Candy and Me

This is my friend Betty and me.  (I don't normally post pictures of myself, so, you shoud consider this a rare sighting. And if you notice the date, you will think I've had time to lose that extra bit of weight by all this walking I'm doing....keep thinking that)  I am the one in the sunglasses.   With the double chin, but please remember also that the camera adds chins!  Or is that pounds? Nevertheless.... here we are in the newspaper.

Betty and I joined the hospital's walking program called "Destination Fitness" and they had a big kickoff back in May, and another official big walk in July and another coming up at the end of this month.  In between we are supposed to be cataloging our walking miles until we've walked to our imaginary destination.  Betty picked somewhere in Alaska--over 900 miles away and I picked the closest town I could think of which is only 50 miles away. 
Then we began to walk on our lunch hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Betty walks the whole hour...the whole 60 minutes.  She doesn't even get swayed by me when we walk past "Jack in the Box" and I say, "I'll buy you a hamburger..."  She is dedicated.

Another thing she does is change up our route. She just keeps track of our "time" and we walk and walk and walk for 60 minutes.  I have learned I'm a creature of habit  (well, truthfully, I've always known that) and I like to walk the same route, so I know EXACTLY how many miles I've walked.  Last year, when I  was training for the Susan G. Komen  3day-60mile walk for breast cancer---one of the greatest experiences I've ever had--I mapped out my training routes...2 miles, 4 miles, 6 miles, 10 miles.   I had to follow these exact routes and they all began and ended at my front door.   So, this is really difficult for me to just begin to walk (unless it's a Saturday morning and I'm walking with the Handyman. SIGH--I know, I have too many rules inside my head.  He tells me this all the time) and walk and walk, willy-nilly for an hour.
Betty does not know how hard this is for me.  I just keep my eyes down and keep on visiting with her, so I don't think about it.  Geez, tho, even the hospital's  Destination program has mapped out routes for us to go on.  And even  when I was hiking this past Labor Day weekend?

Uh huh.....  It is marked!   I think this Willy-Nilliness--changing our way every day, is just not normal!  For me.  Betty seems to enjoy it tho.

So, believe it or not this  is kind of a book post.....
....I just read this book  "Candy and Me" by Hilary Liftin. 

 It was a cute, very fast, fun little memoir about her life growing up and the candy she liked.   Liftin was addicted to candy tho....and it showed in her chapters, which were titled  things like;  Candy Corn, Spree, Bottle Caps Nostalgia, Tootsie Roll, White Chocolate Break-up, and so on.  She wrote a little about life and a lot about candy.  She was blessed with good teeth and good metabolism, thank goodness, because while I enjoyed this book, and it brought back those great nostalgic memories of the candy of my youth, it also made me sick to my stomach sometimes to think of all that sugar.  It made me think of tooth decay and diabetes and obesity.  She really ate that much candy... she never held  back how much she ate and how she would hide her candy wrappers under her mattress, or steal her brothers Halloween candy when her's was gone. But like I said,  she was blessed with NO CAVITIES and no weight gain, sometimes tho, the amount of candy made even me shudder.  Only for a moment tho, because it was an enjoyable read.
Her writing was well paced and funny and poignant and it was a "sweet" book.

As Betty and I were walking on Thursday, I was telling her about the book.  I had just finished it and wanted to share my memories of   Bottle Caps and Smarties and Lemonheads with her and I started telling her all about them in hopes that she would reminisce with me.  You know what she did?   She actually changed the subject to  the "thin" hamburger buns they now have available at our market and they are only 1 Weight Watcher point!    Sigh....I didn't even ask her to stop for lunch as we walked past my favorite Mexican restaurant. I just kept my eyes down and kept on visiting with her. 

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A quick change of subject here......
remember my sadness when this tree cracked and broke?  Click here for more details.  Here is the Handyman cutting it down.

Our side neighbor is really close, which is interesting in a way, since none of the other neighbors are...if it wasn't for this guy I could run around naked and no one would see me.  Not that I would.  Or could...since this neighbor is right there.  That is why we planted a tree.....we wanted something to give the illusion of privacy.  I guess we just planted the wrong tree.   And now, as you can see, it's gone.  Just a tree trunk in it's place.

In the past few years, first one branch broke, then another, then another till we knew we had to take the tree out.

It now looks like this:

It has a horrible root system!

and once the Handyman got to chopping down the tree we found this  (or these, as there were lots of them. LOTS OF THEM)  the Locust Borer Beetle.   They disguise themselves to look like yellow-jackets and they do a mighty fine job of it.

I took one down to our local  tree guy to see if we now need to spray our other trees.  It would make me very, very sad if all my trees died.   I live in the desert  (aha....you thought I wouldnt' say that in this post, but I snuck it in.) and I like my non-deserty backyard. 
Bugs Beware!

My Asters look good tho.  I love fall flowers.