Grief and Tattoos

I have a picture of Tony and I on our night stand.  He’s got a super goofy look on his face, and most mornings when I wake up, put on my glasses, that’s the first thing I see and it makes me smile.  Yesterday?  Just tears.  I mentioned on my 101 Days of Summer Challengers email and facebook thread that grief is like a sucker punch in a boxing match – you never see it coming and before you know it you are knocked to the ground and the referee is counting to ten.  You just keep looking at the ref wondering when you are going to catch your breath again.

As with most emotional eaters, ANY emotion will make you want to eat ALL THE FOOD!  I had to be super conscious yesterday of my eats because I knew one lick, taste or bite of something that I know I shouldn’t eat, would spiral into a full fledge binge and I’d be stopping on my way home from work to buy a bag of flaming hot cheetos and a small container of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.   Because you know after eating salty shit, you need something sweet – and vice versa!  I am happy to report that by the end of the day, I did in fact, find my breath, and will just have to brace myself for when this happens to me again – because it will come again whether I want it to or not.  It’s not fair, but I guess that’s just my life at the moment.  You wouldn’t have known it to see my face yesterday, but I was in a funk most of the day.

I had more pancakes for breakfast and it kept me full for so long.  I ended up not getting my walk in until nearly 2:00, but I got my 2 miles in and it actually really felt good to be out with the sun shining on my face.

My lunch was, well, a bit eclectic?  I had the last of my can of Bush’s Sweet Heat baked beans and when I was putting my stuff together for lunch yesterday morning remembered I had stocked up on all of my canned goods at Aldi and pulled out a can of diced potatoes.  You cannot go wrong with these – while they say it’s three servings of 2/3 cup each, I find that after draining the liquid, it’s actually about a cup of potatoes – for .49 cents a can you can’t beat it that all the dicing is done for you.  So the potatoes and beans served as my “hash” base, and then I made an egg, egg white, baby spinach and Cabot cheese microwaved egg on top, and I had about an ounce of leftover Italian sausage to round out the dish.

Not the prettiest dish, but oh so tasty.  The sauce from the beans coated the potatoes so I got spice with each bite.  This whole plate is 553 calories and super filling with 10 grams of fiber and 31 grams of protein.

Before I left for vacation, Red Gold tomatoes sent me a summer grilling package.  I am still going to blog about that next week, but one of the items that was “back ordered” was a bottle of sriracha ketchup.  They sent me the nicest email saying that they apologized for not being able to send the ketchup with the rest of my loot.  I actually forgot about it until I went outside the other day and saw a small box tucked near my front door and opened it up and low and behold . . . I had a bottle of sriracha ketchup!

I know I mention it all the time, but I bake off about 4 baked potatoes every weekend and store them in the fridge to use later in the week.  Somehow the deep fryer was still on the kitchen counter, so these fries came together super quick while my burgers were cooking.  You guys.  GUYS.  This ketchup is so amazing, I am wondering what else I can put it on – and this is coming from someone who is more of a mustard condiment girl than a ketchup girl.  My twin sister though?  She puts ketchup on her eggs and tacos!  And she doesn’t really like mustard – wtf?!

I had a Sam’s Club run for work, and Hannah and I ran a bunch of errands last night, and I ended up with exactly 15,000 steps – I don’t think I’ve ever ended on an even step count like that before!

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So today will be my last post with vacation pics.  No worries though, because I’ll be going back in a few weeks for another family reunion!

Since everyone likes to cook and because there were 20 people at my Aunt’s house, we only ate out once the entire time we were together.  Roma’s is a staple restaurant in Tappahannock and I was starting to have pizza withdrawals – I hadn’t had pizza in nearly two weeks!

The restaurant menu reminded me of the Godfather – and the “stained” glass on the ceiling was too much – even one of the cherubs was holding a bottle of wine!  I have to admit, even though I am a pizza snob, this pizza was pretty good.  The lower left was a spicy white garlic pizza that I will have to recreate soon – and I’ve never seen a pizza come out with chopped raw veggies on it (everyone in my family LOVES raw onions!) and they all gave that pizza two giant thumbs up.

Sadly in going through all my pictures – I never once got a picture of my Mom or Aunt?!  How could I have taken 590 pictures and not taken at least one of them?  So when I got back in a few weeks, I definitely need to get lots of pictures of them together.

One of the things that Hannah was contemplating while we were there was to get a tattoo.  Her late Uncle Dave used to tell her whenever we left a vacation “Study Hard, Be Good, Stay Safe.” 

So that’s what she got.  I have to tell you I am not a fan of tattoos, but all three of Hannah’s tattoos have meaning to her, and I raised an independent daughter and have always told her that she makes her own decisions in life, and I’ll have an opinion here or there, but I am the exact opposite of a helicopter parent, and she’s the most independent person I know and I am so proud of her.

It got me thinking – if I ever had the balls to get a tattoo, what would I get??  Huh.  Pigs Taste Good!  This is probably what I would get:

And then maybe get the words “beef” and “pork” on my knuckles to be extra klassy.  Ha!

Happy Friday all – thanks for the emails, texts, comments etc. on my funk yesterday – you guys are awesome and I appreciate each and every one of you.  Have an awesome weekend!