**
I hope each and every one of you US readers had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We spent about two days cooking all of our favorites - candied yams, stuffing, roast turkey, pumpkin bread pudding, cranberry salad - and propped the little ones up on stools with great big spoons and aprons. They love it! My three year old's favorite show is The Barefoot Contessa and she gets really indignant when Ina doesn't use all the butter, which is admittedly rare. She loved the Thanksgiving episode where Ina puts the herb rub under the turkey's skin and was dismayed that she didn't get to pry up the skin with her little fingers this year. Sometimes I wonder who's daughter she is. I like my meat in little styrofoam packages with plastic wrap. Or better yet, fully cooked.
This year, we made a "thankful tree" on the table. The girls collected twigs and we put them in an old olive oil bottle with ribbon tied around it. We had a pen on the table and little leaves we'd printed and each of us wrote something we were thankful for on the leaf and tied it to the tree with ribbon.
It's easy to come up with things to be thankful for. In fact, my heart has been a little heavy this season as I've come across so many sad stories of children suffering with attitudes better than mine is at dinner time on an average weekday - kids with a debilitating type of dwarfism in Iraq, a little girl who is afraid of being snatched by human traffickers on her way to school in Albania, a mother in Albania whose kitchen doubles as the only bathroom in the flat.
But at some point in the dinner, it occurred to us that while it's pretty easy to come up with things we are thankful for, a more important question is who we are thankful to. I'm 34 and this is the first Thanksgiving that I've expressly thought about that. So I encourage all of you to thank him, her, them or Him. Whomever you owe thanks to this wonderful season - and maybe if you can spare the time or the resources, give someone a reason to be thankful to you.
** Note: the painting is the work of Morgan Weistling and can be found here.
It's November in Seattle which means that by now most of the leaves have fallen from the trees and congealed into a common mass by the incessant rain. At Westmont, I would be lying on the beach getting a suntan. I can't imagine why I liked it there so much.
But, I digress...
Kids don't stop wiggling just because it's cold out, so we've all bundled up and are exploring the wet autumnscape. The little man is sleeping and the big man is working out so I have the girls looking for leaves to dry out and make a collage. And running. I made them run first. A lot. I just caught the little one halfway up a tree trying to get the very last leaf from the very top branch. I helped her pluck it off, then put her boots back on her feet and told her to stay on solid ground.
Huey is out keeping me company. I think he needs a scarf.
A quote from The Last Tycoon:
I like people, and I like them to like me. But I wear my heart where God put it, on the inside.
Today I'm experimenting to see if I can survive solely on chocolate covered cherries - not the kind with the gooey center, the dried fruit kind, not that it really matters but as long as I'm conducting a scientific experiment, I should be precise.
So far so good.
This has been a long day. Possibly I'd have more stamina if I varied my diet today. Oh well. So, my brain is too fried to come up with much of anything myself and so I am leaving you with my quote of the day from the fabulous Katharine Hepburn:
"Only the really plain people know about love -- the very fascinating ones try so hard to create an impression that they soon exhaust their talents." Katharine Hepburn Look Magazine 2-18-58
I love that quote - so much to think about. It doesn't say much about her happiness, since I think she was strikingly beautful, but it's the sort of thing I'd love to explore in a character.
As an aside, I think it's horrifying that when I typed in Katharine to my google search bar, Katharine McPhee came up before Katharine Hepburn. What is the world coming to?!
Or... inside the mind of a three year old
We're driving. She's in the back seat chatting in her cartoony, lilting, little voice, as usual...
Her: Mom? How big are my teeth?
Me: Pretty little.
Her: NO! I mean how BIG!
Me: I'd say about half a centimeter. (I have no idea)
Her: Oh. Someday I will have a loof toof (loose tooth). How will it get loof?
Me: The adult tooth pushes it out of the way, then it gets loose and falls out.
Her: Oh. Then we put it under the pillow for the toof fairy and she will bwing me a beautiful twinket? (trinket)
Me: Ah... yes?
Her: Mom, what's a twinket?
Me: Um, it's a little shiny toy or doll or.... maybe a quarter... (how do you define trinket?)
Her: Will it be from the toof fairy?
Me: Maybe, or maybe it'll be from me!
Her: Mom? Is the toof fairy weal (real) or just make belive?
Me: She's mostly make believe, but if you put your tooth under the pillow, you will get a trinket! Or... maybe a quarter.
Her: Oh. Mom? When will I be a dragon?
First off, that last post was #200!! Happy blog anniversary!!
Now, for the main event, today is my birthday. I had a wonderful party thrown by my wonderful hubby with lots of gifts from everyone. The girls each got me an ornament - the little one got me a heart, for love, and the big one got me a snowflake that I've been getting lots and lots of hints about. :) I also got some great mysteries that I'll talk about in another post.
What you all need to know is that my parents surprised me with a NETBOOK!!!!! WOOO!!!!!!
It's the cutest thing ever. It is very tiny, about the size of my little one's Barbie laptop that teaches her letters.
His name is Huey, and expect to see lots of pictures of and from Huey. Hueycam.
Now I can work in the living room while DH is watching football or some documentary on social ills. I'm so much better at feigning interest while typing. ;)
This came at an excellent time-- I got accupuncture today and a cortizone shot to fix the tendonitis and now it's so much worse I can't hold a mouse. Ouch. Hooray for Huey!
I went to college at one of the most beautiful places on Earth. My senior year of high school we visited a school in Chicago and were snowed in - in April - then went straight to Westmont, and I knew it was home as soon as I saw it. It was intellectual without being stuffy, protective without being stifling, freeing without being scary, and religous without being dogmatic. I value the four years I spent there every day.
The school is nestled into the hills above Santa Barbara in a little village called Montecito. It's full of old Hollywood history, and I one day rode my little red scooter to see where the marriage of Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable took place. The bouganvilla are always in bloom, and in the summers, mist hangd over the beaches. It had cute boys, caring profs, and faithful friends.
Later, when I'd feel overwhelmed with life - with a new baby, or job losses, or just too much laundry, I'd always dream of Santa Barbara. There would be a lingering thought in the back of my dreaming mind that I should be worried about something, but then I'd think, "I'm at Westmont, what could possibly be wrong."
But today, something is very wrong at Westmont. And while I'm not a demonstrative person, I've been fighting back tears all day. My freshman dorm has burned, just missing the suite I stayed in, but taking down our "brother suite." I know many other buildings have burned and I pray that the dorm I spent three years in and the wonderfully charming Reynold's Hall where I took all of my literature classes is in tact. Sadly, I know we lost about a dozen faculty houses. In a place as expenisve as Montecity, faculty housing is incredibly important.
Thankfully, no students or employees were hurt, though I think they spent some scary time in the gym on cots.
If you have a moment to pray for those involved, I'd really appreciate it.
Here are some places you can track the story for those interested:
LA Times
Tea Fire
Woo!!!!
Also, Michael Scott is still sad. So I am a little bit sad. The Office will be my undoing. I'm telling you, proceed with caution with this television stuff...
My Own Worst Enemy has been cancelled. Just pass the kleenex. It's by far my favorite new show of the season. It had intrigue and philosophical questions and nothing was as it seemed and... Christian Slater whom I've always loved. Really. I admit it. It's like Daybreak all over again or The Black Donnelleys, where they tease you with the set up, you think it's so cool, and then they yank it out from under you.
Television is a risky medium to follow, my friends, do so at your own peril.
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