renewed determination

Today was The Monkey's first day of training with Verizon. I have to admit I missed him a lot. I have really enjoyed the past seven month 'vacation' together. I can't say I ever really felt like I needed a break from him. I just enjoy spending so much time together. Time apart like this is weird. The only long days we've ever spent apart we were both working. Now I find myself with this large chunk of time to occupy. I'll admit it's a little strange and part of me almost wants to go back to work. Almost. So I'll have to settle for spending more time with my sister and Madison. And, of course, I'll be walking every day from 11:00 to 12:00 with my friend, B. We walked today and it not only felt good, it was nice to just talk to somebody for an hour that I'm not related to. :-P B and I used to be very close when we were both working for Unicel. Then I got fired. We stayed very close for about the first six-ish months after and then it seems like we just sort of drifted apart. It's not really surprising to me. We have very little in common with one another. She's lost a LOT of weight in the past year and I've pretty much just gained it. So she's helping me to get motivated. I'm going to start with the afternoon walks with her and then, once I'm a little more 'conditioned' to exercise, I'm going to start walking in the evenings, too. My sister also said she is going to buy Wii Fit! So that'll be another thing to do.

I'm really determined to get this weight off. Even if I can't get down to 140 like I'd love to be, I'll settle for getting back into some of my old 14s for now. I am happy to report that I am able to get back into some jeans that I'd grown out of this summer during my [seemingly] endless depression. I took my measurements yesterday (thighs, biceps, chest, waist, and hips). I was (and wasn't) shocked that I've gained TEN whole inches since March 2003. Talk about a bitter dose of reality. In light of this news I have resolved to eat better. I can't exactly 'diet' while living with my sister. It's hard to tell the people that are letting you live with them for free that they can't eat something you bought. It seems kind of, well, rude. So I just bought stuff that I like that I know won't get eaten. Like Activia Yogurt and V8 juice and whole wheat bread. Tonight we're having chicken salad sandwiches for supper. I also tried that Special K Protein Water and found it to be quite good, actually. So I think I'll buy some of the packets so I can have a protein water when I'm feeling hungry or have the urge to snack.

Hopefully I will notice a difference in my clothes and weight in about a month. We shall see.

[squeeeee!]

I've obsessively checked eBay on a daily basis (usually more than once a day) for the Urban Decay Book of Shadows palette since Sephora stopped carrying it. Unfortunately, not many sellers offered the Buy it Now option because it's such a hot item and people bid on it like CRAZY. It sold for $45 at Sephora and it's now selling on eBay for almost three times its original cost! People are making a killing!

Today, I did my usual scan and found an auction ending in five hours. The price was at a reasonable $55. So I watched it like a hawk all afternoon. With an hour left to go there were only five bids and the price was only up to $65. With 30 seconds to go (yep, I'm one of those eBayers...[snicker]) I placed my proxy bid and won the item. I know I'm paying more than what it's truly worth but I have been so desperate for this palette! The colors I'm most interested in are Mayhem and Absinthe. I can't wait until it arrives! (And it should arrive quickly because the seller is in Gulfport, MS which isn't very far from me.)

Hooray!

so it goes

So far 2009 has been okay. Tolerable at least. The Monkey is employed and that is definitely a good start. However I have vowed to make this my year to get healthy and have not gotten off my lazy ass to do a single thing. But at least I have a plan in the works. The friend at Verizon (henceforth referred to as Banana) has become a bit of an exercise nut over the past year and a half. She walks somewhere between six and 10 miles a night. I would love to walk with her but she lives 30 miles from us so she's not exactly an 'ideal' walking buddy. But she does work here in town and offered to walk with me on her lunch break for at least a half hour, Monday through Friday. I agreed. While it may seem like these are plans that are easily broken I can assure you that they are most definitely not. She simply won't let me off the hook and for some reason I feel obligated to sort of prove that I can do it. I'm not going to lie -- I don't like to exercise. I don't enjoy it. I never have. I've tried all sorts of different things from step aerobics to a complex gym regimen involving cardio and weights but never found anything that held my interest. The only reason I ever got down to 145 was thanks to an eating disorder and a very active job at Outdoor Recreation. I hope that once I get started with exercising I will stay motivated to keep going this time around. I am really quite miserable in my own skin but I cannot honestly ever remember a time when I was not miserable in my own skin. Conundrum. Even still, I have to at least try to do something to get this weight off. Maybe having allowed myself to get this far gone if when I get back to a reasonable weight I won't dog myself out so damned much. (Not likely but miracles can happen, right?)

In an attempt to make myself more receptive towards a year of change I decided to color my hair. It's very close (if not identical) to my natural hair color. I joked with my BFF and told her I dyed it and that I am an 'unnaturally natural brunette' now. I didn't take pictures today but I'll definitely get a couple tomorrow and post them. It'll definitely be easier to maintain than the reds I've been wearing for the past several years which will make it easier to grow my hair long again as I won't have to color it every few months to disguise my roots. I was looking through some old pictures of my hair and came across the pictures of when my hair was nearly to my waist. It almost made me want to cry! But it's just hair and it grows back (thankfully pretty quickly in my case). I'm sure once it is long again I'll ache for a short choppy look and wind up whacking it all off on a whim. It never fails. :P But it's change and change is good.

Speaking of change, I've been neglecting my shiny new eyeshadow palette as of late in favor of a more natural, neutral look. I've been experimenting with mostly moderate browns and champagnes instead of spending oodles of time obsessing over expertly matching my eyeshadow to my outfit. Today I used matte purples (Urban Decay Matte Eyeshadow Trio in Haze). It looked pretty but I prefer shiney shadows when it comes to colors like purple. Yesterday I experimented a bit with a look I found on Sephora.com. It was an Urban Decay look called Sharp Smokey Eyes. I've had a hard time "mastering" the smokey look because to pull it off you have to do a fair amount of blending. My sister is awesome when it comes to blending but whenever I blend it seems I don't blend enough (which leaves harsh lines) or over blend (which nearly obliterates the color completely). The Sharp Smokey Eye looked easy enough and, incidently, I had all of the components the look called for. So I gave it whirl.

eXtrEme close-ups:





Not-so-close-up:



It was, by far, the easiest smokey look I have tried to date. The only real problem I had with it was the black eyeliner. Urban Decay makes an awesome eyeliner pencil. It is remarkably creamy and very pigmented (like all of their products) so a little goes a long way. But try as I may to get a nice, thin line around my lashes I just couldn't. So my liner is quite a bit thicker than the model's. But for an amateur, I think I did pretty well. I really like the look, and though I don't find it suitable for 'everyday' wear, I will be trying it again next time I get dressed up for a special occasion or a night out.

hope for the beginning of a trend

The Monkey got a phone call from Manpower this afternoon. He starts training for Customer Service at Unicel/Verizon (the old company is Unicel; they've officially been bought out by Verizon but are still in the process of converting everything from the Unicel brand to the Verizon brand) on Monday the 12th. We are both positively thrilled even if this doesn't mean an end to our financial struggles. (Nor does it mean an end to us living with my sister and family. We still have to wait and see what happens with my SSDI claim.) The starting pay is nothing to brag about (it's roughly the same as his unemployment checks) but it will definitely get us by. And after his initial 90 day probation period the company should offer him a permanent position at which time he will get a pay raise and (and and AND!) qualify for benefits. Oh glorious, stupendous, muchly coveted benefits. This means in about three months I should be able to get medication that is NOT Lithium and Zyprexa. Joy above all joys. Also they have IF coverage. Which is, yeah, kind of cool but not at all exciting since we are in NO financial state (or living situation) to even think about thinking about picking TTC back up.

But yeah. Employment. I was beginning to think we were going to be hobos very soon. Yay for not becoming hobos!

semi-short, sweet, mostly to the point...

My sister and family should be home in about an hour. I'm very excited as I've missed her and the kiddos a lot. But the week of quiet time was nice. The Monkey and I haven't left the house since New Year's Day. In fact, I haven't even gotten dressed/prettied (makeup, hair). (I did shower, though. :P) We spent New Year's Day playing Guitar Hero World Tour together. I finally forced myself to "graduate" from Easy to Medium. Easy was just getting way too boring. At any rate, I played lead guitar on Medium and The Monkey played bass on Expert and we rocked out for like five hours straight! I'm beginning to think that is why my left wrist hurts. Living with my sister hasn't affected our sex life in that we still have sex regularly; but while everyone was gone we had sex almost every single day! Twice a day a couple of times. :-o I guess it was just the lack of inhibition? I mean, we can have sex whenever we please it's just a little less comfortable when you're worried about the children hearing you or knocking on the door and then trying to open the door and wondering why it was locked. :-P We have plenty of privacy it's just not "all inclusive" like it was this past week.

Today The Monkey and I made sure the house was nice and clean. We not only made sure that the parts of the house we use frequently (kitchen, bathrooms) were spotless but also vacuumed the living room and the den and made sure all the towels were put away. It was just as a courtesy and hopefully my sister will be thrilled to come home to a spic-and-span house.

Our new cat, Jasmine, went into heat about a week after we took her in. This confirms two things: 1) she is definitely a she 2) she is not pregnant! However, she is relentless with the caterwauling especially at night. A few times I've wanted to throw something at her but have refrained. She stopped acting all crazy after about a week; just in time for Christmas. By New Year's Eve, she was at it again! I didn't think they were supposed to go into heat that often! I guess I need to do my research. I'm worried that we won't be able to predict her cycles enough to get her an appointment scheduled to get her spayed and declawed. She is a serious pain in the rear end at night. She's been keeping Tony awake. We have a small animal carrying bag (I bought it for Olivia's plane ride to the US but they wouldn't let me use it) and we were "crating" her in it until we went to let her out one morning and she was damp and smelled like pee. (The bath was mostly funny and The Monkey only got a couple of minor scratches.) So instead of putting her in there, we started trapping her under a laundry basket and covering that with a blanket. She seems to stay quiet when she's trapped. However, the sneaky little brat has learned quite quickly and now she runs away (usually under the bed or under a dresser) when we try to grab her. Blast! I'm going to call our vet tomorrow to see what we can do.

No word from Unicel/Verizon on a job for The Monkey yet. I was worried until he talked to a friend of ours that still works there and she said that they pushed the training class back a week. So that gives them more time to call the new hires. I'm keeping my fingers tightly crossed and our friend is trying to pull as many strings as she can to get him hired.

I lost some weight! My sister's scale said 229 this afternoon! Finally under 230 for the first time in months. Lets hope this is the beginning of a trend. I want need to start walking. I wish my sister had bought Wii Fit for Christmas. :-P

an interesting way to 'sum things up'

The first sentence of each month's first entry for 2008:

I managed to escape hospitalization. So I finally got AF today after waiting 40 days. This morning my RE called and told me that my TSH is elevated. Going away for a while. Five years ago today Tony and I threw out our condoms and decided that we were going to have a baby. I've found that my unemployed life is not so much better than my employed life. I can hardly believe it's September already. I absolutely love October. Some days I feel okay with not being pregnant (or having a child) yet and then there are days where I remember that this would've been our baby's first Halloween (and first Thanksgiving, and first Christmas... etc, etc). So I woke up the day before yesterday with... dum dum dum... another blasted ear infection! That's THREE of these freaking things in as many months!

just another Thursday...

At five past midnight I accidently tipped over a salt shaker and spilled the salt. I hope this isn't a bad omen (to be honest, I'm not really superstitious) but I tossed the spilled salt over my shoulder just to be safe. No sense in tempting fate, right?

Tony interviewed for a job with Unicel/Verizon yesterday. We're crossing all fingers and toes that they call him tomorrow because the training class starts on Monday. (If we don't get a call tomorrow then it's safe to assume they won't be calling.) The starting pay is decent and I know he'll have no problem making it past their 90 day probation period and getting hired on permanently. (This will mean a pay increase and benefits. Guess what Verizon medical insurance covers? Yep, infertility treatment.)

2008 was pretty sucktastic overall, and I'm hoping that 2009 will be different. Mostly I am going to focus on certain things: getting healthy physically and mentally (the latter involves getting stable on meds that work); seeing my SSDI claim through to the end. I don't really have any other plans for this new year. I just want this to be a year for good change.

Just let me cautiously toe the waters' edge for a while before I jump in. No sense in being hasty.