Winter in the Heartland
23 Jan 2012 1 Comment
It’s here. Finally. I loved the mild weather, but the farm girl in me knows that we need some moisture. Drought is a scary, scary thing.
I’ve been in California and Texas the last two weeks. The California trip sucked – well, the hotel sucked. It was a comedy of errors. Everything that could go wrong did. And the customer service from the hotel was mightily lacking. When I checked out, I had a come to jeezus talk with the front desk clerk and asked that he not bill my credit card until I had a chance to talk with the manager. I sent him a pointed email when I was back in the office and asked for a reply.
Nothing. I was in Dallas the next week and when I got back into the office last Friday, my admin told me the hotel charge had come through. I was pissed – until she told me how much it was. 16 cents. All I was charged ($150 a night room-not worth that AT all, but still) was the credit card fee of 8 cents a night. It pays to speak up, people. But can you believe that I’ve still never heard from the manager? Oh, well.
The hotel in Dallas was amazing. It’s a Four Seasons. Love the luxury and attention to detail! It was the 3rd year for the site (the big annual kick off meeting) and our contract is up. Sure hope we go back again!!!!
All is well otherwise. The situation with my friend is still not resolved, although she did finally speak to my son. Better late than never? Maybe. I’ve thought, until recently, that we would talk it out sometime soon and get over it. Or not. But the longer it goes, the less I miss her.
That makes me pretty pathetic, too, I know.
I have a trip scheduled the first week of April to Wilmington, NC. I’m dragging the husband along and we’re going to take a few days and see Charleston. I’ve always wanted to go there and this seemed like the perfect excuse. But YOWZA, hotels and B & Bs are expensive!!!! Still, I’m going to bite the bullet and do it. I also booked a cabin for our summer vacation in the Black Hills. It’s sort of bittersweet – probably the last vacation we’ll take with our youngest. He’ll be a senior this fall and that will be all she wrote.
I just keep imagining the vacations we could all take as adults somewhere down the road…even more fun.
Insomnia has been my constant companion for the last few weeks. I’m only getting 4 or so hours of sleep a night and it’s beginning to wear on me. I’ve now had 5 dreams where I die in March. Must be some kind of serious change coming for me. It scares me a little. Ok, more than a little. I have no problem with change at all – but this recurring dream kind of freaks me out. Please tell me I’m not going to REALLY die.
It’s All Over But the Dishes
04 Jan 2012 2 Comments
The dinner party went swimmingly! A good time was had by all. I cut way back on the appetizers – too far. I won’t make that mistake again. I just needed one more great ‘bite’ on the table. I’ll be on the lookout over the year for the perfect thing.
The menu was:
- Cocktail of the year – Pomegranate martinis
- Shrimp shooters (large shrimp, marinated in olive oil, lemon and garlic, skewered to keep them straight, then grilled. I put about 1 inch of mango salsa in tall shot glasses and added the shrimp, tail up. YUM!)
- Nuts
- Cream cheese covered with pepper/onion jam (sounds white trash, but oh so good) with crackers
- Steak tartare (a risk, I know, both biologically and culturally, but I’d just had it on my last biz trip to SF and thought I’d died and gone to heaven. I made one major mistake – I used my food processor to chop the meat and it was sort of pasty. It tasted great – I used Emeril’s recipe – but the texture was, well, odd. I should have partially frozen the steak and diced it really small by hand. In any case, everyone tried it, liked it, then found out what it was and didn’t eat any more. Sigh…I’ll make it again for ourselves, but not for a dinner party)
- Dry Riesling for salad course
- Romaine salad/red wine vinaigrette with parmesan crisps (I love them! Just pile some grated parmesan in a circle about 3’ in diameter on a parchment lined baking sheet and bake at 350 until lightly browned. It changes the flavor of the cheese to a deep nutty and savory cheesy taste. It makes a great garnish)
- Pinot noir for main course
- Prime rib with blue cheese/horseradish sauce
- Garlic green beans
- Twice baked potatoes
- Wheat/white rolls w/ jam and honey butter
- Raspberry champagne cocktails
- Three layer chocolate ganache filled cake on a pool of white crème de cacao sauce
Is your mouth watering?
The holidays went very well. Nice day with my side on Christmas Eve. We were home by about 5:30 so that my crazy brother could be with her (and I didn’t have to be with him). We had a nice supper at home with M’s oldest brother. He always brought my darling mother in law over for Christmas eve and I couldn’t stand the thought of him being home alone. It was nice.
Christmas day with the husband’s family. Nice, less gifts than normal FINALLY. Good night – that side could go over the top with volume. I was so glad to see one gift, carefully chosen, instead of 10 whatevers.
I had the week off between Christmas and New Years. It had been so long since I took that time and now I remember why. I’d rather have the time when the weather is nice.
Travel starts again next week –California then Dallas.
Oh, and I dreamed about dying in March again. Same dream, same feelings, same everything. Weird.
Dinner Party Plans!
07 Dec 2011 2 Comments
Create and mail invitations (to newly selected invitees-see yesterday’s post) – CHECK
Receive RSVPs from invitees – CHECK
Plan menu – SORT OF CHECK – working on it!
Decide on table decor/theme – SORT OF CHECK – working on it – not as challenging as in the past (see reference to new guests. I’m sort of psycho about NOT repeating the tablescape)
Plan two days off prior to Dec. 17 to shop/cook/decorate – CHECK
I subscribe to a good number of magazines and am always boggled at the articles about giving dinner parties. They all make it sound so easy – just toss together X and Y, scatter a few pine cones down the center of the table, wrap up some home made biscotti in cellophane bags for favors, plan a simple menu that comes together miraculously with very little effort.
That’s not how it works for me, but I really, really like the fussy preparations, all the tiny details, all the special dishes and stemware. I go into a mode for a few days prior and am single minded about pulling off an even bigger, better and tastier party than the year before. I’m not sure I could just toss something together. Maybe….?
I’m going to try to remember to take pictures as it all comes together. I’ll add that to my list. I have 4 of them going at any given time – shopping, Thursday to do, Friday to do and Saturday to do.
I can’t wait!
Protected: That Random Maternal Gene Rears It’s Ugly Head
06 Dec 2011 Enter your password to view comments.
Is Santa Real?
05 Dec 2011 1 Comment
It’s the question every parent (who perpetuates this particular myth with their children) dreads. When our oldest son was still a borderline ‘believer’, I practically got heart palpitations thinking about what I would tell him when the day came. I waffled between several responses, all of them fairly lame, most of them I thought too deep for a 9 year old to understand without lots more confusing explanation. I did what I think many (most?) parents do – I told him the same thing my mom told me, that Santa came as long as you believed in him. He was a smart kid, smart enough to know that the answer was purposefully vague, but he also knew better than to rock that particular boat TOO much.
He was about 9 years old when the day came that he really wanted the truth. I remember it like it was yesterday. Sometime before Christmas, he came to me while I was working in the kitchen and said ‘Mom, I want to ask you something’.
‘Is Santa real?’
I looked him right in the eyes and asked if he wanted the real, whole truth. Yes, he said. He did.
I told him that Santa didn’t come on Christmas eve, to everyone’s house, in a sleigh with reindeer. Dad and I were Santa. But Santa was just another word for love and giving. We loved him very, very much. We were Santa, just like his Grandmas and Grandpas had been Santa for Dad and me.
He was and still isn’t an outwardly emotional boy. Even as a child, he was very pragmatic. He accepted things he couldn’t change with a shrug and went on to something else. He rarely cried unless he was in pain.
But not that day. He burst into tears, sobbing like his heart was breaking.
‘I knew it! I knew it! Kids never get any of the toys that you see the elves making on TV! I was afraid to ask you because you told me when I stopped believing, he’d stop coming’.
Note: This was a genuine concern. While the boys believed in Santa (at least one of them), we never put gifts for them under the tree. All of their presents came from Mr. Claus.
It made me laugh then and makes me laugh still. I crouched down and put my arm around him and told him that he had a little brother that was only 2. Even though HE was a big boy who knew that Santa was Mom and Dad, his little brother didn’t know and wasn’t it fun to believe? As long as David believed, Santa would come. When he quit believing, Danny would be 15 or so. That would be plenty long for Santa, wouldn’t it? From then on, all of their presents would be under the tree.
He sniffed a few times and said ‘We have to keep Santa coming for David. Every little kid needs to believe in something.’
Then he looked up and said ‘I suppose the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy are you and Dad, too, huh?’
I said yes, we were, but this was our secret for a few more years anyway. That year on Christmas morning, amid all of the tearing of paper and excitement, he looked over at me and gave me a big wink and a nod. I would give a million dollars for a picture of that face.
Point Taken.
30 Nov 2011 1 Comment
Heather and Maria’s points were well taken. Yes, women cheat, too. I seem to be at an (ahem) age where couples I know are splitting up – long term marriages – at the request of the wife. A couple of them are because the wife cheated. One former good friend left for an older guy, moved out of state, left her two mostly grown kids, took her generally good-guy ex to the cleaners. And the guy she left him for? It also broke up HIS (3rd) marriage with two kids, the same age as hers.
Others left because it just wasn’t what they were willing to settle for anymore. Most tried counseling. All but one stayed until the kids were out of high school. At the end of the day, they wanted more, they had changed or grown and whatever they needed to be happy or at least satisfied just wasn’t there.
It’s a scary thought – that the relationship that two people who were in love, who built a home and family and life could come unraveled like that. In none of the instances referenced above am I aware of any ‘deal breakers’ . I have a short list of them in my marriage: regular, excessive drunkenness, drug use, cheating (by the other person), gambling, emotional or physical violence.
I know these women fairly well. We’ve talked at length about how and why they left. The common theme was just a, well, a vacancy that they couldn’t seem to find a way to fill. My brain tells me that some or most of that hole was in THEM, but I could see from their faces and hear in their words that they wanted it to be different, but just couldn’t make it so.
Sadness. But yes, ladies. Women do cheat.
For All Of Us UN-Beauty Queens
18 Nov 2011 2 Comments
Demi and Ashton.
Tiger and Elin.
Sandra and Jesse.
That stupid Weiner guy and his wife.
Bill and Hillary.
For every woman – and I include myself, here – that has ever felt they weren’t pretty enough, smart enough, rich enough, sexy enough, thin enough, etc. to keep a man happy and hanging around in a one to one relationship, I offer you the examples above.
It’s not about how you look, how big your, um, wallet or brain is, or how well your lingerie fits. It’s about the mindset that takes men to that place that allows them to compartmentalize their one to one relationships and somehow justify a one to many. I don’t find any joy or satisfaction in the difficult situations that these couples have been through, but I do find a little bit of validation.
If it can happen to them with their looks, bodies, bank accounts or IQs, it can happen to anyone.
That’s absolutely not to say that we as women don’t have responsibility for keeping relationships on track, for carrying more than our share of the burden of making it work sometimes, for shutting the hell up and resisting the urge to talk everything to DEATH (my particular foible). We certainly do. But we can also take some pathetic comfort in the fact that even the most beautiful, sexy, wealthy, smart women among us aren’t enough to keep a man who is hell bent on getting some strange from doing it.
I wonder if this happens in lesbian relationships? I know it happens with gay men-I have gay friends that I’ve seen suffer because of infidelity in committed relationships.
For the love of gawd – it’s 2011. If you don’t want to be married and monogamous, DON’T BE MARRIED. If you can’t be committed and monogamous, DON’T BE COMMITTED.
Pervs. And Dogs.
14 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
I am beyond furious and appalled at the entire situation and every single person involved that didn’t act to protect children in the Penn State/Sandusky Pervert situation. I spent several hours Friday night reading online about it and came across one of the more distressing pieces. Some sportscaster named Madden (I forget where he was from) said there’s even MORE sick (if that’s possible and it is) information yet to come out regarding the PIMPING OF YOUNG BOYS from this charity to big donors to the college and the charity. That it was an organized ring of pedophiles – PEDOPHILES WITH MONEY AND POWER – that used The Second Mile like a stable. I can’t even believe I’m saying this but I hope that the only thing all of those dick-less wonders were protecting was the football program. What the EFF is wrong with people????????????
And the DA that mysteriously closed the investigation and declined to prosecute after that sorry ass all but told the mother – with two police officers LISTENING – that he’d molested her son was declared dead in July 2011. A few months after the investigation was closed, he went for a drive and never came back. His car was found abandoned, his laptop found in the Susquehanna River sometime later, sans hard drive. The hard drive was found a week or so after that in the river, a little farther downstream, damaged to the point that nothing could be retrieved. Or so ‘they‘ say. I don’t trust anyone in Pennsylvania anymore, at any level. His body has never been found. Get this – the official statement last Friday on this matter was that ‘the disappearance has no connection to the current case’. Riiiiiight. No one could connect those dots. They must think everyone is an idiot.
Here’s what I think happened – the DA had every intention of moving ahead with charges and may have had a much bigger scandal – say, PIMPING YOUNG BOYS TO OLD RICH GUYS, but someone or several someones got to him in the week after and stopped it by some kind of scary means. The DA, who by all accounts was a tough prosecutor and wouldn’t fold for anyone, had a change of heart or an attack of conscious and decided that he couldn’t let himself be frightened out of doing his job. Either that or the bad guys decided that even though he’d backed off, they couldn’t risk the information getting out. So they whacked him.
I was talking, okay RANTING, about this to a friend over the weekend. She said ‘but none of the victims testified to the grand jury that they were pimped out’.
My response was that the boys that had been either aren’t alive to talk about it or are in some hellish circle of perversion and can’t get out.
My online reading took me to several scary places, one of them The Franklin Cover Up, which I’d never even heard of. The entire premise of it was absolutely satanic and terrifying. But even worse was that I’D NEVER HEARD OF IT. I try to keep abreast of news. This should have been plastered all over the papers, every tabloid, every news show for years and years. But it wasn’t. Now why do you suppose that is????
This scares me like nothing else has for a very, very long time. I’m curious to see who the next person is involved with this case to disappear or die. Someone will. I’m sort of surprised that it hasn’t happened already. I wonder if it will be Sandusky himself. They let him out of jail on $100k bail-again, WTF?????? As much as I’d love to have his body found washed up on a shore somewhere, I prefer that he get waterboarded until he spills his guts like the puke that he is.
Maria commented on my last post, specifically regarding Bill Clinton. Well, he was a dog. I agree with her totally that what went on between he and his wife is of very little consequence. She used him and has continued to find use for him to further her own career. More power to her. He was a good at the job of president in many ways. But – there’s always a but, isn’t there? – he looked right into the eyes of the American people and lied. Without batting an eye. And lied and lied and lied. I couldn’t give a rats ass about Monica Lewinsky and whatever she did with him or to him, in the Lincoln Bedroom or the Oval Office or wherever. She was an adult. A stupid adult, but an adult just the same. I can’t get over the outright lying. I know that it probably happens more than any of us know from our elected officials. But this wasn’t arms for Contras or Watergate or any number of political hot topics. This was a personal lie that could have gone away in fairly short order if he’d just told the truth. But he didn’t and that single fact discounted for me much of the success that he had. Not that it matters in the scheme of things. I’m nobody. I’m not sure if I’d invite him into my back yard for a burger or not. Seriously. I might not let him in, but I might send him off with a burger for the road. I would definitely send George W packing, and without a burger to go.
And I’m with you, Maria Cupcake – fidelity is mandatory in my marriage also. If I don’t want to be married, or he doesn’t want to be married, we won’t be married. But I would NEVER screw around on him and I trust that he wouldn’t mess around on me either. I made a promise to be true to him. If I broke that promise, the worst victims would be my children. I will keep that promise, no matter what. Also – it’s not like they’re lining up at my door…
Seriously, Herman. WTF?
03 Nov 2011 1 Comment
Ok – I have to weigh in on this Herman Cain harassment stuff.
It’s obviously true. He tried to fight the good fight, lying and denying and smearing the victims. Then he didn’t, because he couldn’t. He’s another right wing nut job (9-9-9 Plan won’t cost middle and low income families any more money – and if it does, they can quit buying new stuff, because there won’t be a tax on used stuff…WTF????????) who tried to hide behind various skirts, no pun intended. He tried the Christian skirt, the Wealthy skirt, the LessTax skirt. None of them are big enough to shield a lech from the scrutiny that comes along with RUNNING FOR FRICKING PRESIDENT.
Which brings me to my core point – how in the hell did he not anticipate this coming out? And why didn’t he either a)preemptively announce it or b) have some kind of plan – besides lying through his teeth and changing his story – for addressing it when it DID come to the scummy surface?
Instead, like every other major ego with a dick, he lied and deflected (WAHHH! Rick Perry leaked it!). Maybe he has a brilliant political mind (not really, but for the sake of argument), but just can’t keep his hands and mouth to himself. Do we care if he hits on women every chance he gets? I don’t know. It seems to be a major problem for men in power.
What I do care about is his response to it. Same with Mr. Tinyweiner. LIARS. And Bill Clinton – a dog of the highest order. Funny how everyone can trash Obama for not magically waving a wand and fixing the nightmare that GW set up for him in his first couple of years in office, but at the very least, we don’t have anyone crawling out of the cracks like this. And you can bet that the Republicans looked. And looked. And looked.
I’ll bet that Ron Paul doesn’t have a problem keeping his johnson in his pants. Or Mitt, either. Not that I’d ever vote for Mitt, but I’m seriously considering Ron Paul. He has opinions – PERSONAL OPINIONS – about marriage and abortion, but he doesn’t think the government should be involved in it. He states that the government has more than enough to do to deal with the economy and job creation and foreign affairs without interjecting themselves into our personal romantic relationships and the relationship between a doctor and patient.
I agree. Get the hell out of my (and your) personal life. Worry about what the government should be worrying about. Quit trying to legislate morality to match the doctrine of a specific religion. Gawd, I’m sick to the teeth of all of this.
I really, truly believe it’s all a smoke screen to keep the masses from paying too close attention to the real problem, which is a select group of rich white men that want to get richer and more powerful, no matter how they do it or who they have to destroy/cripple in the process.
Where The Women are Strong and The Men Are Pretty
31 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
San Francisco. My favorite city. I spent last week there in software training, right downtown at a phenomenal hotel (Kimpton/Monaco – even reasonably priced for the location).
The city, amazing. The training, excruciating. I hung with it pretty well the first couple of days. But after that, when all the SQL talk started in depth, I was in the weeds. Bad in the weeds. I felt like a 4th grader that was behind in learning the times tables and without having memorized them had no chance of doing long multiplication or division. I checked out – feeling like the world’s most stupid human – then got crabby. You know-the same place 4th graders go when they feel dumb and so far behind that it’s hopeless. And start acting out. I made snide comments and generally was ignorant. Not to brag, but there aren’t many situations where I don’t have a pretty good grasp of the materials presented. Of course that’s due in part to the fact that I don’t PUT myself in situation like that. I have new found empathy for children-ANYONE- that feel this way, daily, about multiple subjects. GAH.
But the city – I love her. I love the Castro and the Haight (especially the Haight), the Embarcadaro and the bustle of Mission and rides on the F line, dim sum on a rooftop restaurant on Grant. I took a walk one morning up the hill to see the Golden Gate. It was shrouded with fog with only the tips peeking through. Then suddenly, the fog broke. It seemed that the bridge materialized, like magic. I got a lump in my throat from the glory of it.
And I caught glimpses of my 22 year old self. I miss her and her fearlessness and attitude. I know that she still lives in me, but she’s not who I am anymore. I miss her a lot.
