My friend Michele is a champion of creating the life she wants.  A little over a year ago, she created a project to help her focus on the joy in life.  ISpyJoy.com is a beautiful website where people share pictures of the joy they see in their everyday lives.

As I said, Michele is a champion.  Just about a year after creating the website, she got an email from Toni Childs, a famous recording artist who has put together the Cause: You’re Beautiful project that focuses on the beauty within all women.  She wanted Michele to contribute to the project as a featured author, telling her story of beauty.  Let me say that again:  one year after developing a project to help her through a rough time, Michele was calling a famous recording artist on her cell phone to talk about collaborating.  How wonderful!

Take a look.  Here’s Michele’s page.  Right now it tells the inspiring story of how she walked through a very challenging part of her life to find joy.  It will be updated monthly, and I can’t wait to see what she and the other authors have to share.

I love these projects.  It’s wonderful to know that there are people in the world following their dreams, and finding their joy.  It helps me remember that everyday is a gift, and every step I take a choice.  I can choose to live in joy and in beauty, and when I do, I’m in wonderful company.

My little sister is having a baby.  That makes me a zia!

She and my brother-in-law are going to be great parents.  They’re super-cute, researching, reading, learning, preparing.  They’ll have the best gadgets and gizmos.  They’ll have the best aunt ever (except, of course, for my aunt).  What they are still in need of is a name.

So, as my first, self-appointed duty, I’m embarking on a search to find good name suggestions for them.  Here’s what I’m looking for:

Cool
Old-Fashioned
Interesting
Meaningful

They’re not finding out the gender, so we need names for both.

Ready…….GO!!!

My parents are really excellent.  Yesterday my dad spent a couple of hours helping me figure out what I’m going to do about car and health insurance while I’m traveling.  He’s so super supportive, that he’s become aggressive about making sure I know how supportive he is.  It’s really endearing, even if it goes over the top once in a while.

My dad is a great businessman.  He ran his own successful companies, and even started his own award-winning winery, because it was something he’d always wanted to do.  He built a cabin on a river – actually helped build the thing  – and created an off-the-grid power system for it. It’s pretty amazing to go from worrying what my parents will think about me quitting my job, selling my house and traveling, to trying to curb my dad’s enthusiasm in helping me prepare for the trip.

Last night, I helped my mom set up a website for an organization that she co-coordinates.  Take a look!  It’s called Souper Supper Dining Room.  As you can probably tell from the name, it’s a soup kitchen of sorts.  It provides meals to hungry folks twice a week.  The organization has absolutely no costs.  Everything they do comes from donations and volunteers.  Let me tell you something:  this is amazing.  Food and money donations allow the organization to provide quality meals to those who need them.  Community organizations come together and provide volunteers that staff the dinners.

It’s what community organizing and community service are really about.  I learned community and political organizing by watching my mom.  She was chair of the school board, has run school bond campaigns (sound familiar?), and has volunteered her time and skills tirelessly.

It’s pretty wonderful to have parents that I love, and it’s even more wonderful to have parents that I like.  I’m very proud of them.

I got to go hiking today with my mom and her good friend Karla.  We walked the White Cloud trail that winds through the hills around Sun Valley.  The views are really great.  I grew up here, and the hills and mountains make me feel alive and at home all at once.

The wildflowers were still out a little bit, the mullen was everywhere, we saw two little chipmunks, and the morning rain made the hills smell like sagebrush.  The best part, however, was spending time with Mom and Karla.

The two women have known each other for probably 20 years and have been good friends for the last 10.  I like spending time with them.  They enjoy each other immensely and ask nothing in return.  Do you know how rare that is?  How lovely?  There’s no pretense, no performing.  Just being.

When I measure my friendship – how good a friend I am to others – this is the measure I use.  Can I just love the other person?  Can I let them be themselves and give myself permission to do the same?  That’s what I see when I spend time with Mom and Karla.  It’s beautiful.

Thank you, ladies!  You are beautiful.  Your friendship is something bright and wonderful in this world.

I’m not the only person in my family who loves pastry.  I come by it honestly.  We all do.

Today, which is my little sister’s 30th birthday (Happy Birthday Cath!), my mom decided to do something special – I mean really special.  She decided to make tortones.

For those of you who aren’t in my family, here’s what a tortone is:  Prunes in fried pie dough.  Yummy.

This is something that came from my Great Grandmother Harame who came to the US directly from France.  I remember playing the piano for her in her house.  I remember her sitting next to me and playing that upright piano.  She would write sheet music with the words of songs from France and those of us who played piano would try to learn.  Her hands were so little that she couldn’t reach a full octave, but she so enjoyed playing that it was a delight to watch.

Today when we were making the tortones, Mom pulled out a hand-written recipe and I teared up as I saw Grandma Harame’s handwriting, the same as it was on the sheet music, friendly and instructive.

It’s full of helpful hints like “try to make it your own” and “good luck with your tortones.”  Actually, as I’m sitting here reading the recipe, I’m realizing that I’ve misspelled “tortone” my entire life.  Grandma’s letter says “tourton” as though that is the plural!  Wonderful!  Well, I’ll probably continue calling them “tortones” anyway, the way her name changed from Haramis to Harame when she and her Greek husband came to the US.

So, here are some pictures of the tortones in process and finished:

We stewed the prunes, placed them in the dough like raviolis, and deep fried them (I swear this might be the one reason to own a deep fryer).

You can sprinkle with sugar or just shove them in your mouth while they’re scalding hot.  Sooooo good.

Sidenote, my family just realized what I was blogging about and nearly had a heart attack when they realized I was giving out the recipe.  Lucky for you I’m a fan of open-source recipes.  So, if you can read Grandma Harame’s writing, and come up with a functioning recipe, let me know.  They’re delicious.