Good Fences

Ooh, I'm pissed. Okay, I'm sorry the grape vine is growing over the fence into my neighbor's bush, but the grape vine was there first. I told them it was fine if they cut it back...and they thought it was fine to cut it OFF. Which wouldn't have been so bad if they hadn't included my black raspberries with it. They didn't get them all, but half my production is gone. I'm so. PISSED.

What makes me even more pissed is that Erica's mother, who was helping her, got all pissy back at me, tried to tell me that it WASN'T black raspberries...HELLO!!! This is my fucking yard, I think I know what I have. If you had stayed on your property, you wouldn't have destroyed MY plants.

I should have clarified that I'd help clear out the branches. But how was I supposed to know they'd come into my yard to tear out my plants? ARGH!!! Really. REALLY. PISSED!!!!!

Truth in Advertising FAIL

For the first time in five years, I tried ordering slacks over the internet, because they advertised small waist and full hips. As we can see, they got the full hips right, but small waist - not so much.



I hate that stupid pooch. They go back. At least I got some cute shoes, so the order was worth it.

State Fair

When I was younger, I was in 4-H. I wanted to join the Girl Scouts, but I think it cost more money or something, and Mom had been in 4-H, so 4-H I joined. I have to say I learned some useful skills, like running meetings and presentations and all that other business stuff, but I hated it at the time. I also really enjoyed the project I did for the fair. Not the goal-setting or documentation, but the actual learning how to sew, refinish, and baking. (I also learned the art of procrastination and coming up with goals and documentation after the project was done, so that was a useful skill, too.) I was a nervous presenter, too, so the interviews with judges at the county fair were pretty stressful, too. But the year I was chosen to send on a pair of pajamas I had designed myself to the State Fair was a very proud moment.

Now come to find out, all that rigmarole of county judging is superfluous. I can submit any old thing to the State Fair for judging. At the urging of one of the other knitters in my group at my LYS, I decided to enter one of my knitting projects. The only one I finished within the past year that I still have access to or hasn't been used is my Inga Hat, and I'm pretty excited to show it at the fair.



I'm actually going to go to the fair this year so I can see it on display. Plus, all that food on a stick. I'm trying one of those deep fried somethings this year, diet be damned.

And You Blame God When You're Lonely

I fill up my life with meaningless bullshit because I'm lonely. I go through the motions of living a life, pretending I enjoy it and sometimes I even fool myself into thinking it's true. There were a few precious years where I wasn't lonely and I spent them thinking it was too good to be true and it was. Slowly I lost it all and I'm right back where I started except now I know what it's like to not be lonely and it makes it worse. And I've always had hope but now I'm slowly losing that too. If I don't have hope I don't know why I bother holding out for what I really want - I should just settle for something else. But if I settle that means I don't know who I am anymore, if I haven't already lost myself.

Tomorrow I wake up and I go back to pretending. But tonight...

But you sit there in the darkness
And you make plans but they're hopeless
And you blame God when you're lonely
And you'll call it fate when you show up too late
And it's over.

I had my quarterly evaluation at the gym this morning with excellent results. I lost about 4% in body fat percentage, an inch off my hips, an inch off my thighs and a little off my waist. I was relieved. I could tell the shape of my hips and thighs was different, but I haven't lost any weight on the scale, so I was feeling pretty frustrated.

I'm contemplating going off my meal plan and trying to go it alone. I wish it wasn't an all-or-nothing proposition. Maybe I could do meal plan every other week so I have a back up supply of meals. Then I can ease into the habit of going to the Farmer's Market twice a week for fresh fruits and veggies, and re-learning how to build a food plan based on the healthy eating habits the meal plan has taught me and to which my body has now been conditioned.

The meal plan I'm on now is portion-controlled to 1200 calories per day, which was perfect when I wasn't exercising on a regular basis. This past tax season, I was hungry all the time and snacking on the stuff brought into the office, which wasn't usually particularly healthy. Having lost the fat over that period shows me that I do need to be eating the extra calories, but I might get even better results if I do it in a smarter way.

So I think I'm going to start compiling recipes and learning more about calorie-counting so I can do this on my own.

Reunioning

KP was the first guy I liked that liked me back. Or maybe it was the other way around. He liked me, and I kinda liked him back. When you're 14, there's a difference. I was a freshman in high school, and still dealing with the transition. All the people, moving classrooms with the bell, more than one clique...a lot to deal with all at once, but I was doing all right, and learning I was book smart.

I met KP in band. I think the first time we talked was when we were both in the group that took advantage of free tickets to a Hawkeye football game for marching in the all-conference band during the U of I Homecoming parade. After the game, the group stopped by a McDonald's to eat, and he made me a ring out of a straw. I kept that ring for a long time, I thought I still had it, but I can't find it anywhere. :( He was a junior and very sweet and cute.

I was not allowed to date until I was 16. That really put a kabosh on hanging out outside of school. And I panicked over the thought of what dating entailed and how to deal with the social implications. In retrospect, I don't think I was mature enough to handle dating, so as much as I was upset at the time, my parents were probably right in forbidding it. So we never so much as kissed, and the phone calls eventually trailed off, and nothing ever came of it.

So when he friended me on Facebook, it was kind of a chance to clear the air. We had drinks after work on Monday and got caught up on each other's lives. I've often wondered "what if" with him, and now I know as much as I enjoyed hanging out with him, I'm all right with it not having gone anywhere. So I'm cultivating a friendship, because I like him, but I don't think I still "like him" like him. ;)

It's Alllliiiiiiivvvee!!!!!

Hopefully ya'll are using RSS feeds, because I don't know how otherwise I'll get my readership back.

We survived our first tax season on our own...it seems like we filed a lot more extensions this year, but I suppose that just means more work for the off-season. I'm not sure how we're going to fill time (especially me) without audits. Not that I'm complaining - I've been trying to get out of doing audits for years - but I should be paid for doing something.

But I'm glad to be done and get back to having a life. It's just the life I'm going back to is a little bit different this time. My social life has kinda frittered away to nothing, and I need to build it back up. Or I need to take a look at what activities I'm involved in and decide which ones I really want to still be doing, and what new things I want to be involved in. There are so many things I want to do, but haven't either had or taken the time to do them. I've kinda started the process by giving up a board position, and checking out a knitting group. But there might be some difficult choices ahead, like how involved I want to continue being in Tae Kwon Do and figuring out how to give up television.

I have a lot of thinking to do, so there are a lot of (possibly) interesting posts coming to help me lay out the thinking process. So this is basically just a "Hi, I'm Here!" post. And welcome back to you, too!