Alert! More coming!

I made a deal with a demanding bitch that I write more often and get all of my writings organized. So, thanks to that bitch my daughter, you will be hearing (reading) me more in the next two months.  That's the plan, anyway, so be on alert.  Read on! Tell your friends! Or not. But just for the few of you out there who read this, please keep on reading.

xo

Lying my way through Lent

Growing up, we Catholics were too Lent-oriented.  (Not me, but you know, the real ones.)  Lent was like a test that you simply had to pass.  If you failed, you were dissing the trials and tribulations of Jesus, and no one would go to Heaven if that happened. The point of Lent then was to Give Up Something. The nuns suggested all kinds of things: candy, soda, TV, sex, drugs.  (Hmm, maybe not the last two, at least not in 6th grade, but maybe.....)  So we had to pick what we were Giving Up and the humiliating part of it (because Catholics were 100% into humiliating each other) was that you had to stand up in class and tell everyone what you were Giving Up. Shit. The options for a 6th grader were so limited and yet one wanted to be creative, original and saintly!  What should it be?  Candy seemed too easy.  Our house never had soda, so I could easily go with that one and suffer zero, but that wasn't the Jesus way, so nix on that. TV?  Not in our house, see above.  (We didn't really have a lot of TV.) Chocolate?  The Sunday Comics?  Long stem roses?  Almonds?  Clean underwear? The library?  Alcohol?  (Oh, yes, standing up in class and announcing that you were Giving Up beer would be so, so fun but so, so unfortunate. So no on that one.)

So, obviously you lied. You thought and thought and came up with something to Give Up even though that thing might have never crossed your doorstep.  The problem with this scenario is that the lie had to last 6 friggin weeks!  (In our family we took Sunday's off from Lent. I don't know if other families did that, but ours did and that's when my Dad was happy, coming back from Sunday Mass, eating a jolly big breakfast, reading the entertaining Sunday newspaper, drinking several beers. We were all relieved.)  But I digress.

Keeping a lie alive for 6 weeks is very difficult when you are 10 or 11 or 12 years old. (As we all know, it gets a lot easier the older you get. Keeping a lie alive for years is now possible. If only we had that talent back then.)  You have to create a kind of infrastructure of the lie, a back story, a reason why you would Give Up that thing. It couldn't be something like ..... hot dogs because you sometimes had those for dinner. It would never be Fried Chicken because that was the only thing my mother cooked that was edible. What could it be?

I don't remember all of my wise 11 year old choices but I remember one: I Gave Up listening to music on the radio.  Of course, I rarely listened to music on radio, not having one in my room but I told Jesus that it was the thought that counted. I did have a small record player and a very small collection of very small 45's, which I would never give up no matter how much Jesus had to suffer through Chubby Checker and the Righteous Brothers.  But not listening to music on the radio was perfect!  Everyone loved the radio!  Everyone, especially the Nun, would think I was a total saint and that I really, really loved Jesus!  Foolproof.

In our house the radio was pretty much used for listening to Dodger Games. Since I didn't give up baseball on the radio, I was home safe.  In school we had to stand up once a week, usually on Monday, and tell if we had let our sacrifice lapse. (Why is it that Catholics use the word "lapse" more than any other organized group?)  I could always say "no" to that regime, I was alway 100% NOT listening to music on the radio.  It worked!  For the six weeks of Lent, I lied every week and no one ever knew.

And honestly, even at the age of 10 or 11 or 12, I had no guilt about it all.  Give something up?  My family was poor. We had so little to get, there was simply not much to actually Give Up.  I knew Jesus wouldn't care.  I also knew that Jesus was paying no attention to my 6th grade class.  I sort of intuited that Jesus was paying no attention to much on earth.  So lying my way through Lent wasn't a big risk, redemption-wise.

And hey, it earned me points with the Nuns!  That translated into good grades. It was an early lesson in "agree with me and you will be saved."

I think about all this now because it is now Lent Time.  I know that there is a new paradigm about Lent, it's now What You Will Do instead of What You Will Give Up.  But I bet there are still kids trying to figure out what to do to satisfy a requirement that should no longer exist.  What I say to those 11 year old kids is this:  Give Up Smoking!  Give Up Hardboiled Eggs!  Volunteer at a Maximum Security Prison!  Teach an Alien to read!  Pick something so out there that no one can call you on it.

And eat all the chocolate you want. I am sure Jesus, who I am pretty sure is the guy who bags my groceries, would approve.

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Dining with my son

Every four weeks or so I meet Gabe somewhere around Novato for dinner.  It's sort of a half-way point for both of us, although Novato isn't known for its great dining options. Seriously, we have met at Rickey's several times and if you have never been there, well, don't hurry.  Or maybe you should hurry because places like Rickey's won't be around forever.  Perhaps at one time it was "fine dining" but now it's more like "just something to eat."  But they have a nice 12 year old Macallum Scotch and so it ain't all bad.

Last night we met on Grant Street, the heart of commerce in Novato, if Novato actually has a heart. Finnegan's touts itself as an Irish Bar.  One would expect pub food, shamrocks, Irish fighting ballads. (Yes, that's a bit of a contradiction but some of those old Irish ballads are about beating the crap out of someone, so there you go.)  You would not expect something called "Irish Nachos" but indeed, they were on the menu and we had to have them.  A combo of waffle-cut french fries, some pulled pork, cheese, some other stuff.  They were very bad for you so we ate all of them.  And the entertainment of the evening was a lone guitar player doing covers of Elton John songs.  Last I knew, Elton was not Irish, but he is a changeable guy so maybe he has gone over to the land of the green. 

But the point is to have dinner and drinks with Gabe.  We talk about everything: our pets, friends, work, food, travel, the vagaries of life, poverty, politics, happiness, getting old.  Everything else, too, we never run out of things to chat about.  And usually we have neat shots of good whiskey, either from Kentucky or Scotland or Ireland. Just two shots, we are conscious of the fact we have to drive home.

Last night, after the above mentioned Irish Nachos, we walked down Grant for a while and then back up, passing a really seedy looking bar dropped in the middle of the block.  The other businesses on the block were seriously aiming for "upscale."  A pseudo-Italian trattoria, a very high-end toy store, a furniture store selling nothing but kids sleep furniture (what an odd niche market that is), clothing stores, housewares, you name it.  And then this dive bar. We both like dive bars (well, he is my son after all) and we both appreciated the bar's gutsy grasp on that little piece of high-priced real estate.  So we went in for one last Bushmill's.  Gordon Lightfoot was singing about the Edmund Fitzgerald, an almost-homeless man scooted over so we could sit at the bar, the bartender was nowhere to be found for about three minutes, I was the only female in the place, and it was perfect.

There is something about hanging out with your kids when they are no longer kids but successful adults.  The relationship is so intense and yet so easy.  It's one of the most powerful, concentrated feelings  I have ever experienced but it is also so ethereal and almost ghostly.  It has the strength of a hundred spider webs but seems almost that lacy and fine. Impossible to describe and I don't know if other parents have the same feeling, but it's rather unique.

I am not sure we will visit Finnegan's again but there is more dinner and whiskey in our future, of that I am certain.

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And that's because of what?

I was going to talk about cooking a really nice dinner for myself but what a pain it was to do all the cleanup.  How us single peeps can cook, we just often choose not to because it's easier to have someone else do it. (aka takeout.)  But that making a great roast chicken and potatoes and asparagus is so nice. Yada Yada Yada.

Yes, it's nice but I hate the cleanup.  And honestly, as good as  my roast chicken is, it's all about the leftovers for the next 3 nights.  I need food to take to work so I don't go 8 hours eating either  bacon and eggs or nothing.

What a stupid topic, right?  Because as fat as I am and as rich as I am to buy a free range chicken (even at $2 a pound, it's more than probably 80% of the people on the planet can afford) and as lucky as I am to have a stove to cook it and water and all that, I am still being a whining bitch to complain about the cleaning up.

I give up.

And yet another macaroni and cheese recipe.......

... but a really easy one and so, so delicious!  There are hundreds of mac and cheese recipes from all over the world and most of them are good, some are great and now and then you find one that is outstanding.  (The recipe that is gluten-free and has non-dairy cheese does not qualify, however.)  Who doesn't love the cheesey goodness of those tiny elbows smothered in cheese and cream stuff?  But think about it: one pot to cook the macaroni in, a colander to drain it, another pot to make the bechamel/cheese sauce and a casserole to bake it in.  Too many pots, too many steps.

So here we have this recipe which takes so little time and so little effort and produces a really good mac 'n cheese, way better than I was expecting.  You can add to it if you are so inclined.  Next time I will probably add a finely diced jalapeno pepper or will stir some raw broccoli in half way through.  A little ham would be good, as would a final topping of crunchy bread crumbs.  But as it stands, it's really fine.  It takes about 10 minutes max to get into the oven and an hour to bake, 15 - 20 minutes to stand and firm up and that's it.  Seriously, check it out.  With a nice salad and a glass or two of wine, you are done and you are very, very happy.

http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1015825-creamy-macaroni-and-cheese

Two thumbs up.

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How can I convince you to read this novel? Favorite book of the year!

I probably can't. People read what they want to read, of course. But the book I want to talk about is on everyone's best seller list, so maybe that will move you in the right direction.  Of course, that might move you in the opposite direction, which is what it often does to me.  Many best seller books are written at a 6th grade level (it seems to me) and are not worth the time it takes to turn the pages.  Examples, you ask?  OK, here's a couple of current books that, to me, are not worth reading:  "Gone Girl" by Flynn and "Fifty Shades of Grey" by whomever.  Honestly.  Have any of you tried reading the "Fifty Shades" books?  An over-libidoed 8th grader could write a better book.  Did the author ever read real erotic literature? No.  There is very good erotic lit out there, lots of it. It ...... well, I won't go into the effects of it on the human body (or mine, at least) but suffice it to say the "Shades" books should hide out in the shade and feel sad and ashamed.  It is poor writing, poor erotica and yet the masses ate it up. Go figure.

And "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn.  Well, I give it this: great premise.  Woman hates her husband, (spoiler alert here) and fakes her own death, sassy, cute husband doesn't really care but acts devastated. The book details the wife's deception and the husband's indiscretions and it goes on and on and when it ends, you want to throw the book against the wall and yell "Fuck!  How did I get duped into reading this piece of crap!"  So you do.  Throw the book, I mean.  I have read other books by Flynn and they don't end so stupidly, but still......  ARG!

OK, so, that's my rant about best sellers.  (I won't go into what I think about "Wild" by Strayed.)

So here's a book on the list that is one of the best books I have read in a long time and the one I want to convince you to read:  "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr.  It spans more than 60 years but it feels like it spans 2 years. It starts in WWII and ends in 2014. The characters are real to us, the towns are real, the bombings feel terrifying and real.  You can easily find a synopsis of the book but the story isn't everything.  The characters are everything, and the characters are not just the people.  The cities and towns are characters, the ocean is a character, the models the father builds of his towns are so great of a character that it is impossible to tell you how much I wanted to see those models. Those streets, those tiny buildings, the way for Marie-Laure to see her world, it's unforgettable.

But it's also the incredibly descriptive writing and the philosophy behind it. It's as if Doerr knows everything about the war, about being blind, about radio transmissions, building model cities, about snails, the ocean, birds.  About the failing of the human heart and the triumph of that same heart in the matters of love. About determination, about will, about doing what is right in the face of the unknown wrong.  You can open this book at any page and read prose as poetry or poetry turned into prose:  "To shut your eyes is to guess nothing about blindness. Beneath your world of skies and faces and buildings exists a rawer and older world, a place where surface planes disintegrate and sounds ribbon in shoals through the air. She hears the bones of dead whales stir five leagues below, their marrow offering a century of food for cities of creatures who will live their whole lives and never once see a photon sent from the sun. She hears her snails in the grotto drag their bodies over the rocks." 

I finished this book ten days ago and I can't stop thinking about it. I want to go to Saint-Malo in France and see the city that was bombed and walk the streets in search of fictional characters! People who do not exist, except in the book and now in my mind.  That's how intense and personal this book is.

Several years ago I read a book called "Four Seasons in Rome" by Anthony Doerr.  He had an American Academy grant (or fellowship, whatever it's called) to spend a year in Rome.  Turns out Tom and I were in the SAME neighborhood at the SAME TIME as Doerr was in Rome.  We walked the same streets, strolled the same park, waited for the same Pope to die. We probably saw him walking by with his twins in a stroller.  That book is one of the best travel books I have ever read, giving the reader the essence of the place and making that place wriggle with life.  And he does it again in "All the Light You Cannot See". It's just a different time and place but it is as real as Rome is right now.

Read this book. Beg, borrow or steal it.  And tell me what you think.

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Three movies: watch or don't watch

Three movies that you can now rent on Amazon for cheap money.  Way cheaper than seeing them in a theater. In order of when I watched them, they are:

The Skeleton Twins.  Sort of funny, sort of sad, very good. Twins who are now grown-ups of a sort, like we are all sort of like grown-ups but still aren't so certain of that label.  They haven't seen each other in many years but they try to commit suicide independently of each other.  They fail. (No spoilers here.) They reconnect and try to figure out their lives and why they feel so miserable.  They don't really succeed at that but they do realize that their sibling connection is important.  Not schmaltzy, sometimes funny, often serious.  !00% worth watching.

Gone Girl. If you read this book you will understand this short review.  I wanted to throw the movie across the room, much like I wanted to throw the book across the room when finished with it. It follows the book fairly well but it is so long, almost two and a half hours, and the two main characters are so sleezy and creepy and so unlikable that by the time the thing is finished you feel completely used and you want to have a big drink of something strong and harsh to combat the slime you feel all over your body.  Well, other than that, it was technically well done (Fincher is a great director) and hard to fault.  But way too long and, honestly, if you haven't seen it, don't bother.  You end up regretting the 150 minutes you wasted.

Boyhood. OK, this is totally worth the 150 minutes. We all know how Linklater, the director, made this happen.  The story is simple, it follows two kids and their divorced parents for about 14 years, he films them having a life.  Nothing much happens except all the stuff that happens to all of us during a 14 year span of a life: divorce, moving, jobs, babies, teenagers, angst (teenage and adult), regret, joy, sorrow...... it goes on and on.  But in this movie, it goes on in a small, sly way, in a way that draws you in, even if nothing drastic happens. The viewer gets hooked on "regular life" and goes along for the ride.  Whether it's a great movie is in the eyes of the viewer but one thing is for sure: it's a game changer. The fact that Linklater could even make a move like this opens up the genre to more movies in this realm. But I doubt that anyone can make one that tops this.  "Boyhood" is a masterpiece of calm, real, crazy life. See it.

Watching it, I kept waiting for the big BLAM,  a car crash, a shooting, something way out of the norm.  That doesn't happen here. The drama is all in how the people are, how they respond and deal with all the crap of life.  And that's enough.

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