Another one bites the dust

So, I’m sitting here in my underwear (I was just starting to get dressed after taking a shower when I thought of something I wanted to tell Chuck, so I decided to send him a quick e-mail before I forgot and then I got distracted by Facebook IM because one of my favorite people was on), and BigHugs walks in and says, “Ew, Mom, that’s gross.  You need to get some clothes on.”  And I thought, “She’s right, I really do need to get some clothes on”, but I was still chatting.  And then BigHugs asks if she can have some chocolate teddy grahams and I thought, “Sure, why not?  It’s 9:45 am and you haven’t had breakfast yet—go for it.”  So I told her yes and she went downstairs to get the teddy grahams and a bowl for me to pour them into.  Then, of course, the teddy grahams were just sitting here on the desk, so I help myself because, hey, I haven’t had breakfast yet either, and before I know it, they are all gone and I’m shaking out the bottom of the box into my hand so I can finish off every last dismembered teddy graham appendage.  And now my underwear is littered with the carnage of my teddy graham massacre.

Hey, I’m gonna eat you two!  Another one bites the dust-ah!

 

Happy Thursday to ye!

Phooey on phood

Sunday a friend of mine at church said, “Are you shrinking? You look like you’re shrinking. Are you shrinking on purpose?” I assured her that I was not really shrinking. Perhaps I was on the down swing of my 5-6 lb up/down pendulum, but no doubt in a couple weeks I’d be right back up again.

Truth be told, I have wanted to lose 10-15 lbs for the past 10-15 years. Chuck’s taking me to Hawaii for our 15th anniversary in June, and I thought it would be nice to make the trip with just a little less me. I don’t think I look bad, but I think I could look better. And I’ve been thinking I would enjoy the process of swimsuit shopping a little more hate the process of swimsuit shopping a little less if there was just a little less me.

But I certainly haven’t made any concerted effort or “diet plan” or anything.  If there’s one thing I know about myself, it’s that I’m programmed for complete diet failure.  Complete.  Failure.  I think we’ve had this conversation before over the Christmas fudge.  Anyway, I’ve just been trying to cut down a bit—maybe have one piece of toast instead of two, two cookies instead of twelve.  You know, little stuff.  And it’s been kind of working until my sweet friend had to open up her big mouth on Sunday.  Her innocent and even complimentary shrinking remark triggered my body’s screw itself mode, and last night I found myself sick.  And disgusted.  And all around oogie-feeling.

The day started out innocently enough.  I had a bowl of Special K.  I like Special K.  It’s crispy and ricey.  A little while later I had a small handful of almonds.  A few nuts are good for you, right?  Protein and stuff.  Then a little while later I felt a little grumbly in the tumbly so I had a 90 calorie cereal bar.  I had a box of them in the food storage in the garage and it seemed like a safe snack.  Less than an hour later I found myself in front of the pantry again.  This time I had a spoonful of peanut butter.  A teaspoonful isn’t so bad, eh?  More protein.  Fifteen minutes later (it was lunch time then—time for lunch!) I decided to make myself a couple of eggs sans toast.  Heaven knows I love me some eggs, but it’s not exactly the best taste to leave in your mouth.  I should have brushed my teeth or popped a tic-tac or something, but no, it was back to the pantry for more almonds.  Almonds are salty, though, see?  So I needed a little somethin-somethin to balance that out.  Enter the mint oreos.  I just had one.  Then two minutes later I had three more.  At this point, it was about 12:15 pm.

I managed to go another two hours before breaking out the popcorn.  It was healthy pop, mind you, which as far as I’m concerned is like eating nothing because it doesn’t really taste good.  Isn’t that how it should work?  If you don’t actually enjoy the food, it shouldn’t count as actual eating?  I think that should be one of the slides on those weight watcher point calculators.  You’ve got the calories and the grams of fat and the taste scale.  Obviously, “delicious” jacks the points way up, whereas “tasteless styrofoam” automatically negates all of the other factors.  I guess as long as I’m pretending I should make the delicious food count for nothing, but that would just be too good to be true, and even I’m not that delusional.  So I had a bag of healthy pop kettle corn.  Not one of those mini-single serving bags.  An entire bag.

I was set for another whole hour, and then it was back to the peanut butter.  Another spoonful.  I did manage to resist the urge to put chocolate chips on it.  Then I did my marathon stretch of non-eating and stayed out of the kitchen for two and a half hours until it was time to make dinner.  I’m not a big fan of making dinner.  I stared at the fridge and the freezer and the pantry for several minutes.  Then I went out to the garage and stared at the food shelves for a good long while.  Funny how nothing really sounds good to cook let alone eat when you’ve been eating crap all day.  I finally settled on tacos, and while I was chopping and dicing and browning and stirring, I probably consumed a good three dozen tortilla chips.  Because, you know, they were there.  On the counter.  And heaven forbid I should not eat something when it’s just sitting there.

By the time I put dinner on the table, I felt good and sick, but I still managed to eat two tacos and some beans and some more tortilla chips.  Then as I was clearing my plate I passed the oreos that one of my children had very thoughtfully left on the counter, and I had another one of those.  Yeah, just one.  Because it was the last one.  I spent the rest of the night in a terrible, terrible mood.

Last night I had a dream.  Our family was going on a road trip.  I don’t remember where.  We packed all kinds of food and snacks for the trip, including two big boxes of brown sugar and cinnamon poptarts.  (I don’t even like poptarts.  Maybe that’s why I packed them because I could eat as many as I wanted and it wouldn’t count as actual eating because I wouldn’t enjoy it.)  We stopped at a small restaurant for breakfast.  I don’t know why we were stopping for breakfast when we’d just barely started driving, but we did.  The place was called Mother’s and looked like a nice, cozy little family owned restaurant.  They seated us almost immediately, and then we sat at the table and waited for the waitress to take our order.  We waited and waited.  Finally, after about an hour I went to complain.  The waitress told me with a super fake and patronizing smile that she was sorry, but they were really busy and she was the only one working.  She’d be with us soon.  A half an hour later, she came to our table.  I said, “We’ve been waiting for an hour and a half to place our order!”  She said, “It has not been an hour and a half.”  I looked at my watch and said, “Well an hour and 22 minutes then.”  Then she started to take our order, but left halfway through.  She never came back.  We were still just sitting there when I woke up this morning.  And I woke up super pissed.

What do you think it all means? 

What did you eat yesterday? 

Reason #562 why I love Target

Archer Farms Maui Onion Potato Chips Kettle-cooked for Crispness.  In a resealable bag!

I love these kettle chips.  They’re crispy.  They’re crunchy.  They’re oniony.  They’re delicious!  Look at this golden brown goodness.  Look at it!

Heaven in a bag, my friends, a resealable bag to preserve the crispitty-crunchitty heavenliness.  Dee-lis-see-oh-so.  OH.  SO.

That is all.

Is that burning sensation normal?

Do you ever go to the store in the afternoon without having eaten lunch yet and find that you suddenly need all kinds of crud that you don’t really need but winds up in your cart anyway?  And then when loading your groceries into the trunk, do you pull out a couple of things to tide you over during the 10 minute car ride home until you can eat an actual lunch?  Yeah, me neither.

I certainly did not pretend to be talked into buying Cheetos by my 3 year-old and then randomly pick up a box of ginger snaps because I had a sudden craving for something gingery and molassesy.  And I definitely did not pull those two things out of my bags before closing the trunk and put them in the passenger seat of the car.  And I surely did not, after filling a small bag with Cheetos for BigHugs, proceed to eat through nearly half of the bag myself.  And there is no way that I then, while driving, opened up the box and inner plastic bag of ginger snaps and inhale 3 or 4 of those, too.  And after all that stuff that didn’t happen, I didn’t spend the next several minutes wondering if it was normal to experience a burning sensation in my mouth, tongue and throat after eating a couple servings worth of snaps.  Nor did I wonder since when did ginger snaps become so snappy that I feared breaking my teeth in the effort of eating them.

So, if this is you, let that be a lesson to you.

Oh, and if this is you, do not spend the rest of the day snacking on potato chips, candy corn and almonds in addition to eating a full lunch and dinner.  You’ll regret it.  Trust me.  Not that I would know from personal experience, but it’s just common sense, now, isn’t it?

Brinner!

We had pancakes for dinner last night.  Pancakes is one of my fall back meals for those nights when I just don’t have time for or just don’t feel like cooking a “real” dinner.  For awhile there, we were having pancakes at least once a week, but lately it’s more like twice a month.  My family are good sports.  They don’t mind the pancakes for dinner, I think partly because dinner time is pretty much the only time I make pancakes.  I’m not so much a hot breakfast kind of gal unless it pops out of the toaster. 

Sometimes they’re even excited to come downstairs to the smell of pancakes.  Last night Mr. T came up behind me in the kitchen to see what was on the menu and said, “Mmmm, brinner!  Yessssss!”  I think he was mostly relieved that I was cooking dinner at all.  Usually, if it’s getting to be past 6 pm and mom isn’t in the kitchen yet, we’re getting into “whatever night” territory.  Whatever nights are when mom’s not cooking a meal and it’s just kind of a free for all.  We have these more often than I would like to admit.

I typically serve pancakes with some kind of meat like sausage or bacon and whatever fruit I have on hand.  Occasionally, I’ll throw in some eggs for the non-allergic family members, and if I’m feeling really fancy, I might make hashbrowns.  And once in a blue moon I’ll break out the waffle iron.  If I had my way, we’d do French toast, but how do you make French toast without eggs?  I can make a decent pancake without egg and milk, but I’m not sure what eggless, milkless French toast would be.  I’m thinking, uh, toast.

What about you?  Do you have brinner at your house?  What are your family’s brinner favorites?  Oh, and feel free to share some recipes with those of us who could stand to expand our brinner repertoire.

 

Back from the beach or What I learned on my summer vacation, part II

1.  Total travel time has little to do with the number of times you will hear “are we there yet?”  Apparently, my children are capable of delivering just as many in a 5 hour drive as they are in a 10 hour drive.

2.  Even a six year old can recognize interior design faux pas.  After a week in our rental, Goose said, “The main thing I don’t like about this house is everywhere I look there’s stuff.”  Seriously.

3.  There is such a thing as too many lighthouses and fish and shell and other seashore-themed kitschy knick-knacks.  See number 2.  Seriously.  And the clocks!  There were at least a dozen clocks in that house—fish clocks, lighthouse clocks, shell clocks, bird clocks, flower clocks, ship’s helm clocks—and none of them worked.

4.  I have come to the point where it is nearly impossible for me to watch live TV.  How did I live before the DVR?  How?!  I know we were on vacation, but it’s the Olympics, people!

5.  Anyone who plays arcade games for the sole purpose of exchanging his tickets for fabulous prizes of equal value to the money he’s just spent playing said games is an idiot. 1400 tickets for a Nascar mug?  Really?

6.  I still have some mad Skee Ball skillz.

7.  I’m not too old to enjoy swinging on the beach.  I am too old, however, to jump from a swing with any measure of grace or finesse.  At least I didn’t break anything.

8.  A chicken fried steak breakfast skillet is equal parts delicious and disgusting.  Hashbrowns topped with scrambled eggs topped with cheese topped with chunks of chicken fried steak topped with country gravy=delicious.  Hashbrowns topped with scrambled eggs topped with cheese topped with chunks of chicken fried steak topped with country gravy=disgusting (I think I could actually feel my arteries clogging).

9.  No matter how much non-stop, action-packed fun you cram into one vacation for your family, someone will still be disappointed by the fact that     Mr. T failed to deliver the trifecta of vacation-induced nose-spewing.  In Idaho, it was nerds.  In Portland, it was some kind of artificial rubber-ish dirt/sand/gravel from the OMSI dinosaur dig pit.  But alas, nothing for Seaside.  DynaGirl was bummed.

10.  It’s impossible to take a vacation from yourself.  At least it’s impossible for me to take a vacation from myself.  And I really needed one.  We still managed to have a great time, I think.

Here’s one of my favorite pics from the week:

 

How was your week?

Eeee-villl

So I bought a bag of those Mother’s pink and white frosted circus animal cookies as a treat for the kids that came over to my house for lunch with their moms yesterday.  They didn’t eat any.  Guess who’s eating them?  And I don’t even understand why because as I’m putting them in my mouth I’m thinking to myself, “These aren’t even good.  They’re too sweet and they’ve got sprinkles.”  I hate sprinkles.  But I can’t stop myself.  It’s like I’m possessed.  Mother’s Circus Animal Cookies are of the devil.

What’s your snack food from hell of choice?