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Saucy Friday

Hi friends! It’s Favorite Things Friday here at Adulting – Second Half! Newbies, there is no sentimental, emotional writing here on Fridays. (although I sometimes do love my things, to tears!) On Fridays, I list usually around three favorite things, songs, makeup, books, websites, foods, etc. that just make my surface life sing! I encourage you to check out previous Friday posts for more of my favorites and I am always thrilled when my readers list some of their own favorites, to share, in the Comments section.

Today, you get gypped. Today I am only listing two of my absolute favorite sauces. You can get both of these at Costco. I just don’t have a third one to add, that I believe is in the same category of “delicious” that I place these sauces. I would drink these sauces. I would eat just about anything, if it were smothered in one of these sauces. Without further ado:

Kirkland Cilantro Lime Crema sauce – This sauce first appeared in a little white cup in Costco’s incredibly delicious street tacos tray. One cup is never enough. Six cups wouldn’t be enough. That is why, due to popular demand, Costco now sells this divine, green culinary delight in bottles, sold in twos. That should last you a week, tops.

Kewpie Creamy Deep Roasted Sesame Dressing & Marinade – This sauce had me at “hello” when I was handed a small sample from the sample lady at Costco. She knew what she was doing. Her quota was met within an hour. Supposedly this sauce was the 2016 Dressing of the Year, in case you missed the awards show.

I would love to have more deliciousness to add to my favorite sauces list. Please sauce me up in the Comments section!!

Enjoy a delicious, saucy weekend!!! Happy Friday!!!

Who He Is To Me

We will be dropping my youngest son off at college tomorrow. I’ve written before that he is ready to move on and I am prepared. Having been through this twice before, makes it both easier and harder, all because I know what to expect. We’ll adjust.

We are going to have lunch today, just the two of us. That is a rare thing in a family of six. Children, even almost adult children, relish that undivided attention that one-on-one time with a parent gives to them. My son will be cracking jokes or saying things to get my goat. He’s the child who often heard me say, “Please stop being so inflammatory.” His teachers were always impressed that he knew a big word like “inflammatory.”

The funny thing is, my son will think that I will be listening to him, and I will be, to an extent. But I will be less intent on what he is saying and more intent in just savoring the whole essence of him – his familiar mannerisms, his quirky slang, his intense blue eyes. I read once that when you look at your child, you see every version of him or her, all at once. So when I am gazing intently at my youngest son today, I’ll see that round headed, easy-going baby who would pop his head up, just when I was convinced that I had gotten him to sleep. I’ll see that rough and tumble toddler with such a raspy voice that people told me he should be a radio announcer, when he was about three. I’ll see that little guy, who I peered at in the rear view mirror, as I took him to preschool, who talked and talked, making it easy for me to just rest and nod. I’ll see the young boy who was so tough on the football field and the basketball courts, yet so full of intense, righteous feeling, that he could never convincingly lie to anyone. I’ll see the skinny adolescent, always trying to keep up with his older brothers, yet eager to carve his own unique, impressive path. And all of those images will be encased in the handsome, earnest young man across from me at lunch, the young man with a broad shouldered 6’2″ frame, who will be making edgy remarks to get me off balance, all in playful good fun. I will savor him. I will be grateful for him. And I will swallow my tears before they show, because deep down, I know that we both are going to be just fine. We will have lunch together again, just the two of us, and the next time that we have lunch together, there will be a whole new interesting persona for me to get to know, added to all of the wonderful rest of them, that make up who my son is, to me.

It’s Baaaack!

My daughter started back to school today. She’s a sophomore in high school. We did some back to school shopping earlier in the week. She picked out a pair of “mom jeans” (that’s literally what the tag says) that she wore today. “They’re back in style. They are kind of eighties style,” is what she told me. And what made her think that she needed to describe “eighties style” to me?!? I just hope that they leave the neon, and the shellacked, big hair, back in the history books.

Love You, Left Handers

Happy Left Handers Day! I think that you are wonderful, my left-handed friends! Only 10 percent of our population is left handed. My eldest son is a red-headed (only 2 percent of the population), left hander. That means that he is in very small company. Only about 300,000 people in the world (.004 percent of the world’s population) are both gingers and left handers, at the same time. I always told him that he would never be able to be anonymous. He took that sentiment to heart, from the very start. Did you know that Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Queen Victoria and Leonardo DaVinci are famous left handers?

Even in my childhood, I remember there still being a prejudice against being left-handed. Parents were relieved when their kids turned out to be right-handed. Many of my friends’ parents who were born left-handed were forced to go “right handed” against their own very nature.

There is no place for any kind of prejudice in our society. Why do we fear special-ness so much? Why do we want everything to be the same? Why do we not want people to be different than us? Life would be dreadfully boring if we were all the same, just clones of each other, going on forever and ever, like mirrors facing each other. Do we need others to be alike to us, to validate our choices? Why can’t we be comfortable in our own skin? Why can’t we let others be comfortable in theirs?

People would argue that they want life to be “easy and kind” to their children. They think that melting into the crowd helps with “easy and kind.” But if that is what everyone really wants, just fitting in, why is everyone fighting so hard for their 15 minutes of fame on reality shows and social media? Honestly, when do we get our most hair-raising, mind-blowing, perspective changing, life lessons? It’s never during the easy and kind times.

Sometimes I think that people who are born with such unique characteristics that make them stand out from the get-go, are the luckiest people of all. They have had to accept being “different” from the very beginning of their lives. They know nothing else than to stand out from the masses. So, they embrace their unique qualities. They honor unique qualities in others. They don’t have to do anything out of the ordinary, or out of character, to cry out for attention. Maybe the rest of us, who have stayed comfortable in our “ordinariness”, secretly envy those who have never experienced being anonymous in the crowd. Maybe that is why we created mass prejudice in the first place? I don’t know. But I am happy to see the tides changing.

Happy Left Handers Day, my friends. I think you are wonderful.

The Wise Epicurean

Not what we have, but what we enjoy constitutes our abundance.
– Epicurus

I like this quote. I think it is especially meaningful on a Monday. There are a plethora of things for all of us to enjoy every day of our lives (a lot of things being free or of nominal cost), but sometimes human nature keeps us focused on our lack. On Mondays, lack of time seems to be a big focus of ours as we huff and puff in traffic, grumble at our weekly to-do list and sigh as we start in with our mundane chores. But isn’t the fact that we have the physical ability to do our chores such a gift? Our abundant health is allowing us to do our daily routine without giving it a thought. If we are hungry, most of us have abundant choices of what to eat. What if we made an effort to enjoy eating our food, tasting the different flavors, and laughing with good company?

What if for today on this particular Monday, we all decided to enjoy everything that we have, that we typically take for granted? What if we took the time to walk barefooted in our grass? Took deeper breaths of our clean air? Relished in the idea that we can drink as much clean water as we want to? Savored every bite of our daily meals? Gratefully looked into the eyes of the people who we share our lives with? Watched our pets play and bask in the beams of sunshine that they so seem to always find and relish in? Sat in the marvel of our automobiles, amazed at all of their intricate capabilities? There are very few people, particularly in our country, who if they counted everything that they have and chose to enjoy everything that they used and experienced just for today, who wouldn’t be satiated and perhaps even overwhelmed by their very own abundance.

Man, those ancient Greeks were brilliant people!

Vibe Tribe

I had a relaxing day hanging out on the dog beach with my husband and the pups, yesterday. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. Ralphie, our Labrador swallowed too much salt water from his enthusiastic “merman” routine in the water, and ended up with the squirts. Josie, our collie, decided that it was hot enough to risk drowning, so she even did a little swimming, in order to cool off, before retreating back to the shore. A young couple decided that their enormous Doberman with the spiked choke collar was well-trained enough to be off-lead, so the said dog decided to “mingle” with every other dog within eyesight, despite his owner’s desperate calls and whistles. Like I said, nothing unusual happened. Here is a sampling of good quotes I found in my readings, and decorative sign sightings this week:

“The mind only has questions. The heart only has answers.” – Cal Garrison

“Your vibe attracts your tribe.”

“If love is anything, it is everything.” – Christopher Poindexter

“Please don’t disturb my peace if you are at war with yourself.” – Think Smarter

“If it doesn’t open, it’s not your door.”

“I stopped having $5 reactions to nickel worthy provocations.”

Enjoy the rest of a beautiful summer weekend!!

School of Life

This was another brilliant post on Twitter’s Think Smarter the other day. It speaks for itself.

Friday, Praise God

Yesterday I was grumble-y. So much so, in fact, that in the middle of my ranting, raving, complaining, pissing in the wind, my daughter interrupted my sad soliloquy, with, “Mom, embrace the suck.”

I started laughing. It’s so funny when your kids throw your own words back to you. If you remember a few Favorite Things Friday, back, “Embrace the Suck” was one of my new favorite philosophies, courtesy of The Navy Seals. It was exactly what I needed to hear.

Today I am not grumble-y. I am happy, and joyful. It is a beautiful summer morning. It is Friday. Life is good. Even when you embrace the suck, it is still good!

New readers, on Fridays, I list favorites. It can be favorite websites, plants, books, clothes, miracle creams, etc. I encourage you all to add to the list. Please see previous Fridays for more favorites. It’s okay to enjoy the material side of life. We are meant to experience life fully, and tactically. That is why we have bodies and senses. There are so many delights in life to sample. It’s like a delicious buffet, a blooming bouquet, and an amazing, never-ending amusement park for us to explore, all at once.

Today’s favorites are my favorite inspirational, spiritual songs. These songs are my jam when I want to connect with our Creator in a fun, musical way. There are a lot of them, so I couldn’t narrow them down to three. But these are my very top favorites that never fail to uplift me and to remind me that we are LOVED and we are gloriously interconnected. Here goes, in no particular order:

New World Son’s “Sweet Holy Spirit”

The Beatle’s “Let It Be”

Toby Mac’s “Get Back Up”

Nicole C. Mullen “Everyday People”

Salvador’s “Heaven”

The Black Eyed Peas and Justin Timberlake’s “Where is the Love?”

Wade Imre Morrissette’s “Om Narayana”

Jeremy Camp’s “Here I am to Worship”

Aaron Shust’s “My Savior My God”

Audio Adrenaline’s “Big House”

David Newman’s “Love, Peace Chant”

Scott Underwood’s “Take My Life”

Brandon Heath’s “Give Me Your Eyes”

The Guru Singh Experience “Ong So Hung”

Now go sing your song and have a fabulous, miraculous, awe-inspiring weekend!!!

Thursday Thoughts

I think that soon designers are going to come up with lines of fancy bullet proof vests. I think they may even become a staple in people’s closets. My friend said that bullet proof book bags are already available for kids. Sad. Very sad.

I read an article today that said that those of us born in the 1970s and older are the last generations to remember what life was like without the internet. We are called “digital immigrants” or “innocents.” The article’s main premise is that we are the last humans to realize how good it is to have “digital detoxes” in order to just sit with our inner worlds and our imaginations. The author reminded us that the internet, itself, was invented due to someone’s imagination.

My friend’s elderly dog passed yesterday. She has had a tumultuous decade, raising two teenage boys primarily on her own, after a nasty divorce. The last year or so, she has really gotten her groove back and is on an even keel upward. I think that our pets sense when it is okay to pass on. They understand when we have our strength back. They know so much more than we give them credit for, sometimes. A lot of the times.

I started taking Burdock root a few months ago, as part of my daily supplement regiment. I forgot why I started taking it. I looked it up on the internet. It is great for joints. I realized that my joints have not been so stiff lately. I think it must work.

I like this tweet from u.fo:

may the next few months of 2019 be filled with pleasant plot twists, spontaneous fun, and good vibes.

The Arms of a Woman

My friend sent a beautiful parable about the strength of women, to our group chat just now. It is an interesting kind of strength that we women have, because often our softness and nurturing hearts, belie our cores of steel, and our hard fast loyalty to our faith and to the mission of our lives.

I think I lost my sanity temporarily on a hike this summer. In a fit of really ugly crying, uncontrollable shaking, and a surge of angry energy that I didn’t know could be held in my body, I tried to explain to my family, the strength that it takes to love a family so much. You love them so much that all you want for each and every one of them, is to experience every amazing adventure and delight that life has to offer, and yet try to balance that, with trying to keep them safe, and whole and innocent and wondrous. I have always told my four children that they are my heart, walking around on eight legs.

My second son is my daredevil child. He’s the one that started my temporary crack-up this summer, when he decided to jump over a waterfall, despite the many warning signs, posted right by the shore. This son has broken more bones than any of my other children, and he is the only child to have been pulled over for speeding in his car. He is the one that was always creating crazy skateboard ramps, or icy sledding moguls, or crashing his bike, even with warnings that he was headed for disaster. My second son has been skydiving and has traveled far distances without us, with a cocky air, that tries to portray that adventures are nothing more to him, than breathing. He’s also the one who always forgets to call, to let us know that he is safe. My second son is brilliant young man with a heart of gold, who dreams of becoming a doctor. He is headed to South America next week to be part of a medical mission. And I am extremely proud, vicariously excited, hesitantly supportive, and absolutely terrified, all at the same time.

I think that is the amazing, balanced strength of a woman. We have arms that hold those who we love so tight and so close, so that they can’t help but know that they are constantly surrounded by warmth and safety and love. Yet we also use those same arms to gently push those same objects of our love, towards their lives’ adventures, with confident, reassuring pats on the back, that all is going to be wondrous and whole. I think that it is amazingly strong to be able to hold and to let go, all at the same time.