Thanks for the fish

I haven’t been writing much lately, and there’s one simple reason. I’ve been really really grumpy. Like even grumpier than my normal grumpy. And not only do I annoy myself with my grumpiness, but I figured nobody wanted to hear about it. However, there is reason for hope:

1. Tomorrow is February. February is the generally the last month of bitter cold here, and the last month of really dark days. In fact, by February 15, the sun will still be up if I leave the office at 5. Already, there is light in the sky when I leave (though the sun has technically already set.). I’m thrilled to leave January behind (finally!) and will be even more thrilled when February is over.

2. I’ve been exercising like a madwoman. Not really because I want to, but because J makes me and it gives me more weight watcher points that I can consume in the form of red wine. As much as I hate going to the gym, I have to admit I feel a helluva lot better when I leave then I did when I walked in. I’ve even gotten a pretty regular schedule down so I’m lifting weights twice a week. I actually really dig lifting weights.

3. I don’t actually have a #3 planned, but let’s see what happens… ah! I’ve going on vacation this month…not once but twice! We are going to see my super favorite sister in law (and super favorite sister in law’s boyfriend) in New Hampshire next weekend. They’re really two of my favorite people. The plan is to go cross country skiing. Never done it before. I feel like maybe I would like it, but also maybe I would hate it. Who knows? Not too dangerous… but maybe too tedious? We’ll see. Not sure where I’ll get skis from, but hopefully someone has figured that out. Then at the end of the month.. Texas! I have $1,500 saved up for lovely Mexican food (weight watchers will also be on vacation that week..good planning!), margaritas, and something from the spa. Maybe a massage. hmmmm…. Some people don’t like massages. I’m not one of those people. I don’t care if I’m naked. I’m paying good money, make me moan! And I don’t care if it’s a woman or a man either (this coming from the girl who can’t change into her gym clothes in front of other people at the gym).

I have also a positive spin on this shitty ass economy. Well, for one, J did not lose his job in his company’s layoffs, though he is applying for a different job in his company anyway. Plus, I haven’t lost my job yet. Yay. But even better than those two things, the sales can not be beaten!! I got a bunch of stuff from jcrew.com. Huge sale and I wouldn’t normally pay the exhorbitant prices there. But I do like their stuff and most of it does last a long time. I have a green sweater from there that I’ve had for years and years. But I got a merino wool black cardigan and some camisoles. The only bad thing about their final sales is that you can’t return them. So it’s too risky to buy pants in my opinion. Then… yesterday at Macy’s I bought two really nice shirts. They’re made of viscose and I’m not 100% sure what that is but I am trying to buy all natural fibers lately and I’m pretty sure that’s not a natural fiber. However, they are very cute and one of them is… get this… purple! I don’t think I have ever owned anything purple, ever. I’m diggin’ it. The other one is green. I have a bad habit of buying two of the exact same thing in different colors. Oh well.

What else? I”m making rice and bean tacos for dinner. I bought a new kind of rice… brown basmati. I was really hungry and then realized the rice took 50 minutes to cook. That’s hard core, man. But I’ve enjoying my glass of Fisheye Cab Sav. I’ve learned to love cheap wine. The economy is shit. I can adapt.

I’m also looking for an indoor clothesline, but no luck so far. Not sure what to get… a drying rack, a retractable line, or just stretch a rope up somewhere.

It’s cooooolllllld out there! I know it’s mid November, but this seems excessive. I got my parka out, along with my hat and gloves.According to my LL Bean weather station, it is currently 23.2 degrees outside. Nothing much going on here, so I’ll just recap my day:

Thursday night I got about an hour of sleep, so I had some catching up to do. So last night I got my bed preheating early and got in before 9. Then I slept gloriously until after 10 am this morning. I heard J get up at 6:30 and promptly fell back asleep, practically guilt free (but not entirely). One thing I’ve realized about msyelf lately is that I really don’t like conflict and I have an enormous amount of guilt. I’m working on that.

Then I had breakfast (an apple) followed immediately be lunch (it was 11 by then), which was leftover squash soup with a piece of bacon. I noticed a few of the small buttercup squashes were starting to rot. : ( Bummer… I hate to see good food go to waste. Especially good food that i put my blood, sweat, and tears into. Well, it least my sweat anyway.

Then we went to Sears to get some snow tires for the Scoobaru. Never had them before, but I’ve been sockign money into savings since I’ve gone all frugal.I got the Micheline X-Ice, which consumer report says are the best and evey guy at Sears has apparently bought for their wife (did they all get teh same script?) and their wives say the car drives like a tank. Sounds good. I haven’t had any big problems with the scooby…it’s spun out on me a few times, but it’s all wheel drive and has handled fairly well. Most of the problem for me is visibility and not knowing where the damn road is when it’s covered in snow. But I thought… why not invest a littel in my safety and peace of mind this winter? We’re carpooling a lot anyway so I can make J drive…and then we’ll both be safe. He’s been sweeter lately and a little more chivalrous, which is weird. He went into Sears adn took care of everything even though it’s my car. That’s very unusual, but I hate doing car stuff, so I really appreciated that.

Then we went to TJ Maxx just to look around. I just got paid yesterday and have $158 to last me for the next 2 weeks. It’s my own fault though because I put $715 in savings and then I bought a Diane Von Furstenberg dress for my Xmas party. It’s blue and a wrap dress and J says it’s very “70s.” I think he meant that as a bad thing, but I think it’s awesome. Here’s a link. And it was on sale. And I paid off all my credit card bills and darnit, if a girl can’t buy a sexy damn dress eveyr now and then, then this life is just not worth living! (too dramatic? I was channeling Scarlet O’Hara there)… http://www.dvf.com/dvf/browse/productDetailWithPicker.jsp?productId=D7098001G8&categoryId=cat60004 (in the blue trellis pattern)
Ooh la la, right?

Anyway, so I looked around TJ Maxx and realized why I don’t go window shopping more often…because then I realize all the things I could use. They have really nice stuff there and please dont’ judge me for saying so. It’s true! Stuff from all over the world, like for instance, German nutcrackers. nice! I could totally use one of those Adn then I looked for appropriate presents for my 2 year old nephew. I don’t know what the hell kids like, but I had fun looking. And then I remembered that I wanted to buy him a Redskins outfit. I also looked for things for my in-laws. But I’ve gotten my own family free books from bookmooch.com and some photographs, so I don’t want to spend more on the in-laws. Then we looked at bath and body works and I put on some lotion called “sensual” something to see if it turned J on. He did unzip my pants as we were making dinner, but still no action. : (

Anyway… then we went to Borders, where I ran into A, who is the girlfriend of F, who is one of J’s good friends. For a short time, I used to go to the gym wiht her and I like her. She invited us out/over tonight but F is working late, so now we are trying to stay up long enough to have a social life. Shouldn’t be so hard when you sleep till 10, but hey, I need a lot of sleep. I didn’t buy anything at Borders (of course, because I have a will of steel), but J bought Joseph Campbell’s “Primitive Mythology” that I already have, but whatever. I try to encourage him to like all the things that I love, and he’s come around to many of them…buddhism and Joseph Campbell being the major ones. In fact, he professes on a daily basis “Joseph campbell is a genius!” and I jsut say “yes, I know.”

Then…the gym. I’ve worked out 3 times this week, but twice on teh stair machine for 30 minutes. Hadn’t gotten a good run in so I thought I was due. It sucked though and was super boring. I did 20 minutes of very slow jogging, watching every second pass by, then walked a bit and managed to eak out 7 more minutes of jogging. Finally threw in the towell. I’ve lost no weight (in fact, I think I’ve gained some) since this “hard core” (accroding to my standards) exercising began, but what I’m really concerned about is setting a pattern for teh future. Getting in the habit of working out. And for the most part I like it. We went in Brunswick today and that’s a smaller gym. In Portland, there’s much better people watching so the time goes by faster.

Then we went grocery shopping, made dinner, took care of the in-laws cat and now I”m trying to warm up by drinking my Constant Comment. I turned the thermostat up to 65 which is super hot for us, but it’s so cold out there… I need to splurge. We have enough food in our freezer to last a nuclear holocaust, providing the power doesn’t go out.

I’ve become a bargain shopper. The bad news is that I keep spending money. I had a shitty day, beginning when my brown bag lunch broke open and fell in the rain first thing this morning. Not only did that destroy my lunch, but it also destroyed my hair, giving me a frizzy afro for the rest of the day. Then my shitty week of rewriting every damn thing I do six effing times, ending with my new interim boss just rewriting something herself. And what really pissed me off was that she didn’t do a half bad job. So why do I go to work anyway?

So all day I hoped and whined for a glass of red wine to take it all away. We decided not to go to the gym tonight and I had some coupons for a lounge at a hotel. Ok, so I knew it wasn’t going to be a super cool hangout spot with the very best food, but I had $50 to burn so what the hell. I ordered red wine and the waitress/barmaid looked at me like I was nuts. I tried to get specific…pinot noir? blank stare. Ok, just bring me something red, I dont’ care what it is. Needless to say, I got a cheap merlot in a very small glass. Nearly in tears by now. But the crappy nachos and mealy chicken fingers helped a little. J got a second order of chicken wings, I decided the cheap merlot wasn’t all that bad, and we left paying $10, keeping a $25 coupon for next time (cuz I was so good and I’m dying to go back) and leaving happy.

Then J wants to go to Sears because they have some sales on electric blankets (we live riveting lives I know). I’m chatty because of the wine so ask the first guy about snow tires. The regular kind would cost $320 but there’s a new super duper michelin kind that can help your car scale stalagtites for $450. Seems pricey and I’ve never had snow tires before, but I wouldn’t mind getting some this year. I drive long distances in crappy weather, and besides, they would last several years. But I didn’t buy any since I didn’t have my car.

Next salesperson I asked about servicing my sewing machine. It’s been all jammed up for about a year now. Even my mom tried to fix it but couldn’t. I guess they have a service cetner down the road but they couldn’t tell me how much it would cost. Mabye I’ll try one more time on my own and see if I can fix it.

We found the electric throws… 40% off and we keep our house pretty cold (around 60-63) and that would be nice for watching movies. I bought one. J bought a heated mattress pad, which I didn’t even know existed but now am totally thrilled about. The thing I hate the most about keeping the house so cold is getting into a freezing cold bed. i hate it i hate it i hate it. This thing rocks. It was 50% off and you can adjust each side of the bed separately. My side is preheating right now!! It’s not even very cold tonight but I don’t care.

Then… this afternoon as I was very classisly pacing on the sidewalk smoking a cigarette I realized that even though my lovely LL Bean red wood coat is very warm and comfy, it’s not super sexy. I feel like a linebacker in it. So I wistfully thought about buying a new coat, but you know, I’m on this frugal thing. So I’m wandering around in Sears and even though I wouldn’t normally look for clothes in Sears, I wandered into the coat section and found an absolutely adorable wool twead coat. Orginally $180, on sale for $69, plus I had a coupon so I got it for $62 including tax. It’s so cute I could die.

Well, I’m pooped and poor so I guess it’s time to jump into a hot bed. I can already foresee what my nights will be like. 1) get home 2) get in bed. Good night!

day than a summer day today. It’s cold and dreary, overcast and intermittently rainy. We were out late last night “gallactic bowling” with some friends. It was sort of fun, but I drank too much beer, ate too much bowling alley food, and well, I can’t deny it… bowling kicked my ass. I started off strong with a spare, then as I got tireder and tireder (I know that’s not a word) I got worse and worse and got many many gutter balls. But oh well, better than sitting home on my birthday. : )

So we got home around 1 in the morning and you know I normally go to bed at 9, so yeah, that was way past my bedtime. Oh, and J took me out to a nice dinner too. I had hanger steak and garlic “smashed” potatoes and a cosmo. Anyway, so I slept till 11, got up, ate breakfast and then we tried to do some zen-ifying of the office. We had these magazines on a bookshelf in teh office, some that we’ve been toting around since 1998! So I went through them ruthlessly and tossed 99% of them. It’s silly the things you keep. Then, with all that extra space, we decided to go to borders. To help with my book research, I bought a bunch of books about pirates. : ) Call it synchronicity, but everywhere I went there was pirate stuff everywhere. Or else we can just assume that pirates are very popular and I’ve just never noticed it before. You decide. Then, I got to chatting with the cashier at borders and she assured me that there is buried treasure off the coast of Cliff Island in Casco Bay, left by Captain Kidd. Yes, you’re wondering where all this pirate stuff came from out of the blue. You’ll see when my novel comes out, which coincidentally I have to start actually writing tomorrow! Exciting.

So no garden tasks accomplished today because of the poopy weather. I have officially crossed off zero of 26 items on my list. But I have high hopes to get at least 2 done tomorrow, in between novel writing, and piano practicing. I’ve also vowed to keep the kitchen, living room and bedroom clean. J has been cleaning constnatly and I frankly can’t handle the guilt. He wont’ stop! Damn him! NOOO! Sigh… the things I have to put up wtih from that man. It’s almost too much for me.

I’ve dropped the Enya song from teh recital program. My teacher thought I shoudl concentrate on teh other one (ouch). But she gave me some good tips and a plan of attack, so I feel good about it.

What else? Made squash soup, bought some sexy peek toe black Tahari heels from TJ Maxx ($29!), watched Deja Vu (quite good actually), snuggled with the kitties, and let J have the last bit of wine that I didn’t drink on Thursday night. Decided again that I should quit drinking and instead of beating msyelf up about it, I’m just going to decide to keep deciding that I should stop drinking and maybe one day, I will actually do it! Habits are hard, man. But I quit smoking, so I rock. I also bought a book by the Dalai Lama called “how to see yourself as you really are.” So that will be my bedtime reading tonight. Well, it’s almsot 9, so I think I’ll go up and get ready for bed, bring up some magazines ,and  some books and just relax and try to heal from all that bowling!

Oh, and my mother in law bought me a $50 gift certificate to the local greenhouse! We haven’t gotten the veggies planted yet. In fact, haven’t even rototilled the poop in yet, but maybe manana. So I will probably buy the veggies with the certificate. Need to figure out what to plant first though. We will do much better this year!

Well…first of all, I bought my kayak! My plan for the day was sleeping in, doing some mulching, working a short story for my final writing class… But J wanted to go to the map store and then hit Freeport and I needed to get my sister a present, so I went along. The map store is kinda cool. Delorme is a big map company and they’re based in Yarmouth, which is about 20 miles south of where we live. I drive by it every day on the way to work. They have the biggest rotating globe in the world, or somethign like that. She’s called “Eartha.” Anyway, it’s sort of one of those quaint tourist traps along Route 1, along with the big Indian and god knows what else. I looked around for a birthday present for my other sister (she’s a cartographer and her birthday is coming up soon too) but found nothing. J bought some charts of the bay near our house where we want to go kayaking.

So off to Beans. We’ve been planning on buying kayaks since last summer but were waiting for the “paddlefest” which is an event in June where you can try the different boats out in the water and get 10% off. But we wanted to have an idea of what we wanted so we stopped in at their paddling store. Well.. turns out they had 10% off all boats, 20% off all accessories…that’s huge when you have to buy everything, so we bought everhthing. Actually J didn’t get a kayak since his wasn’t in stock but I got the beautiful Necky Eliza in Lime green. Here she is.

Pretty, huh? : ) I got really stressed out though. But it’s over and she’s home and I’m under budget.

Thursday I finally went to my eye doctor (did I already write about all this?) Basically I’m allergic to my contacts so I have to wear my glasses for the next month. I’m taking 2 different eye drops 4 times a day. They still feel sore but they look a little clearer. I also bought 2 pairs of prescirption glasses..high definition too… Kate Spade.. $1000. What am I doing? But they’re cute.

Weight loss war… not going well. I’m actually up a pound. I feel like I’m covered in a big roll of blubber. But I keep eating and drinking.. J says it’s my writing that causes me to have bad habits. But that’s not true because I hardly ever write. Tonight though I started a short story for my final writing class on Tuesday. 833 words and I have yet to discover a plot. I’m sure it will show itself eventually though. The openeing 2 paragraphs kick ass though… so much potential…

I’m beat. Worked all day yesterday at a kids festival for work. Ha! Yeah, I know.. how did I get that gig? Kid hater that I am. But they were actually wicked cute. The great thing about kids is that the littlest things can make them so happy. So it wasn’t bad and I made $300 in overtime. Carpooled with my boss and that was ok, but he asked me some questions about some issues that are gonig on and I didn’t really want to get into it. But whatever. I tried to be nice but honest.

Other than that, I’m totally broke! But the weather is awesome, the daffodils are blooming so life is fucking grand!

Turn your head. one day I’ll figure that one out.

Oh, so get this. Remember the bird mites from last year? We had a bird’s nest under the porch and when the birdies left in late July, their little mitey mates decided that I was breakfast, lunch, and dinner for them. Then they got in the bed, and all over the house adn I thought I’d go insane. But we did eventually get rid of them. So I get home yesterday and J says to me “I watched the bird build her nest under the porch all day. Because of my new buddhist beliefs I can’t remove the nest, so you should do that tomorrow.” Um, yeah. The bird mites were absolute hell, but I cant’ ruin a bird’s nest. The poor thing slaved away on it all day. : ( So I was basically in tears and stressed out. But this morning I looked online and it is apparently against the law to do anything to a wild bird. yay! I was happy. J said “nobody would ever know” but I’m a law abiding citizen so I’m not touching it. Next year, we will have to really wire off teh  porch so she can’t get back under there. My plan this year is to watch closely and as soon as they are out of the nest, to get it down and as far away from the house as possible. And keep the miticide handy. fun stuff.

So, to recap the day, I went out looking for a birthday present and spent $1700 on kayak supplies. But in the end, I got my sister a cute gingham sleeveless buttom up top from beans and a packet of Stonewall kitchen snickerdoodle mix. At least I’m keeping the money in Maine. Even if it’s all made in china.

And that is the weekly update. I’m sooooo ready for bed right now. It’s 7:25 so I guess I have time for a quick nap before bed~

maybe? Today was gorgeous…makes the winter worth it (as long as it doesn’t come back). Went for a walk by the bay but forgot my coat, and also forgot that it’s always colder by the water. But it was nice… lots of people out on the trail.

Ok, now on to important stuff… I had a life altering experience at Victoria’s Secret today. Yes, I’m going to talk about underwear - a lot and in great detail. Fair warning! Ok… so I don’t buy underwear very often because nobody sees it and it’s too expensive. Then every few years I’ll just go out and replace everything. I’ve been noticing that my bras are really not working. Most of them are just worn out and the little latchy things are half broken. Then the ones I do like I’m spilling out of… did I always spill out over them? Am I getting fat? Or have they never fit and I just never noticed? I’m starting to think that I’ve worn ill fitting clothes my whole life and never noticed. Or my weight fluctuates so much that I’m just used to things either being too tight or too loose.

So.. I knew something was wrong. I’ve heard about these places where they measure you since they say 80% of women wear bras that don’t fit. I couldn’t find one, so I was thinking that I was wearing a size too small, then I thought I needed to go up a cup size (which seemed a little extreme). But today as my boobs were flopping all over the place I just couldnt’ take it anymore so I went to Victoria’s Secret today at lunch time and as luck would have it the manager came over and asked if I needed anything and then she mentioned that every woman should get fitted every 6 months and they could measure me right then and there… perfect! So I got measured and it turns out I should be wearing a size 34, which I have never in my life worn. I’ve always worn a 36 or a 38… turns out I was wrong. The cup size is iffy… I’m somewhere between cups so I still spill out a little but the next one would be way too big… ANYWAY… I feel awesome! I feel supported and confident and like I’m not hanging out all over teh place. I bought 3 bras, then some other stuff too. : ) I love shopping.

Ok… so that’s about all I got. : ) Good stuff.

for a pair of pants that looks good on my weird ass body. I’ve already tried on every pair of pants in the women’s department at Macy’s. Then I hit the eddie bauer outlet and the gap, now I’m just online shopping. Ordered 3 pairs from Eddie Bauer. I really like the look of straight legged pants, you know the kind that is made for women with no shape… Fortunately it finally dawned on me that I have shape, and a whole helluva lot of it. I’ve noticed a lot of retailers are marketing things toward “curvy” women, which is good. Now I’m not going to make any blanket statements over what is good or bad for a woman to look like.. because I have and do know women who would like more curves. Let’s face it, we can’t have it all. I’ve got boobs and an hourglass figure, but I also have cellulite and a saggy butt. So be it. Even with 10 or so extra pounds, I get away with skirts and high heels pretty well, but when it comes to pants, I just look like a frump with a saggy ass.

But I got my first shipment of pants from my online binge. This one from Eddie Bauer. They are work pants, a little frumpy, but they are soooo comfy, that I’m keeping one pair and sending back 2 pairs. My next shipment is coming from Banana republic, but I have a feeling they’re not going to fit. Just as well as I could use the $250 credit on my credit card bill. Where can I try next? If I can find a pair of pants that really looked good on me, I’d pay a lot of money. But I can’t think of anywhere else to try.

The weight loss war began today. We’ve decided on 8 pounds. I did pretty good today. But now there is some red wine and yogurt covered pretzels involved… I have a total chick weekend planned. Exciting! I’ve got Jane Austen Book Club and Atonement lined up for my DVD viewing pleasure… along with the remainder of the Mists of Avalon. Other than that, I have no plans except sleeping in.

Some snow has melted, revealing parts of the garden I haven’t seen since late fall (did I say taht last night?). The two crocuses that I can see have some pale yellow buds on them. There were 2 deer out there this morning, which means it must be time to spray some Liquid Fence on my bushes. Last spring they devoured my puff ball bush and some junipers before I realized what was happening. Puff ball got butchered by the snow, but I have high hopes for her. I think it is a type of chaemocyparis (however you spell that). so cute! I never even cut back my perennials in teh fall because we had such an early snowfall and it never went away. It would be nice if it were warm and sunny this weekend, but it still feels like winter here, as depressing as that is.

I’m throwing a bridal shower for my friend at work and have to plan it. It’s stressful. I don’t like doing things like that. Too much pressure. Basically I don’t like doing anything where other people are involved. Still no cute guys at work. Where did they go? It’s depressing when no cute guy smiles at you in the course of an entire day. Or week. Maybe I can get my husband to smile at me. Hey! Hey you! Over here! YOoooooo hooooo! He’s playing with his new macro lens for his camera. My eyes hurt. Actually they have hurt for 2 months now. Ramble ramble ramble. Time for a movie… tonight is “no country for old men.”

Easy to install, but does not track all possible stats. Most often used in sites which do not allow javascript to be inserted.

double income,  no kids, that is. Tonight I picked J up (actually he met me at my work and left his car there) then we went to the local audubon headquarters, where they have some trails and stuff, to go for a walk. Then we drove around Falmouth (sort of a ritzish place where people are rude and snobby) and found a little deli to have dinner at. The people were super nice, which is unusual in snobville and I had a salami sandwich and a perrier. They also sold wine there and italian ingredients and stuff. So as we left, J said it cost 20 something dollars!! For 2 freaking sandwiches, a bag of chips and 2 bottled drinks… !! We’re in MAINE. ?? But J is in a big buddhist phase so he said “well whatever, we don’t have kids” then I remembered there was an acronym for that… double income no kids.. dinks!

I feel like people at work must think I’m loaded because all of a sudden I’m spending money like water. Got a $1500 bonus today so my kayak fund is complete! I’m thinking about this one. http://www.llbean.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?storeId=1&catalogId=1&langId=-1&categoryId=49698&sc1=Search&feat=sr Hello, you sexy thang!

And yes, I’m still buying a mini. Change my mind on the color daily but I’m back on a blue kick… with white racing stripes? ahhhh… : ) And then there’s Africa, which I still have not booked. Me and J are getting along better but I have to admit that I checked out the Portland apartment listings just to see if I could afford rent. Is that bad? But I know I couldn’t handle that kind of stress. Breaking up is hard to do. Especially when you’re married, have a house, 2 cats, and no particularly good reason to do it. Then I think to myself, if I wasn’t married what would I be doing right now? PRobably eating dinner by myself, surfing the net, being depresed, getting drunk alone and hating myself. So….

Yeah. Pretty much the same thing as I’m doing now, but with less money and no one to talk to! Isn’t it funny how the older you get it seems the less your friends count. I have friends but  I would have absolutely no one to hang out with if I was single. I suppose I would just move back down south (though I would deny that) so at least I could go to my sisters houses for dinner sometimes.

But… I have decided to live each day, day by day, and whatever happens happens. Is that the most redundant sentence ever? Things work themselves out. You know… I feel bad complaining because I’m ecstatically happy a lot. And I think about couples who are miserable together who stay for whatever stupid reason… and people who have multiple scelerosis, etc. etc. and well.. you know where I’m going with this. I guess maybe we all just always feel like we could be happier. Except some days I really don’t feel like that. Some days I’m as happy as I can be.

So fuck it. I’ve been watching Mists of Avalon, which one of my coworkers loaned me after I told her that I really got into things like Renaissance Festivals (remind me not to tell anyone that I like Star Trek). It’s good… very scandalous.. incest and sex and really sexy long haired medieval men. Speaking of sexy men… I haven’t seen many lately. It’s like they all disappeared from work. Makes life a little more boring but luckily I’ve been super busy anyway. Oh.. smoking. So the quitting smoking effort hasn’t been going great. Why did I start again? But I’ve only been having maybe 4 a day… one or two on teh way to work. one or two at luncthime. one or two on teh way home. That’s not too bad.

Getting good use out of my martini glasses. Still bored as hell at night. Need to find something to do. Might even investigate this thing called “TV” (out of pure desperation).

go by too fast. I feel like I had a long list of things to do and haven’t really done any of them. J is on a clean kick and has been nagging me constantly about the house, so I had to do some cleaning yesterday. I don’t mind it, but I can’t stand the nagging. I feel like he follows me around and if I drop a crumb on the floor, I get an earful. ARRGHH! We’re bickering a lot.

Did some caulking yesterday. I thought I liked it but it got old fast. Oh boy.. my morning pages were just like this this morning, full of negativity! I can’t help it. I can’t get out of this funk. I’m unhappy about everything and can think of nothing positive to say. But that’s not entirely true. I’ve been practicing some new songs on the piano - the Harry Potter theme and Walking in Memphis. They’re both hard, but I just need to accept the fact that to be good at a song at the level I’m at, it will take practice. J was playing some movie songs - he has some sort of music service - and they all sounded so beautiful and I wanted them all. One of my favorite movies ever is The Piano with Holly Hunter (and this was even before I played the piano) and it has such beautiful music in it. So I downloaded some of that and took one look at it and realized it was way beyond me. OH well. : ) Would also like to the get the Cider House Rules soundtrack as that is really lovely too.

Paid some bills…depressing! I did a huge freelance project and I don’t even know where the money went. Need to save some money for two trips this month - going to Boston for a bachelorette party, and then going to VA to see my sisters. Have some extra money coming in - a bonus coming up at work plus the $600 rebate check from Dubwa. But those are mostly going to go toward my kayak. I really flip flop between wanting to just buy what I want (I’m in the prime of my life. Enjoy it!) and being more frugal. Did I already say that I wanted to buy a sexy red mini? I really do need to buy a car that is more economical on the gas mileage.

Thought of two new dumb things that I’m afriad of: 1) getting my car inspected at a new place and 2) getting a manicure. Two more things to conquer (baby steps). My nails are a mess.

Well, I need to do my weight lifiting, then either go outside and freeze or go downstairs to the treadmill and inhale fiberglass insulation for my walk. Making Mexican Meatloaf for dinner… happy easter!

I got em! Ugh… I’m obsessed with my appearance lately and let me tell you, it’s a waste of damn time because I am a hideous creature. So I’ve concluded it’s a combination of winter uglies (we all get them… pasty white, dry skin, red eyes, big, spreading ass, dry frizzy hair… yeah, that’s me) and pms (so maybe I’m being a little hard on myself). had a very bad hair day. Got home, took another shower and just started over - just to prove that if I spent long enough on my hair and makeup, I could look at least ok. Which I think I’ve done, though it is still just ok. I think I need to chop my hair off essentially.

Went to a place called Mardens because I heard they got a shipment of banana republic clothes in. It’s like a warehouse where they buy overstock things and stuff from places that get hit by hurricanes, etc. First time in there… kinda scary. But I bought a few summer shirts to get a jump on things. Because we’re already up to 30 degrees! Swimsuit season is right around the corner!

So here I sit with my cape cod cocktail. I broke my last martini glass, so now I just call them cape cods instead. Just vodka and cranberry juice, which is what my “martini” essentially was. I’ve paired it down and simplified it over the years. At one point it was actually a martini. : )

I’ve been smoking and drinking and eating crappy and getting no exercise and suffering from mucho stress at work so - surprise! - I feel like shit. No mas. Tomorrow I am getting on a walking plan that I found in prevention magazine. It says I can lose 30 pounds in 6 weeks. ha, right. But I can shoot for 10 pounds. And I’m going to eat better, drink water, drink less alcohol, and stop smoking. again.

Ok, I sound like a teenager. Surely I can find something insightful and intelligent to talk about… hmm… Well, this is a stretch, but what the hell. We rented the movie Beowolf the other night…computer animation, sexy men, violence, gore… it was ok. But it made me think of this movie I saw years and years ago… I think I was in college and still lived at home. Or else I lived by myself. I know I saw it on Bravo at 4 in the morning and ended up balling my damn eyes out at the end. It was called Rocket Gibraltar. Hard to explain… but I got it from netflix to see if I actually really love this moive. I have realized over the years that my judgement at 4 am is not always the best.

So I may watch that tonight, do my weight lifting, force a veggie down my throat (first one today!), and get to bed early. Yes folks… the life of a 33 year married woman really IS this exciting. I’m not just making it up for effect. : )

Other than that, I hate my job and I’m really looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow.