Why is it I always think about Sheri Lewis when I order lamb chops?

I hadn’t planned on doing anything for Valentine’s day. Truth be told, I’m not a big Valentine’s day girl. I figured that maybe Christen, Spencer and I would go out for dinner like we do once a week (usually Tuesdays, but we skipped Tuesday so that we could go out on Saturday instead), maybe to a smaller place that wouldn’t be swamped, and that would be it. However, my in-laws offered to watch Spencer, so Christen made reservations at an obscenely fancy restaurant, and off we went.

I have to admit, the food and the service were fantastic. We had a tuna appetizer and I wasn’t overly excited by it – not bad, but personally I think Outback’s tuna appetizer is better. I talked Christen into getting the filet, because he always orders another cut to save the $6, and he’s always disappointed with it. He was not disappointed with the filet. We also split the creamed spinach … yum! My dish was the best though. I ordered off the seasonal menu, and got crusted lamp chops with goat cheese and thyme whipped potatoes. Oh. My. God. It was all delicious. The goat cheese was a little overwhelming in the potatoes (really, it just tasted like light and fluffy goat cheese), but since I’m a big fan I was okay with that. The lamb was perfectly cooked, tender and in a fantastic (I need more adjectives) port wine reduction that I wanted to lick off the plate.

We were supposed to go to a movie but we were enjoying the night and the company too much, so instead Christen bought a cigar and we went out to the patio to have a cocktail. I think my drink was the only disappointing thing of the entire night – it was terrible. Sounded good in theory: “Grey Goose Vodka and Cointreau Orange Liqueur gently blended with fresh strawberry puree, lemon juice and kissed with champagne bubbles, served in a strawberry-topped flute”. Ugh! It was so bitter. I wish I could have gone to Mitchell’s, got a Pine Fin Martini, and walked it over to our patio. :) I would have been in heaven.

Garbage?

Have you ever been to a concert of someone that either you didn't like much or didn't know much and was blown away only to get the albums later and hate them?

When I was in college my friend Lester had tickets to Garbage. I was never much of a Garbage fan beyond that song Stupid Girl. But hey, free tickets to a concert! So I went, and it was a blast. The music was great, the performance was awesome, and I was so close I could have reached out and touched Shirley Manson.

I went home and bought all the albums.

They sucked.

It's your generation that made my generation afraid of clowns

So it's been a busy few weeks. I could go into everything, but then I would go on forever and be insanely boring :) And you know how much I hate to ramble ... ha!

Sufficed to say, I have had many irons in the fire these days. I can't exactly remember what I've done to keep so busy, but I know that my workout routine has suffered. I went once last week, and I haven't been yet this week. I plan on going to Zumba tonight, although I don't really like the Wednesday instructor as much (she's fine, but I find her routines harder to follow so I get less out of the workout). So maybe, just maybe, I'll get into the gym again. I guilted Christen into going last night even though he's got a head cold. He said he felt better after he ran 3 miles on the treadmill, but can that really be the case?

Spencer's birthday was Sunday -- I now am the proud owner of a one-year old toddler! He started walking the Thursday of last week. I moved all the furniture in the living room off the rug to vacuum it, and he toddled over to where I placed the chair. He was in the mood to keep walking all that night, so I got it on video a couple times -- they're up on Facebook, if you want to pop over there. After that night though, he didn't feel like walking at all, sadly. Then he performed for the crowd at his birthday party, and he's been walking all over for his grandparents. Still no interest in walking for me in the evenings, but I'll give him some time.

We had a great party for him on Sunday. There were people I forgot to invite, so if you didn't get an invitation, I'm so sorry! Definitely not a slight. We had it at the house, and I was worried the whole time that we wouldn't be able to fit so many people at the house and although my fears were unfounded, if everyone who was invited (or accidentally not invited) came, there's no way we would have fit everyone there. We had 5 kids and 19 adults in my little house, but it was great fun and Spencer and the other kids seemed to enjoy it. Hopefully by next year we'll have the deck built and space will be less of an issue. The people at work tried (quite unsuccessfully) to talk me into hiring a clown (or a pony, or something else outrageous). The clown was the big sticking point. They both hired clowns for their children's birthday parties. Bah. :)

Spencer's been a little sick since Sunday. It's evidently going around, but since he's had the rotavirus and flu vaccines, he hasn't gotten what everyone else had, just a bit of a poopy problem. Really the only issue is that it gave him terrible painful diaper rash and he doesn't usually get diaper rash so he has been freaking out for the past couple days. Since yesterday about 4pm, he's been without the poopy problem so hopefully the diaper rash will follow suit.

So I know you wanted to hear about my son's stomach issues and diaper rash ...

In other news, Christen and I have tentatively decided to take a trip for our birthdays in July. It's his big 3-0 and my big 2-9. I wanted to go to Chicago, and he wanted to go to Lake Tahoe. I've looked into Seattle, San Diego, Chicago, Boston, Portland, and Tahoe and so far my favorite in terms of what there is to do it Boston. Does anyone have any suggestions? I'm looking for not-to-hot, and we'll be going July 9-13.

A snowball's chance in Florida (aka, you know)

There's supposed to be a chance of snow flurries tonight. Here. In. Florida. You know, every time I decide I hate Florida enough to move, the cold hits us (for two days) and reminds me why I can't live anywhere else. I hate the cold. But on and off for weeks - weeks! - it's been cold. Bah! Why can't it be a beautiful 68-73 degrees year round? I'd deal with the snowbirds and the tourists and the beach bums and everything else to have the beautiful weather. And to be fair, in between cold snaps, it was beautiful. And I'd miss my thunderstorms if it was beautiful every day. I love thunderstorms.

The cold snaps brought on the head colds. Saturday I started sneezing, which I thought was due to the high pollen count but it turns out I caught a bad head cold and was down for the count through Monday. I'm not so good at resting when I should, so while I was home sick on Monday I cleaned the library/den/office so you can actually see the floor and couch again. If I could only get around to reorganizing my books I'd be a happier with the room.

I finally got myself back to Zumba last night -- super fun, but on the eve of being so sick I couldn't do every thing I wanted to do, but it was nice to get back to the gym. Today was my personal training session, and she worked me out a little harder than I expected so I'm still sore. That's a good thing, right?

PS - Saturday Spencer started standing on his own! Daycare said that he took steps, but I don't really think that he did (unless he fell forward) but he's so excited that he can stand, he just stands and claps! Ha!

When the blogger's away ...

Today I'm bringing home a new dog. Well, technically and old dog, as my mom's dog Jazzy is coming to stay with us.

This is from last time he came to stay with us for a couple weeks. Don't they look like they could be related? Jazzy is in the foreground, and Lola in the back. Jazzy's a lot older; I think he's around 8-10. Anyhow, Jazzy is coming to live with us for two reasons. One, he can't seem to stay out of trouble at my mom's house. He climbs her chain link fence and gets out constantly. Animal control is on the prowl for him, and my mom doesn't need any more tickets or fines. Two, Lola's been acting out a lot lately, refusing to go outside to go to the bathroom in the morning (although she was good yesterday and didn't go in the house either, for which I was quite proud of her), dug under the gate despite the electric fence being active, and once the hole was filled with river rocks and covered with bricks she broke through the screen enclosure and started chewing on the gate.

So I'm hoping that bringing Jazz into the family will give her someone to play with when we're not home, or when Spencer is getting more attention. In preparation, I got Capstar for the fleas (we have none, and I'd like to keep it that way), and a transmitter for him for the fence, and bathed Lola. She's such a happy dog after she's clean! I always forget that. She hates the bath but tolerates it, and she's so soft and hyper after she dries.

Spencer took a few steps yesterday. I'd be psyched, except it happened at daycare, which depresses me. And then worse, he wouldn't do it at home and just wanted to crawl around. He cut another tooth on top, so now he's at 5 teeth. I've taken away the pacifier, which he's generally okay without, and he's weaning himself off the bottle. He's just not as interested anymore. He loves food (especially spicy foods, who is this kid?) but I'm worried he's not eating enough so I need to start giving him snacks. I don't really feed him at all, he just eats everything with his hands. When do you start giving them their own spoon and fork? I can't believe he's going to be a year in 23 days! Where does the time go?

We haven't made any plans for his birthday yet. I don't really want to do it at home, but Christen does. I want to invite some friends who have kids around Spencer's age, and family, and I can't see everyone fitting in our house! I'm thinking about making the back patio into a play area, and maybe if I did that in the next three weeks we would be able to feasibly fit people in. Oh, possibilities ...

My diet is going only "eh". I lost 6 pounds, but I haven't been that disciplined this week and I've only gotten to the gym once. I'm going tonight and hopefully tomorrow, but the time just gets away from me! I don't feel the weight loss at all, so it's likely just water weight. There are a few more classes I want to try out at the gym, and I might try tomorrow and/or Sunday morning. Wish me luck on all that!

Accountable

So yesterday was not the best day for eating for me. Technically, I think I ate okay. I had one packet of oatmeal for breakfast, no snack, and lunch was grilled chicken on a Greek salad with no dressing and 4 pita points with tzasiki sauce. But going home was my downfall. An empty house, and no menu planned for dinner. We've been so good about planning dinners for the past few months, but this week we didn't do it and I didn't know what to cook before my Zumba class. So I had two mini-Babybel cheese wheels. Then I decided not to cook, and gave Spencer leftover pork, crumbled cheddar cheese and sliced grapes. I made a Lean Cuisine for myself, and then had a yogurt after that. And then I ate a few of Spencer's cheese crumbles. All that food right away didn't sit on my stomach well, and I had a terrible stomachache for a little while. Unfortunately, my Zumba class was at 7:30 and I didn't want to miss it -- it sets up bad precedent if you miss your first class. For me, it makes it a lot harder for me to go at all.

Zumba was a lot of fun. The instructor was actually someone I worked with at Office Depot back in the day, which was a bit surreal. I have no rhythm so it took me a little bit to keep up with the steps, and after 15 minutes I wasn't sure I'd make it through the whole class but I did! I had to stop 1/2 way through to get Spencer out of the childcare for Christen to take him home, but otherwise I did everything. I also wore the wrong shoes (too tight) so partway through I couldn't feel my toes, which makes it hard to dance. Afterward I felt good -- not winded. Closer to bedtime my legs started tightening up, but I was okay this morning. I'm going back on Wednesday, so yay! Today I have my personal trainer appointment, so hopefully that will go okay too. I'm a bit nervous about it, to tell you the truth.

Challenging

As you can probably tell from my more frequent posts, I'm trying to use this blog to keep myself accountable for my health. I still have not yet made it to the gym, but I didn't really expect to get there this weekend. I have a personal trainer session set on Tuesday, and I'm going to try to go to Zumba on Monday night also. Christen had his training session on Monday, so I'm going to see if I can drop the baby off before my class and he can pick him up after his workout. I've never been to Zumba, but I heard it was fun.

Yesterday was a challenging food day. I made blueberry muffins, and I had two small ones with fat-free organic milk for breakfast. I had a babybel cheese wheel for a snack, and then Christen seriously wanted wings for lunch but on our way out the door to Winghouse, my friend Justin called about having dinner at Winghouse before he goes back from leave (Navy, he's deployed to Iraq in February, but he has to do survival training in SanDiego before and admin stuff in Hawaii before he gets there, so he was leaving today). So we had lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings. I was a very good girl. I had grilled chicken strips that I dipped in hot sauce so I didn't really use very much. Their spicy garlic sauce is pretty damn good. We came home and finished the yardwork out front except for a couple small areas on the side of the garage that need some heavy duty weeding (next weekend). It was super hard work but very rewarding. I hate yardwork. I can honestly say that I'd rather clean toilets than do yardwork. But the end product was definitely worth it. We cleaned up and went to Winghouse with Justin, Tim, Katie and Charlie and Charlie's parents, and had a lot of fun! There was nothing diet-related that I could eat, but I had 10 skinless wings and water. No beer, even! To tell you the truth, I didn't even feel like beer. I was still hungry when we left, but I came home and had a stalk of celery with peanut butter for a snack.

This morning I had an orange and yogurt for breakfast with water. I'm trying with the water. Have I ever mentioned that I hate water? People keep saying that if I drink it enough, I'll crave it. Still waiting for that to happen. We went to Target and got some workout clothes for both of us, and then to Publix for groceries -- almost all we got was lunchmeat and a crapload of veggies, yogurt, and fat-free cream cheese for a change on my celery. We came home and had lunch; I made turkey and muenster cheese sandwiches and I had a tangerine and a mini-Babybel cheese with mine. Christen had Baked Lays. Chips are not one of my weaknesses, so I don't mind that he has continued to eat them. I could care less if they're there; I'm not eating them.

Christen fell asleep in the chair after lunch and I messed around online for awhile, and once I started thinking about food again I went outside to start working on the garage. Man, it's hot out there! Is it really January? The other day I was trying to decide if it was safe to eat oysters because it feels like summer! Christen woke up to help me out and we got a lot sorted through and even more in the attic, and I relisted our couch on Craigslist. Things are looking much better, I must say. I baked a sun-dried tomato marinated pork tenderloin for dinner and served it with summer squash and zucchini, and thin sliced potatoes and water. Probably not the absolute best for us, but certainly better than some things I could make, and I was very good on my portions which is a big part of the battle. I'm still a bit hungry, but if I'm still hungry by 8 when I make my lunch for tomorrow, I'll have a celery stalk with something on it.