Saturday thoughts..

This is an official request to the Universe that the weekend be good, pleasant and memorable for all people, for all the right reasons, even the hacker bastids... I am ready to put some distance between last week and me.

Theegbertfamily

Into a Dream 

Overdownunder

Inkas

DO NOT OPEN THAT

Statistics are none of my business.I have so gotten that lesson.  It's the same lesson I'm learning in regards to the as yet unfinished story of "All for all"     It's okay if people don't like you.  If people like you, great. If they don't. also great.   There's a little bit of rambling going on here and bless your hearts for tolerating it. I try to keep it at a minimum but 

my day can be summed up with one ugly word.  Spam.  Take your pick as to which kind I mean because not only have I literally mailed every single person on my contact list some nasty crap ( thank you statistic checking guru.. Statistics are none of my business. {502 times for emphasis }), but all my interpersonal relationships smell a little like chopped can pork at the moment.  Well, the second part isn't true, just a few of my interpersonal relationships smell, but that's likely to change if people on my contact list don't notice my DO NOT OPEN THAT notice that I didn't send because I freaked out when I realized what had happened and deleted my entire contact list ergo could not send out a DO NOT OPEN THAT email because I didn't have anyone's email address and I am a paid computer professional.   God help us all...

If you got one of those, DO NOT OPEN THAT and I am so sorry. Statistics are none of my business...

All for all...

When I was twelve my family moved from a large city to a very small one, and in the process of making me make new friends, my mother decided I would have a slumber party.  If you've been that age, you know the politics of adolescence can make Congress look like a Disney Movie, happy ending included.  
Among the gaggle of girls who spent that night at my house were, among others Abby and Dana.  Abby was sweet, quiet, thirteen, and I want to use the word poor, but her family was always dressed well, had plenty of food and her family didn't seem much different from mine other than the fact that they all shared one bathroom and didn't have air conditioning. Dana's life was closer to mine in socioeconomic status but was she standoff-ish to the point of being cool and she already had a close friend, another girl named Dana.  They spent the weekend glued to each other.
I don't remember anything particularly interesting happening at the slumber party, other than the fact that Dana the First seemed to be in a bad mood the whole time, as if she'd been forced to come to this party, but I could hardly blame her for that since I'd been forced to have it.
Several months later, we were all at a large party, a church social really, together with our parents,  parents in one part of the building, the kids, as they do, drifting/running as far as way from their parents as they were allowed to be and I found myself having a very good time dancing with Abby to something with a beat.  Not long into this goofy gangling, Dana&Dana walked into the room, Dana the First with her sour face plastered perfectly in place and I remember her giving either Abby or me the head to toe scan, at which point she sneered.  The look was facial "buzz kill."
Abby and I stopped bouncing around like insane people and waited as they walked up to us and then Dana said something to me which would effect the rest of my teenage years.  She said,
"If you want to be my friend, you can't be her friend."
I laughed.    I don't remember exactly what I said, but the net effect was,
"Bite me."
Dana the First began a rather serious campaign of making both Abby's and my lives a living hell, when ever the opportunity afforded itself.  Since her parents became friends with my parents, the opportunity afforded itself often.  Not a big deal.  Those years would have been a pain in the ass even without her help.  I grew up. I married. I moved.  I got smarter. I got divorced. I moved. I got remarried. I got smarter.  I forgot Dana the First, and to tell you the truth, I forgot Abby.
Today, I'm looking back on that time because I'm in the middle of a situation that makes me feel like I'm standing there in that room looking at Dana the First telling me I can't be friends with Abby if I'm going to be friends with her and I asked myself this morning what I would have said had I been as smart/age wizened as I am now.
I would have asked her,
"Why not?"

To be continued...

The part where I impress you:

 I love French movies. Excuse, films.  I love French films.   I can sit through a horror flick in French and feel good about the world.

The part where I tell the truth:  As is the way of all people who do this and don't speak the language,  I forget I'm too lazy to have actually learned the language. By the time the film is over, I really do believe my French is flawless, even the Le deuxième forme du conditionnel passé. tense and I don't even know what the "second form of the past conditional" means for English, my mother tongue, believe it or not.

Now that you know my plu perfectly boring little secret, there was is this French film I've seen like...100 times. Seriously.  If I could get someone to only say things from this  movie, I could just quote lines back to them and they'd think I spoke French, but was insane.    The heroine, Manon, is a little.  Insane, that is and, by the end of the film,  she makes sure she has company. The film is Manon des Sources, a sequel to another equally cheery French movie, Jean de Florette.  See them if you like, but the point of this post is that carnations play an integral part in the plot of the sequel. I won't tell you how in case you decide to find and watch them and if you do, the sequel really only makes sense in the context of the first movie, excuse me, film,
but, this is about the carnations, the all too frequent victim/star of floral atrocities.  Geez but this flower is abused.

How does one turn something with this much potential:


Into something as horrible as this:

 This flower has the soul of Degas' la petite danseuse and you people, with your floral dye are turning it into Talouse la Trec woman. Not that there's anything wrong with cross dressing, but personally,  I'm happier elsewhere.
Like here:

and if you simply have to dye the poor dears, maybe keep in mind,  more often than not, more is just more.

The images above are from the following websites:

Hostess Blog

Social Design Events

Manolo Brides

Unless they were hideous, in which case I choose to allow you to remain anonymous.

"Oh my Lord, Holy Crap"

That line is going to get me in trouble with my mother and several other people, but sometimes your horror is so overwhelming that you can't control your mouth.

So, the other night, when JJirraffe from Too Many Fish to Fry and I were having our adult beverage and talking about a few things blogging, one of the things we both laughed about was the shaaaaameful secret of statitics checking. We both do it and we both know you do it, if you have a blog.  This morning I was given yet another reason why it's not healthy for me to check them.

I've known it was none of my business for a while.  My job, as I see it, is to try to put out good material and let this blog grow the same way I want my tomatoes to be grown, organically, patiently, with attention to what I'm doing but allowing nature to take its course.

No no no.. I simply must see who likes me!!

Extra-ORDINARILY bad idea. For some reason, a site I will not reference, had been a jumping off point to cookedheads.  "Oh my Lord. Holy crap."     Yeah. Not something I wanted to see first thing in the morning.  Actually, an entire website devoted to things I do not want to see, any time of the morning, or the rest of the day for that matter.

Whoever you are, you're welcome to come to cookedheads, in fact, I personally think it would be very good for you, but could you do me a favor and go to Martha Stewart Living, or Vogue, or hell, even TMZ first.   yikes...

Now, if you''ll excuse, I have to go wash out my eyes with soap,  run my antivirus and write "Statistics are none of my business." five hundred times.

Ticker Tape Parades in Texts...Part Two

And now the time comes the second part of this game, the awards that I give to other bloggers, and really the gift of perhaps a few blogs you didn't know were so completely clickable.  Some of them are well known, others are not, and if I added you to this list, just so you know that I know, you don't have to do anything about it but think "smile" type thoughts.    Most of these are not strictly "Style" Blogs in the sense that we now use the word, but since style comes from the same word as stylus, I feel justified in saying, well done, thank you and I have very much enjoyed.

1. An Experiment in Poverty because I don't remember young and slightly insane being as fun to live as it is to watch.  
2. Mrs. Baja Greenawalt's Cozy Book Nook because I have a personal bias, and it was my introduction into how a blog could transcend age demographics, the globe, and life details. It also left me with an altered idea of what "friends and family" mean.
3. This is a Website because Keri Smith writes books like "This is Not a Book",  "How to be an Explorer of the World: Portable Life Museum" and posts like this.  If you do not click one link on this post, click this one... all the way to the end.
4. My Marrakesh.  C'mon people.  She has a B&B ( and that's code for "palace she's willing to share" ) in Marrakesh.   If that's not stylish I don't think there is any stylish.  I'm also quite envious of her eyebrows, though it occurs to me that's not quite normal.
5. One Perfect Bite because, in my opinion,  she could have posted this and quit, but didn't.
6. Vinography because when, after a traumatic weekend spent drinking alcoholic boysenberry syrup which wicked frightening people put into wine bottles, I asked Alder if there was something wrong with me. Alder told me it was time to go visit the Loire valley. How can you not love advice like that? Unfortunately I could not clear my schedule last weekend, but because of his advice I spent a lovely afternoon in a wine cellar learning about places like Pouilly-sur-Loir and  Sancerre.
7. Zen Habits because I'm hoping if I keep reading it, I'll adopt a few, but Leo, I have to disagree with you on one point and if you want to arm wrestle over this, I'll be thoroughly confused because that won't be very zen. We are consumers. Life is consumptive.  The question isn't whether or not, it's how or how not.
8. Views of Now, because you'll want to say you knew this bella ragazza before she took over the editorial position at Australian Vogue, and quite frankly, Ms Wintor, you'd better start watching the back of your uncomfortable chair.  ( love her by the way... ).  
9. A Blog of Joy and Disquiet because it takes an extraordinary soul to open itself up to the rest of us and I think the people with them are the teachers of mankind.
10. Damn Cool Pictures because I just accidentally stumbled upon them while looking at my reader and laughed even though I'm  an all dog and no cat box person.
11. My Sparrow because I am shallow, love beauty and this lady helps me feel so very much better about being a consumer ( hoping Leo isn't looking...knows Thoreau isn't).
12. Fancy That..Fancy This because if you're going to spend your vacation days on "The Continent", to vent your completely normal feelings about your completely precocious daughter, to even know Louboutin makes a Barbie, and to be ravishingly beautiful, you'd sure as hell better be really good with excel spreadsheets and be wicked funny.  She's both.  I should probably think about hiring her for Businessville.
13. Tribal Times because she makes these which are so cute they make me want to borrow a baby, and as if that wasn't enough, she reminded me how much fun it was to make bubbles and taught me about yarn bombing.  Finally, a tank I can get behind.
14. Eclectic Revisited because we completely share an aesthetic and she very rarely posts things about kitchens.  When she does, they're pretty fantastic, but I'm a woman who wants to write  "I did not want a kitchen but it came with the house" over my kitchen entry with a big fat sharpie, and hire Banksy to finish up my rough sketch.
15. Lost in Arles, because this lady and her man could easily be to France what Pioneer Woman and the Marlborough Man is to Oklahoma. I'm sorry, but seriously, her Marlborough Man's name is Remi and he barbecues, in Arles, in France, while he sends her out to dance in places like this:

Ticker tape parades in text ...in two parts.

If I was the kind to believe that you got smacked right after you got applauded, I'd be mighty concerned at the moment because three very bright women decided I was a very bright woman.   The story of how I came in contact with all three of them as individuals all goes back to a singularly phenomenal group of women, so their considering this blog to be worthy of accolades says a lot to me.
The are, in the order I "met" them, J, from "Too Many Fish to Fry.",  C from "As Good As It Gets", and Justine from "A Half Baked Life", to which I say, show me one that ain't half baked.  That's rather my point.  All of these women are open enough to share the "beautiful mess" of their lives with anyone willing to seek in their direction.. A few evenings ago, J, and I sat in a rather grown up place talking about what lead us to start and continue to blog.  I'll let her tell you they why of her story, but mine was about accountability and truth.
I live in what is probably one of the least grounded places on the planet but I refuse to play the game, mostly because I can't. I'm not "cute enough", "thin enough", "rich enough", "young enough", "famous enough"...what are you selling? I'm not "that enough." Largely by choice.. These women, and the fifteen bloggers to whom I've passed along the award (Pt.2), are what help me remember that that particular game is impossibly rigged and that no one should ever play it.    The game I will play, now in fact, is the game of "Seven Things You May not Know."

1. I have had my arm inside a cow up to my shoulder joint.  They make gloves for that sort of thing, and though they are long enough to do so, they are not gloves you would wear to the opera.
2. I have been a motorcycle chick in leathers to Flynn's biker dude, in August, through the San Fernando valley when the temperature was 120F.  I then pushed the bike down a moving van ramp and broke it. For good, though not on purpose.  I don't think
3. I pierced my own ears with a needle and two ice cubes.  The needle was sterilized.  The ice was not, but I still have both lobes.
4. My daughter is the woman I admire most.
5. I am not bothered by the c* word, the n* word, the f* word or any other words because I do not believe they possess any power at all.  Instead, I believe our spirits, our truest selves, are omnipotent, being made that way and thus we must be willing to go through the motion of giving words some of that all-power in order for them to hurt us.   And for the record, I think "hurt" is a check engine/reality light blinking in your bones. You're perfect.  Get it. Keep it.
6. I am a hypochondriac who makes my internist laugh, but we're laughing together at my not exploding pancreas and my also not coronary artery disease, and my it's not a tumor.   I stop myself just short of saying , "I'll be baahk."  as I walk out of his office.  It speaks to my momentary optimism. Go me. Go.
7. I love a good fugue. This is a good fugue.

Tomorrow, the awards.  There will be no red carpet, but  I hope your stylist is up to the task...You do have a stylist don't you???

Perfection in Abundance

• Making peace with the fact that I have a created a Journey channel on Pandora and that it dates me beyond repair.
• A boy that brings me flowers in the biggest, most-est, loudest, much-est colors he can find because thats how much he thinks I am.. I love a boy who thinks I'm all these colors even more than I love peonies.  He's... well.  He's a lot of boy goodness.  
• A girl in Houston who takes my mother pale coral peonies because that's what I think my mother is and because I am not able be there to bring them to her myself to tell her and my father thank you for staying married 40 years. (I try not to proof/correct after I post, but saying thank you to my parent seems pretty important. )
• the shift from "is this going to be weird" to "phhhht...this will be good". It came from the decision to meet an unmet friend who's always been a kindred spirit and is now a met friend who confirmed my belief that loving kindness has got to start with ourselves or we won't have any to pass along.

• A carpet cleaner and another carpet cleaner.  seriously.  I have taupe carpet ergo I love those two men.   I'm taking this one back.  Not to whine, but cleaning is good. Cleaning and taking more water with you than you leave is better.  Oh all right. That's whining, but in this moment I'm perfectly okay with it. Does that count? 
• a spice pantry where the ginger and the cinnamon are more likely to be used for curries than they are to be used for cookies
• cake mix.
• cake mix
• sorry.. one more time, cake mix but in all honesty, a great deal of humility needs to be added for the moment to reach the level of perfection.  it's worth it. trust me. champagne helps.  everything. 
• Bhindi made in the same iron skillet my daughter's great-grandmother used to make corn bread, inspired by an amazing woman who's remembering how amazing she is. As to the bhindi, let me quote my mother who has perennially been known to say, "look it up", but because I'm not as hard core "good mother" as my mother is, I will at least give you a couple picture of how it starts:

• A confetti of blog awards that I will gladly accept in great detail...tomorrow, when I can do them and the incredible beauties who bestowed them upon cookedheads the justice they deserve.
• The entire Loire Valley in a glass, on a Sunday, or at least the more easterly pieces.

All this was a result of an exercise in Perfect Moments 

brought to you, and to me

by a WriteMind with a perfectly OpenHeart

Sunday times

From the blog Pink Blossom List

If you have ever raised children, you have been bitten.  If you are a good parent, you have resisted the animal instinct to toss the little bundle of teething joy against the nearest wall.   Perhaps it's time we begin to at least try to view all life as equally vulnerable, equally ill-equipped to step outside overwhelming and immediate discomfort, and equally in need of our best efforts towards tolerance.  Yes, even when these monsters, large and small sink their sharp teeth into our soft places.
Throwing each other against the wall doesn't seem to be making matters any better...

Lazy Saturday

Today, on a Saturday, I slept in, which meant I didn't get a phone call from the golf course until pretty late. That's a luxury, but I should have just asked him to call me later instead of fussing about it in a blog post I didn't realize he would read, and yes, I told him to read it.  I'm slow that way.  I'd feel worse if I was actually fussing when I said it, because I can't think of a single time when he called and I was asleep but I'm the woman that doesn't like to have any kind of conversation before my first cup of coffee and I'm not crazy about the phone in general.  I won't be changing how I write this thing, as if I could, so maybe today is a good time for more pictures and fewer words.  All these came from places unknown. I collected them for my own pleasure and hope perhaps they give you some.  If they are your photos, I'd love to say a personal thank you and give you all the credit you deserve.

Cookedheads sends thoughts of relaxed, restorative, and refreshing weekend in the direction of you all.

War Love

I'm going to post a short story that is not a happy short story.   It's one of two short stories that I'm going to write this week for other bloggers, this one being for the ladies at In Good Company.  I'm not good at writing that way, but I've been repeatedly given the assignment to do so and I try very hard to be a good student of the Universe. I think It All loves me and if It All repeatedly asks me to do something by putting it in my way again and again, then I'm best served by following.

For some reason, in my normally and currently happy life, this is the story that wanted to be born:

War Love

Haley Black stood in the sunken valley of the endless tombstones, all uniform from a distance and only different in intimacy because of the names and the shapes of the god symbols that had been carved from the bleached white marble, the thousands of rock bones as evenly spaced as seconds on a clock.  

She walked through the rows and read each name that marked the way to the grave that brought her here to this marching stone testament to war. After a few hundred of them, she couldn’t look at the names without seeing their faces and she stopped reading names. The faces she saw weren’t of the boys buried in the earth, but the faces of boys she’d seen in the black and white photos she’d found in the box at the bottom of her mother’s closet.  Those boys were all laughing, smoking, lanky, and alive. These boys would lie perfectly still for the rest of ever and all that would live here was the green grass that lay on top of them. This was war.

This is what we do, she thought. 

This wasn’t where she wanted to be.

There was no way not to feel her soul splinter at the incredible and endless waste of all these boys, but she’d come here for a purpose that was larger than a roll call to death.   Her father lay here in this place.  She lived because he had once lived and the ritual of giving thanks to him compelled her as much as any instinctual act had ever driven a living thing.     She’d come here to say thank you to life among all this death, she’d come here to say thank you to life, to this life.  Haley set the heather she had brought with her down in front of the bone white cross and took a letter from the box in her backpack.  A young girl, Haley’s mother had sent it out in innocent love but it had been returned unopened.    In all the years her mother lived, she’d spoken very little of the man who’d been her high school sweetheart and never told Haley of the scores of letters in the lacquered box at the back of a deep closet.   In with the letters was a Kodak Brownie and fists full of black and white photos of a boy she’d never seen, of a boy who had loved her mother once, of other boys.  She opened the first of the love letters and began reading them out loud one at a time.  She read them all, out loud to her father and to the ten thousand, four hundred and eighty eight of his brothers in arms, his brothers in death.

This wasn’t where she wanted anyone to be.

A blatant abuse of the English language.

Respect the bubble.  It's something my daughter says that makes me laugh. My daughter doesn't call her personal space a "box". Instead she calls it a bubble.   I like that analogy a lot because a bubble leaves you room to see out, allows you to merge with another bubble if you want, if it gets popped someone's getting soap in their eye and let's face it, we've been told for years now to think outside the box.
The other day, my daughter, (let's call her Scarlett. It will annoy her), came up with a new word. "Bubblenators" in reference to people who insist on putting their bits too close to your bits, who insist that they run their shopping cart into your shopping cart,  decide to drive their cars bits too close to your cars bits...usually at 90 miles an hour, etc., etc.   Defiant construction of unorthodox verbiage is clearly hereditary.  

The for real Real Housewives of Orange County

Now, I know for a fact I cannot be the only married woman in Orange county California to out, as in, expose, the "Real" ones, but I personally wouldn't have had the nerve to do so until they started tearing out each others extensions and buying plastic surgery procedures from megalomart.  But really, why wouldn't the stereotypical, much maligned housewife? Bulk buying is bulk buying, not that The Real housewives do that sort of thing either, but neither do I. See? Me. An OC HW.
    However,  I am a real housewife of Orange county who, between job/dog/man/job/man generated dinner party/children/car dealership retardation/children's cars/job/what's for dinner/dry cleaners who you hope can do something with the wine you spilled on your husbands YELLOW (what is it with this color and me lately? ) linen shirt because you decided to wear it as a shirt dress. *sigh )/Businessville/Dad, I need a few dollars, you know, in between all the stuff one has to do keep all the balls in the air, I decided cookies needed to be made. They're for a client. What can I say?
  I do live in Orange county, however, I do not have staff, and  I do not live behind a gate ( please don't stalk me ). Cookies means, me, in the kitchen, in an apron, hurrying. See? Pretty? No?  Well, they're full of butter. They don't have to be pretty. Sort of like a rich man doesn't have to be pretty.

     Being from Orange county, I have to own shoes like the the ones to the right and I have be able to cover much ground/go up and down hills in them but as funny as it would be to say I did, I did not wear them when I baked, because there were a couple ibuprophen the day after those shoes and I'm not insane which brings me to a little more "for real"
     At one point I said I wanted to be Paul Dean's daughter. I believe in butter.  A lot of butter, but I don't believe it all belongs on my sitdownish bits and I've decided since cooking is so much work and so many people are so much better at it than me, I should let them help.  It's not any better to make a money off your own suffering than it is to make money off other peoples suffering, which is why I didn't go to law school and won't become a stock broker.  I do believe in butter, but I also believe in my barefeet, in the kitchen, in not being pregnant ( please don't get me pregnant ..i'm 47. i couldn't handled it. ) and as of today, I believe in cake mix...  and champagne. Actually, I've believed in champagne for a while.

They weren't my clients so they got cake mix cookies. Does that make me a bad person?

There is a proof reading position open at cookedheads if you'll work for processed cheese slices, bulk butter and champagne.    Take over the world, Pinkie...

The post where I post about why I'm not posting today.

And yes, there will be bullet points, because, as you already know, if you've been paying any attention at all, I do love me some bullet points.

• I have a list of phone calls to make.  Many. And I will never ever get a ticket for being on my cellphone whilst driving because I hate the phone. Don't ask me why. If I knew, I'd already have fixed it.  I'm just pleased as punch that I haven't made myself a bloody mary to get through the bloody list.
• I still haven't unpacked.   My husband asked me if I was "..planning on staying?"
• I have to figure out why I have such a hard time writing short stories I really want to write for a group of ladies I really like.  It's just such a good meme/exercise/spiritual assignment and at this rate, I'm telling you, I'm going to need to do some extra credit just to pass the class.
• I have a house to un-Destroy.  
• My boss wants things from me.  Seriously, some people are extremely demanding and it's difficult to explain certain concepts to them, like bliss, and laughing, and blogs, and .. well.  You get the point.
• I'm working on Businessville. Since, as pretty as it truly is, I can't like yellow, I figure it's my best shot at changing the paradigm that smart people like yellow.  (smart people like colors that don't show dirt.... smart people like colors that don't show dirt) "Turkish Coffee" is a good color. In fact, it's a brilliant color

so, no post..  but just focus on all the pretty colors to the left.

Perfectly Hilarious Moments

• driving around with the top down in Newport Beach listening to Toby Keith (youtubealert) admit he's not as good as he once was, then assure you he's as good once as he ever was.  Tell it Toby...
• a little old lady counting her pennies, the copper kind, hundreds of thousands of them the very moment you're in a hurry to get home to cook dinner when the beautiful man-boy ahead of you line turns to you and starts laughing at the Marx Brother's moment with you.  I'd tell you the whole story, but thanks to Toby, I'm reminded I'm on my way to being a little old lady. This is me shuttin' up.
• this:

I'll explain later. Maybe. Probably. 

• walking into a Destroyed house after a five day absence to find a six foot ten, grey haired Boy lying on the floor, on this tummy playing with a new toy: an AM radio antenna that's either a monolith from another planet or some sort of fertility idol and it's evidently going to be perched on the bronze 18th century French torchiere from now on so we can catch all the LA Dodger games. Yet another way the Dodgers consistently break my heart.
• a surprised grey-haired boy surveying said Destroyed house from his position on the floor, on his tummy, who turns to you sheepishly, and, in all seriousness saying, "I was going to dust".
• 400 processed cheese slices in the refrigerator and on the counter, I swear to God, a deep fryer.  Damn you Megalomart
• a coffeemaker that pollaxes you and every Keurig K-Cups ever made. If megalomart ever begins to sell these all is forgiven, like... forever. 

Nesspresso

• training a dog about "Sit &Wait". My version consists of Chaka Khan telling my dog and I that she's every woman, while I flail my arms wildly, a stuffed clown in one hand and a noise maker in the other in the more otimistic than realistic hope that your insane Labrador Retriever will allow you to have people into your home without having to make sure they make eye contact with you when you tell them, "She's a drunk in a bar. Don't make eye contact."  Not that I know anything about drunks. Or bars. Seriously. I am not a very good bar girl.  Library girl I do. Having witnessed the eye contact and the over-attachment that results, it does seem to be a good analogy.
• finding out that the state of California imports manhole covers from Belgium

The budget debacle makes so much more sense now

There's more but I have to go help someone find a strainer.  He's deep frying chicken for eight people who won't be here and were never planning to be here as well as the two people who will.  There will be vegetable oil everywhere.  By next week I'm hoping to see the perfect in those moments. btw, does anyone need any processed cheese slices....or butter..... or kettle chips? I have, in order, 400 of the first, 8lbs of the middle and a case of the end unit. Speaking of which, this is the end of this unit.

What had happened was....

Golf ball hates you.  I tell my husband this on a regular basis, but he does not listen.  He is a masochist and it's not just his need to play golf that tells me this.  Because I'd like to stay married to my endearing masochist, I won't give you too many details, but this is a man who we've already establish has a habit of getting up to play golf on one of his two days off while it is still quite dark. When this nonsense happens, his loving sleeping wife doesn't even grunt a goodbye  in his direction.
I haven't seen him in three days because the wife-in-law and I are in the Central Coast wine country doing some market research *cough and a team building retreat *phhhht for Businessville.  Oh alright, we're reliving Sideways minus the dump bucket swilling, the fornicating and the motorcycle helmet to the head, unless you count the day where we sat on the top of the Canary Hotel drinking ...I can't bring myself to tell you how many bottles of wine we consumed during the day, but I assure you at the end of the day, our business plan seemed like inspiration of genius and that it had the blessing of, well, Bacchus at the very least.
This morning, when I got my phone call, the one I call the golf call, too early, always, my loving husband, who knows we've been in the cups and yet still calls at 7:00am on a Saturday, is very chipper for about 30 seconds, until he says two works I won't repeat ( *I wave at my mom) and says,
"I plugged the damn ball in the bunker, I'll call you back." ... the phone went dead.  Sort of like me the past few days but I have every intention of boring you with the many and mighty details of my exploits, experiences and exercises in excesses.
For the moment, all you're getting are excuses, and I'd apologize, but we all know I'd do it all again, so it would bother my conscious to lie to you.

Excuse 1-3

Excuse 4,5

Excuse six:: A very good very bad $5.00 book 

Another excuse.  I've lost count at this point

Damn you Megalomart

Anthony Bourdain once wished blood and gristle to be sheared from the appendages of those who dared use good knives with dull edges.  I feel qualified to broach this subject because I've read his books, enjoyed his snark, hate dull knives and I know someone who "made out with him".  Her words, to which she added, "he's a very good kisser" though I won't name names because given all that he's selling and how long he's been selling it, I'm not thinking this is something the lady would want advertised. I also suspect those sorts of make-out sessions stories are not that unusual either. And Tony, cookedheads with all it's falling off the bone sousvide-ity  has, as one of its evil plans, to sit around a round table with you, at least 10 other people and a few bottles of something as old as we are, but I'm going with one of the things you're selling, the story that you're a hard ass and can take it, nevermind that we both know different, sweetcheeks.

The free flowing exchange of body fluids not withstanding, sweetcheeks has a point.  Sharpen your knives.

Sharpen your knives or you will cut more than the bits you intend to cut and they will most likely be your bits.    Just when I'm beginning to get Flynn to see the evil that is megalomart they begin to sell things like this. Flynn buys them and I can't be annoyed, at least not at him, at least not about this.

tomato preparedness

p.s.  a good sharpener will go a long way to compensate for inexpensive damn you megalotmart knives....

Choosing what you feed...

This morning, about one mile into a three mile walk, I read an email and freaked out because I thought someone had left a comment on a draft post. Had that been the case, it would have meant I'd played fast and loose with the publish button. I hadn't, but for the sake of discussion/my lesson for the day, here is the draft unedited.

your obsession might be able to help you in other areas.


tell how you're trying to teach yourself this thing


I wish i had a shopping addiction (i doubt that's actually true but somehow other peoples monkeys don't seem to throw as much pooooooooooooo in their direction as mine does at me.)
flavors=clothes


mixing flavors is in mixing items in your closet
mixing textures works for alexander sauce and it will work with textiles in a sphincter-ugly room


style book bargain. vivian westwood quote


No big deal right?  So there are a few words I don't want my mother to read, and it's not a great post, but it's not a big deal either.  It wasn't supposed to be a great post because it wasn't finished, but, since I couldn't remember what I'd said in it with any certainty, I ran screaming towards "FlipFreakFailFlail" which triggered the desire to run screaming back to my laptop to un-publish it.  In other words, I wanted very much to stop doing something worthwhile (exercise) in order to do something very much insane ( be afraid of the dreaded and all-in-your-head "if").


Then I started laughing, because I had taken. my. camera. on my walk with me for the precise purpose of documenting that "it", all the good stuff, is all there waiting for you to see, to choose, to nurture, to feed.  I took that walk with that precise purpose because I felt myself returning to a foggy (scary can't see ) state and I'm not having it. I'm having Businessville, the name Flynn and I have assigned to the game of building a pretend company that may or may not become a real company, depending on how well its played but I have to see Businessville  in order to pull it from Potential to palpable.  You probably know it's hard to see in fog. You may not know I tend to overeat when it's foggy...in my head.   Not.Havin'.It.


My mind still spent some time in thought about what I might have said in the run-away post, or how stupid I might have sounded, but I made, and yes, the word is made, myself see what else was manifest. I made myself see that you guys are aware I'm human so it's not like that fact is going to sneak up on any of you and scare you, that nothing will ever be as horrible as you think it will be, ever and that the good stuff is always, ever, persistently present.  The other crap is out there too, but it's up to us to choose which beast we feed.

Here's some of the good stuff that showed up along the way.

Wild grapes, you know, the ones where Love is the viticulturist.

A string of moments

Perfect Moment Monday is about noticing a perfect moment rather than creating one. Perfect moments can be momentous or ordinary or somewhere in between.

Here are a few of my found moments:

• The sight of oily black French roast beans fresh from their newly opened vacuum packed foil bag at 6:00am on a Monday
• a round table,  a 20 year old bottle of wine and people I'd never met but can't wait to see again.
• finding out my daughter has become a fascinating adult with political passions and a fire for change.
• being 47 and still able to navigate the streets of San Francisco in five inch heels.
• A 90 something man who asks a 20 something girl on a date to hear two local high schools have a battle of the bands.  He clears it with her boyfriend first.
• fours sneezes in a row. then not another.   
• sheet angels made in a freshly made bed
• a conversation about anger that leaves the taste of hope and honey in my mind
• a conversation about women that leaves the smell of my grandmother's Cabochard in my mind and then on my wrists

les femmes capitalisme de conscience

The other day I mentioned that I'm going to get my wife-in-law to agree to start an international conglomerate of some sort.
I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing other than following Fun.   We don't need any more money so there's no crushing press to keep our children in milk, or the bank away from our family farms.  That's not what's driving this.  The only real reason for us to play this game is the game and the fact that we want more game tokens which is always and ever how I think of money.
    The basic ground rule, singular, is that this Fun we're following is had by all, and if it's not being had by all, we need to genuinely and constructively fix it.  Post-haste and forthwith.  This gives you have a little insight in to the first meeting of the board of directors for our little coven of capitalists.
     We sat outside on the patio, soaking up the spring sun with a bottle of eleven year old champagne, so, it wasn't like it was, you know, fresh champagne,  but we still enjoyed it.  We also enjoyed a long open exchange of truths, one of which was that wine is one place where crows feet are evidently valued, if the price is any indication.  I mean, they charge you more for middle aged wine than they do for the tarty perky little inexperienced wines in straight leg jeans and stilettos.   It's not surprising that we gave the "ding ding ding" to the mature wine because you don't get to live those extra good years without collecting all those extra good stories to tell, and anything that gets a "ding ding ding" has stories to let.

A "ding ding ding" can be defined as the feeling you get when you won, when you played a game well, when, even if no one else knows about it, you did the thing that was a challenge. Sitting on that piece of ground, we agreed, the game we wanted to play produced one thing: people who were having as much fun as we were and the "ding ding ding" was watching them walk in the door ready to tear the head off the next person they saw and walk out the door with a non-chemically induced smile and a sigh.

Whatever widgets we sell, it won't matter how many game tokens we're given for them if we don't end up with just as many "ding ding ding"s.  We're greedy capitalists after all...with a company....with a new name:  Dosage et c'est très doux.

What your obsession has to teach you.

There's no point in pretending I speak for all people who have obsessions with and unhealthy attachments to a thing, a person, a habit, a chemical, but I feel confident enough in my own experiences to tell you those "monkeys" are more alike than they're not.
What if the thing that caused you so much angst was really your teacher, but you were to slow too fast, too fixated on getting the momentary but sublime release from your suffering that you couldn't see what the "enemy" was trying to tell you.
My crazy like a fox grandmother tried to convince those of us who would have had her quit chain smoking, that she
"only smoked because it's the only time" she  "breathe deeply."   She said it. She meant it.  We thought she was crazy.  
I'm beginning to wonder.
I don't smoke, but I have found one of the best ways to end a ridiculous craving for something insane, be it a 400.00 pair of shoes I cannot have and save for retirement simultaneously or a  box of vanilla wafers under one arm, the bag of candied pecans under the other while I hold the nutella between my thighs so I can attack it with a spoon is to take a deep breath.  It also works for moments when you and your husband are discussing his disconcerting friendship with a a person who owns a vagina.  Sorry, the word needed to be used.  I'll understand if you can never read this blog again.

So, breathing deeply.  yes.  do it, but know that the complete release from obsession is a little more detailed than just breathing.   I don't have as much problem turning down the $400.00 dollar shoes and all right all right, they were only $265.00 shoes. I have had a much bigger challenge turning down bread, and frosting, and pizza with extra cheese and well, you see where I'm going with this.  Believe me when I tell you it does.not.matter.what your self destructive obsession is, the fix is the same.  Find a way to honor your psychic stalker without letting it stab you with an ice pick.

If your thing is shoes you can't afford, you should know, as I had to explain to my husband who really wanted to buy them for me that $245.00 of the suggested retail price is for the privilege of wearing the $5.00 insignia. ( love you Tory, but seriously? for sandals? At the moment, I am not that girl.)  Go find yourself something beautiful that you can afford and if your obsession is calories et al, experience every bite you're eating. Feel what you're eating. Taste what you're eating. Smell what you're making a part of yourself with each swallow. Slow down so you can do these things.   

Yes. Eating can be a source of much pleasure.  But putting the thing in your mouth, in your shopping bag, etc is the very finest point of an entirely sensual experience. If you gulp down your food, max out your credit cards etc, it's because your soul is starving for the rest of the process.

The rest of the process:

make mousse, not love to little debbie

spend ten minutes pickling something

Good yogurt has a smell.

2Tgoat cheese? 50calories.  2T butter? 200.  Do the math.
Add fresh cracked pepper and sea salt.  Eat. Slowly. Wallow.

Bacon, onions and thyme should be a candle.  Guinness optional

Taste a small one.  Stop.  (note "one" could be anything,
but do yourself a favor and taste it all)

Never pass up an opportunity to take a deep breath.
The aroma of almonds roasted in cumin oil and Castillian paprika has
not one single calories, but you will feel like you inhaled the whole of the wide earth.