I’m enjoying a week of spring break (even got some nice sunshine in the early afternoon!) and vowed not to let this one pass by without accomplishing some tasks I’ve had on some list or other for way too long. Yesterday, I mapped out a plan of the week – and seem to have included about one too many things for days one and two so far… but, I also feel like I’ve made some progress. My portion of the office is organized, books are filed (tho still in huge boxes in the living room), clothes made it to the dry cleaners (some of which I had forgotten about as they have lived in a bag for months), and I’ve started tackling a ‘parent project.’ My parent project thus far involves creating a (rather) long list of questions that I want each of Jay and my parents to answer, I’m hoping they will. I have toyed with this idea for years and it comes from a book I found shortly after my Grandma Morley passed away. As we were going through her books, I found one called ‘Grandma’s Book’ and in it were a series of questions and spots for pictures – and my Grandma had answered them all and included many, many pictures from her childhood. I learned so much about her from that book and was so grateful to have it, but also felt kind of sad that I had never asked her some of those questions myself. I did a better job asking my Papa some of these questions, but not as good a job as I would have liked – and he didn’t leave a book full of answers. So I’m now hoping that my current project will elicit positive responses from the four who will be asked to respond – I hope they spend some time on it too. Writing out the answers to a bunch of questions seems a bit like filling out paper work, maybe a voice recorder would be better… or a video camera… 
but I would somehow like to preserve that information, those memories, selfishly for me as well as for any wee ones who may one day call them grandparents.
This weekend marked the end of my concert season. We had Saturday and Sunday shows and both went well. Slanky, Ekbo, Mychellita, et. al., attended and, again, I thank them for their continued support. It’s nice to have fans, if I can call them that.
I’m finding that now more than ever, I get so much enjoyment out of playing in an ensemble. I’m sure part of it is that there are less things that are really just my own since a little guy accompanies me everywhere I go these days. But, part of it is also the feeling that there’s something out there I’m talented at (or at least competent enough that I don’t feel completely embarrassed) and I’m actually pursuing it. Our normal season is over now but I joined a quartet that will be playing once in May so I’m stretching things out a little longer.
I don’t have any pictures from the concerts but, randomly, I saw this car with a huge dog hanging out the window both times I drove up to Capital Hill for the show. The second time I got a shot of him, though it doesn’t do much justice to the magnitude of that dude’s head. He was huge!
Big Dog - Capital Hill
It was just so random to see him twice, it gave me a sense of the full circle of the weekend.
i started walking in the mornings about a month ago to help speed along my body’s return to it’s normal weight. but it’s turned out to be good for many other reasons. it’s very peaceful to be out in the mornings before most anyone else is up. peaceful is a good way to start off the mornings, which are usually a frantic rush to get everyone ready to go for the day. i need a little zen before being inundated with chaos.
the lake is always so beautiful, even when i get rained on like i did today. which makes me really appreciate living where we do. something i have a hard time doing way too often! well anyway, i’m just going to leave you with a picture i took today. i’ve been meaning to post about my morning walks for weeks, and then today was going to be the day, and i was going to really put some thought behind my words, but now it’s suddenly 11:30pm, and i’m going to be up for the day in five hours, so am feeling all hurried. however, i am going to post anyway because i refuse to put it off any longer!
have you guys seen these super cool t-shirts for kids and adults from threadless? i think i’m in love. especially like the wishless tee, the fail tee, quit howling at me tee, the Loch Ness Imposter tee, and—nevermind. i could go on quite a while. anyway, lots of them are on sale until the end of the month!! almost tempted to do away with my long standing rule about not wearing t-shirts except for working out.
I’ve been feeling less creative with my cooking lately and I’ve been trying to focus more on local ingredients and fresh stuff but instead of going out and buying new cookbooks I decided it’d be a good thing to just check them out of the library instead. Novel thought, huh? My mind works with amazing speed and grandeur these days, as you can tell. I’m going to try and actually cook some recipes out of these books I get, instead of just reading them and thinking the recipes sound good.
I already own a lot of cookbooks. And really, I use like 3 of them. That got me to thinking that I should post some recipes of stuff I actually do cook from cookbooks and I should get you all to do the same. What’s the single-most well used recipe you have? Can you even name one? If so, post it! It’ll save me some money and trips to the library!
Daffodowndilly
She wore her yellow sun-bonnet,
She wore her greenest gown;
She turned to the south wind
And curtsied up and down.
She turned to the sunlight
And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbour:
“Winter is dead.”
-AA Milne
Here’s what it looks like around Morges:
tree branches getting ready for leaves
poor rowan was so excited to go to the beach and play with the beach toys on the first day of spring. but it was too windy. the kind of windy that takes a lot of effort to walk against and blows dirt into your eyes.
pretty pink blossoms.
the sun’s been out so much, i finally got some sunglasses for my little vampire, who screams like a banshee anytime the sun shines in her eyes.
i’ve been wanting to make an easter egg tree for years, and this is the year i’m actually going to do it! the branches are all ready, i just need to get enough eggs. niamh’s allergy is slowing me down a bit, but i’ve got some baking planned for this weekend!
the chocolate eggs in this boulangerie window display look like they’re dressed up to dance at a vegas show.
May the blessing of light be on you—
light without and light within.
May the blessed sunlight shine on you
and warm your heart
till it glows like a great peat fire.
i won’t steal pat’s thunder by posting too much about our day. we had our american neighbors over for dinner. it turned out quite nice overall, but there were a few stressful moments. will i ever be too old to call my mom in tears so that she can bail me out of impending disaster (in this case cooking)? no, i don’t think i will.
i made these cute little boxes for the kids and filled them with gold chocolate coins.
found the template at this super cool website called The Toymaker that has all sorts of little paper toys you can make for kids. love it!
hope you all are having a good saint patrick’s day!
i can’t believe that muriel will be ready for solid food in just one month. crazy! i have this rather desperate, unrealistic hope that eating real food will help her sleep at night…it didn’t work with the other two, but who knows. this time could be different, right? niamh has finally learned how to say muriel’s name, before she’d just been saying “baby” or “little miss”. rowan, a couple of weeks ago, said that “muriel is my best baby ever!”
today:
a couple of days ago:
I don’t watch the Daily Show very often, not because I don’t like it, but I just don’t really think about putting it in the rotation. It’s damn funny but for some reason I always forget that it’s on. Anyway. I just watched these clips (they take a while) and I have to say the first one especially is pretty darn depressing. I realize the Daily Show is meant to be comedy. But isn’t it sad that there’s so much truth to what Jon Stewart says? Why is a comedian so much more intelligent than like 90% of the news pundits out there?
if you are of the male persuasion you may want to just skip right on over this post. i’ve been debating for a couple of weeks if this subject is TMI for the WWW (starting to feel like a valley girl…or whatever the current decade’s equivalent is). however, much of my modesty is gone after giving birth to three children. plus it’s just so darn interesting and important, every single woman needs to know about it!!! and i don’t think most do.
anyway–within a couple hours of muriel’s birth my doctor had written me a prescription for physical therapy sessions. i assumed that this was because the last two babies i birthed had been rather large. after several months of procrastinating (i was supposed to start the PT six weeks postpartum) i finally found a therapist relatively close by who was a) a woman (because i haven’t lost all modesty) and b) spoke english fluently.
i came back from my first appointment completely…i don’t know…flabbergasted, wowed, amazed, taken aback, bowled over, dumbfounded, all of the above? you get the picture. it was extremely eye opening. first of all my therapist, barbara, explained that every single woman in switzerland who gives birth goes to PT. or is at least prescribed it. whether the baby is big or small, whether the birth is vaginal or caesarean, all women need to go to physical therapy to learn how to prevent problems such as this and this after menopause. perhaps jodi or mychelle could explain the medical reasons behind everything, i’m not good at that stuff. but it has to do with the way the way all those muscles are arranged and the way hormones we have now, but won’t have after menopause, help keep everything strong.
in a nutshell:
-barbara is completely disgusted by the way our western society (she did not exclude europe!) expects woman to bounce back from childbirth so quickly. she said that the previously referenced problems are all completely preventable. that they shouldn’t be seen as a normal part of aging. that in societies where the postpartum woman is actually taken care of, such problems are non-existent.
-preventing the post-menopausal problems i mentioned requires a whole lifestyle change. a few sessions of PT won’t cut it.
-no running while breastfeeding. something about a combination of the hormones used to create breast milk and how jarring running is.
-no crunches. she said she gets lots of extremely thin, fit, teenage girls who are incontinent because of all the crunches they do. ? something about the way our stomach muscles are designed and…yeah. can’t explain it any more than that. she also says that they are terrible for your back. she has shown me a bunch of exercises that she says will provide support to the pelvic floor, make my stomach strong and flat as well (ha! we’ll see. about the flat part. i am certain #3 has permanently wrecked my stomach).
i think those are the main points that have stuck out to me so far. i wish i could explain it more clearly. writing it down, it doesn’t sound nearly as astounding it was to me after that first session. but hopefully i’ve at least gotten you interested enough that if (when) you’ve had a baby you’ll inquire about a reference for PT from your doctor! PT was not even mentioned by my doctor in the states. or was that just my OB? i guess i don’t have any experience outside of her, but it just seems like if PT was a routine part of postpartum care in the states, that it would be general knowledge, you know?