March 20: Peanut Butter Cookies, Part IV

My mom finally got her peanut butter cookies!

I baked them Friday night because I knew I'd be at Sky Nursery on Saturday. Now it's Sunday, and I'm just sitting down to work on the blog. Typical.

It's just me, a dirty house, a purring cat and the feeling that I need to get this written before the day really starts. James is at a meeting and the boys are asleep. And I still have housework to do, birthday presents to wrap, a shower to take and this to write by 12:30 p.m.

Another weekend at warp speed in the Phillips family.

Highlights of the past seven days:

1. Grandma Lorraine's stay in the hospital: She's feeling better and we're crossing our fingers.

2. My mother-in-law's new roommate: Her English Setter passed last week; on Friday James and Christian delivered Sammy the Havanese Puppy.

3. Ian's Poopy Water Toilet Overflow: Responding to screams of terror, I found him standing at the top of the stairs, pants around ankles, pointing in horror at the mini-Mississippi flowing through the upstairs bathroom.

4. My haircut: It's been 53 weeks. Enough said.

5. Ian's first soccer game: The half-time oranges were his favorite part.

6. Parent Information Night at Tahoma Middle School: James watched all four kids while Renee, Rob and I went to learn about middle school. We concluded that our 10-year-olds aren't ready, the parents definitely are not ready and it's never too soon to start freaking out about the teenage years.

And have I mentioned yet that I'm working out? Linda is my exercise buddy, and we head down to the Regence gym around 3:30 almost every day. Last week I exercised four times. That's some kind of record for me. I've concluded that after two weeks, I'm now in the maintenance stage. I'm also sensing that I'm probably the only gym member who keeps Whoppers in her gym bag. This is because my new fitness focus has taught me something profound: I don't eat enough.

Shut up! My body composition analysis reported that I need to gain 15 pounds of fat and 8.4 pounds of muscle. So, because Friday's 20-minute treadmill walk (remember: maintenance stage) showed I'd burned 97 calories, I enjoyed a handful of Whoppers on the way out of the locker room.

But seriously, I'm finding that when I don't eat properly (i.e., enough) on the weekends, I'm tired. Hmm. I'm just now figuring this out?

I have to add that those 15 pounds of fat are not going to happen. But I'm working on the 8.4 pounds of muscle.

Don't hate me. It's not so great having to work at keeping weight on. And my frame isn't my doing. It's all genetic. I get it from my Grandpa Russ, who, by the way, would have been 94 years old yesterday. I got a lot of things from my grandpa, in addition to the metabolism of a hummingbird. Like really long legs, a sense of optimism, blue eyes and an unabashed desire to drive a "look-at-me" car. He also taught me how to love a good project. So I guess I can sort of blame this blog on him.

I thought of him yesterday when someone mentioned how it was the Spring Equinox. Coincidentally, this occurred at my Great-Aunt Carol's memorial service. She died in December, but her family chose to celebrate her life on the first day of spring. Carol was my dad's aunt and my grandma's baby sister. It was a nice service, and it was interesting to see all those Lovaas and Shold family members we'd either never met or hadn't seen in many years. But in true Molzahn fashion, my sisters and I slipped out quickly, quietly and early. We're Larry's Girls after all, and we need to keep up our anti-social appearances.

When I reported to my mom on how the service was, she said, "You guys are just lucky you had me to dilute all that Scandinavian blood." My mom: one of the world's last anti-Scandites. Ah, but that's a blog entry for another day.

She was pretty happy to get her cookies, though, even if they did come from her mixed-race daughter.