Thankful Thoughts
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Wordless Wednesday, Maui Edition
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Wordless Wednesday – Bastille Day dinner
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Catching Up….
I’m not sure if you will be able to see this video or not…it shows for me. It’s just the view from the house where we stayed last weekend, and the delicious rain outside…not so delightful to those of you not in the midst of a drought. But delightful for me to be sure. It’s been a busy time around here. Or not around here, actually. Last weekend we flew up to Portland to see my family, and also to scatter my father’s ashes, as was his wish. I was simultaneously looking forward to and dreading the trip. So do I tell you about it sequentially, or start with the…
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Meme Monday – Happy Birthday Edition!
Today is my daughter Maya’s 25th birthday! That is somewhat shocking to me, I remember 25 very well. Actually, 25 is when my biological clock started ticking, and I started really wanting a baby. Before that, I was more hypothetical about it. But Ted and I were dating still, had just recently gotten engaged, and I was just graduating from college, into a recession. So it was 5 more years before we had Maya. Anyway, this is her 2nd COVID birthday. She went out yesterday with some friends, and sat in the park and had a lovely time while socially distant. It was almost 80 degrees, so pretty perfect weather…
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Meme Monday – Birthday and Politics
I hope you all had a lovely New Year. We did…I had a four day weekend, to celebrate my birthday on Thursday, and then the New Year on Friday. Thursday, Ted and Maya both had asked for the day off but could not get the day off. She had to work in the morning, and he had to work in the afternoon. So in the morning, Ted and I went for a nice walk with Mulder, then we came home and took showers and so on, and he started work. Maya only had to work a half day, so once she was finished we went to our outdoor mall and…
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Meme Monday – COVID Christmas Edition
Merry Christmas to everyone, and let’s just hope that 2021 brings us an end to the Pandemic, and an end to the stupidity of Trump and his evil minions. I know things won’t change on January 1st, but I will say that the world already feels lighter and more hopeful, and has to me since the election in November turned out well, and since the announcements of (hopefully) safe and effective vaccines. I’m sleeping better at least. We’ve never spent Christmas just us before. It’s going to feel weird. But we will see some of Ted’s family on Christmas Eve, outside with masks. California is a shit storm right now,…
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Splurge Worthy
Photo and recipe found here. Fresh crab meat is expensive. Our local grocery store sells fresh Dungeness crab meat for just under $40 a pound. At that price, you want to be sure your recipe isn’t going to bury it with too much mayo or bread. Last week was our staycation. We were supposed to go to Portland to see family and scatter my father’s ashes at sea, and then to Vancouver for a vacation, but of course, COVID has put all of that on indefinite hold. We decided to take the week off of work anyway, and overall it was a nice week, though more boring than our usual…
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Pandemic Potpourri
These are the beautiful hand made masks, sent to us by some good friends, for when we go to the grocery store and so on. I cannot sew, and have no idea how to follow a pattern, and don’t have (and have never used) a sewing machine. And I’m the one Ted and Maya come to when they need a button sewn on or something, so of course this task was a lot more than I could handle. Aren’t they lovely? I like how the patterns are all different so we can tell which belongs to who, and that they are hand made by friends. How are you all doing?…
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Thursday Thirteen, Los Angeles version
(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia – there was a TINY bit of snow on the tip of the mountains, nothing like this. I don’t think I realized before that there are mountains RIGHT THERE, but I’ve not really paid much attention to LA in the past.) My BFF Rosemary lives in Pennsylvania. She and I met in High School in 1982, and after HS she moved around a bit for a few years, ending up in PA a few months before we moved back to California. She has two boys in college, one is graduating from Clemson in May, the other is a Freshman at Lewis and Clark in Portland, OR.…
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Martin Luther King, Jr.
“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the…
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My Trip to Washington D.C., Day 3
Saturday my BFF Rosemary, who lives in Pennsylvania, down near the Delaware border, drove down to D.C. to spend the day with us. We started out at the National Portrait Gallery, and ended up getting separated from the rest of my family there. It was OK with everyone that we did so…Rosemary and I wanted to go slowly and read the blurbs about all of the Presidents, and my sister wanted to take her kids to the Air and Space Museum, which I didn’t care about. So they ended up seeing more pictures than we did, but we went more slowly at our own pace. It was interesting to us…
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My Trip to Washington D.C., Day 1, Part 2
After spending the morning at the Grant Writers’ Association Conference, we walked over to the National Mall and went to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. It was amazing and overwhelming and so emotional. We only had the fortitude to visit the History section, and at that point were worn out and ready to head home for the day, which is too bad in a way because I think the Culture section would have been well worth seeing as well. The museum is part of the Smithsonian, which means that it is free, and I think a person could spend a month or two in D.C. and…
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Rocking Good News!
Not a recent picture, but one I like a lot…anyway, my darling sister, Melissa (on the right up there, black dress), got the news today that her cancer is in FULL REMISSION! YAY! What a relief, I feel like we can finally exhale. Thank you for your kind thoughts her way. I am so very happy for her, for our sister, for her husband and kids, for myself, for all of us. Very good news. I’ll tell you more about the DC trip soon, it was great.
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Monday Randomness
Since finding the pomegranate in a bush last year, I have had my eyes out for pomegranate trees and bushes. There is one on the path of my daily walk, and I noticed the other day that it has both flowers and little pomegranate buds. Aren’t they cute? I will be interested to see how many large pomegranates the tree gets. I don’t know whether the people whose yard it is eat them, or if people take them, or perhaps squirrels and birds. We shall see what happens. I’ve lived here for almost 23 years, and this is the first year I’ve really paid attention to pomegranates in the area.…
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Only Kindness Matters…
So many gods, so many creeds;So many paths that wind and wind,While just the art of being kindIs all the sad world needs. ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox