Lily sick – Page 10 – Darais Days

A year ago this morning…

I am totally exhausted but Abe, who has been working like crazy all day, is downstairs feeding Mary (again) so I can blog and go to bed. I love him.

I almost missed yoga this morning but thankfully woke up at 5:40 and made it into class by 6. Cynthia met me there, and I was relieved that I didn’t sleep through it, since I forgot to set my alarm last night.

After yoga, I showered at the studio and headed straight to school. I started the day practicing knife cuts, but I had to make up the eggs class I missed Thursday…so for the next three hours I did nothing but attempt to make French omelets and flip eggs. For the record, I make eggs all the time at home, but they are in a nonstick pan, and I flip them with a spatula. Also, I make Western omelets (that are brown and folded vs. yellow and rolled).

In the two hours I practiced, I never once flipped an egg successfully. I had eggs land on the floor, on the range, on the counter, and the ones that landed in the pan either turned funny or got their yolks broken by the fall. It was nothing short of disastrous. I am pretty sure the chef thought I was mentally challenged. The fact that I battle terrific shyness, self-consciousness, and a constant terror that I am incapable of performing the task at hand is no help. I just try to smile and say as little as possible, because when I try to talk, I either stutter or say something monumentally stupid. What’s worse is everyone there is incredibly friendly, and I would love to be friends with all of them if I could work up the courage and wit to talk coherently.

At any rate, here is something I plated (under explicit instruction) at the end of the day:

I came home and laughed and cried a little about the experience with Abe, who was so reassuring. It’s nice to have someone to come home to who is familiar with your weaknesses and can still say positive, loving things. Again, I love my husband.

Then I lay in bed until it was time to go to the Alvarez party for Leah. Carolina, Nefi, and Leah live in Bountiful, so we drove there and spent the evening with them. One of the best parts was that my favorite young women’s leader of all time, Camey Hadlock (Elder Anderson’s daughter), showed up! We chatted the whole party. She is one of my life-long inspirations. She has four kids and is about to start a doctorate program in education and technology, and in anticipation of starting the program, she has published an article in the main journal of her new field. She’s also written much of the new church instructional material for Come Follow Me. She’s just an amazing person who has stayed in touch with the young women she’s taught all over the country, and I admire her so much. Here’s a picture of her posing with Carolina and me. She looks the youngest of all of us (even though she has a teenage daughter while Carolina and I have babies).

Here are some more from the party:

Lydia was waking up from her car ride, and Leah was so cute and wanted to play.

Mary, Lydia AND Abe all wanted pictures taken with the Bubble Guppies:

Midterms, Abe is happy, and our little Olympian

I have to get up really early tomorrow, so just a quick post. I had the first part of my midterm today. I think I made my small dice carrots too small, and I had SERIOUS problems with my hollandaise. Grandma, you taught me to make hollandaise, and I’ve loved it ever since, but the thing is, when I make it at home, I make it in your double boiler. Making it in a mixing bowl over a big saucepan is much more awkward. I scrambled my eggs twice before I finally coaxed them into a sauce.

Abe blew it out of the ball park today at work and doubled his quota at the call center. He is super excited and feeling a little relieved. Today is the second day in a row that he’s surpassed his quota, and he’s feeling blessed and even happier (if that’s possible) to be at his new job. When I told the girls that Daddy had a great day at work, Mary raised both hands high in the air just like she does at the triumphant ending of the book, Potty (where the baby succeeds at going potty and gets to wear undies).

Here are today’s pictures:

Exhausted from feeding my children every two hours from morn until night, I announced today that there would be no meals between breakfast and lunch. This is what ensued. — Exhausted from feeding my children every two hours from morn until night, I announced today that there would be no meals between breakfast and lunch today. This is what ensued.

A little later, they are happy as clams.

Mary is demonstrating her mount/dismount move she's been practicing non stop for the past two days. This is the first step of her mount. — Mary is demonstrating her mount/dismount move she’s been practicing non stop for the past two days (this set-up is next to my bed, which I have occupied almost non-stop for that same time). This is the first step of her mount.

Lydia spent a solid hour coloring her new scripture. Memorizing it was a whole 'nother story... — Lydia spent a solid hour coloring her new scripture. Memorizing it was a whole ‘nother story…

TGIT

Today was another sick day, sort of. I don’t really feel super duper sick, but sick enough that leaving the house was a non-option. I ended up skipping class, too.

I finished The Two Towers, which left me hungry for the last book in the trilogy. Since I don’t have it on hand, I finally, finally picked up Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling, a book I have moved with me and placed near my bed since 2003. I don’t know why I haven’t reached over and actually read it in these past eleven years, but today I finally started, and I love, love, love it.

The girls napped at different times today (Mary woke up as I was tucking Lydia in), so right now I am ready to go straight to bed. From 2pm until 7:45, I did nothing but cook, clean, and feed and clean up the children over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

Here are some pictures from the day:

She tried to show Nana how the printer has this funny piece of plastic that moves when you touch it.

Back to Nana. She loves talking to Nana, and I promised my mom I would post some of the many (I took more, believe it or not) pictures I took during our conversation.

I baked a cake today. The cake itself fell apart, but I sort of glopped it all together and let Lydia go to town with the sprinkles.

Abe gave the girls potty seat rides after their baths. My favorite is how he has Lydia's pre-bath underwear in his back pocket. Also, I never got around to making my bed...maybe because I spent every spare moment in it? — Abe gave the girls potty seat rides after their baths. My favorite is how he has Lydia’s pre-bath underwear in his back pocket. Also, I never got around to making my bed…maybe because I spent every spare moment in it?

Mary backs onto the potty seat and sits very carefully down. Her favorite books right now are all about the potty--maybe because of these rides. — Mary backs onto the potty seat and sits very carefully down. Her favorite books right now are all about the potty–maybe because of these rides.

dinosaurs, Dead Sea Scrolls, and dinner delayed

This morning I took the girls to the dinosaur play area at City Creek. I told the girls I would bring them yesterday because Misty’s play group was meeting there, but then I started feeling tired and slightly sick that I had to renege on my promise. They had fun today, though.

Then I took them to church and dropped Lydia off at nursery while Mary and I attended a lecture from a BYU professor/Dead Sea Scroll scholar on the Dead Sea Scrolls. I was a little late, but what I heard was fantastic. This wasn’t his most important or emphasized point, but he did point out that a lot of Book of Mormon names which were completely unfamiliar to Joseph Smith and everyone else at the time of the translation of the Book of Mormon (some of which had been used by anti-Mormons to prove the Church was not true) show up in the Dead Sea Scrolls. For example, critics used to say that Alma, the Book of Mormon prophet, had the name of a South American woman; when the Dead Sea Scrolls were interpreted, Alma comes up as the name of a Hebrew prince.

The professor said he was going to give a lecture at 4pm today on the historicity of Job. Every part of me was DYING to drive to Provo and sit in on his lecture–to which he invited all of us–but, alas, that was not practical. So instead, we headed home, ate lunch, took long naps, and cooked food. Specifically, I spent two hours doing simple standard breading and baking to three eggplants. I streamlined the process as much as I could, and yet two full hours later, there I was, still dealing with the eggplant. Perhaps the fact that I was also feeding children had something to do with that, but still. It was ridiculous. I didn’t even make the rest of the dish; instead I told Abe to fend for himself for dinner and plan on having eggplant Parmesan tomorrow.

After dinner, I got my first real burst of energy of the whole day (it happened none too early at 8 pm) and cleaned the downstairs for the arrival of my home teacher from Chicago, Brother Richardson. He is flying in for Roots Tech, which starts tomorrow. While I was cleaning away, Abe was upstairs bathing and playing with the girls. Here is a picture he took:

Mary loves, loves, loves to brush her teeth...and tongue. — Mary loves, loves, loves to brush her teeth…and tongue.

Roomie reunion

This morning I practiced my knife skills by cutting a bunch of vegetables for lentil soup. The veggies came out noticeably uneven. Also, upon later consumption, I realized that the soup was unsalted and the veggies were practically raw. Yuck! Then I prepped a sweet potato souffle and rushed to play group with the kids. I forgot to bring Lydia’s bike, but that was okay since we didn’t stay long. My old roommates were in town, and as soon as they called, I rushed out of play group to meet them at home.

At one point I calculated that during my single years I had sixty-eight roommates. Granted, I counted my mission roommates, who would change up every six weeks. I also counted people I lived with for as short as a couple weeks. But I think it’s safe to say that those ten years had a variety of living situations, and during that time, my period with the roommates I saw today stands out in memory as one of the happiest living arrangements of my life. I loved my life with them, and it was truly uplifting to see these lovely, fun, funny, kind, intelligent, affirming women today. Vanessa is expecting baby Tessa in March, and Shandi has two kids, one a month older than Lydia and one GORGEOUS baby who is a couple months old.

Our kids got along great, and I loved, loved, loved visiting with Shandi and Vanessa. Shandi and I even got to play and sing together (she did the singing), and that was SO fun. She has a beeee-autiful voice, and I’d been looking forward to hearing it again for a while. Suffice it to say, I was sad when they left–but so glad that they came!

The rest of the day had some reading, some piano, some tantrums, lots of cleaning, and hopefully now some homework. Here are today’s pictures:

Since Mary is now on a one nap a day schedule, I can go to play group again! — Since Mary is now on a one nap a day schedule, we can go to play group again!

Vanessa, siting on the floor, is due in March. She can do stuff like sit on the floor and wear heels while pregnant. I'm jealous. — Shandi’s kids are Sebastian and Penelope. Vanessa remarked that Shandi could open a children’s boutique named “Sebastian and Penelope.” Can’t you picture it?

Abe watched the girls while I practiced tonight. From the sounds of it, they had some rough moments. But he did capture some good ones here:

Undone by being binky-free

Today started out strong, really. I deep cleaned the kitchen, did laundry, played with my kids, read to my kids, worked on reading with Lydia…and then came nap time. Mary is learning to sleep without her binky, so today nap time was severely truncated.

In its absence, I developed a pounding headache and by the end of the day I was in bed watching this (can you believe that the audience hissed at the premier?! This concerto–in its original 2 piano version– has been the equivalent of my musical comfort food since elementary school. I just can’t imagine a sound aesthetic where this seemed musically deviant!) while Abe tried to entertain the kids on speaker phone during his commute.

I had great plans to get all of my homework done today, but that will have to wait.

Here are today’s pictures:

Grandma, Mary played with those bugaboos you gave her all day. We literally played with them for an hour straight, and that was after she spent the whole morning wearing them around her neck. — Grandma, Mary played with those bugaboos you gave her a ton today. We literally played with them for an hour straight (all I did for 60 minutes was take them apart and put them back together again and again), and that was *after* she spent the whole morning wearing them around her neck.

The rest of the pictures are from FHE tonight, wherein Abe put on another puppet show about sharing. Per my request, he also threw in a skit about staying in your seat until you’re done eating. Grandma, do you recognize some of those puppets?

Abe got great feedback at work today and great feedback on the sermon he wrote for Jon and Shirley. It’s truly beautiful. If they allow me, I’ll post it after their wedding in May.

To bed, to bed.

Wherein Lily learns to distrust a cookbook

We were an hour late to church because Mary slept in a looooong time. I guess all that running around the church gym last night tired her out! It worked out, though, because we got to Skype with Sruthi (Swathi’s sister who lives in Calcutta). It was great to chat with her, and by the time we were done, Mary was just waking up.

I learned today in Sunday School that today marks the one hundred year anniversary of the extinction of the passenger pigeon. I remember a scene from The Pioneers by James Fenimore Cooper wherein one pioneer shoots a canon into a cloud of pigeons…for fun. And now, here we are one hundred years after the passing of the last of those birds. Some stewards of this glorious creation we’ve been.

On that note, we all took deliciously long naps this afternoon. At the end of it, both girls and Abe gave me a back massage. During my massage, I could not imagine heaven being one bit better. Maybe it is? But that was hard to beat.

And then my day came crashing down around this: brown butter icing. Joy of Cooking promises that this is a quick and easy recipe, and it also says not to make this too far in advance. I thought, terrific! A carrot cake with apricot preserves and brown butter icing flecked with orange zest. It sounded so yummy and pretty. And then, this happened:

You can’t see it, but there are grease pools on top of that cake. I was all in a frenzy because we were late and the cake looked like this, and Abe kept telling me it looked fine and we should just take it to the Miners’ as is.

It looked fine?

At that point, my response helped Abe decide to exit the kitchen. I made up some butter cream and smeared it all over this mess, and at that point I got really mad at Joy of Cooking because, thanks to their instructions, the hot brown butter icing melted the buttercream. But there was nothing left to do, so we took the unsightly blob to the Miners, stuck candles in it, sang to Abe, and cut it up. The cake itself tasted great, but the icing tasted only nominally better than it looked. Next time I will be sticking to cream cheese icing and consulting America’s Test Kitchen instead of that sub-par Rombauer publication.

Here are the pictures from the Miners’:

And one from earlier this morning at church:

Mary is growing up! We took away her binky tonight. It is sad and painful, and Lydia claims to remember how hard this was when we did this to her. She told Mary that it would be okay, but Mary doesn’t seem to agree at present.

Recovery and Talent Show

Lily is currently making my birthday cake (yum!!) for one of my birthday celebrations tomorrow and so I offered to blog in her place. We are both hoping to get to bed early tonight.

Today was the first weekend day after Lily and I have started our new schedules. We’ve both agreed that the new groove is going very well, and today we also agreed that especially with us both being sick, we should get a little R&R.

I spent a lot of time with the kids in the morning which was so lovely since I see them so little during the week. I’d like to say we did a bunch of activities, but actually most of what I did was feed them and let them wander around house and somehow that filled the morning. Lily has been quite sick today (much sicker than me!!) so she got a little rest in addition to helping with the kids.

Lily and I both rested while Mary napped and Lydia watched the Ipad. She’s watched it a lot lately, but Lily and I have really needed rest to kick our bugs so it has been nice for her to be entertained while we rest.

When we got up we did some quick errands and then we went to our ward talent show. It was absolutely amazing. I could not believe how much talent was on display in my ward. Someone sang “Marry me” by train and I swear his voice was every bit as good as Train’s. Mark Walton drew live caricatures of people and I heard a lady sing a song she wrote that could seriously air on the radio. Also, Lily played La Campanella by Liszt. The whole ward was floored by her talent. She got a really loud applause and she and I both got a flood of comments from people afterwords. I was so proud of her, especially the way that she played with passion and nailed the ending, which is definitely my favorite part.

Afterwords, we let our two children run around with other kids in the gymn for a long time. It was so great to see them running so much because it’s harder to get out of the house in the winter when it is so cold outside.

Qualtrics is going great so far. Thanks for reading!!!

Here are the pictures from today:

Ode to Beethoven

We’re all still sick, so Lydia spent most of the day on the iPad. When Mary is sick, she does not tolerate being ignored, so I spent all of my time playing with Mary (while she was awake). When she napped, I should have switched gears and played with Lydia, but instead I practiced, did homework, and finished Beethoven’s biography.

There are so many scenes from that book I hope I never forget. Obviously, the premier of the ninth symphony is practically common knowledge, but still, reading about how Beethoven stood there furiously conducting the music in his head even after the music had finished made me choke up. Also, did you know that the Kreutzer sonata was originally dedicated to a violinist named George Bridgetower? He was a British violinist with an African father and British mother, and he was such a virtuoso on the violin that Beethoven interrupted a public performance to embrace and congratulate him. He promised the dedication of this sonata to Bridgetower, but in an after-concert celebration, Bridgetower made a crude joke about a woman, and Beethoven withdrew the dedication on the spot. Instead, he dedicated it to a violinist (last name Kreutzer), who claimed the piece was unplayable and never played it. Bridgetower regretted losing that dedication to his dying day.

Another favorite anecdote from the book comes from Beethoven’s meeting with Goethe. Beethoven had long admired Goethe, but was disgusted when Goethe made a show of bowing to royalty on one of their joint walks. Goethe was horrified at Beethoven’s lack of propriety (Beethoven angrily jammed down his hat and stormed off) and in a later letter lamented Beethoven’s poor etiquette. The incident positively warmed my heartstrings toward Beethoven and made me dislike Goethe (with whose works I am not familiar at all, anyway). In Beethoven’s words, Goethe was too moved by “things that glitter.”

Also, when Beethoven was at one of his patron’s estates, some occupying French soldiers came to dinner. Beethoven’s patron and the soldiers implored Beethoven to play for them, but Beethoven, who hated to play on demand anyway and who detested French soldiers, ended up storming out of the house, the manuscript for The Appassionata in hand, and caught a coach back to Vienna in the pouring rain. The original score has clear water stains from the trip. He told his prince patron, “There will always be plenty of princes in the world, but there is only one Beethoven.”

Anyway–wrong venue! I should be writing in Goodreads, but I am cheating because I need to get to bed and I didn’t do much else today.

I did go to class again tonight and worked again on knife skills and stock. I am going to need to practice a lot if I ever hope to be competent with a knife.

Here are some pictures I took during a rare moment this morning when Lydia was not on the iPad.

Fun company

The one solitary picture I took occurred during our morning play date with Misty, Sophia, and Max. We went to the Discovery Gateway Children’s Museum together, and this is what Lydia and Sophia did while we checked in:

Then we came home, ate lunch, and had naps/quiet time. I’ve been feeling sick and I knew I had five hours of class tonight, so instead of hightailing it to the piano, I crawled into bed with Beethoven’s latest biography. I have loved learning more about him, but this one thing stuck out to me: One of his guests described his apartment, and in doing so noted that there was, I kid you not, an unemptied chamber pot underneath the piano. All the chairs had food and clothes strewn all over them, and there was a mountain of dust on the piano. The author noted that Beethoven literally lived in squalor. Can you imagine? He composed his magnificent work in that!!! I should really ease up about the kitchen floor.

A lot of other tender, funny, and truly sad moments touched me today, but since it’s almost midnight, we’ll have to leave on the note of Beethoven’s unemptied chamber pot.

But I also had my first lab class tonight, and I L.O.V.E.D. it. My teacher is a former middle school English teacher who gave that up to go to cooking school and ended up at Chez Panisse. She is very funny, knowledgeable and has endearing mannerisms. We worked on dicing, stocks, and kitchen etiquette/clean-up today. I have great classmates who all seem to be team players, and it was just fun. I was worried that the late hour of the class (6 – 11 pm) would be hard, but the material was so riveting I had no problem paying attention.

Okay, one last anecdote about Alice Waters, since my teacher worked for her. She told us that when Alice Waters came to town, everyone at the restaurant would have to change routines. In Alice’s absence, they would use the fireplace as a cooling station and set up the kitchen for efficiency. When Alice Waters visited, they’d be warned in advance and set up the kitchen for her arrival by lighting a fire in the fireplace and setting out vases of fresh herbs all around the kitchen. I guess even Alice Waters can be out of touch sometimes. (She did note that the restaurant had an incredible vibe and notably egalitarian spirit; the chef world is normally very hierarchical, but nothing of that sort is tolerated in Alice’s Berkely kitchen.)

Anyway, I spent the day with my children, Misty, Sophia, Max, Beethoven and Alice Waters (and Job and Nephi). Not bad for a Thursday.

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