I started my weight loss plan (not going to say diet, because it isn't really, more a lifestyle change) on January 15th, with the goal of losing 100 pounds total and 50 pounds by my birthday, five months away. My birthday is Sunday, and today I hit my goal with three… Read full post »

The year was 1983. I was fifteen years old. My friends and I were sitting in the bleachers, which was where high school students ate lunch at our school, since the cafeteria wasn't big enough for all the students. There were five of us, three boys and two girls, sitting in… Read full post »

In a previous post, now deleted, I raised a question of OS community etiquette:  what should a good community member do in response to a post which appears to be untruthful?

Some blog posts are retellings of life experiences. Some are fictional, or at least fictionalized. I think all writers do… Read full post »

I've been sick, I was out of town for a while, and I had a nasty fight with family which put me in no mood to write. But!  Today I'm finally getting around to revealing which of my 3 statements was the lie. Thanks to OEsheepdog for the Open Call, 2… Read full post »

I once dislocated my shoulder while rollerblading down the ramp of an elevated parking garage.

I saw an angel when I was five years old.

I was almost expelled from high school for smoking pot but the school board called a special meeting and changed its "no tolerance" drug rule specifically… Read full post »

This started as a comment on a post by laurenjwalter but took on a life of its own. Rather than go off-topic on her comment thread, I decided to make it into its own post.

Fingerlakeswanderer made the comment that all of us here at OS are writers, and that as a…

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It was that time. The Siamese kitten we got the day Obama was elected is eight months old now, and he had gone from being embarrassing (constant, meditative licking of his little pink personal places) and sometimes testy, to being aggressive towards the Black Cat. No spraying yet, but that… Read full post »

So it's the day after Easter. You visit the grocery for a couple of things, and if you're me, you come home with a spiral cut brown sugar ham (77 cents a pound, and then half off on top of that) and a bag of Hershey's special dark chocolate eggs (75%… Read full post »

I know lots of the good folks here on Open Salon know all about gardening.

Here's my situation:  my own backyard is entirely made up of either deep shade, crepe myrtle trees, ivy, or concrete. But!  My parents live on a horse farm out in the country. I see them once… Read full post »

Springtime is here!  There are spiders in my bushes, spiders in my car, tiny spiders parachuting from my ceiling fan, and this mommy spider was carrying her babies on her back across my living room floor. I thought I'd better rescue her before the kitten worked up the nerve to… Read full post »

Taking a break from my usual bitching about my diet to say:  YAY!  My boobs are smaller!

Not what most women probably think of as a reason to rejoice, but then, most women don't have E cup boobs. See, the thing about E cups (or DDD depending on the brand) is… Read full post »

At least I'm not going backward. I weigh now what I weighed one week ago.

Before that, I was losing, on average, .45 pounds per day. Since the middle of January I've lost 35 pounds. I lost them by increasing exercise and eating healthy food and not eating unhealthy food;  I… Read full post »

I guess the economy must be pretty bad after all - now I'm eating bird seed.

Grocery prices recently have gotten so out of hand that there's a new camaraderie in the aisles. "Is that for your cat or for you?" a lady I've never met before today cackles, as I… Read full post »

The funny thing, the sad thing, is that I know people who had it far worse than I had it. I didn't live in fear. 364 days of the year (365 on leap years) I was a pretty ordinary kid in a family which, while it was stressful in a lot… Read full post »

Catamite Bastard's post about bunnies in his garden reminded me of this little fella. My parents live on a farm, and my mom's dog brought him to us, carefully, in her mouth. We thought he was dead but as it turned out he was just severely traumatized. (And covered… Read full post »

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions on my last post. One of the things that was suggested was CSA, community supported agriculture. The idea behind CSA is simple:  you buy a share of a local farm's produce, and they deliver fresh vegetables to your door.

Well, until last year there… Read full post »

Memphis is not a good city to live in if you want to eat healthy food. We have great barbequed pork, legendary ribs, excellent fried chicken and a wings shop on every corner. Pecan pie?  We got it. Peach cobbler?  Yep, we got it. Deep fried banana and peanut butter sandwiches? … Read full post »

In my last post, I told the sad tale of how I failed to resist temptation. The flowers were budding, the birds were building nests, and my husband and I slipped into our usual habit of stopping at a fast food joint and taking the food to the park. Well, I… Read full post »

Well, I did this to myself. I wrote a blog entry in response to Kerry's Open Call about addictions, about my own addiction to Coca-Cola and how drinking Coke sets off a chain reaction of cravings for fast food when I do it. I talked about how I've nobly gone without… Read full post »

I've been clean now for 49 days.

The sound is the worst of it. "Open the damn thing in the kitchen!"  I yell at my husband, who rolls his eyes and takes a deep pull.

Yeah, he's terrified of me. He could stand to get off the stuff too. Some mornings… Read full post »

(Inspired by Jodi's post on ghost photography.)

The second place my husband and I lived in together - the place where we were married - was a crappy little townhouse in an apartment complex called Ridgeway Trace. Ridgeway Trace had been a swanky place to live when it was built in… Read full post »

I'd like to take credit for this one, but it's all him. My husband and I were sitting on the sofa in front of the fire eating delicious soup (hey!  look what you people did!  you inspired me to make my own soup stock) and discussing the fact that my new… Read full post »

This is the latest installment of my continuing quest to improve my health by eating better despite a tight budget. I haven't been on a scale this week but my husband says I feel smaller and I can now pull off the pants which used to be too tight without unbuttoning… Read full post »

 

This is my first Foodie Tuesday post!  I feel a little intimidated, there are so many great cooks on Open Salon.

Okay, here's the deal:  the economy is in the toilet. We all need to lose weight. (Well, I know I do - and so does about half of America,… Read full post »

I was reminded of this incident by a discussion on Bill E's thread about how life isn't fair.

 

As you know by now if you've been following my posts, I have lupus-like syndrome, which means I have an autoimmune disease with symptoms similar to lupus but no one's sure… Read full post »