Thursday things

I took the kids to the local zoo yesterday.  I thought we might see some energetic critters as a storm system moved our way.  We were rewarded with wolves who were eager to commune.

 

Hacking and updating our tired old spaces.  These three new pieces in the bathroom are all from Ikea.  The large bath rug I bought at Amazon started unraveling after the second wash.  That's being returned, it was really nice and expensive.  A shame.

We're still not sure about the new slipcover.  We thought it was going to be padded, but it is not.  It is a 75/25 cotton/poly blend and feels like a stiff linen or hemp (which I don't mind).  Unfortunately, as you can see, it has that easy-to-wrinkle linen quality, too.  It is, also, dry clean only.  And, it was expensive.

 

Two of our older cushion covers are still drying.  I spent an hour watching John Carter and plucking off very small feathers from the inside of these covers.

 

The landlord finally sent over a contractor to patch up the hole in the ceiling.  It needs a coat of paint, but we went ahead and set the desk up in there.

 

Things are coming together nicely in the kids' room...till you get to the pile of stuff with nowhere to go.  We are keeping the red dresser (from my childhood) for now, as well as, the blue egg chair.  But all those other bins/containers need spaces to fit onto somehow somewhere...or there will need to be more vetting of stuff.  Sigh.

Peace and love.

Mellow monday

A quiet and mellow, lovely day.  Cap is up at the university doing an all day workshop for educators who are taking a professional day on the MLK holiday.  The kids, dog and I have been enjoying a peaceful and productive morning at home.

I made this frittata again.  It is so easy and tasty.  The Italian sausage our farmer's market meat guy makes is so incredibly flavorful and well seasoned that the frittata, with its ten eggs and single sweet potato requires no further seasoning!

If Gem spies spare lemon while I am cooking, he has taken to making strawberry lemonade.  I can appreciate making one thing you love over and over again and perfecting the craft.  The extent of my cooking well into adulthood was my excellent scrambled eggs.  The adorable meter went off the charts yesterday when he made his drink a little paper umbrella, to boot.

My dinner plate last night.  Sausage-sweet potato frittata, zucchini noodles aglio et olio, roasted broccoli and a dollop of baba ganoush.  So, so good.  

(I have been keeping close track of our spending this month and our grocery bill is really high.  Way over the budget I set for groceries a year or two ago.  Now that I have a good flow going for meal planning, shopping and cooking, it is time to make adjustments and generate new protocols to shrink that line item by, gulp, 40% or so.  Alternately, I can look at other categories of spending to see if there is trimming to be done.  Lastly, the kids are bigger and that is an adjustment I hadn't calculated for, but need to...food and clothing budget going up!)

He's going home tonight.  It is always really nice to have him around.

Peace and love.

P.S.  A mellow poppy song to go with the day...

Oakland: the flora and the fauna

 Leo.

 Sophie.

 Leona Canyon Creek.

Josephine Street, Berkeley.

 Paris.

 view from Skyline trail.

 Sophie.

 Leo.

 wild iris.

50th Avenue, Maxwell Park.

The whirring of lovely humming bird wings were heard daily out my window.  You'll have to use your imagination for that, though.

Perhaps it is jet lag fatigue, perhaps it is simply true.  While many of my pics looked good on Instagram, at home in iPhoto they leave something to be desired.  Over the next couple of months I will consider upgrading to an iPhone for the better camera or resign myself to lugging around my Sony Cybershot (which is, itself, due for an upgrade within a year, I think).

In the meantime, enjoy these, the best of the flora and fauna lot.  I've decided to devote a separate post to the trees of Muir Woods.  I couldn't do justice to them with even the best of cameras.  But, I love them and took a bunch of shots.

Happy Saturday.  Peace and love.

Moving right along

Time is so illuminating.  That's one of the reasons why being able to just be without worry and constantly trying to figure it all out is the way to live.  In balance, with flow, at optimal health.

• turns out we can operate the GPS in our car without Entune.  glad my annoyance didn't mutate into stress on that one.

• the bookshop website has been updated and now explains things pretty well.  being Aquarian, I am often ahead of the curve...I am learning being zen is a key partner quality to embody.

• my life was changed when our goddaughter was born fourteen years ago.  but time and technology (Google+ is proving itself useless in this one important way) have granted me new opportunities to learn from and about her.  love.

• Cap's time away is going by fast, so far.  but the space that is opened up by having one less person here is significant.  this three-day weekend is going to see some deep cleaning.

• speaking of cleaning.  it is no secret I do not like to clean.  but I like a clean space.  how I carry these two opposites peacefully is a mystery.  and deep down inside it's not peaceful.  the tar-like mess of stress bubbles up during PMS more often than not.  how do other people live with this?  how do they deal with it?

It's going to be a quiet-ish day.  After lunch I'm dropping the kids off and going food shopping.  Will fight the urge to buy tons of cleaning "product".  It's going up to 85º today and the humidity will be up about there, too.  Sag's been studying dolphins and orcas.  He read about Free Willy in the course of his research and wants to watch it.  Maybe we'll do that today, too.

Peace and love and orcas.

 

Fun in the sun

We got together with homeschooling friends at the zoo today.  Bridget spotted this hornet's nest.  I find these so beautiful.

 

The boys were eager to sit on the elephant sculpture.  They have fond memories of sitting on this guy every time we visit.

Here they are on the elephant in January of 2010 when we brought Vanessa to the zoo.

Another favorite is the zoo train.  It was fun being there with a crew of friends.

None of my photos did this justice.  There were eight kids running and jumping an intricate pattern of momentum and balance, crowing heartily.  The leopard was tucked way away in a far corner of its habitat...so no animals were harmed during this spontaneous burst of "out" energy :-)

Cute face, ginormous claws...a red panda.

Angela and M mulling over the boy vs. girl markings of their feathered friend.

We spent an unexpected and wonderful long time in the new aviary.

They were so happy and deeply engaged and really stuck to figuring out how to invite the birds to, and keep them on, their "bird sticks".

What a great day.  Thanks, Shannon!