Oh dear!

Tola has very kindly warned me about the Outlander books. So the Lord John books may be heading back to the library in very short order.

As the old Scots granny with the ear trumpet said to the child who received a toy trumpet for Christmas, “One toot an’ yer oot!”

And as I used to say when the kids were little and somebody recommended a movie that had elements I knew I didn’t need to see, “If I want to see sex, I’ll go watch the chickens. If I want to see violence, I’ll go watch the kids play (when they think I’m not looking).”

In other news, my good friend Leslye tells me that the penultimate apartments [the ones where Firstborn and 1BDH used to live, which at the time were safer than where I was living, and as he said, “It’s better to live in the worst part of a good neighborhood than the best part of a bad one.”] now have “a 6 foot chain link fence surrounding the entire complex, and it appears to be totally empty! Crime statistics in the neighborhood will improve, I’m sure.”

This is the place that got filled with the worst element of the Katrina refugees, where we had Mardi Gras going on 24/7 upstairs and F-bombs dropping off the balcony and through my bedroom window at 2:00a.m. and men looking at LittleBit as if she were dessert. And where the maintenance problems became so bad that Code Enforcement gave the place a score in the negative triple-digits.

Lovely old apartment, beautifully designed, great neighborhood, walk-in closets to die for and plenty of storage throughout. I hope they raze it to the ground and put in an assisted living facility.

I find it astounding that on Fairyland (Facebook game that I’m getting fed-up with) I am on level 17 and “Highly Skilled”. I’m not sure if that means skilled at keeping virtual plants alive, or skilled at luring useful critters to my garden for others to find while being unable to find more than mice and mallards elsewhere.

My children will be happy to tell you about my real-life gardening skills, or lack thereof. [You will note that there has been no mention, this year, of happy plans for tomatoes in the back yard. And the two planters I bought last spring are still sunny-side-down next to the sidewalk in the front yard. Maybe I should just rename them Cadillac Eggs?]

Happy Mothers Day to everybody here in the U.S. I will refrain from my usual M-Day rant. I love my girls and am proud to be their mother; they are a lively and diverse bunch, and I haven’t been bored in decades! And I love my grandchildren [the reward for not pinching off the heads of my teenagers].

I think I am officially caught up on sleep. Took a nap at 5:00, woke up around midnight, up for two hours or so, and back down until 6:30. I should have no difficulty staying awake in my meetings today.

My right foot wishes that this were not the Sabbath, because it would like to spend another hour in the pool. That did me a world of good, and I will definitely make it part of the routine tomorrow morning, if for a shorter time.

The slice of ham on a mini-croissant was every bit as good as I’d hoped. I just ate it for breakfast and will now have a banana and some carrot sticks for dessert. Will try to remember to take a Nutella sandwich to wolf down between the morning meetings and church proper. Five or six very small meals seem to be what my body would like, these days. I’m doing a pretty good job with fruits, etc., but I think I need to eat more green vegetables as well.

The goal is not to lose 500 lbs, but to reach a point where I have greater mobility and stamina, while retaining enough fat reserves for good mental health. I do not like the person I am when I am skinny; I become cranky and competitive and Not Much Fun. Plus, I want a little cushion in case of famine (I am not joking). I lost 21 lbs in three weeks, back when the children’s father was in school, and thankfully I had it to lose.

Just as people who lived through the Great Depression came through either tightfisted or openhanded, those of us who have starved, acquire some sort of food issues, and mine consists in part of not ever wanting to be as slim as I was in my 20’s, even though it was a healthy, curvaceous slimness. Safety, for me, means carrying some of my years-supply with me, everywhere I go.

If I get within five pounds of where I was fifteen years ago, I think that will be slim enough to be healthy and plump enough to be happy. And enough of a weight loss that my two oldest will stop worrying about me.

Time to make like Ladybird and start beautifyin’.