The Lipstick Chronicles

By Sarah

Pardon me if I seem a bit out of it. I have a puppy to raise. Also, a rough draft to write. Oddly enough, the two are strangely similar. Both are equally exhausting.

My puppy, Fred P. Arbogast, aka Mr. Peabody, aka Mr. Arbogast, is a purebred Basset Hound with a truly wrinkled Basset face and a delightfully lazy personality. All my life I've wanted a Basset, ever since Pokey, the Basset owned by my neighbor whose name was - you guessed it - Fred P. Arbogast. And now I have one. He is funny (he chews on his ears to make me laugh) and he sleeps on the bed in my office, often accidentally slipping off. I know that he and I will write many books together. He gets the whole daydreaming thing. Plus, he has a big pink belly.

Only, I have to get up at 5 a.m. to take care of him while the rest of the family is sleeping.  And these are heavy duty playful puppy hours. For the rest of the day, I can get by with taking him every two hours to the backyard where he romps through the field and sniffs the raspberries. In the morning, though, he wants me to romp with him. He's like Snoopy, clicking his heels, rejoicing in the newness of daylight. Even my other dog - who is 56 in human terms - is disgusted. I drink my coffee and he growls and together we tolerate this new energetic family member while the sun rises over the eastern hills.

I'm tired. Very tired. And as I straggle through the dew-soaked field while my slippers become cold and drenched, my focus is not on my delightful puppy, but on my rough draft. Like puppies, rough drafts are enervating, seemingly thankless projects. Rough drafts are written when the rest of the family is asleep. There are "accidents" and, as when mindlessly teaching a puppy to come and sit and stay, there are times when writing the rough draft is so boring each word is akin to chiseling granite. (Nancy Martin's phrase, not mine.)

All writers know that the real writing happens in the subsequent drafts. The rough draft is merely a frame, a bunch of two-by-fours nailed together. Someday there will be drywall and paint and trim and decorations. And then, by gum, you have a room. Or, in our metaphor, a chapter. Or to really extend this metaphor, a well-behaved dog.

I don't care about the cute puppy face or the way he cocks his head. I care about raising a dog that, through my boring repetition, will be a dog people look forward to meeting. I want a dog who is friendly and interesting, polite and fun. Oddly enough, I want the same thing for my next manuscript.

"Hey! Let's see Fred!" That's what I want as much as, "Hey! Let's read Sarah's next book."

So how do we get there? Discipline, writing one thousand words a day, that's a start. Taking Fred out fifteen times between 5 a.m. and 10 p.m. Trusting that showing up, turning out quality product and doing it again will add up. It has to.

If I write one thousand words a day, I will have a rough draft completed by the end of the summer. By then Fred will be house trained and will know to come and sit and stay and "leave" and "down." All I have to do is meet my daily quota. All I have to do is stick it out.

Sound fair?

Okay, so what are your inspirational puppy/dog stories. I need to hear them so I don't give up!

Sarah

True Friendship

by Me, Margie

Recently, my friend Steve (not my boyfriend Steve, who works for the FBI, my other friend Steve who is taking me to the Furry Convention this summer, but don't tell Steve) sent me a funny e-mail that looked like this:

Are you tired of those sissy "friendship" poems that always sound good, but never actually come close to reality? Well, here is a series of promises that actually speak of true friendship. You will see no cutesy little smiley faces on this card- just the stone cold truth of our great friendship.

1. When you are sad -- I will help you get drunk and plot revenge against the sorry bastard who made you sad.

2. When you are blue -- I will try to dislodge whatever is choking you.

3. When you smile -- I will know you are plotting something that I must be involved in.

4. When you are scared -- I will rag on you about it every chance I get.

5. When you are worried -- I will tell you horrible stories about how much worse it could be until you quit whining.

6. When you are confused -- I will use little words.

7. When you are sick -- Stay the hell away from me until you are well again. I don't want whatever you have.

8. When you fall -- I will point and laugh at your clumsy ass.

9. This is my oath.... I pledge it to the end. "Why?" you may ask; "because you are my friend".

I like these a lot more than those sappola things with the birds and the kittens and the weepy crap that ends with something like: if you don't forward this to at least 367 friends, a house will fall on you and your striped socks. As a matter of fact, I hate ALL the e-mails that claim some bad shit is going to come down if you don't send it. Guess what? That's totally idiotic. duh.

So, I was going to totally cheat out and have this be the whole blog, but, you know, Margie don't front and Margie don't fake, so here are some more signs of a TRUE friend. And since I had to do the extra work, so do you. So cough up some of your own.

When you are wondering about the true health status of that guy you just met, I will sneak into his bathroom and check all of his prescriptions and stuff for anything that contains the words: herpes, erectile dysfunction or 'positive'.

When your mother/father/mother-in-law/whomever is driving you batshit, I will call them and tell them you have been transferred overseas on a short assignment and will be out of touch for the forseeable future. But I will not have brunch with them, or play cards.

When you come out of the rest room and something is not where it should be, I will use my own body as a shield so you can go back in and fix it before that bitch Marlene sees it.

When you act like a jackass and get in a fight, I will be right there, holding a chair or a big stick. Because I love you, but I just had my nails done.

When we are out and you have something in your teeth or your hair, I will tell you - quietly - but I reserve the right to give you a nickname about it.

When some idiot will just not give up trying to pick you up, I will come over and pretend to be your girlfriend. I'll even kiss you, but if you are a girl, no tongue.

OK, my funny friends of the Blog, let's hear what you'd do for your friends!

Using the French Horn as Birth Control

by Nancy        

When I was in the 6th grade, my mother announced it was time for me to take music lessons.

Had I expressed an interest in music lessons? I don't remember. Were my brother and sister likewise subjected to music lessons? No. Why me, you ask? To this day, I am clueless.  But it might have something to do with my mother being in labor with me for 36 hours.

I hated music lessons. I particularly hated the French horn.  My mother and my orthodontist decided the French horn was better suited to me than the clarinet or the flute--delicate, feminine instruments that all the other girls got to play.  Something about the shape of my mouth.  (Euphemism for: Major overbite.) So I dutifully lugged that f**king horn case around for three years before I whacked my nose on a diving board and developed a weird sinus rattle that made the horn sound even worse than it did before I deviated my septum.

The French horn wasn't actually my first instrument, though.  No, in the 3rd grade, our teacher, Mrs. White, had no interest in teaching arithmetic. So every day instead of learning to add or subtract, we played our Flutaphones. The Flutaphone was a kind of small, clarinet-shaped kazoo. With all the practice we had, my class could eventually perform the entire Flutaphone songbook--an impressive repertoire that began with Old MacDonald and ended with a short version of Claire du Lune. 

We played for any occasion--parent visitation day, teacher retirements, the kindergarten preview, which wasn't our best gig because most of our audience was crying.

Years later, of course, my classmates and I performed abysmally on the math portion of the SAT. I blame the Flutaphone.

After the nasal rattle allowed me to retire from the junior high band, I taught myself how to play the guitar. Hey, it was 1968, and Joan Baez and the Mamas and the Papas were very big.

I grew my hair down to my butt and played Blowing in the Wind and Leaving on a Jet Plane with a bunch of other band dropouts with long hair.  We called ourselves the North Fork Singers, after the creek that ran down from the Allegheny National Forest and through our town. We played standard folk songs at nursing homes and church suppers. We were pretty dreary even before we smoked the funny cigarettes in the VW van that we took to our performances.  (You think I'm kidding, don't you? Uh, no.  Swear to God, Diana, the artsy one, painted a peace sign on the driver's side door.) 

But the owner of the van and therefore our band's leader---a skinny, gentle-hearted, white country boy who admired B.B. King when everybody else wondered if maybe B.B. was Billie Jean's brother or something--was an amazing guitar player who tried his darnedest to help me learn more than three chords. He later became a United Methodist minister with a tow truck business on the side. (Or was it the other way around?) I don't know if he kept playing the guitar.  I hope so.  I like to think many United Methodists have an appreciation for B.B. King.

Me, I gave up on the guitar when I decided I'd rather have a manicure than strum Woodie Guthrie songs, and I really didn't need to be in a dreary band to smoke the funny cigarettes.

Needless to say, I never was what you'd call a dedicated musician.

Of course, when my own children got old enough to read music, I gave them the gift of music lessons. One major plus? The piano teacher's house butted up onto our back yard, so I didn't have to drive my kids across town like other mothers.  Very handy when deadlines rolled around and I'd give just about anything to get rid of my children for another hour of writing time.

Mind you, I did not force my kids to carry the piano on the school bus three times a week.  (And one of them weighed 11 pounds at birth, which trumps the 36 hour labor, don't you think?) I swear, trying to wrestle a French horn onto a bus crowded with rural degenerates--there was actually a child conceived on our bus one year--was the single biggest detriment to my social life in junior high.  (That, and the fact that I was 5'9" tall in the 7th grade.) Okay, so the French horn may have saved me from getting pregnant on the way to school, but I'm not sure that was reward enough for lugging the damn thing everywhere I went for 3 of my most formative adolescent years.

Nowadays, if you don't pay for private music lessons for your children, they're out of luck. They probably won't get much music appreciation in school.  I remember Mr. Reed, bless his heart, playing La Boheme for an unruly bunch of high school sophomores during the last week of school and trying to get us to understand what a liet-motif was.  What are the chances of that happening in any public school today?

When I asked my husband about the music lessons he took as a kid, he remarked that it was the first time somebody besides his parents or a public school teacher tried to teach him something one-on-one. It was a relationship that changed his view of grown-ups, he said.  His first mentor.

But music lessons prevented my husband from playing high school football. He loved being in the band, though. (While I was smoking dope in the woods outside my crummy rural high school, he was living the clean life in the stage band and the marching band and a jazz band at a big city high school that won state band competitions.) But I think now--as an adult male in the business world--he kinda wishes he'd played football instead. Life for men seems to be more football-oriented than band-oriented. Do you think so? There are no band phrases that seem relevant to corporate America.  Guys say, "We're going on the offensive!"  And, "We've got to pull together as a team!"  How many times on that Donald Trump program do the potential apprentices say,  "You gotta step up to the plate!" (Okay, wrong sport, but you get my point?)  They don't say, "Great tuning job, Maurice!"

But he had that nice mentor who made him see the world differently than anyone else, kinda like my tow truck-driving guitarist who became a minister.

Funny how life is, huh?

The Scary Aunt Sweepstakes

I don’t know if your family was like mine, but most holiday dinners were infested by a flock of what I called "the scary aunts."

Technically, they were probably great-aunts. My grandmother was one of 13 children, and my grandfather one of 11, unless it was the other way around. There were always places at the table for their widowed and single sisters.

These worthy women were somewhere between 50 and 80 and wore black – usually outdated black dresses with rhinestone buttons and sturdy black lace-up shoes. When the aunts went to a funeral, their favorite outing, they added a slightly squashed black hat with a veil. Their names are now fashionable. It’s always a shock when I hear young, pretty women called Emma, Sarah, Emily. I remember the ancient aunts.

No kinder women existed. If you were sick, they would nurse you. They’d feed your husband while you were in the hospital, clean your house (clucking about the dust bunnies under your bed), watch your kids, and shake the family tree to get a job for a ne’er-do-well son-in-law. They volunteered for church and civic committees and cooked for all the family gatherings.

They had only one fault: Every visit to the doctor’s office was a life-and-death drama. No doctor ever said, "Emma, you’re in remarkable shape for 76. Lose 20 pounds and exercise a little and you’ll live to be a hundred."

No, every meal was a recounting of their horrific tumors and cancers, as well as diseases I’ve never heard of since Thanksgiving,1965 – things called dropsy, galloping pneumonia, membranous croup, "variclose veins" and the ever-popular female trouble (usually discussed in whispers).

"They opened her up and found a tumor the size of an eggplant," a scary aunt would say, just as Grandma was piling more creamed veggies on my plate. I wondered why tumors were always the size of vegetables, never cupcakes or Moon Pies.

Worst of all was the doctor death sentence, always said in a hushed voice: "They opened him up and couldn’t do a thing about that cancer, so they sewed him up and sent him home."

The aunts seemed to compete over who came back from the nearest brush with death.

My grandfather used to call these accounts "the organ recital," but they scared the heck out of me. Without the slightest provocation, the aunts would display IV bruises on flabby arms or show operation scars that trespassed into the bounds of modesty.

I was sure on my next visit to Dr. McGuire, he would say, "Elaine, we found a tumor the size of a Hershey bar in your gut. Too bad, kid. Should have eaten your vegetables."

I swore I would never be like my aunts, no matter how old I got. I’ve had to stop myself from telling strangers my cholesterol level.

But now, fifty years later, long after the scary aunt sweepstakes are over, I realize I’ve won.

I’ve had brain surgery. I had my head cut open. Let the aunts talk about their tumors and cancers. I can show little kids the biggest and scariest scars of all. I can frighten my nieces and nephews witless with tales of how the ER doc said I would be a vegetable – a green bean, judging by the hospital meals.

I can say that Uncle Don was planning my funeral when I wiggled my toes in the nick of time and lived to bore them to tears at this dinner.

Ha. Beat that Aunts Emma, Sarah and Emily.

I think I’ll go shopping for a black dress with rhinestone buttons.

By Elaine Viets

SUMMER TORTURE

By Sarah

Before I delve into Summer Torture, I must dispense with a bit of housekeeping. Today is the day THE CINDERELLA PACT comes out in paperback. This story about women trying to lose weight by hook or by crook (or by staple) has been my most popular book yet - and now it's so cheap you can give it to a friend! Why not pick up a dozen or so and use them as, oh, I dunno, coasters? Honestly, it's very pretty with sparkles and, according to the Washington Post, "laugh-out-loud funny." How many coasters can say that, hmm? Hmm?

Secondly, Paris Hilton. Let's just get her out of our system (and into California correctional's) right now, shall we? Early Monday morning, she turned herself early into the "special needs" unit. (I'm sorry, but only in LA would the curse of being rich and beautiful be considered a "special need.") In her defense, she says, she is forgoing "pay jail." Okay, I know about PayPal, but I don't think I've ever heard of a PayJail. Do they take Visa?

Bye, Paris. See you in July!

Now that that skinny bitch Paris Hilton is out of earshot, I feel free to vent about my favorite subject - Summer Torture. Yesterday, I received one of many catalogs touting itself as the End-of-Summer Issue. As with the PayJail thing, once again I'm confused. By my calendar, summer hasn't even started. And now we're closing out on shorts and tank tops? Thank God!

Which just goes to prove my longstanding theory: designers hate women. Wait, that's not it. It's, designers hate summer AND they hate women. (I'm talking real women, the kind who are gonna be satisfying Paris's "special needs" in the yard.) I swear, they can't wait to get through this season of skimpy clothes and jump into fall with its expensive (and lucrative) multi-layering, its furs and wools and leather. Yum!

In the meantime, however, they're going to engage in heartless revenge by producing clothes designed to inflame our deepest insecurities. Sleeveless tops. (Honestly, does any woman over 40 outside of Madonna have the upper arms to pull those off?) Capris. (Shortens the leg, draws the eye to the thighs. Beware.) And, lastly, swimsuits.

Swimsuits. According to sales clerks, women despise trying on swimsuits more than any other item of  clothing besides jeans. This is where I think the Muslim women have an advantage over me. They get to dress in full body suits like this.....

In all fairness to evil designers, I have to say that in recent years designers have begun catering to us - I refuse to say larger - more normal women by adding skirts and ruched waists, thereby making them the new generation of our grandmothers "bathing suits."

You know the kind I'm talking about. Big floral things with HUGE skirts. It was a miracle women could swim in them without being dragged to the bottom of the ocean by their sheer weight. (I'm talking about the suit, not grandma.) For a while there, these old ladyish tunics were all we of the triangle shape were offered. There were absolutely no choices between a grandma suit and the utter humiliation of baring white cellulite in the glare of bright sunshine. Ugh

Once I tried on one of these things and was immediately transported to a different era where I was wearing an Esther Williams bathing cap with white plastic petals. Also, I had on rhinestone studded glasses and was standing knee-deep in a pool, splashing chlorinated water over my tanned and freckled arms, actual swimming being the farthest thing on my mind. The look on Charlie's face said, "Why me?"

Needless to say, I didn't buy it. The last thing I want is for Charlie to cringe when I unzip my coverup. Though, come to think of it, he might be cringing now, only that after 18 years of marriage he's really good at hiding his revulsion.

Which  brings me to Betty and Veronica. They were always prancing off to the beach with Archie and Reggie (the cuter one, in my opinion), wearing the skimpiest bikinis they could find (though Betty was invariably relegated to the tank.) As a young teenager tortured by summer, having read to death my Seventeen and Mad Magazine, I would study these two Riverdale hussies and wonder: how could they be so at ease? Nothing, nothing, was more nightmarish to my lumpy 13-year-old self than the prospect of having to go the beach with a boy my age. Worse - having to wear a bikini!

In fact, summer in general loomed as just one big expose' of my physical shortcomings. I could swim, but I could not dive. (Still can't, unless throwing one's body into the water with a slap has been redefined as diving.) I can play tennis, but barely. Let's just say that no self-respecting country club member would want me on his or her court. Other summer activities I suck at - canoing, camping, water skiing. About the only summer activity I've been able to perfect is lying on the beach and reading. I'm really, really good at that.

Also, blending and drinking excellent lime-laden margaritas.

Perhaps this is why I eye the increasing summer days with dread. Upper arm flab. Shortened legs. Exposed thighs. Outdoor physical activity. Heat. Humidity. Black flies. Mosquitos. Lightening storms. Sand fleas. What monster thought up this season?

A thin, athletic monster in a bikini, that's who.

So pardon me while I count the days until Labor Day (91). In the meantime, I'll have to satisfy myself with the End-Of-Summer catalog that I'm keeping on my desk to remind me that I'm not the only one wishing for fall and the return of jeans that go all the way down to my feet.

Sarah   

PS = If you want one of my Free and Collectible SLEEPING BEAUTY PROPOSAL postcards sent to your home, please CLICK HERE!

Sex with Millionaires
By Harley

I woke the other night to the smell of our dog Fez, back from a late-night date with a skunk.

FLASHBACK: the year, 1995. The place, upstate New York, the country estate of a guy we’ll call . . . Henry. The smell, skunk.

I’m in Henry’s bed, wedged between Henry and Henry’s dog—we’ll call him Spot. It’s our first night together. Henry’s snoring. Spot’s smelling. If I move, I will wake Henry, and I think I prefer Henry asleep to Henry awake. I love Spot, but Henry’s butler has bathed him in tomato juice to neutralize his skunk smell, which serves only to put me off tomato juice.

Oh: a tape plays on the estate’s sound system. Billy Joel. Set on “repeat.” I don’t know about you, but if I never again have sex to the tune of “We Didn’t Start the Fire” I’ll die happy.

It wasn’t the worst night of my life—not like when someone’s just died, or you’re vomiting bad oysters—just bad enough to put me off casual sex.

Henry was a blind date, first in L.A., and continuing in New York, where I’d gone for a silent meditation retreat with the Sufis. Before I met up with the Sufis, Henry took me to Bianca Jagger’s 50th birthday party, then upstate to the small town we’ll call—Weekend Mansions. Where we drove Henry’s roadster to tour the neighbors’ new house, the neighbors being Tommy Mottola and Mariah Carey. Then we ran out of celebrities to hang with, and, it being our 4th or 5th date, ended up in bed. With Spot.

I liked Henry. I’d have liked him more if he weren’t a mega-millionaire mogul. Money and power can make some people—not everyone—so used to deferential treatment that they become slightly creepy. They see others, to quote my friend Larry, as either clients or servants. I, as girl of the week, fell into the servant class. Henry had no children, no ex-wives even, nobody but Spot to tell him the truth, which, that night was: no one can buy off a skunk.

Eventually I extricated myself, inch by inch, from Henry and Spot without waking them. I found blankets, settled onto a chaise, put a pillow over my ear, and dozed. The next day, I took a train north to the Sufis, where I slept in a sleeping bag in a hut on a mountain. I never saw Henry—or Spot—again.

So this week, laying awake smelling Fez, I figured out the epilogue to my Henry story: I no longer want to be a rich. I don’t know when it happened, but I’m happier explaining to my first-grader why we don’t have a yacht, putting green or personal lagoon like her friend Iayn than I am explaining why there are people in L.A. living out of shopping carts.

The only way I could justify serious wealth (as opposed to “our kids go to private school but the girls share a bedroom” wealth) would be to engage in serious philanthropy. Philanthropy’s a lot of work. I’d rather write novels. Plus, giving your kids values when they’ve got trust funds is harder than it looks (ask Paris Hilton.) Yes, I’d like to buy my husband more free time and a new septic tank—and okay, paint the house and fix the roof. But I don’t want a butler.

It’s scary to admit this. Radical. Even un-American. Like, if I’m not consciously upwardly mobile, I’ll end up homeless. Waiting tables again. Lightning will strike.

But here goes: My name is Harley and I have more than enough money. Thank you.

Happy Monday!

TLC Travel CD - The First Cuts

By Rebecca the Bookseller

Ok, between the great suggestions on the blog, and the ones they reminded me of, well, let's just say I had to stop at an even 100.

That's enough to get me to Stone Harbor, so I thank you.

Here are the top 25, in case you're interested -

OH - WAIT! What in the HELL is that Johnny Cash song with the lyrics "I've Been Everywhere, Man" - they use it on a hotel commercial.

So - in no particular order, I give you the TLC 2007 Travel CD Top 25:

Let's Get it Started - Black Eyed Peas
Born to Be Wild - Steppenwolf
These Are the Days - 10,000 Maniacs
Midnight Train to Georgia - Indigo Girls with Gladys Knight
I Don't Need A Man - Pussycat Dolls
Rambin' Man - Allman Brothers
Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen
America - Neil Diamond
Hotel California - The Eagles
Fun, Fun, Fun - The Beach Boys
I Like It - The Dixie Chicks
You Raise Me Up - Josh Groban
Travelin' Band - CCR
Freeway of Love - Aretha Franklin
Route 66 - I have both the Manhattan Transfer and the Rosemary Clooney Covers
Babylon Sisters - Steely Dan
Car Wash - Rose Royce (remember that one?)
Any Road - George Harrison
Drive My Car - The Beatles (also, if you need it from iTunes, Bobby McFerrin's is good)
Hit The Road, Jack - Ray Charles
Little Red Corvette - Prince
Roll Over Beethoven - ELO
455 Rocket - Kathy Mattea (and don't forget the best title in country music: "Eighteen Wheels and A Dozen Roses")
I Can't Drive 55 - Sammy Hagar
Build Me Up Buttercup - The Foundations
Take Me Riding in My Car - Woody Guthrie
I Wanna Be Sedated - The Ramones
When I Come Around - Green Day
Mary Chapin Carpenter - couldn't choose between "Passionate Kisses", "Down at the Twist and Shout" and "The Long Way Home" - so I have all three - and Kerry, you are so right about "Stones in the Road"
American Pie - Don McLean
Fast Car - Tracy Chapman
Center Field - John Fogerty
Traffic Jam - James Taylor
Layla - Eric Clapton
Hawaii 5-0
Superhero - Jane's Addiction (Opening theme for Entourage)

Yeah, yeah, I know, it's more than 25. So what? Just be happy I didn't put all 100 of them.

And for the BEST discovery of this Blog - the award goes to Mary for introducing me to Kacey Jones - had to download the entire live album. Highlights include: "Every Man I Love is Either Married, Gay or Dead" and "The Vascectomy Song" - this woman is part comedian, part folk singer - all genius, and the (un)official songstress of the Sweet Potato Queens. Check her out.

OK, 20 Minutes to Sopranos - and I'm taping the MTV Movie Awards. Got to see Jack, though. Love that guy.

The Travel CD

by Rebecca the Bookseller

It's that time of year - vacation time. Which means spending time on the road. And really, with gas prices what they are, we need to enjoy those expensive miles as much as possible.

So it's time for another TLC Music Project - the Travel CD. I did a Travel CD several years ago (2003), and here are the tracks:

Born To Run - Bruce Springsteen
Takin' It to the Streets - Doobie Brothers
Brandy - Looking Glass
A Thousand Miles - Vanessa Carlton
The Devil Went Down to Georgia - Charlie Daniels Band
Let It Ride - Bachman Turner Overdrive
Running on Empty - Jackson Browne
Magic Carpet Ride - Steppenwolf
Seventy-Six Trombones - The Music Man
Sweet Home Alabama - Lynyrd Skynyrd
M.T.A.- The Kingston Trio
Graceland- Paul Simon
On The Road Again - Willie Nelson
Desperado = Eagles
Will Ye Go Lassie Go? - The Irish Tenors
Free Ride - Edgar Winter Group
Soul Man - Blues Brothers
One More for the Road - Bette Midler (from Johnny Carson's Final Tonight Show)

Let's come up with some more, and I'll post the results tomorrow - just come back and check on this same blog. It'll be like magic! Ok, not really.

What makes you sing along in the car? What makes those travel hours fly by? What makes you raring to load up the Family Vacation Truckster and hit the road?

By Sarah Stewart Taylor

The first time I had the conversation, it was on a backpacking trip in the Green Mountains. We’d been subsisting on freeze dried camping meals and morsels of chocolate bar and as we closed in on day four in the wilderness, a member of the group I was hiking with asked, “What’s the best meal you’ve ever eaten?” We spent a happy couple of hours recounting home-cooked meals, restaurant meals, fast food meals, and street food. I still remember the Ben and Jerry’s Vermonster Sundae (ice cream and toppings for 20) we treated ourselves to once we’d come down out of the mountains as one of the best meals of my life.

Over the years, I’ve gotten more into cooking and I’ve found that I keep a running tally in my head of my best meals. They change from time to time, a new culinary experience bumping an old one off the list. It’s a fun way to remember important events, especially travel, and it makes me realize how much food and sharing food is tied up with relationships and life experience.

Two of my favorite meals were eaten on my honeymoon to Northern Italy and Croatia. We started off in Venice and ate a pedestrian, touristy dinner the first night. Determined that we were going to eat really well the second night, my new husband and I trudged all over the city, crossing and recrossing canals in some vague hope of finding the perfect, authentic Venetian meal. I gave up at some point, so hungry that I would have eaten McDonalds if it came to that. But my hubby persisted, saying he “had a feeling” that the right place was just around the next corner. He was right. We settled in at a tiny restaurant completely devoid of tourists. The waiter didn’t speak English. There wasn’t a menu.  We told him, with hand gestures and terrible Italian, to bring us some dinner, whatever he wanted. What followed was a spectacular series of courses, mostly fish, ending with the best apple tart I have ever had in my life.

Later on our honeymoon trip, we were traveling around Croatia’s Istrian peninsula, a hilly region famous for two things – wine and truffles. We had been disappointed by a couple of the villages we’d visited and on a whim, wound our way up a narrow road to the hilltop fortress of Motovun. It was like something out of a fairytale, a grim-looking castle surrounded by winding cobblestone streets, houses and shops tucked into the sides of the hill. Enchanted, we stopped at a little café and had amazing white truffle risotto and pasta with truffles and oil, washed down with local wine. Best of all was the long conversation with the owner, a Dutchman who’d been a photojournalist during the wars in the former Yugoslavia and had fallen in love with a Croatian woman, and an American writer and the Croatian woman he’d fallen in love with while working in a refugee camp. It was one of the most romantic dinners I've ever eaten.

One of my favorite memories of a meal is the huge plate of my mother’s Mexican chicken casserole (piles of corn tortillas, chicken, chilies, and cheese) I ate the night we brought our son home from the hospital. Exhausted, sore, starving, I heated it up in the microwave and we ate at the kitchen table, never taking our eyes off the gorgeous, mysterious little being in the basket next to us.

Traveling alone in France as a college student, I spent a month staying with some friends of my parents in a suburb of Paris. Every day, I would take the train into the city and explore museums and parks. It was a lonely time, but a good time too. One of those first days, I managed enough French to buy a baguette and to ask the guy at the cheese shop for a recommendation. Sitting on a park bench, I made a sandwich and enjoyed it all by myself, the whole baguette, the whole wedge of Brie. I still remember the unfamiliar, tangy taste of the cheese and the way the bread was so crusty it cut the top of my mouth.

So those are a few of my best meals of all time. What are yours?

P.S. Thanks to the tarts for the opportunity to spend some time at TLC! It's been a blast.