It was a hard day...

If I was a stronger, more selfless person, life would be so, so much easier.

if I could learn to swallow my anger, my annoyance...
if I could keep my demons from taking over my life...
if I could see that the needs of others are no less important than my own...
if I could say what I really mean when it really matters, instead of being harsh to protect my damn pride...
that will be when I have truly succeeded.

Two words...

Two words:
Bikram. Yoga.

My new love. Back in January, while we were celebrating Morgan and Tommy's surprise Christmas visit back from their overseas adventure, Morgan, Alex, and I sweated out a one-week trial of Bikram Yoga classes, just to get a taste of the phenomenon that has been sweeping across the states. We showed up, paid our $20, and recieved a pass for unlimited classes for the next seven days. Now, I've been doing yoga for the past couple of years - mostly in my living room with random video instructors - so I thought I'd be rather prepared for the physical challenge of this class, but man, was I surprised. Basically, you're in a room heated to 105 degrees and you're taken though a series of asenas (postures) for the duration of 90 minutes. It's the same postures every class, for every person, no matter how beginning or advanced you are, so every time you go back, you have a chance to really work on executing each asena with perfection. Not that you get anywhere near perfection in the first ten years, though. That's what makes every class a continual challenge. You are drenched in sweat afterwards, having successfully burned over 800 calories, stretched your muscles in ways they've been waiting for the past twenty five years, and built muscles you didn't even know existed. It's an incredible workout, and a proven way to heal injured areas of your body - back and neck pain from my car accident three years ago, in my case. And it's the only workout I've ever truly enjoyed sticking with, which makes it a rather appealing endeavor for me. After that first week, Alex kept going, but I only started going consistently at the end of February. In short, it's one of the best things I've ever done for myself health-wise - both mind and body, and I love, love, love it! And Isaac and Justin love that they have something new to make fun of us for when we return to our respective houses after class red faced and soaking like drowned rats. Although, I have to say I think Isaac really does like me going because it gives him more time to read and study about investing, which has become a growing interest of his for the past several months. Well, it's been an interest of his for the past several years, but in the past year he's really delved into the study of it - almost like he's in school again. It's fun to watch him in something he loves like that, and makes Bikram a double blessing for our little family.

Well, friends, it's raining again up here. Things were looking so good for an early summer up here that I think I prematurely got my hopes up that maybe we would just skip the rain this year just like we skipped the ice and snow part of this winter. Apparently we shall be having no such luck as the rain has been cascading in some shape or form nearly every day of the past week. Lucky us...

Our little champion...

I ate seaweed this weekend.
And liked it.

I can't even hardly believe it as I have tried various forms of seaweed in the past and was absolutely revolted, but something about this time was different. Mark, Jordan, Justin, and Alex came over for dinner on Saturday and Isaac showcased his chef skills with an incredible wok full of Thai Green Curry - so good. But he started off the meal with making California rolls, which, in case you don't know, are covered in the aforementioned seaweed. Everyone praised the choice of appetizer, but I was rather apprehensive and slightly desirous of a hot bowl of peanut sauce and rice instead. Nevertheless, I put on my brave face and succumbed to the peer pressure...and found that it wasn't half bad. Isaac says I like things more once I've learned how healthy they are, which may very well have been the case in this experience, but however it happened, I now like it. And, as a side note, seaweed does in fact have many a positive nutrient to benefit one's health.

We finished off our evening with a little entertainment from our...(drumroll, please)...Champion Juicer! If you don't know what one of these is, you should definitely find out. They are AWESOME! They juice anything and everything, but the best part of it is if you freeze bananas or berries, you can put those through and they get squished into the consistency of ice cream and come squeezing out the other end ready to enjoy! Sounds gross, I know. It even looks pretty gross as its coming out (think meat grinder producing sausage), but it tastes so good and takes all of forty-five seconds to create. And it makes for some nice entertainment watching the process. Now all we need is an orchard full of fruit trees producing gazillions of pieces of fruit that we can juice to our heart's content.

Sigh. Someday.

Our unappreciated hippie fantasticness...

It was pouring cats and dogs outside this morning, a nice February day, for sure. But that didn't stop us from hitting up Old Town Cafe for our traditional Valentine's Day breakfast together. And they had the candlelit breakfast again this year, which is my favorite! Then church, naps, and by early afternoon the clouds rolled out and the blue sky amazingness rolled in, giving us a perfect get-outside-and-be-productive kind of day. So we did. We decided to conquer some gardening areas around our house as they were getting overrun by previously planted flowers and choking out our strawberry plants that we had transplanted at the end of the summer. Not good. PS, not sure if we've mentioned this yet, but we will not be having our garden space at the community gardens this year. As fun as it was last year, we got about seventeen too many calls from the garden police complaining that our beautiful plot was, indeed, not nearly beautiful enough to be seen with the rest of the plots. Apparently they're not much of a fan of the hippie, letting things run a tad wild, exotic type of experience in gardening, which is really surprising considering we live smack in the middle of hippie land. I mean, honestly, our plot was not any less weeded than any of the other jungles around ours, but for some reason they just thought it was necessary to continuously call us and "make sure we were still tending to our veggies," and "oh, did you realize that it was windy last night and parts of your greenhouse came untucked, could you come fix it immediately?" I swear they just had it out for us, and we thought about staying on this year and being a thorn in their flesh just for the fun of it, but we ended up just saying the heck with it. We did, however, take several bucketfulls of our well-fertilized soil back with us to the house for our new little garden in our front lawn. After all, we'd put about a hundred dollars of good soil into the plot to begin with and in no way were going to let them run us off without taking what was ours to begin with. Anyway, that's the story of the garden plot. Someday when we have a couple acres to play with, we'll have a ginormous garden where the weeds can be tangled into the plot as much as our little hearts desire, but for now we're going to utilize the small area of soil around our little rental. Hence, our outside activities this afternoon. Our lawncare is hired out, so I assumed the flowerbeds and decorative plants around the strip where we wanted to garden was put in place by our landscapers as well, but Isaac didn't think it would be a problem to rip it all up and plant veggies of our own. He was pretty sure most of them were weeds anyway. And I scoured the lease and could find nothing prohibiting us from taking lawn matters into our own hands, so we did. Well, we did the ripping out today at least. I will say one thing, it will be really nice to not have to drive all the way to the garden every day just to water things. We also took our blue-mobile out for a little spin since she's been sitting in the cold and rain for the past few months, and she ran like a gem!

I tried my hand at a new gluten free bread recipe today. It was this yeasty rosemary concoction that had been refrigerated for a week (which the recipe clearly said was okay to do). We took a little sniff before it went into the oven and it definitely smelled a tad fermented, but that just got us excited for a potential sourdough loaf. And sour it was, my friends. Sour and disgusting. It was very disappointing as we were pretty hungry and definitely looking forward to spreading a nice chunk of butter onto the bread and feasting before we did our manual labor. Instead, we just about threw up and spent a solid five minutes washing our mouths out with water. Lesson learned? Fermentation does not equal sourdough. Bleghhh. I'm not sure what went wrong because I baked a loaf right after I originally mixed the dough a week ago and that loaf was great. I suppose that's the beauty of being a baker - you win some, and you lose some. Thankfully we'll be winning some in about an hour as Isaac is making a fantastic cobbler-amazingness for dinner tonight. Happy Valentine's Day to me!

On late nights and sunshine...

It's fun to see Justin and Alex's house becoming more and more their house. I mean, it's already technically theirs and all, but every week more changes happen that give it a more J and A personality. This past week or so has been the painting of the living room and dining room. Well, I suppose even more so this last week has been the complete rewiring of all things electric in their house, but on the asthetic side of things, it's been the downstairs paint jobs. And I got to help this morning! My job was the living room trim, which is seriously one of the only ways I've seen my perfectionism be put to good use. Like for instance last night when I was baking the pie for our little dinner party, I was ridiculously and very unnecessarily frustrated because the edges of the pie crust did not look perfect. We're talking starting to hyperventilate, about to throw the entire pie into the garbage frustration. Over a stupid edge of a pie crust. That's usually the type of benefits I reap from my perfectionism, so it was nice to create something positive with my forces instead. And it was a double bonus getting to hang with J and A (and Stephanie, who's living there for a little bit) while we worked.

So last night we had dinner with a band, aren't we so cool? They're called Transcarlet and are resident Bellingham-ites as well, so we were happy to entertain them. Okay, so they might have been our friends before they were ever a band, and it might have been way more of a just friends get together (especially since J and A were there, too), but it still sounds cool to say we were hobnobbing with a rich and famous band, right? And we met our new friend, TJ, too! Isaac put together some killer enchiladas, I crafted the aforementioned pie (which Isaac saved from being cast into the shadowy depths of the trash can, and which was actually really good, if I do say so myself) for dessert, and we got to spend a few hours talking the night away. I'm actually laughing as I'm writing this, though, because I say talking the night away like we were up to the wee hours of the morning chatting...but in actuality, we lasted until about 9:15pm and then everyone went their separate ways. Which is normal for us, but our guests were mentioning how a normal night for them lasts until about 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, which I'm pretty sure I haven't seen since my college days (except when we're with Ian and Savannah, of course :).

Um, post script here...yesterday afternoon when I came home from work, Isaac and I just sat on the porch and relaxed in the sunshine and 55 degree warmth!! In case you missed that, we and Anyway, all that to say we had a good time with those guys last night.relaxed in the afternoon sunshine on the porch! And it's the middle of February here! All the flowers are coming up, trees are blooming, and I haven't warn a scarf for at least a month. Happy early spring to me.

An Alexie and a Beah...

The house is clean, candles are lit, and the aroma of a flourless chocolate delicacy is wafting out of the oven as it finishes baking. Our Peace mix echos in the background as I open the bottles of wine and put water on for tea. Isaac packs up the xbox, gives me a quick kiss, and makes a run for Justin's before the estrogen overtakes the house. Shortly thereafter, the girls arrive - first Alex, fresh from Bikram, then Grace with her bouncy curls (and Morgs joined us in spirit from the tropical land across the sea). We have a little catching up time before Beth and Stephanie arrive, then the wine is poured, chocolaty goodness is served, and the girl time begins. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we have started a bookclub. How very refined of us, I know.

Now, most of you know that I have been extremely hesitant to commit to any kind of extra curricular activity over the past couple of years in my quest for rest and a calmer life, but I have to say this bookclub thing was a fabulous idea. I mean, you can't go wrong with a girls' night to begin with, but add the good food and stimulating discussion of a meaningful piece of literary work that we have just finished pouring ourselves into for the past month and you've got a really great way to spend an evening. January's book was A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah - this month is The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. By the way, Lynn-t, I think about you every time I open the book, which has been every day for the past week.

It's a little unfortunate that it's just a once-a-month occurrence, but I suppose that helps ward off the possibility of it becoming just one more commitment that overwhelms our lives. So until next month, ladies, may you spend many a night curled up with a cup of tea and dear ol' Sherman.

So many things have been happening around here the last few days! I've watched at least seventeen hours of television, made what appears to be a permanent indent in our antique rust-colored couch, felt like I was going to pass out at least a dozen times, writhed with body aches the likes of which I have never experienced in my life to this point, and have not eaten nearly the amount of calories one should consume per day. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it's official...I'm sick. But I hear poor Tommy and Mitch are both sick as well on the other side of the world, so I'm most definitely counting my blessings that at least I can lounge around in complete misery in the comfort of my own home with a doting husband who rents me Amelie and brings me ice water and smoothies.

But seriously, it can't be very entertaining hearing about me being on death's doorstep (possibly a slight exaggeration, but...) so here's the real news. I am no longer a blonde. Shocking, I know. It lasted for an entire two months and I loved every minute of it, once we got past the yellow stage into the white-blonde color. But, alas, all good things must come to an end as we were not too thrilled about the every-six-week-upkeep schedule the whiteness required. So I am back to brown, although I must admit it is a bit lighter than my natural brown. Another six weeks and I'll go back in to finish off the coloring and get it a tad darker. I must admit, it's kind of nice being back to a more natural me. Which is a good thing, since I'm planning on staying brown for quite a while now.

***

I actually wrote that part a few days ago and just never posted, so I'm happy to report that I have, indeed, recovered from the grossness of being sick, and in true lovers' fashion, succeeded in passing along the fever and body aches to my dear husband shortly thereafter. Isaac took it like a champ, though, and bounced back in only three days, whereas my recovery took a full four. In celebration of his renowned health, we disconnected our cable for the next six months. Isn't that a great getting better present? We got the cable last fall for (of course) football since Isaac is, after all, a boy, but he promised me when we purchased it that it would only be through the football season and then we could go back to our hippier lifestyle. And even in the three days since it's been disconnected, I've felt noticeably calmer and more relaxed. Evenings when I'm tired aren't automatically spent vegging in front of the telly watching Bear Grylls and Mike Rowe, but instead are spent reading, baking, yoga-ing, and relaxing to the tunes of David Bazan or Rocky. Life seems to pass by slowly and peaceably, like a trickling creek, and every minute is experienced as it's own special mark in the day. I like living like that. Brewing a cup of white pear tea, having a girlfriend over to chat, relaxing with Isaac on a walk around the neighborhood, making bran muffins and granola for the week's breakfasts. I guess all I'm saying is that I have a good life up here, with Isaac. Speaking of which, he's walking through the door right now...