The Blog: Spellbound by our own imperfect lives...

It's almost May 1st which means I can officially start to obsess about the details of the birthday party. Regis said he would email the band to find out about any food-related issues on May 1st. He flat-out refused to do it before that date. My skirt came in the mail the other day. I'm going to press it later this afternoon and try it on with different shoes and tops to see what kind of look I want. Regis thinks this is a little crazy. When I ask him what he's going to wear he looks at me like I asked the name of his space ship. Apparently men are not concerned about what to wear. I spent some time shopping on 6pm this morning, put about 8 pairs of shoes in my shopping cart for review later. Half of them are already gone. All wrong. Ah, it's tough being a compulsive worrier about stupid details. Back to the projects.

We had a party last night to honor the impending birth of Baby Valentini. Mostly colleagues and customers of River Rock. We had a wonderful time and it was not a traditional shower. It was non-gender specific, it involved wine and beer, the menu consisted of chicken wings, cheese, bread and olive oil, and dark chocolate covered almonds. The theme of the night was favorite childhood books. Gus was allowed at the party and for the most part, he behaved himself. He caught on fast, that when he heard a car door slam, another person who might be interested in petting him was coming. He loves people. I have several projects I need to get done this weekend. I volunteered to write the bios for the school retirement thing on Wednesday and I've been dragging my feet. I should learn from this, shouldn't I? Some things in life, when the time is right, should just be left to float over the horizon like a big balloon. I need to write a short speech for a friend of m...

I started reading Anna Quindlen's book, Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake,  and my first thought, after highlighting all over the place, was that I need to buy the real book. I have done this before with favorite books. Regis on the other hand, always has the urge to get the audio book when he stumbles onto something he loves. Interesting how we savor the things we read in different ways. Côtes-du-Rhône Villages Rouge Vignoble de la Vialle I was in the local MGM store yesterday, buying wine and beer for a party tonight. Not sure how many people to expect, I bought two boxes. Emily, who is so much fun to shop wine with (She's the one who remembered several years later, the name of a South African wine I liked.) saw my purchases and thought they were random. It's a good thing I didn't run into her until I was done because I always spend too much if she is making recommendations! I happened to mention the French wine maker at the vineyard we met last Saturday. Y...

I love waking up before 5 a.m. Sometimes I think I would enjoy sleeping late but I like the easy transition to the day...dark to light, silence to sound, lazy to busy. I haven't used an alarm clock, except for rare occasions, for years. I hate being blasted out of sleep by an alarm. The down side of this is that I rarely see the other end of the day. I went to a Social Media Marketing seminar the other day that was fascinating and exciting and almost made my brain explode. So much to learn. There were people in the class who didn't know what a blog was, had never seen Facebook, and had never received a tweet. That's why you can't stop...all of a sudden you are behind and can't catch up. I'm reading several books now, by or about women as they age. Anna Quindlen's book . Amazon says:  In this irresistible memoir, the New York Times bestselling author and winner of the Pulitzer Prize Anna Quindlen writes about looking back and ahead—and celebrating it al...

I went to the Pulse this morning where Rachel tried to kill me. Haha! Just kidding. If it weren't for her, I would be a weakling. She worked my body hard and now I'm writing on my blog to exercise my mind. I talked to an artist friend of mine one day and she said she writes in a morning notebook every day. Sometimes draws in the notebook. My blog is like that. I have no theme but I wander from subject to subject, documenting holidays, archiving recipes, ranting about this and that, planning my days, thinking on paper. Regis and I had a funny thought this morning. We thought we should turn on Fox news at the fitness center and then rant loudly about our liberal political views. Boo. Hiss. How rude would that be? Tiffany and Elliot came over yesterday mid-afternoon. We made Snickerdoodles and chicken wings then Elliot and I walked to the park by the swimming pool. You can't ever plan to get somewhere quickly with a three-year old because they are delighted by every flow...

We made the 3rd almost annual wine trip on the Tremendous Blast yesterday. I was nervous about coordinating the whole event so I didn't take one photo the whole day. Besides, my chief photographer, Regis, was not along. When people asked where he was, I said I sold his seat which isn't far from the truth. Actually, I sold it three times and we were over-booked by at least three. No photos means you get my word pictures. When people came into the bar at 9:15 to begin signing up, in true former teacher fashion, I had all my documents laid out in an orderly way...sign up sheet, payment check-off, email list, bus buddy sign-up, and agenda. All went swimmingly. I thought we would have a few no-shows but everyone showed up, in fact, we had someone come down just hoping to get a seat on the bus. How could I say no to that? I took the partial seat which I thought was only fair since I was responsible for the packed conditions. It worked out just fine. Bottles of wine were c...

I've used this picture before and it's in my folder called favorites. It's the perfect illustration of what the nights feel like when sleep eludes and anxieties rage. I've never been able to figure out what comes first. Am I sleepless because I'm anxious or am I anxious because I'm sleepless? It's been a busy week. I don't think I'll do a recap except to say that my Cousin Deb was here on Wednesday from Arizona and we had the nicest visit. After a walk downtown to do some shopping, we sat at the table for hours. We cooked on the grill, munched some interesting appetizers, told some old and new stories, laughed until we cried. Just like always. It was a lovely time. Our 3rd annual wine trip is tomorrow. I am, like my husband, having a hard time working up the right amount of enthusiasm for it. When things start to feel like work, the joy disappears pretty fast, in my experience. This one has involved many changes, many phone calls, disappoin...

I woke up early and watched this documentary: The Parking Lot Movie . I loved it. I'm going to copy the about section because if you don't read about it, you may not bother to watch it either. It really was a great video. Often described as the documentary version of Clerks, The Parking Lot Movie follows a select group of parking lot attendants who work at The Corner Parking Lot in Charlottesville, Virginia. The eccentric brotherhood of attendants consist of grad students, overeducated philosophers, surly artists, middle-age slackers and more. Located nearby the University of Virginia and tucked in behind a number of bars, the assortment of overeducated attendants who work at The Corner Parking Lot have to deal with throngs of drunken frat boys, vandals, and SUV-driving jerks who either take off without paying or fight them over sums as low as $0.40. Fortunately in this establishment the normally agreed upon rules of customer service don’t exist. Disrespect the staff and fac...

I have neglected my blog this week and stuff is backing up in my head. I worked from 7 a.m. - 11 a.m. this morning and my temptation is to crawl into bed for the afternoon to read and avoid the wind and the housework. I decided to sit down and relax with some words instead of napping and reading. We went down to Patrick's last night to drop off some wine trip tickets, which was sold out but as of this morning there are two seats available again. People make up your minds. At Patrick's, I started telling Tom about this show I'm watching, Downtown Abbey, and he corrected me. It's Downton Abbey . Well, I can't help it those Brits can't spell downtown what the hell I thought maybe their abbey was in an urban area. It's interesting and amazing. I keep telling Regis I would love to live like that. They dress fancy, have people to button their cuffs and sweep the crumbs off their laps, and they just get up and walk away from the table without worrying about p...

Boston Cream Pie. Somehow, I manage to bake the cake part, slice it in half, remove it and reassemble it without breaking it into a hundred pieces. Here it is with the custard layer which might have been too thick but a guy can't throw out homemade custard now, right? Here it is with the chocolate ganache, another miracle. I had to boil cream and dump it over chocolate chips. It seemed way too runny but I stirred and stirred and finally it looked right, although a few chocolate lumps remained. When I started pouring it over the top, I thought it would never work. It pooled up a little on the bottom but hey, not bad, I'd say. Here's how it looks when it's served. This was the first piece and I had a little trouble getting it to lay down without manhandling it.  A lot of putzy work but fun. It got good reviews. It's been an interesting week. We took Gus to daycare on Monday and I did a little shopping. I felt like I needed some spring color...

I bought the brown skirt. I apologized to the young woman making it and said I promised I wasn't crazy. I said it's like designing a horse by committee...you get a camel in the end! I think I'll be happy with brown. I'm making Easter dinner for some group of relatives. We're never sure just how many will be here. Somewhere between 8 and 12, I'm thinking. Today I'm making vegan cut-out cookies, Italian country bread, and I'm coloring eggs. I'll get pictures of the process. We had a busy cooking week. We made flank steak and grilled peppers for two friends from my writing class on Tuesday night. It was delicious and beautiful and we served it simply with tortillas, sour cream, and salsa. Aside from a glass of wine, you don't need much else. On Thursday night, we had our old friend, Deb, over for dinner. We made lime and chili marinaded chicken breasts, grilled asparagus, roasted sweet potatoes and the best pepper salad. I bastardized a recipe...

I posted the picture of my red skirt yesterday, then Deb sent this email: I just read your blog and squealed when I saw that skirt because I was in the airport last week and a little girl had that very skirt on; she also had red socks with white lace, black mary janes, and a red beanie with mouse ears! It's minnie mouse's skirt! Hahahahha..... Every time I got to the  beanie part, I laughed so hard I cried and couldn't read the rest of her email.

Last night for dinner, I made this recipe:  Sausage and Kale Mock Lasagna Casserole . Personally, I wouldn't call it mock lasagna, I would call it hotdish. It's a hotdish with kale and sausage, really not like lasagna at all. I like it and Regis said the cheese and sauce did a good job of disguising the flavor of the kale which is a desirable thing for him. I used more cheese than the recipe called for because it seemed like a skimpy amount. Who measures shredded cheese by the tablespoon? Kale is one of those vegetables I never ate until I bought a share of a CSA. I'm not sure I even noticed it in the store. Now I like it. We usually eat it in salads and once I made chips out of it. That was interesting. It takes about two pounds to make a little bowl of chips.  I had the nicest surprise last week. Rita, a very sweet woman I met through my job at River Rock, came in carrying this beautiful bulb basket...for me! These are my daffodils in the front yard...

I'm on a mission to rid my life of extraneous crap. I spent the last hour looking at my desk and thinking about what I use and don't use and throwing away a lot of stuff I never look at anymore. I used to keep CDs of pictures and music. All of that is stored in the cloud now so there is no need to keep it all in plastic format. Right? It just clutters up your head. I have a pile of boxes ready for the EP on the 11th, a pile of boxes for the consignment store on May 1st, I've thrown three bags in the trash and there is more to come. What is this urge to acquire junk and then just let it sit around getting in your way? This is hilarious. I've been reading a zen blog about simplifying your life be getting rid of the stuff you have to move to clean around, the stuff you have to search through to find the stuff you really want...it just goes on and on. Too much stuff. Now that I have purged my space of some stuff, I'm getting ready to do something!

Regis, Gus, and I motored to Canby for the weekend to see Mom. We left Saturday morning and anticipated a trip in bright early spring sunshine. Not to be. Some weather man jibberish blamed it on an inversion and the upshot was that instead of 80 and 90 degrees, it was more like a damp 55. My feet froze and I wore a jacket all weekend. We had a great time with Mom. My mom is something to aspire to...she's active and funny and she has a busy life. We sent Regis to the newly re-modeled liquor store in the afternoon to buy a box of wine. He came back with the report that they had a wine tasting and were serving tator tots as a palate cleanser. Guess that works as well as anything. Well, maybe they were just the snack. This is a busy week. I've invited friends for dinner two times, I'm taking Ella shopping for an Easter dress, Regis has a meeting, grocery shopping tomorrow, and I have to work. All fun stuff but it will be busy. We're having the off-spring and their famil...