stories

This week, we went for Thai with my lovely friend Laura Reese and her husband, Josh. They are just interesting. They met at my alma mater, got married, and now they live in an awesome old house with a big beautiful Akita named Adelaide.

Laura not the kind of girl you can label.  I can't call her my friend from Oregon because she's also my friend who's going to one day open a pie shop and my friend who plays the guitar and used to be a music teacher and my friend who has awesome red curls and my friend who works for the American Red Cross and dressed up in one of their authentic World War II nurse uniforms to perform at a work function.

But I think that's inspiring. If you ask me what I did last night, I either watched a marathon of Ace of Cakes or went out to eat. If I ask her what she did last night, she made her own wine or listened to the Portland Blazers on the radio or sewed a quilt or climbed a mountain in Colorado. Here's to doing things.

It's appropriate that I tried my first Thai with Laura and her husband. I had Pad Park and JT got the best fortune I've seen in awhile:

If you got it, flaunt it

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We were watching our brand new House DVD, and I could only concentrate on one thing: Olivia Wilde's ponytail. I wear my hair in a ponytail more often than not, but mine never looks nearly as stylish.

"I want my ponytail to look like hers," I announced.

JT didn't really know what to say. "I think hers starts higher."

But no sooner had the words left his mouth that I pulled at my ponytail and tightened it in one swift motion, and my ponytail was magic.

"How did you do that?" JT said, tilting my head for a better look.

"How did I do what? I don't know!"

I've tried multiple times unsuccessfully to reproduce this trick to no avail. My ponytails will have to be boring until the Ponytail Fairy decides to sprinkle her magic dust in my hair again.

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This week marked the one-year anniversary of one of my heroes, Jim Beals. He was my college roommate's dad, and called me his fourth daughter. Incredibly smart with a great smile and a warm heart, he pastored a small church in Oregon and his sermons were dynamite. He was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer and when doctors gave him months, he survived upwards of seven years, I think.

One of my fondest memories of him was when he drove us across the Hood River bridge just because we wanted to say we'd been in Washington state. He paid the toll, crossed the bridge, and drove us up this hill. He offered to knock on someone's door so we could get a proper view from a backyard, but we chose not to. We just got out on the street in a neighborhood and we could see all the lights of the quaint river town he called home. It was fun and beautiful! Then we got back in the car and turned around, and we'd been in Washington! What a man!

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I went to Braum's to pick up a cherry pie JT was craving, and I couldn't find it at first. The guy who was working the convenience store counter was very helpful, and later I found out why. When I took off my glove to swipe my credit card, he asked how my day was going.

LB: "My day is going great. How is yours?"
Braum's Guy: "Good, except I wish you'd take off your other glove so I could see if you have a ring."

I was caught off guard but smiled and told him, yes, there was a ring. We laughed about it and when I told JT in the car that his wife was in high demand, he had a lot of fun making fun of me that night.

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I just returned from Whole Foods (aka Whole Paycheck), and my bounty includes:

sparkling pink lemonade

pannetone we've wanted to try

cocoa meringue cookies I've been craving (100 calories for 14 cookies!)

a whole grain French baguette

stew beef

blackberry jam

It's going to be fun and creative cooking in my kitchen this week!