{ finding therapy }

After a too-quick weekend devoid of the relaxation I had hoped for, I found my therapy this evening in the details of laundry and Pea Soup.

{ opa! }

my big fat greek dinner

So I'm very proud of myself! I had this desire to eat some fresh, healthy, and "fancy" food--so, instead of frozen lasagnas or Lipton Sidekicks, I made Greek food from scratch. Now, you have to understand that I know nothing about making Greek food and I had no recipes to go on, but I was just feeling like some of that delicious souvlaki type of dish that I've had once or twice in my life.

I made oven-roasted vegetables (cherry tomatoes, orange peppers, and zucchini), roasted potato wedges, and lemon-oregano chicken. Then I warmed some pita bread in a frying pan with a little oil, garlic powder, and oregano, and I made homemade tzaziki sauce (yogurt, dill, cucumbers, garlic). Pretty much everything was seasoned with lemon, oregano, salt, and pepper, and that's it!

And OH MY GOODNESS, was it ever delicious! I can't believe how much Derek and I ate (everything you see here, plus the majority of the extra food that was on the stovetop just outside of the picture!).

I feel great! Last night I had a total teaching-related meltdown, and I just knew I couldn't handle another night like that. Thus, I decided that I would spend my evening cooking and eating something enjoyable, and forget about all that marking and reading and planning! But now that I've cooked and eaten, I'm in such a great mood that I'm sure I can fly through my marking and quiz-creating in no time!

Opa!

{ the story of how derek started cleaning up and ended up with two stitches }

So perhaps the title gives a little away. We had a fun/productive/stressful/relaxing day, in that order.

Last night was the first night I felt like I've truly slept in over a week. For some reason, all this week, I was woken up at three or four in the morning with pressing thoughts like, "Perhaps I should move Kamal to the seat in the front of the room", or, "I should take down the poetry display and make a display of haikus on cut out snowflakes!" The stress of my job has been wearing on me. The other young beginning teacher that started with me is feeling the same, only she has developed a very literal ulcer as a byproduct of her extra hours on the job. I'm trying to find ways to detox from the work day surrounded by the hordes of sometimes psychotic teens. This weekend is my therapy.

Last week during the nighttime I remember finding myself awake not in bed or even the bedroom, but the office! I was searching for Derek confusedly. I didn't find him in the office, the living room, or the bathroom. Panicking, I called out his name into the dark space of our condo. "Derek?" I remember crying. I heard his groggy voice respond from the bedroom, "I'm in here." Sure enough, I wandered back into the bedroom and found him, on his side of the bed. He had been there the whole time. The panic attack was for nothing, and I had gone wandering in my sleep for some strange reason unbeknownst to me.

A few mornings later, Derek recounted another somewhat startling but somewhat amusing story from the night prior.

"Last night when I came to bed late, you rolled over, looked at me, and asked me in a scared voice: Who are you?"

I couldn't help but giggle, even though it was a bizarre story--involving me!--that I could not remember actually happening.

"What did you tell me?" I asked calmly.

"I explained that I was your husband. You asked me again: Who are you? I said to you, it's me, Derek! You rolled over and went back to sleep."

My late night psychosis is somewhat hilarious and somewhat alarming. But I am slowly realizing it's one of the ways my body processes stress. At least I don't get hives.

So, anyways, today, as part of our mutual detox from the stress of the week, Derek and I slept in late, went out and ambled around the town a while, and somehow came home with an ottoman (funny how that happens!). In order to introduce the ottoman into our life, we were forced to relocate the chair and the TV, and demote the current coffee table, shipping it off to my parents'. And, well, since the TV got moved, we had to vaccuum, dust, and move the stereo into our office. With the massive stereo, receiver, and two giant speakers (which are now hooked to our laptop), our former office now looks like Neo the Hacker's paradise. I was a little miffed at how manly our den had become, but when I saw Derek giddy like he hasn't been in a long time, I even offered to throw in the old magenta lava lamp that has been hiding in my old bedroom at my parents'. We will pick it up tomorrow, and I will add an extra bit of flare to Derek's new hacker-ish hideout.

Since we had already rearranged the entire living room and stylized the office (ha!), I told Derek we might as well move around all the furniture in our bedroom. This involved flipping the bed to the opposite wall, hanging a picture that has been propped up on the floor for the past year, and removing an old computer that was, for some reason, stowed away beside our laundry hamper.

Derek expressed concern at throwing away a harddrive that contained old tax information. But we were too lazy to hook it up and delete everything. I recommended that he take the computer apart, pry out the harddrive, and smash it. He relocated himself to the new hackers den to get the work done.

As I was making us a plate of nachos and cheese (yay Saturday night dinners!), I heard Derek yell, "Oh, I am such an idiot!" as he fled to the bathroom. I knew what that meant! (I had seen it before two years ago when he nearly severed his pinky finger trying to convert our propane barbeque to having a hose for natural gas!). I followed the trail of blood on the linoleum and there he was, woozy over a blood-filled sink, clutching the knuckle of his index finger. He rinsed it out and he applied pressure to the laceration with his nursely training. I got him a cold drink to help him revive himself as I tried not to pass out, myself. Once the bleeding stopped, he pulled back the compress and we could see his skin open up right down to the cartilege of his knuckle. Ugh!

We hopped into the car to get stitches! And so, he came out with two little stitches that will hold his knuckle in while his skin heals.

"Does it hurt?" I asked him.

"No," he replied, "But it might have killed a weaker man than I!"

Oh, sheesh. He must have been feeling all right to be saying things as awful as that!

We decided to stick with our original Saturday night plans of taking in a little Will Farrell at the theatre. I drove, Derek popped a few Tylenol, and we quite thoroughly enjoyed Stranger Than Fiction.

Whew! And there's still a whole other day of weekend left!