HI-CARB DIET

Pancakes for breakfast this morning - Yum!

I'm on a high-carb diet, and, man, is it working. Amazing how quickly my jeans have become uncomfortably tight!

When I get home from Wal-Mart at 11:30 or 12:00 at night, I'm really not in the mood for a normal dinner. Blech. So I just kinda fumble around the kitchen grabbing whatever sounds good until I decide that sleep is a bigger issue than food. Friday night, for example - Martha had made some super-scrummy bread, so I had a slice of that, with butter of course. Something hot would be good, so I heated up a bowl of leftover rice. I love rice...could eat it every day. And I had a beer - that's my country girl alternative to Lunesta. Then, I went to bed and fell into a sound sleep, while all those carbs spent the night permanently attaching themselves to my behind and my middle.

Other random thoughts....

Thomas bought an amplifier for his electric guitar last week. He also discovered Chuck Berry last week. (Mr. Berry now joins a long list of favorites, which includes ZZ Top, ACDC, Muddy Waters, Shinedown...) The house is rocking.

Tom also got his driver's license last week, and now drives himself to classes at Martin each day. Can you say FREEDOM?! I have learned over the years that if I would be slack or lazy in praying, God allows finds a way to spur me to diligence and fervor.

The coffee fast is OFF. No, I'm not back to half a pot or more a day, but I do drink one or two cups in the morning. Seems to be the only way I can get back on my feet after six hours or less of sleep. Zombies - everyone thinks they're after brains. Nope. It's coffee they want.

I met an old man at Wal-Mart last night who had lost his wife Helen back in April. "My youngest is named Helen," I told him. With no one in line behind him, he stood at my register for a long time, telling me about his wife's illness, the long hospitalization, the trips back and forth to Jackson. He had tears in his eyes the whole time he talked. I'm so glad he shared his Helen with me.

With the milder weather we've been enjoying lately, Martha decided to do her math outside on the front lawn one day last week. She spread a blanket under our one tiny tree (it's name is Elmer), sprawled on her belly, and opened her math book. I looked out the kitchen at one point and had to laugh - the cat was sprawled next to Martha on its back, furry belly exposed to the cool breeze. Three chickens pecked in the grass nearby. Every few minutes, one of the hens would meander onto the blanket, and Martha would push it back off into the grass without even looking up from her book. Gotta love life in the country!

I'm currently participating is a scientific research project. Med schools, doctors' offices, high school science labs,...these all need models of various parts of the human body. Of course, real bones and real organs, etc., would be rather pricey. How to mass produce such models in a cost effective way? Well, the inside of my skull was filled with a thick mixture, somewhat like wet cement, which has since solidified to form a perfect mold of my sinus cavities. When we can figure out how to remove the cast of my sinuses without having to break my skull open, we'll be in business! In the meantime, I can't breathe and am beginning to suffer symptoms of oxygen deprivation. [Yes, Dad, I took the Wal-dryl...but then I passed out at the kitchen table during Helen's math lesson. :( ]

What's going on in your neck of the woods?