trying to take it all in stride

Today my sister and I spent most of the day working on her homework. She put it off until today to spend all day yesterday trying desperately to get all of the water out of the garage. It kept me sufficiently distracted from the issue that is our living space. The only productive thing we did [in the garage] today was to take out the box springs and set them in the sun to dry out. Which they did and they look to be undamaged for the most part. Sigh. of. relief. At least we won't have to worry about replacing those immediately.

The carpet is still soaked. We're going to spend tomorrow rearranging everything so we can pull the carpet out. I'm not sure how/if it will dry out completely. The weather man is predicting rain again on Tuesday; albeit not as much rain as we got the past few days. Thank goodness.

Things could be better. Just as they could be worse. They are bordering on just bad enough; I'm dealing better today than I was yesterday.

The Monkey is having a lot of trouble with his back once again. He's limping, walking hunched over, and in a lot of pain. Despite his adamence about taking NO pain killers that would show up on a drug screen he finally broke down and took Lortab yesterday and today. He has a valid prescription for it but the pills weren't his. But as long as he has a prescription he will be covered if they test him soon. Not that I'm worried since the Lortab will be out of his system in a couple of days anyway. I'm planning to make an appointment with our family doctor for his day off this week. That way he can get a new prescription for pain meds. Hopefully those will keep him until he's hired on at Verizon and picks up insurance. Then we can, again hopefully, get him back to the chiropractor. I'm still considering the usefulness of an inversion table, though.

Hopefully this will be the last of our set backs for 2009. [crosses fingers]

natural disasters suck

We have been rather settled in my sister's garage. We had it arranged and setup in such a way that, save for the garage doors, it didn't feel like living in a garage. Just a small extension to my sister's four bedroom, two and a half bath house. It's been working quite fabulously. Except for the occasional bug in the spring/summer, I have no complaints.

Until today.

The past three days have been horrendous, weather wise. I think it's been like that pretty much all across the country, though. We had some heavy rains and early morning tornado warnings. Winds, lightening... nothing too spectacular, honestly. Save for the sirens at 6:00 AM, everything was peachy keen.

Until this morning.

I slept on the couch in my sister's den because I couldn't get comfortable on the bed or couch in the garage. I do this frequently, actually. She has a really comfy couch in the den. I fall asleep almost instantly whenever I land on it. This morning I woke to my sister telling me about the bad weather again. Third day running, like I said. So I drug my tired behind out of bed, poured a bowl of Special K, and went to the garage to turn on the news and keep tabs on the weather-of-doom. I stepped on a tiny (think nickel-sized) wet spot on the carpet by the couch. I thought nothing of it, chalking it up to the cats knocking something over or what-have-you. I ate my bowl of Special K and then went to return my cereal bowl to the kitchen so the cats wouldn't try and devour the bit of milk in the bottom of the bowl (inevitably making a mess).

Imagine my shock, terror, suprise (mostly shock) when I got up and my foot was SOAKING WET. I yelled at Tony to get out of bed that the carpet was soaked! He jumped up and said Holy SHIT it's a freaking PUDDLE over here!

My day did not start off well. And it only got worse.

By the time my sister and I got back from our rush run to Lowe's (we bought a wet/dry shop-vac to suck up the water which was, at the time, about an inch deep in some places) the water had risen to about two inches and the ENTIRE carpet in the garage was saturated. Completely soaked through.

I am devestated.

We don't have anywhere else to go. Of course my sister isn't going to leave us high and dry. We're "camping out" in their house for the next few days (week??) until the insurance adjusters come out and figure out what the HELL is wrong with the foundation of her house. (The water was seeping up from the ground into a crack along the wall in the garage floor.) Thankfully none of our electronics or furniture was badly damaged. Tony got the notion to take the mattress/box springs off the frame a month or two ago so our box springs got soaked. My mom is pricing new ones; possibly an entirely new mattress set. (Something I'm not sure we can afford right now.) We got up as much water as we possibly could but it just kept coming in through the crack in the floor. Our labor would've been a moot point except that we're sure it kept the water from getting any deeper.

Thankfully, around 3:00 PM, the rain stopped and the sun came out. The weather man says it's supposed to be sunny tomorrow, though not very warm. We're going to have to rearrange all the furniture in there so we can pull out all the soaked carpet. Then...well, I don't know what. Hopefully everything will dry quickly once the carpet is gone. Then we can try scavenging for some new carpet. In the mean time, the insurance folks will hopefully come out and the root of the problem can be rememdied before we have to deal with another torrential downpour. Now that it's happened, I am 100% sure that it will happen again. And again. And again... until the root problem is fixed.

Mostly I want to crawl under a rock and hide from all of this. I'm not dealing well at all. :(

a carefully weighted update

Trucking along at a very slow speed with the weight loss thing. I've been taking the Slimquick for a few days now and I can definitely see a difference in my energy levels. Also in my water retention. Omigosh that has improved tenfold at least. I skipped weighing myself for a few days but I knew I had to have dropped a pound or two. The pair of jeans I bought less than two weeks ago are already looser around my waist. (Banana simply said they are too big. Though I beg to differ; all of my pants are, essentially, too big everywhere except the waist. I refuse to buy pants that fit me everywhere else but are too small in the waist. Some people show their muffin tops proudly. NOT THIS CHICK. Which is why I still wear an 18. I could most definitely get into a 16. I'd just rather not showcase my belly fat.)

I've been kind of stuck at 225 for most of this month. Except for the first part of this month when I crept back up the scale to about 228. So I stepped on the scale this morning, naked of course. 223.4! I felt like dancing a jig. I was in the 230s last summer. Last spring, I was, I believe, around 240. (I can only guess I was by looking at pictures of myself from last spring.) All winter I hovered at 240 until January when I started walking. Obviously, something is working.

It's slow goings, of course, thanks to having PCOS, being insulin resistant, and [most likely] having an underactive thyroid. But at least something is happening. Three point four more pounds to lose and I'll be on track to losing around five pounds a month. Which means I should be down to just at 200 pounds by summer time. I'm looking forward to my 16s fitting by then. Though I'm not sure, exactly, what pant size I am at 200 pounds. I haven't been that "small" since...hmm...early 2007? Maybe even as far back as winter 2006. [shrug] It's been a while.

The most thrilling thing of all, I think, was that I could actually get my engagement ring on. It's still a bit snug so I'm not going to start wearing it again just yet. (All it would take would be for me to put on some water weight and the sucker would probably get stuck.) But the fact that I got it on (and back off again) with minimal effort made me smile. Five or ten more pounds and I won't have to worry about it being too tight anymore. I haven't worn my engagement ring in almost a year.

There are other things going on that I should probably blog about soon. More important things, I'm sure. Perhaps another day.

obligatory "new hair' post

Everyone should have a stylist like mine. In the [almost] five years I've been going to her, I think I brought a picture in to show her once. Maybe twice. Every other time I sort of let her do her own thing and I've never walked out of her salon dissatisfied. Never. Not even a little bit.

Today was no exception. The only stipulations I gave her were that I didn't want bangs that I couldn't shove behind my ears and that I wanted to be able to still get all of my hair into a ponytail. (And, actually, the latter stipulation was her daughter's because she didn't want me using my hair being "too hot" to weasel out of walking. :P) And I told her what I wanted as far as color went and let her choose good colors for my skin tone, etc. She's never failed me and I trust her wholeheartedly with my 'do. If I wasn't so dead set on keeping my hair long(ish) right now, I would've let her pick a funky short style for me (as I've done in the past).

So this is the before picture (just for comparison's sake):



And here's my new 'do:





Stylish, easy to manage, and a tiny bit sassified. The color underneath is a dark, dark, dark (almost black) brown. On top I have a rich auburn/red-brown shade. With maybe a hint of violet-red undertones in the right light. It freaking rocks. Now to "suffer" through two days of not shampooing. Gaaah!

what's your greatest fear?

This morning I was signing into The Monkey's account with Sallie Mae to make a payment on his student loans. Before they'd let me do anything I had to pick five (yes, FIVE) security questions. The list had a bunch of unusual/off the wall choices. So I picked the ones I knew the answers to first (favorite band, mother's maiden name, city of birth) but was left with two more. So when he walked back in the room I picked the next one on the list.

Me: Baby, what's your greatest fear?
(seriously without missing a beat or even pausing to think about it)
The Monkey: Prison sex.
[cue hysterical laughter]
Me: Really??
The Monkey: That's why I don't break the law. I don't want to go to jail!

My husband is insanely hilarious.

over the first [hairy] hurdle

So, I've decided, firmly, on my color. I don't want a bunch of highlights as they tend to fade out to a sort of brassy, gross color. But I did want to make my hair color different. So this is what I've decided on:



I really dig the two-tone look. It's funky but not over-the-top wild and crazy. Plus, avoiding the highlight scenario will allow me to do coloring at home in the future when the mood for change [inevitably] strikes again and I don't have the money (or time or motivation or or or) to take my butt back to the salon. I'll be going with a shade pretty similar to what's on the bottom and a bit of a darker auburn shade on top. No need for screamingly loud [dark] roots. ;)

Still on the fence about the cut. I'm pretty sure that I'll wind up going in there and telling her my stipulations about my new style and then just let her have her way with me. That's almost always what I normally do. So basically I'm looking at getting my hair relayered. Long layers, though. None of that short, choppy stuff. That's what I'm trying to get away from. And I also need to let her know that I want to be able to put it in a ponytail (as per "orders" from Banana so I don't punk out on walking because "my hair is too hot" -- boy does she know me or what??) and I want to be able to wear it stick straight or wavy/natural interchangably.

(It would be much easier if my stylist was local but Banana introduced me to her mom's mad hairstyling skills for my birthday in 2004 as a present. Ever since then I just can't force myself to go to another salon/stylist. She is simply the only person on the face of this earth that I entrust completely with my 'do. The downside is that she is about 30 miles away. Meh.)

Random side note: I saw a girl at Fun Zone today that looked just like Kristen Stewart. No, really. My sister started to ask her "Has anyone ever told you that you look just like that one actress..." and before she could finish the girl said "Kristen Stewart? Yeah. At least three times a day." :P

Now I am off to watch Twilight with my sister and my niece.

long over 'do

It has been approximately one year since I last visited my stylist. I'm really bad about hair "maintenance" in regards to getting it cut/colored on a regular basis. In the past year I have colored my hair at home three times. But no cut/style since March of last year.

Usually when I get my hair cut I do something funky and outrageous. Most of the time it worked for me. I'm not really interested in funky or outrageous at this point. I'm more tuned into the trends for Spring/Summer 2009 which, as it seems, are the following: super short pixie cuts (um, no); bobs in all shapes and forms (maybe...); long (yes, please!).

I'd like to have long, flowing hair. Gorgeous locks that I could braid (also popular this year) or wear stick straight or wear natural and wavy. But, alas, I am still waiting for my hair to grow out from my previous style:



This is what it looks like currently:



It looks so... lifeless. There's no style there. It's just... ugh.

Here is what I'm interested in acheiving with my new style:

1. Long layers if possible, keeping most of the current length.


2. If not, a medium bob (shoulder length) possibly with a side-swept bang.


3. Something manageable and easy to run with.


4. Something that I can wear straight or wavy interchangeably.


5. Something that will work with my round face shape.

In regards to color... that is still up in the air. I do love my red but, like I said, I'm horrible about maintenance and red requires maintenance. So I'm thinking of keeping as close to my natural color as possible. Maybe doing the layers underneath dark and then a medium brown for the top layers. Kind of a caramelization type thing.

Maybe I can get this cut again sans the pink-red chunks:





Suggestions... pictures of styles... input... all appreciated. The appointment is scheduled for Tuesday at 9:30 AM. I'm excited and apprehensive at the same time. Go figure. Normally I'm all it's just hair, it grows back but this year I'm not feeling a short, funky cut. Maybe I'm just getting boring in my old age. :P