June Roses

A wise, creative man once said:

God gave us our memories that we might have roses in December. --J. M. Barrie

Right now December is closing in. But those memories just make it worse. Does it ever get better? Living each day is a trial, and the past three have felt like a month on their own. My life has vanished, my best friend is gone. I feel so alone.

I have two more weeks of school. I need to push through and then I can be with my family for a few weeks before school starts again. I love my family so much and I would not survive without them. Thank you mom, you have helped me more than you know.

Well, I'm gonna get out of bed every morning... breathe in and out all day long. Then, after a while I won't have to remind myself to get out of bed every morning and breathe in and out... and, then after a while, I won't have to think about how I had it great and perfect for a while. --"Sleepless in Seattle"

Two years...eternity.

So I'm going to breathe, all day long, and live off of June roses.

Gourmet [gor-MET]

For the past several Christmases we have the most fantastic tradition--an eating style called gourmet. Our friends the Peschier's gave us a set of six burners that you use as a family to prepare your own individual portions of different foods. Tyson had it with us last Christmas and asked if we could have it one more time before he left on his mission. And it was a splendid idea! My favorite thing to cook is Nasi, a Dutch-Indonesian dish that is absolutely wonderful, and this is how you make it:

1. Get the burner started. We found that there is a delicate balance of fluid in order for it to work properly. Too much or too little will not sustain a flame. The first time we did it we forgot the burner fluid and it was Christmas Day so no stores were open. We improvised with Petroleum Jelly. :)

2. Choose your flavor. There are all kinds of things you can cook on your personal frying pan. We had the ingredients for stir fry, Nasi, and little smokies. You can also cook pancakes, little hamburgers, anything you can dream up. Nasi begins with chicken that is marinated in Saute, a special Dutch marinade. You add onions and chicken and let it cook until it's halfway done.

3. Add veggies. Most of the dishes we made tasted best with vegetables, and so you add them next because they don't need to be cooked as long. My favorite way to eat Nasi is only with onions, but I guess it's healthier when you have veggies. :) They looked really pretty too...

4. Rice, Ketchup, and Nasi herbs. Once everything is done then you add a little "Ketchup Manis"--another Dutch ingredient, equivalent to soy sauce-- a tablespoon of Nasi herb mix, and a good helping of rice. Mix together, warm a little and then eat!

5. Start cooking something else while you eat!

It's a social dinner that is slow moving, but so much fun! We had lots of fun talking, creating new mixes, trying to cook the little smokies, and accidentally touching the bottom of the frying pan and turning hands, towels, and pants black.

We discovered that beef cooks much slower compared to chicken, and Dad became impatient and pulled out the blow torch in hopes of speeding up the process. That's my Dad!

We had a wonderful evening talking, sharing stories, laughing, cooking, and relaxing on the patio. It was so much fun to do it outside, and we stayed out there until it became dark and we were stuffed full.

Let me teach you a word: gezellig (click to hear). In Dutch it means cozy or comfortable. My mom always imagines a little warm fireplace in the evening with everyone gathered close. It's her favorite word in Dutch because she hasn't yet met it's English equivalent. It doesn't quite mean the same thing as cozy, even though cozy tries. But it's such a wonderful word, and in honor of our Dutch feast only a Dutch word could describe such a night. :)

Sparkly Crayons

Physiology is consuming me. My life is nothing but kidneys, the liver, and "lack of a terminal hydrogen ion and electron acceptor at the end of the respiratory chain"... believe me, you don't want to know. Due to this all consuming class I never leave my apartment, I study every minute I'm awake and not in class, and virtually nothing else.

Except, I've found a new hobby: Coloring. Spurred by my amazing box of crayons (courtesy of Sarah Singleton--many moons ago) I have become very fond of drawing pictures. I drew some pictures for my dad for fathers day and I told him to put them up in his office at work--and he did! All of the wonderful elderly at his work can see them. :) I drew a few pictures for my mom's birthday and gave them to her. They are so silly, but so much fun to act like a kid again. Cheap gift idea for parents: crayon pictures! They miss those times as much as you do.

When I was little I had such a difficult time coloring, but now it is therapy. Literally. Letting myself relax and be creative for an hour or so before bed is so, freeing. Granted I don't do it every night, but when I'm particularly stressed I do.

I think I'm going to invent color therapy. When someone is having a hard day I will hand over my box of 96 crayons and tell them to color. To me it is so happy-making! I feel like a little kid, choosing the perfect color, trying to draw straight lines, making the hair look semi-presentable. It makes me think of simpler times, when scraped knees and broken crayons were my only worry.

Did you notice that everyone looked the same as stick figures? Everyone had yellow balloon heads with oddly shaped clothing. There was no perfect stick figure, they were all equal. Isn't that interesting?

Did you ever notice that most drawings when you were little were about your family? I remember so many pictures of mommy and daddy, angel Nikolas, and a little Kam and baby Kenz. I think that was a time when our priorities were in order, our family came first, until the teenage years came to ruin it. :)

The thing I love most about drawings is that nothing is impossible, and you are only limited by your imagination. Things fall from the sky, cheetahs are purple, and the sun has glasses. Growing up has killed some of our imagination and made us think inside of the box, but wouldn't it be great if we could break free of that? Maybe with a little practice I can. :)