Lance buys a suit -- film at 11!

Yes, it's true...Lance is now the proud owner of a fantastic Joseph A Bank suit. Charcoal grey. Fits him sooooooo well!

And he did it for me. An act of love, to be sure. Suits are not his thing, and I know that he would prefer more casual attire for the wedding. But with my gown...well, casual is just not an option. So he bought the suit that will look right with the formality of the dress. And he did it with a smile, and more than a few jokes. I am one lucky woman -- and smart enough to see love in action in the purchase of a suit.

New blog to follow....

Just found this blog from a fellow writer, and I wanted to share it. It's called "The Me I Be" -- check it out! Here's a teaser from her latest post...

It's hard not to smile at a man who calls you "Miss Beautiful Lady" every morning when he sees you at 7-11 buying your morning cup of coffee. It's hard not to look for him each morning as you pull into the parking lot for your morning pick me up.

I've begun to think of him as "Mr. Pesonality". He doesn't speak much English but he has mastered the art of flirting with American women. Miss Beautiful Lady - what more do you need? He's the kind of man who'd be comfortable barking on a sidewalk to lure passersby into his club. Flirting to hustle up business. Flirting to make the time pass. Flirting to compete with his buddies (watch me get the lady's number). Flirting for entertainment as he stands shivering in the January cold on the grassy side of the parking lot.

Found her and her blog, The Me I Be, because of a comment she made last year on a blog post from a blog I abandoned 4 years ago! Wow! (Now THAT shows the long-lasting power of social media!)

I've lived in a thousand houses

Growing up in Fl. with family in NJ and PA meant annual road trips up north to visit the family.

Yes, sometimes we flew, but more often than not, we would make it into a three-day-each way journey, complete with stops in Savannah to eat dinner at the Pirate House, a furniture shopping stop in North Carolina, and a visit to the tacky-but-irresistible South of the Border tourist trap.

But one of my most treasured memories of those long days in the car was looking at the houses we passed and creating stories about the people who lived there.

It could just be a fleeting glance as we sped past. I would memorize the color of the door, the front porch, the windows as we came up to a house, went in front of it, and drove on. If we stopped in front of a house, for a light or traffic, I would gather even more information for my story. The flowers. The fence. The swing set. Or the absence of all of those. Then the story would start.

I would begin by imagining that the house was mine. It was the place I came home to each day after school. With just that brief view in my head, I would image walking up to the door, seeing the porch, hearing my footsteps as I walked across the wood or concrete or dirt or stones that led up to the door. I would see the door in my mind, imagine reaching for the knob. Try to gather up how I felt coming home here. Happy? Sad? Hopeful? Scared?

Then I would picture walking inside. The light. The colors. The furniture and the pictures on the wall. The sounds and smells. Who would be there? I would imagine my family-of-that-house. Their names and who they were. Were they home when I got home? Or was the house empty? I would picture my room. Did I have a room to myself, or did I share. What did the bed feel like to lie in at night?

I was too young or too innocent to imagine that horrors could happen in any of my imaginary homes. I could picture sadness or even fear, but not terror.

I would go through a day and night in that house in my imagination, seeing myself as the person who lived there, maybe of a different skin color or religion or language, but always somehow still enough me to recognize. And always a girl.

Once I had exhausted one house in my imagination, I would pick another. I would look ahead and see it coming up, start to gather the details in my mind as it got closer.

I never wrote down any of those stories. But it was clear from those early trips that I was destined to be a writer. Those trips prepared me to live in other skins and see through other eyes.

I seldom get to spend much time on my imaginary homes these days (I am usually behind the wheel, driving my kids), but when I get a chance to be a passenger, I do find my old game coming back. And the other day, my youngest daughter told me from the backseat -- "Mama, when I see people out walking or in a store, sometimes I imagine that what it's like to be them." Another writer is born!

The right song for the day....

Driving to work today, feeling dispirited about things happening a work, feeling my experience and expertise is being dismissed as something anyone could learn overnight.

I tried to keep it in, but failed miserably. A long and tearful talk with Lance last night helped a lot, but I was still feeling pretty down. I knew he was right when he said that work was not how I should define myself, but it's tough when you absolutely loved your job, and suddenly it's changed into something completely different and everything you loved doing is now being done by other people.

This morning I dropped my daughter off at work early. Usually I would immediately go over to work, but today I felt no desire to put in extra hours. So I decided to sit and read and get some tea. Just as I pulled into a parking space to go into Starbucks to get my tea, this song came on. It reinforced everything Lance said last night (thank you, my love) and reminded me of the lessons I've tried to master over the past several years.

I am not a Christian, but this song transcends any one religion. And I am grateful that it came on when it did. And now I get to share it!

Seeing the wedding coming together....

Pressed glassed pitchers for ice cold lemonade and tea

Jewel-toned glass bowls that in a few weeks will be filled with fresh fruit, tempting tumbles of muffins or rich buttery croissants

Be-ribboned wands on their way, flowing with sage, deep purple and vanilla streamers

Music being selected, a growing list of sweet sounds to fill a garden

A tempting menu of treats and sweets in the works

Whimsical surprises to delight the eyes and ears as our guests wander the gardens

The search for the perfect chuppah, the most beautiful ketubah, the ideal dresses for the girls

Tiny details, each noted in a small lavender book, as the ideas go from wild imaginings to reality

Flyaway...

Dreaming of flying away, with my love, with my children. Far away, through the rainy sky and clouds. Landing ever so gently near a Paris sidewalk cafe where we could warm our hands and our stress-tattered hearts with big cups-that-are-really-bowls of steaming hot chocolate and dip flaky butter croissants and not care about the bits that drip on our clothes.

Dreaming of finding a hidden bookstore, carefully crafted to be invisible to those who rush by on their way to meetings and business and busy-ness. Sinking down deep into an armchair, warm lamplight illuminating the faces of those I love, our laps laden with beautiful books and our minds finally free to imagine what we really want to do with the rest of the day and the rest of the week and the rest of our lives, now finally finally finally free from boxes and chores and plans that never worked out no matter how hard we tried or how little rest we allowed our selves.

Dreaming of seeing that the stories in the books we hold aren't the stories from other lives and other pens, but our stories and knowing, at last, that we can write the rest of the pages with our days and fill the empty picture-spaces with the things we see and the people we come to know and the our-selves we finally meet.

Dreaming of standing on a hillside, seeing the landscape spread before us and the endless roads we can wander and knowing that there is now time to walk and time to stand still and time to climb and time to just sit and watch the pictures G-d makes with the clouds and the light.

Dreaming of drifting off to sleep in a featherbed, the lights of Paris below, the days ahead. Somewhere in the distance, a faint whisper of music offers the perfect score for our dreams of this new life. Dreaming. Dreaming. Of Flying Away.