40. To Brownie or Not to Brownie!

I'm making a huge vat of Weight Watcher's vegetable soup today.  I'm still battling the last 1/2 pound to 25 pounds.  I'm having substance abuse issues, but my substance is food.  I have given up my glass of wine before dinner, I have given up milk except when I fix tacos (there are laws on the books about that) and I'm even choosy what samples I eat at Costco. I still take them but they go to Bob (who doesn't need them either, heavy sigh) or take them out to Maggie.  But dang it I love telling myself, "It just isn't fair!"  I've never been good at "Paying the Piper."  At any rate, I put the twist board in the middle of the bedroom so as not to miss it.  We'll see how that works.  I do realize that just staring at it brings no results.

Bob's knee is still swollen too much to walk and I don't like to walk alone even with Maggie.  We do have mountain lions on occasion and I'm out of wasp spray.  Thanks to the internet, I have learned that wasp spray, which I actually use for wasps, is also good for other predators.  If you have never used wasp spray, you only give it one or two shakes and then point and press.  The stream goes out probably 15 feet.  That's so you can spray the wasp nest from a distance...a really good thing!  Nothing is happy with a face full of wasp spray. 

I shouldn't be so sure, though.  There was a small business owner whose business was in a really bad area of a large metropolitan city.  He was constantly being robbed by thieves who crawled in through the ceiling via the roof and attic crawl space.  After several months of the same thing, he lined the opening with electric fence wire and plugged in that baby.  The next robber touched the hot wire, lost his footing and fell breaking his back and a leg.  He sued the store owner and won his case.  The law may represent  justice but it is not MORAL.  If you think it is, don't bother hiring a lawyer.

It's still blustery and surprisingly cold.  Weather like this brings a lethargy with desires of afghans and brownies.  Saturday really brought about desires of all things warm and snuggley.  I did manage to fore go the brownies ( I should have just made some and eaten one, because I kept eating "healthy" things to salve the feeling and would have been better off calorie wise just to eat the darned thing) and watched "The Hunch Back of Notre Dame."  I hadn't watched it in a hundred years.  Golly, it was sad!  I watched the 1939 version with Charles Laughton, (he garnered an Oscar for his brilliant performance.)  The 1830 book by Victor Hugo was pivotal in the restoration of the cathedral.  It was in horrible disrepair and used to house cattle and other farm animals.  People had lost all care or concern for the amazing structure.  The story brought about Gothic changes in the architecture of Paris.

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/hunchback/study.html#explanation1

If you have never been to Paris, I recommend saving your pennies and making it happen.  Put it to the top of your "Bucket List!"  Unfortunately,  you can no longer reach out and touch the gargoyles because of the hideous wire fencing they have erected to stop people from committing suicide by jumping from the top.  (we were just approaching the cathedral one fateful visit when a young man jumped and impaled him self on the fence below, but that's another story.)  My theory is when someone wants to end it all, they will.  One way

or another.  We needn't spend the money and spoil the view.  Sad but true.  We are a complicated lot.  I can guarantee that if people ate more brownies and curled up with something snuggley  more often the world would be a better place!

Now let me see...it says to set the oven at 350 degrees, oil and dust an 8 x 8 inch pan with flour, then...