The Anatomy of a Really Good Day
Three years into a five year plan . . .
Last night I made this elaborate meal. It involved a stack of roasted vegetables — a portabella mushroom, a slice of eggplant, red onion, orange bell pepper, and tomato. Topped with a spicy tomato coulis . . . yes, I said coulis.
I made coulis. (Okay, so that’s basically just sauce. But whatever. It sounds fancy.)
It was delicious, but required a pretty exact timeline for getting everything roasted at the right time. So, while I was doing that, my daughters helped. And Zach sat at my kitchen table building a new Medium publication for Ninja Writers. (It’s empty for now, but you can follow it if you want. It’s going to be pretty epic.)
My husband came home from work just in time. And after dinner Adrienne and I went to Trader Joe’s and bought salads for a picnic tomorrow (which is today, actually) at Lake Tahoe after her sister’s basketball tournament.
And I thought — right now, tonight, life is really good. Everything is humming along. There’s chaos (because there always is), and downstairs in the basement apartment my parents-in-law still have dementia (because they always will), and I’m not getting quite enough sleep (mostly because my brain is spinning with too many ideas, shooting off like sparklers.)
But overall? This is the life I wanted with myself. When I looked up three years ago and realized things had tipped too far into the chaos — that I was pretty miserable on every level — and something had to change, this was the kind of night I wanted.
I still have two years on my five year plan.
I might not get to an Iron Man when I’m 48, but damn. I’ve come a long way.
The recipe came from a book called The How Not to Die Cookbook. My thirteen-year-old thought that was hilarious.
Shaunta Grimes is a writer and teacher. She lives in Reno with her husband, three superstar kids, and a yellow rescue dog named Maybelline Scout. She’s on Twitter @shauntagrimes and is the author of Viral Nation and Rebel Nation and the upcoming novel The Astonishing Maybe. She is the original Ninja Writer. You can be a Ninja Writer, too.