Slowing Pace Sparks Creativity

Roxy, my dog, and I have been downgraded. It seems the veterinarian, my real physician and my doctor/wife all concur that I need to cut back from running to walking.

What brought this about? I hurt my knee. As in, running was becoming extremely uncomfortable and painful. Some popping and grinding seem to be emanating from Roxy's hips and back legs. So, for now, we've slowed down.

One effect of this transition is that we are noticing a lot more around us. To date, we've seen chipmunks, bunnies (14 in one morning is our personal best), hawks, cats, a plethora of squirrels and birds, and a fox. We smelled a skunk once, but, sadly, did not see it.

Regardless, the slowing of our forward momentum has sparked some interesting creativity in me. Good or bad, I'm really not sure. I'll let you be the judge of that.

Here's part of my walk inspired song. For reference purpose, it's sung to the tune of George Thorogood's tune, "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One beer."

    One bunny, one chipmunk, one hawk.
    Ya know we ain't seen our animal friends since yesterday

    I wonder what they do when we go away

    But every morning when we take our walk

    We see one bunny, one chipmunk, one hawk!

    One bunny. One chipmunk. And one hawk...

I'll keep you posted of any further creative musings sparked by our morning walks!

Dessert Difficulties Simplified

 Around my house, we take food seriously.

We formulate menus for the week. We strategize and plan our grocery lists meticulously. I proofread both for any misspellings or other unwanted grammatical mistakes or food items. And our grocery trips? Carried out with the surgical precision of a US Navy S.E.A.L. team strike.

The one area we tend to falter over is dessert. Dessert is... Well, it's difficult, to put a word to it.

We have certain parameters that our desserts have to follow. I don't eat tree nuts, so that rules out anything with pecans, walnuts, pistachios and the like. My wife is gluten sensitive, so it also has to be gluten free. Her father can't eat it if it doesn't contain raisins. Not really. I just made that up.

Needless to say, I tend to make approximately 98.3 percent of the desserts we consume. The other 1.7 percent of the time, we are purchasing something that potentially all three of us can consume AND will like.

I love root beer and and root beer flavored stuff, like Oreo cookies, for example. My two home companions (the dog excluded), do not. The two humans I cohabitate with like fruits and things on and in their desserts.

The fact of the matter is that if it can be misconstrued as healthy, it ain't dessert!

So what do my wife and I do when faced with just such a dessert dilemma while grocery shopping?

Never fear! For all those with dessert woes, I have come up with a failproof system.

Now when faced with this previously dire situation, my wife and I channel our amazing S.E.A.L. team skills and fall back on what works:

When in doubt, chocolate out.