Nutty Bar Taste Test!

Good evening, loyal readers. Today I decided to perform a public service by comparing one of the best snack foods ever made: The Nutty Bar. Unfortunately, the reason I happen to be doing this taste test is because I'm finishing off a box of one brand and beginning a box of another, so there are only two brands in the running: Little Debbie (LD) and Great Value (GV).

The contest got off to a little bit of a rocky start, because I pulled the packages out of the boxes, then laid them down right next to each other on the counter while I got the essential glass of milk. I went back to get the snacks, and realized I didn't know which was which! The contest almost ended then and there. But upon closer inspection, I realized that they were slightly different in appearance. In fact, one of the bars looked a little less chocolaty, and was a little bit skinnier than the other.

Uh-oh! Not a good sign for whoever the culprit turned out to be!

I was out of GV, so I compared to LD's. Turns out, the cheap-o looking thin ones with less chocolate were the name brand!! Tsk, tsk, LD! Not a very good start for the snack I paid an extra quarter for!

Well, I had compared the aesthetics, and GV, definitely looks better, but which actually tastes better? There's only one way to find out, and I am just the girl to test it! I decide to start with the more appetizing looking snack, and bite into the GV brand.

Of course it tastes like heaven, it's a peanut butter/chocolate combo with wafers in between! But for our purposes, let's try to be somewhat critical. The flavor was good, and the wafers were nice and crunchy. There was a good chocolate to peanut butter ratio. Then it was gone.

Now, it was LD's turn! I took a bite into the skinny little un-chocolaty snack. The wafers were more crispy than crunchy. I have to admit that the flavor was slightly better than the GV. The peanut butter seemed creamier. And I actually liked the crispness better than GV's crunchiness.

Now here's the thing: Great Value brand costs $1. Little Debbie brand costs $1.25. Are LD's Nutty Bars good enough for me to go out of my way to buy them over GV's?

Eh, because I'm cheap, probably not.

If I'm at a store that only has the name brand, then I'll happily spend the extra to get a slightly better confection. But if I'm at Walmart, I'll probably just grab the GV at checkout and still be a happy, well chocolate and peanut buttered girl!

The Zombie Apocalypse

After hearing about "The Zombie Apocalypse" and watching enough zombie movies to be pretty much convinced that a Zombie Apocalypse is basically inevitable as scientists continue to play God, I have come to a decision.

I hope to be the first zombie.

Most people want to survive the Zombie Apocalypse. Many people want to kick the Zombie Apocalypse's butt. To many, being one of the last humans beats the alternative...becoming a zombie; or worse: becoming zombie food. In addition, there seems to be some kind of bragging rights involved in beating off zombies, and being one of the last human beings left on the planet.

I would submit to you, however, that being the first zombie is a far superior alternative.

First of all, becoming the first zombie means that you totally don't see it coming for you, so you have no dread of what might happen. One day you feel fine and the next, you are a mindless zombie, eating human flesh. This is admittedly not an appetizing idea, but certainly preferable to being terrified that you will become the aforementioned monster, or its meal, and THEN becoming such.

Second of all, how cool would it be to be the one that started it all?! I would go down in history!! "Patient Zero" has a really cool ring to it, and that could be me!

Third, and most important, I am much too lazy to have to spend so much of my day just trying to survive. I do not want to have to run from zombies, barricade myself against zombies, and become super-inventive in devising ways to obtain food without becoming the food myself. Please, just shoot me and get it over with. Or better yet, become the first zombie, and never have to worry about it!

Finally, I believe that surviving the Zombie Apocalypse is completely overrated. Once the zombies are vanquished, and you're left with only a handful of other people, then what? Your family is gone, there's no guarantee that you even LIKE the others that survived the Zombie Apocalypse with you, and, let's be honest, the smell would be overpowering.

That is why I want to be the first zombie in the Zombie Apocalypse.

A ... Thing Happened To Us On The Way To The Bus Stop

My children's school starts at 8:00 in the morning, but they have to catch the bus at 6:37 (you got that right...in the morning) every day. Between my house and the bus stop (about a block away) there are 3 or 4 places that collect mud every time it rains. It rained last night. This morning, as we were walking to the bus stop, Daniel slipped and fell in a BIG mud collection area. He was COVERED in mud! I looked at him, and I looked at Launa (who hadn't fallen and was clean) trying to decide if I dared to leave my little girl at the bus stop alone in the dark to wait for the bus while I ran home to get Daniel changed. I decided that I'd better not, so I told them we needed to hurry home to change. Fortunately, we ran into our next door neighbor on the way back to the house and I asked him if he'd hold the bus for us. (Note: We are a 1-car family, and my husband is at work with the car, so my kids HAVE to make it to the bus.)

As we were walking back to the house, poor Daniel was sore and his shoes were slippy from the mud they were covered in. I wanted to be sympathetic, but the bus was due in any moment. So I told him I was sorry that he was sore, but that we had to hurry. I told him to wipe his shoes in the grass as we walked, and told him that as soon as we got to the house he needed to start taking off his pants and shoes while I grabbed a fresh pair of pants for him.

As we got into the house, I started running upstairs and he started taking off his pants and shoes...on my area rug. I grabbed the first pair of pants I could find and hurried them down to Dan, who was waiting....with his muddy shoes and pants in a heap...on my area rug. While he put his pants on, I grabbed a paper towel to try to wipe some of the mud off the sides and tops of his shoes so they were a least wearable. When I got back from cleaning off his shoes, I realized that I'd handed him a pair on jeans with a hole in the knee (sigh) but they were what he had on, and they were what he would wear. I tossed him a hand towel I had lying around so he could wipe off his hands, he got his coat and backpack back on, and we were on our way back to the bus stop. I think the whole thing took about 3 minutes.

On the way to the stop, our neighbor spotted us and told us to hurry, the bus was waiting. So we ran to the bus (in the STREET this time, because somehow this is safer than the sidewalk). The driver almost headed down to the next stop (which is about 300 feet from my kids' stop, I am NOT exaggerating for effect. It's ridiculous.) but when he saw us, he waited. He told me that if he had gone down to the next stop, he would have waited for us there, which was fine as well, but I was glad I didn't have to run the extra 300 ft!

The kids made it to the bus, and I need a bowl of Lucky Charms.

It Could Only Happen To Me

When I was 18 I got a second hole in my earlobes, but for some reason, one side never healed properly and I had to re-open the piercing every time I changed my earrings, so I finally just let it close up. For Christmas my in-laws gave everyone $25 gift cards to Walmart! I wanted to do something completely frivolous that I wouldn't probably use family money to do. I decided I wanted to get my second earlobe piercings reopened with my Christmas money.

It seemed like a really good idea, so I went over to have it done tonight. The girl that was doing the piercings had a real thick accent, making her a little difficult to understand. I also decided to get my right cartilage done, so when she asked me which side needed to be re-pierced, I thought she was asking which side I wanted the cartilage pierced on, and I raised my right hand. So she found the little opening to the hole and re-pierced the right ear.

I remember getting my ears pierced when I was 18, and it hurt. A LOT. So I was pleasantly surprised when the piercing didn't hurt at all. She popped the other earring out for me to put into the other side, and she pierced my cartilage.

While she was cleaning up and getting ready to check me out, I tried to put the earring she gave me into my left ear. And it wouldn't go in. That's right. I had her re-pierce the wrong side!! I told her what happened, and she looked at me and said, "I'm running really low on the earrings you just chose. I don't know if there are any more left. So she searched for another set of the earrings I had just bought, and they were completely out. (Of course.) She looked at me and told me, she didn't know what to do, because there were no more earrings like that.

I looked back at her and I said, "Well, I'M the idiot that had you re-pierce the wrong side. Do you think you could just force the other earring in? It's my own fault."

She said she'd try. So I sat back down in the chair, and she started trying to work the earring in. It hurt. Really bad. She said that she could see it coming through the other side and that if I was okay, she'd keep pushing it through (I do feel at this point that I should clarify that even though it hurt, I was NOT fussing, wincing, whining, or being a baby in any way, but I did have my eyes closed - maybe they were closed really tightly). So I told her to finish the job. When it popped through, it really popped through! It was a very strange feeling. She told me I had to take extra care with that side to make sure it didn't get infected since we had to put it through by hand.

I laughed pretty much the whole way home. You know, people tell me that they admire my ability to laugh at myself, but honestly, if they gave themselves as much material as I give myself, they'd be laughing too! I am the biggest dork on the planet.

So, there you go. I had the wrong ear re-pierced. I am the only person in the world that would forget to check before I had something like that done. Yay me!

My Son Makes Me Laugh

We got a new (fake) Christmas tree this year. As it is its' first year with us, my son said to me, "I don't think that this Christmas tree knows how to be a Christmas tree yet. It's only its first year."

I said to him, "Are you going to teach it how to be a Christmas tree then?"

He turns to the tree and says, "Okay tree, stand still, and hold the ornaments!"

Merry Christmas!

Christmas tree with gifts underneath.

The most handsome boy on the planet! My wonderful 8-year-old Daniel!

Launa-monster! She loved the gift she got from Dan!

First white Christmas in Atlanta in 128 years!

Kids posing with their snow man!

Close-up of the snowman!

I'm Siiiiiiick. :(

I have been blessed with an extremely strong constitution. I don't get sick. Well, I get sick sometimes, but only the odd cold. If it happens to be something worse, it usually happens less than annually, and it rarely knocks me out for more than a day or two. Needless to say, I am a HUGE baby when I'm sick. Every time I get sick, I am pretty much convinced that the end is near. Conversations often go something like this:

Me: *feebly* "Jeremy.....? Is that you...? Are...are you an angel...? Is this what death feels like?"

Jeremy: "Mary, you only sneezed. I promise you will survive!"

This week I have been very sick.

It started out on Friday with a cough.

It progressed on Saturday with a cough, headache and a low-grade fever.

Sunday I had a monologue to deliver at church as part of the Christmas production. Let me tell you, the only way I got through that was through lots of prayer and divine intervention. Really. I'm pretty sure that God stood right next to me and whispered the words into my ear. My concentration and thinking abilities were next to nothing that day, but I still nailed it (and had a believable delivery)! Fortunately for me, my costume that day was a pair of sweats and my bathrobe, along with n0 makeup, and super-frizzy hair! It was the perfect part for me.

What else? Okay, so Monday, I think I slept most of Monday. Yeah. I did. Jeremy took care of the kids and was wonderful that day.

But on Tuesday, HE came home from work with it! (He works the graveyard shift at a textiles factory.) So we were BOTH pretty useless on Tuesday, and he even called off work. I was supposed to make a cake for him to take to work for their Christmas potluck (I don't think I've ever blogged about my cakes, but my mom used to be a pro, and I learned everything I know from her. I make GOOD cakes!). I had already decided that it would be the better part of wisdom to not infect his entire shift with this nastiness, so I'm kinda glad that he didn't go. I have a graceful out now. I'll make the cake next week and send it in.

Today he felt well enough to start trying to do something about the house, which looked like it had thrown up. It's reasonably clean now, and I'm hoping that I'll be able to finish cleaning the kitchen and dining room tomorrow. He has to go to work tonight if he wants to get paid for Christmas Eve and Christmas day. So even though he doesn't feel good, he's off to work. I hear him getting ready now. :(

I finally went to the doctor today. He told me what I was afraid I'd hear: "There's nothing I can really do for you. You've had this thing so long, you just need to let it play itself out. I'm writing you a prescription, but don't fill it unless: By NEXT Friday you still feel like this, or your symptoms get worse, and your fever spikes." He said that there was only a 50/50 chance that the antibiotics would work anyway, so I should use them only as a last resort. He did give me a scrip for a cough syrup that should knock me out for a few hours of blessed sleep! He also told me that if I start having shortness of breath that could be pneumonia, and to get back in to see him.

He also told me a lot of other stuff about sickness and antibiotics, but I can't remember any of it. He told me that he doesn't usually go into so much detail, but that I seem to be very open and willing to understand what he's saying to me. I don't know if he was just flattering me to make me obey his instructions not to fill the 'scrip until the end of next week, or if he really meant it, but I'm thinking that my glassy eyes and mouth breathing couldn't have actually instilled too much confidence in my intelligence or comprehension. But I appreciate the sentiment all the same.

So the real reason that I started blogging at all tonight is this picture of Launa. I love this outfit that she has thrown together. This is one of her favorite outfits, and I have to admit to loving it myself. The pink tights have skull & crossbones on them, but you can't see them well in the picture.

(Sorry, FB friends, I know you've already seen and heard all this stuff.)