week 15/25

Friday Food – “Kids” in the Kitchen

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Salad with Chicken
Main Course
(c)2025

It was my daughter’s turn to cook. She can be very creative, but often she just wants to get it over with. Who can blame her? Since her day off is Tuesday, I asked her to make dinner. She chose salad with chicken. She decided on all the ingredients, she did the grocery shopping, she planned, cooked the chicken early so it was cooled off for the salad. She even included items she doesn’t like that the rest of us could add onto our individual bowls.

In addition to our salads, she got really delicious dinner rolls and we had those with a bit of butter.

What was in the salad is below the cut.

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Inspired & Inspiring – Writing Retreat Reflection

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This weekend I went on a much anticipated writing retreat with three writing colleagues. We have been meeting every two weeks for the past year, and the amount of feedback, suggestions, and camaraderie we’ve each received has been a glorious blessing.

We each had our own private bedroom as we shared other accommodations and a small conference room for meeting together and writing.

We interspersed our own writing with writing prompts and exercises to jump start our creativity and we enjoyed snacks, candy, and company and remarkably we each got quite a lot done on our individual projects.

As the “host” I had several goodies planned and I just loved both aspects of hosting and of participating.

The shared space worked out amazingly well, and we have tentatively scheduled another retreat in the fall.

Moving forward from this weekend, I have some goals set that need to be formally set down with specific timelines:

• Sample Book Cover
• Book Title Ideas
• Chapter Headers (each chapter needs):
          – Titles
          – Picture, sketch, or quotation
          – Fictional narrative of this aspect of Kateri’s life, especially related to the shrines
• Timeline both of the formal governments & of Kateri’s life
• Questions to be answered

I’m looking forward to the rest of the week, planning, meeting again on Zoom, and focusing on the direction of my book.

Happy Writing to All of Us!

Caption for Photo Collage above:

  1. Our reserved dining table for the weekend
  2. A beautiful necklace one of my colleagues gave me
  3. Protest sign created for April 5th Hands Off protest that three of our group went to
  4. Chocolate chip scone & cup of hot, black tea with milk
  5. Our conference room where we met, laughed, read, and wrote

World Health Day

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Yesterday was World Health Day, and it’s more important than ever to pay attention to our health and the health of those we care about, not just on World Health Day, but everyday.

The United States is losing a lot of standing in the world as we gut the CDC and the FDA, the NIH and HHS, and it will take time for someone else to take up the mantle of research, development, and whatever else we are quickly dismantling. The alphabet soup of our departments are more than initials, acronyms, and governmental “overreach.” They are what keeps our food from poisoning us. They are what checks on the viability of vaccines; that prevents the next pandemic; that cures cancer.

Visit my new page: Election Connection – Resistance and visit the first table where there are resources for knowing what health issues are going on in the world. Follow Canada Health Watch and get their weekly emails – at least it’s something. As for the title, for anyone who thinks that health isn’t political hasn’t been paying attention.

Please add your own reliable links in the comments. We are a village, and we are responsible for one another even if one quarter of the country doesn’t believe that.