I really have been caught in the challenge of living intensely and writing about it at the same time. Now Bob has gone back to Corpus and I've been sitting all evening at the computer organizing recipes of past generations and checking and responding to email at the same time - or I guess most accurately in alternation. It's cold here by the window, and I need to get up early in the morning to go with Jean to get tickets for the annual Christmas sing along. I shouldn't write long.

In summary - our week of gratitude and freedom was all I could have wanted - very restorative.I loved it that, at the Thanksgiving table, we shared gratitude around the table - Danny starting, each of us offering thanks, and the variety and sweetness of the thanks offered were touching - from Tracy offering thanks for the "little babies" to be born in February to Zachary thanking for the many foods (specifically) on his plate and his spoon and fork to eat them with, through Chris thankful for our relative safety and comfort in turbulent times, to Joanna and Bob being thankful for a day and a week off respectively and Ruth capping it off with gratitude that this is the first Thanksgiving every one is old enough for a big person pink crystal goblet - and the last one for a while.

Highlights of the day included cooking with Joanna - dish after dish after dish - efficiently, cooperatively and cleaning the kitchen with Ruth and K.K. - talking with the two of them about all sorts of birth and baby related topics. Across three generations, woman lore flowed (as much as I know individual differences are greater than sex differences and men and women are more alike than different) there was something deep and sweet about our conversation about pregnancy and birth.

It doesn't seem like three whole days have passed since Thanksgiving. I worked a long but good day at the office on Friday. Friday night and yesterday Bob and I watched three movies - the best being George Clooney's Oh brother Where Art Thou? which is a very loose the and rich with spirituals and country music. It is beautifully done - maybe the most entertaining (not favorite but most entertaining) movie I have ever seen. The treatment of the different agical creatures from the original tale was clever and right on - and the art of it all pleasing, the haracters likable - just made me smile. The other two films - about a friendship between a September eleventh widower and his old college roommate and the life of Moliere were both also thought provoking and enjoyable.

Austin is in the lastand brightest flare of fall color - really beautiful. Bob and I walked at Town Lake yesterday and in the neighborhood today and loved the gold, red, bronze of the trees. There were more leaves on the trees than on the ground yesterday, probably today too, but the balance is shifting fast. In a week, with the temperatures and winds we are having, I predict bare treees. We watched the crescent moon - tiny, delicate, just a line, set as we walked the lake yesterday - the beginning of the next moon cycle after the brilliant full moon we watched rise over the Gulf - so any blessings, so many moons.