Around the world in 12 meals

This is going to be quickish 'cause my students aren't submitting their drafts (due in 3 h 29 m), so I'm flush with some unexpected time, and I have a Sunday crossword staring me down from 2 feet away.  My purple pen is all lined up, and I think that I might even have an episode of Grey's Anatomy lined up, too.  In other words, this Sunday night is turning out to be more pleasant than expected.  Let's move along here, doggy.

I gotta share this one.  It's about my best idea ever (take this as you wish...it's not exactly Earth shattering or anything).  Once a month this year, we're choosing a different country to explore.  We investigate their food, read a book about them, and prepare a meal to enjoy together.  So far, we ventured to the Philippines in January and China in February.  The Filipino meal - excellent.  The Chinese meal - equally excellent but not received as well.  So far, we're two-for-two on trying new foods (and we had five different, new foods to try out yesterday!) without complaint, which is not always the case. 

Next month, we're going to catch a boat to Ireland because March = all things Irish, and who doesn't need a dose of meat and potatoes after noodles and oyster sauce?  Plus, Filipino cooking often calls for an ingredient called banana ketchup.  Let's return to some semblance of normalcy in the space of my regular grocery store aisles, eh?

The moral of the story here, which I already knew (this isn't our first three-ring circus), is that if you want to try something new, get the kids excited about it, too.  Give them a purpose.  Allow them to have input in the decision.  Find out what they're interested in and gratuitously, shamelessly exploit that.  And, when all else fails, give it a ridiculous name and cross your fingers.  (For a while there, kiwis were known as dinosaur bones around our house.  And then the Elder came to terms with their deliciousness.  Now, she eats them for lunch or snack almost every day.)

欢呼  (Cheers!)

Tell me your thoughts. I'll send you cookies!

You know how you sometimes think of that perfect (as it gets) blog topic that you naturally forget because you don't write it down when you think of it?  That's my style, 'bout every day. 

I'll share this thought today, the latest in my stress worrying.  The Younger is turning five this summer, which makes her old enough for Kindergarten in the fall.  We're (mostly me) considering not sending her to K-garten but rather keeping her in a 5-year program at her pre-school and then just skipping K altogether.  It's not required in the state, so this should be an option that the school can't fight us on.

Prior to the Elder's Kindergarten experience, we debated a few options, including half-day Kindergarten, which we're both much bigger fans of, but ultimately decided that we need to suck it up and support the system that we teach in figuratively as well as literally.  So, we I packed her little lunches, tucked her folder in her backpack each day, and sent her on her way.

And she was bored.  And it set a kinda negative tone about school that we're still hearing 3 years later.

I'm fully aware the the Younger is a different little person than her older sister, but for all intents and purposes academically, they're very similar at this point.  In other words, I'm anticipating more of the same, and I'm weighing our options again because we can make a decision.  What a blessing.

I've talked with the pre-school director and the Elder's first-grade teacher, getting a bit of insight from both school perspectives.  Later this week, I'll be picking the brain of her current pre-school teacher.  And folks, I'm still all here and there and every which way about it.  Another blessing is that we don't technically have to commit for about another 2 months yet.  We also live out of district of the school system that we chose for our kids, so a small part of me wonders if this would be a reason that they wouldn't accept the Younger in another year for 1st grade. 

But Kindergarten is not required in this state.  She has had 3 years of a formal schooling experience.  She's learned to socialize with her peers and to follow instructions.  She doesn't need to practice colors ad naseum.  And, she'll get about 9 weeks of a refresher at the beginning of 1st grade that, frankly, makes me think that she'll just pick up whatever she might have not mastered in her alternate-Kindergarten experience. 

I know some that stop by to read my ramblings are likely to have some perspective on this.  I'm very open for thoughts on this, knowing that you all don't really know my child all that well (or at all).  I'll be frank here, though - homeschooling isn't so much an option (though we'll happily supplement if we do choose the 5-year old class, pre-school option).  But please, share some insight!  I'll gladly offer you some thoughts about how the upcoming season is looking for my boys (baseball, my friend, baseball).  Or, I'll send you some cookies.  Your choice.

The skinny around here (figuratively speaking)

Internet people, as I like to do, here's my intro announcement:

I'm still loving my time at the fitness center.  Me.  A treadmill.  Multiple TV screens to flip between as I pace myself.  It's quite lovely. 

I ran for 33 minutes straight (49 minutes in an hour) just the other livelong day.  Little 'ole me.  It feels shockingly good wipe sweat off my face and to tell myself "Just keep going until the next commercials...OK, now just make it through these commercials...alright, now let's make it to when the people get up to the bedrooms" (House Hunters...helpfully formulaic when you're timing yourself by the various parts of the show). 

Things I've discovered so far:
1.  I've had a shocking amount of conversations with the boy concerning Greek yogurt, breathing, hydration, and abs.  If I only have about 15 minutes a day to really wedge in a conversation with the spouse, at least we're keeping it real.
2.  I feel like I sweat less.
3.  I can have a casual conversation until between the 15-20 minute mark when it gets a touch harder. 
4.  My lungs are good until the 30-ish minute mark.
5.  I'm glad that I don't smoke.
6.  I definitely need to stretch out the calves before I start.
7.  Sometimes my back gets stiff...dumb, bad posture.
8.  My abs feel different, which is a new phenomenon.
9.  I don't even mind it when I run into students and I'm all red-faced sweaty.
10.  It's fantastic just doing something else for a couple of hours a week.  That's the best part.

And in other news, my latest thing that I can't make a decision on is whether or not to send the Younger to a 5-year old class next school year and then forgo Kindergarten completely.  Folks - submit your thoughts to me.  I'm all eyes.

In the meantime, the Younger is gaga (again) for Uno, which means that we play games (upon games, upon games...) every day.  And, we added a new game (Sleeping Queens) into the rotation, so there's that, too.  Plus, the Elder is b-i-g into Clue, so we've had quite the winter of gaming.  I lurve it.

Last night at dinner, the Elder was discussing her reading, and she dropped this little nugget of wisdom.

Daughter:  "Did you know that I used to not like reading?"
Me:  "Oh...really?  I couldn't tell."

I mean, seriously.  She thinks that we didn't notice when she read just because.  She thinks that we haven't noticed that she now squirrels away for 45 minutes with books in hand.  Such a 7-year old.

She's always been a math-minded kid, i.e. just like her father.  And I dig that about her.  I don't have to have a little bookworm.  But, goodness, that would be great.  SO great.  Years of education are stretching before her...years of reading.  That will make all of her lives better if we can all just agree that reading is top notch.  Which it is.

And that's the skinny-ish bit of what's going on around here.  Thank you for reading.  You're a nice person. 

All the tears and then the joy

A little bit ago, I just walked outside with The Younger, who is dressed in her aqua, sparkly tights, pink cotton dress, purple fleece jacket, and black/grey velcro sandals (the kind you might wear if wading in a lake or hiking in 100-degree weather when you just can't bear sneakers/hiking boots).  The Younger looked down at herself and announced "I look good in this!  Don't these tights look good with these sandals?" 

I like your moxie, kid.  Not everyone can pull that particular look off.  Milk it, baby.

That was just an aside because I'm about to take you on the emotional journey that was yesterday which includes all of the tears, a lot of the sweat and then the joy.

Earlier this week, we had an appointment set up to get diabetic Leo's teeth clean because they were looking a bit gnarly.  But he got all "Nope, I'm good hiding under this bed.  I'd prefer to stay here.  I shall bite your hand if you try to extract me from this spot because we've been down this road before and I don't trust you when you try to lure me out with suspect treats and the baby voice."  Since it was just a teeth leaning, we ditched that appointment and gave it another try Friday.  This turned into a bit more elaborate of a plan involving the girls going to school with the boy and me hanging out in the car, in the dark, in the vet's office parking lot reading a biography.  But we got the boy in, he was relatively calm, and I got a message later that his procedure went well and we'd be able to get him around dinner time. 

Now, this furry boy has never been one to just do what the vet has needed him to do.  In order to do everything necessary, there involved words like "muzzle," "kitty burrito," and "a little bit of sedation to get his blood work, and then we let that wear off before we anesthetized him for the surgery." 

It's a bit startling to hear a teeth cleaning appointment referred to as "surgery." 

What I wasn't expecting was 3 days of pain meds (but it tastes like bacon!) and 5 days of antibiotics.  Pets love goop pushed in their mouth.  And I wasn't expecting the utterly pathetic sight of my boy's face peeking out from under the blanket he was tucked into.  And I wasn't expecting how sedated he still was.  He wasn't quite as over his sedation as they expected him to be, it turns out.  When I got him home, my boy could barely walk.  And my heart cried to see the desperate look in his eyes as he furiously tried to control his muscles and stay upright to get to his safe spot again.

Even worse, we were absolutely not anticipating his absolute lack of appetite and the vacant look in his eyes.  One of the warning signs to call the vet about as he recovered from his anesthesia was "severe depression."  I literally scoffed at it once I got home and was looking through his paperwork.  How does one tell when your pet is "severely depressed"?  Well, it turns out, I know exactly what it looks like. 

It looks like no interest in food.  It looks like not caring if the other fur baby cusses you out.  It looks like not even recognizing when the little people in the house are right beside you...the same little people that you generally avoid all the day long.  It looks sad-scary. 

I had the chance to take off for an hour to work out, and it was my longest, sweatiest, calorie-burningest work out to date.  And for an hour, I forgot about worrying about my furry boy, but I remembered at the end, and it was one of those crushing moments.  But it also helped me decide to give the vet a call cause all is not well when your diabetic boy hadn't eaten anything for over a day and a half. 

And our vet, who wasn't on call this weekend but had his vet tech tell us to call him if we had any concerns, was simply the best and worked his voodoo magic. 

I know that the time is coming sooner rather than later when we're going to need to make that decision.  They are coming up on 12-years old, which means that they probably have a couple of good years left with solid health, but this is twice now when I mentally said goodbye to my boy and didn't expect to see him again.  I've thought a few times about whether or not I'd be the one to take him and hold him while he gets that last shot, and at the last moment, I couldn't face it.  So I hugged my little guy an extra hug and handed him off to the boy. 

But my boys weren't at the vet for more than 15 or 20 minutes, and seriously, the voodoo.  Leo's blood sugar was only at 170 (just a little elevated) despite not having eaten for over a day and a half.  His blood sugar was over 400 just the morning before when I dropped him off, in part due to stress.  AND, he came back with a bit of a jaunt in his walk and an actual appetite.  He ate food.  He drank water.  He cuddled all afternoon. 

Of course this is a sappy post about my boy getting his teeth cleaned.  But, anyone who has ever loved their pet truly and deeply knows that love doesn't just happen between people.  He may need slightly more attention than the average fur ball, but he has such a gorgeous, rumbly motor, and I'm his favorite person in the whole widey world.  And he'll always be my little budgie boy.

Start me up

NEWSFLASH:

I've gone to the gym THREE times in the past 7 days (it would have been four, but some information on hours wasn't quite accurate). 

BIGGER NEWSFLASH:
I LIKE it!

Here's the thing.  I've been enjoying the cup-of-green-tea-each-day regimen enough.  I've been liking being more intentional about what I'm eating.  And, the gym has TVs tuned to HGTV, ESPN and a political network covering the confirmation hearings.  I can quite literally run my way through commercials and time my sweating to a 30-minute episode. 

So far, this is shaping up to some pretty happy me-time. Plus, I got a few new workout pieces in that it's-the-2nd-week-of-January-and-everyone-is-over-their-resolutions-so-now-workout-clothes-are-on-clearance time.  They're all nice and soft yet. Which I enjoy.

Plus, there aren't too many unfairly-physiqued 19-year olds with their perky ponytails and neon tennis shoes bopping around the place at the times that I've been going, at least so far.  In fact yesterday, several of whom must be fellow faculty/staff members eventually joined me, and we middle-agedly jogged/stepped/pulled on our respective machines in less toned unity. 

I've got a sushi-for-one lunch planned at the end of the month for some incentive and drive.  Sushi plus a month of the Property Brothers on closed captioning sounds like some pretty good ways to take care of my mid-30s self.

That age doesn't seem quite right, somehow.  But then again, I just admitted that it happies me to read a T.V. show about home renovation while on a treadmill, so I guess mid-30s I sure am.

Who needs a cookie?

I'm sitting here with a cup of warm water green tea because 2017 needs me to figure out how to be calmer, cooler, and less riddled with worry and anxiety.  I was going to throw down a few sentences about now about how swimmingly tepidly the year has gone so far, but suffice it to say that it's tasted about the same as my now daily green tea regimen. 

I'm actually not dreading the green tea or anything and have had a cuppa every day for about 2 weeks, but it just has nothing going for it other than warmth and that good, solid weight of the mug in my hands that I dig a lot.  So it could be worse.  It could be training for a marathon.

The tea does go hand in hand (ba da bing, ba da boom) with a couple of positives, though.  So let's focus on that a moment.

1.  My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor
2.  the surefire lose-weight-fast plan
3.  "cookies" 

Let's begin with books.  I'm only about 100 pages in Sotomayor's memoir, but I find her easily narrative and spunky.  It's a solid read and a quick one.  Plus, I'm a big fan of the female who puts her nose to the grindstone and rocks the robe.  I suppose that the scope of the book could completely tank but nah...I wouldn't judge that to happen.  Plus, I want to go to Puerto Rico now/again.

The whole fam came down with a kamikazee stomach bug.  It was the first time that all four of us were felled by the same germs.  The Elder and I succumbed within an hour of each other, which made for an especially fun duality for the boy.  There was specifically one moment when I might have been groaning for help from one bathroom whilst the Elder was getting assistance in the other.  BUT.  When you eat 200 calories in 40 hours, the old jeans feel a bit spiffier a couple of days later when you find yourself ready to venture out of the house. 

The Younger decided on a cookie recipe that she wants to try out.  So we wrote it down, and some day...  The ingredient list alone screams d-e-l-i-c-i-o-u-s.

chocolate chips (5 cups)
flour (5 cups)
cinnamon (1 tsp)
grape tomatoes, chopped (2)
pecans, chopped (1/2 cup)
cranberries (1/2 cup)
salted cashews, chopped (1/2 cup)
baking powder (4 tsp)
eggs (3)
sugar (1/2 cup)
honey (1/4 cup)
butter (2 sticks)
brown sugar (1 cup)
vanilla (1 tsp)

I'll have to get back with you about the outcome of this huge batch of monster cookies with tomatoes.

Tea for two

Folks, I love me nothing more than complete disruption in our living space in order to repaint the same walls that we painted two months ago.  There's nothing that gives me giddy shivers more than this upheaval and chaos.

Well.  I got that sarcastically minded lie out of my system.     

Positive - It turned into the perfect time to tear down the Christmas fol-de-rol.  That stuff was up for less than 2 weeks - my new record for how short I could get the rest of the gang hoodwinked into forgoing all of that.

Negative - Mess.  Mayhem.  Madness.

Positive - It's done. 

The Younger also decided that today would be a grand time for several vomiting sessions.  The Elder decided that was gross and hid.  This unfortunate turn of events brought up the jolly recollection of our first foray into a child's puking session, five years almost to the day ago.  Our kids have some sort of visceral response to "the most wonderful time of the year."  Or else someone keeps slipping my kids some Christmas cookies laced with e. coli. 

And speaking of slipping "someone" something...

Here's where things get possibly more interesting.  [Naturally, one would assume that my enormous negligible reader base is bored to tears about my rambling on painting and puking.]

Our vet has "prescribed" (in the ever-so-loosest sense of the word) a spot-o-tea [obviously, said in a British-y voice) for our cat to "soothe" her nervous stressing, which is causing her to over groom.  In other words, she looks kinda mangy for no good reason.  So, we're switching her water supply to some weak chamomile, which will not affect our other needy special snuggle bum's diabetic diet.  And, when contemplating my choices, you can bet your sweet cheeks that I chose the "naturally decaffeinated" box.  'Cause who needs a furry 6-lb. dynamo hyped up until 2 AM? 

While in the tea aisle...

I also weighed my options for some good-old, plain-old green tea.  Because this, believe it or no, is going to be my intent for the new year.  I will start my days with a cup of green tea.  For the antioxidants.  For the delicate earthiness.  For all of the reasons that websites upon magazines upon word-of-mouths tell me that I should.

I'm still a little on the outs with coffee, and tea seems like a logical alternative because I do like a warm cup of something in the morning.  I like the steam in the face and two hands holding onto something with some warmth to ease my way into conversation and livability. 

And so, if you have any tips on how best to enjoy my green tea experience, please share!  I enjoy flavors of lemon and ginger but not so much berry or sugar/honey-sweet. 

So it seems that 2017 is going starting off with a cuppa or two.  Pass the cream.