Daily Dose

Hot, Cold, Hot, Cold

1 Comment / Daily Dose, Day to Day, Health and Wellness, Pet Peeves /

I went back to wearing two jackets and two pairs of socks in my house. I haven’t been able to bring myself to put on a second pair of pants. I just can’t go that far.

I’m not really warm with the extra layers but at least I’m not shivering so badly that I’m double typing every other letter.

Stupid weather is stupid.

Stupid hot flashes are equally stupid.

They cause me to want to strip off the layers but when I do, I find myself freezing my ass off again five minutes later. It’s a constant — put on the jackets, take off the jackets, put on the jackets, take off the jackets sort of thing.

Even more frustrating because I often take my jackets off and walk away and then have to figure out where I left them when I’m cold again five minutes later.

Today is stupid.

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20-freaking-48

2 Comments / Daily Dose, Family Funk, Personality, Toys & Games /

Elly is always playing some new game on her iPhone and I usually just ignore her. Oh sure, when she was little I installed jelly car for her (I blame Teddy for that) and let her play that on my phone but once she got her own iPhone (and iPad) I just rolled my eyes at whichever game she was currently fixated on.

But on Sunday, I got sucked into 2048 — regular version because the doge version she was playing just looked weird. I installed it on my own phone because watching her play was making me twitchy. She kept moving the tiles into the wrong damn place and while I might have let her play games on my phone, there’s no way in hell she’s gonna let me play games on hers.

So yea, I downloaded it.

And I cannot stop playing. It might be worse than Candy Crush. If I don’t get the damn 2048 tiles matched up soon, I’m going to have to remove the bloody game from my phone. It shouldn’t be that hard — it’s probably rigged.

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Re-Entry Is Hard, Y’all

1 Comment / Daily Dose, Day to Day, Work /

At some point during my little vacation, I saw my co-workers convo’ing about how quickly the day had gone. I chuckled because I often have days like that.

This is not one of those days.

I’ve been at my desk for almost six hours and am wondering why the day is dragging along so slowly. It’s not like I don’t have a ton of work to do — I definitely do, and I’m getting it all done in a timely manner. But good grief, when will this day end?

And the dogs have been royal pains in the ass. TW finally got two of them down for a nap (and yes, I know I sound like we’ve got toddlers or something) but Lola had to jump the gates so she could go into the other room and bark at squirrels which woke Buster Butt up and now I’m sure he’s gonna wonder around acting like a Butt again.

WHEN will THIS day END?

Remind me of this when I’m cursing about how quickly the time is flying later this week, ‘k?

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I Had All the Fun

1 Comment / Daily Dose, Day to Day, Work /

I had an exceptionally nice 4 day break — I worked maybe a total of an hour over four days. That’s… crazy. I worked more than that when JMP was born and I was on vacation in Hawaii. Hah. (Thank you, Sassymonkey.)

I got a lot of odds & ends done. TW and I had fun by ourselves, with the girls and with the puppies. I did some housework. I didn’t read very much and I realized yesterday that I never did put any time in my schedule to work on JMP’s stocking which really made me laugh because Sassymonkey pointed out out that my PTO to do list did not have any stocking time on it. I told her that’s an every day thing, not a PTO thing — and then it promptly fell off of my normal schedule, in favor of other things. So, I had to re-create today’s to do list and add that back in. Sheesh.

I’ve got two more PTO days coming up in a couple of weeks but I’ll be working more than an hour since Sassymonkey is traveling a bit over that weekend. I’m still very much looking forward to that break, though because it will be #readathon time!

I think April might be my favorite month, or it would be if we didn’t also pay $18K in taxes this month but let’s not think of that and ruin my nice vacation high, ok?

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Dinner and a Movie

Daily Dose, Day to Day, Movies & Television /

I took TW to Hollywood Palms for date night yesterday. It turned into date afternoon because there was lightning so we couldn’t take the dogs to the dog park as previously planned and it seemed like a better idea to head out early rather than wait and risk really bad weather.

So, we made it to Naperville (an hour darn drive) shortly before 1pm. We both ordered drinks — TW got some Kahlua mocha frappe thingy and I got a lime sorbet martini. We wandered around the lobby which was full of kids because they were having a couple of special kid events – a Rio 2 day so there were a bunch of birds there that the kids could look at and hold and they had the Easter Bunny in another corner of the lobby.

We took our drinks into the theater at around 1:15, looked at the food menu and ordered ALL OF THE FOOD, which was delivered throughout the movie. The best of all the food we ordered was the Grinch Dip. Yum.

Divergent was ok. But I kept wanting to yell, “Look! A person of color!”

We had a good time — the servers were excellent, the cocktails were good (and I NEVER drink, ever but definitely enjoyed the two martinis I had), the food was fine and I enjoyed the nice rolling computer desk chair (though I did slam my knee into a metal poll right after the movie star but that was my own fault and not the theater/chair’s fault.)

We’ll go again someday, though not often because it’s expensive, lol — and a really long drive just to have food/drinks delivered to you during a movie.

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Freezing… Figures, Right?

1 Comment / Daily Dose, Day to Day /

I woke up at 2am freezing my ass off. It took me about 30 minutes to realize the furnace was running but was blowing cold air. Because, of course it was. The #asshat construction workers across the street hit our gas line yesterday and either the guy from Nicor didn’t light the pilot or he lit it but didn’t put the cover on properly and the pilot went out. I’d guess it’s the latter, since we had a lot of problems with the pilot going out before the landlord figured out how to get the cover to stay on properly.

So, my first day of vacation and I’m freezing.

Except it’s supposed to be in the middle to high 60s today.

And, I’m having hot flashes on top of the freezing.

Which means I’m just plain uncomfortable.

This is not how I pictured the first morning of my vacation day.

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Oh How I Love Fountain Pens

Daily Dose, Day to Day, Filofax /

Remember when I wrote about The 10 Best Pens? Well I had to try the Pilot Varsity Fountain Pens after Sharon (and a few others) recommended them.

And, I love them.

They bleed through my Filofax paper, which is a damn shame, but I’m using them in my five year journal and on some of the mini to do lists I keep in my Filofaxes (but not on official Filoafax paper.)

I love all of the colors. I love the way they write. I just love them.

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Oh So Tired

4 Comments / Daily Dose, Day to Day /

Buster butt woke me up at 6am doing that “I really need to go outside” noise that he sometimes makes (usually while I’m sleeping.) I tried to ignore him, even when he got the bedroom door opened and wandered into the living room, I decided I didn’t care if he had an accident, I’d just clean it up when I woke up at a decent hour.

Except he didn’t GO. He came back and pounced me and made that “I REALLY NEED TO GO OUTSIDE NOISE” and then Lola decided maybe she needed to go too. Even when I tried to coax her up onto the bed next to me, she wasn’t interested.

So, I got up and all three dogs ran screaming and barking at the tops of their lungs to the back door. I wrenched the door open and Buster butt and Lola went outside, looked at me confusedly because it was COLD and RAINY. Skeeter went out onto the top step and refused to go any further. She just kept glowering at me because I would not let her back in until the other two finished their business (which they did.)

And then they all three ran straight back to the bedroom, climbed into bed, and went to sleep for another freaking three hours.

While I worked. And cursed. Because it was cold and dark and wet and I WAS TIRED.

12 hours later, I’m still here working and it’s still cold and dark and wet and I believe all the dogs are in MY bed again.

None of this seems very fair, does it?

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Filofax, Art Journaling and Other Goals in March

2 Comments / Daily Dose, Day to Day, Filofax /

Not. A. Good. Month. for much of anything.

I did almost nothing on my big monthly to do list, and some of the stuff I did has to be done again because that’s how it went for me in March. All messed up. So, I’ve carried my big list into April and am being very cautious about adding anything to that list so that I’m sure to get more things finished. Surely.

With four PTO days coming in April, I’m sure I can do some of these things… and still have fun and relax on my PTO days.

I have been having fun art journaling in my personal Filofax. That’s the one I use for work and I’m using the top space of my week on two pages to doodle the over-arching theme for the week. That’s been fun because it’s a good way to vent some frustration and turn that into something that makes me smile.

I did a fairly good job of working on JMP’s stocking, though I didn’t manage the ultimate goal for that project (which was to finish the entire top right corner) but I did get close. I think I’m going to see a huge difference in this one by the end of April (knock on wood.)

I also managed #17daysofgreen (my personal photo challenge for March) – that was mostly fun and not a chore. I considered extending it to a full month but decided not to press my luck. That was a smart choice since from 3/17 through the rest of the month turned out to be one trial after another (and I don’t really mean that whole jury duty thing.)

Oh, speaking of jury duty, I took my pennybridge (with the iPad case) with my to jury duty and that was cool. I learned a lot about using that Filofax just in the three hours I had to play with it and am looking forward to taking it along with me to BlogHer Food ’14 and BlogHer ’14. (Though I’ll miss my Cover Story and my Malden a LOT while I’m gone. I do love both of those Filofaxes.)

Fingers crossed for April. It’s going to be a good month, I’m sure of it.

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A Good Day Is Painful

2 Comments / Animal Issues, Daily Dose, Day to Day, Family Funk, Health and Wellness /

Ouch. My body hurts. TW’s body hurts more.

This is what happens when you’ve had a very full, very good day.

Cleaning house, ours and the prairie dogs. Taking three very hyper (though one was terrified) puppies to the dog park. The dog park that is covered in mud except along the edges where it is still covered in snow.

Bathing and drying three very hyper and tired (not to mention smelly) puppies.

All of the laundry that goes along with all of the cleaning, muddy walking, and bathing.

So tired.

But happy for the exercise, the somewhat clean house, and the sunny day.

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