Tag: meal

Six Things

  1. The last time I went to the post office, I had a package from Rob, also known as The Smiling Bagel. I call him St. Louis’s goodwill ambassador, because his blog always makes me want to visit that city. He sent me some bottle caps for my ongoing art series. I haven’t painted in a while. Maybe this is the nudge I needed. It wasn’t until I photographed the bottle caps and uploaded the picture that I became aware of….
  2. A tiny wrapped package of pressed pennies from the St. Louis Zoo featuring a train, a hippo, a peacock, and a butterfly. See what I mean about how he promotes his home city? He remembered that I like to collect pressed pennies from tourist attractions, and now I have four new ones. Thank you so much, Rob–for the bottle caps and the pressed pennies!
  3. In going through some old pictures, I found this photo of my mother’s desk. I think Laura and Jess got that desk. The four paintings on the top are four of my One Word Art paintings that she once picked out for either her birthday or Christmas. They were the four that spoke to her, she said. Rather than reclaiming them, I believe I sent them with a box of stuff to Daniel. I’d forgotten them until I saw this photo. I believe they are, left to right, “Trust,” “Surrender,” “Plant,” and “Learn.”
  4. I’m reading Karl Soehnlein’s novel Robin and Ruby.
    I wanted to photograph one of Barnaby’s bigger-than-your-head salads to show you how enormous it is. I usually get a dinner, the next day’s lunch, and maybe a third small salad out of one of these. The salad is excellent, but their ranch dressing is THE BEST. It’s great for dipping fries in, too.
  5. When Jim was here, one afternoon we went to the Menil Collection and the Cy Twombly Gallery. I have to go back to the Menil soon. The next day, we hit up the Museum of Fine Arts, the Lawndale Art Center, and Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. The last is where Jim got me into trouble when he posed for me–it was like the dozenth photo I’d taken, but only when Jim got all goofy were we told, “You can’t take photos of the art here!” Oops. I’d like to say I feel remorse, but I don’t (and I didn’t use a flash). I do recommend that particular exhibit: INTERSTITIAL SPACES: JULIA BARELLO & BEVERLY PENN. It’s there until September 1.
  6. I finally persuaded myself to download Instagram to my iPhone. That’s my first photo: Pixie and Penny all bored, watching out the window for something exciting like a squirrel to appear. I don’t know how much I’ll use Instagram–I have two other photo apps on my phone that I never use. I need to feel the heft of a camera in my hands. But at least now I can look at other people’s Instagram galleries, and some of their pictures are beautiful and creative.

I was not compensated by any businesses, artists, or products mentioned in this post other than sales of my own art work.

Legacy Writing 365:217

Tom and I were just trying to remember our introduction to Barnaby’s cafe. I doubt either of us ate there before we moved into Montrose, because I don’t remember going there with Steve R/ Jeff/John/Tim R. So our most likely first time there was 1997. I know we were already regulars by the time I met Rhonda online late that year, because it was one of those things we bonded over in our chat room. Just about all the locals love Barnaby’s. I’m betting it was James who took me there first. In those days, there was only one location, the original on Fairview. Next door in the same building is Baby Barnaby’s which absolutely can’t be beat if you wake up early enough to have breakfast there. James, Steve V, and I used to go there frequently.

In time, the River Oaks Barnaby’s opened, then the one on West Gray. There’s another in Houston, but it’s outside the ‘hood, so I’ve never been there. Barnaby’s is our go-to place for takeout for us and visiting family and friends, and it’s also the place I go with my suburban friends and out-of-town guests. Which location we choose depends on how many of us there are, time of day, etc., because the restaurants’ sizes vary. But one thing has always been true. Whether I’ve been there with straight friends or gay, male or female, off-beat or buttoned-down, with or without kids, we’ve always been treated with the same courtesy. I like keeping my dollars local, and I like knowing my friends will be respected not only as patrons but as people.

Jim treated Tom and me to lunch there on Wednesday. Tim wasn’t able to go, because he was battling a virus and allergies off and on during the week–and really, with the amount of intolerant and hurtful comments he had to see online last week, I think chicken was the last thing he wanted. Jim, on the other hand, had a grilled chicken sandwich because he knew it came without sides of indifference or malice (neither of those is as tasty as Barnaby’s fries!).

This should make Puterbaugh feel a little nostalgic.

Legacy Writing 365:202

On Friday afternoon, after months of calls for submissions, reading manuscripts, talking to writers, edits, more edits, more emails, and…well, more edits, Tim and I were finally able to have the exciting discussion we’ve been anticipating. I wrote down the names and themes of the sixteen stories that we’ve accepted for Foolish Hearts: New Gay Fiction on squares of paper, and we arranged, discussed, and rearranged them into our table of contents. Then I put them into one big, beautiful draft:

Now we’ll do a last read-through, incorporate a few final edits from one of the contributors, and get the remaining two author bios in there. Tim will finish his introduction, I will finish my afterword, and we’ll ship this baby to Cleis for final approval. Once we have the official “go,” we can share the table of contents with the world. I know the authors involved are looking forward to that.

When we did Fool For Love, we got in the habit of calling the contributors anthology brothers. One gratifying aspect of that is how they’ve sought each other out when they’ve traveled to New Orleans, New York, and beyond. Several of them have developed relationships in which they pass their works in progress to each other for feedback. They read, encourage, and advise–because though the act of writing is a solitary one, the art of writing requires an audience.

All this has made me look backward to some of the lovely moments I’ve experienced with Fool For Love’s writers.


Rob Byrnes with ‘Nathan Burgoine in New Orleans in 2008.


Tim with Trebor Healey in New Orleans in 2009.


I don’t have a photo of our meeting with Rob Williams in New York in 2007, so I just shamelessly stole this shot of him from his blog.


Mark G. Harris with Tim in Houston in 2008.


David Puterbaugh with me in Houston in 2010.


Josh Helmin with Tim in Houston in 2011.


Michael Thomas Ford wasn’t in FFL, but we shot this photo in New Orleans of him with Greg Herren, Rob Byrnes, and Tim for Houston’s OutSmart Magazine. They didn’t publish it, but we aren’t mad at them, because they regularly support and feature gay fiction and gay writers.


Me with Jeffrey Ricker, Tim, and Jeffrey’s partner Michael in 2009 in New Orleans.


Tim with Paul Lisicky in Houston in 2008.


Tim and me with Felice Picano in New Orleans in 2011.


There are four FFL writers and one editor included in this group in New Orleans in 2009: the kind of shenanigans I want to get up to for future photos with the contributors to and readers of Foolish Hearts. I love writers.

Legacy Writing 365:195


When I’m cooking, it often seems like there are a whole lot of people in the kitchen with me. I don’t mean physically, because as most people will tell you, unless someone has a job to do, I don’t want ANYone in my kitchen, and I’m always driving out people and dogs with commands and threats.

As I began preparing fresh okra today, I thought as I always do about Jane Jane, pictured below with Papa.

While she cooked, to keep me out from under her feet, Jane Jane would give me the peelings and snippings from her vegetables in a big bowl and put me on the back porch. That way I could play “cooking” to my heart’s content, and she could keep an eye on me through the screen door without worrying I might get into something I shouldn’t or get hurt in the kitchen. Long before I ever ate okra, I played with it.

To say I was not an adventurous eater as a child would be an understatement. I liked what I liked and wouldn’t try anything else. Dislikes included all breads, many vegetables, and the usual weird stuff like beets, liver, and brussels sprouts. So it wasn’t until I went to college and met Debbie (who became my roommate multiple times during undergraduate and graduate school), that I would try new things. She persuaded me to try boiled okra in our dorm cafeteria.

When I confessed to Granny, pictured below with her great-granddaughter Jennifer, that I’d eaten and liked boiled okra, she cooked me a skillet of fried okra. Mercy, it was SO good.

There was no way to avoid it–I had to admit to my mother that after all those years of shunning her okra, I’d decided I loved it. She taught me to cook it.

Those of you who like my fried okra owe a debt to the women above. Still, I know there are okra haters among you. You’re in good company. Guinness, who’ll eat damn near anything, rushed into the kitchen earlier when the end of a pod of okra rolled off the counter and hit the floor. She sniffed it, laid down next to it, and ignored it, as if to say, “You got anything better up there?”

Legacy Writing 365:171

Some photos give me all kinds of memory cues that no one else would guess. This one’s from my mother’s Kodak Instant camera (spits out Polaroid-type shots immediately), and it was taken sometime in the week before Mother’s Day back in the Late Stone Age. I know that because my then-husband is across the table from me reading our local newspaper and the ads proclaim “Mother’s Day BARGAINS.” It would be Lynne’s first Mother’s Day without her mother, who’d died in September of the year before this photo was taken.

That kitchen is as familiar to me as the one I live in now, even after so many years have passed since I was in it. The trivets, the coffeemaker, the empty ice tray on the counter (no doubt left by me, because for some reason, it was always me who had to “take up the ice,” as we called–and still call–putting the ice in glasses before a meal).

It’s after the dinner hour. Everyone else has already eaten, because my ex and Lynne are sitting in other people’s spots at the table–and no one else is there and eating. I imagine the two of them showed up later in the evening and Mother brought out the leftovers and told them to fix a plate. It’s fried chicken, by the way, along with mashed potatoes and green beans. (Those things are visible when I embiggen the photo.) They’re both drinking iced tea (you’re welcome for the ice). I don’t know where he was coming from, but Lynne was coming from her house, because the first thing I wondered about were all those flowers on the table. I’m betting Lynne brought them out of her own garden (she’s always grown amazing roses), and Mother put them in multiple vases so she could send some home with me.

As for me: I’m trying to get shots of those roses with my Canon, and no one is paying any attention to me. They’ve obviously gotten used to the way I constantly have that thing in front of my face. I’ll bet if I looked through my own photos, I’d find shots of the roses. I’m sitting in my usual spot at the table–I still have a specific place that I always sit at my own table, and if anyone else takes it, I get twitchy.

My hair makes me laugh. For many years, I had the same hairstyle: parted in the middle, hanging down straight on either side of my face, length from mid-back to waist. But I’d finally decided that I wanted bangs to be cut and feathered back. Lynne offered to do that for me. It didn’t exactly work out that way, and it seemed like forever that I had those two stupid hanks of hair that hung without any style at all on each side of my forehead. Blech.

So it’s all there: the comforting familiarity of home, my parents’ way of offering food, a newspaper, a place to relax. My way of hiding behind a camera; Lynne’s way with flowers. This is how I want people to feel in my home–like they’re home, in a place where they can relax and be themselves.

And I continue to have a complicated relationship with my hair.

In and Out

IN.

A week or so ago–that day I made biscuits–I decided to embark on another culinary adventure. There were only two of us for dinner and three chicken legs in the freezer–just enough for two people (Tom ate two; I wanted only one). Even though I’m not the biggest fan of barbecue, I decided to make my own sauce using half this recipe.

Do you guys save all your extra condiments when you get fast food or takeout? ‘Cause that’s what all these packets are about–I used packets of butter, ketchup, and mustard for my sauce.

After letting it simmer for twenty minutes, I brushed it on the chicken legs after I removed their skin.

Tom’s plate with a garden salad, fresh corn on the cob, and a couple of those biscuits.

He liked the sauce. I think I might use a little less vinegar next time. But we had enough left over that we used it on some ribs we grilled a couple of days later.

and OUT.


Then last week, I went to Kimberly Frost’s signing at Murder By The Book. As usual, she was a crowd pleaser. She was there to sign her new release, All That Falls, the second in her Etherlin series. I’ve been reading it all this week…who can resist a sexy fallen angel?

Kimberly does a lot of world building in the paranormal Etherlin novels, which present serious struggles between Muses, Demons, Angels, and mutated Vampires that could affect all of humanity. But when she was asked about creating the town of Duvall, Texas, for her other series, the Southern Witch novels, I had to laugh. As soon as Kimberly began talking about Tammy Jo Trask’s world, her voice and accent changed dramatically. It was easy to see the affection and connection she feels for and with her main character.

All three Southern Witch books, as well as the novella and first two novels of the Etherlin series, are available from your favorite booksellers.

Birthday Animal Tales


Tim’s birthday was Saturday, but he has a busy schedule right now, so we arranged to have his birthday dinner on Friday night. He looks very serious in this photo–almost as if he’s having to balance a bunch of my paintings on his head (more of my genius photo skills at work)–but in fact, it was a fun night filled with plenty of laughter. He, Tom, and I were joined by Lynne, Rhonda, and Lindsey. Sugar was with us, too, and wearing a Cone of Shame because she’s healing from an abrasion to her face, but I didn’t get a photo of her. She seemed to be tormented enough without flashes going off in her face.

Marika had told me that I was to put a unicorn on Tim’s cake:

Done! But Unicorn looks a little nervous.

Probably because the cake was the scene of the movie “Mythical Unicorn, Encroaching Dinosaur.” I’ll let you make up your own plot for that.


Silly animal fun.

Later, Tim returned to his house/dogsitting gig, and Lynne went back to Green Acres. Tom had noticed earlier that Margot had a little blood on her back. The last time this happened to a Compound dog, if you recall, Rex ended up with four staples. So while Rhonda was trying to figure out my most recent bad drawing in Draw Something, and Tom was keeping Lindsey company while she dyed her hair shades of pink, I used a warm washcloth to check out Margot’s back, just to be on the safe side.

EW EW EW. Same thing as Rex. Big wound on her side. The Brides kept me and the rest of the dogs company while Tom took Margot to the ER vet. The staple count this spring: Rex 4, Margot 5.

We think it’s the bougainvillea thorns, so Tom did a thorough pruning job on the branches the next day. Meanwhile, Margot has joined Sugar among the ranks of the Coneheads:

The dogs are sure these things happen to them only when Tim is away working. So they got together with a special T-shirt message for him:

Legacy Writing 365:145

The chances are slim that the players of this story will ever visit this blog, but I’m still changing the names to cover my ass pretend it’s fiction protect the innocent (me).

Cousin Skipper and I lived in the same city. Cousin Midge, her brother Ken, and his wife Barbie were driving through on their way to somewhere else. When Cousin Skipper was a young girl, her widowed mother took her to a far-away state, so she didn’t grow up knowing our family, even though her late father was a sibling to one of my parents as well as to one of Midge and Ken’s parents. Skipper had always longed to know more about her roots, so though I had some misgivings, I agreed to meet them all for lunch.

The first problem: Cousin Skipper was a no-show. I didn’t mind spending time with my cousins, even though they were decades older than me and the conversation went along predictable lines. Cousin Midge rehashed old (imaginary) wrongs. Cousin Ken embellished past exploits of dead family members to make them seem more heroic, noble, or flawless than is possible outside novels and old movies. Barbie asked probing questions about my life even though the answers only caused her distress as she worried for my immortal soul.

It was a blast!

But finally this staid and sober group needed to get back on the road, and we walked outside the restaurant to say our goodbyes. This is when Skipper came wheeling up, hair and makeup a little crazy, and renewed the acquaintance of cousins she hadn’t seen since she was a child. She lit a cigarette and suggested we all go back inside for margaritas, and trust me, in ONE MILLION YEARS, this was not going to happen. So instead we stood outside awkwardly talking.

Then I was moved when Cousin Midge, famous for hoarding a basement full of family treasures and mementos that none of the rest of us were allowed near, took something from her purse and held it toward Cousin Skipper.

“I wondered if you’d ever seen one of these,” Midge said.

Skipper took it and her eyes got wet when she realized she was looking at the announcement of her own birth, written in her late mother’s hand more than sixty years before.

“No,” she said. “I’ve never seen this.” She held it to her heart for a moment then looked at it again as her tears spilled down her cheeks.

That’s when Cousin Midge snatched it from Skipper’s hand and said, “I’m not GIVING it to you!”

I literally and quite audibly gasped, but that didn’t deter Midge from putting the birth announcement back in her purse.

This became a joke between my mother and me whenever I’d admire something of hers or vice versa: “I’m not GIVING it to you!” we’d say, followed by a crazy cackle.

After Mother died, I tried to remember all her suggestions through the years about who should get what, and I’m delighted to say that as far as I know, none of her children or grandchildren argued over stuff–possibly because in times past, she’d given us many of those things that held meaning for us.

However, she did swear she’d given me an engraved silver tray that was a gift to my father when he left one of his jobs. When she found out I didn’t have it, she was sure I threw it away. Anyone who knows me knows this isn’t possible (I do share genes with Cousin Midge, after all).

So to my family, if anyone has that silver tray, I think it’s time you ‘fessed up and let me off the hook.

And Debby wants to know: Who’s hiding the blue willow platter?

I hope Mother didn’t give it to Cousin Midge.

Legacy Writing 365:137


I told Cousin Rachel that I don’t seem to have any photos of her father, Cloyce, but when I was looking at my laptop, I found this one. That I have it scanned in there means it’s among the other Mysteriously Missing Photos that are hiding from me somewhere in this house. In email exchanges, I reminisced to Rachel about the dogs her father raised, trying to remember whether they were chihuahuas. She said she’d forgotten all about those dogs, and they were actually Toy Manchester Terriers. As soon as she said so, my memory of them became much clearer.

When talking to David and Debby about this, David reminded me that Uncle Cloyce could bark exactly like those dogs, which I’d forgotten. It’s funny how just a few words can open a door to a flood of memories. I loved sitting outside his store next to Uncle Cloyce. He always gave me an icy cold soft drink and a lot of laughter. Rachel said he probably talked my ear off telling me the same old stories. How I wish I could recall those now.

In the picture above, taken the same Christmas as earlier photos I’ve shared, Rachel and her then-boyfriend Charles are standing next to David and Debby, then Papa and Jane-Jane, then Uncle Cloyce, and Mother’s holding me. I’m either three (Hanley’s age now) or four (Lila’s age now), and clearly I’ve been crying. Who knows what was wrong with me, but what really bewilders me is how Debby looks a little sulky. She’s standing RIGHT NEXT to her favorite coconut cake! She probably got caught taking a swipe at the frosting with her finger. Most notable: This photo apparently predates my brother’s habit of sneaking bunny ears on the person standing next to him. Or else Aunt Drexel, who may have been wielding the camera, could have given him the schoolteacher stare and put a stop to his shenanigans.