Week #49

Tags

friends, super moon

j: We had friends over last night for homemade pizza and margaritas (our nod to Cinco De Mayo), and I was excited, all sort of Linus-in-the-pumpkin patch, waiting for the super moon to rise. I kept sneaking out of the house to look for the moon. At some point I realized that a portion of the sky was glowing, but all the houses were in my way and I couldn’t see the moon itself. So I ran inside and told everyone to follow me to the end of our street, where the moon was waiting for us, as big and bright and beautiful as promised. I howled, and because I was there with my pack, they all howled back, and I knew I was way luckier than Linus.

I confess I didn’t take this picture, Chad did, with his tripod and his over-sized patience. (I did thank him profusely.)

Did you find a place to look up?

Someday once again…

jb:  For ages, my son-the-train-fanatic, has heard “we’ll take you to the train museum someday”. At last, someday came today. The museum is in far away old town Sacramento, and since we were there for other reasons, today became someday. It’s a pretty cool place, two stories of real (not model) trains from all throughout history. (Yes, they even had trains on the 2nd floor – crazy!) But, as I suspected, the millions of “DO NOT TOUCH” signs in the place did make the fun wear off more quickly for him, even though he’s a good sport. However, they were smart enough to include toy train tables at the end of the museum — a full-on, “PLEASE TOUCH” zone to reward the kids for all their not touching. And even though my guy has “graduated” from Thomas trains to Lego trains, the lure was understandably irresistible to him. Which led to my favorite photos of the day, my not-so-little guy thoroughly enjoying playing with Thomas trains again.

Week #48

Tags

art, friends, wine

j: Some of my favorite people in the world came over Saturday, bearing VIP wine tasting passes to the Steven Kent Winery in Livermore. We were hoping that VIP meant we’d walk on a red carpet, swim with some dolphins, and eat delicious vegetarian delicacies stabbed through with toothpicks, but none of that was included. The wine was good though, and Sharyn, our tasting guru, was so much fun we invited her to go on vacation with us, either to Italy or into outer space (we could not quite reach a consensus).

This painting was hung on the tasting room wall and it stole my heart and my imagination. I love its vibrant color, texture, sensuality, life. I couldn’t afford its $1850 price tag, but I did want to share it with you.

jb: This weekend, after an 8 year hiatus, I returned to my favorite sport ever – scuba diving. All week while preparing for the trip I was anxious and excited and uh, anxious — would I still be able to do it? Would my ears clear? (That’s always been an unpredictable and intermittent problem for me and caused me to miss out on a lot of dives.) But I could! And they did! And even though the dive conditions were just so-so by most standards, for me watching the kelp sway in the ocean waves, seeing the sun rays streaming through the kelp forest, swimming along with kelp fish, finding starfish clinging to their hiding places, breathing underwater and watching my bubbles float to the surface — it was perfect. And the next day, I took my son tide-pooling (another favorite activity of mine) and I got to share the ocean’s treasures with him. All-in-all, a wonderful weekend at the ocean.

I didn’t have my underwater camera (this time!) so I’m sharing a picture from our tide-pooling adventure instead.

Week #42

Tags

friends, love, parenting

The Metal Man

jb: Twice a week, my son and I drive past the “metal man” overlooking a marsh and a pedestrian bridge as we rush from A to B and back again. And every time I say, “Let’s go see that metal man and the marsh someday” and my son says “Yeah, and let’s walk across that bridge”.

This week, my son had a day off from school and for once we didn’t have any appointments or anything urgent to do. So I declared it was “someday”. We drove to the metal man, took pictures with him, walked through the marsh, found treasures (rocks), took pictures (my treasures), watched wildlife, sang songs with made-up words and made wishes on cattails and pulled on them until they exploded everywhere. Then we hiked 1.1 miles (because my distance estimation skills are non-existent weak) to the next surprise – the pedestrian bridge over the freeway. And even though he was tired, when he stood in the middle of the bridge while a big blue semi-truck drove underneath us and an amazing number of friendly people honked and waved he declared “this is AWESOME!”.

But most of all, we just got to spend time together doing “someday things”. Which is a rare and wonderful treat. Someday should come more often.

j: This picture is in response to our dinner date this week – to our meet-in-the-middle goofballery,  the no-vegetarian-salads, the (delicious plan B) soup, the bread, the half-priced wine, the hours spent talking (and talking and talking), the laughter, the tears, the hugs.

Oh, and those little bra thingies, too.

xox

Week #23

Tags

friends, love, pumpkins

j:

“I don’t believe in the myth of that magical place where everything exists in a state of persistent equilibrium. Life is messy. It’s supposed to be. And that’s a good thing. Hell, it’s a wonderful thing, because the fray is where the greatest relationships and experiences are birthed.”
~ Jonathan Fields, UNCERTAINTY

This week has been busy and roller coastery, full of the ups and downs and exhilaration and doubt that comes from leaning into the unknown. Last night, one of my oldest friends came over and we made pizza and drank wine and talked about life and love and the choices we make; ourselves, before and now. The kitchen got trashed, the pizzas were delicious, the conversation jumped chaotically from one thing to another, and I was crazy grateful for the sweet, (wonderfully messy) respite.

my jack-skellington o’lantern

ghost o’lantern

jb: And now, the moment you’ve been waiting for…. the carved pumpkins. Ta-da! (And I’m cheating by posting two pictures this week, because I forgot to take a picture of them together. Oops.) It wasn’t the week or the Halloween we were expecting this year, because the cold and flu fairy decided to visit our house for 5 days. But my son and I made the most of it and were still able to get our pumpkins carved and he was well enough to go trick-or-treating and hand out candy. Yay!