They had a special Mother’s Day meal downstairs today, which did not interest me so I got a ham sandwich and potato salad. Excellent. Then Renata came by and frowned and say, “All you got for Mother’s Day was a sandwich?” and I said, “I wasn’t a very good mother.” Happy Mother’s Day, Mollie, sorry about that, and also to you Arghers, mothers every one of you (in one way or another).
And now its a rainy Sunday afternoon and I’m curled up with my dog ready to work on our book again (Bob’s and mine, not Johnny’s and mine), and now it’s going well, I finally think it’s going to be good, maybe, and I am very happy. Nothing but good times.
What good thing happened for you today?
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I baked a chocolate cake for my brothers birthday tomorrow. I’ll do it up á la Bella Helene with pears, almond crunch, chocolate mousse and – hopefully – good-tempered dark chocolate tomorrow morning. It is completely over the top, but a very well behaved cake. 🙂
Ahem, my birthday is in June…
I’ve never had a chance to find out how well it keeps, but June might be too long. 🙂
Oh, okay.
Or at least share the recipe ? I can’t bake much chocolate because DH can’t eat it but he is about to leave for 10 days.
How does a cake like this travel? Could you pack one very carefully and send it to Tasmania? 🙂
I’ve moved it locally on the backseat of a car, but I think you’ll have to omit any decorations, and pack it very snugly in a tin.
A local restaurant is offering some great sounding Mother’s Day specials. I joked with a couple friends that we should go indulge to make up for having neither children or living mothers. Laziness trumped the impulse. Lasagna from the grocery store food bar is so much easier. But happy Mother’s Day to those of you who celebrate it.
Happy because I have the day off Tuesday to spend with my sister.
I had a lot of time today to play with my current diamond art project and found it satisfying.
I have decided to give up the idea of saving the new Murderbot for my vacation and start reading it as soon as I am done typing this.
Life is short, eat dessert first! And, by extension, read promising new books as fast as you can make time, if not faster.
Today I’m trying to ignore Mother’s Day.
I have been out doing very light gardening, there are SO many ticks, and the yard hasn’t been mowed yet. I did get some branches of the lovely coral quince to bring in for color, and my brother used his big gym muscles to bring over the great big pots I have for containers on the patio. The rhubarb is coming up, and I made a strawberry-rhubarb pie, pretty darn good, if I do say so. I enjoyed my younger brother’s visit. He’s a nurse so he knows how to handle our dad, and he’s pretty low key. We can be in the same room and ignore each other happily, sending the occasional meme.
strawberry-rhubarb pie is my favorite 🙂
There’s a great recipe for Strawberry Rhubarb Tart in Cooking with Craig Claiborne and Pierre Franey. It is an open faced tart and you glaze it with orange marmalade instead of the standard apricot jam. It is easy and delicious.
Today is my birthday and I’ve had wonderful BD messages from lots of friends. Went to a plant sale this morning and got some native plants for my garden plus a pretty pink hellebore.
DH and DS made me breakfast. Received lovely gifts including my very own copy of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. One of my all time favourite albums. According to Rachel Reid, today’s also Shane Hollender’s BD. Yes, he’s a fictional character but it’s a fun fact to share with my HR friend group.
A friend and I went to the Tulip Festival yesterday. It’s a big deal in Ottawa every spring. There’s a large area along the canal with beds planted with hundreds of tulips. They are quite spectacular this year. One of the benefits of a late, cool spring (tulips don’t like the heat). The ones in my garden are just starting out.
Happy birthday, Susan!
Happy birthday!
Susan, we are birthday twins! It’s author John Scalzi’s birthday too!
Sounds like you are having a fun birthday!
Happy Birthday to all of you!
Happy Birthday!
Gorgeous sunrise on the beach, which segued into meeting up with a bunch of dog walking friends. I don’t have a dog, but I get to pat theirs, which always makes a nice start for the day.
Think that would be the ideal start to my perfect day. Don’t live close enough to a beach or have a group of dog walking friends though. But I can share yours, right?
Assume from this point onwards that you are accompanying me on my dawn beach walks, Christine!
At my Mother’s Day minor league baseball game with DH and his brother. Both kids texted me, they are sending chocolates, I will talk to DD later and she gave me credit in a footnote to her SubSchtick. Life is good.
In other news I planted all the more expensive annuals yesterday and got down on the ground and back up a bunch.
Also went to a baby shower for a friend of DS who had asked for parenting advice. DS had none so he looked up birthing advice and sent it to her. I did not know my 28 y o gay son knew the word “episiotomy”. I am still giggling.
See GBT for a small update on the Protective Services drama.
I should explain that DS and friend bonded in 4 grade over science, never looked back, and are both physicists now.
So taking a scientific approach to the question was entirely in line with their whole friendship.
I went to my third craft show in a month today – the weather was perfect, the vendors were amazing, and I didn’t go nuts, although there were *two* vendors who brought dining tables I wanted. I don’t go to these things to spend that much, though.
Part of the fun was chatting with an artist from a town adjacent to my old hometown. I haven’t lived there in decades, so we had a good time talking about how insane it is there now. She had framed pieces of (I wish I wasn’t going to butcher this description) of hand-dyed fabric art, and said it’s so home-grown you could eat the art. I had a very good time, with very good people, which is a great way to spend a Sunday. (Especially if you avoid the big ticket lures.)
I spent the afternoon body-doubling for an ADD friend dealing with a few paperwork crises, which worked out well, since neither of us has a living mother or any kids, so no mother’s day activities for us, and everyone else who might have tempted us away from work was busy with family stuff, so we didn’t have any distractions. We didn’t get all the crises resolved, but we did what could be done on some of them, and laid out a plan for the rest that need to be done on a not-Sunday. So I’m feeling quite virtuous and productive (by proxy).
While I was there, she … well, she didn’t fix the Amazon downloading problem, because that’s a software glitch, but she set up the audible app on my phone, so I could download the latest Murderbot there instead, since it refuses to download to my kindle. Great happiness at my house now!
I blogged my latest knit, a vest in a beautiful red (https://knitigatingcircumstances.com/2026/05/09/a-good-red/) and today I’ve been swatching for my next project. Just watched Spinal Tap 2, which was much funnier than expected. Now I’m missing Rob Reiner. The Princess Bride, anyone?
Nice vest, looks great.
That IS a beautiful red!
I just had the red siding on the front of my house replaced, and at first, when only a few rows were done, I was afraid it wasn’t red enough, but when the rest of the claps went up, it was INTENSE. In a good way.
Yesterday was fun: two close friends (we went through secondary school together) came to town to celebrate our 70ths. We had lunch (which one of them paid for; she gave us a bottle of champagne each too) and then went for a walk – past our old school (now flats) and my old home (redeveloped) and to my favourite local ruin, which they hadn’t been to. We had such a good time together. This birthday is my best ever so far, and I haven’t got to the actual day yet. Seventy is evidently a great age to celebrate!
It was your birthday, Jane??
Or is it yet to come?
Congratulaions to you and big, big hugs!!
My ‘good’ for today was mowing the lawn/wildflower meadow. It’s been raining just enough and at just the right time for the past 3 days to prevent that. But I finally did it.
Yesterday’s happy was getting about 90% of my vegetables, herbs and flowers to plant. Now all we need are some warmer nights.
Nothing doing for Mother’s Day. I walked the furbaby.
My mother having heavily hinted about a plant sale yesterday, we duly went. Alas, it was not the kind of sale that pleased her, so after picking up reinforcement donuts we drove to a local nursery that’s known for natives. Alas, they were not open! So we drove on to Lowe’s where we got a truckload of daisies and three other things (can’t spell it, starts with Wig-, a perennial small shrub with lipstick-red flowers to attract hummingbirds).
So 1/3 of Mother’s Day was yesterday (three Shasta daisies planted by Mom while I weeded a whole lot of backyard) and another 1/3 today (the Wig- things planted by Mom while I cleared a trench / preliminary planting area for the 7 yellow things that are a kind of daisy that I’ve forgotten the name of (starts with C)).
Tomorrow I predict she will do the last 1/3. Also, a robin has built her nest in one of our ninebark shrubs.
And, inside the house, I got another chapter of the GeoIV story written.
Weigela
Thank you! That was driving me slightly nuts trying to figure out .
That’s it! And the yellow things are coreopsis. 🙂
I didn’t celebrate M-day. I did eat a pint of “Mint Chip” ice cream.
My mom is coming for a visit. We rarely get to see each other so…yay. 2 of my aunts are coming with her & they are staying with a 3rd aunt. My daughter & I are planning a tea party / late Mother’s Day event. It is going to be so much fun. I am thinking with all the uppity-ness of the tea party maybe a rowdy game might be fun. Suggestions?
Also – I am going to ask my daughter & granddaughter who won’t be here with us to set up a tea party where they are & join us via Skype or Zoom or some such.
Anticipatory joy!!!
I didn’t celebrate Mothers’s Day and my kids didn’t notice. But I’ve never pushed anyone to notice it, so I’m fine with that. My husband and I usually go out to eat on Sunday evenings and we did tonight to a Burmese place. It was sort of busy, but not packed.
Otherwise, I read a book and messed around online. Which is my ideal weekend day!
And I’m going to visit my family in Ohio next week!
I have gardened/ prepped beds this weekend. K2 made me breakfast, I had a bath, a nap, and DH cooked a wonderful dinner.
My son came for a visit and we went out to lunch. Good time and fun.
Bella Helena Cake
A favorite dessert from my childhood ia Pear Bella Helena: Vanilla icecream with poached pear and chocolate sauce. To turn these flavors into a cake I layer:
1. Black Magic Cake (just google it and pick the variant you like). I like to add more spices, and – once baked – drizzle with Amaretto or Rum.
2. Thinly sliced poached pears – from a tin – but cubed if too firm to cut with a teaspoon for easier eating.
3. Crunch of macaroons, prasline, or hokey-pokey/honeycomb/cindercrunch.
4. Something smooth and fluffy such as whipped cream folded with melted, cooled chocolate, but chocolate buttercream or a whipped ganache would also work.
5. Chocolate doodles or shards on top.
You can make as many layers and decorate as fancy as you like. You can also make it with peaches and raspberries, or strawberries and lemoncurd. It really is a method rather than a recipe, and no two I’ve made have been identical. You can make it two or three days in advance, and it’ll only get better if you like moist cakes. 🙂
Thanks!
Thanks!
Had dinner with a friend this week – one of the people to whom I gave Murderbot for Christmas (the first novella). Last time we talked she seemed lukewarm, but this time she said she loved them, had gobbled them all up and was making grabby hands at the new one. So glad that I picked the right gift for her!
Caught up with other friends this week too. Good week.
Today was sunny so I weeded a garden bed a bit and planted some flower seeds. I also washed my car, so now it’s really pretty. I then rested and read a book. It was a really nice day.