Do I Know You?
I was at a joyful event, full of people I know well, full of people with whom I am acquainted, and full of people who know the people I know, but don’t know me. It was a great party. Even AdventureMan had some great conversations, and enjoyed himself.
You know those little hairs at the back of your neck, the ones who rise up and tell you to pay attention? I found those little antenna standing up, and wondered “do I know you?” looking at total strangers. I had a strong feeling there were bloggers in the room.
Tagged by This Lady
Some tags are silly, but fun. This one . . . someone took some time. These questions are genuinely thought provoking. Thanks for tagging me, Lady.
*Do your closest friends have any nicknames for you? No. If they do, they don’t use it to my face! But when I have grandchildren, I am going to be called “Shisha.” I won’t tell you why, but it has nothing to do with smoking.
*What would your ex-(boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse) say about you in one sentence? “Life just isn’t the same without you.”
*What is the greatest achievement of your life so far? Staying married for years and years and years, and producing a son who is a successful adult. Sharing the triumphs of his graduation(s) and career and marriage with his father/ my husband.
*How should people think of sex in this, the 21st century? Often, and with joy.
*Where would you live if anywhere was possible? If anything were possible, I would live in a house with a view of the sea and mountains.
*Is there a religion that’s fulfilling for you and/or the masses? I am a Christian, and one who has come to believe that the ultimate truth will be a grand adventure. We all have glimpses, and we are limited. One day, we will see clearly, and not “through the glass, darkly.”
*What inspires awe in your life’s experience? People who create something out of nothing. People with vision who make things happen.
*What was/is your best pick-up line? The most interesting women don’t need a line; they are good listeners.
*What and when is the most potent emotion you’ve ever experienced and why? Anger. I am not an angry person, but once I knew I could kill to protect my son. On the very rare occasion when I get angry, my anger scares me, my primitive nature scares me.
*On what occasions do you act self-absorbed or just plain selfish? When I am tired past being able to sleep, or sick past being able to be gracious, or depressed beyond my ability to fight on. Then I need quiet, and rest, and miso soup, and to just curl into a ball until it’s passed.
*If someone assigned you a quest, or if you decided your own, what would you be looking to find? I would want to find the secret to helping us all just get along.
*If you had to choose between them, would you live in Hollywood, Washington D.C. or New York, and why? Oh please! Spare me. Neither!
*Who or what makes you feel “wholeβ? I feel whole when my spiritual life, my family life and my friend-life are all in order.
*Where is your greatest opportunity for change? I love living in places where my husband and I can walk. I feel the need for walking as exercise.
*What do you consider to be the greatest opportunity for humankind? To learn to live together, and to find a fair way to allocate resources.
*What surprises you about getting older? The betrayals of the body. Inside, you are still young!
*What or who makes you feel younger or rejuvenated? Walking, a good haircut, a great conversation.
*Where or when do you feel most alone? When my husband and I disagree.
*Where or how is society most ripe for change? When people are willing to step forward and take their part in making changes.
*Do you think of yourself as attractive to the opposite sex? π
*When or where do you feel the most free? In Seatttle, on the west coast, women are about as close to being equal people as I have ever hoped to see. I feel most free there.
*What is the greatest memory of your life to date? The night I discovered my brain had not turned to jello during childbirth and child-raising. You can read about it here.
*Where and when did you find out who you really are? A female mentor laughed and said “you have no idea yet what you are capable of” and I was so shocked I decided to start finding out.
*How and when do you collect your thoughts and why? I take a bath. I wash off any defilement and pray for discernment.
*If someone told you when and where you would die, what would you do immediately after being told? I would thank God for the many many blessings he has given me, especially seeing our son dance at his wedding, and living happily, and for the years I have had with my husband, and the lively and exciting life we have had together, then I would make lunch dates with my dearest friends one-on-one, to say goodbye and thank them for their contributions to my life.
*What are the best parts of being in love? Learning how many many kinds of love their are, and that love is a verb, and a choice.
*What’s your favorite libation (a drink offered to a god)? I really like coffee! And ginger beer (it is not really beer)
*What “life philosophies” have you adopted since you’ve become an adult? Serve God first, live life so that you have no regrets, stay out of debt, invest for the future, life’s true riches are the blessings of the angels God sends you in family and friends and even brief moments of connection with others.
*How would you like to be remembered? I would love for people to say “Whoa! She was a pistol!” π
I TAG star blogger FONZY, Kuwait’s premier blogger Don Veto, sweet True Faith, Touche, who thinks outside the box, Chirp, because I want to know the answers, and a blogger I think is going to have a very interesting life, MirimtheMirim. I also tag my niece, Beiruti-blogger Little Diamond.
What True Love Looks Like to Me
Here are three of my very favorite presents given to me by AdventureMan. I like diamonds just fine, and at the same time, I really am not a diamonds kind of girl. I worry about losing things like that. I’m hard on watches, I do things with my hands and I break things. Better for me are gifts I don’t have to worry too much about breaking, losing, burning, misplacing . . . all the things that break my heart about earthly treasures.
Every time I look at these things, I see love. These are presents that protect me, that might help me help someone else at just the right time. You probably recognize two of the items, the third is a wind-up flashlight, so that I never need to worry about batteries failing – when the light begins to dim, you just crank away.
Actually, I am going to share two photos, because while the first one is the one I had planned:
This is the one that happened first, and it made me laugh because it also is about true love:
AdventureMan knows what will make me feel safe. It may not look romantic to you, but it looks like true love to me.
Here is today’s challenge. Grab your camera – or your keyboard – and show us / tell us what true love looks like to you?
The Great Migration (2)
After two wonderful days in Grumeti River Lodge we transfer to the CCAfrica’s Serengeti Under Canvas Program, with the first camp being a short drive from the Grumeti River Lodge.
We LOVE tent camping. We used to camp out of a Volkswagon bus across the US with a baby and a cat (now that was an adventure!), in Tunisia, in Jordan. Now, I still love camping, and I particularly love it CCAfrica style – maximum 8 tents to a camp, a huge bed with good linens, an indoor shower and toilet, brass water containers, all very Hemingway in feeling. I love having coffee brought to the tent early in the morning, and I love the quiet shuuussshhhing of the wind through the high African grasses. We have our own dining tent to the side of our tent, which is high on the ridge, or we can choose to eat with the others.
Here is a view looking out from our tent across the Serengeti Plains:
There is one little fly in the ointment – to get in and out of this camp, we drive our open vehicles through an area infested with tsetse flies. I am terribly, horribly allergic to mosquitos and to tsetse flies, and of course they find me irresistible. I am totally wrapped up in local large cotton wraps called kikoy – I look like a very colorful bedu woman, all covered except for my eyes.
But it’s worth it. I take tubes of Benedryl2 with me and lather it on morning and night to keep the size of the bites down.
First trip out of the game camps we find gnus at a water crossing. No hungry alligators, but it’s wonderful getting to watch them crossing:
There are only four of us in the Rover, so we can spend all the time we need watching the elephants. It’s always a delight to find a mother with a baby. The elephants are so sweet with the babies:
Early one morning, we catch a group of hyena:
Even better, as sundown nears, we find a pride of lions, catching the last rays of the day and preparing to hunt:
I have one of the early Lumix models, an FZ10. It takes beautiful photos, even under very low-light conditions. It is small, lightweight, fairly fast, shoots movies as well as stills, captures audio, and oh – did I mention small and lightweight? It has the equivalent of a 420mm lens, in a small body. It is an amazing camera and gets amazing shots.
Sundown has it’s own rituals, with a stop every night for refreshments and a toast to the setting sun:
We spend two nights at the Grumeti River Camp, following the herds, photographing as they drink, as they trek, but in truth, you simply can’t imagine the scale of The Great Migration unless you see it for yourself. At one point, we sat in the center of a road as thousands of gnu and zebra filed past.
We sat for an hour, shooting stills and shooting movies, and when we left, the line just kept going. We were surrounded. Sometimes it would thin a little, and sometimes the gnu would start to gallop and they would all start to gallop and the sounds of their hooves would thunder on the ground.
Other times, we would be sitting, and we would hear the sound of the gnu just shhhhussshhh, shhuusssss, shuussshhhhhh, interspersed with the occasional “hungh? hungh? hungh?”
Watching the zebras drinking, all would be quiet and then all of a sudden one would twitch or panic or something, and then you would hear loud “SWWWOOOOOOOSSSHHHing” noises as they rushed out of the water. We loved the vastness of the Migration, the enormity of it, the huge, grand overwhelming scale of it all, but for me, it was these sounds that have stuck in my memory.
AdventureMan and I find these experiences nourish our souls. We feel close to God in the African wild. We love the sights, and the smells and the sounds. We love meeting the African people. When we get back, we can still sniff the smell of wood-burning campfires lingering in our clothing.
Next, we head for Klein’s Wilderness Camp.
The Great Migration (1)
Every year, thousands and thousands of animals roam the African plains, following the water. Huge herds of zebra, gnu, and antelopes make a grand tour, mindless of international borders. “Wouldn’t that be a sight to see?” Adventure Man and I asked each other, and decided “Yes!”
One of our favorite outfitters, CCAfricxa (for Conservation Corps Africa) offers special tented camps following the great migration, and we really enjoy travelling with them, so we book into several of the camps, and at the end, book ourselves into another of our favorite places, the CCAfrica lodge on Mnemba Island with more photos of Mnemba and Zanzibar here.
We overnighted in Arusha, then flew out of Arusha International Airport to Grumeti lodge. This is what Arusha International Airport looks like:
This is where you look up your flight going out:
The trip was off to a great start when we got to Grumeti Camp. The colors of Grumeti are red and purple; we go to our cabin to clean up and then we have lunch outside, down near a bog full of hippos, who grunt from time to time. This is our bed in the Grumeti Lodge:
Two days at Grumeti, and oh what fun from the very beginning. We see huge herds of Gnu. Here is what a Gnu sounds like:
Gnu: Hunnh? Hunnh? Hunnh? Hunnh?
It never varies.
Gnu: Hunnh? Hunnh? Hunnh? Hunnh? Hunnh?
Here is what a gnu looks like:
There are thousands of them. They know where they are going, and sometimes they go single file and sometimes they go in great bunches. We did get to see gnu (plural) crossing a stream, but the alligator wasn’t anywhere near and I think he had recently eaten:
Here is something very cool. This is what the alligator’s trail looks like:
The Great Migration also includes huge herds of zebra, and the males are constantly trying to keep the females from roaming off. So zebras will all be quietly munching grass and then one male will go heee-hawing around trying to keep other young virile zebras from making off with his females until one day he gets too old and the younger zebras can steal his women, errr, zebra-females.
Thousands of zebra everywhere. . . these ones are drinking while not 100 feet away, a lion is resting. He looks like he has feasted recently, and is not too interested in the remaining thirsty zebra – not right now, anyway.
Next chapter: We go to the CCAfrica tented camps to follow the great migration.
The Big Fight
AdventureMan and I had a big fight last night; I made it worse because I wouldn’t fight. It only made him angrier that I laughed and walked away.
Too much information? Sometimes, most of the time, a fight isn’t about what it seems to be about. When you have been married a LOOOONNNNGGGG time, you learn, thanks be to God.
AdventureMan is jet lagging, and working too hard. He takes all his responsibilities so seriously. He needed to go to sleep. And that is exactly what he did. Right after dinner, he fell asleep. The Qatteri Cat (he told me this morning) knew something was up and took two of his babies in to AdventureMan to make things better.
We were both up early this morning, laughing. He came up with a wonderful idea for date-night tonight, one of my favorite restaurants, and then . . . (if we can stay awake) we are going to watch this:
I know ya’ll have seen it, but we haven’t, and it just came out on DVD last week in the US.
Big Diamond’s Bat-about
Oh Big Diamond, you can’t imagine. You have an eye for the very best gifts.
I’m sorry the shot is not clear. We can’t get the Qatteri Cat to stay still when he has the bat-about toy. This was the best of all the photos – most, the bat-about disappeared just as I was shooting. *dying laughing* He loved it from the minute it came out of the suitcase.
When we all woke up – around 3 this morning, it was the first thing the Qatteri Cat went for, even before his food. He loves the bat-about, and AdventureMan and I are rolling with laughter, watching him play with it. It is great exercise, and such fun for him – and for us.
It is one of the BEST Christmas gifts ever. Thank you!
Smell of the Sea
I started falling asleep last night around 8, finally turned out my light around 9:30 and – of course – was wide awake at 2:30 a.m. and HUNGRY. I finally gave up on sleeping, got up and had a small bowl of pasta (why not? I’m a grown-up, I can do what I want!) and checked around with the blog-world before going back to bed. I had just gotten back to sleep when my VOIP rang – a wrong number. I think I got another couple hours of sleep before AdventureMan called; he had waited up as long as possible to call me; these time zone issues are a (hmmmm) crock.
Got up, chased the Qatteri Cat around and hid his babies (it keeps him interested and active during the day), threw in a load of wash, grabbed a cup of coffee, shut the kitchen door (Qatteri Cat is fast, and doesn’t understand about balconies), opened the balcony door – and oh! the smell of the sea! I thought for a minute I was back in Seattle! The morning air is cool and damp, and the smell of the sea is fresh and knocks my socks off. Sixty seconds of pure bliss before it gets too chilly for me and I come back in. Thanks be to God for these small, wonderful sensory experiences – the smell of the churning sea.
Winter Storm at Taqueria Guaymas
“I think you had better drive me to the airport,” Adventure Man said as the flakes came down more thickly and stuck.
I just laughed.
“The time to have driven to the airport was this morning,” I replied. “Have you even packed?”
(I knew he hadn’t!)
“The snow is coming down too hard right now. It’s supposed to be better in the morning.”
As the snow came down, harder and thicker, he tried to call all the airport shuttle companies, but they were all fully booked – or not answering.
“How about one last Mexican dinner?” he asked.
We went to one of our favorite hands-down authentic Mexican restaurant, Taqueria Guaymas. Adventure Man had a combo, which you will see photographed below, and I had the shrimp with garlic, but I was so hungry I just ate them and forgot to take their picture!
(This is not taken during the snow-storm)
Can you read the menu? It is the honest-to-God real thing:
Adventure Man’s Chili Colorado combo, and look at that salsa – very limey, lots of cilantro, and hot peppers – oh WOW:
Ken Follett and World Without End
Oprah has just chosen the predecessor to this book, Pillars of the Earth, as her monthly book club choice. I am so glad! Ken Follett and I have a very mixed relationship; I used to think he was brilliant, and then he wrote one book that just disgusted me so much I stopped reading him altogether until he wrote Pillars of the Earth, which has to do with the building of the very first cathedrals in Europe. It was one of those books that you hated to have it end, and you remember years later.
World Without End follows up Pillars of the Earth. We follow the lives of several people we meet as they are children, and we discover that their lives are intertwined in intricate ways. Two of the characters, Caris and Merthin, love one another from childhood, and we wonder throughout the book if they will ever find a way to be together. Merthin is a builder, descending from the main character of Pillars of the Earth, and shares his way of being able to look at problems from a new perspective and build in new ways based on stepping outside the box to solve problems.
Ken Follett is good at describing the lives of his characters in the 1300s, as farmers try to survive the rainy summers and crop damage, as laborors become independant from the abuses of feudal overlords, as the plague strikes rich and poor alike, as spiritual leaders cope with the demands of daily life and needs. We learn about the living conditions in England in the 1300’s, we learn about the early trade guilds and merchant guilds, we learn how disasters can be an impetus for social and political change, we learn how women used what little control they had over their own lives to their advantage. World Without End is a book rich in texture, sensually layered and visually vivid.
I have a strong feeling that people are pretty much people, and that we haven’t changed too much over the centuries. We HAVE made some advances, we have carved out rule of law, and ways for communities and nations to function together in relative peace, but I still feel that some of the interactions between men and women have a feeling that is too modern. I could be wrong. A few of the the scenes just didn’t ring true to me; it was as if modern people were transposed back to the 1300’s and thinking in modern ways, and it just seemed . . . well, I guess anachronistic!
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