« October 2003 | Main | December 2003 »
November 21, 2003
WINE-O-RAMA
It has come to my attention that I’m severely lacking in the blogging category, basically because I can’t sit down and crank out an amusing tale of weekend follies five seconds after they happen. What can I say? Most so-called writers are lazy by default, and need a bit of motivation before the thoughts start flowing like volcano lava out of their pointed little heads. For me, it’s usually just a cheap glass of swill, but sometimes, even that doesn’t do the trick. However, when readers mention that they’ve been checking out my site and are disappointed to find the same entry from July, well, that usually gets the ol’ brain ticking. And so, in tribute to Seinfeld’s excellent episode where Elaine (patron saint of all single gals) decides which potential suitors are “sponge-worthy”, here are a few “blog-worthy” tidbits. I might also add that these items were suggested to me by friends and family, so feel free to throw out any other topics you’d like me to babble about……….and remember, I know you all too well……..keep it clean, people.
Wine, Women and Song
So you take 3 blondes of varying ages, throw them in a Toyota, crank up the Dean Martin, then send them out into the Madera wilderness and what do you get? Well, you could get a couple of days behind bars, but in this case, we just got headaches from laughing so hard. That’s right, last weekend was the infamous Madera Wine Trail, where you buy a glass, taste a truckload of vino, and the good folks behind the cork let you get right back into your car to terrorize the sober motorists! Yes Muffy, it’s true. I was joined on Saturday by Margaret and her daughter Kerry, whom I haven’t spent much time with in, oh, let’s say about 20 years? We grew up together, her sister Wendy, and my siblings Kelly and Jill. We practically lived at their house, the notorious 6019 Club with its “Toucantina” bar filled with, you guessed it, about 97 Toucans. Margaret always had swell pool parties, where we gals performed a thousand highly acclaimed cannonballs to a cheering throng of adults, who were usually under the influence of many smart beverages. Ah yes, the good ol’ days. But, I digress. Anyhoot, we three parched blondes ventured out into a vast void of vineyards (say THAT after visiting several tasting rooms), purchased our glasses, and proceeded to consume what must have been a vat of vino between us. I’m talking a lot of wine. An obscene amount of wine. More wine than our tastebuds could handle. Our favorite hot spots were the fabulous Quady Winery (best dessert wines ever), Ficklin’ Vineyards (love their moniker, “Not just any PORT in the storm!”), and the charming people at Englemann, where Kerry has connections. Though technically not associated with the Madera Vintners, and possibly the tiniest winery on the planet, they get high marks for tasty treats and the cutest boys. Who WAS that adorable blonde who sold us a truckload of wine? What WAS he talking about? Who cares! All I can say is we had way too much fun for our own good, screamed with hilarity every three minutes, and almost lost count of the myriad of avenues out there in the boonies….Avenue 24, Avenue 24 ½, Avenue 24 ¾…… where the DING DANG are we?......
We finally concluded our journey at the lovely and attractive Plaza Ventana, for quesadillas, taquitos, baskets of tortilla chips, margos, and several versions of Odd Todd impressions…”It’s shgood”.........(insert Kerry cracking up here)…….
WHAT?!
Living with your parents at the age of 42 is, to say the least, interesting. And I mean the VERY least. It’s also bizarre, strange, weird, frightening, perplexing, astounding, amusing, hysterical, bewildering, and mind-boggling. But mostly, it’s just LOUD. I MEAN REALLY LOUD. LOUDER THAN A JET BLAST. LOUDER THAN A HOWLIN’ HURRICANE. LOUDER THAN A FOGHORN-PRESSED-RIGHT-UP-TO-YOUR-EARDRUM. These people can’t hear anything. NOTHING. My mom laughs at the answers on Hollywood Squares, even though she never hears the questions. She turns up the volume on the bedroom TV so loud, I’m sure the residents of Visalia can hear it. Her reply to every single solitary inquiry is WHAT?! And this is even BEFORE you get the whole thing out: “You know mom, today I had…” “WHAT?” “Well, I was saying that…” “WHAT?” “I had to go to see…” “WHAT?” As Kelly would say, insert rolling of eyes here. My dad’s not much better, but at least he turns the television down to a dull roar to TRY and hear you. But really, he just hears things you DON’T say. I’ll walk into the kitchen, ignoring the level of loudness springing from the TV, open the fridge, turn to leave, and he’ll remark, “What did you say?” Again,……eyes slowly rolling into the back of my head. Actually, I’m going to lose my hearing much sooner than they did, maybe as early as next week, since my ears are being continuously bombarded by decibel levels not fit for the likes of Dumbo, and he had some big ass ears. “Huh? He had some pig grass beers?” Yeesh…….
And now, instead of rambling aimlessly about the really clueless drivers around town, I offer you a list of helpful tips of just who to stay away from while out on the open road. But before I do, let me just reiterate that there are only two types of drivers here in the hinterland:
1) The Cruisers – If the speed limit is 50, you can better believe these scaredy cats behind the wheel will not, under any circumstances, go any faster than 47.5 mph. If you’re behind them, it’s just slow enough to keep you from shifting into 5th gear, so your car makes that nice groaning noise….ugh.
2) Go Speed Racer – Or as I like to call them, the “can I just ride your ass before I climb into your back seat?” drivers. Enough said.
Drivers to Avoid at All Costs on the Fresno Freeway:
a) Two-door American cars with way too many stuffed animals in the back window
b) 1983 Black Trans Ams with oxidized hoods
c) Those IDIOTIC pickups that are so far off the ground you need a stepladder to get into
d) Lost souls going around the world to the left/right (blinker permanently on)
e) Any car with the following bumper stickers: Billy Graham Christian Ministries, I Voted for Bush, Metallica Tour 1997, Stops for Coors Lite, Proud Member of the NRA.
f) People on their cell phone, eating a breakfast burrito, reading the newspaper, working on a laptop, and using their hands in an animated fashion
g) Lowered Hondas with ear-splitting rap music blasting away
h) Chevy Blazers cranking out Travis Tritt from their speakers
i) Soccer moms in those ugly box vans
j) Anyone over 80
k) Anyone under 20
l) My dad (see #1 above)
m) My sister (see #2 above)
Posted by Wendy at 5:41 PM | Comments (4)
November 12, 2003
HOMING PIGEON
Foreward: I wrote this little blurb in 1994, eating lunch and contemplating life. I found it recently, and thought it quite appropriate; I've been back home for just over a year now. I hope you enjoy it. Lors, this one's for you.
SEVENTH HEAVEN
Oh to be home on a Sunday once again. It would be the greatest of treasures for me. I never realized how much I would miss those slow and lazy afternoons at my mother’s house, until I moved away. I didn’t think the sound of a Frank Sinatra tune or the molasses voice of Sarah Vaughn would send me into a sobbing state of melancholy. Sometimes, all it takes is a glint of setting sunshine on my bedroom drapes, or a few dusky shadows creeping across the carpet of the lonely living room. Many times, all it takes is an old Fred Astaire musical. But most of the time, just about every weekend, all I need to know is that it’s Sunday. What is it about Sundays that brings about the homesickness I’ve been saving up all the work week long? Perhaps it’s the lack of responsibility I feel on the weekends, the inexplicable feelings of freedom, expression, and adventure. Or maybe it’s just the searching for something to take my mind off the one place I’d truly rather be; my parent’s house. Sanctuary, safety, family voices, the aromas of pork roast and smoking wood, all deliver escape from an otherwise inescapable world. The one place in the entire world I crave to be in, more than I ever imagined, whilst surviving as a so-called adult away from home.
Like so many other inhabitants of the Bay Area, I moved away from a small (at the time) town and into the teeming city life of San Francisco. Growing up in Fresno, an agricultural city in the San Joaquin Valley, I was often envious of my cousin Lori, who lived in Marin County and worked in San Francisco. She often tried to persuade me to pack up my sleeping bag and movie posters, and head in her direction, where there were bigger and better things; including job opportunities at her company. In my personal and professional life at that time, I never even conceived of a life away from my hometown. However, several years later, the fates dealt me a hand that I could not win, and I folded under those nasty cards.
I’ve been in this fascinating and terrifying area for just over six years now, moving from Marin to San Francisco and back to Marin again; my well worn roots are currently in Walnut Creek. I often wonder if I’ll ever be an old redwood somewhere, with a patch of forest to call home again; a place my SPCA mutt and I will be able to grow old in, amongst the greenery and the sapphire sky. These thoughts have begun to haunt me like an unforgiven ghost lately, although I can’t quite account for them. I suppose the reasons could be beyond the time I have to count them, but I get the sneaking suspicion that it’s the lack of continuity in my life. Things like moving every other year, the tallied up romantic encounters, the absence of a close circle of friends, the jealousy of married couples with a family, house, history, and relationships of their own.
It just now occurs to me that I might be whining, which was not my intention, and is possibly the worst sort of self-indulgence one could possess by living here. So what was my original objective, you may be asking yourself over that third cup of Starbucks brew. Well, I’m not quite sure I even know. I enjoy living and working in the Bay Area, but sometimes I have to sort of reach out and give myself a good backhanded slap. My feelings of self-pity are often easily erasable, when I sit in a Financial District salad bar and gaze from top to bottom at the frowning buildings, towering like King Kong over an otherwise small and helpless concrete city. In other words, I often take my life for granted, which is an incredibly silly thing to do.
I thrive amidst the chaos and artistry of inarguably the most exciting city in the United States. The electricity practically bounces off the countless Yellow Cabs running amok on Market Street. Museum docents, theater goers, coffee shop clientele, restaurant owners, orchestra conductors, opera patrons, and homeless divas have all found a place to call their own. Be it a concert hall, a smoky piano bar, a soggy cardboard box, or the Sansome Street corner the "library man" shares with his ancient black lab; it belongs to them. I long to belong. I long to be a fixture somewhere. I used to be a fixture at my piano bench in the corner of my parent’s den. My hip songbook of 70’s hits splayed open, a glass of cheap chardonnay making a ring on the dusty (or polished, depending on my reliability) wood, and plastic colored ice balls floating in a circus ring on the grapevine liquid. I belonged there.
The condo I now share with my older sister has been on the market since last August. There have been a few nibbles, but nothing major. Realtors come and go, leaving their calling cards, hoping for that bite on the line, casting over and over in their hip waders. My sister will settle in with her boyfriend. My dog and I will be relocating again soon. I have high hopes for this move. I’m thirty-three and this will be the very first time I’m completely on my own. This is a decision I’ve made with a great deal of enthusiasm; no renting a room in a house, no having a roommate, no to anything that might stand in my way of an abode to call my own. I think this is an important (and long time coming) step for me; I anticipate it, I drool over the very thought of my chosen space and it's four walls of private solitude.
I miss my parent’s house on Sundays. I miss having G&T’s with my mom and discussing the hottest top-of-the-charts discs with my dad. I miss mom’s unbelievable mashed potatoes and gravy, and dad annoyingly yanking on my arm hair at the dinner table. I yearn for the silly jokes, the steaming redwood hot tub, the sound of the heater kicking on at night, the smell of non-coffeehouse java in the morning, and the silent loneliness of being in that house when no one else is there. Sometimes I think that when I’m in my new dwelling this time, when it’s all there just for me, I won’t miss Sundays as much. I won’t think of dad’s Trini Lopez tapes, or attending college plays with my uncle, or old high school friends dropping by for cocktails and a soak in the “Hunter’s Tub”. I’m sure it will be much easier to get through the weekends knowing I’m all grown up and can do whatever I want, whenever I want to. After all, I’ll be self-sufficient, won’t I? Who needs those home ties to some piddly little “aggie” town? Who’s got time for childhood buddies and a quiet night life? Let’s see, it’s 9:00 a.m. on Saturday, gas tank’s full…only three hours to Fresno…..
Posted by Wendy at 8:59 PM | Comments (2)
November 6, 2003
BIG FAT BLOG
“Prince, thou art sad; get thee a wife, get thee a wife...”
-Much Ado About Nothing
Or at least get thee to someone ELSE’S wedding, where you can enjoy all the fun and frivolity of marriage, and promptly leave the whole ding dang thing behind when the DJ packs it in. It’s sort of like babysitting for a friend; it’s great spending quality time with a small human who does lots of drooling, but after a few hours, you can hand them back over to their hapless parents and go have a beer. And so it was with this fairly immature attitude last Saturday, that I joined ma and pa Hunter, my two sisters and their significant others, and attended what was lovingly referred to as the “Big Fat Creek Wedding”. This would be the 3rd time my high school pal, Scott Knutson (of the infamous Clovis Knutsons) http://www.explorefresno.com/business/businessK.html would walk the plank, plunging into the great unknown depths of matrimonial bliss. Though by this time, he should be at least a LITTLE semi-familiar of what lies beneath the murky waters of champagne and rose petals.
Scott and his gorgeously frocked bride, Cindy, held their informal event at her parent’s place out at the cross streets of Olive and what appeared to be the ends-of-the-earth. Basically, you couldn’t go any further, or you might have ended up bumper first into the aforementioned creek that runs along their spacious property. The newlyweds are building a swanky new casa about 100 feet from the in-laws, which to most of us, seems like some sort of idea only a “whack job” (thank you, dude) would come up with. Apparently they’re not familiar with the Seinfeld “buffer zone” concept, which one should really employ with regard to either parents OR in-laws. Hmmm, I would say about 2,000 miles should do the trick. I shouldn’t really say anything, since I’ve been living with my parental until for almost a YEAR now; I’ll tell you what, that bedroom door ain’t much, but it’s the only buffer I’ve got. Oh well, at least if the happy couple needs to borrow something, they can just shout out the window, “Hey, do you guys have any Grey Poupon over there?”
In any event, it was quite the bubbly occasion, and there were many glasses of vino consumed (mostly by yours truly), along with around a thousand cans of Coors Lite. I think my sister Jill polished off about 347 brewskies herself, and my brother-in-law Jim, was positively astounded that he actually got ONE photo of her without that precious Silver Bullet in hand. I wish I could say he DIDN’T get an extraordinary amount of Kelly photos, but alas, we are once again deluged with countless pics of “the Kellster”…..one roll after another. www.thedude.com I think there actually MIGHT be a couple nice shots of the bride and groom somewhere in the background. And of course the food was FABULOUS, provided by Jill’s boyfriend Jeff and his band of “Outlaws”. Talk about grub for days, there were mass quantities of delicious tri-tip and chicken, mounds of pilaf, gallons of garden salad, green beans and thick slices of garlic bread. I think there was enough chow for several other wedding parties, including every single solitary guest that showed up for Princess Diana’s world-wide nuptials. And I have to say I was delighted by the color scheme the duo selected, especially considering the fact that the previous day was Halloween. Of course, in retrospect, I myself probably should have gotten hitched on that scariest of nights; under a full moon with werewolves howling, bats swooping overhead, and owls screeching their hoots of warning…..be afraid, be very afraid. Ahem. Anyway, as I was saying, Scott and his entourage were outfitted in great linen shirts the terra-cotta brick shade of a carved pumpkin, while Cindy was resplendent in a smashing ensemble of black satin pajama pants, topped with a sheer, ankle-length, sequined-bodice overlay. Bellisimo! And for those of us poor souls who served our time toiling in a flower shop many years ago, her beautiful bouquet of brilliant Bettina roses and seasonal berries was an absolute stunner.
And since I know you’re chomping at the bit to know….yes, we did do some major John-Travolta-White-Suit-Flaunting-Boogie-Nights-Saturday-Night-Fever disco moves on the dance floor. I was quite thrilled that I wore my fat square-heeled pumps, as I would have been a slippin’ and a slidin’ all over the place, especially when Scott L. twirled me about during a tune by “Big Bad Voodoo Daddy”. http://www.bbvd.com/ Well “Mario”, we may not be Fred and Ginger, but at least we had the guts to get out there and make complete village idiots of ourselves…..thanks for filling my dance card, once again. Plus, it was almost like a high school reunion/blast-from-the-past for moi, as there were many old acquaintances from days gone by. It was wonderful to see Evan “Ev-Head” and his adorable wife Cheryl again, after about 20 years or more. Scott K. and Evan used to share a townhouse a million moons ago, and well, let’s just say that Evan grinned a lot and there were many bottles of Visine in the bathroom cabinet. I was also surprised and happy to see the ever-faithful Dave Peters, who hung around with us during our tenure at the ol’ stomping grounds of Hoover High School, during our salad days of adolescence. http://hoover.fresno.k12.ca.us/ But, I digress. After the music had ended, and our “dancin’ feet” were almost too swollen to schlep back to the car, we managed to make it home to the Hunter Hideaway, for some major relaxation. Actually, we just ended up watching “Jaws” and “48 Hours”, while chowing down on Round Table Pizza, which is just about as chilled out as you can possibly get. Except for that one nasty shot of Roy Scheider’s “Quint” character, slowly getting munched, inch by inch, by one hungry Great White. Always appetizing, always a crowd pleaser. (check out this site…I want some of those action figures!) http://www.jawsmovie.com/
All in all, a good time was had by the masses, and we actually felt almost….dare I say it….NORMAL, in the morning? There’s something to be said by starting out with mimosas at 11:30 in the a.m., partying the afternoon away, and slipping into a warm set of sheets by 10:00 p.m. Hmmm, do I sense a trend beginning here? Could this be the latest thing in vow swapping? Morning marriages? Saying “I do”BEFORE noon? Asking your friends and family to look decent in the ugly hours of early daylight? And isn't that what weddings are all about - showing your guests a good time? Plying them with food and liquor? Isn't THAT the meaning of true love? Oh wait, a minute, there's that whole pesky bride and groom thing......
“......it was so cold I almost got married.”
-Shelly Winters
Posted by Wendy at 11:04 PM | Comments (7)