since theo is a SENIOR this year (honestly, it is HARD for me to even write that as i am already torturing myself with anticipatory grief when i should probably just be enjoying him) we are trying to do all “the things” before he goes to college. so we went to hawaii over the holidays. i have not been in at least thirty years and the kids and first have never been so it was pretty exciting.
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our BIRTHDAY QUEEN! x0x0x
miss rosie is SIX YEARS OLD today! i cannot emphasize enough how much JOY she has brought to all of our lives. we just cannot imagine our days without her. HAPPY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY darling rosie! wishing you a year full of sunny walks, steak snacks, cuddles and naps… we LOVE you so! x0x0x
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PRAISE JESUS we made it to january! x0xx
(artwork: lesik aleksandr)
i DO love the holidays and thank goodness because we do them ALL: thankgiving, sinterklaas, hanukkah, my birthday (i DON’T love this one as much!), christmas and new years. i love baking the cookies, making the gingerbreads, lighting the candles, driving around to see the lights, putting out our clogs, decorating the tree, hanging the stockings, eating the latkes (i DON’T like making them - too messy!), hiding the shelf elves and their reindeer friend, going to the parties, delivering the cookies, sending the holiday cards (although this is always a loaded task!) receiving the holiday cards (much more FUN!), giving the gifts, enjoying my mother’s sticky buns, finding out who got the monkey and spending time with family. but i am always EXHAUSTED by the time we get to january and so grateful to bunker down and have a super quiet month (after i have VACUUMED up all the pine needles, which is my absolute favorite post-christmas task.) wishing you all a quiet, restful month with lots of sleep and TV! (my recent favorites: lessons in chemistry, black cake and the gilded age.) x0x0xx
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HAPPY, HAPPY NEW YEAR! x0xx
wishing you all peace, happiness and beautiful experiences in 2024. x0x0xx
REPOST: the monkey
(even at 15 my grandmother seemed to know exactly what she wanted)
my paternal grandmother was fierce. she lived the way she wanted and you pretty much just went along. she liked things a certain way and if something wasn’t to her choosing she would wave her hand, say, “oh FISH!” and carry on as she deemed appropriate. you didn’t really want to get in her way.
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HAPPY, HAPPY ANNIVERSARY to my darling parents! x00xx
in family
this year marks the FIFTY-EIGHTH (i think) year that my parents have been married. that is longer than my whole life and while i recognize that that is the typical way of things (“first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in the baby carriage”) i still find it absolutely staggering. CONGRATULATIONS my beautiful parents on lives well lived and finding and sharing the love, support and humor to reach this wonderful milestone. x0x0xx
REPOST: gingerbread houses
* i am feeling really SAPPY and a bit gutted because this is the last year theo will be home to help with the gingerbread houses before he goes to college… i have no idea where the time went and i kind of can’t wait to be a grandma so i can share this tradtion with littles again… x0x
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REPOST: raisin-free cranberry sauce
* something really interesting happened to me a few weeks ago… i tried eating blueberries and i LIKED them! previously, i have only enjoyed them in eggos and i’m pretty sure those aren’t real blueberries. hank really likes them too so we have just been scarfing them down. my kids were wondering if i might give raisins another try… of course that is just ABSURD! which is why i am reposting my favorite raisin-free cranberry sauce recipe in anticipation of thanksgiving… ENJOY! x0x
* theo went to a “friendsgiving” the other night and brought my cranberries and they were a bit HIT with the teen crowd! x0x
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braces!
in family
(8th grade was the epitome of awkward for me!)
i got braces the summer of 1982, right before my 8th grade year started. for some reason, i also chopped off all of my hair. this was a super unfortunate combination. my children are both delighted and horrified by my school photo that year. my daughter also got braces during the summer before 8th grade. she has them on the top and the bottom. i don’t really understand why she needed them at all because her teeth were perfectly straight before (unlike mine, which were seriously wonky on the top AND the bottom, although the ortho only braced the top.) i think it has something to do with her bite and how her teeth will work in the future. anyway - she is pulling them off far better than i did (to be fair, she did NOT cut off all of her hair) but no one will ever even see her braces because she has perfected the closed mouth mona lisa smile and we don’t have any photographic proof that she has braces at all. despite my best interests, i am incapable of smiling without showing every single tooth i’ve got, braced or crooked. lucy’s generation has been practicing their angles and learning about their “good sides” with selfies for years so you will not catch them in an unflattering photo.
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the postives of being positive! x0x
in family
at the beginning of the month i had another bout with covid. this time felt very different than when i had it two years ago…rather than being almost delirious with a horrendous sore throat and feeling like i might die for well over a week, i was headachey, nauseous and had a bit of a sore throat for a day and a half. i thought maybe it was the twenty-nine hour flu. at first i was flat - the kind where you contemplate getting a glass of water for like half an hour before you actually make it to the sink. and then i felt MUCH better. this was super exciting because i couldn’t go out, i couldn’t take meetings, i couldn’t run errands but i was actually pretty functional. you can get out of ANYTHING when you have covid. my first husband was making market and pharmacy runs, my meetings were all pushed and i didn’t have to cook because no one wanted to eat any food i prepared, including me. i only had lucy (and hank) with me because she’d had covid recently and we thought she’d still be full of antibodies. so i was in this funny little time cocoon where i was stuck in my house but i could do whatever i wanted. and to top it off, people were dropping off lovely get well treats! it was kind of awesome.
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UPDATE on BIG MAMA
in family
BIG MAMA is getting ever more brutal. she had a guest arrive a few days ago… i thought she might be a niece or a younger cousin (she was quite a bit smaller than BIG MAMA) who came to check out CU and our darling coach prime - did you see how he squeaked past arizona state just when you thought he wouldn’t? I LOVE HIM!! anyway, the niece or cousin was mostly hanging out on the upper deck sunning herself as college age kids are apt to do and then all of sudden she was wrapped up in a ball of BIG MAMA’s web, sucked DRY! i’m pretty sure this is cannibalism… familial cannibalism even, which feels worse. i am really disturbed by BIG MAMA now. i don’t do well when creatures eat their guests or roommates. years ago, we had two goldfish: nemo and blemo. one day i saw that blemo was just floating on the top and his fins looked all tatty and frayed. i tried to convince myself that he had gotten caught up in the filter, even though he did look a little eaten. after the funeral in the backyard, i procured a new roommate for nemo. and a few days later that blemo was floating at the top as well. at that point i figured nemo had had plenty to eat so i just stopped sprinkling fish flakes in the tank. eventually he was a floater too and that was the end of our goldfish. nemo was unceremoniously flushed down the toilet, NOT buried properly like the two blemos he ate.
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tune up
(here is my mother checking under the hood of her friend’s car in college)
periodically, everything needs a tune-up… your car needs the oil changed, the filters need to be replaced on your HVAC, the dryer vents need to be flushed out, you are due for a bikini wax… our nervous systems also need check ups and repair. the summer after my divorce i went to a retreat at the chopra center to work on restoring my psyche, which was pretty much a mess. i learned LOTS of helpful things like how to meditate (who is better equipped to teach that than deepak?), the benefits of green smoothies, yoga and gratitude and how detrimental refined sugar is, possibly worse than crack!
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i still BELIEVE in PRIME! x0x
in family
i am a super loyal fan. i grew up in the bay area so my teams have always been the cal bears, the niners, the warriors and the A’s (billy ball!) back before the TV networks determined the times of the games and scheduled them for all different crazy times, the cal game was always saturday at one. fall saturdays were spent cheering for the bears (GRRRR - RAH! GRRRR - RAH!) in the “family section” of the stadium. you didn’t have to sit anywhere particular once you were in so it felt like an extension of high school where we roved around and chatted about the party from the night before. we didn’t have to pay too much attention to the game because the bears were never very good (save a few glorious moments like THE PLAY when we beat stanford - i WAS present for this unbelievable touchdown but didn’t understand what was happening until i heard the cannon go off, indicating that cal had scored.) sundays were frequently spent at candlestick cheering for the niners… they WERE good, so good that they brought home FOUR superbowls under joe montana. he still makes my heart flutter (i seriously considered becoming a flight attendant after i read that he met his wife, jennifer in the air!) we were always dressed properly (blue and gold for cal, red for the niners) except for one unfortunate saturday when my dad mixed up his gear and sported a red niners shirt at the cal game. he had to endure hollers of “TAKE OFF THAT RED SHIRT” (stanford’s color) for the entirety of the game. so fierce was my loyalty that i was stunned when a dear friend of mine decided to attend stanford. never mind that it was and is one of the BEST schools in the country, i just couldn’t wrap my head around how she could cheer for a team whose mascot is a walking tree after a lifetime of growling for the bears. she managed… in fact she LOVED it, but did admit recently that she never felt comfortable wearing any stanford stuff when she was home in berkeley… not even a hat.
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REPOST: yom kippur, the day of atonement, is coming!
(hank thinking about his transgressions during the year)
* i am reposting my story about yom kippur as it is approaching… l’shana tova! x0x
this week is yom kippur, the day of atonement in the jewish religion. while i never converted, i am raising my children in the faith of their father (with santa and the bunny thrown in) and i have spent more time in temple than i have in any other religious setting. i have hosted loads of seders, rosh hashana dinners and break fasts (i can cook all of the holiday food, except brisket - my brisket is TERRIBLE - so we have roast chicken instead), i know a fair bit of the prayers, or at least the tunes and i have a general understanding of the fundamentals of the religion.
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happy, happy new year! x0x
(hank sharing his sweet rosh apples)
when we moved to boulder we did not join a temple straight away… first we collected a group of jewish (or half jewish) families that we have been celebrating shabbat, rosh hashana, yom kippur, hanukkah and passover with for over a dozen years. this special group has made us feel grounded and connected and has been such an important aspect of our lives in boulder. also, several people in the circle know how to make a proper, delicious brisket, which is my achilles heel, so my kids have been able to ENJOY that signature dish, rather than dread it.
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REPOST: fifteen
we moved to amsterdam from san francisco when i was pregnant with my first baby. we stayed there for nearly the first five years of his life and the very beginning of my daughter’s. traveling with babies is not easy… particularly on eleven hour international flights. and then when you arrive there is the horrendous jet lag that kicks in (there’s a NINE hour time difference between california and the netherlands.) so i only brought my children home once a year, but we would stay for at least a month to stabilize and enjoy the visit before heading back. now that we live in colorado we have continued this summer tradition. the kids LOVE their camp in berkeley (kee tov) and i get to spend time with my family and all my growing up friends.
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HAPPY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my darling dad! x0x0x
theo's LAST first day of school...
(theo on the first day of kindergarten… obviously he couldn’t read yet as he agreed to wear that shirt)
i am a crier. i cry about happy things, i cry about sad things, i cry when things change, i ALWAYS cry on the first day of school. (i do NOT cry when people get hurt, even my own children… then i laugh, VERY inappropriately, which has caused a fair bit of upset.
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REPOST: plum cake
* i am reposting this story because it includes the recipe for plum cake… a few summers ago the plum tree at our cottage went bananas with fruit. early each morning i went out to harvest (i DO have farming roots) enough to make plum cake. sometimes i gave it to someone, but most days we ate it. they are so DELICOUS! unfortunately, i totally over plum caked lucy and i don’t think she will ever eat one again. that is truly unfortunate. (i also did that to her with scrambled eggs - a big bummer both because i make AMAZING scrambles and because i think they are such a healthy way to breakfast.) today when i popped over to my parents’ house the yummiest smell was wafting around… mom was having her quilt friends over for lunch and had made the coveted cake. i was beside myself so, of course, i stayed for lunch! ENJOY! x0x
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the power of THE WAVE! x0xx
in family
(the literal QUEEN of the wave!)
when my kids were in elementary school there was a grandma on the “i” street who was almost always sitting in her front window as we drove to school. we started waving to her and after a bit she began waving back. we were beside ourselves. when the pandemic hit and school was closed we incorporated the “i” street into our dog walks (hank wasn’t best pleased about this as we live between the “c” and “d” streets and FIVE blocks is quite a haul for him!) we got so much JOY out of this wave exchange with the little grandma we never formally met, especially in the midst of all the stress and worry of the corona.
my dad has always been a big waver (his is really more of a salute.) he waves at drivers coming toward him or at people who happen to be on his route when walking rosie. he takes that extra beat to connect. three months ago he had a tough fall and was first in the hospital and then in a rehab facility. a lot of the other clients in rehab were non verbal (some were REALLY verbal) so when we took walks through the halls with dad he waved and waved and waved at the people in their rooms. i started waving too. it seems like such a small thing, but then i happened upon an interview where the guest was a scientist who studies the benefits of “weak/casual interactions”… turns out that each of these waves sends a surge of serotonin (the feel good stuff) right through you.
dad is home from rehab now. he likes to sit in the sun on the front porch and WAVE at the various people walking by, raising the serotonin levels of all his neighbors! x0x