Love
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Happy Birthday Ted!
Today is Ted’s birthday, and we are going to celebrate in the best way, with family and friends. He and I will celebrate some more later this month, we’re going to Los Angeles to the Cruel World music festival! There will be some great 80s and 90s bands, like New Order, ‘Til Tuesday, Madness, Garbage, The Go Go’s, Devo, and more. That will be a lot of fun, but for now it’s time to party. In honor of my beloved husband, let’s do a Saturday Six, shall we? Six Things About Ted
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Friday Randomness
The pretty flowers above are from a little tree I saw in Berkeley last week. Well, I did it! I blogged every day in April. It was a lot easier than NaBloPoMo, because you all weren’t trying to post every day at the same time, and I wasn’t trying to keep up and read your posts. I did get behind a couple of times on reading and commenting though, so that’s one downside. One thing I notice when I blog more often is that I find a lot more blog fodder in my life. When I find myself in a blog drought, and don’t post anything for a couple of…
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(Almost) Wordless Wednesday
I wanted to include this picture in last week’s post about my mom and great-Aunt’s birthday, but I didn’t have it. Now I have it! This is my Great Aunt Flo’s wedding, on her 26th birthday in 1950. My Mom is the flower girl, with her curls and her hoop skirt, and it’s her 8th birthday. I think her dress is yellow. My Grandma is next to the bride, and then my other Great Aunt. I don’t know the other bridesmaid, nor any of the groomsmen. My Great Uncle Wes died before I was born, so I never met him. Doesn’t this look like a beautiful wedding?
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Birthday Girls
Today my mom would have been 83, had she not died too young at the age of 66 in 2008. Today my Great Aunt Flo would have been 101, had she not died at the ripe old age of 100 last year. This is my mom when she was a little girl, with her Shirley Temple curls in her red hair. And here she is in college. She went to UC Berkeley, though she dropped out for a while. After she married, had my brother (six days after getting married), had me, and got divorced (I think her divorce became final on my day of birth, but I’m not 100%…
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The Friend
The Friend ~ Sigrid Nunez The unnamed protagonist of The Friend is a writer and professor in a tiny apartment in Manhattan, a self proclaimed cat person, who inherits a Great Dane, Apollo, when her mentor and close friend dies of suicide. She is buried in grief for her friend, she does not want a dog, her landlord does not allow dogs, and here she is with a dog that weighs (quite a bit) more than she does. What happens is predictable to any animal lover. She falls in love with Apollo. “When you’re lying in bed full of night thoughts,” she thinks, “such as why did your friend have…
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Spotted Photo Theme – Circles
OK, I’m squeaking in under the deadline here. iHanna has another Spotted Photo challenge, where the idea is that you go through your phone/iPad photos, and find pictures that match the theme she has given. You’re not out looking for that theme, not taking new photos, just curating the pictures you already have. I’m not a photographer by any means, so mine are not going to be gorgeous like some others, but here they are anyway. A lot of them are food. And I snuck in some memes, which is totally cheating and not cool at all. The Rose Window in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, 2018. I really hope…
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Happy Birthday Maya!
As mentioned in yesterday’s post, today is Maya’s birthday! This is her ‘Golden Birthday’ or ‘Champagne Birthday’, which is the year your age and day of the month match. She turns 29 on the 29th. I don’t remember what year the picture above is from, but it’s not new. I considered taking her shopping for something gold, but took a look at her jewelry and decided she has plenty and likely won’t wear it, so I bought some Veuve instead to enjoy at her party. Bonus photo from 2022. Note the candle is not on the cake. I didn’t think we’d ever go back to blowing germs all over cakes…
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Spotted Photos Challenge – Pairs
Almost a Wordless Wednesday, here is my submission for iHanna’s Spotted Photos Challenge. The idea is to look through the photos on your phone/iPad/computer and post the ones that match that month’s theme. The February theme is Pairs, so here is Mulder in a (smeary) pair of glasses. He was preparing for an important presentation on macroeconomics that day. He crushed it, obviously.
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Friday Randomness
Elisabeth is encouraging interested souls to write down one thing for which they are grateful every day in February, and is calling this group of interested souls the F.I.G. Collective (FIG = Finding joy In Gratitude) In her comments, Engie said she’s in, but instead of waiting until February, she’s starting NOW. I feel like we could all use a little joy and gratitude, so I’m diving in early too. I started this post on Monday, so I could keep track. Monday – I’m thankful that Monday is Maya’s turn to cook, and that Ted made enough delicious food for dinner on Sunday that we had leftovers, which meant I…
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Shadows and Light
iHanna has a blog photo challenge, where participants go through their photo libraries and find pictures that fit a certain theme. The idea is that you spot that theme in photos that you have already taken, not that you go out and take new photos that would work. I like the idea, so I’m playing along. January’s theme is Shadows. Here are my shadow pictures from my iPad photos. The picture above is an oak tree on one of our walks, and I am so often struck by the beauty of the shadows in amongst the branches. I take pictures, trying to capture it, but I don’t end up sharing…
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Friday Randomness
Just some random thoughts that have nothing to do with the heartbreaking fires in Southern California. I don’t know what to say about the fires except that it is shocking and horrible. Lives lost, homes lost, communities destroyed. This drone footage reminds me so much of the fires in Paradise and Santa Rosa from several years ago. I am shallow enough to be specifically sad about the homes that I visited 5 years ago that were prominent in the TV show, Beverly Hills, 90210, which are about 1/2 block from each other in Altadena. I cannot tell you how stupidly happy it made me to stand in front of these…
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A Lovely Day
Goodness you guys, I had the most wonderful birthday yesterday. It truly was A Lovely Day. Ready for a bunch of pictures? Here we go. The day started when I awoke maybe an hour before anyone else. I came downstairs to a decorated table, with flowers and gifts. If you’re curious, the gifts are AWESOME. Wine, a wonderful cookbook (which I will share when I’ve tried a couple of recipes), a gift card for a massage (!!), and two memoirs, for Ina Garten and Kelly Bishop. After I finished my final yoga session for 2024 (which was actually a meditation and really, JUST what I needed), I had breakfast and…
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Saturday Randomness
I hope that everyone has enjoyed their Christmas/Hanukkah celebrations, and that life is returning to normal (if that is what you want) or that the festivities are continuing (if that’s more your jam). My company gave us both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day as holidays, and then next week we will have both New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day as holidays, plus we still have Fabulous Fridays off (at least we did yesterday, they haven’t told us whether this wonderful benefit will carry in to 2025, and let me tell you, WE ARE ON PINS AND NEEDLES waiting to find out!), so I went ahead and took a couple…
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Day of the Dead
Sorry for the Bonus Post, but I thought I would share the little poster that I put together for Day of the Dead today. This year’s additions are my Great Aunt Flo, who died in early October at the age of 100, and my boy Mulder, who died last year. I didn’t do any sort of altar last year, so just adding him now. I did not grow up with Day of the Dead, I think the first time it occurred to me to do an altar was in 2017 after my Dad died. But I like it. I think of all of these loved ones many times a year,…
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My Great Aunt Flo
Grandma on the left, my Great Aunt Flo on the right. Aunt Flo’s husband died in 1961, and she spent the rest of her life caring for family. For a cousin, for her parents, and then for my Grandma. When my Grandma died in November of 2016, Aunt Flo asked me, “Who am I going to take care of now?” I told her that those days were behind her, she needed to take care of herself. She spent her final years collecting recipes and going through family treasures. Then in late 2021, she went to a care facility, where she got excellent care and lived near her granddaughter, Debbie, and…
