happy valentine's day ❤️

Heartfelt wishes for a Happy Valentines Day!

 

the friday feed: margaritas!

Last weekend we traveled to Chicago to celebrate our grandson's 2nd birthday. Here it is, the dead of winter, and we are are heading to the city where the winter temperature averages 18°F (-7.77C) in February. 

At my 50th high school reunion a group of us were talking and the topic of traveling in retirement came up. "Where do you go in the winter?" Many people said they go to Florida for the winter, Arizona had quite a few snowbirds, and then it was my turn. Cleveland and Chicago. The looks were priceless. Todd and I don't travel much in the winter. We still have our hardy souls and warm coats and boots. Cleveland and Chicago are where our grandchildren are and they are the ones who warm our hearts.

Back to AJ's birthday party. Of course I want to bring something but my daughters have the menu planned: chicken and beef tacos, elotes, my son-in-law's mom is bringing the beans, guacamole, and tortilla chips. Well...it sounds like you need some margaritas to go with all this goodness.

Many years ago, my brother found a delicious margarita recipe. It has the usual tequila and margarita mix, but the ¡Olé! factor comes with the addition of Cointreau, Grand Marnier, Triple Sec, and Drambuie. I filled my handy dandy traveling bottles with the margarita magic and the 20 adults at the party took care of every last drop.

¡Féliz cumpleaños, AJ!

 

the colorful stairs...a story

The Front Street Warehouses are a hub for arts, culture, and small businesses, and feature over 150 artist studios, galleries, and boutiques in repurposed historic industrial buildings.

While strolling through one of the buildings at a the First Friday Art Hop, I came across these steps that lead to a friend's studio. How perfect for a building that houses artists. Anything can be a canvas. And anything can become a story.

The warehouse had no sign, no name on the rusted metal door—just a smear of cobalt blue paint where a handle should have been.

Inside, it smelled like turpentine and dust and something electric, like the air before a storm. Canvases leaned against brick walls three deep. Some were finished, others abandoned mid-thought—half a face, a single furious brushstroke, a sky with no ground beneath it.

And in the center of it all stood a staircase.

It didn’t match the rest of the warehouse. The steps weren’t wood or metal, but thick slabs of reclaimed planks painted in colors so vivid they seemed wet. Crimson. Teal. Mustard. Fuchsia. Each step a different shade, layered with drips, fingerprints, and the ghosts of old decisions.

Kate had built them during a winter when she couldn’t paint.

She had tried. She’d stretched canvas after canvas, stared at blank white until her eyes watered. Nothing came. The ideas that used to arrive like birds now hovered just out of reach.

So instead of painting pictures, she painted steps.

The first one she coated in a cheery mustard—the color of sunflowers, faces toward the sun. She scrawled across it in charcoal: BEGIN ANYWAY.

The next was dusky blue, calm and quiet, as it fades into the night. Then a bittersweet orange she mixed herself, the color of a Halloween pumpkin. She didn’t plan the order. She let instinct choose.

When the staircase was finished, it rose from the concrete floor to the warehouse’s second level—a rickety loft cluttered with old frames and forgotten sculptures. It wasn’t a grand staircase. It wobbled slightly if you climbed too fast. But it blazed against the warehouse’s gray like a rebellion.

One evening, long after sunset, Kate stood at the bottom of the steps with a paint-streaked rag in her hand.

She hadn’t created anything in months.

The warehouse felt like a witness to her silence.

She placed her foot on the ultramarine step.

BEGIN ANYWAY.

She climbed to the blue. Her heart thudded a little harder.

On the orange step, she remembered the first mural she ever painted, how her hands shook and how she’d painted anyway.

On the lime green step, she laughed out loud—suddenly aware of how seriously she’d been taking her fear.

By the time she reached the loft, something had shifted. Not inspiration exactly. Not a lightning bolt.

But a loosening.

She looked down at the staircase from above. The colors weren’t random after all. They were a record of motion. Of showing up. Of painting something—anything—when the mind felt empty.

She went back down.

Instead of facing the blank canvas, she carried one of the colorful planks to her easel. She set it upright and began to paint over it, not covering the old layers but working with them. The red bled through. The charcoal words smudged into shadow. The drips became rain in a cityscape she hadn’t known she was carrying inside her.

By morning, there was a finished piece leaning against the wall.

Not perfect. Not polished.

Alive.

The staircase remained in the center of the warehouse, paint-splattered and stubborn. Visitors who came later would run their fingers along the steps, asking if it was an installation.

Kate would shrug.

“It’s just how I get upstairs,” she’d say.

But sometimes, late at night, when the canvases went quiet and doubt crept back in, she would stand at the bottom of the colorful steps, look up at their reckless brightness, and remember:

Art didn’t have to arrive in a flash.

Sometimes it began with a single painted step.

BEGIN ANYWAY.

 

wednesday's words and wanderings and wonderings

Woodland Cemetery is Dayton's oldest and most historic cemetery. Many of the Who's Who of Dayton have their final resting place here. My yoga studio is just around the corner from Woodland and one day after class, I took a quiet, peaceful walk around the cemetery. The snow, the gray sky, the bare trees, the peace and quiet, the grave markers blanketed by the snow emphasized the reverence of the space and whenever my boots crunched on the ice, I felt as though I was disturbing the sacred rest. 

Whenever I go to Woodland, I always go to see the Wright Brothers gravesite. Orville and Wilbur are buried there along with their sister and their parents. The family plot is between the State of Ohio flag and Aviation History flag.

Another favorite grave marker is of Johnny Morehouse and his dog. Back in the 1800s, the Erie Canal ran through Dayton. The story is that 5-year old Johnny Morehouse was walking alongside the Canal, got too close, and fell in. His loyal dog jumped in but wasn't able to save Johnny's life. A local sculptor immortalized the pair depicting Johnny asleep with his dog protectively curled around him. People who visit his grave leave toys for both Johnny and the loyal dog.

We took off for Chicago to celebrate our grandson AJ's 2nd birthday. The big wind farm in Indiana goes for 20 miles and at the north end of the farm is where the time changes from Eastern Standard Time to Central Standard Time.

Birthday party time and a big Elmo Rice Krispie treat set the Sesame Street party theme.

All smiles with our two-year old little guy.

Q

Back home we woke up to hoarfrost on some branches and leaves. So pretty and delicate. As soon as the sun hit it, the hoarfrost melted.

After gray skies for a few days, this sunset was a welcome sight.

The grocery store is gearing up for Valentine's Day with strawberries and raspberries in heart-shaped containers. RIght now these fruits are not in season and even though they look pretty, their taste has little to be desired. Maybe a little Valentine's magic will make them sweeter for their recipients.

 

monday's mulling: bad bunny's super bowl performance

Last night over here in America we celebrated the culmination of American football by being glued to our televisions to watch the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks play in the final game of the 2025-2025 season, Super Bowl LX (that's 60 if you don't recall your Roman numerals).

My husband loves the game of football. He has his favorite teams and can watch games all day long. Me, I don't care for football. The Super Bowl is a big draw for fans whose teams are playing and it also brings us non-football fans to the TV to watch the commercials (companies shell out huge sums of money to advertise during this game) and to watch the halftime show.

This year's halftime entertainment was provided by the Puerto Rican rapper and singer, Bad Bunny. Bad Bunny? Yeah, I hadn't heard of him until the announcement came out that he would be doing the Super Bowl halftime show. The drama really snowballed when people found out that the performance would be in Spanish, a first for the Super Bowl. 

My first impression of this Spanish-speaking rapper's performance...I liked it. He highlighted Puerto Rican life and even though his words were all Spanish, the choreography told the story - the love of community, the love of family, working to overcome devastating circumstances (the electricity going out with no power for days), and the call for Americans to recognize and respect one another.

Near the end of his performance, Bad Bunny spoke his first and only English words of the show:

"God Bless America."

He then proceeded to name every Latin American country, one by one, in Spanish: Mexico, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Venezuela, the Dominican republic, Cuba, and more. He continued through Central and South America, before ending with USA, Canada, and finally Puerto Rico again. As he named each country, dancers carrying flags from across the Americas walked behind him, a visual representation of the hemisphere united. The jumbotron behind them lit up with the words, "THE ONLY THING MORE POWERFUL THAN HATE IS LOVE."

This post is a little late because this morning I watched this halftime show a few more times before writing about it. It tells the American story. The REAL one. The messy, beautiful, multilingual, multicolored courageous one. At the very end of the performance Bad Bunny held a football that read, "Together we are America," and spiked it into the ground. Not with anger but with joy and it made hate look exactly as small as it is.

Check out this performance that celebrated Puerto Rico and its place in the American story.

 

it's that kind of sunday

Paradox - two opposing elements that coexist, revealing complexity or deeper insights. It challenges conventional thinking, causing people to think more critically, to see the bigger picture, to broaden horizons, to see both sides of the story. It helps us to grow, to adapt.

Right now it feels like the world is wobbling on its axis. Everyday we are bombarded with news that makes us wonder, "Can this get any worse?" and it continues day after day. Tune out the news and tune into your heart. Share a little kindness. It could become the best part of someone's day, especially when they're not expecting it. So today I encourage you to lead by example and show someone that most people are good, that kindness isn't dead, and that we're all in this life together.

it's birthday party time!

Today is the day for the family party to celebrate my little grandson AJ's 2nd birthday. Two years old and what a joy this little boy has brought to so many. 

For his 1st birthday, I made a zine to celebrate his first year. The tradition continues for his second year with a Sesame Street theme.

Dear AJ,

Woohoo!

You're TWO!

Happy, happy birthday,

I love you!

Love,

Didi