Snapshots of Life

I feel like I should have so much to catch you up on after a month-long hiatus from the blog.

Sadly, I think the energy of getting through one day at a time while pumped full of various hormones has completely wiped away any memory of...well...yesterday, much less three weeks ago.

So, you'll have to settle for a list of random snapshots of life around here.

1. John discovered that sometimes when he puts his Blackberry through the security x-ray machine at the airport it comes out set to display everything in Arabic. Hmmm.

2. No later than November 1, our neighbors set up every piece of Christmas yard art they own ensconced in approximately 72 strands of holiday lights. What's even better is that, just a few days after setting up, they began turning on the display every night! Makes me want to pull out the Christmas decorations this weekend because every time I drive home from work I feel like I must be way behind.

3. I can't decide whether it's the recipe or buying a high-quality, grain-fed, hormone and antibiotic-free (read: expensive) cut of meat, but I made This Brisket last weekend, and it was good. Thank you, Pioneer Woman.

4. I have been doing acupuncture for a couple months now and have made two observations that seem to indicate this type of medicine really does work. First, ever since I've started the acupuncture, my infertility doctor has observed that my uterine lining looks good. (Ever since I started going to this doctor, I have had to be on estrogen patches to help thicken my uterine lining appropriately. No more estrogen patches.) Secondly, I have noticed that immediately after the acupuncturist puts the needles in and leaves, I will close my eyes and start feeling as if my entire body is tilted to the left. I have actually opened up my eyes to see if I am, in fact, on some kind of an incline only to see that I appear to be lying flat. After 10 or 15 minutes of acupuncture, I notice my body feels as if I'm lying down in a balanced, normal way.

5. Please take a few minutes to read about The Fishermen's Field on Shaun's website. I especially enjoyed reading about C.S. Lewis' definition of a miracle: "C.S. Lewis believed that miracles are God doing up close, small and in focus what He’s always doing so large that it goes unnoticed by us." Life is a miracle; it's just such a big one that I think I don't notice it often enough.

6. "Giving sacrificially" is a hard concept for me. When you see the good your giving does, and feel the joy you're blessed with when you give, it no longer feels like a sacrifice. Other people could look at my life and tell me how much they admire me for sacrificing so much, but they're just comparing me to...someone else. And I can always find another "someone else" to compare myself to and feel that I'm NOT giving sacrificially enough. And really, I'm not supposed to be comparing myself with other people at all! It's just one of those things I will probably always be striving for and struggling with.

7. If you are in the shopping mood (Christmas is just 5 1/2 weeks away!), here is an opportunity to purchase a cookbook with all proceeds, about $5/book, going to the Prestonwood Pregnancy Center, a crisis pregnancy center in Dallas.

8. The city gives us big, green, plastic trash bins for our garbage. I'm pretty sure we're not supposed to put brush in the bins because there's a separate collection for that kind of stuff if you just set it out by the street. However, when raking leaves, it is sooooooo much easier to just throw the piles into the trash bin than it is to stuff them into plastic garbage bags. So, here I am admitting that I have just been dumping leaves into the trash bins and wheeling them out for the garbage people to pick up. This requires us to rake in installments, but I can't even think about what a pain it would be to stuff those leaves into trash bags and then tie up the bags.

9. I saw onion and garlic sets at the feed store a couple weeks ago, bought some, and planted them in our garden. I now believe I should have planted seeds, not sets, at this particular time of year. Green leaves are already shooting up, and research tells me the onions will be small and need to be used right away because they'll rot quickly. On the other hand, I've conquered the cabbage worms on my broccoli (though, there's still no actual broccoli appearing on the plants), and I have tomatoes and peppers growing really well.

10. I do not usually like anything sweet in my coffee, but I had to buy coffee creamer for some guests and found this chocolate toffee creamer to be great in small quantities when you want a more dessert-like coffee. (And just in case you're wondering, no, no one has ever or is currently paying me to promote their product. They probably would feel a readership of eighteen people would not be worth the money. This blog is all about my subjective opinions.)