The Universe, It Speaks to Me!

Oh, Universe, how lovely you are!

Some of you know that I subscribe to the Note From The Universe emails, which are happy little pick-me-up love notes that just make you feel good and promotes thinking, even early in the morning.

I got my daily note, love it completely, and it speaks to me on SO many levels. My business life, my life as a parent, a friend, and ENDLESS examples within the rest of my family….yes, endless. INFINITE, actually. But I digress.

Here is my little love note from the Universe I got today:

One of the most stringent conditions all angels must meet, Vanessa, other than double-advanced harp playing and skydiving abilities (not necessarily at the same time), is that they must not allow themselves to feel hurt or rejected by the choices made by others, no matter how much they’ve done for them nor how great their love.

Yeah, WOW.
The Universe

I can’t tell you how many times I have fallen victim to my own expectations being shattered. I know inherently, I am the only one responsible for my own misfortune in ANY case, but especially when I have laid out a trail of expectations that often lead to life shattering circumstances when they are not met.

According to the Universe, I am an angel. An angel that need not lean on the approval or actions of others as affirmation to my awesomeness. I am awesome, no matter if others reflect that to me, themselves, or otherwise. They are awesome too, or I wouldn’t care so much. 

Namaste, Universe!

Seasons Change…

I have been handed several reminders of my increase in years of late. Aches, hairs in inappropriate places, “I remember when” statements, frequently meeting others more successful than me much MUCH younger than me, teen daughters ever dropping reminders that I am not as cool as I seem to think I am.

My babies just 6 short years ago.

The forms that these reminders come in, while varied, mostly seem to relate to my own experience in motherhood. Most parents can relate to the fear of their children growing older and moving on and away. The longing of seeing their short little chubby legs waddling toward you, hands outstretched, screeching in delight, wanting nothing more than to end up in your arms and over your head flying and safe….

sniff.

Lately I have been wishing to be able to have one of those moments. My oldest baby is going to high school next year. Not only will this be a major milestone in the timeline of her life, but she is so selfishly dragging me along with her and making ME a HIGH SCHOOL MOM! It is So not fair. I am not amused. Nor prepared to be a Mom of a high school student. I am too young and cool.

Friday I had another moment which was a bit outer worldly. Again, my oldest was attending her first “real” dance for the 8th graders. It wasn’t quite prom fest style activities, however it was pretty high end in comparison to the mixers and things she has frequented the past few years. Not only was there a threat of a potential date (ack! I mean, OMG!) but there was a full dress-shoe-accessory-make up shopping spree that had to be done ahead of time.

My beautiful Boo-Bunny…all dressed up!

In the end, we had to change the hair the last minute, switched up the lipstick shade, but she was absolutely gorgeous! Beyond the novelty of actually seeing her in a dress, she looked so grown up. Her makeup done just “so”, even SHE was strutting around exclaiming “I am SO hot!”!

I do the obligatory “Mom” thing and take my photo’s before we leave, get to school sooner than I was truly ready to, and hoping to be able to take photo’s of her with her equally decked out friends. I wasn’t prepared for the unceremonious ‘shoo-ing’ from the principal directing parents to simply drop their children on the curb, then kindly get on with it! It was horrible…I got to watch her run up to her gang of girlfriends, each of them having spent just as much time getting prepared for the night as mine had, then turn heal and trot inside.

She is like, SO, I mean, Right?!

I am not really sure how to handle all of these feelings of being cast off and unneeded. Not relevant, or part-of. Simply a means to the ends.

Meanwhile, I will just sit back and appreciate my offspring and enjoy watching them grow and do new things. I am so proud of them all the time and I love being part of it. I guess I am just adjusting to how I am to be part.

Follow Up to Previous Post About Inner Meat and Veg War

In my previous post, I had disclosed that I would be attending a luncheon today for a professional association. I was all full of power…feeling really good, I even had a bit of a snack before leaving so I wouldn’t pass out while receiving people at the registration table. All was fabulous!

Then I sit down and the dinner salad was REALLY coated in dressing, which I wouldn’t have done on my worst day! Then the meal came. I mean, REALLY, Universe….what are you trying to do to me?!!

What you can’t see is the ring of cake that is just out of frame…all varieties….all around the table. Seriously.

Let me give you a tour! We have a nice slab of pork steak which looked as though it had been sliced off of a boneless roast, green beans WITH some form of pork in it…I think it was ham….and the off yellowish blob in the upper right corner is a lovely twice baked potato with bacon, the tiniest bit of chive (for color, I am sure) and COMPLETELY loaded and encrusted with cheese. Like, it was stuck to my plate, coated in cheese.

I was able to resist the ring of cakes, which mocked me in their little ballet of torture….it was sick, really. At least it wasn’t the cheesecakes they offered at another event 2 months previous. I had all of my green beans, 2 bites of the potato (wasn’t really good, honestly), and less than half the pork steak. I took water instead of the iced tea, which is good, right?! I’m still a good girl?! PLEASE tell me I am good!

Yes, this is the world we live in. A world with nicely trimmed and grilled meats with side dishes seasoned in meat. I friend of mine told me he had returned his plate and asked for a salad instead. Could I have done that? Sure. Should I have? Absolutely. Next time? Likely. Our next 3 meetings will be at a place that is more known for upscale bar food, so I am preparing my speech now.

I want to be good, I want to be good, I want to be good……

To Meat or Not to Meat…Leaning Toward Veg

A little more of this, a little less Pasta House and doughnuts…

It is amazing the things you notice that you had never noticed before. Like pasta and beef with a lot of dairy mixed in make you feel like garbage. How even the littlest bit of caffeine will make you jittery and ramp up arrhythmia when you are trying to sleep. How horrible your mouth feels after smoking, especially when you try to deal with “cheep” cigarettes.

As you may have gathered, the wagon I was on had been abandoned for a couple of days. Actually, it started at a networking luncheon last Friday when I went on a meat bender…you would not BELIEVE the chicken and fish at this place! It was like they say about ‘gateway drugs’…you start out small then work your way up to harder stuff. Mine was adding just a touch of my husbands caffeinated coffee to my decaf to take the edge off and not be so incredibly tired. I was known to have a bit of tea, a chocolate here and there….there was even a doughnut on Sunday!

After all that decadence, today I feel like garbage. My stomach was a wreck last night, still not altogether awesome today, and I am afraid. I leave in an hour to go to a luncheon where I will not only be working the registration table and meeting everyone as they come in, but I am also getting introduced to the whole group as a new member. The problem is that I am SO concerned that I might end up gassing all over the place in the midst of the activities! This could seriously smell disaster, as I can not think of a more horrid “Hi! Nice to meet you! Hire me and ALL OF THIS can be yours!”

Lesson to me, duly noted, thank you very much. Tonight I need to prioritize my time and have a planning session to make these changes I desperately want to make a bit more sustainable. I will be sure to share them with you and get your feedback.

Wish me luck….and I suppose wishing THEM luck would be in order as well!

Lucky Day 13, And I think I Am Going To Make It!

While I am known for being a bit “wordy” and making a rundown of my day as daunting as snuggling in with a copy of War and Peace, I will try to keep it brief today.

13 days ago I embarked on a journey of better nutrition which was brought on by stress, anxiety, and killer caffeine, which was once a dear and loving friend. I have completely abstained from caffeine…OH DAMN!! Except for the tea I had tonight with dinner, albeit sweetened with agave. Ok, so no more caffeine from now on. I even INTENTIONALLY bought a caffeine free Diet Pepsi the other day! Now, that was a strange experience.

I have been at least 85% refined sugar free, and I say this because it is SO hard to get around this ingredient from being in just about everything. I have been roughly 75% meat product free, and this hasn’t been terribly painful. And though I still have dairy to contend with, I have my eyes set on a couple of replacements for this. I tried a coconut milk beverage from Trader Joe’s hoping for an alternative to have with my granola and decaf coffee, but to no avail. It pretty much sucked. I have it on good authority, however, that almond milk might give me the texture that I am hoping for!

Water, water, and MORE water….! Lots of water!

The absolute best and most science based nutrition doc that you will ever watch!

The headaches are past, at least the ones I can blame on the caffeine detox. I can go to the bathroom SO much easier than I ever could! (Squat and drop, baby!) I am getting less annoyed with the constant hunger that I am experiencing, which is a completely foreign issue. The smazz attacks I used to experience that I thought were my body’s cry for protein haven’t really been an issue. I can’t say that I “feel” better because of what I am doing, but I do like the direction I am going in.

What is interesting to me, is that aside from the conscious decision to cut the caffeine, the rest almost seems involuntary to me. I have studied nutrition for years, watched documentary upon doc upon doc about the evils of additives, fats, preservatives, non-organic, over medicated and abused livestock, plastinated, colored, flavored, salted, hydrogenated, Monsanto-fied GMO, etc and so on issues…basically, I knew what I was doing with each sickening bite.

Then I watched a doc called “Forks Over Knives”…a MUST watch! (It’s on Netflix if you have access to it) It wasn’t just a hippified, social infomercial about how we are all going to get fat and die and McDonald’s is to blame. It was a true, scientific explanation with numerous studies as well as clinics that were ongoing for over a decade that reinforced the theory’s that spelled everything out in a way that nothing else ever had.

So now, not only did I know, I really KNEW!

It was almost like my body, after all of the years of knowledge and recent discussions with nutrition fad peddlers about eating small meals all day long and pure disdain for my aging, sagging body that just simply won’t do what I want it to do with the extra 100 or so pounds I am flying like a flag of shame, just simply said, “OK! Here we go!” I truly don’t feel like I am in control, and it is okay. Sometimes we should revert to a more primal self and just let our sub-conscious take over.

The next level…well, …could be the reason I started this blog to begin with almost 2 years ago. I paid $5 for one pack of cigarettes this morning. I screamed, the girl behind the counter looked at me like I just threw acid on her, it was kind of embarrassing. We will see where this goes….

…another day.

Day 4, and I Think I Am Going To Make It….

For those of you who bore witness to my rant of a couple of days ago, I would just like to say, I am still alive!

On Tuesday I realized that the nervous and anxious feelings I have had have were being incredibly exaggerated by my coffee. More specifically, caffeine. I do adore my coffee, however disliking feeling like I just attended a taste testing at a crack house is much more powerful!

So, I have just for the sake of the experience implemented decaff with agave into my morning routine. I have kept processed sugar, caffeine, and meat largely from my diet. Well, there was high fructose corn syrup in my creamed horseradish spread I put on my portabella burger, and there was that mini (MINI!!) cinnamon roll I had avoided for 5 hours at a seminar yesterday….and the cinnamon swirl bagel that my daughters didn’t eat fast enough from Panera this morning…but other than that!

Honestly, I am not keeping score, I just know that these new practices are a vast improvement than I had in place before. What is interesting is how my body has sort of taken all of the principals and knowledge I had gathered, feel with my entire being as true, but never had the gonads to put into place out of fear of …. just having to DO it! …. and decided that this was the way we were going to go. So now caffeine hurts, real sugar feels cruddy, meat doesn’t taste so good, and I am hungry all the time forcing me to eat small meals throughout the day, and of course, those are yummy and healthy options!

I cooked artichoke last night! I have never successfully done that! Well, I think I overcooked the artichoke, but it was a nifty experience none the less. We have eaten lentils, gnocchi with pesto, the portabella burgers with roasted red peppers, and lots of other things! What a ride!

Aside from the nightly headache that starts up every night around 5:30 or 6 and sends me to bed, things have been great! So when you eat your next steak or slam an espresso, think of me!

Et Tu, Caffeine?!

I can’t drink coffee.

I don’t know what happened….I haven’t been ill, I have had some life changes and maybe there is some anxiety (maybe?!) that could be playing off the affects of the caffeine and enhancing it a bit. Maybe it is the instant stuff I have been drinking in an effort to temper my coffee intake. But we are on our 3rd or 4th jar of that, so that couldn’t be it.

In the end, the bottom line is: I-Can-Not-Drink-Coffee!

Why? Symptoms: I feel like I am on crack. Jittery, numb, shaky, head all a-swirl (as you will likely be able to note within this post)! Even my tongue feels weird. My arrhythmia has back, which hasn’t been an issue for a couple of years. I haven’t slept soundly through the night in weeks, and bad sleep is what I have had after spending at least 2 hours lying there trying to GET to sleep! I just feel totally jacked up!

Why is this a major concern, you might task? Just sounds like I am on a caffeine rampage and to slow down, right? Eat something? To that I would say, you just don’t get it.

In my house growing up, there was a constant flow of caffeine. Iced tea, Pepsi which was later to be replaced by Diet Pepsi. I am most certain that any of these 2 beverages would have been found in bottles and sippy cups of myself and my siblings when we were small children.

I later grew to LOVE and YEARN for coffee! I loved coffee shops and the coffee aisles of the grocery stores, even sometimes sneaking a bean or 2 from the whole bean dispensers, after which I would eat them. I know…gross, but don’t judge.

I found this fitting image on a blog entitled "Run Dangerously" and his tale of no coffee is not terribly uplifting. Mneh! http://rundangerously.blogspot.com/2011/02/one-entire-year-without-coffee-o.html

I am currently 35 years old and after only using a home coffee pot in my mid 20′s or so, I believe I have blasted through at least 7 coffee pots. Killed them dead through rampant overuse. At one point just last year, my husband and I were going through 2-3 pots of coffee a day! Morning, noon, and NIGHT we were swilling down the stuff!

It was late last summer when I broke another pot, we switched to instant to try to curb our intake. And it worked! We went back to the pot this winter, which only prompted another frenzy of over-caffing, so instant, again, we rock.

So after a near major melt down on Monday where I was seriously scared with my symptoms, I decided yesterday to have a caffeine and processed sugar free day. otherwise I was seriously considering adding benedryl to my morning and afternoon routine. I later ended up in bed with one of the most massive migraines I have had in a very long time! Got to love detoxing.

I give in this morning and make a weak coffee in a much smaller cup than I normally bother with and sweeten it with agave instead of sugar. 1/2 a cup later, I am a goddamn mess AGAIN!

I have to say that after shunning all of those who have come before me and foretold of the changes the body takes here and there as we age, I keep tripping over these oddities. So I ask, is it fair that in my 30′s when I have finally (at least mostly) figured out who I am and not brooding in a manner befitting a high school teen full of angst and misdirection that I loose my faculties one by one when, and, you never know!, I may need to use one of them someday to attain the greatness that I have always been meant to do but was too stupid or sophomoric when my body was willing and able to pull it off?!

Is it fair that now, in my hay-day, I have to consistently be concerned with black hairs adorning my face, mocking me at every turn because while I can’t stand them being there, it hurts like hell to rip them out?!

IS IT FAIR, jury of my peers, that I now need more than one hand to list off the food items that give me horrific heartburn that I used to eat without concern? Is IT?!

I guess I could switch to de-caff, but that just seems so disappointing and pointless. Le sigh.

Good bye, coffee. I will miss you. (sniff!)

Fun With 80′s Music: How To Scar your Children For Life!

Remember hanging out in your bedroom as a teen listening to your own personal God, the stereo? In the days when the DJ of your favorite station was just as cool as your fave heart throbs who hung in posters all over your walls which you tore out of Tiger Beat magazines? Wasn’t that awesome?!

Well, my kids don’t have a stereo, per sei. They have iPods, iTunes, and the current God of all new and hip in the world, You Tube. While I love the fact that they can explore the musical and creative world around them, it also leaves me being subject to people singing songs about “Nuggets and a Biscuit”, “Milkshakes”, “Sitting on the Toilet”, and who the hell knows what else assaulting my senses posted by any random idiot with a video camera.

So, in an effort to share my history through music with them, I too entered You tube, for nothing is truly lost in today’s technological era. Including the 80′s.

First I finally played the Corey Hart song I have been singing to annoy them, “Sunglasses At Night”. Turns out, that was a really bad song and after their plea’s for mercy, I agreed to turn it off. But I found another in the list on the right which suggests other songs you may like! How convenient!

So we cued up “One Night In Bangkok” by Murray Head, which I remember being so awesome, mixing a techno sound with harmony and talk (not really rap, just rhythmic speaking). Turns out that song sucked too. Strange, I remember it being so much better!

Don't know why, but I always loved this scene!

Then the file to the right showed me another bygone favorite! Who DIDN’T love “99Luft Balons” by Nena?! I mean, come ON!! German punk rock!! How much cooler can that get!! I could totally see myself dancing around like Molly Ringwald on the banister in the Breakfast Club! Yeah, do you remember that song being over 5 minutes long?Wait…it’s only 4…it must have just felt like 5.

Each song on the right hand side was like a blast from my ear-to-the-speaker past while I was memorizing every word of each song…and yes, I was so excited to find Talking Heads, “Burning Down The House” in the suggestions! I mean, c’mon! “Burnin’ down the house!”….!!! Yeah…again…my memory is getting a bit hazy…that WAS a good song, right? What has happened?!

I mean, "Little Pig" has a claymation Rambo that takes out the wolf in the end! How BA is that?!!

Moving on….new era, shall we? The 90′s was loaded with lots of goofy stuff that was parody-like and not to be taken really seriously. Like Green Jello’s “Little Pig, Little Pig”! A CLASSIC!!! Oh, my God, #2 was still mortified, but I had the most fun! Give it a listen and you will be head banging like back in the day, honest!

On to the next on the list…which song jumped out to greet me with a smile and a warm, “Hey! You’re kids will love me! You loved me, right?!” Oh, Joe…you know me so well! Ugly Kidd Joe, “Everything About You”was the next to blast from my computer speakers, which I had turned up at this point to an inappropriate level. I was getting closer.

You have to check out the song "Little Blue Dune Buggy"! My 2nd fave Pres song!

Then, OMG!! One of my favorite jams EVER!! Presidents of the United States Of America, “Lump” is by far one of the most fun songs that came out of the 90′s! There were a lot of novelty songs in that era, as I mentioned before. Will I be frustrated along many Rush fans in 20 years when the Presidents are not inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? No…I will not be confused. HOWEVER!!! I will be bouncing around to Lump celebrating whomever DOES get inducted!

When I was clicking the link to “Lump”, I spied just a couple of links below to a song that is near and dear to my heart. I grew up in a tiny backwater town that was less than inspirational. Then a song, NO! An anthem was introduced to us through the radio waves! What was the fabled tale? Beck’s, “Loser”! I feel all warm inside when I hear it! The girls are used to hearing it, so no big protest.

Yet another candy coated silly song that is just plain fun….Primus, “Wynona’s Big Brown Beaver”. And yes, it IS about an actual beaver, you sick minded fiend! 2nd child says that she thinks it is funky and cool and likes it! Yay!!

I turned the "safe search" level WAY up before searching this image!

Then there is the last on the list. The Butthole Surfers, “Pepper”. Well, not the last, but this blog is getting super huge. I thought at first when I saw it on the list that I remembered not liking Butthole Surfers. Turns out, I DID and potentially DO like Butthole Surfers! Butthole Surfers are groovy and fun! Do you like Butthole Surfers?! (Uncomfortable yet?)

What did Mommy learn from all of this? That, while I had my pre-teens in the 80′s and fancied myself a child of the 80′s (I mean, I did have the purple boom box and giant plate size glasses to prove it!) but it seams I am more of a 90′s grunge/alternative chick! So I release my glittery day glow and embrace my nose ring (that I still wish I had) and flannel plaid shirt over distressed jeans!

While this was far from daily attire, and my ass will NEVER grace a skateboard, it wasn't far from my look back in the day!

In the end, I am still damn cool! My current jam is The Black Keys (love!) and until they start to scream, I enjoy keeping up with the girls. However, when I relinquished the computer back to the child (#2, wouldn’t you know it!) she had to pull up Slipknot to wash away all of the 80′s madness from her head.

Oye, what a mess.

Spring Break…Woo-Hoo!!

Isn’t it amazing that when you are the parent and not the one with the week off from school that spring break isn’t quite as magical? I wonder what happened. It used to be amazing…full of hope, full of wonder, full of shorts, sandals, possibilities, fun, vacations, social time with friends during the week….oh, wait. That was other people’s spring breaks.

Now that I am a mother of 2 teens and they look up at me with head cocked to one side asking with hope and anticipation, “Mom, what are WE going to do this year on break?!”

“Hmmm? What? What break? Spring break?! ….oh….ok, um, when is it this year?”

Not what they were hoping to hear.

However, in the midst of my own personal mayhem that will go un-noted, I had plans. BIG plans!

While navigating around the girls social engagements and my own schtuff, I had conspired to pick up my 2 nieces and bring them to our house for a few days. While they are younger than my girls, they all get along great and have a lot of fun together! After the mini reunion Sunday, the agenda played out like so:

Monday: Wake early (like 9…it IS vacation, after all!) Wait for Aunt Ashley to get here (my youngest sister, the COOL aunt), pile into 2 cars, and head for the City Museum (which can only be described as the coolest, most creatively fantabulous, interactive fun place on Earth!)!

Observe…

Girls with nieces at the City Museum, complete with Cool Aunt!

Turn around and you see all sorts of wonders! What makes this place awesome is that  around 70% of this place ( I am just guessing) is constructed and decorated with repurposed materials! So frigging awesome!

The place is crawling with tunnels, this happens to be an ultra fab rebar and steel ceiling walk-way...tube...thing. But totally safe!

Tunnels, tunnels, everywhere! HA!! don't tell her I posted this pic! Revenge for at least a decade of horrid photo's of MY bum by my rotten offspring...I rock.

We move to the 2nd floor and visit the Shoelace Shop. I know this isn’t sounding as if it should be an extreme point of interest, but it IS cool! They have an antique shoelace weaving machine that makes, right there on the premises, fabulously colorful and well constructed (know from experience!) shoe laces. Or maybe I am just easy to please!

Just when you think this place couldn’t get any more awesome! When you arrive at the top of the staircase whose railing spindles are actually old assembly/conveyor line spinner things, you see the Majesty that is the  World Aquarium. For an additional fee (…don’t leave home broke) you have a truly fab aquatic area to explore, full of touchy places and things to play with!

My sisters hand covered in "Doctor Fish" who are apparently natures answer to expensive exfoliation treatments and manicures! They are all tickle-y!

Some things like to play more than others.

My sister, the "Cool Aunt" getting her arm sucked off by a stingray! Ambitious, aren't they?

After talking to/poking at/petting/feeding everything they had to offer, we move on to have a snack (feeding stingrays raw slivers of fish at risk of being munched off at the elbow makes one hungry!) at Beatnick Bob’s which is part snack bar, and part everything ever thrown out by a traveling carnival, eviction crews for mobile home parks, and your grandmother when she finally threw everything out after never throwing anything out! TOTALLY kitsch place with nifty things dripping off the walls and standing about! Including Alien Elvis in a coffin! Ha! Beat that, Smithsonian!

TOTALLY didn't know angry lady was there till days later when I downloaded these! Oops!

When you leave, you get to do awesome things like crawl through a tunnel that leads to a place that your aunt can’t see you and cause her to freak out and send smaller-than-her people in to hunt you down! LOVE that!

Sometimes she would pop up to give me hope. Then duck down into darkness again, sending those who were sent to shadow her deeper into who-the-crap knows where!

And sometimes you get to hug up on Big Boy! Yes, the Cool Aunt is picking his nose...So immature...

How many times have you pondered to yourself…”You know, there are a lot of LARGE things in this world. Some things are just large, but other things are the LARGEST! I wonder what the worlds largest pencil would look like?” Well, wonder no longer, friends!! Behold! The World’s Largest Pencil!

Note the rather large-ish man sitting on it further down...this is a really large pencil! The lead at the other end works! (I had to try it! Tee-hee!)

And if you needed proof….well, consider yourself satisfied!

See! Told ya!

Then, after running on ramps fit for X-Game style skate boarding, touring the museum or architecture, and perusing the coolest vintage thrift store upstairs, we shoot down a 3 story tube slide and go outside where I immediately loose all 5 of them. Cages, tubes, bridges, ladders, chutes, airplane fuselages, dragon tree’s…seriously, this place is the product of MANY creative fits by many artists and sculptors who may or may not have been tripping at the time!

Then there is the ball pit. Check out the sequence of events here…

In this photo you see from left to right: partial legs and torso of 2nd child, back of hatted head of oldest niece, cute little boy I don't know, The Cool Aunt, blonde head of youngest niece, legs of person whom I do not know in background.

Now 2nd child is no where to be found, 1st born enters next to Cool Aunt, hatted niece is in relatively the same spot....and all but Blonde Nieces desperate hand is totally buried under rubber balls....you see that? Here is where I am asking, "Should I be trusting childless Cool Aunt to supervise?"

Somehow, blonde niece gets herself out of that, climbs on the bumper and jumps in further down from everyone, instantly buried in lightweight kickballs. So, my girls go in after her.

Here, you can clearly see that the hero's are making great headway! That is #2's head and arm. However, that is NOT her knee and foot. That would be #1's. It took several minutes for #1 to pull herself out of that one.

Point of Agenda #2: Cafe Ventana for Beignets!

Aside from having the worst service by a guy who appeared to have had half his brain siphoned off just before he came in for his shift, everything was great! I mean, look at that face! Does that look like a good beignet or what?!

The next day….Attraction #3!

#1 has been long obsessed with other cultures, specifically nearly everything Asian with an emphasis on Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. When we pass a food truck for a company cleverly named Seoul Taco on the highway advertising that they sell Korean Taco’s, kick obsession up a notch to “Reason to live”! So Tuesday was “track down the food truck for lunch” day!

Miss Veg-tastic on the right even had a "cheat day" to have a beef taco! In this photo, you will see that one truly uncool kid is not present.

Because apparently, it is uncool to take tourist-type photo’s next to a food truck in a business district surrounded by suit people!

But this IS cool, somehow. Hmm. Teenagers.

Awesome destination #4: The Arch Grounds!

When I found out that my elder of the 2 nieces hadn’t been to the Arch (which is totally St. Louis’ only reason for living during baseballs off season) since she was around 6, and the younger had never been at ALL…well, we at LEAST had to go SEE it!

So, I snagged nifty photo opp in the parking lot of the Old Cathedral....

...HI! they wave from so very far away...!!!

Vogue! Can I just say that this day, and every day I think, "HEY! Let's go to the Arch and hang out!" we have gale force Chicago-style winds? They were practically stuck like that for an hour!

Just a short jaunt down about 1,000 stairs, we arrive at the scenic Mississippi Riverfront. Yeah...I don't think even the board of tourism would call it that!

When one goes down 1,000 steps, eventually one must go back UP 1,000 steps.

Destination #5: Michael’s Arts and Crafts followed by Movie!

Michael’s is sort of self explanatory….we bought art stuff. Later, we went to one of the best kept secrets in the Metro Area…St. Andrew’s Cinema 3 in St. Charles! Yes it is old, kinda gross, and the floor is never just covered in floor…but somehow it is one of the coolest places ever! Maybe because each ticket is ONLY $1!!! And inside…you can get $1 hot dogs….just sayin’.

Since we had a younger crowd, we saw Alvin and the Chipmunk’s sequel, Chipwrecked. Yeah, it was as good as it sounds…but the little one was thrilled, and that was awesome!

And….that’s about it. The next day we delivered the nieces to my Grandmothers where they spent 3 more days and had more fun. My #2 spent that evening until Saturday morning at a friends lake house with her family, #1 was delivered to her friends house for a 1 night sleepover, Hubby was at his father’s house overnight, so that left Mommy….

ALONE!….for the first time overnight in I-can’t-remember-how-long….ALL by MYSELF!!! So I partied it up old school by watching documentaries until way-too-late on the couch with a blanket. Oh, after having half a Jimmy Johns sandwich. I do NOT get out enough….

Anyway, albeit expensive, fast, furious, and stressful when listening ears are forgotten…adventures are great. It is also great when school starts again!

Here is to Spring Break Magic!

YAY!
I can't get enough of that picture!

A Cluttered Mind

I live in an apartment complex with my family, and as most apartments, am subject to visits from the exterminator organized by the property manager. Not only are these visits completely out of my control, but also usually at the worst of times. This one was one up from that.

Due to the quick infestation of bed bugs that has been reported nationwide for quite some time now, our complex decided to undergo preventative spraying to keep our “clean” homes safe from the little nasties. We were given a sheet detailing the preparation that was necessary for the exterminators to be able to work.

I need to take a moment and just say, OMG! It was obscene! The list was at least 20 items long, most ending in “and place it in the middle of the floor”. Like, Take objects from the tops of tables and….from shelving and….loose items from bookcases and….remove bedding, place in a plastic bag and….any dirty laundry and throw pillows and….all items from the bottoms of the closets and….! To further paint the picture, our apartment, though large for the area, is only 1000 sq ft. I have 2 teenage daughters, a husband, and a cat. While we don’t live an excessive lifestyle, we do have a lot of stuff! What we don’t have a lot of is FLOOR, let alone the middle of one!

Thankfully my husband was able to spearhead the operation of getting this pulled together. It’s an incredibly rare occurrence for me to not lead ahead with a project, but this time I was frozen by the monumental task that this would be and clueless as to how it was going to happen. But little by little, shelving was condensed and items pulled out to reveal bare closet floors. Candles, photo’s, electronics, musical instruments, lamps, office supplies and file boxes, shoes, ice skates, elementary school pottery projects, plus so much more was atop the kitchen table, chest high in the middle of the living room floor from one end to the other. Couch pulled out and against the precarious pile, computer and television rendered inaccessible. The next day 2 twin beds and 1 queen’s worth of bedding were added to the heap in plastic bags.

The kind of hell that this induced was powerful! The feelings of panic and stress that came over me was so incredible, I couldn’t believe that simply by having all of my worldly possessions piled before me in the middle of my living space how horribly out of control I was feeling! I have long been a fan of the show “Hoarders” much for the same reason people are compelled to watch a train wreck. However, until that day I had never had any idea what it must have been like to live in such a home.

The moral of this story? Don’t let hoarding happen to you! I only had to endure this for a day and almost lost it. Don’t lose it. Put it away first.

G’day.