Ermahgerd! Cermp Mertee!

One thing I have scarcely mention is my Camp Mighty attendance next month.

I am freaking geeking out.

Earlier this week we got our small group assignments. Camp Mighty is a life-improvement retreat. Or a blogger micro-conference. Or a clean water volunteer project. Or a chance to escape the everyday and make big plans with other (mostly) women who are making big plans, too. It’s all of those things and, undoubtedly, way more.

Camp Mighty is a weekend structured around skills. The objective is to improve your life until it cannot be further improved. Before you arrive, you’ll draw up a Life List — about 100 things you’d like to do. The retreat gives you time to think about what you want, a team to help, and a pool. For floating.

That’s a description straight from the Camp Mighty website. There are guest speakers, too,  including Jenny Lawson (The Bloggess) and Ben Silbermann (co-founder of Pinterest), among several others. I’ve even been updating my own Mighty Life List, too, in preparation for camp (and just ’cause I started that list 3 years ago and haven’t finished it).

An odd discovery was made earlier this week. I thought that I had been coveting Camp Mighty for 3 or 4 or 5 years. Turns out, next month will only be the second camp. I think my memory rolled Mighty Summit in with Camp Mighty (the former is the birthplace of the latter). I’d love to be at Mighty Summit someday, too, but it’s not something to which you pay tuition. I think it’s more of a “Be awesome and the Universe will send you there.”

I can do that!

As I was saying, we got our small group assignments this week and I am in camper group 2. So far we are a group of 12 to15 women from various places. Being an Okie, I’m an island. But there are 3 or 4 from the Bay Area, a couple from NYC and then a scatter from around the US. We’ve only stuck our pinky toes in the water of getting to know each other but, so far, it’s been neat.

One of the reasons we are gathered together pre-camp is to plan some fundraising. Upon enrollment, you could pay $200 for a clean water project that Camp Mighty is funding at Charity Water. OR! OR! OR! You could opt out and find a creative way to raise the money as a team. That’s the choice I made.

So….now….my biggest dilemma. “What to do?”

My first thought is toffee. I have made toffee every December for at least the last 6 years. I know it up one side and down the other. People crave my toffee and I’ve always wanted to turn it into a fundraiser. And I have a friend who has a shop in Oklahoma City where I could sell it. And I have access to a commercial kitchen so I could make it in whatever quantity I want and have it be health-code-compliant and all that. BUT…that means lots of moving parts coming together in a short amount of time. I also prefer to make toffee when it is cold outside because it behaves better.

Another thought (borrowed from a teammate) is to throw a fundraising brunch! Open up my house to 10-20 people, make lots of muffins and mimosas and bacon and stuff and throw a brunch. Either charge a fee or request donations. That sounds FUN and is more engaging. More connections, less boiling sugar. The only drawback is that it will make for an intense weekend and my weekends are filling up quickly. (But as I type a menu is forming and it is totally kick-ass.)

But I could do both….you know. I could sell little bags of toffee at brunch. Or the toffee could be a parting gift…

SHUT THE FRONT DOOR.

I just checked my calendar and there’s a Sunday in November when my kids will be at their dad’s house AND it is before I leave for camp. November 11.

Eleven. Eleven.

It is a sign.

Thank you. Glad we had this talk. I’m off to plan a menu!

Napa Valley, y’all

Of course Food On Trees was a fantastic attraction in our 3.5 days in Napa Valley. Another draw for us? Wine, of course!

We first visited Odisea, a wine company formed from a partnership between Adam Webb and Mike Kuenz (a couple of oenophiles from Oklahoma). It is situated in an unassuming corporate park location, but once inside I realized I was walking right into where the magic happens.

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We tasted wine that had been aging in their barrels anywhere from 2 weeks to two years. Was mind blowing to walk into a warehouse stacked six high and twelve deep and maybe 24 long with beautiful oak barrels storing all manner of lovely liquid grapes from many years and varietals. As we were tasting through the funhouse, Adam said,

“I need to go visit a vineyard this afternoon. Do you two want to come with?”

Uh, yeah.

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We hopped in his truck and headed out to Phoenix Ranch Vineyard. Brian Phoenix greeted us at the gate and walked us through several rows of grapes. Some of his grapes go to folks like Odisea or other wine makers and Phoenix make some themselves. My favorite was the viognier varietal which fruited super-tasty grapes that were also gorgeous.

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Later in the week we bought a bottle of Phoenix Ranch Viognier at Back Room Wines. It’ll be nice to revisit that vineyard in a couple of years when the bottle gets uncorked. We’ll taste the sun and soil and smile.

Adam graciously scheduled another winery/ranch for us to visit the next day: Black Sears. We made the graceful, winding drive up Howell Mountain just outside of St. Helena to the tip top where Chris met us with two glasses and a bottle. We tasted and hiked up the syrah-growing sandy soil to this vantage…

I advise seeing wine country with a doctor.

Of all the wine experiences we had while in California, Black Sears is probably the story I return to most often…

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Eating cabernet grapes while drinking cabernet wine. Cool stuff. This photo also reminds me of the conversation we were having at that very moment. In the distance we could hear the workers destemming grapes that had been brought in during the week. Like any laborers, they were blasting music to get them through the day and as we were tasting cabernet, the soulful vocal stylings of Eddie Money filled the air.

Those wine boys may know a lot about grapes but I TOTALLY named way more Eddie Money song titles.

More drinking and tasting happened in those 3.5 days. How much? Nearly 80 wines before we arrived in San Francisco. Dear Napa Valley…I hope you have some sort of liver repair service.

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If I had a million years

…I could get caught up on all the blog posts in my head.

Last month we opened a new restaurant, which is always an intense time in the home office. Then right after it launched my daughter had a birthday. Then the day after that we got on a plane for a 10 day vacation to one of our most favorite places in the world doing all of our most favorite things in the world. On day 2 I got a phone call that my most favorite person in the world had passed away after a long, full life with the exception of several years of dementia and sharply declining physical and mental health. Services won’t be for 6 more weeks so…power through! Wine country then the city and in the middle of that I read two books and averaged 5 miles a day (as opposed to the 50 feet to which we are accustomed) of walking in San Francisco. Oh! And we tasted well over 100 different wines. We also attended two concerts and spent an obscene amount of money and calories that WERE WORTH EVERY MORSEL AND CENT. Someone remind me of this in December when Santa fills our stockings with coal.

My brain. It is FULL of stories. Full of tears. I haven’t the slightest idea of where to begin. Life has been like that all year. I don’t know where to begin because so much is constantly coming at My Thinker for processing. Y’all…there are all these stories about buying the house I haven’t told!  Concerts I’ve been to! Pastries I’ve eaten! Pinteresting things I’ve made! ALL OF THE PHOTOS! Memories to share and, mostly, document before they fade.

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I do want to tell you briefly about this book. It is likely responsible for pushing me past this writer’s block of having TOO MUCH to say. And wanting to say my things at a million miles an hour without eloquence. Imperfectly.

Go read this. Then loan it to a friend. Or buy it for a friend. Chances are, he or she will want to mark it up and highlight it and spill coffee on it and sleep with it under their pillow. Here’s one of her TED talks, if you want a hint of what she writes about…

2012 TED Talk

I also read this:

…which was just pure joy, especially if you have a certain sense of humor. Jenny Lawson is in the category of what I call, “Me in my head.” I can’t wait for several women I love to get their hands on this. It made my 5+ hour plane ride feel like 30 minutes. I wish Jenny Lawson would write a book for every time I need to fly 2,000 miles. I’m sure she’d do that, right?

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