Candy is the Devil

Whew. I'm alive. I have officially survived Sugar Week 2010.

Last weekend we had an action-packed birthday party for my oldest son, who turned 4.

Photo highlights for your viewing pleasure.

Then two days later his actual birthday fell on a weekday, so I was obligated to bring treats to school. Then Easter, and I swear there must have been three or four different baskets and candy-collecting stations around here?



By last night I barely recognized the wild-eyed, sleep deprived monsters that used to resemble my children.

Why is it that every single major holiday is somehow celebrated with candy? I think it's a conspiracy.

I also decided last week to take a few days off work and paint the kitchen porch. Maybe I'd lost all of my faculties when I made that decision, because the kitchen porch consists of thousands and thousands of white spindles. All that time and pain (pain, I tell you, I can barely walk today), and I've only just primed it all once! I still have to actually paint it.

Yesterday I was such a genius I left on my MBT rocker-walker shoes when I started painting. I'm going to give you a heads up, in case you own those shoes or you're considering painting or you're just curious - do NOT, I repeat, do NOT wear MBTs while painting that requires any sort of up and down motion with your legs. The added effort required to walk around in them will cause your back to break and your buns to become steel and all of this includes a lot of pain.

By the time I was done priming yesterday I was having back spasms.

Yeah, I know. I could have taken the shoes off, right?

I guess I was too caught up in what I was doing. Cause priming spindles is some seriously zen-type fun.

But the good news is my butt is firmer, my legs are firmer, my kitchen porch is white (even if it is just primer, it's white primer), and my kids are back to school today without any candy or sugar packets stashed in their pockets. I think. I didn't check them, I was so tired when I sent them off.

P.S. So far I've lost 7 pounds on Jenny Craig. Not bad. Mostly water weight, but I'll take it.

- H

My friend Jenny makes the best cheese curls

I finally asked Jenny for help today. I woke up, stepped on the scale (ok, there were like three other steps in between but whatever), cried a little, drank my Metamucil, and called Jenny.

They've put me on a plan.

Apparently admitting there's a problem is the first step. I heard there are eleven more, but I wasn't really paying attention because I had a headache and was wondering when we'd get to the important part where I got to pick out all my food.

I loaded up with various food-looking items and came home. This was, of course, after stopping at Culver's for a Last Meal of cheeseburger, cheese balls, and Pepsi.

No wonder their scale read super high. Twenty pounds over my regular weight.

I knew I'd been getting larger this year, but when you go to the bathroom monthly, you just kind of assume all those extra pounds are just poop. And then there's the Lexapro, that didn't help. Wait, it helped in that I was able to function and return to human status, but it also helped me sit around and eat a lot without moving.

Sooooo, I'm on a plan. I ate the world's smallest penne pasta entree for dinner. When you are suddenly reduced to eating a specific food and nothing else, chubby little two-year-old fingers plucking precious noodles from your dinner plate can be seen with a certain amount of panic and protectiveness. Not that I didn't let him eat them, I'm not a horrible mother. I just made him eat them one by one while I speared ten at a time and shoveled them in my mouth. I wanted to be sure the balance was on my side.

Then later I got to eat my nighttime snack of cheese curls and you know what? They're pretty good! Just like regular cheese curls, except a little less obnoxious.

So far, Jenny's been good to me. I'll keep y'all posted because I know that a) there's someone out there reading this that's curious what Jenny Craig is all about, and 2) I like to write about the stupid little details of my life cause I'm a loser or I'm about to be one! Get it? Loser? Biggest loser? Man, I crack myself up.

- H