Creepy and Cold (But In a Good Way)

I spent Thursday and Friday working from home in the hopes that Saint Nicholas-- wait, wrong hope. In the hopes that I'd get my heater/furnace replaced. But the company doing the repair had to reschedule me -- one repair scheduled before mine was running longer than expected, and they bumped up another one for a house that had no heating at all, not even emergency heat.

I suppose I can accept that. They're scheduled this time to come out tomorrow, so I probably will not be blogging.

Aside from that, I had a pretty busy weekend. I took a long lunch on Friday and went shopping, and knocked out almost all the rest of my Christmas shopping (I just have to order cards and my dad's annual calendar, and then take Penny shopping for a couple of her friends). I got some editing done, and made some Christmas gifts for the kids' teachers (except I need the kids to sign them before they're officially done, but I'll get them to do that tonight, and then I can wrap them and that's all done). I spent most of Saturday morning and a couple of hours Sunday night working on a book trailer for He Loves Me For My Brainsss, which is coming out in about a month.

Saturday afternoon, I went to KT and Kevin's for their Creepy Christmas Party. KT, being the music freak that she is, hired Jonah Knight to come and perform for her (I think it was part of a kickstarter, or some similar crowdfunded effort). I was expecting the kids present to be a problem, but aside from some in-and-out at the beginning, they were remarkably well-behaved. And the music was great, of course. I have a new favorite novelty Christmas song ("Bacon and Beer", which, alas, is not actually available for sale) and I didn't bring any cash with me to KT's party, but I will be sure to have some on hand at MarsCon. (And during the break between his two sets, Jonah agreed to let me use his zombie song as background music for my book trailer, whoo!) After Jonah finished singing, we had a Geeky Gift Exchange, in which the ring I brought was well-liked, and Greg kindly rescued me from the wacky wig I first opened so that I could go home with a fairly impressive Nerf gun. After that, all the ladies posed on the bed with Jonah (there was apparently a joke with his wife about groupies), and then we all went out to a Chinese buffet for dinner. Mm, Chinese buffet.

Pictures, you say? Why, yes, I do have pictures!

Sunday morning, I ran a bunch of errands, and then after lunch, I drove up to W&M campus to meet Elizabeth for a craft show. I'd forgotten about it being Grand Illumination night -- all of CW and campus were already swarming. It was insane. But I found a parking space over at Zable Stadium and walked from there (more or less in the break between the Old and New campuses) up to the Campus Center, where the craft show was being held. (Holy CRAP, am I out of shape... It's hard to believe that I once did that walk, and longer ones, several times a day, at top speed.)

The craft show was nice, though; I picked up a new necklace, and also stumbled across the most amazing handmade chocolate ever. It's made with, they swear, absolutely no sweeteners. At all. No sugar, no honey, no agave, no artificial sweeteners. Nothing. Just cocoa and salt. So the resulting chocolate is low in both calories and carbs. And unlike artificially sweetened chocolate, which tastes kind of like chocolate-scented wax, this stuff. Is. Amazing. And best of all: they have a physical store right here in Williamsburg. I bought some coffee spoons at the show -- I figure I'll split them between the kids' stockings (only instead of coffee, I'll give them warm milk to make chocolate milk with). Each coffee spoon is only about a third of a gram of carbs, which means Penny can pig out on all six of hers in one day if she wants!

I ended the day with some editing and some slouching about watching television, though I ended up staying up a good hour and a half later than I'd intended trying to finish the book trailer and get it uploaded.

All in all: an excellent weekend!

This coming weekend promises to be excessively busy, but it should all be loads of fun, so I'm looking forward to it.

Sparks Fly

I know, it's been forever last Tuesday since I wrote here. I'm sorry about that.

Part of it is insanity at work eating up lots of both work time and (supposedly) personal time.

Some of it has been dealing with personal things that have absolutely no place in a public forum. (Though I will say thank you to those of you who have offered support, even without knowing what's going on. I'm sorry to be keeping you all in the dark.)

And some of it (let us be honest) is sheer, unadulterated laziness. (Ah, there's the Liz you all know and love.)

This is not a return to the regular schedule (work insanity continues into next week, at minimum), but I'm kind of stuck waiting for someone this morning, so I figured I'd at least touch base and let you all know I'm not dead yet.

I hope everyone had a good 4th of July! Do I even have any non-American readers? If so, I hope you all had a nice Wednesday, but we-all had us a national holiday yesterday. A holiday traditionally celebrated by eating grilled, potentially carcinogenic meat, tons of unhealthy food, and then drinking alcohol while watching large, loud explosions. I think the idea is to recreate the general sensory experience of the Revolutionary War, when we... Okay, I was going to fill that in with an patently incorrect history summary filled with modern references (e.g., bombs created by cheap Chinese fireworks factories) and in my head, it's hysterically funny, but I'm so reliably bad at history that I worried some of you might think I was actually that ignorant. And also, I'm so freaking exhausted this morning that I can't figure out how to put the words together.

And why am I so freaking exhausted this morning? Because yesterday, to celebrate Independence Day, we all drove up to Jenn and Brian's to eat steaks the size of my head (I know I'm prone to hyperbole, but I'm not even joking about that) and drink beer and hard cider and watch Brian and his buddy Travis set off a gajillion fireworks. (Okay, that bit was hyperbolic. But only a little. The man was using a propane blowtorch to light fuses!) They were loud and fun and pretty, everything a fireworks display should be.

Also, the kids got to blow through a stack of sparklers. I mean a stack. 'Cause when Brian went to buy fireworks, everything was buy-one-get-one, and the sparklers were cheapest in packs of twenty. That's not twenty sparklers, mind you. That's twenty boxes of sparklers. So we had around forty boxes of sparklers. They didn't go through all of them, thank goodness, but they still went through a lot.

Anyway, fireworks and sparklers until well past 10pm, and then we had an hour and a half drive home, so I didn't get to bed until around midnight. And that's why I'm so freaking exhausted this morning.

There will be pictures on Flickr, eventually, but all I had time for this morning was downloading a few of my favorites so I could post them here.

Quiet Weekend

I like a quiet weekend, but it doesn't give me much to blog about.

We hung out with the Hegemony, as usual, Friday night. Babysat for them on Saturday so they could go see Prometheus. Spent Sunday mostly at home, running errands, dorking on our computers, and reading.

Penny and I got haircuts Saturday morning. (Nothing exciting; just trims and I got my color refreshed -- it's about two steps redder this time around, and I'm still trying to decide if I like it.)

I tried a new recipe for Sunday's dinner -- bacon-wrapped hamburger patties -- that was very well-received by the whole family. I hereby formally and publicly kowtow to KT for linking me to this list, because I've been completely bored with everything in my usual repertoire, and it's hard to come by meals that a) are mostly healthy; b) everyone in the family is willing to eat; and c) can be prepared in a reasonable amount of time. That list is meal-planning gold.

***

After spending all last week feeling proud of myself for actually getting up when the alarm went off and going downstairs and exercising, I managed to twist my knee Saturday night. How, you ask? By performing the stupidly simple task of bending over from a sitting position to try to pick something up off the floor. Which is even more embarrassing than the time I ended up on crutches after a game of Frisbee -- at least that was an activity. And of course it was the good knee, not the one that's been sort of mildly dodgy for months.

All day Sunday, it twinged every time I straightened it -- you know, like you do when you stand up or walk? -- despite my popping Aleve like candy.

This morning when I woke up, I gingerly straightened my leg, waiting for the pain, and there was none. Oh, awesome, I thought. I guess it just needed some good rest. Maybe I can do some exercise after all. I got up (still no pain!) and went into the bathroom, pondering which of my 15-minute routines would stress the knee least (because I'm not dumb)... and when I sat on the toilet, my knee all but shrieked in protest. Yesterday it was straightening that was bad; today, apparently bending is verboten.

So no exercise for me and my knee this morning. Dammit.

(I swear, between my knees and my back, I'm about to say, "Fuck it, I'm just destined to be fat," and go out and buy a bunch of mumus so I can stop freaking out whenever I outgrow another pair of pants.)

Working Backward

"I want to do something simple for Mother's Day dinner," I told my sister-in-law, "because we're helping friends move the day before. Maybe just a nice beef stew."

Beef stew has to cook for a good long while if you want the beef to be tender instead of tough. And then I'm taking it to my parents', so I want some time for the pot to cool down a bit before I try to transport it. So, working backwards: Need to leave for my parents' around 3:30... so I need to take the pot off the stove by 2:00... so I need to start browning meat and chopping veggies by about 9:30... so I need to do the grocery shopping right at 8:30 as soon as I get up.

Except it's Mother's Day, and there has been mention of a breakfast in bed planned. Scratch that. Do the grocery shopping Saturday night?

Nope, nope, nope. We're helping friends move on Saturday, and given the list of friends coming from out of town, I expect we'll stay late enough that I'm not going to want to do the grocery shopping Saturday night.

Saturday morning? Nope. Heading out by 9:00 Saturday morning, not really going to be time to shop before that.

Friday night? That's our usual night to hang out with the Hedge, and we don't generally get home until quite late.

Friday afternoon? Would've been a candidate, except that the cat has a vet appointment.

So... Grocery shopping on Thursday evening it was, then.

Which is all my way of saying: gonna be a busy weekend. Y'all have a good one, and I'll see you on Monday!

Run Around

Crazy busy weekend.

Hung with the Hedge as usual on Friday. We had Pierce's for dinner (damn, but I should eat there more often) and played some Rock Band after the kids were in bed. (I even managed to keep my drumming scores over 85%. One of these days, I will actually figure out the timing on the effing kick pedal.)

Saturday morning, Penny helped me frost/decorate some black forest cupcakes. (I used this recipe, except instead of the glaze, Penny gave each cupcake a white icing base frost, then I piped a chocolate frosting ring around the edge, and then we filled the ring with cherry pie filling. The white base made the pie filling stand out bright and pretty.) I don't usually like cooked or processed cherries (maraschino cherries make me gag), but this was Jenn's specific request for her birthday party. What the birthday girl wants, the birthday girl gets.

So Jenn took us and the Hedge out for dinner (we decided on TGI Friday's as being family friendly, and got the Best Gay Waiter Ever) and then we went back to the Hedge and had the cupcakes (everyone said they were wonderful, and we introduced Alex and Henry to the concept of shooting whipped cream straight into your mouth from the can, which was awesome and I wish I'd had my camera ready to go) and then after the kids were in bed, the rest of us gamed until somewhere around midnight.

And then Sunday, pretty shortly after lunch, we took the kids down to Chuck-E-Cheese for Henry's birthday party.

I know it's not cool to like Chuck-E-Cheese if you're an adult, but I kind of do. I even like their pizza, which you're really not supposed to admit, but it was damned good pizza. I downloaded a coupon for extra tokens, and found out that if you bring in a recent report card, you can get extra tokens for good grades, so I dug up Penny's latest report card (5 As and a B!) and stuck that in my purse, too. The kids got big ol' handfuls of tokens to play, and there were even plenty of leftovers for Matt and I.

I donated a few of my tickets to Ripley so she could get a toy she wanted, and then I gave the rest to Alex, who didn't really grasp the whole "trade tickets for prizes" concept and was -- silly kid -- picking rides for the fun of them! (Yeah, that's sarcastic, and yet I expect if we'd prepared to leave and he'd realized his sister had gotten toys and he hadn't, there would have been trouble.)

Anyway, both kids had a great time, and they were really well behaved considering they were short on sleep, and now Alex is talking about maybe having his birthday there. (His birthday is eight months away; I'm taking it with a grain of salt for the moment.)

Anyway, both Alex and I went to bed a good half-hour or so earlier than usual last night. It was a great, fun weekend... but a tiring one.

Easter'd

Hooray for days off and friends and family and fun!

As it turned out, at the last possible moment, I got to take Friday off altogether. So I drove Penny down to Chesapeake for a sleepover -- I got to hang out with KT for a couple of hours and chat, and we had lunch together, and I got to see the condo they're about to buy before I came back up -- and in the meantime, Matt and Adin went to Busch Gardens, where they got to ride all the rides. All the roller coasters that Matt's had to walk wistfully past because he's been with me (I hate roller coasters) or Penny (who loves roller coasters but has height restrictions), he got to ride with Adin. They had a fantastic time, despite it being just a touch chilly.

I met them there around 2, by which time they'd pretty much done all the rides. I wanted to do Dark Kastle -- they'd already done it, but I wasn't going to name any rides they hadn't already done -- so we went over and did it. We wound up in a car with a trio of pre-teen (or maybe early teen) girls behind us. The girls started screaming the instant our car moved, and right at first, I thought that was going to be annoying, but it actually turned out to be awesome, in fact, adding an element of verve to the ride. As we dismounted, we joked about just following them to whatever they were doing next.

But by that point, the park was getting stupidly crowded and all the lines were crazy long. We got in line for another ride, but just before we got to it, the ride broke. And we were watching the clock to make sure we weren't late picking up the kids, so we got some snacks and meandered slowly and happily back home. (When it's my turn to spend a full day at the park without the kids, I want to do all the shows.)

Since Penny was off at her sleepover, we were free of our usual carb/dessert restraints for dinner, so we had pizza (real pizza, from Papa John's, which I have missed a lot) and Coldstone, and then we got to hang out with Adin (and Braz, once he got back from his trip) until it was time to go home.

Saturday was very busy: I boiled eggs, did the week's grocery shopping so I wouldn't have to do it on Easter morning, and then made peas with pearl onions for Easter dinner and a lemon chess pie for Easter dessert. While Alex was napping and Matt and Penny were off at the library, I put the kids' Easter baskets together.

After Alex woke up, the kids dyed eggs and had a great time doing it.

When that was done, we took the kids over to the Hedge, ate a quick dinner, and then Matt and I went out for a little date night -- we went to see A Separation at the DoG Street theater. As a note, the descriptions of the movie that we'd seen makes it sound like the movie's pivot/plot points turn on the couple's decision whether to leave the country and/or whether to get divorced; in fact, those decisions are made in the first ten minutes of the film, and the rest of it hinges on what falls out because of it. It was still very good, just not the movie we thought we were getting.

Another note: DEPRESSING. I mean, we knew it was a movie about living in Iran, and that it was going to be depressing. But the only -- and I mean only, entirely free of hyperbole -- happy moment in the movie is a brief scene that exists, I'm fairly certain, solely so it can drop you off the highest possible cliff when the next moment of horror strikes.

When the movie was done, we walked across DoG Street to the Trellis for dessert. Which only made me want to have dessert at the Trellis more often, because they had four or five things I really wanted to try.

Then we went back to the Hedge and cheered ourselves up by hanging with Braz and Adin and playing Cards Against Humanity.

We were up early on Easter, of course, because the kids knew the baskets were waiting... They had fun with them, and didn't even whine too much when I told them they'd have to wait until at least 9 before I'd go hide eggs outside for them. We went over to my parents' more or less immediately after lunch, where they hunted more eggs, and then we had an early dinner.

(I'll have Easter pictures later; I'm still sorting them.)

You'd think that a holiday devoted to chocolate and candy (well, okay, it is at our house) would be a nightmare for parents of a diabetic kid, and you'd probably be right, except not this time. We let her have a measured amount of candy at every meal (though for two of those meals, she deliberately chose to have less candy than we were allowing, because she's very much in the "but if I eat it, then I won't have it" camp when it comes to chocolate), and while she coasted on the high side of her range for most of the day, she did, in fact, only have one officially high blood sugar, and no lows. Which is a better record than she's had for most of the last month, to be honest, so we were both pleased and astonished. (Not enough to let her have candy more often, though, which I think was her secret wish.)

We got home around 5, and I was just about ready to go to bed right away, except that Jenn and Brian came down to deliver the new shelves/entertainment unit that Brian had built for us. It looks great, though we still need to sand and stain it before we put it in its final resting place. Which means I need to get my hands on a sander (I'm tempted to just buy one), and run to the hardware store for some brushes, a dropcloth, and a tarp to cover it so it can dry overnight without dew forming on it. (There's my project for this coming weekend, I guess.) Anyway, Jenn and Brian stayed until around 10 or so. By the time they left, I was ready to completely fall over from exhaustion, which is why I've still only got egg-dying pictures and not Easter Day pictures posted.

I've been ignoring my camera too much lately, though -- I wound up taking tons of pictures that were either way too light or way too dark because I'd forgotten to check the settings before I started snapping. Sigh. Well, now that the weather is getting nice, maybe I'll remember to grab the camera more often.

Frogs and Paint

Good weekend, yay!

We gamed on Saturday, and it was awesome. There was grilled meat, and bags of chips and salsa, and boxes of cookies. There were obstacles to work around and party tactics to formulate. My character got to mutter the sotto voce line, "I'm working with a demon and a werewolf. Mother would be so proud," (which is very funny if you know that my character's mother is Zoya). I got to unleash my big daily power and roll 6d6 for damage. Booya! And! And! Three party members were eaten by giant frogs. Could it get any more awesome than that? No. No, I don't think it can. (...They got better.)

On Sunday, while Matt was taking a much-needed nap, I took the kids to the new Paint On Pottery shop that recently opened in Williamsburg. Alex's dinosaur is fated to look like something from the Black Lagoon, I fear, but both kids had a fantastic time and can't wait to pick up their creations next weekend.

And I made black bean soup for dinner. Now that I've figured out the proportions of the ingredients that works best for me, I could eat this soup until it starts pouring out of my ears, I swear.

And then last night, after Penny went to bed, I sat down with my latest story, did a read-through and edit, and emailed it in! Submission: accomplished!

If there was one thing detracting from the weekend... At several points in the last few days, I've been driving along and looked down the road and thought, "Wow, it looks really smoky down there. Is there a fire?" only to realize, half a beat later, that it wasn't billows of smoke I was looking at, but billows of pollen. Seriously, billowing. Like smoke. It's incredibly thick this year, and we're not even to the really prime pollen season yet, which doesn't usually hit until the first couple of weeks of April. (I'm hoping this is just an early spring, due to our mild winter, but I probably should not count on it.)

Good News/Bad News

Okay, so I didn't get everything done that I wanted to do. Especially sleep.

Okay, Friday was pretty awesome. I met Adin for lunch, and then the two of us went to a pottery painting place and had fun making a mess of some ceramic. (We'll get our pieces back at the end of this week, I think. I'm looking forward to seeing how awful mine turn out, or if they're actually half-decent.) And then, because the weather was so nice and warm, we had grilled meats for dinner. Yum!

I'd forgotten I had a hair appointment Saturday morning, so even though I actually went to bed more or less on time (thanks to Alex throwing a hissy fit so I took him home rather than put him to bed at the Hegemony), I was up at 8 so I could caffeinate and get over to the salon.

Hair re-colored and trimmed, I considered Penny's plea that we join the Hedge at Busch Gardens' pre-opening preview day for pass holders, and decided it was good. So we left the boys at home (Alex was still in pretty dire need of a nap) and headed out. Naturally, the park was completely packed -- we left home at 11:30. It took us 5 minutes to get to the park grounds, and then another twenty minutes to get through the parking line. And then by the time we'd made it to the back of the park to where the Hedge were having lunch, it took us another hour to get our food. (Note to self: Remember, when at Busch Gardens this summer, not to eat at "normal" mealtimes. Get a snack at noon, and have lunch at 2.)

But we did eventually get to have some fun, though Penny didn't get to do any roller coasters, as she was hoping. (There were pictures, but I haven't had time to upload them to flickr yet.) But after we left Busch Gardens, I went home and collected Alex so Matt could go to his D&D game, and then we met up with the Hedge again for dinner. Some begging had induced me to agree that Sarah could sleep over at our house, so we packed up and came home shortly after dinner, and I got all three kids to bed.

Blam! Saturday gone.

Sunday was the usual chores, mostly. We met up with the Hedge for lunch so we could give Sarah back to her dad, but other than that just lounged around the house. I made a pot roast for dinner that turned out very well, though, and I'm eagerly anticipating the leftovers. (Pot roast is always better as leftovers. I don't know why, but it's true.)

And then Monday -- yesterday -- was supposed to be my day off to really relax. Catch up on sleep, do some writing, maybe run a couple of errands. Matt looked at the calendar Sunday night and noticed a doctor appointment I'd completely forgotten about, so that was good, because otherwise I'd have missed it.

The morning got off slow, though -- I did more chatting with KT than writing (this is why I should register my copy of Freedom) and when that two hours was up, I finally guilted myself into doing our taxes.

That was a weird conglomeration of good news/bad news. Good news: We've paid down quite a chunk of the principle on our mortgage, so in 2011 we paid only half the interest we'd paid in 2010. Bad news: That drop meant that our itemized deduction was actually smaller than the standard deduction. Good news: Using the standard deduction is loads easier and lighter on the paperwork, so next year I can probably skip straight to the standard unless something happens to make me think itemizing would be a good idea again.

Good news: I actually did save the receipts from my Vistaprint orders and when I went to Roanoke Pride in September, so I could claim all that stuff as a business expense (advertising and promotion travel are allowable). Bad news: I made less than $1600 from my writing and editing combined; less than $1400 after factoring in the expenses. I won't be able to give up the Day Job any time soon. Good news: That means I got to use the "EZ" version of the self-employment form. (That would be Schedule C, for my writer friends who haven't done their taxes yet...)

Good news: We owed less than last year. Bad news: We still owed. Good news: We make enough money that we owe taxes.

Bad news: The VA form is still put together by epileptic meth addicts. Good news: The VA form still lets us claim a lot more of our daycare expenses, so we're getting a small refund from the state.

Back and forth like that. I think if I had to write them all down and add them up, the good outweighed the bad... but only just barely. Anyway, I lost a solid three hours to wading through all that paperwork. Which is nothing compared to, say, my brother and sister-in-law, who operate their own business out of their home. (Sam spent over 20 hours just gathering files and organizing things for their CPA.) But it was still three hours out of a day I'd really wanted to spend on less mentally draining efforts. Or at least, more enjoyable ones.

Then I ran some errands and ate lunch and tried to wake up a little. Later in the afternoon, I drove over to the doctor's office and had my annual boobsmashing. (I realize I am now old enough that even if I switched to a different insurance company, they're pretty much guaranteed to agree to pay for annual mammograms. I guess that's... good?)

I thought about going to bed early last night, but instead I thought I should recover some of the writing time I'd meant to have earlier in the day, so I started up Freedom (Twitter is my nemesis in the evenings) and dove into my current project. I didn't do a progressive word count, but I wrote a solid two and a half single-spaced pages, so probably 1500 words, give or take? That felt like pretty good progress. I'm only another maybe four pages from wrapping up the story, so I might make that April 1 submission deadline with it, after all. (And if not -- or if they reject it for the anthology -- I think it's good enough that a little scrub would let it stand alone.)

So that was my long weekend. Not nearly as relaxing and sleep-intensive as I'd hoped, but still (mostly, except for the taxes) pretty good.

Now, I just need a good, long nap... What? Work?

Dammit.

Fourish

I had a lovely day off on Friday. I spent the morning at Panera, writing, and then Adin joined me for lunch, and after that we went shopping and got pedicures. We all met up again at Plaza Azteca for dinner, and then we went back to Adin's place so Alex could open his birthday present from them, which turned out to be an "I Spy" bingo game. (Like regular bingo, but with objects and letters of the alphabet, with a number of variations suggested by the rules, depending on how advanced the players are.) We played a few rounds of that, and then I went to my book club party.

For the first time this year, we decided to hold it at a restaurant instead of burdening anyone with the job of cleaning up and providing snacks. That turned out to be an awesome idea. We went to Food For Thought and had a fantastic time. As a clever holiday promotion, the manager was handing out what he called "Secret Santa cards" -- little envelopes that contained a surprise gift, ranging from a free glass of wine to a complete dinner for two on Valentine's Day. The catch was that we couldn't open them ourselves; we have to bring them in sometime in January and have a manager open them. So of course we decided that we have to have our January book club there, too!

Saturday was calmer -- we ran some errands in the morning (like taking a box of stuff to the post office so we can hope it gets to his mom's before we do), and Matt went to his monthly D&D game that evening. I took the kids out to dinner, and they were surprisingly good.

Sunday was a little crazier. We had the usual chores, and we exchanged presents with our next-door neighbors, and then Matt and Penny went to see a production of the Nutcracker ballet while Alex napped. After Alex woke up, I took him down to my parents', where Matt and Penny met up with us (they'd had a good time at the ballet, though as Matt said, it was a children's dance troupe, so the performances were a little uneven) for the family birthday party for Alex. Mom made her homemade mac-and-cheese, and Sam brought a gorgeous salad, and Alex seemed quite happy with all his presents. We all had big pieces of cake (except John and Sam, who were being good and making the rest of us look bad) and HOLY CRAP MY BABY IS (nearly) FOUR.

Who let that happen?

Speaking of crazier...

My office Christmas party holiday luncheon annual morale event is today. (Catered lunch, yum!) Tonight we're swapping gifts with the Hegemony. No plans yet for Tuesday, but I expect I'll spend a chunk of it packing, because. Wednesday morning has a doctor's appointment of some sort for everyone in the house except Matt, Penny has a half-day of school (if she goes at all, depending on how long her doctor appointment goes) and that evening, the Hickses are coming up to do the Christmas thing (and also so KT can give me my thirty-one gear and we can sequester ourselves in a corner and talk writer-stuff for a bit).

And then Thursday, we're off to Chicago for the holidays.

In the meantime, one of the gifts I ordered for Matt still hasn't come in, and I have to figure out a way to wrap another one. Details that I had thought long since established (like whether Santa wraps gifts) are being called into question, and since I haven't really been thinking past the Chicago trip, I was blindsided by the need to plan the events for New Year's Eve. I feel like my head isn't screwed on quite right; I'm dropping details right and left, and my body has reacted by making me drop into a drowse every time I stop moving for more than ten minutes.

But at least I finally remembered to load my holiday music onto my iPad!

WHEE!

Runaround

What an insanely busy weekend! And yet, loads of fun!

Let's see. Friday night, we took the kids out to see The Muppets. It wasn't a perfect movie, but it was a fitting homage to Henson and Oz and the original Muppets. The kids enjoyed it, though Alex was about to turn into a pumpkin on us by the time it ended.

Saturday morning we got up and got dressed right away and headed into town to watch the Christmas parade. Alex found it alternately boring and too loud, but Penny loved it -- her favorite parts were the middle school and high school bands.

Waiting for the parade

When that ended at 10:30, we walked a few blocks up the street and had an early lunch at Wasabi. (They were nice enough to let us in even though they were still setting up and weren't officially open until 11. They got drinks for us and we were grateful just to sit down until they were ready for us.)

After lunch, we got Alex down for a nap and then I ran up to the store for supplies for the moon cookie party, which started around 1:30 or so. It was a smaller group than usual this year (I can't believe KT and Kevin would rather go to Disney World for a week than come to the moon cookie party!) but we had a great time making cookies and chatting. Though for the record, I seriously need to get some more cookie sheets, next year. Waiting on cookies to bake is a huge hold-up!

When that was done, we all went out to eat at La Tolteca, where Adin's sister met up with us, and then we trooped over to Braz and Adin's to put the kids to bed and have a seven-player game of Cards Against Humanity. (Adin's sister is sweet and giggly and precious, and also? has an incredibly filthy mind. I approve. A lot.)

Sunday morning, Matt threatened the kids with mayhem so that I could sleep in until almost 9. Then we got everyone dressed in their new Christmas clothes (or in Matt's and my cases, our old Christmas clothes) and we went down to New Town to visit Santa and take pictures. They had a different guy playing Santa this year, but he was nearly as good with the kids. A new thing they've got going this year is that if there isn't a line (which there wasn't, for us -- I can never quite believe it) Santa would read a story to the kids. Which was pure awesome.

Santa and Penny peruse her list

Santa reading to the kids

After our visit with Santa, we went out for lunch at Ruby Tuesday, then went home so Alex could crash into a nap. While he was out, Penny and I wrapped a bunch of Christmas presents and put them under the tree (Alex woke up in time to help with the last few) and then we all piled in the car and went to Busch Gardens to see Christmastown, which I have missed for the last few years and was determined to see this time.

I have to say, I loved it. And the weather was perfect -- brisk enough to add to the "winter wonderland" atmosphere without being so cold that it was unpleasant to be outdoors. I do sort of wish that Matt and I could go back without the kids, because it would be nice to a) sample some of the tasty treats without having to worry about the diabetic in tow, b) stay at the park later than Alex's bedtime, and c) stroll along and look at everything at our own pace, without having to deal with assorted whines about being bored/hungry/tired and wanting to go right now to the favorite show or ride.

After all that standing and walking and picture-taking, my back and hips are killing me today, but it was totally worth it. I got lots of fun pictures to use for our Christmas cards and the calendar for next year, and the kids had a great time, even if they were both getting a little tired and out of sorts by the end of it. (I can relate, as I was getting a little tired and out of sorts as well...)

I'm hoping to recover some of my aplomb this week -- there's not much happening at work until Thursday, and I've got 7 hours of what my office calls discretionary/holiday time (I'd been saving it all year for the day after Thanksgiving, but wound up working most of that day, so I still have it left over) that I have to use-or-lose by the 16th. So I'm looking at taking some extra time off -- either two half-days or one full day -- to wrap up my Christmas shopping and work on my writing and generally try to relax and recoup my holiday spirit, which has been badly frazzled by my perception of the schedule, this year.

Party Time

Saturday was my birthday party. I invited my family and closest, longest-known friends (and their families) to have dinner with me at the Center Street Grill. We had a room to ourselves and a separate table for the kids, and of the 25 who'd RSVPed, I only had one adult and one kid who had to cancel at the last minute (due to illness, so I'm grateful that she kept it home). Which meant that the room looked like this:

And the kids' table looked like this:

It was a great party. I'd brought little activity bags for the kids with pencils and crayons and notepads and notebooks and play jewelry to keep them occupied, and it worked surprisingly well -- we only had to turn around to tell the kids to get back in their seats about once every five minutes instead of the usual ninety seconds.

The adults had a great time eating and talking and eating some more; I thought there would be more drinking, but I never even got around to ordering anything other than iced tea. As dinner was winding up, there were some fireworks outside that completely wowed the kids -- apparently, they thought it was, in fact, part of the party, and they all ran to the window to look. (I have no idea what they were really for -- the general consensus was that it was probably a Veteran's Day thing.)

When I stood up to do a general introduction around the table and thank everyone for coming, I found myself completely overwhelmed with gratitude that I could count so many wonderful and interesting people among my friends. I did the introductions, and then got about as far as, "Thank you all for coming. I'm really happy you could all make it, and I'm just... Just..." And then my mom chimed in with "...Forty!" and we all cracked up with laughter.

And one benefit of having guests at your party who've known you for more than twenty years is that they bring perfect gifts. I'm just sayin'. A "writer's kit" (gorgeous feathered quill, chocolate, and wine). A gorgeous new coffee mug and a Barnes and Noble gift card nestled in a reusable little book-shaped box. A board game that appears to be the evil twin of the bastard child of Candyland and D&D. And that's just a few! Plus, most of the card were hysterically funny. Do these people know what I like, or what?

The only downer was poor Henry's stomach rebelling at the combination of corn dog and chocolate milk and Sprite and ice cream, and reversing engines, so the entire Hegemony set had to pack up and head out pretty much immediately after dessert, while the rest of us stuck around for another hour, just chatting.

At one point, I saw the waitress bring in the bill folder, and I started to reach for it... but she went around to the far side of the table and handed it to my dad. "Hey," I said, "that comes to me!"

My dad took his already-run credit card out of the folder and said, "Yes, that's what they told me." And that on top of the gift they'd given me -- that I hadn't been expecting, because they'd bought me some very nice jewelry while we were in Cancun as my early birthday present!!!

And to top it all off, despite Henry's mishap, the Hegemony took Alex home with them, and when we were all done at Center Street, Matt and I took Penny over to their place as well -- they kept both our kids (along with all four of theirs!) overnight, so that Matt and I could have a child-free date night.

We'd talked about catching Cabaret at William and Mary, but the party didn't break up until after the show had started, so we just went over to the Barnes and Noble and wandered around, relishing the ability to peruse at our own pace and not having to take turns remaining confined to the children's area to keep an eye on the kids. I bought some stuff with the B&N gift card I'd just received, and we also picked up some Christmas gifts for the kids. Then we went home and watched one of our Netflix (Casanova, which I was expecting to be a sexy drama, or perhaps a dramedy, but it turned out to be completely campy and stupid, alas). But we got to sleep in a bit the next morning, and we went out to breakfast and got to bask in a meal where we didn't have to tell anyone to be quiet and sit down, argue with Penny about volume or carbiness of her selections, or cut up Alex's food for him. Ah, bliss.

It had been Alex's first sleepover anywhere, and he had a fantastic time. He was all set to do it again Sunday night -- alas, we had to shoot that down, as it was a school night. But Braz and Adin promised that both our kids had been well-behaved and wonderful (they'd only had to tell Alex and Henry to shut up and go to sleep two or three times!), so it looks like another sleepover could well happen in the future! Whoo-hoo! (And now, if we can just get Ripley comfortable with the notion of sleeping over at our place, we could trade sleepovers with them and get more frequent kid-free nights!)

So all in all: doubleplus good, awesome, amazing, fantastic weekend. As KT and Kevin told me: Obviously, I need to have 40th birthday parties more often!

Lordy, Lordy

I had, quite possibly, the best possible 40th birthday. No lie.

I couldn't take the day off from work -- too much workstuff to do, alas -- but the day before my birthday was a school holiday for Penny, so I opted to work from home, which turned out to be a great decision, as Adin and Ripley were at loose ends for the day due to a cancellation from another friend, so they came over and hung out with us. We went out to lunch at Penny's favorite restaurant (Wasabi!) and then later in the afternoon, after I'd cleared a little more workstuff, we went out and had mani/pedis. (It was going to be just pedicures, but it turned out that the shop runs a combo special on Tuesdays. How do you pass that up?!) So I had freshly painted, gorgeous nails ready to go for my birthday!

 

That afternoon, Penny and Ripley did coloring and papercrafts while I did more work (see, I do actually get work done when I work from home!) and they both made me birthday cakes! Ripley's was a flat cutout of a gorgeously-decorated tiered cake (she snipped a hole at the top and tied a string in it so I could hang it up) and Penny managed to craft a 3-D paper cake, plain and smooth, decorated tastefully with a ribbon around the middle and a small sprig of fresh blueberries on top. Penny also made me a sign to hang on my office door at work, "just in case anyone doesn't know it's your birthday!"

I got up on my birthday morning to even more hugs and kisses than usual (which is really saying something, as Alex and Penny are always both very affectionate) and presents from Matt (the OOTS Dragon Tales collection, Leverage Season 3 DVDs, and an Amazon gift card!). After I took the kids to school, I went to work, where I had promised Caren that she could decorate my office and be as evil as she wanted.

Thanks to a picky customer and a snarl of workstuff and a bored kid in tow, she hadn't had time to decorate liberally, but when she came in, she brought me a little pot of very pretty peach-colored begonias, to which were attached two enormous balloons. Well, the pirate ship is enormous. The other one was only enormous in its evil, because she'd deliberately gotten one with the wrong age on it.

Diabolical! But then she went with me to meet Matt and Adin for lunch at Plaza Azteca, where we all had margaritas and tableside guacamole. We got a couple of appetizer-type things to split, because dessert was the plan! But when we got to dessert, we just couldn't narrow it down, and we were talking about all getting different things and sharing, and Matt said, "I only want to share if I can have two," and there were only six desserts on the menu anyway, so when the waiter came back for the order, I just said, "Bring us one of each!" The look on the man's face was priceless, and we all laughed when all six desserts came out and we arrayed them on the table in the middle to sample. It was awesome.

(I should have taken a picture, but I didn't think of it. Alas.)

When I got home, Matt had a final present for me, which was the completely brand new expansion pack for Cards Against Humanity that was just released on Monday! Squee! I perused the cards, and now I can't wait to give them a whirl! (Though I may just have to order the official CAH starter deck so all the cards are the same size...)

Penny made dinner -- a "sandwich salad" recipe of her own invention -- almost completely by herself (I helped her core the lettuce and I sliced carrots, but she made the rest of our salads entirely by herself, sharp knives and all!) And then Matt and Penny had picked out a coconut cake from Martin's/Ukrop's for me -- which is one of my very favorite cakes, from one of my very favorite bakeries, so 100% WIN on that! Matt and I were still full from all the guacamole and dessert we'd had at lunch, so we didn't have much cake... but that just means more leftovers!

(You know what one of the best things is about being 40 years and 1 day old? Birthday cake for breakfast.)

My parents called to wish me a happy, and throughout the day, I got a ton of well-wishes on Facebook, too, which was incredibly sweet and nice. KT "combarded" me with snarky e-cards that made me giggle, and Karen sent another e-card later in the day containing an awesome, punny joke. (Knock-knock! Who's there? Señor! Señor, who? Señor share of birthdays, haven't you?!) (Actually, there were multiple puns, and the first one was even off-color, which goes to prove that Karen understands my taste in jokes quite well. Well, of course she does; she's played Cards Against Humanity with me!)

After we got the kids to bed, Matt and I watched all the special features on the Leverage DVDs, and after Matt went to bed early to sleep off his coconut cake, I finally finished the last level of Gemcraft: Labyrinth. A fitting and perfect end to the day.

Productive

I spent way too much time in meetings yesterday, but it ended up being eerily productive anyway. I pulled together a development plan for a new project, did some paperwork from a rushed delivery last week, created a corporate repository for the mini-audit we're about to do, attended four meetings (and mostly managed to keep my sarcasm to myself), and typed up some meeting minutes. I also went to the gym, edited a short story (someone else's), made soup for dinner (mm, soup), and wrote about a thousand new words for the story I'm writing.

All in all, a productive day, indeed.

Today, I need to gather up some artifacts for the mini-audit, do some more paperwork, review a delivery, work on editing another story (someone else's), and go to the chiropractor. I might go to the gym again, and I might swing by Target for more apples. (Honeycrisps -- my very favorite apples, only available for about 2 months out of the year -- are $6 for a bag of 10. I'm eating like five a day.)

(I might also hit Target for a smoothie blender to keep at the office, and ingredients. Better for me than the junk food in the snack bar, and Caren told me a couple of weeks ago they have a really nice little smoothie blender for only about $15.)

So that's my day. What're you up to, today?

Ass: Kicked!

Our farm box last week contained half a dozen persimmons, which is a fruit I don't use much. The flavor is a little too cantaloupe-y for my taste, and they're slightly high-maintenance, what with the spiny leaf and the inedible rind and the stealth seeds and the need to wait until they're completely ripe or else suffer tannin levels that make the flesh taste/feel like chewing on moist black tea leaves.

But they were in the box, and I like to at least try to use the stuff in the box -- we're paying for it, after all, and it can't hurt to help the kids vary their palates a little, either.

We'd eaten a couple of them raw the other night, but they weren't a big hit that way. So I experimented. Chopped a red bell pepper (also from the box) and about a pound of chicken breasts, and tossed them into some oil along with a teaspoon or so of curry powder. (Most curry recipes want tablespoons of the stuff, but my kids don't like it enough for that.) When the chicken was almost done, I threw in a can of diced tomatoes, two persimmons (diced to make sure the seeds had been found) and some frozen peas for color. When that had simmered a bit, I added about 2/3 of a cup of light coconut milk, and a tablespoon of granulated Truvia to accent the sweetness of... well, everything. I served the whole mess over couscous.

It was a hit! Penny and Matt and I loved it, and even Alex (who as a rule does not like cooked vegetables) managed to eat half his chicken along with the couscous.

Dinner/persimmon ass: kicked!

(Though now I have the rest of the can of coconut milk in the fridge and nothing to do with it. Hmm, bet it would make delicious smoothies...)

***

Once the kids were in bed, I sat down to write. I'd finished the previous session mid-scene (I've seen writing advice that you should stop mid-sentence, even, just so finishing the sentence will help you get moving a little, but I've never tried it) and I'd had a pretty clear idea of where it was going, so it was easy to drop back into the story and push forward. By the time I realized I was entering my "getting tired" taper, I checked my word-count and I'd written roughly 1700 words!

Not only that, but I still have a pretty clear idea of what comes next -- really, just the final chapter with its payoff sex and warmfuzzies -- and then I'll be ready to do my draft review and shoot it out to my beta readers. (Anyone interested in joining those ranks? Good feedback is hard to come by!)

Writer's block's ass: kicked!

***

I stayed up a smidge later than I'd intended, not because I was writing, but because after I finished writing, I went downstairs to plug in the iPad (the battery was sorely drained) and to start downloading the new iOS 5 update, and of course I had to fiddle with things for a while.

And then Alex woke me up at 5:30 with some incomprehensible complaint about noises in his room... and got up again at 5:40 to tell me the cat was in his room... and again at 5:50 to tell me he wanted a clean pullup...

My sleep's ass... kicked.

Sorry!

God, I just keep disappearing, don't I?

As I told KT yesterday when we met for lunch (entirely on her initiative, because I'm so brain-burned lately I can't even properly function on Twitter), it's probably for the best, anyway, because pretty much everything I would have posted for the last week and a half would have been half-coherent ranting about the damned project I was on and the incredibly rude and condescending customer we were working for.

But I took most of Monday off, and all of Tuesday. I've written 5500 words (or so) in the last three days, decorated the house for Hallowe'en (okay, I have to admit, Penny did most of the decorating), acquired some cute ankle boots for the fall and winter, edited a story, paid my bills, and spent a lot of time playing mostly mindless video games. I took Penny to the Fall Festival and bought jewelry and fair food, and I made roasted butternut squash soup, and I hung out with friends and family. I feel much better now.

I came back to work yesterday to find a frikking huge pile of paperwork waiting, and four software deliveries that weren't supposed to happen until the week after next, and learned that a new project has been awarded some special attention from corporate which is going to make it a much bigger pain in my ass than usual.

But I feel almost okay with it. Not, you know, happy. But accepting. Resigned.

And so it goes. And so do I.

Get What Ya Need

Lately, Penny's been particularly enjoying what she calls "my" oatmeal, which is oatmeal I make from quick-cooking oats and I add all the flavorings and sweetener myself, instead of relying on instant oatmeal packets. (I have a particular blend of spices I use, plus sometimes I throw in some PB2 for protein. I've given some thought to trying steel-cut oats, about which I've heard many good things, but they require much longer to prepare, and also are not readily available at my grocery store, both of which are kind of deal breakers.)

I eat oatmeal darned near every day -- it's fairly quick and easy to make, and I get a lot of long-term hunger satisfaction for the number of calories in it. If I eat a quarter-cup (dry measure, makes about a cup when cooked) of oatmeal for breakfast, then I'm good for a solid four hours afterward. I'm thinking of just bringing a container of oatmeal and my spices and stuff to the office so I can have it for afternoon snacks, too, because it's so satisfying for me.

Anyway, Penny's been eating it lately, because the way I make it, it's got at least 10 fewer carbs per bowl than even the "lower sugar" packaged stuff that I'd been buying for the kids, which means she can also have yogurt. I don't mind her doing this -- as I said, it's pretty easy to make, and I'm all about her internalizing lessons about making smarter food choices.

But it does mean that my oatmeal gets used up a little faster than usual, and this week, it worked out that there wasn't enough for me to have it for breakfast today.

Today is looking kind of sucky anyway -- I'm in charge of printing and boxing a proposal, but I don't yet have most of the pieces I need, and I don't know when I will get them, which means I may well be here until only the gods know when tonight. Also, I found out last night that the novel I'd spent Wednesday night proofreading and feeling good about...? Yeah, the file got corrupted, so now it won't open at all. I have to do it all over again.

So I was going to shrug the oatmeal thing off as yet another part of this crappy day and just have a lot of coffee for breakfast.

But when I dropped Alex off at daycare, the assistant director said, "Have some breakfast!" and handed me a little white paper bag. On the side of the bag is a label with the school's logo that reads: "Working Parent Day - Hope this helps you have a great day." Inside the bag is a banana, an apple muffin, and a package of granola bars.

Like the song says: you don't always get what you want. But sometimes, you get what you need.

Sufficient

Ahh, I love a long weekend. Even one that does its best to ring in the official start of summer with the hottest weather I've encountered since last summer. I sure hope that's not a harbinger of things to come!

It wasn't a particularly restful weekend -- we had Jess over on Saturday afternoon to have a sleepover with Penny, and then Sunday KT and Kevin came down to pick her up and we had a cookout with them before they went home. (Mmm, venison burgers...)

And then we had a lot of leftover cookout stuff -- hot dogs, corn on the cob, and a whole watermelon we'd been too full to cut into Sunday evening, so Monday we had Braz and Adin and crew over so they could do laundry and we cooked out again (this time with sausages instead of venison for the adults).

So there was lots of running around and shrieking and giggling and noise and parents being needed to mediate issues and cleaning of messes. There was shucking of corn and mixing of drinks and grilling of meats and carving of melons. We offered to set up the sprinkler for the kids to play in, but Penny scorned it, so we didn't. Alex wasn't quite asleep when everyone came over on Monday, so naturally he didn't get any nap at all -- but was not too terribly fussy about it (though he leaned on either Matt or I for the entire duration of The Wizard of Oz when Matt put that in as a way to get the kids to calm down for a bit, and I think that doubled as a rest, if not a nap, for him).

I finally gave in to a long-standing urge and bought a snow-cone machine maker on Friday, along with three bottles of sugar-free flavor syrup. That turned out to be the Best. Idea. EVER. No calories, no carbs, no guilt, and every time over the weekend that the kids started making me crazy and I needed them to quiet down and sit still for ten minutes, I'd fire up the machine and squirt guilt-free syrup and everyone would sit down and shut up and eat shaved ice. Yay! It's a cheapie little machine and I expect it'll be nonfunctional by the end of the summer, but that's okay -- by then, I'll have gotten my money's worth out of it. 

It was a good weekend, in the main, and we had fun and ate and enjoyed ourselves and welcomed summer properly in with excellent food and even better company.

But now I need a day or two off so I can recover from my long weekend.

I should post something, but my brain is completely nonfunctional this morning. Guess I'll just go for the dry weekend report...

Braz and Adin and crew (henceforth referred to as "the Hegemony" for reasons that would make no sense and be really boring if I tried to explain it) came over Friday night; we put all the kids to bed and stayed up late drinking and playing silly games. We did a couple of rounds of Guillotine, which was giggly fun, though I think what it really needs is for players to deliver a Last Words speech for each noble they collect or action card they play.

Then, since I'd spent an hour printing and cutting out the cards, we played a few rounds of Cards Against Humanity, which is like Apples to Apples, but offensive, NSFW, and politically incorrect. Needless to say, it was a big hit for us. (It especially worked for me, because while you gather points in the game, it's not particularly competitive.)

Saturday was mostly quiet. Matt took Penny to Ray's birthday party that evening, and while they were gone, Alex's cough devolved into a full-blown illness, complete with a 103-degree fever. He spent most of the evening laying on the couch with his head on my lap and watching videos. I let the fever burn while he was up, but gave him a dose of children's Motrin before bed, on the theory that helping him get comfortable enough to sleep was more important than continuing to let the fever burn out the germs.

In the meanwhile, Matt and Penny had eaten dinner at Ray's party (mm, pizza and cake!) and Alex didn't have much appetite, so I ordered sushi delivery. (The restaurant has a name, but I have no idea what it is, because thanks to Adin, we all just call it "Forbidden Sushi.") I ate my salad and was retrieving my miso soup from the bag when I realized the bag held no sushi. By that point, it was late and I was tired and I was debating even bothering to call them back to complain about it, but before I made up my mind, the guy came back with the sushi. Yay, Forbidden Sushi guy!

Alex was mostly better Sunday morning but still running a low-grade fever, but since it didn't get any worse, the Hegemony came over that afternoon to borrow our washer and dryer and stuck around to have homemade fajitas with us for dinner. Yum!

Alex was all better this morning, so yay for a quick-burn bug, I guess, and not having to miss school. (Though what with the whole needing to take time off thing, it wouldn't have really been a problem for me -- I just wouldn't be getting to do as much fun stuff.) Of course, Penny's blood sugar, after being low or borderline low all yesterday, popped up 100 points overnight, so we're half-braced for her to get hit with whatever Alex had over the weekend.

So, that was my weekend. 'Scuse me now while I go get some coffee.

Peaks and Valleys

Penny had Monday off from school, so I worked from home with her in tow.

When she checked her blood sugar for lunch, it was crazy high, and I was about to curse the gods of random happenstance... when I remembered that around 9 in the morning, I'd chased Penny out of the kitchen, where she'd been "looking at" the bag with her Easter candy.

To make a long story short... yep, she'd been sneaking candy. And not just Monday, either. Apparently, she's been sneaking chocolate chips and cupcake sprinkles from my baking shelf in the pantry for some time.

Which puts the last couple of weeks' worth of random, unexplainable blood sugar highs in a whole new light.

So I moved the baking stuff up to the top shelf of the pantry, and I put all the candy away in a cabinet she'll need a stool to reach -- none of which guarantees she'll stop, but at least it's harder for her now. I tried to explain to her the damage that high blood sugars do -- we hadn't been very explicit about that before, not wanting to freak her out unnecessarily... but apparently it's now necessary.

But I don't know what else to do. The poor child has inherited my horrible metabolism and my horrible and inaccurate food processing abilities (by which I mean we're both always hungry, even if we've just eaten) and there's a lot more at stake for her than there is for me. How do you expect a seven year old to have the willpower to say, "What I've just eaten should be enough, and therefore I will stop now, even though I still feel like I'm starving," when I myself have trouble with that same thing? How do I discipline her for sneaking candy when my share of Easter candy is already almost gone and I had to make Matt take the rest of it out of the house so I wouldn't eat that, too?

Oh, well.

Diabetes camp is this weekend. I'm waffling between hoping we have a good time and dreading it. I'm trying to hide the "dread" portions of my thoughts from Penny, though, because if she gets even a whiff of lack of enthusiasm from me, it'll color her whole attitude, and the very last thing this needs is for her to be a whiny brat all weekend over things neither of us can control. (I do wish the camp had sent me a schedule of events or something, though. I really don't do well with "wait and see". I'm so freaking anal. Also, I really want to correct the grammar and typos in the info sheets they sent me.)

But on the plus side, I'm taking Friday off from work to pack, so at least there's that, right?

(Oh, don't mind me. I'm PMSing and sleepy.)

Za

Everyone likes pizza. What's not to like?

It's not very diet-friendly, though. And even less diabetic-friendly. So rather than dial out for Papa John's, I make pseudo-pizza at home every few weeks. Usually I use english muffins as a base, but this week, on a whim, I bought some "everything" bagel thins.

I'd given up on bagels as a basis for mini pizzas -- they're too thick. But the bagel thins are basically bagels that are only about half as thick as a normal bagel, which made them just about perfect. Half the calories/carbs, and just the right amount of chewy and crunch. Spread them with a little tomato paste, sprinkle on some shredded cheese, and pop them in the oven until the cheese melts -- blammo!

Must remember that one for the future.