In the Golden Afternoon

"Little bread-and-butterflies kiss the tulips,
and the sun is like a toy balloon.
There are get up in the morning glories,
in the golden afternoon.

You can learn a lot of things from the flowers,
for especially in the month of June.
There's a wealth of happiness and romance,
all in the golden afternoon." 

 - from Alice In Wonderland

Our adventures (and my birthday celebration) continued on Saturday, starting early in the morning, when we hit our third farmer's market in two days.  We were on the hunt for the perfect strawberries for a dinner party, but it turns out that the cool weather delayed our regular strawberry season a little.  Fortunately, that doesn't apply to Harry's Berries, the best strawberry farm in Southern California. We found them at the Santa Monica farmer's market, at Arizona and 3rd.

Eureka!

They specialize in a rare variety called gaviota, which are perfect little nuggets of heaven.  We picked up a 3-pack, as well as some mandarin oranges which will make a culinary appearance in tomorrow's entry.

It's peak citrus season at the market.

While there, we discovered the largest leek I've ever seen.

A leek so large one must make reaction faces.

After making our purchases, we moved on to Project Me class at Slimmons.  We usually stay for back-to-back classes on Saturdays, but since my birthday picnic was scheduled for 1:00, we had to ditch out on Richard's Sweat class.  Fortunately, we got plenty of exercise at Descanso Gardens, the lovely botanical park where we were meeting our friends.  We brought our lunch from my favorite gourmet shop, Joan's on Third.  My lunch was a little larger than usual - I had expected I'd top my usual daily 1400 calories (though, it turns out, I only ate at total 195 extra calories, which is not bad considering two meals we didn't prepare ourselves.)  Lunch included:

• A small black forest ham & brie sandwich with caper mustard and greens
• 1/4 cup of butter beans with herbs
• 1/4 cup of roasted beets
• Three bites of a small lemon tart. I shared some of the rest, and we threw about half of it away.  I didn't feel bad about wasting food - I wanted to enjoy it, but I only needed a taste.
• 8 ounces of sparkling water with 4 ounces of pineapple juice

Descanso was starting its spring bloom, so although not everything was flowering, much was bright and green.  It was a lovely, breezy afternoon, perfect for perambulation.

Much of the day was spent strolling and participating in shutterbuggery.
Photo courtesy of K. McQueen

There are several different subsections of the park, including Camellia gardens.  I had never seen Camellias before, and I thought the arrangement of their petals was remarkable.

Camellias everywhere!

To my surprise, parts of the lilac garden was in bloom.  In Michigan where I grew up, we only had lilacs during early summer.  I took a deep drink of their perfume, and I was surprised to realize it reminded me not of summer gardens, but of my mother's hospital room.  Sense memory strikes again.

Eau de Bittersweet

I loved the Japanese part of the gardens, which was very peaceful. I may return to do some writing and sketching there. Plus, the cherry blossom festival starts next weekend, and I love me some cherry blossoms.

I also loved these sconces inside a pavillion in the Japanese garden.

The park was varied in landscape - some open, bright areas with flower beds, and some darker, woodsy areas that felt more natural.

The trees were unusually (and pleasantly) gnarly for So Cal.

There were lots of water fixtures - and water, in its many and varied forms, tends to make me happy.

Tom snapped this excellent photo of a mini-waterfall.

The best part of the day, of course, was the time spent with friends.  A lovely adventure, had by all.

Photo courtesy of K. McQueen

Mellow Birthday... if mellow involves snakes and cupcakes...

I had a lovely day on Thursday, which was my birthday. I was telling someone that it was mellow, but it actually included much activity.  The difference was that I was mellow.  I'll chalk that up to the good ways I've been taking care of myself.

I started the day thinking on a few past birthdays - a way to include my late mother in the day without feeling too sad - and thinking on the year to come.  After we got up, I ate my usual breakfast:

• 1/2 cup fat free Vanilla Greek yogurt
• 1/2 cup blueberries
• A sandwich, comprised of 1 egg, 2 slices light whole wheat, and 1 slice fat free cheese

Then I spent a little time relaxing with a glass of Earl Grey with sugar-free almond syrup, and my favorite eye candy blog, Design Sponge, followed by some luxurious primp-time.  Do you find that when you spend a little extra time with scrubs, lotions and masks, you feel scrumptious? I seem to.

We had planned our food for the day on Sunday, which is our usual day-of-menu-planning-and-shopping... but when we were entering our calories on LiveStrong, we realized that we'd be getting 70% of our nutrients after 9 PM if we ate as planned.  So we swapped our dinner and our lunch - we headed out to my favorite healthy restaurant, Tender Greens, where I had the albacore hot plate. Delicious!

Photo by Flickr user greenlagirl

From there, we took a leisurely drive down Sunset to Malibu.  The weather was amazing, and when we arrived the beach looked so inviting that I was disappointed to be wearing dress flats.  Fortunately, I remembered that we brought our gym bags, and we always carry a pair of flip-flops in our gym bags!  We took a brief beach-walk and enjoyed the sunshine.

You can't tell it from my crappy Blackberry camera, but the water was sparkling!

On our way back up to the car for a spot of beachfront writing, Tom suddenly threw his arm in front of me.  There was a huge snake in our path!  He was about 4 feet long, and a wrist wide at his largest.  Definitely the largest snake I've ever seen that wasn't separated from me by glass.  It took its sweet time to slither back across the cement ramp, so we took pictures while we waited.

It's hard to tell scale from the photo. Tom suggested that I go stand by it for size reference, and was summarily smacked.

From there, we headed to Beverly Hills for my therapizin', my birthday cupcake from Sprinkles (just the one), and our class at Slimmons, where our butts were thoroughly kicked by Richard.  Plus I moved up from 3-pound free weights to 5-pounders. Yow!

At the end of class, Richard and the Slimmons gang sang for me, and I received Richard's birthday gift - a hand-made doll necklace.  Complete with 'fro and sparkly tank top.

Sitting, fittingly, on my Food Mover book.

And, of course, a hug from the real 'fro and sparkly tank top.

5-year-old Heidi, eat your heart out.

From there, we lumbered home and ate our cupcake and dinner:

• Wrap sandwich, with 2 oz of grilled chicken, cherry tomatoes, a Trader Joe's single-serving of light brie (more on this in a later entry!), and some red bell pepper we'd roasted earlier in the week.
• A cup of steamed broccoli with lemon and capers

Cue collapse and happy birthday spent.  A big thank-you to all of my loved ones who called and reached out on Facebook and elsewhere. You have made my previous 31 special, and I know you'll be a big part of making my 32nd year a wonderful one!

Back to Blogging

It's been a long time since I've blogged, and so much has happened! It's been a time of positive change, and I can hardly believe how circumstances aligned to allow for that positive change.  I had the chance to write about it for Richard Simmons' website.  Yes, Richard Simmons. That Richard Simmons. The one who was my imaginary friend when I was 5. He is, in fact, very real... and he's been our champion and our cheerleader since early January, when my amazing friend David introduced us.

Richard featured Tom and I as his "Salute to Success" for March, and you can read the stories we wrote for him, here.  As of Tuesday, I am down 27 pounds, and Tom is down 21.7!

Our before-and-after, January 11 to March 1

It was an honor to be selected, but writing our story was an emotional and challenging experience for both of us.  In the end, it's been amazing to be able to reach out and help people who have had similar experiences. I'm glad we were able to share our ongoing journey.  And that made me think... perhaps it would be good for me, and for others, if I kept sharing my ongoing journey.  So here I am, back to blogging.  Hello, world!

Ah, so I didn't get to keep up with the blogging daily.

I'm having a rough day and I could use some rest.  Some centering, too.  Health Month has been harder this week, because I had a short weekend and busy week days that sapped my energy.

It's ups and downs, though.  Happy about the reading, about our progress writing, about my partnership and marriage with Tom.  Down about a few other things.

On the up side, I have two free days this weekend. I plan to use them for centering myself. I do this in many ways, so the possibilities almost overwhelm. I want to...

Write
Swim
Clean
Launder
Relax
Enjoy the kittens
Enjoy the husband
To gather zen
Do some yoga
Make some tea
Read November's Real Simple
Eat something deliciously healthy at Tender Greens
Watch a movie. I don't really care what, though I wish Harry Potter or Black Swan were out.

If you were here with me, I would hug you and perhaps ask you for a glass of wine or a punch in the nose - I'm not sure which.

It's official, guys. We booked a theater.  Saturday November 13 at 2:00 PM... at...

SECOND CITY!!

They were surprisingly reasonable, based on the fact that it's a workshop and the audience is not paying.   My best work pal just told me I was "glowing."

Now, to fill 55 seats plus readers.  Hoo, boy.

Note: this is not my blog entry for the day.  It's just my squee.

Oy vey! It has been a full two weeks since I've posted.  And I've stored up so many various things to talk about, it started to overwhelm me and actually keep me from posting more.

Ridiculous.  So I'm going to do a series of shorter posts, just so I can get some things out!

We went on our annual Columbus Day creative retreat to Palm Springs two weekends ago.  It was a tremendous long weekend, full of hard creative work, lots of swimming, delicious food, and wonderful company. More on the food and its effects, in another entry.

Tom and I were able to complete episode 3 of Bubble Gumshoe while we were there, and on the spur of the moment, we decided to have a reading of the first 3 episodes with our fellow retreat-goers.  It was the first time we shared the bulk of it with a group. My family read the first episode together earlier this summer, but we hadn't had a real group reaction until our reading in Palm Springs.

The thing in the reading that stood out most to me was that immediately upon finishing the read, most of our audience/readers lurched into a discussion about who they thought was the culprit of the mystery. Someone would mention one character, and then someone else would say something about that character (accusing or in defense) that showed us that our characterization was clear enough to the audience that they would be able to dispute possible actions and motives.  The bottom line from the reading seemed to be one thing: "write more!"  It's definitely a response we were happy to hear.  That characters and a plot are compelling enough for people to want more of them... I'll take that as a good sign.

We were inspired by this reading to do a workshop reading of all of the 5 Bubble Gumshoe episodes... and we've taken off running with it.  We have our date (the afternoon of Saturday November 13.)  We have a number of theater spaces were considering.  We even have some of the readers and audience members lined up. 

I'm kind of bursting about the whole thing. It felt so great to share Bubble Gumshoe, after all of these months spent writing it quietly with Tom.  We share it every day, together, but it was still kind of a vacuum. To be able to share it with others, to get honest criticism and feedback - to help us shape the final product - is very, very exciting. Probably the most excited I've been about my personal creative work in years.  I may not be getting this across elsewhere, but... this reading is extremely important to me.  To both of us.

Anyway, my goal is to write here daily, to keep up my self-awareness (and keep sharing with all of you.)  So I'll write more tomorrow.  But in the meanwhile... if you're nearby, take a look at your calendar.  If you have some spare time on 11/13, we would love to have you come and listen. We want Bubble Gumshoe to be as solid, as funny, and as entertaining as possible, and your feedback will help that happen.

Happy Monday!

Things are going well on all fronts.  A few high points:

• We started the Health Month October game on Friday, and it's been fun to have an amusing way to keep some goals in check.  So far so good!  
• Took another brief trip to some estate sales this weekend, and I'll have a separate post on that tomorrow, complete with pictures of the wacky things we've acquired, and tips we've learned. 
• Today I tried something new with my water carafe. I brought a package of frozen raspberries to work, and am using them as both fruit flavoring and ice cubes. They're tastier than I expected, and because their cell walls have been punctured in the process of becoming ice crystals, they turn the water a very pretty pink color.
• Caught up on a ton of housework and laundry yesterday, and managed to make a batch of passionfruit curd (which will serve as the sauce base on the tart we're making for our Palm Springs dinner Friday) and my lunch salad for this week: Moroccan Couscous.

1 cup water 
1/2 tablespoon ground ginger 
1 garlic clove 
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric 
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon 
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin 
1 cup plain dry plain couscous 
1/4 cup raisins 
1 cup chopped cucumber 
1 cup halved cherry tomatoes 
1/2 cup caramelized onions 
1 cup canned mandarin oranges (drained, reserving 1/4 cup of juice) 
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

Bring water, ginger, garlic, turmeric, cinnamon, and cumin to boil in heavy large saucepan. Stir in couscous and remove from heat. Scatter raisins over, cover, and let stand until couscous softens, about 10 minutes. Fluff couscous with fork, breaking up any lumps with fingertips. Transfer couscous to large bowl. Add cucumber, tomato, onions and drained oranges. Whisk 1 tablespoon oil and orange juice in small bowl. Add to couscous; toss to coat.  Makes 4 servings,  340 calories per serving.

But enough on that.  I thought that since I've been focusing on only 2 of the 3 main topics I intended to discuss (the physical progress and mental progress) it was probably time to talk a bit about my creative progress.

I haven't gone into details here, because most of you know that over the last year, Tom and I got involved with an animation production company, a new company with some cool connections. The project gave us our first taste of writing and developing animation professionally.  The process of Tom and I joining up with this team, and everyone's subsequent departure from the team, is a long and funny story, and one that doesn't belong on the web.  If you haven't heard it, let's go out for coffee or sit down on the phone and I will tell you the details.  But the biggest thing that came out of this - other than the friends and connections we made - was that Tom and I finally stopped making excuses for why we weren't writing.  In fact, we stopped not writing altogether.  We've been working on our projects consistently all year, and the plan is, basically, to never stop.  We'd love to have more than an hour or two each day to work on it, but for right now it's making us happy.  

The project we've worked most on has been our own animated series, Bubble Gumshoe.  We came up with it together while working with the animation company last year, and we realized it was a good place to start.  Since this spring, we've completed a full series & character bible, and we're currently on episode script #3.  Here's our logline and the introduction of our series description:

Log Line
A clever ten-year-old, inspired by old movies, runs a detective agency out of his treehouse.

Series Description
Welcome to Sam’s town… where dark shadows lurk around every corner and danger looms just out of sight. A city of hardened criminals, and dames with something to hide. A city crying out for someone to set it straight. And that someone is Sam… a fifth-grade detective out to clean up the streets.

Sam lives with his family in Mount Pleasant, a sunny, all-American suburb. But that’s not how Sam sees it. After years of watching old detective movies, to Sam, Mount Pleasant is a world of mystery and intrigue, where the criminals steal stuffed animals, and the dames have cooties. From his treehouse detective agency, Sam cracks the cases brought to him by his classmates at Mount Pleasant Elementary. There are missing toys, mysterious symbols, disappearing homework, epic water fights… and for Sam, the stakes are as high as in one of his beloved Film Noir classics.

Everything that has come from this process has been kind of delightfully surprising.  At the beginning, I was surprised by the episode titles we came up with.  "The Big Nap."  "The Concrete Jungle Gym." "The Maltese Penguin." Later, it was the tapestry of characters we came up with, and the way that they interacted together.

Early on, we worried about the right way to bring in comic relief, and to keep Sam's noir musings from skewing away from the kid-friendly.  But so many solutions came to us in the process of creating!  What we have now, I believe, is a series that will entertain kids while making their parents chuckle, too. That's the goal, anyway.

For instance, we've broken up some of Sam's dark tone with his little brother, Miles - a kindergartener.  Little brothers in cartoons can wear out their welcome as quickly as little brothers in real life.  But thanks to one line that came to us out of the blue, Miles became a spirited little kid with strange taste in food and an inability to use his indoor voice at the worst possible moments. It's so much fun to write Miles.

On the other hand, I absolutely dreaded writing Roz. She is Sam's rival-slash-kindred, a new girl who writes for the school's newspaper. He wants to solve the mystery - but she wants the scoop.  This is all well and good, but when you create a character who is supposed to banter like a Girl Friday from a screwball comedy... you have to write banter from a screwball comedy.  This is as hard as it sounds, and it takes us a lot longer than, say, Miles... but when it works, it really works.

Our basic idea was that Sam should - in his head, his voice-over - sound like he belonged in a hard-boiled film noir. And because of that, he would feel like a fish-out-of-water around everyone else.  He might even feel annoyed by anyone who pulls him out of his personal detective fantasy.  (For instance, his little brother.)  But when Sam meets Roz, he should be bowled away.  Some else talks like an old movie.  Not just in her head... she's talking to him. And they're talking the same language.

Well... not quite the same language.  Part of our key to figuring out Roz was realizing that Sam speaks in occasional "noir slang," but Roz uses a combination of "newspaper slang" and a kind of invented "kid slang."  We worked from online noir and newspaper glossaries, and then we created a glossary of our own for Roz... using school themes, nursery rhymes, fairy tales, and other kidlet-like phrases as a starting point for her unique vocabulary.  Tom says I'm only allowed to share one definition with you today, so I will leave you with my favorite.

To play hopscotch: jumping to conclusions. “Just because he said he was there doesn’t mean he did it. Let’s not play hopscotch here.”