Personal: Mother's Day

I spent yesterday with my mom and grandma, and we celebrated both Mother's Day and my grandma's birthday (she's ninety-two).

Anyway, we went to Ten Thousand Villages, which is a fair-trade store that has some really beautiful things, had lunch at the Everett Street Bistro (I had the Grand Marnier French Toast, which was fascinating), went to the Lawrence art gallery (right now featuring two really neat artists who live in Oregon -- Yiqian Shu, who was raised in China and has been painting since the age of seven and has been declared an Oregon Treasure; and Hans Schiebold, who escaped from the Nazis as a child and who paints every day from eight to three. They each have a unique way of painting -- Yiqian Shu's paintings luminesce like none I've ever seen and Hans Schiebold's are incredibly deeply textured, so much so that they look completely different close up and far away) and went shopping at Savvy Plus and then just hung out for a while at my mom's (she showed us this really cool tea she'd picked the last time she went traveling).

All in all, a really good day.

I really love my mom and my grandma. My grandma is the strongest person that I have ever known. She's an artist, she's well-traveled, and she's incredibly tough. My mom is possibly the nicest person that I know, with more love in her heart than I can describe, and I inherited a great deal of my fannish nature from her.

I love them both dearly and am so honored to have them in my life.