Day 322: When You Drink & Facebook…

Monday, August 4

I was asked by an editor of a local food and wine publication to write an article on the gluten free, Celiac experience, highlighting which restaurants are best prepared to accommodate the gluten free diet, to include the safe beverages to imbibe, by way of wine and spirits.  I am excited to get to work on the story.

While at work, I got a message in my Facebook inbox from a guy I hardly know who I met when I first moved back to Oregon in October.  He was actually responding to a random message I had sent him the night before…

There are those flickering moments of slight inebriation that just happen to happen to some of us every now and again.  I really don’t drink that much.  I limit myself when it comes to alcohol consumption.  Mostly, to be easy on my stomach.  But, I had people over for dinner last night and drank a few glasses of wine in the safety and comforts of my home.

And sometimes, in those flickering moments, the firecracker in me comes out.  She can be at times a little confrontational, part revolutionary leader, part underdog and part feminist Queen.  She’s  a trip.  She’s stoic but with a sense of humor. 

Yeah, she came out on Sunday night after the dinner party dwindled down, after a few bottles of wine had been shared.  Some people drink and dial.  She drank and Facebooked.  A discussion came up about who was that random guy who’s face emerged in the “Friends” section set amongst the faces of a few of my female friends – all who were actually, well, friends.  I laughed and said I hardly knew.  Truth be told, I know all 198 people who make up my friends, except for this guy.  Which is no biggie, but it is pretty random.  And last night I wrote him to let him know I thought it was weird that he was in my group of Facebook friends.  Which, today, seemed pretty funny to me.  I really don’t care one way or another about his status in my friendship list, but, well, he just so happened to be the guy who’s photo showed up in a mix of my friends, so he got the roulette message.

What can I say?  We’re all fallible.  We’re all a mess, really.  That’s human nature.  Not the neat perfection we’d all like to be packaged in.  We’re complicated, layered and unpredictable.  And, often, it’s in our stumbling moments of our most painful or embarrassing and obvious imperfections that we get to really know ourselves better, more intimately and most authentically.

 

Am I mixed up woman who drank and Facebooked, or was there something else going on?

Well, for one, I can laugh at myself.  I don’t usually make such an ass of myself.  I mean, I didn’t exactly Amy Winehouse myself.  This minor goof was funny, not pathetic as one might find it to be – though the smug, judgmental person out there might think otherwise.  But I’m really not concerned about that person.  No, I prefer to not be so uptight or mortified.  And, thus, I have learned that I have a sense of humor about myself.  An ability to laugh at and forgive myself.  If there was a pattern of bad behavior, well, I might consider therapy.  But this was random and for that, even more hilarious to me.  It really was my very own Sex & the City moment – the funny, humiliating ones like when Carrie Bradshaw does something over-the-top ridiculous in the name of love.  It’s endearing.  It’s human.  And we have all been there.

This also forced me to look at what was going on in my head, aside from the wine.  In my conscious world, I am not lonely.  But, maybe in my subconscious I really am.  That’s a hard thing to admit or to discover, and it rocks the boat a little.  I confess that this unsettled me a little.  I could get past the silly behavior.  I wasn’t so sure about the abstract self analysis.

I left work at 6:40, a long day, and changed into my workout clothes when I got home.  I headed over to the gym for a good 30 minute run.  I stopped over-processing the latter thoughts about my drink and Facebook action last night.  I allowed myself to get pulled into the latest news of Brangelina’s new baby names.  Good God.

Back at home, I made the left-over foccaccia pizza for dinner, with a lovely mixed greens salad topped with more gorgeous heirloom grape tomatoes.  I finished with a nice cup of Yogi chamomile tea with local honey and 3 Glutino mini chocolate cookies.

While preparing my dinner, I kept looking at my flowers – which I loved!  The purple and orange tulips looked so pretty, fully open as if commanding look at me!  I never buy myself flowers and was delighted to have them in my kitchen.  I want to give myself more delight.  Less disappointment, judgment, criticism, the stuff that is made up of a chorus of negative voices that can bruise and damage.  Instead, I think of Randy Paush’s widow’s wise words – not helping.   What does help – bringing yourself flowers.  Bringing delight into your life, delight or the light.

Before going to bed, I had picked up my copy of Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose and I found myself re-reading the parts about the ego.  There’s the section about Identification with Things (p. 35-38), highlighting our attachment to material things, to consuming. 

Tolle writes, “when you live in a world deadened by mental abstraction, you don’t sense the aliveness of the universe anymore.” 

He also writes about our obsessive preoccupation with things, attachments created by the ego.  He goes on to write, “Being must be felt”.  He explains that “[most people] were looking throughout their lives for a more complete sense of self, what they were really looking for, their Being, had actually always already been there, but had been obscured by their identification with things,  which ultimately means identification with their mind (p. 43).  And that “Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness.  How do you know this is the experience you need?  Because this is the experience you are having at this moment” (p.41).

I continued reading the sub-sections about Wanting: The Need for More, Identification with the Body and Feeling the Inner Body.  What’s great about this book is that it makes me slow down and really think about my ego, my obsession with material things and consumerism, and my trials with finding my Being, and, ultimately, how this behavior prevents me from getting and having what it is I really want and need in life – whether it’s regarding financial security, success in my career, success with my writing, and my relationships or lack thereof.

Heavy stuff.  I should probably meditate on it.  Instead, I’ll bring my flowers into my writing room and enjoy them for the moment.  In the moment.

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291: Old Fashioned Courting & Independence Day at the St. Paul Rodeo

Friday, July 4

I slept in until 11:00 a.m., which was glorious.  It wasn’t a late night out, but I was tired, nonetheless.  I got up, sliced a ripe, white nectarine and toasted a gluten-free bagel and spread it with whipped cream cheese.  I poured a glass of lite orange juice and sat down to load photos from dinner last night.

Meantime, I turned on the tele and Masterpiece Theater was on OPB.  Fitting, on Independence Day, it was a very engaging story about Jane Austen – called Miss Austen Regrets.

Before there was Carrie Bradshaw, a single thirty-something ingenue writer contemplating love in New York City and romantically entangled with her lofty Mr. Big in Sex & The City, there was Jane Austen a single authoress who was considered an expert in the matters of love, but foiled falling into a match, herself, never finding or marrying her very own Mr. Darcy.

In Miss Austen Regrets, Jane is approaching her fortieth birthday and while she seems happily unmarried, she is asked by her twenty year old neice, Fanny, to counsel her on her potential suitors, which forces Jane to contemplate the choices she has made.

Funny, since I was a girl, I loved no writer like Jane Austen, save for Louisa May Alcott, specifically for her family classic Little Women.  There’s no character I have related to quite like Little Women’s Jo March.  I have often felt like I am living the similar life of such a character, living this drawn out single life, contemplating love, fearing the misfortune of landing in the wrong place of love, and wondering if true love really exists, waiting out, ever hopeful, for my own Professor Friedrich Bhaer, all the while wanting to be independent, free and able to write the stories in my heart and mind that should unravel into books that reflect my heart and soul – about family, sisters, mothers and even love.

This movie about Jane Austen takes a closer look at the brilliant mind that wrote the classic, timeless stories about love, freedom and duty in Pride & Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Sense & Sensibility, Emma, and so on.  It’s an interesting take on the single woman who does her best to defend, whether to herself or others, her decision to maintain maidenhood.  And, being in a similar state, I found the movie to be heartbreaking.

But, as I finished the movie, I thought about the old fashioned ways of love.  And how it might apply today.  Sadly, there are so few moments for the romance of former eras where love was, well, still romantic.  This made me a little sad.

After the movie, I went to the gym for a 30 minute run.  I was in a bit of a rush to get ready for the Rodeo.  The important question – summer dress or blue jeans?  The last two times I went to the St. Paul Rodeo I was sweating like crazy.  Summer dress.  I put on my cowgirl boots, cowgirl hat and some western jewelry.

I met Susan at the Whole Foods in Bridgeport.   We drove down to her mother and step dad’s compound in St. Paul for a barbecue.  We brought strawberry shortcake for dessert. 

It was a lovely dinner.  We had chicken, a tex-mex rice with blackbeans and peppers, a fresh green salad and I brought my gluten-free biscuits.   After dinner and dessert, we walked over to the rodeo.   It was an exciting start.  The rodeo court rode into the ring, wearing shiny cowgirl gear and tiaras on their cowgirl hats.  If I had grown up in Oregon, I would have been on a rodeo court!  Susan, Kerry and I decided we were going to be rodeo court girls for Halloween.

The Star Spangled Banner was gloriously sung while a cowboy rode the rink with an American flag.  It just doesn’t get more American than attending a rodeo on the Fourth!

The St. Paul Rodeo is one of the top 20 rodeos (per size of purse and it’s significance for qualifying for nationals in Las Vegas), out of over 700 rodeos in the USA.  It’s a very exciting show of cowboy skills – bull riding, saddle bronc, team roping, bareback riding, steer wrestling, tie-down roping, and barrel racing (the only girls event). 

Just before the program ended, we headed toward the Tack Room, a western bar set up within the arena.  We got in, used free drink chips we got from Susan’s step-brother, and took in the beauty of the masculine, brawny, western-belt-buckle-cladded, spur-boot footed, tight jean wearin’ cowboys!  I now know why the Dixie Chicks sang Cowboy Take Me Away, and why Paula Cole pondered Where Have All the Cowboys Gone? and what stirred Pam Houston to write Cowboys Are My Weakness.

Suddenly we heard fireworks.  At first notice, it could have been from the excitement of being in a room full of beautiful cowboys.  But then everyone was dashing outside and reality set in.  We hid our drinks behind a barrel within the saloon and joined the crowds outside to watch the colorful spectacle in the warm Oregon sky.  It was magnificent!

After the grand finale of glittering blasts sprouting one-by-one in the sky like a summer garden, the sparks subsided, the smell of smoke wafted and people either left the rodeo grounds or returned to the Tack Room.  We said good-bye to Susan’s parents and their guests, and returned to the fine sport of cowboy gawking.

I sware.  Jeans never looked so good.  Every turn and there was one good looking cowboy after the next.  These were real cowboys.  From all over the wild west.  And we were smitten.  We just kept gazing from one direction to the next.  We were like a trio of adolescent boys oogling at one fine bronco-bucking butt after the next.  In some ways we were mixed in a kind of role reversal as we looked at these fine specimens of grit and perfection.  And, just in time to bring me back down to earth, back to being a woman again, a young cowboy grabbed my hand for a dance. 

He was very young.  Probably twenty-one or twenty-two.  Still, my heart fluttered, my palms were a little sweaty.  He turned me then took his hat off and when he’d spin me, he’d give me a pat on my bum with his hat as he twirled me again and again.  It was intoxicating.  He kept spinning me and playfully tapping his hat to my bum with each turn.  People were all around us, stomping and clapping along.  We were the only couple dancing.  I could hear cheers as he’d turn me then playfully tap my skirted bum.  I was blushing. 

There’s something about a real cowboy playfully flirting with a girl on a western dancefloor.  And there I was, this typical feminist-tomboy, and I never felt so girlie!  He kept dipping me and spinning me and when it was all done, I was all a-flutter.  I gasped and thanked him for the dance, blushing like a school girl.  I am rarely one without words, but I was more or less speachless.

I know why Pam Houston wrote Cowboys Are My Weakness.  In the every day hum-drum of our modern world, there are few moments when we, as women, get to really feel like women.  There’s something about the old fashioned ways of cowboys that still evokes that romance between the sexes, that genteel manner of persuasion, the boot-scootin’ dancing that serves as a prelude to nothing, really.  Which was so nice, so refreshing.  I could dance with a cowboy over and over again and be content with the innocence of it, the flushed cheeks, the pitter-patters in my heart, and the joy of a simple dance that evoked in me a feeling that a cowboy was really taking me away.  And it never felt so wonderful to be a girl from Virginia in her frilly sundress, cowgirl hat and boots.

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Day 257: Sex & the City Opening Night

Friday, May 30

My friends and I have been waiting since February for the Sex & The City movie.  Tonight was opening night!  We bought our tickets two nights ago, as the movie times were all sold out in downtown Portland.  I could only find tickets at Cinetopia, a theater catered to adults 21 and over, with a bar, restaurant, wine room and special events.  Cinetopia is in Vancouver, so it’s a little hike across the Columbia River, separating Oregon from Washington.

I rushed home with excitement after work.  I put on a pair of ‘good’ jeans, a billowy silk BCBG shirt with a plunging neckline, a funky matching smoky topaz necklace, a green puff sleeved jacket from Anthropologie with striping the same color as the smoky taupe shirt, and a great pair of shoes.  Not Manolos, but fabulous enough.  I shined up my hair, added more dramatic make-up and grabbed a gold glitter clutch.  I was ready for the ultimate girl’s night out.

I met Kerry at Ten-01 in the Pearl, imbibing a champagne cocktail at the outdoor cafe seating.  She had her hair down and styled, and was wearing a very stylish black and white wrap dress.  I also ordered the same cocktail - it had Compari and a touch of sugar to enliven the bubbles.  And an orange peel.  We loved this bubbly concoction because it wasn’t sweet.

Our friend, Erica, the sommelier came out to chat.  She sat down and we gabbed about the food and wine industry, her recent trip to France, work stuff.

Soon after, Susan joined us, as well as another friend and colleague, Stephany – a fellow Virginian.  We were celebrating a pre-Sex & the City movie happy hour.  It was a lovely evening out, sunny and warm.  We happy sipped on our cocktails and ordered some food.  Kerry and I shared a half dozen oysters and then I had the duck prosciutto salad with blue cheese and dates.  It was delicious.  I enjoyed it with a glass of Burgundy.

When we finished our pre-movie celebration, we got into Susan’s car, which was conveniently parked across the street, and we headed toward Vancouver.  We didn’t follow the exact directions and took the longer route, which was a little intense because we were behind schedule.  They suggested people arrive at 9:15 p.m. to get seats at 9:30 p.m. for the 10 p.m. show time.  Well, when we got there and picked up the tickets, the theater was already full with the 3 random seats scattered.  Defeated, we left the theater and traded the tickets in for the 10:45 show so that we could sit together.

We checked out the wine bar – it had some really wonderful selections.  Finally, at 10:48 Kerry and I peeled ourselves from the wine bar and found our seats with Susan and two of Kerry’s friends.

The lights dimmed.  The recognizable jazzy theme song blared and all of the women in the audience started to cheer.  It was fabulous!  Sex & the City is our football!  And this movie was the Super Bowl of our favorite team!!

Now, I’m not going to recap the movie.  I will say this – it was luminous, this fab four never looked more fabulous.  And there were some great moments.  I won’t give a full play-by-play recap of the movie.  But, I will give it a review.

And here’s the thing.  I really, really, really wanted to love this movie.  Kerry and I were shunning the NY Times and other critics who dissed the movie. 

But, I gotta say, while just being in the theater with my girlfriends watching this on screen was pretty satisfying enough, the movie left me disappointed.  Now, I know this is fictional.  These women are characters.  It’s a story!  But, having been a true fan of the series, which was so smart and well written on the small screen, earning a plethora of Golden Globes and Emmy’s, among a longer list of shining accolades and awards, the film missed it on so many levels.

For one, there were several deep contradictions.  For example, at one point a heart-broken Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker – do I really need to include that??), is reading Cinderella to Charlotte’s daughter, Lily, and whereupon the ending reads as every little girl and woman knows by heart, “Cinderella marries her prince charming and they live happily ever after.”  Then Carrie looks down at the wide-eyed little girl and says, “you know, that doesn’t really happen in real life.  I just thought you should know that now.”

And yet…Carrie gets her saccharine happily ever after.  After her prince charming had piteously left Carrie at the altar…  wait, it wasn’t even at the altar.  He never even got out of the limo!  I was never convinced Big was the right man for Carrie, with his cruel indecisiveness and stringing-along practice perfected.  Throughout the series, you always knew that Carrie loved Big more than Big loved Carrie.  And my mother always said, “marry a man who loves you a little more than you love him.”  This is very important advice.

After Big’s display of cold feet and run-away-groom absurdity, I thought for sure she was finally rid of the egotistical, commitment-phobe schmuck.  Here, I was hoping she’d run into Aiden all over again!  One can only hope…

I will say that the film is fair to Samantha’s character.  Her storyline was believable and in tandem with her character arch (from the series).  I thought Miranda’s storyline was also fair and true to her character.

Charlotte, on the other hand, who was much more of a complex and interesting character in the series, was reduced to a boring and pregnant wife and mommy.  Her life turned cliche and offered no real impact on the storyline, other than a ridiculous bout of Montezuma’s Revenge in Mexico.  In fact, Charlotte was just another accessory in the film, even diminished by an inanimate object – Carrie’s Vivienne Westwood bridal gown.

Also trite was the assistant Louise, portrayed by American Idol finalist and Dream Girls Academy Award winning actress Jennifer Hudson.  In one scene, over drinks, Carrie offers a sagey line to her young assistant – you date in your 20′s, you learn in your 30′s and you buy drinks in your 40′s.  Not sure if that was any real worthwhile advice.  Again, the writing was not as sharp as in the HBO series.  In any case, Louise claims to have come to New York City for love.  But, this never develops while she’s in New York.  She never goes on dates or meets men – in fact, the only scene where she’s with a man, he’s glancing at her cleavage and she scolds, “there’s nothing in there for you.”  Her character never actually gives New York a chance for finding love.  Except for a random booty call she gets when she and Carrie are sipping on cocktails on the said night.  Rather, she returns home to St. Louis for the holidays and befalls the fate of many desperate women – finding herself back in the arms of an ex.  Sold out in her 20′s!  Where’s the dating???  I suppose Louise will sadly have to miss out on all of that dating in her 20′s, and, worse, learning all of the ever important lessons we single women learn in our 30′s!

I will say that my biggest disappointment was Carrie’s fate.  Half of the movie, more like two-thirds of it, was spent on her mourning the fact that Big ditched her at the altar.  And, yet, over time, perhaps a year, she changes her hair color, hangs out with a suddenly separated Miranda, sharing in their loneliness and bitterness, until she wanders into her emptied penthouse apartment she and Big were to move into as a married couple, to retrieve a precious pair of Manolos, of course, when she…no way!….runs into Big.  They have a crazy passionate suck-face kiss and end up laying down in each other’s arms on the wooden floor of the fabulous apartment and realize how much they really love each other.  He’s on bended knee and gives her the cliched proposal he swore he was against.  Everyone sold out.  Even Big. 

I don’t know.  It just wasn’t satisfying to me.  I was kind of sad.  The film, that once celebrated an iconic character’s free spirit, romantic hope for finding true love, smart, hardworking, independent single woman status was reduced to a cliche finale.   Big’s love for her was never truly convincing.  And icon Carrie Bradshaw deserved a happier, better ending! 

It actually would have been better if she remained in her apartment, single and writing her fabulous column, articles and books.  And still near her fabulous friends, of course.  Proving a point that you don’t have to settle for a man you keep chasing and hoping will love you back.  You don’t have to settle for anyone.  You can, actually, continue to live a satisfying, fabulous life on your own.  The film ends with the fab four celebrating Samantha’s 50th birthday – and we get a glimpse that her life is  the only authentic, true one.  Well, hers and Miranda’s.

The best part of watching the movie, actually, was the opportunity to hang out again with Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha for another two and a half hours.  These were some of the best roles created for women – ever.  Even if the movie fell short.

Their friendship is truly the keystone to the movie and the series.  Women weren’t herding to theaters to see these character’s love lives play out.  Instead, they wanted to hang out with their girlfriends once more, these four women who tell it like it is and support eachother through the good, the bad and the ugly. 

What’s so real and authentic about this program/movie was that it never really lost its footing in the often shallow and materialistic nonsense of Manolos and Jimmy Choos (which is just plain fun, anyhow).  It’s clear that that was just the fluff and fun of the story.  There’s a real depth to these women’s friendships, and that’s what’s most memorable and satisfying. 

In New York, or anywhere else for the matter, love and lovers come and go.  But it’s your girlfriends who stick around for the stuff that spouses and lovers could never realize or understand.  Well, that was why I was so compelled to go see the movie.  It was the ultimate girl’s night out, a date night with my fabulous gal pals - the four on screen and the two sitting next to me.  It was the kind of bonding that makes you realize how lucky you are to have your soul sisters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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