It's just another...

Time with my family can sometimes take on a manic quality. It was comparatively calm this weekend, probably because my sisters spent a lot of time working.

Church is always weird with the family. When we came in a blonde teenager I didn't recognize came running up to me, "Hi Melody I haven't seen you in forever!" It was very odd to have a conversation about work hours and making car payments with this very put-together young lady whose class I taught when she was four years old (and older, after I figured out that I don't like small children).

I came back Sunday afternoon/evening. Car rides with Bethy are good because we get a chance to talk about random stuff.

Robin was at Mike's when I got home, but when she came back we continued our soup adventure. We'd bought a lot of veggies so we could make mimosa soup. It's supposed to be this detox soup you drink every three hours for two days. We've heard of people doing a ten day detox, but we thought two sounded more likely for us.

We'd already spent a couple hours chopping stuff up last weekend, but it had taken too long and we'd put in all in the fridge to have this week. We spent another few hours chopping stuff up, boiling it, and running it through the blender. It looked something like the picture above.

About halfway through our boiled veggie mush the blender began smoking. We set the blender outdoors, decided it was a sign from God, and used the vegetables as compost in our garden.

Loving the warm

Robin and I are trying to walk more since we don't walk nearly as much as we did in college. But we wanted to wait until it got warm outside, and the weather has been very obliging. May it continue.

There are alot of little ponds and lakes in the area behind Robin's house, which we love. And, there's an abandoned building with trees growing out of the top of it. There used to be stairs going up the side. We can't tell what it was, but it's kind of fascinating.

In contrast to that, we saw an amazing four story house with stairs right down to the lake, very pretty. We want to buy it.

Sunny with a high of 75

My body is rebelling. This afternoon I could barely eat the pear I packed for lunch because my jaw hurt so much. Walking is rendered ridiculously painful all because of the stupid shoes I wore on Sunday. They were ballet flats! How can my feet be hurting this much after a day in ballet flats?

On the bright side, today is brilliantly warm. I didn't actually eat my lunch outside, because it was much too windy...but I did roll down my car window and that was lovely.

On the sad side, they're talking about hiring someone to help with the other business...and I so want to be designing for the other business and not be the editor for our phseudo magazine. It's quite depressing.

I work up early this morning...

My family is originally from Florida and no one can understand why we would leave the sunshine state for the unfortunate state of Ohio.

It was nice for us kids because our parents were as delighted with the novelty of snow as we were (yes, at one time I did like snow) and would build snowmen with us and take us sledding as often as we wished.

The novelty wore off after a while. Only my little brother enjoys the cold weather and he was born here. We lived in a rummy area of Ohio too. The rivers are dirty and the parks are dirty and the trees are scraggly. So on a semi-annual trip to Florida I was suprised to hear a Floridian friend say, "You're so lucky you live in Ohio, it's so pretty up there!"

Pretty? Boring at best. The most the mid-west has to offer is a vast landscape of cows and corn.
This has always been true. It's less true due to the number of shopping malls and homoginized housing communities, but it's still true.

Even so, when I drive to work in the morning it's pretty amazing. Especially now that the sun is up earlier. Until just recently the light was only just peeking over the hills by the time I entered to office. But now everything is brilliantly lit up and all this cold, barren farm land, with it's empty corn fields and faded houses, actually is...beautiful, just as my friend said it was.