He said "Clap"

Eating

Last night I called F and offered to make him an extra batch of hearty buckwheat pancakes. You see, someone had eaten all of the first batch of buckwheat pancakes and there would have been nothing for F to eat when he got home.

He said, "No, thanks. I've eaten already and am full."

What a creep! Who actually stops eating when they are "full" and refuses homemade, fresh and wonderful, buckwheat pancakes?

Not I.

And that's why in precisely 1.3 months I'm going to weigh 400 pounds.

I feel that there is nothing I can really do to stop the impending weight gain, but here are some things I am going to, or am already doing. At least I can feel like I have a plan.

• I have a scale in my bathroom now. I have never had a scale in my bathroom before that wasn't completely covered with dust.
• I am getting on the scale every day. --When I was in LPN school, I remember JJunker telling us that she weighed herself daily, and if she noticed a weight change then she made immediate changes in her behavior. She's a darn good-looking woman and I hope it works for me like it has worked for her.
• I am dipping my fork in the salad dressing rather than putting dressing on the salad.
• I am recording my exercise sessions so that I can track my progress.
• I have replaced 2 percent milk with skim. This was very sad for me, but it's not all that bad.
• I have replaced ritz crackers with rice cakes. Let's never speak of this again.
• I am looking at the labels of the food I eat. I have never really done this before, and let me tell you, it is disheartening, not because of the calories and fat calories, but because of the ingredients. There is not a lot of good stuff going on in this packaged food.
• I am eating a whipped chocolate mousse yogurt thing at night time instead of ice cream. Let's never speak of this again.

That's it. That's all I'm currently doing.
I'm open to any suggestions, as I would like to not be an Orca. I am not open to going to Weight Watchers because it's pretty expensive. Anything else, I'm game for.

I am going to do the following things but have not started yet:

• I am going to eat a snack at work before I go home, and not eat while I am making dinner.
• I am not going to snack on things while I am standing up.
• I am going to start doing my hair better--but that's neither here nor there.

So that's it. I'm out of ideas.

--Orcamanda

The Birthday Girl

Ya'll have been holding out on me.

Birthday Cake

Considering that my model was a faded cake photo from the 1970 Wilton yearbook, that I've only made two other decorative cakes in my life (Elmo and the Xmas cake), and that the Wilton yearbook instructions were three sentences long (for those who are regular cake decorators), I was rather pleased with how the cake turned out.
And because I used four layers of butter fudge cake with fudge icing in between, I was even more pleased with how it tasted. I ate almost all the leftovers myself--sacrificing my own figure, really, to help the children stay on nutritional track.

Because of how lovely M's cake ended up turning out--Lovely, from my own creator perspective--I have decided that there is hope for the Xmas cake (see last years model below), and I will bravely continue on making it every year. The goal is that by the end of time it will look exactly like the cake in "Picture This" and that everything on it will be edible. Fondant, fondant, more fondant, and the "Wilton basket weave technique" will all be necessary. For this year though, I think I will work on the "smooth icing" and bordering techniques.

Here are the smallest children oohing and aahing over my cake. Ahem, I mean, M's cake.

T tried to blow out the candle.

Then he tried to dive head first into the cake. He had to be forcibly removed from my arm, and even then, he clung to my pant leg all the way that I walked to the kitchen. He cried, and squirmed, and said, "flowers, flowers, please, Mommy, flowers...." I ignored him while I attempted to serve myself, ahem, guests, but did note that he knew they were flowers without being told. Smart boy. And props again to my decorating skills. I'm pretty sure the local bakery is hiring.

Halloween T!

I had to greedily clutch the candy in my hands, because Big T kept saying "Thank you" and putting the candy back in the basket. We didn't get it across to him until much later in the evening that he should say "Thank you" and put the candy in his bag for me, ahem, I mean, him, to eat later.

Halloween M!

"Things That Should be Private, But Now Aren't", or, "This Photo is in Poor Taste"

In which M experiences an unsightly problem.