Small Plates are Only Good for Me in the Singular
Posted: November 7, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: small plates Leave a comment
The small plate movement in the restaurant and catering world sounds like it would be the perfect diet solution for a person like me. Instead of a giant plate of food being put down in front of me there are multiples of little tiny plates each with their perfect three bites.
In theory fewer bites would be better than more, but the reality is not the case. Small plate servings tend to be more fattening because there is little filler food, like plain vegetables or simple potatoes, which can be ignored. If a chef is only giving you three bites they want to make sure that they “Wow” you and in my experience, “Wow” almost always equals more calories.
I have never seen a small plate of just grilled zucchini. If zucchini were even the subject of a small plate then a rich sauce, perhaps a Romanesco would be included and them an obscene amount of oozing cream laden burrata—that’s the richer and more attractive cousin of mozzarella, a few toasted pistachios, a drizzling of the finest olive oil with one drop of perfect balsamic vinegar and a literal pinch of micro greens. Oh yeah, and the zucchini would not just be grilled instead it would be rolled in panko and Parmesan. That’s how you get zucchini in the small plate world.
Now that I have concluded that what is on the small plate is above my calorie grade let’s throw in the other issue – “It’s small, I can have more.” Followed by, “How many have I had?”
When I get a dinner on one plate I am able to access how much I should eat before I begin eating. “Is that piece of meat 4 or 8 ounces?” “Are the vegetables swimming in butter?” Based on my overall calculations I can determine if I need a take home box before I even begin eating. This is not an option in small plates. Have you ever seen anyone ask for a doggy bag for one bite? Ok, besides someone who is related to me and shall remain nameless since Christmas is coming.
It is much harder math if you have to keep adding up one plate after another. Well, the math is not hard, but I do get tired of doing it. I guess it becomes a math weakness issue.
I am all for smaller plates in general so my eyes think I am getting a full plate, but I need to get all my food at once and not drawn out over an extended period of time dribbled out a few fantastic bites at a time. Yeah the idea of savoring something perfect should make me happy, but in reality a few more less than perfect bites giving me higher quantity and filling me up is the way I need to go. I guess it is just too late to become one of those ladies who just picks at her food.
The Reason I Never Become a Nurse
Posted: November 5, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: sick Leave a commentPoor Carter missed a day of school last week for surgery and then was sick this morning so she stayed home again. The reason I say poor Carter is not the fact that she missed two days of school or that she had these things happen to her, it’s that I am her mother. See, I am a very poor nurse. I think it runs in my family.
When I was a kid we lived in a giant rambling barn of a house. My parents slept on the top floor on one end of the house and I slept on the bottom floor on the other end. If I ever got sick in the night there was no crying out for help because certainly no adult would hear you and no sibling would care.
Here is how an illness would go… I would wake up and throw up; sometimes I made it to the bathroom. I would cry, actually wail, no one would come. So after what felt like a lifetime of being alone in the wilderness I would pull myself up the back barn stairs that had risers that were twelve inches tall, think climbing a ladder and still wailing, drag myself the length of the big living room which felt like Lawrence of Arabia crossing the Sahara.
Crawling on all fours I would open just the bottom half of my parent’s bedroom Dutch door where I would make my way to their bed. Clinging to my mother’s side, I would lift the down pillow that was covering her head to drown out the snoring coming from my father, “I threw up,” I would whine. No response. “I’m sick,” I would say louder. Nothing. The smell of sickness on my nightgown should have woken the dead, but nothing.
I eventually retreated to my father’s side of the bed and I would push his shoulder. “I’m not snoring,” he would say in automatic response to his shoulder being pushed in his sleep. “No, it’s Dana. I’m sick.” A voice finally responds, but I am still not sure which parent it was, “Go sleep in the guest room.”
That was the model of care I grew up with. That is the model I follow today. If you are sick, sleep it off. If you have surgery, go back to school the next day. If you are sick you still better get your homework done. If you are sick, please don’t make anyone else sick. If you aren’t well you are getting the worst possible food.
If you need care I’m not your girl. There are many things I will tell you I’m good at, many I have never even tried, but taking care of sick people, even my own sweet off spring is not my thing. So feel sorry for Carter, not because she is sick, but because I’m her mother.
Things I Can and Can’t Do While Walking
Posted: November 4, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: 000 steps, 10, walking 2 CommentsToday is day four in the 10,000-step commitment. It is harder than I thought to make sure that I get all those steps in. I find myself trying to do more and more things while standing up moving. Some things are successful like dancing back and forth holding my glass in the icemaker, or reading all my e-mail on my phone while walking around and around my dining room table. Some things are not successful, like needlepoint or writing my blog while walking.
Yesterday as I sat in church I thought that I could really get a lot of steps in if I were allowed to circle the perimeter of the pews while listening to the sermon, but being Presbyterian that would be highly frowned upon. Today I had my regular appointment with my trainer so I did a little running on the treadmill before she had me lifting weights and doing lunges. Yes, I got about 2,000 steps in before my workout but for the most part balancing on a bosu while holding dumbbells and then squatting got me no steps.
I also went back to Yoga class this morning. It is amazing how little I move in Yoga and how hard it is. So while I did an insane amount of exercise, especially for me, I still have only reached 7,125 steps by four this afternoon. Sure I have lots of hours left to get that last bit in but I don’t really want to be running up and down my front walkway at 8:00 tonight like I was last night, especially since I have hardly played any Words with Friends and done not one stitch of needlepoint today. Just thinking about getting my steps done is causing me anxiety, which I am sure, is not burning off any extra calories.
I wish I did not have so many things that require my use of a computer to do because I have tried to carry my laptop around with one arm while typing with one hand and I am a total failure at that. First I tend to run into things and second I forget where my train of thought was going and I end up typing pure gibberish. I tried writing on my phone but I do not text by the thumb method so I am very slow and the change in focus from looking through my reading glasses to just over them at the floor is giving me a big headache.
I have dragged my dog outside for more walks, but her need to stop and sniff and squat is frustrating to me. Yes, I do a little dance while she is doing her business so technically I am getting some steps, but I know that I look like I have some disorder or just ants in my pants. It’s not that I don’t want to get out and walk more, but how in the world am I going to get all my regular living done? I’m leaving the computer now and am going to go run around the block before it gets dark and I get hit by a car.
And Yet Another Diet Trick
Posted: November 2, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: fit bit 1 Comment
There is a reason so many people write baking blogs and I found out yesterday when I posted the obscenely bad for you Halloween candy peanut butter pie recipe; people love sweets. I got so many messages about that pie. When I was out walking today I ran into my friend Cliff who has lost a boat-load of weight in the last two years and he said that he was so tempted by my recipe that he actually contemplated buying four bags of Kit Kats at the grocery today so he could make that pie and put it in the freezer.
Now the point of that recipe was to repurpose Halloween candy so that it was not just hanging around to get nibbled on here and there. Thankfully Cliff did not fall prey to the Kit Kats. I promise not to post something like that again, even if it does get me tons of readers. It goes against the point of this blog as a diet comedy.
Halloween is the beginning of the eating season. Not that there is ever a non-eating season for me. I spent last weekend eating what I wanted at Jon and Alli’s wedding and that is not something that worked out for me.
Knowing that this is the dangerous time of year and that I have been less than vigilant in the last month I was searching for what my next “Trick” for dieting was going to be. It was exactly one year ago on November first that my weight-loss challenge for the Food Bank ended. Yes I did raise $53,000 and loose 53 pounds, which worked great for the Food Bank, and me but I can’t keep asking people to pay me to lose weight and I would like to go on and lose the last of it.
I know in my heart and my brain what all the basics are to losing weight. They don’t change and I have memorized them all. I also know there are no magic pills so I never bother to listen to those infomercials on the latest herb or extract guaranteed to help you drop those unwanted pounds. But I still like a gadget or two that will keep me focused on the fundamentals.
My friend Jan is an early adaptor and likes to try out the new and shinny so I was ripe to listen to her talk about her Fit Bit this week. Fit Bit is a tiny device you wear to track steps and activity. It is one of many of these devices to help us sedentary yet completive types get up and move around more. This was the “Trick” I treated myself to post Halloween. So now I have a bracelet on tracking my every move.
Moving more and tracking it is good, but logging every bite of food I eat is better. As wonderful as exercise is, eating right is the only way I really can lose weight. To my luck Fit Bit can be tied into the Losing It App I already have on my phone, but have not used in a while as my logging system for everything I put in my mouth. I don’t bite it until I write it.
I will keep you posted as to the progress of these back to basics tricks I am trying. If you are also a Fit Bit user friend me or invite me or whatever it is called so we can track each other. I am always better if I have people keeping an eye on me and a little competition never hurts.
Halloween Overload
Posted: October 31, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: candy, halloween Leave a comment
Hallmark is always getting a bad rap for promoting Mother’s day since it sells cards but no one seems to jump all over the Mars or Hershey companies for selling America giant bags of candy for Halloween. I don’t think Halloween was such a big deal when my parents were little. Sometime in the 1950’s the costume thing caught on and then the trick or treating, but I don’t think it was until M&M’s came in fun size bags that the candy-begging thing got so big.
I feel like running from house to house and grabbing as much candy as you can hit a peak in the late seventies when parents still felt safe letting their children run amok in their own neighborhoods. Then people started busing carloads of kids into neighborhoods they deemed to be more generous. Sometime after that parents got pulled into to escort their kids and to look their neighbors’ in the eye as if to say, “You know us so please give our children some free candy.”
Now the yard ornament decorating companies have really come into their own with some people creating whole front lawn grave yards with fog and fake spider webs. Halloween is the only night grown-ups are legally allowed to traumatize children as long as you give them a mini snickers after you have done it.
The thing I hate is that we buy candy in case one of our neighbor kids comes by looking for a treat, but for the most part we have the lights off so Carter and her friends can watch a scary movie. Hardly any child is going to waste valuable candy gathering time on a dark house so by 8:00 at night I am assured to have a bowl of leftover candy; something none of us needs.
I am sure candy companies have banked on this happening. Stock prices of all things chocolate depend on people like me buying candy just in case. For the most part America does not need all this candy. I would rather have kids come to the door and let me give them a quarter, at least I would have something to do with the leftover money when all the handing out had finished. I’m sure I would be considered some kind of Grinch for not handing out candy and that is stepping on the foot of another holiday.
Alive and Well
Posted: October 30, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Meniscus surgery 3 Comments
All the worry is passed now that I have Carter home safe and sound from her Meniscus surgery today. Poor thing was not allowed to eat anything form midnight on last night and she was not wheeled into the operating room until 3:00. We had hoped that her Doctor would be able to sew the tendon, but when he got into her knee he found it was a feathery mess so he was only able to trim it. The good news to that scenario is that she won’t have a brace for four weeks.
Carter was a very happy drunk on the anesthesia. It made her sweet and generous offering to share all that she had in recovery, which was a cup of water. On the way home she asked me if I was a happy drunk back in the day when I drank. I told her I was a funny drunk and she said the nicest thing. “Mom how is it possible for you to be any funnier?”
I want to freezer her like this because I fear that as soon as the anesthesia wears off and the pain from the operation is realized she is not going to be as cheerful. But for the moment I am just happy she is home with me.
Thanks to all who sent us good wishes and said prayers for us. It was not a life threatening operation, but why take chances, I’ll take all the help from a higher power I can get. That and the ice chilling machine from Donnabeth, the dinner from Christy, the magazines from Lynn and Ellis and the visit from Taylor before the operation. I’m going back to enjoy Carter before the happy wears off.
Another Set of Crutches
Posted: October 29, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: crutches, surgery 5 Comments
Carter is a crutches salesman’s dream. She needs them often and she keeps growing taller so she needs new one. Tomorrow she is having meniscus surgery and she got fitted for yet a new pair of crutches today. I optimistically brought her last set up to Triangle Ortho to see if they would still suffice, but no, they were already at their most extended setting and were considered too short.
Poor Carter has been living with this knee pain since her volleyball team beach trip in the beginning of August. As soon as she made the team she got injured. No one had any clue that the damage was as bad as it was, not that the adults around her paid any attention. Having to have surgery is bad enough, but the worst part for Carter is missing playing basketball, which is all she was living for.
As a parent I would do anything to take this pain from her and keep her from suffering, but that was not an option on the extensive forms I had to sign today as her legal guardian. Being a helpless observer is not something I do well. I am doing my best to try and alleviate Carter’s fears about the procedure. I think that it would be considered really bad parenting to tell her how much fun anesthesia is going to be.
For me I am going to have to try and not deal with anxiety by eating. Double whammy, worry about Carter and not eat sugar. I know that eating does not help anything, but it sure makes stress more fun, if just for a minute or two.
Hopefully the complex tear will be in a place that can get sewn up and Carter will have a brighter knee future. We won’t know that until after the Dr. has gone in. Please pray for Carter and Dr. Silver who is doing the operation. At least I am a well-seasoned mother of a child on crutches and know all the best parking places.
When Did Pants Become an Accessory?
Posted: October 28, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: pants to big on young men 1 Comment
Today I was driving over to Target and I passed two young men out on the street who were the height of fashion in their crowd for sure. One was wearing a red necklace made up of beads about the size of ping-pong balls that clearly could have come from his great grandmother’s costume jewelry case. The other had a fashionable fedora in a jaunty placement on his head and a fringed leather vest. From the waist up these twenty somethings looked like they might have walked off the pages of GQ except for one thing, they both had hold of the waistbands of their jeans lest they fall to the ground while walking on the sidewalk.
Why do young men who obvious care what they look like, even if it is like a lady who lunched in 1940, insist on wearing pants that are so much too big that they can’t stay on by themselves? Clothes that can’t stay on are more like an accessory than an actual item of clothing.
I blame the “No Shirt, No Shoe, No Service” push of the 1970’s when young men had to be told that shopping was not a clothing optional experience. Owners of 7/11’s mistakenly assumed that everyone would at the least be wearing pants so they did not see the need to include bottoms in the saying. Of course for alliteration purposes it would be so easy to say, “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Slacks, No Service.” If we did it now young people still might not get it since they don’t know what slacks are.
I think the way to solve this your-pants-are-too-low-son-and-I-don’t-want-to-look-at-your-boxers craze is for middle-aged white women to adopt this way of dressing. I assure you the second all too-cool-for-school types see women old enough to be their grandmas dressing like them they will run for the store to buy something different, like a belt, or a pair of jeans that hug their waist, not their thighs.
So let’s bring back pants as a non-optional clothing item. I declare November 1 as the day we give them a taste of their own medicine, but make sure to wear a pair of cotton granny panties so they can really be cured of wanting to look like us. Middle-aged women go to your husband’s closet and put on his biggest pants and go to the mall, McDonalds, the car wash, and every bar in your town. One day ought to solve this problem.
Now to the young man wearing the necklace, I might have some other costume jewelry you might look good in. How do you feel about a nice brooch?
Ninety Minutes ’til Married
Posted: October 26, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Jon and Allie, St john's Leave a commentToday is Cousin Jon’s big day. We had a great rehearsal dinner last night out side under the trees and the stars. It gave the Lange side a chance to really get to know Allie’s family. In the small world of a Lange man marrying an OPEX sales woman, that being a rare thing in its own right, we told lots of stories about OPEX. Based on Russ and my twenty one years of marital bliss we are predicting much happiness for Jon and Allie.
Since the wedding is at five tonight we took advantage of being just a ferry ride away from St. John’s. Russ and I dragged Carter out of our room early this morning to go to the clearly more beautiful island. Once we docked we decided to take an open air tour of the island with Smittie, a lovey older man from Domenica who has lived on St. John for a good part of his life.
He took us up into the National Park which had mainly been Lawrence Rockerfeller’s property until he “donated” it to the government in the fifties. I imagine the IRS played a significant role in that transaction. None the less it is great that two thirds of the 19 square mile island is preserved.
After the indigenous people had been conquered by the Danish and slaves were brought in to work the sugar cane farms the island was prosperous for the sugar and Rum by product. In the middle of the 1800’s the bottom fell out of sugar. Funny how much sugar has to do with bottoms. Eventually the Danish sold four island’s, st. John’s, St. Thomas, St. Croix and one other little one to the US for 25 million dollars during Woodrow Wilson’s administration.
Since Smittie was able to drive us through the national park with out going through any entry gates I asked him what happened the two weeks the government was closed. he said people could still go in the rain forest part of the park since there was no way to keep them out, but the park service closed the beaches by blocking up the parking lots and walk ways out to the sand.
He said that the governor in St. Thomas through a hissy fit saying that all the tourist who had made good money to come on vacation to go to the beach needed them open so after two days they were reopened. That was something that didn’t make the news on the mainland. I can only imagine how all those tourists in Washington DC who paid good money to go to see the monuments might have felt about that.
We had a little lunch on St. John, jumped the ferry came back for a refreshing swim and now are changing for the reason we came here, the wedding. As I think about how the vows they are about to take will profoundly change their life I wonder if they have had much time during all the celebration to think about it. It is only with 21 years of married life behind me do I appreciate what a big day this is for them. Having someone by your side to travel through life with is a true joy, as long as it is the right person. So I am trying not to get too teary already, but I hope that Jon and Allie have as happy a life as Russ and I have had. I guess it’s not 90 minutes ’til married, but 90 minutes until happily ever after.
The Problem With Island Food For Russ
Posted: October 25, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Vacation Leave a commentThe Problem With Island Food For Russ
Vacations hold some promise of paradise. Not all places have paradise potential, but the hope with any place you get away to is that it will be something different from home. I no longer think that going away is going to better than home. It is hard to beat my own bed, my own quiet room and my own pillows. But vacations are supposed to be a break from the normal frenzy of daily life.
With the proliferation of wifi the world over there is almost no such thing as a vacation for Russ. He really planned on taking the long weekend off. Then on Wednesday more work popped up. “I promise I will not work during the days,” he told me. We planned to go to St. John today, but then calls and meetings gave us reason to postpone that until tomorrow. At least Russ got out to the beach by 1:00 and at three we went into town for lunch.
A colleague had given Russ a recommendation for a place to eat that I happen to have heard of too. We wandered the alley’s and finally found it. The place was famous for their hot sauce, a favorite taste profile for Russ. We ordered the local specials. Caribbean lobster salad for me and curried goat for Russ. Whmile waiting for our meals they brought Russ bread so he could taste each of the hot sauce varieties. “Too watered down,” he said, “you can make better,” he finished looking at me.
Our meals came. They were fine, nothing great. “I like your cooking better,” Russ declared. It’s not just island food, but any food that I did not make that Russ dismisses. Even if he is eating something I would never cook for any variety of reasons like, I don’t have access to the ingredients, or it is too fattening or I have just plain never heard of a certain dish.
Now don’t get me wrong. Once in a while we find a restaurant that has something so devine that Russ asks to come back and have it again, but hardly ever on vacation. That is a testament to the great restaurants we have in Durham as well as the cook he has at home. But vacations hold out the promise of something more and that expectation is hardly ever met.
So now we have to adjust our expectations. We are here to celebrate the wedding of Jon and Allie. We are enjoying the company of family we rarely see except at weddings. It does not matter what we eat or if I can get a good cup of decaf coffee in the afternoon, or if Russ will ever stop working. I know my paradise is the people with me. Russ will have to wait a few days until I can get back to the kitchen for his paradise.
Is This 1988?
Posted: October 24, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Jon Lange, OPEX, St. Thomas, wedding 1 CommentIt’s 88 degrees, but it feels like 99. The music blares to a late eighties gay bar beat and it’s three in the afternoon. The ocean pounds the white shore next to us. I need a nap.
Since it is the first real cold day in Durham you might think I am dreaming, but I am sitting at a bar in St. Thomas waiting for our room. Russ and I woke up at 3:55 just because we were fearful of over sleeping the only flight between RDU and here today. Russ’ cousin Jon is getting married this weekend and we are here to represent Russ’ side of the family.
Jon is a popular relative in our family. He’s a NYC ad guy which means all things cool to Carter. One of his accounts is “Got Milk?” and he often sends Carter autographed pictures of the teen stars who wear the milk mustache. Because of Carter’s adoration she was also invited to the wedding.
Proof that the world is a really small place is the fact that Jon is marrying me junior. His wife to be Aly’s first job was my very same first job out of college. Not just the same job, but the same company, the same territory, the same customers, the same boss just twenty years apart. Suffice it to say we think that Lange men do well marrying ex-Opex women so this is sure to be a happy union.
Tonight we are meeting up with other Lange cousins for dinner. I am hoping that we get in our room soon so I can nap and shower. It’s weird to come to hot weather when I was just beginning to crave some crisp fall air. I am really hoping our room is not too close to this bar because listening to the pulsing beat of the music day and night will make me feel like I’m back to selling OPEX mail opening and extracting machines by day and dancing at Rehobeth beach with my friends at night. I’m too old for both of those things.
Halloween Nightmares
Posted: October 23, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: halloween candy Leave a comment
Today Carter convinced me that we needed a Halloween costume for Shay Shay this year. Since Carter will have just had her knee operated on and certainly won’t be dressing up I thought it was the least I could do to celebrate the season.
Amazingly enough while we were at Pet Smart buying food we found the 75% off Halloween costumes and it is a whole week before the holiday. We considered a ladybug, but it required Shay to wear a hat and she was not happy with that plan. Then we saw a shark fin. Cute, but it had the great possibility of sliding down and looking like a giant grey appendage more fitting for a boy dog than our princess Shay.
Then we spotted the perfect outfit for both Carter and Shay. A jockey and saddle turning Shay into the horse he is riding on. At first wearing Shay kept looking behind her to see what monkey was on her back, but then she settled into her role as steed. We think she is going to wait until our backs are turned and then grab that little man off her back and rip him to shreds looking for his squeaker. That will be no problem since the whole outfit only cost $2.97.
Halloween is not my holiday. When Carter was little I did get into making her costumes, which were more like works of art. My favorite was the year I made her into a garden. Another year when she was really into reading The Magic Tree House books I make her a book. I framed it after Halloween and it hangs by the bathroom now.
Today I went to Spooky Mah Jongg at my friend De’s house. Now there is a woman who is really into Halloween. There were hundreds of pumpkins, skulls, mummies skeletons and all things gross like rats and bloody arms all around the outside and inside of her house. When De lived in Atlanta she used to put on a full blown haunted house. She says what we saw today was just a portion of what she used to put out.
Not only does she have all the decorations but also bowls of candy are everywhere.
This is why I can’t have anything to do with Halloween. One tiny Heath bar leads to a fun size Butterfinger, to three full size Reese’s peanut butter cups and forty-eight candy corns. Candy cannot even be a treat for me because it tricks me into eating more of it. And then begins the slide into holiday eating hell.
This year I am vowing not to have one bite of Halloween candy. I’ve already eaten more than my quota with the chocolate covered cranberries. So don’t offer me a small bag of M&M’s or a Sugar Daddy. I need to Pope-like and abstain.
Rip It Out, Even Twice
Posted: October 22, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Needlepoint, trial and error 1 Comment
Since the deadline for completing needlepoint Christmas ornaments is ten and a half months away I have slowed down the speed of my production from hyper-fast to just impressive. Without the self-imposed pressure to get just one more canvas done I veered off into creativity mode on this week’s ornament. It is a little bird house with flowers and rather than just do the standard basket weave stitch I decided to do this one like a sampler and do a different decorative stitches on each flower and the bird.
Decorative stitches are a growing thing in needlepoint and most people I know who do them have a stitch guide showing them what stitches go in which places. Since I was winging this I just used trial and error. I must confess to more error than trial.
Since this was a painted canvas not specifically intended for decorative stitches some parts were an epic failure. I completed one whole flower and looked at it and thought it was horrible so I ripped it out. I tried a different stitch and it was worse than the first one. I sat and looked at it for a day while I completed a different area of the canvas. It was still horrible. I ripped it out again.
I started over completely ignoring what was painted on the canvas and made up my own flower and my own stitch. Better, not perfect, but better. I used twenty-one different patterns in the little four by six inch ornament. I learned I don’t like so many different patterns. It was a good lesson.
The real learning came in idea that it was all right to rip something out even twice. I am much happier with the product than I would have been if I had left the offending needle worked section. Completing a job does not always mean it is done. Sometimes you just on the way to figuring out when done means finished.
It is kind of like painting your house. Just because you buy a big can of paint and cover all the surfaces with it does it mean it is right. If it turns out to have been not exactly the color you imagined it to be or the light makes it look unappealing, repaint it right away. Living with the mistake will be way more annoying than spending the time and maybe the money to get it right.
I am in no way espousing perfectionism. That is a different mental illness and one I am far from, but not settling when you know something is wrong is the right thing to do in the long run. It is better to lose one day’s worth of work and have something I like than have something I dislike which equals losing a weeks worth of work, plus the money I put in it. Do I like ripping out completed work, for goodness sake no, but will I remember that pain when I look at the finished product years later, probably not.
Fair Fun Continues
Posted: October 21, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: commissioner Steve Troxler, food lion, hunger relief day, nc state fair Leave a comment
Without stepping foot on one ride or eating one bite of anything fried my life continued to revolve around the NC State Fair today. This morning I spoke at the Food Bank’s Press Conference to introduce Hunger Relief Day at the Fair with Agriculture Commission Steve Troxler.
This Thursday is the big day when anyone who wants to go to the Fair can bring FIVE cans of Food Lion brand products to the admission gate and get in for that donation. It’s a deal. Regular adult admission is $9 and you know you can get some cheep cans of beans or peas at Food Lion and save some big bucks.
We are trying to raise 325,000 pounds of food at the fair on Thursday. It’s a goal we should be able to meet if more people who come to the fair that day bring cans. Typically only half the people who show up at the fair that day bring food and just end up paying admission. Don’t do it people, save your money for the food at the fair.
Hunger Relief Day does not mean that you have to go hungry. I saw on facebook where one friend had tried an Oreo cookie wrapped in Red velvet cake and deep-fried. She said it was mighty fine. It sounds like it is something you can only get at the fair.
Commission Troxler is a great guy. He comes from a little town called Brown’s Summit that is not too far from my family’s farm. Thanks to him farming is well supported in North Carolina and we all know that without farms there is no food. Troxler issued a matching challenge that he will donate $5,000 to the Food Bank if Hunger Relief day brings in the 325,000 pounds of food. If we get 300,000 pounds he will donate $2,500 or 275,000 pounds a $1,000.
Come on out to the fair, bring cans and not only will you help feed your hungry neighbors, get into the fair for less than half price, but you can get us the $5,000. That is a win-win.
Fairly Exhausted
Posted: October 20, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: state fair horse show 2 Comments
The annual State Fair Horse Show weekend has come and gone, Thank God. It is Carter’s big weekend and one that Russ and I barely endure. Yes, we love watching our daughter do the thing she loves so much, but no we hate the standing around waiting, the late nights, the judging and the packing up when it is over.
Carter had a fairly successful weekend. Her best class was Hunter Seat Equitation where she was being judged on how she was as a rider and not how her horse was. She came in third in a class of fourteen in Equitation. On the under saddle classes we were happy when she ribboned since she does not own a horse and is at the mercy of a horse she is lucky enough to get to ride.
Ridding is a money sport, the more money you pay the better you will do and we are not a money family, especially when it comes to horses. So good for you Carter, for doing well without your parents buying it for you. There is a lot of character building that goes on at horse shows.
I consider this my state fair diet weekend. I ate nothing there. I waited until I was home each day for any meals. Yesterday that was not a big deal because the showing ended early, but tonight we were not home until 8:30. Besides not consuming any frozen cheesecake covered in chocolate or a fried candy bar I got plenty of exercise. I counted my trips between the barn and the arena at 37, just today. That had to be at least six miles of walking. Add to that the trips to the car in loading today and that was worth two more miles of walking, with the extra exercise of carrying stuff.
So no more state fair diet for at least another year. I am happy to stay home and walk my dog and carry stuff around my own house. At least it does not smell like horse poop and my teeth don’t feel gritty from dust flying around.
A Peck of Unpickled Peppers
Posted: October 19, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: peppers, pickling Leave a comment
When I was a kid I knew the nursery rhyme about Peter picking a peck of pickled peppers long before I knew what a peck, pickling or a pepper was. It seemed like a very mysterious thing that Peter was doing. The part that was most confusing was that he could pick something that was pickled already.
My summer garden is all picked as of today and I think I must have at least a peck of peppers and now I need to pickle them or at least do some kind of preserving. Of course with Carter showing at the state fair horse show this weekend I don’t have a ton of time to pickle or make pepper jelly. I hope that the peppers will keep another few days so I can at least chop some up and put them in vinegar with a little sugar and salt. Russ likes to eat those hot peppers that way and I have less guilt that we are using the bounty of our harvest.
I did make a quick pot of ratatouille with the last of my eggplant and a few of the sweeter peppers and the end of my basil. At least Russ and I will have a healthier meal at home than we would have if we were still at the fair with our RV living horse riding child.
For all my Durham friends if you want a few peppers send me a message and I can leave you a little package at my front door. You will have to take them in the raw form and pickle them, or sauté, fry, roast or cook them yourself. The good news is they hardly have any calories and they produce a ton of flavor.
I Should Have Gone With Jell-O Wrestling
Posted: October 18, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Jell-O Wrestling, trivia 2 Comments
Today could be misconstrued to be my family white trash day. What with Carter spending the night in an RV at the State Fair like a Carney and me being challenged to a play off in Jell-O wrestling, but that does not really paint the whole picture.
See Carter is showing in the state fair horse show and was lucky enough to have one barn mother offer to let her stay in their rented RV so that we did not have to get up and drive Carter over to the horse complex at five in the morning each day. As much fun as it sounded to Carter it is really a bigger gift to us parents. Carter has a knee problem so she is not jumping her horse so her father and I don’t even have to spend our whole weekend at the fair. Woo Hoo!
So while Carter is in horse girl heaven over in Raleigh, Russ and I went to Trivia night at the club. We had a team made up of the Prebbles who are in their thirties, the Barnes in their forties, and us, one in our fifties and the other somewhat younger. We thought it was the perfect make-up for trivia, covering a large expanse of time.
Our strategy was good. Our team won two of the four rounds, and lost a third in a tight tiebreak. But when the four rounds were totaled we were in a tie for big winner and had to play a tiebreak round against the strong team of the Everetts, Sprat/Tendlers and Peruns. Both teams correctly guessed the first two questions keeping us deadlocked. That was when the tiebreak of Jell-O wrestling was suggested.
Knowing I had a good forty pounds on any of the other team’s women I challenged Stephanie Perun to the Jell-O and she accepted. I had more than forty pounds on her — this was my chance. The room erupted, but unfortunately Hope Valley had just recently dismantled their Jell-O Wrestling ring so we had to go back to answering trivia questions.
To our great dismay the final question was what year did 80’s hair band Poison release their debut album? Well the other team with ex-mullet wearing team member Roman Perun had the distinct advantage since he could have been mistaken for a Poison member. So down our team went in the final moment. I knew I should have demanded the club to start boiling water and stirring up the lime Jell-O.
Not an Honest Mistake
Posted: October 17, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: cheat, Dark Chocolate 1 Comment
Sometime in September a guest to a party at my house brought me a container of dark chocolate covered cranberries. This oh-so-polite person did not know me and did what all well brought up guests might do and showed up with a hostess gift. How sweet, how kind, how bad for me. I think I need to have a guard at my door at my next party to intercept all gifts that are just plain dangerous for me. That means any candy, cookies, baked goods, sugared nuts, breads or otherwise forbidden foods.
For a month those chocolate cranberries sat in my cupboard untouched. No one else in my house is interested in those. If they had been nachos the rest of the house would have sucked them down before the party was over.
I thought I could use those tasty treats in a recipe I might make for someone else so I stowed them in the not often opened platter cabinet. Out-of-sight, out-of-mind for me. But then last week I needed a platter. There they were, dark chocolate calling to me just as my body was at it’s monthly weakest. I shut the door; no I slammed the door and left the house, as if I had just encountered a poltergeist.
The next day there they were. I made the fatal mistake of actually opening the box, and having a few. Once that seal was broken the devil was hold of me. Over the week I would pop a couple of the tangy treats in my mouth each day. Not too many, just a few and before I knew it the whole container was gone. Only then did I actually look at the calorie count and calculate that I had eaten at least a pounds worth of calories.
In reality my body reacts very badly to sugar calories so even though it was only one pounds worth of calories I am sure that it reacted more like two pounds to me. And the scales are unhappy with me. The unfortunate truth is that for me eating even a small amount of bad for me food leads me to eat other forbidden items. I work hard not to have a throw-in-the-towel mentality for a day when I eat something bad early on, but somehow it still happens.
I should have blogged about my cheat the first day it happened and then I could have invited all my skinny friends to run by my house and eat up the chocolate. Lesson learned! Yes mistakes happen, but making the same mistake over and over is not acceptable. What’s the point of having a blog to keep me honest if I’m not using it for that?
Texting Language
Posted: October 16, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: text language 2 Comments
Today my friend Mary Eileen, who happens to be younger than I am, sent me a sort of dictionary for text language for seniors. At first I thought she was talking about seniors in High School since we have children at the same school, but it quickly became apparent that she meant old folks.
I have still not learned teen text language. The other day someone wrote me IMHO, which apparently EVERYONE knows means, “In my humble opinion” to teens. I got a big laugh out of that since I have never actually heard a young person say “In my humble opinion.” Mary Eileen’s Text code for really old people went something like this:
ATD –At the Doctor’s
BFF- Best Friend’s Funeral
BTW – Bring the Wheelchair
BYOT- Bring your own teeth
FWIW Forgot where I was
LMDO-Laughing my dentures out
LOL- Living on Lipitor
ROTFL…CGU- Rolling on the floor laughing…Can’t get up
TTYL- Talk to you louder
I feel like I am somewhere in between kids’ text language and this one. Since almost everyone I hang with seems to be watching their weight or thinking about watching their weight it might be helpful if we came up with our own text language.
Here are just a few I am considering using:
WCCN- Warning cupcake nearby
HMPIT-How many points is that?
ICAICGP-I cheated and I can’t get up
PDMFC-Please distract me from chocolate
BFD-Big F$*#ing dessert
LSP-Lost some pounds
SIL-Scale is lying
TOD-Tired of dieting
CWAGTTNTAF-Come walk and gossip to not think about food
My problem is that once I make up a textism I won’t be able to remember what it means so I might as well just write out the actual words.
Maybe Not a Happy Columbus Day
Posted: October 14, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Columbus Day Leave a comment
No mail today, its Columbus Day. Not all states or governments recognize Columbus Day as a holiday. I loved that they said on the news this morning that there would not be any negotiations in Washington today since it was a federal holiday. I thought that it was rich for the Congress to take a holiday from governing since they have basically been taking a holiday for the last two weeks.
Columbus Day is to commemorate Christopher Columbus’ “Discovery” of America in 1492. Ha! He basically bumped into the Continent while looking for someplace else and now he gets a day named after him. What about Leif Erickson? I think the Native people’s of America actually deserve a day, or nobody gets a day. In Hawaii they call to day Discoverers’ Day in celebration of the Polynesians’ discovery of Hawaii.
The Italian American’s had the strongest lobby in the early 1900’s and that is how Christopher Columbus got this day. You know the Norwegian Lobby did not stand a chance to get the Leif Erickson day since he supposedly landed in Canada which we all know does not count when America is handing out holidays. I think we can solve this whole big problem by changing the name of the holiday to Great Explorer’s Day.
Great Explorers does nothing to discount the people who were already here and let’s everyone chose whomever they want to celebrate. I know it sounds terribly PC, something I am rarely accused of being, but why squabble about getting a day off work?
While we are on the subject of federal holidays, I have another suggestion. I think we can combine MLK’s birthday and President’s day into one winter holiday and call it Great Leaders Day. This will solve all future fights about someone needing recognition by letting everyone off work. When I was a kid we had both Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthday off and then they got merged into one Presidential holiday.
I do believe that MLK is worthy of national recognition, but why does he get one whole day to himself and Washington and Lincoln each get what works out to half a day? I’m just thinking ahead that we might one day want to throw another leader into the “let’s have another Monday Holiday” pot. It seems like that gives our elected officials a chance to appear like they are legislating while they discuss the need for a holiday rather than doing real work like passing a budget or approving the debt ceiling limit.
What I would really like is a “let’s get all our elected officials back to work 220 specified days a year” just like the non-elected working population. No more holidays for anyone specific!
Fighting Words
Posted: October 13, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: what's for dinner? 1 Comment
At three o’clock I got a text from my child I had not seen all day asking me the eternal question, “What’s for dinner?” Thank goodness her father and I had just settled that question as he was heading out the door to the store. Lord knows there might had been a fight over that innocent issue if I was required to go back to a store today.
What I don’t know is if Carter is asking the question to judge whether she should eat something she likes better where she is now or if she should accept an invitation to go out to dinner or if she is just hungry. Whatever the reason I know that the “What’s for dinner” question has probably caused more disagreements in more households throughout the world for all time.
I remember thirty years ago my friend Gussy saying to her then husband David in response to that same question, “What are you trying to do start a fight?” Granted they eventually did part ways and I’m sure it was not over what was for dinner since Gussy is a great cook.
I am so tired of thinking about what is for dinner even though over 500 cookbooks, endless cooking websites and multiple TV channels dedicated to food surround me. Why with all these resources and the availability of almost any ingredient within five miles of my house is the dilemma about making dinner so prevalent?
I know it is harder for me since I am trying to keep it healthy, but even that is no excuse.
I know people who hate to, or are just not good cooks who make the same meals on the same nights of the week; meatloaf Monday, tuna noodle casserole Tuesday, wicked ham Wednesday (yeah I could not think of a W food), turkey tetrazzini Thursday, fish fry Friday, you got the picture. I cannot imagine making the same thing over and over again, even just one over. I know my child would probably love anyone of those weekday meals so I hope she does not read this blog since they are all way to fattening for us.
Those people who have a limited repertoire have cut way back on the stress about the “What’s for dinner” question. If you serve the same things every week people stop asking. I wonder if they complain more about the repetitiveness or less because it is a fait accompli?
I really don’t mind making dinner and yesterday we established I don’t like to shop for ingredients, but sometimes I would just like a few suggestions that fit both my dietary restrictions and time available. Yes, we all can agree that beef wellington is yummy, but don’t ask for it on a Tuesday. Some days I would be really happy just having Special K for dinner, any takers?
I Should Have Stayed Home
Posted: October 12, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: selfish, shoppers 2 CommentsAs someone with a flexible schedule I enjoy the luxury of not having to shop when the majority of nine-to fivers have to. Not that I like to shop at anytime, but I really hate going into any store when they are busy. All this being said I sometimes have to venture out into the world in the height of shopping frenzy period. Take today. Carter and her friend had a trip to the mall to look for dresses, see a movie and go to dinner planned. Hooray to have a child old enough to do these things on her own, except for getting there.
I almost had to look at the calendar as we neared the mall to see if I had perhaps slept for two months and woke up at Christmas time. The traffic was insane with cars lined up to make a left turn into the already full parking lot. Thank goodness the two girls in my car were flexible about where I was going to drop them off.
On my way home from my drive through moments at the mall I had to stop at Harris Teeter. Now I normally would never venture into the grocery on Saturday afternoon, but Russ had found two recipes in the New York Times he wanted for dinner and it had been a few days since I had actually cooked him any food. So into the store for spring onions and fresh ginger I went.
I think that parents of young children now use the Harris Teeter near the mall as a substitute for Chuky Cheese. There must have been at least a dozen toddlers running free in the store, screaming and crying some in laughter but most in need of a nap. One mother who was pushing one of those extra long carts that looks more like a car with two steering wheels in the kid basket part was holding up all aisle traffic because her not so darling two year old child was holding the front of the basket and walking backwards. Well she really wasn’t walking, more like she was standing there as her mother spoke in her I-must-be-on-medication-sing-songy-I-want-you-to-like-me-voice hardly attempting to get her child to keep moving as dozens of shopper’s cart ground to a halt around her.
You can imagine that in my head I was screaming, “Put Your GD kid that damn car/shopping cart and push her around like the rest of the universe.” But no, I stood patiently as she coaxed the child to take each small step even though at any moment she could have run her over.
Once I broke free of that gridlock I went to the checkout. I purposely picked a line without children. The young couple in front of me had a full basket with lots of beer and I was sure they would hurry along so they could get home to pop one of those cold ones open. WRONG! Two perfectly capable twenty somethings stood and watched the checkout clerk ring every item up and then watched as the clerk packed their bags. Only after he had refilled their cart with their grocery’s now in bags, and not reusable ones, did they think to pull out their credit card and finish the transaction, which they could have at least done while he was bagging. What I really wanted to scream is, “You both have two perfectly good GD arms. At least help pack your own groceries. They don’t get more valuable if someone else does the work.” But no, I stood there making mental note of what these people look like so I can never get behind them in line again.
I know my blood pressure went up and it is all my fault. I know perfectly well to stay locked in my own little quiet home on weekends when all the world is out doing their business, but really, full parking lots and crowded stores are one thing, but laziness in minding your kids and packing your groceries is a first world problem that can be solved!
Board Governance Is No Laughing Matter
Posted: October 11, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: board governance Leave a comment
It is a good thing I don’t work in corporate life anymore because my butt is not trained for it. I spent all day, like more than all day from 7:30 this morning to 5:30 tonight sitting in a hotel meeting room at the National Association of Corporate Boards – day of non profit board training. It was really good information, presented in a mainly good format. With the exception of one joke told by the host Chuck as a way of stretching an introduction so that grown ups could figure out how to make the technology work, my day lacked comedy and exercise.
I have forgotten how uncomfortable those ballroom chairs are and those skinny conference tables have legs that prevent me from crossing mine. I was fairly well behaved, for me at least. I hardly ever spoke out of turn and only during one presentation did I call the presenters out for anything. The real sizzler was ending with two accountants talking to us about the form 990 and new IRS regulations. Can you say glaze over?
The best and worst part about the conference is that now I have a list two arms long of things I need to do on the boards I am on. Well, I can do them on the one I chair and suggest them on my other one. Nobody is going to be happy with me. That is unless we face a crisis that we are actually prepared for because of checking off an item written on my arm, like crisis management, succession planning or foundation creation.
So now I need to go write up all my lessons learned so I can get my board cohorts excited about the work that lies ahead. It’s sad that board governance has become such a big passion of mine. Long gone are the glib days of planning parties and writing manuscripts with my college friend Hugh for a book called “Excuses, excuses.”
Now I’m all about long-range vision and strategic plans. At least I still run meetings with their fair share of jokes and witty remarks. I wonder how those will read back in minutes? Now that I have learned from the accountants about the importance of board minutes documenting CEO compensation rational discussions I’m not sure the IRS would appreciate my sense of humor. I just hope to follow all the rules. Orange may be the new black, but I don’t want to pay for my volunteer non-profit board work in jail.
The Corset Diet
Posted: October 9, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: corset, Dor NE Corset Shop 1 Comment
This morning on Good Morning America they reported on a new trend of women wearing corsets as way to reshape their bodies. The reporter acted like wearing a corset five hours a day could somehow permanently reduce your waist when you were not wearing it.
I am not sure how tight these woman who are trying this are wearing these contraptions but it seems highly unlikely that you could squeeze fat from one area of your body to another and have it stay there. And it sounds as if the fat is still on you somewhere, just not in the middle, what is the point of that?
Now I am all for some good shape ware. I had my first real experience in my early twenties when I was a bridesmaid at one of the seventeen weddings I played a supporting role in. Back in the eighties bridesmaids dresses often were missing parts like straps, backs or sleeves making women who had any endowment up front go running to the Dor Ne Corset shop in downtown Washington DC. I can’t remember whose wedding it was that required me to get the X1100 waist cincher and strapless bra. I can’t even recall what the dress looked like, but I do remember the under garments.
This two part, fully bones black lace number was both backless and strapless and not only could hold the girls in place but created the smallest waist on me I have ever had. Mae West had nothing on me in the X1100. I found every excuse to wear it long after that wedding had taken place.
The X1100 must have had 30 hooks on just the bottom piece of apparatus. It was some feat just to get the thing on. It made me look great, but I never would want to try and take it off in front of another human because that was none to attractive. As much as I wore it I must say it never did any permanent reconfiguring of my body. Yes, my waist was smaller and smother in it but only while it was on.
Sad to say I think the Dor Ne is gone. Buy a corset if you really need one for a certain dress, but if you want to lose weight you are going to have to do it the old fashioned way and not eat as much. I think squeezing is not going to make a big difference.
I Need Daylight Saving Time
Posted: October 8, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: day light saving time Leave a comment
This morning I had a hard time waking up. It was dark and it was cold and I had a snuggly little Shay in bed with me who has been under the weather so she too was not wanting to get up. Carter was going out to breakfast before school with our friend Taylor and commented on the eerie dark blue sky, “Where is the sun?” Now it was seven in the morning, but it felt so much earlier.
I am a morning person, but I like the morning to begin when the sun comes up. The shortening days with the dark mornings are bad for my waistline. I don’t know what the connection is to darkness and eating comfort foods, but somewhere in my brain they are coupled. I am fine with afternoon darkness because late night snacking is not my issue. But starting a day in darkness somehow makes me want to eat more.
We are not going to be setting our clocks back until the Sunday after Halloween. This date was chosen so that kids trick-or-treating could have more light time in order to go out and scoop up free candy. I like for kids to be safe while trick-or-treating so I understand the rational behind this chosen date, even though it is one week after all or Europe goes on Daylight Saving Time, but I wish we could go on and move the clocks back now. Not only do I have to rally myself up in the darkness, but also I am going to soon have Halloween candy in my house, which is always a dangerous thing.
The need for a little caffeine jolt in the mid-afternoon on a cold and dark day calls me to the kitchen. If only there was nothing but a little espresso there I might be safe, but then there is some chocolate and I guess I need a guard to restrain me from my naughty thoughts and potential behaviors.
I blame this all on the lack of vitamin D from the waning sunlight that fall has stolen from me. Maybe if I put up one of those full spectrum lamps right in the middle of the kitchen I could burn the autumn cravings right out of me. If I could hire one of those movie spot lights and have it set to shine in my bedroom window about 5:30 every morning I could trick my body into thinking it is still summer. I know a lot of friends who say that dieting is easier in the summer because the heat takes their appetite away or that the summer fruits and vegetables are more appealing. I think that with air conditioning and year round produce availability I can prove those are not the reasons why dieting is easier in the summer. Clearly it is the sunlight.
Fall is my favorite time of year, but I am going to have to work twice as hard to make it the healthiest time of year. Damn all the candy and impending holiday foods, just bring me the morning sunlight.
Failure is an Option
Posted: October 7, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: learning 2 Comments
I spent the better part of today at Carter’s school where the parents came for a wellness activity. Most of it is confidential so I don’t want to reveal too much, but one theme that came from some of the ninth grade kids is the stress they feel about getting into college. One child was worried that a bad grade on a quiz first semester freshman year is a death sentence.
What have we done to kids? First, we have taught them math well enough that they understand averages and how hard it is to average out a very bad grade. Good on the math front, bad on the psyche. We all need to fail every once in a while.
When I had my first job out of college selling mail opening and extracting machines we used to do a group exercise reviewing all losses. Yes, it was painful to discuss with all your peers and your boss why you did not close a particular sale, but we all learned way more from those reviews of failure than we ever did from the accounts we won.
One reason is you had to analyze every step in the loss and really come to Jesus about your own performance. Did I do everything I could have done to sell that company our mail opening machines? Did I create the right relationship, communicate well, overcome objections, show value, and prove to be a partner they trusted? Obviously not or else I would have made the sale. Doctors in hospitals do the same thing with patients they lose. More learning happens when you dig deep to discover how you would do something differently next time.
Do kids in high schools and college today ever feel like they can try something and fail? And if they do fail, do they have a review to learn from that defeat? I know in sports there are lots of opportunities to learn, especially if a coach is good and cares about developing people and not just winning, but what about out side of sports?
I want to live in a world that encourages experimentation and creativity not just success. It is a long life and if we just keep limiting ourselves to doing the things we already know we are good at it is going to get fairly boring. No matter your age, you should try to learn how to do something new every year or so. Some things you will not be good at, others you might be fine at, but just don’t like that much, but I think you will find many more things that you are good at and that you love more than you thought. Trying, learning, failing and trying again is the best example you can be for your children. They don’t need to think that you are perfect; they need to know that we are human.
Words With Friends Diet
Posted: October 6, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: words with friends Leave a comment
This title is misleading. I don’t need a diet from Words With Friends, but I would like to turn my love of Words With Friends into a diet. Right now I have eighteen different games going. It sounds like a lot but considering that most of my opponents only play once or twice a day there is not too much action in my game life. I try and play twice a day checking to see if it is my turn first thing in the morning and right before I go to bed.
My favorite part of the game is that I can try and make up crazy words that give me a high score and there is no penalty if they are not really words, I just am old to try again. I wish that were the case in dieting. I would love to be able to experiment with different food combinations or amounts to see if they reacted positively with my metabolic make-up with no penalty for trying something.
I know I could try that in real life, but there are so many variables; how much exercise did I get, what time of the month is it, what else did I eat, exactly what amounts did I eat, that it is hard to experiment and really know if something is working or not.
I have written in the past about my theory they eating ground meat is more fattening than eating solid pieces of meat. I have no scientific evidence for it, just a few dozen tests that are about imperfect as a scientific method could be. If only there was a “Words with Friends” like test where I could put in the data on the food and my phone could tell me, yes that will help you lose weight or no, try again, just like it does when I make up crazy words.
Perhaps I could use my love of Words with Friends as an exercise plan. What if I am only allowed to play while walking? I would say something more strenuous, but I think it would be hard to read the screen if I were bouncing around a lot. I can’t read a magazine while I am on the elliptical so I am worried about moving tiles around while so much of me is moving around.
I am open to any other suggestions that tie Words with Friends to a way to drop some pounds. If you want to play with me I am Danaclange. I have no idea how many more games I can have at once, but I welcome new opponents who don’t expect me to know what all the words I play mean.
Driving Lessons
Posted: October 5, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: driver's ed, Tommy Hurdman, Wilton riding Club 2 Comments
The time has come when my child is going to start her practicing driving section of drivers Ed. The thought causes both anxiety and excitement deep inside me all at the same time. Certainly Carter is ready to drive. She has been adult size for years. When she was about seven we started letting her drive at the farm and she has been giving her friends lessons on driving the gator and the Kubota bus for years. But driving on your own property with no other cars coming at you is easy; facing traffic and real time decision-making is another story.
Learning to drive is so different for kids today than it was for me. Since I went to boarding school and I have a May birthday my parents paid a private driving school to give me the required class and practice driving time. I never went to any classroom, but was given the Connecticut DMV book with all 125 questions and answers of which 25 would be on the test. I was told to memorize the whole thing. Then a man who certainly was unemployable in any other profession came to my house with a very old sedan and we spent a few hours driving around the rambling Wilton, Connecticut roads.
I had learned to drive from spending my life sitting in the front seat watching my parents and driving our tractor to cut the grass. It was just not that complicated. Cars only had a few buttons, dials or levers. No phones, navigation or back-up cameras to distract us. Traffic was not much of an issue.
My first summer I had my license I did back my parents ship-like Chevy station wagon into the top of the Hurdman’s spit rail fence and broke the wood. Tommy Hurdman and I went by the Wilton Riding Club and picked up a spare piece of split rail that was sitting along the entrance driveway and brought it home to his house.
It only took us about twenty minutes with a hand saw to get that rail to fit into his mother’s fence and no one was the wiser.
Since we did not have this yearlong practice time that North Carolina requires today I don’t remember spending much time driving my parents around while I learned to drive. I think that I memorized the book, drove four hours with the could-be pedophile and went on down to the DMV and got my license. I know the night I got it I went to the movies in Westport with Tommy Hurdman and no one thought twice about me being a ‘new” driver. Boy, have things changed.
As Beautiful As You Feel
Posted: October 4, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: manicure, nails Leave a comment
On my way home from my errands today I stopped at a local nail salon to get a quick manicure. I have the world’s worst fingernails so I just get some nude polish so as not to draw attention to my nails. I never expect any miracles from something as quick and cheep as a manicure, but perhaps I have missed the magic that some people feel from a shaping and polish.
I usually don’t get my nails done on Fridays because it is the busiest day at the salons, or so I’ve been told by one of the nail techs. That wisdom held true today because the place I went to was packed. As I was sitting at my assigned little manicure table another woman came and sat at the station next to me. Since we were sitting facing a big wall of mirrors I could get a good look at her without having to turn my head. When I say this young lady sitting next to me was the most beautiful human I have ever seen, live or in pictures, including every movie star in retouched photographs, I am not lying.
I stared at the reflection of the young woman with her wheat colored blond hair in a lose pony tail, cornflower blue eyes the size of quarters and lashes like giraffes and skin that was a warm glowing color, but was so smooth the sun had never aged it. If you don’t already hate her she was wearing black Capri yoga pants and a pink skin tight yoga top that reveled a body that appeared curvy but devoid of body fat all at the same time. How can this be?
She was so stunning I had to turn and stare right at her and I hope that my mouth was not hanging open in disbelief. As we sat side-by-side having our tandem manicures I heard her say to the nice Asian woman painting her nails, “I feel so much more beautiful when I get my nails done.”
The first thought that came into my mind was, “Has this woman never looked in the mirror. How much more beautiful could she get? But then I thought about it. She did not say, “I am more beautiful, but that she felt more beautiful.” Since most of us don’t go around looking in a mirror all day we really don’t see what we look like all the time, except for our hands. We look at our own hands inadvertently as we do our daily chores, like cooking, driving or typing.
Now to a regular person looking at this stunning specimen of a woman the difference between what she looked like with a manicure or without probably was a less than one percent change in her beauty, but to her it made a big difference. I won’t go so far as to say getting a manicure makes me feel even close to beautiful, but it does make me feel not so bad about my short pitiful nails and wrinkly hands. And if something that costs $13 can do that then it is a good thing even for the goddess next to me.
Does This Bag Make Me Look Thinner?
Posted: October 3, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: handbag, purse, tote Leave a comment
I need a new fall handbag. I realized today when I was out with my big brightly colored stripped tote that it was actually October 3 and although it was 85 degrees it is time to tone down the pink. For some reason I have dozens of spring and summer bags probably because I am naturally attracted to happy colors, but time for my French ice cream flavor bag has passed.
I bought my current bag at the Farnsworth Museum shop in Maine this summer and I have loved having a giant lightweight tote so I can carry my needlepoint everywhere without having it stick in an unsightly way out of my purse. In the past I have shied away from big bags because I had the notion that the bigger the bag the more sh#t I would carry around in it and the heavier it would get. This tote has proven to me that I can be minimalist in my purse contents. Even though I could probably use it to pack a week’s worth of groceries in, I don’t.
Normally shopping for a new purse is not such a horrible job. No sizes are required and for the most part sales clerks don’t lie to you about how the purse makes you look, as they could when you are trying on a pair of skin tight red jeans. But since I don’t see a moment’s free time in my calendar to go purse shopping I looked online just to narrow down the search.
What was I thinking? Online I can’t feel the weight of a bag or judge if it is actually worth whatever crazy amount they want to charge me for it. My favorite feature of one website is the silhouette of the woman in grey pictured carrying the bag you are looking at so you can judge how big it is on a human. The only problem with this feature is I am fairly certain that the grey woman model is not my actual size. Are her arms as fat as mine? Hell, for all I know she could be a Kristin Chenoweth’s twin and the place the purse hits on her is not anything like the place it will hit on me.
As far as I’m concerned the most important requirement of any accessory I buy is does it make me look thinner? Yes, I want a purse that is beautiful, can stand on it’s own when I set it down and has useful pockets and compartments, but if it is not flattering when I “wear” it then it is a non-starter. Because I will “wear” that purse everyday until I realize the season has changed and I need to change it again. I guess I might actually spend less time at the mall than I could looking online because I am actually good at scanning a large area filled with purses and ruling most of them out. I only need one and if the store has got one of those trick mirrors that make you look thinner I’ll buy the first one I like.
October Second – The Day God Made Me Smile
Posted: October 2, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Birthday, Russ Lange Leave a comment
Little did I know that on this day forty-nine years ago a baby boy was born who would grow up to make me happy everyday. Yeah, I was only three so I did not know much. It took me a few years to recognize Russ Lange as the quality human he is, but once I did I knew I had to spend my life with him.
I owe Russ’ parents a big thank you for raising such a genuine, kind, brilliant, hard working, loving man. I owe Russ a lifetime of devotion because he makes all things good for Carter and me. Really devotion is not a strong enough word to describe my love and affection for my husband. But the word does not exist in English to convey how much I cherish him.
So on his birthday, a day he would act is like any normal day, I want to send out to the universe this message, “Russ Lange rocks!” October second is not just a regular day; it is the day that God made me smile. Like me, you might not notice his super powers at first because of his quiet steadfast demeanor. Perhaps that is because he lives in an air space above most of our heads. But if you are ever lucky enough to be invited to visit the place Russ exists in you will discover new possibilities about the world and yourself. Not everyone gets that invitation. I’m just glad that I did and I did not miss the big party that became my life living with him.
The BBQ Strategy
Posted: September 29, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: banana pudding, BBQ, Hush Puppies, Mac and Cheese Leave a commentLiving in North Carolina means you attend a lot of Barbecues. When someone says BBQ here it more often than not means a pig pickin’ – or a meal that centers around all things yummy and uber caloric. It’s not just the slow roasted pork slathered with any form of sauce, but the mayonnaise laden Cole slaw and deep fried hush puppies that make up a normal BBQ here.
Delicious as all those things and any number of other traditional sides, think Mac and cheese and banana pudding, are, but none of them represent diet type food. What is someone who is trying to fit into a smaller size pant to do in these situations?
Begging off every invitation is just no fun. Why should you miss the camaraderie of good friends just because they are people who are can enjoy that food and you are not. I have found the best answer is to eat before I go to one of these festivities. The secret is to eat something filling and very low calorie like some vegetable soup or a giant green apple right before I get to the party. This will fill my stomach and keep me from feeling deprived when mealtime comes around.
I’m not good at taking small portions of everything. One hush puppy leads to ten for me. I am much better at skipping my most tempting foods, the cheesiest or most carbohydrate full ones, and eating just a little protein. I drink a ton of water or if it is not too late at night unsweet-tea and keep talking. Thank goodness it is rude to talk with your mouth full. If there is not much offered in the diet category, and why should there be at a BBQ, I pray there are some new friends to be made who have not heard all my stories, that way I can talk rather than eat through the dinner hour.
The real trick is to not eat when I get home. The best of all worlds would be to be able to go right to sleep when I got home from a party. My dilemma comes from my extrovertedness keeping me awake long after I have left a party. I just have to stay out of the kitchen and be thankful that there is no leftover pork or pudding in my house.
Vegan Strip Club, Really?
Posted: September 28, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Corey Booker, strip club, vegan 1 Comment
Yesterday I watching the news and heard that Corey Booker, the Mayor of Newark NJ who is running for Senate had a controversy brewing because he was responding to tweets from a stripper. I don’t think this stripper identified herself as such in the tweets so how was he supposed to know? Especially since this particular stripper works in Oregon and not at just any strip club, at the country’s first vegan strip club.
Now Corey Booker is single so he is not cheating on anyone and as far as the news reported he did not tweet out any salacious photos like some other Yankee politicians, so where is the story? It has got to be the vegan part that is driving all this news. Vegan is the new black, no connection to Booker who also happens to be African American, which used to be the old black.
To me vegan is the new hip too, look if Bill Clinton can give up cheeseburgers, that means not ever eating neither the cheese nor the burger, then it is hitting mainstream. What I am confused about is what vegan has to do with naked women? Are the strippers who work there vegan and don’t like one dollar bills that have buffalo hot wings remnants on them tucked into their g-strings? Sure the hot sauce could sting, but the hot is from chilies and they are vegan.
It seems to me that if you want to make news you either declare yourself vegan, you take off your clothes, or you tweet something outrageous. If you do all three you are sure to make all three morning news shows. So I am declaring myself right here and right now, NOT a vegan. I am keeping all my clothes on for the good of the human race. And even though I have a twitter account I don’t think I have actually ever tweeted anything other than one test message two years ago. No news here!
I am perfectly happy for people to eat what ever they want, but I am getting tired of the vegan announcements and attention people are getting for forgoing eating all animal products. Good for you, but I don’t care. I wonder if Mr. Booker would have been caught up in this non-controversy if the stripper who tweeted her support for his candidacy had just worked at a regular old seedy strip club that served sausage-on-a-stick, I think not.
Is Chasing Happiness Making You Unhappy?
Posted: September 27, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: happiness Leave a comment
Seems like every where I turn I am reading or hearing people talking about happiness, are they unhappy, what makes people happy, blah, blah blah. Now don’t get me wrong, I love to be happy. I like to be around people who are happy. Spending time with chronic complainers is not something I am good at, especially because those people don’t even know they are annoying. I have the hardest time holding back from telling them what wet blankets they are, yet I do, or at least I walk, no, run away from them.
Is being happy all that you need in life? And what is the time frame you are measuring to see if you are happy? Is one good hour enough to be happy? If I have a good day does that count? What if I have five good days out of seven does that make a good week or do two bad days ruin the whole week?
Sometimes our loved ones are unhappy and that can change everything for us. You know the old saying, “You are only as happy as your most unhappy child.” This has to be a very twenty-first century thought because I don’t remember mothers when I was a kid who had of giant families being suicidal because at any one time some kid is unhappy.
Being grateful, kind, compassionate, optimistic these are things we can work on and I think that when you can be all these things happiness follows, but just going for happiness alone is a little self-centered. My friend Molly sent me a study done by
Positivity Psychologist (Her title, not that I actually understand it) Sonja Lyubomirsky documenting the 12 things happy people do differently to increase their levels of happiness. With the exception of “Taking care of your body and committing to your goal” the other ten were really about not focusing on yourself and nothing was about doing things that you think make you happy. Happiness is a by-product of other things.
I think not worrying about happiness is the best way to go in order to actually get it. Spend your time living your life not measuring your life and in the end you should be happier most of the time than not, that is of course as long as you are not one of those wet blankets. But wet things can dry — It is never too late.
No Human Hold Button
Posted: September 26, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: aging Leave a comment
The other day I ran into an acquaintance I had not seen in a couple of years. She was generous in her compliments on my weight loss, not having known about my weight loss challenge or this blog. It was nice to surprise someone since most everyone I know gets a bit or two of my daily humdrum by reading this blog, even if occasionally.
My friend asked me how I lost weight and I summarized the basic changes to my diet of eating fewer carbs, not much added sugar, veggies, fruits and protein, no major revolutions in the diet world. I told her about the blog and my accountability to myself through brutal and I hope humorous honesty in a very public way.
“Well, now you can stop that,” she said. “Stop what?” I asked. “Well you can eat a cookie now that you lost weight.”
I know she must have never had a weight issue in her whole life because she was shocked by my response. “I don’t have a hold button on my weight. I am either going down or going up and if I let my foot off the pedal I can easily go back to where I was.” If only there was a pause like I have on my TV remote control.
It would be great to have a way to hold ourselves at a place we are happy with. What if I could flip a switch and never get another wrinkle around my eyes, or that my skin would not get saggier? Life just does not work that way. We are all moving in some direction, either better or worse. When I was a teenager I could hardly wait until the day I no longer got zits, that day came and the next day my skin was getting dry and tiny lines started to appear. Well, maybe that is a small exaggeration; perhaps it was three days between acne and dry skin.
Since there is no way to pause ourselves at our best I am just coming to appreciate the littlest things that still work. Today I am thankful for my wrists. I gave up long ago on my breasts holding any shape that resembles round, eyesight being capable of reading a font smaller than 24 without glasses or my short-term memory holding a list of three grocery items from the time I leave my kitchen until I get in the car. My long-term memory still works and it says my wrists today look like my wrists of 30 years ago. Now that is something to appreciate.
Just In Case Vs. Just In Time Learning
Posted: September 25, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Pat Bassett Leave a comment
Last night I went to a great talk by Pat Bassett who is the past president of the National Association of Independent Schools. He is a recognized and learned expert on education and an enthusiastic and entertaining speaker. His talk started with the idea that Americans are in our third revolution, the first being the actual American Revolution, the second the civil rights movement and the third being the Internet.
He went on to talk about how the Internet changes everything about school, something I whole-heartedly agree with. How many times I have said, “Why should kids memorize things that they can look up in the blink of an eye with the device they hold in their hands at all times?”
Now don’t get me wrong, learning history so you can understand things in context not only about the past, but in real time is very important, but memorizing lists of things seems to be unneeded today. One idea Pat talked about was “Just in case learning versus just in time learning.” When you were in school did you ever say out loud, “When am I going to use this?” That is just in case learning. The problem is you can’t always predict what you may need to know when you are older or how learning one thing becomes a foundation for learning something else and the something else is really what you end up loving.
“Just in time learning” is how I learn now. When I have something I want to accomplish and I need to master a skill I don’t have then I learn it. I was never one to want to learn just for knowing, but always for using. One example was when I became a consultant. I did not really know how to use Excel or create complicated spread sheets, but suddenly I had a job that required me to do that, so I learned. I taught myself as I went along. The need drove the learning.
I know plenty of “life long learners,” some are people who would be happiest to be perpetual students, gobbling up knowledge just to have it and then there are others who learn new things all the time because it furthers a greater goal to create or do new things. The important thing is that we continue to learn. Don’t be deterred from doing anything because you don’t have the skill, just learn it. The desire to accomplish something is the best motivator for learning something new. Learn now before you just don’t have any more time.
Dish Penance
Posted: September 23, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: china, dishes, dishwasher Leave a comment
I am sick of cleaning out the dishwasher and cleaning the kitchen. I am trying to figure out how I can use my total loathing of these chores as a way to eat less. I am racking my brain. If I were able to stop eating all together the kitchen could stay spotless and the dishwasher empty. But somehow hunger comes into play and ruins that plan. Also, those other pesky people who live in my house would probably insist on using the kitchen for the purpose it was intended for, so I’m back to square one.
What if I put all the plates in the dishwasher and did not run it? It would be harder to have a meal without a plate. Unfortunately I would need about six to eight more dishwashers to hold all my china a once. See I inherited the “china gene.” You might have a relative who also has this; it tends to run in families. You know someone with the “china gene” because they own more than two sets of china. I have, let’s say about seven complete sets of different china patterns and lots of odd plates and bowls too. In my everyday china I have about 25 dinner plates because you just never know when 22 of your good friends might stop by for dinner. No wonder I hate cleaning out the dishwasher.
When I was a teenager I had a family I babysat for and I swear the mother never did the dishes and just waited until I came to babysit because she knew I would wash them. The kids told me that more than once she just threw dirty plates away and bought new ones rather than run them through the dishwasher. I call that an extreme case of disliking to empty the machine. I might have used up my lifetime allotment of dishwashing by doing many loads at this families house.
Maybe I could create some game where I was only allowed one small plate and one bowl a day. It would cut down on the surfaces I had to eat off, but then again it might incent me to eat standing over the sink, which is never a good thing to do when trying to lose weight.
I know all about paper plates, but my naturally frugal nature and concern for the planet rules that out. Russ is excellent at cleaning out the dishwasher, but somehow his eyesight prevents him from noticing dirty counters, and he travels so much that he is unreliable as the sole dishwasher guy. Carter is more like that family I babysat for than she is like me. Sometimes if I am looking for a bowl I know to look near her. Maybe the answer is I threaten not to go grocery shopping if she does not do all the kitchen cleaning. I know that is unrealistic especially since she has “homework” and the kitchen is my “homework.” I guess there is just no way out of this job alive.
Picnics Day
Posted: September 22, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: dogs, Mary, Putt Putt, tootsie Rolls Leave a comment
I’m running between events. I just did my shift at the All School Picnic running the putt-putt booth. It is either the second or third year that has been my assigned job which with the hundred or so different volunteer opportunities I am not sure how I always get Putt-Putt. Perhaps it is because I seem to have no trouble keeping small innocent children lined up quietly while one kid gets three tries to hit the wiffle ball into the cup.
It sounds like an easy job, and it is until you really look at a despondent five year old’s face who has missed all three times and they think their world has ended. Well, that is where the bucket of five million tootsie rolls comes in. Everybody is a winner. Three shots, no ball in the cup wins you one, three shots and you finally get the ball in on the third shot gets you two and if you get a hole in one you get three. These are not the published rules of the game, just my interpretation of what a carnival is all about. That and I had five million Tootsie rolls, what are we saving them for?
I would have liked to stay and visit with the young school parents but I had to run home to get ready for my neighbor Mary’s moving party. Mary is our neighborhood dog sitter and all the dog parents are in mourning over her moving. She will eventually move to a house not too far away, but not three doors down as she has been.
I have not broken the news to Shay Shay who sees going to Mary’s as her own personal All School Picnic. On any given weekend Mary might have five or six neighborhood pooches staying with her. They all seem to love it. I know that Shay does because when we go out for our regular walk she pulls me to Mary’s house and stands at her door looking in her side light window for her friends. I think Mary must have her own version of the giant bucket of doggie tootsie rolls because she has never met a dog that did not love her.
So off to the next picnic — A little saner with no carnival games or bouncy castles. I think we should have hired a clown to make balloon animals because all the guests are going to be sad that Mary is moving, much more sad than a five year old who missed three shots in putt putt and didn’t get a tootsie roll.
Do Dogs Feel Guilt?
Posted: September 21, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: dogs, guilt, lazy Leave a comment
Is guilt a purely human emotion or do dogs feel it too? As I sit in the sunroom this afternoon watching college football and needle pointing a long list of chores I should be doing before this runs through my head; the mail is stacked up in various piles around the house, laundry goes unfolded in the dryer, the garage has collected a number of items that belong other places — Nothing life threatening, but nothing so exciting that I want to jump up and work on them.
Shay Shay snuggles happily on top of Russ who is working away on his I-pad. Russ never stops working since keeping up with all the news in the world can be classified as research for his job. He does not while away his time on his I-pad playing games like his wife.
I have some guilt about being lazy. I have some guilt about putting real half and half in my coffee just now, I have some guilt that sitting is not exercise and that I have been a little too sedentary lately. Is this guilt changing my actions? Not really. Will it eventually get me to be more productive? Maybe.
As Shay sighs her sound of contentment I wonder if she feels guilty about anything? When she snuggles on Russ making him stay in one place so as not to disturb her is she guilty about that? When she steels a paper towel off the coffee table and shreds it up into feather like bits, leaving it in a pile on the guest room floor is she ashamed? If she quietly grabs a strip of bacon off Carter’s plate and swallows it down uninvited is she regretful. No, no and no on all counts.
Now if Shay gets caught doing anyone of these things and gets scolded I think she feels shame, but maybe for just a few moments. Not enough time for guilt to come into play. I certainly think she does not walk around muttering, “I really should not have eaten that biscuit.”
Is guilt a good thing? Does it drive us to the best behaviors or does it just make us feel bad about our natural instinct? I know I don’t want to get scolded by anyone and since I am more or less an autonomous adult there is no one really watching my every move and grading me on it. Guilt must be my own personal grading system, but is it enough to get me to be on my best behavior all the time? I wonder who is more evolved, dogs who live happily without guilt or humans who use guilt as a tool for self-moderation, just not that successfully?
Web Analytics – Not All That
Posted: September 20, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: junk mail, web Leave a comment
The more I try and remove myself from e-mail lists so that I can cut down on the amount of junk e-mail I get the more weird and less accurate the e-mail spammers get with me. Just now I was delete, delete, deleting junk to get to my actual mail and here are some of the headlines I got:
Seven Days of skinny jeans from Nordstrom
5- star Pesto Lasagna from Friday Feed
See Who’s on Match.com
Meet Food Network Star Jamie Dean from Southern Season
You could be entitled to Social Security Disability Income from Assistance Network
You’ll never wear the same bra size again from Jockey
With all the fear about big brother and internet search lack of privacy with cookies and analytics about things we click on I would think that one bit of junk mail might actually be something I was interested in, but noooo. The junk I am getting is so far from hitting the mark that it is annoying me more than usual.
Yes, at some point in my life, perhaps 35 years ago, I might have been interested in skinny jeans, if they had been the fashion then, but now, not so much. If the ad had been for Skinny Jeans capable thighs I might have opened it, but even if I had skinny thighs I’m too old for skinny jeans.
Absolutely no Lasagna, Pesto or otherwise is happening here. Friday Feed how about a good Green vegetable side dish? Even if I could eat pasta I could make Lasagna in my sleep and certainly don’t need a recipe. Isn’t there an ultra advanced cooking analytic that would only send me recipes for things like Soufflés?
Match.com. I’ve got a good match. I can’t imagine what I clicked on that leads these people to believe I’ve got time or interest in another. I guess the good thing is I did not get any penis enlargement or Viagra ads.
Jamie Dean… well he is trying to make healthier versions of his Mama’s recipes, but I don’t really have any interest in waiting to meet a “star” and I use that word liberally.
There is no way I am entitled to anything and I really hate the idea of ads fishing for people to get what they probably don’t deserve. If you are really hurt you already know you might qualify for social security. The government does not have enough money to pay people to read fraudulent claims.
Bras and bra sizes. I just don’t care what my bra size is as long as it is correct and it does its job. Based on the dozen of people who click daily on my joke blog called “Dana’s bra strap shortening station” I am sure this ad would have the highest open rate because bras are one serious issue, but not for me today. I am perfectly happy just the size I am.
So hey Internet you were batting a zero. None of the junk you charged your clients to send me helped them out at all and it just filled up my inbox. At least the real junk mail brings things like the Vermont Country Store, which is always good for a chuckle and some really ugly bras too.
Kitchen Invisible Fence
Posted: September 18, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: dogs, Invisble Fence Leave a comment
There are a lot of dogs that live in my neighborhood. Most of them make me happy. Some live in houses with invisible fences around their yard so they can joyfully remain outdoors while sticking to their property. I have one neighbor who’s dogs never cross their invisible fence, but the ferocious barking they do when you walk by does give one pause to worry. When my sweet Shay Shay and I venture past their house I call it running the gauntlet.
Now there is little reason that these two dogs, which appear to hate us for being in the vicinity of their house, should obey their invisible fence, other than the small shock they will take, but they do. As I was walking past the other day with dogs barring their teeth to me and Shay shivering in fear I thought, “Boy, I need an invisible fence.” Not for Shay and our yard, but for me in my kitchen.
I think that the same technology that keeps these protective guard dogs in their yard could be utilized to keep me away from naughty foods in my kitchen. I could wire up a carb and calorie loaded zone with all the foods that are temptations to me and snap on the zapping collar. Anytime I tried to cross into the “danger zone” I would take a big shock.
Not only would I steer clear of that area I’m sure I would develop an aversion to those foods other places than just in my kitchen. Now I might take on a few disturbing ticks or twitches. Dunkin’ Donut ads might send me into seizures, but hell it might be worth it. Maybe I will be able to not only lose those last twenty pounds I have literally holding tight onto me, but keeping them off would be dramatically easier.
If this Kitchen Invisible Fence works for me I could wire up other people’s homes. I will have to create a refrigerator zone as well as a pantry area, but I see this as a doable project. If you see me out in public and I seem a little skittish and have some unsightly red marks on my neck it probably means I was tempted by a vanilla scone in the forbidden zone.
Happy Cheetos Day
Posted: September 17, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Bull Street Market, Cheetos, Peanut Butter Egg, Reese's, Toro Pizza, Watt's Grocery 1 CommentBefore you get all in a wad that you missed National Cheetos day, relax, this is not a national holiday. If it were it would have to be before Yom Kipper so that you could quickly atone for the sin of enjoying those cheesy orange puffs. No, Cheetos Day is my friend Mary’s own personal annual event. See Mary loves Cheetos but she only allows herself one bag once a year. That is a fairly good diet routine because an addictive food like Cheetos with no nutritional well being at all needs to be moderated.
I used to have a Weight Watcher leader, Eve, who waited all year for Easter to come around so that she could indulge her one big splurge of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg. It is like a Reese’s peanut butter cup, but the filling is slightly fluffier and the ratio of peanut butter to chocolate is different making it Eve’s favorite food she must avoid except for once a year. The Reese’s Egg was Eve’s kryptonite and it was never a good thing for us Weight Watcher members to have her talk about what it was going to be like when she ate it. She justified it by telling us it was just four points (in the old points system) and that she saved up her points to eat it, but it always made me crave one of those PB&C (that’s peanut butter and chocolate) eggs.
If I were to relegate all the foods I crave, but need to stay away from, to their own one day a year I easily could have a special day everyday. The calendar would look something like this, Bull Street Market Gooey Butter Cake on October 1, Toro Pizza’s Lemon Pizza on October 2, Watt’s Grocery Pimento Cheese on October 3, ETC, ETC, ETC. I easily could fill 365 days with a different food that should be forbidden to me and my tend-to-blow-up-just-looking-at-carbs-body. Even though I am just eating that bad for me food once a year when you add it to the other naughty foods I would be in a bad place.
No Cheetos, or Reese’s, or cake, pizza, pimento cheese days for me. I need to celebrate National Radish Day or Celerypalooza. After a few hundred more of those days I might finally fit in my skinniest pants that have patiently awaiting their chance to be comfortably zipped up on me. The only day I really am hoping to observe is You Reached Your Goal Day!
If You Were Not Invited
Posted: September 16, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: parties Leave a commentToday I had lunch with my friend Amy. Amy used to be my workout partner until her work life got too crazy. Today was a belated celebration for her birthday but we spent an extra long time lingering over lunch to catch each other up since we don’t have those workout talks anymore.
Amy has two girls just younger than Carter so we are always comparing the stages we are dealing with. I loved something that Amy said today, “I’m tired of kids who want to be invited to something, but don’t want to enjoy it when they get there.”
She was talking about adolescents who are often dealing with personal insecurities and trouble with expectations, but the more I thought about her peeve the more I thought how many adults that also applies to. So many times I hear about people who want to be in a certain club or organization, but once then get in they do not actually participate.
I know a person who is constantly questioning people about what their weekend plans are to find out if she is not invited to things. When I ask her what her plans are, she is always fully booked so why would she care what else is going on, she could not attend anyway?
No matter your age, if you want to be included you need to be nice, be active, be thankful and reciprocate. Sitting around moping that you are excluded is a waste of your life. Plan your own fun and invite others. Most parties don’t have an unlimited amount of people they can hold and lines are drawn for various reason, but usually it is not to purposely exclude you!
Those kids who don’t think much of a party they were dying to get invited to need to try and throw a party. It is not the host’s sole responsibility to ensure your happiness. The guest has to put a little into trying to enjoy the gift they were given by being invited. As the song goes, “Don’t worry, be happy.”
My 24 Hour Step Back Twenty Five Years
Posted: September 15, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: David Macaulay, Dorthy Dordelman Pearson, John McLarty, Washington DC Leave a comment
I just ran up to Washington DC for the night so I could go to my friend John McLarty’s fiftieth birthday party that our friend David Macaulay threw for him. It was a quick 24-hour trip that I made alone that was really like stepping back into my old life before I was a wife or mother and lived my carefree life in DC.
Well, I don’t think I really had a carefree life in DC. I basically worked all the time either selling mailing opening and extracting machines or catering. But I did have a great group of friends who also worked too hard, but we played plenty together.
Last night I had a wonderful dinner with my friend Dorothy Dordelman Pearson catching up on lives, loves, children, crazy people we might be related to, the need to clean out our attics and promises to help each other and all the things that old friends talk about. To give you an idea of the kind of friend Dot is her youngest child was born four days before Russ and I got married and she still made it to our wedding. Actually I think she came directly from the hospital to our wedding, now that’s a woman who knows not to miss a good party.
I spent last night at my sister Janet’s house without her. Being in her house alone was like a flash back to when I lived alone in DC. The planes started landing at National at six in the morning waking me and ending any notion I had about sleeping late. I watched the Sunday morning news shows with greater interest in the Washington insider talk since I was there.
After I took a shower David texted me with that pre-party panic about the birthday brunch and said I was welcome to come early. It was code for come-over-and-help-me. David and I have been friends since about 1984. He was my number one employee at å la Carter, my catering business. He was the President of Cheese Grating, but he announced to me over text that he was not grating any cheese for today’s party.
I introduced John and David to each other about 1986 so I am their ground zero friend and they have been fast and furious friends ever since. They have lived together “foreva”. John had gone to Dickinson with me. I was a senior and he was a freshman. He used to follow me around campus and profess his undying love to me. He often ask me to marry him, once even producing a ring he had made out of a scrap piece of watercolor paper from a painting I had done and thrown out. I would tell him that I was not the right person, read gender, for him and he would still persist. Eventually he realized what I knew all along and embraced a world filled with men, as Leisel sang from the Sound of Music.
I arrived at John and David’s fabulous house and of course everything was under control. The caterer arrived with help and we finished setting up the bloody Mary bar and the fun began. The slew of fiftieth birthdays that I have attended in the last few years seems surreal. How could all these people I have known for thirty years or more be 50? Especially the celebrations for people I don’t see often, like John, we pick right up as if we were in college, but now he actually knows he’s gay.
The quick visit is bitter sweet because it reminds me that I am not as good at keeping up as I would like to be. How can a person ever stay in touch with all your old friends as you meet and make new ones all the time? On the other had the best part about old friends is that you pick right up where you left off as if you never missed a day. Now I am home with my wonderful husband and daughter and I feel like I just experienced some kind of time travel, in a way I did.
The Real American Problem
Posted: September 14, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Young parents 5 Comments
Everyone who knows me knows I have a passion for the Food Bank. That being said I do not think that hunger is the worst problem in America. Don’t get me wrong, hunger is a real big problem that stems from poverty, but there is a bigger problem that no one in any place of power will dare deal with and that is the problem of people having children too young.
Today on my way to Washington DC I stopped at a Panera Bread in Petersburg, VA because I knew I could get an edible salad fast. Petersburg is not a tiny, nor poor place and I think that half the town was at this same Panera when I was. As I stood in the line that ran out the door waiting to order I had more than enough time to observe, over hear and be thoroughly annoyed by the family in front of me. It was made up of a 35 year old grand mother, her four daughters who’s ages ranged from about 11-17 and a grand daughter who was over one and not yet able to speak words.
I am not guessing at all that information, but got it verbatim as the family fought with each other while waiting in line. The mother of the baby, the bleached blond texting in the picture, was the second oldest child and clearly was already tired of being a mother as she tried to hand off her child to her siblings. Her mother begged off from holding the screaming child since it was her 35th birthday today.
I thought I had shaken this group when I went to sit down, but they soon followed me and sat at two tables across from me for their so happy, familial meal to celebrate their mother’s birthday. Her two youngest children sat at a table alone having tired of their mother hitting them in the waiting line.
The thing I witnessed that really threw me over edge and thus made this family the subject of my ranting blog today was not only did they not get any food for the baby, but the blond mother poured sweet tea form her own cup into a smaller cup for the baby. It was obviously not the first time this child had drunk sweet tea because she would down it and scream for more in her nonverbal way. The very young mother got terribly annoyed by her child drinking all her tea and since she was busy texting she screamed over to her younger sisters sitting at their own table to ask them to get her sweet tea refills. At one point she ripped off a hunk of bread and put it in front of the baby who would have none of it because it was not sugary nor full of caffeine. Lord help this poor child and her future teeth.
We need help for our country full of children being raised by children. I have nothing against single people having children as long as they are old enough and have the resources to care for their offspring. I have no problem with same sex partners having families. Some of the best behaved kids I know have either two Moms or two Dads. But the human brain is not developed enough to properly parent a child until it is at least 25. Before all you young parents scream at me ask yourselves if you had help with your kids when you were young, or had good jobs and were already well educated. That makes a big difference. But if someone is under 25, without much education, money or support raising a child is going to have a hard time. I know it’s not politically correct to say, but the continuation of very young people having children is the biggest long term problem we face as a country. I am not holding out much hope that this sweet child I witnessed today has a bright future. Please let me be wrong.
Hunger Action Month
Posted: September 13, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Food Bank Telethon Leave a comment
Sometimes I feel like every month, every week and every day is action day. I am looking forward to an inaction day, but don’t see any other those on the horizon.
September is Hunger Action Month. I think if you are hungry you are hungry every month and you are looking for food every month, week and day, not just one month. At this very writing the Food Bank is holding a 24 hour telethon on their website. All kind of people are spending the night at the food bank headquarters in Raleigh with bands and food trucks and all kinds of volunteers stopping by.
I am making an appearance on the telethon tomorrow morning about 8:45. I am going to be interviewed about the Less Dana Campaign so if you want to see me in live streaming Internet just click on this link while you enjoy your morning coffee. Food Bank Telethon
I can’t imagine what the poor Food Bank staff has been through this week with the giant Sort-a-rama on Wednesday and now spending the night running a 24-hour telethon.
I am not an all nighter kind of person, never have been. In college I had friends who would stay up all night writing those last minute papers they had known were due for three weeks. Waiting until the last minute makes me too nervous and I just don’t like the pressure of leaving things to the deadline.
Except today, I left by blog to the last minute as well as the laundry I need washed so I can pack for my quick overnight trip to Washington DC tomorrow when I am finished up with the telethon. So I apology for the non-blog blog today, which is really more of an ad for the telethon — I just had way too much action today which left little time for reflection.
Simple Is Best
Posted: September 12, 2013 Filed under: Diet- comedy | Tags: Lynn, Morris Minor Traveler 2 Comments
Today is my friend Lynn’s birthday. Lynn is not one who normally eats lunch but on her birthday she made an exception and so we went out to a local tapas place. As a surprise my friend Hannah and I picked Lynn up in my 1964 Morris Minor Traveler woody station wagon to make the big five-mile drive to downtown Durham. It seemed appropriate to celebrate Lynn’s day in a car that was about her age.
I have been somewhat remiss in taking the Morris out of the garage as often as my Flying Circus English mechanic would like me to. It is better for the car to be driven, but a car in North Carolina without air conditioning is not the best summer model. But then again the Morris, with it’s heat coming from air that went past the sewing machine engine is not really a great winter car either. Even though it is hot today I thought us three girls could stand the old fashion cooling system of windows open, especially the specialty front door wing windows.
I love taking friends out in the Morris because even though everyone my age or older grew up with crank windows and door handles you actually have to tug to release the latch it seems so foreign to them now. My little robins egg blue wagon is a three door, which means it has two passenger doors and a spilt back door for the wagon part. To get in the back seat you just lift the front seat up, no catch to undo or buttons to push. The seat is only attached to the floor on the front and it just stays in place by gravity.
The car does not have a radio or a clock, but it does have a choke. Even though I had not started it up all summer once I pulled out the choke and turned the tiny little key that looks more like a cheep luggage key, she started right up. Obviously the engine mice that run the conveyor belt were still alive and able to run the tiny machine fine.
Driving the Morris around Durham just brings a smile to even the biggest sourpuss’ face. We parked on the street and an older gentleman came running as fast as an old guy can without getting winded up to talk to us about the car. I wish I had about 50 of these sweet little cars because I could sell one everyday I drive one.
As cars go there is not much to this one, no bells or whistles, just a squeaky little horn and a turn signal that flashes green on the stem that you flick up or down. The best part is that without a back up camera or hydro turbo cooler engine there is not much to go wrong. Yeah, and it gets 40 miles to the gallon.
I think there is a good lesson for long term living in my well-named Minor. Keep things simple if you want to go the long haul. Everything does not have to be a major deal and living with less stuff means you have a smaller load to carry. So happy birthday Lynn, may your load always be light.
Less Dana, More Good 