kitty in a sunbeam!

BONUS ENTRY

You may have seen some adorable children on Reid and Lindsay's blog, but I will play my cuteness trump card of a kitty basking in a sunbeam. It's spring, sunshine has returned, (it was gorgeous all weekend, although I was not well enough to enjoy it) and Lyra has discovered the time-honored cat tradition of sleeping in the sun.

 As you can see, she's not terribly modest.

 I missed the yawn that came shortly before this shot. Darn digital delay!

 Belly rubs? pleasethankyou.

totally blissed out.

news from the sick bay

Well, I'm starting to feel human again, so this is good news. This weekend was a busy one because of a very special person's birthday. That's right, our very own Nathaniel James was born 24 years ago!!!! A cause for celebration--so we had a little get together with some of his friends from school, Steph and Ben, and our old friend Staci and her boyfriend, Derek. And everyone actually showed up! A tax day miracle! I pulled myself out of a near comatose state to go to the grocery--twice--and make a boxed cake. That's love.
I made a Peanut Butter Cup themed cake. Here it is!

Ingredients

• 1 (18.25 ounce) package devil's food cake mix
• 4 ounces cream cheese, softened
• 1/4 cup creamy peanut butter
• 2 tablespoons confectioners' sugar
• 1 cup whipped topping
• 1 cup whipping cream
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Directions

1. Prepare and bake cake mix according to package directions, using a 9-in. fluted tube pan. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pan to a wire rack.
2. In a small mixing bowl, beat cream cheese until smooth. Add the peanut butter and confectioners' sugar; beat until blended. Fold in whipped topping. Split cake in half horizontally; place bottom layer on a serving plate. Spread with the peanut butter mixture. Top with remaining cake. Refrigerate until chilled.
3. In a small heavy saucepan, bring cream to a boil. Reduce heat to low. Stir in chocolate chips; cook and stir until chocolate is melted. Refrigerate until spreadable. Frost top and sides of cake. Refrigerate until serving.

Here is the URL: http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/peanut-butter-chocolate-cake/Detail.aspx

I didn't use a tube-pan obviously, just baked half (or what I thought was half but in fact was not even close) of the batter in my 9" cake pan, then the other "half" and layered that way. And put PB cups on top. It was easy. The only think I might add to this is read the instructions on the "whipped topping" (which is cool whip.) I read "Keep Frozen" and so didn't realize before I made the filling that you are supposed to defrost the cool whip in the fridge for 4 hours before you use.

Nathan: about to blow out all 24 candles. That's a whole box. The cake is on fire basically.

Enjoying his first bite of cake.

The innards!

So that was a good time. I also hosted book club this weekend. We just finished reading The End of the Jews by Adam Mansbach. The title is misleading. It's about a Jewish family with multiple generations of writers who are immersed in Jazz music, graffiti art, photography, and hip hop. Lauren gave it to me for Christmas and so I suggested it for our book club. I don't want to write a book report here, but it gave me a very interesting perspective into writing and how it differs from dance and other art forms. Mainly that it seems like a very lonely, solo journey. Dance is so collaborative, it's reigning in a different animal. Pros and cons to both I suppose. Here was the spread for book club. I got totally out of control at trader joe's and so I didn't even put all of the food out.

I made bread again and macaroons. Both are recipes I've shared on this blog. The previous two books we read were White Teeth by Zadie Smith (which I enjoyed immensely) and War Dances by Sherman Alexi. All three books were modern, had huge casts, and dealt with identity/race/cultural blending. It made for a nice trio actually. Next we are reading Travels with Charlie by John Steinbeck to do something a little different. I am about halfway through The English Patient (not for book club) which so far is lovely and so dreamy. A really beautiful book. I haven't seen the movie, but would like to once I finish.

Also, last week we had a little home-improvement project, which was recovering our chairs! We have four--two gross, two not-so-gross, but not really our style anyways.

BEFORE

Recovering chairs just takes a little elbow grease if you've never done it. If you look at the bottom of a chair it is pretty self explanatory. You just unscrew the seat, and then remove the staples or tacks holding the old fabric on. Staple on new fabric, and re-screw. Of course there were about 80 staples in each red chair (someone got a little trigger happy) so that took forever, but now we have:

AFTER

Here is a close up of the fabric. Nathan picked it out. I couldn't decide what I liked and so I went with his choice:

So nice.

My first baseball game!

I'm home sick! Not so much fun, but it gives me a chance to update my blog, because all I can really fathom right now is sitting on the couch and drinking tea. I'm also roomba-ing, so the day is not a total loss--thank god for robots.

SO, Emily and Michael so kindly invited me and Steph to the season opener at Safeco field last friday. It was such a blast! Here is the view from our awesome seats right behind home plate.  

It was sold out--that's right, 43,000 people showed up to see the Mariners get their asses handed to them...

But we tried not to let that get us down! 

We sang Take Me Out to the Ball Game at the bottom of the 7th inning and all the quintessential baseball stuff. I bought some hot peanuts from a vendor walking up and down the aisles, and then some cotton candy. Michael had never had cotton candy before!

First bite!

Reaction shot!

We stayed until the very end, even though the Indians scored 10 runs in one inning. 

I can't say for certain, but I think this is the only baseball game I've been to save Reid's little legue--and that was so long ago, I don't remember them.

Being at the game got me thinking about baseball and sports and what the appeal is. Certainly it is not terribly exciting most of the time, but it has the benefit of competition. Viewers have an invested interest in their team winning. Of course, we cheered for the Seattle team because we are from Seattle now, but it seems kind of silly since none of the players are from Seattle--so is there really a geographical tie? When you have allegiance to a team, and to specific players, how do you reconcile those players getting traded to other cities? Seattle's basketball team actually relocated to Oklahoma City for goodness sakes.

Another interesting thing about baseball is how ceremonial it is--so many little rituals. There are specific behaviors at sporting events that may not be acceptable other places, like shouting and dancing goofily and throwing peanut shells on the floor : )  Just more evidence in the file for the fact that all people love dancing, moving, and expressing physically, but have all kinds of complexes about it. We gotta let those feelings out sometime--and some of those baseball fans certainly were!! Maybe there is also a vicarious aspect of it--think of what it must be like to be one of those players and have 43,000 people cheering for you. It can be easy to get caught up in the glory and legacy of a sport!

In dance we have trouble getting people to pay for a ticket much cheaper than a baseball ticket, and a concert with one 100th of the attendees of this game would still be considered successful for a small concert. Maybe appropriate "theater behavior" is our enemy. Would people enjoy a dance concert more if they could yell and cheer and eat and drink beer and talk to their friends? Maybe. Would it be disruptive? Probably, depending on the piece. But how do you reconcile dancers working for free and the Mariners making millions to be pretty mediocre at best? The world may never know.