I heard these three Mama-isms quite often when I was a small child sitting at the kitchen table: "Don't lean on your hand. God will get mad." "Don't sing at the table. God will get mad." "Don't play with your food. God will get mad." The husband told me he was told similar things as a kid. Just not the part about "God will get mad." His parents usually said something like: "Don't lean on the table. That's not polite." Since the Mama had to remind me more than once about not doing certain things at meal time, I must've figure God wasn't mad at me at all. And, look, I still sometimes play with my food.

 "I like to pick tomatoes," the mama said, looking up as she continued picking cherry tomatoes from the depth of the green vines. "They should hire me." Yesterday morning, the mama, the husband, and I picked tomatoes at a local organic farm. It was having one of its few U-pick days for the season. We discovered this opportunity a couple of years ago. We don't pick a lot of tomatoes. Just enough to freeze to last us until the next growing season. For us, that's about 25 to 30 pounds, which is about equivalent to what the Mama used to get from her tomato plants. With each year, the yield has gotten less, so finding a place to get a deal for organic tomatoes is really perfect. This year, the Mama wanted to tag along for the picking. She doesn't like to go out much so it made the adventure an extra treat.  She was really enjoying herself out there amongst the rows of tomatoes, plunked in the warm sun on her green plastic bench from home. The Mama had worked ...

How many book challenges did I sign up for at the beginning of the year?  Whatever was I thinking? Oh, yeah, that I could and would read books for pleasure, at the same time as I'm doing research crazily about 500,000 different professions. hahahahahahahahahahaha. Yeah, I'm hysterical. No, serious, I am hysterical. I started off fine. If you were to look at my book list ,  you'd see I've read a dozen so far. C'est la vie. Just the fact that I piled up all the books that I want to read, rather than scattered throughout our space is a win for me. And, for the husband. Poor guy. Once upon a time he organized and managed a very large warehouse of paper and office supplies for a California state agency. It was very clean and orderly. It in fact rivaled the cleanliness of the Mama's garden. (The woman picks up leaves and sweeps the ground every day that it's not raining. ) What was I talking about? Book challenges, yeah. There is one I did complete: The Cozy Book ...

Yes, finally. Thank you, dear friends, for waiting patiently. Here's Part One to my  quest  to find perfume for the Mama. Because I was buying perfume online, I purchased a bunch of samples so the Mama could decide which one or two she likes. My decision of which samples was based on the descriptions. The Retailer: I went with DSH Perfumes.com , based in Colorado, because they had the best descriptions and prices for my budget.  Roll-on Perfumes DSH had some perfumes on sale because they were being discontinued or were made on a temporary basis. I chose two perfumes in roll-on format. It turns out that the roll-on formats are easier for the Mama to handle. en Fleur: "...A necklace of island flowers that stirs the soul: the one and only Plumeria."  No brainer there. I love the smell of plumeria, and I wanted to share the happy scent of that one with the Mama. The mama's reaction: Okay. butterfly: "...it is fresh and clear...It is vibrant, colorful and alive! b...

No, I haven't forgotten to write Part 2 about buying birthday perfume for the Mama . Yesterday afternoon while looking for a bookmark I found the envelope containing all the tags and bits of information about the perfume samples that I got her. So, part 2 is a coming. One day. These days, it just takes me a long while to get around to doing the fun writing. Something called writing deadlines get in my way, as does making meals for the crew and doing the minimum housecleaning that I can get away with, which generally means when we're all sneezing. Not to say trying to stay half a step ahead of the Mama and remember to go water the flowers and chayote vines before they wilt. Oh, and other stuff, whatever they are. By the way, is anyone out there flinching with my grammatical errors yet. I'm sure they're there. "They" referring to errors. I ought to be sleeping. I've got only 15 minutes left of the sleep cycle for my liver to regenerate itself. I read somewhe...