Emerging from the haze

I'm finally coming out of the haze from Sunday's Worst Migraine of My Life, which continued into Monday's Pounding Headache and Maybe Do I Have An Ear Infection? (Conclusion: no. It was just a headache. Apparently triggered by the weather, my allergies and a need to go to the chiropractor. All of those have now been remedied, thankfully). A few happy things have been helping make it all better:

• Bronwyn is in town and came over to visit us last night! Chris even got to show off his robot.
• I made pulled pork for supper, and the recipe I tried this time worked fantastically.* (Cooking successes always cheer me up.) And it was cheap, because pork's a reasonable price (thanks to people mistakenly thinking that eating pork causes Swine Flu). I'm still dreaming about those sandwiches. I'm going to do that again soon.
  
• I got a phone call this morning from my friend's hilarious four year old. Celeste particularly wanted to talk with me about her wish to have macaroni for lunch (and informed me that it is "tasty" with ham and peas). We also discussed how I am, in fact, not trapped inside the phone, but am at my house that is far away from her. Preschoolers are crazy.
  
• I'm well enough to go to my yoga class this afternoon, which also means that I'll be leaving the house soon.
  

* I promised a few people that I'd share the pulled pork recipe. I took it from The Joy of Cooking, but it's in my own words and with the adaptations that I did:
Take a pork shoulder/butt roast and cover it with a dry rub (mine used 1/4 c each of brown sugar and chili powder, a whole bunch of paprika, a few tablespoons of cumin, about a tablespoon each of chipotle pepper and red pepper flakes, and then a bunch of salt and pepper) and wrap it all up in a couple of sheets of foil. Refrigerate it for anywhere between one and 24 hours (I did it for an hour and a half).

Take a dutch oven (or other pot that can go from stove to oven and can be covered by either a lid or heavy foil) and brown the roast in a tablespoon of oil. Cover with the lid or foil and put it in the oven at 325F for 3-3 1/2 hours. (This is for a 4lb roast. Mine was only 2lb, and I pulled it a little before 3 hours.) Shred the pork with forks, mixing it with the pan juices, and add barbecue sauce. (I made my own barbecue sauce starting from long strips of sauteed onions, and using a decent amount of vinegar, but I don't even know if I could accurately recount everything I put in the sauce.)

Serve on kaiser buns.

Now (or at least on Monday) We Are Six

The Wee Girlie turns six on Monday. She's old enough that she understands a lot more about the world around her than she ever did before, but still young enough (and has had such a happy childhood) that everything new she encounters is magic. It's fun.

I talked on the phone with her today, and everything I told her blew her mind. First, the idea that I made pink strawberry cupcakes today got the response of "Pink strawberry cupcakes?!?" And then it just got more exciting when I told her that her Mom was making them for her birthday.

But that was nothing compared to when I told her about the trip they're taking out here to Victoria at the end of September. It's been a long time since I tried to explain to her about where I live; I remember when she couldn't really fathom that I couldn't just come to her house and look at her toys immediately. But now? I got explaining to her that it would take a few days for them to drive out to my house, and then mentioned that they'll have to drive their van onto a big boat that's called a ferry.

"We have to ride a boat?" she asked.

"Yes, honey. I live on an island in the ocean,"

Her mom echoed in the background: "Auntie Mary lives on an island in the ocean."

I thought I'd clarify: "It's a really big boat. Actually, it's big enough that there restaurants and stores in the ferry."

"RESTAURANTS AND STORES on a BOAT?!?" she shrieked. It completely blew her mind. Now the trip was even bigger in her mind: Auntie Mary lives on the ocean! She lives walking distance from a beach! We're going to go and see seals! We're going to ride on a boat that has restaurants and stores!

When I went back to talking with her mom on the phone, I joked about how I apparently blew WG's mind by telling her about the ferry. And, as if on cue, the kid shouted in the background, "Restaurants and stores!"

It hits in waves

I had a hard day today. I've been really busy for the past few days, and haven't had a lot of chances to process all of the stress that's been building up, regarding Dad's health and Mom's lack of sleep, and Brandy and Chad's crazy health situations. When will things let up? When will things get back to normal?

And so I had a bit of a meltdown this morning. I had all these plans for the things that had to get done today, but then I got overwhelmed by it all and got really avoidant and panicky. And so Chris convinced me to let a few things go for the day, and just take care of myself. I ended up doing a bunch of cleaning and unpacking around the house, and even baked corn muffins. That helped, because it felt like I was getting back to normal, somehow.

It's frustrating, but I guess I still need to allow myself space to heal.

Accentuate the Positive

I know I've been over-doing the lists lately, but that's the way I've been thinking most coherently. And what I need to do right now is to make a list of all the good things that have happened today.

1. Today is Chris's birthday! Today ends the thirteen days a year in which he gets to revel in having married an older woman. For the past thirteen days he's been all "Maryanne's 26. Me? I'm only 25. Older women are awesome. And my wife is really old." Now he can be old like me again.

2. Peanut butter chip pancakes for brunch.

3. Talking to the Wee Girlie over webcams, and learning that she got duck feet slippers for Christmas from her little friends, and that she spent the day reading Dr. Seuss's I Wish That I Had Duck Feet (which I bought her for Christmas last year, because it was her favourite book of Meg's, back when I babysat the WG).

4. Going through the pen drawer in Chris's desk and discovering that he'd squirreled away one of my beloved dark black Zebra Sarassa rollerball pens. A brand new one. I thought those were long gone, and had been longing for a good pen these days. Especially right now, while I'm doing serious editing. You need a good pen for that.

5. My instrumental Christmas carol station on Pandora.com.

6. This post of jo(e)'s. I especially love that the Christmas village was specially made so that kids would play with it.

7. This post of Stylegeek's. There are ways that it reminded me of my crazy Norweigan family.

8. Making plans with a friend in my department for Christmas Eve. He and his wife invited us over for their Christmas dinner. There's going to be a big group of us, mostly exchange students. We're going to bring mashed potatoes, vegetables, biscuits, and a lot of games. I also found out that his [Shirk] application got forwarded on to Ottawa. I'm really glad for him, because he could use that funding more than I could. Especially because his funding is his and his wife's primary source of income, unlike Chris and me.

9. Editing my essay and discovering that it's not half-bad. I started making such notes in the margin as, "I like this point! That's good!" I've learned to give myself positive feedback.

Yeah. It hasn't been a bad day after all. I'll focus on that.