An Unmarried Woman

Every once in awhile an unexpected, irrestible someone or something comes along and stirs up the pot, the routine, the delicate balance of our lives.

The challenge for an intense person, given naturally to a single-mindedness pursuit of an interest, is to tame the 20-something year old inside the 50-something body that is still a lively, adventurous, independent woman but one with responsibilities and an experience-based recognition and knowledge of passing, potentially disastrous distractions. 

The unexpected distraction is a scenario ripe with the tension and breathlessness that fuels and is present, perhaps or most likely, in the most intense and memorable moments of our lives.  However passing or fleeting.

The things that can never be but distract.

What would you do, in the moment, if you knew you could not fail and time might stand still while you explored?

My fingers can still fly over a 10-key with respectable speed but my math skills have gone to pot.  In the deli section of Safeway I had my iPhone in my hand, using it as a calculator to convert the price per ounce to price per pound.  I was contemplating once again hauling food 1600 miles to Tulsa.

The incoming text read, “ALL MEN ARE DAWGS! Any ideas?”

At the risk of seeming uncaring or flippant, I responded, “You are asking me??!  I am far more interested in a good price for Manchego cheese than I am in men.”

Manchego is a firm Spanish cheese made from sheep’s milk.

“You are right to pair it with almonds,” a guest recently told me.  That night I was simply making due with the scant offerings of my pantry.  Right he was, though.  Manchego goes especially well with Marcona Almonds, (I have Urban Kitchen to thank for this knowledge) which are fried and salted (Blue Hour serves them peppered).  This morning I was again making do with what was on hand after discovering there was no yogurt in the icebox for breakfast.

Try this and tell me what you think….

Fill a blender with frozen peaches, blueberries and strawberries.

Slice up 3 small fresh ripe pears and toss them in, as well.

Leave to defrost slightly while you address thank-you notes (micro actions , such as just addressing the envelopes, help propel you through daunting to-do lists)

Return to run the blender until all is mixed but little bites of fresh pear are still visible.

Plate with roasted almonds and triangles of Manchego cheese.

Put on an Andre Ferinte recording.  Enjoy!

Always, Trix

Do the most significant directional changes in our life come about by design or chance?  By accident, impulse, peer suggestion or careful consideration?  Five years ago, would you have imagined yourself where you are, doing what you are doing and focused on what has your attention today?

What can we truly control and direct and how much do we wish to do of either?

I find myself loosening my hold on the reins, becoming more fluid, choosing now over no and never.  Still seeking a home, a safe harbor for my golden years but increasingly content with an interim nomadic lifestyle and lightening the load of possessions.  Treading more softly and stretching further.

Daydreaming has lost its allure, replaced by exploring – with enthusiasm and the expectation of delightful finds.

Enjoy the freshness of a new year.

Always, Trix

November 27, 2011

Find a few old letters and you’ve got rocket fuel for a trip in a time machine. And you may just like getting to know your younger self.

Three times one recent Sunday I loaded up a bellman’s cart with donations for the Salvation Army and headed for the lobby collection point.  I had scooted a good 100 to 150 pounds out the door before finding a crate of letters saved from the basement flood last December.  I dove in.  I was lost in memories before I had settled comfortably on the carpet.

A quickly scribbled draft of a letter later tidied up and mailed read:

Dear Carl:

Did you ever you make it to LA during mud season?  I keep forgetting to ask. Your lazy summer days in Steamboat are inviting. Are you painting at all?

I am writing from Cleveland – enjoying a break from stockings, hairpins and the Oklahoma heat for cooler, relaxed afternoons playing with my young nephew and niec Today we saw a Chardin exhibit downtown.  I liked his subjects and mood, for the most part, but eventually had my fill of images of dead rabbits nailed to the wall. And I have to say, I still really prefer to see art somewhere other than in a museum. Afterwards we stopped at the Westside Market. THERE I could spend HOURS strolling among the stalls.  Many have been in families for years.  Great faces, stories – so lively!

The trip and staying with family has been a nice break after indulging my appetite for solitude during my first two months living alone.  I am somewhat eager to get back to my place – a high rise flat.  I really like where I live.  My flat is small but the whole north side is one big window. I keep the drapes open to a view of hills and city lights.  Safeway, the library, the river, work – everything but school is within walking distance. Couples I knew in the building before moving in have gone on to buy houses but I meet plenty of new neighbors just coming and going  …

The letter was dated 9.2.1979.

Today the windows in my 11th floor Portland flat frame views of the West Hills and downtown.  A Safeway is next door and I am, again, relatively new to living alone. Neighbors still come and go and I regularly visit the Waterfront to spend time strolling through markets, taking in all the stories, sights, music, people. After years of involvement with the arts, I still view vibrant museums as those flinging open the doors for events with living artists and could-be patrons and I seek out galleries in a new town before paying admission to museums.

The girl who wrote to Carl was less than half my age. At first I felt shamed to have spent 3 decades seemingly going nowhere.  Then it struck me.  Many days I feel 21 again – in a good way.

November 26th, 2011

This is the year I will (probably, pretty likely, almost positively) buy a pair of cowboy boots.

They will most definitely be new for me but THEY will not be new.  Baby, this is a perfect example of when to hit the consignment shops. And men, give it some thought, too.

My consignment shop finds to date include  a black leather jacket, fitted wool jacket with perfect lapels for  broaches, lace up boots that looked like they stepped out of my DJ Lafon painting Remembrance and a vintage evening dress that I can wear  fearlessly to any cocktail party knowing I won’t see myself coming and going.

A good outfit is priceless and timeless. And when you want to experiment with a new look, trim the investment by shopping consignment or the sales rack  so a misfire doesn’t send you back to “safe” purchases forever. It’s up to you if you reveal your sources.  It is fashionable to be a smart shopper and sometimes deliciously satisfying knowing flattery can’t include copying.

Save your money.  Support the local economy and shop without going into the red.

November 25, 2011

This Thanksgiving I was grateful for an unexpected booty call.

It took me nearly fours hours to recognize it (some very specific dialogue finally tipped me off), a few minutes to consider it and several more hours to find the words for it.

I’m usually faster on the pick up. Also known to misuse and misspell slang, this morning I goggled “booty call.” Per Wikipedia:  A 1997 comedy film with bad boy Jamie Foxx.  I looked further.

Urban Dictionary: A late night summons — often made via telephone — to arrange clandestine sexual liaisons on an ad hoc basis.

Hmm. “Liaisons” rolls off the tongue much the same as does one of my favorite words: “lagniappe,” Southern for “a little something extra.” As for “ad hoc” – first known use in 1659 – it rhymes with Bangkok, bedrock ….  ah, the sonnets and snippets that could come of a tryst!

Sometime around 7 am I drifted off to sleep, satisfied. Though tempted, I’d chosen not to get any but simply enjoy learning that at 53 I’ve still got “IT.”  And my text buddy? He’s probably equally fine and chuckling.  In the wings he had two younger options with more expansive vocabularies, better rested and still eager to hook up.  As is my nature, I believed him.

Didn’t have a high school sweetheart. Not even a college romance. No teacher really stood out in my educational period.  Mentors for a woman in business in the early 1980′s weren’t plentiful but in 9th grade I met an incredible young woman just around the corner from my parents’ house. Her influence I would count among the top 5 people in my life.

I was always the new kid on the block.  I wasn’t accustomed to welcoming anyone to the neighborhood but I tagged along with the gang of teenagers who lived on Delaware Place and visited the Keegan’s home in early summer 1972.  I met Glenda. Glenda wrote to her daughter Lisa that night, “I’ve met your best friend.”

Indeed when Lisa arrived in Tulsa from a summer trip and we met on August 9th we started a year together in Tulsa as the best of friends.  Lisa moved away August 10th, 1973.  Her father had been transferred back to New Orleans.  Glenda thoughtfully allowed us our “first anniversary of meeting” before heading south.

Since then, for 38 years, we have stayed in touch (am I doing the math right?).  At first we wrote daily, doubling up on Thursdays so Monday’s trip to the mailbox would yield 2 letters to make up for no delivery on Sunday. I visited New Orleans regularly in the early 1980′s and Lisa met my son when he was still in diapers and we were in our first house.  But I’ve never met her daughter, a lovely woman – like her mother – and slightly older than Lisa and I when we first met.

Minutes ago I booked a November trip to see Lisa for the first time in more than a dozen years. Family and business kept us both close to home during the 1990′s; we met once for a lunch in Dallas at the Mansion on Turtle Creek.

I hope the dates will fit her schedule.  The trip is one I’ve delayed far too long.

And you?  Isn’t there someone who should hear from you TODAY?

Always, Trix

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1042110–the-decline-of-asian-marriage

This article has many interesting stats.

Does the heart  now play only a very minor role in the decision to marry or not to marry?

Trix

“Have you looked at the menu? There must be 10 ingredients in each dish,” I said.

I was standing in a crowded, noisy dining room that only allowed for “sound bites” of conversation.

He picked a dish on the menu and began to count.  Scientists can be so literal.

Coffee and pimento-rubbed smoked pork shoulder with pomegranate glaze, Korean rice sticks, lop cheon on mustard green kimchee.  Fingerling potatoes in red miso with Roger Konda’s wild and domesticated mushrooms. Firm tofu with fava beans, leeks and sundried tomatoes with Szechuan peppercorn.

What was easily visible on the menu with the naked eye thankfully proved my hypothesis.

I didn’t have a clue what cheon was and hoped when the time came I could pick out the tofu but first I had to come face to face with the eel. I was attending my first open kitchen. I’d read about open kitchens AKA “pop up restaurants” and on the car ride over to Portland’s southeast side a friend had read aloud the press release about this one at Abby’s.  It was our crash course en route to the event.

In the gathered crowd were four couples I knew but I’d bought a single ticket. When guests and seat assignments are paired at food events it generally means seating all the solo explorers together with or without a stray leftover couple once all the other tables have been filled. I had done nothing to thrust the assignment at the community table with what turned out to be the food and hospitality industry types involved with or studying the production.  I decided my role would be iPhone photographer.

Roger (Konka) turned out to be a rather shy farmer dressed in a Tastykake shirt he’d bought at Good Will. We spoke across the table of the “mowing pigs” he was now raising and the gold mine in truffles. Under a mop of thick dark disheveled hair he had dancing blue eyes in a sun-wrinkled face. My mother would have had something to say about the dirt under his nails.  I thought it made him even more authentic and farmerly.  We both smiled broadly each time a farmers’ market regular came over to fuss over him and share their experiences with buying and cooking the mushrooms he sold.  The florist seated to my right was a retired musical theatre dancer who had left New York, heading west in pursuit of his next career, arriving in Portland two months before the crash of October 2008.  Through many twists in the path he seemed to always land on his feet.  The beverage and spirit educator to my right talked of her 10 years living in Japan and explained her unusual name was really quite common in Israel. When we visit next I will ask her about sake.

By the time I rejoined my Wyatt neighbors for the ride to Teardrop for a nightcap I had made three new friends. It was Saturday.  I had wandered out for dinner on my own the two previous nights.  Friday at a neighborhood outdoor Italian café I experienced being kissed each time the owner talked by my table – cannot say I felt sorry for myself being without a date since I was getting more attention than any other woman in the place. Thursday I had a bird’s eye view for people watching at Irving Street Kitchen while I enjoyed making a meal of just a simple but delicious white corn soup and studying the ink on paper artwork depicting farm animals.

I have said it before but it bares repeating: eat out alone occasionally.  Suck up your courage, let loose of some of your pop bottle money and don’t cook at home. Even if you don’t live alone, and especially if you do, leave the kitchen sink. I promise you it will be more entertaining than most any rerun on TV – certainly any I’ve seen in years.  You may not learn to like tofu (I haven’t) but the port-like flavor of cherry wine may pleasantly surprise you.

Be gracious but particular about the table you are ushered to and above all else, take the time to do more than strictly fill your belly.  Feed your soul, recharge your imagination.  You will live through the execution of such a plan and you’ll do it with a style that will impress the most important person in the room to impress – the one attuned to every detail and nuance of your actions– you.

Bon appetite! Trix