it's a beautiful day and i'm supposed to be racing around readying for thanksgiving. but i can't stop feeling the thanks. isn't that what we're supposed to do? this whole season was built around it. but i keep trying to push it aside to plan menus, make lists and clean rooms.

i wouldn't be so rushed if it weren't for the company we've had for the last month or so. all welcome guests who gave us joy and enriched our lives. and now it comes down to the mundane righting of the household. today's society and its stipulations encroach and people say "hurry, or you won't get it all done in time". i know i'll give back. make a juicy turkey, a welcome atmosphere and, barring mishaps, tasty tempting side-dishes. i'm leaving desserts to the experts this year, as the sweet stuff always seems to be the straw that stresses me. i don't want to feel stress this year. i want to keep this feeling that i'm so lucky to have what i have, to have found what i've found, and to have kept the capacity to enjoy it all.

i'm 50 now. that thought comes through and all i feel is grateful. i've earned any lines, aches and cellulite that has formed in/around this body. i've earned the short-term memory lapses and jumbled thoughts that result from a life filled with times worth remembering and lessons well learned. i don't have the slightest urge to have anything nipped, tucked or enhanced. i'll keep it all. the aging process has brought me a new awareness of the luck i have that others do not. the gifts i keep and try to use when i can.

my computer's crowded with photos, journals and wishes. my greatest joys are simple ones: pen and paper play (blue ink, bold lines and flourishes), trying to finish just one more crossword puzzle before bed, collecting recipes, soft yarns, baking the perfefctly browned whatever, watching the dogs run up/down the walkway, abundant flowerbeds, sleepy saturdays, a good garage sale, listening to adventures told by my kids (whosever biological ones they are), laughing, music that moves me, a flattering outfit, all natural shades of green, a perfect sentence, an inviting scent, old movies, anything jimmy stewart did, honest people, funny friends, baby animals, my front yard, saying "we" instead of "me", grated cheddar, howard stern, mom's house and the memories there, family traditions, vibrant colors, the look of trust on a dog's face, brothers-in-law, balloons, pool parties, cool breezes on a hot day, wind chimes, sunsets, fireworks, piglet, my husband wearing his 'comfies', a good hair day, pride in my work, watching my soap, italian soccer, perfectly fried fish & chips, fruity drinks where you can't taste the alcohol, barbeques, silhouettes and having had granparents. so much more, but i think i've already won the contest for longest run-on sentence. i'd list them instead, but i don't like the look of lists - reminds me of to-do chore and shopping lists. thanks should flow and keep coming like pouring rain or the spicy finish of a perfect bite.

all the thanksgiving thoughts i've heard and read lately, felt forced to me. like they're supposed to happen now, so here they are. this morning they all hit and i'm warm with them. it's going to be a great day. thanks to all who've brought me here. time to get out the shopping list...

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just like gramma used to make

nothing brings me closer to both my grandmothers than having my way with the kitchen. i strive to recreate smells, tastes, inviting warmth and the love that both put into the most amazing italian meals. mixing old and new, vicdomino and longo, creativity and nostalgia - all into stockpots and baking dishes. all i can say is, well, yummy. not necessarily for my own versions, but for those inspirational to the methods used to create them.

two very different women, different levels of life, different looks entirely. commonalities include heritage and height - i take after both. i remember watching each get prepped and ready for their day: one with great care, very proper and detailed, the other with the fortitude of many women before her, with an "into the kitchen i go, doesn't matter much my looks while i'm there" attitude and tenacity.

each with different specialties. one made a MEAN sauce (or gravy as the die-hards call it), the other great attention to detail - antipasto platter just right - CHECK! lasagna bubbling in the oven - CHECK! the right amount of tempting side-dishes - CHECK! good to go. i take after both there too. more the latter i'd say, the sauce i'm still perfecting. i'm happy to say that i can feel their spirits near when i attempt to re-create their specialties.

gramma madoo (my baby version of mother, like my mom called her) was adept at the sweet stuff: baking. pignole cookies (that's pinion or pine-nut to the rest of you), harvey wallbanger and rum cakes (*hic*), even potato/peanut butter candy. along with chewy-doughy pizza (the way i love it!), a beautiful/bountiful table could be found at her glendale home.

gramma rose made the most tender, fall-off-the-bone meats. Along with a very dark, rich tomato sauce served with lots of crusty bread. She introduced me to the pungent tang of romano, still my choice over parmesan. a down-home atmosphere was always present in her burbank home.

add to that my dear great-aunt josie's incredible meatballs and pizzelles and i'd say my kitchen lineage is a most respectable one.

my style? no shortcuts, no canned sauces, no ready-mixed or prepared meats, always freshly grated cheeses and garlic bread with real garlic. all a novelty in today's hurry-up kitchens. a full meal takes more than one day, and those days started early and ending late. honestly? it gets harder with each year and my grammas made it look effortless. i know now that it was far from it. in my little girl's mind, dinner was always ready when we arrived, glimpsing only a small portion of the preparation and never allowed to participate for fear i'd be underfoot and hamper the process.

richness, fullness, love. no wonder i have 'portion issues'. but i wouldn't trade a bit of how i got here. with two loving women at the helm, missing them both more with each year since their passings, keeping their lessons close and dear. the most fondly remembered? "always use your hands to mix and mold the food - meatballs especially". in my opinion, that's where the love is added. gramma madoo insisted that several sized spatulas were always close at hand, but preferred to use her fingers to scrape batter from beaters or bowl. often washed and very well used, her hands. much like mine today.

love and miss you grammas and aunt josie. you are in me today, in gene and spirit. never forgotten, served up with each hearty italian meal.

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fragility

the cynical side kicks in and i wonder how much i can really trust. people have disappointed me in that arena for many years. once so badly i think it changed my entire outlook on life. i wonder about folks who talk about others in such a negative way - that they're not talking about me the same way when i'm not around. i've been told this is usually the case.

some people just have a sense about other people. they know immediately if that person is trustworthy or not so much. they sense failures and half-truths when they should, and take as long as they need to form opinions on folks they meet, especially those they are exposed to by other family members (aka family-members' new boyfriends, baby-daddies, best friends etc.)

i seem to have switched places with my mother on this trait. she used to always see the good in people - the angel in her head always overtook the devil when it came to giving people chance after chance to prove themselves. now, she is quick to know right from wrong, good from bad. i think it comes from years of having her beliefs proven wrong, some dreadfully so. with me, however, it's feeling over function, and hope that drives the opinion mechanism: do i like this person? am i drawn to them? do i want them in my life? do i NEED them in my life? if any of those apply, then YES, they are good people and deserve my trust. i think everyone can see the flaw in that logic (or lack thereof), although i am just now realizing it.

so, i'm left to my own intuition in this area. i believe i would be better served if i could just listen purely to my own hard-won judgement. if i could kick the long-standing habit of letting my inner critic talk over whatever first thought comes to mind, particularly in areas of character judgement. there always seems to be a more compelling reason to believe the hopeful aspects of a person and not the signs of that persons integrity (or lack thereof).

choices made, people accepted or left behind, it IS what it IS what it IS. better judgement in the future? if i can silence (or strangle, either one works) that inner critic who's obviously proven to be very naive and new to all this logical assessement stuff, there's a good shot.

OR i can finally listen to mom.

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Gramma's Geraniums

cindy has gramma's geraniums but I had forgotten she did. we have them in droves (front & back yard), rob planted them and they took off, mom can't seem to keep them going. but I had forgotten that cindy had them and when I saw a whole corner of them on her porch, i was so hopeful. a little piece of gramma in valencia.

when the glendale house was on the market, i cried a little everyday. my best childhood memories would soon belong to someone else. i even tried a rite of passage by burying a time capsule in a deep hole at the farthest corner of gramma's garden. a place i didn't go nearly enough, behind the patios and pool area, the small gate that led to gramma's passion. insanely big mint leaf plants, blackberry brambles (mom's favorite), zucchini, tomotoes - only remnants & stubborn vines remained as i sat in the dirt and cried. the little jar contained a picture of gramma & grampa in matching hawaiian garb dancing on the cruise. smiling at the camera, gramma showed herself - a happy lady with her loving husband, not a care in the world. wilted, dried flowers from her funeral and a letter telling just how important that house was to this family, and to me.

around the pool, gramma's fuschia geraniums thrived. on the day we took the kids to enjoy grampa's pool one last time, i carefully cut stalks to keep, hoping they would live on in our yards. hoping a piece of gramma would always be there, signifying comfort and love. and they do. even in valencia.

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a two dog night

the eskimos used to say it was really cold if they needed 3 dogs to keep them warm. i've always only needed 2 dogs, although maybe that has something to do with my being in southern california and not alaska.

i've had 2 sets of dogs in my adult life, although the most current is closer to a matching set than the prior. one way i have been lucky (or unlucky in the summer - whew!) is that one of each pair could generate enough heat to light a city block!

corona used to be the one we'd hug close when bones were chilled, now it's little tanner. smaller in stature but even greater on the heat scale. you can't wish him far enough away in the summertime, but when you just get into bed in the winter and the sheets give you a chill, tanner's the one you want by your side. and he's more than happy to oblige.

some of my happiest moments are spent with one dog within reach of each petting arm. it's one of the reasons i just can't see adding a third. no third arm! nope, two of them lay there making those calm, sleepy faces that let me know they are just as happy to be there as i am to have them there. little reminders that there's always something to care for in this lifetime. something to call your attention away from yourself at the most selfish of moments, or those most sad and crushing.

not having children of my own, i'd say i'm proud of my little furry ones (or big ones as the last case may be), that they all have loving and giving personalities and...oh wait, that's what dogs are mostly, just bundles of unconditional and anxious love. watching my friends and family go through the cautious toddler years, the tenuous teenage years then the expectant adult years that their children pass through too quickly, i think i may have taken the easier four-legged route. on a night where i'm able to snuggle down with them and watch an old familiar movie or two, that suits me just fine!

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audio

i keep thinking about the beginnings. the am radios that our parents controlled while we sat in backseats (withOUT seatbelts, by the way) and waited patiently to get where we were going and listened to the family tunes of the early sixties, the elephant walk, walk on by, walk like a man. a lotta walking going on in the sixties. we never thought about the radio quality, just that a tune was coming out and thank God it wasn't KFWB all news like my grandparents had on 24-7. then came the boxed hinge-covered single record player i had in my room with 45s of three dog night, classics IV, grass roots, guess who, the archies and the buckinghams.

the reverberating organ music of the late sixties that wasn't listened to by any parents i knew, but by the teenagers on the block, the ones who baby-sat but probably shouldn't have. barbara scott showed me which drugs she took by pointing to the pamphlet the police handed out at school as a pre-curser to 'just say no'. all the brightly-colored pills with the cool nicknames, she took them all, and i was afraid of her, and her music. grace slick sounded like what i'd heard an acid trip felt like and i didn't want any. i preferred whichever 45s or even an album or two that my cool cousin Tommy would buy for my birthdays or christmas. my favorite: in-a-gada-da-vida by the iron butterfly. this one didn't sound dangerous, just reminded me of my cousin and drove my parents crazy as the only place to play it was on the stereo console in the living room. they thought it was a disrespectful reference to the bible and still think the words go 'in the garden of eden, baby'.

we wanted to carry our tunes outside our cars or homes and the only way to do that was to get one of the very strang looking, very American-made, personal transistor radios trying to come out as fashion accesories to eclipse little handheld rectangles with indented speaker stripes in front. mine was a blue panasonic radio ball on a chain. worse sound than even the car radio, but it was mine and it was portable! i could listen to 93-KHJ all i wanted and did. jerry reed, the jackson five, and three dog night, all came with me from my own radio. wow.

fm came on strong in the mid-seventies, i could listen to KIQQ or KTNQ (ten-Q) on my bedroom stereo that took up almost a whole wall in its massive white painted cabinet with black accents. that's when life took off for me. i discovered rock, funk, love songs, disco, rock-a-billy, anything and everything my friends or boyfriend-of-the-moment was listening to. and i did too, loudly and often. they wouldn't come with me, but charlie, chicago, boston, lynnard skynyrd, the eagles, bad company, doobie brothers, cat stevens, elton john, santana, bee gees, charlie daniels, bread, rose royce were all ambience for anything that went on there in my room. i collected albums like penny candy and studied the cover art harder than i did any of my schoolwork. there could've been less-than-savory things going on in the world, even in my own family, but to me and my music, it was the most perfect of times.

the walkman was invented just for me. when i moved to a strange part of the country and was left to myself more than i expected, def leppard, yes, genesis and zebra kept me company on the long walks and drives i took to keep myself busy. all the strange sights i had yet to get used to were exciting and so was the music in my ears. everytime i hear 'foolin' by def leppard, i think of take-off from either LAX or JFK (EWR, LGA) with words in my ears as i looked out the window at the tinier and tinier houses: "Is anybody out there? Anybody there? Does anybody wonder? Anybody care?"

fast-forward to this morning. i decided to escape the droning football commentaries and crowds cheering that my husband chose to punctuate his sunday and strapped on the iPod armband so i can fill my head with tunes that light a fire under me. i clean the house, wash the clothes, strip the beds, even rid the fridge of serving dishes holding the last of the thanksgiving leftovers. i contemplate over again the complex organ tunes of the late sixties, the hard-hitting electric guitar solos of the seventies, the harder and longer ones of the eighties hair bands and let's not forget the disco and hip-hop tunes. they kick my ass like nothing else can, the house is done in no time and i don't want to take the buds from my ears. i'm re-connected to the music in my head. such an eccelectic mix taking me back to re-live pieces of my life, places i've almost forgotten, and people i no longer see but had once 'grooved to the tunes' along with me, however they came to us.

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working for a living

i have been so fortunate that my career has taken me to some wonderful places and even better to wonderful folks. i say IT'S taken ME because that's how i have felt about my working life. swept along by circumstance, a small or maybe larger decision or two along the way, but for the most part i've gone with the flow.

the flow took me through 4 years at a major network, 20 at a major motion picture company and now 4 and counting at one of the top feature animation companies in the world. countless lessons, friends and many bits of marketable experience later, i can emphatically say that i'm very happy with what i've accomplished and become.

with (or maybe partly because of) the career, i've forfeited my option/ability to become a mother. that choice has not weighed as heavily on me as i would have thought, mostly i feel because of the growing list of extroardinary children i've gotten to share with and contribute to along the way. my sister contributed the first two, my husband now the other two AND even a grandbaby of the cutest caliber. all of them are my family and although i don't know or have that special bond that only a mother can have, i get what i could only imagine is the same warm, amazing feeling when i look at all of them and see the little parts of their lives and growth.

because of them, my life so far has included teletubbies, pop-up video, sponge-bob, tony hawke, hannah montana, school reports on the chumash indians and grizzly bears, treasured baby blankets and stuffed animals (ank, man, a-a baby, squishy and rosie), the latest scooters and skateboards, the rebirth of weird al, stories of the boy who eats 4 pieces of chicken on "chicken day" and of all girls named "ariana", the naked brothers band, runescape, and one very wise saying: "cry me a river, build me a bridge, and GET OVER IT!".

aaaah, but i started out about work and lept to the logical absence of maternal pleasures that work has eclipsed. for me, the two haven't existed together because, i've decided, i am a perfectionist of the worst type. if i can't give my all to something, then i try to avoid it entirely. career and children - both worthy and demanding of time, energy and effort that i couldn't find a way to split, and so it goes. but i carry proudly the nickname of "tee" that children under 15 call me (even friends of friends of friends).

it's back to work now, there's reviews to write, wires to enter, journal entries to complete, credit card programs to administer, and, and, and...

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