I miss writing.

It has been over a year since I've taken time to write here. Life has been busy.

I keep telling one of my students, that life is all about change. It's the only constant thing that exists. Change. Everyday we are presented with new perspectives, new feelings, new relationships, new pulls for our time, new interests, new opportunities, new losses, new successes, as well as new challenges. This is life. I saw her eyes light up. No one immune to it. We all must go through change.

This year change has approached me in a variety of ways, and seemingly seasonal. In the winter, I decided to take some time for me, to visit North Carolina as well as a old friend. It was a trip that enlightened me, introduced me to some new friends, taught me about health, and opened my eyes to how important having a group of trusted female friends really is for me. I was always the girl who hung out with the boys. They weren't catty and they were laid back. Beginning in my mid-20s, I began developing a wonderful circle of women who definitely aren't catty, but who are creative, who accept me and who really listen. Springtime came, and as flowers were slowly opening from their winter slumber, I, too, opened up to several friends about an on-going issue I was having. Terrifying as it was, much relief came after it was out. Right behind that, came a CD project (which is just about finished). It's a Celtic CD with my group White Orchid. The CD is called "A Memory's Journey." Upon summer's arrival, I found myself, and continue to find myself all stirred up and restless, with a lack of focus, lack of energy, lack of time, and lack of desire for most things. With an unobtainable carrot dangling out in front of me, I feel unfulfilled and yet my life is more beautiful, richer and fuller than it has ever been.

What's For Dinner?

It seems whenever we have a dinner guest, my need to experiment in the kitchen is always present. My mother-in-law is coming this evening, and though she isn't picky or critical, like some mother-in-laws, I decided to try some new recipes out on her. I had in mind to have a "old fashioned Sunday night dinner" on a dull and grey Thursday instead, but didn't want to use the same pot roast recipe that my mom and I have used for years. I caught Tyler's Ultimate Sunday Dinner on Food Network last week, and am using his entire menu. Wish me luck!

Pot Roast with Vegetables
Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Honey Butter
Herbed Butter Parsnips
Chocolate Cracked Earth (love the title)

For the recipes, see:
Tyler's Ultimate Sunday Dinner

Anaïs Nin - An Excerpt from Children of the Albatross

"In art, in history man fights his fears, he wants to live forever, he is afraid of death, he wants to work with other men, he wants to live forever. He is like a child afraid of death. The child is afraid of death, of darkness, of solitude. Such simple fears behind all the elaborate constructions. Such simple fears as hunger for light, warmth, love. Such simple fears behind the elaborate constructions of art. Examine them all gently and quietly through the eyes of a boy. There is always a human being lonely, confused. Concealing and disguising his dependence, in too vast and too complex a world. Because of all we have discovered about a leaf...it is still a leaf. Can we relate to a leaf, on a tree, in a park, a simple leaf: green, glistening, sun-bathed or wet, or turning white because the storm is coming. Like the savage, let us look at the leaf wet or shining with sun, or white with fear of the storm, or silvery in the fog, or listless in too great heat, or falling in the autumn, drying, reborn each year anew. Learn from the leaf: its nerve structure phyllome cellular papilla parenchyma stomata venation. Keep a human relation - leaf, man, woman, child. In tenderness. No matter how immense the world, how elaborate, how contradictory, there is always man, woman, child, and the leaf. Humanity makes everything warm and simple. Humanity. Let the waters of humanity flow through the abstract city, through abstract art, weeping like rivulets cracking rocky mountains, melting icebergs. The frozen worlds in empty cages of mobiles where hearts lie exposed like wires in an electric bulb. Let them burst at the tender touch of a leaf."