Dinner of Champions

The Husband is travelling this week. And you know what that means...

...ZERO incentive to cook.

It also means a project. That may or may not include oil-based primer - huzzah! But don't tell The Husband. He's pretending he doesn't know that I'm doing it.


Most of the time I really enjoy cooking. I like trying new recipes and I especially like the never-ending quest of finding meals that suit all of our palates.

(If you know of something that is vegan, tomato-free, lentil-free, sweet potato-free, chickpea-free, is not a soup, and can survive eight hours in a crockpot and still be fantastic...I am all ears. In the meantime, every person gets a vote and anything that scores 2.5 out of 4 gets put into the rotation.)

But without The Husband to back me up (which he always valiantly does, even if he later tells me privately that he would be okay if we didn't have that particular combination of lentils again - although he assures me that he is still willing to try to like them), I lose heart. I just can't face it.

Especially on a Monday.

Especially when Mondays kids eat for 99 cents at the best buffet ever.

(And yes, I know as soon as I say "buffet," the bar plummets and as long as the bacon bits aren't in the jello, we're talking high quality.)

But this one is a good one, honest. It's got tons of fresh veggies in the salad bar and lots of vegetarian options and fresh fruit in the dessert bar.

Of course, you can lead those horses to water...

..but you can't make them eat anything except chocolate muffins, french fries, and breadsticks drink.

Oh well. At least olives are kind of a vegetable, yes?

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Music Sounds Better With You

I love going to school performances.

Sure, the scheduling and juggling meetings so I can head over there in the middle of the day is a bit annoying. They also tend to clump up at the end of the year, so The Husband and I end up playing Rock, Paper, Scissors to determine who has gets to see 24 presentations on national monuments. And I always roll my eyes at the sea of smartphones/SLR cameras/video cameras in the audience and the jockeying for the best sightlines.

But still. It's a window into what my kids do all day. It's a chance to observe them in one of their natural habitats. I get to put faces to names (of both their friends and that kid who got suspended AGAIN).

One of the best parts is when the kids come into the room, anxiously scanning the audience for a familiar face, and then their eyes light up and a shy smile steals across their face and they give a little half-wave.

I think I love the music ones the best. I'm a Mennonite Arts major - I dig the music thing.

(Ha - that looks like I majored in "Mennonite Arts." I so wish that was a real discipline.)

Plus The Boy is absolutely adorable when he performs. Music gets right into his body. He can't keep still. (Yes, that's a nine-year-old boy thing, but his wiggles follow the beat whenever he hears a song.)

He loves to sing, but he doesn't want to show how much he loves it. His chin tilts up and his eyes go to the ceiling and he half loses himself in his breathy voice. He sways and swivels and nods without realizing it.

He's still working on the whole rhythm and pitch aspect, but he's got the heart thing totally down. When he learns a song, it's in his blood. He can't pass a piano without playing his latest piece (we're on Can-Can now. A welcome change from Fur Elise).

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Rose-Smelling Part the First

 Spring Summer returned to Minnesota today. High twenties, sunny, a bit humid, a bit breezy - gorgeous.

What's a girl to do except strap on her running shoes and head out for a run?

(This was actually a big deal in and of itself. I hurt myself a few weeks back - own fault, pushed myself too hard, busted up my IT band, yadda yadda, couldn't run for awhile - so I'm relishing getting back in the game.)

Whenever I run outside, it's always in only one direction. Towards the lake:

I loved this lake even before we moved here. When we went on our whirlwind tour to find a house four days before The Husband was scheduled to start his new job, our relocation agent drove us around the area we had in mind and there, right in the middle of the city, was a lake.

(This is not a big deal to the locals, but to a prairie girl, whose closest "lakes" were man-made mosquito traps or all the way into the next province, this was astonishing.)

More astonishing was that the house we ended up with was only three quarters of a mile from this lake. It didn't take long before all of my walks headed in that direction.

Then we moved to get into the right school division, and I mourned that we were farther away from the lake. Only two miles, but it wasn't a quick fifteen-minute walk anymore.

(Maybe that's why I started running longer distances right from the start. It was the only way to get down to the beach and back.)

We longed to get back into our first neighbourhood, not least because all of our runs/bikes/beach/park trips ended up there.

And lo and behold, after years of stalking the MLS listings and narrowing our search down to six square blocks in the entire state, our perfect little house on the hill happens to be as close to the lake as possible while still being just inside the school district.

I love, love, love the lake. I love the separate walking and biking paths. I love that it's the perfect 3-mile distance around. I love watching the sailboats. I love the new concession stand that makes the best black bean burgers I've ever tasted. I love that they're replacing the play structure so the kids will have a most difficult choice determining whether they want to play there or at the beach.

I love that they have concerts in the bandshell on summer weekends:

I love that when I bike to work, I get to the lake just as the sun is cresting the water. I love that I can see my downtown office skyscraper from its beaches and know that during the day I'm just a hop, skip, and a jump from one of my favourite places.

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Anybody else...

...getting tired of checking this blog only to discover that yet again PM hasn't posted?

Me too.

(Apparently Blogger is thinking the same thing as they have totally overhauled the whole post creation factory since the last time I was here and I don't know where anything is. Please pardon errant italics.)

Know what else I'm tired of? This whole "life at the speed of light" thing. The "where has the time gone?" deal.

At first it was kind of funny. I felt like a walking cliche and I sniggered a bit at my whole mom-jeans-and-high-fiber outlook.

(Mmmm. Fiber.)


And there are definite advantages to the speediness. I don't get the Monday blues anymore; I've realized that I only need to blink a couple of times and then suddenly it's Friday night.

(Cuts both ways, though. I get a teensy bit sad every Friday because I know Monday is just around the corner.)

Then I started to get mad. What business does Time have jumping to warp speed without advance warning? Just when everything starts to get settled...the kids get to a good age, my job is great, we are feeling comfortable in our house/neighborhood/church....suddenly I can't even catch my breath long enough to stop and smell those dang roses?

And then I started to get sad. (Didn't I tell you that I was going to have a mid-life crisis this year?) Like the walking cliche I am, I am sad that I feel these important moments slipping so quickly through my fingertips. I am sad that I spend so much time anticipating what's coming next that I miss what's happening now.

I am sad that in so many ways I've "arrived" at a place where I've longed to be and, now that I'm here, I feel too rushed to even enjoy it.

So I am trying to be more mindful. I am trying to notice the small things. To take pleasure in the mundane. To give thanks for the ordinary.

I'm going to try to be deliberate and record those things here. Because otherwise my gratitude is as fleeting as the moment for which I am thankful. No promises that it will be every day or anything, but I want this place to be a little bit less "long time no see" and more "in our last episode."

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One More for the Road

Sigh. It's the end of an era, folks.

I'm saying goodbye to my dear, sweet, faithful Jetta.

I still remember when we first got her...Christmas holidays 2001. The cutest little April Fool's Day baby had arrived earlier that year, and after one summer of carting her around in a two-door Honda Civic sans air conditioning (oh poor baby - windows open at 110 km/h racing down Hwy 59), we knew we needed to upgrade to something more in the family way.

The Husband had his heart set on a diesel engine for some strange reason and spied himself a barely-used navy 2000 VW Jetta over at Eastern Nissan.

We should have known when they gave us 1 1/2 keys (one was broken..."but you can still use the automatic lock button on it....") that we were in for it.

Three weeks after we got the car, I was on the side of the road. Minus 30. Just me and my mother-in-law.

We've replaced pretty much every part on that car already. And by "we," I mean The Husband, whose three-inch-thick red manual of "how to fix everything on a Jetta" is well-thumbed and worn. He's done timing belts. Relays. Glove compartments. Swapped out the suspension.

He bought me new injectors for our anniversary one year. So I could go faster.

New cup holders after I broke the old ones. Rebuilt alternators (plural - we can't seem to keep 'em). Emergency brake cables. Rotors. Brakes (a few times). Bushings.

But this is not to say that our local dealerships haven't gotten some shop rate lovin'. I seem to be an accident magnet. There was that time I hit the bus bench. And the time I got hit-and-ran in the West Acres parking lot. The time I tore the belly-pan to shreds en route to a Rudy Wiebe reading at the Mennonite Museum.

The time I lost the mudflap (no idea when that was...it's just not there anymore).

The time I got rear-ended yet again. Oh wait - that was three weeks ago.

(Apparently I'm the only person who decides that her car needs to be sold so she gets herself a free car wash by being in an accident and getting it as part of the insurance claim. Now THAT'S some hardcore frugal right there.)

But now, despite my protests that she's still PERFECTLY fine and that she's got YEARS and MILES left on her and that I want to teach my kids to drive in that car, The Husband has decided that it is time to go. We're both upgrading - he to the fancy-schmancy new car.

Me to the next Jetta in line - the Jetta 2004.

(Which I've already worn in. I broke the side mirror on it last winter. So we're already on good terms.)

As much as my "new" car is probably a bit better in the burning-oil, leaking-coolant, burned-out-dash-lights, visible-rust department, I'm definitely going to miss the old girl.

We're bestest buds. We both creak. We both prefer slow and steady. We both think that shifting gears should be loose and easy. Plus she's got the rockingest cup holders.

(The Husband knows of my love for the cup holders. So he installed the good kind in my "new" car. Which means that I can now have FOUR drinks within reach at all time.)

And so tonight, as we drive up to Canada for Easter, we'll be our own little caravan. A funeral procession, if you will. I'll go on ahead while The Husband follows with the honour guard.

I'll settle back in my well-worn seat and set the cruise control and reach for my coffee and we'll ride into the sunset for one last drive. I'll say my goodbyes and we'll relive all our many adventures. I'll get misty-eyed as I picture her with a "For Sale" sign in the window and I'll promise to find her a good home.

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SERIOUSLY?!

It feels like I say this every day.

When I look at the calendar...

How can it possibly be April already? I was barely aware that it was March. And now my calendar page has gone all flippy again.

When I look outside...

Heh heh. Sorry Old Man Winter. Looks like you done got beat early this year. The grass is green, the birds are singing, and even the trees are budding and blossoming. The parkas have already been put away for the year and our used-three-times snowblower is in storage.

When I look at my kids...

We had a birthday here this weekend. 11?! It seems unpossible. And yet, today when we went shoe shopping, we didn't even bother with the kids' section. (Although she's still my baby. Every night she thanks Jesus for "Mom and Mom Teddy.")

And my behemoth of a son? He's giving his sister a run for her money. Except when it's been awhile since he's had a haircut and he's walking around with a haystack on his head that adds a couple of inches. Then people start asking me if I have twins.

When I look at the clock...

I've been given a temporary project at work that, while super fun and amazing and fabulous experience, nevertheless takes up 85% of my total brain capacity. (This is causing a bit of an issue around here since the rest of my life usually takes up at least 50%.) Every day flies by. It feels like it's time for lunch just after my morning coffee and then I blink and it's 3:00.

I've heard life with young kids described as "long days and short years." True to what everyone said about time accelerating as you get older, I feel like I've now reached the "short days and short years" phase of life. This school year just started yet we're counting down the days to the end of year. Just yesterday we finally got the kids into the right elementary school and now The Girl is excited about graduating from fifth grade and heading off to middle school next year.

(Middle. School. Hold me...)

Every Friday, as I enjoy my bestest moment of the week and take the elevator down after work, thinking about having the whole weekend ahead of me, I actually get a wee bit sad thinking about how soon Monday is going to come. But now it's gotten to the point that when the Monday blues hit, I say, "oh, just hang on a sec...I just have to look at this design...." and suddenly I'm on that elevator, hitting "L" on a Friday afternoon again.

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