Our Annoying TV Diet

Last night I woke up hungry.

This isn't such a deal for Steve; having fought both obesity and anorexia in high school, his whole eating thing is out of whack. I'm used to him waking up at four in the morning and eating half a protein bar before going back to bed. But not me.

Steve and I make our lunches because it's cheaper and easier to eat healthy when you brown-bag it, and we tend to eat very well...

Okay, it don't look like much. But this is one of my typical daily diets.

banana snack, go to the gym, breakfast of egg whites and Canadian bacon (which in Canada, they just call "ham"), a salad with roasted chicken for lunch, two snacks-- string cheese and protein bar, and then something lovely for dinner. Tonight, for example, we're having low-fat/low-carb meatloaf with roasted veggies.

This is normally plenty of food, but on Sunday we had a drink (or 10) and ate a bunch of fried foods: onion rings, chicken fingers, French fries, taquitos. Yum. Needless to say, my stomach is all screwed up, I wasn't hungry most of yesterday, and last night I woke up starving. Ate the other half of Steve's protein bar at 3am. That's romance.

But now, as I sit at the office enjoying my salad of mixed greens, tomatoes, goat cheese, some basil leaves and chicken breast in a lovely balsamic vinaigrette , I think about something very significant: Anorexic people are weird. Especially those twins who keep getting on all the entertainment shows like they have a special talent. Not eating is not a talent.

You know what's also weird? People on vanity diets. But since I'm on one myself, and fighting for a set of abs by the time HGTV arrives at our house, I refuse to place judgment.

I must run. A sprig of basil just fell on the office floor and I can't waste one calorie.

Rick and Steve to be on HGTV!

Ever since Steve and I bought our house we thought about trying to get on HGTV for a home improvement. But then we did a lot of the interior stuff ourselves since it was the only way we could live/work here with any amount of sanity.
The backyard, however, was another story.

As you can see, the colors are wild, everything is a bit wacky and while we knew we could slap down some paint we really don't know anything about which plants go well in certain locations, how to care for them, or how to fix the yard to take care of certain eye sores such as our lovely laundry unit or views of our neighbor's houses and phone wires.

Enter Matt James, The City Gardner.

The City Gardner is a show from the United Kingdom and it has a huge following. Designer Matt James comes into small urban spaces and helps the owners renovate your garden into a fantastic usable space. It's shown late on HGTV but they're going to shoot a season of episodes in the United States, and since our yard is really an extension of our house it seemed like the perfect show for us to be a part of.

And last week, we were accepted.

Steve and I kept this all really quiet because we didn't want to jinx anything, but Matt and the producer, Rupert, came out a couple weeks ago and then last week we got the call where everyone approved us. So in three weeks they will be at our little pink cupcake house, redo the yard with the help of us and our friends, and then it will premiere on HGTV at some point this year.

Depending on the confidentiality agreement we might not really be allowed to journal about the whole process, but if so I'll keep the blog updated on everything. But either way it's going to be a super cool experience and we can't wait!

And just FYI, we started out TV diet yesterday. I mean, really, the camera adds 10-pounds and the last thing we need is people watching us on the tube and wondering just how many cameras we had filming us. Yuck!