daily exhale

Time is the most precious gift from friends.

For me birthdays aren't about presents. I actually don't care for them.  What l love best is when friends and family are so kind do go out of their way to make the time for me.  I've had two friends plan their week around spending time with me to celebrate my birthday.  It means so much to me.  Time is the most precious gift.  The time to sigh, and laugh together and when they truly ask about all of the chaos in my life and laugh with me about it all; these are my precious gifts and memories.

I've had a few cards arrive.  They, too, are a gift of time. Someone took the time to find a card that matched our friendship and hand addressed it, stamped it and mailed it off.  That's better than any expensive gift.

The other part of my birthday I look forward to are calls from my brothers. They don't call often so when they remember my birthday it means the world to me.  They will always be my heroes.

My clients are giving me another gift; they have all crammed the beginning of my week with fantastic projects and then they all magically went quiet today starting at 4:30 in anticipation of tomorrow.  Yes, i tell my clients when it's my birthday. They also know my camping schedule.  I truly adore my clients.

I'm blessed every moment of every day. I just have to remember to see it and breathe it in.

Pure joy on her face is the best gift

The Easter Bunny was good to our children today.  He brought minimal candy, but several things they can amuse themselves with outside.  One item was a giant bubble wand.  Not only is it a perfect compact light saber, but the bubbles are easy to launch.

It has been raining today. Our children aren't phased by this since we live in Oregon. If you wait for it not to rain, you are going outside in June. 

Following a sugar-crash nap on her dad's lap, our daughter giggled her way outside to have a parade with herself and test the bubbles.  I initially watched her from our living room window while dozing to the Masters Tournament, a family tradition - dozing during it, not playing in it.

As I saw the joy she was exuding, I wanted some.  I put on the jacket and joined her in the parade of two, plus the 8 miles of invisible musicians. They kept getting lost and were off-key, but she put them back in line through giggles and orders.  She was especially tickled with herself yelling, "April, April, April"  You know why - it's not MARCH, duh.

She couldn't believe I was actually following her in a make-believe parade in the rain.

I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

Close call - nearly followed in my mother's footsteps

I'm not being cruel with this headline, it really was a close call.  I made those ginger cookies last night, tucked them away and had drifted off to sleep.  Toward the end of that sleep I had a dream...

There was a crowd of about 1,000 on a flat field at night.  The front row had some familiar faces from high school, young childhood and relatives - although they were foggy and dark. They were all tossing around the beach ball, as crowds do when they are happy or bored.  They were cheering me on to "toss the lantern."  The lantern being a large version of the last of the Christmas decorations to be put away.  They just don't fit in the box.  Any way, I was cheered and cheered to toss out a large, red, paper lantern with snowmen on it and a wire structure inside.  I collapsed it to give it the most distance and flung it out.  It landed on some poor bicyclist, the sister of my senior prom date, in the back of the neck and knocked her out.  The entire field gasped in unison and I shot up straight in bed.

I suddenly remembered that those cookies were not made with the fund raiser dough from our son's preschool.  The fund raiser dough has no dairy, is kosher, etc.  No, this dough was made from scratch with fresh eggs -- at least they were fresh during the baking frenzy over two weeks ago.  I recalled the stiffness and sheen to the dough as I tore it apart to plop it onto the cookie sheet.  My husband thought I was nuts as I alighted for the kitchen without a word.  He's ready, at this point, to take away my glue guns and Sharpies.  The fumes have settled in.

I found my cookie stash and immediately tossed them into the trash and went back to bed with the satisfaction that I had saved my family from doom.

You may wonder the tie-in to this revelation and my mother's footsteps.

My mother was a lot of fun and many other positive things, but a culinary goddess was not one of them.  She bordered on the edge of scary with some of the things she would serve us.  We spent many day-after-Thanksgivings in bed with "stomach flu" when indeed it was food poisoning.  She had a habit of putting mayo in the cabinet, rather than the fridge and wouldn't tell anyone.  This was close. I'm grateful for the lantern dream.

Ginger turds - it's just what I feel like making

With snow outside and the very real possibility of ANOTHER school snow day I wanted to drown my boo-boos in the only thing left over from the holidays - recycled ginger bread dough.

When will you stop being mean?

Good news. I've retained my rein as Meanest Mother of the Year.  Please let Winter Break end -- SOON.  It seems that each day we are beginning to detox from fudge and sugar we have our round of screaming, brat fits and bickering.  Today I had a double-header - he fought going down for a nap after a series of belligerent yelling and grumbling at his sister and at me; then she started to mouth off because we wouldn't let her keep him company during his nap. Oh, yeh, that would work well. 

She did it to me, I was done hearing her (different than listening - that was done 10 minutes prior), looking at her face and hearing her "Harumphs" galore.  I banished her to her room until she could either stop nagging me for a treat through a series of bargaining or she cleaned her room.  She chose the first option, but not without taking the time to create the beauty of a note and toss it at me.

After she noticed I didn't read it and realized she was the perpetrator of the poopiness, she quietly took it back and modified the text and drawing so she could keep me company while I was working on a new quilt. She loves to use the machine and knew she'd better calm her attitude if she wanted to get a turn.  I have a small collection of these notes. Gratefully, the nice ones far outnumber the bad ones.

Snow Days - It's just cruel.

It's bad enough that there are an average of two teacher whatever days each month, plus one holiday.  This month, as we know, we have the joyous season which means those of us who work from home full-time need to figure out how to keep the chaos to a minimum, farm out the children and not lose our minds.  Now we have the added bonus of at least two snow days with no snow plow in sight.

Holiday Meal Plan

I'm missing a potluck with a group of Marcom professionals.  I miss their meetings and socializing because they are an intelligent bunch of folks.  This was the email that went out:

I was talking to a member today and realized that in all my emails on the party I failed to clarify one point that I always make about South County potlucks:  We love your home cooking but also welcome -- no questions asked -- store-bought food as well.   We have some very talented cooks among us who always come armed with great food.  Then there are those of us who bring a salad or desert from the local deli -- which is equally fair game.

In the end, it's the time with good friends that counts most.  Please just be sure to RSVP if you're coming this Sunday so we can get a good headcount.
My reply:

Coconut Flambe

What started out as a Betty Crocker day of making fudge, turned into Martha Stewart as I expanded my horizons and added new combinations of flavors to my usual Fantasy Fudge.  From Martha, I'm afraid to say, we ventured into Lucy.  We hit on a winning combination of toasted almonds, toasted, unsweetened shredded coconut to create our Almond Joy fudge.

Name Draw Shouldn't Make You Dizzy

We have a large family.  There are 40 of us from my siblings down to their grandchildren.  To us the most important thing is getting together.  We started a tradition of drawing names for Christmas years ago.  We all enjoy it and it takes a lot of pressure off just jamming through a list to get everyone something. This way, we can each focus on one person for the year.