I have no idea what I did, but yesterday, I woke up and my upper right arm was hurting a tad. By the end of the day, it was hurting a lot, and it circles around to the back of my arm, down to my elbow and them continued until it reached my palm. Then it snaked up to the back of my shoulder. If I keep it down by my side, it just ached. If I lifted it up, it really hurt. I had a hard time going to sleep with it. I’m very thankful that Mac went into work late so he could take Ada to school. I medicated and Icy Hotted and finally slept from about 3:00 – 7:00, and then again from 8:00 until a little after 10:00. It hurts less, but I just cannot lift it without more pain.

I know what I should not have done yesterday: go for a run, cleaned two bathrooms, washed, folded and put away 2.5 loads of laundry, made beds, unload and reload dishes and cleaned the kitchen.

Today I am doing almost nothing. I picked up Ada, and had to start the shift the car with my left arm. I loaded some remaining dishes and started one load, but will not put them up. I’m thankful that the kids said they wanted cereal and pickles for lunch. I can do that with one arm. I also just vetoed making dinner because even though I planned out a meal that I can make by throwing food in the slow cooker, I’d have to lift my heavy slow cooker out of the very back of bottom cabinet. With one arm. My left arm. Nope. I’ll order dinner or have Mac pick something up.

If it is still bad tomorrow, I’ll have to seek the advice from the medical community. I just don’t know what I did. Unless it is a back issue, say a pinched nerve, that is resulting in pain in my arm. I just really wish it hadn’t taken out my more coordinated right arm.

Jay nose picking

This is the result of Mac and I breeding. Yup.

I made my first loaf of five minutes artisan bread. This technique has similarity to no knead bread in that it replaces kneading with time. It is a really wet dough, but this doesn’t produce as big of holes as the no knead. I could always reduce the flour next time. I started off making a garlic cheddar. I’m going to make one change, but it is still pretty good. The crust isn’t as as crisp as the no knead, even with the added steam. I think the next time I bake one, I’m going to try it in my dutch oven instead of with the baking stone. And despite the title, it doesn’t really take five minutes, *but* digging into the dough stash and shaping the loaf did take less than five minutes for me. It still takes about 2 hours between proofing, baking and cooling until you have a loaf that is ready to eat. However, this is a great method if you don’t have a stand mixer worthy of kneading dough. You can hand mix and just replace the kneading by hand with time.

My new cooking endeavor tonight will be quinoa. I have never made it. I’m using my first one to make a quinoa pilaf.

I love bran muffins. A lot. Back when Ada was first starting solids, bananas were one things she loved to eat, so one day I made banana bran muffins with the leftover ripe ones. They were really good, and she liked them too. Then Jay came along, and between the two of them, bananas were eaten so fast that I rarely had over ripe ones to work with. Lately, they haven’t been into the bananas much, so a few of them get to the point of needing to be made into something or tossed or frozen. I decided I really wanted to make the bran muffins again, but I wanted to find one that used wheat bran, which I always have for making bread, instead of bran cereal, which I rarely have unless I’m on a kick for eating it for breakfast. I found one, made some, and they were really good. Of course, I love bran muffins. The kids devoured them. Mac devoured them. They didn’t last long. Here is the recipe, based on one from Eating Well:

2 large eggs
1/2 cup agave nectar
2-4 medium ripe bananas, mashed really well
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup unprocessed wheat bran (do not use cereal!)
¼ cup canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup whole-wheat flour
¾ cup all-purpose flour
¼ cup flax seed meal (optional)
2 Tbsp. Hi-Maize fiber (optional)
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 400°F. Coat 12 muffin cups with cooking spray.

Whisk eggs and agave in a medium bowl until smooth. Whisk in bananas, buttermilk, wheat bran, oil and vanilla.

Whisk whole-wheat flour, all-purpose flour, flax seed meal, Hi-Maize, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt in a large bowl. Make a well in the dry ingredients; add the wet ingredients and stir with a rubber spatula until just combined. Scoop the batter into the prepared muffin cups (they’ll be quite full).

Bake the muffins until the tops are golden brown and spring back when touched lightly, 15 to 25 minutes. Let cool in the pan for 5 minutes. Loosen edges and turn muffins out onto a wire rack to cool slightly before serving.

Notes: The recipe says it makes 12. I do not use muffin tins. I use cupcake tins, so this made 12 cupcakes size muffins and 12 mini muffins and probably a couple more mini muffins if I had another tin. I could probably get about 16-18 cupcake sized muffins, and I fill them to the top.

The flax seed meal and Hi-Maize fiber are my own adding, as is the agave. If you don’t have agave, use 2/3 cup of packed light brown sugar. You can also add chocolate chips or nuts, but I don’t. If you don’t have buttermilk, use regular milk with some lemon.

And you can mix this gently in a stand mixer instead of by hand. I beat the first ingredients first, and then add the dry to it in three parts, mixing on slow until each part is incorporated.

Ada has done really well in that she has gone and participated without very few sensory meltdowns. She had one issue in the beginning when taking turns, and last week was the first time she wouldn’t go in the class and I had to resort to her breathing exercises to get her to calm down.

She is handling it so well that I enrolled her in another class starting at the end of March that goes until mid-May. This is a creative dance class. It focuses on movement, music and rhythm. Ada has a surplus of movement and creativity. It’s the rhythm part she lacking. It is also taught by the same group of instructors that do pre-ballet. Unfortunately, it isn’t on Saturday. It is on Thursday evenings. It really only affects dinner plans. Easy or pre-fixed meals will have to be a part of that day. I see many trips to fancy Dillons for the Mediterranean bar or rotisserie chicken. Or carry out sushi! I’ll also have to bring Jay with me. It is in the same place, so we can go to that concrete observation area above the gym where he can have freedom to run about. It will work out great as long as I don’t bring anything he can throw over the edge.

I love having these classes available from Parks and Rec. The other classes for younger kids that I’ll try her in are Cherry O’s, which is intro to cheerleading and tumbling, and another pre-dance class that focuses on coordination and flexibility. Next summer, she’ll be old enough to get into a class that really focuses on one area of dance. Hopefully by then she’ll know what she likes the best.

Jay just hit the minimum age to start taking some classes. I’ll look for some sort of tumbling class for him. There needs to be a class called “Please Wear Out My Child So He Will Go To Bed At A Decent Time.” I’ll probably wait until fall and put both of them in the Fitness Fun class. It requires my participation and has activities geared towards coordination skills that prep them for sports — kicking, hitting, catching and so forth without there being any competition. It would be fun to do that with a group of kids rather than just with me in the backyard, I think.

Sunday Lunch

I decided that soup, sammiches and salad would be good for a lunch and also good because it was easy. For most of the fam, I set out roast beef, honey mesquite turkey, cedar smoked ham, salami, provolone, colby jack, and pepper jack. To that we set out the typical condiments: lettuce, tomato, oil and vinegar, mayo, dijon mustard, regular mustard and even ketchup. That is a really easy lunch because everybody makes their own. Then I threw Sun Chips on the table for those who may not like the rest of the meal. For the salad, pictured in the very back of the plate so you can’t see it that well: baby greens; chickpeas; avocado, and roasted mushrooms marinated in balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, olive oil, garlic and Marsala cooking wine all tossed in a vinaigrette of Dijon mustard, grapeseed oil, red wine vinegar and agave. The open face sandwich I made for me and Charity: roasted eggplant, roasted red bell pepper, and baby greens. I added a slice of brie to the top of mine, and then put them under the broiler. I also tossed grapes and strawberries on the table. The soup was a vegan tomato.

It was a lot of food for lunch, and some of the soup and salad will be my dinner if I get hungry again. I won’t be hungry enough for a full meal.

This is also the first time I’ve used one of my photo plates. I bought some plates just for the purpose of taking photos. I have red ones. Those who look at my photos are familiar with them. Not all food photographs well with those plates. World Market sells individual plates, so I went there and picked out four different designs/colors. I may grab some bowls too.

• Roasted chicken with rutabaga, sweet potato, yukon gold, onion and garlic
• Chicken and noodle soup with carrots, scallions and leeks. I cooked extra chicken with the roasted meal and used that. I made homemade egg noodles too.
• Lemon ginger bagels
• Challah
• Shrimp with penne and tomato sauce. And cheese.

I bought 4lbs of quinoa. That will make it into a meal next week. I also replenished my polenta. My only solid meal plan though is for lunch tomorrow for the extended fam. I’m making sammiches, soup and salad. I have various meats, cheeses and condiments for subs–including Penzey’s Sandwich Sprinkle, which if you don’t have this for your sammiches, get some right now. My sammich is going to be an open face of roasted garlic, red bell pepper and eggplant topped with mixed greens and brie and put under the broiler. I’m making a salad of mixed greens, roasted portabella mushrooms, chickpeas and avocado with a spicy mustard vinaigrette. The soup part will be homemade tomato, and I’m going to sub for the butter in the roux and the chicken broth so it will be vegan homemade tomato. I picked up some Sun Chips and grapes and strawberries for the side. I don’t feel like making dessert, so I picked up a couple of Godiva nibbles to toss in a bowl if someone wants something sweet.

solar system puzzle

Ada’s last dance lesson was today for this particular class. Next Saturday is her recital. They keep parents out to remove distractions for kids. I’m fine with that. She practices at home. We get to see the entire class perform next Saturday. It will be fun to watch them all.

After class, we went out to grab some yogurt, fruit and juice. We got attacked by a cranky old woman while we were eating. Apparently, we cut in front of her in line. She came over and teared into me and then huffed off. I didn’t even get a chance to apologize. And if she did perceive that we cut in front of her, she should have said so in line. We were in it for quite awhile. I would have happily let her in front of us. They wouldn’t have ran out of food, and it really isn’t that important to be that level of cranky.

We went to The Toy Store after we were done eating. There we found two books: Knuckleheads and I Love Monkey. I have my eyes on Rodney Matthews’ illustrated Alice in Wonderland. We also picked up this solar system puzzle. We put together the Hello Kitty puzzle again last week. We can do that one without any photo aid, so it was time to move onto something more complicated. This is about as complicated as I can get with Ada. She did pretty well putting together the planets. Jay and Mac joined us a bit later to finish it up. This is a Ravensburger puzzle. It is a pretty good quality construction. They had a 18,000 piece puzzle in the store. It was similar to this globe one if I remember right. It isn’t on the website.

We went home so I could get the battery to my wireless flash transmitter so I can get a replacement and headed back out with Jay. Our 8 bay batter charger also needed replacing since somehow a non-rechargeable battery was placed in it. The outcome wasn’t good for either the battery or the charger. This was the only one I had that charged my C & D batteries. I really wanted to replace it. Both of those items were replaced, along with picking up some cheap two way radios. That provided the rest of the entertainment for today.

The game today, however, was not so entertaining.

We did go to Oak Park Mall because I had $40 in Build-A-Bear gift cards that we needed to use. I had a $10 coupon from my Build-A-Stuff card, or whatever it is called, but I couldn’t find it. I had a talk with the kids so they were clear that we were not building any bears. We have two bears, two dinosaurs, a dog and a snowman. That is enough. We were going for accessories only. Ada picked out a sundress, which Frosty the Snowman is now wearing. She also picked out a Hello Kitty chair for her bear to sit in. Jay got a soccer outfit and then lost interest in everything except punching on the computers. I picked out Star Wars jammies for his dog. Then we went to Lush. Ah, Lush. How I love you. How I wish you weren’t in the mall. Indoor malls give me headaches. I want to go in and get out as fast as possible. I really wish Lush was in an outdoor mall. Mac’s lucked out with this one. We picked up some bath bombs and bubble bars and lip balm. Ada is enjoying her think pink bath bomb right now. It smells really good, turns her water pink and fills it with little hearts. I’ve shoved all the extras into drawers and in our closet. The sales associate entertained the kids by letting them create bubbles in the tub of water while I stocked up. They are nice that way. It makes it easier on me when they aren’t grabbing at things.

Now I need to encourage Ada to be done so I can get them to bed. I have a mall headache.

They are strange to explain because most people assume you are talking about sore muscles — the kind of soreness you get when you strain one or the kind that makes you stiff and grimace a little when you try to move after being sedentary for too long. That’s not it. My leg aches are an all over pain. They aren’t in one particular muscle, my legs just hurt everywhere. It is so much different than the kind of pain you get from muscle exertion that I don’t quite know how to describe it. I get them a few hours after I do any sort of activity that has me on my feet. I’ll get them after I cook a big meal. I had leg aches last Friday after I spent the entire day doing house chores. Neither of those activities are straining in any way.

The reason that I am writing about it is because my decision to pick up running has upped the pain level a tad above what I’d get when I would just power walk. Adding more potassium to my diet doesn’t help prevent them and taking ibuprofen doesn’t help relieve them. It is typically always below my knee, although if I do really strenuous it can start hurting my legs above the knee as well. The worst one I’ve ever had was when I was doing an activity that was a bootcamp of strenuous activity designed to work you hard. I woke up at night crying from that, both from the level of pain and the fact that it was so bad I kept dreaming that someone was holding me down and beating my legs with a hammer.

I’ve asked a doctor before, but all I got was the eat a banana speech. I wonder if lactic acid is the culprit. Most people do not get this type of leg pain even with simple activities. Aside from any bootcamp training, it is bearable, but running has made it less bearable and I’d rather just not have to bear with it at all. I wonder if someone in sports medicine would have a better answer for me than a general practitioner.