Preemptive Action

Looking through my stats, I am horrified at the search strings that have started turning up. The number of strings that make me cringe have increased exponentially it feels like, and that is really bothering me. I don't like the thought that someone like that is coming here and reading about my children.

I've always been careful on here to avoid certain words that I felt sure would attract attention. But now, words that I had considered completely innocent are showing up in some really sick phrases. To try to keep the blog going and cut down on the number of visitors of that type I'm going to be changing my names for the kids.

So, meet Michael, Arielle and Gabrielle, in order of age. Hopefully that will cut down on some of the problem.

Baby Games

The toddler has learned to say hello. Only, she can't pronounce "L" yet, so it comes out as a cheery little "hey-yo" instead.

Naturally, I think this is just the cutest thing I've ever heard, so I've spent the last couple of days saying to her, "Say hello!"

Yesterday she decided she'd had enough of this game.

"Say hello!" I told her.

"No!" she screamed, and threw a toy at me.

Ok. Time to back off.

Maybe I can bribe her with a cookie?

I don't want to have to remember.

I am finding Memorial Day a little more than I can handle this year. Every time I hear something about dead soldiers, dead heros, the "true meaning" of the holiday, it feels like sandpaper across my skin and I have to tune it out or start losing my composure.

Yesterday I made the mistake of starting to read Parade magazine's cover article about a soldier who saved his men by throwing himself on top of some sort of explosive device. I only got a couple of paragraphs into it before I could feel my throat closing up and my tears starting up in the corners of my eyes.

I wound up breaking down and crying later on that evening, much to the husband's frustration. He doesn't understand, really, how I feel. Having been in and around the military so many years he's been through so much worse than I've ever had to deal with, seeing friends killed in training accidents, being shot at, all sorts of things that make my fear for a brother who isn't even doing anything dangerous, probably seem pretty silly.

But I am scared. It's really hit the last few days, and the irony is that my brother isn't even out of the country right now. He's home for two weeks. My sister in law is having their first son and he's here for the birth (it's worked out well - she's late, so they're inducing her) and the baby's blessing.

The problem is, he's going back after that, and for some reason I'm more frightened for him than I've been all these previous months. I keep thinking about how, if he dies, I'll never be able to talk with him again.

I wish I could go out there and see him. I miss him so much.

I have to stop now, because I'm crying again.

Oh, please, please, let him come home safely.

But, why?

Around 12:30 yesterday afternoon, the preschooler officially entered the "Why?" stage.

I'd just put the toddler down for her nap and the preschooler and I were working on a jigsaw puzzle. She wanted to have a drink of milk and I told her she'd have to keep the cup away from the puzzle.

"Why?" she asked me.

"Because I don't want it to spill on the puzzle," I told her. "It would 'break' it."

"Why?"

"Because the milk would soak into the pieces and they'd get yucky."

"Why?"

"Um, well, because they're made of cardboard, which is paper, and paper soaks up liquid."

"Why?"

That was when I realized what was happening. Sure enough, every conversation I've had with her since then has been dominated by that word.

At the moment I'm finding it a little tiring, but amusing and it's reassuring to see her development moving right along. I can see that it's going to start getting less amusing at some time in the future, though. Oh, well. My mom put up with me, I can handle it, too.

How long do they stay in this stage, anyway?

A friend once told me, she cobbled an emergency diaper together from tape, a grocery bag, and restroom paper towels.

I needed diapers and cat food yesterday, so off I went to the store, girls in tow. We had a successful shopping trip. Caught some good sales, stopped by a local nursery and picked up some tomato plants, picked up a nice big pot at the dollar store to plant them in, and headed home before it was too late for naptime.

Except that I forgot to buy diapers and cat food.

I have one diaper left. The husband doesn't leave for work for at least another half hour. His car is parked behind my car in our one-car-garage driveway. The toddler needs to be changed. Then I will have no diapers left.

Hopefully we will not have any diaper emergencies in the next hour.

I really wish I'd remembered at least the diapers yesterday.

Whining, because I'm PMSing. What's your excuse? Pppbbllttt.

I'm having another period this week. Unbelievable. I don't cycle on my own for all those years we were trying to get pregnant, but let us decide our family is complete and all of a sudden I'm cycling? If I wasn't laughing, I'd kick the wall in.

Don't ever let anyone tell you God doesn't have a sense of humor.

Yes, I'm laughing.

Not only am I sleeping on a towel, it's been raining here for the last three days. Which means I have two little girls that are getting really tired of being cooped up. Please, oh please, let it be dry enough tomorrow to go to our playdate at the park, so I don't go stark raving mad and wind up sitting in the shower in my clothes, with the water running over my head, my fingers in my ears and singing, "La, la, la, la," while my children bang on the locked bathroom door!

Strawberries are finally coming into season around here. The first sunny day we get I'm heading out with the girls to gorge ourselves on fresh fruit. Just-picked, sun-warmed strawberries could make any day better.

Written between toddler temper tantrums

It's hard to blog when everyone's home. Not only is there much jostling and shoving for computer time, they all want me to do unreasonable things, like making breakfast and lunch.

The toddler's head is healing up beautifully. I thought she'd have a big ol' bruise on her forehead, but all she has is a couple of scabs. I haven't even needed to give her Tyenol.

The kid who might have had appendicitis who only had strep throat? Naturally (at least it seems natural to me!) we didn't go over for the playdate. Sunday I saw Strep Throat Kid's mom at church. She was upset with me for not coming over. "He's on penicillin!" she told me.

Ooookay. As I recall from when I was a kid, strep always involved several days of lying on the couch, feverish and throwing up. Glad to see he isn't going through that. Nevertheless, I will not be bringing my children over until I am sure Strep Throat Kid's younger siblings are not current strep incubators. I have no desire to go through that with my two, none whatsoever.

I finally had the courage to go through the girls' old clothes and decide what to give away and what to keep forever. I did pretty well. I only kept a few things and managed to put most of the clothes into two large garbage bags, to give to a neighbor who has a new baby girl, with only a couple of pangs.

We may not be moving. We've been thinking it over further and we're not sure that buying is the right move right now. We'd be in a better position to buy if we had more of a downpayment, so we're seriously considering waiting a year, while we save up. We're still talking it over, but I think we'll be staying here for the time being. Which gives me mixed feelings. I'm worried about the rising home prices around here and it would be nice to have our own place, where I could plant flowers and we could put up a fence so the dog could be outside without needing constant supervision. But, I wasn't looking forward to moving again so soon and I wasn't happy with the housing selection in our price range.

Why did I think life would be easier when I was an adult? Oh, that's right. I'd never paid my own utility bills.

... but everything's fine today.

We had our first emergency room visit yesterday.

We were supposed to have a playdate at the park, but as we were getting ready to go the other mom called and canceled. Her daughter was throwing up. So, off we went on our own to spend a couple of hours having a great deal of fun. The weather was perfect, cool without being cold. There were kids to play with, but not so many families there that all the equipment was overcrowded and the other kids were friendly and fun to play with.

It was a great day, until we were leaving. There's a stream that runs along one side of the parking lot and yesterday there were some ducks there. We stopped to watch the ducks along with another mom and her two sons. The kids started exploring along the water, the mom and I started talking and before I knew it, time was slipping away and so were the kids. The four of them had made their way almost to the street, so the other mom and I called them back.

They headed back without protest (always a nice thing) and I turned my attention back to my conversation with my (hopefully) new friend, who seemed very nice. I was still keeping an eye on the kids, though, which is how I saw the toddler step down from the edge of the blacktop to the rocky bank of the creek. Sadly, she's still not very good at all about stepping down without hanging on to something. In fact, she's never taken a step down without holding on to something. Sure enough, she took a nose dive, or rather a swan dive, right onto her head.

When she got up, sobbing, I was already there, holding her in my arms and trying to soothe her. There was a big fat trickle of blood running down the side of her face, though, and when I managed to get enough blood cleared away from her cut to examine it I could see it was narrow, but deep.

The other mom offered the comment that it looked like a cut her son had a few weeks before, which she'd taken him to the emergency room for, where they'd glued it. That sounded like a good idea to me, so off we went.

(I did call our doctor and they confirmed they didn't want us in there. Since it was her head they wanted the hospital to take care of it.)

In the end, all went well, although it took a while. A hospital worker gave both the girls little teddy bears made by a local church, and lollipops, too. We wound up missing naptime and lunch, though, so with the sugar the girls wound up first bouncing off the walls (while we were waiting in the exam room for the doctor) and then melting down into hysteria soon after we got home.

The doctor glued the cut, which turned out to be only one centimeter wide. No-one bothered to measure how deep it was. The toddler obviously wasn't concussed the way she was tearing around and fighting with her sister when the doctor came in, so they sent us off with just some instructions not to wash her hair until tomorrow (today now) and to bring her back if she started acting oddly or started throwing up.

It was no big deal, but the husband kept saying last night how impressed he was that I didn't panic. I was never anywhere near close to panic. (If I didn't know that head cuts always bleed like crazy I might have been a lot more scared, though! Wow, that was a lot of blood to see coming out of my sweet baby's head.) I was lot closer to wringing both their necks for screaming at each other as they fought over the wheeled stool that was in our area.

It's always nice to impress my sweetie, though.

Interesting side note: As we were leaving the hospital we saw today's playdate coming in. Their oldest boy was showing signs of appendicitis. I called last night to see how he was and learned it was "just" strep throat. So much for today's playdate.

As I pointed out to the husband, two days, two playdates, two sick kids. Sheesh, it's enough to make me start thinking of myself as a bad luck playdate!

Just call me Typhoid Mommy.

Alive. Here. Just not here.

I'm busy, I'm tired, I feel a little bit floaty and spacy. I keep meaning to blog and keep forgetting.

What I've done this week: Planted a container garden, canned 20 pints of carrots with a friend, arranged two! not one but two! playdates for the girls, and kept my house clean. Or at least reasonably clean. Cleaner than it's been in a couple of years, how about that?

Huge, huge, huge, huge progress from just a couple of months ago.

Friday the Thirteenth

Think I'll get some hits off that title?

I didn't even think about today being the 13th until I was looking through the yard sale ads and noticed the dates. (Around here yard sales are frequently held on Friday and Saturday.)

My father was born on a Friday the 13th. From what I understand that makes it his lucky day. I've always joked that it wasn't so lucky for the rest of the world.

Today was a pretty good day for me, too. I went to a yard sale around the corner, grandparent sorts moving out and selling everything they don't want to pack. They had a lot of old toys for sale, among them a Fisher-Price Music Box Record Player. I remember those from when I was a kid and when I saw it I had to grab it for my girls. I couldn't remember at first how to make it work. (I'm too used to batteries. Windup mechanism? What's that?) They've been having a ball with it.

There are only four of the records. The one with Clair de Lune and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star isn't there, which is a shame because Twinkle is the preschooler's favorite song and has been since she was first able to sing it. I nosed around online (looking to see if I could buy a single record) and found out that a Music Box in good shape with all the records goes for about $20. I paid 25 cents. I love yard sales. Of course, this is for my kids, not for collecting.

I also got an absolutely gorgeous blue blanket with the most incredible feel. It's soft and silky at the same time, almost velvety, but not quite, and an intense royal blue. I love it. The lady selling it told me it was a "Ralph L'Raawn." It took me a second to realize she meant a Ralph Lauren! We desperately needed something to serve as a bedspread and it looks so beautiful in our room.

I also went to the doctor and got a refill on my antidepressants. He's pleased with how well they're working for me. I look back on the last couple of years and I can't believe how low I got. Remembering it is like looking through a gray fog with blurry eyes. I am so relieved to be out of that. I don't ever want to be there again.

I'm slowing whipping the house back into shape. It's nice to walk in and see a clean floor. It's nice to have cleaning to do and not feel entirely overwhelmed and exhausted at the fact.

I played with the girls and we had lots of fun. The teen felt safe inviting a friend over this afternoon to our clean house. I came home from the doctor's office to see a visitor and didn't panic. My bed looks beautiful and my room is starting to look a little pulled together. I found out at the doctor's office that I've lost three pounds (and I'd just had a big lunch!)

It's been a very good day. Makes me wish every day was Friday the 13th.

A penny saved or a bird in the hand?

Feeling better is making it much harder to write, I've noticed. I'm so busy trying to catch up on life I'm having a hard time taking the time to site down and put words on paper. And then when I do sit down I can't really think of what to say. It's much easier to pour out your heart when you're feeling alone, underappreciated and very, very sorry for yourself!

I took the girls to the park today. It was fun until time to go. Then there was much screaming and pleading to stay. Even the toddler, who's always been fairly cheerful about time to go, lost it. I had to pick her up and carry her kicking and screaming to the car. Of course, they were both tired and hungry, but what do things like that matter when there are slides, swings, and merry-go-rounds to play with?

The teen had his birthday recently. The husband wanted to do something special for him, since the last year's been so rough, so we arranged a surprise party at a local pizza parlor. His friend picked him up from our house, supposedly to hang out, but drove him to the restaurant instead. I wasn't able to be there (we were giving him a little-sister-free night, too) but I understand he was plenty surprised. It was really fun doing that for him.

We're trying to decide what to do about a down payment on a house. Should we borrow the entire amount, or clean out our savings? I don't want to clean out our savings. It makes me nervous. I'm not sure we'll be able to replace that money. We're not good about saving money. There always seems to be some crisis or other that keeps us from putting anything aside. If we don't have this, we won't have anything to be a cushion in case of a major emergency. On the other hand, I'm not sure how it would effect our ability to get a loan if we don't have a down payment. We're still talking it over. Any thoughts or suggestions would be welcome!

Just a quick post.

I've been canning all day. Chicken was on sale and I've been planning on doing some beans, so I got a whole bunch of stuff done. Tomorrow I'll finish up the chicken and can up the chicken stock that's in the crockpot right now.

Mother's Day went well. I got Phantom of the Opera, which was very nice. The family got a DVD player, which was supposedly for me, too. But that was OK, because it's very nice to have one finally! I've been wanting one for quite awhile. We can't use it yet, though, because we need an adapter. Our TV is a bit too old for the DVD player to date without a chaperone present.

At church they gave all the women (current and future mothers, as they put it) tomato plants! Yes, tomato plants. I had a hard time stifling my giggles. The men who came up with the idea thought it would be such a nice practical thing to give everyone.

Men make me laugh.

Mother's Day is saved?

The mystery of the One Sweep broom has been resolved. It was not my Mother's Day present, although it was intended to be a present.

You see, last month the husband was working night shift. Which meant his days off were spent all alone while the rest of us slept. He passed the time playing on the computer and watching late night television. There are lots of infomercials on at that time of night, and, well, you see ...

The fact is, the husband is a marketer's ultimate fantasy. He can be sold to so easily. He's the worst kind of impulse shopper and to make it even worse, he's loyal once he's signed up.

He had Juno when we first met. Remember Juno? "Email was meant to be free!" Advertising was supposed to cover all the costs. There was always a banner ad on top of the screen when you were reading your email, and when you sent or downloaded your mail a nearly full-screen ad would be displayed.

The husband bought almost everything they advertised, I think. After we got married I kept running across packages that he'd never even opened. We had a big fight about it, eventually, and I got him to stop buying things, but it was quite a while before our finances recovered.

Over the years I've managed to teach him some of the fundamentals of smart shopping. He'll come home every so often now, excited and proud over some purchase on which he managed to avoid overpaying.

"Look at my new watch! It was only $10!"

I always try to encourage him. "Wow, what a great job! That's a really nice watch and what a great price, dear!"

So, yeah, he gave in to temptation. At least he didn't pay the $40 he almost got charged for buying two of them.

Oh, and my review of the One Sweep? Pppbbbllltttt. Worthless. Not worth two cents in my opinion, much less the $17 we paid for it.

We'll see how tomorrow goes.

Tag

Just as I was trying to figure out what to blog about today, Dana tagged me! What I have to do is choose five things from the list below and complete the sentence. Then I tag other people and they answer in their blogs.

Hmmmm, who shall I choose .... (evil laughter)

If I could be a scientist.
If I could be a farmer
If I could be a psychologist
If I could be a librarian
If I could be an inn-keeper
If I could be a professor
If I could be a writer
If I could be a llama-rider
If I could be a bonnie pirate
If I could be an astronaut
If I could be a world famous blogger
If I could be a justice on any one court in the world
If I could be married to any current famous political figure

If I could be a psychologist, I would do research on how our bodies and brains effect what is going on with our emotions and thinking. We don't know enough about how all that works, which makes it almost impossible to offer significant treatment options to people suffering from "mental" illness, which is all too often simply a symptom of a very physical problem. In fact, that's the plan, for someday, after the kids are grown up, go back to college, get my PhD and start researching!

If I could be married to any current famous political figure, I would be sure to destroy his political career in just a few hours. In spite of my best efforts, by the time I finished my first interview his career would be history! I am definitely not cut out to be a perfect political wife.

If I could be a librarian, I would spend all my time reading, and never go home. I would spend the hours after the library closed devouring books, and probably wind up falling asleep there. They'd fire me soon after they realized I hadn't showered in weeks ...

If I could be a llama-rider (are there really llama-riders? Or is that just a Jimmy Neutron thing?) I would live in Peru and spin their hair? wool? fur? into beautiful yarn that I would dye and weave into even lovelier clothing.

If I could be an astronaut, I would want to live on the space station forever.

Kira, Amie, and Barbara - your turn! Let me know if you don't want to, and I'll tag some other unsuspecting blogger.

Climbing on my soapbox a little bit.

Have you ever been interested in learning to can? Know how to can but want to learn more about food preservation? The University of Georgia is offering a free online class, a self-paced Canning Course from the National Center for Home Food Preservation. It will cover:

• Introduction to Food Preservation
• General Canning
• Canning Acid Foods
• Canning Low-Acid Foods

I'm taking it right now. If you sign up let me know and we can study together!

I love canning. there's just nothing quite as satisfying as seeing a row of jars full of food in beautiful colors and textures, that I canned. Not to mention all the money we save. There's an initial investment in jars and equipment, yes, but I everything gets amortized over the years I use it. Throw in the advantage of being able to buy meat and produce at it's cheapest yearly prices and store it without needing additional electricity, and you're talking some pretty substantial contributions to our family's solvency.

The stuff I can is healthier and tastier than what you can buy in the store, too. The husband says my strawberry jam is "good enough to eat with a spoon." (A nice thing to hear!) I don't have the preservatives and excess sugar and salt there is in that stuff. I can even make things you can't get in the stores, like Lemon-Blueberry Marmalade, which I'm going to try this year, or Dandelion Jelly, which I'm toying with trying.

Try it! You'll like it! Just try making some freezer jam to start off with. You'll be blown away by the flavor.

Rambling about food and a deep, dark secret.

Sorry I haven't been posting much lately. The medicine I'm on has a rare side effect of insomnia. Guess who has insomnia? I'm going to try taking some melatonin tonight and see how well it works. I hope I don't have to change to another prescription. I just like this stuff so much. It's stabilized my appetite. I've been losing weight like crazy and instead of craving carbs all the time I actually have been looking at sugar and thinking, "Yuck." Can you believe it? I want to stay like this always!

There was a great sale at one of the local grocery stores today. I don't usually go there, because the last time I was there they weren't particularly clean, but the prices were so spectacular that I couldn't afford to not at least look.

They've improved. It was pretty clean. I can handle a lot in a store, but when we're talking my groceries, no. You'd better keep that store spotless if you want me to come back.

I'm watching Good Eats right now. We all love that show, here. I majored in Home Ec the first time I was in college, have I ever mentioned that? I actually have an Associate's degree in it. Which is kind of sad, because after my first year I realized I hated my classes. I liked learning needlearts, learning how to make patterns, what chemicals make food different colors (did you know cauliflower and potatoes are white because they contain cyanide?) and such-like stuff. I hated the classes on childcare, self-esteem, personal improvement, interior decorating - all the stuff that tended toward the fluffier/more subjective side.

There's a reason I majored in psychology, rather than counseling, when I went back to college, years later. I am much more of a hands-on scientist type than anything else.

Anyway, that's what I like about Good Eats. It's got lots of great information about the details of cooking. Not just how, but why. What's funny is that I got the husband and the teen hooked on it too. It's a must watch show here. We even tape it if we can't be home to watch it.

I never mention my Home Ec degree. Shh! Let's keep it our secret, OK?

Happy May Day!

The girls have been playing a tag-like game this morning. It involves lots of screaming and the preschooler chasing the toddler, who then runs to Mommy and throws her arms around my knees. I'm the "safe" zone I guess.

It's driving me nuts. Every few seconds I'm thrown off balance as the toddler catapults into me, always from behind, naturally. It makes it very hard to clean the kitchen.

Great news about the teen! He's a very good writer, not that you'd know it from his English grades, but still, very good. He's shown me some of his stuff and it's impressive. So, when I heard about a writing job I talked it over with the husband and then encouraged the teen to apply. And he got it! It's going to take a certain amount of initiative from him to do it; he's not going to have a boss standing over his shoulder, so it's his job to lose or keep, but if he'll follow through it's a great opportunity for him. Good for his self-image, too. He could use some successes in life, right now.

The main e-mail group I participate in is having their anniversary this month. Every year we have a big month-long celebration with secret friends and reminiscing, culminating in an all night party in the chatroom. I'm very excited about it. I love doing secret friends. I asked for two this year, and I'm really looking forward to it. With the medication I'm feeling so much better and so much more "awake" that it will be easy to take care of two SFs. I'm not wasting all that time staring into space anymore!

Once Upon a Time

A couple of years ago I joined an online writing group that focused on a sub-specialty I was interested in. It was a big mistake. I've been a member of a really great group of writers for years and was used to the support and camaraderie I found there. This other group was nothing like that. The members spent a lot of time making sniffy noises about what great writers they were and how pathetic other writers were. Of course none of these so-called great writers ever actually wrote anything, while the writers they were putting down were actually published. It was all very annoying and I left the group after only a few weeks.

There was one member of that group, though, who was deathly serious about writing. He was painfully earnest about it, asking for critiques almost every day, revamping his stories according to the suggestions he received, then posting them again for further critique.

To give them credit, this group was very gentle with him, because what was painful about his earnestness was his incredibly bad writing. He had excellent plots, but just couldn't seem to put them down in a readable form. Even after doing several revisions his stories were horrible, the sort of stuff that you read and are hard-pressed to find something nice to say about it.

"My, you type so neatly."
"What an interesting vocabulary you have."
"You're certainly an excellent speller!"

He couldn't write to save his life.

The other day, we were at a store that has a large book section. Naturally, the preschooler dragged us over to look at the children's books. As I was browsing I picked up an interesting-looking book whose cover was dotted with bright and colorful foil insects. I opened it and read the first page.

What?

No!

Hurriedly I flipped through the rest of the story, then checked the author's name

Sure enough. It was him. The really bad writer. It was one of the stories he'd been working on while I was a member of that group. And it was wonderfully told.

Hooray for persistance and hard work!

I may have to hurt him.

I've been balancing our accounts and ran across an odd charge on the credit card. TEL ONE SWEEP.

Tel one sweep? Huh? I hate running across charges I can't figure out immediately. I'm paranoid about things like identity theft. I check every charge, balance every penny. Nothing is going to slip past me. When I first got telephone access to my checking account I practically wore out the buttons on my trimline phone (my very first phone!) calling the bank to see if this check or that had cleared yet.

All of which adds up to my plugging the suspect phrase into a search engine to make sure nothing was wrong.

Guess what I pulled up?

Cleaning supplies.

I have a really bad feeling about Mother's Day.

I think I can do this.

I kept hearing at the end of last week about the government's new food pyramids, but no-one was showing any pictures of them. Naturally I turned to the internet to remedy this, and found ... nothing. No pictures of the new pyramids at least. I did, however, find the government's website about the new pyramids and I have to say, I like it.

The site was pretty easy to use. You can track what you're eating every day and it will tell you how much of each nutrient you're getting, as well as how many calories you're taking in (and how many calories you should be taking in.) You can also track your physical activity and the site will tie the two together to tell you how the exercise has increased your caloric needs.

I've been doing this for a few days now and I've been surprised at how much I've gained from it. Oh, sure, I could do this without a website, or using one of the many diet websites there are out there, but this layout just works for me. I've actually been able to stick to it, instead of forgetting about it after the first day!

This morning I noticed that I was starting to think of my food choices in light of what they'd do to my calorie count for the day. I wound up having an apple for breakfast, and then some oatmeal, because of their fiber count and overall "healthiness quotient" (as I think of it.) I've always made food choices for the girls based on that kind of thinking, but for me I've tended too often to just grab whatever was available and would temporarily stave off hunger pangs.

I also learned some stuff about food choices that I never knew before. Did you know popcorn counts as a whole grain? Yes, it does! I can eat it and feel virtuous. (Just don't tell anyone about the butter and salt, OK?)

The only serious problem I find with it is that the food choices they give you are pretty general and not wildly suited to the way I cook. If you eat a lot of packaged food you're covered. If you cook from scratch a lot, the way I do, you'll get more general approximations of what you're eating. That's OK, though. I don't mind if it's general. It's still helpful. I think if it was more detailed it would probably overwhelm me anyway and then I'd wind up quitting it.