Today I tried a new recipe for my breakfast. Well, not so much a recipe as a technique to produce a dish I usually only eat in brunchy-type restaurants. I learned the following valueable information the hard way:

The correct tool for this job is a large slotted spoon, NOT a spatula.

And with that, I exit stage left, uttering the following:

Ghostly, shivering
Sloshed upon some buttered toast
I am a poached egg

Last week in my parish's bulletin, there was a notice for a vigil to commemorate the Roe Vs. Wade decision. I thought about how much attention the abortion issue gets from so-called "Pro LIfe" people, and yet rarely, if ever, do the numbers of fervent activists address the issue of Capital Punishment. Then I got angry, thinking about people like "W" calling himself Pro-life and "born-again Christian" when during his reign as Texas Governor he thew the switch on over 150 people, inclung the infamous case of fellow "born again," Karla Faye Tucker.

Coincidentally, that evening, I returned home to find that my husband had borrowed a copy of the excellent documentary, Deadline from our local library. The film is so succinct and eloquent in the points it aims to make that I need not waste my jumble of words (nor the bandwidth) to reiterate them here.

To me, one of the most moving parts of the film were statements read by family members of homicide victims who, despite their sorrow and loss, oppose the death penalty. I thought about my own desire to learn to implement this outlook in small ways in my own life.

I'm no pushover. If, even after walking away from a bully, that bully keeps pushing me, I push back. And yet, I have also learned over the past few years that when someone hurts you, really HURTS you, gossip, over-analyzing or even revenge provide no healing, no "closure." Walking away, putting that person/situation and the corresponding negative energy as far away as possible - THAT is what sustains me when I'm am heading toward anger, resentment, jealousy, etc.

Not long ago, a stressful situation would lead me down a road mixed with positive energy (my intact self-esteem) and negative. In one situation I purveyed gossip, cursing, declarations of severe dislike - all of this about some bad driver who cut me off in the school parking lot! Now, if its humanly possible to decline the Ultimate Revenge for the murder of a family member, then maybe there's hope for us road ragers out there. I've been pretty good about "forgiving" or at least "ignoring" some utterly crapulent driving I've seen in the past few months. Sadly for us law-abiding defensive drivers out there, I seem to have to remind myself to "let it go" and not allow the expletives to come streaming out of my mouth, audibly polluting the confines of my '98 Taurus. In '05 I was amazed at my declining rate of car-cussing; maybe one of my '06 goals could be to sustain and perhaps improve upon my track record.

This year, I think I'm already moving in the direction I want to be heading...I started SLOWLY getting back to excercise months ago, and unfortunately, due to my back injury, I'm hampered in getting too aggressive on that front. But that's ok.

Other than that, I think my spending, organizing, housecleaning, meal-planning/eating, and not-yelling-at-my-family-too-much habits are going along quite well.

I also think, however, that I will NOT be entering any triathlons this year. I just want to stay away from any self-induced guilt/pressure/stress for hardcore training when I need to focus on NOT working out until my back is 100%. Not to mention that yet again there is NO room in our household budget for a proper racing bike (not even a USED one!) I'm just going to keep my pre-pregnancy size as my carrot-on-a-stick goal to reach. And I will take as long as I need to to reach it.

So...

Here's an anecdote to add a little snicker to your day:

Around 6am this morning, uncustomarily early for me, I was feeling a bit amorous and so I snuggled up to hubby looking for some lovin'. As the good times commenced, Annie, the beagle, jumped up and began barking - also unsually early, as she almost always sleeps until 10 am. Sensing her urgent need to go out to pee, I interrupted the marital proceedings, jumped out of bed, threw on a bathrobe and some boots (its darn muddy outside) and took her out for a squirt. She took care of business, we came back inthe house and I got back into bed.

Not long after the after-glow, I heard a tell-tale "squishing" noise. The g*ddamn dog was squatting on my NEW carpet and delivering a payload of extra-steamy diarrhea!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Needless to say, I began cleanup immediately with RESOLVE cleaner, wet sponge, scrub brush, a roll of paper towels, a big garbage can and a very bad post-coital/pre-morning-cup-of-coffee attitude.

Despite the scrubbing and blotting of said stain,I could still tell where the schmears were on the rug so I went up into the attic to retrieve a long-forgotten Bissell canister power-steamer. Thanks to more RESOLVE, hot water, scrubbing and "extracting" of brown water via the Bissell, the stains are now gone (lucky for the dog.)

Ain't nothing more romantic than poop in the morning...

As this is the week when many people take Christmas cookies to work, cookie exchange parties, or give them as gifts to neighbors and friends, I thought I'd share a recipe that allows for MANY variations. It has come in very handy this season and I've given them as gifts (in nice holiday-themed gift bags) to my duagher's teacher, ccd instructor, school bus driver and babysitter. Hubby has taken many batches of these cookies to work for his staff, and they have been well-received.

Today was my follow-up visit with the Gastroenterologist - who came up with a gameplan to care for my various aches and pains (back, ibs) while protecting my stomach from painkillers and my colon from narcotics.

So here's the plan:

• One daily Prevacid pill (proton pump inhibitor to protect the tummy from the effects of Ibuprofen)
• Two daily Zelnorm tablets
• Three daily Xanax as needed for IBS-related pain (to "take the edge off" as he said and to literally relax my GI tract)
• 800mg Ibuprofen for back pain

...and a Partridge in a pear tree!

I got tagged by Michelle over at Smoochdog. I'm game to give my answers but I won't force anyone else to do it. But here's what I will do: If you are uninspired and haven't come up with an interesting blog entry OR you'd love to wax poetic about YOURSELF without seeming self-centered, then here's your excuse. You have to name the "5 wierdest things about me..."

For some reason I am compelled to focus my introspection today on my grammar/style/computing habits.

1. Obviously enough, I refuse to continue chain letters. That includes emails, blog games, etc. Oh wait. That's not wierd. That's conserving worldwide bandwith and storage space! ;)

2. My favorite part of blogging is coming up with clever titles/headlines. I used to do the same thing when I wrote interoffice newsletters as well as articles for a now-defunct music magazine. I think the one I was most proud of slipped an Urge Overkill lyric into the headline for a blood drive at school. Well, at least I try.

3. I have no left arrow key on my laptop keyboard. Hmm, that's more about my computer than me...

4. I type so fast and furiously that I produce heaps of typos -thus everything I compose looks like it came from a psychopathic dunce.

5. As stated before, I abuse elipses, semicolons, exclamation points, and parentheses. I think the elipses overuse is the worst....

It appears to be safe to post again without the threat of alien faux-links inserted forcefully into our blogs. Hmm, now that I think about it, "blog" could become a fun lil' euphemism for any number of swear words, bodily functions and/or body parts...

"Honey, I'll be in the bathroom for awhile takin' a blog"

"Flip over, baby, and show me some blog"

"Aw, man! My laptop got a virus and now its totally blogged up!"

"I think you need a tissue; you got a little blog hanging out there."

What in holy tarnation is up with these utterly crapulent and frequently innapropriate ads that masque as links under each blog entry.

My verdict: Hatin' them!!!!!

First time in eight months

Awfully sore. Note to self:

Buy fresh Astroglide.