Happy sunny Saturday.

Today I did a quick run on the treadmill and then (after an appropriate period of sitting around with a book - it is Spring Break, people) the kids and I biked about a mile down the road and had a picnic at a little playground. We're going to do it again, all summer long, because it was so fun, although there were the usual moments of pursuading Peter to take on a task he's not sure about and I ended up pushing him back up the big hill to our house when we came home. Our other plans include putting some seeds in the teeny terrariums I bought last weekend and spending more time outside today and tomorrow, when it's supposed to be warmer - today was just slightly on the cool and windy edge of pleasant.

The photos are totally unrelated, but too fun to keep to myself. I forget the name of this superhero, but he was fierce and awesome.

Dramatic Garden Update

Today, I am home sick (with what turns out to be a Bad Case of Sniffles, but yesterday it involved high fever and aches and whatnot, and the hacking cough persists today, and yesterday at work people were looking at me like, hmm, maybe I'll sit across the room from you to not get coughed on! And then I came home.) So naturally, in the springtime, which is really probably months from now, a girl's fancy turns to... buying plants.

We've been getting garden catalogs for a few weeks now, and I recently got some Hot Birthday Cash (not to be confused with the Hot Birthday Amazon Gift Card, which is a whole 'nother thing) that I decided could be spent on plants. Usually I buy them at the nursery, tote them home, dig up the yard, and plant immediately, which is satisfying but also leads to a teensy bit of impulse buying of expensive plants. Which is fine, and it feels great to pick out the lush, gorgeous whatever that you simply must have and then take it home and put it in your garden, but it maybe shouldn't be one's primary mode of plant acquisition. For one thing, it adds up quickly. So I googled around enough to determine that the catalog currently offering a ridiculously good half-off-stuff deal is a legitimate business with a good plant reputation, and then I bought the following:

5 hydrangias, three pink and two purple
7 daylillies (from the mixed bargain bag, so whatever colors, which is fine with me)
2 butterfly/hummingbird gardens, which are eight plants each - a butterfly bush, something called "Keys of Heaven" which looks to be bushy with small red blossoms, some Mixed Monarda, which are a variety of bee balm that look to come in pink, reddish, white, and purple, some pink asters, something called White Obedient Plant which is a type of snapdragon, and Amber Wheels Gallardia, which are pretty yellow daisies.

For $82, that ain't bad. A person could easily spend $40 on a single hydrangia, not that I've ever done that multiple times, or anything. (Actually I stuck to the slightly cheaper varieties, but the fancy ones are tempting.) I'm sure these will be small plants and not full-sized blooming pretties, but still, it's a good start, and our yard has some spots that really need to be planted. I'm now even more excited for spring.

Mmmmm... cheesecake.

So I was planning to write about cheesecake (the literal kind) and also hockey (likewise, not a metaphor - are there even hockey-based metaphors?) but then we went to church today, and there were protesters, and it dampened my hockey-reporting mojo.

They were, admittedly, lame and stupid protesters, but apparently because the ELCA issued a new sexuality study this week that's not so homophobic as one feared, although there's still room for improvement, and because our church is openly gay-friendly, we got targeted by some lame and stupid protestors. I yelled at them that I was going to pray for them, because I believe in a compassionate God who might be able to bring even them to a kinder and wiser path, which message was probably not so effective given my BitchMother tone of voice. And then I hustled the kids inside and took a seat and was quietly furious, while Mike was loudly furious outside, with the stupid protesters. Our pastor, who is graciousness and hospitality embodied, invited them in for worship and potluck lunch after, but they refused to set foot in any church with a female pastor. (As she said to one of our fellow congregants: If only they knew! because she is out and awesome about it. Anyway.)

All of this precipitated a gentle conversation with the kids, about how some people grow up and marry someone of the other gender, but sometimes boys want to marry boys and girls want to marry girls, and we in our house, and in our church are fine with that... and Peter interrupted to tell me sadly that it's not allowed for boys to marry boys and girls to marry girls, that if they fall in love they have to marry secretly. (Which concept - of marrying secretly - he picked up from Star Wars.) So we talked about that, and then had potluck, and came home to finish making cheesecake, because *somebody* turned 29 this week. Again. (See? Not a day over 29. If possibly somewhat cranky-looking. Swear to it! Not kidding! Ok, mostly kidding, and the photo is not that flattering, I realize.)

I had Kid the Elder help with the cheesecake itself, and Kid the Younger help with the "glaze," which is a fancy way of saying the melted chocolate you pour over top.