I have an hour and a half left of work to do for the week. I still have one and a half cups of broccoli left that I should eat and a cup full of runts sitting beside me. I do it to myself really. My husband hates it when there is candy in the house and probably hates me eating it but as long as I'm not around him when I do the blow is softer. Yesterday I was at Party City buying supplies for goodie bags for my piano students. How I've never been inside a Party City is beyond me but I feel like if I were a millionaire I would throw parties for every occasion and I would furnish them all with things from that store. I was pleased to find pencils for 23 cents instead of the 55 cents they cost where I work (how does that figure?) and I bought several marble maze games for the boys. I also happened to pick up this plastic jug of runts and brought them home with me. It's been a long week I deserved them.. yeah right. My love of sweets is probably the closest I'll ever feel to that tug an addict feels. That's embarrassing to type now isn't it! Let me go heat up my broccoli and then I'll finish this post. Maybe that will save some face.

I think that I get this sweet tooth from my mother. Now that I look back on it she seems to have had plenty of sweet snacks around her. One Easter she confessed to me that she almost ate an entire bag of those sweet tart chicks ducks and bunnies. On road trips to Northern Illinois she would hide Twizzlers in the glove compartment of our Volvo. So I'm going to blame this on her. Not entirely.. but partly. You hear that Mom? I'm blaming you for something! What a horrible mother! The only thing I can think of that you did wrong was introduce your addict child to candy. Gah. Well.. you also introduced me to broccoli and it is doing wonderful things for my insides I'm sure; making me grow strong and healthy. I do try to eat healthy (ish) so don't think that I'm totally ruining my life. I eat vegetables every day. I pretty much only drink water (throw some coke zero and black coffee in there every once in a while.. ok the coffee is everyday) and I workout on a regular basis. Pretty good. I brush my teeth with vigor and I floss regularly. At my last dentist visit I had no cavities. I don't smoke cigarettes (anymore) and I enjoy taking my dogs for long walks. :) Look how wonderful and healthy I am!

At my piano lessons if the students are good and do what I ask them to I will give them candy. A small piece. The other day one of my students was looking through my bag of candy and commented that she couldn't find Butterfingers. I have to confess that it's possible I contributed to the lack of Butterfingers (yes I eat my children's candy) but I know for a fact that I did not eat the last one. I told my student that they were my favorites as well and I was sorry that they were all gone (it really was a travesty). Last night after the recital I received several presents from some of the families I teach, I'm particularly interested to see how far I can make my target gift card go! This child had given me an entire bag of Butterfingers. When I opened it at home I stood there holding the bag and laughing and laughing. It was the perfect ending to the evening. I also had Moe's again last night so that didn't hurt the perfect evening either.

I have really great students. I was so pleased with their work at the recital and more than anything I actually enjoyed telling them each how well they had done. I usually get nervous about the whole, talking to parents ordeal, but the more years I have under my belt the more comfortable I get. This year I really enjoyed telling the parents how pleased I was with their children. I can honestly say that not one of the students in my recital were a pain to teach. I can't think of a more eloquent way to put that right now so I'll leave it at that. Usually when you teach a big group of students you find a few that really frustrate you. You find some that make you think that there is absolutely no hope.. or you teach the ones that do things like... lick their hands and rub them all over your keyboard. That happened to me once. I wanted to kill myself. I can say for the first time in forever I think that I really cared deeply about each one of my students. I cared that they did well, I cared that they knew I thought they did well, and I cared that they had a desire to continue learning. I also want each and everyone of them to not only keep taking with me for their entire lives but to never grow up. Especially my little four year old that began my students recital. I never want him to grow up. Well.. I only want him to grow up to play hands together but that's about it.

I'm amazed at how quickly the year has gone by. It's summer break already. I looked at the calendar this morning and realized that a week from tomorrow we'll be packing up and leaving for SC and then to the beach. A week long vacation at the beach. Wow. Already? Where is my summer going? Not just where is my summer going but.. I don't have a swimsuit. *groan* I know what I'll be doing tomorrow. Is it possible that all swimsuit manufacturers want you to look skanky instead of sexy? I would very much appreciate a swimsuit that covers more than the lingerie that I received at my bachelorette party while still allowing for minimal tan lines. It's really not too much to ask. Lets go for sexy-classy not sexy-slut.

Interesting things are happening and will happen. My townhouse neighborhood is having a garden contest. I know I won't win. I don't have a garden. I have VEGETABLES. But my front yard is a mass of weeds and I don't have the energy to dig them all out and plant something else. I have thought of spraying the entire yard down with round up but then I realized that it might kill whatever I planted after the weeds died. It could be interesting though. Either way the community is going to be beautiful this week and I really look forward to seeing who will win.

My mother is coming into town on Wednesday (which happens to be my coveted day off!) and I'll get to visit and have lunch with her and some of her lady friends :) I'm so excited about this. I used to get really really homesick when we first got married, however, I'm gradually adjusting to calling Birmingham home which I think is an ok thing to adjust to. BUT I leap at any opportunity to visit my parents. They did such a good job raising me that I just can't stay away! It's crazy! Crazy awesome!

The dogs got table scraps of pork chops and mashed potatoes (and garden salad from MY GARDEN). Huxtables stole off with a pork bone and hid under our bed with it. He thinks under our bed is his den. Churchill never was much of a den animal, he spends most of his time sleeping on the couch, but since Huxley has been crate trained I think he prefers dark quiet.. "under" places. Jaime and I got on the floor and watched him defend his bone from us which really was adorable. He does this really cute thing where he'll army crawl towards you and roll over and put his paws on your face. Anyway. Dogs should never be fed pork chops. Ever. The next day I found several small piles of vomit that didn't look like vomit more like a pile of little pieces of bone (that must have felt nice coming up). Yesterday while I was eating my runts and packing little baggies of goodies I experienced the gas that comes with puppies who eat pork. Then later. The pork came out the other end. Poor little baby. Huxley was covered in it. I thought about blogging about this yesterday. I spent a good deal of time thinking about it actually. I finally decided that the only way to describe what happened in Huxley's crate is to simply call it shit. It was shit. I know I don't really cuss on this blog because who knows who's reading it. But there is no other way I can put this. It was worse than anything I've ever seen. It was.. a big deal. It wasn't just like.. the four letter word that people say in surprise or something like oh shit! It was the four letter word that people say when they are disgusted. I looked over at Jaime and said.. babies are going to be so much easier, so much easier. I know those of you who have had babies want to interject here and say something like, Carrie, you're totally wrong, you don't even know what you have coming your way. Well this is me laughing in your face. You feed your baby porkchops and lock them in a cage without a diaper on.

I also have a tiny baby bell pepper and I'm super excited about that. I'm also ready to start vining the cantaloupe up the railing on my front porch :) What a nice welcome. Welcome to my house, check out the cantaloupe!