Little Duplex on the Prairie

I Have Returned...

2011-12-18T23:54:00.000-07:00

Well, here I am again. So sorry to have left you for so long, but I just haven't been able to get back into the blog swing of things again. I think that I am ready to get back to it now though; I have missed it so and have found myself narrating blogs in my head. I figured I should start getting them in writing again.

Not much has changed, yet everything has changed. Does that make sense? I left Montana 15 months ago; it seems like yesterday. It seems like forever ago. I will always miss Montana, but I don't regret coming back to my family out here.

Here is a basic rundown of the haps:

Looking for work
Feeding seven (7) animals every day, twice a day. Five kitties (Ethel, Barnes, Teddy, Muffin, and Gus-Gus), and two dogs (Luka and Bruiser). Yes, we have a cat named after a mouse. We don't think he gets the irony.
Looking for work
Looking for work
Did mention walking Bruiser (Luka takes care of herself) and scooping five (5) kitty litter boxes everyday? Well, consider it mentioned.
Still looking for work.
Visiting Mom.
Mom has surgery to repair a second hernia in her abdomen in November.
I babysat my 4-year-old great-niece for 10 days last December. I went from living like a hermit for 10 years to babysitting a precocious, yet precious, and did I mention very active 4-year-old. It was exhausting. It was awesome.
STILL looking for work
Had a kidney stone in June. So far it was the easiest one I've had, but it still left me with a $1500 emergency room bill. And that was after the $500 discount they gave me for not having any medical insurance. Woot!
Did have a temp job for a couple of weeks doing data entry from 4pm to 3am down in Portland. It paid pretty well but I just could not deal with the hours and the working conditions. Plus, I had to stay at Mom's from Tuesday after work until Saturday Noon; then I could run home here to the house for Saturday evening til Monday Noon when I had to drive back down to start again. It was literally killing me, and the family staged an intervention to get me to quit. I was grateful, but back to being broke. Sigh...
Back to looking for work
Mom had surgery in August to remove all the mesh in her abdomen that was put in from her two hernia surgeries. She never really recovered from the one in November; her incision just would not heal and it kept abscessing. She was extremely uncomfortable and had zero quality of life. She recovered quickly from this surgery and is doing just great now. She is completely back to her old self again.
Still looking for BLOODY WORK.
In September, the reason why I moved back here raised it's head. My brother-in-law, Les, was on the road in the middle of TX when he became ill. He has been having a lot of trouble with his urinary system over the last year - lots of bladder infections, etc. We convinced him to go to the ER out there at the nearest hospital. To make the long story short, they found he has bladder cancer. He was in the right place at the right time, as the hospital he wound up at actually is the leading expert on bladder cancer in that area. They went in and debulked the tumor and my sister drove out and brought him home. He has since had two more surgeries up at the Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) in Portland, and tomorrow goes back in to have his bladder and prostate removed. His prognosis is really good considering he has a very aggressive type of cancer; he will have to pee into a bag for the rest of his life, but the important thing is that he will have a rest of his life. He has not been working since he got ill in September, and we are doing the best we can getting by on Sis's part-time (yet well paying) job and Mom's VISA card.
The animal count went UP one in October when we adopted a handi-pawed (awwww) Doxie named Monty. He was unceremoniously dumped at a vet in Idaho when his owners allowed him to severely injure his back. When they discovered the extent of his injuries, they discovered they didn't want him back. Sis found him online and he now has a very happy home here with us. I started a new blog about him, and you can read about him here.
Last month I found a great staffing service out in Longview, WA and signed up with them. I got a job two weeks ago with Longview Fibre and have an 85 mile round trip commute that uses a full quarter tank of gas every day. But I like the people I work with and hope to get hired on there as a LF employee. Oh please, oh please, oh PLEASE! I am gone from 6:30am to 6:30pm and right now I. Am. Tired. All. The. Time. But, I will get used to it, and I have to climb a flight of stairs at least four times a day, so I am hoping to have smaller hips at some point as well.

Well, that is pretty much the last 15 months in a nutshell. I promise to get better about the blogging, but it might be a little spotty right now. I will also, at some point, get around to updating the stuff on the side of my blog (rubbish about the books I am reading and the movies I've seen, etc.). Thanks to my followers that haven't given up on me!

TTFN.

PS - I am thinking of renaming the blog since I no longer live on the prairie nor live in a duplex. Any ideas? Or should I just leave it the same?

I'm Back! Intros please...

2010-11-13T21:14:00.004-07:00

Sorry it has taken me so long to get back on here, but rest assured that I have arrived safe and sound in Onalaska, Washington. It was interesting getting the move together; the moving company was AWESOME - they delivered all my crap intact and on time. The moving truck arrived on Sept. 17th bright and early. There were only two guys, and I thought it would take them forever to get the truck loaded with just two of them, but they were fab-u-lous and had everything loaded and ready to go by 1:30pm. I spent the night at a hotel and then went back the next morning to clean and pack up my truck. Unfortunately, I managed to leave one box behind in the garage; it had stuff that was near and dear to me in it (including my ergonomic keyboard that you can't find anymore) like my tax returns for the last several years, and a really nice collage picture frame with pictures of all my great-nieces and great-nephews in it. I realized that I had left it behind sometime around Bozeman; too far to go back and get it, and no bars on the cell phone to call the landlord. Oh well, thought I; I will call him when I get to Sissy's. Surely he will call me if he has any questions about what to do with it; after all, he is an intelligent human being and I left him my new address and my cell phone number on the kitchen counter with the AC remote and the garage door opener.

In my glee of starting my new chapter in life, I forgot that my landlord is a twat and a knob-end. I reached him a few days later and he told me that he had "gotten rid of" the box of stuff. I cried for two days. He doesn't know it, but his ass has a future appointment with my sister's foot.

Anyhoosier, my trip went smoothly. Until...

As I was going over the pass between Montana and Idaho, I felt what I thought was a rock being kicked up by my Rodeo's front passenger side tire. No big deal, but it sounded like an awfully soft rock. Hmm. Fast forward to climbing the hill on I-90 going through Couer d'Alene, ID. Another soft sounding rock being kicked up. Now it feels like there is a bit of a wobble in that tire. Hmmm...am I losing lug nuts? Since I was *this close* to peeing my pants anyway, I stopped at a rest area just outside of Post Falls. Went pee, looked at lug nuts. Nope - all accounted for. Hmmmmmm... Continued on to Spokane, and now the wobble-type-feeling is alarming. I can barely keep the steering wheel in my hands. Time to get gas, will inspect tire at gas station. I pulled up to the pump, looked at the tire, and nearly pooped my pants. There was a large (5" at least) section of the tire MISSING. Metal wires were sticking out. It's a miracle I didn't blow the tire! I ran into the gas station asking if there was a full service station or a tire store nearby. There was; I gingerly drove as fast as possible to it, pulled into the parking lot just in time to see the guy locking the door. PANIC!! I begged him to change my tire, and he was more than happy to put my spare on for me, check my other tires, and put a little air in them - free of charge. Bless his little pea pickin' heart!!

The rest of the trip was relatively uneventful, but I didn't get to Sissy's until almost 1am. I. Was. TIRED. But happy. And tired.

Did I mention that I was tired? Yes. OK, just checking.

So now I would like to introduce you to some of my new house mates. Please to enjoy.

This is Bruiser, or as I call him: Bruiser Buckman, Uber Pooper with the Wild Willy. You may remember from one of my last posts that Bruiser had seriously injured his spine. The vet said that he would never stand or walk again, and Sissy was heartbroken - to say the least. Well, the Flying Black Weenie Dog of Death was not to be dismissed so easily as that. Not only does he indeed stand, but he walks and runs too! Well, his front legs work normally, but he puts his back legs together and hops with them. He can out run me, so... Sissy bought him a little stroller (think baby buggy as opposed to an umbrella stroller) so that we can wheel him around the house with us when he wants to be with us, but we don't want him ON us. We take him into stores with us (the top zips shut with a mesh so that he can see out, but people are not able to touch him) and we take him to the park in it, etc. Even though he wants to run around and jump up and down, his spine is still extremely fragile and still healing, so we try really hard to not let him get too active. It's amazing how quickly I fell in love with him, and he with me. Sissy is still first in his heart, but I come in a real close second, and that feels wonderful.

Sissy, Bruiser and I took a drive one day out to the Washington coast - just long enough to say, "Look! There's the water!", then we turned around and drove back home (pics of that day will follow). We drove through the local Dairy Queen, and Bruiser got his own cone. HE IS SO CUTE!! (shut up)

Bruiser tells those pesky seagulls to poop on the car at their own risk boy howdy.

This beautiful smiling gal is Luka.

We aren't sure what kind of dog she is; it appears that she has Blue Heeler, Pit Bull, and perhaps Akita in her. She is super duper smart and very protective; she has chased bears and god knows what else off the property. She just appeared at Sissy's house one day and never left. She is Awesome.

This lovely lady is the youngest and newest member of the family, Miss Muffin.

She is about a year old and we think that she is a calico/Rag Doll mix. Although she appears dainty, her tag line is: Hi! I'm Miss Muffin. Let's wrastle!

This is Miss Muffin's nemesis, Teddy.

He is a pure bred Rag Doll, and he thinks that he is a dog. Seriously. I am so not kidding. After dinner, when the dogs get their little dessert treat, we have to give him one too. He does not purr like a normal cat either. I actually got him to purr the other day, and Sissy was amazed as she had never heard him do it. You can't tell from this picture, but he has the most gorgeous china blue eyes. Oh, yes, and he is a total Pill.

This is the old man of the family, Barnes.

He is at least 20 years old and is beloved by all the cats - even the dogs love him! He has a super industrial sized purr - you can actually hear him from across the room.

This is Gus Gus (yes, after the mouse in Cinderella - my brother-in-law named him).

We actually think he is gay (not that there is anything wrong with that) because he acts like a total queen. Barnes is the only animal in the family that will tolerate his presence (except for Ethel), but the other cats hate him and Bruiser would love to bite his big fat butt if he could ever get the chance. We don't really understand this, he seems nice enough.

Ethel makes up the complete animal family here, but she has some serious heath issues and lives solely in my sister's bedroom and is very, very shy. She is a great round black kitty with huge yellow eyes; she suffers from chronic (as in daily) kidney stones and is not usually in the best of tempers. I will try to get a decent picture of her to post soon.

So, that's all of us; I'll share more later. Right now, my hands are tired since I cannot type on my fabulous ergonomic keyboard anymore because some TWAT that shall remain nameless threw it out...but I don't want to talk about that. I will fill you in later on the job hunt, etc.

Thanks for all the nice emails - thanks for not giving up on me!

TTFN.

I Made It!! Whew!!

2010-09-26T16:46:00.000-06:00

Hi all - just wanted to throw a quick post at you to let you know that I finally made it to my new home in Washington. I'll be putting up a proper post in a few days, complete with a few pictures, but for now I just wanted to let you know that I'm still here (but HERE and not THERE). Once I get used to the miracle of television again - you know, since I haven't been able to watch any for about two months - I'll be able to tear myself away from the remote and get back to writing.

TTFN!

Stop Haunting My Dreams

2010-08-12T15:54:00.000-06:00

I dreamed about him last night. I hate it when I do. I don’t do it very often, and when it happens it takes me by surprise. It’s usually just some small, passing part of my dream and very rarely is he the main focus. Last night I dreamt I was limping along a mountain path and suddenly he was beside me, his arm wrapped around me and was almost lifting me off the ground (I am always the “thin me of my youth” in my dreams so the lifting was definitely doable for him). I kept telling him that I was OK, that he didn’t need to squeeze me that tight; he was afraid of someone seeing him holding me like that but he said that he just didn’t want to let go. It was a few dream minutes of that; then it was over.

When I awoke this morning I could still feel his arms around me, holding me tight, making me feel safe. Then I realized it was just the blanket. It made me cry; it’s making me cry right now. I’m not crying for the loss of him, specifically; it’s the loss of that feeling – that feeling of safe, of love, of affection, of protection. I always felt those things in his arms, and that is what I miss now. It makes me nuts because it always lingers with me throughout the day, sneaking up on me when I least expect it and it makes my eyes smart with tears. Pisses me off. Especially because I am not very attractive when I cry; my face gets blotchy, my nose turns bright red, and my eyes turn red, swell, and look small and beady. I look like a piglet that’s been rooting in the onion bin. Yuck. Sigh. Sniff.

He seems to turn up in my dreams most often when I am stressed or feeling anxious. This move has got me flying in the dangerous red zone of an almost constant panic attack. I am at about Defcon 2 at this stage; not a full blown melt down, but my ears are ringing all the time and I can’t seem to catch my breath. Mom is coming on the 21st (that is probably part of the problem; like 7/8th’s of it I’d say) to help me get packed up. I hope I won’t suffocate her in her sleep before she flies back on the 28th, god love her. I don’t know what I would do without her.

I have decided to go with a moving company instead of the U-Haul route; it’s just going to be so much simpler on everyone. I have one estimate from Allied ($3900) and will be getting one from Mayflower on Monday. It will take almost all of my money, but I think it will be worth it in the long run. The guy from Allied that came to my hideously unkempt house on Tuesday was awesome. He gave me all kinds of tips on the cheapest places to get boxes, getting boxes out of the dumpster from behind the bike shop on Broadwater and 19th because they are awesome for packing my framed art pictures in, etc. I wanted to adopt him.

My company has just this week started to interview potential replacements for me; we received over 150 resumes in response to the job posting. I couldn’t believe it. We started turning some of the work over to our customer service departments; the sales reps are having a really hard time letting them take over. I keep trying to convince them that if they don’t start now, it will be so much harder for everyone after I leave. It’s a learning curve for everyone.

Well, that is it for now. I’ll keep you informed and let you know if I survive my Mom’s visit.

TTFN.

2010-07-30T16:28:00.000-06:00

Wow – I had not realized how long it has been since I last posted. Sorry about that! My life is in kind of a holding pattern right now, and unfortunately that makes everything lock up; my brain, my body – everything.

The move is still on; mom is coming the week of 8/23 to help me pack. It’s kind of sad and humiliating when you are 43 and you need your 74 year old mother to fly out and help you pack, but let me tell ya: she is a packing machine. That woman can have me and my 2-bedroom duplex packed and move ready in about three days. Seriously. I will want to suffocate her in her sleep by the time she leaves, but it will be totally worth it. And this way she knows that all of her china and crystal stemware that she gave to me will be properly packed and she won’t have to worry about it. Because, trust me; she will.

Bruiser, my sister’s Flying Cocktail Weenie Dog of Death, has severely injured his back. He accidentally fell off of my mom’s bed when they were visiting earlier this week, then Wednesday he injured himself pretty badly when jumping on or off the couch. Sis took him to the vet immediately and they didn’t think he had done any real damage; they gave him some pain meds and Sis took him home. She tried to keep him moving around a little so that he didn’t get stiff but kept him on the floor and didn’t let him up onto the furniture. Yesterday he was curled up in his little bed on the floor next to her computer; she realized he’d been in there for several hours and decided to wake him up so that he didn’t get stiff and sore. When he crawled out of the bed, his little body was curled up almost like a U, with his hind end trying to be next to his head, and he was dragging his back feet. She called the vet immediately and ran down to the office to get a powerful muscle relaxant for him. Later she took him back to the vet and they took some x-rays; he has damaged three vertebrae in his spine. They said he has a “good 50/50 chance” of recovery, but Sis is just devastated. She has been crying for two days straight; the vet said that this is much harder on her than it is on Bruiser! She is already thinking of getting him a little doggie wheelchair/cart thingy, and the vet said that surgery could help him but it would be $3-5k and she would have to save up for it. I am trying to be encouraging and trying to help her see that this could just be temporary and Bruiser could be in good shape again once all the swelling in his spine goes down. When I was a freshman in high school, our weenie dog Alexander actually broke his back jumping off the back porch (do you see the pattern here?). I was in the middle of band class, out in the middle of the football field in the middle of a formation when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and it was my mother in hysterics. We had to drive about an hour into the Bay Area to get to the specialist vet that would save our Alexander from death and being permanently paralyzed. Mom spared no expense on his surgery and treatment, and he eventually completely recovered. So there is hope for our little Flying Cocktail Weenie Dog of Death, but since he won’t be flying anymore, I guess I will have to come up with another nickname for him. Poor Bruiser; poor Sissy!!

Speaking of close medical calls, I still cannot believe what happened to the kids’ cousin. His sister sent out an email to the family on Tuesday to give us the whole story:

My younger brother Justin (29 yrs old), went into the hospital very suddenly last week, and we almost lost him. He was very fortunate to have an amazing medical team, wife and his young age on his side! It started a couple of weeks ago when he popped his neck (like I do 10 times a day w/o even a thought!) and when he did, he felt instantly sick at his stomach and dizzy. He had a lot of neck pain, and a terrible headache for the next 2 weeks. The beginning of last week, he started having headaches so severe that he would immediately vomit if he stood up, turned his head, or any movement at all. Then on Wednesday night, he was feeling really sick, and he stood up to go to the other room and he just collapsed to the floor. His wife helped him up and to the restroom, then got him into bed to help him feel better. The next morning, he was still really sick but went to work anyway. He got so ill while there that he waved down a coworker who could see something was very wrong, and they took him to the urgent care nearby. When the urgent care Dr read his chart and why he was there, and then walked in the room to see him, he knew something was wrong, and told him it was "out of his league" and he needed to go to the hospital asap. They taped his head to a stretcher and called for the ambulance. They were fast and awesome, got him transported, checked in to the ER and had dr's working on him right away. After 2 cat scans and most of a day of testing while trying to get him comfortable, they discovered he had torn one of his main arteries in his neck. They admitted him to the hospital and started him on blood thinners and pain medicine right away. That night they moved him up to the neuroscience unit and had a watch on him overnight until the specialist could come the next day. When the specialist arrived, he ordered an MRI to confirm his suspicions of strokes, and he was right. There were 2 strokes, one smaller one, that occurred the night he popped his neck, and the second one was much larger and occurred the night he collapsed. They said if he hadn't come into the hospital when he did it would have been almost certainly deadly.

After 5 days at the hospital, a ton of pain medication (not only for the torn artery but also for the neck pain he had to start with and the injuries he got to his neck when he collapsed as well) and pill form + shot injections of blood thinners, tons of tests and dr visits and daily physical therapy, they let him go home last night. The main reason being, there is nothing they can do for him there that he can't do at home. He will still need to attend the physical therapy regularly to relearn his balance and regain his ability to walk ok. He also has to have blood tests every 3 days to monitor the blood thinners in his system, regular dr appts to monitor everything else, and he will need to use his cane and wear his neck brace for a while until they say otherwise. He was soooo fortunate. The doc told us that most people who have the kind of stroke he had come out of it being paralyzed from the eyes down! He has no paralyzation or loss of speech at all so far. The biggest impact has been on his balance, which although sounds somewhat minor... causes him to not be able to stand well, walk well, and also causes constant dizziness and nausea. But, they said the first 18 months is when you relearn your abilities the best so he will be working hard to do so with therapy. Fortunately he is young, and he had a wise dr who recognized something was seriously wrong immediately, and those combined with the fantastic unit in the hospital at Salmon Creek Legacy in WA, he's doing much better. He's off work for now until further notice, and he's mostly in bed from all the meds and from the dizziness. But he's with us! And he's home now! And he will be able to recover over time. The torn artery will heal itself, and in the meantime they will keep watch on the 2 blood clots they found and make sure his blood thinners continue to work. It will be quite a long journey, but he should have a full recovery.

So, thanks for reading my novel! I decided it was much easier to send one long email to everyone than to type it out a whole bunch of times individually. I am doing much better now that I know he's not in as much of a danger zone as he was before. We really thought we were going to lose him last week by the way the dr's were talking to us. One dr said that every morning when he woke up and got ready to start his shift, he wondered if Justin would still be there. That one scared us! My family is soooo happy and grateful that he's ok, and that he's back home with his wife and his kids will be home shortly. A couple of days with their grandparents will entertain them while dad gets settled in at home. His wife, Star, is amazing. She had to be trained by the nurses to give him the shots a few times a day in his stomach for the blood thinners, and she never left his side thru the whole hospital stay. She's a great little care taker and she's home caring for him until he goes back to work or as long as they can both be home.

Unbelievable! So, so, very, very lucky. He has been doing well while he’s been home, and we are so very grateful and glad.

I am currently without cable at home, so that means no TV and no Internet access. The no TV is weird but I’m getting used to it; hopefully I will use the down time that I usually spent on the couch watching TV and eating crap to do something constructive instead – like pack or clean the house before Mom arrives. But so far I have just been reading books, going to bed early, and watching my DVD collection. Currently I am hooked on my BBC version of The Office.

My last day at work will be 8/31, so I won’t be able to post anything to my blogs after that until I get to my new home in Washington, but I’ll try to keep you up to date until then.

TTFN.

If Procrastination Were A Fortune 500 Company, I’d be The CEO

2010-07-07T14:04:00.001-06:00

Well, I am still here in Billings. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. My boss came to me and asked me if I would consider helping them out by staying through the end of August, and I agreed. So, instead of being knee deep in the middle of packing, cleaning, and panicking, I’m just sitting and panicking. I still haven’t had a single garage sale.

O ye great moving gods, I pray that you give me the strength to get up off of my fat ass and get my collective shit together. Please grant me wisdom while my sorting my stuff that has got to go into the garage sale; help me to reason that if I don’t sell it, I have to pack it, and if I pack it I have to transport it. Please give me the gift of restraint while my mother is here helping me; she is 74 and shouldn’t have to do this crap for me anymore but she is, and please help me to be grateful for her “suggestions” and “instructions” because otherwise one of us will be dead and the other will be in jail and at this point I don’t know who will be which. Amen.

Sis was understandably disappointed in having to wait a couple more months – so was I – but she has been a good sport about it. Frankly, we both needed just a little more time to get stuff done. We have decided on a game plan if my company asks me to extend my time again; this time it’s all about me. I have worked for this company for 15 years with very little to show for it (other than the panicked look on faces when I announce I will be gone on vacation, and the agonized screams of “You never get to go on vacation again!” when I return); I haven’t had a raise in years and I am the company pack mule for getting the work done. So, if they want me to stay past August 31st they will have to pay for a moving company to move me. No more U-Haul and my family having to come all the way out here to help. After September, the weather starts to get unpredictable and with five mountain passes to go over I am not going to ask my family to help me with that. Also, I am going to ask the company to lay me off. This way, I can collect my 15 years worth of severance pay since they are not going to keep my job position the way it is after I leave, and any arrangements for employment I may have made will go right out the window. If they don’t want to do these things, then they are SOL after 8/31. And that’s the truth, pfffft.

Other than that, things are still pretty much the same, dang it. I was really proud of myself for mowing the front yard the other day; I didn’t think I would physically survive it but I did and there was much patting of my back, clapping of hands and telling myself, “YOU DID IT!! YAY YOU!”

The sun went behind the one little grey cloud that was in the sky, and about 16 drops of rain fell. The sun came out again and all was lovely.

Approximately 9.2537 minutes later, the grass grew back to the same height it was before I mowed it.

Stupid lawn.

TTFN.

Oh, Sweet Life, Where the Smell Are Ya?

2010-06-25T15:46:00.000-06:00

Two lucky people from Helena hit the Power Ball the other day. They have to split the total three ways (with someone from somewhere else) and will walk away with about $24 million each.

I often fantasize about what I would do if I was independently wealthy. Besides paying my mother back all the money I ever borrowed from her x20 and paying off all of her bills, and paying off my sister’s mortgage and all of her bills, and setting up funds for all of the kids, what would I do with the money?

Well, here is my fantasy:

I would find myself a beautiful chunk of land somewhere, and by “chunk” I mean as many square miles as I could afford to have custom fenced off from the rest of the world. I would like it to be somewhere in the country, with rolling hills and a gorgeous, unobstructed view of the sunset, preferably with a mountain or two in it. I would build an awesome yet humble mansion, complete with swimming pool, full wet bar and movie room – a home that my whole family can enjoy and hopefully come to visit and stay for a weekend or so. It would be a mix of Frank Lloyd Wright and Lewis and Clark; a large, log-cabin design with windows everywhere. It would be multi-level, with one guest bedroom on the main floor that would be handicap accessible but in the coolest and most modern of ways. I would have a kitchen that Gordon Ramsey would kiss my toes to get his hands on (the eff word gushing forth from his mouth – you know, as he does, yet under his breath so as not to offend my mother) and would learn to cook fabulous meals and gourmet goodies that I would whip up for all our family parties. There would be no cabinets on the walls – I am short and can usually only reach the bottom shelf of those stupid things anyway – and instead would have a kitchen with large windows, flooding the room with light, with a large island with all the storage I would need (in addition to a lovely walk-in pantry).

I would have a fire pit built outside so that we could congregate around it on starry nights and make s’mores and grill hot dogs and drink beer and talk.

I would have one spot on the side of the house, or maybe on the side of the barn (see below) where I could project movies. I would invite my friends, family, and neighbors over at least once a month (weather permitting, maybe more often in the summer?) and show the movies while everyone sat on blankets or lawn chairs and brought picnic dinners. I would make fabulous appetizers and desserts to share.

To the grounds I would add petite, two room log cabins; each with a hot tub, fireplace, WIFI, small kitchenette, and a large fluffy bed that you need a step ladder to get into and a fire department ladder to get out of. No television. They would be discreetly dotted around the property but close enough to the main house to walk over to watch a movie or enjoy a family style dinner. I love the idea of giving my family the choice to stay in a guest room in the main house or in one of the cabins for a little get-a-way. I would rent out the cabins whenever I wanted to, if I ever wanted to.

I would have a large pond installed, complete with a natural looking waterfall and koi fish; I would have a gazebo somewhere nearby that was big enough to hold weddings in, and also a rose-covered archway somewhere else for weddings as well. I would have a large barn constructed solely for the use of wedding receptions and local school dances, etc. I would do packages for the weddings for those who could not afford the wedding of their dreams due to limited income or personal circumstances; I would work with local florists, caterers, and musicians and hire them to make dreams come true for those that thought their dreams would never happen. They would be able to have their wedding and reception on site, and then stay in the cabin of their choice for the wedding night. I would invite local high schools to have their proms there, and would see to it that they were alcohol free (on my property, anyway), sophisticated yet fun, and safe.

I would also have a little photography studio built separate from the house so that I could take portraits of people and pets. Maybe I would have some sort of creative art space attached for my love of making greeting cards and jewelry. When the great-nieces and nephews came out, they could paint or make jewelry or whatever they wanted to out there along with me. When my mom, sister, or nieces are there, we could sew or whatever. Probably drink some wine and be silly. That would be awesome as well.

I would have lovely landscaped walkways that joined everything, making it easy for people of all abilities to get from A to B.

Basically, I want a place where I can feel free and creative; a place that can be used to make others happy; a place of comfort and contentment for my family as well as strangers. A place where I could have big dogs and horses; beautiful koi fish; and natural wildlife all in one spot.

Sigh………

Can you tell I think about this A LOT?

What is your fantasy?

TTFN.

Um, Could Someone Please Dial Down the Weather A Notch? Thanks.

2010-06-21T14:25:00.005-06:00

Remember those nice, lovely pictures I posted about my Saturday drive? Well, Sunday was not in the mood to play nice.

At 4:30pm it was hailing so hard it was making my teeth rattle. Here is a fuzzy picture of one the larger hailstones that landed on my front steps:
There were larger ones than this out on the lawn, but there was so much lightning I was scared to go get one! At about 7:45pm, I could not resist the siren song of the pizza delivery conglomerates, so I caved in. I went online to Domino's, but they were offline and not taking online orders. I could have called but was too lazy. So I tried Papa John's; same story. I figured that the power was out or something since the power at my house had been going on and off a few times. I then decided that Dairy Queen would nicely fill the void, so I threw on my shoes and grabbed the camera - just in case anything interesting popped up from the hail storm.

I headed down Main Street and got to Hillview where the intersection was completely closed with fire trucks and police cars. You could either turn right and go back up into the Heights neighborhood, or you could turn left towards the river. I opted to turn left, figuring that perhaps the Albertsons parking lot had flooded or something and that was why the street was closed. I turned right on Joyce, which runs parallel to Main Street, and tried to look through the buildings to see what all the hub-bub was about. Couldn't see anything wrong at all! Hmmmm... I continued down the street and turned right on the little street that leads to the DQ; pulled up to the DQ and realized that it was all dark. CRAP! That was when I knew the cosmos was conspiring against me - having fast food just was NOT in the cards for me today!

The DQ is situated on top of a hill; you can follow the road behind it down the steep hill into a large Target parking lot where there is a little strip mall to the right with a MacKenzie River restaurant, a 31 Flavors, Radio Shack, etc. There is a McDonald's at the far end of the parking lot. As I was coming down the hill towards the lot, I was shocked to see that it was pretty much empty except for a few fire trucks, Battalion Commander SUVs...um is that insulation? And...sheet rock? What the...? To the right of the lot I could see clots of vehicles parked, people running to the top of the grassy knoll (no relation) that bordered Main Street with cameras and children in tow. I could see the bright yellow DO NOT CROSS police tape strung everywhere. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?

Well, at the time that hell's fury in the form of hail was raining down upon my house at 4:30pm, a tornado touched down on Main Street. I live about 1.5 miles away; never heard the sirens or anything. No less than six businesses, including the McD's, were either heavily damaged or destroyed completely.

I stood dumbfounded along with many of my fellow neighbors. It's one thing to see something like this on TV, but to see it first hand? It is awe-inspiring. The 18,000 square foot business complex across Main Street that housed a Kawasaki dealership and the owner's sister's active wear shop is pretty much a total loss. The upside? Amid the debris of the ruined building and scattered brand new motorcycles, T-cat, the owner's kitty, had ridden out the tornado and lived to tell about it. The Lake Elmo Coin Op had no windows left, and most of the lettering had been ripped from the building.

Housed in the same little strip were a dance studio and a barber shop - both completely destroyed. Fas-Break Glass is completely destroyed; the roof ripped off and dumped into neighboring Alkali Creek (along with a pick up truck); siding torn off the walls down to the plywood covering the studs. The Main Street Casino and Restaurant is heavily damaged, along with McD's.

For reasons only the tornado knows, it skipped diagonally from the glass company, over the top of the small strip of stores with the Subway and the liquor store, bypassing the large, 3-story hotel that was sitting right there, and slammed into and danced on top of the Rim Rock Auto Arena in the Metrapark. This is the building where Billings holds all of its large venue concerts, rodeos, trade shows, and conventions. The Billings Outlaws - the arena football league team that we are all so very proud of - held its last regular season game there...the day before - on Saturday, with thousands of fans packed in. Most of the 97,263 square foot roof is gone or collapsed; the building is a total loss. It will have to be completely demolished and rebuilt because it is now structurely unsound.

The miraculous thing is - not one single reported injury. No one died. No homes were destroyed, although there was one home that got its front porch removed, and a few houses where skylights shattered and let in waterfalls of rain and hail; but considering what could have been...
So, there you have it. The cosmos literally moving heaven and earth to keep me from DQ.

Next time, a supportive phone call will do nicely. Thanks.

TTFN.

Some of my photography

2010-06-20T12:33:00.004-06:00

I love pictures. I'm not sure when this love developed, but I do remember spending hours, several times a month, going through the bottom drawer of our secretary where all of our family photos were kept. It drove my mom nuts. "Are you in those pictures AGAIN?" I never, ever, got tired of going through the albums, slides, and loose pictures that made up that treasure.

As I grew into my 20's, I fell in love with the taking of pictures. After moving to Oregon, I was under too much stress, so I spent a year living with my mother in Sultan, Washington. While I was there, I bought myself a "real" camera: a SLR with auto focus! I felt so incredibly grown up and was very impressed with the pictures it took. It's a far cry from the little Kodak Insta-matics I had grown up with (remember the flash bulbs that you had to buy? Remember the ones that came eight to a cartridge, and when the first four were used up you had to flip it over?). I took a photography class that was offered in Monroe one night a week by the adult education center. It was probably the best investment I ever made. After that I bought as many books on photography as I could afford. I still have most of them. A few years later, after my uncle saw my love of photography, he sold me his old Canon AE-1. At that time the camera was probably 20 years old, but I jumped at the chance to own it because it had several lenses with it. Being able to changes the lenses made me feel like a "real" photographer.

As the kids grew older, I started practicing portrait photography on them. I love taking portraits. The kids were very photogenic, and fortunately for me, they never got tired of me wanting to take their picture! I never had any special equipment. I just made do with what I had. I hung white bedsheets on the wall, or sometimes I purchased fabrics from the store that I thought would make pretty backgrounds. I used my living room lamps (without shades) for accent lighting, and my sister's living room had the perfect south-facing window to give me tons of natural light - which is still my favorite lighting to use. I experimented with black and white film. This was before digital photography was main-stream, and I must have invested thousands of dollars in rolls of film and developing costs. The hard part about photography with 35mm film is that you really don't know how the pictures have come out until they are developed. Your subject could have blinked in every single picture, and you just wasted all that time and money for nothing. The days of waiting for the film to be developed was agony for me! For a while, there were these really cool machines that some photography shops had where you could feed your developed negatives into the machine and then crop, enlarge, and play with color saturation and hue, then print your own pictures in whatever size you desired. I even looked into how much it would cost to purchase one!

Here are a few of my portraits from that time period. These are scans of inkjet printed copies, so the quality isn't that great, but you get the idea.

This is an old friend Ginna with my cat Chloe:

And this is Alisha; it was a black and white photo, and I messed with color saturation and hue to get his blueish/purplish cast to it:

I love Reanna in black and white; her eyes are gorgeous. It's hard to believe that she is only about 12 years old here:

On a side note, I just learned how to put a copyright watermark on my photos! I never posted any of my work before, just because I was a little paranoid. Now that I know how to do it, I will post more in the future.

A few years later, I was in the midst of full blown depression and I lost my love of photography. After moving to Montana, I tried to switch to landscape photography but discovered I really wasn't very good at it. My beloved old Canon AE-1 had been stolen while I was still living in Portland and I could not find another one. My insurance company had replaced it with a modern AE-1 Rebel, but it just wasn't the same. I still had all the lenses for the old camera, but you can't use them with an auto-focus, modern SLR. Then, one day out of the blue, I went into a pawn shop while living in Missoula. Now, you need to understand that I had never been into a pawn shop in my life, and there were no less than about 25 pawn shops in this small city. So, I cannot explain why in the world I picked this one to go into on that day. I was looking at the cameras in the case, when low and behold, there sat an old Canon AE-1. It looked exactly like mine, but I knew there was no way it could be... I had the owner take it out of the case for me. I gingerly turned it over to see the bottom, and there it was - the very distinct crack in the case that happened when my mother dropped it in a parking lot on a beach trip. This was MY camera!! The one that had been stolen at least five years earlier! I nearly burst into tears. I told the owner the story and told him I could not afford the $300 tag; he took $100 off and I bought it with my rent money. I was overjoyed!

My sister is the one that drug me, kicking and screaming, into the digital photography age. I had poo-pooed the whole digital thing as a fad that would never really catch on. I knew in my heart that nothing could compare with 35mm film. Let's just say that it's a good thing I am not a stock broker! I said the same thing about fax machines when those came out! She had bought a digital SLR camera and starting taking pictures of her grand kids. I grudgingly had to admit the pictures were first rate, and then being able to see them immediately and also emailing them around was a definite plus. I was finally sold when I had been out for a visit and used her camera myself. I. Loved. It. The following year, my wonderful sissy bought me the same camera and had it shipped to me at work as a surprise!

Lately I have been rekindling my love for photography. I have been reading a few blogs that have been inspiring; and since I will be moving back to where my family is very soon, I hope to start taking portraits again.

In the meantime, I keep taking pictures of what is available. You never know what you might see, so yesterday I went for a drive. I suffer from weather-induced headaches, and the last few weeks have been no exception. Yesterday was so pretty that I could not stand to be in the house, so I went for a drive - with my camera.

A thunderhead building to the south of Billings. Picture taken at Sword Park, just off the main road to the airport.

A wispy cloud formation to the southeast.

Big Sky country. This picture is taken at the far west end of Wicks Avenue, where the houses end and the prairie takes over.

An old church that was moved to this spot a few years ago in several pieces. They are still working on getting it all put together and restored. When it was first moved here, there were no houses around. That has changed now.

Another view of the church, converted to black and white.

On the way back down Wicks toward my house is a very large, modern church. This prong-horn antelope was with a group of three of his friends across the street from it.

They decided to run across the street to the church's parking lot.

The first three await the arrival of their friend.

The party of four.

These two gave me a pretty pose.

I will post more pictures in the future; I hope you liked these.

TTFN.

Learn More Crap About Me

2010-06-17T13:20:00.004-06:00

I have a screaming weather-induced headache today, left over from last night's massive thunderstorm. So, because I feel like chewing gum on the bottom of someone else's shoe, I am posting another one of those "get to know people" emails that came to me at work today.

I would like to invent one of my own, but with different questions. They all seem to have the same ones all the time! It would be amusing to see if someone ever forwarded me the email that I originally started. Any questions you would love to see? Leave it in the comments!

Please to enjoy:

We will be going into the new 2010 edition of getting to know your family and friends. Here is what you are supposed to do, and try not to be lame and spoil the fun. Change all the answers so that they apply to you. Then send this to a bunch of people you know, INCLUDING the person who sent it to you. Some of you may get this several times; that means you have lots of friends. The easiest way to do it is to hit 'forward' so you can change the answers or copy and paste. Have fun and be truthful!
1. What is your occupation? Administrative Assistant with short-timer’s syndrome
2. What color are your socks right now? White, with gray toes and heels (they were made that way, not dirty)
3. What are you listening to right now? The blood pumping through my ears
4. What was the last thing that you ate? Quaker Instant Grits, butter flavor, with half a packet of Truvia.
5. Can you drive a stick shift? You bet your sweet bippy I can.
6. Last person you spoke to on the phone? Frank Carlson, one of our sales reps
7. Do you like the person who sent this to you? I LOVE HER!!
8. How old are you today? Old enough to know better than to answer this question.
9. What is your favorite sport to watch on TV? Football, the Olympics, Iron Man Triathlons, those Red Bull air races.
10. What is your favorite drink ? Lemonade
11. Have you ever dyed/colored your hair? Helloooo – have we met? Yes. I have and will again.
12. Favorite food? Pizza or Mexican
13. What is the last movie you watched? Daddy Is In Heaven With Nixon
14. Favorite day of the year? My first paid vacation day.
15. How do you vent anger? Swearing. Lots and lots of swearing. And cake.
16. What was your favorite toy as a child? Cars and miniature horses. I also had this toy that was a plastic lemon attached to a plastic cord. You looped it around your ankle, and then swung your foot around so that the lemon went around in a circle. Then you jumped over the lemon with your other foot. I wore a hole clean through that stupid lemon from all the hours of scraping it on the driveway. My dad thought I was nuts. I couldn’t figure out why they used a lemon instead of a ball or something.
17. What is your favorite season? Spring.
18. Cherries or Blueberries? Cherries.
19. Do you want your friends to e-mail you back? Nope. I just want them all to know that this is all about me, and I couldn’t care less what their answers might be.
20. Who is the most likely to respond? The ones that want to. Why is this important?
21. Who is least likely to? The ones that don’t want to. Again, this is important because…?
22. Living arrangements? Renting a 2-bedroom duplex. Just me, my significant other dust bunnies, and my 500lb television.
23. When was the last time you cried? Last night while watching So You Think You Can Dance. But they were happy tears.
24. What is on the floor of your closet? Shoes, boxes of shoes, clothes that don’t fit.
25. Who is the friend you have had the longest that you are sending to? My Sissy!!
26. What did you do last night? Drove home in a vicious thunderstorm, watching out of the corner of my eye for tornados, as fast as the ripping wind would allow because my bedroom window was open and I didn’t want to sleep in a soggy bed. Then I watched TV and ate beef jerky until my contact lenses dried out.
27. Plain, cheese, or spicy hamburgers? Cheese with mushrooms and bacon.
28. Favorite Dog Breed? Great Dane (harlequin, specifically)
29. Favorite day of the week? Saturday.
30. How many states have you lived in? Five – California, Oklahoma, Washington, Oregon and Montana
31. Diamonds or pearls? Diamonds. I’m not really a pearl person.
32. Favorite flower? Tulips, roses, snap dragons and sweet peas.

I Think I Popped A Blood Vessel In My Eye

2010-06-03T15:06:00.002-06:00

I haven’t blogged lately because there isn’t anything going on. Just the regular old same old stuff.

But then this article about people protesting the National Spelling Bee in DC caught my eye on MSNBC.com. You can read the article here.

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME??? Or should I say, R U FREEKING KIDING ME?

These people really, I mean REALLY, think that we need to dumb down our culture in this country even more than it already is? These people need to either get jobs or find a hobby that keeps them out of the general population. It’s too much trouble to spell “fruit”, so they want it changed to “froot”??? Oh. My. Freaking. God. These people are IDIOTS. People in this country (myself included – let’s be fair here) are already way too dependent on their computer’s spell checker as it is, and I would estimate 85% of those people (myself NOT included, thank you very much) don’t have the brains it requires to operate it correctly. I used to have a manager that would send out these horrible emails full of spelling and grammar errors. I was so embarrassed that she was my boss. Didn’t she notice all of those squiggly red and green lines all over the place? They aren't there for decoration! DUH.

I guess I am outraged by this because it’s like these protesters have just given up on themselves and our society as a whole. “It’s too hard to do it the right way, so let’s just get someone to change it to the easy/stupid/wrong way to do it so that we don’t have to apply ourselves and elevate our status level on the planet above the apes and chimps.” I can’t believe people actually wasted time in their lives to make signs and picket a spelling bee. I wonder if any of them were spelled correctly…

What’s next? “It’s too hard to count change. Let’s make everything in the world free so that I never have to do math.” Yes, let us kowtow to the stupid and ignorant just to make their lives easier. You don’t have to be a calculus whiz to make change at the (enter fast food establishment/retail outlet of your choice here) – especially when the cash register does all the work for you already. (Want to seriously screw them up? If your total is $4.05, hand them a $5 bill and a nickel and watch them try to figure out what they are supposed to give you for change. It’s a hoot!)

Pfft.

TTFN.

Tweety Bird Has Gone Gangsta

2010-05-25T10:02:00.002-06:00

At approximately 4:30am every morning, I awake to the sound of a bird outside my bedroom window. Now, other than the early hour, normally I would find this very refreshing. The idea of little birds fluttering in the tree tops, going about their morning business singing their sweet little songs a la some Disney story (Snow White or similar) is very refreshing and a great way to start the day.

But in this case, not so much.

This birdie is not your typical Walt Disney style birdie. Where the Disney birdies sing sweetly – tweet tweet tweetie-tweet tweet – and flitter to and fro from branch to branch, my birdie is more like, “TWEET BITCH!” and is probably more the size of a penguin, bowing the pine branch it sits on to the point of snapping.

I picture it holding a loaded .44 in its wing, turned sideways gangsta style; it is eyeballing me through the bedroom window and aiming at me, screeching, “TWEET BITCH! YO, GET YOUR LAZY MOFO ASS OUT OF BED BEFORE I POP A CAP OFF IN IT!”

By 5:30am – 15 minutes before my alarm goes off – it tires of harassing me and flies off to accomplish whatever business gangsta birdies have; visiting baby mamas, dropping ostrich egg sized poops on freshly washed cars and laughing hysterically when the car alarm goes off, roughing up pit pulls and such I imagine. I lie there in my bed fantasizing about throwing something at it when it starts up tomorrow morning, but I am afraid it will manage to shoot me and how will I explain the gunshot wound to the ER nurse? No one will believe it was Gangsta Tweety Bird.

The Sword of Damocles Is Incredibly Annoying

2010-05-20T10:06:00.001-06:00

The time for my impending move is drawing nigh, and I am so not ready. I hope to give my notice in June and have my last day at work be July 2nd; but so much depends on my bankruptcy (which I am this close to getting filed). I really hoped to be in the attorney’s office with all my stuff by the end of last week, but of course I didn’t read all the paperwork thoroughly and I still have some stuff to round up. I hate myself for sabotaging myself at every turn; I really do want this move, and I really do want to be out of financial hot water (I have one credit card company that calls my house no less than eight times a day – no exaggeration, I have caller ID and it logs each and every call; they call me a minimum of four times between 8-9pm!!). So, all I can ask myself is WHY???

I look around the house and I just feel so incredibly overwhelmed by the prospect of having to do everything all by myself (although I feel like I NEED to accomplish this on my own to prove that I am a for sure really and truly adult). My sister will be a big help when she gets here, but the plan is to have everything pretty much ready to go (packed up, etc.) by the time she arrives. I am terrified that when she gets here, expecting to be able to load up the U-Haul the next day, absolutely nothing will be packed or clean and we will have to kill ourselves by staying up for four days straight to get it all done, and then she will be ginormously angry and disappointed with me. I have tried all kinds of tricks on my brain but so far none of them have worked. I am a compulsive and obsessive list maker, and I make “to do” lists by the thousands. So far, all that has resulted from that is another acre of forests cut down to make more paper for me to make more lists on. I have tried pretending that this is not my house, but rather the home of someone else that has hired me to clean and pack up their things for them. All that has resulted from that is the knowledge that I would never make any money at all in that line of work because I suck at it.

I feel at my most productive with I-can-do-thisness and go-forth-and-conquerousness between 9:30am-2pm. Unfortunately, I am at work when this kicks in, where there is nothing for me to do or conquer, other than keeping my chair on the floor and occasionally picking up the telephone to make sure it is still working. Even on my way home from work my head is swimming with “OK, here’s the plan. You are going to get home and do this, this, this, this, and this; and then when you are done with that you will do this, and then you will eat a healthy dinner and go to bed and get a good night’s sleep.” What actually happens is: I walk in the house, put my purse down, go pee (sometimes not in that actual order), take a good look around, sit on the couch, turn on the TV, and watch and eat crap until my contacts dry out around 10pm. Obviously, the simple solution here is to NOT TURN ON THE TV. You know it, I know it, the Efe pygmy tribe of the African rain forest knows it, and yet… It’s such a hard habit to break. I think it’s because it’s comforting, in a way. I don’t feel so alone in the house when the TV is on. Sometimes I can have it on and completely ignore it; sometimes I can put some CDs on instead and I really enjoy that. I don’t know; it’s an addiction I suppose. I wish I had friends here that would come over and help, or at least keep me company while I got some stuff done. That just kind of adds to the loneliness and helplessness feelings. Poor me; boo hoo. Whatever.

I am, however, very proud of the progress I made in the garage last weekend. I cleaned out all the garbage and moved some half-completed shelves over near the door that goes into the house; I finished putting them together and am currently using them to house items that I am gathering for the Garage Sale. I opened boxes of stuff that haven’t seen the light of day since I moved to Billings five years ago, and put them over on the Garage Sale side; I even swept up (which nearly caused my back to snap in half, but I did it!). I still have a few boxes to move around but I will work on that some more this weekend, and will hopefully have the GS over the holiday weekend. I know most experts agree that holiday weekends aren’t the best times to have sales, but I live three blocks from the lake so my street will get lots of traffic, and I have a feeling that more people will be sticking closer to home this Memorial Day weekend due to economics, gas prices, etc. And if not, that’s OK. I’ll just have another one right before I move anyway to get rid of the lawn mower, leaf blower, etc. I’m not doing it for the money – I just want to get rid of the stuff!

Having written about all of this, I feel better. I think I may actually be able to go home and accomplish something tonight (yes, I write my blog while I’m at work. You thought I was kidding about checking the phone to see if it worked, huh?). I have actually been waking up earlier in the mornings lately – probably due to sunlight hitting my unaccustomed eyelids and those damn birds being so damn happy and loud outside my bedroom window – and today was no exception. I actually managed to get up and take a shower, get dressed, round up my healthy lunch, AND hit McD’s for breakfast (get off me; it fits in with my eating plan so LAY OFF). I even had extra time to slap on some eyeliner and mascara this morning. I am sure the guys here at work are all wondering why I’m all dolled up since normally they are lucky that my hair is combed and I have all my clothes on. Hopefully the energetic feeling I have now will last for a while after I get home. Because at 7pm, the TV goes on for sure; gotta watch Community and The Office! Gotta get a life!! Get off me. Pfft.

TTFN.

Bird of Prey vs. Cocktail Weenie

2010-05-18T09:51:00.003-06:00

My sister called me the other day and told me that there are four bald eagles nesting in the trees by the pond behind her house. When she takes Bruiser, the mini doxie, out to go potty they circle in the sky above them. Recently, one of them did a low swoop over their heads. Bruiser is now terrified to be outside. The eagles must be royally pissed of that my sister is brazenly parading this...this...appetizer before them and not allowing them to taste it. She says that if they manage to somehow carry him off, she will either be in the looney bin for having witnessed such horror, or in federal prison for shooting a symbol of the US of A.

Hopefully it will be neither. Bruiser has never been allowed outside by himself because he is so small, and in addition to birds of prey there are coyotes, bears, and stupid clumsey cows to worry about as well. Now Sissy is having to carry Bruiser out underneath the big pine tree in the front yard to do his business so that he doesn't get spirited away for baby eagle breakfast. I told her she should train him to use a litter box! That poor dog is already uber-neurotic; this is all his nerves need now. Poor little cocktail weenie.

Learn A Little Sumpin' 'bout me

2010-05-14T11:30:00.003-06:00

Do you ever get these (or ones similar to them) in your email? I get them from time to time, and I love them. So, without further ado, here is the latest one I received and the answers I gave.

Please to enjoy.

2010 Getting to Know Your Friends

Welcome to the 2010 edition of getting to know your Friends. Please 'press FORWARD' then change all the answers so they apply to you, and then send this to your friends including me. The theory is that you will learn a lot of little things about your friends that you might not have known! Have fun! Look forward to hearing from you shortly.

1. What time did you get up this morning? Alarm went off at 5:45; physically got out of bed at 7:05.
2. Diamonds or pearls? Diamonds
3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? 2012
4. What is your favorite TV show? The Big Bang Theory
5. What do you usually have for breakfast? Quaker Instant Grits – butter flavor
6. What is your middle name? Leann
7. What food do you dislike? Vegetables – all of them; liver
8. What is your favourite CD at moment? Lady Gaga
9. What kind of car do you drive? 1994 Isuzu Rodeo with front windows that won’t roll down and a driver’s side door that won’t lock. Well, actually it will lock, but it won’t UN-lock. And having it UN-lock is actually more important than having it lock. Trust me on this.
10. Favorite sandwich? Egg Salad
11. What characteristic do you despise? Intolerance
12. Favorite item of clothing? Stilettos
13. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation? Paris
14. Favorite brand of clothing? Anything that fits me
15. Where would you like to retire to? The Oregon Coast
16. What was your most recent memorable birthday? Do you mean, “What is the last birthday you remember?” Because that is really a different question and this little square isn’t big enough for that answer. Next?
17. Favorite sport to watch? FOOTBALL!!!
18. Furthest place you are sending this? Jacksonville, FL
19. Person you expect to send it back first? Brad Pitt – he’s considerate that way and loves these questionnaires!
20. When is your birthday? Every year. Oh, sorry, April 15th.
21. Are you a morning person or a night person? More of a 10am-3:30pm kind of person.
22. What is your shoe size? 6.5
23. Pets? Not right now. Thanks for rubbing salt in that wound.
24. Any new and exciting news you'd like to share with us? I will be moving back to where my family is this summer! But that might just be exciting to me, and it probably isn’t new to a lot of people, so I guess…no.
25. What did you want to be when you grew up? An actress or a stewardess. And for a short period when I was young, I wanted to be a horse.
26. How are you today? I have a headache.
27. What are your favorite sweets? Dark chocolate covered seafoam, salt water taffy
28. What is your favorite flower? Tulips
29. What is a day on the calendar you are looking forward to? July 1st.
30. What is your full name? Heather Leann Hotchkiss
31. What are you listening to right now? A sales rep making a phone call.
32. What was the last thing you ate? See question #5.
33. Do you wish on stars? Not any more.
34. If you were a crayon, what color would you be? Violet.
35. How is the weather right now? Sunny, 59, winds from WSW at 16mph (at 9:15am)
36. The first person you spoke to on the phone today? A customer.
37. Favorite soft drink? Huckleberry cream soda
38. Favorite restaurant? The Rex in Billings, MT
39. Real hair color? Dark ash blonde (looks just like brown!) Wait, what do you mean by “real” hair color? What exactly are you insinuating?
40. What was your favorite toy as a child? Lincoln Logs, Matchbox cars, miniature horses
41. Summer or winter? I love the snow in winter, but I love the sunshine in summer.
42. Hugs or kisses? Hugs are great because you can get them from lots of people, but it depends on who exactly is doing the kissing.
43. Chocolate or Vanilla? Chocolate (dark, not milk)
44. Coffee or tea? Neither. Yuck.
45. Do you want your friends to email you back? I would prefer that they sent me money.
46. When was the last time you cried? This morning on my way to work.
47. What is under your bed? Carpet, probably some CD’s that I can’t find, more than likely some socks that are also missing.
48. What did you do last night? Watched TV, ate a sandwich, watched some more TV, went to bed and watched a little more TV, fell asleep while listening to an episode of South Park.
49. What are you afraid of? Bats, bees, wasps, dying alone and unloved, my mother finding out the deep, dark secrets I have been hiding from her all these years.
50. Salty or sweet? Preferably both together, like chocolate covered pretzels or similar.
51. How many keys on your key ring? Six, but I don’t know what three of them go to and I am afraid to throw them away.
52. How many years at your current job? 50 million (but HR seems to be under the impression that it’s only been about 15)
53. Favorite day of the week? Usually Saturday, but I will have to say that any day that I am not at work is a great day.
54. How many towns have you lived in? Twelve
55. Do you make friends easily? Yes but none really seem to last.
56. How many people will you send this to? Why? Is there a limit? Will I be penalized if I go over the limit? I want to speak to an attorney. I plead the fifth. Bite me.
57. How many will respond? If I knew the answer to this question, I would be playing the lottery in every state of the US.

Feel free to tell me your answers to these questions in the comments if you want to.

TTFN.

Poor Little Echo

2010-05-12T21:35:00.002-06:00

About two weeks ago my neighbor’s car met with a disaster. Poor little Echo; it never saw it coming.

It happened in the midst of a raging windstorm. And when I say raging, I mean that I actually took the vacuum cleaner out of the tiny hall closet and put some pillows, a blanket, my tennis shoes and my cell phone in there – just in case. I even wore my best nightie lest rescue was required by some hunky firefighters after my roof collapsed…sorry, what was I saying? Oh yes. I had brought our large, black, wheeled, city issued trashcans up against the duplex for safekeeping; mine had already been blown over twice, so I just left it. This way it would not blow over again in the middle of the night and scare the bejezus out of me like it usually does. The winds were blowing at a sustained 60mph, gusting up to 95. I went to bed and had just started drifting off to sleep; it was 10:45pm. Suddenly a large crash woke me up; it sounded like my neighbor had run over one of the large trashcans. Bummer, I thought, not terribly concerned. But then as I stared to be more awake, I remembered that the trashcans were up against the duplex; there was no way the neighbor could have run over one of them. Their SUV was already in the driveway, but his wife usually parked their little Echo car in the driveway behind it. Then I had the odd feeling of remembering the sound of glass breaking. And I realized that there were headlights shining in my bedroom window (which faces the street). Things just seemed odd to me so I got out of bed and tiptoed into the living room and peeked through the vertical blinds looking into the front yard. I could see what appeared to be a vehicle blocking our driveway, still running with the offending headlights shining in my bedroom window. I didn’t have my contacts in so I was blind as a bat and without the benefit of sonar. It seemed like there were people, or at least a person, walking back and forth, in and out of the driveway. Eventually I heard voices but couldn’t make out what they were saying. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but when I heard my neighbor say, “Are you sure you’re OK?” I thought – something is seriously going on. I ran and got my jeans on, threw on a shirt and a pair of flip-flops and ran out the front door to get the scoop.

It turns out that my neighbor’s wife did not park the Echo in the driveway behind the SUV, she had parked it on the curb on their side of the duplex. A large, old pickup truck, sturdily built and with a monster grill guard on it had plowed into the back of it, sending it down the street about 35 feet, up onto the sidewalk wiping out the mailboxes. It was hard to see in the dark, but I got a pretty good idea of the carnage. It was a good thing that the neighbor’s wife and their young daughter were not actually in the car (everyone was in the house and turning in for the night when this happened), because as you can see from the pictures there ain’t a whole lot left of the little Echo. I took these pictures with my cell phone the next morning as I was going to work.

I got the impression that the driver of the pickup was not intoxicated, and seemed to be very cooperative with my neighbor and the police officers that showed up about five minutes later. I haven’t gotten to discuss the whole story with the neighbors as our schedules are quite out of sync and I rarely see them in person. Our mailboxes were finally replaced about a week later, but the old smashed ones were still in my yard this morning; but they were gone when I got home from work today.

Poor little Echo.

I Love You, Mom

2010-05-10T10:21:00.002-06:00

I know that yesterday was Mother’s Day, but I grew up in a household that does not celebrate such holidays. Every day was Mother’s or Father’s day; we didn’t need Hallmark to tell us when it was the appropriate time to say so.

Having said that, I hope that dear old Mom won’t mind if I pay a small tribute to her today. After all, it isn’t Mother’s Day today, right? Right.

Mom – I just want to tell you that I love you. I appreciate you. I don’t know what I will do without you.

Me and Mom, 1967

Even though we have butted heads about things in the past, and will in the present and the future, I want you to know that I appreciate everything you have done for me. When Daddy died, I know that you wanted to pack up the house and move to Washington to be with your mother and your brothers. I was going to be a freshman in high school that year and didn’t want to start yet another new school. I wanted to stay in California with the people I had come to know as my friends and the ones that I finally felt at home and comfortable with. You made the sacrifice to stay where we were so that I could finish school where I felt comfortable. I didn’t realize then how hard that must have been for you, but I did understand later. Thank you so much for that.

I know that you think that I don’t read or appreciate all the little articles that you clip and mail to me; all the things about money and finances, migraine headaches, and identity theft; weight loss and the benefits of vitamins; depression; etc. I do read them; some of them get saved in my “important stuff” files that I have; some make me laugh, some make me mad, but I know that you were thinking of me and my well being when you read them.

I love the two volume cookbook that you made for me, full of recipes from my grandmother, my great-aunt, my aunts and uncles; recipes that were Daddy’s favorites. I love all of the little pictures that you painstakingly cut out of magazines and catalogs that are of things that you know I love, and things that make me smile and laugh. I remember that day when they arrived at work, without warning, and how I showed them to everyone and cried all day because I was so touched by them. I still haven’t made any of the recipes yet, but I love to take them down off the shelf and just look through them.

Me and Mom in my great aunt Ruth's pool, 1968

I know it isn’t enough to say, “Thanks for everything, Mom.” But, thanks for everything, Mom. I love you.

Don’t Know Much About History…

2010-04-19T10:33:00.002-06:00

The new season of The Tudors has started on ShowTime, and I am hooked once again. I’ll tell ya, if they had had this series back when I was in high school, I can guarantee you that I would have paid a lot closer attention to my history lessons!! You think that politicians today are corrupt and seedy? They can’t hold a candle to Henry VIII. He was one seriously messed up dude, and Jonathan Rhys Myers plays him fabulously. I love all the costumes and jewelry; the horses and riding are first rate; and all the women are drop dead gorgeous. Some people think it was such a romantic time to be living and think that living amongst the King’s Court would have been wonderful; um, I am thinking not so much.

You never knew who was going to stick a knife in your back or for what reason; disease ran rampant and doctors had no clue how to treat you if they couldn’t use leeches; the everyday person was severely oppressed; and if you were female, can you imagine trying to go to the bathroom in those gowns they wore?? Yeah, funny how they never show that kind of stuff on the show.

I wonder if they will ever come out with a series that deals with US history. It would be interesting to see what kinds of behind the scenes info (meaning dirt and scandal, obviously) they could dig up. I am ashamed to admit that I was one of those kids in school that never really paid attention to American History. We are pretty boring with our powdered wigs and buckle shoes in comparison to European Kings that go through wives like Kleenex, chopping off heads willy-nilly every time a wife has a daughter instead of a son, or if a younger maiden catches his eye.

Although, you do see a lot of that type of behavior in every day current American life; just watch Snapped on the Oxygen channel, or Forensic Files on A&E. Or your evening news for that matter.

Scary.

It is also baseball season once again. I think I have mentioned this once before, but I used to be a huge baseball fan – even back before I was physically huge. I say “used to be” because when all the ball players went on strike back in the 90’s for more money, it really ruined it for me.

Gee, I’m so sorry that 10 million dollars a year isn’t enough for you to be paid for hitting a little ball with a stick, and that you make more than ER doctors, firefighters, police officers, and other people who actually make a difference in the world by treating the injured, healing the sick and dying, and generally putting their lives on the line every single day.

I’m sorry, where was I? Oh yes. Sorry, I have digressed once again (do they make a pill for that without the side effect of anal leakage?). Anyhoo, it gets me by until football season starts again. I put the game on and then go about my business doing other stuff around the house, listening to the game but not really watching it. Just doing that kind of brings back memories: when I was a kid, we always had baseball on the tube (Dad was a ginormous fan), and it would usually be hot enough in California for the air conditioner to be running in the house; Mom would do her mounds of ironing while watching the game and I would usually fall asleep on the couch listening to Vin Skulley’s voice combined with the hiss of the steam from the iron. Good times. Dad would usually wake me up because he would be hollering at the TV over a bad call. (Why do guys do that? Tip: THEY CAN’T HEAR YOU. But the neighbors can, and they don’t care if he was safe or out. Chill.)

Anything good on the tube that you are enjoying these days?

TTFN.

Happy (?) IRS Day

2010-04-15T15:20:00.000-06:00

Did you remember to mail off your taxes today? I did. I have a very handy built-in reminder.

Today is my birthday.

You know what I did for my birthday today? I mailed the IRS a check for $475.

Its times like these that make me realize how I have absolutely no life.

Happy Frickin Birthday to me.

TTFN.

Need Money for Karate Lessons

2010-04-12T13:16:00.002-06:00

This morning I have dusted off the soap box, gotten out my step ladder, and am now atop said box ready to give you my two cents. Ahem.

I am starting to get really disappointed with the Today Show. It comes on at 7am here, and I usually watch it while getting dressed for work (otherwise known as the fabulously fun game of SOCKS, SOCKS, WHERE THE HELL ARE MY SOCKS?!). Tomorrow Meredith V. is interviewing – sorry, conducting an IN DEPTH interview – with Kate Gosselin.

Why?

First of all, I don’t see how IN DEPTH the interview can be when this person is more shallow than a cake pan. Also, shouldn’t stuff like that be relegated to Entertainment Tonight? Or at least to the fourth hour of the Today Show with Hoda and Cathy Lee (that I am pretty sure no one watches or if they are, they are in a coma by the time it reaches this point and are unable to reach the clicker)? Is the world of top notch journalism so slow these days that an interview with this person is the best they can do? Is the war in Iraq over? What about the President of Poland being killed in that plane wreck? Isn’t the President of the US putting through a new health care bill that will affect us all? I would love to know what the bill is exactly; and I don’t mean listening to Senators and Congresspeople yelling at each other about it, I want to know what it is supposed to do for us all. Heck, Kate’s got eight children; maybe she would like to be better informed about it. Although, she is pretty busy sucking on Dancing With The Stars right now, so maybe she is postponing her study of it for later. And I’m sorry – why hasn’t she been voted off yet? My bedside table dances better than her. I think that Joel McHale over on E’s The Soup gets people to vote for her, just so that they can make fun of her week after week (WIN!).

And I am really tired of hearing about Tiger Woods and Jesse James. I’m sorry – I know that there are people out there that suffer from sex addiction, and I am not talking about them; but just being a walking douche bag with a ton of cash that can’t keep its fly zipped does not qualify you as such. If you are going to hump everything in sight then scream REHAB at the top of your lungs, please stop marrying people and reproducing. Go live in your limo down by the river, and keep your disgusting habits to yourself. And that goes for the entire cast of Jersey Shore as well.

Why can’t regular, everyday, next-door-neighbor type people be featured on the Today Show? You know, the ones that are working a day job, or two jobs plus night school, that are managing to take care of their aging parents, raise four kids that aren’t pregnant or on drugs, and volunteer their time to raise money for cancer patients? Oh, not shocking enough? Are you kidding me? I have a feeling that a lot of people don’t think those types of people exist anymore. Who would you rather have as a role model for your kids? A pseudo-celebrity that is only good at pimping out their children for fame and cash and then doing IN DEPTH interviews to whine about the fame; another pseudo-celeb that is only good at hitting a little tiny ball into a little tiny hole with a stick but damn can he sell shoes; or someone that works hard for their money, doesn’t complain about it (much) and manages to be a good person without asking for the world to be delivered to them, in their dressing room, on a silver platter and manages to keep off the nose candy and stay out of rehab? Hmmmmm…gee, it’s so hard to choose.

Phew. I think my soap box is on fire, so I believe I will step down now.

On a lighter note: this weekend while I was out running some errands, I saw a young man panhandling down by the MetraPark. I noticed as I approached the corner where he had set himself up that he was talking to a gal in another car that had already stopped for the light. As he jogged back across the lane in front of me, he held up his cardboard sign for me to read. It said, “My family was killed by ninjas; need money for karate lessons.” I nearly gave him $5 just for the laugh he gave me.

Now THAT guy should be on the Today Show.

TTFN.

Love Your Local Library

2010-04-09T11:34:00.000-06:00

I love to read.

I mean that. And I don’t mean People magazine, or Reader’s Digest; I love books. Big, fat, heavy books. Not only are they great for smashing spiders, but they can transport you to anywhere in world; any time in history; and you can be whomever you wish.

My father loved to read and I think that he passed that love on to my sister and me. He was always reading; he read stories and poetry to me almost every night until I was about 12. I miss that. I still have two of the poetry books that he read to me out of, and I treasure them.

When I was a kid, I loved trips to the library with Dad. We would hit the door and go our separate ways and then meet up an hour later. Sometimes I would beg to stay a little longer, and sometimes we would. There was something so profoundly satisfying about leaving that musty old place with armfuls of books.

I like to read a variety of stuff; I’m not a huge fan of non-fiction for some reason, and I don’t care for romance novels either. I went through a stage in junior high with one of my best pals where we read every single Barbara Cartland romance we could get our hands on. We collected them and traded them, dreamed about them, and talked about them until I thought my mother would lose her mind. Eventually I caught on that there were only about six different plot lines; dear Barbara just changed the countries, names, and hair color of the people involved and just kept cranking those suckers out! I love mystery novels and collected Agatha Christie novels too. I still have a bunch of them. I also read her biography and loved it! I have that book and will always keep it on my shelf. I love anything having to do with psychology and forensics. I find both fields to be extremely interesting; if I had gotten the opportunity to go to college, I would have studied both of those subjects. I also like horror – Steven King is a favorite, but he can get a little too…out there…for even me sometimes. I am not a huge fan of ghosts or anything dealing with the occult; I do like ghost stories to an extent, but not if having the book in my possession is going to start rearranging the furniture in my living room, you know what I mean? Yeah. That’s not fun. Having said that, I just finished one and am starting another ghost story novel. And I do not care for vampire novels at all!! You aren’t going to see me roped into the Twilight series. Period.

I do like monsters and space aliens too; and I love it when I read a book and think to myself, Wow – that would make a great movie, and then POOF! I’m at the movie theater a few weeks, months, or a year later and there it is – the book I read and the previews for the movie. I had read Jurassic Park almost three years before the movie came out; my sister and I had both read it and thought it would be the most awesome movie, and when we saw the previews for it we nearly beat each other to death with glee. It was one of the few movies made from a book that I thought really stuck to the original. It is so incredibly disappointing to love a book then see a movie that doesn’t live up to it. The Da Vinci Code was definitely one, and I never saw Angels and Demons but I heard it was disappointing as well. Sometimes I just know that a movie isn’t going to cut it so I won’t bother; but sometimes I am pleasantly surprised. Which can be awesome. The Relic was an awesome book, and the movie did pretty well at sticking to the basic plot. The DVD of the movie is in my collection.

I am also more drawn to paperbacks rather than hardbacks. I love a paperback because I can stick it in my purse and joyfully carry it around with me. I rarely buy tiny purses; any new purse must be large enough to contain at least one paperback book. I read them everywhere: work, restaurants, movie theaters, in traffic. I read them at restaurants because it makes me feel less alone, and I find that if I don’t have any company to share the meal with, reading is a good substitute. And it keeps me from looking at all the happy families and/or couples and feeling sorry for myself for being there alone. The same with movies; I don’t often go the theaters anymore – they are too expensive, and who wants to go see a movie all by themselves? But I believe that some films must be seen on the big screen to be fully appreciated (like the Star Wars films, or 300, etc.) so I will suck it up and go. I like to arrive early so that I can sit in my favorite spot (in stadium seating, top row, dead center) and I don’t miss any previews. So, during the 10-15 minutes of uncomfortable dead time, I read. It makes the wait go by faster and I don’t obsess about whether or not people are staring at me and wondering why I am there alone. And, if you are stuck at a red light that seems to take forever? Whip out your book and read one sentence -I guarantee the light will change; this also works for slow moving drive-thrus. The other reason I like paperbacks is that I refuse to pay $25 for a hardback. Unless it’s something I know I will treasure and want to keep forever.

In these…let’s say challenging…economic times, I have found myself returning to the library more often. I can check out armfuls of hardback books for free. I love to go onto my favorite bookstore site (Powell Books in Portland, OR) to snuffle around and see what books are out there that I might like. When I find something, I flip over to my local library’s website and open the catalog to search for it. If they have it, I make a note of the call numbers and when I have a few on my list, I make a library run. It’s been great – I had forgotten how great. If I hate a book, I can just return it. No questions, no refunds, no problem. I can check out whole collections of a single author’s work and read them back to back in order. I can check out cookbooks and copy just the recipes I like instead of buying an entire book with 892 recipes that I hate and will never make. Sometimes doing that will lead me to a different book by the same person that I will purchase for permanent residence on my cookbook shelf. Sometimes I will preview a book this way, and if I like it enough I will go out and buy my own copy.

Love your local library. If you haven’t been there in a while, check it out (no pun intended). Turn your kids onto the miracle of reading. It’s not just for billboards and menus these days.

TTFN.

A New Goal

2010-04-08T09:57:00.001-06:00

Some of you may know that I also have a weight loss blog; there is a link to it on the right side of this page. I haven’t had anything nice to say about my weight loss journey for quite a while, so I have been neglecting it. Bad blogger – bad girl!! But I have a new goal; a new Twinkie on a stick if you will. I have detailed it on the other blog and will keep track of the details over there, but will also post updates here too.

Here is the basic scoop:

I am still working with my therapist on the issues that cause me to run straight to food for comfort; the hard part is that it is basically everything in my life! I have a lot of holes in my heart and soul, and I recognize now that I use food as a kind of spackle to try to fill those holes. Now I just have to work on finding other ways to fill those holes instead of using food. No more donuts as dry wall. It may take a while, but I’ll get there.

So I have decided to change tactics.

One of my nieces sent me an email yesterday that has lit a fire under me for a couple of reasons. Her father, my sister’s ex-brother-in-law, has ALS (better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease), and she is getting people together to be a team for an upcoming ALS walk. We traded a few emails back and forth, and then I got an idea – why not find out when the walk is? If I haven’t moved back to Washington yet, I will do it here in Billings by myself in honor of him.

Turns out the walk is September 26th. I will definitely be back on the west coast by then, so I told my niece to sign me up to be on her team.

It’s a three mile walk. She is going to start training for it with one of my other nieces next week. I am going to have to train on my own, at least until I move, but I am going to start this weekend and the goal is to have some endurance built up by the time I move this summer. Then I can finish my training out there.

So – there you have it. My new goal. I hope that I can really do this; it would be great for my health, my self esteem, my brain, my heart (in every sense), my soul, my karma. Not only will I be benefiting myself, but I can also be a part of helping others as well. I feel like since this goal is not just about ME, but a part of something bigger than me that is for the benefit of others, that it is something that I will actually follow through on.

And if that is what it takes, then Bring. It. On.

TTFN.

Ah Spring…whatever that means

2010-04-07T10:05:00.002-06:00

So, I haven’t been blogging lately. Anyone notice? Yeah, I thought not. I am pretty sure, regardless of what my visitor counter says, that no one really reads this (except you, Laurie! Thanks for your support girl!!). I think most of the numbers on there are me checking to see if anyone is checking. Hurt.

But, I want to be more diligent in my writing. I love to write. Unfortunately, most of what I write stays written only on the little grey cells (as Hercule Poirot would say) and never seems to make it to the page (paper or virtual). That has been happening a lot lately.

Sometimes people who find out that I write a blog ask me what it’s about. … I don’t really know. It’s about stuff. And things. Ramblings, thoughts, occurrences; things I’ve done or read or seen; things I am thinking about doing or reading or seeing.

If you read my blog, let me know. If you have one of your own and you want me to read it, let me know. I love blogs; I think I am addicted to them. Is there a 12 step program for that? I hope not. I like being addicted to them. My mom doesn’t get it, but that’s OK. She doesn’t “get” a lot of things, but I still love her. But that is a blog all its own.

Sissy keeps encouraging me to write; she says I have a knack for it. I hope so! I started a novel a few years ago but haven’t been working on it very much lately. I dug it out and have decided to start pecking away at it again. I also found a second story that I started around the same time but had forgotten about; I am going to try to get that one going again as well.

I came into contact with a lovely person on an answer forum that I belong to. We had actually been discussing my situation of still being single at…my age…and the fact that my last date had been over 25 years ago, and I was asking for tips on how to get myself back out there in the social scene. I think that social skills can be like speaking a foreign language: if you don’t use it, you lose it. I have no clue how to talk to guys, or anyone really for that matter, when I am face to face with them. I really don’t have any life experience to speak of, so if we aren’t talking about work, sports, movies or the great state of Montana, I am tapped out for subjects. I feel like I have squat all in common with other human beings and trying to talk to people just makes me want to crawl under the floor boards sometimes. I can ramble on and on when I am just an anonymous voice on the internet or in email… But I digress. This lovely lady is a published author and is going to help try to help me form a writer’s group at the local library. Even though I will be moving in a few months, even if I don’t get this group off the ground here, maybe I can get one off the ground in Washington. I will keep you informed on that.

Anyhoo, spring is coming and I love spring. I think I was actually supposed to be a bear in this life. I have a tendency to hibernate during the winter. At least that is how I try to explain away the weight gain, grumpiness, and general desire to stay indoors under the covers where it is warm and just watch TV all the live-long day. Do bears watch TV? They probably would if they had a remote with larger buttons and cable.

But the days are getting longer now, and warmer, and the little critters are starting to pop their heads up out of their hidey holes and the grass is starting to get green again. Which means I will have to eventually dig out the lawn mower at some point. Dang. I HATE mowing the lawn and this year I will not be able to afford to pay someone to do it for me. Oh well. I’ll be moving soon and hopefully I won’t have to do it too many times before I can bid adieu to that stupid thing at my garage sale. Along with the edger/weed eater and leaf blower that I have never used but somehow have managed to lose the manuals for. Hmmm…I will have to look for those! We have rabbits that live in the empty lots across the street from our office building, and gophers too. I made the mistake early on here of referring to them as Prairie Dogs; I was on no uncertain terms corrected. I don’t care what they are, I think they are cute. Of course, they aren’t living in my lawn so I can think that if I want to. So there. Pfft.

So as the days get longer and I start to come out of my hibernation, I promise to be more diligent in keeping in touch on here. All I ask in return is, if you are out there drop me a note to say hi, OK? It’s lonely here in cyberspace. Thanks.

TTFN.

Day Off!

2010-02-26T16:17:00.006-07:00

I took today off from work to chill out or whatever I felt I needed to do. Even though it's been S-L-O-W as molasses in winter (very appropriate analogy, actually) I have been burnt out and in need of a little R&R. I suffer from chronic headaches and migraines, and lately they have been driving me out of my gourd. It felt so good today to just get out in the sunshine and fresh air! Florescent lighting makes me want to scream after a while.

I couldn't decide what to do with this extra day; should I sleep in? Take a drive? Both? Neither? I hated to waste it by sleeping all day, but that is what usually makes my head feel better. After a little discussion on Facebook, I decided to sleep in a little, then take a drive with my camera. I really can't afford the gas, but it was worth it.

I decided to head to Red Lodge, then make the loop through Roscoe, Absorakee, and Columbus, then back to Billings. Here is Lake Elmo State Park, just about 3 blocks up the street from my place. It's still frozen over, but is starting to get a few little areas where it's starting to thaw since the weather has been in the low 40's for a few days. But before I started out on my little road trip, I needed to perform a little maintenance.

Poor 'ol Rodeo; I don't treat her as well as I should, but she runs great for me all the time anyway. I got my hands all grimy from get the oil tank thingy lid off; however, a fortunate side effect of being a junk food junkie is that I always have tons of napkins in the rig! YAY!

And I had to be sure I had my trusty, musty map book too!

These map books are a must if you decide to go road tripping in your state. If you can find one for where you live, I highly recommend them. They show every single little highway, mountain road, logging road, river, lake, stream, etc. in a grid format. I love mine! It's faded from the sun and warped from tons of miscellaneous spilled liquids. I never leave home without it. Just don't sniff it. Trust me. Seriously bad idea.

I then headed on over to Taco John's for a bottle of water and a bacon, egg, and potato burrito (YAY - more napkins!). I whipped into their tiny parking lot and planned my route. Then it was off to the Interstate!

I left Taco John's at 10:20am. Got on I-90 and headed west, set the cruise at 65 and munched on my burrito. Eight miles from Laurel, the speed limit changes to 75; I up my speed to 70 and reset the cruise. I hate driving 75. My poor Rodeo doesn't need that kind of stress and I am sucking gas fast enough, thank you very much.

I took exit 434 for Laurel and Red Lodge; took only 10 minutes. Hung a left at the light onto highway 212 West. Now only 44 miles to Red Lodge! Here you can see the highway to Red Lodge with the Bear Tooth Mountains in the distance.

As I entered the town of Joliet, I passed this handsome fellow outside the Charles Ringer Studio and Gallery. I love his toes!

Just outside of Roberts, I saw this magnificent creature. I had to stop and capture him! He nearly got me into trouble too; the road has no shoulder, but there were no cars coming in either direction. I pulled over as far as I could and jumped out, snapped a few pictures, then ran back across the road to jump in the rig. As I was putting my seat belt on, a dark car pulled up next to me and stopped; I looked over and nearly had a stroke - a Montana Sheriff!! He gave me his best get-your-fat-butt-outta-here gesture and I immediately gave him my most sincere Holy-Crap-officer-didn't-see-you-sorry-I'm-going-RIGHT-NOW-gesture. I think my only saving grace was that he had two guys in his back seat that it appeared he was, um, transporting to Red Lodge and he didn't want to try to write me a ticket in the middle of the road with them in the car. WHEW!!! There were some other nifty things I would have stopped to clicky-clicky at, but I was too shook up!

So, now I arrive at Red Lodge. I thought that I would have a nice mosey around town, maybe find a little bakery to be bad in; no one's going to be there on a weekday in winter, right? Wrong. The streets were all heavily lined with cars and there was no where to park; it appeared that there were also some chartered buses full of people arriving, so I said NEVER MIND! I went to the local super market and got a hot dog and a drink, then ate them in the car.

So now I am leaving Red Lodge and am on my way to Roscoe. The scenery was so beautiful!!! Unfortunately, it is a very narrow and windy highway with less shoulder than before, so it's hard to find a place to pull over. But here are a few I managed to take when I found a place to pull over:

After passing by Luther, I passed the house that was for sale that had been infested by Barn Wrens; I blogged about that place about two years or so ago. It looked so forlorn; nothing has been done to it since the last time I saw it, but it does appear that the birds are gone (for now).

I was just passing the sign that said ROSCOE when I crossed over the East Rosebud Creek and saw a cow standing down in the creek! I knew I had to capture that!

That water had to be soooo cold - but it would definitely be refreshing! Here is the stream from the other side of the bridge:

After Roscoe, there was this historical marker, along with a memorial erected in 1938 for an old Montana pastor:I also really liked this fence post at the same site:

I moved on and took the frontage road from Columbus to Park City, a road that I have seen several times but had never been on. I am so glad I took it! I passed this and had to turn around and go back for a second look:

This is some sort of spill way that flows out and down into a little stream below. Did you catch that it is frozen solid? That water that looks like it is spilling down is a frozen solid column of water, and so is the big, thick mound at the bottom that looks like water splashing up!! Cool, huh?

I finally got back home at about 3:30pm. It was a lovely day and I am glad I took advantage of it.

Now I need a nap.

TTFN.

Om nom nom...

2010-02-23T18:10:00.005-07:00

Since it has been so mind numbingly S-L-O-W at work, I spend a lot of time on the internet. I found several new blogs that I am greatly enjoying and have added them to my list of favs on the right. None of the blog authors have asked me to mention them; in fact, only one of them know I even exist! I am driving myself completely crazy reading recipes, coveting mad kitchen skills, and having the creativity spot in my brain stimulated. All while being chained to my desk at work so I can't do anything about it. ERRGG!!!

One of the things that is happening to me as I read these wonderful, wonderful blogs (besides feeling like a complete boob in the kitchen) is that I want to try new things. Reading about new ingredients and cooking techniques has reawakened my desire to get into the kitchen and cook. These blogs list recipes and have beautiful pictures of step-by-step instructions; it kinda makes me want to dump my blog in the trash when I compare mine to them, especially since I seriously doubt that anyone will want to tune into my blog to watch step by step photographs of me opening and nuking a Smart Ones frozen entree or ordering pizza online. But it also wants me to be more creative with my writing and documenting stuff on my blog. So, I am going to try to do just that.

I was reading one of them yesterday - inomthings.com. Ila was writing about these cool things called "roux blocks"; they look like blocks of chocolate and you just chop some or all of it up and simmer it with the rest of your ingredients for yummy sauces. How cool is that?? She has a post about making Hayashi rice and you can buy a hayashi roux block to make the sauce. Well, she can where she lives - this is Billings, Montana. If you can't buy it at Costco, Wal Mart, or Albertson's, you are pretty much SOL as that is all we have out here. And considering that most food markets use the local gastronomic leanings to govern what they purchase for their shelves, the shelves here pretty much lean towards beef and white bread; we aren't very diverse out here. But, inspired by the recipe, I went to the only store in Billings that I thought just might carry something like a roux block - Cost Plus World Market. I luuurve this store, but I have to stay far, far away from the dinner ware, bake ware and candy aisles as it is very easy to spend all of my rent money on stuff for the only room in the house I don't really use - the kitchen/dining room. I was also excited to go out shopping last night because we have finally gotten some warm weather (this means above 32F) and all of the parking lots are finally starting to de-ice. So I went trucking back to the food aisles, determined to find something neat and yummy to try. No roux blocks; in fact, their Asian food aisle was more like a shelf and a half of rice and assorted noodle-y things, a few bottles of teriyaki sauce, and a few pre-packaged fortune cookies. Dang. But, as you can see from the photo below, I did find a few treasures.

The Haribo fruit salad candy is one of my all time favs; the Napolitanke cookies are lemon orange flavored (yum!) and actually fit in really well with the lower carb/low sugar style of eating I am trying really hard to adopt; the two sodas are not such a great fit with that plan (and neither is the fruit salad candy, I know - leave me alone), but I am a sucker for interesting and unusual fizzy drinks - these are an old fashioned black cherry soda and a Key Lime cream soda; and the last item is a jar of Korma Curry sauce - a coconut flavored sauce with Indian spices. The directions say that all I have to do is saute some cubed chicken in a little oil until cooked through, dump in the jar of sauce and let simmer for 20 minutes. I think that I can handle that, even with my severely stunted cooking skills. I think I will add some onions and mushrooms to it as well, and perhaps try my hand at making some couscous to have with it.

Now all I need is a clean skillet.

TTFN.

I Want To Be More Than Someone In The Stands With A Wet Butt…

2010-02-16T09:19:00.001-07:00

I love watching the Olympics, but for me it is a two-edged sword. Let me explain.

I am an emotional person – which is actually kind of an understatement. Lots of things make me cry these days: movies, sporting events, commercials, commercials about movies about sporting events…you get the picture. The Olympics are no exception. The opening ceremony is usually something I kind of skip through, but I love watching the parade of athletes. I am inspired by the countries that have just a single athlete – the alpine skier from some desert country that has never even seen snow before, etc. I start to tear up as the Olympic flame comes into the stadium, the look of pride and excitement on the faces of those honored to carry it, a slight fear if this could be the year that someone trips and falls and the flames goes out. I love to cheer on the underdog, even when they are in direct competition with the good old USA. And of course this year there was the terrible tragedy before the games had even officially started, and of course the media will not let anyone forget about it, even for one single second; tormenting the family needlessly by camping out on their front doorstep (literally), asking the question that only tip-top journalists could come up with: How do you feel? Dude, seriously? HOW THE HELL DO YOU THINK THEY FEEL??? Your parents paid how much money for that degree in journalism?? Thank you so much for that insightful insight there Skippy. But I digress…

Oh yes, the two edged sword thing, right. It is a two edged sword because I am so inspired by so many of the athletes; many come from war-torn countries, or train with no sponsors and no money with sub-par equipment or training facilities. Some families make massive sacrifices so their children can pursue the dream of dreams, mortgaging the family home or quitting their jobs to devote themselves full time to their sport of choice. The athletes train from sun up to sun down for years to just be in the hunt, with no guarantee that there will be medals of precious metals in their future. They have self discipline and dedication up the ying yang. And some of those athletes come in dead last (someone has to) and are just as proud of that as they would be if they had brought home gold. To just be able to say “I was there and I participated” fulfills a lifetime of dreams for them. I honestly have to say that I think I admire them a little more than some of those who stand on the podium at the end of the day, listening to their country’s national anthem fill the stadium and their fans cheering for them. I see and hear their stories and they make me weep. Yes, literally weep. I am so happy for them and proud of them and my heart breaks and the floodgates open. Man the lifeboats, Skippy! We’re taking on water!!

And here is where the flip side of the sword comes into play. The tears of pride often turn to tears of bitterness and self-pity. No, I was never a contender for the Olympics in any way, but sometimes I wonder – what if? What if my life had played out differently? What if I had learned to develop some sort of self-discipline and “no fear” attitude? Where would I be now? Probably not on the podium at the Olympics, but probably not 200lbs overweight and without relationships in my life either. And most of the time, it makes me weep because I feel like it’s too late for me. I have wasted away the last 25 years of my life and along with it, my youth. Too late to pursue dreams, too late for success, just flat out too late…for anything.

But that’s not really true, is it? (That’s a rhetorical question there, Skippy.) The Iron Man competition has divisions for those 60+ years old that participate. There are thousands of 40+ people that run in marathons every year. Now, I am not saying that it is one of my dreams to be an elite athlete (although I do dream of the Iron Man) (stop laughing – I really do!!); but I don’t want to continue life as a spectator, watching others fulfill their dreams while I sit on a soggy bleacher getting my butt wet.

How do I start? When do I finally say – with conviction – today is the day that I change my life?

TTFN.

It’s 12pm – Do You Know Where Your Chicken Is?

2010-02-12T10:16:00.000-07:00

I haven’t been blogging lately because I don’t have anything worth talking about. Nothing is going on in my life except some negative stuff, and I didn’t really want to go on here just to whine. However, I will mention:

Still working on my weight; still not making any progress.
Still haven’t gotten my bankruptcy filed; still having 25% of my wages garnished. I have everything thing I need to get it done except for the back bone to open my mail and to gather up all the scary paper work.
My only friend has decided that she is not interested in being my friend anymore and has subsequently and efficiently cut me out of her life without a whisper.
My rosacea seems to have pitched itself to a height never documented in medical journals and makes me wish that wearing veils over the face is an accepted practice in our culture.
I haven’t been able to see my therapist for the last two weeks due to snow; she works from her home on a treacherous neighborhood corner where it is not uncommon for vehicles to smash head-on into each other, hit her tree in the front yard, or to even hit her HOUSE when the streets are covered with snow and ice like they have been for weeks now. I see her on Saturdays; even though this week has been new-snow-free, there is an 80% chance of snow tomorrow. I don’t care if it’s MY vehicle that hits her house; I am going to be there tomorrow!!
Valentine’s Day is the day after tomorrow. 25 years in a row without anyone in my life, and the streak remains unbroken. You’d think that I would be used to it by now and that I would have found some way to deal with it and make sure it doesn’t get to me; but I haven’t. And it hurts. Badly. Nothing like two months of hype and promotion by every single means possible just to remind you that no one loves you to make you feel worse about yourself and more alone in the world. Thanks Hallmark!

Even though it has been mind-numbingly slow at the 8-5 day job, it has been a nice opportunity for me to troll the internet, looking for nifty cup cake recipes. Sis and I are totally hooked on the idea of making them for profit in the future when I get moved out there, and I have found several awesome blogs that are devoted either entirely to cup cakes, or to cooking in various forms. The down side of all this lovely recipe reading is that I am pretty sure I have gained back the 10 lbs I recently lost and gained another five just by reading them! Doesn’t drooling burn calories? No? It should. Judging by the puddle on my desk around my keyboard, you would think that I would at least loose the water weight I seem to be retaining in my feet. Sheesh!!

And now for a completely unrelated thought.

Yesterday, as I stepped out of the front door on my way out of the office for lunch, I noticed a chicken lying on the sidewalk in front of the building. Not a live chicken, mind you; this was a raw chicken – whole – still in the plastic wrapper from the grocery store. Just lying there in the sun, trying to be unobtrusive, just hanging out. My brain kind of locked up for a second as I passed by it (uh, is that a chicken??). Yes, I passed by it, since I was on my way to the parking lot and what was I going to do with it if I picked it up? Let it ride in the seat next to me on my way to Mickey D’s for lunch? Um…no. I did my lunch thing and when I came back, it was still there. Now, you need to understand that we don’t get a huge amount of foot traffic in front of our building since it is in kind of an industrial end of town; most of the people that pass by the front of our building are either working here, coming here to conduct some kind of business with us, or are part of the group of homeless and - how do I put this – inebriated type persons that tend to wander around down here. So you see, the thought of someone walking from nowhere to nowhere and not realizing that they had lost an ENTIRE CHICKEN along the way made my brain hurt a little. I picked up the chicken, gingerly and with two fingers, trying hard not to let it touch me or anything I may consider touching in the near future, and brought it into the office with me much to the incredulous laughter of the guys. Yes, they saw it too and were content to let sleeping dogs…er chickens…lie. I threw it in the garbage and washed my hands for about a half an hour. For the rest of the day and most of the evening I tried to imagine who the heck had lost this chicken. When did they notice? And how pissed off were they?

TTFN.

FASHION AND THE FAT GIRL

2010-02-01T18:22:00.002-07:00

One of the things that I really miss about my former self is dressing well. I haven’t bothered to dress up at all since I was about 20 or so; that is when I really started packing on the pounds and started to slack off on attending my religious meetings. Those were really the only opportunities I had to put on my great heels and feel pretty.

Since giving up on me, it’s pretty rare to see me in anything other than elastic waist jeans (horror) and t-shirts. If I do have to wear a dress for some sort of occasion, it is usually some formless sack that hangs from my shoulders; and since I am on the vertically-challenged side (that means short), the dress and or skirt usually hits about 2” above swollen ankles or it hits the floor. Not my best look.

My ankles swell up pretty bad if I am wearing any shoe without some type of arch support – this being because I have managed to flatten my arch into non-existence from carrying all this extra weight around. Walking on your tip-toes in stilettos is not the same thing as arch support. And now that my girls are so big from all the weight, when I slip into a pair of high heels I have a tendency to be top and front heavy and lead with my forehead. Need I reiterate, not really an attractive look for me.

On Friday I sent in an application for a job in Chehalis, WA. After sending it in and being all giddy about what might happen if they did hire me ($3.50 more per hour, great benefits, etc.), I suddenly had a panic attack – what if they have a dress code??? We have a dress code here that pretty much amounts to no flip-flops, no short-shorts, and no holes in your jeans. What if this place hires me and I have to wear a skirt everyday? Oh…help.

My closet consists of three different pairs of the afore mentioned elastic waist jeans (black, stonewash, and khaki), about 10 different t-shirts, one pair of LL Bean black mocs, one pair of tenny-runners, and one pair of black Ariat lace up boots – heavily scuffed. It also consists of about 5 pairs of very shiny black high heels that have never seen the light of day, and never will until I lose about 150 lbs to avoid embarrassing forehead leading accidents.

This leads me (finally) into the thought that brought up the title for today’s post: Where the heck does a 5’3” tall 325lb (give or take) potato of a mature woman with teen-age taste find clothes that fit and do not require a wholesaler’s license from Nieman Marcus and an address in NYC or LA to purchase? There are places to buy such items (but not in Montana, I can assure you), but I don’t have $325 to pay for a single skirt. Plus the fact that my bra bottom currently takes up the same piece of real estate around my mid-section that the waist band of said skirt would wish to occupy, along with the undergarments required to tuck, smooth and shape the rest of my body’s real estate into said skirt and keeping it from popping out at inopportune moments. Who needs to breathe anyway? I hear being comfortable is over-rated.

It almost makes me hope that they don’t hire me. Almost.

While watching an episode of What Not To Wear (from bed) this weekend, my heroes Clinton and Stacey once again pounded home the message YOU ARE WORTH IT. You are worth the effort of dressing well and looking nice; you are worth spending a little (or a lot of) money on; you are worth feeling confident, fashionable, and beautiful. By the end of the show the gal they were working on was believing it and living it.

How the hell do I get on that show? I could believe it too if I had $5000 to spend.

I also found the blog that my all-time favorite author, Jen Lancaster, writes. I love, love, love and adore this woman. Not in a creepy I-think-I’ll-start-stalking-her way (besides, she lives in Chicago – not very practical for me if I did decide to stalk her, which I won’t), but more in a I-want-to-imitate-practically-everything-this-woman-does way. She is the fantastic author of the books Bitter Is The New Black, Bright Lights Big Ass, Such A Pretty Fat, Pretty In Plaid, and the brand new soon to be released in May – My Fair Lazy. (And, NO, she did not pay me in any way, shape or form to list her books on my blog. I have read them all and will re-read them for the rest of my life!!!) I was reading a few past posts and she has an awesome one about plus-sized clothing websites. They. Are. Awesome. I won’t list them here as I feel that would be copying part of her post, but you can check it out at www.jennsylvania.com; check out her post on November 13, 2009 titled: You In The Size Zero Pants, Finish Your Carrot Sticks And Skip This Post. Be sure to read ALL of her stuff, because she. Is. Fabulous. Did I mention that I adore her? Yes? OK. Just checking.

So, anyway, I guess the point that I am very lamely trying to make is that: 1) I need to lose weight so I can buy awesome clothes and look awesome again, and 2) I need a job that pays well so that when I do lose weight and start buying awesome clothes, I can get some seriously kick-ass shoes to go with! ‘Nuff said.

TTFN.

Oh Goody - A Shiny New Year!

2010-01-03T20:55:00.005-07:00

Oh joy - a brand spanking new year. I was still writing 2008 on my checks; how am I going to get used to writing 2010??? And what will we call this new year? Two thousand ten? Twenty ten? Oh ten? Just plain ten? I am leaning towards twenty ten, myself.

So Ollie came over on the first and we spent the day watching movies, laughing and just talking. We watched Orphan, The Watcher, and 100 Feet. Orphan was good and creepy; The Watcher was an older film from the 90's with Keanu Reeves and James Spader where Keanu plays a serial killer; and 100 Feet was down right hide-your-eyes-and-pee-your-pants SCARY!! We had a great time.

I made my favorite Tamale Pie casserole which I haven't made in about 10 years; it has beef, chili, corn, sliced black olives, and beef tamales all combined in it and then topped with tons of cheese and then baked in the oven and served with super cold Dos Equis and Fritos. MMMMM!! I also tried a new recipe that Sissy sent me, and it is OH SO GOOD!! It is a cream cheese blueberry coffee cake and it looked like this:
I followed Sissy's suggestion and made it with cake flour instead of regular flour, and I decided to throw some walnut halves on top that I had in the cupboard that were left over from some other recipe I had made a while ago and didn't want them to go bad. Oh. My. Goodness. This cake is super yummy and moist and full of blueberries. The cake itself is not very sweet, but the topping of sugar and cinnamon makes a sweet crust on top that complements the berries very nicely. Drop me a comment if you would like the recipe.

Well, you all try to be good this year. And as my Uncle Harry used to tell me, "Don't do anything I wouldn't do; and if you do, don't name it after me."

TTFN.

Baby, Its Cold Outside

2009-12-31T08:46:00.001-07:00

BRRRRRR – I am telling you, I am tired of being COLD! And as well insulated as I am, if I am cold, then it is COLD! I am cold at home, cold at work; the only place that I am warm is in bed, under a super-snugly blanket my mom bought me! But, it’s really hard to make any money if you stay home from work just to stay under a snugly blanket. Drat it all. I also find it hard to get any work done at the office because I have an awesome little space heater that keeps me warm, and I don’t want to get up and leave my desk because of it! The office floor plan here is all open space with just turn-of-the-century wall radiators for heat. Seriously, they all have to be at least 80 years old – very pretty, to be sure, but not super efficient at heating all this vast open space. The copier is over by the windows, which are drafty, and I just don’t want to get up!! At least it is supposed to be 40 by Saturday; that will bring out the shorts and T-shirts for most people around here!

The count down to the move is now officially beginning with the New Year. I am so excited about going back to the West Coast; I wish I was going tomorrow. Mom has been off work since Christmas – her office closes between Christmas and New Year’s – so she has been staying out at Sissy’s place. They have gotten started on cleaning out what is to be my room and have made great progress so far. They got a whole bunch of paint swatches to test out; I would like my room to have an Asian/spa-like feel to it so we are leaning towards a nice, sage-y green color or perhaps something in the mocha latte spectrum. I have been trying to find pictures online of Asian-inspired décor but have actually been having trouble! I keep getting furniture websites, but I want to see fully decorated rooms. I am hoping to be able to buy my dream bed – a platform style that doesn’t need a box spring and sits just an inch or so off the floor. I already have several art prints that Sissy bought for me a few years ago that are Japanese, and the few pieces of furniture that I am bringing with me are dark wood, so I think they will all fit in well.

I keep thinking of all the fun things we can all do together once I am back there; trips to the bead stores, marathon garage sale shopping with mom, taking the back roads to the Coast. I have a wish list on the Powell Book Store website (a super awesome book store in downtown Portland: www.powells.com ) and have been adding books on different walks that you can take around the city. I won’t be very close to Portland like I have been in the past – Onalaska is about 80 miles north of Portland – but I hope that my life there will allow me the flexibility of going there whenever I would like. I am looking forward to the SHOPPING!!! Even grocery shopping will be better. I longed for Montana to get a Trader Joe’s out here, but I don’t think it will happen in my lifetime. Sissy and I are really going to focus on getting healthy and losing weight; she has been doing pretty well in that regard without my help, but I know I will do a lot better with her help!

The goal is to get started packing this weekend since I have a three day weekend to work with. I know that probably sounds odd, but if you knew me and my professional outlook on procrastination… I am going to start with packing up all the stuff that needs to go into storage, sorting out the stuff that can go into a massive garage sale this Spring and stuff that can be thrown out or donated. I don’t want this move to go like my move from Missoula to Billings – my mom having to come out and help me pack up my entire two bedroom apartment in four days!! THAT WILL NOT HAPPEN AGAIN! I was so embarrassed by that! The move caught me a bit off guard, but I was mostly just completely overwhelmed by the whole process. Not this time.

So, please send me all the calm packing vibes you can to help me get going on this massive project. The goal date for the move is the first week of July, but it’s not written in stone by any means. It could be April for all I know. And as far as I’m concerned, the sooner the better!!

TTFN.

Did Ya Miss Me?

2009-12-16T08:39:00.001-07:00

I haven’t been blogging** lately because I haven’t really felt like it, and sometimes I feel like all I will be doing is whining anyway and who wants to read THAT? So, here are a few things that have been going on:

1. I am so sick of hearing about Tiger Woods and his errant clubs. Does anyone really care? I mean, REALLY care? Why is this national news? Isn’t there enough real news going on to keep the media busy? Apparently not. Move on already. Sheesh.

2. We lost one of our favorite guys at work last month because he failed a random drug test. We were devastated. My company has a zero tolerance policy (which I whole-heartedly support) and he knew the minute that he got called up for it that he was going to fail it. We all wanted to hug him and break our foot off in his ass at the same time. How could he be so stupid?? Especially after he constantly told anyone who would listen that he was violently opposed to drugs. Methinks he protested too much.

3. I am still working on the bankruptcy thing; the only thing holding it up is the fact that cannot find my 2008 tax returns anywhere!! ERRRGGG.

4. I have firmly decided that the move back to the west coast is on. Unless I meet the man of my dreams or win the lottery, nothing is going to stand in the way. I told my boss and co-workers and broke the news to Ollie; everyone took it very well. They are all bummed that I am leaving (no threats of hari kari or quitting) but all are very happy for me as it is quite obvious how excited I am about being reunited with my family. I have been on my own in Montana for 10 years; I accomplished a few things and learned many more things about myself and I consider that a success. Now I just have to get the money saved up to rent the truck, etc. I have July 1 as a target date. We shall see how it goes. The plan as it stands now is to start packing away stuff that I plan on keeping but moving into storage; list some stuff on eBay with the hopes of making a little money towards the move and getting rid of some stuff I don’t need anymore; decide what goes to my new home at Karen’s and what goes to storage. I plan to have a big garage sale, probably in May, to help get rid of even more stuff. It’s amazing how much crap you accumulate – even when you’re single! Until you are confronted with the task of moving all of it, you don’t have a clue how much you’ve got. My goal is to do it all by myself without Mom having to come out at the last minute and save my bacon. Wish me luck!!

5. Still trying to lose weight. Have managed only to gain a little more. I don’t understand why I just can’t get motivated to do it, and it is SO FRUSTRATING. I have posted really horrible “before” pictures on my other blog, and if they aren’t Biggest Loser material, then I don’t know what is. Everything hurts nowadays – back, ankles, hips – getting out of bed in the morning is sheer agony these days. Shouldn’t that be motivation enough? Besides the fact that I am now diabetic because of my weight? What will it take to get this big ass in gear? Dunno, but I will continue to work on it.

Well, that’s it for now. TTFN!

** too funny; spellchecker doesn’t recognize the word “blogging”; when you click on it for options, it lists: bogging, logging, flogging, clogging, and slogging. For some reason, I find that immensely funny.

2009-10-27T09:53:00.001-06:00

It seems so odd to me that, at 42 years of age, I am just now beginning to learn about myself: who I am, what I believe in, what I have not been allowing my self to feel, etc. Why does it take a professional to help me figure this all out? Because I haven’t been able to do it on my own, that’s why.

At my last therapy session, I learned about something called Learned Helplessness. Yep – it was a new concept to me too; you can actually learn to be helpless. And I am not talking about the damsel that is always being tied to the railroad tracks (although she could probably use counseling as well – why does she always wind up with men that tie her to train tracks? But I digress…). This is my kind of helpless; the paralyzing can’t make a decision because I am afraid to move ahead with my life kind of helpless.

This was an actual study performed years ago by leading psychologists. Two dogs were placed in two cages, side by side. Each cage was identical with a metal floor and a lever inside. At random times, the floors of both cages were simultaneously shocked with electricity (**see note below) for an uncomfortable length of time. As you can imagine, there was quite a bit of hopping and dancing around being done by the subjects as they tried to escape the shocks coming from the floor. During the course of said hopping about, dog A accidentally tripped his lever, stopping the flow of current to both cages. In short order, dog A learned that tripping this lever would always stop the scary and painful waves radiating from the floor and would immediately hit it whenever they started. Dog B, however, never learned this lesson – even though he also had a lever and it would also stop the shocks to both cages - and eventually he just gave in to depression and just lay there and endured the pain and fear, never trying to avoid it or stop it, just waiting for it to end.

Guess which dog I am?

This was a real eye opener for me. That is basically a blue print for how I live my life. I just sit still, waiting for the pain and the fear, never knowing why it comes or what to do about it when it does. Therefore, I am paralyzed with fear of living on the whole. I have just been sitting still on the sidelines of life, dealing with the depression by not dealing with it, just waiting for it all to end.

And speaking of dog illustrations, my therapist has me write essays about my feelings on certain subjects. She had me write about what I gain from staying overweight, and what I will sacrifice by loosing it. I will put that essay on my other blog if you want to check it out. But at one point I was describing my relationship with food by using the illustration of a mistreated dog; no matter how much I abuse food – ignore it, talk bad about it, kick it to the curb, neglect it – it is always there for me, waiting to be loved, wanting to please. My therapist read that part, paused to look me dead in the eye, then re-read the section substituting “I” for “it”. I was really saying how no matter how much I am ignored, talked bad about, kicked to the curb and neglected, I am always there – waiting to be loved, wanting to please, waiting, waiting, waiting to be thrown some scrap of kindness and affection, some sort of confirmation that I exist and am worthy. I burst into tears and cried and cried; it still hits me hard as I write this and the tears well up again because it is true.

I live my whole life scared to move about in it because I am afraid I will say or do something that will offend someone, somewhere. If I say this thing, will I offend someone? If I do this thing, will my family loose respect for me? That would probably be appropriate if I was planning murder or a bank robbery, or if I planned to perform sexual favors for the entire city of New York. But these are just simple everyday things that I am thinking about. When I am waiting to make a turn into traffic, I often wonder if the driver of the car behind me is angry because I am taking too long. I have entire conversations with this person in my head about how I am just trying to be careful and that I can’t go because there are too many cars coming, etc. I find that I am constantly exhausted by this line of thinking; it affects me everywhere! At work, in the grocery store, driving on the road, talking to my friends, family, strangers. Everywhere I go and everything I do is affected by this. And it isn’t just because of my weight. I think my weight is a symptom of all the other stuff, but it just adds to the CRAZY mix. I could be packaged – for enough servings of Crazy for the whole family, just add water and stir!

So I am starting to implement some new ways into my life. It is hard to turn down the crazy and look for the lever in my cage, but I am pretty sure that I know where it is now. I just have to have the strength to reach for it. It is up to me and within my power to change this, and I am determined to do it.

**NOTE: in spite of the last paragraph, I have to submit to the crazy and add this little note. In case you are wondering, no – it does not make me happy that animals are experimented on that way. I do feel it is cruel. But – having said that – I didn’t do the experiment nor did I ask for it to be done. But it is done and there is nothing I can do about it now. So chill out.

TTFN.

Just trying to hang in there

2009-10-13T20:02:00.002-06:00

Well, I managed to sell one of my bracelets below; I sold the one with the matching earrings! Yay! Now, if only I could sell the rest of my stuff. Oh well.

It has been colder than HECK here! Normally we are in the mid 60's at this time of year; two weeks ago it was 83; for the last week and a half we can barely break 30. We've even had a couple of inches of snow!

I decided to add another blog that will mostly deal with my weight loss journey. You can find it here, and I also added it to the right side of this blog. It will have my food journals, track my weight loss, before/after pictures, etc.

Otherwise, nothing much new going on.

TTFN.

Bracelets

2009-10-04T13:15:00.003-06:00

Not feeling so hot this weekend; had a migraine yesterday. I was able to go see my therapist, but the migraine struck in the middle of our session, so I just came home and went to bed. Today I am just taking it easy and watching football.

Here are some bracelets I made and have just listed in my eBay store; I made them a few weeks ago and just now was able to clean off my computer desk enough to get to the scanner!

Please to enjoy:

TTFN!

Never give up on the day…

2009-10-02T09:48:00.002-06:00

Wednesday night was a bad night; I had a binge episode and the rest of the night was one huge pity party blowout, complete with the rending of garments and the gnashing of teeth. It was spectacular in its patheticness (is that a real word?). It left its mark on me the next morning as the depression was oozing from my pores and was painfully obvious to anyone who happened to glance in my general direction. I had a really hard time keeping my composure throughout the day, and my lunch hour was spent in tears, weeping, and screaming in agony at the cosmos in general. I’m sure you get the general idea.

I had been writing my post throughout the day as I usually do, trying to capture the helplessness that I had felt the night before. It was full of accusations and finger pointing, past regrets, and general “poor me” crap and “if only” scenarios. Even in my profoundly depressed state of mind, I thought it was waaaaaaay to depressing to post! Even though I write honestly, the main goal is to be encouraging at the same time; that post would not have served any purpose at all.

My point in all of this is: sometimes good things still happen, and you don’t really realize it. Now, a few of these things that happened are nothing truly outstanding in the scheme of life. But, when you group them all together and stand back and look at the entire collection as a whole, it really changed how I felt. I didn’t really even notice them at the time they were happening, but when the BIG good thing happened at the end of the day, it made it easier to see them. Kinda like one of those pictures that are all dots, and you finally focus your eyes just right and the picture that was there all along POPS out right at you!

I was cleaning out a really old email box for an email address that I don’t even use anymore and found a recent email advertising a sequel to my all-time favorite computer game: Zuma. I had been hoping for the last several months that eventually a sequel would be made. The email was from MSN games and said that it was $19.99 to purchase, plus I would get a 40% off coupon for the next game I purchased. When I got home and went online to purchase the game, it was actually only $14.95!
I was looking at one of my favorite online cross-stitch websites and discovered that one of the patterns I had been eyeballing was on sale – 50% off! I bought it.
My bankruptcy attorney called me; he had gotten together, in person, with the debt management gal and decided that he would handle my bankruptcy. He kept referring to the collection agency that is not being co-operative as “those bastards over there”. Instead of charging me his standard $1800 fee, he is only charging me $500 (after first saying he would do it for $600) and he is letting me make payments to him, AND he is not going to wait until I pay him in full to file. This will stop the judgment the collection agency filed, and instead of getting their money paid in full over time, they will now get squat.
When I got home from work, I found my Nordic walking poles that I was sure had been stolen out of my Rodeo because I couldn’t find them. I had unloaded them from the opposite side of the truck than I normally do, and they were leaning into the corner where I couldn’t see them. I had almost bought a new pair off of eBay the other day, but they didn’t have the correct height.
I remembered to grab my checkbook and book of stamps so I could actually MAIL my rent today, on time (instead of driving across town to my icky landlord's home to drop it off).

So, when I got up today, I said – today will be an AWESOME day. Because look how bad yesterday started out, but look how good it ended!

TTFN.

Over the shoulder boulder holder FAIL

2009-09-29T11:44:00.000-06:00

It’s interesting what makes you happy and excited, and by the same turn can utterly disappoint you. I ordered a new bra and was so excited to get it. I am really hard on them as my lady boulders are quite, um, large. And HEAVY. It’s hard to find one that fits me comfortably, they are expensive at my size, and they are basically an all around pain in the butt to deal with. I think that they should make putting your bra on everyday an Olympic event. I am a shoe in for gold in the heavyweight division: Greco Roman wrestling style. But, I digress. This new one I ordered looked so comfortable and supportive, and not S&M scary looking either. I was waiting on pins and needles for it to come. It came yesterday. I always have stuff shipped to work so that I don’t worry about it being scuttled away off of my front door step (imagine the shock the thief would receive upon opening this prize!!). So I had to wait all day until I got home to open the package; holy pup tents, Batman! It was HUGE. I mean, seriously, even for me who expects it, it was HUGE. I excitedly whipped off my upper stuff and tried it on. Well, tried to try it on. It just didn’t fit. Extreme disappointment washed over me like a flood. Then I felt extremely stupid; I felt like the world was ending, but it was just a stupid bra that didn’t fit! Get a grip!!! I made a couple of adjustments to it and tried to wear it to work today, but it just looks awful and doesn’t feel much better. Intelligently, I had grabbed my normal one on my way out the door and stuffed it in my bag. I changed when I got to work. Tonight I will dig out the return label that came with it and send it back, and will reorder my standard ugly one. Dang!! Heavy sigh…..

Mooving on…

I have been trying to pay more attention to my eating habits. I keep waffling between being really gung-ho and apathetic about it. It is frustrating me to no end. I am trying to finish my book but when I got sick I kinda got thrown off track and am off my game a little. I am working on getting back into it. I still eat out, but not as often; and when I do I pay attention to how I am feeling – emotionally and hunger-wise – and I find I am able to order less food and be just as happy (if not happier). Take yesterday for example: I have been bringing my lunch for the last several days, but today I had to run errands during lunch so I stopped at Taco Bell. I would normally order 2-3 tacos, one burrito, and a caramel apple empanada (oooooooo, those are SO GOOD!!!) with a small drink. I always over ate and was miserable for the rest of the afternoon, not to mention the acid reflux I would have to battle down. Yesterday I ordered one burrito, an order of cinnamon twists and a small drink that I promptly left in the Rodeo and forgot to bring into the building with me when I got back to work. I was perfectly fine with that amount of food, not hungry after I ate and was satisfied all afternoon. I learned that instead of ingesting 1070-1120 calories, 47-54 grams of fat, and 104-114 grams of carbs and feeling like crap, I could ingest 620 calories, 24 grams of fat and 77 carbs and be satisfied. Now, are the lower numbers good? No, they are just lower than what I had been ingesting; they are still bad, but better than before. There are other choices that I could have made that probably would have resulted in much lower numbers and a higher quantity of food, but I am not that quick in the drive-thru line.

I also took myself out to dinner last night. All I could think about all day long was the stupid shrimp and cream cheese wonton appetizers at Montana Jack’s. I knew that if I tried to stifle that craving, I would end up eating everything in the house just to try to distract myself, so I caved. I ordered a half order of them = four little packets of heaven. I then ordered my usual BBQ chicken wrap sandwich with fries. I ate the sandwich but didn’t touch one single fry. I should have just had the appetizer and went home, but no, I feel guilty about doing that. WHY?? Why would I feel guilty about going to a restaurant and only ordering a little bit of food? Something to work on to be sure. I also ordered a piece of cheesecake, but got it to go. I was very satisfied and not at all hungry, but I wanted that stupid cheesecake.

I told you all of that just to tell you this: the cheesecake is still in my fridge, untouched. Even after the bra disappointment, and having to talk to the debt reduction service people about my problem with the collection agency, I never ate the cheesecake. I never even had the desire to eat it.

I will take my victories where I can get them.

TTFN.

A difficult decision, rather easily made...

2009-09-25T15:56:00.002-06:00

Well, I am making plans for the future; next summer, to be more specific. I have decided that I have had my fill of independence here in Montana. I miss my family so much!! The little ones are growing up without knowing me, and it kills me. My mother is not getting any younger, and I don’t think that it is fair that my sister will bear the entire burden of caring for her if something happens to her. She plans to retire and move in with Sissy, and thus poor Sissy will be under continuous fire without relief. Les is almost the same age as Mom, so the upcoming years would be difficult for her on her own. Besides, I love my Mom and Sissy, and I want to be near them both. I yearn for their company – even though my mom usually drives me insane. Sissy and Les have always told me that if I wanted to, I was welcome to move in with them; they have a very nice four bedroom home on five acres out in Onalaska, WA, waaaaaaaay out in the North 40 Boonies. Seriously, they can’t even get cable out there. The country lands are beautiful; they can see Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Rainier, and Mt. Adams from their front property on a clear day and the skies are so full of stars at night that it is unbelievable. Les is very excited and wants me to move out there ASAP. Sissy sends me text messages every day, asking me if I am all packed up yet.

I will miss my wonderful Montana, but going “home” doesn’t mean I can’t come back here someday. Sissy and I have always wanted to go into business together; perhaps now we will be able to do it! We have always toyed with opening a “modified” restaurant; like a place that only serves breakfast and boxed lunches; or a place that only does dessert, etc. She and I are both into photography and she has taken many beautiful photos of the local area, and I keep trying to get her to make calendars and sell them at some of the local stores in the area. She is afraid to do the marketing, but I’m not! So maybe I can help her do that too.

I am a seriously compulsive list maker, so now I am making lists up the wazoo! What to put into storage and what to sell, what to sell at a garage sale and what to list on eBay, etc. We haven’t told my Mom yet because she will drive me nuts, calling me everyday – or several times a day – asking when I’m coming, what my plans are, trying to be helpful but just coming across as bat-poop crazy, etc. To be perfectly honest, I don’t know the answer to either question. I sure won’t be planning on moving before next spring. No one in their right mind would try to drive a U-Haul truck over the five mountain passes between Billings and Onalaska after October and before May. The odds for nasty driving conditions just don’t make it worth it! I really don’t want to be sitting on the side of I-90, on a mountain pass, in horizontal snow and below zero temps. No thanks. I am trying to decide if I want to store my stuff here or there; I can’t decide if I should store my piano or try to find a place for it at Sissy’s. I think I want to get rid of as much bedroom stuff as I can, and maybe I can buy the platform bed I have always wanted at the local IKEA. They have one in Portland, and they also have one in Renton, WA; so I have two stores to choose from! My bedroom has a kind of Asian flair, but I have never been able to really carry it off with the sleigh bed…

So, have you been enjoying the new season of TV shows? I have a few early favs: Community – I absolutely ADORE Joel McHale, he reminds me of Jeremy so much and he just kills me (if Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes ever grew up and because a human being, he would look like Joel McHale); Modern Family – I really like this one, and I am kind of partial to sitcoms that are filmed in “mockumentary” style, so you know I am a faithful watcher of The Office, and this season will be no different. Last night was the premiere of Flash Forward; I thought it was really well done, and this is the first drama series in a long time that I think I might actually keep watching after the pilot! I have been enjoying Glee, but I am a survivor of marching band (and band camp) in high school, so it’s pretty much a given that I can relate to the characters on the show. The Big Bang Theory is back for another season, and I am so glad!! I purchased the first season on DVD and hope to get the second season soon. Of course new seasons of Family Guy make me happy, and I can’t wait to see if The Cleveland Show will be any good. I am anticipating V and Brothers; both look good, although Brothers is being slammed by critics before it has even aired. And then there is the fabulous So You Think You Can Dance, The Biggest Loser, and all of the NFL Football I can stand (this will be the first year I have EVER cheered for the Minnesota Vikings – I love you, Brett! And for the first time in about 25 years, there is a team I hate more than the Oakland Traitors Raiders: the Philadelphia Eagles. Any team that kicks off a good, hard working guy to let a convicted felon play on their team for obscene amounts of money deserves to go 0-12 for the rest of their franchise life. Pffft.).

TTFN.

Got Cramps?

2009-09-23T15:21:00.001-06:00

Well, as you can see, I have managed to get my weight down a little; and it makes me happy to see the number go in that general direction. Unfortunately, I am doing it the hard way – gastroenteritis. Very, very painful. To those of you out there that have suffered from this, my heart goes out to you. This is the illness I suffered from almost a year ago that caused my diabetes to be uncovered. There isn’t a whole lot that can be done for you; you just have to suffer through it until it has decided you have been punished enough and moves on. I lost two days of work this week and wasn’t sure if I would make it all day today or not. Seems like I will survive. I have some trouble standing upright, and if I move around too much the pains come back with a vengenance. Fortunately, it’s been a quiet day; not a lot of trips out to the warehouse or to the copier. I have lost about six pounds since last week – the hard way. Also, two days being completely horizontal and drinking lots of fluids have reduced my ankles and feet to normal again. YAY.

Even though I watch The Biggest Loser religiously every season, I was pretty sure I would not be watching this season (SPOILER ALERT – I will be talking about this week’s episode, so if you’ve TIVO’D it but not watched it, you may want to skip this part). There is so much yelling at the contestants by the trainers and I just can’t stand it. That, and even though they are monitored by doctors, etc. it still isn’t a very realistic way to lose weight. The contestants are put on a very low calorie/fat diet and they work out in the gym for 6-8 hours a day. I don’t even like to do things that feel GOOD for 6-8 hours a day! Of course, that is the only way they can get such dramatic results in such a short period of time; I seriously doubt that networks think we would follow these people for the 2-3 years it would normally take for these people to loose these amounts of weight. I know I would certainly get bored with it. And if I managed to be accepted onto the show, would I go? You bet your sweet bippy I would. Anyhoo I caved in last night and watched it. I was actually really glad that I did. This is the dreaded second week; the week where people lose only 1-2 lbs or actually gain, despite eating nothing and then working out until they barf up what they did eat. It’s called metabolism shock; drop 15 lbs in seven days and your body goes into WTF mode and hangs on to all the fat and calories it can with all the strength it can muster. It’s normal, and it’s incredibly frustrating. So the challenge this week was: if the group can lose a total of 150 lbs, there would be NO ELIMINATION. No one would go home! BUT, and the buts are big on this show (sorry, couldn’t resist), if the goal was not met, two people would be sent packing. The contestants were very positive and were sure they could pull it off. They went on their merry ways and started working hard. The next day, when the trainers found out, they absolutely glowed with negativity. Now, I understand that they are worried and don’t want the contestants to hype themselves up over something they could not accomplish. But what pissed me off is that the trainers were sure that they could not accomplish it. The contestants were obviously very dejected when they saw the trainers attitudes about this challenge. But they persevered. As a group they met with that celebrity chef that ambushes you in the super market and goes home with you to cook a nice meal; the blonde with the Aussie accent. He gave them a nice seminar on nutrition, etc., and at the end there was a quiz. If, as a group, they got 5 out of the 8 questions correct, they got a 15lb advantage at the weigh in; reducing their group goal from 150lbs to 135lbs. They got them right with only missing two. Hurrah! Then they did their group physical challenge which was walking from raft to raft in a baseball diamond shaped course; the “bases” separated by decreasingly wide balance beams that they had to walk on. They had to get from the home platform to the first raft, or base, as a group; they could not continue on to the next one until everyone had gotten on the first base, and so on. As soon as one person fell in the water the challenge was over. The prize for making it to the first base was another 5lb advantage at the weigh in; second base was an additional 5 lbs; third base was calls home for everyone; and the last prize for getting back to the home raft was an additional 10 lbs advantage at the weigh in. It was really tough, but everyone helped one another and they made it all the way around!! There were tears, high fives and hugs all around. It was awesome to watch. At the actual weigh in, the trainers were there complete in black leather biker jackets and long faces to match. They knew there was no way they would make the new goal of 105lbs as a group. This seemed to be confirmed with the pink team went first; Amanda only lost 4lbs and her partner lost 6. However, this was the only team that had both partners in single digits; Julio, who was the group pariah after his partner got sent home last week, proved his worth by losing an astonishing 19lbs all by himself! The orange team, with Shay who is the heaviest woman at about 450lbs, hadn’t weighed in yet and the group had already exceeded the goal weight, and everyone was safe; after they weighed in, it turns out that they beat the original goal weight by 5lbs – the group lost an incredible 155 lbs!!! I was so happy to see those stupid negative smirks get wiped off the trainers faces! This group proved that the week 2 of death could be defeated. HA! Take THAT!!! And I was so happy that not only did they actually meet the original challenge, they exceeded it. It was awesome, and not just a little encouraging. Will I be watching next week? Yeah, probably.

TTFN.

Oh, global warming, you nasty booger…

2009-09-18T16:30:00.004-06:00

Man, it’s been HOT here the last few weeks. We have been in the mid to upper 90’s for the last several weeks which is pretty unusual around here. We are normally in the low 70’s around this time of year; we will probably drop from the 90’s to the 50’s in a three week span – that happens here a lot. Montana’s weather motto is: If you don’t like the weather, wait 10 minutes; it will change.

So, since it’s been so warm, I still have not been exercising. I have a lot of trouble regulating my body temperature (and it’s worse when I am heavy, better when I am thin) and because I do not sweat, I overheat really easily. I overheat just walking around large warehouse-style stores like Wal-Mart or Costco; places where it is not evenly cool all over. My face turns the color of a ripe eggplant and feels like it is cooking from the inside out. I really do want to walk, but I just can’t do it for more than two or three minutes in 90° heat. I try to motivate myself to put on an exercise DVD and just turn the fan on high and aim it dead on me, but I am so out of shape that they are too much for me; I wind up sitting on the couch watching them like a movie. LAME! The mind is willing, but the body says to shut the hell up and siddown.

I know if just move even a little bit that it will help to rev up my metabolism. The goal for this weekend is to leave the TV off until the Montana State football game comes on, put on the dance tunes and clean house like crazy. As I have stated in earlier posts, I HATE to clean house; but the other night I made a clean spot in my kitchen and I have been dying to expand it, and usually when I put the dance club CDs on, I get happy feet and get a lot done before I even realize it. Yay! Please send me all of your house cleaning/happy feet vibes. Thank you.

And now, since I have done nothing lately but bitch and whine, here are some nice vacation pictures for you as a reward for being so patient. These pictures were taken in August, after The Luau, on the Oregon Coast. Mom, Sissy, Hannah and Bruiser the weiner dog drove out to Tillamook; then we drove south through Lincoln City, taking a respite and having some lunch in Boiler Bay. Then we continued on down to Yachats where we stayed overnight at the Fireside Motel. It was GREAT!! I booked the room off of the internet, and we were not disappointed. When they said “water front room”, they were not kidding. We had a deck that faced the water that was only about 50 yards away. We had a great time, and so did Bruiser.

Please to enjoy.

Boiler Bay

A friendly seagull at Boiler BayOur very first view from our room, Yachats

Bruiser on guard on the deck!Mom and Sissy enjoying the view while on their walk
Mom, Sissy, and me playing tourist!

CRAP...

2009-09-17T11:25:00.000-06:00

So, I was just sitting there last night, quietly minding my own business, playing a game of Big Kahuna 2 and watching the newest installment of So You Think You Can Dance, when the doorbell rings. I answered the door and was promptly served papers by a collection agency, suing me for the $6k I owe them. I am currently making payments to them through a debit reduction agency. You can imagine my dismay. I made a conscience effort not to completely freak out and run screaming into the streets; I also made a conscience effort not to turn my living room into a circus of flying breakable objects. However, my efforts at making a conscience decision not to eat were over-ruled and the pizza man soon came calling, complete with two crunchy chocolate lava cakes. Crap.

This morning my feet and ankles were much less swollen and I was pleased, as were my feet and ankles. I decided to step onto the scale, just for giggles to get an idea of where I am these days. Not the greatest decision. It said 330.8; my officially highest weight of my lifetime. I felt like a senator, screaming “YOU LIE!!” at my scale. It did not change the ugly, ugly facts. Crap.

I am now currently at work, waiting for the debt reduction service to call me back to explain why I am being sued.

UPDATE: Well, the debt reduction service just call me back, and crap has now turned to…well, you know…the stuff that hits fans and that creeks are made out of. With corn and great big chunks of me in it. Apparently, the collection agency never agreed to the payment offer that the debt reduction place told them I would be making. I did not know this. I thought they accepted it and every thing was honkey dorey. I felt so good because I was getting my debt paid off and was fulfilling my responsibility as an adult and paying back money that I legitimately owe. Yeah, well, surprise to me. The debit gal said to write the court a letter, explaining the situation and as for a trial. A trial? Seriously? I don’t want to go to trial!! For once I actually don’t feel like eating; I feel like barfing. Repeatedly. Until I die. I swear, I think that all my problems will finally be solved approximately two weeks after my death; I will finally be at the weight I have always wanted to be, and all my bill collectors will finally stop hounding me for money.

I called Sissy from the warehouse on my cell phone, crying my head off. She was very sympathetic and calming, which is exactly why I called her! She thought that maybe I should call the bankruptcy lawyer back that I was working with before I decided to go the debit reduction route. I hate to declare bankruptcy, but I can’t have them garnish my wages if the judge rules for the collection agency, which the debt reduction gal is pretty sure he will. Must…not…use…F-word… After hanging up with her I sat on the dock and wept and felt sorry for myself for a little while, then got it together and came back into the office. I had waiting for me an email from the warehouse foreman that had witnessed my melt down, offering his empathy and listening ear. What a sweetheart. He told me he currently has five judgments against him, and is being garnished monthly for about $850. Oh. Suddenly I feel slightly idiotic, but it still doesn’t change the fact that I have to get this taken care of, and it doesn’t really change my anxiety level that much. I am terrified that if my landlord somehow finds out, he will evict me. He sees this kind of thing as a huge flaw in character, and when I signed my lease, it was on his list of things that he will boot someone’s butt to the curb for. But, this is just a sign of my anxiety – catastrophe predictions. There is no way he can find out unless I tell him, and deep down I know that. Right? Right. Of course, Harriett is trying to use this against me in typical Nazi bitch style. So far, I am able to smother her with my psychological pillow, and she isn’t squirming too much. That will come later this evening after work when I am home with no distractions to keep me from listening to her. I will just have to deal with that when it happens.

CRAP.

It’s hard to get back into the swing of things…

2009-09-16T16:31:00.001-06:00

Since my vacation in August, I have been out of whack. Since I got back from my vacation last week, I am super out of whack! I am completely unproductive at work; I just can’t get my head into what I need to do, and I just want to sit and play on the Internet all day. I am soooo burned out by this job; 14 years of pushing papers around and fixing other people’s stupid mistakes all day is culminating into one, big, gigantic SCREAM that I am sure is going to let loose at some extremely inappropriate time. I am grateful to have a job, let me make that perfectly clear. Now, having said that, I just don’t want this particular job anymore. I really want to work from home because for me, it would be just be, well, awesome. No commute (not that driving seven miles to work every day can actually be considered a “commute”; more like an inconvenience at best); I can actually eat my meals at home at a time when I am actually hungry – not just because it is “lunch time” or whatever; I can sleep in a little later; maybe I could actually do something that is fulfilling or creative or both. I really want to get the scoping training done; Sis and I are still working on the financial aspect of that and it’s hard. She and Les sold one of their pick up trucks for $1700 cash – and they weren’t even trying to sell it! – but then Sis’s car broke down and she was crushed to have to use the money to pay for it. But that’s life, isn’t it? You get a windfall just in time for crisis. Sis was really upset that we weren’t able to start taking classes with that money, but I tried to get her to see how great it was that they had the money on hand to fix her car. Otherwise, they would have been up the proverbial creek without the required paddle, or even a boat to float in for that matter. She lives waaaaaaay out yonder where carpooling, etc. is not an option; nor is taking the bus or hitching a ride with a friend. They live way out in the country, and there is no way to get around anywhere if you don’t have a running vehicle; let alone drive 105 miles one way to work three days a week. Yes, such is her life. I just want to be able to do computer work from home, work on my novel (yes, yes, be quiet), make my jewelry and greeting cards, and be happy. That’s all!

So, in addition to sitting around daydreaming about all of that while I am supposed to be working, I have not been working on my weight either. As some of you may have noticed, that little gauge at the top of my blog has not moved. If I was honest, it would have moved – back the wrong way unfortunately. I haven’t been reading my book, though I have been talking about it to Sis and my therapist a lot, and I have been meditating on what I have learned so far. I just need to get back into it so that I can keep learning and start applying! My feet and ankles are big, swollen water balloons. They look like someone filled medical exam gloves with water and attached them to where my feet should be; my toes look like little sausages sticking out. Not real flattering. Or comfortable for that matter. This is due to lack of moving my fat butt and not drinking enough water. So I am increasing my water intake during the day and that seems to be helping a little bit; I just need to GET MOVING – preferably manually, not by vehicle. I walked around (stalked) the new Bed, Bath & Beyond that just opened down town yesterday, but it didn’t really help. Stalking kitchen gadgets isn’t the same as strolling down the sidewalk, and it actually just made the swelling worse. If I get brave enough, maybe I will post a picture of my poor swollen little piggies. Maybe if I poke them with a pin, water will spray out (like that episode of Will & Grace with the water bra in the art gallery).

TTFN.

Um...Hi!

2009-09-15T10:32:00.001-06:00

You know, a lot of us bloggers figure that no one except close friends and family members ever look at or read our blogs; at least, that is definitely how I always felt. I know now that there are a few people that have been regularly reading my blog, and some of you have left me comments, which I cannot tell you how much I appreciate! So, I am pretty sure most of you can imagine my sincere surprise when I logged into my blog and found that my counter had gone from 247 to 11,905!! Holy crap!!! Well, I just wanted to say…uh…welcome…to all the people that are now stopping by to check out my blog. It’s very humbling, to say the least!

I think that my sudden rise in popularity must come from something that I did back on the 3rd; I didn’t write about it yet because I wasn’t sure how it would pan out, and then I went back to Sissy’s for another week on the 5th and so didn’t have time to write about it before I left. Sorry. Here’s the scoop:

I was checking my email one morning before I left for work (something I never do) and found an email from someone I didn’t know, and the subject line was the name of my blog. Uh, OK. I wonder what this is about. Imagine my surprise when I read this:

I work for the company that is producing Mutual of Omaha’s official sponsor of the aha moment campaign – visit www.ahamoment.com <http://www.ahamoment.com/> to see what an aha moment is and the great real stories we have collected so far. Associated to that, we have a 34-foot Airstream mobile film studio that is traveling the US on a 25-city tour to capture the country’s aha moments. We are headed to Billings this Wednesday, September 2nd & Thursday, September 3rd, and would love to invite you to share a defining moment in your life – large or small. I came across your blog and thought you would have a great story to share! You would just have to step into the Airstream studio for a few minutes and tell your story on film, which would be posted to www.ahamoment.com. We would love to have you if you are interested! We will be parked at the Yellowstone Art Museum (401 N 27th Street) Wednesday, September 2nd (Noon to 8pm) and Thursday, September 3rd (10am to 8pm). Let me know as soon as possible and I can reserve some time for you, thanks!

Uh, please excuse me a moment while I pick myself up off the floor. Seriously? ME? I was sure that this came to me in error somehow, that there was another blog out there with the same name as mine, and they really meant this email to go that THAT person. I don’t have anything that interesting to say, do I? That would be Harriet shooting off her stupid mouth (see blog entry below). I didn’t respond to the email right away, mostly because I was in shock, but also because I only had seven minutes to make the 20+ minute drive to work and I still didn’t have my shoes or pants on yet. I wanted to talk to Sissy about it, but with the hour time difference (earlier where she is) I didn’t want to call and wake her up. She seriously deserves her sleep. So I sent her an email from work that just said “CALL ME” repeatedly; I figured she wouldn’t be able to resist that! I was right! She called me by 10am, by which time I figure I had lost at least 15 lbs by fidgeting and sweating. I told her about the email and she was really excited for me. I had pretty much made up my mind to do it (why wouldn’t I?) and she agreed and was super encouraging (“be sure to put makeup on and wear that blue shirt you wore to the luau!!” Very sage advice indeed). I emailed M of O back and set up an appointment for that Thursday after work.

I went down to the Art Museum and did my thing. Everyone was super nice and made me feel as at ease as they could; when you are hyper-conscious about your weight, usually the last thing you want to do is to go ON CAMERA AND TALK ABOUT IT! But I did. I actually had a nice time too. I had Friday and all of the rest of the following week off; Sissy called me in a tax panic and begged me to come back out to her place, so I left on Saturday (I’ll blog about that fun trip later). On Thursday, I checked my email from her house because they said that they would send me a link to my “aha moment” on their website when they had it finished. Nothing. I checked the website for my “aha moment”. Nothing. There were other things posted about their stop in Billings, but my moment wasn’t there. Harriet raised her ugly head, telling me that I wasn’t good enough; they had hated me, hated my blog, I screwed it all up, they were disappointed in me, they made a mistake. For a few minutes I was profoundly depressed, buying into the crap spewing forth from Harriet’s mouth, accepting it as gospel as usual. Then I took a deep breath and told Harriet, “My life is not any different than it was before this. If they didn’t like it, oh well. It is what it is. Only Sissy knew about it anyway, so no real harm done.” She didn’t know how to react to that (HA!) and shut up. I pulled myself up from the computer chair and went about my business of living my life. If I had checked back a few hours later, I would have seen the email that they sent with the link to my story. I saw it on Sunday after I got home and was checking my email; I suddenly was very happy. Insert mental image of me flipping the bird to Harriet with both hands and feet (which is really hard to do – you try to see if you can get your middle toe to stick up on its own!). I still have not been able to watch my video or anything; I don’t have the right version of Flash loaded and am still working on that. I will post a link to it as soon as I figure out how to do that as well.

So, welcome to all of you; and thank you for checking me out. Please drop me a comment if you wish; I would love to hear from you. My deepest hope is that someone out there that is going through this same journey on a parallel path that needs to know they are not alone finds this blog. I hope that we can share a laugh, a tear, or an aha moment. And even if you aren’t on a similar journey, I still hope you enjoy my ramblings and pictures, etc.

TTFN.

I’m learning and making some progress…

2009-08-28T15:11:00.002-06:00

OMG – where has this book been all of my life? Apparently just lying in wait, waiting for me to be in the right place to go searching for it. As I read, I sometimes wonder where I would be now if I had read this book a year ago; five years ago; 10 years ago! But, it doesn’t do any good to wonder, so I stop. I have already put into play a few of the key points I have learned so far, and I feel good. Uh, really pretty good, in fact. I have actually managed to eat at one of my “user” restaurants, eat only half of what I would have normally eaten, took the other half home and didn’t even eat it at all (as opposed to eating it in the car in my driveway after the five minute drive home, or perhaps an hour or so later while watching TV in bed). I can’t tell you the last time I have done that. I usually waddle from the restaurant, wanting to throw up or in physical pain in my gut because I have stuffed so much food into my stomach that it hurts to contort myself into my driver’s seat and hook my seatbelt. I am often out of breath after I eat, probably because my stomach is so packed with food that it is filling my chest cavity and inhibiting my lungs from working properly. Sad picture, isn’t it? Well, it’s the truth. I also managed to order pizza yesterday without any anger or frustration or self-loathing involved, although there was some boredom. However, instead of ordering a 16” extra-large with two chocolate lava cakes for dessert, I ordered one 10” with a soda. I found that even this ridiculously tiny (in my eyes) pizza filled my stomach to capacity – which I thought only a large pizza could do. I was full by the time I ate half, but had to finish it because the voice in my head said I had to (that is Harriet; more on that later), but otherwise would have been happy to stop right then. Who knew? I did; I just chose to ignore. Silly girl.

I am now on page 79 (of 265) of Shrink Yourself and have learned a lot of very eye opening stuff. For those of you who follow this blog who do not have problems with food (or perhaps just think that you don’t), I still highly recommend this book. Some people do have problems with abusing food, but don’t have trouble with their weight. This book can still help you to change your feelings and relationship with food. I promise – no one is paying me to say that I really recommend reading it. Look for it at your local public library if you don’t want to purchase it. I was going to let Sissy read mine when I finished it, but I have a feeling I’m not going to want to let it go.

I have learned that I have feeling phobias. I never would have thought that was true! I have lots of feelings, and thought that because I considered myself an “emotional” person, that meant that I was in touch with them, albeit in perhaps a not-so-healthy way. As humans, we are “meaning-hungry creatures. We make everything mean something.” That is me to a “T”. If someone doesn’t return my voice mail or email, then they are mad at me or I have done something wrong or they just don’t care about me (even though I know none of these things are true). These misinterpretations make simple feelings feel like more than they really are. There are also things called “Catastrophe Predictions”. You can probably figure out what those are; it’s like snow in Oregon. It’s not the snow itself that is scary to people, it’s the worst-case scenario predictions that people come up with that scare them. Schools are closed, Trail Blazer games get cancelled, and people leave work at 2pm to get home before the roads get bad. All for a few flakes of snow. I liked one of the sentences in one of the paragraphs under this heading: “When you come to the place where you’re feeling powerless for just a moment, you believe on some level that eating is the only option you really have to make yourself feel better, and that otherwise that moment will become an eternity.” Welcome to my life. However, I have learned that I use food to push away negative feelings that I don’t want to deal with. I use food as an over-the-counter tranquilizer. When I am bingeing, I feel content and secure. I am not thinking about anything else – this is called the trance. It is a very appropriate way to describe how I feel when I binge; I am not thinking about the horrible day I had, or how much I hate my job or how lonely I am, all I am thinking about is how delicious the food tastes and how quickly it will be gone. I have now learned that I “have to remember that you need to master the feeling phobia and food trance in order to understand the deeper issues that make you feel powerless.”

Anyway, I have learned something about my conscience. I always thought that your conscience was your guide, and it is. However, there is more than one kind of conscience, and one of mine – called the critical conscience - is a real sick Nazi bitch. She uses every opportunity to get me down, kick me repeatedly and viciously while I am down, and then uses every tactic to keep me down if I show any sign of trying to get back up. She tells me I am worthless, stupid, fat, ugly, unlovable, unforgivable, and will never attain any goal I set for myself; she loves to see me as a helpless, lonely, and hopeless victim. See? I told you she was a bitch. The worst part? I believe her. Utterly and completely. Why???

The book recommends giving your self-critical voice a name, like Harriet. “Even though you’re an intelligent, self-contained, functioning adult, Harriet has a lot of power.” Sometimes the critical voice is just background noise, but sometimes it’s like she is screaming through a bull horn, and I feel like others can hear her, and they agree with her. There have been times when I am in the grocery store, wavering between what I want to eat and what I know I should eat, and her voice is so loud and confusing that I leave the store in tears, half full shopping cart (or an empty one) stranded in an aisle. I have sat in restaurants full of people and families, trying to keep it together while she pokes me in my broken ribs (from some earlier assault) with her Nazi stiletto pointed toe black leather boots, telling me how I will never, ever have anyone in my life and I will always be alone and unloved. She is the one that tells me that I must keep eating, even when I can feel that I am full (and sometimes in physical pain), because there are starving children in (insert impoverished country of your choice here), or because it will be a waste of money if I don't. I am powerless to tell her to shut the hell up, mostly because she was a nameless, faceless captor of my psyche. Well, no more. Her name is Harriet – or whatever I tell her her name is – and the fact that I have now taken her down a peg by naming her gives me some power! You may scoff, but it actually works. Now when I hear her start to go to town on me, I can say SHUT THE HELL UP, HARRIET!! I sometimes say it out loud. And you know what? She does. I think that sometimes I can even hear her sputtering and looking for some sort of response, but by then I have moved on and left her in the dust, kicking at air. HA! Take that.

Well, this is getting wordy, so I will leave you with this for now. I will write again later to give you more updates on how I am doing with this. Nothing much else in life is happening right now. But maybe that will change too.

TTFN.

I feel better now...

2009-08-21T13:45:00.002-06:00

OK, I am feeling better than I was when I wrote my last post; but I had to wait until today to feel good enough to actually post something.

After reading the sage advise I found in that book, I could not help but feel...overwhelmed. Panicky. Totally and completely freaked out. Which was probably why it was a good thing that I read it. This is probably how people feel when they are hit with an intervention for their drug or alcohol abuse. It is everything that you know to be true, right, and sound; but it is everything that you don't want to hear. I know that I am an emotional eater, and my mom has been telling me for YEARS that I should stay away from flour and wheat (something else Mom was right about. Dammit!). When I was a child, she said that my head and hair smelled weird, but when she took me off of wheat it was normal. And I remember the hellish times when she took me off of the wheat products - it was horrible!! But I was a kid then, and other kids tend to make fun of you when you have a sandwich in your lunch with no bread, and other "weird" "health food" "freak of nature" type foods in your Charlie Brown lunchbox (maybe it was the lunchbox that was the problem?). I am an adult now, and I fully understand that life is unfair, and sometimes you have to suck it up and do things that are unpleasant for your own good. No one will laugh at my lunches now (and I am sure that no longer carrying around the Charlie Brown lunchbox will help that as well) so there should be no issues. Right? RIGHT??? Well... The problem is that everything I like to eat has sugar, flour or wheat products in it (yeah, and that is why you are FAT!) (Can someone please shut this voice up? Thank you.) and if I eliminate all of them, then I will have nothing to eat at all and my life will be joyless and empty.

Oh...wait...right.

My life is already joyless and empty because I hate myself for allowing my weight to be so out of control. That's right. I forgot.

But the more I thought about what I should do the angrier I got. On top of the panic I felt by the anticipation of having to cut all the foods that I love and cannot live without, I was feeling put out with someone I care about, I had a crappy day at work, and since I have been home from vacation I have been so homesick that I am "this close" to calling U-Haul to rent a truck and move back to Oregon. All of that just accumulated until I was feeling TRAPPED BY EVERYTHING - people, employment, finances, all of it and I just wanted to SCREAM!!! I threw the mail all over the living room and stomped around a little bit. Then I sat at my computer, pulled up the Domino's website, and angrily ordered a medium deep dish pizza and two lava cakes (omg - they are the DEVIL). Oh, and a Coke Zero. Lord knows I don't want to add any extra calories to this love fest if I don't have too! (It is soooo ironic; when I was a teenager I worked for a deli owned by the parents of a school friend of mine [the Stovepipe Deli, Livermore, CA] with a bunch of my other friends from school. We used to laugh when overweight people came in, ordered the biggest and fattiest sandwiches we made along with a Diet Coke. We thought it was the dumbest thing we ever saw. Karma's a bitch.) When it arrived, I ate all of it in about a 20 minute time span. Oh man, do I need help. And the worst part of this behavior is that I know it's bad, I know that I am punishing myself for other people's behavior towards me, but I still can't stop myself. It makes me feel helpless and hopeless.

Late last night, after the guilt and the pain had subsided some, I picked up my other new book that I bought before I left for vacation and started to read it. I wish I had read it FIRST. (Please see the right hand column for info.) The first book was very good and extremely important for me to read, but it was very cut and dry, no funny business, and cut straight to the heart of the matter in a rather un-empathetic and clinical way. This new book is written by a therapist instead of a clinical doctor, and it appeals to me very much. One of the paragraphs in the introduction, under the header of "How Does the Book Work?", really spoke to me and the work I am trying to do on myself: Once I began to explore the question of powerlessness as related to weight, I realized that powerlessness over the urge to eat was simply a superficial layer of powerlessness. It actually covered up for five other ways that people felt powerless in their lives. People feel powerless when they doubt themselves, when they feel frustrated, when they feel vulnerable or unsafe, when they feel rebellious or angry, and when they feel empty. Yep. That sentence should have been followed by an 8x10 glossy of me. That is EXACTLY why I ate that pizza last night. I felt powerless, frustrated, angry and empty. Four out of five. Some days it's all five, and some days it's all five plus eleven more. Sometimes it's only one of those reasons, but just one is enough to send me running for food. Well, not running exactly. But you get the idea.

I look forward to reading the rest of this book, hopefully over the weekend. I will keep you posted (no blog pun intended) on my progress. I hope that, if there is just one person out there that reads this blog and suffers from food addiction like I do, you will find that you are not alone and perhaps you can start your own road to recovery too. Life is too short to suffer like this, and suffering like this will only make it shorter.

Until later, TTFN.

2009-08-19T18:23:00.002-06:00

I want to be well. I want to recover from this disease I have of food addiction. The time is right, let's do it. Felt positive yet very apprehensive as I finished reading my book on food addiction today, because now i have the knowledge to do what i need to do, but i am scared to fail. Needed to go to the grocery store on my way home for baking soda as my refrigerator smells like there is a decomposing horse in it. I remember from my reading that to succeed and start my road to recovery I will need to eliminate all sugar, flour and wheat from what I eat. She (the author) recommends glowingly Paul Newman's Own line of salad dressings. I decide to check them out while in the store to see what yummy concoctions he has in store for me. Bottle after bottle, flavor after flavor I turn eagerly, then with growing apprehension, to the list of ingredients. Bottle after bottle, flavor after flavor, sugar. sugar. sugar. sugar. Even the bloody oil and vinegar has stupid bloody sugar in it. Not one of the salad dressings could be in my home. What the hell was this author talking about??? Oh yeah. The book was written in 1993. Apparently Mr. Newman succumbed to the screaming food addicts in the world and added sugar to his salad dressings since then.

Suddenly, everything in the store seemed off limits. I became extremely overwhelmed as item after item that i grabbed randomly from the shelves seemed to scream I HAVE SUGAR IN ME - YOU CAN NEVER EAT ME! Tears began to well up in my eyes as i immediately began the cycle of self-pity and self-loathing that haunts my every waking minute as i try to deal with food. I managed to keep it together while paying for my baking soda and chicken wings, but burst into tears when i hit the parking lot. People pretended not to see the sobbing 325 lb 5'2" bleached blond obviously psychopathic blob wobbling her way to her vehicle. I cried all the way to my empty home with the smelly fridge. I felt like a recovering drug addict forced to find the small scraps of sobriety among aisle after aisle, row after row, shelf upon shelf upon shelf of crack pipes. I know you think i am being ridiculous, a drama queen; but i assure you this is my life. If you don't have a problem with it then you cannot understand it. You are not addicted to something you MUST ingest every single day of your life, several times a day in fact, in order to live.

When i got home i was tempted to just leave the truck running as i closed the garage door.

But i didn't.

And i will live to try again tomorrow.

TTFN.

I WILL NOT PANIC…

2009-08-18T16:49:00.000-06:00

So, I am reading one of my new books that I ordered before I went on vacation – Food Addiction, The Body Knows – and I am trying to retain a positive attitude. What I really want to do is to run screaming into the streets, “I WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO EAT NORMALLY AGAIN! I WILL NEVER BE WELL!!!” Ahem. I know this is not true, or even accurate, but SHEESH. This gal is taking forever to get to the positive part of the book!! Basically, in a nut shell so to speak, the culprits are sugar and wheat. Cut out processed foods, sugar, flour and all things made with these things and you can recover. And that leaves me basically…what? Beef jerky and water? I know it isn’t really that severe; but as my logical brain (yes, I do have one, shut up) reads and absorbs this information, my emotional brain is screaming BUT THAT IS ALL THE FOODS YOU LOVE!! YOU WILL NEVER GET TO EAT ANYTHING YOU LIKE EVER AGAIN!!! And that actually may not be too terribly far from the truth, actually. Basically, it’s like being addicted to drugs or alcohol; once you abstain and go into recovery, you can never go back to having “just a little cocaine/heroin/bourbon every once in a while”. Just the smallest portion of what you are addicted to causes relapse and continuing addiction, and then you have to start the recovery process all over again. I have to choose how I want to live my life or how I want to continue slowly killing myself. I don’t want to die, I want to LIVE; and not EXIST like I am doing and have been doing for the last 25 years, but truly and completely LIVE.

Sigh…it’s going to be hard. REALLY hard. But the book makes a lot of sense, and I know that everything worth having is worth working REALLY hard for. 25 years of abuse is going to take a lot of time to undo. And I really do want to.

But, can’t I just take a pill for it? No? Ok…sigh…

I thought it was rather ironic that as I sat in the parking lot of my favorite Mexican restaurant, reading about food addiction as I prepared to go in and spend a little quality time with one of my “dealers”, I was crying because just reading about the things that feed my addiction made me WANT TO EAT THEM. Will I be strong enough to learn about my addiction and how to recover without shooting myself in the foot? We shall see.

Maybe I should pitch my story to TLC or A&E; aren’t weight loss and addiction shows all the rage right now? They could have both all rolled into one, and maybe I could earn some money for school (since I am not willing to have a ton of kids and pimp them out for the world to gawk at). What do you think? And do you know someone I could call?

TTFN.

Back from vacation...sigh...

2009-08-16T19:47:00.009-06:00

Well, I made it back. It was really, REALLY, hard this time to come home. It's always hard, but it was especially hard this time.

I had an awesome time at the party; little worries and concerns that I had myself all worked up about (like the inevitable question: When are you going to get married?) never came up. I adore my family; there were ex-spouses and ex-in laws in abundance, but everyone gets along - and not in that fake plastic way either where you can still smell the tension in the air, and all it would take is a small spark to set everything off. Nope, everyone is genuinely happy to see one another and had a great time celebrating Jeremy and Erika's 10th wedding anniversary. It. Was. AWESOME. Jeremy's cousin Amber put together a fabulous Hawaiian Luau party that was beyond our wildest expectations. She should do parties for a living! She had fresh orchids EVERYWHERE, and authentic leis for Jeremy and Erika, which you can see below in this portrait I took on site:

Don't they look great? Such a hot couple.

Sis and I made cupcakes up the wazoo - vanilla with pink vanilla butter cream frosting, chocolate with sinfully rich chocolate butter cream frosting, Mimosa (orange juice and champagne) cupcakes with champagne frosting - and Sis also made a Pink Champagne cake. Amber was having a chocolate Kahlua cake and a Pina Colada cake made, but the guy making them backed out at the last minute. Jerk. Oh well - we got cakes from Costco which were fabulous and decorated them with the left over orchids, etc. There were BBQ meatballs, Teriyaki soba noodles, fruit salad and a ton of other food - all of it was home made and fabulous. Jeremy's sisters and Amber also hired real hula dancers to perform!

I was able to take lots of family pictures for all sides of the family attending; I set up a small portable portrait "studio" and invited any and all to have pictures taken. It was really great to feel like I was contributing something; it was especially poignant as Amber's father was recently diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease - or ALS - and we don't know when we would have had a better opportunity to get group pictures with him.

Here is one of my three gorgeous kids (OK, Sis's gorgeous kids):

From left to right: Reanna, Jeremy, Alisha.

Here is a group photo of Mom, Sis, and all of the family generated just through the two of them!

From left to right, back row: Brock Palmer, Zac Brown, Jeremy Seals, Kyrell Seals. Middle row: Alisha Palmer, Reanna Brown, Shirley Hotchkiss, Karen Buckman, Erika Seals. Front row: Hannah Morris, Taelynn Palmer, Emily Brown, Alexander Brown, Kieran Seals, Kaya Seals.

I even allowed Reanna to take a picture of me with Mom and Sis:

I think my mom looks awesome for being 73, having two children over 40, three grandchildren over 30, and seven great-grandchildren!

Well, I think that is all for now; it's 10pm and I have to go back to work tomorrow. Sigh. I will blog about my vacation in stages so I don't bore anyone to tears!

TTFN.

I think I'm starting to figure it out...

2009-07-27T10:00:00.003-06:00

I have an addiction problem. My drug of choice may come as a surprise to some, but probably not to others. It is…food.

Food addiction is a real, clinical, factual addiction. It has all of the same triggers and deep rooted emotional causes as heroin, cocaine, and other drug addictions and alcoholism. It is just not very widely diagnosed as such because we are dealing with, well FOOD – something every person on this planet ingests, even children - not drugs or alcohol where abuse can be much more obvious and they are not consumed by every person on the planet.

Many people feel that saying you can be addicted to food is preposterous. “That is like saying you are addicted to water, or air!” Yes, it may sound ridiculous, and it may just sound like an excuse for why I am morbidly obese. And it is easy for people who do not have a problem with food or addictive behavior to say, “Just eat less and take some exercise. That is all you need to do.” Well, that may be all YOU need to do, but that does not work for me. It is like telling a heroin addict to just stop doing heroin. Um, yeah; that doesn’t really work for most people. Some people may say, “It can’t be an addiction. You can’t overdose and die from food!” Wanna bet? What do you think morbid or super morbid obesity is? It is a case of constant overdosing. No, we don’t die immediately like you might with drugs; it is a slightly slower process. However, massive strokes and heart attacks can occur following binge eating. And they can occur at anytime for anyone that is obese.

I have been paying particular attention to my eating patterns over the last several weeks, trying understand just what the heck is wrong with me; why can’t I just STOP EATING?? I made mental notes and talked about them with my therapist this weekend. She agrees with my “armchair diagnosis”; I have all the patterns of someone with addictive and somewhat obsessive behavior. I also have many of the emotional earmarks from childhood and early adulthood that can lead to this type of behavior later in life.

I want to make it perfectly clear from the outset that I had a very happy and healthy childhood. I was never physically or sexually abused in any way. I loved my parents very much and they loved me; I didn’t even have any sibling rivalry to deal with as my sister has been my best friend literally from birth – she even physically saved my life on at least one occasion. So what exactly were my problems then? I will say that I lived in a very restricted home. My mom was very over-protective to the point of being smothering, while my father was the one who would finally step in and make her back off. My mom and I did have major issues over my eating habits. I was a very picky eater; I hated vegetables or anything resembling them, and I didn’t like to try anything new. I vividly remember sitting at the dinner table, in the dark, until bedtime because there was uneaten or untried food still left on my plate. This was usually a weekly occurrence. My therapist identified that type of controlling behavior as a cornerstone to building an eating disorder. (I was very disturbed to hear her say that, as I had once used that same controlling method on one of my nieces when she refused to eat fish sticks one night. I even copied my mother’s behavior in going so far as to serve them to her for breakfast the following morning, so of course she then went to school that day without breakfast. Alisha – I am so sorry.) I also remember a particular episode involving peas. I had been given vitamins in pill form from an early age, so I had no trouble swallowing things whole. I hated peas with a vengeance, and one night had the brilliant idea of just swallowing them down with a glass of milk. It was the perfect solution! I didn’t have to taste them, and mom would be satisfied that I ate them. When she discovered what I was doing, she insisted that I “chew them up!” I tried faking her out by putting them in the center of my mouth and making chewing motions; this didn’t work because she could hear my teeth clacking together. I pleaded with her, asking her what difference did it make whether they were whole or chewed? But, once again, it was a control issue, and so I sat in the dark until bedtime again with a plate of cold peas. One time even my dear father got in on the act. Sweet potatoes are my nemesis; ask anyone who knows me well and they will tell you that I cannot even be in the house when they are being cooked. You could put a million dollars in front of me and tell me all I had to do to earn it was eat one forkful of sweet potato, and I would not be able to do it. Now on the other hand, pumpkin pie is one my most treasured treats (I think some of you may know where I am going with this). In trying to get me to eat some sweet potato pie, my father told me it was pumpkin pie. (insert sound of chirping crickets here) As a child, my father was a saint in my eyes and could never do any wrong; however, to this day I have never forgiven him for that.

So, you may be reading this and be thinking, “Big deal. So your mom made you eat vegetables that you didn’t like, and your dad pulled the oldest trick in the book. You poor baby. People live in other countries without food and you are whining about being made to eat.” I understand your reasoning, but you are missing the real point. Food was being used in these circumstances as a way to control my behavior. As a result, family meals for me became very trying and stressful. I felt I was always walking a fine line between making my mother very angry at me, which resulted in my father being very angry with my mother. I was always afraid of what might be on my plate that I wouldn’t like, and how I was going to deal with the situation.

The only time I really felt any freedom from the stress of eating as a family is when we went out to a restaurant for dinner. There I was usually free to choose my own food, and if there was anything I didn’t like I was free to leave it on my plate as my mother would never risk a confrontation in public. I would get some accusing glares from her which threatened severe discipline once we got home, but it was still worth it to me.

Hmmm…even as I write these things, I feel I understand myself a little better. I will write more in my next entry, as this one is getting pretty long.

TTFN.

Heather and Ollie drive the Beartooth Hwy

2009-07-11T16:05:00.007-06:00

Last Sunday Ollie and I took a lovely drive on the Beartooth Hwy. It is about 75 south of Billings, through Red Lodge and into Wyoming. The summit is 10,980' and change - 400' below the tip of Mt. Hood in Oregon. The drive is breathtakingly gorgeous from both directions, and the air is soooooooo clean - I wish I could bottle it up and take it home. There were lots of motorcycles on the highway; it's very popular with large groups and individuals alike. We stopped about 3/4 of the way up the pass at an overlook to take a few pictures and use the potties. Please to enjoy:The little chipmunk was so cute, and it wasn't until I was focusing on him that I realized he was eating...a fly. Yep, wings and legs were just spinning off in every direction while he nibbled on him. Therapy anyone? We continued on down the other side of the pass and headed towards Cooke City. We couldn't afford to go into Yellowstone Park, so we found a cool little turn out called Flume Trail about five minutes outside of Cooke City and turned around there. Here are a few pics from that spot:Lots of people had their four-legged family members along with them to enjoy the day; I loved this doggie's daisy bandana, so I had to get a snap of it (and her owner's particularly nice hiney managed to sneak it's way in there too - oops!). As we drove out of the parking area, the owner of the cute rear...err...uh...doggie waved to us as Ollie and I blushed, smiled, and waved back like idiots. On our way back onto the highway, we spotted this waterfall - the first picture is how it looked from the road, then there is a close up on it:

We had such a nice day. The mosquitos were HORRIBLE as they are that time of year (so I found out afterwards while talking with a co-worker) and Ollie and I looked like we had the chicken pox the next day with all the bites. We stopped at the Top Of The World Store and I was standing in line to use the potty with nine other people, and each of us had our very own cloud of not less than 30 mosquitos swarming around us. West Nile Virus anyone?

We then arrived back in Red Lodge and went to the candy store (shut up). We then cruised around town so that Ollie could snap some pictures of this quaint old mountain town to send home her to family. We spotted what promised to be an extra bad action rock and gem store and got out to investigate. Well, I should say Ollie got out - my door was locked and refused to UNlock. I was locked into my own vehicle. And not like in that funny Family Guy episode where Peter locked himself inside the car; this was complete brain freeze and feeling totally helpless. So I managed to get Ollie's attention and asked her to try to unlock my door from the outside with the key - no dice. Must...not...curse...out...loud...in...front...of...Ollie.

Once we arrived back at Ollie's place, I realized that I had no idea how I was going to get out! You see, I am only 5'2"; the Rodeo has bucket seats, a center console, a stick shift and an emergency brake all between me and the passenger's seat. I have not waited 42 years to have sex only to lose my virginity to the emergency brake while trying to lift my 300+ lb carcass into the next seat in order to get out of the freaking truck!!! So, since Ollie's driveway is on a steep angle, I parked on the street. We laid the passenger seat all the way back, slid my driver's seat all the way back and laid it flat, left the emergency brake off, and I climbed/scrambled/crawled into the passenger seat and out the passenger side door. Awesome! We figured that the temporary block that is holding my non-working electric window up shook loose and was now blocking the lock and there was nothing I could do but wait until Monday to have it fixed. Neat.

Monday morning arrived as did I at work - now having crawled in and out of my crippled rig five times. A guy came and fixed it, and I was walking on air; elated at the thought of not having to get in and out the hard way anymore. Whew!! Lunch came and went - no problems. After work I went to the grocery store, went to get out, and - you guessed it - was locked in AGAIN. Must...not...even...think...of...using...the...f-word. I flew back downtown to the glass shop and called them from the curb only to be told that there was nothing they could do about it until the following morning. MUST...NOT...REPEATEDLY...YELL...THE...F-WORD...AT...THE...TOP...OF...MY...LUNGS.
The following morning the same guy came and picked up the truck and took it back to the shop. It turns out that the temporary window block is fine; it's the locking mechanism that has now fallen apart. Sigh...one more seemingly minor thing that I cannot afford to fix. I was so depressed; not because of the lock not working but because of what it represented. One more thing going wrong and no money to fix it. The glass shop guy recommended that I not lock the door anymore and I should be fine. Wow - really Sherlock? The only problem with that is the fact that we all live in a society - even in Billings, Montana - where some people have a tendency to remove things from your unlocked vehicle that do not belong to them. Hence, the use of DOOR LOCKS YOU MORON. Oh well. It could be worse. I just wish it was better.

TTFN.

Still here...

2009-06-28T16:07:00.004-06:00

Thanks to everyone who left me uplifting comments (Laurie - thank you so much!!) and sent me messages via email and Facebook. They meant a lot to me, and I cherish each and every one of them.

I am doing somewhat better these days; I believe a pinpoint of light is appearing at one end of the tunnel and I am choosing to believe it is not a train, plane or helicopter. I dropped off my first payment to a debt reduction service to help me get my $8000+ in medical bills (and a few other bills) paid off. One down, 32 more to go. It actally felt good and made me feel happy to give over this hard earned money to strangers in charge of my bills (who knew?). The goal now is to not incur any more. Do you hear that kidneys? NO MORE STONES!!
Yep, those are my kidney stones that cost me $32,000 to get rid of. Not a pleasant experience on any level.

One of my dreams is to work from home. I have wanted to work from home for about the last 10 years or so; Sissy has worked from home and really wants to do it again. Les will need to retire next year, but they will still need a decent income to sustain them. Sissy and I have found what we feel is the answer for us; the problem is attaining it. We found a skill that we want to train for, but the schooling itself is about $2500 and then the software we would have to purchase in order to pursue this skill as a living is another $2000. Yeah, we both just have a stray $5k laying around just waiting for this! There are no grants or anything out there to help us out - trust us, we've looked. I have even written to someone that runs one of the schools and asked them about it, and they didn't know of any financial assistance either.

So, we have decided to sell a bunch of stuff on eBay. I have my own store which has been sitting empty for the last six months (and that I continue to pay for, brilliant), so we have decided to put it to good use. I make greeting cards and jewelry, so I will be listing those along with books, DVDs and CDs that I don't need. Sissy will have some of the same, along with nice clothing, jewelry, shoes, and nice knick knacks and collectables. Please check out my store here.

Well, not much more news for right now; I just wanted to let everyone know that I am OK and I'm hanging in there.

TTFN.

It's a downer...

2009-06-09T17:05:00.003-06:00

I haven’t been blogging much lately, mostly because nothing is going on. I have been deeply depressed for the last few weeks and I keep thinking about my life. I don’t mean the financial stuff and all of that, but how my life is. Everyone has financial troubles, especially now. No…it’s deeper than that.

What is it like to have a fun group of friends? Is it like they show on TV? Do people really get together to have drinks at a local bar or restaurant, just for fun and to talk? Do they really get together and have Super Bowl parties and BBQ’s? I wish I knew what that was like. For a brief time in high school when I was allowed to have a group of friends, we kind of did stuff like that. We were too young to drink of course, but we did hang out at the local Roller King to skate, and we went to movies, and we hung out at each others houses.

What is it like to have your own home? I rent and so I feel like I work my butt off for the privilege of living in someone else’s home while I throw $650 cash out into the street every month. I did something on Saturday that I should never do when I am in these dark moods – I drove through a neighborhood and looked at the homes. I don’t mean big mansions or anything like that; just nice, clean, neat neighborhoods with real people living in them. What is it like to know you can paint all of your walls hot pink and put in orange shag carpeting if you want to? What is it like to not have a stroke every time a vehicle looking remarkably like your landlord’s drives by? What is it like to own a pet if you want to?

What is it like to be loved by someone that is not related to you? I was loved once a long, long time ago, but I think I have forgotten what it was like. What is it like to have someone to come home to? Someone that chose you and wants to be with you? Someone who holds you in their arms and whispers into your hair that everything is going to be OK? What is it like to be touched by another human being because they want to touch you, not because they are your doctor? What is it like to be kissed or have your hand held? It has been 24 years since someone did either one of those things with me.

What is it like to live life outside of a cage? I want so badly to live life like other people, but I am afraid. I don’t know how to do it. I live my life like an animal that was caged and declawed at birth. When I turned 19, the door to my cage was thrown open and I was allowed to be free. Instead of hurling myself out of the cage and leaving it in the dust, I warily tip-toed out of the door. I never ventured far from the prison I knew; I want so badly to run away and never look back; to be truly free. But I find that I am ill equipped to live this life, unsure how to defend myself without my claws.

And so night, after night, after lonely night I return to the soiled and rusted cage that I hate - head down, ears back, tail tucked firmly between my legs - because it is the only thing I know. I lie there with the door open and watch, resentfully, as time and people pass me by.

I feel like it is too late now; too late for me.

Not much going on...

2009-05-27T13:23:00.001-06:00

I haven’t written anything in a while because, well, other than whining about the trivial amount of crap happening in my life (as compared with the rest of the world), there just hasn’t been very much going on. I continue to struggle with depression, especially recently with worrying about financial issues – whether to declare bankruptcy or not. Stupid medical bills. Stupid hospital for charging so much for getting rid of stupid kidney stones. Stupid economy crashing, making it impossible for me to get stupid raise from stupid employer. Stupid me whining about stupid problems when other people are facing stupid foreclosure on their homes due to stupid banks being stupid. But, problems are problems, and the fact that I owe more than $7,000 in medical bills alone feels like it may as well be $7,000,000.

This frustration is compounded by the fact that I still cannot make any headway in the weight loss struggle. I manage to get down to about eight or nine pounds above the three hundred mark, and then…TWANG!!! I am whiplashed back up 10 pounds or so back to where I started. EEERRRGGG!!!! Everyone is going to meet their goal for the party in August except me. Why? Why can’t I get it together? Why do I reach a certain point and then just…quit? I am tired of falling off the proverbial wagon to be trampled by pizza-wielding horses. (And why are the horses behind the wagon? Hmmm…yet another issue to be solved.) I haven’t been exercising either, and of course, that is not helping. And thus the vicious circle spins round and round, making me psychologically dizzy and causing me to vomit forth excuse after excuse. Nice mental picture, eh? Pfft.

But, today I was good (as of the typing of this blog entry, anyway) and had oatmeal for breakfast and a chicken salad for lunch, with dietetically approved snacks and consumption of the appropriate amount of liquids. One day down, a lifetime to go.

I miss you, Daddy

2009-05-01T20:08:00.005-06:00

Today is the 28th anniversary of my father's death.

I miss him every day.

I love you, Daddy.

I'M DOING IT!!

2009-04-25T20:46:00.002-06:00

I have stuck to my WW points for an entire week (except for Friday night); I have gone walking on Tuesday, Wednesday, and today - 20 minutes on Tuesday and 25 minutes Wednesday and today. And, as you can see by my little ticker at the top of the page, the hula girl is moving closer to my goal! The big party is in August and has a Hawaiian theme, so I changed my ticker to reflect that. Woo hoo!

I have been feeling positive about 85% of the time. There are times when I am feeling so good, so WELL, so positive...then I catch sight of myself in a window. I don't have a single full length mirror in my house, and I manage to look myself dead in the eye in the bathroom mirror when doing my hair, brushing my teeth, etc. It is the only mirror in the place, and it hits me at about bellybutton height, so I never get to see myself full length - just the way I like it. Anyhoo, I digress. When I see myself reflected in a window or something that shows me full length, I think, "Why am I doing this? What difference does it make? I am too old to ever find anyone that will love me. By the time I lose all the weight I want to, I will probably be 45 (if I'm lucky) and no one will want me." For a few minutes, my world crumbles and I want to just crawl in a hole and stay there (as long as I can order pizza). I don't know who in the world will want to be with a 40+ year old that has had zippo experience with relationships (the last time I had a boyfriend, I was 17. Haven't even been kissed since then, let alone anything else. People who say they have "chosen" to be celibate for a month crack me up). But then I remember that lots of women find love later in life and are very happy. And even if I never find love, if I stay strong and loose weight and exercise, I will die happy knowing that I won't have to be removed from my house with a crane and be buried in a piano crate for a coffin.

Sheesh - could I be any more morbid? Let's not find out, shall we? I have been having some fun planning my new wardrobe for my August vacation. The new Roaman's plus size catalog came in the mail the other day, and there are lots of really cute clothes in there that I could pull off if I meet my goal weight by then. Normally I don't get a big thrill out of the thought of buying new clothes, because I am using buying them in a BIGGER size. I can't wait to find out what it feels like to buy clothes in a SMALLER size! I have been pizza free for an entire week (I'm surprised Domino's and Papa John's haven't sent the cops by to make sure I'm OK), and have had fast food a few times but made them work into my points for the day. Friday night I did go over and have fish & chips with a piece of cheesecake at Montana Jacks. However, I did not feel guilty because I have decided that if I am going to jump off the wagon and run along side, I will do it with a plan and not with the "screw this I'm just chucking it" attitude. If I want to go off plan and have dinner out, I will do it on a Friday or Saturday; I will continue to eat the way I should for the entire day - with the exception of that one meal - instead of pigging out all day long; and I will still exercise that day. I want to lose the weight, but I don't want to live in a world where I cannot eat something if I really want it and am willing to be responsible about it. That isn't a change of lifestyle, that is a diet and it is hell.

Welp, I'ma gonna sign off for now. I had a lovely day and I am tired and wish to go sleepy bo-bos. TTFN.

Dieting sucks, and I HATE IT

2009-04-20T17:57:00.003-06:00

I sent the following email to my lovely friends, sister, and nieces; we are all trying to lose weight, and some of us have a specific goal of losing 40-45 lbs by August (thus the little scale-o-meter at the top of my blog page - you know, the one that never mooves? Oops, I meant mooves. Moooves. Moves. Whatever.)

Hi ladies – how is everyone doing with their goals? I suck. Big time. I am not any closer to meeting my goal than I was when I started! I have been frustrated and depressed, and it has caused me to find solace in my comfort foods: pizza (curse you Domino’s!!!! I ate an entire medium deep dish pizza Thursday night – that’s right, an entire medium pizza all by myself in one sitting); Super Nachos from Guadalajara (which are actually meant to serve four people as an appetizer); burgers and fries from McDonalds. Well ladies – that was last week. This is a new week – which for me actually started Saturday. The weather here has finally reached above 45° and is predicted to be 75°+ for the rest of the week! Talk about a boost!! Saturday and Sunday I opened every single window in my place and let the nice fresh air blow around and through it. It was fabulous! I started taking Lipozene on Friday before lunch and dinner and it really helps to dampen my appetite, and I am fuller quicker – which is the whole point. I have a 30-day supply, so I will let you know how they work for me.

Sunday I went grocery shopping at Wally World and got stuff for lunches and dinner. I seem to do really well (most of the time) while I am at work. I pack a lunch with a Lean Cuisine or Smart Ones frozen entrée, a jello or pudding cup, cottage cheese and fruit, and some crackers or something crunchy for a snack. One drawer of my desk is filled – literally – with sugar-free drinks for my water, Fiber One and Zone Perfect bars, and instant oatmeal packets (for breakfast since I cannot ever get breakfast at home). Dinner is my ultimate downfall. By the time I get home I just don’t want to make anything; the kitchen is a complete disaster full of dirty dishes, etc., I am tired and frustrated after a long day of working for this stupid company, and I just want to go through a drive-thru or order pizza online because it is fast and I don’t have to do much. So, I have purchased Weight Watcher points friendly sandwich makings, etc. so that I can just make myself a simple sandwich when I get home. Taking the Lipozene at about 5pm helps me stop the over eating and snacking after I get home, so that is a plus!

I do Weight Watchers online, and last week they put out a walking challenge and encouraged people to make teams, etc. I finally found a couple of people here in Billings that want to participate with me in this, and we are getting together Tuesday for our first “official” walk together (our team name is – my idea – The Billings Booty Busters). The challenge is basically to be 5K ready in 8 weeks – for either a 5K walk or run. There is no way I could do a 5K run in my present condition, but I am determined to be able to do a 5K walk! I took a little, tiny-weenie, walk yesterday – down to the end of my block, across the street to the other end of the block, back across the street again to home. I was probably only about an eighth of a mile, but it felt really good to just get the body moving, and I met my neighbor that moved in next door about six months ago since he was outside playing with his 2 year old son and 1 year old daughter in the lovely sunshine!

So, I am feeling very positive this morning – despite gaining 3.2 pound last week – and I hope you all are feeling positive too! WE CAN DO THIS. It may not seem like it sometimes, but I refuse to give up.

Love you all!!!

Wow, wasn't that positive and uplifting? I have no idea where it came from. Oh, don't get me wrong; I am feeling positive, etc. but I suppose it was just a little sugary for the real me. Anyway, so far so good today. I really got into a slump as it was my birthday last week - on the 15th. Yep! What is almost as fun as sharing your birthday with Hitler? Sharing with the IRS of course! That means for lucky little 'ol me, I cannot ever forget my birthday or when taxes are due. NEAT! I now need to perfect my Patsy Stone accent (I'M FORTY-TWO!)

I just get frustrated because sometimes things that I don't want to pass quickly always do, and losing weight is not one of those things. I get all hepped up and excited and positive, etc. but it still takes FOREVER for next week to come so that I can see the results of my progress (if any). How come the weekends don't follow the same time continuum? (That was for all of you Star Trek fans out there. As if you read my blog.)

But the good news is that the days are getting longer and it stays lighter now; Family Guy had a new episode last night so I have a NEW un-PC song stuck in my noggin' (a bag of weed, a bag of weed, everything goes better with a bag of weed!); baseball games have started in earnest; and the weather is finally leading us Montanan's to believe (erroniously, of course) that all the snow is behind us and we can now enjoy our first sunburn of the year.

So, until next time, please concentrate on the little scale at the top of my blog and will it to moooove towards my goal. Your cooperation is greatly appreciated.

TTFN.

Procrastination is my middle name...

2009-04-05T22:35:00.005-06:00

I am feeling better now; Thursday was the worst day, and I have a very unsympathetic boss so it just made things worse. I am now on the mend; god bless NyQuil liquid gels!

I took myself out to lunch today since Montana Jacks sent me a coupon for my birthday this month. While treating myself, I had a slice of their new Very Cherry Cheesecake. Uh, yes, would you please come to my home and fill my bathtub with this please? STAT? OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!!! Yes yes me likey very very much the Very Cherry Cheesecake from Montana Jacks. Highly recommend ordering and promptly planting face in. STAT. I am not usually a fan of the baked cheesecake as I find they are kinda on the dry side (yes, this from the woman who buys the Jell-O brand cheesecake mix, mixes the batter together and eats it straight out of the mixing bowl without letting it set with all the graham cracker crust ingredients sprinkled on top). HOWEVER, this heavenly concoction was not dry at all, was full of lovely big juicy cherries, and the thick graham cracker crust? WAS ON TOP OF THE CHEESECAKE! Did I mention that I highly recommend consuming mass quantities? Ok, just wanted to be sure. It is the closest thing to sex I have ever had. Ever.

After leaving the restaurant I was on a bit of a high. The sun was shining brilliantly and I just wanted to go for a lovely walk. So I drove all the way across the city to the new Kohl's and walked around in there (shut up - it counts as exercise)(it DOES TOO!!!). I am forever seeking the best duvet cover for my bedroom (duh - No, we thought it was for the kitchen!) and found one on Overstock.com that I really, really like, but I am just having a really hard time committing. I found several items that I liked at Kohl's, but the problem is that I have a full-sized bed. If it was something that was just, eh, ok - then they had it in a full size and it was on sale. Next. If it was something that was fabulous and designed by Vera Wang - they had it in a full but it was over $200. Next. If it was fabulous and on sale? Then they had one California King set and one twin. CURSES!! So, after wandering around the housewares and jewelry sections without finding anything that turned me on as much as that cheesecake, I left. Then I decided that what would really cheer me up would be a nifty crystal decanter for storing mouthwash in my bathroom. I would run (drive) over to Tuesday Morning to see what they had; they rarely disappoint in their choices of crystal nifty-thingies. Would Tuesday Morning be open on a Sunday Afternoon? SCORE! I parked next to a sparkly shiny clean SUV as the owner came strolling out in her Easter best. My SUV looks like I currently live in it, and am as bad a housekeeper while living in my vehicle as I am in my real home. She had the nerve to very un-casually "glance" into my vehicle as she was approaching hers and turn up her nose in judgement. I felt like hocking a lugey at her as I got out of my Rodeo, but I classily resisted. Humpf. I was determined that this old biddy was not going to harsh my cheesecake buzz (have I mentioned the cheesecake? I have? Just checking). I made my entrance into the store prepared to be dazzled by their usual array of crystal lovlies. I was sorely disappointed. It appears that they have not only rearranged the store so that I had to waste precious steps to find said crystal collection, but they have drastically down-sized their inventory as well. CRAP!! I finally managed to find where they were hiding the three crystal decanters they had, but they were all $25 and just didn't do it for me. Sigh... I then realized why I rarely shop there anymore; most of the stuff they have you would have to pay me to take out of the store and then I still wouldn't want to schlep it to my car. Oh well. Just as well I suppose.

And the real reason I was doing all of this was because I was wearing my last pair of clean underwear, next to last pair of clean socks, and my horribly unflattering pair of workout sweats because I have absolutely no clean clothes. At all. Seriously. But I did manage to get two loads of laundry done today. Yay me.

TTFN.

Achoo

2009-04-01T09:22:00.004-06:00

*sniff* *snnnniiiiifff* *cough cough* *snort* *SNEEZE* *whine for mommy* *SSSNNNNIIIIFFFFFF*

I have the crud.

I am whiny.

My nose is raw.

Lost 2.8 lbs last week. Reading Jen Lancaster's Bitter Is The New Black. Laughing my head off, which is OK because it's full of snot and not doing me much good right now anyway.

I'm going back to bed.

You Can't Tell, But I'm Moving In The Right Direction!

2009-03-23T12:15:00.003-06:00

I am - truely!! I managed to loose four pounds this week; just don't ask me how. Cause I don't have a clue. I ate out, didn't exercise; maybe it's because I slept most of the day Saturday and only ate once at about 8:30pm? But it was pizza so...I give up. I don't know why I lost them but I am glad to be rid of them. So there. PFFT. I have somehow managed to reset my weight loss ticker by accident, but that is OK because I feel like I am starting over now anyway. I read a FANTASTIC book this weekend (when I wasn't sleeping on Saturday) - more about it below - and it gave me some renewed faith in my ability to lose this weight. My goal is still the same - to weigh 265 by August 1st - but I will have to work a lot harder to attain it now because I have been messing around and not paying attention to how much time has gone by. It is still a reasonable goal of about three pounds per week, and if I get this gigantic butt of mine moving, that will help out even more.

So, the book. It is "Such A Pretty Fat" by Jen Lancaster. I nearly died about 50 times from laughter while reading this book!! However, there is bad language in it, so you may need to self-edit it. Otherwise, it is fantastic. She has written three books total, but at the time of writing this one, she had only published her first book, "Bitter Is The New Black". She determines that she needs to loose weight, so her agent suggests she write a book about her journey. I loved it because I felt like (aside from the bad language) this book could have been written by me. She has the same views on a lot of things and she has the same sence of humor that I do. I also loved her because she moaned about the same things I would have (a personal trainer named Barbie?), her fears were the same as mine, etc. I like the book because it is about a REAL PERSON and her fears are real just like mine. I just got off the phone with my sister, telling her about it and I am going to send it to her so she can enjoy it. I think that I will also run out (drive, sorry, not run...not yet) and buy her other two books as well.

Well, that's all that's new for now. TTFN.

I caved...

2009-03-16T14:01:00.002-06:00

Yes, I admit it; I caved in and called to have my cable hooked back up (SHUT UP!). Hey - I really tried!! But, living in Montana and not being able to hear the weather in the morning is not such a hot idea. At least, not at this time of the year. Trying to dress for a new day based on the weather the day before is not an exact science. Or any science for that matter. Last week, on Saturday, the weather was glorious! 55 degrees, sunny, warm, nice breeze, etc. Cut to 9:37am Sunday and two inches of snow on the ground accumulating to a total of almost 6 inches by Monday morning. Um, yeah. Good thing I didn't grab my shorts and sandals! Well, I wouldn't be grabbing shorts anyway, but...uh...thingy.

Anyhoo, I can't wait to get it back. I am missing my favorite shows, although Ollie and I are having a lot of fun getting together to watch the Biggest Loser every Tuesday night. The biggest problem we have is that I want to bring nibbly things to snack on that are not in the spirit of the show! I did purchase the first season of The Big Bang Theory on DVD this week and watched all three DVDs. I LOVE that show!! I would go out with any of those guys, except Walowitz. He is just toooooo much of a horn dog for this gal. I would even date Sheldon with all his sphinter-puckering idiosyncracies. I love Leonard though; he is the perfect mix. So, I have to wait until next Monday to get everything back, and I will be a happier camper!

Also, you may have noticed that the weight tracker didn't change this week (or did you notice? See how you are?) - that would be because I DIDN'T GAIN THIS WEEK! Yeehaw! No, I didn't lose, but please don't harsh my buzz, OK? I plan to buckle down this week and stick to a decent eating plan and hopefully will take a little exercise and get that going as well. Since there is more daylight at the end of the day, I am not so inclined to go sleepy bo bos when I get home from work; hopefully I can put that extra time to good use. Ha.

Well, since I don't have a lot to say today, I thought I would share some wisdom from Andy Rooney. That guy is older than dirt but still hanging in there; there aren't a lot like him left and it's a darn shame. Please to enjoy:

I've learned....
That the best classroom in the world is at the feet of an elderly person.
That when you're in love, it shows.
That just one person saying to me, 'You've made my day!' makes my day.
That having a child fall asleep in your arms is one of the most peaceful feelings
in the world.
That being kind is more important than being right.
That you should never say no to a gift from a child.
That I can always pray for someone when I don't have the strength to help him in
some other way.
That no matter how serious your life requires you to be, everyone needs a friend
to act goofy with.
That sometimes all a person needs is a hand to hold and a heart to understand.
That simple walks with my father around the block on summer nights when I was
a child did wonders for me as an adult.
That life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster
it goes.
That we should be glad God doesn't give us everything we ask for.
That money doesn't buy class.
That it's those small daily happenings that make life so spectacular.
That under everyone's hard shell is someone who wants to be appreciated
and loved.
That to ignore the facts does not change the facts.
That when you plan to get even with someone, you are only letting that person
continue to hurt you.
That love, not time, heals all wounds.
That the easiest way for me to grow as a person is to surround myself with people
smarter than I am.
That everyone you meet deserves to be greeted with a smile.
That no one is perfect until you fall in love with them.
That life is tough, but I'm tougher.
That opportunities are never lost, someone will take the ones you miss.
That when you harbor bitterness, happiness will dock elsewhere.
That I wish I could have told my Dad that I loved him one more time before he
passed away.
That one should keep his words both soft and tender, because tomorrow he may
have to eat them.
That a smile is an inexpensive way to improve your looks.
That when your newly born grandchild holds your little finger in his little fist,
that you're hooked for life.
That everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and
growth occurs while you're climbing it.
That the less time I have to work with, the more things I get done.

TTFN.

Not much new...How U?

2009-03-09T13:01:00.002-06:00

Well, the weight loss tracker is still moving in the wrong direction. CRAP. Yes, I said it, you read it, C R A P. I HATE TRYING TO LOSE WEIGHT!!! Sigh. OK, enough self-pity - what was the problem? Oh, just pizza and pasta and those stupid little chocolate donuts that you can get at WalMart by the crate. Oh yeah, and still taking no exercise. Other than that, I just can't understand why I am not waking up each morning in a puddle of fat! Depression has been crushing all of my best habits lately (shut up, yes, I do have a few) and causing me to eat all kinds of garbage just in case the world shall end in my sleep and I will never get the opportunity to eat pizza or little chocolate donuts by the crate ever again. The fact that the world seems to keep dawning new each morning has apparently been lost on my depression-addled brain. So, help me out here in reaching said brain. Please take a moment to scream at the top of your lungs along with me - yes, you in the back, come on speak up - STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT!!!! Thank you.

Having said that, I actually woke up in a pretty focused mood this morning. I realized that I have not been taking any of my medications for at least a week; perhaps this could be part of the problem. Not just with the depression - doesn't take a MD to figure that one out - but with my weight loss (gain) problems and eating out of control. So, this morning I am back on the meds. Yesterday, with the threat of Les coming to possibly spend the evening, I actually managed to get the living room into some kind of shape that would not cause me to blindfold him before he came in the front door. I have been living in mortal fear that the dreaded landlord would make an appearance and demand entry and I would have to feign the Black Plague to keep him outside. I even sent Ollie an email and told her that she may now come over to watch movies with me if she wished - just as long as she did not look into the kitchen (which is another post in itself). I am not completely finished but the goal for tonight is to finish it and get out my walking-exercise DVD. I had an awesome CD playing yesterday (that Sissy made for me) while I was cleaning, and sometimes I ran in place to the music or just danced in an alarmingly white way (arm flinging, pointing at random objects repeatedly, the Cabbage, etc.). If my landlord has hidden cameras in my place then he is blind now, and deservedly so. I was surprised by these sudden and random bursts of energy; it just isn't like me. But, I would like it to be like me, and to be more often like me.

I really hate this part of Daylight Savings Time too - do not mess with my sleep time, do not take an hour away from me! But, I will have to say, I do enjoy having more light at the end of the day. I wish that the US would just leave the time where it is now and stop messing with it. Arizona doesn't even participate - how funny is that?? I like having more sun at the end of the day so that I can get stuff done at home. If it's dark outside when I get home, it must be sleepy time. I want to get the house back in shape, and I want to make some earrings and bracelets with the lovely lovely beads that I bought on Saturday. Man, I walked out of the bead store with a sack the size of an egg and it cost me $45!! When you are scooping up pretty shiney things at $.10 a piece, you forget exactly how much money you are spending; I think they do that on purpose. If I manage to make anything, I will post some pictures of them on here.

Speaking of posting pictures, I took in my collection of portraits that I have taken over the years in to show my therapist on Saturday. It's one of the few things I have done in life that I am proud of, so I just wanted to show them off. She thinks that getting back into photography will help me a lot with my depression. My problem is that Alisha, Reanna and Amber were my star models, and I'm not down there any more! So, somehow I will have to find some people that will allow me to take their pictures I guess. If the girls will give me permission, I will post some of my favorite portraits on here too.

Well - I guess I should stop blathering and get on with it; I did really well on my eating today and I drank at least 40 oz of water so far today. I have no clue what I'm doing for dinner, but I will try my best to be good.

TTFN

What A Cold Day In Hell Must Look Like

2009-03-05T17:35:00.004-07:00

I took this picture with my cell phone the other day when I was sitting in the drive-thru at Mickey D's (notice the huge crack in my windshield that goes all the way across the picture). What were you doing at McD's you ask? Shut up, I reply. This McD's thermometer always seems to go out of whack when the temp drops below a certain degree. It just cracked me up seeing 266 degrees F juxtaposed with 6" of snow on the ground. Just kinda gave me a little giggle.

I had my car in the shop this week; $600 bucks!! Thank goodness for a generous mother that got a decent tax return; if she hadn't been willing to loan it to me, I would be in big trouble!! The timing belt tensioner died - a very rare occurrence. The mechanic said that it is very rare that the part just fails like that; it's usually due to an accident with severe front end damage. He thinks that this part was defective on the day it was manufactured. Sigh. Leave it to me to get it! It was making this horrible loud clacking noise ever since about Christmas time; it was so loud that you could hear me coming about a half mile away, drew stares from people on the street, and made other people roll down their windows and listen to their own vehicles. I would be waving at them and mouthing - no, it's me! Now the Rodeo is so quiet that I am not sure sometimes if it is still actually running! It's like driving a stealth Rodeo! I am so happy. Thanks again, Mom!!

TTFN.

I'm Going In The Wrong Direction

2009-03-02T11:12:00.004-07:00

Well, as you can see by my little weight tracker at the top of my blog, I am clearly going in the wrong direction. Apparently my brain has not yet grasped the concept that i am intending to LOSE weight, not GAIN it. I have set myself back 6 pounds this week! Curse Domino's and their fantastic Bacon Cheeseburger pizza!!! I love it so...
I must must must start exercising (hmmm, where have i heard this tune before? Insert sound of broken record here). I saw on the Biggest Loser where all but two of the teams were locked out of the gym and had to learn to improvise a work out for the week without using any of the gym machines. They used this super nifty device that they hooked to a tree and got a full body work out with it. Kind of a loops and pulley sort of system with straps and stuff. Kinda looked like a modern take on a Medieval torture device in yellow and black nylon. I searched and searched and finally found the elusive little sucker online. I thought that if it wasn't too much, i might waste a few dollars on it. Well, it's $200. Too much? Yeah. I guess i will wait to see if i can find one on Ebay sometime in the future. If you want to see it and read the testimonials about it, you can find it here: http://www.fitnessanywhere.com/page/000-94127/PROD/TSPBV1.
I am also trying to find a good bra to wear while exercising (frankly, i am just looking for a good bra PERIOD). Ever try to find a decent sports bra in a size 52DD? Yeah, i thought not. Guess what? They don't exist. I was on the Biggest Loser's website, reading some of the forums, and one gal recommended bras from Enell (http://www.enell.com/). I checked them out; they are not pretty, but they sure look like they would hold the girls firmly! They aren't cheap either ($79 in my size), but if they work, i would be willing to pay a small ransom for one. There is a place here in town that does professional fittings, and i think i will go there to see what my real size is before i spring that kind of cash for one of those corsets. But i would love to start exercising and not come to work with two black eyes (and then try to explain them to an all male staff).
My car has gone in to hospital today; it started making a horrible noise in mid-December and is now having other issues that i believe are related. It could just be a really bad timing belt, but it could be the timing belt tensioner. It could cost $25 to fix or $600 to fix. Boy, do I love surprises! At least i will not be able to hit the fast food places for lunch this week. I am carpooling with Ollie, so i will be forced to bring my lunch to work. i have a few Weight Watchers Smart Ones frozen entrees in the freezer, and i have my Dark Chocolate Raspberry Sugar Free Jello Pudding cups so i think i'll be good to go. Wish me luck, as there is a gas station right around the corner that sells nasty but tasty hot dogs, chips, goodies and candy that is not out of my walking range...curse you Conoco!!!
I got new neighbors over the weekend, and all i can say is WOOHOO! No, not single male heterosexual underwear models with a fetish for short fat women with yellow hair that don't cook or clean; but they are the next best thing. Normal people. Nice normal quiet people. I can't wait to sit out on my back deck this spring and summer and enjoy a nice book and a glass of lemonade without being accosted by my three-sheets-to-the-wind neighbor that always wanted to hug and kiss me, and all of her loud three-sheets-to-the-wind loud mouthed friends. Whee!!!
Well, i guess i should get back to work; i have spent the latter portion of this morning surfing the web and just playing around. Oh well.
TTFN.

WHAT I ATE TODAY:

One sausage McMuffin with egg
One McDonalds hashbrown
8oz chocolate milk
6oz water

One Red Baron Personal Deep Dish Meat Trio Pizza
One Dark Chocolate Raspberry Sugar Free Jello pudding cup
20oz diet coke

THE SECRET TO KICKING THE TV HABIT

2009-02-26T15:24:00.002-07:00

Well, I have discovered the secret to kicking the habit of watching hours and hours of TV every night and weekend: don’t pay your cable bill and wind up getting it shut off, then call them and find out it is going to cost $411.89 to get it reconnected again.

So, I no longer have internet access at home; also, since it was part of the digital package through cable, my home telephone no longer works. Great. I can’t wait for Mom to call my home number and then I have to explain to her why it’s disconnected. Yay!

I guess that means that I will now have to get busy and clean that house. Or sleep a lot. Or both. Hmmmmm…maybe exercise? Perish the thought!

This also means that I will have to update my blog from work (gee, waste time on the internet when I should be working? Ummmm…OK.).

So I was going to post what I have been eating for the last few days. It ain't purdy sista.

Tuesday: Breakfast - none (bad). Lunch: Big Mac meal (removed center bun) (v bad). Dinner - none (vv bad).
Wednesday: Breakfast - none (bad again). Lunch: Hardee's Ham & Cheese sandwich, curly fries, diet Coke (pretty bad, could have been worse). Dinner: Potato salad, some sort of strawberry salad, four chocolate Pop-Tarts, 2 cups of milk (what the...?).
Today, so far: Breakfast - two Egg McMuffins (not bad). Lunch: four little slices of pizza, 40oz water w/Crystal Lite (could have been WAY worse). Snack: piece of SF gum.

I have no idea what I am going to have for dinner tonight. I have no idea what I am going to do when I get home tonight!! I know that I have the TV on for company; being single with no pets (thanks to my doody-headed landlord - don't get me started) my house is really empty and quiet when I get home. Music doesn't fill the same void as humans talking to each other does. It's weird. But, I guess I am just going to have to get used to it.

Poop.

Our very own DIET TRIBE

2009-02-23T18:57:00.005-07:00

I have struggled with my weight forever. Who hasn't? PS - to those of you who haven't, I hate you. Unless you are under age 16. Anyway, I watch The Biggest Loser every Tuesday night WITHOUT FAIL. Ollie turned me on to The Diet Tribe, but I didn't start watching it until the very end. I really liked it. At the beginning of February, my niece Amber sent a group of us an email, asking if we wanted to band together and lose weight as a group; encouraging each other and trading tips, etc. I got out my step ladder and climbed on that wagon! (For those of you who don't know me, I am short; thus the step ladder...oh never mind.) We all got really excited and decided that we would keep track of our weight loss on my blog, and set a goal to lose five pounds by the end of February. As you can see, it is now the last week of February, and I am just now getting going on the blog. But hey - no one sent me any info to put on it! So, without further ado (adieu? a dew?), I am posting my picture and info (warning: not for the squeemish).

Heather, age 41
Current weight: 309 (AAAUUUGGGHHH!!!!)
Pounds lost since Feb. 1st: 4
Long range goal: weigh 265 by August 3rd

Sheesh - I am all boobs, and not in a good way!!! I have decided that I am also going to record everything I eat on here as well. One of the best way to be successful at weight loss is to truthfully record every single thing you put in your mouth. And it worked for me tonight! I went to the grocery store to get something for dinner, and I really wanted either a piece of cake or some donuts. Ooooohhhh, they looked SO GOOD!! Normally, I would have felt a little guilty for buying them but would have done it anyway. But tonight, because I knew that I would have to be honest and list them here, I decided it wasn't worth it. SCORE! So, here is what I have eaten today:

One packet of Quaker Weight Control instant oatmeal (made with water) in Banana Bread
20oz water with one packet of Great Value brand sugar free Lemonade drink mix
One Burger King Tender Grill chicken sandwich with no tomatoes
12oz diet Coke
One small Cobb salad made with iceburg and romaine lettuce, chunky blue cheese dressing, smoked turkey breast, hard boiled egg and bacon bits
20oz plain water
Two small blue raspberry Now & Laters

Not a lot of food, I know, but it's always easy on the first day.

C'mon gals - send me your stuff and let's get this Tribe going!

More vacation stuff

2008-09-27T14:19:00.000-06:00

Sorry I didn't get right back on here to finish my vacation tale, but I am still trying to get into the swing of the "blog" thing. Besides, I am sure no one reads this anyway.

So, where did I leave off? Oh, yes - the end of Day One.

The next day, Monday, we just hung around Billings. Everyone was tired, and Sis normally gets up at 4am everyday at home, so I sure as heck wasn't going to begrudge her some sleeping in time. We had a very late breakfast - OK, it was brunch - at Sis's favorite restaurant, the Cracker Barrel. She always cracks me up because she can never remember the name - it usally comes out as Chicken Barrel, Chicken Biscuit Barrel, or similar. I think she keeps confusing it with those Chicken in a Biscuit crackers... Anyhoo, she was thrilled and Hannah was thrilled and they both spent lots of money there. Hannah got a really pretty watch where you pick out your band (purple and white stones w/silver accents) and the face and then you just hook them together for your own personal look.

Then we went to my office and they got introduced to all the guys. A good friend of mine from the Portland office had flown out to cover for my first week off and it was awesome to see her again. Then we went to Hobby Lobby and cleaned out their scrapbooking section. Sis and Hannah wanted to keep scrapbooks of their trip - Hobby Lobby is now my best friend, wondering when this wonderful red-headed woman and her credit card will be visiting me again. Hannah also got a little silver cowboy hat to attach to her new watch. Super cute!

After that we kind of drove around town and I showed them the sights. We stopped and had ice cream before dinner (BEFORE dinner? shut up - we were on vacation!!) at the local 31 Flavors. I haven't had ice cream there in years and it was SSSSSOOOOOO GOOOOOD!! I noticed the front of my rig looked a little fuzzy, and it is because it was PLASTERED with bugs!!!

It was so disgusting!!! It was hilarious!!! I don't know how people at the neighboring coffe/cafe were able to eat! Sis wanted to have Famous Dave's BBQ for dinner, but we just had ice cream, so we drove around to find a suitable place to stake out the sunset. We drove up through and around my neighborhood while I was telling Hannah how we have Pronghorn Antelope that wander through the houses out here. Just as she was saying how cool it would be to run across one in someone's front yard, we came around a corner and saw:

I managed to pull up to the yard where they were eating cherries from a tree, and we got these pictures - please to enjoy:

No, the first one is not photoshopped to look like she is saying OH! She was chewing and I just held my finger down on the shutter - I love it!

So, after that we drove over by the airport to a subdivision called Rebergh Ranch where there are lots of beautiful homes. We found an empty lot and parked the truck, then waited for the sun to set. Sis caught these great pics:

As we drove out of the area and were almost back to the highway, Hannah spotted this guy and took a great picture with Sis's camera:

We went on to a lovely dinner and then home for sleep.

More about the rest of the trip later.

TTFN.

Post Vacation Blues

2008-09-13T18:42:00.001-06:00

Well, vacation has been over with for a week, and I am totally bummed. I had an AWESOME time with Sis and Hannah, and had a great week in Portland as well. But, it sucks to come home to a completely empty home and a job that totally bites. I miss my family sooooooo much!!! I still don't want to move back to the big city; I just wish they could all come be with me here. Sigh...

OK, well, Sis and Hannah's trip on the train was great. Sis of course wound up with the only seat on the train that wouldn't recline and the foot rest would not come up, but Hannah was a good sport and traded seats with her Mimi when she couldn't stand it any more.

Our Hannah on the train

The train left Portland at about 4pmish on Saturday 8/23 and then went into Vancouver to pick up a few more passengers. Then they headed east along the Columbia River Gorge. Here are a few gorgeous pictures Sis and Hannah took along the way:

The train made it's way to Spokane at about 1:15am where they had a lay over for about an hour and a half. Then a train from Seattle hooked up with them and away they went, further east through the night. In the early hours, the train rolled into Montana and Glacier National Park.

Now, I pride myself on being really good with directions; I can read a map and can tell which way is north, south, east or west; I can go somewhere for the first time in the dark, then find it again three years later in the daytime. So, surely you can imagine my complete surprise when I discovered that I took a wrong turn in Roundup and went 150 miles to the east when I should have been almost to Malta, 200 miles to the north. I could NOT believe it!!!! I had to call Sis on her cell (fortunately she was in range) and tell her that I would be, oh, two hours late picking her up. Hannah said I was fired. Fortunately, Sis and Hannah both were really good sports; especially since the Malta train station is really just a wooden bench with a roof and a bathroom. There was no where for them to go, it was 103 outside and about 110 inside the little station house. Hannah had brought her portable DVD player and they passed the wait by watching a movie and soaking their hair and shirts with water when the heat just got too much. Here is the train station and some pretty sights from the trip home:
All tuckered out and getting ready for adventure!

More about our adventures tomorrow.

TTFN!

Hurrah!! VACATION! Hurrah!!!

2008-08-23T18:50:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow... Sissy and Hannah arrive tomorrow via Amtrak. I am sooooooooooooo excited!! Have I mentioned how excited I am? Just in case you were wondering, I am very excited. My house is still in complete disarray, and it is 7pm. I have been trying really hard (no, seriously!) to get my butt in gear to get the house cleaned up, but I just can't find the shifter. I am stuck wandering around the place in first gear, talking to myself. I spent an hour going around town trying to find one of those big glass jars with the spigot on it to make sun tea for Sissy because it's her favorite. Guess I am a little late in jumping on that summer culinary bandwagon. Even Wal-Mart doesn't have any. CRAP!!! Can you make sun tea in a cookie jar? Oh bother.

Ollie is finally getting her furniture. She flew to Sacramento last week to supervise the loading of her possessions onto the moving truck. I was very proud of her for flying down there by herself; she is terrified to fly and it usually takes a lot of alcohol to get her on a plane. But, this time she had to have enough wits about her to not leave her purse and carry on behind on the plane as she is wont to do when in a red wine stupor. I wasn't able to go with her because of my pending two weeks off from work (did I mention that I am on vacation, and that I am very excited about it?) and the fact that all the money i have is going into said two weeks off. The moving company is now trying to jerk her out of an additional $200 bucks; good for her, she is sticking to her guns and having none of it. Did you know that if you scream, "I HAVE RETAINED AN ATTORNEY" on someones voice mail, they call you back really quickly? Hmmmmmm...

Well, here are a few of the fun things that Ollie and I did this summer: we went to the stock car races out on the highway to Roundup; it's about 18 miles or so outside of Billings. It was very loud and TONS of fun!! We got to scream and yell our bloody heads off and let out lots of stress and aggression. No one got hurt or went to jail. Score!

Ollie checks out the action pre-race

The track is out in the middle of nothing

But it sure is pretty out in the middle of nothing!

It was nice to see that Sponge Bob was represented

A fabulous sunset was a nice touch.

We wanted to go to the fair this year since it was about 20 degrees cooler this summer than last, but they still pick the hottest bloody week of August to have it! I just cannot handle heat, so I am kinda left out of that kind of stuff. I hope that one day when i loose these two extra people hanging off of my skeleton that the weight loss will help with that; but i have been prone to heat stroke ever since i was a child, so i may just be one of those people that never really gets to enjoy that kind of thing. Anyhoo, we did go opening night to see Bill Engvall. OMG - he was a hoot!!! He is just as funny in person as he is on TV or DVD; no swearing or talking about sex just to be dirty, and he has been married to the same woman for 25 years. He is very humble and down to earth; we were waiting for the elevator to take us up to the main level and a guy was talking to some of his friends about Bill (everyone calls him Bill; it's totally fine and cool). He had flown into Billings earlier in the day and asked this guy to show him around the fairgrounds. They set out in a golf cart, and the guy said that not one person that asked for an autograph or photo op was turned down. He was very happy and gracious to everyone, and loved to talk to all the little kids. He did a bit in his show about turning 50 and getting his first colonoscopy; i thought i was going to pee and pass out at the same time. It was a great evening. Ollie and i decided that we would go ahead and go out to the fairgrounds since now it was dark out and wouldn't be nearly so hot. I was totally jones-ing for a tater pig and deep fried chocolate covered twinkie. I don't normally eat that kind of stuff in public, but hey it was DARK - no one would really be able to see me!! When we finally figured out how to get out of the Metra Arena and out to the grounds, it was spitting a little rain. Ollie had just spent three hours in her unairconditioned bathroom straightening her hair, so we decided not to venture any further. We merrily returned to the Arena, took the elevator up to the main floor, where i proceeded to eyeball the four - yep, four - flights of stairs to get up to where we parked. Out of the corner of my eye, i could see all the Metra personnel taking bets and running through their CPR lessons in their heads. I managed the first two flights without stopping, then it took me another 10 minutes to climb the last two. The 15 mile hike to where i parked the Rodeo on the side of a hill was a breeze after that! But, all in all, it was totally worth it.

Well, i guess i had better wrap this up. I have managed to get some laundry going while my pictures for this post were uploading; you may applaud.

It's gettin' warmer...

2008-06-17T21:53:00.000-06:00

Well, it's starting to be that time of the year here in Billings. We are pretty sure we've finally seen the last of the snow and the thunderstorms are starting to roll in every evening. Monday night Ollie and I met up at the movie theater to see The Happening (I'll give you a non-spoiler review later). When we came out of the theater, this huge thunderhead was building in the distance.

The picture really doesn't do it justice; suffice it to say, it was bloody huge. I love a good thunderstorm; the more lightning and thunder the better! I just hate to see the lightning start fires that result in people losing animals and homes. But after living for 15 years in the Pacific Northwest, I am tired of rain that just hangs around and doesn't do anything but make me miserable. If it's going to rain, I want it to STORM! Make it worth my while, don't waste my time by hanging around all freaking day just spitting at me. Do it, do it with attitude, and get lost. Yeah. Anyhoo, it was too far past Billings for us to get anything out of it. That is typical of a lot of the weather here; 85% of the time it comes at us full bore, but then it splits up and goes north and south of us. And to the northeast of us, they usually get nailed!

Tonight they keep butting into the TV with the EBS telling us about severe thunderstorm warnings; they interrupted Hell's Kitchen five times, and now they keep interrupting my new favorite Britcom "Not Going Out". It's extremely irritating because the storms aren't anywhere near Billings, and the weird tones that they use and the guy's voice that narrates the warnings are both extremely loud and just that side of creepy. Ah, the inconvenience of safety. It's like having to take your shoes off at the airport.

Ok, so, The Happening. The previews at the theater a few weeks ago had me jumping out of my skin with anticipation. I am a pretty big fan of M. Night, and it seemed to me like this movie was going to be in the same vein as Signs, which scared the crap out of me - and I loved every second of it. This movie, well, not so much. It was very good, and very well acted, but it just left me...I don't know...wanting more of something. I don't want to say much about it, because with his movies any stray comment can be a spoiler, but the R rating was definitely for the gore content. No sex, no bad language, but I found the scene where the construction workers are falling from the sky to be particularly disturbing. I was still very happy to have turned over my hard earned money to see it and all in all I give it 4.5 stars out of 5.

oooooooo - I just saw lightning! Can't hear any thunder, but if that's all I'm going to get, I'll take it.

Gotta dash - Absolutely Fabulous just came on.

I'm baaaaaaack...

2008-06-14T08:15:00.000-06:00

Wow - I had no idea how long I had been away! Several things have happened since my last blog, although not that much really.

If you are wondering how my lithotripsy went, it went pretty well. The second time. Yep, $16,000 a piece and I had it done twice in 30 days. The first time, the stone basically broke into three large pieces, and none of them were small enough for me to pass. So, they did it again, this time blasting them REALLY hard, and the results were five large stones and a whole sandbox full of gravel. Here are the five largest:

Ewwwww!!! I know. But hey, blogs are for sharing, right? Right! When I took them in to the doctor, I told him that I was thinking of having them polished and made into a ring or necklace. They sure were expensive, and painful, and I thought that I should at least get to show them off. Pfft.

At the end of November, just around Thanksgiving time, Ollie got her own place. She has a great job now and a cute duplex apartment. She doesn't have any furniture yet though! Well, she did order a couch, and she does have a lamp, and two twin size mattresses that she was sleeping on when she lived here. All the rest of her stuff is still in storage in California. We are still trying to work out a plan to go get the stuff, but with gas prices at insanity, who knows when she will be able to afford it!

Well, that's all the new stuff there is; told you it wasn't much. As for future stuff, Sissy and Hannah will be coming out for a visit the last week of August, then I will be going back to Portland with them to stay for a week. I AM SOOOOO EXCITED!!!!!! So is Sissy and Hannah. They will be coming out by Amtrak, and neither of them has ever traveled by train. I have taken the train from Portland to California several times, and I just love it. I cannot wait to see them!!!

Well, ta-ta for now.

A Nice Day For A Drive

2007-09-03T11:50:00.000-06:00

Les felt much better when he woke up Sunday morning - yay!! I went and picked him up from a truck stop in Laurel and then we went to breakfast. We came home, picked up Ollie (who was nursing a wicked migraine) and went for a drive. We drove out to Ironwood which is a housing subdivision on the outskirts of Billings. There are HUGE, gorgeous houses up there and Ollie wanted to snap a few pics to send to her family back home. We really enjoyed driving around the entire subdivision, judging...ahem...I mean critiquing the homes and the landscaping. I cannot for the life of me figure out what all those people do for a living out here to own such fabulous homes, and I would love to know if I could get one of those jobs!!! We had so much fun that we decided to drive around and look at other neighborhoods to see what gems we could find. We found this cool place off RimRock Drive (sorry, taken through a dirty and cracked windshield - don't ask):

We thought it was super cool that they built this house around these MASSIVE boulders instead of dynamiting them into gravel. Can you think of a more secure place to have your deck? Very cool and extremely unique!

Well, Sissy's BBQ didn't turn out quite the way she had planned, but a great time was had by all. My aunt & uncle and cousins from the Seattle area were not able to come, Les wasn't there, but all the kids and grandkids showed up! Here are some pictures of my wonderful, fabulous and gorgeous family; please to enjoy.

My nephew Jeremy and his wife Erika

VICTORY!!

Kieran, monkey boy with popcicle lips

Sweet Kaya, always smiling!!

Poor Kyrell, played himself into a coma

My niece Alisha with youngest daughter, Taelynn

My nephew-in-law, Brock

Our precious Hannah

My niece, Reanna

Little Alex

Our sweet Emily

Brock's new toy - a custom made $14,000 electric guitar

Zac's new toy!

Oh Uncle Zac, take me for a ride!!

Stone VS Shock Waves

2007-09-01T22:29:00.000-06:00

I am scheduled to have shock wave lithotripsy on Tuesday the 11th. The doctor says that my stone is definitely lodged in the beginning of the ureter; he showed me the stone on the x-ray and it is definitely a big bugger. I believe he described it as "impressive". Neat. I am going to play a trick on my Mom - after I have the procedure done, I'm going to get a rock out of the parking lot at work and send it to her. She just got this book on painting rocks...I think you can see where I am going with this. The doctor thought it was a great idea!

There are a couple different kinds of lithotripsy; the one I am having involves using shock waves that are directed at the stone that break it up into smaller pieces. He is going to insert a stint into my ureter (fun!) so that it will be a little wider and hopefully the pieces will pass along nicely. I will follow up a few weeks later for x-rays to see if all the pieces are out and then he will remove the stint. He said that I should recover just fine, but will probably feel like someone kicked the heck out of my kidney and that I may even have bruising on my skin.

I was telling Ollie that I must have been thinking about the procedure before I fell asleep the other night because I had a funny little dream about it. I dreamed that I walked into the operating room and was very impressed by all the modern technology and fancy equipment that they were going to use on me. They put me under, and then the doctor asked, "Is she out? Cool!" Then he and the nurses grabbed baseball bats and started whacking the heck out of my side! And they didn't use the more modern aluminum bats either; oooooh, no, they were totally old school and used the wooden Louisville Sluggers on me. I woke up laughing my head off.

Well, Les will be dropping by tomorrow morning; he is a long haul truck driver and always stops in Billings when he is on his way through. Sometimes he only has time to take me to breakfast or dinner, and sometimes he will spend the night or a few days. He doesn't have to be in Spokane until Tuesday, so he's going to spend the day and the night here with Ollie and me. He isn't feeling very well; it seems that he either has food poisoning or a stomach flu - let's just say if he could figure out how to swallow some plaster of Paris to plug off a certain orifice, he would be much happier. Poor Les!

Les in Red Lodge April 2007

Bummin' 'Bout the BBQ

2007-08-30T10:38:00.000-06:00

Well, poop. I won't get to go to Sissy's BBQ this weekend after all. Aaaand, speaking of poop:

I had to go in on Monday for a CT/IVP (series of xrays and a cat scan, then the same tests again after being injected with dye). I have had a massive kidney infection (so the doctor thinks) for about a month, so after being on strong antibiotics for a month they wanted to repeat this test to see if the infection had gone away. They had also reported a stone in the kidney about the size of a nickel. They wanted me to repeat the procedure so that they could see the progress of the infection and see what that stone was up to. I don't mind the procedure at all; heck, anything to be away from work!! I absolutely HATE the prep for the test. For the whole day before you have to have liquids only (a minimum of 12oz every hour - a lot for me; I'm lucky to drink 12oz a DAY!) plus take three different laxatives! Whee! What fun!!

I decided that since I had to do all that yucky stuff, I might as well try to get something positive out of it. I know - I will see just how much weight I lose by a day on an all liquid diet plus frequent trips to the pooper! I figured two to three pounds. When I weighed myself Monday morning, I found that..............wait for it........I had GAINED A POUND!!! What the...???? I pee and poop myself senseless for THIS??? The scale is now officially working for the other side. Sigh. I have PCOS (poly cystic ovarian syndrome) so I often have swelling of my feet and ankles, especially on the right side. My right foot was HUGE on Monday morning, so I figured that my foot alone probably weighed three pounds. The nurse at the hospital agreed with me, so there. Pfffft.

The doctor called me Tuesday morning with the results: good news - infection has reduced considerably, but he wants me to take another round of antibiotics. Bad news - that stinkin' stone is on the move and has left the kidney and is in the ureter now. He said there is no way I can pass this stone. I have an appointment to see him today at 3:30; they will take an X-ray to see if it has moved at all and I will probably have to go in to the hospital on Tuesday to have the stone blasted. It's a day surgery under general anaesthesia, but no cutting is involved. Yea! I will probably be off work for a day or two (yea again!). I will know more for sure today.

So, because of the unpredictability of the stone, I cannot go to Sissy's this weekend. Probably nothing will happen, but I just don't want to be in Spokane or Moses Lake and have the stupid thing decide to really start trouble. Hospitals are too far away at those junctures, and I especially don't want it to kick in when I am at Sissy's. Poor Sis; Les will not be home for the BBQ after all, and so he won't get to be with the family either. They are both super bummed out.

By the way, the LL still has not come back to finish the atrocious job he started with the front door; the old one is still leaning up against the house, terrible peeling paint job still showing.

Sigh. Stupid stone.

Front Door Saga, part II; Labor Day is a-comin!

2007-08-25T14:42:00.001-06:00

Well, I got home from work yesterday and the door was still leaning up against the house. The trim had all been put back on, but now there needs to be new paint put on the house around the door, inside and out. No word on if the LL is coming back to do it, or when.

I cannot wait to go to Sissy's for her Labor Day BBQ! I am so sick of dealing with the socially retarded and just want to have some fun for a change. All of the kids and the kid's kids will be there, including some cousins I haven't seen in a while, and my favorite aunt and uncle from Sultan, WA. I will be posting pictures from the BBQ so you can see my lovely family!

I am also just looking forward to the trip itself. Instead of flying, which I detest because I am too fat to sit comfortably, I am going to drive. Driving is always my travel of choice. So, I will leave Friday at Noon and should arrive in Onalaska, WA sometime around midnight or 1am. I only stop for gas - ask Sissy! She is lucky if I pull over and let her pee. I am the road trip QUEEN!!!!

My Landlord Is A Twat

2007-08-23T18:54:00.000-06:00

I am so incredibly pissed off right now I can hardly type. Or think.

After 2 1/2 years of asking, begging, pleading and threatening, my landlord finally came over today to put in a new front door that has a deadbolt lock on it. Yes, as long as I have lived in this duplex, I just had one of those doorknobs that you push in and twist to lock - on the FRONT DOOR. Most people have more secure locks on their bathroom doors! I know this is Billings, but being a single woman and all, I just wanted a leetle more security than that, you know? I mean, when you drive down the street here, you can see every one's front doors; mine stuck out like a sore thumb because you could see that mine was the only one without a deadbolt lock on it.

So, he calls me at work to tell me that he is on his way over to the house. I called Ollie from work to warn her so that he didn't walk in on her in her underwear or something. She called me about an hour later to tell me what a twat he is. She kept going on and on and on about how much she hates this guy (she was totally preaching to the choir - I wrote the book on hating his man) and what a jerk he is. Apparently he had tried to call me at work while I was at lunch so he could tell me what a horrible housekeeper I am. I finally got her off the phone and was stewing for a while. Then, she called me again towards the end of the day to say that he didn't finish it all today and would have to come back again tomorrow - needless to say, she wasn't thrilled. She said that the key that unlocked the back door (the one totally obscured from the world, that door has a deadbolt) would also unlock the front door now. I said, "What did he do? Just put the lock from the back door on the front?" "No, it's the same kind of lock, so the key will open both." Wow! I feel so much more secure now!! Imagine: anyone with the same lock as mine will be able to open my front door with their key! JOY! The other problem was that the key I had for the back door didn't actually open the back door. I told her not to leave the house until I got home, and get that key from him so we can copy it.

I get home, and see that he has parked his pickup truck on my front lawn. The lawn I have to pay someone $100 a month to mow for me because I am not physically able to do it myself. The lawn that he is constantly ragging on me about to take care of. Who knew that parking a two ton metal machine that drips transmission fluid and synthetic oil all over the place would be good for the grass?? Silly me - women just don't know anything! Ollie came flying (literally) out of the house and said, "Park the truck; we're taking my car." So, we get into her fabulous car and she roars off practically before I can get my door shut. I hit my head on the windshield as she slows to negotiate a curve in the road because I am too fat to wear the seat belt in her fabulous car. We go to ACE Hardware where three apathetic teens try to ignore us as we stand in their direct line of sight at the key kiosk, but I am having none of it. "Get over here and copy this key," I grumbled and thrust it at the closest gene pool disaster. He takes it from me disdainfully as his co-workers snicker away; then nearly has a seizure when he realizes that now he will have to actually do the rest of his job by ringing up the copies and allowing me to give him money for them.

We drive back home, and the LL has left. He also left the old front door laying in the middle of the lawn. It compliments the tire tracks beautifully. The new door has supposedly been freshly painted; apparently by a blind person with an eyeshadow applicator. It is a total mess. The (white) inside of the door has black scuff marks all over it that make it appear as though he has included it on his list of favorite things to park his truck on. I went outside for a few minutes to enjoy the back porch that the LL made Ollie feel obligated to go out and sweep the leaves off of. It looks nice. The garbage bag of leaves was still on the porch, so I took it around the front and put it in the trash can (which I forgot to set out this morning because when I left for work, I thought it was Friday. Stupid, stupid girl.). I came in the house, bolted into my bedroom, shut the door, striped off all my clothes, sat on the edge of the bed, and cried. After about a half an hour, I put some cruddy clothes on and went out in the front yard to pick up the door off the grass. I leaned it against the front of the house, which the LL will probably hate. Then I came in here and started typing. I feel better now. Thanks.

Brand New Shiny Blog

2007-08-22T18:02:00.000-06:00

Wow, my first blog entry. It seems a shame to mess up this pristine page. Oh well.

I love blogs. You get to learn so much from people you don't even know. People from all different walks of live, backgrounds, family situations; even though we are all different, I find that I have so many things in common with so many people. I love reading about their lives (ok, living vicariously through some of them), where they live, etc. Some are personal friends that I actually know, others are people that I just feel like I know after reading about some of the things they have gone through. I will be honest; I started a blog once before and didn't really do anything with it. I didn't like the way it worked - I couldn't post any of the pictures I love! That and my internet connection was only basic dial up, so it would take FOREVER to get anything done. So, I promise to try to do better with this blog. I may not have something to post every day, but I will try to post every week (stop laughing).

I absolutely adore taking pictures. I finally moved into the 21st century this year when my beloved Sissy bought me a totally kick ass digital SLR camera, complete with super nifty lens. Since nothing has really happened this week, I give you the following pictures from my personal gallery to ponder. Please to enjoy:

Poppies growing along the road; Roberts, MT

Peekaboo deer; Nye, MT

Ducks at Riverside Park; Billings, MT

Stillwater River; outside of Nye, MT