tag...I'm it!

So I hear I have been tagged...and now I am to reveal 7 deep, dark secrets that most people don't know about me. Man....this is tough, because I'm not one to keep much to myself, as you may have already noticed! But I'll give it a shot...

1. I only get dressed when I have to. No....I am not nude right now! But I am in my "work uniform" - black velveteen nightgown, beige fleece robe and warm suede slippers. (sigh...May temps in Seattle are akin to March's most everywhere else...)

2. One summer, I wired an old cow skull found in the southern Utah desert to the front grill of my car, then my daughter Katie and I (she was around 10 at the time) decorated the entire car with our hand prints dipped from a whole rainbow of tempera paints. We had semi trucks blowing their horns for us whenever we were on the freeway. Katie and I both had a blast with the attention! Eventually, it rained and washed all our fun away. (Meanwhile, my parent's wondered where they'd gone wrong...I'm guessing it was all somehow intricately tied to that aforementioned diet, don'tcha think?)

3. I sleep so impossibly soundly that I probably should have been reported to Child Protective Services at some point. When my kids were newborns, I would butt the cradle right up against my side of the bed so their heads were fewer than 5 inches from mine. But it didn't matter...I slept and slept and slept right through their cries, anyway. Poor babies...by the time I would finally wake up, it was always painfully clear that they'd been attempting to get my attention for quite. some. time.

4. I've had every utility turned off...most of them several times. There were eleven leeeeeean years post-divorce, until my first book was published. One time, I had acquaintances over to the house and when I used the bathroom, I discovered my water had been turned off. I'll never forget my horror as I realized I was going to have to get them out of the house RIGHT NOW before they needed to use the bathroom!!!

5. I don't watch TV. (Well, I mean, except for Survivor, Amazing Race, American Idol, Project Runway, The Apprentice, Dancing with the Stars and the news....)

6. In my 50 years, I've been in love with or married: a white man, a Japanese man, a black man 14 inches taller than me, and a Pakistani man 19 years my junior. Turns out none of those were really my type. Major problem - I'm fast running out of types!

7. In my opinion, toast is the perfect food. White toast....and for the following reasons:

• It's cheap.
• It's warm.
• It's quick.
• It's sweet - cinnamon, jam, honey
• It's savory - cheese, peanut butter, spaghetti sauce
• It's crunchy.
• It's buttery.
• It just smells heavenly....

I even have a fond childhood memory about toast. We grew up in Japan (Dad was a Lutheran missionary there for 10 years) and we had a housemaid, Hayano-san. She was like our grandma. I loved her inside and out. One day, when I was around 5, she took me with her on a visit to a friend of hers - a rare, rare privilege. I remember sitting on the tatami floor close to the warm, charcoal hibachi as the two women talked. A ceramic hibachi in the middle of the "main" room of the house was the only source of heat for Japanese homes back then. Soon, Hayano-san's friend asked if I wanted toast. I should first say that although we grew up in a small, rural town about 2 hours outside Tokyo, and although we were the only foreigners in the town (in fact, we were the only family in town with a car - an old military Jeep) and although all our friends were Japanese.....we actually lived in a western style home with hardwood floors, an oven & fridge, a sofa and beds and all the usual western stuff. In other words, toast was made in a toaster at our house.

But Hayano-san's friend put two, thick white, square pieces of bread (Japanese bread loaves are square!) on the small metal grill that rested across the top of the hibachi. I watched, fascinated, as she eventually turned the bread with chopsticks and I saw beautiful golden brown grill lines gracing the toast tops. After another minute, she used her chopsticks again to remove the newly made toast onto a plate, then buttered them and handed them to me. I literally remember all of this better than I remember this morning's breakfast. I remember the warmth of the hibachi, the heavenly smell wafting from the grill, the chopsticks turning the slices, how special and grownup I felt being on an outing with Hayano-san, and the perfect crunch of that perfect toast. Oishikatta, wa! (Delicious!)

See? Can't really blame me for having a warm spot in my heart for toast, can you, now?!

Done! That wasn't so bad. But now I'm supposed to tag 7 more????????????? How am I going to do that? Help!

Little Dutch Girl

I seem always to be writing in the few moments before a taxi comes to whisk me off to an airport. (Actually, I can't really say I "always" seem to be writing, when here lately, it's more like I "never" seem to be writing!)

Anyway...I'm off to Utah today for my annual May workshop in Provo. I will enjoy my 3 days there, because I invariably do! It's sooooooo pretty in Provo...and by now, that group feels like family, since I've been doing workshops in Provo forever and ever.

But before I go...I found a photo my sister gave me recently, taken in 1966 on the front porch of the Lutheran parsonage - our home. I'm 10. I don't remember this dress (or those godawful shoes!) but good grief....it looks like someone thought it would be a good idea to design a dress that could easily carry a toaster in its pockets!

So. You tell me? Does it look like I needed cow urine injection intervention?

Personally, I think all I need is a little shoe polish, sun-glasses and a little loosening up. I am looking like such a very good little pastor's daughter here, aren't I??? :-)

I'll write again soon! I promise!!

(Nora and I made up, btw.....thanks for asking!)

Nora and the Breakup

NORA DIDN'T WORK FOR ME THIS MORNING!!! (see previous post)


I guess Dewey, Oklahoma is out of her range or somethin'...but I can't begin to tell you how disappointed I am in her.

Managed to find the workshop location anyway, on my own, but it took a couple of stops at convenience stores for directions, and the 2.2 mile trip took half an hour.

So Nora and I are on the outs for right now.

If she talks to me real nice later this week and helps me get to the Tulsa airport, I'll think about giving her another chance....

;-)

Nora and the Rattle

I finished teaching a 3-day workshop in Newton, Kansas yesterday afternoon, and today I drove south from Kansas to Bartlesville, Oklahoma so I can teach another workshop for the next 3 days. Kansas was a blast, and deserves its own post, which I'll write later...But today...

I have recently fallen in love.

You know that TV commercial where the men fall in love with their GPS systems because "she" finds them golf courses and great Chinese food? Well, I'm telling you, that ad's not that far off the mark! My cell phone is my GPS navigator (through Verizon wireless...it's called VNavigator) and my nephews and I decided last week that "she" needed a name. We decided to call her Nora, but her full name is Nora K. Best (the "K" stands for "Knows".) She gets me everywhere stress free. I really can't begin to tell you what a relief it is to get into a rental car in a strange town with Nora in hand. No more panic, stress, fear or time lost being lost. I love her.

So this morning, I left my Kansas motel to head south on I-135. The sun was warm, skies blue, breeze was light...a perfect spring day, and I was immensely looking forward to the 2 and a half hour drive to Oklahoma. I hopped on the freeway and as my speed hit 60mph, I started to hear a rattle to end all rattles. By 65 it was a rattle/vibration/buzz saw...and at 70 mph (the speed limit on the freeway) it was DEAFENING. Not to mention a tad bit scary.

I'm not going to bore you with all the mental machinations I went through in trying to decide whether or not to continue on my way, or to turn around and drive up to Wichita to turn it in for a replacement rental car...

Suffice it to say that I decided to keep going south since as long as my speed was around 55, there wasn't a peep out of the car.

Here's the cool part. Driving virtually empty roads at a leisurely 55 mph on a sunny spring day with Nora at your side is like....like a......like a gift. Normally I'd be speeding along, pushing 5 miles over the limit, just because I could, all the while in a mild state of panic that my MapQuest directions aren't right, and have I already missed that turn off???

I enjoyed every minute. Lots and lots of grass and flat. Lots of lines of trees with graceful bare branches. Lots of cows. I turned off the radio and rolled down my windows and heard birds singing. Pulled the car over once to watch a huge flock of some kind of white bird way, way, way up high in the sky. At 73 mph, I'd never have even noticed them.

By mid-afternoon, with no breakfast or lunch yet, I was hungry so I pulled over in charming Caney, OK at the Snak Shack for a cheeseburger and ate it on the bench in the grass in front of the joint, right along the main drag. The hamburger patty was hand-formed - by real human (I suspect female) hands and the bun was grilled and the onion rings had never lived inside a box in any freezer. It took 10 minutes to fix and she brought it outside to me in a pure white paper bag without a hint of a cool logo or branding on it anywhere.

Half an hour later I was in Bartlesville in my hotel - safe, sound, rejuvenated and happy. Nora and her calm, confident voice got me here without a single wrong turn.

I can only hope that once I get back home to Seattle I find that my own little Ford Focus has picked up a nasty rattle of its own. It was a genuine and surprising pleasure to slow down for a change....

cow urine & fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt

Months ago, I mentioned a "cow urine" diet...

By the age of 14, I'd already been thoroughly through the diet wringer. Why I was put on so many diets so young is pretty much of a mystery to me, since I wasn't fat. Round, yes...but never so round that you'd even call me chubby. My parents are fine people, but they were pretty much nuts during much of our coming up years, and I guess, like, one of their hobbies was to try to make me thin or something.

By 1970, they'd tried the following in their fearless quest for a Twiggy daughter:

• 1961 - Changing the big meal of the day to noon, during which time I was at kindergarten.
• 1965 - Paying me a dollar for every pound I lost. I was 8 at the time. A dollar bought 20 candy bars in 1962, or two movie tickets. A dollar was sweet incentive...
• 1969 - Stillman's Diet. What every junior high kid wants to eat in front of her friends at school every day - broiled hamburger and a boiled egg. Oh yeah. THAT was fun...

Apparently none of these diets did much good. I do remember quickly losing weight on the Stillman's Diet...then gaining it all back in something like 3 and a half minutes.

So there was a fourth (but hardly the last) attempt. This one, the cow urine diet, involved Mom driving me to the local medical clinic every day for a shot of treated cow urine. It was supposed to help me shed pounds quickly. Hmmm...... Oh....and....well...just in case the pee shot didn't work, I was also simultaneously put on a rather restrictive diet. How restrictive? This restrictive: I was supposed to eat two cartons of yogurt a day. And that's it. Two cartons of yogurt! 500 calories.

Mind you, I was walking a mile to school every day and a mile back. I was 14 and a cheerleader and we practiced cheer for a couple hours every night after school, and when I wasn't walking or cheering I was playing badminton or kick ball in the church parking lot, or on my bike roaming the neighborhoods. Two cartons of yogurt a day. Ahhh....the enlightened 70's....

After 2 or 3 days of near starvation, I invented various and vital reasons to go down to the basement many, many times a day. Our basement was our pantry, and it was loaded with 10 lb. coffee cans loaded with Mom's reeeeally yummy homemade cookies. Peanut butter cookies, gingersnap cookies, chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal raisin cookies, snickerdoodles and shortbread and probably more that I've forgotten. No lie. There were never fewer than 6 giant coffee cans full of cookies downstairs. If the measure of a great mom is whether or not she stays home and bakes cookies, then my mom gets a perfect 10!

So, the cow urine diet was a bust. Two cartons of yogurt a day plus the crusts off Kim Harmon's tuna fish sandwiches at school lunch every day plus a couple dozen cookies every day pretty much negated whatever magical powers lurked inside that syringe. After a couple of weeks with no results, I remember the doctor's furrowed, accusatory brow as he actually asked me if I was cheating on the diet. If?? He had to ask if??????? I steadfastly denied it of course, probably while turning a furious red, as I was wont to do back then.

So there you go. That's my cow urine story. Not just everyone has a cow urine story. I'm rather fond of mine...