My party was a success.  And I don’t know how old I will have to be to trust that going in.   I had good reason to worry, though, because half  the people on the guest list weren’t coming.  Breaking up with your boyfriend two weeks before a party, a party thrown to introduce the families, is a quick way to change the dynamic.  The original plan was to invite a lot of people, put them in costume, and let the two families get a small idea of who they were dealing with.  Fortunately, I hadn’t invited anybody but the two families and my best friends so I decided to switch to an intimate mode and have a dinner party. 

I made vegetarian and nonvegetarian soup, and buttermilk rolls from scratch.  I made my special  hot apple cider, and a carrot cake, but the best thing was I found an old-fashioned recipe for a sugar cookie that you decorate.  There was molasses, cinnamon, ginger, cardamon and nutmeg in them, and they were chewy but firm;  just perfect for decorating.  The kids made orange frosting and put Halloween sprinkles on them. 

I had a fire in the living room and after dinner we sat in there.  My family was enthused by what a great house this is to entertain in and started scheming about where to seat everyone for Thanksgiving.  The puppy kept everyone busy and didn’t eat anyone’s shoes. 

This is huge.  I just unpacked AND THREW AWAY the court-reporting boxes I have been moving from one house to another.  I still have the machine but if I am to write anything on it, they will be MY words.   If all I do is write here I feel like I am learning, and that is enough. I have found a new way to play with words and I can’t tell you how relieved I am  I think I just couldn’t face that that part of my life was over.  The fact that there is no money involved now, is just a slight irritation.  What matters is that I am working on it.

I just broke up with my boyfriend, my washing machine is leaking, and the market is down, STILL.  I’ve been trying to look the other way re: the boyfriend and the market, thinking it will get better.  But it hasn’t.  Time to cut my losses.  I feel very cold-hearted.  Got to be.  Now if I have the nerve to do…See, I can get rid of the guy, but I just don’t want to part with some of these stocks.  I’ve been trying to get myself to do the thing where you automatically sell after a certain amount of loss.  Easy come, easy go.  I’m spending too much time on here and not enough time tracking the stocks.  I wanted to go look at that site for the obsessed, but I’m spending enough time as it is on here.  I figure those people would be right up my alley.  The whole point of this was supposed to be practice.  Well, I’m not writing anything pithy, I’m just spilling my guts.  I think I was trying to impress you, praying that someone would subscribe to me; that if I got some subscribers, that would be enough validation to start my book.  I read some of you and it’s clear that you are writers.  Some of your sentences take my breath away, they’re so perfect.  What I need to do is sign up for a class, and just start writing for a teacher.  Winter term, you can hold me to it.

I just took a shower with my new deluxe shower head, with the clog-free drain.  And I don’t care how much of a chump I was, even though  I feel sure I paid too much.  And I don’t care if I am a bad mom, the end result was a wonderful weekend with a renewed bond.  I gave it the ten-year test.  That’s how I gage things that I’m torn about.  You know, what difference will it make in the long run.  Kids don’t like change.  They didn’t want me to move.  The youngest said she would not be spending the night.  And I agree that it’s not fair that she should have to drive 30 minutes to school in the morning now.  But I took her to Starbucks — That’s right, Repairman_Jack, and the stock went up in spite of you – so it sort of broke up the drive a little bit.  The one thing I am guilty of is allowing her to buy an unsafe car.  If someone hits her in that little thing, she could suffer serious damage, and it will be my fault.  My plan is to get her to sell it, and buy an old Cadillac.

Let me begin with my fairyland weekend; the one where my brother and daughter, and this is a first, have a little driving lesson.  The last time my brother and this child, or any of my children, did anything together was when they were very small.  He used to come over a fair amount when my ex-husband was out of town, which was Tues through Thursday.  But as soon as they figured out he was a little different; that, in fact, my whole family was very different, they kept their distance.  But now that he is around the corner and knows a lot about engines, and she needed help putting in spark plugs and a window, we called Uncle Tom.  He was thrilled.  When I looked out the kitchen window they stood side by.  He was passing something on that he might never have gotten to, as he has no children.   We all piled in my car and went to the junk yard to find the window, and on the way back we stopped at a pumpkin patch.  By then they were both humoring me as I wandered down memory lane, only without the irritation of my ex.  Probably the last thing we did, as a family, was to go to the pumpkin patch.  I even have a picture of  us on a hay wagon:  it was grim.  This fine fall day, with a male family figure, and my estranged daughter, eagerly picking pumkins, seemed so right.  Between the car and the puppy, and the fact that all of her earnings are going to me for a while, the only time she wanted to leave was to go to work.  It seems like a terrible way to lure her here for the weekend but, hey, whatever works.  My feelings won’t be hurt if you feel like pointing out a better way to get her to drive over here.  I thought about just insisting but that seemed wrong. 

I just spent $1300 to get my washer and dryer hooked up, get a new faucet and take the footpedals out, put new shower heads on and snake out a drain.  This includes the plumber purchasing a washtub, sump pump, hard pipe for the washer and dryer, and for a full day’s work, with a second man for five hours.  When I heard $50 an hour I thought, whoa, what a deal. The guy is slow and never shuts up.  But I believe him to be honest and conscientious.  I just went down there, though, and there is water leaking on the floor. 

Before I begin, I want to register a complaint.  With no help from xanga, I have managed to find good people to read.  I meant to say good writers.  And I thank those writers for turning me onto the others, who I wouldn’t have found otherwise.  Isn’t that what the “featured” column should be for?

 On a brighter note:

The “Silver Bullet” sits in my driveway.  It’s an ’81 Chevette with a missing back window. Someone’s belongings are still inside, and it looks as though they were on a road trip.  My youngest daughter and I went to an auction yesterday and caught a glimpse into the world of  — I think these are the people who have lots of junker cars on their lawn.  Last week we discovered the place.  She was looking for a car she can paint and cruise around town in, just for fun.  She has a job now and checked into the cost of insuring it.  Her dad insures all the girls’ cars, along with his own, on one policy.  Her jeep is a car he picked out, with me having no say.  I just had to pay for half of it.  When we were married and there was plenty of cash to go around I didn’t have an issue with the expensive cars he would buy for the girls.  I do now.  I think this crummy little car, that she will have to take responsibility for, because Daddy won’t, will be a good thing.  Also, it will be parked outside my house so she will have to drive over here if she wants to work on it.  She has 14 days to get it ready for DEQ.  That will require learning how to replace spark plugs. 

But I want to tell you about the place.  We got into trouble right away because we were looking at the cars on the left side of the lot.  This was way out in southeast, the emphasis being on east.  They take impounded cars here and for the first month, while the owner sill has a chance to get them back, the cars sit on the left side.  Those are not to be touched.  Then they move over to the other side and every Wednesday there is an auction. 

We arrived — She had me call her school and say that I needed her to come home right away – at 12:00, with an hour before bidding started.  That is the time people stand around deciding which car they want.  Some of the hoods are up and you can get the key and try to start it up.  Actually, I think most of them ran.  I just erased fine. 

As you can imagine, we were at a loss.  Two men, one of them with a long silver ponytail under a leather, biker cap,  were standing next to the man in charge.  After overhearing some of our questions, the two men came over to the Chevette, and the biker taught us what to look for.  His friend, who looked nothing like the rest of the people in the yard, used his cell phone to see if he could track down a window.  He also called DMV to find out if the tags were bogus.  They were.  They told us not to spend more than $150.

Then the truck rolls up with an auctioneer in the back.  He’s holding a bullhorn, or whatever you call it, and he goes through the rules.  Our new friend with the cell phone has offered to do the bidding for us.  We get it for $110.  I’m supposed to call him because he thinks he might have tires that will fit. 

We rush to the bank because they only take cash.  The biker has volunteered to lead the way in his cadillac.  I think they are greatly amused by our presence and how helpless we are.  Lost doesn’t begin to describe it.  He honks and waves good-bye, when we reach the bank. I withdraw the money and head back so that we can get in line.  When we first saw this place last week, there was a black guy, tall and educated looking, standing around inside.  I noticed him, today, carrying a golf club.  He was kind of making the rounds out in the yard.  I couldn’t imagine what the golf club was for.  Now he is standing at the door, letting us all inside.  But, again, he stands on the other side of the desk, holding the club.  I wonder if this place gets robbed or something?  As we wait, among the men, we are questioned.  They feel as though we paid too much for that “piece of shit.”  Once they find out this is a car for fun, and that she drives a jeep, they are quiet with disdain.

As we leave the office, key in hand, she asks me if I want to drive it.  The last time I drove a stick was 30 years ago, so I decline.  She assures me she can do it, so we make our way to the gas station, down the road.  She seems to be doing fine, so we head on home, me in the front.  Suddenly, halfway home, she makes a quick left and disappears.  I turn around to see where she’s gone.  I notice a Burger King and wrongly assume she has ducked into the drivethrough.  I wait for her “piece of shit” to reappear but it doesn’t.  Now I am panicked.  I go back out and sit in the middle turning lane so that she will see me, wherever she is, but she doesn’t.  I wrongly assume that the left turn was to get onto the freeway, something she said she didn’t want to do, and that she is on her way back to my house.  I quickly head that way, but she is not there. Maybe there is something wrong with the car.  She has no cell phone in the car, no money, and is driving that “piece of shit.”  She doesn’t know where she is and will have to ask for help.  I remember she is wearing her favorite pair of jeans with all the rips and tears.  Getting out of that car, she looks homeless.  It’s a whole different impression, on a whole different side of town.  Finally the phone rings and she’s hoping I will come show her the way home.  She is sitting by the side of the road, head in hands.  I have really broadened her horizens today. 

The car is fine, she had had technical difficulties, downshifting.  She’d never done it before.  We are not telling H., her dad, until it passes DEQ.  I expect to see a lot of her in the next two weeks. 

On my way home from the hospital, I drove to Zupans, in pursuit of the organic.  As I stood there, clutching a small bouquet of spinach, I suspiciously eyed the tag.  It had that foreign look about it.  The one that screams, “I’ve been sprayed within an inch of my life.  Don’t eat me.”  I saw no organic spinach, so I took it.  It’s a tradeoff.  This is why shopping takes so long, there are so many decisions to make.  Take maple syrup.  After that cooking class, where they insist that the only sugar which should be passing through your lips is honey or maple syrup, I was quickly able to choose a honey.  This is only because of previous time invested resulting in known preferences.  Because they didn’t have the brand that I used to buy, and because there were a million choices, I bought the most expensive, forgetting that I had left that affluent life, promising myself that I would create dishes around this sugar.  ……. I’m back.  I just put two yams in the oven.  Now if I can just keep this pace up.  Anyway.  In my pursuit of health, I am on my way home with a full load of things like rabbit, soy milk and a lot of green stuff.  I notice, like  radar beaming through my window, the cake store.  I have seen it several  times but can never remember the location  when I’m at home wanting to go there.  I quickly pull into the parking lot and enter a store from another time.  They must sell wedding cakes, as there are notebooks at a long table.  There are lots of little tables, not like a restaurant, but like a living room with couches and chairs.  The place is dingy with lots of doilies; tired but quaint.  As I near the counter I see a sign boasting gluten, wheat-free cake.  Behind the glass case, though, stand the decadent.  I decide on a yellow pound cake, with lemon curd between the four layers, and a buttercream icing.  This woman, clearly a baker, slices a gargantuan piece, too big to balance.  It falls inches from my plate, onto the counter.  But she retrieves it and slides the plate over.  She assures me the counter is clean, but is willing to slice a new piece.  I act like I don’t care a whit about germs  and bravely sit down in one of the old chairs.  As I bite into the cake, I find it has almost the consistency of a New York cheesecake.  Thinking of my wilting greens, in the hot car, I quickly make my way through the layers.  Back in the car, I am remorseful.  Granted, the cake was superb, but the flower and sugar do not agree with me.  Like I don’t know this.  Like I should have paid more attention to the sign.