That loan I wrote about last time has cleared, and now I’m through step 2 of the Financial Fix Up.  This plan has 5 steps, the first of which is the hardest – getting the cash. The rest is just waiting time for things to clear so I can jump through the next hoop.  I should be done with all of it in about 2 more weeks.  YAY!

Also, my bonus from work came in at just the right time. Most of the bonus is earmarked for responsible grown up stuff, (bills, vets, shoes that won’t hurt my sore foot, and new glasses) but I was saving a few hundred for something fun for myself. I hadn’t quite figured out what yet…. but then the universe took me on a little ride.

I learned Thursday that Minime was selling her DSLR camera gear. She had planned a 2 week trip to visit some friends over Thanksgiving, and that had to be cancelled unless she could make up some of the money that their broken water heater took. As a side note: She’s also got a very nice point and shoot cam that she’s been using 95% of the time for the last year, so her DSLR gear has mostly been collecting dust while life goes on around her.  I felt bad about her selling her DSLR until she told me that. She hadn’t really put any effort into furthering her photography for a while, so better to sell the gear while it’s still worth something.

Backstory:  She bought her camera shortly after I bought mine. It was a step up from my camera gear, and also was the camera that I should have bought in the first place but couldn’t afford at the time. She let me mess with it a few times when we went places together, and it’s the same make as mine (Nikon) so I am somewhat familiar with it.  It also happens to do the one thing that my lesser camera didn’t do that would allow me to branch into the part of photography that I’m dying to get into.  I’ve been trying to figure out how to get that level of cam into my camera bag for a couple of years, but the price tag was just unreachable for something that wasn’t a necessity in my life. /end backstory

So after I learned that it was available and why, and that the price she was asking almost exactly equaled my available cash + the going rate for my old gear,  we talked and I made her a deal. I’d give her the cash that I had available now, and then sell my gear and give her that money whenever it came in. She agreed to that, because it allowed her to go on the trip that she had planned. She didn’t need ALL the cash up front.  So it worked out, literally perfectly, for both of us.  She drove in Friday to have lunch and make the trade. I came home with new gear.  Literally that whole plan was hatched and executed in about 24 hours.  She’s also already sold most of her other gear that I didn’t buy, and now has enough of a cushion that I won’t be too worried about her on this trip too. She leaves tomorrow. Awesomeness abounds.

Also, Thursday, as soon as minime and I worked this plan out,  I texted my photography mentor, lets call him “BL” here, to tell him that I was selling my original DSLR and asked that if he knew anyone that was looking for beginner gear to let me know. BL then texted one friend. BL texted me back not very long after and asked me to send an e-mail description of exactly what was included. I sent that e-mail, and after very little back and forth with them, two hours after I got home with minime’s gear Friday, I got an e-mail that my camera kit had sold, and the money was in my paypal account.  HOLY BOVINE!  BL’s friend that bought it wrote me a very nice e-mail that this is all very serendipitous for her, just perfect timing. I wrote her back that it felt that way for me too.  When the universe wants things to happen, it doesn’t really take it’s time, does it?

So, in the end, I upgraded my gear to exactly what I’d been wanting, for the exact amount of money that I had available which makes me happy, and in the process I got to make two other people really happy.  Minime gets to spend her holiday where she’s happy, and BL’s friend gets to start down a wonderful road of creativity.

I love happy endings.

Namaste

So yesterday, BFF and I drove 4 hours, picked up her minime who lives 10 miles from my minime 220 miles away from both of us.  We went to a stir fry place where we could all (well, me and my minime) eat our respective dietary ways, and then went back to the house for some serious sitting around, talking, playing video games, etc.  We had to leave before the actual party because of said 220 miles, but it was nice just to have a relaxed afternoon and I think both minime’s needed their respective moms for a few hours.

It was a nice end to a really busy, one hell of a rollercoaster, week.

The rollercoaster had already started the week before.  I had taken a day off to get my car fixed and help my 93 year old aunt with some tech support.  Round one of both of those didn’t work on Wednesday, so I had to repeat the whole thing Sunday. Success! on both accounts! My car has a clean windshield again and my aunt knows how to fix the thing that she keeps accidentally doing.

My aunt was one of a couple of family members that knew the financial struggle that’s been snowballing in my life. She also knew that I’d found a solution for it but the solution involved a very large, very short term loan so that I could turn a loan around and get a bigger one.  Well, like a lot of other families, my extended family is very loving, very hard working, and mostly broke.  My immediate family consists of my daughter who’s getting divorced, and one brother and he’s broke and has a teenager, so neither of them are an option. We all get by, but in this economy no one’s getting ahead.  I have precisely one family member that might have the ability to loan me said wad of cash, and my aunt told me that they were going to be in town for approximately 2 weeks before snowbirding off to their winter abode. I had been hesitating to ask them, but my aunt said it wouldn’t hurt, and might help.  She also reminded me again that my time to get to them was limited, so I went home last Wednesday thinking about it, and stayed up late writing then an e-mail with enough of the info that they’d understand but not so much as to blurt out every little detail.   Long story short, the snowball of debt that’s been getting fatter and fatter is going to be melted by about 2/3 in a week or two when I can make magic happen once their check clears.  That other 1/3 of debt can then be knocked down by several hundred dollars every month until it’s gone. I have a 5 year plan to be debt free except for my house, and I’ll start working on that after the other debts are gone. YAY!  Unbelievable relief , and Happy Dancing ensues, even to just get the first part of the debt paid. I’ve been running the rat race barely paying minimums since the banks all collectively cut everyone’s limits then raised the interest rates because everyone was close to their limits a couple of years ago. Bastards. I have learned that lesson. If I can’t pay cash, it’s not going to happen. Screw the 1%, they can’t have my money anymore.

So, Sunday, I picked up a check that was dated Tuesday. It went into the bank at 9:01 AM Tuesday because the bank opens at 9   Then they told me that since it’s over the limit for clearing in 3 days it will be 7 full business days until I can access that money.  That’s OK. I’ll just admire my bank account online until I can actually use the cash to start fixing things next Friday. YAY!

This week I also had a very old and dear friend in town. We tried to get together a couple of times, but the fates were against us. He was with a group for 3 days of training, and they had something planned every evening because when you’re from Kentucky, Chicago is All Kinds of Big City Fun.  We have those tall buildings! and Traffic! and People! My God THE FOOD!!! Chicago is definitely a foodies dream. They ate at Navy Pier one night, Greek the next, and Italian the next.  They did pretty good being tourists, but getting an hour or two to catch up with my friend was somewhat tricky. He abandoned them for a second night in the city to spend a couple of hours with me. He’s seen the city before.

He had called Tuesday to let me know that the reason he was calling a week ago and never got me, was to remind me that he told me 2 months ago that he’d be in town in November and now he was here.. D’OH!  So, he’s a foodie and his goals for food were to get Lou’s pizza, and to try an Italian Beef Sandwich.  Well, it turns out, the last evening after training that they’d have in the city, they went to Lous for pizza (WITHOUT ME! the nerve…) and since we’d planned to go there for dinner but they went straight from the training instead we had to improvise our plans. I didn’t pick him up until after 6, they were late getting back,  and he hadn’t yet tasted Italian Beef, so an hour after eating 2 full pieces of Lous deep dish, we went to Portillos to get him his Italian Beef, with sweet peppers and mozz.   He made it through 2/3rds of it before he cried uncle. Such a champ!  We talked for a bit and got caught up, and then I showed him around my neck of the woods like he did for me 2 years ago in his neck of the woods. He was back at his hotel by 8, I was home by 8:20, and that was that. Mission Accomplished. Hospitality repaid. YAY!

Also, in the middle of the week was an interesting visit with my therapist. Things are going decently there. This stuff is hard work. The amount of trauma in my life is astounding when I stop to look at all of it collectively, and that’s sort of what we do. After this past week, it’s evident that it’s working. Some of the conclusions that she’s pulling out of all of it are really giving me things to think about.  One of the main themes lately is that sitting at home all of the time is doing nothing for me to get past the serious amount of trauma and anxiety that has built up so much the past few years that it got me into therapy in the first place.  I have a nice safe little haven at home. I never want to leave. I never have to deal with anything as long as life is stopped and I’m not doing anything. I don’t even like working outside in the yard. I don’t know why that makes me so anxious, but it does.  That I’m generally nervous about leaving the house has only cropped up in recent years, and that’s what got me to therapy. Roomie sort of unknowingly caters to staying home too because he refuses to go out together. We haven’t even been to the store together in a couple of years.  So, here at home I have a safe little haven with basic reinforcement that it’s OK to stay that way, but it’s really not. I wasn’t built to be a hermit. I’ve never been exactly a social butterfly, but it’s nice to experience something besides the same four walls occasionally.  If he won’t do that with me, I’ll go with other friends, or even.. GASP… alone.  Winter is bearing down quickly, so I’m taking advantage of the freaky 60 degree November weather and doing things.  The bottom line is that I shouldn’t be afraid to go to the store, or to see a friend, or freakin mow my own lawn. That’s seriously ridiculous and I know it but it doesn’t make me less anxious about it, so I put my big girl panties on, took a deap breath, and left the house a few times this week.

My therapist is happy if i get out to do something once a week, and I sort of blew that away this week. So if you’re keeping score (like I am, and being proud of myself), that’s a trip to my aunt’s an hour away on Sunday, I also hit my brother’s on the way home from there, Tuesday was the bank, Wednesday was the therapist, Thursday was hosting my Kentucky friend for a quick second dinner (just call us Hobbits. Instead of Elevensies, it was more like Sevensies, but you get the point), Friday was shopping after work at my favorite grocery store, and Saturday was a trip to see Minime. Today I have to get to Walmart and the pet store, so there’s more Out Of The House time.  I need to do something with the leaves in front of the house too. Oh the Joy. 

I think I went a little overboard with the getting out this week, but I did pretty well with it all from an anxiety level perspective too. I haven’t had dinner with Roomie since Tuesday and I miss it when we don’t sit and talk every day, and actually most of my anxiety was about leaving him alone at home, but sometimes life is busy and this week felt really good from a theraputic perspective. He’s a big boy, he’ll get over it.  Also, after falling off the vegan bandwagon for a few days after halloween, I’m back on it and I’ve found a few new recipes to make this afternoon. I think I’ll wait another week before getting on the scale. This isn’t about weight, and that mean little machine just deflates my will every time I get on it. So no scale for at least another week. I may go to a monthly weighing, just so I can see some progress.

That’s it for now. I have to go OUT

Namaste.

I made this today. Except I used organic whole wheat flour, organic bananas, and a little milk instead of the sour cream. It was Better Than Mom’s, even without the chocolate chips.  You really don’t need the honey butter, which is good because I didn’t make it,  The bread just happened to come out of the oven right before dinner, so dinner was way too much banana bread and some of the home made chicken/veggie salad that roomie  made earlier.  Belly is happy.

In other news… I think I’ve figured out my financial mess enough to say that if the plan flies, I will be debt free in a couple of years. After the past few months of just barely making it to the bank finally breaking this month and having to borrow the electric bill money, there is light at the end of that tunnel. I really hope the plan flies. I’ll know next week. Maybe the Lunar new year will bring me a little luck

We are slowly becoming raw dieters at home. There are a few necessities that we’ve been gathering over the last couple of months, the grocery budget has been restricted by the need to not be homeless or cold, so that’s been a little slow. We have been eating better, fresher, healthier when the budget allows, and soon it will allow a little better. I have discovered a few things already.

• Organic beef gives me a stomach ache faster than regular beef. I think giving up beef won’t be difficult at all.
• You can flavor a bowl of chopped up raw veggies with nearly any dressing and it’s yummy.
• Eating this way has killed 95% of my cravings. That is kind of amazing.
• Cats don’t beg much when they don’t smell meat cooking first.

So life goes on at Casa Grania. Tomorrow I’ll be helping my best friend move. She’s got a whole new life ahead of her and I’m really proud of how she’s been handling some really tough things. She is who I haven’t been writing about, and I’ll continue that, except to highlight the good things. We haven’t been walking lately, more out of midwinter in the midwest necessity, but we have been getting together almost weekly and talking through the messier things. I’ve been helping with what guidance I can give, and offering a shoulder when there’s nothing else to do but be quiet together and know that life will get better even if right now sucks royally.  We’re a pair, the two of us. When life goes bad, it goes really bad, but the pay off happens when we hit the other end of that scale and life is good. We are both very blessed, and very focused on that, and the more you give something your full attention, the more it propagates itself. It’s working, things are getting better.

Oh.. yesterday, Minime was in town.  She took me to lunch at the mall where the Apple store is (because my power cord went bad, they replaced it) and then after lunch we ran around to a few stores and she spoiled me rotten. I got lotions (75% off!), and 2 bath bombs that I love, and a few lego keychains to complete the set, and a couple of hugs, all from her.  Awesome!  We usually get little trinkets for each other on holidays, but I’ve been seriously broke, so Christmas was lean and I haven’t even thought about any of the upcoming ones. She really had fun making me happy too. She handed me the lotions and said “Happy Valentines Day” and then the legos were for St Nicks, etc. She rocks. We have all of these seemingly silly traditions like little gifts for little holidays, and she’s carrying them on. That makes me happy too.

Today she got a new (used) car that is pretty cool. The timing’s a bit strange for a new car, but things will work out. She got a deal, and a friend bought her old car, so the situation kind of just happened and they jumped at it. Her husband is very close to a new job (as in through several phone interviews, checked his references, and now they’re flying him down there to meet him), and then it’s all good.  I’ll stop worrying when he signs on there.

OK BFF, I blogged. Now what??

In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m kind of taking a break from writing. There are some things going on around me that need some TLC and not to be written about, so I’m taking a break. Life is good at Casa Grania, no worries here. The holidays were excellent too.  Thanks for askin’.

Pretty much my only resolution this year was to try 100 new fruits.  It will probably take longer than a year to do that but that’s OK. I don’t really do resolutions, so we’ll just call it a goal and go with it.  The starfruit that I started with was pretty good. Kind of unusual and citrusy, but not a stringy mess like oranges can be. I don’t eat oranges because I can’t handle the texture. Starfruit are OK texture wise but the taste was a bit tart.  I ended up eating 2 slices of it and then throwing the rest into my morning smoothie. It worked well in there.  I think kumquats are next. I’m curious about them, and whole foods has them, so I’ll get a couple and see the next time I go there.

In the news here, Roomie and I are transitioning ourselves to a new diet. There’s a definite learning curve to this, and some equipment to get, but we both think it’s the right way to be healthy.  We are learning how to prepare and eat raw food (not meat, it’s cooked, but we’re eating much less of it).  I don’t know if we’ll go totally vegan or keep a little high quality meat around, but it’s been fun learning to do nutrition this way.  I’m investigating a couple of places around here that sell organic produce by the box for $25 a week, and also there’s a place to get grass fed meat for relatively inexpensive prices compared to the health food stores around here that carry it.  The more I study about this kind of food, the more I’m convinced that it will go a long way toward improving my health and well being.

All of it is pretty cool, and the best part is that I have a man in my life that’s leading me to be healthy and happy instead of dragging me down. That in itself blows me away, but it is also how it should be. We’re here to make each other better people, not to get sucked down into each other’s misery. Right?

In other news, my friend James finally sucked me into playing Warcraft.  It helped that Minime had a free year’s subscription that she offloaded to me. I’ve missed serious gaming almost as much as I’ve missed making music, so it’s a good way for me to re-engage for a few hours a week and get that out of my system. That’s taken the place of writing for now.  Don’t worry, I’ll have plenty to write about in a couple of months, but my priorities right now include protecting my friend, so rather than risk it, I’ll just go kill goblins and orks and stuff

Now I just have to get my piano moved upstairs…

That’s it for now

Namaste

Roomie made his traditional and yummy green bean/potato/bacon goodness in a pot.  I made the turkey breast, stuffing (eh, too mushy), baked sweet potatoes, pecan pie, cheesecake, and opened the can of cranberry stuff.  That’s it.  I set the table with the good china and silverware, we had candle light and just talked the way we always do.   Nothing remarkable, but I feel so blessed. Roomie is a positive force in my life, and we’re both, for different reasons, somewhat reclusive so I’m OK with just him and me at Thanksgiving dinner. I want it to be a nice meal, but I don’t stress about it like I used to when 15 or 20 people were coming over. We had a friend invited, but she got a few invites and one meant more to her daughter, so she went there.

Minime is allergic to turkey, Thanksgiving always included lasagna when she was around. Now she’s started her own tradition with her friends where she lives  and that’s all good. She and hewhostilldoesn’thaveablogname have a good life. I’m thankful for that too. I’ll see her tomorrow when bff and I take bff’s daughter back to school 20 minutes from Minime.  We’ll spend the evening gaming and talking, and just spending time together.

That’s what I want more than anything during the holidays. Time with my loved ones is somehow a little more important this year. Along with that, Minime is probably moving farther away soon, so a few hour drive isn’t going to be the way to see her on a whim anymore. I’m bummed, but their circumstances are changing and they’ll land on their feet, but it will probably require relocation to a more tech friendly town.

I did most of my Christmas shopping this morning, on line, in my PJs. It’s 15 degrees out, there’s no way you’d catch me waiting for a store to open at 5 am. I just have two more people to shop for, and two more gifts to make.  No big deal. The days of the overboard Christmas gifts, and something for everyone that I work with are over.  I’m on a budget for gifts this year and I should come in about $50 under that if everything goes well with those last few things. I’ve toned way down on the materialism since my ex is gone. He was the leader of that endeavor. If there was a new toy available he had to have it.  I’m happy with a bunch of hugs and a few good meals with loved ones. I’ve got enough stuff.

That being said, sometimes paying it forward works.  I gave my 92 year old aunt my last (good, Gateway when it was still Gateway) laptop when I bought this one that I’m typing on. That was cool because she’s using it to type out her memories/memoirs for her grandchildren. We’ve all been enjoying the bits of stories that she’s shared with each of us. She’s really working hard on them. It’s given her new purpose. I love that I helped do that and I had a new computer so instead of letting the old one sit there, it’s being useful.

I really thought that my new laptop would be better for me. Then, 8 months after I got it, the new one started overheating.

It’s been limping along for a couple of months now. Its poorly designed. I should have known better than to buy a Gateway now that they’re really owned by Acer but I talked myself into it because the price was right. Acer is low end and this one feels like it.  I have an i3(really good) processor that isn’t vented enough to keep the machine from overheating (really bad for it).  It’s great for typing posts, and surfing blogs and news sites, but when it gets to doing anything that uses the processor, like photo editing, watching videos, or game playing, it overheats in about 10 minutes.  I cleaned what I could get to a couple of weeks ago and that helped but it’s still shutting down in the middle of stuff and aside from that being annoying, I’m sure that it’s taking it’s toll on the computer.

So, tomorrow when I go to Minime and HWSDHABN’s, they are giving me one of their macbooks (SCORE!!!)  It’s “gently used” by my son in law, but with 4 gb ram, a new battery and I’ll put a new hard drive into it next year and IT DOESN’T RANDOMLY TURN OFF!!!!  They just got a new MacBookPro, so I get the cast off. I don’t care, it’s a Mac, and it’s way friggin better than this stupid Acer POS.

So there’s more to be thankful for. 1. My girl takes care of me. 2. a decent computer that DOESN’T RANDOMLY SHUT OFF and 3. I get to pay it forward again with the laptop that I’ll no longer be using. It’s a POS for me because most of what I do is graphics intense, but it’s perfectly fine for someone who doesn’t do all of that stuff. I have someone in mind. She’ll appreciate it. YAY!

Tell us the story of a piece of jewelry you own. Where did it come from, and what does it mean to you?

I wear three rings that each have a story. 

#1. I created a set of matching rings for minime and me last year.  Those rings are made from a 50% mix of the gold in my mom and stepdad’s wedding set and 50% new gold, and the diamond from my mom’s ring went into Minime’s ring.  With half of the gold and gems that went into them coming from those rings and a few others that I had laying around, they weren’t terribly expensive to create, and they have meaning for both of us. My stepdad helped me raise my daughter for the first 7 years of her life, and a few years after my mom died, he remarried. Before he remarried, he left his and mom’s wedding sets with me to give to Minime when she was old enough. The were pretty, but very old school, and not at all a style that was just wearable, so Minime and I talked about what to do with them. Creating these rings is the end result of that. Grandpa also left Minime a note with their wedding sets about the love and joy that she brought them while we lived with them.  I had the jeweler engrave “Love and Joy” in both of the rings and gave my daughter her ring the morning she got married.  So on her wedding day, which was coincidently my parents anniversary, I got to give her something that comes from 2 generations of love for her.  They’re cool rings too. Celtic style with white gold celtic braids around the sides of the band, and diamonds and green Tsavorite garnets set in the crown. I’m really glad that she likes it and wears hers all of the time.

#2 I wear that fist ring on the same finger with a gold band that I got in Hawaii. I bought that ring in a little open air shop in Kilua Kona the day after hiking out on Kileaua while it was erupting.  My gym shoes were leaving hot rubber foot prints on the lava, we were that close to the lava flow.  That was an intense experience.  The power of nature, the beauty of the island, the pounding surf, and the volcano made that one of the most significant weeks in my life. I came home with a simple white and yellow gold ring that has a hibiscus flower engraved on it as a remembrance of that time.

Those two rings are on my right ring finger.

#3 The third ring, that I wear on my left ring finger,  belonged to Roomie’s mother. It’s silver and torquoise and beautiful. I’ve spent 5+ years of my life with him and he gave me that ring early on as a gift for helping him with something. That ring is very special to me, it touched me when he gave it to me and he continues to touch me in so many ways.  I’ve owned a very similar ring to it before, but that was tourist junk compared to this one. The silver is much thicker and more durable, and the torquoise is deeply colored and speckled. It’s a very good quality stone compared to the touristy crap you get at the reservations these days.  The ring has his mom’s name stamped into the back of it and the words “sterling” and “navajo”.  His parents were in the state department for many years, and I’m sure that there’s a story on how she came by such a beautiful ring that was custom made for her, but that story is lost, and that ring is now just something special that her very special son passed on to me out of the kindness of his heart.

 I have a gold chain that I wear too, with a few different pendants on it, but those are a story for another day.

Namaste.

OK, here goes me being brave. Not many people get to see my photography. I took the larger version of this pic a couple of weeks ago from my cube at work. My office is 20 miles west of Chicago, 120 feet up in a high rise. Recently my view changed from industrial (on the other side of the building) to this.  This was taken on a remarkably clear day with a decent zoom lens during the reddest part of the sunset, it’s actually a much smaller part of my horizon than it appears here. 

I have a professional photographer friend named James who spends his life shooting nature scenes where he lives in the mountains. He’s one of the few people that see a lot of what I shoot, and he critiques and gives advice on how to make it better. I value his advice. He’s got real talent, I get good insight from him, and he doesn’t charge me for photography lessons .  

I showed this one to him, half complaining about all of the things that I see wrong with it. His response was “Now THAT’s a shot”.

I think I just got my first “A” in James’ unofficial Photography school.

I wasn’t going to do this this year, I haven’t felt much like writing lately, but a couple of blog friends said they would if I would so I’m back.  I’m doing it. I want to see what they have to say, so it’s only fair that I come out of hiding too.

NaBloPoMo starts Monday.  I’ve got some background work to do on my blog template today and tomorrow.   I’ve got some work to do to my laptop that may not survive the month. It’s been overheating a lot and shutting down.  I’ve got some work to do to finish a project for my cousins before I get all entrenched in writing/prepping 30 posts for 30 days. Paid jobs have to come first right now. 

I might do something different this year and post a few pictures.  My non-portrait photography is very personal to me, just as my music has always been personal to me. I’m not good at sharing it, but then art that isn’t shared isn’t art, is it?  My skills have improved over the past couple of years.  It’s time to get over the stage fright with my photography.  So you’ll see some of it, maybe.  I’ve also recently shut down a couple of other blogs that I started a while ago, so I may repost some things that I wrote there.  

Anyway, there it is. November is National Blog Posting Month. Who’s in?

• Attended an awesome family party. My aunt and uncle celebrated their 60th anniversary last week. Many cousins came in from all over the country. It was so cool to see everyone. There’s so much love in our family, it’s really uplifting when everyone is in the same place at the same time.
• BFF and I took them to lunch the sunday after the party too. They’re hilarious fun to be around. They are in their early 80′s and she’s nearly blind, and he’s got his hands full caring for her, but they have their own routine worked out and they laugh a lot. It’s inspiring.
• I also have new glasses, they’re progressive, they don’t look bad, but dang, old people need them. When did I get old? I wouldn’t mind age so much but I don’t seem to be doing it as well as my aunt and uncle.
• I’ve reinjured my knee, actually the ligament on the outside of my right knee, the knee itself is fine.  It’s getting better. My chiropracter, who is also a runner and knows knees gave me some exercises and they’re working. Unfortunately he told me to lay off the walking for a couple of weeks. Fortunately, my weekend walking partner won’t be around next weekend, so I won’t be letting her down.
• this past Sunday BFF and I drove to Iowa and back in 9 hours, then I got home, cleaned, mopped floors, and just generally wore myself into the ground.  That was two days ago. One more night of sleep and I may be back to myself again.  After three surgeries in three years, my bounce back isn’t so bounce-backy anymore. 
• BFF is still figuring out her Lupus, and I’m still figuring out how much to push her to slow down and how much to let her learn her own limits that seem to vary hour to hour.  The whole thing sucks, but we’re still us. We talk and comiserate, and laugh at the most morbid stuff, but we laugh, and love, and life goes on somehow.
• I was given a really nice, ergonomic, completely adjustable, professional, $600 office chair for free from my work place.  Next weekend’s plan is to move a few things around in the house, including the old office chair out to the curb. 
• Also next weekend, the elliptical definitely comes out of hiding. If I can’t walk that’s all I have left, and doc said it was OK, so my options are do it, or don’t and be a slug. I’m tired of being a slug. The diet will come back once I start exercising again. I’ve learned that I have to lead with the workouts or I don’t have the will to keep the food healthy.
• I’ve taken a couple of steps to cut my bills a little.  Cable’s been downgraded to no movie channels, except by doing that I got HBO and Cinemax free for three months. I get to catch up on True Blood season 3, and Boardwalk Empire.  I also finally cancelled my satelite radio. I live in a place that has a couple hundred radio stations, satelite was a nice idea, but there really aren’t less commercials, and the only benefit was not losing the channel on road trips. I can live with that.  I’m also selling the unit to a friend. That money will go toward doctor bills. I’m still paying them…
• I’ve been selective about the new TV season too. I spend my evenings talking to Roomie so my TV time is limited to an hour or two as I wind down at night.  Mostly I’ve stuck with my standards: Big Bang Theory, House, Grays, NCIS,  They didn’t disappoint. Jimmy Smits’ new show “Outlaw” is a really good concept, and I totally have a crush on him, but the writing is weak. Hopefully it gets better.  I have Tom Selleck’s new cop show on DVR, I hope it’s good. The other new one is William Shatner’s new comedy. It’s ok. I’ll give it a chance.  I mostly DVR everything and watch it when I can.  Biggest Loser has started up again, I avoided watching it for so long because I don’t need to see what fat people go through, I’m one of them. I’m sorry I missed the last few seasons. It’s pretty inspiring, and educational.
• I’m also slowly working on a project for my cousins. It involves photographs, video, and several hours of organizing, in my spare time, when I have enough brain left to work on it at the end of the day, and my laptop cooperates and doesn’t overheat and shut down. My next big purchase will be a MacBook. I’m really tired of systems that can’t handle graphics, since that’s about 75% of what I do on them.
• Next weekend is my other aunt’s 92nd birthday. She lives about an hour from me, so I’m going to try and go see her for an hour or two, and stop by the spice shop near her to stock up on a few things.
• My website template broke, and I’m getting ready to do a complete revamp on this site.
• I’m putting together a business plan for another site that has potential to be income generating and figuring out how much it will cost for the software to do it right. Roomie’s got me looking into some pretty progressive funding methods for things like that. Maybe it will all come together and work for me. It’s worth a shot.

I’m sure there’s more that I’m forgetting, but this is already the lamest post ever. Suffice it to say it’s been a little busy around Casa Grania and every time I sit down to write something here it comes out as a “dear diary, today i did this and this and this. The End” kind of post, and I mever meant for this to be a log of my daily life. It’s supposed to be where I come to write the thoughts that mean more to me than just getting through the day.  That’s my life right now though. I’m actually pretty disappointed on how focused I still am on just getting through the day. That last surgery  really did me in much more than I anticipated. It’s been three and a half months and my stamina is still in the gutter, but I’m getting there.  My belly is much less sore. My knee will heal and I’ll be able to walk again soon. I just have to be patient with my body and let it heal properly.

Fall is here, and my usual fall events have all been cancelled. I’m a little bummed about that. My company isn’t sponsoring the Ringo Gari Apple Picking this year (it’s a Japanese thing), and I don’t have the cash to do the fall color cruise on the Mississippi that I love to do.  The leaves will still be there next year though. The photo trip to the Adorandacks  that I dreamed up in the spring is not going to happen this year either. Hopefully by next year I’ll have better equipment to do that trip with, so I don’t mind delaying that one.

In an attempt to find something different and new to do,  I looked around online last week. I found a few new local places to check out and take pics while the leaves are changing that don’t involve too much walking.  Maybe I can coax Roomie out for an hour or two to check out a Japanese garden that I found that is fairly near home. We’ll see.  I’d enjoy the time out with him, we haven’t gone anywhere in a while.   That would be nice to do before we become hermits for the winter. 

Namaste

Yesterday I had my annual optometrist visit.  This is the second time I’ve seen this guy and he continues to impress me in a big way.  My last optometrist was horrible. After going back twice to get a prescription fixed, I asked around among my friends last year to see if I could find a better doc.  Dr B is an old fashioned eye doc in modern day dress. He’s only a few years older than me, but he does his job consciously and consciensciously. He loves what he does, and it shows.  I turned down the retina photograph this year because I’m really broke and my insurance doesn’t cover it.  Both he and his aide that did the initial testing on me told me that if he felt that it was necessary, they often comp the retinal image.  He did the vision exam and then looked into my eyes the old fashioned way, with a light and his eyes. No machines, just real doctorin’.  Then, since I was the last patient, he came out and helped me find glasses, and while I was working with the tech, he put back all of the frames that we had chosen and then eliminated.  When I asked about my sunglasses that I got somewhere else, he asked me to go get them, and he fixed them for me.  Apparently my astigmatism is bad enough that I can’t wear frames that wrap around my face. The RayBans that I have are definitely curved. He took them in back, checked the prescription, and uncurved them a little bit, They are so much better now. No Charge.  I walked out of there only paying my $10 copay and with them ordering the two frames that we narrowed down to in a different size that will fit me better.  They spent a good hour+ with me, and addressed every concern that I had.  I’ll go back in a few days when the frames that they ordered come in and pick one to make into my new glasses.

Dr B is also an activist. The whole conversation between exam questions was about who pays for terrorist weapons (many are Made in the USA) and how he does house calls to shut ins that would benefit tremendously if a little of that money that’s going to further warfare went to further welfare instead.  He’s passionate, involved, and as a bonus, really good at his job.  It’s sad how rarely I find someone like him. It gave me such a charge to spend time with someone like that.  He’s one of the good guys.

Tomorrow my BFF will hopefully get a diagnosis that she can work with to regain her health.  I know she reads this.  I’ll be thinking about you all day, please call me when you have any answers. xo

This coming weekend is a significant party. My sort of Aunt and Uncle (we’re only related by marriage) are celebrating their 60th anniversary.  This is the couple that I’ve spent every Christmas Day with since I was a teenager or earlier.  They are truly special people. Minime and her man are coming in. Lots of cousins are descending from the four corners of the planet. Everyone’s chipping in their bit of food, and there will be laughter and dancing and good times.  The happy couple are in their early 80′s now,  slowing down, but nothing makes them happier than to be surrounded by loved ones, whatever the occasion.  I have nothing but fondness and respect for them. It will be fun to see everyone too.

I also re-started my healthy living plan again.  Last weekend I walked a couple of miles, and I’ve been eating better. There’s still a ways to go before I’m back to where I was, but until I get paid, I have to eat the food that I have.  I make decent choices most of the time. It will get better as time goes on.  I don’t think I’ll lose another 50 pounds before Christmas, but maybe 25 or 30 is possible.  I’ll just take that a day at a time and do my best with the exercising and decision making.

That’s all anyone can do right?

Namaste