Stream of Tuesday's Consciousness

I'd write the next Saga post, but I'm babysitting for a family in the ward while they attend the temple (we're switching off with two different families in the ward once a month for temple attendance and dates. I love it.), and I am at their house, so I don't have my handy dandy journal here to remind me of all the important dates.

It's been kind of crazy around our place. On Friday (2:00 am to 6:00 am) Lydia was sick. Sunday I was sick. Monday Avram was sick. (I at first worried I was pregnant, although I shouldn't be for several reasons, because it felt so much like morning sickness, with waking up nauseous, etc, etc. But then Avram got sick with the exact same thing, so unless he's miraculously pregnant I think I'm ok. I did have to tell him that now he can empathize with me how it feels to feel like that, every day, for two months. ANd try to be productive during it. Although "being productive usually equaled out to lying on the bed/couch and trying to have an out of body mental experiance to escape the nausea.) Plus on Monday and Today I worked (babysitting) from 4:00 am-3:35 pm. Fun times were had by all.

Before you feel to sorry for me and my life, I only have two more days left (next Monday and Tuesday) of early morning babysitting (although only at 5:30 am) left, and then I'm switching to babysitting a little six week old boy named James at my own home two days a week. Ideally I'll add on a full time second babysitting child, who can walk (and to be really ideal is within a year of Lydia's age), but unless someone reads this post and has that perfect toddler who needs to be babysat, I'm not exactly sure how to go about finding that second child. I'm excited to be babysitting from home - it'll be a first for me.

In other random notes, Elisheva yesterday out of nowhere climbed a flight of stairs. She's never even climbed one stair before yesterday, and then went up completely on her own (surprising me a lot). Today she tried to go down stairs head first. (also surprising me). She fell down one step, and balanced there on her head screaming until I got to her, thankfully before she fell any further. I helped her go down the steps backwards a couple of times, but I don't know if it really sunk in at all.

I'm listing all the books I'm reading this year on my sidebar. It's a little embarrassing - I hadn't really realized how many fluff novels I read. Although I have already read more than one non fiction book, and one is even a text book (Golden Arches East. It's a Socio-Cultural Anthropological book).

This morning, when I couldn't sleep, I read Dave Ramsey's The Total Money Makeover book, from about 5:00-8:00 am. It's an easy read. It's seven "Baby Steps" that could have been a pamphlet, but most of the book is motivation to get you to actually do the steps. I've believed and followed his principles before I even heard of him, like not believing in Credit Cards at all, and wanting to be out of debt (ok, and trying). After the debt Snowballing chapter, which is the second step, he says something to the effect of, "now you're debt free (except your mortgage) and have your $1,000 emergency fund in hand (Baby step one) - how does it feel. I know you're smiling." (I'm only remembering this. This isn't an actual quote) Except I wasn't smiling. I was crying. A financial book made me cry. And I'm not a cryer. I never cry. (Except later today, when I was watching Dumbo and the mom was rocking Dumbo with her trunk while she was locked up, but that's a mother's moment, and mother's moment's have my number.) I'll go months and months without crying normally. But I started crying, because honestly I feel so bound down by our debt - it's all student loan debt, and we're not earning any interest on it, and we're paying it off, but I still hate it. And the image of me being debt free, with $1,000 in emergency savings (this isn't the long term savings, that's step three) made me cry.

Avram doesn't even know all this yet, because I have seen him for a total of one minute flat today, so I guess he'll read all this on my blog, which is an awfully weird way to read about the emotional moments of your spouse. But hey, what's the Internet for but to publically air all our awkward moments? Although we're already pretty gung ho about paying off debt, and we don't live frivolously, reading this book made me rededicate myself to being debt free faster, with more personal sacrifices. So, I whole heartedly recommend this book (it's not some weird get rich quick book. Frankly, the Church's pamphlet on money says basically the same thing up through step three. But just knowing financially good practices is clearly not enough to get people out of debt, and live frugally. I think you have to have a moment where you realize being financially a good steward is more important to you than having stuff or going places or whatnot. Although he's all for buying stuff. With cash.)

Oh, while I'm writing stream of consciousness, we're not going to Israel next year. The fellowship would require Avram to stay at OSU. I'm okay with that; there are many years in the future we could go to Israel. Jerusalem will always be there. I hope at least. Just to clarify, we don't actually know about the fellowship yet. He's applied for two different ones, though.

We're going to have a fancy, candlelight dinner at home on valentine's day. Here are my questions. Should we make it a family meal? Or wait until the kids go to bed? And what should we have to eat? We've talked about chicken cordon bleu, but Avram says if we do that we have to buy toothpicks, and not use straight pins that get lost in the chicken, like we did when we had the Sister Missionaries over. I'm thinking some really bad for you, but tastes really good meal, that also has nice presentation and feels fancy. I'm not picky, or anything. Clearly. Also, I'd like to find the perfect dessert, for both Avram and I to love.

Avram - loves vanilla desserts. Cheesecake. Poundcake. Angel Food Cake. Vanilla pudding. Spritz cookies. Butter cookies. Vanilla Icecream, never with anything in it (except for almond pralines). Actively dislikes fruit desserts and chocolate desserts and frosting. He loves simple flavors and textures.

Thora - loves gooey chocolate desserts. Triple fudge and raspberry type cake desserts. Frosted layer cakes, with goopy filling. Fruit desserts, like apple pie, apple crisp. I've always wanted to try the molten chocolate center cakes. I love chocolate moose track ice cream - the more random stuff in ice cream, the better. I love complicated flavors, textures, presentations.

Truly it is a wonder we managed to overcome our differences and get married. And most of the desserts we mutually like - cinnamon rolls, pumpkin pie, homemade donuts, we already do plenty of. We both had a mormonized tiramisu recently and liked it (postum instead of coffee, with no liquer). Should I make some of that?

Sadly I'm realizing as I type this because I don't actively dislike any of Avram's desserts, we have his kind far more than we have any of my kind (although the opposite is true when it comes to main dishes). So maybe it's time for some gooey molten chocolate center cakes.

So, now you know what goes through the mind of a Thora on a Tuesday night. (Before I found their computer hidden away in a basement I didn't know about, (after the kids were asleep) I was beating my head against the wall going, "bored, bored, bored." It made me remember my mother, who would say, "Hi Bored, I'm Barbara." But really, I had nothing to read or do, and I don't like watching movies by myself. I don't like movies. But then I found the lovely Internet, and all my time wasting opportunity was fulfilled again.)