True Story: the My Delight Cupcake Truck regularly comes to the park at the end of our street. Seriously! Like, I can (and do) walk down to get my sugar fix.
I may even have friends alert me ahead of time.
Last Thursday that was just the edge of the sugar bowl I ended up diving into.
Without the encumbrances (aka kids), E and I decided to grab a bite to eat and go grocery shopping. AKA “Date Night”
But “wait, the truck is down the street. Let’s walk down first.” Picked up a snickerdoodle and a caramel churro.
Didn’t leave them in the house while we went out – Aaron might come home and well… $10 in cupcakes are not meant to be inhaled by the undiscerning. So on our adventure they went, too.
“While we’re out, let’s stop and pick up my free birthday bundt cake.” OK
After a few other stops we finally made it to dinner, BJ’s to share the $20 Thursday rib special which comes with a FREE pizookie. Can’t say no to free. OK can’t say no to pizookie. I forgot to take a pic before and E wouldn’t let me ask the couple on their obvious first date if I could photograph theirs…
“Well, while we’re down here let’s pop into Krispy Kreme and see if they still have the cookie donuts.”
Bummed that they had run out of the Nutter Butter – that was my favorite. Even more bummed that these were limited time only. Easily the best KK donuts EVER. #bringthemback
Stopped at Target and these just jumped into the cart
The kids (Aaron) had eaten the whole package before I got even one last time! Not even one! This package lasted all the way until Saturday (probably due to the mildly threatening post it note) when we broke them open to taste test with Dennis & Stacey. No one would consent to an unboxing video so you’ll have to assume by the empty package that they were yummy. I continue to be a fan of the Oreo/Pop Rocks mashup.
YES, we finally made it grocery shopping. At that point, I just wanted to be home because 1) I freaking HATE grocery shopping, 2) E was buying boring stuff like vegetables and leg shanks and crap for the kids, 3) the inevitable crash was quickly setting in, and 4) I still had the cupcakes in the car!
Should I be eating all this sugar? Most def NOT! I SHOULD be more consistent with my Plexus regimen. I SHOULD be more balanced in my diet choices. I SHOULD have SOME impulse control. I SHOULD be modeling these things for my children. But I’m also trying to indulge now and then and well… last Thursday ended up being one of those times.
Will there be other “Thursdays”? Probably. I mean… I am, well, ME.
MoralS of the story: 1) ALWAYS visit the cupcake truck when it’s down the street from your house – support small business, 2) sign up to get your free birthday bundt – because it’s frosting even I eat, 3) Thursday’s rib deal at BJ’s is an AWESOME deal AND comes with a FREE pizookie, 4) KK needs to add the Nabisco donuts to their regular menu, and 5) try all the LE Oreos – well except kettle corn, that just sounds gross.
In the interest of transparency, I may have also had a Boston Cream Pie donut from Dunkin for lunch. Shhhhh don’t tell the big guy, he may schedule an intervention.
My children have a knack for “finding” things. Justin dragged a filthy hubcap home from a walk. We have a street sign, too. The tweedles once brought home a toilet. Don’t ask.
And, of course, the animals. Common yard lizards. A giant turtle the pet store was going to throw away. A bearded dragon in the recycling. And dogs. Yes plural… dogS.
The first one was Fontana, the porch dog. “He just followed us home.” Neutra wanted nothing to do with him, so on the front porch he lived… for about a week until he either ran away or some kindhearted person rescued him.
Not long after the week with Fontana, this happened.
“Mom we’re bringing home a dog.”
Wait, what?
“She was tied to a tree at the park (with a sign that said FREE), we couldn’t just LEAVE her there, could we!?”
Well…
That was seven years ago today. Seven years with Dobby, our first HOUSE dog, hence her name. Prior to Dobs, dogs lived OUTSIDE. Because… dogs. Wylie, Corbu, Neutra, Harley. Dogs were also not little. For better or worse – Dobby changed it all.
In 2014 we came home to her missing – hysterically checking the pool to make sure she hadn’t fallen in and drowned – hearing from a neighbor she’d been hit by a car – checking the internet and seeing her jailed, leg in a cast – trapped at the shelter until they reopened DAYS later – ugly crying picking her up – surgery to repair the leg and hip – and then back to normal as if it was all just some horrible dream.
She wasn’t the last dog they brought home. “Mom, I got a dog.” I thought Aaron was kidding. When will I learn? And then, of course, bringing Anthony back home last year meant adding Charlie to the mix, too.
Before Luna, she was Eric’s dog. His bird hunting (and occasionally catching), adventure seeking, carpool copilot.
Now, Dobby’s more like me. Middle aged. A bit bigger in the butt than she used to be. Yeah we can go on an adventure OR we could sit in the recliner and nap rather than “be productive”. She’s my armrest dog. And like me, she puts up with this shit…
I have a thing for clocks. There’s a big clock on the wall of our family room. Just the sight of It’s a Small World makes me smile. We’ve even been to the Sundial Bridge near Sacramento
Disclaimer – I’m not a fan of the bird clock at the Atascadero house – probably because in general birds freak me out and hearing birds every hour on the hour is a big No Thank You from me.
And watches. From the time I was little, watches were always important to me. My favorites were the cheapie watches from McDonalds (remember the fake ones that you could put change in?). There was the early (horrible) digital Casio that I could never get the alarm to work properly on. I had a collection of Swatchs (including a large wall version), but who lived through the 80s and didn’t wear an obnoxious colored plastic watch? I even still have a Seiko that I received as a bat mitzvah gift circa 1982.
Eric’s bought me a few over the years – an orange Indiglo with an orange band, a Lego build your own from LegoLand (that the tweedles had smaller versions of), a fancy silver “more professional” one, and of course my iWatch. Pretty ironic since he doesn’t wear a watch and never has.
My mom bought me quite a few, too – CocaCola, Winnie the Pooh, Mickey. All treasured but no longer worn. Truth be told, there’s a box of watches in my bedroom that I never wear but can’t seem to part with including a large dial, glowing one that harkens back to my pre-Lasik days.
One of my favorite watches dates back to high school – a simple black windup Timex. Despite constantly forgetting to wind it, I wore it into adulthood. My current watch is a powerful minicomputer that like my old Casio I use for little more than telling time (although I do feel like Dick Tracy when I answer calls through it). At least once a week, I forget to charge it, so despite the HUGE leap in technology, apparently somethings never change.
For a while I stopped wearing a watch at all – I relied on my phone to tell me the time – but there is something almost comforting about having a watch on my wrist. A constant reminder that time is passing whether I am appreciating that fact or not. I guess I should charge my damn watch.
So many things I could have written about over the last month but I just wasn’t feeling it.
There have been adventures…
E and I went down to a cool, private botanic garden in Fallbrook a few weeks ago without the boys. We’ve been trying to spend more time together without them. It’s all about balance and learning how to be a couple again after being 2:5 for so long.
There were goats, lots of rustic crap, and some yummy food.
Side note: this was my first time on the 395 in Fallbrook since the accident and I think I handled it pretty dang well. I don’t think I’ve put last year’s accident behind me but maybe I’m desensitizing a little. Now if I could just stop seizing up every time I see a car roll in a movie.
Last Sunday I asked E if he was in the mood for a sandwich. (AKA easy way to get him to go somewhere that he likely would not have wanted to go in the first place.) My ulterior motive was a scrapbook store that had lost its lease and was having a close out sale. Instead of reminding me that I have enough crap and that I had just been at the expo the day before – all he asked was if it was the store with the comfy chair. Like I said, sandwiches get me pretty far.
Katella Deli for a shared sandwich – after 30 years we’re getting better at sharing one meal rather than bringing home a ton of leftovers. (We’ve officially turned into that old married couple with one meal, two plates, and two glasses of water.) It’s all about compromise and finding something we can both not just tolerate but enjoy. The winner? A combo of pastrami AND corned beef that was taken apart so that we each got exactly what we wanted – his side with yellow mustard and mine with brown and both slathered in coleslaw.
I miss deli SO much! It reminds me of my dad and it is IMPOSSIBLE to find anywhere near us. We both commented on how the sandwiches at Katella seem to be shrinking. I also noticed that the clientele was all our age and older. Although they were packed, like always, I wonder if after we are gone, Katella will be as well. My kids don’t get excited about deli the way we (still) do and I cannot imagine them driving an hour to get a sandwich. I hope I’m wrong.
There was scrapbook… shopping…
I keep sitting down to craft and nothing comes out. Kind of like my writing – over the last few weeks I’ve been dry. I was hoping walking around the expo with Lisa would solve that. All it did was enable me to buy more stuff. When I went to put it away I realized between the expo and the store, I’ve managed to buy a bunch of duplicates. I REALLY need to organize again and get some stuff done. Crop signed up for Thanksgiving weekend so I have the incentive, now I just need the motivation.
I did play with alcohol inks a few weeks ago and made some cool tile coasters that are still sitting in the family room waiting to be sealed. THREE WEEKS LATER!
I probably should get on that. I was so excited about the tiles that I went out and bought 9 more bottles of ink and some more tiles so that we could have a family craft night – ummm yeah… not sure when exactly the planets will align for us all to be home together but it was a nice thought. The newly purchased supplies are also sitting in the family room; a constant reminder that we all lead WAY too busy of lives.
There was also a trip to Sam’s Club the other night to get a ginormous cinnamon roll. Went for the roll, spent over $200 on stuff – mighty expensive pastry. It would have been cheaper to get us all Cinnabons! FYI Cinnabons would have tasted better, too – ours looked NOTHING like the Delish article.
Or caramel apples… I’ve been craving one for at least a month but the one at Myrtle Creek was disappointing and I cannot justify $10 at Rocky Mountain. E saw that they have 13 varieties of apples on sale at Sprouts this week and I suggested that he buy one of each kind and we have an apple taste-off. I even offered to make caramel dip. Nope, not a self-serving suggestion at all. 😉 We’ll see if he comes through when he goes shopping. If so, there WILL be a DIY caramel apple bar in our future!
Aaron tagged along on a trip up to Idyllwild last week. E needed to site supervise the placement of the chapel he designed at Camp Emerson and I went along so he didn’t have to drive up alone. Not sure why Aa came with except that he thought he was getting breakfast which apparently is NOT the same thing as run through the drive through at Mc Donald’s – good to know. After we were done at Emerson, Aa DEMANDED “real food” so we stopped in town. We walked around for a little bit – how have we never walked around Idyllwild despite the hundreds of trips we have made up there???? Happened upon a store that sells HAND-DIPPED ICE CREAM BARS! I search FOREVER for ice cream bars and the one time I find one I am too stuffed from eating TWO breakfasts?!?! Good thing I can guarantee that that will not be my last trip up there so at some point, there WILL be an ice cream bar in my future. Damn you Costco for taking them off the cafe menu! Curses!
There was a bunch of random ass shit, too…
The other night I was getting into bed and Anthony asked me why I was going to sleep in my work clothes. I was wearing Rudolph pajama pants. Either I’m way overdressing for sleep or I need to step up my work clothes from leggings. Probably the latter. Probably not going to happen though. #leggingsarepantstoo
I finally de-Halloweened the front porch. Took that nasty spider web crap off the trees. That shit is worse than tinsel. They’re both like holiday herpes! Aa is already talking about Christmas so I am sure it’s only a matter of days before one of those damn trees is setup in my house.
Speaking of Halloween, we went to Target last week and bought about $20 in candy. When candy is marked down 50% off that’s a shitload of candy. I brought one bag of Reese’s to the office with me because I live with damn locusts. E may have a few bags of Skittles hidden. The GIANT bag on the counter is at least half way down! Locusts I tell you! (In all honesty, it’s mostly Aaron.)
The Mystery Oreos are STILL sitting on the kitchen counter from almost a month ago. We tried them and they were just SO tasty that more than 1/2 the package is still there almost a month later. Since it doesn’t look like anyone is going to eat them, I might need to find something else to do with them – maybe scrape the filling out and use the cookies for a cheesecake crust? Other ideas? Want to know what we thought of them?
That being said, I just saw that they have limited edition Hot Cocoa Oreos out now. Yeah, THOSE will be in my cart, most definitely.
Monday night I finally was able to stand on one leg. WITHOUT FALLING OVER! We’re nearing the end of yoga class so apparently the damn optimists were right and persistence does indeed pay off. Who’d have thought?
Last week, I read Dan Brown’s new book Origin. We saw Thor: Ragnarok. We rewatched the original Kingsman movie in hopes of seeing the sequel which is pretty much not even playing anymore. We still haven’t watched season 2 of Stranger Things – once again trying to find a time when we can all watch it together so that no one is an asshole and spoils it for anyone else. Yeah, not sure when/how THAT will ever happen. It’s been a no go for the new season of Orange is the New Black, too – every time I sit down to watch it some kid starts asking me questions about characters or plot lines or the criminal justice system – sheesh, just watch it from the beginning and stop yammering on so I can hear what they are saying!
One last thing, there may have also been donuts as big as our heads, too.
The last two months of the year are filled with madness. I have an adventure day with the boys scheduled for tomorrow (Veteran’s Day observed). Band is winding down – only 2 more performances to go! 2nd Annual Thanksgiving with the Weiners. Our 18th familversary. Feeding pomegranates to and riding camels – YES REALLY! CHINA!!!! Hanukkah/Festivus/Christmas. E’s last birthday starting with a 4.
Holy shit that’s a lot of stuff – and I’m sure it’s not a complete list! Despite the mayhem and chaos, it will be filled with family, friends, laughter, adventures, and shenanigans. Definitely shenanigans! Because of course they are MY assholes children…
Over the years… swim practice, scout meetings, school pickup, kids at work, band, Six Flags. You name it, I’ve probably waited through it.
Early morning. Late at night. Heat of the day. Freezing cold. Well lit lot. Pitch dark scared for my life in the grossest part of town. Countless HOURS of my life!
I’m not a huge socializer so sitting in my car is usually more palatable than making small talk with relative strangers.
I’m also not a huge fan of driving home just to turn around and drive back. Nap, read, Facebook (heck, even blog) in the car sounds like SO much better use of my time.
Los Osos should have given me a designated parking space by now, I’ve spent so much time in their parking lot. Waiting.
People wonder how I possibly have time to read as many books as I do. I’m ALWAYS waiting for someone!
This morning, I’m waiting again. This time, not for a kid. I’m sitting in a sketchy gravel lot that might be a mobile home park or a construction yard. Who knows.
Irony? E won’t wait for the kids. Thinks I’m insane. And yet… here I am. Waiting for him. In a sketchy lot in Ontario.
Me: I’m going to go get a drink.
E: (looking around) You’re LEAVING me HERE?
Me: Yet, it’s ok for me to sit HERE?
So here I am, waiting… again. Just another day in… paradise?
Avocados. I’m fairly certain if you don’t like them you have to turn in your California card. Luckily, we don’t have that problem in our house. No rain this week – matter of fact, we’re back up into triple digits… so when E suggested the Avocado Festival, it was another HELL YEAH moment. A) food fest, B) beach, C) FOOD FEST!
I didn’t realize it at the time he proposed the idea but E just wanted to eat from the world’s largest bowl of guacamole. Or swim in it like Juli and I did at the sprinkle pool. It wasn’t even on display! It could have been a Tupeprware container for all we knew. Seriously? If you’re going to advertise the WORLD’S LARGEST BOWL OF GUACAMOLE, have it on display, people! He settled for chips and guac instead which was yummy and plentiful.
It’s usually sweets that get me excited, especially since I’m not big on chips – so I opted for a cone of the avocado mango sorbet. Ice cream? No brainer. Good choice because it was seriously YUMMY!
My AWESOME new shirt from our Huy Fong day. Saw LOTS of people wearing sriracha shirts at the fest! Nothing but love for guac and cock (sauce).
Avocados have been in short supply lately (#thanksglobalwarming) so it was nice to see them guaced, spread, deep fried, baked, frozen and of course as a photo-op. The varieties were amazing and the ones as big as our hands, wow! In the markets they basically have bumpy and smooth (yes, I know they have REAL names) and Lord knows we’ve never been able to grow an avocado tree – so seeing so many different kinds was awesome.
Looks kind of Veggie Tales-ish – half expected it to start playing the Hairbrush song.
We got about 8,500 steps in, learned a bunch about avocados, and E scored a case of chips. They’re quinoa chips, but still. I even treated myself to this necklace, customized for (some of) my obsessions. I just need to find an awesome llama charm. Not bad for a Sunday.
Until next time Avo Fest – Stay Golden, California!
OK, so when the big guy texts you and offers to take you to ALPACA DAYS, the answer is a resounding UMMM HECK YEAH!
Pet AND feed the alpacas? YES, please! Sign me up!
So off we went to Temecula (without the boys) for an adventure. And it did not disappoint! I even wore my favorite Llama shirt!
We rolled up around 1 and I think E was doubting himself when he said “this is just someone’s house isn’t it?” Someone lucky’s house! They live with alpacas and a LLAMA! HELLO!
First stop – buy a bag of treats. Way too small in my opinion but then again if everyone was feeding them tons of treats, by the time we got there they’d be full. We’ve had that problem with the Wild Animal Park giraffes. That was sadness – so happily these fuzzy friends were still interested in the pellets. (Not as much as their wagons of grass, but they could be coaxed and I was good with that.)
OMG! Nothing like feeding Dobby who’ll take your fingers off! It actually tickles.
Then we met Marshall Llama! He keeps an eye on all his alpaca friends. And he gave snuggles and kisses, too.
Even Eric was into my llama love (he kept trying to get them to wear his Rams hat) and by the time we got home, he was checking online sales and wondering how large the doggy door would need to be. But… zoning. No llamas or alpacas for us. Sadness.
So, this will have to do until I can talk him into a llama ranch of my own. The house next door to the Alpaca Hacienda’s for sale… hmmm.
I have a thing for clocks. There’s a big clock on the wall of our family room. Just the sight of It’s a Small World makes me smile. We’ve even been to the 
OK, so when the big guy texts you and offers to take you to ALPACA DAYS, the answer is a resounding UMMM HECK YEAH!
Sparkling Llama 