April Showers Bring BOSSY

Bossy was in town for her (No)Book Tour to promote the book she didn't write. And thanks be to Bossy for driving cross country to bring people together! Several bloggers, of the mommy variety and otherwise, gathered at a little restaurant in Encino to get to know each other outside of our respective blogs. Due to babysitting snafus and a softball practice we did not attend, I arrived about an hour late with Girl-Child in tow, and happy to see many familiar faces from Bossy's Excellent Road Trip two years ago.

(And here would be the picture to, you know, represent (**pounds fist to chest and gives peace sign to the sky**), if someone had bothered to pull her camera out of her bag even just once during the evening, but she didn't because she figured Bossy would take plenty and then someone could just link to Bossy because her pictures are better anyway)

Once we all had our fill of appetizers, Bossy had us go around the table and tell a little something about what makes us, us. Or perhaps tell something surprising about ourselves that we wouldn't know about the other just from reading blogs. PRESSURE!

Aunt Snow from Doves Today took the lead and holymotherofgod she was a hard act to follow. I mean, it's not like I'd ever up and joined the circus -and no I'm not kidding THAT is what we had to follow and WHO LET HER GO FIRST? That's no opening act! That's the main attraction! And since I was so busy being engrossed in her anecdote, and that of Smacksy who was next, I didn't have anything prepared to say about myself. Now, of course, with several days to think about it, I've come up with ...well I still haven't. I tripped over my words and wondered if I got even half of a story out. I started off talking about how I grew up in a small town suburb of Los Angeles and then somehow ended up telling about how I met my husband and then I felt like I'd been talking for too long and then just kind of brought the whole thing to a screeching halt. Then the next guest started speaking and I'm sitting there going, wtf, Tootsie? Did you say ANYTHING? Certainly not anything surprising about myself or anything anyone who reads my blog wouldn't already know. I think it's safe to say that I can scratch "writing my memoirs" off my list of things to accomplish before I bite the dust.

Gonna Need a Price Check on that, Herb

When I am shopping, I have this amazingly annoying ability to grab the one item that does not contain a price tag. I can pick up two of one item, compare, decide which one I want and put the one WITH THE PRICE back on the shelf. Depending on where I shop, this can be a problem. Some retailers know their merchandise and it's absolutely not an inconvenience to the people standing in line behind me because the clerk does not miss a beat in ringing me up. Then there are those other stores where the cashier expects the customer to know exactly how much each item in their shopping cart costs.

For instance today. I had a handful of stuffs and the ten items or less aisle was clear. The scanning of said items was moving along quite nicely, albeit slowly, until the plastic container used to transport liquids made it into the cashiers hot little hands. That's when everything came to a screeching halt. "There's no price", she says - out loud. But the look on her face indicated that this was a problem with which I was to deal.

I know it's hard to determine from this blog but I'm normally an easy going kinda gal. But this was the ten items or less lane and I had ten minutes to finish up this bullpucky and pick up my kid from school. -And I was already mad about the fact that it was raining on my car the one I just got washed yesterday and that the hem of my pants and up to my ankles were soaked I do not like to be wet. Put Tootsie in wet clothes and you get one cranky Tootsie- So I says to the lady, okay well it's like a dollar-sixty-seven or something. Because believe it or not I did not memorize the exact price of everything I decided to buy, shocker, I know right?

Perhaps I should have stated the price with some authority...It's A DOLLAR SIXTY SEVEN! and left out the "like" and the "or something" because then she was all, we're going to have to check. Really? REALLY? It's not like I was trying to make off with a Blu Ray player for a buck sixty seven! It was a little plastic container, not quite Rubbermaid but graduated from Ziplock. For this she was going to hold up the express lane as long as I was willing to play along. And who was this "we" to which she refers? I don't work there. Does she think I'm going to run to the back of the store for a buck sixty seven? ohmygod-no.

You know what? She didn't want me to either. She was willing to lose that sale than have to find out the price...or BELIEVE THE WORDS THAT WERE COMING OUT OF MY MOUTH. I know this because the rest of my items weren't allowed to be rung up until I blinked in this stare off. She stood there. Staring at me. Holding the item up for my review. Daring me.

Forget it, I don't want it. I tell her. I think I saw a slow small smile creep across her face. And I swear to GAWD I heard someone in line behind me heave a sigh of relief. And to that dude, you're welcome because I totally could have been that customer.

I've Got a Fat Secret

In the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving I shed a few pounds to get some room to play around with. You know, play, fun games like eating several helpings of juicy turkey and sucking the gravy from your mashed potato volcano, and extra marshmallows on your yams, and a generous serving of cranberry sauce in the shape of the can from which it came...and pumpkin pie for dessert- then again before you go to bed - then for breakfast. What? It so does go with coffee.

Before you know it it's March and you're still on the field, in the zone, and the coach hasn't benched you in months. When you look in the mirror you exclaim "Holy Muffin Top, Batman!" and you can't exactly use "the holidays" as an excuse anymore. You pull yourself aside and have a meeting about overindulgence and how it's time to knock it off and design a plan to get it together WOMAN! You're not twenty anymore, Ms. Farklepants! You can't just skip a couple of dinners and lose five pounds and be fabulous in those pants. Not. At. All.

I'm a late afternoon snacker. I adore the salty snacks during those pre-dinner hours. And this just will not do. So I decided to start documenting everything I eat and to help keep track I joined Fat Secret. I enter all the foods I've eaten for the day; breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks and wine, gin, vodka, rum other. When you have to enter your intake it really makes you think twice about what you put in your mouth. Stop it. Stop it right now. Yes, you too.

I've been trying to keep my daily calorie total between 1200 and 1400, and I've been doing a pretty good job of sticking to that number except for the recent trip to Las Vegas this past weekend to celebrate my sister's twenty-first birthday which I'm not going to elaborate on but suffice it to say that the night included me doing this:



And that's all I'm going to say about that because: self explanatory. Needless to say, about 3000 calories were consumed in one evening and when I got on the scale Monday morning, after two weeks of due diligence I lost a whopping....ONE POUND. Clearly, what happens in Vegas...stays on your ass.