This hit me like a death in my own family, and I wasn't sure what I wanted to say about it. Then I read the ending quote in this article and realized that she had explained part of why I cared for her and her books so deeply. Thank you Madeleine.
“Why does anybody tell a story? It does indeed have something to do with faith, faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.” - Madeleine L'Engle
I'm one of those people who actually does want to know what you had for lunch (and breakfast and supper too!). It's one way I get new ideas, and it also reminds me of old favorites we haven't had in a while. There's also something very friendly about sharing meals with someone even if it's just through his/her blog.
In that spirit, I thought I'd share what Matt and I have been eating this week, and once I finalize our grocery list, I'll share the plan for next week's suppers too. We'll see how closely it matches what we really end up doing. The focus is on suppers because Matt and I tend to just choose from a variety of staples for lunch, breakfast, and any snacks and/or eat leftovers.
Sunday - I made a huge beef roast with vegetables in the slow cooker. We had a lot of meat left over to use in more suppers during the week, so Matt didn't have to go through red meat withdrawal symptoms. ;)
Monday - I grilled chicken breasts seasoned with lemon pepper. I had one on top of a salad using romaine hearts, crumbled blue cheese, red onions, cucumbers, and balsamic vinaigrette. Matt ate his along with some of the leftover veggies from Sunday's roast and a couple slices of garlic toast.
Tuesday - This was a quick and simple meal with some of that leftover roast used for French dip sandwiches. We had roasted new potatoes and steamed broccoli for the sides.
Wednesday - We had one of Matt's favorite non-beef meals - grilled salmon with a pepper crust. This was a special treat because salmon around here is often not worth the relatively high cost, but Matt's parents sent us some awesome salmon fillets from Alaska for our anniversary. With these we had a very simple salad and broccoli stir-fried with dark sesame oil, sesame seeds, and a few red pepper flakes.
Thursday - After two suppers and a few lunches for Matt from Sunday's roast, we used up the last of it for some enchiladas. Matt is also eating enchiladas for lunch today.
Friday - We usually plan on eating out one night per week, and tonight is the night this week. We've been talking about going to our favorite Chinese restaurant, which most likely means Mongolian beef with fried rice for Matt and tofu and veggies in garlic sauce with brown rice for me.
Saturday - Unless I buy something that sounds better during tomorrow's grocery run, we'll be having chicken sandwiches topped with bacon and sharp cheddar cheese along with some salad to use up our romaine hearts and cucumbers.
I've been going through some of my quote notebooks, and this one jumped out at me and demanded to be shared here. Storytelling is a big theme in the quotes I've collected over the years.
"My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours. Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I, of these stories of who we are and where we have come from and the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories, in all their particularity, as I have long believed and often said, that God makes himself known to each of us most powerfully and personally."
-- Frederick Buechner
My husband is not a morning person, and he'd never be mistaken for a vegetarian.
After three whole nights of not having red meat as part of our supper (I'm so cruel!), I decided this morning that I'd go ahead and start up the slow cooker with some beef stew ingredients. It would be a nice little surprise for Matt because I feared he was going through red meat withdrawal symptoms.
I typically wake up at least an hour or so before Matt, and then when he does wake up, he takes a really long time to actually make it out of the bedroom. Waking up is quite a process for him, which I don't completely understand, but I do know he's easier to deal with when he wakes up in his own time, so I give him lots of space in the mornings. It's actually nice for me as well because I get my own private time while he's waking up.
So I'm up and about this morning, and I start browning the beef for the stew. Within about 10 minutes, I heard Matt moving around in the bedroom, which is a little early for him. About 5 minutes after that, he was in the kitchen going on and on about how good something smelled. The power of beef drastically reduced his waking-up process.
He looked a little disappointed when he realized he was smelling supper and not breakfast, so I surprised him with steak and eggs for breakfast when he got out of the shower. He practically bounced out the door on his way to work with some steak already in his system and the promise of more beef waiting for him when he comes home.
My grandfather, who raised Angus cattle, died before I met Matt, but I know he is looking down and giving me the thumbs-up for picking a steak-lover. My own bout with vegetarianism as a teenager had him a little concerned that I'd end up with one of those crazy hippies. ;)
I need someone to explain to me exactly how it became August 22 already. Wasn't the beginning of August like yesterday? This month is just flying by, but I'm fine with that as long as it takes all these triple-digit temperatures with it. The heat and the humidity are really not my favorite parts of living in the South.
I'm feeling very shy about blogging lately, which is just silly. Every time I start to think about sitting down to post here, I start running all my thoughts through a "Is this blog worthy?" filter, and nothing seems to be worth the time to write because I'm all boring and stupid and blah blah blah. It's crazy, so I'm just going to spill out some thoughts and run ahead of my internal editor.
Matt and I celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary on the 16th of this month. We drove to Colonial Williamsburg and spent a few days there before heading to Norfolk, Virginia for some sight-seeing. It was a very low-key celebration, and we had a great time just being silly together without all the distractions of home.
The fall semester started this week for grad school, so that's taken most of my attention. I'm usually really excited about the start of a new semester, but I'm not really feeling much of anything about this one. That's probably because the classes don't seem as interesting as others I've taken. I'm hoping they prove me wrong though and turn out great.
We're also looking for a new church, which is really weighing me down. I loved our last church, and I'm sad that a disagreement among some of the elders has turned everything into a huge mess. We were hanging on like the last people on a sinking ship, but with the pastor feeling led to move to another state, we decided that it was time for us to move on as well. One positive is that the church had moved several miles out of town after we started attending there, so maybe we'll find a church a little closer to home and make some new friends who live near us.
Speaking of friends, I have to say that even though my closest friends live a million miles away from me (feels that way sometimes at least :D), I'm really blessed to have them. I'm not always the best at keeping in touch because I go through these times where dealing with anyone other than family just completely tires me out or I convince myself that I'm just bothering people. Some of my friends are the same way, and it's good for all of us to remember that we're not alone and that we can have some quiet pauses in our friendships without the friendships themselves disappearing.
And I've obviously left that internal editor eating my dust, so I'll click "save" and then go take a little rest.
We realized last night that we have a fairly large Amazon gift certificate from Christmas that we never used. It's like finding a dollar in your coat pocket but on a bigger scale, so we've been practically giddy with all the possibilities.
Both of us have been going through our wish lists and finding items that make us scratch our heads. "Why did that sound interesting?" Then we look at the other books added the same day, and we realize that was the day we read the NPR list of summer reading picks or the week we were obsessed with some particular topic like Nancy Drew or The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
Having been through this pruning cycle more times than I can count, I know some of those books will probably make their way back to the lists in the future. Eventually, they'll come back often enough that we'll end up buying them. It's fun to see the ebb and flow of our lives laid out so plainly in the books we find interesting.
People always say they're willing to die for the ones they love, as if nothing else they could do would be so hard. But it is harder to keep living for someone else, doing everything in your power to keep that person safe and breathing. I know. All these past weeks I have been living for my sister and her son, battling everyone else in the world, or so it seems, to keep Annie and Kinnon alive. I have defied my father, broken my mother's heart, traveled in secret, gone without sleep, gone without food, and hidden from violent strangers trying to kill all of us because of the magic in Kinnon's veins.
Most days it would be easier to be dead.
"When Winter Comes" seems to be set in the same world as the Shinn series that begins with Mystic and Rider, and I enjoyed this novella enough that I'll probably pick that up as well. Those sneaky writers keep pulling me in! ;) I read the Samaria trilogy by Shinn years ago and loved them, but for some reason, I haven't kept up with her more recent work.
Well, the not-so-good fanfic mentioned in my last post was really the ending. Bah. Still didn't like it, but the rest of the book was fairly good. I'm keeping this a spoiler-free zone for a bit longer, so that's all for now. :)
