Boo loves (to hunt) bunnies, birdies, squirrels, and…

ANGEL FOOD CAKE!?

It’s like catnip to him… or, in his particular case, like a soft white defenseless bunny rabbit sitting on our kitchen counter. 

Obviously Bad Boo did some midnight hunting last night, as this is what greeted me this morning:

Bad kitty!  He somehow tore the lid off the poor, defenseless angel food cake, viciously tore into it, and now we’re just down to cake guts. 

He always leaves part of his prey for me to find, expecting praise for his stealth hunting abilities.  Yeah, right.  I’m impressed, Boo.  (Not.)

This poor, sweet angel food cake never saw it coming and now look at it!

Gross.

Oklahoma, what (on earth) have you done?!

Oklahoma just enacted legislation (HB 2656) which allows a doctor to “withhold information, mislead or even blatantly lie to a pregnant woman and her partner about the health of their baby if the doctor so much as thinks that fetal test results would cause a woman to consider abortion.”

Seriously?

Read that again.  It says that a doctor can LIE to a pregnant woman about the health of her child.  The Oklahoma legislature deliberately discussed and passed a law, allowing this!  So in Oklahoma, if I’m pregnant and have a genetic test, and it indicates that my child has any variety of genetic diseases, some of which would cause his/her death immediately after birth or lead to life in a vegetative state or render my child unable to walk, talk, see, hear, or even think, my doctor is allowed (encouraged, even? otherwise, why even pass legislation?) to LIE to me about MY baby.

It’s sickening!

This is yet another indication to me that America is moving backwards.  My parents immigrated to this country from Europe in the early 1950s because America was progressive, open-minded, and filled with opportunity.  Their grandson, my son, is now considering relocating to Europe after he graduates from college in two years.  It's things like THIS that make that seem like a good option to me, and if I were 20, I'd seriously consider bringing the family back to its European roots too. 

The rest of the world is progressing now while America reverts to closed-mind, fanatical fundamentalism.  This is no longer the country my parents immigrated to almost 60 years ago and, in spite of a progressive, open-minded, smart president (who I still adore and support), it no longer feels like my country.  And I’m sure it no longer feels to my dad like the country he immigrated to as a German Jew who dared to hope for a better life for his family when he immigrated here in the early 50’s.

America, where have you gone?  America, please start THINKING (with reason and compassion) again! 

In honor of Aleks’ trip to Berlin this week (from his “home” in Prague)

Yes, he LOVES living in Prague.  Yes, he loves everything about being abroad. 

Yes, I’m begging him to write a guest blog post.  (Maybe he’ll listen to you?!)

Yes, I do wonder if he’ll just come home just long enough to finish college (majoring in – what else? – international relations and political science) and then return to Europe to be… oh, a diplomat or an ambassador.

Prost, Aleks! 

Holding Up the Sky

Note the BLUE sky (in, yes, SEATTLE)!

Missing my Mommy

I wish Mom was still here so I could tell her that I love her…

 

 

 

Wonderful weather for Woodinville wine tasting!

When Tom and I met Lynn and her husband John last September in their gorgeous hometown of Poulsbo, Washington, it felt like we’d been friends forever, even though it was the first time we’d met in person.  (Blogging friendships are like that.) 

We’d talked about meeting again in December in our town, Woodinville, for some wine tasting, but had to postpone till February, and then again till today because life just kept getting in the way.  But finally today we met again, this time in our little town of Woodinville, which has somehow become a wine tasting mecca in the past few years. 

The weather couldn’t have been more glorious!

Our first stop was my absolute favorite Woodinville winery, JM Cellars, where we are always treated like old friends and where someone is always enthusiastically educating us about wine, not just filling our glasses with sips of this and that.  We’ve been here before a few times, but each time is better than the last!

Today we were treated to owner John himself leading the tour, pouring the wine and sharing his passion.  He explained that “ya gotta have big, beautiful doors if you really want to be a winery.”  (I didn’t know that!) Here are JM Cellars’ gorgeous brass doors, made by a Seattle artist, and slowly acquiring a purple patina from the acid of the wine.

Speaking of a purple patina, I asked John if I could take a picture of his… on his thumb!  Now that is a sign that you’re a true vintner!

Of course Lynn and I had to have a photo of us taken amid the barrels…

Lightweight that I am, I was already feeling the little taste after little taste by this time.  And yes, I was already flushing…

After JM Cellars, we went to Woodhouse Family Cellars, which is one of the many “warehouse wineries” in Woodinville. 

What I really like about this winery, other than the wine and the very nice guy who taught us all about it…

…is the kitchen…

…and the cooking classes offered at the winery.

Oh, and of course the absolutely incredible (as in, incredible) chocolate that’s offered with the wine.

Wine and chocolate together?  Oh, you betcha!

No visit to the wineries of Woodinville can be complete without a visit to the grand dame of local wineries, Chateau Ste Michelle.

Named chateau because… well, because of this!

Not only the wine here is fabulous; the entire grounds are amazing, and on a warm, sunny day like today people come to sip wine and enjoy the grounds with a picnic.

The winery even supplies the corkscrews, one attached to each table!

There’s a concert series at Chateau Ste. Michelle each summer, too – and I’m embarrassed to say that we’ve never been to a concert here, even though we live just a few miles away.

(Reminder to self: look into tickets for Crosby, Still & Nash, playing here is a few weeks…)

We took a tour here, too, of course. 

This is a MUCH bigger operation than either of the other two wineries we visited!  (Can anyone really visit all 60 Woodinville wineries in one day – or weekend… or month?!)

What a wonderful time we had with Lynn and John!  Conversation flows so easily with them and we always have a truly marvelous time whenever we get together with them – whether wine is involved or not!  Thanks for coming to our neck of the woods, guys!

And for a special Washington sunny-day-treat, we saw Mt Rainier in all her glory as we drove home from the winery…

…and then again as we drove through Redmond…

…and across Lake Washington…

to pick up Kat from UW so she can spend tomorrow with us at home this weekend.

Frozen in Time

To my now-grown and relatively independent, non-popsicle eating children:

Does this look familiar?

If my memory serves me correctly, this box of OtterPops was purchased at Costco on a hot summer day in 1997, prompted by the whining and begging of at least two (and more likely four) tag-along kids who really-really needed and pretty-please wanted 200 popsicles. 

There are still at least 192 OtterPops still in the box and now I have no idea what to do with them.  Do you each want 48 popsicles?  Should I Freecycle them?  Or maybe use them for wounds and headaches?  Should I build an OtterPop castle?  Or maybe ship them to deserving and sweaty children somewhere?

I can’t think of many things that have hung around here longer than these OtterPops – certainly not the four of you!  How embarrassing!

Or maybe what’s really embarrassing is the fact that we haven’t defrosted that garage freezer since – oh, about 1997.

Wild Animals and Estrogen: A Ladies Day at the Zoo

(Click the PLAY button in the bottom right.)

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