2024 in review, part 2

 

This brings us to February, when I went to the beach a lot.

Malinda got this heated cat bed, which she loves.

David and I exchanged Valentine’s Day poems. They were both about crows.

Then I went to Joshua Tree to meet up with Andrea and Ursi. We all turned 50 this year, and we each did a birthday trip to celebrate. This was Ursi’s birthday trip, and it was so much fun.

Joshua Tree is one of my favorite places.

After Joshua Tree, I took them to my favorite beach, which is in Corona Del Mar.

Then it was David’s birthday! Here he is about to unwrap an ice cream maker. This was truly one of the best presents I’ve ever given, because David turned out to be great at making ice cream, and I spent the rest of the year eating a lot of delicious ice cream.

We went birding at the marsh for David’s birthday.

In March, spring had arrived.

While Malinda relaxed in yet another cat bed, David and I went on a trip to Palm Springs.

We saw the Cabazon dinosaurs!

And we got to see our friends Anthony and Todd.

Then it was April, and Irvine was so beautiful! I was going for lots of walks in the park, the marsh, and at the beach.

But I also flew to Bloomington in April, because that was one of the places that you could see the full solar eclipse! Most of my family was there to see it too.

And I had basically a whole high school reunion with friends who were also visiting their parents for the eclipse.

Meanwhile, Katy and Cam toured IU, where Cam would be starting school in the fall.

I went up to Indianapolis for a mini reunion of the Cocktail Club with Jennifer and Louise.

Then we waited for the eclipse.

And it was impossible to photograph, but it was one of the most awe-inspiring things I’ve ever seen. The air got cold and night fell in seconds. I saw the blackness of space and the multicolored fire of the sun, pink and white and gold, leaping all around the moon. The earth seemed to shrink, and I felt like we were all spinning through an impossibly huge universe on an impossibly tiny planet.

Then I went back to Irvine and regular life, and even though I was still spinning through space in reality, I was able to forget about it and just have drinks with the Cocktail Club. But not alcoholic drinks, because I had lost my ability to drink alcohol, maybe as a result of getting Covid in 2022.

May came, and the by-the-wind-sailors washed up on the beach at Crystal Cove. This is always sad but fascinating.

My favorite California flowers bloomed.

I left Irvine again — this was a year of travel and adventure! — and took the most scenic train trip of my life from San Francisco to Denver.

I was going to Laramie for Cam’s graduation, and I had the best time!

There was a huge graduation party with this Office-inspired cake.

This year I fell in love with Galesburg, Illinois, which is the best place to have a layover between train rides.

And then it was June! My birthday month! I turned 50, and I basically spent the whole month celebrating.

Adrienne, Jennifer, Louise, and I got together for a full Cocktail Club trip to Dana Point.

We celebrated all of our birthdays at once.

I laughed harder than I think I ever have before.

We went on a boat and saw dolphins and a mola mola!

Then I celebrated my actual birthday alone on a beach in Corona Del Mar.

And later that day, David and I went out to the Newport Beach pier to watch the sunset.

2024 in Review, part 1

Hello, and welcome back to my blog! I’m having another urge to start blogging again, so here is a summary of 2024. We’ll skip over everything that happened since my last blog post and begin again in January 2024.

This is the first picture I took this year, and it really did set the tone for the rest of the year, because this was a year of waffles. I found this great waffle recipe, and David and I started our “marsh and waffles” tradition where we go look at birds in the marsh and then have waffles.

We got a new apartment in Irvine last year, and Malinda had a wonderful year living in it and sleeping on all of its surfaces.

I wanted this year to be a creative one, and I drew this tarot card, the Ace of Cups, to launch 2024.

The cup is supposed to be overflowing with creative abundance. I added a crow dipping a watercolor brush into it for extra inspiration.

Our apartment overlooks a wildlife preserve/water treatment area that we love very much. We have this majestic sycamore outside our window, and every evening it is covered with crows as all of the crows in the greater Irvine area descend into the marsh to roost for the night.

I spent a lot of time documenting this tree in different seasons and different lights. And a lot of time sitting out on the balcony, watching the incredible sunrises that you can see from our apartment, feeling extremely lucky to live here.

This sums up my experience so far in this apartment.

At the end of January I finished a project where I drew every day for 30 days, and it was a perfect start to the year.

My Life is on Zoom Now

 

I'm still on Zoom just as much as I was in the early days of the pandemic. There was this time when everyone seemed to be over Zoom happy hours, but I don't think I'll ever be over them. I love getting together with Jennifer, Adrienne, and Louise over Zoom. We've been doing this about twice a month since the pandemic started. We all decide on a cocktail, and make the same one, and we always have so much to talk about. Last weekend we celebrated May Day with floral martinis.

Adrienne has been texting us pictures from her cocktail book for inspiration. This was what we were drinking (although Jennifer went rogue and made something with watermelon in it).

Also last weekend, I went to a cooking class on Zoom. It was a promotional thing for the new cookbook I just bought, Lukas Volger's Snacks for Dinner. We made a feta-jam tart (mine was dairy- and gluten-free), sriracha snack mix, crudites, and pickled mushrooms, which I served over hummus. Everything was amazing, and I can't wait to get the cookbook!

Then early this morning I took a drawing class from Megan Fatharly, a U.K. artist whose work I love.

We drew flowers in different exercises, starting with a 30-second drawing. I was drawing a bunch of Trader Joe's ranunculus.

One minute with the left hand (I could only do these chaotic lines).

Four minutes with the left hand, and I was really starting to see how you could capture flowers with energetic lines and strong shapes. The flowers were so vibrant and alive, and I wanted to get some of that in my drawing.

Focusing on the background.

And this was my final drawing.