Usually having a sore, aching stomach is a cause for concern or at least annoyance. It might make you call in sick to work or it might make you lie down for awhile. Maybe you heat up a hot water bottle.
But other times, an aching stomach is a good thing. It’s a wonderful thing, for instance, when it hurts this much because you’ve spent hours laughing until you cry and wrap your arms around your middle, doubled over on the couch.
It’s the sign of a good Saturday when you have family over for dinner and to hang out for the evening and your eyes are streaming, your throat is sore, and your stomach is begging you to just stop laughing for five minutes.
I hope your Saturday was filled with the good kind of sore stomach too.
Oh my goodness, it’s Friday, hooray! This week was wonderful, I had one of my best weeks at work thus far and other than the craziness of the commute during Snowpocalypse Part One, there was nothing particularly awful or annoying. That being said I have been pretty tired lately.
It’s probably because with the time that I get home I find it difficult to get to bed before midnight. Even when I’m tired I need time to unwind. I get in at 9:30, check on the kids (one of whom is always sleeping and one of whom is usually not), get changed, make their lunches, and then the next thing I know it’s already 10 pm.
Once I get into bed somewhere between midnight and 12:30, I tend to fall asleep within a few minutes – sleep is rarely a problem once my head is on the pillow – but then 7:15 comes before I know it and my alarm is ringing to tell me that I have to get the kids up shortly to get them ready for school.
It’s enough sleep that I’m not exhausted but I’m frequently vaguely tired. As a result I’m looking forward to two whole days of relaxing, or at least as much as you can get with two young kids. They didn’t go to bed until after 10 tonight, waiting up for me to get home, so they’ll sleep in a little bit at least, and even if I get up sooner than I’d like at least I can stay in my pajamas.
We have tentative plans for Saturday evening but overall it’s not supposed to be a crazily busy weekend. We may put up the tree this weekend and start decorating, and I have some Christmas crafts for the kids to do, but in general I’m planning on a whole lot of rejuvenation.
My day started off wonky. When I got downtown I stopped in a store and I bought myself some granola bars for my snack times and to have change for the bus. As the woman handed me my change I came very close to wishing her a nice weekend and then I remembered that it was only Thursday and I must get up early tomorrow morning to get the kids ready for school. I had had nice thoughts of sleeping in a bit, making pancakes for breakfast, and then lazing about on the couch with my Kindle. Alas. Only one more day.
Anyway. I wanted to wish all my American friends a happy Thanksgiving. Although we had ours last month up here in Canuckistan, I am always envious when I know that millions of people just below the border are eating turkey dinners with cranberries and stuffing.
Despite the fact that I’m not American and already had Thanksgiving, I am still grateful for many things. In no particular order here are just a handful of many of those things:
My family, and that includes the family in this house, my own family, my extended family, and the friends that just feel like family.
Having a great job in an amazing company when I know not everyone has that. I’m human and I have my days where I would rather just stay home in my pajamas than go to work but I do enjoy what I do, I’m getting better at it every day, and I love the people I work with and for.
Living here. I miss so many people and even a few things from back home but this is home now and I really do love it here.
Yoga and everything it does for me.
This glass of red wine I’m enjoying right now.
Tim Horton’s ridiculously delicious ginger molasses cookies.
Bus schedules that were back to normal so that I was able to get to work nice and early (so I can eat lunch before I start) and got home by 9:25.
A relaxing weekend ahead, looking for the next best book to read.
Good lord. What a day. I (apparently foolishly!) believed that I’d be okay for getting to work and back today because of my shift and the fact that I don’t travel during rush hour. HAHAHA. Yeah right. It didn’t look so bad when I left for work this morning when I snapped this photo.
Except I then proceeded to wait for over 40 minutes for a bus that should have been there five minutes after I arrived at my bus stop. Then we had such slippery conditions that we essentially slid all the way down a steep hill (which was as terrifying as it sounds and I think it’s a strong testament to my commitment to my job that I didn’t immediately get off and take the other bus back home) and the driving was very slow from there on out. They also ended up closing streets and re-routing bus lines so that in the end what should normally be a 40-minute commute from my front door to the office ended up taking almost two hours. I was 20 minutes late but I wasn’t the only one so it was no big deal.
I was glad to be at work because we had a big company event this afternoon, however leaving work ended up being no better than trying to get there this morning. I walked with a co-worker to the bus terminal where we waited for one of our two buses and none ever came. A friendly bus driver on a different route offered his bus to the two of us and four other people waiting so that we could get out of the cold until his shift started. We all sat on the bus chatting (yes, we’re Maritimers, all sitting around talking to total strangers, perfectly comfortable!), and then in the end we decided to just take that bus to the next terminal rather than standing out in the freezing rain and cold for our usual bus choices.
Once at the terminal we stood inside a (warm, thankfully) shelter for what felt like eons, waiting for one of our buses to finally come. I’m pretty sure we saw every single bus on the Halifax side go by except one that would take us home.
Just when we were starting to give up any hope at all, a girl that we had met while sitting at the first terminal came running over, happy to see we were still there. She said she was fed up and was taking a cab home, and did we want to split the cost and go with her. It turned out she lives just up the street from me and my friend from work lives about two minutes past her so we immediately agreed, hopped in the taxi she had called, and I was home about five minutes later.
All in all, I finished work at 8:30 and got home at 10:05. Had we not taken the taxi I doubt we would have been home until at least 10:30. I have never been so happy to come home and change into flannel pajamas and a fuzzy robe.
Here’s hoping that tomorrow is a better weather and commuting day.
After a fairly mild fall season our temperatures have been dropping including mornings like this one where it was only -5C* and as of tomorrow we’ll be hitting the real “winter is coming” milestone. According to the weather reports – and the weather warnings – we’re slated to get anywhere from 15 to 30 centimeters of snow across our area.
I’m not thrilled, and I’m sure that’s no surprise. Despite all my years of living in this country I still can’t seem to embrace the winter season but it’s inevitable that it will hit us at some point. At this point I’m really grateful for the fact that I work an off-shift. The morning should be okay, I don’t think it’s supposed to start snowing until the afternoon. However, having seen how everyone forgets how to drive the second a few flakes fall from the sky I know that the rush hour traffic on the way home could be a bit of a nightmare. By the time I’m on my way home it should have died down and most people will be at home and hopefully just staying there so that we can get where we’re going.
Winter boots for everyone tomorrow!
*Despite the fact that it was cold out I saw a kid run by in SHORTS. If it was someone jogging it would have been excusable but it was just a random kid. If one of my kids tried to get out of the house in shorts in this kind of weather I’d flip out and make them change!
I think I’ve mentioned this before but because of the fun and never dull anxiety issues that I deal with regularly, I sometimes get very anxious before I have to leave for work. I don’t even really know why, nothing horrible has ever happened to me on the bus, I’m fine when I get to work, and I enjoy my job so there’s no reason to be right on the edge of having a full-blown panic attack.
However, that doesn’t mean my brain doesn’t decide to throw me under the bus. You know, so to speak.
There are two things that help me. One, Rescue Remedy is my friend. It’s an all natural product that comes in drops or spray and helps to calm nerves so I take some of that before getting on the bus. It does a lot to dial it down but even more than that I think that my habit of meditating on the bus has made it so much better.
When I first started yoga I kind of shrugged over the meditation aspect. It wasn’t that I thought it couldn’t work or be beneficial, I just didn’t think I could do it. And truth be told, if I sit or lie down all by myself with my breathing I will either find myself thinking about the latest episode of The Walking Dead or I’ll fall asleep. However, if I do a guided meditation I have something to concentrate on and I do really well with it. I still sometimes doze off for a split second but overall it works for me.
Meditation isn’t necessarily something you’re supposed to do on the bus, I suppose. It’s generally suggested that you do it when you’re all alone with no distractions to get in your way. That’s all well and good but the fact of the matter is that I need it most on the bus so I do the best I can. People probably think I’m sleeping on the bus but I’m not – I’m just meditating!
If you find yourself stressed out and in need of some meditation as well, I have a few suggestions for you.
One is a guided meditation from Dashama, my very first yoga teacher who taught me so much. She does a meditation that is almost 20 minutes long and she offers it up from time to time for free with her newsletter.
Another is this fabulous anti-anxiety meditation that I found on YouTube. It’s amazing and by the time it’s over I’m usually calm and mildly limp, practically incapable of getting worked up.
I have a good one from Deepak Chopra that is sadly under five minutes but it’s really nice even if it’s short. It’s this one:
I particularly love the line “wherever you go, bring the whole Universe with you.”
Finally, and not everyone will be into this, I enjoy doing a chakra balancing meditation. I always kind of scoffed at chakras until I got Dashama’s DVD and did the chakra meditation she has on there; the way I felt afterwards, both energized and relaxed was enough to convince me. I found this good meditation on YouTube and it’s quite helpful if you’re open to that.
Of course my preferred method of meditating is yoga; I like getting lost in the movement and breathing of a nice vinyasa flow. It’s not like I can really do a good downward facing dog or crow pose on the bus though, so meditating with my iPod will have to do!
Today, although I tried to be in denial, Breanna went and turned six years old. When she woke up, the first thing out of her mouth after stretching and looking down at herself was, “I didn’t grow!” I guess she was expecting to actively grow in a noticeable way but I assured her that based on the things she’s been outgrowing lately she has indeed been growing!
This afternoon we had some family over to celebrate her special day with supper (spaghetti, garlic bread, and salad), cake, and good times. She was very eager to open her gifts but she managed to hold off until after we ate – but before the cake!
She got some very nice gifts including cards with money to buy her own presents, a cute outfit, a bathrobe, some DVDs, and a dinosaur Play-Doh kit. Hayley gave her a pink Yoshi doll which she loves, and George and I got her Just Dance 3 for the Wii; Breanna loves to dance and enjoyed the first one so she was very excited to get this version.
Breanna had asked for a chocolate cake from the store so we got her one with her name on it and she was very proud to have us all sing to her and bring it lit up for her to blow the candles out.
After people left I went down into the basement with the kids and the three of us played four rounds of the new Wii game and although I did win twice, Breanna kicked ass and scored more than double what I did on one of them. I’ll bet she’ll be playing it after school tomorrow.
Six years ago I went through a fast labour that was under four hours from start to finish and I always said that Breanna was just too eager to get on with life to wait any longer. That was more or less the way she treated today – too eager to have fun to bother with sitting around waiting for fun to come to her.
It was a good day. Breanna said it was the best birthday ever. That’s good enough for me.
Tonight we ate an early dinner and then headed out right at 5 pm with a good friend of ours and his kids so we could catch the Halifax Parade of Lights which is essentially a Christmas parade. It’s filled with floats, marching bands, majorettes (I *love* majorettes, I always wanted to be one when I was a kid!), and of course the Big Guy, Santa Claus.
It was a great night for our first parade in Halifax. It wasn’t too cold, just comfortable for the most part. I was a little chilly by the end of the parade but overall it was very nice. There was one “huh?!” moment though. They had a float sponsored by one of the fitness places go by and they were pole dancing. I’m no prude whatsoever, believe me, but pole dancing in a parade for kids and families? Really?!
The kids had a blast. They sat with their friends on the curb and watched everything go by. Hayley got a candy cane from one of the floats and Breanna got a hug from Cookie Monster, so all was good. And much to my amusement and glee there was a Stormtrooper doing the Running Man. That just pretty much filled me with joy.
And much joy was also had courtesy of the Grinch and Kermit the Frog, consecutively.
Also, every once in awhile I see a person on the street that makes me wish I could get over my shyness and just go up and ask them if I could schedule a whole photo shoot with them. This Native American girl in a Mic’Maq float was one of them. She was just so photogenic and beautiful that I would love to spend an hour taking pictures of her. And the man in the amazing traditional costume behind her for that matter.
Next week there will the the lighting of the big tree downtown and I’m not sure if we’ll go or not; they figure that about 100,000 people showed up for the parade, and I can’t imagine a large crowd showing up in one small park for a tree lighting, but we’ll see. In the meantime I had a lot of fun tonight and took almost 200 pictures. Good times! 🙂
1. It’s officially the weekend now.
2. Exceeding my monthly work goals and the month isn’t even over yet.
3. A new episode of “Blue Bloods” on tv.
4. A glass of wine and some cheese to enjoy while watching it.
5. Planning a nice weekend of seeing the Santa parade and celebrating Breanna’s 6th (!!!) birthday on Sunday.
6. A nice call home to my parents this evening.
7. A chance to do some longer yoga routines than I can do during the week.
8. The thought of sleeping in past my usual 7:30 mornings for two whole days!
A few days ago I saw an intriguing recipe that required a large food processor. I have a smaller one that works really well for chopping up onions, garlic, and peppers for stuff but it wasn’t big enough for the recipe and it doesn’t have the multiple blades, so I sent George a link for a food processor saying that I’d like to get it at some point. I also have some grand plans to chop up a metric ton of vegetables for stir-frying.
And so today I was pleasantly surprised to get to come home to that very food processor!
It’s a shame that it’s not quite the weekend yet because I won’t have time to play with it until then but it is only a little longer. Then I can try out the recipe I saw (basically it’s a raw food recipe that uses cauliflower to imitate mashed potatoes), and I also want to try out a recipe in the manual for potatoes au gratin. I can make pizza dough in there too with the dough blade and that would be fun to try.
I’ve got a few ideas already but what’s your favorite thing to do and make with a food processor? Please share!
