Five Things for March 22
Let my prayer arise!
- We had a really nice Sunday for various reasons. Jarrod was serving behind the alter at church, and usually when it’s me-on-three things are a disaster. (Last time we left before communion because I made the mistake of telling Theda that we would leave if she didn’t behave — this was a welcome threat, and I couldn’t walk it back at that point) This week, I dunno. It went a lot better (in spite of accidentally leaving Liesl’s beloved stripes at home!). I know 90% of it is my attitude, but that’s often difficult to remember in the moment. After church Jarrod had a couple friends over to talk for a while, and I’m always invested in their love lives. (Single seminarians who want to get married are sort of in a time crunch, since they can’t be married after ordination. This leads to all sorts of interesting dating setups and scenarios.) Then we managed to snag the old rowing machine that was about to be tossed to make room for a new fancy one, so we had to get it up the hill from the exercise room. Ambrose is an utter weirdo who immediately made it his goal to row 1000 strokes — this took him 40 minutes, not counting the 20 minutes he initially put in before having to take a break for water, which reset his number. And to finish the entire fun day, Theodora cleaned her **absolute disaster** of a room entirely on her own — she was so proud of herself. What a day!
- On an entirely consumerist note, our federal tax refund hit our checking account, which means that I finally got to order the office chair I’ve been drooling over for the past year. I’ve been making do with one of our dining room chairs as an office chair since we moved here. Boo!
- Theodora had a speech evaluation on Monday. We’ve been concerned about the way she pronounces some words, and she’s also seemed to have developed a bit of a stutter that’s not going away. When I brought it up with her pediatrician at her 5-year well visit, she said Theda’s on the tail end of a stutter going away on its own, so it wouldn’t hurt to be evaluated. In any case, Theda was very cooperative and the SLP got what she needed. Her stutter is actually not a true stutter — just a mild disfluency. The recommendation is to do 4-6 weeks of a program that will coach Theda to slow down as she talks. Then we’ll go from there. Neat!
- I’ve really been enjoying scaling back my ridiculous eating now that it’s the first week of Great Lent. I realized when I was planning meals this past week that I should have come up with a seven-week menu rotation years ago. No worries, I’m doing it this year! I’ll share it when everything is done with — there are still some recipes I’m trying out. My first-week prepped lunch, for example, is a chickpea stew from Mediterranean Harvest. It’s pretty good, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever want to make it again. (But…it is pretty good. So maybe I’ll keep it in.) In any case, on Wednesday I made a white bean pot pie from Minimalist Baker…someone revoke my Mennonite license! I made a pie crust with **margarine**! It was actually really tasty — a keeper! (Next time I think I’ll add in some mushrooms though.)
- One snag that’s come up in my “Spring Quarter Expedition” is (as always) my plan to get a novel published (or at least, be under contract) before I turn 40. The path I planned to go down involved me writing an outline/summary of a scene every day, until the book was vaguely outlined/drafted — and then to go back in and write the thing. I’ve been having trouble getting started down this path, though. (You could say, it’s full of brambles and I left my machete at home!) I realized, after I thought on it for a bit and went back to my original plan of writing the novel I’m currently calling A Marriage of Convenience, is that I should have given myself a month to even look at the paths — the books — before me. Do I want to write the marriage of convenience one, or do I want to write one about a group of online mom friends being catfished by a woman who’s been in their group for seven years? Or do I want to write a Mom Detectives novel? See my point? I should have allowed myself time to think over each novel and decide which one is the most feasible for me to write/which one just feels right for me right now. So. Note for future Em, I suppose!
Categories5 Things
4
mins
read
