Recipe for a 100% Wonderful Day...

This morning started off a little unsure of itself. I had a 5:45am running date with a friend and this commitment loomed over me even as I slept. I woke up at 2:15am, 3:23am, and 4:35am thinking it was time to get up and cursing the day I became a slave to running. When 5:15 actually did roll around my mood was not much better. I reached for my phone at least 4 times to call Mikaela and cancel but each time the excuses I thought up in my head were not good enough to say out loud despite my best attempts to perfect them. And so with no call to tell her otherwise Mikaela arrived at 5:49am (4 minutes late!) and I came to find out that she was entering into this 8 mile expedition with a similar mindset. To make a long story short: she came, we ran, the rain conquered. When I finished I looked like a drowned labradoodle. My pony tail was one giant rat's nest with odd frizz-curls framing my face but luckily an accompanying doodle-stench was absent. I say luckily because there was no time to shower. I hurriedly (and somewhat violently) brushed the rats out to create a lovely fluff-ball on my head, stuck a headband on forementioned fluff-ball, and packed up left-overs from last nights foray in Moosewood Restaruant: New Classics and ran out the door.

It being Seattle the weather on June 2nd is nothing but doom and gloom but for some reason today I decided that I would eat while I worked in order to afford myself a walk to Pike's Place. So after eating my polenta and Sicilian Stir-Fry (the rosemary, garlic, basil, red pepper flakes, and red wine are what make it delightfully Sicilian) I grabbed my umbrella and headed out. I picked up a coffee from the tourist laden original Starbucks and got down to business -- scoping out the flowers!

I did not title this entry "Recipe for a 100% Wonderful Day" because I have bad hair and woke up earlier than I would have liked so that I could run 8 miles in the rain. But I am sure that you, my ever so clever reader, know this. You have patiently been reading so that you too can know the secret to a 100% wonderful day and finally we have arrived. Hold on to your fedoras because here it is...

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PEONIES at $10 for 6 stems!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I know!

Did I tell you or what?

Take a minute. Process.

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Now, get in your car / hop on your bike / board that bus and get down to the market.

Or just enjoy this picture. Can you spot the peonies??



Feeling sunny in spite of the surrounding stratocumulus',
OLIT

Huzzah!

I just received the following text message from my sister's friend, "I just found your camera buried in my underwear drawer!"

I don't know how it got there and I don't care. A celebration is in order. A proper update on the way!

Is this bliss??

Despite my current state of exhaustion I am experiencing a little personal bliss. The spring cleaning that I have blogged about as needing to happen finally did last week. My apartment is impecable. I have applied for a promising job lead. I PRd at the Whidbey Island Half Marathon yesterday. My salvaged crown molding shelves were successfully hung. And best of all I have the return of Glee to look forward to tomorrow. I have been trying to think of things looming over my head to be done when I get home today but since I am in a bit of recovery state from my race yesterday a run is not mandatory and thusly I am coming up with absolutely no "shoulds" for my afternoon. What is an old lady in training to do? Well, I'm thinking yoga with my dear neighbor and probably reading while the Glee soundtrack (volume 1 as my sister has my volume 2) plays in the background. Oh yes, I also plan on taking and posting some pictures of my newest decorative endeavor!!

Respectfully yours,
OLIT

Really? Wednesday already?

When starting this blog I fully intended to update nearly daily and now here I am almost a week after my last post with very little inspiration to work with. I have some ideas but am feeling a certain amount of laziness and so will put them off until tomorrow or maybe even Friday if I feel like it. But in the meantime I will put up some pictures of the centerpieces I worked on this past weekend for my grandmother's 80th birthday party.

My aunt, mother, and I headed to Lowe's on Friday in search of flowers to use but were hit by divine inspiration and opted for potted herbs and vegetables the guests could take home and place in their own gardens.

That evening I hammered out and flattened forks to be used as table number holders in the pots.

The next morning after my mother and aunt transferred the plants to terracotta pots my cousin and I made numbers for the center pieces, wrapped the pots with ribbon, and inserted the flattened forks.


Once we arrived we were able to put the centerpieces down, check with the seating charts, and finally add numbers to each plant.


All in all I was very pleased with the final results!!! Nothing like a good centerpiece project to get me going!!

More soon.
OLIT

OLIT Flies the "Friendly" Skies

For those of you who know this Old Lady in Training then it is no secret that I do not care for airplanes. For those of you who do not know me then I shall educate you...

I HATE FLYING!!

As an old lady in training I am obviously irritated by the swelling of my feet that is inherent in air travel but beyond my own physical discomfort there are SO many other reasons to avoid flight. One - it is unnatural. Two - I don't care if people say it's the safest way to travel... I've seen enough Lost (one or two episodes) to know that it is DANGEROUS. Three - with it's three main components being take-off, 30,000 feet above ground suspension, and landing it is completely 100% horrifying. But unfortunately it is also the most convenient way to get from Seattle to the Bay Area for a weekend trip. Yes I have been looking forward to this for weeks and YES I am so thrilled to be scooped up by my friend this evening and whisked away to San Francisco for some catch up, good food, and a beautiful city I just wish that Seattle would do a better job of making me want to leave it. Perhaps if I felt it urgent to leave the Emerald City then this flight would be weighing on me less as a potential disaster and more as a "cannot come soon enough" escape plan.

What's strange is that last week at this time I could not wait to get down to California and now my feelings are more along the lines of, "Oh California, I love you but can't you just come up here for a visit?" What has changed since last week? I guess if I had to narrow it down to three things they would be the following:

1) I am still riding high from Monday's completely lovely day of birthday merriment (not to mention the most perfect $1 ice cream cone that McDonalds has ever produced)! Why would I want to leave the people who plied me with wine, Pike's Place lunch, red vines, pie, spicy, tortellini, laughter, and allow me to get cheesy and say love?!

2) Seattle decided to have a "this" kind of a day...

... whenever Seattle has a "this" kind of a day my old love San Francisco, who occassionally beckons for me to once again pine away after its beautiful albeit astronomically expensive cityscape, suddenly pales in comparison to the everywhere you turn mountain peaks, blue water, and overly excited vitamin-D deficient Pacific Northwesterners.

3) After searching for worthy Bay Area estate sales to pounce on this weekend (cannot seem to find any) I decided to peruse estatesales.net and see what I would be missing out on here this weekend. Bad... no awful... no HORRENDOUS idea. Turns out a Ballard estate sale has the final puzzle piece to my ever growing "dog portrait" collection.

I say all of this knowing that the second my plane touches down in San Jose my heart will be skipping beats with excitement for a weekend of family, friends, sunshine, and warmth but in the mean time it makes it so much easier to get carried away with my ritual of flight dread by convincing myself that I should just stay here for the weekend to enjoy the delights of my PNW home or at the very least to snatch up Rolph (clearly by Rolph I am referring to the pipe smoking dog pictured above who's sure to go quick at this weekend's sale).

But since I know I am ultimately giddy about my trip home I will try and concentrate on ways to help me get through the flight instead of reasons I shouldn't go through with it.
1) Beer.
2) Trashy magazine featuring the Kardashian's that I would feel guilty reading otherwise.

California Here I Come!

OLIT