How's That New Healthy-Food Kick Going?

Pretty good.  Thanks for asking.

So...The whole eating-healthier-because-we-want-to-live thing is still going on here.  I am pretty much buying only fruits and vegetables right now, in the hope that IF YOU'RE HUNGRY ENOUGH, YOU WILL EAT THEM AND NOT CALL DOMINO'S AT 10 PM BECAUSE THERE'S NOTHING IN THE FRIDGE BUT BROCCOLI, NOT EVEN A PIECE OF CHEESE.   Right??

I also stopped drinking coffee (again) a few days ago.

Actually, I didn't.  But we appear to be out of creamer AND cream right now, and coffee for me doesn't exist without some form of cream.  Not milk, either.  That is not the same, so don't be all throwing that out there.  Plus, we're out of milk, or I'm not buying it because it's bad for Shane's cholesterol or something.

That's the best way I know how to diet.  Just quit having that stuff in the fridge, and tah-dah...you can't eat it.  Problem solved.

Today I did make coffee for him, and I stood at the fridge for quite awhile wondering what I could put in a cup for me.  Greek yogurt? Nah, too much honey.  Sour cream?  Maybe.  Bleu cheese dressing?  Come on, it's 8:30 a.m...  Then I found Redi-Whip, another thing I buy about once a decade, so I put that in it.

Don't judge.  I'm having raw cauliflower and almonds for lunch.

Yep. It's all about health around here.

Because...SUMMER (Also--my ONE CAKE for this year)

Finally!  

My one big cake adventure for the year--more on that, below...

Wait.  It is the weekend right now, isn't it?  I just realized I honestly don't actually know what day it is.  *stares into space*  Saturday? Yeah, that seems right.  

See? Why would I be inside?  (Louis and Jack in the rose garden)

Moving on--

I probably won't post as much, so I'm just checking in to say that I'm fine. (I know you were putting your entire summer on holding wondering about that, so yes...rest easy, my dears).  I don't even get online much in the summer, because I'm outside, so, for all my fellow bloggers who I love to read--I'm not ignoring you, I'm saving the reading for later.  When the sun's not out.  Which is like 80% of the year, here.

Not that I won't still pop in to rant about one thing or another.  Like right now, I am driving my second rental car this summer, and I can just FEEL a "car review" post brewing soon.  If you're a Mazda 5 lover, you may need to look away for parts of that one.

If you know me, you know I pretty much live for summer.  My year revolves like this:  Holidays, that icky cold gap between the holidays and my birthday, waiting for summer, SUMMER, summer's almost over, I wish it was still summer, almost holidays, and back to-- holidays.  

The sun finally came back out this morning, the BBQ is out, the garden is peaking with the first giant wave of my zillions of antique roses, and I've spent the last three weeks enjoying having my brother and my mom here, watching our oldest graduate, knitting hats, studying French (for hours every day, for real...like where you actually speak it), and reading Utopia in the hammock.  Not even an e-book.  A real book.  With paper pages and everything.  

Also, I made the cake (at top) for our school's graduation, which was absolutely one of my funnest cakes ever!

A little closer view of my 3-D sugar tractor and palette 

All the details were made of sugar.  The whole thing is airbrushed metallic gold, which didn't translate well in the photo.  The kids each got a specific sugar item sculpted to match their interests, so I made a tractor (with wheels that turn, y'all), a palette for the grad going to fashion school, a film reel for the film school student, the British flag for the one going abroad, and a hand-painted sugar bagpipe for the girl who was leaving for Ireland and Scotland the day after graduation.  I can't tell you how fun this one was to make, and it was a privilege to do this for my daughter and her friends.  
Also--if you are interested in history/politics/society and you haven't read Utopia, you should check it out.  I'm a history freak, especially 16th century England and France, so I'm not sure why I haven't read this yet.  It's fascinating to me that this book was written in the early 1500s, but if you don't know that, you could easily forget that it's not sometimes talking about current trends in human nature and government.  Not at all what I expected.  (Note to self--I can also see where some of those hippie communes I remember from the 70s got their ideas.  It was just a book, people.)

So.  Here's to forgetting what day it is...for at least another 60 days, then we send one to college and one back to school, and the whole thing starts over again.

*muah*





 

Wow. This is Like CAMP. Only NOT-

Did you hear THAT?

Remember that game when you were at camp in the 80s?  You 'member? That one, where we'd all line up, and the kid at the front of the line would whisper something in the ear of the second kid in line.  Then that kid would turn around and whisper what he heard (or thought he heard) in the ear of the third kid in line, and so on....

Then the last kid in line would say what they "heard", and we'd see how far off it was, and it was always way, wayyyy off.

YEAH.  THAT GAME.

Well, my friends, in case you were waiting til you're a grownup to find out if that ever ends, let me be the first to whisper in your ear...it never ends, ever.  NEVER. EVER.

I've been off for awhile, enjoying family and some company, and graduations, etc.  You know...real life.  And I don't get out much, so when I do...I tend to chatter like a chipmunk on Red Bull.

*eye roll*

ANYway.  I happened to be chatting, as is my way, with someone a few weeks ago, and I randomly got on the line of conversation that goes like this:  "We're getting older, and I totally get the snow bird thing, and I'd love to see France...so...someday, yeah, it'd be nice to travel.  Maybe we'll actually DO that."  (Right after we pay off our debts, buy a car, and put two kids through college... but sometime before the actual nursing home.  Yes.  Definitely.  Maybe.)

So...today, we heard from an unrelated other friend, who heard from a friend, who heard it from these people I talked to.  He asked if we were, "uh...going to Europe for two months", because...you know...HOW CAN YOU AFFORD THAT???  

*insert blank shocked face here*

HAHAHAHAHA

Yes, my friends.  APPARENTLY THE GAME NEVER ENDS.

What they don't let you do in grade school, though, is go to the back of the line and SLAP the kid at the end for blabbing the wrong info to the whole world.  They assumed that somewhere along the way, we were also supposed to learn to FILTER out what *is* chit-chat/gossipy nonsense, and what *is* interesting news.  Apparently, this is still a huge problem for some people (see also: pretty much every single Facebook post ever written).

But still.  Just...wow.  I'd say I'm speechless, but of course...I'm so not.  It does feel a little like camp, though.

dweebs