A slate that's fresh and clean

I find it appropriate that my yearly review at work is due right now, at the same time as the whole resolution thing happens. My objectives at work get completed almost as often as my resolutions, but my resolutions never result in pay raises.

I usually don't bother with resolutions but this year, I think I will.

I resolve to read more books.
I watch too much TV, I'll admit it fully. (Right now, Dr. Phil is on in the background despite the fact that I think he's a pompous ass. But I need the background noise, and he's easy to ignore.) But I need to turn it off more often and go sit somewhere quiet and read. I have a ton of books that I got for Christmas and $50 on a gift card to buy more, so I need to get back to the written word and away from the tube of boobs. (Hey! A tube of boobs would be HILARIOUS!)

I resolve to listen more and advise less.
I am bossy and bitchy and a total know it all, and lately it's been out of control; I blame the crazy hormone levels (an after effect of the surgery) combining with my crazy brain chemicals, but I need to change it regardless. I don't always have to have something to say, you know? It's really okay if I just sit back and nod every so often.

I resolve to be more aware of what we're spending our money on.
And along with that, I resolve to start saving. If one of us lost our job right now, we would be horribly screwed. I would like to finally grow the fuck up when it comes to my financial future, you know?

I resolve to spend more time taking pictures and more time actually posting them.
I have a fancy pants camera with a fancy pants new lens and I have wanted to devote more time to that hobby than I have. San Diego is so freaking gorgeous, and we're not going to be here forever. I need to start documenting it and showing it off to you guys.

I resolve to run a 5K.
I started training on Sunday, doing the Couch to 5K training program. I've got at least 2 people willing to run with me, and I want to do it before my 33rd birthday. So by May 5th!

I resolve to stay in better touch with my friends.
So many of them live out of town, and I miss them so much. But none of them know that because I'm so bad about just picking up the phone and calling them. So this year is all about the emails and the phone calls and the happy notes in the mail.

I resolve to learn how to say no.
I over schedule myself, and I over schedule us as a couple. This year, I'm going to learn how to say no so that we can have more weekends of doing nothing together, because those make us happy. And they also keep me sane.

I resolve to use this blog the way I want to use it, rather than the way I think I SHOULD use it.
I am not the wittiest, wordiest writer ever. My entries don't all have to be works of art, deeply profound and thought provoking. So I'm going to just start writing what I want, when I want. I hereby give myself permission to do so.

I resolve to be nicer to myself.
I am constantly second guessing myself, blaming myself, critiquing myself. It's real good for convincing myself that no one likes me, I suck at my job and my husband's going to leave me and I will die alone and be eaten by cats. I need to just chill the fuck out on myself this year.


I resolve to be more brave.
This goes with the photography thing. I've missed so many shots because I didn't want people to stare at me when I take a picture. I've missed so many opportunities for amazing experiences because I was afraid to do it by myself. I've gotten better about it, but I need more bravery in my life.

We will be spending New Year's Eve eating and watching movies and knitting and watching the cats, because we are 80. But we will be spending it together, and I will kiss my husband at midnight and I will go to sleep with the knowledge that my life is very, very good because it is full of friends and family and health and happiness. And I couldn't ask for more than that.

An early Christmas present

Last week, I thought I had a chest cold. Loaded up on Zicam and Airborne and crossed my fingers. Until this morning, when I woke up with that all too familiar tightness in my chest and a cough that had suddenly gotten even worse.

Did my doctor have an opening? Not until January 10th. So I spent an hour at urgent care, and was given the gift of a Z-pack and cough syrup with codeine to take care of my acute bronchitis.

Merry Christmas to me!

(Of course, this gives me an excuse for laying on the couch and asking weakly for more hot tea for the entire weekend.)

It's a wonder anything gets done around here

Grinchy cat
Originally uploaded by Minarae

Yeah, YOU try wrapping presents when a 16 pound grumpy ass cat decides the wrapping paper now belongs to her.

Party on, Garth

We have successfully made it through this year's plethora of holiday parties. I don't know how we did it, except I do know we did not get enough sleep through it all.

So first there was my company party on the 1st. Big to do, fancy dress, dinner and dancing and pantyhose. Good times.

Then there was my potluck with my WLS support group. Yep, a bunch of people who have had weight loss surgery got together to eat. It cracked me up to tell people that because the idea really confused people. But come one people! We still eat! And it was the one potluck I've been to where I knew I could eat every last thing there.

Next up was Kevin's company party, which also confused people because we both work for the same company. So you'd think we'd have the same party, right? But hey, our company has over 46,000 people. There isn't a hotel banquet room in existence that would make that work. So each section of the company has its own party, so we go to go to two parties for The Company.

Friday was a double whammy....my potluck/gift exchange for my main group, and then a party with the Otter crowd of folks. The Otter party was awesome just because we got to spend the evening trading stories with an emergency room doctor who also gives lectures on bioterrorism. Oh, and one of the cutest babies I have ever seen spent most of the evening sticking his tongue out at us.

And then Saturday....oh, Saturday. Saturday was for Shindig. And Shindig was AWESOME, if only because I got to spend the evening with most of my favorite people in the world, and also play Three Card Poker which is the BEST GAME EVER. We did not get back from the party until 2:30 in the morning, and I think I am still tired. But it was so worth it. It was the perfect way to wrap up our party circuit for the year.

And now I can finally nap.

Desktop greenery

Desktop greenery
Originally uploaded by Minarae

Have I mentioned how much I love Trader Joe's? I love them with a love that's a little dirty, really. I love Trader Joe's because not only can I get my lifeblood there (Fage 0% Greek style yogurt), but I can stock up on things like yummy vegan muffins and frozen turkey meatballs AND fancy cheeses.

And! I can buy wee little Christmas shrubberies there. Love!

A prayer for the needful

We added another social obligation to our calendar today: dinner with Kevin's dad and stepmother on the 23rd. We've been told to pick out a restaurant, as it will be their treat since they still "owe us a dinner" for helping during the fires back in October. I figure we should make it worth it and pick out a restaurant that costs a bunch of money, has difficult parking, and is at least a half an hour away from where they live just to make sure that his dad has plenty to complain about since that seems to be what makes him happiest these days.

The stepmother, on the other hand, will spend the entire night A) questioning me about my weight loss and B) watching every bite I put into my mouth. See, I chose not to tell them about the surgery since A) they are assholes about things like this and B) we hardly ever see them and C) it was none of their damn business. Stepmom is unfortunately super obsessed with weight, so of course when she saw me in October she was all over it. She actually got on the phone with Kevin today specifically to ask if I was still dieting and what size I'm wearing these days. Jesus gay, that woman makes me head want to explode.

So in preparation for this upcoming festive situation, I decided I need a little something to get me through it since I can't count on martinis to help me this year.

St. Anthony, the Patron Saint of Bacon, please grant me the serenity to accept my father-in-law's constant complaining,
the courage to tell his wife to stop asking about my "diet",
and enough restraint to keep from punching both of them in their faces.
Amen.

Merry Christmas to all, indeed.

In the spirit

I think I am almost at the end of my Christmas to do list. Tonight, Beth and I camped out at Starbucks for a couple of hours and worked on Christmas cards. I am happy to report that I finished all 110 cards with only one missing address. And that was after I went and bought awesome gift exchange treats for Saturday; I still need to go pick up some booze for Friday's potluck/gift exchange at work (oh, and also food for the potluck) but that's about it. Rock the fuck on.

In other news, I have actually decorated my door at work. And there is a lot of pink. Maybe I should take a picture of that, make an entry out of it.

Tired now. To bed with me.

Well, I'm not smart enough to cure cancer so this will have to do

"We should go give blood this weekend," I said. "They need extra blood during the holidays. Because of the Stupid People Car Accidents."

"Okay," he said. "Let's go give blood."

And so off we went to give blood.

I hadn't been in to give blood for a couple years (a colposcopy, a wedding, a couple surgeries, and a trip to a malaria zone had waylaid me) and Kevin had never given blood. Dude doesn't even know his blood type.

And he still doesn't know his blood type because they rejected him. They rejected him because back in October, he ended up with this really crazy ass case of blepharitis that left him with this giant monster eye. Curing it involved a ton of Keflex and antibiotic eye goop, and it is still not quite done healing; the draining from your eye is amazingly slow, who knew? So they rejected him since to the blood bank draining=active infection.

But they gladly took me and my O+ blood and my Super Good Veins (seriously, my arms are a phlebotomist's wet dream....every time I get blood drawn, they get the vapors). I told Kevin it had never taken me more than 10 minutes to fill a pint, so he wouldn't have to wait long. The nurse told me the record for donors that she's taken care of was 4 minutes.

I clocked in at 6 minutes start to finish. Damn. I gotta squeeze the squishy ball faster next time.

So now I am filled with warm fuzzies, knowing I donated blood that could help people like Mo Pie's nephew and Weetabix's husband stay alive, awake, alert and enthusiastic. And I'm already signed up for an appointment in February!

And now it's your turn! Think of it as a Gift To Humanity. The fuzzies'll totally warm you up this winter. Seriously.

The elf in charge of baking

Since the rest of this month holds nothing but INSANITY for me, I decided to do all my Christmas baking this weekend. Everyone at work will probably curse me tomorrow when i show up with cookies for everyone but oh well. That's what they're getting for gifts this year since I am broke and would rather buy presents for other people.

Anyway, here's what I baked this year:

Oatmeal Toffee Cookies from Martha Stewart


Mom's Awesome Pumpkin Cookies


Mom's Sugar Cookies (Best ones EVER)


Lime Meltaways, also from Martha Stewart


I tossed in a few squares of Rocky Road Fudge, and voila! Festive packages of tasty treats!


Don't you wish you worked with me?

Hungry Hungry Hippos

You know what's fun?

Trying to train cats who have been free-fed their entire lives to start eating on a schedule.

See, we're planning on getting a kitten in February, and the last thing Riley and Abbie need is kitten food. Abbie's a documented Fat Cat, and Riley's been packing it in a lot more lately so he's chunking up. It makes him more fun to snuggle, but since he's a lot more wee than Abbie, he doesn't have the bone structure to carry 16 pounds. But both of them have spent their entire lives with filled bowls always available for them to snack from, so this whole "small portions at designated times" thing is sending them into a tizzy.

So now when I get home from work or first wake up in the morning, we do the Hungry Hungry Hippo Routine, which basically consists of me walking into the kitchen with the two of them swarming around me meowing while I say "Time for Hungry Hungry Hippos!" over and over in the most annoying sing-songy voice ever. (There is, on occasion, a little bit of dancing to go along with it, but that's gone undocumented so no one can prove that part.) It is something that I do not see ending any time soon.

I'm pretty much the biggest dork ever, but really, I should tell you something you don't already know.

Queen of the online shopping carts

You know what I love best about the internet?

I love Christmas shopping.

Today I spent an hour online at the end of my workday and did the vast majority of our Christmas shopping, and half of it is going to arrive wrapped and ready to hand off to their recipients. Love. It.

I imagine that in the future, parents aren't going to tell stories about how hard it was for them to get to school; they'll tell stories instead about how hard holiday shopping was.

"Why, when I was your age, I had to drive for 6 hours to get to the mall, and once I got there, I had to mudwrestle guys dressed like elves in order to get into the parking lot. AND THE!! Then I'd have play 3 rounds of rock paper scissors to try and win a parking spot. And don't even get me started on the lines. These bunions here? They're from the Great Macy's Line of 2012."

The irony of me already being done with my online shopping? I still have to go to the mall with my Little Sister so she can do her Christmas shopping.

And we're not going until December 19th. Guess I better start practicing my mudwrestling skills!

They're my favorites

Festive Freeways
Originally uploaded by Minarae

Following along with today's Holidailies writing prompt...

San Diego has got plenty of light displays to check out, and they're pretty much everywhere. On boats, at the various theme parks, in the park...hell, there's even a drive through display at the Del Mar Fairgrounds. But my favorite lights of all are some simple strings of old school bulbs. They don't blink or flash or do anything other than hang along the fences on the bridges that cross the 805.

The lights have been there since I can remember. I remember being curled up in the back seat of my mom's Impala, listening to Christmas music on the way home from some appointment or party or general errand running. We would come up the hill on the 805 south and there they were, twinkling in greeting. They show up over Thanksgiving weekend, and they stay up until after New Year's Day. It is not the holiday season until those lights go up.

These days, I live right next to the 805, and every night on my way home from work I come up that hill and under those bridges. Those bridges are my neighborhood, and I've loved the fact that every year, the lights were there to welcome me home during the busy holiday season.

But this year, we came home from Thanksgiving to find that the lights were hung but only some of them were lit. And they were hung all wrong. I complained bitterly to Kevin about it. How dare they mess with my favorite tradition! Someone needed to go fix the half-assed hanging job ASAP! I would have called someone except for one tiny thing....I have no idea who is in charge of those lights. I don't think it's the city, or there'd be lights on every bridge in town, and these ones are only in North Park. I thought that maybe it's some North Park Improvement Committee. Or maybe it's just been some random old dude who used to do it and he finally died and his grandson was lazy and did a crap job of light hanging and now we were just going to have with the sloppy results.

I pouted for a week about the lights.

But then! Happiness! Someone magically came and fixed them and the lights were finally hung correctly! And all was right with the world except...not all the lights were lit. There was only one or two strings lit on any given night, and it was never the same ones. Every night when I've come home over the past couple weeks, I've sighed morosely because the lights looked so bad.

But tonight, all is right with the world. Because tonight, finally, all the lights were lit, and all the bridges were twinkling above the freeway. Let the holidays commence!

Another thing to thank Mom for

When I was a sophomore in high school, a new girl started the year with us. Her name was Shawna, and she played the clarinet, and she quickly became part of the group of girls that I was friends with that year, a group of girls who were mostly fellow bandmates. She was new, so she was exotic, and that made her more influential than she probably would have been had she started high school with the rest of us the year before. My mother did not trust her, nor did she like her; she had good reason for that.

See, my mom had decided to throw me a surprise slumber party for my 15th birthday, and she invited a small group of girls that she knew. Shawna called and asked if she could bring another girl to the party, another new girl who had started at the school literally a few weeks before the party. My mother very politely told her no, but Shawna showed up that night with the other girl, knowing full well that my mother would not be mean enough to send the girl home. It would have been fine, if that girl had not later been involved in shenanigans involving the pool table in our family room that lead to our sliding glass door being broken, shenanigans which in turn lead to drama surrounding who the hell was going to pay for the door. Shawna lead the charge against me, calling me mean for insisting that her friend pay her share for the replacement door.

But that was minor compared to what Shawna did a few months later.

She was having a birthday party, a slumber party of course, and the whole group of us was invited. It was easily 12-15 girls, and it was all the girls that I socialized with at school every day. Problem was, it was the same weekend my family and I were going to be out of town for one of JM's son's soccer tournaments. And no matter how much pleading I did, no matter whose mother offered to let me stay with them during the weekend so I could still go to the party, my mom insisted that I skip the party and go with the family. I was heartbroken, but my friends all promised to tell me stories on Monday about the party.

Except on Monday when I saw my friends, they weren't speaking to me. Every single one of them was mad at me about something I had apparently done or said behind their backs, something that came out at the party, something Shawna had told them. Somehow, Shawna's party had become a forum for discussing Reasons To Hate Melinda. And Shawna herself had started it all. What she hadn't counted on in her little plan of destruction was the fact that I wasn't going to put up with it. I yelled at her, I yelled at my other friends, I provided explanations for everything I actually said and refuted the lies.

And then I went home and cried my eyes out to my mother. Bawled and bawled and probably ruined her shirt with cheap makeup and snot. I didn't want to go to school the next day, I didn't want to have to face those girls, especially Shawna. My mom patted me on the back, reminded me that I was still awesome (blame her for my overinflated ego), and told me that sorry, I was going to have to go to school and I was going to have to either find new friends or fix this myself. She didn't call the school and complain, she didn't call Shawna's parents and tell them what a horrible little shit their daughter was. Instead, she told me how to deal with the problem and sent me back out there to deal with it.

The next day, I decided to ignore those girls and go talk to some other friends instead. But then a couple of them came over to me and apologized, told me they just got caught up in everything at the party. It took me a few days to forgive the ones who apologized, and I never did trust Shawna again after that, and it really, really sucked while it was going on. Being a teenager is hard enough; being a teenage girl who's being shunned by all of her friends and being psychologically bullied falls under the category of cruel and unusual punishment.

I am, however, glad that my mother had the sense to let me work it out on my own, rather than run interference or play guardian angel. It was a lesson I needed to learn, that sometimes friends stab you the back and sometimes you have to just turn your back and move on.

It is a lesson that Lori Drew's daughter will never get to learn. Instead, her daughter has learned that the way to deal with friendships ending and bullying is to have her mom bully her friends back.

I am at a loss to understand how any reasonable, sane adult thinks that is is okay for them to attack a child via cyber bullying. The fact that she is a parent and that this is the behavior she is modeling for her child makes me want to punch her in the face. It makes me too angry to really write anything coherent about the situation, really; all I keep thinking of to type involves all caps cursing. But Judith Warner wrote an excellent column about this situation, a column that I think every parent should read if just to make them step back and re-evaluate how they parent their children through situations like this one.

I was lucky that the Shawna situation happened in the days before internet harassment was commonplace; the situation would have been 10 times worse if it had been spread all over the world wide web. But I'm even luckier to have had a mom who helped me learn to deal with situations like this on my own. I just hope that someday Lori Drew's daughter learns that lesson herself, despite her mother's efforts to keep it from happening.

Bettering myself

There's been a cold snap going on around here lately, and it's been making it hard for me to get out of bed. Never mind the fact that I'm someone who loves to sleep, just the fact that the mornings find me all warm and buried in my super snuggly sheets with a purring cat next to me makes it almost impossible to get me out of bed. So yeah, this morning was rough for me and I totally got to work half an hour late. And I was wearing jeans because man, I just could not handle putting together an outfit that was both warm and professional looking. But hey, I wore the dark wash jeans and some heels, so it was totally a business casual outfit. Okay, maybe it was casual business, I don't know.

Speaking of casual business, I've finally up and decided to Do Something With My Life other than just hang out in the same job for the next 20 years. So I'm heading back to school in January to get my MBA through one of those universities aimed at working professionals. They do these nifty 9 week semesters, with classes meeting once a week for like...4 hours. Which is fine, I'd rather have one really long night than have to coordinate my schedule around class 2 or 3 times a week.

The only problem is that there's only one of my required prerequisites open to me in the January-February semester, and it meets on Thursdays. And I'm going to be gone on the third Thursday of the semester (because I will be on my way to Meatacon! Yay!), which is the night of the first test in the class. And really, when the class meets only 9 times, I can understand if a professor objects to students missing a session. So now who knows if I'm going to be able to start in January after all. I've emailed the professor to see if it would be okay for me to just make up the work/test, and if he says no, then I guess I'll wait til February.

I was momentarily stressed out about the whole thing, but then I decided to say fuck it; whatever happens is what's supposed to happen and I'll start school when I'm supposed to start. In the meantime, I need to start trying to remember how to do things like study. And take notes.

But hey, at least I finally have an excuse to go buy a plethora of school supplies! I wonder if I can get a tax write-off for the fancy pens.

And the cats are STILL sleeping

Today was pretty much a perfect Sunday, despite the fact that for some stupid reason, I woke up at 8:30 with a sinus headache and could not get back to sleep to save my life. So instead, I curled up in my big fluffy robe (which is now 2 sizes too big on me, which makes it even more fluffy and awesome and warm; now it's like my own personal blanket with arms) and tried to rehydrate myself since for some reason I woke up beyond parched. (Seriously, I've barely peed all day which is just weird. I am usually a peeing MACHINE.) Eventually, Kevin stumbled out of bed and I sent him off to the storage unit to pick up all the Christmas decorations while I wrangled our living room into a decoratable state.

I have to say, I'm pleased with how the living room looks now; I would totally not mind someone coming over unexpectedly right now. They would only be allowed to be in the living room though, because the bedroom has a gigantic pile of clothes in it that needs to been taken to both the consignment store and Goodwill and the bathroom is only okay if you don't look at the floor of the tub (Downside to cute hair that involves three hair products a day? Instant and constant levels of soap scum) and as usual, we have a bunch of dishes to be done in the kitchen. So hey, come visit! See the tree with the million ornaments! Just don't leave the living room!

So yeah, got the tree up and man, we have a lot of ornaments. I'm beginning to realize why my mom has ended up with a dozen boxes filled with just ornaments. It's like they breed during the summer in the storage unit or something. The tree is looking kinda beat down though (to be expected from a $60 tree I bought at Wal-Mart three years ago though, I think) so this is the last year for the artificial one I think. It's time to switch to the real ones.

And after all the decorating, I decided I was tired and needed a nap so the cats and I settled on the couch to watch Law & Order and we all fell fast asleep for a good hour. Sunday afternoon naps on couches while covered in cats are really the best naps of all.

Kicking off the season: Holiday Party #1

Apparently, the following equation is totally true:

80 pounds lost since last year's party + a sassy new haircut + the perfect party dress = People not recognizing you at the company holiday party because you are just THAT DAMN HOT



I don't know about you, but this holiday season has started off Just Right.