Ruth Ayres hosts a weekly celebration on her blog. I appreciate this invitation to find the positives in my week.

1. Healing words from my son. I spend so much time working with my son on attachment and healing, and sometimes it can seem like very little progress is being made. Healing trauma is one step forward, twelve steps backwards some days. I got plenty of “you’re not my real mom, you’ll never be my mom” this week. But I also got “I didn’t love you when I first came here but now I do. Now I am always going to love you” and “I am yours, and you are mine.”

2. My request for travel funding to take 4 students to NCTE was approved. Kelsey, Maggie, Mariah, Shelby, and I are off to DC next month. I can’t imagine a better group to travel with. I’m looking forward to lots of learning and laughter–and to reading the tweets and blog posts!

3. Exercise. Workouts are often the first thing to go when I get too busy with work, parenting, life. But exercise helps me manage my stress and keeps me healthier, so I am trying to re-establish the habit. This week, I am celebrating six days of workouts! The first couple were hard, but I’m already feeling stronger and calmer.

4. A visit from Quincy. We dog-sat for my mom this week. I enjoyed hosting Q-dog, who has beautiful manners, but I will also confess to being relieved that it was only for one night! Six cats and two pit bulls is A LOT. I thought all the cats would scatter, but it turns out that three of the cats were unusually and unhealthily obsessed with the new dog. Tiny Frances walked right up to him and sniffed his nose. Normally shy Fergus followed suit. And then Puck spent the day stalking and terrorizing him and occasionally growling.

At any given moment, there were at least three cats in the room watching him. Q is good with cats, but he is a young dog and finds it hard to keep resisting the chase. So he would sit very politely minding his own business until I thought any urge to chase a cat had passed and my attention focused elsewhere. And then–zoom!–he’d be off, and much hissing and puffy tails would ensue. SIGH.

The cats seemed to find his dog bed nearly as interesting as Q himself. The moment he was crated, they’d be all over the bed.

Q chewed on all of Roxy’s toys (none of which she ever touches–but I’m sure you can imagine how interested she became when they were in another dog’s mouth); had some very fine pittie zoomies in the yard; and tried to convince us that he’s actually a lap dog (he’s 70+ pounds!). (Roxy, at 55 pounds, is also a lap dog, and at some moments, they were both trying to get into the same lap. Pit bulls!)

5. Ethiopian food. I discovered the most amazing thing this week: mail order injera! Injera is the sour crepe-like bread served with Ethiopian food.

I’ve attempted to make it a couple of times at home, and it’s been a dismal failure. We love Ethiopian food, and many dishes are extremely easy to cook (once you’ve invested in the right spices), but without injera, you really don’t have Ethiopian food. And since nobody–including me–wants to eat my injera, I rarely cook Ethiopian. But now, for $30, I can get 20 rounds of injera baked fresh on Tuesday and delivered to my door in the middle of nowhere, South Dakota, on Friday. Amazing! Internet, how I love you. And so we feasted. First, I made niter kibbeh, which is the spiced clarified butter that’s used in many Ethiopian dishes. Isn’t it pretty? (You do get a chance to use all your spices when you cook Ethiopian–and I do mean all of them.)

And then I made Red Lentil Stew, Yellow Split Pea Stew, Gomen (which I made with chard–terrific recipe), Shiro, and Cabbage and Potatoes. I don’t know that you’d call it pretty, but it was delicious–and got full approval from my sharpest critic. (That would be my son.)