this is halloween everybody make a scene

We did indeed have a murder mytery party with my family. It was scandalous, but luckily nobody had an affair with either of my parents (though my sister did supposedly kiss my fiance). I had never done one of those before, and I found that it was much more fun than I thought it would be. Here we are as Tara Misou and her fiance Rocco Scarfazzi:

We are a handsome Italian couple, no? In any case, good times were had by all. And, at the end of the evening, my niece accomplished something I haven't been able to do even once in my life:

Amazing! I was fully impressed.

I have a ghost story just in time for Halloween, but I'm going to save it for next post. :) Until then, goodnight.

tgif

I finally did it—I saw the counselor. And I haven’t felt this good in a long time. I was able to talk through a lot of things, and she was very optimistic about the eventual outcome of this whole counseling thing. Because of that, I feel so much better about the issues and problems I’ve been worried about. It was as if the words I spoke lifted a weight right off my chest. I’m so glad I finally called.

And in other news, my parents and sister are coming into town this weekend. We’re going to see my niece dressed up at her ‘Trunk-or-treat’ (costume still TBD), attend Sparky’s FestDevil, and perhaps have our own murder mystery party…should be an interesting weekend.

I’m so glad it’s Friday! Someone walked into our office just now with plates of sandwiches and fruit—always a welcome sight, but quite the party on a Friday afternoon. Our office is frequently the recipient of leftover food from catered meetings. Yum. What a way to end the week.

Have a good weekend!

we eat ham and jam and spam a lot!

That's it. Enough with the spam already. I am now turning on the comment feature that makes it so if you're going to comment on my site, you have to type in the word you see. This should prevent any more spam from happening. Some of the spam seemed harmless, but a pornography one pushed me over the edge. (I delete the spam comments, so that's why I'm ranting away about spam and you don't see what I'm talking about anywhere on my site.)

Anyway, sorry for the inconvenience--to all you real people, please keep commenting! I appreciate all of your comments.

love,
HJ

when you're young you get sad

Geraldine is the made up name for a rabbit that I almost had. A couple of days ago I got an email from a lady who couldn’t keep her rabbit any longer and was giving it away to a good home. (Through freecycle. You should check it out if you’ve never heard of it—it’s like recycling; you give other people the stuff you don’t want anymore.)

The rabbit was litter box trained, friendly, sweet. I e-mailed the lady but I was too late. She had given it to someone else, but by then we had already named the rabbit, for crying out loud. She was mine, and then suddenly she wasn’t.

I don’t think you can understand how sad I was when I didn’t get this rabbit. Probably it’s for the best, but I’ve been confused and sad lately, and I thought maybe Geraldine would help me feel better. I’m sad. But it’s not really because I didn’t get Geraldine. I’m just a little lost right now.

NaNoWriMo blues

In the year 2002, I participated in NaNoWriMo. If you haven’t heard of it, that stands for National Novel Writing Month. November is the month, and in 2002, I wrote a whole novel during the month of November. It is an accomplishment I am quite proud of, because it definitely wasn’t easy.

I didn’t participate during 2003 or 2004 because of grad school—I would have gone crazy. I was so looking forward to NaNoWriMo 2005 so I could write my second novel. But November 1 is fast approaching, and I find that my heart just isn’t in it. I want to do it—the thrill of writing a novel in a month (along with 20,000 other people!) and knowing that you accomplished something that difficult and big, well, there’s nothing like that feeling.

So what’s keeping me from signing up? Why am I not dreaming up plots, developing characters, and listening in on other people’s conversations for inspiration? (Haha. Listening in on conversations is fun to do, and often quite inspirational!) It’s plain my heart isn’t in it, and I can’t write 50,000 words in one month without a whole lot of conviction and heart. I almost quit halfway through the month (when I had written 25,000 words already!) the first time I participated, so I KNOW that NaNoWriMo is not for the faint of heart.

If something changes by November 1, then I’ll go at it full force! I guess I just don’t know why I’m so lethargic about it…Anyone out there thinking of participating this year? Anyone willing to try and help psych me up for this?

Oh, p.s. This shirt makes nanowrimo awfully tempting...

So NOW who's with me? For those about to write, we salute you.

hey, it's all one big crapshoot anywho

My plan to look good isn’t going quite as well as I had hoped.

The good news is that I have consistently worn my step counter, and have increased my daily average by 500 steps each week. So that means this week I’m up to 6,500 steps per day. (When I first started, my average was 4,000 steps a day.) That probably doesn’t sound like much to many of you, but it involves me taking a 20-minute walk every day at lunch. I’ve also started doing a weight workout once a week—the goal is at least twice a week, but we’re talking baby steps here. I’m pretty proud of my efforts in this realm.

The eating has not gone as well. I somehow manage to sabotage myself at every turn. I eat yogurt and a granola bar for breakfast, fruits and veggies for snacks, a healthy lunch, and then I pig out in the evening on greasy Mexican food takeout and top it off with ice cream. I get nowhere doing that. Probably because of this, my stomach looks as big as before (or bigger). I get discouraged.

You know what else is discouraging? The instructors of my health and wellness class. The nutrition expert is chubby. The exercise expert is built like a linebacker, and not all of that is muscle. Are they not following their own advice? Because at the end of this course, I want to look and feel a little better than I did when I started. I’m discouraged, but I’m not giving up.

Tonight, one of my best friends will be dyeing my hair. Saturday I’m getting it cut. And someday very soon, I’m hopefully going to be wearing these . Or these.


And very soon I’m going to call a counselor for my emotional health. I’ve been trying to make the call for a couple of weeks now, but I’m scared. I know I need it, it’s just hard for me to pick up the phone and do it. But it’s time. I want to make myself and my marriage into something better, and I know this is the way to do it. I’m just scared of revealing my thoughts and feelings to someone—I have a problem being vulnerable. (Hence, why I need to get counseling in the first place.)

It sounds funny—a person (me) who puts a blog up for anyone to stumble upon is scared to reveal her true thoughts and feelings. But it’s different on a blog. I edit my thoughts here. I don’t generally blog about the bad stuff, or the problems I have, or the emotional mess I am sometimes. Can you see why this would be a problem in a marriage? My fear of revealing my true self sometimes prevents me from being a full, true partner to my husband, and that is not acceptable to me. I think a counselor can help me with that. There are more issues to deal with, but that is a big one. (Wow...I wasn’t even sure where to start with counseling, but writing it out has pointed out one of my main problems!)

Anywho, I’m still alive. I’m working on my goals, and I’m trying to become a better person (both inside and out). I’m just getting exhausted by the effort.

speaking of manicures

I purchased a nail buffer at the store yesterday. The buffer has two sides - one buffs, the other shines. I tried it on myself and was amazed at how nice my nails looked. I demonstrated it to JJ by trying it out on one of his fingers. He was fascinated. Next thing I know, I'm buffing and shining all his fingernails at his request. ;)

you're so vain, you probably think this post is about you

I have a goal to look good. Actually, the goal is to look damn good. Is that shallow? JJ tells me it’s not a shallow goal, but I feel a bit vain verbalizing it. However, feeling vain is not enough to stop me. I’m very focused on this.

As I said before, I’m taking a class on health and nutrition, and I’ve made changes in my lifestyle. I walk A LOT more than I ever did. On my lunch hours I take walks instead of sit at my desk. I’ve started working out with weights a couple times a week. I’ve also stopped eating candy and junk during the day and have exchanged them for fruit and vegetable snacks.

I’m doing these things because I want to look good, not necessarily because I want to be healthy. Everyone always says “I’m doing it to be healthy”, not “I want to look hot.” But hey, I’m not afraid to admit it.

I found a cool hairstyle that I want, and I’m going to dye my hair darker brown and put red highlights in it. I’m getting new glasses (The ones I wear are at least two years old. And I am unable to wear contacts for the time being). I’m going to get up early enough to do my hair every day rather than put it in a ponytail like I usually do.

I even plan to get a new wardrobe, though that part will be tricky—I don’t exactly have any money in my budget for that…We’ll see. Get this, I even bought some manicure equipment and am going to do my nails and toenails on a regular basis.

I’m serious about this. I’m tired of feeling unattractive. I want to feel sexy. Could this have something to do with the fact that my birthday is approaching faster than ever? Probably. Let’s face it, I’m turning 31 in three months. 30 was okay, because it just rounds out the 20s. But 31, that means I’m IN my 30s. Yikes! I don’t want to look like a middle-aged housewife or something. Not that there’s danger of that right now…I’m just majorly into prevention in this instance.

It doesn’t help that JJ is turning 25 this year. He loves to remind me that I’m practically his grandma. :) Okay, he’s not that bad. But still. Here’s what I want. When people see us, I want them to think I’m younger than he is. So far, people think of us as the youngster married couple. What they don’t know won’t hurt them! I just want to keep it that way.

So anyway, I’ll keep you posted on the looking good goal. I’ll even post pictures of my hair when I get it done. Thanks for listening, and don't think I'm too vain!

you think anybody wants a roundhouse kick to the face while I'm wearing these bad boys?

Okay, my last entry was quite a rant, wasn’t it? What I failed to mention is that there are some days when I accomplish very little at work. I can’t focus, and I don’t get much done. I get grouchy and less pleasant on those days, and Tuesday was one of them. I also didn’t mention that my supervisor is one of the nicest human beings out there. She really doesn’t know that her actions are hurtful.

Not that I don’t plan to leave soon. It’s time for me to become a librarian, and I know it. The good thing is that JJ and I sat down together this past weekend and discussed our dreams and goals. We each wrote out the things we are working toward, and it seems so much more real now that the goals are in black and white. So things at work are bearable because I have a game plan.

I’ll probably be writing in here about some of those goals. In fact, if I weren’t so busy/lazy all the time, I’d be writing in here a lot! Nearly every day something happens to me and I wonder, “Should I blog about that?” I practically have an incident all typed out in my head while it’s simultaneously happening to me.

Speaking of “Should I blog about that?”, something funny happened to me yesterday at the public library. When I told the story to JJ, he laughed like crazy and voted no on me blogging about it. Here’s a hint: it involves bathrooms and me not being able to hold it…but, I guess I’ll have a little propriety and not post it. Even though it’s funny!