The Big Weekend Report

The play by play run down of a very fulfilling and exciting couple of days!

I’m not feeling sentences right now, so this is more like a list

Friday: Slept in till 8:30 because it was a day off!! Sucked in my lower abs for an hour while my friend Marisa taught her Friday Pilates class (I was very excited that I got to go), met with my awesome Pastor at church for an hour about some work that I’ll be doing for the next 6 months while our other pastor is on sabbatical, came home and ate, checked email, drove two friends to the BART station (they’re in MI right now for two weddings), knocked on Jenn and Craig’s door for our planned evening movie watching but Jenn was too tired, being pregnant and all, so I went home (two doors down the hallway) and watched “The 40 Year Old Virgin” all by myself and ate my popcorn. Grant called around 10pm and I burst into tears because he told me that he was on his way home- a day early, he arrived just after midnight.

Saturday: Got a phone call at 3:30am from Craig asking for some Mylanta and Benadryl for Jenn who was exhausted from not sleeping and thought she was having gas pains from the chili they ate for dinner. Woke up around 9am with Grant by my side (a change from the previous 5 mornings). Headed out to the farmer’s market and knocked on our neighbor’s door to see if they wanted anything, they were in labor, so their answer was no. As we stepped out of the building, tears beaded in my eyes. Today was my dad’s birthday, and now it will be someone else’s birthday and someone’s anniversary. We walked down to the farmer’s market, our favorite Saturday activity, and found that the pluots are in season, and so are the cherries… soooooo yummmmy. Sat on some grass and munched on the cherries while we listened to live music and people watched. Came back around 12:30 and the neighbor’s car was gone so we guessed they were at the hospital, giving birth. At 2pm we attended the wedding of our church’s music director, sat with a bunch of friends for church and had a blast. Came home, checked on our neighbor’s kitties and borrowed a movie from them to watch in the evening. At 10pm we got a call to tell us that the delivery went well and that the world had a new baby boy to take care of.

Sunday: Sung in the choir at church, it was a light service, I’m guessing because it was memorial day. Shared the news with our church community of the birth, came home and enjoyed my husband who had been gone for a week. We started planning our summer backpacking trip to Desolation Wilderness and started making some phone calls to see who else was interested. Are any of you interested? One person who was very interested was Rebecca. Who ended up calling Jenn and got us a visitation approval. We drove the 3 minutes to the hospital and within moments were holding a newborn. Yeah for miracles. Like a little kid, I looked at Jenn and said, “Wow, that thing was inside you,”

Monday: Memorial Day Meditation Retreat (1/2 day) in our home, where Grant and I woke at 6am and followed a strict schedule, with a Treo programmed to play a chime at the appropriate times.

6am: sun salutations (a series of yoga poses)

6:15: sitting meditation/centering prayer

6:45: walking meditation

7:00: breakfast (in silence)

7:30: cleaning activity (Grant did the bathroom… thank you, thank you!)

8:00: sitting meditation

8:30: walking meditation

8:45: reading scripture, book, and journaling

9:30: sitting meditation

10:00: snack on brownies made last night and debrief.

I’ll have to write another time about my observations from doing this retreat.

I then went to another pilates class taught by my friend Marisa, went to lunch with another friend Paul, came home and started on my school work, got distracted and started to write this blog, and eventually got back to my school work. Yeah for 12 more school days with students. 16 more working days until summer vacation!

Anniversary Present

For my third anniversary of being married to Grant, I asked my mom to send me some flowers… the kind with the bulbs still attached. And she did. Unfortunately, UPS and I had a hard time hooking up and the box took almost 2 weeks to get into the apartment. It visited the apartment building daily for about a week and then finally Grant was home one day to let the box into the door.

So imagine a bunch of plants wrapped in wet newspaper, put into a black plastic bag, and stuck in a cardboard box for two weeks. What would it be like to open such a box? I’ll give you a hint. It has something to do with slime. We had to open the box outside because it stunk so badly. I had to use the hose outside wash the decomposing newspaper and plant matter off of the stocks. I then planted what remained into the pots I had prepared beforehand, watered them, and waited. About a week later, there was no change. About a week after that, however, I came outside to find growth! Check it out. (hyperlink to flickr)

In addition to those future beauties, I have planted the typical crop of tomato plants. (hyperlink to flickr) Amazingly, the strawberry plants from last year survived my abuse and lack of watering. Back in April, I “fluffed” the soil, by that I mean I dug up the plant, worked in some new soil and fertilizer, and then replaced the plant. Now we’ll be enjoying strawberries (hyperlink to flickr) all summer.

Growing food at home is great, but it’s not enough to feed us. Going to the farmer’s market for fresh produce has really spoiled us but it has also taught us some lessons about appreciating each season of the year. Once the tomatoes stopped at the farmer’s market in the late fall, the ones at the store were just not as appetizing. I almost felt bad expecting a tomato forced to grow at the wrong time of year, in a hot house, to meet my expectations. As a result, I’ve gone almost 5 months without any tomatoes! I don’t even have a craving for them because I know that it will be worth the wait for fresh tomatoes in July. When the grapefruit hit its peak back in March, I was in heaven. But now that they’re not in season anymore, I can’t stand grapefruit again.

I understand that we live in a country where we feel that we are entitled to have whatever we want, when we want it, including food. Why else would we have these massive grocery stores with the never changing produce sections? But what a difference it has made to me to know that I will enjoy something so much more because I have waited for it to come at its own time. And it is then, and only then, that I will know how it was meant to be, instead of how I would have demanded it be. Isn’t that so much better?

Guilty!

I woke up this morning after a much better night of sleep, although my throat was dry and my nose was wet, just like usual. My goal for my day off was to relax, be introspective, discover the meaning of life and my true vocation. After a short mediation, a crunchy breakfast and doing the dishes, I decided to visit the mold. It pretty much consumed the rest of my morning.

In other news, I walked down to Lakeshore Ave with my favorite pregnant lady. She wondered why my car was in the garage so she knocked on my door. I was thrilled by the invitation to leave my moldy bedroom. We were on a mission for a pedicure and manicure. Not for me, just for her. While I waited, I stopped by a cute little consignment shop, Maribels’s, highly recommended by two good friends and found a cute little top. Sorry, no picture yet.

Home Alone

In celebration of finishing 97% of a challenging semester on time, Grant is backpacking with two friends in Ventana Wilderness (near Big Sur, California) for a week. Yes, I’m a little jealous since it was a last minute trip that I couldn’t go on because I have this thing I do called work. Yes, it was sad when I showed Esther, the daughter of the friend who invited Grant on the trip but who is actually our age and hopefully will become our friend too, how to use her water filter. Yes it is also sad that my hiking pants, which Esther is borrowing, will have fun without me. But how could I say no? This is the last summer of fun for Grant. Come September, Grant signs the next 12 months of his life away to CPE at St. Francis Memorial Hospital in SF. And then the working scales of our family will be more balanced.

So I’m home alone for the week. Night #1 was very restless for the first 2 hours and I woke up tired. I muscled through a day at school, but was angry and my students felt it. I then did what I was dreaming about doing over the weekend: I called for a substitute so I could take tomorrow off. I’m just exhausted. I haven’t been sleeping well, even when Grant was next to me. My nose has uncontrollable sneezing and mucus flow only at night. Tomorrow will be a much needed day of rest. Looking ahead at the calendar, it is really the only day I can take until the school year is done (15 school days… 17 including staff days)

What else am I doing with my time alone? Obviously I’m updating my blog. I’m going to clean parts of the apartment including the mold that is starting to grow around the bedroom window (could that be related to my sneezing? Doctor’s appointment scheduled for June 8^th to find out). I’m going to take control of the alarm clock and sleep on my side of the bed. I’m going to a yoga class and a Pilates class. I’ll probably have dinner with friends. I’m going to try that meditation and journaling thing that I’ve been promising myself that I would start doing for months. I’m even going to paint a 2” x 4” section of a wall in the living room. White.

On the bright and romantic side of all of this, Grant planned ahead and wrote me a love note for every day that I wouldn’t see him. I have specific instructions as to which note to read on each day. So far I’ve been honest and have only read the note for Monday. He also insisted that we make a huge pan of lasagna on Sunday morning before he left so that I wouldn’t be stuck eating macaroni and cheese all week. It is incredibly yummy lasagna, as always, but I’m still going to have mac n cheese at least once this week.