7QT: The Happiness Edition

It’s winter, it’s Lent, it’s a Pandemic (still) and I am…surprisingly happy. Here are 7 Quick Takes on the things that are making me happy right now:

1. Intermittent Fasting: I love love Intermittent Fasting. I recently listened to this book and it cemented it as a way of life for me. She only eats between 5-10 pm but I eat at 11 and 7, and somedays I might push it to 12 or 1 if I know we are going to be eating later. After our ski vacation where I did eat breakfast before we hit the slopes, and I ate burgers and fries and nachos, I wasn’t worried about if I gained any weight, I just eased right back into it this week and my jeans are loser.

2. A Writing Weekend: This weekend my husband is taking over at home and letting me go up alone to our camp in Maine to working on my second draft of my book. (He is skiing out west next week so it is a fair trade.) I am also going to be tuning into this Writing Workshop with Dani Shapiro. I have learned a lot about writing from Dani and her podcast Family Secrets is also really good. Her book Inheritance is about how an Ancestry DNA test revealed that her half sister was not actually her sister, and her dad was not actually her father. It is amazing that she has found so many guests on her podcast who have similar stories of finding out info

3. Good Food: I have a ritual where I make a big pot of pasta on these types of weekends and I am craving this spicy pasta alla vodka one. I’m looking forward to working and eating and picking my own show on Netflix.

4. Great Reading: I have been loving reading Searching For and Maintaining Interior Peace this Lent along with Adele. This is my second time reading it, and it is such a big part of why I feel so happy. His other books Interior Freedom and In the School of the Holy Spirit are also amazing.

5. Comfy Clothes: I have been living in these JCrew leggings – they are so soft and cozy and I also grabbed this pullover sweatshirt in black and green. They go so well with the leggings or jeans. I’m also eyeing these because we can’t have too many comfy pant options in our life can we?

6. More Good Food: I just made this Creamy Lemon Cod Piccata this week and I am obsessed. It is lemony creamy buttery goodness heaven and it is done in 15 minutes. I feel a strong need to share the love about how yummy and easy this dish is, like restaurant-quality. They say that sometimes constraints yield creativity and that’s how I feel about cooking in Lent which is not the intended purpose I know. I’ll just read some extra pages of Fr. Philippe’s book.

7. Great Writers on Motherhood: I really loved this article by Noelle Mering from The Theology of Home blog. It made me think and raised so many important points about the materialistic world view and how it tries to put a value on motherhood.