Chuck

Love does not really = fascinate. But I am surely fascinated by this whole Charlie Sheen debacle. Okay, as perverse as this might be, I even slightly love it. I watched a 26 minute clip of Charlie railing at his boss, his dad and his naysayers. "Bi-winner" and "bitchin rock star from Mars" and "brain from a different terrestrial realm." ???????? Really? We all secretly want to be him.

Based on a Novella

I adore writing long, involved, fascinating blog posts. This is not going to be one. And I have not written one for a week or so. I even took the weekend off. But I can say this. I am completely enthralled and entranced and blown away by the movie, Legends of the Fall. It is another (along with Shawshank Redemption) of my top 3 favorite movies of all time. It's so filled with tragedy. They should put up a stop light in that tiny hilltop cemetery because there's so much traffic. Anthony Hopkins is superb even before the stroke....and then after, with his closed eye and palsied face, AMAZING. Brad Pitt is beautiful and yet.....beautiful. He's also a damn good actor here. And did i mention, beautiful. Aiden Quinn is the lesser of the handsome men, and he's no slouch. And Julia Ormand is damaged and stunning and lost all at the same time. Great writing, acting, and directing. (Side note - April....I know this one made you shed a tear.) Oh, and did I mention the scenery?! Whoa. This is an EPIC movie.

It's the weekend

I LOVE taking the weekend off. And I am. I will be back on Sunday.

Logophile

Yes, I am a lover of words. That's what the post title means....a person who loves words. This was exhibited in my last post, although I was too lazy to go to the dictionary and really search for the good ones. If you want to get a unique word-a-day, check out wordsmith.org. They'll send a vocabulary word to your e-mail everyday and it will be unusual and one you've probably never used in a sentence. I use that site to get my vocab words for my English classes and lately we've had ambisinister, captious, pip and lacuna. Do you know any of those?! I didn't. Now I do.

mmmmmm

Did you think it was going to be about food?! No! I adore the letter M! Monkeys, money, mulberry, magazines, mercy. Mmmmmm. Music, moon, morning. Mother, motion, muscles, Metropolitan Museum of Art. My Man. Malarky. Mr Rogers. Monsoon, mudpie, mettle.

Short but Sweeeet

I heart bumper stickers. Not really. It's just that saying that makes me think of this one story. Remember those goofy-ass bumper stickers with the "I" then the "heart" symbol then the picture of the dog's head. And it would mean "I love my poodle." Well, a few years after those got popular I saw a bumper sticker that said, "I heart my dog's head." Hahahaha. Really. I laughed for days about that one. I heart my dog's head.

Homemade Pizza!

I be lovin my homemade pizza. Here's why I wrote that sentence like that......I'm on day 13 of my "30 days of stuff I love" and if I write the words, "I love...." one more time I will barf. As I recall, this happened last time too. I had to substitute other words in there. It just gets so TRITE. So, today, I be lovin my homemade pizza.

The routine is simple. Make some dough about an hour or two before dinner time (pour a nice little glass of red wine here and sip it slowly). Let the dough rise in a bowl, covered, on top of the stove. I usually turn the oven on for a few minutes to make the area warm on the stovetop. Then, divide the dough into thirds, ball up and let THAT sit for 15 minutes (you will have finished that first glass by now.....pour glass two). Olive oil the cast iron skillets, sprinkle with corn meal, preheat oven. Take each dough ball and flatten it out, throw it in the air (Go, B!) and flip it into a pan. Then, ahhhhh, the pizza making begins. Mine is always the same because I LOVE it so much (I said it again and it was really okay), pesto, mozzeralla, fresh tomato and garlic, a little parmesean. MMMMM. Jay's was red sauce, chicken/sundried tomato sausage, pepperoni, mozzerella and a few dollpos of pesto on the top. Barry's (the one pictutred) was both red sauce and pesto, broccoli (lots and lots of broccoli), cheeses, tomato, and garlic. He put a bit of fake meat in there too but decided next time to forgo it. You might need to top off that second glass of wine here. Bake for 13 minutes. Eat. Yum.

Snow

I LOVE driving in the snow. And by snow, I mean 18 inches of snow. I mean, put on the chains, back over the berm, and barrel down the block in your front wheel, 2-wheel drive Honda Pilot, over piles and piles of white serious snow. I laugh out loud like a crazy person and Jay looks cautiously over at me from the passenger seat and says, "You really like driving in this weather, don't you mom?" and I say, "Oh yeah." and off we go, to Joann Fabrics. Hahahaha. I can go anywhere with chains on my tires and I will stop on a DIME! I love the white swirling powder storm of snow against the windshield. I love driving through the hedges of snow. I think this is all I can say without sounding TOTALLY irresponsible and careless. Okay. Goodnight.

I love......

nothing today. Oh, I do. I brought a caterpillar in out of the snow. I made white chicken chili. I had one lovely glass of St Francis Claret. I even told my son that he needed to turn off his cell phone because he has a friend over. When you have a guest, listen to them, talk to them and BE PRESENT. I liked all those things. I might have even loved them in my "I love it all" way. But I also feel sad about a lot of the world. People are suffering from floods and earthquakes and nothing gets done. Children get treated badly by the very people they trust. Loneliness is epidemic. Our politicians are corrupt and we have no heros. We stop having conversations with the people we should be talking to, preferring texting and IM's and facebook. (I saw a couple at a table in a restaurant the other day and they were sitting there across from each other, texting.) There's not much to depend on. People lose their jobs and houses and loved ones and we just keep plodding on. I don't love that stuff. None of it. But I love, for some reason, that I can write it down. I love that I can see it, and just keep breathing.

Ear Buds

I love music that surrounds me. I was in the car today with the music blasting and in the car next to me was someone with ear buds in their ears. I can understand the virtue of ear phones/buds/whatever, as far as listening while running or exercising or avoid bothering other people, but the acoustics have to have space to bounce off of, and that just doesn't happen as well confined to my ears.

Goodnight

I love being really tired, but awake enough to appreciate it. Lying in bed when the sheets and blankets all feel just right and I find a sleeping position that is just comfy and not in any way disagreeable. No restless legs, no temperature angst, no strong thirst or hunger. No cravings for nachos or fast food. No strange worries about having a heart attack in the middle of the night. No slight headache that may turn into a stroke at 3:00 a.m. or driving rain that keeps me up worrying about the cat. Just soft coziness and warmth. Ahhhhh. It's moments like this that allow me to experience supreme gratefulness.

Get busy living, or get busy dying.

I love Shawshank Redemption. Wow. What a movie. I didn't watch it tonight (I watched American Idol!), but it's one of my top 3 movies of all time. Andy Dufrain is the classic common-man hero. He's honest and good and Innocent of the crime he was convicted of. He's also willing to break the "law" to get his life back. He hurts no one. And helps many. I love the scene when he's escaping. Also the scene when Morgan Freeman leaves the prison and heads to Mexico. If you don't shed a tear in this movie, you must be the tin man and I would advise you follow the yellow brick road to go find a heart. If you haven't seen it, rent it now.

Just let me sing one more!!!!!!

I love American Idol. I do!!!! I really do. No fooling. I like j-Lo and Steven Tyler and Randy. J-Lo is soooo Jenny from the hood; just a regular gal married to a wack-a-doodle. She's kind and sensible and knows her music.....NOT like Paula. Steven Tyler is alternately funny and serious and deranged. Randy is the new, kinder yet still honest Simon. Happy as can be that Kara is gone, never to be heard from again. I have never really gotten into the show like I have this year. I can't decide if, during the audition phase, I like the talented folks best or the really lousy ones. I cry when the really amazing people sing, and tell their tragic life stories, and I laugh like a fucking hyena when the squeaky, crazy, arrogant people bellow about. LOVE IT.

Sweet Stuff

I love memories. I love how, just through thought, we can remember things that are comforting or funny, or important. Little stories our mind tells us, that are slightly embellished over time, and also slightly forgotten. It's almost as if the mind distills the memory down to just a theme or a lesson. One of the best Valentine memories I have happened when I was maybe 20. At the time, it wasn't necessarily a great day, or even memorable. But I think of it now with great fondness. It was a sweet kindness directed my way and I have never forgotten it. There was a boy that worked with me, Steve, I think. I don't even remember his last name. I vaguely remember him liking me but not thinking much about it. I came home to my apartment after work on Valentine's Day and there was a big fat Manila envelope at my door.

It had my name on the front. I took it inside and opened it up. There were 25 small, store bought valentines. Each was written on in child's handwriting. They all said, "To Jill," and they were all notes. "I hope you have a happy Valentimes" and "I like you" and "Be my Valentine." They were all signed either Love or From, and the children had all written their names. Mark, Janet, Betsy, Tim. I emptied them all out on the table and looked them over. I looked in the envelope for a note, a card or just a scrape of paper to tell me who these were from. Nothing. How weird. I didn't get it. How did these kids know me? And where did these come from? It was a mystery for a while and then I think I just let it go.

Steve never said a word about those cards, but I talked to a friend of his several months later. His friend asked me about the Valentines and it all came back. He told me that Steve had a sister who taught third grade in one of those very small Kansas towns, and that Steve had taken the Valentines out and asked the kids to write me a Valentine. They did, and sometimes I think about those kids writing a Valentine to a girl they didn't even know. I do remember those cards strewn out all over my kitchen table, and I remember that it made me smile and feel strangely happy that someone had left an envelope full of Valentines at my door.

Steve never even said anything to me. We never went out. I never would have known the story except I ran into his friend at a party one night. But it's a nice soft memory of an act of kindness that had no motive or manipulation. I still have those Valentines in that big envelope in a box somewhere. And when I think of that memory, I always hope I'm capable of that kind of kindliness.

Happy Valentimes Day.

La la lalala la lala la la.

Well, I love music. But I also forget about music. I'll go days and not hear a bit of it. Except maybe on American Idol. Hahaha. Really. But then, I'll have a day at home and I'll plug in my computer to the stereo and play Pandora radio for a couple hours. Or I'll just surf my own itunes or check out Grooveshark. I get energized and confident and I dance a across the living room like Tom Cruise in Risky Business, only better. Music is weird like that. It can make me feel really confident, as in, "Yeah world, I just listened to Mumford and Sons and Kings of Leon and I am ready to go out and BE SOMEBODY and KICK SOME ASS and totally BE KIND TO EVERYONE. Yeah, I am going to SUCCEED today f**kers!" It's very cool. I not only love the music but the lyrics too. I pretty much like it all, except country, and I'd probably be okay with that if I had the money to just sit around and listen to music all day. Music can take me over and change my whole mood for the better. It never really changes my mood for the worse, because even sad and depressing songs make me feel good. Oh, yes, I am watching the Grammy's. I haven't watched the Grammy's for a decade but it's kind of fun. I didn't even know who B.O.B. was, or Esperanza, or Lady Antebellum. Well, I'd heard of B.O.B. and L.A. but not Esperanza (won for best new artist). I have a little music sampler to the right of this post I believe. I haven't changed the songs for three years. Because I like them. I think of it as the soundtrack to this blog. Go on, listen.....

Powerball

I love when, If I forget to play the lottery, my numbers don't come up. See, I have two sets of numbers I play quite often on Powerball. I'm a gambler, yet I'm not real consistent on making it to the store on the right days. So, for instance, earlier today I thought, don't forget to buy Powerball tickets. Then at 10:00 p.m., I realized I never did it. I couldn't resist, I had to know! So I googled Powerball and saw that the numbers WERE'NT MY NUMBERS. Ahhhhhh. Relief. Elation! I did not lose millions of dollars by not playing the lottery.

Ommmmmm

i love yoga. It's all about breathing and stretching and wearing cool yoga pants.There's no running involved. You get to close your eyes. I just started a few weeks ago. I can barely touch my knees.

Steamy

I love very long, very hot showers. Lobster skin showers. This may be too much information but TOO BAD PEOPLE. I am a water wasting, utility raising shower fanatic. I will easily shower until the hot water runs out. I will shower until I'm late for class. I seem to get most of my epiphanies and revelations in there, with the pulsing streams of water knocking on (frying) my brain. One of the first shower epiphanies I had was about a million years ago when I was getting ready to pack my bag and head out for my grandma's 90th birthday. Right there in the shower I knew very clearly that I needed to buy a video camera. BOOM! This is before anyone had video cameras. I was very young and I had no money. I think I had one credit card which had rarely, if ever, been used. But there in that shower I realized I had to get a damn movie camera. I was meeting my parents at the birthday party. As I recall it was in a church in Hutchinson Kansas. In a long room with a long brown tables and paper table clothes. Crepe streamer decorations.

I had about 100 miles to drive with a town or two along the way. I stopped at several stores I thought might carry video cameras but couldn't find one. Sure, there were tons of cassette tape players and beta video players, but I couldn't find a video camera. I finally did, of course, (this may be where the bile problem started) and when I got to the party I told my parents I borrowed it from someone. My dad would have bust a gut if he knew I had BOUGHT one. On a credit card. For $1600. That was a CRAZY amount of money back then. That was like 5 months rent. Shit. And the camera was HUGE. Heavy and bulky. Luckily these days my epiphanies are more likely to be about what I should make for dinner or where the raised bed garden should go, although some days I do still have grand ideas like, I'm going to quit my job, or, I think I'm going to start a business. Most of my shower ideas do come to fruition, and it's usually a positive thing. At the time of the video camera splurge, everyone feigned shyness, and didn't want to be filmed. It was such a novelty then. But I was relentless and got great footage. I made people tell me stories. I filmed relatives eating cake. I got audio of myself saying "um" a LOT. But mostly, even now, a million years later, I can hear my grandma laugh. Now THAT'S worth $1600.

Birthday stream of consciousness

It's my birthday. I was driving home from doing some errands this morning and I had the best running dialogue going in my head of blog writing! Man, it was good. I have now forgotten all of it. I don't really think I have early onset, although I worry sometimes about my memory. Although I'm NOT old and I do remember lots of things. I just can't think of any right now. Hahaha. And I'm not going to do some piece on THAT. The whole getting older thing. I'm in a good place, with good people, and good food. I have good employment and good recreation, although I would love to travel more. Good. I'm baking a cake right now. Can someone please tell me the difference between Milk Chocolate, Swiss Chocolate, Devil's Food and Chocolate Fudge? I chose Chocolate Fudge because it sounded, well, chocolater. I'm making it in the two 8" round pans my mom used to use when I was a child, and I'm going to frost my chocolate fudge cake with a brown sugar/caramely frosting that my mom used to always make for me (recipe alert!!!! 1 and a half cups brown sugar, half a cup butter, half a cup milk, put that in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Take off heat and add powdered sugar. Frost cake.). My birthday dinner (which I will not make because I would be the only one eating it since the folks I live with are either vegetarian or tuna abhorers) used to always be tuna and noodles with mashed potatoes.

I have come to a few realizations. Nothing profound. Namely, I write more when I have an assignment. For instance, I started a blog a few days ago (here it is).....

"I have adopted a new cooking method. It's the "throw a bunch of vegetables in a pan with broth and cook em" theory of dinner prep. Then, throw what's in the pan in a blender, and you're done and the soup is on the table. It's rather like making a smoothie, only the smoothie is cold and for breakfast, and the soup is hot and for dinner. The amazing part of this is that Jay likes this dinner. He used to LOVE baby food veggies; squash, carrots, peas, etc...but when I stopped the baby food, he stopped eating vegetables. This is a sly way of bringing back the baby food. And I swear, I am not writing about him for at least a couple weeks.

I HAVE been on a food making kick. I made a berry pie yesterday, and I've been doing other soups (chicken, mushroom and wild rice - yum) and pastas and whatnot. I really am happy to not be at Starbucks anymore. I had no idea how much I would love NOT working there. I feel like I'm having another oneyearofopus even though I have a job. Now if this irritating snow would just go away."

(End of blog) ....and then I just got busy with other things and did not write more, or edit, or THINK, or post it. I've been pretty darn successful with the "30 days of......" so I think I'll go back to that for the next 30. I WAS thinking about this in the car. Thirty days of things I love. Yes, yes, I've done it before. But, I really like being positive. Plus there are so many things I love. And, I feel no pressure when I start up a 30-days-of because if I want to, I can just write one measly sentence. BUT, I have to write every day of that 30. Yay! A purpose! Oh yes, in addition, writing about what I love makes even crappy days better because I am suddenly aware of how stinking lucky I am that I have things to love.

(Three hours later, still my birthday)

We have a phonograph. It works a bit. Sometimes we still play records. It's not a high-tech deal; more of an old console style from the fifties. Mostly we listen to NPR weekend mornings with the radio in it. It's amazing how the radio in a thing like that gets such good reception. So, Jay came up to me a few minutes ago and said what's this? and he was holding one of those yellow plastic 45 record center dohickies that let you play singles on a turntable with just the long thing center piece. (After that description, I'm sure I need a picture here.) I got out my 45's and put on Sister Golden Hair by America. That song was my favorite song once. I still love it. I can still sing all the words. I did, and Jay never once told me to stop. It did skip once, where it plays the same phrase over and over and I was so excited. "That's a skip, that's a skip. Listen. Oh, it just used to gripe the heck out of us. You'll never hear a skip anywhere." and Jay actually seemed interested and listened while the I pushed my finger down on the arm to ride through the scratch. Birthday kindness rocks.

Here is a poem from Poetry Daily that I get on Facebook. It's wonderful. Read it slowly, don't rush, and read it out loud.


Happiness

I have been taught never to brag but now
I cannot help it: I keep
a beautiful garden, all abundance,
indiscriminate, pulling itself
from the stubborn earth. Does it offend you
to watch me working in it,
touching my hands to the greening tips or
tearing the yellow stalks back, so wild
the living and the dead both
snap off in my hands?
The neighbor with his stuttering
fingers, the neighbor with his broken
love: each comes up my drive
to receive his pitying,
accustomed consolations, watches me
work in silence a while, rises in anger,
walks back. Does it offend them to watch me
not mourning with them but working
fitfully, fruitlessly, working
the way the bees work, which is to say
by instinct alone, which looks
like pleasure? I can stand for hours among
the sweet narcissus, silent as a point of bone.
I can wait longer than sadness. I can wait longer
than your grief. It is such a small thing
to be proud of, this garden. Today
there were scrub jays, quail,
a woodpecker knocking at the white
and black shapes of trees, and someone's lost rabbit
scratching under the barberry: Is it
indiscriminate? Should it shrink back, wither,
and expurgate? Should I, too, not be loved?
It is only a little time, a little space.
Why not watch the grasses take up their colors in a rush
like a stream of kerosene being lit?
If I could not have made this garden beautiful
I wouldn't understand your suffering,
nor care for each the same, inflamed way.
I would have to stay only like the bees,
beyond consciousness, beyond self-
reproach, fingers dug down hard
into stone, growing nothing.
There is no end to ego,
with its museum of disappointments.
I want to take my neighbors into the garden
and show them: Here is consolation.
Here is your pity. Look how much seed it drops
around the sparrows as they fight.
It lives despite their misery.
It glows each evening with a violent light.

by Paisley Rekdal

My favorite part of that poem is "working like bees work, which is to say by instinct alone, which looks like pleasure."

I good solid line of poetry makes my day.

So, segueing here into Facebook. I am a convert. I have controlled myself and never spend more than a half hour a day on it, and I mostly make sure it's after 8:00 pm. That way I'm not losing scads of time surfing and looking at other people's vacation pictures. But today, I had a million birthday wishes. It was not fake. It was real birthday love. Thank you, to everyone who sent me a happy birthday wish. I feel blessed and lucky. And for all my former Facebook disdain, all I can say is what I say about EVERYTHING......moderation, baby.

Oh, and the realizations. I said several and I only wrote about one. Another realization is that my life is relatively bile free. For many years I produced a lot of bile. (Sorry) It was mainly because I had dismal relationships (the number one bile-producing problem in the U.S. today) and I was younger and confused. Now, very little bile. Yes, I have a 98% bile free relationship (thank you B), I am older (not OLD), and....wait....okay i'm still confused.

Also, I have come to realize that my office (the 8X8 room in our house that has my desk, B's desk and some bookcases) will never be organized to the point where there are no paper piles on the floor. Now, this is something that has, in the past, produced bile in my guts, but, by changing my perspective, I can accept it and live with it, no bile. No hoarding either, again, moderation.

Okay, have you drifted off yet? One more thing. This is the first day of my what-I-love blog commitment. Here it is....

I love chocolate cake with caramel frosting that was made in those old pans that my mom used to butter and flour for every birthday in our family. I love that those old pans were touched by her fingers as she put the batter in, and when she tapped the cake out onto a plate. I love that the frosting is her recipe and that, because she just knew, she didn't write down the amount of powdered sugar when she sent me the recipe so I'm never really sure how much to put in. I love that she cared enough to make me that cake. I love that she's why I have a birthday today. I love that she had me, even though she was older and she and my dad had to cancel their vacation to Hawaii because SURPRISE I was coming and I love that she taught me how to love so many things so very very much.