Mai Tai, please.

100 Market Bags are done! and shipped to Japan! and billed!
Laundry is laundrying, suitcases are filling, snacks and surprises artfully hidden in the backpacks of traveling minors. Refrigerator divested of perishables. Mail service paused. Reservations confirmed, pet-sitters engaged. Favors asked and granted. By this time tomorrow, I will be three-thousand miles away - mind and body - and I would like a mai tai, please.

100! Sweating in the sweatshop.

Around here....

Supermoon! usually that little white dot in the photo would be like - 14 percent smaller. Plus, now it's raining - in California, in June. Curiouser and curiouser.

Happy Solstice!

Tomorrow, Seamus comes home from his trip to Glacier with Grandma and Grandpa, so today is the last day to spend alone with Fin. We celebrated with a lie-in and reading inspirational books. Iron Man 3 for him and Amy Butler's Midwest Modern for me. (I know that needed explanation.) Now I have to upgrade my attitude toward Amy Butler* to "grudgingly respectful." I'm not even sure why I find her hard to like. We shouldn't not like people just because they are wildly successful and ubiquitous, right? Today is a good day for an attitude adjustment.

I had to google "solstice" in order to be able to explain it to my kid.
Tried on swimsuits and immediately wished I had not.
I did a pile of laundry, bought groceries, and sorted through the mountain of paper my kids brought home during the last three weeks of school.
Cut roses.
Planted watermelons.
Wore sunscreen and a hat.
Got dirty, got clean.
Got my hair blow-dried by an eight-year-old boy.
Renewed a library book I have not read and cannot find.
Held a chicken.
Ate leftovers and played sudoku.
Made peach ice cream.
Made guacamole.
Realized that I'm lucky and my life is beautiful. It's not suburban and dull and small, petty, and meaningless unless I think it is. I had a crazy industrious day and I just have to keep lighting it up. Because growing food and swimming in the ocean and answering questions like "Mama, what is dark matter?" — that's what it's all about.
So -  now, I'm going to sit on the porch and drink champagne. And if you think I'm kidding, just come over and have a glass with me.
* Amy - if you're reading this, and I know you're not: It's not you, it's me. Everyone thinks you're all that and you probably are, plus 100 times nicer and more generous than I would be if I were wildly successful and ubiquitous. Heck, you're probably just 100 times nicer and more generous than I am - unqualified. The above offer of champagne applies to you.

100!

Seventy-one, actually. More of a slog  now, but I'm staying hydrated and taking lots of cycling, burrito, and Iron Man 3 breaks with an 8-year-old. Rock on, lovelies!

Around here: cinnamon milk chocolate.

The cinnamon milk chocolate ice cream is a downright triumph. Plus, this is the first batch of ice cream I did not overchurn and I'm feeling downright triumphant about it. The recipe is a mix of this one and that one. If you're planning to make a batch, I'll send you the measurements and instructions....

Around here....

Around here, we started summer with a bike ride to breakfast. It was kind of perfect.

Friday, I'm in love....

with Whole Larder Love. Because: hunting, gathering, growing, cooking, eating, writing about it! And because reckless enthusiasm and a high threshold for vulnerability are two of my favorite qualities. Along with laughs and hotness and a fondness for learning stuff. If you'll let the f-word fly with abandon as well? You've got my heart.

100!

I'm making one-hundred (100!) Market Bags for my awesome client in Japan. Yea, because I looove a client who believes in me and keeps coming back! Yea, because I love making the first twelve of anything. And then I have to go to a zen manufacturing place and make another eighty-eight. Which? is also not so bad. If that's all I have to complain about - then I have nothing to complain about.

Treasury on Tuesday: Summer days and nights.

these beauties and more, here.

Around here....

Around here, we're doubling down on blog posts. It won't last.
Around here, someone has asked me to "go to the store and see if they have any leather jackets" because he wants to be cool. Which makes me wonder where he's getting his idea of what "cool" is.

Around here: fresh strawberry.

I did it again. I took another week off. It was not my intention and all I can say is this: My so-called elementary school life? Is killing me. And while I am prone to amplify - I sometimes think that elementary school might actually be the death of me.
Recipe for strawberry ice cream, which was quite good, very very good really - here.

Around here: honey vanilla.

 So - I accidentally took a week off here. It happens.

Around here, Memorial Day is the beginning of summer, sure. But what we really look forward to is: Summer Mom. This year she arrived on Memorial Day weekend, as she often does - and turned on her heel and left, disgusted that we still had three weeks of school left. We were called: No fun. And then it rained.
We tried to lure her back with tie-dye. (To no avail.) She wouldn't even give us a top ten list, but yelled over her shoulder something about twenty kinds of homemade ice cream and random acts of kindness.
Honey vanilla was a brilliant start in the homemade ice cream department - recipe here.