A Place to BE

Peaceful.  That is the one word I would use to describe how I felt last night.  It is amazing how one place can have so much power.  After waking up at 4 a.m., traveling by planes, trains and automobiles for twelve hours, just walking in the door and looking out of the windows made it all worthwhile.  As we drove those familiar roads for the hundredth time I looked out of the car as if I were seeing it all for the first time.  It is all brand new and yet so familiar and the same.

Hello my view, I have missed your vastness!

My first conscious memory of arriving at the shore was in the '60's ,we had driven up from Beaumont, Texas in a tan and orange VW van.  I am guessing I was about 6 or 7 years old.  We arrived in the pitch dark and had to stop at my aunt's cottage to pick up the keys to our cottage.  I remember waking up in the van and looking out into the dark and not knowing where I was.  It was spooky and fascinating.  I don't remember much about that summer except that it blurs together with all of the other childhood summers that make my heart swell when we come back.  This happens every year...every time I arrive... since I can remember.

So, last night as we opened the farmhouse after 8 1/2 months of living our "real" lives, we felt like we were being wrapped up in the arms of an old friend.  A friend with very cold arms as it was about 50 degrees inside and out.  After we unloaded all of the stuff TJ packed for his many months up here, my one suitcase and the groceries we bought, we walked around doing inventory.  An 8 1/2 month absence makes everything new again.  I have certain things up here that I just love and I miss them when I go away.  There are some pieces of art that make me happy when I see them.  There is the whirligig outside of my kitchen window that makes doing dishes fun.  There are the floors we put in when we renovated, that I luckily still love.  It is all stuff but it is all stuff that goes into making this place feel like my long lost home.

All my sun room needs now is the sun and
a few friends to share the view!

We were lucky last night and got to visit with some summer friends who were here for the "long weekend".  We just pick right up where we left off last summer and the one before.  Social media makes us more familiar with each other's lives than we really are though.  A blessing and a curse.  We did happily discover that one of the couples will coincidentally be in Prague next fall while we are there!  We are making dinner plans for sure!  The things you discover sitting and talking, which we do a lot of up here.

When the very long day was finally over and I sat here in the place I will sit many nights over the next few months, I felt an overwhelming sense of stillness.  It was quiet.  No television.  No air conditioner.  No cars driving by outside.  My brain needed this.  I am sure after a couple of days, especially if the rain continues, I will be ready for some noise but for now the peace is just what I needed.  We all need someplace to just...be.  This is mine.

The Best Photo I Never Took

warning...religious content

The best photo I never took would have required technology that does not exist yet.  If there were technology that could convey love, peace, passion, joy, contentment, awe, spirit, faith, and talent then I would have taken that photo yesterday and you would be moved to tears just like I was.  In that photo would be our family with grandparents, parents and children at Easter Mass.  We sat very close to the choir, the same choir my daughter sang in for many years until balancing work, babies and life ate up choir practice and performance time....for now.  The song being sung during the offertory was Because He Lives... close your eyes and listen peacefully, it is beautiful!

The best photo I never took happened as I watched my daughter, cradle her daughter who was asleep in her arms, as she sang every beautiful word of that song.  She was next to her husband who was holding their son, who was exhibiting his best church behavior (thank you Holy Spirit!), and surrounded by their families.  My daughter loves to sing!  She has an amazing voice and had sung that song many times as a choir member.  The peace and sheer pleasure on her face as she sang and rocked her soon to be baptized daughter brought both my husband and I to tears.  Watching her do something that brings her such joy is like watching an artist at work.  It was the best photo I never took and will be forever etched in my memory as one of the most beautiful moments of this life. 

And it all happened... because He lives. 
Happy Easter!

March Marched By Me

Another month with no blog post....ugh!  I feel like my beloved blog and I are breaking up and it is not the clean break... "Goodbye, it's been fun, we had some great times, have a good life." kind of break up.  It's the... "We never see each other, we never talk, I still love you, I think about you all of the time....maybe we can try to work it out. (but we all know that never works...or does it?)." kind of break up.  I start each month telling myself  I'm going to write more...because frankly, I can't write any less.  I'm going to pay attention to life around me and look with my eyes wide open.  But it all feels a little Groundhog day-ish.  How is this supposed to be surprising, inspiring, touching and entertaining or remotely blog worthy?  Surely it hasn't all been said...has it?

They are pondering cereal and whether it has all been said....
Apple, say hello to tree.

March drifted by me this year.  As I read my last post, January and February were a massive effort to just keep going one more day with hopes the sun would shine.  Amazing how much that giant star in our sky affects me and my productivity/mood/outlook on life/smile on my face.  I had high hopes that March would break the clouds in the sky and my brain.  There was that day, in spite of  overcast skies, I decided to pretend it was a lovely spring day and took my camera out for a field trip.  We went in search of beauty and found it!  I practiced my rusty photography skills on the azaleas and daffodils and by the time I finished that star in the sky had shown it's shy face.  

I have never seen flowers growing on branches like these were.
Surprising!

Wish the planters in my yard looked like this!

Happy flowers saying Spring is here!

The southern beacon of spring...azaleas!

Another time consuming activity in March was the search for the elusive perfect mother of the bride dress.  You would think that by the fourth time I would have this down to a science.  Oh no my friend!  Maybe if I had that 48 year old body with my 60 year old budget!  Alas, the dress has been purchased and as a result of the horrifying images that stared back at me in all of those poorly lit dressing room mirrors I am repeating an old Lenten tradition of mine...Weight Watchers.  Or as they refer to it now...WW as if no one knows what that stands for!  Needless to say, hope springs eternal and if I happen to snap back at you for no good reason it was because I was hungry....and sober!

Oh yum....kale, shrimp and oranges.
Salad done a million different ways!

What else....oh, I listened to Lauren Graham's (Lorelai Gilmore) book "Talking as Fast as I Can"  compliments of my daughter/bride-to-be/GG partner in crime.  I may have to explain to my neighbors why I was laughing and/or crying on my daily walks while listening to this book.  I felt just like I did when Gilmore Girls ended when I finished this book.  I miss them!  I now want to watch all of Gilmore Girls and the reboot again for the zillionth time.  FYI, Lauren Graham and I could totally hang out, I enjoy her perspective and humor.  You can also partially thank her for my deciding to try and patch things up with my blog.

In and effort to keep my hands busy not eating I picked up the old smocking stuff and decided to make and Easter dress for my grand daughter.  Something I have dreamt of doing ever since I learned to smock back in the '80's.  It is as much a pleasure as it was back then.  Creating something out of string and fabric is very rewarding.  Now to sew it all together...halfway there!

Spoiler alert....it's going to be super cute!

Speaking of smocking in the '80's....I found a dress I made for my daughter, Katie.  On Saturday, she and I took her children for our annual bluebonnet photo shoot.  It was a very special moment when we put Katie's old dress on Deirdre!  She must have known how special that dress was because she posed for the camera like a pro!

Be still my heart!
So glad I can't throw things away!

Other activities that made March float by were golf, the final emergence of the sun for an entire week and a short trip to Chicago.  The bride-to-be and I did some shopping and planning and walking and drinking and eating.  Shhh, don't tell WW.  We also got to have lunch with this motley crew!

Pizza, grand sons and NCAA basketball watching!  Fun!

Last but not least I have an announcement...I have decided to really break up with the blog and dedicate my time to writing a book about the joys of life such as hitting a golf ball straight, laughing and crying all in one 45 minute walk around the neighborhood, eating pizza and losing weight on WW, finding the perfect camera settings to use while photographing moving children on cloudy days, seeing all four of your grown children in one weekend, and what it takes to actually sit down and write more than a paragraph in a month.  Book coming out soon!

April Fools!

Appreciate Where You Are

I'm ready to move...or go on another vacation!  I have forgotten what the sun looks like and my feet are beginning to web together.  The sidewalks are blackish green, moldy and super slippery.  I haven't played golf in a very long time, the only exercise I've been able to get has been done indoors, my hair resembles a Brillo pad and I'm running out of ways to entertain myself indoors!  Can you tell?  I know some of you are up north and it is not golf season but have you seen the sun or a blue sky in the past 2 weeks?  What do they look like?  Can you send pictures? 

Days and days of this....

Speaking of pictures, I resorted to organizing my many photo albums in the study today.  They are now in chronological order.  No idea why it has taken me 8 years to come up with that clever system!  They must have been in some order originally but through the years and flood preparation measures they have gotten quite disorganized.  I just had to look through some many of the albums while I organized and I gotta say....what a great life it's been!  A few questionable hair and fashion choices but they all made sense at the time.

Looking back through the years I have also come to the radical conclusion that I wish I would have appreciated my youth more!  I should have appreciated the body I had... when I had it.  Why was I always so critical of myself?  Why did I always think I needed to lose weight?  If 40 year old Lisa could have seen herself through 60 year old Lisa's eyes she would have been so much happier with her body, her smile, her smooth skin, her bright eyes and all the other things that she took for granted.  Damn!  I say this to myself as much as to anyone out there criticizing themselves.  We all do it!  Why?!  We should really appreciate ourselves more.  To quote one of my sisters, "We will never again be as young as we are today!"  I need to keep reminding myself that 70 year old Lisa is going to look back some day at 60 year old Lisa and say, "I was so young then!" 

Smile for the pictures...you will never be this young again and you look fabulous!   Oh, and if the sun is shining where you are, give thanks and go play outside... I would!
This has been your rainy day public service announcement.

What Makes You Smile?

There have been years we have gone to Park City for our annual ski trip and arrived to brown grass and slushy slopes.  One year TJ threatened to bring his golf clubs when he saw the balmy forecast.  This year no golf clubs were needed...only skis.

Winter golf clubs!

Being the weather nerd that I am, I kept track of the snowfall before our trip.  Things were looking very promising, there was a substantial base and regular new snowfall.   I had high hopes for some amazing skiing!  There are some skiers who love knee deep powder, I am not one of them!  I like my ski slopes nicely groomed with maybe an inch or two of fresh snow on top of them.  I'm very picky wimpy when it comes to skiing.  Deep powder is work if you ask me and even more challenging when you are skiing through a blizzard. 

One of the days we chose not to ski in the knee deep powder,
we watched the professionals instead!

To say we had epic snow may be an understatement.  It snowed over 50 inches the week we were there!  I wondered if we would ever see the sun but on day four it finally showed its face!  Nothing better than blue skies and plenty "groomed" slopes! It was an epic trip if you like snow!

My kind of skiing!  

The other thing that has made me smile lately happens every Friday morning.  It is just as good as waking up and seeing groomed slopes and blue skies.  It is taking Logan to swimming lessons.  I have never seen a more infectious smile in my life than the one he sports during swimming lessons.  He can come out of the water sputtering and gasping for breath but there is a huge smile on his face when he does.  The kid LOVES the water!  I have no idea if he is the next Michael Phelps or the next Jacques Cousteau but he is very close to mastering rolling from front to back and back to front in the water.   He has shown definite improvement over the last few months and never...not once...has he ever hesitated to get into the pool or do whatever the coach asks.  It is a joy to watch him.   *This paragraph is brought to you by a proud grandmother.

Sheer joy!

Smiling halfway under water...

Smiling while others are swimming...

Smiling when listening....

Still smiling!  I think he likes it!

What is it that makes you smile like this?  Do it!

Where Did December Go?

December 2018 will go down in history as the first month in 11 years that I did not publish a single post on the blog.  394 posts, an average of 3 per month ( I had a lot to say in the beginning) and nothing to say in December 2018.  It's as if it never happened.  I wish I could say I was busy exploring some exotic destination with no Internet and could not publish for 6 or 7 weeks....no such luck, unless you consider Mrs. Maisel and The Great British Baking Show exotic destinations.  They occupied a large chunk of my "not blogging" time in December.   I'm not proud.

Here I am, not blogging in December, with Logan at the wheel!

It took a cold the size of Texas to make me finally sit down and address the neglected blog.  I was tired of watching television, took many naps while trying to read my book and felt too crappy to go out and do anything else.  Nothing says post holiday let down like a miserable cold to go along with the miserable weather.  Seems to be a regular event for me.  Different year, same tune...January isn't my favorite month.

Those two paragraphs were written over the last two weeks.  What gives?  No focus whatsoever!  Today I am confined, mostly, to my house.  It is the glorious day before the dreaded colonoscopy.  So far, so good, but I'm only two hours into my day of a "liquid diet".  I expect things will go downhill from here.  I have made my list of things to do to keep my mind off my empty tummy and will spare you the details of my confinement later today.  Suffice it to say, this will be my least favorite day of the year so far.  Hopefully at the end of the year I can look back and still say this was the worst day of the year.  Then  2019 would have been a pretty good year.  Hope springs eternal. 

I decided to go to daily mass today to take my mind off the fact that I could not eat and to ask for all the help I can get enduring the next 24 hours.  ( I am such a wimp!)  Ironically, the first line of the gospel reading was, "The disciples of John and of the Pharisees were accustomed to fast."  I guess I am no disciple of John or the Pharisees.  The entire gospel spoke about fasting!  Then, as if to add insult to injury they started talking about wine in the reading.  Way to take my mind off missing lunch and dinner...and wine!  I am not a regular daily mass attendee.  I go, maybe every quarter, maybe more during Lent.  Inevitably whenever I do go, something in that mass that I randomly showed up to speaks to me.  I'm taking this as a good sign.

Last night, after the Saints did not make it to the Super Bowl (still questioning the zebras calling that game but if we were winning by 14 points it would not have mattered) and we ate what I will refer to as "the last supper", I played with my camera.  I thought I would try to capture the lunar eclipse.  The blood moon.  The celestial event of the season.  The skies were perfectly clear.  The weather was very crisp.  The eclipse was between 11 and 12, not 3 and 4 a.m., which made it totally doable.  It was romantic laying there on the driveway with my husband and my camera.  So much better than the football game!

Still a sliver

Going

Going

Gone

Coming back

out into the sun again.

After looking at those photos I've decided my day is in eclipse mode.  I started out brightly and as the day goes on I will eventually find myself in darkness...sometime between 5 p.m. and 2 a.m..  Hopefully by 9 a.m. things will begin to brighten and all will be well with my world again.  Thanks for hanging in there are reading.  I can check one more thing off my list of things to do to take my mind off the inevitable.  Now what?!  Oh....THAT!

Empty Nest = Empty Pantry

'Tis the night before the night before Thanksgiving and I'm already all cooked out!  I did something I never do....I started early.  I don't start early for anything.  Is this the new normal?  Am I going to start being one of those overachieving people who has their Christmas cards ordered before Thanksgiving?  No!  One of those people who makes everything days ahead of time?  Yikes!  A person who does her Christmas shopping before December 20th?  Not yet!  Once a last minute person...always a last minute person.  Except this year.  I'm going to give this "being organized and prepared" thing a try.  Foreign territory here!

Today, as I made the cornbread and the pecan pie bars I realized that my empty nest has also resulted in an empty pantry.  I thought I had everything I needed but when you don't bake or even cook much you lose track of inventory.  I found I was inconveniently out of baking powder this afternoon.  Ten years ago I would have never been out of baking powder... or brown sugar. There was a time in my life that we always had something freshly baked in our house.  I have made many cookies, cakes and brownies in my life but not many in the last 5 to 10 years... except for the holidays. 

Another cooking realization today happened when I looked up at my counter and saw this....

3 generations of recipes.
The handwritten cards, the cookbook and the computer.

 I had to comb through that recipe box to find my mother-in-law's stuffing recipe.  Apparently, the recipe box had been dropped and put back in haphazardly since the cards were upside down and totally disorganized.  Grandson handiwork no doubt.  I took a walk down recipe memory lane reorganizing the box.  So many cookie exchange recipes that I haven't made in years.  I have no idea why I still have most of them.  The chances of me making enchilada casserole from a random card in that box are slim to none.  Pinterest has thousands of them at the click of a mouse.  We have come a long way, baby! 

This year I am thankful for my family, the opportunity to cook for a full house and grandsons who dump out my recipe box!  I hope you all enjoy some good food and some good times this Thanksgiving!