Betty Crocker I Am Not

I don’t like cooking.

I can cook. I can feed myself regularly, and I can whip up a reasonably schmancy holiday meal when the need arises. I just don’t enjoy it. It’s a lot of fuss and bother and you get to enjoy the end product for about fifteen minutes. The destination is rarely worth the journey.

And then you have to do the dishes.

I do, however, try to eat reasonably healthily. I understand the components of a balanced diet. I am vegetably literate. I know that a woman cannot exist on Nutella alone, much though she would prefer that to be the case.

::sigh::

I have made it my mission in life to find as many ways to chuck vegetables into dishes one might normally have served with a salad so that I don’t, in fact, have to create a whole extra component to accompany my meal just to round it out. I am the Queen of the Casserole, and my Royal Motto is Veni, Vidi, Broccolini. “I came, I saw, I chucked a cruciferous vegetable in it.” For my dinner this week, I made a pot of chili: ground turkey, low sodium kidney beans, low sodium chili seasoning packet, onion, green bell pepper, canned tomatoes, a can of corn, and an entire bag of kale. The whole thing. I mean, I picked out the really huge stems, but other than that...a biiig pile o’ kale. My tuna noodle casserole and chicken alfredo casserole are always heavy on the peas and celery, and broccoli (or, if I’m feeling really adventurous, brussels sprouts), respectively. Pasta sauce? Start with whole tomatoes! Add squash! And mushrooms! And eggplant! And, oh, what the hell, a bag of spinach!

Don’t get me wrong, I love salad, and vegetables in forms besides ‘jumbled in with everything else’--I just love them more when someone else deals with the preparation part. And, if you couldn’t already tell, I’m a massive fan of the casserole, and its cousin, the one-pot meal. Fewer dishes makes a happy Elizabeth, and a happy Elizabeth is less likely to transform into Godzilla and go smash Tokyo. Just sayin’.

I truly don’t know where my cooking aversion--which isn’t so much an aversion to the cooking itself as it is to the post-cooking clean-up--came from. My mother isn’t any sort of a Grand Kitchen Adventurer, sure, but she always fed us more than adequately. The woman bakes like a wizard, though, holy waistline, Batman… My father can manage to use every pot, pan, measuring cup, and teaspoon in the house to make a bowl of cereal, so I suppose there’s really no mystery insofar as my dish-doing allergy. Apart from my parents, however, the rest of my family is full of clever cooks. They all love trying new recipes and their everyday meals somehow manage to be everything but. How did this gene manage to bypass me?!

I’m not really that bothered about it, though. Fewer dishes, remember?

My very bestest friend since we were three is my foil in this arena. The bish can cook--she always could. Her idea of a birthday dinner is that she makes it for everyone else. Not that I’m complaining--I’ve had sooo many good meals as a result of this--but it’s the exact opposite of how I want to deal with celebratory food.

I want to celebrate by not having to deal with it.

Mind you, in the grand tradition of my baker mother, I make a damn decent cake. You know, when I can be bothered to deal with baking at all. (Read: not often.) And you know what you can do with cake?

No, apart from all the crazy nonsense they used to get up to on Ace of Cakes.

YOU CAN HIDE FRUITS AND EVEN SOMETIMES VEGGIES IN THEM!

That makes them healthy, right?

RIGHT?!

It’s A Janumas Miracle!

Between my work schedule and geography quite literally getting in the way, my Parental Units and I don’t get together during the holidays anymore. Instead, we go somewhere in January. Last year, it was Hawai’i. This year we spent a couple of days in Cambria, CA. It was low-key, and while we packed a certain amount of stuff-doing into our time, only a couple of things were properly scheduled, which left a great deal of room for just going with the flow.

An organized flow, mind you. We’re not heathens.



The point of Cambria, apart from just being a quaint little coastal town, was twofold; on the one hand, the lodge we stayed at does a deal on rooms where you get a meal and a bottle of wine included--and we really, really like wine--and on the other, there is a parcel of land in nearby Montaña de Oro State Park owned by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) with a tie to one of my very favorite Disney movies.

Since the PG&E trail is only open a few days a week and the rates at the hotel were predictably less on weeknights, the plan was to meet in the hotel parking lot at 10:00 AM Monday morning, leave my car, and go walkies. In an attempt to avoid the Monday morning commute traffic, I stopped over halfway down in Gilroy at a cheap motel on Sunday night and had dinner with a friend.

Can I just stop here for a second and mention that it feels REALLY FUCKING WEIRD checking into a hotel in your home towm? ‘Cause it does. Really, really weird.

Now, this little hike on the coast with the Disney history, yeah? Some of you may be familiar with the film Pete’s Dragon. No, not the ‘live action’ remake they put out a few years ago. The original 1977 version with Helen Reddy and Mickey Rooney. For those of you who aren’t, all you really need to know is that in this film, there was a lighthouse. It so happens that the actual set piece was built at what is now known as Disney Point along this coastal trail, and all the exterior lighthouse footage was shot there. The production had to get special permission from the Coast Guard to light the lamp in the lighthouse because it was situated in a spot where it could easily have confused sailors traveling in the area. The lighthouse itself was supposed to be moved to Disneyland after filming, but unfortunately by that time was too damaged, and was scrapped. BUT, I love Pete’s Dragon, I have seen the spot where the lighthouse was, and I can now cross that off my Bucket List. My parents actually found out about it by mistake about a year ago. At the end of this trail is a nuclear power plant which is in the process of being decommissioned, and they hiked out with some friends to look at that, and BOOM, Disney trivia related to one of their kid’s favorites.





So that was fun. If you haven’t ever seen the original Pete’s Dragon, I recommend you do. It’s a nifty little piece of cinema and it has a delightful soundtrack.

I feel I ought to mention two other things I learned on this trip. One is that there is a little hamlet called Harmony, CA, population EIGHTEEN, that exists. They have a chapel, a pottery studio, a creamery (sadly only open on weekends,) a glassworks, a neat little parklet with plants and garden art, and their own post office. Oh, and a decorated cow called Gladys. The glassworks is particularly entertaining because you can watch the people actually do the forming and glass blowing and whatnot. As someone who is deathly afraid of things that burn, it’s also terrifying, but in a cool ‘I’m learning something’ way. Also, you can buy Harmony Creamery ice cream at certain area grocery stores, but it does lose something when you can’t get it from the cute little bitty truck.

A reason to return, I suppose.



The second thing to which I would like to draw your attention is that ELEPHANT SEALS ARE E-FUCKING-NORMOUS. Scary big. Huge. Twelve out of ten would not want to meet face-to-face. It’s currently pupping season, so the colonies are lounging around on certain beaches, and we popped along to one to have a look, and HOLY WOW. I was prepared for them to be large, but I don’t think Blue Planet or any other well-made documentaries could properly prepare you for the sheer size of those things. The males are staggeringly large, and the females aren’t too far behind them.



Any old way, I just spent two-and-a-half days with my parents, and we didn’t murder each other, so...hooray?

“Words, words, words.”

Last week I rambled about my relationship with the written word. This week, let’s change gears and take a look at my relationship with the spoken word.

One of my aunt’s favorite stories to tell about me is indicative of my penchant for language. We were having a family dinner at my other aunt’s house, and since her dining room didn’t accommodate everyone, the table had been extended, by means of another, smaller table, into the entry hall. The only light fixture in the entry hall didn’t provide much light, so it was a little darker there than in the main dining room. I was three or four. The first aunt was helping me get into my chair for dinner. Apparently, I sat up on my knees on the chair, looked around and up at the light source, and announced:

“This is abominable.”

Four. Years. Old. It was definitely an omen.

Fast-forward to the sixth grade. Our second play of the school year was Pocahontas, and I played the not-so-nice governor in the first act. (I was a good villain. I still am.) Unfortunately, there was nothing for that part to do in act two, so the director (who liked me a lot) dragged out a hardcover copy of the complete works of William Shakespeare, opened it to Sonnet #18, handed it to me, and said, “Read.”

I read.

The words just tumbled out of my mouth. It was effortless. When I stopped, the whole room was silent. It happened again the following year with a scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and has happened back as far as I can remember when I read anything aloud. I have a knack for taking something from a page and making it live.

It’s a big reason why small humans love it when I read them stories.

Sometimes my own words aren’t enough, and I have to turn to those of others; a song, a poem, a quotation. What makes the difference, at least to me, is delivery, in the sense of how a piece of text is spoken. Where someone may emphasize a certain word or phrase, the tone and volume in which they speak--that’s where personality and emotion come through.

There’s a reason I ended up in drama school…

I read at both of my paternal grandparents’ funerals; Sonnet #73 for my grandfather, and an excerpt from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes for my grandmother. Both times I was faced with the problem of what to say. To have read something biblical was out of the question--it would have been hypocritical at best, and heretical at worst--and coming up with something original when you’re grieving isn’t exactly the easiest thing in the world, so I had to borrow from Billy Boy and Herr Rilke. The two occasions and the readings they inspired came from vastly different sets of feelings. For my grandfather, it was nothing but pure and unadulterated love, and to me that’s what #73 is all about--the love you feel for something in spite of the fact that you know it’s temporary. For my grandmother, well, the feelings were more complicated, and that made finding something to read more complicated. I was in a production of Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses in college, and one of the sections is the Rilke version of the Orpheus myth. Somehow that came to the front of my mind as I was frantically scrabbling for something that wasn’t twee or overdone or an outright lie. The underlying meaning I took from it in relation to my grandmother’s death was about letting go. A surface interpretation would barrel straight into the literal letting go of someone who has passed on, and if that’s all that anyone in St. Isidore’s got from my reading at that funeral, it’s enough. It ran deeper, however. There are so many things to let go when it comes to my grandmother--not just for me, but I can only speak for myself.

I haven’t let go of all of it yet. I may never let go of all of it. But I have a solid text to return to, to speak out loud when I’m circling the drain of her memory. Giving voice to things can sometimes help you recognize them for what they are and help you see where they fit, and where they might not anymore.

This may be unique to me. It may not. I find it helps. Your mileage may vary. But if you find yourself up against something for which you have no words of your own, speak someone else’s. You may be surprised.

The Writer’s Nightmare

I’m back! A week off for funsies, aaand then I got a stomach bug. That was not so fun. It could have been much worse, but it was awful enough, thank you very much. I hope you all enjoyed your holidays, or tolerated them, or weren’t completely miserable at least. And if you don’t celebrate, well, I hope you had a nice couple of weeks? Hooray!

A couple weeks ago I had a dream.

Actually, it was worse than a dream. It was definitely a nightmare. A nightmare of the sort that only I could cobble together out of the miscellaneous brick-a-brack lurking in the darkest recesses of my half a brain. Well, sort of. You see, there’s this short play called The Actor’s Nightmare, written by Christopher Durang, in which the main character is mistaken for an actor’s understudy and forced to perform without knowing his lines. My nightmare was a variation on a theme, if you will.

I should mention at this point (and I’m pretty sure I have in the past) that I do my utmost to adhere to the various and sundry rules and quirks of the English language. They call me Grammar Girl at the office. I have been known to wield a red pen with a level of glee which could only be described as manic. I will never not point out an inappropriate apostrophe.

The power of the Oxford comma compels you! ::flings holy water all over::

Ahem. Pardon me. I got a little overexcited.

Back to the dream. Of course, the memory always fades the next morning, but the image that stuck with me was a paper that had been handed back to me. It was more red pen and margin notes than original text, and holy crap, if that doesn’t give a writer the wibblies, nothing will.

Like any normal human being, I suffer from a certain level of what’s known as Imposter Syndrome, where I can’t shake the feeling that sooner or later everyone is going to figure out that I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.

I’m just realizing that I probably shouldn’t have told you that.

Anyway, I really did wake up in a cold sweat over this nonexistent paper all marked up by a faceless proofreader. The note at the top was the stinger, though.

“I know you can do better.”

Ouch. And, of course, this led to several hours of drain-circling. What am I doing? Why am I doing it? There are so many people who do it better than I do, why am I bothering? Am I really that good at it? I mean, I think I’m above average, and I know that people look to me to rip into their stuff and improve it...heck, my COO once said ‘You have nice verbiage,’ which was the weirdest compliment I’ve ever had. People say nice things in general. But...I could do better. Right?

My subconscious seems to think so, anyway.

Then again, my subconscious is kind of an asshole, so…

There’s nothing wrong with improvement. I keep bashing this thing out in an attempt to hone my craft. I write other things, too, in different formats. Sometimes I journal.

I play a word game when I'm waiting places where I make as many words out of the name of the place as I can.

Words are a Big Deal in my life. I like putting them together. I like messing around with them. I like using them to express my frustration at the monumental douchenozzle ahead of me in traffic. (There's a whole other facet of my language fixation--the spoken word. We'll leave that for another time, though.)

I’m still going to work on my, well, everything, but damn, Dream-Me. That was a dick move.

Okay, so...

Last week was a gift. This week I have the flu.

I'll be back NEXT week. For real, this time.

I hope... 

::flails weakly & looks pathetic & sickly::

"The Cheeeeeeeeeeeeat! Get in here with my Puke Pail!"