Disneyland

So.  Much.  Fun.

I did some focused Princess studying during our visit.  Noticing styles of gesture, mannerisms, vocal tone.  Supreme feminine essence, the Princesses (I saw six all together).  So beautifully feminine.  All little girls love this; somehow, in the search for my authentic self, I am being drawn to this energy once again.  Here is Cinderella.  So soft and pretty.  We saw two different girls "do" Cinderella, and both were wonderful.

I lost my voice on this roller coaster.  In the spirit of great fun, ND went on the Screamer too - twice!  The center of the circle you see above is the upside - down part.  Saturday morning we got in an hour early and rode this several times in a row with no crowds.  (I apologize for the gorgeous Southern California weather I am so shamefully flaunting here, for those of you enjoying otherwise.)

We rode all the rides, ate all the food, laughed a bunch.  Good family fun.

Home once again, I am anxiously awaiting Spring.  There is broccoli ready to pick in the garden.  Nice Dad turned 51.  I am learning how to be lovely.

inside my head

Here are my two bigger girls.  This is a moment of rare happiness.  The truth is they fight like cats.  They are merciless with each other, turning physical at times, and they completely ignore my pleas that they not fight in front of me (it's so rare I have them together, I hate for them to ruin it).  When they were little, Nice Dad always wanted to buy them those big inflatable boxing gloves so they could just go at it; I never let him, fearing the worst.  Now I just stay out of their way, hoping it will get better some day.

There are many many mushrooms in the forest lately.  It has rained off and on for a couple of weeks now (drowning some small lettuces trapped under row cover) and the fungi seem to love this.  We found a trickle of chanterelles following a drainage pipe last week.  ND picked and cleaned them, and we cooked them up with lots of butter and garlic, and slurped them down.  Even little p. loved them and ate up a big bowl.  It felt like eating the forest.

The mushrooms in these pictures are NOT chanterelles; I am too lazy to search around for proper i.d.  I just think they are good colors and neat looking, and will assume they are deadly for good luck.

Meanwhile I could be taking pictures of:  the scarlet merino top I'm spinning (trying to keep it chunky); the hot pink corriedale I got from the December gift exchange that I can't stop petting; the looong lacy pink scarf I knit out of sock yarn; the black spiral rib fingerless gloves I made for Big Princess for Solstice but ended up keeping; the "purl" scarf that I started but haven't worked on in weeks.  Instead I'm kind of hibernating, filling up my hot water bottle by 8 pm and curling up in the quilts with some chocolate and Sex in the City in the laptop.