It's Sunday, the week after Easter. I'm in my typical place...sitting at my kitchen counter on a bar stool. All the windows are open even though it's a bit chilly (68 today...sorry east coasters) and that guy that I like so much is grilling a whole bunch of random, bottom of the bin veggies and a marinated tri-tip. I'm drinking a summery aperol spritz and dreaming of long, hot, sunshine-y days.
Summer is coming...I feel it in my bones.
I'm catching up on messages from my boy who lives in China. They keep me laughing...I really love the way he writes. I love that we send voice messages and can video chat, though I notice as he settles in and gets busier those become a bit fewer and far between. And that's the way it should be. But I do miss him.
The azalea tree in our back yard blooms only once a year and it's the most beautiful thing ever. Never once have we timed it for Easter Sunday...it's always a few weeks before or a few weeks after and I've tried asking it nicely to cooperate with our schedule and it just doesn't. Kinda like children...try as you might, they always have their own schedule. Or maybe that's just the way mine work.
But when it blooms?
WOW.
We had dinner at our friends the other night and if I had to choose a last meal, this would be it. Or one of them. Turkish meets Greek meets perfection.
But more than that...it was a night of friendship. Stories and laughter and wine and whisky and then a long walk home. Or at least it felt long...all 50 yards of it.
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I am making a conscious effort to get back on my trail...or at least walk around my lakes, each and every day. I'm stuck to a computer and a phone and I need to make moving my body a priority...not so much for my physical health (important, I know!) but for my emotional well being.
I'm just grumpy if I'm all work and no play. And a grumpy Italian is...well, a grumpy Italian.
Good Friday was a quiet day off for that guy that I like so much and he spent it doing the thing that makes him so happy...he planted. And planted. And planted some more.
Our garden this year is more beautiful than ever before and I'm counting down the days to the grand opening party.
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Easter Sunday...4 HUGE services for Michael and we, the fam, decided to go on Saturday night instead. It was...weird. Not sure we'll do that again but the service itself was beautiful...but it just didn't feel like Easter.
I cooked - roasted pork and pesto lasagnes and garlic green beans and a ginormous salad. Our friends brought roast lamb and potatoes and my sis-in-law brought desserts. We sat in the garden, my New York niece made a surprise appearance, we had some students over too...and the day was lovely.
I took one picture and it was one that makes me so happy. These are my people.
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They hunted eggs and played corn hole and football and I just love filling this little house with people.
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Earlier this week the palm trees came out. They were growing into the fence and into the bbq and they were, frankly, annoying me to no end. So enter Alejandro and Juan and out they came.
Thanks, guys!
A new one will be planted soon...a smaller one that will grow big and tall in 20 years or so.
We'll deal with that then.
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