Love the meat!

During a recent trip to Atlanta where I had the pleasure of shelling out 2k for a burst pipe (yup, had to dig through the driveway and everything. Lovely!) for a house I am unable to sell, I did have the good fortune of being able to meet up with my good friend, Mark. (Refer to previous post of our last outing:
http://carolesharpless.blogspot.com/2010/05/news-update.html )

Mark is always good for a night of laughs as we always have such a fun, comfortable time together. He also knows what a pig I am, no pun intended, so he took me to a Brazilian steakhouse for dinner. Ever since I first learned about the Brazilian steakhouse (or churrascaria, for Brazilian people or annoying know-it-alls), I wanted to go. And it never disappoints.

If you’re unfamiliar with the awesomeness that is a Brazilian steakhouse, congratulations on being a vegetarian. Basically, a Brazilian steakhouse is a temple to all things meat. There’s no menu. There’s no pasta special. There’s a huge salad bar and an army of men who wander the dining room with various hunks of meat on skewers, their sole mission being to feed you so much meat that it’ll take weeks for your digestive tract to get back on schedule.

You “order” using a wooden disk at your table. One side is painted red, the other green. When you want meat, you place the green side up. When you don’t want meat, you place the red side up. “Simple enough,” I think to myself as we sit down at the table.

The waiter comes to our table to explain the procedure and I give him a look that says “Yeah, like I would come to a Brazilian steakhouse without A PLAN.” The way I see it, an all-you-can-eat buffet is a battle between me and the restaurant: They want me to fill up quickly, I want to suck them dry for all the food they’re worth.

I tell Mark I have a plan and he reminds me it’s a restaurant, not an action movie. Whatever. The idea, I tell him, is to wet your appetite using the salad bar. This means eating small portions of delicious food, but also eating medium sized portions of not so delicious food. In this way, you properly wet your appetite for good food while tricking your stomach into thinking that it has to absorb as much of the good stuff (i.e. meat) as possible before the mediocre stuff comes back. This procedure is in line with how my mind normally relates to my body (through deception and trickery), which is also how I conduct most personal relationships in life. It’s complicated, but effective.

My first plate contains mozzarella, asparagus, lettuce, hard cheeses, and pasta salad. I eat in a rotating fashion: two good bites (mozzarella and cheese), one bad (lettuce). (Readers should understand that I don’t hate lettuce, I just fundamentally disagree with, and will never trust anyone who says they like, lettuce.)

Mark is going to town on his heaping plate of appetizers, but I know better. I eat slowly, purposefully. All the while, I am watching the waiters stalk the eager diners with their hunks of meat. (Ed. Note: Great line for a suspenseful chapter ending in my next romance novel.)

Finally, the time comes to flip the disk from red to green. And the second I do, it’s like chumming shark infested waters – except I’m not the prey, I’m the hunter. And the waiters are carrying my prey, so they’re more like a school of smaller fish who are incidentally attracted to the bloody scene. So the shark metaphor might be a reach. But the point is, I haven’t had this many men offering me meat since that time in college when my friend Laura and I got caught in a torrential downpour and accidentally ducked into a Frat house soaking wet. . . .

And once the floodgates opened, it was impossible to stop them. Top round, bacon wrapped filet mignon, pork medallions, quail – the only thing more impressive than the quantity was the variety. When one guy came over and thrust a slice of medium rare beef at me saying “Pichana!” I thought he was threatening me. It turns out that’s a type of delicious steak. Which I ate a lot of.

The initial flurry was intense, but then Mark reaches over and turns my disk to red...

...Instinctively, I shot him a threatening look. But in that moment, he talked me off the ledge: “Remember the plan! Slow and steady!” I took a deep breath and realized he was right. This is what they wanted me to do – ruin my appetite by gorging on the first wave, leaving me defeated. I looked Mark in the eye and realized all over again why I once loved him.

Then he quickly reminded me why I dumped his ass (*smile*) ... with his cheesy attempt at humor he said, "Remember Carole that the way to a man’s heart is through his meat."

I rolled my eyes at him, shaking my head with a smirk: "That's so appealing. Women love to be talked to like that..."

"You miss me. Admit it.", he said with a teasing wink.

"Just tend to your meat, Romeo!" :)

Pigs in a blanket

What a rare treat to get to hang out with my favorite twosome, Atlanta's Lee and Amy Amlicke.

Anniversaries and Memories

"Sometimes I feel like there is a hole inside of me,
an emptiness that at times seems to burn.
I think if you lifted my heart to your ear, you could probably hear the ocean.
The moon tonight, there's a circle around it... Sign of trouble not far behind.
I have this dream of being whole.
Of not going to sleep each night, wanting.
But still sometimes, when the wind is warm or the crickets sing...
I dream of a love that even time will lie down and be still for.
I just want someone to love me.
I want to be seen."
-- Practical Magic ---

Today my thoughts have been consumed with my mother, Nancy. Today marks the day she died, 25 years ago. I've been without my mother for much longer than I had her.

My memories come as isolated snapshots now. A kaleidoscope of colorful fragments that somehow add up to a woman I once called "Mom". I can no longer hear her voice, and the few examples I have of her handwriting have begun to look foreign to me. I am losing her a little more each day. How is it then, I've wondered, that she still has such a hold on me.

My mother died on the eve of her 48th birthday. So young. It had been thirteen months since she returned from the doctors office with news of malignancy in her breast, thirteen months of chemotherapy and CAT scans and desperate attempts to hang onto the little rituals that amounted to normalcy in our day. We still took our orange juice and vitamins together in the morning, but then she swallowed the small white oval pills that were supposed to help prevent the cancer's spread. After school I would go with her to her oncology appointments and on the way home in the car she promised me she would live. Because I wanted so badly to believe her I did, even as I watched her lose her hair, and then her mobility, and finally her hope.

When my mother died, I knew no woman my age who had experienced mother loss. Also too I was an only child. I felt utterly and irrevocably alone. In college, where new friends knew only as much about me as I was willing to reveal, I told few people my mother had died. I searched the university library and local bookstores for writings about mother loss. In each book I found about mother-daughter relationships, I quickly flipped ahead to the chapter about a mother's death, but discovered they all assumed the reader would be in her forties or fifties when her mother dies. I was fourteen. As a grown woman, I have no ongoing female presense in my lfe. I have no aunts, no sisters, no stepmother. I have my friends, who I adore, bu they are my peers. It is not their job to be my mentors or my umbilical cord to oxygen. With a maternal void in my life for most of it, it's a wonder I'm not more screwed up than I am. :) When your window to mimicry closes - how do you learn?

I am fooling only myself when I say that my mother exists now only in a photograph or in the outline of my hand or in the armful of memories I still hold tight. She lives on beneath everything I do. She's a foggy image I can't quite bring into focus and a gentle spirit that infuses all my days. She exists in the background of my life, hovering, suspended, shapeless, like familiar air. Her presence influenced who I was and her absence influences who I am. From the fourteen years with her I learned to be fun loving, enthusiastic and devoted. Since her death I've learned to be independent, self sufficient and strong.

In the darkness of night when everything is quiet and still.... in these hours when I am my most alone and my most reflective, I often ask myself: Am I as I am - who I am, what I am - because my mother lived or because my mother died?

The answer, I decide, is both.

Love you and miss you, Mom - forever my hero.

REV3:Costa Rica

I'm getting that warm, fuzzy feeling............. and NO not because I am going to Costa Rica ......but because Rev3 Costa Rica is a mere 6 days away!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Go TICOS!

Will I Be Fish Food?

I have to be careful how I write some of this entry. If I suddenly go missing, know I did not go into the witness protection program (I’m not a witness of anything) ... Please be sure all of my worldly possessions (my MAC makeup and a house I am unable to sell in Atlanta) go to my sole heir, my 4-year old Goddaughter, Isabelle. (I’m being funny – I hope.)

While sitting in the Denver Airport waiting to board, I made my way to the Chop House Restaurant bar area to have a snack. I struck the good luck of randomly sitting next to two gentlemen who would provide great conversation for an hour. I’m not really sure why they were talking about “The Kennedy’s”, or in particular, the foundation for their fortune and Joe Kennedy (father of JFK, Robert, Ted, etc. ) but I was about to appear really intelligent. They were discussing one of the few topics about which I can really hold my own in both opinion and fact.

I bit my tongue as long as possible while eavesdropping, but then had to step in. I extended my hand for introduction and invited myself into their conversation.

My family has always had...let’s call it a “fascination” with the Kennedy Dynasty. Personally, I’ll go as far as saying I’ve bordered on obsessed with collecting and analyzing their family history. Not only do I believe half their clan has deserved to go to prison, my own family has a bit of a connection.

Let me try to provide some perspective...carefully, Carole!

My maternal Grandfather, Paul Qualteri, is (was) one of ten children. A big Italian, Catholic family…and I was raised with deep sensitivity to my Italian heritage. Once, my father called my grandfather a “WOP” (oops) and grandfather completely flipped out. Let’s just say the only reason Paul didn’t cap his ass right there was because he was marrying his daughter. My Dad is not one to be intimidated by anyone – but he never called his father-in-law a WOP again.

Many decades ago, my grandfather’s first cousin was in a ... ummmmmmmm ... “business dealing” with Joe Kennedy that went array. My family is Italian. (You picking up on the undercurrent?) Our cousin was on a boat. Then there was an explosion. And a body was found. (You following this?) I’ll leave it with that.

Every one in our family was pretty familiar with Joe Kennedy and his rather shaddy business deals, and stories have been passed down through the generations.
So last week here I was in the bar with my two new friends. They were questioning the Kennedy fortune and its origin, and if Joe was “so shaddy”, why he never got clipped (killed).

Carole: First of all, it’s generally accepted there was a hit out on Joe but legendary mobster Sam Giancama called it off in order to have mob protection in the White House (once JFK would be elected – a feat also made possible by Joe Kennedy mob connections. Most evidence on this is pretty compelling).

Two friends: Really?

Carole: Yup. But once this protection never came to fruition, more to the point, when there was unprecedented mob prosecution led by Bobby Kennedy, who was the Attorney General, there was Kennedy punishment. JFK was assassinated...

Friends: Hold on. You really believe the MOB did that?

Carole: Well, it’s never been proven, but a lot of people believe this. And yes, I do. There are other theories but the notion that this was a mafia initiated hit is widely plausible. I certainly believe it.

I went on to explain a little of the family history and Joe Kennedy’s rise to financial prosperity. Most of Kennedy’s dealings were done before things were actually illegal. In his late 20’s he became a stockbroker and made a fortune through insider trading and stock manipulation. He was a master of the stock pool, a then-legal stunt in which a few traders conspired to inflate a stock's price, selling out just before the bubble burst. And, though never proven, his Prohibition liquor business (and the trading of illegal booze) is a great example of things illegal but sort of brushed under the rug. This earned him a lot of money and underworld connections. And, while this was never proven either, most people believe considerable bootlegging earned Joe his initial prosperity. Mob boss Frank Costello said in the early 1970’s that he and Kennedy were partners. My family has always been pretty convinced of this. I’m sure my cousin on the boat would have agreed.

Friend: Yeah, didn’t Kennedy sell Opium to the Chinese?

Carole: *laugh* I don’t think he did that.

Friend: No?

Carole: He was a crook but let’s not be ridiculous. The British sold opium to the Chinese. That’s a pretty well known fact. Trust me.

Friends: Well you really know about the Kennedy’s.

It’s been a lifetime following. As a family they’ve done a lot of good with their power and position, but it’s also been abused. Too many times they have been above the law. And ultimately their family money is blood money.

Just a little history lesson for today.

The author and the imp

Last night I went to a writing group which completely filled my nerdish needs for literary individuals who spend their free time pursuing activities like photography and music and yoga and the selection of festively named beer.

There was a great quote one of the writers in the group had brought along; I asked if I could have it.
"The romance surrounding the writing profession carries several truths: that one must suffer in order to be creative; that one must be cantankerous and objectionable in order to be bright; that one can rise to a level from which one can tell the reader to go to hell."
- David Brin -

Brilliant...

I wrote strange rhyming phrases about mold and skittering feet and penned passages concerning our chosen topics of sleep and fear. I wrote down a succession of words that began with Lemon Drop and ended with Lichtenstein, though rest assured there were other words in my list that didn’t begin with ‘L,’ such as orangutan. I ate a chocolate chip cookie that was crumbly and delicious and confessed to my obsession with bleaching sheets and how I’d lusted after an ironing machine in Williams-Sonoma that professed to quickly and easily press the largest of sheets and cloths, no creases involved.

At the end of the evening I realized I’d spent two and a half hours in a small room with six people I’d never met before and not once wanted to stab any of them in the eye. Not once. Not even a wee bit.

This is quite the accomplishment for me.