Day 14 of the whole "captivity" thing

It's Day 14 and I'm doing good.

Even though Grandma made this for dessert tonight:

That's right, people. Grandma made banana pudding for dessert. With heavy whipping cream, vanilla pudding, with the bananas soaked in lemon juice to give it a little extra flavor. As if it needed it. Oh, and the Nilla wafers thrown in too.

Yeah. This whole weight loss thing may turn out to be a wash if I can't get her to stop it.

I know what you're thinking: Well, jeez, Ness, have a little will power already. How hard can it be to say no?

To which I say: Okay, then you come up here and live with her for a bit and see if you have the ability to say no. If you do, then yes, you win, you're a stronger person than me and I'm just a whiny little girl with no self-control whatsoever.

I'm okay with that. Because I get to eat banana pudding. With Nilla wafers. So :P

Anyway, with the banana pudding came a revelation: even though I'm trying to lose weight, even though I'm trying to teach myself to eat better, I fully intend to learn to cook the way Grandma does.

As far as we know for sure, we only have one life to live, so why not? I mean, she threw together a meal that I never would have thought of: potato salad and beans as side dishes with the leftover ham from last night. I almost never think of potato salad and if I think of beans, it's because it's in chili. In fact, my first lesson (beyond wash your hands before doing anything) was that the cooking thing is basically 90% preparation.

But it's not just the cooking thing. It's learning to think the way she does, at least when it comes to food. There are times when we don't necessarily agree on outlooks on life, but when you can laugh at just about anything the way she does--and cook the way she does, dear God--is it any wonder that I want to be like her when I grow up?

And that might just be the whole point.