Desert Magnolia

As the biggest storm of year, 'a whopper!' by national weather standards, makes its way across the West and into the Midwest today, we find ourselves making a few wishes: 1. Please let it NOT impede Son's journey home. He needs (ok we need him) to be home in time for Christmas Eve. 2. Please let it wait, just 12 more hours, to superchill us. We love hanging out by a crackling fire, sipping cider, playing Scrabble and backgammon and super silly card games. Together. 3. Let it allow a white Christmas. A beautiful, peaceful, serene Norman Rockwell-ish holiday. That's all. Just three wishes.

Saturday afternoon. The mail comes, Hubby grabs it from the box, and, for some reason unknown to any of us, he opens the water bill then instead of when he pays bills at the end of the month. Water bills tend to be the same within each season, after all. Unless they're TWICE what they one before was. Which this one was. Really? WHY????? Well, 18,000 gallons more usage than the prior month. 18,000. That's a whole lotta water. Leaking somewhere. Many profanities escaped our mouths before we took several deep breaths and collected our wits. Which meant calling a leak detection service. On a Saturday. Which meant overtime. Or a premium. Or whatever they call it. But a LOT. A really nice man wearing a logo'd shirt and thermals and carrying a modern day divining rod found the leak. Fortunately, it was outside the house..but right outside Daughter's bedroom. And it was deep. 4 feet or so. Turns out the water main broke. And leaked. And leaked some more....

It's one of those weeks. A rule breaking week. One where I decide, around 1 p.m. on Wednesday, that Thursday morning for the weekly beverage treat of a chocolate steamer is far too far away. So I go an errand. A really important errand. Involving swinging by Satellite, finding a good parking spot (no easy feat since the UNM area, where Satellite resides, is nutso this time of day/year) and ordering up my new favorite almost perfect beverage. Mission accomplished. Sunbeam is shining across my desk, a promising pile of content for review awaits, and I realize that once again, it's the simple things. Always the simple things.

Yesterday they picked up the CPM machine. That bad boy worked many hours to keep Daughter's knee bending at ever increasing angles during the first days of her recovery. This morning the cryo/compression device went back. Of the two machines, this one was definitely her favorite as it helped minimize inflammation, provided cooling comfort and generally soothed the knee while it began its healing. The brace is the one piece of hardware remaining, and that has a week or so left in our house. Today, today is the first PT session. I predict an evening where Daughter is pleased to be on the path, and sore as we'd expect her to be after the initial therapy. Milestones. Baby milestones, but milestones nonetheless.

When I first saw Milagro Beanfield War many years ago, I viewed it as yet another great novel underserved during the screenwriting and production process. I was crabby about some omitted details, details I had found poignant and key to the story as I interpreted it. I was hypercritical of character development (or lack thereof in my opin), and felt less than enough time had been spent providing a basis for the viewer. In short, I didn't like it. Since I saw it for the first time, critiqued it to no end, and basically decided that what Redford did was a reflection of his Eastern seaboard roots vs deep immersion into the whole Northern New Mexico life/politics/Hispanic history/flavor, I've mellowed a bit. I've begun to shun most critiques (literary and cinematic) as just that -- opinions often rendered by those that critique rather than risk creative failure by actually writing or producing or directing a book or movie. That said, I'd like to alter my opinion ...

We never seem to run out of laundry to wash/dry/fold. Ever. And we even have a very diplomatic process in our house (precipitated some years back by the Son sandbagging me one Sunday afternoon with piles of unwashed clothes long after the entire weekend batch had been nicely folded and put away) -- everyone does their own. Oh, I pick up the slack and wash all the sheets and towels, but everyone is responsible for doing their own wearables. The day this process started began an era of laundry bliss. Everyone has total control of their wardrobe. If they run out of socks or undies or clean jeans, it's their own fault. If their closets are pristine, hung with fresh-smelling, wrinkle free clothes, they can take credit. For the most part, this system continues to work well. For the most part, but most systems occasionally falter, then regain equilibrium. See, sometimes I'm the one who gets behind. Never in the washing/drying part. Just in the folding part. I'm reall...

But I'm ok with that. How do I know this about myself? I recently bought these. I'm pretty sure you can't be buying and wearing these unless you're at least 25% hippie. Also, they're not my first pair. I have two others. Purchased within a year of each other. Brown, and black. But I bought them a really long time ago. And they never wear out. They're like the Volvo of shoes. Really, you can't tell that there's an entire DECADE of wear on them. So I got a little bored, went shopping, and found these bad boys. Apparently, that's how I roll.

Great movie! Charming, great quirky, interesting characters. Fun topics -- food and life journeys. Definitely worth a view if you have any fondness for: food, Julia Child, Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, quirky characters, finding your way, identifying your true passion and food. As the movie was playing I got out my own edition of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and flipped through it. It had been awhile, so doing so once more made me feel connected to my inner artistic foodie. The timing was terrific as my friend KD's birthday is this weekend, and I'm making a dark chocolate cake with buttercream frosting to help celebrate. I love the buttercream frosting recipes in the book. Of the three, I use the first. It's a matter of preference, I suppose, but there you have it. I love being entertained, and the movie was definitely entertaining. I also love being reminded of just how very much I love food. Thinking about it, preparing it, presenting it, enjoying it, I love i...

Food, well, food connects us to our history, to our lineage, to memories and childhood and celebrations and mostly it soothes and nurtures. My bloodline is like many Americans, a mix of northern European (Scottish, English, Czech) and in my case, Mediterranean as well. I come from a crazy Lebanese family whose passions run deep and love of food and family is absolutely legendary. We talk about food. We eat food, we talk about food we've prepared and eaten in the past, and food we'll prepare for upcoming life events. And we tend to bicker a bit, which makes it fun. My Aunt's take on Grandma Alice's recipes is a little different than mine.  I believe my Grandma, at whose hip I learned to estimate measurements using the palm of my hand, my eyes and my tastebuds, would want me to adapt a bit to best suit my family's taste. So I do. But as I was making a treasured dish the other night, pthiad (triangular pies filled with spiced meat and pine nuts), I realized how...

One of Daughter's friends brought her a lovely warm drink the other day. It's called  London Fog with Blue Eyes. I got to taste it, and OMG it's delicious! Turns out it's a blend of Earl Grey tea, steamed milk, vanilla, and Blue Eyes tea which has a lovely, fruity flavor. The blend? Perfect. I may be addicted. Does having one the day after her friend came by, then thinking about them incessantly since then count? Ok, fine.

Saw the surgeon today, and all is well. Daughter is progressing nicely, is moving from big pain meds to lesser, gets to start using her leg more, and gets to go back to school tomorrow. She's not looking forward to that part.  The campus is pretty stretched out, with hills and steps to navigate, but I'm guessing seeing her friends and rejoining the chaos will be good for her. Big, happy sigh. All's well in the world, yes?