Desert Laura

Thanksgiving week is over and now I'm enjoying a long weekend of resting and relaxing.  Mr. C and I had a nice time with friends up in the McDowell mountains.  There was lots of good food and super nice people to spend the day with. I'm getting ready for some DIY projects for the wedding,and hoping that they're all as simple as they appear in my head.  My plan is to get these done by January.  Some things on my list: Make invitations Make soy candles (about 40 of them) Make thank-you cards Make more olives Sew linen table runners So, our next date night idea was to go out and shoot pool and play darts.  So exciting!  I'm awful at pool and haven't played in a really long time, but I was looking forward to the challenge. We started the evening by making a really good dinner of sauteed vegetables with tempeh in a curry simmer sauce.  We popped open a very cheap bottle of red wine (thank you Trader Joe's for selling wine cheaper than Two-buck Ch...

Mr. C and I have been together for a while and we love to have "date nights."  We try to go out, just the 2 of us, at least once a week.  Dinner, at least.  Every couple weeks we get our dancing shoes on and go to the nearest Blues bar and dance to the old-school R&B cover band...they're great, and we absolutely love to dance .    The other week I had the bright idea of changing things up a bit.  Try to come up with creative things to do on our date nights.  This is a big city and I thought it would be fun to find ways to see it all...and do it all under $30.  So, Mr. C and I each had 5 sheets of blank paper to write 5 different date night ideas on it.  We put these 10 sheets in a jar and every week we would pull a sheet from the jar and plan a night based on what was written. So, this week we went to see a movie...at a drive-in.  There are only 2 in the city, and I haven't been to a drive-in in a few ye...

So I'm seeing a counselor.  It's not a bad thing, really.  I actually like to go every month to chat.  I mean, I'm a social worker and being a counselor is what I do.  So why shouldn't I have some time to be on the receiving end of things for a change?  Lately, the conversations have been about my family (actually, they're usually about my family).  But getting married brings up lots of things that I'd like to think I've resolved, put away in a nice box wrapped snuggly in pretty tissue, never to come out again.  Normally, 6 out of 7 days, the box stays put.  My life is good, healthy, happy. But now that I'm getting married I find myself dealing with my box of old family stuff. I never pretend or claim that I have a typical, functional family.  I think most of my friends know otherwise.  So it's no surprise that I've tried to live the last 14 years of my life in the healthiest way possible.  That means finding some distance b...

So I thought it would be a nice idea to make my own olives for the wedding.  It can't be that difficult and we have tons of olive trees in Phoenix.  So, a couple of weeks ago I drove around with my step ladder and 5 gallon bucket in search for the perfect olive trees.  Los Olivos park was a good start, as I had a suspicion that they had olives there. About an hour later I walked away with my bucket almost full of juicy, ripe olives.  It turns out there are lots of ways of making olives, so figuring out which recipe was the best was difficult.  In the end, I hope these recipes worked! Picking olives at Los Olivos Park A whole park full of olive trees! Separating the green from the black...cleaning and slicing each one. The finished product...4 jars of Kalamatas and 5 jars of Mediterranean Kalamata Olives - Brine 1 Gallon water 2 cups pickling salt 4 cups red wine vinegar Put olives in jar, cover with brining solution. Top with ...

Dear Nerina, I want to take this time to tell you how much you have meant to me these past (almost) 15 years.   Knowing you has been a gift that I will cherish forever.  It seems you came into my life knowing that I needed you alongside me - guiding me, supporting me, giving me love and loyalty, showing me strength and compassion, and just being a true companion each and every day.  From the beginning, I knew we were meant to be together, and that you chose me as your life partner... Sunday, April 14, 1996 - the eve of your arrival -  I had just returned from living in Ann Arbor for 2 years, studying and living in an incredible place.  I remember being pretty depressed after finding out that I couldn't move out of my parents house and my partner decided not to follow me to Arizona.  My depression kept me in bed for days, not able to eat, with no energy.  That afternoon, I remember looking in the classified ads for puppies.  I though...

8/31/10 Nerina will turn 15 in February.  But I don't know if she'll make it to her next birthday.  The past 2 weeks have been trying for us as we've been dealing with Nerina's apparent seizures. This week, she' s been having "petit mal" seizures daily, that last about 5-10 minutes each.  Her head just starts shaking and twitching as we watch helplessly.  She lays down and we hold her while she goes through this awful time.  The first time it happened, I just cried thinking she was about to die.  I thought she was having a heart attack and would die right there, in my arms.  But she didn't.  Instead when the tremors stopped, she just got up, walked over to her bed and went to sleep.  All day long, I prepared myself to call the doctor to put her out of her misery.  But l ater in the day she greeted me at the door, tail wagging, brushing her muzzle into my leg as though to give me a big, sloppy, wet kiss.  Not only was she...

I'm on this kick to try and forage what I can in this city.  I live in the desert, which gives the assumption that nothing grows here and produces nothing of value.  This has been far from the truth.  In reality, Phoenix and most of Arizona has tons of fruit, veggies and other edibles right at our fingertips!  I remember growing up and my dad taking us to Los Olivos Park...car loaded with a step ladder and bucket.  He and my mom climbed the trees and harvested pounds and pounds of olives.  Then, we'd head back home and my sisters and I would help mom prepare the olives, cutting a slit into each one, then brining them.  Or, I remember when Bell Road was a 2 lane,  county road with orange and grapefruit orchards for miles around.  Again, the car is loaded with us kids and 5 gallon buckets or garbage bags.  He would pull off the side of the road, disappear into the orchard and return with buckets of juicy goodness! Or, when we'd...