This week Mama Kat invited us to write about really special Valentine’s Day memories instead of dead childhood pets. So I’m pretty much jumping on the opportunity. http://www.mamakatslosinit.com/

 

 

I am very fortunate to be in love with a thoughtful, romance-inclined guy who out does me at every single gift-giving event in life. This means we have lots of special  Valentine’s Day memories, but one stands out in my mind. It was the weekend of the final Valentine’s Day before we were married, which will be thirteen years ago this summer. I like to say things the longest way possible.

This story takes place on a cool Friday evening in Oklahoma City. Handsome and I were solo for the weekend. We must not have had any certain plans, because he picked me up from my apartment sort of last minute for what turned out to be dinner at Eddy’s, a special steak restaurant in Bethany that is now, sadly, closed. I was wearing jeans and a long sleeved pink t-shirt and almost no makeup. I know for sure he was wearing a black leather jacket, because the smell of leather is heavy in this memory. He was as strong and good looking as ever. With zero effort.

We sat in the quiet, dimly lit restaurant and ate our meal slowly, talking and being in love. It’s so easy for me to drum up the emotion from that dinner, because I still feel it all the time. We indulged in the requisite beef ribs and cabbage roll appetizers, those hot, fluffy baked potatoes, and the most perfect charbroiled, marbled steak you will ever allow to melt in your greedy little mouth. If memory serves we also split an obscenely wide slice of chocolate-chip cheesecake.  Eventually, filled to the brim with great food and simmering in soft, easy romance, we collected what remained of our feast into a Styrofoam box. We left the restaurant and drove off in his curvy red Stingray corvette. Things were about to get interesting.

On nights when we are free to just drive around in a fun car, anything could happen. I am happy just being a passenger, just succumbing to the speed and power of whatever car he happens to be driving, sure, but really… I’m succumbing to him. I love to have my left hand on his right thigh and feel him dig deep into the accelerator.

Anyway.

On this particular night we drove to Lake Hefner in Oklahoma City and parked beneath a well lit flagpole, near the super old red white and blue metal playground. (If you’re from here you know exactly where I’m describing.) As we exited the Vette, we decided to remove the T-tops so the smells of our leftover food wouldn’t be overwhelming later.

What is that they say about hindsight? And twenty-twenty?

So. Handsome walked me to a beautiful spot near the high flying American flag. He was all muscular arms and cologne and leather jacket, and we smooched like there was no tomorrow. Almost wordlessly he gave me a narrow, sparkling gold band bearing three diamonds, one large one in the center for me flanked by two sightly smaller diamonds, one for each of my girls, both still toddlers. He really could have given me the ring at the restaurant, but this spot was important to us and I appreciated the absence of embarrassing fanfare but overdose of eye contact and meaningful affection. It was, just like every other romantic gesture of his, perfect.

Then things got interesting.

We strolled back in the dark, a newly engaged couple, floating on that strong, bright  cloud of belief that the future holds only good things for people this in love.

We approached the Corvette and had our hands poised on the door handles when it happened.

Do you know how in cartoons, a whirlwind is actually visible? Like, you can see not only the item or creature that is spinning, but also the air around it? You can see the lines of its spinning motion tracing concentric spirals in faster and tighter patterns? That. Like, the Tasmanian Devil. That’s what I saw first.

After that I saw the cat. Maybe two. Yes, at least two feral cats had hopped into our car and tried to help themselves to the steak and potatoes held inside that Styrofoam box. They were fighting over it or with it, it was hard to tell. But the chaos in that small black interior was intense. They were screeching and hissing and there was much fur.

Then I saw my fiancee of exactly three minutes. His face. Oh my goodness, I have only seen his face like this a few times in our life together. He was frozen in what I can only describe as shock and awe. His beautiful show car being scratched at and most likely sprayed by at least thirteen wild bobcats or tigers, it was hard to tell. Things were officially Out. Of. Hand.

I do not remember exactly how we got the rabid lions and bears out of the car. But I am kind of thinking it had to do with just opening the door. The Styrofoam box was still closed but toppled onto the floor and etched with angry claw and bite marks. I remember having to bite the inside of my cheek and look up at the stars to not bust out laughing. In fact, right now as I type this Handsome is across the room from me and I still feel guilty laughing at this thirteen year old memory.

LOL

He was not amused then, and he is not terribly amused now. But at least I wasn’t reading about Ted Bundy the night we got engaged.

 

Happy Cat Scratch Fever Valentine’s Day, babe. I love you more than you can imagine. And let’s just eat at home this year.

 

Steak is Natural, Steak is Good

Not Everybody Eats it 

But Everybody Should

XOXOXO

Hello again! Did you catch my book review of Notes to Boys? As predicted, most of my friends are now salivating to read the latest novel by Pam Ribon. She just… she just, well… she gets us, us pseudo-serious writerly girls from the nineties. And we all want to read how someone else has articulated the teen-aged girl experience of the Drakkar Noir-Edie Brickell era. More to the point, few of us (okay none of us) are brave enough to do the articulating ourselves. And because I am the luckiest blogger on the face of this earth, I was given the chance to do some casual Q & A with the author, which I am sharing with you today. You guys, she just remained as true and sweet, funny and comforting, smart and self-aware as ever, right to the last syllable. Please enjoy.

(Warning: two or three moments of adult language are not edited out and could make this interview less than appropriate for young readers. I mean, unless you were as cool-awkward as Pam and I were at that age. Just kidding but not really.)

 *************************

Marie:  I’d love to hear a little about the conception of this (very cool by the way) book idea. Was the initial inspiration yours? Or did your Mom find the archived boxes of your writing and give you a little nudge? Or was it something completely different? Did you lose a bet? The idea of my teen-aged writing being unearthed is so terrifying to me that I need to know how this went down, basically so I can prevent it from happening in my life. I’m actually a nervous wreck right now, because I wrote lots of love notes to boys and wrote lots of general junk in my spare time. Just kidding, but please tell us about the creative process here.

Pam: You make it seem so romantic!  No, what happened was I started reading these letters out loud at book readings and posting them on my website and people got a little obsessed with my young, weird self.  I was reading the awkwardica poems at the book party for my last novel when my publisher said, “That’s it.  We have to give Little Pam her own book.”  I didn’t stop to think about what that really meant until I’d turned it all in.  And now it’s all… so very much out there.

Marie: What would Little Pam have thought about you sharing these with the world? I wonder if the notion of world-wide exposure would have shut her down or fueled her? How would the writing have been the same or different?

Pam: I believe actual Little Pam would have thought this was exactly what was supposed to happen with her “writings.”  She was archiving them for a reason, after all.  If anything, knowing people were going to read it would have only made her insufferable.  She probably would have written even more essays on topics she knew absolutely nothing about.  The gun control essay alone would’ve been terrifying.

 

 

Marie: I just want you to come to the farm and watch a Christian Slater movie with me and maybe listen to Pearl Jam and the Doors. I kid you not: some of the lyrics you mentioned in the book are painted on a big canvas in my guest bath. ‘Cause that’s just how girls from the 90’s roll. Also I ran around with a small group of “guy friends” in high school who, in retrospect, might not have seen me the way I saw them? Hmm. Anyway we went to see The Doors together and felt collectively that we were the coolest people ever. My boyfriend at the time was one of those guys, and we listened to the Doors music, burned incense, even snuck out to poetry-reading coffee shops, but never ever past my curfew. Oh I thought I was so cool, then for years I felt so weird, now thanks to you I feel normal. Whew! Question: Assuming Jim Morrison’s actor had aged more gracefully, who is hotter: Kilmer or Depp?

 

 

 

Pam:  Listen.  If you Google my name + Johnny Depp and see the results number, you will have your answer right there. 

True Story: I went to see The Doors with two people from the memoir (K and Super Mario Brothers Boy).  We had to sneak in because people were losing their minds about how R-rated this movie was (due to the elevator BJ scene—remember?! We were so innocent as a nation!), and they were checking ticket stubs at the door.  We bought tickets to He Said, She Said, finagled ticket stubs from some grown-up who looked old enough to just waltz into The Doors, and snuck in.  We did it!  We were gold!  Super Mario Brothers Boy convinced me to go back out to buy him some snacks.  When I tried to walk back to my seat, arms filled with provisions, I got carded.  Busted.  Kicked out of the theater. 

I sat in a parking lot for two and a half hours with all the other pissed-off minors while Super Mario Brothers Boy watched the entire movie without a second of empathy.  That was our high school love affair in a nutshell.

Marie: And the take away here is never to stop sneaking into R-rated movies but rather to never leave for snacks once you’re in.

http://pamie.com/2010/02/when-all-you-wanted-was-to-be-wanted/

Marie: The book is dedicated to both your infant daughter and your husband, beautifully.  As I read the book I thought a lot in abstract terms of her. Whether you hope for her to read this, etc. Then I found your list of ways to write to boys and started crying.  Clearly you had her in your heart as you wrote the entire thing. I know you want her to avoid violence and all forms of injury and invasion. Do you also want her to be spared these more benign heartaches and unfulfilled longings you suffered? Or do you think it’s okay for girls to have these painful teen-aged experiences? How much did it hold you back in life, or how much did it fortify you?

Pam: I was stopped at a red light last week when a group of teen-aged boys walked past my car, all floppy hair and weak necks, holding their skateboards like they were too cool to have wrists, pants falling all over the place, wearing shirts from bands I didn’t know, and I thought, “YOU AREN’T GOOD ENOUGH FOR HER!” 

So, I guess the transition has already happened. 

I know she will fall in love and get hurt and I know I’m going to be hiding in the other room not letting her see me cry for her.  The hardest part will be giving her the space she’ll need to figure out love on her own.  But what’s different about her teen years and mine is that only one boy at a time read what I was writing.  Having been online since 1998, I’ve already made just about every mistake you can writing in a public forum.  I won’t be quiet about those lessons learned.  I am already fiercely protective of her Internet footprint.  She has no idea how annoying I’m going to be when she finally has her own Tw9bot account.  (That’s what I assume the equivalent of Twitter is called in the future.)

Marie: You’re absolutely right, mama. No one is good enough for her. xoxoxo

Marie: Judy Blume. 5^th grade. Please tell me you too got in trouble for reading it? I was in Catholic school at the time and had to go see the counselor (who was a nun) and everything. What other controversial things did you read? I am impressed with Anais Nin.

Pam: Did I write about this in the book, or are you just actually my life-twin?  In the fifth grade I got in SO MUCH TROUBLE when I asked my mom what a menstrual belt was, and she flipped through my copy of Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret.  “This is NOT A BOOK FOR KIDS!” she screeched.  The combination of teen girls celebrating getting their periods and the tips for how to make your boobs grow made her livid.  I remember yelling, “But, Mom!  She wrote Superfudge! You gave me that book!”  Mom confiscated all my Judy Blume and instead handed me: Stephen King’s Pet Sematary.  That is true.  There’s a HJ scene in that book so confusing it messed me up for years. (“Where in God’s name did you learn how to do that?” “Girl Scouts.”) 

So, in my house it was okay to read controversial things, as long as they were for grown-ups, not teens.  I read all of Stephen King.  I read Endless Love.  Roots.  I fell in love with a copy of The Color Purple I found in the trashcan of my parents’ bathroom.  (My father often said, “Women can’t write.”  This is why I am a writer.)

Marie: “I must! I Must! I must increase my bust!” hahaha!! And yes once again, this time to Stephen King. The target audience matters, right? I take it as a compliment now, that my parents thought I was better suited for the latter form of literature than the former. But I’m probably wrong about that, too.

Marie:  How would you speak with your Dad about things now, if he were still alive?

Pam: This week my father would’ve turned 64.  In the twelve years he’s been gone, he missed more than just the birth of his granddaughter or the start of his eldest’s career.  There are all these little things he missed I know he would’ve loved.  Breaking Bad.  Drive-thru Starbucks.  Netflix Streaming. That show where Gordon Ramsay goes into struggling hotels and yells at everybody (which was pretty much my dad’s job). I do wish I could call him right now to listen to him tell me for three hours how much he hated everything about Her. 

We weren’t really able to talk to each other with something resembling respect until the very last of his days.  He had a hard time letting go of how he thought a father was supposed to treat a daughter until he knew our time was running out.  Then he dropped all of that and talked to me like I’d suddenly aged twenty years.  I’ll never know if the dad he was right at the end is the dad he’d be right now.  I’ve decided to believe in it, because it’s the only way I can tolerate the fact that he left my life before it ever really started.

Marie: Happiest birthday wishes and warm hugs to you for your Dad’s birthday week. How poetic that your memoir release right now. It is amazing how relationships can evolve even with a physical separation, and I would imagine your gift with words must have helped with that over the years. “Will ya still need me, will ya still feed me, when I’m 64?” xoxoxo

Marie: Now that the book is printed, is there anything in it you rather wish you had left out? Is there anything not in it you rather wish you had included?

Pam: I know it’s hard to believe, but there are so many more poems and letters I didn’t include in this book, usually because they are about stories I feel aren’t mine to share.  This book is a comedic memoir, first and foremost, so I was careful not to let it get too heavy. You can’t talk about high school without delving into some serious issues when it comes to life as a teenage girl, but I didn’t want to turn this book into an Afterschool Special.  If Facebook hadn’t been invented, and it was still like before, when high school was a time left in the past and you never know what happened to all these people who helped shape who you are, then maybe there would be more stories.  Facebook makes it hard to keep that time in a bubble. 

My mom probably wishes I hadn’t included that sex talk my father gave me.  I also have to legally state here, for the record, that my mother would like to remind people that I’m normally a writer of fiction, so maybe some things in this memoir are a little exaggerated or simply not true, especially when it’s about her sex life with my father, and whatever it was that man said to me when she was not in the room to defend herself.

By the way, to back to your first question, that’s how you know this book wasn’t my mother’s idea.

Marie: So stated. And this reminds me of the review I saw on Goodreads. The one you wrote on behalf of your Mom: “Since my mom isn’t on Goodreads, I’m giving me her five stars. IT COUNTS.”

*************************

Pam, thank you from the bottom of my ink-smeared, Drakkar-Noir scented heart for sharing your youth in this beautiful way. Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions so generously. Thank you for making your peers from that era feel better than normal; you have made us feel rather exotic and interesting. (You should know that I read your remarks top to bottom while holding a pretty bad ass crane pose.)

Happy Valentine’s Day. Happy Birthday to your Dad who obviously loved you more than he could say. And happy LIFE to that baby girl you’ve been given. She has an amazing Mom to guide her through the choppy seas of girlhood.

Riders On the Storm…

Into This House We’re Born

Into This World We’re Thrown

~Jim Morrison

XOXOXOXO

 

I could never be real-life friends with Pam Ribon, because my body just couldn’t take it.

http://pamie.com/

 

In recent days, thanks once again to Julia’s sweet hook ups,  I have had the true pleasure of communicating with this accomplished author and all around brilliant woman via email and Twitter. Every single conversation has left me laughing until my ribs hurt and/or crying hot, flowing, cleansing tears. And I’m not even ovulating this week. She is so funny! She also is truthful and insightful and a powerful writer. We had terrifyingly similar coming-of-age experiences in the late eighties, early nineties. We both even wrote prolifically all through those years  (someone once aptly called me a fire hazard thanks to my growing sea of paper). The difference is, she has shared those writings with the world. And boy am I ever so grateful she did.

 

 

Her latest book, Notes to Boys, is a memoir-style collection of all kinds of interesting things that Little Pam (as she comes to refer to her teen self) wrote over the years. In the book, adult Ribon converses with Little Pam and sort of provides captions to the readers about context and meaning. Sometimes it’s sympathetic and affirming; more often it feels like a good-natured shoulder-shaking like a snap out of it, man! moment between Bones and Captain Kirk. So as the reader you are given the experience of hearing two voices from one woman, and it is pretty amazing. I definitely felt notes of staying character as well as a spectrum of evolution and changing maturity between the two versions of her. (Side note…  As a mother of two teenaged ladies myself, this experience alone made it worth reading.)

Honestly, Notes to Boys is the one of funniest things I have ever read as well as one of the most poignant. Ribon addresses several pivotal moments in a girl’s adolescent life. She delves gently into trauma and parental relationships, too; but mostly she just bares her soul with enormous doses of humor and self-deprecation that just leave you belly laughing and cringing with every page. Long, excavating love letters to boys and even longer, ill-informed but passionate letters to society at large, all trying to express the depth of one teenaged girl’s tortured,  word-loving soul… These are the letters she shares.

You know how horror movies are scarier when you know they are based on true stories? Well, this commentary on being a teen girl in the nineties is funnier and more terrible because as you read, you know it is all true. It’s a beautiful, warm crazy-quilt of confession and retrospection. You will not regret wrapping yourself up in this quilt. Then you will hide beneath it because you recognize so much of your younger self.

Do you need a little litmus test to see if this book is for you? Please explore the following list. If any of these feels even vaguely familiar to you, then the answer is yes. A resounding yes.

• The Doors, first the movie then its soundtrack, informed your sense of adulthood and taste in music. (I mean, maybe it is normal to set rooms on fire for true love…)
• Or, you are at least disappointed with how Val Kilmer looks twenty years later.
• You ever in your life actively collected Johnny Depp posters.
• You mistook every little hormone-drenched crush for true love, the dangerous kind.
• You spent more time free writing than doing homework, mostly because the homework was too easy and you felt like what you had to say was far more important. (Don’t worry; it was.)
• And sometimes your read those writings aloud to yourself.
• You got in trouble with your parents for reading Judy Blume but not Stephen King.
• Sylvia Plath seemed like a good role model at the time.
• And Christian Slater seemed like a true philosopher there for a while, while John Cusack from Say Anything could have made you do anything.
• In high school you had a penchant for the dramatic but couldn’t admit that at the time. You fancied yourself quite a serious person.
• You secretly admired and perhaps envied the cheerleader set, wishing to be one of them, but once again your writing was just so important!
• Drakkar Noir. End of story.

 

I had so much weeping, nodding, giggling fun reading Notes to Boys. I plan to get copies of it in the hands of my best laugh-out-loud sisters and girlfriends, too. But I won’t pursue a friendship with Pam Ribon, even though we have every single important thing in common.  Because it would be flat-out exhausting, all the Depeche Mode and Pearl Jam sing alongs, all the soapbox protests, all the cry-laughing. Too much.

 

Instead, will you please check back in later this week for an interview with Pam? She was kind enough to indulge me in a luscious conversation, and I would love for you to hear more. Then order her book or snag it at your favorite local book seller! You will love it.

Can’t Buy What I Want because Its Free…

~Eddie Vedder

XOXOXOXO

Hello there! Starting today I am borrowing a great idea from Shel,

a fellow Oklahoma lady who blogs over at 

http://shelharrington.com/

Every Friday she offers us five cool snippets of information or inspiration.

Easy Peasy. Short and sweet.

For Lazy W purposes, I’ll share five farm facts.

Odd minutiae you may or may not know about us and our little offbeat hobby farm.

Or maybe five photos from that week. Or five anecdotes from the animals,

miscellaneous goings-on, etc. Hope you enjoy!

• The dangerously frigid weather this week has made it necessary to keep our geese and chickens tucked safe and warm inside their coop and enclosed yard, no sunrise door opening and dramatic release. They are completely unhappy about this, totally unappreciative of the warmth we are helping to ensure. They just want to be free! The geese especially (we have five) just want to run downhill and skate around on top of the frozen pond. The hens and roosters are displaying slightly better attitudes, but I think it’s because being locked inside the coop is like an extended date night for them all. I suspect some of the eggs we’ve been collecting could be, ahem, fertilized.
• Handsome ordered new halters for the llamas. All three of them. I find this both thrilling and hilarious, because the llamas have a pretty strict Don’t you dare touch me policy. We will keep you posted.
• We recently adopted three cats to help Fast Woman with the mouse and gopher executions. They all four live in the barn and are beautiful and adorable in every way. They are named Geoffrey, Sonia (as in Sonia Blade from Mortal Kombat) and Natasha Romanov, just because we can. Natasha in particular is a cuddler and meows aggressively at every door of our house until Handsome relents and lets her in. She cuddles, claws, and V-8 purrs her way into your heart then steals the dog food and walks on the piano. It’s a dream come true for my husband who has always wanted a big, satiny, ink black cat to cuddle him.
• Yesterday I saw this little blurb in a local paper and am so psyched about it! Agricultural training for inner city women in order to improve diets, health, and financial stability. Yes! The fact that our city is launching this program the same year I am taking Master Gardener classes is, like, more awesome than anything. I am all over it.

• I am also super excited about fresh herbs, in case you’ve missed that lately. Last night I roasted a huge pan of chicken with lemons, minced garlic, and so much fresh rosemary you could probably smell it from the forest next door. In just weeks we will be working herbs outside instead of just in kitchen countertop pots.

 

So that’s my first Friday Five Farm Facts! Thank you Shel for the borrowed idea. If y’all check back here this weekend I will have the results of the brownie taste test and a few thoughts on that. Happy Friday!  Stay cozy.

XOXOXOXO

 

So I spent yesterday afternoon and evening mixing up three different brownie recipes in order to pit them against each other in a taste test. This is the second such dessert taste test we’ve hosted from the Lazy W, and it is great fun for all. I am so thankful for friends and colleague who will suffer through the nibbling and finger-slurping in order to find a champion recipe. Y’all are the best. Martyrs, all.

 

 

Okay. Here are the three recipes I used, along with weak photos of each brownie pan. Let me stress that they all tasted way better than these photos might suggest. Please visit the original websites for gorgeous visuals!

 

1. Oatmeal Pecan Brownie Bars:  The first was pretty simple, just basically a fancied up box mix. Here is the recipe site: http://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/oatmeal-brownies/7b8043a3-8fa3-4cd1-a404-d4ebcfc7d311  This contains both oats and pecans, so you might even get away with calling it a healthy energy bar rather than a brownie. Oh, and eggs too. They give you protein, right? This was fast and easy to assemble and also easy to cut. They do not require refrigeration either, so that’s a plus.

 

 

 

2. Mocha Mousse Brownies: This recipe was the most complex of the three and also the most fun to tackle. Between the mocha brownie base and gelatin-cream cheese-mocha frosting, it has more ingredients in it than most four course meals I serve here at the farm. The detailed recipe is right here: http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/mocha-mousse-brownies I followed it to a tee and am so glad. The finished product is spectacular. This does require refrigeration, so keep that in mind if you make it. Also, I think the reason my frosting looks a bit coddled is that I walked away from it for a few minutes. I should have spread it on the brownies immediately upon folding it together, so if you avoid that mistake yours will probably look prettier.

 

 

3. Old Fashioned Brownie with Sour Cream Chocolate Frosting: This attempt was full of detours, but I was so happy with the combo I settled on. It is a made-from-scratch old-fashioned fudge brownie base found here: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/best-brownies/  topped with a pretty darn scrumptious sour cream-chocolate frosting, recipe found at the bottom of the following page, below the cupcake info:  http://loopgum.com/2010/04/21/food-chocolate-cupcakes-with-milk-chocolate-sour-cream-frosting/

 

 

Yum.

So today these three brownies are making their way in little brown paper sacks to discerning, chocolate-loving taste buds all over Oklahoma City. Kind of perfect for a snow day I think. My sweet Father in law has already tasted his samples, made his written comments, and cast his vote for “favorite.” Since he helped me water the big animals in single digit temps, he might get two of each. I’m really looking forward to seeing what everyone else says. Please check back here in a couple of days for the results!

In the mean time, since I licked clean half the spoons and bowls from last night (Handsome took care of the other half), I’m experiencing a bit of a sugar rush. So if you need me I will be on the elliptical machine for the next eight to nine hours.

If you’re buried in snow, fan those arms and legs and make an angel!

 

Happy snacking, friends. Happy loving. Happy life.

XOXOXOXO