Category Archives: Splashes

Lost and Found

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So, I have a new cousin.

Well, not a new cousin. She’s thirty-five.

A new-to-me cousin.

I don’t want to ‘out’ her by mentioning her name, and her story isn’t mine to tell, either, but we’ve exchanged texts and become Facebook friends, and hopefully in a few days when things are a bit less overwhelming, we’ll get to actually talk, because she seems like a neat person, and as someone who is (biologically) an ‘only’ child, I have a special fondness for finding family members.

So, my message to her was just to welcome her to my crazy, smart, diverse, stubborn, loving family.

Of course, our family is not without its share of angst.

Whose is?

But I’m not part of the angst in this case, merely an outside observer, but today that distance, that detachment put me in the position of offering comfort and advice from someone from whom I’ve often sought solace for myself.

It’s odd, this role-reversal that happens as we get older. I sat down intending to write about all the strong women – both in my family, and in the greater world – that I’m privileged to know, and instead I find myself marveling about my own inner strength, and musing about paths untaken that I’m still considering.

I love that I find new things about myself and about the world every day.

And I love that lost and found don’t have to be opposites, because both conditions share a similarity: they represent change.

Thursday 13: Coasting

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Seaside Heights Roller Coaster After Sandy by Brian Thompson

I don’t know the name of the roller coaster at Seaside Heights, NJ that was washed to sea by Hurricane Sandy last week, but Brian Thompson’s image of the scene – framed by the storm-tossed timbers from the boardwalk itself – has been permanently etched onto my brain. I’ve spent a lot of time at boardwalk amusement parks and piers over the years, so, as a tribute to Seaside Heights, Asbury Park, Keansburg, and boardwalks elsewhere, my first Thursday 13 in months is a list of my favorites:

  1. The Galaxy, Asbury Park, NJ: The first coaster I ever encountered, long since dismantled, but living on in my memory.
  2. The Giant Dipper, Santa Cruz, CA: One of the last remaining wooden roller coasters still in operation. The front gives the best view of the water, the back gives the joltiest ride.
  3. The Wildcat, Keansburg, NJ: Modern-ish, with corkscrews and such, but amazing night lighting.
  4. The Giant Dipper, Belmont Park (San Diego), CA: Another version of the coaster at Santa Cruz, further down the coast. Built in 1925 and recently restored.
  5. The Hurricane, Santa Cruz, CA: This coaster was the scarier of the two at Santa Cruz’s boardwalk, but 2012 was it’s last year in operation. It’s being replaced in 2013 by a spinning coaster called the Undertow.
  6. The Great White, Wildwood, NJ: Another wooden coaster, though technically it’s wood and steel. Classic coaster.
  7. The Cyclone, Luna Park, Coney Island, NY: Probably the most iconic boardwalk roller coaster in American history.
  8. Galaxi Coaster, Palace Playland, Portland, ME: Italian made steel coaster with a minimum height requirement of 42 inches even if you’re riding with a parent.
  9. Boardwalk Bullet, Kemah Boardwalk, Galveston, TX: A classic wooden coaster in a warm-weather locale. Everything really is bigger in Texas.
  10. Rolling Thunder, Six Flags Great Adventure, Jackson, NJ: Okay, technically, this isn’t a boardwalk coaster, but it’s in New Jersey, so I’m counting it because it was the first BIG coaster I ever rode.
  11. The Swamp Fox, Family Kingdom, Myrtle Beach, SC: Another classic wooden coaster (you find these a lot at boardwalks). I’ve not been on this one; it’s on my list.
  12. Looping Star, Ocean City, MD: Another on my list of must-do’s, this one’s in Maryland, and looks awesome.
  13. The West Coaster, Pacific Park, Santa Monica, CA: This is the only seaside coaster in LA, and it’s as iconic as the coasters in Asbury Park and Coney Island to folks from the left coast. If you remember the opening of Three’s Company you know this coaster.

Jersey Strong: Sandy Hook Lives

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Sandy Hook Sign by USNavy13@Instagram

Has it really been over a week since I’ve written anything here? I guess it has. I wish I could tell you that I’ve been off having grand adventures, but the reality is that I spent most of last week, except Halloween, watching coverage of Hurricane Sandy, first on The Weather Channel, and then via News 12 New Jersey, a cable channel that I could live-stream over my Google TV. Now, my mother and I share a love of weather movies and weather disaster films, and I do try not to buy into hype when there’s a real weather disaster, but Hurricane Sandy was personal for me, even though I was dry, warm, and safe here in Texas.

Why?

Because I was born in Ocean County, NJ at Fort Monmouth.
Because I spent the first four years of my life hearing the foghorn wafting over Sandy Hook.
Because every summer until I was thirteen, I stayed with my grandparents in Middletown, and went to the beach at Sandy Hook, Ocean Grove, and Avon-by-the-Sea.
Because the year I was nine, my mother and I lived in Ocean Grove, two blocks from the ocean.
Because when I was little Asbury Park still had a functioning amusement park (I loved the tilt-a-whirl and spinning teacups), and I’ve been to Seaside Heights more than once.
Because I remember walking up and down the piers of the Atlantic Highlands yacht harbor before going to my cousin’s diner for rice pudding.
Because Sandy Hook, and Fort Hancock (which is out on the Hook) are among my favorite placed on earth, and I have played in the bunkers, and climbed the lighthouse, and built sand castles and learned to swim in the salty blue ocean off those beaches.
Because I have family and friends, and friends who may as well be family who have spent the last week and a half bailing water out of their houses, not having heat, not having power, not having working water, because of Sandy, and now today’s snowstorm has some of them without power again.

Because even though I’ve lived in Colorado, California, South Dakota, California (again), and Texas, at heart I am, and always will be, a Jersey Girl, and Monmouth County will always be my truest home.

After the storm, I went out to Twitter and Instagram and Facebook, searching for images of the places I knew best, the places I loved, and the entry sign at the top of this post is just one of the images I found. It led me to the National Park Service’s Facebook Page for the Sandy Hook unit of Gateway Park Service (Sandy Hook, NJ; Jamaica Bay & Staten Island, NY) and there, I found images of Sandy Hook and Fort Hancock post-Hurricane Sandy.

The beaches are trashed. The parking lots are in disarray. The beach pavillions took serious damage. But the lighthouse still stands, the old houses of Officer’s Row are still there, the Coast Guard dock survived, and even though they’re technically off-limits and covered in poison ivy, future kids will still play in the old bunkers.

Sandy Hook Lives.
And New Jersey is small, but strong.

Evil Lives Again (Evil Dead Red Band Trailer)

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When we were at Dallas Comic-Con Fan Days on Saturday, we had close-up seats for Bruce Campbell’s Q&A, and one of the tasty treats he brought for his fans was the short trailer for the remake of Evil Dead. (He’s not in it, but he’s co-producing, so consider it sanctioned – would he be promoting it if he didn’t approve?)

Today, of course, the OFFICIAL trailer was released – the “Evil Dead Red Band” trailer. You can see it on IGN or YouTube, but, because I’m really, really nice. (And because I’m re-embracing the love of horror I had as a teenager and sort of stifled as an adult) I’m sharing it here.

Warnings? Hell, yeah. Not Safe for Work, Not Appropriate for Viewers Under 17, Those Who are Squeamish, or Those Who Hate Violence and Gore.

For everyone else? ENJOY:

Cruise Control

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All this week, I’ve felt a bit like my life is on cruise control, except that while I’m going at a steady pace, there’s no one doing any navigation, so I’m just running in circles. padden-royal-mail-mediterranean It’s a frustrating feeling, because it’s this|close to stagnation without quite being so.

I did all my paid work this week in an unhurried fashion, and still finished it in time to get my invoice in yesterday. I’m where I need to be on some writing (paid and not) due tomorrow. I’ve worked out twice so far this week even though I had my period (I totally get a gold star for working through menstrual cramps, even if I have to give it to myself). I’ve edited a bunch of stuff for a good friend, and recommended her website to two other good friends.

I’ve taught the new foster dog (Zelda the boxer, who has been with us for nearly two weeks now) what her name is, and where her bed is. She’s taught me what her “I need to pee Right NOW” signal is. We’re working on commands like sit, stay, and come. She’s playing with my big, sweet pointer Maximus (aka Maximus the Monster Pup), now, and no longer getting all growly when one of the other dogs tries to take her abandoned bones.

But I haven’t been working on any of my own stuff. Not my creative non-fiction project. Not my novel. Not the super-skeret project I’m co-creating with a friend. Not the short story. Not even my fanfiction. I’m not blocked, exactly, just feeling really tired, and like I need to spend some more time reading before I do more writing.

I write every day for some reason or another, but I don’t always write what I want to write.

And I feel like I’m locked in cruise control mode, but not quite sure where I’m going.

Grid Lines and Aged Scotch

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Hemingway drinking and writing

My friend Becca recently moved from a house where she’s lived for decades into a new place, and her writings about the move have me thinking about my own routines.

Next month will be our eighth year in this house. As I just commented on Becca’s blog, it’s the longest I’ve lived anywhere in my entire life, and while I love my house, and really don’t want to go through the temporary hell that is moving, I’m also having periodic bouts of antsy-ness that are getting harder and harder to quell.

I wasn’t meant to live in suburbia, but I’m spoiled by the space we have, and the pool, and the fact that our neighborhood is generally pretty safe. I mean, I don’t hate it, and it certainly isn’t one of those raw, sterile subdivisions, but it’s a lot more white-bread than I really like, and I wish there was a cafe within easy walking distance.

There is nothing like being able to walk your dog to your favorite cafe, grab a latte, and sit outside with the pooch lying near your feet, both of you people- and dog-watching. When we lived in the condo in San Jose, that was part of my routine, as was bringing my dog to work, and grabbing the best ever chicken burritos from the tiny Mexican place on the corner when I didn’t want to have lunch with other people.

Here, my routine is centered on my house. I get into bad habits, like writing in bed all day, instead of going to the Word Lounge, all of 100 feet away. I like working up there, mostly, but I hate having to go all the way back downstairs when my water glass is empty. It’s not the walking up and down that bothers me, but the fact that doing so distracts me from whatever creative flow I’ve got going.

Then again, most days I have to finish all my work before I shower, or THAT will ruin my creative flow.

Routines can be helpful things, but I don’t like mine to be so rigid that I feel trapped. I prefer broad frameworks, not tiny grid squares (and, in fact, I take perverse delight in buying pads of graph paper, and writing bad poetry across the squares, paying no attention to the lines). I like guidelines. I hate rules.

More and more, I’m convinced that great authors – Dorothy Parker, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, etc. – drank so much because the alcohol buzzed forced the lines to go down and the creative walls to tumble into dust.

I don’t drink that much, or terribly often, because I have little tolerance for alcohol, but there are days when I can completely see the appeal. Sometimes I find that funny.

But sometimes, it scares me.

Delicious Autumn!

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And so summer has ended, and autumn has begun. It seems a bit of an anti-climactic beginning, however, since today’s high temperature was a distinctly summery 97 degrees. Autumn Running from iStockPhoto.com But then, it’s not as if the earth can read a calendar, and even if the day was warm, by five-thirty the light was pale and thin, and there was an edge to the heat.

Autumn is my favorite season. I love crunching through crisp fallen leaves when I walk the dogs – hell, I love that it’s cool enough to walk the dogs without their feet burning or their owner melting into a puddle of sweaty goo. I love the different vegetables that come into season, the weather that begs for soups and stews. I love the way my creativity increases as the nights grow longer, and I love that my ritual Saturday evening baths don’t make me feel like I’m wasting hot water because it’s hot outside.

But autumn has another side, too. The side that reminds us that all things eventually wither and die, the side that reminds us that such death is a normal part of the life-cycle.

I was watching the 2006 production of Company on Netflix earlier today while folding laundry. (Raul Esparza is brilliant, by the way. His version of “Being Alive” is chilling.) There’s a line uttered by the character Joanne that goes something like, “We’re too young to be with the old people, but too old to spend time with the young people. We ARE the generation gap,” and that line really struck me today. Okay, I’m older than Robert’s 35(ish – there’s a throwaway line which suggests this is not his first 35th birthday), but our whole population is living longer, so it’s reasonable, I think, to feel similar. (Anyway, Joanne was older than Robert).

They say the unexamined life isn’t worth living. My recent examinations have taught me that I have young energy, despite being 42. (My dentist had my birthdate in front of him, and he and his assistant both thought I was barely 30). I’m not even close to my own autumn yet. If anything, I’m just entering mid-summer.

I may not be ready for the autumn of my life any time soon. But the autumn of the year? Bring it on, in all its colorful deliciousness!

“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.”
~George Eliot

Thursday 13 – Ac-SCENT-tchu-ate the Positive

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As a child, I wasn’t exposed to a lot of perfume because my mother is highly allergic to such things. I mean, she used to wear Norell from time to time, and my grandmother had a special fondness for L’aire du Temps, but other than that, my only memory of perfume was Aunt Molly’s Taboo, which smells like rice pudding in my brain, because my association between her and the family diner where rice pudding was served is so strong.

Over the last several years, though, I’ve developed a special fondness for perfumes, so even though this offering for Thursday 13 is coming in very late (it’s been an odd day) I hope you enjoy my list of 13 perfumes I really love (in no particular order).

  1. Clinique Happy: I received a sample of this when it first came out, and fell in love instantly. It’s a sunny floral, young, but not too young, and I really love it. Sadly, my bottle is now empty.
  2. Benefit So Hooked on Carmella: This is one of the Benefit “Crescent Row” scents, and it’s a bit foodie, but not too much so. It’s a good casual scent.
  3. Jennifer Aniston: While I’m not a particular fan of Jennifer Aniston as an actor, her namesake perfume, which comes in a whale-tail inspired bottle, is delightful. I bought it when I ran out of something else, and walked into ULTA and said, “I like florals and aquatics, but nothing cloying, and nothing too young, because I have young energy but I’m not twenty.” The saleswoman introduced me to this, and I really like it. It’s a little overpowering wet, but on dry-down it’s salty and sweet and pretty subtle.
  4. Vera Wang Princess: I confess, I fell in love with the box, and I was amused that the bottle is a cut-glass heart with pink glass hearts in the crown-shaped top. The scent is a crisp but sweet floral.
  5. Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Intrigue: This is a foody scent with figs and smoke among the main notes. It’s a good winter scent, and I like to combine it with my burgundy stiletto ankle boots and a forest green fedora (and other clothes, of course) and pretend (in my inner monologue only) that I’m a modern-day Mata Hari.
  6. Possets Silver Carnations: It’s a clove-y carnation scent but there’s something slinky and silvery about it. It reminds me of violets, in that once you get a whiff of it, you stop smelling it until suddenly, you catch the scent again.
  7. Escada Moon Sparkle: Fruity and sparkly, this scent is one that my husband particularly responds to. I wear it often when he’s just come home from a business trip.
  8. Possets Frou-Frou: Anyone who knows me will hardly be surprised that I am a fan of a perfume called ‘frou-frou.’ It’s got some figgy notes, but it’s also playful, and for a long time it was my signature scent.
  9. Bulgari Mon Jasmin Noir: I just got a sample of this in the September Birchbox, and I’m already really hooked on it – which is amazing, because I don’t really like jasmine most of the time.
  10. Christian Dior Miss Dior: This is another Birchbox sample, from a couple of months ago. It’s a little young, but it’s also classic.
  11. Benefit Lookin’ to Rock Rita: Another “Crescent Row” scent, clean, fresh, fun, and a little bit edgy.
  12. Juicy Coutour Viva la Juicy La Fleur: This is such a happy, playful scent, I can’t not love it. Really.
  13. Black Phoenix Jester: A great scent for summer, this has strawberries and currants, but still manages not to be horrifyingly sweet. This is Fuzzy’s favorite perfume of mine, but I’ve run out of it. Twice.

perfume bottles on glass shelf from istockphoto