Yes, I ate the cookie.

Last week, temptation showed itself in the form of a box of M&M cookies--at work, naturally. Okay, well, I did eat one dang cookie. But I didn't enjoy it! That's the thing. I think I know they are not all that great, and I still want one.

Today there will be more cookies. We celebrate peoples' hire anniversaries around here. Fruit, cookies, brownies, cheese & crackers. I still have an apple in my lunch bag, a lonely thing that will sit like a wallflower at the dance. One whole week of tracking (the tedium!), and I am thinking not about the calorie-landslide about to happen (or not), but of the nuisance factor of trying to locate the name and nutritional information of each cookie, cracker or piece of fruit I might select, so that I can add it to my tracker. After all, what is the point of tracking, if one is not going to be honest? Maybe I can keep it under control. We will see.

Speaking of honest: On Sunday, my husband was feeling sick and tired (for the 100th time this year...) and I asked him how much alcohol he had been drinking. Lately, I have avoided doing this, because for one thing, it makes me sound like a nag. For another, I want to trust him.

I had announced at dinner time on Saturday that I didn't want him to buy any wine or other alcohol, period. I had too much wine on Friday, and besides making me feel bad the next day, I seriously do not need the calories. He seemed to agree. Then I noticed that, on the wine rack where there had been two bottles of wine, there was now only one. The one that was missing was a 750ml! When I asked him about where it went, he said: "I spritzed it." I asked, "Do you mean to tell me you drank the whole thing?" His reply was again: "I spritzed it. I'm not proud of that." Holy crap, an entire 750ml of wine in one day! No wonder he was out of it on Saturday.

What to do? I have warned him that I have absolutely no intention of living with an alcoholic.

Hello again...

Okay, the garlic was really good this year, my first year growing it. The bulbs were a little small, but there are plenty of them, and they are tasty.

I re-connected with my SparkPeople account two days ago, and was horrified to find that it has been two years since I stopped using it. Really now, it is way past time I did something about my weight. So, here I go again. I don't enjoy the chore of recording everything I have eaten, every day. But right now, I think it is what I need to do. Can I lose 100 pounds in one year??

Today there is a box of sugar cookies with M&Ms embedded in them on top of the water cooler at work. Most Fridays, there is something sugary and high-carby sitting up there. I am trying to develop a blind spot, as I need to walk past it several times during the work day. So far, so good. I tell myself that absolutely nothing tastes as good as thin feels, and it is true or at least it was, many years ago.

Just ate a Macoun apple. God, I love those and I wish their season lasted longer. Firm, sweet-tart, "wind-like". I nibble it right down to the stem and seeds.

Rhubarb

Yes, it is May and my two lovely rhubarb plants are bursting forth. One is a smallish, red one that lives in the flower border in the back yard. It is truly beautiful. The other rhubarb plant is out in a corner of the yard near the kitty cat cemetary. That one is huge; you could float a baby down the river on one of its huge leaves. I always fantasize about doing that but there are no babies around here, not to mention no river.

On Saturday, I had picked enough rhubarb to make two pies. I used my antique "New England Flaky Crust--Mother's Only Rival" pans with the holes in the bottom. Apparently, at one time you could buy pies which came in these tins. The holes were there for...well, I am not sure but maybe to keep the crust from being soggy? I can tell you it didn't work for the rhubarb but rhubarb is very juicy stuff.

Two eight inch pies; not huge, just right for a small household like ours. I gave one of the pies to my neighbor up the street, who really likes rhubarb. Charlie lives alone now because his wife Barbara has Alzheimer's and is in a nursing home. I feel sad for them. He had only been retired a for few years before she began to show the symptoms. She is not very old--in her late 60s. They have children and grandchildren. Charlie says that most of the time, Barbara is in very good spirits but doesn't remember things (or sometimes, her own family) from moment to moment. So the pie is one little thing I can do for him. I make a rhubarb pie for Charlie every Spring.

Garlic shoots

Finally. Finally, we are getting around to some much needed house renovation. The bathroom upstairs (and the only full bath) is a micro-tiled horror from the 1960's. The blue fixtures are wearing out fast. I would like to find the person who came up with the idea of adding much more grout to the square foot by making the tiles tiny. Then I would throttle him/her. Everyone assures me that grout is much more stable and easy to clean these days but I don't know...

We have arranged to have two different contractors come over early next week to look at the house. Our intention is to cut a very big slab of the roof on the north side and lift it up, thus making a dormer, which will give us more space. The space will be converted to a walk-in closet behind the bedroom that connects to the rear of the expanded bathroom. We have lots of ideas and no experience with this kind of thing--should be interesting.

More about all this next week.

Meanwhile, the garlic bulbs that I planted last Fall are sprouting and working their way through the cover of leaves we put there to protect them from extreme cold. I suppose we could still get a hard frost or two, but I am tempted to remove most of the leaves to give those little green guys a chance to have more sun.

Ray just pulled into the driveway. I can tell without looking because his muffler is losing its...muffle. Time for me to get back to cleaning house!

I start with a cat widget, of course.