::faithful

Praying for

• more young friends as they graduate from high school – they are all so excited about going off to college!
• the mothers of these young friends as they look to their [grown] babies with wistful eyes, remembering their chubby baby legs and toothless smiles.

Grateful for

Mr. Pea!!  Thursday was our twenty-sixth wedding anniversary!

And This!

Yes, this is completely worldly, but by golly, I am over the moon with our new dishwasher.  Our old one broke, about ten months ago. We were investigating remodeling the entire kitchen, as it’s twenty years old now and could use some serious structural face lifting. However, life became more complicated, funds were needed elsewhere and the renovations were put on hold.  But I still didn’t have a dishwasher.  I have many children who have been washing dishes by hand, but it becomes tiresome to keep after them, and on school nights I usually excused them from kitchen patrol so they could finish their homework and study.

Memorial Day Sales, a coupon and a tax-free pass, along with reminding Mr. Pea that when we do remodel in the future we can simply KEEP THE DISHWASHER, brought this lovely to my kitchen.  So sweet.  So silent.  So efficient.

::healthy

Exercise was great this week, too, up until Friday.  Still learing to use the clipless pedals, I took another fall.  This time, though, the chainring bit the back of my leg.  It looks like a swirly tattoo with a string of holes at the end of it. Totally freaked out the guy in the Botanic Garden, as blood was dripping down my leg and leaving marks on the walkway. I thought he was going to faint.

The blurry camera phone snapshot is my leg today.  Note the ripped (as in buff, not actually torn open, though it could be interpreted as such given the rad abrasion below it) calf muscle.    Said “holes” are to the right. Mr. Pea says if I don’t stop falling soon, he’s going to take my bike away.

Weight Maintenance – down a few pounds again.  Must have been the blood loss. 🙂

::delicious

On tap for this week – Grilled Chicken and massaged kale salad; italian roast sandwiches and summer squash; hamburgers with cucumber and tomato salad; turkey paninis.  Oh Glory Be!!  Cherries are coming into season!!  Peaches, too!

::creative

On the needles – a pair of slippers that I made as a pattern tester. I need to felt them, then I’ll post a picture.  A pistachio green cotton baby blanket.  That second mitten has taken a back seat.

::fun

I’m reading the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes with DirtBike.  It’s his summer reading assignment.   I just finished Ape House by Sara Gruen.  Eh.  I liked Water for Elephants better.

::faithful

Praying for

• friends who have each lost their husbands, one to disease and one to accident, for strength and fortitude as they move forward in the following days as single mothers
• Michelle, as she takes up her pink banner once again and fights the breast cancer monster…after she returns from her trip to France!

Grateful for

Princess Pea has graduated from high school! Cherry Ames is home for the summer, DirtBike and The Architect only have eight more days of regular classes.

::healthy

Exercise was on this week, as the weather is fabulous.  I had three great bike rides – a solo run on Monday, the Mayor’s rolling town hall from LaGrave Field on Wednesday in celebration of the opening of Cats baseball, and a twenty miler with the family on Saturday morning.  The boys are both training for a time trial in September.  The rest of us are tagging along for shucks and grins.

Weight Maintenance – up a few pounds, but still maintaining!  I love this part!  The up part may be water retention due to some majorly intense CrossFit training.  I did 231 push ups in one workout and 210 squats.  My muscles are still achy!

::delicious

I’m getting back on track feeding my family well after what seems like a month of sandwiches and canned soup.  Actually, with the insanity that is the end of the school year, it actually has been a month of eating sandwiches and canned soup. This week we’re having ratatouille, with the leftovers going into a vegetable lasagna; fajitas one evening and burgers on the grill another.  Cucumber salad and grilled chicken.  And leftover cupcakes from the Graduation Celebration!

::creative

On the needles – a pair of socks that have actually been on the needles since, oh, Christmas!  A pair of mittens for next winter to match the scarf I finished as this winter was ending.

I also have some tailoring and mending to tackle in the coming week.  Lots of pants that need hems let down.

::fun

Why?

Why does the end of the school year mean an utterly insane lets-cram-every-project-test-paper-report-event-we-can-fest?  Seriously, Oh Teachers of my Children.  You have had them in your classrooms for ten months now. Why have you waited until there are only three weeks of school left to do a year’s worth of work?  And why, Great Biology Teacher, do you insist on the gathering of certain specific flower specimens for a field book when they are either a) not native to our harsh Texas environment; b) already well past their blooming season; and c) not even close to coming out of dormancy yet?  Seriously?  Aren’t you a  biology teacher?  With a passion for botany???

Of course, I’ve done my own share of overloading the Pea Family Calendar.  We have orthodontist appointments, dentist appointments, doctor appointments, optometrist appointments and the Fort Worth Mountain Bike Association Fat Tire Festival.  I’m the one who made all of those appointments and scribbled them onto the calendar.  Then there’s  Mr. Pea’s birthday celebration, that will include cake baking if I can get the contrary oven to function properly for more than ten minutes.  Let’s not forget Princess Pea’s graduation and all of the parties and gatherings that go with it, as well as the followup “let’s-move-to-college-hours-away-from-home-game which ensue shortly thereafter.  BTW – if any of you are close by and have any well-loved furniture that you would like to get out of your house, I know a couple of bright, beautiful young ladies who have just signed the leases for their first apartment and would be delighted to give it a good home.

Mr. Pea and I are still feeling cruddy. Allergy season is particularly vicious this year.  I’ve used TWO humongous family sized boxes of tissues this week. I’m not letting it get to me, though.  I played “Death By Boxes” yesterday in Crossfit.  You start on the minute, flex your knees and jump up onto the top of a wood box, stand up straight, then step down.  My box was the – ahem – baby box.  A mere 15″ tall.  At minute two, you jump up and step down twice.  Three times at minute three, and so on through twenty minutes.  It’s deceptive.  At first you think to yourself, “Oh yeah.  I’m tough. I have this in a bag.”  By minute twelve, when you’re tired because you’ve already jumped up onto this stupid box 68 times, it seems to grow about a foot taller. Then, you realize that the ‘rest’ seconds between minutes have dwindled considerably and you’re jumping constantly without stopping.  Up to the top of a six-foot tall $#^* wooden box!

I made it to 17 minutes and 17 jumps.  I had to stop because I couldn’t finish 18 jumps in less than a minute.  Now I have a goal to kick out 20 minutes.  On a taller box.

 Jump to it.  Keep the Faith.