Saturday's Email of the Week: A Smorgasbord

I have to say that it was a bit of a slow week for interesting emails. A gazillion recipes, lots of comment stream on Linked In, a few cutesy emails, but nothing that made me roll on the ground laughing or inhale sharply at the shock of it. Oh well, they can't all be banner weeks I guess. Perhaps I will just present you with a smorgasbord of images and snippets from my week via my life-line to the outer world - email. I hope you have a fabulous Saturday!

So on Thursday the kids and I went for dinner, then hit Canadian Tire to pick up a new inner tube for T's bike. We wandered around and as we were in the exercise-type aisles, I also picked up a step-counter.  The kids were gung-ho to buy some hand weights as well, but I managed to convince them out of them.

Why a step counter, you ask? Well, I have to admit that I fear all of this writing stuff might be a bit of a detriment to my waistline. I missed my weekly yoga class and didn't feel like I managed to squeeze in quite enough activity to make up for it. All the surfing I do just doesn't amount to quite enough calories burned I suspect.

So on Friday I strapped on the step counter, left my laptop behind and hit my gardens for a little fresh air and slugging of mulch. My shoulders got a mite rosy from my exertions, but my mood was elevated. By the time the kids came home I had burned off 150 calories, according to my new toy! While the girls ran naked through the sprinkler (first time this year!), I lovingly planted a few new specimens that we picked up from the garden centre on the way home. Yes, I love my gardens!

The forecast now calls for rain for the near future, so I stayed late into the evening to feel the grass between my toes. A discovery that our rhubarb was coming ready was cause to celebrate, so a bundle was picked. I think that perhaps tomorrow I can make use of one of those recipes that came in last week;

Aunt Norma's Rhubarb Muffins

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/4 cups brown sugar
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 1/2 cups diced rhubarb
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
• 1 tablespoon melted butter
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease two 12 cup muffin pans or line with paper cups.
2. In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. In a separate bowl, beat the brown sugar, oil, egg, vanilla and buttermilk with an electric mixer until smooth. Pour in the dry ingredients and mix by hand just until blended. Stir in the rhubarb and walnuts. Spoon the batter into the prepared cups, filling almost to the top. In a small bowl, stir together the melted butter, white sugar and cinnamon; sprinkle about 1 teaspoon of this mixture on top of each muffin.
3. Bake in the preheated oven until the tops of the muffins spring back when lightly pressed, about 25 minutes. Cool in the pans for at least 10 minutes before removing.

I will let you know how they turn out! 

For now I will leave you with a cute little poem that resonated with me from the week. I am sure I have read it before, and probably you have too, but it made me smile to re-read. Maybe I will vacuum and work on that sticky floor tomorrow after the muffins go into the oven...

MOTHERS

Real Mothers don't eat quiche;

They don't have time to make it.

Real Mothers know that their kitchen utensils

Are probably in the sandbox.

Real Mothers often have sticky floors,

Filthy ovens and happy kids.

Real Mothers know that dried play dough

Doesn't come out of carpets.

Real Mothers don't want to know what

The vacuum just sucked up...

Real Mothers sometimes ask 'Why me?'

And get their answer when a little

Voice says, 'Because I love you best.'

The Gods Proclaim that my Work Day is Done

Twitter is over capacity. Blogger was down for over 20 hours yesterday. I am missing my latest post and really don't feel like re-writing it. It was a book review and I would like to include it here though, so just might have to. Sorry Book Thief!

What is going on in the web this week? I think that the God's are trying to tell me to get back outside and keep playing in the fresh air before the rains come. The forecast is for rain from now till eternity. Lovely.

So perhaps I will see how many more steps I can add into my day (I bought a step-counter to see how inactive I really am -Fat girl here I come!). We are supposed to take 10,000 steps a day (see an article I wrote about it here) and I am in the 3400 range right about now. I don't think I will make it today at this rate. That scares me for how inert I probably really am. Loving the life of a writer, but my butt certainly won't.

I am going to head back out into the yard. I spent the morning edging a walkway, garden and curb, as well as spreading some of the mulch around that I recently had delivered. If I want to beat that rain, I better act quick though.

Oops, I almost forgot that I have to pick my kids up though! Darn. I mean goody!! :) Maybe I can convince them that playing with mulch is a lot of fun! Oh boy! Or I can bribe them with a freezie. Now that's the ticket! 

Have a great weekend all!

A Little Bit About Me Today.

Well now, isn't that a pretty thing! I have seen them around, but this lovely spring-feeling award comes from a new blogger that I've recently met. I found Sara from Starving Novelist on Twitter. While I am still feeling my way through the ups and downs of all things Twitterness, she seems to have it all down pat. She was very friendly and welcoming to me as well, which I am prone to like. And now what does she do, but present me with an award! Woohoo! I will take the cheap flattery and parade it around with me for the day, cus I'm like that I guess. You know that there are always strings with these things though. Drat.

Today's strings are simple enough;

1. Thank and link to the person who nominated you.

2. Share seven random facts about yourself.
3. Pass the award along to 5 new-found blogging buddies.
4. Contact the winners to congratulate them.


Easy peasy right! So a big shout out and thank you to Sara Burr for including me in the fun. Your random facts were a lot of fun. I can tell that we are going to get on just fine. 


Now I have to contemplate some random facts that you lovely people might be interested to know that I haven't already shared with you. Hmmm...

1. I seem to have always been able to spin a decent yarn. Way back in grade school I wrote a speech for the annual public speaking contest. Everyone in the school had to write one and the best one from each class then had an opportunity to read their speech in front of the whole school. Well, I wrote a delightful little speech about some of the inventions that my Grandfather concocted, like the gotcha stick, the discomboobulator and I cannot remember what else. Anyway, I got lots of laughs in my class and was rewarded with the honour of reading my speech in front of the entire school! Accolades!!!
2. Accolades aside, I was terrified. Fact #2 is that I was an extremely shy child that hid behind her mother's skirts whenever we were out in public. I did have a few neighbour friends, but most of my friends lived in the pages of books. Humourful or not, speaking in front of a rather large group of people was horrifying to me. I did it, but spoke into my pages and had my friends in the first row using stage whispers to encourage me to speak up that were louder than my own mousy tones. I would not be going on to speak in any wider circles after that fiasco, but I did eventually loosen up a tad. Friends and associates now would be shocked to learn that I was ever quiet.
3. I might have been afraid of public speaking as a child, but I wasn't afraid of snakes. One summer while my sister and I were staying out at my Grandparent's house in BC, my cousins came to visit. My cousin Mike was a) a boy & b) a year older than me. That made him the leader of our little pack for some reason (there was him, me, my sister, who was 2 years younger than me, & his sister, who was a year younger than my sister). He came up with an idea to while away the hours on our senior citizen retreat island - putting garter snakes in people's mailboxes. Oh fun! Yup, we gathered up enough snakes to put one in each of the 6-7 mailboxes that sat at the side of the road, just up the hill from my grandparent's house. Hilarious, except for the fact that shortly thereafter we all went out for a drive and Grandpa decided to check the mail before going too far. Rats! Plan foiled and dirty looks were sent all around to us nasty kids in the back of the pickup. Fun while it lasted, but probably best that it was my Grandpa that found the snakes vs some poor little old lady who might've had a heart attack.
4. While I frequently flew out to BC to spend summers with my grandparents, my first flight was a much longer affair. At 5 1/2 months old I had the pleasure of my very first airplane flight, all the way out to Cape Town, South Africa. I have no idea if I was a good baby or not or really anything about the visit at all, but that was my first flight. Not my last flight to South Africa though, as you all well know. :)
5. Really, seven is such a large number! What else is interesting? Well, I don't think much of it, but most people think I am a bit of a freak as I don't like bacon. Not turkey bacon, or back bacon, or even that pre-cooked bacon (that looks pretty darn scary on the packaging and doesn't make me want to even consider it). My last bacon meal was a starvation-induced, bacon or nothing affair after a night of drinking at a friend's house. It passed my lips that morning, but no more (keep your knickers on though, as I can pick bacon bits out of a salad if I have to!)
6. I also don't like olives, but feel less conspicuous about that. I use olive oil. I will eat pickles (home-made by ME of course) or pickled mushrooms, and have tried green and black olives on more than one occasion, but I just don't care for them. Sorry!
7. Oh ho! Number Seven! Wonderful. Interesting fact number seven is that ... ummm ... errr... well... I, ah. Oh frig, you probably know more about me now than I do! How about, while my handwriting is generally legible, my signature is far from it. Scrawl! 

Woohoo! Did it. Oh wait. You say there is something more that I have to do? Lord have mercy! Ok, let me scroll back.

Dum-te-dum...


Oh yes, right, right, right! I am supposed to pass on my little award to some of the newest bloggers that I have discovered. Okey doke. how about we pick on Meg at Big London/Little London. She was in my recent writing class and could use a little love. Mama Zen at The Zen of Motherhood has been around for a while, but it hasn't been that long since I have been following her, so I am going to toot her horn today as well. Possum is also relatively new to my roster, as is Suzanne at Words that Work. There are probably others I could pick on, but I am tired and I am supposed to go let these lovely folks know that I have plagued them with this quiz awarded them for their merit! If you have read all the way to the bottom, good for you. This post has taken me longer to write than most and is all about me, me, me (so hopefully didn't lull you into sleep/an early grave).

Thanks Sara! It was fun!

of life and love

listen to the wind

hear it cry of life and love

I nod in answer

At 5PM est, the One Stop Poetry doors will open on another One Shot Wednesday.
Will you be there?

Hakuna Matata

“Hakuna Matata! What a wonderful phrase.”

While this is a line from “The Lion King”, I learned it in Kenya. No worries, indeed. I heard this Swahili phrase everywhere I went. While I perhaps should have had a worry or two, this phrase stuck with me though. I held faith that everything would work out for me, as I travelled along.

At present, I gazed out the window of the Sunrise B&B into a throng of waiting taxis. There was a constant buzz of traffic, horns, music and people’s voices in the air. It probably wasn’t the best neighbourhood, but I wouldn’t be staying for long.  I had spent a few nights there before I went to the Masai Mara, and now had returned for a mere few hours. Only long enough to have a last visit with Amin and his wife. I had met him in a take-away the week before, and he had been the one to recommend this particular establishment. It wasn’t overly pretty, but it certainly had character being in the heart of this bustling neck of the woods. I didn’t go out after dark though.

Meeting Amin had been a God-send that I didn’t take lightly. Aside from the little packet of goodies that his wife had made up for me for my night bus to Mombasa, he had given me something much more valuable. This Edmonton, Alberta local was filled with the spirit of adventure himself. He had recently relocated from Canada and while his wife was still having a difficult time with the transition, their faith in “Hakuna Matata” was contagious. He had buoyed me up when I felt threatened with depression at my dismissal from the overland truck and now urged me on to the adventure ahead. He reminded me of the thrills of the road, and I could tell that he would love to take flight again, if the opportunity arose. His wife seemed only to dream of a flight back to Canada, but she gamely struggled on.

So for me, my road that night would take me on a dangerous adventure, from the accounts I had heard thus far. At 9PM, I would be taking the night bus to Mombasa and be rejoined with the coast. While I looked forward to arriving on the Indian Ocean, it sounded like my chances of arriving would be fraught with peril. More than one person that I met had fear in their eyes when I said that I was on the night bus. They told me stories of vehicles without lights colliding, the dangers of hitting animals on the road, as well as the threat of hijacking. I tried to take it all in stride, but I have to admit I was worried. By 9PM, it would be too late to do anything about it though, except for hopefully sleep some of my fear away.