Getting outta bed

This morning I STRUGGLED to think of a good enough reason to get out of bed.  Out of bed, there’s coffee, baking and pottering to be done, as well as an intellectually stimulating essay to write.  Today is bread baking day and I am even buying some yarn for a knitting project.  In bed, I was a bit bored, getting depressed and not feeling very cozy, yet I found myself pondering over whether or not coffee would be worth it?  Duh, of course it is!  I know it’s nicer to be up, doing all that fun stuff, than lying in bed where my head goes into all sorts of tangles, based around the one word: “why?” Now that I’m up and about, I’m visibly happier (to myself, if no one else – my coffee was delicious).  

 

Unfortunately, as winter looms, and the weather keeps getting cooler, it will probably get harder.  Please don’t get me wrong, the day we have kids and jobs and things that force me out, I will miss these days.  But at the moment, I am my sole motivator.  Every day.  And that intrinsic motivation is hard to maintain.  Ask any educator. 

Living on a shoestring

Since moving to the States, Jbird and I have been living on not-very-much.  One of the ways I make this work in our weekly budget is by measuring/weighing ingredients.  For example, a box of pasta suggests 56g/2oz per serving.  This does not seem like much when weighed but it’s plenty, especially if you have a thick sauce full of yummies.  We always have leftovers too so the box stretches to at least 12 meals.  I don’t buy the cheapest laundry detergent because it makes my skin disintegrate but I’m sure to only use up to the 1 on the measuring cup, even on a full load.

I want to assure you we also have margins in our weekly budget, or we’d probably explode.  I drink real coffee (every day, more than once a day).    I always get chocolate chips and our desserts are prolific.  Fruit and veges are a priority – but it’s also my priority to use what we buy. Every now and then we buy cream or bacon.  We just don’t use a whole packet of bacon in one sitting.  We get two lovely, crispy slices each.

The wonders of baking soda

I have known of the cleaning properties of baking soda since I was a young girl and my mother suggested it to remove tea stains from a tea cup when I was on dishes (I remember the kitchen and the moment quite vividly).  Recently, a friend mentioned that it’s all she uses to clean.  I had been using a vinegar cleaning solution from the supermarket which I wasn’t all together satisfied with.  Everything needed a lot of scrubbing and some marks just didn’t come off.  Our second-hand microwave always had an appearance of grime.

I was having issues with one of Jbird's shirts.  It's a black one and he needs it all the time in his line of work.  As with much needed shirts, it had a certain smell that wouldn't seem to go away.  I had tried soaking it but it didn't seem to help.  Because I didn’t want to spend money on a stain remover and I knew this shirt had years of use left in it, I looked up natural solutions to removing stains.  Low and behold, a baking soda paste was recommended and it worked wonders.  When I used the left-over paste to clean the floor, I realised there would be no turning back.  Our microwave is now spotless.  Most of the spots on the hand-me-down kettle have come off.  My cloth tan handbag has been revamped.  With cloth, I tend to make up a paste and rub it into the troublesome spot, leave it for a couple hours then put it through a normal wash.  I'm not sure if the leaving it part is important or not but it's working!  You may find a salty residue is left behind on kitchen/bathroom surfaces but it’s easy enough to wipe away next time you get a chance.

It’s an old old remedy I’m happy to reproduce in our little house.  I wonder if you’ve discovered any similar remedies in your life? (If you do a google search, you'll find at least 100 uses for baking soda).

Preparing for winter

Our squash plant shrivelled up and died on us this week!  I knew, when it first sprouted, that it would be too late for any harvest.  It was growing fantastically though, covered in little yellow flowers and huge flat leaves, its finger-like vines winding themselves around the nearest plants.  It did not like the drop in temperature: we had our first frost on the weekend and though we’ve had some glorious, 21 degree C weather, it was also sitting at 3 degrees C last night.  Facebook tells me there was snow in Boston and Baltimore!

I brought in a huge bucket of green grape tomatoes in time for the frost and they’re ripening on our kitchen bench.  I remembered to collect them late at night by the light of a torch (I felt like the great tomato thief!) and I'm looking forward to making some traditional tomato sauce. I’ve also transplanted a basil plant and a mint plant to pots.  I hope they survive as I think I may have been a bit late in the season to do this.

It's time to find room for the rest of the pots inside the apartment.

A Brahms Special

Tonight, I went to a concert for a solo violist, Robert Diaz.  I had no idea what his program would be but before I went I said to Jbird “Wouldn’t it be neat if he played the Brahms Sonata I used to play? I’ve never heard it live.”  Well.  It was a Brahms Sonata concert!  What a lovely surprise.  He played both viola sonatas and a violin one (transcribed for viola).  A sonata is really a conversation between the pianist and instrumentalist.  Now that I have a special interest in piano music, I can appreciate this more.  When I was 18, learning the piece, it was hard for me to hear the conversation as I was concentrating so hard on the notes and then on counting the rests.  Brahms wrote some doozies, these were originally written for the clarinet.  They’re incredibly lyrical and beautiful and they only get better the more you know them.  Look ‘em up!

Increasing the Yummliness

I’ve been meaning to make a plug for this great recipe search engine I use: yummly.com.

It works like the usual recipe websites (my fav. being allrecipes.com, second fav.: epicurious) except that it draws from all of those websites and displays a clear list of recipes that you can choose from, with a list of the ingredients you will need if you choose that recipe.  If you decide you don’t want to use a particular ingredient because you don’t have it, just right click on that ingredient and you can discard it.  This will whittle down what could have been a HUGE list of thousands.  The less specific your search, the more recipes you’ll be offered but it’s a great way to start brainstorming a meal.  When you choose your recipe, there is also the option to choose how many servings you’d like to make and it will do all the lovely maths for you.  The units of measurement seem very accessible (i.e.: no sticks of butter or packets of yeast).   I haven't yet used the columns on the left as Jbird and I eat basically anything but if you have an allergy or a dietary requirement, even a taste preference, yummly is ready to help. This site is fabulous and can be easily forgiven its lack of pretty pictures.

Tonsils, are you there?

For at least a week, maybe longer, I’ve felt as though I was getting food stuck at the very back of my throat.  At first I would try doing that rather uncivilised hoik at the back of my throat to get it out.  Then I’d blow my nose super hard.  Now I kind of squeeze the back of my throat over the lump. 

Since then, I commented on my friend’s fb feed about her tonsils being able to grow back if she gets them removed.  They do, by the way, my friend had his removed TWICE.  Today it dawned on me.  Maybe what I can feel isn’t food.  Maybe my tonsils have grown back!?  I had a look by the light of a torch and there are two round things back there I'm sure are tonsils.  Nobody really has a use for those little guys yet they can be removed and grow back.  I find this fascinating.  Now that I have solved the mystery, I can stop being irritated and get used to having something back there again.

We brought them back from the dead

We bought our very first American pot plant – a kind of burgundy/green creeper – for our first apartment.  I wouldn't let Jbird get any more, that apartment was too small and too depressing.  Let's call it the cave from now on.  Luckily we had so much light in our next apartment, I didn't know what to do with it, and I became a pot-plant-aholic. 

That first poor plant was not looked after very well and it grew soft and weak from being indoors.  It was down to being a stem stuck in some dirt with four leaves for A YEAR. It would not die and it would not grow.  Since I’ve had it here, outdoors and in the sun, it’s grown lovely and healthy into five different plants (at least).  It's all ready to come in and keep our apartment cheery (and the air nice and clean) for the winter.  I hope the dry, still apartment air doesn't shock it too much!

An exciting update: the Meyer Lemon tree which was a bare stick with a few leaves that were falling off and had been overtaken by the capsicum plant (this was mentioned in a previous post - tree spotting).  It recently DOUBLED its leaf population, from 12 to 24. There are early signs of more new growth <phew>.  Lemons next year?  Here’s hoping!

SHHHHH...don't tell!!

World cup fever hasn’t really made it to Bloomington, Indiana.  The timing is all off as the games play in the early hours of the morning here.  Jbird has been able to watch one pre-recorded game on a t.v. screen and we’ve watched two others and highlights, more than 72 hours after the original screening (the earliest you can watch them besides getting up to watch live), from the internet.  Our Scottish friend has paid for the cable channel which shows some of the games and he has recorded the final for us to watch this afternoon.  That means no email, no facebook, no radio ALL DAY.  <What a lovely reprieve>.  I have made chocolate éclairs for the French and vanilla cupcakes with chocolate icing and hopefully a white silver fern and/or kiwi birds iced on top (not yet completed) for our All Blacks. 

Jbird, unfortunately, just went on our gmail account to call his sister about church this morning and the inevitable has happened.  Someone emailed (to congratulate? Condole?): he read the results in their subject line!!  His reaction is awful (i.e.: it was explosive and now whatever he says is leading and it’s got me all in a tither).  The first disastrous moment is over and I think I might make it to 3pm.  He’s super disappointed but I’m glad it wasn’t me!

Fattening the Calf

Tonight, I realised I had a bunch of Korean type ingredients all on hand, waiting to be used: spring onions, thinly sliced beef, baby bok choy, sesame seeds, sesame oil, snow peas.  Even a tub of kimchi!  I NEVER have that stuff!  The ingredients were screaming at me to make beef bulgogi.  Beef bulgogi is always best when you can just keep eating it so I made a lovely large mound and then quickly steamed/fried the veges (adding broccoli too).  You can get the recipe here: http://www.koreanhomefood.com/?p=138 I used my cast iron pan as the bbq/grill. 

I tried to leave lots out for Jbird, he's all skin and bone at the moment from biking to and from school a couple times a day, but it was hard to stop guzzling.  My stomach kind of aches...but it was so good.  

The legacy that we leave

I heard a great sermon a while back about how we all leave a legacy behind.  I think this is true of everybody.  I know that when my uncle died at 4 years old, his mother grieved for him for the rest of her life.  She wouldn’t talk about him but there was a picture of him on her mantle.  She grieved even though she had 5 living children (3 born after his death).   He affected all of his brothers and sisters and then his nieces and nephews in some way.  My cousins have even recently named their baby Hugh (I’m assuming because of him, they probably also thought it was a nice name). He was too young to do much but he left a legacy anyway, maybe because he was loved by someone.  It makes me think about my actions and what legacy I will leave depending on the choices I make.

When in Indy...

Last week I got a very exciting coupon in the post: $20 off if I spend $49 or more at DSW (Discount Shoe Wharehouse).  It is a great store, with racks of sale shoes with further 30%, 40%, 50% or 60% off items ordered by size at the back (and that's where I beeline). Lots of lovely, cheap but good quality shoes.  Unfortunately, there are no DSWs in Bloomington.  LUCKILY we were going to Indy so Jbird suggested we look at the DSW there.  I found two pairs of Roxy (! fav. surf label).  I got some jandals, some cute boat shoes (very American of me) and some insoles.  Here’re the savings, if you’re as interested as the two people in my family were.  I spent $31.09.  My receipt tells me I saved $46.89.  Wowzers.

A defeaning silence

I should let myself get bored so that I can be creative.  We teachers often want to fill our teaching timetables with lots of productive things that keep the children 'learning', all the time.  Or simply busy work, to make us feel better about running out of productive things to do. 

I now believe that children will learn at a deeper level if they’re given challenging problems and the space to knuckle it out, to be frustrated.  A lot of the time (not every time), I look at children struggling and give them some kind of a clue, big or small, therefore taking away their opportunity to do something mentally challenging, some real, deep learning.  It’s my insecurities that make me do this: that giving them a chance to think silence can be deafening.

Thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Bird, Sr.!

For Jbird’s birthday this year, he got money for a piano.  We weren’t very good at accepting it and when we first got to Bloomington, we started looking around for el-cheapo uprights or top line electric keyboards.  However, the benefactors insisted we needed a more respectable piece of furniture in our lounge for this degree.  We do.  And we’re very, very grateful.

We became rather disheartened with the lack of decent pianos available to buy here in Bloomington so I did some asking around and we were informed of two great stores up in Indy (Indianapolis).  It took us nearly two months to get up there but we finally made it yesterday.  What’s that saying?  Veni Vedi Veci - We came, we saw, we conquered!  We are the proud owners of a shiny brand new Kawai Studio in mahogany, Model 506N.  

I’m looking forward to cashing in on some free piano lessons. Usually, I'm really familiar with Jbird's music.  I can't wait to hear what he's playing at the moment. 

Veni vedi veci actually means "I came, I saw, I conquered".  I think Julius Caesar was wrong when he said that, I bet all the minions did the work for him.

I'm taking my time

I’ve got this idea that I’ve been thinking about for a couple weeks and I really like it.  It came from all the reading I’ve been doing for a paper on issues in mathematics education, as well as a blog post I read from some smart mum living in Thailand.  I’m quite sorry it’s taken me so long to grasp this as it would’ve helped my teaching a lot, I think, as well as other things about other parts of my life. I was going to expand on it but I’ve decided to just state the idea and I’m sure it’ll come up again.  I'm ready to stop bowling on ahead. 

The idea is this: I should let myself get bored so that I can be creative. 

I never knew what I was missing

We have been really lucky: we have had beautifully warm, t-shirt and shorts type weather for the passed couple of weeks.  This week, fall came for real!  Suddenly there were leaves everywhere.  I was on pick up duty for a couple of tykes I look after which meant I had the privilege of driving around and really seeing the full glory.  

I have never seen so much colour.  One tree can be a rainbow in itself. Not just the oranges and browns I imagined but a whole display of pinks, yellows, reds and every green in between.  I can't believe how beautiful it is.  People and books have described it to me.  Baltimore also had a bit of this glory they call fall (but sooo much concrete in between).  Now I know why we only ever call it Autumn in Auckland, NZ.  Of course, I taught said tykes to look for the largest bundle of leaves and walk through it, enjoying the swish swish rustle beneath our feet. It took us f-or-ev-a to get to the car.

Raisins they are a rum-soaking

I’ve never been a big fan of Christmas Fruit Cake.  I mean, really.  Fruit.  Inside cake.  When it’s so good outside of cake...why would you?  But Jbird loves it, especially his Grandma’s recipe.  We even had to have it as one of the layers in our wedding cake.  

So for our two married Christmases, both away from mum (and Grandma), I have attempted to make him a successful fruitcake. I’ve even come to enjoy it!  It requires wrapping, slow cooking, rum soaking, and aging.  But I’ve always only added raisins, craisins, citrus peel and some chopped nuts (!).  “Nuts, Annabel!  Christmas cake doesn’t have nuts! That’s not how Grandma makes it.”  But that’s how I like it, none of that gooey fake cherry ick.  

Our tradition is to start it on boxing day – Christmas day already has too much food goodness going on.  Jbird can’t remember my fruit cakes (though I remember him enjoying them) and doesn't really complain, but this year I bought 400g of Christmas fruit mix for HIM.  With cherries and pineapple ickyness.  I’m fairly sure it will be very similar to how his Grandma made it.  They’re soaking in some rum for the required 24 hours with some raisins and craisins to balance it out a bit.  I’ve got nearly 10 weeks to age the cake if I make it tomorrow. It's the first year I've remembered to make it early enough to age as the websites tell me it’s meant to.

Cafe Bird

I drink coffee every day, twice a day.  Jbird doesn't - I cannot convince him to -  but he will have a cup of tea with me.  There’s something about the process of making and drinking that reminds me of companionship, even when drinking alone.  When I’m not working full time, I get the shakes after the second cup (and sometimes even the first).  So at the moment I only have one caffeinated coffee a day.  Espresso or plunger coffee (French press) are tied in preference.  I only drink coffee machine coffee if I'm desperate <ew>.  Plunger gives such a full, rich, thick flavour and the oils from the beans are an added treat.  Espresso - generally a cappuccino - is like a dessert.  We have an espresso maker but no plunger (unfortunately).  We got it for a steal AND its steamer works a treat.  Libby used to work in a cafe and she once told me (6 or 7 years ago) "never wank the milk".  I always always think about that, just 'cos it's funny.  My milk is getting better and I'm even starting to try some designs.

I find that if I make a really good coffee at home, I no longer crave one when we’re near a cafe – I’m saving a bundle! 

One Tomato, Two Tomato

A kind benefactor/ess who was probably the previous tenant in this apartment, grew a grape tomato plant (or perhaps merely dropped a tomato) along the south facing wall of our apartment.  It gets sun all day on sunny days and is producing a large quantity of itty bitty grape tomatoes.  There are so many of them ripening that Jbird and I can barely keep up.  So today I made this: http://www.yummly.com/recipe/Roasted-Tomato-Soup-Recipezaar_8.  It's a pretty standard recipe, I know, but it was made with my own homegrown tomatoes so I was really excited about it.  I was hungry (and too lazy to cut 40 tiny little tomatoes) so instead of roasting them, I cooked them slowly in a big pot, popping them against the side as they got hot and ready to burst.  

More often, we have been enjoying the tomatoes in a tomato/cucumber salad seasoned with the obvious: olive oil, balsamic vinegar, fresh basil and salt and pepper.  Having an outdoors has improved my basil maintaining/growing abilities.  It’s so great with anything tomato-ee and with lots of other things too.

Unruly Recipes

This may seem like a trivial problem to you high achievers out there but I am struggling to work out the best way to store my recipes.  I only have a few cookbooks here (my fav.: Julia Child’s The French Chef), my good ones are mostly at home.  I like to use online recipe engines to find what to cook.  It’s nice to punch in an ingredient and come out with a bunch of different ideas.  The problem is that afterwards, I often think I’ll remember where I got the recipe or the words I used to search it and don’t bother making a note of it.  More often than not I forget.  Or even worse, I forget I ever made it! 

When I remember to, I store the web addy on our gmail account.  I have any number of cooking folders squirreled away on the two computers and in our email address.  Then there’re the ones I’ve written onto recipe cards, and into my spiral notebook.  Consolidation must be the key.  What a perfect rainy day activity (sarcastic snigger).  Any suggestions?

Columbus Day

Yesterday was a strange day.  We were supposed to drive to Indianapolis in the afternoon to look at pianos but there were no zipcars available at short notice.  This was kind of annoying seeing as we’d forgotten to book and were probably lazy about it because they’re always available on weekdays.  We’d been planning the trip for a couple of weeks now and what I’d thought would be a super busy day turned into a lazy, empty day. 

Because I was kind of bored, I kept checking the mail to see if it had come.  I generally see the postie rock up to our boxes and if I don’t see him, I hear him.  But I was giving him (or myself?) the benefit of the doubt and walked the few metres THREE TIMES, just in case he had come while I wasn’t looking or in hearing distance (I really do love getting mail).  On my last checking, I realised that facebook had informed me that it was Columbus Day.  Government holiday = no postie.   Maybe that’s why there were no cars available?  Except that the holiday hardly seems to affect anyone. Who knows, maybe the piano shops would have been closed.

Tree Spotting

I love sitting out in our garden, surrounded by our pot plants and the few plants I’ve managed to grow, contemplating what they need from me next.  Today I had to perform surgery on a pot which housed my dinosaur plant (a cycad), two succulents, and a mysterious sprout we noticed last night.  I bought the cycad recently because it’s native to NZ and I hope to grow it into a magnificent house tree.  Upon digging down, I discovered that the sprout had a huge root!

A similar thing happened to my Meyer lemon tree when I let a little wee sprout live in it's pot for a month as a tiny little being.  Spring warmed up and the thing grew into a capsicum tree.  This tree overshadowed any possibility of performance from my poor lemon tree which nearly died.  It lost all but three of its’ already miniscule leaves.  I couldn’t really do anything to help them until we moved properly to Indiana after our visit home so that lemon tree has lost nearly a year of growth!  I've separated them out and it’s looking good now though, with 12 quite big leaves and a few more on the way.  I’m glad it’s healthy looking before the long months of near dormancy during winter.

Three Avocado Trees

My mother has an avocado tree and we eat avocado with everything when we’re at her place.  Such opulence!  So I am trying to sprout some avocado trees.  I have three fine looking pits suspended above jars of water.  They have been sitting there for a little over a week and each have a tiny little tail root but no other evidence of growth so far.  I know that we will be here for at least 3 years, maybe 4, so chances are we will have our first harvest before we leave.  Of course, I’m going to have to buy some big ol’ pots to grow them in – they’ll have to live indoors in the snowy winter – but I am an optimist about this operation!  Maybe we’ll move to Florida one day and they can be transplanted into the ground.  Green card permitted.

The Perfect Day

I have had a perfect day.  I did nothing.  I didn't even get out of my p.j.s until our buddy, Morris (of the red peppers) insisted it was my job to run down to the store for booze at 4pm.  Well, it kinda is.  Yet in the nothingness, I baked cookies (we were all out, it was a necessity), crocheted a Chrissie pressie (I'm super excited but my lips are sealed), watched a movie, and had brunch with Jbird aka lover-boy.  Now I'm in a huge hurry to get the focaccia bread in the oven but I had to blog.  So here I am, writing an obligatory blog (it's my first one, give me a break).  Unfortunately, I discovered some buddies from Texas and Canada have been writing a blog and all I want to do is read it.  Bah to that.  Gotta go. xxx

Anyone wanna confirm or deny my use of the Oxford comma?  I lost a grade on my paper because of it (well, actually, because I didn't use it)!  Bah to that too.

Roasted Red Peppers

Our friend, Morris, gave us at least 20 red capsicum.  They are huge, juicy guys.  We could’ve taken more but I told him my kitchen had no more room.  What a treat!  I’ve always wanted to make roasted red peppers but we never have enough to spare. Today was the day!  It’s super easy, (and set our fire alarm off at least three times).  The sound of the skin popping as it chars is followed quickly by a sweet singed smell. 

Unfortunately, I made yummy pasta sauce yesterday, caremalised onions last week and lemon curd the week before (yum yum yum for my tum tum tum), so I only had a few jars left.  After extensive deliberation on this dilemma, I decided to condense a lot of them down further and make some roasted red pepper pesto.  I don’t think an open jar of roasted red peppers is meant to be kept in the fridge too long (and there are only two of us to gobble it all down) but pesto seems to last longer.  

I used the pesto part of this recipe http://www.yummly.com/recipe/Roasted-Pepper-Pesto_tomato-Pizza-Recipezaar.   

Even after making all of this, and giving Sophie a few, we have more to spare!  What would you do with them?

Assessing Life

I have been reading about assessment for my paper.  What a brain drain.  Today was formative assessment, or assessment which directly informs learning (50 pages? It’s taken 3 hours to read just 25).  It has got me thinking about what I do in my own life and whether it improves, stays the same or gets worse.   I think of practicing something as exercising muscles in my brain and their subsequent flexibility.  I do a lot of things but I feel as though unless I have some way of formatively assessing them, they’ll only improve at a very limited pace.  

Crocheting and knitting would improve at a greater rate, had I a buddy with at least slightly better skills than me to work with.  I am often motivated to do the work by seeing what I can make.  It makes me happy because I have achieved something.  The physical feeling of the task is also quite soothing.  I am also motivated by crochet deadlines, the most likely ones being Christmas and birthdays. Despite this, I don't feel as though I am improving much because I don't challenge myself to harder stitches or patterns.

I wonder if you have some things in your life that you’re working on improving, and what they are.  I believe that a goal will be more easily achieved if you have thought about what that goal is.

Guernsey Literary

I just read a gorgeous book – the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.  Thanks for the recommendation, Libby.  It was beautifully thought provoking, historically interesting - set in post WWII London and Guernsey Island - and, well, romantic.  Not in a girl-meets-boy way (although a girl meets a boy), but in a "I want my life to be on that little island, with those lovely people" kind of way.  Finishing this book has left me feeling a bit sad, I can never read it for the first time again.

Its’ narrative was through many written letters and reminded me of the conversations that occur through letters in real life.  I have consequently been drafting letters to people and reading replies from them in my head.  It made me think of the times that letters have been especially important to me – my dad spent a year in Zimbabwe, and each time I have moved from Auckland - to Dhaka, Baltimore and Bloomington.  Pre-email, I was a letter writer with penpals in America, Germany and Australia (as well as a few friends around NZ).   

Nothing can substitute that physicality of receiving, holding, opening and reading a letter.  I promised myself (and a few potential recipients) that I would go back to writing physical letters upon moving to Bloomington but so far have not lived up to that promise.  There’s always today.

I'm a Sun Cat

I love the sun, love capturing it, and enjoying it indoors as well as out.  Our first place in Baltimore was sunless.  It was basically a cave and needed the lights on all day during the peak of winter.  Luckily we had a nice stoop which got sun all day and there was a park near by.  Our second place had lovely lovely morning sun.  It was east facing with a lovely bay window which even gave us a glimpse of the South which is the sunniest face a window can have in the Northern hemisphere.  I know it doesn’t take a genius to work this out but I know it because my parents' house is North facing in NZ and we love the sunlight their lounge gets, though her furniture doesn’t!
 

Our current apartment has both East and West facing walls so we get sun for a large portion of both the morning and the afternoon.  In the mornings I stretch out on our bed with my study and a coffee – sun is not conducive to staying awake!  Then in the afternoons I aim to have everything done by 4:30, when the sun really starts to come in those windows.  Today we rearranged the lounge so that our table - which is where we study - isn’t directly in the sunlight and I can lie on our couch with a good book and enjoy its splendours.

Probably the sunniest spots will be stolen by the pot plants soon enough but they are currently enjoying being outdoors while the weather remains mild.

Social Anxiety

Moving out-of-state and internationally has this phenomenal ability to make you feel all alone in the world, even though I moved with the person closest to me in the world (I definitely take Jbird for granted) and now live down the road from my sister-in-law.  I also have daily reminders from people who love me in other places. Just today, I received a package from DC and a lovely phone call from two friends in Baltimore. Every day, somebody emails me from NZ.  I really don't have anything to complain about.  

I had an experience on Saturday where I had two social events to go to.  At the first one, I only knew the hosts.  I became all shy and couldn’t think of how to talk to anyone - I wanted to run out of there as quickly as possible.  This took away all interest of going to the second event.  Miraculously at the event, I was seated at a table where I had met two of the people before (I swear they were the only two people I knew in a room of 70).  I also met a lady who works for a world wide missions organisation and we had a lot in common.  I was even invited to join a book club!  I know who engineered this.  There was a great sermon at church the next day, telling me I cannot expect to be blessed by worship (I don't take this just to be time spent at church but also time spent in every-day relationship-building) but am there to be a blessing.  It was absolutely perfect timing for my selfish-introverted ways.  Love ya’ll.  Miss you! 

An afternoon on a bike

We went for a bike ride this afternoon.  The weather was perfect for it - sunny and breezy.  Not just around the block, but out of town to a piano factory – it was 9 miles away.  If you're wondering, it should have been 55 minutes each way (thanks google maps) but we got a bit lost, leaving at 2pm and getting home at 6pm.  The scenery was edible, it was so nice.  The corn fields were all dry and withery and made a rustling sound as we biked past them.  There were some significant hills which were fun to go down and the trees were very pretty.  Most of them are still very green but there is a colourful hue to them too, so you can tell they're just about to change. Bloomington is far greener and tidier than Baltimore was.  Nobody shouts at you out their car windows either.  Instead, they speed past.   It was frightening at times, especially because it some pretty major roads exist without shoulders to ride on.  So Jbird and I hugged the kerb, sometimes riding on grass or sidewalks.  Thankfully no nasty metal or glass found our tyres.    Next time we go for a significant bike ride, I hope it'll be for a more leisurely reason and we'll scout out the bike roads.  They’re much quieter, often have special bike lanes and are therefore a little less scary.

I'm in the garden

I had a tiny bit of success with some roses last year and I've let it go to my head!  Jbird gave me a pot of six miniature rose plants for Valentines day, they looked gorgeous but they were dieing within the week.  They'd been grown in a Canadian hot house, under perfect temperature and moisture conditions to move to our drafty (moisture deficient) flat with faint winter sunshine and the shock was too much for them.  So I separated them all out and spent a few moments every day pruning away anything dead and watering them (probably over-watering) and they flourished, providing me flowers for the next 5 month.  I gave them away (and I miss them!) but they've given me the courage to keep trying. I don't know much but we bought a couple books at yard sales about gardening in this area and I'm excited that we have at least three years in the same place with a little, tiny bit of land.  Let's see what we can do!