Counting my blessings.

(If you have firefox, see that font on “blessing #1”? It’s called Waker, but everytime I scroll down, I see “WANKER” and giggle. What exactly does a Wanker font look like??)

 

Well, blessing #1 is Dad is home. He’s been in the hospital for the past week with a blood clot in his lung-probably a side effect from the H1N1. They warned us back in November that they were finding out these were common with flu patients. This one was dangerous, so they admitted him. There are some concerns that maybe his heart is doing something wonky, so he’s off to a cardiologist soon. For now, he can rest at home just as easy as he can in the hospital.

Blessing # 2 is things are looking better at school. There was a brief window of…..panic last night with some news that things might be changing and we all know how well I take change (HA!). As of right now, things are going to be fine. But it made me appreciate my school that much more.

 

Contrary to popular opinion, we work our asses off. Sometimes the bad apples get in the news, but overall, teachers work hard. And forget the “3 months off in the summer”. I’ve never had 3 months off in my 10 summers. We work, we worry, we stress, we let it get to us, we sometimes let it affect our families and friendships. But at the end of the day, ask us what we would rather be doing with our lives. Most of us would joke “WAL MART GREETER!!” but that’s not true. We are doing what we feel like is our calling, our purpose, our directions. I have to be happy at my job because if I’m not, I’m wasting my time and my life and thousands of student loan dollars each year. Several times in my life, I’ve had to talk myself into finding contentment in whichever situation I was in at that time. I do a good job of that, but getting my head around to that point of contentment can take a while. And in the meantime, I drive myself insane. So, after the crisis was over, I found myself really taking in all parts of school today. I paid extra attention to the uniqueness that IS Kindergarten. There is no other grade that has the wide variety of fearless humor, in my opinion. They say exactly what is on their mind and I love that. I love the honesty and innocence. I love the attempts to dress themselves and the little girl who cut off all her hair because “I was just bored but mom cried and spanked me. I won’t be bored EVER again”. (BTW, she found mom’s hair stuff and wanted to fix her growing-out bangs. Ever seen “There’s Something About Mary”? Remember the ahem….natural hair gel scene? Yes, she had the exact same bangs. Straight up in the air. It was perfection!)

 

Blessing #3  For 4 days, my blood sugar levels have been stable. That is rare, but wonderful thing.

 

Since I was actually looking forward to going to school, I was so excited that I overslept a little. So, it was a green shake on the way to school.

Peaches, mango, bananas, Amazing Grass, and greek yogurt. The yogurt has a whopping 10g of protein which is why I use it. Protein combats all that natural sugar in the fruit. The Amazing Grass has protein as well.

My Hamilton Beach blender died yesterday. The new Tribest is freakin’ amazing. It would grind stones, I bet.

 

I’ve been wanting to try a new lentil recipe. I love lentils, but haven’t been too creative with them. I usually  treat them like pinto beans and add some spices and eat them with cornbread. My creativity is in random jabs here and there and sometimes, it’s a big ol’ hot mess.

Tonight, I found a recipe and went for it. If it failed, oh well. Better to have tried and failed than not tried at all. I bet Tennyson is so proud of me right now for applying his quote to lentils. (although his quote is actually about love, not trying, but I digress)

Herbed Lentils

1/4 Cup each of basil, mint, parsley

1 C of fresh spinach, cut

some tomatoes and mushrooms. I broiled mine first while I was cutting some greens.

2.5 Cups of dried lentils (allow 40 min. cooking time for these)

Cook lentils. Add green stuff. Add ‘shrooms and ‘maters. Stir it all up and serve. Next time, I’m adding some Balsamic vinegar to the broiling veggies.

I made some pepper pork stir fry with brown rice, too.

 

So, after checking my Google Analytics, I see I have, on average, between 60-90 hits a day here. I am shocked and pleasantly surprised. Anybody got anything they are really thankful for tonight?