Just regular folks.

Made some cookies 🙂

Today is Monday – the first day of Edda’s last spring break. Now that the weather has turned to spring, I really feel the last-ness of Edda’s public schooling. We are winding down to graduation and the end of her being a kid. We’ve been so lucky – MCPS came through for us and saw us through Edda’s childhood – esp her high school team which has been in place since Edda was 14 – what a great team, through covid, through many, many challenges – they showed up for Edda everyday. I know that there are teachers and admins who are moving on after this school year – to other positions within the county, so it feels extra like the end of an era.

Elka and I went to the dog park yesterday to be outside.

Friday Vibes was Decades Dance party night PLUS Chipotle. We could not miss it.

I ran into a mom who recognized me from when the kids were three years old. It’s pretty cool to have those connections happen.

Jeremy’s such a good father – he spent a lot of the night dancing with Edda to YMCA, I Will Survive and other great dance classics.

Saturday – Megan and I volunteered at Main Street for one of their art events. Megan had made like 40 of these pens and let me pick out a package.

So, I find myself often – weirdly – at art events where I have a few hours to paint something. This went terribly at the yoga retreat, I totally didn’t know what to paint. But this time – I prepped by watching some youtube videos about how to paint flowers in acrylic.

So, it turned out…OK. Not terrible. These paintings are going in a gallery with sale prices. I priced mine for $45. I should buy it back myself, lol.

Felix, excitedly, got invited to his cousin’s Rachel’s birthday party bash and he spent the afternoon making cinnamon buns. They were delicious!

This morning, I skipped church (because the choir was not performing) and went with Edda to practice my snatch. So I think I have the form down not too terribly, now the only instruction is to get…stronger. FYI, I can snatch 15 kg which is the weight of a toddler or a bag of potatoes.

Jeremy was out of town for two dinners (Kansas City)- and Ginny is also out of town on personal business – so it was just me, Edda and Felix for dinner early in the week. Jeremy did a wonderful and kind thing and made Edda’s lunches for when he’d be gone and left me very simple dinners to make. He’s been making these pre-marinated chicken thighs from Whole Foods and told me I needed two packages to feed three people. I was like….ok? Thinking that there were only four in the package, but there were FIVE. So…five chicken thighs for three people? I mean, I knew I’d eat only one, Edda would eat one and then Felix would eat…more than three? Did we really need that much meat? Anyways, I texted this photo to Jeremy while he was in the air (unable to get my text) saying…really? This is not enough for three people? Turns out, Megan came over for dinner and we still only needed the one package. But like a dutiful sous chef, I did make the 2nd package – so ten chicken thighs for the original three people. Which meant that we had the exact same dinner the next night – cold with also one chicken thigh leftover still sitting in the fridge right now.

We are on some crazy protein kick in the house right now, Felix is determined to gain muscle – you can see the creatine and the protein powder next to the chicken tray. Jeremy is into it too. I don’t focus so much on getting a gram per pound of body weight, but I try to cut out carbs in the house which makes the share of calories of my diet coming from protein higher. Anyways, I don’t believe in protein, I believe in fiber. More veggies people! Balanced with protein.

Kansas City was good to Jeremy – though he ate no BBQ nor did he really see anything outside. He stayed in the hotel the conference was in.

I know everyone is watching White Lotus, but I’m not. Mainly because I’m too cheap to subscribe. Instead of thinking I’m missing out (which I am), I’m, instead, deciding to fight the algorithm. HAHAHa.

Because I’m into vocal music and I’m completely tapped out on Glee club-type a capella, I’ve been listening a lot to the Rachmaninoff’s Vigil I went to see a few weeks ago. I’m also delighted to find myself listening to: Caroline Shaw’s ‘Partita for 8 Voices’ | Music on Main. So interesting, I did not know about this person before yesterday.

And to go the other direction, the movie I’m watching is Captain America: Winter Soldier which, I hear, is one of the best MCU movies out there, which…I think is a low bar. But I’m still, slowly, working on a movie watching challenge and this week’s theme is a movie with a season (Spring, Summer, Winter or Fall) in the title.

On Friday we went to Friday Night Vibes with Edda. The weather was lovely as was the company. I really enjoyed my pasta dinner – Jeremy was not impressed. haha, I think because I’m restricting carbs in the house, I look forward to any pasta dish outside of the house no matter how mediocre it may be.

My guitar teacher showing off his Gulf of Mexico shirt. We are learning a new song my Mumford & sons.

Introducing Felix to Domino’s pizza. We got it delivered, I don’t think I’ve had dominos since college. Or at least, my fondest memories are of Domino’s in college.

So much music yesterday – guitar lesson in the morning and then to choir all afternoon where we recorded three pieces for general assembly in a few months with over 100 singers from congregations from all over the region which felt amazing, really. I’m enjoying this all, but I haven’t really had time to practice, I’m just winging it. Here’s a recording of just our choir from a few weeks ago. Fun.

Let’s keep this light. I’m enjoying renting clothes. The necklace is from an accessories exchange party I went to a few weeks ago where you bring all the random accessories you have and you trade. You can bring as much or as little as you like and there is no rule for equal exchange. So I got a lot of necklaces to experiment with.

So there is some interest in this clothing rental stuff. It’s completely frivolous and is what I consider “a waste of money” and I feel somewhat guilty of indulging in this, but now it’s been almost a year I’ve done it and I really love it and it’s taught me a lot about how I enjoy fashion. It’s Rent the Runway – I pay about $150 a month for 10 pieces of clothing, 5 at a time, 2 shipments. Shipping and cleaning is all included. If you get a little snag or stain, you don’t get charged for them. They are surprisingly good at guessing which size fits you and you can read the reviews from other renters to figure it out a little more for yourself.

What I’ve learned is that I like different clothes all the time. Rental is perfect for me because I wear clothes for two, three or five times over half a month and then I never wear them again. You can buy stuff you like at a discount and I did that a few times, but then I realized I can’t buy everything I like, because 1. it’s expensive even at a discount and 2. my closet will burst.

So the advice I’d been trying to follow my entire life is to by “timeless” or “classic” pieces of clothing – supposed to be high quality and last a long time is/was basically crap for my personality. I could never do this because I never wanted to spend more than $50 for a piece of clothing and then, if you do, you have a whole lot of plain black pants, grey sweaters and brown shoes and a sturdy leather bag. Which I did like and is totally fine, but it turns out, I like completely funky pieces of clothing, all in bright colors that don’t match anything.

I actually also found out that I don’t mind being a little bit more dressed up than anyone else. I like it when people enjoy the outfits I wear which they do all the time and I thought I didn’t want to stand out or be noticed and, actually, it’s nice to stand out and be noticed – I usually fess up that I rent my clothing. It’s a lot of FUN. Like so much more fun than I thought it would be. This is a very surprising thing that I found out about me that I would have never known. Do I care about fashion? I never did, but now I do. I watch youtube videos about fashion and how to dress. SO STRANGE. (the #1 tip I have is monochromatic dressing. Dress in all one color from head to toe, shoes and accessories included. Doesn’t matter if they exactly match, just dress in all blues or all yellows or all reds or all whatever – try to mix textures or materials or shape, but the same color. You’ll look fantastic. #2 tip is silhouette – mix them – tight pants, billowy top or the other way around, baggy pants and form fitting top). For a long, long time (and the pandemic did not help), I was very content to wear my pajamas to the grocery store. And when I’m stressed out, I’ll still go back to wearing PJs all day. Even though comfort is my #1 goal and even if all the clothes I rent have elastic waistbands and/or fit perfectly, nothing, absolutely nothing is as comfy as a set of sweatpants and a sweatshirt over a beloved soft T shirt & no bra.

I declare that I can back squat my body weight – which was a goal I’ve been trying to reach since last fall. It’s been very slow going, but you keep adding 5 pounds at a time, or even 2.5 pounds at a time, and you can get there. Thrilled! If I can keep that and do a few pullups, I’d be…superwoman. I should start trying to do the pullups. I’ve been able to do one in the past – premenopause. I’ll think about it.

My entire workout routine changed at the beginning of the year because my interests are changing.

I was probably spending about 90 minutes most days working out (mainly running) if you count the actual working out part, the getting ready to workout and the showering afterwards and also, slightly, the procrastination that happened at the beginning of each workout – 10 min of phone scrolling or just staring at the ceiling thinking “I don’t want to workout” <- yes, this happens all the time even when you like to workout. And maybe 3 hours on a Sunday because I had to drive to the long run place and then actually do the long run. I’ve done this for more than 10 years now, I don’t know how I found the time to do it (literally, I look back and think…I was a crazy person), I amazed I’ve been so consistent for so long – thanks a lot to Paul, my coach to help me get faster and learn to love running. And to support this – I would often throw in a 20 min yoga session most nights to stretch out.

But for whatever reason, I needed to change this amount of time working out. I needed to cut the time because 1. I was adding more socialization into my life, 2. I needed about 30 minutes a day to practice music and a little more time to actually go to lessons, rehearsals and performances (this is not consistent, right now), 3. Ginny, our weekday night caregiver, had a baby in January and went on maternity leave and so I did a lot of evening care for Edda and 4. I want some time to literally…do nothing (which is hard for me).

I actually did not want to give up the time running, I wanted to add all the other stuff in my life without giving that up – because, honestly I felt like I’m not parenting young kids anymore, it should open up vast amounts of time, and it did, but I rapidly filled up that time with random stuff. And then I was trying to do all of that stuff, but then I decided to just relax about the whole thing.

Anyways, I’m just telling you that I slashed the workouts to about 45 minutes everyday – and I’m trying to do the entire getting ready/working out/showering part to be only an hour of my day. I rotate through three activities – running, yoga and strength. So I’ve gone from running like 20-25 miles a week to like 6.5? Feels weird. I’m actually really enjoying the 45 minute yoga sessions which, of all three disciplines, I feel like I have the most natural talent for and is great because there are really no goals in yoga. I’ve not done such long yoga sessions regularly ever. And the strength sessions are supported by Ward, who is teaching me to Olympic lift.

I feel lucky/grateful that my body is working well. You never, never know when that is going to be not true. <3

A busy weekend – spent a lot of Friday night and Saturday day cooking for fellowship dinner at church on Saturday night. The theme of our table was the Roaring 20s. So I made a pineapple upside down cake – which reminded me of the cakes that my mom made all the time when I was little and I asked Jeremy to make green beans and stuffed mushrooms (apparently all very popular in the 1920s).

I think I overcooked the cake just a *tiny* bit. A little more dry than I’d have liked it to be, but it all got eaten which, I suppose is the best outcome. It looks good?

I, of course, did not get any photos of the party itself. But it was fun. Felix came and provided childcare, we met lots of new people I hadn’t talked to before. Jeremy came to dinner, which is unusual for him and he and Edda ate dinner and then ducked out early to head on home.

The next day, I made (or really, baked) these guava/cheese that Dani’s mom gifted us for Edda’s birthday. Completely delicious and savory/sweet.

I think I erred on the other side this time and they are ever so slightly underdone. But I was afraid of burning them!