buying your own flowers, or....

O.K. when I was a kid in the 50's, and thank you very much I don't really look like I am 55 at least from the neck up...below is none of your business, women did not buy themselves flowers.

Or so I thought.

Or perfume, or jewelry, or anything that a man should, and would, buy them.
As Marilyn sang, "diamonds are a girl's best friend " and Anita Loos made sure she never bought them, her lovers did. And Coco Chanel. She was liberated, introduced pants, and you can be sure others bought her diamonds and flowers and perfume.

So this is a wierd post feminist diatribe. I wanted my husband to bring me flowers. He would bring me chocolate, and cookies, and in the death throws of duplicity, would bring me cookies from a bakery where he had just come from hanging out with his syncophants, and girl hanger's on, and more. A tuille for a kiss. A shortbread for his hugs. And I, the fool thanked him for his crumbs. He meant well, and I was at the same time decieved, as was he. Move on.

I need to buy my own flowers, and chocolate, and perfume, and diamonds. I really hate to, I want men I know to be able to read my mind, bring me flowers and regress to the 50's. I don't think I should buy my own luxuries, and therein is the paradox. If I don't, who will? Treat yourself, and indulge yourself. Sleep in, indulge yourself as a friend said. Who else will tell you that?

Do men buy themselves flowers? I think, from recent postings that they have no trouble buying themselves toys, jewelry tools, golf clubs, sportboats, good for them. Women buy mom things, and house things. I left behind a washer and dryer for God's sake, an entire yard full of flowers I helped plant, and bricks I bought, and statues I was given. It hurts to see the yard. I did not get myself toys, I bought for the house. I bought for the family.

I had a fantasy that if I put money down at a florist, I could go every Friday and pick up $5 of flowers throughout the year and treat myself. I would love flowers in the home, and recently bought myself some. I had a friend coming over, flew to the store, bought wine, flowers, and threw all the clothes in the hamper. My daughter later in the week brought me flowers, and I adored them. But generally, I am on the shelf, waiting for them. Waiting for the call, the e-mail, the invitation to the movie, the implication and symbolism is large and clear.

So what if no one brings them? Will I never have them? Do I live a life without flowers?

Really, flowers in this context mean love. I have the love of my daughter. I rarely got flowers from anyone else, and they mean so much. I should tell people more, and they should get it. I got flowers from my husband during courting but then very few afterwards. If love to me is making a meal, and caring for the home, why can he not get that love is not big presents but flowers for $5 every Friday, not shortbread from the loose skirt doxy? I will promise to be more deliberate and hope the man gets it.

On to chocolate, lingerie, and diamonds.

Ditto diamonds, when I finally got that tennis bracelet, it was already tainted. I had wanted one in the worst way. I packed it up and will never wear it again. enough said.

I bought my own gold for my birthday, and love it. Do I wish that someone else would buy it for me? You bet I do, and I would want it purchased with fun, and love, and sex, and no strings, and not taint. But it ain't happening yet, and I needed new earrings. If I want my daughter to be a self actualizer, I should model the same thing; indeed, I have learned from her. She waits for no one for her shopping and taking care of herself.

Chocolate is over-rated in my mind as a gift. Touted in year old packages with a bloom of over- heating on it at Valentine's, it is not what I want. But, chocolate in home made packages from artisinal producers, from Mexico, from Africa, will fit the bill, I work in food. I don't want a mass produced bar, or tacky heart box. I want chocolate dripped, licked, rolled, dusted, and liquored. Get it. Or, I get my own, and that is the shift.

I buy my own flowers, I buy my own chocolate, and I buy my own lingerie. No more Costco brands for me, yes, I crossed the threshold of the famous Victorian and went for it. Always be prepared, the Girl Scout of lingerie, and waiting. Or not, but no longer a six-pac underwear gal.

Perfume falls into a shadow quality, if someone else buys it for you, it may not be likeable. And, it is impossible to wear perfume that is upsetting. However, luxurious lotion, and oils, are gifts to enjoy. Give me more. I do buy my own perfume, because I hated telling what I like, then they got it, then I was "surprised" with the gift. Learn me better, and get it right. I worked very hard especially when called upon that I was not attentive, to pick things that worked.

Yet, I got my "list'. It is hard to make a list that says, "notice me, pick me, choose me."

choose cookies, choose chocolate, choose tennis bracelets, choose......

So, I have a great perfume, it is arcane, it is multi-sexual, and designed in the 20's. Cary Grant and Ava Gardner both liked it, it is Italian, and reeks of the Riveria, Kathering Hepburn, Coco, and the Cote d'Azure. I have gone through three bottles since July. And, it is the last thing I charged; I am paying things off.

So, I buy myself flowers.

Take note, if you start to buy me some, be prepared for their significance, and don't take it lightly. Otherwise, I will reduce you to cookie crumbs, and pack away your gift, it is too painful to not be worthwhile. Sometime moving on means to face it, and take responsibility for mixed signals.

barbeque

Smoke, fire, and big slabs of something from an animal...barbeque. I have begun to think about it as the weather warms up. I only have a small deck at my new home, and so am beginning to think that one of the cantilevered ones like those hung over an outboard might not be a bad idea. Until I flip with a spatula the t-bone over the deck to the wildlife waiting far below. Must re- think this.

We have always barbeque'd, as I grew up I have a mental photo shoot of shish kebabs on our fifth floor balcony in Izmir, Turkey. Mom had purchased the three foot skewers in the market, and Dad would make the shish kebabs to grill. I have those skewers yet, in a vase on my mantle, and use them often.

Americans grill. If Chinese set up restaurants all over the world, and they do...I have had egg rolls in Frankfurt, New Delhi, and Panama...Americans take their grills.

In Germany we lived on the fourth floor, and no balcony. The apartments were divided into three stairwells, with eight homes to a stairwell. And, in the front of the homes were line ups of grills. Dad would run down the flights to do the steaks and bring them all the way back up for dinner parties. The smell of coals on the base evoked America, and fourth of July and fun.

Later, when my brother was a young Air Force officer, he was stationed in a base in England. They did not have enough rank to be on base, so he and his young wife found a place in a small village. The taciturn villagers, British to their crumpet soul, did not really come forth with open arms. What to do? Walt and Ingrid decided to have a good old fashioned Texas barbeque, complete with potato salad, the works, and invited all the neighbors. It was a huge success, slabs of commissary beef on the grill, and these grizzled WWII vets took them to their collective hearts and made Walt an honorary Rotary member. Wins them over all the time.

Over the last few years in my marriage we had collected barbeques, to no success in using them though, we would always forget to start the coals. We didn't start a lot of coals it seems. It became a joke, from the very lovely cast iron Lodge cookware one, to a small Webber, electric, and antique hibachi. Never got used, like so many presents, they were appreciated but not accessed. Wonder why. Concept over performance, like so many things, plans which rolled from year to year with no sense of time. I loved that Lodge grill, but was the only one who used it, although grilling is supposed to be a guy thing. Macho. And yet, there I was, using it, de rusting it, and now it is rusted.

That too is a metaphor, I tend to be forthright, and take charge, and do the "guy" things, maybe because I am a military kid, or the first, or in a post feminist angst not wanting to look like a girly girl.

To hell with that now, I want to be more of a girly girl, I want someone else to open the wine, buy my dinner, take care of me. but not too much. I can start my own coals, thread my own kebabs, in fact I took a BBQ class from the CIA. Big, Big, men with whole cows on the grill. Me, feeling petite, something I do not feel often, and still having to work with whole cows on the grill.

Where was I? Oh yes, feeling petite AND assertive at the same time. I want a grill on my deck. I want a party, I want people to come and go in my home and grill, and the sound of men's laughter as smoke drifts over the trees. I want elegant appetizers, champagne glasses on the deck and plates of food for the summer as we look over the valley. I want my own grill, not one that was seldom used, or enjoyed. I want my grill to make its own history. And, I want someone else to help me with it when needed, and to stand back when I damn well want to do it on my own

There is a book out by a friend called "Girls who Grill" and I get it. And, the grill is not Barbie pink, in fact, I don't think Barbie ever had a grill. Only Ken, but then again it took him 20 years to get hair.

This does not mean in any way that I plan to tune my own car, change my own tires or drive a stick. It does not mean that I will swill beer and bait my own hooks. It does mean that I like fire, I can invite men over to eat, and turn out something that was not immolated in the coals. And, tired metaphor that it is Phoenix like it will, and I will rise again. I am looking forward to the summer.

uberthinking

I think too damn much. Lately, I cannot turn off my head, and boy have I tried. I think on the way to work, listen to the radio and think at the same time. I teach and also check e-mail, visualize what the next class will be doing and project a mental map of activities for the rest of the day. I am doing five things at once, six classes a day, too many projects, and behind in anything. I avoid thinking by watching TV or reading, but I am not relaxed. I think at the end of a massage, what I will be doing in 15 minutes. And I over think my actions with friends, new friends, and midlife friends.

This is exhausting me. I am sleepwalking. I have tried meditation but I begin to think. What is the sound of a quiet mind? Beats me, I have a skitzo conversation with myself constantly.I have tried yoga, but by the time I get into position watching the limber gal on my DVD, I cannot focus through my narrow cool bifocals, and then begin to think if I am doing the pose right. The TV is on in the background, and like a personal ad where the visual news channel is also running a line item along the bottom: "man eats hot dog and dies" " government statistics are overrated", I have this blog typing going on while I listen to the inner city news in my background, across the room to the TV. I hear myself constructing sentences, and even have sentences, floating like a ghostly script through my consciousness, in my dreams. I can construct whole storylines, and not turn them off. I even see the letters, the layout, and hear the voice over. I am in a video movie and the enemy is me.

At three am the computer calls me because, well, I was thinking and woke up. Shivering in my pink p's, glasses off, one eye shielded from the glare after the dark, I check my mail. I type a little, check my spelling and typos and stumble back to bed, clutching the dogs like teddy bears. I begin to think again. It makes my shoulders hurt, and teeth, I now wear a mouth guard. I think about that too.

There are times I don't think but it is rare. Wine is no good, I am trying to not drink it and lose weight. I did for a while, but really, this is a habit I broke, and I do not want to start again. If wine is in the house, it calls as a siren relief from stress when I come home from work. But, I am trying to resist. If I could only stop up my mind with wax like Ulysses and his Siren sail-by, bind myself to the mast of relaxation and let the thoughts float away.

A new friend helped the other night, sensing my tenseness, my filling the space with words. And, now I worry that I was still thinking too much, lost in the silence of my mind and not acting out or expressing just what good time I was having. I was too worried what they would , THINK of me! This is truly neurotic. Or a throwback to middle school. I am an adult, I can act and not continue to debrief myself again and again about actions. But, I do not want to have lost an opportunity to grow because I think too much before, during, and after any event in my life.

Food metaphor, after all, it is a blog for food. Watched pots don't boil. More than that, over fiddling seizes the chocolate, dashes the souffle to sodden bits, and scources the sauce. Too much plating ruins a perfectly lovely dish, too much spice leaves no nuance. God, could I only apply that to my life at the moment instead of after the event.I am a delayed reaction, a sonic boom of my own mind. I want another chance. I want my mind to quiet, to relax, and to be in the moment, not in the synapse. Any suggestions, ship them there, but don't think too much, just send them.

PInot noir

I had a boyfriend who named his dog, a big black standard poodle, Pinot. As in noir, as in black. cute. nice dog, nice man. That was my first introduction to Pinots. I moved to Oregon in the silly glory years of winemaking, when everyone with a slope thought they could, and would, make wine.

We had fruit wines that would rival Maneshevitz, apple wines ,rhubharb wines, and finally everyone thought we should make wines like California. Cabernets flowed in the gulleys and we were wrong. Ours was not an Italian wanna-be climate, we were the Rhine with salmon. We had finally figured out that we should grow Gewurtztraminner, Riesling and other om-pah-pah wines, suitable for small sausages and German style Spatlaleze sweet wines. Our microclimates, deep valleys with mists, rain and south facing slopes lead themselves to the type of wines that the Romans figured out would work in the Mosel, Saar, and Ruhr valleys, let alone the Rhine with the Loreli, Wagner, and lederhosen.

Topless dancers, folk music, bell bottoms, hippie beads, and organic grapes, and the lure of counter-culture music led in the 70's. The wine followed the same path. I now have diners with mega mansion owners who planted the first Rieslings and were the old hippies. Cabernets eat our dust.

I could trade my weight, up and down, in Pinots in Calistoga. Actually, I could drive to Napa with my Subabru, the Pinot car equivalent in Oregon, loaded to the roof rack with Pinots. I could return with the Mercedes, the Lexus and the Volvos of wine.

Twenty years ago, I traveled with boyfriend post divorce guy to Calistoga. We had broken up, o.k, I found that out in the MIDDLE of the trip, but he still wanted the free trip, to search for cabernets. We survived, and drank a hell of a lot of Cabernet in our post-coital denial search for vino. Cabernet bottles lined the dresser, not lingerie. But, we still had a good time, after I verbally beat him up.

However, in a Freudian wine sort of way, I don't like cabs anymore. Cabs. That also means in jewelry the faceted, rounded ready-to-set gemstones. Cabernet is the same way, faceted, and full of terroir, the ready-to -set flavor from the earth. Cabs must breathe, and they have gravity, weight, and nuance. I don't want to drink gemstones, I want stones. And they make me flush with a blush...so I stopped drinking them.

On to Chardonnays, the darling of the post-Cab era in Oregon. After lots of blondes, ( who can say that with a straight face) oak planks floating in a sea of butter, cabs have finally settled down and I tried them. But, personally, I prefer the lightweights, the trainers, the Vouvray, Souave and white Rojoas. No cabs. No blood red wines, less nuance, less pairing problems, more shift to light, and God forbid easier to get out of the carpet. A metaphor for my relationships certainly.

On to Pinots. After twenty years drinking only whites including champagne and Aste, I think I have grown into Pinots. Oregon wines have grown up. No strawberries hovering over the cork. In fact, many corks have never seen a God-given tree, most are like test tube kids, grown in the lab. Wines are in aseptic boxes God love them, and not amphore. No Greek gods of wine here, but the gods of the viniculture and wine degree.

But Pinot IS the wine of Oregon. Everyone likes them, in fact, they have priced themselves out of the state. I was in Panama this winter, and found a wineshop with Oregon wines differentiated like California, and ( oh my God) Washington wines. Pinots were out of sight in price, even my friends down the valley with theirs. My neighbors in Panama! Guess I had better pay attention to the neighbors.

Like always, my metaphors and life lessons are home grown, even found in Panama. Pinots are home grown. They too, have nuance, complexity, gravity. They beg to be discovered, and I have followed Barbie instead of her darker cousin. I need a little red in my color, a little blush in my cheeks, a little blood in my sex-starved veins. Maybe I should look at the men in the same way; complex, not duplicitous, with focus and locality. I do not need to travel to Calistoga, they are at my own back door. Pinots are a locality, a myth, a national article in Wine Spectator, and time to re-discover. Put the Chardonnays on the back shelf. Pop the cork, forget the cellaring, and move on.

pyjamas

ok, ok, it has been a month since my last posting. mea culpa. I will work on it, my initial goal was to post very other day, but then, life got in the way. Conferences, meeting new friends, and housecleaning, the occasional wine binge, and family. That's all.

So, pyjamas. p.j.'s.

I turned 55 at my conference and decided to have a pj party in my room. I didn't want a pity party, it has been a rough year, but I would like to think it is a successful year. One of moving on, liberation, not worrying about "the other" and decorating/eating/reading/watching for myself. So, I decided to have a champagne and pj party in my hotel room.

I had a blast.

And, next year, I will do it better.

I did not take my pjs, which are and alternatively have been, an assorted set of long sleeve tee shirts from the mid east council and knit lightweight sweats. I have gone to bed with Alexander the Great on the silk road, a casbah from the Moorish world, and Turkik designs. All with black sweats marked with paint from my walls, as they doubled with paint pants from the summer. And godawful wool socks. I hate cold feet, ( now there's a metaphor) and sleep with socks no matter how hot the summer.

Nope, I got my own new pjs, and alternative pjs. I went with a friend to get some vintage and old clothing, and found a great set from the 40's which are brushed flannel, and outside shiny striped pink, silk pjs that Katherine Hepburn wou have loved. But, no bra. Lots of folks. So, I also took my Syrian silk caftan, red, and lots of embroidery. If I had a turban it would be retro 50's, but it is really from Syria. I selected that for my guests. Barefoot, new red toenail polish.

Lots of champagne, small cupcakes, the new thing, and trays of baklava.

I loved the friends who came. One packed his embroirdered smoking jacket from France to wear. Another, a silk ensemble, ivory, with pjs and wrap. A fave: a flannel set with sushi on it. And, an eccentric brilliant friend in red flannels. It was great.

For those who said, " I don't sleep in anything, ". Too much information! Wear street clothes! come anyway. And they did.

So, what is is about pjs? Not nightgowns, not negliges, but pjs. They seem to be from the great 30's like Gatsby, feminine and not, and appropriate in public. Two days later, friends who missed the party called at 1 am. They still had a present to deliver, would I come get it? I put on my tourquoise wrap, kept on the pink silks and went downstiars in the hotel elevator. I figured if I was found out I oculd always plead lock out.

So, I had a birthday and folks got behind it. I was not pitied, I got presents, (unasked for) and had fun. A new year. And next year, new party, and new pjs.