Balm for a battered ego

Whew, today was just wonderful. What a welcome relief from my rather rocky work week, which included my boss having to drive me home one day because I couldn't stop crying, and then spending the next day reorganizing this report I've been killing myself working on for the past 3 months. I've actually been working on it for 9 months, but totally stressing out and driving myself crazy for the past three months to meet this deadline, which was today, which we didn't make. But mercifully, my boss told me to stay home today (my normal day off) so she could have if for the day. I have to go in this weekend, but at least I had this beautiful sunny day to forget about it.

And is was a lovely day. First A's piano lesson, with her wonderful, incomparable piano teacher. She was in the emergency room at this time last week and had us all very scared, but today she was healthy, almost fully recovered, and a joy to see. Then a leisurely trip to the grocery store where I got a great dinner idea from a friend I ran into there. Back home for lunch, then the kids and I rode bikes to the park and spent the spring-like afternoon playing in the sun with some friends. After climbing up the big hill from the park on our bikes, we had to stop for gelato, of course. We came home and the kids and I made a delicious dinner, watched a movie about Andrew Goldsworthy, played a few rounds of Man Bites Dog, and now here I am writing on my blog.

Lately my kids have been wanting to make dinner with me so they can pretend they are doing a cooking show. So they actually do most of the work and I just tell them what to do, and they then turn to the "camera" and say "We're using about a half pound of green beans for three people, and you start by cutting the ends off, like this..." etc. etc. It is really fun, and we always seem to wind up with something everyone likes when we do this. Not that everyone likes everything, or course, but at least one thing appeals to each kid, usually. A loved the quinoa-corn-feta dish (thanks Melisa!), M loved the oven-baked sweet potato chips, and I loved the green beans (and the other stuff, too). Add apple slices and carrots sticks, and it was really delicious. The roasted fingerling potatoes were done about 20 minutes after we ate, so we had a second course standing around the counter. We topped it off with vegan zucchini brownies, which are amazingly delicious.

I want to recommend the movie Rivers and Tides, about Andy Goldsworthy. If you aren't familiar with his work, he makes these amazing, mostly temporary sculptures using natural materials such as leaves, flowers, ice, rocks, and sticks. Sometimes you can't believe his stuff is made only out of natural materials, the colors can be so brilliant, or the shapes so perfect. A movie is a perfect medium for showing his work, because the destruction of some of the pieces is part of the piece. He builds things at the ocean's edge sometimes, so that the tide will come in and wash it away (or at least cover it up). Great movie, amazing art.