Yesterday

Yesterday I woke up at 8 a.m. Is that not the best? The fam and I are a little bit off, time-wise, since getting back from California a week ago. Yes, somehow after a week we can't recover from a two-hour time difference. I'm thinking international travel isn't in our future.

At 9 a.m. I had the trainer at the gym. You guys, she is so nice and fair and reasonable. There's nothing to blog about. Normally I can tap an exercise experience for some pretty good blog fodder, because I am out of shape and OMG they're trying to kill me. But Trainer Jill is so sweet and encouraging, and she makes me do exercises that are challenging but not impossible. You might say they are exercises that are personally tailored to me.

After the trainer, I attempted to do the treadmill, as part of my new plan to double up on my various exercise activities. I was all, "I will go for 45 minutes!" Then I quickly amended that to 30 minutes. And then 5. There is only so long you can be in the fitness room at the gym. It smells like rubber and sweat.

When I got home from the gym, my first order of business needed to be cleaning up the kitchen! And then laundry! And dishes! But instead I made a new iPod playlist. Since you asked, here it is:

I guess you have to click on it to actually read it.

Anyway, yes, I did buy the new Taylor Swift song. I'm as surprised as you are. In general I don't dislike Taylor, it's just that I figure I get enough of her catchy songs on the radio. But her new one kind of has a little bit more of a pretty, lilting tone that distinguishes it slightly from all her other songs.

Armed with my playlist, I went in my kitchen to prepare dinner. Hellz yeah, it was only like 11:30 a.m., but that's how awesome I am. And oh yeah, it was a two Crock Pot dinner. Chili in one Crock Pot, baked potatoes in the other. Chili potatoes!

See, the thing is, my husband is a little bit of a picky eater. Those of you who know me IRL know that picky eater is an understatement when it comes to my husband. And I'm a very insecure cook, so picky eaters can be my undoing, cooking-wise. I need people to eat my food and be like ohmygosh, Shannon, this is the best thing I've ever eaten, you should totally have your own Food Network show! Not, oh okay, I will swirl it around my plate for awhile until she gets distracted, at which point I will dump it in the trash.

So sometimes when I'm feeling particularly insecure about my cooking, I go for an ace in the hole. My husband loves chili potatoes, because apparently when he was in high school every Friday was the baked potato bar, except he will tell you that they never had enough chili to cover the whole potato, and ... oh well, I guess his complaining isn't just specific to my cooking. Although I'd hate to think that my cooking might be equated to that of a high school cafeteria.

To go with the potatoes, I put together a cinnamon swirl bread for the bread maker. My new blog friend Leigh Ann recently talked about how baking is an inexpensive form of therapy, and I agree. As I wrote in this post from November 2009:

"I like to bake because it distracts me from all of my other petty problems. I can't tell you how many times I have been mired in a bout of depression or anxiety, subsequently decided to bake something, and then realized a short while into measuring flour and sugar that I'm surprisingly calm. I think just the feel of flour and sugar is calming."

Okay, so I sort of screwed up the cinnamon swirl bread, because I added the cinnamon-sugar too early, and so it got all pulverized and mixed in with the dough, rather than being a pretty little swirl of cinnamon in the middle. Oh well, cinnamon in bread always tastes good, even if it doesn't look as pretty as it could.

Here is what I did after making the bread:

I sat.

All afternoon.

It was awesome.

Well, I mean, you know, I got interrupted in my sitting a lot, but mostly I sat. And I surfed the Internet. I probably should have broken down and read a legitimate book. Why is it that sitting down to read a book in the middle of the day seems so slovenly, but I can surf the Internet all afternoon with much less guilt?

Oh, I forgot to tell you guys the best thing! While I was cooking, I got an e-mail from the director of the Tonys show, and she said my script was everything she wanted and more! Oh I am so happy!

Okay, so anyway, the reason I was Crock Potting it was that Nathan had his first ice skating lesson right during the time I would normally be making dinner. Look how cute:


Except that's the only shot I have of him actually on the ice, because most of the time he was hanging onto the wall, like this:


I can't blame the boy, though, because when I tried to take ice skating lessons last year, I dropped out after two sessions, so terrified was I of falling.

So we had ice skating, and then we went home and ate chili potatoes, and then the evening routine and blah, blah, blah, blahbitty blah.

The other fun fact is, yesterday I only consumed about 8 oz. total of coffee. I think it might have been better for me. I felt a little less wired than, say, I do now after having had more coffee than that while writing this blog post. I'm wondering if I should try to cut back on the caffeine. DAMMIT. It's always something.