Cheating at Candyland

I got Candyland because I had fun childhood memories of playing it. Curse my memory! Most children's games are designed so that eventually there will be a winner and the game will (blessedly) stop. Candyland, on the other hand, can go on forever. And ever.

In case it's been a while since you played I will refresh your memory - Players draw cards and then move game pieces from the beginning of the board to the end. There are also some special cards which let the player jump to a specific square on the board. This means you can be one square from winning and then draw a card (the freakin' plum, for example) that takes you back to the beginning. This can happen indefinitely because you have to keep reshuffling.

After an hour my 3-year-old still didn't understand how to play and I didn't think the game would ever end. So, in desperation I did what I'd spent the last hour trying to keep her from accidentally doing: I cheated. Not only that, but I cheated and WON. Muhahahahaha! I so kicked her ass at Candyland. Tomorrow I'm breaking out Monopoly.

Supermom

I'm not a supermom, but I have developed some superpowers since I became a parent:

Super Hearing: No matter where I am in the house, I can hear the binky drop out of my almost-asleep infant's mouth.

Dodge: I can carry my flailing, tantruming 3-year-old to her room without being hit or kicked.

2 Minute Meals: I can make an arguably balanced meal for three people in 2 minutes. Eat your heart out Rachael Ray!


Mind Reading: I know when my toddler has misbehaved. Of course, it helps that she always instructs me "not to see," anything she knows she'll get in trouble for.

Locator: I know where all of the parts of all of the toys are in the entire house at any given moment. I can also find DH's keys, wallet, and shoes at any time. Not to mention sense the location of my OWN keys when DH accidentally takes them to work and refuses to look for them there ("I couldn't possibly have taken your keys.")

Food Source: Actually, I think this is pretty cool.

Jedi Mind Trick: I can still convince my toddler to fall asleep for a nap most days. "This isn't the nap-time you are looking for."

Zombie Mom: I can shape-shift into Zombie mom when I've been up with the baby for too many consecutive nights and denied all naps. Zombie mom can competently care for a toddler and baby while barely moving or speaking or forming a coherent thought. Unfortunately, Zombie mom can't be relied upon to make rational decisions. Letting kids watch 7 hours of Dora the Explorer is fine with Zombie mom. Zombie mom also microwaved her own eyeglasses in a bottle sterilizer after they fell in the toilet.



What superpowers have you discovered since you became a parent?

Top 20 Bottom 10

TOP:
1. my kids 2. peanut butter m&m's 3. a clean house 4. toddler story-time at the library 5. maternity leave 6. survivorman 7. brain age 8. showers 9. brushing teeth 10. jack johnson 11. listening to my sleeping baby breathe 12. watching my 3-year-old dance 13. top gun nostalgia 14. the road 15. what not to wear 16. hospital ice 17. shopping by myself 18. a good latch 19. quiet 20. sleeping

BOTTOM:
1. post-partem body 2. baby pee fountains 3. living an hour from work 4. writer's strike 5. baby molesting toddlers 6. world of warcraft 7. both kids crying at the same time 8. clutter 9. cats on the counter 10. animal cruelty

Eternal Love Story

This is the true story of what happened to my mom yesterday on Valentine's Day.

My dad died suddenly a few years ago at age 54. He was fine the day before, and then died instantly of an aneurism. It really broke my mom's heart she didn't get to say goodbye to him.


A jewelry store in her hometown hosted a contest this year and contestants had to submit a home-made valentine. My mom made one for my dad. It was simple on the outside, but when she made it her heart was full of the goodbyes and I love you's she didn't get to say.

The jewelry store chose my mom as one of their 12 finalists, and told her she needed to come in for the grand prize drawing. The 12 would all put their name in a hat and the winner would be chosen at random.

All of the finalists would win a really nice box of valentine candy, and the big winner would get a diamond. My mom LOVES diamonds and my dad always wanted to get a nice one for her, but with 4 kids (the youngest was in college when he died) he didn't have money for nice diamonds.

To make a long story short, my mom won! So on the holiday when I know she particularly feels his loss, this year she feels like she was able to give my dad her home-made valentine full of love. And she feels that he gave her a box of chocolates and the diamond he'd always promised her for Valentine's Day.



(Kind of fuzzy, but I don't live close enough to go take a good photo for her.)

Things I'd like to ask my newborn

Welcome my dear son!



My new little guy has a scrunchy monkey-face, he bites me when he nurses, he screams bloody-murder whenever we change his diaper and he is the love of my life.

Here are some questions I'd like to ask him:

Why do you smack yourself randomly in the face?

*You love the swaddle, you hate it with the burning intensity of a thousand suns. WHICH IS IT?

*What's with all the hiccups? You are like a tiny drunk old man.

What does the squealing baby elephant noise mean?

Do you really STILL think you'll be able to get milk from my cheek after being disappointed every other single time?

No matter how I prop you, you still end up slumped over in your swing. Is this by choice?

* A couple of these questions/answers brought to you by Linda Lee at ParentDish.com.

Updates

Time for me to make a few updates on previous entries.

Paper shredder - I am such a sucker. The old shredder broke and I got DH a new shredder for Christmas. He loves it. Apparently it can shred a credit card or CD. It's in the basement though, out of site.

Hair - still going grey. I got my haircut last week though. I took my daughter to Cartoon Cuts for the first time, and they had a special to do both our haircuts for $30. Heck yeah. It's actually a pretty decent haircut too, and DD looks adorable. Now I bet you're wondering - Did she speak English? HA! Never. But she spoke spanish, which I speak too.

Maid - I finally caved and hired a service. They clean twice/month for $85 each time which for now I think is reasonable. For the first time in I don't know how long I'm not stressing about how dirty my house is. It still gets cluttered and messy, but I know it'll get picked up every 2 weeks so we can get our money's worth from the service.

The Christmas Package

Last week Mom told me she'd sent our Christmas package and I should call her when it arrived. She said it would be here in a couple of days. Christmas packages are a Big Deal(tm) to my mom, so I immediately went on the lookout. Lo and behold, the next day there was a notice in my box that we'd gotten a package but I had to go and sign for it. UGH! With our commute there is just no going to the post office on weekdays. I'd have to do it on Saturday. I was annoyed my mom sent something I'd have to sign for, but I figured she just wanted it to get here in time.

So Saturday rolls around and I FORGOT TO GET IT. They close at 1 on Saturdays and I totally spaced it. It still wasn't too late though. I knew I'd have to get that package on Christmas Eve Day Monday, come hell or high water. I still had my city mentality and I figured they wouldn't close early, at least not before 1. How wrong I was! I got there at 12:20 only to find they'd closed at noon. I almost cried. Not because I wanted the presents, but because I knew my mom would be so upset.

The first thing I did was phone my sister to try to make her tell me what was in the package. My plan was to find out and then lie to my mom and say I got the package and we loved everything in it. This was a little lie for the greater good. A necessary lie. My sister let me down though! She refused to say what was in the package. I was soo upset. How could she hold out on me like this??

I ran the rest of my last minute errands and on my way home stopped to get the mail. We don't get home delivery, our box is about 1/2 mile from our house with all the neighbors' boxes. A bunch of folks were already there waiting for the mailman which gave me a brilliant idea: I would ask the mail-lady if I could wait at the post office for her to finish her route and she could get my package.

I had little confidence my plan would work. It had to be against the rules but it was worth a try. When she arrived I told her about my problem and she volunteered to pick up the package and deliver it to my house after her route! I could barely believe it! This would never happen in the city. I got such a warm Christmas spirit feeling and I wished I'd given her more than a bag of Moose Munch this year.

That night I took my daughter out to see Santa riding through the streets on his fire engine (more small-town goodness) and on the way back I stopped at the mailbox. Sure enough, there was my mom's package! All was right with the world.

When I got home my husband said, "The mail lady brought by that package." I froze. What package? I had the one I had been fretting myself crazy over for almost a week. He said, "Your sister-in-law overseas sent us something." It took only moments for me to process. I'd been worrying for days over the wrong package, for the wrong reasons. My mom's package didn't need to be signed for, it was just very late.

Feeling silly about all that worry and stress, I realized I still got a great lesson on Christmas Spirit, and we got to eat chocolates from Belgium on Christmas Day while opening presents from my mom. Not to mention the discovery of my sister's traitorous streak!

New Traditions, Old Magic?

This will be the first year since Mike and I met that we won't be traveling to Idaho for Christmas, and I've been thinking a lot about what makes Christmas at home magical for me. My family has always had a lot of traditions and I want the same thing for my kids. We trimmed the tree tonight and I had to laugh at what will eventually become the new Christmas traditions for our children.

First, instead of going to the woods, or even to a Christmas tree lot to pick out a tree (this included stopping at McDonalds for burgers and looking at Christmas lights and singing carols in the car for us), Mike made the trek into the storage room in our basement and hauled up the giant box that holds our fake Christmas tree. It comes out of the box looking more like a green rectangle than a tree, so we spent a good half hour pulling the branches apart and trying to make it look "real." This is a painful process because those wires are really jabby!

While we trimmed the tree I wanted Christmas music, but we don't have a stereo, nor do we have any Christmas albums. So I set up my laptop and played youtube Christmas slide shows set to Nat King Cole, Andy Williams and Karen Carpenter songs. My daughter decorated the bottom half of the tree with kid ornaments and I did the top with nice ones, and maybe I will re-do it while she's sleeping tonight. My mom always did, and Mike says his mom did too. ;)

After we finished the tree we washed our hands. Not because of sticky pine sap. Mainly because of the lead warnings on the tree and on the lights. Seriously, can't we make anything without lead in it?

Finally, I plugged in a pine scented air freshener to get that Christmas tree smell in the air. It is good and actually does smell like a tree! After decorating the Christmas tree a family should sit down to a nice dinner of comfort food, so Mike warmed up a can of soup for him and DD to share.

What wonderful traditions our children will have to look back on and try to recreate with their own kids, haha. The best part is that DD really DID have a great time. I think maybe Christmas can be magic regardless of whether the soup's from a can and the tree smell is an air freshener. Maybe the magic is about family doing Christmas things together. My next project is to buy Christmas cookie dough and bake it with DD. I'll let you know if that rates on the Christmas magic scale too. ;)

Worst Case Scenario: Pool Drains

I just read a story tonight that freaked me out. A little girl fell on her bum on a pool drain that's cover had been removed, and the suction ripped a hole in her rectum and sucked out most of her small intestine. That poor thing! She was only 6 and her life is changed forever. She's lucky to be alive. http://wcco.com/topstories/local_story_185085504.html

That got me thinking about how scary it would be to be trapped in a pool drain in deep water. Apparently the pressure can be so much that people couldn't pull you out and you could drown. So, typical of me, I started trying to think of what could be done to get air to someone in that situation. My best idea is with those floaty "noodle" things kids play with in pools. It turns out they are hollow, like giant straws. So if you could somehow cover the end of one and get it down to someone that was stuck, they could hopefully breathe through it. Of course though, they aren't 10 ft. long, and I doubt you could really hold them together and keep a water tight seal. I doubt there are enough drinking straws at a pool to make a breathing tube.

I'd welcome any good survival ideas. McGuyver would know what to do! Maybe there'd be some piping nearby? Or maybe a hose at a neighbor's house? I do think that if you saw someone get stuck in there, the best thing you could do would be to start trying to find them some kind of tube to breathe through. Let someone else try to pull them off the bottom, someone that doesn't realize it probably isn't going to work. You'd have to be so fast though. The trapped person could probably only hold their breath for a minute or two, and after that would probably pass out and whatever tube you got them would be useless if you couldn't clear their lungs.

Could people swim down to the person and give them breaths of air, like mouth to mouth? If I was trapped on the bottom of a pool I seriously doubt I could be calm enough to handle the logistics of that. And if I was the swimmer, I'd be a little scared to swim down there because what if they grabbed on and I couldn't get away?

What if it was your kid? I think my worst fears all involve being helpless while something bad happens to my daughter. Ugh.

Oh man, I am going to have the worst dreams tonight. Curse my late night browsing!!

Book Tally for 2006

I made a resolution in 2006 to read 60 books. I broke it down into 5/month so I wouldn't procrastinate it and end up with 60 books to read in December. The final tally: Sixty-Seven books! wooo! That's 7 more than my goal, despite the fact that there were a couple of months that I didn't make my 5.
The strangest thing has been looking over my reading for 2006 and not seeing very much Fantasy. I would have guessed that usually made up the bulk of my reading, but not so much last year. I've been reading more of it this year, but haven't really been keeping track of my reading. I hopefully will again though, it's kind of neat to look back over a list of what I've read. Otherwise I tend to forget a lot of them.

I didn't ever post my November and December books, so here they are (without reviews):

Talk Gertie to Me - Lois Winston
Digging to China - Anne Tyler
Daughter of Deceit - Victoria Holt
Everything's Eventual - Stephen King
The Cat that Could Read Backwards
Assassin's Apprentice
Royal Assassin
Raven't Gate
Sailing to Capri - Elizabeth Adler

Books - October (8/5)

I read a few extra books this month to make up for last months slacking.

On the Edge of the Woods – Diane Tyrrel
A Fatal Thaw – Dana Stabenow
Answered Prayers – Danielle Steele
Birth: the surprising history of how we are born – Tina Cassidy
Liquor: a novel – Poppy Z. Brite
Ramona and her Father – Beverly Cleary
The Printer's Devil – by Paul Bajoria
Lakeside Cottage – Susan Wiggs

On the Edge of the Woods – Diane Tyrrel
This book kind of reminded me of a Victoria Holt book, except set in present day and a little bit earthier. It was an okay read. I got a Victoria Holt book out of the library after reading it though (see Nov) and it was much better. I had NO idea how much Victoria Holt wrote. /boggle. Over 200 books (under different pen names) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Holt

A Fatal Thaw – Dana Stabenow
I thought I wanted to read a mystery, so I got this. It's part of a girl detective series set up in remote Alaska. There wasn't really anything wrong with it, and the details of Alaska life were interesting, but the characters weren't very compelling and I don't think I'll pick up another in this series.

Answered Prayers – Danielle Steele
This book was so lame. How can this woman sell so many books? It was about a woman with an abusive past, married to a dirtball man, and the book just kept going on and on about how pathetic she was, and how many bad things she'd been through. Over and over and over again. It would say that her husband was cold, and then repeat it to me so many times I actually felt insulted. Like did she think I couldn't remember? L – you could write so much better than this.

Birth: the surprising history of how we are born – Tina Cassidy
This was non-fiction and I really liked it, and learned a lot of things I never knew. For example, there was a bad time during the Industrial Revolution when a lot of women had rickets (no sun or fruit) and their bodies wouldn't grow and their pelvises were too small to have their babies. I learned about Twilight Sleep and wondered if that's how my grandmother's delivered my parents. It is a lot worse than it sounds. I read about how men couldn't be in hospital rooms and briefly felt proud of how much we'd progressed. But then I read on and agreed that my experience having my husband in the room was not all that great. He didn't know what to do and I felt like I had to be brave for him because he was so worried about me being in pain. Now I think it might have been nice to have my sister there, or a woman friend, or maybe a trained doula. But having husbands in the room is what we do now, just like having having epidurals and babies sleep-in, and scheduled c-sections. We always think that what we're currently doing is "the best and most enlightened," but it seems that women's birth experiences through history are mostly a product of what is acceptable to society at the time, and will continue to evolve and change.

Liquor: a novel – Poppy Z. Brite
This book was set in New Orleans and was about the restaurant world. I really liked it, with just a couple of reservations. These 2 guys come up with an idea for a trendy restaurant and the book takes off from there. I wish they had just stuck to the story, but the author decided to make it into a thriller. The part of the book about what goes on behind the scenes with chefs and line cooks and sautee and desserts, etc.. that part was great, and the thriller part you can kind of disregard if you want and just enjoy the restaurant scene. The other thing that wasn't quite for me was that the 2 guys were gay. I don't have anything against gays, but I don't really like reading romantic scenes between 2 guys.

Ramona and her Father – Beverly Cleary
This is a kid's book from the Ramona series. It's the story of Ramona's perspective of her dad's being out of work and quitting smoking. This is a fun series for kids and I got it because it would be safe car listening for DD.

The Printer's Devil – by Paul Bajoria
This book was pretty well done, set in London a few hundred years ago during early printing presses. The main character is an orphan apprenticed to the printer and gets ] involved in a mystery trying to discover what happened with a mysterious boat shipment from India. There were interesting characters, and the setting really made the story. I think this would be appropriate for young adult age.

Lakeside Cottage – Susan Wiggs
Trite romance about a single mom that goes to stay at her family's lakeside cottage for the summer and finds romance. Pretty good for what it was.

Grey (and other stuff)

It started one day when I was primping in the bathroom at work and saw a glint of something in my hair. Much to my horror, it was a grey hair. And not just a little bit grey at the roots. The entire strand was silvery pale! I tried to chalk it up to a fluke, but I remained unconvinced. I was hypersensitive about grey hairs. The more I looked, the more I found. All of them completely grey. I thought going grey started at your roots and grew in that way, giving you time to adjust and make decisions. I didn't know it would invade all at once. Like aliens.

I asked my stylist if she thought it looked grey and she asked if I would like "highrights" (no, I still haven't found an English speaking stylist - see previous entry) because they would hide it. Frankly, I didn't feel like I could trust her. (See a different previous entry where my eyebrow waxer told me I should wax my lip.)

I finally gave in and bought a box of hair color that I put on myself and no one has seemed to notice, which is good. I'm only 33! I am too young to have grey hair. And even though Lala thinks it's amusing, and claims that she won't fight growing old, I dare her to go grey before 40 and see if she doesn't do something about it.

Plus, I just have to say that this week's Battlestar Galactica was possibly the best ever. I predicted what happened with Starbuck actually, but I still cried. So sad! But the worst was the beginning. oh man. How do those writers take someone and make me hate them, and then make me like them and then make me cry for them? Most shows these days (Lost is an exception) don't change your feelings toward the characters. You pretty much feel the same about them from week to week, while still being entertained by their stories. Good job to the writers and actors that have raised the television bar.

The paper shredder is safely stashed away under DH's desk.

I didn't get any catsup packets last week.

My latest attempt at quick cooking burned me out. I would make 2 huge meals on Sundays and then heat them up during the week for leftovers. I'm done with that though. We've wasted too much food, and I'm so tired by Sunday night and it takes half of my weekend (while DH watches football all day, so I get mad) and then the kitchen is trashed all week. I might just start making a huge batch of spaghetti (DD calls it sableckley) and letting them eat that. I doubt it if either of them would complain.

I was reading old blogs and saw that in February I was losing 2 lbs/wk. if I hadn't quit I'd be down at least 50 lbs now! Alas. Today I decided to diet and last until about 4pm when I remembered that I had made chip dip and had a bag of chips in the pantry. I really should start dieting when I don't have so much junk food in the house.

Catsup Catastrophe

Chick Fil A gave me this entire bag full of condiments and a stack of napkins thicker than a dictionary at lunch on Monday.

Granted, I called ahead food for 12 people, but we had condiments back in the office so I didn't ask for any at the store.

It wasn't until I got back to work and started handing around the food that I realized they'd included a full-size fast food bag of condiments. What an extravagant waste.

Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oils

If you've read my blog you'll see that I've switched us over to free-range animal meat, and locally raised eggs and beef, and organic products. I've also been converting to non-toxic, biodegradable cleaners and detergents (thanks in part to Lahdeeda. Here's what we're using - http://www.saferforyourhome.com/ Let me know if you want to sign up for them so I can get credit!).

Then this vegetable oil thing came up. DH kind of started it, nagging me about margarine. I really like margarine on toast. Really like, as in favorite food. He bought this tub of margarine alternative, but it makes the bread soggy on toast or grilled cheese sandwich, and forms a watery looking puddle in a pan if you melt it. I fully intended to stick with my stick of margarine, but finally decided to do some research on it.

Apparently there is solid scientific evidence that partially hydrogenated vegetable oil is directly related to heart disease. There are entire countries in Europe that have banned it. NYC is considering banning it from all restaurants and street vendors, etc. Wendy's has gotten rid of it and so have some other places. This stuff is bad news. I have been aware of "trans fats" and that they're bad and so I try to buy stuff without them (excepting my stick margarine), but get this - the FDA allows companies to put "0 Trans Fats" on their labels as long as there is less than .5 g per serving. So these companies are just making their serving sizes extremely small, but the trans fats are still in the foods! A lot of trans fats. You have to read the ingredients to find them though. Research shows that even the smallest amounts of these is bad for your heart. There is no minimal healthy amount you can eat. Not only do PHVO's raise your bad cholesterol, but they lower your good cholesterol.

The night I did all this reading I stayed up 'til 3am, going through our pantry and setting out every food that had PHVO's on the nutritional info. It was in a number of things, here's where it was mostly - microwave popcorn, cake mixes and frosting, instant hot chocolate, instant oatmeal, dehydrated soup, chips, stovetop stuffing, crackers, fish sticks, ice cream sandwiches. Mainly, it's in the foods that don't resemble foods so much any more. Lots of convenience foods. The most surprising find was in Quakers Heart Healthy Oatmeal. DH just about flipped his lid. I think he wants to sue!

It was his birthday this weekend, and he wouldn't touch a cake with all this stuff, so I found an organic cake mix and frosting mix and made it with butter instead of margarine. The frosting is sooo good, but the cake was a little dusty tasting. I will probably have to start making more things from scratch. I made the best ever blueberry muffins last weekend.

We're making slow progress, but we have a few hold-outs. My stick margarine is still in the fridge and DH put the stovetop stuffing back in the pantry. I have only used butter so far though, and I may try to learn to make stuffing from scratch. The hardest part I think will be the eating out. You just don't know what these places are putting in their food. I grilled six chicken breasts today and boiled some eggs and fried some bacon and I'm planning on having salads all week with carrots and cucumbers and maybe a little lettuce.

No spinach though. Pretty soon nothing will be safe to eat but what we've grown ourselves.

Long Enough Jeans

Long enough jeans are something most people take for granted. Try finding jeans with a 36" inseam in a plus size though! I wear capris all summer and in the winters I have to wear dress pants or else jeans that are slightly, (like an inch) too short. I finally got some long jeans though, and I love going barefoot in them and seeing just my toes peeking out. I could wear a heel with them and it would look right, and I'm no longer seeing glimpses of my socks when I walk by a full-length mirror.

I wore them out shopping on Saturday and it rained. The back of the jeans by my foot got wet from puddles and slapped against my heel. It was uncomfortable, but I was happy about it. I never knew that happened. It's like a whole new pants world out there now.

Books June-Sept (18/20)

June
Black Dahlia – Nora Roberts
The Giver – Lois Lowry
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants – Ann Brashares
Tangerine – Edward Bloor
Replay – Sharon Creech

Black Dahlia is typical Nora Roberts, but know that it's the first of a trilogy. I wish I'd known. I don't mind finishing a campy romance, but I'm not really into committing to a trilogy of it. The Giver was the best book I read in June, and Replay was the worst. Traveling Pants was good. I'd have liked it at 15 or so. Tangerine was kind of weird but not in a great way.

July
"B" is for Burglar – Sue Grafton
A Great and Terrible Beauty – Libba Bray
Rebel Angels – Libba Bray
Our Man in Havana – Graham Greene
"C" is for Corpse – Sue Grafton

DH checked out a bunch of the Sue Grafton books on CD and that's what was in the car, so that's what I had to listen to on the commute. They are crap. After 3 or 4 books I still don't care about the characters, the plot devices are totally contrived, and they are very predictable. The 2 Libba Bray books were fun though, kind of goth and dark and Elizabethan and young. The best book this month was Our Man in Havana. It was subtle and funny and made me LOL.

August
"D" is for Deadbeat – Sue Grafton
Modesty Blaise – Peter O'Donnell
My Life on a Plate – India Knight

I am sure I read 5 books in August, but I am drawing a blank. Good thing I was ahead for the year already. More Sue Grafton nonsense. I read Modesty Blaise for my book club. It was fun, it was like a woman 007. My Life on a Plate was one of those britcom mom books, kind of Jennifer Weiner-esque, but edgier.

September
Housekeeping – Marilynne Robertson
Confessions of an Ugly Step-sister – Gregory Maguire
Forestwife – Theresa Tomlinson
Spinners – Donna Jo Napoli
The Book of the Lion – Michael Cadnum

Housekeeping was like an Oprah book or maybe like Snow Falling on Cedars. It had a lot of imagery and beautiful writing, but it was also dark. Its themes were about beauty and abandonment and loss and gypsies. It was kind of haunting, and I'm not sure if I liked it or not. Book of the Lion was mediocre.
I took DD to the library and she was causing a ruckus and ended up putting a bunch of books from a fairy tale display in my bag. I like fairy tales so I kept them - Confessions was a great re-telling of Cinderella and an interesting angle. Forestwife was Maid Marian, and it was very juvenile. I really liked Spinners at the beginning (Rumplestiltskin) and I even wanted to start knitting again (since I will never learn to spin or weave) but I hated the last page. It ended far too abruptly.

Food Lion

I feel like I've hit the healthy food jackpot. Food Lion. Can you believe it? Back in Fairfax the Food Lions were a little scary. They looked old and unswept and wilted. Gangs were hanging out in front of the one we normally went to, and motorcycles raced by outside.

We moved out here and were told that the best place to shop is Martin's (a spin-off of Giant). Apparently it's popular because it... has an olive bar? because it... *thinks* um, has a lot of kid push/truck carts? Probably because it serves coffee? I don't know. I hate it. It's always totally crowded on weekends, and all of the organic foods are mixed in with everything else, so I have to shop the whole store to get what I want.

Did I mention we've switched to organic? All organic dairy products (cheese can be hard to find), humane raised meat for the most part, and organic fruits/vegetables unless they have thick skin that you discard like oranges and bananas. It's more expensive, but we eat less of it. Like I don't just dump cheese on things because I know it cost like triple what regular cheese cost. We also eat out a lot too, and then all bets are off.

Anyway, so 2 weekends ago I went to Food Lion to find something Martin's didn't have (distilled water) and voila! What is this? A whole section of organic items! Including cleaning and beauty products, and even the freezer and refrigerator items! Wait, it gets better - so I went back this week and found free range, organic chicken breasts in the meat department! *faints*

I just haven't been able to bring myself to buy chicken since I found out about the animal cruelty, so we've just been avoiding chicken (much to the dismay of DH). I was going to buy local chicken, but dealing with a whole, bone-in, skin-on chicken was too daunting, plus I'd have to go out to a farm an hour away to pick it up.

I couldn't be happier about the Food Lion here. The store is clean and uncrowded, the organic section actually has a little wood floor, the produce looks crisp, and the international section was huge too, and I can get everything I need for dinner for a week in a half hour.

Maid Update

There are three reasons I'm letting the maid go:

1 - After the first cleaning, she just does surface cleaning. Like, I can spray/wipe the toilet and use a swiffer myself.

2 - She wears totally inappropriate outfits. Last time she was wearing tight jeans and a glittery spaghetti strap tank top and no bra. Good for her that she has a nice body, but when she is so blatant it makes me question her motives.

I could have tolerated the first 2 things a while longer and given her the benefit of the doubt, but the third thing is the real clincher.

3 - After the last time she was here I noticed I was missing some prescription pain killers. I don't know for sure that she took them, but I know I didn't finish them and we haven't had anyone over since the last time I checked the bottle. Also, the bottle was definitely moved during the course of the cleaning, pushed to the back of the top of the fridge and hidden behind some other stuff.

I don't have proof that she took them, but I have too many suspicions to be able to feel comfortable having her over again.

Healthy Eating Plan

I am trying to find a balance between quick cooking and healthy cooking. We usually get home between 7-7:30 and DD is supposed to be in bed by 8:30. I want to do a family dinner where we all sit down at the table 3 nights/week.

Sound impossible? It probably is. DH and I have both put on weight since we moved out here. I figure it's the combination of 3 more hrs/day sitting (commuting) and more fast food meals (sadly, eaten in the car during said commute).

This weekend I browned 3 lbs of ground beef. Last night I used 1/3 of it in spaghetti and we can have it for lunch leftovers at work. I put the rest of it in the fridge.

Tonight I used it to make tacos for dinner. I made my own taco seasonings with herbs, tomatoes and green peppers that I grew (recipe to follow), and we had wheat tortillas, organic cheese, and local corn. On Wed. I'm going to use the rest of the meat in beef and bean burritos. It's a heavily beef week, but I think less variety will make things faster. Next week will be chicken week.

Stan Livingston's Tacos

chopped garlic
2 tsp curry powder
1 tsp each of oregano, garlic salt, onion salt, paprika, chili powder
pinch of ground red pepper (I left that out)
2 tomatoes, chopped
3/4 C water
olive oil
I added a green pepper chopped up very fine

You add all of that to drained ground beef and let it simmer for a while. Right before I served it I added fresh oregano and cilantro.

Whole Foods

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/products/meat-poultry/qualitystandards.html

Finally, a place to shop for humanely raised meat! Organics are good and fine, and although I knocked them in a previous post, we actually had already made the switch to organic milk and yogurt (which imo, if you only switch to one organic thing, it should be milk, and if you only do it for one person in your family, it should be your daughter).

There are lots of places to buy organic food, but just because something is labelled organic, doesn't guarantee anything about how the animals were treated. It looks like Whole Foods is setting standards for compassionate treatment of animals, and has plans to do even more.

They're opening a store that I'll be driving by twice a day on my regular route, woot! I just hope it doesn't smell like a health food store. Whenever I walk into one I lose my appetite. I don't even know what it is, maybe the vitamins?

I'm also thinking about trying distilled water for a couple of weeks, but I'm still a little divided on that.