A Mindful Life

I’ve decided I need new ways to make couscous dishes. Plain couscous is boring and tasteless. The boxed mixes are ridiculously expensive. Fruity Couscous Salad 2 & 2/3 cups dry whole wheat couscous (or regular) 3 cups orange juice (or water, or a mixture) 1 cup packed dried apricots, chopped 1 & 1/3 cups dried [...]

The climate here is a Mediterranean one, which means near-idyllic conditions. So when weather happens, it becomes a Big Deal. For the past few days a “huge” Arctic storm was destined to come down from Canada. Stop the presses! Cover your water pipes! It might get into the upper 20s! And IT MIGHT SNOW!!!! OMG, [...]

It’s been a long time since I shared a video of Claire. For half a year I’d had trouble uploading them to Flickr, and just as suddenly it seems to work again. So here’s a video from the other morning (if the embedded video doesn’t work, try this link): She played the “drums” and “cymbals,” [...]

Life continues as normal. We create, learn, play, grow. Things change quickly! Until a couple weeks ago, Claire just couldn’t handle scissors, although she wanted to. Her hands are very petite. Then we went to a library event that involved a craft; she picked up scissors and began snipping. She’s been at it since. It [...]

I got a phone call at noon on Thursday with my biopsy results. The news wasn’t the worst, but it’s not the best either. I have Atypical Ductal Hyperplasia. In simplest terms, this means there’s a spot on my breast with too many cells growing in the duct that are taking on suspiciously irregular forms. [...]

The waiting is the hardest part. I’ve been doing all right, on the surface. And there’s an 80% chance there will be no malignancy. But I won’t know until Thursday at the earliest. So I go through each day, playing with Claire, cleaning, shopping, cooking, and functioning. But there’s an undertow of distraction. It manifests [...]

Claire and I made this together. I set it up, she sprinkled stuff on it (confetti, sequins, jewels, feathers), squirted glitter glue, and I finished it off. Contact paper is wonderful stuff! A few days later I made a quick collage in a few spare moments in my art journal. I call it “Store Up [...]

We continue to create our way through the alphabet!

I’ve got to hand it to Palo Alto Medical Foundation. Almost every encounter I have with them is an interaction of efficiency and compassion, from the desk staff to the doctors. Today I had a stereotactic breast biopsy. That’s where you climb onto a table that’s a cross between a massage table and an auto [...]

Piano and pennies…