A Soft Spot to Land...

For the past four weeks, there has been a widowed Canadian goose that has taken up residence along the sleepy lakeshore that laps against the border of my back yard. My neighbor pointed her out to me a week ago while he was mounted atop his riding lawnmower and sipping a Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. He attempted to summarize the life-long partnerships of Canadian geese while hollering over the mower’s sputtering engine and told me that she had more than likely lost her mate and would in all probability stay through the summer until she hitched up with a likeable south-bound flock making that biannual road trip in the sky. For now that hasn’t happened and I watch her while we both enjoy the sun coming up and sparkling on the mirror-like lake we both call home for now. I stretch in front of the kitchen window while the coffee bubbles and drips in the coffeemaker on my countertop. The goose walks out to her goose-knees in the water and sharply plunges her bill below the surface and she shudders when she emerges. It resembles a Noxzema commercial where a towel-turbaned, fresh-faced woman splashes cool water from the sink on to her honey-kissed skin, dousing the cold cream she had previously smothered it in. I am convinced it is the animal kingdom’s way of allowing her to cold-splash her face just enough to alert her to function today. I finish my coffee and head for the living room to catch some HGTV before its time to put my makeup on. I think about the goose. She should really get some breakfast in her stomach. The lake is brimming with plump, fumanchu-ed catfish to quiet her grumbling tummy. Then I remember. She is not here at my lake on vacation eager to check out the all-inclusive seafood buffet that Willow Lake has to offer. Laden with so much grief, her wings lack the propulsion to fly; I reckon she is not interested in food again today. Instead she finds a soft divot of dirt under a maple tree that stretches its arm out over the shoreline and she tucks her bill down into her downy breast and closes her eyes. Grief is the most depleting emotion and often sleep is the only escape.

Though while I do not claim to actually know whether it is indeed a female goose, I have sympathized with this goose and have identified with her. Women were created with an innate desire to give and receive love. We desire this fully. We can trash talk our way through a round of margaritas on a Friday night with our girlfriends and subscribe to superwoman magazines whose covers tell us that we don’t need no stinkin’ man and that what we really need is just a few more lip-plumpers in our cosmetic bags and a few less slices of white bread in our lunch bags if we really want to feel full and complete. While I personally find that one trip through the drive thru of the Dairy Queen can make me feel full and complete on an occasion, I, like my friend the goose, would be left to wander and navigate unfamiliar waters in the event of my spouse’s death. I too, would spiral out of the sky and free-fall into a place where I could tuck my tail-feathers and nap for a while until my tears dried up and I felt like picking up where my flight path last dropped off the radar. Without love, life is barren and unfruitful and it can simply take away our will to fly.

One of the most tragically quixotic love stories of our time and my personal favorite is that of Johnny and June Carter Cash. When Johnny was 18, he spotted June Carter on stage from a distant seat in the audience and pledged to himself that someday he would marry her and he did, nearly two decades later. Johnny publicly succumbed to drug addictions and suicidal attempts and often credits June Carter and their indissoluble love with saving him from a premature and undignified death. Now this is what chokes me up: June Carter Cash died May 15, 2003 in a Tennessee hospital with Johnny clutching her hand. Before his final concert performance on July 5, 2003, Cash took the stage before performing his anthem “Ring of Fire” and said, “The spirit of June Carter overshadows me tonight with the love she had for me and the love I have for her. We connect somewhere between here and heaven. She came down for a short visit, I guess, from heaven to visit with me tonight to give me courage and inspiration like she always has.” Two months later on September 12, Johnny Cash passed away. The internet tells me he died of complications from Diabetes. I believe it was heart-related.

It is my greatest hope that I would be the blessed, lone witness to this goose testing her wings on a crisp fall morning in the coming months. I long to see her get a running start and lift off to join a flock that has created a spot in the flight cluster just for her to seamlessly slip into. I want to hear her honk and flap her wings good-bye thanking us for the corner of the world we shared with her while she needed a soft-spot to land. I am sure that many of my neighbors with their tidy back yards would like to see her relocated sooner than later as spotty goose droppings are dotting the once manicured lakeside. I would like to see her relocate too. Perhaps to a sunny beach in Mexico for the winter with a new gaggle of girlfriends to promenade the seashore with, hearts and wings fully intact.

A Peanut-Butter-Cracker Kind of Love...

Peanut butter crackers are a marriage of unsophisticated fodder that brings joy to the roofs of mouths in the young and old alike. My 4 year-old niece takes delight in carefully wobbling on the ledge of a kitchen chair heaping globs of the nutty butter onto ordinarily bland crackers that have the savor of drywall. With the care and skill of a structural engineer, she maintains enough equilibrium to see to it that she finishes with a smeary paper plate full of the peanut butter and cracker smokestacks. After all of the precision artistry, they will be eaten in a matter of crunchy, crackery moments and the creamy, tan glob at the end of her nose will be the only evidence of their sweet, brief existence. Peanut butter was invented as a source of protein for the toothless, those who couldn’t chew tough meats. Saltine crackers by themselves are often reserved only for the ill and nauseated a digestive aid of sorts. But something magical happens when the two bare kitchen staples meet at the end of a bread knife and are matrimonially layered like earthen rock under sweet, heavy soil.

A few nights ago, after being tagged to prepare appetizers for a backyard party and a retirement bash, I hurriedly drove to the supermarket to gather last minute ingredients. The evening sky swirled with dark clouds as a storm readied itself to wreak havoc on what was otherwise a still, summer evening. As I threw my pickup into gear and dashed into the supermarket, the clouds saturated with thick warm rain, broke open and cloaked each stand of hair on my head and swept every bit of rouge off of my cheeks like rain racing down a pane of glass. As I dashed in, wiping soggy hair from my forehead, I managed to wrestle a shopping cart from the strand of metal carts in the store entrance and proceeded to take my basket on two wheels around the store as if I were being timed on a game show. The nippiness of the air-conditioner in the supermarket was quickly painting my lips a cool violet and causing my white, bony hands to tremble. I threw stalky produce into my cart, scanned the spice aisle for dip mixes, mistakening sloppy Joe powder for onion soup mix, and even braving the frostiness of the dairy case to score a few containers of sour cream. I scrawled through lines of crackers, chips, and sodas written on my notepad as I located them and added to my booty of party fare. My day had been predictably hectic and its outcome hatched an all-too-familiar headache by the time I had crossed the parking lot after punching out at the time clock. My heart was heavy as a friend shared news with me earlier that day of her intentions to divorce her husband after just a few, whirl-winded years of marriage. Images of the two of them floated in and out of my mind throughout the course of the day. They were sunburned and smiling, shoulder to shoulder on a beach during their honeymoon only seasons earlier. Snapshots of them scattered and random, once blissful and full of hope, tender-hearted and wide-eye, played like a slideshow set to a James Taylor soundtrack against the backdrop of my pounding forehead. I floored it down the cereal aisle. It was there I almost mowed them down.

Beyond the bend of the end cap that sheltered the teetering skyscraper of Captain Crunch boxes, I commanded my buggy vengefully forward as if it were a team of Clydesdales driven by a zealous whip. Til that moment, I was previously unaware of any other shoppers in the store. They were a sight that stopped my team of thundering horsepower dead in their wheel ruts. My cans of pimentos and green chiles abruptly shifted forward in my race cart as I slammed on my breaks to keep from hitting them. They were not startled and he barely looked up from the tops of his tiny, wet shoes. They were an ancient couple, delicate yet sturdy, simple but purposed. She was aware, the leader, the instruction giver. He followed, holding softly to her bony elbow as she navigated the store, both of them shuffling and bent. The humidity that evening was torrential, like a wet sleeping bag draped from my shoulders. Despite this, she wore a wool cardigan, grey like her skin and a knee-length skirt that barely met the tops of her knee-high pantyhose bearing several snags. Her face was small and heart-shaped and her eyes were draped in yards of worn, velvety skin and looked out from behind thick, outdated lenses. She was their leader. The album in my mind had flipped over on its phonograph and when the needle met the vinyl, it began to trumpet old Edith Piaf songs in French. They swooned and swirled, forever young, trapped in a storybook without end, he the hero and she his envied prize. The old man, crooked and curved, was the same shape as the quivering cane he gripped in his veiny, blue hands. Though a Tuesday, he was dressed for Friday night. His tie was crooked but tight, and his suit jacket bore the wear of decades of distant relative’s wedding receptions and the funerals of childhood friends. I tried to look occupied and hoped they wouldn’t notice the way I had unknowingly invited myself on their shopping trip this evening. I busied myself by picking up cans of black beans and pretending to run my finger along the backs of their labels checking fiber content. She patted his arm and reminded him of how much he used to like pea soup, but he was far away. I noticed how his colorless eyes were baggy and full of water. His stare was blank, but I could see him in there. I saw him perched atop a tractor in a summer field swollen with wheat and fragranced by clover on the wind. He waved across the field to her as she rang him in for supper. I saw him coming home from the war; youthful and shiny, but secretly bruised. He smiled to himself. Wherever he was, I knew she was there too. She silently scuffled in her sensible loafers and gently bent to retrieve a box of no-name crackers from a bottom shelf of our aisle. Unable to free both of her arms for shopping, the ancient lady held the box of crackers to her bosom while her handbag swung from her skeletal wrist. The old man never let go of her other elbow and it made me think about love.

I met them again at the checkout. I was already in line when they arrived behind me, unhurried and content to be sluggish, like a pair of old, wise turtles. They had but two items to load on the conveyor and I watched their no-name crackers ride the moving sidewalk with their small jar of peanut butter. An otherwise ordinary Tuesday and an otherwise ordinary snack was a grand affair for this pair of old-time lovers who were unstoppable neither by acts of nature nor by their food budget. I met her eyes as I swiped my debit card in the reader and she smiled and continued to burrow down in her handbag for a fistful of rumpled dollar bills. He never let go of her elbow. His eyes, hollow and vacated, gaped toward the racks of beef jerky and bubble gum next to the register and I hoped he would look up at me. I loaded my provisions in my basket when my payment was complete and I took my time, pokey and impeding, gathering my wallet and receipt back into my purse. It was then he looked up from his tractor ride, from his war homecoming, and smiled impassively at me. My throat clenched as if it had been stuffed with a melon and I thought about love again.

The rain must have kept everyone else home, cozy and far from the inconvenience of a little summer storm; but not them. The rain was no occasion for hindrance or delaying a simple pleasure like a plateful of peanut butter crackers for this pair who had traveled the stretches of time together. I climbed into my pickup and watched the rain tumble down my windshield, now foggy with my moist breath. I rubbed a spot on the driver’s window enough to see them come out of the store together, no umbrellas, just the cloaking of the hot sky. He never let go of her elbow. She kindly seated him in the passenger seat of the long, clean Buick they owned. She folded his seatbelt neatly across his lap and placed the plastic sac of peanut butter and crackers on the tops of his slight thighs. The wet sack must have dampened his dress slacks, but he made no fuss. She kissed his cheek and at a snail’s pace, nestled herself in the driver’s seat for their ride home.

What happens to the filling of love? New love is hard to measure or rope. Like a plastic bag on the wind, it blows where it may, light and free, airy and without definition or shape. We chase it. It moves faster, dipping and gliding, causing our hearts to skip and our breath to labor. Few of us ever love long enough to see peanut butter crackers on a Tuesday night in a thunderstorm. I drove home thinking about what happens to all of the stuff on the middle? I thought about my friend and her situation. When and how do we fall out of love? Is it like falling out of a cab after too many gin and tonics on Saturday night? Do we just try to roll out of the way quickly so we are not caught beneath the rubber and peeled out on? Is it like falling out of a hot-air balloon, barreling towards earth, smashing through the stratosphere on your belly, hoping you land in once piece and can brush yourself off and walk away without a noticeable limp? The sands slip through the glass and we are not allowed to stop the timer and flip it over again when the rain stops. I don’t want to fall out of love. I want my Tuesday nights to consist of snagged pantyhose and a record player, crackly and aged, spinning the soundtrack to my life and my love; Italian arias and a stack of peanut butter crackers, our memories present yet ever-so-distant.

The Skinny on Big Breakfasts

Breakfast. It is an event I live for. I could have and maybe should have been married to a farmer just because I like a belly-full of breakfast anytime after 3:30 am on any day of the week that ends in Y. The nostalgic notion of me and my other half rising to the rooster crowing each and every morning is a scenario that I hopelessly romanticize every 24 hours when my alarm goes off at 5:45 am. The aromatic percolation of my automatic coffee maker is music to my ears and sweetly sipped though my nostrils. It not only signals to my brain that chemical help is on the way to assist in my waking, but it reminds me that I have an empty stomach that needs to be filled shortly if it is to sop of the three cups of medium roast I intend to ingest before I get my face fully on this morning. When I get ready to prepare breakfast, which is never a wimpy yogurt or fruit suggested by well-meaning friends who diet endlessly, I picture myself in an apron, a Swiss-dot apron to be exact, and I see the same old 1940’s farm kitchen I have cooked breakfast in over and over in my mind; the one with a large white and chrome cook-stove that is warmed and ready to sizzle whatever I toss in the skillet. The kitchen of my mind has a view of an outdoor clothesline through the window above the big farm sink and has red, wooden-handled utensils at my disposal in big clear glass canisters on my Hoosier cupboard... Farm breakfasts. Something about that term not only conjures up images of perfectly cooked sunny-side-up eggs that could have been on the cover of a Denny’s menu, but I imagine all of my eggs collected in a wire egg basket after my swollen apron pockets could hold no more of my shelled loot. My bacon and ham are farm-fresh also, but I beg to leave the details out of how that was collected and prepared for my use. Nostalgic or not, I have a weak stomach and prefer to reside in my own naïve existence about where bacon and ham come from. Perhaps I have read Charlotte’s Web too many times, but I skip this part. I like potatoes with breakfast, any kind, preferably hashed and slightly salted and fried until the edges are crispy and break sharply when sliced with the edge of my fork and yes, douse them in ketchup, please. Farmers eat bread with breakfast, I reckon, and I will take it in any way it’s served. I like big, bloated blueberry muffins that spill over their paper liners and fancy seeing them snuggled together in a wicker serving basket lined with a flour sack cloth and then slathered in sweet cream butter so thick it runs down my wrist when my teeth puncture the muffin top as I bite down. Other mornings a few slices of buttered toast and strawberry jam simply sweeten the deal. I make large breakfasts every morning. My breakfasts are usually eaten alone, in bed, and I go over the day’s game plan with God. It is not eaten over the Formica-topped table as it is eaten in my mind’s kitchen, nor eaten with my husband the farmer who wears overalls and a ball cap, always eating too fast as there are chores to be done. For the farmer, breakfast is utilitarian, not sleepy or to involve leisurely conversation in between bites of American fries and gulps of juice. It is the mornings I get out the waffle iron, special and occasional, he knows I am hot under the apron and chores will have to wait…






On weekends in the summer, I like to rise extra early to attend a good old farm auction. This is where I stand elbow to elbow with my fellow breakfast eaters and bid on items purely for the nostalgia of it all. The auctioneers know me by name and recognize easily my hot pink jacket amidst the sea of John Deere green and camouflage. They wink at me when they know something I fancy is about to be put on the block and they graciously help me load my wares when the auction has concluded. I carry tow-straps and tape measures and drive a pickup truck I have lovingly dubbed “my big shopping cart.” I would never dare think of not eating a man-sized breakfast before I go toe-to-toe with my competition. My auction mornings are somewhat ritualistic and the other morning I happily decided to eat my breakfast at the local café where the stools still spin and the breakfast specials are written on a dry erase-board next to the day’s pie selections. I perused the paper from my chrome-plated perch and swilled hot cups of black, tarry coffee. The opposite side of the horseshoe-shaped counter hosted 5 or 6 old farmers who nodded politely at me as I ate. As I broke chunks off of my omelet and shoveled fork-fuls of syrupy pancake into my mouth, I eaves-dropped on my fellow breakfast doer’s as they evaluated each other’s menu selections as the waitress brought out plate after plate of auction fuel. One short, ruddy gentleman who wore striped overalls remarked to a tall, lanky fellow who wore a ball cap with the logo of a corn fertilizer on it how bad eggs were for people to eat and that he had recently changed his breakfast diet to include sugar-free juice and oatmeal for weight control. I looked up slowly with a strip of bacon hanging out of my mouth holding the end like a lit cigar to hear them exclaiming about their weight. “Earl, how much do you weigh, you old fart?” Earl placed his hands on his love handles and said, “You know, Don, I haven’t weighed this much ever. I need to start eating more fruit I think. I hear they have a yogurt with fiber in it.” They all nodded in agreement with their arms folded across their flannel shirts as if they were Congressional members voting on a legislative measure. I wanted to weigh in on this nonsense and slam my strip of bacon down like a judicial gavel. “This can’t be, “I thought, “All farmers eat eggs, at at 4am, at that. It’s seven am! What about the bacon, fried potatoes, ham slices, orange juice, sausage links, cinnamon rolls? Are you nuts? You aren’t real American farmers. What have you done with them? You are fakes! You must be dairy farmers from California! Isn’t that where happy cows and health-nut farmers come from! I bet you aren’t even wearing work boots…bet those are Birkenstocks you are hiding behind the counter!



I was somewhat saddened by my encounter that morning and I fretted all weekend about the condition of the American farmer. Their farms have dwindled in numbers, mom-and-pop farms have been swallowed up by factory conglomerates and now farmers exist on a banana and a yogurt for breakfast? I am a lover of the nostalgic, the classic, and the time-worn. I prefer a flea-market to an outlet mall and a set of cracked, old baking bowls to a set of new, registered-for wedding china that collects dust in a cabinet from Slumberland. I realize that time and technology have pushed past me and I am content to live slightly in the past, left to relish the last of the farm auctions and gather their fossils into my apron pockets as they disintegrate into the precedent. I guess the kitchen in my mind cannot be outfitted by the Home Depot or other mammoth box-stores and I am content with that. I will ponder the ways of the world from my kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a short-stack. Breakfast, my first love.

The Accidental Italian...she didn't see it coming. Like a bicyclist peddling upstream into oncoming traffic, she was hit head on, thrown from her comfy seat and suffered a momentary lapse of reason. My childhood dream of becoming a freelance writer once seemed a road-blocked prospect, shunned by well-meaning relatives who thought I should pursue more "practical" professions like nursing or accounting. "Writers go hungry," they told me. After a decade and a half of living off the fat of other occupations far more "sensible" in the eyes of suburbia, my hunger pangs for a career as a writer were gnawing at my backbone and eating holes in my heart. Here I am...an Italian by shear accident; a born-again writer by pure happenstance, but a destiny by no simple chance.....I want this. Move over, bacon...I don't claim to write about everything and anything. I offer no literary smorgasbord for the like. I fancy Italy and all things Italian. I love God. I like broken furniture (stay tuned). I am a good girl who is simply a bad girl who thinks she will never get caught. (God knows better) I own a pair of love-handles and a cordless drill. I can fix things but I have more experience breaking things. Primarily promises and my teeth. (God is fixing me on the first of the two!) I swoon over subtitles and all Italian music makes me cry. I get irritated when grown-ups wear Disney and I am morbidly fearful of frogs ( I heard they can choke out a grown man). I like big,deep bathtubs and I have read the same magazine issues over and over again in them. I like wine and if I could find an acceptable way to have it with breakfast, I would. ("I'll have a bowl of Grape Nuts, an english muffin with jelly, and a glass of Pinot, per favore.") Instead I drink coffee and lots of it because they won't let me have crack at work.


I have learned a few valuable lessons in my short go-round on this earth. My time-worn toast adopted from an Irish saying and heard by many of whom have "clanked" cocktails with me:

"Here's to those we love, may they always love us back. Here's to those we loved, who have never loved us back. May God turn their knees around to the backs of their legs so we recognize them by their stinkin' limp all the days of their lives!"

A domani, mei amici...

The Joys of Being a Basement Employee

Dreams are funny things.  I don't mean the kind that have woken me from a dead sleep and have left me staring at the ceiling wondering about what I ate before bed that made me dream I was rolling a giant powdered donut down the interstate.  Not those kind of dreams.  I mean the kind that burn rubber on my brain in the middle of a slogging afternoon, shoulder to the wheel at a job that tested slighlty below average and recommend only by the unchoosy, impartial moms who didn't choose Jif.  "Hi. You have reached the voicemail of Jamie.  I am away from my desk right now.  I have sailed away to Margaritaville in seach of a  hot tub with my name on it.  Everyone else thinks I have diahhrea from a not-so-stellar salad bar selection at lunch today and assumes that I am spending the afternoon in the stall of the faculty lounge, but in reality,   I have absconded in hot pursuit of buried purpose and hidden meaning and will not return again until my soul-searching (ahem, I mean gut rot) wears off.  If you find my purpose in life, please place it in an interoffice envelope and kindly return it to me. I would greatly appreciate it.  Beep." 

Though I envisioned myself escaping my 40-hour a week existence via knotted-up sheets  and repelling down chucky brick-faced walls like a business-casual SpiderWoman, I was quickly reminded that I have a basement office.  When you work in a basement like I do, the only way out is up. When others in my place of business come down the 3 or 4 flights of stairs to see me and place orders or request equipment, I often resist the urge to say in my best Phantom of the Opera voice, "Don't look at me. I'm hideous!"  One might expect my skin to be the palor of a wax worm seeing as how the only light I receive for 8 hours out of my day is from the pole-barn sized flouresent lights that scream "we got enough killowatts to guarantee your sterility or your money back" and "we gotta blue light special on scratch and dent catheters in aisle 5!"  I distract them from my dermal-deficiency like the way a matador would distract a bull, by roping yards of bright, heavy jewely around my neck each day to divert their attention from the excess face foundation I have spackled on this morning with a grout trawler.  "Ooh, I like your necklace today!" the nurses exclaim, when they really want to proclaim, "Wow, you might need to up your Vitamin D intake. Your heading for a case of the rickets, young missy!"
 My current gig, though predictable and safe, sterile and sometimes isolated, is cut off from all forms of natural light and incoming air.  My workspace is oxygenated by the artifical, dry air that is pumped in to me to keep me sustained much like a goldfish in a Wal-Mart pet aisle who depends upon a algae-encased bubbler to keep it alive.  If you don't clean a fishtank, your fish will suffocate on dirty, recirculated, tired air.  Though an aquaruim is considered safer than say the Great Barrier Reef, it affords the goldfish a ho-hum existence in an environement devoid of any natural light, food sources, and opportunites to thrive and create. It won't die, but it certainly won't thrive. I, like my friend the goldfish,  swim in circles, lethargically, startled when someone taps on the glass unexpectedly.  They wave and make funny faces at me.  I make fish lips at them and they usually leave in disgust and I am left to repackage rectal tubes for the afternoon until the next well-wisher stops by and asks for the fish lips. I typicaally refuse. Unless its Friday....its my favorite and I like to put on a show on Fridays.
When I am not making fish lips or trying to take a nap while treading water behind the back rack of urinal cakes, I am dreaming.  I dream when I am awake, with my eyes open and my mind blank but noisy like static on a television station that doesn't run anything after midnight.  It is when I dream my best dreams.  I like a little fish, rise to the surface, swimming upwards from the basement toward a light that hovers overs the murky waters.  Swim harder, swim faster, kick your legs, lift your head,dog-paddle if you have to.  Just don't stop.  To my chagrin, someone will ultimately decide to give me the Royal Flush one day when they deem my fish lips aren't funny anymore or my urinal cakes just don't bake up as fluffy as they used to.  I know in my heart, sometimes a flush is just what you need to be forced out in to the big, nutrient-rich sea. A sea full of natural light and food sources to fill my belly and extend to all corners of my soul, a kaleidoscope of creation that sways in the gentle waves of my imagination await and beckon me with fishy kissy-faces that make me swoon the way dreamers do. Sometimes we have to get flushed and endure the one-way red-eye express through the poop-chutes of life to ultimately reach the sea.  Don't be discouraged by your fishtank in the basement, little fish.  That plastic castle anchored in the purple aquarium rocks? Why its just the right spot to hide out and dream until your ticket arrives.  Don't be afraid of the flush, though the waters swirl and sploosh, the dizzying descent only lasts a minute.  Hold your breath, it can be stinky. Close your eyes and take the opportunity to dream, your time in the poop-chute can be productive...SPLASH!  You have arrived.

Let Go and Let It Be..

Sometime a notion just drifts off to eternal slumber on its own, other times we try to manually induce the coma that suspends the animation of our thoughts in hopes of waking it in another season.  Other times it our own sleep and the dreams we dream while inside of our sleep where we sweetly euthanize even the most  deliciously, painful memories and they let go, never to look us up again, never to send us a postcard from their new port of call.  Dreams are revelation.  They, like feverish gardeners with their foot to the head of a shovel, can press into the dirt, overturning and breaking up years of clumped and compacted soil. Black soil churning,revelaing, some worm-filled, wet and sweet.  Some dry and void of any nutrients, just dirt that we choose to keep that never produces, just taking up precious real estate in our all-too-short lives.  I can almost taste on my tongue the dust of seasons past, the I have hoarded all winter in the confines of my cozy space, stale and recycled, swirling around my feet the way stray plastic bags bob and weave on the wind; with no purpose or direction, never wanting to be caught and thrown away.  My dust escapes through the screen as the breeze is inhaled and exhaled, in and out of my home...newborn thoughts and dreams fly in, squatters who have overstayed their welcome, drift out....the breeze drags familiar ones back in as I secretly hoped they would return only to be pressed back out and lost to time and space before I can get my fingers around them. Lazily skimming the pines, they ascend.  My dreams are mine, they reveal. They remind me that I love, that I have loved, and that I love that about me...Fly away, go to sleep, good night, sleep tight.  My dreams are mine again....

Wine...it's what's for breakfast.

So this weekend, somewhat bummed out about having to live vicariously through my friends who are in Naples this week, I decided to channel my energy into something other than pouting. We packed our bags and attended a wine lover's weekend complete with tastings, vineyard tours, and case-load sales on the crimson drink.What a better beverage to drown your sorrows in than wine?  It is the magically delicious foot-stomped concoction that has the ability to turn the clumsy into the choregraphed and the tongue-tied into talkers.  Wine can make us shed weekday inhibitions and inject our once-sleepy dreams with gusto.  It has a myterious way of turning on the music of our minds and somehow infuses our souls with the soundtracks of our life.  It can make our mundane existences come alive with animation, it makes me want to love, to live, to laugh...
So it wasn't Tuscany.  But it was a three-day breather for the both of us  The winding hills of the country and the wonders of a roadtrip that somehow always open the road to conversation.  We drank, we reminisced, we loved.  Our full-bodied weekend ended on a sweet and light note with a deliciously smooth finish....yep, I'll have another glass of that...
Bouna Lunedi, a tutti!

Buon Viaggio...or something like it.

Some precious friends of ours are leaving for Naples today.  They have never ventured to Italy before.  They are Midwest folk who uniquely have a broader palette than what most people here I know have.  This couple will not be the kind to return to the states and eagerly share with us that although they liked Italy, the people there just don't speak any English!  I have had the privelege of sharing dinners with them and these are the kind of people who aren't afraid to order something off of the menu that they can't pronounce, but want to try it simply because they like the way the name rolls off the tongue, even in a butchered Fargo-like accent.  They will not complain of their visit because the food had too many spices, or because the endless symphony of traffic was too much for their ears.  We have put them in touch with our Italian brother and a Neapolitan sister who are there so we may vicariously live through them over the next 10 days.  If we can't hug or lay eyes on our Italian friends, atleast our American friends will have laid eyes on them and will be able to tell us just how they looked as they shared cappuccinos. Our memories now have edges that have become smudged over time.  Jim and Sharon will tell us their travel tales when they return and recount the steps that Dennis and I took what seems, so many years ago.  If only you could bottle the smell of a wood-fire Neapolitan pizza into a jar or trap in a bottle the noise of the city. Customs might stop them and confiscate my jar as no one can resist the smell of a pizza verace, not even a customs agent.

So I wish my friends  a buon viaggio (or something like it). I am jealous.  Just a little. Ok, A LOT.  I am readying myself for work this morning. Same routine day after day.  I wish I was packing for Italy (or maybe I don't). Today I am not sure I would come back....

Buon Viaggio, Jim and Sharon. (or something like it)

Melancholy

Melancholy. I like the way it sounds. The word itself rolls off the tongue like melted butter on a dinner roll. Though the word doesn't conjure up images butterflies and rainbows, melancholy is an address I frequent when the winter slogs by.  These are the days I kick my own butt.  Foolish, foolish girl. I was told today that God inflicts wounds on us so he may heal us, fully and restoratively.  Some days I am content with my amputations, somedays I feel the ghost pains associated with my losses.  I have tried to wiggle toes that are no longer attached.  I have cried over lost opportunities and tried to scratch my head is disbelief over their passing only to realize I have no arm to lift.  So I wait.  Restore my body and soul, precious God, so I may mount up like an eagle, whole and new so I may swoop upon the valley of Melancholy, dipping and gliding, over and under. I am happy to visit for an afternoon, but don't want to look down for more than an hour or two...

A big fat No-Duh!

I love court TV.  Did I metion something yesterday about being sick of court TV?  Well, I lied. It is my secret indulgence, though probably not so secret, anymore...Yes, everything I need to know I learned from Judge Judy.  Judy taught me that many relationships are merely a coupling of folks who ultimately need nothing more from the other person than solely a co-signor with an obligation to buy something they will ultimately only use to meet someone else! Yup.  "Hey Flo-Jo, I need you to cosign for this Kia for me, baby girl."  Yup. He's using it to pick up honeys and YOU just signed for it.  Duh.  Judge Judy also reminds us that we are never to sign  lease with someone we are not married to or part of a conjoined twin arrangement with.  Personally, I think ONLY conjoined twins should ever agree to signing a lease together, that would mean Cheng and Eng the original Siamese twins are really the only two who should share property.  Should the deal go down, they could really make life hell for the other one. (Imagine trying to sleep while the other tries to man-handle Yoga on the Wii) Duh.  Judy repeatedly harps on us to never, ever have a baby with a man who doesn't have a job. This is a big, huge DUH.  Do we still have to tell women this? Ladies, this is never a good idea. You don't have to take Judy's word for it.  Ask Maury, Ricki, or Montel.  Havin a baby with  man who doesn't have a job is like wipin before you poop..it just don't make no sense!  So I tell you again, Judy will set you straight.  God will get you right, but Judy will set you straight....So, excuse me while I tend to my pack of  Ho-Hos and my court TV.  It's prime-time in the trailer park and I'm gonna crack a Bud before Judy puts the smack-down on another idiot! Boo-ya!
Stay on the straight,kiddies...
A domani,

Day One...Gone to the Dog.

Buongiorno.
Somehow doesn't sound as romantic as I had hoped it would straight out of the box. Day one. Gone to the dog...I have a nasty cold today. The kind that reddens the nose to the likeness of an alcoholic uncle, swollen and ruddy from one too many whiskeys.  A whiskey would be nice today...My dog has been faithfully lying at my side the last two days, sticking her wet nose on the end of my bed to carefully examine me when my coughing fits become uncontrollable. With the exception of thinking that I might be hiding a tasty treat in all of those wadded up kleenexes, she has been content to accompanying me through the extent of this boring, stuffy day.  Would soup be good? I'd love to try, but my taste buds are as unresponsive as moss. I should have gone with Dennis to the nursing home today.  Nursing home food is bland. Never enough salt or seasoning.  My young cousin used to say that nursing homes smelled like "hot dish and farts."  Hmmm.  Today my house feels like an infirmary. Kleenex boxes, empty cups with remnants of "fluids" all of my well-meaning friends insist I ingest.  Daytime TV is terrible.  My poor husband.  How does he do this all day?  I have two days worth of court TV under my belt and I am ready to roll up my sleeves and get back to work, me and my sputum.  Looks like tomorrow I will make a run for it and make it "Take Your Sputum to Work Day."

Hope your day finds you booger-free, dear friends...
A domani...

Can you hear me now?

Hello, race fans...
This is only a test. Do you love me? Do you wanna be my friend? Well if you do....
Don't be afraid to follow me as I share the wrangles of love, life (or something like it) and everything under the Tuscan sun...
Life is beautuful. Bouncy. Bumpy. Wanna walk with me?