The "It Was a Dark and Stormy Night...and Day", edition.

Good Friday morning. Nice and sunny.  And chilly. We do acknowledge that chilly has an entirely different meaning out here than it did in Detroit. It's 55 degrees right now. Brian muses that 55 in Detroit this time of year is warm. Out here, since we've already hit the 90s, it's chilly. It's all in the perspective.  

We started back to painting on Wednesday. I hadn't been since August, when I descended into sick hell. I'm slowly getting back to "normal". So of course we're in the advanced watercolor class. And the instructor gives us an assignment that incorporates everything we ever learned. Lol. Media techniques, stroke techniques, style techniques. It's coming back and coming together. The interesting thing about painting is while I'm painting, I'm less than impressed with my work. When I put it down and revisit it later and am not on top of the painting, it looks ok. Anyway. I prefer watercolor. Acrylic is just ok and I'm not trying to do oils. Brian, he likes oils. He's complicated like that.  :-)

It was chilly enough when we left for class on Wednesday that I took my sweater. Sometimes the classrooms get cold with air conditioning. The room was fine.  When we left it was cold and raining. Brrrr.  By the the time we got to the condo, it was pouring. And it rained all night. Then by the time we left for deep water fitness yesterday morning, the sun shining. Schizophrenic weather. Because of course, by late afternoon, we had a thunderstorm. With hail. Lol. 

But check this out. We plan out meals (sort of) for the week. I'd seen a slow cooker Mexican soup recipe and I told Brian it looked easy and good. We planned it for Wednesday. 3 chicken breasts, cumin, chili powder, salt, pepper (and I added chipotle chile powder), red and yellow peppers, onion, 2 cloves garlic, large can of crushed tomatoes, 1 can of Rotel, 3 cups of unsalted chicken broth. I opted out of the black beans but they go in the crockpot in the beginning also. Cook on high for 5 hours. Shred the chicken, add a bag of frozen corn...this was my substitute for the black beans...cook for another hour. Squeeze the juice of 1 lime in the soup, then serve. Toppings we used were avocado, cheese, sour cream and tortilla chips. Sooo good and so appropriate for the chilly day!  Dad referred to it as stew. Since Brian shredded the chicken into chunks, it probably could qualify as a stew. 

On the dialysis front, no news!  Some treatment days are better than others. Last night, my blood pressure stayed low. I know my nurses are going to comment about that. And sometimes my blood pressure dips while I'm out and about. I not fond of that. Lol. I try to fight it, it's probably not something I want to fight, but should deal with it instead. 

Well that's it for today. Have a great weekend!