Sending supportive thoughts, krampus, to you, your BF and family.

Krampus, my condolences to your BF and you. Playing music is a touching way to reach out to others in grief.

Michele, kudos to stepping away from the make-your-own Sunday bar... that would be hard to face!

I enjoy browsing at Trader Joe's but I don't buy much there. The produce is cheaper elsewhere and the products are usually too more-ish. I love the chili dried mango, but I only buy it once in a great while.

They are building a Trader Joes fairly close by so I'm excited to have that available but I know it will probably be so crowded I won't want to go. I had never been to a Trader Joes until my DD started going to college in NYC and she became obsessed with it . Even though she has to take the subway to get there she says it is worth the cost and selection. I went with her once when I visited and it was unreal...the lines were soooooo long but very organized. It was a little intense for me! She says there is one close by to her apt in Monterey so I'll get to shop there soon!
All we really have is Publix. There is a Whole Foods but too far away and too expensive for me.

Krampus, sorry to hear about the sad times. Wishing you all peace and a smooth transition through the grief.

Michele, you are a dessert management warrior princess! Dang! As far as stores go, I love Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, but they are an hour away (probably a good thing). We have a terrific CSA that I need to use more effectively, as they have local sources for free-range, crazy bug-fed, chickens-being-chickens and also free-range, mud-wallowing, dirt snuffling, pigs-being-pigs. We'll be out of purchased produce here shortly, as DH expanded the garden by a factor of 3 this year to allow room for the roamy stuff like melons and big-area like potatoes. The grapevine installation went in this spring too. And while we lost two young cherry trees to the horrid winter and the peaches were hurt, all the apples and pears (9 trees) are looking really, really good.

I am buzzing from the ribs up today. After being extremely sedentary through most of May, I got it in my head to go swimming and get back in with a bang - a one hour swim-for-distance with my team. Made it just over two miles, for 138 lengths. Ow.

I'm so jealous of all of you with gardens...

Krampus~hugs to you and your BF.

One more week and my DS is home from his first year of college!!

Exercise has been scarce for me. That's not good. But who has the humph to exercise when it's 107 outside? And it'll be 112 this weekend, so no golf.

Krampus, I am sorry, but at the same time, I think it's wonderful that you can participate in the ceremony and give the attendees some music, as I find that music is one way to focus one's feelings intensely and of course, express what's so complex & difficult to express.

One sign of my age: Now whenever someone announces a death, I find myself wondering if it was the long, drawn-out kind, expected but still a shock when it really happens -- or completely unexpected and surprising.

I go to regular mass-market grocery stores, but just as regularly, I go to a small, specialized Latino-owned greengrocer that has nearly wholesale prices on produce.

Far less frequently, I go to Trader Joe's, maybe once every six or seven weeks. I use Whole Foods primarily to grab a sit-down lunch from its enormous salad and prepared food bar; I hardly ever shop there. Strangely enough, your posts on this happened on a day when I shopped at the one that's about three miles from me, and where I hardly ever go because it's in a busy mall with paid-for parking garages. The store makes me uneasy, it's like entering a church for a religion that I don't belong to.

Thank you all for your kind words. It was lung cancer, slow decline, lots of morphine, still difficult though.

BF's mom needs all the support she can get - her health and $ situation are not great. I am trying to figure out what I can do to make this easier/help her in the future.

Grocery store-wise - I like Trader Joe's and the cheapo Chinese supermarket around here, ShopRite is good too. I'm very lucky to be ~10 min from Trader Joe's, and the new Whole Foods is being built right down the road from TJs - I won't patronize them too much most likely, $$$ and also because their CEO has said some things I can't ignore.

It is definitely summer here. I just downloaded 12 new salad recipes to keep the cool. I think more spinach instead of romaine will be better, too.

Krampus, sorry about BF's stepdad.

In terms of where I tend to buy groceries, Meijer is my top pick overall. It's a big box store but it's done the opposite of Walmart -- basically Meijer is a grocery store with other stuff attached, whereas Walmart is an other-stuff store with a grocery attached. Meijer typically has better produce than the other local supermarkets (Marsh, Kroger) and has lower prices.

That said, it's really annoying to shop there sometimes. In terms of shopping experience, I prefer The Fresh Market. Less crowded, they play classical music, it's smaller, and you never have to wait in line...but it is $$$ It also doesn't have as much variety.

I buy almost all my meat (all unprocessed meat anyway) at a local butcher shop that uses human farming practices. We've been going to the farmer's market for veggies and meats too, and also to Costco lately since we got a membership.

Jessica, thanks for reminding me about Meijer (smh). My closest grocery store is part of the Spartan chain but was locally owned - it was a fantastic spot to shop until they sold it. Prices began to creep up, organic produce shrunk and shrunk, the weird nifty boutique foods started to disappear ... and then I found out I could get all my basics at Meijer for about 10% less. It's a hike, but I did the math and it's worth the extra driving.

I've decided to venture into the "Chicks Up For a Challenge" thread. They are about to start a 3 month challenge that starts Jun 15. I am feeling more and more ready to resolutely go after some extra inches on my backside; now I have to formulate my goals and personal contract.

Ugh, I am suddenly melting down a bit with wedding stress. I thought I was dealing with everything pretty well, but my heart has been racing all morning and I'm shaking, and it's obviously anxiety. I am trying to squeeze in wedding emails and phone calls whenever possible but it's making me go insane, having this on top of a 60 hr/wk job. And work is as busy as ever - I have 3 abstracts and one grant due this week, for example. Why did I sign on for this??

The worst part is having to come up with everything myself. Our venue is (I'm realizing) quite inconvenient from a vendor perspective so there will need to be a lot of coordination with various people meeting delivery people (or driving to pick things up) then taking everything up the mountain and dealing with it up there. I will have to arrange all of this and tell everyone where to be every second of the day.

My fiance likes to say "how can I help?", but what this means is I give him a small, well-defined task that he will then take a month to complete, and will need my advice the whole time. He is just not that interested in this whole thing and has absolutely no initiative to think of things himself. It clearly hasn't occurred to him that I feel the same, but I don't have the luxury of not caring. His mother likes to ask me "aren't you SO excited?" and I have to resist the urge to hit her - she has no idea what is going on, only that she will show up and there will be a wedding.

OK, sorry for the vent. Today seems to have been a turning point in my stress. I realized that I have 3 weeks left to get this all together. Why on earth I didn't hire a wedding planner is beyond me. I thought with a smaller wedding it wouldn't be necessary. The price of stupidity... must not compensate by shoveling crackers into my mouth at top speed. Which I have been doing.

JayZee, wedding planning is seriously the worst! You might want to consider finding a day-of coordinator even though it's last minute. We had hired a wedding coordinator who then had a midlife crisis and went AWOL a few weeks before our wedding. Luckily we were able to find someone else to take over and they did an amazing job of handling all the last-minute stress that was going to drive me bonkers (like the venue losing our contract and trying to charge us more than the contract said, the fact that the first coordinator had never actually passed along the money we gave him to our musicians so they weren't actually booked, dealing with my MIL's crazy ideas, etc.).

Anyway IMO a day-of coordinator is absolutely 100% worth every penny.

Jessica, thanks - I actually called a bunch of day-of businesses last weekend, but struck out all 8 times. All were booked on the day.

ETA: I am feeling a lot better now - the whining I did earlier seems to have un-stuck a big gooey glob of anxiety. This thing will happen and be over and it just doesn't matter that much. A healthy dose of world news just now helped that message to sink in. I can re-focus on my work and remember the reason that I do it - because I hope to make a real difference to the health of the world's people and animals.
P.S. Go Chrome!!

JZJ: 1) DF is a big boy, he can handle it, it's time to unburden yourself of a REAL chunk of the last-minute responsibilities (e.g., "I need you to figure out who's going to meet the caterer, the florist and the decorator and get all their stuff up the mountain to our venue, and then make those arrangements. Email me the details once it's worked out."). No offense, but "he's just not that into it" is not an acceptable excuse to shirk the work in 2014, especially when he sees how frazzled you are.
2) See if you can coax a friend, or the mother of a friend who's good with details to be your day-of assistant, even if she's also invited to your wedding as a guest (heck; my maid of honor served this role for me; seriously). Bribe her with the promise of a home-made dinner at a later date, or whatever you think she'd appreciate.
3) Put down the crackers and pick up a bag of baby carrots. Or better yet, turn off the laptop and get an early night.

I'm amused that our usual "food porn" posts have been temporarily replaced by "supermarket porn." I am totally completely jealous of all of you with hip, trendy stores like Trader Joe's, Costco and Whole Foods in your area. I make do with Meijer (my go-to for just about everything), plus a medium-sized non-chain health food store (as overpriced as Whole Paycheck but not nearly as good) and several smallish Asian grocery stores for cool things like nori, rice vinegar and edamame.

Scale has not moved at all the last few weeks. At least I've been done with the last flare of my irritable bowel long enough that the bloat is off again, so my sidebar data are currently accurate.

I am, as it turns out, going through alcohol detox. I was a heavy drinker in my 20's and part of my 30's and, when I quit for good, I experienced a series of symptoms for about 8 weeks during my initial non-drinking phase. Then I drank nothing for close to 20 years.

For the last two years or so I've been drinking "a bit" (according to my DH and my family's yardsticks) on the weekends. Couple of beers or half a bottle of wine etc.

Now that I've stopped again for good (the resulting 4-day sleep disturbances were just not worth the small alcohol buzz on the weekends) I'm experiencing the same sugar cravings and big weird dreams that I had when detoxing the first time. I didn't clue in to this last week (I've been "dry" for just under 2 weeks) because I didn't think I was drinking a lot.

Apparently my body doesn't agree.

Dagmar