Sublime Abandon

            I have been dieting off and on now for a few months and I’ve lost a few pounds.  But the cravings for certain foods just never go away.  Some days I yearn for a slice of Godfather’s pizza, other days the taste buds tend to lean toward Chinese take-out.  So far I’ve been able to keep those evil little urges locked up in the back of my mind, screaming for release, but unfulfilled.

            But today I had to make brownies for a meeting I’m going to tonight and the chocolate batter called to me from the mixing bowl like minions from hell.  I resisted for the most part, but after they were baked and cooling on the counter, and I was in the middle of stirring up the chocolate butter cream frosting to top them off, I couldn’t take anymore!  I gave in to a sublime abandon, letting it take me where it would.  Licking the spatula, the beaters, the bowl, perhaps even the spattered countertop.  I can’t seem to remember clearly.  My face covered in chocolate goo, my hands shaking, I finally glanced up and caught my reflection in the toaster.  Ashamed of myself for so easily giving in to the dark side, I washed at the sink, put the lid on the brownies and pushed them far from my mind, remembering that admitting you have a problem is the first step to… what?  

What is your sublime abandon? Leave a comment and share.   

The Flavor of Meat and Other Deep Issues

Is it just me or does this time of year—the beginning of hibernation season—bring forth loads of unanswered questions to ponder throughout the coming cold months?

Why is it that salad needs dressing to make it edible, whereas chocolate needs nothing extra at all? Which reminds me…it’s coming up on Halloween again. Children dressed in store bought costumes, plastic capes flapping in the wind, standing on my doorstep demanding free candy—or else. Now if they were actually children I recognized from the houses around us, it would be different. But when kids are driven to my neighborhood by sugar-deprived adults and told to blanket the area, I feel a bit used.

Have you ever wondered why people that can barely get out of their car and walk, are allowed to drive? Not only that, but they get the prime front spots in the parking lot. There are lots of recent news stories about how texting and talking on your cell phone while driving is more dangerous than driving while intoxicated, but no one ever ventures into the “elderly” scenario. That is obviously a politically incorrect topic. But have they tested whether people eating Big Macs, applying mascara, and flossing their teeth have faster reactions than the 96-year-old woman in the Oldsmobile? I’m pretty sure if they did a test, there would be a lot of people in my area who should no longer be behind the wheel. I’m not against “older” people driving, but if you can’t walk without a walker or a mobility scooter, you have no business operating a vehicle, anymore than a teenager with a cell phone glued to his head. Your reaction time is close to zero. That is just the reality of aging. So, if I reach a certain age and still think I have Mario Andrette skills, just take away my keys. I wouldn’t want someone’s death on my conscience.

After watching recent news, and because I’m a believer in equal opportunity, (blast the old, now I must blast the young) I also wonder: Why would anyone think that college age “adults” are capable of voting intelligently? I’m sure there are some of you out there who know things other than the name of your favorite band or quotes from “The Office,” but apparently they didn’t find any of you at the universities where they asked, “What is the name of our Vice President? How many United States Senators are there? Who is the Speaker of the House? Not trick questions like, “How many senators does it take to screw in an eco-friendly light bulb?” but fairly simple ones. None of these higher learning individuals could come up with the answers even after two or three guesses. But then I doubt whether politicians care if young people are educated on the issues or even American history, as long as they vote the party line they’ve been indoctrinated in. Apparently, young men overwhelmingly look to Jon Stewart as a trustworthy fount of information. I suppose the young women are waiting for Lady GaGa to spout something profound as well.

Have you ever wondered why the Turkey is the only bird used as a substitute for all other meats? Those poor dumb birds, shot, decapitated, stripped of their feathers, gutted of their innards, and sealed up with plastic handcuffs holding their legs together as though they might jump out of the freezer section and run away at any moment, are never given the respect they deserve. And often they don’t even get the decency of being eaten as a turkey. They are advertised as turkey burger, turkey ham, turkey bacon, as though just being a turkey isn’t good enough. They have to be flavored like a pig or a cow or maybe even a hotdog (whatever kind of meat that is). It’s just wrong.

Speaking of edible birds, why are strips of chicken, battered and deep-fried, called “fingers?” And why did someone decide to rename chicken wings served up with strangely sour hot sauce—buffalo wings? Sounds like identity crisis is going around the fowl world.

Do you wonder why people seem to love their cell phones more than they ever loved their home phone, and are willing to pay 500 times more to talk on it?

Commercials portray us as obsessed, unable to break free of our phones, as though we’re addicts of technology. A man in China recently took that addiction for his phone farther than I would dare go. He refused to be parted from it even when it flushed. He reached down that little hole and around the bend of the ceramic tank like Gumby and held on until someone called the Chinese equivalent of 911 to break him out of his predicament. When it was all said and done, chunks of broken ceramic toilet bowl all around, he was still gleefully holding on to his phone.

I won’t even ask why “Survivor” keeps getting renewed for another season. That is a profound question for another time.

Do you have any pre-hibernation questions that you would like to share? Please leave a comment.

An Epic Life (Belva Plain)

Belva Plain died last Tuesday. She was 95 years old. I read many of her books when I was in my early twenties. They were epic novels of hope, forgiveness, longing for a better life, love and family; novels some people these days might find daunting because of the sheer number of pages. But back then we didn’t have cable, cell phones, or internet so I had plenty of time to read.

As a writer starting a little late in the game—my husband nearly trained, the kids grown, rearing our second set of dogs—I find hope in Belva Plain’s personal story. She married, helped her husband through medical school, raised their three kids, and didn’t start writing until she was a grandmother. At 59 years old her first novel, Evergreen, was published and became a national best seller. It stayed on the best-seller list for over 40 weeks and was even made into a mini-series for television. Twenty more of her novels have made the New York Times best seller list through the years.

She wrote her stories out by hand, on yellow tablets, rarely using a typewriter and never owning a computer. And yet over twenty-eight million copies of her books have been sold. Not only that, but shortly before her death she finished a sequel to Evergreen, which will be published sometime next year.

I have a hard time remembering what I walked downstairs for, and at 95 she could keep track of characters, plot, and timeline?? Impressive. 

Have you read one of Belva Plain’s family sagas? Which was your favorite? 

Stars & Marriage (old but still hot)

Happy Anniversary to me! 

Today my husband and I have been married 29 years. That may seem like a lifetime to those of you just turning 29, but for us old people it’s a drop in a bucket. Well, actually it’s a really, really long time. I have now been married longer than fifteen or twenty movie stars put together. Not that I’m in a marriage contest against movie stars. I’m too competitive for that. It would be way too easy to win such a contest.

But to show I’m not against movie stars just because they are really terrible at marriage, we went to a lovely “romantic” movie to celebrate our relationship longevity.

RED-starring Bruce Willis, Mary-Louise Parker, John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman, and Helen Mirren was an exciting, explosive, hilarious romp. Much like our marriage.

RED stands for Retired & Extremely Dangerous, and believe me, those old guys and gals were pretty dangerous. If you have a chance to see it, you won’t be sorry. Bruce still has loads of charm and Malkovich was definitely funnier than in his 1996 Dr. Jekyll movie, “Mary Reilly.” Oh yeah, that wasn’t supposed to be funny. (I thought it was. But I may have been the only one to see it).

Anyway—this past week we had both sets of parents come for a visit. First, my husband’s parents showed up with a trunk load of produce from the farm, and then after they left, my folks showed up with a third dog to join the pack and a pile of books. (They didn’t leave the dog, just the books) Mom always brings me a pile of books that she’s already read. I guess she thinks I don’t have enough of a “to read” list.

Now our house is quiet once more, except for Leon speaking words of love in French to me across a candlelit table set with delicate china and crystal goblets and adorned with a pizza from Godfathers.

Actually, I made that last part up—except for the pizza. We ate it in the truck, in a parking lot, watching people come and go at Target and washing it down with cans of Coke Zero. Our lives are filled with romantic moments. I’m just sharing one of many. Don’t be jealous. This is the life of a writer.

I'm optimistically pessimistic

In London they’ve just figured out that some dogs are pessimists. In fact, they believe half of the dogs in the United Kingdom show “separation-related behavior.” These dogs are the “bowl is half empty” kind of pooch.

Questions abound in my mind. How do they know 5 million British dogs have this problem? Did they drive through neighborhoods and count how many dogs bark while their owners are away?

I think my dogs are complete opposites. One is a pessimist and one is an optimist.

Rugby has obvious psychological problems. He worries himself into a frenzy when he goes somewhere in the car. He really, really, really wants to go with us, cause maybe we’ll stop at the Dairy Queen and he’ll get ice cream, but on the other paw we might get in an accident and he’ll be homeless and then what? Who will fill his dish and pick up his fragrant offerings? So he whines and moans and jumps around like a ping-pong ball in a tiled room. He’s a born worrier. If I’m gone all day, he sits at the front window and stares out, waiting for my return. I don’t think he ever really believes I will return because he basically puts himself into suicide mode. He won’t eat, drink, or go outside until he sees me again.

Willow is an optimist. But she also has psychological problems. She’s bi-polar. (That’s my personal medical assessment) Her mood can turn from lovey-dovey to attack-Rugby mode like the flip of a switch. But she always expects and believes she deserves attention, food, or water to be there for her whenever she decides she wants them. She doesn’t worry herself sick just because I’m out of the house either. She uses the time to take a much-deserved nap, or go out and hunt squirrels and moles in the backyard.

I think it’s funny that except for the bi-polar disorder, our kids had basically the same temperaments. Is that a parenting failure—or skill? 

Psycho-analysis

I was talking to a friend this week and I brought up classic movies by Alfred Hitchcock. She admitted that she’d never seen any of them and I nearly fell off my chair. How could someone live their entire life in such a state of deprivation? Watching Rear Window, Vertigo, The Birds, North by Northwest, and Psycho were some of my most memorable childhood moments. These great movies used strange camera angles, suspense and tension to scare me silly--rather than blood, guts, and gore.

With Halloween coming up, we’ll be seeing lots of movies advertised on cable channels that some clueless TV executive considers “scary.” Or maybe they’re just really cheap to play over and over. I don’t know. Most of them aren’t so much scary as violently gory. Sequel follows sequel until no one really knows how the bad guy started axing people in the first place--or why. And where did he get the hockey mask? Last I remember he was a young boy who drowned in a lake at camp—wearing a bathing suit, not a hockey uniform. And his grief-stricken mother was the murderer. But it’s apparently all about body count—not story. Or maybe I'm confusing Halloween XV with Friday the 13th VI.

Hitchcock movies involve dialogue rather than violent scenes, although Psycho did have the famous shower scene. Even filmed in black and white, it is still frightening enough to make me think twice before taking a shower in an empty house. Hitchcock knew how to build up slowly, playing off of common fears. Who isn’t afraid of birds pecking their eyes out?

I grew up on movies like this. Well, I didn’t exactly watch them with parental approval. For some reason my mother thought they were too scary for children. People used to put their kids to bed early and watch TV alone. Weird, huh? But I managed to see most of them one way or another.

When I was about seven, The Birds came on TV one night at my grandma’s house. My brother and I were sent to bed. Luckily, my grandmother’s bedrooms faced the living room and had doors with slats at the bottom. As quiet as a mouse, I sat behind that door and peeked through the slats for two hours, watching birds attack people while my brother snored softly behind me.

When I was nine, we were at my cousin’s house and Whatever happened to Baby Jane? came on. (Not a Hitchcock movie, but still creepy) My mom would never let me watch that movie but since she was busy talking in the other room, my cousin and I watched as Betty Davis put a dead rat on her invalid sister’s plate and served it to her for dinner. The resultant scream sent a shiver up my spine and sent my cousin outside to play cause she was too scared to keep watching it with me.

I loved scary movies when I was a kid. It was my thrill ride, like riding a rollercoaster. I feel the same way about suspense/thriller novels today. They don’t make many decent suspense movies anymore, but there are still authors who write great suspense. Too bad screenwriters can’t seem to generate it to the screen. Lacking suspense, they go for longevity instead. Have you noticed how many movies are nearing three hours these days? Usually about an hour longer than necessary to tell the story. Hitchcock once said, “The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.” I agree with that, but also add that three dream levels is more than sufficient to bore me to death. Any more levels and I become totally comatose.


Leave a comment and share the scariest movie you watched as a kid (or as an adult if your mommy wouldn't let you watch one:)