SUN. JUNE 25

Cory's b'day, so the whole day was sort of centered around that.

It was "Meet Your Deacon Day" at church, which means all the deacons, who are divided up by neighborhood, set up tables w/ snacks and you go introduce yourself. I had a mini-crumb donut.

We went to Costco to pick up the cake and stuff for the party. Had lunch at the food court: a 1/4 lb. kosher hot dog, about 1/3 of a non-fat frozen yogurt.

Lots of munchies at the party, once it got started. I had about 3 of those turkey/cheese/cream cheese pinwheel thingies (is there a good name for those?), about 1 handful of doritos, a few bites of pineapple, a small piece of pepperoni pizza, 2 bites of a sugar cookie, a piece of b'day cake and a scoop of black raspberry ice cream.

Later in the evening, no one really wanted dinner, but I had another small piece of pizza, plus a few more chips.

All week this week is Vacation Bible School -- so snacks in the morning, exhaustion in the afternoon.

FRI. JUNE 23

I know I've skipped a day or two again, but it's turning out to be harder than I thought to write this blog, since w/ no comments it feels like I'm sending it out into a vacuum. Oh well.

Yesterday I skipped b'fast. We headed down to Orange County so Cory could have his b'day lunch with Grandma. We went to the Rainforest Cafe -- festive, kid-friendly, and very easy to get to at South Coast Plaza, with handicapped parking right outside the mall entrance by the restaurant. (Although it turns out it's almost impossible for Grandma to negotiate an escalator now, so may be the last time we go there.)

We split an appetizer -- I had 1/6 of a chicken quesadilla. Then I had a few bites of macadamia encrusted red snapper (took the rest home as leftovers), 4 coconut shrimp, a crab cake and about 3/4 c. of rice. We had their "volcano" for dessert -- my share worked out to appx 1 brownie, a few bites of ice cream, a smattering of hot fudge.

It took us 4 1/2 hours to get home (60 miles!). The second I got home I had to race out to a meeting I was already late for. It was a potluck dinner meeting, so I had appx 1 1/2 c. of sesame noodles, a few bites of roast chicken, a handful of popcorn shrimp. I was planning to have what looked like a great salad, but what I thought was a grape on my first bite turned out to be an olive, and I almost gagged. Couldn't eat any of the rest of teh salad.

There was a lot of dessert, but I skipped most of it, had a very small (1/2" thick) slice of lemon cake w/ cream cheese frosting. I will always choose lemon over chocolate.

Oh, and usually everyone drinks wine at these meetings, and I skip it, not being that fond of wine, and having problems w/ sulfites in cheaper wines. But this time they broke out the vodka as well, I had appx 1 oz. of vodka neat.

Today is all getting ready for Cory's b'day party tomorrow. Lots of housewlrk, and no making a mess in the kitchen.

TUES. JUNE 20

Yesterday was a day of nervous eating, I'm afraid.

I had a meeting at Act One in the morning. Raced back to pick up the kids after that, and had to run errands with them (the library, stuff for Cory's b'day party, etc.).

We stopped for lunch at Arby's. I had a turkey, bacon, ranch wrap, and 3 potato cakes. I also ate one of Sabrina's chicken nuggets that she decided was too "spicy."

I just didn't feel like cooking, and it's so hot anyway, so we just had pizza for dinner. I had a small CPK Thai chicken pizza. A lot of food, but just too nervous so ended up eating.

And today my tummy's all tying itself in nervous knots so I'm not eating. Go figure.

MON. JUNE 19

I skipped breakfast yesterday.

I was sort of planning to skip lunch too, but Lee made me a Lean Cuisine roast turkey/apples thingie.

I hadn't done any real cooking for a while, so I made a pasta guaranteed to please Lee and not so much the kids pasta w/ chicken, red peppers, broccoli, mushrooms, blue cheese, cream cheese, Parmesan and walnuts. It was quite yummy, and we have a lot of leftovers.

Later I had a bowl of cookies and cream ice cream while we were watching "Searching for Bobby Fischer" together.

SUN. JUNE 18

Sunday was Father's Day, and actually a quite nice one.

We went to church. Had a jelly doughnut there...

The kids wanted to take Dad to see Cars, which sort of determined where we went for lunch. We were going to go to Fuddruckers, but they have virtually no air conditioning, and it was a hot day. So we left and went down the mall to El Torito Grill. More expensive than we intended, but it was really nice.

They don't serve chips there, as it turns out (!). So I had 2 small flour tortillas w/ salsa (they serve homemade tortillas instead. Then I had a chicken burrito w/ rice and sourcream, and a little corn cake. It was all lovely, and everyone's food was absolutely delicious. Even Cory's, and he usually complains when we have Mexican food.

No snacks at the movies, because of the big lunch.

For dinner I made broiled orange roughy, w/ about 1 T. fat-free tartar sauce, and pasta w/ butter and herbs -- I had 2 servings of the pasta, 'cause the kids didn't eat any.

Later had a small bowl of cookies and cream ice cream.

Monday is a catch-up-on-stuff-that-didn't-get-done-while-writing day. Also may start to do some real cooking again. I want to make this pasta w/ walnuts and bleu cheese, even though I know the kids will complain.

FRI. JUNE 16

Traditionally on the first "real" day of summer (i.e., the first empty day after school ends), we go out to breakfast at Denny's and brainstorm ideas for the summer. Then I type up the list, to post on the fridge and point to every time the kids say, "I'm bored."

Well, we didn't quite make it to breakfast yesterday, because Lee and I were finishing our script, which we actually finished around 12:30. So we called it brunch.

I had 1/3 of a plate of cheese-smothered fries (not much smothering, I have to say), and a taco salad -- lettuce, about 12 tortilla chips, Taco-Bell-like-meat-in-sauce, appx 1/3 c. sour cream, a sprinkling of cheese. I also stole about 5 of Cory's onion rings.

It was so unbearably hot (108 degrees in the valley, where we went for brunch. One. Hundred. Eight.) that no one felt like eating for the rest of the day. Lee and Cory and I watched Chariots of Fire, and Cory and I split half a bag of salt-and-vinegar potato chips. Later I had a medium bowl of cookies-and-cream ice cream. No nutrition prizes for me.

But we finished a script, so that was okay.

Saturday, I have to teach a class for Act One, and will have dinner w/ Barb later. That's it for the day.

THURS. JUNE 15

We finished our script today.

I mean, "finished" is a relative term. I'm sure there will be a typo or two. I'm sure we'll think of some line changes (at least, Lee will). But it's in the hands of our agents, and we'll hear from them next week, and that means that for at least a few days, I will not have to be so monomaniacal about my days, and may be able to post here more reliably.

I don't think I ate yesterday morning -- we were writing too frenetically. Maybe I did eat... but if I did, I don't remember.

Oh wait, yes I did eat -- I had a popsicle -- it was already so hot, I couldn't handle much more. Oh, and I had a little bit of leftover macaroni and cheese.

I had to break from writing mid-afternoon to take Sabrina to her class's end-of-year-party. $30 per kid, and boy did we get next to nothing for it! I had a small plate of tortilla chips w/ salsa (at least the salsa was fresh!) and a small plate of potato chips -- Ruffles, no less, at $30/head!. At the end of the party, I had a piece of chocolate and strawberry cake -- and on the way home I got such an attack of TMJ, I couldn't believe it. Usually I only get that from drinking cheap red wine or champagne w/ sulfites in it. I sort of wonder if the strawberries were treated w/ sulfites in some way.

I got home to find Lee had gone out to Panda Express to pick up dinner, thinking (rightly) that I wouldn't want to cook on such a hot day after spending an hour in traffic. I had a bowl of orange chicken and white rice But I was still ravenously nungry (Lee didn't buy enough), so later made myself a baked potato w/ butter.

What am I going to do with myself now that the script is done?!

MON. JUNE 12

I was writing hard most of yesterday, so didn't eat much.

I skipped breakfast. Had a Lean Cuisine mac & cheese for lunch.

By dinnertime, I was feeling v. nervous and unfortunately did some nervous eating. I had 2 bowls of potato chips before getting around to making dinner. For dinner I had 3 large fish sticks w/ fat-free tartar sauce, and 2 servings of rigatoni w/ cheese sauce. Later that night I had a small bowl of Moose Tracks ice cream.

Tuesday is back to all writing again. School out on Wed. We don't have much time.

SUN. JUNE 11

I really am trying to get my act together here with the postings...

Yesterday we went to late church. I was craving tomato in the morning, had no tomato in the house, so had a Lean Cuisine cheese ravioli in tomato sauce for b'fast.

At church, I had half an old-fashioned doughnut.

After church, Cory and I had to stay for the Vacation Bible School volunteer lunch. I'm so proud of Cory for wanting to volunteer -- his 2nd year now. Middle school kids are allowed to work alongside their moms, so Cory is working w/ me in the crafts unit (high school get to do things like sports and drama -- he's looking forward to that!). One of the pastors' wives runs the elementary school age crafts -- I really like her -- and her sons help her out. The older son (1 year ahead of Cory) was there last year too, and he was really excited that Cory was going to be back again.

Anyway, we had to sit through one of those presentations where the speaker reads out loud the items from her powerpoint presentation, which are also xeroxed slide by slide onto a handout -- triple redundancy. Oy. Cory, who has just learned how to use PowerPoint, was dying from boredom -- he asked if he could make the PowerPoint slides for next year's presentation, add some life to it. For lunch I had a big plate of Caesar salad, a little bit of pasta salad w/ sundried tomatoes and tofu, and 2 small coconut/cranberry cookies. Cory looked at all that salad, and promptly had a healthy lunch of snickerdoodle cookies.

For dinner I was at the Premise annual community meeting. We were hoping for something other than pizza -- but no, it was pizza. I had 1 small piece of sausage/pepperoni, 1 small piece of veggie. And that was it. I skipped the cookies afterwards.

Today (Mon.) is an all-writing day -- we HAVE TO get this script done, the stress is killing me. After school we go to a "Patriot" presentation at school and have "Patriot" sundaes (blueberries, strawberries, vanilla ice cream -- get it?). Don't know what dinner will be, as we'll get home pretty late. Two more days of school.

SAT. JUNE 10

Oh, I can't believe how long it's been since I've posted here. Mea culpa. I have just been so wrapped in writing that everything else -- washing dishes, turning in my kids' end-of-the-school-year stuff -- just everything else has fallen by the wayside.

Yesterday we had our writers group. I was totally and completely out of cash, so we couldn't stop and pick up donuts, as we usually do. Fortunately other folks filled in the gap. I had half an old-fashioned, half a cinnamon roll, and a few bites of an apple fritter.

We couldn't go out to lunch w/ our writers group, because Sabrina had a birthday party to go to, and Lee and I had to get back to writing. We drove through McDonald's on the way home -- I had a $1 double cheeseburger and half of a $1 order of fries.

Sabrina was supposed to have dinner at the party, so Lee made what was left of a frozen version of orange chicken -- supposed to be like the kind at Panda Express, but not nearly as good. I had about 1 c. of the orange chicken w/ appx 1/2 c. of rice. We made it because Sabrina hates it, but the rest of us like it. So everyone was happy.

We watched "The Incredibles" as our family movie -- wow, what a great movie that is!... I had a bowl of potato chips while watching.

And that was it.

I'll try to be more diligent about getting back here. So sorry.

SUN. JUNE 4

I skipped breakfast, choosing to sleep in before church instead.

For lunch, I had 3 chicken soft tacos -- tortillas, chicken, salsa, lettuce, tomatoes -- plus about 1/3 basket of fries w/ lo-cal ranch dressing.

I was supposed to cook potato pancakes and apple sausage for dinner last night, but it was SO HOT there was no way. Just no way. The mere thought of hauling out the Cuisinart to mince all those potatoes made me sweat.

So instead I floated in the pool for about 45 minutes during the time I would have been cooking. (Although floating is a misnomer, as the kids were jumping on my float the whole time.) Then I threw together a tuna noodle Parmesan casseroley thing. I had a bowl and a half (Cory's leftovers).

Oh, and somewhere in the afternoon I had a medium bowl of cookies and cream ice cream. Because it was so hot.

SAT. JUNE 3

Yesterday was the ActOne faculty and mentors BBQ at our house, so I didn't eat any b'fast or lunch, knowing I'd be munching all afternoon. Just spent the morning cleaning house.

Folks showed up around 2:30 to help set up, and by 3:00 we'd broken open a bag of potato chips. I ate a lot of potato chips throughout the afternoon, hard to tell how much (that's why they're so pernicious) -- I'd say 4 to 6 handfuls of chips.

We finally got the grills going around 4:30. I had a cheeseburger, about 8 grilled shrimp, about 1 c. of pasta salad, about 1/2 c. of broccoli salad, a few carrot sticks. I also had a bottle of hard lemonade, and 2 bottles of these cute little Jose Cuervo mini-margaritas -- cute idea, but they really did need ice and salt.

All very yummy and good. I was shocked though, when I wandered into the kitchen at the end of the evening, having been outside chatting. You know, we host a fair amount of events at our place, and always, every time, when there are leftovers, the people who asked if they could use our house offer us some of the leftovers. It's always seemed to me like this is the bonus we get for being willing to spend a day or more cleaning and prepping, as well as for pulling out all the serving dishes, and whatever they've forgotten (although this time they didn't forget a thing, often we end up handing over butter, rice, tin foil, whatever).

But this time, I walked into the kitchen and found that the organizers had packed every scrap of leftovers (and they overbought, so there was a lot of leftover food). Most had already been put on ice and taken out to the car. When I walked in, they were debating what to do with the 6 lb. or so of leftover hamburger meat, which they clearly weren't sure they could use for a future event. Not wanting to be rude and say, "then leave it here, we'll use it for sure," and half expecting someone to turn to me and say "would you like any of the leftovers," I just didn't say anything. And within seconds, all that unwanted, uneaten, uncooked meat was swept away into a cooler.

I was sort of stunned. And this morning, as Lee wandered around the kitchen, he was equally stunned. "They didn't even leave a can of Coke!" he said. "I should have hidden a couple of beers!"

Are we out of line here? Someone weigh in and let me know.

Oh well. The food was good while it lasted. And (except for the grill itself, which no one ever thinks to clean) they did an excellent job of cleaning up. And not everyone does.

But seriously -- should they have left us some leftovers? Or am I wrong?

FRI. JUNE 2

We did get a lot done today (finally!)... So little time, so much to finish.

Somewhere around late morning I had a frozie of hamburger, mashed potatoes, carrots.

I was really hungry around dinnertime, but we are having a BBQ today (Sat.) so didn' twant to get the kitchen all messed up. So I just made "cheater's chicken," so named because it's so easy: chicken breasts in sauce of Kraft Catalina dressing, apricot preserves, and Lipton onion soup mix. I had it over sticky rice and had a 2nd serving of just rice Not sure the chicken was as cooked as it should have been, because I started feeling not so great while we were watching a movie.

Or maybe it was just the movie, which totally sucked ("Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow") -- I had half a box of Junior Mints while watching it, then quit halfway through the movie and went to bed.

Sat. we have the Act One BBQ here, about 30-40 people, hamburgers and shrimp.

THURS. JUNE 1

Between being broke and my nerves being shot as I wait for everything in my life to unwind, I sort of didn't have much of an appetite yesterday.

I ate the leftovers of Sabrina's bagel for breakfast. I skipped lunch.

For dinner, I needed to make something the kids would like, as they were both working very hard on their research papers, due today (Fri.). They both did really good jobs -- Sabrina had a 10-page paper on the Cherokee Indians, and Cory had a 24-page paper on Benedict Arnold. I have to say, I don' t think I ever wrote a 24-page (illustrated!) paper till I was in high school -- at least!

So I made them cheese enchilada Hamburger Helper. I had mine w/ sour cream.

Later we watched the spelling bee on tv, and I had a medium sized bowl of cookies and cream ice cream. I wanted comfort food, but boy was it a mistake. My stomach was tying itself in knots the rest of the night.

Today we are supposed to be writing all day. But we got zero zilch nada accomplished yesterday, just a lot of arguing, so who knows. Hopefully I'll be able to eat something.

THURS. JUN. 1

Between being broke and my nerves being shot as I wait for everything in my life to unwind, I sort of didn't have much of an appetite yesterday.

I ate the leftovers of Sabrina's bagel for breakfast. I skipped lunch.

For dinner, I needed to make something the kids would like, as they were both working very hard on their research papers, due today (Fri.). They both did really good jobs -- Sabrina had a 10-page paper on the Cherokee Indians, and Cory had a 24-page paper on Benedict Arnold. I have to say, I don' t think I ever wrote a 24-page (illustrated!) paper till I was in high school -- at least!

So I made them cheese enchilada Hamburger Helper. I had mine w/ sour cream.

Later we watched the spelling bee on tv, and I had a medium sized bowl of cookies and cream ice cream. I wanted comfort food, but boy was it a mistake. My stomach was tying itself in knots the rest of the night.

Today we are supposed to be writing all day. But we got zero zilch nada accomplished yesterday, just a lot of arguing, so who knows. Hopefully I'll be able to eat something.

WED. MAY 31

I was out running errands all morning yesterday, banking, getting photos developed because Cory forgot to tell me he had a photo collage due today... Grabbed a chicken/rice/cilantro/corn/whatever else burrito at El Pollo Loco. And I ate about 5 chips.

We worked and got a lot done all afternoon, interrupted by the kids coming home and needing our computers, as both of them have huge research projects due Friday. (I don't remember writing research papers in 3rd grade... but Sabrina's finishing up her paper on the Cherokee Indians... and Cory's, on Benedict Arnold's place in the Revolutionary War, is about 25 pages longs, with illustrations, bibliography, the whole bit. Better than what most kids do in high school. I'm actually sort of impressed, even as I resent losing my computer when I really need it...)

Lee took the kids up to church for their Wed. night programs, then made me a cheeseburger on rye bread, w/ grilled onions. It was tasty. I also had a medium-sized bowl of cookies & cream ice cream.

Thurs. is all writing again. And with the beginning of June, I will probably be eating less, because we can now officially not afford to buy much in the way of food. I'll keep posting though.

And I do have to ask again, because it's the beginning of a new month -- if you're reading, drop me a comment and let me know, so I know my words (and calories) aren't going out totally into the void. Thanks.