Thursday, December 29, 2011

In Which I Complain

Every day I am exhausted.  I wake up (I actually like to say, I get out of bed after laying in it for 8 hrs because I'm not sure if what I did counts as sleeping).  I go to work.  I will take  my "morning nap" which is 30 min. of uncontrollable sleep.  Sometimes it's all I can do to make it into work before I fall asleep, then I just stay in my truck and take a nap.  Sometimes I sleep at work.  The other morning, I woke up, got ready for work, saw that I had 30 min before I had to leave and took a nap.

Every week night I go to bed AT 10:00.  Sometimes I play a video game/read in bed, so I would say I fall asleep at 10:40.  Then I get up between 6 and 6:30.  That's just under 8 hrs.  The other night I went to bed at 9:00 but didn't fall asleep until 11:00 ish. 

 I'm not worrying about things at night either.  My brain just refuses to relax.  I could be thinking about nothing, but my face is all scruntched up, I get these terrible headaches behind my eyes.  That pain has always been there.  It feels like I'm looking up as high as I can with my eyeballs and it hurts the eyeball moving muscles.  I have practiced my whole life to not worry before going to bed...this whole can't sleep thing...it happened a lot when I was in high school and younger (for as long as I can remember), but went away entirely in college.  I like to think that when I was in college, I only got 3-4 hrs of sleep anyways, it all sorta just washed out.  I was also very happy in college.  Happier than high school or now.

Then I have the world's most boring dreams.  Recently they have been dreams where I read the words in my mind, liek it's a book, I repeat the words to myself, then I understand but do not see what happens. I just see words in a row.  Only you can't really read in dreams, so I am spending a whole lot of time concentrating on reading and not relaxing and letting the dreams flow.  Sometimes in the morning, I know I'm dreaming, and I open my eyes and realize I've been awake the whole time, and sigh in relief that I don't have to be in the dream any more because it's so long and boring, and chances are, it's the second time I'm dreaming the same boring dream in the same night.

When I don't work, I usually wake up, say goodbye to Josh (he only works on the days I have off), and then take a nap that's actually relaxing for 5-6 hrs when he gets home.  So I sleep about 14 hrs a day/night on the weekends.  My mother told me I should have gotten my Christmas cards out when I was on vacation...what was I doing that whole time? Well, I was sleeping.

With my little energy, I force myself to work at work.  Accomplish something.  It takes all of my energy I have to motivate me to work, so when I get home, I just want to crawl into bed.  Instead I have to find reserves of energy to make me do my work at home.  How do mom's do it?

And that's why you haven't received my Christmas card yet.  I got the litter cleaned before I got those written.  But in my defense, litter stinks more than christmas cards.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Christmas Wii, Not.

I have an opinion about all the wedding ideas on pinterest, but I will keep it to myself.  It isn't pleasant, and maybe I'm wrong.

For all you future brides, I'm probably wrong.

I received an email at work a few weeks ago saying that the Wii with Mario Cart game pack I ordered was being shipped by Amazon.  Now I didn't order a Wii, so I assumed it was Josh and made an effort not to read it.  I thought maybe he used my amazon account on accident to order it.  (That's a lie, he doesn't have his own account).

Anyways, I felt bad knowing what he got me for Christmas, and I deliberated for days about telling him or not.  I read into his every word and conversation.  I finally decided, with the help of a friend, to get him some Wii games to let him know I knew, after I opened the Wii.

There was no Wii.

It was a spam email.

But it did distract me entirely from the idea that I might get a Kindle Fire, which is exactly what I did get!  And it's awesome beyond belief.  I feel like I imagine it would feel like to get a cell phone at age 16 instead of age 21, my third year of college.  It's sort of like I'm close to being the first cool person instead of the lame person who catches up with the older version of the new sweetest thing.

For example:  I get a smart phone, the Droid Eris.  Fast forward 3 months: Angry Birds comes out.  It's a hit.  I couldn't play it until this weekend when I got my Fire b/c the Droid Eris is too old and slow run Angry Birds. 

Here is a list of my favorite Actors:
1.  Bruce Willis

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Ant Update

I'm not sure I'm going to get Christmas cards out this year.  I hope anyone who doesn't get one takes it as a personal offense.  Mostly it's because I'm lazy as hell.  AND I didn't buy Christmas cards.  I went searching for my stash the other night, and it was empty.  I'm also on vacation.  Who wants to do Christmas cards on vacation?  Not this girl.

Our Scotch tape is also too big for our dispenser.  So that's difficult.

I heard from my sister that the ants are just creating an early base for the upcoming take over in the spring.  She votes kill them.  She also hates ants more than most bugs.  I don't know though, those ants may have helped a mushroom grow in the pot and that was awesome.  I do not dislike ants like she does.  It took a lot to motivate me to discover why there were ants all over my couch.  I was fine just living with them.  At least they weren't in the food.

Once, when we lived on Belmont in Nashville, my mom sent me delicious cookies in a bag.  The postman left them on the porch and hundreds of tiny ants got in the box.  Hundreds of them.  Josh brought it in and just left the box on a plastic lid of a tub in the apartment.  I had to bring the whole thing out covered in ants.  We went through each cookie and blew off all of the ants we could find and then ate the cookies.  My mom's cookies are that good.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Potted Plant Habitat and Stupid Water

Okay.

I had started a different post this morning, but forgot what interesting things I was going to say!  It was all depressing and sad, and today I don't want to be sad and unhappy, so I deleted it.

Here is what I wanted to say:

We have ants in one of my houseplant pots.  It's my favorite cactus style plant that I've been wanting forever.  My mom has one and my plan growing up was to get one when I was an adult too.  Well, last spring, I was finally adult enough to purchase one, pot it, and keep it out of reach of Ackbar.  He loves to bat the leaves off one by one.  And now there is a colony of ants in it.  It grew a mushroom too this fall!  The pot of earth did that is.  So it's my little habitat, not just a cactus plant.  The ants came out when we brought the fire wood in from the porch when they replaced the slider door.  They made a long line from the wood to the pot.  Josh says they came from the pot.  I say they moved from the log to the pot.  How else would I get a tiny colony of ants in a potted plant??  They found the candy cane decorations I put on the mantle too.  There is such a small amount of ants compared to the war we fight against them in the spring time around the rest of the apartment that I am inclined not to mind them there.  Plus, neither of us are going to eat the candy canes, and there are three other jars full of them.

(Look at that sweet rock!)


So the dilemma is do I let them live and be a part of the family or do I try to get rid of them, possibly harming my plant at the same time?  What would you do?  Ants are good for the soil.  By the way, the soil was totally indoor potting plant soil that I bought.  Sigh.  That was the hardest part, paying for dirt.  I have become one of the suckers that paid good money for my parents' manure.  I asked my parents but they would not bring soil from home for me to use.  This is probably smart on their part, it would go a long way to transporting invasive species.  The same reason why they would not bring me firewood either.

Paying for firewood and dirt is all part of why the city is not a good place for me to live.  Plus, I dont' live in a fun part of the city.  I live in a ghetto suburb without sidewalks or parks.  I have to be on constant vigilance when I drive making sure I don't hit homeless guys or teenagers walking around.  It does make things more exciting though.

Do you want to hear a long annoying story?  Yes?  Good.  The other morning, it was raining.  My theory is that when it rains, some of that storm water makes its way into the water system and is filled with Stupid.  People wake up, drink some Stupid water, and then drive to work.  The Stupid is always worse when it rains here you see.  So it's raining.  I'm driving to work.  It's one long road and once you get out of Antioch proper (past the mall) it goes down to one lane.  It's a one lane road all the way to my work, except for 100 feet inbetween two lights where it has two lanes.  It takes me anywhere from 15 to 45 min. to get to work depending on traffic, time of day, if school is in, and if someone pissed off the crossing guard/four way stop traffic director.  I've sat for 15 min trying to go less than a quarter of a mile because of the crossing guard wasn't letting my lane of traffic go.  So there is a long line of traffic on a normal day.  You just drive in a line of 30 cars or so and there is no point of passing anyone b/c all it gets you is spot 15 instead of spot 18 in a line of 30.  You are still going to go the speed of the car in spot 1 no matter what.  On this particular rainy day, the double lanes were merging into one lane.  The two cars in front of me were playing chicken and neither slowed down to let the other in.  Finally the car being the ass in the lane that was ending, slowed down and got behind the car in front of me, then got in the left turn lane and passed three cars on the left through an intersection and got back in line.  See incredibly Stupid and pointless.  Maybe if it wasn't pointless I would be slightly understanding, but it was.  I passed that guy when he finally turned left 10 min. later.  He got no where faster and put a lot of people in danger.

For a delicious cup of healthy coffee, add ovaltine.  It has vitamins and makes your coffee chocolatey. 

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Delicious Delicious Soup

Josh and I have been feeling under the weather this week and have very low stores of food in our house.

Yesterday I looked in the freezer to see what we had.  We had a bag of frozen cut up veggies that I had cut up earlier this year and froze for just this situation.  It was turnips, carrots, and peppers.  What kind of peppers?  I have no idea, but one was VERY spicy and one was not.  There was also a frozen bag of yellow that for weeks and weeks now I've been telling myself it's corn.  And then the other part of me goes, No, that can't be corn I remember eating all of the frozen corn.  I also found 4 frozen chicken legs in the freezer and a container of low sodium veggie broth in the pantry.

I poured the broth in a big pot and added 1.5 Cups of water.  I put in the legs frozen and waiting for the water to boil.  Then I cut up an entire onion and put it in with the chicken.  Once the chicken legs were cooked through, we removed them from the soup and added the rest of the frozen veggies.  The bag of "corn" turned out to be grated yellow squash and added a nice thickness to the soup without gross squashiness.  We pulled the meat from the chicken bone and skin and put it back into the soup.

Spices included:  Salt, pepper, Terregon, ground savory, basil, celery seeds, and powdered slippery elm for health.

I think you could use any spice you wanted.  These were just what was out and celery seeds are my favorite so I put them in everything really.

BAM!  Delicious chicken soup!  No need to thaw anything.  I think it still took 1.5 hrs to cook b/c it all started frozen, but we were also just taking our time to cook it...I bet you could cut it down if you were smart enough.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

In Which Technology Fights Back

What a busy time of year it is, isn't it?

I just returned from a work trip to Vegas. To answer my most commonly asked questions:
1.  I stayed in the Flamingo
2.  It was an updated room not an old one
3.  I did not leave the hotel for fear of getting lost and then sold as a sex slave
4.  I disapprove of Vegas's existance

Okay.  I got there.  Barely.  A marathon was going through the city and many of the major roads were closed and blocked off. My shuttle driver had to do some yelling in Russian to get us through and around.

My room had this amazing machine that played DVD's, CD's, ipods, and stuff with a special plug.  I had none of these things with me.  It had many large speakers hooked up to it, but I could not get the TV sound to play out of the speakers.  So that fancy gadget was worthless. 

The zipper on my luggage has reached its' last lap.  I almost thought I was going to have to cut my luggage open, but on my last try, the zipper finally worked right.

The light switch for the heat lamps in the bathroom are not located in the bathroom, they were located next to the entrance door.  That switch turned on the heat lamps and the closet light.  Not sure why.  Before I figured this out, I was taking a shower.  There was something in the shower that looked like broken plastic nobs.  They weren't pretty and fancy like the rest of the place, so I thought maybe that turns on the heat lamps, while you're already in the shower.  I was standing there, with the shower door open, waiting for the water to heat up, and I turned this lever from OFF to ON and those "broken" knobs shot water straight out at me and into the rest of the bathroom!  It was horrible and the heat lamps did NOT turn on.

There was also a tv in the mirror of my bathroom, but not a tub, so I could not lay in a bath and watch tv.  It also blocked my view of myself in the mirror, making it difficult to get ready in the morning.

Finally, the best part, once I figured it out, was the curtains opened and closed electronically by flipping a switch. 

And that was just my room.  I got lost every time I stepped out of my room.  Some elevators worked, some did not, and some would let the doors shut slooooowly and then nothing would happen.  There were flamingo's and ducks outside in a fake habitat. I  like watching them in the morning before I had to go to my meeting.  They would clean themselves by rubbing their heads on their feathers, spreading their natural oils around to help them float better.  Then they all tried to jump/fly down a little water fall.  Some ducks where less afraid than other ducks.  There was also a 30 lb albino catfish in there too.  Reinforced my determination to never eat catfish.


That was last week.

Saturday was my birthday and I turned 28, which is a really good number to be.  I never imagined myself this old before.  It seems though, that the older I get, the younger people think I am.  I was calling for room service in the hotel for food, and the lady asked me if she could speak to the adult in the room.  "Um, I am the adult."  Then we had to chat all about it, blah blah blah.