Over my shoulder a piano falls

"Open up, you stupid box of stupidness!" --Abby, 

showing the cereal who's boss this morning.

Here's what I just learned: You should not blog while you are cooking bacon.  I know this, and yet.  On the upside, my kitchen smells like bacon!  On the downside, there's a bit of a haze looming about.

Today is Fat Tuesday (well, that's what we call it, even if Mardi Gras sounds way cooler), which is why I'm cooking bacon.  We're going all out tonight for dinner--BLTs, fries, apple pie and whipped cream.  You know why?  Because we've got five lean weeks coming.  Lent is not the most fun a person can have.

Anyway, this is the sort of meal that I can't just whip up after work, so I'm starting early.  Really early, since I made the pie last night.  It's too bad the girls missed out on the bacon plume, though.  I think they would have enjoyed that.

Side note: I hate making pie crust.

Too much food talk for a season of fasting, perhaps.  Although honestly, Eric and I don't find Lenten fasting that difficult.  I mean, yes, it sucks, and it's supposed to.  But you are able to do it because you know what you're doing it for.  I was trying to explain this to a couple of non-Catholics at work who are going to give something up this year, one for the first time.  I'm not sure if they understood what I meant, but Eric did when I was telling him about it.  Preaching to the choir, I suppose.

Okay, fine, just one more food paragraph: Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday (not my favorite, but not as bad as Good Friday), which means pancakes for dinner.  I think that's how my in-laws rolled when Eric was growing up, and now it's a tradition for our family, too.  Eric takes it to the extreme and just eats a couple of pancakes, practically devoid of all topping, but I make the girls (and myself, I won't lie) eggs and hashbrowns, too.  Well, they're 12 and seven, for crying out loud.  And I... get cranky when I'm really hungry, so I figure it's my gift to the world to eat a full dinner after a day of half-meals and no snacks.

And just FYI, today marks my one-year anniversary at the paper.  Wow, that was fast.  And I still love it, so there you go.  Yesterday I got to do some writing, and was answering the phone like a champ, and talking with my co-workers, and I was like, I could be at home doing laundry and being all depressed.  Eric is quite thrilled with my check, of course, but for me, it's the getting the hell out of the house every day that cinches the awesomeness.

R.E.M., The Great Beyond.  (Well, it made sense in my head, anyway.)