Category Archives: Love/Loathe

June 9, 2009 · 10:50 pm

Love & Loathe — 06/09/09

Love:

* Getting a great deal on meat. Beef Round Cut for $1.99/lb. Regular price was $3.99/lb. Perfect for making beef stew in the crockpot.

*Beef stew in the crockpot — you didn’t see that one coming, did you?

* Summer fruits — watermelon, blueberries, cherries. Anyone else but me seeing a food theme here?

* Coming home on my lunch hour. Enjoying the heck out of that while I still can.

* My sweetie, who makes me happy.

Loathe:

* Worrying about things. I know full well that worry never fixes things and, in fact, it often makes things worse. So, why can I not turn it off sometimes?

* Lack of sleep from worrying about things.

* Being tired from lack of sleep.

One Last Thing:
With as crazy as things have been at work for me lately, I sometimes feel as if I don't stop going until I fall into bed at night. I use the word “night” loosely, because it always seems to be around 1 AM that I actually lay my head on the pillow. Then to lay there and worry about stuff, I still feel as if I'm running mentally because I didn't have time to process things intellectually during the day.

I just want to tell you that seeing that you guys have visited here, choosing to interact with me in the comments, those are little happy darts for me during the day. You guys mean so much to me.

So, just… thank you for being here. It means a lot.

Oh, and today is my brother’s birthday — I’m sending him Happy Birthday wishes in a prayer and happy thoughts, since we don’t talk. Someday he’ll know I never forgot.

10 Comments

Filed under Brother rates his own category, I Blog about Blogging, Life Encompasses Me, Love/Loathe, Money Hump Building

June 3, 2009 · 10:30 pm

Love & Loathe — 060209, 1 day late, but I found the dollar.

Love:

* Finding a dollar bill in my jeans pocket that I forgot I put in there. Money launders well, and I suppose they call that money laundering?

* Funky weather. Even though it’s jacking up my sinuses, I love weird weather. We had thunder this morning and sprinkling today. That was fun.

* Swimming in the rain.

* Having healthy fish. I have not taken for granted a single day of their health since I declared them healthy just before Thanksgiving last year. I thought I would mention this because that whole fish dying thing started right around this time last year. I hope I’m not jinxing their health by saying that.

* My gardenia tree is still blooming up a storm — every branch has two or three flowers. It’s quite ridiculous. I bring four flowers into work every other day… two for me, one for my boss and one for my friend. Even with that, I can’t keep up with it, the little tree just keeps churning them out!

Loathe:

* Forgetting to take my spare battery for my camera OUT of my pocket. Then not remembering which pair of jeans or shorts I was wearing when I changed the battery. GAH! But so grateful I hadn’t run it through the wash.

* Weird vibes and undercurrents. (sigh) Sometimes I wish I didn’t have that ultra-sensitive mood sensor intuition radar thing that’s part of my personality. Being an “NF” sucks sometimes.

* More with the gapped-tooth models. I’d post more pictures, but she wore the same exact expression in them all, so what’s the point? I mean, maybe if she was actually smiling it would have distracted from that vacuous vampiress look.

Different model, different company than I wrote about before. Yes, I know (again) this is terribly superficial of me, but really? How am I supposed to enjoy browsing catalogs when they heavily use the one model who has a gap in her front teeth? Even putting her on the cover of their 25th Anniversary catalog! Is she a bargain model? Is the economy THAT bad? It’s like going to bed at night with the closet door open. It’s the only thing I see, the only thing I think of. No, I don’t obsess much.

* Acne.

6 Comments

Filed under Life Encompasses Me, Love/Loathe

May 19, 2009 · 10:50 pm

Love & Loathe — 05/19/09

Love:

* Spaghetti. Simple, easy, and loaded with carbs. Yum.

* The gardenia tree in my back yard. I wish I could show you how glorious it is, but 3/4 of its beauty comes from the olfactory senses.

* Dermaswim. A lotion that is applied before swimming to guard against chlorine rash. Oddly, all the dermatologists I’ve seen haven’t been able to figure out the incredibly painful rash I get in certain spots where my swimsuit rubs. It’s gotten so bad and inflamed that, at times, it bleeds. Yet, even though I’ve told them I swim a lot, which means that I get a lot of swimsuit rubbing action, and even though they’ve validated my statement with, “that’s where your swimsuit rubs.” They’ve never correctly diagnosed it. I’ve tried steroidal creams, anti-bacterial creams, anti-fungus creams — all to no avail. A couple weeks ago, I found Dermaswim. I apply this lotion before my swim and, like magic, no rash appears. Problem solved. If I forget to apply it, say hello to painful rash.

* Hummingbirds. I love hearing them chirp at each other and watching them perch while they eat.

* Nights like tonight when Snug doesn’t run away like the hounds of hell are on his heels just because someone walks by him when he’s relaxing.

Loathe:
* Current shoes that are in style — I’m already 5’11”. Do I really need heels that are 3 1/2 inches tall? Does anyone who wears a 9 1/2 (or larger) size shoe? If a lady’s feet are that big, chances are she’s either really tall, or has other things going on, and she probably doesn’t need a heel that high.

* How so many people I love and care about are really struggling with various difficulties right now. Emotional, financial and just stuff… and it just always seems that things load up all at once.

One Last Thing:

I’ve been following a few blogs and reading stuff on the ‘net about going pooless. Over the years I’ve tried hundreds of shampoos, literally, and have never been happy with how any of them leave my hair feeling, except one and I can now only find that one on the Internet. Which really bugs me because of the cost of shipping, handling and all that. I wish I could go without shampoo, except I swim every day. Chlorine won’t come out with just a baking soda mix. But I tried it, just to try it… and I hated it. My hair looked fine, but it felt tangled and woolen. Ugh.

And then I read on a long hair forum about how club soda deactivates chlorine. And it cleans hair of dirt. So, I thought, why not? $.79 for a 2 liter bottle of it?

I thought I would hate it. I was prepared to hate it. But I don’t. Today was my second day using club soda in lieu of shampoo and I love it. I am still using a sulfate free conditioner — not ready to give that up yet. But here’s the bonus, the last two days I’ve not had to use detangling spray or hair serum to get through it with a comb.

I’ll keep you updated on how it’s working out for me.

12 Comments

Filed under Hair Can Be a Topic of Conversation, Love/Loathe

May 12, 2009 · 12:52 am

Love & Loathe — 05/12/09

Love:
* Products that actually do what they say they do. After 7 years, the top on my convertible is showing signs of age. I found a small hole, which I patched and there is some cracking. At the recommendation of some people in my Miata club, I bought 303 vinyl cleaner and protector kit. The stuff works. I can see and feel the difference after just one treatment in the flexibility of my top.

* Sweet potato fries. Oh my.

* Capturing pictures, like this one, of the birds who visit my back yard.

* Tony took this picture last August when we were in Hawaii. When I saw it, I was all, “Hey, that woman has really pretty hair!” And then I felt all narcissistic when I realized “that woman” is actually me. Hehe. I am pleased to report that a couple weeks ago, I finally reached my goal of having waist length hair. I know I reached my goal because my hair is now tuckable… meaning, I tuck it into the waistband of my jeans if I’m not paying attention. I can’t wait until it’s buttcrackable! And maybe, if my hair ever gets long enough to hold hands with the Crazy Hair on the back of my knee, I might consider donating some of it to Locks of Love… but not until then!

Loathe:
* I’m presently in what I call “Klutz Phase”. For example, I’m constantly bumping my not-funny bone on things, on Saturday I ran the bottom of the door over the top of my foot, and on Sunday I forgot to put my splash guard/ingredient slide on my mixer. Ouch and oops!

* Being tricked. My acupuncturist gave me some dried salted plums and they were good. I was surprised by that. So when I spotted some in the store today on the “Mexican Food Aisle” (that’s what the sign said), I was excited. Except, apparently, Mexican dried salted plums are different than Chinese dried salted plums. I nearly died from foaming at the mouth before I could evict that nasty thing from my mouth. Yuck.

One Last Thing:
Tony has been watching the History Channel’s new show called Life After People. The show theorizes how cities, landmarks and animals get along without people to maintain and care for them.

It makes me think of my trip back to my childhood home in Oklahoma in 2004, and seeing the massive plant overgrowth on the property that my parents once owned.

Yesterday, when I was leaving work, there was a crow sitting on top of someone’s car, brave and brazen as you please, cawing away at his feathered buddies. The thought ran through my mind that nature will always try to win, and there that car was, probably no more than four hours “after people”… and I was glad he wasn’t on my car trying to poke a hole in the top.

11 Comments

Filed under Life Encompasses Me, Love/Loathe

May 5, 2009 · 9:42 pm

Love & Loathe — 050509

Love:

* Our Parrotlet. When we brought her home last August, we were told she was approximately three months old. We decided that her birthday should be Cinco de Mayo. So happy one year birthday little Yoda!

* That Monday is over and … bonus, Tuesday is done, too.

* We used my PF Chang’s gift certificate for dinner and saw a movie on Sunday — date nights with my husband rule.

Loathe:

* Headaches. I had one show up yesterday at 4:30 PM, nothing I did made it disappear, so I woke up with it this morning. It left this evening in the middle of my swim, around 7:30 PM.

* Yesterday just kind of sucked donkey balls all the way around.

One Last Thing:

As the crow flies, we’re about one, maybe one and half, miles away from a minimum security prison. I know this because I had to sign papers acknowledging the close proximity to that facility when I purchased my home.

About once a week, usually on Sunday nights, a helicopter circles a 2-3 mile radius around our home. It’s more than just a little annoying, particularly when they decide to thump the heck out of our air space at midnight.

If it’s earlier than that, after about 20 minutes of the thumping, we’ll go out in front of our home and join a few of our neighbors and we all discuss the helicopter above us. The last time we did that, the helicopter in mid-circle, up and left. We figured it was us — we have the power!

A few days ago, Tony said his theory is that every time a helicopter circles it means that someone has escaped from the prison down the road. It is minimum security, after all, he says.

I scoffed in response, because, what, someone escapes once a week, sometimes twice a week? I think not.

He argues that, yes, they plan it for Sundays. After all, he says, people in prison are entitled to practice their religion and so they go to church and then escape. This is what I call his Making Stuff Up to Practice Random Logic.

So riddle me this, why was there a helicopter circling tonight? Tuesday night services?