Heather- Nice work on the PoP days!
Ags- Keeping a cooler head in a hot situation always feels good. I wish I had some banana pudding right now. I don't know how you stuck to only licking the spoon! That would have seriously tested will power to the limits. Good for you for withstanding temptation.
Amen to taking time out for yourself!
I might pop in the recipe section and look for some seafood dishes. I freak out about cooking stuff in general that I'm not familiar with. Like pork.. I won't cook pork. I'm terrified to under cook it and get trichinosis. Raw meat, with the exception of beef, squicks me out something fierce for similar reasons. I know, I'm totally weird. I don't really like leftovers either because I can't tell when stuff has gone bad. If it's been in the fridge for more than 24 hours it just grosses me out. I freak out about bread going moldy, especially when we used to get blueberry bagels because for some reason they look kind of green to begin with. I can't smell the difference between good milk and bad milk... it all smells pretty bad to me. Bad lunch meat is the same. I can ask my husband to check it out, but then I don't totally trust his whiffer there either. See, I'm a total food freak and here I am letting my freak flag fly.
Misty- I hope everything works out with your mom. I hate waiting rooms in general. They always have such horrid seating considering that you usually spend so much time in them! Is it really so bad to give them a little cushion and maybe not be made out of super thin plastic? Sorry I just derailed there... oops.
At least you had a project to work on while you wait. You should post pics when it's done! OMG your puppy is so adorable! I love the little shoes! How do they stay on though? If I tried to stick booties on any animal I have ever had they'd just shake them off. I did get a tutu on Emily once when she was a kitten though.
Also, if you'd like I can try to overnight some of our snow. We have had about 75 inches of snow this year. We actually just broke into the top ten snowiest winters ever for the Boston-Metro area. It was packed solid up the windows on the side of our house. There's a plaza of stores north of Boston where they had to put the snow around this massive 40ft light post. The snow goes all the way up to the bulb and they're calling it Mt. Loop.
It's not as bad as the blizzard of '78 and the rest of that winter (at least from what I hear, that was a little before my time) but it has still been pretty nasty out there.
Learn- My kitty doesn't so much purr as oink. Seriously, it's tiny little oinking noises. Its precious...she's precious. I love my little fur babies. I can't imagine having to use an ac in February. My grandparents used to live in Palm Bay near Melbourne and one year we drove down to visit them during April vacation and it was pretty bad. We went to the beach a few times to cool off but other than that I was dying. We came home to 40 degree temps and it was much better for me. I can go outside in -20 wind chills without a jacket and shovel but once it's over 85 or so I'm a mess. We really only use the ac's around here from June to early September. I'm glad you were about to get your yard work done. I hope your mom gets some great stuff with her $7000! I love music so that sounds like a fabulous day to me!
Linda- I read that 3 times over and every time thought it said "I ran all over the country" and keep thinking of you as a real life Carmen Sandiego! You know, I wouldn't be surprised in the least about the fast food places having somehow bottled that smell and here's why. I went to a steak house once, one of the nationwide chain places, and it smelled HORRIBLE. About 2 minutes into our wait for a table I was so turned off that I was begging to leave. It smelled like I imagine dead animals and wet moldy leaves would smell like with no pleasant pine foresty goodness anywhere to be found. My mom was hellbent on eating there though but asked the hosted what the deal was with the smell. She said that the restaurant was made to look like a hunting lodge and they took it a step further and used this aerosol spray that smelled like wild game to "increase the atmosphere." I proceeded to tell her they went a little overboard. I don't really like red meat and the whole situation bothered me. The smell went away a bit once we were there for a little while, overcome by the smell of food. At least my chicken tasted great.
Susan- I used to manage an Avenue for a few years and they'd go coupon crazy there. If anything, I tried to help people out buy splitting up orders so they could use more (which we weren't supposed to do), or hook them up with friends and family only promos (that were for 30% off your entire purchase). I don't like when cashiers get all grouchy over coupons, or checks, or heaven forbid getting exact change, so I never was that way with customers. I think when you work in retail you go one of two ways: either you embrace it and try to be a better customer to not anger your cashiers or you despise it and try to make everyone as miserable as you are while you are at work. My husband and I (who also used to be in retail management before he went back to college) feel that you are getting paid to do a job, make the company money while following their rules. Companies generally want to make money first and foremost, but they do that by *making the customer happy*. Most people forget that last part until they're on the other side of the fence. Having mean customers is also no excuse. You kind of just have to 'smile and nod' (thinking of trademarking that technique) and remember it isn't personal. Again, I derailed. I'm sorry. Just a pet peeve of mine... bad customer service. So back on track... YOU USE THOSE COUPONS GIRL!
I'm glad your local store is cool about it, but they all should be!
:gets off soapbox:
CJZ- Congrats on maintaining. I think sometimes that's actually the hard part, Finding the right balance to keep going forward.
My positives...
Sadly, yesterday I didn't really feel up to getting out of bed. Stomach flu or something. I just tried to drink as much water as possible to replace lost fluid and then I had some soup for dinner. The good news is that staying in bad gave me a lot of time to work on my afghan and I got a big chunk of the panel I'm on done. I should have it finished in an hour or two tonight. Three done, Sixty to go... and a border... and a backing...
.
Today I hung out with my hubby. We played some WoW for an hour or so, played with the kitties. I woke up still feeling a little ill so I'm taking it easy. I've been slacking on exercise big time lately. I'm lazy by nature and really have to push myself to do a workout but lately I've been so beat. I hardly have energy enough to wake up some days! I need some so sort of motivation to do it besides the obvious perks it gives. I used to do this all the time. Say we had relatives coming to visit for a week and I wanted to give the whole house a good scrub. My husband would go get some food, say fruit roll ups or something equally bad for me. He'd hide them and only give me one if I completed everything on my list of to-dos. Usually that list was impossibly long, but I'd get it done. I can't, or rather, won't do that anymore. We chatted today and came up with a plan, so today this is my positive. For every 30 minute workout I do, I get $1 (virtually, I'll just get a lump sum later) with a weekly cap of $4. We put a cap on there so I don't push myself to far which is what I used to do. When I hit goal, he'll pull the money out of our savings and I get a new wardrobe! I mean, I'll get new clothes anyway... but I'm talking wardrobe here.
I think it's a far more fitting reward (no pun intended) than a lousy fruit roll up! Also, I'm going to get my clothes together that no longer fit (remember I used to manage a plus size clothing store with a big discount) and since there's so much of it, I'm going to probably give it to the goodwill. Perhaps the Salvation Army. My sister's former MIL and FIL are Majors in the Salvation Army so they could get it to folks who could use it. I'm keeping my sweaters though! I love big fuzzy sweaters and I have a ton of them. This should clear out some closet space for newer stuff. Goal here I come!
Text wall again. Sorry guys. Since I've barely been able to stay on topic and I've really put out there how strange I can be, I'm off to finish stitching that panel and probably grid the fabric for the next one. I hope you all have a wonderful night and a fabulous day tomorrow in case I don't pop in. I seem to have an every other day thing going on here. I hope this post makes someone chuckle because I'm laughing my butt off over here.
