Chocolate Chips and Miniature Marshmallows

The other day I watched Hitch. You know, with Eva Mendes and Will Smith. About 2/3 of the way through the movie, Eva Mendes’ character is alone in her apartment. She is feeling sorry for herself after she blew it with such an amazing guy, so what does she do? She curls up on a chair to watch a chick flick with her favorite treat.

Spray whipped cream.

That’s right. She isn’t binge drinking. She isn’t downing a panful of brownies. She is spraying whipped cream into her mouth between scenes of the movie looking utterly miserable. It caused me to wonder. Was that really her favorite treat? Or, was the miserable aspect of her evening forcing her to find whatever she had on hand which happened to be whipped cream?

These are the things I think about.

You’re welcome.

When I am finally alone, during school maybe. Or maybe when I can hide for a few minutes at one end of the house before the girls catch up with me, I sometimes sneak treats, too. This also goes for feeling miserable. I sneak treats then also. Only I don’t choose whipped cream. I usually choose miniature marshmallows and chocolate chips. Dustin still wonders why I don't just buy M&M's, but you know, I can buy chocolate chips under the guise of someday maybe making cookies. I even serve them to myself in a measuring cup to keep up the facade of baking. You get it, right?

What about you? What’s your secret treat? The one you don’t want to share. The one that you don’t offer to guests because it’s not meant to be a stand-alone snack?

Come on. You know you want to tell us.

It Turns Out Flowers DO Grow in Colorado . . . .

Hello again. I’m back after a 4-month hiatus. It was unplanned except that I had a third baby (his name is Blake) and got lost in the depths of his squishiness. See:

In August, the girls and I picked sunflowers along the roadside.

Blake rested peacefully in his car seat while we gathered handfuls of the goldenrod-colored flowers. The afternoon sunlight glowed off the faces of my children. Claire and Avery were disappointed to find that those beady, black ants liked the flowers as much as they do. They have quite the insect aversion right now. Still, they both had fistfuls of daisy-sized sunflowers by the time we moved on.

All summer throughout the Springs, I noticed sunflowers along the roads, and I remembered my April declaration that there were still no flowers here in Colorado. I wasn’t sure if I would see any at all, and I was most definitely not sure if I would create any roots that would compare even to the non-existent flowers.

Then, I noticed some large purple bushes pretty much everywhere. It turns out that the deer don’t eat the yellow or purple flowers, so they survive. The deer gobble up everything even things they technically aren’t supposed to like at all, like tulips. So, even though I think having deer right outside my windows is pretty awesome, when the green leaves FINALLY started growing in June, I am not ashamed to say that when I saw a deer eating them, I went and threw rocks ‘near’ the deer just to let it know – “These are MY leaves. Go back to the mountains for you OWN leaves.” Then I remembered that I live in the mountains and the deer were here first. SO. 

 Flowers are here in Colorado after all. And, even though I spent the weekend in Seattle realizing even more strongly how I miss it, maybe, just maybe I will blossom here in Colorado as well.

What do you do when you're homesick?