I haven’t done every day’s assignments but I am still following along with the Writing 101 class.  Here’s today’s writing challenge /  assignment:

Write a post based on the contrast between two things — whether people, objects, emotions, places, or something else.

Today’s twist: write your post in the form of a dialogue.

This is another kind of writing I haven’t done since I was a kid, but it lends itself perfectly to me expanding on my last post about trying to feed my kids healthy food, or get them to do anything else healthy…

“So, Mad, you want to help me make dinner?” I asked my daughter through her closed door.  I had to ask loudly as she was blasting screamo (we used to call it punk and I like it but won’t admit that to her) AND watching Supernatural on her tablet)

“I’m good”

“I didn’t ask if you were good or not, I asked if you were going to help me make dinner” I helpfully reminded her.

“What are you making?”

“I’m trying out this new vegan recipe I found” I told her.

“Ewww, I’m good.”

OK, seriously?  I opened her door. “I was just pretending to give you a choice, come out and chop a tomato.”

Much eye rolling, dragging of feet, and asking if everyone could make their own dinners tonight ensues.

Finally we were both in the kitchen and she watched me pull the ingredients out of the fridge. Cue predictable teen enthusiasm.

“I hate mushrooms.”

“I hate dill”

“I don’t like soy sauce”

“What is that even?”
I told her “rice noodles, it’s something different.”

“I don’t like rice.”

In a voice I was pretty sure (but not totally sure) the neighbors couldn’t hear “It’s NOT RICE, it’s rice noodles.  You can’t hate it, you’ve never even tried it!”

“I hate rice.”

Seriously?

Me, “Oh good god I’ll make it myself. I should have just made a frozen pizza.”

The worst part of all?  None of us liked it.  It was a cool recipe but we all found out we only like dill when it’s part of a pickle.  Even worst?  I made myself eat everything on my plate to prove a point.

Even knowing that I don’t care too much for dill I think it looked dang good halfway through making the sauce.

On the plus side I think with some modifications (no dill, maybe some hot peppers) this could be pretty good.

Do you have your kids help cook?  If so do they enjoy it or not so much?  My kids can actually all 3 cook better than I did at their ages, but they prefer to cook when it isn’t considered helping.  Especially if I foolishly say the V word!

I received two VIP tickets to The Tampa Bay Rum Festival through a partnership with Tampa Bay Bloggers in exchange for writing a review. As always, my opinions are all mine.

I seem to have lost any ability to write in a semi-consistent matter, a lot of things have been happening lately concerning work and my personal life that have kept me a bit off centered.  Not all bad but not all good either.  At least I think my u.c. is in remission, they say there is always a bright side.

Anyways, that was my lead in (excuse) to why it took me two weeks to  let you know how the Tampa Summer of Rum Festival went. It was amazing.  I’ve been to other events put on by Big City Events but this was by far my favorite.  And I really liked the others. Follow them on Facebook to see what all they have coming up!

The festival was held at the The Cuban Club, which I’d never been to before.  The building was amazing in and of itself.  Because of the location there were the (really, really good) bands outside, lots of food buses and rum shacks, and also a whole big air conditioned inside to be in.  Inside there was a DJ, dance floor, and additional live entertainment.  I was in heaven; there were different types of music, food and rum everywhere.

On top of that as an add on to the VP ticket the rum tasting was included.  More music and a huge variety of rums to try.  Some where given in shots and others as mixed drinks.  My favorite was the Amber ‘Ti Punch with Clement Select Barrel rum.  The recipe is at the bottom of their page.  I would not have guessed the recipe, but that’s what the lady said I was drinking.  Who am I to argue? I haven’t tried making it myself yet but I without a doubt will.

Did you make it out to the Summer of Rum festival?  If you aren’t in Tampa are there festivals like this in your area?

Almost a month ago my older son talked me into trying a Tae Kwon Do class with him. I was reluctant because I hadn’t yet done much of anything besides laying around feeling sick for a couple of months and  because in spite of the evidence to the contrary I am not all that fond of making a fool out of myself in public. He called around anyways and found a place close to the house, and as an added benefit the first two weeks were free. So I figured what the heck, I could go to one class.  How bad could it be?

Well.  First of all I find group classes to be way too intimidating. Second of all three quarters of the class was kids.  So everyone was sitting around waiting for class to begin, then all of the kids (and me) headed to the mat.  I felt like I should give the other parents some sort of explanation, but I’ve learned over the years that me talking only makes things worst so I didn’t bother.

Did I mention that most of the kids have at least a blue belt and I was wearing yoga pants and a running shirt?  Ya.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the end of the week’s classes.  I realized that there actually were a couple of other adults there.   I realized that even if there weren’t tae kwon do is hella fun. I also realized that any excuse to hang out with my 21 year old when he isn’t trying to talk his way out of it is probably a good thing.

After the second week I got a uniform which kind of makes me feel official and kind of makes me feel like a little kid playing dress up.  I just finished my third week, and I am absolutely hooked.

Have you ever tried a martial arts class?   Would you consider taking a class were you were one of the few adults among kids?

It’s been a rough couple of weeks.  I haven’t been blogging, I haven’t been running, I haven’t even been on much of any social media because sitting at the computer paying attention to one thing for that long has just been too much work. Heck, I’ve even been watching Netflix instead of reading which isn’t much like me.

On the animal front out of the 2 chickens I have left one began crowing – seriously.  I have  a third rooster out of my 4 pullets, and I can’t keep one chicken by itself so I’m looking for a good home for both of them.  If I try again I’ll for certain get them from a breeder instead of a feed store.  It never even occurred to me that they’d sex 3 out of 4 wrong. At least I live in an area where it isn’t too hard to find them good homes.

Also this week my 13 year old dog Lucky who has arthritis and nerve damage in her legs has begun randomly falling down even when she is just standing still.  Her legs have been bad and the other dogs have knocked her down before, but it wasn’t like this. Not fun but not unexpected.

Oh, and my son brought home a little couple day old kitten who was the only survivor of a litter from a hoarder’s house.  We knew it had about 1% chance of making it but it started eating, made it through the night, and then didn’t make it through the next day.  I couldn’t tell my son to leave it to die but it was definitely a rough life lesson for the kids. I did use it as an opportunity to talk about how they made his last day so much better than it would have been and sometimes that’s all you can do.

These are things I can’t change.

I don’t like to sound so negative. On the plus side my other two dogs are happy healthy and obnoxious as always, the rats are healthy and playful as always, and the bunny is still awesome though she/he has decided that chewing on floorboards is a great way to pass the time.

On the everything else front my ulcerative colitis which has been in remission for an entire year is rearing it’s ugly head again.  It isn’t horrible yet, I usually feel a bit sick after eating or after drinking anything cold or carbonated but I still CAN eat and that’s always a plus. Half of the time I feel almost normal and the other half I feel like I’ve been run over by a bus.  I’m absolutely not up for running or even walking outside. Thanks to an insanely high deductible I really can’t afford to go to the doctor for it. I’ve decided it’s time to take things into my own hands and see if I can control it through diet.

I know what things make me feel sicker.  Being a vegetarian I don’t have to worry about red meat, which is said to make it worse.  Strangely I can’t eat any raw fruits or vegetables, everything has to be super-cooked. No booze though it seems I can tolerate sangria , I’m *trying* to be smart and not test that theory. But stress is a trigger too and some days it’s a toss up as to which is the worst of two evils.  Dairy is a trigger too. The doctor told me way back when to avoid glutton, but as a vegetarian we decided that would limit my food too much and it was never brought up again.

You might be surprised at how hard it is to follow the rules even when you know that breaking them will only do you harm.  There’s only one frozen pizza in the freezer, I’ll just eat it and then it won’t be there to temp me anymore.  I’ll just have a bowl of ice cream tonight, and then I’ll stop eating it…  till the next grocery store visit that is.

This is something I can change.

So I’ve decided it’s time to go all in.  For the rest of July I’m changing my vegan Meatless Mondays to every day, and going vegan for the rest of the month.  I’m not going to stock up on fake cheese and such, I’m going to try and eat real foods as much as I can.  I’m also cutting out wheat and rye.  I don’t plan on going glutton free but I am going to avoid most of it until I’m firmly back in remission.  Will it make a difference?  Only time will tell but it certainly can’t hurt.

I am making one exception if I feel good – Friday nights I usually go to the BarFly for dinner.  It’s a bar / mostly seafood restaurant in Safety Harbor. They’ve had nothing on the menu vegetarian but always let me special order vegetarian quesadillas or nachos anyways (and they make them GOOD). Then I went in last Friday and they had added both to their new menu!   Granted I’m sure other people were asking for them too, but I’m certainly not going to start asking them to modify their newly vegetarian menu items when they just added them! At least not yet.  🙂

So wish me luck and if you have any tips for a cheese addict going vegan or blogs you recommend let me know!

About that 10K goal.  Ya, I still have it.  But how do you take anything too seriously when it’s summer time and you are living in Tampa? If you know don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.

Ya, huge Sublime fan here.

Summer is always a little bittersweet if you ask me.  The possibilities are endless, except for that whole gotta feed the kids 9-5 thing.  My 9-5 is as a technical analyst. Bet you didn’t see that one coming, I actually have to think 8-10 hours a day.  Nerd that I am I enjoy it, but when I’m done I’m done, and this is what’s left.  🙂

Anyways, back to my 10K goal.   I have been following the plan minus the cross training. I do yoga after every run, sometimes quite a bit, but that’s a much cross training as I’ve done since starting the 10K plan.  Until this week, when summer time hit.

First, I started the Kinetic Revolution 30 Day Challenge which, as all things do that look super easy at first, kicked my butt by the second week and reminded me that people who do not cross train are weaker than people who do. So ya, my legs are a wee bit more tired than they should be.

Then, to celebrate and make official summer I went paddleboarding AND kayaking.  I paddleboarded out, switched with my boyfriend and kayaked back in.  Best of both worlds!  You want some excellent cross training, try anything with a paddle.

Then, to also celebrate and make summer official I went for an hour swim.  It was both hella fun and hella exhausting.

And then I realized.  I have the choice of continuing to try to up my distance running each week, jumping into all kinds of other crazy exhausting but fun other summer activities, or trying to do it all.  I choose a lazy combination of all of the above.  I’m going to stick to running 4 miles on the weekend for a while and swim, paddle, hike, and other summer stuff my heart out.  I still intend to gradually add distance to my ‘long runs’, but not every week until I get used to all the extra stuff I’ve been doing.

I had my eye on a cool sounding 10K in July, but it specifically said it was NOT for run/walkers. That’s intimidating since it would be my first 10K and I’ve never done a 5K that wasn’t a mud run or fun run. Plus some people said that it was not only extremely hot in spite of being a night run, it was extremely dark in some parts which would make me nervous running by myself barefoot or not.

I’m thinking I will let summer be summer, gradually continue with my plan but repeat weeks as much as I want for a while, and look for a 10K when it starts to cool off a wee bit, maybe in September. I feel pretty good about this since paddleboarding and swimming are WAY more exhausting than running so they can only help my running in the long run (no pun intended).

So, what is my current goal? Paddle a lot, run 3 days a week consistently (hopefully including trails but not ticks, a whole ‘nother post)  listen to a while lot of Sublime, Weezer, Slipknot and such, appreciate the local bars, wineries and breweries, visit some aquariums and generally live like a tourist because I DO live in vacation land after all.

These guys agree with me, I’m pretty sure.

I’ll leave you with an entirely inappropriate but yet completely my favorite Sublime song because it’s summer and so I can.

How about you, do you change your plans for summertime even if you are an adult who doesn’t get the benefit of being off for the summer? You should!

I am. After all, I wouldn’t even be kinda zennish if I didn’t.

Have you ever really looked forward to something only to have something come up to kind of ruin it for you?  Ya, that happened to me at the Margarita Fest.  But not because the Fest wasn’t a great time!

I got up early that morning and headed out to Color Me Rad (which was, you know, rad) where I felt great and had a really fun time with the family.  I went home, had some food and a shower and headed out.  Waiting in line to go into the Margarita FestivaI I started to get a little headache, but no big deal.

We headed straight away over to the shaded VIP tent to grab some margaritas and beer. Thanks to running into Denise of Run DMT I knew to grab 2 drinks to avoid getting back in line so quick; I got a Grand Mango Jalapeno Margarita and a Grand Prickly Pear Margarita.  I’d never had a jalapeno margarita before, and I gotta say it lived up to the hype.

Ya, I know this picture is too big but I just found out I could embed a picture from Instagram so how could I not?

http://instagram.com/p/oZJqTFLWgc/#

After we sat and drank our first drinks (I do NOT have the coordination to walk holding 2 full drinks and not spill one or both) we headed over to the Taco Bus.  I was super excited because I am for sure the last person in Tampa to try their food and what do you know, there they were.  Couldn’t be more convenient!

But then.  We were in line for about 10 minutes (the other food trucks barely had lines, a testament to the addiction this place causes) and I realized I wasn’t going to make it to the front of the line.  I asked my boyfriend if we could run back to the car for some Tylenol and come back, which we did.  I grabbed another jalapeno margarita and we sat in the shade listening to the band and people watching (always, always fun at these events) for about an hour. I didn’t drink my margarita but I did enjoy myself. Unfortunately as soon as we got up and walked back into the sun my headache firmly reinstated itself as the boss of me and we decided to go.

So no Taco Bus, no traditional margarita (tequila is my all time favorite drink), no Naked Turtle (I also love rum. Don’t judge) and no more fun for me.  I spent the rest of the evening staring at but not watching the TV patiently(ish) waiting for the stupid headache to go away enough to sleep.

Wanna know the worst part?  This was my turn to not be the designated driver and I only drank one full margarita!  What did I do to make karma strike at me like this????? As my 3 year old nephews would say, so sad.

Since I didn’t get to enjoy much of the festivities here’s some links to check out what some other Tampa Bay Bloggers thought. Spoiler alert, they thought it was great.

Run DMT , Never Have I Ever, Loving Life and Casa De Crews

Oh yeah, and final cool things I didn’t do but so hope to next year – this was a dog friendly event, and they had a corona beer bull ride thing.  Check out their twitter feed of the event, it is kind of cool:

https://www.eventliveus.com/event/tampa-bay-margarita-festival/wall

Anyways, long story short it was an amazing event and the people who put this on are doing it again August 16th – this time it’ll be the Summer of Rum. Here’s hoping I’m not the designated driver for that one and I get to torture people with drunk tweets!

I received two VIP tickets to The Tampa Bay Margarita Festival in exchange for writing a review and this giveaway. As always, my opinions are all mine.

Have you ever looked forward to an event and then had to make the decision to opt out?  If you are here in Tampa are you planning to go to the Summer of Rum Festival?  If so check back here closer to the festival, I may have some general admission tickets to give away!

Remember the 4 cute little baby chickens I got almost 3 months ago?  I bought pullets, meaning (in secret chicken people language) that they were future egg laying hens.

Well, not so much. The cute little yellow fuzz ball started crowing when it was about 2 months old.  Guess what’s against my HOA rules?  I  mean besides all the other stupid stuff.  Roosters.  And as much as we liked Nugget, we couldn’t argue that the crowing was obnoxious so we gave him to someone who’s daughter wanted a pet rooster.  I know, weird.

So the next day….

The very morning after Nugget was gone (and the hens cried all night, for real) the little mini chicken, Baby, started crowing.  Apparently he was intimidated by the huge rooster and didn’t show his true colors until Nugget was gone.  So he had to go.  We gave him to a family that had 6 bantam (little) hens. They were very nice and even offered to send me pictures of him in his new home since I had said they could only have him if he wasn’t going to be a meat chicken or raised in a tiny box or something.

So here is what I ended up with out of my 4 believed to be hens:

But wait, that isn’t a chicken!  Because fate says I obviously don’t have enough animals the guy who took Nugget, the 1st rooster, offered me a cute little 9 week old bunny in trade even though I already said I was just giving him the rooster.  Who would say no to that?

Of course since I hadn’t actually planned on getting a bunny we had to run out that night and pick up food and hay and such necessities.  Oh yeah, and since we didn’t have a rabbit hutch just laying around (s)he is living in my bathroom.   Ya, it’s kind of unconventional but it’s litter box trained and runs around my room when I’m in it for exercise.  Someday my chicken coop will be finished and I’ll build a hutch.  It WILL happen.  All that’s left on the coop is a ceiling and door, the only reason it’s not done is I can’t fit those supplies in my Prius so I have to wait for my dad’s truck to be available to make the Home Depot run.

I managed to turn 4 baby chicks into 2 hens and a bunny, and I didn’t even need a magic hat!    On the plus side I’m down to only 9 pets now…

I’m pretty sure that since my 9 are divided between hens, a bunny, dogs, and rats I can’t be considered an animal hoarder.  I’m pretty sure hoarders pick an animal and stick to it.  Right???  I am, however,  definitely at the point where even a goldfish would cross the line into too much!

How about you, what kinds of pets do you have?  Did you get any of them spur of the moment? I’m not the only one who couldn’t turn down a baby bunny, right?

First things first, the winners of a pair of tickets to the Margarita Festival in Tampa are Elliot W and Chris B.  Congratulations, I’ll email you your tickets tonight!

I also want to check in on my journey to a 10K.  This last week was not as successful as the first 2, I’m going to repeat the week.

Sunday was my ‘long run’ of 3 miles.  It was also Mother’s Day and I talked my oldest son into going with me to meet a running group and do a trail run. Happily, everyone there was really nice and I had a great time.   Unhappily I forgot that trail running in Florida often means  running in soft sand which totally and immediately wrecked me.  I have no idea how far we ran because I brilliantly tried to use a new to me program to track mileage but didn’t actually mess with it to see how to use it before starting to run.  Brilliant!  I decided to turn around and head back, and found that we had gone pretty far, but I really doubt it was 3 miles.  And also, we made a wrong turn on the way back because if I’m in the woods I kind of have to get lost a little.  Especially if there are witnesses.

I wasn’t too torn about not making my 3 miles since the terrain made it feel like about 30.  I without a doubt worked harder than if I had done 3 miles on the treadmill!  But then Tuesday I didn’t run do to poor planning on my part.  Thursday I did run but instead of 3.5 miles on the weekend I only did 2.  Blah.

So here it is Tuesday again, the first day of my running week.   I’m calling a do over on last week and following the same plan again.  I have a lot of the same things going on as last Tuesday, but this time I’m buckling down and not letting things get in the way.  Like writing this in the morning instead of trying to fit in writing at night.  🙂

Do you have a backup plan for when things come up and throw you off schedule, whether it’s a running schedule or something else?  If you are following a training plan do you have a problem with doing a week over if you do not have a hard date (like a race) you have to be ready by?

There’s a rumor going around that margaritas are Tampa’s drink of choice.  I have no idea if that’s true or not but I know if I had to pick a poison tequila is by far the tastiest!  Maybe it comes from spending so many weekends in Tijuana when I was younger or maybe it’s just that good, I don’t know.

Regardless, if you are also a fan you really need to join my out at the Tampa Bay Margarita Festival coming up Saturday, May 24th. There will be margaritas with Sauza (an old favorite of mine), Cabo Wabo (a favorite of everyone’s) and tons of other different tequilas. Bud Light’s Lime-A-Rita will be there and if you aren’t a tequila fan there’s Coronas and HRM Rex Goliath wine. And also, apparently there will be naked turtles there. Strange but true.

Of course they have to keep your designated driver happy too, so there will be lots of music and games and the evening will be topped off with fireworks. Los Lonely Boys will be headlining the show and there are plenty other bands starting after the gates open at 1:00.  I for one cannot resist sitting on the lawn listening to  live music, I can’t wait. Here’s a sample of one of the bands, Thomas Wynn & The Believers. Try and tell me this and a margarita isn’t the definition  of a perfect chill weekend.

The festival will be at Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park and is being put on by the same people who did the Tampa Spring Beer Fling so I expect it will be a blast. Which is why you want to go too, right?  You can get your tickets here, they’re $15 now or $20 at the door for general admission or for $85 ($100 at the door) you can VIP it and your ticket will include all of your margaritas.  Sounds good to me!

What could be better?  How about winning a pair of general admission tickets? I have 2 pairs to give away, I’ll announce the winners here Tuesday the 20th.

Enter here: a Rafflecopter giveaway

I received two VIP tickets to The Tampa Bay Margarita Festival in exchange for writing a review and this giveaway. As always, my opinions are all mine.

So, will you be there?

Last weekend I went to an award ceremony for the Zombie Film Festival, and the week before I went to their second premier night to watch a bunch of short films, all about zombies (as you may guess).  What fun!

What is a Zombie Film Festival?  Participants get 30 days to create a film and all films have to contain certain elements.  I know these had to have a particular quote, a zombie joke, a plunger, and a few other items.  It was really fun to watch for the requirements in all of the different films.

After the award ceremony the second Friday there was a really fun punk band, The Funeral Dazies.  All of the members were zombies, and body parts did occasionally fly to and from the stage, but I’m sure they were basically nice people.   Here’s the band, a stray body part, and the awards announcer. They look nice, right??

So how did I know to go see all of this awesomeness when you didn’t even know it existed?  I have an in!  I know a really great group of people who happen to have just started a film company, Atone Films.  Their film, In Vain, won an award!

Here’s the link to the short film, check it out! Then go over to Atone Film’s new Facebook page and let them know if you like it!

The lead in the film happens to be the guy I’ve been seeing for many a year, do I know how to find the good guys or what?

Are you a fan of zombie films?  Do you think 100s of slow, shambling zombies are scarier or just one or two fast, parkour type zombies are scarier?  I guess it depends on how fast you can run…