New Year’s Eve
Well goodbye 2011. Hello 2012. Ugh. I have never been one of those people that really marks the passing of time. Or feels the heavy burden of it wearing away at my youth and counting down the ever decreasing time I have left on this Earth. But this year…a lot of good. Nothing too bad. Things that pretty much stayed the same. That’s what gets me thinking the most. The times when nothing happens. Just stillness. Stagnation. The word isn’t even nice sounding no matter where you put it in the sentence.
You’ll have to forgive me for this depressing post. I feel happy that I am pretty healthy (except for that acute case of FAT-itis I picked up over the last year, that my mother was kind enough to dx for me so that I can take the proper course of action—although that won’t be tonight–wink wink). And I did finally graduate and get that RN license. My life’s goal. However, I am currently 2 weeks to 4 months behind all my classmates on the job and experience getting. I totally and completely underestimated how much having a job and earning money and being a vital part of society has on my own personal self-esteem and general disposition as a woman in the world. Also it just sucks being broke. And as always, I am grateful and happy for my two gorgeous and hilarious children. My reason for living pretty much and never giving up. Except that neither one will be here to say goodbye to the old and welcome the new as both have abandoned me for better and more exciting evenings of fun and celebrations. Traitorous spawn of my loins! The boy will be off with his dad and uncles (who are the same age actually, but that’s another story, so we just call them cousins because it is easier) and he will be spending the night hanging out with other teenagers, playing xbox and acting like teenage boys do. Crazy on the Pepsi and snacks and late night shenanigans. The girl is with my sister and her children and friends. Actually, now that I think of it, is at this very moment, having a New Year’s Eve party at a place my sister found where they do a package thing for the younger crowd. Then they will go home and celebrate again by eating snacks and having “drinks” while watching TV and one of the shows that they have to ring in the new year. Hmm. It’s rather sad when your kids have more going on then you do. Oh well. Hopefully they will at least call me at midnight. Or send a text. Ooooh!! and Eewww!!…look at me turning into one of those old, sad, mom ladies, crying because their kids never call or come over! Yikes! I am definitely on the slippery slope to old age. Poopers!
I didn’t really have a plan so I guess it’s my own fault. One of these years we are leaving town and I’m spending New Year’s in Vegas. Or Hawaii. Yeah Hawaii sounds really good. Maybe the Caribbean. Someplace warm and beachy. I know I’ve said that before. Well, not this year. This year is just me and the BF. (Who I am also very grateful for and extremely lucky to have in my life. Thanks honey. Even at my lowest moments I can still say I have a boyfriend and that’s something. Love you.) He thinks I won’t be fun but he’s wrong. I’m just playing sad and despairing. Once I get some junk food and a drink in me the party will be rolling over here. For now though, we still have to go out and get some stuff for tomorrow. We are making appetizers for a family get-together for the New Year Day. It’s something fun and new we are trying to keep our extended family together and in each others lives. It’s so easy when you are little. Anyway, I hope it’s not too crazy out there. I hope the stores are still open. Then we can settle in and find something to do I am sure. My brother-in-law said this, about tonight, when I left my daughter there the other day, “If I can’t go out to the bar then I want to sit home and stuff my belly full of as much food as I can.” Wise words brother. And pretty much MY plan for the night too. So thanks for that! I’ll see you all tomorrow!
Despite the above paragraphs, life is pretty good. And I hope it’s good for you too. But if not, then I’m glad this year is over and we can start brand new in just a few hours! Even though some of these days can really break a soul, I truly believe that as long as you wait for just one more of those days, you always have another chance to do something different. Now who’s gonna argue with that?
Have a safe and Happy New Year! Don’t drink and drive please. That kind of chance is NEVER worth it. Wake up alive tomorrow so we can get this new year started! I have some goals and resolutions too I guess. The usual stuff, weight loss, job, school, etc…maybe I’ll post about it tomorrow or later on. But, as a treat to my loyal readers, and something I usually never do, I posted a snazzy self portrait of myself! Lucky! That’s me in the red ornament above taking a picture of myself. Looks just like me! Oh and I also used red to highlight the first sentences. Cheers!
Clear Blue Sunny 33 Degrees at 10 AM
I had a dream last night that it snowed. I got up and the streets and driveways and lawns were covered with half a foot of snow. In my dream I was cursing because it just figured that it would snow on the day that we actually have to drive an hour north. But thankfully, it was only a dream. I could pretty much go the whole winter without snow if this region would be so accommodating. I doubt we will get that lucky but it’s something to wish for. And because I know how much my cousins love my weather updates, I thought I would put up a pic of our sky, with a skeleton tree that I can’t stop taking pictures of. This is today. Like 10 minutes ago. I just ran outside to get the best picture I could for this site. I will go that extra mile to keep things fresh and current. My BF just asked me, “What the hell are you doing??” I said, “Just goofing around.” But we both know…Only the best for my friends and family. Enjoy your day and Merry Post-Christmas!
This is also Packer Day!
Technically this should have been posted YESTERDAY. Today is actually December 26 and Christmas is over. The Green Bay Packers played a little football game against the Chicago Bears last night and of course they won. They are a 14 and 1 team. Clinched their playoff spot and got home field advantage or whatever. I was kind of busy having Christmas with my kids last night (and watching the game) so I neglected to throw something up here. These posts are probably going to start getting real scarce in the next two weeks—not that that is really unusual for me since I can go a month without a word—but because I have to really hit the bricks for a job. I can’t be unemployed for January. Things are starting to get really stressful without two paychecks and my “win the lottery” strategy didn’t work. I still have hope for my “find a giant bag of money on the street” scheme, but I’m not holding my breath.
Anyway we saw the above Packer mobile out in a parking lot at Menard’s, so of course I took pics. I am a recent fan of the Packers. Like the last two or three years. I have to keep it kind of quiet because I do live in the Chicago area and this could get me assaulted by crazy Bear fans. I even have a jersey but I have only worn it once. It’s endless sarcastic comments, bordering on threatening, one after another when you walk around this part of the world. I like to say I am a football fan. Which I really am. I have three different team jerseys and I love every one. I just got an awesome Terrible Towel for X-mas. (That would be a Pittsburgh Steeler thing—if you want to know the hows and whys I am afraid you will have to do an independent research study on that one. And then report back to me please, because I really don’t know how that started.) I also received a GB Packer coffee mug which I am using right now while I type this. Thank you BF! I also have my tiny helmets collection and some college football stuff (The Razorback Craze–you can see it all with the link to the right if you want).
So that’s it for now. We have one more Christmas to do today. My mom and family. I’m pretty sure I already laid this out in a previous post but we can’t really get together on the actual holiday because of goofy schedules, so we are doing it today. Kind of like my last vacation day in a long string of vacation weeks and months. Haw haw. Anyway I got onions that need to be wrapped in cream cheese and the tastiest processed meat, that will also simultaneously destroy healthy heart cells while you are gaining a few more robust indestructible fat cells, and remarking, “Mmm so good” along with other appetizers that are just dying to clog up those arteries stat. Follow that up with some nice diabetes and cirrhosis, I mean dessert and drinks, and we are having a party to end the weekend right! All the way until New Years anyway when we are doing it again! Ahh the holidays! Love and MI’s. Fabulous.
Here’s more pics of the Packer truck. Notice the detail. Notice the Indiana license plate that I left slightly visible so that you can draw your own conclusions about who in the hell would do this to the vehicle they actually need to drive. It has a Pac-Man on one side and Mrs. Pac-Man on the other chomping down little Bear logo’s. Creative. Helmet on the roof. Check. Green and yellow spray paint paint job. Check. Smarmy, but not too offensive insult on the back. Check. Dingleball Packer hanging decoration? Check. That weird egg carton packing material (although it may be carpet of some sort too) laid out all over the dashboard. Check. I’m not even sure what that is for. Color? Anyway, enjoy!
This is Christmas Day!
The sky is mostly blue with white and gray clouds that look like snow. But it’s windy and warm. Warm for winter where we live anyway. 45 to 50 degrees depending on where you are. And it feels warmer in the sun. A sun that has been shining all day. It is beautiful. And no snow. I could get used to this. Hope your day is just as great!
Merry Christmas!
May all be well and safe out there and keep those lights all burning bright. Eve is gone and time has turned, most magical of nights. Darkness sets across the land as stars reveal their light. The air grows cold but we won’t know, we’re tucked in good and tight. Make your wish and quiet now, let silence reign with precious might. Spirit, joy, and all your dreams, may they come true tonight. To you and yours, Peace and Health and Happiness, now and always.
Ho! Ho! Ho! From the 12 foot tall Santa across the street
My holiday posts should be getting a whole lot cheerier now that I’ve started sampling the Christmas Egg Nog brought to you by the fine folks at the Jack Daniels corporation. It’s been made just the way I like it, less egg, more nog. In fact you might say it contains virtually no actual “eggnog” and is really just a glass full of amber colored “whiskeynog” that looks like liquid Christmas lights. We are about to go out and have a nice Christmas Eve dinner with all the other non-family celebrators. A lounge with a bar and food can be just as cheery as someone’s living room. Believe. Be back later. Cheers!
MW3 COD Black Ops X-Mas Cheer brought to you from the mall!
If your eyes did NOT just bug out, and you did NOT get a sudden nervous rush of adrenaline and excitement after reading that headline and seeing that picture, then you are obviously NOT a teenage boy. Or a young adult male. Or a grown ass man that might even have a wife and kids.
All those letters and numbers in the above headline stand for: Modern Warfare 3, Call of Duty, Black Ops. It’s a video game. Well, it’s a series of video games. I used the 3 because it sounds like more. And these games are all about MORE. More guns. Bigger guns. Throwing knives. Stabbing things. I hear the words “quick scope no scope” practically every 10 minutes from one of my children and I have no idea what that means. It usually leads to yelling and screaming about cheating and ends with real-life combat and declarations that one is quitting and never playing that damn game again with the other one. At any rate, it’s really popular too. This is a Jeep that was actually produced because of the game. Apparently this exact Jeep is IN the game. And now you can buy it! And drive around in it. And people, like me, will take its picture and show their teenage son and adult brother-in-law and they will get all sweaty and freak out and say the exact same thing despite the 20 year age difference between them: “Oh man you saw one of these???” And they will take your phone and stare at the pictures all jittery and asking questions that you really don’t know the answers to because you are a female and couldn’t give a rat’s ass about a black Jeep with a special sticker on it. Ha. I kid. But then again, I really didn’t know about this Jeep until we saw it at the Arby’s the other day. I knew as I was taking the pictures that the owner was probably watching me from inside. He was. In fact, he was sitting at a table that was facing his Jeep. I knew it was him because of his location in the restaurant, the weird way he was looking at me as he was leaving and then because I watched him physically get into the Jeep and drive away. I made up an entire life story about him while we were sitting there after he left. He looked to be in the 30 to 40-ish year old age range. In my fake life for him he worked at the Best Buy. I made him a manager so it wouldn’t be so sad and my son said if that was true, that’s probably why he gets to play video games all day. He probably needs to be a bit older, and be a manager, because I just found out they cost about 40,000 dollars. (I know right? These video game accessories are getting way out of hand.) He probably has boys, and their dads, drooling and fawning all over that thing every time he parks it somewhere. In fact, before he left, an entire van of teenagers pulled up and they all walked around it, staring and talking, as they scattered to other parts of the parking lot.
So if you find yourself out today, and I hear there are a lot of crazies madly swarming the shopping areas in these last desperate hours, keep your eyes open and your camera ready and maybe you’ll see a Black Ops Jeep too! I’m taking my sighting as a sign of a prosperous New Year for people AND the world. I mean really, if we have money to blow on a custom Jeep from a video game, and the car company feels confident enough that if they build them we will buy them, things cannot be all that bad. At the very least you will make your son very happy! Dashboard. Black Ops out.
Sunshine and clear skies!
I love a Christmas Eve that is sunny and clear! Snow is highly overrated in places where it falls on a regular basis for half the year. It still feels special and the brightness just lights everything up with that extra energy boost that can move you through a long day. The kids protest Christmas music so we are listening to the fastest, poppiest, rock and dance songs that we have. It’s actually very cheery over here. And, the TV is not on. Another small Christmas miracle.
The above picture is from a gift my mom had given me a long time ago. It’s not really very holidayish but I keep it with my Christmas stuff and bring it out every year. It was really catching all that light this morning, so I took its picture and here you go. One bright wish for the coming days.
Christmas Eve Eve
This is the kind of sky we have tonight in the Midwest. This was at sunset. I looked out the kitchen window and everything seemed pink. So when I went outside this is what I saw. Facing southwest. This is taken with the camera and the color has not been altered at all. It’s the color of all my dreams. As it is, and has been every year, for most of my life, Christmas is really more than one day. All the prep stuff is done. The kids are finally off of school. They kept them down to the wire this year. They leave with their dad tomorrow and return to me Christmas Day in the afternoon. We try to keep it as stress free as possible for them. Lots of people travel and my kids have spent many a Christmas Eve traveling on long, cold, dark and icy roads to get shuttled back and forth between his family and mine. Thanks to my sisters and brothers and their new families, compromises needed to made, and I am able to now forfeit the 24th in order to get the 25th and more. Once you give up the notion of Christmas morning it’s really quite magical and it seems like Christmas lasts, like it’s longer somehow. Christmas night, when all of the lights are on and everyone is warm and cozy and tired from the last two days, is when I finally get my real gift. Just us. Being together. Talking about everything that happened while we open our little presents to each other. Laughing so hard that sometimes I just can’t believe I brought these two clever and humorous children into this world. As the years have gone by they started focusing more on the stockings and what was inside them. It’s funny because even though Santa fills them up, I seem to spend an awful lot of time thinking about the things that go into them. They’ve become more important than any actual present. It feels so quiet and peaceful to be awake as most everyone else is getting ready to sleep and say goodnight to another Christmas. This year my family is celebrating on Monday the 26th. It works out really well with family and work schedules. No stress of other places to go or a big meal to cook. We’re doing appetizers and desserts only. Which makes it even better! Everyone is always sick and stuffed to the gills with fat Christmas dinners and we all know that appetizers and desserts are the best part of a party anyway. I get to hang out with all my sisters and brother and all the kids. It’s loud and crazy and never boring. Then on Tuesday we all get to go back to our regular lives for another year. Every year I say I would love to go to a place where they don’t celebrate Christmas at all. Preferably a place that is warm and has a beach and an ocean, because it just becomes too much and not very special at all. But secretly…no, even secretly I still wish I could go anywhere else but here. Luckily though I am easily persuaded. With a few good songs and some well placed advertising and sitcom episodes, that Christmas spirit grabs me by the heartstrings and yanks me right back in. What a sucker. As usual, I have typed way too much and I am tired. Besides it’s Christmas Eve now. I am going to try and post pictures throughout the next few days as this holiday wraps and folds around me, but you know how that can go. So, from me and mine, to you and all of yours, I wish you the very merriest of Christmases. Pay attention and find the joy wherever it may be. I believe in the good. I truly truly do because you just never know. Peace.
Doctor Rita has diagnosed my ailment!
After extensive research that included reviewing all my symptoms, observing my behavior, and a long wait in her brain surgeon’s office, she delicately broke the bad news to me that I was, what they like to call in the medical world: F. A. T.
Thanks Mom! And yes, that is a picture of a slug up above. It was crawling on our garage one balmy autumn morning as we have had quite the unusual temperate temperatures around here lately. So much so that slugs are actually slime-ing all over the buildings to remind me of my dread disease. I figured it was appropriate now that I am aware of the root of all my medical problems.
Believe it or not, it was pretty funny when she kindly said to me, “You know, all these problems, I think it’s just because, you know, you’re really starting to put on the weight…” As she trailed off while pointing to my overall fatness and touching her lower face and chin area at the same time, remarking, “You’re getting more chins than me…you should probably do something about that.” It really was hilarious. I was so surprised. Not shocked. Because she is right. I have kind of porked up these last few months despite my strict exercise program of working out once every two weeks or so. But it really wasn’t what I expected her to say. And it was so matter of fact that we just sat there, across from each other for a minute and then I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it. We were laughing like truly brain damaged people in the brain surgeon’s office over my giant fat body…I said, “Geez mom, way to break it to me gently: ‘Oh, by the way, you have more chins then a Chinese phone book, do something about that would ya…’ ” No offense intended to anyone, but that made us laugh even harder.
If you can’t count on your mom to give it to you straight who can you count on? So I weighed myself when I got home. It’s bad. And I just weighed myself today and I think it’s worse. I actually went to the gym too. Several times. So I am going with my original diagnosis which is a growing, but benign tumor that is adding weight to my body without my knowledge. Too bad the tumor is probably made of cookies and pizza and alcohol. Anyway, I got three days of exercise in last week and three days in this week, but I haven’t reduced my intake by enough to make me hungry and crabby. That’s how you know. Get ready for some crabby ass posts next week because it will NOT be pretty. That first week is going to SUCK. I hate starving myself but it seems to be the only way to jump start any kind of weight loss and to kill the taste for those delicious fatty, greasy, sugary, sweet, savory treats that are so available this time of year. I will only say that I have remained inside the 100’s weight-wise, but if I don’t stop the train now, I am going to careen off the track into the 200 pound valley of pain. It’s bad enough that my skin is stretching to its maximum limits. It’s letting loose and I can tell it wants to go all floppy. But I can’t be weighing more than my mother now so the end is near. Damn. Why does food have to taste so good??
Alright. Speaking of food, I have to go and have breakfast with my sister-in-law since it’s her birthday today. Happy Birthday Carole! Even though she doesn’t read this, but she would appreciate the shout out none the less. I will try to order healthy and prepare myself for the coming days. A lot of damage can be done when you give up and say, “What the hell.” I don’t want to have to lose any more weight than I already have on me.
So, to sum up: I am not dying of carbon monoxide poisoning. Not having strokes. Probably don’t have lupus. No MS or any one of the degenerative nerve diseases. No tumors. My mom has ruled all these serious illnesses out and has slapped me back to reality. My name is….and I am a fat ass.
I love you mom. See you in a few days.
just shy of pretty 