six cats in the yard

I think the snow started falling *last* Sunday. Leigh worked from home on Monday and Tuesday, luckily so did everyone else in his office. But Thursday he had a meeting and so Wednesday he went in to prepare, knowing that he would be camping out on someone’s couch. I steeled myself for him to be gone until Saturday since the reports were talking about snow storms everyday for the next week!

It was nice to have the entire bed to myself (and Maddie) and to be able to put her to sleep at 6:30 instead of 7:30. She still didn’t sleep through the night, but I had enough time to start reading the Super Baby Food book that my friend Sarah gave me. And I hatched a plan to add another solid to her diet and get into more of a routine with the solids. I guess one of the reasons babies at her age will stop sleeping through the night is that they are still hungry and can’t get filled up enough from the breast milk, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

And after Leigh returned Friday night, the snow has continued to fall. But this year it is welcome, more peaceful and more of a blizzard! I remember being constantly cold and feeling off all winter last year. I didn’t know if it was from a dissatisfaction with work or my life in general, or it if was hormones from the pregnancy. This year, while I’m still working, my work hours are *much* reduced with no emergencies! And I’m happy to say that while we do struggle with my lack of steady income and an intermittent lack of sleep, I’m having a beautiful, fun, joyful time being a mom and perhaps that feeling of peace with the world is helping me to return to my pre-vet school feelings of calm, love, tolerance and openness that has really escaped me for a long time. The snow storm gives me a good excuse to snuggle up on the couch or get out an walk to appointments rather than drive and I get to see the world in slow motion.

Every now and then we look out the window and watch the snowmobilers tearing off down the street or watch the snowplows clink by or even see people swish-swish by on cross country skis. 

Today I appreciate my life.

When I first graduated vet school and was unemployed while Leigh worked diligently and unhappily at his Seattle job, I played the housewife and cooked dinner most every night. I really enjoyed it, spending hours on the net or my cookbooks trying to come up with healthy meaty meals to replace Leigh’s frozen fare.

But once we swapped roles and I was the one working long hours while Leigh was taking a well-deserved sabbatical, Leigh hesitantly took over the cooking. Not that he’s a bad cook, in fact, just the opposite. But he wants it to be perfect the first time (and it usually is actually), but making a mistake or having it fall flat (which has happened, but very rarely) will hold him back.

We recently visited Curt & Jamie in Seattle and they re-energized my desire to buy organic & local and eat less meat. They also introduced us to a fabulous cookbook (Deborah Madison, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone) and we bought it. Leigh was the first to try something from it, a great pasta dish with capers. After we had a mild falling out about the fact that I don’t seem to get excited about the dinners he makes (really I’m just excited to not have to cook, in addition to being able to eat the great things he makes). I think he was mistaking my lack of enthusiasm for exhaustion. But since then he’s made the effort not to be so sensitive and I’ve made an effort to show him how excited I am to eat whatever he offers up.

This risotto was one of the first meals after our fight and it was really really good. He bought saffron special for this one.

One of the best things about eating one of Leigh’s meals is the presentation. Where I just throw things on the plate and then on the table, Leigh’s dishes look like they came out of a restaurant. (That little blob on the side of the plate was probably my fault).

Leigh and I had been looking at the real estate market for almost a year. Since January, when we first moved here, I’d been obsessive about finding the perfect house. We looked at a couple of places with the greatest real estate agent ever (Jane Parker) but just couldn’t find what we wanted and then decided to wait until Leigh found a full time job. I still kept looking every day just to make sure we didn’t miss the right house if it came along.

I saw this listing for a house around the corner from us, and though it didn’t have a picture and was on a busier street than I cared for, I made Leigh go look at it on his daily walk. Needless to say, he fell in love with it from the outside and made me call Jane to get a look at it asap.

These are the pics from the original real estate ads:

The first thing we did was pull up all the carpet in the house. We started with the ugly green/blue shag in the master bedroom and then went on to the cream-colored carpet in the rest of the house, including the stairs. Everything smelled better and became so much brighter. We also pulled out the fireplace insert. We weren’t quite sure how much of a fire hazard it was. Turns out the fireplace works just fine, according to the chimneysweep.

Leigh just had to keep this wallpaper, however. I tried to talk him out of it….

When Leigh’s mom was here, we went to find some flowers for the back deck and this is what we came up with:

So that’s a quick tour of the place. We have lots of projects and we’ll keep people updated. Right now we’re struggling with the fact that today the washer backed up all over the floor and we’re afraid that might have something to do with the potato peelings from 10 potatoes I tried to shove down the garbage disposal. Not having grown up with a disposal, I missed the memo that potato peelings are one of the main things you don’t put down the disposal…