There's a food fairy out there, and he's stalking me.

So, I started my three-week fast on Monday. It's supposed to go something like this:

--Week one: Fruit and vegetables
--Week two: Fruit, vegetables and chicken
--Week three: Fruit, vegetables and fish

The fast is supposed to be cleansing -- both physically and spiritually. So far, so good. I've been like, praying and (mostly) not eating. But, if anyone else decides to brave this, I wanted to let you all know exactly what happens when you go on a fast and the universe knows.

1. The vending machine man will have leftovers. And when does that ever happen? So around noon, I walked over to the break area to get a fork for my salad -- my very dry, bland salad. I must have just missed the vending machine guy, who was apparently in a very jolly, giving mood. He was giving out the honeybuns he couldn't sell. He also took the time to write a very kind note explaining the sweet, sticky freebies. Behind the note, the honeybuns stared at me. Out-of-date honeybuns never looked so good.


2. Record-breaking temperatures will cause your job (in Florida) to have a snow day. Again -- when does that ever happen? At my job, snow day morphed into Tempt Suzy day. We all received a mass email with promises of ooey-gooey marshmallows, chocolate and graham crackers. Yes, it was horrible, horrible S'mores day. I ventured down with my co-worker and snapped these shots. But, I did not touch. My co-worker ruined it for me by answering me incorrectly. "A marshmallow is a vegetable, right?" "No, Suzy, a marshmallow is like, sugar on top of sugar." Well, shoot. By the way, it never did snow -- just rained S'mores.

Isn't it pretty? This heaping bowl of chocolate. This was sitting on the table when I arrived downstairs for the Tempt Suzy fest. So welcoming. So warm. Sucks me in every time. But not today.



3. All of the normal kid-related semi-emergencies (scream fests) will involve food of some sort. So, the other day, I had a handful of candy canes, which I distributed to the children. One for each child. Half-way home, the baby starts screaming. He lost his candy cane. So, while everyone else was gnawing on their candy canes, baby was throwing a fit. I looked everywhere I could until finally, I gave up, thinking that the lonely candy cane had somehow slipped through his chubby fingers and between the seat cushions never to be seen again. I was wrong -- as you can see in this picture.

Not that this tempted me. Icky. But, the recurring theme was obvious: Food. Food everywhere.

4. Moe's will lure you with promises of cups and cups of totally free queso dip. Right around 12:03 p.m., my phone buzzed. An email from Moe's promised that if I became a Facebook friend, they'd give me the hard-to-resist goodness that is Moe's queso dip. And again, at 12:15 p.m., they sought my FB friendship. But, my fast and I agreed that Moe's was no real friend.


5. A food fairy will follow you. And he will sprinkle little packages of Reese's and M&M's on random counter tops. I swear, I keep finding random little cute packages of candy just waiting for me to fall and take them back.

6. But, you'll resist all of the above -- to a degree. Don't look too closely at the picture below, mkay? Today, by the end of my week, I sat down -- having weathered the not-snow and the S'mores and the invisible food fairy -- and I enjoyed a big fat salad. (P.S. You do not see chicken strips in this salad. Those are, um, veggie sticks. OK?) This week, I give myself a 9 out of 10.

BLOG: Who feeds their kid moldy spaghetti?!

[Please note: The main purpose of this blog is to post the pictures of Mixed and Happy families. But while I'm here, I might as well let you take a peek into my Mixed and Happy life, so I'll be blogging in-between picture posts.]

Hubby, who is a firefighter, worked a 24-hour shift last night, which meant that this was my morning to get all of the kids to school before I headed to work. But, this morning was a little different because of two things:

1. My niece spent the night (Making that, uh, five kids)
2. I promised the three older kids that we would have a breakfast date before school

That meant that I was up by 6 and out the door before 7. Morning routine without hubby can be chaotic because someone's always missing a shoe or a lunchbox or a good attitude.

Because we were pressed for time, I didn't make lunches. "Just throw your lunch boxes in the car; We'll stop by Publix or something," I said to the kids in the middle of our stampede out the door.

After dropping the babies off at day care, we stopped by our favorite little cafe. The kids watched with delight as the waitress piled plates of pancakes, scrambled eggs and cheese grits on our little table in the corner.

It was perfect. We stuffed ourselves.

I dropped the kids off at school and picked up lunch from Publix. In the parking lot at work, I opened the plastic grocery bag and began stuffing their lunch boxes. "Ugh. What the heck is this?"

I had just made a discovery in my daughter's Hello Kitty lunchbox. There was a red container, partially opened, that must have been from lunch earlier in the week. Somehow, I think she took it out of her lunchbox earlier in the week, left it in the van and threw it back in this morning.

However it ended up back in her lunchbox, I'm not sure. But one thing I was sure of: ick. I left the icky container on the front seat and finished packing the lunchboxes.

A few minutes later, sitting at my desk, I called hubby who had just finished his shift. "I need you to take the kids' lunches to school. I didn't have time this morning."

He agreed. "Oh, and E needs his as well. It's on the front seat." Mr. E. is the 3-year-old. Hubby called me later to tell me that everything was taken care of. Kids had lunches=I could rest.

And I did rest easy until later that day when I walked into Mr. E's day care and his teacher handed me a ... red container! "Um, this didn't look or smell very good, so we gave him something else."

"What? What? How did you? Why do you have the ... red container!?"

"It was in his lunch box."

And then I did a quick mental rewind: Me on the phone. Hubby on the other line. Me to hubby: "Oh, and E needs his as well. It's on the front seat." Quick revelation: this is the red container I always pack Mr. E's spaghetti-os in.

"Oh my gosh. No. he. didn't."

Yes, he did, though. Hubby packed Mr. E's lunchbox with that dreaded red container. You know what it had in it, don't you? Moldy spaghetti! We sent Mr. E to school with a lunch box filled with moldy spaghetti as the main course.

I hung my head in shame and began quickly explaining how, really, I do not feed my children moldy spaghetti. The teacher laughed and said "We know. We figured there was some kind of mix up."

I mean, I know I'm dreadful in the kitchen, but really, I'm better than that. How embarrassing!

Oh.
My.