Get Those Ducks Wet!

The Universe keeps smacking me around. It happened again Thursday night. Beth and I attended our first Smart Talk event of the 2009 season. Smart Talk is a lecture series targeted especially to women. Celebrity women speak on issues they are passionate about and then take questions afterward. It's a very grown-up way to spend an evening; Beth and I have been going since it started 5 years ago. We've heard Maya Angelou, Mia Farrow, Debbie Reynolds, Jane Fonda, Marianne Pearl among many other equally fascinating women. Thursday night we were slated to hear Joy Behar of The View. Instead because of miserable weather in New York that made it impossible for Ms. Behar to fly to Iowa, we were treated to Jane Pauley. She was highly entertaining and spoke on her passion, "Practical Inspiration," ways for baby boomer women to re-imagine themselves. She was very, very funny, but that shouldn't have been a surprise since she's married to Garry Trudeau of Doonesbury fame. I think you'd have to be funny if you were married to a cartoonist! In the midst of her many stories, however, she told one that really hit home to me. She was discussing her friend, Anne, who is always "trying to get her ducks in a row." What Jane told her was that "it's time to stop trying to get your ducks in a row, and get them in the water instead!"

What great advice! That sounds like me...always thinking, worrying, planning how to get things together. What I need to do is boot those duckies in the bottom and launch them! At the very least they need to get their little duckie feet wet!

Be Bold!

I promised a fellow blogger that I would give her some 'press' in my blog. So, I direct your attention to one the blogs I follow faithfully, The Bold Soul. Lisa Taylor Huff is a woman after my own heart...she took a giant leap of faith to make her dreams come true...and they did! Lisa blogs from Paris. She's a life coach who shares some of her secrets and a lot of her life in her very entertaining blog. Yesterday's post about not worrying about 'how' to make your dreams come true, but rather determining 'what' exactly your dreams are and 'who' exactly you are, really made sense to me. I get very caught up in the 'how' part. And of course, when you do that, it becomes overwhelming. So, I know what I want to do and I'm pretty sure I know who I am (I've had lots of years to figure that out). And I also know I'm getting pretty tired of waiting for 'something' to happen. I think that all boils down to...I have to make that something happen. Now, I just need to figure out what that is! Maybe Lisa will give me some ideas.

An Award

I received an award today from Jientje at Heaven in Belgium! She gave me the lemonade award because we both love Provence and would love to share a lemonade at Cafe de la Poste in Goult. Or as Jientje said...maybe a pastis?? Unfortunately I don't have a photo of la Poste, so I had to resort to M. Google for one. Aha...a perfect reason to return to Goult..to take my own photo of one of my hangouts in Provence!

Crying Over Cut Onions...and a Book!

My brother, Jim. scored another big hit this holiday season with Kathleen Flinn's "The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry." It was his gift to me for my birthday, and it couldn't be more perfect! See that little Eiffel Tower on the cover? It's a hint that this book is about the author's life-long dream to go to Paris and study cooking with the master chefs at Le Cordon Bleu. At 36 Kathleen Flinn was a successful manager working for an American company based in London; within 2 hours after arriving home from a vacation, however, she was unemployed, laid off, from a job that she really didn't feel a passion for, but that paid the bills. Sound familiar? It did to me. That hit very close to home.What Kathleen did, however, was something I'm not sure I'd ever be brave enough to do...she cashed in her retirement, emptied her savings account and applied to cooking school. She was accepted and her adventure began. (This is the part that made me cry. What a leap of faith!) I'm not certain that putting up with the rigors of the curriculum and the moods of the Cordon Bleu chefs would be my idea of fun, but Kathleen loved it. Each chapter of her book is devoted to a cooking lesson and comes complete with a recipe at the end. I don't intend to spend hours and days making beef stock from scratch, but I've tried the faux minestrone soup recipe, and it's delicious. So is this book!

Black and White

Ansel Adams and Georgie O'Keeffe were both inspired by the churches of northern New Mexico. They fascinate me as well. There's something about their solid, geometric shapes that I find comforting. They look peaceful and ageless. I also love the black and white contrasts of Adams' photography; the play of dark against light is very mysterious to me. The Adams images in "Natural Affinities" illustrate his love of nature as well as his attraction to these adobe structures. After reading the book, I was inspired, too. I won't share my feeble watercolor efforts, but if you're interested in my literary interpretation of the mystery of black and white, you can click here to visit my other blog, Dona Nobis Pacem.

What I Did on My Christmas Vacation...

I didn't exactly take a Christmas vacation, although I did take the day after Christmas off (expected of all managers since we are 'non-essential to patient care'...ouch!). Starting around Thanksgiving I began to feel a little blue that I hadn't planned anything exciting for the 4-day weekend...no family for Christmas, no trip to some warm and sunny clime. Those Hallmark commercials always get to me...maybe I should have tried to fly to Montana to be with Travis? Once the holiday got a bit closer, though, and I saw horror stories on the news of cancelled flights, horrendous weather, and travellers stranded for DAYS...I knew I made the right decision once again to stay home. So, Christmas was quiet. I opened a few gifts, made real oyster stew for Christmas Eve dinner and enjoyed a peaceful holiday.

One of my best...ever...gifts came from my brother, Jim. It's a wonderful picture book called "Natural Affinities" and features two of my favorites artists, Georgia O'Keeffe (pictured here) and Ansel Adams. It contains 3 rather lengthy essays comparing and contrasting their work, but the bulk of the book is pictures of some of the most famous and also least seen works by both. I've been to the Georgia O'Keeffe art museum in Santa Fe and have seen a lot of her work. Many of the works featured in this book, however, are in private collections and not often viewed by others. They are spectacular. Although I don't always understand O'Keeffe's paintings, I find them intriguing. Reading about her life only added to my fascination with her as both an artist and a woman.

More tomorrow on Ansel Adams....

I'm Back!

My home computer is fixed! Picked it up from the corner computer store this afternoon and just got it re-connected and ready to go. Look for a new, more interesting post soon.