It's Monday. Have a nutty bar.

How to get rid of nutty bars. I never remembered to give them to the kids.

I just saw something flash before my eyes. I ask the following question:

“Was that my weekend?”

I could list all the things I meant to do, like respond to blog comments, over the weekend, but nothing like that happened. It was all a blur. I think I cleaned the house. I know I had some relaxing moments. I had an awesome training run/walk on Saturday plus I got to swim for 35 minutes.

The grandkids take up a lot of time and Sundays are 100% full of them, so there’s that. Yesterday after they went home, I went to a community band concert and sat outside listening to great music under blue skies and enjoying a gentle breeze. It was beautiful.

Normally when we go camping, I do no very little preparation anymore. Then when I get to the campground I realize I have no food worth eating and few clothes. I don’t really care, so it’s not a big deal as long as I have my running shoes and shorts.

But getting ready for a long vacation demands a little involvement from me if I am to be happy. I am making sure the food is planned out rather than relying on somebody else what’s in the camper. Usually there are plenty of canned vegetables, crackers, beans and half a bag of O’Brien potatoes in the freezer. For the upcoming trip, I am making plans. There will be ingredients and tools for a proper milkshake with Guinness added. I’ll also be making non-alcoholic milkshakes for friends up in Sioux Falls. You'll be so sorry you missed it. The spectacle, I mean. I will probably do something dumb. Maybe there will be photos. No promises!

Speaking of tacos, which we weren’t, but I was because I also need to make sure I have taco prep in the camper. I cut up a ribeye last night and over indulged in the most wonderful tacos. I found a lone ribeye in the freezer Saturday morning. I threw it in the fridge to thaw and last night I put the pieces in a hot skillet with some kosher salt. Corn tortillas, a tomato, a little garlic salsa and some white cheese. That’s it. No wonder I couldn’t stop eating them!

So for the sake of this blog, I keep wondering when something interesting is going to happen to me. I suppose … yes, it is true … that if I were to whine about a few things, get stuff off my chest, complain about certain people I know, complain about people I don’t know but don’t like or explain some family dynamics, I would have much more to blog about. But since all of that would lead to veiled and cryptic posts, I steer clear.

Maybe this will help:

I bought a going away card for a friend of mine yesterday morning. It said something like this: I’m sorry you’re going away. You’re the least annoying person I know. It made me laugh out loud in the grocery store. I would have paid double the price for that card. It was perfect not only for my personality, but for the recipient as well as the situation.

I shook out crumbs from my keyboard here in the office. I eat at my desk but like to think I am not four years old. Apparently I am fooling myself. My keyboard detritus looked like a bread truck had blown up on the highway. So what did I do? What any Gen X office worker would do: I brushed them onto the floor. Whatever.

I rarely refer to my status as a stepparent on the blog. I do not think of myself as a stepparent any more. I am a real, live grandmother and have the dishpan hands to prove it. Don’t rain on the granny parade. I work hard every weekend to be a good grandma for my grandchildren. But stepparent? No. Something in life that has nothing to do with my step family has dredged up old step family feelings of callous rejection and indifference and I’m fed to the back teeth with feeling like crap about something I have zero control over.

I was tickled pink to find an obituary on July 6 with the following mistake: Dead Guy born July 11, 2010, passed away July 2, 2010 after a lengthy illness battling Lou Gehrig’s Disease… Back in Journalism School (shocking, isn’t it? I am educated in writing and yet…) we were told that people would be fired for messing up an obit. I suppose it is just an oddity and a correction was printed. I didn’t remember to look the next day for a new listing. I was too busy staring at the torn-out copy that is STILL on my desk making me smile.

I mostly stopped arguing with my hair back in December 1995. I began wearing it naturally curly and letting the chips fall. Over time, I’ve become accustomed to the predictably unpredictable nature of my hair and although I still fiddle with it, I don’t fuss. But anyway, this isn’t about that. Back then I wore my hair shoulder length and as now, it blows into my face a lot. I was in outside sales, so I was in and out of my car all day long rain or shine. Also, my eyes are extremely photosensitive. I’ve had eye doctors call them photophobic. What do those things have in common? I hear you asking. Here’s the answer: I wear sunglasses all year long. I wear them into the evening. I wear them on sunless days when the glare makes my eyes water. I wear them all the time and if I don’t have them I get headaches that make me want to scream and can take an entire day to go away. I sometimes wear them in restaurants by big windows. That makes me look like a dope head or a dork or possibly a blind person but I do not want the Headache to End All Headaches and neither do you. All this is to say that most of the time my sunglasses are on top of my head. So there you have the long back story to a 2-second silly comment that made me laugh. I was in a meeting last week and in the middle of everything, my boss of 5.5 years looks across the table and quietly asks me, “Do you know you have sunglasses on your head?” I said, “Yes, is this the first time you’ve noticed?”

I keep checking on my tomatoes and am continually bummed that they are all still green and small. This breed is supposed to be pink and large. I’m not getting anywhere and the clock is ticking. But the plant continues to grow and is almost freakish in height.

OK, that’s it for now. Have a great day.