My Holiday of Lists and Bang-Ups

We're back from our 4th of July get-a-away. A long story involving being stopped at a red light and being rear-ended by a drunk driver. Can't say too much more but we ended up with a holiday at home just us and the cats, who stuck real close and a steady diet of the couch with some books and some mags to read, about 2 foreign films a day (the highlight was an Iranian film called Transit Cafe, a slew of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations (sometimes we watched those twice), and left once or twice to get some food and to see Wall-e which we both loved.

We also looked at Mini Coopers on-line. Here's one I'm hoping that the drunk driver who hit our car on the way out of town will buy us:

The mini cooper that you can design yourself on line.
This is one of four I "designed". I swear if you go to their website,
you won't come back here anytime soon...first baby tomatoes

the first apricots of the season.

We cooked some nice meals, harvested our first cherry tomatoes and watched the fireworks from our backyard.
And I made lists.
I made lists of where I'd like to go and who I'd like to learn more about, a list of bird names in English and in French, characteristics of my friends I really admire, and what I'd like to do if I had more free time. I made lists of the sorts of jewelry I'd like to make, what could influence the next collection, possibilities for photoshoots, what kind of cookies sound nice, what kinds of music I need to get for studio listening, and a list of where I would go and who I would visit on a trip back to India. Making lists is comforting to me I think.

Where I'd like to go:
Ethiopia, Morocco
Argentina, especially Patagonia and on to Chile and Peru
Greece
Cambodia and North Vietnam into the hilltribe country
Loire and Dordogne Valleys, Strasbourg, Alsace in France
Iceland
Portland to see my friend Dave and then to see his yurt and then up to Vancouver
Alaska
Japan
Hawaii
Back to India, all over the South
Back to Laos, back to Luang Prabang and up North near the border of China and then South
Back to Bangkok, to eat all the delicious street food

What Kind of cookies Sound Nice:
rosewater madeleines with a little rose petal chiffonade in there for further prettiness
orange flower water cookies sprinkled with powdered sugar and decorated with nasturtium
basil and poppyseed butter cookies
walnut cookies with walnut oil and pineapple sage
lemon buttermilk cookies with blueberry jam middles (with lemon mint and lemon zest speckles)
rose petal cookies on a bed of rose petals
jasmine tea cookies eaten with mint tea
earl grey madeleines that i think i read about somewhere

Here are some far more creative lists than mine from McSweeney's. Try this one if you live in the suburbs, this one if you like men's magazines, this one if you enjoy yiddish and get a lot of spam like I do, this one if you like to use a lot of parentheses (like I do).

We did make some killer pancakes and a golden beet and apricot salad that worked wonders on our psyches. I'll post more about that tomorrow.