Turn Your Life into a Deduction

In the interest of being more independent and, OK, saving money, this year I decided to do my taxes myself using Turbo Tax, rather than my expensive Westside LA accountants.  It triggered some past math trauma as I remembered Mr. Roche, my high school geometry teacher referring to me as the "dumb broad." This was way before Gloria Allred so there was no lawsuit, just a major amount of self-doubt and humiliation.

So, my BFF Laura is a do-it-yourself-er who takes DIY to the extreme — no task rabbit for organizing this girl’s spice rack. She handled her own divorce, details her car, and I’m for her to do her own open heart surgery on herself with a knife in one hand and watching instructions on YouTube.

So, Laura comes over and we dig into itemizing deductions, figuring out just how many rooms in my house are used for business, and can I deduct my dog expenses as providing me emotional support?

No, but cat food, I discovered, can be considered a legitimate business expense. This is based on a case where a junkyard owner brought in local stray cats in order to drive away mice and rats. The IRS accepted that the cats were essential for his business. Still, it wouldn’t work for me as I can’t even get my cat to stop throwing up fur balls, let alone participate in my business as cats aren’t great at writing jokes.

Laura and I then researched whether or not I could deduct my considerable therapy expenses. What I found out about that makes a statement about the American culture.

Did you know that therapy for treatment of sexual inadequacy is deductible, but a couple’s counseling to improve a marriage is NOT?  So, if a couple goes to therapy to improve communication – that’s not a medical necessity. But if someone isn’t getting laid, STAT Code Blue – that’s important. These rules were surely written by a dude who doesn’t value talking.

I also learned that if you want to help solve your husband’s sexual problems by going to the gym and looking hot, you can’t deduct that either unless your doctor is willing to say that your life might be in danger if you don’t start exercising and losing weight. But, it gets even more confusing. Elastic hosiery to treat blood circulation problems IS deductible, but my Spanx tights that make me look thinner and may make the difference between my getting laid or not are NOT deductible. This doesn’t make sense as the elastic hosiery could well be the reason a couple has sexual inadequacy. When was the last time a guy said, "Wow, you look so hot in those support hose?"

It seems that expenses for female items are less likely to be considered important enough for a deduction. Artificial limbs can be write-offs, but not artificial breasts, even if you are diagnosed with gender-identity disorder. You can deduct various surgeries and hormone therapy, but breasts are considered to be cosmetic and deemed nondeductible. The exception is if you need big breasts to work as a stripper, then the IRS considers them to be props and a business expense.

So, after a few cocktails, Laura and I finished our returns. Lo and behold, I’m getting a 50% larger refund than I did when I used the fancy accountants. And now that I’m onto the IRS, next year my refund will be even larger as I’m going to redesign my life.

• There will be no more restaurant meals with friends. These will be business networking meetings… with friends… at restaurants.
• Supplements I buy on Amazon are to prop me up to work, making my gummy bear multi vitamins and Vitamin D part of my business operating expenses.
• My cat will no longer be a pet, but a YouTube star, bringing in revenue. No clicks, no kibble.

 Hey, Mr. Roche – whose the dumb broad now?

Can Laughter be an Antibiotic for Pain?

Have you ever had a horrible day? A day that’s so horrible it’s funny? What is it exactly that turns life’s problems into punch lines?

I had one of those horrible days.

Used with Permission by Keep Calm Studios

It started with my Weight Watchers meeting weigh in where I gained 2.4 pounds. Really? And there is not much more I can take off during a weigh it. I mean, I even flossed. I had to face the fact that the only thing I can still fit into are my high school earrings.

So, I go upstairs to my bedroom and it stunk. My neighbor’s dog was over and pooped on my white carpet. That would not be so bad, but apparently right after that, my Roomba (an expensive, automatic robot vacuum cleaner) started and smeared crap EVERYWHERE.

It’s said that comedy is tragedy, plus time. But, at the moment of viewing my crap-streaked carpet, if someone had made a joke, I would have shouted in anger, “That’s NOT funny.”

But, a few hours after cleaning up the carpet and my Roomba, I posted it on Facebook and got a lot of laughs. 

There was no choice but to see if I could find the hilarity in this. Was there any way to go from being a drama queen to a comedy queen?

I remembered back to when I was in my 20’s and dating comic Andy Kaufman. He broke up with me, leaving me angry and bitter. I couldn’t stop obsessing about being dumped, until one night I went onstage at the Hollywood Improv and made a joke about it. 

Maybe the best was, “I was in love and we had one thing in common, we were both in love with HIM. I worshiped the ground he walked over me on.”

As the audience laughed, the pain went away. That’s perhaps when I realized that laughing at something can be the antibiotic for pain.

Please post about your horrible day in the comments. 

What to write comedy material? Find your message? Write a speech? View free videos at The Message of you University here.

Aerobic Laughing: A New Weight Loss Plan

Congratulations to Caitlyn Jenner. 

Looking at the upcoming Vanity Fair cover, I admired her courage to come out of shame and emerge as the person she was meant to be. We have all read about Bruce Jenner’s decades of living in a body that didn’t match who he knew himself to be. 

On some level, I can relate to that. With the risk of sounding shallow, I have had my own body image struggles and can identify with Caitlyn. I know this is far different from being transgender, but how often I have looked in the mirror and seen a stranger with belly fat and stretch marks. And, like my dogs, I, too, have nipples on my stomach. Inside was a skinny, glamorous woman, but nobody else was getting to see her.

Source: Courtesy of Cathryn Michon

One of the problems was my weight. It was always hard to shed those pounds. It only got worse after I turned 50, as my metabolism seemed to have taken an early retirement. I now have to jog five miles just to work off a tic-tac I ate in the 90’s. The only things that fit from my earlier years are my earrings. Like Vegas, what goes on in my body—stays in my body. 

I’d tried every diet, every pill, even Overeaters Anonymous—which doesn’t make sense—what’s so anonymous about it? You’re fat and everyone knows it. A lot of things didn’t work, but what finally did was laughing. The same techniques I used on stage as a standup comic proved to be fat fighters. Humor turned out to be the new secret weight loss method. You can literally laugh off your pounds.  

It’s no joke (excuse the pun)—laughing has been shown to boost your immune system and reduce both stress and physical pain. It also lowers your blood sugar levels. Dr. Helen Pilcher, a neuroscientist AND a comic (no, she doesn’t go by the name Shecky Pilcher), has found that laughing for one hour can burn up to 100 calories. And you don’t have to squeeze into spandex to laugh.

As soon as I stopped beating myself up about my body and started approaching food with a sense of humor, I lightened up—literally.

Here are a few steps to help you feel more confident, happier, and healthier:

1. Poke fun at your fat. When someone asked, “How are you?” instead of feeling ashamed of being overweight, I’d joke about it. “I’m only fifteen pounds away from what it says on my driver’s license.” Self-mocking is better than anything else for taking the heaviness out of the issue. 

2. Gain power over temptation. When you laugh at something, you have power over it. So rather than reach for that cookie, I take a picture of it. I put it on my phone. Let anyone show me a picture of a grandchild and I'll say, “I’ll show you something sweet.”

3. Have snappy comebacks for your inner heckler. As a standup comic, I know how to deal with drunk, abusive hecklers. But when it came to that nasty, defiant voice inside my head, I was never so quick. I let it cut into my confidence and would give up on dieting. Now, I pull a Donald Trump and tell the under-miner, “Hey, you’re fired!” I replaced that critical voice with a more upbeat, “Hey gorgeous, you’re going to be bikini-ready. You’re on the John Oliver, Jon Stewart, Amy Schumer Diet.”  You won’t, but if you should want to cheat on the diet, you can slip in a few moments of morose brooding. 

Business Lessons Learned From 50 Shades of Grey

How I stopped being a SLAVE in life and empowered my relationships.     

A friend asked me if I wanted to go see 50 Shades of Grey. On my only free night recovering from a long work week, the LAST thing I want to see is seeing a woman dominated by someone. After all, as an entrepreneur, every day feels as if I’m tied to my computer, whipped by chores, pained by computer glitches, and brought to my knees by the volume of emails—each one screaming me into submission. Why would I pay to see that?

Source: CC BY 2.0

What I long for is to be the one on top of someTHING, which is sometimes better than being on top of someONE. I would like to dominate my inbox, get control of my escalating waistline, or maybe humiliate my dogs to stop peeing on my carpet. My wish is to be the alpha female, which I haven’t accomplished despite several rounds of obedience training. I can’t get my dog to heel or the people who work for me to do what I want, and I’m their boss. I can’t whip anyone into shape.

But, as I ranted to my friend of why I’m not interested in seeing a movie about S&M, I remembered a time, long ago in my 30s, when I was propositioned to enter into an S&M relationship and become a slave. No joke!

Because you don’t know me—picture Jewish girl, president of the 7th grade tropical fish club and 8th grade safety monitor.

Me a slave? This seemed a huge safety violation. I was a nerd. But, I was curious as I asked, “So… how does this work… this slavery thing?”

“Well… we all agree on what is going to be done, and then there is a word we decide on if someone wants to stop.”

And I thought, “OMG! You mean you actually listen and respect someone’s boundaries?”

After all, at that time in my life, I had let both men and women do things to me that I didn’t like, and I didn’t say anything to stop it. Even when my primary care physician inappropriately fondled me—I didn’t say anything. I just sat there frozen wondering, why he had to examine my breasts so thoroughly when I only had a cold?

“What kind of word,” I asked.

“Like ‘Blueberry.’ And this will be in the contract we would write together.”

“Contract? Write together?” I said, “You mean that we would actually communicate what we both want and write it down… with no attorney fees?”

“Yes! These contracts would include what we both expected of each other; what annoys you, such as hair in sink, how often we would have sessions, and a final list of offenses and the agreed upon punishment for each offense. Each offense will have a minimum and maximum number of strokes and a force level associated with it.”

I thought, “Wow! How conscious is this?” I mean, aside from the bruising of ropes, whips, and chains, I usually have been unable to tell someone what I want, yet, just like most women, I’m disappointed if I don’t get what I want. Don’t most women expect our partners to be working psychics?

And… I actually liked the idea of a defined punishment—just six slashes, and it’s over. This seems much better than someone dwelling on something I had done and punishing me for years and bringing it up in front of my business clients at a fancy party.   

I never did enter into that S&M contract. Black is not my color, and pain is not my pleasure. But, it did change me and help me to have better relationships. In future relationships, I got more in tune with my partners as well as asking directly for what I wanted and didn’t want.

“Judy—I need you to pick me up at the airport.” 

“Blueberry!”

I'd like to know—would you ever enter into a relationship like this?

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