Monday Morning Moan-a-Thon

Don't get me wrong. I'm in a good mood and feeling very positive and have no serious complaints, but...


UUUGGGHHH! Monday after a week's vacation is such a drag!


And a week's vacation spent eating junk and staying up late is a perfect recipe for the crash-and-burn morning I'm currently experiencing.


If you saw my last blog, you already know of my heroic efforts to gain a record amount of weight while visiting the Blue Ridge Mountains last week. Not content to eat myself into oblivion while travelling, I came home and started planning our Easter feast. As I conferred with my husband and kids about the menu, a pattern began to emerge. Start with basically healthy appetizers, then gradually decline into high-fat, calorie-dense dishes until arriving at a selection of 5 separate desserts, each of which serves 8, for a party of 8. The flagrantly hedonistic menu included: 

boiled shrimp with mild cocktail sauce and sinus-draining cocktail sauce

one dozen each bacon-cheese and curry-horseradish devilled eggs

fruit platter

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ham

Eric's Savory Artery-Clogging Mashed Potatoes with gravy

steamed asparagus with Hollandaise sauce

green beans with butter

composed fruit salad with yogurt-poppy seed dressing

two loaves buttered French bread

~~~~~~~~~~~~

mixed berry tart

peach-cherry tart

vanilla bean ice cream

double-chocolate fudge brownies

bunny-shaped chocolate layer cake

I'm ashamed to say that I probably even forgot something. And whatever I forgot, I'm still sure that I ate some of it, memorable or not. Plus I didn't mention that there were bowls of jelly beans sitting around everywhere, and two of our guests brought candy- and chocolate-filled baskets. And I had to wash it all down with coffee laced with Irish cream liquer.

The DTs from going cold-turkey after that much sugar will probably last all week.

And I'll do it. I'll get back on the wagon today, and start detoxing from the excessive sugar and starch and caffeine and fat and preservatives and all the other unhealthy components of my vacation diet.

But I reserve the right to complain until I feel better.

I need a catchy name for my complaint. Considering how much junk I've eaten and the length of time I've been eating this way, I'm likely to feel bad for a while. I need a shorthand way of referring to my symptoms, to mask the fact that I've been unapologetically consuming any and all food-like substances within reach for several weeks. Since I know my condition is not my fault, but due to pre-vacation stress, vacation excitement and post-vacation letdown, blaming my behavior on vacation seems to be the best approach.


I'm suffering from Post-Vacation Excessive Eating Letdown.


If I don't get better soon, I can call it a condition. A few weeks of persistent symptoms, and I've got a syndrome. Soon, I'll be able to claim my "disability" and refer to it only in acronym form.


"My P-VEEL is bothering me today."

Hmmm...how would this work...


A neighbor calls to see if I want to take an early morning walk:

Neighbor: Hi, Michele. Ready for a brisk walk on this gorgeous spring morning?

Me: Oh, I'd love to. Really, I would. But my P-VEEL flared up overnight, and I think I'd better take it easy today.

  Another friend calls to see if I can babysit:

Friend: Are you available to watch Baby Lucifer for a couple of hours today?  

Me: I'm feeling terrible today. I think my P-VEEL is coming back.              

Friend: That's awful. But I really need a sitter. Is it contagious? 

 Me: I don't know for sure, but I wouldn't want to take that chance (silent chuckle).

P-VEEL may come in handy for the constant requests to volunteer. I envision my answer to the next email response to bake something, or sell tickets, or chair a committee:

Dear Mrs. Slavedriver,
     I regret to inform you that I've been diagnosed with P-VEEL and will be unable to assist with any more of your pointless projects. Please remove me from your volunteer list and purge every trace of my contact information from your files.

Yours in eternal exhaustion,

Michele Arnett

I'm beginning to see some real advantages to having a scary-sounding diagnosis. In a perfect world, it would most commonly flare up on Monday mornings and could last through Friday afternoons. Treatment options would include rest, sunshine and live-in help.


(Cue haunting music):

P-VEEL -  are you at risk? Research into a cure has been affected due to the poor economy and budget cuts. Please give generously to your local P-VEEL foundation. 

Alright. Enough already. I'm done blogging as an excuse to goof off.


I'm healthy, well-fed, well-rested, laying around my climate-controlled home in comfy pajamas on a cushy chair, drinking imported coffee. Whining. It's time I get up and get going. Earn my keep. Clean my kitchen. Walk my dogs. Sew something. Weed the front garden. Take a jog on the treadmill.


Or get started on my new favorite most important list:


The Netflix Instant Queue.

Welcome Spring - Who Cares if it's The Real Thing?

It seems most of the country is experiencing an early spring, or a false summer, or some kind of weather aberration that would be quite enjoyable if everyone wasn't so worried about what's causing it. The pleasant weather has been so overanalyzed, concerned citizens feel obligated to request a moratorium on the word "unseasonable."    The news and weather experts can't stop speculating about the cause of this alarming development and predicting some kind of associated doom.

Can't we just enjoy the warmth and sunshine without having to imagine or make up or demand answers for its existence? Do we need to analyze this pleasant turn of events and try to discover dangerous trends in the offing? Or can we analyze this pleasant turn of events and discover normal fluctuations in the offing? (Click on the purple words to see what other non-experts think.)

For heaven's sake - I got a sunburn this weekend! A brief reprieve from my terminal winter pastiness! Instead of shoveling the driveway, I was pulling weeds. Around here, gardening normally kicks off Mother's Day weekend - here's last year's blog from that day, showing my hunky yard boy planting a new garden for me. The concept of cleaning out the flower beds and putting down mulch in March is thrilling for me. Some year in the not-so-distant future, when it's too cold to consider going to a St. Patrick's Day parade, I'll be thinking nostalgically of that one surprising winter when we had blue skies and green grass in mid-March.


So I'm not going to waste time worrying about the reason why we had a mild winter and questioning if spring is here to stay.  If it snows next week, so be it. Will my worrying stop snow? 


Birds start singing by 5:30am and we've had ground fog hovering over the growing grass these last few mornings.  Thanks to Daylight Saving Time, kids can still play outside after dinner. Instead of the typical overcast nights of late winter, we've been able to enjoy the planetary conjunction of Jupiter and Venus under crystal-clear skies. The sights and sounds of spring have come early, and that just means more time to enjoy them.

Being a "man-made global warming" skeptic, I'd normally love to get involved in a lively debate about the Greenland glacial expansion, the jet stream, new ice core analysis, the El Nino effect, the record cold European winter, longer growing seasons, the need for summer blend gasoline and the alarmist, speculative "journalism" on Weather.com.


I would, but I'm going to be busy soaking up some rays.


And here's my view from the lawn chair:

Happy first day of spring!

The Gift that was Mother's Day

I'm a bit of a cynic when it comes to the recent onslaught of made up days for gift-giving.  Even when I've been on the receiving end, whether it was Secretary's Day, Sweetest Day, Teacher Appreciation Week, Dumb Blonde Month (Wednesday), I didn't like the contrived nature of forced gratitude.  I've always envisioned a dark-paneled, smoke-filled board room, filled with executives from Hallmark, FTD, Russell Stover, Honey-Baked Ham, DeBeers and WalMart, brainstorming about the next invented "special" day to foist on the unsuspecting but ever-willing shopping-obsessed public.  With Mother's and Father's Days a cultural standard, and Grandparent's Day the new guilt-inducing day to "oops" about, it can't be long before we begin celebrating Cousin's Day, Brothers-In-Law Day, Pool-Boy Day. (Note to self:  find a job designing those cards.)

In keeping with the "attitude of gratitude" that inspired this entry, I should refrain from any more sardonic wit concerning our card-and-gift-giving mentality.  Especially since I had an exceptionally lovely Mother's Day.

I love getting gifts, and even I try to think of suggestions for gift-giving occasions  like Mother's Day (mostly to steer my children away from the candy aisle).  My idea of a good gift is very broad, because I like almost anything, the older and tackier the better, and if I don't like it, I'll regift it.  The price of an item is not important, because (for me), a well-chosen cheap gift trumps an expensive ugly sweater  or bottle of perfume any day.

Plus I love used stuff, especially if it comes from an antique store, flea market, garage sale, or some other place where you get to look through other people's castoffs and see what they didn't need but you do.  My taste, so-called, is pretty simple.  Two categories covers it:  I like "stuff" and  I love "things."  If you wrap it in paper or shove it in a gift bag, chances are I'll be charmed.  ("Stuff and Things" is also the name of the new cologne created by noted unicorn artist and late-night talk-show host Greg Gutfeld, but keep that on the down low for now.)

In addition to the gifts, Mother's Day is always pleasant, because the girls make breakfast, people are always refilling my coffee unasked, I usually get to talk on the phone to my mother and sisters, and we ordinarily have my mother-in-law over for dinner, with Eric doing the cooking.  And it always falls on a Sunday...why can't the Calendar Czars arrange that for Dumb Blonde Month?

But seriously, this Mother's Day was special.  I received some very nice gifts, and that was part of what made it so nice.  But from the beautiful sunrise to the goodnight kisses, this Mother's Day gave me joy.

Some of my Mother's Day gifts:

A new flower bed for my scarlet peony, excavated by my wonderful husband after our lovely four-mile walk.  He always does some kind of outdoor project for me on Mother's Day weekend.







A new hummingbird feeder.  Words to live by:  "You can never have too many birdfeeders."














The dvd of   "The King's Speech ."  Colin plays a reluctant king who suffers a terrible stammer whenever he attempts to speak without using profanity.  See it if you haven't already - it's a sublime, intelligent film.

 

A breakfast of scrambled eggs with ham, a side of yogurt with sliced strawberries and a fresh sprig of garden sage, courtesy of Chef Mary Kathleen.

(I was too busy eating to think of taking a picture.  It looked much tastier than this dish.)

Kitchen shears to replace the kitchen shears which became garden shears:

Dinner at Bonefish Grill.  Bang-Bang Shrimp - need I say more?

Spring concert by the South Bend Youth Symphony, including a fabulous performance of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," featuring a certain bassonist carrying the eerie melody of the enchanted brooms

fetching a bit too much water:

 


 A Baltimore oriole visited my for the first time that I'm aware of.  It was such a brilliant orange, it almost hurt my eyes: 

What a treat -- but alas, this is just a google image.  Stay tuned - I intend to lure him back with fruit and jelly.

We brought home a gorgeous buffet, which completed my antique furniture wish list for the foreseeable future:

These amazing daughters are irreplaceable gifts:

Camille and Mary Kathleen

I have a wonderful mother-in-law who exemplifies generosity and kindness:

Eve Arnett

And the woman who gave me life, reared me well and is still my biggest cheerleader and fairest critic -  my mother:

Carole Jones

Sometimes, the question of why I am so blessed when others suffer makes me crazy with wonder.

But this Mother's Day, I just enjoyed my many, many gifts and offered up a silent prayer of thanks for the people, the love and the great good fortune that fills my life.

10 Reasons I should not Complain that it is Snowing on April 18th

1.  Snow.  What's 1 - 4" compared to this?

2. Heat.  Summer barely lasts three months here.  I need to remember these people in Calcutta.  They are sleeping outside and the heat has caused long-term power outages.

3. Drought.   I have never in my life missed a single meal because of conditions like this:

4.  Wind.  I love that it is breezy in northern Indiana.  I'm thankful I have not personally had to deal with this scene:

5.  Tornado.  I have frequent nightmares about tornadoes, thanks to "The Wizard of Oz" and living in "tornado alley," but it's never been my lot to see one out my window, thank God.

6.  Flood.  Flooding is common enough in the Midwest, but I've never been affected by one like this family:

7.  Tsunami.  Despite numerous trips to many beaches, I've fortunately never seen a sight like this:

8.  Fire.  I've never been inconvenienced for one minute due to a frightening scene like this one:

9,  Pestilence.I've spent a small fortune bug-proofing my home and yard, and spray chemicals on my body to prevent insect bites.  This poor guy isn't as lucky as me:

10.  Famine. Even more ungrateful than my complaining about the weather is when I say, "I'm hungry."  What do I know of hunger?

I'm as protected from the natural processes of the Earth as any human being can ever hope to be.

This exercise cured me of my Monday morning moaning.