the dream life

Rock-n-roll

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Babies of 1969 unite (& put your party shoes on)

My birthday being in February, I was one of the first of my classmates and same-age friends to cross over from the thirties into the forties, but the season of birthdays has really ramped up now with people turning 40 all over the place, and it’s a lot of fun. I love reading and hearing about each person’s take on this and I have to say, I’m impressed with how overwhelmingly positive my friends are. There seems to be a general consensus that this coming decade is going to be the best one yet. It’s like we’re all gathering this energy and putting these intentions out in to the world and simultaneously shedding everything that we no longer need while embracing what we truly want. (And in case you’re wondering, everybody looks fantastic!)

Happy birthday, Tracy

Tracy turns 41 today, and in honor of the anniversary of his birth, I asked for permission to post this photograph of him experiencing pure joy, Kentucky-style.

Today is Heywood's birthday

Our beautiful boy is four today.

Happy Darwin Day

I attended two fabulous birthday celebrations today. The first was for me, 

given by my workmates and featured homemade strawberry cupcakes, a lovely card, beautiful pink tulips and a singing telegram.

 

(They are kind and sweet workmates, and they know me well.) The other was for Charles Darwin and featured a cake in the shape of a Galapagos Island turtle.

(It was red velvet on the inside.)

Pretty cool.

Birthday cake with space monkey

When I asked my brother what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday, he said, “A very, very large strawberry cake. I want the icing to have little blue round things in it and I want one big round thing in the center. I’d like a man fishing, a race car and a poet on top and it would be nice if there could be little planets and stuff on the side.”

“Or,” he said, “just write 1-800-CALL-JENNY on the side and put that woman on top. You know the one who had that show about the lingerie company?”

“Kirstie Alley?” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, “or if all that’s too hard, just make sure there’s one big blue round thing on it and make sure the cake itself is very, very large.”

So, I made a strawberry cake. It's not "very very large" but it is three layers and it has chocolate ganache on top, which should count for something. Tracy and I shopped together for the cake toppers. We found a guy fishing, and some space-related stuff, and blue round thing. I chose the Neptune because it just reminded me of something my brother would like, and Tracy chose the rest of the stuff as an homage to Chad's paintings.  He also colored-in a race car as a table decoration. Oh we are pretty pleased with how it all turned out.

I love birthdays

October brings in a wonderful season of birthdays around here. Mandy's was at the end of September, Alexa had one at the beginning of the month. My brother's was on Wednesday, and yesterday it was my niece Emme and  Anessa and Carla. 

I know there are others, too, so if I've left you off this list, it's not because you're not in my heart. I celebrate each one of you, my fine, fabulous, fall-birthed people and raise a Lindt Lindor Truffle in your honor.

A weekend with the force

It's been a strange sort of weekend around here - one where things happen and time passes but it seems like there's no time, or that everything is happening quickly.
On Saturday, I did my first Reiki healing session for another person and I was honored that the other person was my own beloved. It was a pleasant, relaxing experience for both of us and I'm looking forward to continuing a practice of healing with him. (Maybe you can convince him to guest blog and tell you about it.) Other than that, it seems the whole day was consumed with cake baking and birthday partying. That can't be true, but if I did something else, I can't remember what it was.
Tracy and I spent this morning with the girls, then we came home and dealt with flood-damaged belongings for a couple of hours. This involved sorting through wet, ruined, mildewed things, piling them into garbage bags and carrying the bags up the rickety basement steps (I didn't do that part). When we'd had enough of that, Tracy helped me do my taxes (I only had a couple of small breakdowns), I completed some other required tasks, and here we are. Day over.
Of course all there is to it is never really all there is to it.
This weekend has also been punctuated by the original Star Wars trilogy - A New Hope on Friday night, The Empire Strikes Back last night, Return of the Jedi tonight. (My method of watching Star Wars is to ask Tracy a lot of questions - "Who is the Emperor? That face that sometimes talks to Darth Vader?", "Why does Darth Vader wear the mask?", "How did Luke and Leia get separated in the first place?", "Did that look like Fraggle Rock to you?", "Were the Star Wars movies based on books or are the books based on the movies?", "How much of the Star Wars movies do you think George Lucas had in his head before he made the first one?", "Do all Jedis disappear like that when they die, or just masters?","Did that green woman get eaten?", "What did Yoda just say?" That sort of thing.)
Even though I don't particularly like movies about wars and space and all that good vs. evil jazz, I've found that I like watching these because they're tied to my childhood in a particular way and I like revisiting that territory, especially with Tracy (perhaps exclusively with Tracy) and that realization leads me to the other thing about this weekend.
Because he knows I'm working on my big genealogy project (I want to know everything about everyone I'm related to in all directions of time), my dad let me borrow his mother's family bible for a few days so that can scan things and copy lists of names and dates. My grandmother has kept the family record in this bible - births, deaths, marriages. It's filled with newspaper clippings, photographs, florist's cards - history.

It's an incredible thing to turn the pages and know there's so much information there and mostly information that I can't see, but can only feel. I'm grateful to have a few days with it and honor my connection to the flow of time.

Birthday cakery

Thursday was my mom's birthday, so we had dinner for her tonight at my grandmother's house. It was a big delicious dinner comprised of a variety of foods including radish roses, cole slaw, baked ziti and biscuits. I made German Chocolate Cake and although there were moments when I worried about (it looked a little floppy coming out of the oven) it turned out fine.

I always assumed that German Chocolate Cake was somehow German, but that turns out not to be the case at all. A man named Sam German created a chocolate baking bar for Baker's Chocolate Company in 1852 and it was named in his honor. As often happens with 's, that part was dropped somewhere along the way. It was a Texas newspaper that first published a recipe for the cake in 1957.
Yes, sometimes I research cake.

Carrot cake

Since today is Tracy’s actual birthday, we're having dinner at my parents' house and I made his favorite carrot cake. This is a really dense, moist cake. If carrot cake is your thing, I'm pretty sure you'll like this one. You could put nuts in it, too, but why would you do that? I did give in and put a few around the edge.

Carrot Cake

6 cups grated carrots
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup golden raisins
splash rum
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup crushed pineapple, drained
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons ground cinnamon

In a small bowl, drain pineapple juice, add a dash of rum, pour in raisins.

In a medium bowl, combine grated carrots and brown sugar. Set aside for 60 minutes, then stir in raisins.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour two 10 inch cake pans.

In a large bowl, beat eggs until light. Gradually beat in the white sugar, oil and vanilla. Stir in the pineapple. Combine the flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon, stir into the wet mixture until absorbed. Finally stir in the carrot mixture, straining out the liquid as you go. Pour evenly into the prepared pans.

Bake for 45 to 50 minutes in the preheated oven, until cake tests done with a toothpick. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pan. When completely cooled, frost with cream cheese frosting.

(3 - 8” rounds instead of the recommended 2 - 10” rounds will shorten the bake time to about 30-45 mins.)

Cream Cheese Frosting

2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup butter, softened
2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a medium bowl, cream together the cream cheese and butter. Mix in the vanilla, then gradually stir in the confectioners' sugar. Store in the refrigerator after use.

Walter Egan rocked Tracy's birthday

The reason for my unusual silence these past few days is that I've been completely and utterly preoccupied. Tracy turns 40 next Saturday and pretty much since his birthday last year, I've known what I wanted to do for him this year. When Mandy was here after Christmas, I told her my idea and she thought it was feasible. She was so into the idea, in fact, she went straight home and started up negotiations. Since then, we've been hatching the plan and watching it grow. In January, I let Tracy's brother and sister in on the planning and these last few days, covert operations have really heated up with lots of secret rendezvous and new surprises and twists and turns coming in daily.
You may recall that Tracy is a huge Walter Egan fan. It was his sister who introduced him and his brother to Walter's music when Tracy was ten. They got to go backstage and meet Walter and they've loved him ever since. When we were first dating, Tracy and I rode around in his car and listened to Walter's music and I, too, became a fan. The music has significance to Tracy and his siblings and to me and Tracy. About four years ago, Tracy and I drove to Nashville to see Walter play and Tracy was so happy. It just so happens that Mandy, who lives in Nashville, knows Walter and thus is in possession of his e-mail address...
So for Tracy's birthday this year, I planned a private Walter Egan concert.

Tracy's sister graciously offered her house as the venue and she made the food which included three stellar cakes. Mandy brought guitar-shaped chocolates from Nashville. Balloons were tied to the banister.
Tracy is not really a party guy - so my dream was always to keep the festivities intimate. I only invited family and his closest friends. Tracy's niece, Lindsay, flew in from Florida and a dear family member, John, flew in from Oregon.
The event went off as scheduled on Saturday night (Walter wasn't available on Tracy's actual birthday) and it was absolutely fantastic. It was - in all seriousness - awesome.

It's the boy's birthday

Today is Woody's third birthday.

It was three years ago that we drove to Russell Springs, put him in a box and brought him home.

It was the best thing we ever did.
We sang to him today and gave him a biscuit (not a dog biscuit, an actual biscuit). Dog partying will commence this weekend.

*Update* Woody's birthday part has been cancelled due to predicted ice and snow. I guess it's not spring just yet.

Bruised, but happy

Several years ago, my brother got into my car (which had some glitter embedded in the grey upholstery, and a few other things going on) and said, “It looks like a fairy blew up in here.”
I thought of that this morning as I glanced around the house before leaving for work. Rose petals and chocolate and hearts and wrapping paper pieces were everywhere. Somebody really needs to clean all that up (and by “clean-up,” I do not mean “eat all the chocolate with reckless abandon,” which is probably what will happen since the somebody is me.)

My birthday weekend festivities wrapped up yesterday with a C.R.A.B.S. Extended pottery painting party.

I was so happy to see each and every person walk through the door (so happy, I can’t even tell you), but I must confess that I was so focused on painting my dang platter I hardly even got to talk to anyone. I hope everyone had as much fun painting as I did. I think there is something cool and almost magical – definitely something life giving – that happens when people are creative together, and I grooved on that energy yesterday.

Afterwards, I stole a few moments with Anessa by hitching a ride home with her, then promptly fell head-first out of her Jeep on to the sidewalk. Yes, it was very graceful. Tracy said I looked like a sack of potatoes hitting the ground. I didn’t actually hit my head, and I was happy that except for a little bruising and banging, I didn’t break anything or seriously hurt myself.
I did feel weird all day today, though. My vision isn’t blurry, but I'm a little out of focus in general. I don’t think you can get a concussion if you don’t hit your head – but if you can, then I might have one. The inside of my skull feels not-so-good, the way I imagine it might feel if a giant picked me up and shook me.
I know what you’re thinking – that I should be sharing this information with a medical professional. Well, I tried to call a nurse today, but she wasn’t in.
Besides, I did some reading about concussions (which I probably don't have, since I didn’t hit my head) and there’s really not much you can do about them except wait to feel better.
I actually do feel better compared with how I felt this morning, so I’m sure I’m on the mend.
I took a sweet orange and patchouli-scented shower and now I'm in the bed (in bed by 8 o'clock is my favorite thing) with the salt lamp on and the ylang-ylang burning.

Sacred life: Family dinner

Tracy and I ran errands this morning (including dropping Woody off at the groomer) and had lunch at the Mouse Trap then I came home and took a salt lamp rest (because I can't really take naps) then we went over to my parents' house.
Before we went, I was super tired, but when we got there, the house was so pretty and there were tulips and pink candles on the table and then my brother's family arrived and the nieces were both dressed in their finest and Ava ran in and handed me a present with a big smile on her face.
My mom made an array of my favorite foods - including beets and ambrosia salad (yes, a lot of my favorite foods include sugar) and we had such a nice time.

After dinner, the girls and went home but Tracy and I stayed for a while and talked with my parents and grandmother. It was a nice time, a really good nice time. We talked about the usual sorts of strange and crazy things that we always talk about ranging from strippers to Native American burial grounds to Pauline's to what would happen to New York City if humans suddenly ceased to exist.
I love that I am from the family I'm from, and I love that my brother and I both found partners who are truly full-fledged members of my family and embrace it with all of its beautiful weirdness.

So that was how I connected with spirit today - by hanging around with my people and accepting the love that goes into one of these birthday celebrations that my parents throw for us.
It's not a bad way to get grounded.

This post is a day early for Sacred Sunday, but it's close.

39

Tracy and I stayed up late on Thursday night. We did watch Say Anything and that sparked conversations that went on until the wee hours while Woody smacked his mouth and rustled and sighed and wished that we would just be quiet before he finally gave up and fell asleep.
So I was tired yesterday and walked around with a dirty-hair pony tail, even though it was my birthday, and really thought quite a lot about just coming home and going to bed, but that’s not what I did.
I changed clothes instead and we went out to dinner at Natasha’s.

It was a lovely meal and a good place to be. We had a view of Main Street as the sun went down and sat beneath my favorite stained glass.

All day I was showered with gifts and surprises and cards and gestures and even a singing telegram. (Your personal thank you's are coming and heartfelt, but now please accept this group thank you and know how deeply it touches me -- all of the kind wishes.)
Back at home, Tracy gave me his presents - a very cool wooden village on garden stakes for the yard and a salt lamp.

A salt lamp, I'm so happy to finally have one. As I type, it sits glowing beside me, releasing negative ions into the air, contributing to my well being.
I tried to watch Sixteen Candles with him last night, but I feel asleep at the dance -- right about the time the freshman boys were lined up to see the female underwear.
This morning, I'm still tired, but Woody has an appointment with some nail clippers and a bottle of shampoo, I have cupcakes to buy, and tonight the celebrations will continue at my parents' house.
I'm grateful for my life and all of you who are in it.