Elegant, Anxious Mornings

Ingredients for this My Time: Trader Joe's organic LIGHT whipped cream cheese, frozen bagels, 2 mg Xanax, iced kombucha tea.

Oh, Honey, I love the mornings. I am such a morning person.

It's like, I wake up with so much on my mind, so much to do, so much to see in the world! I get so excited that it's hard to tell what I'm feeling, so I simply have to settle on either 1. incredible depression, or 2. incredible hangover. And every morning lately it's been a toss up. Who knows, I think excitedly! What is it today?!?!

As I prepare my morning banquet of HALF a bagel with LIGHT whipped cream cheese or nothing till 2 pm, hands shaky with--what is it exactly? Vim? Vigor? Nervousness? Debilitating anxiety? Heartbreak? Mistrust of the world? Anticipation?--I think of all the things on my full social schedule for the day.

There's always a few hours of work on my project that needs to be done,

there's the WORKING OUT UNTIL I'M LESS UGLY of the day

and there's the ability to avoid it all with a glass of champs and 2mg of Xanax until all my EXCITEMENT FOR LIFE is calmed down to a reasonable, dignified level. Ah, the mornings. It's when you crawl out of bed while casually considering suicide, and stumble toward your television and find out that there's a show called "Love Handles: Couples in Crisis." Hahaha you think, distracted from your own demise. But wait, Darling, you only have one part of that equation, and not the other. BOOM, thinks your television back to you: BOOM.

Honey, being a rich, rich woman in the Midwestern country is a complicated thing and one can, if one must--and she must sometimes--indulge too much in order to sublimate the confusion that comes along with this culture, and with being a living creature in general, and with being grossed out by being alive with this body and these orifices. Being a woman in this DAY AND AGE means having SO MUCH to do, and finishing something 5-years in the making, like the charity project I'm working on, is just so taxing on the soul. I mean, I don't have a soul or feelings or morality, but you know, it's so taxing on the prescription pad. It's almost like you think, wait a minute, is that a feeling? Am I feeling TOO MUCH? AM I FREAKING OUT? As you turn to your elegant social group to remark on what you might be FEELING and you watch them politely shudder away into a "Hi how are you? Fine? I'm fine. We're all fine forever" part of the charity ball, you are reminded that, indeed, people of our social class do not feel.

You drink alcohol. Sometimes you freak out and eyes are adverted, and other times, everyone is perfectly, richly, JUST FINE. I mean, of course, Honey, we know we're all not. How can we be? We've been working for years on artistic projects and academic degrees that come without love, affirmation, a future, or even collegiality. For those of us in PRE-DIVORCES who are settled into a lovely exchange of legalize, silence, and affairs, I wonder--what keeps us in? What moves our mornings? One might hope that it is, indeed, love

and not the crippling, cliche silence that not communicating about the depression our silencing relationships have wrought has landed us in. And for those of us IN-BETWEEN marriages, well, we vacillate, especially in the mornings, about how lovely it is to finally see oneself looking back, how you didn't seek your desires out with the fervent passion that leads to such drunken exhaustion of getting a PhD, and how sleeping with this knife, with this selenite orb, with this body that you can fuck up how ever you want, well there's something settling about that. I mean, in the upper echelons of society, Honey, I can't tell you how many times someone is willing to fucking kill themselves to finish work with an uncertain future, yet how incapable the same person is of asking someone on a date, or for affirmation, or to speak to their spouse about the incredible sadness that led to so many transgressions. But that degree or tenure line or charity planning--that could get the weight of one's heart. Simple, easier to fulfill, beautiful, sessy desires, not so much.

On the other hand, those of us IN-BETWEEN marriages think, a marriage presumes love, commitment, later alimony, and empathy, doesn't it? And isn't that something to be jealous of? How do we get there? Will once again, one day, we too see a naked body? And ALIMONY? Will it be like our previous times or will we be able to get there through a frank accounting of our desires, needs, and a willingness to communicate openly despite fear of rejection, thus landing us with a more suitable, and courageous, mate? That is what we hope, Honey, 'tis. Until then, there are these hard mornings where no matter the heat, the familiar cold moves through your shaking insides.

But like my favorite "gay husband "from The Real Housewives series (this one: Vancouver) reminds us, "Maybe you've had a hard life. But you don't need to show it here. No one needs to see that on your face."

So the best thing about being IN-BETWEEN marriages is that your mornings are yours. And later, when you go out to prepare for another tragic morning, your freedom is knowing that when you contemplate suicide, it's yours. When you have your HEALTHY morning kombucha tea with a Xanax floater, no one needs to know how it smooths the sadness away from your pursed lips, and really, Darling, bouncing back and forth from the complete bottom to the very top of SOCIETY has made you incredibly stable. You can contemplate suicide and communication and your own shaky hands, but you have been and will be strong enough to live day-to-day with your testimony. Which is to say, Honey, Dagmar always asks out the gorgeous men, even when she knows they'll say "no," and feels fabulous more than anxious about doing so. Which is to say, Honey, there is no ladder we can't climb if we are our desire, and we speak frankly about what we want, and what we're never willing to put up with again. Everyone presumes you're too intense, crazy, and own a trampy mouth anyway if you speak your mind without reserve for gentile politeness, so why not??

"I was married to 2 very irritating men. I deserve the money."

And that is what makes it possible for me to lounge through the morning until the later possibilities of the day. Of course, Sundays are the worst, so double everything in the My Time recipe to taste.

Champs on me, later, Honey, and maybe I'll propose, too:
Dagmar Ottenham

David Lynch Family Hour

Ingredients for this My Time: a tape recorder and notebook to make notes for your memoir. And probably xanax and wine nearby JUST IN CASE.

Honey, when was the last time you lived with your family? I mean, stop judging me, because you don't know what it's like when your mother is evicted and your brother gets out of jail and there they are, at Grandpa's, LIVING when you VISIT. I mean, the more you judge, the more I have to pretend I care about what you think, and the more we have to TALK instead of CONSUME which really makes this all MUCH EASIER IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Look, when you're raised rich and well, you have the freedom to develop...eccentricities. So, your family exists with them. And oh, to be a MAN like in a WES ANDERSON MAN FILM where being rich equals a sophisticated separation from a culture to come to terms without the terrible strain of having to talk to someone but always with the insipid knowledge that you'll be whole again when you CHOOSE IT

Oh, look at you always on the verge of choosing wholeness. Honey, I applaud you. Because this blog is really for women, yet, as we know, the readership is mostly men learning how women want them to spend their millions. So, let's learn something about ladies today, okay? Here are some memories they want you to spend your money on erasing. That means that when you marry said woman, you have a good shrink with gorgeous accessories to accommodate a lady's NEEDS

I just bought two of these lovely "purses" in a German airport. Leave it to the Germans to help us all forget!

What your little Daggy wants to forget:

Scene One: Shared bathroom with 22-year-old brother. Left of sink: "Maximum confidence" deodorant, Axe body spray, Oxy cream, Mach 5 razors, and (from sister, for guidance) Keihl's chamomile toner and exfoliating facial wipes. Toilet: the place that kills several trees this summer, as so many anti-bacterial wipes need to be used to wipe away any last drop of urine.

Scene Two: a can of nacho cheese and a large Palermo's pizza on the kitchen sink. Mother claims, "I went grocery shopping," and pulls out her leftover items from the "99 Cent Store" plastic bag.

Scene Three: Brother sinks head into hands and curses under breath. Tears manifest. Mother has forgotten novelty corn-cob-shaped corn cob end holders for brother's corn cob.

Scene Four: Dude shows up after dark asking for mother. Mother answers door in underwear after being told by daughter not to let strange man in. They argue behind a closed door. They go outside to smoke. Gatorade bottles. Firetrucks show up to help neighbor. Neighbor has fallen down stairs, isn't breathing, has broken neck. Mother smokes in front of the firetruck in her bikini underwear. She watches while making her own wind in her own personal spot light

Daughter says to mother, "mom, why don't you put on some pants?" Mother asks, "why are you so mean? God," and mutters under her breath. Mother cries. Mother puts on pants. Mother goes to comfort everyone in neighbor's lawn forever.

Scene Five: Mother asks daughter nine times across the course of one week, "isn't my pool raft really cool?"

Scene Six: Daughter gives mother informal drug test. Daughter says to mother, I can't wait to afford a personal trainer because I'M SO FAT. Mother does not take bait. Result positive.

Scene Seven: a repeated image of brother laying in bed staring at various times a day. No television. No book. Sitting and looking into clasped hands on a bed. Forever.

Scene Eight: daughter walks into kitchen and finds mother folding various things into tortillas late at night. Mother looks around for an escape route and says I'M HAVING A MIDNIGHT SNACK.

Scene Nine: Daughter cooks spaghetti sauce concoction and eats that for dinner. Mother takes said concoction the next night and pours it over one pound of pasta and eats it.

Scene Ten: Grandfather yells at brother. Grandfather is wearing white socks pulled up to calves, tight white underwear, a white surgical glove on right hand with vaseline inside, and nothing else. The gloved hand points at brother. Brother listens, and obliges.

 Scene Eleven: Daughter opens bedroom door to refill wine bowl. Mother's door is open. Brother's door is open. They are adults sharing a house and sleep with their bedroom doors open. Daughter decides to make a wine spritzer to utilize the crashing sound of ice from the ice machine. One week later, the pattern continues and no door has closed.

Scene Twelve: a lone red pubic hair in the bathroom sink. Whose it is, the daughter wonders. FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HER LIFE SHE HAS TO WONDER IF IT'S HERS OR NOT.

Scene Thirteen: Daughter researches laser hair removal online.

Scene Fourteen: Daughter researches teeth whitening online.

Scene Fifteen: Daughter researches the Real Housewives of Vancouver online.

Scene Sixteen: Daughter thinks of herself as such. Daughter pauses, then continues the day's work on a PhD dissertation that many result in getting the average 3-year wait for a tenure-track job at a university in a place unknown, confused that this wanting something so uncertain and without benefits of sure happiness creates such a drive for success.

Scene Seventeen: PSYCH, HONEY! I had dinner with an eccentric man named David Lynch tonight. We went to a lovely Zagat-rated (that's ZaGOT) El Pollo Loco, like another rich and eccentric man from the upper echelons

Bud

and we talked over romantic candlelight that none of us we're willing to match with frank conversation, because, well, we're polite and don't speak frankly out of interest in not knowing ourselves and being comfortable and eating salmon.

Honey, you know why I married irritating men? Alimony. You know what I got alimony? Because it's a lot better than struggling through your intellectual juices to be exhausted and draining of potency. You know why I want potency? DIVORCE. BATTLES. Look, Honey, we make our own family. If you don't want to wonder if that's your pubic hair, then you can go and find a group of different-hair people to seek solace in IN THE BATHROOM. And if you don't want to struggle turning passion into marketability, don't get a PhD, get smart. A PhD happens once, and alimony is FOREVER.

I'm returning to the midwestern country this week to revisit the gigantic, expensive spiders that can be drained for the perfect facial that will work so well your face will feel like a 12-year-old's because THAT IS WHAT WOMEN WANT TO LOOK LIKE I MEAN FEEL LIKE I MEAN LOOK LIKE. Champers on me, Honey! We all know YOU clearly need IT. So it's ON ME.

"love,"
Dagmar Ottenham

paranoia goes well with sangria

Ingredients for this My Time: paranoia, a litre of sangria, old patterns, insomnia

Oh Honey, here I am in a foreign land, with my body yet even IN MY HEART.

I'm coming to the close of my month in Greece, shopping for my next ex-husband, Cappy McOilBaron, and wouldn't you know it, he has not appeared yet on his white steed boat to wisk me away to the yacht bedroom where I can roll around in his money on a circular bed and grease my body up with oil, then insure said body for millions.

OH, BODY! What has happened to you? ADULTHOOD, obviously. And while my analyst tells me my PTSD ( I HAVE been through many divorces, after all) forces me to be hyper-vigilant, which means prone to paranoia (although paranoia has a much more long-term psychopathic connotation for docs), this knowledge, while under stress, does not help your lil' Daggy differentiate between the panic caused by my mental issues--which are called "eccentricities" for rich people like me--only the poor and those lacking elegance go crazy without putting champers in their champers hole--

that's for Moet, honey

or the silent hatred of my fellow peers. I think, you see, there is a private discourse around me that my rich, elegant friends are too unaware of its implications to share. Because we all lack shame and compassion, thank god--money does that. But the insecurity, Honey, only money can solve that. There is truth in the patterns that come up when a lady is searching for a new ex-huzzie. The insecurities blossom like one of those god damn stink flowers, and suddenly, the elegant lady you are falls to the floor in her kimono, wondering how many emails one can send to the board members of the neoliberal economic planning boards you sit on, asking, simply DO YOU LIKE ME? DO YOU LIKE ME REALLY QUALIFICATION QUALIFICATION SORRY BUT SERIOUSLY, TELL ME I'M ACCEPTED. Which doesn't make sense. If another bitch in a diamond bedazzled sweat suit doesn't like me, I should hold my shoulder pads high and walk on. But, alas...

In my profession, in a rich world of charities, functions, mingling with exes on yachts with their hotter Russian girlfriends who have LIKE NO FACIAL PORES, polite turning of heads is the way to dismiss a woman. But is this dismissal or simply how the rich affirm, aka, don't engage? I don't know. Affirmation doesn't come easily, as it is hard to pat someone on the shoulder when her shoulder pads delicately keep her dignity in position.

But here's the truth, Honey, about those of us in analysis for PTSD, otherwise known as Pretty Terrible Steady Divorces. I wonder, as I shop for an oil baron with my stomach not six-packing as it used to, with my face strangely become toe-headed as I age, and with my thinking that I'm not in the company of like-minded women who dare look at me when I speak, out of fear I will ruin something like comfortable silence...the truth is, an elegant lady can lose it occasionally, and when she does, she might be getting that pat on the shoulder pads without realizing it. Is it their rejection, or simply them living their own lives? Paranoia has solipsism, but so does polite silence. We who are lonesome wonder, in our elegance without six packs, are my shoulder pads my barrier in understanding if I'm being patted/affirmed? Or are they not being patted in a friendly way for a reason? It's a terrifying thought and reminds me of the one dream I've been having in Greece, a return from years past that is reliving in my mind, even after my blue clouds. My heart is unlike my own, for I never have a handle on it. For weeks I have been trying to reach a dear friend, a duchess of Romanskilia, to no avail. My heart aches, but the truth is that this aching is old, and the fear of being hated is its product.

In my loveless oil baron Greek dreams, I wake in a hazy part of the elegant town I lived in with my rich father. I know he is dead--a duel with a duke of some Romanian sect brought him an honorable passing--but has come back. I will be with him. But he is aloof (as are the people I wonder about in my waking world). He has another woman in his life and they have an understanding I don't have access to (what I fear about a discourse happening about me in my waking world). He ignores my screams from the ground--the dirt, can you imagine me there, Honey?--he doesn't hear me. In these dreams he never will hear me, and instead, he has met a woman while I am forever a mere child without the ability to express my adulty feelings, Daggy without divorces, an elegant child clawing out her own skin and screaming to be accepted, screaming for that diamond ring of social standing. While I'm generally A VERY CALM, COLLECTED WOMAN, it is in these dreams that I have the most reactions. I grab at his flannel shirt, scream, fall to the ground, logic with him. But I can't logic with his great ghost, his decisions to leave me on the street corner. It is here I awake, sweaty (which reminds me, I'm def planning a trip to Juarez soon to get rid of those sweat glands along with my NOT MARRIAGE MATERIAL PORES) in a room of my own, in Greece, where my insecurities have shown themselves to be in double. The problem, Honey, is the truth. In this dream I return to the place that was ours

tie-dye and overalls: a winning combo of familial love

to learn it was never mine in the first place, and I wonder, in this life I awake to, what will never be mine still, again, and newly. I would like to say that people here in Greece like my elegant brand of richness, but I dunno. Politeness and silence mix in the discourse, and then, my shoulder pads sink into my sagging shoulders a bit. Another truth is that I would like to say that my father loved me, but the truth is that his love was hidden, too powerful a force for him to share. A rich soul burdens the tongue. It silenced him and he watched me from afar. The pictures of my childhood are ones of a red kid looking bewildered, unclear who the voyeur really was in our love.

This brings us to sangria, of course. Mix a bottle of cheap red with fruit, a tad bubbly water or champers, and fill that sangria hole when no one else will for you. They turn away from your hunger, it feels like, but you're a paranoid Dynasty character, so who knows. You may be getting your shoulder pads embraced without knowing it under 5 inches of rubber and cotton, but you may not be. Intuition comes with elegance, but paranoia comes with wealth. A sangria hole is also for talking, but it's worth knowing what's work talking through, and to whom, considering one's first love existing on two sides of the lens--if you don't know that daddy loved you, Honey, maybe you should start there and not worry about your peers.  Because, really, who wants peers that don't want you? There's too many rich, fucked up, amazing society circles in this world to get caught up in one. And yet, even the most elegant ladies need to know what they need to say, and fuck the propriety--you pay to the charities, that is your propriety--of politeness. You could say it and risk the consequences, or shut your mouth with sangria and let it work out the seething. You are here to meet an oil baron, and nothing else. Which is another way to say, the paranoia you feel about not being loved by peers, no matter valid or not, is beside the point of learning how to break the lens of being your own voyeur. Stop. watching. yourself. It ruins the drunk.

Honey, take it from me, the more humor you bring to not being able to read SHOULDER PAD TOUCH OR REJECTION SIGNALS makes your paranoia no more than wondering what waiter will fill the sangria carafe next. Which CAN BE a daunting endeavor. In the gaps between those refillings, remember the people who remove your shoulder pads and touch your skin to the bone. The people where there is no weighing. And how skinny, therefore, they make you feel for finding that clavicle under the fat. Those rich friends are always draped with enough velvet to share.

the one on the right, aghast, proclaims: that is silk, not velvet!

Then, one more litre for us all, one more litre before strolling the coast for another ex-husband.

Back to Malibu-Lite soon, Honies. Champers on me, and just for you, a xanax in my mouth before we meet up, because we all know I could be right, I could be wrong, but I could always relax into life a little more.

love,
your Daggy

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday

Ingredients for this My Time: natural phenomena, wistful thinking, scheduled drinking.

Hola, Lovers. It seems like the farther along I get with my project, the less I am able to connect with my "fans." It is atrocious of me, I know. And if I had a human heart enough to care, I wouldn't be using this sentence to pretend that I care. But hear me out.

My pure bred, feral linx got sick, and I was with her in the exotic animal vet. Then, I drove across the country to one of my summer homes in Malibu-Lite, then all these boys visited. Boys! They came from the muscular farm sun of Missouri and the mysterious clouds of Washington, with Iphones and tight jeans, with proper shaving and nice white shirts, with lisps and foul mouths, with cocktails and appetites. It really brought me back.

After being so long in my project that I was sure I would not gaze upon such greased up gorgeousness again, I was just dumbstruck. I drank margaritas, I smelled their hair when they weren't looking, I thought about all the things they could say to boss me around, I ate their hand towels, I worshiped at the altar of the patriarchy, and loved every minute of it. While they watched other women, I lasciviously watched them. I devoured their desires through breath and, as if exhaling is having, I made them my own. I imprinted them on my body, and like that, it was if their desires for the women around us were desires already writing on my skin.

That reminds me, I need to cash another alimony check...if I won't ever be able to fall in love again--ha ha, I kid--I've never loved anyone except God and Mr Grey Goose--ha ha I kid again--my heart is so fragile that it breaks like each marriage egg and fucking fries, Lovers, fries like a bad simile--

then I will spend their fucking money. Which reminds me. You know how I really knew my marriage was over with the fucking classy man? Well, beside the fact that he played Everything But The Girl at dinner parties? Well, and beside the fact that he was already married, thus leaving me with no alimony after it all went kaput? When we started going Dutch. I mean, who are these Dutch people with their awful rules for women? How dare they think I'm dignified enough to pay for my own lobby and champers. As we all know, I have no dignity. I want no dignity.

So, I'm in Miami-Lite, soon to leave to Oaxaca for one of seven weddings this year of the rich, fabulous people of the world that I'll grit my teeth through. I kid. I love a good wedding. So much free al-co-hol. And what woman, whose womb is as dried as a dead batch of corn, and who doesn't trust men as far as she can fuck 'em, doesn't love attending wedding after wedding and seeing something in this world work out? I strap on a bra, throw on a dress and a sun hat, etch lipstick on my face, and voila, I'm in another country at another wedding with less money and more opportunities for scandal. My life is fabulous.

But today, the wretched day of the week, Sunday, the day when it seems that all hope with fail, a solar eclipse awaits us. I, of course, will be with fabulous (and some foreign!) people on the roof of a Los Angeles LOFT, staring directly into what keeps me alive and might blind me. I don't buy the whole don't look directly bull--my strength and my problem is that I always, always, look directly into it and walk away with less sight but more vision. Of course, while others are looking I plan to stand behind them and suck their energy in through their ears, keeping my gorgeous, youthful skin that much more so. And cocktails, cocktails, cocktails, Honey.

The world can't keep a loveless wench--I mean a tender, romantic soul--it's so hard to tell sometimes when one's spirit is a pendulumm and one's life seems to follow--like me down if it can't keep its own sun.

Talk soon, Honies, champers on me! Ha ha I kid--on every ex who paid for breaking my heart.

Poor Grammar and Content: Now With Friends

Ingredients for this My Time: writing a blog that balances humor with pain, sarcasm with love, a past with a future, and hope with a martini.

Oh, Honey, I hear you. It irks you when someone doesn't edit for spelling and grammar. I mean, we live and love in a society for God's sake! And, worse, when someone puts inappropriate content on the internet, when they're trying to be a professional, like Ogden? (minute 1:36 is important.) How dare she? Who does she think she is, anonymous, another person, writing under a pseudonym? Doesn't she live in a society? Lordy. Yet...

Of course I'm not a pseudonym! It's me: Dagmar! Remember me? The little girl from a humble Tallina castle who was the umpire and commissioner of a sporting league that celebrated and defiled her own, and all, bodies?

Mmm, white wine in a box and a look of reverence, even in the rain! Looks like a healthy lass. And one that is appropriately covered, OK, in what seems to be an outdoor bathing vessel I've heard of called a "hot spring" which poor, leathah-y desert wanderers go to.

The thing is, Honey, that it's a wonder in this society that I can pry my lips off the pie pan or stop them from enclosing around little bitty pills like a fish to food long enough to write an ungrammatical, inappropriate mess. I mean, how can I live and love in this society when I know that I'M THE PROBLEM with it? I mean, I'm an amazing mess! Look at me! I'm incredible and terrible!

 So pat yourself on the back for being so good, such a good soldier and/or lover, and deal with this.

FYI: no one has actually said anything to lil' ol' Daggy about how her terrible grammar and content bother them. But, Honey, we know it's always safer in the upper echelons of society to frame everything--before anyone gets a chance to--as a kind of pre-apology.

Ha ha ha--that last one was sent to me as an "e-card" recently because I took in a lover named Daveed from the Cayman Islands. I thought he was Benecio Del Toro! My girlfriends laughed and laughed. I just LOVE my FRIENDS. Of which I HAVE SO MANY I'VE ALMOST MANIACALLY CAPITALIZED FRIENDSHIPS OF THE WORLD. Why? Because we're rich and amazing and gorgeous. They love you, they hate you, they are human, and so are you.

Like an Eastern European discotekka, sincerity and irony have merged in our world, and it's OK to start a project of testimony and art that has no clear outcome, nor a clear conscience. To support such ends (ha ha--I mean NO ENDS), Dagmar has asked some of her most sessy, fabulous, rich girlfriends to write about their My Times. Look for upcoming regular posts (and possibly nude photos!) by "Mommies' My Time," "The One-Percent's My Time" and "The Scholar's My Time" We're all so sorry for your loss, and we know you love to watch us turn ours into real wins. Let's all pretend not to know about each others' secrets and pains the next time we meet up, OK? Champers on me! Love, Daggy.