A week in the life.

For all of you who have written and asked what I've been doing, here it is. I didn't work last week. My beautiful curly-haired daughter and her handsome (and really nice) husband went away for a few days to celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary and their 4-year-old (and fabulous!) twins stayed with me. Just for a moment, it's nice to stop and think of that happy marriage, how they've been together for ten years and are still really nice to each other and seem to love and appreciate each other more and more as they have traveled thru the years.

Having the twins stay with me for four days was oddly relaxing. I expected to enjoy them and I thought I would get tired and worn out, but just the opposite, it was rather invigorating. It's like they walk in the door and any troubles disappear. I stop worrying about my retirement or the war or the environment and just live in the moment. Which is what I've been trying to do for many, many years and it's taken these little people to show me the way.

So we went to their dance class where they jumped and did ballet moves and sashayed about the floor very happily to upbeat music. They rarely got any steps "right" but they surely didn't care about that! We also went to Lake Balboa and walked around once, seeing herons and ducks and geese (who did run after us, but we were faster) and one day I walked and they scootered around Mason Park and then I made a Halloween cape for the little guy and we put together a lot of puzzles and went to the pet store to replace the fish that went to visit her grandmother but didn't come back and they went into the haunted house that was made of dog food and we just had fun every day, all the time. I did put the garage door down on the hatch of my car (ooops!) and we had to take it to the dealer so I bought a big box of donuts for the car guys and told the kids that they couldn't eat their donuts until we arrived, so imagine them in their car seats, holding onto a little white bag with their donut inside for the whole drive! And the day I took the picture above we stayed in our pajamas until lunch and just played inside all morning. Aaaahhhh, one of my best vacations, ever.

And now LA is in the midst of a fire that has scorched Southern California for the past three days and it's really scary, like the air is a weird color and it hurts to breathe and hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated and lots of houses have burned to the ground. And my very smart daughter, who has some issues with asthma, especially with all the smoke in the air, reminds me that it certainly could be worse, that we could be one of the unlucky ones who have lost everything and I'm grateful for the reminder and for a daughter who is so compassionate.

So what else has been going on? Oh yes, the last Cocktail Party was fun, as usual. I put some pictures on the post above for you to enjoy. I'm thinking of doing a Karaoke night for all of you, somewhere locally where we can have the whole room to ourselves and sing (or not) as much as we want. Sound good? And my favorite yoga teacher told us at the Sunday class that she is taking some time off to "tend to herself and her relationships" which sounds very wise and mature and maybe a reminder to all of us busy people to rethink our priorities. Oh, can't forget that the Wowettes and I celebrated the 2nd anniversary of Wow by having a typical date with each other, dinner and a movie, to celebrate the joy of having women friends. The ladies were beautiful and smiling and happy and I was delighted to be in their company.

So I end this by saying that life goes on, sometimes exciting but mostly not, so taking the time to enjoy the little things in life and see it all through the eyes of a child might must be a good thing to do. And that to make time, even one minute a day, to count our blessings will make all that we have seem so much richer.