Fish Tacos

Looking up - from the deck - while eating fish tacos!

8 Corn tortillas - I prefer white corn if you can find them
1 small Mahi Mahi (or other) fillet, grilled and shredded
1 cup shredded red cabbage
1/4 c sour cream
1/4 c mayo
1 lime, sectioned

Place the fish and cabbage in the center of the tortillas. Mix the sour cream and mayo and then put in a small baggie, cut a small hole in the tip and "sqiggle" the sauce over the fish and cabbage. Squeeze lime juice over it all and enjoy. Easy, healthy, fast and very very delicious...one of my favorite summer meals!

This I Believe...

• Our first choice should first take care of the earth - we have just one.
• There is no such thing as boredom if you can draw, read, or play an instrument.
• Time with family and friends is never wasted.
• You'll never regret spending money on a vacation.
• The New York Times, the New Yorker and Public Radio can jump start your mind.
• Your home is your castle.
• Be your own best friend.
  
• God is in your heart. Heaven can be on earth.
• Avoid debt - live within you means.
• If you say you are going to do something - do it.
  
• There are just two choices: love or fear.
• Get enough sleep, drink water, take deep breaths and everything will be alright.
• Everything you need to be happy is here, right now. Now, take the next step.
  
• We should all be driving hybrid cars, walking or riding bicycles.
  
• Infants, kittens and puppies should be held as much as possible (between midnight and 6AM.)
• Lake Superior is truly greatest lake in the world.
• Being a mother is one of the greatest privileges.
  
• It's well worth spending extra money on things like original art, Apple computers, local produce, olive oil and Aveda products...

To be continued.....

Going Grey

Going Grey by Anne Kreamer seems to be a Something About My Neck/Nora Ephram wanna be. Kreamer's book doesn't cut it. Ephram's book made me laugh out loud and drew me into her psche. Though drawn out, the points in Kreamer's book rang true.

Going Grey chronicles the choice to stop dying hair and become ones authentic self. Been there done that. The author is surprised to learn through a myriad of surveys that others found women that look their age and not faking it more attractive. I appreciated the book jacket: "Anne Kremer considered herself an impossibly youthful forty-nine until a casual glance at a family photograph stopped her in her tracks. There she was behind carefully chosen clothes, meticulously dyed hair and several rounds of botox - looking (horror or horrors) exactly forty-nine."

Something special happens when you turn fifty. For me at least, it was the very first time besides when I was sixteen and got my drivers license, that I actually thought about my age. I felt good about the first fifty and thought about the next fifty. I also observed my urban life... women with under-aged hairstyles, fake nails, and eek few forty-year-olds that didn't have any business wearing anything that exposed their tummies.

True confession: somehow in my forties I started dying my hair. As I approached fifty, I thought, wait a minute "why am I doing this?" How to stop without having a frumpy striped hairline?

I said "tawanda" and let my hair grow out a little and found a good hairdresser. I had my hair cut down to a half inch. My husband loved it. At work someone told me I looked like I owned an art gallery (my secret alter ego). I got more comments on the street from men and women then since my twenties. My twenty-something son liked it. My late-teen aged daughter said I looked like a cancer patient. My five year old said I looked like a boy.

I felt bolder. I felt beautiful. I felt wise. I felt fifty. I felt like me.

Twenty Questions: Decision-making

Write the answers to these questions down – the first thing that comes to mind. Yes write them down, answer every question (“I don’t know” or “doesn’t matter” don’t count) even if the questions seem dumb. Don’t worry about the questions or your answer - just see where they take you in the end. Once you have done this, is anything more obvious?

1. What are your dreams? Is this one of them?
2. If you don’t do it now will you do it later?
3. How could your decision make the world a better place?
4. Will this decision hurt or disappoint anyone? Can you soften the blow?
5. What would your mother say?
6. List the things that are irreversible in this decision. Can you live with them?
7. Think of someone you admire. Would they make the same decision?
8. What happens when you’re nervous? Will you do this more or less?
9. List your three greatest attributes. Will this strengthen them?
10. What is the healthiest thing to do?
11. Will this decision put you in a better place a year from now? In ten years?
12. Christian or not, what would Jesus do?
13. The little people in cartoons on peoples shoulders…what do they say?
14. What would you do if you had one year to live?
15. What would you have done five year ago? Five years from now?
16. Imagine the next six months are you feeling vulnerable or gutsy?
17. What is the financial impact?
18. Where will you get emotional support through the change?
19. What is the worse case scenario? Can you live with it?
20. What is your Plan B?

List five other questions and answer them. Yes write them down.

Lake Superior, Really?

Can you believe these colors? Sunday, after Anna and Jessie's wedding we ventured to Little Girl Point - a Lake Superior beach just across the Michigan line. I have long favored the scenery and smooth dark rocks of Lake Superior's north shore. I made my third circumnavigation of Gittche Gumme last summer with my friend and rock hound Candy, and she introduced me to a few other prize beaches on the south shore.

These little gems (and a few pieces of beach glass) were a treat for the eyes and a relaxing distraction to an already fun weekend.

Let Them Eat Cake

You saw the test cake, posted on July 15, and here is the final gateau. Anna and Jessie's grooms cake turned out lovely, shadowed only by the event itself hosted on Jessie's family farm in northern Wisconsin.