Abundance

Marinara Sauce - In Its Elemental Form

I've developed a weekday infatuation with my slow cooker.  The relationship is especially nice when daylight is short, the workday is frustrating or long. My slow cooker offers some comfort at that first push through the front door.  Somebody has already thought about dinner. The house already smells delicious.

Autumn Weekend

Arbor Day Tree Adventure, Oct. 2012

If joy can be imperially measured I would express it in the layers of mud caked against my shoes at the end of a day.

6.3-miles Outside

Rock Island Trail, 33rd & Sheridan

I went for a run this morning. Laced up my laces. Pulled back my hair. Flicked on the coffee pot to brew while I was gone. Threw the door open and ran, ran, ran outside.  

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Currently Reading: State of Wonder by Ann Patchett 

Recent Goodness: N gave public speaking a whirl last weekend. In Mandarin. 

Anxious to Attend:  Pirate Weekend at the Renaissance Festival in K.C.

OMA-DEN-SFO

Big Basin Redwood State Park

My California findings:

• This book by Paolo Giordano.
• A quiet hotel in Silicon Valley that offered a delicious, hot breakfast each morning. Every comfy bed had a canopy. Every guest room had a plastic cactus shaped lamp.
• My kid can mass-transit with the best of 'em.
• The Golden Gate Bridge is seventy-five years old this year. 
• Before purchasing your slinky, little blue dress in San Francisco's Chinatown: take a moment to try it on. American dress sizes are not the global standard.
• Skunk patrol among forest rangers is part of the job but it isn't so much living the dream.
• A forest of tall trees is even more magnificent than you'd imagine.
• The only other conversations that tackle the same expanse of time as the redwoods involve rocks and tectonic plates.
• Stop at the mountain-town grocery store. The sign offers liquor, coffee and donuts. In that order. 

Wishful Thinking

Sigh. And yet, it was almost 100 degrees again today...

Night Noises

'Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?'    (Mary Oliver)

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My mother spends the next two weeks teaching in Cambodia.

I get a vicarious thrill from her sense adventure. Her sense of purpose. I'll catch myself, in the middle of the day, wondering about the view outside her window. The smell that hangs in the air, the chatter of places and people.  

An email from mom landed in my inbox on Sunday afternoon, the middle of the night in Phnom Penh. The night noises so loud she couldn't sleep.

Ever since my brain has been crowded with jungle noises and the sound of a rainstorm from the other side of the world.

Rainstorm

After months and months of drought. After acclimating to the scratch at my ankles of brown and dead grass blades. After the soil shrinks away from the sidewalk and the City has watering restrictions. 

It rained. Small, sharp droplets. A heavy, wet wind.  

I went outside. Sat down. Closed my eyes to have a more tactile sense of what was happening.