Part 2 - Sabotage - The Marlboro Man

This is part 2 of what is technically a three part story. ' Cowboy of the Rings' is the third piece to this short trilogy. Although, my time with the Marlboro Man isn't as often as I would like, it's definitely quality time. I call him 'Mentor' and my ' Role Model' but I really consider him family as well as those other things. I am grateful everyday for him.

Continued from Part 1 Sabotage........(all links are always in yellow)

"Love don't mean nothing less there's something worth fighting for. It's a beautiful war" - Kings of Leon

    He talked as we walked. Marlboro Man lives on a sizable piece of property. We followed the fence line for a bit and I listened as he described areas of the ranch that I had never been to on foot before. Walking is a completely different perspective than on horseback or in a vehicle.
    He pointed to what appeared to be an old run down barn in the distance and I questioned our ability to make it there and back before the sun set down.  He said we could wait until morning if I promised it would be the first thing we would do just after breakfast. I agreed.



     Breakfast on the ranch is before sun up. In the summer it's super early, like 5 am, and it's a bit later in the fall and winter months, closer to 7 am. If you are familiar with office work...this is nothing like that. Critters need to be fed and turned out to pastures, stalls need mucked (shit shoveled), eggs gathered, and then depending on the season, Marlboro Man says "Wanna be cowboys need fixin'." In other words, he trains or re-trains them to be the best they can be. 
     It's chilly, so I grab a light jacket and follow Marlboro Man down the creaky porch steps. He has a stride on me, so I trot to catch up, we head to the horse barn. A ranch cowboy already has two horses saddled. I follow Marlboro Man and his horse down the fence line towards that old barn. We take our time. He talks, I listen.
    A short time later, we tie off the horses and I follow him into the barn, which doesn't look as run down up close, just needs a few patches and some paint.
    Marlboro Man gets the latch on the second try, because it was stuck on the first attempt. He says something under his breath and I hear the big metal latch hit the wood with a thud. He slides the door open and we walk into a large open area, to the left is a stack of straw bales, on the right are several unused galvanized watering troughs.
    " I keep my memories here." he says with a smile. He pulls a key from his pocket and unlocks the padlock on a door just past the straw bales. 
      The room looked as if it had been abandoned since sometime post Vietnam War era, but Marlboro Man assured me it was just a short time before Liv 'went home.' 
"I couldn't be out of the house anymore. she couldn't get things on her own." His face went serious and pale. I knew what he meant. Someone close to me had had the same situation. It was quite sad to reflect on.
"Any cowboy that has come through this place since the 80's is on that wall." He pointed to the wall directly in front of us. There were so many photos, it didn't look like there was any wall left.
    There were also a smattering of trophies bunched together on the dust and cob web covered oak desk to the left. There was a large glass window behind that desk that housed hundreds of trophies and blue ribbons, upon it's shelves. "Trophy room," he advised. I recognized some of those famous boys on the wall and he confirmed that I was correct, when I was correct in naming them.
    "So there's a reason, you're showing me this, yes?"
    "Of course. The Saboteurs, are not on that wall. They went home crying to their Mommas about me being unfair, or the road to get to be the best was too hard." He stopped and pointed at the wall with a fierceness that softened when turned to me. "You got that, Cupcake. I seen it in your eyes more than once. The fire, I mean. That's why I brought you here." 
     He lit a cigarette and dragged heavily on it. I found an ashtray on the dishevelled desk and moved it cautiously towards him. "Just cause someone gives you a little guff, doesn't mean you quit, and when you got something good, worth fighting for, you don't walk away from it. Follow me?" I nodded slowly. "It's none of my business really, about your boyfriends. But I shudder to think if Liv had walked away." He smiled and looked at his wedding band, then turned it slowly with his thumb on the same hand, then reached up to a chain around his neck that had two more rings, before he said
"Life's lessons don't always arrive with a bang and go out the same way. Sometimes they are subtle and quiet." 
     He snubbed out the cigarette and shook his pack for another. He popped it up out of the soft pack, effortlessly catching it between his lips, moved it between clenched teeth, then spoke.
"Don't miss love cause you're looking for the fireworks, when you got your hands on the sparklers already. You miss your best friend and you may spend the rest of your life looking for that missing link. 
     Too many kids get it wrong and they think something physical is gonna fill some weird void in their lives." He shook his head, dusted off a chair and offered it to me. He had managed a spot on that giant desk. 
"Jesse and Wade never really seen the soft side of me in the beginning, 'cept when they was really young and first come here. After Liv passed, I was an asshole, then I realized as much as I missed her, I still had them." He smiled again. "They've always done me proud." He pointed through the window at their pictures side by side on some crazy bull rides, their names etched neatly on the trophy plates. 
"Jes has a lot of heart," he reminded and nodded at the picture. Then he got up close to my face, I could smell stale and new smoke on him, and said "Spend your life in avoidance and you will wake up alone, more or longer than you want to, guaranteed."

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Sabotage Part 1 - The Marlboro Man

Cowboy of the Rings

 

Part 1 Sabotage - The Marlboro Man

Self sabotage is the oldest trick in the book, according to my mentor and cowboy friend Nick, who most of you know as the Marlboro Man. Being vulnerable is NOT something I've been very good at over the years. I'm more of the 'Tough Cookie' type. Steve Miller Band has a lyric that goes "Riding high, I got tears in my eyes..you know you have to go through hell before you get to heaven." On the way the to the proverbial heaven, is the hell that for many is often caused by self sabotage.
   

    "You may not think that you sabotaged that relationship, Cupcake, but I promise if you look hard enough, you'll figure out what you did. Maybe not WHY you did, that could take a lot longer." The Marlboro Man looked at me square and commanded my eyes to meet his. Tears welled, I could feel that black cloud coming to the surface. The one that said 'He's right. You blew it up on purpose.' Part of me wanted to be that kind of happy, and part of me kept saying 'You don't deserve that kind of happy.' 
     The part of me that wanted it, was buried in that black cloud, always trying to get out of harm's way. 
     Sometimes we talk ourselves into not wanting to feel and sell ourselves into believing that's okay, even if it's not our real truth. 
    As I was absorbing Marlboro Man's silence, he turned to me and wanted to know "Do you always make a u-turn just before the curve?" 
    "What do you mean?" I asked. He chuckled and drew heavily on the cigarette gripped between his fingers on his right hand. the smoke bellowed out when he spoke again. He had turned back to the pasture. We were sitting a top the wooden fence like two kids trying to figure out the sun's lingering agenda. It was slowly turning to dusk. 
    "I mean," he emphasized the word mean "that cowboy thinks the world of you, would probably try to walk on water or across hot coals if you said he ought to. I've watched you through some short lived relationships, counting Jesse. And when it's gits a little bit serious, you high tail it in the other direction. " He used his left hand to draw circles in the air with his index finger, making a swirling motion as he talked. " I call that a u-turn, Girl." Silence followed, as he let that sink in. I had every excuse to say and no words to say them with.
"I ain't saying nothing that I don't know first hand about." He paused and bit his lip. "If Livvy was here, I suppose you'd be in the kitchen talking with her, cause she was better at stuff like this. But I know if I lay my head down without telling ya this, I'm not being a good friend. Follow me?" I nodded.
"Jesse is a kind hearted and loving cowboy." He held up his hand to stop me from saying anything and continued "He's a good man...You don't have to believe me, and I'm sure you got your reasons for calling it quits with him, so I'm not gonna nag on that. What I am gonna go after is watching you 'almost' have something and then doing that u-turn. You will never know what it's like to be truly loved if you can't let it in." He lit another cigarette and we sat in silence. I didn't know what to say and he was obviously working on choosing his words, as I had always known him to do.
"Like I said. I know sabotage when I see it. I been training cowboys  to ride bulls longer than I even remember. I ain't done much of nothing else. 
   I suppose it comes from knowing if you're really good enough. If you really got what it takes. At least for a bull rider.......but I reckon it works about the same in love." He reached out and gently touched my face with the back of his weathered hand. "You remind me of her." He said with quiet nostalgia. 'Her' being his beloved, no longer in the world wife, Olivia, whom he only referred to as 'Liv' or 'Livvy.'
I imagine that I would have been fond of her as well.
    "When we're looking for that something that fills the void, we gotta help it along, by being open to the possibility that it exists, that it's out there, that we deserve it in our lives. Make sense?" I nodded.
"Sabotage is not about being open to anything. That's more like justifying the reasons things will never work for you, whether you are even aware of it or not." He coughed into his fist, then adjusted his hat while leaving plenty of quiet for those words to sink in. "You're a lot like a custom car, Cupcake."
    "What the heck does that mean?" 
    "It's not a bad thing. But you're different than most girls. You can fend for yourself, and that can be intimidating for some boys. My point is if you have a limited audience already, don't make it worse by turning the boys away."
    "Maybe I just need a particular kind of boy." I rationalized.
    "Oh believe me, you do" He grinned at me, "you need a strong, confident boy. Maybe why you like the bull riding sort?" That last part was obviously rhetorical so I just smiled back at him.
     He hopped off the fence, then helped me down and signaled for me to follow him.

to be continued....

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Part 2 Sabotage - The Marlboro Man

Cowboy of the Rings

The Relationship Ninja Volume 7 - Curing Olives is like Toxic Relationships

Sometimes when I get upset, I cook....A LOT. I recently confessed that. And the after thought was, "Maybe that's why my Xs used to intentionally piss me off all the time."  This is for Sheridan (thank you), who reminded me that some relationships are just 'toxic' no matter how you try to slice, dice or cure them...

    One of my first cooking sessions, I mean life lessons...well both from Nina was the process of curing olives. I just finished picking the remainder of the olives from the tree in my yard. I have about two pounds (not British currency) of ripe black olives that need curing. 

    It's been a while since I learned how to do it, but the one thing I never forgot was my Ninja Nina's analogy of olives, the curing process, and their relationship to toxic relationships. 

    The first part goes like this. Green olives are simply olives that are not ripe, although they, like ripe black olives are quite bitter on the inside. It takes less time to cure them. Nina says 
    "Green olives are less toxic. They are easily cured as well, simply soak them in distilled water." She went on to explain that green olives are like the beginning of toxic relationships if we are not careful, watching, or aware of what we are attracting or letting into our lives. 
    She had me take a bite of the green olive before it was cured and it was terrible. Unripened fruit is sour and dour and stays on the taste buds for more than an hour...sometimes all day. Yes, I rhymed that on purpose. 
    I felt like when someone takes a bite of something horrible and then offers it to you, so they have someone to be disgusted with; maybe that's where the phrase 'misery loves company' comes from. 

    We washed the green olives. Nina had a big wooden mallet that she hit the olives with to open them. It was a little scary watching her give those little fruits the Ninja Smack Down.  We then put them in a container covered in water and an air tight lid. They had to sit for a week before we tested them for flavor again. I was hoping I was not elected to be the 'Taster.'

"Now. when I say 'easily cured,' you understand what the cure is yes?" I shook my head. She let out a heavy sigh, and explained that 'easily cured' means the relationship is new,and although it can be delicate, there is possibly something noticeably wrong from the beginning, therefore it's easier to let go of if  you have less skin or time invested in the game." She said and winked at me. 
    At that time, I supposed she was right, even though I knew there were times in my life where I wanted things to work so badly that I just hung in or on for a while longer. As if to read my mind, she added.
    "Comfort is what happens if you stay too long. And then good or bad, you just stay." She handed me another batch of green olives to wash and prepare.
    A few hours later, we had finished all of the green olives and were onto preparing the black olives. 
"These are a little different" she said, handing me a large bowl of them "we still wash and cut them, but we will add salt before the water to make them a nice soaking brine."
    We had more black olives than green olives and Nina explained that the time difference is generally about two months in between green and black olives but she got hers from different regions, so she could do them all at once.
    During the second run of olive curing, Nina used a paring knife like me to cut the olives. 
    "What happened to your hammer?" I asked, smirking.
    "It was a mallet, not a hammer, and the black olives stain. Look at your fingers, Smarty pants." She was right about my fingers, not about my pants. Black olives stain. 
"Taste" she said handing me a black olive that she had cut open. I was reluctant. It was like being handed a turd to try. I knew it was bad, but I obliged and tasted. 
    I was right it was horrible, even a little more horrible than the green one if that was possible. It reminded me of when you burn your tongue on plastic and then everything tastes like that for a week.
"The curing of black olives takes longer" she said. She had just finished pouring salt over a batch. She stopped and looked at me over her glasses the way she often did with her scolding yet caring eyes. "These, as you know, because you tasted them, are far more horrendous than the mild green ones." I nodded my head in agreement to her nodding her head. 
     "However, now you have a problem. You stayed too long in the relationship and your empathy becomes sympathy and often resentment. The loyal ones always know what I mean here. Do you?" 
       "I do." I answered. I did, and unfortunately have since known exactly what she meant.
       "So, we salt and add water, then they will soak for a week, we will drain and rinse, and then we will remake the brine and let them soak another week. Same as a relationship that is toxic. You sit in the same stew for weeks, months, sometimes years until you finally decide that you are drained and need to be rinsed. If you get that far, you are lucky." She threw her hands up in air as if she instantly had an epiphany. 

"If not, then maybe your life looks and smells like this." She opened a container with a batch of black olives that hadn't cured, but had somehow rotted instead. They were stinky (like rotted fruit can be) and mushy. 
"They look like they've given up, yes?" I nodded, holding my nose while she stirred up the stench with a spoon before replacing the container top. " I never want to see you look like that my Dear. It's bad. Let's eat lunch!"
    

   Yes, she's never really cared if lunch is followed by dissecting  a frog or anything horrid, gruesome or disgusting. When it's time to eat. It's simply time to eat.

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Relationship Ninja Vol 6 - Salmon Ceviche & Rebound Sex

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The Relationship Ninja Volume 6 - Salmon Ceviche and Rebound Sex

When I first went through the horrible pain of a divorce, I went to Nina cause I knew she would know what to say to me, what to feed me and best of all how to relate everything she was feeding me to what was happening my life....and she did.

     I will have been divorced for 5 years this September. None of it is ever easy, and the longer you've been married it seems like the more junk you have to work out. It is a sad situation that we sometimes find ourselves in. The good news is that time does heal things.

    Once again, I was blessed to have my ninja Nina share her wonderful and sometimes harsh advice. This time it was about 'life after divorce." 

    I was gone from Arizona for nearly 18 months and had just recently returned. We hadn't seen each other in a while, but had spoken via phone and she knew that I was coming home to Phoenix. I came back in January of 2012 and it was February before I made it to see my friend. 
    While I was gone, I was involved with someone and things were perfectly fine for a while, then it got dicey and weird. I couldn't figure out why. I knew Nina would have an answer.

     I got the feeling that I may have been interrupting her 'alone time' but she opened the door, saw me, wrapped her arms around me, nearly squeezing the breath out of me and said "Bella, you are home!"

     A brief time later, we were at the dining room table, just off the kitchen having coffee. Nina handed me a giant piece of an amazing "I can't believe anyone would ever want to stop eating this" chocolate cake. 
     It was a Saturday and we had the house to ourselves, her family was all out doing things even her husband had gone off to golf.  

    She reached across the small table and lifted my chin so that I was looking her in the eye. She held my face in her hand for a minute while she looked for something in my eyes, when she let go she immediately said "Let's Make Ceviche!" She got up and headed to the kitchen. I was confused but followed her anyway.

    "Get some things out of the fridge for me?" She half asked, half ordered. She began pulling large bowls and pots out of the cabinets.

"You know Ceviche, yes?" I shook my head. “Well, you will learn now, Bella....There's a large chunk of salmon in there, and some limes in the drawer." I brought her a half of a raw salmon and a small bag of about 8 limes. “Get me the cilantro, a couple of tomatoes, the peppers in the bottom of the fridge and a red onion." Her request was nearly automated, as she cut the salmon into chunks and put them in a large glass bowl.

"Salmon go upstream to spawn." She said I nodded. This is something that I did actually know, being from a Michigan, where many salmon go to spawn.

"Those little basturds will do anything to make this happen." I giggle and she proceeds into the real reason she is teaching me this lesson. 

    "You are the salmon. Follow me Bella?" I shook my head. At that point I was completely dumbfounded. Did she just relate my situation to a spawning little basturd of a salmon? I think she did.                   
       She continued to cut the salmon, when she finished. She took out the hand juicer, began juicing the limes, and continued to talk "Salmon swim upstream against all odds to return to the place where they were born." She paused. I had no idea that she knew so much about fish, but then she always amazes me. "You are the salmon. You want love and attention and rebound sex." Who doesn't want love and attention? It's the rebound sex, I didn't understand why she was calling it that.

    "Nina, explain 'rebound sex' to me please. I just spend 18 months in a place I didn't wanna be with someone who I thought was someone they weren't. This is all very confusing." I told her. She nodded. 

     I get it, “she answered " but there's more to the story and the cooking." She held up her finger in infamous Nina style, signifying that she had one more point to make. 

     When the limes were juiced, she set them aside and diced and chopped the Serrano, the tomatoes, and the onion into a separate bowl, she added some spices and tossed them for a minute.

"This is you before you left Phoenix." She pointed to the bowl of items that she just tossed together "A bit of a hot mess, no?" I smiled, nodded and agreed with her. She continued "Confused, hurt, and not knowing what you want besides attention and love, yes?" I nodded again. "Bella. No one wants their life to collapse. No one wants to be alone." She touched my chin again, making me look her in the eye. She was shaking her head. 

"So after they make it back to the place where they were born, the fish I mean. They will lay eggs. 

    Rebound sex has to do largely with being the object of someone's attention. That's not the person you are going to spend eternity with, especially if you are not equally yoked...ah, on the same page, I think you call it. Sex is physical, it doesn't have to be 'on the same page'. Relationships have to be on the same page or it fails." She made a signal as if cutting her throat with her finger. 

    She went back to making the Ceviche. "Now, we add the lime to the salmon, this 'cooks' the salmon. In reference to the rebound sex, this is the part when you will have had just about enough and are ready to move onto something more permanent or perhaps be single for a while." I look at her in disbelief. But I recall how I felt at the end of the short lived fun and I realize that she's right. She leaned over to me and though we were the only ones there she half whispered "Rebound sex is something that no one really talks about. But I'm telling it to you, so you can recognize where you've been, now you can move forward." 

     Thirty minutes later she served those little salmon basturds on a crunchy tostada shell and we had Ceviche for lunch.

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Relationship Ninja Vol 5 - Equally Yo(l)ked

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The Relationship Ninja Vol 5 - Equally Yo(l)ked

     A long time ago, my good friends Peggy and his sister Jeanie told me that if I was ever to find what I DID want in a significant other, that I would first have to discover all of the things that I DIDN'T want. And of course, like always, they were right.

     Today we are cooking with eggs. Nina is in an "Egg Frenzy." We are not making one egg dish, we are are making several. On the menu line up for the egg recipes are: deviled eggs, meatloaf, and an assortment of sweet breads. They may not all sound like egg dishes, but they do all require eggs.
     There is generally a purpose to all of this cooking, or is there? I think Nina just loves to cook and share her gifts of  her delicious treats and knowledge with the world.
     Our first acts of Eggery are a banana nut bread, followed by a cranberry orange bread. Nina has all of the ingredients spread out on the counter. She hands me the loaf pans and motions for me to grease and flour them. She's told me before 'without a good base, food will crash and burn, just like your relationships.' And I know she's right.
     "First understand that eggs are used for many different reasons. Leavening, richness and moisture and as a binder. They are for leavening when you don't have baking soda or powder," Nina stops talking and holds her index finger up in the air, looking over her glasses that are falling down her nose, scolding to make her point. "or to off set acidic agents like vinegar or buttermilk, like in banana or a nice cranberry orange bread. There are many people who are the leavening agent in their relationships. I've seen you do this before child... It's not always healthy to be the leavening agent. You see this can often mean that there is something toxic in your relationships....maybe the other is a drinker, or they do things in excess that can damage the relationship. But we need leavening in the breads. Yes, a stabilizer. Many people are looking for a 'stabilizer' in a partner for various reasons; it's a common form of denial in my opinion." She emphasizes the 'O' in opinion. 
"I generally think those looking for a 'leavening agent' don't have the confidence to love themselves. That makes me sad." She shrugs her shoulders and begins adding ingredients to a large mixing bowl. 
     When the breads are safely in the oven, She takes out a large pot to boil the deviled eggs in. She puts about five inches of water in the pot and asks me to bring her two dozen eggs from the fridge.     
     She takes the first carton from me and and withdraws one egg at a time, placing them carefully in the water. "These are the beginning of what needs to be equally yoked. You understand equally yoked?" Apparently the look on my face says that I do not understand the phrase, even though I give a little chuckle to the 'yolk' pun she's used. 
"Equally yoked is what John and I are, what that cute little Italian couple you told me you knew as a child were, and your grandparents were. They had the same 'core' values. They believed the same way. They didn't worry about trust or lack of it. They knew, they BELIEVED in each other...and God too." She points to the ceiling and then quickly signs the cross in front of her. Your generation, not so blessed maybe." She finishes adding the eggs to the water in speaking silence but gently hums a tune I recognize as 'It had to be you.' 
       Once we have the boiled eggs peeled, cut, and the yolks in a separate bowl, the lesson continues 
"The yolks provide the rich taste in the whites. Another purpose of eggs is to have richness in flavor. Richness, like adventures. Equally yoked is also about having fun and feeling fulfilled. Adventures, like travelling, raising children, or something as simple as laughing together, provides the foundation for memories, making your life rich." She smiles and mashes the yolks with with a fork. A short time later two dozen beautiful deviled eggs share an 'equally yolked' platter.
       Our final task, to finish the day's cooking is a meatloaf. As she's forming the loaf in the pan and arranging it for it's final oven destination, she tells me..
"The eggs are a binder in this case. A binder holds things together. In the case of the meatloaf, it binds with the bread crumbs and meat, coagulating in togetherness in the oven." She laughs then, so do I. She can be very silly sometimes; it's one of the reasons I adore her. " A good relationship binder are two who are willing to share responsibilities, like work, gardening, and chores. Also, equally and if not more important in being equally yoked is your emotional state of being. One will quickly outgrow the other if they are stifled by the other instead of encouraged, or one remains trapped in the past, unable to let go of the past, or refuses change altogether. You must be like the meatloaf, that changes from it's raw form to a juicy encrusted cooked dish. Even it has to go through a transformation to become edible."

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The Relationship Ninja Vol 4 Part 2 - Marriage and the Wedding Meal

 Not for lack of trying, but here again, sometimes we get busy doing things, living life and being distracted, and I hate to admit it, but it happens to all writer's at some point...we just get writer's block and even the stories that we know and love to tell and talk about, just don't seem to fit correctly on the page. After a bit of thought, a smidge of writer's block, and of course all of life's distractions; I want to finish telling you about "Marriage and the Wedding Meal."  Follow me.
  
    After lunch and coffee ( I love that about Nina...there's always coffee), we go back to work on the menu.
    "It's hard to talk about or think about food, right after you eat, no?" I nod my head. I'm stuffed, and thinking I should be looking for a treadmill or we should go for a walk. Nina grabs a remote and turns on some music. 
    As if on cue Earth, Wind, And Fire's 'September' promptly begins, and we're dancing...Seriously? How we could not be? I bet you are right now. It's just one of those grooves that make you groove. She turns the music down after a few minutes.
"This meal, needs an antipasto, and more bread." Nina says matter-of-factly. She looks at me over her thick rimmed glasses. "You know it too, Baby Girl." She doesn't wait for my answer "We'll make room." She says. I look over her shoulder and read as she writes and dictates aloud. "Mozzarella, grape tomatoes, green and black olives, in a nice vinegar & oil with pepperoncinis on the side,...You don't need to be Italian to know this meal needs an antipasto."
    "And bread." I remind.
    "Hmm, of course." She's in the 'trance.' It's kind of a deer in the headlights look. Interrupting her trance, I ask 
    "What do the antipasto items represent?"
   "The in laws." Is all she says. I don't have the heart to ask why. She looks so serious, writing the items on her list. I chuckle under my breath and patiently wait for her return. It's slow, but she finally begins to speak "Lasagna with meat, and Eggplant Parmesan for the vegetarians, for the main course." She announces. "Why are so many people Vegee..tear..ian" she drags out the word with thick enunciation "these days? What's wrong with meat?" I shrug my shoulders. I know she means me, since I haven't eaten meat in over two years. I have my reasons, whatever anyone else's reasons are, I have no idea.
"The Eggplant Parmesan with wide noodles. Charlie will want the angel hair pasta, but I hate that. It get's all 'mushy.'" John interjects quietly from behind his rattling newspaper in the other room 
     "For goodness sakes, let the girl have what she wants." 
     "Mind your business, Johnny." she calls. I just smile at these two. She turns back to me and says "Now, the lasagna will have meat. I think sweet Italian sausage. I like hot but I agree with Charlie and most people will like the sweet better."
      Nina digs in her extremely impressive recipe box. She still has one. It's kind of old school and cool. I am still dismayed that a load of people can't or don't bother or learn to cook these days. 
      She finishes her list and hands it to me to make sure that she hasn't missed anything for the main meal. I approve and hand it back. "Now, coffee and dessert." She says. 

continued from part 1
    
    

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The Marlboro Man - Opinions

Sometimes we are overly obsessed with pleasing people or living up to their standards or expectations. My first experience with this thought was delivered to me from a man I look up to on every level. Sometimes the simplest words, can make the biggest impact on you.       

Most of you have "met" the Marlboro Man through me at some point, and know that he is one of my ultimate heroes. He is the one who gave me direction in my life, when I really had none and was quite clueless. If we could pick our own relatives, I'd pick him more than once! 

      Nick (the Marlboro Man) is a striking force of nature. He's one of those men that you hope will live until they are a hundred and twenty just so you can listen to their advice and learn from them, 

       He is the Shi Fu of cowboys, all things cowboy, and represents his life lived here on earth as a cowboy. For those who have never met a real cowboy, think John Wayne, direct, right as rain, and comfortable in his own skin. 

      There are four of us. Marlboro Man, me, Wade and his brother Jesse. We are in Tombstone, playing cards. It's 2 a.m. and no one has won the pot yet. Marlboro Man lays those piercing blue eyes on me, and with perfect clarity, let's me know I am the target of something he is about to say. He glances at his cards for a second and pulls one from his hand, as he lays it face down on the table and says 

     "You look distant, Cupcake, what's the skinny?" He winks at Wade. Wade smiles and Jesse chuckles into his arm. Marlboro Man shoots them a glare and they immediately settle into a hush. I watch the smoke from his cigarette nub rise and engulf his face, his eyes never leave me. He's waiting for an answer.

     "I've been thinking about what I wanna be when I 'grow' up. If I feel like growing up that is." Wade chuckles. It seems as if he knows what's coming next.

     "Who says you gotta do anything at all?" The old cowboy asks.

     "Unwritten societal expectation." I say, as if I know something.

     He lays his card hand face down on the table, snubs out the cigarette, draws another from the pack in shirt pocket, lights it, sits back in his chair. Wade fills the shot glass in front of MM with Jack Daniels. They all look at me and then Marlboro Man leans in, puts his elbows on the table, slams the shot and says

     "Opinions are like Assholes and drunk relatives, everyone has one. You don't need anyone's approval to do or be anything, Cupcake." He pauses, sits back in the chair, changes his mind, and then leans in again. “If you listen to what everyone else wants, you'll find yourself always chasing your tail and gettin' nothin' done; Or worse trying to make everyone else happy. That's not your job. You got one life, one job, yours. What makes you happy? What things do you wanna do, be, or have? At the end of this life, the only ones you gotta answer to is yourself and God." He winks at me, and then flips over his hand to reveal a full house of Aces over kings.

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The Relationship Ninja Vol 4 Part 1 - Marriage and the Wedding Meal (2 Courses)

      In the "Let's Eat" chapter of my book "A Perfect Body" the character's have a euphoric and heavenly experience with their food. It's not so much about the love of food (there is nothing respectful about they way they gorge themselves); it's about the complete power that the situation has over them and their unwillingness to change.

       Today we are planning a wedding.......


      My Ninja, Nina's second eldest daughter is planning a wedding. Nina explains that Charlie's (short for Charlene) fiance Jeff has been asking Nina and her husband to marry Charlie for over a year. Yes, you guessed it, Nina's 'old school' beliefs and ideas about marriage have been the hold up here and for good reason (she says).
     "Let them be happy."  Her husband John says from behind the rattling of his newspaper in den. He mumbles something else inaudible, and Nina calls back
     "Mind your business John." She then turns to me sitting across the kitchen table and says "They've dated for five years, these two. They got engaged three years ago and Jeff has been asking me and John to have a wedding to the girl for about fourteen months....and a few days." She stops fidgeting with her ring, looks up at me, shrugs her shoulders and adds "but whose counting?" Her thick accent breaking through. She's counting, I know she is. Marriage is a big deal to Nina. 
    She prepared the wedding cake for her eldest daughter's wedding a few years before. It was beautiful. The wedding was stressful. The groom's mother was a pain in the neck, but my Ninja was composed and awesome through the whole thing. That time she was only creating the cake; this time she won't actually be cooking the meal (it's being catered) but she has been chosen by Charlie to plan the menu.
"Sometimes, my kids don't understand the freedoms they have. They get to choose things that I never got to." Her parents were very strict and very much thought in favor of arranged marriages, Nina's parents had had an arranged marriage. Fortunately for Nina and her siblings the parents decided not to continue that tradition, I think she used that 'idea' more to teach her children about the importance of making solid and good decisions than anything else.
    Today we are planning a 5 course meal. I am excited to hear her opinions on the lovely foods that we will be putting together for the menu.
"I think we should start with Wedding Soup. You understand the five things that make a successful marriage, yes?" I shake my head. But I am absolutely open to hearing what her perspective is going to be.
    The Wedding Soup represents HEALTH; the staple Nina says that will carry the marriage. There are four other areas that are dependent on the health of the marriage; health is the umbrella for the others.
     The first and generally the most obvious when we hear the word health is physical health.
"You must have good health and mental strength to endure the long hours of balancing work, and family. People forget that once the kids come along, you still gotta have time with your spouse away from the kids. It's a constant battle to keep things together. Something is always trying to come between you...job, parents, family, friends with opinions or jealousies. Yes jealousies. We will talk about that later, Darling." She drawls at me and chuckles.
    The Wedding soup generally has a chicken broth base, meatballs, sausage or some type of chicken as well as bread crumbs and small noodles like an orzo or  tiny stars with vegetables such as celery, onion, and carrots. My ninja says "The broth represents physical strength, the meat represents mental strength, the noodles and bread are the bombardments of everyday life and the vegetables are the divine balance that you seek." I never learned so much from soup!
"Course two will be an appetizer whose fancy name is hors d'oeuvre." She says it like it's spelled, not like it's pronounced   or derve. Her thick accent getting in the way again, as it often does when she's excited or stressed. "Let's stick with calling them appetizers, no? It's much easier." I nod "You are so quiet today." She notices.
   "I am learning," I tell her "You can't learn when your mouth is moving." She smiles at me and shakes her finger reminding me of Billy Crystal in The Princess Bride when he talks about his favorite sandwich.
   "At least I raised you right." she jokes. "Now, Shrimp cocktail or bacon wrapped oysters?"
   "What's the main course?" I ask. She looks at me and I immediately get that her question, though she said it out loud, was rhetorical and for sorting purposes only. We are not yet to the lesson of the main course, I stop talking and she continues, until she has decided that the appetizer will be Shrimp Cocktail.
   The Shrimp Cocktail represents what Nina calls HOUSEKEEPING. She explains that two people moving into together have a responsibility to create a nice home for one another. Sometimes that means one handles everything at home while the other handles work or things outside the home. But it should be a combined effort and not an expectation. 
  The shrimp can be eaten alone or dunked in a lovely spiced red cocktail sauce, either way she says when they come together, it should work well. The horseradish should not over power the sweetness of the red sauce. She explains the dangers of the sauce being too spicy.
   "If one gives more and the other takes too much, your house will be out of balance. This makes people fight over things that can be handled by simple communication. Sometimes we don't think first. We react." She raps on her head closed fist like she's thumping a coconut. "Anyway, the cocktail sauce has to be perfectly balanced tangy to sweet." She puts her pad of paper down and goes to make lunch. I follow her into the kitchen.


to be continued...

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The Relationship Ninja Vol 3 Family and a Breakfast Casserole

    When I first met Nina, we would always cook on Sundays and make it a "merged" family afternoon. We are cooking on a Saturday afternoon in this event, so that all is ready for Sunday morning. Weekend family events with Nina and her family are never dull. She once asked me why it was only me and why I did not have any other family in Arizona. I explained that I was the only one who moved away from my small home town. That was when she taught me about breakfast casseroles.
    "They can be tricky," she said "more like a quiche and less like a souffle. But you have to know how to add the ingredients to get the results that you want."
     First we cut potatoes and onion, next cook and drain sausage crumbles, then crisp the bacon. "There are many other vegetables we could add in place of the meat, but I find that the meat adds a specific type of flavor to the business." She smiles and cracks egg number twelve into the large mixing bowl. "Stir those potatoes." she directs and motions with her head as she whips the eggs into a frenzy. 
   The potatoes are being slow roasted before they will be added to the mixture. I open the oven and stir them," The key here" Nina says, "is to have everything prepped and ready to go." I look inquisitively at her and ask 
   "And how does that relate?" The thought pops out of my mouth before I can stop it.
   "I was just about to tell you that." She heavily enunciates the word that. "sometimes you get ahead on the conversation." she warns. I nod and listen.  "You see all of these ingredients have to be prepped, much like when people are young children. If you do it one way, you get a certain result. If you do it another way, you get quite a different result..." she pauses and stops whipping the eggs.   
   Nina gives me a stern look, but her eye brows are raised as if to say 'Take good mental notes.'  I know I am simply to listen. " Like the potatoes. See how we slow roast them in the oven?" She doesn't wait for me to answer and I nod as she continues. "We could par boil them on top of the stove, or even microwave the little buggers, and with each we will would get a different result. This way, they are more flavorful and they have a little bit of crust on top. If this were a child, you would have a well behaved and disciplined child, because you spent time with them, you understand?" I nod. 
   She sets two 9 X 13 pans on the counter top. "Now we will make two. One because some people don't like meat." She dumps the bacon and the potatoes (the well behaved children) into the pan and says "Here's the TV family, like the one that causes people to have dysfunction or think they are not as good as they could be, you know?" I continue to nod and smile. I get her point. Then she adds sausage
into the same pan and describes it as a 'blended family' step father or mother. I noticed the potatoes, grow a bit less crunchy as they soak up the little bit of grease from the meats. "What's Happening to the children?" I joke. "We have changed the original family make up by adding more fat, you know, making it different. The children are learning a different perspective exists." She says as she pops one of the potato children into her mouth. "And they are tasty too." She smiles and laughs. She adds onion, and a few green chilies. " These additions represent opinions. They can add flavor or they can over power the meat and potatoes if we add too many, then you will have problems for sure. The flavors will fight for dominance. So to calm it all down we add the constant in every breakfast casserole, eggs. The eggs, represent the right to choose. Once they are cooked they are a more stable environment for the rest of the ingredients." Now we were ready to put the first mixture into the oven. 
   As I hand Nina the pan to place into the oven she continues
 "This Breakfast family casserole now will have stability. We have given it the meat, or the head of the family if you will, the children (behaved and disciplined) and enough opinions to add flavor but not over power the choices the impressionable potato children will need to make in their lives, they will be stabilized by the eggs or the beliefs that they have based their opinions on. And here my Dear, you have Family and a Breakfast Casserole." She smiles and hugs me, grabs her coffee cup. refills it from the pot, and refills mine. Next I follow her to the table. where we sit to wait for the casserole. 
    "You know, even when you love the thought of breakfast...like a breakfast casserole - not everyone likes it? It's sometimes bland and boring and your get tired of eating the leftovers faster than you want more." 
   We had already prepped the vegetarian casserole to go in when the other came out. She made vegetarian because not everyone liked meat. "Meat upsets some tummies yes? Kind of like advice from your parents when you realize they were right you made a bad choice. You get that feeling in your stomach knowing that you were wrong and they were right.

 

Cheers until the next adventure

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January 4th, 5th & 6th Download Kindle version of

A Perfect Body - my current novel, English translation, available Internationally in the following countries: Clicking on the listed country automatically brings you to that country's Amazon page. If you don't have a KINDLE you can still download an APP directly from the page to allow you to read on PC or Smartphones - $0.99 US - all other countries pricing is relative to US pricing in it's own currency.

United States
Canada
France
Spain
Germany
India
Japan
Netherlands
United Kingdom
Italy 
Brazil
Mexico
Australia

Copyright 2015 - Noelle Sangster/Sangster Entertainment LLC - All rights reserved

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Noelle Sangster Worldwide

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