September 19, 2005

Again, it feels like a long time since I journaled.  I dropped bits and pieces into my Live Journal, but nothing particularly cohesive.  Midweek last week, I developed a pretty nasty head cold and I am still not over it.  My sinuses are pretty much on fire and I sneeze and blow my nose all the time, in addition to feeling really tired all of the time, partly from the cold and partly from still getting up 3-4 times a night to feed the puppy.

He is doing very well, as nearly as I can tell. He is two weeks old on Wednesday, so his eyes should open this week.  I got him started on a baby bottle, which has made feedings much, much easier for both of us.  The other four in the hole are doing exceptionally well.  I am still worried about them for the coming rains, but Eric is really pushing the "nature knows what it's doing" approach.  As a Pagan, I can fully embrace that thought and as a Virgo, I have a hard time thinking anything or anyone can get by without my interference, so it's a battle.  He points out that Belle has been an exceptionally good mother and that she'll know what to do and when to do it.  I'm leaning toward trusting that, but damn.  And boy do we need the rains.

The weekend was fairly uneventful.  I went to Sacramento with Delena on Saturday and had lunch with Dave, then took pizza over to Josh and Valerie.  They will be visiting us with their three kids all this coming weekend, then moving to Colorado the following weekend.  Afterwards, Delena and I went to the thrift store (no major finds there) and on to get her some shoes.  She was going to get her hair cut, but declined at the last minute.  We scuttled back up the mountain and did little for the evening.  Sunday, Jennifer came up for Mabon, the second harvest ritual.  We had a great visit, great ritual, then it was time to sleep. 

On Thursday, I was able to correct (sort of) some ongoing computer problems.  I started by switching over to sbcyahoo as an internet service provider instead of earthlink.  That allowed me to connect on dial up at a few kbps faster, which I greatly appreciate.  I also got a new hard drive.  I've had store credit at Office Depot for months for a chair I bought from them that screwed up about a month after I got it.  The store credit let me get the hard drive for just a few bucks extra, so I had Eric toss it in the computer, moved all of my stuff I needed to say over to the new drive, wiped the old D drive with a d:format and although it is completely blank, my computer still believes I have two installations of Windows XP installed on my drives and prompts me to choose which one.  By going into my systemini file, I was able to at least name the c drive, which DOES have the windows installation on it, as the default, but I can't get it to stop prompting me to choose an installation.  I did find a program called TweakUI that will fix your registry and rebuild icons and such.  It got my computer running like a champ, so I'm all kinds of happy (except for that whole having to choose an installation at start up thing).  Georgia says I have to tweak my cmos, but I haven't figured out how to get into it yet.  Hitting delete during set up doesn't do it.  I'll keep playing until I find it.

Fall has come so quickly on the mountain.  Even though the leaves have not yet turned up here (they have just a mile down the mountain, however), the air is really crisp and I have been having a fire in the woodstove at night.  I'm really grateful to Eric for stocking up on wood and getting most of it all chopped up over the summer.  There is something so comforting about the warmth of a wood fire that feels some much more radiant and natural than central heat.  It's a pain to wade out in a few feet of snow to get wood, but I'll burn that bridge when I come to it.

Exercise or sleep... exercise or sleep?  The hedon in me is screaming that I should just crawl into bed and get all caught up, but I promised myself that this is the week I would start exercising again.  I have been keeping my calories, with the exception of Saturday, which was one brilliant eatfest, under 1800 every day for a couple of weeks now and this is the time that I have to amplify that with exercise.  I was doing great with exercise until I went to the GH Fan Weekend in July and after I came back from that, it just all petered out.  Now I have to get back on it again and make it work.  I am not expecting miracles right away, but I at least need to get started.  I'll be using the gazelle because it is what I resent least and is an easy starting point. 

Mostly, I'm just checking in.  Not too much to report, really. We are working on refinancing our house again.  Our agent was able to help us get a ton of things cleared up on our credit report that were reported incorrectly, which will give us a much higher credit score and a much lower interest rate.  Those few dollars a month will really help.  Say a little prayer that it all works out if you get a minute.  It would surely be a blessing. 

Take care and have a wonderful week (sleep or exercise?),

Katrina

 

 

September 13, 2005

The dimming of the day.

It feels like a long time. 

The party on Sunday was a success.  We had about 6-7 kids show up, some siblings of those invited.  Parents stayed, which I've never had happen, but which was very nice.  They were great company; really good folks from what I could tell.  The cord of the piņata kept breaking, so Eric, being a He-Man, held the piņata while the kids whacked at it.  Sadly, not everyone got to give it a whack before the cardboard/crepe paper Spiderman broke apart. 

The kids played well together on the playground while the adults laughed and talked.  David showed up after a while and spent time with us and with the kids. 

I went into the party a little furrowed.  One of the parents kind of hit me the wrong way when she called to confirm for the party that morning.  After the info exchange, the conversation went like this:

"My name is Denise, by the way."

"I'm Katrina."

"Did you say 'Katrina?'"

"Yes, I did."

"Well, I sure don't like that name very much right now!"

"Hmm.  I'm sorry to hear that."

"I mean, with the hurricane and all."

"Well, it's my name."

"I was just talking to someone the other day whose name sounded sort of like Katrina and I told my  husband that I was sure glad it wasn't Katrina!"

"Well, I guess you struck out this time."

Everyone thinks they are the first one say something about the hurricane and me sharing the name. She was a nice enough person as it turned out, but her son did ask me at the party:

"Is your name really Katrina?"

"Yes, it is."

"Like the hurricane?"

"Yes."

"Did they name you after the hurricane?"

"No, baby, they named the hurricane after me."

Puppies are all doing well.  Belle has been spending less time in the hole and more time in our yard, but the puppies are big and healthy.  In fact, while we were at the party, Delena sort of freaked out that Belle was not spending much time with the babies and brought the babies inside the house.  When Eric was taking them back, he was able to notice that they were all girls (ours in a boy) and that they are considerably heavier and sturdier than the one I am feeding.  Good ol' breast milk, I guess.  Yesterday, the puppy was trying to nurse my pinkie and I realized that my pinkie is not much smaller than the nipple of a baby bottle.  I remembered that Valerie'd left one of Aiden's baby bottles here on a visit and I have been using that to feed the baby with much greater success than I had with the syringe.  It takes about 10% of the time as it did with the syringe and he sleeps a lot longer.  He totally rejects any formula that is not warm and sleeps for 3-4 hours if I keep the room super warm and only an hour and a half if he get cool at all.  He's on a heating pad on low, but unfortunately, it has an automatic shut off.  Almost to the second that it shuts off, he'll start to fuss. 

Eric didn't get to built the lean to over the hole yet, but I managed to push off the threat of rain (I am the Weather Witch Mastah!).  When we moved here, there was a dog kennel, nice sized fence with a big dog house inside, on the property.  I'm thinking of putting an old blanket in the dog house and moving the babies in there where they will be safe from the rain when it comes.  As it stands now, they are going to be in a big, muddy, washed out hole.  I hope Belle will continue to take care of them if I move them and show her where they are.  I can also put her food in the kennel fence and leave the fence open so she can come and go as she needs to.  It's just a thought at this point, but it's a thought that is currently beating out the lean to idea.

Tomorrow, I am having lunch with my friend, Melissa, who I haven't seen in months, so that will be nice.  I have to get Eric a new percolator.  I have so little counter space that I have to put his percolator on a back burner of the stove to do it's thing.  You can imagine how that went.  I've done it for over a year and a half, but for reasons unknown, I turned on the wrong burner. 

The diet is going exceptionally well.  Every day, I've eaten comfortably and happily and come in at under my 1800 calorie limit, usually by several hundred calories.  Today, I was about 800 below, so I got to treat myself to a late night bowl of cornflakes!  I will start exercising again soon.  2.4 pounds down this week.

This weekend, I get to take the shed apart and find the canopy to use for the Harvest Moon Festival the 8-9th of October.  Of course, it's in the very back of the shed behind every box and piece of crap I've ever known.  So I'll have to move boxes and pieces of crap for a long while, drag it out and then return every box and piece of crap back into the Box and Piece of Crap Shed again.  Fortunately, Eric has volunteered to help me.

I drove past the turn off to Joe's old apartment today.  Made me sad.  I really miss him.

Kids are quiet, the night is dark and rich.  I think it's time for me to blend into it and get some rest.  Clean tomorrow.  Go to town, have fun, call it a day.  :)

Hope you have a wonderful night,

September 10, 2005

Why I love my life:

    I was sitting here posting some new columns to EOS and I popped on my MP3 playlist (called "stuff").  It crossed my mind to wonder how the 4 13-year-old girls behind me playing "Simpson's Clue" would do with the country music that's on it.  Would they roll their eyes, scoff and talk about Dee's uncool mom?  Nope, they're singing along with Faith Hill doing "Cry."  I wub dem.

    Uh oh.  Clouds just obscured the sun.  Either God hates Faith Hill (a distinct possibility) or we're thinking about getting rain.  NOOOOOO! Rain be gone rain be gone!  I can't have the puppy hole/nursery fill up with water!  I'm going to make Eric build a lean to over the hole.  That's all there is to it. 

   I'm pretty mad at Oprah right now for killing my self-esteem.  This is beyond the Why Oprah Bugs the Crap Out of Me column that I did a while back.  Because so many of my friends view her as a mentor and shining star for us wimmin, I started not immediately covering myself with calamine and changing the channel (douche optional) when her show barreled in after Dr Phil's and actually waited to see what she was up to.  I caught the show a while back where the woman looked all sorts of successful and normal on the outside but had a totally filthy house with dog poo in the shower and animal urine on the mattress and several years of dirty dishes in her kitchen and such.  Then I caught the follow up where they went in an rechecked to see if she was staying all tidy (well sorta kinda she was) and found a garage and office she hadn't shown them before.  Then recently,  I watched the show with the girls from "What Not to Wear" who did surprise makeovers on unsuspecting people (I am trying to pretend they were not shills planted by the show).  It was a decent enough show and the people did look remarkably different, making me salivate ever so heavily for an image makeover. 

  In that vein, I decided to head their advice and go out into yonder Walmart in search of some new clothes for my birthday, in possession of their sage advice for how to dress if you have giant, pendulous breasts (forget the pencil test, I can likely hold a small Toyota vehicle under my boobs and not drop it) and a tremendously fat ass.  The basic idea was to get a sleek outer line with a touch of color at the chest and some nice cleavage, plus the ominous warning that "no one can wear tapered legged pants and look good."  After a careful exploration of the wares in both K-mart and Walmart, I have determined that in Fat Woman World (which the What Not to Wear ladies have obviously not explored all that well) there are two kinds of pants:  Elephant legs and tapered.  There is no midline.   I looked over every pair of pants, from jeans to polyester to my personal favorite, microfiber, to cotton.  I examined every puff sleeve, cabbage rose, Eeyore bearing, too short, too wide, too stiff fat woman's shirt they offered.  Everything there either had a twin in my closet, a place on my "hate it" list or a "created especially by thin people who really hate fat people" label inside it.  Also mentioned was that if you have giant, pendulous breast, you simply must wear underwires or risk being the eternally unforgiven.  I bought 3 underwire bras, 2 body slimmers and 2 high waisted slimming briefs.  The only thing that fit when I got home was the $3 underwire bra on the clearance rack and I ended up wanting to tear it off halfway through my trip to town the first time I wore it.  Also the last time I wore it, which were the same time. 

  So as nearly as I can tell, I am doomed to wear my white, old lady granny panties, my no-under-wire-having (the bane of my Energy Medicine practice anyway) bras and my soft clothes, most of which have tapered legs.  The only other time I ever employed any kind of system or premise to clothes shopping was about 4 years ago when I never bought an article of clothing without first considering, "Can I sleep in this?"  Most of my clothes are still from that era.  I tend to go less for chic and more for comfort, never suffering pain for class or style.  I'd like to be a person who does, but it just isn't in me.  Maybe when I'm thinner I can think about it more.

  When I was going through clothing angst (good thing I couldn't find anything and what I could find didn't fit because I ended up needing the money for the budget big time!), I saw another woman, slightly smaller than I am, carefully unfolding each pair of jeans, looking at the legs and refolding them.  In my newfound effort to be more social, I drifted over and said, "Did you watch Oprah yesterday?"  She looked at me like I was a crazy, whack-job stalker person and said, "Um, no."  I said, "What not to wear ladies?  You're looking at the tapered legs, aren't you?"  She laughed and said she was and we had a good conversation lamenting the shitty styles of fat women clothes.  Placerville is fresh out of Lane Bryant and I am fresh out of Lane Bryant money.  After spending 99% of my life buying all of my clothes in thrift stores (and still loving to when I can), it's a rarity and a luxury to buy clothes that someone else hasn't already worn a few hundred times.  I tell myself they're nicely broken in and much softer, but I do like new things once in a while.  More motivation to weight loss, I guess, which is still going well.  Ate Mexican food with Eric last night after saving up calories all day and still come in a few hundred calories under my allowance.  Yayyyy me!

   Wish me luck with the dual birthday party tomorrow.  Two kids have RSVP'd out of thirty-four, so we could have none, we could have two or we could have thirty-four if these mountain people think "RSVP" means "call if you have questions."  I am loaded down with the Spiderman piņata, hats and the blowy things.  I'm only doing punch, cake and little prepackaged sundaes, so not much mess and not much to carry.  Beyond that, they can play on the playground and mingle. 

   It's almost noon, so I should go wake up the mister and get him busy on the doggy shelter. 

    Have a great weekend!

---

   I was trying to find a nice webset and I realized that all of the pretty ones have a horribly long load time, so I decided to go simple.  This is the design that is used on my LiveJournal and I kind of like it, so I'm going to move it over here for a while, plus, it has a really fast load, which is always nice.

    I am just wickedly tired and unlike yesterday, really am going to take a nap as soon as I finish writing this.  Laundry is underway, puppy is fed and seems to be sleeping (for once, he sure wasn't last night) and the kids are home early today at 1:30 instead of 3:45. 

    All four of the outside puppies are doing well and we have a couple of people who have offered to adopt 2 of them when it's time.  Belle seems to be doing a wonderful job as a mommy.  She still bolts when we get near (that is one huge hole!), but doesn't go far and is right back there as soon as we're gone.  The babies look easily as healthy as the one I am handfeeding, so I am very pleased. 

    This weekend is the boys' birthday party, but so far, I've only had one RSVP, which was from a Jehovah's Witness mom who seemed offended that her kids were invited, as if I am supposed to know.  She said, "well, we have a lot of new families this year."  I told her we were here all of last year and she sort of "pfft'd" me.  I hope people show up.  We invited all the kids in both classes and so far, nada.  Delena is having friends over this weekend as well, but her friends are always exceptionally well behaved and a joy to have around.  We're just glad she has good friends.  She really loves living here, unlike when we first got here from Sacramento and she was vowing to move back to the city the millisecond she turned 18.  It's a pity we're still dry enough for a burn ban because the weather is so perfect for a bonfire.

    The diet is going well.  Not really enough to get into the Fatastic Journal, although I will hold to my promise to do so once I hit the 10 pound loss mark.  I have been using fitday.com for PC, a $20 download that has a huge database of food values, charts your daily progress, monitors your daily intake and generates all kinds of reports on your overall progress.  It has been well worth the $20 I invested a while back in one of my earlier attempts.  Carolyn was kind enough to send me her Weight Watchers information, so I have been looking that over as well.  The interesting thing is that I worked out some of the points on the past few days of fitday.com tracking and I've consistently been right at the correct points value, so that's really good.  I have lost 1.6 pounds this week and I'm (again) giving it my best shot. 

    I've been thinking about some of the products I've been using lately and the good:bad ratio.  Nutra Nail Triple Power, which is a nail strengthener, seems to work really, really well.  It's a blend of acrylic polymer, protein complex and calcium complex that you use like or under polish (I am a "like" at this point).  Gives it a nice healthy shine and seems to make them really strong.

    I have long been a fan of Mr Clean Magic Erasers (all hail!), but lately, since they came out with the blue backed ones, they don't seem to work as well for me, either in blue back or all white.  It's as though they fall apart a lot faster and don't clean as well.  Still, if they came out today as they are now, I would be impressed, but I don't think they are as good as they used to be.

    Cottonelle toilet tissue leaves little TP pills on your butthole.  Ew.  I'm sold on Northern and Charmin forever now.  I will never cheat again.

    I still use the cheapest laundry detergent I can find (liquid) and I swear, it gets the clothes just as clean as the expensive stuff.

    New Sprite Zero gets my hearty endorsement.

    Easy Off Bam isn't really all that.  Just cleaner.  Not super duper cleaner.  Just cleaner. 

    The Mr Clean extender thing that you use to clean your bathtub is OK, but the extending handle tends to collapse in on itself.

    (Hurray!  An RSVP for the party!)

    Netflix is still the best place on earth to be, even though I am running out of movies to put on my list.

    I still believe that Pine Sol cleans my floors better than anything.

    I never thought that having the ice maker in my refrigerator (not on the door) would mean much to me, but oh my lord, I love this thing.  We had the refrigerator for about four years before it was hooked up and Eric recently did the deed.  I am completely impressed.

    Vitamin B-12 = Happy Mommy Pills.  Time released, cheap, gooood stuff.  Trust me.

    The Gazelle is still the best aerobic exercise machine I've ever used and I used to go to Air Force gyms with top of the line stuff.  I'm completely impressed and it is the best $100 I ever spent.

    Still love ebay, half.com and amazon.com marketplace.  It's like the world's biggest garage sale. 

    While we're on the subject of websites, if you go to www.google.com and click the "images" tab, you can enter any name or word in the space and get pictures of it.  Ditto on Yahoo, but I like Google better.  I can't even say why, I just do.  Another tip is that if you are searching for a phrase or specific name on Yahoo, Google or another search engine, if you just enter the name David Allan Roetts, for instance, you will get every entry that mentions the name David, the name Allan and/or the name Roetts.  If you put the name in quotation marks, "David Allan Roetts," you will only find entries that list the name together in that order.  This is great for finding the title and artist of a song if you only caught a bit of the lyrics.  "Our love is a chain that binds me and breaks my bones to bits," for instance, would likely take you right to the song itself (which does not exist, I made that up).  If you don't have it in quotes, the search engine will find any document with all of those words in it.

    Something that a surprising number of people do not yet know about is Craig's list, www.craigslist.org.  This is an amazing online classifieds site that is divided into many different areas of the US.  I love to go to the "free" section and see what people are giving away.

    

    Can you believe we are already so far into September?  It has been getting COLD at night here, but it's just glorious during the day.  The scents outside are so pungent and delicious.  No matter what is going on, I can step outside, feel the light sun on my face and breathe deeply and I'm in heaven again. I haven't hardly even used incense lately.  I just open a window. 

    I learned last night that my son Joshua, his wife and their children are all moving to Colorado the beginning of next month.  I have mixed feeling about this for a lot of different reasons and I am really praying for this young family.  They are facing some real challenges and I love them so very much.  There are so many pitfalls out there in the world and they seem to have hit every single one.  I will miss the kids and my grandkids a lot.  I don't know when I will get to see them again, but I am going to trust that Goddess will take care of them and give them all they need.  What they need most right now is a fresh start and they feel this is what is going to do it for them.  So all I can do is wish them peace, love, happiness and success on their way.  I love you, kids and I will miss you very, very much.

    Ooops!  Puppy is awake and wants his syringe of milk and egg.  He's not very good at it and each feeding is a struggle.  We've had a couple of good ones, but that was the exception rather than the rule.  Feed puppy then power sleep for an hour before the kids are here.

    Have a brilliant weekend and get outside a bit if you can.  Rest.  Revitalize and feel who you are again.

    Much love,