Procrastination station

Looking forward to the day when this form and the tax forms are happily in the past...in sepia tones ;-)

Saw Vinny yesterday and he says my "gateways" are super tight and need work.  I laughed.  That doesn't sound like me, at first listen.  I'm kind of the go to illustration for "open book".  But, if I stop to think on it, I can understand it in a few different ways.

Mainly, that my body is more aware (and therefore I am, too) and working to deflect harmful, toxic elements.  It's defending itself, much like an immune system.  I can see how this would make the gateways more active and on alert.

This isn't ideal.  It would be better for the gateways to be relaxed.  That way the energy flows more freely.  For my Self to be able to accept everything and use what I can and discard what I don't want.

I am remembering one year ago.  Soon it will be the anniversary of my mystery lung thing.  There was pain (every time I took a breath), there was a "something" on a chest x-ray, there was a lot of worry.

I don't think there's going to be a repeat of last year, this Spring.  I feel like I've moved forward a ring or two in my Spiral.  I am accepting Vinny's challenge as my own this week: practice Qigong five times, even if it's "just" Dragon Standing Between Heaven And Earth.

You know the drill: each moment is an opportunity to start anew.  To do something rather than wait.

Sigur Rós

I posed the rainy day music question on Facebook, too. And an old friend who I've come back into touch with suggested Sigur Rós. YES. Thanks to my SIL and brother, I had some iTunes money and bought an album. And I requested a few others from the library.

Here's a taste for y'all.

Rain music

Any suggestions for a rainy day playlist would be greatly appreciated.  Leave it in the comments, please :-)

A little bit of unpackaging

I was blogging about my Thai curry dinner over at the eating blog and unpackaged something about my eating. I'm including an excerpt here:

After I finished my first bowl of rice and curry, I sighed with pleasure and contentment. And instead of being with that moment...truly becoming one with it, I immediately began to think of a second bowl. And, probably there were a few things that went through my mind, and I don't remember it all. But, I do remember thinking: it would be better to have a second bowl of rice rather than have the rice go to waste.

Our rice cooker is on the fritz, too. And where pre-fritz it cooked rice perfectly (for 16 years!) and then kept it warm and perfectly edible for 24 hours, as of a month or so ago, it is cooking the rice unevenly and the rice becomes wet and soggy after a few hours.

(And, yes, we can take the rice out of the cooker and put it in the fridge to reheat, so it wouldn't go to waste, per se.)

So, I had a second bowl. It was a small portion, and I enjoyed it, but it didn't satisfy in the same way. At all. Because I didn't really want the food. I wanted that delicious feeling of utter satisfaction. And I was so driven towards that that I failed to recognize that I had that feeling already. It. was. right. there. Instead, I dropped it to chase it.

This is where eating mindfully can help me. If I can slow down and savor to the very last bite, chew and swallow, bliss is there for the experiencing.

I love food. And derive great pleasure from eating delicious food. Eating mindfully can help me re-train my habit of thinking that eating more food will get me the pleasure I seek. I can get a lot of pleasure from just one bite. I know, because I've experienced that.

There's a flipside to this with two parts.

One is that maybe I have a fast absorption rate of pleasure (however that plays out biochemically...) So, where someone else would experience the pleasure for longer, I burn through my pleasure quicker and it literally dissipates in an instant, leaving me eager and even a little edgy, for more.

The other is that I have a deep and unknown emotional (and/or possibly chemical) need for extending my experiences of pleasure (or having them at all). This need extends its long fingers at the faintest whiff of pleasure and grabs at it, refusing to let go.

I know that I can achieve some balance through practicing Qigong. And being more mindful and present in everything I do. And hopefully, if there is some mystery emotional garbage down in my subconscious weighing me down, I'll be able to unearth that and get rid of that, too.

Moon-y

I could wax on and on about the moon and its effects on me.  But there is work to be done. Suffice to say the moon is full and I can feel it through all this rainy atmosphere.

So now that I've got the chicken stock going, got the sandwich bread going (I have to bake a loaf every day or two), got the kids fed, got myself fed, got the groceries unpacked and put away, got caught up on my e-mail and Reader and Facebook, got the blog post about chicken stock done, got the go ahead to fully plan for our upcoming weekend away, got the Blue Moon video primed to upload...

I'm going to settle down with a massive backlog of paperwork.  And Spring tunes to brighten the dreary day.

I'm feeling distinctly better today, which is a relief as much as I don't want to think of it that way.

Peace and love, people.

Emma Thompson

I used to love Emma Thompson, but haven't seen her much in the last decade or so.  I watched Last Chance Harvey today and, boom, back in love with her, just like that. 

Cold

Whether it's viral or not, I don't know.  But, my body has some cold-like symptoms.  As Vinny said today at an emergency in-between-treatments treatment, "something's goin' on".

honk.

(I love you for regarding my nose-blowing visage.  truly.)

I've noticed this week, my first of being GFCF, that I have been feeling very full upon eating despite consuming less than what I have been.

Tonight it hit me.  I'm too cold.  Between all the salad and soaked raw cashews, I think I'm consuming too much cold essence via uncooked food.

Getting ready to watch a post-dinner movie with Cap, I put some water on for tea to take my herbs and I realized I was craving ginger and lemon.  A few minutes earlier I had said to him that I felt like eating nothing but rice and soup for a week.

Having a cold?  Tipping too far over to the cold side of balance?  Whichever it is, or it could be both, the ginger tea with lemon and honey felt amazing.  It helped to restore some calm to a system that objected to the cucumber (raw, of course) I shoveled into my mouth at dinner because their cool felt so good in my cold-symptomy-warm/dry mouth.

I had a second cup while we watched Julie and Julia (Meryl Streep...sigh).  

I can feel aspects of the four elements at work inside me: Air, Water, Fire and Earth.  I need to pull back on my zealousness...or rather, pause it in order to recalibrate as I move forward.

I love food and this week so much was about the food as I made a shift.  But, it goes deeper than the food...  It's not really about the food.  I've got to practice Qigong.  Every day.  This is important.  A cornerstone without which the building of me cannot stand.

I feel as though I'm in an Infinity.  I peel back layers and gain awareness...then peel back some more and regain the same awareness.  Is there a center?  A core? Or is it about traversing the sideways eight over and over again?

Kinks

I just wrote a post about sometimes dreaming of opening a café and my love of leftovers. I debated about where to post it and decided to post it at the GFCF blog which I am already rethinking as more of an Eating blog.

Still working the kinks out of how to separate these strands when sometimes that is (naturally) hard to do.

You can read the post here.

Schweddy balls

One thing led to another this morning and I found myself rewatching this classic Saturday Night Live clip.

Empty your mouth of food/drink if you don't want to be cleaning your screen in a couple of minutes. :-)

Tea and honey

I think I may have a cold.  I have the symptoms anyway.  It's soothing to prepare and consume my tea in the morning.  Taking it easy, moving slowly.

Justified

I watched the second episode of this new show, Justified, last night.  (It's on Tuesdays, I had recorded it.)  I'm enjoying it, but dug this interview of Timothy Olyphant even more.  It's cool to get this kind of background on an artist whose work you are appreciating.

Happy Birthday ♥

connecting with the birthday girl.

Happy birthday to just about the bestest egg I know:

Brave

Artistic

Resonant

Bellissima

Righteous

Asana

Sweet song

What's up

I went to my partner-in-healing yesterday evening.  It was interesting.  I told him about going GFCF for a year and he really listened and heard me.  At face value this kind of proclamation rubs him the wrong way.  But, how I broke down 'the proclamation' seemed to make sense to him.  That I am not seeing this as an answer of some sort made him feel better, I think.

He senses a big question and answer in me.  And he really wants one of us, preferably me, to figure it out.

He also said something felt very different about me.  So interesting!

Then he found some really tight and painful points and went to work on them.  Ouch.  (I missed an appointment last week because he was out-of-town.)

Last night, instead of kicking the kids out of the living room so I could veg in front of the tv, I left Gem in there to read and hung out with Sag in their room, for an hour.  It was fun and we laughed a lot.  I then read them the second-to-last chapter of The Moffats and tucked them in.

(Then I vegged in front of the tv.)

I did a half-practice of Qigong this morning and felt my tendons and meridians stretch and creak open.  I can feel 'gunk' releasing from organs and working their way out.  It borders on feeling crappy, actually.

Woke the kids up, which I hate to do, but I am trying to reset their body clocks to an earlier to sleep-earlier to wake mode.

After we had all eaten and Cap and the kids got going on schooling, I mixed up a quadruple batch of a protein flour blend and now have a loaf of sandwich bread going in the bread machine.

Reality continues

Again with feeling so full.  I had Panda Puffs with sliced banana and rice milk for breakfast and miso soup and salad for lunch.

Full and dense is how I feel.  Like there's little room for molecules to bounce around.  Heavy, but not sodden.

Fell asleep earlier than I have been, was woken up by a creaking door when Cap came to bed and lumbered out of bed because I had to pee badly, which is just about unheard of, for me.  I never have to pee in the middle of the night.

I didn't wake up early enough to practice Qigong.  It's been awhile.  I'm looking forward to seeing Vinny this evening.  I can feel realignment starting to happen inside and it will feel great to have some energy directed at strengthening these 'new' channels back to what's right.

Maybe there's a low pressure system above.  Gravity is feeling immensely powerful on me at the moment.

I was in a bad mood this morning, have been able to keep mostly to myself which helps me not to lash out at others.  By the time lunch time came around I was feeling better and made a nice lunch for the kids and me.

I was able to get to a few things this morning.  Nothing like the whirling decluttering I'd imagined, but shit that needs to get done nonetheless.

Like the fridge.  I emptied it of some moldy oldies and reorganized it somewhat.  Stopped short of putting labels on the shelves, but haven't abandoned the idea entirely.

Miles

Our car, Miles, is in the shop.  Again.  I got the call this morning, estimate is just shy of 1K, can they proceed?

Winding down

I felt a little blue this afternoon.  And a little irritable this evening.  Not bad for the first day without.  Though there's probably waves to come in that realm. 

It's looking like I will go to sleep earlier tonight, which I kind of desperately need.  I went without caffeine today except for a bit of dark chocolate.  I can feel the positive effect this is already having on my connection to sleep.  (I've been going wild with the Raspberry Earl tea.)

I felt very full after dinner tonight.  Turkey soup, a piece of corn bread with green goddess dressing, and a ramekin of warm rice pudding.  Full in a satisfied way.  Dense.  Not in a too much way.  It felt good.

I did read to the kids and get them to bed earlier.  I can hear them chattering away...we'll see when they actually fall asleep.

Not much decluttering happened, but I can see much of the computer desk now.  It's a start.  I'll have more concentrated time tomorrow.

Peace and love.

Factor

This is a musing.  Not a complaint.

It has been about two hours since my last post.  During that time I made myself lunch.

I ate my lunch and then I made Gem his lunch.  A salmon pasta salad made with leftover salmon, leftover pasta, some salt and mayo.  (No photo taken.)

Then I made Sag his lunch.  A grilled cheese sandwich.

The turkey soup is smelling really good.  Then I thought I should make some corn bread to go with dinner in case the kids really hate the soup and need carby sustenance.  So I got all the ingredients out to get them to room temp (an important GFCF cooking tip.)

There was a near continual stream of washing plates, bowls, utensils, salad spinner, etc.  By the end of my time in the kitchen, I was really wanting to pop one of these in my mouth.

But, they have milk in them so I passed.  And feel okay.  It's caffeine withdrawal that I am feeling more than anything.  Well, that and lack of sleep.

I've also dealt with the car repair shop and a younger son who is emotionally volatile and an older son who is bearing the brunt of this volatility.  Now, it's 2:30 and my "day" of dealing with a room is whittled down to two hours or so.  I'd like to have dinner on the table by 6:00.

Tonight I am aiming to get the kids in bed by 9:00 and to read to them.  We've gotten out of that routine and since daylight savings they have been going to bed very late.

Off to declutter...trying not to be too bummed about the shrunken time and the dashing of my room-a-day hopes.

Spring cleaning

This morning I popped out to drag around trash and recycling cans and wandered to the back corner of the yard to look for crocuses and chives.  I was happy to find both.  Then I moved into the kitchen and put away dishes and pots and pans while making a fried pastured egg sandwich with mayo, smoked paprika, garlic and cayenne.

Turkey soup and rice pudding are on my menu for dinner, green goddess dressing for lunch.  I made the dressing and have the soup going in the crock pot.  (A shout out to the butcher at Whole Foods who cut me a really nice looking piece of turkey breast with skin left on.)  The rice pudidng I will make later.

For now, multiple blogging done, I'm going to have some lunch and move on to Spring-declutter a room.  Which room, which room...

Spring Equinox Hike

I absolutely adore having this tradition with these friends.  We mark the start of each new Season with a hike around a local pond.  There is a familiarity of place and routine, but Mother Nature always provides entertainment as she sweeps us along in her constant rhythmic dance.

Today there was an abundance of water, which is always fun.

See photos of past Spring hikes here and here.  Interesting to take a look back.  It was much warmer today than it has been the last two years!  Also, we have not seen Broken Wing since last Summer or Fall.

Abuzz

I've been mostly parked in front of the computer screen for 2 hours, but I am quite energized.  I've pulled together a bunch of recipes to try out this week and now have to pull on some clothes and try to to either get a bite of food in me or form a coherent shopping list.  I've e-mailed and facebooked and bopped to the Spring playlist.

We're dropping the kids off at Donna's and then have a few hours to run errands, talk, get some lunch, and talk.  And talk.  So much to catch up on anyway, but then add a week apart to that, and there's a lot to talk about.

Later this afternoon we have our Equinox hike with the regular crew.  It moves me to have this tradition established.  That the kids have this.

Tonight, Cap's tuna pasta salad, piles of laundry to fold, and maybe the Discovery Channel's new series with the kids.  (It's called Life and has a lot of stunning nature video footage.)

Monday through Friday I am looking at tackling a room a day and whirling dervish-ing my way through unwanted, unneeded cluttering "stuff".  Spring cleaning, I've got my eye on you!

A manatee knits

I started a knitting blog.  You can see it here.

I want to be able to link to a knitting only blog from Ravelry.  Hence the separation...

Egged on by the equinox

I have decided to go GFCF for a year.  And will be blogging about it here.  Check it out :-)

I may start a knitting blog, too.

Went to an International Women's Day event today organized by my friend, Mary.  And was delighted and stunned to meet an online friend.  Someone I have been quietly admiring for a few months.  I was flustered and overwhelmed (felt so shy!), but also energized by such a truly contemporary experience.  (You are your blog, as it turns out :-)

Tonight I will be bidding gluten and casein farewell with dinner from Habaneros.  Locals, I urge you to check this place out.  The food is fresh and tasty.  I love it!

Happy Spring, peeps.

Just a sec

skeined and soothed.

Finally got some sleep last night. Yay!

Had some quiet time this morning because the kids continued their sleep after I awoke.

I had an unexpected run-in with Stacked Eyelet Cowl.  I won't go into the details here, but this poor yarn has been rode hard and put away wet, as the saying goes.  It was knit and reknit as Sunday Market Shawl a few times, and is now going a few rounds as Stacked Eyelet Cowl.

One detail: I have no practical method for a long tail cast-on when casting on over 100 stitches.  It's a pain, and my brain had more blindspots than usual this morning because it took forever to figure something workable.  And "workable"left a tail of over 3 feet...

I may be absent from here for a few days.  Have some spring cleaning to tackle...literally and metaphorically.

Cap's coming home today, yay!

Gem's seeing Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Movie today, yay!

Sag is on the road to recovery, yay!

I need to sleep

Last night, the younger boy was fever-y and very restless in his sleep.  Wait...did I already blog this?  I don't know.  Yet more proof that I need sleep.

Sick kid was diagnosed and is now taking antibiotics.  Tonight should be better for sleep.  Last night I was in bed for six hours and woke up about six times.  (I think it was my fear that he was going to start throwing up in the bed that kept me sleeping shallowly.  His body bumping against me, emanating fever-heat, is what kept rousing me.)

I will pause from my zombiehood (I was fine till about an hour ago) to say that I have moved on from my self-designed cowl and am knitting something quite lovely now.  (The cowl was good while it lasted, but the yarn wasn't luxe enough for something to snuggle 'round your neck and it was way too big.  Wait...did I already blog this?)

My current knit is Kelly's "prize" for being one of the commenters selected for my 1000th blog post.  If you don't like it, babe, I have a lovely plan B in mind :-)

A few of the things keeping me going...little bursts of love that are so yummy and life-giving:

Gem offering his unraveling/winding services.  His attraction to the fiber arts, though selective and slightly idiosyncratic, endures in a way that makes this mama's heart sing.

Cap having a good time in Chicago.  For this über-hard working man to catch a break is cause for celebration.  He likes Chi-town a lot: is getting some much needed time and space to work on his book, is spending time with a good friend and her family (with whom he is staying), is hanging with professional peers as he presents and partakes at a conference, and is taking in sights and sounds getting some quality "him" time.

These earrings today. Wendy gave them to me a few (?) years ago.  I've been acclimating my earring holes to having earrings in them again and put these in today.  Love them.

From the 'pen' of Holly Robinson Peete

A great, simple and informative piece on autism from the perspective of a mom/activist.  Read it here.

From night to day

The period I was beginning to think was the skipped one I have on occasional years finally began yesterday and it's a relief.  For the last 12 hours or so my systems have been rebooting.  The Americone Dream that has been my mana for over a week suddenly tasted off late last night.

My self-designed knit came out too big.  I knit last night (to the children playing, to White Collar and to Be Good Johnny Weir) eager to get it done so I could see it and wear it.  Time to tinker.

Today I'll be watching one extra kid in the morning, then taking my kids to art class, and then watching another extra kid in the late afternoon/evening.  Should be a fun and active day. 

Will also be keeping an eye on the little pump that could which is pumping water out of the basement.

And making turkey meatloaf and sweet potato fries for dinner.

Miss you, Cap.

Double yolk

Been doing better than treading water lately.  Managing a gentle side stroke, head above the water, taking in what there is to see, relaxed but alert.

Designed my first knit last night.  I have frogged the Sunday Market Shawl once again and put that yarn down for now.  It's meant for a different project, to be determined.  Dove into the stash and the archives in Ravelry with Kelly in mind.  She won a knitted prize way back when I posted my 1000th post.  I found yarn that spoke to me and tried, in vain, to find a pattern to partner it with.  The one pattern I would have gone with was in Finnish, with no English translation :-)

I pulled out my "stitchionary" to compare a Rav pattern with something I remembered from the book and fell in love with this book all over again.  I got lost poring over the stitch patterns and then came upon something that sang to me right off the page.

I realized that I could convert the stitch pattern to what I was envisioning in my mind with some basic math and the knitting experience I've logged in the last few months.  So I gave it a go.  I am a kinesthetic / trial and error learner so it may take some time to achieve the final product.  But, I am tickled, to have fallen into unknowingly designing my first knit!

I've been cooking.  Made a beef chili yesterday for the kids and me.  After dropping Cap off at EWR (he's in Chi-town for a conference this week) the kids and I stopped at Whole Paycheck.  I was thinking chili for dinner, liking the one-pot aspect of it.  They were out of my preferred dark meat ground turkey so I chose the local grass fed ground beef (since our one non-beef eater was away).

I winged it, with one eye on the Silver Palate recipe, and tossed my ingredients into one pot.  The result was good.  Adding cayenne to my bowl improved it greatly, for me.  I am going to sprinkle smoked paprika into my leftover bowl today.  Sag liked it enough to have seconds, but not enough to praise it outright.  Gem liked it enough not to gag as he ate the bites I encouraged him to eat.

Cast iron skillet corn bread and ice cream for dessert rounded the meal out nicely :-)

I continue to be captivated by the tv screen.  Watched Rabbit-Proof Fence yesterday.  I've wanted to see this movie for years (it came out in 2002).  It is well made and beautifully acted by a trio of girls, none of whom had acted professionally before.  The subject matter is wrenching, not or everybody.

The night before I watched The Proposal.  It was pretty trashy.

Friday night Cap and I watched Adventureland.  It was good.  Well-written, great soundtrack, and nicely acted, especially Kristen Stewart (for me, her best work to date).  It made me feel old, but not in a bad way.  (The main character had just graduated college in 1987.)

I've started watching Southland, late to the game.  I'm waiting for Season One to come from Netflix.  Season 2 is airing on TNT right now.  Season 2 is not a complete season (NBC canceled the show abruptly before airing these episodes) and TNT has not begun production on new episodes yet.  So it may be all for naught, but I'm enjoying what I'm seeing so far.

(Links to the movies and Southland can be found in Recent Movies and Currently Loving on the sidebar :-)

I've had a string of playdates :-)  Hung out with Angela, Shannon and Nicole (with Kelly and Kate in the periphery) at a library meet-up on Friday (the kids were engrossed in a game of Risk with some new friends). Kelly and the girls came over later that afternoon.  I met Roger for lunch and conversation on Saturday, and Shannon and Elizabeth came over for pot luck yumminess and Arrested Development Saturday evening.

I appreciate my friendships and love spending this kind of time with friends talking, thinking, connecting, commiserating, problem-solving and laughing.  Laughing is always good :-)

When I sliced into the egg pictured above, and saw the double yolk hidden inside.  I was delighted.  I ran around the apartment showing my family.  And it seemed a symbol of the times.  Just be and do, and you will be rewarded with lovely surprises.  Occurrences which, random as they are, bring you joy and energize you for more.

Alighting for a moment

This one was very happy when his vintage Lego set arrived in the mail today.  He had been saving a birthday gift card for something special and the wait was finally over.

This one was very sad that he didn't have something nifty arrive in the mail.  His birthday is feeling very far away still.

Baxter went home last night.  Here he is shortly before my brother came to pick him up.  I miss him.

Today I was nourished by lengthy conversation with Tiina while the kids played and played.  I continue to feel rocked by dark shrieks and weights.  And am thinking more on this as an opportunity...to understand this discomfort as a message to dig deeper...to find the truth that hides and I cannot see...and to heal the raw space left from extraction.

I appreciate the attuning of my body to the season.  The shooting upward of energy from seed/bulb through dark and cold earthen bed...the breaking through which must be painful even as it is so glorious to finally see light and feel air...  This same impulse is at work in my body and my spirit.  There's a seed or bulb in there, something new for this season or something old returning for more life...I guess it's time to nest with it a bit, to relax my self in order to welcome it through...to maintain balance as I push and labor.

Apologies

I really should have posted earlier after yesterday's post. 

Today has been full of cooking for tonight's common meal.  (Vegetable soup with my homemade chicken stock, zucchini sautéd in evoo with garlic, and a big batch of homefries...Cap will bake some French bread and cookies to round out the meal :-)

Now I'm off to take the kids to the dentist which will be followed by a stop at the bookstore.  (I have very fond memories of hitting Baskin-Robbins after my childhood dental appointments...I kid you not...the dentist would hand moms/dads a coupon for the local B-R, it was AWESOME :-)

Spending 90 minutes in the sun outside the kids' art class yesterday afternoon helped.

Talking to some of my home girls on the phone yesterday helped.

Starting a new Chinese herbal formulation ('Joyful Spirit' :-) yesterday helped.

Definitely feeling better.  Peace, out!

...

As my eyes opened this morning I thought: functional depressive...is there such a thing?  Because that is how I feel today. 

Vanessa's coming and going packed an emotional wallop for sure.  But, there is a familiarity to how I feel.  The melancholy that has been coming and going since adolescence.  The states of non-motivation and low energy that have been coming and going for years and years.

Being a patient of TCM the last few years has helped significantly in areas like self-esteem, self-awareness, feeling happy, sleep issues, sex, stress, and anxiety.

But, for some reason(s) I don't feel good right now.  In a way that despite its familiarity, feels foreign enough (which is a good thing!) that it's stopping me a bit in my tracks to wonder (with a pinch of dread) while I gawk at it.

I feel small in the face of the maw of the coming Spring.  Time is feeling like a powerful vortex.  The weather around here has changed rapidly, the light almost feels too bright at times.  Yes, I can feel it, how my center wobbles as these forces of Nature spin me around and around some more.  (S.A.D. is something I have felt come and go for me, as well.)

It turns out there is such a thing as 'functional depressive' according to my friend, Google.  But after some brief reading on the subject (dysthymia) I think I'm dealing with a blip of a condition that used to be more chronic than it is now.  I'm going to keep an eye on it.  And keep an open mind and heart about it.

And enjoy this photo repeatedly.  It is a balm for my soul on a day like today.  Thank you, Jamie.

P.S.  Did anyone watch House last night?  The main patient was a woman who blogs and I thought the way this was dealt with was really interesting :-)

Fantastic read

Read a great book today.  When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead.  Despite the fact that it recently won the Newbery, I did not know much about the plot beforehand and am glad for it.  It's quick, it's absorbing, it's wonderful.

More bell hooks

Inspired by more bell hooks over at ColinResponse.  Great quote and excellent photo.  Hope you're getting your Monday groove on without too much Ego resistance :-)

Under the dome

I'm in the 700s of this 1000+ page novel.  (Is it still a novel at over 1000 pages?  Feels like it enters another territory at this length/weight.)

I have been spending a lot of time reading this book.  In part because it's a 'new' library book and I have a deadline, in part because Stephen King's writing is delectably pulpy...either way a momentum has built which I have chosen to go with.

I think I can finish it today, if I myself remain 'under the dome'...and return to reality tomorrow, ready for a new week.

I am woman

Completely uninspired today.  It feels PMS-y so I am embracing it, feeling it's better than being a hot mess.  (Clue: a bottomless pit of a stomach satisfied by very random yet particular flavor profiles and textures: natto, Panda Puffs, strawberry Pocky and Sunday bacon.)

Grateful for Baxter who got me out into continually approaching Spring, if even for a little bit.

Cranked it

The knitting and dropping dropping dropping of stitches is done on my Sunday Market Shawl.  Ends need to be woven in and I think this may look quite different once it is blocked.  I am considering buying a hand held clothes steamer to block this (and future items).

For now, I am satisfied to be somewhat finished.  And am finding this shawl/scarf very cozy and warm.  The yarn is awesome.

Off to snuggle in with the kids in the big bed.  I will not set an alarm for the first time all week.