Bunch of Savages in this Town!

Two short stories for your approval that demonstrate the mentality of people today.

Story the First:

The Husband found himself in Home Depot (as he seldom does because the sweet siren call of power tools is much too powerful to resist especially when there are things such as "credit cards" with "six months of no interest" at his disposal) looking to replace a bit set that he had lost/broken some pieces of. When he found the set on the shelf, upon closer examination, he realized that someone had stolen the biggest bit out of the package. Either that or it just came that way from the factory, missing a bit.

No big deal, right? You just get the package behind it to buy, and take the one with the missing bit to an employee for them to deal with.

Wrong.

Every. Single. Package. that was on that shelf had the same bit missing. About a dozen of them.

Some rat bastard had stolen every single bit in this particular size. Inconcieveable!

The employee that was brought over to see the damage was just as incredulous as The Husband.

Story the Second:

After church this morning, we decided to do some light grocery shopping to fill in the holes in our refrigerator so that we don't have to do much of it during the week. This makes for much a much happier husband and a much happier me in that we don't have to go running all over creation for that one ingredient that we forgot.

We did our shopping and managed to get our of there fairly quickly. However, we realized that we were supposed to purchase a grocery card for someone and had to turn back around and return to the store. Instead of all four of us going in, The Husband went in alone. When he came back out, boy did he have a story to tell.

A guy was attempting to check out in one of the relatively new self check-out lanes. Now, these lanes are a bit touchy, as you have to put your groceries all in this one small space after you scan them because it wants to assess the weight of things - I guess to make sure you're not stealing stuff? I don't know. But if you don't put the thing you just scanned in the area where the bags are, it gives you a bunch of problems, and insists that you put it in OR ELSE. Basically, it's only a good thing if you are purchasing say, less than 15 items, and all of them can be fit into two plastic grocery bags. Otherwise, you're better off being checked out normally.

This guy, however, was purchasing around 25 items. And was having a huge problem with the whole bagging procedure. Basically, he was working himself into a full-blown tantrum because he couldn't follow the voice instructions the machine was giving him. And, tempermental beast that it is, the machine wasn't cooperating with him either because let's face it, the machine is the one in charge here.

Two of the on-floor managers converged on the guy to help him out with the process, to try to smooth things out, but the guy was way too far gone in the short time that things had become FUBARed. He threw such a conniption fit that the managers refunded all his money and let him walk out with all his groceries. In addition, they gave him a twelve-pack of Pepsi as a "we're so sorry for the trouble, and we hope you'll come back again" prize. Another employee helped the guy out to the car with his groceries.

But getting free groceries and a free twelve-pack of soda apparently wasn't enough to soothe the temper this man had on him.

When he and the employee got to the car, he proceeded to scream at the employee about the self-check out and said something to the effect of, "And you can keep these for all I care!" Then he THREW the entire twelve-pack of soda at the employee. Luckily, he missed the employee, but the sodas hit the ground and several of them exploded spectacularly.

The Moral of the Stories:

Some people are assholes, and either take what they want or aren't gracious enough to accept sincere apologies and generosity. They suck.

Unfortunately, far too many people in this town are like Exhibit A and B. Bunch of savages in this town.

Happy birthday to me!

Tomorrow is my birthday. And my body has decided to give me a present - 41 pounds lost since surgery! Whoo-hoo! I am so not going to complain about this. This means that I'm down to 274. I haven't been this size since Thing Two was about a year old. I just need to keep it up. And when the hell are the clothes sizes going to start going down? Aaagh! I'll take the poundage lost, though.

To celebrate, I don't think we are going to do anything special, and that's just fine by me. I have been "over" celebrating my birthdays for such a long time. Plus, I see absolutely no value in being one of those high maintenance adults that INSIST on having a party thrown for them every year. Oh, and should I mention that the party MUST be a surprise? Let me roll my eyes for dramatic effect here. :::roll::: Done. Oh wait. A little bit more. :::rooool::: Okay, there.

Yes, I know one of these little divas. Her birthday is what the center of the universe revolves around, and her poor henpecked husband hasn't been able to break through her selfish shell and make her understand that he just cannot do these things every. single. year. Especially since they are pinching pennies right now so hard I think that their fingers are stained with copper residue. I just honestly cannot understand this attitude. And she claims to be a good and loving Christian wife! Ha! One of the FIRST things about being a Christian that you learn is that, um, hello! You're not supposed to be selfish anymore - you put OTHERS before YOU.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no angel either on the selfish side of things, as The Husband can readily attest to. But this is an attitude that I just don't get and frankly makes me madder than hell. I do not get an understanding of the need to make everything about YOU. That's not what this life is about, period.

Anyway, both The Husband and I will be getting our bi-monthly massages tomorrow. This will be my first one since the surgery and I cannot wait for it. My back needs such a going over it's not funny. I've been holding off going to the chiropractor until I could get the massage because I'm just too tight to adjust right now. This is one of our few splurges, and since it makes both of us feel so much better, we scrimp in other areas so that we can continue to get them. Our therapist, Nicki, is ever so good and worth every single penny.

Just getting this massage will make my birthday one of the best in the world. Well, between that and getting to wake up next to The Husband and hugging my girls when they wake up in the morning.

So, in honor of my birthday, what makes your birthday special to you? Cards? A nice present from someone you love? Cake? Ice Cream? A party? Getting quiet time with a book? Let us all know, and then we can all throw an un-Birthday Party sometime and everybody will get something that they love and feel good about.

Sometimes, childhood comfort foods are the best

Since I had my DS, I have been telling myself that I'm going to make myself one of my favorite snack/lunch items, but I've never gotten around to doing it. Well, The Husband got sick and tired of me just saying it but never doing it, so on Monday he boiled up a dozen eggs for me just so that I can make myself some deviled eggs. This, ladies and germs, is true love, right here. A man boiling his wife eggs.

Seriously, though, I love deviled eggs. They are possibly my favorite comfort food, ever. As a child, I would boil up a dozen eggs, and then over the course of the next week or so would foray into the spice cabinet, seeking that perfect blend of spices that would make my eggs fantastic. A little bit of garlic powder, some onion powder, perhaps a little bit of oregano or thyme, hey, this meat tenderizer might work pretty well, how about some cumin? The recipie would vary every time I made the eggs up. I think the only thing that was constant was the garlic and onion powder. I probably tried every spice there was in my eggs. Sometimes the concoction wasn't that good - even vile. Sometimes it was astoundingly flavorful. But I was having fun with spices and that's all that mattered.

Now, I am a finicky girl, and don't like to eat other people's deviled eggs. And why would that be? Because they contaminate their eggs with either one of two things: mustard or pickle relish. Or, horror of horrors, they use BOTH! Gah! Oh, and too much paprika. Enough with the red stuff, people! It's supposed to be just a dash, not a pile of the stuff on top!

Every time I try someone else's deviled eggs, I have to go discretely rid myself of the mouthful of egg because I cannot stand mustard or pickle relish, and they always have at least one of these ingredients in there. Why? When did people decide that these two foul creations must go in deviled eggs? Ugh! All you need is a tiny spot of mayonnaise and some good spices and call it done, already!

Please note that I am very hypocritical about mustard. Mustard has it's uses. However, it may only be honey mustard, and it can only be used in certain recipies. Like The Husband's Little Smokies recipie or my mother-in-law's Honey Mustard Chicken. But people always use the nasty yellow mustard in their deviled eggs and that's just gag-a-rific to me. Blech!

Anyway, instead of my haphazard childhood search through the spice cabinet for the perfect blend of things, I now have a single spice mix that I use for deviled eggs. It's called Cajun Land Cajun Seasoning with Green Onion and it's made by this family in Louisiana in their home (well, it used to be - they've gotten bigger as word about their products has spread) and it is the best spice mix ever. Seriously. You can use it on chicken, you can use it on beef, it's epsecially tasty on pork. It goes in your potatoes, it goes on your scrambled eggs. My brother-in-law uses it instead of salt the stuff is so good.

In fact, everything this company makes is good. We love their pork seasoning, for instance, and their hot tamale kit is pretty damn good as well.

We stumbled upon this company via our friend Karl. We used to place orders in bulk with them because, well, because it's all so good and we didn't want to have to ring them back up every time we ran out of something. One time, Karl called the number for them (before their website was up) and got the granddaughter on the line. She said in her cute little girl voice that they didn't have any in stock at the moment but that her grandmother would be back soon with a new batch of spices and they would ship it off to us as soon as they got everything mixed up. We were completely enchanted. They've had loyal customers for the last 13 years in us.

They're in Metairie, so obviously they were affected by Hurricane Katrina. Their website is still up, so hopefully they are back up and running. Because we're about to run out of some of this spice, and our kitchen comes to a screeching halt if this stuff isn't around. Check them out. Their prices are excellent, and you get a quality product.

But the main point of this post is that in my deviled eggs, I have finally found a good way to up my protein count. The three that I have already consumed over the past three hours has me at a 22 gram level, and I've got one more staring at me, begging me to eat it. I may in about an hour or so, but we'll see. I think today might actually be the day that I break 80 grams of protein because of these eggs, and that will make me very happy. And because of the DS, 80% of the fat that's in the mayo that I used is just going to move on through, which makes me happy as well. They won't be an "every day" thing, but they'll be there to help boost me when that protein count is down.

Who knew that a childhood comfort food would be so good for me?

I always knew I was a bit off my rocker

But this kind of clinches it for me. Multi-dimensional wonderland? Yeah, if you consider "multi" to mean totally crazed and delusional. Hee!

Your Brain's Pattern

Your mind is a multi dimensional wonderland, with many layers. You're the type that always has multiple streams of thought going. And you can keep these thoughts going at any time. You're very likely to be engaged in deep thought - and deep conversation.

What Pattern Is Your Brain?

So. The food thing.

It appears that I have an anonymous person who has left a few comments to some of my posts that doesn't quite grasp my literary devices when speaking about 1) outrage and 2) food. Ahhh! The beauty of the Internet! Say anything you want, and nobody has to know who you are!

Yeah, I use a little bit of hyperbole on occasion - I didn't *actually* see "red" when I saw that DirecTV satellite, you know? But that's my personality, so that's the way I write.

But anyway, the real problem for them seems to be the food thing. After all, I *did* have bariatric surgery, so of course I am completely banned from anything good tasting ever again, because of course I'll just gain back all my weight after the honeymoon period when everybody loses weight is over because I'll just keep eating like a pig, right?

I'm not about to kid myself that all of the choices I make are going to wise all the time, but they *do* fit into the eating plan that my surgeon gave me to follow. The idea goes something like this: Push that protein, get in those vitamins, suck down the water. Then if you have room left, sure, have a tiny bite or two of something carb-ish or desert-ish.

For example, today, when I could actually plan out my food, I had yogurt supplemented with some protein powder, approximately 6 slices of turkey breast lunchmeat and 3 slices of provolone cheese (wrap the cheese around two slices of turkey) split into two different meals. For dinner tonight, I will have one or two pork ribs. Total water consumption throughout the day should equal about 80 ozs. This is a normal day, although the pork ribs are kind of a treat.

At the Magic Kingdom this weekend, I was not able to plan things out, so of course, my choices suffered. But the beauty of the DS is that it is forgiving when you make these slip-ups (unless they create bathroom issues, which doesn't seem to happen to me. Yet). Then again, I don't think that an inch or so of a churro, two small bites of peach cobbler and a sniff and a tiny nibble of chocolate spread out over four days qualifies as a major deviation from the eating plan I am going by.

But what about the rest of what I ate, you say? Well, here ya go:

• Pizza. Delicious toppings it had. Goat cheese, pecorino cheese, mozarella and a few others I can't remember. Thick sliced pepperoni. Splendid! The crust? Honestly, I don't know. Didn't eat it. Ate too much cheese and pepperoni to fit any in. The Husband said it was damn good, though. He ate five pieces.
• Sandwiches. I didn't feel like dealing with possible gas issues, so I took off the bread and ate the lunchmeat and cheese inside. Very tasty.
• Corn dog. Way too thick of a breading, so that's gotta go. Don't want to eat that anyway. Looks like it will give me nasty gas. The dog inside was too spicy for me to eat more than a few nibbles. Scratch that lunch.
• Fish and Chips. Very good cod. Lightly breaded so I didn't need to tear any off. The chips? Well, not so good, which is why I chose the smallest ones on the plate to nibble on after I had my fill of cod.
• In-N-Out Burger. Seeing as how this chain is the best in quality if you're going to pick fast food, I have no heartache with this choice at all. I avoided the bun entirely, and only managed to eat between 1/2 to 2/3rds of the cheeseburger. No room for their fries, though, and I didn't mind their absence.

I know that other people feel very passionately about how you should eat after any type of bariatric surgery. And believe me, I understand and share many of their sentiments. Protein will always be my major focus whenever I eat from now on. Come to think of it, it was that way before surgery as well. I always prefered my meat before I prefered my potatoes - but then I usually went overboard when it came to dishing out my potatoes, and that is what got me in the place I was at before surgery.

Here's the bottom line. I didn't have surgery to punish myself. I've already done that and failed beyond my wildest dreams - but now I have a tool that can help me enjoy life and eating again (even though it's within limits) and still get down to a normal weight and maintain it. My surgeon has made darned sure to impress this mindset upon me whenever I have spoken with him.

I'm supposed to be able to learn how to make smart choices when ordering from the menu - because one reason why I chose the DS is to make sure that I can order from the menu. I don't care that it may look a bit wierd with me picking my toppings off my pizza with a fork, eating everything but the bread on a sandwich, completely ignoring whole sections of food of my plate, or making the waiter or waitress ask me if everything was okay with the food because I only ate about 10 percent of what was put in front of me. It's fine with me, because in the end I'm eating for me and my continued health, not someone else's.

Everyone makes their choices in this life. These are the ones I chose for me. It doesn't make me right, and it doesn't make me wrong. It's the choices that will shape me into who I want to be.

The Husband has begun teasing me that I'm a cheap date now because of the amount I eat. That's fine with me. I'd rather be his cheap date than someone else's expensive eating machine any day of the year.