bits of string and sealing wax

song of the day - addicted to love - Florence + The Machine

Prepare to be bombarded by all the events that have taken place in the last few days!  MWAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!  It’s as though I wake up in the morning and have three days for every one.  Erg… did that even make sense?  Am I just blathering again?

Ok.  Last things first (apart from Tuesdays and bank holidays): From now on I am going to respond to my comments at the end of my posts.  I got the idea from a post that I read written by Ellie (she’s over there chilling under my blog roll), and I happen to think it is a superswell dreamsicle explosion of a fine idea.  I have gotten some very nice and kindly messages lately, and I want to be able to respond to everybody and give props.

Second story of the day: *spoiler alert* this portion of my blog contains mushy gushy throw-up-in-my-mouth a little saptastic crushy comments about my latest beau.  You might want to gouge your eyes out now instead of later.

The other day I dropped Chris off at his house in Antioch.  He showed me his extensive collection of awesome cameras (he loathes digital the same as me!), and let me look at all his photography.  I was blown away.  Sparks (who is my bestie from way back to answer Munchberry’s question) and my mum are both camera crazy with their Nikons, but I’ve never gotten into photography very much because digital and photoshop aren’t my thing.  They are awesome and nifty, but just not for me.  Looking at his pictures made me want to buy a camera on the spot and take ten billion pictures of everything.  He looks at things and really sees them, and people like that impress me.

And we watched this movie called The Protector that had bad ass martial arts, Capoeira, a segway getaway scene, elephants, and a kick ass neck scarf.

And (no joke) a couple weeks back I was telling Sparks that Orlando Chris (who will henceforth be known as Not As Cool Watered Down Chris- NACWDC for short) killed it for me when I asked him if he wore a watch and he said, “No, because I am a guy and I don’t wear jewelry.”  I was explaining how much I adore beautiful watches, and always wanted to buy one for a dude I liked, but have never known one cool enough or whatevies.  Soooooo, Chris Two Point Oh has this super lovely watch that he wears and it is broken and doesn’t even keep time.  Yeah.  He told me he just wears it because he likes it so much.  Yeah.  Can you hear that dreadful puppy love song playing in your head?  Now you can.  And, yes, I am salivating like a puppy.  An excited puppy that wants to hump a leg.

Ok, so I hung out at his house last night and watched season one of Archer (an animated show that NACWDC actually got me hooked on) on Netflix instant.  After that he taught me how to use one of his cameras (the one I was drooling over the most) and then told me I could borrow it.  WHAT?  And gave me a bunch of film.  HOLY SHIT, IS THIS REAL?  The camera is called a Spinner.  Look for it on Lomography.com and see what it can do.  It’ll knock at least one sock off.  Shit, I’ll up the ante for my chubby brethren and make the bold claim that it’ll knock a pound off.

Anyolddanghow, I am trying to keep my cool and save some pride for later, but I’m getting goggly eyed and nerdier by the second.  I hate to be cliche, but I kind of stare at him and think to myself, “Gee, I wanna breed with this one.  Can’t we just have babies now?”  Oh. Em. Gee.  I need to be slapped again.  I am not kidding ladies.  Punch me in my ovaries, please.

Cool collection of cameras.  Check.  Beautiful watch that can’t keep time.  Check.  Badass elephant kung fu movie.  Check.  Good for sexin’ up morning, noon, and night.  Check.  Deonn is now ovulating.  Check.

Third tale from Wednesday evening:

After hanging out and getting starry eyed over cameras and round house kicks I rolled back into town at about six p.m.  An old friend of mine called and wanted to cook me dinner.  He is a fine cook, and I won’t turn down a free dinner.  (Why do you think I’m on this site, people?)  Long story short, he’s getting me very interested in Miataki mushrooms.  He is obsessed with mushrooming, and wants me to give it a try.  Did I ever tell you guys that I am something of a hobby collector?  True story.  I love learning how to do things.  The last year was crystals, collages, and fabric dying.  I still indulge in my old hobbies, but I am always getting new ones.  Mushrooming and photography?  WHEEEEEEE!

Oh.  And we used to sing together sometimes and play guitar, so after his roommates and their girlfriends got home we had a hell of a sing along. We have great chemistry together, as we are both eccentric, humorous, and goofy, and we have talked of throwing a band together in the past.  It never happened because the timing was never right.  Now the timing is bloody brilliant.  We’re going to get a mishmash of eclectic duets together and see what happens.  I’ll keep you all posted.

Well, I actually have more to tell you about an amazing conversation that I had with my mother yesterday, but my cousin is here so I need to wrap this up.  I will post more later. Also, my brand new business cards (all one thousand of them) got here yesterday! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!  They have my new phone number on them, and I am totally ready to distribute and network and all that jazz.  JAZZ HANDS!  Didi is being productive!

@ellie- I am glad that I had you laughing in Starbucks.  Everybody needs to look like a loon in public once and a while.  Thanks for giving me the good idea of responding to comments in my blog.  It seems so simple and obvious!

@ goodnuff - I laughed so hard at the “walking in my vag” image that naturally popped into my head.  Oh, lord.  I know why I continue to read your blog week after week and month after month.  The saying over the door is “Let The Right One In” in Swedish.  It is actually the name of a foreign movie that I am in love with, and I just thought it would be a cool saying to paint above the back door.  (Over the front door is “Uva Uvam Vivendo Varia Fit” which is Latin for “A Grape Becomes Different Through Living”  Which is from the book Lonesome Dove that I read every year)  The house is my Wisconsin home, and my cousin and her two boys are going to move in the first week of October.  We were going to rent a place, because we’ve stopped paying the mortgage and have decided to let this house foreclose… but it’ll take at least a year for that to go down so we may as well have free rent for a while.

@janeemosher - Hey, thanks for the tip.  I like to cut fresh herbs and keep them in the freezer, but never thought of the onions and peppers.  I put onions in EVERYTHING too, so that would actually be pretty convenient.  I do a lot of stir fry and vegetable style whole wheat pastas, and also like to combine veggies with quinoa and lentils, so having my own frozen mixes is a pretty good idea.  I will buy frozen vegetables sometimes when I am lazy, but they always taste like the freezer to me so I shy away from anything other than peas and corn.  I bet if I froze my own blends they would taste better though.

@jewlz - clutter like that makes me nutty too!  That is why I have slowly slowly been taking care of it.  For some reason it has been trying emotionally, so I end up doing a little bit and then leaving for the rest of the day.  I have a deadline though- everything needs to be done before next Saturday, so I will probably do the rest of it this weekend.  I finished all the books

@munchberry - The house was given to me by my father when I was twenty.  It is the house he bought when I was ten years old.  It needed tons of repairs and whatnot (still needs a lot, lol) so I have done a lot to it over the years.  Unfortunately, my dad refinanced because he used to make a shit ton of money.  Since the economy went caput it has been hard trying to make the mortgage payments.  We decided to just let it foreclose, since nothing else has panned out too great.  While I was living in Florida a cousin of mine stayed at the house with my two cats to keep an eye on things.  I would love to throw curtains over all of the piles of my stuff.  Too funny!

@jitterfish - Ok.  The chinchilla eating your paper on the behavior of chinchillas gave me the giggles pretty good.  Let me know if you are going to start the Monday fasts.  I think it would be interesting if we exchanged notes on it, lol.  I haven’t gotten going on that yet, but I might give it a go this Monday.

The title of my second post of the day is describing the speed at which I am getting my house back in order.  Ug.  There is just so much to do!  Literally every nook needs cleaning and organizing, and I live in a very big house.  Le sigh.  I know I already posted today, but I need a break because I’m feeling sleepy and bored.  Sparks was over here earlier working on a craft project (I let her have her pick of the items in my giant craft box) but I took her home a bit ago.   She agreed to come hang out while I hauled boxes of books and things around.  When I am cleaning/unpacking/rearranging/ etc. I really like to have somebody else in the house with me.  Call me shit-city-insane, but I don’t even care if they help me or not.  I just fancy somebody sitting around that I can have a word or two with every so often.  It keeps me cheerful, and I am more likely to stay focused and not flee the dusty piles of mess and find something more fun to do, or take too many extended union breaks.  (Ha ha)  When there is as much mess to deal with as I’ve got going on here it helps me fool my brain to have a pal present.  Yeah, I know.  It doesn’t take much to fool my brain.  My indian name is Half-A-Deck-Didi, didn’t I ever mention that?  Maybe it should be Slumps-With-Sloths.

Well, I am happy to report that I went to the grocery store and now have a fridge stuffed full of fresh produce.  I was actually excited to be grocery shopping, and I could feel my body rejoicing at the thought of eating veggies and greens.  Consuming restaurant slop food for such a long while has really pissed my body off!  I purchased: broccoli, cauliflower, peppers, three types of greens, two types of apples, carrots, mushrooms, celery, zucchini, summer squash, spinach, and some other things that I can’t recall at the moment.  I’m so excited and nerdgasmy about all the produce packed into my fridge that I just had to list it all for you guys.  Honestly, it’s probably a good thing that I simply let myself indulge in garbage after moving home.  It made me crave grilled fish and vegetables, and let me realize how much better I feel when I stick to my one salad a day policy.  Sodium and sugar make me retain sooooooooo much extra water weight that I can’t even believe it.  I’ve got a feeling that in less than a week my weight will be down to 190 again.

I am hoping that I can talk my mom into coming over tomorrow to help me with the rest of the cleaning and unpacking.  She offered to come by last week, but our plans got shot up and it didn’t work out.

When I am done decluttering my dwellings, I can get to decluttering other areas of my life.  I still have extra weight, because I still have emotional bullhonky that I am dragging around.  The weight is a result of habits and emotional patterns that I am slowly chiseling away at.  I suppose that I am lucky, because my milestone goal of 163 is only around thirty some pounds of bullhonky away.  The hardest globs of stubborn-me were at the two hundred and above mark.  Jayyyyyysus, I thought I’d never get under two hundred pounds again.  Now that I have accomplished that part of my goal I feel as though I know myself better.  I really crawled through some trenches in that notebook that my lovely pup chewed to bits earlier.

I chose food over real love, nurturing, and emotional support.  I chose food because I was bored and didn’t know what to do with myself.  The extra weight gave me an excuse to stay home and not always be social if I didn’t feel like it.  My padding kept certain people away, and helped to keep me out of the limelight if I wanted it to.  Thinking of myself as “fat” gave me a reason to feel sorry for myself and not move forward.  It was as though I was magically permitted to put everything on hold just because I thought of myself as fat.  (Yeah, I am deliberately saying “thought” of myself as fat.  I ain’t hardly thin at the moment, but I think of myself as fat less and less these days.  I may possess some chunk, but it’s sultry sexy chunk!  I’m a total love goddess, and that has nothing to do with weight at all.  Beauty and body size are NOT related) There was a list of things that I was not going to do until I was healthier.  WHAT A CROCK OF SHIT!!  For realsies.  One crock won’t even hold them horse turds.   The truth is that I was afraid to do all of those things, and that being fat gave me an excuse not to do them.  I told myself that I couldn’t have a nice boyfriend, or pretty clothing, or enough clients to support myself.   I told myself a lot of lies.  I couldn’t live and be in the world until my body was the size that I thought it should be. How does that even make sense? There are attractive, thin folks out there with plenty of money that are wayyyyyy more miserable than my hefty broke ass.  I gained weight because I was terrified of moving forward and being seen in the world as I am.

Once upon a time there was a princess of a puppy named Lali.  She was the loveliest beast to ever touch paws to the earth in the fine state of Wisconsin.  She had traveled to the land of beer and cheese from Ohio two years ago in order to set up shop with a beautiful and chunky lass called, Deonn.  Lali loved Deonn and was constantly trying to help her on her quest to become a balanced, happy, and functional human being.  Deonn could be stubborn though.  Sometimes Lali had to take extra steps to get her to pay attention.

Deonn had been keeping a notebook on hand in order to track her growth and progress over the past six months.  This notebook was filled with sad things, and happy things, new realizations, and remembrances of past events.  After the thousand mile journey, Deonn wondered if perhaps she should get a new notebook or journal to write in.  This was a new part of her life, and new journeys might better be recorded into new journals. For some reason, however, she was feeling attached to the filled pages of her old notebook.  There were still many blank pages left inside of it, and maybe she might want to revisit her musings sometime.

Lali sagely decided that Deonn was clinging to the past too much, and probably needed to let that stage of her life go.  Who can start a new chapter when they are fixating on the ones that they worked on for the last six months?  She knew Deonn was too big of a dunce to realize this though, so she developed a simple, and yet elegantly cunning plan.

As Deonn peacefully slumbered in her bed, Lali worked diligently through the night.  When that silly girl woke up, she sure was in for a treat!  Here is what she found!!

Oh, I’m sorry.  Were you using this?

Haha!  So much for that notebook I’ve been journaling in.  Lali has decided!  The pup has spoken!  She honestly never chews up anything.  Coconut oil got spilled onto the back cover during the move, so I guess that was her excuse.  I woke up and there were bits of notebook all over my room, which I still have not cleaned up yet.  Bollocks!  How can I get mad at that adorable critter though?  It’s seriously impossible.  I am taking it as a sign that I need a brand new notebook or journal to write in, so that I can carry on with the next stage of my journey. So, farewell old notebook!!!  You have served me well!!

My weight this morning was 197, but I’m still on my period so I know that it is up at least three pounds due to water weight.  Still, I really would like to be at 183 by Halloween.  I don’t feel bad about gaining since I have been home, but I am ready to get back on track.  The lowest number that I’ve seen on the scale was slightly over 187, and I know I can get back there quickly provided that I stop feasting on salty foods at restaurants every day.

I have been thinking of setting aside one day a week to do a fast as well.  I believe in the health and spiritual benefits behind fasting, but longer fasts are difficult to maintain with an active social life.  I’ve been rolling the idea of doing Monday fasts over in my head, since that seems to be a day when I like to keep to myself and meditate anyhow.  I have no intention of “loading up” on calories the day before or the day after my fasts either- I just feel like I could use a weekly detox to help with my energy level.  As far as food goes, I’m going to go back to my previous habits of loading up on veggies and fruits, and getting in a large salad every day.

Well, yesterday I managed to move my giant bookshelf up against the wall next to the front door.  It really opened the room up, and I think it’s going to help the energy flow through here.  Today my goal is to get the back living room/ dining area cleaned.  All the crap in there is getting moved to my bedroom, where most of it will end up.  I don’t know if I will unpack everything yet, but it needs to be out of the way. Wanna see the ruins? Here are some before shots of the “pumpkin room” so named because it is orange… you guys could probably guess that.

So there you have it!  All of the stuff I brought back from Florida is scattered everywhere.  Most of it is books or clothing.  I might not unpack everything today, but I am determined to get it moved up to my bedroom AT THE VERY LEAST.  Living amongst this much clutter is making me wackier than I already am.  Wish me luck!

I have so much catching up to do that I thought I would write separate posts.  The other one is probably way more fun than this post, because I talk about not getting anything done and having a bunch of sex.  Perhaps I ought not have mentioned that.  Now you will stop reading this post, and skip on over to that one.  :)  I don’t blame you.

Alright, ya know how I admitted that I’m not getting much done because I’ve been hanging out and goofing around?  Well, I know I needs to get my butt back on track.  My lowest Florida weight was 187, yet since I have been home I have been drinking plenty of beer and eating total garbage.  I have gone to a restaurant practically EVERY day since I’ve been back in town.  I either end up going out to lunch or dinner (breakfast only once, lol) with a friend or family member, and I’ve been going to places that I really missed while being away.  My body can certainly detect a difference.  I went from eating a salad once a day, tons of steamed veggies and grilled meats, and well balanced meals, to eating whatever.  The extra sodium and sugar makes me feel bloated, and there is definitely a visual difference in my face.  (I hate it when my face looks puffy!).  My weight is slow dancing around between 194-195 (it is a bit higher at the moment, but that’s because I am on my period), and I know I need to get cracking again.  I have had ONE salad since Labor day weekend.  I ate a small bag of mini peppers, and a thing of celery, and that is IT as far as veggies goes.  Since being home I’ve eaten some grapes, and one banana.  YELL AT ME!!!  Lol.  I am seriously to the point where I am physically craving greens and veggies, and I need to go grocery shopping.  I’m not drinking enough water, and have even been drinking soda for some reason- which is bizarre because I NEVER drink soda.  I need to be bitch slapped.

A huge part of the problem is that there are no groceries in the house.  I cleaned out the fridge, but it has remained empty.  The counters are so packed with stuff from the move that there isn’t any space for food preparation.

I am going to try to keep myself at home for a few days so that I can finally unpack and get everything organized, cleaned, and put into its proper place.  My cousin is moving in on October seventh with her two boys, so I really need to get this stuff all done anyway.  I also would like to have friends over, and am obviously not comfortable with that since the back half of the house looks like a tornado swirled through it.  The truth is that I won’t buckle down with decisions about school until my living space is taken care of, so I need to take care of it.

I also need to get back to taking care of myself.  I’ve been eating tacos and chinese like they are going out of style, and I’ve not worked out once since being home.  Every day I look at my arms in the mirror and think, “Christ, if my arms were toned I’d look twenty pounds lighter.”  My arms are the only part of my body that I truly don’t like, and I know I could get them into shape if I’d just stick to a good workout regime for a couple of months.

So here are some goals.  I have decided to talk my friend into doing a costume party at his studio for Halloween.  (I am going to be Hit Girl from the movie Kick Ass this year, and have already found all of the components of my costume.  I love doing costumes… so fun!)  I want to be 183 by Halloween.  For the rest of this week I am going to stick to steamed veggies and grilled chicken or fish.  I might do a week of the Master Cleanse starting on the second of October, because I’ve got all the stuff for it.

My long term goal is to be 173 by the end of November, and then be back to my old weight of 163 by the end of December.  Once I get there I can assess how I feel and determine if I want to try to lose more, or just stay there.  I am also going to shoot for a morning workout (Jane Fonda aerobics and Winsor pilates upper body sculpting) EVERY SINGLE DAY.  I used to always aim for seven days a week back when I exercised regularly, and I would generally hit five days out of seven.  That’s pretty good.

I am suddenly very inspired to get a move on and get back to my old size.  Is it all the good sex I have been having?  Is it seeing all my old friends and being happy to be home?  Is it knowing that I made the right decision moving back here?  Is it wanting to keep moving forward?  Is it knowing that I have an entire fucking sweet ass wardrobe waiting for me when I get down to a size twelve?  ALL OF THE ABOVE!!  I am entering a totally different phase of my life, and I know it’s a really really really good one.  I want to love myself and take care of myself as best as I can, so that I have the energy to take on new projects.

Alright, well, I am going to move my giant bookshelf to a different spot right now.  It’s blocking the energy flow from the front door, and the last thing I need right now is bad feng shui!  I just wandered around taking “before” pics of all the crazy clutter around here.  As I finish each room and get it back in order I will post pictures so you guys can see.

Howdy, y’all.  I am sorry that I have stayed absent for so long, but I have been very busy since my arrival back home.  Honestly, I’ve been wayyyyy too distracted to sit down and post.  God knows, I’ve not been terribly productive since my return to the midwest.  I kinda don’t want to admit that, but here we are.

What have I been doing?

Hanging out and goofing around with all of my old friends.

Want to see what I have accomplished in the weeks that I have been off carousing?  Here.  Allow me to type out a list.  I know you all appreciate my brevity, and you shall not be disappointed.

Crap Didi Has Done Did

#1) cleaned up the ruins of her house enough so that she can walk into a room and not go into shock and have her lungs collapse from all the dust and cat fur

#2) put up most of the new pictures and artwork that was made/ purchased in Florida

#3) unloaded everything from the car (I finally finished doing that the other day, haha)

#4) I’d really like to have an item for number four, but I’d just be fibbing.  I did order business cards with my new phone number on them.  Does that count as a productive thing?

Alright. So.  As you can see I really am getting next to nothing done.  I’ve unpacked a few things, and that is it.  All of my shit good quality belongings are in bags all over the dining room table, and strewn about the back living room.  The kitchen is an explosion of crap spread across the counter tops.  I haven’t bothered about getting any clients (although that is in the works), or doing craft fairs, posting new pics for my etsy shop, deciding what I want to do about school, etc.  Yep.  I am one lazy son of a bitch.  Here is some visual proof in case you don’t believe me.

<—– I can’t even be bothered to comb my hair these days

A lot of insane emotional stuff has been going on, but I think I’d rather tell you guys about all the fun and scandalous stuff that I have been doing.  I can update on the “deep” stuff later, right?

I started dating a new guy exactly two weeks ago.  He is in the reserves with a good friend of mine, Mikey, and my friend decided to hook us up.  Mikey is sort of an epic match maker, but I never realized that before.  Like, for realsies, guys- he hooks people up and they get married and live happily ever after and all that shit.  Anyolddanghow, Mikey comes to me and he says, “Ok, I’ve got this great friend, Chris, and he’s really cool and sweet and *blah blah blah insert bro praises here* but he’s really shy so he’s only been with, like, one other girl and they weren’t together very long, and yadda yadda yadda who really gives a crap…”  And then he looks at me and is trying to be all comically serious and says, “And we all know your reputation with the menfolk, sweetie, so I was kind of thinking you could break him in and make a man out of him and all.”  Who can argue with that?

Oh, did I neglect to mention that this happened at Sunday night karaoke at a pub?  Silly me, always forgetting the details.  I was at a friend’s bonfire until about eleven P.M. that Sunday, and for some reason I was compelled to stop by the pub afterwards because I had a strong desire to sing karaoke (which I’d not done in at least a year and a half).

And truly, Mikey needn’t have bothered asking me to bump uglies with his army pal, because I was totally attracted to him anyhow.  In fact, we had been talking quite a bit already, and I was already running an internal dialogue in my mind debating on whether or not I should jump into his lap and just start making out with him.  I took a year off from sex and dating, so I was feeling like I ought to get the ball rolling again, ya know?  I probably shouldn’t use “sex” and “ball rolling” in the same sentence, cause it makes me seem so dirty.  Tee hee hee.

Karaoke was fricken awesome that night.  Mikey and I sang “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” together and brought the house down.  One of the nice things about having a fine singing voice is being able to choose to sing badly if you want to.  For our duet I was doing my “bad opera voice” and harmonizing.  Yes.  I have different voices that I sing in.  One of them is “bad opera voice.”  This developed in mockery of a woman at my Grandmother’s church with this ridiculous warbling howl that had my Dad and I giggling like fools one year at Christmas.  I used to sing Christmas songs in my Bob Dylan voice to my old roommate whenever he was feeling down.  He laughed every time.  “…fall on your knees, and hear the angels singing…!” put him in stitches without fail.

After karaoke we all hung out at Mikey’s until the wee hours of the morning laughing and talking nonsense.  Does Deonn lift her skirts upon the first eve of meeting a guy that she likes?  You know it.  Call me a brazen strumpet, but I am hornier than a stoat in season, so I tend to sex a guy up first and then ask questions later.  I like to get it out of the way.  If a dude is lousy in bed there really is no reason for a second date.  I know that makes me sound as deep as a puddle, but whatevies.  I figure at this age a person is either a good lover (or at least decent but willing to learn) or is total rubbish and isn’t worth the patience and effort that it would take during the retraining process.  I sound like such a slag.

Soooooo, since our first steamy encounter we have had many rounds of marathon sex and are totally all crushy at each other.  He even went to a gay bar with me and some other friends (straight guys that will hang out and dance at gay bars with their girlfriends are totally awesome) and danced with me while totally sober.  Yeah.  Super cool.  He’s a bit shy, but is fun enough to hold my interest.  Perhaps pairing a loud mouthed wild thing such as myself with a sweet, quiet, gentle guy is an odd choice.  Time will tell.  I am trying not to get too carried away, but it’s tough.  I’ve always been a little wild, but I am also a hopeless romantic.  Combine that with the fact that I am banana sandwiches crazy, and I can flounder pretty badly into a swamp of infatuation that bogs me down and then fizzles out within a couple of months.

Historically all of my boyfriends have been douchey.  I’m on friendly terms with them now, but they were NOT good boyfriends.  This guy is seriously so sweet and nice that I am not totally sure how to respond to it.  Example:  The second night we hung out together we stayed up all night talking, and then we had sex from eight in the morning until one in the afternoon.  That bit isn’t actually integral to this particular tale, but I kinda wanted to flaunt it that I am finally getting some after such a long stint of sex-free-ness.  Ha ha!  Okle dokles, back to the point.  Well, we went and got lunch at a Chinese place that I like.  After the waitress placed all the food and tastiness on the table, Chris picked up my plate all kind of natural like and without even thinking about it, and he spooned some rice onto it.  For realsies.  He spooned some rice onto my plate and then placed it in front of me.  I was just sitting there staring like a fricken idjit, because I thought it was so dang sweet and natural.  He noticed me gaping like a chimpanzee at a banana stand and finally said, “What?”  I just shrugged and told him that I thought he might be the nicest guy I had ever met.

On Saturday I invited him to a birthday party that a pal of mine had at his recording studio.  I was worried that he’d be bored and not know anybody, but he said he didn’t care.  It worked out alright because he ended up knowing a few people there.  I think he’s been making an extra effort to talk and socialize with others because he is trying to be less shy or something.  Perhaps my gregarious and unruly ways will positively influence somebody.  Think of that and tremble!

The last guy I was seeing I left behind in Orlando, because I knew I didn’t permanently belong in Florida and he would never want to move to Wisconsin.  His name was also Chris.  We are still friends, so I told him that I had replaced him with a Chris of the Midwest.  He laughed and told me that I wasn’t right in the head.

I think he’s onto something with that statement.

I am wayyyyy behind with my blogging, and feel bad that I haven’t had any time to catch up with my blog reading.  Sorry gals!  I still love ya all.

I had an INSANE trip back to Wisconsin.  No, really.  It was nutty even for me.  I decided to return before Labor Day weekend.  There were lots of reasons, and I don’t even know if I am ready to write about them all yet.  However, I will say that the first three hours of driving were excruciating, and it sorta felt like somebody was ripping my heart out.  Blerg.  That’s just the way that it goes sometimes.

I had a lot of cleaning to do, so I spent my first two days home working on that.  Yep.  That’s another tender issue that I will get to later.

Alright.  I pretty much want to get to everything later.  I’ve been upset about a few things since my return, and I’ve also been getting all kinds of ridiculously emotional at the drop of a hat.  Ug.

Just wanted to let you all know that I will catch up with blogs in the next couple of days.  I have been looking at places with my cousin, and also need to look into signing up for a couple of classes during the winter semester.

I still have tons of packing, cleaning, and organizing to do, and have only seen family members since I have been home.  Honestly, I don’t know if I can deal with any of my old friends right now.  I am thrilled to be back in Wisconsin, but I don’t have any interest in returning to my old life.  Most of the people that I used to be friends with kind of sucked the life out of me.  There are a few people that I would like to see, and I certainly wish the best for everybody… I just don’t want to return to any bad habits.  Yipes!

I’ve been taking lots of long walks with my dog, and have brought her to the lake several times so that I could watch her swim.  (She loves water!)  I feel like if i didn’t have my dog I’d really be going bananas right now.

Tomorrow I am starting another detox.  I have so many things to do and so much on my mind that I could use the extra clarity and the energy boost.

More later!!  Hope everybody is well!