Nutritious and ... Disgusting

I dare you to guess what this is:



Macaroni and cheese, you say? Penne pasta with a light cream sauce?

Oh, no. Not for this gluten and (after a visit to my doctor this summer) dairy-free girl. Here is the box this blasted meal came from:



That's right. Chreese. It was so foul. I barely managed to eat one bowl. If you wondered what cheese made from ground rice and lentils tastes like, I'll clue you in: like ground rice and lentils. And shoedust.

Chicago-Bound

I started my weekly commute to Naperville a few weeks ago and have loved staying with my sis and brother-in-law. I've also started weekly one-on-one dates with my cousins. This week, Sean was the lucky winner of time with me. We walked downtown and got an ice cream and a latte and fed the ducks at the riverwalk. We also named them: Frumpy, Captain, Emperor, Fuzzy Wuzzy, and Cinnamon. We stopped by the bookstore where Sean entertained himself on the escalators and then snuck into the new auditorium with a beautiful new stage. Someday, Sean will be a world famous Irish flute/piano/violin player. It was a lovely afternoon that felt like it had been ripped from one of those Family Circus comic strips showing the loopy path kids take whenever they go anywhere. I loved it.

Victory Tastes So Sweet

My pops came to visit a couple of weeks ago and it was one of my favorite ever weekends with him. We were lucky to have an extra day on each end of the visit which gave us more time to relax, play farkle, take friends sailing on the hobie cat, and spontaneously stop by a putt-putt course where I defeated my father for the first time with a dazzling, last minute hole-in-one on #17. Oh, yes. Victory tastes so sweet.

I couldn't find my ball because I couldn't believe it would be in the hole. No joke.


Overall, he was an excellent sport.

On the Street

Before the undergrads came back to campus, it was easy to wander from the parking ramp to my building and notice little things that tickled my fancy. Now, it's too tempting to people watch and I doubt I would have seen these gems.

A determined petunia growing up through the cracks in the concrete:

Evidence of a frustrated (and perhaps a bit melodramatic) skateboarder in need of a spelling lesson:

It's Raining, It's Pouring

I love thunderstorms. We've had a few good ones in the last couple of weeks and I love the thrill of thunder claps and lightning strikes and hearing that gush of wind and water. It gets my heart racing and makes me want to cuddle up under the covers even more than usual. Before I went to bed tonight, however, I wanted to make sure there weren't any more serious warnings out, so I checked weather.com and found this note which I found to be almost quaint - as if it were written by a kindergarten teacher in the 1950s.

GUSTY WINDS MAY CAUSE BRANCHES AND A TREE OR TWO TO BE BLOWN DOWN... AND LOOSE OBJECTS TO BLOW AROUND. STAY AWAY FROM HIGH OBJECTS OUTDOORS SUCH AS TREES.

A Motley Crew

To those of you who are mothers, God bless you. I just got back from a shift at the restaurant after a weekend with my cousins from Chicago and I am beat. We had a blast and they are great, but six people (three cousins ages 7,9, and 12, an aunt, and an uncle) is a huge crew to have shoved in a two-bedroom apartment for 24 hours. Three kids are quite a handful after living by yourself with a cat for years (a cat who apparently peed on my futon... a futon that is , by the way, now in the dumpster).

Though I am barely awake now, we did have tons of fun this weekend... while Ron and Ann were sweating their tails off at an outdoor wedding, we escaped the 90+ heat at the water park down the block from me. Our favorite was this windmill-like contraption that would fill up with water and then dump a huge bucket on (un)suspecting victims below.

I didn't think there would be much to do at my house, but Sean and Gwen showed off their piano skills immediately and thoroughly enjoyed experimenting with the sounds and rhythms of the keyboard. They also loved finding Lois and trying to pet her - she actually came out from under the bed for awhile this morning. We also ate a huge gutbuster breakfast at Mickie's Dairy Bar, went to the Vilas Zoo in Madison where we saw a Wild Pig Boy (aka Grant). And though the movie wasn't anything I would rave about, we did see G-Force in 3-D which scored us free "old man" glasses.

My favorite part of the weekend involved sniffing candles in the aisles at Walgreens - before we discovered the cat pee, I knew I had an odor I needed to attack any way I knew how. I wanted to buy Febreze, candles, Glade Plug-ins - whatever I could since I couldn't uncover the root of the smell. The kids helped me sniff all of the candles and we started laughing so hard we could barely hold the glass containers... let's just say Walgreens does not specialize in fragrance. One particularly awful candle smelled just like baby wipes. Baby wipes.

I also loved Gwen's random and completely sincere thoughts... a few of my favorites:

"Do I have to wear shoes?" (before we went into the movie theater... she had not worn shoes in the car. luckily, i had an old pair of flip flops in the backseat that she threw on. they were a woman's size 8.)

"Windows down, baby!" (on the way home from the movie theater when it was scorching hot)

"I love the name Frank." (when choosing a proper noun for a MadLibs game)

"So I think I'll just go to college in China, but I won't have any idea what anybody is saying." (when asking questions about how college works)

"Oh, I can use this rubber band!" (picking a rubber band off the sidewalk in front of the capitol building on the way to drop off her parents' keys at the wedding reception)

A Glimpse of Madison

I really have fallen in love with my city this summer... not just because it's beautiful, though that is certainly one of the reasons. Here are a few of the classic Madison vistas I caught on my cell phone camera in the last couple of weeks.

Lake Mendota, as seen from James Madison Park. I was driving home from a friend's and had nowhere else to go, so I pulled over and laid on the grass and took a little catnap. It was a gorgeous day - breezy and warm and just all-around lovely.


The view from my hostess post... the sunset that night was particularly spectacular. It's so pretty that people often gasp when they first come upon the view. If you have to stand somewhere for 7 hours, it might as well be in a place like this.


I love this picture because it captures two of Madison's characteristics at the same time. In the sideview mirror: many of Madison's major streets are under construction which slows drive time down considerably... as do the semi-frequent protests (driver's side window), like this one demanding health care reform. Hundreds of people (all ages, colors, and sizes) marched from campus to the capitol playing music and waving signs. I was happy to stop for them and wished I had known so I could march with them.