My brother, Rudy, and his beautiful wife, Carmen flew in from Texas yesterday - for the funeral. "I'm going to make arroz con pollo," Amy declared authoritatively. (She made enough arroz con pollo to feed the small army that is my big, fat, Cuban family, but that's not important right now.) First, Eric and I arrive with the ...
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Love and Death
The grief is a funny thing. It seems to come out of nowhere and wrap itself tightly around me without letting go making it impossible to breathe.Just as suddenly it drops its clutches from around my chest and life goes on - business as usual.That has been the rhythm of my days this past week. I've been consumed by grief over the passing of ...
She’s living the life I want (A Rant – By Amy)
It's not fair. (This is Amy again, by the way) Today, my abuela is 94. NINETY-FOUR!! And where is she? MIAMI. Perhaps you don't quite understand. I live with her, HERE, in Orange County. But about a month ago, she decided to take a trip to MIAMI and visit her OLDER (yes, OLDER) brother. He will be 97 in ...
Next time I ask for CHANGE, I’m going to be more specific
Hello everyone! It's me, Amy! So, I know I haven't written in quite some time and you've probably wondered what happened to me . . . Well, I was stuck at a job that I was miserable in and was always so exhausted after work that I didn't have time to READ let alone WRITE any posts. Thanks to my praying Mom (and my own prayers) I have ...
The word of the day is “Anticlimax”
We love going to Disneyland. It's conveniently located just a few miles from us and we conveniently have annual passes so we can go anytime. And we never get tired of it.It's not just the rides, but we love walking around and seeing things. I love taking my camera because something different and fun will always catch my eye. Even though it ...
Can you hum a few bars?
This was taken at The Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens. Don't we look pretty in pink? ;-) This is in the Japanese garden and I was seriously floored by how amazingly beautiful these cherry blossoms were. I just couldn't understand why they would plant such a tranquil garden near such noisy power lines. But wait . . . I quickly ...
Time, energy, and money
For weeks now Eric and the kids have been taunting me. "You're going to have a wonderful Valentine's Day," they kept saying. Then they would laugh in a neener- neener-you-don't-know kind of way. So I was wracking my brain trying to guess. Flowers? (which would be great - I always love flowers) "Not telling." And there I ...
Celebration of Chocolate
Chocolate chips, butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla.Five simple ingredients. But. . . mix them together in the proper proportions and they become. . . Chocolatón!- an impossibly rich chocolate mousse. It's important that you pronounce it using a Spanish accent with an especially heavy emphasis on that last syllable. (Don't ask why. Just go with it. ...
FORTY-SEVEN YEARS is a long time to wait for change
These are my very young parents. They would have been in their 30's in this picture.It is my father's birthday. He would have been 97 today. (He passed away in 1999.) But something else happened on his birthday back in 1961 on this day that we would commemorate long after he passed away. Our family arrived in Miami on February ...
You’re all invited to my Pity Party!
We took the red-eye home from Honolulu. It seemed like a good scheduling decision at the time. I hadn't planned on catching a cold in Hawaii, but that's exactly what I did. So I got home and I was over-tired from not being able to sleep on the flight and all feverish and achy and fussy. Oh so fussy.And in a foul, foul mood. Yes, I know ...
