shining egg

w.i.p.

remember wordplay? time is growing short on our first go-round; the gossamer project is due to be finished on may 15, which is nine days from today.

it's been tricky, this one. it's the first one. and the word - gossamer - it's so beautiful and delicate and evocative all on its own. what could i possibly add to the experience of this word? but i've been thinking and brainstorming and writing page after page of notes.

yesterday i spent some time playing with all of my notes and ideas. i wish i could show you! but this peek is all i can spare until next week. there are some elements from yesterday's work that i'm loving, that i'm certain will end up in the final piece. and there are other things that i'll be playing with and adjusting over the next nine days.

we'll all three (erin and tracy and i) be sharing our first-round projects on (or around?) may 15. i'm looking forward to that - to sharing my creation, and to seeing how erin and tracy have interpreted gossamer. i'll be sharing my process then, too. and revealing the second word at the same time.

i've got a lot of work to do in the next nine days. but this project, it's fun!

coconut cupcakes are yummy

today is my mother's birthday. and also her mother's birthday.

can you imagine!? my mother was born on her mother's 23rd birthday. what a gift.

coconut cake is their favorite. (convenient that they have the same favorite, isn't it?) i've been making the same coconut cake recipe for a few years now, and though i love the cake, i wasn't crazy about the seven-minute-frosting. so today i tried something new: a coconut-cream cheese frosting. it's a bit thinner than i had imagined - not thin enough to be a glaze, but a wee bit thinner than a traditional frosting - but it's creamy and shiny and absolutely delicious. d.e.l.i.c.i.o.u.s.

i'll tell you how i made it. but only if you promise not to say a single word about my arteries. it's frosting, after all. and it's two birthdays rolled into one. ok? ok.

coconut-cream cheese frosting - makes more than enough to frost 18 cupcakes
(adapted from this recipe)

1 8-ounce block of cream cheese, at room temperature
1/2 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
1.5-2 cups confectioners sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened coconut milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

beat the cream cheese and butter together until smooth.
add all but 1/2 cup of the confectioners sugar and beat until smooth.
add the coconut milk and vanilla and the remaining confectioners sugar.
beat until smooth. (there's a pattern here, you see?)
frost the cupcakes, trying not to eat as much of the frosting as i did along the way.
and enjoy.

happy birthday mom and gramz. i'm proud (and also feeling pretty lucky) to be your daughter and granddaughter. i'm wishing you love and joy - and most of all, peace - in the coming year.

bits of the islands (and the end of the vacation pictures, ok?)

have i bored you to tears all week with these vacation pictures? i'm through now, for the most part. one or two might trickle out here and there over the coming weeks. but really, this is it.

today's pictures are from the 2 islands we visited. st. thomas and st. maarten.

you might remember that i love the beach in a sort-of-insane way, so these two stops were some of the best parts of the trip for me. the water was as blue as it appears in these photos. really. the sand was soft as powder. the ocean was the absolute perfect temperature. the air was hot. the sun was shining. (we have few burned shoulders to prove it. oops.) the people were friendly. perfection.

st. maarten was my favorite. oh my, how i'd like to go back there for a week. (or a month. are you reading this, dave?) perhaps the very best beach i've ever been to in my life was in a tiny town on the french side of the island. the beach was almost empty (we changed into our suits right there on the sand. it was that empty.), and the shoreline was filled with seaglass. i get almost giddy typing those words. i mean, can you imagine my glee!? to find this glorious deserted beach covered with sea glass? we were piggy about it, too. stuffing our pockets and our shoes with (mostly) green bits of polished happiness. (i'll share those treasures next week.)

those two island days were glorious. we swam, we sunned, we walked and explored and collected and ate and walked some more and swam some more. we enjoyed the local flavor, we saw a tourist spot or two. we remembered how much we love to travel, to explore new places. we discovered that our children can walk - really walk - through a town or a city or a beach; that they're suddenly big enough to be fun to travel with in a new and different sort of way. we had fun. so much fun.

and then we got back on the great big boat and sailed home. there's so much more of the trip that i wish i could capture in words. i've tried, but i can't. a blur of memories and photographs and a few short sentences to sum up such an adventure doesn't seem fair. and, on the other hand, it seems just the right way to tie up a whirlwind, you know? so that's it, then. it was a beautiful blur. a beautiful, beautiful blur.

lines, on and around deck 4

off to paint today. it's been four weeks since i've been in the painting studio. and i always wonder, after a break like that - will my groove be there waiting for me, packed away with my paints and brushes and my smock that used to be my fathers pink dress shirt? or will i struggle this morning, stumbling along as penance for my absence from the easel?

either way, i'm awfully excited. not only to have brushes in hand, but because i feel the window paintings winding down. i'm eager to see the end of that obsession - not that i haven't loved it! oh, i have loved it dearly, but i'm looking forward to finding out what will grip me next. today, i think, more windows. and then, we'll see.

the sun is shining here. the air is crisp. all things are possible this thursday.

circles on deck (and a snippet of conversation from my everyday life)

driving to gymnastics on tuesday afternoon, alone in the car with l. (age 5), we happened upon a fire truck and an ambulance and a car that had crashed into the side of the road.

l: what happened?

me: looks like that car crashed.

l: good thing it wasn't us.

me: yes, good thing it wasn't us.

l: because i'm not wearing such nice shoes.

of course.

sigh.

we're home. thoroughly spoiled by seven days of luxury. refreshed. a bit behind on the household management. and thrilled to have returned to the thick of the springtime - green grass, leaves on trees, flowers in bloom.

mostly pictures this week while i wobble through the re-entry period that follows any good vacation. i wish i had made journal entries just like andrea's so that i could share a taste of my days at sea. but alas, i wrote nothing during those seven days. not a word. i was too busy staring out at the ocean and dreaming. so my photos will have to suffice.

more tomorrow.

bloom

a peek at my favorite dogwood tree over the last eight days.

sweet nothings

well then. my feet are still hovering a good few inches above the earth as i whiz around trying to keep all of my balls in the air. but the pace has slowed just a bit, and i'm dropping in here because i miss this space. i've noticed, these last days, as i'm racing here and there, that i'm so very aware of the beauty, the small moments of joy, the bright spots in each day (which have been sometimes buried deep in between layers of tissues and fever remedies and loads and loads of laundry). and i've missed sharing those moments here, with you.

since i last was here, we've had no less than eight separate infections/viruses/illnesses in our home. but it looks like we're on the mend now, finally. and i'm planning a little sage-burning ceremony, just to be sure.

so there's been lots of tending, and also packing. we're leaving on sunday for a big family trip: to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary, my in-laws are taking the whole family on a cruise. i will admit to being ambivalent about spending seven days on a gigantic ship-of-excess, but i'm putting my hesitations aside now and plowing forward with the fun. it will be a great gift to spend a week with family, in the sunshine (hopefully there will be plenty of sunshine!), in a place where there are no plans to be made, no worries to be had. flip flops and bathing suits and shorts? knitting and embroidery and books? make-your-own-dessert-bar? all good.

but before we leave, some important things will happen here at home.

saturday evening marks the start of the passover holiday. we'll celebrate the start of the holiday on saturday night at my mom's house, with a huge festival meal that includes numerous rituals and ritual foods (and plenty of delicious foods that are traditional but have nothing to do with the ritual). it's wonderful, this holiday. a celebration of freedom - literally, a celebration of the freedom of the israelite people from slavery in egypt. but at our festival table, we take that celebration two steps farther, celebrating the freedom of all people who have ever been enslaved, and also celebrating our own individual freedom from whatever it is that enslaves us - our obsessions, our worries, our fears. there is so much there, and i'd love to write about the holiday all week long. but, alas, i'll be at sea. maybe next year.

so in honor of the start of the holiday, and because this recipe is too good to keep to myself, i share with you a most delicious passover treat. really, it's delicious. whether or not you celebrate passover, you can't go wrong with this one. (in fact, i've heard that it can be done with saltine crackers. but i've never tried.)

matzah brittle

line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil and preheat your oven to 375.

cover your cookie sheet with a single layer of matzah (any kind of matzah will do). it's ok to have some overlap or some gaps.

in a pot on the stovetop, combine 2 sticks of butter and 1 cup of brown sugar. bring the mixture to a boil and boil, stirring, for 3 minutes.

remove the pot from the heat and pour the yummy sugar-butter mixture over the matzah, spreading the mixture around so that it covers all corners of the pan. (really, this is my favorite part. i could skip the chocolate altogether and just have the matzah covered with this toffee-type mixture. so make sure you get it all over.)

put the baking sheet in the oven for 5-7 minutes. i usually do 6 minutes. but i check it after 5. because you don't want it to burn.

when you remove the pan from the oven, the mixture will be bubbling and gloriously golden and delicious looking. dump a bag of chocolate chips over the mixture and let it sit for 5 minutes. (today i used milk chocolate and bittersweet chocolate. you could use anything. my friend julie was going to use white chocolate in piping bags drizzled over the dark chocolate. yum. and beautiful.)

after the chocolate sits on the hot matzah for 5 minutes, spread the chocolate around to cover the whole pan. (or leave some sections free of chocolate if you're like me and prefer the toffee.)

then sprinkle with crushed nuts of your choice. or not. (my helpers weren't too excited about the nuts. so they're localized. one small section on each pan. that's how it's gonna be.) and place the pan in the fridge for 1 hour. (or in the freezer for 30 minutes if you can't wait an hour. like me.)

remove from fridge, break into pieces, and (gobble, gobble, gobble) enjoy.

i'll be back here before we leave. tomorrow, maybe. or saturday. or both.

over and out

another round of illness. a house in a state of disarray. a garden in a state of greater disarray. an enormous second grade project. the upcoming arrival of a grandfather for a brief - and much appreciated - visit. a big birthday, a big holiday, and a big trip coming up very quickly.

i'm going to take some time away from the blog to regroup. i'll be back, but not until i've got two feet on the ground. looking forward...

bits of unfinished business (or 27 things on my mind at 2am)

been home with a sick boy for the last two days. a fever yesterday, and a mending day today. i'm hopeful that he's back to himself now. but i'm a wee bit stir crazy.

also, i've missed the last two thursdays in the painting studio. missed another creative date on tuesday morning. there's not been much cooking or baking lately, between the house and the finger. i haven't created anything for days, which is making me itchy. and i haven't been to yoga either.

all in all, a bad combination.

that, and d. is working around the clock this week, there was a game of musical beds in my house in the wee hours of this morning, and somebody gave my daughter a copy of the classified-guide-to-every-single-one-of-my-buttons (and helped her to study it).

phew. it's been a week already.

so, in an effort to purge myself of the bits and bobs running through my mind last night during the aforementioned game of musical beds, here's just a smattering. in no particular order.

* i've become exceptionally lazy lately about responding to your comments. i mean, it's not as though there hasn't been a lot going on here. and the nine-finger-thing has put a bit of a damper on my typing. but still. i've always responded to every comment. for me, it's a really important part of blogging. it's a conversation, after all. and we're not conversing, really, if i'm not responding to you. i'm sorry about that. i'll be resuming proper shining-egg-comment-responding-behavior shortly.

* the stitches did come out on monday. it wasn't bad, but the finger is still really yucky. i'll spare you the gory details.

* for the record, the picture of "the scene" of my finger injury was taken after we returned home from the hospital. not before. (i'm crazy, but not that crazy. though even my mother wondered how i managed to take the picture!)

* to say that i am grateful for your feedback on my paintings is an understatement. it's exciting and encouraging to me that you're enjoying them. i've been thinking, a good bit, about where i'll be going with them. i've got no answers yet, but i will.

* your enthusiasm about wordplay is energizing. really, your excitement makes the whole project even sweeter, if that's possible. i forgot to mention yesterday that tracy designed our amazing logo. and she made these super cool wordplay tokens. aren't they fantastic? i've been dreaming about gossamer, by the way. in my waking hours, i mean.

* we painted the new creative-space-to-be bright white. and i'm really happy with it. it will be awhile until it's ready to move into. and it won't be all mine, this room. i'll be sharing with d. and the kids. but we've agreed that i'll be the landlord and they'll be leasing space from me. so i'm calling the shots in there!

i think that's it. phew, that's better. there might be more, later. but that's it for now.

i do know, by the way, that this is just a little moment in time and that it will soon pass. honestly, i feel rotten complaining about anything; my life is so full of blessings. i try to remember to take time every day to be grateful for those blessings, and that helps me to keep all of this in perspective. it also helps me to remember that with some sleep, a chunk of time spent with a paintbrush in my hand, a few moments alone in my house, maybe a loaf of bread, a walk, and two or three sun salutations, everything will be righted once again. i do know that. i know it. i do. thanks for listening to me say it anyway.