Doctory Icky Stuff Ahead

Well, the reason why I haven't posted until today was that I've been SICK.

Instead of catching a cold from DD, who was sick all last week, I was blessed to contract a UTI (urinary tract infection) somehow. :( I woke up with it on Monday morning, right as I was getting ready to go to work. :(

DH took me to the doctor and I got some antibiotics to treat it (Bactrim and Pyridium). Sigh. It seems like ever since I got a UTI back in 1993, I am prone to getting them. However, I believe that this one and one I had last summer are stress-related. I hadn't had a UTI, probably since 1993, until last summer. It was a mild one, thankfully. But I didn't get so lucky this time. Oh well.

I hate going to the doctor. I hate calling to make an appointment. I hate waiting. I hate freaking out over what could be wrong with me. I hate that I'm ill. I hate having to worry. When the doctor asked me if I needed anything else, what was I supposed to say? Should I have had my breakdown then and told her how terrible I was feeling--mentally, spiritually, and emotionally?

Probably.

But instead, I swallowed it all back, like I always do. I know what I need to do. I know that I need to relax, find enjoyment in my hobbies again, devote more time to DD, &etc.

In good news, we got a $407 refund from our house insurance company. We raised our deductible to $2,500 and that cut the payment in half. I cannot believe we were paying $800 a year in housing insurance anyway! The refund will be spent paying off our couch. Yay!

Happy Birthday

DD turned six yesterday.

I wonder where the time has gone. It seems like only yesterday she was a tiny, not-even-5-lb. baby that could fit into one hand. Now she's a kindergartener, learning to read. She calls the sight words she's learning "kindergarten words." She even works on sounding out other words. Last night, she was copying the words "Happy Birthday" from a card she had received in the mail.

She never ceases to amaze me. I am lucky to have her in my life--even on those days she drives me bonkers.

DH baked cupcakes for her to take to school, and a cake to have at home. We decided to forego a huge party; DD was sick this week. (She was sick last year on her birthday also.) I took her out to eat last night at McD's, after DH went to work. She always enjoys eating out. When we got home, she played with some of her gifts from the Birthday Faerie: a Tinkerbell doll, a hopscotch mat, Monopoly Jr., and checkers.

Time flies.

What's on my Mind: Roundup

Baby blogs go one further: parents buy domain names in their children's (or sometimes future children's) names. This sounds nuts; parents do tend to go overboard sometimes. However, I can almost understand how someone might want to use their real name as their domain name but not be able to buy the domain they want because it's already taken.

I forsee possible future bidding wars.

***

You're sick of reading me rant about it, but I have to say it one more time: If CBS News hires Katie Couric to anchor the evening news broadcast, I will QUIT WATCHING!!!!!!! I have always watched the CBS News, my entire life, and thought it was one of the more solid news teams. I felt like those reporters knew what they were talking about (although less so in recent years). Katie Couric is nothing but an entertainment tart. There is nothing about her that says hard news. Why they don't give the job to John Roberts or Russ Mitchell, Vicky Mabry or Mika Brezinski is beyond me. (DH personally watches for Trish Regan and Lara Logan, but that's a whole 'nother story.) ;) C'mon CBS, get a clue!

***

Although I haven't been following the story closely, I feel bad for Jill Carroll, the Christian Science Monitor reporter kidnapped in Iraq. I feel bad for every hostage, but it's worse when it's a pretty white (American) woman. Or at least the media seems to think so, garnering almost wall-to-wall coverage. I do hope she is rescued or freed soon. Here's the text of her mother's statement.

***

With all the hubbub over Oprah's book club selections lately, why can't fictional memoirs be recast as fiction based on fact? Why does everything have to fit into a genre? I've never thought of "Night," her latest book choice by Elie Wiesel, as "memoir." I have it categorized in my head as "based on a true story, with more truth than fiction." Even my most favorite book of all time, "The Diary of Anne Frank," is not EXACTLY how it really happened in the Secret Annex. I'm sure that Anne didn't report verbatim the conversations they had with one another. No one's memory is that good. Plus, she herself was in the midst of revising her diary when she was arrested.

Oprah needs to select some undiscovered gems in foreign literature. Unfortunately, those gems are probably not published yet in English.

The Body Shop

Did you know that The Body Shop now has home consultants? My sister-in-law gave a "chocolate lovers foot spa" party today. I have always liked The Body Shop products, but there aren't any stores close by where I live. The closest is in Terre Haute, IN, an hour and a half away.

Anyway, it was fun. I rarely pamper my feet. We exfoliated, washed, and lotioned while the consultant talked about her business and why she chose to become a consultant. This is the fourth year of the company's home consultant expansion. In the future, I imagine that a lot of other companies will have home consultants. There's no overhead for the company.

If I were going to ever become a home consultant, The Body Shop is what I'd choose. I really like and use their products.

Saturday Shopping

Magnus ate his plastic food bowl.

So, until I could go shopping today, we had been using a cookie tin to feed him his food. $100 later at Petsmart, I had a new food dish, a new bag of dog food (the cheap stuff just wasn't cutting it), a dog brush (for the Husky), a new box of doggie treats, and a couple of individual packs of wet food. The Nutro brand dog food was recommended by some breeders on a Boxer email list. Also, when I was in Petsmart, a representative of the Nutro company gave me some coupons.

Sigh. The food is supposed to help keep dogs from shedding as much as well as keep them full and have less poo. I'll let you know how that all turns out.

Battlestar Galactica Returns!

DH and I have been watching the first season of "BG" on DVD, which I received for Christmas. I'm glad the new episodes have returned. I really like this show and I hope it stays on for a long, long time.

Tonight's episode was part one of two. One hour just doesn't seem like enough time to answer every question raised throughout previous episodes.

(If Chief Tyrol gets killed off, I'll quit watching.)

January is...

(from a prompt: "What is the best part of January?")

January is... strangely warm. The ground has thawed after a long December of freezing temperatures. I have to wipe off the dogs' feet when they come in from outside. The kitchen floor has muddy pawprints. The days have been rainy and cloudy, reflecting my mood.

But I did see the sun today, if only briefly.

The best part of January is the new year of hope it offers.

2006 Goals

Writing

1. Blog every day (even if I have to cheat by backdating on weekends.)
2. Write 335 words per day on a work-in-progress, 6 days a week, as part of a challenge to write 100,000 in a year.
3. Write at least 2,000 journal pages.

Financial

1. Pay down debt.

Personal

1. Read 50 books this year.
2. Study Welsh and Russian.
3. Meditate daily.
4. Spend more time doing fun things with DD and DH.
5. Let go of the past.

Crafty

1. Finish cross-stitch mime WIP.
2. Start and finish cross-stitch on Xmas stockings that I've been planning to do since 1997.
3. Start a small cr0ss-stitch project and finish it.
4. Start a new large cr0ss-stitch project and finish it.

These are just a few of my goals. :)

A Couple of Movies

We rented "The Brothers Grimm" over the weekend. It's a strange film, filled with some eye-popping special effects. Matt Damon and Heath Ledger star as the famous brothers. Ledger, as Jacob, is ever the dreamer, living in the world of books and fairy tales. Damon, as Will, is the down-to-earth practical brother. During the Napoleonic era, the two brothers concoct a scam in which they chase away (or exorcise) various demons, witches, and other assorted spirits that the uneducated peasant folk of Germany tell them about. Jacob records these stories. They have a couple of henchmen who help them trick the simple folk.

However, there is a real curse on a forest in the Thuringian area (Marbaden Forest). The brothers are kidnapped by a French general who is tired of hearing about missing children from the townsfolk and he tells the Grimms that either they find out what is going on or else he will execute them for their scams.

I liked this movie, but I could see the ending coming a long way off. Perhaps I have read too many fairy tales.


Another movie I watched this weekend was "Mermaids." From 1990, it stars Cher, Winona Ryder, and Christina Ricci as a semi-dysfunctional family. Cher is Mrs. Flax, a single mom, who is trying to support two daughters during the early 1960s. Charlotte (Ryder) is a confused 15-year-old, who wants to become a nun, even though the family is Jewish. Kate (Ricci) is a 5-year-old whose dream is to be an Olympic swimmer.

Mrs. Flax can never settle in one place for long, usually because something happens, like the end of a relationship, that she wants to run away from. Charlotte holds onto a dream that her father may return for her someday, even wearing boots that are too small for her just because it was one of the few presents he sent to her.

Much drama ensues, including Mrs. Flax making out with a 19-year-old guy who Charlotte has a crush on. Charlotte needs her mother to understand her need for roots. It's also as if Charlotte is the mother figure, but she needs Mrs. Flax to become an adult.

I like this movie. It has a happy ending. I always wonder what happened to Charlotte after the movie was over.

Brand New Year, Brand New Me

Today, I finished paper journal #58--384 pages of mostly whining and complaining and feeling sorry for myself. Unlike many of the other journals I used this year, #58 had pages of 8-1/2 x 11 size, so that was a LOT of writing.

Carrying around this book for four months was a bigger weight on my soul than what I thought. I spent most of today writing out the last ten pages. I wrote about 2005 and what I had accomplished. I got out my other seven journals of the year and added up how many pages I wrote. I was stunned to find that I had written a total of 1,760 pages.

Yes, one thousand, seven hundred and sixty pages... the majority of which was depressive crap. I looked back at January 2005 (in vol. 50), and saw that I was writing about the same things then as I have been lately. At that moment, I decided that it was time to let it all go. I can't spend the rest of my life in a suicidal depression because I feel abandoned. (I wish that it hadn't taken two years to figure that one out!)

Life is what you make it. As I closed the book on 2005, I filed journal #58 away with the rest of the year's books. I ended the journal on a positive note with hope. (I think I screwed up the "energy" of the entire book by starting it back in September on a negative image.)

The day passed quickly while watching the Bears lose and then a marathon of "Mythbusters." It's back to the old grind tomorrow.