Baby, its cold outside.

Fall has officially fallen and I couldn't be more ready for it. This summer, while fun and productive, was exhausting. I'm ready to snuggle in, to read (for pleasure!!), to wrap myself and the chihuahua in a blanket and watch crappy TV and eat yummy comfort food until March. Maybe April. :-) I have 3 exams scheduled between now and Thanksgiving, the first of which being this Friday. I feel as positive as I can about it in light of having failed the first 2 I took. I'm studying, reviewing, really trying to be hopeful. Then the next one is October 20th - just 17 days to study 20 chapters. But I've studied for and taken this one before and scored 2 points below passing, so it seems possible. Then the next is the Monday before Thanksgiving. That one is new, I'm not sure how it'll go.

After that, I'm going to try to take off Tuesday and Wednesday to cook and clean because we're hosting Thanksgiving. Hosting used to be difficult for me, I stressed out about every little detail and would inevitably work myself like a dog until the wee hours of the morning the night before. Nothing seemed right - it wasn't clean enough, tasty enough, something enough. But somewhere along the way, I've given up on all that silliness. My house is what it is, if I think it's clean and, more importantly really, if Husband thinks its clean enough, then it is. everyone else can,effectively, suck it. I know I cook decently well and if people don't like my food they are more than welcome to stop at McDonald's on their way home. And I'm not trying to be a bitch here - I want people to enjoy our home and my cooking and to have a good time when they come to our house, but I don't worry about it like I used to, which probably makes it all run smoother, actually. I make our home they way Husband wants it and the way I want it and that is good enough. We're having my parents, my sister, her husband, our neice and hopefully my in-laws for dinner. A big crowd for me since we have such a tiny family.

Right now though, I have a nasty case of poison ivy. It started on my left wrist, I thought it was a bug bite and I scratched it. The next morning, it was all over the inside of my wrist. The next day, it has jumped to the other arm and now it is all on the side of my left boob and all over my stomach. It is slowly creeping around my sides too, I'm hoping it'll stop spreading before it gets all the way around! My arms are fine but my stomach itches like a mother!!

I gotta get back to work right now, but to end this on a happy note, I weighed in at -5 pounds this morning!! Yeeeah, biaotches!!

Tuesday.

Hey! I still exist! What do you know about that. Crazy, huh? So I've made it - thru tax season, thru 5 of my co-workers being fired and 2 managers quitting, thru the Sept. 15th deadline and now we're heading into the October 15th deadline then it will be smooth sailing (HA!) until tax season starts again in about 3 months. Joy.

Since I last posted, work has just been insane and there hasn't been time to turn around much less turn around, sit down, log into blogger and post something. I've been reading and keeping up (for the most part) with my blogroll, but that's been the extent of my accomplishments. I've even been relatively quiet on twitter - and how hard is it to spit out less than 140 characters a couple times a day??

Right now, I'm studying for my 3rd part of the ever-present CPA exam and anxiously awaiting my results on the 2nd part (and getting more than mildly annoyed at how long those results are taking to materialize). I feel certain I didn't pass it, but I want to know, dammit!!

Nothing else is new really. I don't have time for anything but studying at this point, and won't until the Monday before Thanksgiving. Then I'll get a few merciful days off and it will be awesome. But until then, I'm just trying to make time for studying, still trying to cook for my Man *most* nights, trying to keep the house at least liveable, taking care of the guineas, the dogs, the Man, AND being available to help with home improvement projects, etc. Unfortunately, the whole working out thing has fallen by the wayside. And I hate that, but I'm just overwhelmed right now, to say the least.

We have, however, been on a diet for a few weeks now. Well, "diet" isn't really the right word. We're just making better decisions, not eating out, limiting desserts and sweets and fixing healthy stuff for lunches and dinners. So far, I've lost about 9 pounds. And trust me, we've still been out and there has been ice cream consumed (very little, but still). I have a weight that I call the "magic number". Once I got above that number (no, I won't say how much it is), I've never gotten below it. (At the worst point, I was 20 pounds ABOVE that number, about 6 years ago.) I mean, I have been below it, but only by a pound or two and only very briefly. Our diets have always been derailed right about the time I get back down to that number. Perhaps you have that number too. It's so ingrained at this point that I think of my weight in terms of that number.

Let's say the number is 100 pounds (HA-HA-HA), if I get on the scale and weigh 112, I don't think, "I weight 112 pounds", I think "I'm 12 pounds over." And by the same token, if I weigh 98 pounds, I think, "Ooo, I'm down 2 pounds!!" So this morning, I weigh 0. And I'm stoked!! Our diet is going along swimmingly, I don't see any reason it will derail on me and right now I'm at 0, so the only place to go from here is into negative numbers!!

Hopefully one day I'll have a new "magic number". I can imagine in my head what I'd like the next one to be, and the one after that, but I'm not sure what I'd like my Long-Term Magic Number to be. I guess I'll know when (IF) I get there. I feel motivated to exercise now, to speed up my progression toward my new number. Hopefully I'll be able to start working that into the schedule again.

Ok, right now, lunch is over and it's time for me to get back to work.