it comes but once every 4 years

it seems like whatever is written today on leap year day should be good. it's a special day. it comes only once every four years. it's like a bonus, extra day, which to me, makes it seem like it shouldn't be wasted. and that i shouldn't write drivel (and yet, here i sit, chattering away...).

tomorrow, we're starting our raw food detox diet. we're not going 100% raw in one fell swoop, we're going to be sensible, which is what natalia rose, the woman who wrote the book, advocates anyway. i told husband this morning and he began muttering something under his breath about not really getting official notice in writing in good time so he wasn't sure he was going to participate. unless he's doing the cooking himself (which he will be on thursday and friday when i'm in oslo), he'll be eating MY way and my way is the new detox raw food diet way. tons of fruit and vegetables and being smart about food combining--no starches with meat, no avocado on toast. we're going to eat this way for the month of march and see what happens.

i already changed to a different organic box from årstiderne so that it won't require so much cooking as the dogme box does with all those root vegetables. i also ordered organic wine from them, so that if we must have wine, at least it will be organic. i'm not going to do everything raw either. cooked spinach is one of nature's most perfect foods, esp. w/a little garam masala and some sauteéd onions (my mouth is watering just thinking about it), so i'll no doubt make that. (hey, that might make a good afternoon snack.)

it would be nice to lose a bit of weight, but actually, i want to do this diet in order to be much more conscious about the food i'm eating. this week, we felt lazy and got pizza one night. i always feel yucky afterwards. too full, all bloated and vaguely disgusted with myself (same thing after the saturday shawarmas, which are going to have go as well). no more of that! we will be conscious about what food we put in our mouths. and we will need a juicer. i adore kitchen appliances.

i'm not sure this posting was worthy of february 29, but it'll have to do.

shortcut link MOVED!

That's stupid... now it's harder to get into the blog. Why'd they move that?

I'm making it my mission to serve some sort of after-school snack made of spinach. I found a yogurt here that in spite of being made from lowfat milk, it's at least got real sugar in it. It comes in big quart sized containers. I'd eaten probably a third of the container over the last two evenings in my little bedtime dairy craving moments. Today, Finn got into it and before I realized what happened, he said his tummy was big and full. Ate the whole huge thing of yogurt. So much for a bedtime snack tonight. :(

spinach snacks

that is excellent!!! (tho' i admit to being slightly skeeved by the dr. pepper substitution--not sure nigel would approve, tho' nigella lawson would, she has a recipe for ham boiled in coke in one of her cookbooks) i am proud of you and feel that the work we did on your upbringing while you were here had at least some small effect. (heehee!) keep up the good work!!!!

tho' i'm not sure spinach is a good after school snack. make it for the meal proper.

FOUR thumbs up!

Today, I made a late-day decision to make The Sausage and Pasta dish for the boys. I'd had this conversation with them yesterday.

"When Mom gets her new house all set up and settled into, we're going to start cooking some nice meals at home. It's really important to me that when I cook a nice meal, my boys at least try the food. We're not going to eat a bunch of pudding when we get home from school, even if we're starving. Mom's going to give you things like cucumbers and almonds and carrots and spinach to snack on until supper is ready. And then when I serve you the nice homemade meal, you must try it before proclaiming that you hate it. I won't raise two ungracious, picky eater boys. This is really important, okay? Then when you try it and you don't like the food, I'll change how I make it the next time to try to make it better. We have an agreement, right? You'll try the stuff that I cook and I'll cook more often!?"

"Okay, Mom."

Even though I'm STILL a house guest right now, I decided that I'd try out our new agreement right away. I went to Fareway and got what I thought was everything I'd need to make The Dish. Except there was no fresh basil and I totally forgot the WHITE WINE! Oh horrors! What to do, what to do? I already had meat browning on the stove (why the hell don't these people have any olive oil in their cupboards?) and I needed to make a decision fast. Water instead of wine? Beer? Neither sounded like a good option and a quick glance in the fridge revealed a complete lack of any alcohol at all. On the end of the counter, however, was my big 32 oz Dr Pepper from earlier this afternoon. Ice melted, but still mostly Dr. Pepper. I made a fast call and tossed it in. Found some dried basil in the drawer. This was probably the 2nd best "Do" on The Dish to date!

Aren'tcha proud? (Ok, don't be proud of the Dr. Pepper, but I made a fast substitution decision and it seemed to work!)

The huge success and victory part? I tasted the sauce and found it to be again, slightly zippier than I'd intended for my boy's mac n cheese palates. But I excitedly put it on the table. Finn inspected a chili flake and started to ask if it was spicy, and I said, "No, that's an herb and you can call it an herb or you can call it a herb, it's completely up to you!" (Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!) He giggled at me and began to dig in. Will you believe this... he needed SECONDS! Owen also gobbled his whole plate (I'd dished a healthier serving for him, knowing that Finn was my biggest (noisiest) critic.)

I danced and dance and hugged them both for trying my cooking. Asked them to rate it with their thumbs.

why am i...

....the only one who ever writes anything on this blog.....(sniff, sniff)

on language and assembly of ikea furniture

sabin and i were just assembling some bits and bobs we got yesterday at ikea. she said, "why do these things have to be so damn hard?" maybe we need to watch what we say around her a little bit more. however, she has a point.

you gotta love the global warming

purple and yellow crocuses are already in bloom on our street, at least a month ahead of time. and the leaves are already sprouting out on the climbing roses (yes, i know there's nothing for them to climb) in our back yard. and bear in mind it's north-facing and slower than other yards that get proper sun and warmth. it seems to me that (other than the slug plague), global warming isn't really that bad...

easy friday dinner

this sadly now empty bottle of delheim's chardonnay sur lie, i post here to remind us of how fantastic it was. we drank it on friday evening (for the second to last supper) with the smoked shrimp and smoked "butterfish" from the little smokehouse on møn. it was crisp and yes, dare i say, gorgeous, with the smoky goodness of the shrimp and the fragrant garlic of the homemade aïoli i made to accompany it. it was one of those easy friday dinners--3 different kinds of cheese (prima donna with those yummy salt crystals in the hard body of the cheese, a soft, creamy danish blue and a real french brie), 2 kinds of sausage, the smoked butterfish, the smoked shrimp with aïoli and two kinds of fresh, delicious loaves of bread from the bakery. it was a worthy use of the last bottle of the delheim from my november visit to the delheim winery in the western cape. ahhh....these are the times to remember.

another must-read

while i'm thinking of it, you've gotta read this one too...

the end of the "denmark period"

..or is it the beginning of the journey home? or maybe a bit of both? monica had a crazy amount of carry-on luggage at the airport today (not sure how she's going to lift that backpack into the overhead locker when she gets on the plane). i had to come back home with a bunch of sweatpants and a jogging suit which i never saw her wear in all the time she was here, because the bags were a bit overweight (are you callin' me fat?). but most of the essentials got to go back home to iowa. and she even managed to take her paintings along in the carry-on, which is way cool.

the house is already quieter. we will definitely miss having "aunt" around here. life will seem a little more dull and a little less colorful. but, we're also glad that she's going home to put some color back in owen and finn's lives! we hope the journey has been a good one! :-) come back with owen & finn when the house is finally done!!

tea cozy to take home to iowa

a felt tea cozy made by me and sabin for aunt monica to take home to iowa and use while thinking of the countless pots of tea that were drunk over the winter of 2007-08 in denmark. and it's even "signed." :-) a work of homemade art, just for aunt. sabin did the felted pictures of flowers, a house and a smiling sun. i did the rest.

one more møn rock

ok, this one does look like a penis and not a seal. it's gonna make a great pony tail band holder in your new bathroom.

fantastic food

i would have said gorgeous, but i have been banned from saying it...however, is this not gorgeous?

my salad with goat cheese and the most beautiful greens, plus sabin's tapas plate and monica's mackerel in the background. aren't they lovely?

it was so beautiful, it warranted another picture.

sabin's very danish version of tapas. that rolled salmon thingie was gorgeous--something creamy and with bits of unexpected apple in it. yummy. oops. there was that word again...

monica's super yummy smoked mackerel with some mystery creamy stuff underneath. delicious.

are they seals or penises?

monica kept noticing these small penis-shaped stones on the beach at møn's klint yesterday, so we gathered them. even sabin got into the act, thinking it was rather funny. she'd shout from down the beach, "aunt, look, i found another penis."

but now that we have them home, they look more to me little little seals. that's a nicer thought anyway. they actually seem to have character, don't they?

You forgot to mention

That all three of us wore Crazy Braids to Møns Klint today! I put a small braid on both sides of all our heads before making pony tails out of all the hair. It set the tone for a fabulous day of singing songs in the car and freezing our buns out on the beach.

You also forgot to mention all the penis rocks I found.

we went to møn's klint today

monica poses with one of the many rocks we found (and carried up 574 stairs)

julie poses with a sample rock which was (thankfully) left on the beach and not lugged up 574 (did we mention 574!!! stairs).

monica and sabin at the bottom of the other monster set of stairs which we came down. monica's sitting down because her legs wouldn't hold her at this point--all shaky from coming down the stairs.

here are just SOME of the stairs.

yes, we went to the beach in the winter. not that this has been much of a winter. there's a saying in danish that there's no such thing as bad weather, only being dressed wrongly for it. hence sabin's snowsuit. we were wearing long underwear, but still got rather cold in the end. in all, tho', it was a wonderful winter's day at the beach in denmark.

another must-read

preservation

i think we may be preserving a WWI song. are we cool or what?

The Songs we Sing

Oh he was just a long, lean country geek
from a-way out West where the hop toads wink
He was six foot two in his stockin' feet
and he kep' a-gettin' skinnier the more he'd eat.
But he was brave as he was thin
when the war broke out he jumped right in
unhitched his mule, put the plow away
and here's what the Old Folks heard him say,
"Goodbye Ma, Goodbye Pa,
goodbye mule with yer old hee-haw!
I may not know what the war's about,
but I'll betcha by gosh I'll soon find out.
And oh my sweetheart, don't you fear.
I'll bring you a king for a souvenir.
Maybe a Turk and a Keyser, too,
but that's about all one fella can do!"

Shave-an'-a-haircut, six bits!

**********************

Oh I had a little chicky
and she wouldn't lay an egg
So I poured hot water
up an' down her leg
And the little chicky cried
and the little chicky begged
And the little chicky laid a hard-boiled egg!

Bum boo de ah dum, Some Chick!

**********************

My name is Leonardo
I am a retardo
I live on the ninety-fourth floor
(*) I sit on the steeple and spit (shit) on the people
and they say,
"Leonardo, whadoyoudo that for?"
And I say,
"My name is Leonardo
I am a retardo
I live on the ninety-fourth floor (*)

repeat endlessly between the (*) signs, never ever counting down like the song was intended

**********************

that weird in-between place

the thing about just knowing where you are is that although you may know, it might not be readily apparent to those around you. they may think you are somewhere else entirely. where we are is often not sign-posted. and it's often related to where the other person is at that moment. and that weird in-between place that's created by where i am in relation to where you are can be quite volatile. and at times unpredictable. i think that's what happened the other night. you were so totally not where i thought you were and i felt really bewildered by where you actually were....it was as if i was looking left and you turned out to be on the right. if that makes sense. so it was quite disorienting. you're right that i shouldn't have let it upset me. i got upset because i felt confused. i thought i was being helpful and i turned out i wasn't. i react to that by taking my voice down an octave which unfortunately seems condescending. when that doesn't seem to work and my confusion mounts, i end up shouting. i'm sorry i shouted at you.

i can't automatically know what you're feeling. i didn't pick up any signals that the directions i was giving you were frustrating you until way too far into the conversation. once i did pick up the signals, i totally didn't understand why my directions should be upsetting, so i kept down the same track. it's true that your reactions are unpredictable and probably even more so than usual at the moment, as you undergo the admirable ordeal of going off the meds. although the timing may be a bit strange to me when you have a lot of other stressors in your life, it's up to you and not for me to judge. i'm making a big effort not to judge, but that doesn't mean that i'm not concerned. and i'm really not scrutinizing your behavior, at least not consciously or constantly (i did think about what went wrong in the conversation the other night and that was arguably scrutiny, but it was more scrutiny of the situation than of you per se).

it's rather interesting that in danish anti-depressants are called "lykkepiller" which means "happy pills." linguistically, a totally different take on them than in english. but i don't think that long-term any meds can make you happy. i think it's a good thing that you're going off them, but that's just because i think that we should listen to our bodies--same as having a fever or a headache (i take way too much ibuprofen, i know, but can usually pinpoint the reason for the headache)--it's your body trying to tell you something isn't right. if the pills mask what your body is trying to tell you, it can't be good long term. so the best you can do for yourself is listen (which i think you're doing in going off the meds) and work with the message.

i want to support this process, but it's difficult for me when i feel bewildered and confused by your reactions to certain (to me seemingly innocuous) situations. i can't know what's happening in your head. maybe you have to say, "hey, i'm having one of Those Moments!" and i'll do my best to back off.

i think it was in pigs in heaven that barbara kingsolver wrote, "you can never know how inside of themselves people are." but if you try to let me know what's going on, i'll do my best to support you.

I already forgave myself and I hope you will too

I would like to be a person who is free of brain chemical-altering stuff. And for the strange, teary moments last night I might like to ask for a bit of a break.

I feel a shorter fuse.
* Looking for things that are missing makes me totally disgusted with myself for misplacing it in the first place.
* When I look for the third time in a place where I did not find it the first time, I continue The Madness
* I don't want to hop back on the pills because of a few new, possibly related to the sudden absence of the medication, moments of difficulty.


I'd like your help.
* Possibly I picked a strange time to stop the chemicals. I'm never going to find a time that I can deem perfect for such an endeavor.
* Please, please, please give me a break. Don't label behavior of mine with a stronger word than is fair. Ballistic wasn't it. I felt short-fused and teary and made a poor choice in how I behaved. I couldn't swallow the lump in my throat. Then you added a condescending and shouting voice and I'll nearly always just walk away from that.
* It might be nice to have a moratorium on the scrutiny of my behavior. If we keep deeming it inappropriate, I'll be more likely to start taking the damn meds again.
* All This Crap is quite possibly simply related to the withdrawal of the chemicals.
* I need to learn to navigate new, sharper feelings.
* Sometimes I won't do so well.
* You'll probably get to witness Those Times.
* I'll go away from here in less than a week, and we need to drink heavily from the Life is Too Short cup.

It's difficult to determine what is related to the sudden, cold-turkey and self-prescribed withdrawal of the meds. I'm crossing my fingers that the short fuse before extreme frustration is one of those yucky withdrawal symptoms. Right up there with rubberbanding in my ears and wakefulness in the night. But even if it's a feature of Monica Not on Paxil, I'm going to try to work with it.

And apparently, I'm going to do so by blogging about it.

but we likey the gorgeous stuff!

although i believe you are a TAD on the manic side....i do agree with the over-use of the word "gorgeous" and will attempt (it may be hard at first--due to the posh yarn site being open on my other screen and those colors ARE yummy!) to limit its use. i already had a sense myself that i was over-using it. mostly because, as you say, it always looks spelled wrong, so it always trips me up. i shall try not to use it as much. but at least it's a positive word and not like i am constantly using "poop" or "heinous" (that's another one that looks spelled wrong), which would be negative.

as for likey, although it's not a word, it's cheerful. tho' it's being over-used in the blogosphere (at least that part of the blogosphere where i'm spending far too much time), i'll grant you that. i can't promise not to use it. mostly because there's so much gorgeous stuff that i likey these days! ;-)

as for my pinkies..you almost got me with the mrs. leistra reference, but i resolve to stick to resting my pinkies and limiting my use of capital letters. suzi blu would approve.

Another word

"Likey." It isn't a word. The user of it is saccharin and unbearable. Seeing that word makes me throw up a little bit in my mouth.

Word Ban

I'm making a new rule. No member of this household is to use the word "gorgeous" in a blog from this point forward. The reasons?
* it never looks like it's spelled correctly, even when it is
* it's getting entirely too much use
* there are many other words that would like a chance to be used in its place
* I'd rather hear a sentence about this thing's gorgeous-ness than just have to believe you that it is, indeed, gorgeous.
* There are many gorgeous things worthy of being described. What makes them gorgeous? That's what I want to know.
* What IS gorgeous? It's an ugly word. Is the root word, "gorge?" Are we greedily eating until we're just stuffed? Or is there a deep, dark hole with a river at the bottom? Or are we about to throw up, feeling our gorge rise?

Expand your mind by limiting your own over-used words. I haven't noticed some recent capital letters in your entries, have I? Is Suzi Blu getting to the traditionalist in you? You're now feeling the creative energy flowing so much that your fingers have taken over old habits again with the capitalized letters? Perhaps you were so constricted... before... that you were also restricting your fingers. Telling them, "No, little pinky fingers, don't you capitalize the first letters of my new sentences!" The pinky fingers did as they were told, but they resented the affected results of sentences lacking capital letters. The pinky fingers are not crying out with your new freedom of creativity! They're saying "Let us do it, Mommy! We WANT to do what Mrs. Leistra taught us! We want to make capital letters!

we likey...pretty colors

everyday moments

last night, we had a great dinner, i know i already described it a bit below, but i keep thinking about it, so i have to go on about it again...

it was valentine's day, so we bought some filet mignons. to go with them, i made portabellos sauteed in garlic butter (i think sabin ate most of those) and my old favorite green bean dish. it's green beans boiled just long enough to turn bright green, but not lose their crunch, then tossed in with some bacon that's been sauteed together with onions. at the end, you throw a handful of chopped salty almonds. it's heavenly. and instead of any potato (carbs bad, you know), a very simple salad of baby spinach leaves and mango. we drank the last bottle of that fantastic spiers pinotage from the western cape. perfection.

but best of all, we lingered at the table, talking and laughing and trying the valentine chocolates. sabin loves those days when we stay at the table, laughing and telling stories. these are the things that memories are made of. everyday moments.

pretty papers

most of my pretty papers have come. and still my favorite one, the one that aligns all of my molecules and makes them hum in perfect pitch, is the one that's behind our new banner. basic grey's biology. i love that one.

it was a lovely day today. valentine's day, perhaps that's why it just generally feels good. went to the national museum with sabin. although all of the other people there were either aggressively perfect families (2.5 children, bright blue eyes, long lashes, the right clothes) or single moms out with their kids and their new boyfriends (who were trying valiantly to pretend it was ok with the snot-nosed brats who were crawling in among the mummies) or the grandparents who were near the end of their ropes, entertaining 5-year-old oliver for the 5th day in row...we had a great day. sabin fell madly for the sun chariot, an artifact from 1500 BC (or something like that), found in a field in Denmark here at the beginning of the last century. she asked questions and then didn't want to see any more of the museum, but wanted to go sit in the cafe and try to draw it in her new art notepad (who could argue with that?)

eventually, we came home and made gorgeous filet mignons for dinner, along with some of those yummy green beans i make with bacon, onion and almonds. we had a salad of spinach and mango (that makes us talk SILLY) to go with. and then the gorgeous (i can't make that look spelled right) chocolates husband brought home for valentine's day (along with flowers). with a bottle of south african pinotage (spiers, of course, we've been there!). it was a great evening.

anyway, back to the pretty papers...i'm sure the second to last one will come tomorrow. it just has to!! :-)

follow your bliss...

it's what we need to do. follow our bliss. i'm learning what my bliss is, are you?

for our family newsletter story

a day out in manila...

we landed early in the a.m. monica from cedar rapids via minneapolis and tokyo. me & sabin from copenhagen via frankfurt and that freakish stopover in guanzhou where they don't let you off the plane but make you take off your seatbelts while they refuel the plane (as if when it blows up they won't want to identify your BODY from the seat number).

the gorgeous limo from the manila pen picked us up (ms. broberg, welcome back...). i truly love these people. and that hotel. it's the best in the world (who CARES if those guys staged their coup attempt there 4 days after we left? i'll still stay there the next time i to go to manila).

we bathed and met in the lobby (ohh, that lobby, it's a nest, a cocoon, the most wonderful place on the planet--live classical music lofting overhead while they serve fresh mango juice and you basque in comfy chairs with exactly the right lighting..but i digress). we had the pretty green pen car take us over to rockwell powerplant mall, where we got the works manicures/pedicures (sabin included--her first--at age 6) at dashing divas. at one point, the jetlags got to us, so we asked the divas to run to starbucks for lattes and cocoa for the 6-year-old.

we departed for a quick power shop at our favorite purse store (tint) and bubble bath (lush). then it was time to work! during the workshop, while julie slaved away at the sofitel and monica slaved away at the maersk office, testing out the eLearning on live learners, sabin went shopping with the nanny (a lovely girl named che), coming back with no less than 6 pairs of shoes, countless bracelets and hair ornaments.

that evening, it was the amazing show, a totally astonishing drag show at a condemned theatre within walking distance of the sofitel. sabin, at 6, was quite shocked and still doesn't believe those girls were really boys (some had had a LOT of work done). we don't think she's damaged long-term tho', how bad can broadway songs be?

back at the hotel with the gang (from all over the world--denmark, ireland, scotland, england, the US, the philippines and south africa), we dominated the dessert bar and kept the lobby lounge singer on until all hours of the morning (jetlag after all). some of the party departed for the hobbit bar (wait staff is all little people (in unpolitically correct parlance--dwarves)), but not us.

when it was all over (several days later), we spent another day shopping and pampering ourselves. we ate the best tapas outside of barcelona at the tapas place on the top floor of greenbelt 3 (don't miss the garlic shrimp or the salpicao). we embibed a few mangojitos at café havana (sabin had a fresh watermelon juice) and in all, fell madly in love with manila and the wonderful friendliness of the philippine people.

it was sabin's 4th visit, but her first in economy class. she asked on the way there, "mom, why are we in monkey?" why indeed...

we love her, although she seems a little drunk

we're supposed to write...

...a piece for the family newsletter. i promised gizzy. i think it should cover a day in the philippines. it should have pictures. and it should actually condense all the good stuff into one day. so, manicure/pedicure at dashing divas, transvestite show, tapas, mangojitos, sabin's shoe fetish...as if it all happened on one day. we can call it, "our day of fun in manila" or something like that.

we have two weeks, but we should pretend we have two days. we're procrastinators.

we likey...

...café lezinc. it's a local café here in frederikssund. it's been open only a couple of months. the couple who runs it is really nice. the food is awesome. the lighting is right. and we dig their tall skinny mermaid sculptures. we went there yesterday for tall hot chocolates, topped with real whipped cream. today, it was lunch. i had a beautiful salad with slices of roast beef encrusted in mustard on top of fresh, delectible baby leaves of all kinds, with artichokes and oven-dried tomatoes hiding in among the leaves, like a delicious surprise and a gorgeous sweet balsamic red onion relish on top. monica had a chicken sandwich with slices of chicken breast speckled with pesto atop similar salad to mine--with julienned radish peeking out here and there from under the toasty-warm fresh bread. hers came with homemade potato fries and a delicious garlic mayo for dipping. fantastic! i wonder if we can eat lunch there every day?

7 good things about 2007

it seemed too boring without any pictures of anything on this blog, so i hereby share the page i made yesterday entitled 7 good things about 2007. it was rather limiting to only put 7, but that's all there was room for on my 18mmx20mm page that goes into my fabulous plum-colored bookbinders design binder. what are YOUR top 7 good things about 2007?

new banner

by the way, it's a pretty cool new banner i made for us today with my pretty papers, isn't it? :-)

vinterferie

we have lots to do this week, even tho' it's supposedly a holiday. the winter holiday--vinterferie. for a holiday, there's certainly a lot to do:

1. voice recordings (m)
2. talk to that riding place (that lady never called back. :-( ) (j)
3. visit an art museum (i vote for arken, which just reopened after building on) (j, m, s)
4. visit a castle (j, m, s)
5. finish buying husband's b-day prezzies. (j)
6. wrap them. (j & s)
7. celebrate husband's birthday (tuesday) (he wants to go out to dinner--also to celebrate outsourcing the retards) (all)
8. anxiously await next delivery of pretty papers and chipboard alphabets (j)
9. møns klint if there's a sunny day (j, m, s)
10. west coast of jutland (j, m, s)
11. quick ski trip to sweden? (j, m, s)
12. go try to retrieve lost green jacket/wallet out at svanholm (j on monday)
13. get some more of that basicgrey recess pretty paper that's 50% off in roskilde (j)
14. clear out kitchen so it can be torn out (j)
15. inspection of new furnace by gas company people (tuesday)
16. go on expedition for 6 identical laundry baskets (j)
17. take all that damn cement out of the trunk (to make room for driftwood for potential trip to west coast of jutland) (husband)
18. dinner at maj's on saturday (all)
19. stop incessantly sitting in front of the internet (j, m)
20. get over this stupid cold in order to enjoy all of above (j)
    

Write, dammit! Just Write!

All day today I've been procrastinating. I have Things To Do. And rather than tackle them head-on, I put them off. I started packing a bag for a trip that's over two weeks away. I ripped some music into my iTunes. I did some reading, hell I even took a nap! I made myself a cocktail before I finally sat down to edit that script. I felt a tinge of guilt as I excused myself from dinner clean-up to finally tackle some of the editing. So, I'll deal with that tomorrow when it's time to clean something around here.

Speaking of which, we need to do something that's visible to Husband when he gets home. We could even paint a canvas. Or make some beaded earrings. I'm not sure if he cares that I threw a sheep at Dave Sedgwick tonight on Facebook. You can't see that, nor can you benefit from it. But what a sense of accomplishment that little sheep toss gave to me!

avocado toast

i think avocado toast must be the closest thing there is to the perfect breakfast. a couple of slices of yesterday's loaf of good bread from the "gold baker," just a tad on the dry side, popped into the toaster. they come out, burning your fingers as you put them over on the bread board. slathering them in butter that melts instantly on the warm, crunchy surface. smoothing soft knife-fuls of perfectly ripe, bright green avocado on the pooling butter, creating a carpet of its green, buttery goodness. sprinkling it with lime pepper and crystals of maldon's sea salt. biting in and feeling the crunchiness of the salt crystals melding with the soft heavenly avocado and the warm, crunchy toast in your mouth. tasting a small zing of lime on the tongue. absolute heaven.

to do on wednesday

1. vaccination appointment
2. hair appointment for sabin to get a trim
3. do not hang out in front of the internet all day (it's going pretty fast and might hit me)
4. sign sabin up for riding lessons!!!!!!!
5. make some stuff, instead of just looking at it online all day
6. chick lit playlist (again, since i didn't do it yesterday)
7. that domain name task (again)
8. grocery store
9. finish laundry
10. charge camera
11. knit
12. finish rereading what i loved

Conversation

The DHL truck appears in the window in front of our computers.
"Stuff I ordered!" Julie says with wild eyes and clenched fists.
"J-P may not know, but this DHL lady knows about your internet shopping obsession," I say.
Running to the door Julie says, "And she knows we never get dressed!"

to do on tuesday

1. stop obsessively looking at scrapbooking designs online and MAKE SOME!!!
2. stop waiting for all the cool scrapbooking stuff you've ordered to come and USE WHAT YOU HAVE!!!
3. laundry
4. go running or at least for a long walk
5. dishes
6. find something inspiring to make for dinner from new nigel slater appetite cookbook
7. wake up babe sisto before she sleeps the day away
8. research web domains for new business
9. knit
10. brush hair and teeth
11. make new chick music playlist
12. buy extension cord thingie
13. start looking for knitting blogs
14. and felting blogs

happy monday!

reasons why this is a great monday!

1. i filed the paperwork to start my own business today! it feels so exciting. so liberating. so liminal! on the threshhold of something new and exciting.
2. i just got a new cut and fabulous color!
3. i have all kinds of gorge-i-o-us scrapping papers and supplies on their way (think tinkering ink and love, elsie...ooh, ooh, i can't wait!!!)
4. monica's coming back today (with prezzies!) from spain.
5. i'm making a delicious pot of The Soup.
6. i've got yael naim's new soul playing on repeat on the iPod through the henry kloss. i will only stop once i reach 600 times!
7. the sun is shining. at least i think that's what the big bright fireball in the sky is...it has been awhile since we've seen it.
8. it's almost time to go pick up sabin from school/sfo.
   

Where I Am

On last night in Fun Spain, I´ve stayed up late... again. Must wake early to catch train to Valencia to catch train to Barcelona to catch plane to Copenhagen via Zurich and then to Poppelvej Street.

Must dream up most fantastic Thank You card-gift-package to send to Maria and to her parents. Am thinking I´ll have Puerto Rican friend, Marisel, help me write the note to Maria´s parents en español. Am also thinking the gift will have something to do with some of the fabulous pictures I´ve taken of these people and their home. Ideas?

See you soon. Must sleep.

aren't you dying?

...without your big iPod?

of course you're not. you have my facial cleanser with you...