Category: weekending

Pardon Me, Waiter. What Is this?

Over the past few days The Good Man and I had some things to celebrate, so we got out of town for a few days.

We headed up north and checked into a really fancy schmancy hotel. The Good Man had planned the weekend to be a surprise for me, and it was amazingly good stuff.

I’d been advised to bring one nice outfit for a night out, and so I did. Friday night I put ‘er on and off we went to dinner at a Michelin starred restaurant.

(In case all Michelin means to you is tires, a starred restaurant is a really big deal.)

So being the New Mexico hayseed that I am, I made sure I worked very hard to mind my manners, use the right fork and not laugh too loud inside this very expensive and fairly quiet restaurant.

Of course, that only lasted through my first Sidecar martini drink.

Once the sugary brandy took hold, all bets were off.

Which just happened to coincide with the end of appetizers, when our fantastic server began setting up our table for entrees.

Ok, so a nice sold fork was laid down. Good. Then kind of a funky scroll sided knife, but a knife nonetheless.

And then another utensil was put next to the knife.

It looked like this:



Shaped like a spoon, but flat like a knife. I was perplexed. I had NO idea what in the sam hell it was.

Then I watched the waiter lay out a similar place setting for The Good Man.

Before the server could get away I blurted out “Excuse me, sir? But what is this?” and held up the alien utensil.

He took a step backward. I reconsidered my manners.

“My apologies,” I said. “It’s just that my mother taught me all the forks, but I have no idea how to use this.”

He laughed, “It’s a sauce spoon, your entrée comes with a wonderful sauce and this will help you get all of it.” Then he showed me how to use it.

And, well, by god that flat spoon did work pretty darn good on that tasty sauce.

I mean, where I come from we sop up all the good sauce with a biscuit, but whatever. I guess if they want me to use a fancy spoon, I will.

Didn’t stop me from licking it when I was done.
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(ok, no, just kidding about that last part)



Image from Connox Living Design Shop.


Same Venue, Different View

Over the weekend I got together with a longtime dear friend for a much needed girl’s weekend.

My friend is the full time mom of a very happy and rambunctious toddler, so she needed a minute to herself to remember the not-mom side of her life.

On our weekend away, we walked a well worn path. Over the decade we’ve been pals, one of our favorite things is to grab a room at a really high end hotel, get tickets to a concert at the outdoor Shoreline Amphitheater, and have a raucous time.

To be honest, we haven’t done this for several years. I got married, then she got married, then she gave birth and suddenly life and all that goes with it intervened.

We were both glad to reconvene and return to our tradition. It bears noting, however, that on this weekend things were markedly different than in the past.

Where once we talked of work, our insane boss (we used to work in the same team), worries about saving enough money to support being a single gal, our dating life both good and bad, and the latest fashion available…

This weekend we talked of her being a mom, of how work is still important but takes a backseat to what matters in life, how to save enough money to retire on, our husbands, and the latest styles of magnifying reader glasses available and where to buy them.

We asked each other if it is inevitable to end up with the same physical attributes of our mother, no matter how hard we try. We lamented the years that have passed so quickly.

Back in the day after we’d gotten caught up, we’d start at the hotel bar, move on to a local Mexican restaurant with a wide array of tequila, then go to the concert venue grabbing beers and more fun on the way.

My friend weighs about 90 lbs on a good day, and when she drinks takes on the demeanor of a linebacker. Our friendship has been a lot about her having three to my one margarita and then bouncing off the fences.

I’ve pulled her out of girl fights, away from skeevy guys, off the venue railing, away from climbing up on the stage and I’ve literally carried her to the car more than once.

Friday, she arrived at the hotel and asked “Do you mind if we don’t drink much tonight?”

I said that was fine (and inside I felt incredibly relieved).

We ate room service, forgoing the heavily crowded restaurant of our usual mode. Then we went to see a Toby Keith show.

You know…Toby Keith used to play at the country bar Cowboy’s in Las Cruces. I used to go dancing to Toby Keith and Easy Money (when they were just known as Easy Money and no one cared who Toby Keith was) in my college years.

On Friday I read an SFGate article about celebrities that turned 50 this year.

Toby is on that list.

Seems even Toby has lost a step or two. He looks road weary and his set was pretty uninspired.

We left before the encore. As we walked out, the crowd of a billion girls in Daisy Dukes and boots pressed in around us. My friend commented, “I don’t think I’ve ever been to a show here where I wasn’t drunk. I’m suddenly very aware of my small size. How come I never worried about that before?”

I replied, “Because when you drink you’re ten feet tall.”

She laughed, then sighed. Then she said, “I miss my cub.”

I put my arm around her and we walked out of the venue together, solid on our four feet.

Later we texted our husbands to let them know we’d made it back to the hotel safely.

Then we both went to bed before midnight. Turns out that my tiny friend now snores like a longshoreman.

Things change. I guess it’s inevitable.

While sometimes I lament the past, I think we are both a lot happier today than we were back then.

Mostly.



Where once this view fired me up, now I think “what happens if there’s a fire?”


Copyright 2011, Karen Fayeth



It might also be mentioned that my magnetic powers of attracting the most sloppy drunk Hispanic cowboy in the house are still strong. If they got white boots that are too pointy and a belt that’s too long, they will find a way to find me. He was harmless and I quickly pawned him off on a gaggle of drunk girls. I bet that he’d be barfing before the encore. My friend had more faith than I did and took the after. She won the bet.


Photo taken Friday night with the Camera+ app for the iPhone.


Dyin’ or Revivin’?

Last week I received an email by the good folks running the literary competitions at my local county fair. After notifying me that my story won a prize, they invited me to come out to the fair next weekend to read my story aloud on stage as part of their literary event.

Well I was just pleased as punch to say yes. What a wonderful opportunity.

This past Saturday, I had some time on my hands while I sat in a chair waiting for my hair to turn that color that only my hairdresser knows how to make.

I started thinking about this event next weekend and planning. I need to spend some time practicing reading my story aloud. Practice is everything in a public speaking situation.

I wondered if I’d be asked any questions about the story. I thought I should try to think up what I might be asked so I could be ready with good answers.

One of the first questions I thought of was, “what was your inspiration for this story?”

I had to spend some time thinking that through. It’s a story that’s been rambling around in my mind for a while, and I’ve taken several stabs and getting it out, to both greater and lesser success.

Mainly, I was inspired by the fact that upon reading the guidelines for the competition, I noted that there was a “Western” genre available to compete under. This is not something I often see, so that really got my creative juices rolling.

My absolute author-hero is Larry McMurtry. I adore his way with description and dialogue, and his western novels are a cut above.

I have a collection of short stories that McMurtry edited. It’s western stories written only by writers raised in the west.

When I saw that my county fair offered a Western category, I knew there was no doubt that I had to write a western story.

That said, what I wrote isn’t truly a classical western. Technically, the western genre implies a story set in the 1800’s, the so called “Old West.”

If you read any of the literally thousands of short stories that Louis L’Amour wrote, you’ll find within his formula a common theme. The great conflict in his stories is of man against nature which includes cattle grazing the land, the weather and water. In fact, water rights always seem to play a big role in L’Amour’s short stories.

I guess that the western genre has declined so much because these concepts seem hopelessly old fashioned.

But are they?

Until his untimely death last year, my dear friend who farmed cotton and chile on his family’s farm in La Mesa was fighting with the state of New Mexico over water rights. This problem was such a vital aspect of his life that it was mentioned in his eulogy.

Yesterday I watched a televised show where renowned French chef Eric Ripert spoke passionately about the “farm to table” movement, and visited a Virginia farm where the owner was doing something revolutionary.

He was not overgrazing his land.

He spends time calculating how many head of cattle his land can bear and then actively rotates pastures to be sure that his cattle never overgraze. His land flourishes, his cattle are healthy and he’s seen as an innovator.

This is not innovation. Louis L’Amour wrote stories about this very idea over 70 years ago. This concept is also something they taught me in my collegiate FFA organization**. It’s called “being a good steward of the land.”

And so, to bring this back to my point…

I wanted to write a western story because although I keep hearing that the western fiction genre is dying, I’m seeing that the topics driving most true western stories are still essential and vital to today’s world.

And so maybe Westerns aren’t dying. Maybe, much like the land, if tended to and nourished, the genre can continue to flourish with a modern sensibility.

Writing a western story set in modern times that won an award at my local county fair is so deeply satisfying to me. It’s my affirmation that the Western genre is alive and well inside at least one little girl who was born and raised in the west.

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Further proof: The Western genre gets back in the saddle





**”I believe in the future of farming…”


A Cacophony of Noms

Over this past weekend, The Good Man and I got together to celebrate a belated Mother’s Day with my in-laws. It’s always nice to have a chance to catch up with family.

The place we chose to eat was a nice hotel with a Sunday buffet brunch and a live jazz trio to add ambiance.

The family all got dressed up and converged on the hotel. The jazz was lovely. The setting sublime. Mimosas were poured. Chatter happened. Then the waiter said “go ahead and get started” and we were off to wander around the wonderland of food.

I have to admit that at first I could only stumble about with an empty plate. I was both surprised and astounded by all the food.

Prime rib and pancakes, sushi and dim sum, a huge table of seafood of all varieties! And that was only the beginning.

One part of me was like “Yeah baby!” I could easily envision myself much like Cookie Monster, shoveling it all in there while grunting “ahm nom nom nom nom!”

But another part of me was almost turned off by the literal piles of food. Good lord! So much food! A first world problem, to be sure.

After walking around in a daze, I finally dove in. I made the conscious decision NOT to lay right down and devour the entire dessert table (it was tempting). Instead I chose only the things I knew for sure I’d like and in small amounts. I had to remind myself that I could return for more if needed. That ol’ demon self-control.

I think the key to a buffet is if you take something you don’t really care for…don’t eat it. Yes, I know for many the idea of wasting food is terrible, but in this scenario, it’s almost necessary.

In the past, I’ve had occasion to think about the “I have to get my money’s worth out of the buffet!” concept. This plagues a lot of people and causes the desire to eat as much as possible. This is fairly common, actually. I’ve personally succumbed to this thought.

To be honest, the cost of the buffet is less about how much one can eat and more about how many choices the establishment is able to provide. It costs money to have enough people to put on a spread like that.

A buffet is certainly a deliciously dangerous place for a food lover like me, but it’s also a boon for a food lover. A buffet provides a huge range of choices that I’d just never get with a traditional sit down and order off the menu type of meal.

It’s all about balance.

At the end of the day, the intent was to be with family, not Cookie Monster the entire meat carving station. Though the thought did cross my mind…