Bollywood, Easter Eggs, and What I Never Expected to See at 6:30 a.m. (7QT)

Happy Friday, everyone! It's been a long time since I joined Kelly for some quick takes, and since things have been on the heavy/deep side lately here on the ol' blog with my discussion of therapy, I figured it would be fun to lighten things up! 


1. I've been on a bit of a Bollywood kick lately, and it's been pretty fun!
It all started when my younger brother highly recommended Bajrangi Bhaijaan to me. I hadn't seen a Bollywood film in probably a year, so I decided to check it out. It was AMAZING (plot: Hindu man tries to reunite young, mute Muslim girl with her parents because she's stuck in India and they're in Pakistan). It didn't have as many musical numbers as I would have liked, but it was really good. Then, at the library, I saw a Bollywood-themed cookbook written by the son of immigrants from India, so naturally I checked it out and started searching Amazon Prime to see which of the movies were available on instant view (this turned into me adding whatever Bollywood movies had good ratings onto my watchlist). Over the weekend as I tried to cope with a sick toddler (see below) I watched Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, and while I didn't like the theme of a man lying to his wife (it was in an effort to get her to fall in love with him, but still not a fan of that), I thought it was way too much fun to see Shah Rukh Khan play two totally different characters. If any of you have Bollywood recommendations (especially if they are available on Prime!) let me know!!! 

2. Since I had Bollywood movies on my mind and a cool cookbook in hand, I decided to try a new recipe. 
Behold, "homestyle chicken curry"! 

Also pictured is an pan, which I realize is from a totally different
culture, but I just felt like making an pan.

 I loved the interaction of the flavors, and I also loved the fact that the author recommended making it the day before, so basically there were two days in a row where I didn't have to make dinner! I would definitely love to make this recipe again, and I'd be interested to try more Indian recipes. 

3. This week, I discovered that random awesome things can happen at the park in the wee hours of the morning. 
It all started when my toddler woke up furious at 5:42 a.m. I tried to console him and help him get back to sleep, but he just kept raging and raging. So, I suggested the first thing that came to me: "Do you want to go see the ducks?" That got a positive reaction! And so it happened that we went strolling into the park sometime before 6:30 a.m. Since it was very bright outside and I used to visit this park frequently on 6 a.m. runs, I wasn't concerned about the "safety factor"-there are quite a few walkers/joggers/runners at that time of day that I'm used to seeing. What I was NOT expecting to see was a man in his late 50s/early 60s on roller skates gliding around the perimeter of the park. It was extremely random and very awesome.

4. As you might guess from that early morning wakeup, it's been a bit of a rough week.
Over the weekend, my toddler was very much under the weather (according to the doctor it was probably just seasonal allergies and his poor little body just couldn't take it very well), and then once he finally felt better, he started waking up in the middle of the night or crazy early. So for the first part of the week, I lived off of coffee and prayer. I also learned that I have a tendency to become really grumpy when someone in the house is sick, so it's been a good opportunity for me to focus on being more patient with my husband and son! Today happened to be a really splendid, really fun day, and I'm hoping that the rough patch is now behind us. 

5. It's still the Easter season over here (for one more week!), and we FINALLY did an egg hunt!
On Sunday evening, my husband hid eggs around the yard and our still-recovering toddler went running to find them. Since I didn't want him to be overloaded with sugar, I filled the eggs with goldfish crackers. He'd never guess that most people have candy in theirs, right?? Ha. After finding all of the eggs and delighting in the crackers, he looked around with a perplexed expression on his face. "Easter eggs...chocolate?!?!" He has been playing with the plastic eggs all week and even requested that I re-stuff some of them with crackers just so we could open them together and get excited :) I finally put the eggs away today, because I was tired of almost-stepping on plastic eggs every time I walked through the dining room. 

6. I don't buy books often (because I'm frugal and because I'm a bit of a minimalist), but I just ordered Jennifer Fulwiler's new book and I'm really excited about it.
I know that most of the Catholic internet world seems to be talking about this book right now, and I'm hoping it lives up to the hype. I think now is a good time for me to read this book, because lately I've been thinking a bit about how I've been struggling to fit time for creative work in. I guess this partially has to do with the fact that for about 2 solid weeks in the past month, my husband and/or my son have had bad allergies or sickness so I've been in survival mode as I'm trying to take care of them, take care of the house, and not go insane. Adding in the fact that sleep has been rather spotty, so many weeks, I just don't feel like waking up early for my early morning "designated writing time." I realize that excuses will just keep coming, so I need to whack myself into shape and take control of the situation...and I'm really hoping that this book will help me get motivated to do this! (rest assured, y'all will hear my thoughts on the book-I have a draft of "on the bookshelf" that I am slowly working on)

7. On that note...I miss this blog. 
I've been blogging here and there, but honestly, there is so much more I would love to do here. Write more "fun" posts about a variety of topics. Write more liturgical living posts. That kind of thing. Eventually, I think it'd be fun to develop some kind of very-occasional newsletter; I don't know about y'all, but I really enjoy the personal glimpse into a blogger's life through her newsletter. I guess we'll just have to see what happens! I'm also trying to keep in perspective that in what, four months? Give or take a couple weeks? I'll be birthing a baby, which will probably turn life upside-down for who knows how long. Wow, this is getting really rambly, so I'll just stop here ;) 

This is unrelated to everything in the post, but while decluttering
I found this drawing that I did when I was 8 1/2 depicting Mary's assumption. 

I hope y'all have a great weekend, a happy Mother's Day, and a fabulous celebration of the Ascension!