Stories

1) You can’t find your keys
           Don’t worry about it, no one can ever find their keys

2) You can’t find your cell phone.
           Don’t worry about it, no one can ever find their cell phone

3) Your daughter calls and tells you they’ve just called her from the deli to say you left your cell phone there. And you had no idea it was even missing.

4) You have two things in your hand, a dirty napkin and a wallet, and you throw your wallet in the trashcan.

5) You walk into the bedroom and realize the dresser drawer is open.
           This is a bad sign. There’s a cure. Retrain yourself to do things in a different order. Open the drawer. Take the sweater out. Shut the drawer. THEN put the sweater on.

Let’s be real, here. People who grow up like I did are not often country music fans. Aside from my mother’s odd taste for the sounds of the Grand Old Opry (acquired during her years at Wellesley, no doubt) I knew no country music unless it was from one of those “Willie Nelson’s Greatest Hits” ads that ran constantly on our local CBS station. Well, sometimes I caught a little bit of “Hee Haw” if no one changed the channel in time. Suffice it to say that “another somebody done somebody wrong song” was never my music of choice.

I like irony, subtly, and a literary lyric. Like my tea, I tend to like my music un-sweet, unless the sweetness is only one of many layers and has no cloying quality. There was a kind of song that made me queasy from the time I was very small:  ”Baby, I’m a want you,” and “Cherish” come to mind. Well, and that other kind; the kind where a dog dies and is carried out to sea, or someone (or something) named “Wildfire” is apparently lost. There was a kind of broad, needy, whiny quality about those songs, and that Ick Factor seemed to exist in every country song I heard. “Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain?” Seriously?!

There are as many ‘personal chefs’ in Palm Beach as there are swimming pools.  I see them in their white chef coats and Mario Batali crocs at Publix Super Market chatting each other up as they fondle the passion fruit.  I have had to resist the urge to run up to them and say, “I personally know Wolfgang Puck … personally!”

Palm Beach residents love to dine together.  Restaurants flourish, but elegant dinner parties reign! They always have.

So, what does one do in a town where an intimate sit down dinner is for forty people? If one is a Texas DNA challenged, Left Coast Malibubi, “Y’all come on over and I’ll cook up something” works. During the season of Madoff, a small home cooked dinner - while not the rage – does earn a few sophisticated nods of approval. Besides, it gives me a certain pleasure to psychically push aside the personal chefs at Publix so that I too can fondle the passion fruit with the same sense of authority!

Trying to find something different that is relatively easy to do at the last minute and actually tastes good is the goal.  I have gone through the various BBQ and Mexican dinner menus, all of which were adored by my if-I-see-one-more-beef-tornado-on-my-plate-I-will-scream friends. And, I do relish their fawning looks of gratitude over the unexpected but delicious déclassé fare!

This is been a TERRIBILIS AUTEM SABBATI (aka a really bad week)... a lot of pain - all over the world. Cautious moderate thinking seems utterly incapable of solving the problems, as we have moved into a communal state of FIGHT OR FLEE. For a moderate middle of the roader this is awkward. So while my point is serious, I now move into a wistful moment of humor. I am offering two options each on fight or flee.

Fight: Slim Pickens riding the bomb from Dr Strangelove and Brunhilda from Wagner's Ring Cycle, (photo©Nancy Ellison Photography).

Flee: IZ - Israel Kamakawiwo'ole and his youtube video of Somewhere Over the Rainbow - the sweetest most personal rendition ever, and finally my personal favorite - the White Cosmo that I just had at Cafe Boulud for brunch today....

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The Flee choices are short term. The Fight choices are rather permanent.