Put another candle on my birthday cake!

Saturday was my birthday! I had a wonderful day. It was a bit on the indulgent side. I went on a shopping spree! I went to Macy's and made a significant investment in Clarins skin care - I have always liked their goodies and feel that I deserve it at my new mature age. I bought just about the entire line for my skin type (I have always wanted to do that). I must go back for some magic serum thing that will turn me into a hot 20 year old French girl next month - that was the only thing I did not buy. I then went to J. Jill and bought some really cute goodies on sale - how very prudent of me!

Our family went out for dinner at the Fish House Vera Cruz - which I absolutely adore and I indulged in one (1) glass of chardonnay - how very stringent of me!!!! My best buds Sylvia and Majid showed up to join us as a surprise so the night was very fun. I ate my Jenny Craig birthday cake and was surprisingly satisfied. I have lost 20 lbs - well, just 4 0z shy of that but I always round up when it involves weight loss.

Matt got me an ipod and the kids got me some itune cards so I plan to spend at least part of today getting my music thing set up. I do love the ipod!!! I get really into mundane things like housework and exercising with the ipod. It is also great for art projects!

There is one significant difference to this birthday that I discovered on Friday. Nina and I went to the Del Mar Fair and we were having a grand time when we decided to ride some of the rides. OMG - I realized I am sooooo not 20 any more!!!!! That's it for me I am off the carni-rides for good now. All I did was scream and holler! NO NINA, NO NO NO!!! Well, I am embarrassed to tell you that it took about an hour to recover and for my legs to stop shaking. So, no more carni-rides! I just don't do those things anymore. That is how I know I am getting older, and I am ok with that.

They say time flys when you are having fun...

Really, it didn't seem like that long ago that I was home everyday doing the really important stuff like teaching little people how to walk and talk. My Father would visit us and say "This will slip by so fast Kim, you'd better enjoy it".





This is a picture of Bijan taking his first steps. A little shakey at first but he got the hang of it. Check out those late 80' glasses and the spikey do I was sporting!

Bijan graduated from high school Thursday! It really did slip by fast. We are so proud of him - he is such a wonderful son.

My Favorite Artist

It is a great time to share a little bit of my dad with you. His birthday is this week he will be 82! I spent last weekend helping him take some of his paintings to a library in Rancho Santa Fe for a showing. He has a small collection of about 20 paintings there for a month. He shows his paintings but will not sell them. There are more than 70 works at his home gathered like old friends he is not willing to part with.

He has such an insightful way of seeing things. It is surely my favorite thing about him. When I look at art with him he can see so much more in the work than I would have ever picked up on my own. He knows the colors that the artist originally started out with, he minds the brush strokes, play of the light and the particular way the colors are blended. He doesn’t always see things in life the way I see them, but I have learned to respect and appreciate that.

He is an amazing teacher to me. It has been a precarious balance of lessons ranging from what not to do in life, by his own example, and how to pull from within the courage to walk the line that needs walking. The most valuable lessons he has taught me are about the frailty and preciousness of relationships. How they come and how they go. How quickly they can be lost and how courageously they can sometimes be won back, if the timing is right and you are willing to risk and love.

Grace

I’ve been tip toeing through grace. I am in awe of grace. I am inspired by grace. Degas was inspired by it too I think – the movement of women from ballerinas to laundresses. What makes someone graceful? When I think of real grace I suppose I think of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, or Grace Kelly – hmm, I should refer to her by her proper title: Her Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco, - now that is graceful!

I have often thought of myself as something like a bull in a china shop. Tromping not so carefully through life. I laugh too loud. I definitely am not afraid to use all manner of four letter words with no concern of whose company I am in. I am usually guilty of talking too much. I sometimes catch myself just as my foot is going into my mouth – but not always. I succumb to the whims of fashion trends to often and you will not find me in a perfect and timeless little black dress, although perhaps after a few more months on Jenny Craig I can swing that.

I asked a dear friend of mine, a minister, if we ever reach a state of permanent grace, a place where we handle all cards that are dealt to us gracefully. Is grace just reserved for the few that are born with perfect hair or size six feet? Is it dolled out in extra servings for the likes of Jackie O. and Her Serene Highness? My friend told me that grace could be found in your recovery time. She told me that we all freak out from time to time, we all go to the zoo some day. Grace can be found in the time and manner in which you recover. I like that. I like that I can be graceful and that I can condition to become more graceful.

But grace can not be suffering in silence. You cannot just keep twirling Swan Lake in your little pink satin toe shoes whilst your toes are bleeding. There must be a reckoning – a little “Come to Jesus” meeting, as an old boss of mine used to say. You have to spread it out on a table and inspect what is not working and get it – own it - and move on. Only the brave can do this, the strong and the well conditioned.

As I step into the gracefulness of my life I am reminded of a quote by Oprah Winfrey, when musing about all of her life lessons that have required graceful acrobatics she said, “Some days I wake up and I say God don’t teach me nothin today!”

As I trip the light fantastic across the room, perhaps a new title for me: Her Graceful Highness Princess Kim of California…

Still love this CD...

Driving home from my fun outing today, I listened to my Madeline Peyroux "Carless Love" CD. I am telling you it is like listening to Billy Holiday reincarnated with a smidgen of Bessie Smith - I love it. If you like what my Son refers to as "Chick Music" then you should have her CD's in your collection. Happy New Week to you all.

"We never laughed like that"...

I don’t have many pictures of my Mother. This one is a favorite of mine. It is originally only 3 inches tall and about 2 ½ inches wide and for years I could not make out what was really going on in the photo. One night when I was going through pictures with my Mom she came upon it and stared at it for a while. She tossed it aside and said, “We never laughed like that”. Years later after she had passed I had the few remaining pictures of her enlarged. When I opened the envelope for the first time I could see that she was with her family, the girls are holding tiny puppies that are snuggling into their necks tickling them and making them laugh. My Mother is the bobbed little girl sitting on her father’s lap.

I am happy to say that I don’t look back on my childhood with that same type of feeling. We laughed a lot in our home. There were six kids and my mother was an executive in the real estate industry. She was extremely busy. I don’t know how she did it. It was not common for women to work like that in those days. She always tried to make a little extra time for me. We shared a lot of time talking while she was cooking. Some of my favorite memories of her are the nights before Thanksgiving or Christmas Eve when she made pies. The best rainy Saturday afternoons I have ever spent were those watching spooky movies with Mom and splurging on fudge. She had a weakness for fudge and could whip up a perfect batch at a moments notice.

I don’t have much of anything that belonged to my mother, just a plastic powder compact – nothing fancy. But oh - when you open that compact…that is the scent of my mother. I keep it in my memory box with other photos and things from a long time ago.

I have been thinking a lot this week…what sort of things am I leaving behind for my kids? I am not sure how to say this without sounding shallow, but here goes… I want them to have something nicer. My Mother was worth so much more than a drug store compact. The idea that the simple things left behind might someday be the very token that someone holds onto is interesting. I am sure when my mother purchased that compact at the five and dime she did not know that 32 years later her daughter would still have it and cherish it. A friend of mine has a collection of beautiful tiny bowls that belonged to her mother. “These are ketchup and mustard dishes, a little joy for a pickle or a pepper”, she told me. She said that her mother would never put condiments on to the table in the ordinary jars they came in – everything was served in little vintage china or crystal dishes.

I think these little personality glimpses are what we are holding on to. I am also holding on to the scent of my mother, no matter how it is packaged.

Moving On

I have just started reading Moving On by Sarah Ban Breathnach. Click here to buy it online. I love her stuff. I have only read Simple Abundance and it changed my life. If you have not read it - you must! I am not sure if this is the book I should be reading now with all of my plans of getting to know myself a little better - I think this book is more about creating your "Home of Belonging". Oh well, it just spoke to me on my last trip to the book store so I took it home. "Trans", Nina says it is a Latin root word for carry. This book talks a lot about Transitions. I am in a transition right now and by my last post you could say I am in the process of transporting myself on a little expedition of the soul. Surely my home is part of a soulful transformation too, after all my home is my heart and my heart is my home.