Came home last night from Big Bear, where we consumed huge amounts of food.  Isn’t it amazing that as soon as you pull out of the driveway, you begin to look for something to munch. It’s just what makes taking a little car trip, “a car trip”. We had not gone a block when Randy held out his hand and ask what we had to munch on? Seriously? We aren’t even out of our neighborhood and he is wanting me to climb over the seat to grab the cookie bag out of our “snack bag” Thinking back to last month when I was climbing over the seat on the trip from Dallas to Phoenix, to hold a pee jar for the 3 yr old grandson, at least this time I was looking for cookies. By the time we had arrived, two hours later, my rear end had been up in the air more times than it was actually sitting. You would think that having a picture of what that must look like would encourage me to eat only lettuce and water, but that wasn’t the case. We arrived in Big Bear with an empty chocolate chip cookie bag, less two Dr Peppers, half of the almonds gone and my chocolate covered blueberries, well, let’s just say that my teeth were blue by the end of the trip up the mountain.The weekend was a time of great bonding with friends who we have been around quite a lot and a new couple that we are now, bonded not only because of Christ, but by our Saturday night Egyptian feast and playing cards till midnight. You get to know people when you sit around the table, hearing stories about how they met, married and the stories of different customs because of how all of us were raised.
One of us, I won’t mention her name, thought she would try to learn how to belly dance to make our Egyptian feast “authentic”. Trying to video her had me laughing so hard that the video is moving so much that you can’t really see her, plus my laughter covered up the background music. Reminding her that I now had something to blackmail her with, I was released from kitchen duty the last day. Randy and I agreed that we won’t even go near the scales until we have a chance to loose the pounds that we came home with. We began the trip down the mountain yesterday, after going to fill up on snack food for the long 2 hour trip. You never know when you might just get caught out in the wild and need all the junk we loaded up on last night. But, as soon as we got to the bottom of the mountain and fast food places began to appear, we looked at each other and planned where we would stop. Tomorrow…we will begin tomorrow. We just need this one last night to talk about the fireworks we saw, the laughter we enjoyed and the food and card games. Of course, it is always so much better to talk about these new memories over food. Tomorrow is today. We are going cold turkey. There are no cookies to be had in our house. no lamb kabobs or apple pie. We have great new memories of a very blessed July 4th, but both of us know that if my rear end is going to be in any kind of shape to be crawling over the seat by the next car trip to San Diego, I had better find a zumba class fast.
As we are so proud of ourselves for eating so healthy today, we will reward ourselves tomorrow with a frozen German chocolate pie, which I will post the recipe. Since this is my birthday week, I have already convinced myself that I should be able to treat myself. Will maybe begin the diet next week, no, that week, our kids are coming and I will need to cook all their favorites….well maybe August, oh shoot, I just remembered, we have company coming in from Texas and will need to take them to all of our favorite places to eat. OK, maybe I just need to blacken our car windows so no one will see me climbing over the seat for our car trip treats. That is much easier than trying to diet

This morning Jodi and I were talking on the phone about July 4th and the memories we have of taking Jaden and Sevy to a club that was by our house when we lived in Dallas. Each July 4th we would take the boys and ride on our golf cart to the hill overlooking a small lake. Around 9 p.m. the celebration would begin. It was such a grand time of watching the wonder in their eyes, as the sky lite up with red, white, blue, green and pink sparkles. Sevy would get a little scared and would lay down on Randy and cover his ears. Jaden would then come sit by me and we would sit and ooh and aah at each firework that lit up the sky. Truly this was one of my most favorite times of the year. It just gave such a sense of family and how blessed we are to sit together and watch such beautiful displays of color and sound. Those are the things that I miss so much, living so far away from them. As I was replaying the scenes this morning of our July 4th memories to Randy, he reminded me that as the boys got older, we would now be making new memories that, down the road, would mean as much to us then, as the memories of times past, mean to us now. He is very wise.
As I wiped the tears from my eyes, I began to smile as I remembered a July 4th, before grandkids, when we went to the hill country in Texas. Randy had to go for a meeting and knowing that all the wives would be there, I was exited to hear that we, would have a few extra days after his meeting when we would be able to stay at the resort and just relax. We were still newly married and I had not met many of his work colleagues. It was so important to me that I make a good impression with the wives, so they would all say, “didn’t Randy marry just the sweetest lady.”
When Randy was in one of the meetings, the wives were given a breakfast there at the hotel that the company had set up, so all the foo foo women were there. Because this was my first time to meet most of them, we talked about our husbands, their work, what we did when we weren’t playing “company wife”. The talk turned to the different generations and one of the women said that you could tell how old a woman was by the type of operation that she says that she has had. I just sat there, listening and one of the younger ladies said that she talked about having babies which told everyone she was in her 30’s. Another lady shared her experience of having her gall bladder out and that would tell us that she was probably in her 40’s. I continued to sit there, because the only time I had been in the hospital was having children. Another lady, I think she was the Chairmen of the Board’s wife, told us that she had just had a hysterectomy and began to share how painful it was. She was telling us that the pain pills that the Dr had prescribed for her didn’t do any good and she was still having some pain. It was at this point that I knew it was time for me to show my wisdom. I quickly interjected, in the sweetest little southern drawl, “why don’t you just ask the Dr to give you some Valium?” Every eye turned and looked at me, as if I had showed up not wearing my pearls and earrings. The COB’s wife calmly looked at me and said, “why honey, those things are so addictive, they just don’t prescribe them much anymore”. Wanting to show her that I knew what I was talking about, I stated, with such confidence, “oh they’re not addictive, I’ve been taking them for years.” There were quite a few coffee cups that fell onto the table at this point. Oh my gosh, what I had I just said? When I tried to go back and tell them what I meant, I just kept making it worse. What I was trying to tell them is that I took 2 every month during “that time” to keep me from really getting sick. But it was no use. The damage was done. At the dinner that night, I felt the eyes of the women watching me to see if my eyes were dilated or if I was slipping a pill into my tea.
By the next day, after I had confessed to Randy what I had done, he just laughed and said that it was good that I had given them something to talk about other than their operations. At the next company meeting, I made sure that anytime the topic of surgeries or pain medications came up, I would just walk away. After all, if I got to know them too well, they might want me to share the last Valium I have saved for the last 10 years. As the years go by, everyone tells me that my hip or knee replacements are probably just right around the corner. My 10 year old Valium might just come in handy.
So however you choose to spend the 4th, watching fireworks with grandkids, family and friends, or just relaxing and discussing all your medical issues, have a great and safe July 4th…..call me if you are in pain, I know just the thing that will help.

Yesterday we planned a trip to go explore a new place about a 2 hour drive from our house. It is a beautiful little town nestled in the valley just east of Santa Barbara. Friends have told us that we just have to go and see this place, as it is truly a great little place to spend the day. So we had made up our minds that this weekend, we were going to get out of the hustle bustle of schedules and just eat anything we wanted and go explore. So Saturday morning, we got in the car and headed out. I had told Randy to make this an official “exploring, do anything kind of day” we would need to start off pretty soon with some junk food, so we decide to find a Starbucks knowing that we could always munch on their lemon loaf cake and down that with a mocha frappachino. We get off the freeway at Camrillo and head to the Starbucks. We park and lo and behold, we look right next door to the Starbucks and there in all it’s glory is a donut shop, just begging us to come in. So we quickly pass the door to Starbucks, put my phone back in its resting position, (I had it out ready to use my Starbucks app to pay for our goodies) and walk in the door to the donut shop. We had watched several people sitting around the fountain outside, holding great looking donuts. We came out with two bags. One was mine and one was his. My bag had miniature cream puffs sprinkled with powdered sugar, which is one of my favorite health foods and a blueberry filled donut. Randy had a giant cinnamon roll and a maple frosted donut. Because it is a beautiful day and such a cool day, we find us a bench and sit down to munch down on our donuts. I look across the parking lot and there is a huge wood burning oven where a man is baking pizzas right there in the parking lot for people to buy and take home. Randy looks at me and says, “no” we want to have a good lunch when we get to Ojai and already, we are going to have to walk around the town to get hungry again after eating these donuts. But, I just couldn’t let this go, I had to walk over to see what the deal was and take a picture, so that’s just what I did. I was explaining to the nice pizza guy why I was taking a picture because they just don’t do that in Texas because it is always so hot. He asks me where in Texas I was from and we started talking. I walked away with a free piece of pizza after he told me, “welcome to California”. Randy told me that he thinks the guy would have given me his firstborn just to get me to quit talking, but I ignored that comment and walked to the car with my donut sack in one hand and my piece of free pizza in the other hand. We continue on our way and arrive in Ojai. What a beautiful valley and town. It reminded us of Santa Fe and just the quaintness of the town was beautiful. Shade trees all around the downtown and after realizing that it is 1:30 we decide that in order for us to be hungry for a great fish dinner down in Santa Barbara on our way back into LA, we shouldn’t wait too long to have lunch. We walk down the main street and come to a cute little diner called, Bonnie Lu’s. We look in the window and see quite a crowd, which tells us that the food is good, so walking through the door, the waitress welcomes us and seats us at a table by the window. Ordering a glass of tea, we decide that we shouldn’t order much more than a salad, if we are going to have room for fish and chips later on. The waitress comes and after taking our order, she comes back and just visits with us about the town.  This is my kind of town. People yell to each other across the street when they see a friend and stop to talk to visitors. Really a great little old fashioned town. We get our salads and proceed to talk and eat when I tell Randy that my salad could use some more dressing. When the waitress comes to the table next to ours to clear off dishes, we try to get her attention but cannot do so. Randy picks up his cane and holds it up like he is going to tap her in the rear in to get her attention. I immediately yell, “don’t you dare” which of course got her attention. Randy is laughing telling me that he was just kidding, that he would never have really done that but when I yelled, she turned around to see why I was yelling and saw the cane which was about 2″ from her rear. Randy is laughing and now I have to tell her why I yelled. I told her that I thought he was going to get her attention by poking her in the rear and that freaked me out, thinking that I was now at lunch with an official crotchely old man, using his cane to get peoples attention. After asking her for a little more dressing for my salad, which was huge with every veggie known to man, she picks up the salad and takes it with her, even though I had said, “no, don’t take it, I just need some extra dressing”. But she said, that no, she wanted it to be perfect. She brought back another brand new salad with the dressing all mixed in and set it in front of me. I told her that she shouldn’t have done that because I was already full and now, I had to eat at least some of it so I wouldn’t feel bad for her making me a brand new one. At this point, the other waitress comes over and says that we are having way to much fun and begins to visit with us. The couple sitting at the next table begin to look at us because now we have two waitresses at our table laughing and visiting about Texas, then the second waitress tells us that she lived in Texas a year, but came back because she just missed Ojai to much. We learn all about her and how she rides the trolley at night around town because the trolley driver is a friend of hers and he takes her riding on the last shift of the night and then drops her off at her house. This place is just a “hoot” and we hate to leave, but after getting our tea in a “to go” glass, we mosey on down the block to our car and head to Santa Barbara to shop for where we will eat dinner, AFTER our 4:00 Cold Stone ice cream snack. To say we came home at 10 last night, stuffed is an understatement, but then, today is Fathers Day and what better way to a man’s heart, but through his stomach? I think I have his heart now. Happy Fathers Day Sweetie, you continue to give me so much laughter and material to write about. Love to you. TK