Forget Hurricane Preparedness, Try Halloween Preparedness

Something wicked is around the corner...

and it's not a monster with an ax! (but it could be) It's time for us to kick our mad lab prep into high gear and start unpacking the unbelievable amount of things we fill our garage and the rest of our home with to make it a truly "hare" raising Halloween experience. With only 99 days left to our favorite haunted holiday, we need to get cracking! Time to break out the coffin, bones, and the endless list of gooey, gory, glowing, and gross items we have collected over the years. We are always looking for new additions, and even though last year was great, I think I really want to make it different this year. The kids in our area know our tricks, and while they look forward to seeing our display, it can get tiresome. We have two main events, our first is the Halloween/Birthday party in early October, where I celebrate my big day, and freak our family and friends out with my gross food items such as, black bat wings and swamp dip. The grossest thing I make is the realistic brain. This throws EVERY one off, and very few can handle even tasting it. Of course pictures aren't available, because while I was running around chatting and refilling food, I completely spaced on having an amazing camera in my possession. Not this year!! I will have pictures of everything!!

Lately I have felt like bottomless void for all food items. I don't know what is causing it, but I am always starving. I suppose next month I can ask my doctor about this disturbing development. Thankfully these are maintenance appointments, and I will be going back quarterly instead of weekly, as it was when all this started. Cooking low fat has become so much easier. I can typically replace and substitute just about anything in a recipe and make it healthier. Although, one thing I have been unable to replace has been bacon. I'm sorry, chopped up, smoked turkey thigh isn't going to come close to bacon, no matter what shape you press it into. It's one of those things I will just have to let go of for now. HEB's maple flavored turkey bacon isn't so bad. It tasted like maple ham instead of smokey bacon goodness. As a breakfast meat, it will do when turkey sausage isn't what I want, but turkey bacon isn't going to be a staple in my fridge. I have to throw in the towel on my hopes for low fat bacon option or turkey bacon that doesn't have the texture of Beggin Strips doggy treats. Bleh!

This isn't the center of the Earth, this is Tuesday.

While I am wasting away over here, bacon-less and unable to satisfy my hunger, We are also being steamed alive outside. The dog days of summer are officially upon us. Arm yourselves with fans, pools, and lemonade for a few more months and hang in there. The Farmer's Almanac says we aren't cooling down until late September. They also predict a hurricane in The Gulf mid to late August. So just in case, try to keep cool and batten the hatches y'all. This would be a good time to vacation in Alaska. If you get the notion to go, don't forget to take me with you! I will have to head back by September though, Halloween parties don't plan themselves you know. I suppose I might miss my family after a while too. Speaking of family, Master Pigglesworth has made almost a full recovery from his tonsillectomy, which we are all grateful for. It was a bummer to have him down in the dumps for almost two weeks, and unable to be his normal crazy self. This weekend we will be swimming and playing as we normally would on the weekend. Game on folks, game on.

Hitting A Nerve

Final Step: Curl into a ball and cry!

I had my first ever root canal done yesterday. I must say that I could go another 31 years without having it done again. It wasn't painful at all. The shots they give you numb you for hours. But what it lacks in pain is made up for with the sights, sounds, and smells that accompany it. Let's just say I had my eyes closed, put Vic's vapo rub in my nose, and tried not to rip the arm rests off in my anxiety. The only good point is that thanks to my dental insurance, the whole ordeal was pretty cheap! I mean if you call $376 cheap.For a root canal and crown? That is unheard of! My boss isn't allowed to change our insurance. It's the best I have ever had! Sadly he will probably get rid of it because for the first time in 3 years, I have used it. Not to mention my dentist has a list of torture, I mean work, he needs to do on me. He's just going to have to wait, because even if the nerve was removed from my tooth, chewing hurts, and accidentally biting down?? Oh god. Not good.

My diary entries never ended up like Katy's! 

I was addicted to writing by the age of 10. I kept one of those small diaries with the lock anyone could break under my pillow. I never had anything interesting to say other than talk about how awful my mom was to me, and thinking about boys and kisses and what not. As I evolved as a human, my diaries tended to be used in the worst of times in my life. Unlike this blog, which is pretty much an online and public diary of sorts, when I was my most distressed I gravitated towards writing. I have journals, and spiral note books everywhere. I ran across one on Sunday, and it was from 2003. It doesn't surprise me how 9 years has changed my views on life. I had been separated from my first husband for a year, and just started dating my current husband. I thought I knew what life was all about. Little did I know, I had barely scratched the surface.  I was so naive then, always looking right past the bad for the good, no matter how big the bad might be. I miss that part of myself. I thought I was so right in my assessments, and willing to ignore misgivings and intuition for the silver lining. I suppose that is part of growing up. The worst part of it all is knowing 10 years from now, I am most likely going to be laughing at my 31 year old self as I look through this blog. Maybe by then, I might have my head screwed on straight enough...

or perhaps not. I like me the way I am.

I Thwarted

Self Control, I haz it! (but by not much!)

I hit a weak point this weekend. Saturday night I came home from my parents after a long day, not feeling so well, and after about an hour nap I woke up feeling ravenous. I was starving, and I had a craving. I didn't discuss my craving with anyone. (I really should have a sponsor or someone to call when I start feeling indignant.) Never the less, I announced I was going to get something, and left with no further words. I felt like a teenager sneaking off to drink beer at the beach! I was going to go to Whataburger, and get myself a burger and fries! I talked myself out of and into it at least 4 times in the short drive to the restaurant from home. The teeny tiny, yet insistent voice of reason was fighting with my who-gives-a-crap side. I really thought the voice of reason was bullied back into the depths of my subconscious, and I was going to get that burger, until at the last stop light before the restaurant. I was so close to fatty heaven. The second the light turned green, my blinker came on, and I took a right and headed to our grocery store, HEB. I  purchased the leanest ground beef available, and went home to make burgers on the grill, and bake some fries. I suppose my aversion to pain is strong enough to beat out even the strongest cravings.

I must have used up all my common sense up Saturday, because by Sunday, my brain was on auto pilot. I had one goal in mind, and it was to make home made peach ice cream. I looked for just the right recipe, and I made sure to get everything I needed while at the store. With my sister and brother in law's help and their ice cream maker, I made not only peach ice cream, but vanilla bean ice cream too. They were both good. I had a scoop of each. Neither of them was what you considered low fat or lactose free.  But had eaten little all day, and wasn't worried about the fat content. Somehow, in all of this I had forgotten my lactose intolerance. I have been drinking almond milk for months, even before the pancreatitus.  By the time I got home, the magnitude of what I had done had already begun haunting me. By 4 am I hated myself. Not one of my finest moments... yes I can do stupid things too!

And good bye strep throat every other week!

This Thursday, The Intrepid Mr. Pigglesworth will have his tonsils removed. So far, he has been very brave.  He is already letting us know he will be eating plenty of ice cream and squishies (slushies), and his talking will be limited. I wish I could find my old school snoopy ice cone maker, that would entertain him and help keep him hydrated.

Despite all the talk and the prep that has been going on to get him ready for this, there is one loose end that still needs to be tied down. His mommy. Her baby is going in for SURGERY and she is scared he is going to come out of the anesthesia kicking and screaming as he has done before. She is officially a basket case. I wish I could take the day off and be with both of them, but sadly my schedule these next two weeks doesn't leave any available time open. So let's all hope Hayden has grown out of his angry reaction to sedation, and his Mommy doesn't rip the nurses in two while waiting to see for herself that her baby is okay.

Open Up and Say, Ahh

My dentist is cuter, and way less sadistic thankfully.

 After all the medical attention I have received in the past few months, I decided June was my month off. I succeeded. For one month, I was free of the lab coats, needles, and co pays. This month I am visiting my dentist. While I have a very awesome dentist, and his wife who runs the office is equally as nice, I still hate to have dental work done. Ever since watching little shop of Horrors as a kid, well, let's just say Orin Scrivello - D.D.S. left me with a lasting impression. "I thrill when I drill a bicuspid / It's swell though they tell me I'm mal-ad-just-ed." I don't get too upset over it until they start talking payments. Even with insurance, which covers a whole $1000, one root canal, and a crown will cost around $3,000. This is for one solitary tooth. I don't understand how they can say that dentist have the highest suicide rate of any profession with all that money they make. Is it possibly remorse for ripping us off that forces them over the literal and proverbial edge? But if that theory is correct, then why not lower the rate and therefore save yourself the trouble? Let's be reasonable here. Driving off the cliff in a yellow Lamborghini Diablo is flashy, but it is just a shocking as driving off in a Toyota Carolla, I promise. Same fiery crashing and everything. Honestly, no one but the people on the road will know what car you died in. Once you get to the bottom, it will be burnt to a crisp either way.

The couch is the safe zone, and every where else is hot lava... Stay on the couch!

My last post mentioned the heat, and how we needed the rain. Ask and I shall receive. It makes me think that it is possible that my husband has a weather machine in the garage some where. I did buy him that book "Electronic Gadgets for the Evil Genius", perhaps it isn't just an entertaining bathroom read. Or maybe he won it from Dick Cheney in a poker game? All I know is, we got rain! But someone didn't finish reading the post, because I specifically asked for NO MOSQUITOES. This was blatantly forgotten, and now I fear we will all be anemic in the next few days. Maybe if someone would invent a mosquito that sucked fat instead of blood, we wouldn't do our best to be rid of them. I would honor them in my home, and pay them homage! Sadly, the majority of the rest of the country is either on fire, or being baked to death. Adding insult to injury, you get storms that succeed in only cooling you temporarily while simultaneously knocking out your power for weeks at a time. These are the days to be in a pool, a lake, or the ocean. Get to a body of water and stay there!

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, and beer.

The time is upon us for us for celebrating the day our very first congress assembly got together and decided to draft a nasty letter to King George III basically telling him where to stick it, and how to go about breaking it off too. The miracle that I see is not that they produced such poetry as the Declaration of Independence, but that Congress accomplished something without looking like a room full of buffoons. Good for you, fore fathers. Wish the guys and gals currently in Congress and the Senate could get it together. This selfish business of government we have now probably has more than a few spinning in their graves. 276 years ago, they were patting themselves on the back, thinking they had just secured a better America. Sadly, too many of the wrong people got their greedy, corrupt or just idiotic hands on our government, and now the youngest country is looking less like a responsible, hard working, and brave nation, and much more like a huge mess. I know I sound like a total pessimist here, but I think I am being a realist. We put ourselves here, and I hope we get ourselves out. Happy Independence day fellow Americans!