Pooie Day

Yeah, that's right, I said it's a "Pooie Day"...wanna make something of it? Oh, sorry ~ perhaps I'm feeling a bit confrontational right now.

Last night I was struck down with a headache and the realization that I only have 1 handwrap, the other must have disappeared during our move. Shit. So I studied and fixed dinner and watched old episodes of ANTM and just generally felt sorry for myself. Finally I went downstairs to feed the guineas and before coming back up and pounded on the old heavy bag for a little while - barefoot and bare fisted until my knuckles were bright red and screaming. I just broke a sweat, nothing major, but still more than I thought I'd do with the massive headache. Of course, hitting the bag did nothing for the head, but I was just frustrated at that point and didn't care.

I still have said headache, but it feels like an excuse and I refuse to fail this time, dammit. I found a Pilates For Beginners DVD on our rack (No idea where that came from, btw) so I'm either going to give that a shot when I get home (I've never done any Pilates...at all...ever...none) or I'll do an honest heavy bag routine. Either way, I gotta get moving. Oh, I did do some dips this morning before work. I'm somewhat obsessed with the disgusting state of my upper arms, so I'm trying to work in tricep exercises any free moment I have. If you know of any that really work, please share!!

Ok, I'm off to pick up Husband for lunch in a few minutes. I get to go out in the rain - yay!!

Quickie

Don't have much time here cause I only have an hour left in this day and it is essential that I accomplish...something. But, I wanted to give you and update.

Got home last night (35 minutes LATE because of a stupid traffic jam!!) and threw a couple chicken breasts in the oven. Then I studied for about 20 minutes. Then I did the strength training routine! I actually did it. I know that's not impressive really, but before I can accomplish (fail at) anything, I have to start it. So step one: starting - check! I was only able to do the minimum recommended reps of each movement, which was 8 (except the tourture-crunches...the kind where you lay on your back, put your knees in the air and straighten and lower one leg as your crunch...yeah, I did 4 on each side and prayed for death). Oh, and the calf thingies - raising up on one foot, hold, lower slowly, I did 10 of those and then 10 more on both feet. Guess my calves are pretty strong after packing all this ass around for so long. When I got finished, I was hot and tired and semi-sweaty and achy feeling. This morning, my legs were a bit sore, but not much and it's gone now. So I'm thinking I didn't really push myself hard enough. I'm not accustomed to pushing myself physically (except when doing yard work, in which case I always over-do it and hurt myself) so I have to figure out how to dig deep and make myself do more than I think I'm capable of.

Afterward, I continued to study until Husband got home, then we fixed homemade chicken burritos (YUM) and took a walk around the yard after dinner. Got 4 more tomatoes, a handful of green beans and a cucumber from the garden. 4 canteloupes are very close to ripe too - exciting!

So tonight is the heavy bag routine. I plan to try to figure out what a good time limit is, so I can say I start with ____ minutes and work up from there. I try to stay light (HA) on my feet and move around a lot to get some extra cardio out of it. First - I have to figure out how to wrap my hands!!

Plans are made to be broken...

The problem with being flexible (and I mean in an 'available for someone one their schedule' way, not a 'flexie-bendie' way) is that you have to be so...flexible.

This weekend, we finally got a space cleared out in the basement...wait...I say that like our basement is full of crap and that could not be farther from the truth. Here's the deal, when we had ducks (before the tragedy), they spent their nights in the room in the basement (it's a typical big-open-space-unfinished basement, except for this little room off to one side) and we had put cedar chips on the floor for them to keep down the smell and give them something nicer than concrete to sleep on. My heavy bag was also in that room (separated from the ducks) and not hung up and all the internet stuff (router, whatever) was right under my heavy bag stand, which didn't lend itself to bouncing around in there. So this weekend, I got all the cedar chips out of there and we cleaned up the aquarium where the guineas stayed when they were in the basement and we moved the heavy bag stand out into the main room and hung up the bag. The plan was to start with a heavy bag routine last night. Didn't happen.

Because there is rain in the forecast today (and the rest of the week, and all weekend AND all of next week), Husband needed my help getting the lawn mowed last night, so it wouldn't end up half mowed for a week while it rained. When I got home, I studied for the hour until he got home, then we fixed dinner and ate and got started mowing. We mowed for 2 1/2 hours, so until 9:30pm, then I had to go down and feed the guineas (they were a little less than pleased with the slow service) and by then it was nearly 10pm. I'm not what you'd call a "good sleeper" and I've read that working out late at night can be bad for sleeping, so it seemed like a bad plan to do it after my usual bedtime. But I did ride the mower around for 2 1/2 hours and my arms are quite sore as a result, so my muscles must have done some moving. They already feel better now than they did this morning, so I plan to do the strength training stuff tonight, before Husband gets home, then I'll study later. That's my plan, we'll see how I do.

I can't stand...

*bloggers who think they are the shit and who won't hesitate to spend an entire post telling you how wonderful they are. Gag.

*when people say "See ya" or "Later" instead of goodbye on the phone. This applies especially when it is someone they don't know and who they will most likely never see and/or talk to again. Just dumb.

*not being able to shake that groggy feeling. My eyes are rolling up in my head and I can barely stay awake. I was this way ALL day yesterday. Suck.

*traffic jams. It took me an hour and 15 minutes to get to work this morning, when it usually takes 40 minutes. Aaarrrggghhh. I was very angry. I don't know how many times I've forbidden people to have accidents, close roads, etc, etc, etc where I'm trying to drive.

*when my office mate decides he wants to have a conversation with me. Granted, this hardly ever happens. But today, when I'm super groggy and trying to study (at work ~ with permission ~ because I have no actual work to do ~ SWEET) he decides he wants to discuss refinancing and mortgage rates and all that shit. Please, for the love of god, just shut the fuck up.

Ok ~ now that I have all that off my chest (and I feel a lot better thankyouverymuch), I can tell you what's up with the running/working out stuff. I talked to Husband about it and he's on board (yay!), so we're going to clean out the basement (hopefully very soon) and put his stuff down there from his room and we're going to bring the heavy bag upstairs and put it in the spare bedroom. Then we found a workout bench thingy - kind of like a bowflex but WAY less expensive. We're going to buy that and put that in there too. That will be the workout room, which is a step in the right direction for me to have a space dedicated to that. The only time in my life I've worked out regularly was when I had a space, just for that, in our old house.

This week there is a fair in Husband's hometown and next week is the fair in the town where we live, so we'll be going to those a few nights and I still have to keep up with my studying (having this time to study at work is invaluable this week!!) AND I need to clean the house, take care of the guineas, clean their house, and get the laundry and stuff caught up. But, somewhere in there, I hope to find time to get everything situated and start the new routine on Monday. That's the current goal, we'll see how we do.

I love it when...

*People post pictures on their blogs, especially of something inside their house. I often find myself looking, not at the subject of the picture, but at the stuff in the background. Magazines on tables, flowers on a windowsill, the blanket on the couch. Is there dust on/under their furniture like there is on mine?? What's playing on that TV in the background?? As you can see, I often miss what the picture was even supposed to be of.

*Monday passes quickly and suddenly I look at the clock and there is less than an hour and a half before I go home. And I know what I'm fixing for dinner and I know I need to study and finish hemming Husband's pants and the whole evening is laid out before me.

*A project I've been dreading at work turns out to be MUCH easier than I expected it to be and I finish it and don't have to dread it any longer.

*The momma deer who lives near us brings her triplets out where we can see them. She brings them out every Saturday morning between 9:30am and 10:30am and they are PRECIOUS!! Yesterday before leaving the house, we saw one of the babies, sprinting across the front yard and no one else in the family. Then we saw a grown deer down the road who had an unfortunate encounter with a vehicle, so we were very afraid for the little family. But she kindly brought them out again after we got home, just so we'd know they are all safe and together, I'm sure.

*My guineas act like they're maybe not completely terrified of me. We're still not best friends, and they're still quite wild, but from time to time, they'll come quite near me and act like I don't have the plague, and that's nice.

*We have a weekend together where we basically accomplish nothing. Sure, I feel a little guilty about letting 2 whole days pass and doing: a TINY bit of laundry, sort of cleaning the kitchen up (a pathetic attempt, really), grocery shopping, taking care of the guineas, going to see a play, and watching movies and NOTHING else. It's awesome. And it's even better when we veg because we want to and not because anyone is sick or anything.

*We go and do something and neither of us is sure how it's going to be and then we both have a great time. We went to our little community theatre Saturday night to see their production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. We've both seen Shakespear before, done the way you expect to see it done, and Husband read in the paper the other day, that this one was set in the 1980's. That scared us both a little because there was that movie version of Romeo and Juliet set in the 90's or something and we both loathed it. But we went with *partially* open minds. IT WAS GREAT. They were all dressed in 80's clothes and there was lots of 80's rock infused in the play. There were a couple actors of questionable talent, but for a tiny community theatre, it had a GREAT cast. The guys that played Puck, Flute and Bottom were beyond awesome and one of them was only a junior in high school. The play was hilarious, the cast worked very hard and we had a wonderful time.

Duh

I found myself driving to into the sun this morning, squinting, with my sunglasses on my head.

So...

I've noticed that I use the word "so" WAY too much. Not just when I'm talking but also in my blog posts and emails. I often delete it from Tweets in order to get under the 140 character limit. I also say, "Hm...interesting" about 50 million times a day. Hey, there's lots of interesting shit in the world!! And it doesn't work if you pronouce interesting with 3 syllables, it has to be just one.

Anyway...I need to make some modifications to my speech patterns. I'm getting on my own damn nerves.

Need suggestions here

As you might have guessed, I'm not expert when it comes to fitness (if you knew me in RL, you would know just how much of an understatement that really is). So, I have a tentative plan for starting out here and I need suggestions from those of you who know what you're talking about (and any level of "knowing" will trump me...so chime in!)

Here's what I'm thinking for the first couple weeks:

Monday - strength training
Tuesday - heavy bag (time yet to be determined - I want to push myself, but not kill myself and I'm honestly not sure where that line is yet)
Wednesday - off or a light walk/run to keep up the momentum
Thursday - strength training
Friday - heavy bag
Saturday - strength training
Sunday - same as Wednesday

So...my questions are, so I need to do the strength training more frequently for it to make improvements? Should I combine it and the heavy bag on the same night? Or should I do the heavy bag first rather than the strength stuff (by strength training, I'm meaning dips and push ups and things like that). Do I need those "off" nights or will that hurt more than help?

It's clearly going to be a learning process for me - to see what I am capable of and what my body will stage a revolt against. I intend to start off kind of light, but enough to push myself so I make progress. I will be finding the line between "making progress" and "hurting myself" and no one can really tell me where that line is except my own body. (I'm sure it won't hesitate to let me know!!)

For this weekend, the steps I'll be taking in the right direction are to clean out the room in the basement where my heavy bag goes and to get it set up. The ducks were in there when they stayed in the house so it looks pretty much like what you're picturing right now. So I'll be cleaning out the cedar chips and the duck poop and bleaching the concrete and then scrubbing off the nasty bleach smell with some kind of pleasant smelling cleaner. Then I'll get my heavy bag put up (with help from K, of course) and all that.

Monday will start my new life, so I need to get ready!!

Here it is.

So I say to Husband last night, "So, you wanna run a marathon?" to which He replies, "Um, not right now." Gotta love him. Then I told him about my plan and he says, "How are you going to do that with studying and everything?" I didn't really expect resistance from that angle, but that just made me more determined because it's not impossible to do this, but it does kind of seem impossible.

The new master plan for the blog (and for my life, really) is to run a marathon. I haven't set a date and said, "I'm going to run X marathon on X date" which is probably what I should do, but that seems huge. So I'm going to run a 5k first...gotta start small. I know that I need to start that small because I found a 5 week training program for a 5k race and there's no way I can do that yet. I'm so out of shape it isn't even funny. So my current goal is to work my way up to starting the 5k training. I figure it'll take about a month. I'm going to start with the heavy bag tonight - basically working on stamina (with hopeful upper arm improvements!).

I'm going to try for a 5week pre-training training program. There will be heavy bag workouts and run/walks and I found a general strength training program that seems like a good idea. I need to get a reasonable schedule worked out - both to keep this realistic (it's not like the CPA exam just disappeared or anything) and because I just function better with a schedule (hence, the studying schedule). Once I get a schedule worked out, I'll post it here and we'll go from there.

I will have beginning numbers (weight, measurements, etc) but the overwhelming shame will not allow me to post those here - not just yet. Once I'm far enough away from those numbers, I'll tell you what they were, but not until they're a thing of the past. Besides, losing weight or being thin or whatever isn't my goal here. My goal is to pick something I want to do, something I could totally accomplish if I put my mind to it and am committed to it, and DO THAT THING. If I drop a bunch of weight and become a total hottie in the process - BONUS.

A plan

I finally have a plan for this blog. Sort of. More than just random ramblings about nothing in particular. Don't get me wrong - those will still be here - but there will also be a more grand purpose to the thing. We'll be going somewhere with this, you see. I'm going to do something. And I'm going to document it.

Earth shattering, right? You're glad you waited all this time for me to come up with that (completely original) idea...right?

And here's the best part...I don't know what it's going to be yet. I don't know what I'll be documenting. I haven't been inspired. I can't decide if I want to start small...so something every day for a week, let's say. Or maybe for a month and see how that goes. Can I keep it up? Can I blog about it? Will it mean anything? Or should I just start out with a whole year. That seems huge.

I know I don't have many readers on here yet so I'm not going to bother with setting up a poll cause I feel certain I wouldn't get many responses. But I'm going to throw some ideas I have out here and let them bounce around and see if anyone has anything to say about them. Maybe it'll just help me decide all on my own.

Ideas for a week (to potentially be extended to a month or longer):
~Eat an apple before each meal.
~Do a cleansing/detox type diet
~Do something creative every day (and actually post pics of the results)
~Have sex every day (I've also thought of this one as 365 times in a year/31 times in a month but not necessarily every single day....make sense?)

One idea I had for a longer goal-type thing was to run a mini-marathon next summer. I mean, it would be awesome to run in the New York City marathon in 2010, but being able to run 26 miles in a little over a year when I can't even run down my driveway right now, might be a touch unreasonable. Of course, unreasonable does NOT equal undoable or impossible. So, we'll see. And I've always wanted to be a runner.

Hmmm...

What do I think of people who don't censor themselves regardless of their audience? Am I envious? Or do I think they must lead boring lives if they don't mind for every single person they know to potentially know every single detail of their lives. Still - am I envious of that kind of simplicity? Or am I envious of a life filled with those kinds of relationships? Can you imagine being surrounded ONLY by people who would not judge you (or disown you) for anything you could think to say? Sure, I have a couple of those people in my life, but they are most certainly not ALL like that.

Not to mention - these people who claim to be uncensored - how do we know that they really are? I mean, when you're reading a blog, or twitter posts, or whatever, you have no idea what's really going on outside the monitor. Sure, they might claim they're sharing their entire life, or that they don't hold back on their opinions, but you really have no way of knowing. (Next time you're reading someone's blog - especially someone you don't really know - just imagine all the things they could be doing while typing that very post!!)And whenever someone's blog is open to family members, I'm always skeptical. But maybe that's just me. Perhaps I compartmentalize.

I'd have to be 'out there' looking 'in here' to really say, but maybe if you read this blog, then read my tweets, then read my other blog - you might not even think all 3 were written by the same person. Surely this can't all be the same life - can it? Three completely different views on a single reality? Or is it even a single reality?

Sorry - I didn't intend to be all philosophical and cryptic, it just came out that way.

Lost in translation

On the way to work this morning, I saw a bumper sticker someone had stuck to the back of a street sign. It said, "Abortion is Murder". But, my little 7:20am eyes read it as "Adoption is Murder" and I thought, Geez, if it is, you're doing it wrong!

TGIF

It's finally Friday. I say "finally" because I'm certain this week has been 8 or 10 days long. I'm caught up on my studying (I have a schedule) so I'm going to study some at lunch today to try to review and maybe get ahead a little, then any studying I do this weekend is just bonus, so that's beyond awesome. I do, however, have a to-do list as long as my arm. Wanna see??

• do laundry
• clean the house (bathrooms, bedrooms and all!!)
• weed the front flower beds
• stake the tomatoes
• weed the garden (this is much worse than it sounds!!)
• clean Casa de Guinea
• clean up the basement from where we had foul fowl living in there
• change the bed
• wash my car/clean out the inside
• plant my poor rose bush before it croaks
• do something FUN!!

That's a lot to ask of 2 days, right? I guess I should get started tonight. I could probably clean our bedroom and bathroom before Husband gets home, and maybe even get the bed changed and everything. I could throw in a load of laundry while I'm doing all that. Then when he gets home he's going to weedeat and I could easily weed the front flower beds while he's doing that. Cleaning the basement will be a good project for the middle of the day tomorrow when it's far too hot to do anything outside (anything work-like anyway).

I better get to work - and since it's 8:32, it's time to start crossing my fingers that my office-mate has called in sick today!!

Hump Day

You know, having to work sucks sometimes and being independently wealthy would win out over working for a living any day. Guess I should start playing the lottery if I ever expect to live out my lifelong dreams of sloth and gluttony.

I announced to Husband the other night that once I pass my CPA and we get some money saved up, I'm going to go back to school to become a nurse. I believe he thinks I've lost my mind completely this time. But I've had these nurse fantasies (not like that!!) for a long time now, so I think I'll go for it. It's never too late to have dreams, I suppose. Of course...does it make sense to aspire to a career with worse hours and lower pay than the career I have now? I suppose not. Maybe I'll just become a candy striper after I retire. ;-)

I'm having trouble staying (getting) motivated today. Lord knows I have enough work to do, they keep piling it on ad nauseum, but I just don't feel like doing it. I want to go home and...oh, I don't know....chillax?? :-) Actually, I'd like to be studying right now - that would at least feel like I was accomplishing something. I never thought I'd get into the whole CPA exam thing, but I'm totally obessessed with it. I don't want to do anything except study. At all. Until I'm finished. Husband complains about how much I study and wants to know why I didn't take a break between tests, or why I have to study EVERY NIGHT FOR SIX WEEKS. Because I want to be done with this test, you know? I don't want to take it 15 times, I don't want to half-ass it and drag it out forever. I want to study hard now, learn this shit and be done. I want to pass all 4 parts on the first try. Who knows if I will (or if I have) but I want to, and not studying will not facillitate that. It's hard to explain this kind of obessession to someone who is not experiencing it, and even harder to ask them to be understanding about it.

Tests, animals, life.

I'm back. Took some time off and had a lot of catching up to do at work yesterday, so no time for blogging. Wednesday was my first part of the CPA exam...BEC...Business Environment and Concepts. Lots of crap about partnerships, s-corps, c-corps, stocks, bonds, present value of money, information technology, international markets, etc, etc, etc. It's kind of the random-crap section of the exam. I sincerely hope I passed it, not just because I have a fear of failure, but also because if I have to study that boring ass shit again, I'll probably have to hurt someone. Then Thursday, Friday and Saturday we took a little trip to celebrate our anniversary. Saturday we came home, gathered the dogs, then grilled out some veggies for dinner and set off fireworks in the front yard. It was fun and I look forward to buying even more explosives next year!! Oddly enough, it is legal to buy the big fireworks in our state, but illegal to actually set them off. Needless to say, we ignored that last part of the law.

Saturday was our anniversary. We've been married 11 years. I keep saying that and it keeps blowing my mind. It is amazing how young we were when we got together and when we got married and how we've managed to stay together. So much shit has gone down since we got married, not just with us, but with all the people in our wedding. Let's look at my bride's maids. One of them had a baby, got married and had another baby (in that order), another one came out of the closet and lives happily with her girlfriend, another one got married and divored twice, got married again and had a baby, and the fourth one had a baby and got divorced. Then there's the groomsmen. The best man had a baby, got divorced, then married a woman who already has 4 kids. Another one had triplets, one had 2 kids and the fourth got divorced and is now a musician. That's a whole lot of crap happening, lots of marriages and divorces and babies for 8 people!! And what have we done? Well, no divorces or babies here. We did move to another city, finish college, got real jobs, moved again...out of state that time. And then of course, there were all manner of interesting developments and things changing...as I think you'd expect when two people essentially grow up together. I mean, I was only 18 and a month out of high school when we started dating. And now I'm 31 years old. Geez.

At work, my office mate is back. Yuck. I got used to having my own office (he was gone for a month...he's an auditor and they spend a lot of time in the field). As it turns out, I really took to talking to myself while he was gone too, so I've had to get that in check. And I got used to listening to my iPod too, but I can't do that with him in here either. But the good news is that he's here this week then gone again next week. Sweet.

At home, all is well. I'm studying again for the 2nd part of the exam which is scheduled for August 20th. This one is FAR - Financial Accounting and Reporting. I'm trying to get the house cleaned too, I accomplished the kitchen this weekend, that's been about it. Maybe tonight I'll knock out a bathroom or something. However, after the duck tragedies and the baby deer and all that sadness, my faith in the Disney cartoon status of our property has been restored. Sunday I went in the laundry room to hang something up and I looked out the window and there was a deer and 3 babies!! Triplets are very, very rare for deer so it was amazing. I yelled for Husband to come look and we stood at the window watching them. There is a patch in the middle of our front yard that contains our burn pile. We haven't had an opportunity to burn it and the grass/weeds have grown up around it. The fawns used it like a race track and chased each other in circles around it. It was hilarious!! The mother just stood watching them and eating grass, very calm. They moved over near the woods and we went on the back porch and watched them a while longer (they were kind of beside the house at that point). Finally they went into the woods. I took some pictures and will share them as soon as I can sweet-talk Husband into uploading them from the camera. Then this morning, I stepped out on the front porch and 5 deer ran across the driveway. They must have been grazing in the front yard and I startled them and they scampered off into the long grass in the field next to us. Not to sound like a big dork, but it was pretty magical. I mean, they're such beautiful creatures and for them to feel safe enough to just graze and hang out and bring their babies out so close to our house is pretty cool. So this morning's count was 5 deer, 1 indigo bunting and 1 baby bunny (we're overrun with bunnies...want some??)

So what's the deal here anyway?

It is truly a joy to write things, real things about your life, or from your imagination, when the people who are going to read them are either complete strangers or are those rare, special, wonderful, kindred spirits who will not judge you and will continue to really want you in their lives no matter what might jump off your fingertips and onto the keyboard. When you get done writing something for an audience like that, your soul feels lighter, you feel happy. So this thought leads me to wonder why I have this blog. Sure, I can ramble on about farm/tractor/guinea/duck/dog stuff for days and you can't say anything because I warned you that's what this was going to be like. But does that stuff really weigh on me and want to be dumped here? Not really. It's just life stuff, just sharing experiences. Which is cool too, but have never really been the thing that has compelled me to write. There are a couple of you here that know understand what I'm getting at here.

Also, I think I've attracted some new readers to this blog and when I look back at it with fresh eyes, I realize you know nothing about me really. And how interesting can guinea fowl tales be from a person you know nothing about?? So for this post, a mini-bio. I'm going to keep this semi-annoymous, but you'll get the basics.

I grew up on a 200 acre farm. We had lots of animals - cows, horses, a donkey, guinea fowl, ducks, geese, hamsters, dogs, cats, etc. We grew corn, tobacco, and bell peppers. We lived there until I was 12 years old. Then we moved "into town" which was 6 acreas about 5 miles from town. My parents lived there until about 5 years ago, I think. I met Husband the day before I graduated from high school. Our first date was July 4, 1996 and we got married July 4, 1998. 11 years ago this coming Saturday. I was 20 years old when we got married. So how I'm only 29 now, after being married 11 years is a bit of a mystery, I'll admit. We bought a house a couple months before we got married and lived there for 3 years. In 2001 Husband lost his job and we ended up moving away - to the "big city" - where he found a new job. I was not happy about leaving my home town, but now I think it was the best thing we could have done. We lived in a neighborhood in a mid-sized town (a little over 200,000 people I think). We both went to school during that time (while working full-time) and got our degrees. After Husband graduated, we decided to move out into the country - 2 1/2 hours from where we lived. So we fixed up our house, sold it in October 2008, quit our jobs, left all of our friends, co-workers and favorite restaurants behind, bought a new house and moved to where we live now. We own a little over 4 acres and sit in the middle of 16 acres all owned by the same people - we hope to buy it all someday.

Here's a few random tidbits, then I gotta get back to work. The first grade was by far the worst year of my life. I had the chicken pox twice that year, even though that "isn't possible." I burned my hand on an iron bad enough that I was off school a couple days and the pain was still so bad when I went back (with my hand a giant ball of gauze) that it made me dizzy. My paternal grandmother died in October of that year. On February 1 (my parents' anniversary) my dad, sister & I were in a car accident. My dad still suffers from his injuries. I ate the radio knob and knocked out my only adult tooth. Then my paternal grandfather died on February 7th (I think). I have been put to sleep 6 times in my life. Once to have that tooth put back in and braces sewn into my gums, then to have the braces taken out, then to have the tooth itself taken out (3 or 4 years later), then to have my gallbladder taken out in 2003 and twice for oral surgery in 2003 & 2004 (I think). I once went to a psychiatrist named Clovis Augustus (first & middle names), and one who told me that I could never tell anyone I'd ever seen a shrink as it would make people think less of me (I was about 14 at that time). I've been medicated for everything from depression to bipolar disorder to severe anxiety. I haven't taken any of that stuff in over 7 years and I don't intend to ever again. I feel like Husband and our marriage are the great miracles of my life - it is what I am most proud of.

Monday - or, Thursday, as it were

So it's another Monday and yet, I don't entirely hate this one because I only have to work 2 days this week. We were supposed to go out to lunch today with a girl who used to work here but moved away - she's back in town today. But I'm not going, instead I'm going to stay here and study. It's what I should do, so I'm doing it.

The weekend went fairly ok, just not long enough as usual. Friday night we went to the in-laws' and worked on the guinea coop, then we ate dinner and played some pinochle. We were there into the wee hours of the morning (ok, it was midnight, but it felt really late!) Saturday we got up and Husband went to help them load up the guinea coop parts to bring to our house for final assembly. I stayed home and cleaned the house, did some laundry and studied. When they got there, I went down and helped with assembly. It was 500,000 degrees (95) outside, so we worked until about 2:30pm, then stopped cause it was blisteringly hot. The in-laws went home and we took showers and went out to dinner and stopped at Wal-Mart for some essentials (gas can for diesel for the tractor, windshield wiper blades, car washing soap, paint for the guinea house & cheap brush (since its going to be red and will likely ruin the brush cause of the rough wood), and various other goodies). Then I studied for a bit and around 6pm, when that side of the house was in the shade, we got back to work on the coop. It is 8' x 4' and has plywood sides and back, a metal roof and a wire front and bottom. We covered the inside of the bottom with vinyl stuff and a couple piecs of paneling that we'll leave there at least until they can get up on the roost (which is a wooden 8ft. closet rod). There are also a couple pieces of paneling in the front to protect them (they sleep with their faces up against that wire and a racoon will reach in and kill them just for fun) and to keep some heat in. Anyway, we got it done Saturday night and it was supposed to storm, so we left them in the basement and moved them out there Sunday. They move around a little and are eating and everything, but they are clearly still freaked out about being outside (where they can hear dogs barking and who knows what else). They can't get up on their perch yet, or they haven't figured out that they can, so they're still huddling on the floor and sitting on their feeder. Of course, it dropped down into the 50's last night, which is the coldest night we've had in a month or two so when I went down to feed them this morning, they mostly gave me dirty looks. I put a cardboard box in there on its side so for them, they can get in that and snuggle together to get warmer if they want (once they stop being afraid of it). Also, they might use it as a step up onto their perch. Hopefully after a full day of sunshine and no dogs or people looking in on them every 5 minutes, they'll relax and explore their new house some more.

So I have to work today and tomorrow, then Wednesday is my big test. I took some practice tests over the weekend and I'm pretty sure I will not pass this section. But at least I'll get a feel for the experience and I'll know better how to study for future sections. It's a very expensive learning experience, but a learning experience none the less. And who knows, maybe I'll get lucky. Stranger things have happened. Even though it is so close, I will still spend tonight and tomorrow night doing practice questions and trying to drill that last tiny bit of information into my brain that might be the difference between passing and failing. Then, on Thursday, we will drop the chihuahua with my in-laws, take the big girls to the kennel and head off on our little anniversary get-away. Our 11th wedding anniversary is this coming Saturday (yes, we got married on the 4th of July), so we're staying at a cabin for 2 nights in a little town about 2 hours away. Not a big deal, just a little break from the ordinary.

Not much else happening. I have a tomato from the garden ripening on the window sill and several more getting near ripe on the vine. Maybel has several berries in the works, but 2 that will be eaten before we leave Thursday. Our squash plants have ceased producing anything edible - not sure what the problem is. I just keep pulling off the rotten or woody fruits and hoping for something delicious soon. We have 5 watermelons coming on our single plant - our entire family will be eating watermelons soon!! We're also expecting a bumper crop of cantelopes - I hope everyone we know loves them!! I think I'm going to have a bunch of lima beans too, which means I need to look up when to pick them and how to store them - I've only ever had them out of a can!

Here we go again...

Got a big fat slap with the old reality fish last night. Didn't really need it - not at the end of this week, believe me. It's been a hard week. They happen. But I got home to find all 3 of our ducks had perished. Well, I don't know for sure if they had perished when I got home, or if it happened between me letting the dogs out and letting them back in. I'm thinking the latter though. And that's tough, because the dogs have been left out there much longer than they were last night, unattended and nothing has happened. We've observed them with the ducks and they've been alone with the ducks and its always been fine. Not this time. This time, I have no more ducks and I feel horribly guilty about that. I should have known: Dogs will be dogs. I should have remembered that the dogs aren't human and they have a nature much different from our own. They don't understand that the ducks were our pets, they don't even understand that the ducks are dead now. Vikki keeps trying to go down there, looking for them. She clearly doesn't get it. She's a dog. And I'm the human - the one who should have protected the ducks. I failed.

Husband really liked the ducks too, so we might get some more. We'll just have to be a lot more careful this time and remember that the dogs are dogs. Its very tough right now not to be totally pissed at the dogs - they couldn't help it, we never really taught them any different so they didn't know any different. But I refused to pet them last night and I didn't pet them this morning either. It's mean though, if you think about it, because they don't understand WHY I'm not petting them (or talking to them, or even looking at them much), they just think I'm a big old bitch who doesn't love them anymore and they don't understand why. Jazzy (the Australian Shepherd) is really the most heart broken. She is a serious velcro dog and this cold shoulder thing is killing her. So I'm all guilty about that too - I hate being mean to the dogs, I hate thinking that they think I don't love them, but I just can't bring myself to love on them. This sucks out loud.

In other news, we're going to get the guinea house tonight (too little, too late for the ducks) and we'll put it together this weekend. I'll try to help, but my first part of the CPA exam is Wednesday, so I'll have to study too. The guineas will go out there for a couple weeks, while we get the area fenced in more securely so the dogs (and other predators) can't get in there, then they'll have a little grassy area to go into during the day. They will still get locked up at night though, because no fence (that we can afford) is racoon proof. So we're having dinner with the in-laws tonight since the guinea house is at their house. I don't really feel like being social, but whatever.

At least the weekend starts in an hour and 55 minutes and next week is a short week, so that's good.

On the way to work this morning, it was raining a little and cloudy and I literally saw a cloud with a silver lining. Now, I just need to find the figurative silver linings.

Oh, St. Teresa

I have a splitting headache today. No doubt the result of not sleeping the last two nights because I lay in bed just giddy and excited like I'm going to fucking Disney Land the next day. Oh, guess what? No Disney Land. So, yeah, this is mania, not happiness. I should have known right away when it started pretty much on the first day of summer. Duh. I was suspitious, but now I know for sure, for reasons I won't go into in this blog. (I really wish that I could access the other one from work...argh!)

But, among other things, I can't concentrate well enough to do a fucking journal entry to record the sale of a truck. The simplest thing in the world. I have my credit to vehichles & gain on sale, and I have a debit to accumulated depreciation but the rest of the entry is just dangling there...lost. Fogged up in my brain like the memory of a drunken night - its there, just not quite accessible right now. I'm sure the state of my brain is also the result of cramming an entire book worth of information into over the last month. But that doesn't matter, I have my exam in less than a week and I do NOT have time for this right now. I need to think clearly, I need access to everything I know about accounting, bits and pieces of it are now allowed to be swallowed up in the crazy right now. Bah.

I brought my lunch today, but I'm definately going out for lunch anyway. I just need to sit in my car in the quiet and get my shit together. I just gotta make it to lunch now. Funny how hard the "up" side can be sometimes.

"...and I liked it."

I'm so stinking happy these days I make myself sick. Husband and I are getting along really well, I'm happy with our house, I'm excited about getting the duck/guinea shelter done and moving them outside, I'm feeling positive about my exam that's coming up, I'm excited about our anniversary trip next week, I'm satisfied with my job right now. You don't understand how unusual this is. My entire life I've been the poster child for Emo kids. But right now, even with my moodiness and unusual amounts of anger (you should try being cheerful-angry sometime, its really weird), overall, I'm practically fucking giddy. This is probably known as "manic", not "happy", but I'll take what I can get. :-) Whatever this mood is, I just hope it lasts. Like, forever.

Last night when I got home I straightened up the house a little (very little) then we went and met my sister, her husband and Katie (our niece) for dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant. The service was awful, which has never been the case before, but isn't that always the way when you take someone to a place you swear is good? Then they came to our house to see the guineas and the ducks. They are all getting so big, my sister wanted to see them before they were full grown. Katie is now afraid of our dogs, just cause she hasn't seen them since she's been more aware of what's going on. Last time she was at our house (in April) she thought they were funny. Now they're scary. Hopefully she'll change her mind again. She didn't seem too impressed by the birds, probably because she doesn't really know what they are. She did watch the ducks in the pool though and seemed amused by that.

After last night though, its completely official that my BIL is a total (I mean - TOTAL) city boy. I'm pretty sure he was afraid of the guineas, probably because they look kind of mean and have pointy curved beaks. But they're just babies, and still cute! Soon they will lose the feathers on their heads and will look more like vultures. I'm sure he won't come within a mile of them then. Honestly, I think he was scared of the ducks too, which is hilarious to me. My sister ran right out there and grabbed a duck, no hesitation. I mean, they're almost still ducklings!! But he backed away and wouldn't let Katie touch it. In a way I think its funny, but in another way I'm afraid he isn't going to let her come stay with us when she's older because I get the feeling like he thinks we're irresponsible and that our house is a death trap. I could be way wrong, but that's the impression I get and even though I don't have kids or anything, I'd never let something happen to that little girl and it hurts my feelings a little bit. But then again, given our lack of kids and all the things around our house that he's uncomfortable with, I guess I can't really blame him.

Well, I'm not going to the charity thing tonight. Between the duck/guinea house, the lawn needing to be mowed, and the studying I have to do, I just don't have an entire evening that I can give up right now. So I told her I can't go, I'll just have to catch the next event. I'm sure she's not very happy about it, but right now I have a lot going on and I need more than 1 day notice when I'm going to have to surrender an entire evening to something. That's just how it is right now. Husband and I are meeting for lunch today and I'll tell him then that I'm not going, I think he'll be pretty happy.