...a way of seeing beyond inner and outer.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Newport Beach Gothic

My mail comes to a very beautiful zipcode, a blessing I never take for granted.    The man I wake up with everyday is profoundly smarter than me.  Organizations that test these things have said so.  Hell,  even I think so.  This isn't to say that my first husband wasn't smarter than me, but I didn't know it at the time and we both suffered for the oversight.
As the man I wake up with everyday, says, "It was a bad fit."
Truly....


So here I sit with a man who sends me pacing in an effort not to kill him and knows the exact spot on my shoulder that has the same chemical effect as valium.     Sorry, ....the exact same.

He writes songs about my temper.
He does all the laundry.
He does the dinner dishes.
He takes me shoe shopping.
He repairs the starter on a car when the manual says don't do this at home.
He knows a defense against the Ruy Lopez opening that side steps most of the Morphy Defense
He has blue eyes
He has silver in his curly hair
He's lived on the street and with the son's of oil, wine and publishing.
He knows the art of "Yes dear"
He play classical guitar and the banjo.
He buys me champagne on Tuesdays.


I'm mean to him sometimes, particularly when I feel like I'm flying apart.      Today we leave for a trip to fix that...

Why do we work so hard to make relationships work and why do we have to?

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Waiting to explode

The other day when I began to see that life would, in the approaching days, begin to edge back from chaotic careening to clear, I thought back to times when I'd be so happy to be "done" with being annoyed, frustrated and exhausted that I would become annoying, frustrating and exhausting.  I have been told lithium might not be a bad idea and considered it until I found out about its effect on the liver.  The swing is pretty dramatic, but I need my liver for other things, like champagne and the crap that kills birds when it burns off non-stick pans.
Ever see a room full of screaming 7 year olds in close proximity to presents, cake, balloons and lit candles  ?  That's joy.  It's also hysteria, a good way to burn down a house and why balloons aren't filled with hydrogen any more.
Joy is wild.  It's complete abandonment of restraints because it's all consuming.  It's also not a perpetually pragmatic way to live ones life because joy is dangerously close to mania and it doesn't get the laundry done.    There are many schools of thought that suggest you really shouldn't experience it until you're very evolved or you'll basically explode.   I don't care. I want to get to it so I can get passed it.
om?   um.....    
 Right passed joy is bliss and the thing about bliss, is you get it all.... love and peace and joy and faith etc.  all of it... in equal measure.  There's no one burning down a house and the laundry becomes a spiritual experience.     
At this point, laundry is not at all spiritual. It's one of the many things that are standing between me and wine country.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Tapped out tap out.

The best boss I ever had, other than the one I have now who is the most amazing human being on the planet in every possible way and thus can't really be compared to any other boss...
was a woman named Jeni, a left brain geek with a little right brain time traveler from Haight-Ashbury circa nineteen hundred and sixty seven thrown into the mix. She, more than Gloria Steinem or Betty Friedan,  taught me about smart women in a man's world, and it is, still, a man's world, baby. Jeni was so influential in my formation of my feminine-ist notions about myself that I had to go look up why those other two broads were in my own list.  I'd hang my head in shame, but I'm afraid I'd fall asleep.
Gloria Steinem:  A liberated woman is one who has sex before marriage and a job after.
cookedheads:  I thought a liberated woman did what she wanted to do.  I want not to have to have a job.
Betty FriedanAging is not lost youth but a new stage of opportunity and strength.
cookedheads: phhtt...aging is reading glasses, ma'am and backing up to get a running start.
Jeni the Boss: The universe will teach you a lesson until you get it but the politeness begins to fade.
cookedheads:  okay, so that's less about being a woman than it is about being a human, but that doesn't make it any less valid as an axiom
Work is never ending at the moment and there have been a few domestic fracusses, fracaii? to muddle the minty goodness of my life, but evidently, I was the last person to know it.  It helps to have people tell you that you're starting to drift into the other lane and the head on traffic of a real problem.    Noticing these things isn't my strong suit.  I'm all about 36 hours of natural childbirth and taking contracts I probably shouldn't in the belief that I'll figure it all out as I go along, which I have, so far,  knock on polyethylene terephathalate.
That approach to life is spectacular and quite flawed because it makes me as much of a meltdown mama as it does a take over the world, Pinkie. Fortunately, I have help from The Brain. Several of them in fact.
First my mother mails me a hand written letter telling me she's worried about me.  Then my sister emails me to ask if I'm okay.  Then my cousin in Australia asks me if I'm okay via Facebook. All very polite.
Then I looked down at my lunch to find I'd decided to revert back to Vanilla wafer and Nutella Therapy and realize things are starting to get very hostile.
It's at that point that my imaginary French friend booked a five day peace summit in "Camp Sonoma" for my husband and me.  We leave day after tomorrow.    
Bric's Pink Croc,
  though a black trash bag would work too...

Monday, March 28, 2011

4% perfection

96% of our universe is theoretically at least, made up of things we cannot detect. We're only pretty sure they're there because of the way they effect the 4% we can detect, you know, like trees and galaxies.  I like to think of that 96% as "Unseen good stuff"    It's there, but you have to be looking for it or you're never going to notice it working on your life because you'll be too busy noticing other things, like Mondays. (cue the fugue)
Most of the time nothing horrible happens, but let's face it, day light savings time and work becomes a lot less fun after two days of sleep and play. Today, driven by a Perfect Moments meme, I'm going to see what happens in my day, but in the tradition of "if you can't think of something nice to say, say nothing at all, I'm not going to participate with the meme because, well, 
here, read this:
ditto


 For the record, since there appear to be no perfect moments on the horizon, maybe I'll start with the bar a little lower and aim for a specimen that's easier to gather, like less disagreeable moments.  Yes. Less disagreeable moments and more coffee. 

It's from a fresh bag of French Roast.   I can do this.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings

There will be no beach house in my near future, because I didn't win the 300+million dollar gigunda lotto. That  has as much to do with the astronomical odd against winning (1 in 175,711,536 vs  the mere 93,000,000 miles it takes to get to the sun ) as it does with the small problem of a ticket, or the lack of one.   Obviously, some effort is required to make these things happen, but things that appear to be next to impossible do happen because someone did win it, and my husband is living proof that you don't even have to buy a ticket to win. He received a ticket as a gift that won 200.00 and has been no fun as a gambler ever since.
I still want the beach house and Carolina Herrera's cell phone number but since I'm already asking for a lot, I'd like to enjoy them in a world where the following story is so common place it would be the journalistic equivalent of covering the Miss (insert farm product here ) pageant at the county fair.


"Sendai is the biggest city in the region hit by the tsunami and its airport was utterly destroyed. The grounds and runways were covered in mud, rubble and more than 1,000 vehicles that were tossed about by the sea. The first floor of the terminal building was caked in sandy sludge, its windows were shattered by the tsunami and its shops were a jumble of garbage and broken souvenirs
Now cars have been placed in rows and the second floor houses a command center.
Capt. Robert Gerbract, who is in charge (kings) of the U.S. Marines' cleanup operations, said that when he arrived last week he felt like he had stepped back in time.
"It looked like if you had left an airport alone for 1,000 years. It was like an archaeological site. It was hard to figure out where to begin," Gerbract, an Iraq veteran from Wantaugh, N.Y., said as he looked out at the runway from the Marines' makeshift command center in the airport's departure lounge.
For Marines like Gerbract, it's a satisfying assignment.
"I'd much rather be carrying relief food packages(cabbages) than a rifle, to be honest," he said.  
The Marines are just one facet of the U.S. operation.
·          Within days of the tsunami, the USS Ronald Reagan (ships) was stationed about 100 miles off Japan's northeastern shore. It had to reposition itself due to radiation from the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility but is now sending sorties to hard-hit towns. The U.S. Navy has 19 ships, 140 aircraft and 18,282 personnel assigned to assist in the operation. It is sending barges filled with freshwater to help cool the reactor site.
·                          The Air Force has opened its bases for relief flights. Its transport planes have flown dozens of missions and its fighters have flown over the devastation in search of survivors. Two of its aircraft have helped the Japanese monitor the nuclear plant.
·                          Nearly 500 soldiers with the U.S. Army in Japan, which has fewer troops here than the other branches, have delivered blankets and other supplies (shoes) and are conducting support and refueling for military helicopter operations.
The U.S. forces stress that they are not taking a lead role. That is being done by Japan itself, which has mobilized more of its troops than at anytime since World War II.
"What we're doing is coordination with the Japanese army," said Gunnery Sgt. Leo Salinas, of Dallas, Texas. "Every mission we do is a bilateral mission. They are all Japanese-led and under Japanese initiative. These guys are our allies and, more than that, they are our friends. (sealing waxWhatever they want us to do, we will do.""  Eric Talmadge- Associate Press




Saturday, March 26, 2011

I blog (& proofread with haphazard lightness.)

I started cookedheads to be accountable for the proof of a theory I am applying to my life.
     Theory: I make my own world and therefor have complete power over how I experience it.  
     Proof:  A work in progress that keeps me in peace and delight and results in the manifestation of the contents of an envelope I sealed over a year ago.

When I asked you guys about your "why"s, it was because I'd noticed a resistance on my part to blogging even though doing the snoopy dance in the word river is one of my delights .  I'd think about a post, or even go so far as to draft it in a moment of inspiration, then stop short of hitting the publish post button.  
This didn't really concern me much until I realized I was doing the same thing about learning French and then I began to look around at quite a number of things I enjoy doing, but resist..  Since I got so much good feedback from everyone about the "why" that motivates them to continue blogging, I figured I'd ask if you guys ever do that.
Then I started writing away from the familiar blue and orange of blogger circa 2011.  This is the post that came out, unedited, without being proofread, so bare with me
"new things are foreign because we haven't spent enough time with them.  thinking about them makes us comfortable enough to allow the universe to give us the next lesson, the thing we THINK we want... because the universe knows once we get 'it' whatever that goal is, we'll THINK we want something else, something we don't have,  always looking for the thing that makes us feel okay.
things are symbols the way words are."  

A beach house is....?  
A beautiful body is.....?
Wealth is......?
A collection of fascinating experiences is......?
Blonde highlights are.......?
A handsome wealthy partner with a stamped up passport and a beach house who pays for your blonde highlights is....?

Some of those things, I want.Some of them I don't want. Some of those things I have. Some of them I have, just not the way I want to have them, and this reminded me of a experience in my collection, but it didn't seem fascinating because it didn't happen in a size 4, or while doing the tango, or sipping champagne while in Champagne

It was in Las Vegas, a city which I cannot abide. Although I did in fact abide there which is why I no longer can.  "It ain't me babe", thank you Bob Dylan  Whilst I abideth in brown pastures, I met a little girl who was red headed, freckled, blue eyed and fearless as we are before we're given fear.    I asked her what she wanted for Christmas and  as she sat on the floor at my feet, petting her dog, she said she wanted a dog.  I pointed out the oversight slapping her with its tail.   She said,
"No no. I want Santa Claus to bring me a dog that does what I say."
Out of the mouths...etc.

Obviously, the dog isn't the problem.   Neither is our unremarkable house, our cellulite, our bank account, our empty passport, our brown hair, or or the mostly adorable, spendthrift homebody who loves you and is fine with brown hair but likes it long.

Make the dog behave. Hang a picture. Talk a walk. Put the "bargain" down. Loveperiod  Chase delicious in every way possible.
And that, my dear unmet friends, why I started Cookedheads.  To chase delicious and hope other people would come along for the romp.

Friday, March 25, 2011

Perfect moment

I recently started following a blog whose title I love, Write mind, open heart almost as much as the meme she's got going on Mondays, "Perfect Moment Mondays". It speaks to everything I believe about the world, namely, that we create the world in which we want to live and it's that very belief that made me want to start a blog .

After a very unhappy first marriage based on stupidity and , well, pretty much stupidity, I constantly ask myself why I am married to my current husband.   If the answer ever becomes, because I have to be, I know I have a problem.  I've been asking myself the same thing about blogging lately.  I've been neglecting one blog and swatting at this one and I want to know why.  

Why do you blog? What are you creating? Why do you invest the time in blogging? Is it purely to vent?  Is there something you're passionate about that every day, every post you easily come back to pass this love along?

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Small me, the girlfriend and the smackdown.

Now that I've got you all ready for a cat fight I'm sorry to say, you're in for a disappoint.  If it makes you feel any better, it turns out I'm disappointed too.
Sunday, I sat in the yellow-white happy light of candles writing the original form of this post, when Pandora began to play Natalie Merchant's "Jealousy"and the weather Southern California isn't supposed to have began to beat dreary wet and on my living room windows. The poetic perfection made me smile.  It's an appropriate setting and soundtrack for the day after the conversation that started with his question
     "What are you doing?"
and my answer,
   "I'm blogging about your girlfriend."
Nothing has changed but the conversation hasn't truly ended yet, because, in my adult years, I've learned that dialog can and often should stop and start based on how productive it is in bringing me and another person together rather than whether or not I've gotten my point across, and in this case, by "I've gotten my point across", I'm really saying "he nods his head after I say,
    'You agree to buy me jewelry as a manifestation of how clearly you see how much you clearly messed this up. Are we clear?'"
     Of course that's my initial reaction.  I'm human and while I made the point to my husband that my larger self realizes there is no threat, my biologically programmed female self insists on totalitarian monogamy which, in fairness, is no more than was being asked of me by his very male self, when, for example, one of his buddies asks me to go to a movie.  That line-crossing he saw, but for the record, had it been a friend who respected his own wife, I might have wanted to go, which shows you that it wasn't really marital jealousy that was working my nerves. Nor was my husband's stereotypically male relationship myopia.
   What been bugging me about this is that even though I know she is worthy of my kindness, even though I am in love very deeply with my husband who I trust and respect only because I do know him so well,  and even though this friendship costs me absolutely nothing, and even though I know grace and love makes me happier, always, every time, with great consistency,  I think I still want my husband, of his own volition, to have called this woman to punish her for not wanting to be my friend too and I think I want him to have felt embarrassed, spanked and humbled as he called her because "he clearly messed this up."
     I was most bothered by the fact that I wanted someone other than me to feel bad and I wanted vengeance At least as far as the blogosphere,  I got it.  I was right and good. She was wrong and bad. "Oh hell no he didn't!"  "Girl, you ain't got to take that from no man." , things my sister and I say to each  in jest about men.
  So why did  that makes me feel a little bit small, then a lot small?
Finding grace is a work in progress that is a lot like double digging.  If you garden, you know what that is and what that means.  If you don't, it's removing the stuff you see to get to the stuff you don't, in the case of gardening, inferior soil.  In the case of myself as a human being, anything that doesn't serve me in the highest sense. While this friendship doesn't exactly serve me in apparent ways, jealousy, pettiness, vengeance don't either and those are things I am inclined to dig into and replace with something holy, with something that nurtures rather than punishes, that builds rather than tears down, that creates rather than humiliates.
 If you go down to the very root of your jealousies, your dislikes, your anger, there's always a seed of self loathing or even more insidious, self doubt What you are cannot be hurt.  That's what we forget.  To think that we as brilliant creatures are something that can be dinged and knicked in any meaningful way is absurd.   You may be disappointed that someone else forgot themselves and felt the need to attack you in some way, but you aren't really effected unless you take that story of "attack" and attach it to your own definition of yourself. Attack implies battle, which there cannot be with only one person participating.  Mine is a not quite tender enough head in need of a little more cooking but I'm done with smallness.  For now.

I have this budding bodhisattva to thank for the final form of this post. It was a hard post to write but it got ever so slightly easier after I read a comment he left on the "husband's girlfriend" post.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

My husband's girlfriend.

     My weird/happy life has already been discussed here and for those of you have been following along, you may have begun to think we have one of these California/"Mormon hippies with tans and board shorts" families.  But no.  We're just doing the best we can with what we've got, and we've got the girlfriend. This topic needs to be removed from my to do list before I go on with my "big reveal" and if you're not chuckling, you should be because I am. ( About the "big reveal" not my husband's girlfriend.  There's not as much chuckling there.)
     Long before I met my husband, when he was still married to my wife-in-law, he spent so much time in the dentist office that he became friends with the woman that ran the office. His teeth recovered beautifully because the dentist is amazing. In fact it's the same dentist that I went to the other day for my teeth.
Actually, I'm stating to think maybe we're not right.  Be that as it may husband, lady, friends. Wife of 28 years not happy anyway, but this doesn't help.  Understandably so, but nothing more than a few too many emails and a few rounds of golf with the gang happened between them.  Even if it had, my philosophy on relationships is, if my partner going to be unfaithful, I want them to hurry up so I can kick their sorry sit downs to the curb and move on with my life. Jealousy never stopped one man from jumping into a woman.  It also helps that I have a very high opinion of my self worth and pity the fool that doesn't share my opinion.  
My response to all this was,
"You want to keep your girl friend because you've known her forever?  No problem. We'll all be friends."  Her husband.  Her.  Me.  My husband.   You know.. two couples.. in love with each other, friends with another couple.  Sounds like a 1950s tv sitcom waiting to happen.
Unfortunately, the girlfriend has made it clear that she does not want to "all be friends." She wants to date my husband.  You can imagine how I feel about that.
Games I would not play ensued with "I'll call you"s and "Tell Tracy I said hi"s and "We should get together"s where we "get" and they decide not to"gether", leaving us to sit in a bar all night waiting for people who don't show.  Yeah.  Not feeling the fun.
So here we are.  Years later, where she's calling my husband, to apologize about being "a bitch"  ( her words, not mine )because he had to cancel a lunch date on a work day and crying on my husbands shoulder during a legitimately stressful time in her life.   And yes, I know she has a husband of her own.   She evidently needs my husband too.    
Am I mad?  No.
Am I stupid? No.  And yes, that's hard to sell.
Am I going to stop being kind to her? No.  Probably not.
Am I a saint? No
Am I going to insist I be a part of her friendship with my husband?    No.
Am I going to insist my husband end his friendship with her?  Phhht.. No.


So what am I going to do?   I'm going to get a boyfriend!

kidding...

but what I am going to do is slit her tir...

KIDDING!

I'm going to do nothing.   I know all the people involved.  I know what I value, and I know what she thinks is "out there" in my husband really isn't, because as wonderful of a man as he is be no one can ever make you feel better or worse about your life than you.   The girl needs a hug.  I have a very high opinion of the quality of my hugs and I pity the fool who doesn't share my opinion.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

If you ever forget...

we are capable of deep love, if you ever forget we are good, if you ever forget, we are this. Don't waste all you are on silly smallness, on fussing, on unimportant impatience, on fear.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Show me the money

It's a wide arc and a hard swing from "yay freakin' yay! to "shit", from love to loathe, from lotus to muddle, from "sharing is caring" to "internal revenue services".
   I made peace with a rather difficult five figure check to write and until about an hour ago, I bitterly resented it with much gnashing and grinding of clenched teeth.   Given that said teeth have paid in pain for the privilege of writing another check to the dentist,  you can imagine just how big the check was and how hard it was to write
Bitterness is not appealing, and forgive me, but the welfare system is broken and not helping. At.All. And I bitterly resent writing checks for welfare as much as I bitterly resent writing them for guns to "protect" us from each other, in case you think I'm an elitist war monger who hates people on welfare.
 Then I decided I'd happily write a 5 figure check so any child in the welfare system would have access to places like this for the price of a bus ticket, which is as hard for him to come up with as it is for me to fork over my share.
 Non judgmentally speaking: tax is and today I made peace with it all.      
Of course, right after that,  I accidentally/on purpose started a fight with my husband, who got mad, took his ball and went home. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that he's having problems with his girlfriend.  I kid you not though it's not what you think, or at least it better not be.  One day I'll explain/explode, but when I do, I'm sure I'll find the other side of that coin too.

Monday, March 14, 2011

Exercise Compassionate Wisdom

It seems sort of trivial to worry about doing a database backup or eyeliner when the world is falling apart at the seams.   I don't really believe the world is falling apart at the seams, but there is a great deal going on in the world that would completely destroy the belief that it's all going swimmingly.   The choice I've given myself is to panic, which I'm extraordinarily good at doing, or to do something to help. Several things in fact, but it almost doesn't matter what, because the fact is, if you suffer, I suffer.  If someone in Japan, or Libya, or Mississippi, Darfur or Mexico suffers, we do all suffer.  We are all connected and to deny that is to deny reality.
Reality also tells us that what we individually do can't make much of a difference, but what we as a species  does. What we see in each other and how we extend ourselves to help can, does, will and is.
Backup the database.  It keeps your employer from being scared.   Put on your eyeliner. It makes someone who has to look at you smile. Make jewelery  if you are unfortunate enough to have the supplies. If you are not, buy some.  It will say something about what you believe...

Exercise compassionate wisdom is my to-do list for pretty much the rest of my life because to exercise compassionate wisdom is to be released from the suffering inherent in cyclic existence.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Balance

     My mother blogged until she wrote a post that told us all she wasn't going to blog because she was going to find a beach somewhere.   My sister and I applauded her.  
     My sister also blogs, but not often, at least not on her personal blog, because she's too busy having a personal life.
     I'm not willing to stop blogging because this has been ..well.. if you blog you know what this has been and if you haven't, the closest thing I can think of to explain it that still doesn't even come close to it is if you could have therapy with the help of 1,966,514,816 people, the number of people who have internet access, and thus theoretically, to your blog.  I'm sure that number, supplied by the people at Internet World Access Stats has increased since June 2010
    Given that this experience has been so life altering, it makes me think that everyone should have access to it.  Look what it did for the Middle East...ok ok ok.. It's absolute chaos at the moment, but I'm hopeful because I see the internet used by people in hijab and gucci sunglasses, keffieyeh and nike t-shirts to upend old ideas that clearly do not work for the good of all mankind.   This doesn't seem like a group of people who hates the other half of the world. They seem like a group of people whose culture I'd like to learn from rather than fear.
So, I will keep blogging, and living. In fact, today, hark! I blog forth!  
And now, I go forth.

  1. I need to beat the house into submission or at the very least find all my missing socks.  My daughter has decided that socks and coat hangers are some sort of inter dimensional monetary exchange system and we'd better hope wire coat hangers are gold and socks are junk bonds. 
  2. the wife-in-law is dropping by after a hair appointment so we can start planning a girls getaway to the Central Coast Wine country.
  3. husband and I are going to watch golf.  (Well, part of us is.  you'd be amazed how good a nap can be...)
  4. husband and I may or may not go to a wine tasting at Hi-Times Wine Cellar with Toby, of Tobin James fame in the spirit of it takes a village to plan a wine trip and it was also part of our deal. If he does that, then we go to dinner at a "greasy in a good way" Mexican food restaurant and go hear some old boys play old music...not my favorite, thus the "deal", but at least I don't have to cook and it's fair, some may even say, balanced.  
peace out...

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

A Given Wednesday

Ever since watching the film adaptation of Dinesen's story Babette's Feast, I've been in love with the idea of the overly complex dinner party.  It's a lot like a marathon. You don't enjoy doing it as much as you enjoy having done it.
Tonight is one of those nights because we have a standing midweek dinner with very good friends who don't mind if dinner is late, if it's a bit of a circus or if I experiment as long as they can have a glass of wine or two and take home the leftovers.  Dinner is not always a complete success, but no one's turned one down yet.


Butter
Radishes
Cold Smoked Salmon
Parsley/Caper/onion/lemon/ confetti
Schramsberg 2008 Blanc de Noir

Butter lettuce, sweet pea, 
browned mushrooms, bacon , raw aspargus salad 
Herb vinigrette 
Warm goat cheese medalion crisped in butter
As yet undetermined sauvignon blanc

Meatloaf with pâté de campagne leanings
Multi-colored scalloped potatoes
Roasted beets
Iron Horse 2008 Pinot Noir

Chocolate Pudding*
Bananas in caramel, flamed with scotch
Whipped cream
coffee




*I will definitely use 1/2t less cinnamon next time and this really needs to be done the day before so it can marry, but it was surprisingly good.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

No cookie for you!

I have issues with men that need to be addressed. In fact, I'm beginning to think one of my assignments is to do exactly that then move on because men are starting to get on my nerves.

While not yet a reality I'm willing to accept, middle age is no longer someone else's reality entirely. I'm assured, repeatedly via shiny card stock mailers that the local plastic surgeon could remedy this, I'm softer than I should be in places and if that and my age weren't enough to keep my ego in check, beautiful store-bought women are so thick around here, you could stir them with a stick, but even with all that evolutionary deterrent,  men appear to want my attention, and I am very unhappy about this recent development.

When a waiter sings to me, or boys tell me they watch me leaving, I instantly jump to predator/prey mode, where I'm the running bunny leaving little puddles of frightened bunny piddle as I flee... not literally, yet....

This is what lay at the bottom of the funk of last week, because as I lose weight ( thank you french friend ), I begin to attract attention from the other gender. This is not a good thing as far as I'm concern, it's certainly not a wanted thing, but it's happening and so I began to withdraw into the safety of my smaller world, reeeeeeeally  believing it was a case of ennui.  No. I was pretty much a coward and have been since I was thirteen when a boy who like me brought me a soda.  I sobbed in horror.  Maybe even still am pretty much a coward or at the very least, definitely leanings towards cowardice. Until now, I accepted that about myself.  No more.

The other day when I was getting on with it all, outside myself, onward and upward,  a thought occurred to me in reference to this growing phenomena. I could think in terms of being a mother figure to these men, these boys, meaning, be in the "heart" of having the same adoration for them a mother might, because since I have no sexual interest in them, the only other male female relationship I know how to "do" is mother/son.  
and I think, "yes, maybe that can be the solution.  if they respond in a way I don't want, i'm still their mother... knowing what they really want and need....  love, approval, reassurance,  a nap, a hug, even a time out, but what they don't need is a cookie... especially not MY cookie."
These I'm more inclined to hand out along with a glass of milk and a lecture on why you're not supposed to scare the almost little almost old lady.
my new favorite bad thing

Whole Wheat Milk Chocolate Macadamia Nut Shortbread

  • 1 3/4 cups white whole wheat  flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 cup salted butter
  • 1/2 cup white sugar
  • 1 T light brown sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1/ cup chopped macadamia nuts
  • 1/2 cup milk chocolate chips


Preheat oven to 300F
Combine flour and soda in bowl. Set aside.   In a stand mixer bowl, cream sugars, butter and vanilla until light and fluffy.   Scrape down the side.  Add flour mixture, nuts and chocolate until dough comes together.  There may be some loose bits in the bottom but that's fine. You're going to knead it a bit.  After you do, and the dough forms a cohesive mix, then chill for half an hour. for into slight larger than tablespoon size balls and form into flat disks with your hands.  Place on cookie sheet. Bake for 20 minutes 
Makes 27 1 1/2 inch X 1/4 inch cookies.  

Monday, March 7, 2011

What is fun to be

  • It's fun to plan a delicious meal and to stay in the moment its preparation,
  • It's not fun to try not to think about food, to miss out on the dance of cooking a meal, glass of wine near by while sometime musical blow bluesy in the background because I'm too starved to do more than the funky chicken. It's also no fun to walk away from the table full.  Not really.
slow down


  • It's fun to look at the clock at 7:00am and feel the feminine satisfaction that comes from my own adoration in the form of softly curled hair, perfume on my pulse points and smoky moss brown shadow rimmed with ghost smudges of waxy of Egyptian kohl.
  • It's not fun to feel the need to justify why I feel better when I put my makeup on, dress well and do my hair because somehow that's "shallow" and growing arm pit hair is "deep".  Really not really. Particularly, when at 9:30am is here and I'm closer to the latter than the former and do not an any way feel empowered to do anything.
adore you where you are

  • It's fun to look at the space around me and see care.
  • It's no fun to neglect the things I care enough to bring into my life. The repeated sets of ten seconds it takes to create functional beauty isn't worth the hours of annoyance that comes with the clutter's screaming insistence that you see it all. 
create what is beautiful to you knowing it may not be beautiful to anyone else

  •  It's fun to consume life sensually, to splash in the wash of colors, textures, sounds, smells and tastes that constitute our physical existence so actively that you barely have time to blog about it all.
  • It's not fun to sleep walk though life. Not one bit...
play in it all

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Hang Ten

The gift/curse of blogging is that there are witnesses.  There's a contract to tell the truth with yourself and, of course, with anyone who reads what you're writing otherwise, why bother.  So, fifteen minutes after being honest about my "rider's" block, aka mental stagnation,aka not giving much of a damn about much, I started this post, because simply whining isn't enough for me.It doesn't make me feel better. I'm whining because I want a solution and towards that end, I begin the process of starting my day, dedicated to seeing what the solution is.

The Universe has a sense of humor.  It's a parental sense of humor.  You tell your parents you're bored and they give you chores.  That sort of thing.
So, this post pops up from a blogger I follow who, like me, is using the macro of the internet to crunch his internal numbers.  In this case, he goes to the other side of the continent and finds himself outside his own head.  I really want to be outside my own head.
Then it happens. I know and it almost feels like remembering something I already knew. (thank you again ,Jeff)  Once I decided to follow, I was able to go to a few places that had been weighing on the cracked bits of my brain and I was able to go there happily.

  • I went to the big store that always seems to come with its own crush of people eager to slam their carts into yours, or to stop in the middle of the isle with their huge and doubtless fun for kiddie carts while they compare canned tomatoes so I could make soda bread, but I took the long way, the one that goes along the ocean. (Thank you Lesa )
  • I got off my rear.  Joy is as much work as riding a wave is. The work started with a pile of clothes that was once a single moment of "later" and turned into a  clothes cone large enough to have its own gravitational force. General order, peace of mind and domestic beauty followed.  I also took a break, from blogging for a few days. To ride joy, you have to do the stuff it takes to stay there in a physical sense and you have to give your internal critic the shove off so it can't push you off the wave.  (Thank you JJ)
  • I worked on a couple of  long walks and a bike ride through the undeveloped chaparral trail not far from our house because sometimes, going off the trail you've ground into the dirt is the only way to see yourself as whole rather than by the labels you're using to tell yourself your own story, and it is just a story.  ( thank you Jeff, again again).
  • I bought a red sports car, and am on the hunt for someone half my age with whom to have a torrid extra marital affair. Kidding. But what I did do was decide I was old enough to mother the world. I'll explain later. (thank you GG)
  • And finally,slightly more than a few days later, I remembered what is fun to be, and you may punctuate that any way you'd like. ( thank you maddening internal critic for reminding how far you are from fun and thus pushing in towards the good bits.)

Friday, March 4, 2011

How to.

You do not have to be "good".
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves
~~Mary Oliver.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Rider's block.

The video below is the match strike for this post

I've absent from the blog for a few days and there hasn't been a really good reason other than the thought of coming here and whining about nothing does not appeal, and truly, it would be whining about nothing because the past few days have been as good as any I've ever experienced.  They haven't been reality t.v. worthy, but I'm yet to find reality t.v. to be worthy of its own hype, even the ones based in lives of excess everything.
Several years ago, I had a smart internist who would spend a lot more time with her patients than I wanted her to, but she was holistic in her approach to health so a yearly phsyical was only half physical.  The other half was asking about my life and how I was doing in it.   She was motherly and I found myself telling her things that I didn't even want to tell myself, like,
"Everything's fine. I'm just bored with life." 
Talking about whining..  
She used a word I can't now remember, but it after she used it and saw the blank expression on my face, she said,
"It basically means an absence of joy."
Ah.  See, that I get, and more to the point, that I have, even though I firmly believe joy is all around me and my lack of it is only a result of not tapping into it.  This is all me, not "life".
I smiled when I watched the video above, a genuine, all by myself smile and I wondered why, because I'm not willing in this moment to "fix" the blockage I'm experiencing.  Maybe I'm experimenting with a go with the flow mentality that goes alone with the advise my husband gave me about major decisions.  The problem is, there isn't any flow and now I'm looking at the situation and have decided to do something about it.  What that something is, is the question.  

To be continued...  and I for one can hardly wait because this is not as much fun as life should be.


<br /> <a href="http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/building-waves/20hjzhqt?q=Surfing&amp;rel=msn&amp;from=en-us_msnhp&amp;form=msnrll&amp;gt1=42010&amp;src=v5:embed:&amp;fg=sharenoembed" target="_new" title="Building Waves">Video: Building Waves</a>