Life I've Been Living

I had a goal to write a blog entry at least once a week, and I realized that it's been a couple of weeks since I posted. My excuse is something similar to what my son wrote in an email he sent me from France:

"one random fact, i now have 3 different journals plus my little pocket notebook. All for different purposes. And still there is so much stuff happening in my life that isn't recorded. But life has to be lived as well as written and talked about."

I have jumbles of thoughts in 3 or more different notebooks of my own, but none of it is too coherent. For the record, I wanted to write down some of the life that I've been living recently:

1. Joined a healthy-living type of support group at my work for which I made goals to exercise more and eat better.
2. Promptly injured myself and have been exercising less.
3. Got a bit too obsessed about food and started eating worse. Not worse-tasting or worse-quality food, just worse-healthy in terms of sugar and fat.
4. Combined three different recipes from a cookbook to develop my own recipe for Toasted Coconut Custard. Made it and ate it twice. (See #3 above.)
5. Went with a friend to celebrate her birthday and we indulged in Raspberry Bread Pudding at Kneaders bakery. (Again, see #3 above.) I had planned to save half of the bread pudding to share with my husband when I got home, but I kept eating until it was gone. My friend didn't save any for her husband either. I unashamedly licked the bowl clean in a public eating establishment. It was that good. The next week I bought some more to share with my husband, and he declared it to be the best dessert he had ever eaten. It was that good. (We tend to like squishy-fruity-custardy desserts at our house.)
6. Decided in this election year that I wanted to get back to the basics, and I read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
7. Went to caucus meetings for two different political parties. I'm not a member of any party but wanted to observe and learn what's what with the whole neighborhood precinct caucus thing. (I'll write more in another post about the whole goings-on because I found the contrast in the two meetings to be rather interesting.)
8. Attended a gardening class where I learned about growing heirloom vegetables. My favorite quote from our instructor: "Remember when the Zombie Apocalypse comes that I was kind to you. Do not come to my house to rob me and steal my vegetables."
9. Watched a documentary about the Amish. Watched a documentary about Thomas Jefferson. Started reading again Approaching Zion by Hugh Nibley. Been thinking a lot lately about good people who sometimes do not so good things. (Probably more about that later.)
10. Watched all four hours of the BBC mini-series North and South in one evening with my husband. We held hands and ate ice cream. (My husband is pretty much awesome. Definitely more about him later.)
11. Heard about a 3-minute fiction contest put on by public radio. The main contest guidelines are that the story be no longer than 600 words and it must start with this sentence: "She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door." I wondered what I could do with this, so I started writing a piece of fiction for the first time in decades. Not sure I will enter the contest, but it's been interesting to find out how the characters and story evolve as I play around with it.
12. Have had a lot of insomnia. Don't know if it is the change in the weather, too many thoughts in my head, change in my body chemistry. Bought earplugs today in case my obsessive listening to the fan and the humidifier are contributing to the problem. Maybe I will sleep better if I exercise more and eat better. (See #1 above.)
13. Sorted through and organized the photos I've taken in 2012 in preparation for writing more blog posts.

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So, what life have you been living recently?