Okay, I'm here.

Just like always, the start of the major growing season happened while I was away and I came home to a jungle of a yard and all the weeds in the gardens were taller than the intentional plants. I have been slowly working my way through the weeds and I have all of the front presentable now. This evening I'll do the veggie garden. I need to dig the garlic too.

The cat was really happy to see us. She was clingy for a few days but she's back to normal again.

This years' trip to Canada was suprisingly pleasent. You know how family can get sometimes... It rained the first day or so and then again on Friday but the rest of the time it was beautiful. 50's at night and 70's during the day.

I have tried 4 times to upload photos and I can't. It is frustrating. So you'll get text now and picures later. In fact, you'll get vacation text when the pictures happen. It really wasn't that eventful until the last part which I don't have pictures for, so I'll tell you about that part now.

There are these bugs called No-See-Ums. They are really tiny, as the name would suggest, and they take a bite out of your skin and they manange to make it hurt despite being tiny. For me they're just annoying. For DH and FIL, they make little red bite marks all over that itch. For MIL, they blister up and get huge and gross and infected. So on Friday, the day before we're supposed to leave camp, we decide to leave a day early since it's raining and we can go to town and get MIL some medical care and have a nice meal and a hot shower and a warm soft bed without any No-See-Ums. So we do. That's the most exciting thing that happened. I suppose if it were my first time to go the moose on the side of the road would be eventful and the pair of bald eagles fishing in the lake would be eventful, but honestly, I love how uneventful it is up there. It is so peaceful and restful.

DH has started the HCG diet. HCG is a hormone that pregnant women produce that causes the body to use fat stores in the body to feed the fetus even if the mother isn't eating enough. When you give it to not pregnant people it causes the body to just burn a ton of fat. And it also reduces the appetite quite a bit. So what you're supposed to do is put the drops under your tongue 3 times a day and only eat 500 calories from a very small list of foods. It sounds really dangerous and I am monitoring DH very closely but so far he's done well. The foods they have you eat are the healthiest possible and you get lots of vitamins and minerals. In fact, I am trying to mimic his food types, if not the tiny amounts. This goes on for 40 days and then he stops taking the drops and increases to 1500 or more calories per day and adds in healthy fats for 6 weeks to give the body time to make a new set point.

The first couple of days on the 500 calorie part is a detox and DH had a lot of toxins built up in his body from pizza and cheeseburgers and diet coke and what not. So he was feeling pretty bad. He managed to make it through without taking anything for the pain and I was proud. Some souces claim that taking meds just prolongs the process. Now his biggest hurdle is being hungry an hour or so after he eats. But he's breaking up the meals into smaller snacks and that is helping. It'll take a little bit for his stomach to shrink up. I think most people stop being hungry after a week or two. He's almost a week into it so we should be over the worst part. He's lost almost 10 pounds and an inch from his waist. He's supposed to lose about a pound a day on this diet. It is really fast weight loss and I'm not really comfortable with it. But I figure he can either die from being overweight or die from trying to lose it. And he knows a ton of people who have done and are doing it and none of them have had any problems. So as long as he doesn't have any nasty toxins stored in his fat cells he should be ok.

A nice side effect is that we can't eat out all summer, we can't have unhealthy things in the house because that would just be mean, and we aren't cooking huge unhealthy meals. I am already eating way less and way healthier. We have lots of fresh fruit and veggies in the house all the time now. I expect to lose weight along with him. If I can keep from gorging myself at work it'll be even better. They like me to make cookies for them and other people bring chocolate and stuff and we have a vending machine with NUTTY BARS for goodness sake!

My 10 year high school reunion is in September. I would like to lose weight for that so maybe I can fit into some of my cute clothes and I won't have to buy cute fat clothes. I don't want to be one of those that ages badly. I want people to not recognize me but not like that!

Ok, I can upload one picture at a time. Here are some cupcakes.


Here's the view of the camp from out in the lake on a paddleboat.


Here's the neighbor. He runs a commercial vacation thingy. We wish we were more secluded but in an emergency it is nice to have a neighbor.


Here's camp from the end of the dock. And Cyrus the Wonder Dog. He is one of the best little dogs I have ever met. He is calm and not very neurotic.


And this is the main cabin. It was built in the 1920's by a native and his donkey.


This is taking way too long. I'll do more later.