The mural joined us in the fall of 2006. It was painted in acrylics over the space of a few weeks. The finishing touches emerged, swirling into corners and bleeding occasionally onto the ceiling and spattering, no matter how much I scolded, onto the floor tiles we had chosen deliberately for our oldest child’s room.

He was the firstborn of five offspring and it took us that many attempts at reproduction before it was apparent that none of the little versions of ourselves in any way resembled each other or danced to any drum but their own. He drew his first lizard at two years old, with a crayon, on the back of his granddad’s giant sheet of unwanted street plans; a purple curvy amphibian basking across the black and white, straight and narrow, professionally engineered road map.

During grade school, what began with a proper mother’s encouragement grew into a secret mother’s certainty that her eldest child was a creative genius. It was as quickly quenched when all parties concerned were summoned into the middle school office. No one could understand how a sullen, doodling pre-teen could sit in the back row ignoring the teacher until called out for it; said pre-teen answered the questions correctly, aced the test, and doodled his way back out the door. No one could decide whether this was an academic or an attitude problem.

But my son’s art got better.

In high school, he enrolled in an art class and dropped it again after one week. It took three more semesters before he came to an understanding with the teacher and stayed in the class to play with different mediums. One day I went to pick him up from water polo practice and found the team huddled around a player, intently watching my eldest. He had dared the player to shave his head and in return, my son, using a black sharpie, drew an intricate Maori design on it that completely covered the scalp. With neither a beginning nor an ending, the design was both a prank and a masterpiece.

And my son’s art got better.

Meanwhile, our small home underwent a third and final renovation. The baby was almost ready for kindergarten, and bursting the seams, we added a new garage, den, laundry room, bedroom, and bathroom. While it was under construction, our eldest decided to live in the rafters of the new garage. He laid a plywood floor, moved crates of clothes up to it and wired some lights. He had no use for a ladder. He swung himself up like a gymnast and enjoyed his privacy. In this aerie, his art advanced to include nudes, interlaced fingers, fantasy-scapes, cyclops.

And during the last semesters of high school, he graced his brand new bedroom with a singular mural. It developed like a polaroid, integrating shapes from his night terrors, from our garden, from a place deep in his mind that sparked colors and vivid imagery that he interpreted in paint.

Always spontaneous, always unexpected, his art got better.

After he graduated and moved out, when it was time to repurpose his room, the mural was painted over in comforting soft pale green. A cover that, in hindsight, I think I wanted to caress the mural with, and preserve it along with the painful period of growth it represented. To plant it, perhaps, beneath moss and clover and allow it to become humus – eventually, fertile ground that attracts roots.

I mothered the mural because I could not mother the man-child.

His art is always getting better. No matter the medium, his signature style is stamped into it. He wanders the world, collecting no moss, pushing straight lines into flowing curves and painting them brilliant purple.

Many know the legend of the curse that follows those who dare disturb the sarcophagus of Toot-in-Common. Few have dared to approach it. None have dared to open it.

For many years, people circled the area, knowing that foul deeds and fouler air were contained in the bowels of the ancient tomb. What treasures must be locked away in there? What mysteries hidden in the depths of the forbidden zone?

One intrepid archeologist risked her reputation and her life by venturing where no man had gone before. Well. A man or two had obviously gone before her to build the thing. And yes, what they buried involved another man who should have died for the plan to work. Somebody somewhere had to curse the thing.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

There were strange markings in the walls that she couldn’t decipher. Patterns in the tiles plastered above the cavernous entry. Mold grew in the corners in a black spidery gesture that unmistakably beckoned the wary explorer to come closer. She looked carefully for a trap. There was nothing here that could sustain life. The smell was a mixture of damp clay, stale air, and sewer slime. The floor shifted with her weight and creaked. The wind outside moaned in warning. In the dim light, she stepped closer. The sarcophagus was buried here in the dry rot. She could feel it.

Waving to her team of hired thugs, she moved into position. She put on gloves, a mask, and protective eye shields. On her signal, hammers fell against the stone that encased her prize. She reached for ear plugs. Shrapnel flew through the chamber, filling the air with dusty debris. “Stop!” she cried, lifting a fist. “Time to use the chisels.” With detailed precision, the last of the stone was chipped away, revealing the edges and smoothly polished target of her ambition.

“Yes,” she said, running her gloved hand over its alabaster surface. “You’re mine.”

She turned to look behind her. There were three intricately carved storage chests. Taking up a mallet, she smashed through the front panel of the one on the left. “Empty!” she cried in frustration. She broke open the one on the right. There was nothing inside but a cracked cistern, oozing thick, black offal. She backed away quickly, signaling to the minions to cover it up. With one last desperate swing, she cracked open the central box. She moved her boots out of the way just as odd shapes and parcels began spilling at her feet.

“Bag it,” she said. Time to sort her treasures later.

Circling slowly, she knew what she had to do. Others would hear about this as soon as she left. They would follow, curse or no. The credit was hers and hers alone. She would remove her prize and destroy the place behind her. She took photos first. Proof for those who might scoff later. A tease for those who hadn’t been brave enough to go after it themselves. Cowards.

Workers lifted the huge sarcophagus from the bowels of its encasement and gingerly moved it towards the entry as others took up hammers again. “Level it,” she said, and took the first swing. The cavern wall opened immediately, gaping wide as huge chunks fell away on their own. Through the rubble, black slime began crawling from hidden recesses above the ceiling and down into the room. It percolated from the holes in the floor, bubbling up in anger. The alluvium of a thousand years rose to challenge the intruders and surrounded them in stench.

There, in the wall, was the source of the curse. It pulsed with the remains of a thousand human hands, dripping with stripes of brown, green, and yellow stalactites. A sulfurous decaying mass began to slide towards her. It was offended by the carrion birds who had entered with irreverence to pillage and destroy. The curse had been released and she felt the air hum with its static. They stampeded for the exit. “Bleach bombs!” she cried, staggering towards the fresh air.

Hubby was waiting outside. “I almost died in there!” she said.

“I told you so. You had to do it, didn’t you?”

“I still might die. What happens when you breathe all that?”

“Leave it alone, I said. We can hire a professional, I said.”

“A professional is who built that bathroom in the first place. A man who did a lazy job with the plumbing and left it dripping for the last 30 years in the wall.”

“Where did you find my hammers? I hid the hammers.”

“At least I got the tub out in one piece.” Kid #5 stood there and pointed to the dings in it. She tried not to feel defeated.

“I hope you’re happy. The bathroom’s destroyed. Now we have to rip out the mold and it goes in every direction.”

“Yes, I’m happy. The place is like death in there.”

“Please don’t touch the toilet. What did the toilet ever do to you?”

“Toot-in-Common can stay. It’s the only thing that worked right anyway.”

“Thank goodness for small blessings. I’m not good with rivers running through the house.”

“Well,” she said, “at least I can find out what’s been falling behind the cupboards for the last million years.”

Someone’s retainer. Someone else’s diaphragm. An enema. Floss. Meds. Qtips. My sanity.

I might just light the thing on fire and rebuild from scratch. I mean. She might. She’s a crazy archeologist with a torch, you know.

Hot Diggity

TMI

Don’t open this. You were warned.

Good morning my fellow quarantinettes!

I imagine that you’ve cleaned the pantry, weeded the garden, binge-watched your shows and taken the kids on maybe a million walks around the block by now. How about a change of scenery? My girlfriend and blogging-buddy, Mary Knight, offered a peek into her world of food and fancies and agreed to share the following recipe with us! Mary travels the world, making friends, creating recipes, and curating mouth watering photos. She’s interviewed Julia Child herself and that will get a girl inspired, wouldn’t you agree?

Mary’s blog is a cornucopia of glorious photos of recipes and travel. SpoonAndSuitcase.com will take you on a tour of Portugal, Sicily, or Santa Fe without leaving the living room and is a breath of fresh air in a world afraid to inhale. Let’s take some time to relax.

Grab some almond paste from Amazon and clear the kitchen, because we’re going to make Almondines!

While cleaning out an upper cupboard in my closet last week, I discovered a forgotten box. A treasure full of old recipes I had created when I taught cooking classes, as well as letters and postcards I’d sent my parents from La Varenne in Paris, France. It was like opening a present on Christmas day. The “missing pieces” from my life suddenly inspired me to go back to the recipes I’d embraced many years ago. Early in my cooking career, ideas for recipes came like lightning strikes, unexpected but exhilarating, followed by cloud bursts of extended creations. It all seemed so easy. I almost couldn’t get the ideas down fast enough, not to mention implement them.

Here is one of those recipes for Almondines that I’ve adapted. The results impressed me more than I’d expected. The tart is made delectable by the inclusion of almond paste. Rich and tender, the almond filling almost melts on the tongue and the unifying light almond crust is the accent mark. Divine. It’s been a hit with all my taste testers. The best part is you can fill the tarts with the almond creme, sprinkle on the sliced almonds and freeze for an impromptu breakfast or tea time. They only take about 18 minutes to bake or about 25 if frozen. I’m making a batch to freeze for weekend guests and neighbor thank you’s. Enjoy!

Believe in your heart that you’re meant to live a life full of passion, purpose, magic and miracles.”
― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

Caio for now,

I love my job. I mean LOVE. I snack on words at tea time. I shake them in a bag like dice and see what they form when they roll out. People send me words and I’m as excited as a kid at Christmas to read them. My collection of greeting cards fills more than one box and when I’m down I pull one out at random and feel the love.

Words. The gift that keeps on giving.

But when I want a laugh, a good deep belly laugh, I pull up my spam emails and feed them to my ferrets.

It is my pleasure to communicate with you via this platform. Your positive regards towards this very message will be appreciated, please do not regard this email as one of the common unsolicited email or false business invitation in the world today. I am fully convinced that you will really be of help as a new friend and business partner. I hope my message to you will be given proper attention despite the fact we have not seen or even meet each other before. knowing fully well it takes a minute, an hour or even a day to know somebody and also establish an everlasting relationship with truth and honesty between you and I without cheat, lie or sabotage the business project. My lawyer will prepare a good memorandum of Understanding to facilitate the success of this project in-line with law of your country of origin. I can assure you the success of the business transaction if you can keep it top secret. Humbly indicate your full name, Contact address and contact number while replying my proposal.

Hello my loved one! I wish to say that this post is amazing, nice written and include approximately all significant infos. I would like to see more posts like this.

certainly like your website but you need to test the spelling on several of your posts. A number of them are rife with spelling issues and I to find it very bothersome to tell the truth then again I will definitely come again again.

The subsequent time I read a weblog, I hope that it doesnt disappoint me as a lot as this one. I imply, I do know it was my choice to learn, however I actually thought youd have something attention-grabbing to say. All I hear is a bunch of whining about one thing that you might repair in case you werent too busy on the lookout for attention.

It’s a shame you don’t have a donate button! I’d most certainly donate to this fantastic blog! I suppose for now i’ll settle for book-marking and adding your RSS feed to my Google account. I look forward to new updates and will share this website with my Facebook group. Chat soon!

Thanks for the tips you discuss through this blog. In addition, several young women who become pregnant don’t even try and get health insurance because they dread they probably would not qualify. Although some states right now require that insurers supply coverage no matter what about the pre-existing conditions.

We are approaching a future of a one-world cashless society in which they will mandate us to have an RFID microchip implanted in our body. This chip will contain all our personal information and we will lose much more of our privacy because of the tracking capabilities. More importantly, did you know that this was all prophesied almost 2000 years ago by a man named Jesus? Don’t believe me? Keep reading…This may be the most important thing you will ever read.

Was it ever. Went on for pages and repeated in several languages. But he could have spared the space and just beeped the info via satellite into my microchip.

Knowing fully well it takes a minute, an hour or even a day to know somebody and also establish an everlasting relationship with truth and honesty, I know I can count on you to stick around when I do a bunch of whining about one thing that I might repair if I weren’t so busy looking for attention.

You’re the best.

And it is my pleasure to communicate with you via this platform.

My kid stepped on a screw last week. He went through the garage barefoot to take out the trash and started hollering. When I answered his warbles, he calmly asked me to unscrew the screw sticking out of his heel. To do this properly, you have to turn it ‘Lefty Lucy’.

Later, after a trip to urgent care, some X-rays, a new Darth Vader boot, and a tetanus shot, he rode the whole way home updating his social media accounts.

“Seriously kid?”

“If I don’t post it,” he said, “it didn’t happen.”

“Oh, it happened. It was disgusting.”

Silence. More tapping.

A long, long time ago, somewhere off the northwest coast of Norway, a Viking discovered a swirling vortex of death, a tornado made out of ocean, and just said no to the maelstrom. Have you seen the movie, “Sharknado“? This is how I feel when surrounded with social media. My kid was sucked in willingly and I never heard from him again. The kraken got him.

It’s his own fault.

In the meantime, I’ve created accounts on Instagram, YouTube, Goodreads, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and three – count em, three – Facebook thingys. One of which is a Private Group called “Jolie Tunnell’s Earlybirds“, which is basically a book club. I’ve got a website, a business, a blog, and a book to maintain.

So, I’ve set my own vortex into motion, spinning in happy little currents, and as the tide goes in and out, I wonder how much time I have left before it traps me. At its center is my newsletter. Everything else is attached to it in some way and that feels like the right direction for this year. Lefty Lucy. If you want to know what happened to Jolie, read the newsletter.

Which, by the way, I may have accidentally on purpose signed you up for already. I knew you wouldn’t mind. But if you do, there’s this cool button called “Unsubscribe” at the bottom of it that will make it all go away. It has adorable palm trees in the title so you can find it in your inbox but I think most of them landed in your trash. You’d best go dive in there and save it from last month.

🌴

If the kraken ate it, sign up here for a fresh start:

Enjoy.

Our next meeting is tomorrow morning at 1:30am Pacific Time, mark your calendar.

Last night’s agenda:

2am: Wake up hearing a strange noise. Realize you smell the essence of skunk and wonder if the garage door was left open. Listen for strange noises for a few more minutes.

2:08am: Tell yourself it’s nothing and try to go back to sleep.

2:10am: Realize that nice tune in the back of your head is Maroon 5. Congratulate yourself on good taste in music.

2:12am: Recall that a critical task was left undone and due at 6am. Reassure yourself the world will not stop spinning if you didn’t post a blog. No, we aren’t’ getting up right now and doing it.

2:20am: Bladder insists that we can’t wait until morning. Check the garage door. Sneak into kitchen for a drink. Your house is creepy in the dark.

2:24am: WHO ARE THESE BARBARIANS? The sink is full of dirty dishes. You cleaned this place before you went to bed. You live in a barn. Go back to bed.

2:46am: Practice dramatic yawning in attempt to force oxygen into sleep part of brain. Stretch extremities. Roll over.

3:08am: Hubby still snoring. Contemplate the droopy bags, dark rings, and the wrinkles I’m actively creating under my eyes. Mentally inventory makeup drawer for solutions. Don’t forget to add a new mascara to the shopping list.

3:24am: Decide I need to be a better parent. I should help the boys with their college planning. When was the last time I took a daughter for coffee? Am I supportive enough? Give them enough space? Give them enough time? My poor babies.

3:39am: Try not to get mad. Lots of people aren’t sleeping right now. Probably the President. For sure moms with newborns. You don’t see them getting upset, do you? Pound pillows into proper sleeping shapes.

3:48am: The song is so appropriate. So right for right now. Explains everything. You might as well watch the whole cartoon in your head. We have time. You got yours and I got mine.

3:52: It’s such a cozy bed. Snuggly, really. All is well. And if it isn’t, well, there’s always tomorrow. We’ll have coffee. Cooooofffffffeeeeeee……

4:01am: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

The Imperiled Ocean by ocean journalist Laura Trethewey is a deeply reported work of narrative journalism that follows people as they head out to sea. What they discover holds inspiring and dire implications for the life of the ocean — and for all of us back on land. Battles are fought, fortunes made, lives lost, and the ocean approaches an uncertain future.

Congratulations to Missy from Illinois, the winner of Laura’s freshly minted and personally autographed book! These smart and thought-provoking stories are worth sitting down and thoroughly ingesting. Here is an excerpt from her piece, Cleaning the Coast.

Thank you, Laura, for an exploration of the earth’s last wild frontier, and the opportunity to get to know it – and you – better.

A worn piece of plastic drifted on the ocean over a thousand miles from civilization. A sailboat approached with a 30-year-old woman on board. She leaned out over the gunwale to pick the plastic from the surface. Except she couldn’t: long, dangling seaweed roped the plastic to the water. She reeled up the weed, hand over hand; it stretched deeper and deeper into the depths. Down below, she saw fish darting between the fronds.

As Chloé Dubois sailed farther into a slowly spinning gyre of plastic in the largest ocean on Earth, she experienced this scene again and again. It was 2015, and Chloé and her team at the nonprofit Ocean Legacy had sailed to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to collect microplastic samples for The Ocean Cleanup, another plastic-pollution nonprofit.

Using samples collected by 37 boats, Chloé’s included, that trawled a 3.5-million-square-kilometer swath of the Pacific, Ocean Cleanup hoped to create the first high-resolution map of ocean plastic. Chloé remembers hauling up the water-sampling trawler and peeking in at its contents on deck, and discovering all manner of marine stowaways in the detritus. How did you get here? she wondered as she picked up a tiny crab clinging to a bottle cap in the middle of the formidable ocean. Drifting by the boat, she saw buoys covered with gooseneck barnacles. Ocean-knotted islands of rope that hid masses of organisms.

“On the news, there’s this plastic island in the middle of the ocean that’s the size of Texas, and that’s pretty much what people know unless they go out there and experience it for themselves,” she said. Instead of a floating island of waste, as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is so often portrayed, she encountered more of a drifting slurry. The pollution came in all shapes and stages of degradation, from microscopic particles and fibers, to toothbrushes, bottles and great tangles of fishing nets and lines.

She witnessed, too, how nature worked with the plastic intruders. In the ocean, bacteria and algae quickly glom onto any floating feature they can find, drawn to the nutrients that collect there. More and larger animals, like barnacles and tubeworms, follow suit, fastening themselves to the marine debris. How productive of the ocean to use the plastic to build tiny ecosystems out on a vast desert of salt water, where so little life thrives in comparison to coastal waters.

The Garbage Patch was not a dead zone at all, she realized, but a world teeming with life.

Since she was 17 years old, Chloé has been involved in the environmental movement. In her early twenties, she began collecting plastic from beaches and she’s now cleaned shorelines across Mexico, Alaska, Costa Rica, Panama, and Canada. When she was 29, she co-founded the nonprofit Ocean Legacy, and she has become obsessed with cleaning plastic from the environment. She knows the names, acronyms, and resin codes of the plastic pantheon like they’re her children.

For a moment, Chloé hesitated before destroying the little crab’s home, this plastic piece of garbage that it had found and colonized and survived on against all the odds. Rationally, she knew that the crab’s plastic bottle cap was on its way to becoming a toxic pill. Plastic is a master at teasing out toxins from the ocean, sucking floating chemicals from the water column and condensing them into ever more hazardous forms. Industrial metals, pesticides, fertilizers, plastic softeners, and flame retardants can dissolve in water or be hydrophobic, meaning they want out of the water fast. Plastic already contains some of the chemical contaminants found in water, and that makes certain types of plastic naturally attractive hosts to wayward chemicals. A smaller animal might then ingest that poisoned plastic item, covered in slimy nutrients and pollutants, like PCBs, that have been banned on land for decades but are still drifting out in the ocean. A larger animal will then eat this animal, and up the food chain the plastic goes, magnifying its toxicity as it jumps to each new animal.

Chloé knew all this. She had seen the damage firsthand, yet destroying an animal’s home still gave her pause.

Then she plunged her hands in and removed all the plastic she could find, no matter how much life clung to it. The team built a home for displaced crabs in a glass tank on deck.

When they had sailed outside the center of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, Chloé dove off the boat and into the sea. When she climbed back on board, tiny pellets of plastic covered her skin. After a month and a half sailing across the Pacific, her sailboat returned to land with 154 water samples hauled up from across the ocean. Every single one contained plastic.

Not all plastic is a problem. Much of it helps us and is integrated into every step of human life from birth to death. As I write this, I tap away on computer keys made of plastic, scroll through webpages on a mouse made of plastic, and peer through glasses rimmed with plastic. It’s the cheap, omnipresent plastic that lasts hundreds of years but is built to throw away the second after we use it that’s a big problem, perhaps one of the biggest for the ocean.

For almost as long as industrial plastic production has existed, we’ve known that plastic was going in the ocean. In the 1970s, a team of researchers sampling water in the sluggish Sargasso Sea reported that tiny plastic fragments were floating on the surface. During a 1997 yacht race from Los Angeles to Honolulu, a sailing scientist named Charles Moore passed through a remote stretch of Pacific Ocean and found himself surrounded by plastic debris in all directions. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, as it was later called, grabbed the world’s attention.

Suddenly there was a tangible place where all our waste was going, just outside the limits of our imagination.

The sea is a vast, deep, mutable force that covers 71 percent of the Earth. Plastic is small, ubiquitous, and breaks into ever-smaller pieces. When these two meet, they marry: a horrible collision between the synthetic and the natural.

A trawl sample collected from the Great Pacific Gyre by Ocean Legacy.

Given enough time, the ocean has the ability to spread plastic to the most remote reaches of the planet. Today, plastic is drifting in the waters off Antarctica. Plastic comes down in rain. Plastic fibers pass through the filter-feeding valves of oysters. Not long ago, Japan’s Deep-sea Debris Database reported finding a fully intact plastic bag in the Mariana Trench, the deepest underwater trough in the world.

We still don’t know exactly how much plastic is going into the ocean. One study, published in Science in February 2015, conservatively estimates that eight million metric tons of plastic is entering the ocean each year from municipal solid waste streams on land. That is 200 times higher than what had last been calculated in 1975 based on plastic pollution entering the ocean from maritime activities, and more than 2,000 times higher than what had been estimated from floating debris samples.

In that 2015 study in Science, environmental engineer Jenna Jemback and her co-authors argue that barring any major changes, plastic going into the ocean will multiply by a factor of 10 in 2025. That’s 80 million metric tons of plastic dumped in the ocean each year.

Despite the startling numbers of waste already in the ocean, our love of plastic endures. Plastic production is growing and expanding right along with plastic demand. By 2030, our need for plastic is expected to double.

The financial guru Warren Buffett once compared a stock market crash to the tide going out: you find out who’s been swimming naked all along. During the 2008 financial crisis, we discovered that big banks can fail. For centuries, we’ve believed the same of the ocean: that it was simply too big to fail. But an encroaching movement of threats, such as a warming ocean, overfishing, and pollution, could change that in the not-too-distant future.

If we could see beneath the surface, what would we find at the bottom of the sea? Perhaps millions of tons of plastic lying undisturbed, except for the bottom-dwellers that nibble at the nutrients collecting on it. Perhaps this evidence of the world’s waste will eventually become a layer of sediment pressed between rock layers: the Plastic Era, a fitting symbol of human-made change, baked into the Earth’s crust.

Laura Trethewey sits across the folding table from me on bright San Diego Tuesday mornings, but we’re not supposed to talk to each other. The writing room is pretty much like sitting in detention and being forced to write a three page essay on dust bunnies before the bell rings. We swing between frantic typing and staring in frozen silence at our screens – or out the window – and this is what we do for fun.

It works.

All of us writers come and go in anonymity here unless we make it a point to step out for a ten minute break. On one of these jaunts between our laptops and the coffee place down the way, I discovered that Laura was working on nonfiction essays about the ocean. And she’s been working on them for a while. When you meet other writers, it’s polite to ask about their projects, but I’ve found that sometimes the best stories are the writers themselves. Laura’s been on a lot of travels and adventures, and writing them down for magazines and newspapers has recently culminated in her first book, The Imperiled Ocean. Congratulations, Laura!

Laura is a native Canuck who has also lived in Scotland but now lives here. Because, San Diego. You can read all about her on her website, but her projects, like this video, which she wrote, researched, and produced, will give you an idea of her passion for all things ocean.

Hubby and I attended her book launch last month. We sat in the cozy downtown bookstore, listening to her broad perspective on the relationship between people and the ocean. “I’m very curious,” she said, “about the ways that people view and use the water. I’m used to thinking about traveling over water, by boat for example, but I hope this book helps people think about the ocean from many other angles.” As these amazing essays cover topics from refugees to plastic pollution to Hollywood, I’d say Laura did just that.

On a life raft in the Mediterranean, a teenager from Ghana wonders whether he will reach Europe alive, and if he does, whether he will be allowed to stay. In the North Atlantic, a young chef disappears from a cruise ship, leaving a mystery for his friends and family to solve. A water-squatting community battles eviction from a harbor in a Pacific Northwest town, raising the question of who owns the water. In this exploration of the earth’s last wild frontier, I follow seven true stories of the ocean undergoing tremendous change as it faces an uncertain future.

To win an awesome autographed copy of her new book, enter a comment in the box below. Entries will be accepted through Sunday the 26th at midnight and the winner will be announced next week on the 28th! Addresses accepted from anywhere in the world that a book can be mailed.

Laura Trethewey reporting from the Dogpatch, an off-grid boating community fighting eviction from the harbor of Ladysmith, British Columbia.

Ah, romance. What else would you make a trip to Seattle for? If Tom Hanks is sad and sleepless and says so on talk radio during Christmas, this intrepid reporter is going to catch the next flight into the land-that-never-stops-raining-shoot-me-now, to cheer him up.

Or at least spy on him. The man is such a great actor, I had to watch Saving Mr Banks again last night, just to be sure. Of course, this time he was in sunny Disneyland where he and everyone else belongs, so life is good again.

The entire clan went to Seattle last week to attend my nephew’s wedding, and so far as romance goes, it was thoroughly done. Roses, harpist, ancient barn venue hung with twinkle lights and chandeliers. The ceremony had people in tears, as did the mini donut truck parked outside. Tears of joy and harmony and hot, cinnamon-powdered sweetness.

After a couple of turns on the dance floor, the newlyweds drove off in a giant truck because, weather. I’m constrained to report that the weather remained outside the building for this event and during the rest of our adventures in the city, and it was our own fault if we went through an exit.

Not Seattle’s.

Gloom on the outside, sparkles on the inside.

We’ve explored downtown on a prior trip, so we went to the waterfront for this visit, and discovered the curious, the glorious, and the grotesque.

Grotesque: Bubble gum alley. People, why? My floors were this exciting during the toddler years. I should have cordoned off my dining room and charged admission for viewing. “Move that cheerio two inches left of the grape juice spill next to last week’s bogey. Yes. Perfect.”

Glorious: Pikes Place Market. All four levels. Flavored honey. Arcade. Leather bound journals. Tibetan singing bowls. Squid. Magic tricks. Hot clam chowder and double-sour bread. Fresh cheese. Jewelry. The giant brass pig, “Rachel”, on the street corner that collects change for downtown center services.

Glorious Honorable Mention because my sister said so: The original Starbucks store. I was expecting the Sistine Starbucks and instead found a mall version. It has a brass marker stamped 1971 but no painted ceilings or statues. We should have walked nine blocks further to the Roastery, but we had plenty to work with, right where we were.

Curious: Taxidermy. Life-size wood carvings. The giant ferris wheel for a full immersion weather experience. You can buy a whole fish the size of your arm and the fishmongers will seal it into a “24 hour airplane bag” after throwing said fish around first, tenderizing it for you.

Seattle offers live fish as well, and we spent some time in the Aquarium. This is where we watched a giant octopus work his snack out of a tube and then travel around trying to find snacks in the audience. The kraken is real. We wandered into the underwater dome, trying not to hyperventilate, when I recognized a giant fish overhead.

“That’s a sturgeon!” I said, chasing it with my camera. “I know that one!”

My kids patted me on the head. It’s not like sturgeon can compete with a butterfly fish. But thanks to my author friend, Laura, I am educated now, and yes they can. Next week I will tell you all about Laura and hold a give away of her new book!

The star of next week’s blog!

However. If you sit next to me on the ride home, you’d better not be carrying a flying fish. Or an octopus. Or a prickly sea urchin, which wouldn’t be allowed through airport security anyway, as I discovered. Seattle wasn’t going to let me go home without a little personal cuddle time.

I was the lucky winner of a random TSA security check giveaway!

“I’m going to wipe this little tag over your palms to detect any trace of explosives,” said the lady.

“Cool,” I said, offering both hands. “I never win anything!”

The palm reader flashed red, declaring me a national security threat. “It could also be a lot of other things that aren’t explosives,” she said, “but we’ll have to frisk you down anyway.”

“Okay,” I said, offering my luggage, boots, purse, electronics, boarding pass. Go, ‘Merica.

“I’ll be touching your breasts, buttocks, and other body parts that shouldn’t be said out loud. Do you want a private room for this screening?”

“Nah, go for it,” I said, offering up my dignity and a lot of laughing. Pretty bold for a blind date.

I stood with my feet apart, arms out, palms up, and waited to see if anyone wandering by in the airport would notice our shenanigans. Instead, while the lady checked for sea urchins in my hair, I caught my sons standing on the other side of the blockade, taking photos, delighted with my predicament. (Later, I demanded the photos for this blog, knowing they were solid gold, and they confessed to “Snapchatting” them, which means they are lost to space and we have only the good memories to prove any of this ever happened.)

“Ma’am, this can’t be taken through security,” said the lady with a righteous frown. She pulled a yogurt cup from my purse. “This is a gel and as it clearly states, right here on the label, is over the 3.4 ounce limit.”

“Yogurt is a gel? Eww.”

She was so excited to find something amiss, that I let her run with the victory. I offered to help the other agent repack my luggage, but she was having a great time waving my brassiere around in front of everyone and cheerfully replied, “I’ve seen worse.”

Ah, romance.

The date’s a bit off, but…

PSA: Fish market door greeter. He’s on a chain and they will make him jump to scare you. You’re welcome.

Crab is about right sized.

So. Much. Nope.

Pirate gold

Purple reef

I likey.

I can’t believe it. 2019 is rolling to a close. I hope you have each decided on a creative way to ring in the fresh 2020. Perhaps with a thankful list of all the little things that brought you joy, perhaps with a sigh of relief that some things are now behind you. Or perhaps like a certain sister-in-law, determined to do a Polar Bear Plunge on the first fresh new year morning with a leap into the salty Pacific. To each her own.

Taking a peek at my website, I can see that I tried a variety of new things this year and I want to encourage you to spread your own wings, too. It’s okay to knock on doors, just to see who opens them. Bring a couple of girlfriends along, in case it’s a trap full of Imperial Stormtroopers, but most of the time, it’s just a group of Ewoks and a Baby Yoda or two. (What if there’s more than one? EEK!)

Since you’re staying up past your bedtime tonight anyway, here’s the countdown of our Top Five Blogs of 2019 to read.

5. The Blues is about depression, what feels like, how it works, and that you are loved.

4. Eldercare Where? is about transitioning through our different life stages and giving particular thought to our elders’ circumstances.

3. Pie Giveaway Time! was a fun blog to run and I’m planning a lot of giveaways next year! Stay tuned!

2. Vaping, School, and Your Kid is as labeled and full of links and photos. Parenting is not for sissies.

1. Stalked by the Empty Nest was the opener for 2019 and contains all the emotions of change.

I wish you joy and courage. I hope you do hard things and grow stronger from them. I want you to carry your laughter into battle because we are all in this together and I need to hear your giggles beside me.

Love your people, lend a hand, nourish yourself with all good things. May your light rise and brightly glow into the new year.