2009

What can we say about the past year, today?

That it was short or long or boring or strong?

Did you find your bliss
or
on that did you miss?

Some days were sunny, some rainy, some snow.

More days are coming in 2010, you know.

Enjoy life. Love life. Live life.

Time flies ~~~~~~~ whoosh~~~~~~~~~~

I made lasagna

Oh yes.

It came out REALLY good.

It had the most luscious amounts of ricotta and mozarella.

My nine year old helped assemble it, layering the layers for me. He was so precise.

Nine year olds really like to create and creating a meal is the ultimate for them. Pride. Primal pride.


Other things I did today:

joined the West Coast Songwriters

inquired about a Take the Stage Workshop

painted a cabinet in my master bath

bought new towels and rug for same bath

spent quality time with all my kids. :heart :heart :heart

Made a blog entry (ta da!)

I am going to write you a lovely new poem

This poem is for you
The reader of the blog entry

This poem is for you, its true
I hope you believe it.....golly gee.

You are so kind to visit here
to read my posts
you are a dear.

This poem is real
This poem is right
I hope it brings you joy tonight.

Back from Manhattan

Here is a synopsis of my trip.

Plane ride....zoooooooom (watched HGTV most of the way to while away the time in the air).

Crazy taxi ride to hotel. Honk, swerve, honk, honk, honk.

Walked all over the town. Times Square, Broadway, Empire State Building, 30 Rock (next to hotel...this turned into home base), Central Park, 5th Avenue Stores (didn't buy much, mostly looked), Grand Central Terminal, the U.N.

My favorite skyscraper is the Chrysler Building. So beautifully crafted and the griffins are a great touch to the design.

I am sick of paninis (ate two and that was enough).

I didn't have to wear my Raybans while there. The buildings blocked the glare of the sun. They also blocked the wind. My dear old Dad told me they are the "cement canyons". So true.

Private car back to JFK (great, calm ride) and

ZOOOOOOOooooooom home. The air traffic and wind were on our side and the trip was not as long as anticipated here.

Yeah.

Paint

I painted my bedroom aviary nest by Freshaire and am prepping a bathroom to paint (color not completely decided yet....a shade of white per young Master B's instructions).

Travel planning~

Okay.

Going to Manhattan soon.

Going with the well known, favorite daughter Qui (also known as Magic Girl).

Trying to figure out the layout of the area and how to get around it.

Maps on walls, in books, on the web.

Staying at a landmark Art Deco Hotel (built in 1928, see picture at top of this posting) in an exclusive Eastside neighborhood in Manhattan. It is located just steps from the United Nations.

Oh!

What to visit? Grant's Tomb? The U.N. (gotta), Rockefeller Plaza (and NBC Studios)? Central Park? Statue of Liberty? Ellis Island? Jewish Deli's? Pizza parlors?

Flying into JFK and driving through Queens and taking Grand Central Pkwy to Manhattan.

Hope the weather is nice during the trip.

The Story of the Rabbit

Once there was a rabbit. She lived in a wooden box in the fig tree forest.
She ate timothy hay and pellets and drank clean water from a little crock that had pictures of rabbits' silouettes on the sides.
She was kind and sweet and beautiful. She was a rabbit who knew her place in the world.

Sometimes, the door to her wooden box would open wide and she would hop out the door into the garden surrounding the fig tree forest.

She would leap and fling her body around and feel the earth beneath her rabbit feet. She would snif the ground. The plants. The air. She would look around for other creatures to connect with.
Kind dogs. Vocal bluejays. Humans who happened near.

She would feel alive. Feel great love. Feel like life was very good indeed.

Eventually, she would hop back into the door of the wooden box and settle in to her nest of fuzzy carpet and hay and she would snuggle herself into the box and wait for the future with contentment in the present.

Okay. Halloween WAS fun.

Suffice it to say.

A party of men and women eating good food, having yummy cake and really talking and playing music and singing IS the way to go on Halloween. Dancing adds the extra little something to it too.


Wait a minute....the World Series on a large screen was even cool.

Hope you had a nice one.

Beauty, grace, wisdom

These are the things that we can all hope we have more and more of as we go along.

Beauty
–noun, plural -ties.
1.
the quality present in a thing or person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind, whether arising from sensory manifestations (as shape, color, sound, etc.), a meaningful design or pattern, or something else (as a personality in which high spiritual qualities are manifest).
2.
a beautiful person, esp. a woman.
3.
a beautiful thing, as a work of art or a building.
4.
Often, beauties. something that is beautiful in nature or in some natural or artificial environment.
5.
an individually pleasing or beautiful quality; grace; charm: a vivid blue area that is the one real beauty of the painting.
6.
Informal. a particular advantage: One of the beauties of this medicine is the freedom from aftereffects.
7.
(usually used ironically) something extraordinary: My sunburn was a real beauty.
8.
something excellent of its kind: My old car was a beauty.

Grace

–noun
1.
elegance or beauty of form, manner, motion, or action.
2.
a pleasing or attractive quality or endowment.
3.
favor or good will.
4.
a manifestation of favor, esp. by a superior: It was only through the dean's grace that I wasn't expelled from school.
5.
mercy; clemency; pardon: an act of grace.
6.
favor shown in granting a delay or temporary immunity.
7.
an allowance of time after a debt or bill has become payable granted to the debtor before suit can be brought against him or her or a penalty applied: The life insurance premium is due today, but we have 31 days' grace before the policy lapses. Compare grace period.
8.
Theology.
a.
the freely given, unmerited favor and love of God.
b.
the influence or spirit of God operating in humans to regenerate or strengthen them.
c.
a virtue or excellence of divine origin: the Christian graces.
d.
Also called state of grace. the condition of being in God's favor or one of the elect.
9.
moral strength: the grace to perform a duty.
10.
a short prayer before or after a meal, in which a blessing is asked and thanks are given.
11.
(usually initial capital letter) a formal title used in addressing or mentioning a duke, duchess, or archbishop, and formerly also a sovereign (usually prec. by your, his, etc.).
12.
Graces, Classical Mythology. the goddesses of beauty, daughters of Zeus and Eurynome, worshiped in Greece as the Charities and in Rome as the Gratiae.
13.
Music. grace note.

Wisdom
–noun
1.
the quality or state of being wise; knowledge of what is true or right coupled with just judgment as to action; sagacity, discernment, or insight.
2.
scholarly knowledge or learning: the wisdom of the schools.
3.
wise sayings or teachings; precepts.
4.
a wise act or saying.

Halloween Costume Hunting

If you wait until the last week before Halloween, you will not have as much to choose from in costumes.

My teen had a big craving to be Snow White

and

Snow White has already gone to the early worms.


Yes. There were a lot of cool, interesting costumes but not THE one.

Green Botttles on the Counter

Green bottles on the counter
I put them away and
they're back the next day

16 year old with hair products
Lots of hair products
You know what I mean?

Full control air spray, hair conditioner, hair gel

Green bottles on the counter
Making a mess in a green basket
Making a sloppy room

Green bottles on the counter
I put them away
And
they're back the next day

Wow. That was a ton of fun!

Yesterday was a really incredible day.

My nine year old and I visited a friend who lives in a nice, upscale community.

We sat by her grecian pool eating grapes for an hour, enjoying the waterfalls and fields of wild turkeys behind it all.

Then, we went out for a delicious meal at a cute little restaurant. Had scone like chicken pot pie and hand made pasta and salad. Water with mint,lemons and cucumbers soaking in it.

After lunch, we went to an art gallery and spent about an hour talking with the artist. He was really very good. He was really very likeable (and kind of cute). He sells his originals for a lot of money ($27,000ish for one).

Then, we went to a very cool bookstore and talked with the owner there about his upcoming booksignings/authors. The collection of books was unusual and interesting and the store was really big for a locally owned one.

Then, we went back to hang out and talk with my friend's teenage daughters who were home from high school. We talked about their homecoming week and the dresses they were going to wear.

It was a fabulous time.

!

"Intelligence will be used in the service of the neurosis"_ Sigmund Freud

poem

Breathe in, breathe out
Smile
Laugh

Think about puppies and kittens and kids

Smell roses

Sing out loud

Time is an illusion

Here is just part of a good article by Amanda Gefter for New Scientist magazine. (Jan. 19,2008)

"IT IS the invisible presence that governs your world. Trailing you like an unshakeable shadow, it ticks and tocks incessantly - you can sense it in your heartbeat, in the rising and setting of the sun, and in your daily rush to make meetings, trains and deadlines. It brings order to our lives through the categories of past, present and future.
Time. There is nothing with which we are so familiar, and yet when you try to pin it down you find only a relentless torrent of questions. Why does time appear to flow? What makes it different from space? What exactly is it? It's enough to make your neurons misfire, then sizzle and smoke.
You are not alone. Physicists have long struggled to understand what time really is. In fact, they are not even sure it exists at all. In their quest for deeper theories of the universe, some researchers increasingly suspect that time is not a fundamental feature of nature, but rather an artefact of our perception. One group has recently found a way to do quantum physics without invoking time, which could help pave a path to a time-free "theory of everything". If correct, the approach suggests that time really is an illusion, and that we may need to rethink how the universe at large works.
For decades, physicists have been searching for a quantum theory of gravity to reconcile Einstein's general relativity, which describes gravity at the largest scales, with quantum mechanics, which describes the behaviour of particles at the tiniest scales. One reason it has been so difficult to merge the two is that they are built on incompatible views of time. "I am more and more convinced that the problem of time is key both to quantum gravity and to issues in cosmology," says Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
According to general relativity, time is stitched together with space to form four-dimensional space-time. The passage of time is not absolute - no cosmic clock ticks away the hours of the universe. Instead, time differs from one frame of reference to the next, and what one observer experiences as time, another might experience as a mixture of time and space. For Einstein, time is a useful measure of things, but nothing special.
Not so in quantum mechanics. Here time plays a key role, keeping track of the ever-changing probabilities that define the microworld, which are encoded in the "wave function" of a quantum system. The clock by which the wave function evolves records not just the time in one particular frame of reference, but the absolute time that Einstein worked so hard to topple. So while relativity treats space and time as a whole, quantum mechanics splits the universe into two parts: the quantum system being observed and the classical world outside. In this fractured universe, a clock always remains outside the quantum system (see Diagram).
Something has to give. The fact that the universe has no outside, by definition, suggests that quantum mechanics will be the one to surrender - and to many, this suggests that time is not fundamental. In the 1990s, for instance, physicist Julian Barbour proposed that time must not exist in a quantum theory of the universe. All the same, physicists are loath to throw out quantum theory, as it has proven capable of extraordinarily accurate predictions. What they need is a way to do quantum mechanics in the absence of time."

Notes on a guitar lesson

-play the chromatic scale from the fifth fret and then the third fret.
keep your fingers down as you go up the scale (don't lift them) and watch your pinky to make sure it is rounded and not flat.

-play the Am Pentatonic Scale and use alternate picking (up,down) and keep your fingers down as you go.

-practise chord pairs of
C Em
Em D
C D
Em G

-practise strum pattern for Intro of Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) by Green Day
work on speed (that was a blast doing it with the instructor as a duo!)

-work on pages 12-15 in book


Yes. I am learning a lot. Yeah!

Now, gotta go do it!

Rain

Weather. Ahhhhhh weather.

We had super hot days and then some weird overcast hot ones and now

rain.

Nature is amazing. Really amazing.


At this very moment (10:29pm), my two oldest kids are at a Blink 182 concert and I suppose getting super wet?!

Refreshing..............................................

Happy 9-9-09

Enjoy the day!

~~~~~~~~~* ~~~~~~~~~~~~~*~~~~~~~~~~~~

Walk, walk, walk

Yesterday was a walking day.

I took a long hike to Little Yosemite with Mike and Star.
Parking was easy and the gravel path was crunchy and dusty and we overshot the actual place because the rode we were on was above it.

We saw cows and horses and dogs and people and boulders and water and thistles and grass and lots of poison oak.

Later I took a walk on a beach with Nic and there were lots of people enjoying Labor Day.
Seaweed was thick and washed up on the shore and difficult to walk around.
There were little flies all around it.

I think, all together, I walked three-ish hours.

My toes feel it today. (by the way, I just got back from a half hour walk with Star).

Nine

Ben is nine
He is growing like a vine
Youngest child of mine

He is smart and smart and ....oh ya.....smart

Ben is tall
No longer small
No longer nervous bout playin' wall ball

He is smart and smart and .....oh ya....smart

Ben is wise
Strong for his size
Likes to catch flies

He is smart and smart and ..... oh ya....smart

Thank you Ben
For being Ben
For being
Ben

Love, Mom on your ninth birthday (in place of a quilt)

The Vulgar Bulgarian King

The vulgar Bulgarian king
He doesn't have a kingdom to rule
But he isn't lacking in subjects

He doesn't have a white horse to ride
but he always has a surreal car which runs

He isn't very intelligent
He just knows how to make people think that he is
Make people think he is everything
Everything ........ is king

What a laugh
He really is very ordinary
He pulls the wool over eyes
Cons men with beligerence
Cons women with lies

Don't con me anymore mister
Its not my thing

Where are we?!

A lovely group of people who are posing for a complete stranger.................!

Do these forms and colors give you a hint?!

Celestial Adventure

Last night, my husband woke me and the youngest child up at 3am and we went on a minivan excursion.

We went in search of the unobstructed NE sky.

It was a night of meteor showers in that direction.

But for heaven's sake (pun?) we could not find that part of the sky.

There are too many trees and hills near us and it was blocked from view.

We did see a young buck run across a street in front of us.

We did see lots of stars everywhere else.

After an hour, we came back home and went to sleep.




Thematically, a couple kids and I had gone to a NASA center to look at a museum and visiters' center yesterday. We saw a real Moon rock and the Mercury capsule that landed in 1960.


This morning, my oldest child told me that he and a couple friends had watched shooting stars from a field on the other side of the hills (the meteors!)

What ...........

is your favorite thing to do at the dentist office?

Read a magazine

Listen to the piped in music

Talk to the hygenist as she is prepping things to clean your teeth

Paying for services

Getting xrays

Having a filling done


LOL

I bet one of the first three things listed, probably not one of the last three

LOL

Azure Eyes

As I was walking
down a dirt pathway

I met a man
with azure eyes

His eyes sparkled
Intensity set
and
right then I knew

that we never should have met

It would soon be my demise
sighs and sighs and sighs and sighs

For there are emotions
to hard to resist
which halt all other motions
with a flick of the wrist

There are no magic potions
to escape the fine mist
of the azure eyes
of the hypnotist

Mmmmmmmm
Mmmmmmmm
Mmmmmmmm
Mmmmmmmm

As I was walking
down a dirt pathway
I met a man with
azure eyes...............................

copyright 1984 Mari Allen

Food

We have been eating late meals (8pm-ish)

Besides lasagna, here are some meals I have made lately.

Tacos (both ground turkey and garbanzo fillings)
Spanish Tortilla (huge omelet made with eggs, potatos, spinach, garlic, onions)
Hot n Sour Soup (with tofu, bamboo shoots, mushroom, baby corn)
Bar B Que (lamb, chicken breast, eggplants, zuchinni, salmon)

Bon Appetite

knock knock jokes

Briefly, before the jokes.....I sang at my second Open Mic this week and it went good.
The house trio was not the best......but they were okay. The usual trio was at a gig with the Shirells (current performers using the name).
I really look forward to the trio coming back to the club where the open mic was.
Yup.

Here are the jokes.

Knock Knock!
Who's there?
Wendy.
Wendy who?
Wendy wind blows de cradle will rock.



Knock Knock
Who's there !
Figs !
Figs who ?
Figs the doorbell, it's broken



Will you remember me in an hour?
Yes.
Will you remember me in a day?
Yes.
Will you remember me in a week?
Yes.
Will you remember me in a month?
Yes.
Will you remember me in a year?
Yes.
I think you won't.
Yes, I will.
Knock, knock!
Who's there?
See?
You've forgotten me already!

The Quantum Zone

Days and days and more days.
Lifting up the hours to the moments to the now

Hearing the sounds. Seeing the people. Feeling the textures of it all.

Being in a life.

Freeing of a limit.

Moving into the knowing of .......... it

I went to listen to more music.

I was restless and nothing was helping, so I went off to catch a band of women who were performing that night.

The Barefoot Nellies.

http://www.barefootnellies.com/?page_id=2

Five women who took turns singing songs and playing

mandolin
guitar
stand up bass
banjo
fiddle

It was really just the thing for the night. Fine music, good selection of songs, good crowd watching, easy parking.

Health and Happiness

Let me ruminate on two things that start with the letter H.

Health and happiness.

Health is really something we often take for granted until its gone. Health is such a wonderful thing. It helps us cope with daily life and helps us function in an optimal way.

Happiness also is something we take for granted until its gone. It is a wonderful thing. It helps us enjoy daily life and helps us function in an optimal way.

Yes.

H & H.

May you, my reading friend be the recipient of both H and H.

: )

Oh! And tonight's dinner is leftover roasted Costco Chicken, baked potatos, baked sweet potato fries, brocolli, salad and falafel balls for the vegetarian in the family.

Images to ponder

a man-made glacier

a dog with soul

Long In the Tooth

Aren't teeth wonderful?

Definition

phi·los·o·pher

(fi-los-i-fer)
n.
1. A student of or specialist in philosophy.
2. A person who lives and thinks according to a particular philosophy.
3. A person who is calm and rational under any circumstances.
[Middle English philosophre, from alteration of Old French philosophe, from Latin philosophus, from Greek philosophos, lover of wisdom, philosopher : philo-, philo- + sophi, knowledge, learning.]
hm()
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2003. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
philosopher
Noun
1. a person who studies philosophy
2. a person who remains calm and stoical in the face of difficulties or disappointments

Maker Faire

This morning I went to Maker Faire.

It is a HUGE faire put on by Maker Magazine and sponsored by many businesses (Google, Epilog laser, Singer, Radio Shack, ShopBot, Yahoo!, Whole Foods, Etsy, Guardian, Geek Squad, provocraft, HP, Sparkfun electronics, Make: telebvision,Lion Brand Yarn).

I have never seen so many robots in my life. Robots of all sizes and capabilities and materials.
There were also crafts people (I bought a very nice bud vase and necklace from a ceramics artist). Lots of yarn stuff there. Button art/jewelry. Bugs incased in lucite stuff.

I ate the most delicious spinach potato knish. MMMMmmmmm.

I also bought a hoola hoop that is sized for me (the vendor measured and checked to make sure I got the right one).

I went with one of my kids very early to avoid parking distress.
We got a space in the front row of the parking lot! Woohoo!

We went to buy tickets and a vendor gave us two of his for free (saving us $35) and we waited for the gates to open in 45 minutes. We chatted with fellow early birds and eventually went in and wandered around.

Everything was amazing.

Amazing.

How do people figure these things out? Huh?

If you want to check out their website......it is MakerFaire.com

poetry for my babies

There in the sky is a light

A light that is bright both day and night

One in the day that warms us

One at night that shows us our place

in space

The sun. The moon.

Yes. I think its true.

When you think about something you often see it very soon.

I was thinking that I'd like a nice Bob Dylan song book and

voila

one big, fat book (only one) at my local Border's Bookstore.

That is really something. It might have been there anyway BUT I noticed it because I was thinking of one and

there is was.

My Magic Girl

Oh wow.

I cannot go without posting today.

Today is my child's Sweet Sixteenth Birthday.

Here is my story about her.

She smiled a moment after she was born. Pushing up from her stomach and beaming rays of light into the world.

She is strong and beautiful and creative and full of coordinations that few ever show.

She is wise.....wiser than I am.

She is magic.

Pure magic.

Happy Birthday honey pie. KiKi. Nicole-ee-wole--ee.
Happy Birthday to you.

Sparkling Things.

Shiny and sparkling
Glimmers of light

Sending their fragments of beauty

To the eyes.

Music is good for the soul

I went out to listen to music a couple nights ago. It was bluegrass. It was an open playing night and the room was full of fiddles, guitars, basses, banjos, harmonicas.
Everyone made a big circle and just played.
Occasionally someone would sing along.

It hit the spot, like a drink of fizzy soda on a thirsty day.

Little Miss Sunshine

My adventure today was in my mind. Reflection and understanding of who I really am.
Perfection and imperfections.

Mother of three really spectacular children who love me..........a lot.
This is critically important to my life. It is critically important to how I will handle myself with my current state of being. It will be one of those challenges I face uniquely well and philosophically.

Yes.
I am a philosopher.
I am

I have big, wonderful plans for me. Plans that wouldn't be possible without a shake up.

I want things to be .....magical

Hola

I didn't make lasagna tonight......speghetti instead.

My travels for today were walks in the rain with a gaggle of children walking with me. We took umbrellas and went around the block looking at wet newspapers turning into mush and worms drowning in puddles in near the curb and oil slicks in the same puddles.

It was a hot, humid tropical rainy day.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Surgery and Crime

Today my poodle pup was spayed.

She is hanging out in an exercise pen in my kitchen right now.

What a dog. Other dogs looked like trucks hit them (male and female alike) but this girl.....well.....she is a little low key but eating, drinking, going potty outside when I take her, looking interested in things happening around her.

Hope it all goes smooth in the next 7-10 days of recovery.


Here is a bit of an act of crime I heard today.

I was walking back from a task in my neighborhood and ran into two old friends. They were talking and one told me that her house was robbed while she and her family were sleeping.

The robber broke down a door and stole many things (including her purse and car keys) and then took the stuff in her car.

Get this......her large dog didn't bark and the husband she was sleeping next to is a police sargeant (whose gun was in the house).

How exasperating and violating and just plain mean spirited of the crook. Well, at least the criminal didn't hurt anyone. Phew.

Amazing.

A friend of mine lost her 14 year old son to a sudden, serious illness a month ago (the evil MRSA).

It knocked the community on its seat. So out of no where. So scary and confusing.

Today I took a walk with her and went to a coffee place to spend time with her.

She is living a parent's worse nightmare but doing so in the most amazing way. She can smile. She can chat about other things. She can weave her child's name and memories into the conversation in the most beautiful way.

We left the coffee place and walked past his middle school. Kids outside having P.E. Life going on.....without someone.

(sigh)

Indian Joe Creek Trail

Today I took a drive out to a regional park with two of my kids, my fluffy poodle and my mate.

We parked near a horse corral and watched the horses for a few minutes and then went in search of a friendly trail to hike.

A park ranger suggested the 1.41 mile Indian Joe Creek Trail. We got the general directions to go and some helpful hints of landmarks to watch for so that we could make the proper turns and stay on course.

It was a lovely trail with a bit of this and a bit of that along the way. Wild flowers, birds, rock formations and the super important stream to step over here and there. We tried to stay in the middle of the path to avoid ticks and poison oak. Hopefully we did. Hopefully the dog did too.
Her hair is too long to really look for ticks and she did pick up some seeds in her velcro like locks.

There are other, longer trails in the same park which I plan to try in the future.

Let sleeping dogs lie.

That is my favorite saying right now. I have a wild and wiggly 20 pound poodle puppy who is great at tackling, galloping and bowling over things and chewing up stuff. When she is laying down resting......I will do my best not to inspire her to get up and start something wild.

Yesterday, she chewed up two wooden unit blocks (the kind children build with). Here are some other things she has chewed up

a paperback book
a poster from a rock concert
a leather slipper
any paper towel or toilet paper left in reach
plastic cup

You would be telling the truth if you said "The dog ate my homework". She did.

At this moment, she is laying on a dog bed next to me. She blends in with it like a chameleon and it would be a great photo but if I got up to get my camera.....well.....she would get up too!

Gonna be hot

The weather is supposed to get quite hot today.

It is 12:18 as I type this and, yes, I think it will!

My travels today were mundane but busy.

I went to the bank to cash a check. A branch I had never been to before. The branch had some MAJOR security measures I had never come across before.

You go in one door and wait until it completely closes and a green light lets you open the next to go into the room. Then, the man in front of me in line pointed out that there were maybe 20 cameras facing all different directions on one wall. Yikes. The place was also sort of unkempt inside. They were not going for "The Most Beautiful Bank" award.

The teller was nice and had a really lovely name. Florita Flores. I told her I liked it and asked if it meant Little Flower Flower. She smiled and said yes.

There was also a two year old girl wearing funny sandals that squeaked whenever she took a step. Built in squeaker sandals. It would bug me listening to them all day but her mother didn't seem to be bugged by them.

I also went looking for a knee brace for my knee which is bothering me and bought one at the second place I looked for one.

Bought popsicles and soda to help get through the heatwave this evening

and

now, I must tend to some chores (vacuuming, cleaning the microwave, taking out some garbage, walking a dog).

My trip to a lake

I drove to a nearby lake to spend the very pretty day. One of my children went with me.

I sat in the shade, on a wooden bench and watched the hikers, bikers, boaters and creatures around me.

One family came in on a row boat, docked it at the boat rental and had caught two large fish and a smallish one. A catfish and something that looked like a trout but wasn't. Not sure of the small fish.The fish were still alive and trying to breathe on the hook. Their gills went in and out. The family beamed with pride.

There were geese, ducks, kingfishers, coots and a large trumpet swan in the lake all looking for fish too.

My child climbed a tree next to the bench.

I sat there a really long time.

Later, we walked around the lake path to an area where we could go down to the shore and just enjoyed the other view.

One lady in a boat had an umbrella to shade herself. It was so picturesque.

How my blog got its name.

I registered for a blog since I needed to be registered to leave comments for a blog I looked at.

I had just concocted a nice big lasagna and thought how lasagna maker fit my mood at the time. I make really nice lasagnas these days.

I also didn't want people to think that.....should I start a blog with the name lasagna maker that that is what I am all about.....cooking. No. I am about much more than that.

A traveling lasagna maker sounds more well rounded.

So there you have it.