Ding dong

Sagrada Familia, 2005

Only my doorbell is more like "Ding dong ding DONG, dong ding DING DONG."

At 4 this morning I was awakened from a really sound sleep all snuggled in my flannel sheets to this. I stumbled out of bed, grabbed my bathrobe and headed to the door and just as I got to the window to peek out, he did it AGAIN.

In the brief moment before I opened the door, it flashed through my mind that the story I'd been writing for my writing group was coming true. And maybe, just maybe, I shouldn't open the door.

But I did.

He wasn't wielding an axe or a chainsaw and was instantly apologetic when he saw me and knew he was at the wrong house. Apologizing repeatedly, he went down the steps and headed in the direction I pointed.

I hope he found the house he was looking for, and that someone there was awake and expecting a friendly ding dong.

Giving thanks

Trencadis tile bench at Parc Güell, Barcelona

It's gloomy and gray and cold and drizzly outside. But soon the pie-baking will resume and the house will fill with the warm and spicy smells of apple and pumpkin, vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg ...

Last night, I relinquished the making of DJ's chocolate pie to Lizz. I hovered and coached while she made the most beautiful, perfect pie crusts. I was the sous chef, fetching ingredients and utensils and washing dishes while she reminded me that my job was to lead by encouragement and example.

Even though I'm trying to get used to being the only human in this house most of the time, it's so easy and right to fall into our old routines when the college kid comes home. Earlier in the day, when I got home from work, it wasn't even a surprise to find a girl-sized lump huddled in my bed. She said she'd first gone in there to snuggle with Claudette and then fell asleep. I climbed in and a myriad of topics wove in and out of our dialogue as she texted back and forth with a friend and I checked on the progress of an artist back at the office finishing up a project we had to get out last night. Dinner was veggie pizza eaten while I proofread and Lizz checked e-mail, asking every now and then, "Are you done yet?"

When the work was done, we shoved pizza boxes and computers out of the way to make room for a few rounds of Skip-Bo, procrastinating on starting the pie project. Speaking of procrastination and pie ... I'd better share some thankful thoughts so I can go get the master baker out of bed and we can get back to work!

I am thankful for my brilliant, beautiful, loving daughter. I'm thankful for her presence in my life and for the person she is and the gifts she shares with so many.

I cannot think back on this year without feeling extreme gratitude for my dear sister and brother-in-law, who adopted me for two whole months while I recovered from my broken ankle.

I am thankful for all of my family and friends - near and far.

I am thankful for quiet moments to enjoy strong, hot coffee with a stripey cat purring under my elbow while I bask in the blessings of a generous, loving God.

Flannel sheets. Can I be thankful for flannel sheets? And monkey pants?

Rain. And sun. And the farmers who make growing our food their livelihood. I'm thankful for them.

I'm thankful for pie. That I got the pie-making gene from my grandmothers and seem to have passed it to my daughter. It's our traditional contribution to the Thanksgiving feast, and we take it seriously.

So with all of this talk of pie, you'd think I'd embellish today's post with a picture of, well, pie, right? Yes, that would make sense. But I chose the trencadis tile bench because the beautiful mosaic of broken tiles reminded me that there is beauty and there are blessings even in the broken parts of our lives. I know today is not a happy day of feasting and family fun for everyone. There is hunger. And sickness. And loneliness. My prayer for today: that our hearts will overflow with gratitude that touches and transforms all within our reach. Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm thankful for ...

Last year, I asked my readers to share their thankful thoughts and I posted a list on Thanksgiving morning. I think that's a good tradition to continue!

So tune in here tomorrow, where we'll be thankful together. Shall we say around 9:30 a.m.?

Today I'm especially thankful for shortened work days and long holiday weekends ...

P.S. In looking back at the posts of that Thanksgiving week, I'm reminded that I never delivered on the pie award to Annnonymous. Hint: Now might be a good time to collect on that pie. I'll be baking tonight and most of tomorrow before heading over to my sister's for turkey in the late afternoon.

OMG. LMAO. TGIF. TTFN.

Wish I was here

It's only Day 12 and I know I'm boring y'all stiff. Sorry. I've been suffering from major brain depletion.

So, here are a few links from my Twitter feed to keep you occupied.

By the way, Roger Ebert seems to tweet about every 10 minutes. How in the world does he have time to watch movies, let alone write reviews? I wonder if he has a guest tweeter. And I wanted to link to the photo in need of caption from 10/23 but the link appears to be broken. Ugh. So no Roger Ebert links. But trust me: He tweets all. the. time.

Making Perfect Pies
Eco-Friendly Cigarettes
World's Weirdest Wines
More Hyperboleandahalf Craziness

Plus, not on Twitter, but still very amusing and worth a look: The Hilarious Goat Farm Story (LMAO)

TGIF

126+ reasons to procrastinate

I've given up on sorting the book list. Alphabetically is the best I can do ... because I wanted to post it sometime tonight. I thought about pulling out the children's books. And the cookbooks. And the Oxford Unabridged Dictionary.

But really I love the mix of titles. The range of interests my friends have. You'll see some duplicates with my list. Some of my friends included the author's names. I thought that was helpful so I left them in. 

Of this list of 126 books/series I think I counted about 33 that I've read.

So my next reads? Hmmm. 

Interpreter of Maladies and Cellist of Sarajevo for sure. And I guess I'd better read the other two Stieg Larsson books since I finished Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Then we'll just have to see.

1. 1984
2. 9 Stories
3. A Cure For Gravity (Joe Jackson)
4. A Thousand Acres (Jane Smiley)
5. Advise and Consent (Allen Drury)
6. All Quiet on the Western Front
7. All The President's Men (Carl Bernstein & Bob Woodward)
8. Amityville Horror
9. Andersonville
10. Anne of Green Gables x 2
11. Another Roadside Attraction (Tom Robbins)
12. Aunt Dimity Mysteries
13. Awed to Heaven, Rooted to Earth (Walter Brueggemann)
14. Ball's Blue Book of Canning
15. Beloved (Toni Morrison)
16. Bird by Bird
17. Bobbsey Twins Series
18. Brave New World
19. Bridge to Terabithia x 2
20. Cannery Row
21. Cat's Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut)
22. Cat's Eye (Margaret Atwood) 
23. Catcher in the Rye
24. Cellist of Sarajevo (Stephen Galloway) x 2
25. Dakota (Kathleen Norris)
26. Dangerous Wonder
27. Dear Dumb Diary Series
28. Dune (Frank Herbert)
29. East of Eden
30. Equus (Peter Schaffer)
31. Evening Class
32. Exodus (Leon Uris)
33. Express Lane Cookbook
34. Flatland (E. A. Abbott)
35. Flowers for Algernon
36. Freaky Friday
37. Gone With The Wind x 3
38. Hardy Boys Series
39. Harriet the Spy
40. Harry Potter Series x 4
41. Having Our Say
42. Henry's Sisters
43. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
44. Huckleberry Finn
45. If Grace is True
46. If You Give a Mouse A Cookie (Laura Numeroff)
47. Interpreter of Maladies (Jumpa Lahiri)
48. Jane Eyre
49. Jitterbug Perfume (Tom Robbins)
50. Johnny Tremain
51. Jonathan Livingston Seagull
52. Kim (Rudyard Kipling?)
53. Let Your Life Speak - Parker Palmer
54. Little Women
55. Living a Beautiful Life
56. Lost Moon (Jim Lovell & Jeffrey Kluger)
57. Mark of the Lion Series (Francine Rivers)
58. Memoirs of a Mangy Lover (Groucho Marx)
59. Messy Spirituality
60. Mistress of Mellyn
61. Nancy Drew Series x 2
62. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
63. One Man's Initiation: 1917 (John Dos Passos)
64. Oxford Unabridged Dictionary
65. Packing for Mars
66. Pastcal's Wager
67. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
68. Programming Perl (Larry Wall & Randall L Schwartz)
69. Riding the Bus with my Sister
70. Roots (Alex Haley)
71. Running with Scissors
72. Savage Inequalities
73. Selected Poems (Langston Hughes)
74. Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen)
75. Seventh Scroll
76. Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse)
77. Slaughterhouse Five (Kurt Vonnegut)
78. Stuart Little  (E.B. White)
79. Summer of My German Soldier
80. The Artist's Way
81. The Bible  x 4
82. The Book of Ruth (Jane Hamilton)
83. The Bourne Identity
84. The Catcher in the Rye
85. The Cuckoo's Egg - Clifford Stoll
86. The Enchanted Broccoli Forest
87. The Farm Journal Cookbook
88. The Glass Castle (Jeannette Walls) x 2
89. The God Particle (Leon Lederman)
90. The Godbearing Life (Kenda Creasy Dean)
91. The Grapes of Wrath

92. The Great Gatsby
93. The Help
94. The History of Love (Nicole Krauss)
95. The Hobbit
96. The Lorax (Dr. Seuss)
97. The Lord of the Flies x 2
98. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
99. The Scarlet Pimpernel
100. The Shining
101. The Shipping News (E. Annie Proulx)
102. The Soul of Politics (Jim Wallis)
103. The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner)
104. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
105. The Stephanie Plum Series (Janet Evanovich)
106. The Teddy Bear Habit
107. The Wasteland (T.S. Eliot)
108. The Water Is Wide (Pat Conroy)
109. The World is Flat (Thomas Friedman)
110. The Year of Living Biblically
111. Three Cups of Tea
112. To Bathe A Boa (C. Imbior Kudrna)
113. To Infinity and Beyond (Eli Maor)
114. To Kill a Mockingbird x 3
115. Trixie Belden Series
116. Unchristian
117. Ursula Under x 2
118. Vanity Fair (William M. Thackeray)
119. Watership Down
120. Where the Wild Things Are
121. Why Christian (Douglas John Hall)
122. Wizard's First Rule Series (Terry Goodkind)
123. Working With Emotional Intelligence
124. Yellow Book of Fairy Tales
125. Yosemite and the Range of Light (Ansel Adams)
126. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig x 2

Sorting things out

All righty. I only got one response in the comments section to my "influential books" question yesterday but am tallying that with the ones I got on Facebook. I got as far as putting all the books in one giant list and now I have to organize. I'll have the list ship-shape tomorrow.

Claudette is obsessed with LICKING things lately. My sheets. Sweaters. Blankets. The carpet. Grocery bags. Furniture. I wake up to the raspy sound of her lick-lick-licking. WHY?

Reading List!

Y'all really seem to like lists. Why is that?

In her Sunday night post, my friend Deb mentioned the 15 books in 15 minutes activity a bunch of us on Facebook engaged in a week or so ago. Another friend invited me to participate in a 15 authors in 15 minutes challenge, which I still need to respond to.

Knowing that a lot of the people I care about aren't on Facebook, I thought I'd offer this up here. I'll put together some sort of table to collect responses so we'll all have a nice tidy reading list for the winter!

Here are "the rules":
Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. (On Facebook you tag 15 friends and post a note or a comment or whatever.)

In no particular order, here are mine:

1. Ursula Under
2. Little Women
3. Where the Wild Things Are
4. Bird by Bird
5. The Bible
6. Messy Spirituality
7. Dangerous Wonder
8. Anne of Green Gables
9. Gone With the Wind
10. The Enchanted Broccoli Forest
11. Riding the Bus with my Sister
12. Pascal's Wager
13. Any of the Harry Potter series
14. Having Our Say
15. Three Cups of Tea

Random List Monday

Hey, Hawee, I tink we need a caption.

I'm going to take a tiny break from the 19750475092475209874597 chapters of the tale of my French adventures. My shiny ramblings are bad enough without subjecting you to my "oh look, a chicken!" writing process. I hope to have the post in shape by the weekend. If I don't have to bring work home again. We'll see. No promises.

So that means I have to do something else in this space today. I'm thinking it's time for a random list.

I. The time change messes me up. It's only 8:30 as I write this and I'm ready for bed. When did I get so old?

II. I'm finally reading Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

III. I just finished The Geography of Bliss.

IV. I wish I could get paid for reading. And watching movies.

V. I got my hairs cut last week. I wonder if Edna will stop by to see if I write about her again.

VI. Claudette is sitting in the sink. I'm really not sure why.

VII. Cheeseburger Doritos are YUMMY. You can taste the ketchup, mustard and pickle. I may or may not have purchased a bag at the grocery store.

VIII. My friend MBG has started a new blog called Laundry First. You should check it out.

LXXXIV. Put the pedal adapter things on the clipless pedals on my Cannondale hybrid. I learned when I was working on my bike last month that the adapter things I bought a zillion years ago will never fit on those pedals. So I'm going to change this item on my list to:  Dust off Cannondale hybrid and take it for a ride ... and then cross it off the list! That's allowed, right? Of course it is. It's my list.

Gotta go. Stieg Larsson is calling. Happy Monday!

Catharsis?

 Wow. I was so distracted by my coffee machine crisis yesterday that I forgot to add a headline to the post. I just went back and added one.

My trusty Krups kicked out - Lizz and I are estimating - close to 1,000 pots of coffee over the past 26 months or so. It decided to go on strike yesterday - on the grounds that it perceived the water reservoir was empty. I spent all morning trying to fix it and finally gave up and went to Mack-a-donalds as Misty would say. Then last night was hang-out-with-big-sister time, so she helped me select a new coffee machine and then we went out to eat.

The basement is turning into a mausoleum for formerly functioning appliances that I can't bear to toss in a landfill. I'm sure some handy person can revive the plethora of coffee machines, blenders, mini fridge, toaster, etc.

The good news is that I found my journal Friday night. I re-checked a basket I'd collected a bunch of papers and stuff in and there it was, at the bottom.

Gosh. Who knows what I'll write about tomorrow? I apologize for dragging this out so long.

Define "Express"

All righty then. So as I was saying, we picked up our car at Sants (Estació del Sants) and headed out of Barcelona mid-morning. I think we had arrived at the station before 9, so I guess I learned to allow lots of time for paperwork processing when picking up a car. In Spain.

I thought the French border was only about 18 miles north of Barcelona, but as I look at my map now and Google it, I'm seeing that it's a bit farther. I don't remember the trip to the border taking 2 hours. I'm pretty sure we took the expressway: the N11. Getting to the N11 was a tad hazardous, but we held our collective breath and off we went.

I was very surprised at the lack of security at the border. It seems there was a customs station but nobody stopped us. We just breezed right across. Our first stop was a rest area, where I was alarmed to discover the toilet seats were missing. That made for an interesting experience.

I'm sorry to drag this out. I really am. But I'm having a coffee machine crisis. Well, at least we're over the border, eh?

We interrupt this journey ...

This is what my brain feels like today: veggie lasagna with a side of Mediterranean vegetables. Blurred.

I'll continue the long and winding road tonight. If I have any brain matter left.

TGIF!

OK, a winding road ...

In case you were wondering, it's about 1,230 miles to Percé, Québec, and 1,393 miles to Sanibel Island. I'm not sure, but I think Percé may be where my dad and I went to see an old woodcarver and his wife in 1983. And where we ordered burgers with oignons in a restaurant where not a drop of English was spoken. A story for another day ...

As I was saying yesterday, J and I decided to spend a couple of days in France. We had no plan so we met with Josu, Nacho and César, the guides assigned to our group, to see how we could go about getting a car and to get some ideas of things to do.

Ugh. I really wish I had my dang journal. Where is that thing? Anyway, Nacho made arrangements for a car rental and sent us to the train station to pick it up. While we were waiting for the paperwork to be completed, I found a lovely Michelin map - in Catalan - of France. We got our little Citroën, and - oh my God - I never thought we'd make it out of Barcelona.

Yeah, you're probably thinking that too. Because I have to go get ready for work now.

On the road to Carcassonne

I hate it when I lose things. I spent over an hour last night looking for my travel journal. Now I'm going to have to rely on my memory to tell this story.

Let's see how far I can get in 20 minutes.

Gotta stay on task.

I'm listening to NPR and Sarah Palin's name keeps coming up and whenever the reporter says 'caucus' I swear it sounds like 'carcass.'

Oh yeah. Focus.

I've mentioned a few times that I went to Europe in 2005. It was part of a choir trip to Barcelona. I was about to turn 39 for the first time and I figured it was time - way past time. I had wanted to travel the world ever since I was a young girl but the farthest I had ever been from home at that point was probably the far eastern part of the Gaspé Peninsula. Or maybe Sanibel Island. I'm actually not sure which was farther. I should look that up.

Anyway, I guess I can't tell the story honestly without mentioning that I went on the trip with the man I had been dating for over a year - J, whom I met during a relatively short stint singing Alto in our church choir.

Oh geez. I have four minutes before I have to jump in the shower.

So there we were in Spain in the early winter of 2005. After completing our choral performance schedule, we could finally make plans to go to France for a couple of days. I could have spent weeks, months, years exploring Barcelona and the surrounding area, but we had just 10 days. And there was no way I could not travel the short distance to the French border to see what there was to see ...

An auberge!

My favorite time of day AND leftover apple pie. Yum. It's like the day after Thanksgiving. Except I have to go to work shortly. So I can't linger over pie and then go back to sleep. But that's OK. If I got to do what I wanted every day, it wouldn't be special, right?

So ... yesterday's photo ... a friend called me last night to ask what it was. It is kind of an odd photo, isn't it?   I totally meant to ask the proprietors of Auberge du Balestié what was up with the horseshoe hanging on the stable. I figured there was some really interesting story behind it. But I never got around to asking. I think I completely forgot until we were back on the road to Carcassonne.

Doesn't the photo below look sooo French? I don't even know if that outbuilding is still there. 

According to the Web site for l'Auberge, the Alletts have continued to make the renovations still in the planning stages at the time I visited over five years ago. Over a bottle of 2003 Château Parazols-Bertron Minervois,  David Allett told a delightful story of how he and his wife left their life in England to move to a somewhat remote area in the Pyrenées. The story of how we came upon their auberge is rather cool - at least I thought so - and I've been wanting to write about it for more than five years.

Dang. Gotta get ready for work now.

An auspicious start

Why? 

 This is my favorite time of the morning. Not the actual time, that is. Ideally I would not be up before 7. Ever. But whatever time I have to get up, I try to allow space for those still, quiet moments before the day really starts. When I can grab a fresh, hot cup of strong coffee and huddle back in bed with my laptop to check e-mails and news feeds, and, on the best days, contemplate the wide open possibilities of a blog post.

On this first day of November I'm thinking about journeys. Travels real and imagined, near and far. I have no idea where this thinking will take us. But for fun, I'll start with France.

à demain!