So, last night, stentoriansista and I made a stir fry after the gym. It consisted of chinese cabbage, garlic scapes, pak choi (all from farm share), broccoli, snap peas (both farmers market), onion, chicken, noodles and some seasonings (sadly, all from the grocery store). It was tasty and I was starving, so I quickly dug into it.

Then, about 45 minute later, I had seconds.

Then, half an hour after that, I had a pint of strawberries with some ice cream.

Then an hour after that, I had a couple of spoonfuls of ice cream.

Then I went to bed hungry, despite practically eating my weight in food.

I wasn't dehydrated, trust me. I went through 2 water bottles worth of water last night (48 oz) and went through a 20 oz water bottle at the gym. I could have just been wanting to replace all the extra calories that I burned at the gym too or I could have been PMSing, I'm not sure.

But here's the thing. I wasn't that hungry this morning, but ate a good sized breakfast (peanut butter, graham crackers & cherries). When I sat down to lunch, I was hungry, but not starving.

I'm ravenous now and have been ever since I finished eating. It's the kind of hungry that I know isn't actually me wanting food, but it's annoying as all hell, because I want to just keep eating until I feel sick. Add to this that stentoriansista started feeling sick last night and I'm just wondering how this happened?

Twitter consensus is that I didn't get enough protein (pretty sure I did) or that it just awoke a hunger in me (how very romance novel!) (also, I don't think so).

Then there's the stentoriansista theory that I have a tapeworm.

I had a bit of a meltdown last night. I wore sleeves when I sat on the couch of death to prevent further bites and instead whatever it is bit the hell out of my neck and collarbone (vampire bed-flea-ders! ARGH NO!!!). Took a Tylenol PM to hope to bring the swelling and itching down which means that today is both itchy and sleepy. (swelling down, itching not so much. I must admit the fact that these bites are so itchy they hurt concerns me) Before I got the bites, I pulled out the couch and vacuumed the entire damn thing. Front, back, sides, cushions and mattress. And the the vacuum cleaner stopped worked (I think I clogged the filter) and I quit everything until today. About half an hour after I finished the vacuuming is when the vampire bed-flea-ders attacked, at which point I had to call stentoriansista and whine for 20 minutes.

I am about ready to set this damn couch on fire.

In other news, when I was out with a cold the other week, I started watching the LG15 series. Ugh. ( Spoilers McGee they calls me )

I'm having a trifecta of FAIL today:
-Last night, I left my knitting at a superbowl party. Luckily, it was at Mr. mel21clc's, so I'll get it back, but still... that pissed me off.
-Last night, when getting out of the car, I was carrying a coat, a purse and my iPod. Somewhere between the three, I dropped the iPod. It took me 20 minutes to figure out it was missing and another hour to find it, on the ground outside the car, which was parked on Meridian. (As a side note, I'm honestly surprised it was still there because this is Meridian. I was also surprised I didn't get set on fire while rummaging through the car at 1am) (Side note - see that black beetle in the third shot in the first post? That's stentoriansista's car. No, for reals) Because of these shenanigans, I didn't actually get to bed until 2am.
-This morning, after the usual 'omg, none of my pants fit' angst, I went to get dressed and go to work. I put on my super cool vintage necklace I got at accessories of old on Saturday... and it broke. Like, thread severed from findings, no real way to fix broke. Lame.

Since the universe deserves balance, here is a trifecta of WIN for you:
-Found said iPod, despite the fact that it was actually on the street and therefore could have been ganked by anyone with sharp eyes.
-Quickly got on to a completely empty S1 bus this morning, allowing me the seat of my choice (and a quick snooze).
-I still have 4 cups of cooked beets to enjoy at whim.

Though, another tick in both the fail and win columns is that I'm enjoying my first french press coffee with my swanky new french press at work (win!). Unfortunately, the hot water dispenser... dispensed some lukewarm water. Cold coffee. That I made way too strong (fail!)

So, I made the mistake of opening mail before going to bed last night. Among them was a bill for $200 from my dentist. I got a couple of fillings done last month, but I'd paid my $80 copay at the time. I figured it was just a billing mistake, along with the $20 they said I owed from the visit in October. So, I called my dental insurance company. Turns out that, no, I'm just fucked. My dentist did a fancier filling that they don't cover, plus my deductible, plus they don't cover work on molars fully. So now I owe them $200. That I don't really have. And it's probably just that I got to bed at 2am last night, but I really want to cry. Plus they haven't submitted that x-ray for a pretreatment estimate like they said they would in October, so I can't go ahead and schedule my root canal. Plus I have to submit more paperwork for my FHSA.

And I broke my coffee mug this morning. Not a happy camper.

Ugh, today is worse than yesterday. There's some serious yellow slime action going on, made marginally better by the neti pot. On the bus this morning, I snagged a window seat and this lady sat down next to me, which, fine, it's a crowded bus in the morning. She was wearing way too much perfume, but whatever. She kept elbowing me, which... well, I'm a wider person and she was a wider person, so again, I can understand that. I was trying to snooze and had my head against the window, which was right next to the pull cord. When her stop comes up, she goes to pull the cord, jamming her watch into my skull. I moved my head and glared at her and she said 'Oh, excuse me' in a really huffy tone. Lady, all you had to say was 'excuse me' before you smacked me upside the head. Act like a human being. Oh, whatever.

I'm skipping pilates class today because... ha, that just ain't gonna happen and I'll make it up probably next week.

I desperately need to clean my kitchen and I'd like to go for a swim on Sunday, but I won't if my sinuses continue to ache like this. Bah.

Some days I can never tell if I'm being insulting or funny. Today is one of those days. Having these moments makes me think that I am a jackass and that everyone at work secretly hates me and is trying to get me fired. I'm pretty sure that this is not true. Pretty sure.

I want a farm share, dammit! In my usual vein of WANT! IGNORE BAD PARTS!, I am completely ignoring the fact that I can be somewhat picky about my veggie wants and don't cook all that much and it's too late in the season and just want! farmshare!

Specifically, I want one that drops off at a downtown location close to work (I don't want to have to go to Dupont!), will give me lots of fruits & veggies & the occasional chicken. Can someone please make this happen? kthxbye.

Also, unfortunately placed ads. Heh.

ETA: Well, gosh. Bull Run Farms that's pretty close to my house! Inconvenient times, though. I'd have to leave work half an hour early to still make pickup, probably.

I'm wearing pants I wore on Friday. They smell of woodsmoke. This pleases me.

So, Friday, stentoriansista and I got in her car and drove out to Harper's Ferry for a weekend of being crunchy hippy granola types. We get to the Harper's Ferry KOA with rising amounts of OMGWTF because of the sheer volume of people and smallness of campgrounds. It's luau weekend. Our list of activities for the weekend include a hula competition and a pig roast. We decline said activities. We check in, I buy firewood, firestarters & a camp chair and drive out to our site. Which is right next to a family with four small children and no firepit. We drive back to the store and get a new campground, across the way from the original site. We pitch the tent, I start the fire and stentoriansista goes to inflate the airmattress, only to discover that the pump I bought from Target a few weeks ago... has no back. We go back to the camp store and I pay $5 more than I paid for the first one for a pump that has to go into your car adapter. Inflate the thing, I attempt to rekindle the refusing to burn fire with firestarter #2, we realize that we'll be sleeping on the mother of all downhill angles and stentoriansista moves the batteries from the backless pump to the flashlight... which doesn't turn on. stentoriansista goes to get her campchair only to discover it decided to stay home and canoodle with the kiddies. Moving to a hotel is discussed and rejected because my will is stronger than wood. stentoriansista has a bucket to sit on. Firestarter number three actually gets a fire going. Wine is swigged from the bottle. We go to bed, only to be woken up an hour later by the people across the way from us swearing loudly (probably drunk).

We get up at the crack of 7:45 to get some breakfast and then go to River Riders to get checked in and everything. There's an informative bike safety video, a nice gentleman from Austin with a large beard and even larger ear spacers loads the bikes and some other folks' canoes into a van and we head out. stentoriansista and I, being nice people, strike up a conversation with him and he invites us to hang out with him & his wife in Shepherdstown that night. Canoers get dropped off and we get dropped off at Lock 38? of the C&O trail and start biking.

The C&O trail is absa-frigging-lutely beautiful and runs along the Potomac at a 1% downhill grade, so the biking time is easy and fun. We bike 12-ish miles in an hour and a half and then head into Harper's Ferry, eat some food looking out over the water and then wander around the old church & cemetary. We make it to our pickup point right as our picker-upper shows up and then wait around for 20 minutes as he tries to figure out how to ratchet the bikes into the trailer. We drive very, very slowly back to River Riders and get back to the campground, where I change into a bathing suit and we drive into the mouth of hell itself Wal-Mart, where we get a camp chair, flashlight, more firestarters (we used all the old ones!), a lantern and a faux-bathing suit for stentoriansista and drive back to the river, where we climb out onto some rocks and proceed to just hang out and enjoy the sun and water. There's a bunch of folks around, including some people with a few German shepherds that are swimming. One, named Ruckus, pulls himself out of the water, shakes himself off on OUR TOWEL, relieves himself and then shakes himself off on OUR TOWEL AGAIN and runs away. At this point, we realize we're going to make the car smell like river. We head back to camp and I leave stentoriansista to make fire while I take a much needed shower.

We continue to fail at fire until I remember that you need kindling before the big logs and we burn up a bunch of deadwood & leaves and then the big logs finally catch. We roast weenies and marshmellows and drink more wine and generally have a lovely time until the people next door show up at 9pm and proceed to set up their tents by headlight, ask us really dumb questions and then be loudly annoying and drunk for the next three hours. We go get more beer (we would have gotten more wine, but they were selling Little Penguin for $9 a bottle, which is pretty outrageous). We drink a little more and proceed to go to bed, after I ask the twelve drunk people to please keep it down. They proceed to laugh at me.

We get up at 9:45 and attempt to be as loud as possible as we break down camp, because we know Drinky McDrunksaLot next door are still passed out. After a leisurely breakfast, watching the drunkards next door pee in the woods (the bathrooms are almost as far away as you wandered to go hide behind trees! What's wrong with you!!!) and checkout, we go peruse the flea market next door, where everything that is crappy in the world has come to die. Seriously, it's the worst flea market ever. We get to River Riders at 12:30 for our 1 o'clock check in, eat some snacks and check in promptly at one... when we are told to be back at 1:45. So, we sit on top of the car and knit and watch the sky, which is pretty, but also gray and threatening rain. I'd gotten a phone call saying that we couldn't raft on the Shenandoah because the water level was too low, but that we could go on the Potomac, which was supposed to be "near constant rapids." It was disappointing. Our guide was awesome (I think he enjoyed hanging out with girls near his age and not families or teenagers), but the route was almost exactly what we'd biked along the day before and there was a lot of shiny nature (herons, osprey & egrets), but not a lot of action. We did jump out and swim the final rapid, which was pretty awesome. I forgot to take my watch off, but it took a licking and kept on ticking. We finally got back to the base, changed, and made it home by 6:30ish, where we proceeded to be dead on the couch and watch What Not to Wear until we passed out.

The SUPERLOUD THUNDER woke us up at 1am. It was crazy raining. And then I finally shipped my spinning wheel back to Wisconsin. The damn thing cost $50 to ship. Apparently, it cost extra because they were shipping it to a "rural area." WTFever. If I get a hundred dollars refunded for the thing, that's $50 more than I had before I shipped it and I don't have to have it in my house anymore.

So, to sum up, River Riders = win, Harpers Ferry KOA & UPS = suck. Also, for future camping trips, we're only going to by firewood while camping. Also also, I won't forget pillows. Or dishes.

The aftermath from dying the exercise class from hell yesterday is that everything's sore. The good news is that everything's sore. The bad news is that EVERYTHING IS SORE. One of these days, doing 10 minutes of ab work won't leave my neck hurting. And the weight training stuff he did with my arms left my mid-back really cranky.

I just checked Harpers Ferry's weather forecast for the weekend and it's supposed to be 80* both days. The 40% chance of rain on Sunday has gone down to 10%. I AM SO FREAKING EXCITED. If this weekend ends up sucking, I may have to choke a bitch. Holy crap, our campground has wireless... again, completely missing the point of CAMPING. We're going to buy some firestarters and wood onsite... here's hoping it's not ridiculously expensive.

Work is mostly good, second job is mostly good. I forgot to blog about it, but stentoriansista and I went down to Virginia Beach for a bridal shower last weekend and had a lovely time hanging out. Saw Stardust and was rather disappointed. The book was lovely, the movie had to tie everything up in a neat little bow... that was painful. After Virginia Beach last week, camping this week and dogsitting next week, I'm going to have slept in my bed at my house for either 3 or 4 nights from the 9th through the 27th. It's wacky.

I suppose I should go get some work done. Especially since I had a talk with Boss about how I'm bored and she's actually given me more work.

It has occurred to me that the sleeping bag (not mine) that I said I'd bring to the Becoming retreat this weekend is MIA. It also occurs to me that I might want a sleeping bag for future camping endeavors. It also also occurs to me that I just got my catsitting payment. Yes. I may buy a $30 sleeping bag in the near future. I figure I don't need one for subzero temperature ratings since I don't plan on going camping in the freezing, freezing cold.

It has also occurred to me that if I got a freaking driver's license already (srsly ppl), I wouldn't have to be dependent on others for camping-ness. Going this weekend reminded me how much I enjoyed it and that it would be nice to go by myself or with others, but I can't really go by myself these days. I mean, I could, but it would require taking a tent, sleeping bag, food, equipment, etc... on the metro and then walking to that Greenbelt park. Hah. If I got better at or even practiced parking, I'd feel confident at going out and getting a license tomorrow, though less confident about actually using it. But I could still join the Dark Side get a ZipCar membership in a year. Blah blah blah pretty pretty over-privileged princess.

In other news, pork chops + Newman's Own Mango Salsa = love. Even if I overcooked them.

What just happened? I was working, bopping along, doing just fine and then bam. I'm tired, I'm upset, I want to backhand someone, I feel like a failure, blah blah blah. Hello, major mood swing, completely unwarranted & unprovoked, how are you?

I think I'm just tired. Between the 8am board meeting yesterday, the 9am doctor's appointment today and the 8am dentist tomorrow, I've gotten not enough sleep. And tomorrow is a cleaning AND a cavity fill. Yuck. At least I'm seeing Harry Potter tonight! YAYAYAYAYAY!!! Yes, I am a giant geek. I have an hour to kill before the show, so I think I'm going to ::gulp:: call my mother. Of course, my cell phone is starting to die, so at least I have an excuse to end the call.

I get a massage tomorrow. I'm very, very excited about this. I think I'm getting my hopes a bit too high, but I really want them to work out all of my shoulder knots and then I'll have a reasonable range of motion on my arms and/or can shrug without crunchy noises and/or not constantly bug stentoriansista to rub my back.

I finally went grocery shopping yesterday and broke a new record for me - $100 worth of food. My freezer now has 4 kinds of meat, more ice cream, I have camping foods and chili fixings, it's all good in the hood. Of course, my grocery cart that I bought in April and have used maybe 5 times broke on the way home, but I'm pretty sure it's fixable with duct tape. What is it with me breaking things? Plus, I got to go hang out with mareska and a_muse_amused for mareska's birfday and generally feel a bit more in order.

stentoriansista found me a (free!!!) bed & mattress set on craigslist with basically a "write something entertaining & I'll give it to you" hook. I was charming and witty for 5 paragraphs and assuming the single mom with two kids punks out, I can have it! New mattress! No box spring! IKEA cute bedness! Of course, I'd have to get rid of the old bed, but that's what freecycle is for. This could be very exciting.

While I'm crazy-ing it up, I became a member for the pagan group that I've been visiting once a month, which makes me very happy. I really, really like it. And I'm not just saying that because two folks in it read this LJ. I like the people, I like the ritual, I really like that it's a group of folks that you can hang out with and not feel like you need a bath to wash off the skeeze afterwards. It's funny, I'm so out of practice and I've been abusing my body so much that I'm almost completely energy de-sensitized... I used to be much more attuned to these things and I'm sure I would be again if I took better care of myself. It's just nice to take a day a month and acknowledge the sacred in the world.

Christina's Critic: Hey Psyche?
Christina's Psyche: Yo.
Critic: You notice something lately?
Psyche: Yeah. We rule.
Critic: Yeah. I'm not okay with this.
Psyche: No?
Critic: No. We keep this up, that stupid Sense of Self Worth might start actually acting up again.
Christina's Sense of Self Worth: Hey guys? Hello?
Psyche: I hate that guy. What can we do that would really, really crush him?
Sense of Self Worth: I'm standing right here...
Christina's Body: Done.
Psyche: Uh... wah?
Body: Done.
Critic: Explain, please.
Sense of Self Worth: What's going on?
Body: Remember how we've been eating well but having some portion control issues lately?
Critic: Weakling.
Body: And how we've been busy and stressed and therefore not exercising?
Psyche: Exercise sucks.
Sense of Self Worth: Why didn't someone tell me we were having a meeting? No one sent me the minutes from the last one!
Body: Well, now I've added inches. None of the summer skirts fit. Hell, she can't even zip most of 'em up!
Psyche: None?
Body: Not even the too big purple one she made last fall.
Critic: Wow, fatso, how much have you gained?
Body: Not that much... Five pounds? Maybe ten?
Psyche: Food makes me happy.
Critic: Well, I would have done it better, but that works.
Psyche: Let me just add some reinforcement that she'll die alone and unloved... and done.
Body: Who wants ice cream? I know I sure do.

Sense of Self Worth: So... cold...

I wish I knew why I get so fucked up in the head when I go to the gym. No, scratch that, I do know. Mirrors. I see myself in the mirror. And I think I'm moving gracefully or holding a pose properly and then I look over and not only am I red-faced, sweaty & ugly, I move like crap. I wish I could look in the mirror and see more than my flaws.

In other news, I'm going to my favorite place, the doctors, tomorrow. I told my boss and was basically told to take the rest of the afternoon off, so I think I'll metro to the airport and then walk the C&O footpath home. Assuming it doesn't rain. Which it probably will.

I have a sinus headache and a chest cough. I had too much dinner and now I'm nauseous. I can't finish this goddamn book review. My roommate basically went "Ex roommate is gone! I'm having these problems with the house! Go!" and then said that I have a lot of stuff. I don't have that much stuff and what I do have will fit pretty easily into the room. I'm slightly offended this declaration. I mean, even if I can't find a good place for my bookshelf, that can live in the living room. Oy.

ETA: And Kurt Vonnegut's dead. And everyone else I know is having huge family issues, so why am I whining again?

I'm officially annoyed.

One of my main reasons for going to IKEA yesterday was to get mineral oil for the butcher block I picked up a month ago. I ask the nice saleslady for mineral oil. She points it out to me, I buy it. I get it home, preparing to slap some on said butcher block only to find out that it's BEHANDLA wood treatment oil. Which is great to preserve wooden countertops, but not to use to prepare foods. That's another $4 I'm never going to see again, along with the $8 shoes that don't fit. And. AND. I still have to buy the damn oil.

Not to mention that I accidentally set the genre for all of my MP3s to Alternative, rather than just the ones that were labeled Alternative-Rock. BLARGH.

So, I got the temporary crown on Tuesday. There've been problems. I think I am downgrading my dentist from awesome to merely okay at this point. For one, I'm pretty sure that they put my tooth on backwards. I grind my teeth, so all of my bottom teeth have kind of a reverse-J shape - high on the outside, flat on the inside. Except the new tooth is a J-shape - high on the inside, flat on the outside. On one hand, this is great because it's not hitting my mouthguard and causing issues like last time, but this causes me to play with it with my tongue more than is healthy.

Also, the tooth is not flush with my other teeth. Like, there's a gap between the two. It's a small gap, but I can get floss in and out without any issue or worry that I'll pull the temp out because there is no resistance. This also means that food can very easily get jammed in there, which causes it to ache even more. We had dinner last night and there was a tomato seed jammed in there. stentoriansista's roommates were having a 4am party, it was hard for me to get back to sleep because my tooth was complaining. I took an aspirin, and now that I've eaten lunch, I'm getting another ache.

I don't want to have to deal with this shit for the next three weeks. Sure, I can keep floss at my desk, but I'm not sure if that's the right solution. I guess I should call my dentist on Tuesday?

Back from the dentist. I hate novocaine. And they didn't fill the cavity like they were supposed to, but considering it took 2.5 hours to get the crown in, I wasn't going to hang around for another hour.

Come to me, comfy couch and 6 Feet Under episodes...

So, I just reread Dangerous Angels by Francesca Lia Block. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it - it's a series of short novels all centered around Weetzie Bat, a young filmmaker in LA, compressed into a larger book. It's a series of lovely, romantic, lyrical books that combine magical realism with the pain of real life and they're just fucking beautiful.

Reading them always makes me a little sad. The characters are startlingly real and harsh in their emotions, but that's not what always gives me a little pang of regret when I read them. The characters have their flaws, their problems, their magic... and there's something about them that I know I can never be. They're all beautiful, mysterious and skinny.

Now, the GF constantly reassures me that I'm pretty, beautiful, gorgeous, stunning. I give her orgasms. It's part of the deal. And while I'm a lovely person, silly and (hopefully) funny and witty, I'm certainly not mysterious. Hell, I wouldn't have a livejournal if I wanted that. Reading descriptions of these magical vegetarians who are always eating and who are always skin and bones, I know it's something I could never be. I don't know, even if I get myself down to a size 8, which I know will never happen (at least, not healthily), I'm sure I'll still think of myself of fat and unworthy of anyone's affection.

And magic? For some reason, I've always known that's for someone that's never worn pants in my size. Maybe it's because of things like the ridiculous wife prancing around in fairy wings on Wife Swap the other week, or because the most ridiculous pagans I've met have always been large, or because the most compelling ones have always had dress sizes in the single digits, or even shit like Practical Magic but I've always had this thought in the back of my head that the reason that I've never had the Profound Mystical Experience I keep expecting to happen is due to my waist.

Which is not to say that I devalue my religion or that it devalues me or that I hate myself because of my size. I've been having issues the whole pagan thing because I've been unwilling to spend the time to focus on it... which reminds me that I had a really powerful dream on Thursday that I need to recap. I prided myself so much on being "special" when I was younger... I was smart, I was a writer, I was going to Mean Something to the world. And then I grew up a bit and I realized that yes, I'm smart, but everyone seems to be much smarter, I'm a good writer, but not when compared to the professional writing world and the things that I love are conventional and not Meaningful and I'm not changing the world the way I was so sure I'd do. In other words, I'm having a huge Avenue Q moment.

It just makes me sad to reread these books that have these beautiful, powerful heroines who overcome adverse odds and make their own magic and think that that's a kind of magic that I will never have, because I'm not one of the beautiful people. The world doesn't sit up and take notice you if you're a size 14 the way it does if you look like a supermodel. Not when Norbit makes the most money at the box office and Tyra Banks is attacked for gaining 30 pounds. I'm never going to be one of the special, beautiful, magical people. It's hard to love yourself when the world refuses to even recognize yourself as a person, sometimes. I try to pretend that it doesn't bother me, but it does.

Let's see, Friday I overslept due to the cold of DOOM, so I took a long shower and then set out to Bailey's Crossroads to see the podiatrist. Managed to get sort of lost finding it and then waited 20 minutes for a bus that I took for 3 stops (which always makes me feel like a tool). The podiatrist was EXPENSIVE. $26 copay. Krikey! And it was this older, white haired white guy, who talked to you really slow-ly and care-ful-ly and over-enun-ci-a-ted everything so it sounded condescending and like he thought I had the IQ of a toddler. Direct quote: "OK, I want you to put this antibiotic ointment on your foot. [rummages in bin, holds tube directly in front of my face] It's called Ne-o-spor-in." I wish I could just write it off and say he talking down to me because he works mainly with old people and kids, but he was doing that do his receptionist and the 40 something guy next door (who had diabetes and didn't exercise, from the sound of it). Also, he kept me waiting half an hour to be seen. And I was early since there's always paperwork the first time you see a doctor.

After that, I walked back to Bailey's Crossroads and did some quick Christmas shopping. Then I realized that even if I did catch the next bus home, I'd have about 10 minutes before I had to turn around and go to work. Accidentally took a 25 instead of a 16 and ended up downtown around 5. Did some more shopping at Barnes & Noble and managed to escape with 3 presents and only The Will of the Empress as an impulse purchase.

Worked at work. Went to stentoriansista's. Saw Rainbow Brite: The Movie. Was very amused.

Saturday, got woken up at the crack of 11 by a crazy roommate. Stupid roommate. stentoriansista and I ran back to my place so I could have new clothes (what a luxury!), ran to Old Navy & AC Moore, visited with goingdriftless and then went back to DC to hang out with someone who can only be referred to as Jamesy James. There was Cakelove. And it's weird, but I didn't actually like their cake. The cake part was flavorless and the frosting didn't wow me. Drinking at Common Share (while a Santa pub crawl happened - weird), then drinking at Wonderland, then in bed by 2am (I'm so old. You kids get off my lawn!). Up at 9, at work at 10 on Sunday, where I read a magazine and drank chai and babysat a rental.

Due in no small part to the fact that I'd eaten only a sandwich and chips in the past 15 hours, I got very upset with myself toward the end of the day on Sunday. Feeling like a failure because I'm not where I want to be in my career and blah blah blah. Compounding this was the fact that it's Giftmas, I'm (perpetually) broke and I have no food in my house, so I've been eating out a lot. Got home, made a box of mac 'n' cheese, realized I had most of my chili fixings and crocked some chili (sans peppers and carrots, but still good). Stayed up way too late and then couldn't fall asleep. So now I'm tired, cranky, sick and still feeling like a failure (though that may be due to the fact that I skipped breakfast). And DOOM. DOOOOOOM.

And I have to go buy a secret santa present for the company holiday party tonight.

Remember when this blog wasn't full of me whining with the occasional recipe thrown in? Me neither.

In other news, I need to use two cups of beef broth in the next two weeks (I keep typing brother instead of broth). Have crockpot, will travel, can't find any particularly good recipes that don't require me buying spices. Thoughts? ETA: Never mind, will make this and substitute cumin for caraway.

( Meal Plan for the Next Couple of Weeks )

So, does having two-three smallish glasses of wine every night for the past week make me an alcoholic or just stressed and self-medicating?

(I've worked everyday for the past week, too)

(Questions perhaps not to be asked while watching Intervention, eh?)

Listless. Tired. Took the morning off and am still ded.

People won't return my phone calls. I am grouchy.

Today was officially a long-ass scary day. So, I made it up with nachos and wine for dinner and ice cream for dinner in a minute. I'm sick of feeling like I'm constantly falling apart at the seams. I'd say it'll blow over, but I'm afraid it won't. And now, more wine!

You know that feeling where you have nothing to do but you think there's something you should be doing and you don't know what it is and the more you think about it the guilter you get but you still can't figure out what it is so eventually you just give up and fuck around on the internet for hours?

Yeah. That.

And I'll probably read the paper later, too.

I had a dream last night (at least, I think it was a dream) where I had to do something vaguely magical that I knew would change my life forever and I wasn't sure if I wanted to do it or not. A globe was involved, but I think that was leftover from a story I read last night. I hesitated and I'm not sure if I acted. I woke up still feeling like I needed to make a decision. It reminds me of Beltane where I made a promise to myself that I would make a change in my life. And I've been trying and some things have definitely changed for the better, but I guess this is a reminder that I need to kick some things into high gear.

I need to devote more effort into the spiritual stuff too. I guess I've been slacking at that because I'm lazy and I've been lazy for so long it feels like I'll be starting from scratch. And I wish my freaking job would give me Sundays off so I could go to Becoming events. And I wish I remembered to check in their schedule more. Just RSVP'd for the Saturday thing and may not be able to go since I'm after deadline. Alas, alack, I'm a sillyhead.

I just wish things were a little bit easier sometimes.

Dear Shoulders,

Please stop sucking. Really, I like being able to use you but not the BLINDING PAIN that happens when I do things like cut a pattern. I can't craft if you keep these things up. Not cool, shoulders.

No love,
Christina