Travel

I changed my blog template. I don't know how much I like it. I figure I will try it on for size, see how it fits and, most likely, return to my "classic" layout.

I may try on many templates - at least that will give me a reason to post something on this blog. Seeing as I don't have anything to write about. Or, more accurately, I have very little that I still feel like writing about once I finally get a chance to sit down and write, and most of that gets left on the cutting floor because I imagine it isn't appropriate for the audience.

The background of this template was filed under travel. I'm not sure why, I guess it is thanks to its cottage dans le pays look. My own travels have taken me to Santa Clarita, Cali, baby and last ... excuse me i took a twelve day break from writing this entry...Monday, in particular, my travels took me to Lee's Wine Bistro for the Westridge Mom's Club "Mom's Night Out." Feel free to file this one under turns I never expected my life to take.

For those of you who know me like that, I am not much of what you would call a "joiner." Don't get me wrong, I still love people to love me and I want to be the most popular girl in town (although at 33 i SUPPOSE girl is used QUITE a bit loosely) I just want to march to the beat of my own drum while being admired and beloved for my enviable individuality and moral fortitude. Ironic?

Instead of chasing my tail, tale, (hare, hair) down that rabbit hole, I'll bring you back to Lee's Wine Bistro on Town Centre Drive in Valencia. Because, thanks to the excellent salesmanship of my good friend JB, I was prevailed upon to join the Mom's Club.

And, speaking of rabbit (rabid, no really, I'm sorry, I 'll stop) holes let me tell you about the Voignier I drank that night, and why I drank it. I picked up the much neglected - thanks to five recently free of a cumulative eleven (sorry girls, it might be ten or twelve, you'll have to forgive the iffy math) children, kvetching about said children and leurs autres genetic donors - wine menu. At a glance, halfway down the menu, the word honeysuckle jumped, literally leapt, out at me. Images of the privet hedge between our home and the neighboring Streits' rental cottage flooded my brain, drowning out the otherwise captivating conversation bandying about me. Darting in and about, at once parasitically stealing prized nutrients from the carefully manicured boundary plantings and surreptitiously making off with the would-be viticulturist's instinct to pluck the invader by its roots, weaved a fragrance so unforgettable, so beguiling, so fresh, so pure, so innocent, and yet anciently complex. As the fragrance drew you in, it led you, inevitably to its source, the sweet nectar at the base of the corolla. I remember, as if time travel (backwards, of course, by about 25 years) were possible, and I was there at this very moment, pulling the blooms off the vine to reveal only a drop of the nectar, licking it off the honeysuckle and running down the "no right of way" toward the Great South Bay. A ceremonial kiss to greet the summer day.

Now that I live in California, I so NEARLY relive those moments every time I smell Jasmine...so nearly, and yet so far. In the first fraction of a second, upon smelling the white, lesser, cousin of the honeysuckle of my childhood...BOOM!...and fast on the heels of that report is the knowledge that something is missing, wrong, incomplete, one-off if you will. That knowledge brings with it some sense of loss that I never have the time or energy to fully define. So when I read that this glass of Viognier would taste of honeysuckle, I closed the menu, read no more and determined to spend my night drinking from that cup.

It was delicious. In the immortal words of my all too mortal mother - "deloushe lautrec."

...stay tuned for the next installment of this evening entitled "On Why Being Nice Is Overrated, and In Fact, Is Not Nice At All."...

Near Death Experience

I almost died last night.

There is an urban legend that Mama Cass, the larger than life face of the Mamas and the Papas and arguably the voice that propelled them from relative obscurity to being one of the most iconic vocal bands of the 60's (without her would they ever have achieved their blend of four harmonies that somehow tricked your ear into hearing a fifth-now here is a place where the overused word synergy is a actually appropriate) died, poetically, choking on a ham sandwich. That she died both at the hands of and in the arms of her truest love. The boring truth is that she died, quite un-glamorously, of an apparent heart attack in her home (join the club).

I almost died in a manner after her urban legend last night.

After I blogged about LOST (a sort of pot calling the kettle black-ishly lazy effort if I do say so myself) I decided to stay up to watch Saturday Night Live with my husband. He is a huge fan and tries to watch as often as possible. I, as the mother of four, just can't afford to miss out on the sleep and usually shuffle off to Buffalo after our Saturday sampling from Netflix. I guess I was in rare form last night, movie watching, blogging etc...so I figured what the heck, break out the crackers, cheeses and salami and watch Tina Fey thank her fake entourage, including Chaka Khan as interpreted by the black guy on SNL who plays every black woman exactly the same-without attempting to look or act anything like her.

About ten buttery crackers topped with slices of cheddar (not just any old cheddar but some fancy award winning stuff) and dry, Italian Salami, I felt something scrape the back of my throat. I tried clearing it, but it seemed to just lodge itself behind my tonsil. A small flap of thin sliced salami had created a synthetic epiglottis, which was evidently permanently sealing off my trachea. I tried to cough it loose and felt like it was having the desired effect, but every time I tried to breathe in I simply sucked the flap back into place and could get no air. As I panicked in the realization that there was nothing I could do to prevent my death by asphyxiation that night, part of my mind was using humor in an attempt to deflect from the seriousness of the situation. It became clear that a wormhole had been created in the fabric of the universe connecting the fictional LOST character Desmond Hume (circa the Swan hatch era) and myself via the solo effort written and performed by Cass Elliot after the Mamas and the Papas had split due to creative and personal differences - "Make Your Own Kind of Music." As I heard the lyrics "Nobody can tell ya there's only one song worth singin'. They may try and sell ya,'cause it hangs them up to see someone like you" in my head, a warmth washed over me along with something that seemed like inner peace, at the time, but in retrospect was probably just some kind of hypoxic euphoria. I hoped that one day, long after I was gone, when they made the movie of the story of my life that this song would play as the soundtrack to my death. That was soon replaced, as if in concert with the climax of the refrain...

But you've gotta make your own kind of music
sing your own special song,
make your own kind of music even if nobody
else sings along.

...by a sudden violent gag. I ran to the bathroom and threw up. Luckily I had been drinking a lot of lime seltzer to wash down those crackers so it all came back up rather easily. And somewhere in the stream of liquid regurge the flap came loose and I lived to see a few more minutes of Liz Lemon's fictional alter ego Tina Fey make fun of Sarah Palin and Tiger Woods' lady loves.

Just thought I would share.

Open Memo for the creators of LOST

Dear, dear writers, thinkers, learned readers, great minds behind television's greatest series ever...on this day, less than 24 hours from your finale, I have some final thoughts for you.

First, I know you are weary of writing and that you have set an unachievable goal of finishing (properly) this series in six seasons. I admire you for sticking to a timeline, but at this point it seems like you either should have made a beeline for the finish, or given yourselves a season or two more to flesh out the theories suggested by past seasons rather than abandoning them and opting for an either lazy or cowardly line of story telling. Nonetheless I still have faith in your intelligence, your vast literary knowledge and somewhere mixed up in there an inkling of the truth.

Second, I know that LOST is all about the long con. My sincerest hope is that this is all part of the long, LONG con and the reveal will be as mind blowing for us, the viewers, as the same is for the object of a con once the confidence man has had his way with her. Otherwise, I shudder to think, but, in the words of Dr. Seuss (with some liberties taken) goodbye LOST you con too long.

Finally, I truly believe that there is a convergence of truth and genius at the heart of this series. I will probably have more to say on this topic after the finale...but for now, my imaginary friends (for indeed I do imagine we would get along most famously ever the twain our paths should cross) BRING IT!

Monday after Mother's Day

My oldest son turns seven this week. I am terrified. How do I let this boy spread his little wings and take a few flaps? How do I instruct and correct him in such a way as to encourage growth toward manhood rather than emasculating with reactionary, punitive cruelty perfected by generations of paying it forward? How do I love him enough to cover the multitude of mothering missteps that I feel doomed to commit along the way? It is time to revisit the parenting books to find some answers.

And what of the questions the books don't address? How can I help him find where his talents lie and if he has any at all? How do I expect and educe excellence without being demanding? How do I balance honoring who he is and preparing him for success in a world that may not be so kind?

I am so in love with my first born child, so proud of his kind heart and fiercely protective when others wound him. My greatest fear is that I am the one whose actions are blighting his life. I WANT him to grow up and simply be himself and along the way if I could nudge him here and there to help him be the best version of himself then I would be happy. But I don't even know what that means.

What I do know is that I am going to make this week the best, funnest, seven-est week ever...and then we'll see about figuring out what to do with the next 51.

Long Island Nostalgia

The other day I was driving around, running errands with the windows of my tres chic minivan rolled down, wind whipping my hair, itunes blaring - when I was caught off guard by Your Name Here (Sunrise Highway) by Straylight Run. As he sang the lyics "Go east on Sunrise Highway" I was unexpectedly clobbered by what can only be defined by the dictionary's second entry for the word nostalgia: a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition. A sensation I feel obliged to attribute to the fact that I am my older brother's sister.

After an early morning dream about being a member of a surprise roller skating fried chicken delivery team whose most recent assignment was a school for children with Down Syndrome where there was a little boy who looked like a mash-up of my third son and my youngest brother, I was considering blogging about this very topic and had all but decided against it. Then I was pushed right back over the edge by a Facebook status that a friend from Long Island had joined a group for those who grew up on Long Island in the 60's and 70's. As I browsed through their memories of places I could vaguely recall as if through a Monet painted veil of fog, I felt an old familiar wave wash over me and decided not to abandon this post.

I have only been back to Long Island twice in the past 18 years, most recently, ten years ago for my mother's funeral. For fourteen years I have been doing the west coast swing, first college in Colorado and then ten years split between California and Arizona. After so many years of arid air and caustic tap water, I have of late been haunted by the little East Coast seaside village in which I grew up. I would attempt to exorcise this line of thought through writing if there were words to give shape to this phantom, but it is so distant and obscured I can't quite make it out and when I look directly at it, it disappears completely. It is a proper haunting.

There is something there, some story that with a little (maybe a lot) of hard work, eager pursuit, careful study, sketching and returning to add detail again and again could begin to reveal its form...but for now I will enjoy this siren's song from a distance, ignore her directions because I have a shower to take, kids to take to the park and a stack of the weekend's unattended dishes to wash.

For all you Long Islanders out there, leave a comment. Aw, what the heck leave a comment if you are from anywhere on the East Coast, or if you have enough good sense to wish you were!

The Invention of Keeping Your Inner Monologue Inside

I just watched the Invention of Lying last night. While I find Ricky Gervais, Eloise Hawking, half the cast from the funniest canceled sitcom in America, Arrested Development, and Jennifer Garner (despite her unity with that devil, Ben Affleck) to be quite amusing; I must take issue with the use of the word lying. According to my old friends, Merriam and Webster - remind me to introduce you to them sometime, if you aren't yet besties with them - to lie is to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive. According to this movie not to lie is to say the first, and hopefully rudest, thing that pops into your mind, without weighing the merit of the statement or its necessity in the conversation.

This is, in fact, the same misconception employed by the average misanthrope who wishes to protect their cruelty toward others with the famous "I cannot tell a lie" defense. The implication given by both the movie and these honest to a fault folks is that propriety, kindness and measured silence (enjoy it) are dishonest and therefore not worthy of taking up the space they might occupy in the proverbial tool belt and as such are cast off and trampled under foot.


If someone doesn't ask you a question and the information is not germane to the discussion then, dear writer of The Invention of Lying, failing to publicize the details of YOUR constant inner monologue is not a lie. And should someone ask you a question that would elicit the outing of your thoughts, having a brain-to-mouth filter is not lying either. Just because you think it, doesn't make it true; and just because you don't say it doesn't make you deceitful.

I am a big fan of honesty, and by and large I do not espouse lying. But what about this one: Tell the truth in Love. You don't have to tell your friend their cooking sucks (well, it's the TRUTH), especially if they don't ask, just thank them for their generosity and hospitality - because that is both kind and true. You can remain silent during a disagreement rather than blurting out the hurtful (and TRUE) things that you want to say without compromising your integrity. And if and ONLY if, it is absolutely necessary to tell a person something that has the potential to hurt said person 1. Make sure you are the appropriate person to say it 2. Check your motivation 3. Use gentle words so that you stand a chance of being heard. Otherwise, let's just be honest with ourselves, we're just venting, and while it feels good and we all do it, let's not attempt to render our actions noble by saying not to do so would be lying. Cuz that just ain't true, y'all.

Bla Blah Blog About Writing...

I have, at long last, made it to the library and have managed to check out a couple of books that qualify as proper adult reading, previously unread by yours truly. I have not, however, made it past page ten of the first book. Now that I think of it, I never did finish "The Dome" by Stephen King, so maybe I should go back and finish that before taking on anything new. Regardless of the book I am reading, there is always a reason to put it down and do something more important: change a diaper, break up a fight, move the clothes from washer to the dryer, or (and this is my personal favorite) attempt (most futilely) to convince my four year old that writing upside down and backward is not going to fly when he gets to Kindergarten in August. By the time I find the book again, find the place I left off reading - because, no I do not believe in or own any bookmarks - and finally start reading, I am interrupted anew. This happens when I'm blogging, too. In order to avoid Einstein's definition of insanity, I inevitably quit trying to read, and as proved by the queue of yet unfinished blog entries (some of which are about quite interesting topics) saved on my dashboard, quit trying to write.

In my short return to reading (non-children's) books, a few things have occurred to me about writing. I am sure you'll recall my delusion of grandeur post and the fact that I'd like to write a book. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea. Maybe a novel about some profound truism of the human condition that evinces my more than passing interest in science. I could be 21st century Madeleine L'Engle (oooh my fascination with Maddy since childhood and my no longer secret desire to be her and belong to her family, and have interesting friends like hers-and oh the impossibility of it all...I could blog about that, maybe I will). I mentioned the LITTLE problem of what I would write about in the first place. This problem became even bigger as I was reading the prologue to "Straight Man" by Richard Russo (recommended to me by my brother-to whom I do not listen and therefore did not get the book at the time, and re-recommended to me by my sister-whom I copy in all things except liking tuna-fish sandwiches...INDIVIDUALITY VICTORY...and therefore I am now reading it). I realized that whatever story I think of that might make a good book is really only an anecdote that might be used within a larger story-line in a REAL book. Additionally, and even more depressingly, every subsequent story-line I drum up in response to this realization carries the same fatal flaw.

And then, in reading the several paragraphs used to describe the physical appearance of the protagonist's friend, I became overwhelmed by the amount of work that must go into developing each and every character. What does each character look like, what is he (or, she) wearing, what does that say about the person's personality and what are the things we cannot know about the person at the outset and what has to be conferred by writing between the lines...and who can just dream all of this up.

Lastly, because as it is with decorating and celebrity deaths my realizations come in threes, as I was transported to the very snow-covered hill William H. Devereaux, Jr. and his car were careening down, tail first, I couldn't even imagine how I would set the scenes in which my story would take place. Supposing the story takes place somewhere that actually exists, how would I remember all the sights, smells and subtleties of each endroit necessary to take the reader to my hometown, the "redrum" house of my teens or my college campus. My answer is that I would have to return to each place, experience it again, attempt to conjure the memories of how it was then, and then write about it there.

In that case, I have to conclude that for me writing a novel would mean years of character sketching and locational research. Then taking these muscles, organs, sinew, and skin and layering them one upon another in order for the story itself to take shape. Layered on what? On a skeleton, on the idea, the substantial well structured support system of the novel, protecting and guiding the characters along their way-and we've already established that is a rib or two at best.

Even as I think, OK-I can do this. Write it down bit by bit. When I think of the un-showering Professor Doofenschmirtz-esque man sporting wide wale, high-water, corduroy pants in the heat of Indian summer as if he hadn't recognized fall's temporary retreat and a peed on poodle color fisherman's cableknit sweater...and how the sweater is nearly the same color as his wild mane of would-be white if not for the aforementioned distaste for daily ablutions crowning glory...and how all of this was announced moments before he entered the room by a cacophonous orchestra of smells-coffee, oil, greasiness not to be confused with oil and a hint of wet dog (whence we know not, as it has been years since we had a dog), write it down. Put it away. Save it for another day, to edit, to weave into a larger tapestry that could become a character to place on a wall of the greater story that will one day become my novel. Even as I think this, the sneaking suspicion that writing is supposed to be an organic, ex-nihilo (well almost) sort of process and all of these contrivances are further proof that I am not at all a writer assails me and I feel like giving up before I've even started.

And such has been my constant inner monologue since starting this foray into literacy...and as such it is yet another reason not to read ever again. Well played, Jessica, truly well played.

Editor's Note: Since the editor sees fit to do NO editing, she thinks it only fair that once in a while she makes herself useful by writing a note. To those of you who take exception to the description herein because you imagine you know who is described thereby, my sincerest apologies. But fear not! You, too, will be featured, in no more glorious terms, in my novel, should my novel ever be written.