Hey kids,
Today was a stay-at-home day. I started a chicken curry in the slow cooker right after breakfast, so the house smelled foreign and exotic all day. Also made a batch of crinkle-top chocolate cookies around midday, and a batch of rosemary cheddar biscuits right before dinner. I meant to take photos of everything I made today, but the only thing that turned out to be even the least photogenic was the cookies, above.
Wavy, you and I were at odds most of the day. There seemed to be a read-only conduit in your head today, and no matter what I said to you today, or asked of you, or demanded of you, I couldn't get through. I explained to you a million times, patiently at first, then increasingly more impatient, why I can't just give you Tylenol because you ask for it. No matter how many times I asked you not to pick your nose, or to clean up your mess, or to not spill, blah blah blah... there was a huge disconnect between my mouth and your ears. Which made for a tense day. I apologize if things got out of hand today. I have to remind myself that you are only three. Sometimes you look and act older, and I forget. We do continue to bond in the kitchen, though. You helped me cut up veggies for the curry, and you sifted the ingredients for the cookies and the biscuits. You didn't much care for the actual curry, though, when it came time to eat it. Jakob didn't either. But sometimes grown-ups just have to say, to hell with what I think the kids will or will not eat... I am in need of a spicy curry. Here you are last weekend, in full-on chef regalia:
So I have stopped/started smoking a number of times in the past year. Currently I am about a month smoke-free. That last bout of bronchitis had me to the point where I didn't even want one, so I am trying to ride it out one more time and see if I can turn it into an official quit.
I've explained here a while ago that I don't smoke a lot. I don't smoke at work. I don't smoke at home. I don't smoke on weekends. The one and only place that I smoke is when I am in the car by myself, driving to and from work. So it is easy enough to go through a four-day holiday weekend and not even think about a cigarette, but as soon as that first work day rolls around, and I jump in the car to go to work, the urge is like a punch in the gut. Which of course means that the whole ordeal is less of a nicotine addiction, but more of a behavioral thing. I have tried to lessen the urge by making sure I have something cold to drink on the way up the mountain, or I even eat my breakfast while I drive. I'm actually trying and succeeding a bit with deep-breathing exercises when the craving is strongest, which I've always read about, but have always scoffed at. When I arrive at work, I am craving-free for eight hours plus, then I have to face the same ordeal as I drive back down the mountain towards home.
But... this may all be moot soon, as I can't see myself at this job much longer. I know I am being a fatalist, but over the past few months, I have seen much more useful people than me being let go. Especially, as one by one, the projects that I work on and the people that I support, have been yanked out from beneath me. I feel at this point that I am tap dancing on a very creaky bridge that may collapse at any time. We'll see. I can't even bear to think something like, "If it's gonna happen, I wish it would go ahead and happen," cuz then it just might. But gawd... this waiting is just torture.
My goal this week is to walk around the park twice before work every morning. That translates to about a mile and a half. I tried it one day last week, and it wasn't too bad, and I still got to work at a decent time. So as long as the weather isn't too awful, I have no excuses. My other goal this week is to get my damn seeds planted. I cleared off the workbench in the garage and located my grow-lights, so it's just a matter of putting seed to little cups of earth. Just do it already! Here is what we will be cultivating and eventually snacking on this year:
Baby Eggplant
Hanging Basket Cucumber
Japanese Bunching Onion
Miniature Red Bell Pepper
Miniature Yellow Bell
Miniature Chocolate Bell
Silver Fir Tree Tomato
Siberian Tomato
Tomato, Red Robin
Yellow Canary Tomato
Sugar Snap Pea, Sugar Ann
Wonderberry (Whatever that is! We shall see!)
Wavy is finally old enough this year to not snatch everything out of the ground, which she was prone to do at this time last year. Jakob, you had the same inclination when you were at that age. I had a tidy little garden when you were a harmless baby, skipped a year when you were Mr. Destructo, then had another nice one going the year after that. Then we threw Wavy into the mix and I had to skip another year. This year everyone is finally on the same page.
All right. Enough. Love you both, and good night.
And Glenn, I'm all self-conscious now that I know that I show up in your Google alerts whenever I press the "publish post" button.
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