keep on the road you're on

one of my new favorite bloggers, mighty girl, (who i don't know the actual name of) is going through a divorce right now. today she was talking about things that cheer her up and she said "I used to love getting dressed in the morning, especially if I was feeling blue. Looking pulled together is like armor, it makes me feel so much more confident."  isn't that so true?

there are many things that always cheer me up. face time with friends, yoga, gram's tea, cooking (specifically chopping), newly washed sheets + smooth legs, wearing jewelry other than the everyday james avery silver stuff.

while we're linking around.. if you haven't checked out words of wisdom living, i recommend it. it's a blog written by a man whose daughters are also bloggers and convinced him to start his own (i think..) but he writes about nutrition and has simple 'healthy change' tips. todays was: #9 Your daily bread must be whole grain, with more grams of fiber than added sugar.

mango

this picture sums up my weekend.

finished barbara bush's memoir. went on my first jet ski ride of the year. the water is chilly, but it was fun. 85 degrees this afternoon. i wore actual above-the-knee shorts for the first time in 2011. ate dinner outside on the patio of zocalo. good day.

even if they could

random picture day! this is the lettuce that i have fretted over all winter. naturally, i would never think about the freeze warning until i had just turned off my light and put my head on my pillow. can't count the number of times i ran outside in my jammies to cover up this patch of lettuce. the onions seem to be hanging in there too.

 i feel like i write about this all the time, but i've been making weekly fritatas for a while now. no crust, no real recipe. three eggs, a splash of milk, some kind of cheese and whatever random vegetables are on hand. it's almost become a game of how effortless it can be and still taste good.

 the biggest time savers are sliced swiss cheese cut into squares and not using any crust.

 this one was yellow bell pepper, red onion, asparagus, yellow squash, zucchini and swiss. our house fav though is potatoes cut up really small, white onion, bacon and maybe some random veggie thrown in there. really anything with bacon turns out delicious.

 and we end with this picture of jeff doing the 'double ear pet' on a rainy day. we watched ina garten make comfort food while we sipped tea and watched the rain.

ripley kinda looks like a pony if you squint.

a beautiful thing

i had a low-key day full of tea, cleaning, cooking and yoga.

i'm just going to leave us with this ralph waldo emerson quote from marisa's blog.
Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations to waste a moment on yesterdays.


p.s. ohmygosh! look what happened over at stuff no one told me today.

like a lighthouse on a coast

..i walk into preschool this afternoon..
kids: miss megan!
me: hi guys!
C: now there are 4 girls and 4 boys. that's 8. i didn't even have to count that. i just know what it is.

remember when you memorized your addition tables?

..and do you know what the going rate for the tooth fairy is these days?! one kid got $6 per tooth, another gets $20! kids these days have it so easy.

it's my friend emil's birthday today. he's in koh tao, thailand teaching people to dive. i miss that beach.

like a book

modeling multitasking: '80s yoga pants + new high heels.

going to yoga with stacy & becca tonight.

she only drinks now and then

ripley is so cute when her snout is dirty.

 jeff and i have been loving baked kale chips lately. the first time, we made them with flat kale, but i oversalted it and it was yummy but too salty.

this time i used curly kale and i put them in at 400 for 20 min like it said, but it burnt. it was still good for the first couple of chips, but you couldn't eat a whole lot of them. live and learn.

it's super easy though. wash kale. toss with 1 T olive oil. spread out on a baking sheet in one layer. bake at 400 for 15 minutes and check. should be completely dehydrated and crispy, but not browned.

i went to vinyasa yoga tonight. never again. i'm just glad i made it out alive.

things, they changed

look what iiii got to do today! visit my teeniest new friend, cate. she's a week and a half old!

unfortunately i have a couple steps to take care of before i'll be holding my own teeny baby. but ooohh is there anything better in the whole wide world than having a little baby asleep on your shoulder?

fun day today! baby cate, jill & zach.. coffee with andy and margaritas with girls from the old office. and a new dress (in an extra small, no less. something went wacky with their sizing on that one, but i'll take it.)

the lower road

two teeny, yoga things.
1. the problem i wrote about this morning is resolved. they let me give away my remaining class passes, so i can go whenever i want now with the unlimited pass, andd my mom and stacy get to go to classes for freeee. that is a super relief because 3 days in a row was beginning to take its toll. although! i do feel stronger than usual.

2. this isn't really a yoga thing so much as a life thing (although it has applied a lot lately in the last couple of days in yoga), but this summer a very wise woman at camp who was teaching me how to teach kids leadership skills told me that anything that goes wrong in class is my fault. at first, i didn't like that. but it's true the majority of the time. if the kids misbehave, it's because you aren't engaging them. if they don't get it, it's because you aren't explaining it well enough. that lesson keeps coming back to me now as i teach anyone to do anything.. and as i try not to get frustrated with people who haven't yet mastered it yet.

p.s. anthropologie launched its own line of wedding/bridesmaid dresses called bhldn. it is taking over the blogosphere.

just wanna dance with you

this is the unfolded jasmine pearl tea. i forgot to take a followup picture the other day.

so i don't know if i told you, but i've been volunteering at yoga a couple hours a week. they have a work trade program and you get credited for your time. i'm accumulating enough credit every month for an unlimited pass ($100). but for christmas, i asked for a 20 class pass. so far, i've gone 8 times.

the only thing is, there's a special deal on the unlimited pass, so i have to buy it by feb 28. and once i have it, i won't need to use my class passes anymore. so i have to use up all 12 remaining class passes if i don't want to lose them (because they expire in april).

this is all to say that it's worked out so that i have to go to yoga every day for the rest of february. so far, i've gone 2 days in a row. last night, i was in a beginner class with an instructor i had never had before and she kind of reminded me of simon says. "bend. touch your hands to the floor. jump your feet back. downward dog. come up. hands up." (most instructors are a little more fluid about it and add words like 'gently, slowly, at your own pace, when you feel ready').

but! at the very end, she used me as an example of how to do something right! and i'm never the example! so maybe this every day yoga thing is working out for me.

very, very extraordinary

happy valentine's day!

tulle/chiffon flower pin + felt heart pin = valentine's pin (the best part is it cost something like $3 to make.)

i was the belle of HEB this afternoon.

when the sun goes down

jeff and i had a very productive day today. the best stop was the tea shop. 

[photo from teaembassy.com]

the tea embassy is actually this historical home in the middle of downtown. the rooms are filled with teapots and strainers and tea cups and it has creaky old wood floors. behind the counter, they have bazillions of beautiful shiny silver tins full of tea. today there was only one guy working, tim. we loved him. cute, knowledgeable, rides a scooter.

 he taught us about the difference between the three jasmine teas. it has a bit to do with the quality of the tea leaves.. but the biggest difference is how many times they process it. apparently, jasmine tea is made by mixing fresh jasmine flowers with tea and then they mix it all up, let the oil from the flowers get into the tea, and blow on it with a special fan that blows the flowers away and leaves the heavier tea behind. the more times they mix in the flowers, the stronger the tea, the more expensive it is.

last time, i bought the least expensive one.. jasmine joy. today we bought the next one up, jasmine pearls. it's hand rolled into little pearls. and we brought him some tea to identify. alex had sent it to me, and it had the chinese name on it, but i didn't really know what it was. tim thinks it's a white tipped formosa oolong. ..after a little wiki research and character/pinyin matching on the tag, i think it's dong fang mei jia oolong aka oriental beauty. need to ask alex. 

and maj and i made ina garten's shrimp scampi for dinner. it is so easy/yummy.

(and has anyone read great house by nicole krauss yet? it's our second book club book.)

the farmer's daughter

we have a bad habit in this house of stacking all of the clean clothes on the dryer, so today i put all of that away. while folding, i found jeff's wool sweater that was unfortunately shrunken after the cruise. it's way too small for humans, but it's perfect ripley size. 

 she looked like a professor. seems like she liked it though. her tail was wagging the whole time.

time to cover up the lettuce hopefully for the last time, or close to it. it's supposed to get down to 17 tonight, but it'll be in the 70s on sunday/monday/tuesday. so ready to get the shorts out.

and this is just a silly thing (because ripley dressed in a sweater is very serious), but i've been doing yoga on and off now for a little more than six years.. and tonight i found out i've been doing downward dog wrong this whole time! if you don't know, in downward dog your body is folded like an upside down V with your hands and feet on the floor and your bum in the air. that pose has always really hurt my wrists and elbows.. and tonight the instructor told me my hands are way too close together. they should be shoulder-distance apart (and i thought they were), but they were 6 inches or so too close. whoops! wish i had learned that six years ago though.

p.s. you have to go look at alex's mom blog today. she talked about mrs. kuo's paper teapot and cups :)

i listen to the wind

there was a new glee yesterday?! missed that. 

it was very very cold today in austin. the door to my car was frozen shut and i had icicles on my windshield wipers. brr. perfect day for hot chocolate and homemade dumplings. 

kitty has been spending a lot of time inside this winter. he doesn't usually come inside when it's nice out, so it's been weird to see him around so much. he likes to sleep right on your chest where he can swat at you if you stop petting him.

 and today is wednesday which means it's supposed to be double coupon day at sprouts. they either ended it, or my cashier didn't know what was going on, because mine only counted once.. anyway i tell you this because double coupon day is the only reason i thought to try vegan bacon. i think the promise of it being almost free was enough to push me over the edge.

you guessed i'm sure, but it is disgusting. it's hard to separate it from itself in the package, for one thing. most of my pieces broke in half. then when you cook it, it releases all of this orangey oil. thenn if you aren't grossed out enough already, it tastes kinda like the outside of a tamale and vaguely beany. but the texture is like too-thick turkey bacon. yuck.

yay for carla winning top chef tonight! carla is our fav.

what 'cha know about

my friends jillian and zach had a baby girl this afternoon! she is so teeny and sweet.

so i took an informal poll of gchat friends and was surprised to find out that the majority of people i asked had no bedtime routine. seems like girls are more likely to.. and the more steps there are, the more likely you are to have one too. that makes sense.

have to go cover up my lettuce before i lose motivation. cold snap tomorrow.

p.s. rocketstars is now going by rocketsparkles.

way down low

do you think everyone is equally weird, but some people don't seem quite as weird because you just don't know them that well?

i do a lot of things a certain way because i'm trying to be as efficient as possible. for example.. before i go to bed, first i brush my teeth.. because in the time it takes to wet and rinse your tooth brush, the water has gotten warm enough to then wash your face without wasting any water waiting for it to warm up.. and thenn once i've washed my face, my hands are clean so i can take out my contacts last.

i often wonder if everyone has routines like that and we just don't know about it because they have no reason to tell you.

all the wild horses

we had (half an inch of) snow in austin today! naturally, the whole city shut down this morning. businesses closed, school was cancelled, there were wrecks aplenty. but it had mostly melted by noon or so. at least everything that wasn't in the shade.

tonight we had dinner with our old neighbors.. and they've been on the paleolithic diet for a month now. wikipedia says.. "Centered on commonly available modern foods, the "contemporary" Paleolithic diet consists mainly of meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, roots, and nuts, and excludes grains, legumes, dairy products, salt, refined sugar, and processed oils."


they've lost between 8 and 16 (maybe it was 19?) pounds for the month. fruit, veggies and meat only. no dairy, bread, corn, salt or refined sugar.

maj and i have been discussing diet a lot lately because she thinks she might be gluten intolerant, so she's been avoiding wheat products. and when dad isn't here, we generally avoid red meat during the week. i often think about trying out vegetarianism for a bit, but i don't really have any issues about the animal aspect of it.. and i'm afraid i wouldn't pay attention to supplementing whatever i'd lose by not eating meat. in the last month, i've been experimenting with soy/almond milk in my tea & cereal. soy wins. almond milk is gross.

but the paleolithic/hunter gatherer diet is interesting. the neighbors were talking about how they read a book and the author wrote about how your body was never designed to break down foods like wheat because wheat isn't designed to be spread by animals/people the way berries were, for example. (...but spinach and broccoli and apples aren't designed to be spread that way either.)

anyway i know this is rambly, but it's interesting to think about how each element of your diet affects your body. and even more interesting to think about your own personal diet and what you might get a little too much of and what you might need more of.

lovers will come

today when i walked in to school, a very cute bunch of very excited girls announced they had new names.. my favorite of which was 'rocketstars.' that's right, not rockstar. rocketstars.

me: V, are you ready to come to the kitchen for lunch?
V: no, but rocketstars is.
me: i apologize. rocketstars, please come to the kitchen for lunch
V: ok

when i was little (and today too) my favorite new name/title was Cynthia, queen of hearts castle. do you have one?

snow day

no time to chat today because i have to look up activities for preschoolers to do tomorrow while their moms are busy making dumplings. hope everyone had a nice snow day. i think my lettuce froze. whoops! good thing there are three batches.

speaking of the cold.. do any of you from the colder states have any tips for dry, cracking winter skin? i tried lotion from head to toe after a shower, but i still feel itchy.