I haven't posted here in a while because there hasn't really been anything to report. I have been busy, but not with anything exciting. I've been working out a bit of a weekly schedule of things to do with Elsa, and I'm happy to report that I found a kid's gymnastics center that has "open gym" on Friday mornings. So I can take Elsa there and let her run around and jump on trampolines, play on teeter-totters, climb and hang on bars, and play with other kids. It does cost $7 for an hour and a half: cheap by California standards, expensive by Oklahoma standards. It was pouring rain when I went last week, and so there were quite a lot of kids and parents in there. Maybe I will be able to meet some parents there, but mostly they all seemed to have known each other for a long time.
I've also been busy trying to go to the gym, then hurting myself and being sad that I can't go to the gym. In the past two months, I've been stung by a wasp, fallen down a step and twisted by ankle, burned my hand quite badly, hurt my back mysteriously during a kick-boxing class, and of course I've had the lingering not-quite-a-cold cold that we all seem to have. Each thing took about a week to fix itself, and of course they happened consecutively, not all at once. And of course I wanted to start going to the gym in the early morning again, but it's soooo cold at 5:30! When I can't get to the gym, I try to walk and/or run on the path around Boomer Lake:
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| It's three miles all the way around, but I only run about 1/2 mile of it! |
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| It's pretty when the weather's nice |
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| I do this... | | | | | |
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| ...while Elsa does this... |
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| ...and we try to avoid the notice of aggressive geese. |
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Turban-shaped Challah with dried cherries
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Less boringly, I've been baking loaves and loaves of bread! Claire and my Dad got me
this book for my birthday, and it is fantastic. I have made two loaves of plain bakery bread, one of herb bread, one of olive bread, one plain challah, and one challah with dried cherries, and one loaf of peasant bread, with the dough for three more loaves of peasant bread resting in the refrigerator and getting beautifully sour. Watch out, if you have even the slightest kitchen inclinations, you are probably going to get this book from me for Christmas. I am crazy for it.
The twins are good, they have also had the not-quite-a-cold cold, too, though. They actually missed some school last week, but after the second day, I had send them back. They were driving me crazy. They are the sickest at night, then morning comes and they are tired from not sleeping well. After an hour or two, though, they are feeling fine and asking me "what can we do that's fun, mama?" Arg. We have a humidifier in their room now, but they complain about the noise.
Wow. This is boring. Let me talk about swearing a little bit:
This past Sunday, I was listening to Jane's Addiction's opus Ritual De Lo Habitual (how sacrilegious of me!!) and thinking about swearing, rebellion, and motherhood. When I was 22 or so, listening to this album constantly, punk-rock pink-haired grunge girl, older people would often tell me how I was going to grow out of my rebelliousness just like everyone else, that you have to grow up at some point and be an adult. But actually I held onto it for a very long time. And really, I could totally have been an adult and still have been that punk-rock pink-haired (okay, I still do have pink hair occasionally) grunge girl. There are jobs out there, real grown-up jobs, where they pay you to be weird. The thing that forces us into conformity is not adulthood, but motherhood. Do I care that the girls were around when I was listening to Jane's Addiction? Nope. They've heard music with swearing in it since they were babies. My policy is, as long as the word isn't being sung over and over, they aren't even going to notice. Did I change the CD when the neighbor kid came over? Of course. What is my point here? I don't know. I guess that it's hard to reconcile the person you used to be, the person you like to think you are, and the person that you actually live as in everyday life.
