*my little parrot seems to be feeling better
*Cranes flying over the house
*my dog being so happy to see me
*antics of the Steller's Jays in our yard

Every year, one of the non-profits I volunteer for makes a quilt as a fundraiser. We sell raffle tickets all year and raffle it off in December. In January or February, a group of 12 volunteers goes to the director's cabin in the mountains for a weekend. We arrive Friday afternoon or evening, sew on Saturday, and leave on Sunday after breakfast. Teams of two people take turns making meals. I never know what people are going to make, so I always bring back up food just in case.

This year, my friend and I made a dinner. We decided to do pasta with meat sauce (and a meatless sauce for vegetarians). I like lots of veggies in my sauce anyway. I decided to do some of the prep ahead of time, so I cooked the ground beef and put it in a big container, and then I sauteed onion, mushrooms, zucchini and summer squash and put that in another big container. I took 3 big jars of pasta sauce. I brought regular fettuccine, and some quinoa pasta for me because I am not eating wheat. Having the sauteed vegetables came in handy, because on Friday when I prepared to eat my lunch, I realized that in all the preparations I'd forgotten to pack a vegetable for my lunch at work. I used some of the sauteed vegetables and they were delicious.

In addition to the food I brought for the dinner my friend and I were cooking, I brought protein powder, a serving of oatmeal with blueberries and greek yogurt, almond milk, yam cakes, cheese sticks, brown rice, 2 grilled pork chops and about 4 ounces of rotisserie chicken. That way, I figured I'd be prepared for anything.

Breakfast is usually a bit later than I'm used to, so I had almond milk with protein powder when I got up. That way, if breakfast was late, I'd still be ok. Breakfast the first day had what I needed, but the second day it was granola, yogurt and fruit, which did not have enough protein or browns for me, so I heated up my oatmeal and added protein powder. Lunch on Saturday was delicious, but had almost no protein. It was sauteed vegetables and potato and corn soup. I ate my chicken with it and had yam cakes for a brown.

On Saturday night it started snowing. By Sunday morning, we were in a winter wonderland. It was beautiful, but the cabin is on a steep, twisty road so we weren't sure we were going to be able to leave. We had leftovers for lunch (soup again, and I had a pork chop and yam cakes with it. We finally left in the mid afternoon. The car I was in had problems with the hill. After it turned 180 degrees and got stuck, we grabbed what we absolutely needed from the car and left it stuck in the snow and walked the rest of the way down, where fortunately the other two drivers were waiting to make sure we made it down ok. I finally got the rest of my luggage on Tuesday.

I'm an extreme introvert, so spending that much time in a small cabin with 11 other people, sharing a bedroom with 3 other people, and sewing (something that is not my area of expertise) in very close quarters is a bit of a challenge, especially because I don't sleep well during the retreat. Doing the food enables me to stay calm and have fun, even when sleep deprived and when trying to learn something new. It also enabled me to be calm when we had to abandon most of our luggage. It also helps that there are always at least 2 dogs there, so when I need a break, I sit on the couch with the dogs and give them love and attention. I got to take a lovely walk in the snow, too, and I was able to enjoy the beautiful snow instead of worrying about how we were going to get home. My biggest worry about staying longer was that we would run out of food, but I had brought enough extra food that I could have fed myself and let the other people have all the leftovers from the group meals. (At that point, a few people with 4 wheel drive had left, so there were just 7 of us.)
Allison