Professionals Do It Better.

Well, Hello There! Good to see ya again. You're treated to a self-portrait to show you what $140 hair color looks like. Is it $130 better than the DIY model I've been sportin' for the past few months? Well, you may not be able to tell it from here, but yes, yes it is. It's dimensional and shimmery and not brassy and swingy and shiny. I've tried to convince myself that it doesn't look $130 better, but frankly it does. Ah, well. The price we pay to forget our reality of ashy brown hair sprinkled with grey. So this is the new shade at least for another five weeks. It feels much, much lighter when I look in the mirror, but in photos I can more objectively judge that it's really not as shockingly different. I'm good with it.

So here's a quick update on other things.

Twinkle is doing well. He's not too keen on shots, but he only growled at me once, and seems to be doing pretty well overall. He's definitely friskier. I've been aggressively researching how to correct this with diet, and am switching them all to a diet heavier in canned cat food. I still have some dry food out, I don't want to suddenly make food unavailable to them throughout the day, but have switched to a higher-protein dry (still not as high as canned) which doesn't have a corn base (Chicken Soup for the Cat Lovers Soul brand) and we'll see how that goes. They're happier about it, but it's more expensive.

I'm in full-blown getting ready for a trip whirling dervish panic mode. Sitting here blogging isn't helping matters, but I'm drinking a beer and trying to take it easy. We leave for an overnight trip to Atlantic City in the morn. I need a break from life, I am having a difficult time coping with it lately. I'm attributing it to working too hard for the past couple of months, so maybe a break will help.

Thanks to his Scooby-Senses, Kenny may have prevented a house fire! Sometime smelled amiss in the kitchen, and it wasn't the trash or dirty dishes in the sink. Timmy came up to help us pinpoint the smell and the conversation went kinda like this:

Kenny: "Do you know what that smell could be?"

Timmy: "Maybe it's the gas line?"

Kenny: "We have an electric stove."

Timmy: "Huh. I got nothing then."

It was actually coming from a light we had above the stove, some piece of shit that Keith installed for me a couple of years ago. While I appreciate his efforts, the shit he digs up out of the basement to bring over here is never of any quality and it never works well or for long. Now the kitchen is a little bit dark. Luckily I don't spend much time in there.

While there's more, so much more that I could say, I really have to go and scrub behind the stove. Now that I've seen the filth back there, I can't pretend we're just a little messy and disorganized. The behind-the-stove dirt has ruined that for me.

The end.

WWJD (what would jack do?)

The following events took place between 8:00 a.m. and 11:00 p.m.:

1. Twinkle had a full day of insulin today. He pounced and romped and wasn't trying to eat off my plate for the first time in a while. Improvement noted. Cat was kissed. I am still teary about the situation and have decided to allow myself a good long wallow if I wanna.
2. Got a ridiculous project with an even more ridiculous due-date. Wallowed about that. Still wallowing.
3. Continued my tradition of Gym & Gyro Tuesday. However, skipped the gym part and went straight to gyro. Didn't wallow about that decision.
4. Have calculated that The Misery is a couple of days behind. Could possibly be the direct link to the dramatic bout of wallowing.
5. Had a pathetic lunch of leftover brown rice and edamame, without the luxury of even heating it up. Sad leftovers in a sad little container for a sad wallower.
6. Ate one piece of fruit today. A banana.

The end.

Didn't I Just Get Off This Ride??

The Twinkle near my eye is sick. I knew he was just a little off, I've felt like it for a while now, but kept tamping down my instinct. He's only six, and pretty stinkin' cute - how could something really be wrong with him? Well, it is.

He went to the vet this morning based on his mother's hunch, he has just been a little "off" and has lost a pound. Not concerning on a person, but a pound on a cat is notable. So he had $151 worth of tests, and the results came in that he's A-Okay other than diabetes. Fucking diabetes. Again. Here we go, back to shots twice a day and keeping a close eye on him in general.

Drat. I don't know anymore. I had some type of a nervous breakdown crying fit and pity party all rolled into one jagged spell. I don't want HIM to be sick. I only had ONE sick-pet-free year - now I'm back to the drawing board, and he's young so I will have many years of this ahead of me (if I'm lucky!). Not to mention the added pet expense. Insulin is up to $45/bottle and it should be replaced after 30 days (I never knew this, Newf got new when it was all used up), not to mention the tests we're going to be scheduling while we get him monitored. And then there's the imposition I'll place on people while I gallivant around the globe during extensive travels.

But. He had his first shot tonight, 2 units, and never even noticed what was happening. And then he was a little more interested in things around the house, getting a little of his frisky back. The vet told me that he would have never guessed anything was wrong with him, everything else is perfect so it's caught VERY early. His little cat levels were over 500 - normal range is 80-100, with concern coming in over 200. He was on the very high even of the spectrum.

I'm drained and depressed and sad and angry. Why my pets, all the time (she rails her fists towards the heavens and weeps). I'm taking two Tylenol PMs and calling it a night. With my cat.

A Quickie

My nails are too short and my leg hair is too long. It's a rather uncomfortable day to be me. I picked my nails off last night during the movie Frost/Nixon. Just a habit, but now they're super-short to the point of being a little painful. My leg hair is long enough to be abrasive against my pajama pants. I haven't shaved them since my "date" with Jack Bauer a couple of weeks ago. I should really make "Personal Maintenance" a higher priority for 2009.

Just heard the weather's causing I-480 to shut down in some areas. Drat. We have plans to try a new restaurant tonight, but are now a "tentative, contingent on the weather." Don't need a steak that badly.

I'm going to spend some time today eking out a menu plan for myself for the coming week. Some simple planning ahead will produce some healthy, tasty lunches for myself. Since I really don't go out much for lunch anyways, might as well bring in some healthy choices. A co-worker, Kim, is into holistic eating and has given me some guidelines. Not sure how good they really sound, but I'm willing to try some of her concoctions, which include dishes such as brown rice, edamame, cannelloni beans, salmon and soy sauce. She assures me I'll have a rockin' bod if I eat that kinda stuff for lunch. She also told me that she read that if you ingest a teaspoon of molasses a day, it'll prevent gray hair. I'm going to be the guinea pig for that experiment, as soon as I get some molasses. Kim told me that it tastes pretty rough and you really have to want the benefits to get it down. I don't know how it can be that bad, they created a cookie with it. If it's good enough for a cookie, it's good enough for me.

That's if for a short rundown, I need to stop procrastinating and go to the gym.

Lame.

Six things about today, cause I know you're all very curious.

1. My friend Meggan brought me a homemade pecan tassie she brought in to work to celebrate her birthday today. I enjoyed her treat for her birthday very much! Happy Birthday Meggan - you can bake for me any day, not just on your birthday!
2. I honestly thought Meggan was celebrating her 29th birthday. She wasn't. She turned 35. Which I should have known, because we went to Vegas five years ago to celebrate her 30th and Sally's 40th birthdays respectively (but not respectably, we saw a somewhat nudie show with semi-clad females swimming around in a giant clear teacup and it was a little erotic, or something). I'm worried about my brain and how I could have forgotten that. I blame the crack.
3. My breath tasted very bad, that no amount of toothbrushing could cure. It was a lasting effect from the very ornery onions I had last night on my gyro. I gave my coworkers fair warning, however they probably still suffered. I didn't have many guests in my cube. Maybe that could be a new deterrent system.
4. I spent the evening at Kym's house, we had our first group writing session. Fully clothed, not that I want to burst anyones naughty scenarios they may have concocted. Kym served the most delicious dinner of soup with bread & butter and Little Debbie's Valentine's Day Snack Cakes for dessert. I talked too much again. And got home too late again. And was ten minutes late again. Well, at least I'm consistent.
5. Lost started tonight. I have been looking forward to it very much, but missed it since I was at my writing session. I hope it Tivo'd, but am too tired to check it out. I'm going to hope for the best tomorrow.
6. I was a bit sneezy today, which I hope isn't a sign of colds to come.

The end.

Idiocracy.

Never ceases to amaze me, the depths that humans can go to fuck things up.

My all-girl gym is a really nice place. It's not high-falutting fancy, but the owner takes pride in the facility and adds a lot of really nice conveniences. She always decorates for the holidays, from the entrance-way down to the bathrooms. She provides clean towels, well-appointed showers, tampons and air freshners in the bathrooms, and lockers with corresponding locks and keys all free of charge.

Somewhere along the line, enough people have stolen the locks and keys, lost the keys to the locks or locked the keys in the lockers, both of the latter two instances resulting in the gym incurring a fee to get the locks cut off. Four of these instances have irreparably broken lockers, which are now rendered useless. Four instances of locks being cut off. I would ask if people can really be that fucking stupid, but apparently they are. Don't they realize they are ruining the place they PAY to attend?? Now, locks aren't provided for free. You have to leave your car keys at the desk and pay fifty cents to get a lock. Or buy and bring your own. Nice going, People. Idiocracy: Mission Accomplished.

Oh, on a last note, they gave me a lock to use for free tonight, they know I'm not part of the problem as I haven't been there in quite some time. Hmm. It's comforting to know that my time spent molded to my largeass-making recliner has had some benefit - no errant blame has been cast.

You Might Want to Clean That Thing Up

It's a sad day when one needs to fear peanut butter. Peanut butter has long been a friend of mine, and now warnings are posted across the Internet to Steer Clear. Peanut butter should never be a foe, somethings just wrong with the world when that happens.

The day started off at the crack of nine, with high hopes of doing Great Things with all that day unfurled at my feet. Here we sit, four hours later, with the only accomplishment of note being that I made some rather salty biscuits and gravy from scratch, ate it anyway, have full bellies and an unquenchable thirst as a result, and am being teased by the allure of an early afternoon nap. Kenny's succumbed to the siren's call already and is lightly snoring while he awaits the three o'clock kickoff which signals the start of his Sunday. Well, on a super-cold weekend such as this, what else is there, really, that needs to be accomplished. I may make a start being productive. Maybe.

I'm not sure if my Reader knows this or not, but one of the highlights of my last cruise was meeting my dining companion during the first week of our vacation. The Donna Birdsell was at our table, and to put it mildly I was exuberantly obnoxious about it. She's a historical romance novelist, and I dubbed her "Just Joan" since she was my very own flesh-and-blood Joan Wilder.
Anyway. To appease my fixation on her life and her career, Just Joan sent me two autographed novels, which I was beyond excited to receive. However, they were received right about the time I had gotten immersed in the Twilight series, and took a backseat for a while. Yesterday I decided that one of Just Joan's books will be the first book I read for the New Year. I started with Falcon's Mistress last night. I didn't get to any heaving bosoms or burning loins or throbbing manhoods yet, but it's still early on. I hope there's a little Adult Judy Blume in them.

On to other things. Wednesday night I fought the blizzard and forged my way to my friend Kym's new pad for a Girls Night In. She has a darling place in Lakewood, cute-ed up beyond belief and I could have moved right on in. Kym might have been afraid it was coming to that, as I stayed until 10:45, going on and on and on about ridiculous things in my life. Kym's a psychic, and I find myself always looking to her for advice on my life. Not really fair, but that's the way it is, I guess, when you know someone who might have insights to fixing the mess you're in, or preventing you from getting into a mess. People want to know things. She and I are working on motivating ourselves to move our lives forward, and are going to have some writing sessions at her place. I'm looking forward to it, Kym always seems to figure out a way to make her life happen the way she wants it to, so maybe some of that will rub off on me.

With the exceptionally cold weather we've had, Kenny has been preoccupied with worry about Street Widda. Again, he brought up the "we need to try and catch her" idea. Nope, still no. We don't need to catch that Wild Cat and acclimate her to indoor living. I did see her in our driveway one evening and she took off like a cat outta hell. The neighbor has her garage door opened a foot or so, I'm assuming to house outdoor critters that need retreat. I hope if she's thoughtful enough to go to that trouble that there's also some blankies for curling up in out there, and some food, too. That outdoor livin' is all fun & games when you're chasing birds, catching mice and getting into trash cans, but not so much fun when the snow is blowing up their cat asses.

So there we have another weekend of no gym activity. It's too effing cold. I think about it, and if they were open later than 1 effing p.m., I'd probably make it over there. But I can't even think about being productive before two or three. I guess that'll come back to roost when I'm laying my fatass all over Cabo in March, wishing I had bothered on that snowy cold January weekend to get the fuck up and go to the gym. Ah well. Why do today, what you can put off til another day.

I'm off to bake a cake. We're having an Inauguration Party at work on Tuesday, have a t.v. lined up to watch history being made and eat snacks. Ladies, get ready to shave your snatches, Tuesday is the last day for Bush.