Change

Well, I've started exercising again. I took the plunge about a week ago and I've only gone one day without doing anything. My goal is 20 minutes a day. So far, so good.

I Do Not Like...

Yard work. I was forced to try pulling up weeds/vines yesterday as HUBS did his usual mowing and weed-eating. We started way too late, but I went out there anyway. It was hot and sweat was running into my eyes. Also great about working in our yard? The snakes. That's right, people, I came up against two of them yesterday and managed to remove one of them but missed the other. Ick...

I was doing this because our Orkin man said the best hope of getting rid of the snakes (specifically, stopping them from coming into the house anymore) would be to clear all the brush from the perimeter of the yard and the basement windows. About three weeks ago we got supposedly super tough brush and poison ivy killer and I spent about an hour spraying all around the outskirts of our yard. Guess what? Most of the crap didn't come close to dying. Yay! I love blowing $18 on bullshit that doesn't even work!

Since we only had about a half hour of light left I didn't get much done. All the pulling and yanking has made my shoulders sore. I was barely able to finish one spot near the worst basement window - it was completely covered with vines. When it got too dark and I was tired of sweating I went inside to shower in disgust.

I really don't understand why we need nature this close to our homes.

Things I Want That I Can't Buy Yet

A new winter coat. This one (from Jessica London) is actually a lighter into-winter kind of jacket, but look how cute it is! It's only available in a bright green now, since it's on clearance for about $34. Yeah, no shit!



I really want some less wide legged jeans. I've got two pairs from Lane Bryant (like this pair) but they are super long and wide leggy. Not the best thing to pair with all my billowy, trying-to-hide-my-gut tops. This pair, by the by, is like $70. There is no way in hell I'd spend that much on a pair of JEANS!



I've been seeing feather headbands all over the place the past couple of months, but they usually cost upwards of $35. I've been stalking this one (and it's Blue Almond shade twin) since May on Urban Outfitters. It's under 20 bucks, which is much more reasonable, but I still want it to be cheaper. The UO fuckers refuse to put them on sale! And I really want two! Come on guys, $10 per feather head thingie seems fair...right?



Um, this is from IKEA and I WANT IT REALLY REALLY BAD. I mean, look at the color! Holy shitballs, it's adorable! And I don't just want this 'cause it's seriously cute, either. One of the issues with our small house is the lack of storage space. There are only THREE CLOSETS in the whole place, and one of those (the coat closet) isn't even deep enough for HANGERS. That's right, y'all, everything hanging in there has to be tilted to one side for it to fit. Unbelievably irritating. Also, we have a ton of blankets, pillows, towels and other sundry items that are either sitting out right now or crammed into unacceptable places. I need some order, people! Though, I have to say, at over 300 big ones this might not be enough bang for our bucks considering how much crap we need room for.



Flowers...ummmmm. Right now I have some mini calla lilies slowly dying in our living room. I've had them for almost a month, so considering that they are holding up rather well. I wish I could buy fresh flowers every couple of weeks. Enough for the living room and our bedroom. This shot is from a recent Domino magazine.



Speaking of magazines? I'm an absolute magazine whore. I haven't been able to renew my Essence subscription, my Lucky is about to run out and I wanted to start one for BUST. The Lucky is only $12 so I can swing that one, but both the others are 18 bucks! Who do they think they are? At least I can get Essence at the library, but not BUST. One of my favorite things to do is rip pretty pictures out of magazines, but with our current financial state, I've been trying to resale them on ebay, so, no rippy-ripperson for me.

I've also wanted to renew my flickr pro account, get a photo book made of our wedding and honeymoon pics and sign up for lynda to get some software training. No go so far.

And, people? I cannot express how badly I want to buy random makeup and beauty products. Do you know how hard it is to not make impulse purchases? Even cheap, under $10 ones? How hard it is to know that $4 here and 6 bucks there could mean not making HUBS' car payment on time (like this month)?

We've also decided to hold off on some household improvements. Like staining and waterproofing the deck this year. And getting a new toilet seat. (The finish is coming off of ours. Has that ever happened to anyone? Because I, for one, have never lived in a place where this occurred. How fucking cheap must our toilet seat be?!)

What do you guys want that you can't actually buy yet?

Apparently...It's Monday

My weekend wasn't the suckiest possible ever, but it wasn't as eventful as I'd wanted either.

In my new effort to have HUBS and I start doing stuff with our free time instead of just sitting at home on the computer or putzing around the house, I wanted us to go to the Forest Park Ballon Glow and Race on Friday and Saturday. Follow the link...see! Doesn't that look cool! I had never been to the race and hadn't been to the glow in about 10 years. I thought with my new fangled camera I could really get some great shots.

First, though, we went to a rally for the school district HUBS works for. This may sound horrible, but the only reason we went was the free food. I know, you guys, we have no school spirit at all. But, the food was from one of our favorite Mexican places, Qdoba, and we haven't been there since our wedding night date back on July 19. So really, can you blame us?

What comes next is the story of how I'm a pussy who gets angry a lot and shoots herself in the foot, because the traffic to get into the park? The worst I've ever seen. I went the easiest way to get there, and it took us about 20 minutes just to get off the highway because of traffic. Then, when we finally got to the street we needed there was a SOLID line of cars in front of us in all three lanes.

I became enraged (something that's become quite common during my unemployment). When the light turned green you couldn't even move, there were so many cars in front of us. I considered using one of the dozen or so other park entrances but punked out, turned around, and brought us home. HUBS made french fries and we watched a couple of Netflix selections. I was upset with myself for not doing what I set out to do just because of all the assholes trying to do the same thing (who, really, weren't assholes), but I had fries so I was better.

Needless to say, we also did not go to the race on Saturday. I got tired thinking about the traffic and so HUBS and I took a nap instead. I woke up about three hours later, exercised (yay, me), called my mom and made HUBS help me clean up the kitchen so I could cook blueberry pancakes and eggs for dinner. We ate while having a Buffy-athon.

Sunday was all about his folks coming to visit. We looked at wedding pictures, they gave us some food from their garden, and went out to eat. They usually pay for all of us when we go to dinner, but didn't this time. Luckily for us, they also brought along a $25 check someone had sent them for us so we actually had money to pay for our meal. Because, you know, the $1.79 that was in our account wouldn't have cut it.