Life is a Series of Love Affairs

When I say life is a series of love affairs, I don't mean the kind that Tiger Woods or Jesse James find entertaining. That's tawdry. Select your partner, celebrate life together, find your passions, honor all that's living, and be grateful for your daily bread. Spread love throughout.

I think of my next door neighbors as a life of love. I like to sit on their porch with them on a summer day and I ask them to retell me the story of how they met. It was during WWll that they met on a crowded train. He bribed the sailor sitting next to "the prettiest girl" on the train to give him his seat. They talked, exchanged addresses, wrote and were married a month later. Not that I recommend such a hasty engagement but those were times of uncertainty and love was grabbed when it approached.

After the war, they settled into a community, raised a family, performed civic duties, compiled a great following of friends. Together, they turned their yard into a magical garden of unusual flowers and planted a vegetable garden. In the winter they made exceptional quilts and the most exquisite gnome-size santa clauses. This is truly, a life of love affairs.

Like Water For Chocolate

Cooking is such a powerful art that it’s actually scary when you give it your entire thoughts. The cook’s emotions are transferred into the food and those emotions are then, in turn, sent into the person eating the food. This process can be totally unintentional. It’s especially scary for people who eat in restaurants. Maybe the food is being prepared by a disgruntled chef who hates his wife or maybe your own wife is angry at the time she prepared your dinner.

I was Macrobiotic for 30 years and many times I recall Avelyn Kushi telling us that the Mother of a family, as food preparer had complete responsibility for the health and emotions of the entire family. Avelyn,being Japanese and speaking limited English, I never fully understood. I knew about the health part but not the emotions until I saw the movie Like Water For Chocolate. Then I began reading more about vibrational cooking and I realized Avelyn was giving us supreme information.

Then, too, I remembered the old saying, “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” If you aren’t familar with the movie, it’s a Mexican movie, made in 1992. It won a multitude of awards. These pictures are from my copy, an old VHS. Every so often I dig it out from a box in the garage and renew my love affair with the movie’s characters.

The Hat

My daughter's a shopper. I'm not. It's boring. There's only just so much you can do with clothes, take the hemline up, take it down, flair the skirt, pencil the skirt. puff the sleeve, pleat the sleeve. I've been through it all, over and over. So I shop in my daughter's Goodwill bag. She buys expensive clothes and I know they'll fit, even though they are several years out of style by the time she discards them. I'll just pretend it's year 2004 again.

I didn't have to scrounge in the bag for the black straw hat. She handed it to me, saying, "I think this will look good on you. " We walked the dogs, rested by the lake and she snapped this picture. When I got home, I decided I looked like Stan Laurel in the hat so I took off the ribbon and soaked the hat in water to reshape it. Then I looked at the picture and decided it looked OK but by that time it looked like an infants floppy sun hat that had been scrunched in a beach bag all day. Oh dear, I'll tell her it was abducted by aliens, taken up in a flying saucer and surgery was performed. No, then she'd think it's time for the burly guy's in white coats to escort me to Happy Dale. Better, yet, I betcha she'll never ask. Whewwww ....... Saved. I'd hate to have her delete me from the Goodwill bag. Perish the thought of going shopping again.

Evening in Paris

Hey Babes and Babettes,

Is fragrance "in" or "out?' I don't honestly know. Years ago when I lived in Morocco, we'd say (if in a hurry to get dressed) "do the French thing" which meant spritzing perfume and no bath.Today, I hear people complain about the annoying smell of fragrance in work or public places. (Forget the whales). More Morocco notes: Movie theaters were a strange olfactory experience, garlic ala Chanel #5. Now there's a smell that'll turn your head.

But the fragrence of a lifetime, the scent you'll never, never, never forget is "Evening in Paris." While I was growing up, the whole world smelled like Evening in Paris. Everyone wore it and everyone loved it. It was made in France from 1929 to still being made BUT it was no longer exported to the US at sometime in the '50's.Men always knew the exact gift to get their woman.When I was 15, a special boy gave me the large set for Christmas. Each item was embedded in a box lined with a heavenly diaphanous fabric. My supreme ecstasy was unparalleled. All of my life's wishes were suddenly fulfilled.

According to Marilyn

I am 9 years older than Marilyn. She's been my very best friend for over 50 years. During all those years we've talked to each other almost every day. (Even way before cell phones.... WOW What Phone Bills)

The Universe has given us parallel lives. We've never asked, it just happens. Because I'm older, I get zonked first ..... with whatever it is we are supposed to grasp.

The thought could never enter my mind to be displeased with Marilyn. I wonder how many people have ever known true friendship? We both have other friends and this post is no discredit to them. But no other person has ever entered my life who has not heard about Marilyn.

People have equated us to being sisters. No. Nowhere is it ever written that you even have to like your sister. Marilyn says we share a brain. My kids don't really know me but Marilyn knows me. Could be, the brain thing, I mean. Marilyn's a Virgo. Me, Pisces....... shadow signs to each other. There is something we were put here to learn from each other and I think we got that one nailed.

Life is sometimes just a bowl of popcorn.

Life is sometimes just a bowl of popcorn. One kernel at a time. What do you put on your popcorn? I use coconut oil with a spritz of butter. Melt that and glup it over those snappy, crunchy, morsels . Popcorn spells MOVIE.

Where Will Our Ducks Go This Winter?

Ducks don't read newspapers or watch TV. Do they know about the oil spill? Is there some kind of underground Duck Hotline that spreads the word? Will they start flying South and then find out about it and end up someplace in between, say Keokuck, Iowa? Cody and I worry about our Montana ducks.

A Day In May In Montana

Rebecca Hartka is a most talented cellist, a beautiful person and also a hot married chick. Also fun to the core. I jumped at the chance to tag along on her Folkfire video shoot, mainly because I love the Geeky video stuff and I love Rebecca and her young university friends. There were 3 locations and 3 costume changes for Rebecca. Montana weather does not always cooperate and we used up all the little icons the weather station offered for the day. Wind (OMG did it blow & try using my cheapy camcorder in the wind), sleet, sun, rain, and real, real cold...... except on top of a steep mountain where we stripped layers because of the altitude. God, that was a steep climb for an old lady but those beautiful athletic kids mountain goated it up and down while I clung frantically to a lodgepole pine branch.

Not a complaint all day from anyone. Smiling, joking, singing ........ you'd think we were spending a day in the woods with spring daisys and 80 degree weather. They loved their work and they loved life. Absolutely remarkable group of 5 helpers. Stephani, the talented videographer toted around a heavy tripod and camera and she was "oh, so comfortable with what she was doing." They let me take photos and vids in-between the shoots. I was thrilled. I felt so Hitchkockian.d

I later discovered that Folkfire Production is shy $3,000. If anyone wants to donate to a great artistic endeaver for a paramount group of people and help Rebecca realize her cello dream, please contact Rebecca Hartka at http://rebeccahartka.com

Sink Towel & Guitar

I bid you welcome to my spare room. Water for the thirsty, if you spend the night.

It replaces.......a big huge photo lab sink.

Used to be my darkroom in the dinosaur era.

Gone, fini, adios, finito, the end, bye bye.

Now I'm learning geeky ways with geeky tools.

If I make mistakes .....gimme a break!

Life's one big boomerang.