Valemtime's Day Eve

"Nana, Nana, did you know that Valemtime's Day is tomorrow?" I did, but I didn't know that Lottie knew. She came bearing roses and the most beautiful HUGE card covered in hearts and her absolute favorite beautifier...glitter. We gave her a card that had a little kitty on the front with red chocolate happy lips and inside it said, "You're PURRRRRFECT!" Also a heart-shaped cookie with red icing that said "I Love You" and a Peter Rabbit fine English bone china mug that she could use for her cups of tea. She says she loves cups of tea. Really, she just likes the idea and I can understand that. I don't think I drank a cup of coffee [that I enjoyed] until I was 30, but I posed with many a cup. I posed with cups of BLACK coffee when I was only 16 and that's nothing but crazy. Now I've entered that phase of my life when I actually ration the amount of coffee that I drink per day. For the record, I rarely drink more than two cups, more frequently one, but sometimes three. For me, the absolute, very best toy coffee drink can be had at the http://coffeebean.com/shop.asp. It is the Mocha Ice Blended and the most wonderful thing is that you can now get one that has no sugar and no fat and hardly any calories. Some days I feel that if I only had a bowl of porridge for breakfast, two mocha ice blended for lunch and a light dinner I could truly lose weight. That's when living in Topanga is a little bit of a drag. To get a mocha iced blended I'd have to drive 15 minutes and much as I love them, they're not worth a 1/2 hour round trip.

My daughter and I went for a lovely muddy walk and marveled at the wildflowers in full glorious bloom and it's FEBRUARY and there are FLOWERS...that's one of the reasons I love living here. Wild lupines and black-eyed susans and wild correopsis, all blooming in a riot of color on Yorkshire green hillsides that in just a few months will be tinder dry. Then I will find a different kind of beauty in these hillsides. Right now, though, it is lush and blowsy full of living beauty...and it's going to rain again later this week. Before you say, "Big deal, rain." You have to understand that between April and December, it really doesn't rain at all. Not once...ever. That's why Southern Californians stand at the window and watch the rain, or fall into the L.A. River or drive through rain-swollen creeks and get stuck or washed away. They just don't know any better.