A Day With Becca

A Day With Becca, a photo by northwoodsluna on Flickr.

t's been a busy week thus far, today I'm working at home to do paperwork. I've been sloughing off big time!

Sunday I spent most of the day at church, first for services in the morning, visiting with my friend Becky for a while after. Came home and heated up leftovers for a light lunch, and then at 3:00 we went back to church where one of our favorite kids was celebrating her 16th birthday. There were Wiis set up all over the church basement, board games and card games happening, the kids all had a ginormous water balloon fight in a neighboring yard. We were there for several hours.

Monday I worked all day, came home and cooked supper and then read and watched The Closer and Rizzoli and Isles before going to bed to read a bit more. I finished reading Alice Hoffman's book THE RED GARDEN this past weekend. A very interesting read, a collection of vignettes about the members of, and descendants of, 4 families who settled in Massachusetts in the mid 1700s up to around 1990. True to Hoffman's style, there is a mixture of magic, humanity, and survivors. I really enjoyed the book!

In the evenings, I'm currently reading SARAH'S KEY by Tatiana DeRosnay, a quarter of the way into the book. I'm hooked. It's set in Paris during the Nazi occupation, the time of Vel' d'Hiv, the round up and removal of Jews from the city to concentration camps; and then in the present an American journalist married to a Frenchman is assigned by her editor to write a story about the event. The book alternates chapters between the story of Sarah, a 10 year old girl at the time of the events, and Julia Jarmond who is investigating/writing about the event. I understand that there is a movie recently made from the book. It is well written and I'm a quarter way into the book and am absolutely hooked. DeRosnay is a gifted writer! I'm anxious to get in my 6 hours of paperwork today to get back to the book! Upstairs by my bedside I have Iris and Ray Johansen's book SHADOW ZONES that is an interesting sci-fi fantasy kind of book, I'll be finished reading that soon. I've been reading that at night for a few minutes before I become too drowsy. I.J. is one of my favorite authors. Next up on the bedside queue, THE HELP which I'd been meaning to read for ages, long before the adapted movie version. Generally the books are oh so much better than the screen version!

Yesterday my friend Becca came for the day. We had such a wonderful day! We baked brownies, cooked lunch, ( fruit salad with vanilla yogurt, and Chicken Vegetable Alphabet soup with garden vegetables) We read several fairy stories and then played with small fairy dolls, watched a video, Becca worked on her painting in spurts, finishing it up just before her daddy came to pick her up. She was very proud of her painting! I love that she insisted on painting in a storm that was coming. Such imagination. So much fun! I was exhausted! LOL

I had intended to make a veggie pizza with a prebaked crust I had in the freezer but we were out of green peppers and I'm a bit OCD about what must go on my veggie pizza. There MUST be green peppers LOL. Red peppers are optional, so I made a BBQ chicken pizza to use up the last bit of BBQ sauce in the fridge with extra chicken I'd cooked for our soup lunch, also topped it with red pepper, red onion, and fat free mozzarella and a bit of cheddar cheese. It was amazing! I also made a garden salad. Quick easy and delicious! Tom had the baseball game on TV so I happily read my book. I went to bed early and had a great night's sleep! It was really warm here yesterday, in the low 90s but our house is cool and we didn't have to turn on the kitchen AC for a while until evening. I was comfortable but Tom was getting warm. Today is bright breezy and cooler.

I was away from computer and TV/Radio all day entertaining Becca so didn't know about the earthquake on the east coast until hours later when I got around to checking my e-mail in which Anni had written to me about it! Yikes!! The whole world pays attention when Mama Earth rolls over! :-)

Tomorrow and Friday are work days as well, but the weekend is quiet for me. Tom has funerals on Thursday and Friday so is busy meeting with families and writing orders of service for programs, collaborating on arrangements with funeral directors and so on.

I had a phone call from a former client at 7:30 this morning. He wanted to check in with me to let me know how things had been going for him since we last met in May. What a change in him! So happy for him! Life is so much better! He is a vet and I think he has done some real healing over the summer! He sounds totally different on the phone! It made my day to hear the life and joy in his voice! Good stuff, changes that will endure! He filled up the empty places with really good stuff, and life is brand new for him! So excited for him! The call totally made my day!

Well, time to get off the computer and hit the paperwork trail so I have time to prepare tonight's lasagna of sausage and chard with cherry tomatoes. Thank you Martha Stewart!. (Although I substitute fat free cottage cheese for the ricotta in my version!

Life is good!