Close your eyes and imagine it. Come with me. The smells are there. All sorts of them: fresh spicy radishes laid out on a wool blanket for all to see and buy, sizzling tacos of unknown meats and sausages, corn tortillas toasting on a cast iron griddle and the citrus freshness of plump limes whose juice is constantly drizzled over everything. This is the de Mercado Valle de Bravo in Mexico: a Sunday market housed in a cramped labyrinth of tiny stalls connected by a roof made of blue plastic feigning the sky. It is an infinitely raw and vibrant world nestled within Valle de Bravo, a scenic vacation town of picturesque cobble stone roads and a breathtaking lake where tourists enjoy mountain fresh air and sit and eat trucha fresca, fresh trout, and escape the pollution and population …Read on

“If you let your leg dangle just a teensy weensy bit off the side of the bed, the bed monster will get you,” my older sister informed a gullible six-year old me many many moons ago. Her steady, authoritative gaze bore deeply into my impressionable eyes and I instantly believed her. Why wouldn’t I? She was my big sister and my guide to survival in life. Whatever she said, stuck.

And so, this freshly seared image of a patient beast (slightly benevolent and cuddly but with a wicked temper that could turn on you in an instant) housed itself in my psyche and settled in so comfortably that it took me years to stop sleeping with my feet safely curled up by my chest…just in case.

I would greet mornings with a quiet sigh of relief …Read on

It recently became fashionable to celebrate our obsession with list taking. You know the books: 1000 Places to Visit Before You Die, 1000 Things To Do and even the movie, The Bucket List, a melodramatic journey of Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson as two old men revisiting dreams and rekindling failed relationships. Even Oprah Winfrey’s O List has a way of magically transforming the item mentioned into an instant best seller, whether it is a book, a product, or a personality like Dr. Phil or Dr. Oz. We are a culture obsessed with lists: little items, thoughts, or deeds we must write down to check off and feel a sense of accomplishment. I’m not knocking it; I am a list queen myself. If I don’t write it down (to then check it off), it doesn’t get done. …Read on

Twenty years ago I was a daredevil. Today I am chic. I am poised upon the fresh powder (that’s Colorado snow, for those of you not in the know), garbed up in my razor sharp ski outfit (Spyder jacket ice white with aqua and midnight trim, white gloves, sexy black pants) helmet, goggles, boots, skis. Ready for the slopes. On top of the world.

I had made it on the lifts, a contraption I gave no thought to mount from age 6 to 19, but now, at 39, approached apprehensively. All right, approached in a panic. I haven’t lived in Manhattan in over 14 years but it’s as if Woody Allen and all his neurosis had infiltrated me steadily through the years:

“Get on this thing? It’s not safe? A dangling chair in subzero weather climbing precariously …Read on

Oh I thought of all of you last night, my friends, as I used Larry for the first time (no, Larry isn’t my vibrator, if you recall from a former post, he’s my meat grinder…)  My husband was helping me shove in chunks of top round as it was all spewing out of the tiny little drain-looking contraption and meat and blood was flying EVERYWHERE splattering my seven-year old son and I in the face like an edited-out scene of Carrie.

I assume most normal folk would run in horror, scream, or, quite logically, TURN THE KITCHENAID MIXER OFF, but I fell straight into the role of the demented killer as a smile the size of a quarter watermelon slid on my face and a curling, and pardon the pun, bloodthirsty laughter escaped from the deepest and most carnivorous corner of …Read on