Summer again

not much new here. MissM wallpapered herself in stickers and then got hives from said stickers (ever seen heart and star shapes hives?). she ran a low temp for 3 days after and a cocktail of ibuprofen and benadryl became standard proceedure. one of my sisters and my mother are allergic to adhesives, so i'm not shocked. so when i prayed MissM wouldn't get my allergies, it was answered, but they then gave her all my mom's allergies. careful what you wish for eh?

we're being given a $2,000 swingset for free for missm. the guy's momma has a friend whose kid just aged out of the swingset and the dad was going to just chop it up even though it was expensive and only bought a few years ago. the woman called my m-i-l and offered it to us for free. It's one of those nice wooden ones with the fort, climbing wall, slide, monkey-bars, and 3 swings. missm loved it when we went to see it. the menfolk are going to take it apart in 3-4 pieces, put it in a u-haul and drive it the hour to our place and install it on 4th of july weekend. i'll be fixing food for their hard work efforts while they're at it. i have to decide on ribs or steak for them. i'll have fish or chicken. i rarely eat chicken at home, because that's my standard eating out food. some people eat so much chicken that they get tired of it. i eat a big variety of foods so i won't look at cucumbers and feel ill at the thought of eating them again.

i am now in a size six and according to the BMI chart, i need to lose about 4lbs to be "normal" weight. that seems CRAZY to me! My 7 y-o niece wears a 16youth and that's about the same size as an adult size 6. how do i know? I bought a dress for me niece for her birthday and my guy insisted that i could fit it. I called him crazy and we had a show-down where i put the dress on and it FIT. my niece tried it on after i gave it to her and it fit her too.

that's about all that's new with me. it's been 100ish degrees and so we've taken to doing as little as possible as we live without AC.

pizza, sorta

i've tried just about every "sorta" pizza recipe out there and a lot of already made diet pizzas too. none of it really matches the real thing. it's not the sauce or toppings, it's the dough and cheese. recently i had a friend tell me to use a portabella mushroom and do this:

broil it for 2 mins, take out of oven and fill with 1/4c sauce (i used super chunky extra veggie sauce) and then cover it with 1 pc provolone cheese ( i used reduced fat) and broil it again for 4 mins. I also tossed in 1/2 a thing of asparagus b/c i love broiled asparagus and it doesn't keep long.

it was the closest thing to real pizza i've found. take notice that i've used tortillas of all sorts, na'an, english muffins, sandwhich flats, wraps, various prename and hommemade low fat and high fiber whole wheat crusts etc. they're all okay, but rather skimpy and not a good break substitute.

the mushrooms weren't bread like at all, and i love the taste of mushrooms, which is very obvious, BUT the cheese was toasty and gooey and the sauce was warm and didn't squish out of run through the "bread" or wasn't too crunchy. i prefer thin crust pizza that's a little crunchy, but a lot of the "diet" breads are TOO crunchy and it's like eating a pizza made out of a wheat thin, not bread.

this mushroom base was a lot like having a deep dish pizza, without any of the guilt and very little fat.

Dinner took me less than 10 mins and it was a big hit. I can see myself doing this again but using the grill.

i think this might even be safe for the low carbers.

my-tar

so this am Mandolin and I got back from running an errand at about 8am and while i took care of some houswork, she watched the Wiggles. they're 4 Australian dudes that sing and dance about eating fruit and cleaning your room etc. They're some of the only adults who do kids shows that don't give me the heebiegeebies. Anyway, today they did a special on the Mandolin. Mandolin looked at me and said "momma that's a tar (guitar)" I looked at her and said "That's a Mandolin, like you" She thought this over, turned her head to the side and said "That's my-tar. I like my-tar."

Man is it easy for me to think my kid's one of the cutest kids in the world.

She got her haircut yesterday. I would share a picture, but she refuses to sit still and my candid pics keep coming out weird.

other side

i love the works of lm montgomery. i read her stuff as a child and saw the shoes etc. i've recently started making my way through them again and all i can say is what a difference 20 years makes. i used to feel so terrible for anne and now i understand the adult viewpoint and catch the meanings so well from the other side. i understand why people were "mean" etc. this is why lm montgomery's works are found in children, young adult, and adult literature sections. they really can appeal to all ages.

Drama at the Salon

I went at the buttcrack of dawn and got my hair did this am (8am to be exact). While I was getting my hair did I saw a woman with her leg in all sorts of traction machinery and in a wheelchair getting hers done. Like women at the salon do, i pretended I was talking about a sale ad and asked Adrianno wtf was up with that lady. He said she fainted while at the top of some stairs and broke ler leg bone into 5 pieces. Lord have mercy. Her husband stood next to her the entire time holding her foot for her and heling move her from chair to chair. I hope that if I ever break something to bits my guy is literally happy as punch to hold my leg while in the estrogen haven known as a woman's hair salon. Adrianno told me that the woman kept complaining that she wasn't feeling well. He was of the opinion that when one's leg is that mangeled and you're feeling poorly, it's okay to stay home, you'll have hair in a few weeks and can get it cut then. I agreed with him and stated that there are a few times in your life that the world will forgive you bad hair, and having a leg broken to bits is one of them. We then forgot about her and went on to talk of his momma's cooking and me begging him to get his mommato teach me some stuff (they're from Italy, so her food has gotta be tops) when there was a loud roar noise and the broken leg lady fell outta her chair and proceeded to have a massive seizure. It looked like something off of religous TV, I was waiting for someone to put their hands on her and shout "JESUS SAVES!" Sher eally looked like a fish flopping aroun out of water. In less than 5 mins the paramedics swooped in and saved her.

After that got calmed down a bit, Adiranno told me he wanted a quiet day because there'd been a big to-do at the salon the night before. Apparently he was cutting this woman's hair while her husband and his sister were watching when the husband got mad at the wife and full on slapped her in the face while she was sitting in the cahir. Adrianno was upset and had words with the dude when the wife and sister-in-law tried to calm Adrianno down by saying "We're from the chech republic, that's how we do it there. It's okay, he doens't mean harm, that's how it is." Imagine how well that went over? Another woman pointed out that if her husband hit her like that, it would be the last time, he'd have scissors in his eye for his troubles. Look, some guy might get one hit in, but then he'd better pray I never catch him because I am one nasty mean bitch and now that i've taken up running, I'm pretty fast and have decent endurance too.