"mindfulness monday"

At school, every Monday during morning quarters formation (when we all lineup at 7 AM and basically take attendance) a plebe (freshman) reads a little speech that he prepared and tells us ways that we can make our lives a little better. Don't worry, he's been sending us weekly emails since we've been gone.

A little update on my health, holy cow I hate coughing. It's a productive cough but my throat is killing me. I just feel blah. I want to sleep, I'm convinced that cough medicine is a scam. I spent ten minutes in that Walgreen's aisle comparing my options only to realize that they're basically all the same. But I will say, the Ricola cough drops with the stuff in the middle, those things are a game changer. I hate the way they taste... it tastes like I'm eating Vick's vapo-rub but they work. Enough of that, I'm just hoping to beat it soon. I really want to run and actually workout. I'm drained. I'm not sleeping and it hurts to swallow anything so I'm super low energy. But, I should be good soon thanks to my super-duper cough medicine and "dual action" cough drops.

On Saturday, after I updated you on my somewhat bland Saturday it got exciting. We were tasked with removing a tree from the front of the house. Soren's granddad got out his chainsaw and we hauled the pieced into the truck to dump into the woods. That tree took three trips... it didn't even look that big. While Soren and his mom hauled the tree away, Baden (Soren's little brother) and I wondered what was wrong with the tree in the first place! It's okay, it's gone now.

Also on Saturday, Soren's mom brought me some brown bananas and I made chocolate chip banana bread. I forgot to take a picture and it's half-eaten now, but it's really good. I followed this recipe: https://www.food.com/recipe/best-banana-bread-2886 and just added my own chocolate chips, I even sprinkled some on the top. I also only baked it for about 50 minutes. It is really good. Soren brought us pizza for dinner and he surprised me with some ice cream because I'd been saying how much I wanted it for days.

The yard work did not end there! We got up bright and early on Sunday to cut down some more trees at their camp (It's not really a camp that you're picturing it's just a cute lakeside house and the extra bedrooms are like camps because they don't have bathrooms in them, you have to go inside.) It was quite a process and we worked pretty much all day, this time we had two trucks (I drove the other one) so it was only three trips. We have more to do and we'll be going back on Tuesday. I haven't done yard work in years, but even then it was like raking leaves and my dad would argue that I was probably less help then I remember. We finally called it quits at like 3:15 PM, we'd been there since 10 AM and we were all starving.

We came home and just hungout, ate some leftover pizza and made sure to shower and check for ticks. I watched "All American" it's a little like "The Blind Side" but more dramatic. I had chop suey for the first time. I definitely thought it was an Asian dish. Turns out there are two versions and this one was the American version. It's just like pasta with meat sauce, I liked it a lot.

Today I have three classes, I think I'll try and nap at some point. If I miraculously feel better I will workout. I need to write some papers. I just really don't want to... Okay well that's all for now!