Happpiness, baking, and tiny dogs

Thank you for your kind words on my last post.

I know grief is a process and it's certainly not always linear no matter how hard we wish it were. I often find myself telling others to just let feelings happen and go with them because they need to happen but sometimes it's hard to follow that advice.

However.

I am doing much better. So much better, than instead of stress baking I did a little 'just for fun baking.' Not a new recipe, but a new, arrangement, for lack of a better word.

Today we also participated in World Malaria Day on our state Capitol lawn as part of a launch for the broader Imagine.No.Malaria Campaign from the United Methodist Church (imaginenomalaria.org if you're so inclined). DH performed his song "One of These Tomorrows" with a youth band as part of the celebration. I teared up just listening.

One Of These Tomorrows...

We'll be ok.

Click here if you want to listen to it again :)

There's very little space to feel sorry for your infertility woes when you're thinking about the fact that in Africa, a child dies from malaria every thirty seconds. It's preventable and treatable and it shouldn't be this way.

On a happier note I'll leave you with two things:
A pic of Penelope, our tiny little rescue dog, who came to us in such bad shape they had named her "Hope" because they just hoped she'd live a few more months. We were told she was 12.

Ha.

That was five years ago and ain't no way Penelope was any 12 years old when we got her.

And thank God for that, because when I got her, I needed something small to distract me from my fertility woes (you know, we'd been trying three months and it hadn't happened so I was experiencing woes). She is small, that's for sure (see pic below). But she's also a great comfort, in a way only a dog can be (I feel like Mickey Rourke here, egads). And I do love her and I still need her.

Isn't she tiny but also adorable?



And now, for my baking adventure. I give you: cake ball banana split. The 'container' is white chocolate, and yes that's a tiny banana slice in there. It's hard to see the 'vanilla ice cream ball' but it's there behind the banana... and a red M&M makes the 'cherry' (to give you perspective). It was fun to make, but I didn't eat it....

Also--we're on the countdown to NYC so I'm getting in my uber happy place!