Saturday morning

The family is still sleeping - all four of them. (Mozart has taken to sleeping on the foot of Tessa's bed, which she loves - she's been begging him to do that for years. Shep is curled up in a little dog ball on his bed, and I know that Ryan's still asleep because I can hear him snoring.)

I logged in to work a bit on the book before they woke up. And to drink coffee - mmmmmm coffee. I made progress on the book yesterday, and today is more or less a day off, but tomorrow I'll work on it sunup to sundown in preparation for my meeting with my boss on Monday.

Gardening, a little trip to REI, and playing in the sunshine are in our future today. Ahhhhhh - sunshine.

I fell asleep last night thinking about cottages and how they reflect a lifestyle. It is amusing to me that I've been reading "deep" books about simplicity, but somehow this fluffy little book with the pretty pictures has made a more lasting impression on me. I think that it gave me permission to embrace eclecticism, which is really the ultimate simplicity. It's a form of letting go, while still embracing the beautiful. The text of the book made most of the cottages sound like vacation or summer homes, and implied that the owners had busy lives at home, but came to the cottages to escape all fo that, and I just kept thinking "why not LIVE like that?" Yes, there are jobs and homework and school and such, but why not approach it in a simpler way? If the best part of life is drinking coffee while curled up in a chair and reading a book, surely we can all find fifteen minutes a day to do that? I love my commuter mug - it helps me to sustain my coffee addiction - but isn't the best way to drink coffee in one's pajamas, out of a favorite mug (the one I have know was purchased in Portland maybe ten years ago, and it's hand painted with a cobalt design and hecho a mano in Mexico)?

What's right for me isn't right for everyone, but this is right for me.

Another thing I'm trying to do more simply: food. I get all caught up in food, and it sometimes feels like I spend half of my life cooking or planning to cook. I use recipes most of the time, experimenting with new food ideas, and finding those recipes and executing them can take forever. Last night, though, I just wasn't in the mood, so I went with some old standards....and they were delicious. I made a pot of brown rice, and grilled asparagus (snap the ends, drizzle with a little olive oil, sprinkle with coarse salt, and grill; serve with lemon wedges) and grilled salmon (a little garlic powder, some lemon pepper, and put lemon slices on top to lock in the moisture; grill) and it tasted fresh and good and Tessa didn't even complain about it. I kept my sanity, it was healthy....is there a down side? I need to do more dishes like this.

(Note: My unfussy daughter has become SO PICKY ABOUT FOOD! Is she doing this just to torture me? She is also in a period of a few days of being a sass-talker. Yesterday I resorted to all kinds of "consequences" and I'm not sure a single one of them made an impact on her. Arghhhhh! She's so lovely, why is she doing this? Sigh. Nobody's perfect, but I really hope that today is an easier day for us.)

Stumbling through, day by day. I'm learning a tiny bit every day, and I know that I have a forward momentum to the life I dream of. It does go slower than I'd intended, but c'est la vie. I suppose it is la dolce vita, anyway. (And there you have just about all of the French and Italian in my vocabulary.)

Here's wishing you some la dolce vita today, too.