5 Star Dining Experience

I was warming up the camera for our New York trip last night. Three was my willing subject. She really didn't have much choice. Three is skilled in not looking at the camera. Whenever I point it at her, she stands still up until the moment I'm willing to click and then walks away ever-so casually. It's SO AWESOME. Or not.

She loves to eat, though, and cooperated nicely with me for the most part. Let's join her in her lovely dining experience last night.

Location: Apex, 415, the floor
Time: 9:30pm
Menu selection: Beneful-Healthy Radiance and a water

Uh, hai. I in twouble?...No?...Ok, good. I was just eatin'.
A-CACK! Woops, I choke-ded. I suk at eatin' somtime.
Mmmm, I wuv my fooood.
CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH. I rude. I chew wif mouf wide open. So what? Who cayahs?
Oh yeah, water! I firstee, too. Slurrrrrrrp.
Lummy waters.
And now for my special twick...I turn into mop after dwinking water! Mom & Dad wuv dis. I cwean floor for dem.
Oh....yeah....so I'm done. Dat's it! BYE!
Three thanks you for dining with her and hopes to do it again soon.

And she begged me to share with you her report card from Doggie Day Care.


Calorie Outrage

I'm disgusted with what I ate for lunch.

Here's why.

My nutritionist wanted me to try food journaling for the 2 weeks until my next appointment with her. I'm using this website to help me. It's great. You can enter in all the specifics from the nutrition labels on your food which helps keep track of ALL the ingredients going into your body and not just fat and calories.

ANYWAY, most of the foods I'm entering as "custom" rather than selecting the foods they've already calculated information for. It just makes me feel like it's MOST accurate, plus, they don't have every fast food in the book listed.

So today we go to Quiznos. I order the Chicken Taco Salad. It's listed as containing chicken, cheese, guacamole, salsa, lettuce, tomato, and tortilla strips. It comes with a chipotle dressing. The picture in the store looks like this (I ordered the bottom salad):
I'm kicking myself for not taking a picture of what I ACTUALLY got, but I'll attempt to describe it to you. Picture a salad of 80% shredded iceberg lettuce. Then add a tablespoon of guacamole on top, then about 2 tablespoons of salsa, then maybe 2 tablespoons of chicken - but it's the kind where it's diced into 1/4" chunks - then a little bit of shredded cheddar cheese. That's IT. No pretty green lettuce, no tortilla strips, not much of anything. They gave me 2, 2 ounce containers of the dressing and I was proud of myself for using just one. After looking up the nutrition info, I'm INFINITELY more glad and here's why.

THIS SALAD HAS 880 CALORIES! (What?!) and this is the kicker - the DRESSING is 520 of those calories. The salad also has 71 grams of fat, 56 of which are from the dressing. NOW. The nutrition info isn't specific about how much dressing is 56 grams, but I googled "56 grams to ounces" and wouldn't you know it's 1.97534187 ounces which is practically 2 ounces which is precisely the size container I used on my salad.

I'm disgusted. That's just wrong. That makes me feel like 100% of my dressing was made from LARD. What do they put in that stuff? SURELY, my actual salad wasn't THAT bad for me since they made it using short cuts and left off the tortilla strips. That saved me 70 calories and 3.5 grams of fat. It also claims to have 27 grams of protein, but I HIGHLY doubt my meager serving of chicken and cheese contained that much protein.

It's just sad when you can't even be health conscious and go out and get a salad without some place totally ruining it by loading you up with a fat and calorie laden dressing. I didn't have much choice, though. NEXT TIME (if there is one), I see now that with this salad there's really no need for dressing. It comes with salsa and guacamole which provided plenty of extra moisture, and certainly flavor, on their own.

I KNOW that dressings are the killer, but this just seems WRONG. I mean, I feel like you sort of have to TRY to make something so small that high in fat and calories. If I recreated that dressing at home, I bet it'd be less than 1/3rd the same fat and calories - even using full fat ingredients.


Trend I'm Loving

image from ByOrderOfTheCrown etsy shop

Over the course of the past 48 hours, I've fallen in love with the "Keep Calm and Carry On" thing that's going around. I don't know when I first saw it, but I remember noticing it and not caring too much about it. I figured it was something I didn't get because I wasn't involved in some new cultural phenom. Then, I asked Seth about it over the weekend. He whipped out the 'ole computer and got to googling. According to Wikipedia:
Of course, the official web site has THE info so check it out here. How interesting. And how brilliant of a design trend. I just love it. I'm not sure why, but the simple font and layout just speaks to me.

I haven't bought anything with this logo yet, but I saw it at Target last night. They had lime green and turquoise throw pillows with the logo as well as an adorable snack tray.
Please excuse the horrificity (my word) of those pictures. It's Target's fault for not letting me save images. Blame them.

The snack tray is a great example of how this slogan is being twisted and turned into all sorts of things. Here are some of my faves from etsy (where else!!).

This one I'd take for myself:
These would go to Katherine:
This one is tailor-made for GF:
And this one is good for anyone with taste buds and a sense of good eating!
And lastly, this is a fun take on the slogan that we will probably need in a nursery one day:
So what do we think? Love? Hate? I'm loving it and want to add a piece to my home. I wish I could say I follow this rule in life, but I'll have to settle for saying it's what I WISH I followed in life.


The Weekend & Our LOST Fest!

We had a nice weekend for the first time in what seems like ages. I mean nice in that we had nothing scheduled to do, no where to go, no plans or projects and for some reason no feeling (from me) that we had to do any more unpacking for the moment.Friday night, we had tickets to see The Swell Season at the NC Museum of Art. This was our 3rd time seeing TSS and of couse, as usual, they did NOT disappoint. I love this duo. They soothe my soul as cheesy as that sounds. We've seen them in Richmond, VA, Boston, Mass, and FINALLY we got tickets to see them in Raleigh. No trip, no driving, no hotel room. We bought tickets during a pre-sale and ended up with the most fabulous seats. The Art Museum has a quaint amphitheater anyway so I knew no seat would be bad. Here's a view from our seats which were just a few rows up but smack dab in the middle. The huge empty space between the seats and the stage were filled in by folks who should've sat on the grass, but flooded when Glen invited them to come in closer.The show was fabulous and it was a gorgeous, perfect night. Oddly enough, I spotted my 7th grade boyfriend down the aisle from us. He was sitting with his wife but I never got up to speak to him. What an odd place to spy someone you've not seen since the day you graduated from high school. There were some funny happenings during the show, not surprisingly caused by 2 girls clearly eager for attention. But the music was great and I was happy for a few hours.

When we got home that night I headed upstairs and realized as I climbed the stairs that it was seriously hot on the second level of our house. The thermostat read 82 degrees and the air was blowing hard. We have no clue what happened because neither of us remember touching it that day. We turned it down and tried to sleep in our room and somehow succeeded. By morning it was only 78 so we figured the A/C was officially broken. Saturday night we tried to sleep up there again, but it just wasn't working. I slept on one of our sofas downstairs and eventually Seth joined me and turned the other sofa into his bed for the night.

It was actually sort of cozy. We woke up to a loud thunderstorm that seemed to be on top of our house and pouring rain. We lazed around all morning, polished off some doughnuts from the night before, showered, and then went out to buy groceries for our LOST fest that would include just the 2 of us. Even having not slept well or long enough, I was up for grocery shopping and cooking later that night. I totally took a nap mid-day, but that's normal for a weekend. Put me on the couch and I'll fall asleep 100% of the time.

Around 6:45 I started preparing dinner for our LOST party. We planned to hold down the couches from 7 to 11:30 watching the last episode. Please pardon the cheesiness of the next few paragraphs.

I was on a... to have a fun LOST-themed dinner.

We had homemade burritos with...
and... and I prepared it on the...
During the cooking process, the smoke monster didn't show up, but we had a friendly steam monster stop by for a visit: He smelled delicious. He took some responsibility of leaving these in his wake:
Mine was better with the sour cream and fresh Roma tomatoes included.

So we ate and watched the 2 hour special recap of LOST and then watched the finale. Which I thought was great. Seth wasn't totally sold on it. I'm just not the LOST viewer who wants to ask 10 million questions at the end. I thought it was a happy and warm ending to a long and complex story. My theory is that the flash sideways was always Jack's "place of light." As they said, if you go towards the island's light, it would be the best place on earth. I think Jack's version of that was for all those people on the island to find each other, to remember each other and to love each other as a whole. And it was at the point that he could truly "leave."

The weekend was good. Just the 2 of us (FINALLY!) got to hang out, watch TV, and sleep.


Nutrition Visit #1

Yesterday's visit with the dietitian went quite well and I left feeling good about working with and learning from her. The only bump in the visit was the fault of the receptionist who simply told me to "go to the second floor and wait on the couches in the lobby." I did that and after about 15 (nearly 20 minutes) the dietitian came looking for me. She told me the receptionist downstairs was supposed to notify the receptionist upstairs that I had arrived and apparently she failed to do so. Awesome.

Finally, when I met my dietitian, Shelly, we got started. She weighed me (in front of an ultra-skinny intern), asked me questions about my height, eating habits, health status, medications and all the normal stuff of a first visit with a health professional. As a state employee, I get 4 visits to a nutritionist covered ($25 co-pay) for the year. She told me we'd do the first 2 really close together and use the last 2 throughout the year so I could take full advantage of her and she could give me some time to make some progress.

This first visit was an overview of carbohydrates. What's good, what's bad, what I should be avoiding, what I can have gobs of. I learned that veggies are good across the board and I could eat as much of them as I wanted except corn, peas, and potatoes. I was surprised to learn that peas were a starchy veggie but mostly because I'd never really thought about it. But yes, the inside of a pea is like mashed potatoes so - makes sense. Corn is sort of put in the grain category oddly enough.

She taught me about balancing carbs and proteins and veggies. She says lots of people think a salad with grilled chicken is a great meal and while it may be, she says you really should throw a carb in there with it. Carbs make your brain happy (for those of us whose bodies crave them - don't we all?) and if you give you body carbs your brain won't obsess over them like it would if you denied yourself carbs.

We went over my lunchtime habits which recently include running over to Cafe Carolina to grab the delicious Turkey Berry Panini or the Pulled Pork Panini (YUUUUM). But both are served on sourdough bread and are those wide slices of bread. She says those sandwiches are fine - but only HALF. DUH. I should've guessed. Half is actually plenty, too, because there's a ton of meat on them. She said order the half sandwich/half salad combo and said that'd be a "beautiful lunch." So...I did just that yesterday. I was fine. It was good. I could've eaten more, but I'm guessing that's because my stomach is the size of a house. I skipped the chips and will try to continue to do so.

CHIPS. Let's just say they are annoying. I can skip them easily, but sandwich places now just want to shove them at you in a combo and actually make it harder for you to say "leave off the chips" because they build the price of the combo WITH chips. If you order a sandwich and drink they'll try to sell the GREAT COMBO to you and it's just annoying to have that dialogue. The worst is my beloved Cafe Carolina because they have no combo that includes a drink. THE SANDWICH itself comes with chips (or pretzels - carb nightmare) and the drink is separate. So my mind says I'm paying for the chips whether I want to or not in the cost of the sandwich so just take them. UGH. Sometimes I bring them back to my office unopened and put them in the kitchen for my co-workers. I've even written "EAT ME" in sharpie letters on the bag. They love me.

We wrapped up our visit talking about food journaling. I've tried doing it when I was using Weight Watchers online, but I found it sort of annoying. I'm now using fitday.com and it's a better site. You can actually create your own foods and input all the information from the label. It takes into account everything - not just calories and fat. So far, it's pretty cool. I've only put today's breakfast in so we'll see.

My next appointment is June 2nd and I think she wants to look at my food journal to get an idea of what I'm eating. I'm looking forward to one of our visits - she says we can do a grocery store tour! FUN! I told her I got so overwhelmed at the grocery store because I just don't know what to buy and what's right for my body without torturing my husband. I am looking forward to that visit.


Today We Talk Nutrition

Last week, I had a check-up and check-in with my endocrinologist. The visit was as to be expected. The 'ole "How are you? How's everything?" regular chit-chat that doctors do when you're just in for an update. My doctor is an interesting man. He told me all about his 8th grade son who really likes a girl in his class but whose mom won't let her date (anyone). He wasn't sure what advice to give his son. While I totally get that - middle school really sucks - I was like "OK, and what's this got to do with ME? Your patient who's paying to be here?" But anyway...I asked for a referral to a nutritionist and he sent me off to have my blood drawn (wee!).

So today, I'm going to see a nutritionist at Rex. I'm very hopeful that the visit will be what I want it to be. I am in a weird position of having PCOS (with high cortisol levels and insulin resistance) and high cholesterol. So while the foods that are good for my insulin resistance - think proteins and dairy - may not be so good for my heart. So I'm in the middle and the problem is, I have a hard time finding and walking down the middle of the road. I run out of ideas and just cave and eat doughnuts and candy because it makes me happy and it tastes delicious. Which is an utter diet fail.

I'm hoping that this nutritionist will tell me what to eat for all 3 meals a day, for snacks, and school me on what to stay away from and what I can indulge in every once in a while. I eat a lot of peanut butter and cheese. I think she's going to tell me those are fine - as long as they are low fat. It's all so confusing. Starches or no starches? If starches - whole wheat? Nothing white (am I on a racist diet?). Seems from my reading that some fruits and veggies are bad and others good. But how can any of them be bad? They are from the earth!!! My body craves carbs. Maybe everyone's does. But I was put on a medication for diabetics which was to help curb my craving for carbs and sweets and help me lose weight. When I take it properly, I notice less "need" for a sweet after a meal, but it has not helped me lose weight.

Gee, you think I've avoided exercising for long enough? That's the ONE ELEMENT I have not included in my life and I KNOW that's the key. It's just SO HARD to do. I've never had to do it, so I think I'm in denial about the necessity. I've joined gyms repeatedly only to unjoin when I don't go and am wasting money paying for the membership. I've bought a treadmill, elliptical, Malibu Pilates machine, and a bike. The first two of which I sold to others who I hope have used them to their fullest potential :)

I will certainly post again post-consultation. I pray for the information I need to begin shopping better, eating better, living better and feeling better.


Maybe I Can Start Sleeping Through the Night Again




Here's what I plan on doing when I get home:








B.A. McFarland

That's me these past few weeks. Bad Attitude McFarland. You know, like Mr. T? Get it?

Anyway, I've had a bad attitude. Mostly, others are to blame. Or should I say my lack of patience with others is to blame. I don't know why, but I've been quite the grump for at least the last month. With our house issues taking us on the roller coaster ride of our lives, I have little to no room for other people's....well, just people.

The best I can explain it is like so: I am VERY logic-minded. My brain sees everything in life as a puzzle and I can usually quickly and easily find a good solution to a problem in a short amount of time. Take for example, the task of packing things into boxes as well as packing boxes into a moving truck or storage unit (as we encountered). My brain automatically says "OK, we've got this limited space, how can we fit these pieces together (items or boxes) using the space in the most efficient manor?" It's just something that happens and that's simply the way I think. My mom says my logical brain would've made me a good attorney, but I'd like to have a life, thankyouverymuch.

Anyway, so when things don't match up to the magical puzzle in my head, my brain gets VERY annoyed and irked. It just sees the solution as a mess from hell and it says "That is SO dumb! Who decided to put together that puzzle so sloppily?!?" and in turn, Kelley gets annoyed. As you may well be assuming, this very thing happened when we moved from our house to our storage unit. Seth and I boxed up the truck both times and I was in charge of placing boxes. My eyes just saw how the puzzle needed to go together. However, I was not part of placing the boxes in the storage unit. SO when I saw the results my heart sank a little. DON'T. GET. ME. WRONG. I LOVED the help and appreciated the guys putting all my boxes in the unit, but I just couldn't reconcile their approach to organization in my brain so I was disappointed that it didn't appear as the well-placed puzzle I had envisioned.

This may seem like the dumbest thing in the whole world to be posting about, but this stuff has been eating at me for weeks now. We just moved in not 2 weeks ago, but all this planning I've done in my head has been met with others doing it differently and that's just thrown my little logic brain into a tail-spin. It's made me HIGHLY irritated at folks and less tolerant than I usually am. It's made me over protective of my house and my things and made my desire to be ALONE WITH MY FAMILY (Seth and Three) extremely strong. Just leave me be with the people I am most comfortable with and I'll let you all know when you're welcome again.

We've also been burned so much during the last month, I just don't feel the love. I don't know why, but I just feel like a hermit. I want to be ignored and left alone and asked no questions. That's silly, but I feel like if I talk about ANYTHING that it'll disappear. I've been hurt by family, our buyers, and other folks along the way that have just not treated us as if we matter - as if it matters AT ALL that we may lose a home or a deal may fall through. Things have just hurt. They've stung and again, that's made me a bit bitter and resentful towards others.

I've been avoiding this post all day, but I've just been having a Monday and wanted to throw things out there. I just want some time with my house. We moved in on a Wednesday, I took an extra day off the day after that (unplanned), then that Saturday we spent the day driving to and from Charlotte & IKEA. Then this past weekend we left pretty much right after work to go to Boone & Blowing Rock for Skye's graduation. We got back sometime after 1pm and I took a much needed nap on the sofa with Three and then we went to J&S's house for MY mom's Mother's Day dinner (which was delicious!). I woke up in the middle of the night Saturday in Blowing Rock. I was so homesick. Seth was with me and so was Three, but I just longed for my family and my house. I couldn't wait to be back with my mom and give her the wonderful gift I got her in the mountains.

I think my attitude has been greatly fueled by my lack of feeling like I have TIME to enjoy my new house. I want to get it all straight and put away so I can start doing the things I love to do. This place excites me and he's like a new boyfriend that I can't wait to see everyday after work.

I'll try to do better, but I have lost my patience when it comes to cluelessness. Just open your eyes and think about others before you say or do something that could be hurtful.


Meet the iPad

I have a new friend. Her name is .... well, I don't have a name for her yet. But she's my new iPad and I love her.
I haven't yet figured out how best to use her at work other than for playing games (because we DO have slow times at work). You can see I have a regular ole computer right in front of me so it's hard to pick one over the other.
In the meantime, be jealous. Very jealous.

Let's go on a tour of her most fun features (sorry for the crappy pictures, I'm using my iPhone because I don't tote my SLR camera to work everyday. plus, I'm bored and this was what I came up with the photograph):

1. iBooks. I will use this to replace my Kindle which I sold to my dear mother. Don't you love the cute look of the wooden shelves where all my books are stored. Not sure if you can see it, but the iPad comes with your own shiny copy of "Winnie the Pooh." Apple got me there - no idea why THAT book would be your first default book, but it IS 361 pages - not too shabby, Winnie.
2. Videos! I can still watch Gilmore Girls (which I am putting off finishing because I just can't stand for it to be over!) in style. Used to watch it on the laptop, but the iPad is plenty spacious for TV watching.
3. Lastly (for now until I can take better photos), is the cool case. This bad boy has a little slot in the back where the front flap fits and props up the laptop like a drunk college girl at 2am. I love it. It makes it so much easier to use. I am so looking forward to getting this wonderful keyboard dock, though. T'will make it seem as if I still have a laptop:

For me, the iPad is so great. Just the right size, portable as can be, and roomy.


Please tell me you know about Etsy. Please.







We're OUT!

We've officially closed on our old house. We were supposed to close last Friday, April 30th, but due to stupidity and sloppy work on the part of their closing attorney's office, a $90 past-due tax bill wasn't found until the 11th hour. Said lien delayed the heck out of the closing and our buyers couldn't move in last weekend as planned.

Finally, yesterday at 4:35pm, the closing was complete and the deed should be recorded today. Our agent, Edna, relayed from our buyer's agent that the buyer (the wife) was "un-nerved" by the closing set back. Sorry folks, I'm not feeling the least bit sorry for her. She wasn't un-nerved by a $12k under appraisal nor did they feel sorry for us, so too bad, so sad you couldn't move in on time. It's about time someone other than us suffered during this process.

So bye-bye country home that was too far away from everything we loved! HELLOOOOO APEX!!!


Now for the fun part...


Today, I went to a wonderful fabric store with my mom during my lunch hour. That was the only bad part - we could only stay for 20 minutes since I have to be back right at 2pm. In any case, I had some luck selecting a few adorable fabrics which will transform into pillows for the sofa and curtain panels for the windows in my living and possibly dining room.

Check them out!

One thing I hate about some fabric stores is that they give you the measliest samples on earth. It's OK for some fabrics with a small or even itty-bitty repeat, but ones with large repeats, you can't tell squat from the sample. Luckily, there was an ENTIRE SOFA covered in the fabric I picked for our pillows.

This photo shows the sample of the fabric I picked for curtain panels and possibly a small lumbar pillow for the middle of the couch. I threw it on the couch so you could see how very cute they are together. I may use the graphic pattern on the bias for piping on another pillow. I am not sure how exactly I will combine them all.Here's a close-up of the green fabric so you can get an idea of its texture. I love it. It's got a linen-like texture and it has just the look and feel I wanted in the room.
This last photo includes one more fabric I'd like to incorporate. This particular one is an outdoor fabric, but usually they also carry it in an indoor version as well. I love a good old-fashioned ticking stripe and this one matches the current paint as well as the fabric perfectly. My mom turned her nose up at this one, but I'm learning to ignore her judgments because we've always had (and always will) different tastes in home decor. Oddly enough, she found the green fabric and it was just what I had been picturing so score one for mom.
I think the ticking stripe might go well in the dining room with some cute green trim or a fun pom-pom or tassel trim. Also, our downstairs bathroom has a great window that's in desperate need of a cafe curtain and I think the ticking stripe would work well in there, too.

My mom has a lady who has done her sewing for years (until recently) who I hope to use and get great prices from. I just can't find what I need at Target and the likes anymore. Plus, using custom stuff is soooo much more fun. I'm trying to find the nerve to make friends with my sewing machine again and make a run at some pillows or even a simple panel curtain myself! Tutorial suggestions anyone??

We're IN!

So FINALLY we moved in to 415. It's the dream I thought it would be and to be able to say that and mean it is another dream. When we moved into our previous house people would ask, "Are you LOVING your new house?!?!" with an expectant tone indicating they assumed it was fabulous. I never felt that true connection to the house and always down-played our enjoyment of the house. Red flag #1. I was an idiot. However, 415 is all I hoped it would be. The more stuff I put away or on display or arrange the more I feel like the house was made for us. I really, truly am loving it.

The house is still an utter wreck, but we've done a lot despite the mess. We went to IKEA on Saturday and got 2 new couches for the living room since we had to sell our old one. It's amazing what having a BIG house can do to your perception. A lot of our furniture and accessories either don't fit in this house or don't have a place. We've given up several things (gladly, though) to move into this house. I don't feel like I have a huge, overwhelming home on my hands and I really have no desire to ever live in more than 2200 square feet! I just don't see the point.

I've been holding these back for a while, but I think we're safe to share them. I hope me saying that doesn't throw this transaction into a tail-spin :| It would be our luck. In the meantime, enjoy the photos from our new house!

Slideshow of 415