I know I have been awfully quiet as of late. I'm not even sure if anyone reads anymore. I never lost my desire to write, I just find it hard to let it all spew out when this site is so publicly known (not famous per se but known to friends and family in real life). Plus, as I get older and take on more normal grown up responsibilities, I find it so hard to carve out some time to write.
Read MoreToday, I am thankful for flannel pajama pants, a nice soft bed, my laptop, a boyfriend that cooks me dinner and a chill in the air that makes all of that seem more delicious than it sounds.
If I had stuck to my normal Monday evening routine from the past couple of weeks, I’d probably just be winding down from dinner and cleaning the back of the house (bedrooms, bathrooms, hallway). As it is, I’m sitting in my bed in soft flannel pajamas, mindlessly surfing the Internet and writing this post and that’s about all I’ve accomplished tonight. And I don’t feel a bit guilty about it.
The past few weeks have been filled with copious amounts of lists and planning for a surprise party we threw for my mom’s 50th birthday this past Saturday night and since I go into whirlwind type-A geek mode for those things, I was all about the party and, with the exception of my daily and weekly chores, everything else fell to the wayside.
(Seriously, I geeked the hell out for it. I had a clipboard and lists! And I made posters – with glue and cutout letters and facts about 1959 and Hawaii – it was a luau theme – and a collage board of pictures. I cooked food and planned menus and OH EM GEE was it FREAKIN’ FUN but OH SO TIRING! It may be quite awhile before I try to pull of a feat like that again!)
Obviously, since it was a surprise, I couldn’t mention it here on the off chance that my mom stumble over and read about the plans we had in store but it has passed and all went well, for the most part. Surprises are always tricky and it’s amazing how one kink in the schedule can create a domino effect that comes close to pretty much ruining weeks and weeks of planning and trickery.
The lesson learned over the past month or so and with planning this party is that I am much more effective if I take my life one week at a time. I was notorious for overwhelming myself with attempts to plan weeks and months out and I don’t know when or where it clicked that hey, shit happens, no matter how much you plan, something, somewhere is going to change. And hey, it would be much easier if you took it one week at a time and dealt with things as they come.
And gosh darn it, that works!
Granted, I still try to do my meal plans for a few weeks and bigger events certainly get penciled in but, for instance, (and it makes so much sense writing it that I want to smack myself in the head), there is no way I could concentrate on Thanksgiving while I was planning this party. And there is no way I can concentrate on Christmas until Thanksgiving is over. (Although, I do have most of Christmas planned, it’s just getting it done and putting it into effect that I won’t do until after Thanksgiving.) (Also, I’m not even doing much for Thanksgiving but it’s an EVENT so it has to be treated as so in my time line of events and planning.)
AND THANKSGIVING! OMG THANKSGIVING! I don’t know why I’m so excited about it except maybe that I’ve been so busy these past couple of months that a day of gorging on all that deliciousness and collapsing in front of the TV in cozy sweatpants just seems right up my alley now (despite half of that being quite a few weekends this year). I LOVE me some turkey and REAL mashed potatoes (I will eat instant in an emergency but do NOT come near me with them on Thanksgiving!) and stuffing and corn and this broccoli/cauliflower/Ritz cracker casserole my mom makes. And pie. Lots and lots of pie! Dutch apple for me, thanks.
But seriously, normally, Thanksgiving is just a delicious treat in between Halloween (pretty much my favorite) and Christmas (a close second). This year, I didn’t do ANYTHING at home for Halloween. We got dressed up and went to a party at a friends house but I just had no spirit this year and my house was devoid of anything autumn or Halloween, save for a few pumpkin candles here and there. I have yet to even decide if I will decorate for Christmas this year as it seems a bit of a waste when we will be out of town. But we didn’t do much last year because I was sick and the year before we had just moved into the house and were going out of town so we skipped decorations then as well. (Who knows – I can say this now but in a few weeks I’ll be bouncing around here like a freak, still eating leftover turkey and demanding Steve haul out the Christmas decorations.)
But I am excited for Thanksgiving this year. I want food. Delicious, yummy, pants-unbuttoning, falling asleep while watching football, food.
I am also off Wednesday and Friday and will actually be using that to do some side projects that I’ve been wanting to concentrate on. There’s some house stuff and some Internet stuff and some general organization of things. I really want to sit down and make a list of things I’d like to do during the holidays. Like experiences – build a gingerbread house, do the Festival of Lights, stuff like that. So maybe I can get in the Christmas spirit and enjoy the season without feeling like I was rushed through it in nothing but chaos and traveling and clouds of wrapping paper.
I’m hoping to find a clean and pretty layout to put up here with some sort of jQuery featured slider but I haven’t found anything that has overly appealed to me yet. I’m quite finicky though so it’s a neverending quest. But part of the plans are cleanup on all of my projects so I’ll feel super accomplished if I can get those done.
So that’s life in a nutshell. Just humming along as usual here, curiously upbeat and optimistic. I like how I’m managing things now because it makes me feel like I have more time to enjoy life instead of manage it. I just seriously hope I can maintain it. I figure if I can keep it through this busy holiday season, then I pretty much can’t fail afterwards. If not, well, then I’m doomed to live a life of squalor and excess and laziness …..
Hmmm, that doesn’t sound too bad after all! LOL
Hope everyone is having a great week and if you don’t see me before then, have a wonderful and delicious Thanksgiving!
(On a side note and probably TMI but who cares – I feel awful because earlier I told Steve he could join me in my sloth and laziness of lounging in bed because I wanted his company and I guess he incurred that I wanted some “quality time” together and I never reciprocated. And he kind of went back in to play video games with his friends saying “I’ll go play with people who want to hang out with me”. I know he was joking and I know he doesn’t hold a grudge but damn, do I feel awful that it didn’t even OCCUR to me …. am I stupid or just a girl?? Hahaha!)
Holy crap on a cracker, there’s a blog here? Something I can write in every day if I’d like? Pffft, who knew? Apparently not me since it’s been close to a month and a half since my last update. I feel like this is confession …
Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It’s been <too many to count> days since I have blogged …
(Look at me trying to act like I’m Catholic. The closest I come is that I was baptized. I tried to ask Steve because he did all of that good Catholic child stuff up until high school and then he quit. Which, apparently it’s like a job that you can just stop. They even have a colloquial name for it … lapsed Catholic, which basically means you don’t give enough of a shit to care about the rituals and traditions anymore.) But I digress, because I didn’t disappear for a month and a half to talk about religion. I would just look like an idiot (and probably offend what little readers I have left) if I tried.
But no seriously, I know, I’m bad, I’m awful at this. I just can’t force myself to give up on it. Actually, these past few months, there has been more I wanted to write about than in the past few years. My problem is that I’m such a damn perfectionist that I’m not good at snippets and I haven’t figured out how to let go of the ideal of a complete and concise blog entry, one that has a beginning, middle and end and tells a story and makes a point. Or something like that. So instead of trying, I just don’t do it and then it gets daunting when I do try it because there is JUST.SO.MUCH and I’m writing four or five pages worth of crap that makes no sense because it’s all thrown together and one long rambling mess of I did this and went here and tried this and etcetera and so on.
And the days, they just disappear. I keep telling people the older I get, the faster time seems to go. One minute its January and then I turn around and the holidays are staring me in the face. I’m closer to thirty than I like, all my siblings and cousins are growing up, all my parents and and grandparents are getting older. Time moves so fast that it’s hard to get a grasp on it. Even these past few weeks, we’ve been making plans for the holidays and other stuff and it’s like oh, we have three weeks, no, wait, two weeks, holy shit, it’s just days away.
And of course, it flies when you’re having fun!
One thing has changed that has consumed a lot of my time these past few months: me. In a sense that I stopped being so lazy and started making a point to give myself a routine that worked. One that allowed me to be more organized and to effectively accomplish the tasks that needed to get done in a timely manner. I don’t know how it started or what forced the change but basically, at some point a few weeks ago, I realized we had A LOT of things coming up this holiday season and I need to budget them into my finances as well as my time.
I made up cleaning lists, ones that allowed me to do one area of the house in about half-an-hour each day during the week (my weekly list) and ones that forced me to take care of daily chores that made the weekly ones easier (my daily list).
That change alone really revamped how I spent my time. No longer would I come home and mindlessly veg out on the couch, playing pointless games on the laptop or watching TV (it could be argued that I never posted or did tasks during that time either and that’s correct because even when I was “vegging” out, I was so exhausted that I didn’t do anything on the computer that required me to think). Instead, I started coming home, cooking (or finishing) dinner, doing my daily chores and whatever room that needed to be cleaned that evening, watching whatever shows came on that night, then bed.
Of course, this freed up time on the weekends and I spent that free time, plus whatever I had during the week, doing productive things, things that needed to be taken care of. Paying bills, returning emails from family and friends, working on some business related stuff. We also spent more time with friends and I didn’t have to feel guilty about it.
Because we’ve been trying to cut down on expenses here, I spend a lot of time “managing” the house to be more efficient financially. Budgeting in events and meals so that we can buy only groceries that we need and will use.
I’ve just been more organized and more active and more productive and unfortunately, that means some of my hobbies have suffered more than ever. But I’m working towards a balance and have been doing quite a few things in my Internet life on the back end. So eventually, I think this is going to get me to a place where I can have life in order, both online and off!
Coming soon are the monthly love posts for September and October, because I am that behind!
Life always seems the craziest when you’re actively trying not to be busy at all.
Last summer was rough for us because we had so many people staying with us throughout June, July and August and we vowed that we wouldn’t repeat that this year. We made plans to not make plans at all.
The problem with that is we either end up doing absolutely nothing at all, thus turning into literal sloths who serve no other purpose than to make the ass prints in our couch bigger. Or things end up appearing so unexpectedly that before we know it, we’ve blown through seven or ten days and can’t tell you the last time we got to enjoy our sloth states.
You’d think as much time as I spend being a sloth, I’d be able to think up good things to write. Instead, you’ll get a series of snippets.
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This past Monday, I wake up at quarter til seven to the dog going batshit crazy in the office, which is where his perch is located that lets him watch over the neighborhood. And this was his ‘Get the hell of my property!’ batshit crazy bark not the little ‘The neighbor kids are walking across the street’ chatter. I shoot out of bed and squint through the blinds to see two cop cars pulled up to our driveway and Steve standing behind his truck gesturing towards our backyard. So of course, I panic a bit because early morning and cops being at my house doesn’t bode well. I throw something semi-decent on and walk outside to find Steve and a cop standing on the side of the house looking towards the park that backs up to our yard while the other cop is trying to navigate his way across the tiny creek. And in that park is a car.
That’s a silly place to park a car!
I asked what was going on and Steve said he was leaving for work and noticed the car in the park so he called the cops because that’s not exactly a thorughfare. The cop then explained that two vehicles had been stolen from the neighborhood the night before and that the people they thought did it actually lived close enough to the park that they weren’t surprised to find the vehicle there. Said they had been to the woman’s house enough for domestic disturbances and that she was always doped up on crazy pills and stuff. Steve then headed off to work and they spent the next hour or so making calls and trying to get into the vehicle before they finally towed it out of there.
Needless to say, I spent the week worrying a bit because the last thing you need is to find a stolen vehicle pretty much in your backyard. Guess it’s time to get the security system installed.
At least I got to close the day out with Conan O’Brien on The Tonight Show. I love him! I truly do.
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Work kicked my ass this past week on so many levels. So many levels that I’m not going to discuss in public because that would not be kosher. I can disagree with my job but I need it and am thankful to have it at this period in time. I just don’t like change and am not good with it. I much prefer for things to continue exactly the way they are because with change comes stress and with stress comes with an unhappy me and an unhappy me is not fun at all.
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My toes, on the other hand, are healing. They’re still swollen and still painful but they feel surprisingly better than they did before the doctor aspirated the nail. On Friday, I went back to work but had to wear the slip-on shoes I’d bought when I had my blood clot because when I tried to put on normal shoes, the foot protested by sending searing pain up my foot and into my leg. I was able to remove the band-aid Friday night only to find that the hole was still oozing a bit but even that was over by Saturday morning.
Now they’re just black and blue and yellow and green and I can even move them. The swelling has gone down and the oozing has stopped. I just have to remember to take it easy because they won’t hurt for some time and then I’ll walk on them wrong or catch my foot as I’m walking, as I did last night, and it’ll hurt like crazy again. I thought I was able to stop the pain meds because I was feeling better, but I’m feeling better because of the meds. If I’m off them completely the foot kills and it’s the worst if I’m standing still. It’s easiest when I have the meds in me and my foot is elevated with nothing on it, because even the weight of the blanket hurts.
This was Saturday’s progress! It ain’t pretty.
When I went into work Friday, I slipped my sock off and showed my boss who looked right at me and was like, “You know, you could’ve just asked for the day off!” then smiled.
Apparently, when I do it, I do it big.
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I finally finished the closet reorganization that was the cause to the whole toe debacle. Steve had been after me for months (ok, years) to go through our closet and my clothes because well, he’s a man and to him anything more than five shirts and two pairs of pants is too many clothes.
But it was time. I still had clothes in there from college. Skinny girl clothes that I just wasn’t ready to part with because you know, I might fit into them again (we all know how much of a truth that really is). I mean, there are a few favorites that you could hang onto for that reason but they either need to really be your favorite or they need to be classics with style that outlasts trends. An entire closet does not count towards that rule.
Plus, I was having a really hard time finding a place to put things when I did laundry. And I was wearing the same thing over and over again. It just needed to be done.
I thought it was going to take a week. Had it not been for my injury, I would have finished it in an afternoon. That being said, it took a total of one day.
Here’s the before:
Before: The Closet
That is a walk in closet big enough for two people to walk in. If you shut the door, you could fit three, maybe four people. In other words, that’s a lot of clothes. All the ones hanging pretty much consist of my clothes with the exception of a small sliver to the far left that is Steve’s and that starts approximately where the solid burgundy shirt is. The basket on the floor is overflow laundry that has yet to be put away. And the entire left side on the top shelf is my clothes. The back wall on the shelf is Steve’s. That’s not including our two dressers that we have.
Here’s the after:
After: The Closet
It still looks a little crowded but that’s purely because I ran out of hangers, otherwise, the shirts on the top left shelf would have been hung as well. Also, Steve didn’t humor and go through his clothes. But unlike before, everything is organized. The entire left side is now mine and is organized into categories: work shirts and blouses, crossovers (i.e. plain cotton shirts that I can wear to work or out with friends), nice casual shirts (most of them are printed so I can’t wear them to work), polos & button downs and long sleeves. Sweatshirts and sweaters have been moved into our guest bedrooms closet which has been deemed the winter closet. Steve now has the entire back wall with space for his nice shirts and his work shirts. The tucker on the floor contains overflow clothes that he needs to go through but since it has a lid, it serves a dual purpose: as a shelf. Which was an awesome find because I was going to purchase shelves but with this, I can just pile his work pants onto it and they are accessible without me having to worry about putting them into drawers or throwing them on the top shelf (they’re heavy Dickies pants so they were too much for the shelf). The clear boxes and the smaller tucker contain my shoes, the brown bedding is overflow winter bedding for our bed and there’s finally room to tuck the hamper back in the corner. And what you can’t see is that on the top to the left are three of the fabric grocery bags you can buy almost anywhere now. One contains bathings suits, extra bras and my heavy fuzzy winter socks, the other two contain hats and accessories (handbags and belts) respectively. And my drawers, at least, are organized for pants and others things that can’t be hung.
Everything now has it’s place and that’s one more thing that I can mark off my list.
It’s makes my internalized OCD very, very happy!
(I’d like to say the pain of the toe injury was worth it, but it really wasn’t. I mean, I’m crazy, but not that crazy!)
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The only other things worth noting is that we had a very nice dinner with some great friends last night at TGI Friday’s, of all places (they have never been high up on my list of restaurants) and then went to see The Hangover, which was absolutely fabulous and as phenomenally funny as the trailer leads you to believe.
And also, this guy:
SO.FREAKIN’.HOT!
Seriously, I’ve had celebrity crushes before but he is easily one of the best. Right now, it’s him and Gerard Butler, haunting my dreams. Love, love, love! Funny as well as smokin’ hot … my kind of man!
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That’s about it though – the most exciting parts of my week crunched into totally unrelated recaps. I’m hoping for a better week this time around but only time will tell. Here’s one final image from this week.
Hangin’ Around …
One of the things about living in the South … there’s always strange visitors right outside your front door!
The past few weeks I’ve made small efforts offline to give myself a boost of inspiration for blogging. I’ve bought a book of questions and a Pocket Muse. I even took inspiration from her and bought a book of blog ideas (I bought the Kindle version for my iPod touch which is awesome because it’s one less book I have to store and it saved me three bucks!)
I just haven’t put them into fruition yet. But soon!
May was had it ups and downs. We were either really busy on the weekends or did absolutely nothing and I was too tired to do anything productive because I’ve been so busy at work. We had a graduation, a trip to Myrtle Beach, movie trips, roller derby, dinners, and other various social events. I’ve been putting in really long weeks at work because of the fact that I’m a bit overloaded at the moment.
I even forgot to do my Monthly Love for May! (Stay tuned for it this weekend)
So very soon I will be putting some of these ideas into practice. I think I’ve got things squared away a bit to where I can do some real writing. This week was supposed to be the week but this week ended up being the week from hell.
Due to some unforseen circumstances at work, I had Wednesday off and thought I would end up having Thursday and Friday off as well. I was already in a shitty mood because of those unforseen circumstances and the days I had been at work had been crappy. But Wednesday, I figured I needed to do something to be productive and to keep my mind off of shit I was worrying about.
So I decided to tackle my closet, which was in desperate need of cleaning. Plus, I had recently read a post on This Young House about how John and Sherry organized their clothing and got even more inspired. I had clothes that had to be gone through – piles and piles of stuff that didn’t fit me or got thrown into piles because I had no where else to put them. Tons of Steve’s stuff, shoes, bedding that was stored, etc. And it just all needed to be cleaned out.
I started Wednesday afternoon around 1pm and within in a few hours, I was done with my clothes. I had mounds of stuff that I need donate or sell and was able to get through my drawers too. Now, all of my pants are in my dresser, seperated into jeans, work pants, summer capris/shorts and khakis. There’s also drawers for tank tops, pajama/lounge shirts, and pajama pants/shorts. The smaller drawers have underwear, dress socks and athletic socks. In my closet, I was able to hang up mostly all of my shirts and seperate them into work-dressy shirts, plain cotton shirts that I can wear with khakis to work, polos, casual print shirts/blouses and just regular cotton tshirts.
Then I had a bright idea that almost killed me.
I had overloaded the hanging rack in our closet to where it was kind of coming out of the wall. So after fixing that, I figured I’d move all of my sweaters and sweatshirts into the unused guest bedroom cloest and make a “winter” closet. We don’t have much of a winter here so when it does get cold enough to need that stuff, it won’t bother me much to go into another room to get it (plus, the room is literally across the hall from the master bedroom).
The problem was that closet still had some other stuff stored in it, like decorations and overflow linens. And they were kind of stored haphazardly. But it was late and I was trying to wrap things up so I just started hanging the overflow in there and figured I’d go through and organize that closet later. Well, as I was hanging a batch of things, the stuff in the closet got a big dislodged and these slate tile wall decorations that I had wrapped in paper and just sat on the top of a pile of things slid off the pile and fell from about waist level onto the three major toes of my right foot. And they fell edge side down, not flat side.
Needless to say, it hurt pretty bad. I immediately yelled and screamed and then started crying because it hurt so bad. Steve came running back as I was hobbling to the bathroom because my first instinct was to run it under cold water. By the time I sat on the edge of the tub, I was almost hyperventilating, the pain was that great. Truthfully, it was more the shock and the adrenaline rush that was making me react the way I did.
Anyway, for any of you followng on Twitter, you saw this pic of it. Steve immediately put ice on it and we checked to see if I could move my toes and everything seemed ok. I was still panicking and it still hurt so very badly but I could walk and I could move my toes and truthfully, I didn’t want to spend $100 for an emergency room visit for them to tell me it was just bruised.
We kept it iced and elevated and I figured I’d suck it up. Steve’s a mechanic and has hit his fingers the same way before, where the blood wells up under the nail. He’s even drilled a hole in the nail before to relieve the pressure and that’s what he recommended we do. Normally, I would of probably let him do it but being that I’m still on the blood thinners, I was concerned about the DIY method at home that would probably induce quite a bit of bleeding.
Well, let’s just say that last night was one of the longest nights ever. No matter which way I laid with my foot elevated, it hurt so much that the pain was making my leg spasm. My big toe throbbed and was hard and it felt like my heartbeat was in my toe.
I couldn’t sleep because it hurt so bad and the spasms were disruptive. I seriously contemplated waking Steve up at 4am to take me to the emergency room. But I still couldn’t be ok with paying that much copay and waiting in the ER forever especially when I could go into Urgent Care at 8am with a $20 copay and be in a place where they knew my history with the blood clots and blood thinners.
At some point, around 5am, my body finally gave up fighting the pain and I dozed off. Of course, an hour later, my alarm went off. I still hurt so bad that I just asked Steve if he could drive me to Urgent Care since I didn’t think I could drive myself and because I was pretty sure they were gonna give me pain meds.
We arrived at Urgent Care two minutes before it opened and no lie, there was a line of old people waiting outside. At first I’m thinking, ‘Damn, are they all sick?’ but I forgot that there’s a diagnostics lab in the same office and they all apparently were early birds who wanted to get their shit out of the way.
I said hello to my nurses (I’m enough of a regular there because of the DVT that they know me by sight) and we got down to business. Even the doctor was basically like ‘Holy crap!’ when he saw it. X-rays were taken and thankfully, nothing was broken though he said I was pretty lucky that I didn’t cut my toe off. And then they took this little tool with a heated tip that basically poke a hole through the big toenail to aspirate all of the blood that had collected under. I didn’t watch but Steve said it squirted up and out so fast that it got all over the bed. And it stung a bit during and for a little bit after but I tell you what, it ultimately made it feel so much better because it relieved all of the pressure.
They gave me two Lortabs for the pain which also helped greatly as well. And then Steve signed the discharge papers and they wheeled me out of there in a wheelchair with care instructions for a subungual hematoma, a prescription for Darvoset, a note to get out of work and a sticker! The sticker made it all better (the pain meds totally helped too).
Steve and I then proceeded to stop by the Bilo to fill the prescription and decided while were there to pick up some supplies (we needed milk). I was pretty doped up and was limping around anyway, so I just hopped on one of those little ride along mechanical things and drove around the store tossing food in the basket. I tell you, I couldn’t be that loopy everyday but at that moment riding that cart thing in Bilo in basically my slippers and all doped up, I was having a pretty good time.
I closed out the day by sleeping on the couch through a pretty wicked thunderstorm wherein the dog curled up terrified into such a tight ball next to me that I think he would of crawled inside of me if he could have. Woke up and ate a bit of lunch than went back to sleep only to wake up when Steve got home. He cooked dinner and checked on my foot and then I got a shower and cleaned the wound a bit because it’s oozing like crazy and now I’m sitting in bed getting ready to actually get a decent night’s sleep so that I can go back to work tomorrow and be a little bit productive.
In all of that brouhaha, I never finished my closet project and since I’m having a bit of a hard time getting around for long periods of time, it’ll probably be awhile before I get that done. But at least it’s almost done instead of only a quarter of the way done. My house is still a wreck though but it’s always like that.
I think if I one wish in life, it would be that my house was always clean without intervention from me. Like, it magically just cleans itself.
But for now, I’m going to try and take it easy and let me foot heal and not push myself into any major projects for the time being.
Because it’s apparently dangerous to be productive.
(Look for the Monthly Love May and possibly some private posts this weekend)
