I'm diggin' it...Part One

This is my 102nd post! I totally missed number 100, which I think I was supposed celebrate by bragging on myself in some way. I can still do that, though. I can.

When your Grandma turns 100, it is a big deal, right? Well, when she turns 102, even bigger deal, eh?

So don't leave in disgust because Beeswax is eating a Beyer's light ice cream bar for breakfast to celebrate her 102nd post. Because I love these ice cream bars. And that is the theme of this post. Things I like. One hundred and two of them.

1. Ummm, I told you about the ice cream bars, righty-o? They are mighty tasty and a much better choice, calorically, for my Sunday night ice cream bender than an entire pint of Ben and Jerry's Phish Food, which is also fairly delicious.

2. I just read People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks. I just started to write a synopsis, but then I remembered it is about a book conservator who finds clues to a medieval manuscript's provenance, with many fascinating historical flashbacks, but if I write that, then you'll know I'm a big nerd, and you won't read it. Which would be too bad. Also read The Opposite of Fate by Amy Tan. An interesting writing memoir, although it got a little whiny at the end. Uh, Amy? You are one of the most popular living writers in American literature. Who cares if someone labels you "Asian-American writer?" If someone wanted to publish my book (the one that isn't yet written), they could totally label me Asian-American if they wanted. The readers might be disappointed, though, by my lack of Asian content. I guess I could write about the big crush I had on Steve Chang in 7th grade. That Steve was one foxy 12-year-old.

Okay, where am I? #3? At this rate, this post could be my first book.

3. Bumble and Bumble curl creme for medium to thick hair. This stuff makes it possible to wear my hair curly and not look like a witch. And at about $100 for the giant quart size I buy, they ought to be adding some kind of black magic. But if your curls need cold rinsing, then creme-ing, then wrapping in a turban like some sort of sheik, then diffusing and shine spraying, this is for you. I'm actually sort of cheap, so I've tried all the drugstore curling products. (I am so cheap I sometimes can't help myself and buy generic Oil of Olay Complete moisturizer, even though I know it makes me break out and the real Oil of Olay should really be cheap enough.) I figure I'm saving money because I don't use my Bumble and Bumble on the kids; they get the below-par drugstore products I have rejected. So ladies and gentleman, if your hair has always been curly but not curly enough to do anything with, try this. (Buy the small bottle first).

4. Jeans that don't gap in the back and show my crack. In a later post I will amaze you all with my revolutionary sewing technique which has made plumber butt a thing of my past.

5. Going to Women's Conference. I leave tomorrow afternoon! I have never been before and so am really thrilled, but sad because I will miss going through the Temple with Liz, and because I will not be able to eat my way across Provo as previously planned because...

6. I'M GOING TO CABO! Jen might have invited us because I whined that my mental health is suffering from all the sickness at our house (started nearly three weeks ago, but now we are down to only secondary infections, so I think I can see a light at the end of the pus-filled, infected eardrum). But who cares about eardrums, and whether I'm acting a little bit crazy, when I am going to CABO?

7. Jake coming home Saturday night from Mountain biking in Utah and getting a babysitter immediately. That was very nice of him, especially since he was pretty much exhausted.

102 seem a long way off? Okay, sorry. I'll pick up the pace.

8. Converse low tops
9. British stuff
10. libraries
11. Orange toenail polish
12. a stack of unread novels by my bedside
13. babies
14. guacamole
15. family history
16. Masterpiece Theater
17. babysitters
18. Gary Jules
19. Food Network
20. Nutella
21. traveling
22. warm beaches with no fish because I am scared of fish
23. collecting/hoarding books
24. pretty jewels
25. hoarding stuff for sentiment's sake
26. hoarding stuff cause I can't help it
27. baking cookies
28. eating cookies
29. history books
30. blonde curly hair
31. my book club
32. Rick Steves
33. trouser-cut jeans
34. my family

I think I will stop before you lose interest.
What, too late?

TO BE CONTINUED...

Deep thoughts with Sam Beeswax

Mom, how did they make the world again? Did they make land or plants or animals first?

I go into long monologue about days of creation that bores him a lot. He stops blinking, and stares out the window; finally, he cuts me off.

Okay. But Mom? Why did they pour in the spiders? When was that?
I visualize Sam's idea of the creation of the world: a big stew, wherein the Lord adds a pinch of this or that, according to his whim. If Sam could only figure out when the spiders got added, he might be able to better understand their purpose; or maybe determine if their addition was ON purpose, or, more likely, a big misunderstanding.

Which makes complete sense to me. I think he asks a good question. Why, ever, did they put in the spiders?

Like me, Sam isn't a fan of the arachnids. No, no, hold on. I don't need your lecture about the supply chain or the food cycle or how this is earth week or blah blah blah.

Do YOU have hairy, 2-3 inch long wolf spiders at your house that you have to spray with hairspray before you kill? Because if you don't spray it and smack the mama anyway, thousands of tiny eight-legged babies will crawl off their squished mama's back and onto the shoe you squished her with, then up your pant leg and all over your house where they will incestuously multiply and bite you 126 times while you sleep in your bed? Do you have those?

(You might, if you live near me, in this great Sonoran desierto. Here is the family photo below: mom with all the babies. Heartwarming, isn't it?)
If you don't have them, don't try to tell me that spiders are my friends. My friends don't bite. Very often.

At least we don't have a house full of scorpions. (Like you, Jane and Todd, and Mom and Dad.)
I'm not sure I could answer all the deep doctrinal questions those horrid little fellas (also arachnids, btw) might provoke.

Flat Yael

Heard of Flat Stanley? In this children's book by Jeff Brown, Stanley gets flattened by a bulletin board, which sounds painful, but apparently makes it possible for him to be mailed to his friends around the world. Which is cheap travel. My friend Shawna's daughter, Yael, sent her flat self to us from her 1st grade class in Castaic, California.

Flat Yael's time at the Beeswax home has been full of exciting adventures. At first, I wasn't exactly sure what Yael's teacher wanted from us, but in my mind it looked something like this:

but that's just staged (I know you couldn't tell). Ross, Jane, Sam, Tommy and Yael didn't get to go to the Grand Canyon during her visit. Yael was wearing those super high heels, which didn't seem very practical.

Instead, as soon as she arrived, we put her to work. Yael was a good babysitter. Here she is reading stories to Tommy:This allowed Kelly more time for her own stories:Flat Yael took Ross to the eye Doc at Wal-Mart because she suspected Ross was blind as a bat. She was right! Too bad she wasn't around to stop Sam from busting the new titanium frames. That was expensive, Yael!
Jane and Yael sponsored an art show. Read the rules if you can. When I asked Jake what he would enter, he told me he couldn't tell me, because then I might be tempted to break rule #2.

Like the rest of us, Yael spent a lot of time watching Ross' Little League games. Ross is pretty good, but Yael was more interested in the concessions. She heartily enjoyed the icees that taste eerily like grape Hubba Bubba. Here she is, watching with Tom:

Things have been a little crazy around here. Yael thinks this is what all hungry and harried Arizonans eat for dinner:

Well, sometimes they go to Little Caesars. Right, Yael?

Anyway, I think she had a great time. It has been a suburban cultural feast!

Thanks for coming, Yael!

My Boyfriend's Back

That's right, folks! (Be sure to say the 'l' in folks like they do in the South, home of the Kremes, where these 'nuts grow wild on the roadside and knee-high by the fourth of July). Jake just spotted this sign outside the Krispy Kreme on Superstition Springs.

Is this real? Is this a mean and tardy April Fool's Day prank? Does anybody know anything about this? Why haven't you told me?

Anyway. MAY 13! Whatever shall I wear? I am tingling with anticipation.

But wait. Now that I've had a little time to think about it, I'm not so sure it's a good thing. Krispy Kreme is like a bad-boy, bad-for-me ex-boyfriend, to whom I keep returning. At inopportune times. After I've already gotten over him. Learned to live without him.

I won't lie. Things were bad for awhile when he first left, but now I've found healthier replacements for that co-dependant relationship. I mean, we totally ended things as friends. I've seen him around a little, and it has been okay. Not weird at all. We're like Bruce and Demi. Really, it would be impossible to avoid him in my travels. He's so cosmopolitan. The last time we met up was nearly a year ago, in London:

Honestly, it has been months since I've driven by his old place to see if the lights were on and he was back in town.

But now he IS back, I can't say no, and I'll let him woo me, lure me in, even though I know it'll never work between us. But he looks good, he smells good, and I already know we have a great time together, even if afterwards I feel sick, guilty, and swear I'm never going back for more. But then I do. Things were much easier when he was out of the state. I am a weak woman. A weak woman with glaze on her chin.

Maybe this time, the Krispy Kreme and I can just be friends. I don't need to jump right back into something I can already see will have a miserable, unhappy ending (my rear ending), right? I can set up some boundaries, like:

1. Can't use the drive thru. It is dangerous for us to be alone in the car together. I might end up doing something I'll regret later.

2. Can't get doughnuts after dark. A single doughnut during the day, well, that's just sociable; A box at home in the evening? That sounds like a date. Plus, would would my new scale think?

3. Can't ever buy one of those discount cards that gives me two dozen for the price of one. It is an evil trap. Those doughnuts seem so cheap, but who ends up feeling cheap in the long run? Uh-huh. You know.

Anyway. Welcome back, Krispy Kreme. I did miss you. Wal-Mart doughnuts are disgusting, and though the churros at Costco are tasty, things just haven't the same while you were away. Save me a raised, glazed, creme-filled.

I'll see you soon.

The next Disney Princess

Mom, what is this song we are listening to?

Another Suitcase in Another Hall. From Evita.

Oh. Is Evita a Disney Princess?

Well, Sam. No. But that's such an interesting question. I think I'll stew about it all day while I nurse my sick babies. (Sam pukes, Tom pukes and poops, Jane coughs and sneezes but does not puke. Yet.)

I'm not sure even Disney can add enough sugar to that story to make it a palatable fairy tale. I will give it to you that Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice vilified her somewhat unfairly, if very beautifully, in song. Eva Peron wasn't a fascist or a Communist. (Why does cybersitter keep taking out fascist but leaves communist?) She really did try to help the poor. She also went on that Rainbow Tour of Europe, where she wore fancy clothes and got ridiculed cuz she was friends with Francisco Franco, who was not the coolest kid on the continent at the time. She has a classic rags (to actress of questionable morals to political activist) to riches story. There really might be something for Disney to work with there.

If an opportunistic wife of a South American president/dictator will ever break into that exclusive princess cohort, it will be Evita. But it will be a tough go. Not only will she have to fit the glass slipper, but she's got to get through the palace's glass ceiling. Once she's in, she will still need to sell a heck of a lot of merchandise to really secure her spot, with Cinderella breathing down her neck all the while. Pocahontas couldn't do it (even with her own feature-length animated picture and Vanessa Williams insisting this Indian maiden could paint with all the colors of the wind); she just didn't have the right dress. Animal skins just don't cut it in this clique. One should not underestimate the importance of the dress. The Little Mermaid got a dress exception, but she had to show more cleavage to make up for it.

In a 1996 interview, Tomás Eloy Martínez referred to Eva Perón as "the Cinderella of the tango and the Sleeping Beauty of Latin America".

Aha! So there's at least one guy out there who thinks she's got a shot at the big time.

(To be fair, Martinez also said many other, non-princess-related things in the same interview, including this:
"Latin American myths are more resistant than they seem to be. Not even the mass exodus of the Cuban raft people or the rapid decomposition and isolation of Fidel Castro's regime have eroded the triumphal myth of Ché Guevara, which remains alive in the dreams of thousands of young people in Latin America, Africa and Europe. Ché as well as Evita symbolize certain naive, but effective, beliefs: the hope for a better world; a life sacrificed on the altar of the disinherited, the humiliated, the poor of the earth. They are myths which somehow reproduce the image of Christ."

I don't think he was starting a grass roots campaign to see her as a cartoon. In fact, if he thinks Christ's ideals are naive, what do you think he'd say to "when you wish upon a star"?)

If Peron gets her Princess role, I think her countryman Che Guevara should at least get his own ride in Fantasyland. It couldn't be any weirder or scarier than Snow White. That's one creepy ride.

Who else might make a good Disney heroine? Maybe Joan of Arc? She and Mulan have a lot in common.

I got an F on your lame-o book meme

Okay, this book meme is so 2007, but I just got it so I thought I'd try it. I like it because the books are so random. I've read 51 out of 99. That's an F, people. What did you get? Leave me a link to your post if you try it.

Bold the ones you’ve read- Italicize the ones you want to read- Leave unaltered the ones that you aren’t interested in or haven’t heard of.

1. The DaVinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (JRR Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (JRR Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (JRR Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (JK Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (JK Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (JK Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (JK Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (JRR Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (George Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. The Bible (Can't say I've read it cover to cover yet.)
46. Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (F Scott Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (JK Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
68. Les Miserables (Victor Hugo)
69. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
70. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
71. Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
72. Shogun (James Clavell)
73. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
74. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
75. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
76. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
77. The World According to Garp (John Irving)
78. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
79. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
80. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
81. Of Mice And Men (John Steinbeck)
82. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
83. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
84. Emma (Jane Austen)
85. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
86. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
87. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
88. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
89. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
90. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
91. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
92. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
93. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
94. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
95. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
96. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
97. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
98. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
99. Ulysses (James Joyce)

Why I'm not at yoga right now

I should be in the 9:35 Body Flow class right now, but since I'm not, I think I'll blog about it.

A few days ago, Tommy grabbed a big knife off the counter while I was cooking dinner and cut his pinkie finger, and he did not cry at all. Jane and Sam both yelled and cried and made him quite nervous while I washed and put an Elmo band-aid on it, but my baby still shed no tears.

That is because Tommy likes to reserve his "I'm being stabbed with a big knife" screams for the Kidzone at the gym.

My children don't have any stranger danger. They like new people, not one has even turned around to say goodbye on his or her first day of nursery at Church. (They usually start whining when they start Primary. I hypothesize it is all about the treats/no treats.) Anyway, now Tommy is hanging on my legs, whining, and doesn't want to be left anywhere, with anyone. I think he should cry it out, but the tenderhearted (or tender eardrummed) ladies of the Kidszone don't want to let him bawl.

Yesterday, I had an appointment with my trainer (actual friend named Jodi, who is very nice and not at all like my old trainer of which I will speak in the next paragraph), who wanted to talk to me about my fitness goals, but all the talk was just to get me loosened up for the real reason we were there: measuring the circumference of my thighs in front of the whole gym, then pinching me with calipers and telling me my fat content (which I totally already knew because of the new scale). I had to try to hold my thighs still while wrestling Tommy, who had already been kicked out of child area.

Just a quick story about last time I did this Trainer Talk (yeah, I keep coming back for more). Whilst lecturing me about my sometimes habit of breakfast-skipping, my old trainer sneezed into his own hands, and upon finding himself with two hands full of boogers and without a tissue, excused himself. Excused himself not to get up and find a snot rag, but to lean under the table to remove a green lunger from his upper lip, then wipe it and all the rest under the desk. Unfortunately, his hands were still wet, so he rubbed them on his nylon exercise pants.

Me, inside my head: Um, hello, Senor Trainer-man? You aren't actually under the table. I can totally see you, and I am fully grossed out. Note to self: I really must get some anti-bacterial weight lifting gloves.

Him, out loud: Okay, I'm back. Shall we have a look at those thighs, then? (Might not have been the exact words. It happened over a year ago. The snot story is 100% real, though. I can't seem to forget it. )

Sorry, I have a hard time staying on topic. (What's the topic? Quick, read post title for clues. Ah, yes.) Of course, this whole Tommy thing is all about me. He is trying to keep me down. He doesn't want his mama fit and hot (ter than already am), so he's pulling this stunt. He's so naughty.

I really do need to go to the gym during the day, though. Nights I am tired and weak. Let me illustrate: Tuesday night I planned to go meet Liz for a class where a bunch of non-dancing, mostly white ladies try hip hop moves, so it should be as entertaining as it is sweat-inducing. Instead, I found myself in a Lexus rental car, picking up 5 sundaes in the Sonic Drive-thru. (No, they weren't all for me, but you see my point, right?)

Since I saw a little of Idol Gives Back last night, I fully understand that lack of mosquito nets and malaria in Africa = real problem. Nearly-2-year-old son of stay-at-home middle class Mom in suburbia who won't go to childcare at gym? = not real problem. I get it. I really do. Just because I sometimes find myself writing my blog in the voice of Bridget Jones does not mean I am shallow and self-absorbed. It just means I read embarrassing novels sometimes.

(I do not in any way endorse the reading of Bridget Jones Diary or Bridget Jones the Edge of Reason to my blog readers. Bridget has terrible potty mouth.)

Lunch in Globe: quel romantique!

10:00 am, last Monday. Sam, Tommy, Mom, Dad, Ryan and I loaded into the Beemer and head east. At the same time, Grandma Layton got in her pick-em-up (grandpa was alt fuel before alt fuel was cool) and drove west out of Central. 1.5 hours later, we arrive almost at the same moment at our mutual destination: the Taco Bell parking lot on the west end of Globe. But then we backtracked a bit, and went to the McD's so the kids could climb around while we ate Big Macs.

So we had some lunch with Grandma Lavada Layton, and my Dad wowed her with the the technovoodoo that is his iphone.

I asked her if she had known Grandpa (Corthel Layton) when she was a girl, since they had lived in a pretty small place (Central, Graham County, Arizona). She told me, sure, he was always around, getting in trouble, getting in fights.

The first memory Grandma (Lavada Layton nee Allred) has of Corthel was a day when she was out in front of her house. She was in big trouble for running off (I picture her 3 or 4 years old, but I forgot to ask), and she had been tied with a rope by the wrist to a bed post. (You'll remember this was before Dr. Spock. Plus, there were no fences in the yards, and anybody who's got a 1000 square foot house and couple of kids they want to keep out of the highway might attempt something similar. To wit: Mom says Grandpa Taylor also remembers being tied to the front yard.)

Corthel came riding by on a horse. He came up to her and asked why she was tied up. She explained.

"So did he untie you?" I asked, breathlessly. (He rode up on his steed and save the fair maiden (er, toddler!)

"No," she said. "He laughed. He laughed and laughed and kept laughing while he and the horse continued on down the road." (Out into the sunset, maiden-free.)

What's the point of this story? I learned that my Grandmother and I both met our future spouses while in our own front yards. This is apparently an excellent place to meet boys. Single girls, take note.

C'est l'amour!

(I also learned that I can google Frenchy phrases, to make my posts very chic and classy.)

Sugar, spice (water, fat, muscles, bones) and everything nice.

What am I made of?

This morning I decided I really needed a body fat analyzing scale, and I needed it immediately. I wanted to know how much fat I'm toting about even more than I wanted clean underpants (today is laundry day). So I loaded up Sam and Tommy and went to Target, where I located a Taylor 5593 scale on clearance for only $15.00. "Bag it up, lady. I'm taking it home!" I announced to the check-out clerk. Only, the lady didn't hear me. I saw the sign that said she was hard of hearing after I'd already performed my short monologue. Then, there was an awkward silence. Well, awkward for me, anyway.

Maybe it was good she didn't hear me, because I wasn't being totally honest. Before I went home, I had to pick up the kids (it was a half day), and stop by In-n-out for some burgers, shakes and fries with Jake and Todd. I wanted to enjoy my greasy lunch in an Eden-like state of innocence, kind of like taking one last lap around the garden before before partaking of the fruit and stepping on the fat scale. After I got on, I'd KNOW. I'd be responsible for the knowledge. This analogy isn't working very well, is it? Maybe if the burger could be the fruit? Or maybe somehow I could incorporate the pink spread I put on my fries? No, no. It is getting worse...I'll stop.

So, back at home we unwrap our new toy and start her up. This scale is cheap entertainment, people. For 15 bucks my kids and I have spent a happy afternoon weighing, measuring, and trying to trick the scale by standing on one foot, alternately peeing and drinking (it also measures your percentage of water), and telling it we are 90 years old or extreme athletes. We also washed our feet and left them a little damp for potentially better results from the electrical impulse the Taylor 5593 shoots in one foot and out the other. It doesn't sound entirely safe, which is half the fun, of course. We are all thrill-seekers over here. Especially when it comes to our bathroom scales.

So, how did I do? How much of me is blubber? Well, I'll share a lot on my blog, but there are some things a lady needs to keep to herself, don't you think? To keep the bloggy mystery and romance alive? Yes, I think so. Let's just say I'm not at all horrified by the result. My first thought as I saw the result was "maybe I shoulda had the Double Double!," but then again, I've never been much of an overachiever. I'm 57 percent water, including those 2 diet cokes, which were totally necessary to wash down the fries. 57% sounds okay, I think. Or maybe I'm terribly dehydrated, and one of you will tell me. That would be humiliating.

Now, I think I'll make the kids all go clean their rooms so I can be alone with the new scale and try it out in the buff ! (All in the name of accuracy and scientific method. Directions say it works best when you're nudie).

I've said a bit too much? Yes, perhaps.

After that, though, I'll do some laundry. I promise I will.

The nose knows...occasionally.

11:15 pm.
The lights are out.
I hear munching and smell...

"popcorn? Jake, are you eating popcorn over there?"

"Uh... yeah." he confesses.

"It smells like old popcorn. Like old movie popcorn. Do you have old movie popcorn over there?"

"You caught me. I've got a bag under the bed over here."

"I knew it! Can you believe my sense of smell? Your wife is pretty much a genius! Come on, tell me I'm a genius!"

"Okay, genius. Too bad I'm really eating Doritos."

"No popcorn?"

"no."

Dangit. "You have any dip over there?"