Grabbing Hygge Where I Can

It has been a very rough week.  My back has been giving me lots of pain, along with my knee and my neck.  I do think things are on the mend, but it is slow.  All week I felt like I was drowning.  And extra things kept coming up to add to the overwhelming feeling.  We are still trying to deal with the affects of Hashimoto's on my 16 year old. She's really been struggling with depression and that is a total emotional drain on everybody.  Plus this week we had to watch our houseguest's toddler much more than we usually do, due to her variable work schedule.  So many forms and checks etc were due this week.  I just couldn't keep up.  And this morning I and my sister are going to a court hearing on changing guardianship for our youngest sister who has Downs.  She's due here at 8 and the hearing is at 9.  And I'm not even telling you everything that is going on right now.  Whew.

But I know many people have it way worse than I do.  I have so many blessings.  Life has its little overwhelming periods.  Pain makes it hard to function though.

My escape has been my youtube videos.  One of my favorite channels A Baltic Homestead made a couple new videos.  I just love getting a glimpse into people's lives in such exotic locations (at least to me!).  I'm trying to promote this guy's channel because he just started it and he needs more subscribers. 

Oops!  My sister is here early.  Gotta make her a cup of coffee and hit the road!

Anybody Can Do Anything - Book 30

Anybody Can Do Anything is my fourth Betty MacDonald book in a row.  According to Wikipedia, I had the order of the books wrong.  First she wrote The Egg and I, then The Plague and I, then Anybody Can Do Anything and then Onions in the Stew. 

Anybody Can Do Anything was a really delightful read.  I found it fascinating to get a first person account of what working life was like during the Depression for a woman.  Betty left her husband on the chicken farm and came home with her two, very young children in tow.  The Depression has hit and everybody lives back at home with their mother.  Her intrepid and hysterically funny older sister, Mary, thinks anybody can do anything and she is quite good at getting jobs for both herself and Betty (though not quite so good at keeping the jobs).  Thus begins Betty MacDonald's adventures as a working girl.  She goes from one crazy situation to another until finally after years of this, she winds up working for the government and actually gets to rise to a position of authority, though she never feels quite qualified.  (Who would, if you had to be Mary's younger sister?  Betty's inferiority complex mirrors her sister's superiority one!).

Though she does mention her two daughters from time to time, I get the impression during this period, her mother was really raising them.  She goes from job to job, office party to office party, madcap mishap to madcap mishap while perpetually going to night school to try (and fail again and again) to learn shorthand.

An extremely entertaining book that gives you a slice of life right out of history.  Two thumbs up!

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

This Week's Meal Plan

I am just going to whine a little bit here.  My knee is still bothering me, my neck is still bothering me and now my back is killing me!  So I get up in the morning thinking I'm feeling pretty good and by about 2 or so I am completely done!  Today I got up and made pancakes, drove S to his music lesson and back, grocery shopped and then it was 1:40 and I was done.  I had to lay down for a few hours. I really, really, really, really want to feel better.

Ok.  All done whining.

Here are my ambitious plans for the week.  Things got really bad towards the end of this week.  I hit an all time low when I gave B a quinoa chocolate bar and an aluminum can of cherry flavored sparkling water for lunch on Friday.  Hey, quinoa has protein!

I am still trying to keep zero waste goals in mind while I weather the misery of trying to get everyone to eat half way healthfully, gluten free, and keep up with my obligations and activities even though I am next to zero in terms of energy.

My zero waste code: c - compostable, r - recyclable,  bob (bring own bag), boc (bring own container), cp (compostable packaging), rp (recyclable packaging), lfw (landfill waste) pf (packaging free - this excludes things like wire ties, rubber bands and little stickers on fruit and veggies).  My meat is pastured, grass fed from local farms and usually wrapped in plastic except when I get it at Whole Foods where they wrap it in compostable butcher paper.

Saturday

B:  Banana pancakes (eggs, bananas - c) and syrup (rp)

L:  turkey Cobb salad (deli turkey and cheese - boc + pf produce)

D:  Shepherd's pie made with leftover lamb (this didn't happen - the lamb was freezer burned and anyway 5 out of 7 people decided to go to a big corn maze out in the country.  I think they are doing IHOP for dinner.)  Anyway, I am not up for cooking.

Sunday

Brunch:  egg (c), sausage (lfw - locally sourced but wrapped in plastic), sweet potato casserole

Dinner:  grilled steak (lfw), corn (c or r), whatever veggies from CSA

Monday:

B: Scrambled eggs and fruit

L:  turkey Cobb salad reprise

D:  Spaghetti (corn/quinoa - r), ground beef (lfw), tomato sauce (r), veggies

Tuesday:

B:  Cream of rice (r or c) w/ nuts (boc) and fruit (bob)

L:  gluten free mac and cheese (r and lfw - Annie's brand), veggies

D:  Chicken (lfw plastic wrapper), potatoes, veggies

Wednesday:

B:  bacon (c) and egg cup

L:  Eat at chipotle

D:  Leftovers - will probably have leftover chicken combined somehow with veggies and other leftovers. 

Thursday (I work on Thursdays):

B:  scrambled eggs and fruit 

L:  out at 5 Guys (lettuce wrapped burgers!)

D:  Gluten free pizza 

Friday:

B:  peanut butter and fruit

L:  salmon salad (canned salmon (r), onion, celery 

D:  shrimp fried rice (shrimp in c packaging from WF), bulk rice, veggies

Saturday:
B:  banana pancakes again!  

It's Fall!

Evidence of Fall on the front stoop.

Woke up this morning to a chilly house.  I think it might have frosted last night!  Feels delicious to me!  Fall is here!!!

I cleaned out another shelf in the fridge door and I got to the curb for Purple Heart pick up, a box and a big lawn and leaf bag of various old towels and sheets that has been sitting in my room for an embarrassingly long period of time.  Hooray!  Little by little. 

It was quite chilly went I took my giveaways to the street.  But could I find my fall jacket?  Oh no, I could not.  So that's another thing to go on the to do list today.  Where could I have put it???

The backyard.  Soon our privacy screen of trees will be denuded of leaves and we will be forced to stare at the ugly backsides of the McMansion development behind our house.

Fall Clutter Control

I resolve to declutter my kitchen/family room, mud room, garage and master bedroom between now and Thanksgiving!  I'm going to chip away at it bit by bit.

• I decluttered one fridge door shelf that had been really bugging me already this morning.
• This week I focus on the fridge and freezer.
• Next week I'll focus on cabinets.
• Today I am going to try to collect some stuff to have out for Purple Heart to pick up (by 7 a.m. tomorrow morning)
• I've already told everyone next Saturday afternoon, no matter the weather, we are going to tackle at least some portion of the garage.  I'm focused mostly on all the cardboard recycling and some of the junk that has gotten piled in there over the last year.
• Also next Saturday we are going to declutter our souls by going to confession.  Haven't been for a while.

Onions in the Stew - Book 29

I am on a Betty MacDonald jag.  I've read The Egg and I, The Plague and I (both of which I'd read before) and now Onions in the Stew which I had not read before.  This is her third book chronologically.  In this book she meets and marries Don MacDonald who works at Boeing which got such a boost during World War II.  Due to the housing shortage they wind up moving out to Vashon Island to a house right on the beach.  MacDonald loves being close to the beach but this is the Pacific Northwest, so while there are lots of beautiful things, there's lots and lots of rain and quirky neighbors too!  This book basically covers how she raised her children with her new husband; a successful marriage, though there were certainly some tensions.

My absolute favorite part of this book was the author's recounting of raising adolescent girls.  I howled in recognition of the absolute insanity, absurdity and out of the blue tension that happens when trying to parent teens.  MacDonald says it so well, so to the point, so exactly right! 

Highly, highly enjoyable memoir!

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Teaching Hygge?

On Thursdays I teach Latin 1 and Modern European History at an Aquinas Learning Center.  I've been teaching at Aquinas off and on for 7 or so years.  Last year I only taught Latin 1; the year before Latin 1 and 2.  And before that I taught Latin 1 and Literature and Composition, or Lit/Comp as it gets called. 

Anyway a couple days ago the lit/comp teacher emailed me asking if I could take over her class while she went to a writing conference.  I said yes.  Then late last night I got an email saying that the teacher for another lit/comp class and the U. S. History class was down with a fever, could I sub for her?

Oh man, I thought.  I am going to be so stressed out and exhausted!  And my legs hurts so much too!  I was having trouble getting around.  With my own two classes but three others I would be teaching from 9 to 3, with a lunch break, except I had told a student I would tutor him over lunch.  Well, I did it and it was fun!  The day shot past!  Even though I didn't quite know what I was doing in the three other classes I was subbing for, I think I knew enough that they at least weren't a complete waste of time. 

9:00 - 10:00
Lit/comp - the book the kids just finished reading was Amos Fortune.  The composition was IEW dress ups like ly words, strong verbs, quality adjectives, who/which clauses and www.asia.b  Dimly, in the back of my mind I remembered all this stuff from when I taught it years ago as a sub myself when a teacher had to be out for a few months.  And also B did IEW when she was in Aquinas.

10:00 - 11:00
U.S. History - we did a Lost Tools of Writing style of debate on Columbus Day vs. Indigenous Peoples Day; then we discussed early interaction of Native Americans with French explorers as well as first hand accounts of encounters in Maryland.

11:00 - 12:00
My Latin 1 class - quiz on 3rd declension, parsed some sentences, did some Certamen prep in Roman history.

12:00 - 12:20 tutored student struggling with memorization of paradigms.

12:20 - 1:00 lunch

1:00-2:00 Another Lit/Comp class - these were older students who'd just finished reading the Aeneid. Did a Lost Tools of Writing essay on: Should Aeneas have stayed in Carthage with Dido?

2:00 - 3:00 My Modern European History class - Reviewed Chapter on 7 Years War, etc; picked out person to do presentation on next week; read aloud to them about Voltaire from George Washington's World by Genevieve Foster.   My MEH kids had also done a presentation on the new foods introduced to Europe from other countries during the age of Enlightenment.  It was on display in the lunch room but I don't think many people noticed it, so I'm going to put it up again next week.

Now I am home and planning to have a cup of tea and rest my leg.  And I have no idea what to have for dinner tonight!