We’re heading to North Carolina for a long weekend at the beach with my dad and stepmom and our two dogs. I’m looking forward to swimming, bike riding, sand castles and BLTs. And since I’m not on the Consumption Diet anymore, I bought a new bikini, the first new article of clothing I’ve purchased for myself since January. Whoot!

Happy Memorial Day weekend, everyone.

I was wearing a sundress the other day and June asked what’s that thing on my back. Continue reading here.

We’re heading back to the beach for Memorial Day weekend tomorrow and you know what I can’t stop thinking about? Not the sun, the surf, spending time with Grandma and Grandpa, not even building sand castles on the beach with Jake and June.

I can’t stop thinking about the BLT.

All I want to do is eat a BLT on the beach with my family.

BLTs are my favorite sandwich evah and I can’t stop thinking about them. In fact, whenever I make them for myself and Jake, I say those words every time. (“Oh man, BLTs are my favorite sandwich ever.” “I know, hon, I know.” “No, really, they really are my favorite sandwich ever.” “I know, hon, I know.”)

I take the purists, midwestern farmer’s wife approach to its construction. I stack thick slices of garden fresh, salted, lightly oiled tomatoes, crispy, cold iceberg lettuce and crispy fried bacon between two slices of bread toasted in bacon fat — yes, bacon fat, people (go big or go home) — and slathered in homemade or Duke’s mayonnaise. One bite elevates me from the doldrums of my existence to the plane of the superfluous.

To get you in the mood for a BLT, here are a few derivatives pulled from around the web.

The BELT — Bacon Egg Lettuce and Tomato

BLT Wedge Salad

Mexican BLT Lobster Roll

BLT pizza!

Fried Green Tomato BLT

Salivating yet? Here are a few more secrets to a great BLT, plus a mayo recipe made with bacon fat.

Can’t wait for the beach a BLT.

There’s nothing much to blog about today in light of the horrifying devastation in Oklahoma. Our hearts go out to all the victims, their families, and all the schoolchildren.

I haven’t seen any online relief funds set up yet to help out displaced families of Moore, OK, so if anyone has a reputable link or site, please share it.

Some incredible footage of the tornado funnel forming…

And a piece of happy news….a woman who survived the tornado finds her little dog during a live TV interview.

Sunday was finally the day we brought the horses over to live at our place.

Jake first had to catch them. Not that they put up a fight.

This is Jake’s horse, Yamaha. I think. She looks exactly like her sister, Penny, who is also coming to live with us. (I can’t tell them apart. They both look the same to me — a couple of diva hussies.)

Yamaha has been at our neighbors’ place since well before Jake deployed to Afghanistan. We couldn’t bring her over because we didn’t have fencing or a barn…until now.

Stay out of the road, you two!

The cowgirl checks out the horses in their new digs at our place.

The sisters immediately fled to the furthest corner of the pasture where they neighed and whinnied and generally made a fuss. I guess the change of scenery rattled the girls because Yamaha immediately started nipping at her sister.

Sure enough, twenty minutes after I took this picture, Penny and Yamaha got into the equine equivalent of a cat fight — typical sisters! — and Penny responded by trotting right over to Jake’s brand new four board fence and attempted to jump over it. Only she didn’t make it because she’s out of shape. She got all hung up and bruised but was finally able to lug herself over the top, breaking a board in the process.

Jake, by this point, ran June and Solha up to the house and had me watch them while he chased poor, cranky Penny right into the highway. It was a very tense twenty minutes. He was able to get a bridle on her and led her back to the pasture where he spent the next several minutes brushing her mane and tail, rubbing her belly and telling her that she’s the prettiest pony in the field and that Yamaha is just insecure. Or something like that. Horse therapy. Yeesh. These creatures are more emotionally delicate than co-eds during Rush Week. Meanwhile, Yamaha strutted right over and made Jake brush out her mane and tail and tell her she’s the prettiest horse in the field.

Meanwhile, I’m looking at all this from the window, going, Why didn’t we just get a cat? 

Remember when I was lamenting over a friend’s gift of a bunch of bruised, brown bananas? I took readers’ advice and used those sorry specimens to make banana bread. And what a loaf it is! Every morning before work, I cut myself a large slab and slather it with homemade lemon curd, made from David Lebovitz’s recipe here. It’s kind of sad to think that breakfast is the highlight of my day.

The banana bread recipe comes from Cook’s Illustrated , my go-to guide for everything culinary these days. I tweaked it a bit by adding a quarter cup of both raisins and chocolate chips because that’s the kind of mood I’m in these days (gluttonous), though  I stopped short when the recipe instructed me to “shingle your loaf.” I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. It sounded wrong. Plus I’d already run out of bananas.

We planted this asparagus patch while I was pregnant with June. Nearly three years later, this is where we’re at. It’s pathetic! It will be another two years before the patch is even established. Five years for asparagus, people.

June has been gone for nearly a week now and I miss her like crazy. This is the longest we’ve ever been apart. Hurry up and get home, Jake and June! (They’re due home tomorrow! Yah!)

I’ve had a lot of time to think this week, and it occurred to me that Jake and I have been apart more than three years of our decade together. That seems insane to me! And we will likely spend another year or so apart if he gets deployed again.  I guess I’ve reconciled that aspect of our relationship — when you marry a soldier, it comes with the territory — and I’ve learned to handle it but, man, is it hard to go without my little girl for even a few days.

What’s the longest you’ve gone without your family? A day? A weekend? A month? Years?

In the meantime, Solha has been keeping me company. She’s been coming to work with me everyday. Snoozing next to me in my office can’t be as fun as scampering across open fields with Jake, but it’s better than leaving her home alone. I’m sure she’ll attack Jake the moment she sees him (attack him with kisses, that is); we both will.

It’s been several months since I put myself on a Consumption Diet, my effort to cut the waste of my life in which I abstained from buying myself anything new but the essentials for a period of five months — no clothes, no shoes, no makeup. I didn’t even buy myself stuff from the Dollar General, Dollar Tree or Family Dollar. That’s when you know you’re really suffering for a cause. When you forego the $1 sunglasses at the Dollar Tree.  I lived like an ascetic Obi Wan for the most part, with the exception of a few major but necessary expenditures. I had to buy both a new washing machine and vacuum when our old ones broke and I had to snap up a pair of mint condition LL Bean duck boots that cried out to me at the Goodwill because they were only $3.50. Other than that, I went without. (Oh wait, I bought Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies – a book I didn’t care for, by the way — a few music purchases from iTunes, and knock-off Thonet bentwood chairs and table for $35.)

As I’ve mentioned, the Consumption Diet was surprisingly easy. I didn’t feel much deprived throughout. This is primarily because there is little temptation to shop around here (the most popular store in town is Walmart) and I lack all imagination when it comes to conjuring up cool new stuff to buy. I can’t think of anything (except a new, kickin’ sound system for my home).

If there’s one immediate downside to the Consumption Diet, it’s this: I got rid of so many clothes during the rummage sale and I haven’t bought myself anything new for five months that my closet is looking a little, um, jaundiced and sallow  these days.  As in, drab. As in, dated like Monica from Friends. I’m going to have to stock up on some new clothes at some point which totally defeats the purpose of the Consumption Diet! But what can I say? Life is too short to dress like a J Chuckles model.

Now that June is two and a half, she says all sorts of funny stuff. She cracks us up everyday. Even though 80 percent of what she says is parroting us, it just sounds better coming from the mouth of a two year old.

A few of my favorites….and not so favorites (continue reading here)…