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Babies
(Photos from film website. Click to enlarge. They’re gorgeous.) Thomas Balmes is a French documentary filmmaker, and in Babies, he brings us a nature film about, well, babies. The only dialog is that between the members of the various families in the film, and most of it we can’t understand, either because it is in foreign languages, sans subtitles, or because the voices are low. Because the families surrounding the babies are not the point of this film, except perhaps in that they all love their babies dearly. No, the point of the film seems to be how similar babies around the world are, whether they are being raised in…
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Happy Mother’s Day
Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there. Yesterday, I went to visit my Grandma and her sister, my Great Aunt Flo, partly for Mother’s Day, and partly because I miss them and haven’t seen them for awhile. We went to Marie Calendar’s, and they had strawberry pie ala’ mode for lunch, and we had a great time. When we were back at the house visiting, the talk wound around to my mom, which it usually does, and how adventuresome she was. And Grandma asked me how much, if anything, I remembered about the homestead we lived on, outside of Fairbanks, Alaska, in 1970. I remember the dogs…there was…
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This World We Live In
For the first time ever I hoped there was no Baby Rachel. I don’t know what happened to Dad and Lisa, if the baby was ever born. It must be so hard now to have a baby. Lisa could have miscarried or had a stillborn baby. Horrible though that is, it might be for the better. I tiptoed out of the sunroom and through the kitchen to the bathroom. It smells of fish and bedpans and ocean breeze air freshener. I curled up on the cold tile floor, and I rocked back and forth, glad it made my body ache even more, like I deserved the punishment for what I’d…
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Beef – It’s what’s for dinner…and dinner…and breakfast…
(Picture found along with recipe, here) Yahoo recipes had this yummy looking fajita dish on their weekly meals plan the other day, and I decided to try it. What I didn’t really realize was just how much the recipe made. I knew there’d be leftovers, just not how much. So, the first night, I made the recipe as is. Shredded Beef, Bean, and Corn Fajitas Shredded Beef Ingredients: * 3 to 3-1/2 pound boneless beef chuck pot roast * 2 large onions, cut into thin wedges * 2 cloves garlic, minced * 1 14-oz can beef broth * 1 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce * 2 tsp. dry mustard * 1 tsp.…
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Happy Birthday Ted!
Happy Birthday today to my wonderful husband, Ted, who has actually started blogging again! Welcome back, to the same old place that you laughed about, hon. 😉 So yesterday was a lovely picnic lunch with friends and family at a local park, and today he’s crossing an item off of his lifetime, ‘to do’ list, and taking his bike over to the City, and riding it across the Golden Gate Bridge. He loves his bike, so this is the perfect way to spend a little ‘me time’. Ted is a wonderful man, a wonderful husband, and a wonderful father. I’m so very grateful that we found each other, and that…
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Mistaken Identity
My dear friend Cherry is having her baby today…as we speak, she’s going in to O.R. for her c-section, and I’m expecting a call and can hardly contain myself! Breath, J, breath. OK, but of course Cherry having her baby reminded me of when I had my baby, lo these many years ago. I wanted what any new mom wants right then…my mom. So we planned for my mom to fly from Juneau, Alaska (where she was living), to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (where we were living). At this sad point, I hadn’t seen my mom in about 3 years. A few weeks after Ted and I were married in ’93, my…
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Dear Mom
Dear Mom, First of all, Happy Birthday. You would have been 68 today, and probably would have gone to Stockton to celebrate with Grandma and Aunt Flo (whose birthday it is today as well, she’s 86). Maybe you’d have fried chicken and angel food cake, or maybe you’d go out somewhere. I would have come to see you at Kate’s house this weekend, and we would have celebrated somehow. Maybe with a pedicure for the changing weather. I think about you all of the time, though I don’t cry as much as I used to. Which is good, because Maya had a hard time with that, and would feel guilty…
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The Bride’s Farewell
“On the morning of August the twelfth, eighteen hundred and fifty something, on the day she was to be married, Pell Ridley crept up from her bed in the dark, kissed her sisters goodbye, fetched Jack in from the wind and rain on the heath, and told him they were leaving. Not that he was likely to offer any objections, being a horse.” Pell knows far more about horses than she does about men, or women, or the workings of the human heart. She understands horses, can look at a horse and see into its spirit, and know whether it will be a good worker, a good companion, a safe…
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Cottage Pie
This time of year is usually quite warm and sunny in our parts, but we experienced a few days of cool wet weather the other day, inspiring Ted to make an old favorite winter time dish of ours, Cottage Pie. The little index recipe card I have (much stained and well worn) says the recipe came from the April 1994 issue of Bon Appetit magazine. I found an online copy of the recipe, and it says to use ground beef, and beef broth. Back when I started making this recipe, Ted didn’t eat beef, so I substituted lamb stew meat and mushroom gravy, and since we really like it this…
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The Ultimate Urban Legend?
(picture found here) From Wikipedia: An urban legend, urban myth, urban tale, or, more accurately, a contemporary legend, is a form of modern folklore consisting of apocryphal stories believed by their tellers to be true. As with all folklore and mythology, the designation suggests nothing about the story’s factuality or falsehood, but merely that it is in non-institutional circulation, exhibits variation over time, and carries some significance that motivates the community in preserving and propagating it. For a hundred and fifty years, hearing the words, “Donner Party” has meant one thing. Cannibalism. I’m not sure when people learn about the Donner Party in other parts of the country, but if…
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Date Night
Phil and Claire Foster (Steve Carell and Tina Fey) are a couple that truly love each other, but are a bit worn out by life. Especially the kids in life, followed by the jobs in life, then the daily chores in life…life is wearing them out. They still make some effort, though, going out for a weekly ‘date night’ at their local steak house, where they enjoy spending a bit of time together, and laughing at their made up scenarios of the other couples around the restaurant. These glimpses into their marriage show genuine affection, almost drowned by daily life. When they find out that their friends, who have sex…
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Wordless Wednesday
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The Night Listener
I know how it sounds when I call him my son. There’s something a little precious about it, a little too wishful to be taken seriously. I’ve noticed the looks on people’s faces, those dim, indulgent smiles that vanish in a heartbeat. It’s easy enough to see how they’ve pegged me: an unfulfilled man on the shady side of fifty, making a last grasp at fatherhood with somebody else’s child. That’s not the way it is. Frankly, I’ve never wanted a kid. Never once believed that nature’s whim had robbed me of my manly destiny. Pete and I were an accident, pure and simple, a collision of kindred spirits that…
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A Mediocre Marriage
One of my favorite cookbooks is the Greens Cookbook, by Deborah Madison. Oddly enough, I’ve never been to Greens Restaurant, though it’s local and well regarded. Anyway, our friends Matt and Casey gave us the Greens Cookbook years ago, and we’ve enjoyed it like crazy. A leak from our upstairs bathtub into our kitchen a couple of years ago killed the cookbook (along with several others), but I missed it enough that I went out and got another copy. Actually, I think I received it as a gift. One of my favorite recipes from the cookbook is for Cockscombs, Tomatoes, Garlic, and Parsley. It’s simple, it’s quick, it’s healthy, and…
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Friday Randomness
(This is a lovely hookworm…want this in your intestines? The answer…perhaps. Find out more, below.) I’m behind on this whole blogging thing. I’m behind on my book review, having finished ‘The Night Listener‘ and ‘This World We Live In‘, but I haven’t reviewed them. I’m halfway through ‘Three Cups of Tea‘, but I left it at cheer-leading tryouts last week, and it’s lost, so I went to get another copy from the library. Now I’m finishing up ‘The Bride’s Farewell‘, and then I’ll get back to ‘Three Cups of Tea‘. So I guess you’re going to see a lot of book reviews around here in the near future. I have…