Mitch's Animal Knowledge

 1.  Border collies can run 27 miles per hour.  Tops.

2.  Raccoons tie sloppy knots.

3.  A pigeon can fly into the window of a car going 60 miles per hour.

4.  If a squirrel has a choice between living in nature and living in a lunch box, it will choose the lunch box.

5.  If a bird has a choice between flying and walking, it will walk. 

6.  Good raccoon names:  Smokey and Bandit.

7.  Dogs can climb plum trees.

8.  Dogs love plums.

9.  The best way to catch a bat in your house is with two paper plates.

10.  If one of your kids leaves a coonskin hat under your bed, and you see it and and think it might be an animal, don't touch it.  Make your wife do it.

11.  The best weapon against bears in the long grass:  canoe paddle.

Brandi Carlile

I just discovered a new musician that I LOVE!  Actually, she's not new and I am not the one who discovered her, but I heard her for the first time yesterday on Prairie Home Companion (I'm only in my 30s, why do you ask?)  Her name, as you have probably deduced from the title of this post, is Brandi Carlile.  She sang her song The Story on PHP and I was riveted!  That never happens to me!  I like music, sure, but her voice hit me like a ton of bricks.  So I immediately bought the album on iTunes with that song on it and I've been listening to it all day.  It's FANTASTIC!  Check her out on youtube!

My girl

I previously wrote a post for today that involved what I thought was a very sweet, but upon further consideration, perhaps too personal story about my sweet daughter and her talent for describing the little details of life in interesting and hilarious ways.  Oh well.  (Maybe I'll repost it someday when she really really pisses me off.) I got a comment shortly after posting it that warned me of the danger of posting personal things on the internet about the person who sleeps in the room adjacent to mine, and the possibility of being murdered in my sleep.  Point taken!  I don't want to die!

The point was that she delights me every day and I love her very much.  Enough said.

Internet sensation

I think internet addiction is the form my mid-life crisis is taking.  It's so easy and fun!  Just push a few buttons (which is fun in itself) and beep boop beep!: Facebook. I can cyber-spy on everyone I've ever known since preschool.   Push a few more buttons and there's my Farmville cyberfarm.  If I spent half the time doing actual yardwork instead of cyberfarming, my actual yard would be virtually dog-poop free.  (No, not virtually poop-free, that was a mistake, I mean actually poop-free.  My farmville farm is always virtually poop free because my cyber-livestock doesn't poop.  Or eat.  Or move around much.  But I have to collect their hair about every other day.)

And then there is this blog which is not quite as big a waste of time as cyberfarming because it's making me famous.  I'm all over Google.  Just type in "Carlton County Chicken Swap" and guess whose site pops up first?

Yeah, that's right...

People all over the world are googling things like the chicken swap and Dr. Quinn, wanting real information and instead they are getting my silly blog.  HA HA!  So that's not a waste of time.  I just hope that if I ever apply for another job (Mitch, I WILL!  I said I would, I will, okay?) they don't have the wherewithal to use Google to look me up, because they would find me and it might not be very job-getty for me.

Lately I've been on my way to reading every single list on McSweeney's blog.  (It's taking a while.)  I also like LOLcats because who wouldn't?  Funny pictures of cats with silly captions.  Genius!  I have about a hundred blogs that I read on Google reader (not really a hundred), and I look up every word or concept I'm not sure about on dictionary.com or Wikipedia or IMDB.   Sometimes I also use Urbandictionary as a reference, but they don't really give reliable information. Only use it if you need to find out the meaning of the latest offensive slang you hear at school or on TV but don't want to look dorky by saying, "So what's a 'rusty trombone' anyway?" (DO NOT look up rusty trombone  YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW. Just be happy knowing it does not refer to a neglected brass instrument.)  Urbandictionary was helpful once when watching 30 Rock and Frank suggested they name the newest model of General Electric microwave a "Hot Carl."  Again, DO NOT LOOK IT UP.  Believe me, usually the names are funnier if you don't know what they mean.*

I wish there was something productive I could do while also being on the internet.  I wish my cyberfarm could feed the world.  Or I wish I could get paid lots of money for being on Facebook.  Are there any jobs like that?

What are your favorite internet activities? (non-porn categories only, please)

*(I told you not to look them up.  It's your fault.  Curiosity killed the LOLcat.) (ha ha, good one)

You're wrong Danica McKellar, math does, in fact, suck.

You know how every middle-school aged kid gets frustrated with math and says, "Why do I have to do this anyway?  I'll never use this in my life!"  Being an English major, I never had an answer to that question because really, who gives a gigantic rat's ass what x is anyway?  Nobody cares.  After I got a D in Mr. Turry's 8th grade math, I sort of gave up.  (and by 'sort of' I mean 'totally')

I took one algebra course in high school and was excited if on the tests I got a double digit percentage correct.  12% AWESOME!  I usually wavered around the 9% area.  I was just going to blow it off and take Math for Today the next year to fulfill my math credits and call it quits on math altogether.  Unfortunately my dad, who was a teacher, happened to run into my math teacher at school one day and innocently asked how I was doing and good ole' Mr. Mueller said without hesitating, "She hasn't handed in one assignment all quarter.  She's getting an F."  What a blabbermouth.  So I spent my entire spring quarter doing algebra with my dad every single night for hours and hours.  I wonder who hated it more, me or Dad?

Now I'm the parent, and Sam got a bad grade in math so I'm trying to help him out at home and today I hit the wall on my math knowledge.  Yesterday was problems like this:  5m+18=15m-24-4m.  Easy.  Well, not exactly easy, I had to work this one problem at least three times before I got the right answer, but I got the right answer! (7!) Today's problems were like this:  -7/20f+2/5=1/4f.  I can get it down to 2/5=3/5f (and I don't even know if that's right, but it's damn close) but from there on, I don't know how to do it.  One of my answers was 15876/1218.  That just doesn't seem reasonable. 

So the answer to those kids who say, "Why do I have to do this!  I hate it!  I'll never have to use it!"  is "Yes you will, you will need it to help your child with his or her 7th grade math and believe me, you don't want to look like a total idiot in front of your 13 year old.  That totally sucks.

Hey Gmail, mind your own beeswax

I was just innocently sending some email and I glanced at the margins of the page, the part that has ads that I generally don't pay any attention to and I found this helpful information:

Why, Gmail, do you think, based on the content of my email that my biggest concerns are stomach gas, bloating, and calories needed per day?  Are you trying to tell me something, Gmail?  It makes me ask myself how often do I regale my friends and family with personal tales of digestion?  (Sorry family, sorry friends.  You should have said something.)

Now I'm going to go look up that colon cleanser from DrNatura.com/constipation!  I'll let you know how it goes!

(no, I won't)

(I might, if it's good)

D-I-V-O-R-C-E

I found out this weekend that one of my oldest friends is getting a divorce.  They've been married about as long as Mitch and me and have kids about the same age.  I've had friends that have gotten divorced before, but then it seemed like they were nothing like us, and a lot of the time when I heard those couples were splitting up I was saying, "Oh no!" but I was secretly thinking, "Geez, it's about time."

This time is different.  This couple is too much like us.  It's kind of scary.  Reminds me that marriage is hard work a lot of the time, because I sincerely believe it's not a natural state to be legally bound to one person of the opposite sex FOR LIFE.  (Seems kind of mean if you think of it like that.)  I heard an analogy of marriage recently that said that marriage is like a mosaic and every day you add another piece to the picture and some pictures are ugly and small, and some are huge and beautiful, but it's up to the couple to decide what their picture is going to look like. Yeah, no pressure there.

Knowing how hard it is to married and be happy while doing it, I have taken some marriage-saving precautions.  I told Mitch that if he leaves me when I'm post-menopausal for a younger woman and has another family I will kill his new kids. (maybe I shouldn't put that in writing.)  I also told him that if he ever leaves me I'm going with him. 

OMG Mad Men Dolls!

OH MY GOD.  Look what I just found on the internet:

It's Mad Men Barbie dolls!  I am getting every one of them, then I can re-enact the scripts to all the shows and make the characters do what I think they should have done in the first place.  (Oh, it will be steamy.) I will have to get a doll that looks kind of like me too so I can worm my way onto the set as well.  Don Draper loves me so much and I'm the only one who can fix him, I just know it!

 This will do, I just have to cut her hair and change the poncho for a cardigan and it's ME!

I hope they also have the office and maybe a house or two and TONS of clothes.  And also little tiny bottles of scotch and teeny weeny packs of cigarettes.  The dolls should really have holes in their hands for their little cigarettes. 

Mad Men

Mitch and I have been watching the series Mad Men on DVD.  It's a really interesting show.  In case you don't know about it, it's about an advertising firm in the early sixties and the main character is Don Draper (Don Draper!)

 Don Draper!

He's super cool, smart, handsome, but troubled. I like the show mostly for the clothes, hair and make-up, and furniture (and Don Draper!).  (Oh, and the underwear, my god, the underwear!  It's positively architectural.  They just pushed their flab into flattering places, no matter how uncomfortable it was.  That's tempting, but I don't know if I could shove my back fat into the front of my bra.)

 1960's bra

Mitch likes the overt chauvinism so he's trying a little out at home.  Lucky me.  This consists mostly of him saying, "Hey, the sink is over there," and "Mix me a drink, woman!" and "I'm hungry." 

According to this show, people lived pretty dangerously in the sixties.  Absolutely everyone smoked, all the time, everywhere.  There was even a scene where a woman was getting a gynocological exam and the doctor lit up in the middle of it.  Weird.  There was a lot of drinking of scotch in tiny glasses too.  All day at work at this firm, the ad men are drinking.  They have booze and cigarettes in their supply closet!  These days the only thing worth stealing in supply closets is Post-its (not that anyone should steal anything out of supply closets, ever)  And also, nobody ever wore seatbelts.  So they were driving around drunk, seatbelt-less, and lighting up.  I think even texting while driving is safer than that.  There was also a lot of cheating in marriage.  People back then were apparently very hot to trot and easy.

I think I may know too much about the sixties now, Grandma.

Our latest crafts

This is a balloon with wings that Kira made.  She ripped the wings off of Sam's 20Q electronic game, Harry Potter version.  Sam: more pissed than impressed.

Kira got a portion of fake fur from her grandma and made this pet/bookmark.  It took her about half a second to cut a strip of fabric and poke some googly eyes onto it.

This is a cake I made for Mitch's birthday.  It's supposed to be a bunny but it looks more like a pear with boobs.  It was delicious regardless of what it looked like. 

The worst song in the world

I was driving in the car with the kids today and a song came on the radio that I had never heard before.  It's called Bedrock by Lil' Wayne and friends.  Lil' Wayne should be embarrassed, and so should all of his former teachers.  And his parents.  He probably should also be embarrassed that he calls himself "Lil' Wayne."   Here are the lyrics in red, and my comments in black.

She got that good, she Michael Jackson bad, Im attracted to her, but her attracted fast.  Huh?

And now we murders because we kill time (that is so stupid) and I cut lights out and she still shine. Aww.. 

I hate to see her go but I love to watch her leave. Get it?

But I keep her running back and forth like a soccer team.  simile.
Cold as a winter day, hot as a summers eve, more similes

Young Money thieves steal ya heart with ease.  What???  Why is money capitalized, and why do money thieves steal my heart?  Isn't their specialty money?

I like the way you walking if you walking my way, Awww...

Im that red bull now lets fly away. Red Bull, like the drink???

Let'z buy a place with all kind of space  yes, let's

i let chu be the judge and and im the case. huh? You want me to judge you?  Okay!

Im Gutta Gutta i put her under I see me with her, no Stevey Wonder.  This is just random words but something about being blind maybe?

She don't even wonder cause she kno she's bad and I got her niggah, grocery bag.  I'm utterly flabbergasted.

Oooh baby I be stuck to you like glue baby. Awwww... (but seriously, I need my space.)
Wanna spend it all on you baby.  Spend all what on me, the glue?
My room is the G spot (get it?), call me Mr. Flinstone cause I can make ya bedrock. GET IT? 

There is soooo much more to this song, lyric-wise, but I can't even bring myself to read it.  I never thought I would get old enough to think "young people's" music was stupid, but here I am, utterly disgusted with a young.... I was going to write musician, but he's clearly not a musician, or a lyricist...  pop star?   

I'm officially old.  

Lil' Dumbass Wayne

OIL ME, LOLA

 I was making dinner tonite and Kira was sitting at the kitchen counter playing with some pieces to a game she has.  She wouldn't talk to me unless it was in a robot voice, and all she would say was, "OIL ME, LOLA."  She got this from an Old-Time Radio show about a robot named Junior that was built to be super strong and he was able to learn.  The robot ends up killing everyone in the story.  Kira loves it.  So as she's sitting there, ordering me to oil her, I said, "Kira, can't you say anything else?"  and she says, "LOLA, WHEN WILL DUKE BE BACK?  LOLA, WHERE'S DUKE?" I'm assuming that Mitch was supposed to be Duke.  Then she recited the alphabet in the robot voice, and I was beginning to wonder when Duke would be back myself.  Now she's downstairs calling Sam and Mitch Lola and ordering them to oil her. 

Hey!  It's spring ahead night!  I can spring ahead right now and put her to bed!

BYE

The Boring Latest

I didn't get up until after ten today. What??? I haven't done that in a while. And I think I could have slept even longer if not for Kira coming in, giving me an unceremonious shove and saying, "Mom, Mom, Mom, can I download this app onto your iPod? Mom, Mom, MOM look, can I? Can I download this?"

I got up and decided to weigh myself. I've been on a half-assed diet for a week and a half. I gained 2 and a half pounds. WHAT??? How does that happen? Dense bones, that's how.

Now I'm sitting in my filthy pjs, in my filthy house, watching Jack Hanna on TV. Is he mentally handicapped? I think maybe he is. Earlier I watched a different animal show about bears. They did an entire segment on how special pandas are. Puh-lease. Pandas have really pulled the wool over everyone's eyes, haven't they? They must have good PR reps.  They probably have the same PR firm as Nancy Kerrigan.

Kira made herself a blog and her aim is "to tell the dead truth," whatever that means. She tried to be all nonchalant last night and took pictures of the enormous, ever expanding gray patch of hair on my head. I said, "What are you doing?" and she said, "Getting ready to tell the dead truth." So, you can expect to read the dead truth here.

Oh, and the last bit of boring news is that I expanded my blog template. Now the text goes all the way to the edges. That's better, don't you think? I felt like I was wasting cyberspace before. Now I'm being more economical. I also got some blogfish. They are on the sidebar. You can feed them. Go ahead.

I'm boring myself now. Time to do something productive.

Update on my teeth that you forgot to ask for

I just realized that I had my oral surgery consultation and I never updated the blog about how it went. I guess you all FORGOT TO ASK about it, or maybe you were just being polite, because I know everyone loves to hear about other people's disgusting maladies.

You know how my doctor told me a few years ago that I'm approaching middle age (bitch) and I should start to take preventative measures against old-lady problems like osteoporosis? (she did) She told me I need to take a daily calcium/vitamin D supplement, so for about two years I have been faithfully doing just that. Guess what? It's working! My bones are harder and denser than anyone could ever expect bones to be even though I drink gallons of Diet Coke which supposedly weakens bones with all the delicious acid. That's why I weigh so much, dense bones. But, there's a down-side to being the anti-osteoporosis poster gal, and that is that my bone-impacted teeth will have to be chipped out of my rock-like jaw, and I can expect extensive swelling and pain after surgery! Isn't that fucking fantastic?

My doctor is kind of cute which is also bad because now, on top of being completely freaked out by the entire ordeal, I have to be embarrassed that a handsome man is going to be smelling my infected tooth sockets. I bet that's going to be really stinky.

Oh, and the tiny bits of the teeth that have popped through the gums have cavities, so if I were to just leave them in, eventually I would have to get the cavities fixed or look forward to root canals.

Life is SWEET these days!

Australia!

Me, Amy and Beth on a beach in Australia in 1982. The words on the back of the picture say "Cape Patterson Liptrap" but I'm not sure Liptrap is a word, Mom.

My friend and fellow blogger, Kady, is on a world tour right now. She sold all her stuff, quit her job and put all of her worldly belongings in a backpack (apparently a HUGE backpack that she never actually carries on her back), and took off to see the world. She just finished visiting Australia. You can read about her adventures here.

She recently wrote a post all about koalas. After reading it I am officially putting koalas on my "I wish they were extinct" list. Anything that has an upside down pouch where its baby can just fall out is a contender for the list. Add to that the fact that they feed their babies poop for several weeks in order to get them accustomed to eating poisonous eucalyptus leaves for the rest of their lives has firmly put them on the list. Watch out koalas.

When I lived in Australia when I was twelve, we were constantly straining our necks to look up into the eucalyptus trees to try to spot a koala, and we saw them sometimes. They are pretty cute, but I remember once Queen Elizabeth was visiting either the Sydney Zoo or the Melbourne Zoo, and she wanted to see a koala up close, so a zoo keeper was going to get a cute adolescent one for her to gush over. The mother of the adolescent didn't like the zoo keeper touching her baby so she slashed him with her gigantic claws and he was gushing blood. Fun times for the queen. I wasn't there, I just heard about it. It's probably not even true, but ever since then I've not been the biggest fan of koalas.

Watch out, Kady, that koala has murder in its eyes.

I just looked through our Australia photo album to see if I had any koala pictures of my own, and I didn't find any koala pictures, but I did find some doosies. We spent the year there because my dad went on a teacher exchange so he did an Australian teacher's job and that teacher did his job for a year and we lived in each other's houses. Like I said, I was twelve. It's an awkward age. This is the picture that my sisters still pee their pants laughing about and threatening to make public. Well Amy, Beth, I'm taking your power away and I'm publishing this picture on the internet for the whole world to see because I'M PROUD OF IT. Here it is:

It's me, in a hoody tied tightly around my head, with my gigantic photo-gray glasses, in a graveyard, holding Barbie. In my defense, we were touring Port Campbell and it was a cold and rainy day and, no offense Mom and Dad, it was kind of boring. That's why Barbie is so prominently featured. She was keeping me entertained.

Just so Amy and Beth have no other gems that they're saving for future Christmas cards, I'm also publishing this one:

and this one:


The upper one is me panning for gold, which is kind of cute, so I don't know why they think it's so funny. Maybe it's the white-man's-overbite I seemed to have in almost every picture from that era. The lower one is me learning the hula in Hawaii. I really liked that dress, but I was so afraid it would slip down my stick straight torso and someone would see my brand new boobs.


This picture was taken the same day as the Barbie/hood picture. I remember we were sitting in the van playing with Barbies and Beth, the little one who was 5 at the time told us to "Shut the damn door!" when we were coming in from outside. It was hilarious.

This post has veered off of Kady and her trip. She has some interesting and hilarious stories to tell. Check out her blog!

Wolf Girl

Kira asked me last night, "Mom, can I use your computer to look at Amazon?" because she got some Amazon gift cards for Christmas and her birthday. I said, "Sure," and off she went. Today she told me that she only needs 20 more dollars to get what she really REALLY wants. She said this is something she has wanted for years. (She's ten.) What is it, you ask? Let me show you:


A wolf mascot costume. I was stunned. How does she even think of this stuff? Who would think of buying a mascot costume on Amazon? I asked her where she would ever wear something like this and she looked at me like I'm an idiot and said, "EVERYWHERE!" So now she is saving her money so she can get this thing. I don't know how successful she'll be, she spent all her cash on superballs at the arena today. On that note, guess what you can buy at the concession stand at the Cloquet arena? Shrimp cocktails. And they're only three dollars. Fortunately they weren't open today when I was there or else I would probably be puking my guts out right now.

Phrazer

I don't know if you knew this, but my brother in law, Mat Johnson, is kind of a big deal. He's been telling us that for years, but now I'm starting to believe it.

He invented a medical device called the Phrazer. It is a communication device that will be used when there is a language barrier between care-givers and patients.

You're saying, "but Sarah, that's already invented, just go to Google translator, and it's free." No, you're wrong, this isn't a translator, this is a communicator. It takes into account cultural factors like body language and phrasing that is particular to certain cultures. When the patient is using the device they see a real doctor from their culture asking them questions about their ailment. While the patient is answering the questions on the device, the on-site doctor, who is wearing an earpiece, is hearing specific information like what language the patient speaks, what culture they are from etc. There is nothing like this in the world. IN THE WORLD. It takes medical care from the third world to the first world. (that's what they said in the presentation last night and I liked it.)

There was a party last night to celebrate Mat's company, Geacom, and the development of the Bulldog model of the Phrazer. It was held at the Duluth Convention Center. The program featured doctors and caregivers who work around the world and emphasized how desperately a device like this is needed. Art Fry, the inventor of the Post-it note was one of the speakers.

He doesn't always wear that Post-it on his head.
(Well, he wasn't last night, anyway.)

Mr. Fry talked about innovative ideas and creating something new where there is a need and nothing to fill the need. It was very interesting. He put this cartoon up on the giant screens while talking about innovation.

I was laughing because look at Zog. He's wearing glasses. Where did he get the glasses?

After the presentations there was a wonderful dinner where you could go around the giant ballroom and try foods from around the world. Kira was sitting at a table with her cousins and some friends and I saw her walk by with a glass with about 50 maraschino cherries and 7-up, and a plate of mini-eclairs. (We're going to talk about choices later.)

It was a lot of fun and very exciting for Mat. Check out the links on this post (above; the words in different colors and also this video) and see what he's been up to. You'll think he's a big deal then too.

I wish the pandas would all just die already

I know this seems to be coming out of nowhere, but it's something that's been on my mind a lot lately. I'm really sick of pandas. I guess it all started when I went to the San Diego Zoo a few years ago and I wanted to see the pandas because everyone always makes such a huge deal about pandas so I wanted to see what the fuss was about. There was a line that was about a mile long of people waiting to see a panda in its den sleeping. What? Why? I didn't stand in the line, but I was intrigued and decided to learn more about pandas.

They live in China, obviously, everyone knows that, but what I didn't know was that they live in a very specific spot in the mountains and only live at specific elevations. Not too high, not too low. (picky picky) Of course, their historical habitat has been taken over by more ambitious and adaptive species, so I guess that's not one of my major beefs with the pandas.

What really drives me nuts about them is this:

Despite its taxonomic classification as a carnivore, the giant Panda has a diet that is primarily herbivorous, which consists almost exclusively of bamboo. However, the Giant Panda still has the digestive system of a carnivore, as well as carnivore-specific genes, and thus derives little energy and little protein from consumption of bamboo. (from Wikipedia)

They will only eat bamboo. And bamboo is not even that good for the stupid pandas. And they are defined by their very genes to be carnivores but don't eat any meat. They won't even eat other plants that might be a little more nutritious. Idiots.

They are mostly sedentary because they derive so little energy from their diet, yet they have to be constantly eating so they can get the tiny bit of nutritional value from the bamboo. They have developed their giant (some say "cute," I say "freakish") heads as adaptations to their ridiculous diets because they had to have stronger jaw muscles to chew the bamboo. You'd think that instead, they'd adapt the digestive system of something that thrives on bamboo if they're so insistent on eating nothing but bamboo, but no, in another example of why intelligent design is such a stupid theory, they have instead developed giant jaws for chewing their worthless food. I'd love to eat nothing but chocolate cake and pita chips but if I did that, I would be malnutritioned and fat, (like a panda) but nobody would think it was cute if I did it.

My last problem with the pandas is the fact that they won't reproduce to save their own species. So humans have tried to get them to mate in captivity by showing them panda porn. (I'm not even kidding. Look it up.) Zookeepers show the pandas videos of other pandas doing it hoping it will get them in the mood. They won't get in the mood because they are too tired from eating nothing but bamboo. They don't have the energy to do it. They'd rather just go to bed and read their book. Then on the off-chance that they do mate, and a baby panda is born, it is teeny and helpless and it's not easy to get the mother to look after it. The fathers have nothing to do with them. If there are two cubs born the mother will let one die so she only has to take care of one. Nice parents!

You need to re-think why you're so in love with pandas.

If this panda would spend more time planning a healthy diet of a variety of foods, and less time playing the flute, I might have more sympathy for the entire species. 

**********************************

A few weeks after writing this post, I learned about a blog called Animal Review on NPR.  They review animals and give them letter grades.  I think they gave the panda an F-.  Their blog is hysterical and I highly recommend reading it.  The review of the porcupine is one of my favorites. 

Losin' it!

I put on one of my dark and dreary subbing outfits today (kids respond much better to someone dressed like the grim reaper rather than someone dressed like an Easter egg. I don't know why) and my corduroy pants are so tight that I was in danger of starting a fire every time I walked anywhere. Time to diet!

I found an iPhone app called "Lose it!" not to be confused with the teeny-bopper movie "Losin' it!"

Lose it! iPhone app

Losin' It! (not about weight loss)

This new app seems pretty cool so far. It's a novel new way to do the same damn thing I have to make myself do every year. The only bad thing is there's really no way to cheat without it being obvious to myself that I'm cheating. I like to cheat. When I was doing Weight Watchers, I could call a huge bowl of raisin bran 4 points because all the little bowls that were actually 4 points-size were in the dishwasher. And cleaning up a pan of bars or cake by evening off the edges doesn't count either. That's just housework. I suppose I shouldn't cheat. I can't afford to wear inner-thigh holes in all my cords.

Anybody got any foolproof weight loss tips NOT about eating less and moving more? (that's been done to DEATH.)