hello!

Now that our house is no longer overflowing, I’ve pretty much stopped cooking all together. Instead, I’ve been living on pretzels and cheese, popcorn, apples and peanut butter, ginger tea, red wine, chips, and eggs. The fridge is bare and everyone’s fussing about there not being any food, and I’m like, Stop fussing, there’s cereal..

Yesterday, I threw together a stirfry with leftover rice, sausage, and spinach, and then, last minute, everyone made themselves eggs to go with. And tonight there will be mashed potatoes and steak and corn. And I baked one of my freezer coffee cakes this afternoon.

So it’s not like we’re not starving or anything.

I still feel like I’m recuperating from all the activity, though. I was sick last week (just a cold) and haven’t been sleeping well. And then one of the kickboxing instructors alerted/invited me to the studio’s Valentine special — bring buddies for free — so I’ve been going to classes all week, some of which take place at 5:30 in the morning. So now, on top of the cold and lack of sleep, my entire body hurts.

I keep telling myself to take it easy. It’s okay to rest. Napping’s good. Netflix are fun. Read.

Anyway, for those of you who think I’m go-go-go all the time: I’m not. Just fyi.

Speaking of kickboxing: I need to find a better deodorant. Preferably, one that works. The kind I’m using — some cheap, unscented Dove stuff — just doesn’t cut it.

Suggestions, please and thank you.

My husband and I watched Joker the other night. I loved it — I thought it was real and creative, nuanced and honest, beautiful — but my husband, not so much.

It was actually pretty funny: the whole first half, I was like, Lah-de-dah-de-dah, isn’t this story fascinating? Isn’t the acting great? And my husband was literally writhing in agony from the social awkwardness of it. I had to hold his hand so he wouldn’t walk out, and even so he managed to flee the room on a couple times.

Then the violence picked up and he calmed down and I started covering my face with the pillow. 

We’re such a team.

Do any of you own a tortilla press?

For awhile now, I’ve been contemplating buying one, but I’m worried it’d just clutter up the shelf. On the other hand, if it made tortilla-making that much easier (I hate the rolling-out part) then I’d presumably make tortillas more often and it’d be worth it, right?

Ugh. I hate it when I can’t make up my mind.

The other day I came across this post about spring cleaning.

Pretend you’re going to be selling your house, Sarah writes. Go into each room and make a list of everything that needs to be done to ready it for showing to potential customers: painting, a new chair, patching holes, decluttering, etc. Then, one room at a time, do it. Get it nice — not for the customer, but for yourself.

It’s an intriguing idea, but I don’t think it’d work for us, since most of the work would fall to my husband and, well: if you’ll recall, that kitchen island took three years (or thirteen years, depending on how you look at it) to finish, and I’m still waiting for him to install a couple easy-peasy latches on the cupboard doors.

I’m not fussing, mind you (not too much anyway) — just, keeping it real.

I’ve been writing, often five mornings a week. People ask me how it’s going. The answer: I’m doing it, so … good?

It’s weird how I have so little to say about something that I spend so much time doing.

My new experiment: bamboo toothbrushes!

I haven’t tried them yet, but the kids love them. Since they’re all identical, we just write our names on the handles.

My younger son is into plants. Or growing things? Whatever.

I’m not sure where he gets the interest — neither my husband nor I are particularly good at growing things — but he’s forever sticking plants in dirt, or water, and trying to get them going. Just this afternoon, he came back from a friend’s house with a start for a houseplant that he’d begged.

For awhile, he cluttered up my kitchen sill with his starts, and then, once he moved into his older sister’s tiny room, I ordered him to take them all upstairs to his new room. He kept the plants clustered on an old end table in front of the window, but then, for his birthday, my husband built him a special plant shelf that runs across the upper half of the window so he could get rid of the table and save space.

It wasn’t completely finished when my son’s birthday rolled around (see above about spring cleaning), so my son sealed it with tung oil and then installed it himself.

And now he has lots of room for his plant collection!

And the arrangement of the room — with a cut-to-size bed above the dresser — is the best we’ve come up with to date.

He’s got tons of storage and work space, good lighting, and a cozy reading nook.

It’s tight, but it’s all his. He loves it.

This same time, years previous: homemade pasta, the quotidian (2.20.17), doppelganger, Jonathan’s jerky, in my kitchen: 11:50 a.m., almond cake, pan-fried tilapia, toasted steel-cut oatmeal, cream scones.