I Feel Pretty (Thanks, Igigi!)

March 22, 2011 at 8:54 pm (Friends, General Gobbledygook)
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The one thing about me and my personal style that has changed dramatically since my whole Weight Loss Saga started is that I am in love with dresses. This is mostly because somewhere along the way I shifted from being a definite pear shape to being more of an hourglass shape, but it’s also because finding a pair of pants that fits my big butt and stubby legs without causing me to spend the day fidgeting to make things fit right is pretty much impossible. Therefore in the Pants vs. Dresses debate, I have come down firmly on the side of Dresses.

The problem is that even finding good dresses that fit right is still a problem, because I’m a weird size. I’m a 14/16 but in today’s world of women’s sizes that can mean roughly 15 million things. So when Wendy Bix emailed us and said “Hey, Igigi wants to send us clothes to wear at Weetacon! Who’s in?” I said “Oh hells yeah!” and started picking out dresses left and right. And then I promptly forgot which dresses I requested because man alive, i was busy and shit.

So imagine my surprise when Wendy gathered us to explain that the lovely women behind Igigi were beyond generous and had sent us not one piece of clothing apiece, but instead multiple pieces…2, 3, 4 items to wear! And KEEP!! And next thing I knew we had gone from excitedly jumping around in the parking lot to frantically changing clothes together in the stairwell so we could put on a fashion show for the rest of the Weetacon revelers. (Please note: yes, I got to keep the clothes I am about to discuss. No, I was not told what to write and yes, these are my honest opinions.)

The first dress I wore was the Tres Chic Dress in a lovely black & white pattern. I love, love, love patterns on dresses; they distract the eye and hide any lumpy bits you might be trying to hide. This dress takes it a bit further and adds a princess knot that makes the front of the dress the perfect tummy cover and the cowl neck draws the eye up. I honestly wasn’t sure how I would like the cowl neck; it’s super tough for me to find one that doesn’t make me look dumpy. But this one hit just right, and I think the wider neckline kept it from making me look thick around the chin. The longer sleeves and modest neckline make this a perfect work dress, and the fact that it’s fully lined means no need for slips or Spanx. (I actually ended up wearing this to work my first day back from Weetacon since we had no time to do laundry!) Two thumbs up for sure on the Tres Chic!

The second dress I wore was the one that made Kevin drool; it was the Jackie 2-in1 in a lovely, lovely shade of royal blue. I love this dress. LOVE. BIG GIANT LOVE. Not only does it hug my curves as though it was made specifically for me, it has pockets! And can be worn multiple ways! The detachable belt can be worn aqua side up or blue side up, or it can be left behind entirely. Sleeves rolled up to show the aqua accent, sleeves rolled down or heck you can even wear the belt as a scarf (which would be a good way to cover up the top a little bit). This is definitely a dress I would grab for a night out; those pockets would be perfect to hold ID, lipstick and money (and yes, phone!). I went ahead and wore it to work but I will admit that I felt a little over exposed; I ended up putting some double sided tape on my bra to hold the top a little more closed. Next time I might try doing the scarf trick. Another two thumbs up plus a star because of the pockets.

Last but not least in my own personal lineup was the Carmella Lace dress, which quite a few of us got to wear. This is an absolutely lovely dress with tons of quality lace and little details like different lace edging around the neckline and satin belt. The cut of the skirt is one I would not have thought I would like on myself since it was somewhat trumpety and that shape always makes my hips look ginormous. But this one didn’t do that. What the Carmella DID do was confuse the hell out of me. It is a true wrap dress, and the satin belt was long enough to wrap around more than once so I wasn’t sure where I should tie it. I tried it on the side but then it was too loose and kept busting wide open; once I tied it in the back it stayed shut but then I felt like there was way too much ribbon hanging out over my butt. I did finally make it fit me right but  I think I need to try it on again when I have more time to fiddle with it than I did that night. I have a gala to go to in September and I think this dress will work well for it once I finally figure it out! So one and a half thumbs for the Carmella; that might get bumped up to two once I know how to wear it. (I think I might have been able to figure out the Venice Dress more easily but alas, that one is sold out in my size.)

So here’s the very best part of all this generosity that Igigi has shown to me and so many other women at Weetacon….I get to pass on some of that generosity! Yuliya has given me the opportunity to give a commenter a $50 gift certificate to Igigi so that you guys can feel pretty too! (PrettiER, because my commenters are the prettiest already. All three of you!) All you have to do is tell me which piece you are lusting after and where you want to wear it, and then I will use some fandangled random number generator (probably random.org) to pick one of you to give a piece of Igigi. I’m even going to give you a couple weeks to do some window shopping before posting your comment. Winner will be announced on April 8th (because I know for sure I will post an entry then!) Yay! Contest! Pretty stuff to wear!

(Big thanks to Jorie Tappa for taking the lovely pictures in this entry!)

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Still not shutting up

March 17, 2011 at 1:28 pm (General Gobbledygook, Schooling)

Despite appearances, I have not run out of things to say. Just ask Jane. I was just…hiatussing. Or something.

Anyway. It’s sunny outside and the tree pollen is killing my ability to breathe and it’s light for absolute hours after work and oh yay, it’s spring! I feel like I am coming up for air for the first time in months. I don’t like to joke about having Seasonal Affective Disorder, because I know people who truly DO suffer from it, but this past fall and winter were some seriously low moments for me.

Last October, work got exponentially worse for me when I suddenly realized that my boss was well and truly insane. I can say now (because she is gone!) that she was literally the worst boss I have ever had. She had no idea what I actually did on a day to day basis, she was disrespectful of me and others, she made racist comments in the workplace, and she pawned the vast majority of her job off on other people. She spent entirely too much time walking around bitching about her divorce and was possibly the most demoralizing person I have ever worked with.

To deal with it, I drank a lot of wine and ate a lot of carbs. One day I was telling my coworker (and dear friend) about something funny that happened at my house after I had a bottle of wine.

“What was the occasion” she asked.

“Um…Tuesday?” I answered.

(She then got really jealous because she was pregnant and did not have the option of drinking to deal with the stress of our boss.)

It got to the point where I asked Kevin if he thought I had a problem. He said no, since I wasn’t drinking during the day and I did have a cutoff point of only one bottle and I was drinking around people instead of swigging Night Train out of a paper bag in my car before coming home. But still. Looking back, it was bad.

Everything was bad. Work was REALLY REALLY bad, school was stressing me out, money was stressing me out, our various and sundry parents and their various and sundry ailments were stressing me out. So I hunkered down with my husband and my dog and my wine and hurtled through it the best I could.

And then a miracle happened and my crazy, demoralizing, occasionally racist boss up and quit. I am not kidding when I say that I literally jumped for joy when coworker friend told me this. Seriously, I closed her office door and jumped up and down in excitement for a couple minutes, then walked out with a big ass grin on my face. (I found out later that it was a good thing it happened when it did because Kevin had gotten worried enough about my ragey, yelling outbursts about the crazy boss that he was about to tell me to get my doctor to pull me out of work for a mental health break.)

So anyway, now all the crap that I was unofficially doing is now officially my crap to do so I gave in and got a Blackberry and now I check email before I get out of bed (hi European and Australian sites we are working with!). At one point during Weetacon, I was answering work email WHILE AT A WINERY until Andrea took my Blackberry away and handed me her phone with Angry Birds loaded up and ordered me to stop working and start playing. Yeah, I’m totally turning into one of “those people.”

But I’m happier at work than I have been in ages. I’m being included in projects and treated like I have a brain and hey, there might even be some opportunities for job change in the Very Near Future. That last bit is important because in the middle of all this shit, I totally finished my MBA program. And then I bought a purse, because that was easier than trying to figure out what I want to be now that I’m grown up. But that’s a whole OTHER entry, as is Weetacon and also, the Dress My Husband Loves (which can also be yours!! TEEEEASSSSSSEEEEER)

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Finally warm! Thanks, Grandma!

January 9, 2011 at 3:38 pm (Family, General Gobbledygook)
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Everyone thinks I’m a wimp when I say I’m cold. Because I live in San Diego! It’s never cold there! It’s sunny and 75 EVERY DAY.

Except it’s not, that’s just what our chamber of commerce wants you to believe. Also, I do not technically live in San Diego anymore, I live in Poway. And Poway is “The City In The Country”, with coyotes and rodeos and big ass town parades. Seriously though, we’re 30 miles away from San Diego proper and are basically nestled up against the mountains so our weather is way more variable. Summers get all kinds of Africa Hot (I think our highest temp last summer was 112 F), which sucks. But what sucks more are the winters.

Daytimes aren’t too bad, because it usually stays around the low 50′s. Totally manageable! But the winters mean it’s regularly low 40′s to mid 30′s at night, sometimes even colder. Which would not be a problem if A) we had central heating in our vaulted ceiling apartment or B) our building was better insulated and didn’t have drafty windows ALL OVER IT. On top of that, our bedroom is set up in such a way that we basically have to have the head of our bed under a window; handy when trying to catch a breeze in the summer but hell on my poor delicate nose during the winter.

Last winter was not as bad as this winter, because this winter it’s been freezing and I wasn’t able to come up with the right combination of blanket/pajamas/socks to keep me warm enough without getting too warm. I was sleeping like crap because I kept waking up shivering and needing more clothes or sweating and needing to strip off either blankets or socks. Basically, I’ve been seriously jonesing for my Grandma Blanket. My Grandma had a thing for crocheting. After she and my grandfather retired, she spent hours each day sitting and watching her stories (Young and the Restless was her favorite) but since she was never someone who could just sit still not doing anything, she crocheted. Mostly she crocheted blankets, of the classic zig zag stripe variety. One day she decided to make a blanket for me, big enough to cover my twin size bed. It was the very early 80′s so she of course picked a stellar color combination:

Yes, it is burnt orange, chocolate brown, tan and ivory. Never mind that my entire room was decorated in a Strawberry Shortcake motif, that was the color set she liked.

She liked that particular blanket so much that she tried repeatedly to recreate it. I am not sure why that particular pattern was so hard for her to remember but it was. She never did duplicate it exactly, but she made a dozen or so in that color scheme. We found the resulting blankets stashed in a cupboard when she and my grandfather died, and now all of us cousins have a Grandma Blanket.

It’s a hideous color, but it’s the very best blanket I own. It’s heavy and warm without being stifling, and it covers exactly half of the bed so Kevin doesn’t complain about being hot because I have an extra blanket on the bed. I’ve been freezing this winter, but last night Kevin was finally able to find the Grandma Blanket in our carport storage unit. Sophie immediately made a nest in it once I had it on the bed; she knows a good blanket when she sees one.

And I slept better than I had in weeks, because I was finally, blessedly, perfectly warm. Thanks, Grandma

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Voila!

January 7, 2011 at 9:07 pm (Finances, General Gobbledygook, Weightastic)

“I think I’ll write a blog entry tonight”, I said. “Time to get back on that horse.”

I think I need to pretend like this is my confession booth. Maybe thinking people are keeping track will make me be accountable. Or something.

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I’ve decided to be better this year. Not better at running or knitting or my job, just better in general. Better at taking care of my home, better at taking care of my money, better about taking care of myself and my family and my relationships. Maybe drink a little less wine and a little more water. And take my vitamins and do my filing.

And also appreciate my left arm, regardless of how disabled, scarred, and gradually weakening it is. Remember that parable, the one about the man with no feet? (“I cried because I had no shoes, then I met a man who had no feet.” That one.) This week I found out the sister of my college roommate was in a car accident that crushed her left arm, and it was amputated above the elbow. I can’t even imagine how tough the road ahead is for her, and she has 3 kids (who are only 7, 3 and 1). Don’t get me wrong, I have great faith that she will make it through just fine because I know her family and I know her and she is one tough cookie. But maybe now I will whine a little less often about the arthritic twinging my wrist has been doing more often these days.

(Aw, who am I kidding? I’m still going to whine, because the whole plate in the arm/scar tissue tearing/arthritis shit hurts.)

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I stopped drinking Diet Coke on New Year’s Eve. Not because of any big desire to not drink artificial sweeteners or cut back on caffeine, but because I suddenly realized that I was tired of feeling all bloated all the time. Who knew that surgically altered stomachs that are tiny would feel gross if filled with carbonated artificially sweetened liquids?

Oh right, every bariatric professional in the world.

Also, I gained 20 pounds when I stopped working out with Sheila back in May, which puts me a good 40 pounds above where I’d like to be. On the good side I made it through the holidays without gaining anything, a small miracle considering that I A) baked roughly 700 cookies and B) spent the entire week between Christmas and New year’s cooking.

Anyway, I’ll be doing some dieting. And exercising. And discussing it here.

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2011 is also going to be when I get my shit back together financially because holy mother of the universe I let shit get out of control over the past couple years. I finally sat down and did my budget spreadsheet for the year like I used to (up until mid-2008 that spreadsheet directed my every move and it WORKED). So I have great hopes for us to stop being constantly goddamn broke and overspending and paying late fees and overdraft fees and GAH.

It’s going to be a tight year, and not just in my jeans. Yet another reason to blog! It’s free! And fun! Or something.

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Diets and finances. God, I’m such a boring ass adult. I obviously need to go out and do some carousing too so all my confessions here aren’t boring.

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Har de har har

September 21, 2010 at 7:54 pm (General Gobbledygook, Pets)

Sometimes life gets crazy, and I get crazy with it. Other times life gets crazy and I stay sane. The past few months have been a good example of the latter. Last month, Kevin’s car basically blew up. (Kevin’s car is my old Honda Civic; driving it is his reward for being silly enough to buy a Ford Taurus back in the day.) It blew up right after we both went on vacation and had no money because we are trying to Get Our Shit Together on the money so we were like…paying bills and shit. ANYWAY. $1800 later it was fixed (blown head gaskets are not cheap, just an FYI) and we thought we were in the clear so I went about my business going to class and going to work and trying to find the humor in people who are definitely KRAZEE and not HEELARIOUS.

Then one Thursday night, I’m in class, and I am sick as can be with a very nasty cold and I get a text message from Kevin. The cats got into the pantry and broke a vase. Awesome! Vivi had a boo boo on her foot from the broken glass, but it looked like she had taken care of it. Even more awesome! So I stick to class for as long as I can, then bail early enough to get home by 9, take some Nyquil and crash the fuck out.

Except I get home and That Damn Cat (she who cost us close to $2000 her first year of life) (and is only 2 1/2 years old as of this writing) is bleeding. Profusely. Apparently she had managed to lick the wound shut and then she decided to start wandering around and started bleeding all over the damn place (that reminds me, I should clean up those bloodstains this weekend). So we wrapped her in a towel and headed out to the emergency vet. At 9pm, while I am sick and also, needing to pee. Because things always happen when I need to pee.

Anyway, thank gawd we live in the country now because the emergency vet charges the same as the regular vet rather than those crazy fucking outrageous prices that most emergency vets charge. So instead of $750 for the surgical repair of Dumbass Vivi’s 3/4 inch laceration with tendon damage we only had to pay $575. Le sigh.

Anyway, she’s spent the last 12 days walking around with a jaunty pink bandage on her leg, a bandage that she keeps trying to shake off (prompting Kevin to declare that Vivi has stanky leg). She is all better now, according to her; the vet’s admonitions to keep her from jumping have been met with laughter on our parts because seriously, we turn my back for two seconds and voila, she is on top of the 6 foot tall cat tree.

My opinion can be summed up thusly: what the fuck ever. So we end up with a cat with a limp. Not surprising.

We are contemplating renaming her Caviar, except I think at this point she costs more per ounce than caviar.

In other news Kevin is now officially in the contestant pool for Jeopardy. Perhaps he will get called up to whomp ass and make lots of money for us. I hope so, because we have a few more vases for Vivi to break.

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Things of Note

July 7, 2010 at 7:28 pm (Absurdity, Friends, General Gobbledygook)
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I bought a new trash can, and it made me much happier than I even thought I would be because of a trash can. Really, if anything screams “BORING MIDDLE AGED SUBURBANITE” it’s getting excited over a new trashcan. But here’s the thing. Our old trash can was one of those plastic ones with the swingy tops that always got caught on the trash we piled into it (because we are Uberconsumers, I swear) and I really, REALLY wanted one of those cool stainless steel ones with the little foot pedal but have you seen how much the big ones are?? EIGHTY DOLLARS. FOR A TRASH CAN. And I’m sorry but my trash can should not cost more than the trash it holds, so I refused to buy one.

But then I was wandering through Sam Walton’s Kingdom of Things Made In China and found this awesome Rubbermaid trashcan for $12. IN RED! So it matches my randomly decided red theme in the kitchen, keeps the dog and cats out of all our trash AND has a nifty lid. I am not at all ashamed to say that I bragged about my awesome $12 trashcan for a few days after I found it.
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I got a used bike, and I love it but I have yet to ride it. And this is because I bought it from my friend who just happens to be a good 4 inches taller than me and when she was fixing it up she neglected to lower the seat so when I sit on it I am barely able to reach the ground with my tiptoes. I am planning on riding it down to the bike shop this weekend and get it adjusted, and then I am going to get my new bike basket mounted and then I am going to make Sophie ride in the basket to the dog park. She gets exercise, I get exercise, win win!

Kevin keeps wanting me to buy a bike helmet despite the fact that California law doesn’t require me to. He forgets that I rode a beach cruiser through the streets of LA for two years without a single fall, injury or car incident. Also, I only get hurt when doing mundane things like walking so I don’t really know what he’s worried about.
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Speaking of car incidents, I got rear-ended last week. And not in the good way (BA DUM DUM!) Instead a dude in a Civic slammed into me, then got out and said “That was totally on me, sorry. My chest hurts.”

One of my friends texted me about it later and asked how badly I beat him up. I managed to resist beating the crap out of the non-attention paying idiot but I cannot promise anything when it comes to the mushroom-headed adjuster who is dealing with my claim. That dude may be in for quite a verbal lashing later this week since so far he has managed to A) not call me within the required contact time limit and B) tried to send me to a body shop near my house instead of my job even AFTER I specifically told him I wanted to go to one near my job.

Anyway, my lower back starts hurting if I sit for more than 20 minutes, wine is the only thing that makes it stop hurting, I wake up with headaches and I do not have time for this shit. So I am trying to fix my car and fix myself and ARGH. Pffbbbt.
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I am watching Rachel Getting Married. Will the wine help or hurt my enjoyment of this movie?
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Susan and Shawn came and stayed with us last weekend and celebrated the 4th of July with us. My parental units were even more charming than usual (thank goodness JM got a full night’s sleep the night before) (and also had 9 pounds of bitterness taken out of her last fall), the fireworks were awesome, and we drank a lot of wine and gossiped and it was like a weekend long summer camp.

I lurve my girls.
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Speaking of my girls, Laura had her baby!!! And he is my cute little boo, Kendrick Monkeybutt Squishy Shmoo. It KILLS ME that I am here and not there, and that I have yet to hold him but I am flying out there over Labor Day and then I will smother him with kisses and loving and cook casseroles for his mother.

AND I just found out that Niblet is going to get a sibling next February so it is Auntie M in full effect up in here.

Also, holy cats, as I typed that I got a text message that JM’s son (my stepbrother for all intents and purposes) just welcomed HIS baby boy (his second) an hour ago. This is why I don’t feel bad about not having babies, people. All these awesome, smart people are having babies around me, and I get to do all the fun stuff with them and just bask in my auntiedom.
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This movie is pretty boring so far. I think I need to find some Law & Order
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I have nothing else to say, so here is a gratuitous picture of Sophie on 4th of July. (And yes, I made the collar. Because that’s how I roll.)

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Run. On.

June 3, 2010 at 2:12 pm (Family, Friends, General Gobbledygook)

I’m in a rut. Not a rut so much as well, a crevasse. I’m psychologically stymied. The ennui, I has it.

Who gets ennui in the springtime? Seriously, only me.

I think it is because I am an emotional sponge and there is so much fucking drama (DRAMA MOTHERFUCKERS) around me at any given time these days that I am kind of constantly exhausted. It’s not my drama, thank every deity of possible existence out there. But when one friend almost leaves her husband and another definitely IS leaving her husband and the stories that I tell about my job make my former boss tell me it sounds like an episode of The Office, I become prone to being distracted and skittery and tired and apparently, cannot speak unless it is via incredibly long run-on sentences.

In other news, I told Sheila I needed to take a break from going to her class, because it was starting to get to the point where I hated going. I hated driving down there (it tacked an extra 60-90 minutes of driving onto my day). I hated paying for it, because we are a household of broke ass bitches thanks to some stupid low profile tires I had to buy for my stupid car. I hated the fact that I was missing my husband because I never got home before 7:30 on the one night a week we were both home.  So I quit, and who knows if I will go back. I will call her, and I will stay in touch and I will have to come up with some kind of exercise program on my own that is cheap and that I will actually do because I feel like a slug right now. Luckily, I live in a crazy suburban world in the country and there’s all kinds of activity things going on. There is a dog walking group that goes out and hikes on Sunday mornings, which I think I might try to go do. Of course, the last time I took Sophie out for a hike we saw (from about 10 feet away) A GIGANTIC RATTLESNAKE so now we are having to look into rattlesnake awareness training for her. Because we live in the country, and country dogs need to know how to avoid rattlesnakes. (Of course, Kevin’s plan to avoid rattlesnakes involves just not hiking, but hiking is fun and I like it so rattlesnake awareness training it is!)

I did get to take a quick vacation last weekend over the holiday, and I flew out to Kansas City, MO to visit Laura and help her get her baby’s room ready for his imminent arrival (because yes, she is having a boy, which I told her the first time she had an ultrasound and I saw his giant head; his name is Kendrick and he totally roundhouse kicked me).  And then I packed Laura’s very pregnant self into the car and we drove over to the Kansas side of things and visited (the now boobless but still a hot cougar) Jane, who demonstrated her remarkable ability to find anything I wanted in relation to a liquor store. (Don’t knock it, that is a handy, handy trait to have.) It was a lovely weekend and on my last morning there we went and got coffee at an awesome little coffeeshop in downtown Parkville. It was run by a small gay man named Josh who was originally from (you guessed it) San Diego by way of Los Angeles, so we spent our breakfast chattering with him about North Park and East County and the Princess House crystal plates he inherited from his mother and then used in the shop. (And here I thought only my mother had the insane Princess House collection!)

So I’m taking the summer off from school and hoping to use the extra time to do something productive, like actually finish the Couch to 5K program. Of course, I’m also on the planning committee for the CF Foundation Gala so I’m going to be spending a lot of time asking people for money this summer too but you know I have no problem with that.  I’ll probably take at least one more trip good old Kansas City once my little Monekybutt is born, but other than that I think I’ll just plan on sitting next to the pool and yelling at the neighbor kids all summer. It’s cheap entertainment, which really, is always something I can use more of.

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This is what I sound like in real life, too

March 10, 2010 at 3:39 pm (Friends, General Gobbledygook, Schooling, Weightastic)
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So hey, how about that February that just whizzed by? That was good times, right there. I think I did some stuff and saw some people and maybe did some homework in there somewhere. OH! I definitely went to LA and gave Shawn  the best birthday present EVER (the 1980 Black Barbie, complete with ‘fro, pick and pantsuit!) I also greeted Patrick at the airport with a giant obnoxious sign and ate cupcakes with Trish and Jared. And hung out with my dog and my husband and the little asshole cats.

In other words, I did the whole day to day life thing.

And then March came and Weetacon was finally here and real life went far far away and I cried in a bar about how awesome Wendy Bix is and I ate chicken fried steak at 2:30am (MISTAKE) and I drank the best home brewed beer ever and dropped my Nano in my bathtub and lost my voice and didn’t show my boobs, not even once. And it was magical and sparkly and awesome and then I came home and had to work and ugh.

I have to say, for someone who actually usually enjoys her job and its flexibility (hello, I am writing this entry while scanning business cards), I am easily annoyed by it. Maybe that is why I was told during my review that I tend to be “discourteous when feeling under pressure.” (Apparently that bothers me more than I let on, since I have told that story to oh, 50 people now.)

But I mean come on. There was apparently drama about who was going to answer the door while I was gone (our facility is locked down and people ahve to be buzzed in, whoo whoo TOP SECRET SHIT HERE), because apparently everyone else is JUST TOO BUSY to answer the door. Amazingly enough, they discovered that having to answer the door constantly means that a person gets interrupted all damn day. HELLO, WELCOME TO MY WORLD. Ask me again why the Big Giant Filing Project isn’t done. It’s because I am basically chained to my desk until 2 or 3 in the afternoon, that’s why. And this is why I’m getting an MBA, so I can get unchained from the front desk (By the way, I totally aced Managerial Accounting somehow.)

So anyway, I got to come back and listen to the fall out from that drama and I really just wanted to tell everyone that they were grown ass adults and to stop complaining about it because damn if it’s going to keep me from going on vacations (especially now that we have found out that my coworker is basically the best petsitter ever in the history of the world.) But then I remembered that I really like my coworkers and I really like my hours and I really, REALLY like the fact that my company is actually successful in these uncertain times, so I shut my mouth and ate some chocolate.

Speaking of chocolate, have I mentioned that I have an entire chocolate drawer in my fridge? This is because my dear friend David sells chocolate through Dove, which now has this whole home party enterprise. Think Tupperware but for chocolate. And it’s actual good chocolate so I buy some or I host a party and then whammo, chocolate drawer. I’m like the worst WLS patient in the history of the world.

Speaking of worst WLS patient in the world, I’ve had these weird symptoms lately that sent me over to my doctor asking if there was a possibility that I could be starting menopause early. Or maybe it was my thyroid! Or something! So she took a ton of blood from me (because my doctor does not pshaw her patients’ concerns) and tested me up, down, left and right and declared me perfectly normal. (Aside from the hot flashes and dry skin and usual insanity, of course.) So I’m telling my friend this and drop in there that oh, well, I haven’t been taking my vitamins lately (I KNOW) and she basically smacked me with her eyes and sarcastically said “Oh, maybe you should try taking them then? MAYBE?”

So I’ll start taking them again, I promise. Because I really don’t like the hot flashes. And I hear beri beri sucks.

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To Do or Not To Do, That Is The Question

January 6, 2010 at 4:18 pm (General Gobbledygook)
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I am notorious for having giant long to-do lists. At work I have these hardbound record books where I keep all of my notes, and every day I write a new to-do list with anywhere from 10 to 25 things listed on there to get done in one day. (I never finish them all.) I have a notebook that lives in my purse where I jot down lists of things I need to get done at home. I send emails with lists of things to do to Kevin so I can make sure that he gets his things done.

So with all my compulsive list making, you’d think I would love the whole resolution schtick. It’s a list! Of things to do! Except I hate it, because I fail at long term projects. I am a procrastinator to the extreme, a person who always waited until the last minute to do schoolwork. (True story: One day at lunch my freshman year in college, some friends tried to get me to go shopping with them. I told them I couldn’t because I needed to write a paper. “When’s it due?” they asked, “It can wait!” But no, it couldn’t because it was due at 3 that afternoon. I got a B+) So you see where telling myself in January that I will do something before December becomes a problem.

I am therfore NOT making resolutions this year. Instead, I’ve decided to make small, monthly to-do lists. And by small I mean 3-5 things. I do have an overall goal guiding all of this (Live well, be happpy, stay healthy), but the two main areas I want to improve are my diet/fitness situations and my financial situation. So every month, there will be 1 diet/fitness to-do, 1 financial to-do and 1-3 general life to-dos.

January To-Dos 2010:

  1. Diet/Fitness: Stop drinking soda. I somehow slipped back into drinking Diet Coke like it was water and that needs to stop tout suite.
  2. Financial: Create year-long budget spreadsheet. I used to do this every December to keep track of our paychecks and plan out what bills will be paid when. I stopped and now things are A MESS.
  3. General Life: Walk Sophie at least 3x/week. Even though she’s little and really tends to spend most of her time sleeping, she needs to get out more. She’s crazy when she doesn’t get enough exercise, and now that Laura and her pugs are gone she’s not getting her weekly 12-hour “run around like a crazy thing” sessions.
  4. General Life: Cook at home 3x/week and eat out at lunch no more than 1x/week. Gotta get our nutrition back on track at home; we can survive on cookies anymore. Plus, eating out is expensive.

I’ve also made a commitment to Sheila (she of the insane yet awesome workouts) that I will not miss more than 2 classes a month until at least August. And I made a commitment to Kevin to keep Saturdays open so that he and I can spend them together as often as possible.

So we’ll see just how much of it gets done. But I have high hopes because look how short that list is!

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Over and Out

January 3, 2010 at 10:59 pm (General Gobbledygook)
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I took down all my Christmas decorations today. The sparkly lights and fake greenery and ornaments with their shmoopy stories are all boxed up and waiting to go back into storage for another year. I was sad to put it away, and not just because this means my vacation is really and truly over now.

I was sad because this holiday season was one of the best ones we’ve had in awhile. I vowed to keep it low stress and low cost. I committed to nothing outside of work obligations and our own open house/holiday party. I slashed our list of people we were buying presents for and didn’t sign up for card exchanges. I gave myself permission to cut corners and go to bed early once a week, and it all worked out beautifully.

I spent time with dear friends, lingering over dinner and playing silly games. I baked roughly 5 million cookies, meditating in my kitchen as butter and sugar and flour became little gifts for everyone I knew. I threw a stellar holiday party for my company, and was reminded again how lucky I am to be working with these people at this company in this industry. We invited our friends and family and coworkers into our home to watch football and eat cookies and tell Sophie how cute she is. I made my first turkey, and it turned out fabulous.

So it was indeed a happy holiday season for me, for us. I paused and looked around and realized that this right here, this is the life I have been trying to get to all these years.

A priceless gift, indeed.

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