A letter to an editor...

Howdy,

I read nytimes.com religiously and on the occasion that I am lunching solo, such as today, I purchase the print version for a date.

We found ourselves at an outdoor cafe in weather that is unusual for Houston but nostalgic for me. The breeze through the oak trees gently wisped around us and before I flipped the first page open, I closed my eyes. I was reminded of dipping my toes into Johnson Creek on the first day of summer. I thought of my high school friend Amanda, a native transplant currently in NYC who was pining for Texas in a recent Facebook status update. I thought of my friend Jamie who recently moved to Copenhagen, Denmark; I wondered if his cowboy boots were wearing in the stirrups of his bicycle and his pride the women, like any good pair of boots and Texan will do. I thought of running barefoot through the hills with my little brother before we knew Gap was something other than a clearing in the woods.

Half an hour later and now an expert on ACORN, I bit into a lemon cookie as I unfolded C31. Immediately, I recognized Robert Earl Keen. I flashed back to the first time I saw him live in concert. It was August of 1999 at the Gillespie County Fairgrounds -- I was 16, standing in a body of swaying, singing sweat, and in complete awe. He was a legend even then and especially among my generation of small-town Texans. Lyle Lovett is a God, if that tells you anything.

Life has always had a way of setting me up for these simple surprises, but finding Tammy LaGroce’s “The Charms of the Big City in the Texas Hill Country” left me especially enamored in the midst of my reminisces. She transcended 99% of everything that has been written about my hometown on the subjects of hassle-free urban living and tourism.

That one itty-bitty %, you’re wondering? Starbucks. Kerrville was cool before Starbucks. Cooler if you ask me.

Big Lone Star love,

Elle

It is my pleasure...

...to introduce what I have decided will be a regular feature:

Mom Talks

conversations with lady

(Featuring a one in bazillion mom, my mom.)

I've had the idea for years because that's how long she's been calling me, ignoring me while we're on the phone and then trumping my excuses to get off the phone.

Some random Caribbean ring tone interrupted my perfectly poised grump Sunday afternoon and it was the one person in the world I can never ignore, Lady*. She was calling from the foreign foods section of her local grocery store so that I could translate Tikka Masala. Weasel is an Expat Brit so she jumps at any chance she can to speak his language, even if it means reading labels on isle 6. Our conversation went like this:

Lady: Hey, I'm in the foreign foods, ask Weasel if he wants some spotted Dick?

She had humored herself so. She couldn't even finish the question before she was spitting air out the gasket of her pressed lips trying to hold back laughter.

Me, to Weasel across the room and unamused: Mom wants to know if you want any spotted Dick?

Lady: Hey, here it is, I saw this the other day, what is this? Treacle. What's treacle?

Me, to Weasel across the room and again, unamused: What's treacle?

Weasel: It's like maple syrup but disgusting.

Me, to my mother: It's disgusting is what it is.

Lady: Oh. Here, what's this, Branston Pickle.

Me: It's pickles in some brown sauce, it's disgusting too.

Weasel: It's sweet.

Lady: What did he say, put it on meat? What kind of meat? What kind of meat do they eat over there?

Me: No Mom, he said it's sweet. And they don't believe in meat. They believe in chips and mushy peas. See if you can find some mushy peas, that'll teach you all you need to know about the English.

Lady: Mushy peas... no, I don't see any mushy peas.

I don't respond. I can hear packaging materials crinkling in the palm of her hand as she selects and returns random prodcuts to the shelves and whispers the names to herself. "Piccalilli..."

Lady: Well, I want you to know that I counted up that I've only seen you 3 times in the last year. You just don't love me anymore.

Me: 3? That's it? That might be a record.

Lady: Yep, when you came up after Ike, when I went to see PaPa and you met us for dinner and when you and Weasel came up earlier in the year.

I reminded her of the reunion in Austin just after Christmas.

Lady: Okay, 4. But I never even talk to you anymore.

Me: You're always in a bad mood and it just so happens that today you're not and I am.

Long pause.

Lady: HP sauce. Ooooooo, Pataks...Biryani Curry Paste in a jar!

Me: Okay, I'm gonna get off here and let you finish shopping.

Lady, during a satisfied sigh: Okay sweetheart, I'm gonna let you go. I need to finish up here and get home.

See what I mean? She always trumps me.

Several hours passed before the next Carribean jingle:

Me: Hey.

Lady: Hey, you know I get about two checks a year from the Hill Country Telephone Co-op...theeeeey cooooome...to about...(calculator punching noise in the background)...twenty-six dollars total.

Me: Yep, your dividends?

Lady: Yep. So, when I die, you need to make sure you call them so you can get my checks. It's your inheritance.

Me: Sweet!

We both laughed to the verge of tears.

*Lady is what I affectionately call my mother, Sallie Jo.





DISCLAIMER: THIS STORY MAY CONTAIN EMBELISHMENTS BUT IS MOSTLY VER BATUM. I ♥ you mom!

Forget it.

Dear God,
Thank you for my infallible memory, it makes it so much easier to cope with the rest of the hand you dealt me.
Love,
Elle

P.S. You should have read this with a sarcastic tone and don't tell Mom, but I know all about Santa.

♠

One upon a time there was a girl who remembered everything. E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G. Jealous? Don't be. Having a photographic memory is not so picturesque. Don't. Don't even say you wish. It's a curse, an absolute curse.

Take for example, the innocent white lie. You think you're sly, the world has taught so. The world is your enemy, because the Elle was put here to remember. And I will probably remember where I was when you told me, what I was wearing (and what you were wearing as well if you were lying to my face), what the air smelled of and whether or not it was humid. Then I will remind you of my sick gift. I forget nothing and you, my friend, are red handed. I'll put the apology on your tab. And this will be five years down White Lie Road. (And you will owe me a lot of white wine from the Loire Valley.)

Aftermath blessings.

One year ago today I was zipping around Weatherford, Texas buying out Gibson's in gas cans and Walmart in junk food before I returned to the aftermath of Ike.

I fled to North Texas after hanging out with my grandparents and great-grandmother in a dark sauna for two days only to be called back a day later for work.

Ready to kiss my mother goodbye, a friend of several years text messages me that he is back from a trip, has electricity and needs a car battery. I agreed to trade him my AAA services for accommodations. One last stop at O'Reilly's and I was Houston bound.

After dropping supplies at the grandparental's, I delivered a car battery and caught up with my friend over a glass of wine at La Carafe before we popped the hood on his V'dub.

An hour later and I was standing on his engine block and positioning the battery into place.

He says that's the moment he fell in love with me.

Happy Anniversary, Weasel!

A hairy lesson.

My hair stylist is a fabulously chubby, suburban, flamboyant and gay twenty-one year old Caucasian, who - having grown up under the thumb of a very conservative mother - most likely is not using his given surname. To protect the innocent, we shall call him Stefanba. (Translated into the secret twin language of Jenna and Barbara Bush, courtesy of one of my top 10 favorite SNL skits of the 21st century.) I entrusted this youngling Stefanba with my locks under the assumption that no twenty-one year old could possibly have what every other stylist had enough of to send me flying out of the salon with wet hair and a refund: foot infections, track marks, disappearing acts mid-cut and ex-boyfriend drama. Stefanba has styled my hair a total of 3 times now, all of which have been mini-adventures in the latter, and a new first for me. Two words, eight consonants, four vowels, a lot of wrist action and hair spray.

I explained that I was attending a soiree and wanted something glamorous, sleek and wavy. "Absolutely! We'll part your hair down the center and do these beautiful ocean waves!" He motioned like a pelvis-rocked water bed down the sides of my face and shoulders. I smiled back at him in the mirror. "Exactly!"

While sectioning my hair for the blow dry he mentions among a slew of other subjects that his next client is a stripper and "She wants big, big, teeeeeeeeeezed sex-hair." My neurons couldn't even process the statement into a thought, an opinion, anything, before he started telling me about his latest ad for casual encounters, his astrology chart, that he's giving his little sis a keratin treatment this weekend, that his lack of cash flow is directly related to the fact that he cannot turn down an invitation to dine out...

Then the comb comes out and it goes upside down beneath a section of my hair and moves violently in the opposite direction it should have. After teasing the roots of my entire scalp, giving me aerosol lung, curling, applying wax down the part and at my crown "to prevent flyaways" he whisked me around in the chair to reveal that one topic never really escaped the conversation. Stefanba then threw his hands in the air like someone pinched his cheekies mid-revelation, squealed "I know what you need!" and disappeared. He returned in full skip from the other side of the salon and before properly introducing me to the fully loaded product in his hand he had fired a reflective mist into my coif. "Gold glitter!"

Imagine, in slow motion if you will, my hands raising up over my head, my inner eyebrows lifting into the center of my forehead, my lips forming an "O" and my voice taking on a steroid-esque moan when I whaled with horror. Stefanba and I had reached a new height, quite literally.

On the drive home I was able to transfer most of the gold glitter to my jeans via the palm of my hand that was also working diligently to undo the poof beneath the armor of hairspray and curls. This annual event called for "hot summer chic or cocktail" attire. Stripper hair was not on the menu.

I succeeded in undoing the do and around 8pm Weasel and I caught the train to the museum district. We confirmed with the registrar of the swanky hotel that we would be consuming $250 worth of hors d'oeuvres, cocktails and margarine topped zebra patterned cupcakes and then entered a lobby full of well accessorized middle aged men. I tugged on Weasel's coat sleeve and whispered behind the back of my hand "Are we sure we're in the right room? I think this is a father-daughter dance." Dangling from their arms were bronze sticks with beating hearts in haute couture 1/3 of the average male age.

After sizing myself up against all the silicone and layers of MAC, it occurred to me rather quickly that I was not only the only twenty-six year old not on a date with grandpa - or the only natural brunette or the only natural anything for that matter - but I was also the only one...without stripper hair. My curves in an eggplant colored satin strapless Calvin Klein dress with black patent pumps and handbag could hold their own in a lineup of bone-filled Cavalli but in a room of fluffed, pinned, teased and sprayed hair, my long fallen waves were in a league of their own. I spent the better part of the evening powdering my nose, aka, trying to redo the do I had undid.

On the way home and one too many G&Ts later I asked Weasel what he thought about the women; prefaced with how I felt in a room full of them: unsure of myself. He reminded me, "But you're the Elle."

Those four words have echoed in all of my words and movements through the morning. I am the Elle. I am in a league of my own. And the fact of life is that we're all in a league of our own. But sometimes we choose to join other leagues, to play on other teams where stripper hair is hot summer chic.

You've got...fan mail!

We have a new member here at the hellacious ramblings of elle...

A warm welcome everyone to Distributor in Chief, Courtney Henslee. My sister, who promises to be a regular subject and suspect around these parts.

After my post yesterday I emailed the only two people in the WWW² (whole wide world and world wide web), who if by nothing other than obligation, I knew would bother to click on the link and investigate what exactly I had stirred up this time. One was my mother and the other, well self-appointed Distributor in Chief who so characteristically updated her Facebook status with the birth announcement of my blog and welcomed me home tonight as a follower.

I am honored to have her blogside and I'm looking forward to all the sisterly growth that comes with being virtual neighbors.

Not so fast, Julie & Julia...

What actually possessed me may be forever locked in the chamber of my subconscious (a place, apparently, where all Facebook status updates go to die), with many of the other unknown origins of my bad thought/action duos (mostly crap I read on the internets). But for whatever reason (namely my sister's Facebook updates), I decided that I needed an internal adventure called the Master Cleanse, a "lemonade" fast created by Stanley Burroughs some fifty+ years ago.

Today marks my sister's 13th day on the cleanse and I have been following her progress via Facebook, like all other happenings since she decided to desert me three years ago for the hippie utopia of Austin, TX. I'm not bitter. Her posts are reminiscent of someone who's received a miracle, via a strike of lightening or a Joel Osteen sermon. Okay, maybe the Evangelicals don't do it for me but who doesn't want to be struck by lightening and not only live to tell about it but have some physiological upgrade because of it? 20/20 vision or a sixth sense anyone? My point is, her posts had me foaming at the mouth for lemon juice, maple syrup, cayenne pepper and H2O. Any Foodie that can prepare a gourmet meal for her kids on day 5 of a liquid regime and not even lick a spoon is an inspiration of will and I want to be that person. Add to this the fact that I had been in the UK for a week filling my pores and arteries with frying oil and starch. I needed a detox.

But no great glutton goes out without a bang...or a bender.

Saturday, September 5th was a day inclusive of all things I love to put in my mouth: Fresh cage free eggs prepared al la Elle (TM) in a no holds barred amount of salted butter with fresh Mexican Mint Marigold (or Texas tarragon) and spring onion, served perched on a bed of toasted multi-grain bread. Polished this off with a french press of cheap-o Colombian medium roast by Folgers and held tight until dinner, by which time Weasel and I had decided it would be our last meal for 10 days. We dined that evening at Dolce Vita, home of Houston's most authentic Neapolitan pizzas and one of our favorite eateries where there is no shortage of indulgence: Stemware of dry, flinty Italian white wines, verdura of shredded Brussels sprouts evenly tossed in olive oil and perfectly partnered with pecorino cheese, sided but not upstaged by juicy beet root with walnuts and speckled with finely chopped horseradish. Two delicate pizzas, the Sciciliana and Margherita, were the taste bud grand finale. Not only mouthwatering combination of flavors but texture, texture, TEXTURE! Thin crusts brick oven fired to perfection and topped with saucy marinara, oozing mozzarella, olives and capers for the Sciciliana and fresh basil for the Margherita, both lightly dusted like a blessing from the Food Heavens with flecks of sea salt. The result is an oral orgasm in your Parotid glands and complete submission to the enoteca.

And like no great glutton goes out without a bender, no last night of solids is complete without their fair share of liquids and debauchery. It was on to Dean's Credit Clothing on Fairview for a frozen Cosmo (in the rain but on some really cool bamboo woven patio digs no less) and then one cocktail later we were couch-side some friends at Anvil, where we disclosed that we would be unavailable for social interactions for the next week due to our diet. I wasn't expecting applause but I also wasn't expecting or prepared for the blank stares, batting eyes and raised upper lip snarls of confusion and bewilderment. "What about protein!?" "What about essential nutrients!?" they picketed with their words. Some 80's remix at Etro with several gin and tonics resulted in me kicking some pin ball-ass at Poison Girl and no hard feelings.

Game day, game face, day one, drink one, perplexed expression and a squeeze of qweezy. It wasn't a bad mix but it may have been better under other circumstances, say, sans hangover? Yeah. Two glasses into it and three hours into a deep purge of the apartment, I was light-headed, moody and in a fog that wouldn't allow me to decipher either of the two. And poor Weasel, enduring caffeine and nicotine withdraws on top of sustenance deprivation. We needed something to keep our minds off food, coffee and cigarettes and that, my readers, is when our cleanse took a turn for the worse. Eleven blocks of zombie-like strolling later we were at the Angelika purchasing tickets to see Julie & Julia. A quarter of the way through the film Weasel was whispering in my ear that his mouth was watering and halfway through, I could smell the beef bourguigon. Less than 15 minutes after the credits rolled we were next door at Migalone's devouring fresh bread, olive oil and insalatas. (Note to self: when you are trying to suppress the desire to eat, don't watch a movie about food.)

Not all is lost on a failed cleanse, however. It turns out that I don't need a fast or a strike of lightening for a stroke of genius (or 20/20 vision, thanks to hindsight). I just needed a taste of anorexia and a movie to determine what exactly was missing in my life: Blogging: The Gateway to Writing. I know, I just invented an entire new genre of cliche: Wannabe-writer-and-corporate-slave-by-day-with-foodie-passions goes on fast, sees movie about wannabe-writer-corporate-slave-by-day-and-foodie-by-night who starts a blog about Julia Child and becomes a writer.

The truth is, I invented blogging (and if you know me, "duh" is resonating in the cavitites of your upper body) just as Al Gore did the internet, as Julia Child did French cooking for the servantless American. In the days of Leap Frog on DOS, I was dreaming about uploading my daily thoughts to a world where people appreciated my humor, where the boundaries of intellect were beyond the Kerr County line and where I might actually be good at something in the realm of things.

Some thing(s) in the makeup of yesterday's events, mostly my appreciation for eating, empathy for career struggles, the aching desire to write and the magical connectedness of them all, cleansed me of whatever fears have kept me from creating this account and gave me the courage to construct a first post.

Yes, so not all is lost. Welcome to the hellacious ramblings of Elle.