Nine years ago, I had nothing to do but go to work and decide which friends I would ski with the next day, and which bar I would go to that night.  One day, purely by chance, I found out that my *ahem* “valley” wasn’t as green as I had thought and that it was in fact a brown infertile field.

While I saw doctors and took medicine and dealt with fatigue and nausea and saw more doctors and changed medications, I longed for those carefree years to return. A year later I found out that not only had the “valley” returned to green, much to my surprise, it was fer-tile.  34 weeks later, I was a mom.  I looked back longingly at a time when I could jump out of the car and run into a store alone, and when I could drive down the road without singing “How much is that doggie in the window” two hundred times so I didn’t have to hear the freaking crying the entire ride. 20 months later, when I was pregnant again, I ached for my first pregnancy when I could sleep late and take naps in the middle of the day and only had my own face to stuff. When my third child was born, four years and six weeks after the first one (I said fer-tile didn’t I?), I dreamed of the time when I had one hand for each child and my husband and I weren’t outnumbered.

Sixteen months ago we sold our house and moved into a rental. My heart ached to be able to paint my own walls and drive holes into them willy nilly.  We’re on our second rental now and I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.  I’ve wasted too much time looking back.  Now is the time I should be appreciating.  Now is when I should be feeling the joy.

The size of the mountains may vary from time to time. There may be the occasional brown patch. But our valleys, yours and mine, they are green right now. We just need to open our eyes, take off our shoes and wriggle our toes in the grass that is under our feet at this moment, because even though we can remember it a little, it’s always growing in different directions.  It will never be the same.

photo credit: Nicholas T. / CC BY 2.0

Here comes Valentine’s Day.  What better excuse to grab a bottle of Champagne to celebrate your current love affair?  Whether it be with your husband, yourself, Champagne in general, your picture of Brad Pitt, or whatever you can think of.  Personally, I’ll drink Champagne just to celebrate that it’s Tuesday. This one is a lovely, bubbly red color that fits right in with the “Holiday”.

Champagne Pomegranate Cocktail

1 sugar cube (or 1/2 tsp sugar)

1 oz.  Pomegranate Juice

Champagne to fill

Drop sugar into Champagne flute. Pour in pomegranate juice. Top off with Champagne.

An awesome  tip for this kind of cocktail is that you should save the expensive stuff to drink straight.  If you’re mixing it with something, use a less expensive American sparkling wine, Italian Prosecco, or my choice, a Spanish Cava ($8/bottle).  Just make sure it says Methode Champenoise, Charmat Method, or Method Tradicionale on the bottle. This ensures a fermentation that causes small bubbles to occur naturally. Small natural bubbles = less of a headache.  Large bubbles from forced carbonation = big bad headache.

Contributed by – Kellie Nelson.  Formerly of Mom Ran Out Screaming. That is to say, she let that blog die a slow and painful death this past fall while she blundered around trying to find something else to do. Thank goodness the Room 704 women dug something up!    Ever since she left the glamorous job of fine dining server eight years ago she has been seen around and about herding her three rabid monkeys.  She has a new blog in the works but hasn’t quite figured out how much of the population she would like to offend with it.