Edited to add:  The vodka came AFTER I dropped her off.

I think I messed up.  I told my daughter I didn’t see her marrying the boy she’s living with.  She’s hellbent on having babies with him, and I’m very fond of him but I just don’t think he’s the one.  And I know it’s way too early for her to be talking about babies.  She’ll be 24 this month, and she’s still going to school.  She transfered to the Art Institute here, from San Francisco, but lots of the credits they won’t accept.  So, it’s another year and a half.  She and her older sister managed to drag out the four-year process pretty good; trust-fund babies, as long as they were in school.  I’m drinking vodka and orange juice or I probably wouldn’t be going into the family business.  Not that it’s my business, according to their dad, since I’m not paying for it. 

We were having a perfectly lovely evening.  She’d invited me to go to a movie, and I suggested dinner.  It was a  documentary about an older photographer who falls in love with his model.  He did nudes — my daughter is a FABULOUS artist and nude charcoals are her thing — and the story was told by his ex-wife, the model.  The time these two spent together she journaled and he photographed.  Her daughter helped tell the story, along with the biographer and someone who knew the photography scene in the ’30s and ’40s.   There was one scene of him photographing her rolling down the dunes, nude.  He was hanging out with Ansel Adams at the time.

We were walking back to the car when I decided to tell her.  I figured I had to because when I took the youngest to the doctor earlier in the week — Good thing I’m drinking orange juice with my daughter’s vodka (the oldest likes this certain kind I got for her to drink at Christmas and I just remembered it was here) as the two younger girls have terrible colds — I brought her back to her Grandma’s, and in the course of the conversation I said I didn’t think this guy was the one.  You can bet THAT will be repeated so I was addressing it first.  She seemed fine in the car but once we got to her driveway she got huffy and said something to the effect that she would prove me wrong.  Great.

Turkey and almond salad in honey orange dressing

Every bite is different but each has that same crunch of freshly toasted slivers of almond dressed in orange.  It’s funny what you don’t taste, like the pickled beets, unless you grab one with the fork.  Sliced like thick matchsticks, they sat in the dressing.  The beets bled to redden the juice and warm up the orange.  I sliced the fennel thin and added that to the dressing, too, because I was afraid it would not meld well with the other strong flavors.  I wanted it to absorb the citrus and impart that wonderful licorice.  I wanted miso to ground it all.   I put a good teaspoon into the dressing to give it more body but had to add orange juice as a result.  I prefer using vegetables to flavor dressing.

I just bit into beet, paired with avocado, and along with the nutty crunch came the essence of cilantro.  I don’t like cilantro so I diced it real small with garlic and tossed it into the dressing for a fresh taste of green.  Even I liked this.  I have been hunting and gathering for days, knowing I’d have some turkey breast left over.  When the sun came out I decided it was going into salad.  Everything was sliced uniformly, and it all lay pretty on a bed of green cabbage.  There’s more but I need to go work up the recipe.

Guess who had a good day in the market!  Yeah, baby.  Uh-huh, uh-huh.  Can you see me dancin’?  I’ve made half of it back so far, a quarter of it after Bernanke’s speech today.  I’m not such a dumbshit after all.  You should have seen me swagger on my walk in the sunshine.  I’d canceled my dentist appt because I couldn’t pay for it and, instead, started work on a new book I’m going to try to sell on the Internet about cancer prevention.  Brilliant, huh.  Not my idea, this was Ellen’s (ellen234 ).  She’s come to my rescue and given me a nudge.

I’ve been trying to get myself to start a website and put up some of the articles I wrote for the hospital but I had such trouble setting up the thing that I gave up.  A book I can do.  She even checked in with me today with a good tip and to see if I’d done some pages.  How lucky can I get!  It’s amazing how empowering it is to have a mentor.

No more of that sleazy food.  Tonight I cleaned out my refrigerator and made pasta with pine nuts. 

Pasta with Pine Nuts

1/2 bunch fresh spinach

1 onion

1 portabello mushroom

3 garlic cloves

2 T olive oil

½ cup pine nuts

grated parmesan cheese

3-4 cups freshly cooked pasta

splash of balsamic vinaigrette

lemon pepper and garlic salt

Heat the frying pan before you add the oil.  Slice the onion and mushroom into similar-sized pieces and saute in olive oil on medium heat.  I like my pieces big.  When the onion is looking limp add the spinach, and when that has cooked down add the garlic and pine nuts and turn the heat down.  Keep those moving as they burn easily.  Salt and pepper and deglaze the pan with vinegar.  Drain the pasta and add to the pan, stirring to soak up the flavors.  Plate it and grate parmesan over the top.  It’s all about texture; the crunch of the nuts, the chew of the cheese.  In the summer I substitute basil for the spinach and cherry tomatoes for the mushrooms.

I feel like myself again.

I hardly know what to do with myself and I’m filled with self-loathing so there’s nothing I really want to do.  Except eat and drink things I shouldn’t.  I just got back from McDonald’s drive-through where I ordered a hot fudge sundae with extra hot fudge.  It was only $1.40.  I bet I could save $50 a week, just by eating junk food.

I don’t know what to do with all this extra time.  I used to pour over my watch-list of stocks, planning the next buy, checking all the sectors to see what was hot and what was getting sold off.  Then I’d go to my portfolio and run through each one, a sense of pride and greed settling over me like a warm blanket.  It felt so good when I was winning and it feels SO BAD to lose.  I feel like an idiot, not setting aside cash.  How fucking stupid could I be. 

Then there’s the man thing.  I know how I said I’d be happy if I just could find a stock buddy.  And it is nice to have someone to commiserate with but the guy’s in love with me.  At first I thought it might be okay because he said he was willing to give it a chance, like he thought I’d come around.  I told him I was in love with a married man and that’s why I wasn’t interested in anything more than friendship.  More self-loathing because, once again, how fucking stupid can I get.  Fortunately the married guy lives in another state, I only see him once a year, and he’s a little on the kinky side for me.  Don’t get the wrong idea, I’ve never kissed him.  We mostly talk about business or our kids now, safe topics.  The first couple months I knew him though, wow.  I would have moved there.  I would have married him.  But now I just love him.  He’s not the one for me, thank God.  I want him to be happy with his family and sometimes he is.

Anyway, about Sam.  I’m starting to think he has Alzheimers.  He’s only 65 so that seems a little young but there is something very wrong with his memory.  He’s on a trip now and every day he calls and every day he says the same thing.  Today I asked him if his daughter ever said anything to him about it and he said yes.  So it looks like my new best friend will need more than friendship from me.  And that’s fine but it’s very sad

I either need to make $2,000 in the next three weeks or save it somehow.   My car needs an expensive repair and I have to buy an airline ticket.  I was going to sell a couple stocks but the market is not cooperating.  This has never happened.  Usually, I keep enough cash on hand that if the market takes a tumble it’s annoying but I’ve already sold at a good price.  I can’t sell anything now because everything is down.I’ve been eating out of the freezer, only buying what I have to.  If you have any great ideas about how to save money I’d appreciate it. Tonight I made popcorn for dinner and went through the drive-thru for a mocha perk.  Fast food is so cheap but I’m not going to make that a habit.

I do have one idea.  I pruned the hell out of my wisteria tree and when I was on vacation I saw these branches — I can’t think of the name of a pliable branch – bent in the shape of a heart all over town.  They’d been trained, wrapped around a green frame in the shape of a heart.  I could do that and I don’t think I’d need the plastic frame.  The were stuck in a pot, probably planted with a vine.  I have at least a hundred containers, all sizes, from the landscaping I did at the last house.  I’m just thinking out loud here.  I’d need dirt.  And a cheap vine.  The farmer’s market is starting soon.  Any ideas of  for a fast-growing, inexpensive vine?  Hey, I know, what about ivy?

Lake Chelan

A snow-covered ridge peaks through my view.  The white is clean against the brown bell tower of the church across the street.  I’m in Chelan, drinking a 12-ounce, double Americano, no room and extra hot, looking through one of those cool doors that go up on rollers.  You know, those garage-door sized, glass and aluminum jobs?  There was one at the coffee shop I used to go to every morning, and I can still hear the sound in spring when around ten they’d roll it up.  This floor reminds me of my friend’s old kitchen with a black-and-white checkerboard floor.  If it were warmer and the door was up I’d be out on the slate courtyard, trying to write on their funky iron tables.

The Episcopal Church, which just happens to be the right one for me, is the antithesis of mine.  It’s a log cabin from the 1800s with a woman Reverend who talks like a cowboy.  Their stained glass windows let more light in and her sermon I won’t forget.  When it was time to shake hands with your neighbor and say “Peace be with you,” instead of turning to the left and right, people left their pews and started walking around.  We all met in the middle so everyone could get caught up.  Ten minutes later the Reverend resumed.

Each morning I walk out my door, down the main highway a block, turn the corner and drop down into town over a little bridge to the main strip.  It’s taken three days to do the strip. 

Yesterday I went snowshoeing up at Echo Ridge and then found a popular winery in the neighboring town of Manson.  It was barely noon but she plied me with tastings, and for free.  I bought what I’m dying to drink but won’t:  Red Delicious.  They only serve dinner, which they are famous for, so I went looking for lunch and found the best tacos I’ve ever eaten, in the back of a grocery store, of all places.

Lake Chelan is my new favorite place.  I’ve probably said that before, on other vacations, but this time I even bought a sweatshirt with big white letters across the front.  Lunch is the only meal I eat out as I have a wonderful kitchen to cook in and brought many delicacies with me.  After lunch I do the loop.  There are two baby bridges at either end of town and they both feed onto the river walk: paved paths that wind along both banks of the river.  The bridge closest to the time-share separates the lake from the river.

At night I build a fire and work on the novel.  No distractions here, read no computer.  There’s one in the office I can use for 20 minutes but the market’s been so bad I don’t want to look.  I get CNBC so I can watch the ticker tape.  And I’ve been watching Mad Money and The Fast Five so I know what’s going on but vacation’s the perfect place to forget.  Standing in snowshoes at the North Junction yesterday with nobody but me and God, as far as the eye could see, put some perspective on my monetary loss.

From the bridge into town I can see my dock.  Lake Chelan is long and narrow and surrounded by a white ridge of tall hills.  At night I can see lights across the way from the hotels that line the lake.  Spring break is coming and that’s when the town goes nuts again.  I guess the strip becomes a mob scene and the lake is covered in boats. 

Three shop girls are conferring about window displays.  The young men who come in and out for coffee probably work construction, as there’s much building going on.  Lake Chelan runs through the neighboring town of Manson where they are playing catch-up to Chelan.  It’s still just wineries and apple orchards.  There is a large Hispanic population in both towns, seamlessly integrated from my limited vantage.

I leave tomorrow, early, so I can take another look at Leavenworth, a tourist town dressed up to look Bavarian.  Before I leave, though, I’ll take one last walk over the bridge so I can remember the way the blue and white came together.  So much contrast with only one shade of two colors.  The glassy lake reflects the soft blue sky but what lends a mystical feel is the mist of white hovering at the back of the lake.  It’s as soft as the sky, against the crystal white snow, each fading into the other.  I want to remember the mornings because by afternoon the fog rises through the blue to become billowing pillows, softer than sky.  I stop and stare in thanks at the ever-changing shift of two colors.  This study in texture, the juxtaposition of soft and hard, what does that teach me?