365: Red; It's made of what, exactly?

Right before she left on a jet plane and married some guy.... 

My girls are endlessly fun, hilarious, wonderful. They are able to make the most mundane event or thing unique and funny by virtue of their intelligent and quirky world views. We can - and we have - watch them as if we're party to our own private comedy hour.

This image is from the night before my youngest moved to Florida, where she now lives - permanently - with her spouse, a captain in the US air force. I love the guy. Good thing, because us being separated, me from her, and she from her two sisters, is, quite frankly, just a millimetre shy of unbearable.

They were making light of it all, the packing up of her bedroom, the chucking of cherished childhood things, the consumption of weird-tasting beers, the every fewer hours before the future became the now, and our loved one would disappear through the doors of US customs.

I will never understand parents who have stale-dated their kids, as in, "They're moving out the second they're 18." Being separated from my kids is, by far, the most painful thing. They're competent, intelligent, motivated, educated, wonderful people, and they're fine doing what they're doing, but being this far away from her is as painful as a burn that never heals.

365: Red; March 24, Leftovers

These are the leftovers, or perhaps more accurately, the survivors of the chaos and hell fires (ok, not hell; just a really hot oven filled with flames and smoke).

Everything's better with red wine.

365: Red; March 23, Not burning it down

Sometimes the best laid plans just totally go to hell. Such was the night of the Beef Wellington.

Every possible thing happened to slow down getting dinner on the table, starting with a dog suddenly developing a very weird pain, followed by fog filling the kitchen thanks to lovely fatty beef with a lovely buttery crust starting to smoke, followed by a delicious dinner, followed by said dog becoming really uncomfortable just as the real, shredded coconut topping for the real, from-the-nut, coconut pie caught fire in the oven while everyone poured over the dog.

This is the movement one makes whilst waiving the new, not-yet-burned oven mitts under the fire alarm in an effort to have it quit screaming. What you don't see is three other people extricating a flaming pile of burned coconut from the oven.