That new Foodie movie. . .

After my blog the other day, I hot-footed it out to see Julie and Julia and am delighted to report LOVING the movie! Such a lovely and interesting character study. The acting and cooking and atmosphere were all fabulous and Meryl should get an Oscar nomination for her turn as the big gawky cook with the fabulous palate.

There were plenty of laughs, some poignant moments, and many mouth-watering vignettes of cooking and food magnifique!

There were so many layers. . . American, French, aging woman, childless woman, struggling for identity, struggling for vocation, struggling for acceptance and validation, working to bring a dream to fruition. Julia's comfortable, cosmopolitan life in Paris contrasts sharply to Julie's constrained life in the Bronx, but it is startling to see the similarities. And there were layers of relationships. . . friends, husbands and wives. . . supporting each other, adoring each other. . . sometimes correcting each other.

This movie was a fabulous demonstration of the partnership of love, of the way true and abiding love grows and works in the lives of people.

Stanley Tucci is my new hero. He is downright sexy in this movie. REAL hero material. And that takes some doing.

My sig other pronounced it a "chick flick" before we went, but he loved it as much as I did. And there were quite a few men there. . . husbands will love the winking allusions to food and sex as parts of the same passion.

These are two wonderful and talented actresses led by a clever script and caught with marvelous cinematography. . . together they produce a film that is thought provoking and inspiring. As you watch these two women work and dream and persevere, you can't help asking yourself, "What is my dream? What could I be doing? What is my passion?"

And isn't it about time I got started on it?

If you have a chance to see the movie, drop in and let us know your take on it. And did you cringe through the lobster scene, too?

Debra - "I WANNA DO THAT!"

Before I get to the things I "wanna" do, I should say a word or two about why I've been so quiet lately.

I had an accident on December 13th. About 1/2" of the end of my middle finger of my right hand had to be put back on/together. And it was broken. Typing has been an issue for me! We think and hope that all will be well in time. Although there is every possibility that healing will take a while and that the final result may not be as spectacularly attractive as it once was. There is a little lawsuit and the attorney doesn't want me discussing the accident.

Suffice to say that the "i" and the comma! are typed with the middle finger of your right hand. And then there is the ten-key pad. That has been impossible. I'm hiring extra help to get me through the end of/first of the year.

So...I haven't been ignoring you but constantly backspacing to correct the "i" and whacking the finger keeps me pretty quiet online.

The accident and the sheer number of things I can't fully do in the last 3 weeks (try putting on socks or tying shoes and forget quilting or taking this picture left-handed when the button is on the right-hand side) had me thinking about how we should have experiences and embrace life NOW and not tomorrow. We should cram it all in while we can. The smallest things can derail your plans. Don't give chaos a chance to "reign" in your parade.

My uncle, Mike Martin, has been grabbing hold of life and strapping in for one heck of a ride since he retired. He's one of those guys who spent his life outdoors. Former President of the Forestry Association of America, did forestry consulting, managed timber, and owned a number of sawmills. He's always been in good shape. In 2008 he made the trip to base camp. That's the base camp at EVEREST.

He became so interested in the plight of the sherpas there that he's beginning work on a foundation to supply some of their needs like water treatment facilities. And he's talking about signing on to one of my husband's company's humanitarian missions. They go built schools and small local hospitals. All volunteer and that means you volunteer your cash to get you there and back!

One of the other things my uncle has done is sponsor a leg of the whooping crane migration. "Huh?" you say. This is real. They imprint the whooping cranes in Canada on an ultra aircraft. Then they fly them down to the United States along a route which will be "their" migration route. My uncle sponsored a leg of the journey that went over his home county. And he's wheedling his way into the good graces of the organization so that he can maybe fly a leg of the migration next year!! Here are some pics of him in the aircraft and then of the birds following the plane across Hardin County, Tennessee.

When it snowed on his farm he had his wife tow him up a big hill which we now call "Manbone Mountain" and he skied down it. This was recent, not ten years ago!

And they are planning a return trip to Everest. He just got back from some conservation work in one of those South American wilderness areas. I think they boated up a river while charting trees or something. Sound like a snooze to me but this is something he wanted to do and by golly he made it happen. He devoted his time and money to it.

He was going to drag us on one of these adventures but my mother (she's 11 years older than him) said, "Dude, you can drag me onto a cruise ship in the Greek Isles but that's as 'back to nature' as I'm getting." So, this summer my bestest, favorite uncle in the whole world is taking his girls on a cruise to the Greek Isles. (Mom, Sis and me) I definitely wanna do that.

But there are a lot of things I wanna do. And my husband thinks he wants to do one of the humanitarian trips. We're making plans. We're going to stop saying, "Wouldn't it be neat..." and instead we're going to say, "How can we make this happen now?"

What do you guys have planned? How are you going to get involved in your life and in the lives of others this year? Do you have big dreams or small dreams? Both are okay! Right now I want to stop saying I'm going to put together a quilting book and I actually want to plan, execute and get those quilts made this year!

Dream-working

Occasionally I hear other writers talking about "dreaming" a whole book, or even getting an idea for a book from a dream, and I admit: it makes me jealous. Because I must have the laziest subconscious on the planet. No Eiffel towers, no rocket launches, no steamy orgies, no familial confrontations with tommy guns. My dreams are basically my ordinary life with the occasional orangutan thrown in.

The most excitement I ever generated in bed was when I once sat up during a dream (still asleep, I am told) and asked anxiously: "Has anybody seen Frank Ray?"

Now, Frank Ray was a dear and somewhat dotty old man who lived with his equally aged sister. . . two doors down from me when I was six years old. We all thought he was a little smelly, but otherwise benign. My only real memory of him was a trip my sister and two or three other kids and I took to collect pumpkins from a farmer's pumpkin patch. I had to ride in the front seat with the old guy and he caught my thumb in the car door. The car was so old (like him) that there was a huge gap in the seal and while it caught my thumb and kinda mashed it a little, it hardly even hurt. My sister cried; I didn't. That's it. No trauma. No terror. No illicit anything. Just a memory of ordinary childhood that popped into my head and apparently made me want to sit up and ask for the old guy. Sigh. See what I mean? Just plain forgettable.

Except that . . . I didn't forget it, and I can't figure that out. Most of my dreams are so forgettable that I. . . forget them. So why Frank Ray? What was he to me that I've forgotten. . . or suppressed? Hmmmmm.

Did I see something in that old woodshed with all the knives and civil war swords out behind his house? Something that marked my young mind? Something so terrible that I've blanked it out and can't bear to remember it? When I peeked in his windows, as all six year olds are wont to do, did I see him and his equally aged sister engaged in unnatural acts. . . like frying liver and onions. . . IN THE SAME PAN?

Why ask for Frank Ray? Did he have a son or a nephew named James Earl. . . who would go on later to infamy as the killer of Martin Luther King? Did I see swastikas hanging above an altar in the closet of the back room? Did he shuffle along all the time to make the neighbors "think" he was old and decrepit so he could go on secret courier missions abroad? Did his aged sister serve us all spiked lemonade that made us forget what we saw at the "pumpkin patch"? Did he snip off locks of our hair (or thumbs) to use to find us and invade our dreams as we grew up so he could live on-- night by night-- stalking us through our dreams?

Did he really keep a big orange orangutan?

Sigh. See what I mean? Back with the orangutan again and I know I'm back in Kansas and nothing really extraordinary happened. Not even in my dreams. And I guess I've made peace with that. Maybe it's all just a balancing act. My subconscious is getting rid of the flotsam and jettsum of ORDINARY so I can get wild and fertile with my waking mind.

Yeah. Maybe that's it. Who needs dreams when my waking mind is so. . . ummm. . . colorful?

What about you? How's your dream life? Any recurring things you want to get off your chest? Any strange dreams you've turned into books or proposals or good cocktail party stories?

Debra - The "Stuffing" of Dreams

I am a picky person. I can't help it. It's not that I'm devasted because you changed your recipe for corn soufle, but really? Why mess with it?

I don't mean to blurt out, "What did you do to the soufle?" It just comes out. I'm inquisitive. Really. Best to tell me right up front if you're screwing around with my view of how the world should be. It'll go better for both of us. I can be a team player, but I like to get a heads-up about the plays.

Don't deliver furniture to me that has a scratch or nick. I didn't pay for scratched or nicked furniture, and I will look. I don't take anything that looks like a box has been retaped. Nope. "Go get me one from the back, please!" I'm polite, but I'm picky.

Don't change brands of sour cream. Only get the "right" brand of onion dip.

Don't leave my car empty. Or trash in it.

I can't order anything off the menu as-is.

Eventually Amazon will learn to stop sending me books with bent corners and hang-nail spines. Hate 'em. Won't keep 'em.

Where is all this leading? To a king-sized mattress. I told my husband to get a mattress. (Please, hold the guffaws until I'm finished. I know that was stupid...NOW.) He did. Only it was more of a 7-ply piece of birch marine grade plywood.

In the beginning I couldn't make it a whole night without decamping for the den and the recliner. He, who sleeps on his back, was snoozing like a baby and getting his best sleep ever. Meanwhile my spine was all out of whack from sleeping on my side. My bonny good nature was whacked too. Just ask hubby.

If I hadn't had to go out of town on business, I think there would have been bloodshed. (His.) But I did and got the most fabulous night's sleep. I'm sure the maid thought a bomb had gone off in the room because I tore everything apart the next morning to find out the magic combination of bedding. My bet was on the down featherbed. Ooh la and la. Don't let the word "feather" fool you here. We are talking "down." Fluffy scrumptious heaven in a bag. I called the manufacturer and had them ship that puppy ASAP and heck! Throw in a couple of down pillows.
I am now sleeping the sleep of the instantly gratified consumer. I am back in dreamland where the men are yummy and bon bons are necessary to survival. I highly recommend it. http://pacificcoast.com/

It's a tad rumple/lumpish when the bed is made up but it has that antique bed look. Sort of like puffy clouds.

How about you guys? What is indispensible to your sleep?