Yum.....

Big thanks to MP and JS! We cashed in the second part of your wedding gift last night and had a major sushi fest at home - YUM!!!! The funny thing is, they gave us six sets of chopsticks, clearly they didn't think just two people would put back this much food. Oh, but we did. It was lovely. :)

Time to get more active

Nekā nedarīšana ir visai nogurdinoša, jo tu nevari apstāties un atpūsties.

Translation: Doing nothing is completely exhausting, because you can't stop and rest.

That was in my horoscope today, and it helped me set my goal for fall break, to start doing more! Reading that resonated all too true for me, as this school year I have been working so much and convincing myself that I'm too tired for anything by the time I get home. It is good to choose to be lazy sometimes, but I think I've been choosing it too much lately. I've set some projects for myself this fall break - some school-related which I have forbade myself to even think about until Wednesday and some personal projects. I'm optimistic about a good week coming.

We cleaned the house like maniacs (9 am until 5 pm yesterday), and realized the house hadn't had a good cleaning since well before the wedding in June. It feels good and it's so much easier to be productive. The mess just made me feel like closing my eyes and sleeping all the time. We rewarded ourselves (or really created motivation for ourselves) by having a group of friends over to play Apples to Apples last night, which is always fun and funny. We also started watching the Trailer Park Boys with them again. Ricky, Julian and Bubbles are such a great way to combat the winter blahblahs, I think we'll go through all seven seasons again this winter.

I can still taste it!

I just spent at least half the night dreaming that I was eating all my favorite Ben and Jerry's ice creams in turn - half baked, chocolate chip cookie dough, caramel sutra, peace of cake, phish food - and I could truly taste every sweet bite in my dream! Upon waking this morning, I wasn't sad that this hadn't really happened, but I atually somehow felt satisfied because it was such a real dream (and how nice that I didn't feel like I rolled out of bed - no calories in dream food, even after eating ice cream for about four hours straight). So many of my colleagues have headed out of the country to Ben and Jerry's selling locations during our fall break, so last week I had countless conversations of "Eat some ice cream for me while you're there!" How nice of my brain to offer me an escape to ice cream land as well. It's really great how our bodies and minds can find ways to give us what we need sometimes, even if it feels impossible. :)

High noon

It's been a beautiful and relatively sunny October in Latvia this year. Yesterday, however, when I had recess duty at high noon on a crisp and sunny fall day, I noticed that shadows were quite long and the sun was sitting rather low in the sky. I felt the first morsels of dread, as I know the next time I will really, really get to feel and enjoy the sun on a sunny day won't be until about April again. Sigh..... It's pitch black as I wake up in the morning, I'm walking to school as the sun is rising. It's still light out when I head home, but it won't be much longer, till it's all happening in the dark. Daylight savings is this weekend. Hmph. It's nearly time to bring out the happy light again.

Creepy

Two night ago, on the eve of the full moon, I dreamed that someone from the American embassy came looking for me at work and needed me to prove my American identity, because there was a pending terrorist attack on Latvia and they were going to need to evacuate all Americans. The dream proceeded with a plane coming toward the building, us not being sure if it was the bomb or the protectors. It ended up being the bomb and I felt myself hanging on for dear life as long as I could, but then I also felt myself exploding. It wasn't painful, actually quite peaceful, like I wanted to live as long as I could, but I was able to let go when I knew I couldn't live anymore. Then I was still around on earth to be able to see what happened after I was gone.

Imagine my surprise when I go to work this morning and the administration let's me know that there is a team of Americans from the Department of State here to talk to all the American teachers! I totally panicked. It was ok, and of course was something unrelated, but that was certainly a jump start to my morning!

And for those wondering, dreaming your own death is not actually bad or ominous. It's the signal of change and new beginnings. Since I went into it all peacefully in the dream, I take that all as a good sign.

Is our earth getting sick?

One of my kiddos asked me today if I thought that the earth was getting warmer or cooler, and then proceeded to tell me her theory that the earth is getting warmer because it's getting sick. Like when we are sick, we have a fever, the earth is getting a fever too. Because people are not taking care of the earth.

I, for one, would like to let kids rule the world for a while. At least their priorities are in the right place and they might help fix this place up....

A bit of pre-Thanksgiving advice

I celebrated the Canadian Thanksgiving last night, and thank goodness I now have six weeks of recovery before we host the American Thanksgiving at the end of November. This is what I learned this year:

There is a very good reason you should wear pants that fit to Thanksgiving dinner!

Yesterday when dressing, I purposely looked for the pants that would least squeeze my stomach at the Thanksgiving dinner. (A bit of a challenge for me these days, as I've been slacking on the Pilates lately.) We debated with KB, IG and AD for a while why we couldn't actually wear pajama pants to the dinner, as the point is to be elastic and eat as much as you can!

Take my advice, friends, do not go this route this year. Wear pants that actually fit you! The problem is, if you don't have the waistband of the pants squeezing and telling you when to stop, the next thing that squeezes and tells you when to stop is your skin. And you can't loosen your skin when you get home.

I'm quite sure I've never eaten so much before in my life as I did last night, because my skin still feels too tight this morning. Aijajai......it was amazingly good food - a turkey cooked just right in a convection oven, gailenu gravy (mushrooms just freshly picked from the forest), KB's famous stuffing, AD's homemade from scratch macaroni and cheese, roasted vegetables and butternut squash, yum....... And for dessert, I had made pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting, and AD had made cinnamon buns, of course we all had to eat both desserts.

Today we're heading to Jaunvitagas for recovery. I'm on a mission to collect moss for a science experiment we'll be doing in class tomorrow and I'll be searching for the last of this season's mushrooms (though we've already had a frost, so it's doubtful), and KB will be going to town with his trimmer. Hopefully the fresh air will do a world of good.

A fall weekend

Mima the Wondercat's top list of favorite foods

10. Dry crunchy food in this order: salmon is the best, then chicken, then liver, finally the blahblah indoor fat cat food I'm usually given on a daily basis. (Thank goodness the local grocery store has discontinued selling the indoor fat cat food - I need to put my winter fat back on, says Mims.)

9. The moist cat food I'm given once in a blue moon, when I'm especially well behaved. I point to the one I would like - tuna is always the favorite.

8. Crabby cat treats which I get after I am well-behaved for a manicure (usually I'm pretty good about getting my nails trimmed).

7. Tuna juice, but not the tuna. And no salmon for me. My people are not sure why, but I jump like I've just seen a ghost when salmon is offered to me.

6. Frikadelu zupa (a Latvian soup).

5. CHICKEN in any way, shape or form!!!!!

4. Barbeque pulled pork sandwiches, as I discovered tonight.

3. KB's spicy chili. Seriously, Diana can't even handle the stuff, but I love licking out the bowl afterwards!

2. MILK!!!! I get tail seizures about milk, it makes me so happy! Yogurt too! Cheese, not anymore. That was my favorite food as a baby, but I'm all grown up now.

And my number 1, top favorite food of all time.... Carmex. I love to lick Diana's fingers after she puts her carmex on at night and then I clean my fur like a maniac. Once she left the carmex open for me to see how much I'd eat. I would've scarfed the whole thing down if she hadn't stopped me. I love that stuff....

This and that at the end of the week....

1. I did answer my own "what's worse?" this week. Having your alarm clock wake you deep in the middle of a sweet dream, only to realize that it's not really a sweet dream but you have spent the whole night nigthmaring (too bad that's not a real English word like "murgot" in Latvian) about the lesson you have planned for the next day.

2. People who care too much about their own nails should not give manicures to others. I guess as one of my improvements of myself before I'm not 29.5 anymore, I started getting bi-weekly manicures this year, in an effort to break an approximately 23 year old habit of picking at my nails. This week I was so irritated with the manicurist who had her own artificial nails over an inch long, trying to desperately not to ruin her own manicure in an effort of completing mine. I really spent the whole hour thinking, "would you like me to do that myself, because I could do it a whole lot faster?!"

3. My second graders still rock the world. :)

4. I still work too much. As we were still at school at 6pm on a Friday night, another teacher and I pondered why we are always there so late and how do other teachers actually get prepared without working late. We decided that we are either "very committed or need to be committed....."

5. I like my bed warmer. And I've finally discovered a good solution, as my bed warmer has a much later bed time than I do (being that I am a teaching, I am pooped at night and I wake up at 5:30 am). 6 nights out of 7 I fall asleep on the couch. At such an embarrassingly early hour I can't even post it here. KB used to wake me a few hours later and send me off to bed, as he felt sorry for me sleeping on the couch, but would only join me even later. The couch was so warm and the bed was so cold! So now, the new routine is that I happily sleep on the couch until KB is ready to go to bed. I get up and brush my teeth and wash my face, while he lays on my side of the bed warming it up. Then he gets on his own crisp side of the bed (which he prefers - what????) and we both happily drift into sleepland - me in my warmth, him in his cool. It is a great and wonderful deal.

6. The leaves are nearing their brightest, most colorful peak, and a nice weekend is forecasted ahead. We're hoping for a great adventure somewhere outside tomorrow. Hooray for the weekend! :)