Scrambled Eggs

Margret Mallory sat beaming down at her plate of sunshine. That’s what she’d called the heaps of canary yellow scrambled eggs mother would serve her weekend mornings for as far back as she could recall. Her mother had this magical secret recipe she’d tell Margret was filled with at least twenty-four ingredients from all corners of the Earth. They each had an exotic name and now that Margret was in her late teens she realized that these names might actually be made-up. It didn’t matter where the recipe came from, and certainly it didn’t matter if it were part of an elaborate tale her mother had concocted many years ago for her little girl. Knowing that only made them taste better to her.

She propped her elbows onto the gingham table cloth and let a foolish grin cover the lower half of her delicate face. She was a slight girl with one of those heads that held up features just a bit too large for the face they resided upon. Eyes that bulged surrounded by lashes like feathers batted the stardust from in front of her face. Her cheek bones swelled out like enormous bee stings still rosy from the flying insect’s assault. Protruding below her cheeks in a perfectly tied bow, were her lips wrapping up an over sized set of cloud-white teeth all standing at attention in two neat rows.

The fork in her hand caught the Saturday morning light briefly as the fog started its coastal routine of burning off before noon. Margret dipped her fork into the eggs, not stabbing because that might deflate their puff; instead she chose to gently lift them up from under where they practically hovered above the plate. The misty steam preceded the eggs and climbed into Margret’s nose almost heavy from the spices that created the heavenly aroma.

“Tell me the main spice- just the main one, the one that tastes like the kitchen smells?” Margret asked.

“If I tell you that then you won’t need me to make them for you anymore." Margret’s mom held back a sly grin at the silliness of the power she possessed over a mundane breakfast food. She heard her daughter give up a little laugh of defeat, then the sound of the fork lightly scrape her teeth. She kept her back to Margret cupping her coffee in its “Worlds Best Mom” mug and went over the days mental check list she always made as the fog turned to mist then laid down as dew on the Redwoods.

First off that's not my kid!

Why is it that the little one can't get along with the big one; the middle one is arguing with the grown-up one and the female parent is pissed at them all! Sound familiar? Unfortunately it's all too familiar at our house. The best laid plans just blowing up in tears and screams- sorry Nigel.

While he is the level headed parent, that only means I get the extreme pleasure of being the total ass. I get to be the tyrant on a rant; as it were. It's all exhausting and usually ends with someone saying they are sorry to me. The end is fine, I suppose, but can't we just avoid the whole rigga-more-o?

To sum up these frequent interactions: it's like doing downward facing dog, keeping your mind clear and beautiful, slowly you open you eyes and there's the toddler smiling up at you from inside the curve of your body in it's positions. The most Zen places make the most wonderful spots for insane amounts of, well, insanity. Namastae.

THE POOR BEE REALLY WANTED THIS GINGER-TINI

HOW SWEET IT IS

Careful girls, one day you may wake up and find that life has rushed past your youthful face, leaving deep ruts where there once was taut skin. The bouncing boobies have been replaced with push-up bras lifting up whats left of the old milkers. Why didn't anyone warn us about the 35-45 box that has to be checked from now on? I also do not recall any solid advice about the toll one night of cocktails can take on a person. Why with all the "self-discovery"?

Be extremely cautious when it comes to living life. I honestly mean living, not just running around in your messy mini-van with the fast food wrappers curling around your feet like fall leaves. Be cautious because it too, will zip by faster than you can say, "Oh my God, look at Dallas taking his first steps!" (Please note the photo of 16 year-old Dallas).There comes the time when you are surprised at how many of your friends are dying; not how many of your girlfriends are having babies. To every season...

Take the extra time to go out of your way and be nice. You don't have to get all weird here and fake, you know you have it in you- let it out! Nothing is more beautiful than a woman at any age just oozing with genuine kindness. Lets face it, in times where T.G.I.Fridays is going tits-up we could all use some grassroots, free compassionate gestures. It keeps you young and feels good all the way around.

As a whole, we all could use a bit more of the deep-breath action. God forbid, something horrible should happen to any of us tomorrow, (insert your own worst fear here); we simply must live for today. Keep it simple. Straigthen up and fly right. Remember what it was like to live in the simpler days of our own childhood. We may not look like one on the outside, but we sure keep her in there, with all the other stuff inside that no one can take away. Smile to yourself and remember something fun about being a kid. Now recreate it. Dress-up anyone? And if you have little one's, I don't care how big your ass is, get it down on the floor and get to making some kick-

butt make believe, already!

I'm not 11 anymore-still love an ice cream cone!

We aren't getting any younger, but wow, we are getting smarter! I remember someone telling me that looks fade quickly and that an exceptional personality would far outweigh passing beauty. That's pleasing to me to know that there's always room for improvement for all of us to expand the ever-growing internal charm.

Bellies that scream for a tummy-tuck be damned! Greying roots can be ignored under a bandanna, and split-ends; please. Laughing with my friends, even if we don't get together nearly often as we should, far outweighs anything that damn bathroom scale keeps lying about!

I believe I just bought us all a round of deep breaths in this photo!

*Labor Day is just a friendly reminder of what is right around the corner.

The Last Hurrah

This week-end holds more pressure than a Swedish masseur. I mean, the fact is that if you aren't doing something wonderful for Labor day weekend, forget it, you're so lame. What no camping plans? Did you say you were just going to kind of hang around the house? Good Lord man, what is going through your mind?

Seems to me the whole idea behind "Labor Day" is that we all get a day off, or one prays we all get a three-day weekend. Along with the extra time off comes the obligatory "plans". I'm unsure where this started, I will guess in the '50's sometime when the American family was encouraged to hit the national campgrounds, hook up the round, silver travel trailer, gas up the boat of a car you were driving and make good use of the fact that you had a shortened work week. Well, thanks a lot grandpa and grandma, now we are stuck with this tradition and I think it's gotten out of hand.

Way too much effort goes into planning, purchasing, packing, setting up, tearing down, and finally unpacking again once you get home. Oh, did I mention this all takes place the DAY before school starts? That's what I want to do; be thoroughly exhausted before getting up to get the kids off on their first day of school, still wreaking of campfire smoke. Why bother?

It's a hassle, it's expensive and tiring, but what the heck; it is what it is. It's an American institution at this point in our history and I, too will be hitting the highway to find the perfect camp site. I just happen to be lucky enough to have a wonderful friend, who has a wonderful family who has property on the river. I will have to find my relaxation where I can amid the ciaos of Paul Bunyan Days, a camp site with 50 friends and family members, and a mini van stuffed to the gills with gear and kids galore. What's not to love?

Not Letting Go Without a Fight

I am not one of those people who are all fuzzy-sweater on the inside to greet the changing of the season. I am a summer person, always have been, always will. I'm sure it comes from growing up in North Idaho where the summer is a mere blip on the radar of weather. When it comes; it's here immediately. You often hear Idahoans talking about the fact that there is no acclimatizing for our poor winterized souls, we go straight from 37 degrees to 80. It is truly a bit of a shock, but who gives a rip? Nothing says summer like 65 and sunny with most of the town's population roaming around half naked. Big deal if it's really just late spring weather. So elated are we to shed the multi-layers that I want to go on strike against cruel mother nature, how dare she make me cover up my Coppertone tan!

The long days and nights are shrinking and as they do they are rusting the leaves. I have a keen eye for that-I noticed a couple of leaves on someones yard about a month ago and ran straight for the beach. Today was 95 degrees and I lounged around in the blazing golden heaven for hours upon hours. Yet, I feel cheated. Is there a way for me to cram extra hours filled with sunny memories into my suitcase overflowing with fleeces, Sorrel's, mittens, hats, scarves, wool socks, jeans loose enough to allow long underwear to fit under, earmuffs and puffy coats?

I guess the best way to snuggle down with these warm sparkly thoughts is to wrap them close to my body, maybe under a layer of cocoa butter, then hold them close and cover them up with the endless layers of winter protection. Then when the snow is up to my waist and school is closed for the day, I can stick my nose inside my collar and close my eyes to breath in the sweetness of my sacred summer.

I am now going to officially blame my mother for all this. Growing up we would spend every waking hour at Rocky Point. We were usually the first ones there with our cooler of snacks fully stocked, then after swimming in the lake all day, we'd be one of the last families to leave. I remember my skin would have a new weight to it as if heavier from all the water I'd absorbed over all the hours. She'd tell us to get out of the water, that we were water logged and it was time to go home. I'm not sure I've been water logged like that in my adult age, but my kids certainly have.

*The symptoms of being water logged is an unrational reaction to the fact that it's time to leave, the uncontrollable urge to show your mom "just one more thing", hair resembling seaweed, and the failure to identify that the sun is hanging just barely above the trees.

My mom would lounge on the pebbly sand and chat with friends, take a long swim out to the logs, and usually take a nap. Every year she had a golden toasted tan. I loved that we were never in a hurry to get home like so many of the other families that would flit in and out throughout the day. We had nothing but time and when you're a kid time means nothing.

Now I'm the mom on the beach into late September. It's usually early October because the kids and I love to brag into the winter about how we got in in April and then the last swim was in October. We always remember the dates too, just in case someone doesn't believe us. At least I'm not alone in my battle against the slipping away of summer. For now I will not think about it too hard, mostly because I have to get to bed. We are, of course, meeting my mom at the lake early.

*Photo is from the 70's@ Plummer Point

Another Fine Mess

It's a lovely Sunday and I was feeling easy like it, but all that went out the window after too much coffee and grand plans for changing the house around. My crew of three children were ready, if not a little forced into the project, and standing at attention. Yeah right, they were fighting tooth and nail with me and each other, of course.

First things first; we needed to get rid of the darn lazy boy. It served its purpose on the pregnancy front three years ago, but now it is just taking up space and is a makeshift jelly catcher of sorts. It reclines way too far back and is a virtual black hole for remotes. My sixteen year-old was in charge of placing it in the front yard with a sign that read, "$20- two years-old-needs tightening". (A little embellishing never hurt anyone, it's not like we are offering a guarantee.)

The hassle that ensued involved a broken light switch, a smashed Lego house sister had been working on, many tears, dragging it out the back yard then to the front, and the 2 1/2 year-old finally hiding in the bedroom with a soothing Peter Pan video for comfort. All this for a hopeful $20! It barely seems worth it.

The living room looks no better; laundry needs to be folded and put away, the shelf I dragged into the back yard is cooking in the sun only half painted and I'm pretty sure metal paint isn't the right stuff for a wooden shelf. The garbage bag of broken toys got spilled in the madness of shuffling around and the toys to donate slowly got redistributed around the kitchen with new-found excitement. *sigh. Now it's lunch time; time for another mess.

Through all this, the song, "Easy like Sunday Morning", taunts and twirls and seems to only make the whole ordeal worse. Perhaps a nap might help to refocus and give some new found exuberance to the situation. At this point I'm over the whole deal and would like to just head for the beach for a swim and some rays. (Sun not sting).

Maybe I was destined for failure from the get-go. My crew of 16, 10, and 2 1/2 might not have been the manpower I actually needed. A nanny, a handy-man and a cook is what I really need. An interior decorator would be extremely helpful as well. I'm very good at tearing it up, but the rebuilding is where I run into trouble. Why, oh why, can't I just fold my arms and nod my head and the mess just cleans itself up? On top of everything I just took a break to thoroughly frustrate myself by not being able to figure out how to get pictures from my phone to my computer. That's it-nap time.

Procrastination Makes it Happen?

As an aspiring writer I have a common problem so many of us artsy-types face: PROCRASTINATION. It's the demon lurking under my bed as I try to drift off to sleep, the words of my best selling novel materialize in my mind, my computer brain spell-checking my floating work until it lulls me to subconscious blackness. It's the poem that so beautifully forms as I take a walk in the morning, each line more genius than the last; the poem that might even make a hit song if only I can make it home to get it onto a piece of paper. The ideas that come to me when I'm reading the droll local newspaper with it's sophomoric reporting could possibly win me a Pulitzer. If I die before I have a chance to get this stuff down- boy what a loss for all mankind! That's what we all think; us procrastinators.

Lousy loafs the lot of us! Well, enough is enough I say. I'm making a cyber-rific effort to put an end to all this wasted thought process that comes to a head only to die in shattered pieces inside my brain. I will force myself to write uncannily witty little blurbs that force the masses to think, to laugh , to cry, to change their very thinking as they know it. There will be no more excuses as to why I don't have a bog. As far as that goes, turns out I already had one and hadn't used it in nearly a year. The only thing I'd posted was a pissy little rant about the lack of a recipe I couldn't obtain from P.B.S. So, anger appears to have some affect on the procrastinating artist.

Having made my first move toward greatness and, if nothing else, personal satisfaction, I feel like an enormous weight has been lifted. Now I have to hope I can keep this thing from getting too out of hand, what with all the millions of hits and what-not.