It's New Year's Eve tonight...

It's New Year's Eve tonight.
I confess, that as I write this, I'm still a little bit loopy from the ambien my brother gave me last night to help me sleep. I just can't DO that stuff - too hard to shake it off the next day. However, for now, I have a pleasantly goofy feeling all through my body. QUITE relaxed.

Tonight I'll bring the New Year in working. Which is just as well, and quite good, since I don't have a date anyway. It's how I hope the coming year will follow - lots of WORK!!!!
 I feel good about the year to come. Good about things in general. Lucky to have such great kids and such great family all around me.

But I DO have SERIOUS New Year's resolutions this year.
For the first time in a long time - I am DETERMINED to make some that are top priority and follow through like a maniac.
It's just no good anymore - this - this lollygagging about, this using only a tiny part of my potential. It simply WON'T do any longer. This year I will :

1. Stop Drinking. (either full stop or mostly)
2. Learn French. For REALS - like enough to have some simple conversations!
3. Learn to pay 3 songs on the piano.
4. improve my Spanish.
5. Do yoga. EVERY WEEK.
6. Walk around the lake at least once a week.
7. get a job (that goes without saying, really)
8. do theatre. (it's been FAR too long!)
9. sing. a LOT more.
10. write letters - actual ones, not e-mails.
11. take dance classes.
12. fall in love.

The only thing I see as a real challenge is the falling in love part. Kind of hard to MAKE that happen. But I'll write it down in a spasm of hope.
Check in with me next year, and see how I did.....

MAY YOU ALL HAVE THE MOST AMAZING, MEMORABLE , HAPPY 2013 !!!!!!

Christmas Eve, 2012

It is Christmas Eve.
As I am writing this, I am looking out over the hills to the sparkling lights of the city. It is so warm here.
So warm in so many ways. And I must be the most pampered and spoiled homeless person on this earth.

I have just come from church (yes, I went to my childhood church - quite odd - looked so much smaller!) and Christmas Eve dinner with my family. I am full of good food and good feelings. We are the lucky ones. Everyone is well and full of good cheer this year. Everyone is grateful. Perhaps a little bit because of the Sandy Hook shooting - it certainly puts things into perspective right before Christmas.

I have to confess, I couldn't sleep the other night  - so I turned the TV on looking for an old movie to calm my mind. 'Miracle on 34th Street' was on, and the first thing I thought of was how horrible it would be to see these sweet, family Christmas movies if your child had been shot dead at school just a week ago.

Tomorrow I will give gifts to my family that I have accumulated from all over the world. Exotic things. I have dragged them with me on planes, trains and automobiles in an attempt to share a piece of my adventures. I look forward to giving my little nieces the headdresses from Bali - golden tiaras studded with jewels (not real ones, of course),  saffron tea to my mother, cashmere scarfs from Scotland for my nephews, jewelry from South Africa for my sisters and the impish mask of happiness for my grown up cousin who runs a theatre. As I wrapped all of the trinkets and treasures - the silks, the woolen things, the wooden carvings, the beaded art, etc - I thought of where and how I got them. All of the different looking money used over the last many months, the adventures associated with each and every item.

And as I enjoy the greatest gift of seeing my little cousins faces light up, or a smile from one of my sisters, I will not take a single moment of it for granted.
I will treasure each second of tomorrow's Christmas, and feel deeply how lucky I am. How lucky we are. We had a close call in our family - very recently - but we've made it through. So far.

We are here. We are safe, well fed, healthy and loved.
We have each other.
And after a year of great travels and adventures and culinary school, I feel like I am about to embark on the very greatest adventure of all.
I don't know what it is exactly.
I just know that's how it feels.

the OK Cupid experiment...

SO.... (big breath)

Before I left Portland, my sister gently shoved me into the online dating world via OK Cupid.

"Look," she said, with a note of resigned pity on her face, "we both know that you are a breeder."
Before I could shake my head, "no", she went on.."A MATER - someone who likes to partner up. Am I wrong?"

"Well..." I said, thinking about it. "I guess so."
"And this is how it's DONE these days, Jennifer." she instructed me. "At the VERY least - you can just look at the guys in Texas and see what you think."

So, I started looking at the guys in Texas.
I was rather amazed at how many lovely, intelligent men were swimming around the pool of the OK Cupid waters. AND with good taste in books and music and film!

The first conversation I had online, was with a nice Atheist man from West Texas who scolded me for not having good photos up. "You need one where we can see your FACE." he wrote to me.

Ok, ok. I put more photos. 2 without sunglasses.

"That's good." He wrote. "Now fill out your profile and answer some of those questions."
"I don't like the questions. " I wrote back. "And I can't sum myself up in one page!"
"Well, I don't know what you want out of this experience.." he replied, "but I don't really want a pen pall. I really want to meet someone - and the more specific you are, the better chances that you'll meet someone you actually like.."

I thought about that. What DID I want? Just to look at the big, tall Texas cowboys? A pen pall? Well, no. I DID want to meet someone cool and great and all that. But I was NOT going to answer a million questions about sex and intimate stuff like that on a public site. So, I decided to try something different. I put up a link to this blog. Now - it's ALL out there. They could research me if they so chose to. My thoughts, my worst Christmas, my past - some of the TV shows I was on - easy to google, etc, etc.

I thought for sure I would get some hate mail - but I was ok with that. It certainly would be a weeding out process, wouldn't it?
Instead, I got lots of positive responses. Not one hate mail. (not yet, anyway). This OK Cupid thing was going pretty well - and the most LOVELY men were writing to me! Maybe it would WORK!!!

But then, conversations began to develop. Online. On screen.
These lovely men all had a LOT of questions. Good ones.
"Do you have a job lined up?" "Where will you live?" "How many times a week do you work out?"

Uhhhhh.....
Uhhhhhhhhhhh........

I realized very quickly that I have NO answers to these questions.
Then I felt like a COMPLETE IDIOT.

"What the hell is wrong with you, girl?" I asked myself - while laughing at myself.
I have no job lined up, not sure where I'll be living and last week I worked out ZERO times and in fact was sitting in a car for 12 hrs at a time and only now am regaining feeling in my ass, and am on some road to recovering my poor stomach from the dreadful road trip crap I've put into it over the last few days.

In short - I am a mess.

So...as much as I really do want to cover all of those lovely Texas men with freshly sliced Texas peaches and eat them all up - as much as I want to go on a million coffee dates with different fellows - this one gentleman told me something that sticks in my head. He told me that he went on a date with this woman from OK Cupid and she BRAGGED at dinner that she just went out with all these guys to get a bunch of free meals out of it. If you can BELIEVE that! Not cool!

I in no way want to be like that woman.
And these super nice guys deserve a little better in my book. They deserve to go out with someone who can  answer at LEAST those first 3 questions. I mean, they ARE pretty basic, after all.

Gentle readers - I have torn myself away from the scintillating and slightly addictive world of online dating for NOW.
I intend to get myself into a place where I can answer those questions (and more)very happily, and then I'll just dive back in.

 Maybe.

In the mean time - single ladies who read this blog - if you EVER thought about moving to Texas - I can tell you that there are some MIGHTY FINE gentlemen here - smart, cool, athletic, single (unless they're lying - but I don't think so) - that are ready to meet you for coffee!

Sandy Hook Massacre

On Dec. 14th, I couldn't sleep.

All that early morning I was awoken by terrible, horrifying, violent dreams. I kept sitting up and physically shaking myself to try to get away from the nightmares.

I dreamt about my mother, after my family's car accident, on the side of the road just outside Clovis, New Mexico, with her 10 year old boy in her lap, his neck snapped. I couldn't shake the extreme, deep horror and sadness of that moment.

Then I dreamt about my best friend, Mieke.
She, too, held her daughter in her arms after it was too late. Nothing  - no amount of love or desire - could bring her back. I dreamt and felt so distinctly how that MOMENT - those moments - must have felt. A mother losing her child. It felt so real.

Then, I was awoken by a random dream. It was vague, and hazy - but there was a man with a gun. I heard the shots, and again was awoken in terror and a deep, deep sadness - not knowing why these dreams were coming to me this morning. I shook my head, hard. "Perhaps it's just because I'm leaving today.." I thought. "Maybe I'm scared and don't realize it fully?"

I tried to sleep for another hour, then gave up and switched on the TV to see what time it was. Almost 8:30 am , on the West Coast. I was getting a late start to my journey back to Texas.

And then I saw the images.
Little children being hustled out of somewhere. Grown ups hunched protectively over them - cars everywhere - a scene of chaos.
I turned the sound up and listened to the news in disbelief. A SHOOTING? At an ELEMENTARY SCHOOL??? TWO FREAKIN' DAYS AFTER THE MALL THING HERE IN PORTLAND!!?????

It was hard to believe. Awful to believe.

I tore myself away from the terrible images, packed my car, made a couple of sandwiches, and left.
I'd been looking forward to the drive through Southern Oregon. Grant's Pass, all of those beautiful mountains - and I was also in a hurry to beat the next snowfall.

My cat, Zyll, and I , took in the glorious scenery as Handel's Messiah washed through me. Clouds swept and swirled around the tops of tall evergreens and snow capped mountain tops. Then, as I lost one radio station and searched for another, I landed on NPR. The reporters were clearly accounting the details of the Sandy Hook Massacre. TWENTY young children believed to be dead, and SIX adults, not including the shooter and possibly his mother. It was almost too horrible to believe - and RIGHT before Christmas!

I cried and cried through the beautiful trees, mountains and vistas. The sun popped out at times looking like those paintings of 'God'. The green pastures dotted with white sheep were so vibrant they almost  glowed green. I lost the station, and switched back to classical music. It was raining off and on, making my over active imagination feel like the beautiful sky was crying with me. Then, just passed Grant's Pass, a rainbow appeared.

I went to Catholic school as a kid. I am not Catholic any longer, but all of those stories stuck in my head. And, I feel like the bit about rainbows being a sign of hope just makes sense. Even if I never heard those stories - I think a rainbow WOULD make me feel hopeful. Just from it's sheer beauty and magic. Maybe there IS a pot of gold, maybe everything WILL be ok....

But then again, if there is a God - how the hell can these 2 realities be reconciled? The horror of those poor families losing their children ( AND the adults, too, of course) in such a terrible, disgusting way -  and this incredible, peaceful, glorious rainbow - looking innocent and HOPEFUL!!!???

I stayed in Lake Shasta, then continued my drive yesterday, crying off and on all the way into L.A.
It doesn't make any sense to me.
No sense at all.

Back to Roots

After I sold my house a year ago, I didn't know where to go.
I felt homeless.
So, I traveled the globe looking for options.

I thought perhaps it would be good to go back to where I was born, South Africa. I could get citizenship there if I wanted to, and I hadn't ever been back. "Perhaps these are my roots?" I thought as whizzed through the sky in a huge man made machine, looking down at fluffy, white clouds underneath me.

South Africa felt familiar and strange all at once. There WAS something of me there. A tiny part of my history. But it was not where I belonged. Not now, anyway.

Then, after much travel, I decided on Portland. Partly because of my sister. She'd been wanting to move here for years, and I truly loved the city when I was coming to "scout it out".

But now, after a few short months, I know that Portland is NOT where I belong right now, either. I feel like a ghost here, and that's quite something for ME to say. If you know me at all, you know that I am not a shy or introverted creature. I did not feel like a ghost in Bali or Paris or South Africa when I was traveling there alone. Not in Amsterdam or Scotland.
Something about this beautiful place and I - is just not clicking.

AND....I do feel, after many conversations with my sister, that perhaps both of us were running away from something at the beginning. She certainly was and is. And maybe I was, too. From family - from perceptions of both failure and success - from my past....

But I've come to a glorious and wonderful new enlightenment.

I don't WANT to run away!!! NOT FROM ANYTHING!!!
I WANT the messy family stuff - the lovely, complicated, complex relationships that make us who we are. I want it ALL.  I want the drama, the stress (sometimes) the laughs, the love, the food... I want to see my little cousins and my niece grow up ...I WANT IT ALL.

So...I am packing up my car once again. getting rid of even MORE stuff (a serious shedding)...and heading back to my roots, and my family in Texas. Of ALL places.

Shaken, not stirred.

There is a great debate in my family.
About martini's.
One camp (my father and his cousin, Jim, belong to this camp) believe that a true martini is made ONLY with gin - NEVER vodka. This camp prefers their martini's shaken, not stirred.

A great, and very old friend of mine, I have recently learned - is staunchly in my father's camp about the gin, but he prefers his martini's stirred. Gently. "You'll bruise the gin if you shake it." he explained to me earnestly on the phone. "Gin has a distinct and delicate flavor - you want to taste that." he explained.
I laughed on my end of the phone - hundreds of miles away. I laughed because people can be so very passionate about these seemingly little things. My father and Jim are the same way. When I order a VODKA martini in my father's presence, he shakes his head and looks very sincerely disapointed.
"It's not a MARTINI, Jennifer." he'll say. "Ask Jim! He'll tell you."
"I know, Dad." I said the last time we had martinis. "I remember."
"Well..." he said back to me with an accusing look on his face."When you went to Harry's Bar, in Venice - you went, right?"
"I did. I went. I promise. I took photographs to prove it."
( I HAD gone, and I KNEW I'd have to have some evidence, so I begged my friend, Dorian , to take some pics of the martinis, the bartender - the whole scene)
"Well....did you have a REAL martini there? Or a "VODKA martini"?" (I could hear the sarcastic quotes hanging in the air around those 2 words)
"Oh, Dad...gosh..." I struggled to remember exactly what I'd ordered. For some reason it seemed important. It had been important to my Dad that I go there in the first place, so I had. These strange little strings of communication that we all hung onto in our family. Our bizarre versions of tradition, I guess. Harry's Bar was famous for being a Hemingway spot and an American x-pat spot, so of course the artists and writers of our family felt they had to make it ours as well.
"I just ordered a martini, Dad. That's what I did. You told me to order a martini, and that's what I did."

My father's face was suddenly covered with a cloak of righteous happiness. He looked fulfilled and delighted. A half laugh forced it's way out of his lips, "Ha...WELL..then you had a REAL MARTINI. A GIN martini - that's how they do them!"
"Mmmhmm. Yep. It was gin."
"A PROPER martini! THAT'S Harry's Bar for you!"
"It was a good martini, Dad. Cool place."

I prefer vodka martinis in general. But my father and I do land in the same camp when it comes to shaken, not stirred. I don't think a martini is drinkable if not shaken vigorously. And of course, I grew up hearing 007 say, "Shaken..not stirred".

This Thanksgiving, I had the impossibly great pleasure of having all of my children around me. And my brother, my sister and my mother. These days that's quite something. We are all so spread out and mobile. And after the girls all got on their planes and trains, the boys and I decided to go to a movie as it was spitting rain. The new James Bond on Imax won out. 50 year anniversary of the series this year. Wow.
It was great fun seeing that with my boys - Jake, Max and August Blue. The theme of the movie (or the hook, rather) seemed to be 'Sometimes the old ways are the best ways'. And I loved that. But - with that set up - I was disappointed that James never ordered his martini "Shaken, not stirred".

I found myself daydreaming during the movie. Remembering the drive around Lago Maggiore a couple years ago - how I felt like I was truly IN a James Bond movie - and little drives around the English countryside when I lived there many years ago. "Shaken, not stirred" was really sticking in my mind. I couldn't shake it (pardon the language).

That night I dreamt about all of the roads not taken. The safe roads. The predictable roads. The destinies I so often yearn for. And every night since, I have had similar dreams. The life that eludes me.

How can I say what I am trying to say?
I don't know how yet.
I am an awkward toddler of a writer at best.
I write like a toddler walks - like a drunken sailor. No balance, no form, no grace, no expectation or taking for granted that the next step will land well...or at all.

These dreams have been tormenting me.
I could have taken over my Grandmother's shop. She wanted me to. I didn't hate it. I sort of loved it.
I could have done a lot of things differently.
But I didn't.

I must come to some peace with the fact that I like my whole freakin' life shaken, not gently stirred.
I have loved so passionately, been hurt so terribly.....bruised all over. My martinis must be shaken. HARD. So must my life - at least up until this point.
And the question that remains - that dangles in front of my face like a cat toy - is...

......STILL??????