Cheese - The Temptress

Last week I went vegan for 100 hours.

Why?

Just to see if I could.  I'm a big cheese eater, pepper jack, ricotta, feta, all kinds, eggs are generally in my diet, and so is honey, of course, yet I know vegans are healthier than vegetarians so I'm curious about it.  I'm tempted.  I even lost a few pounds which is surprising, because seriously?  Cheese has done that?  I do eat a lot of it.

Sarah's a proponent of vegan before six, which is usually easy for me as well, and yesterday at a yard sale, I bought The Vegan Sourcebook by Joanne Stepaniak for a buck.  I bought Sarah a Nigella Lawson hardback for 50 cents, the retail price listed on the cover was $35.  Who doesn't shop at yard sales? Without yard sales I'd never be able to afford my reading habit.

Or check this out...Made in Italy clay pots for a buck?  Yeah, boy!

Lily, my creative genius, bought name brand blouses and accessories, hardly spent $6 total, yet will look beautifully appointed in her various outfits.

Best of all were the CDs.  Bingo big time.  Little Feat's Waiting For Columbus and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's Will the Circle be Unbroken each for less than a buck because I'd gotten two other CDs to add. I'd squealed like a pig at the find.

I'll garden my fanny off while blasting Dixie Chicken in my earbuds.  Are you kidding me?  I'd had that original album before I ever had kids, oops no, not true, Sarah was a chunky monkey toddler then, now she's almost 39 years old.

Can I even begin to measure the amount of Big Blessed Mama I feel to know that Sarah lives nearby me? After all this...that she and her husband chose to live down this loud, sometime dangerous dirt road?  So did Yolie's husband, who again bailed me out after I overfilled the van's oil reserve last night, Chuck sweetly crawling under to relieve it, Jack right behind him, as Jack deeply adores Chuck.

Grandma and Grandpa's friend died yesterday, and their family needed to use our van to pick up other family members from the Atlanta Airport.  Ten of my kids and I ran out, notified at the last minute, and emptied the soccer season detritous and everything else from our well-used van.  It appeared as if an entire soccer team had exploded within - shin guards, cleats, socks, jerseys and shorts everywhere.  CW brought out both shop vacuums and we rapidly detailed the bugger, glad to be of service, it isn't often than we can be the helpers, usually we need the help, and this turn of event helped me within.

Our 15 passenger van is 8 years old, 109,000 miles on it, it looks like lions were raised within it, but Honey, it's paid for, it's fine for us, I'm praying it lasts for maybe 3 more years and I won't hardly need it anymore, all my teens will hopefully be driving their own cars.  In two years most'll nearly be grown up, or at least at age 18.

Four are gone this weekend, CW kept wandering around muttering, "So this is what a small family feels like," even though there were still ten of us at home.

I went inside a gorgeous upscale home at a yard sale on Friday, marveling at the beauty of the house that looked out upon a lake, furnished with an outdoor kitchen and a massive TV screen on the loggia, shocked at the initial thought popping into my head, "So this is how white people live?" I didn't blurt.

What the heck. Cindy?  Are you losing your ever loving mind?

But it's as if I've lived with so many skunk-like family members, so lovely to behold, so cute and unique, yet I get sprayed unexpectedly.  It's tough to get the stink offa me.  Or to keep up with the broken window repair jobs, to fix the sheetrock each time it's kicked in.

Go figure girl, this is what trauma looks like in people.

I hugged a friend of mine I ran into at a yard sale, Lily hugged the daughter, the son spouting off an aside, "Awkward yard sale hug time," as he must've felt self-conscious to be curb-side shopping?  One of the wealthiest women I know in this county shops exclusively at yard sales, her home is incredibly lovely and filled with second hand items...duh, kids, as I've mentioned often, guess why she's wealthy?  She'd not burning money in hoity-toity over-priced retail shops.

I passed my used copy of The Automatic Millionaire to a grown kid of mine yesterday, a fairly innocuous book, simply detailing the one step to success, making one's savings automatic, yet with compound interest, it's certainly something everyone should learn as a young person.

I'll never be a millionaire as I have 39 kids, yet to have kept my head about water with 39 kids is impressive enough for me.

Another grown kid of mine just got charged with underage possession of alcohol.  I despise alcohol and the ease with which it seemingly self-medicates our country's population.  So many folks struggling with alcoholism, and worse yet, the damage that alcohol can physically do to young women.  No amount is safe in regards to breast cancer.  Even light drinkers up their risk.  Ladies, don't do it.

I'd gladly give up cheese in a New York minute if I ever found it contributed to cancer.