A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

By the time you hit 40licious, you collect a lot. You have a house and head full of books and recipes and stories and homespun remedies (Off the top of my head, I remember that slug slime helps soothe nettle burn. Look for the cure right next to the problem. Which works in other situations too). You know obscure Broadway show lyrics and enough trivia to win trips to Turks & Caicos on game shows.  But mostly, you've collected people. Lots of amazing, big-hearted, funny souls who have made your journey on this earth so darn delightful, and easier and meaningful.

And then sometimes -- it might take until you are WELL INTO your 40liciousness or beyond -- you find someone who is so big-hearted and funny and lovely and helpful and sexy and fun that you just have to join up lives with them and walk your paths together, forever.

Steve proposed on my birthday, and the very next morning, I went to Japan for 10 days. We didn't have a lot of time to do any of the fun canoodling engagement things, whatever they are, right away. When I came back, the first order was to recover from jetlag of a land 17 hours ahead. Then it was to think about the wedding.

What will it feel like, smell like, taste like? Who will be there? I don't care about decorations, or party favors, or his-n-her engraved champagne flutes. Since forever, I've wanted to walk down the aisle to Pachalbel's Canon in D, and hear the Beatles' "In My Life" for the first dance. And I want an amazing dress. And to never have to limit our guest list.

The original idea of just getting 300 of our closest friends to the beach quickly disappeared after each site required numerous deposits and permits and then we thought it's just easier to do it with a beachfront hotel and have them arrange everything ... until we saw that most places charge $8,000 just to step foot in the door. And maybe throw in some lemon water. Eight. Thousand. Dollars.

And then our small wedding up in Lilliwaup grew as I tallied at least 100 people in my family alone, too much for the 77-person Lilliwaup Community Center, where my father and his brothers attended kindergarten in a one-room school house. It is also the site where we had my father's wake, and pretty much every other wake and celebration in between.

We thought about Sonoma, a place we both love, and talked with some well-meaning hippies who run a wine-country retreat center.  Which turned out to be even too funky for us (and you're talking about a girl who lived off the grid in a tiny cabin, and peed in a tomato can for five years).

And during our long Easter flight delay at SFO, with the rain pelting down outside and planes coming and going without us, our plan came together. We were invited to wed in a place we both love, hosted by people who mean so much to us. A place we visited that's in between what both of us consider home. A place where rolling hills kiss faraway mountains; where vineyards erupt in passions of purple; where  horses nearly bust out of their own skin, they are so ready to race.

We have found our spot and our date. And I've told anyone, regardless of age, sex, race or inspiration, who wants to be a flower girl that she can. We're up to about five now. And we will gallop off into our future, with our families and friends at our backs. And I will wear cowboy boots with my dress.

A Tiny Gift for Yourself

Poets.org will send you a poem a day to celebrate National Poetry Month. I am sure that a poem a day will soften hard edges and sweeten addled minds. It might even inspire you to greatness, or niceness, or peace.

No, Love Is Not Dead


by Robert Desnos

No, love is not dead in this heart these eyes and this mouth
that announced the start of its own funeral.
Listen, I've had enough of the picturesque, the colorful
and the charming.
I love love, its tenderness and cruelty.

My love has only one name, one form.
Everything disappears. All mouths cling to that one.
My love has just one name, one form.
And if someday you remember

O you, form and name of my love,
One day on the ocean between America and Europe,
At the hour when the last ray of light sparkles
on the undulating surface of the waves, or else a stormy night
beneath a tree in the countryside or in a speeding car,

A spring morning on the boulevard Malesherbes,
A rainy day,
Just before going to bed at dawn,
Tell yourself-I order your familiar spirit-that
I alone loved you more and it's a shame
you didn't know it.

Tell yourself there's no need to regret: Ronsard
and Baudelaire before me sang the sorrows
of women old or dead who scorned the purest love.

When you are dead
You will still be lovely and desirable.
I'll be dead already, completely enclosed in your immortal body,
in your astounding image forever there among the endless marvels
of life and eternity, but if I'm alive,
The sound of your voice, your radiant looks,
Your smell the smell of your hair and many other things
will live on inside me.

In me and I'm not Ronsard or Baudelaire
I'm Robert Desnos who, because I knew
and loved you,
Is as good as they are.

I'm Robert Desnos who wants to be remembered

On this vile earth for nothing but his love of you.

A la mysterieuse

I wouldn't normally read a magazine for 40-year-olds, except that they have a LOT of info for 40licious people. The thing that drives me nuts is when a gorgeous 40licious woman resigns and gets all frumpy before her time. There's no fighting getting older, but at least, ladies, let's do it in style.

Oh, and don't let the 19-year-old models fool you. This does work for us.

The Art of Compromise

I very much loved my solid oak, dovetail-crafted antique dresser, which I'd moved around from cabin to house to apartment since the early 1990s. I had to give it up as my fiance and I negotiated his move into my smallish two-bedroom apartment. I got to keep my couch and loveseat while his went to a quick and savvy Craigslist buyer. In return, practicality reigned and he brought over his much bigger dresser that we'd share. >>> Read more over at Emineo Domus

Tequila's stunt double

Looks like bubble bath but it's really the natural color of the red shiso leaf infused in the shochu.

I’m a lucky person, it turns out. So lucky, in fact, that I was invited on a 10-day press trip to Japan, where the good folks of the Japanese External Trade Organization gave me and seven other American writers a crash course in Japanese food, drink and culture.

 

I came away quite captivated by the shochu. It’s versatile – a gritty stunt double for cheap tequila, or an airy, smooth alternative to vodka. A shocking-pink sweet version is flavored by the red shiso leaf; a mellow gold brew with faint coconut aftertaste has been informed by its aging in an oak cask. Shochu is infused with almost any fruit you can think of – my favorites are plum and yuzu, a citrus that’s kind of a cross between a meyer lemon and a grapefruit. >>> READ MORE OF MY STORY AT www.theliquidmuse.com

Salty Is Sweet

Today is the first time I've felt equilibrium in what seems like weeks. First, a birthday and engagement. Then off for 10 days to Japan, courtesy of the Japanese External Trade Organization, which brought eight American writers to learn about Japanese food, beverages and culture. I was bowled over every day by how new and different everything was ... in a culture thousands of years older than our own.

Things that I thought would be salty were sweet. Things that for sure were candy were fish. There was no taste or cultural reference for lots of food. And hello? Heated toilet seats.

The women were well put together and quite fashionable. Everyone was small and beautiful, with good skin and hair. I read "Memoirs of a Geisha" while I was there and decided I could be more demure, more charming, more concerned about presentation.

It's good to be knocked on your ass every now and then.

Noodles, Tokyo style