Catching Up

I guess it's time to catch up.

Let's see ... my sister arrived late last week, and we descended upon the parental abode for dinner on Friday night, everyone bringing his or her favorite take-out. We ate Thai; my brother's girlfriend ate sushi; my parents ate homemade tuna salad. Comically, my little brother showed up not with food but with a big box of beer.

On Saturday morning, my boyfriend and I went to the market for giant muffins, and then he went running while my sister, my brother's girlfriend, and I went to hear my mom give a little talk on the importance of silence in our lives. She encouraged us to turn off the radio, turn off the TV, and not be afraid to be quiet sometimes and listen to what life might try to tell us in the silence. This was compelling, especially in light of all of my thoughts after reading Eat, Pray, Love. I think I want to become a meditator. Seriously. My mom did a great job, as always.

After the talk, I went on my long run of the week and somehow managed to run 4.4 miles. I have no idea how. I like this running program because every week ends with reaching a personal best. It's always made easier by a beautiful day outside. I got home, and we rushed off to our massage appointments. Massages are important.

Then it was to the coffee shop with my sister for a game of Scrabble and a disturbingly gross decaf cafe au lait.

That night seemed like a good movie night so we went to see The Departed, which was FANTASTIC. It's not really my kind of movie, but it was so exciting and everyone should see it. Leonardo DiCaprio has somehow transformed himself from the wormy days of yore and is suddenly strong and manly. Everyone in it does a great job. It's a highly entertaining movie.

Last week, I used my new detergent to wash basically everything in the house. I thought it smelled pretty good. My boyfriend sniffed my sheets suspiciously and declared that they smelled like hamsters. Namely, the cedar chips in a hamster's cage. I defended the detergent. "It's supposed to smell like vanilla and lavender!" But after further sniffing, I conceded that the sheets did rather smell like cedar chips. So much for the blissful aroma of the new detergent. No. It makes my bed smell like a rodent's lair. (Weirdly, I still kind of like it. Perhaps it's the fond memories of my childhood hamsters, Spaghetti and Meatball.)

Sunday is kind of a blur. My boyfriend left. I think I did some chores and grocery shopping. My sister came over that night to watch last week's Grey's Anatomy.

On Monday, I felt not at all like running after work but went out anyway for the first run of the last week of the one hour running program. It was a pretty mellow 30-minute run.

Last night, my sister and I went shopping for work-out clothes and I somehow spent $46 on a pair of Adidas Climalite running pants which she insisted were a good bargain even though they are possibly the most unflattering pants I will ever own. Then we got sushi take-out and watched this week's Heroes, a show I'd never seen before. It seems pretty good.

I had bizarre, complex, detailed teaching dreams all through the night last night. You know, the kind where you show up for school without lesson plans, not knowing where your classroom is, not knowing when your planning period is, having never seen a map of the school, having not set up your classroom to your liking, where your students have faces and personalities that somehow your mind has made up and they tell you things like you should stop pacing so much and stop wearing skirts to school because you have ugly knees. In this dream classroom, there were curtains instead of walls so the students would slip in and out of class before I could really see what they were doing. And it was a private school so I assumed they would work really hard and be really well-behaved. But they weren't. They were just mean. Teaching dreams are terrifying. They really are.

In other news, I've decided that a bowl of grape nuts with banana slices might be the world's perfect food.