today was a stressful day.
yesterday was an unhappy day.
when people i love are unhappy, i am unhappy.
when i am happy and people i love are unhappy it is stressful.
when i am unhappy and people i love are unhappy it is extra stressful.
misery loves company, but i am not in misery and i’d like to be happy.
i’d like the people i love to be happy when i am happy.

the clock ticks, ticks, ticks,
time moves too slow and too fast,
the moment is gone.

thoughts on the sin nature of gluttony: i know that to eat more than i need is to treat my body poorly, i know that to feed my body with too many processed foods and sugars is not proper caretaking, i know that too eat way too much of bad foods is gluttony, i know that gluttony is a sin, i know that I have a conscious desire to avoid sin, and a conscious desire to avoid eating too much, yet…. presented with a box of donuts or a carton of ice cream, I do not care. I want to eat them, and I want to eat as much as I can get away with eating. I do not binge, I do not purge, I do not have an eating disorder. I just want to eat yummy foods. But if I am the steward of my body, and I am unable to properly care for it, how can I be trusted to steward anything else? What do I lose by missing the mark? What do I gain besides extra weight? Must get something out of it or I wouldn’t do it.
Right?

I would like to take a nap and I would like a drink. Not necessarily in that order. My husband would like it if I would come home instead of blogging I’m sure.
On my way.

I’ve been tagged by Regulargoy, generally because he was running out of people who hadn’t already done this viral survey. Oh right, meme. A word I’d only heard used in linguistics class or in reference to linguistics until today. Learn something new everyday…

So, i’m supposed to write 6 weird things about myself and then tag 6 people and the people who have been tagged by me are supposed to go and do the same thing. It’s highly doubtful that I have 6 friends on Xanga that haven’t been tagged, but I’ll see what i can do. Whose definition of weird should I use? Ha! Obviously I don’t think the things I do are that weird. Ok, here we go…

1. I grew up in Berkeley, California in the 1970’s, and we lived about 2 or 3 blocks from People’s Park back in the day. If you are familiar with the cultural history of Berkeley and People’s Park in the late 60’s and early 70’s, this will explain a lot about me. Haha! If you aren’t, the information is on those links, but I’m not sure they adequately explain the complete insanity of growing up there. I see little mention of hippies dancing around naked, stoned off their asses on weed and acid. Some memories just never go away . I’m not sure it’s actually weird that I grew up there as much as growing up there has made me kind of weird myself.
2. My second toes on my feet are longer than my big toes. SOMEONE (my husband) tells me that I’m deformed, but I think it’s normal. Also, on my hands my middle fingers bend slightly at the end toward my ring fingers. I don’t know if they are crooked or if that’s common. I think it’s weird though.
3. This won’t seem weird to Xangans or Internet-chatters in general, but the vast majority of the people I call my friends I met online. Including my husband. This is apparently weird to most of the people I meet in “real life”.
4. My sacrum did not completely fuse the way it is supposed to on my right side, so I’m given to my lower back getting out of whack frequently, and lots of lower back discomfort. Basically my upper pelvis has a little too much motion. (Get your mind out of the gutter!)
5. I dislike talking on the phone and I put off calling people that I should call. Basically if you don’t have an internet chat program, you’ll never hear from me; unless you are related, in which case you might hear from me every few months for closer members and maybe once a year for those further removed. Although, I do have a cell phone now, so I call my mom to check on her. She’s getting older and more confused every year.
6. I pretty much hate watching TV unless I’m watching a show that teaches me something. I love watching TLC, HGTV, and The Discovery Channel,  My favorite shows are What Not To Wear & Mythbusters. My guilty favorite is America’s Next Top Model because I love seeing the process of the photo shoots and making my own calls on who should win or who should leave. My daughters love watching these shows too, so we like to do that together and get snarky about the things people do and the things people wear. My husband likes to watch them too, but he only watches them because we do.

Hmmm….. tagging: eyemachine, curtin_severn, headtomyheart, trnunes, I just ran out of people I “think” haven’t done this. And that’s not to say they haven’t been tagged, but that they haven’t given in to the inherent idiocy, yet strangely fascinating aspect, of these sorts of things.

Oh dear lord, it’s already almost Monday morning again. Sure to be another groggy morning. But for now, it’s merely a Sunday night, of a good weekend.

Our closest “couple” friends (you know, the couple we both really enjoy and like to hang out with the most, plus the ones my dear husband is the most comfortable with because we’ve known them so long… they were in our wedding of course) came over this morning after church with their two little girls and we had lunch and showed them the new house. Our first official guests. It was great to see them and I was pretty pleased and proud to show off our new house.  They loved it, said they were jealous. I know the feeling, right after we bought our house, we went to see my brother’s new house and it was like… “damn, my new house doesn’t seem nearly as nice anymore!”.

We bought some artwork for the house and some plants today. Went through old photos with the youngest and picked out some for photo collages. We have WAY too many photos up in our house and none of them are even recent! But, it makes me smile to see the pictures, and I love looking at them with people for the first time. So, there they are, and there they will stay for awhile, years probably.

Took an art print in for custom framing today. We went to Michael’s Crafts, and with the HALF-OFF SALE on custom framing orders, we STILL paid almost $500. ZOMGWTFBBQ!!!11!eleven!  And they are the “lower priced” framing store. WHAT THE HELL!?!?!! It’s a fricking racket is what it is!!! They’ve got the market cornered because no one else has a flipping clue how to frame an odd sized art piece not to mention, getting the materials. Might be worse than the insurance market!! Wait, no…. never mind, there is no larger racket than the insurance market. Stupid health insurance…. My out of pocket deductible (not including co-pays and medication of course) is $500 for the year. I got my end of December statement and I had…. $450 paid out of pocket, therefore they covered JACK! Grrrrrrrrr!

I think a little Bohemian Rhapsody, gentlemen.
Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me, for me, for meeeeeee!

And, Melissa, I enjoy you too. I do. And, I’d like a white chocolate mocha please, in case you were asking. 😀

Groggy Monday morning.

On the list of “words you should add to your auto-correct list” at work, please add the following:
1. Pubic: I will most likely never have the occasion to type the word pubic at work, but I type the word “public” all the time. We do work for public municipalities mostly.
2. Pimp: Today I was typing the words piping and pump for a project and it wasn’t long before my tired fingers input “pimp” and my tired eyes missed it until the re-read. Oooops!

This week is my husband’s last week working at the jobsite he’s been at for a few months now, so he’ll be home every night again. Possibly more importantly he’ll be home every morning to help me wake up on time. Hurray!

Oregon has entered its 3 months of rain, wherein we no longer see the sun. Oregon is the first place I’ve ever lived that had traffic jams listed as being caused by “bright sunlight” instead of only from rain and accidents.

Cheers!

There is far far too much to talk about and I don’t have the time to tell it all properly. Reader’s Digest version commencing:

1. We moved two days before Christmas and I love my new house! Christmas was rather chaotic what with not being able to find much of anything in my house but it all worked out. I made four treasure hunts/scavenger hunts for my kids that hopefully made getting money and very small gifts more interesting and fun than opening one envelope or one box. I worked on them for hours Christmas eve and got up early on Christmas day to hide all the clues.

1a. I had quite a bit of family in town for the Christmas week and I only got to spend a small amount of time with them on Christmas morning amid the chaos of 17 people in a house trying to open presents. This makes me sad. And, none of them got to see my new house. 😦

2. I finally started playing my Kingdom Hearts 2 playstation game that my husband gave me for my birthday… in April… oops. It’s quite entertaining and allows me to sit on the couch with my husband instead of isolating at the computer desk. 

3. We got Comcast digital cable including On-Demand TV and DVR capability. I’ve watched more TV in the last two weeks than I’ve probably watched in the last two years. HGTV, TLC, the Discovery channel at my fingertips! Wahoo! I’m SUCH a sucker for tv that teaches me something.

4. New Years Eve was fun. We went to our friends’ house and ate and drank and played games until Midnight, watched the crystal ball drop (wth is that about anyway? and it’s time for Dick Clark to retire… he’s so hard to comprehend…. kudos to him for his rehabbing from his stroke, but c’mon!), watched some fireworks, and then came home. It was nice to not be drunk. It was even nicer to wake up the next morning feeling fine.

5. New Years Eve being on a Sunday means church and it was a strange service. The Jr. High Youth Pastor gave the sermon and he’s a little out there. Nice guy, great guy, but hard to follow where he was going. Something about dark days in our past not determining our future, and God giving us another chance as many times as we need….I think. Had I known it wouldn’t be Pastor James I honestly would have preferred to stay home. On the other hand we ran into our best friends, whom we had not seen for a few weeks, so that was nice.

6. I failed to make any resolutions this year. Mostly because I never keep them anyway, so why bother. Lose weight, start exercising, eat healthier, blah, blah, blah. I know! I resolve to unpack all the boxes from our move instead of leaving them in the garage unopened. (Except the ones that were planned for that.) I should be able to handle that. I resolve to try to be more patient with people. I might be able to handle that…

Getting… OLD,
or out of shape;
both really.

Spent about 6 hours yesterday painting bedrooms in the new house. The ceilings are the killers. Now that my ceiling is done, I’m glad, but had I known how much my back would hurt afterwards, I might have skipped it. I don’t know.

Anyway, I can hardly move, and today we still get to put on a second coat! Yippee! :*(
Fortunately, I made sure the ceiling wouldn’t NEED a second coat and so it should be simple enough just to paint walls.

Our master bedroom is now a gorgeous chocolate brown on the walls and ceiling, but one wall will be a dark burgundy. It’s really not an enourmously different color as far as I can tell now, but it’s not on the wall yet. Also I’m going to paint the trim in the burgundy. Last night after it got dark and I was finishing up by lamp light I could see I was getting exactly the effect I wanted. I think it will look very romantic with our wrought-iron (look) canopy bed with it’s creamy colored drapings on the corners. (I might have to invest in a new comforter cover to match it. Right now the colors we have aren’t so much compatible.) Overall it’s really warm and cozy and inviting. Not bright and airy. I’m all for bright and airy, but not in the room I want to sleep in. Besides, we have a sliding glass door in our room to the back deck. If I want light all I have to do is open the blinds and there will be plenty.

What a letdown…. Claudia was a very nice Hispanic woman, but I don’t speak a lick of Spanish beyond the basics. I actually took Italian in college! Then, we tried to do a hair style like one i found in a book there, but i forgot that the hair on my neckline was no way in hell going to lay flat on my neck and do a little flippy at the bottom, the hair on my neckline grows upwards basically…. i have cowlicks all over the place. So my bob looks fine, but the part that was supposed to be a little longer and flippy at the back just looks like it was missed in the cut. It sounds weird but the picture was super cute and I would have been happy for it to look like that. Alas, that is not gonna happen. I’m going back on Saturday for some highlights and I’ll have her trim it up to match the bob all around. Kind of an inverted bob. I think I’m going back anyway… i’m kind of torn. It wasn’t at all the type of place I usually go to, on the other hand, the prices were a lot more reasonable. As soon as she asked me if I wanted my hair washed I knew all was not right in my world. Of COURSE I want my hair washed, that’s part of getting a hair cut lady. The rave reviews on citysearch clearly were in reference to a previous incarnation OR their expectations were very low. I shall have to put my own out there. She was nice, she didn’t do a bad job, but she didn’t do a great job either. Thus, I’m a little scared about having her put highlights in my hair. We’ll see.

I will try to get a picture to post later.

In other news I’m literally falling asleep at my desk. I’m seeing double. This can’t be good.

Well, i took the plunge and have a hair appt at 5:30 today with Claudia. (Pronounced Cloudya) She has the same accent as my college roommate Claudia from Torino did, so I shall ask her if she’s from Torino and maybe score big points. Of course, what if Torino is like some rival city? >.<

Imagine scenario like this:
Claudia: “This stupid American lady thinks I’m from Torino? Che putta! I will show her what I think of Torino!!”
Me: “Crap!! I just wanted 2 inches taken off, why am I bald?”

Preferred scenario:
Claudio: “Ah bella mia! Si, si, Torino! I will give you the best haircut ever!”
Me: “Ale’! Grazie mille! Molto lieto!”
and she will transform me! (well, one can wish).

My favorite Xanga sites are full of interesting and witty commentary, thoughtful reflection, eager hypothesizing about the future, and have an all-around high intelligence quotient….

This is not going to be one of those sites today.

The question before me: What to do with my hair? It’s currently below my shoulders, dark brown, and very fine textured. The texture leads it to look stringy a lot, because there is just NO body to it. I also get a lot of fly-aways and broken strands. I was growing it out mostly for the convenience of being able to put it in a ponytail, which is my way of saying “i just don’t care” i think. Anyhow, my husband has suddenly gotten rather insistent that I cut mine. That’s what I get for watching TLC’s “What Not To Wear” program with him. (I love that show btw, love it! Except for the fact that I increasingly resemble the people on the show at the beginning of the show and not how they are at the end.) The makeovers are so incredible and clearly he thinks I’m due for one.

I’m all for the idea of looking nice for my husband, but I’m rather inherently lazy. This means I usually don’t like to style my hair, wear makeup, or dress in confining clothing.  In the morning I can usually be found racing out the front door about 20 minutes after waking up, or less if I don’t have time to shower. (Mondays for instance.) In the evenings I can usually be found in my pajamas or sweats immediately upon arriving home. I used to do all those things but then he told me he liked me better without makeup, that he didn’t care what I did with my hair, and that I should dress comfortably. Hah, so you see, it’s actually his fault. Inherently lazy also means that I’m on the heavy side because exercising is something I pretty much hate to do, and ice cream is actually part of the food groups triangle, i think at the top…. kind of like a sundae with a cherry on the top (though I hate maraschino cherries, but they look cheerful, don’t they?).

Next problem, my hairdresser that I’ve been going to for years and years now is getting extremely difficult to get in to see without taking time off work. Taking time off work to get my hair cut is not really tenable because… well just because. I feel wrong about it. Besides, she works about a half-hour drive from my office, and my hair cut usually takes between half-hour and an hour of time. So, that’s two hours just to get a hair cut! Not workable for me generally. So, now I am thinking it’s time to find a new hairstylist. But, and I think most women will agree, having to find a new hairstylist borders on the pain of going swimsuit shopping… What if they SUCK?! And when you call a new salon and don’t have a specific name to ask for, they put you on the list for whoever is newest, and thus may totally screw up my hair. Thinnish fine hair shows every cut and a bad one is really obvious. The main reason I have an ‘i just don’t care’ attitude is that I’m actually quite vain, so if I give in to it, I pay far too much money to get my hair cut and colored just so, and it has to be an upscale salon. I’m a closet snob. That means I could have a very expensive, sucky hair cut while I’m looking for a new stylist. That prospect is not pleasant, because I probably won’t be able to throw it up into a ponytail at that point.

Third problem, finding a picture of a haircut that I like, that will work for my hair type, and that will complement my face shape and not make it look rounder. (More round?) Bangs? A bob? Short above my ears hair? A chin-length bob or a shoulder length bob? I need a picture because if I just describe what I want to a new hairstylist, the odds of coming out looking halfway decent drop dramatically. Apparently you have to use just the right words to describe things and I’m not “in the know” on the jargon. It would really help if I’d taken any pictures of hair cuts I’ve really liked in the past, but of course that would be too smart. Usually by the time I have a picture, the cut is grown out and not representative of what I want.

So, as you can see, I’m stuck at the deciding points of several decisions that should be inconsequential, but feel annoyingly important.

In other news, my realtor just called and I am now officially a homeowner!!! Wahoo! Too bad I can’t get in the house for four more days…  On the other hand, the act of not charging the seller any rent for the four days she will be in the house prior to our taking possession (my personal decision to show her grace) resulted in her giving us her china hutch that was in the house, because, we had been “so gracious to her”. So, chalk one up for grace and it’s effect on people! When we looked at the house and made an offer on it, I asked my realtor “find out if she’s interested in selling any of her furniture! I love it!” So, I’m pretty stoked about that. I would have been perfectly happy to move in to it fully furnished as far as the main rooms of the house were concerned.

I’m really excited about getting in there and doing some stuff like painting the bedrooms. I’m planning to go with some pretty dark colors in our room… chestnut brown, dark red, merlot, that kind of thing. Saturated colors. Warm, cozy, inviting colors. Soft lamp lighting instead of bright overhead lighting. Hurray for being able to change whatever you want as long as you can afford to do it!!

C’mon Saturday night!!! Get here faster!

I have now officially signed my life away in order to buy a house. I feel like a grown up.

Question: why didn’t I feel quite grown up at 40 without buying a house? I owned a house at 22… definitely didn’t feel like a grown up then.

Then again, I bought that house under false pretenses, pressed by my (unbeknownst to me) con-artist, live-in boyfriend. To be clear, I did know he lived with me, I just didn’t know he was a con-artist until afterwards. Anyway, he talked me into buying this house with his income but on my credit, using a loan where all they do is check your credit rating, they don’t verify your employment. Why anyone would give out this type of loan is far beyond me. Why I would allow myself to be persuaded to do such a thing is a completely different sociological, psychological treatise. Suffice to say I thought I was doing the right thing at the time.

Anyway, that’s all somewhat beside the point of why I feel more grown up today than I did yesterday before signing all the papers for this house. You’d think by 40 years of age one would feel grown up without the outward trappings of “adulthood”. And, mostly I did. I am married, I have stepchildren that I raise and stand in the gap for as a mom, I own a car outright, I have a steady income, and pay my bills on time. Those are “adult” things. Still, I feel that little difference.

In other news: Lots of Christmas parties and other Christmas events coming up. Feeling as I do about my appearance right now, I’m not looking forward to them as much as I might be, because I have nothing special to wear to any of them.  I have pretty jewelry though. I’ll make do somehow. If only I could lose 50 pounds overnight. *sigh*