Valentine's Day Weekend

I never felt like Valentine's Day was a big deal. We always did a card, and maybe dinner on the weekend, but nothing extravagant. It will always carry a special significance for me from now on though, as its the anniversary of Brian's first seizure. I'm not sure why a year feels like such a huge milestone for me. Maybe its because I've made a committment to myself to live a better, richer life, and a year seems like an appropriate amount of time to have adjusted to some of life's peaks and valleys.

I've noticed my stress level ebbing and flowing a lot lately. I never thought I would say this, but I am almost thankful for the little stresses of life (The girlfriend drama, do women ever grow up? The school stress. What am I going to make for dinner, and how am I going to get the laundry done?) if only because it means that the real problems in life are manageable right now. A year ago at this time, I was sitting in the hospital with my sweet Brian watching him get more and more swollen and just praying that pathology results would come back okay. Everything else fell far, far away and while I was overwhelmed, my priorities were straight. Take care of Brian. Get rest. Eat. Pray. Repeat.

Now that we are out of crisis mode, I have the freedom to add a few things that priority list, but the core remains the same. My marriage is my number one priority. Marriage is hard work. Even good marriages need serious maintenence so that they don't fall into disrepair, just like a house. When I don't clean my house for a week or two (who am I kidding? I haven't done a good deep clean in months!) I don't want to live in it. Like a house needs upkeep, so does a marriage. This means lots of communicating, and I get uncomfortable with maintenence conversations sometimes because I want to believe that Brian and I are just perfect for each other and things should always fall magically into place. Perspective is everything though, and knowing that these conversations don't mean that our marriage is broken, but that we are working to keep it healthy makes all the difference. We constantly grow as a couple, and it is so important never to take the blessing of our marriage for granted. We chose each other as companions, and we must choose also to progress together.

On that note, here is a little photo journey of how Brian swept me away this weekend to celebrate and decompress after a very tumultuous year.



I woke up early on Valentine's Day to make pink, heart-shaped pancakes for
my love, and when I came into the kitchen, I saw....



this lovely surprise!! Brian got us tickets for The Hobbit in IMAX 3D at Navy Pier
and we were spending the night in Chicago!
(Of course notice the Hobbit font which had me squealing with delight at 6am.)

We had a corner suite and it was great!
We ate at Fogo de Chao and came home and spent the night cuddling and digesting ;)

Love!

Day Two, almost Hobbit time!

For lunch we I had a New York dog with sour kraut and brown mustard,
and Brian had the "Ditka Dog" a footlong spicy polish sausage with chilli and cheese on french bread.
But that's not all, we topped it off with a mint chip dazzler!

It was delicious!

So sad...time to go home!

 

It really was the best Valentine's Day ever. I am so grateful for such a sweet Valentine. I am thankful that Brian is healthy and confident that he will continue to improve. Relationships are so important. Whether its a friendship, or a relationship with a significant other or your family, do not take it for granted. As humans we are programmed to depend on each other. Work hard to cultivate those connections. It is not a sign of weakness, but of strength when you can continually strive to thrive within your relationships.

I'm ever grateful for the strong and true relationships in my life.

 

Ooops, I did it again

This was a stressful week. Radiation is the main culprit, but school is also busy. At work we are getting ready to go live with a new electronic medical records system and I am trying to single-handedly get that ready for our little satellite office. This would be okay, except that its a big change, and nobody likes change.

 

Today we woke up early and Brian had a headache and a lot of cleaning he wanted to get done. I got up and did things like dishes and folded laundry, and he tackled the big stuff like bathrooms. Brian isn't the most organized person clutter-wise, but he hates when things are dirty. Like when you sweep the bathroom floor every two days and there is a small animal sized pile of curly auburn strands on the floor. He is very particular about his cleaning methods. And to be fair, I hate most chores like laundry and dishes, so I just do them quickly to get them done. For example, I am not a fan of sorting laundry. When I lived alone, I usually just (GASP!) threw it all in together to save money not doing multiple loads and it worked out just fine for me. Brian has a method to every task. I don't do much of his laundry besides throwing our whites in together because he has certain rules about certain articles of clothing. Without fail when I try to help, I always end up drying something that shouldn't have been tried or washing something with something it shouldn't have been washed with by mistake. When we first got married, I was actually looking forward to washing our clothes together. Silly, I know. I wanted to do his laundry and take care of household chores for him. But after a couple episodes where I shrunk clothes he had kept perfect for 10 years, I decided maybe we could just each take care of our own clothes. 

 

I don't even want to talk about dishes. I really never considered that there were multiple ways to do the dishes, but Brian and I disagree on the best way to do them. I like to use a dish rack. I wash the dishes and drain them in the rack and then IF I feel like it when I am done, I dry them and put them away. Otherwise, I let them air dry and put them away later. Brian likes to wash and dry them as he goes with no dish rack involved. He thinks it is cumbersome and gets in the way of the garbage disposal and rinsing, which I admit is true. Brian's way is to wash and rinse a few dishes at a time and then dry and put them away as he goes. So if you have a dinner full of dishes, I feel like this takes longer. After our perspective shift this year, I decided that I didn't want dishes to be a big deal in my marriage so I gave up doing them the fast, efficient, and just as clean way my way, and now I exclusively do them the tedious, painstaking way Brian's way.

 

Brian did most of the cleaning today while I was at the computer getting my church stuff ready for tomorrow and working on homework. I feel bad that he did so much of it. I felt so bad that I decided we deserved a little treat. Then I kept looking at these blondies again. The picture isn't mine, but mine turned out true to the picture except that I used only chocolate chips in mine instead of butterscotch ones. These turned out so well last weekend when I made them and I have been fantasizing about them all week. I'm not kidding. It's serious. I think I found my Danger Food. I am actually a little concerned about it. I can smell them right now, as a matter of fact, and I haven't even gone to the store to get the butter yet.

 

Fall is on its way as evidenced by this gorgeous weather. I should be practicing pie crust and peeling apples. Brian likes apple pie more. A better wife wouldn't be so selfish with her desserts. Brian didn't eat very many blondies last week. Probably because when he went to sleep I ate half of the pan myself. He said he was full and he liked them just fine, but I do long for the day when we find a dessert so mutually satisfying that I don't have to feel guilty for picking one I know I like more, or settling for one that I don't like as much.

 

But for tonight, I am being selfish. I woke up knowing these blondies were happening today and I can't fight it anymore, I'm not that innocent.

 

 

This week in baking!

I have found that not only am I a stress eater, I am a stress baker. I like the straightforwardness of it. You follow the recipe, and the outcome is more or less what you expect. At least that is how it usually goes.  Today I guess my stress level impaired my ability to read a recipe all the way through. I found a really good looking recipe for cinnamon pull apart bread , but somehow I missed the part about the dough needing to be refrigerated for a few hours up to 24 hours. I didn't have time for that. Brian was going to help Grandpa Branch hang up a swing and I really wanted them to be done for him to have breakfast and take some over to share.

Not wanting to get discouraged too early, I decided to try to make it with another cinnamon roll dough recipe that I use all the time. The dough came out alright, but then I messed up the recipe again and I cut the dough it all wrong. I really just wasn't reading well this morning. I tried putting it in the loaf pan and it just wasn't working. There wasn't enough dough and the strips weren't fitting right. With tears in my eyes, I started doing some positive affirmations that went something like this:

 "Wait a minute! You are a baker wife! You have all this perfect cinnamon roll dough (even though it is all cut up), and you can fix this!"

So I pulled out a muffin tin and rolled up those little mistake pieces of buttery, cinnamon and sugar goodness and let them rise and bake. I could just as easily pitch them after I saw how they turned out. Luckily for me, and one of the only good things that happened today, they turned out okay. Brian ate two and Matt came upstairs and grabbed three before disappearing back to bed. Here is what the finished product looked like.

I actually kind of made up this recipe! It could use a little perfecting, but a facebook friend gave them a name that I love! "Cinnamon Runt Cakes!" SO PERFECTLY CUTE!

Last week, on Friday night, I made cinnamon swirl bread and then I used it to make french toast for the boys on Saturday morning. It killed us all! It was so heavy, but good. They each ate three whole pieces, my two thin ones sent me back to bed for a mid-morning nap!

Then this week we were having pasta one night so I made these cheesy garlic bread swirls .  I need to branch out and do more than bread, but coming back to the stress relief thing, I really do like to just get in there and knead it. So therapeutic. And the boys are really benefitting from all this stress baking!

They were so perfectly soft inside!

That was our week in baking. In other news, I had to finally break down and call a patient advocate for all the trouble we are having with Brian's neurology office. Thanks to a sweet friend from high school, I was able to get in touch with the right people and they were very kind and sympathetic, not to mention disgusted with the issues we are having, but that is a different post and I have not cooled down sufficiently to tackle that one. Also, remember the awesome scholarship I received?  Well, ICC decided that I have too many credit hours from an associate's degree I earned eight years ago (and paid for with no financial aid whatsoever), and so my scholarship is terminated pending a painstaking appeal process that I have to get started first thing Tuesday morning. Way to stress me out on a holiday weekend. But that is also for another post. I'm saving it up for the next "bump" in the road of which I honestly feel like we have had our fair share of in just shy of two years of marriage.

Have a good and safe holiday weekend friends!

Love, Lindsey

Chemo, stress, and (dog) cookies

My name is Lindsey and I am stress eater. I have gained about five pounds in the almost two months since Brian was in the hospital. Its funny because my eating inversely correlates with my stress level. The more stressed I am, the less I eat. On my mild to moderate stress days, I eat my feelings. When I am extremely stressed, I lose my appetite.

All this had me thinking about my poor, sweet, neurotic Jack.  He is stressed too. I know he can sense the tension in the house from my nerves. I feel bad for him because he doesn't get to eat all the comfort food we do. So, to remedy that, I found a recipe for homemade dog cookies! I spent a couple hours today making yummy and cute cookies all for Jack, except for the ones he shared with his dog friends. The recipe was really easy, just a little all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, vegetable oil, water, and PEANUT BUTTER!!! which made them smell so good that I actually ate one. They basically turned out like you would imagine an eggless, butterless, sugarless peanut butter cookie, but they were fabulous and much appreciated by my faithful companion (the canine one).

As for my other one, Brian started chemo on Monday and is finishing up month one tonight. We are so grateful for the minimal side effects! He takes an anti-nausea medicine first and then the three chemo pills. Those smell and taste nasty. Then we go to bed so he really hasn't been sick to his stomach at all. He does have a headache from it, and he has had a KILLER back ache for two days straight. If it persists over the weekend I am calling the doctor Monday, but I haven't seen that symptom listed in the literature anywhere so hopefully its just a pulled muscle.

More to come tomorrow! We are heading up to Chicago to see the CSO. My family got us tickets for Christmas and I am glad we can still go!

Here are some pictures of Jack with his cookies.

I don't know if you can read the angst on this face.

A very patient boy. 

Love, Lindsey