Evil lettuce....Blech! Blech!

Have you ever suffered from food poisoning? If you haven't, consider yourself VERY lucky.  But if you have, you know that you'll probably associate the last thing you ate with the gut wrenching (literally) illness, whether it was the real culprit or not.  I once ate an Arby's sandwich, then got deathly sick that night. I can't eat Arby's to this day.

A few years ago after a Christmas party K and I both got violently ill.  So did bro and my SIL and several other people from the same party.  SIL reported this to her doctor and he asked what was served.  She ran down the list, and when she said salad, he said "Whoa. That's it.  Lettuce is notorious for harboring all kinds of nasty 'wee beasties'" (my term).

I've always been extremely careful with lettuce ever since.  I usually buy fresh red or green leaf lettuce from Central Market, then wash it myself and use one of those spin dryer things before I put it away in Tupperware.  Until this week.  BIG MISTAKE!

Tuesday night for dinner we had some grilled home made hamburgers.  They were excellent as always, K and I both having the same thing except I put lettuce on mine.  Lettuce I bought in a hurry from evilWalmart.  (Yes, it's all one word:  evilWalmart.)  It was pre-packaged, sealed, and prominently labeled "Triple Washed". 

Triple washed my ass!

By midnight I had taken up residence in the bathroom.  I'll spare you the details.  It was one of those illnesses where you actually start to think about what kind of accommodations you'll have in your afterlife.

I'm hoping this episode doesn't develop into a personal life-long phobia against lettuce as I do like me a good salad bar now and then.  I am 0 for 2, after all.

You know how they say you should get right back on a horse if you ever fall off?  If that's really true, I'm thinking I'll need to go visit Jason's Deli salad bar soon.

Wish me luck.

S

Fun weekend...

Saturday morning K & I took Luke to a pet expo at Fair Park in Dallas.  There were agility demos, obedience trainers, different breed rescue organizations, and lots more.  Luke did well considering he was by far the smallest dog there.  He stood his ground most of the time, except when he went nose-to-nose with a giant Bernese Mountain Dog.  It was hard to get a good photo of him as he was moving so fast:

"Ohhh....my big chance!  I can sneak up on these two babes and get a sniff and they'll never even know I was there."

We left there and went by the big Farmers Market in downtown Dallas where I bought some locally grown cantelopes, tomatoes, and a watermelon.  I don't remember fruit and tomatoes ever tasting this sweet!  

Today was just a lazy one, spending all our time indoors because the temps broke into triple digits.  We had lunch at Jason's Deli, then stopped in to REI to see what was new there.  I found my kayak:

Look....a seat.  A REAL SEAT!!  I would have bought it except for 3 things; no way to get it home, no place to store it if I got it home, and they kept pestering me for $1,000.  :(

Now we're back home, probably in for the day.  I can see some sangria in my future, but besides that....?  Hope you had a good weekend, too.  :)

S

Magical salad

Trying to eat better in order to begin enjoying a more active outdoor lifestyle (whenever it cools some), last night we went to Jason's Deli for dinner.  We both had the salad bar.  We sometimes have a small salad with dinner, but rarely do we have a salad as dinner.  We're carnivores and darn proud of it!

Since then strange things have been happening.  First, I took Emma Belle out for her last dootie call of the day and found it to be cool.  Again...I said COOL.  It's a relative term, I know, but compared to the 107 of late afternoon, 80 felt cool.  Strange.

Then I woke up at 3 am with an idea of how to build a balance board (improves balance and coordination) using inexpensive building materials instead of  paying $50 for a store-bought one.  But how big?  I got up and went to the internet and did several minutes of highly intense academic research and decided what I really wanted was a "wobble board".

 At 3 am.  Very strange. 

Finally at 6 am this morning, as I was throwing on some old clothes to take the dog out for her first dootie call of the new day, I heard it....thunder.  Then I heard....could it be?....rain!  Radar showed one tiny little shower right over my side of my town, right over me.  Beyond strange.  

I'm thinking it was the salad.  What else could it be?  It must have had some mighty powerful juju.  I promise I'll never make fun of salad again.

S