And on a lighter note . . .

My local Dairy Queen is hiring fruit smoothies.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On Being Patriotic

The list of adjectives I assign to myself is pretty long: clumsy, organized, competent, uptight, etc. One that might surprise you: patriotic. I fully understand what it means to be an American and am darned happy about living here. But, I have a beef (that part won't surprise you). I've grown tired of certain segments of the population thinking that they've cornered the market on patriotism or that they can dictate precisely how the rest of us express ourselves when it comes to our shared country and flag. Sometimes it seems like the Toby-Keith-boot-in-yer-ass brand of patriotism drowns out the rest of us. For the record, I don't believe that patriotism requires a love of NASCAR, a disdain for immigrants, a Republican voting record, or a preference for country music. Nor does it require adherence to a specific religion. I've seen Facebook posts from some of my friends and acquaintances that call for all of us to return to the "Christian principles on which ...
Read more

Buca di Beppo Gift Card Giveaway!

Image
I've been gaining some new readers lately, which is very gratifying. I've done some reading on the topic of optimizing one's blog, and one oft-used suggestion is to have a giveaway of some type. "No," I always think to myself with a self-satisfied shake of my head. "I will not cheapen my blog like that. I want people to come on by because they like my writing." Or because they find me incredibly witty and unmistakably modest. Or they think I have the cutest kid they've ever seen, bar none. Or they are stalking me and need to gather just a bit more personal information before showing up at my workplace with a machete. I've also noticed that some of the blogs that receive heavy traffic are also very confessional (TMI) in nature. I think harboring a few secrets is healthy, so I'll continue to keep some things to myself, thankyouveddymuch. I'm also keenly aware that I don't really have a reliable shtick on which to hang my blogger hat. I ...
Read more

Five years ago

Image
. . . I walked into a Weight Watchers meeting for the first time. It was early September 2005. My daughter was just four months old. Unlike most new moms, I was not overweight because I'd just given birth. It's hard to hang your hat on that particular excuse when your baby did not, in fact, live in your uterus at all. Indeed, I had reached maximum density all on my own. I had been putting on weight for a while. For most of my life, I think I've been what you'd call average-sized. I've been a size 10 for virtually all of my adult life. I've been as small as an 8 and as large as a 12, but never anything outside that range. I don't know if it was the cascade of miscarriages that caused me to give up on my body completely or if it was something else that is outside my consciousness (and yes, I'm a vegetarian and yes, you'd think that I'd be thin as a result, but let me remind you that there is no meat in brownies). Once my daughter was born, though...
Read more