Tag: best of 2009 (Page 2 of 3)

denver or bust (aka: best road trip)

December 20, 2009 / jeanne / 4 Comments

okay, so it was last year not this year, and it was a bigass yellow truck and not a car, but it was still the best road trip i’ve had in a while: summer of 2008 when we moved my boy from california to colorado. it wins Most Fabulous Trip because we were moving my boy closer to me! okay, listen. i was out the day they taught geography, so let’s just go with colorado is closer to me than southern california and leave it at that.

hubbie and i drove the bigass yellow truck (i think it was a 148-footer, but i’m not a numbers girl, so don’t quote me on that) while kipp and his former girlfriend led in his car. it was a gorgeous trip – mountains of every hue and description. here’s the view from the passenger’s seat doing as we moved along at (roughly) the speed limit:

we start with the los angeles mountains (look familiar, emma?)

and move to a hint of green:

then a splash of red:

some stripes to keep things interesting:

some just plain fun:

and finally:

grandchild rode with us. i forget ~~his~~ its name. starts with a “z” i think.

or maybe it’s a her-it since she/it (don’t say that out loud) does like to shop and try on pinks:

here we have grandchild playing buddha:

and i’ll leave you (you’re welcome) with:

best09
~~~
the stories are mine, but credit for the kindling goes to gwen bell and her best of 2009 blog challenge.
~~~

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catching up (again)

December 17, 2009 / jeanne / 24 Comments

they say that catching-up is hard to do . . . no, that’s breaking up that’s hard to do. whatever.

best rush of 09 was brought on by . . . well, honestly, i don’t have rushes any more. not since that one unfortunate night in undergraduate school when i was drunk on life – the closest to feeling joy i can remember. for the record: there were no drugs and no alcohol involved – just a day of good things. like being asked out by an upperclassman who was easy on the eyes. getting an A on my paper. finding $20 in my wallet when i was hoping to find enough change to make $1. it was just me and happiness to the 7th degree.

maybe to the 9th.

so there i was, humming to myself in the room when my roommate got back with her little entourage of ~~toadies~~ pledglings. humming, laughing, saying whatever funny stuff popped into my head (and it was all pretty damn funny, if i do say so myself). “what’s wrong with her?” sniffed the ~~condescending bitch~~ girl from across the hall who’d just pledged a sorority. “oh i don’t know,” sniffed back my ~~condescending bitch in the making~~ sorority wannabe roomie. “just ignore her.”

they ignored me all right, talking about me as though being drunk on life automatically rendered me stone deaf. it took weeks for them to change the subject, and life was so miserable, i vowed to never disturb the flatlines again. it’s just too dangerous. even now, there are far too many people around here who prefer homogenization. to get a rush and show it is to risk being labeled, and the labels used around here have some more kind of everlasting glue on the back, let me tell you.

i don’t know why this college memory bubbled up. maybe it’s time to:
a) find these gals on facebook, ask them to be my fb friends, then drop them like hot potatoes (that’ll really sting ’em.).
b) learn how to have a rush and keep it to my own self. (i guess that’s possible?)
c) don my big girl panties and get over it.

~~~

best packaging has to be anything apple sells. space for only the necessary. the essentials held firmly in place to prevent jarring and breakage . . .

wish they’d create packaging for my life.

~~~

best tea of the year . . . well, since no tea has crossed these lips in the past 16 years, i’m just gonna trek down memory lane and tell you that the best tea i ever had was aunt rene’s sweet tea.

down here, when we go to a restaurant and the waiter asks what we want, we say “sweet tea” to which, more often than not, we get a “huh?” eventually followed by “we only have unsweetened tea.” let’s be real clear about this: the term “sweet tea” is NOT retarded. it is a type of tea. a particularly pleasing, desirable kind of tea. sure it’s been a while, but i can tell you this with absolute certainty: you cannot thump all the crystals to the bottom of some colorful little packet, dump it in a glass of tea, whirl it around a few times, and expect to get anything near the quality of aunt rene’s sweet tea. it’s just not gonna’ happen.

aunt rene’s tea was so good, i once gave her a big ass set of drinking glasses when it wasn’t even a holiday. (something that’s unheard of in my ~~cheap~~ economically-correct family.) you could get about 3/4 of a gallon in those glasses, and we’d down at least 2 refills with every meal. the woman had to make her tea in a stockpot, i tell you, it was that good. before i swore off tea, i was known to make a meal off aunt rene’s sweet tea, though i have to admit that like my children, i preferred to have aunt rene’s sweet tea with a side of her blackeyed peas and some of her crisply fried bacon for dessert.

the secret to aunt rene’s sweet tea? sugar. lots and lots and lots of sugar. added while the tea was still hot so it would dissolve. she’d stir that disappearing sugar, and once she couldn’t see it anymore, she’d up and add some more, reckoning that if you can’t see it you can’t taste it.

i guess now folks would call that wrong or unhealthy or something. i mean, we all know that sugar is on the bad-for-you list.

sure. whatever.

i just quit drinking tea cause it was staining my teeth, and i read somewhere that discolored teeth add about a decade to your real age.

yeah, i’m kidding. there’s no way i can talk about age in the same hemisphere as aunt rene cause the best thing that special woman (she was my great aunt) (and i mean that in more ways than one) ever taught me is to not ever tell ’em your age. “it’s none of their business,” she’d declare, the “damn” implied. “besides, just ’cause you can count it doesn’t mean it counts.” (she lived to be 97.5 years young.) (but who’s counting her years or the number of glasses of sweet tea she imbibed?)

best09
~~~
the stories are mine, but credit for the kindling goes to gwen bell and her best of 2009 blog challenge.
~~~

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there’s food, then there’s nourishment

December 15, 2009 / jeanne / 12 Comments

best new food has to be the moroccan lunch i recently had at in mouseville. i am not an adventurous eater – my taste buds are old fuddy duddies, stuck in their ways. i have become a veritable magician at disguising pushing food around to look like devouring. but there i was, in epcot with the in-laws. what i’m trying to say is i was outnumbered . . . and the forced moroccan meal was nothing short of delicious. can’t remember what i had, but it was a delicious mingling of sweet and not-sweet. probably could’ve done without the skinny-as-a-rail belly dancer contorting around me as i gorged myself, but the food and the company, well, yes. best food 09 = feasting moroccan with the mouse and the in-law peeps.

but was there some epiphany? did the angels sing down a chorus of “see there” in perfect harmony? am i now forever transformed into a cookbookaholic and someone who orders the most exotic-sounding items on the menu, even if she has to point because she can’t pronounce it? no. oh no, no, no, no, no. culinary adventures are never gonna’ be my thing.

some things never change, and this is one: my favorite meal will always be mashed potatoes and cornbread, what my great-grandmother and i feasted on when i’d visit her in her adorable little termite-infested dollhouse. she would hold the bowl on her left hip, hug it with her left arm and stir and beat and whip all the lumps out before pouring it into a sizzling hot cast iron skillet and popping it in the oven. she taught me how to create the crunchy exterior on cornbread (remember that piping hot cast iron skillet?). she ~~taught me~~ tried to teach me how to peel the potatoes so finely you could see through right through the skin. and she taught me that i don’t have to spend a lot of money or eat exotic things i can’t pronounce to feast.

ps: the picture? that’s me, there, the cute-bordering-on-adorable (well, somebody’s got to say it) one standing on the left, and my great-grandmother, chef mimmy. (the little onionhead she’s holding is my little sister.)

pps: the photo is a snap of an image and emulsion transfer i did in one of my no-fat art adventures.

#best09
~~~
the story is mine, but credit for the kindling goes to gwen bell and her best of 2009 blog challenge.
~~~

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querencia

December 11, 2009 / jeanne / 22 Comments

my querencia (spanish for a place where you feel safe, at home, protected, invincible) is here:

and here

and here:

oh, and here:

but perhaps my #1 favorite querencia is here:

that’s right: the shower.

it’s not much to look at, but i like to call it home as often as possible.

it’s there i can relax and

wash away all the day’s dirt and dreariness.

it’s always 5:00 in the shower

where i can sit on the ledge and

and do my best thinking

with a glass of wine or a martini.

in the shower, i can be totally alone.

there’s no phone – just running water

to drown out the sounds of the day around me.

besides the car, it’s where i do my best (and loudest) singing.

i can be totally alone there.

the cats don’t like the shower very much,

the dog can’t open the door,

and my kids are old enough to know that if they wander in,

they’ll go blind at the sight.

#best09
~~~
the story is mine, but credit for the kindling goes to gwen bell and her best of 2009 blog challenge.
~~~

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favorite album: lessons from a bird brain

December 10, 2009 / jeanne / 12 Comments

today’s challenge is to write about our favorite album, and since gwen didn’t specifically mention music, i’m going with something we’ll call a video album. though you can’t really hum along and it’s hard to dance to, it is an album that rocked my world. (okay, maybe that’s a little too over the top, but i did learn how to take videos with my new camera and though i did already know how to use idvd, i learned how to use quick time pro, and last but not least, i learned how to upload and share via flickr.)

every morning like clockwork, ms. redbird shows up to defend her space. she’s a tenacious thing, continuing her task despite the would-be distractions of a nosey cat and a growling dog. outsiders are not the issue, you see. ms. redbird tenaciously defends her space from her own reflection, from her own self. when it comes to protecting her personal territory, she is her own worst enemy.

#best09
~~~
the story is mine, but credit for the kindling goes to gwen bell and her best of 2009 blog challenge.
~~~

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i’ve fallen into challenge and i can’t get up

December 10, 2009 / jeanne / 18 Comments

a snap of tree roots growing in north hollywood, california that look like feet to me. guess it’s all in how you look at things.

just writing this post proves a challenge of the first order as i try to get it from becoming a flat-out pity party.

other top contenders include:

* we moved this year.
* the holidays: overspending.
* the holidays: feeling melancholy instead of the generally preferred (by others) festive.
* the holidays: decorating followed by the dreaded un.
* the holidays: greetings, as in continuing to wish folks a “happy, happy” when around here, anyway, using anything but “merry christmas” can draw blood.
* a to do list that’s about to implode and involve collateral damage.
* settling the estate of a precious, much-loved, childless 97 year-old great-aunt who had two not-really-so-dear-but-just-as-childless-and-tenaciously-long-lived predeceased sisters (a.k.a. you never saw so much stuff).
* learning del.icio.us (the “damn” is implied).
* creating digital social faux pas’es. (which is the way i think you indicate plural, as in a few more than several).
* not sounding too eager when digitally meeting new people.
* not sounding too lackadaisical when digitally meeting new people.
* my weight.
* those little critical, naysaying voices.
* juggling what i need to do with what i want – and vice versa.

i have written this post several times now. the first draft was a clever little ditty about the boot camp i just finished. (or would have had my back not gotten all messed up). the 2nd draft was a wordy wrangle about how the challenge of how much a private girl like me should actually reveal and why opening yourself up is always risky. the edit stage of that version is when i realized my real challenge was how not to appear/feel like a poor-little-me girl. and just now, as i was polishing this off, comes a text message from a friend who underwent surgery for a hernia today telling me they found cancer. and right on the heels of that a call from my brother telling me that his stepson’s face and neck came in direct contact with a full-charged and running drill motor, requiring some 67 stitches on the outside and i-don’t-know-how many on the inside.

so.

now i realize 2 things:
1) in the best interest of myself and everybody else, i HAVE to get this challenge piece posted and move on

and

2) i don’t really have any challenges worthy of note. (but thanks for listening.)

#best09

~~~

the story is mine, but credit for the kindling goes to gwen bell and her best of 2009 blog challenge.
~~~

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pieces of peace

December 8, 2009 / jeanne / 16 Comments

my grandmother made quilts – one for everybody in the family.

she’d swap fabric scraps with neighbors, decide on a pattern, then dump the accumulated fabric bits out on the bed, make her selections, and start cutting. she consulted with us about our preferred color for the flannel backing fabric, but she and she alone made the decision on fabric for the quilt tops based mostly – okay, solely – on what fabrics she had in hand.

she used a sewing machine – an old treadle machine – to sew the pieces together into blocks then the blocks together into the top. one the top was assembled, she’d sandwich batting between the quilt top and flannel backing and stitch those together, the machine whirring it’s irregular rhythm. the very last thing she did once the quilting was done and the borders finished off, was embroider our name in a corner of the quilt, and that she did by hand.

honestly, the quilts weren’t all that special to us. we figured quilting was just something grandmother did to keep busy. my mother used our quilts to wrap furniture when she moved it out to redecorate and as beach towels when we went to the ocean and as dog beds on cold winter nights. when they got dirty, she’d throw them in the washing machine then hang them on the line to dry.

a few years ago i decided to catalog grandmother’s quilts and asked my cousins, aunts, and uncles to bring their quilts to be photographed. when we held the first one up to the backdrop of the woods and stepped back to have a look, there was an audible collective inhale followed by the most exquisite silence – the silence of respect and appreciation and love-in-a-new-light.

my quilt is in the velveteen stage of life, loved raw in places, the batting spilling out and making a mess all over the place. i’ve thought about mending it, but, shoot, i’ve never gotten around to it. i ought to, though, because let me tell you one thing: some of the most peaceful moments i’ll ever know are enjoying that deep, peaceful, falling-off-the-edge good sleep that comes only on the nights when grandmother’s quilt is wrapped around me. mmm mmm mmm. all those tiny little pieces. painstakingly cut, arranged, then stitched together into something bigger. something much, much bigger.

#best09
~~~
the story is mine, but credit for the kindling goes to gwen bell and her best of 2009 blog challenge.
~~~

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this blog changed my life in less than a week. i’m not kidding.

December 8, 2009 / jeanne / 22 Comments

first, i want to say, on behalf of both gwen and me, that this was no setup. but, gwen, i do thank you for making today’s post so easy for me.

i spent the better part of this year spinning things off and practicing saying “not now, i’m writing” without apology or laughter. my plan is that come january 2010, i will sit in the green leather banker’s chair that once belonged to my paternal granddaddy and write those books and plays i’ve been carrying around inside for a while. i’ve remain determined that i want to do that, but as the calendar ticks nearer the 1/1 box, my confidence wavers.

then on november 30, author, blog/facebook/twitter rockstar, and funny one patti digh posts something on facebook about this blog challenge that she’s entering, and before i had time to talk myself out of it, i’m in, too. i wanted a ready-made writing structure and to develop a rhythm to my writing days, and i’ve found that and much, much more . . .

i ~~am becoming~~ will eventually become fluent in twitter.

i’m meeting new people – folks who are not only nice and encouraging and supportive, but who are dynamic, crackerjack, intelligent writers, and, as if all that isn’t enough, they step up my writing game. they raise my bar. for starters, and in no particular order, there’s lindsey; and patty; and karen; and angela; and mahala; and bryce.

i am choosing – sometimes it’s agonizing and i want to dodge in the worst sort of way – but i stick and select, and that feels good. real, real good.

i am developing a rhythm that goes like this: i read the assignment > think about it all day > let it get bigger and bigger and bigger to the point of wondering about things like bandwidth > spend some creativity coming up with reasons i just can’t post today > jotting a few notes > then finally sitting down just to see if anything comes out > burn a little clock trying to find my notes > then sighing audibly and turn my fingers loose.

i am learning new organization systems for my digital life, for keeping up with the so-called normal life while checking in with new posts and investigating new links. responding and replying and initiating communications, encouragement, and support so i don’t take more than i give and don’t constantly feel like i’m sipping from a firehose. (it’s slow going and none have completely gelled yet unfortunately, so ideas, suggestions, and tips welcomed and appreciated.)

i am accepting positive feedback and encouragement with heartfelt appreciation instead of my usual sidestepping or deflecting in my familiar aw-shucks mode. for decades, i’ve been the cheerleader, you see – a role i find easy and rewarding – but to have the tables turned, to have others rah-rahing me makes me think keep-it-coming while saying oh-stop.

i am making my way through a month that others find full and festive, a month i find melancholy on the best day. participation hasn’t made me giddily festive or caught me wearing christmas sweaters or wiring a wreath onto the grill of my car, but i am quietly getting through the month focusing on what has filled instead of what has emptied. and i’m discovering and developing more good things in the process. it just doesn’t get much better than that.

with so many benefits, it’s easy to see why i say that behind door #1 we have the best blog i stumbled onto in 2009: gwen bell’s big love in a small world. gwen, sugar, i thank you for being and supplying the kindling. i thank you for being fun and generous and honest. i thank you for raising the standard with your writing. and i especially thank you for yesterday, for making me believe that maybe – just maybe – i can do this thing called writing.

p.s. gwen, feel free to go ahead and sign me up as a 2010 volunteer . . . but do you think i could be an elf instead of a reindeer? it’s a personal preference thing, that’s all.

#best09
~~~
the story is mine, but credit for the kindling goes to gwen bell and her best of 2009 blog challenge.
~~~

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the wind tunnel as life’s little book of big lessons

December 7, 2009 / jeanne / 24 Comments

this is my boy, kipp. he could collect toy trains or comic books or baseball cards, but nooooo. his hobby is jumping out of airplanes, and the weekend before thanksgiving, i got to see him compete in the national skydiving championship.

i’ll get to the conference part in a minute, but first, let me introduce you to my son:

when he was 11 years old, kipp was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. he could’ve tucked himself into a nice safe cocoon where he remained comfortable, but instead he pursued acting and snowboarding and running themed marathons (like the time he ran through the mud carrying a huge boombox) and eventually skydiving. which is not to say that he runs around constantly pushing the limits and behaving recklessly. no, he’s quite the balanced guy – one helluva writer who’s also holding down a full-time job, raising a dog he rescued from the pound, participating in some open mic nights, snowboarding during the season . . . and skydiving every chance he gets.

i’ll get to the conference part in a minute, right after i show you a few snapshots of my boy at the recent championship:

here he is right after his chute opened. his dad argued that some other guy was kipp (his dad also mistakenly goo-goo’ed over somebody else’s baby in the nursery after our daughter was born, but we’ll talk about that another time).

and this is kipp righting himself in preparation for the landing:

and finally we see kipp – well, we see his chute anyway – safely on the ground:

i’ll tell you about the conference, but first you need to know that kipp’s team, relativity, came in 2nd at that national championship.

okay, now proud mama is ready to tell you about the best conference of 2009 . . . which isn’t exactly a conference but i’m going with it anyway. if you squint, i promise it comes close to qualifying because: (1) there were several people there, (2) i only knew one of them (2 if you count kipp’s former girlfriend, but let’s not), and (3) i learned something new. (not something you’d call a marketable skill, but still, i learned something. something important.)

kipp practices for skydiving competitions during weekly sessions in the indoor wind tunnel, and one day last year, (this is as good a time as any to mention that i just don’t track linear, chronological time that well) he took me along. i watched the 5-minute training video, suited up, double-knotted my shoes, and took my place in line (last).

before we started, the instructor went over the hand signals one more time. this, he said slightly curling 2 fingers, means bend your legs slowly. and this, he said straightening out those same 2 fingers, means straighten out your legs just a little. this, he said putting a finger to each corner of his mouth, means smile, and this, he said displaying the hawaiian sign for hang loose, means relax.

as it turns out, falling into the tunnel is my specialty. once inside the tunnel, however, things went ugly fast. some of the air churned by the unbelievably huge and loud (even with earplugs) jet engines went right up my nose and, well, you know how when you forget that you’re not a fish and inhale while under water and feel like you’re gonna’ drown any minute now? it’s not just a water thing. it can happen with air, too, i’m here to tell you. i felt like i was going to drown and just like in the movies, my life whizzed by before my eyes.

okay, well, not my ENTIRE life, but i did vividly remember that one time when i went swimming at lake spivey with my friend joyce and nearly drowned because i jumped off the concrete block wall (don’t ask why a lake had a wall – just don’t ask) a little further to the deep side than i should have been. ordinarily i would have just waded in like i normally did, but you see joyce knew everything about everything (just like her mother did) and she was best at everything (just like her mother was) and she knew everybody who was anybody (just like her mother did) so naturally i could NOT tell them that i didn’t know how to do anything more at a lake than walk in ankle-deep water.

i was drowning in jet-propelled air this time, though, and right about then is when i realized that while i could read their signals, we hadn’t begun to talk about mine. i began motioning furiously to the exit door, and the instructor just smiled and gave me the relax sign. eventually, when i pulled away and just started to swim (i’m embarrassed to tell you that i did – i swam through the air) towards the exit door, the instructor picked up on where i was headed and helped me get there.

my boy and his friends were kinda’ concerned about me, but honestly, my early exit meant more flying time for them, so their concern didn’t exactly eat up a lot of clock. i gave myself a good talking to and knew – i just knew – i couldn’t quit. i might never have this opportunity again, so i had to shake it off, take myself in hand, get back in there, and fly.

and when it was my turn again, i did – get back in there, i mean – and i swear, it was a near-exact repeat. fall in: check. air goes up nose: check. panic sets in: big time check. again i started with my own wild, obviously indecipherable hand signals, and again the instructor gave me his signal to relax. every time i’d manage to get myself oriented towards the exit door, he’d grab a grip on my suit and spin me back around. with my eyes, i pleaded with the guy in the control booth to GET ME OUT, but he just smiled and turned up the air. finally i realized that i was, in fact, going to be in that tunnel until my time was up, and so, i reasoned, i and i alone was responsible for how i spent my time there.

relax, i told myself, and i relaxed. breathe, i told myself, and i breathed. look around, i told myself, and i looked around. shoot, i think i even smiled a bit. i focused on what my body was doing and feeling and marveled at how the slightest movement – just a quarter turn of one hand, for example, changed my direction or altitude.

when my 2 minutes were up (yes, it sounded like it was a lot longer, didn’t it?), was when i was just getting comfortable.

i’ve thought a lot about that conference. about how short my time was there, about how i spoke my own language that not everybody understood, about how my slightest movement was powerful enough to affect big changes . . . about how if i’d’ve been given a face guard to provide full-face protection, things might’ve turned out much, much differently.

#best09
~~~
the story is mine, but credit for the kindling goes to gwen bell and her best of 2009 blog challenge.
~~~

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the best night(s)

December 6, 2009 / jeanne / 0 Comments

before we get started, a confession: i signed up for gwen bell’s blog challenge for two specific, well-thought-out (maybe fairly well-thought-out is more like it), self-serving reasons:
1. i want and i need to associate with good writers, seriously good writers. writers who will keep me sharp and keep me trying.
2. i don’t know if it’s fear of commitment or what, but i have trouble selecting favorites in my life. oh, i’m reflective enough all right, but in a general, broad-stroke sort of way.

that said, today’s assignment goes like this: December 5 Night out. Did you have a night out with friends or a loved one that rocked your world? Who was there? What was the highlight of the night? and my response goes like this:

best pre-2009 nights that come to mind include the night when, as an undergraduate student, i felt absolutely, undeniably, uncontrollably in love with my life. and the night he scooped me up – broken knee and all – and whisked me away minutes after we said “i will. oh, yes, yes, yes, you know i will.” how could i ever forget the night my daughter was born, and i slept through the night on my stomach for the first time in 12 years or the night 14 months later when my son was born and spent his first night sleeping quietly right beside me as i finished his christmas stocking?

then, after enough consideration to disrupt sleep and cause headaches, i’ve decided that the best 2009 nights include (in no particular order):
the night we supped with our n.c. friends – people we know only by sight – and their longtime friends whom we’d never seen at all. now eating with the people who live next door can be tricky. real tricky. and expensive if things go badly and you wind up having to sell your house or something. anyway, the first potential land mine is the fact that i’m a picky eater of the first order. it’s nothing my mother did or didn’t do, it’s just the way it is and i am. and what if we have multiple forks and i select the wrong one? what if we stay too long? leave too early? what if there’s something i can (read: will) eat, and it sticks to my teeth . . . and what if it’s an APPETIZER? what if i say the wrong thing? what if andy says the wrong thing and i can’t cover?

you get the picture.

at the appointed time, we head out and walk down to their house. it’s a nice night (and, honestly, we forget all about the fact that we’ll be walking uphill on the way home). what unfolded after we crossed their threshold is a night that, well, i’m writing about it here, so you know it was a good night. the food was DELICIOUS – i even asked for a recipe. there was only one spoon, one knife, and one fork at each place. the conversation flowed freely and easily – even when the other two couples talked about things shared, we didn’t feel left out for a single minute.

as we ate and talked and laughed – oh my goodness how we did laugh – the music played, and to my great delight, we would, after the hosts set the example, get up and dance right smack dab in the middle of the meal. this wasn’t dancing after dinner, this was dancing during dinner – and nobody had to ask to be excused. a good song would come on, and somebody would be up dancing before you could say “turn it up.”

another night worth remembering is a recent meal at the house of other friends. again, the food was delicious, the conversation never stalled, and cutlery was blessedly kept to one of each. at one point in the meal, the four of us were watching a football game on television; reading selections from a book by carlos castaneda, and discussing pre-columbian textiles as modern art – all at the same time.

the other 2009 night that comes to mind is this past thanksgiving night when i was settled in with the husband, my two chiclets, my mother, and an assortment of cats and dogs. tummies were full, dishes were clean and stored, and as we sat talking about this ‘n that while looking at the spectacular, can’t-take-your-eyes-off-of-it waterfall, it started snowing. we turned off all the lights inside, turned on all (read: both) the outside lights, and sat mesmerized with the beauty and quietness of it all.

. . . you know for a picky eater who hates cooking, it’s interesting that each one of my favorite nights involves a meal, isn’t it? well, i suppose there’s nourishment then there’s nourishment.

#best09

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