John and Yoko, amaryliss bulb & hunkering down

Last Wednesday, the 5th, was Maya's birthday. Happy birthday, Maya, big number 26! I could reminisce about how many hours I was in labor, etc, but after 26 years I guess it's time to let that go. She's totally worth the many hours of excruciatingly painful labor.

Poor girl, though, it was a less-than-glamorous celebration that night. She got stuck in an important meeting at work ("How important?" we asked) just when we were supposed to meet for dinner at her favorite Thai restaurant. When she finally got there, it was raining so hard she couldn't see that she was stepping out of her car right into a huge puddle, so that one shoe, sock and lower pant leg were soaked. Then, welcome to dinner with a tired and cranky baby boy named Ben, who was not particularly interested in sitting sweetly in a highchair. Basically my mom, Courtney, Eder, Maya and I shoveled down our pad thai and hit the road, before Ben totally melted down.

But luckily there's a happy ending to the story. Saturday evening we all met at Maya and Eder's for birthday cake and ice cream. Then Aaron, Courtney, Mom and I took Benny off to look at Christmas lights and stay the night at our house, while Maya and Eder went out with their friends to party. The End.

December 8th was Courtney's brother Steve's birthday. Happy birthday, Steve! (Steve has a little bitty grandbaby living with him, so his birthday may have been hijacked by a baby too.) But it was also the 28th anniversary of John Lennon's death. Only this year did I learn that the FBI had hounded John Lennon towards the end his life, threatening him with deportation, because of his anti-war activism.

Being exactly the right age to be a Beatlemaniac, my girlfriends and I each had a Beatle that was our favorite, and mine was John. I was always crazy about him. But in December of 1980 I was on a slightly different planet (Skykomish, WA) and had limited contact with the outside world and so John's death didn't have the impact on me it might have at another time. Now it seems like an incredible loss.




Speaking of remembrances, my sis sent this beautiful amaryliss to Courtney after his dad died. It is making quite the show in our kitchen these days.




It is the season when, of course, Courtney becomes quite animal-like: busy beaver, squirreling away wood--you get the picture. Anyway, it is a wondrous thing. Courtney keeps the hearth fire burning, bakes the squashes he grew in our garden, hangs the laundry on the clothesline by the wood stove to keep humidity in the house. It all makes our little scene really work well for us.




As soon as we moved to Corvallis we joined the Hour Exchange, the local currency system, which also turns out to be a community. Through the Hour Exchange Courtney met someone who cuts wood, and so....TAAA DAAA! A beautiful cord of maple delivered to our doorstep, and artfully stacked by Courtney.




The plants have all come indoors for the winter now. So much so that we had to give away our sofa to make room for the giant jade trees we brought from California. Anyway, we had bought a two-person bean bag chair (called a love sack) at a garage sale and didn't really have room for it and a sofa. So now we have the papasan on one side of the wood stove and the love sack on the other. Suffice to say that it is deadly if you sit in that bean bag when you are tired--there is no getting up. From the bean bag I can watch Courtney cooking dinner (God bless him!) and the geese flying overhead (as seen from our skylight in the kitchen or through the sliding glass door) and the fire roaring in the stove. And I'm really in heaven when you add my laptop to that picture. What a life.




No, this is not the cover of a famous cookbook. This is Courtney holding a bowl of his fabulous chicken soup, made with squash and parsley from the garden. I couldn't resist a shot of these vivid colors and great presentation. You too could enjoy such delicacies if you come to visit.

Happy winter, and I hope all who are reading this are enjoying good health and great happiness,

Valori