winnipeg: day one

today we drove to winnipeg.  in a sweet rented routan.  (thank you, silmara!)  one of my girls was sick ... we had a gross moment on a bridge - where we couldn't pull over - and she puked in an empty tim's cup.  i had to drive with my knees and cover my ears with my hands so i wouldn't puke too.  all the other times, we got pulled over before the ickiness.

i killed my first roadkill.  the cutest little squirrel tried to kamikaze the van.  sadly, we won, and the last we saw of it was its little corpse spinning in circles from our deadly force.  agh.  i don't know how soldiers do it.

also, we saw llamas.

and cows.  lots of cows, yeah yeah.

and we only stopped for gas once - the routan has amazing mileage.

anyway, we arrived in winnipeg and i suddenly started to get excited for the week.  up til then, i'd mostly been bummed about being away from patrick.  (i still am.  but it's fun chatting with him online.  he's hot.)

so we checked into our hotel, and went upstairs ... and the girls were sharing rooms, but i got one all to myself ... and when i walked in ... !!!!!  it's huge - a suite, really, with a living room and kitchen and bathroom and massive bedroom.  and it's beautiful.  and the solitude is the most precious part.

being alone is awesome because: tonight i'm chatting with patrick, blogging, listening to music.  i'm going to hop into the tub for a warm bath and read my book.  and them i'm going to pray and fall asleep.  and i love it. 

(oh.  i don't know if i mentioned it, but i got another promotion.  crazily.  i'm the office manager now. it feels so sudden and unexpected.  but i'm glad.  and that explains the king suite ... hooray for perks!)

surprising, sweet gifts from God.  He takes care of us.  and while i always feel tenderly cared for, and know His provision for me is constant, this week i feel especially lavished in a love language i can touch and see and feel.

thanks, God, for taking such good care of me!

road trip: winnipeg

i'm going to winnipeg next week, for training with work.  i've never been there.  i was hoping someone from our store would be taking us, but they're not, and i'm the supervisor, so ... i'll be driving my girls!  our bosses have rented us a van, and we'll get the keys sunday morning. crazy. 

i plan to make food for patrick to eat while i'm gone.  the real problem, though, is to get him to remember to eat ... he doesn't get hungry (just cranky).  we're both really really bummed at being apart for seven days.  no cuddles.  no morning coffee & conversation.  no whiskery kisses.

however, while i'm not looking forward to being away from patrick for so ridiculously long, i am looking forward to seeing a live store in action, and getting some practice serving customers and managing records.  and, i've saved some money to buy some cute clothes before i go - since i'll be working in a real store, not a construction zone - so three cheers for shopping!

the weather network predicts that winnipeg's weather next week will be above 6 degrees and sunny.  hooray!  then snowy for our ride home.  icksville.

here's hoping we have fun times and a safe trip.  pray for us!

three wheel kiss bloggies

to deep down things i award the prestigious spelunk award.  jen from deep down things takes us below the surface of everyday events and refocuses our attention on things that really matter.   thanks, jen, for sharing your treasures with us.

to patrick's blob, i award the nerdie.  patrick reviews books, musical artists, and occasionally shares stories from his life.  his academic style and choice of topics are geeky chic like your favorite suspenders.  cheers to you, patrick.

to polkadotsoup, i award the bearhug.  katie's cute posts - from her multitude mondays to frequent sweet peeks into her life - feel like a real-live hug, no matter how far away i am.  thanks for your daily updates and adorableness, k-dizzle!  i love you.

to my small tornado, i award the diaper genie.  danielle makes mommyhood seem like a run in the park.  her little macattack is already lighting up the blogosphere - thanks for sharing him (and yourself) with us, dan.

to the journey inside, i award the honest abe.  carrie is open and transparent in her writing, and is brave enough to tackle really personal, private topics.  she also shares absolutely adorable stories of her kids, whom i love, even though i have never met them.

to idlehide, i award the linklove.  heidi's posts are always like little peeks into her fun and busy life, and one of my favorite things about her blog is her link list to wonderful blogs.  she's one of my first stops before i start surfing.  thanks, heidi, for keeping me linked!    *honorable mention goes to heidi's hubby, kennyo, for posting weird and wonderful clips before they show up on msn.com.   

to rise before dawn, i award the vuvuzela.  gwen's descriptions of life & work in south africa are beautiful, funny, and heartbreaking.  i love getting my africa fix by popping on over to her blog.  thanks, cousin!

*      *      *

honorable mentions to those whose blogs have been somewhat sparse of late: i'm still a fan.  keep posting because i love to read your stuff.
joey at a day in the life has sweet stories and adorable kids. i love them so much it hurts.  i need more stories!
kelly at life [revealed] has some of the world's most hilarious stories and vulnerable writing, usually all in the same post.

thanks to all of you.  i love peeking in to your lives, and seeing your world through your eyes.  

comfort

when i'm upset, i usually turn to food.  or hugs.  the best comfort is some yummy food (maybe pork dumplings with spicy tangy sauce) and a cuddle.

but if i don't have patrick, and i'm not hungry, or don't have what i'm craving, the next best comfort is ink.

clearly, not for cuddling.  or eating.

but for writing.  when i'm stressing, i reach for my pen and notebook.  i used to write about whatever was upsetting ... but then i would blow it all out of proportion, and make a mountain out of a molehill.

so i like to resort to making lists.  i make lists of things to do.  things to buy.  nice things.  bad things.  things i love.  things i hate.  things i wish i'd said.  things i want to do.  and sometimes i draw - lame, inconsequential sketches, like flowers or stars or birds.

ink is no small comfort.

this day

psalm 118:24. 
this is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

this day.  with its cold, starry morning and its long training session and free pizza for lunch.  with its sweet husband and turkey soup and a freshly-cleaned apartment.  with its smoky smoke smoking neighbours and satisfying bubble bath.  with its full complement of texting and facebook messages, with its youtube videos and comfortable couch.  with its longing heart and red-rimmed eyes.  with its cares.

this day.  this is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

thank you, Lord, for one more day.

just another way to be like Jesus.

alrighty.  today i'm responding to a post my friend Carrie wrote about Christian marriages and sex.  you can check out her post here.
if that sort of thing isn't the type of topic you want to read, please stop now. :).  i'll still love you.
on the other hand, if you do want to read, agree, disagree, comment, or interrupt ... the comment box is below and i'd love to hear from you.

a long time ago, i wrote a post about a coworker, who found joy in washing dishes.  he said that making dirty things clean all day was just another way he could be like Jesus. 
and that phrase stuck in my head.
and i think that God is always working on making us more like Jesus.  and He uses all sorts of things to do that.
and i think that one of those things is sex.

God is a giver.
and being givers is one of the sweetest ways to be like Him.  Jesus gave everything for us.  and He gives us every good & perfect gift.
and virginity is one of the good & perfect gifts He gives us.
He gives it to us because He knows that giving is awesome.  and when we come to marriage as virgins, we come as givers - not seekers, not takers, but givers - we get to be like Him in the sweetest, most vulnerable way possible.

in my experience (getting personal here, beware), being in this kind of marriage is spectacularly awesome.  it's exciting, it's fun, it's always new, and it's beautiful.  it's not boring, stale, or selfish.  it's honest.  it's incredibly secure-ifying.  (i mean, it helps me be secure.  i struggle with this in every area of my life, except with patrick.)

i think i was blessed (?) to be raised in a church that didn't talk about sex at all.  what i mean is, i didn't hear "sex is bad" from the pulpit, at youth events, etc.  i didn't hear anything about that.  so instead of having a lot of creepy baggage to wade through, i feel like i absorbed most of my opinions, thoughts, ideas about sex from my parents indirectly, through my upbringing.  and i am grateful for that.
let me explain.

my parents lived out their faith.  as i grew up, i watched them make sacrifices to care for others.  i watched them trust God when things were really hard.  i felt loved and wanted ... even though we were a big family, i always felt like my parents were glad for every one of us kids.  sure they weren't perfect, but i always knew their motivation, in everything they did, was to honor God and care for their family.  and that permeated their relationship too.

so Christianity was never a separate category in their lives.  everything they did sprang from loving Jesus and wanting to obey and live out His word.  and when I became a Christian too, they were really good examples.  i wanted to be like them.  and they wanted to be like Jesus.  so i learned from them to let Him be my deepest motivation.  to let Him lead.  to put Him first.

in every area of my life, i feel blessed by this.  clearly, i'm no saint, and can be labeled honestly as a work in progress.  but like my parents, i really want to love Jesus in every area of my life.

and so why would sex be any different?  loving Jesus makes me better. (okay, right now every single person i know is probably snorting and remembering something awful i've done.  i don't mean perfect.  i just mean, better than i would be without Him.  and happier, more complete.  not that i love Him in order to be happy ... but He's awesome, and when i love Him, i'm transformed to be like Him in tiny ways.)  and if it makes me more generous, kind, free, selfless ... that translates into a really happy lover.  and that translates into good great (!) sex.

does this make sense at all?  am i totally rambling?  i just think the recipe for having great sex starts with the same recipe for anything great ... Jesus on the throne of your heart.

purity and love spring from Him.  it's not something you can manufacture.  i can't imagine trying to be a good lover apart from having Him in my heart.  when i'm feeling angry or selfish or sullen or just cranky ... He reminds me that patrick is my husband, and i love him.  i love him!  even cranky angry selfish me loves him. and Jesus rocks. because He even cares about that.

i can't imagine anyone having a sweeter, awesomer, crazier, more fun marriage than ours.  in every way, i am honored, loved, cherished, adored, and satisfied.  and sex is divine.

tryptophan does me in

so i came home from work tonight all excited to go to Bible study. i even had it on my list of things to do (and i ADORE crossing things off my list).
then we had turkey for supper.
and it was great. delicious. amazing. (there was even leftover gravy, so you know it had to be good.)
and then after supper i couldn't seem to open my eyes.
patrick snuggled me up on the couch and told me to stay home. it was a long (happy! but busy) weekend, and after a day of work i guess i just need a night where i don't go much further than the bubble bath.
so sweet dreams, world ... i'm out.

potato skins

this week, patrick and i rediscovered the amazing delicious versatile potato!
here is our step-by-step recipe for making potato skins. enjoy.

first, peel the skins off the potato. (we like them pretty thin, so we only left a little bit of potato on the skin.)


then, melt some butter (1 1/2 tablespoons), stir in 1/2 teaspoon each of garlic powder, and paprika, and a dash of salt. (you can always add more salt later if it's not flavorful enough.)

stir the potatoes so they're all coated in the buttery spice mixture.


lay the potatoes in a single layer on a cookie sheet. (or more layers, you'll just need to cook them longer.) you will have lots of time to do this if you, like me, forgot to preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

cook at 400 for 10 mins.

remove from oven, taste-test. add more salt if you want to. (we did). broil for 5 minutes ... or until crispy. then remove from oven, add cheese, bacon bits, and green onion. (we were out of green onion for this photo shoot).

broil for four or five more minutes and enjoy! mmmm.
(we were planning to eat them with these condiments, but they were so delicious on their own that we didn't even bother. they're that good.)

thankfullist

a lot of my friends have been blogging lists of things they're grateful for. (for which they're grateful. ugh. my inner english teacher is hard to shake.) so i'm hopping on the bandwagon and creating my own.

here are ten of the things that have brought me joy in september:

1. a handsome and kind husband who is glad to be married to me even though i have pcos and may never bear children. this is a pretty big deal for a guy who has always dreamed of having a big crazy family. he got the big & crazy part ... just all bundled up in me, not spread out among 5 kids :). i am so glad he loves me. and he shows it all the time.

(tired after a long hike. not cranky. promise.)

2. this week, i'm grateful for aunt diane, who took us out for dinner (our first dinner out for months) and drove us all over town to find the spider. God is so good to let us have some family close by! she treated us to such a nice meal and she was so kind to us (as always). it's nice to be spoiled.

3. mark driscoll and mars hill church, who make their awesome solid teaching available free online. they make me laugh, help me learn, and bring me close to the place where God can speak to me. they even make me face the ugliness within that i try to hide, and give me a kick in the pants when i need it.

4. ann ortlund's book 'the disciplines of the beautiful woman.' it's pretty old school, but God used it to show me the beauty and necessity of being disciplined in all areas of my life ... especially in the area of my faith. thanks to the wisdom she shares, i've learned to prioritize & protect my time with the Lord - a huge blessing to my soul.

5. my new phone and unlimited texting. i love love love being able to text with patrick when we're apart. he's my favorite person ever, so being able to stay in touch with him all the time completely rocks. also, i have the cutest new ring tones. my current texting tone is "froggy night" and i'm in love with it. imagine a frog, sitting on a front porch, plucking a guitar. that's my ringtone.

6. caitlin, victoria, and chrissy. sigh. such good friends. they've made us feel SO welcome here in thunder bay. caitlin has even gotten up early to drive us around on errands, and stayed up late to do the same. she's the kind of friend you'd call when you're stranded on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere at 3 in the morning ... and you'd know she'd be glad you did.

victoria, caitlin, & moi.
and chrissy.

7. delightful, surprising snail mail! my loving far-away friends and family have kept in touch by sending me cards, letters, stickers, notepaper, and even a dvd! it means a lot when people stay in touch, so three hundred cheers for mailers!! (i'm really bad at this, but i'm trying to improve! if you've gotten anything from me in the mail, know that i'm working hard to tell you i love you.)

8. my kitchen. i love to cook. it makes me happy to feed people. and because i have a bar-window-pass-through thingy, i can hang out with my friends and make them food too. hurray!

9. my ... ugh, it's hard to say it, but i really am grateful for it ... job. okay okay, i don't like telemarketing. i think telemarketers are even more universally disliked than lawyers and politicians ... especially when they're doing surveys on behalf of lawyers and politicians. and i completely understand why. i'd hang up on me too. but i am grateful, because it's paying the bills and after 2 months without work, we've accumulated a lot of those. (also, i made up a superhero alter-ego, RockSolid, who can bear the brunt of telemeanness. RockSolid wears a teflon suit and everything just rolls off. :). my identity is in Jesus, and RockSolid is like my imaginary personification of that. because i'm crazy.)

10. psalm 4:8. God has kept us safe even though our neighbourhood is less than peaceful. you can check out patrick's blog for details of The Incident. basically, we were scared, there was violence, and none of it touched us. *grateful prayer.*

so there you have it. my thankfullist. make your own, send it to me, and we can all say hurray together.
xoxo.

the spider

for the past month, patrick and i have been taking apple cider vinegar: two teaspoons in water, three times a day. we (affectionately?) call it spider, much to the electrification of our company, who hear us nonchalantly asking one another if we would like a spider.

mama c & papa g recommended it to us, and passed along a book outlining all the good benefits that come from taking daily doses of spider. their friend, a nutritionist, recommended it to them. when i read the book, i kind of laughed. it seemed like snake oil - full of magical promises to cure everything from warts to acne to dandruff.

but i figured - why not give it a shot? the most it will cost is a few bucks and a few puckers.

so we hoofed it to bulk barn and bought some organic, unfiltered apple cider vinegar. apparently it's got all the goodness in it when it's kind of cloudy and murky looking. mmm, delicious. ( i didn't - and don't - really think it's delicious).

it's pretty puckery, but it gives the nicest little flare in the belly first thing in the morning that totally wakes me up. :) patrick takes his mixed with pure maple syrup in a glass of water; i take mine in a shot and chase it with water. we're both wimps in our own way: he tries to sweeten the bitter, and i try to get it over with as quickly as possible.

within a week or two, my skin had cleared up - completely. acne is one of the most annoying aspects of pcos, and i've been trying to manage it with medication which helped, but didn't totally eliminate it. not only was my skin acne-free, it was smooth and i didn't need lotion ... wahoo! i haven't changed anything else in my lifestyle, so i think it's safe to credit the spider with the improvement.

after a few weeks of enjoying luscious new skin, i started wondering if this has helped other people with pcos. so i googled, and found that there is a TON of research on the spider's effects on pcos ... all of them ranging from mildly to wildly positive.

so i'm pretty pumped about the spider. our bulk barn ran out, and patrick's aunt drove us to a health store on the far side of town. we bulked up and bought three bottles - which should hold us over for a while!! :) we had to go for a few days without it, and i really noticed the difference. boo to that. when we noticed our supply running thin, patrick stopped taking it and let me spin it out as long as possible. i am married to a very good man.

anyway, i'm totally not a remedy-of-the-month-er, but i thought i'd share. i know i've got a few pcosy readers, and i'd love to know how it goes, if you try it. as for me, i give it two thumbs up (i'd give it more, but that's all i have).

slim

i was feeling sick tonight, and craving something salty. i really didn't want to walk through the dark and marshy shortcut to superstore, nor did i want to take the 4km trip on the sidewalk at 1030 at night. i was sick. i just wanted to stay home. but i really really wanted something salty to settle my stomach.

so i made some slim.

(slim: the luscious marriage of whipped potato and flour, fried in butter and topped with salt.)

one minute i was standing in my kitchen, woefully nauseous and homesick ... the next minute i was sitting in nana's kitchen, taking a piece of slim off her brown-rimmed stoneware plates. she was standing at the stove in a 1970s-print apron, flipping more delectable goodness on a cast-iron skillet. my sisters and brother and i were not arguing, reading archies, or breaking the spines of l.m. montgomeries ... we were eating. silently, saltily, butterily. and thanking God in our innermost hearts that we had an old-fashioned irish grandmother who was dishing up platefuls of piping hot potato magic, as fast as we could eat it.

i love you, nana. thanks for making me feel better, a thousand miles and twenty years away.

cringing in my soul

i have a confession to make. i am terrified of creepy plane noises.
not ordinary flying passenger planes, but horrible zoomy rumbly russian-spy-sounding planes.
(patrick pooh-poohs this fear and tells me that no russian spy planes are allowed in cdn air space. well of course they aren't ... but i bet the good ones get in anyway. that's their job, right?)

(these are russian planes. let me know if you see them coming.)

i often have spectacular nightmares that i go outside and look up at the sky and suddenly it bursts into action, filled with planes zooming and shooting at each other. and i know that canada is at war and i need to join the resistance.
(this usually ends up with me on a top secret mission and running from the bad guys who have invaded halifax.)

when i was little, my mom babysat a twisted kid who told me that a ghost lived in the pencil sharpener, and that airplanes would come and get me if i was outside playing when they flew overhead.

i'm no shrink, but i think this may have something to do with it. i'm not afraid of pencil sharpeners, but freaky non-passenger planes do make my heart beat fast.

when i watched pearl harbour, i completely knew what they were feeling when the planes attacked. i've felt it, dreamed it, feared it.

once, when we were living in toronto, a huge group (squadron?) of not-normal planes zoomed over the city, flying really low. they were so loud, and so low, and all of a sudden i imagined bombs plummeting to the ground. my heart didn't stop pounding for hours. i kept waiting to hear someone with a blackberry yell that we'd been attacked. (clearly, it didn't happen).


apparently, there was an airshow nearby, and these planes were on their way. ugh.

anyway, this morning a loud, abnormal plane circled by and i cringed. i thought writing about it might help.

it probably didn't, but now you know my secret fear.