Category: Observer

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A Girl’s Gotta Eat (aka: There Goes My Last Excuse)

I’m not boring. Truly, I’m not. The problem for you faithful readers is that I’ve realized this is more than a diary. If you people with terribly busy lives who have deemed my blog important enough to squeeze in to your allotted 1,440 minutes per day remember, which I’m sure you do, I realized last Thanksgiving that REAL people are REALLY out there reading this. (Hi Chuck and Betty!)

Life ain’t always pretty, and I have to be careful about what I casually throw out there.

I mean, it’s not like I’ve been arrested or anything else humiliating, but come on, life is messy, and personal. Right? So, somedays, the really interesting days, when I’m aching to blog about Life’s Lessons, I don’t. Other days, okay, most days I probably am boring. The days when I sit at my computer, never breath fresh air unless I walk my dog (and that’s not very fresh), those are the days I create my best work, but it goes into my novels and you can’t share the excitement until my work is published. (Soon, I hope!)

But back to the subject at hand. My oldest son is 26-years old now. I don’t consider myself a great cook by any means, but for MORE THAN 26 YEARS, it’s been my “duty/job/responsibility” to cook dinner. I was married once for 15 years, single for 5, married again for 7 years now (Hi, honey!), and I’ve done almost all the cooking for those 26+ years. AND I DON’T EVEN LIKE TO COOK!

Some of you out there must think I’m crazy. I shoulda…. Yeah, well, I didn’t. Granted, my husband and I now eat out 2-3x/week (yea!) but the other 4 or 5 nights, I cook. I’ve always done it cuz I’ve always done it.

Well, this past New Year’s Eve, my husband and I were sitting at home having a nice, quiet, peaceful, non-drunken dinner (Scallops with caramel-orange sauce, asparagus, and quinoa), and we were talking about our goals for 2011. I said, no surprise here, that I wanted to write more and be published. I must have also mentioned something about the time I spend cooking… and know what my incredible husband said to me? He told me that I don’t have to cook. This was over a nice dinner; it’s not like I served him mac ‘n cheese or anything. I’ve kinda gotten good at this over the years. He said that as long as the two of us can sit and relax and talk, he doesn’t care where the food comes from (takeout anyone?) or even if it’s frozen pizza. Who knew?

I know, I know, there are MILLIONS of men and women out there right now screaming, Girl! Wake up! Why have you been cooking all these years if you didn’t want to! It’s about time!

So, I’m not boring, just slow. I cook because my family needs to eat. I can, therefore I do. Kinda like putting together the furniture for my youngest son’s first apartment last August. (kindly see the post dated Aug. 24, 2010)

HOWEVER, even after my husband said I don’t NEED to cook a nice meal, the following night, I made Braised Cardamon-Curry Lamb Stew with a hearty loaf of focaccia bread. Tonight was broiled beef tenderloin, roasted squash with brown sugar, and chipotle-spiced corn.

Turns out, I WANT to eat good food at home. I don’t want cereal for dinner.

There goes my last excuse for not writing more.

Now, what’s for dessert?

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Prepare To Be Delighted

Several weeks ago, I mentioned at the bottom of one blog entry that I was going to ask several of my friends who are published writers to talk about how they got published. Don’t feel bad if you missed it… You’d probably qualify as a stalker if you actually noticed it.

What I hoped to get (knowing how busy everybody is these days) was a few hundred words on daily struggles of the publishing world. My first guest blogger, Michael Halleran, wrote an enlightening and entertaining 1800-word essay. We writers love to write! Please note his bio (very impressive) and the proper citation at the bottom of the essay. (No wonder I write fiction; I must have missed that day in school.)

First, a sincere thank you to my high school friend, Mike. You have elevated my simple, narcissistic blog.

Second, to all you loyal readers: Enjoy the next post!
p.s. If you’re a writer and would like to post on my site about your experiences, send me an email.

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Never Tell Me You’re Bored

Raising four boys, born less than six years apart, left very little time for boredom. At least for me. Every so often, one of my young sons would come to me with that pitiful whine, “Mommy, I’m bored.” I quickly constructed a response… “Good, because I need someone to sweep out the garage.” That cured their boredom! You’ve never seen kids run the other way so fast.

Bored? Are you kidding me? Who has time to be bored? As you know from my last blog entry, I have many obsessions. My biggest complaint in life (yes, I know this makes me one lucky lady) is that I don’t have enough hours in a day to tackle all the books/activities/obsessions in my life. I’ve realized that everyone of us on this planet has the same number of minutes each day, and miraculously, some people seem to get so damn much accomplished (Martha Stewart, I’m talking ’bout you), and others…well not so much. We ALL have time for what’s important to us, e.g. facebook, watching sitcoms, or writing a prize winning novel.

But now I have a new obsession: French cooking.

My husband took me to Paris for my 48th birthday (where I took the lousy photo of this beautiful Modigliani painting). We had a fabulous time, and ate the most delicious food. I’m not much of a cook, but I am newly inspired to give Soupe à l’Oignon Gratinée (French onion soup) a shot, and Ragout de Champignons (mushroom ragout), and Croque-Monsieur sandwiches, and Confit avec Pruneaux et Pommes (Duck confit with prunes and apples). I think you get the picture. How am I going to squeeze this in with writing my novel Left on Blue? Ah, there’s the rub.

Time management. That’s the answer.

And motivation!

Look at this guy, for example. Is he the greatest real-life character you’ve ever seen? I have no idea who he is, or what his life is like, or what he’s listening to, or what’s in his backpack. Does he speak French or English or maybe German? He was at a cafe where my husband and I stopped for lunch after touring the Louvre. This guy makes me want to write and write and write.

And, so, dear friends, I’m back to my novel. Looks like I’m going to have to sleep less (that’s Martha Stewart’s solution) to squeeze everything in. I hope my neighbors understand when I start caramelizing onions in the middle of the night.

I’ll call you when dinner’s ready.

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A Blessing or a Curse/The Chicken or the Egg

So last week I took my youngest son back to college. He’s a sophomore now, and is now living in his first apartment. He’s also the youngest of seven kids. What that means, in parental terms, is that he needed all brand-new furniture for his room… no more hand-me downs left to hand down. They got used up by the first six kids.

More specifically, it means that I, mom/driver/do-it-yourselfer, had to put together a six-drawer dresser, a one-drawer desk, and a bookshelf, all purchased in tiny little boxes from Target. No sense in spending a lot of money to buy a college kid “nice” (read: already-put-together) furniture.

Here’s where my lesson learned comes in: Neither my husband (wonderful as he is) or my ex-husband or a thousand other people I can think of off the top of my head, could have or would have spent FIVE BLEEPING HOURS in beautiful Colorado in a small apartment bedroom gluing and screwing furniture together. So why did I?

Because I am able. I am logical, patient, determined, and intelligent. And these are all the qualities that make me capable of sitting alone, at a desk, quietly creating novels. Over the 47+ years of my life, I have rarely failed to achieve my goals. Whether my goal is to get three pieces of furniture assembled in time for dinner with my son, or publishing a novel, I never stop until I am successful. (Please see my previous blog entry referring to the Calvin Coolidge quote on persistence.)

But which came first? The need to turn 280 random pieces of wood and rails and screws into a dresser, or the ability to do such a task? Or, the fact that until my book sells, I must be very frugal?

So many questions, so little time. So many callouses on my hand.

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Life is like a matryoshka doll…

Or, I can see clearly now…

(Disclaimer: For those of you looking for more Central American adventures, you may skip this blog.)

Is it my age? Or my stage? Or is it the air in Costa Rica?

I feel as if another layer has been peeled away, a window opened, another doll lifted. There are times in life when “things” seem so clear, when one looks back on his or her life to see how screwed up he or she was before, and thinks: Now I get it! Yet, I also know that this feeling is fleeting. One day I’ll look back with even more wisdom, hindsight, knowledge and think what a fool I was to think I had all the answers on Thursday, March 18, 2010. But, it’s not that I think I have all the answers, oh Future Me, it’s just that I realize that on this day, I am truly happy. Please, let me have this day.

At the wise young age of 47 (no, I’m not afraid of that number), I feel very grounded and centered. I can look back and see past mistakes, in myself, in others, in history, and feel proud that I’ve moved on and learned a thing or two along the way. (This is awfully narcissistic… but that’s allowed in blogs, yes?) What will NEVER cease to amaze me, is how ANYONE can look back at their life and say, “I have no regrets.” Well, bully for them. I have regrets, then again, too numerous to mention. Sure, I get the whole part that my mistakes make me who I am today, blah, blah, blah. I would like to think, if only for today, that I might have come to this effervescent spot in my life without having hurt people I love along the way, without having blurt out words that I immediately regretted. Isn’t it the least bit possible that I was an idiot once or twice? (That’s a rhetorical question.) Who among us does not regret their idiotic moments? I wouldn’t want to be 20 ever again, or even 30, unless I could magically erase the mistakes I made along the way (and make by Apple at its IPO) and still find myself where I am today. But we don’t get that chance. We have to stew in the juices that made us. Well, here I am, happily stewing.

Life is better for me now; I’ve learned to float one level above myself: me, once removed, like a very tall distant cousin, if you will. As a child, I dove into life head first, careless and free. As an innocent teenager (yes, I was the Innocent One), I believed what I was told, never questioned authority. As a young adult, I was so consumed by the whirlpool of my life (read: four sons) that it seemed all I could do was to save myself from drowning. Well, I found a life raft! A broken piece of driftwood! An air mattress! Maybe it’s my husband; maybe it’s distance from daily chores (see: Gecko-tourism in Costa Rica); maybe life is calmer now that my children are in college; maybe it’s being 47 1/2 and being alive and healthy. I am learning to observe, question, take pause, and formulate my own opinion like never before.

Then, again, maybe it’s a career in WRITING. I cannot go back, erase mistakes, reverse bad stock picks, unsay things I’ve said, but my characters can! They are my second chance at life: my past, my present, my future; the one where everyone learns wisdom (or gets their due) in the end, the moment the final doll is lifted.

I sure hope this writing gig pays off, because I’ve got a pretty good view of life from this perch.

If not, does anyone know of a school that teaches puppet-mastery?