Penalized for buying milk.

I'm addicted to soft drinks (soda). Being borderline diabetic, and hearing that even one soda a day doubles your risk of being diabetic, I really want to quit drinking any drink with high fructose corn syrup in it. I started analyzing why I'm having so much trouble quitting.

Here is one reason. When you get a combo meal at a fast food place, a soft drink is included in the price with bottomless refills. I usually have 2 medium cups of soda. This morning I decided to have milk instead. One child's sized milk is included in the price. They don't even have an adult size. So I needed at least two to get through the meal. The extra milk cost $1.09. If I got the equivalent of 2 medium soft drinks I would be paying $3.27 more for the same amount of meal. That's just not right. My thrifty mind almost gags knowing if I do the healthy alternative, it costs me as almost double. There is something wrong with the system.

Since we are out and about every weekend I am faced with this dilemma time and time again. I could buy the iced tea instead, but I don't like unsweetened iced tea and I'm guessing the sweetened ones also contain high fructose corn syrup. Plus the taste of iced tea is very inconsistant from place to place.

I'm sure I'm not the only one with this situation.

Going to an archery event.

I'm going to a four day archery event tomorrow. And I'm really torn as to what to take. Which projects do I want to work on? Which ones are too much trouble to bother with? If I take too many will it interfer with the time I want to spend interacting with others? It's a social event and if I'm not careful I'll spend the whole time with my nose buried in various tasks. There will be opportunities to learn new things too, but I'm always too shy just to come right out and say, "Teach me to do this." I mean I don't want to usurp someone else's time. So then everyone else comes home having learned something new, and I haven't. I know I should be more proactive but it's just not my nature. And the people in the group that are experts are always super busy helping other people. They barely have time to do their own projects.
I really want to take my guitar, but then again, do I really want other people to hear how much I suck at it? And what about my juggling equipment? My hula hoop? There is only so much space in the truck and most of it will be taken with inventory, tent, tables, a canopy, sleeping bags, and so forth.

My mother

Today was one of those days where I really missed my mother. I was at a fabric store and I started thinking about her. How much she would have liked the store, and how happy she would be that her great grandchild will be born in Sept. She really loved babies the best. Maybe that's why she had five kids. But then we kept growing up. She made many of our clothes when we were little. She also loved to crochet and tat. She was forever fixing my dad's pants when he would split the backside. He is a big man and hard on clothes. He'd even wear out fatigues. I'm dating myself...I don't think they call them fatigues anymore but that olive drab was everywhere in my childhood house. I dislike it to this day. Funny where our color preferences come from isn't it?
My mother liked all the cute things like the Campbell Soup Kids, Kewpie Dolls, roses, I Love Lucy, and Mr. Magoo. She also collected old time radio shows on tape, though I no longer remember which ones. And she was a Kay Starr fan.
She was a housewife and military wife who never learned to drive. Imagine having five kids and no way to get around. Many families only had one car in that era, and the man of the house usually drove it to work. Such was the case in my family. We take so many things for granted now a days.

Expired food

Photo caption: Even combing your hair is a chore when you are sick.

Well boys and girls, I managed to give myself food poisoning and so haven't done anything productive in four or five days. The sad thing is I knew better but listened to someone else's advice. So there's one lesson I hope I learned. Trust my own judgement. I could have avoided this whole thing.

Going back to Soulcast

I went back to one of my old blogging haunts at Soulcast and saw the site much improved. I wrote a post about Moleskine and noticed the Stumble Upon button on the post and hit that, and within an hour I already had 112 hits. Holy Guacamole! The reason I left soulcast was no one was reading my stuff. I am so thrilled to see the potential of sites like Stumble Upon I've decided to give Soulcast another go. So here are my Soulcast blogs: Purple, Storyteller, and Butterscotch.

Wardrobe malfunctions

I just got back from a week long trip and went to wash my clothes yesterday. As I was putting my vest into the wash, I thought, "I should check for things in the pocket." But then I remembered I had already checked them before tossing them in the wash.

So last night I put them in the dryer.
Today I took them out to find they were covered with blue blobs, splotches, dots, and measles. I had washed and dried a blue ink pen and a sharpie marker with my clothes. Now what? Somehow random blue spots don't look all that great on a red floral skirt. This is even worse than washing a red shirt with your white items. Most of the stuff in my wash was already red or pink or black.
I guess I may be using those new sewing patterns I bought a lot sooner than I had planned.
At least with the sweatshirt, I can spritz it with other colors to give it kind of a Grateful Dead look.

My train trip to Goleta

At the Santa Barbara station the train was delayed because they were trying to reunite some lady with her missing purse.
There was this doofus teenage guy that hopped off the train to have a smoke in Santa Barbara. A few minutes later I see him back on the train. He was walking by the open doors between two conductors. One of them says to him, "This is the Santa Barbara station here. We are pulling out so if this is your stop you better get off."
Instead the kid turns to go back upstairs. So they say, "Where are you going?" And he says, "All my bags are still upstairs." So he goes racing up the stairs, comes back in a minute, and hops off. And the conductor shut the door and off we went. So either that kid would have ended up in Goleta with his bags, or if the train left while he was smoking he would have been left in S.B. without his luggage.
The only reason we were in S.B. still was because of that lady and the purse, other wise that kid would have be SOL.

My daughter and her hubby and I had lunch at a beachfront restaurant in Goleta called the Beach Bar. Both he and I had shrimp quesidillas. They came with a big glob of fresh guacamole and sour cream, and a corn veggie mixture. It was excellent...very shrimpy tasting. I bet you'd like some of the spicier items on their menu. The average entree there is about $13.00. Ours was $10. I think. My daughter had clam chowder and bread.
Then we strolled the beach. This guy was using the shower to rinse off, and the ducks were playing in it with him. And I got a piece of driftwood that looks like a phallis. I wasn't gonna say that outloud but my daughter did. I figure I can sand it and carve something on it.
Then there was a couple making out on the beach with the guy's laptop sitting next to him. Now that's what I call a day at the office. They about got tangled up in 2 scotties that ran up the beach and tried to jump over them. HA.