Coffee with Christine: Part One

Cue elevator music here.

Welcome to Coffee with Christine, a new series on An Island Mom where Christine writes as the spirit moves, with no particular structure or focus to her ramblings. It’s basically like having coffee with Christine, which will scare many of you, but you’ll keep reading anyway because otherwise you’d have to go back to doing whatever productive thing you were doing before you landed on An Island Mom.

So let’s chat.

Topic #1

Important New Health Regime Update: It has been fifteen-and-a-half days since my last chocolate.

(Due to my truth in blogging pledge, I will again admit that I have had diet Swiss Miss hot chocolate. However, we all know it’s very good but not a valid chocolate source for chocoholics with an experienced palate and a penchant for dark chocolate especially).

This means that my life is basically all about chocolate, which is ironic and messed up, because the whole reason I’m forgoing chocolate is because I’m trying to break my obsession with it by going cold turkey.

It’s one more reason why I’m not the family member in the health care business.

Topic #2 

I wasn’t going to mention this, but LCB basically double-dog dared me to, so here goes. Last Sunday, I decided to splurge and allow myself one non-chocolate dessert this upcoming Friday (I’ve avoided most sugar as well). I decided to pick a new recipe, preferably something easy to make, like cookies or cupcakes.

Promise you won’t laugh here.

Somehow, in a moment of Let’s-stop-using-our brains-for-a moment-shall-we-now? I latched onto the idea of making red velvet cupcakes. In case there’s anyone who doesn’t know, red velvet typically has cocoa in it.

Just wait; it gets worse.

I sat online for a full five minutes, carefully selecting the red velvet cupcake recipe with the largest amount of cocoa in it, printed the chosen recipe, and read it again before realizing my obvious mistake.

That was a really great moment.

Topic #3

My eldest came home yesterday and announced that he needed to make chocolate chip cookies for math class.

Sweet mercy, that boy has never had to bake for math class or any other class he’s had before, and now he has to go and do it during the Regime.

I feel like an alcoholic consigned to work in a bar, folks.

It ain’t pretty.

The whole “needed” thing actually turned into, “Well…we don’t have to but we’re allowed to make them and bring them in after we do our recipe calculations. Please, please, please Mom, don’t lose your Best Mom Ever status this far into the game.”

It was underhanded of him.

And so I supervised the baking, internally screaming “Look away, look away!” every time the chips came into sight.

Oh, did I also mention I love raw cookie dough? (Public service announcement: Consuming raw eggs can be dangerous for your health. Please do not try this at home. It may cause serious illness and blogging.)

Well, looky here. My post without focus has been, oddly, entirely about chocolate.

Topic # 4

Oh, yeah, there’s one other thing, and glory be, it’s not directly about chocolate. For those of you into the whole numbers thing, here’s the latest.

LCB had a really tough forty-eight hours last week during which he experienced no weight loss at all. I can’t tell you how difficult it is to watch your loved one suffer so terribly. My heart truly goes out to all the people who can lose only fifteen pounds in two weeks after exercising two whole times.

I, on the other hand, after daily workouts plus a light walk each day to keep my metabolism going, have managed to lose the five pounds I gained over the holidays. This, naturally, is assuming any strategic placement of the feet on the scale does not work.

Feel free to comment and add your own suggestions for discussion on the next Coffee with Christine. Otherwise, it will probably involve…more chocolate.