We still had movie stars. Legitimate movie stars. We loved their looks, their glamour, and everyone wanted to be them. In 1987,  I was in high school and I remember seeing The Lost Boys. The movie was incredible. It starred Corey Haim and Corey Feldman also known as The Two Coreys. I remember looking up Corey Haim because he was young, hot, and a movie star. Then I noticed  that we were the same age. I wondered what cosmic shift in the Universe could have occured that I was sitting in my kitchen attemping my math homework and this kid’s on a red carpet somewhere. I remember feeling it was so unfair that some kids got stardom and others got trigonometry.

I didn’t know in 1987, I was blessed with trigonometry. I knew it in the years following when The Two Coreys became falling stars. Consumed by their failing celebrity, unable to get work, and turning to drugs to numb out. They were once on top of the world and even tried to get it back through reality television and to no avail.

We were the same age in 1987, and we are the same age now when I woke up this morning to discover that Corey Haim accidently overdosed and died in Burbank, CA. It’s still amazing to me. He was someone who went as high as life could take him –  literally and figuratively – and he is now gone.  All that talent, all that promise, all that hope….

Lindsay Lohan, are you listening?

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We’ve all had some crazy bosses, I’m sure. Maybe not quite Michael Scott crazy – but crazy enough. Just to prove that this is true our friends from People of Walmart have created a new site That’s My Boss that is hilarious. It’s a website where you can submit your own stories of your horrendous bosses but don’t worry your story is completely confidential and will never be disclosed.  Luke Wherry, one of the creators of the websites, will be joining us on Regina’s Universe: Live & Uncensored on Monday, March 1st to discuss That’s My Boss, You Drive What and of course People of Walmart!

Go to the site and let loose. Tell the world about your boss and if you think  your story is truly hilarious or outrageous then we want to hear it on the show for a chance to win People of Walmart t-shirts and a $25 Visa Gift Card! Check out the show Monday, March 1st at 10pm ET and call in your story to 646.716.8825 and you can even click to talk directly to the show from your computer using a headset and mic.

Got a crazy story? Funny submission? Check out the site and if you think you can do better than that call it in and throw it past the creators for a chance to WIN!!

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They call their relationship dynamic Negotiated Infidelity and the couple featured, Holly and Dino, are from Australia and feel that this is the best possible relationship for them. The basics of Negotiated Infidelity is that both partners are able to meet other people and have sexual relations with them under defined rules. Dinner is okay but cuddling and other forms of intimacy are not. They have to meet the partners and the new partners have to be aware of their unique situation and they get to negotiate the terms of the infidelity.

Holly, who has even written a book on this subject, claims that since she was cheated on by her ex that this way is much better for her. She feels she  has an element of control over the situation and that her man won’t cheat behind her back. They both expressed an appreciation that at any time they understand that they could meet someone that they could possibly want to pursue further but neither seemed to worried that it could happen.

I started thinking about this and I couldn’t make any sense of it. It certainly isn’t monogamy because both partners are so willing to engage in meeting other sexual partners. It’s different from swinging because the sex acts are done behind closed doors and don’t involve the other spouse. It isn’t even polyamory because you aren’t sharing intimacy with your other partners only your spouse.

Even if it is a “new” type of relationship it seems almost impossible to do successfully. Humans may not be monogamous by nature but that is part of the beauty of committment. To find a person that is worth staying with through ups and downs or for richer or poorer, if you will. Even if we aren’t monogamous by design we are jealous beings and I find that at some point while Holly is painting her toenails listening to her man makes another woman moan she will come to terms with her definition of relationship.

You may get cheated on in your life and it may devastate you but that doesn’t mean that you have to give a license to cheat in your relationship and think it will protect you from getting hurt.

What do you think? We will be discussing this on the air on Monday, February 22nd at 10pm ET. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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When you do a live show you never can tell what’s going to happen next and you get your fair share of crazy people calling in to comment. Last night I took a call from a man who has called in before and he’s known to have strong opinions. He was making some comments that were getting misongynistic about how all fights are started by women in relationships and I did my best to defend my point of view and still respect the fact that he had an opinion even if I didn’t agree with it. Then he said something that was just so out of line that I couldn’t believe it.

He said: “If a girl comes to my house, she’s safe. I won’t kiss her if she doesn’t want to kiss her or fondle her if she doesn’t want. But all that goes out the door if she goes into my bedroom.”

I was STUNNED. I told him that I don’t care if I was begging him to touch me all night long that I soon as I said NO then all bets were off. He completely disagreed even when I said that what he was saying constitutes RAPE. He tried to even further say that my viewpoint is part of the “problem.”

As a woman, as a mother, and as a human being I cannot begin to express how  much this disturbed me. For anyone to believe that a woman no longer has rights because she entered his bedroom is appalling. I can’t imagine how many women may have been harmed at the hands of this man or any others who believe the same as he does.

After I dressed him down I hung up on him. In over 2 years of live programming and hundreds of shows I have only deliberately hung up on a person one time before this and if the situation was to happen all over again I would act the same way.

What do you think of his comments? Did you listen to the show?

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There are some things you never forget. I will remember, vividly, the first time I read THE STAND by Stephen King. It was about 15 years ago and I was reading it at home… alone… in the middle of the night. There was one chapter at the beginning that stands out because it terrified me and made me more aware of how disease and germs pass between people than any college science class ever did.

In a nutshell the story is about some disease that is highly communicable and one person that has it goes to a gas station and pumps and then goes in and pays. Then every other person who used that gas pump, touched the counter, got his money back as change (and so on) also got this disease. That story made me look at people and germs so differently. Not in a psychotic, full-tilt Howie Mandell germaphobe sort of way, just more aware of people around me.

Apparently, this was lost on me for a while because I came home from the flea market last week and I was very tired. Then on Monday it took all the strength I had to get out of bed and even more effort to do the show that night. Tuesday began the nasal war. It was an all out battle between my nostrils. Only one wanted to work at a time no matter how much NyQuil, DayQuil, or any other Quil I tried. As a nose breather I was frustrated. Then the worst of it came. Neither nostril worked. All I could think of in my haze of cold medicine and stuffiness is Stephen King. How could I have been so foolish?

By Friday I could no longer handle it. There was only one thing I haven’t tried. It’s been in the upstairs bathroom since last year. The thought sickened me. But it was my only clear thought.

The Neti Pot.

Jeff’s son purchased one last year when we moved here to Pollen Land and only used it once. He said it helped but he didn’t want to use it again. I had never heard of a Neti Pot so I was curious. It’s looks like a tea kettle and you use it with a saline solution to clear your sinuses. I was still interested until I saw the diagram on the box. Apparently, you are supposed to take this tea kettle and put the spout in one nostril and it will fill your sinus and DRAIN OUT THE OTHER NOSTRIL.

Um… ARE YOU EFFEN SERIOUS?? No thanks.

Now, nearly a year later I find my thoughts being consumed by the Neti Pot which brings me to Saturday. I am at the worst of the cold. My mouth feels like it’s filled with cotton from breatihing through it all week. I’m exhausted but I’ve been too tired to even move and I can’t take it anymore. I go upstairs and get it. At first I stare at the Neti Pot. As I read the instructions and fill the kettle I wonder if I will feel like I’m drowning or if complete nastiness will come out or if something is inhabiting my nasal cavity. Then I don’t care anymore I just want to breathe. I tilt the kettle and I feel the saline solution go in my nose. I’m surprised that I don’t feel anything just the warmth of the water. No drowning, no panic, no nastiness and more importantly nothing living in my nose. As the drip starts from the other nostril I am amazed. Then it turns from a drip to a flow and it feels like pressure being released from my head.

One the treatment is over I wipe my nose and inhale. It’s amazing. I can breathe through both nostrils. There’s no pressure behind my eyes. I feel like a new woman. I inhale again and it was like a sunny day. I went back into my room and got into bed and relished what full nasal breaths feel like. I will never take it for granted again.

I went to the flea market on Sunday a new woman! I watched a kid licking cotton candy off of her fingers and then touched something on a table. I saw a woman walk out of the bathroom without washing her hands. I saw a man who looked like he hadn’t bathed since 1985. I took two squirts of my hand sanitizer and went back to business.

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Welcome to the REWIND where I post a blog that I wrote that was posted on a previously blogging platform. This blog was posted on April 7, 2007, on MySpace! Enjoy!

Let’s face it, this is not your

Vicodin + Driving = Bad Idea

type of world anymore!

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It just didn’t seem right for me to write anything funny or angry  – or even angry yet funny - when something so horrible happened.

When I think of Haiti I think of Wyclef Jean, Angelina Jolie and when I was a kid there was a big uprising when the people overthrew Baby Doc Duvalier.  Although Haiti is the first black-led repulic in Latin America it is also among the poorest in the world. Now, they are hit with a level of devastation for which no one was prepared.

I’ve watched the images in horror and can’t imagine what life would be like if I were in Haiti or had family there. I listened to a little girl rescued after 10 days in the rubble with her little brother. Her little brother said God kept them alive. The little said that she’s happy to be alive but she watched her other brother die right next to her, begging for water. Then she had to stay there trapped with his dead and decomposing body next to her for days before her rescue. My mind can’t comprehend living through that.

Hundreds of thousands dead, a city in ruins, and a long road ahead for the people of Haiti. But in the midst of devastation I’ve also witnessed celebrities mobilizing with their exposure AND their money to  help. The Red Cross has an impressive text campaign that you can donate $10 by texting HAITI to 90999 and it gets billed to your cell bill which has raised millions of dollars.

Proving, yet again, that in devastation there is hope.

I don’t think that I could have written another thing until I gave the people of Haiti a moment of my time.

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For nearly 30 years I have agonized over resolutions. Will it be another year of starting something I am doomed to fail? Will it disappoint me for the year? Will it be the same one’s I’ve always had:

Lose Weight
Save Money

I always start, like everyone else, with the best of intentions… like the way fitness centers are always packed in January. Yet, I tend to lose track and focus when things aren’t 100% to plan and those “things” can be anything. The past 365 days was such an upheaval of change for me both personally and professionally. I discovered that the upheaval itself can be both positive and negative and that your attitude and view of things can truly make a difference.

In light of this, I want to take my resolutions to a whole new level. I’ve asked other people what their resolutions will be this year and I liked the way that many of them handled it. It seemed like welcoming something new instead of trying to fix something bad. I’ve decided that this year I will do just that. I will gently welcome new things into my life in 2010.

NYR 2010

1. I will welcome the joy that I receive from running back into my life and try to get at least two other people to experience that joy. 2009 was such a period of change for me and I stopped running forgetting that I could have benefitted from the mental clarity and feeling of accomplishment I get from it.

2. I will speak highly of my body. For years I have beat myself up for the way my body looks neglecting the fact that only I can change it. It didn’t matter if I was tipping the scales well over 300 or to my all time low of 130 and every size in between it was never good enough or worthy of praise. No more. I will love every graceful curve and every single inch of this body. This body has carried two amazing children, completed a half marathon, received millions of hugs from people I love and bears the scars of my great memories and adventures. This body is mine and worthy of celebration.

3. I will be more fearless. I have a tendency to let my fear of the unknown keep from truly experiencing things fully. Fear can be a prison and I breaking out in 2010. Fear is linked with trust. I’ve learned to trust more so I know that this year I can fear less.

4. I will be a better friend on every level to family and friends the same and make nurturing the relationships I have with them as my highest priority.

5. I will write down everyday the one phrase that always seems to get me motivated: “A year from now, you’ll wish you started today.” And remember this story: What You Feed

2010 is a welcoming. I am welcoming not tying my well-being to the size of my jeans. Welcoming the opportunity that exists in challenges and welcoming saying goodbye to fear and hello to action.

What are you welcoming?

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This excerpt is taken from the article STOPPING GAY GENOCIDE by  Michael A. Jones on Change.org:  “The bill itself would create some of the harshest laws in the world related to homosexuality. It would call for the execution of LGBT people who are HIV-positive, and give lifetime prison sentences to other LGBT folks. It would also threaten to throw in jail straight people who do not report suspected LGBT people to government authorities, and set mandatory jail time for anyone who speaks favorably about LGBT rights. It’s kind of like institutionalizing the Salem Witch Trials for the 21st century, on a global level.”

What has to happen now? What will it take for people to understand that being gay isn’t a crime and certainly not a crime punishable by death or by lifelong prison sentences? Why can’t two consenting adults love each other without government intervention, religious intervention, or societal intervention?

Can we evolve, please?

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I think for most adults, especially parents, you can find these moments with ease. Getting your drivers license, your first really serious relationship, your first… anything.

My daughter is a sophomore in high school and she and her friends have an assignment that is giving them all stress ulcers. They have to write a memoir.

My daughter’s thought on this topic: “I cannot write a memoir because I am the only person in the world who has never experienced a relevant occurrence. But, on the bright side, I have new running shoes.”

I read that on her Facebook page and I was stunned. I did some mental calculations on just how many blogs I have written directly about her or about my experiences with her and they were significant enough for me to write it and significant enough for people to read it. But you just don’t see things through the same lens when you’re fifteen than when you are knocking on 40’s door.

I wonder what I would have written about then. What would have stood out as a defining moment? Before driving, before graduation, before many things that have defined my life. What was significant at 15 that I would have recognized as significant?

Then I took a look at her pictures and her “memoirs” were right there in front of her face. The digital world we live in doesn’t lend to writing paper journals. We Facebook, we Twitter, and we take pictures of everything.

I thought of her concert with her best friend Franchesca to see Panic! At The Disco and she was thrilled. Getting a medal during indoor track her freshman year. Going on trips with her youth group. Road trips in the car like our 8 hour wrong turn going to Niagara Falls by way of Montreal. The 11 month anniversary of her and her boyfriend.

She will look at these very pictures in 20 years and she will feel the same thing I feel when I look back at mine. The good ol’ days really were quite good. She will know that she looks so much better than she ever thought when she was 15. She have a slight yearn to feel that sense of wonder and magic when you are teenager that at the time felt so confusing and confining.

I can’t wait to read her memoir but more than that I can’t wait to read it again in 2029.

What’s a significant moment in your childhood? Could you write a memoir?

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