Monthly Archives: August 2009

A true tomato

4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, Stuff I Actually Think, , , ,

I spent the entire week in Puerto Rico poo-pooing their very sad looking tomatoes.  They were barely-pinkish, transparent, rubbery-looking things that resembled something that some one may have tried to grow at some point or the other, but which had been aborted too soon and now were in a state of perpetual laboratory-like strangeness.

dsc06954 this may have been one of the better ones at the resort, truly…

So, seriously: we eat at these great restaurants.  Everything is beautiful, but every time – terrible, terrible tomatoes.  What on earth?

So, a long day on Palomino Island was my final day.  I dragged the beach lounger knee-deep into the ocean and let the waves splash over me all day while a hot breeze cooled my skin.  I got burned.  A deep burn, but it was OK because I had been careful not to burn before, so the base tan protected me (I hope Ali, who has agreed to help me un-do previous sun damage on my skin, is not reading this – because we just talked about it the night before I went!). 

Tredessa looked at me and said, “Mom, you are burned.  You are as red as a tomato.”

And then, the reason I am so proud of her, the reason I admire her intelligence so, she made the distinction, “But not like a Puerto Rican tomato.  Like one of your tomatoes.”  And I beamed.  Tomato red.

Now this is a tomato.

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From my garden.  A small tomato and some basil.  If it is slightly blurry, forgive the photographer (me).  I think it is because I may have been shaking a little bit in anticipation of sprinkling some salt on these slices and eating them.  Because, omygoodness, they are sweet and tangy, and the juice, which tries unsuccessfully to escape my tongue and run down my face, is madly divine, the fountain of life, more potent than wine.

I have written about tomatoes before – oh, yes, I have!

I would like to dedicate this blog to Bryan.  Read here and here and here – for old times’ sake, Bry.  And oh, what the heck?  Here is my roasted tomato recipe for Cody, but Bryan, you can enjoy it again, too – right before you re-read this blog about YOU, where I seriously question whether God wants us to be friends if you hate tomatoes!   ;)

El Coqui

5 Songs I am Singing, Stuff I Actually Think, , , , ,

The song.

We arrived in Puerto Rico late on a Monday night to the most intoxicating chirping and tropical song.  Luke and I both thought they were surely piping in the sound of large birds,  for the trees around the entire resort were alive with sound – loud sound.

El Coqui.

Luke and I were wrong.  The sound, we were told, were the male tree frogs calling out, wooing the females, from sun-down to sun-up.  The Coqui (which means “little frog”) got its’ name from the sound it makes: ko-kee’, a sort-of whistle or chirp.  There must have been thousands of them there.  They lullaby’ed me all night long.

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I miss their song already.

Nice People

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The ones I already knew.

Watermill Express people.

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They. are. so. cool!  This company, this amazing bunch of people just contacted us at the Heaven Fest  office last year and said, “How can we help?  Can we give away free water?”  Honestly, I have to tell you the jaded side of me wondered what their angle was.  They  didn’t have one, it turns out, other than being Kingdom-minded and wanting to bless.  www.watermillexpress.com

So, they rounded up volunteers, set up water stations, and guess what they did?

  • They gave away 2100 gallons of  chilled water (using 5000 pounds of ice!) at Heaven Fest in recyclable paper cups.
  • They saved our landfills from getting approximately 17,000 plastic water bottles thrown in them!
  • They brought in 20 volunteers to give the water away – their friends and acquaintances and employees and family all chipped in to pass out water.
  • They put a container out for donations for the Home of Refuge and raised $3496, an average of $1.66 per gallon served.
  • They helped 23,000 people stay hydrated and safe at Heaven Fest.
  • And they have our undying devotion and gratefulness.  When we grow up, we wanna be just like Watermill Express!

Matt and Emily.

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Reunited and it feels so good!  Emily used to be one of my employees and I adore this girl!  I was, after all, her very first boss and was able to fully mold and make her into a perfect and top-notch employee!  Hehe.

Emily married, like, the best guy ever a couple of years ago and they jumped in to become a part of HF at the very last minute this year when we lost a leadership couple.  They did it so well.  We knew we were killing them with a pile of stuff to do, but they jumped in and worked their way through the festival very well.  You have turned out so beautifully, Emily!  I am so proud of you and thank God we are working together again.  And?  Matt is so great!  I couldn’t have found you a better guy myself and I am pretty good at that, as you know!  LOVE you guys!

The ones I just met that day.

Jason, big dreamer and God-lover. 

Jason Herrera appreciation-dinner-056Jason shown here with Lewis Brown (aka Proxy, some one else I truly adore) and with his ministry partner at the Appreciation dinner

G-Spot Ministries.  I know, I know-he has got to change the name of his ministry (kids today!!)!  Jason (aka DJ Spooky 1) is going to start a network of Christian hip-hop radio stations and he wants to pick my brain about fundraising and making it happen.  I have never raised anything close to the millions he’ll need, but the adventure possibility seems fun…

This cutie-patootie pregnant youth pastor’s wife from Wyoming.

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This adorable woman came up to me right after the Sacred Assembly and a very long festival day and said, “We’re here from Wyoming with 30 teen-agers and there is no point of getting caught in that traffic jam.  If you can get us trash bags, we’ll start cleaning up.”  They were awesome!  The boys and girls competed and they cleaned like maniacs, right along with this beautiful woman and her husband.  I don’t know them, but I LOVE them.  Hey-if this is you and you find this, contact me and next year I’ll treat you to something special at HF, maybe an artist meet-and-greet or something!?  Plus, I wanna see the baby!

Justin, the front of Main Stage Security guy.

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The Sacred Assembly was, well, sacred.  It was amazing.  The worship was pure and cool and loud and crazy-great.  And I was right there, next to the middle-of-the-front-of-the-main-stage security guy.  I am pretty sure his name was Justin.  And he was so sweet.  And he was such a worshiper.  And he loved Sacred Assembly, too.  And I hope we meet to worship together again sometime.  Really good kid with a pure heart!  And a peace-maker, too.

Biker Missionaries from Houma, Louisiana.

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Mike and Annie Bradford, full-time missionaries, came all the way to Heaven Fest on their motorcycles to help the Watermill Express people hand out water.  So sweet!  Annie and I got to compare “language differences” between us Coloradans and people from Louisiana.  I think I was able to tap into my old “accent” from living there for a couple of years during the last millennium.  It was a pleasure to have them.

Nice people just show up.

Heaven Fest was a crazy busy day.  But everywhere I turned, part of the Family met me with the love of Jesus.  These are good days and good people.  Great people, really.

And there were so many more.

My Girls

2 Mi Familia, 9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment, Stuff I Actually Think, , ,

Pictured*:

Jovan, Stormie, Tara, me, Stephanie and Tredessa at The Heaven Fest Appreciation Dinner (where I had the worst hair night, but a tremendous amount of fun in my Norma Kamali dress doing my rather-comedic, if I do say so, trivia observations about HF). 

I love my girls.  I am blessed by them, in spite of the fact that they tell me I am like Diane Keaton in “Because I Said So,” with which I must totally and vehemently disagree.  I may intrude a bit, but I am not as prudish and uptight!  And I wouldn’t wear those flouncy 50’s dresses, because I am more of a 40’s woman.  We do both make cakes, though.

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These are My Little Women.  And it is such an honor to work with them in all things life, love, family and ministry.  Heaven Fest has been one of my favorite things ever because we do it together.

 

Good lines from Because I Said So:

Milly:  I’m gonna be just like you mom.

Johnny:  Once I saw that you were a woman with profound static cling, I wanted to be that force around you…I love that when I breathe you in you smell like cake batter.  And I love that you have this insane way of talking in circles that makes perfect sense…I love your eyes.  I even love…your mother.

*Thanks to Luke Bodley for getting us in frame.  We thought there was no way in Hades this could turn out because of the way he lunged at us just as he counted to three.  But, wow, Luke.  You did it.

So long, Mr. Big Toad

4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, Stuff I Actually Think, ,

They hop about.

Our backyard is a veritable toad-city, the pond providing a natural pool for an occasional toad swim and all the shade and garden nooks and crannies for dwelling.  It might at times be almost plague-like, if you don’t like toads, but we appreciate how they dine on unwanted bug life.

The Godfather.

But the biggest toad of all, the Godfather Toad, if you will, is gone.  That toad had to be weighing in at 10 ounces, for sure.  I mean, he must have really been packing away the mosquito larvae.  He was huge and he was a governing presence.  But he flew too close to the sun, attempting to stay hidden in tall grass…the same grass Dave was mowing.

He will be missed.

The garden is a little less welcoming now.  The mosquitos bzzzzzssszzzz in temporary victory.  The little toads wonder what the future holds, watching for the next time the loud green machine will come rolling out like thunder.  For the Godfather is gone.  He is dead.  No more Mr. Big Toad.

She’s like the Wind

2 Mi Familia, 4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, 5 Songs I am Singing, 9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment, Stuff I Actually Think, ,

Averi-Baby.

A few weeks ago, I followed Averi (the youngest of my grandbebes), around with a camera.  Each time she “stopped,”  I’d try to snap her picture.  But she is faster than the digital can handle.

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She’d be looking right at me, center screen, giving me that smile all grandmotherly-photographer types are dying to get.  And then?  Dang it!

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Finally.  The money shot.

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The cousins arrive.

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Popsicles all around.  Summer is good.

 

“She’s Like the Wind,” from the Patrick-he-used-to-be-so-cute-Swazye

shoes are good

6 Looking Back // Memories!, Stuff I Actually Think, , , ,

Mary brought this up.

My friend and protege, Mary, is a shoe freak, sort of.  And she is acquiring a collection.  In fact, just today when we met for lunch, she was sporting a pair of hot pink satin, rounded-toe pumps.  All the little girls within a 50-foot radius noticed them right away.  Mary got me on the shoe topic.

I had to “give up” shoes for awhile following first, a terrible right foot break by which I can now measure the barometric pressure in the atmosphere, and then a bad left knee injury, which, after 4 torturous months of recovery, got re-injured in Maui and has been the bain of my stair-climbing existance ever since.

Memories.

I recently realized I am mourning the fact that I got rid of the high-healed flip-flop-style, stone-beaded shoes I wore to Dave and Tara’s wedding in ’03, (but which were still just so stinking cute) in the garage sale in June.  And I mourn all the Candie’s slides I have ever owned and lost.  And I weep that, unlike the days of my youth, the shoe heel just can’t be sky-high anymore. And while some people seemingly wished I would fall and break my neck back in the day when they could,  I had, after all,  been practicing since my toddler days, often walking around for hours on tip-toe to “pretend” high-heels, so, I mean, I rather excelled in  that area. 

Ah, shoes.  I once had a collection!   

At my age, comfort must come in to play.

Sad, really.  But there are shoes that are both comfortable and cute, I was forced to find.

Case in point: the hippie flip-flops my friend Amy Jo made for me last summer.  They are orange, for crying out loud.  How wonderful is that?  And really?  The flip-flop is truly the first shoe I remember (I wrote an ode to them last summer), though when I had my first pair at the age of four, sort of a faded brick-red color (is that true or just because everything in early 1960s memory is sort of muted and washed out in photos?), they were called “thongs.”  How times (and words) have changed and how I loved those shoes.  I think my knees were perpetually scraped up because I couldn’t help looking at them admiringly as I’d run around the neighborhood.  And I thank Amy Jo for these soft, fuzzy ones.

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And there are the beloved, very cute, super-comfy-but-you-can’t-tell-that-by-looking-necessarily black and white shoes I got from Kohl’s last summer for Heaven Fest for only $12!  They are made on a base of that dense foam like a baby’s Bumbo chair (btw, amazingingly wonderful seats for babies!).  It is like wearing shock absorbers (which I apparenty need because Dave says I walk everywhere like I am going to a house on fire), but ever-so-stylishly. 

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 However, I can’t get the stripes of the foam clean and pristine after 2 summers’ use.  So, they may have to be retired.  And this is a sad thought to ponder.  I may not be able to let them go.

shoesilove33 grease 

And I cannot show favor to other cute and comfy shoes without giving at least an honorable mention to these low-heeled slides and thanking the Candies people for considering middle-aged women who fondly remember their youth and Olivia Newton-John in Grease.  Thank-you, Candies shoe people, from the bottom of my heart!

I can dream again, can’t I?

Stormie got these Forever 21 shoes in the most retro-70s color and naturally I am in love with them, but can only wear them around the house, and not very gracefully, I am sad to say.  I mean, how fabulous are these??!

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Shoe advice.

So I cheer on my younger counterparts: my daughters and Mary and Stefanie and my little sister, Tami, and other shoe-stars.  My advice: The flat-shoe craze will never fill your heart with joy as you look back over your shoe life, so go ahead and wear the shoe with pizzazz because shoe-beauty can cover a multitude of pain.  Be careful running through the woods in platforms and up and down ladders with heavy boxes.  Save your feet for the perfect shoe!  For, while I thank the earth-loving Boulder-types for telling me I look “cool” in my Danskos,  and I do love how much further and more energetically I can get around in them, I can also admit, they are truly hideous looking.  And not my inner-shoe style.  They are just… necessary some days.  *sigh…

 what an ugly, ugly shoe…

Have platforms will travel (happily)…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  Rebuild the ruins of the once-glorious shoe collection.

Thank-you Stormie and Jovan for helping me share shoe love.  And thank-you, Mary, for getting me thinking about it.