Experimenting. I am sort of loyal to Z., funny. That is OK, as at home I will resume biking and swimming and add treadmill and WILL lose that weight.

Yesterday I was a little euphoric in a quiet non-manic way. I did not have a migraine, did not have a cold, stomatitis was gone and I just had the back pain. Being almost painXfree was my reason for feeling so good. I planned to make a salad and cook a split green. Pea soup with salt pork. When bff got up, she said that after all the holiday food she wanted a light soup, without animal fat. I suggested a vegetarian cabbage soup. She agreed. I started putting the ingredients on the table and determined that I was
Missing white canned beans in tomato sauce. I went to the little grocery store located in bff's apartment building but it was closed until two pm due to the date being jan first. I then decided that I would start cooking and go back to the store at two, since beans are the next to last ingredient (by order of being put in the soup) anyway. I started working. I. Did mise en place, the French term for putting all ingredients in separate bowls on thr table for convenient access. I did everything correctly. I then left the soup pot on the lowest level of heat and went to the store without giving bff instructions. That was a mistake. When I returned, the soup was boiling rapidly and there is a Southern expression BOILED soup is SPOILED soup and I live by it, always making sure that no more than a couple of small bubbles erupt on the surface of the liquid at any one time.

Bff spoiled my soup... she told me that she increased the heat just to bring the soup to the boiling point, but that is not true - the liquid was boiling rapidly and my carefully prepared creation was ruthlessly destroyed. When I tried my soup, I hated the grossly overcooked vegetables. My hosts liked it though which made me conclude that that is how they are used to cooking their soups. Ok, I have learned my lesson and for my pea soup the day after tomorrow I will first go to the grocery store and then start cooking.

The salad however was a success. I married Russia and California by using the. Typically Russian unrefined sunflower oil with typically Californian arugula and several lettuces. I also added cut up kiwis, kumato tomatoes, salt, purple onion, and freshly squeezed lemon juice. Bff said that this light salad was a perfect follow-up to the heavy holiday fare, and. I was quite happy.

I then said that I would pay a visit to bff's mother whom I know very well, to say Happy New Year and give her my handmade present - a necklace. Since I was going to see grandma, who lives within a nice long walking distance, it was decided that I would be treated like the Little Red Riding Hood in that bff sent leftover holiday food plus my soup plus my. Salad to grandma who was having a hard time cooking for herself due to a broken arm in a sling.

With a big bagged filled with food and with the necklace in a festive printed organza bag I left bff's house. I asked for walking directions and two people said that I needed to take public transit as the walk would be too long. So it is not just my friends who shirk walking. Finally I saw a man coming back from his cross country skiing trip. He had bright rosy cheeks and looked tired but optimistic. I was an extremely fast skier at school, outrunniing athletic boys, and it is my belief that had I stayed in a cold climate, be it Moscow or Montreal, I would have stayed thin because cross country and skate skiing that I love so much are also the best cardio. So I decided that this man would not say that I needed to take public transit. I was right - he gave me clear directions and I learned my. Way well enough to not needing to ask for directions on the way back.

Had a good time with bff's mom. Had tea with sweets - when I visit people, I eat whatever they offer me, trying to be polite. I can always go back to restricted carbs diet when I am back in California.

Then, I went to see Lana, another close gf from adolescent years who knows bff as well - we were from the same group of friends back then. Lana is French-Russian bilingual who has always worked for French companies splitting her time between Paris and Moscow. She now works for a top haute couture company as a press attache. She is one year. Younger than me. For many years, she wanted but was unable to conceive and finally after 4 In Vitro Fertilization attempts, she conceived and gave birth to twin boys at age 40. The boys were term and each weighed big enough for a single birth, which is unusual for twins.

I was happily chatting with Lana and her mother while her father was taking the kids who are now 15 months old for a walk when I casually inquired when Michael, Lana's second H and the father of the twins, would come back home from seeing clients in his T practice. I certainly could not have possibly expected to hear that Michael DIED from a heart attack hving just turned 40, when Lana was seven months pregnant. Lana is a widow and the twins do not have a father.

On that day, Lana, with her huge belly, left home as usual to go to work. On her way, in the car, she had a premonition, a feeling that something was wrong. She returned home to find Michael dead on the floor. He just returned from Switzerland where he attended a continuing education program in Jungian psychology. He just finalized his divorce (he has a 6 year old son whom Lana regularly invites to bond with his half-brothers, being on friendly terms with Michael's first wife) and was planning to marry Lana, for whom it would have been the second marriage as well. Everything was going as planned and nobody could anticipate the tragedy.

Because they were not married, Lana had to go to court to prove paternity using signed consent forms from the IVF treatment, all in order to give the boys their father's last name.

Lana gets a lot of moral support from Michael's mother who survived her son. She is too frail to offer physical help but she is generous with emotional support. Lana's parents help her every day and her younger sister Veronica who has no children of her own helps out on weekends. Lana also has a nanny who takes care of the twins together with Lana's prents, and a cleaning lady. All this help allows her to leave for work at nine and come back at ten. So basically she is with the children on weekends only. When she is on a business trip in Paris, the nanny moves in.

The older twin looks exactly like his late father.

Lana has always been optimistic, determined, and hardworking, but when the kids were born she decided that she would no longer work as hard and put in as much time as before. Still, she does because her direct supervisor just had a baby and is home on a maternity leave and Lana performs her executive functions in her absence.

I knew my friend was strong but I never imagined that life would give her challenges of that magnitude.