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Jul. 31st, 2009 03:36 amToday is my Nana's 61st birthday. She's moving her left arm well and consistently, and learning to sit balanced on the edge of her bed. So far she can do about 20 seconds before she starts to tip one way or the other. The kids and I sent her a birthday card that says something about her deserving a wonderful birthday on the front, and when you open it, it plays that oldie that goes, Do you believe in magic? This made me cry, because that was the theme song of the oldies station that was always playing in her house and car as I grew up - Magic 102.7 - but also because we are all hoping for miracles with her.
I am not even thinking it's weird anymore to do things like email petitions to the International Shrine of St. Jude in Chicago so they can dedicate Masses to her and light candles in her name.
My mother almost died laughing on the phone with me today, because this whole left arm usage is brand new still and things are still connecting. So my Nana had a twizzler in her right hand, eating it, and reached up and pulled it out of that hand with the left hand, and then looked around confused because her twizzler was gone and said, "What in the hell just happened?" The amazing part of this is, my Nana can laugh about it with her and knows it's ridiculous. She was yelling through the phone from the other side of the room, chuckling herself - "This damn thing has a mind of it's own!"
We have been sick. Off and on, one at a time and sometimes in pairs, sick. I was lucky in that when I got it, Grant was off and so I was able to sleep in, take naps and have tea delivered to me. Somehow, through who knows what kind of rare serendipity, everyone seemed all better yesterday afternoon and so Grant and I were able to drop all the kids off with the sitter and go see Tori Amos live last night without incident. Then we got home, put everyone to bed, and a few hours later...Elise had it. And so that has been the main theme of my day today - holding, carrying, laying under, nursing, giving juice to and sometime passing off to Annie, Elise. She seems to be doing better now - sleeping soundly for a couple of hours and her fever has finally broken. <3
The Tori Amos concert - I don't know. Pros:
-We were really close, and it's just awesome to be standing like 40 feet from Tori Amos while she plays and sings
-when we walked in, she was starting "Cornflake Girl".
-she kicked it old school a lot, including Spacedog and Winter, which made me cry. Winter ALWAYS MAKES ME CRY, but this time I got to cry right along with a flamboyantly gay and exceedingly drunk guy next to me who then applauded so enthusiastically through his sobbing that he spilled beer all over my foot/shoe. This could also be a con :p
-I got to hear Carbon live. Then she ended on Bouncing Off Clouds, which was great, we were standing right up front at that point because it was an encore and security had only eyed us suspiciously when we approached. I walked out feeling high energy.
Cons:
-Grant wasn't like "Woo HOO let's go see Tori Amos!!" he was like, "Yeah sure I'll go see her with you. I guess." So it was really different than being there with, say, Jess and squealing and jumping around and being all enthusiastic together.
-she didn't talk. This is the 3rd time I've seen her live and she just, like, does not talk anymore. WTH.
-we were in a pretty ridiculous section of people, just in that they were getting up and down and going and coming and posing for group photos and dancing/clapping as though they were listening to a completely different song than what the rest of us were. I can mostly ignore this, I think it effected G more than me.
-it's irritating how you can be that close and still not get anything like a decent picture. Grant took this and posted it during - http://twitpic.com/c2wvi
*shrug*
These produce boxes we're picking up, from our organic co-op, are awesome.
1. We save a lot of money buying it this way.
2. We save even more money because we aren't making the extra trips to the grocery store that would lead to buying unnecessary other stuff while we were there, and
3. We're getting all kinds of stuff that we would never have tried otherwise.
FOR INSTANCE -
-fingerling potatoes are, apparently, awesome and don't even require milk for creamy goodness when mashed
-champagne grapes are both tinier than blueberries by about half, and literally sweet as candy. Unbelievably good. I had never heard of such a thing.
-fresh peas both lead to an afternoon shelling peas with the kids, and are SOOOO incredibly much better when cooked up!
-my kids all adore pluots. Who knew?
-kale and chard can lead to some delicious and hearty soups that the entire family actually eats
Also we've been having salad 1-3 times per week because we tend to get at least one big head of romaine every time, and other than Isaac all the kids will tear up salad. Elise will eat 3 bowls of salad and fill up on just that. As someone who is not so into salad myself, I never would have started trying this without the boxes (we don't get to choose what is in them, we just pay our money and then get a guarantee of a ton of fresh organic variety that has to be worth x amount retail).
So - the kale soup was just a kale and bean soup I found online, you can google and there are tons of recipes. This involved an olive oil and chicken broth base with some italian seasonings, and pureeing some of the beans towards the end to thicken it with.
But this crazy scandalous one I came up with today!
1. Cook a package of turkey bacon on the George Foreman. Crumble it all up on a plate, big pieces are fine.
2. Pour the grease catcher in a stockpot with 2 sticks of butter and heat on medium (I did say scandalous. I was not kidding around.)
3. Add a couple of diced celery stalks, a bunch of chopped spring onions and some diced yellow onion. Cook it while you mince like 6 cloves of garlic, then throw that in, too.
4. THINLY slice about 5-6 yellow potatoes, yukon gold ideally, Throw in, salt and pepper it like crazy, stir often.
5. Next is all the chard - we had a huge bundle of it and I just ripped it all off the stalks and into the biggest pieces I can deal with. Throw it in and stir til it's good and wilted.
6. about a dozen fresh basil leaves and a big handful of chopped italian parsley, both fresh in this case from our garden and the produce box, and all the crumbled turkey bacon.
7. 8 cups of water and cook it til the starch has done something obvious. OM NOM NOM.
Ananda and Jake couldn't get enough of this, and I ate 3 bowls over the course of the night.
( 14 pictures, unicycle stunts, chickens, there's a tiger and some stained glass and some pigtails... )
I am eating, breathing, and dreaming Catholicism lately.
Since finishing that Anne Rice book Called Out of Darkness, I've burned through Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic, which is a lot less of a personal account and a lot more of an in-depth theological defense of every Catholic thing that seems "weird" to Protestants - statues, Confession, saints, Mary, the Pope, approcryphal books in the Bible, and so on. It is unreal the number of things that are falling into place in my mind and making me run and explain things to Grant, that I have ignorantly spouted off against in the past. AT LENGTH. Without knowing anything about them except hearsay. Hearsay, heresy, hahaha.
Except it is not funny. My head is spinning with this stuff. I got "caught" on my way out of Mass this past Sunday (I take the 3 oldest to Mass before we all go to City Church) by the Priest for the first time. He is incredibly approachably nice and sincere-seeming. But it still made me all nervous and weirded out in some way I don't know how to explain, but I think is good? I also have my old Catholic friend Matt who some of you will remember as the one willing to stand up and righteously denounce abortion at length while remaining anti-war and pro-justice, etc, in comment threads here - he's messaging me on facebook about Catholicism and I am just. Waiting til I have the time and energy, I guess.
Meanwhile I have all these friends online who are Orthodox. I spent hours today, with Elise hot on my lap and semi-conscious, reading about the great Schism that split the ancient church and the different sides of every issue. It seems almost impossible to discern this much later in history who was "right" and what is facts. I think it made a lot of sense when JP II talked about the East and the West being like the two breathing lungs of the Body of Christ. I see a ton of Truth on both sides and don't feel at all qualified to deem one of them TruER than the other one! I read some things about moves towards reconciliation in recent years that made me think, hey. Maybe commonreader is right. Maybe that will happen in our lifetimes.
For now, I have to go to bed.
HOW IN THE WORLD DID IT GET THIS LATE? I've been writing this update for like 2.5 hours, counting the photo editing and uploading. Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez, no wonder my eyes are blurring.
I am not even thinking it's weird anymore to do things like email petitions to the International Shrine of St. Jude in Chicago so they can dedicate Masses to her and light candles in her name.
My mother almost died laughing on the phone with me today, because this whole left arm usage is brand new still and things are still connecting. So my Nana had a twizzler in her right hand, eating it, and reached up and pulled it out of that hand with the left hand, and then looked around confused because her twizzler was gone and said, "What in the hell just happened?" The amazing part of this is, my Nana can laugh about it with her and knows it's ridiculous. She was yelling through the phone from the other side of the room, chuckling herself - "This damn thing has a mind of it's own!"
We have been sick. Off and on, one at a time and sometimes in pairs, sick. I was lucky in that when I got it, Grant was off and so I was able to sleep in, take naps and have tea delivered to me. Somehow, through who knows what kind of rare serendipity, everyone seemed all better yesterday afternoon and so Grant and I were able to drop all the kids off with the sitter and go see Tori Amos live last night without incident. Then we got home, put everyone to bed, and a few hours later...Elise had it. And so that has been the main theme of my day today - holding, carrying, laying under, nursing, giving juice to and sometime passing off to Annie, Elise. She seems to be doing better now - sleeping soundly for a couple of hours and her fever has finally broken. <3
The Tori Amos concert - I don't know. Pros:
-We were really close, and it's just awesome to be standing like 40 feet from Tori Amos while she plays and sings
-when we walked in, she was starting "Cornflake Girl".
-she kicked it old school a lot, including Spacedog and Winter, which made me cry. Winter ALWAYS MAKES ME CRY, but this time I got to cry right along with a flamboyantly gay and exceedingly drunk guy next to me who then applauded so enthusiastically through his sobbing that he spilled beer all over my foot/shoe. This could also be a con :p
-I got to hear Carbon live. Then she ended on Bouncing Off Clouds, which was great, we were standing right up front at that point because it was an encore and security had only eyed us suspiciously when we approached. I walked out feeling high energy.
Cons:
-Grant wasn't like "Woo HOO let's go see Tori Amos!!" he was like, "Yeah sure I'll go see her with you. I guess." So it was really different than being there with, say, Jess and squealing and jumping around and being all enthusiastic together.
-she didn't talk. This is the 3rd time I've seen her live and she just, like, does not talk anymore. WTH.
-we were in a pretty ridiculous section of people, just in that they were getting up and down and going and coming and posing for group photos and dancing/clapping as though they were listening to a completely different song than what the rest of us were. I can mostly ignore this, I think it effected G more than me.
-it's irritating how you can be that close and still not get anything like a decent picture. Grant took this and posted it during - http://twitpic.com/c2wvi
*shrug*
These produce boxes we're picking up, from our organic co-op, are awesome.
1. We save a lot of money buying it this way.
2. We save even more money because we aren't making the extra trips to the grocery store that would lead to buying unnecessary other stuff while we were there, and
3. We're getting all kinds of stuff that we would never have tried otherwise.
FOR INSTANCE -
-fingerling potatoes are, apparently, awesome and don't even require milk for creamy goodness when mashed
-champagne grapes are both tinier than blueberries by about half, and literally sweet as candy. Unbelievably good. I had never heard of such a thing.
-fresh peas both lead to an afternoon shelling peas with the kids, and are SOOOO incredibly much better when cooked up!
-my kids all adore pluots. Who knew?
-kale and chard can lead to some delicious and hearty soups that the entire family actually eats
Also we've been having salad 1-3 times per week because we tend to get at least one big head of romaine every time, and other than Isaac all the kids will tear up salad. Elise will eat 3 bowls of salad and fill up on just that. As someone who is not so into salad myself, I never would have started trying this without the boxes (we don't get to choose what is in them, we just pay our money and then get a guarantee of a ton of fresh organic variety that has to be worth x amount retail).
So - the kale soup was just a kale and bean soup I found online, you can google and there are tons of recipes. This involved an olive oil and chicken broth base with some italian seasonings, and pureeing some of the beans towards the end to thicken it with.
But this crazy scandalous one I came up with today!
1. Cook a package of turkey bacon on the George Foreman. Crumble it all up on a plate, big pieces are fine.
2. Pour the grease catcher in a stockpot with 2 sticks of butter and heat on medium (I did say scandalous. I was not kidding around.)
3. Add a couple of diced celery stalks, a bunch of chopped spring onions and some diced yellow onion. Cook it while you mince like 6 cloves of garlic, then throw that in, too.
4. THINLY slice about 5-6 yellow potatoes, yukon gold ideally, Throw in, salt and pepper it like crazy, stir often.
5. Next is all the chard - we had a huge bundle of it and I just ripped it all off the stalks and into the biggest pieces I can deal with. Throw it in and stir til it's good and wilted.
6. about a dozen fresh basil leaves and a big handful of chopped italian parsley, both fresh in this case from our garden and the produce box, and all the crumbled turkey bacon.
7. 8 cups of water and cook it til the starch has done something obvious. OM NOM NOM.
Ananda and Jake couldn't get enough of this, and I ate 3 bowls over the course of the night.
( 14 pictures, unicycle stunts, chickens, there's a tiger and some stained glass and some pigtails... )
I am eating, breathing, and dreaming Catholicism lately.
Since finishing that Anne Rice book Called Out of Darkness, I've burned through Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic, which is a lot less of a personal account and a lot more of an in-depth theological defense of every Catholic thing that seems "weird" to Protestants - statues, Confession, saints, Mary, the Pope, approcryphal books in the Bible, and so on. It is unreal the number of things that are falling into place in my mind and making me run and explain things to Grant, that I have ignorantly spouted off against in the past. AT LENGTH. Without knowing anything about them except hearsay. Hearsay, heresy, hahaha.
Except it is not funny. My head is spinning with this stuff. I got "caught" on my way out of Mass this past Sunday (I take the 3 oldest to Mass before we all go to City Church) by the Priest for the first time. He is incredibly approachably nice and sincere-seeming. But it still made me all nervous and weirded out in some way I don't know how to explain, but I think is good? I also have my old Catholic friend Matt who some of you will remember as the one willing to stand up and righteously denounce abortion at length while remaining anti-war and pro-justice, etc, in comment threads here - he's messaging me on facebook about Catholicism and I am just. Waiting til I have the time and energy, I guess.
Meanwhile I have all these friends online who are Orthodox. I spent hours today, with Elise hot on my lap and semi-conscious, reading about the great Schism that split the ancient church and the different sides of every issue. It seems almost impossible to discern this much later in history who was "right" and what is facts. I think it made a lot of sense when JP II talked about the East and the West being like the two breathing lungs of the Body of Christ. I see a ton of Truth on both sides and don't feel at all qualified to deem one of them TruER than the other one! I read some things about moves towards reconciliation in recent years that made me think, hey. Maybe commonreader is right. Maybe that will happen in our lifetimes.
For now, I have to go to bed.
HOW IN THE WORLD DID IT GET THIS LATE? I've been writing this update for like 2.5 hours, counting the photo editing and uploading. Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez, no wonder my eyes are blurring.
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