Dakota’s cheftestant introduction video on Bravo TV’s Top Chef Season 9 website should not send me into some kind of crazy swirl of overly sweetened chocolate and caramel sugar high, but it does. The premier countdown is on. Oh good Lord, what will I do if I hear Tom Colicchio tell her, “Please pack your knives and go?” What will I do if she’s in the final three or less?
Spouse rushed from the morning news on the tube and into the spare bedroom when he heard me rustle through an old cedar chest for my pink rabbit ears and skunk tail. “NO darling!” he wailed. “They’ll either haul your naked ass, but for the skunk tail and rabbit ears, to jail for indecent exposure, or the neighbors will simply close their drapes and pretend they didn’t see you—again–running stark naked and screaming down the street.” “Shut up! Help me find my […]
After a 1986 spring visit to the chi-chi shops of Palm Springs, a Southwestern pastel pallet of peach, mauve and teal inspired a redo of our harvest gold and brown home’s interior. Two weeks later, my now pre-adolescent daughters and I swooned over a pale apricot carpet sample. OMG the apricot carpeting and peach painted walls, trimmed in pale teal, was gorgeous. It reversed our masculine-inspired home to a three females in-charge and in-control home. Concurrent to the home redo my […]
In other words, buck up. Deal with it. Take responsibility. I couldn’t do everything. Skid marks cut and scarred my own learning curve. It sounds hard-lined, but as mother, father, earner and guide, the options ranged between zero and nothing.
Dakota’s road to Top Chef began after a long labor some 30-plus years ago in my home where I gave birth to Dakota. The unconventional birthing included a male midwife, my late husband, a psychic, an astrologer, and my Siamese cat who was very concerned throughout the entire 22-hour birthing drama.
Once again, it proved to me that during these times of challenge and change, forward movement fueled by positive words and vision naturally shuns opposing wills draped in negativity and self-service.
Clearly, this is not the bird our ancestors deemed perfect for a day of thanks and giving.
I sipped more ginger tea. I thought about the Tea Party demands; I thought about the progressive demands; I thought about my own budget (or lack thereof); I thought about religious demands; I thought about corporate demands, and I started to gasp for lack of oxygen.
Two cups of ginger tea later a spicy idea landed. Start my own party, the Ginger Tea Party.
Today this wildly off-balance pendulum struck my personal life. Oh, there was no catastrophic tragedy, just a realization that things aren’t like they were or how I want them. Yes, I’m one of those former middle class Americans trying to find my way through the maze. I feel like Jack in the Jack in The Box commercial who whines, “I am so tired of this recession.”
Then I received a gift. An absolutely free gift—probably from bird poop.
You see I’ve had a thistle up my tush since the most beautiful and coolest wine/beverage chiller ever made (in China) went kaput nine months ago. It was three-months out of warranty. We installed it in our remodeled kitchen exactly 15 months earlier.
