Friday Frags & Leftovers: Did I really say/do/eat that?

Ladies & gents -- It's pre-7am on a Friday morning which means it must be time for Friday Fragments and Friday Night Leftovers (which at this time of day really should be Thursday night leftovers, but I won't split hairs). Thanks once again to our gracious hosts Mrs. 4444s and Danifred.

On this very dark and too-cold-for-Spring-Break Friday morning, I'm asking myself, "Did I really say/do/eat that?!"

Say: It's a tradition at our kids' school that the 7th graders host a graduation reception for the 8th grade class. Guess who volunteered to coordinate that? Yep. Yours truly. Did I really say "yes" to that request?

Do: I finally got my butt back to the gym. With Mike being in the hospital and then unable to drive for a while, it was too easy for me to stop going. It felt good to be back, but did I really go two whole weeks without setting foot in the gym?

Eat: The last of the Girl Scout cookies are gone, finally. None in the freezer. None hidden in the pantry. But, did I really have to polish off an entire sleeve of Thin Mints just to get them out of here?

Say: Are you ever just on the edge of total frustration and you say something you ordinarily wouldn't? I told one of my kids to "shut up" this week -- twice. In the world of good mommyhood, that's practically a felony. Did I really say that to my kid? Guilty, as charged.

Do: Last night at the Mexican restaurant with my girlfriends, I carried on a "conversation" with the waiter. I had no idea what he was saying and I don't think he knew what I was talking about. But we both smiled and laughed and nodded our heads like we knew exactly what the other person meant. Did I just advance international relations in my little corner of the world?

Eat: Burrito. Chips & salsa. Queso. Guacamole. Coronas, with lime of course. ¿Yo comí realmente todo el eso?

Recipe for a great night

3 girlfriends
5 Coronas
1 bowl of queso dip
1 bowl of guacamole
2 baskets of chips
36" television broadcasting a Sweet 16 game
1 dozen bar-bound basketball fans

Stir up a conversation among the girlfriends about friends, work, kids, sex and faith. Add in a few colorful expletives shouted toward the basketball game on TV (mea culpa senor to the waiter). Top with 5th-seeded Butler Bulldog team upsetting 1st seed Syracuse.

Shall we do it again on Saturday?

Biggest Loser: Going home again

Just as I'm getting back to the Biggest Loser, the Biggest Loser contestants were sent home for a weeklong visit.

(Anyone know what the song was during the homecoming scenes? I tried to Shazam it, but was unsuccessful.)

The same day the contestants arrived home, so did a very large wooden crate. Inside each crate was an exercise bike and a box of mini cupcakes -- the makings of a challenge and a temptation.

The challenge was a 26.2 mile bike challenge. The first to finish would win $10,000. But not so fast. Each player could eat as many 100-calorie cupcakes as they wanted to in order to add time to another player's bike time. For every cupcake they ate, they could add 5 minutes to another player's time.

Lance ate 17 cupcakes. Michael ate 6. Drea ate 9.

The product placements in this show were as obvious as always, but they were at least for new products: Tempurpedic, Biggest Loser Wii game, Biggest Loser app for Verizon Blackberry. Not one mention of Extra Sugar-Free Gum or Ziploc bags.

The contestants were all faced with making healthy choices in situations and places where they previously ate badly. Ashley was talking with her family about changing how they spend time together. Their habit was to get together to eat. She said they were going to go hiking and canoeing and do other active things:

"We're actually going to live because eating is not living," Ashley said. I love that!

Then it was time for the bike challenge. Sam at 13.1 miles looked cool and unthreatened. But I knew that all those minutes Lance, Drea and Michael ate against him were going to come to haunt him. I don't think anyone ate against Lance. Koli and Lance were neck and neck at the end. Koli took second. Lance took third. Sunshine - 4th. Daris - 5th. Drea - 6th. Stephanie - 7th. Ashley - 8th. Michael - 9th. Every single one of them finished!

After the cupcake totals, the standings were:

Steph - 9th. Sam - 8th. Drea - 7th. Sunshine - 6th. Daris - 5th. Michael - 4th. Ashley - 3rd. Lance - 2nd. Koli, with the win for $10,000, 1st!

For all the 17 cupcakes Lance ate, if he would have eaten just one against Koli, he could have won the cash.

After the bike challenge, they headed back to the ranch for the last chance workout. Poor black team. Jillian had them back on the bike! I bet their butts panicked at the sight of that tiny seat.

Lance had a hard time coming back. He described Melissa as "lost and confused." That totally doesn't jive with what we've seen of Melissa on the show. But Lance told Bob that he felt like he was letting down his family by leaving them again and coming back to the ranch. Bob told him he was at the ranch for his family. That seemed to settle him down.

Then it was time for the weigh in --

Blue Team
O'Neal: -7
"My shape is my shame," he said talking about how he hasn't been under 300 pounds in many years.
Sunshine: -8
Lance: -8
Michael: -8
Koli: -10
Daris: -4

Total: -45/2.58%

Black Team had to lose more than 26 pounds
Drea: -6
Stephanie: -9
Ashley: -10
Sam: Needed to lose 2. I was definitely nervous for him. He is really getting very trim and it was imaginable that he might have a hard time losing weight. But I shouldn't have doubted him. Sam lost 14!

Total: -39/3.86%

For the first time in three weeks, the blue team headed for the elimination room. Sunshine was safe from elimination because she had the highest percentage of weight loss.

Koli, Michael, O'Neal and Daris all voted for Lance, which sent him packing. I can't say that I'll miss him and that nasty, scruffy beard of his.

Biggest Loser transformation moment: Lance has lost 100 pounds since beginning the show. Because he and Melissa live way out in the country, he doesn't really have access to a gym so they work out with equipment at home. The transformation moment showed him walking to the top of a nearby mountain with his son. That was a great moment.

Iron-ning low

I got a call yesterday from the nurse at my doctor's office. She wanted to go over the results of my recent bloodwork.

"Your iron is still low," she said. "In fact, you're extremely anemic and Dr. Y wants you to see the hematologist upstairs."

Normally, a statement like that would send me, panicking, straight for Google to see what exotic disease I might have. However, hearing what the nurse had to say made me feel one thing: guilty.

See, I am what they would call in medical circles a non-compliant patient. Yes, Dr. Y has told me before that I need to take iron supplements to combat my low hemoglobin. But I generally nod yes, while knowing darn well that I'd rather iron my sheets than take iron supplements. I am guilty of non-compliance.

I don't really have a good reason for not taking them, well aside from the threat of wicked, er, plumbing issues. It's really a quantity issue. I hate taking so many pills every day. I guess I'm just stubborn like that.

However, the threat of the hematologist was enough to kick this mule in the hind end. All I could think of were the bills that will soon be rolling in from Mike's recent hospital stay and I wasn't about to trot off to another specialist with his (or her) special blood tests with their not-so-special price tags.

So, I 'fessed up to the nurse that I haven't actually been taking the iron supplements as Dr. Y would have me take them and could I please have another chance?

The nurse talked to the doc who agreed, but -- as punishment, I'm sure -- said I have to take the iron supplement not once but twice a day for the next two months, after which they'll check my iron again. If it's still low then, I agreed to present myself and my pin-cushion arms to the hematologist.

The thing is, I don't FEEL incredibly anemic. I'm tired, yes, but I chalk that up to my wacky sleeping habits. I don't think my skin is pasty white. I chew ice, a lot, but that's better than chewing Thin Mints or Snickers, right?

I guess now that I've got my heart on the right track, I should get my blood in the same shape. So iron supplements (and plenty of added fiber), here I come!

Monday morning kick in the a$$

A few weeks ago, someone (maybe Mike?) sent me this e-newsletter officially called "Dave Navarro's Stop Settling" newsletter. But when it arrives in my inbox, the subject line is always: "Your Monday morning kick in the ass."

Just like that, with the word ass spelled out and everything. I'm amazed that it makes it through the filters of my work e-mail. Anyway, this Dave Navarro guy is apparently a, well I don't know how to describe what he is. He's an author, having written a book called What's Holding You Back? He has a website/blog called "Rock Your Day: Stop Settling for Less, Start Changing Your Life." He says he helps entrepreneurs get "unstuck."

I haven't spent much time nosing around his blog and I haven't ordered his book (though I might). But I do faithfully read my Monday morning kick. Today's kick was one I thought worth sharing.

Lift someone up.

I won't reprint the whole thing here, but basically the gist is that everyone feels down sometimes and the best way to get out of that is to make someone else feel good. Dave goes on to hand out an assignment -

Each day this week, send someone a quick email. Quick and short. Just say “I really appreciate you because of _____; you’ve made a difference in my life. I just wanted to say thanks.”

(Sure, you can gush if you want, and ignore my ‘quick and short’ command – it’s really just there to get you off your ass so you’ll do it. Write as much as you want, but just write something.)

Each day this week, take 60 seconds to email one person. And watch what happens – you’ll feel better about yourself, in spades.

I'm going to give it a try. Will you?

God, I love this kid!

Well, really, I love all my kids. This week each one of them has left me with those warm, fuzzy "I'm so lucky" feelings.

But for this post, I'm giving the love to Charlie. I swear he's had energy bottled up all winter and now that the sun is out, it's like his cork popped and he's been uncontainable. On Tuesday night, he had 90 minutes of track practice. When he got home, he didn't even come in the house, but went straight to shooting baskets down the street.

Yesterday was the school talent show. Last year, Charlie did a dance to that "you spin my head right round..." song. I didn't even know he was going to do it and had to hear about it from several people who were there.

This year, he picked Michael Jackson's "They Don't Care about Us." I kept telling him he should practice and he kept assuring me that he would be fine. As we sat in the gym and watched all the kids in the school file in and take their places, I started to get nervous for Charlie.

I shouldn't have worried. Oh, he's not going to be recruited for "Dancing with the Stars" anytime soon, but he had some moves:

All that -- by himself -- in front of 500+ people. I love that he has enough self-confidence and enough hunger for the spotlight to put himself out there. Even if I do need to find a pediatric chiropractor or at least some break dancing lessons for him.

Irish wannabe

It's St. Patrick's Day again and here I am, a melting pot American, longing for a fiercely loyal heritage. I've always been a bit jealous of friends who wear their lineage like a badge -- who celebrate St. Patrick's Day or Cinqo de Mayo or Oktoberfest as part of their connection to the motherland.

Of all of the ethnicities I wish I could be, Irish is the one I most pine after. Maybe it's the adorable brogue or the stiff-skirted dancers or the stew. Maybe it's just that St. Patrick's Day is such a fun celebration, made more festive, I think, by the fact that it often accompanies the coming of spring when people are looking for a reason to come out of hibernation and be social again.

I wear green on St. Patrick's Day. I try to cook something festive -- for the past several years we've had green pancakes for breakfast. When the kids were little, we always went to the St. Patrick's Day parade. And I love to listen to all the naughty tricks the leprechaun pulled at school.

But I don't pretend that I am Irish. I didn't name my kids Killian and Seamus and Colleen. I wouldn't feel right about hanging out at the Golden Ace where the real Irishmen in town go on St. Patrick's Day.

In the vernacular of Harry Potter, I suppose I would be considered a "mudblood" with a mix of Swiss and German in my heritage. At least I've got the good chocolates on my side.

I can pretend to be Irish a little by marriage. Though my father-in-law's family is from England, my mother-in-law is Irish. Her mother was a Dunnivan who married a Donovan. Mike's grandfather once enraged an army official who asked him what his wife's maiden name was.

"Dunnivan," he said, his voice thick with a Boston accent.

"No," said the official, "What was her last name before she married you?"

"Dunnivan," the young Mr. Donovan replied.

"Not her name now. Before you got married, she was Miss...what?"

The way the story goes, it was quite the Abbott and Costello moment. Dunnivan. Donovan. Potato (Irish, of course). Potahto. Whatever it is, Erin go bragh!

(The cute little clover above qualifies me for "Him, Me and Our Three's" Celebration of Green giveaway. Check it out here!)