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The Worry Train

When my husband and I were in Italy the last couple of weeks, we did a better job of letting go of our everyday cares and concerns than we probably ever have, in our shared lifetime of over thirty years of loving each other. We called the trip, “a gift to ourselves”, to celebrate raising our family to adulthood. And we took indulging in this gift, quite seriously. Before we even left for our adventure, I implored our grown, adult children to please not contact us with anything other than dire emergencies. I asked them to lean on each other while we were away.

My husband made a gallant effort to leave work at the office, to the delight of both of us. We truly allowed ourselves to get lost in the every moments of adventure and novelty and pure delight. Of course, geographic distance, a busy traveling schedule, plenty of interesting distractions, and a large time difference helped with this ability to let go of our everyday responsibilities, but in our last couple days there, I suggested to my husband that perhaps we could bring some of this wonderful relief of letting go, back to our regular everyday lives. He enthusiastically agreed.

And yet, soon after I got home, I found myself jumping right back on to The Worry Train. Does my son, who is in medical school, seem a tad more stressed than I remember? Is my youngest son on top of everything that he has to get done (including being in a wedding) before he moves into his new apartment and starts his new job next month? Why is my daughter so sick again? Was it terrible that she lived in that old, mildewy dormitory her freshman year? Is my eldest as content with his work situation as he claims? Will my husband be slammed at his work, and have to work late hours to make everything up? Have I caught up on my friends’ issues and concerns, and have I shown enough care? What appointments do I need to set up? How do I immediately lose all of the extra weight I have gained from vacation and beyond? Did our dogs eat enough while we were gone and are they seemingly depressed? . . . . . blah, blah, blah. The Worry Train has a constant soundtrack playing in my mind that never, ever skips a beat. The Worry Train loves to hand me baggage to hold on to, that usually isn’t even mine to carry. And for years and years and years, I have traveled on The Worry Train, almost oblivious to the fact that I have the ability to step off of it, anytime that I want.

I think one of the best things which my recent travel experience gave to me, was the gift of contrast. I was able to clearly see that the world still turns, and the adults whom I care about (including my children, my friends and my loved ones) capably live their own lives, whether I am desperately circling them on The Worry Train, or whether I am capably, and happily, and confidently living my own life adventures. When I deliberately disembark from The Worry Train, and the soothing soundtrack of “All is Well” is playing in the back of my mind, the travel of my own life flows a whole lot easier, and my travel companions also seem much more at ease from my own breezy example.


“Trains changed – conductors never did.” – Harper Lee

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Monday – Funday

Credit: Gregorio Catarino, Twitter

When our recent vacation came to its close, I was reminded of the Dr. Seuss phrase that my friend always uses at the endings of happy events and gatherings, “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”

On the other hand, when difficult things are happening, I often remind myself, and my family, and my friends, that our lives are really just the vast, blue sky and the clouds always, always pass. This visual always comforts me with its pure truth.

We brought our youngest child, our only daughter, home for the summer, from college yesterday. She successfully completed her freshman year. We enter a new passageway of being home together, when all of us are used to living our own individual lives. There is always an adjustment period during times like these, but I slept soundly and happily last night knowing that she was safely under our roof once again.

Today is May Day. For many cultures today marks the beginning of spring. Today, we enter yet another fresh new passageway into the journey of our lives. Smile for all the good times which lie behind you and that will always be a small part of you, hope for and excitedly anticipate all of the unknown adventures that lie ahead of you, and know that if you do hit a patch of black clouds, these clouds will pass. They always do.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Soul Sunday

Good morning. One thing that I loved about Italy, is that everyone greeted each other, all day long. It would have been utterly rude if you didn’t say, “Buongiorno” to anyone and everyone whom you came across, throughout your day. So, Buongiorno!! “Grazie” (thank you) and “Prego” (your welcome) were also so liberally used by everyone, that I am having a hard time not saying them constantly, even here at home. The Italians have such a friendly, warm, inviting culture.

I hope that this beautiful Sunday finds you well. I feel so lucky to have this blog to come home to, and to look forward to writing every morning. It was good for me that I took a break from writing my blog, only because it made me truly appreciate just how much writing the blog means to me. Absence does make the heart grow fonder. Here is my poem that I wrote for today. (I hope that you will write one, too. Soul Sunday is supposed to inspire the poets in all of us.)

“The Antiquities”

She was exhausted from the endless beauty . . .

One marble statue equally as exquisite as the next . . .

Their individual magnificence was lost to the mass of them . . .

Airly, she remarked:

“Perhaps, they should have made less of them,

In order for their individual perfection to be truly appreciated.”

“My dear!” he laughed. “Did you think that they made them for you?

Is it your belief that they made these statues for eager tourists,

and greedy museum goers, hundreds of years into the future?

Let me ask you this: ‘How many pictures do you have on your phone?’

Your photographs hold your memories for you,

And your memories are primarily for you.

These statues, my love, were their pictures, their memories and their experiences.

These statues were primarily for their own selves,

And yet they were kind enough to leave them behind.

You, my dear, are a voyeur borrowing their own fond, many memories, left in stone.”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Highlights and Reflections

++++In my experience, what Europeans do best is that they linger, they savor, they relish . . . they absolutely luxuriate in their moments. The Europeans seem to realize that the flourishes and details are what makes life so delightful and meaningful. When my husband and I eagerly purchased several pastries from a bakery in Rome and I mentioned that I needed them to-go, I was so utterly amazed and enchanted, when we got back to our hotel room, to find out that our delicacies had been carefully wrapped up like a gift, tied up in bright red wrapping paper and a pretty gold ribbon. It was a poignant reminder that we can always give ourselves little gifts throughout our days, and that our every days carry so many precious gifts with them, if we take the time to unwrap our precious moments. Perhaps by carefully wrapping up our delicacies, the bakers were saying, “Slow down. Notice and savor what you are about to experience. Unwrap it intentionally and carefully. Appreciate the many parcels of beauty, and joy, and sensations that you get to partake in, every single day of your life. Be thankful for your many, many beautiful gifts, large and small.”

++++My husband and I are not typically “tour people.” We are both independent, stubborn, reluctant to take orders, and a tad manic when we are on our adventures. In this past trip to Italy, we averaged walking over 20,000 steps a day. (Our children have lamented to us, more than once, “Some people like to relax on their vacations.”) However, our well-experienced travel agent insisted that we had to take a few guided tours in order to get into the sites which we wanted to see, in an efficient, “inside scoop” sort of a way. And so we agreed to take a tour of the Coliseum, the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica, and the museum that houses Michelangelo’s masterpiece, “David”, and a few other short, “required” tours. (The statue of David was, surprisingly to me, enormous – in most regards. Ahem. “David” is almost 17 feet tall!!) Our tour guides were a colorful bunch and quite proud of their profession. They were all multi-lingual and apparently, tour guides in Italy are required to take six different tests in order to achieve their touring licenses. The “tour guides” were distinguished from our “tour leaders” and “drivers” whose main job was just to shuffle us along, and to make sure that no one got lost. Apparently “tour leaders” can get fined thousands of dollars if they offer up any information about different sites, as that is a job which is entirely devoted to the highly adept “tour guides.” Our first tour guide (in Rome, a tour of the Coliseum) was a lovely young woman, who unfortunately, I cannot remember her name. She was beautiful and proud of her Roman heritage and had one small tattoo of some artwork that her two children had created. She was enchanting and dedicated to giving us a thorough history lesson. Another tour guide was Larisa, in Florence, who was highly dramatic, artistically snobby, and animated in a Jessica Rabbit sort of a way. Larisa was utterly horrified when I touched the “lucky boar” in the center of the city. “Don’t touch it!” she exclaimed with her dramatic flair, nose up in the air. “It’s full of bacteria. A true Florentine would never touch it!”

“I’m not Florentine. I’m an American tourist. I’m touching it,” I said, staring back at her, like a defiant child. (Larisa didn’t know me well enough to know that I am willing to put my life at risk for anything considered “lucky”. I will, without hesitation, stop traffic in order to pick up a lucky penny.)

Our most interesting tour guide was in Sienna. He was “Uncle Paulo”, an older, elegantly dressed man (the theme of South Carolina’s Pawleys Island, “Arrogantly Shabby” comes to mind when I think of Uncle Paulo) who made his opinions about everything and everyone be known. He didn’t care for modern buildings, modern art, scantily dressed women (“Practically naked, can you imagine?!), nor dancing children (“I hope that they are teaching those children to learn, and not to just dance!”). Everything that disgusted him, he would declare and then for extra flourish, add the question, “Can you imagine?!?” So, how the tour ended, was something that we will never forget, nor will Uncle Paolo. A proud man, Uncle Paulo wanted to keep the tour efficiently on time, so he decided to take us on a short cut through a park, which happened to be hosting a bike race. He had wrongly assumed that the bike race would be over, but it wasn’t. So Uncle Paulo had to shuffle us through a bike race, where only a couple of us at a time, would duck under the safety ribbon, run across the street, right after a motorcycle had passed, indicating the last racer of that particular racing heat. When we all finally and safely, yet a little ruffled and harried and full of nervous giggles, reconvened at our tour bus, Uncle Paulo was obviously deeply chagrined. “This is quite possibly the worst mistake of my life! Can you imagine?!?”

I felt sorry for him. We all did. We all reassured Uncle Paulo that these are the stories that make a vacation. These little “snafus” are the things that you remember with a smile on your face, once you’ve survived them, and they are happily in your past. (I’ll save the story for another blog post in which my husband purposely bought an unusually green colored piece of luggage, specifically for this particular trip, only to have accidentally picked up the wrong piece of luggage when we arrived in Rome. It turns out that my husband picked up the suitcase belonging to a young Texan, who had also purposefully purchased the same unusual green colored, piece of luggage for his trip to Italy. These are the stories that make our trips and experiences so memorable and amusing and idiosyncratic to each of us, for years to come. Can you imagine?!)

++++I am, I realize, unfortunately American-centric, and I noticed in myself, complete surprise when I noticed Italian people with Down Syndrome or other conditions. I had to giggle at myself, to notice that I seemed to think that somehow all human experiences were somehow limited to just us Americans. I was deeply moved when were sitting in an outdoor cafe in Rome, having dinner next to a beautiful Roman family, whom I won’t soon forget. They were a young couple, with a beautiful little girl. The husband was so attentive to his little child and also to his lovely wife, who was in a wheelchair and was making constant involuntary movements and sounds. I don’t know what her affliction was exactly, but it rendered her completely dependent on her loving husband and unable to care for her little girl, as I am sure she wished that she could. The husband affectionately fed his wife dessert, and gently wiped her mouth after each bite. I found myself praying for this lovely family, and being in awe of them, all at once, in a constant stream of emotion. They were so young to be dealing with what they were experiencing, and yet they were so brave, and resilient, and determined to make the most of the moment. It was one of the moments when the Universe was giving me a reminder lesson that “the human spirit” is a Universal thing which resides in all of our bodies, no matter the race, religion, ethnicity, or condition that our individual bodies are currently in.

++++We were picked up in a car outside of our hotel by the tour company who was going to take us through the Vatican City, the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica (which is also unbelievably enormous – it could house more than two American football fields). We were told that we had to pick up one other family on the way, and we arrived outside of a hotel where a lovely Chilean woman and her daughter jumped into the car, giggling at the husband/father who was running towards the car from the sidewalk. He was a lovably rumpled middle-aged man, whose glasses were missing one of their arms, making his glasses perch, perilously and crookedly, at the end of his nose. The Chilean family were delightful and I felt an instant kinship to them. The husband was a lawyer, the wife had raised their four children (just like me!), and their 19-year-old daughter, a graceful young woman, was the youngest of their four children and the only girl. (just like us!) The mother and I bonded easily. She had a no-nonsense, intelligent sense of humor and a twinkle in her eyes. So, I was taken off guard, when telling each other about our children, that she mentioned that one of her sons had died. That’s when the sparkle in her eyes faded, but the beauty of her vulnerable soul still glowed.

We met Mohammed, our guide for the Vatican experience (he was the first to admit the irony of it all, being a man of Middle Eastern descent, who reminded me of a younger version of the game show host, Bob Barker), at a cafe which was below ground. As we were shuffled down the stairs, my Chilean friend, giggled, grabbed my arm, and suggested that perhaps we were being kidnapped, and that’s when my stomach turned a little, considering the idea of that perhaps not-too-far-out-of-the-realm possibility. It turned out that Mohammed was an excellent guide, with a lot of connections, so we got to see quite a bit of everything, in all of the right places and at all of the right times. When we got to the Pietà, Michelangelo’s masterpiece of Mary, holding the body of Jesus, who had just been removed from the cross, I was instantly moved to tears and I was entirely entranced for a period which felt eternal and timeless. I have honestly never seen a more beautiful work of art in my lifetime. When I turned to exclaim and share my unbelievable flow of emotion and excitement to my newfound Chilean soul sister, I noticed that she was no longer nearby, nor with our group. She was far away in a corner, and she was sort of crumpled, and small, and dark, and sad. I walked back to her, and I put my arm around her. I had no words. But I purely understand the universalness of a mother’s heart. It is amazing to me that Michelangelo was able to capture the intensity and emotion of a mother’s broken heart, forever in a slab of marble. He captured the vulnerable, defenseless, yet still armored, resilient, purposeful heart of a mother, to the point that I have no doubts that the Pietà must be nothing but Divine.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

I’m Baaaaack!

I’ve missed you, my dear friends and readers! I am writing this in an entirely zombie-fied state (we got in at 3 a.m. last night), and I probably shouldn’t be writing this at all, and yet I must. I have been yearning to put down in words, so much of what I have experienced in the last ten days or so. And I have desperately missed writing the blog (and you) so very much! I will tell you now that my husband and I are back home, and we are safe and satiated. My husband and I just did a whirlwind “second honeymoon/damn, we raised four amazing kids and we still really dig each other/congratulations, and now, here’s a gift to us and for only us” trip to Italy. We had both been to Italy when we were small children, but never until now, had we experienced Italy as adults. So for all intents and purposes, it was our first trip to Italy. And Italy is everything that it is cracked up to be. And more. And more and more and more. It goes without saying that the Italian food and wine are unbeatable. (one of the first things we did when we got home was to throw away all of our atrocious, plastic bottled BOGO grocery store olive oil. The real thing arrived today from Pruneti in Florence!) The Italian people are kind, upbeat, gorgeously nose-up proud and defiant, and yet hilariously self-deprecating all at once, and hospitable, and charming and beyond accommodating. The Italians are lovely, intoxicating people. The antiquities of Italy are exhaustingly marvelous (Europe is easily the capital of sensory overload). The gelato is addicting (my effort to repeat my nightly gelato with last night’s 3 a.m. Drumstick out of box, with freezer burn, was sadly disappointing and pathetic). The Tuscan countryside seems too beautiful to be real, and when we were at the coastal area in Cinque Terre, I truly had become convinced that I had fallen into a gorgeous painting hanging on a museum wall. There were many times that I had to pinch myself, and I questioned whether I had somehow been hit by one of the many zippy Vespas that had buzzed around us like flies, and that I had somehow easily and quickly died, and luckily, I had skipped the morose parts, and suddenly, I had arrived in a charming, indulgent version of Heaven, full of beauty, pasta, gelato, bread, and wine. (yes, I do think that I deserve to go to Heaven . . . for the most part)

I have so much to digest. I have so much to recount. I have so much to be grateful for having experienced. But, I was also admittedly eager to get home to my precious, grown-up, stateside, busy with their own lives, babies. And home to my devoted fur babies. And home to my plant babies and to my own comfortable bed. And to free flowing water, and to free flowing boring American coffee, and to easily accessible restrooms of a generous size. And I was so eager to open up my precious blog, and to reconnect to the blog’s treasured, loyal readers. Thank you for allowing me my pause. Thank you for allowing me to recalibrate, and to disappear for a little bit into one of my life’s adventures. Thank you for your patience. Thank you for staying with me. I believe that it will be worth it.

I missed you. I’m back. I’ll see you tomorrow! Ciao!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Notice

Dear friends and readers,

I have never done this before, since I started writing the blog in 2018, but I have decided to take the rest of the month off from writing the blog. My husband and I have some adventures planned that we can finally partake in. We had planned to celebrate the raising of our four children to adulthood, a little earlier than this (our youngest started college last year) but we had to deal with health issues of extended family members and the death of my husband’s mother. It’s been A LOT and I don’t think that we have fully processed everything that has happened, and what we have gone through. We need an “escape time” for a little while.

I write this blog every single day. On rare occasions, I have written a blog post the night before, but that doesn’t feel genuine to me. I see this blog as an extension of me, and where I am at in the moment. It’s not a business. It’s an outpouring of my thoughts and my feelings. Where I am at right now emotionally, is a mix of proud celebration and relief, and desperately needing a break from my usual.

I hope that you won’t leave me. You can look at my archives to understand my consistent, loyal nature. I have every intention of coming back to the blog, feeling refreshed and optimistic about this stage of my life, and with a lot of adventures to write about.

I hope to “see” you around these parts again in May. I honestly hope that you will miss me. I know that I will miss you.

Sincere love,

Kelly

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Wednesday’s Whimsies

+ This is a limpkin. When in mating season, male limpkins scream (literally scream – people often confuse their screams of that of a hurt child) all day and all night in order to attract the lady limpkins, and to make it clear that the area that they are screaming in, is their territory. There is no mistaking that a screaming male limpkin means business. There is a local limpkin who has decided that the small lake on the other side of our backyard is his territory. Sigh.

+ I learned a great new word this week: farrago. It means “a confused mixture.” It’s like a fancier, more sophisticated way to say “hodgepodge” or “mishmash.” At times when I feel like my own life is a confused mixture (and that is more often than I like to admit), I think that I will use the term “farrago”. This word makes it sound like I still have everything under control.

+ My friends and I were at Carrabba’s last night celebrating a birthday, and Carrabba’s has a special going on that if you order a meal in-house, you can get another meal to take home for the next day, for only $10 (which is less than half their usual price for meals). So, I am really looking forward to Chicken Parm for lunch today. I don’t know how long this special lasts but you might want to check it out.

+ I am extremely disappointed with Dalai Lama, and the video circulating of him asking a young boy to “suck his tongue.” As the saying goes, “Never meet your heroes.” What I think is more important is, be careful who you make your “heroes.” Shouldn’t anyone whom we consider to be a “hero” be someone whom we know very well, and with whom we have had extensive personal experience with? Or maybe having heroes really isn’t a good idea at all. All humans are fallible. Perhaps it is best to work being your own hero.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Crazy World

Our youngest son graduated early from college in December, and he will be starting his first “real” job out of college this summer. He and one of his long time best friends are planning to be roommates downtown in our city, so they have been apartment shopping. I took them out to lunch the other day and it was amusing to hear them complain about all of the “crazy” things that you have to do in the adult world. They were making fun of so many things that just don’t make sense. I laughed and I told them, “Guys, you’ve only just begun. Get used to “crazy”. It’s everywhere. At least you are aware of all of the “crazy”, even if you have to be a part of it.”

Along these lines, on Easter, our youngest son was complaining about the fact that two times in a row, his Starbucks barista did not put any ice into a special new drink, which is supposed to be known and created and advertised for its full-out freezing iciness. I said to my son, “Well, next time you’ll have to say, ‘This drink is known for having a lot of ice in it, right?’, to you know, kind of jog his memory.”

“I shouldn’t have to do that, Mom. It’s his job to know how to make the drinks,” my son said stubbornly, as I barely stifled my guffaw. “Darling, there are a lot of things in this world which should happen or shouldn’t happen, but still don’t or do happen. Part of being an adult is learning how to navigate a system that’s all kinds of crazy without going crazy yourself.”

I’ve learned in life that smiles, kindness, friendliness, foresight, self-deprecating comments mentioning that I can sometimes have a tendency to be a PITA, or sometimes a little “high maintenance”, lowered expectations, and accepting that I will have to make many reminder calls and I will have to repeat many questions (and then self-deprecatingly admitting that reminders can be annoying), have helped make it easier for me to navigate my own little corner of cray-cray. The goal is “to be in this world, but not of it“, right? Of course, it took a little while to get my process into play, and being at peace that I even have “to do this process” (which sometimes feels fake and manipulative) is still something that I am working on, now in my ripe old fifties. It’s interesting being the observer of my children as they enter the arena of Crazy World, right out of their Starting Gates of Adulthood. Maybe they’ll turn crazy enough to change the world into the way that it should be.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Monday – Funday

Credit: @MindPsychology, Twitter

It feels so good to be back in my writing seat this morning! Did everyone press your reset buttons this weekend? Are you reset, renewed and rejuvenated for the year ahead? As a big picture person (Thank goodness that I’m married to a detail-oriented person. We’re yin/yang this way. I set up the plans, and my husband makes sure that we have food/gas/directions and a perfectly packed trunk), a question that I often ask myself, or I tell my friends and family to ponder, is: “What’s the endgame here?” What am I ultimately trying to achieve? What’s most important for me in this endeavor?”

When you are dealing with a situation that you are frustrated with, and you are overthinking it, and you find yourself feeling annoyed, irritated, and possibly even stubborn and hopeless about it, take a few steps back. Pause and ask yourself if the thoughts that you are thinking, and the actions which you are taking, are necessary in order to bring you to the ultimate result, which you are trying to achieve. If you ultimately want peace for yourself, is it truly in your own best interest to hold on, like a dog on a bone, to your side of an argument? If you have grown enough in your career to support the overall lifestyle that makes you feel comfortable, is it still necessary to overwork/over-volunteer for things, as if you are desperately trying to climb the corporate ladder? If you want to keep climbing “the ladder” to see what level you can ultimately achieve, do you need to do more? If you can’t stand managing people, is the title of “manager” truly important for you to have on your business card? If you are tired of yard work, could you envision yourself living in a simpler condominium? You get the (big) picture . . . . What’s the endgame here? This “step-back and pause for a minute” question, helps to bring better clarity for ourselves. It shows us what our own honest priorities are in our lives. It helps us to eliminate confusion, and the “shoulds”, and rote thoughts and rote habits, which are things that have a tendency to cloud our clarity on what we ultimately want to achieve, and to feel, on a daily basis. It pulls us out of the deep-dive weed bed of too many details and compulsions.

If you have a frustration going on right now, ask yourself, “What’s the endgame here?” Once you have the end goal figured out, you can then see if your thoughts and your actions and your plans are matching up to that end goal. We all know that there are no guarantees. Life likes to throw curveballs at us here and there. But even when running in circles, it still feels better to know that we have taken clear-headed steps towards a direction of our own choosing.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Good Friday

Good morning, my beautiful friends and readers. Thank you for reading my blog. Thank you for “hearing” me. I love you. I started this blog in 2018, when my eldest of four children officially left the nest, by graduating from college and moving to a whole other city. And every year since then, I have written a blog post almost every single day. This blog is one of my own favorite things of all time. It has become my lifeline back to me. However, consistently, I have taken Easter weekend off from writing, since the day that I started the blog.

This is a holy time of year. Easter, Passover, Spring. This time of year is the biggest, most gapingly open portal to hope which we receive in any given year. It’s the perfect time to press the “reset” button. Whatever your spiritual beliefs are (or aren’t), you can’t help but to feel the renewal of life and hope all around you. This time of year, is the best time of year for me, to quiet my thoughts, and to let the good of life, just soak in. I hope that you are able to do the same.

Here are a couple of bonus favorites (for Favorite Things Friday), to tide you over. I hope that you are eager to come back to the blog on Monday. I know that I will be more than eager to write it.

L’Oréal Paris Age Perfect Satin Glide Eyeliner with Mineral Pigments – Oh my gosh. I can’t believe I forgot how much I love this eyeliner. I recently randomly pulled it out of a cup of eyeliner pencils that I keep by my bathroom sink, and then I instantly remembered how great it is, the minute I started putting it on. This pencil is so rich, so smooth, and so long-lasting. I love eyeliner, like Cleopatra loved eyeliner. I have a lot of eyeliner pencils. This one is the best!

Good & Gather Crushed Garlic Cubes and Crushed Ginger Cubes – I purchased these wonders at Target recently, and they have become flavor game changers. You keep them in your freezer (they look like small ice cube trays). Then, when you need to put something on the skillet, you just blop one of the frozen cubes on to the pan and it turns into the perfect mix of oil and flavor, to help to make whatever you are cooking, taste divine.

Have a wonderful weekend friends. I hope that the weekend ends with us all feeling refreshed, renewed, relieved, revived, rejuvenated and reoriented to living our lives with excitement, hope and energy. I will see you back here on Monday.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.