I like things that Nap.

This weekend I learned that things that nap are the very best things. I like things that nap.

We kept my 9 month old nephew Samson for 7 hours on Saturday. My sister had a wedding to shoot in Austin, and we were nominated as babysitters. I was more than happy to do it, he is a cute kid and I hadn't seen him in over a month. My limit is usually 3 weeks before I feel like I've missed too much. Since our last visit, he's started walking and eating pretty much anything you put in front of him. 

I was proud that we managed pretty easily all day, with minimal fussing. Of course, there were two of us and I did get Sam to nap for almost an hour. Nap time is when I like babies the best. I also learned that breast milk makes me gag, especially when someone squirts it across my face with the bottle. Blech. Thanks to my days as a nanny, crying does not phase me one bit, and neither do tantrums. However, poopy diapers definitely get to me, so I was very happy that the kid did not poop and I was granted that small concession. And bottom line? I was very glad Tim had this experience, if only to prove: they are fun to play with and cute to have around, but only when on loan. He loves Sam, but he was ready to give him back! Hah. I don't think Oscar will be getting any siblings any time soon.

Here's a photo run down of our day of pseudo-parenthood:

We took a walk around the neighborhood with the baby-wearing Ergo, in which I felt like Bianca from 10 Things I Hate About You having to wear the Empathy Belly Pregnancy Suit before going to a party.

Tim is the model babysitter. Clearly, the baby is being carefully monitored, and the sitter is being entirely attentive -- to his iPhone.



Oscar discovered that the best thing about babies is there is never a shortage of boogers, free for the taking. It's like an all you can eat pick buffet.

A naked baby appeared in our yard, so naturally we got out the hose to scare him off. Little did we know, naked babies love water.

After it was time to drop the munchkin off, we relaxed with an evening of nothing-ness. I wasn't as tired as I thought I'd be after 7 hours on baby duty, but I was relieved to be able to plop on the couch and cuddle with a furry creature who was not going to swipe me across the face trying to find my nose, or cry if I didn't make funny faces at him, and was perfectly happy being ignored and ignoring me as long as I shared my blanket with him.

Saturday evening after dropping Sam off, I also got a really sore throat. It came on so suddenly and was so bad that I thought I had caught a cold. I think now that it was just allergies from being outside all day and rolling around in the grass. As a result, we missed church with the Starey's on Sunday morning yet again, and slept in and recovered. Oscar was a cuddle-machine that morning. Somehow I think he always knows when I'm feeling bad. I also think he doesn't mind any excuse to lie around with another warm body. You can tell my eyes are all puffy in that morning picture.

Sunday afternoon Tim took Oscar to the park to play while I sunbathed in the yard, and then we did some yard work together. We're prepping to build a simple compost box, and put in a raised garden bed. After that, the house got quiet for a few hours while Tim and Oscar napped (again), and I did a little reading. Then we blew the whole evening finishing our taxes - hallelujah - and watching the truly boring Oscar ceremony. Not our dog, the awards. Our dog is not boring.

Dreaming of Wheat

I apologize for writing so much about food and about not eating certain foods. This is not a food blog, but my psychological relationship with food is what I'm "dealing with" right now, and it's weighing on my mind... and stomach. Like a lot, a lot. Bear with me.

It's Sunday which means I've been one week "wheat free."
OH MY GAWD do I miss it. 

Side note: Sooooo, I've cheated a little bit? Because I've been eating some girl scout cookies. But, that's it. Now there will be no. more. girl scout. cookies. We have eaten all the Thin Mints, and they aren't selling them any more. Temptation gone. I will have to revert to high quality chocolate.

To take bread off my weekly grocery list was dramatic. Bread is my first love. If I could only choose one thing to ever eat again for the rest of my life it would be bread. Last meal? Fresh warm bread and salted butter. Yum.

Over the last month and a half I've stopped buying processed foods. That wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, actually, to cut out junk food. Although I enjoy it as I'm eating, it never makes me feel good. Initially, this transition was made easier for me by baking fresh bread in our bread-maker, and eating it when I would otherwise look to junk. In the long run, though, I can't survive on bread alone, as much as I dream about it.

How we've made the transition:

• I switched from shopping at HEB to only shopping at Central Market, which simply doesn't carry a lot of the processed foods that tempt me. 
• I've grown accustomed to only selecting whole foods. That doesn't mean we haven't slipped up and had one or two bags of potato chips since January 1st, but we don't keep that stuff in the house any more. 
• Now I think about meals in very simple terms, so I don't get overwhelmed or frustrated. For example, we're okay with eating the same things over and over again, and keeping it easy for each meal: greek yogurt and bacon, boiled egg and celery sticks, chicken breast and salad. Done. 
• I've also starting keeping more whole foods on hand in the house, so on a night when I don't have specific plans for dinner we fall back on defrosting chicken or grilling meat, rather than ordering out. 

It's starting to feel easy, although it wasn't at first. Unfortunately, it's also starting to feel expensive. I sure wish there were tax breaks for people trying to buy and eat all organic whole foods. What a reward and motivator that would be!

I always knew wheat was going to be a big hurdle. How do I have a sandwich with no bread? What about pancakes for bunch on weekends? I'm salivating just thinking about them. I don't think I'll give up wheat for good, but I'm going to make a pointed effort for at least a month to eradicate it from my diet. I want to know if it's the cause of my lethargy, my slow brain functioning, the haze that I seem to live in perpetually (or if I'm just growing stupider with age). I also want to see some weight come off. If I see that, it will be a huge encouragement to keep at it.

In the meantime, I'm torturing myself with this beautiful film from Kinfolk, makers of Food Porn. 
Join me?

Dutch Oven Bread from Kinfolk on Vimeo.

Zero Dark Thirty

I wish I had written this response to Zero Dark Thirty sooner. We saw this movie in January, and I read multiple articles afterward and had a multitude of thoughts about it, but never got them down. So this is going to be all over the place. With the approach of the Academy Awards this weekend, it was time...

I had a really hard time with this movie. Mostly because I found that I really enjoyed it. I'm big on political films, especially if they involve any kind of conspiracy, CIA, covert operations, etc. I like the fictional ride alongside the semi-non-fictional. This one, of course, was especially intriguing because I suppose I expected something new about this particular piece of history to be revealed.

Nothing new was really revealed. Except the depravity of human nature. Wait, that's not new either. Nothing new was really revealed. Don't worry, I'm not going to go into the torture issue. I don't know enough, haven't enough checked facts or vetted sources, to speak knowledgeably about the torture issue. I'm also - as horrid as it sounds - unsure of my exact stance on torture. So I'll leave torture out of this.

What I really want to talk about is THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY.

I was struck as we walked out of the theatre, where we sat for near 3 hours - our treats of warm cookies and ice cream and craft beer in front of us - that I had just paid quite a bit of money to go watch Americans do some really shitty things. This included several murders that made me devilishly satisfied. Like the author of this article, the "wrongness" of this whole picture didn't really surface until the film was over, and what we'd seen started sinking in.

As a political, war-time thriller, I really liked the movie. The dialogue was a bit Hollywood-ish at times, and there are way too many shots of Jessica Chastain's perplexed face for my taste, even though she has a nice face. Her "I'm a bad-ass" attitude sometimes rode the edge of stereotype, but I liked her and - for the most part - I appreciated her character. (I much preferred Jennifer Ehle's, though.) Like so many people have said before me, the final scenes of the raid on Osama's complex, are really brilliant. Kathryn Bigelow and her team have a knack for capturing that "you feel like you're really there," realistic vantage point during action scenes. I was shallow-breathing, just as much as I was during the Hurt Locker bomb dismantling scenes. I was glad they finally "got the bad guy." Some people applauded the film at the end. There were a couple of "whoops" when Osama got pegged. Nothing truly distasteful, or out of hand. I can't blame anyone, especially those who have veterans in the family or a personal connection to 9/11. But I think that left an impression on me as I walked away.

Without passing judgement, because I'm definitely the Pot here just as much as anyone, I'd like to point out that we pay money to go watch these things dramatized for our entertainment. We pay money to go watch ourselves torture and murder other people. By doing so, we become what the rest of the world hates about us. We're not any better than they are. We turn our dirty deeds into a billion dollar industry, and cheer when they make us feel like heroes.

For this reason, I hope Zero Dark Thirty doesn't win an Academy Award.

I can't support what it represents, no matter how much I enjoyed it as "entertainment."
Pot and Kettle, present, I know.

The one about the Teeth.

Yes, I'm aware these are not human teeth. I couldn't handle pictures of human teeth in a jar, so I went with animal. I believe these are alligator.

There are some bad dreams that are worse than dreams of falling or people you love dying. Those dreams involve teeth.

Teeth falling out, teeth rotting out, teeth knocked out, teeth pulled out, teeth becoming crooked. Oh, the variations of terror available to my morbid subconscious. I hate dreaming about my teeth. Just to reassure you, they are all still there -- for now.

Last night, I introduced a new topic for nightmares: dreams about eyeballs. In this dream (the details of which I do not recall fully), I was confused as to why - upon opening my eyes in the morning - my vision was blurry and fuzzy, and no amount of rubbing my eyeballs fixed the matter. Holy Shite.

Since I had LASIK last June, I've just added a thousand more things to worry myself about. Amongst all the possible side effects - some of which I experienced and some of which I didn't - there is the chance of vision regression. Changes in your vision post-surgery can take place usually for up to a year after surgery, sometimes longer. This of course is excluding the natural changes that will occur as you age. To my knowledge, I haven't experienced any regression, and I was clocking in at a steady 20/20 at my last appointment. But of course, that doesn't mean I can't dream up horrific scenarios about it.

I would find a way to worry about something that hasn't actually happened and that shows no signs of actually happening in the future. I really, really need to work on that.

Still, the teeth win. The teeth are the worst.

The Daily's v.2

This beautiful weather we've had lately has been so invigorating. I've been pretty motivated to work outside and start preparing for our garden. We really need to get that sucker up and running if we plan to have any summer veggies. I pruned my first cactus this week. Didn't know you could or should prune cacti, but apparently it is good for the plant, and definitely necessary for container cacti or any you don't want to get out of hand. This one was out of hand - check out how big the pads were getting. And I thought this heart-shaped pad was cute - although it is sort of a stretch to call it heart-shaped.

Our rental home was built in the 1920s by our landlady's uncle. When he built the house, he also planted a lot of irises around the yard. In the many years since, and with various renter negligence, they've spread and popped up in weird places. Last time our landlady was here she mentioned we could definitely weed some of them out. So last week I took to the bed and started pulling. These were the gigantic bulbs I came up with. We're going to dry them and give them to friends and family for replanting.

Lately, Christina and I have been hitting up different cafes for brunch and coffee. We've been to Texas French Bread three times in the last two weeks! We are addicted to their banana walnut pancakes which are like nothing else I've ever eaten. They are fluffier and tastier than regular pancakes and don't leave you feeling lethargic and bloated afterward. Clear winner. On Sunday, our attempts to try a new church with Christina and her husband Earl were thwarted by the Austin Marathon and road closures, so we defaulted to TFB and banana walnut pancakes, yet again! There was this really cute, and very patient corgi named Billy Austin, which we fawned over quite a bit.

In other, even less exciting news, I scored my highest yet on a word in Words With Friends. Being Facebook free has really helped my game quite a bit. The winning (and totally unassuming) word?

This may not seem traumatic to any of you, but I had to buy new sheets. Two years I ago I found the perfect sheets. Neither Tim nor I like really soft sheets. I can't stand those silky Egyptian cotton or jersey materials. The gross slick feeling aside, I hate that they alway always appear messy. And they make me sweat. I know everyone is all about high thread count, but that doesn't always equal better sheets. The higher the thread count, the less breathable the sheets seem to get. No, we prefer a crisper - almost rough - cotton. However, with a sweaty man and a dirty dog, the white sheets I bought only stayed white if I bleached them every single time I washed them. It finally was just too much, and a month ago I found a hole. (My sad tale carries on....) The brand I bought a few years ago seems to be no longer available. This sucks big time, but I sort of wanted a patterned sheet anyway - and that company only makes solids. So while I am mourning our loss, this forced me to branch out. I finally settled on a set from West Elm, and they took some getting used to, but now I really like them! And I love having a pattern to look at everyday.

Oscar approves.