Pop That Cork!

I wish each and every one of you the year of your dreams. 

May I also add, I find you absolutely irresistible. 

Bottoms up, angel pants, and be joyous!

May all of your celebrations be just as spectacular

(please click & swoon...)

Tip of the Hat

Remember when men dressed in smart suits and wore hats? Me, neither. And neither does my next door neighbor who wears gray sweats with a hole the size of a silver dollar in what should be a very private zone.

To be fair, I'm just as guilty as he is. As I write this I'm wearing what I like to call, yoga pants, which is just a high falutin' word for, old stretchy black sweats. What happened here? When did we get so lazy and creepy looking? Just look at what's happened to Las Vegas. My god, it used to be alive with money, sin and glamour. Ladies dripped with diamonds and wore big huge hair-do's. And, of course, men wore suits. Now Vegas is just fat. We're too lazy to even put the Las in it. Vegas. Buttery buffets and sneaker clad visitors with buffoonish tee shirts that read, "Vegas, Baby!" or "Slot Slut!".  Good night.

People used to dress up to go the movies, to the grocery store, for lawn bowling. (I know lawn bowling is extinct, I'm just trying to make a point here.)

Listen, I'm wearing "yoga pants" because I'm indifferent about dressing. I work from home. Who's going to see me besides the UPS guy and my horribly dressed neighbor? And sometimes I kick it up a notch, put on jeans and a cute top, maybe even a charming little dress, but those days are few and far between. I think we all need to collectively do a lot better. What does it take, an extra 10 or 15 minutes to doll up? And for the men, more like 46 seconds.

Can you imagine? We'd blow our mutual minds with our snappy looks.

So it's agreed. We'll all cut the shit and start looking like the smart set that we are.

Or, and I'm just throwing this out there for the sake of comfort and conversation...we slip into our roomy sweats and cool all this fancy pants chatter.

Ho Ho Ho!

"Merry Christmas, nearly everybody!"

-Ogden Nash

Light Up Your Christmas, Old-School Style!

In Tofino with Toots

When I was nine I spent the summer in Tofino Canada, vacationing with my very best friend, Melissa, and her rich, oddball father, Rod.

In fact, I had spent the last three summers doing the exact same thing, but during those trips Melissa's mom had come with us. This was the first trip without her and I felt her absence immediately. For starters, Rod wasn't big on rules. Like staying sober. Or feeding us. He was big, however, on his new girlfriend, Toots. That was her name. We even stole her wallet late one night and checked her driver's license. Toots, it read. She arrived the day after we did, wearing a see-throughish orange sundress and you could glimpse her lacy black bra underneath. She was exotic and terrifying.

The Tofino house was enormous and sat on a huge piece of land in front of the ocean. Toots wandered around the house picking up the knick knacks and candlesticks Melissa's mom had lovingly arranged in previous summers, as if she were taking inventory.

Toots and Rod required a lot of privacy which left Melissa and I with time on our hands. This can be an exciting thing to a nine year old. We felt like short adults. In the morning we'd find the handfuls of crumpled twenties Rod had left us on the kitchen counter. We'd eat cold pop tarts in the back yard and then wander into town where we bought People magazines and postcards that I'd send home to Seattle, scribbling notes about the fine time I was having.

Rod always smelled of scotch and expensive cologne. He had thick wavy black hair and an elegant gold watch and looked the way I imagined a jet setter would. He was the first man I'd ever seen who actually had a money clip which made it seem like his money was worth more.  Rod normally wore tailored suits, but here in Tofino he favored linen pants and pastel colored shirts. He roared around town with Toots in a red convertible. And then a white one after he crashed the red one. Both at home and in Tofino Rod remained remote, like he was watching Melissa and I from another room. He always seemed just out of our reach.

A couple of weeks into summer there was no pretense left of Toots and Rod looking after us. The two of them slept late into the afternoons on the days they were home. Even at nine I knew it was sad for us to be left so alone. My parents knew my every move, my every friend, my every grade. Melissa could go missing for a couple of days before a red flag would be raised.

About this time we started spending long afternoons at sea. A little fishing boat sat at their pier and we'd start up the engine and head out. We took these trips seriously, packing food, rods, reels, bait and a stack of our People's.

We were living a life that was filled with freedom and fear. We were nine and it's really dark at night. We had to learn how to do our own laundry and make our own dinner. We made a pact with each other to not let our hair get too dirty. Of course there were many nights that we cranked up the Grease soundtrack, singing loud and bad while layering on Toots' makeup, telling each other ghost stories and secrets, but the plain fact is, nine year olds need to feel somewhat supervised.

Toward the very end of that summer we were out on the boat when a storm came. Our heads were buried deep in the People's and we didn't see it coming. By the time we did it was a little too late. Something like this was bound to happen. The long and short of it is that the boat was smashed to bits and local fishermen plucked us from the water and took us home. If Rod were there, they would have beat him up. Since he wasn't, they called their wives who dried our clothes, gave us baths and made us hot soup. Melissa and I laid awake all night, holding hands while we waited for Rod and morning to come.

That was the last summer I went to Tofino. Melissa and I saw less and less of each other as the years went on. She began to become what girls will sometimes become when they aren't parented all that much. In high school she acted tough and dated hard characters trying to hide it all away.  But from time to time, whenever we ran into each other,  we'd catch eyes and smile. We knew each other in a way that no one else ever will. We knew each other in the way that only nine year old girls who've been caught in a wild storm can know each other.

My fine, brave friend, Melissa.

No Way, Jose

I noticed that my garbageman, Jose, had lost a tremendous amount of weight. Yesterday afternoon I quizzed him about it.

"All carb diet." That's right, All Carbs! He breakfasts on donuts and toast. Lunch is a combination of tortillas and potato chips. For dinner, baked potatoes and linguini. Snacking on pretzels is a must!

What have we stumbled onto, I thought. Just what dietary walls are we breaking down today, America?

Not many, I'm afraid. On his way back to the truck he threw in that he also quit his 12 can a day beer habit.

So close. So very, very close.

She's Eternally Aces

"Show me a woman who cries when the trees lose their leaves in autumn and I'll show you a real asshole."

Nora Ephron

(my hero of all time)

My Bad Reputation

About one million years ago I stood in the middle of a boozy, smoky loft, the floor littered with bottles and crushed cigarette butts. It was about 4 in the am and I was quite drunk and so were the dozens of other mohawked attendees. This was more or less a routine evening for me at this time in my weird little life, but what stands out about this particular evening was what I overheard. A tattered looking lad was sitting on a tattered looking couch. He leaned in toward his friend (who appeared to have vomit drying on his chin) and said, "She can be so fucking harsh, man. Just so mean."

The "she" in question, was me. It was jarring to hear. I'd always thought of myself as kittenishly soft. Very affable. But, apparently, these two did not.  Why, I thought as I smacked them about their pale faces. Why on earth would they say that?

While icing my fist, I took a good, long, hard look at myself. Perhaps there was something to what they said. Yes, I yelled a lot. Yes, I sometimes stormed out of rooms when people were mid-story because I didn't want to hear the boring end. Yes, I chucked things when I got mad, occasionally leaving someone with a faint scar. (Very faint, you crybabies.) Things were beginning to add up.

As I stumbled home I decided it was probably time to mend my ways, lighten up a little, try out some charm school magic.  Nobody wants to be seen as a meanie,

But here's the thing - no one bothers to tell you how much fucking energy manners take. How time consuming it is to hold a door open, dash off a thank you note, give away your cabs, or smile. These were dark times for me. Just lifting a lit smoke to my lips was absolutely exhausting most mornings.

I spent the better part of a week doing what I could to improve my character before wearily flopping onto my unmade bed and deciding that in a certain light, there was a forceful beauty in a bad reputation.  Maybe not such a bad thing after all.

The Sad Tale of Uneaten Nuts

My husband is a squirrel enthusiast. He enjoys their agility and free-spirited, can-do attitude. Me, not so much. Ever since the murder of a somber squirrel I had briefly known named Sartoosh (see the grisly details here!), I've been kind of off of the whole befriending rodents thing.

We have a large smelly tree in the backyard. It grows some kind of fruit that I've never seen sold in stores and the reason for this is probably because it smells faintly of candy and blood. However, this scent has not put the local squirrel population off one bit. They flock to this tree. And the tree grows without a bit of help from me. Hoping to ignore the tree to death didn't work and it's grown about a foot since we bought the house, nestling up against our back porch which means the squirrels frolic around the back porch which is what first caught my husband's attention.

Listen, it's cute, I get it. Fuzzy grey haired little animals hopping around on a tree, it's fun. But while I am able to ignore the squirrel demographic, my big hearted husband is not. He started by watching them out the laundry room window, then he would slowly open the back door, hoping they wouldn't dash away. Day after day he worked at this, and day after day they ran. That's when he came up with the idea of a squirrel buffet of sorts, gently placing nuts on our back porch railing, making sure they were evenly spaced. But they snubbed his snacks. You would think instinct would take over and the squirrels would start snatching them up, maybe even fighting over this feast, but I guess their penchant for hurting my husband's feelings was greater than their urge to eat.

Finally, all of this came to an abrupt end. The excitement in my husband's eyes when he saw several nuts missing from the railing, and the despair once he realized it was the wind that had knocked them off. The cold nuts lying on the ground below. Unwanted. Ignored. Uneaten.

Oh, I'll catch him glancing out the back window from time to time, but I suspect that's more habit than hope. Sad, really.

Squirrels blow.

Thanky Panky

I am thankful that roller boogie is making a huge comeback, that the twitching in my left eye is waning, and that I get to fall asleep each night next to the coolest guy around.

Happy jive ass turkey day, you sweet taters!

Saturday Afternoon Thoughts

I'm thinking that my life is too small.

Seeing as how I'm in my early thirties, (plus way more years) I need to make more of a splash.  Right now my life feels like a series of to-do lists. 

How, though? How do I stir things up, make my life more of a sensation? Outside of cat burglary or something hero-ish, I think it may be a slow build. 

You see, I woke up this morning already late for my errands. Plus, I had a webinar I'd signed up for. Which, I should point out, is taking place as I write this. I've got the guy leading the webinar on speaker  phone and he is droning on and on about some lame ass thing that two weeks ago I thought would get me out of this rut. Placed the wrong bet there.  He's one of those people that tries to illustrate their emotions by using their voice. "I'm smiling with my voice." "Ugh, now I'm showing frustration!" Also, I don't believe a word he says. He's telling stories meant to inspire and it's making me seethe. My teeth are on edge. I should really hang up the phone, but there's this hopeful part of me that keeps half-listening for the game changer. The thing he's gonna say with his grating voice that will turn my life around. 

And let's face it, he's out there doing his thing. He may be lying and emphasizing words in an astonishingly irritating way, but he's doing a webinar that I signed up for. So, kudos to you, fuck face. And I say that with no inflection at all. 

Okay, I should start. Finish up here and get started. Get things moving. Get some thrills. I'm not known for my patience, but I am known as appallingly stubborn and I think that may come in handy. 

Or...I could curl up with a good book. And by good book I mean watch the House Hunters marathon. I'll let you know as things develop.

Easy as Pie

As I've mentioned in the past, I'm not a favorite in my neighborhood. And, quite frankly, my efforts to up my popularity have dwindled tremendously.

For many a moon I thought I could thaw their obvious distaste of me with friendly waves and home baked pies. They would melt like snowmen in sunshine, I thought.  Not so, my kittens, not so. They remain forever, it would seem, glacial.

So, I've thrown in the smelly towel and I can give you the exact date and time of when that towel was thrown - 8:21 a.m. yesterday. 

Why, you may shriek? Because, I shriek back, my crazy ass neighbor who loves nothing more than standing on her porch taking imaginary phone calls from her invisible cell phone, threw the N-bomb my way and she threw it hard.  Yes, I know, she's crazy. Yes, I know, I'm a whitey. But none of that really matters, does it? Especially at 8:21 in the a.m. when you're trying to help your 17 year old dog pee on the front lawn. 

You see, she has hurled many things at me before and I will now formally list them: Tin cans (large and small), old newspapers, insults, side eyes, mud, shade, and now, racial epithets. 

I'm pretty loose when it comes to hard and fast rules in my life, but with the handful I have, the N word is pretty much tops. Just don't say it. Super easy to follow. 

So the die has been cast. I remain the unpopular-pie baking-waver, but as of now, I just don't care. 

Have they won, you howl? No, sweet angels, we are the victors, I howl back. 

Or so I'd like to think. 

It is!

Super sexy! So cast your damn ballots, America!
And before you go to the polls...click this!

Farewell, Margo

Leora Margaret Cope, magnificent wife, mother, grandmother and great grandmother passed away Monday, June 11th, surrounded by family, admiration and an endless amount of love.

Margaret Cope was born on October 2nd, 1913 in Mott, North Dakota to parents Leora Sophia and Alexander Douglas, a Presbyterian minister, along with her devoted brothers, Chuck and Jimmy.

She moved to Camano Island, Washington in 1929, and it was there, at a dance, that she met and fell in love with James Cope, the love of her life. 

The two of them were inseparable from the start and together began both a family and a grand adventure. They took to the seas because Jim was a fisherman and sailed from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico countless times, with stops at ports in between to have their children, Wendy, John and Jill.

Margaret and Jim settled in Seattle's University District where Margaret was an active member of University Christian Church. Many marveled at her ability to balance such a full life and give so much of herself as well. Her life was full indeed. 

All who met Margaret, even for a short time, were touched by her humor, generous spirt and singular grace.

She lived voraciously up until her final days; sharing stories, memories, and laughter, with family and friends. All of whom will miss her dearly.

Snack Time

Monday, May 7th, 10:15 a.m.

"Anything interesting happen at the park this morning?"
"Saw a guy shooting up at a picnic table."
"Sweet."
"Super sweet."

The Welcome Wagon

I'm trying to find just the right words to describe my neighborhood and I'm stalling out on "ghetto-y", so I'm just gonna stick with that. It's a little rough around the edges and by edges I mean gang members. Be that as it may, you have to hand it to the gangs when it comes to an entrepreneurial spirit. They seem to be constantly reinventing themselves around here.

They tag things and then sell whitewash at hugely inflated prices to the terrified convenience store owners. They've taken over the fruit stand on the corner and forced the little guy to sell Schlitz and unfiltered Camels.  Most recently (and most intriguingly) they've opened a barbershop/party decoration store just a half block away from me and I have to tell you, it's not too shabby. On the right side of their shop, they've got glittering Valentine hearts and bright green St. Patrick clovers. They've hung sexy Halloween costumes on a small metal rod and they boast a wide selection of colorful birthday balloons.  And if you walk through the beaded 60's style curtain, you enter the barber part of the business and to be frank, this is the shadier section. I've never seen anyone in there and it smells like weed.

Because the people in my neighborhood have never really embraced me as one of their own, I thought I'd try and break down their walls by supporting their most recent endeavor. Easter was my first chance to hit their newest business and for the most part I was happy with how it went. They didn't really talk much to me and eye contact was a at a minimum, but they took my cash and I took home some shiny egg decorations plus an oversized cardboard bunny. The entire purchase cost me $48 bucks. (Side note - I've seen better deals.)

Yesterday I saw one of the guys that worked there. I waved, maybe a little too enthusiastically, but he waved back. Not so much "waved", but it seemed to me that he felt like it. So, I'm making progress. You know what they say about slow and steady. And with 4th of July right around the corner I may just have it made.

Cuttin' Cals

Summer is nigh and it's time to trim the old waistline. To do this, I'm embarking on a diet that has proven successful to millions and is an absolute cinch - I'm taking  up smoking. 

When hunger calls, I'll curl up and light a cig, satisfied that I'm finally making some healthy choices.  No wonder they call it, Virginia Slims.

Let's retire this one, too.

I heard this twice today, "It is what it is." 

And both times I felt like kicking the speaker in the throat. Bruce Lee style.

Stop it!

I need everyone to stop saying, 

"That's what I'm talkin' about!" and/or "Vegas, baby!"

Just stop saying that. 

Seriously. 

Stop. 

It.

Doggles

Nuff said...

Let's Talk About Squirrels

Squirrels are...I was going to say, fascinating, but that's pushing it isn't it?  I do, however, have a true-crime story about some squirrels I knew.

In the backyard of a small house I used to rent on the east side of Los Angeles, was a large, weirdly shaped avocado tree. All the squirrels in the neighborhood loved it. They hung out in it, swung around on it, just in general had a great time in the tree. The one drawback was this, the squirrels were not used to eating such high fat, gastronomic riches and because of that, they got fat. And because of that, instead of swinging and jumping around, they started to mainly just lounge around in the tree. Lounging and plucking the ripe fruit.  And as we all know, sitting around and eating avocados makes you fat. And they got super fat.

So one evening, round about eight in the p.m., I heard what can only be described as an all-out baller of a fight between Sven (the blond-ish, surprisingly low-key, Nordic-y squirrel) and Sartoosh (the middle-eastern-y, depressive squirrel). It was rough. It was violent. It was curiously entertaining.

The next morning while picking up some dog poop in the backyard, I saw Sartoosh lying on the ground. I knew in an instant that he was dead and even in death, Sartoosh looked depressed. I don't like picking up dead things so I waited until my husband got home and had him pick up the dead squirrel. As he scooped Sartoosh up, I reminded him about the bad ass fight we'd heard the night before. We had a murder on our hands, I told him. But my husband insisted that Sartoosh had packed on the pounds and probably tried to leap from from limb to limb as he had in his youth and fell accidentally to his death.  I suppose there's two schools of thought about most things, so I let it go without further argument. Mostly because I felt kind of embarrassed to have a fight about squirrel murder. But it was murder. Everyone knew it. Especially Sven.

Love is in the Air!

Click right here, sweet cheeks....Love Rules!

Heads Will Roll!

A severed head has been found near the Hollywood sign! I know! A dog found it in a plastic bag and thinking it was a toy (who wouldn't?!) snatched it up and showed it off.  

Sweet mother of pearl, is nothing sacred in this town? If you've got to lop off someone's melon, please have the foresight to take your victim away from tinseltown landmarks. Manners matter.

For Love Nor Money

Yesterday I found myself musing over the heady, mesmerizing days of the summer of 1973, when I fell desperately in love with a woman. Full disclosure: that woman was, Michele Bachmann. And yes, we made love. A lot. Like tons of it, and it was awesome.

Regrettably, our relationship ended like the flash of a meat cleaver through the shank of lamb. I was rather slow to heal.  After loving a woman like Michele, it’s hard to bounce back, but I can honestly say that I look back on those crazy days (and nights, when our lovemaking sessions were the most ferocious) with fondness, and just a smidge of terror.

I first spotted her as she hopped out of a cab in the East Village.  She was shrieking at the taxi driver who had offended her by asking for more than a nickel tip on the 50 buck fare.  But, Michele’s tight with a buck, and fairly loose with the insults as I soon came to learn.  She called the cabby a homo who wanted more than just one kind of free ride.  Wow.  Her shrill voice pierced the humid air as she gave him what for. And frankly, I was instantly smitten.  She seemed so dangerous, yet indifferent.

I approached her cab, my outstretched hand dangling a twenty, somehow knowing that that would catch her eye.  She grabbed the bill with her talon-like fingers and briskly walked away.  I raced after her, my batik dashiki flapping in the late summer breeze.  I didn’t know her name at the time so I simply shouted, “Lady!  Hey, Maam!”  Finally, she turned on her pricey heel and met my beseeching gaze.  And that, as they say, was that.

We spent our first afternoon together in my tiny studio apartment, burning incense, and our bras.  (Michele’s was huge.  I mean her knockers are just tremendous.)  We talked Steinem, Zinn, Chomsky, and the Parent Trap.  (We’re both just crazy about Hayley Mills.)  It seemed there was nothing we didn’t agree on.  We compared our fraying ACLU cards and threw back our heads, and laughed like crafty toddlers at how we would bend this country to our mutual will.  How was I to know that this was mere charade? (Pronounced SHA-ROD.)

At the time I was toying with the idea of starting a commune in upstate Idaho.  Michele initially seemed supportive, but kept dropping hints about using the land as a part-time dog fighting ring.  When I refused, she smacked me on the ass and said, “Just use those lips for coolin’ soup, sister.” Yep.   She’s tougher than a nickel steak. And I knew she was no good for me, but like a huge festering boil – you sort of like it.

Things went from bad to worse.  She began peddling green stamps, used my comb when her hair was greasy, and stole change from my coin purse, making me buy it back at twice the price.

As expected, I awoke one morning to find myself strapped to the radiator in my empty apartment.  She’d drugged me and cleaned me out.  She'd also taken the deed to my land in Idaho. Apparently her dog fighting ring was fairly fruitful for a time.

The next thing you know she’s running for President.  Isn’t that something?  I gaze at photos of her now – shrieking about gun control and arabs, or standing uneasily next to her gay husband, and all the memories come flooding back.  Some good. Some not so good.  Anyhoo, she was a great lay and my one and only lady love.

Ring It On In!

Happy New Year, soda pops!

May every single dream you've ever dreamed come true this very fine new year.

pop the champagne!