorite Childhood Memories: How Many Can You Relate To?

I have some of the most amazing memories of my childhood growing up in New England. I was really big into climbing trees. I lived on a short dead end street that was downhill, and at the end it had a small woods. There was one tree in particular there that I really liked to climb. One day I remember I went up too high and my mom’s cousin Fuzzy (my second cousin, a police officer) had to come and get me down. I never went that high up again. 

My best friend Mary Ann lived in the house to the right of the woods. Her bedroom was at the front of the house and she had a little portable record player and she used to bring the record player out to the front porch and run the chord through her bedroom window. She had a box of 45s and we used to dance on the porch, just the two of us, for hours. 

It was the sixties and straight legged stretchy pants were in – funny how things come back, right? – and they had stirrups to put your feet through (thank God those didn’t come back!). She and I both had a set in every color. The two of us were constantly out there on the porch in our stretchy colored pants. She was probably around 9 and I was maybe 10 or 11. When I think back now we probably looked like dorks. But still to this day this is one of my favorite memories. 

From ages 4-11 I skated on a small pond in the winter. I remember it being full of parents, small children, teenagers, and lots of voices and laughter – it was right out of a Currier & Ives picture book. But before we went to the pond, we learned how to skate in the backyard. We lived on the left side of a two-family house that Fuzzy owned, and we had an above-ground pool. In the winter he emptied the water and took the pool down. But there was aluminum sheeting just 5 inches high that encased the circle that the pool went into, and one day, when temperatures were below freezing, Fuzzy filled the circle with water, and it froze. My mom bought us all beginner skates with double runners, and that was the start of a lifelong love affair with ice skating. I feel so grateful to have grown up with that experience. 

I grew up on the shoreline of the Atlantic Ocean, and always within walking distance of the beach. As soon as I was old enough to be independent, I would walk to the beach. I spent entire summers there. Now, I could never live inland for any length of time. I need to have a beach nearby. I’m not a sunworshiper per se. I just really enjoy walking along the shoreline and taking in all the smells, sights and sounds -- the waves crashing, the seagulls chirping, the feel of the breeze coming in off the water as it brushed against my face and arms.

I feel so grateful to have had a great childhood. I was raised by a single mom who worked two jobs her whole life, and I was also a very sick child, in and out of the hospital a lot. But I and my siblings never lacked for anything. I hope your childhood memories bring a smile to your face like mine do!

If you like fiction, please read my novel. It's a story of strength and success, but it has plenty of crime, deceit, backstabbing, and of course, love. Find In Fashion's Web on Amazon. It's available in print, on Kindle and on Audible. 

Back When I Was A Las Vegas Showgirl

In April 2004 I was on a business trip in Las Vegas and staying at the Paris Hotel. Walking down the hall with my then husband Adrian, there was an open-air storefront for a photography studio that would put your face on a magazine cover. Think Sports Illustrated with you holding the biggest fish ever caught! LOL.

So the guy's waving us over and we're like, no thanks, not interested. And he said, "C'mon, c'mon, just look, no pressure." So I got in front of the big white screen and all I could see was the camera in front of me and  the white screen behind me. 

So I'm standing there for a few minutes and people are walking by and they're laughing hysterically, and I'm wondering, what is so funny? 

Finally the guy shows me the picture. He had put my face on the body of a Las Vegas showgirl. Well as soon as I saw it I knew I had to take that picture home! 

For years it hung on the wall of my home office. And every time we had a visitor and I was giving the nickel tour, we'd get to the picture and I would say, "Boy those were the days when I had really flat abs!!!" And people would look at me with the most serious expression like they thought I really meant it! After all, it does look just like me, right????

I'm not a prankster but it was fun seeing people's expressions!

If you like murder, love and intrigue, please check out my novel, In Fashion's Web on Amazon.

Black Lives Have Always Mattered to Me…but I Admit I’m Not Perfect

I was taught that all people are equal at a very early age. I remember when I was about 5 years old, my mom’s best friend was a black woman. The fact that she was a maid for the rich family who owned the company my mother worked for was something that I did not comprehend at a young age. 

Once a week, my mom would take us to the company softball games, the team of which was heavily populated by the black men who worked in the factory. Then after the games, my mom would go with her girlfriend to a black bar. While I was aware that it was black bar, it was not something I cared about or concerned myself with. We ran around and played as all children do.

I went to a private Christian elementary school called St. Mary’s. We had black students, but they were very rare, so rare that there were only about one per grade. Their rarity made them special and there was no racism that I was aware of. What I was too young (or too white?) to understand is what it must have felt like to be the only person of color in an entirely white class.

In 9th grade, at a private Christian high school, I befriended a Haitian girl. Yolanda. She and I became very close that year. In hindsight, I probably latched on to her because I didn’t want her to be alone. I was trying to protect her and let her know that she had a friend. 

For the rest of my high school years, I transferred to a larger public school where racial riots were in full force. Thankfully, I never had a problem. I like to think it was because I treated everyone equally. 

However, as I said, I am not perfect. I remember one day when I was in my twenties, I was carrying groceries into my apartment building and a black man was walking behind me. He asked if he could help. I said no thank you. I like to think that it was more because he was a stranger than the fact that he was black, but he ended up being a friend of my neighbor John across the way, and I said, oh you’re a friend of John’s. If I had known I would have let you help. And he asked if he had been white would I have let him help? And I honestly don’t know the answer. To this day, this situation still haunts me. 

When I reached around my forties, that’s when I learned that treating everyone equally is not enough to eliminate racism. I learned that black people, particularly black women, don’t want their color to be invisible, but rather, they want to embrace their color and want others to embrace it too.

I try not to judge people and to accept everyone for their true selves. But I realize that I am not perfect and I hope to continue to learn and grow in my humanity and my compassion. I pray that others will too.

Please Donate to Komen.Org to Help with the Fight Against Breast Cancer

And if you donate by October 31, Bank of America and other Komen partners will triple your gift!

In mid-September of this year, I woke up on a Saturday morning and discovered a dark purple bruise on my right breast. Knowing that breast bruising could be affiliated with a fast growing, aggressive breast cancer without lumps, I was scared. It took 10 days for me to find out that my bruise, thankfully, was just a bruise. But not before I had completely convinced myself that my life had changed in an instant and it was never going to be the same again.

I was one of the lucky ones. But it certainly was an experience I will never forget.

So I would be remiss if I let the entire month of October pass by without pointing out to the world that it is Breast Cancer Awareness month. And if you donate to the Susan G. Komen Foundation, Bank of America, a key partner of the Susan G. Komen Foundation, as well as other partners of SGK, will triple your gift!

The Susan G. Komen Foundation funds research for the goal of getting the current number of breast cancer deaths down by 50 percent by 2026. Will you help?

DONATE HERE. Thank you.

Is Your Binge Watching Turning Into an Addiction?

Having an addictive personality is 50 percent genetics and 50 percent poor coping skills. At least that's what they say at addictionsandrecovery.org.

But what if new technology is making us more addictive than ever, and training the next generation of people, including those who might not have an addictive personality, to become addicts?

One behavior in particular that has me concerned is binge-watching a TV show. Traditional TV is like maintaining portion control when eating. With TV, you schedule your watching when the shows are on, and you only watch one episode a week, like having three square meals a day.

Conversely, binge watching is like an all-you-can-eat buffet. We can have as much as want, as often as we want. Nobody tells us when to stop or what not to eat. Is that a healthy behavior for us to get used to? And even more, is it a healthy behavior for us to teach our children? We've already set a precedent with video games. I, personally, have been addicted to a good book. Would binge watching be adding another nail in the addiction coffin?

Now imagine someone who has an addictive personality. Maybe they're a drug addict, an alcoholic, a smoker, a food addict. Someone who has the addictive gene in their DNA would probably become even more addicted to binge-watching TV than someone who doesn't have the gene.

I think it's important that we all keep our binge watching in perspective. I suggest the following:

• Limit the number of episodes you watch per week.
• Put your to-do list first and don't start binge watching until all your chores are done and responsibilities are taken care of. 
• If you find yourself getting in too deep, stand up and take a break. Change your scenery, breathe deep, take a walk, look around you and see what else needs to be taken care of before you go back to the TV.

Remember, it's just television. Don't ignore your real life because of it.

If you like a good book that keeps you on your toes and surprises you at every turn, please check out my novel, In Fashion's Web on Amazon. It has 10 5-star reviews!