Day: September 7, 2013

Saturday in September

I woke up this morning and forced myself to go to Bikram Yoga. Normally I love Bikram, but today I was so tired that by the end, I staggered to the car and lay on the front seat for a good fifteen minutes before I had the strength to drive home. While lying there, I opened the windows and sunroof and had a great heart to heart with God and a lovely fir tree whose branches hung over my car. By the end, I was feeling better, so I thanked the tree (and God) for the lovely patterns the pine branches made and for the awesome smell they gave off.  I really feel like the tree and I bonded, and I am looking forward to parking under it the next time I go to Bikram.

(By now I seem really strange. Talking to trees, engaging in long distance magnet therapy, doing yoga…not that being a hippie is bad, but I am, for sure, not one. In real life I can generally be counted on to tow the Mormon party line.)

So anyway. Saturday–my favorite day. What did we do this Saturday?

Abe and Lydia painted and did crafty things in the basement while I did yoga, showered, read scriptures and wrote in my journal. I love my husband so much. Also, I basically never get around to cleaning the basement, so there you are.
Then Lydia and I made lemon ricotta pancakes. It looks somewhat peaceful, doesn’t it? Well, let me disillusion you. Lydia will eat anything, and so every step of the way I had to remind her not to eat straight: flour, baking soda, butter, salt, raw egg, etc. This was a precise, scientific recipe from Cook’s Illustrated, and I am sure the ratios were ruined by Lydia’s little sneaks of various ingredients. Plus, by the end there was a puddle of lemon juice on the floor, not to mention the piles of dishes. Mary woke up in the middle of our baking escapade, and that only added to the chaos. But this is a nice picture, and in spite of the mess, I actuallydo love collaborating with Lydia in the kitchen.

Then we went to the farmer’s market where I bought corn, onions and some tomatoes. After that, we went to buy a birthday present for Lydia’s friend, Espen, a calendar full of green stuff for my college friend, Missi (she’s making a collage to help her through a v-bac), and Whole Foods for mussels, shrimp and squash. This month’sCook’sIllustrated really hit it out of the park for me in that I want to almost every single dish in the issue. Normally I am intrigued by one or two, but this issue was amazing: pasta puttanesca with fresh tomatoes! lemon ricotta pancakes! evenly cooked mussels! fresh peach pie! creamy cauliflower soup! What an issue!

After our outing, we came home and I collapsed (again) in bed. Abe set up Lydia on the iPad while he studied, and Mary very obligingly took a long nap. Here is Lydia engaged in her favorite activity:

I am sure her eyes will be shot from this obsession. But when I need to lie down, glasses don’t sound like the end of the world now, do they?

We have to be at Espen’s birthday party in approximately five minutes, and I have yet to wrap the odd-shaped gift we got him. So I’ll stop blogging and go do that now.

What a day

So I think my last post indicated that I am undergoing a little crisis of confidence right now. I do not think I am suffering from clinical depression or anything like that, but I do have up days and down days…and today felt as close to an up day as I have had in a while!

But even up days always start with at least one mess:

Lydia always feeds a good portion of her breakfast to her stuffed animals.
Mary is studying the effects of momentum and gravity. (She threw her breakfast on the ground and finished off by dropping down her full sippy cup.)

And then I made Abe this for lunch. He, as usual, forgot to take it to work. Very handy of him, since the power went out this evening and I couldn’t cook dinner (Yay!).

Those are tomatoes from our neighbor’s garden. My goal in life is to grow so many tomatoes I can give them away by the bushel. Since I am nowhere near this point, I still humbly accept (and sometimes beg for) any extra bounty in my neighborhood.

And of course, what morning would be complete without a tantrum?

Lydia went at least a couple months where she threw these all. day. long. We basically counted ourselves lucky when we caught a thirty minute break between fits. One tantrum, I can so handle.

And then Misty, Sophia and Max came over for a play date.

I actually took this picture a couple months ago. But the subjects are the same!

And then our friends Cole and Candice came over. And then our friend Aria dropped off her son Espen for a little bit. It was a busy, kid-filled morning! I loved everyone who came over, but boy was I ready for Lydia and Mary to have some quiet time by the time 2 pm rolled around.

During their quiet time, one of my friends called to give me emotion code magnetic therapy over the phone. I happened to be complaining to her about how dissatisfied I am with basically everything I do, and she said she just happened to be in the certification process to do magnetic healings and would love to work with me. I thought, why not?–and gave it a shot. Now, I love my friend a lot, but I was (and remain) a little skeptical about how magnets can heal you (especially when you do it long distance by proxy, as we did). However, I will say this: my friend totally pinpointed when and what traumatic event continues to derail me, and she had no idea this had ever occurred to me. I rarely talk about this personal past to anyone, and there is no way she could have known the information she told me. She is LDS, so she does not define herself as a psychic, but I really felt like she was, at the very least, extremely inspired when she started telling me about my past trauma.

She also informed me that she had completely released the trauma from my energy field, and that I should feel noticeably lighter and brighter because of that. Regardless of whether the magnet worked or not, just hearing her confidently tell me that I should feel lighter and brighter made me feel…lighter and brighter! So hip hip hooray for new age-y therapy. And hurray for my dear friend, who exerted love and energy and healing prayers on my behalf today. I love her.

After the long distance magnet work, I rounded the girls up and took them and my sister-in-law’s cousin to Silver Lake in Big Cottonwood Canyon. The scenery was spectacular, and we saw TWO moose twenty feet from the trail! I was so upset that I did not have my camera.

After that, we dropped Balu off at his cricket team and came home to discover…there had been a wind storm and the power was out. So we ate leftover egg sandwich, ice cream and animal crackers for dinner.

Then it was bath time, book time, bedtime–and now blog time! (Did I mention we got fast internet for the first time in three years? Which makes blogging sooooooo much easier?)

So all in all, today was a good day. I still feel fat and maybe a little melancholy, but noticeably “lighter and brighter” than yesterday. Hooray for…magnets? 😉