What I Learned in April

WOW. So April ends on Sunday. WHAT? I realized about two days ago that a new month is looming RIGHT NOW and I need to hurry to make sure I have my goals made, my birthday cards ordered, and my schedule set, because May is fixin' to be one cuh-ra-zay busy month in Shafferland. So while I anticipate that what I'll learn next month is to hang onto my hat, here's a peek at what I learned in April!

1. I am so glad we did a tiny destination wedding.

Ryan's sister is getting married this year and is in the throes of heavy wedding planning. This month, I was invited to a few of the meetings with a bunch of the family girls, and while it was fun (because hello! Wedding!), I realized I'm so glad we had a tiny little wedding that was far, far away. I know we hurt and disappointed a lot of people who wanted to attend our wedding and couldn't, because it was too far, but for my anxious personality, that itty bitty wedding was so perfect, and I'm glad we did it that way. I don't think I realized just how much until I was reminded of the enormity of traditional wedding planning!

2. Cozy mysteries are an actual genre.

I probably shouldn't be admitting out loud that I did not know that, because it probably reveals a giant flaw in my literature-loving understanding. But when I interviewed Ann Gabhart earlier this month about her Hidden Springs Mystery series, we talked about how they had such a lightheartedness about them, compared to the dark, heavy suspense of other crime novels I've read. And that's where I learned about cozy mysteries. In these books, the violence is written in a much more toned-down manner to allow the reader a more comfortable experience, while still getting to participate in a mystery.

3. You can purchase riced cauliflower.

Am I the only one who didn't know about this? I found a recipe to try this month that made "breadsticks" out of cauliflower. The instructions said to grind up the cauliflower in a blender until it was the size of pieces of rice. Someone had commented and asked if she could just use frozen riced cauliflower. What? You can buy it already processed? For a girl who has the worst blender ever made, this was very exciting news! Save time and headache? OKAY!!!!!

4. I drink water better if it's cold.

I'm not a bad water-drinker. I'm thankful for that because I hated water when I was a kid and pretty much refused to drink it. But as an adult, I started enjoying it and it's all we have here at home, really. We don't keep pop in the house and I don't even make tea all that often. But I had noticed that even though I'm pretty good at drinking water, I wasn't getting in as much as I wanted. And that's when I discovered that I drink it much better if it's cold. How did I not know this about myself until just now? 

5.  Lawn rollers can be filled with water.

When I was a kid, I remember every spring, my dad would hire a guy from town to come out to their property with his big heavy roller. I'd be instructed to stay far away while the man drove his tractor slowly through the massive yard, leveling the ground so Dad could proceed with the first mowing of the season. This year, Ryan borrowed a roller from a friend of his, with the intent of rolling our yard and one of his co-worker's yards. When I asked how he planned to heft that thing into his truck and drive it to her house, he just stared at me funny and said, "Just empty it?" Empty it? That's when I found out that these modern, newfangled rollers are plastic and hollow, and you just fill them up with water to create the weight. When you're done, you empty it out and you could lift the whole thing one-handed. Who knew? 

6. My husband can rock a flamingo suit like you wouldn't believe.

 This absolutely falls under "sentences I never expected to type" and also is entirely self-explanatory.

7. Traction isn't as scary as I thought.

I tried it for the first time this month. I have a lot of tightness and discomfort (we'll stop short of calling it pain, because it's really not pain) in my neck, which I'm sure comes from a combination of carrying all my stress there and sitting in front of a computer for pretty much every waking hour of my life. I always thought traction was like some horrible immobilizing thing you were stuck in for life if you broke your back or something. But I found this very relaxing and helpful in stretching out my poor strained neck!

So that's what I learned. What about you? Any April revelations?