Mom's cupckes

Thank you everyone for the sweet comments about the last post. They were so sweet, they made me want to make all of you a treat. So here you go.
Chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese icing and dark chocolate drizzles


and there's enough for everyone...

An Airman winks at me everyday

I live near an Air Force Base. Usually this fact has absolutely no impact on my life whatsoever. It simply means that sometimes we have to pause in our conversations as jets go roaring overhead in twos or fours, screaming their way back to the base. Sometimes it means that we see F-22's taking off before us at the airport right along side all the commercial and commuter planes. Mostly, though, it does not affect me. I don't even live close enough to the base to see cute Airmen in the grocery store or anything.
I do have one little connection with the flyers of Davis Monthan though, that I think is so special.

Every morning, one of them winks at me.

This requires a little explaining probably. You see, on my street, all of the houses face exactly north or south. That means that everyone's side windows face exactly east or west. In my house, my bedroom and bathroom have east facing windows. When the sun rises, it fills this side of the house with bright bright sunlight, while the other rooms still look like night. It is no fun in the summer when the sun rises straight in your face at 5:30 in the morning, but in the winter, it's so much nicer. You start to get a pinky glow at 6:30 and by seven, the window is all sparkly. I especially like the sparkly window effect in the bathroom, where the window is textured and frosty. The sunrise through that window turns the whole pane into one big diamond. It gets even better when the shower has been going because then the air is all sparkly too with the tiny water droplets. So, when I'm good and can manage to get in the shower around 7 or 7:30, I spend most of the time staring at the gorgeous window. This is what I was doing when I first saw the wink.

I was looking at the window with perfect indifference to the time or the soap dripping down my face when for a split second the sparkles stopped and the room turned dark. It happened in less than a blink, so I thought that maybe I imagined it. Afterall, I am not a morning person, and I probably had been staring too long. But it happened again the next day. And again. It happens almost every day.

By some magic trick of timing and light, at the same moment I am staring at the diamond window, a plane flies overhead on its way to the base and blocks out my light. The shadow from a fighter plane must be very small and must move very fast, but it crosses exactly over my house early every morning when I am looking at the sunrise. When I first realized that it must be a plane blocking my window, I started thinking about the person flying that plane.
He probably got up much earlier than I did because he is already on his way home. Home safe at the base. He is seeing the same rising sun that I am, but probably saw it much earlier from that height. He's thinking of breakfast, or a nap, or worrying about the landing, or thinking about a deployment. 3,000 feet above me, my airman has no idea that I see him. That I think about him every morning. That I pray for him to make it safely back to Davis Monthan.

I sometimes wonder if he feels eyes on him as he comes in to land. If he knows that I care. I have never actually met anyone who lives or works at the base, but my pilot has brought the war to me in a way that no news broadcast or political speech ever could. When I hear of war casualties I immediately think of my pilot, high above Tucson, alone in the cockpit, thinking that no one notices. I notice. I care. And I'm winking right back.

Happy Valentines Day!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Even though it is possible that this is a greeting card holiday that puts undue pressure on men to buy expensive jewelry or flowers or candy, I still enjoy a designated day of lovin'. Me and my Valentine have been taking it easy today. He competed in a racquetball tournament this morning and then we went back to the zoo this afternoon. Tonight we're going to make a lovely little feast out of pork loin, garlic-y pasta, and asparagus. yum. Maybe I will take some pictures of the cooking and share them tomorrow. I did a teeny bit of hearty (har har) crafting. I made these using the pattern on Martha Stewart's website last week. They took no time at all.
One of them is stuffed with homegrown catnip and a jingle bell. We quickly had to take that one away from its fat little recipient this morning. Orbit got really high and worked up. He wouldn't stop meowing and then he bit me. Very out of character. No more drugs for Orbit. Remember the last time we had to take the catnip away?

My sweetheart did bring home flowers and chocolate. I love them! The flowers are the hugest bunch of bright yellow chrysanthemums (with an "e") and a red heart full of truffles. The best!

Don't they smell nice?

I bought my Valentine a little gift to let him know how hot I think he is.

This isn't as random as it seems. He really likes Tabasco.

Popcorn ceiling

Check out this sky over Tucson the other day. Wow. We decided this might be God's cotton candy machine.

Dolls

Over the weekend I was going through the crafty shelves and I ran across this poor little dollhouse doll. She's really pretty, but she was wearing a super poufy polyester blue dress with lots and lots of lace. She's such a cool porcelain doll and is in perfect scale for a dollhouse, but the dress had to go. So I made her this one.


It's nothing special, but she seems way more comfortable. The doll also had a lace headband glued to her head, which I peeled off. Now all she needs is a dollhouse to live in.

The most important part of any doll is her shoes...
This is another little doll that I don't think I've shared before. She's a wooden clothespin with a little wooden knob glued on for a head. Her arms are pipe cleaners. She isn't the right scale, but I still like her.
It's tough to take pictures of tiny dolls, even though they stand perfectly still. Here I was trying to take a picture of her little red bow painted on the side of her head.

Anyway, they were two small projects that were easy and satisfied my strange need to make teeny tiny things. Is that an inherited trait? I kind of think so.

Go Cardinals!

Well. I have been a diehard Arizona Cardinals fan since at least...this morning. To celebrate our team's Super Bowl appearance Rob and I had a cookout today with some good friends.
We grilled out hotdogs, burgers, brats, and italian sausage andhad all kinds of other yummy football food.

We had Kelly, Sam, Liz, Lauren, Anna, AJ, and Katherine over to watch. We had a great time watching the game and watching the commercials.
Unfortunatley we lost. It was a great game though and we were ahead briefly in the fourth quarter. I'm strangely disappointed for somebody who has been cheering for the team as long as I have.
Go team! Go Arizona! We're going to have a great season next year, for sure.

Trip to the Zoo

Rob and I took a trip to the Reid Park Zoo this afternoon. We've been meaning to go for a long time. I have a thing for otters and as soon as we heard that the zoo has an otter exhibit, it was on the top of our to-do list.
It turns out our little Tucson zoo is completely awesome! There are way more animals there than we expected and the habitats are really nice. Some of them are smallish, but they are all laid out well and the zoo is really good about shade. I don't know how they did it but most of the habitats face east so they're much cooler and many of the viewing spots are shaded or in little tunnels so the visitors stay cool and still get a great view of all the animals. It is much more intimate than other zoos I've been to. It may not be as big or swanky, but the animals seem healthy and they were all visible.

Here I am in the aviary:


And here is our new friend:




The giraffe enclosure was fairly large, but this guy was hanging out right next to the sidewalk so that everyone could admire his pretty spots. And his weird tongue. He got so close he managed to lick the camera of a guy next to us. Nice!

We are definitely going to come back. They're building a new elephant habitat, so we look forward to seeing what that looks like. This trip we walked around the whole zoo and tried to see everything, but we've decided that next time we're going to pick out an animal or two to watch the whole time. Or maybe we'll just do one area. They have the zoo divided by continent of origin, so it would be easy to spend a lot of time looking at the South American animals or the African ones. Or just the otters. I'd be happy spending the day with the otters.

If you live in Tucson, we highly recommend the zoo, our hidden gem right in the middle of town. If you're not from Tucson, come visit and we'll take you there.