Talk Thursday: Soothing Naturals

It’s been one of those life times this week, but that’s another blog. Thursday nights begin with dinner out, one week with my mother and grandmother, the next with my girlfriend Leigh. Tonight it was Italian with my mom and grandmother; Leigh had clients. Ducky spends Thursday nights in the Valley.

We met at six at 1258 Ristorante on Bay Street, formerly a small pizza shop, 1258 offers two small menus: one pasta, the other pizzas. Tonight it was baked lasagna for two of us; my grandmother had seafood pasta. First the noodles were uneven (don’t ask). Then there were only three scallops, and three prawns in the mix (okay so that might be a legitimate gripe.) Then it was too hot, the breeze was cold (reasonable gripe, I got up and close the window.) Then for dessert we split a slice of chocolate cheesecake (divine.) Grandma doesn’t like cheesecake. Who knew?

Fog hung in thick patches along Bay Street as we parted way and drove in opposite directions for home. The just past full, the moon’s light brightened the night air, above the fog stars twinkled in the October sky. It’s been a while since I pulled out my suit and slipped into the hot tub, but tonight was the night. Walking on to the deck in the dark I could see the fog over the gate. Stepping out onto the steps I was suddenly drenched in moonlight. Hot, bubbling water beckoned; stepping over the edge of the tub I let myself sink into the warmth. I closed my eyes and let the peace wash over me, silent peace accented by the bubbling water that enveloped me.

Stars above the trees winkled through the fog at me. The bright moon illuminated the fog and air. I was at peace. Within ten minutes I began sweating away the poisons in my system. Fifteen minutes and my legs and feet floated up to the top of the water carefree. Twenty minutes later the soothing water had naturally erased the stress and strain of my week.

What do people do without a hot tub?

Sith,
Cele

Women for McCain

Yes I know it's Thursday, and a naturally soothing thought will come to me... but first a word from our sponsor. And then if I can still speak...er I mean think, I'll write My Talk Thursday blog.



I want to know how they did this straight faced?

Brought to you by satrical/political humorist Katie Halper at 23/6

20 Questions Meme

I got tagged by (but not really, but sort of) Steve over at Heterosexually Challenged


The rules of the game:


RULE #1 : People who have been tagged must write their answers on their blogs and replace any question that they dislike with a new question formulated by themselves.

RULE #2 : Tag 6 people to do this quiz and they cannot refuse. These people must state who they were tagged by and cannot tag the person whom they were tagged by continue this game by sending it to other people.


Questions:

1. If your lover betrayed you, what will your reaction be?
Life goes on, after three marriages, two divorces, and numerous relationships I have to ask, “What is betrayed? And who hasn’t been betrayed on one level or another?” I’m sure I would cry, I’m sure I would over think the situation. And then hopefully I would ask myself, “What the heck does this mean to me? How does it change my life? And does it really?” Human is as human does. I don’t hold grudges. So I think I would learn the lessons, deal with it, and move on.


2. If you have a dream you’d like to come true, what is it?
Hmmm let’s see. A smart person in the White House this November. World Peace. And solvency without fear.


3. Whose butt would you like to kick?
No one’s. Life has a lot of mistakes get over it.


4. What would you do with a billion dollars?
Pay off my kid’s student loans, pay off my house, give money to those I love, donate, donate, donate, and save for a rainy day.


5. Will your best friend always be your best friend?
Hmmm, Yes, I have a lot of best friends.


6. Have you ever been in love with two people at once?
No.


7. How long would you wait for someone you really loved?
Forever.


8. If you won the lottery, would you quit your job?
No, I love my job, but I might take a long vacation at the beginning of baseball season. Say about six months.

9. Who is on your celebrity top 5…you know, the ones…that if you ever had an opportunity…
Sex is not an issue with me, I’ve never been into one night stands. I need longevity. And personality and heart play a large part in my attraction—not so much looks.
But, in playing the game… Appealing in a strange way… hmmmm.







Sam Elliot (his voice could send me over the moon—with toes curled)





Bradley Whitford






Jason Cole







Oded Fehr (with tats perferrably)

Ben Browder

Sam Elliot, Bradley Whitford, Jason Cole, Oded Fehr, and Ben Browder

10. What sucks the life out of you?
Hatred, bigotry, and whiney people who think they are owed.

11. How would you see yourself in ten years time?
Still married, happily in love and lust. Happily growing my flowers. Financially solvent. Connected to the people I love, respect, and cherish with a back-at-cha. Still working in a growing radio station and valued.

12. What’s your greatest fear/phobia?
Snakes

13. What kind of person do you think the person who tagged you is?
A delightful gentleman, who is still finding his way and his comfort zone. But he’s young, give him time I have faith.

14. Would you rather be single and rich or married but poor?
I would rather be loved and valued.

15. What’s the first thing you do when you wake up?
Close them and roll over hoping I can go back to sleep

16. Would you give all in a relationship?
Positively

17. Is your career vitally important to you?
Career and job for me are one in the same. Yes.

18. Would you forgive and forget no matter how horrible a thing someone has done?
Forgive…yes, Forget…..never (but it’s importance diminishes with time, I don’t hord sorrow and wrongs.)

19. Do you prefer being single or having a relationship?
Relationship is important, but I can live by myself.

20. List 6 people to tag:
You, and you. Oh and then that one over there, and him too. Oh her and of course her. There, my work here is done.

Talk Thursday: Joys of Autumn

Folige red, and gold

cascades, silent, downward falls

to the forest floor.

© 2002

This is my brain on….

In the days of yore, I was able to effortlessly bounce back, now at 52 I’m finding it takes me days to recoup. For the last two weeks I worked double shifts. I am a person who requires a minimum seven to eight hours of sleep, being menopausal means I’m lucky if I get 4 hours unbroken, but usually I get two hours straight. Friday at the end of a marathon of work schedule I was barely able to stand on my own two feet, let alone keep my eyes open and my brain cognizant.

A storm was forecasted for Friday night, but the northern coast was expected to get the brunt of mother nature’s angst. That didn’t mean we wouldn’t get some dips, bumps, and bruises along the way. At 10:44 my station’s silence sensor calls me. At 11:02 I’m up on the mountain (a misnomer because it’s only a few hundred over sea level) fixing a jammed STL Receiver (a computer that talks to it’s counter part at the station to broadcast the signal.) I was back home by 11:45, sadly I had to be on air at 6am. Now you all know that I love my job, but I love enough sleep even more.

When I arrived Saturday morning at the station for my airshift it was eyes at half mast and brains half past scrambled….to find an FM computer/playlist that wasn’t syncing with ABC News at the top of the hour. On top of that the AM computer and my production studio were off line. A fact not easily discernable to the attentive ear because the satellite feed will stay on the air, but the commercials not air. I was so tired I took out both computers thinking I need to replace the powers sources. Luckily I plugged the AM onair into a power strip to find it booted right up. It was the UPS that died not both computer power supplies, but no I was ready to break them down…This is your brain on lack of sleep…it’s as deadly as, say crank.

I love winter, it means no yard chores- even though my paver courtyard isn’t finished, I want to put in another lily garden and tulip beds, I was glad to have the weekend to vegetate. The most I might have to do is hold the ladder for Ducky while he cleaned gutters. And laundry, and dinner, and dishes, and vaccuming, and well the regular chores. During college football season the remote belongs to Ducky, it wasn’t too heartbreaking to fall asleep on the couch somewhere between USC wiping their feet on my Ducks and stuffing their beaks in the dust of the Colliseum.

Burp and I did get some cookies baked Sunday afternoon before his mom picked him up, some delicious oatmeal chocolate chips, all they needed was some coconut. Thankfully he’s into doing all the measuring all I had to do was pour in my spices and mix (I don’t believe in measuring spices- what sort of example am I, really?) Our nutmeg spiced chocolate chip cookies are divine.

The effects of the cookies are narcotic. I’m not much of a TV watcher, but I blundered into a Starter Wife marathon on ?USA? network. I’ve meant to catch an episode in the past, but it’s never been a barn burner must. What a great show. I love the characters, the chemistry, and storyline. Unlike Pushing up Daisies, which I caught Wednesday night for the first time before my eyes closed into a coma, it held my attention, I wanted to know all the whys and hows, and what will happens when the new season starts Friday night. Then I passed out.

So what is the point of this whole rambling blog? Good question. It started out with how I don’t physically and mentally bounce back like I did when I was younger. I use to be on the go constantly, but now I relish dark, stormy winter weekends. Days falling asleep on the couch in a cookie induced coma. And every once in a while a new TV show. But most of all I am realizing that I am changing, how I’m not exactly am sure, except for age—I am getting older and while I don’t mind, I am definitely noticing and ruing some of the losses. The loss of energy. I miss my friends of childhood. I will soon miss Burp wanting to bake cookies with his grandma, or cuddling with me during a Duck’s game. And I rue the days when I don’t bounce back and it makes me emotional and bitchy, despite how hard I try to fight it. I’m just glad Ducky still wants to hold my had and eat my cookies.

Sith,
Cele

Talk Thursday - Bail Out

Talk Thursday: Bail Out

Through out my childhood there was always an inboard boat in some stage of construction jutting out of the garage; my father’s blueprints either tacked up to the wall or laid out on his draft board. On occasion my dad would let me sand on a section of fiberglassed hull or hold a board while he nailed or screwed it into place.

My dad’s boats are twined deeply into the good memories of my childhood. There’s a few bad memories too, like when my eldest brother, Butch wrapped me up in a sheet of fiberglass. Or the time I popped the clutch on my dad’s VW sending it into the garage, just left of the bow…umm, through the closed garage door.

And of course there was the time during the summer between sixth and seventh grade when we went Bonita fishing off Dana Point closer to Catalina. You know the heart of shark infest waters between mainland and the Channel Islands. My cousin Lenny (who from here on out will be called Snakeboy- for reasons not revealed in this adventure) lived with us, and he and Butch were the two who usually got to go fishing with my dad on the Sea Horse. But for some reason my dad allowed me to go along one Saturday morning.

Major, but applied digression. My baby brother had died the day after being born that June; suddenly family time was important. My mom has always said things happen for a reason, David’s arrival and departure from our lives was a family cementing for me. I distinctly remember weekends Pinecone and I spent with my dad camping, motorcycle riding, hiking, and fishing, while the boys spent the weekend with my mom learning the finer arts of cafeteria dining, miniature golf, or roller skating. The following weekend we’d swap parents. Those are cherished, focused times for me.

I distinctly remember leaving San Pedro that morning while it was still dark, the heavy tang of salt scenting the air, the harbor clock striking the quarter hour, motoring past the Queen Mary and feeling miniscule in comparison. We stopped to gassed up and buy bait at the breakwater before heading out to open water. The ocean was relatively calm and my father opened the hatch so we could stand up in the bunk and let the wind and spray hit us in the face as we made out way out to sea.

Dawn was breaking over the horizon when we first saw the flying fish off our bow, seemingly keeping up with the Sea Horse as we flew over the waves that morning. Flying fish made me search for dolphins in front of us, sadly I never saw one. Those first two hours were fantastic. Then we stopped so we could drop lines and begin fishing. I remember baiting up, letting my dad show me how to cast and being envious because Butch and Snakeboy could do this themselves. Then we sat, and the ocean rolled, and I heaved, and heaved, and heaved again. Someone, with a kindly heart gave me saltines to settle my stomach… I’d call my aunt Dot a bitch if I didn’t love her so much.

Note to the Unwared: Saltines and Seven Up do not settle your stomach on a rolling sea, it just gives you more to heave…

A lifetime later the sun shone, the fish were biting hot, and I finally quit puking. It actually was a great day, egg salad sandwiches rarely tasted better, and I caught a big ass Spanish Mackerel. A fish called such because when landed it slaps its body about with unequalled enthusiasm, sounding much like a pair of castanets, very entertaining and musical. My dad accidentally hooked a seagull and then let it shred him as he gently unhooked it amid claws and savage pecking. Snakeboy hooked the first shark of the day, a blue about 6 or 7 feet long, freaked out and dropped his rod and reel over board. Luckily, both rod and reel were retrieved and the shark allowed to escape.

Right before my dad discovered the strange noise coming from the bilge and the sump pump. Yep, the loud gurgle meant we were taking on water. The sump pump had burned out…about 15 miles out to see between Dana Point and Catalina. It’s a weird feeling to see land to the west and then to the east and know you can’t swim that far. Did I mention sharks? Because they live pretty vividly in my memory, so does the empty, three pound Folgers coffee can he thrust in to my hands with instructions to bail—fast. My dad used empty coffee cans for everything. Butch, Snakeboy, and I bailed as my dad and uncle stowed away the gear, lifted anchor, and headed for port and dry land.

Once we were moving we stopped bailing and enjoyed the ride. We had plenty of fish (my dad loved to fish, hated to eat fish) for my mom’s roses, a great memory, and I can honestly say I’ve had to bail out a boat or sink.

Snakeboy lived with us for a year (our seventh grade – we’re the same age) before he returned to his mom in Ohio. That trip was the last time I went out on the ocean in the Sea Horse. I later learned to water ski behind it on Shasta Lake. Butch now is land locked racing Sprints in Sioux Falls. My uncle died in the 1990’s from lung cancer and cirrhosis of the liver, I don’t think he and Snakeboy ever had the relationship they had that year. My dad quit building boats after we moved to Oregon, he started building Ultra-lights instead, and yes he did build an aquatic one…which he crashed into Siltcoos Lake on it’s maiden voyage..no bail out was going to help it.

Boats, planes, and people pass, but memories remain, glorious and golden in my mind.

Sith,
Cele