Orange

#1 - Good cooking start of the week.  Yesterday I made a fritatta (with plenty of leftovers) as well as some pumpkin cookies - partly because they sounded good and partly for my father's birthday.  The cookies only used 1/2 can of pumpkin though.  Usually I would double the recipe but I'm not used to cooking much with butter and I couldn't fathom using 4 sticks of it.

So I had a 1/2 can of pumpkin left to use.  I found the only other pumpkin recipe in the cookbook and it was for pumpkin biscuits.  So I also mixed up that batter yesterday.  Today I baked salmon, made coleslaw and the pumpkin biscuits.  I never cook three things.  Usually it's one and if I'm fancy two.  So this was impressive.  Plus leftovers again.

#2 - Part of the reason I was ambitious yesterday is I took this free class at Orange Theory .  I guess it is kind of like a group personal training class.  Half the class we were on the treadmill and the other half doing circuits.  I left with no intention of signing up, but then later in the day I started considering it.  My favorite part was the running.  I haven't run to music for a long time and though treadmills (especially treadmills with a view of McDonald's) aren't my thing, it was fun to do something different and I had so much energy later in the day.  I also think because of my my knee last year and then twisting my ankle, I'm just so grateful to be able to do it at all.  So today I signed up to go there once a week for the next couple months - until I'd rather be outside.

#3 - It's my Dad's birthday and I made him a birthday dinner (the coleslaw, fish and pumpkin biscuits).  I've been thinking recently about the fact that I won't always have his physical presence which I can't even imagine, and am so blessed he is a regular part of my life.

#4 -  I gave someone with a health situation a small gift certificate for restorative yoga.  I wasn't sure she'd want it (just sure I would), so I'm relieved to find she was touched by it.  I didn't want to be the annoying yoga pusher.

#5 - I was continually confused by a situation at work today, something that on Friday I was getting frustrated by; but today, I guess because I had the energy, I just kept finding it funny.  As the confusion got deeper I would write my supervisor, "This is a joke right?  This has to be a joke."  (And I wasn't sarcastic I was actually finding it humorous.)

Bonus quote - Can you imagine? 

If you really want to be free, criticism from others can be a gift. Feeling hurt by any criticism, feeling the slightest urge to defend yourself, means that there is something you don't accept and love about yourself. This the very part of you that you want to hide. Hiding creates separation, from yourself as well as others.

—Byron Katie