A happy rainy Sunday

What a lovely rainy Sunday it has been.  I started the day by making my guy and I a light breakfast of French eggs with finely chopped mint and chives, scrambled with cream, served with lemon juice over them, eaten with warm Lebanese bread and fresh fruit and tea.  It was delicious and my guy waited until half way through his meal before covering his eggs in ketchup!  We had friends stop by and deliver a couple of chairs we had stored at their house, which of course later generated a conversation about how to recover them for our new living room.  We headed off to Ikea to return left over kitchen installation pieces and then, after rambling around six different stores, we found, fell in love and bought a new bedroom suite for our room.  Until now, we have made due with bedroom suites that either of us had accumulated over the years.  But with our new house, I wanted us to get a brand new, jointly chosen bedroom suite that is just ours.  And we found it.  Actually my guy found it and seeing him so happy with his discovery I couldn’t very well say no.  It arrives on Wednesday night.  I have spent the last four hours unpacking still more boxes.  I seriously have no idea where they are all coming from but there is also suddenly more carpet showing through, enough that I could actually pull out the vacuum and give it a good cleaning.  I am so surprised at myself now that we moved into the new house.  All I am doing is cleaning and I hate cleaning, like really hate, resent it even.  But in the new house, if a dish is dirty I was it, dry it, put it away and then put the drain board away!  I barely recognize myself.  I am sure this will all wear off soon enough but for now I am have an incredibly clean house and kitchen, especially considering all the boxes and tools still sitting around.  A regular week coming up for me; it is good to be back to a regular routine.  

Feeling very fortunate

Well here I am, sitting at my desk, still damp from coming in from outside.  Seriously, I am thinking about heading onto the internet to search for design plans to build ourselves an ark it is raining so much.  It started last night and is supposed to keep raining off and on, with fluctuating levels of rainfall for the next six days!  Fortunately I went out in the yard last night amid the drizzle and planted all my impatients, dalias, begonias, pansies, and marigolds.  The beds look amazing and come mid summer will be simply a riot of colour.  I have my tomatoes and herbs in already, I remember telling you and so I think I am all set.  It feels great to have spruced up the beds and made them our own and besides now throughout the summer we can enjoy eating al fresco and be surrounded with wonderful flowers.  So I guess the rain for the next while will be great for giving them all a head start.  We got up early this morning and went up to meet my brother in law and nephews and we cycled 20 kms in the rain to train for the charity ride.  Fortunately it never really got much worse than hard drizzle but that didn’t stop me from getting covered in mud and grime.  We showered back at my sister in laws and then stayed for a great lunch.  We found out while we were there that my sister in law’s sister is newly pregnant, a moment of great joy and celebration.  Congratulations to them, expecting their first.  Then we popped up to my parents for a quick visit.  Dad is much recovered from his illness, thank goodness, and found after a trip to the chiropractor that he was much improved.  I hope it continues, he is getting back to his old self.  We are home now, my guy taking a quick nap, and me here at the computer, thinking of you, and wondering what is next for me.  Tonight, more electrical work and unpacking more boxes and generally making this house a home.  To be honest, I am really happy right now, deeply happy, deeply content.  Amid the noise and haste and chaos, I am happy.   A wonderful place to be, loved by a great guy, blessed with great family and friends, and life full of change and opportunities.  This I think is definitely the “for better” part of our vows.  How lucky I am.  

A weekend of domestic bliss ahead

Here I am getting ready for a weekend of unpacking.  We have lots to do this weekend and this afternoon we are going shopping for tiles for our backsplash.  I want to get all my flowers for the beds tonight since they are calling for four days of rain.  Better to have the flowers in now so they can get a good soaking after transplanting.  Tomorrow we have a 20 km training ride on our bikes, rain or shine, and most likely rain, so we will be ready for the charity ride.  It doesn’t really sound appealing but the ride will occur in rain or shine so we have to start to train in both weather conditions. And other than a whole weekend of unpacking boxes and working on our new home.  Our only delicious break is a lunch at my sister in laws on Saturday.  It is domestic bliss at our place these days and frankly I am enjoying it immensely!

Today sharing Blueberry French Toast Bake with new friends

I just jumped off the deep end again!  I have heard tonnes about Twitter for the last year but honestly knew very little about it.  Yesterday I was talking with one of the marketing managers at work and he recommended that I set up a Twitter account to go with my website and Facebook account.  After some review on the Twitter site and then more research on Google on actually how to use it, I have now signed up for a Twitter account.  The location is @feedingyourguy if you want to follow along on Twitter.  I have to admit I now feel a new pressure to come up with witty and useful things to put on the Twitter account as well; all this interconnectedness is amazing but also puts a little bit more pressure on me.  I just desperately don’t want to become one of those people you always hear about who post completely inane things on their Twitter account. Trust me, you will not be seeing any tweets from me telling you I am washing dishes or heading off to bed!

There was also some exciting news today.  There are two more articles written about my cookbook, one from the Tulsa World, located here Tulsa World - May 11, 2011 and another article from the Times of India located here Times of India - May 11, 2011  I had a great email conversation with Natalie at the Tulsa World and expressed my sincere thanks to her for writing an article about my cookbook.  I sent her a recipe for Blueberry French Toast bake which even she said she was going to try soon.  It is exciting to have articles talking about the cookbook, even doubly exciting to be able to share my recipes!  I have been starting to think I should do something special for Father’s Day in conjunction with the cookbook, not sure what yet but what better guy to prepare a nice meal for than Dad!  If you have any ideas, I would love to hear them.

Selling is going to be hard work

I am having a funny sort of day.  First the minutes seemed to crawl by today, slowly like they were watching me as they marched by, saluting me that they were going but never in a hurry to leave.  Work was fine, a fairly regular sort of day, but uninspiring.  I realized today I think for the first time how much work is ahead of me to try to sell the cookbook, how many hours of work, planning, trying, testing ideas and rejecting them and trying something new.  How I am going to have to seek help, ask for advice, beg, cajole and plead for those first people to get it and then to recommend it to others so some word of mouth can start happening.  I think I realized today that, despite the countless hours of work that are behind me in creating the cookbook, that was the easy part, that the real work is just now starting and I have so very much to do.  I am not sure where to begin and I think I have realized that there is going to be no magic bullet, that selling the book will be a long, regular pattern of ideas, execution and then moving on to the next idea.  Selling is going to be much harder work than writing and no amount of exciting news articles are going to make a heap of difference, I have to plug away each day and see what works, see what catches people’s imaginations and then drives them to buy the cookbook.  Feeling a little despair, a little let down, a little anti-climax after the excitement of the launch.  I guess I am just getting back down to the brass tacks of selling this cookbook!  It is what I said I wanted so no point whining, just gotta get at it.  

Wow, am I exhausted

I just came in an hour or so ago after riding my bike for two and a half hours.  I wanted to get out and do some training prior to our participation in the Heart and Stroke charity ride on June 5 and I ended up getting lost in the park system here in the city.  Although it was definitely beautiful, I rode way more than I had anticipated.  At one point, I even had to carry my bike up about two hundred concrete steps, passing a group of women doing an outdoor booty camp workout.  I am not sure who looked more dejected, them or me!  Anyway I finally made it home and now my legs are exhausted and all I can think about is my bed.  I am off for a well deserved sleep!

Just planted next August's tomatoes for an outdoor salad

I have just come indoors from the backyard where I have just spent the last two hours gloriously planting tomato plants, rosemary and basil in anticipation of that hot August day when I can go outside and pluck a sun warmed tomato and some fresh basil and toss a summer salad and pinch some rosemary and roast the first new potatoes of the season.  It is all in planting the seeds for the future and here today I took the first small steps.  I am still unpacking the kitchen and trying to make some semblance of order in this messy house right now but it is deeply satisfying having this new home, this nest just for us, to create how we see fit, to plan and dream and create the next phase of our life.  I am behind my self imposed schedule of what I wanted to get unpacked tonight so I better run but more news tomorrow!  I promise.