Mimosa Mama

At the tender age of 41 I discovered a recipe for a garlic eggplant dip.  It calls for one “head of garlic” but when I went to the store to shop for it the elephant garlic beckoned me, and since I had never heard of having too much garlic in or on anything in my life I bought two.

If you coat the garlic in olive oil, sprinkle a little salt on it, and bake it in the oven it becomes creamy and sweet like candy.  And seeing as how I had cooked twice as much as my little recipe called for I thought I would sample me some.  So I did.  But I couldn’t stop.  I sampled away until an EN-tire elephant garlic was happily residing in my belly.  Then I went about my business There’s more, read the rest of this entry! »

After working the Oregon Wine Food & Brew Festival recently I have this little tidbit to add to my chapter:

Then there was the day not long ago that I had a book signing at a wine festival.  Sitting at my booth, pretending to be somebody and having nobody truly give a shit, can be taxing, so I set out to stretch my legs and walked over to check out a booth that had olives (I am somewhat of an olive whore).

I had been sitting far too long, so as I worked my way around the olive station I didn’t even realize my hands were on my hips in a stance that must have been noticeably painful.  I had to step around a group of people already gathered round the little green jewels, and my focus was on which jar I would invite home with me to get in my hot mess belly, so I almost didn’t hear Drunk Dude as he said, “I have a question for you.  What is this all about?”  He was mocking my hands-on-hips stance, completely snapping me out of my olive trance.  Bastard.

My response was, “I don’t know.  Does it seem attitudy or sumpthin?”

Drunk Dude: “I don’t know.  IS it attitudy?”  (where the hell are we going with this?)

Me: “I don’t think so.  Maybe it just feels good on my back.”

Drunk Dude: “You got a bad back?”

Me: “Not really.”

Drunk Dude:  “Ah, everyone over 50 has a bad back, right?”

Over 50?  OVER 50??  Good Lord!  I am only 41 teensy years old!  I was once again mentally disabled by his insinuation.  I have no respect for myself in these moments.  Generally I pride myself on being a woman who thinks well on her feet.  Witty witch.  It is part of who I believe myself to be, my self-identity.  But again I found myself unprepared to take on Drunk Dude, whom I would normally eat for breakfast in a verbal spar.  He had hit too close to home.  This asshole, who has no idea that I am sensitive to the fact that I seem an EN-tire generation older than I am, took me down in one fell swoop.

As I turned to gracefully huff off in the other direction (without any olives, which is the true tragedy of this tale) I noticed the look of pure horror on his wife’s face as she looked at this fuck-head she was married to.  Poor lady.  My only hope is that someday soon she escapes his evil grasp.  I am bending the good will of the universe in her general direction that she may someday know a lesser asshole.

I returned to my real job the following Monday, feeling old because I let Drunk Dude determine my self worth (I’m real smart like that) and there, sitting in my In-Box, was the icing on my freaking old cake.  An invite from AARP.  Surely one of the lowest points in my life.

First I was afraid, I was petrified

kept thinkin I could never live without you by my side

Oh, Gloria Gaynor (I had to look that up) – I have no freaking idea who you are, but your words changed my life.

I was tortured by that song as a child by an evil woman.  “Builds character” my mother use to say incessantly.  Frickin character.  I got sick to death of building it.

My mom and her two sisters There’s more, read the rest of this entry! »

“Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.”

Dorothy Parker

My signature drink is the mimosa.  Good old champagne and orange juice.

I don’t remember “discovering” them.  They just somehow eased into my existence sometime in my early 30s.

I’ve never been one to handle my hard liquor, and beer doesn’t usually hit the spot for me (outside of an occasional Corona with lime on a hot summer’s day).  There is just something refreshing and soothing about a mimosa I don’t get from any other form of alcoholic beverage.

Champagne on its own (we’ll get more into the types of champagne shortly, hold your horses) is fine for a toast There’s more, read the rest of this entry! »

Small excerpt from I Am Not A Bigot (Damn It!)

At one point in my life I lived in a small studio apartment on the University of Oregon campus (Home of the Ducks!).  As I waited one morning at the closest bus stop to get my little self to work, a rather large black man came ambling up saying something like “Excuse me.  I just saw a pretty lady and thought I’d come sit down beside her.”

What in the world is one suppose to say to that?  I sure as hell wasn’t impressed with his “come-on” so I just, literally, shrugged it off.

He said, “What? Don’t you think you’re beautiful?”

I replied something like “I don’t think it’s important whether I am beautiful or not.”

Well, that just pissed him right off.  He immediately got defensive, and now I’ve treated him badly not because he’s a dumbass There’s more, read the rest of this entry! »

My sister “Mary” and I once worked together at a store I’ll call “Wal*Mart.” I was the Personnel Manager and she worked in the cash office.

One fine day Mary needed a tampon, so she came into my office in search of one. I reached into my purse, grabbed the tampon, and in the middle of passing the damn thing to her like a relay race baton There’s more, read the rest of this entry! »

There are things that it is just politically incorrect to judge people on.

We don’t judge on weight.  I like that.  It is a very difficult thing to resist whatever foods make us weak (bacon and mimosas!).  And let’s not even START on how hard it is to get your fat ass off the couch to get some real exercise in.   I get that.

I remember as a child calling my sister “Mary” a blimp once.   She had always struggled with her weight in a way that I had not.  She didn’t talk to me for three days.   THREE DAYS! I remember that it was three days exactly.   I reflected, There’s more, read the rest of this entry! »

My bitchy sister Penny once tricked me into attending a Nascar race in Bristol Tennessee. Her husband has season tickets to this stupid thing. I am not a race fan of any sort, but she swore that I’d feel differently after actually attending one live. I am pretty sure she knew better but, as they say, misery loves company. Whore.

We saved for a year and a half for this “vacation.” A real trip of a lifetime, for my husband anyway. For me it was pure hell. I’ll try my best to explain it to you in my customary non-dramatic style. There’s more, read the rest of this entry! »

Yes, you read that word right. Ignorgant. My spell check isn’t crazy about it, but I’m hell bent on getting it added to the dictionary.

The word was born the other day as I made my way across town. The car ahead of me changed lanes without using their blinkers (sorry, but this is almost always a stunt pulled by men, no doubt with penile issues). I thought to myself that this is a very arrogant thing to do, and hot on the heels of that thought was that it was also ignorant. Those two words merged together in the blink of an eye inside the lovely soup of my brain. Ignorgant.

Ignorgant is an ugly word. Kind of sounds There’s more, read the rest of this entry! »