I would suck at living alone

Sexy Boyfriend is gone for a few days visiting his family. Since I have work stuff going on, I couldn't go and am home alone with the doggies and Simon.

I hate cooking for myself. I haven't cooked a real meal for the whole two days he's been gone. I have bagels for breakfast, so I guess that counts as a meal. For lunch I have had leftover pasta and then today I warmed up some frozen samosas. And some crackers on the side. Mmmm. Supper has been take-out - Quiznos, Subway.

Also, I am very lonely. I have called all my friends, called SB like four hundred times, and even spent a whole afternoon shopping. Although that was less about being lonely and more about needing some time to decompress - and spend my gift cards..... :P

When I am home alone, I rarely do things that are in any way productive. You are more likely to find me sitting on the sofa wondering if my cat ever wonders why he's the only one who pees in a box in the closet.

So, probably not the best time for experimenting....

Wowie wowie - what a crazy couple of weeks! I have made friends with more cats (for our business, not just random cats) in the last two weeks then in my whole entire life, I think. Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day were pretty insano - SB helped out tons, and I think there would have been some serious meltdown action if he hadn't been with me. Next year we will keep at least one staff member working through the holiday - we are just too busy for just us to take care of it. Oh, well, at least we had one year of being nice to them!

Anyway, so I haven't had a day off since......I forget, but it's been a while, and I think I will actually get a whole day off on Tuesday, so I can't wait! Today wasn't so bad because I had appointments in the morning and then at night, but had the afternoon off. I did some shopping, which was pretty relaxing, but went a bit overboard and now my feet hurt.

Last week, I started to forget to take my meds before bed. By the time I realized it, it had been almost a week. They say that when you are on "Mood Meds" that after a year of being symptom free, you usually give it a go without them, and since it has been a year since I have cried over handsoap and tampons, I thought since I was half-weaned anyway, might as well cut 'em out all together.

Bad idea. Bad, bad idea.

I haven't really been spending any time crying in my car, which is what I did most of last fall, however this morning, while administering an insulin injection to my cat friend Freddie, I started crying over a commercial about DVR recorders. Or something similar. It's the one where the dad is watching a hockey game, and the little boy comes down and says he can't get to sleep. The dad pauses his hockey game ("you can pause live TV"), and makes like he is going to get up and put the boy to bed, but then he thinks twice about it, and says, "Wanna see a great goal?" Then he rewinds the game a bit, they watch the goal, and cuddle on the couch to watch the last few minutes of the game. All the while this really great song is playing, and at the end of the commercial you hear some of the words to the song, which is a line that says "I will be the one who loves you the most." I didn't even realize I was crying until Regis and Kelly came back on.

Aside from this alleged symptom, I'm feeling a little...wired. Frazzled. Maybe manic could be a description, but I really have no idea, since I don't think I ever had manic episodes before. My head is in overdrive, I feel like I'm in fast-forward, and I always feel hungry.

So, I think I won't be skipping my meds anymore.

Fast times

How did you spend your Saturday?

Bet it wasn't by baking 30 dozen Peanut-butter Honey Crunch dog biscuits whilst watching a marathon of The Real World: Austin.

Nope, I bet none of your were lucky enough to have a Saturday that exciting.

Hitting the slopes - a little harder than I had hoped

This weekend was the first weekend of ski/snowboard season!!! We bought our season passes last week, and decided to give it a go with some night-riding last night. Now, because we haven't gotten much snow yet, the hill has been making lots but only a few trails were open. I think there were like five trails or something like that. But, two were easy, and pretty long, so we decided to get a jump on things and get me a-learnin'.

My equipment is friggin' awesome. In the past when I tried to learn I had always rented equipment, but always had problems with pinchy boots, ill-fitting stuff, wrong board sizes, etc. When I decided this would be my year to learn, I knew I should invest in my own equipment, and I am so glad that I did. I think i would have gotten more discouraged with equipment problems. Plus, my board is cute. Who doesn't want to look cute?

All in all, things went pretty well. I have semi-mastered my back edge, so instead of nice ess-curves I make kinda z's, cutting back and forth on the trail, but always facing forward or pointed down. I tried a few times to go on my front edge, but fell on my face, so decided just to do what I was good at and not force too much on the first try!

It was a pretty fun night, although with the whole not a lot of trails open thing came the problem of people off all skill levels riding the same trails. This is very annoying when you are learning, and you can hear someone whizzing down, coming towards you. It made me so nervous!!! I also had some difficulties getting off of one of the chairlifts - but the other one was no problem. I fell down WAY too much at the beginning, thus my arms are killing me. First of all, from being jammed so much into the snow, catching myself, and second from pushing myself up at such awkward angles. Today my shoulders are killing me. (My actual shoulder joints, not my back and shoulder blades). Also, my thighs are killing from always being crouched. SB said that when I start to ride on my front edge my legs will get less tired cause I'll be working all different muscles instead of the same ones.

I was so sore when we got home I had to lay on the heating pad before bed. We only did three runs in like three hours, but they were the long and windy ones, and the first one took super forever. The last one was actually pretty fast cause I didn't fall and was moving faster by that point, but my legs and arms were so sore I was ready to call it a day.

Can't wait til next weekend!

Christmas is dead

As it goes with our kind of business, Christmas is a very busy time of year. While a lot of our doggies apparently take the holidays off, the kitty cats that we sit for come out of the woodwork for the period between Dec 15 and Jan 8. Because I am a super great person and love my girls, and also don't feel like paying time and a half to them when I have to be around anyway, I will be the only one working on Christmas Day and New Year's Day. Now, New year's Day is not so bad, as per the schedule I have as of today (I have at least one addition per day these days). But Christmas. Christmas is dead.

I have 20 visits scheduled that day so far. Each visit is 30 minutes. plus travel time in between. Two of the visits are actually an hour long because it's a diabetic cat who needs to eat all of his food before getting his insulin, and he likes to take his sweet old time. If you calculate that out, it's about 15.5 hours of work. With no breaks for meals. Luckily SB has offered to help me do some of them, but I think this means I won't be cooking a big Christmas dinner.

Since I've been quite concentrated on getting the business ready for the holiday, I am not exactly in a Christmas-y mood. Last weekend SB said:
"Do you feel like getting our tree this weekend?"
"no"
"yeah, i guess it's too early."
"I don't really think I want a tree."

Silence and inner tears on his part.

Probably like ten pounds lighter

It's all gone. And I didn't even cry once.

Okay, so not all gone, but like a foot gone. You know it's serious when they put away the hairdresser scissors and break out the old-school Grade 1 teacher scissors (the metal ones that used to have a black coating, but that's wearing off so they are kinda just metal-colored with peeling black paint).

Anyway, so here is what my ponytail looked like after the fact:

So sad, so lonely, like some kind of beached sea cucumber. Admittedly, the ends are not in such great shape, but I think it will still contribute to a pretty terrific wig.

I was sweating when I arrived at the salon because I was so nervous. The girl at the front desk was super nice and told me about her friend who had done it. Then a random client was like "you're donating your hair?" and I said yes, and she was like "that is so awesome, good for you" It made me feel really great, and took my mind off of all the ways it could possibly end up sucky.

The hairdresser was really cool too - she helped me a lot figuring out what would work best rather than what would look great today and never again because I hate blowdrying my hair and am just generally hair lazy. I have seen people on TV who have this moment of breaking down when the scissors start to cut through the hair, but that didn't happen. I even liked the sound.

I can't wait for my first at-home wash. It will feel strange, having like 1/3 of the hair than I used to. Here are some photos.

In taking my own photo for this little exercise, I have discovered that I make some pretty funny faces. Also, please take note that, yes, that is indeed Degrassi the Next Generation on the TV behind me. Craig and Ashley got back together today.