really, really, small

M and M had their first child on Monday. M's back is quite a disaster so they had a C-section scheduled for Monday. Everything went really well and S and I went to see little Jasmine yesterday. The drive out to Hudson was remarkably short - especially since I was dreading the whole experience a little. I love M, she is one of the coolest people ever, but newborns scare the life out of me. They are so little and helpless - it just frightens me. So I would have liked a little more traffic as I prepared to see my best friend as a new mother.

The anticipation, the anxiousness, and even that familiar hospital smell wound my stomach into a neat little ball by the time we found the room. I was clinging on to S for some much needed support while trying to pretend that I was fine.

Wow - she was small. Small and perfect. M looked great - 24 hours after having around 7 pounds of baby removed from her body, her first shot at breastfeeding, and trying to get sleep in a semi open hospital room with visitors all the time, she looked great. I hate her.

One of the best things about M is how open she is. She just lets you know whats going on or whats on her mind with little editing about how people will think of her. She is blunt and I love it. However, last night was not a night for bluntness. Did you know, that babies poop is black and sticky when it first comes out and that it is not until the baby injests the natural laxitive that is in breast milk that they are able to clean out thier systems? Or that the laxitive milk is not really milk but a precursor to the real milk that will follow? Or that it takes around 2 weeks for your nipples to become calloused enough for breastfeeding not to hurt like crazy? I'll stop here, but needless to say, my head was spinning. It seems like everytime I find out something new about pregnancy I am amazed that people choose to do it at all!

After all of the fear and repulsion, I finnally got to hold her - and she was amazing. M has a daughter. How amazing is that? How incredible is it that we can bring a new life into the world? I simply could not speak after seeing her. I spent the rest of the drive home and much of the night simply thinking. Thinking about this new person, thinking about my friends and how their lives have changed. But mostly, I keep thinking about me and S. Could we really do this? It's a ways off, we want to wait until next summer before we try, but wow - what an amazing thing to do. . .

So I can cook?

Marriage, ain't it grand?

So two weeks into my marriage I have decided to run a small inventory. Here's what I found:

S has crazy skills- he can do plumbing, electrical, drywall, concrete, tiling, and pretty much any kind of general building or repair. Unfortunately he is also a whiz at finances. He has our budget worked out to the penny.

I can plant, and create glass windows, quilts,books, and paper crafts.

So . . . in an attempt to equal out the glaring inequality in our partnership I have been attempting to learn to cook. Well not just cook, but to cook healthy food on a small budget that has enough heat to it to make S feel like he is actually eating something. Initially this was entirely daunting. I just seemed to mess up everything - and it was frustrating to spend so much effort on a meal just to have it be inedible or worse - just barely edible so you would actually have to trudge through the entire plate wishing for death (or at least a party pizza!).

My cooking background had prepared me to make fattening food from ready made ingredients with little flavor other than salt, pepper, and garlic. So there has been no help from the family. I have big enough thighs as it is - so learning to cook healthy now will only help us in the long run - but sometimes I wish I could just use the white flour, the sugar, and the butter like I want to - it would make things so much easier! (Damn the French!)

Thankfully the teachers I work with are very helpful and tuned into the world of cooking. D has given me so many great ideas and flavorful recipes that are actually good for you. (Who knew?) I have now amassed a small repertoire of healthy dishes that can be made decently and in a reasonable amount of time. S has been ever patient as I try new dishes and spice combinations and has been extremely supportive considering his ex was a gourmet chef.

I also have become slightly excited by the prospect of making the food that will become our families traditions. What cookies will we eat at Christmas? What food will they request for their birthdays or wait to have on special occasions? So far I have found a fantastic pumpkin spice cookie, courtesy of M, which I think is a fantastic and unique option for a holiday treat. One down, many more to go!

This week I have been searching for really good whole wheat recipes - anyone got a bread recipe they want to share?

Just in case

Its been a frustrating couple of days at work. There are so many portions of my teaching that just seem to be in question. I am a unique person. I know that. I also understand that with my personality and my energy I will oftentimes strike people the wrong way or confuse them. I get that. And I guess I feel that a certain amount of drama is just part of me staying true to who I am.

But lately it seems like every aspect of my professional life has been off. I am tired of having to prove my ability to those around me - my colleagues, my grad school professors, my students' parents.

It has taken my a long time to be able to say that I am a good teacher. It has taken 5 years of long days, endless grading, reading, and evaluating of my craft to be at a place where I feel secure - not finished, but secure.

Apparently, though, there is some part of me - some aspect of my nature that translates my professionalism of "I care about teaching children." into "Hey my shoe is shiny!" And I don't know what to do about it. Eventually people figure out how I work and things work out just fine - but until they reach that point it really feels like shit.

S went over to his sister's house last night to be a step-husband for her and provide some much needed support. (No I don't have an ounce of attitude about that do I?) I hung out with L for a while and then went home. I just wanted to be with S and since that couldn't happen I just wanted to be alone. But after a night of stewing and creating a really nice hole for me to wallow in it was nice to have S come home and pull me out. We got to bed extremely late, but it only took some cuddling, some deep conversation, and some really great bed aerobics to set things right. It is nice to know that when everthing falls appart I have someone who is really good at putting the pieces right again.

Homestead

Had a really crappy day yesterday. Was absolutely livid about some people at work. So irritated in fact that I opted out of talking to them about it because I felt that I might not recover from my word vomit. So in an attempt to see if I can stay within our proposed food budget I carried my rant energy into Cub, then back home where I attempted a dry-rub rib recipe (hey beef was on sale) and then unleashed my pent-up rage on the house.

We have been unbelievably blessed with gifts from EVERYWHERE. People have been so generous and we have received almost everything we asked for on our registry. (Except my heart shaped waffle maker!) But now our house has become a slew of boxes and appliances. We have an appliance for every possible use. A popcorn maker, a rice cooker, a tea seeper, a coffee maker, a chopper, a blender, a toaster, a mixer and no counter space whatsoever!

So last night I may have lost it a little. I just couldn't take the disorganization any more, the sea of boxes was killing me. So I cleaned and unloaded and organized and reorganized until I felt the panic subside. (5 bags of garbage and half of the mini-van filled with cardboard boxes.) The house is still far from together, but it is now livable at least! So now my goal is to find a way to be that pissed off every time I leave work so that by summer time our house is our home!

(As a side note - for someone who has spent their lives between school/home/car for this many years it is really nice to be building a home with S. It is strangely comforting and simple and as weird as it feels from time to time it is all I think I've ever wanted and just never knew it!)

Picture Day

So here we are getting married. I just got this picture from T because I simply can't wait for our photographer to get all of the pictures together. (3-4 weeks? Is she trying to kill me?)

Its really funny as I look through the pictures how much it matters to me how I look in them. I know it sounds really shallow, but its the truth. It has always been this way for me with pictures. Every year on picture day I would get up early and do my hair. Sounds normal enough right? But if you know me at all you will know that I never do my hair. I have absolutely no skill in that department. In fact my grandmother will often bring up the story of how she had to pull knots out of my hair at the end of one summer due to my neglect. But on picture day everything was different. I would curl, comb, spray and part my hair into some creation that I thought would look beautiful. And each year I would hope that when I got my picture back from school that people would look at it and be amazed at the untapped beauty I posed daily that they never saw.

Instead, year after year I looked crazy. My grade school pictures look nothing like me or what I looked like that year and they represent some of the worst hair disasters of the 80's. But even though I grew out of this phase of pretending that I could do my own hair - I guess I never lost that desire to finally see a picture of me looking gorgeous.

I can't get rid of my huge nose, my gelatinous triceps, or my uncanny ability to grow a double chin no matter what my weight. But I guess now I just want a picture of reality. To see a picture of me that reflects how I felt when I took that picture, not how I actually look.

When I saw this picture I saw not the defects in my appearance but how I felt when it was taken. I was so happy. I was so sure of my life's direction. And for once that makes me feel like that picture really the beauty of that moment- the beauty in me.

April 7th 2007

So here it is - the place where I became Mrs. B. The night was perfect. Simply perfect. I started the day moving at a quick pace. Early on I quickly finished my lesson plans and my grades for 3rd quarter. I ran out of the house by 9:30ish so I could make a quick coffee stop before meeting M and T at the mansion. Well of course T got lost, but we picked her up and got to the hair place with little trouble. First hair than make-up at the Ridgedale Mall. We returned to the Gale Mansion only about 25 minutes behind schedule and I got a little worried, but everything worked out fine from there on out. Everything - the photos, the music, the food, the family - everything.

Sometime during the hair appointment I made up my mind. I was getting flushed, not that "oh I am really excited and my cheeks are rosy", but the "oh you look like you just ran 30 miles in the sun" - and that is just not attractive. I was also starting to feel my stomach roll into knots. So I decided. I wasn't going to be nervous, I wasn't going to do all of this work and miss out on the day because I became bridezilla. Come on! I am marrying S - the love of my life, the man I know I want to spend the rest of my life with. What about that is going to freak me out?

So I didn't stress, not at all. Even walking down the aisle with my dad - in front of all of those people. Even repeating the vows or doing a wedding we had not rehearsed. I didn't have even that tense anxious feeling in my stomach. I was calm - I was centered and I had SO much fun - I enjoyed every moment of it. It was perfect - simply perfect.

Goodbye 210 1/2

I am officially moved out. 3 days of moving in the rain and I am gone. (It is disturbing how much stuff I threw away and yet how much I still had to move!) I lived in that apartment for a good 2 - 2 1/2 years and really loved it. It was such a fluke that I found it and it was an amazingly good deal. (425 dollars a month for a awesome 1 bedroom apartment with garage in the year 2000? Come on!) The apartments (4 in total) were built on the top of an antique store in downtown Anoka. When I first moved in the ladies in the shop said there were some really neat pictures of legs hanging out of my front windows from when it used to be a saloon. (No such events occurred while I was a tenant. . . he, he!)



My first dweling out of college/home living was with a coworker that I met from Casablanca Coffee where I worked during high school/college. C was a little off, but had a great heart and offered the top part of her house for me to rent for 250 when I was freshly graduated from College. I really enjoyed the much needed separation from home but the living situation was not the best. They had a poorly trained pit bull that would terrorize the house and all of its occupants and about 3 months after I moved in they ripped apart the kitchen and then realized they did not have the means to fix it. So I ate almost nothing but fast food for the better part of a year and grew to hate dogs - okay well at least theirs. Thankfully when another friend from the coffee shop told C about an opening in her building she passed the information on to me. I went and saw it and fell in love.


Now for the last year as S and I have been dating I have not spent as much quality time hanging out at my place, but it was still sad to say goodbye to a place that was my home for so long. I loved the small-town feel of being able to walk to the bank, the grocery store, and having to pay my rent in person to the store below. It was the perfect place for that season of my life. It just so happens that I am ready for a new place - and that is perfect in its own way too.

Goodbye Anoka - Hello North Minneapolis! (6 more days to a new name!)