Love Suddenly

Breakdance/Capoeira meets Gymnastics with a mild contortionist twist!

WordPress doesn’t like the embedded player, so I have you send you to this link. It’s nifty, I promise!

I moved back into the upstairs bedroom last night. BF is currently falling asleep on the futon, and while it doesn’t seem to bother him too much, I wanted to give him the option of sleeping in a bed. So I took all my night-time necessaries (alarm clock, contact solution and case, and various things to divert my attention while getting sleepy) and my pillow and went to sleep with the cats. This is somewhat similar to ’sleeping with the fishes’ but with more heart attack in the middle of the night as something pounces on your toes. Times two.

There is one reason why I love sleeping in this room though. Sunshine. I have always wanted an East-facing bedroom with plenty of windows. For some reason it makes waking up a hundred times more enjoyable. Waking up to sunshine after yesterday’s grey rainy nastiness was especially nice. Add some sprinkles of friendly feline purring, and you just know the day is going to be great.

I am a pansy when it comes to the cold, thus I gave up my running (ish) about four months ago when snow started coming down. The last two weeks, I’ve felt the itch to get out and at least go for a walk, but my brain knew it was still colder than it looked. Today I could not resist. I had to get outside. I lounged a little, enjoyed the sunshine bouncing off my walls, then threw on some workout type clothes and walked around the park.

The over-achiever inside of me was pushing, begging, and taunting in turns to try and get me to run. Just a little. Just for the fun of it. Just to see how it felt. Mmmm…. But I knew not having spent much time off my butt for four months probably took its toll, and I ought to take it slow. So I just walked. I’m glad I did for two excellent reasons: One, certain parts of my legs were already objecting to the increased activity about three quarters of the way around. Two, walking meant finishing slower, which meant more time outside in the sun. Ahhh….

My favorite part was the smells. I have always gotten caught up in the smells of the seasons. I know when snow is coming, I know when it’s going to rain. Fall is full of the sickly sweet smell of everything ripening, then rotting. Even during the winter, I can smell the ice, the freeze. Today, though. Today I could smell the thaw. I could hear water running. All the little rivulets of melting snow seeking lower ground. Unable to seep into the over-saturated earth. At one turn, the smell of the pine trees took me up into the mountains, and I started dreaming of hikes and campouts. The smell brings up an urge to clean. To purge my life of the weight of the last year. And each year I bring myself to drop a few things that I’ve been carrying for a lifetime.

Oh how I love the spring! I know we’re not there yet. I know we’ve still got snow to fend off, and ice, and cold. But the small swelling buds at the ends of branches bring the promise of warmth, and life, and green.

The very best thing about my relationship with BF is that it is constantly driving me to grow. I learn, expand, and alter. Fortunately, he also helps me throw down roots to support the massive branches. While the subject matter of my previous, now private, post is important and relevant, I did not stop to think that it also involved the choices, and thus required the consent of BF as well as myself. So I apologize to him, and to all of you, for sharing things best left private.

In other news, the birthday boy came over last night with his wife and new baby to spend some celebratory time for his latest aging. We laughed at lots of the LolCats pictures, and we were given some banana bread (a childhood favorite) and some surprisingly tasty butterscotch suckers. Let me clarify: I expected them to taste good (come on! SHE made them!) but butterscotch is one of those easy things to have not quite right. These had a very pleasant, but not too strong flavor. This meant you enjoyed them all the way through, rather than getting tired of the taste halfway through. Kudos to her.

As you can imagine by my lack of posting, and the title of today’s post, not a whole lot going on for me at the moment. Hung out with some friends for dinner this weekend, had a good time. Mixed up a drink that was pretty tasty. Borrowed a game from work for my DS called Professor Layton and the Curious Village. It’s essentially an excuse to put tons of puzzles in a game for you to solve. Real brainteaser type stuff. Move matches, etc, etc. Really liked it. Fortunately, they have plans to make more. Unfortunately, this one just came out last week, so it’ll be a while. They’ve got an option to download a new puzzle every week, but it requires a wireless connection (which I don’t have) and your own copy of the game. As this copy is borrowed, I’m SOL. /shrug. It was still good times. I need to finish Zelda, then Phoenix Wright. Then maybe I’ll play through Lego Star Wars. All fit in around work and WoW. I lead a pretty nice life.

While I don’t entirely have the hutsbah (however you spell it) to commit to blogging every day for a whole year (Go Rick!), I do like the idea of blogging every day for a month. Months are small edible bites of goodness that I can swallow. November somehow became the month of choice for several different month long (insane) ventures.

It started with NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, with a goal of putting 50,000 semi-coherent words on the page or screen in the name of just getting it done. Its popularity has grown exponetially every year. It has spawned several other writing projects for the writers of other-than-novels. Bloggers, screen and script writers, and short story authors all have their own month, or share November.

About two and a half years ago, a blogger decided that novels weren’t her thing, and created NaBloPoMo. National Blog Posting Month. Through what must have been sheer force of will, she kept track of all the blogs that decided to participate, and all the people who graciously donated prizes to be given away to random participants, or to those who met certain conditions. (The first baby born, or the first pregnancy announced for example)

Last November she started a Ning community to do much of the work for her. Yesterday she sent out an email letting everyone know the rules of NaBloPoMo have changed. She’ll be putting out a new theme each month, and inviting people to kick-start their blogging by posting every day. She’s tending to her sanity by limiting the prize to a $20 certificate to the winner’s choice of several online vendors. November will still be open to all the user-donated prizes.

The theme for March is lists. I plan on giving it a shot. And who knows, by posting every day for a month at a time, maybe I’ll make it a whole year. It’s a good time to start new for me. One year since my divorce, one year with BF. I dreamed of getting back together with him the other night. Working hard, being devious, doing whatever it took. When I woke up, I knew it was just a dream and I went on with my day. It was good.

Teaser trailer for the next Indiana Jones! Woot!

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/indianajones.html?showVideo=1

Knowing the last two days of glorious warmth, sunshine, and snow-melt wouldn’t last, I wasn’t surprised by the storm today. However! I was dismayed. Someone has it in for my BF and I. Every time we think things can’t get worse, they start to. Things also get worse when things start to look up a little. I don’t know what the heck is going on, but I feel like I’m caught in some kind of ‘comedy of errors’. For the sake of getting it all out on the table somewhere, this is the (mostly) comprehensive list of everything staring me in the face.

For myself: Student loan - $50 a month. Phone - recently brought down to about $40 a month. His aunt - $150 a month. My paychecks are averaging $150 to $180 every two weeks.

For BF: Phone - unknown. Right now his mother is covering it. BF’s paychecks are currently nonexistent.

As far as I know, that’s it at the moment by way of individual monthly bills. Our roommate is out of town until roughly late April, early May. He has been graciously covering our living expenses over the last several months, and has pretty much left that up to us while he’s out of town. $750 for rent, ? for electric, ? for gas, and ? for internet. I would estimate 40, 80, and 60 respectively. Who knows, I could be way off. Then of course come all the regular type expenses like food, soap, etc. We also each have a WoW subscription, but at the moment we’re getting away with paying for those by way of trade ins. So essentially they’re free for at least a little while.

All the nasty stuff comes in with the leftovers that we just can’t take care of right now. BF got a ticket for lack of proof of insurance. He had insurance at the time, just no proof. Thus far, we haven’t managed to take care of that ticket. So it’s gone far enough that should he get pulled over for anything he’ll get arrested. In order to take care of it we would have to able to both pay the fine and pay for insurance for probably the next year, maybe two. At the moment, BF does not have a legal license. I can’t remember if it’s because of the ticket or because he just missed his renewal. At the moment we don’t have any car insurance. Our brakes are rapidly becoming unusable. It’s a good thing we’ve got a stick, and that he knows how to use the transmision as a brake, or they’d be gone already. This makes driving in the snow pretty sketchy. Yesterday I discovered one of our headlights is out. Upping the likelihood he’ll get pulled over, slapped with all sorts of fines for all the previously mentioned problems, and thrown in jail. Suffice it to say, driving is pretty stressful right now. Top the whole thing with the knowledge that to get a job, or to a job, he’ll need gas in the car, and neither of us have money.

Now I know that people have a generally understood meaning to “no money.” Usually when someone says this, it means things are tight that month, and they have what they need to pay their bills, and eat, but not enough to really play with. For BF and I this pretty literally means zero dollars. He keeps cash in his wallet, and that’s gone. I just spent the last of what was in my account on contact solution. We both have tax returns to do. I’m pretty sure mine will break even. The jobs that took taxes out will pay for the ones that didn’t. I might get something back, but I’d be pretty surprised if it was in the three digit range. BF should get a fair amount back, but that will probably need to go to keeping walls around our stuff. The next guaranteed date of income will be the 22nd, at which point my student loan will again be late, we will need gas and food, and not likely being enough to pay for my next phone bill making it late for something like the fifth time in a year.

Oh! I forgot. We have two cats. While less expensive than kids, we do have to feed them and provide a place for them to crap that we can all agree upon. Just before Christmas (as in Christmas Eve) BF’s amp and speaker set up was stolen out of the trunk of his car. About two or three weeks ago, they came back and took his stereo.

Last time I looked, we had about 10 packs of ramen and one more pack of rice in the cabinet, and two packets of instant oatmeal and a box of malt-o-meal (shudder) on top of the fridge. Let’s see, one half full jar of peanut butter, some jelly, some butter, and some milk that’s probably gone bad by now. A partly full bottle of some pretty nasty wine that I’m pretty sure will end up down the sink. Two small boxes of uncooked capellini noodles, and some pancake mix. Various condiments and spices.

BF is looking for work, and will be putting in a very concerted day of looking tomorrow. I’ll be exploring the option of going to a company where a good friend works. It’d pay almost double what I’m making now, but have kind of a sucky commute, and be full time. While I don’t mind working, I also like having as much free time as I do, and I’m not to excited about giving it up.

I think that’s about it. That’s everything staring us in the face right now. I’m not asking for anyone’s pity, nor am I trying to one-up anyone else’s situation. Everyone has it hard in their own way, I know. I just wanted to get it all out somewhere so I can look at it. Know what I’m working with. Or against. We’ll be okay. We’ll be okay. We’ll be okay. I’m just feeling pretty stressed at the moment. That panicky, just below your breastbone kind of tight that won’t go away when you breathe. *SIGH* We’ll be okay…

Thanks to the wonder and joy of free samples, I can see once again, and write the post I meant to write yesterday! This weekend was pretty fun, full of stuff I either haven’t done in a while, or haven’t done at all. BF’s mom’s work party was up at Gorgoza Park in Jeremy Ranch. Me, BF, his sister and her daughter, his mother, and his grandma all went tubing. They’ve got a tow rope that drags you up the hill so you don’t have to trudge back up on your own. It was a little warmer that day, so the runs weren’t as slick as could be, but it was still a ton of fun. I’ll have to get a group together to go some time. $20 for 2 hours is a little pricey, but for a one time thing, I’m sure it’d be a blast.

My roommate was in town for the weekend, and we went to visit his family. We couldn’t get a hold of one pair of siblings, sadly, but we did get to see the newest addition to the family. He was conked out the whole time we were there, but he was still crazy cute. They showed us some pictures they’d gotten during a bath, and one of the last ones he’s laying on his back, facing the camera to the side with a big grin on his face, and fingers curled in a perfect bird. Great picture.

My roommate then took off for a little while to watch a movie with a friend. The new parents expressed their cabin fever, so the three of us went to the dollar theater to see The Golden Compass. It was okay, but not particularly spectacular. I’d like to read the book. It felt like the movie just couldn’t quite fit enough information in to make it really grab you. It seemed like the kind of movie that would be geared toward a younger crowd (I didn’t know it was PG-13 rather than PG), I was really surprised by the polar bear fight. While there is no real blood or gore, one bear kills the other by knocking his jaw off his face. I was half-expecting my friend to throw up right there. She made a few gagging noises, but bravely held it in. Suffice it to say, we were both startled. I’ll give any further impressions when(/if) I read the book.

Then it was off to Monk’s House of Jazz for karaoke. I was completely unprepared, so I didn’t sing anything, but several friends did, and I’ve promised to sing the next time I go. I also told a few other musically inclined friends of mind about the whole thing, and they agreed that a date should be set. I had a Long Island Iced Tea, and it was somehow stronger than I’m used to or something. It made my head kinda twisty, but it was relaxing and made the whole thing a ton of fun.

All in all it was a fantastic Saturday, and having started the whole thing with somewhat less than five hour’s sleep, I crashed hard when I got home. I look forward to doing it again soon.

So I’m sure between the conversations and experiences I’ve had this weekend, I could write all sorts of blog posts, even semi-interesting ones. However! Last night, in typical changing of the contacts fashion, I took out my old contacts and threw them away. This morning I open my medicine cabinet, and to my squinty chagrin, there are no contact boxes. I’m pretty sure I’ve got another six pair in two well matched L and R boxes somewhere, but when you can only see about six inches in front of your nose, mounting a concerted search is headachingly difficult. My eye doctor is open on weekdays, so I have spent the day examining my lcd screen pixel by pixel.

In short, more later.