The rain is coming down hard and swirling around in the street, rushing swiftly through the gutters.

Inside our warm, dry house, I’m having a cup of tea and watching the girls play together, baking some russet potatoes in the oven, enjoying the row of candles glowing on the mantel, listening to some old 1960s country music on the stereo.

Fully prepared and excited to spend the afternoon indoors. I’ve made a batch of garlicky, lemony hummus to share with Freya and Audrey. So far the baby seems to love it, so let’s hope that her father’s tragic allergy to garlic has not been passed down.

Little known fact: Our TV has been kinda broken for almost two years. The screen is dark on one side when you turn it on, and you have to slap it around a bit to get it to clear up. If it’s on a while it kind of “warms up” and the picture shows up more, but then it still randomly goes dark on the left side. We bought it new in 2008 from Costco, it’s a 42″ Vizio flatscreen (so, never do that, everyone). It started doing this when we had only owned it for four years.

Anyway, buying a TV is just not a big priority, which is why we’ve waited so long. But it’s not getting any better and the dark spot will eventually cover the entire screen (it started out small). So I poked around on Craigslist and found a really good 2-year-old Samsung that retailed for $1500 (crazy) which we’re going to get for 1/3 of that. Not paying any sales tax is a nice thing too.

Now we’ll have to get used to a clear picture and not having to smack the TV like the Fonz anymore.

Ahh. Following a twenty-four month hiatus, I have at last “returned to fertility.”

This really explains a lot of the past couple of weeks.

And now to front load the Tylenol.

One of my favorite things about Freya’s name is that it is the root of the word “Friday”. Thursday is Thor’s day, Friday is Freya day.

My stomach seems a bit better today. I’ve been taking great care to avoid junk food and coffee. For whatever that’s worth. I really like tea.

Tonight I made my favorite tacos: white corn tortillas cooked in the cast iron skillet with cheese then stuffed with a filling of black beans, yams, corn, shallot, lime juice, cumin, and oregano (all simmered for an hour in chicken stock). Added some avocado tossed in lime juice. So, so good.

After dinner, cuddled on the couch with Freya for movie night: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The download stopped working after 45 minutes unfortunately, but it was baby bedtime anyway. While the movie played, Audrey wandered around babbling to the cat, dancing, sitting on my feet, and saying “sissy!” to Freya.

I’m so in love with my girls.

I did 20 minutes of yoga at dawn, it was good. Poured a half cup of coffee, didn’t finish it. I’ve started drinking herbal tea since my tummy troubles began.

After taking Freya to preschool, came home a went for a 40 minute walk with Audrey through the misty hills. That’s four walks this week.

As baby napped this afternoon, I cleaned the kitchen while Freya watched a cartoon. When the dishes were done, I  put some cookie dough into the oven to bake because I’m that mom, apparently.

I have grown to like doing housework, it’s just finding good opportunities to do it, like when children are asleep.

While cookies baked I sat with Freya and we practiced reading and writing. Sit, cat, wet. The fact that she is beginning to read makes my heart sing a happy song.

I may have become a little misty eyed listening to that Macklemore song on the way to preschool this morning.

Maybe because we’ve come such a long way. A song like that would never have been played on the radio when I was a kid.