Water and Fish. Two separate stories.

Cup 11 of 16 for the day!

I have had every intention, lately, to blog about my life, but every time I sit down to write about work, I just....can't.  It's not that I don't love my job!  It's just not that interesting, and I'm not allowed to talk about the few things which are.  I do a lot of paperwork, and my office is right next to the bathroom.  Close proximity to the bathroom is a HUGE thing right now, because my doctor has decided I'm dehydrated.  I don't believe her, so I drink 12 cups of water a day in an effort to prove her wrong.
 What I really need to do is man up and tell her I want to get off my meds, but I'm too much of a wimp to do that, and besides, if I get off my meds I'll actually have to be healthy, and who does that?
Honestly, I've been doing really well lately, but then the other day I had a bit of a scare.  Y'all probably remember my BP problem (I never shut up about it), but it's been basically under control for the last 6 months.  I've been taking  my meds, and avoiding salt, and working out, and it's been summer so I've been pretty much stress-free, not to mention a trip to Hawaii; how much more laid back can you get?  So things are good.  I get dizzy every once in a while; usually when I first wake up, I make it to the bathroom and I kinda have to catch myself on the counter until things even out, and then I'm good.  The doctor said that's normal, to drink some water and tell her if it gets worse.  Cool beans.
Well, the other day, Jesse was leaving for work, so I stood up to give him a hug goodbye.  I'd been up for about an hour, at that point, no dizziness.  Well when I stood up things swam a little bit, but no black spots or anything, nothing out of the ordinary, just stood up too fast, right?  Then I was dreaming.  I don't remember what I was dreaming, but I was definitely not awake.  You know that in-between stage where you're asleep but you still kinda know what's going on around you?  It was like that, and then I heard Jesse saying "what are you doing??" but it was all quiet and far away, as cliche as that is.  At that point I realized I was half on the floor and Jesse was holding me up, so I said "I'm falling over, hang on a second!"  I stood up, sent Jesse off to work, had a bottle of water, and thought "huh, that was strange."  Well, I work with many women who love me, and they decided I was probably going to die, so I called the doctor and the doctor said "no more monkeys jumping on the bed!"  Oh wait....that was what we were singing while we were in line for the bathroom, sorry!  No, the doctor said "oh you're fine, just have some water", and that was when I decided I don't believe her.  I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to pass out like that.  Anyway, that's my blood pressure story.  I drink a lot of water, and I pee even more, and I take my BP 3-4 times a day.  Woohoo!

Can't decide if this combo will be divine or disgusting...

And on to other things....like dinner!  That's what I really intended to be talking about, because I really like food, and I really like excuses to take pictures of my food.  There are too many pictures in this post, fair warning.

Tonight I'm making kokonee.  That's as far as my menu plan went, so at lunch today I asked my friends how they like to cook salmon and we went from there.
This is my Great Kitchen Adventure of the day!

I'm starting with this recipe, and then making it how I want to.  I don't like guacamole, so I didn't want to buy any like the recipe says, and instead I'm whipping up my own version of the topping stuff.
So far I have a nice big spoonful of greek yogurt, 1/4 of a small avocado, a teaspoonish of minced garlic, a few cilantro leaves, a splash of lemon juice, and a sprinkling of sugar.  I mixed this up about an hour before dinner, for two reasons:

1. My choices were start dinner or do laundry.  That's a no-brainer, folks.
2. Things like this are yummy when the flavors have time to soak together and blend and stuff, right?

So far my verdict is that I used too much garlic.  I bought a big jar of minced garlic and it's strange.  It almost has an after taste, and I'm not a huge fan, but I'm stuck with it till I get through it, sadly.

While that's been chilling in the fridge (pun only partly intended), I've been clickity clackiting away here, and it's about time to start some mexican rice.  Of course it's a Pioneer Woman recipe.  What else would it be?  It was supposed to be rice pilaf, originally, but then I had this can of tomatoes, so it's evolving...I'm going to keep that recipe open in another tab and we'll see how close it turns out, shall we?
Melt some butter, saute up some onions...
(I've always had this strange fascination with chopping onions.  It was the first thing I would do when I was doing prep at the coffee shop because I wanted to get to it before anyone else did.  Is that abnormal?  I don't know why it brings me as much enjoyment as it does...)
Add some garlic and rice and stir it around for a while.  Then the can of tomatoes that started it all, salt, pepper, and cumin, chicken bouillon, and BAM!  You got yo-self some Mexican rice pilaf.


I actually mostly followed the recipe for the spice rub on the fish, but I didn't have any of that chili powder, so I used half regular ol' burrito makin' chili powder, and half cayenne pepper.  I rubbed the fishies down, and tried to get some on the inside, too, since they're whole fish, not salmon steaks like the original recipe was designed for.

A big mess and twenty minutes later...rice is bubbling away on the stove, and as soon as the oven heats up I'll pop the fish in the oven!  I should probably provide some sort of vegetables, but that would most likely require cleaning a dish to cook them in.  Unless I just throw some corn in the rice cooker or something, but corn hardly counts as a vegetable.  It's mostly water, after all, and your body doesn't even digest the majority of it.

In other mostly-water vegetable news, I'm growing celery and it hasn't died!  It's green and growing and alive!!  Go celery!

Hey, that looks almost edible!  Actually, it was pretty delicious.  In Jesse's words, "love me some kokonee!"  Just a teensy bit spicy, but the yogurt sauce countered it beautifully.  Jesse said he didn't like the rice, but we only ate half the pan at dinner, and the rest of it has now been finished off, so it must not have been that awful!
All in all, if I would learn to slow down while I eat fish, so I don't swallow quite so many little fish bones, fish would be one of my favorite foods.  But I'm impatient and I don't like having to dissect my food after I've cooked it.

I forgot the guac-y stuff in the first picture....so here's another!  I know you wanted more....

And that's my life.
Wish you were here.

Today's View From the Mat

Honestly, I just took a picture I liked and came up with a profound-sounding caption, so now I'm trying to think of something I can say to go along with it...

"Thus I considered all my activities which my hands had done and the labor which I had exerted, and behold all was vanity and striving after wind and there was no profit under the sun." Ecclesiastes 2:11

It's easy to see life this way.  For two years we have been here in Texas, living our Great Adventure, and some of it has been truly Adventurous.  I started a dance team.  Like...What?  BYC Dance Company came into being, and it was amazing!  But some of it (a lot of it) has been less Adventurous.  We have spent countless days sitting around our apartment, staring at Netflix or, Lord help me, Minecraft.  That background music gets really old after a while, ya know?  You can only build so many houses, blow up so many piles of TNT.  Eventually you've watched all 9 seasons of Bones, both seasons of Agents of Shield, and all the nerd-tastic movies you own a few times over, and you've baked more cookies than you could eat in a month...and then eaten them all.  In a weekend.  I was making myself a planner, and collecting nice little quotes from pinterest to put at the top of every page (because who doesn't like pinterest sayings, right?), and I came across one that said

"What you do today is important because you're trading a day of your life for it."

As far as pinterest cliches go, that one struck me as being pretty deep.  I mean, it's true!  Every single day I spend sitting here on the couch, watching The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and eating salad and cheesecake is a day of my life in which I do nothing.  How's that for vanity?  It's not even striving after anything!  It's completely selfish.  But lately I find it so hard to strive because it's all just wind anyway, isn't it?  I got to thinking, and was trying to figure out what is worth a day of my life.  What is important enough to give up my life?
People.
People are worth it.  My family is worth it.  My kids at the school are worth it.  My tiny dancers are worth it.  But today is July 24th, and I have 4 days till my last summer dance class, 4 weeks until school starts again, and 4 months until I get to see my one of my sisters for Thanksgiving.  In the meantime, I have been doing that whole hippy, focus on me-time thing.  I do yoga and I started tumble classes (I am so close to having a back handspring I can taste it!).  I read two books in three days, and I built a custom planner.  I baked a batch of cookies and a pan of cheesecake brownies.  I bought strawberries and bananas and made chocolate fondue just for the heck of it.  I cut my bangs and dyed my hair and I try to dance at least every couple of days, just for me.
I get frustrated feeling my life is stagnant.  I am  missing my family, and I feel I am not doing a whole lot of good right now.  But as I was chilling in child's pose this morning, listening to the humming birds and enjoying the sunshine, I remembered something:  we came here for a lot of reasons, but one big reason was for us to have a chance to establish Us.  We came here for Us.  Not for our families or the people around us; they are absolutely still SO important, and ultimately life is about the people, but maybe it is ok to take time to be...Us.  I realized I haven't had an anxiety attack all summer, and we even went to Strawn for dinner the other night!  I socialized with people, and had normal conversations, and didn't have any ridiculous urges to yell at my husband for things I imagined.  Must be doing something right...maybe being a selfish hippy isn't so  bad, eh?  
We are coming up on our 2nd anniversary on Monday, and really, two years isn't very long, in the grand scheme of things.  Someday soon we will be ready to come back to the real world.  Someday soon we will be strong enough to focus on more than just Us.  Someday soon our family will be established and we will be prepared to expand it.  But for now, just for a while longer, I am going to be content doing yoga and cooking steak for Jesse.  We will continue to work at being Us, because someday life will be hectic and other people will be involved, and we will need Us to be auto pilot.  We will need these years of isolation and frustration and adventure and discovery and anxiety and boredom to look back on and remember who we are as Us.

And that's today's view from the yoga mat, the part of the blog when Rianna reveals the way life changes when you look from a hippy point of view.  Peace out and namaste!

Living the Life

I had never before traveled far enough, fast enough, to experience jet lag.  I know I only got a small dose of it, but let me tell you this: It's remarkably disorienting, and when I have gotten a chance to sleep, it's amazing.  Best sleep of my life.
Keeping everything in Texas time (over less than 24 hours we passed through 5 time zones), we got up yesterday (Thursday) morning at noon and had breakfast.  We packed up at geocached for a while, and then went to the airport and caught our first plane at 5pm, where we ate subway for lunch.  Our plane landed in Seatte six plus hours later, so just after midnight, Texas time.  There we finished off our Subway for dinner, and took off again around 2am.  That flight was 3 hours and 34 minutes, and I probably dozed for almost 3 hours.  I am a gifted napper.  I have periods of insomnia, so I can't exactly say that I am blessed with the ability to sleep anytime and anyplace, but I am usually able to nap whenever I choose.  Therefore, I was able to sit back and at least shut my body down to rest, even though my brain was partly aware of what was going on, and the audiobook Jesse was listening to.
Touchdown in Dallas was 5:46 am, and it took us until 11:30 to finally make our way to Breckenridge.  We ate somewhere in there...then ran some errands and make some mac and cheese at 3:00 and were both passed out on the couches by 3:30.  In 30 hours I slept just over 4 hours, traveled 5 time zones, had my feet on the ground in 3 different states, and ate 5 meals.  
But enough about that.  Is vacation worth all the jet lag?  I'm not a huge vacationer; I am more of a workaholic homebody, but I was struck with the beauty of Hawaii, and am in awe of the imagination of our Creator.  There are more colors in a mile of Hawaii's coastline than the entire state of Texas.  The sheer magnitude of the trees and bamboo and cliffs is astonishing.  The fantastic shapes of the flowers and fruits and leaves!  Round, flat, bumpy, thorny, thick, delicate, spiney, smooth; it's all there.
We spent a lot of time driving around to various places all over the island.  We stopped at countless beaches, hiked miles up and down ridiculous hills, picked up coconuts and mangos everywhere, toured a coffee factory thing, took a dinner cruise, went to a luau, kayaked and snorkeled and went to every farmers market on the island, I swear.  It was quite the experience.  Jesse has been trying to convince me for some time that we need to live in Hawaii, and I must admit he's closer than he ever has been.  We spent some time talking with a couple of the guys working the dinner cruise we went on, and they talked about "living the life", and not being there for the money or anything.  They're just living.  I would love to go to the beach every day, eat fresh food from farmers markets, live in funky harem pants and be a hippy....that would be amazing.  But for me, living the life is still being with my family.  I will never be living the life as long as I am thousands of miles away from the people who made me who I am. 

It's goin'.

Well it has been a while, and a lot has happened!

This is my little 5 yr old

To sum it up...A bunch of snow days happened, and that got in the way of many things.  We drove down to our last competition in awful snow and ice; it was bad enough that they delayed the competition for a day.  We didn't quite come out on top at this last one, but that was ok.  We still have some trophies to show off, and we are now gearing up for the end of the year showcase!  That has involved continued rehearsals for our two competition dances, extra ballet classes, my two regular

We are working on her very first solo!

Lilly asked for an emotional lyrical solo

classes and their routines, 5 or 6 new students, and three solos to choreograph, teach, and clean, costumes to be ordered, sent back, re-ordered, letters sent to parents, an auditorium to book, dress rehearsal to be scheduled, and the program written all before May 3rd!  Now of course, not all of that has fallen on me; Leslie makes amazing things happen for me.  But it has been hectic!  In the midst of all that I have had to cancel the youth group thing.  My rehearsals have been running into youth group time, and I just do not have the mental capacity to make it all happen.

Selfies with the coolest teacher ever!

In my other life, the one where I get up early and actually brush my hair, I had an interview for the Head Start Family Services position.  The lady who currently does that job is retiring, and she asked me to apply for the job when she left.  The interview was two weeks ago, and still no one has heard anything.  At first it looked like I was in a pretty good position to get the job, but now I'm not so sure.  Honestly, as my mother said this morning, it would be a God thing.  It would be so great....I really think I would be good at it, but probably I'm more wanting the office and my own space and my own title and someplace to keep all my pens and post-it notes, and God probably isn't going to bestow such things upon me for such selfish reasons, but you can pray for His will to be done anyway.  I've been trying to do that, amidst the prayers for my own desk....Mrs. Brooks offered to give me a desk in the corner of her room so I could have someplace to put my stuff!  Like I would get anything done there.  I spend too much time in her room, as it is.

Oh hey!  Have I mentioned that I am now "Tia Rianna"?  Yep.  I have adopted a tiny Mexican as a niece.  My friend Sarai had her baby Ariely, and I went over the other day to play dress up while Jesse was working late.  It's not fair that everybody is getting to have babies and be all grownup and domestic.  Well ok, I'm not in a huge rush to have babies, because then I wouldn't have time for my kids, and that would
be sad.  So my childlike/domestic adventures are limited to wearing my owl apron while I spend my entire weekend making lots of food, and then canning it.  Yep, I just canned my first pork and beans.  Hello, camping food!
It's a little intimidating, I'm not gonna lie.  I haven't canned anything in years, and never without my mother.  Really my mother has canned and I have hung out in the kitchen, eating whatever I could scrounge.  So going at this lone has been an experience.  it has made a decent mess, BUT I haven't exploded anything, and so far all (5) of my jars have sealed!  I have another 6 in the pressure cooker right now, so hopefully they will share the fate of their brothers.  Of course, if they don't (assuming they don't explode), I won't have to make dinner tonight, so maybe that's not such a bad thing!  
 Anyway, I ust end this edition of DBA chronicles, because I have something burning in the kitchen....

Ice Breakers.

I had some ice to break this evening, and when I say "some", I mean enough to sink the Titanic.  I led my first youth group dance session. Because that's a totally normal thing that people do.
I estimate there were around 30 kids, and I think I had four who actually participated, and maybe the same amount who looked like they wanted to, but didn't have the guts. But come on, if some crazy chick in bleach stained sweatpants showed up, made you stand in a circle with all your friends, put her phone in the middle of the floor to play the lecrae station on Pandora, and then asked you to dance, what would you do? Yeah, probably laugh into the side of your hand like you're too cool for school and wait for someone else to bust some moves. Unfortunately, lecrae and I do not exactly have the same style, so I wasn't busting many moves, either, but I gave it my best! I jumped around and made a fool of myself, and I was rewarded with one kid doing the worm, and two more doing "the robot thing". Honestly, they weren't half bad, which is maybe why the others were reluctant to do anything.
All around is was just about as awkward as I expected, but surprisingly the ones showing the most interest were actually guys. I believe I can win over the girls, so having the guys already ion board s going to make this much easier. I had two more guys come up to me as everyone was leaving and ask if there is going to be any singing. "Well, are you gonna sing? We can't have singing without someone to sing, so if you wanna sing, then you'll have to come up with something to sing."  They said that they will try to come up with some clean songs that they know and talk to Yuri about it, so she and I can figure out how to make that work. Dude, by the time I get done with this, I may have a full fledged glee club on my hands! Pitch Perfect: Youth Group Edition. I can see it now...
Anyway, it is an interesting adventure I have embarked on, and I have no idea where it will lead me, but I think I need to be doing it. It will be good for me, and hopefully I will be able to build some relationships with these kids, and it will grow and be a good ministry for me as long as we are here.
It's a little strange... I'm still not sure I feel old enough to not be a member of the youth group yet. It's odd being on this side of things. Talking about having a "ministry", while I know there is no age requirement for ministry, it still feels so grown-up, and honestly, I don't feel all that grown-up right now. I don't know if I'm in a position to be leading anyone... but I guess that's why I'm just there to dance; I am not marketing myself as any kind of spiritual guru, just a chick who wants to dance for God. If I can make a real difference in their lives somehow, so much the better, but maybe I'll just be an opportunity for a laugh. Either way, I expect it will be a positive experience, once we melt through all the awkwardness.

Family.

An old guitar and a stand up bass. Turkey noodle soup and apple pie. Sheep in the pasture and kids on the deck. Art on the walls and crayons on the floor. Curling hair and baking bread. Dancing in the living room and reading in bed. Getting out the dictionary (app) in the middle of the night, staying up all night to paint the walls. Walking empty streets and living in full houses. Singing with the tea kettle, to the baby, in the shower...Yes, sometimes all at once. Scrabble and chamomile, and cribbage with coffee. Dr. Seuss and Charles Dickens and Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and Fanny's Dream. Big table, small kitchen, neither ever empty. Hobos on the couch and kids sleeping in the sailboat.
A house smaller on the outside than what it held inside it.

Valentine's Day with my girls

Happy Valentine's Day!  I hope yours was spent with loved ones, doing things appropriate to your own personal level of mushiness.
As for myself, I spent it with four of the most wonderful girls in Breckenridge, and the most wonderful woman I have ever had the pleasure of starting a dance company with.  At 7 am we all met at Party Planet, and loaded up into the Van.  Four girls, two coaches, one mom, 3 pillows and blankets, 8 costumes, 12 pairs of dance shoes, a dozen powdered doughnuts, 6 chocolate covered strawberries, 2 sparkly backpacks, 3 makeup bags, two cans of hairspray, and a partridge in a pear tree!  Wait....wrong holiday, sorry.
We drove all the way down to Killeen, TX, about 3 hours away, just north of Austin, for the Heart of Texas Classic ADT competition.  This was our first time performing lyrical as well as hip hop, and Leslie and I were definitely a little nervous.  I don't know much about the Texas dance scene, and Leslie doesn't know much about dance outside of cheer, and it was our first experience with ADT.  We really didn't quite know what to expect.  After stopping for breakfast in this totally random little cafe, we were running late, so I started braiding hair in the back of the van.  A word to the wise: Don't spray hairspray in the back of a hot van.  It's just not fun. 
We rolled in around 11, and we were set to perform lyrical at 1:12.  Hair and makeup was really a breeze, and with only four girls we had plenty of room in our classroom to practice without having to go out into the hallways.  The girls were enamored of an older girl who was practicing her solo in the hall.  She was dancing to the song Addison sang for the talent show, so that just made it even better.
12:45 rolled around, and it was go time!  The ladies running the practice gym very generously allowed us to sneak in a practice between the big teams (as a small ensemble we didn't get a real practice time), which was more important than I realized it would.  A minute into their practice, the music shut off.  The girls tripped over their feet and stopped and stared at me. 
"If the music stops, you keep going.  You do NOT stop dancing!"
"This stereo is just really old.  Your CD should be fine in the auditorium, don't worry about it!"
Fast forward to standing in the wings.
There is something magical about being backstage.  I love it.  I like to watch from the side, I love seeing the backstage rituals that happen, stretching, planks, last minute whispered questions and assurances, silent applause...it's one of my favorite places to be.
Leslie and I stood backstage with the girls, and watched them go on and start lyrical.  There was a collective "awww!" as they took the stage.  Their performance was set in the middle of a bunch of high school solos, and they were beautiful little girls in their purple dresses and braids.  They won the hearts of the audience from the very beginning.
Then, about a minute in, the music stopped.
I will not repeat on the internet what the only word we exchanged was before I went running down the stairs to the music table.  I whipped out my phone and I know I spoke with the music girl and announcer, but I have no idea what I said.  I just remember looking up and realizing that the girls were still dancing, and were completely together.  Addison told us later that Lilly had started singing and they just kept going.  Thank goodness we were given practice time, so they knew what to do!  Everyone was cheering and clapping, and the announcer said "thank you girls, you can stop now.  We'll start over."
It wasn't perfect, but all things considered, it was amazing.  It was possibly the best I have seen them do, and they recovered so well.  This audience was much smaller than our previous audiences, but they were great.  They cheered and clapped and the girls faces were shining.
On the way back to the room we had to pass by the practice gym again and the nice ladies asked how we did.
"themusicstoppedandwekeptgoingandzoedidatoetouchthingandpeopleCLAPPEDforherandweweresogood!!"
Back in the room to change, scarf down some chicken nuggets, crazy up the hair, touch up the makeup, have some dance battles, and off we go!  We stopped at the practice gym again to give the girls a chance to do some back handsprings and practice the pop ups, and we had our next "oh crap" moment.  Lilly somehow had forgotten how to jump up off the floor.  While Zoe and Kam were showing the high school girls how to do it, Lilly was getting more and more frustrated.  They have to roll back on their backs, and then throw their feet up and forward to push themselves up onto their feet and stand up.  Does that make sense?  Anyway, Lilly was having trouble with it in practice last week, but she was tired and sore, and we were sure that she would be fine the day of.  She was the first one to figure it out, after all, and is very capable.  But suddenly she just couldn't do it, and was very upset by it.  I have never seen Lilly not happy, and I was worried that she was just not going to be able to shake it off.
We walked back into the auditorium and people started clapping.  There was a huge team over on one side that stood up to cheer for them, and we hadn't even gotten on stage yet.  I didn't even want to risk the CD not working, so I hugged them all and ran down to the music table.  As the girls walked on, the audience exploded.  I didn't have to do anything.  Usually I try to get their attention, try to get them to smile and keep their energy up...There was no way they were gonna look at me.  For 2 minutes they were celebrities.  I can't even begin to describe the euphoria that I felt, and I can only imagine how the girls felt!  They fed off that energy and it was amazing.  Again, it wasn't perfect, but as we told them, the crowd loved them, so who cares what the judges thought?
It may have been the best moment in my dancing career.
After a while, the girls went back inside to watch, and to thank their fans, and when we went back inside, we found them sitting right in the middle of the Midway Goaltenders.  They were just chillin, hanging out, talking, taking selfies and exchanging phone numbers.  The high school girls raved about them and adored them.  Their hair, their dancing, their costumes, their choreography (not mine, btw), everything.  You could not ask for better fans.

I had to stalk them a little bit after we left so I could send an FB message to their coach, to tell her how wonderful her dancers are and thank her.  But it wasn't just the dancers.  We had a couple parents from that team come up and talk to us about them.  It was crazy.  I never would have imagined that our little team would be noticed, much less celebrated this way.  Of course, being young made them endearing, having their music cut out made them memorable, continuing to dance made them impressive, and tumbling made them totally gangster swagalicious cool.
Unfortunately, the competition did not end until 11:15 pm, and we had a three hour drive to get home, so we were not able to stay for awards.  But we got our results from the competition director before we left, and were so excited to take them out to dinner and present them with not just a second place trophy, but the first place as well!
I guess I forget that they are 11.  Their scores were 90 and 95, and I  were great athletes, and I am just used to working with older girls.  They really have worked very hard, and I can't wait to see what they will accomplish in the future.
I am one very proud coach, or "director", as they say in Texas.  It sounds so fancy!  As Kam says, Brownings don't come to participate, they come to win.
Nobody beats us but us!  It's a good day to be a Browning.

Post by BYC Dance Company.