How Do You Tell Someone You Don't Love Them?

I realize that is incorrect grammar, but I don't care. It's a great song. In need of some fresh music today for our drive up to the cottage, I raided our CD collection in the back room. I found Cowboy Mouth, and remembered how great they are, and listening to the CD totally took me back in time. I LOVE track 2 ("how do you tell someone") and I listened to it over and over in the car tonight when Martin sent me to Vienna because he thought I was having a nervous breakdown. One fun thing about driving without passengers (of the youth or the adult variety) is that you can blast your music and know that you're not hurting anyone's ears but your own.

Tomorrow morning I am going to the dentist. The last time I went to the dentist was just over a year ago. They were going to give me a root canal, and told me that some kind of drug they were going to give me had a mild birth control agent in it. Since I knew there was a possibility I might be pregnant at that time, we came home before the root canal appointment (which was scheduled for just a few hours later) and took a pregnancy test... and that was the day we found out about Greta! Just as a precaution, I did the same thing tonight. The good thing about finding out I'm not pregnant is that I'M NOT PREGNANT. The bad thing is that I now have NO excuse for all the extra pounds I've put on this summer.

Martin and I recall three summers ago when we were both lean and brown and active. We ate well, we got enough sleep, and even though we didn't know it (we were engaged and we had neither jobs, nor housing for after the big day) we were living a life of leisure. This summer we've become coke addicts (of the Cola variety) and haven't had the time (or the patience of Greta) to take very long or frequent walks, resulting in a slightly chubbier silhouette for both of us. We are eating well, though. In the car today we were talking about "the Perimeter Diet" which is where most of your food comes from the perimeter of the grocery store (not including the ice cream and popsicles on the far end). This is basically how we eat, except for our abnormally large peanut butter intake. Our big problem is coke, which has become a big problem. We NEVER used to have coke in our house, and only drank it when we went out to eat, which was also infrequent (and is now even more infrequent.) But we've been spending so much time up at the cottages this summer that we spend our weekends drinking cokes!!! "Booooo!" say my hips and widening buttocks! Today I told Martin, "at least in the winter we won't crave cokes all the time." He responded with, "no, because then we'll be craving vanilla chai." Ugh. He's so right.

We had a fun weekend! We spent most of the day on Saturday with my family celebrating birthdays and much of the day today with Martin's family doing the same thing. Yesterday with my family we got together at the river and ate ourselves to death all afternoon, then went to mass in Delphi. Today with Martin's family we got together for brunch! I really am generally not a fan of breakfast foods, but I LOVE the idea of getting together with people for breakfast. I made quiche, my sister-in-law made banana bread, and also contributed some fruit, some leftover blueberry cobbler that a friend of hers had made, canteloupe and something else... and we had a homemade feast! Then we hung out for awhile, the Antonio cousins came to visit along with a neighboring basset hound, and we were home in time to mow the lawn. Except on the way we stopped at Rural King and bought Anja a kiddie pool for $6.39. She loves it! Martin never did mow the lawn.... we filled the pool, took a quilt out and ate a watermelon and roast beef sandwiches in the backyard until Anja realized she was very cold and wet, having gotten in the pool in all her clothes. (It wasn't really a very warm day. ) It was a terrific afternoon and way better than mowing the lawn.

I checked on my cucumber plant today and found it completely and utterly dead. It's all shriveled up and brown and I have no idea what happened! I'm wondering if I could've uprooted it once while I was watering... I know dumping the hose on my garden is not the best idea for watering, but we don't have a sprinkler, and I don't have much time to water. So I just glug-glug-glug the hose over the plants for about ten minutes and call it good. For living across the street from the library, you'd think I could get some gardening books and read up on this hobby. Maybe if I did that I wouldn't be such a failure...

My niece got a guinea pig this week and its name is Sweet Pea. That's a fine name for a guinea pig, but before she met Sweet Pea (who came with that name) she was planning to name her future pet Sylvia. Now I don't know about you, but I can't think of a more perfect name for a guinea pig. Absolutely perfect!!! I tried to gently convince her to change Sweet Pea's name to Sylvia, but she didn't go for it... I think she fell in love with every bit of Sweet Pea, including her name.

Greta used to be an incredible sleeper. Now she's worse than Anja. It's pretty awesome.